Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.463losophy advanced, receding more and more fromthat imperfect conception of personality with whichit had started. Further, the idea of creation iswanting to Greek philosophy from its beginningto its end. The power which it contemplatesis evermore confronted with matter, which it canpermeate, fashion, move through a natural alchemyof endless changes, but in face of which it is notfree to create or not to create, not even free toprevent the evil which lies therein as a sort ofblind necessity. As there was always Force, sowas there always Matter. To the conception ofa free Creator of spirit and of matter the Greekmind never rose : nor accordingly to that of a freeKuler of the universe : and this is only to sayin other words, that the conception of personalitythat is, of self-consciousness and moral freedom,as applied to a Being * of infinite power, wisdom,_ "and goodness-was imperfect and confused. Platoin his highest flight had seemed to recognise oneGod, whom to enjoy is the happiness of man ; butPlato and all who followed him had endured, hadcountenanced, had taken part in the polytheisticworship. And again, neither he, nor Aristotle,nor Zeno showed any inclination to suffer fortheir doctrines. This philosophic god, graduallyevolved by the reasoning mind, produced the verysmallest effect upon the unphilosophic world. Thestoic argument from final causes, which Cicerohas preserved for us, and the force of which he