Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.469wn authority, but he is in fact the mouth];herein of that whole preceding heathen philosophywhich he criticised, and from which he selected.Even Plato himself, by far the highest and best ofGreek philosophers in this respect, thouggle expressions indicated that the happinessf man was to be made like to God, constructedno system of ethics in dependence on that conception,which, if it be true, is of all-constraininginfluence, and is to the whole moral system whatthe law of gravity is to the material universe.Plato's ethical system was a strict deduction fromhis physical theory of the three parts in man, toeach of which he assigned its virtue. Far less didAristotle connect morality with God. The Stoics,indeed, who occupy by far the largest space inGreek philosophy, seem to be an exception. It issaid that " their whole view of the world springsfrom the thought of the Divine Being who generatesall finite beings from himself, and includesthem all in himself, who penetrates them withhis power, rules them, with his unchangeable law,and thus merely manifests himself in them all;"so that their system " is fundamentally religious,and scarcely an important statement in it which isnot in connection with their doctrine of God;" andso with them " all moral duties rest on a religious oW* ground, -L V.7 IXI.JL.J. V