butes and conditions pertaining to our physical existence. And supposing Zenon to insist further on the indecomposable character of his consciousness, which seemed not only to guarantee but to postulate an absolute One or indivisible Ens, his opponent might fairly object that Zenon's consciousness could not reasonably be expected to limit or bind his own. And even were he to grant that his consciousness, like that of Zenon, was one and indivisible, yet, being numerically and probably in other respects different from that of Zenon, he could make no inferences from it, either as to the existence or character of an absolute Ens. But leaving Zenon, and casting a rapid retrospective glance over the Eleatic school, we must admit that the essential tendency of its methods is Skeptical. Directly, all its teachers impeach the veracity and, so far as based upon them, the determinations of our reason. It is no set-off to this negation that the metaphysical entity of the One-the absolute Ens-is dogmatically inferred from it; for the negation which thus engenders an artificial affirmation is clearly competent, if need be, to its destruction. Mr. Grote thinks that Zenon did not intend to destroy or bring into doubt the phenomenal world.' Whether he intended it or not, he undoubtedly succeeded in doing so. The object of his ratiocination, in common with his predecessors at Elea, is to claim for metaphysical concepts an inherent superiority to their physical correlatives. No one but a Skeptic-at least a man who could shut out from his consciousness the ordinary bases of certitude-would have thought that the problem of Achilles and the tortoise was anything else but a palpable and absurd paralogism. Indeed, I doubt whether those negative ratiocinations of Zenon can be adequately appreciated except by persons who are more or less Skeptics. Indirectly, too, the Eleatics contributed to the growth of Skepticism by their excessive ontology. The very determination to discover truth not in phenomena but in noumena, accompanied by a disregard both of our personal experience and the consensus of humanity as to the deliverances of the senses, is sufficient to vitiate all conclusions based on such principles. We shall find in the course of our inquiry that Skeptical methods are frequently allied to and made to serve the basis of idealistic conclusions, while these in their turn are no less apt to engender Skepticism. Our test in every such case should be clearly not the conclusions, but the method employed to attain them; and, judged by this criterion, the principles of the Eleatics must be pronounced to be both This was Tennemann's opinion, which Mr. Grote thinks wrong. See his Plato, vol. i. p. 98, note q. Skeptical in themselves, as well as the source of much of the Skeptical idealism current in subsequent Hellenic thought. Their method leads up to, if it does not involve, the Platonic maxim, 'Confusion first begins in the Concrete.' 3. With the Eleatics we also have the first employment of the Greek language for Eristic purposes. Probably no other language has ever been so much used, certainly none has ever been so well adapted to subserve objects of this nature. Itself the creation of the subtle Hellenic intellect, it abounds in synonyms, delicate distinctions and gradations of meaning, abstractions of every degree of metaphysical tenuity, while it possesses a wealth of ant-onyms, contradictory terms, and other weapons adapted for dialectical and sophistical purposes. Zenon was also the first who employed the dialogue form in philosophical controversy, a method of discussion peculiarly well adapted, as we see in the case of Sokrates and his school, for the inculcation of Skepticism. Nor was the ontological tendency of the Eleatics without indirect effect on their Eristic. The assertion of the absolute signification of words, as apart from their derivation or phenomenal meaning, was only effected by a verbal analysis or decomposition between whose constitutive elements disagreements might readily occur. Here, as in other matters, the flesh-the phenomenal-lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Let us take, for instance, the Eleatic terms: the One, Being, Infinite, &c. We have no difficulty in perceiving how the absolute in each of these words might be brought by astute and subtle intellects into conflict with their relative signification. The method is really the same as that by which advocates of twofold truth maintain their dual position, the Eristic asserts a distinction between the known and the unknown in language, just as the maintainer of twofold truth maintains a like distinction between nature or humanity, and revelation. 4. And this leads me to remark that the Eleatics introduced into philosophical thought the argument that has been more used by Skeptics than any other; I mean the possible antagonism, and hence liability to dissolution, of the different parts of the discrete and divisible, both as to noumena and phenomena. The reasoning that Zenon applied to the successional forms of space and time, Sokrates and his followers, together with Pyrrhôn and Sextos. Empeirikos, applied to number, as well as other objects and ideas that were in the least degree discrete and separable. In the works of the last-named writer you can scarce read a page without finding numerous examples of this operation. In short, all the analytical Greek thinkers delighted to insert the thin end of their thought wedge into whatever minute crevice-whether in word, thing, or conception-their keen sight was able to detect, or their subtle methods were sufficient to create. The splitting up of such an object, and its consequent destruction, were afterwards comparatively easy-at least, as dialectical processes. When we come to Sextos we shall have an opportunity of examining this mode of reasoning, or, as some would prefer to call it, of un-reasoning. 1 5. The Skeptical character of the Eleatics, as I have already remarked in the case of Parmenides, is distinctly recognised by all subsequent Greek philosophy. Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissos, and Zenon are called indifferently Eristics, Sophists, dialecticians, and, occasionally, Skeptics. Zenon enjoys, perhaps, an exceptional fame for vigorous and trenchant analytic; Aristotle says that he invented dialectic; Plato calls him the 'Eleatic Palamedes,' who has an art of speaking which makes the same things appear to his hearers like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion; while Timon speaks2 of The great and exhaustless power of double-tongued Zenon, Taking the Eleatics as a whole, we must, I think, be struck with their singular audacity of speculation. Although standing chronologically at the commencement of Greek speculation, they are already advanced thinkers. The fable of the infant Herakles strangling the serpents in his cradle is undoubtedly true of the mental growth of Greece. The age is that of the child, the prowess that of the grown man. From the point of view of general fitness and human expectation, there is almost a disadvantage in contemplating the future of Hellenic free-thought from the lofty standpoints of these early philosophers. When a traveller attempts the exploration of a new country, it is not always desirable to make his entry into it by scaling some boundary range of hills. Other mountains of the interior become dwarfed by the comparison; the panorama seems unfolded too abruptly, and the sense of proportion and gradual development is impaired. The Eleatic school, on the threshold of Greek philosophy, is suggestive of a corresponding disadvantage. The Skepticism of Xenophanes seems almost too daring and comprehensive; the idealism of Parmenides too sublime and ethereal; the subtlety of Zenon too refined and impalpable. Can, we are inclined to ask, Pyrrhôn or even Sextos Empeirikos rival the former? Can Plato or Plotinos transcend Diog. Laert. ix. 11, Art. Pyrrhon. 2 Phado 261 E. Jowett, i. p. 596. the two latter? The first of these questions will come within the scope of our present researches. We shall presently learn that Greek Skepticism, though a plant of native growth, is the product of various conditions of soil, climate, and surroundings, and hence assumes a considerable diversity of form and character. We shall find that the free-thought of Xenophanes, however remarkable, is but the half-articulate utterance of the free instincts of Greek speculation. The tendencies he thus exemplified are elaborated and assume a more definite form by the labours of the Sophists and Sokrates, while their final systematisation belongs to Pyrrhôn and his successors. Hence, although we enter upon our study by climbing an elevated ridge of speculation, our horizon is bounded at no great distance by intellectual summits which overtop our present position, and from which a different stretch of scenery will disclose itself to our view. Empedokles. Passing now to Empedokles-for in our rapid survey of Greek Skepticism we can only touch upon prominent and well-marked names-we find a thinker connected on the one hand with the Eleatics, and on the other with the physical philosophers and the atomists. Though not an avowed Skeptic, there are distinct Skeptical elements in his teaching; quite enough, in my opinion, to justify his inclusion among thinkers of that class by Cicero and Diogenes Laertius. He follows Xenophanes and his successors in inveighing against sense-deliverances as imperfect and untrustworthy. He bemoans the limitation of human knowledge and the brevity of human life. These two conditions, combined with the accidental and one-sided experience pertaining to every individual man, render the discovery of truth, as a whole, impossible. Here are some remarkable verses of his on this subject 2 Cramped are the ways of knowledge, through bodily senses diffusèd, 1 ix. 73: comp. Cic. Acad. i. 12, 44. So Claudian, de Consulatu Mall. Theod.: Corporis hic damnat sensus verumque videri Pernegat... 2 Karsten, p. 90. Mullach, Frag. i. p. 2. No! nor yet by the mind. Hence, man who hast wandered hither, Refrain from seeing more than to mortal sight is permitted. Empedokles has other verses on the same subject 1—— See as much as you can whatsoever is clearly discerned, But do not believe your eyes beyond the clear range of their vision, It seems not unlikely that the Skepticism of Empedokles may have been a direct outcome from his physical theories. There were, according to him, four elemental principles-earth, air, fire, and water-operated upon by two rival agencies, love and hatred,2 or concord and discord. These were primordial and absolute, the sum of existence; for he denied that anything could be originated or perish. It is not difficult to see that this physical dualism, of which discord is represented as the more powerful influence and the eternal source of all the varied activities of the universe, imparted to his conclusions the instability and uncertainty which belong to all dual systems. But Empedokles clearly saw the difficulty of any and every theory of the universe, not only from the imperfection of human faculties, but also from the immeasurable extent of creation. Thus he says3 Since limitless are the depths of the earth and the infinite ether, How rashly do mortals enounce on such subjects their puerile judgment, Seeing of the infinite whole, such an infinitesimal portion. But though the powers of the senses are limited, he acknowledges that the imagination of man is able in its way to transcend those limits Sacred alone is mind, and unbounded its fanciful impulse, Ranging by speediest thought, through every domain of the Kosmos. He also accepted, as a criterion of truth, a certain faculty which he denominated öplos λóyos, or right reason, by which, as he denies the power of the intellect as well as of the senses to apprehend truth, he must have meant a divine or supernatural intuition.1 He also agrees with Xenophanes in opposing the anthropomorphism of the popular theology. The Deity he affirms to be invisible, unapproachable, and elevated far above the limitations of form and faculty pertaining to humanity Mullach, Frag. i. p. 2. 2 Karster, p. 96. • Mullach, p. 7. Cf. i. 302. |