APPENDIX B.

(Page 111.)

On the School of Elea.

Of all schools of thought that have emerged in the history of philosophy, and that are able to claim in some sort 'a local habitation and a name,' none is more remarkable than that of Elea. In respect of its general influence on the thought of Europe, and its special relation to the philosophy of Italy, it may almost claim to be unique. It took its rise in the teaching of Xenophanes some five centuries before the Christian era. At that period Elea was a maritime town of some importance commercially, while in intellectual advance, in general culture and refinement, it might be termed the capital of the flourishing province of Magna Græcia. Indeed, the surrounding country is connected with Elea at this early period by remarkable intellectual affinities. There flourished for some centuries the Pythagorean philosophy— that marvellous compound of profound wisdom and puerile superstition, that heterogeneous conglomerate of pure transcendentalism, oriental theosophy and magical lore-whose teachers and eminent disciples were at one time so numerous that Fabricius collected the names of nearly two hundred who flourished in Magna Græcia or in the neighbouring island of Sicily.

But the purer idealism of the Eleatics is, in relation to the subsequent thought of Europe, more remarkable than the system of Pythagoras. From the thought-tendencies conjointly produced by Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zenon, we seem able to trace in unintermittent succession the stream of European idealism, through Socrates, Plato, and their successors, the New Academy, the NeoPlatonists, the Christian Fathers, the Realistic Schoolmen, the Platonists of the Renaissance, the Idealist Free-thinkers of the same period, the German mystics and Kabbalists, down to its latest development of Hegelian transcendentalism. Of no other school of purely philosophic speculation could an equal proportion of enduring many-sided influences be affirmed.

The first stage in this marvellous evolution is that described in the text. Under Parmenides and Zenon the city of Elea enjoyed the rare position of being a free municipality, whose governing minds were philosophers. In contrast to the contempt, now so common, of politicians for philosophers-the men of action for the

men of thought, the ancients considered Elea as the best governed city of Magna Græcia, because its laws were devised by Parmenides. The nature of this philosophic régime we are only able to guess at. That its tendencies were in the direction of freedom we may well be certain, both from an examination of the Eleatic philosophy itself, and from the historical fact that its founders were regarded as the earliest teachers of Hellenic Free-thought. Nothing need be said here as to the tenets of Xenophanes and his successors, which have already been treated in the text, but it may be remarked that the transcendental teaching of the Eleatics, while undoubtedly constituting the most characteristic feature of the school, does not exhaust its philosophical importance. If we may credit an early tradition, Leukippos was an offshoot of the Eleatics, and as he is the accepted teacher of Demokritus, and (through him) of Epikouros, we have the remarkable fact that this early Hegelianism of Magna Græcia, like its modern German descendant, became subdivided into a right and left; the right maintaining the pure idealism of their teachers, the left transmuting it into-or deriving from its relation to the phenomenal world-certain atomistic or materialist theories. Granting the truth of this hypothesis, the Eleatic School becomes the progenitor, not only of the idealism of Hellenic philosophy, but also of its concrete and materialistic systems.

But the school of Elea is equally remarkable in its relation to the whole course of Italian philosophy. The characteristics and tendencies of Italian speculation have retained for upwards of two thousand years the impulse originally imparted to them by the Elean thinkers. A recent writer (Giuseppe Buroni Dell' Essere e del Conoscere, studii su Parmenide Platone e Rosmini'), who has made it his object to trace the connection between the speculations of Parmenides and those of Hegel, terms the main principle of the former-the identity of thought and existence-' il principio splendido e supremo dell' antica e nuova filosofia italica.' Nor can it be said that this is an exaggeration. The modern school of Italian secular philosophy, together with the speculations of its mediæval theologians, is indissolubly united to the teaching of the Eleatics. The identity of thought and being, whatever its value philosophically or otherwise, may be said to be the primary article in the creed of Italian thinkers-the animating principle of all her highest thought. With the possible exception of Englandinsular in this as in other respects-no European country has kept its philosophic speculation within the same general lines so persistently as Italy. Whatever its occasional deflections from the

straight path of idealism-caused mostly by foreign influencesItaly has never been quite devoid of her own native product of transcendentalism; and for the most part the neighbourhood of Elea, Nola, Naples-towns on or adjoining the old seaboard of Magna Græcia-have furnished the larger contingent of such idealist thinkers. It is possible that this evolution of ontology may be due partly to the connection of Italian thought with the theological metaphysics and conclusions of the papacy; but inasmuch as Italian thinkers have never been wanting in independence, and their idealism is just as often employed in the interests of Skepticism as of Romanist dogma, this does not seem a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon. It would take too much time to detail the whole course of Italian idealism, from its first origin in the schools of Elea to the Hegelianism now dominant in all the Italian universities; but it may be pointed out that most of the schoolmen of Italian origin-e.g. Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas-were men whose doctrines were not only leavened by but based upon ontological conclusions. The selfsame tendencies are markedly conspicuous in the free-thinking speculations of Giordano Bruno and the school of idealists with which he is allied. Bruno is besides a native of Nola, and on this ground claims the Eleatics as his own predecessors and fellow countrymen. His biographer, M. Bartholmess ('Jordano Bruno,' ii. p. 310), tells us that, 'every time he mentions the Eleatic School, it is with a kind of national pride.' But Bruno is only one of an illustrious band of Italian free-thinkers, who, in the 15th and 16th centuries were natives of the territory surrounding Elea, Naples, &c. Connected with the same district, of which it might be said, as Diogenes Laertius remarked of Elea, that 'it was capable of producing great men,' are the names of Valdez, Vanini, Telesius, Campanella, and Ochino-all thinkers in whom idealism, whether philosophical, religious, or both, is abundantly traceable.

Another offshoot, at least indirectly, of Elean idealism is found in the School of Platonists which flourished at Florence during the 15th century. The speculations of Plethon, Ficinus, Picus Mirandula, Patrizzi, though not immediately affiliated to the Eleatics, belong to the later developments of Hellenic transcendentalism, the original ancestor of which is unquestionably Parmenides of Elea. Nor is this by any means the last appearance in Italian philosophy of the same idealism: to quote the historian of Italian philosophy (L. Ferri, Essai sur l'Histoire de la Philosophie en Italie, vol. i. p. vi.), 'L'idéal, qui brilla jadis d'un si grand éclat dans le Platonisme de Ficin, de Léon l'Hébreu, de Pic de la

Mirandole et de François Patrizzi, a reparu, après une disparition plus que séculaire' (this may be doubted), 'dans les écrits de Rosmini, de Gioberti, et de Mamiani, pour développer, cette fois, dans l'esprit de l'Italie, non le sentiment du beau et les instincts esthétiques, mais la conscience du droit, et le désir réfléchi de la justice.'

In these words we have a succinct description of the present position of idealism in Italy, and the latest service which the thought-tendencies generated in Elea 500 B.C. have rendered to the country of their birth. Ontological speculation, it need not be said, is capable of assuming many aspects, and of subserving various and even conflicting interests. In the course of Italian Thoughtevolution we find it sometimes employed as a weapon of ecclesiasticism to suppress freedom of thought, or as a basis on which to found harsh and unsustainable dogmas. It is therefore satisfactory to find that at present the teachings and thought-impulses of ancient Elea are in harmony with free speculation, and with the growth of civil and religious liberty in their native land. After centuries of struggle, bloodshed and suffering, Italy has arrived at the standpoint of philosophical liberty which Parmenides legislated for Elea two thousand three hundred years ago. She has allied idealism and introspective speculation with the mental liberty, which, when unhampered, these are calculated to produce. She has united-it may be hoped indissolubly-the speculations and political energies of her most ancient thinkers with her own most pressing needs as a modern European state-with free institutions, popular aspirations, and general progressive enlightenment. It is this remarkable dénouement which gives to the history of Italian idealism, from its first origin to the present day, the peculiar if not unique character of being a kind of philosophical romance.

APPENDIX C.

(Page 198.)

On some aspects of the character and life of Sokrates.

The estimate here advanced of the moral purity of Sokrates was arrived at after a full and impartial consideration of the whole question. Indeed, a substantial agreement on the point seems now to have been attained by all the historians of Greek philosophy, which might be described as consisting of partly the verdict of 'not-proven,' partly the conclusion of 'not probable.' The evidence adduced for the opposite conclusion is resolvable, (1) into an affectation of eccentricity not uncommon to independent thinkers. That Sokrates was apt to conceive himself and his mission under grotesquely humorous aspects is evidenced by his ironical profession of being a gadfly, a torpedo fish, a hundred-headed Typhon, a professor, like his mother, of the maieutic art. Judging from these examples, it is not impossible that he may have symbolically represented himself as a kind of aged Cupid, or mediator between the sexes. Such a profession, casually made, might easily have been strained from its innocent to its degrading aspect, or, intended as it was metaphorically, might have been taken literally by such practicalminded hearers as Xenophon. Add to this that Sokrates was often described by personal friends as an eccentric, though his eccentricities are avowedly in the direction of asceticism and endurance; but it is quite conceivable how extravagant metaphor, arising from the contempt of an independent thinker for mere conventional opinions, might give rise to imputations of immoral conduct, which were far from being based on fact. (2) The possibility of a perverted inference from his teaching is further shown by his doctrine of Eros. Most writers agree that the Platonic Symposium is, of all Plato's writings, the most likely to have originated the charge of Sokrates' participation in the national sin of Greece. But the Symposium, with its doctrine of Eros, probably represents the mature and extreme stage of its author's constructive idealism. Every student of Plato knows how zealously he endeavoured to make his master the participator of his transcendental opinions, even when these had assumed a trenchantly dogmatic aspect wholly inconsistent with the Sokratic standpoint of Nescience. Thus in the Symposium he tries to implicate him with his own conception of Eros, as an unappeasable yearning for unattainable fruition in every sphere of human