A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  In general, the rulers of Asia called themselves “Phil-Hellene,” and befriended the old Greek cities as far as policy and military necessity allowed. The cities desired, and (when they could) claimed as a right, democratic self-government, absence of tribute, and freedom from a royal garrison. It was worth while to conciliate them, because they were rich, they could supply mercenaries, and many of them had important harbours. But if they took the wrong side in a civil war, they exposed themselves to sheer conquest. On the whole, the Seleucids, and the other dynasties which gradually grew up, dealt tolerably with them, but there were exceptions.

  The new cities, though they had a measure of self-government, had not the same traditions as the older ones. Their citizens were not of homogeneous origin, but were from all parts of Greece. They were in the main adventurers, like the conquistadores or the settlers in Johannesburg, not pious pilgrims like the earlier Greek colonists or the New England pioneers. Consequently no one of Alexander’s cities formed a strong political unit. This was convenient from the standpoint of the king’s government, but a weakness from the standpoint of the spread of Hellenism.

  The influence of non-Greek religion and superstition in the Hellenistic world was mainly, but not wholly, bad. This might not have been the case. Jews, Persians, and Buddhists all had religions that were very definitely superior to the popular Greek polytheism, and could even have been studied with profit by the best philosophers. Unfortunately it was the Babylonians, or Chaldeans, who most impressed the imagination of the Greeks. There was, first of all, their fabulous antiquity; the priestly records went back for thousands of years, and professed to go back for thousands more. Then there was some genuine wisdom: the Babylonians could more or less predict eclipses long before the Greeks could. But these were merely causes of receptiveness; what was received was mainly astrology and magic. “Astrology,” says Professor Gilbert Murray, “fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon some remote island people. The tomb of Ozymandias, as described by Diodorus, was covered with astrological symbols, and that of Antiochus I, which has been discovered in Commagene, is of the same character. It was natural for monarchs to believe that the stars watched over them. But every one was ready to receive the germ.”* It appears that astrology was first taught to the Greeks in the time of Alexander, by a Chaldean named Berosus, who taught in Cos, and, according to Seneca, “interpreted Bel.” “This,” says Professor Murray, “must mean that he translated into Greek the ‘Eye of Bel,’ a treatise in seventy tablets found in the library of Assur-bani-pal (686-26 B.C.) but composed for Sargon I in the third millennium B.C.” (ib. p. 176).

  As we shall see, the majority even of the best philosophers fell in with the belief in astrology. It involved, since it thought the future predictable, a belief in necessity or fate, which could be set against the prevalent belief in fortune. No doubt most men believed in both, and never noticed the inconsistency.

  The general confusion was bound to bring moral decay, even more than intellectual enfeeblement. Ages of prolonged uncertainty, while they are compatible with the highest degree of saintliness in a few, are inimical to the prosaic every-day virtues of respectable citizens, There seems no use in thrift, when tomorrow all your savings may be dissipated; no advantage in honesty, when the man towards whom you practise it is pretty sure to swindle you; no point in steadfast adherence to a cause, when no cause is important or has a chance of stable victory; no argument in favour of truthfulness, when only supple tergiversation makes the preservation of life and fortune possible. The man whose virtue has no source except a purely terrestrial prudence will, in such a world, become an adventurer if he has the courage, and, if not, will seek obscurity as a timid time-server.

  Menander, who belongs to this age, says:

  So many cases I have known

  Of men who, though not naturally rogues,

  Became so, through misfortune, by constraint.

  This sums up the moral character of the third century B.C., except for a few exceptional men. Even among these few, fear took the place of hope; the purpose of life was rather to escape misfortune than to achieve any positive good. “Metaphysics sink into the background, and ethics, now individual, become of the first importance. Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before a few intrepid seekers after truth: it is rather an ambulance following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up the weak and wounded.”*

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Cynics and Sceptics

  THE relation of intellectually eminent men to contemporary society has been very different in different ages. In some fortunate epochs they have been on the whole in harmony with their surroundings—suggesting, no doubt, such reforms as seemed to them necessary, but fairly confident that their suggestions would be welcomed, and not disliking the world in which they found themselves even if it remained unreformed. At other times they have been revolutionary, considering that radical alterations were called for, but expecting that, partly as a result of their advocacy, these alterations would be brought about in the near future. At yet other times they have despaired of the world, and felt that, though they themselves knew what was needed, there was no hope of its being brought about. This mood sinks easily into the deeper despair which regards life on earth as essentially bad, and hopes for good only in a future life or in some mystical transfiguration.

  In some ages, all these attitudes have been adopted by different men living at the same time. Consider, for example, the early nineteenth century. Goethe is comfortable, Bentham is a reformer, Shelley is a revolutionary, and Leopardi is a pessimist. But in most periods there has been a prevailing tone among great writers. In England they were comfortable under Elizabeth and in the eighteenth century; in France, they became revolutionary about 1750; in Germany, they have been nationalistic since 1813.

  During the period of ecclesiastical domination, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, there was a certain conflict between what was theoretically believed and what was actually felt. Theoretically, the world was a vale of tears, a preparation, amid tribulation, for the world to come. But in practice the writers of books, being almost all clerics, could not help feeling exhilarated by the power of the Church; they found opportunity for abundant activity of a sort that they believed to be useful. They had therefore the mentality of a governing class, not of men who feel themselves exiles in an alien world. This is part of the curious dualism that runs through the Middle Ages, owing to the fact that the Church, though based on other-worldly beliefs, was the most important institution in the every-day world.

  The psychological preparation for the other-worldliness of Christianity begins in the Hellenistic period, and is connected with the eclipse of the City State. Down to Aristotle, Greek philosophers, though they might complain of this or that, were, in the main, not cosmically despairing, nor did they feel themselves politically impotent. They might, at times, belong to a beaten party, but, if so, their defeat was due to the chances of conflict, not to any inevitable powerlessness of the wise. Even those who, like Pythagoras, and Plato in certain moods, condemned the world of appearance and sought escape in mysticism, had practical plans for turning the governing classes into saints and sages. When political power passed into the hands of the Macedonians, Greek philosophers, as was natural, turned aside from politics and devoted themselves more to the problem of individual virtue or salvation. They no longer asked: how can men create a good State? They asked instead: how can men be virtuous in a wicked world, or happy in a world of suffering? The change, it is true is only one of degree; such questions had been asked before, and the later Stoics, for a time, again concerned themselves with politics—the politics of Rome, not of Greece. But the change was none the less real. Except to a limited extent during the Roman period in Stoicism, the outlook of those who thought and felt seriously became increasingly subjective and individualistic, until, at last, Christianity evolved a gospel of individual salvation which inspired missionary zeal and created
the Church. Until that happened, there was no institution to which the philosopher could give whole-hearted adherence, and therefore there was no adequate outlet for his legitimate love of power. For this reason, the philosophers of the Hellenistic period are more limited as human beings than the men who lived while the City State could still inspire allegiance. They still think, because they cannot help thinking; but they scarcely hope that their thought will bear fruit in the world of affairs.

  Four schools of philosophy were founded about the time of Alexander. The two most famous, the Stoics and Epicureans, will be the subjects of later chapters; in the present chapter we shall be concerned with the Cynics and Sceptics.

  The first of these schools is derived, through its founder Diogenes, from Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, about twenty years older than Plato. Antisthenes was a remarkable character, in some ways rather like Tolstoy. Until after the death of Socrates, he lived in the aristocratic circle of his fellow disciples, and showed no sign of unorthodoxy. But something—whether the defeat of Athens, or the death of Socrates, or a distaste for philosophic quibbling—caused him, when no longer young, to despise the things that he had formerly valued. He would have nothing but simple goodness. He associated with working men, and dressed as one of them. He took to open-air preaching, in a style that the uneducated could understand. All refined philosophy he held to be worthless; what could be known, could be known by the plain man. He believed in the “return to nature,” and carried this belief very far. There was to be no government, no private property, no marriage, no established religion. His followers, if not he himself, condemned slavery. He was not exactly ascetic, but he despised luxury and all pursuit of artificial pleasures of the senses. “I had rather be mad than delighted,” he said.*

  The fame of Antisthenes was surpassed by that of his disciple Diogenes, “a young man from Sinope, on the Euxine, whom he [Antisthenes] did not take to at first sight; the son of a disreputable money-changer who had been sent to prison for defacing the coinage. Antisthenes ordered the lad away, but he paid no attention; he beat him with his stick, but he never moved. He wanted ‘wisdom,’ and saw that Antisthenes had it to give. His aim in life was to do as his father had done, to ‘deface the coinage,’ but on a much larger scale. He would deface all the coinage current in the world. Every conventional stamp was false. The men stamped as generals and kings; the things stamped as honour and wisdom and happiness and riches; all were base metal with lying superscription.”†

  He decided to live like a dog, and was therefore called a “cynic,” which means “canine.” He rejected all conventions—whether of religion, of manners, of dress, of housing, of food, or of decency. One is told that he lived in a tub, but Gilbert Murray assures us that this is a mistake: it was a large pitcher, of the sort used in primitive times for burials.‡ He lived, like an Indian fakir, by begging. He proclaimed his brotherhood, not only with the whole human race, but also with animals. He was a man about whom stories gathered, even in his lifetime. Every one knows how Alexander visited him, and asked if he desired any favour; “only to stand out of my light,” he replied.

  The teaching of Diogenes was by no means what we now call “cynical”—quite the contrary. He had an ardent passion for “virtue,” in comparison with which he held worldly goods of no account. He sought virtue and moral freedom in liberation from desire: be indifferent to the goods that fortune has to bestow, and you will be emancipated from fear. In this respect, his doctrine, as we shall see, was taken up by the Stoics, but they did not follow him in rejecting the amenities of civilization. He considered that Prometheus was justly punished for bringing to man the arts that have produced the complication and artificiality of modern life. In this he resembled the Taoists and Rousseau and Tolstoy, but was more consistent than they were.

  His doctrine, though he was a contemporary of Aristotle, belongs in its temper to the Hellenistic age. Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world is bad; let us learn to be independent of it. External goods are precarious; they are the gift of fortune, not the reward of our own efforts. Only subjective goods—virtue, or contentment through resignation—are secure, and these alone, therefore, will be valued by the wise man. Diogenes personally was a man full of vigour, but his doctrine, like all those of the Hellenistic age, was one to appeal to weary men, in whom disappointment had destroyed natural zest. And it was certainly not a doctrine calculated to promote art or science or statesmanship, or any useful activity except one of protest against powerful evil.

  It is interesting to observe what the Cynic teaching became when it was popularized. In the early part of the third century B.C., the Cynics were the fashion, especially in Alexandria. They published little sermons pointing out how easy it is to do without material possessions, how happy one can be on simple food, how warm one can keep in winter without expensive clothes (which might be true in Egypt!), how silly it is to feel affection for one’s native country, or to mourn when one’s children or friends die. “Because my son or my wife is dead,” says Teles, who was one of these popularizing Cynics, “is that any reason for my neglecting myself, who am still alive, and ceasing to look after my property?”* At this point, it becomes difficult to feel any sympathy with the simple life, which has grown altogether too simple. One wonders who enjoyed these sermons. Was it the rich, who wished to think the sufferings of the poor imaginary? Or was it the new poor, who were trying to despise the successful business man? Or was it sycophants who persuaded themselves that the charity they accepted was unimportant? Teles says to a rich man: “You give liberally and I take valiantly from you, neither grovelling nor demeaning myself basely nor grumbling.”* A very convenient doctrine. Popular Cynicism did not teach abstinence from the good things of this world, but only a certain indifference to them. In the case of a borrower, this might take the form of minimizing the obligation to the lender. One can see how the word “cynic” acquired its every-day meaning.

  What was best in the Cynic doctrine passed over into Stoicism, which was an altogether more complete and rounded philosophy.

  Scepticism, as a doctrine of the schools, was first proclaimed by Pyrrho, who was in Alexander’s army, and campaigned with it as far as India. It seems that this gave him a sufficient taste of travel, and that he spent the rest of his life in his native city, Elis, where he died in 275 B.C. There was not much that was new in his doctrine, beyond a certain systematizing and formalizing of older doubts. Scepticism with regard to the senses had troubled Greek philosophers from a very early stage; the only exceptions were those who, like Parmenides and Plato, denied the cognitive value of perception, and made their denial into an opportunity for an intellectual dogmatism. The Sophists, notably Protagoras and Gorgias, had been led by the ambiguities and apparent contradictions of sense-perception to a subjectivism not unlike Hume’s. Pyrrho seems (for he very wisely wrote no books) to have added moral and logical scepticism to scepticism as to the senses. He is said to have maintained that there could never be any rational ground for preferring one course of action to another. In practice, this meant that one conformed to the customs of whatever country one inhabited. A modern disciple would go to church on Sundays and perform the correct genuflexions, but without any of the religious beliefs that are supposed to inspire these actions. Ancient Sceptics went through the whole pagan ritual, and were even sometimes priests; their Scepticism assured them that this behaviour could not be proved wrong, and their common sense (which survived their philosophy) assured them that it was convenient.

  Scepticism naturally made an appeal to many unphilosophic minds. People observed the diversity of schools and the acerbity of their disputes, and decided that all alike were pretending to knowledge which was in fact unattainable. Scepticism was a lazy man’s consolation, since it showed the ignorant to be as wise as the reputed men of learning. To men who, by temperament, required a gospel, it might seem u
nsatisfying, but like every doctrine of the Hellenistic period it recommended itself as an antidote to worry. Why trouble about the future? It is wholly uncertain. You may as well enjoy the present; “What’s to come is still unsure.” For these reasons, Scepticism enjoyed a considerable popular success.

  It should be observed that Scepticism as a philosophy is not merely doubt, but what may be called dogmatic doubt. The man of science says “I think it is so-and-so, but I am not sure.” The man of intellectual curiosity says “I don’t know how it is, but I hope to find out.” The philosophical Sceptic says “nobody knows, and nobody ever can know.” It is this element of dogmatism that makes the system vulnerable. Sceptics, of course, deny that they assert the impossibility of knowledge dogmatically, but their denials are not very convincing.