LOGOS, a common term in ancient philosophy and theology.
It expresses the idea of an immanent reason in the world, and, under various modifications, is met with in Indian, Egyptian and Persian systems of thought. But the idea was developed mainly in Hellenic and Hebrew philosophy, and we may distinguish the following stages : I. The Hellenic Logos.—To the Greek mind, which saw in the world a KOaktos (ordered whole), it was natural to regard the world as the product of reason, and reason as the ruling principle in the world. So we find a Logos doctrine more or less prominent from the dawn of Hellenic thought to its eclipse. It rises in the realm of physical speculation, passes over into the territory of ethics and theology, and makes its way through at least three well-defined stages. These are marked off by the names of Heraclitus of Ephesus, the Stoics and Philo.
It acquires its first importance in the theories of Heraclitus (6th century B.c.), who, trying to account for the aesthetic order of the visible universe, broke away to some extent from the purely physical conceptions of his predecessors and discerned at work in the cosmic process a Xlryos analogous to the reasoning power in man. On the one hand the Logos is identified with -yvc'okt and connected with 31xrf, which latter seems to have the function of correcting deviations from the eternal law that rules in things. On the other hand it is not positively distinguished either from the ethereal fire, or from the El/Lap/Aim and the ava-pcn accord ing to which all things occur. Heraclitus holds that nothing mate rial can be thought of without this Logos, but he does not con ceive the Logos itself to be immaterial. Whether it is regarded as in any sense possessed of intelligence and consciousness is a ques tion variously answered. But there is most to say for the negative. This Logos is not one above the world or prior to it, but in the world and inseparable from it. Man's soul is a part of it. It is relation, therefore, as Schleiermacher expresses it, or reason, not speech or word. And it, is objective, not subjective, reason. Like a law of nature, objective in the world, it gives order and regularity to the movement of things, and makes the system rational.
The failure of Heraclitus to free himself entirely from the phys ical hypotheses of earlier times prevented his speculation from influencing his successors. With Anaxagoras a conception entered
which gradually triumphed over that of Heraclitus, namely, the conception of a supreme, intellectual principle, not identified with the world but independent of it. This, however, was van, not Logos. In the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, too, the theory of ideas involved an absolute separation between the material world and the world of higher reality, and though the term Logos is found the conception is vague. With Plato the term selected for the expression of the principle to which the order visible in the universe is due is vas or o-ockl,a, not X6-yos. It is in the pseudo Platonic Epinomis that Xhyos appears as a synonym for van. In Aristotle, again, the principle which sets all nature under the rule of thought, and directs it towards a rational end, is vas, or the divine spirit itself ; while Xhyos is a term with many senses, used as more or less identical with a number of phrases, oi5 gma, b4pyita, biTEVxeta, etaos, l,sopck, etc.
In the reaction from Platonic dualism, however, the Logos doctrine reappears in great breadth. It is a capital element in the system of the Stoics. With their teleological views of the world they naturally predicated an active principle pervading it and determining it. This operative principle is called both Logos and God. It is conceived of as material, and is described in terms used equally of nature and of God. There is at the same time the special doctrine of the X6-yos the seminal Logos, or the law of generation in the world, the principle of the active reason working in dead matter. This parts into X6-yoc arEp,uartKot, which are akin, not to the Platonic ideas, but rather to the gyvXot of Aristotle. In man, too, there is a Logos which is his characteristic possession, and which is as long as it is a thought resident within his breast, but rpockoptK6s when it is expressed as a word. This distinction between Lobos as ratio and Logos as oratio, so much used sub sequently by Philo and the Christian fathers, had been so far anticipated by Aristotle's distinction between the 4(.,) X6yos and the iv Tfl ilivxfi. It forms the point of attachment by which the Logos doctrine connected itself with Christianity. The Logos of the Stoics (q.v.) is a reason in the world gifted with intelli gence, and analogous to the reason in man.