The Historians' History of the World 04

A troublous period followed, represented by the Sophists, a time of youthful storm and stress, out of which the mature philosophy of ideas developed towards the end of the fifth century. The term “philosopher” begins to acquire a professional meaning. Side by side with the Sophist, who supplied “culture” in return for money, stood the philosopher, who directed the course of education without remuneration. At first, it is true, this education was confined to morals. But in Plato it proceeded to expand into a study that comprised mathematics, logic, physics, and ethics, as well as politics, forming a pyramid built on the broadest of possible bases and culminating in the idea of Good. By that time a “philosopher” had come to mean one who is capable of grasping the eternal idea (Plato, Rep. VI, 484 A). Next, in the Universal Encyclopædia of Aristotle, this platonic structure is completed and made habitable within and fitted to human requirements. Under him the idea and the term “philosopher” attained its maximum extension. Thereafter both begin to narrow down. The end of the fourth century witnessed the collapse of the Greek state, to the insecure structure of which the philosophers had never been blind.

With the fall of the Hellenic municipal system and the rise of the Macedonian sovereignty a new world comes into being, in which the leaders are monarchs and no longer individual citizens. The outlook and sphere of action of the individual is restricted. Men grow to be eminent in practical affairs, experts in the art of living, less eager to solve the riddle of the universe than that of the personal Ego, by withdrawing men from the tumult of external affairs and guiding them into the imperturbable calm of philosophic conviction as into a sure haven. Hence in the systems of the Stoa and of Epicurus and Pyrrho the designation of philosopher assumes the meaning of a counsellor in the conduct of life, who, in the lack of political liberty then prevailing, held up an ideal of liberty within, which no tyrant could menace.

In proportion as the sphere of philosophy in the Hellenistic world narrowed to the consideration of the Useful and the Practicable, the sphere of its influence widened. Alexander’s expedition had thrown the East open to Greek civilisation, and the assiduous and subjective temperament of the youth of the Semitic peoples was drawn to the wisdom of the Greeks. An active process of endosmosis and exosmosis set in between the countries of the West and East. During the period from the third to the first century B.C. this interchange created a new civilisation, destined to form the basis of the Imperium Romanum in matters temporal and the Imperium Christi in matters spiritual. But at this period the clear outlines of development tend to become blurred.

As the Hellenic nation expands into the Hellenistic peoples, as the national language of Greece becomes the common medium of the East, nay, of the whole civilised world, the eclecticism which had been formed out of certain elements of the old Greek philosophy under the dominant influence of the Stoa gained ground on all sides. In the time of Christ, Greek philosophy is an indispensable requisite of the higher culture, and the university of Athens, with its professors, whose appointment the state soon took upon itself, is the one where the educated Roman and Cappadocian alike must have studied. The Greek private tutor, recommended by the head of some school or other at Athens, becomes a standing institution in Roman families of distinction, and is treated with the contempt due to such a Græculus, ranking first among the slaves of the household.

Times soon change, however. Under the philosopher Marcus, philosophy gained admission to courtly circles, and presently became indispensable in the conflict with the increasing might of Christianity. After the Christian conception of the world had conquered under Constantine, the university of Athens became the bulwark of Paganism. Neo-Platonism, a new philosophy bred of the enthusiastic temperament of the East, the congenial philosophy of Plato and the erudition of Aristotle, fought the last fight with the courage of despair. But though its champions were, for the most part, superior in courage, moral character, and scientific learning to the bishops whom they withstood, philosophy and the ancient world had played out their part. In the latter end of the period of antiquity the overseer of any craft (as, for example, the overseer of the quarrymen in the Passio Sanctorum IV Coronatorum) was called in popular parlance philosophus to distinguish him from the artisans. Sic transit gloria mundi.

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