MR. BENN'S GREEK PHILOSOPHERS.* Ma. BEEN'S work on the Greek

philosophers is a remarkable production. It is subtle, learned, and eloquent. He brings to the illustration of his proper subject information gathered from the most varied sources, and has been able, in quite a felicitous way, to show the frequent parallelism between Greek and modern thought. Neither the vast learning, nor the system- atising power, nor the fascinating style in which it is written, nor all of these taken together is sufficient to enable us to account for the book, nor for the particular conclusions set forth in it. It is one of those books into which a personal element largely enters, and unexpressed considerations form a large part of the logical process which justifies the results won by Mr. Benn. It is all the more necessary to point this out, because Mr. Benn is one of those who seem to think that truth can only be reached when we eliminate the personal element altogether. This book of his, is, on the contrary, one of the best illustrations we have seen of the large part which uncon- scious preconceptions play in conscious logical processes. He has come to the study of Greek philosophy, and to the study of philosophy in general, with quite a number of presuppositions, some of which are present in clear consciousness to his mind, and some of which lie more or less completely in the background. One of these conscious presuppositions is what he calls " the modern conception of the universe as an absolute whole, whose parts are not caused, but constituted by their fundamental unity, and are not really separated from each other in nature, but only ideally distinguished in our thoughts." (Vol. II., pp. 346-7.) Alongside of this we may put another conception, the consistency of which with the foregoing we do not quite see. Yet it is a con- ception which finds frequent expression in these volumes, chiefly, however, when Mr. Bean puts on the mantle of prophecy. The time will come "when the truths of science are seen by all, as they are now seen by a few, to involve the admission that there is no object for our devotion but the welfare of sentient beings like ourselves ; that there are no changes in Nature for which natural forces will not account; and that the unity of all existence has, for us, no individualisation beyond the finite and perishable consciousness of man." (Vol. II., p. 265.) Another preconcep- tion in the mind of Mr. Benn is a hatred of superstition. By superstition, he means almost all that other people mean when they speak of natural and revealed religion. Frequent allusions occur to "organised superstition." So far has this gone with Mr. Benn, that hatred of superstition often rises to the altitude of religious faith. His language attains to a warmer glow and becomes urgent and passionate, in its denunciation of the evil wrought by a faith in the supernatural, in any form what- soever. A curious illustration occurs in a paragraph in the third section of the chapter on the religious revival. Mr. Benn is speaking of the military organisation of the Roman Empire, and of some of the results of it :—" On the other hand, when it came to be a question of supernatural agency, a man of this type would astonish the Jews themselves by his credulity. Imbued with the idea of personal authority, he readily fancied that any one standing high in the favour of God could cure diseases from a distance, by simply giving them the word of command to depart." (Vol. IL, p. 207.) This is one of the few allusions to the New Testament to be found in these two volumes, and we quote it because of the illustration it affords of the extreme arbi- trariness of Mr. Benn's method of criticism. It shows how a mind imbued with preconceptions will pass through a mass of evidence, and like a magnet, will attract only what has affinity with itself. It was open to Mr. Benn to take the story of the centurion as a whole, it was equally open to him to omit all reference to it. But it was not open to him, without critical inquiry, simply in this arbitrary way to take as much as suited his purpose, and to cast the remainder overboard as superstition. The story of the centurion hangs together. Instead of manifest- ing credulity, he showed a reasonable faith. He argued from what he knew just as cogently as Mr. Benn does ; even more so. Personal authority was a fact. A word from the Emperor was enough, as the centurion well knew, to set troops in motion from Palestine to. Britain. He himself was a man under authority, and others obeyed him as he obeyed his superiors.

• The Greek Philosophers. By Alfred William Benn. 2 vole. London : C. Kogan Paul and Co.

Was there anything irrational in supposing that similar authority and obedience might obtain in other spheres ? If the. story in the Gospels be true, and if Jesus Christ is what he- claims to be, then it is not the centurion who exhibits credulity ; it is Mr. Benn. If the story is true, the centurion was right,- and Mr. Benn is wrong in his opinion. It is time that it should' be understood that superstition may be negative as well as positive. And people may err as much in refusing to faith its proper sphere, as in yielding to extra-belief.

The truth is that Mr. Benn is an enthusiast, and his enthusiasm is twofold. It is positive when he is looking at the scientific intelligence, its methods, and its triumphs. For him science is the beneficent healing power, whose office it is to redeem humanity from all evils. On the other hand, he is a negative enthusiast, who hates as passionately as he loves. Ha can see no good in supernaturalism. It is simply an obstruction to science, and must at all hazards be removed out of the way.

It is this enthusiasm which evidently has set Mr. Beim to the enormous toil of writing this book, and of the vast preparatory study which has issued in this result. It is as good a way of attack on Supernaturalism as any which can be found now-a- days. To write a history of Greek philosophy, and to show how supernaturalism coincided with reaction, and how progress, in all the breadth of its meaning, coincided with the triumph of what Mr. Benn calls the scientific spirit, was a happy thought.

It would bring the forces of history to bear on the formidable defence which supernaturalism is still able to offer. What had resisted the direct attack, and indeed had attacked in turn and not without success the exclusive scientific prejudices of our own time, might not be able to resist a flank attack by the circuitous route of the philosophers of Greece. No doubt Mr. Bean has a certain interest in Greek philosophy, for its own sake; but to us it appears that it has a deeper interest for him, in so far as it enables him to overthrow the citadel of superstition. He has brought to the study of Greek philosophy the intensity of his own con- victions, and his eyes see just what they have the power to see„ and no more. From the tone of the book, the author seems to-

imagine that he has got free from preconception, and is as far as possible from reading into history what his own mind brought- with it ; and yet, if Cardinal Newman were seeking a new illus- tration of the leading principle set forth in the Grammar of Assent, he could find none more appropriate than The Greek Philosophers, by A. W. Benn. The reasoning of this volttme has a personal and individual character.

Sometimes, indeed, these preconceptions fall into the back- ground, and Mr. Benn allows himself to stand face to face with the objects of his study. Then we have true, earnest work, and results of abiding value. The studies of the pre-Socratic schools,.

and of Socrates, of Plato, and Aristotle, are worthy of all praise, when they are confined to these philosophers, and their place in the history of human thought. The exposition is always good,

but it is not allowed to proceed undisturbed for any length of time. Mr. Benn has to point a moral and adorn a tale, and

takes occasion to show how superstition comes in, in a quiet,.

disguised way, or destructively like a flood. Now and then we come across an enjoyable allusion to modern times and thought; a fair specimen is the following, which occurs in his description of the Sophists :—" Wherever the rhetorician comes into com- petition with the professional, he will beat him on his own ground, and will be preferred to him for every public office. The type is by no means extinct, and flourishes like a green bay-tree among ourselves. Like Pendennis, a writer of this kind will review any book from the height of superior knowledge acquired

by two hours' reading in the British Museum ; or, if he is adroit enough, will dispense with even that slender amount of pre-

paration. He need not even trouble himself to read the book which he criticises. A superficial acquaintance with magazine articles will qualify him to pass judgment on all life, all religion,.

and all philosophy. But it is in politics that the finest career lies before him. He rises to power by attacking the measures of real statesmen, and remains there by adopting them. He becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer by gross economical blundering, and Prime Minister by a happy mixture of epigram and adulation." (Vol. I., p. 97.) These allusions add much to.

the enjoyment of the reader, but not very much to his knowledge or information. Frequently, indeed, they break the continuity of argument and exposition, although we have no doubt that they appear to the author the most valuable feature of the book.. In the midst of the exposition of Plato's system, when we have reached what many regard as the highest point of his thought,.

Mr. Benn stops short to apo'ogise for Plato, and to point out how even out of this evil good did eventually flow. The Theism which Plato reached is regarded by critics " who, like Lange, are most imbued with the scientific spirit as a retrograde movement. We may to a certain extent agree with them, without admitting that philosophy as a whole was injured by departing from the principles of Democri- tus. An intellectual, like an animal organism, may sometimes have to choose between retrograde metamorphosis and total extinction. The course of events drove speculation to Athens, where it could only exist on the condition of assuming a theo- logical form. Moreover, action and reaction are equal and contrary. Mythology gained as much as philosophy lost. It was purified from immoral ingredients, and raised to the highest level which supernaturalism is capable of attaining. If the Bepublie was the forerunner of the Catholic Church, the Timaeus was the forerunner of the Catholic faith." (Vol. I., p. 267.) The statement in the last sentence is either a truism or an un- truth, according to the meaning we are to attach to the word 4‘ forerunner." If this means only that the Tinzmus came first in time, then, of course, this is true. If it means that the Timaeus determined either the form or the contents of the Catholic faith, nothing can be more untrue. That this is, how- ever, Mr. Benn's meaning is obvious from many paragraphs in his work. He speaks in the preface of Hellenic culture having to repair " the ravages of the Barbarians, and, chiefly under the form of Christianity, to make itself accepted by the new nation- alities which had arisen on the ruins of the Roman Empire." The Christian interpretation of life is a "great supernaturalist reaction," which had its time and passed away ; and when it passed away, "Nature could once more be studied on scientific principles."

To suppose that Christianity owed its strength and success to Hellenic culture is so contrary to historic evidence, that he who makes the supposition and gravely proceeds to build on it, by the very fact shows himself disqualified for the task of reading history aright, and appreciating what are its moving forces. The motive force of Christianity did not come from Greece. It came from Palestine. Its power did not spring from Plato. It sprang from Christ. Christianity confronted the thought of Greece with a greater thought by far, and brought satisfaction to the needs which the culture of Greece could awaken but could not satisfy. Christianity could use all that Greece had won, just because it came to Greek thought and life from a higher stand-point, and had in it the energies of a larger life. Just as Christianity met the wants created by the thought and culture of the Greeks, so also it met those new wants of humanity which had been awakened for the first time in history by the wide do- minion, the equal justice, and the common citizenship of the Roman Empire. Christianity brought to the Roman Empire a wider citizenship, a vaster dominion, a more large- hearted brotherhood, a more equal justice, just because it brought them an organisation in which differences of nation- ality, speech, history, race, and sex, were made to blend in the higher unity of the body of Christ. This new organisation has its origin, form, and motive in Christ. He was in the thought of Christianity, the beginning and the end of it. And to every Christian, union with Christ was both the source and the end of eternal life. These are common-places which every student of history ought to know, and yet they are utterly ignored by Mr. Benn, who can see nothing, as far as we can gather from these volumes, in Christianity which cannot be found in the culture of Greece. We have read these volumes from end to end, some chapters we have read more than once, and we have sought to discover whether Mr. Benn was prepared to allow any factors to have influence in the history of Europe save those which are derived from Greece or Rome. We have found that he can appreciate the forces derived from Judaism before Christianity began to be, that he can also see that some influ- ence was derived from the union of Greek thought with the thought of Arabia. But when we sought to discover whether Christianity had any direct power, any moulding influence on the thought and life of men, we have not found that Mr. Benn was prepared to allow that it had. It seems to us that Mr. Benn regards both the " supernaturalist reaction " and the influence which overcame it as having been derived from the thought and culture of Greece, a position which every student of history knows to be utterly untenable.

We have already exceeded the limits which we can afford to this book, or we should have liked to look closely at the issues raised by Mr. Bean, in the chapter on " Religious Revival." We do not think that he has made good his case, or shown that the accepted conclusions regarding the civilization of the Roman Empire have to be rejected as inadequate or untenable. But if he has made good his case, and if the picture he has drawn be true, then the worse for his general position. For if the religions which Christianity overcame were not effete, worn- out, and contemned, but strong, vigorous, and adequate for the expression of the religious life, then the testimony to the vigour, truth, and adequacy of the Christian religion becomes all the stronger, unless, indeed, Mr. Benn takes refuge in the shelter for the distressed which men of his way of thinking have built for themselves, and say that the more vigorous a religion which recognises the supernatural is, the more danger- ous and the more untrue it is.