In the history of spiritual and intellectual culture, idealism and materialism have naturally been provided with opposite signs. For the former that sign has been just plus, and for the latter just minus. In our case that becomes a particularly fallacious simplification. From the viewpoint of totality both these qualifications are equally one-sided and deficient. The "ideal" partition line, in this new sense, or scale, of values we have taken the freedom to introduce will tend to cut right across the lines of classical idealism and materialism.
At the root of dualism, both in Pythagoras and in Plato, there is undoubtedly a high degree of idealism, even in the modern and popular sense of the term. And, as compared to the utilitarian trend in a good deal of Oriental thought, that idealism certainly testifies to a superior degree of spirituality, even as our special "system" of alterocentric totality understands the "spiritual". That superiority is most clearly described by Plato himself in the famous passage where he compares the Greek spirit, eager for knowledge first and foremost, to that of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians more eager for gains. And of course it would seem rather absurd to praise a spirit of sordid commercialism and narrow-minded utilitarianism as spiritually equal to that self-forgetting zeal for pure wisdom.
Aristotle also, in the first part of his Metaphysics, very aptly compares the same tendencies: on one hand the mind of the true philosopher, always longing for pure knowledge, i.e. not the knowledge of particular things, but a knowledge of the universal; on the other hand: the mind more anxious to collect just empirical facts. Aristotle leaves us in no doubt as to which group has chosen the "better part". That is the philosophers. They were always the elite of superior men. Why? Notice the proud reasons given:
They were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently, then, we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. (Metaphysica, 9b, 20; here we have chosen Ross's translation, Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 8, p. 501).
Only in a later chapter shall we discuss more fully the proud elements of independence and self-sufficiency characterizing the philosopher's attitude here. So far, let us keep to what is obviously favourable in it.
Considered from an intellectual angle everybody must admit the crushing superiority of the Greeks, manifesting itself just in their preference for purely rational speculation. (At this point we accept, so far, the common assumption that those speculations were just as genuinely Greek as usually supposed.) One understands perfectly well a certain feeling of deception overwhelming the minds of archaeologists when confronted with the cultural remains of some territories of less intellectual ancient cultures. They have perhaps for weeks and months been eagerly digging for what they hoped to be exquisite values of the human spirit, and then suddenly they stand in front of some Babylonian inscriptions or some Egyptian papyri. But what do these contain? Sad to say, almost nothing but empirical data relating to quite practical problems of everyday life. How infinitely more gratifying it would be to dig up a subtle thesis of Pythagorean mathematics.
On the other hand, we should also clearly see the dangers of that exaggerated concentration on purely theoretical problems, manifesting itself in Greek philosophy in a way which the world had never witnessed previously.
We think we are always safe in saying: immoderation, in whatever field it occurs, is the sworn enemy of sound totality in human life. A seriously unfavourable development is clearly seen already in the circle of Pythagorean disciples. A systematic depreciation of the practical, the corporeal and the outward could hardly fail to spoil the fine equilibrium of human existence!
The soul is considered by Pythagoras to be the only element of divine essence in man, the only part entitled to the prerogatives of immortality. Then, what is the body? It is a prison in which the soul is kept captive. Worse, it is a tomb in which the soul has been buried. How could it happen to be so miserably incarcerated, so cruelly dealt with? There must have been some terrible weight of "personal guilt" some time, and this must be the heavy punishment that has to be suffered for it. But once in the future the human soul is destined to be liberated from this ignoble dungeon of a despicable human body. That will happen at the moment of death. Then the soul finally flutters away like the breeze of the morning. However, sad to say, it still remains subject to a dreadful necessity: It is doomed to enter some other body. The air is actually full of such unhappy souls waiting for their next incarnation.[1]
That change of abode (or prison) was certainly not always for the good. Pythagoras is even quoted as saying that the soul of a man might enter the body of an animal.[2]
Here it must be owned, in the name of what we, too, would call true spirituality: the doctrine of the Pythagoreans was not without some element highly favourable to the maintenance of good moral conditions. In other words, there is in it, after all, a practical point of definite importance to human lives. This point is a certain encouragement towards altruistic activity: the soul has to go through a whole series of existences, and always the type of life enjoyed--or suffered--in the future, is determined by the actions performed in the past. An inexorable law of justice and retribution provides that a soul go through exactly the same pains which it has previously inflicted upon others.
Generally speaking, however, the whole trend of the doctrine was rather such that it encouraged passive meditation and an inevitable depreciation of all practical and physical aspects of life. Most decidedly it represents a religion for the exceptional few, and adapted solely to their needs and their desires. It is not properly a religion for the people. Even this trait of a certain aristocratic exclusivism is an ominous sign, viewed from the angle of human totality.
The philosophical views of Pythagoras were taken over, and further developed, by Plato. He becomes the leading representative of dualism in Greek history; we might just as well say, dualism in the history of our world, for Plato's idealism was destined to mould the thinking of all subsequent ages. So it is here, first and foremost, that we have to study the interesting relations between dualist idealism and totality.
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