his pages, although he had probably no direct knowledge of the sources whence they came.

In the later stages of Plato's philosophy these elements of world-flight and asceticism seem even more pronounced.' He was perhaps influenced by his own political failures." He himself regarded the "Republic" as only a council of perfection, and Plato had so low an estimate of Athens that he was himself strongly under the conviction that Athens at least could never really learn. The life of philosophy was to be a life of retirement and contemplation far from the phenomenal confusions of the market and the street. In fact the philosopher of the "Republic" is very nearly the picture of the statesman and monk of the great Papal state at its best. It is impossible to overlook the influence exercised by Plato upon the whole conception of life born of the monastic ideal. In conjunction with the oriental and Egyptian notes, which appear also in Plato and are more and more apparent in Neoplatonism, we find the temper of the age from which Christianity sprang despondent as it looks out on human nature, and the doctrine of total depravity has its roots far more in Hellenistic than in Semitic soil. In the teaching of Plato not only was the body a limitation upon pure knowledge, but even the psychic process so far as it dealt with particulars. Mystic salvation in its escape from particulars into the immediate revelation of the vision exactly corresponds to one phase of Plato's hope. So that more than once we face an estimate of life with its manifoldness that calls itself Christian, but whose real roots are in the soil of Greece.

On the formal side of the ethical thinking of the church, both Aristotle and Plato exercised a great and beneficent influence. All attempts to classify the virtues and to reduce to systematic form the moral life and its demands go back at once to either

1 Cf. Timæus, 69-71.

'Cf. Steinhart, Karl: "Platon's Leben," Leipsic, 1873.

2

3

Apology 31, 32.

Cf. Schultz, H.: "Alttestamentliche Theologie," 5th ed., pp. 493–512. English translation, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1892; vol. II, p. 241–280.

Plato or Aristotle or to both. In the early chapters Aristotle cannot always be distinctly traced, and again it is Plato with his fourfold division of the virtues that dominates the early thought. In the attempt, indeed, to fit the ethical ideals of Christianity into these classic forms violence has often to be done either to the contents or to the forms. Indeed it is in following up this effort that the strong contrast between the classic and the Christian ideals comes into view. At the same time it was from Greek and Roman models that early Christianity learnt what it knew of systematic co-ordinated thinking, and the strength of its teaching was due in large measure to contact with the flower of Greek culture in the works of Plato and Aristotle.

However much we may regret the confusions that arose and that still persist between the classic and the Christian interests, we should never cease to be grateful for the intellectual schooling given the early church by contact with Grecian dialectics.

The ethics of Plato were developed in the midst of a society commonly called democratic, but which was in truth a small slave-holding and highly aristocratically governed community. Plato himself belonged to the most highly privileged class in the state. This state itself was rapidly going to pieces under the burden of these privileged classes and under the strain of external political complications. This decay was patent to all the thoughtful elements in the community. The "Republic" of Plato and the "Laws," so far as they are from his hand, represent an earnest and wonderfully inspiring attempt to suggest a new social construction to arrest the decay. On its purely formal side the work of Plato had enormous influence upon the social dreaming of Augustine, and through him moulded, in larger measure than is perhaps generally recognized, the great Priest

'As in Thomas Aquinas.

2 σοφία or Wisdom, ἀνδρία or Courage, σωφροσύνη or Temperance, Self-control, and dialoσún or Justice.

Cf. Schaubach: "Das Verhältniss der Moral des klassischen Alterthums zur christlichen Theologie. Theologische Studien und Kritiken," 1851, pp. 59-121.

state of the Middle Ages. Plato was, however, far from democratic in either his temper or his hope. At the same time he wished for an aristocracy of the noblest and an aristocracy trained for its work of self-sacrifice and duty by sacrifice and service. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was a bold attempt on a large and most impressive scale to realize this ideal. The relative success of the experiment was due to the fact that it was linked with that religious enthusiasm which Plato sought to infuse into Athenian life.' And the history of the attempt goes far to justify the real insight of the great philosopher.

At the same time the weaknesses of Plato's ideals were born of the very social organization he wished to redeem. The aristocratic type of thought and feeling so prominent in the small, closely organized Greek cities reappears in the priestly reconstruction of the Middle Ages, and did so in part, at least, under the influence of the Platonic conceptions carried over by Augustine. The "Republic" reflects the caste spirit which played such havoc with the political and religious ideals of the Old Catholic church, and which, amid all semblance of democracy, even to this day give to the ethics of the Roman Communion an aristocratic character.

II. THE HELLENISTIC PREPARATION

The Grecian life that is most plainly reflected in our earliest Christian sources is not that of either the Ionic or Attic periods, but that which since Droysen has been called Hellenism.2

LITERATURE (in addition to list on page 7ƒ. and of the standard histories of Greece).-Droysen, J. G.: "Geschichte des Hellenismus"; 2d ed.; 3 vols.; Gotha, 1877-1878.—Mahaffy, J. P.: "The Silver Age of the Greek World"; Chicago, 1906.-Hatch, Edwin: "The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church"; 3d ed.; by A. M. Fairbairn (Hibbert Lectures for 1888); London, 1891.-Zeller, E.: "Die Philosophie der Griechen"; vol. III.,

1

1 Cf. Windelband, W.: "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie,” 4th ed., 1907, p. 105. English translation, "History of Philosophy," New York, 1901, p. 127.

2 Droysen, J. G.: "Geschichte des Hellenismus," 3 vols., Gotha, 1877. See Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: "Griechische Literatur des Altertums" (Kultur der Gegenwart, I, viii, 1907), p. 84.

Greece became the world's teacher when her culture was scattered over all known lands and was forced upon the unwilling Orient by the conquests of Macedonia. Aristotle was Alexander's teacher, but the pupil had greater insight into the actual possibilities of empire than even his teacher. He saw that a really world-wide empire could not be built upon the basis of the intellectual aristocracy of the Greek city. According to Plutarch, Aristotle advised Alexander to treat the Greeks as friends and relations and the barbarians as plants and animals.' It was quite as impossible to build empire on such organization as Athens possessed as it would have been to build up a kingdom in the Middle Ages on the basis of the free city. Athens had in 309 B. C. a population of 21,000 free citizens, 10,000 "strangers" (žévo), free but not citizens, and 400,000 slaves. The result of such a city organization was the intense particularism and the haughty patrician pride which marked the free cities of the Middle Ages. Such a spirit is as far removed from democracy as the east is from the west. The intellectual conquest of the world was effected only when this organization was broken down, and Grecian culture like Jewish religion had become relatively homeless. Moreover, this conquest was effected, like part 1; Leipsic, 1903.-Rohde, E.: "Kleine Schriften"; Tübingen, 1902 (especially "Die Religion der Griechen"); in 2d vol., pp. 335-336.—Siebeck, H.: "Untersuchungen zur Philosophie der Griechen"; 2d ed.; Freiburg, 1888.— Wendland, P.: "Christentum und Hellenismus in ihren litterarischen Beziehungen"; Leipsic, 1902; and "Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum"; Tübingen, 1907.-v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: "Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (in der Kultur der Gegenwart"); Teil I, Abteilung VIII, pp. 3-238; 2d ed.; Berlin, 1907.Cumont, Fr.: "Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain"; Paris, 1906.-Deissmann, G. A.: "Licht vom Osten"; 2d ed.; Tübingen, 1909.

Aristot. apud Plut. de fort. Alexander 1, 6. See also Aristotle, "Politics," I, I, quoted by Droysen.

Boeckh's "Staatshaushaltung der Athener," 4 Bücher mit Inschriften, Berlin (1st ed., 1817; 3d ed., by Max Fraenkel, 1886), vol. I, p. 38, based on disputed census figures, which, however, Droysen accepts as accurate. Cf. vol. I, § III, p. 429 of 1st ed., 1836. (Translated by Sir G. C. Lewis, London. 2 vols., 1828, 2d ed., 1842. Translated by A. Lamb, Boston, 1857, 2 vols.)

the political conquests of Alexander, by skilful use of the forces of the antagonists. The result was that with Alexander began that cosmopolitanism which fitted Greek thought to the conditions out of which came the still greater world-empire of Rome. Indeed the history of Hellenism stretches on into the intellectual life of Rome under the Cæsars. Cicero founded an empire of thought which was based on Hellenism, and which contested with the Cæsars for the dominion over men's minds,1 and men sought in it consolation for lost national freedom. The historians before Droysen have underestimated the achievements of this period, when science and speculation became the possession of an enlarging world. Alexander founded over seventy cities or trading colonies, and thus Hellenism became the mother of the modern city-development and taught Rome a lesson in the organization of an awakening world.

This cosmopolitanism was not gained without sacrifice. Greece lost her liberty, and the world of Hellenism is overshadowed by the greatness of this loss. The unity of her thought gave way to a unity based on a synthesis of many elements, and at every point the student of Hellenic art or literature marks concessions to the synthetic character of the whole movement. Into this synthesis enter three elements that have especial bearing upon the ethics of Christianity. It is a period of philosophic adaptation that is often rather conglomerate than an organized philosophic whole. During this time is born a popular religious philosophy with many elements drawn from oriental cults, and it is during this era that an oriental mysticism brings forth its full fruit, and is itself ennobled and purified by Hellenistic thought. This philosophic synthesis involved all possible combinations drawn from the teachings of the Academy, the Peripatetics, the Stoa, and from Epicurus as well as from the scepticism of the Middle Academy and the mysticism of Neoplatonism. The Stoicism which conquered Rome and became the religion of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, was

1

1 Cf. Cicero's own statement of his ambition in "De Divinatione," liber II, §§ 1, 2.