THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.-A COMMEN- ERRATA. Want of room prevents an intended notice of several errors, some of them errors of the INTRODUCTION. THERE are two great tendencies in human nature of which Plato and Aristotle are commonly regarded as the representatives. One of these tendencies or characteristics is indicated, in its various forms, by the epithets speculative, theoretical, ideal, abstract, doctrinal, subjective. The terms which are employed in describing the other tendency are practical, experimental, concrete, actual, objective. Plato, though not deficient in acuteness and subtlety, was meditative and profound. As the author of the celebrated ideal philosophy, he supposed that certain ideas existed in the Divine mind from eternity, to which God gave a figure or form when he created the world. He ascribed a Divine original to the human soul. True happiness, according to Plato, consists in the investigation of truth and in the subjection of the passions. Virtue is the perfection and health of the soul. It is manifested in the various forms of wisdom, righteousness, temperance, valor. Plate had a living power of imagination, a loftiness of thought, together with the ability to clothe his conceptions in the noblest and most beautiful forms. Under his pen the most abstract ideas assumed the character of lind reality. Spirit, vigor, warmth pervade his writings.1 1 See Schöll, Geschichte der Griech. Litt. I. 480. The moral character of Plato's great master is yet occasionally assailed with considerable violence. The charges against Socrates originated partly from calumny, which is always thrown out by the vicious against those who are more virtuous than themselves; and partly from a misapprehension of some Socratico-Platonic expressions. For instance, when Socrates said, in his last moments, that he owed a cock to Esculapius," any one, who regards his well known habit of irony, may suppose that he was not in earnest; that be understood by Esculapius health, and intimated by this form of expression that he had almost recovered from his long disease. In respect to another charge-that of sensuality-we have the explicit testimony of Xenophon, that physical love was directly excluded by Socrates. Alcibiades, in Plato's Dialogue, declares that Socrates was unsusceptible of every lower kind of love, being devoted to spiritual love alone. If Socrates had been Aristotle is the father of natural history. The philosophical terminology and many of the existing scientific definitions are traced to his pen. He formed a system of logic with wonderful completeness, and also gave fundamental laws to rhetoric and poetry. Psychology owes to him its philosophical form. His style of writing is simple and exact. He never sacrifices sense to sound. He discards the fable, the allegory and the various figures of speech in which Plato abounds. He is always serene, tranquil, modest, though occasionally obscure in consequence of his brevity, or his use of uncommon words. He founded his system on reason and experiment, entirely rejecting the aid of the imagination. He embraced all the branches of human knowledge which were attainable in his time, and gave to them order and a scientific form. He had collected so large a library that Plato named his dwelling," the house of the reader." It has been said, probably with truth, that in the quality of mere dry intellect, Aristotle is at the head of the race. Plato is the leader of another series. In imagination, feeling, originality, in what may be termed the spiritual powers, he is among the greatest of the children of men-the Homer of philosophers. Plato," says Goethe, "is, in relation to this world, like a blessed spirit, who chooses fat a time to take up his abode here. 66 His object is not so much to become acquainted with the world as kindly to communicate to it that which he brings with him, and which is so necessary to i ம்: He mounts upward, with longing to partake again of his original All.tothe atters has reference to one single principle-perfect, good, true, beautiful; the love of which he studies to enkindle in every bosom. Whatever of earthly science he acquires in particulars, melts, yea we might say, evaporates in his method, in his discourse. Aristotle, on the contrary, is, in relation to the world, like a man, a master-builder. He is once here, and he must work and build. He inquires about the soil; but no further than till he finds a firm foundation. From that point to the centre of the earth, all the rest is indifferent to him. He marks out a vast circuit guilty in this particular, would not Aristophanes have trumpeted it? Before we believe all which has been uttered against some of the best men of antiquity, we want better authority than the story-teller Athenaeus. We do not vindicate everything which Socrates did or said. We may contend that he would not be admitted into virtuous society now. of the pious patriarchs of Scripture on the same principle? Bibl. Repos. II. 453, and Schweighäuser, XII. 161. But would many for his building, collects his materials from every quarter, arranges them, piles them one upon another, and thus rises in regular pyramidical form into the air; while Plato shoots up towards heaven like an obelisk, yea like a pointed flame."1 These eminent Greeks are not without their representatives at the present day. Plato reäppears in the German; Aristotle in the Anglo-Saxon. The former lives in an ideal realm. He is given to speculation. He is lost in the depths of his own spirit. Nothing is profound or subjective enough for him. The Oriental mysticism is seen again in the centre of Europe. The Gnostic finds a home on the banks of the Elbe. The German is not satisfied with the obvious meaning of a proposition. He must look behind or below it for something more fundamental, for something wrapped in deeper mystery. In struggling to reach a lofty and unattainable ideal, he will have nothing to do with the actual and possible. Plain sense, obvious truth, are cast out as too vulgar. A personal God, with definite, individual attributes is not to his taste. He meditates and conjectures till he loses himself in barren generalities or pantheistic dreams. In his exclusive tendency he perverts Plato himself. That great thinker did not overlook praetical utility. His repeated and hazardous journies into Sicily, as well as many other events of his life, are a proof of his attention to the actual condition of his fellow creatures. His aim was the completeness, the symme try, the perfection of the human soul. He abhorred everything partial or exclusive. Dr. Ritter terms, his republica University.' Still the general position is undoubtedly true that the Germans are the disciples of the Academy. Their faults are of the ideal kind. Their mistakes are not those of action. Of the errors of the experimentalist they are guiltless.2 On the other hand, the Englishman and American are thoroughly Peripatetic; they are ever in motion. They are undoubting believers in the sensible world. In rejecting its existence, Berkeley has hardly a living disciple. In demolishing his system, Dr. Reid performed a work of supererogation. Nothing could be more harmless than Berkeley's notion. The corn law or the woollen trade have 1 Goethe, Farbenlehre II. 140. Bibl. Repos. III. 687. 2 Of course the general tendency, the national characteristic is here described. Prominent exceptions doubtless exist. Of this the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy are a sufficient proof. |