sophies, or rather theosophies, vast and shadowy, like the countries which gave them birth, we shall discover the two prevalent tendencies referred to; though the current of Oriental thought has always inclined rather to idealism than to materialism. Both of these, however, are realized among the Brahminical sages, and are occasionally found existing in a blended form, giving rise to a confused, sensual pantheism. It was long, however, before philosophy disentangled itself, in any degree, from religion, so that we find, lying at the basis of all the speculations of the Hindoo mind, a complicated system of mythological worship, in which a few tra ditionary fragments respecting God and the soul are probably mingled with the veneration of nature or the universe. For this reason their religion is more a worship of the outward and carnal, than of the inward and divine. Still the world is regarded as a whole, and worshiped, in its various elements and forms, as a manifestation of the one indivisible, eternal Brahm, or absolute Being. The moment, however, that speculative thought took a decisive form, it vacillated constantly between the real and the ideal, the inner and the outer worlds. Cousin states decisively that the first fruit of their philosophy, the moment it became independent of the Vedas, or sacred books, was atheism.1 This system, which goes far back into the annals of India, was called Sankhya, the author of which was Kapila, a sort of Hindoo Condillac. According to Kapila all thought is derived from sensation; consequently there is nothing but matter. Synchronous with this but diverging from it, was the philosophy of Pantandjali, which as the other made nothing of God made every thing of God, but how is not so clearly explained.2 Opposed to the narrow and atheistic philosophy of Kapila was the theory of rationalism, called Nyaya, which is found to be nothing less than a system of subjective idealism. As in Fichte's philosophy, the soul is the centre of this philosophy, and is infinite in its principle. True, it is admitted to be a special substance, distinct from the body, and different in different individuals; so that this form of idealism was not consistently carried out. But this was subsequently done in the philosophy called Vedanta, which denied the existence as finite realities of both matter and mind, and recognized one universal Substance, as nature and God. The final absolute verity according to Karika, a celebrated commentator on the Sankhya was this:

I neither am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist."

1 Hist. de la Philosophie. Second Series. Tome ii. p. 120. See also Tennemann's Manual, p. 41.

2. There is much uncertainty respecting the forms of the Hindoo philosophy. Some, among whom is Ritter, doubt whether it ought to be dignified with the name of philosophy at all. Hegel in his Geschichte der Philosophie, says that their philosophy is "identical with their religion," and that its "fundamental idea is this, that there is one Universal Substance from which all things proceed, gods, animals, inorganic nature, and man."

Thus pantheism, in its most decisive form, was made the basis not only of Hindoo philosophy but of Hindoo worship. All things come from Brahm and thither all return. Mind is matter, and matter is mind, and all is God 1 Hegel is much pleased with the pantheistic philosophy of India, and quotes with approbation the Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krishnu, an incarnation of Vishnu and thence of Brahm, is introduced addressing the warrior Ardjouna: "I am the author and destroyer of the universe, etc. I am the breath which dwells in the body of the living, the progenitor and the governor. * * * * I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. I am under the stars the radiant sun, undėr the lunar signs the moon, the sweet perfume of the earth, the splendor of the flame, the life in animals," &c.2

Hence the key for the deliverance of the soul, according to the school of Vedantam, is in these words, which the Hindoo sages have to repeat incessantly, Aham, Ava, param Brahma, I am the supreme God-the last result of a fanatical pantheism.3

Tholuck in his interesting work on the pantheistic philosophy of the Persians (Ssufismus) informs us that the Mohammedan heretical philosophers, the Soofies, teach that God is every thing, in the most absolute sense of the expression, nihil esse præter Deum, that the external universe is a divine emanation, and that absorption in the primal essence is the highest good. In a word, their doctrine is that of a sublime, inexorable pantheism, in which all distinction between subject and object, being and thought, holiness and sin, God and man is swallowed up and lost. The Budhists of India, an offshoot from Brahminism, materialize all things, consequently deny an eternal God, and long for Burchan, which is simply annihilation. Thus the Oriental soul vibrates darkly between pantheism and atheism, longing for, but apparently never finding, the "Unknown God."

2. It was in Greece, however, that ancient speculative thought developed itself with the greatest vigor. Somewhat under the influence of the Oriental mind, but acute, restless, penetrating, practical, and pressing philosophy, as all else, to its extreme logical verge, the Grecian thinkers

1 See Cousin's Hist. de la Philosophie. Second Series. Tome ii. Sixième Leçon. Tennemann's Manual (Bohn's Ed.) pp. 37, 38. Compare Ritter's Ancient Philosophy, vol. i. pp. 60–128. For more extended information consult Colebrooke's Essay, and Miscellanies. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vols. i. and ii.

2 See Geschichte der Philosophie, Schriften, T. 13, p. 152, et seq. Hegel is especially pleased with the Sankhya, and imagines that he sees in this his own fundamental principle, especially the three momenta or qualities of "The Absolute Idea,” p. 154. It is well known that, in the Hindoo Cosmogony, Brahm, the absolute and inconceivable becomes manifest in Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, who represent the creating, preserving, and destroying powers of the Universe. These form a circle, in which all things proceed from and return into the absolute. This, therefore, in the form of theosophy, would represent the three Momenta, or Trinity of Hegel's Absolute Idea. * Tholuck's Ssufismus, p. 214, quoted from Lettres Edifiantes.

was

seized, with avidity, the great problems of existence, and projected an infinite variety of plausible and splendid theories. But "the boundless Power, the infinite Substance of the Orientals," as Hegel suggests, determined, limited, individualized by the Hellenic genius." In India, grand and colossal, the forces of nature are deified; unity, immensity, eternity, are its leading ideas, absorption its longing and aim. On the other hand, the gods of Greece are "the offspring of passion and thought," and its philosophy that of the Kosmos, or visible universe, as limited, but complete, beautiful, harmonious. The outward and formal, indeed, is finally transcended, and the essence of philosophy is recognized in the absolute and ideal. But nature, with its grace, beauty, and movement, supplies the chief inspiration of the Greek mind, and the absolute or ideal is little more than an abstraction of material forms.

Never in the annals of history did thought expatiate with more freedom and energy; and here, if anywhere, might philosophy have reached perfection and solved the enigma of the universe. But we find it constantly vacillating between subject and object, sensualism and idealism, atheism and pantheism, and finally, running out into a flat and arid skepticism.

The earlier Greek philosophers are speculative naturalists, who attempt to solve the origin of the universe by a reference to natural or occult forces. The idea of a supreme and controlling mind seems to haunt them, but seldom comes out in clear and articulate form. Soon they range themselves under two determinate schools-the Ionian and the Eleatic; the former, with some exceptions, teaching a system of naturalism, or refined materialism, with occasional glimpses of an all-penetrating Mind or God; the other, a system of idealism, which issues in a lofty but bewildering pantheism.1 Thales, the founder of the Ionian school, derived all things from water, or moisture, as a generative principle, accompanied or followed, it is difficult to say which, by a sort of magnetic or mental energy, pervading universal nature.2 Anaximander advanced a step further, and maintained that all things, or the material universe in its totality, is the only God. Anaximanes, and somewhat later Diogenes of Apollonia, asserted that air and not water is the true source of all existence; while Heraclitus of Ephesus, oracular and profound, found it in the more delicate and resplendent element of fire. Perhaps, as Ritter suggests, he used the term fire in a figurative sense, and really believed, as he seems to teach,

The Ionian school varies exceedingly, as Ritter (Hist. of A. Ph. p. 201, et seq.) has shown. We do not find any decided continuity in their views.

2 Thales seems to have regarded the Kosmos as a sort of animal, having a vital, or seminal principle, by which it is nourished. He has been represented, on the authority of Cicero, who mistook the testimony of Aristotle, as a sublime Theist. If he believed in God, he made water and God primary essences. In his view, all things are "ensouled." Amber and the magnet, for example, he represents as possessing "souls." His term for soul is uxý.-Aristotle, De Animo, i. 2.

that the all-creative, all-penetrating power is infinite and eternal Reason. Judging from the spirit and scope of his speculations, he belongs rather to the school of Elea than to that of Ionia. His Eternal Fire produces and absorbs all individual phenomena. "All is and is not." "On the same stream we embark, and we embark not; we are, and we are not." Life is death, and death is life." All is contrary, and yet all is harmony." A doctrine which must have been posited in the idea of absoTo him the universe is "ensouled" and divine; in a word, pantheism, as in the school of Elea, is the logical result of his system. Whence the force of his favorite apothegm, "Enter; for here, too, are gods."1

lute and eternal unity. To him the universe is “

It may be naturally supposed, that according to the views of most of the Ionian philosophers, the soul of man is either a natural energy, or a mere mechanical force, somewhat refined; consequently fatalism is its logical issue.

From this source sprang the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus, according to which the universe, internal and external, is composed of definite atoms. The soul is a collection of such atoms, igneous, and spherical, producing at once motion and thought. The theory was ingenious, and admitted, in its elucidation and defense, of much eloquent discussion, but could never transcend the forms of matter, or lift the soul to the idea of supreme and eternal perfection.

Xenophanes, a rhapsodist, as well as philosopher, is usually recognized as the founder of the Eleatic school, and certainly attained, at least by glimpses, to lofty views of God and the universe; but he found himself bewildered by the problem of the One and the All, the All and the One, Thus he says, mournfully :

Certainly no mortal yet knew, and ne'er shall there be one

Knowing well both the gods and the All, whose nature we treat of:
For when, by chance, he at times may utter the true and the perfect,
He wists not unconscious; for error is spread over all things.

Between the Ionian school, with its world of natural forces, and the Eleatic with its abstract or ideal one, we find the Italian school founded by Pythagoras, who, with a profounder insight than most of his contemporaries, penetrated beneath mere phenomena, and tried to solve the interior relations of things. His mind, like that of Spinoza, in more modern times, was eminently mathematical, and so he constituted the universe

1 Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Phil. i. 255.

2 Hence the appropriateness of the words put into his mouth by Timon, the Sillograph :

"O that mine were the deep mind, prudent and looking to both sides;

Long, alas! have I strayed on the road of error, beguiled,

And am now hoary of years, yet exposed to doubt and distraction

Of all kinds; for wherever I turn to consider

I am lost in the One and All.”

of numbers, and recognized the Deity as a simple numerical unit, from which the universe is evolved. "The Ionians," says Hegel, "conceived the absolute under a natural form; instead of this, the Pythagoreans substituted Number, which is neither a material thing, nor pure thought, but something between them, which partakes of the nature of both." Chaos is organized by numbers, and the universe is both one and many. The Eleatic school was formed under Pythagorean influence. Unity was its central principle, and diversity, or plurality, was gradually eliminated. It was finally abandoned by Zeno, who denied the innate energy, and the consequent real existence of the external world. Parmenides maintained that thought is one with its object, one with actual existence, and thus approached the absolute idealism of the modern German school.

In this way the schools of Ionia and Elea represented the two extremes of philosophical speculation, and combated each other with various success, the consequence of which was the rise of many Skeptics who despised them both, and a very few Eclectics who attempted, but without decided success, to blend the peculiarities of the two systems.1

At last Socrates made his appearance, the noblest and purest of all the Greek philosophers, the friend and teacher of Alcibiades, Xenophon, and Plato, who, like Reid in Scotland, recalled his countrymen to the reality of things and the dictates of common sense, and thus created an epoch in the history of thought. It was not, however, in precisely the same import of the expression, as that attached to it by Dr. Reid, and explained by Sir W. Hamilton, that Socrates appealed to the dictates of "' common sense.” He made no attempt, on philosophical grounds, to ascertain the fundamental axioms of thought, or to construct a psychological system. He called attention only to common convictions, conceded principles, obvious every-day uses; exhorted men to study themselves, and not cheat their minds by prejudices and appearances, and especially by an unmeaning logomachy. His method, if he had any, was that of clear definitions, admirable within certain limits, but liable to great abuse. He poured contempt upon the shallow pretensions of the popular teachers, and endeavored to turn the minds of men in upon themselves. "Know thyself," was his great maxim, goodness his end and aim. He had no theory, properly speaking, wrote no book, founded no school. He followed common sense, "the good demon," as he symbolized it-the inspiration of the Almighty, we should say, "the light which lighteth every man," who will heed it; in other words, the deep spon taneous convictions of the well-ordered soul, which evermore suggest the reality of a Supreme Being, the beauty and authority of virtue. Man

When we speak of the school of Ionia, it is rather in deference to usage, for we have already seen that one of the number was rather an idealist than a materialist. Indeed there is so much diversity among them, that its members alone might be taken as representatives of the two extremes of philosophical speculation.