Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1859-01-19
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

Prof. Youmans, in a recent lecture on An
cient Philosophy, assumed that the idea, often
advanced and entertained by many, that the
| ancients were wiser than the moderns, is un-
founded and untrue. In literature, the fine
arts, and speculative philosophy, it may be ad-
mitted, the ancients eXcelled. Appelles and
Phidas in art, Demosthenes in oratory, Peri
cles in craftsmanship, Euclid in mathematics,
Pretus and Scopus in architecture, Homer in
poetry, were stars of the first magnitude IN the
galaxy of genius but in natural philosophy
and useful arts, the ancients were deficient, lg-
norant, visionary, in the dark. Man, We may
say, has two natures-an outward nature, by
his association through the senses with the
outward world, and the inward, ideal nature
in the realm of mind. The earliest ancient
philosophers, as mental children, were curious
about the cause and origin of all things, and
being without experience, continuously theo-
rized upon such subjects. Thales insisted that
water was the primary cause of all created
things; Anaximenes, that air was the original
element of creation; Heraclitus and Pythago-
raS, that all matter spraDg into form and SUBJ
stance by fire; Empedocles and others main
tanned that there were four primary elements
earth, water, air, and fire. Some insisted
that metals grew in mines as plants grow ;
they also argued that lightning was bolt from
Jupiter, to be prevented by prayers and sacri-
fices; that water rose in tube void of air,
because nature abhors a vacuum; with Empe-
docles and Plato, they thought that light pro-
ceeds originally from the eyes, and then is re-
f1ected back to them by the objects lighted ;
they taught that eclipses are caused by a
dragon swallowing the moon that death by
carbonic acid gas, in deep wells or cells was
caused by the fabled Basilisk, and that the
stars moved with the sun in separate spheres
or epicyclcS, to the emusic of the spheres -
Ihus the ancientS continuously sought an elu-
citation of the phenomena of the outer world
by conjectures of their inner world of mind.
Plato and others insisted that all outward OBJ
Jects, and observations or exercises of the
senses, were positive distractions to the
growth and happiness of the soul, and that the
body OF man was prison or dungeon to the
mind. This doctrine led to the detestation,
among philosophers, of material appliances,
so that trades and physical pursuits, or inven-
tions, were regarded as only fit for slaves,
while discussions of verbal theories, syllo-
gisms, and disputes and asceticism were alone
worthy of philosophical considerations. This
ideal philosophy, with its abhorrence of the
flesh and the world, blended with the first
espousal of Christianity and Paganism, and
extended through the scholastic periods Of the
middle ages, down to Kepler and Bacon
time, while such men as Turner of England
Cor Thomas Aquinas p inquired ssif hog is
led to market with rope round his neck, and
man holding it. is the hog or the man led by
the rope ?'' and others disputed long as to how
many angels could dance on the point of a
needle without crowding. This theoretic,
ideal, mystic system of philosophy even pre-
vailed, in some departments, to about the
middle of the eighteenth century, up to which
time the people and even the physicians them
selves, believed that scrofula or the liking s
Evil'' could be cured only by the touch of a
king on the patient.