ARISTOTLE IN CONCLUSION.

155

history, compared with Buffon, has led me into remarkable thoughts." Even, as we saw, Mr. Darwin himself, who is recent enough, and, certainly, a special expert enough, when he reads Aristotle on the Parts of Animals in the admirable translation which, with its valuable notes, had been executed and forwarded to him by his friend Dr. Ogle, is obliged to cry out in his letter of acknowledgment by return: "I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he (Aristotle) was: Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways; but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle." Aristotle, however, is no mere specialist: he is as wide as the circumference, and as the centre deep. The old idea of him is that he is cold and dry, technical, practical, and of the earth earthy only. But this is not the case. Aristotle is even a deeper mind than Plato. He may take up things as he finds them, or as they come to him; but he never lets them go till he has wrung from them their very inmost and utmost. We have to bear in mind, too, that we have lost five-sixths of his writings, while the best of the sixth we have has suffered lamentably. For myself here, I feel in this way, that, if I were condemned to solitary confinement for the rest of my life, and no book allowed me but an edition of Aristotle, I should not, as a student, conceive myself ill-served. Perhaps, indeed, looking round me to think, I know only three other collective writings which, in such circumstances, I should wish added to those of Aristotle; but these I shall leave to your own conjectures.

Professor Blackie, after hearing the foregoing lecture, was kind enough further to honour it by publishing (as dated) the following obliging note and admirable

GIFFORD LECTURE THE NINTH.

The Sects-The Skeptics-The Epicureans-Epicurus-Leucippus and Democritus-Aristotle, Plato-Stoics, Pantheism-Chrysippus-Origin of evil-Antithesis-Negation-Epictetus-The Neo-Platonists-Important six hundred years-Course of history-Reflection at last-Aufklärung, Revolution-RomeThe atom, the Cæsar-The despair of the old, the hope of the new-Paganism, Christianity-The State-The temple -Asceticism-Philosophy, the East, Alexandria-The NeoPlatonists-Ecstasy - Cicero-Paley and the others all in him -All probably due to Aristotle-Sextus-Philo JudaeusMinucius Felix-Cicero now as to Dr. Alexander Thomson and the Germans-A word in defence.

WHAT, for philosophical consideration, follows Aristotle, are what are called the Sects-the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics. Our subject, however, relates only to the proofs for the existence of God; and we shall have to do with the Sects, consequently, only so far as they have any bearing on those proofs: it is not the history of philosophy that we are engaged on. Now, in regard to that bearing, the very name of the Sect may here, in a case or two, be determinative and decisive. Of them all, in fact, it is only among the doctrines of the Stoics that we shall find anything that bears on our business. The Skeptics, for example, knew nothing-neither a καλόν nor an αἰσχρόν, neither a δίκαιον nor an ἄδικον, neither a good nor a bad, neither a right nor a wrong. They knew not at all that this is more than it is that; that anything, in truth, is; that, in fact, anything is, any more than that it is not. Their standpoint was ἐποχή: they would not speak; or it was ἀκαταληψία, and they did not understand; or it was ἀταραξία, and they would not be troubled. It is in vain to seek for any argument on their part in reference to the existence of the Godhead. The very best and most advanced of them admitted, in regard to anything, only a more or less of perhaps.

Nor with the Epicureans are we one whit better placed. They believe in no reality but that of the body: they have no test for that reality but touch, or sight, or hearing-the ear, or the eye, or the fingers; and the transcendent object we would prove is within the reach of no sense. As it is written: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." In fact, Epicurus directly tells us that we are not to believe in design, but only in the movements proper of mere nature. We are not to suppose, he says, the order of the universe to result from the ministration or regulation of any blessed god, but that, to the original consequences of the whirlings together at the birth of the world are due the necessary courses of movement (Diog. L. 24, 76). In short, in all such matters we are to see only a physical operation (ib. 78). Why Epicurus will have all from natural causes, and not from any influence of beings supernatural is, that belief in the latter would be the occasion of fear. Very evidently, Epicurus has been an exceedingly sensitive person. For him the best thing from within is calm enjoyment, and the worst thing from without fear. All is useless and superfluous that does not promote the one and prevent the other. So it is that it is quite idle to have knowledge, as knowledge of astronomical phenomena, say, since those who have it are not led thereby to happiness; but, on the contrary, have rather more fears; for such is the effect of belief in the action of superterrestrial powers. But all accounts of such powers are only fables. Undisturbed assurance

that is the only end (ib. 85). "Our life," he says, "has need, not of ideology and empty opinion, but of untroubled tranquillity" (ib. 87). "As for the size of the sun and the stars, it is, as regards us, just such as it seems (ib. 91). "With contradiction of our senses there can never be true tranquillity" (ib. 96). "If no meteorological apprehensions, and none about death, disturbed us, we should have no need of physiology" (ib. 142). But "death is nothing to us, for what is dissolved feels not, and what is not felt is for us nothing" (ib. 139). These notices will be sufficient to show the absolutely materialistic nature of Epicureanism, and how it rejected everything like teleological agency, or explanation, and referred all to the mechanical movements of mere corporeal particles. In short, what we have from Epicurus is but a repetition of the atoms of Democritus and Leucippus, of whom Aristotle (d. G. A. v. 18) said that "they rejected design, and referred all to necessity." It seems to be they also whom Plato (Soph. 246 A, and Theaet, 155 E) has in his eye when he speaks of "those who pull all things down to earth from heaven and the unseen, stubbornly maintaining, with their insensate fingers on rocks and oak trees, that only what they touch is, and that body and being are the same thing, while of things that are incorporeal they will not hear a word." Neither Skeptics nor Epicureans, then, are here anything for us.

The religion of the Stoics, so far as they had a religion, consisted probably, on the whole, in a sort of clumsy and crude material pantheism. Nevertheless, unlike both Skeptics and Epicureans, they did point to the nature of this universe - its contingency and design-as demonstrative of its origin in a divine and intelligent causality. This causality is to them a conscious God, creative of the world through his own will,