The Five Great Philosophies of Life

When asked why some men with moderate talents and meagre technical equipment succeed, where others with greater ability and better preparation fail; why some women with plain features and few accomplishments charm, while others with all the advantages of beauty and cultivation repel, we are wont to conceal our ignorance behind the vague term personality. Undoubtedly the deeper springs of personality are below the threshold of consciousness, in hereditary traits and early training. Still some of the higher elements of personality rise above this threshold, are reducible to philosophical principles, and amenable to rational control.


The five centuries from the birth of Socrates to the death of Jesus produced five such principles: the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure, genial but ungenerous; the Stoic law of self-control, strenuous but forbidding; the Platonic plan of subordination, sublime but ascetic; the Aristotelian sense of proportion, practical but uninspiring; and the Christian Spirit of Love, broadest and deepest of them all.


The purpose of this book is to let the masters of these sane and wholesome principles of personality talk to us in their own words; with just enough of comment and interpretation to bring us to their points of view, and make us welcome their friendly assistance in the philosophical guidance of life.


Why a new edition under a new title? Because "From Epicurus to Christ" had an antiquarian flavor; while the book presents those answers to the problem of life, which, though offered first by the ancients, are still so broad, deep, and true that all our modern answers are mere varieties of these five great types. Because the former title suggested that the historical aspect was a finality; whereas it is here used merely as the most effective approach to present-day solutions of the fundamental problems of life.


"Why rewrite the last chapter?" Because, while the faith of the world has found in Jesus much more than a philosophy of life, in its quest for greater things it has almost overlooked that. Yet Jesus' Spirit of Love is the final philosophy of life.


To the question in its Jewish form, "What is the great commandment?" Jesus answers, "The first is Love to God; and the second, just like it, Love to man." Translated into modern, ethical terms his philosophy of life is a grateful and helpful appreciation; first of the whole system of relations, physical, mental, social, and spiritual, as Personal like ourselves, but Infinite, seeking perfection, caring for each lowliest member as an essential and precious part of the whole; and, second, of other finite and imperfect persons, whose aims, interests, and affections are just as real, and therefore to be held just as sacred, as our own.


To love, to dwell in this grateful and helpful appreciation of the Father and our brothers,—this is life: and all that falls short of it is intellectually the illusion of selfishness; spiritually the death penalty of sin.


From this central point of view every phase of Jesus' teaching, his democracy, compassion, courage, humility, earnestness, charitableness, sacrifice, can be shown to flow straight and clear.


Of course such a limitation to his philosophy of life leaves out of account all supernatural and eschatological considerations. We here consider only the truth and worth of the teaching; not who the Teacher is, nor what may happen to us hereafter if we obey or disobey.