CHAPTER XV.

THE HISTORY OF THEOSOPHY.

The task undertaken by philosophy.-Theism and pantheism.-1. Greek philosophy. -The Ionic school.-Heraclitus.-The Atomists.-Empedocles.-Anaxagoras.-Pythagoreans.-Eleatic school.-The Sophists.-Socrates.-Plato.-Aristotle.Epicurean school.-The Stoics.-The New Skeptics.--The Neoplatonists.-2. Indian philosophy.-Braminism.--Sankhya philosophy. -- Buddhism.-3. Chinese philosophy.-Confucianism. - Chinese dualism.--Taoism.-4. Christianity.-5.

Modern philosophy.--Descartes.- Leibnitz.-Hobbes.--Locke.--Hume.-Kant.

Fichte.-Hegel.-Conclusions.

WE

E have seen in the preceding chapter that there are seven hypotheses whereby the existence of the world is accounted for. All these attempts at solving a difficult problem are philosophemes.

Religion and philosophy are inseparable. In the former sentiment predominates, in the latter reason. Religion is the representation of an idea more or less philosophic: it is always the expression of a thought; often it is unconsciously philosophic.

The task undertaken by philosophy is inquiry into the fundamental reason of things; and in proportion to the degree of development attained at any given period, does it express the idea of the divinity more or less perfectly.

In tracing the history of philosophic speculation, we rise above the region of mythologic fog into the pure ether of reason. It must not be forgotten that the conceptions of philosophy are the same as those which energize religion, but in the latter form they are broken and refracted into rainbow tints.

Our review must be necessarily very cursory, in a work of the limits imposed on this, and it shall be directed mainly to theistic and pantheistic speculations of great thinkers, in ancient and modern times.

One important school of thought has not been alluded to in the foregoing chapter, and it must be dismissed here with a few words. It is that of the Positivists, which accounts for nothing, and rejects all attempts at solving the problem of the universe. Hitherto, they say, and not without justice, hypotheses have been erected without facts to establish them, theory has preceded experience. Therefore they reject all hypotheses, attempting to explain nothing beyond the cognizance of man. The data of facts cannot be brought to bear on the origin of matter, therefore it is idle. to speculate on what is incapable of demonstration.

The religions of the past, and those of heathendom at the present day, are either theistic or pantheistic or both conjoined. Heathenism rests on two fulcra, spirit and matter; and in it spirit-worship and element-worship coexist, touch, interpenetrate. Mental constitution, local causes, or habits of life, develop one phase at the expense of the other. The Turanian has leaned heavily to the side of spiritualism, and the Aryan to that of naturalism.

Pantheism may be distinguished from Theism, as the enunciation of the consubstantiality of God with Nature. Matter and essence are two faces of the same truth, which truth is God. God is Nature attached to its immanent principle, and Nature is God in the evolution of His power. The divine is supposed to be in constant progress of development. God sleeps in the mineral, dreams in the animal, wakens in man. He is transubstantiated in the universe, and humanity is a necessary manifestation of the absolute.

Pantheism is the philosophy of reason;-of reason, it

may be, in its impotence, but of such reason as man is gifted with here. Regarding the universe as a fact, the mind seeks to explain it. It must offer as its explanation either a personal God or an impersonal God. The former theory is that of the Theist, the latter of the Pantheist.

In all unphilosophic religions there is a strong pantheistic bias. The great spiritual essence is regarded as pervading the universe, palpitating in the ocean, flickering in the stars, rustling in the forest-leaves, germinating in the herb. God is the aggregate of spiritual existence and of material being. The soul is an atom of all-pervading eternal substance, emerging, for a brief period, like a sound breaking out of stillness, and then dying back into the silence of primeval spirit. Any thing is an object of worship, for every thing is God. Such is the rude pantheism of the Turanian, the African, and the American Indian. But at the same time the personality of the Deity has been so keenly felt, that primitive religions have always shown a marked tendency toward emphasizing the Deity, and investing Him with vigorous anthropomorphic personality, and this has withdrawn a large group of religions out of the pantheistic sphere.

We shall now follow these ideas through the systems of philosophers.

I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

1. THE IONIC SCHOOL (sixth Cent. B. C.).

The first effort of Greek speculation to find the cause of existences was purely naturalistic (ἐν ὕλης εἴδει μόνας ὠήθησαν ἀρχὰς εἶναι πάντων). Matter was with the first philosophers the original principle (ȧpxý, στoixeĩov), whether it were water, as taught by Thales, or air, as supposed by

1 Aristot. Met., i., 3.

Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia. Anaximander of Miletus considered the principle of all things to be a substance in infinite space, of undetermined form, in which the motive force indwelt, and out of which, by a process of separation of opposites, individualities were formed. This infinite substance was, he said, immortal and imperishable, and he designated it, hylozoistically, the Deity.'

2. HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS (500 B. c.).

The experimental observation of the continual flux of nature (πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει) inspired the notion that the essence of all things lay in perpetual modification. The world, according to Heraclitus, is eternal (oiré TIÇ Oεwν OUTÈ ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται), but it is a whirl of ever-shifting phenomena, an eternal emergence and disappearance, and it was well said of this philosopher that he swept repose clean out of the world. The universe rose out of fire, and will dive back into fire to become renovated and renew its precipitate career. It had no beginning, and it will have no end. It is one, as a river is one, but without living unity of being. That which Heraclitus calls God is the life of the aggregate of substances, undergoing change, in obedience to a law of necessity, which is however logic (ỏ žʊvòs λóyos)." Man, according to Heraclitus, is only a (ὁ ξυνὸς λόγος). transitory phenomenon in the universal becoming; and his negation of individuality obliges him to reduce conscience and personal independence to an illusion."

1 Aristot. Phys., i., 4.

2 Plato: Cratyl.

4 Plut. Plat. Phil., i., 27.

6 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp., iii., 320.

4

3 Clem. Alex. Strom.

6

5 Sext. Emp. adv. Math., vii., 133.

Heraclitus: in Zeller's "Philosophy of the Greeks," i., 450-490; also see "Fragments of Heraclitus" in "Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft,"

3. THE ATOMISTS. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS (500 B. C.). The materialism of this school is of the most pronounced character. It is not pantheistic, for the idea of divinity is expelled from its hypothesis of the universe. In the eyes of Leucippus and Democritus, matter is inert and passive, and if bodies exist in combination, it is through a succession of shocks (λnyai) repeated through eternity.' Consequently the world is not a unity, immutable or in process of development, but is an agglomeration of an infinite number of eternal atoms, invisible, and insеcable (πр☎та åпλã owμata, πρῶτα μεγέθη, στοιχεῖα, ἄτομα), and without original connection or bond of union (τὸ ὂν οὐκ εἶναι ἓν, ἀλλ ̓ ἄπειρα τὸ πλῆθος, καὶ ἀόρατα διὰ σμικρότητα). The universe being the result of chance combinations, there is no law either in physics or in morals. The object of life is happiness, and life is devoid of responsibilities. The soul is an aggregate of fiery atoms, and when these atoms have reached a proper temperature they evolve thought; right thought is the product of high temperature, but excess in heat or cold makes thought unintelligent.

Though the intervention of divine power was not postulated in the moulding of the universe, yet the existence of divinity was not wholly denied. The Atomists taught that the gods were systems of round igneous atoms, which had attached themselves to finer bodies than those of men. These deities became visible to men through the images ever flowing from them.*

4. EMPEDOCLES OF AGRIGENTUM (440 B. C.). The system of this remarkable poet-philosopher is thoroughly pantheistic. He taught that the world was

1 Cicero: De Nat. Deor., i., 12, 29.

2 Aristot. De Gen. An., v.,

3 Aristot. De Gen. et Corr., i., 8; Phys., iv., 6. 4 Sext. Emp. adv. Math., ix., 24.

8.