THREE:We now understand why Protagoras, in the Platonic dialogue bearing his name, should glance scornfully at the89 method of instruction pursued by Hippias, with his lectures on astronomy, and why he prefers to discuss obscure passages in the poets. The quarrel between a classical and a scientific education was just then beginning, and Protagoras, as a Humanist, sided with the classics. Again, he does not think much of the great and sane and noble race of brutes. He would not, like the Cynics, take them as examples of conduct. Man, he says, is naturally worse provided for than any animal; even the divine gift of wisdom would not save him from extinction without the priceless social virtues of justice and reverence, that is, the regard for public opinion which Mr. Darwin, too, has represented as the strongest moralising power in primitive society. And, as the possession of these qualities constituted the fundamental distinction between men and brutes, so also did the advantage of civilisation over barbarism rest on their superior development, a development due to the ethical instruction received by every citizen from his earliest infancy, reinforced through after-life by the sterner correction of legal punishments, and completed by the elimination of all individuals demonstrably unfitted for the social state. Protagoras had no sympathy with those who affect to prefer the simplicity of savages to the fancied corruption of civilisation. Hear how he answers the Rousseaus and Diderots of his time:The Epicurean philosophy of external Nature was used as an instrument for destroying the uncomfortable belief in Divine Providence. The Epicurean philosophy of mind was used to destroy the still more uncomfortable belief in mans immortality. As opinions then stood, the task was a comparatively easy one. In our discussion of Stoicism, we observed that the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle was far before their age, and was not accepted or even understood by their countrymen for a long time to come. Moreover, Aristotle did not agree with his master in thinking that the personal eternity of the soul followed from its immateriality. The belief of the Stoics in a prolongation of individual existence until the destruction of all created things by fire, was, even in that very limited form, inconsistent with their avowed materialism, and had absolutely no influence on their practical89 convictions. Thus Platos arguments were alone worth considering. For Epicurus, the whole question was virtually settled by the principle, which he held in common with the Stoics, that nothing exists but matter, its attributes, and its relations. He accepted, it is true, the duality of soul and body, agreeing, in this respect also, with the Stoics and the earlier physicists; and the familiar antithesis of flesh and spirit is a survival of his favourite phraseology;173 but this very term flesh was employed to cover the assumption that the body to which he applied it differed not in substance but in composition from its animating principle. The latter, a rather complex aggregate, consists proximately of four distinct elements, imagined, apparently, for the purpose of explaining its various functions, and, in the last analysis, of very fine and mobile atoms.174 When so much had been granted, it naturally followed that the soul was only held together by the body, and was immediately dissolved on being separated from ita conclusion still further strengthened by the manifest dependence of psychic on corporeal activities throughout the period of their joint existence. Thus all terrors arising from the apprehension of future torments were summarily dispelled.
FORE:The foregoing record of my experiences in Louvain will make it sufficiently clear to the unprejudiced reader that the destruction and wholesale murders were nothing but wanton crimes committed by the German troops stationed there, crimes which it is impossible to justify on any ground.
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