第23章

How should he escape from this? It is the same universal Mind that is embraced by thinking Philosophy; that Philosophy is Mind's thought of itself and therefore its determinate and substantial content. Every philosophy is the philosophy of its own day, a link in the whole chain of spiritual development, and thus it can only find satisfaction for the interests belonging to its own particular time.

On this account an earlier philosophy does not give satisfaction to the mind in which a deeper conception reigns. What Mind seeks for in Philosophy is this conception which already constitutes its inward determination and the root of its existence conceived of as object to thought; Mind demands a knowledge of itself. But in the earlier philosophy the Idea is not yet present in this determinate character. Hence the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and indeed all philosophies, ever live and are present in their principles, but Philosophy no longer has the particular form and aspect possessed by that of Plato and of Aristotle. We cannot rest content with them, and they cannot be revived; hence there can be no Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, or Epicureans today. To re-awaken them would be to try to bring back to an earlier stage the Mind of a deeper culture and self-penetration. But this cannot be the case; it would be an impossibility and as great a folly as were a man to wish to expend his energies in attaining the standpoint of the youth, the youth in endeavouring to be the boy or child again; whereas the man, the youth, and the child, are all one and the same individual. The period of revival in the sciences, the new epoch in learning which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, began not only with the revived study of, but also with the re-animation of the old philosophies. Marsilius Ficinus was a Platonist; an Academy of Platonic philosophy was established and installed with professors by Cosmos de Medici, and Ficinus was placed at the head of it. There were pure Aristotelians like Pomponius: Gassendi later on maintained the Epicurean philosophy, for his philosophy dealt with Physics after the manner of the Epicureans; Lipsius wished to be a Stoic, and so on. The sense of opposition was so great, ancient philosophy and Christianity - from or in which no special philosophy had developed - were so diverse, that no philosophy peculiar to itself could develop in Christianity. What was or could be had as philosophy, either in conformity with or in opposition to Christianity, was a certain ancient philosophy which was thus taken up anew. But mummies when brought amongst living beings cannot there remain. Mind had for long possessed a more substantial life, a more profound Notion of itself, and hence its thought had higher needs than such as could be satisfied by these philosophies. A revival such as this is then to be regarded only as the transitory period in which we learn to know the forms which are implied and which have gone before, and as the renewal of former struggles through the steps necessary in development. Such reconstructions and repetitions in a distant time of principles which have become foreign to Mind, are in history transitory only, and formed in a language which is dead. Such things are translations only and not originals, and Mind does not find satisfaction excepting in knowledge of its own origination.