(a) The Sophists.—By these men this new de- parture in the development of Philosophy is inaugurated. One of the most famous of them is Protagoras of Abdera (c. 440 Β.0.}, a pure subjectiv- ist, who taught that there is no absolute standard either of truth or right. Nothing is good or bad by nature (φύσει), but merely by statute (νόμῳ). Another is Gorgias (c. 427 B.c.), who taught a rigorous individualism, summed up in a series of paradoxes. Nothing exists; or, if something exists,
it cannot be known; or, if it can be known, it cannot be communicated. The work of the Sophista was destructive, and often ethically mischievous
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but it was necessary, as a preparation for the great forward movement which Greek philosophy was now totake. Their merit is that they have claimed on behalf of man that the principle which is to explain experience must be in harmony with his self-consciousness. Their defect is that they have construed man too poner, and have regarded self- consciousness as little more than individual opinion or feeling.
(b) Socrates (B.c. 469-399).—In one sense Soc- rates is a Sophist. He occupies the position of subjectivity, and is a keen critic of conventional customs, institutions, and dogmas. His aim, how- ever, is always positive. e desires to break through mere opinion in order that he may reach universal principles of thought and action. His method accordingly has a double aspect. It is destructive, an ‘irony’ by which he destroys the conceit of knowledge and convinces of ignorance, which is the ‘original’ sin of the Socratic theology ; but it is also constructive, an obstetric process, whereby universal truth is brought to the birth, and instinct is raised to the rank of clear self- consciousness. In a word, his method is induc- tion, the process whereby is discerned in a mass of particulars what is universal, and therefore funda- mental and true. The last result of this method is condensed into the famous Socratic phrase, ‘Virtue is knowledge,’ knowledge of universal principles of thought and action. In Socrates the problem of Greek philosophy has deepened so as to include the element of man’s conscious life. It has become a moral, even a religious problem, how to live life whole, and reach a complete synthesis of experience. Socrates finds the answer in Thought or the Universal. His gospel is ‘Salvation by Wisdom.’ Defective as it was, the teaching of Socrates declared the supreme worth of man as a spiritual being. It gave direction to the whole subsequent course of Greek thought, till at length the problem became too complex for the Socratic solution.
(c) Plato (B.0. 427-347) and Aristotle (B.c. 385- 322).—Socrates attempted no systematization of thought. He was content with enunciating and illustrating a principle. It was the work of Plato and Aristotle to take the Socratic primacy of thought, and from this standpoint to frame systems of knowledge. Their systems have been called splendid digressions.’ his would be in- correct if it meant that they were not in the main current of Greek thought. It is true, however, that one element prominent in Socrates is lost in them, to reappear with yet stronger emphasis in the post- Aristotelian thinkers, viz. subjectivity. They treat thought as a universal organ. Man as an individual falls into the background. Their problem is that of all Philosophy, to find a unity that shall reconcile all differences; but among these the self-assertion of the individual and the claim of the particular have not found their place.
The Socratic universal principles are in Plato ‘ideas,’ which are reached by ‘reminiscence,’ and form the archetypes of all things. Supreme among the ideas is the Good, the ultimate reality, the common ground of all thought and being. The Good is God; but for Plato the question of the personality of God has not arisen. He is moving in the pure ether of speculation, high above the strife and tragedy which make men so eagerl demand or so passionately deny a personal God. Aristotle occupies the same ground as Plato in holding that the universal is the real. But he has a deeper interest than Plato in the phenomenal and the particular. His aim is to bring the uni- versal and particular together, and to exhibit them in their true relations. The formula he uses is that of Form and Matter, εἶδος and ὕλη. Form
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acts as a plastic artist, taking up the rude amor.
hous matter, and transforming or rather ferming it into actuality. Not only so, but this relation has stages: that which is Form to what is beneath it, being Matter to what is above it. Thus there is a chain of being with mere Matter at one end and pure Form at the other. Pure Form originates the whole movement of existence, but is itself un- moved. It is Thought, in its pure activity, having no object but itself, ‘Very Thought of Very Thought, νόησις νοήσεως. Thus the high level of Greek specu- lation is theism, not that of the Hebrews with its ethical content, but a theism of thought, in which God abides by Himself in the bliss of perfect know- ledge.
Both in Plato and in Aristotle the Unity ia magnificent, but it is incomplete. The dualism of Anaxagoras is not yet exorcized. The phenomenal and the individual still fall apart from this sublime transcendental Thought. They must receive their proper place before a true unity can be reached, oe when it is, it will not be merely intellectual.