deified every visible object. Chrysippus," says Cicero, "deifies fire and those elements which naturally proceed from what I before called the ethereal spirit-water, earth, and air. He attributes divinity to the sun, moon, stars, and universal space, the grand container of all things, and to those men likewise who have obtained immortality."1 The world is the body of God. The order and wisdom manifest in the universe are evidences of the presence of God in it. The universe is perfect (réλelov σwμa). Evil is absorbed in the harmony of the whole (ἡ κακία οὐκ ἀχρήστως YiveTαι πpôs Tà öλa). Everything, good and evil, life and death, growth and decay, are parts of the law of general existence, of the life of the world,—God, of whom the present phase of cosmic being is but a transitory phase.* 14. THE NEW SCEPTICS. The dogmatism of the Stoics and of the Epicureans provoked the appearance of another school, of which Pyrrho of Elis (325 B.C.) may be regarded as the founder. This school maintained the incompetence of man to arrive at any conclusion upon the nature of the gods and the origin of the world. Man, they held, could not attain objective truth from sensible observation, or from intellectual analysis. Sensible impressions are merely the perceptions of sense, and do not prove substantial existence. To be certain that an object really answered to its appearance, it would be necessary for the subject to detach itself from its subjective impressions and to compare the objects with their subjective representations, and then it would be qualified to 1 Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 15. 2 Diog. Laert. vii. 147. 3 Chrysip. ap. Plut. de Stoic. Repug. 44. 4 Ravaisson: Mémoire sur le Stoicisme. Græchen, vol. i. Zeller: Die Philosophie d. pronounce upon their reality.1 Reason, also, is incapable of leading to truth. Every demonstration rests on an undemonstrated thesis, and the greatest uncertainty reigns in philosophy on the essence of that reason which is taken as the criterion of the truth. It is not merely the subject which this positivism refuses to consider as a basis of truth, but also the object, which, by its nature, is withdrawn from a sphere of absolute certainty. For the essence of things reveals itself solely in the totality of their observable qualities, and these qualities interpose themselves between us and the essence of being, so that it is impossible for man to penetrate beyond the veil of phenomena. Moreover, the logical distinction between cause and effect is a pure illusion. No cause can produce anything but what is in it. Cause and effect are two names of the same thing in different stages of progress. This reasoning exerted great influence on the idea of God. If cause and effect are indistinguishable and inseparable, the world and God are the same. God is not the cause of the world, and the world is not an effect. The sceptics thus annihilated the conception of God.2 15. THE NEOPLATONISTS. Greek philosophy died under the influence of scepticism. Speculation, after having traversed the different phases of naturalism, idealism, sensualism, dualism, and pantheism, -after having occupied itself alternately in questioning the universe as object, and man as subject, of all knowledge, gave up the problem in despair; and, wearied of thinking, men's minds lapsed into systematic doubt, or into an ascetic mysticism. 1 Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 287, 295, et seq. The Neoplatonic school of Alexandria (Ammonius Saccas, 200; Plotinus, 205-270; Porphyry, 233-304; Iamblicus, 300; Proclus, 412-485) substituted a fantastic doctrine of emanations for observation and experience, The abstract All, without attribute, or the Pleroma (TO πρῶτον, τὸ ἁπλοῦν, τὸ ἔν, τὸ ὄν, τὸ ἐπέκεινα πάντων, τὸ ǎTELрov),1 is the point of departure for a series of emanations which compose the ideal world, then the soul of the world, and lastly the material world, which is to some extent overflowing with it (οἷον ὑπερεῤῥύη καὶ τὸ ὑπερTλnpés); this materializing of emanations from the Pleroma is a species of fall. Human souls originally belonging to the κóσμos vontós sank into matter, and forgot their divine origin, which can only be recovered by a conquest of the spirit over matter by means of asceticism and contemplation. Greek philosophy ended sadly, in the renunciation of observation and thought. A new leaven was needed to renovate the human mind.a 2 II. INDIAN PHILOSOPHY. 1. BRAHMANISM. After the nature-worship of the Vaidic age, and the anthropomorphism immediately following it, ensued a period of intellectual movement, and a theodicy was constructed, based on intelligent principles, and elaborated by speculative philosophy, in which the same hypotheses which emerge and break down in Greek philosophy co-exist without their antagonism being perceived. In Hindúism of 1 Plotin. Enn. vi. 9. 3 Porph. de Abstin. I. iii. Stirling, 1868. Tennemann 2 Ibid. v. 2. Schwegler: Hist. Philosoph. Tr. p. 141 ; Man. Philos. p. 177, ed. Bohn. this period there is a tendency towards unity eminently apparent. Every species of existence was regarded as a constituent part of the Deity, and the special character of an object was held to depend on its proximity to God. "In the creed of Brahmanism, as methodized by orthodox philosophy, God alone is truly said to be: all other forms of life are, as to their material properties, but empty and illusive; while, as to their spiritual properties, they are but transient scintillations of His glory. Alone, supreme, and unapproachable, a feeling of dissatisfaction with Himself had crossed the mind of the Great Solitary. He longed for offspring, and at length determined to resolve the primitive simplicity of His essence, and transform Himself into a world which might contrast with His eternal quietude. From this desire of God has sprung whatever is, or is to be: the earth, the sky, the rock, the flower, the forest, the innumerable tribes of gods and men, of beasts and demons; these, so far as they possess a true existence, are all consubstantial with Divinity. The basis underlying all the forms which they assume is the ineffable, the uncreated.”1 The pure metaphysical conception of God was called Brahm, an abstraction, self-centred, self-absorbed, the cause and the end of all; the impulse of His will caused beings and matter to spring into existence; there was no labour of creation, no dualism of conflicting essences, spirit and matter, but a simple objecting of the subject.2 This looks like the doctrine of evolution of nature; but from another point the hypothesis is that of a negation of the positive existence of the visible world. The forms of matter are held to be illusive. The semblance of reality 1 Hardwick: Christ and other Masters, i. 195. • Müller: Glauben u. Wissen de alten Hindus, p. 90 ct seq.; Mainz, 1822. possessed by them is due to Máyá, the personification of God's fruitless longing for some being other than His own. Máyá, which originally signified the longing of the Deity, afterwards became the synonym for delusion and unreality; and it was taught that by means of Máyá a phantom world of dream-like imagery rose before the eye of the Great One, and that this semblance of reality is the phenomenal universe in which we live. But Hindú philosophic theodoxy had a tendency towards dualism. Divine spirit on one side, and the world soul and man's soul on the other, were regarded in the light of the undefined and the defined: the latter as taken out of the former, being a part of His substance and of His nature, but bounded. This limitation is a defect, and consequently a fall, and physical nature, inasmuch as it is not without term, is opposed to the nature of God. The world, and all that is in the world, passes through three stages, growth, perfection, and decay; and the last of these, deified as Siva, becomes the opposite pole to the creative force of Brahmá. 2. SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY. The founder of this philosophy was Kapila, and he called it Sánkhya, because he deemed it a result of pure reason. It does not, like some other systems, strive to discriminate between existence and non-existence, but seeks the reason why existences are as they are. In this creed, the plastic origin of all material things is the absolute, the indestructible, the eternal. This is the spring of life, a source from which material essences and their modifications emanate in constant development-not rational and benevolent, but a blind impulsive life, evolving intelligence as a property of material essence, like weight or dimension. Consequently, human |