"To ruin Dr. Bruce," Isidore said, as coolly as if a great light had not suddenly broken in upon him. "So your friend is in London?"Another term occupying a very large place in Aristotles philosophy was well adapted to mediate between and eventually to unite the two speculative extremes. This was Substance; in logic the subject of predication, in metaphysics the substratum of qualities, the ο?σ?α or Being of the Ten Categories. Now First Matter might fairly claim the position of a universal subject or substance, since it was invested with every sensible quality in turn, and even, as the common element of all Forms, with every thinkable quality as well. Aristotle himself had finally pronounced for the individual compound of Form and Matter as the true substance. Yet he also speaks as if the essential definition of a thing constituted the thing itself; in which case Form alone could be the true subject; and a similar claim might be put forward on behalf of the Plotinian One.561
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So far, we have spoken as if the Socratic definitions were merely verbal; they were, however, a great deal more, and their author did not accurately discriminate between what at that stage of thought could not well be kept apartexplanations of words, practical reforms, and scientific generalisations. For example, in defining a ruler to be one who knew more than other men, he was departing from the common usages of language, and showing not what was, but what ought to be true.93 And in defining virtue as wisdom, he was putting forward a new theory of his own, instead of formulating the145 received connotation of a term. Still, after making every deduction, we cannot fail to perceive what an immense service was rendered to exact thought by introducing definitions of every kind into that department of enquiry where they were chiefly needed. We may observe also that a general law of Greek intelligence was here realising itself in a new direction. The need of accurate determination had always been felt, but hitherto it had worked under the more elementary forms of time, space, and causality, or, to employ the higher generalisation of modern psychology, under the form of contiguous association. The earlier cosmologies were all processes of circumscription; they were attempts to fix the limits of the universe, and, accordingly, that element which was supposed to surround the others was also conceived as their producing cause, or else (in the theory of Heracleitus) as typifying the rationale of their continuous transformation. For this reason Parmenides, when he identified existence with extension, found himself obliged to declare that extension was necessarily limited. Of all the physical thinkers, Anaxagoras, who immediately precedes Socrates, approaches, on the objective side, most nearly to his standpoint. For the governing Nous brings order out of chaos by segregating the confused elements, by separating the unlike and drawing the like together, which is precisely what definition does for our conceptions. Meanwhile Greek literature had been performing the same task in a more restricted province, first fixing events according to their geographical and historical positions, then assigning to each its proper cause, then, as Thucydides does, isolating the most important groups of events from their external connexions, and analysing the causes of complex changes into different classes of antecedents. The final revolution effected by Socrates was to substitute arrangement by difference and resemblance for arrangement by contiguity in coexistence and succession. To say that by so doing he created science is inexact, for science requires to consider nature under every146 aspect, including those which he systematically neglected; but we may say that he introduced the method which is most particularly applicable to mental phenomena, the method of ideal analysis, classification, and reasoning. For, be it observed that Socrates did not limit himself to searching for the One in the Many, he also, and perhaps more habitually, sought for the Many in the One. He would take hold of a conception and analyse it into its various notes, laying them, as it were, piecemeal before his interlocutor for separate acceptance or rejection. If, for example, they could not agree about the relative merits of two citizens, Socrates would decompose the character of a good citizen into its component parts and bring the comparison down to them. A good citizen, he would say, increases the national resources by his administration of the finances, defeats the enemy abroad, wins allies by his diplomacy, appeases dissension by his eloquence at home.94 When the shy and gifted Charmides shrank from addressing a public audience on public questions, Socrates strove to overcome his nervousness by mercilessly subdividing the august Ecclsia into its constituent classes. Is it the fullers that you are afraid of? he asked, or the leather-cutters, or the masons, or the smiths, or the husbandmen, or the traders, or the lowest class of hucksters?95 Here the analytical power of Greek thought is manifested with still more searching effect than when it was applied to space and motion by Zeno.VIII.Besides the general religious movement which had long been in action, and was daily gaining strength from the increasing barbarisation of the empire, there was, at this juncture, a particular cause tending to bring Greek philosophy into close alliance with the mythology which it had formerly rejected and denounced. This was the rapid rise and spread of Christianity. St Augustine has said that of all heathen philosophers none came nearer to the Christian faith than the Neo-Platonists.528 Nevertheless, it was in them that the old religion found its only apologists and the new religion its most active assailants. We have already alluded to the elaborate polemic of Porphyry. Half a century later, the same principles could boast of a still more illustrious champion. The emperor Julian was imbued with the doctrines of Neo-Platonism, and was won back to the ancient faith by the teaching of its professors.
