130 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Gellius's 

 account ex- 

 plained. 



Effect of this 

 discipline on 

 the subject- 

 matter of 

 philosophy. 



On the phi- 

 losopher. 



must have had a wonderful effect in sharpening the dialectical talent of 

 the student, and in producing perhaps at the expense of the more 

 valuable faculty of deep and systematic thought extraordinary astute- 

 ness and agility in argumentation. Indeed, if we make abstraction of 

 the subject-matter of the discussions, we may very well regard the 

 exercise as simply a practical instruction in the art of Disputation, 

 that which formed the staple of the education of the Sophists. And 

 now we may understand how Gellius, 1 writing in the second century 

 after Christ, should place this art among the branches which Aristotle's 

 evening course embraced, although in the sense in which the Sophists 

 taught it, he would have scorned to make any such profession. 2 In 

 what other light could this compiler have viewed the fact, that insu- 

 lated topics arising out of a subject which they had heard systematically 

 treated by their master in his lectures (aKpoatmg) of the morning, 

 were debated by Aristotle's more advanced scholars, in the presence 

 of the whole body, in the evening, the master being himself present 

 and regulating the whole discussion. 



It is evident that in this species of exercise it is not the faculty of 

 comprehending philosophic truth that plays the most prominent part. 

 As regards the subject-matter of such debates, nothing which is at all 

 incomplete, nothing unsusceptible of rigid definition is available. Con- 

 sequently the whole of that extensive region, where knowledge exists 

 in a state of growth and gradual consolidation, the domain of half- 

 evolved truths, of observations and theories blended together in varying 

 proportions, of approximately ascertained laws, in the main true, but 

 still apparently irreconcilable with some phenomena, all this fertile 

 soil, out of which every particle of real knowledge has sprung and 

 must spring, will be neglected as barren and unprofitable. Where 

 public discussion is the only test to be applied, an impregnable para- 

 dox will be more valued than an imperfectly -established truth. 3 And 

 it is not only by diverting the attention of the student away from the 

 profitable fields of knowledge, that a pernicious effect will be produced. 

 He will further be tempted to give, perhaps unconsciously, an artificial 

 roundness to established facts by means of arbitrary definitions. In 

 nature everything is shaded off by imperceptible gradations into some- 

 thing entirely different. Who can define the exact line which separates 

 the animal from the vegetable kingdom, or the family of bijds from 

 that of animals ? Who can say exactly where disinterestedness in the 

 individual character joins on to a well-regulated self-love ? or w T here 

 fanaticism ends and hypocrisy begins ? But the intellect refuses to ap- 



1 Noct. Att. xx. 5. See p. 127. 



2 See, for instance, the contempt with which he speaks of the sophistical prin- 

 ciple the one on which Isocrates taught rhetoric. Khetoric. i. init. 



3 " Sapientis hanc censet Arcesilas vim esse maximam, Zenoni assentiens, cavere 

 ne capiatur; ne fallatur, videre." (Cicero, Academ. prior, ii. 21.) Who can fail 

 to recognise the disputatious habit of mind which gave birth to this principle ? 

 Compare sec. 21. "Si ulli rei sapiens assentietur unquam, aliquando etiam 

 opinabitur : nunquam autem opinabltur ; nulli igitur rei assentietur." 



