Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

The life of Plato extends from 427-347 B.C. He was born in the fourth year of the Peloponnesian war, and he died at the age of 80, about the time when Olynthus was taken by the Macedonian Philip. The last years of his life thus witnessed a melancholy breach in the integrity of the Hellenic world, and even exhibited data from which a far-sighted Hellenic politician might have anticipated something like the coming subjugation, realised afterwards by the victory of Philip at Chæroneia. But during the first half of Plato’s life, no such anticipations seemed even within the limits of possibility. The forces of Hellas, though discordant among themselves, were superabundant as to defensive efficacy, and were disposed rather to aggression against foreign enemies, especially against a country then so little formidable as Macedonia. It was under this contemplation of Hellas self-acting and self-sufficing — an aggregate of cities, each a political unit, yet held together by strong ties of race, language, religion, and common feelings of various kinds — that the mind of Plato was both formed and matured.

In appreciating, as far as our scanty evidence allows, the circumstances which determined his intellectual and speculative character, I shall be compelled to touch briefly upon the various philosophical theories which were propounded anterior to Sokrates — as well as to repeat some matters already brought to view in the sixteenth, sixty-seventh, and sixty-eighth chapters of my History of Greece.

To us, as to Herodotus, in his day, the philosophical speculation of the Greeks begins with the theology and cosmology of Homer and Hesiod. The series of divine persons and attributes, and generations presented by these poets, and especially the Theogony of Hesiod, supplied at one time full satisfaction to the curiosity of the Greeks respecting the past history and present agencies of the world around them. In the emphatic censure bestowed by Herakleitus on the poets and philosophers who preceded him, as having much knowledge but no sense — he includes Hesiod, as well as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hekatæus: upon Homer and Archilochus he is still more severe, declaring that they ought to be banished from the public festivals and scourged.1 The sentiment of curiosity as it then existed was only secondary and derivative, arising out of some of the strong primary or personal sentiments — fear or hope, antipathy or sympathy, — impression of present weakness, — unsatisfied appetites and longings, — wonder and awe under the presence of the terror-striking phenomena of nature, &c. Under this state of the mind, when problems suggested themselves for solution, the answers afforded by Polytheism gave more satisfaction than could have been afforded by any other hypothesis. Among the indefinite multitude of invisible, personal, quasi-human agents, with different attributes and dispositions, some one could be found to account for every perplexing phenomenon.

The question asked was, not What are the antecedent conditions or causes of rain, thunder, or earthquakes, but Who rains and thunders? Who produces earthquakes?2 The Hesiodic Greek was satisfied when informed that it was Zeus or Poseidon. To be told of physical agencies would have appeared to him not merely unsatisfactory, but absurd, ridiculous, and impious. It was the task of a poet like Hesiod to clothe this general polytheistic sentiment in suitable details: to describe the various Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, and other quasi-human agents, with their characteristic attributes, with illustrative adventures, and with sufficient relations of sympathy and subordination among each other, to connect them in men’s imaginations as members of the same brotherhood. Okeanus, Gæa, Uranus, Helios, Selênê, — Zeus, Poseidon, Hades — Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Aphroditê — these and many other divine personal agents, were invoked as the producing and sustaining forces in nature, the past history of which was contained in their filiations or contests. Anterior to all of them, the primordial matter or person, was Chaos.

Hesiod represents the point of view ancient and popular (to use Aristotle’s expression3) among the Greeks, from whence all their philosophical speculation took its departure; and which continued throughout their history, to underlie all the philosophical speculations, as the faith of the ordinary public who neither frequented the schools nor conversed with philosophers. While Aristophanes, speaking in the name of this popular faith, denounces and derides Sokrates as a searcher, alike foolish and irreligious, after astronomical and physical causes — Sokrates himself not only denies the truth of the allegation, but adopts as his own the sentiment which dictated it; proclaiming Anaxagoras and others to be culpable for prying into mysteries which the Gods intentionally kept hidden.4 The repugnance felt by a numerous public, against scientific explanation — as eliminating the divine agents and substituting in their place irrational causes,5 — was a permanent fact of which philosophers were always obliged to take account, and which modified the tone of their speculations without being powerful enough to repress them.

Even in the sixth century B.C., when the habit of composing in prose was first introduced, Pherekydes and Akusilaus still continued in their prose the theogony, or the mythical cosmogony, of Hesiod and the other old Poets: while Epimenides and the Orphic poets put forth different theogonies, blended with mystical dogmas. It was, however, in the same century, and in the first half of it, that Thales of Miletus (620-560 B.C.), set the example of a new vein of thought. Instead of the Homeric Okeanus, father of all things, Thales assumed the material substance, Water, as the primordial matter and the universal substratum of everything in nature. By various transmutations, all other substances were generated from water; all of them, when destroyed, returned into water. Like the old poets, Thales conceived the surface of the earth to be flat and round; but he did not, like them, regard it as stretching down to the depths of Tartarus: he supposed it to be flat and shallow, floating on the immensity of the watery expanse or Ocean.6 This is the main feature of the Thaletian hypothesis, about which, however, its author seems to have left no writing. Aristotle says little about Thales, and that little in a tone of so much doubt,7 that we can hardly confide in the opinions and discoveries ascribed to him by others.8

The next of the Ionic philosophers, and the first who published his opinions in writing, was Anaximander, of Miletus, the countryman and younger contemporary of Thales (570-520 B.C.). He too searched for an Ἀρχή, a primordial Something or principle, self-existent and comprehending in its own nature a generative, motive, or transmutative force. Not thinking that water, or any other known and definite substance fulfilled these conditions, he adopted as the foundation of his hypothesis a substance which he called the Infinite or Indeterminate. Under this name he conceived Body simply, without any positive or determinate properties, yet including the fundamental contraries, Hot, Cold, Moist, Dry, &c., in a potential or latent state, including farther a self-changing and self-developing force,9 and being moreover immortal and indestructible.10 By this inherent force, and by the evolution of one or more of these dormant contrary qualities, were generated the various definite substances of nature — Air, Fire, Water, &c. But every determinate substance thus generated was, after a certain time, destroyed and resolved again into the Indeterminate mass. “From thence all substances proceed, and into this they relapse: each in its turn thus making atonement to the others, and suffering the penalty of injustice.”11 Anaximander conceived separate existence (determinate and particular existence, apart from the indeterminate and universal) as an unjust privilege, not to be tolerated except for a time, and requiring atonement even for that.

As this process of alternate generation and destruction was unceasing, so nothing less than an Infinite could supply material for it. Earth, Water, Air, Fire, having been generated, the two former, being cold and heavy, remained at the bottom, while the two latter ascended. Fire formed the exterior circle, encompassing the air like bark round a tree: this peripheral fire was broken up and aggregated into separate masses, composing the sun, moon, and stars. The sphere of the fixed stars was nearest to the earth: that of the moon next above it: that of the sun highest of all. The sun and moon were circular bodies twenty-eight times larger than the earth: but the visible part of them was only an opening in the centre, through which12 the fire or light behind was seen. All these spheres revolved round the earth, which was at first semi-fluid or mud, but became dry and solid through the heat of the sun. It was in shape like the section of a cylinder, with a depth equal to one-third of its breadth or horizontal surface, on which men and animals live. It was in the centre of the Kosmos; it remained stationary because of its equal distance from all parts of the outer revolving spheres; there was no cause determining it to move upward rather than downward or sideways, therefore it remained still.13 Its exhalations nourished the fire in the peripheral regions of the Kosmos.

Animals were produced from the primitive muddy fluid of the earth: first, fishes and other lower animals — next, in process of time man, when circumstances permitted his development.14 We learn farther respecting the doctrines of Anaximander, that he proposed physical explanations of thunder, lightning, and other meteorological phenomena:15 memorable as the earliest attempt of speculation in that department, at a time when such events inspired the strongest religious awe, and were regarded as the most especial manifestations of purposes of the Gods. He is said also to have been the first who tried to represent the surface and divisions of the earth on a brazen plate, the earliest rudiment of a map or chart.16