The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy
The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy, Ancient
the material universe must be similarly animated, Democritus might
have answered that the world presents no appearance of being organised
like an animal. When he argued that, because statues and pictures are
known to be the work of intelligence, the living models from which they
are copied must be similarly due to design, Aristodêmus should have
answered, that the former are seen to be manufactured, while the others
are seen to grow. It might also have been observed, that if our own
intelligence requires to be accounted for by a cause like itself, so
also does the creative cause, and so on through an infinite regress of
antecedents. Teleology has been destroyed by the Darwinian theory; but
before the _Origin of Species_ appeared, the slightest scrutiny might
have shown that it was a precarious foundation for religious belief.
If many thoughtful men are now turning away from theism, ‘natural
theology’ may be thanked for the desertion. ‘I believe in God,’ says
the German baron in _Thorndale_, ‘until your philosophers demonstrate
His existence.’ ‘And then?’ asks a friend. ‘And then—I do not believe
the demonstration.’
Whatever may have been the errors into which Socrates fell, he did
not commit the fatal mistake of compromising his ethical doctrine by
associating it indissolubly with his metaphysical opinions. Religion,
with him, instead of being the source and sanction of all duty, simply
brought in an additional duty—that of gratitude to the gods for their
goodness. We shall presently see where he sought for the ultimate
foundation of morality, after completing our survey of the dialectic
method with which it was so closely connected. The induction of
Socrates, when it went beyond that kind of analogical reasoning which
we have just been considering, was mainly abstraction, the process by
which he obtained those general conceptions or definitions which played
so great a part in his philosophy. Thus, on comparing the different
virtues, as commonly distinguished, he found that they all agreed in
requiring knowledge, which he accordingly concluded to be the essence
of virtue. So other moralists have been led to conclude that right
actions resemble one another in their felicific quality, and In that
alone. Similarly, political economists find, or formerly found (for we
do not wish to be positive on the matter), that a common characteristic
of all industrial employments is the desire to secure the maximum of
profit with the minimum of trouble. Another comparison shows that value
depends on the relation between supply and demand. Aesthetic enjoyments
of every kind resemble one another by including an element of ideal
emotion. It is a common characteristic of all cognitions that they are
constructed by association out of elementary feelings. All societies
are marked by a more or less developed division of labour. These
are given as typical generalisations which have been reached by the
Socratic method.
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