Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/407

391 The whole tone of Greek thought in that age had taken a bent towards monarchy in some form. This tendency may be traced alike in the practical common sense of Xenophon and in the lofty idealism of Plato. There could be no better instance of it than a well-known passage in the Politics of Aristotle. He is speaking of the gifts which meet in the Greek race, a race warlike, like the Europeans, but more subtle, keen, like the Asiatics, but braver. Here, he says, is a race which " might rule all men, if it were brought under a single government." 1 It is unnecessary to suppose a special allusion to Alexander; but it is probable that Aristotle had in his mind a possible union of the Greek cities under a strong constitutional monarchy. His advice to Alexander (as reported by Plutarch) was to treat the Greeks in the spirit of a leader (^ye/zoviKois), and the barbarians in the spirit of a master (Seo-TroriKoJs). 2 Aristotle agreed, then, with Isocrates in holding that, if the Greek race was to have a great future, the first requisite was union under a central power. Aristotle conceived this power as political and permanent ; Isocrates conceived it as, in the first place, military having for its immediate aim the conduct of an expedition against Asia. Had Isocrates foreseen that such a command-in-chief was inseparable from a per manent monarchy, he would undoubtedly have accepted the latter ; but he would have insisted, in the spirit of Aristotle s advice, on the constitutional liberty of the Greek subjects. The general views of Isocrates as to the largest good possible for the Greek race were thus substantially the same as those of Aristotle ; and they were in accord with the prevailing tendency of the best Greek thought in that age. 2. How far were these views justified by the issue? The vision of the Greek race " brought under one polity " was not, indeed, fulfilled in the sense of Aristotle or of Isocrates. But the invasion of Asia by Alexander, as captain-general of Greece, became the event which actually opened new and larger destinies to the Greek race. The old political life of the Greek cities was worn out ; in the new fields which were now opened, the empire of Greek civilization entered on a career of world-wide conquest, until Greece became to East and West more than all that Athens had been to Greece. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, ceased indeed to be the chief centres of Greek life ; but the mission of the Greek mind could scarcely have been accomplished with such expansive and penetrating power if its influence had not radiated over the East from Pergamus, Antioch, and Alexandria. Panhellenic politics had the foremost interest for Isocrates. But in two of his works the oration On the Peace and the Areopagiticus (both of 355 B.C.) he deals specially with the politics of Athens. The speech On the Peace relates chiefly to foreign affairs. It is an eloquent appeal to his fellow-citizens to abandon the dream of supremacy, and to treat their allies as equals, not as sub jects. The fervid orator personifies that empire, that false mistress which has lured Athens, then Sparta, then Athens once more, to the verge of destruction. " Is she not worthy of detestation 1 " Leadership passes into empire ; empire begets insolence ; insolence brings ruin. The Areopagi ticus breathes a kindred spirit in regard to home policy. Athenian life had lost its old tone. Apathy to public interests, dissolute frivolity, tawdry display and real poverty these are the features on which Isocrates dwells. With this picture he contrasts the elder democracy of Solon and Clisthenes, and, as a first step towards reform, would restore to the Areopagus its general censor- 1 rb rSjv ^.i]vu>v ytvos . . . Swd/jLevov &p^iv TTO-VTUV, pitis rvyxavov iroAireios, Polit., iv. [vii.] 7. 2 De Alex. Virt., i., vi. ship of morals. It is here, and here alone in his com ments on Athenian affairs at home and abroad that we can distinctly recognize the man to whom the Athens of Pericles was something more than a tradition. We are carried back to the age in which his long life began. We find it difficult to realize that the voice to which we listen is the same which we hear in the letter to Philip. Turning from the political to the literary aspect of his His work, we are at once upon ground where the question of literary his merits will now provoke comparatively little controversy. Perhaps the most serious prejudice with which his reputa tion has bad to contend in modern times has been due to an accident of verbal usage. He repeatedly describes that art which he professed to teach as his </><Aco-o<t a. His use of this word joined to the fact that in a few passages he appears to allude slightingly to Plato or to the Socratics has exposed him to a groundless imputation. It cannot be too distinctly understood that, when Isocrates speaks of his (fuXoa-ocfria, he means simply his theory or method of "culture" to use the only modern term which is really equivalent in latitude to the Greek word as then current. :J The <f>io(rod> a, or practical culture, of Isocrates was not in conflict, because it had nothing in common, with the Socratic or Platonic philosophy. The personal influence of Socrates may, indeed, be traced in his work. He con stantly desires to make his teaching bear on the practical life. His maxims of homely moral wisdom frequently recall Xenophon s Memorabilia. But there the relation ends. Plato alludes to Isocrates in perhaps three places. The glowing prophecy in the Pheednis has been quoted ; in the Gorgias a phrase of Isocrates is wittily parodied ; and in the Euthydemus Isocrates is probably meant by the person who dwells " on the borderland between philosophy and statesmanship." 4 The writings of Isocrates contain a few more or less distinct allusions to PlatVs doctrines or works, to the general effect that they are barren of practical result. 5 But Isocrates nowhere assails Plato s philosophy as such. When he declares "knowledge" (cVicTr??/^) to be unattainable, he means an exact "knowledge" of the contingencies which may arise in practical life. " Since it is impossible for human nature to acquire any science (eVtorry/xr/v) by which we should know what to do or to say, in the next resort I deem those wise who, as a rule, can hit what is best by their opinions " (Sofas). 6 Isocrates should be compared with the practical teachers His din- of his day. In his essay Against the Sojihisls, and in his tiuctive speech on the Antidosis, which belong respectively to the ni beginning and the close of his professional career, he has clearly marked the points which distinguish him from " the sophists of the herd" (dyeAcuot o-o^io-rat). First, then, he claims, and justly, greater breadth of view. The ordinary teacher confined himself to the narrow scope of local in terests, training the young citizen to plead in the Athenian law courts, or to speak on Athenian affairs in the ecclesia. Isocrates sought to enlarge the mental horizon of his dis ciples by accustoming them to deal with subjects which were not merely Athenian, but, in his own phrase, Hellenic. Secondly, though he did not claim to have, found a philosophical basis for morals, it has been well 3 The word (j>io(?o<j>ia. seems to have come into Athenian use not much before the time of Socrates ; and, till long after the time of Isocrates, it was commonly used, not in the sense of "philosophy," but in that of "literary taste and study culture generally." Aristid., ii. 407, <f>tOKata ns xa.1 Starpi^j) irepl oyovt, Kal oi/x a vvv rp6iros ovros, aa iratSeia Koivivs. And so writers of the 4th century B.C. use (pio<ro(pe ii> as simply =" to study"; as, e.g., au invalid "studies" the means of relief from pain, Lys., Or. xxiv. 10; cf. Isocr., Or. iv. 6, &c. 4 Plat, Gorg., p. 403 ; Euthyd., 304-6. 5 These allusions are discussed in the Attic Orators, vol. ii. pp. 61 /. 6 Isocr., Or. xv. S 271.