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+ | ====== The Major Greek Philosophers - Yonge ====== | ||
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+ | //The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus and Tusculan Disputations Of M. T. Cicero// | ||
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+ | //With A Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by Cicero.// | ||
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+ | //Literally Translated by C. D. Yonge, B.A.// | ||
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+ | //London: George Bell and Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street and Charing Cross, 1875// | ||
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+ | // | ||
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+ | In the works translated in the present volume, Cicero makes such constant references to the doctrines and systems of the ancient Greek Philosophers, | ||
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+ | ==== Thales ==== | ||
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+ | The earliest of them was Thales, who was born at Miletus, about 640 b.c. He was a man of great political sagacity and influence; but we have to consider him here as the earliest philosopher who appears to have been convinced of the necessity of scientific proof of whatever was put forward to be believed, and as the originator of mathematics and geometry. He was also a great astronomer; for we read in Herodotus (i. 74) that he predicted the eclipse of the sun which happened in the reign of Alyattes, king of Lydia, b.c. 609. He asserted that water is the origin of all things; that everything is produced out of it, and everything is resolved into it. He also asserted that it is the soul which originates all motion, so much so, that he attributes a soul to the magnet. Aristotle also represents him as saying that everything is full of Gods. He does not appear to have left any written treatises behind him: we are uncertain when or where he died, but he is said to have lived to a great age—to 78, or, according to some writers, to 90 years of age. | ||
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+ | ==== Anaximander ==== | ||
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+ | Anaximander, | ||
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+ | Anaximander further held that the earth was of a cylindrical form, suspended in the middle of the universe, and surrounded by water, air, and fire, like the coats of an onion; but that the interior stratum of fire was broken up and collected into masses, from which originated the sun, moon, and stars; which he thought were carried round by the three spheres in which they were respectively fixed. He believed that the moon had a light of her own, not a borrowed light; that she was nineteen times as large as the earth, and the sun twenty-eight. He thought that all animals, including man, were originally produced in water, and proceeded gradually to become land animals. According to Diogenes Laertius, he was the inventor of the gnomon, and of geographical maps; at all events, he was the first person who introduced the use of the gnomon into Greece. He died about 547 b.c. | ||
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+ | ==== Anaximenes ==== | ||
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+ | Anaximenes was also a Milesian, and a contemporary of Thales and Anaximander. We do not exactly know when he was born, or when he died; but he must have lived to a very great age, for he was in high repute as early as b.c. 544, and he was the tutor of Anaxagoras, b.c. 480. His theory was, that air was the first cause of all things, and that the other elements of the universe were resolvable into it. From this infinite air, he imagined that all finite things were formed by compression and rarefaction, | ||
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+ | ==== Anaxagoras ==== | ||
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+ | Anaxagoras, who, as has been already stated, was a pupil of Anaximenes, was born at Clazomenæ, in Ionia, about b.c. 499. He removed to Athens at the time of the Persian war, where he became intimate with Pericles, who defended him, though unsuccessfully, | ||
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+ | ==== Pythagoras ==== | ||
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+ | Pythagoras was earlier than Anaxagoras, though this latter has been mentioned before him to avoid breaking the continuity of the Ionic School. His father' | ||
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+ | Many of his peculiar tenets are believed to have been derived from the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, with whom he is said to have been connected. His contemporaries at Crotona in South Italy, where he lived, looked upon him as a man peculiarly connected with the gods; and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, “In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods.” (Hist. of Greece, iv. p. 529.) | ||
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+ | On his arrival at Crotona, he formed a school, consisting at first of three hundred of the richest of the citizens, who bound themselves by a sort of vow to himself and to each other, for the purpose of cultivating the ascetic observances which he enjoined, and of studying his religious and philosophical theories. All that took place in this school was kept a profound secret; and there were gradations among the pupils themselves, who were not all admitted, or at all events not at first, to a full acquaintance with their master' | ||
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+ | Pythagoras is said to have been the first who assumed the title of φιλόσοφος; | ||
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+ | Music and harmony too, played almost as important a part in the Pythagorean system as mathematics, | ||
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+ | The most distant region he called Olympus; the space between the fixed stars and the moon he called κόσμος; | ||
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+ | The light and heat of the central fire he believed that we received through the sun, which he considered a kind of lens: and perfection, he conceived to exist in direct ratio to the distance from the central fire. | ||
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+ | The universe, itself, they looked upon as having subsisted from all eternity, controlled by an eternal supreme Deity; who established both limits and infinity; and whom they often speak of as the absolute μονὰς, | ||
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+ | With respect to man, the doctrine of Pythagoras was that known by the name of the Metempsychosis, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Alcmæon ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Alcmæon of Crotona was a pupil of Pythagoras; but that is all that is known of his history. He was a great natural philosopher; | ||
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+ | ==== Xenophanes ==== | ||
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+ | Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school, was a native of Colophon; and flourished probably about the time of Pisistratus. Being banished from his own country, he fled to the Ionian colonies in Sicily, and at last settled in Elea, or Velia. His writings were chiefly poetical. He was universally regarded by the ancients as the originator of the doctrine of the oneness of the universe: he also maintained, it is said, the unity of the Deity; and also his immortality and eternity; denounced the transference of him into human form; and reproached Homer and Hesiod for attributing to him human weaknesses. He represented him as endowed with unwearied activity, and as the animating power of the universe. | ||
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+ | ==== Heraclitus ==== | ||
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+ | Heraclitus was an Ephesian, and is said to have been a pupil of Xenophanes, though this statement is much doubted; others call him a pupil of Hippasus the Pythagorean. He wrote a treatise on Nature; declaring that the principle of all things was fire, from which he saw the world was evolved by a natural operation; he further said that this fire was the human life and soul, and therefore a rational intelligence guiding the whole universe. In this primary fire he considered that there was a perpetual longing to manifest itself in different forms: in its perfectly pure state it is in heaven; but in order to gratify this longing it descends, gradually losing the rapidity of its motion till it settles in the earth. The earth, however, is not immovable, but only the slowest of all moving bodies; while the soul of man, though dwelling in the lowest of all regions, namely, in the earth, he considered a migrated portion of fire in its pure state; which, in spite of its descent, had lost none of its original purity. The summum bonum he considered to be a contented acquiescence in the decrees of the Deity. None of his writings are extant; and he does not appear to have had many followers. | ||
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+ | ==== Diogenes of Apollonia ==== | ||
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+ | Diogenes of Apollonia, (who must not be confounded with his Stoic or Cynic namesake,) was a pupil of Anaximenes, and wrote a treatise on Nature, of which Diogenes Laertius gives the following account: “He maintained that air was the primary element of all things; that there was an infinite number of worlds and an infinite vacuum; that air condensed and rarefied produced the different members of the universe; that nothing was generated from nothing, or resolved into nothing; that the earth was round, supported in the centre, having received its shape from the whirling round it of warm vapours, and its concrete nature and hardness from cold.” He also imputed to air an intellectual energy, though he did not recognise any difference between mind and matter. | ||
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+ | ==== Parmenides ==== | ||
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+ | Parmenides was a native of Elea or Velia, and flourished about 460 b.c., soon after which time he came to Athens, and became acquainted with Socrates, who was then very young. Theophrastus and Aristotle speak doubtfully of his having been a pupil of Xenophanes. Some authors, however, reckon him as one of the Pythagorean school; Plato and Aristotle speak of him as the greatest of the Eleatics; and it is said that his fellow-countrymen bound their magistrates every year to abide by the laws which he had laid down. He, like Xenophanes, explained his philosophical tenets in a didactic poem, in which he speaks of two primary forms, one the fine uniform etherial fire of flame (φλόγος πῦρ), the other the cold body of night, out of the intermingling of which everything in the world is formed by the Deity who reigns in the midst. His cosmogony was carried into minute detail, of which we possess only a few obscure fragments; he somewhat resembled the Pythagoreans in believing in a spherical system of the world, surrounded by a circle of pure light; in the centre of which was the earth; and between the earth and the light was the circle of the Milky Way, of the morning and evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon. And the differences in perfection of organization, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Democritus ==== | ||
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+ | Democritus was born at Abdera, b.c. 460. His father Hegesistratus had been so rich as to be able to entertain Xerxes, when on his march against Greece. He spent his inheritance in travelling into distant countries, visiting the greater part of Asia, and, according to some authors, extending his travels as far as India and Æthiopia. Egypt he certainly was acquainted with. He lived to beyond the age of 100 years, and is said to have died b.c. 357. | ||
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+ | He was a man of vast and varied learning, and a most voluminous author, though none of his works have come down to us;—in them he carried out the theory of atoms which he had derived from Leucippus; insisting on the reality of a vacuum and of motion, which he held was the eternal and necessary consequence of the original variety of atoms in this vacuum. These atoms, according to this theory, being in constant motion and impenetrable, | ||
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+ | Besides the infinite number of atoms, he likewise supposed the existence of an infinite number of worlds, each being kept together by a sort of shell or skin. He derived the four elements from the form, quality, and proportionate magnitude of the atoms predominating in each; and in deriving individual things from atoms, he mainly considered the qualities of warm and cold; the soul he considered as derived from fire atoms; and he did not consider mind as anything peculiar, or as a power distinct from the soul or sensuous perception; but he considered knowledge derived from reason to be a sensuous perception. | ||
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+ | In his ethical philosophy, he considered (as we may see from the de Finibus) the acquisition of peace of mind as the end and ultimate object of all our actions, and as the last and best fruit of philosophical inquiry. Temperance and moderation in prosperity and adversity were, in his eyes, the principal means of acquiring this peace of mind. And he called those men alone pious and beloved by the Gods who hate whatever is wrong. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Empedocles ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Empedocles was a Sicilian, who flourished about the time when Thrasydæus, | ||
+ | |||
+ | He was a man of great genius and extensive learning; it is not known whose pupil he was, nor are any of his disciples mentioned except Gorgias. He was well versed in the tenets of the Eleatic and Pythagorean schools; but he did not adopt the fundamental principles of either; though he agreed with Pythagoras in his belief in the metempsychosis, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Diagoras ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Diagoras was a native of Melos, and a pupil of Democritus, and flourished about b.c. 435. He is remarkable as having been regarded by all antiquity as an Atheist. In his youth he had some reputation as a lyric poet; so that he is sometimes classed with Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides. Aristophanes, | ||
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+ | That he was an atheist, however, appears to have been quite untrue. Like Socrates, he took new and peculiar views respecting the Gods and their worship; and seems to have ridiculed the honours paid to their statues, and the common notions which were entertained of their actions and conduct. (See De Nat. Deor. iii. 37.) He is said also to have attacked objects held in the greatest veneration at Athens, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, and to have dissuaded people from being initiated into them. He appears also, in his theories on the divine nature, to have substituted in some degree the active powers of nature for the activity of the Gods. In his own conduct he was a man of strict morality and virtue. He died at Corinth before the end of the century. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Protagoras ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Protagoras was a native of Abdera; the exact time of his birth is unknown, but he was a little older than Socrates. He was the first person who gave himself the title of σοφιστὴς, | ||
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+ | His fundamental principle was, that everything is motion, and that that is the efficient cause of everything; that nothing exists, but that everything is continually coming into existence. He divided motion (besides numerous subordinate divisions) into active and passive; though he did not consider either of these characteristics as permanent. From the concurrence of two such motions he taught that sensations and perceptions arose, according to the rapidity of the motion. Therefore he said that there is or exists for each individual, only that of which he has a sensation or perception; and that as sensation, like its objects, is engaged in a perpetual change of motion, opposite assertions might exist according to the difference of the perception respecting such object. Moral worth he attributed to taking pleasure in the beautiful; and virtue he referred to a certain sense of shame implanted in man by nature; and to a certain conscious feeling of justice, which secures the bonds of connexion in private and political life. | ||
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+ | ==== Socrates ==== | ||
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+ | Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, | ||
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+ | From his disciples Plato and Xenophon we have a very full account of his habits and doctrines; though it has been much disputed which of the two is to be considered as giving the most accurate description of his opinions. As a young man he had been to a certain extent a pupil of Archelaus (the disciple of Anaxagoras), | ||
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+ | Socrates, then, looked at all knowledge from the point of view of human practice. He first, as Cicero says, (Tusc. Dis. v. 4,) “called philosophy down from heaven and established it in the cities, introduced it even into private houses, and compelled it to investigate life, and manners, and what was good and evil among men.” He was the first man who turned his thoughts and discussions distinctly to the subject of Ethics. Deeply imbued with sincere religious feeling, and believing himself to be under the peculiar guidance of the Gods, who at all times admonished him by a divine warning voice when he was in danger of doing anything unwise, inexpedient, | ||
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+ | Such then being the capacity of man for wisdom and virtue, his object was to impart that wisdom to them; and the first step necessary, he considered to be eradicating one great fault which was a barrier to all improvement. This fault he described as “the conceit of knowledge without the reality.” His friend and admirer Chærephon had consulted the oracle at Delphi as to whether any man was wiser than Socrates; to which the priestess replied that no other man was wiser. Socrates affirms that he was greatly disturbed at hearing this declaration from so infallible an authority; till after conversing with politicians, | ||
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+ | And if his objects were new, his method was no less so. He was the parent of dialectics and logic. Aristotle says, “To Socrates we may unquestionably assign two novelties—inductive discourses, and the definitions of general terms.” Without any predecessor to copy, Socrates fell as it were instinctively into that which Aristotle describes as the double tract of the dialectic process, breaking up the one into the many, and recombining the many into the one; though the latter or synthetical process he did not often perform himself, but strove to stimulate his hearer' | ||
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+ | The fault of the Socratic theory is well remarked by Grote to be, that while he resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom, and all vice into ignorance or folly, he omitted to notice what is not less essential to virtue, the proper condition of the passions, desires, &c., and limited his views too exclusively to the intellect; still while laying down a theory which is too narrow, he escaped the erroneous consequences of it by a partial inconsistency. For no one ever insisted more emphatically on the necessity of control over the passions and appetites, of enforcing good habits, and on the value of that state of the sentiments and emotions which such a course tended to form. He constantly pointed out that the chief pleasures were such as inevitably arise from the performance of one's duty, and that as to happiness, a very moderate degree of good fortune is sufficient as to external things, provided the internal man be properly disciplined. | ||
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+ | Grote remarks further, (and this remark is particularly worth remembering in the reading of Cicero' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The system, then, of Socrates was animated by the truest spirit of positive science, and formed an indispensable precursor to its attainment. And we may form some estimate of his worth and genius if we recollect, that while the systems and speculations of other ancient philosophers serve only as curiosities to make us wonder, or as beacons to warn us into what absurdities the ablest men may fall, the principles and the system of Socrates and his followers, and of that school alone, exercise to this day an important influence on all human argument and speculation. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Aristippus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Aristippus (whom we will consider before Plato, that Aristotle may follow Plato more immediately) came when a young man to Athens, for the express purpose of becoming acquainted with Socrates, with whom he remained almost till his death. He was, however, very different from his master, being a person of most luxurious and sensual habits. He was also the first of Socrates' | ||
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+ | He pronounced pleasure to be the chief good, and pain the chief evil; but he denied that either of these was a mere negative inactive state, considering them, on the contrary, both to be motions of the soul, | ||
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+ | As to actions, he asserted that they were all morally indifferent, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Plato ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Plato, the greatest of all the disciples of Socrates, was the son of Ariston and Perictione, and was born probably in the year b.c. 428, and descended, on the side of his father, from Codrus, and on his mother' | ||
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+ | His works have come down to us in a more complete form than those of any other ancient author who was equally voluminous; and from them we get a clear idea of the principal doctrines which he inculcated on his followers. | ||
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+ | Like Socrates, he was penetrated with the idea, that knowledge and wisdom were the things most necessary to man, and the greatest goods assigned to him by God. Wisdom he looked on as the great purifier of the soul; and as any approach to wisdom presupposes an original communion with Being, properly so called, this communion also presupposes the divine nature, and consequent immortality of the soul, his doctrine respecting which was of a much purer and loftier character than the usual theology of the ancients. Believing that the world also had a soul, he considered the human soul as similar to it in nature, and free from all liability to death, in spite of its being bound up with the appetites, in consequence of its connexion with the body, and as preserving power and consciousness after its separation from the body. What he believed, however, to be its condition after death is far less certain, as his ideas on this subject are expressed in a mythical form. | ||
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+ | The chief point, however, to which Plato directed his attention, was ethics, which, especially in his system, are closely connected with politics. He devotes the Protagoras, and several shorter dialogues, to refute the sensual and selfish theories of some of his predecessors, | ||
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+ | Virtue he considered the fitness of the soul for the operations that are proper to it; and it manifests itself by means of its inward harmony, beauty, and health. Different phases of virtue are distinguishable so far as the soul is not pure spirit, but just as the spirit should rule both the other elements of the soul, so also should wisdom, as the inner development of the spirit, rule the other virtues. | ||
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+ | Politics he considered an inseparable part of ethics, and the state as the copy of a well-regulated individual life: from the three different activities of the soul he deduced the three main elements of the state, likening the working class to the appetitive element of the soul, both of which equally require to be kept under control; the military order, which answered, in his idea, to the emotive element, ought to develop itself in thorough dependence on the reason; and from that the governing order, answering to the rational faculty, must proceed. The right of passing from a subordinate to a dominant position must depend on the individual capacity and ability for raising itself. But from the difficulties of realizing his theories, he renounces this absolute separation of ranks in his book on Laws, limits the power of the governors, attempts to reconcile freedom with unity and reason, and to mingle monarchy with democracy. | ||
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+ | With respect to his theology, he appears to have agreed entirely with Socrates. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Aristotle ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Aristotle was born at Stageira, b.c. 384. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas II., king of Macedon. At the age of seventeen he went to Athens, in hopes to become a pupil of Plato; but Plato was in Sicily, and did not return for three years, which time Aristotle applied to severe study, and to cultivating the friendship of Heraclides Ponticus. When Plato returned, he soon distinguished him above all his other pupils. He remained at Athens twenty years, maintaining, | ||
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+ | His learning was immense, and his most voluminous writings embraced almost every subject conceivable; | ||
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+ | God he considered to be the highest and purest energy of eternal intellect, | ||
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+ | Connected with Aristotle' | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Heraclides Ponticus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Heraclides Ponticus, as he is usually called, was, as his name denotes, a native of Pontus. He migrated to Athens, where he became a disciple of Plato, who, while absent in Sicily, entrusted him with the care of his school. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Speusippus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Speusippus was the nephew of Plato, and succeeded him as President of the Academy; but he continued so but a short time, and, within eight years of the death of Plato, he died at Athens, b.c. 339. He refused to recognise the Good as the ultimate principle; but, going back to the older theologians, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Theophrastus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Theophrastus was a native of Eresus, from whence he migrated to Athens, where he became a follower of Plato, and afterwards of Aristotle, by whom, when he quitted Athens for Chalcis, he was designated as his successor in the presidency of the Lyceum; while in this position, he is said to have had two thousand disciples, and among them the comic poet Menander. When, b.c. 305, the philosophers were banished from Athens, he also left the city, but returned the next year on the repeal of the law. He lived to a great age, though the date of his birth is not certainly known. | ||
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+ | He was a very voluminous writer on many subjects, but directed his chief attention to continuing the researches into natural history which had been begun by Aristotle. As, however, only a few fragments of his works have come down to us, and these in a very corrupt state, we know but little what peculiar views he entertained; | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Xenocrates ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Xenocrates was a native of Chalcedon, born probably b.c. 396. He was a follower of Plato, and accompanied him to Sicily. After his death, he betook himself, with Aristotle, to the court of Hermias, tyrant of Ptarneus, but soon returned to Athens, and became president of the Academy when Speusippus, through ill health, was forced to abandon that post. He died b.c. 314. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He was not a man of great genius, but of unwearied industry and the purest virtue and integrity. None of his works have come down to us; but, from the notices of other writers, we are acquainted with some of his peculiar doctrines. He stood at the head of those who, regarding the universe as imperishable and existing from eternity, looked upon the chronic succession in the theory of Plato as a form in which to denote the relations of conceptual succession. He asserted that the soul was a self-moving member, | ||
+ | |||
+ | In his ethics he endeavoured to render the Platonic theory more complete, and to give it a more direct applicability to human life; admitting, besides the good and the bad, of something which is neither good nor bad, and some of these intermediate things, such as health, beauty, fame, good fortune, he would not admit to be absolutely worthless and indifferent. He maintained, however, in the most decided manner, that virtue is the only thing valuable in itself, and that the value of everything else is conditional, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Antisthenes ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Antisthenes was older than Plato; though the exact time of his birth is uncertain: but he fought at the battle of Tanagra, b.c. 420, though then very young. He became a disciple of Gorgias, and afterwards of Socrates, at whose death he set up a school in the Cynosarges, a gymnasium for the use of Athenians born of foreign mothers, near the temple of Hercules, from which place of assembly his followers were called Cynics. He lived to a great age, though the year of his death is not known, but he certainly was alive after the battle of Leuctra, b.c. 371. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In his philosophical system, which was almost confined to ethics, he appears to have aimed at novelty rather than truth or common sense. He taught that in all that the wise man does he conforms to perfect virtue, and that pleasure is so far from being necessary to man, that it is a positive evil. He is reported also to have gone the length of pronouncing pain and infamy blessings rather than evils, though when he spoke of pleasure as worthless, he probably meant that pleasure which arises from the gratification of sensual or artificial desires; for he praised that which arises from the intellect, and from friendship. The summum bonum he placed in a life according to virtue. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In a treatise in which he discussed the nature of the Gods he contended for the unity of the Deity, and asserted that man is unable to know him by any sensible representation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Diogenes ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Diogenes, a native of Sinope in Pontus, who was born b.c. 412, was one of his few disciples; he came at an early age to Athens, and became notorious for the most frantic excesses of moroseness and self-denial. On a voyage to Ægina he was taken by pirates and sold as a slave to Xeniades, a Corinthian, over whom he acquired great influence, and was made tutor to his children. His system consisted merely in teaching men to dispense with even the simplest necessaries of civilized life: and he is said to have taught that all minds are air, exactly alike, and composed of similar particles; but that in beasts and in idiots they are hindered from properly developing themselves by various humors and incapacities of their bodies. He died b.c. 323, the same year that Epicurus came to Athens. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Zeno ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Zeno was born at Citium, a city of Cyprus; but having been shipwrecked near Cyprus, he settled in that city, where he devoted himself to severe study for a great length of time, cultivating, | ||
+ | |||
+ | In speaking of the Stoic doctrines, it is not very clear how much of them proceeded from Zeno himself, and how much from Chrysippus and other eminent men of the school in subsequent years. In natural philosophy he considered that there was a primary matter which was never increased or diminished, and which was the foundation of everything which existed: and which was brought into existence by the operative power, | ||
+ | |||
+ | In ethics he agreed with the Cynics in recognising the constitutional nature of moral obligations, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Cleanthes ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Cleanthes was born at Assos in the Troas, about 300 b.c.; he came to Athens at an early age, and became the pupil of Zeno, whom at his death he succeeded in his school. He differed from his master in regarding the soul as immortal, and approximated to the Cynics in denying that pleasure was agreeable to nature, or in any respect good. He died of voluntary starvation at the age of eighty. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Chrysippus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Chrysippus was born b.c. 280, at Soli in Cilicia. He came at an early age to Athens, and became a pupil of Cleanthes; and among the later Stoics he was more regarded than either Zeno or Cleanthes. He died b.c. 207. | ||
+ | |||
+ | His doctrines do not appear to have differed from those of Zeno; only that, from feeling the dangerous influence of the Epicurean principles, he endeavoured to popularize the Stoic ethics. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Epicurus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Epicurus was an Athenian of the Attic demos Gargettus, whence he is sometimes simply called the Gargettian. He was, however, born at Samos, b.c. 342, and did not come to Athens till the age of eighteen, when he found Xenocrates at the head of the Academy, and by some authors is said to have become his pupil, though he himself would not admit it (Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 26). At the outbreak of the Samian war he crossed over to Colophon, where he collected a school. It is said that the first thing that excited him to the study of philosophy was the perusal of the works of Democritus while he resided at Colophon. From thence he went to Mitylene and Lampsacus, and b.c. 306 he returned to Athens, and finally established himself as a teacher of philosophy. His own life was that of a man of simple, pure, and temperate habits. He died of the stone, b.c. 270, and left Hermarchus of Mitylene as his successor in the management of his school. | ||
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+ | None of his works have come down to us. With regard to his philosophical system, in spite of his boast of being self-taught and having borrowed from no one, he clearly derived the chief part of his natural philosophy from Democritus, and of his moral philosophy from Aristippus and the Cyrenaics. He considered human happiness the end of all philosophy, and agreed with the Cyrenaics that pleasure constituted the greatest happiness; still this theory in his hands acquired a far loftier character;< | ||
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+ | In his natural philosophy he embraced the atomic theories of Democritus and Diagoras, carrying them even further than they themselves had done, to such a degree that he drew upon himself the reproach of Atheism. He regarded the Gods themselves as consisting of atoms, and < | ||
+ | ==== Theodorus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Theodorus was a native of Cyrene, who flourished about b.c. 320. He was of the Cyrenaic sect, and the founder of that branch of it which was called after him, the Theodorean; though we scarcely know in what his doctrines differed from those of Aristippus, unless they were, if possible, of a still more lax character. He taught, for instance, that there was nothing really wrong or disgraceful in theft, adultery, or sacrilege; but that they were branded by public opinion to restrain fools. He is also reproved with utter atheism; and Cicero classes him with Diagoras, as a man who utterly denied the existence of any Gods at all. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Pyrrho ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Pyrrho was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, whose expedition into Asia he joined. He appears, as far as his philosophy went, to have been an universal sceptic. He impeached, however, none of the chief principles of morality, but, regarding Socrates as his model, directed all his endeavours towards the production in his pupils of a firm well-regulated moral character. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Crantor ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Crantor was a native of Soli in Cilicia; we do not know when he was born or when he died, but he came to Athens before b.c. 315. He was the first of Plato' | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Arcesilaus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Arcesilaus, or Arcesilas, flourished about b.c. 280; he was born at Pitane, but came to Athens and became the pupil of Theophrastus and of Crantor, and afterwards of some of the more sceptical philosophers. On the death of Crantor he succeeded to the chair of the Academy, in the doctrines of which he made so many innovations that he is called the founder of the New Academy. What his peculiar views were is, however, a matter of great uncertainty. Some give him the credit of having restored the doctrines of Plato in an uncorrupted form; while, according to Cicero, on the other hand, (Acad. i. 12,) he summed up all his opinions in the statement that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance. He, and the New Academy, do not, however, seem to have doubted the existence of truth in itself, but only the capacity of man for arriving at the knowledge of it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Carneades ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Carneades was born at Cyrene about b.c. 213. He went early to Athens, and at first attended the lectures of the Stoics; but subsequently attached himself to the Academy, and succeeded to the chair on the death of Hegesinus. In the year b.c. 155, he came to Rome on an embassy, but so offended Cato by speaking one day in praise of justice as a virtue, and the next day, in answer to all his previous arguments, that he made a motion in the senate, that he should be ordered to depart from Rome. He died b.c. 129. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Philo ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Philo of Larissa, who is often mentioned by Cicero, was his own master, having removed to Rome after the conquest of Athens by Mithridates, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Antiochus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Antiochus of Ascalon has been called by some writers the founder of the Fifth Academy; he also was a teacher of Cicero during the time he studied at Athens; he had also a school at Alexandria, and another in Syria, where he died. He studied under Philo, but was so far from agreeing with him that he wrote a treatise on purpose to refute what he considered as the scepticism of the Academics. And undoubtedly the later philosophers of that school had exaggerated the teaching of Plato, that the senses were not in all cases trustworthy organs of perception, so as to infer from it a denial of the certainty of any knowledge whatever. Antiochus professed that his object was to revive the real doctrines of Plato in opposition to the modern scepticism of Carneades and Philo. He appears to have considered himself as an eclectic philosopher, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Diodorus ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Diodorus of Tyre flourished about b.c. 110. He lived at Athens, where he succeeded Critolaus as the head of the Peripatetic school. Cicero, however, denies that he was a genuine Peripatetic, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Panætius ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Panætius was a native of Rhodes; his exact age is not known, but he was a contemporary of Scipio Æmilianus, who died b.c. 129. He went to Athens at an early age, where he is said to have been a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus, and also of Polemo Periegetes. He became associated with P. Scipio Æmilianus, who valued him highly. The latter part of his life he spent at Athens, where he had succeeded Antipater as head of the Stoic school. He was the author of a treatise on “What is Becoming, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Polemo ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Polemo was a pupil of Xenocrates, and succeeded him as the head of his school. There is a story that he had been a very dissolute young man, and that one day, at the head of a band of revellers, he burst into the school of Xenocrates, when his attention was so arrested by the discourse of the philosopher, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Archytas ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Archytas was a native of Tarentum: his age is not quite certain, but he is believed to have been a contemporary of Plato, and he is even said to have saved his life by his interest with the tyrant Dionysius. He was a great general and statesman, as well as a philosopher. In philosophy he was a Pythagorean; | ||
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+ | \\ | ||
+ | The limits of this volume forbid more than the preceding very brief sketch of the chiefs of the ancient philosophy. For a more detailed account the reader is referred to the Biographical Dictionary edited by Dr. Smith, from which valuable work much of this sketch has been derived. The account of Socrates has been principally derived from Mr. Grote' | ||
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+ | It was intended to subjoin a comparison of the systems of the different sects, but it would take more space than can be spared; and it is moreover unnecessary, | ||
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