The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
World history
The motion of passive substance towards the active form, _i.e._, the
realisation of the Possible, leads up to the idea of development, of
genesis (though not, indeed, in the modern sense) on which Plato’s
speculations had made shipwreck, and passes over Plato’s rigid Eleatism
to join hands with Heraclitus, the philosopher of change, with whom
Aristotle sees the ultimate cause of all motion and all things in the
Deity, itself as eternal as the world, which “yearns towards It as the
bridegroom towards the bride.” Thus soul, too, is the pattern of the
body, hence the purpose of its being. The body is but the instrument
(_organon_) of the soul. Thus Aristotle first coins the name and idea
of organic being and draws a sharp distinction between these animate
creatures (plants, animals, and man) and inanimate nature. In ethics and
politics his speculation treads in the footsteps of Plato, save that, in
this province of thought also, he mitigates the uncompromising rigourism
of the master by his innate bias towards the historically-established
and practically-possible, and turns it to more profitable uses. The
ethico-political speculations of both are, however, adapted to the
aristocratic class at that time dominant in Greece. Alexander, the pupil
of Aristotle, conquered the East during his master’s life-time, but
the philosopher’s opinion that the newly acquired continent should be
governed by other laws than those of Hellas was not practically feasible.
His ethics failed him utterly in face of the new political situation thus
created.
III
At this juncture the cosmopolitan Cynicism, which had outgrown the narrow
particularism of Hellenism as early as the time of Antisthenes, and the
Stoicism which was built upon its foundation later on, proved the form
best fitted to the times. Zeno, sprung of Phœnician blood and brought up
in Cyprus, that is on semi-Asiatic soil, elaborated this theory of life
at Athens, whither he came shortly after the death of Aristotle (about
320). After the dualism that had prevailed from Anaxagoras to Plato and
Aristotle, in which God and the World were set over against one another
as antagonistic principles, Zeno’s theory harks back to the monistic
tendency of the Ionic period. Like that, it is realistic, nay, grossly
materialistic, in contrast to the Idealism of Athenian philosophy. The
result is a consistent Pantheism in which soul and body represent the
analogon to God and the World. Both are of the same essential nature, and
only temporarily divided by transitory differentiation of manifestation.
Zeno’s morality is rigorous, and aims not at the moderation of the
passions (like that of Plato and Aristotle) but at their extirpation. The
inexorable law that holds the world and man in bonds from which there is
no escape, exacts obedience, and to render it voluntarily is virtue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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