From the long history of Greek philosophy presented in the foregoing pages, we turn, 1st, to an investi- Summary of gation of the manner of progress of the Greek Greek philomind; and, 2nd, to the results to which it sophy. attained.

Age of In

solutions.

The period occupied by the events we have been considering extends over almost twelve centuries. It commences with Thales, B.C. 636, and ends A.D. 529. 1st. Greek philosophy commenced on the foundation of physical suggestions. Its first object was the determination of the origin and manner of pro- quiry-lis duction of the world. The basis upon which it rested was in its nature unsubstantial, for it included intrinsic errors due to imperfect and erroneous observations. It diminished the world and magnified man, accepting the apparent aspect of Nature as real, and regarding the earth as a flat surface, on which the sky was sustained like a dome. It limited the boundaries of the terrestrial plane to an insignificant extent, and asserted that it was the special and exclusive property of man. The stars and First problem. other heavenly bodies it looked upon as mere Origin of the meteors or manifestations of fire. With superficial simplicity, it received the notions of absolute directions in space, up and down, above and below. In a like spirit is adopted, from the most general observation, the doctrine of four elements, those forms of substance naturally presented to us in a predominating quantity- earth, water, air, fire. From these slender beginnings it made its first attempt at a cosmogony, or theory of the mode of creation, by giving to one of these elements a predominance or superiority over the other three, and making them issue from it.

world.

With one teacher the primordial element was water; with another, air; with another, fire. Whether a genesis had thus taken place, or whether all four elements were coordinate and equal, the production of the world was of easy explanation; for, by calling in the aid of ordinary observation, which assures us that mud will sink to the bottom of water, that water will fall through air, that it is the apparent nature of fire to ascend, and, combining these illusory facts with the erroneous notion of up and down in space, the arrangement of the visible world became clearVOL. I.-11

the earth down below, the water floating upon it, the air above, and, still higher, the region of fire. Thus it appears that the first inquiry made by European philosophy was, Whence and in what manner came the world?

The principles involved in the solution of this problem evidently led to a very important inference, at this early period betraying what was before long to become a serious point of dispute. It is natural for man to see in things around him visible tokens of divinity, continual providential dispensations. But in this, its very first act, Greek philosophy had evidently excluded God from his own world. This settling of the heavy, this ascending of Its irreligious the light, was altogether a purely physical solution affair; the limitless sea, the blue air, and the unthereof. numbered shining stars, were set in their appropriate places, not at the pleasure or by the hand of God, but by innate properties of their own. Popular superstition was in some degree appeased by the localization of deities in the likeness of men in a starry Olympus above the sky, a region furnishing unsubstantial glories and a tranquil abode. And yet it is not possible to exclude altogether the spiritual from this world. The soul, ever active and ever thinking, asserts its kindred with the divine. What is that soul? Such was the second question propounded by Greek philosophy.

Second pro

A like course of superficial observation was resorted to in the solution of this inquiry. To breathe is to blem What live; then the breath is the life. If we cease to is the soul? breathe we die. Man only becomes a living soul when the breath of life enters his nostrils; he is a senseless and impassive form when the last breath is expired. In this life-giving principle, the air, must therefore exist all those noble qualities possessed by the soul. It must be the source from which all intellect arises, the store to which all intellect again returns. The philosophical school whose fundamental principle was that the air is the primordial element thus brought back the Deity into the solution world, though under a material form. Yet still thereof. it was in antagonism to the national polytheism, unless from that one god, the air, the many gods of Olympus arose.

Its material

But who is that one God? This is the third question put forth by Greek philosophy. Its answer Thir problem. betrays that in this, its beginning, it is tending What is God? to Pantheism,

In all these investigations the starting-point had been material conceptions, depending on the impressions or information of the senses. Whatever the conclusion arrived at, its correctness turned on the correctness of that information. When we put a little wine into a measure of water, the eye may no longer see it, but the wine is there. When a rain-drop falls on the leaves of a distant forest, we cannot hear it, but the murmur of many drops composing a shower is audible enough. But what is that murmur except the sum of the sounds of all the individual drops?

blem. Has

And so it is plain our senses are prone to Fourth prodeceive us. Hence arises the fourth great man a critequestion of Greek philosophy: Have we any rion of truth? criterion of truth?

Pythagoras.

The moment a suspicion that we have not crosses the mind of man, he realizes what may be truly termed intellectual despair. Is this world an illusion, a phantasm of the imagination? If things material and tangible, and therefore the most solid props of knowledge, are thus abruptly destroyed, in what direction shall we turn? Within a single century Greek philosophy had come to this pass, and it was not without reason that intelligent men looked on Pythagoras almost as a divinity upon Importance of earth when he pointed out to them a path of the views of escape; when he bid them reflect on what it was that had thus taught them the fallibility of sense. For what is it but reason that has been thus warning us, and, in the midst of delusions, has guided us to the truthreason, which has objects of her own, a world of her own? Though the visible and audible may deceive, we may nevertheless find absolute truth in things altogether separate from material nature, particularly in the relations of numbers and properties of geometrical forms. There is no illusion in this, that two added to two make four; or in this, that any two sides of a triangle taken together are greater than the third. If, then, we are living in a region

of deceptions, we may rest assured that it is surrounded by a world of truth.

the Eleatic

From the material basis speculative philosophy gradually disengaged itself through the labours of Influence of the Eleatic school, the controversy as to the school and the primary element receding into insignificance, Sophists. and being replaced by investigations as to Time, Motion, Space, Thought, Being, God. The general result of these inquiries brought into prominence the suspicion of the untrustworthiness of the senses, the tendency of the whole period being manifested in the hypothesis at last attained, that atoms and space alone exist; and, since the former are mere centres of force, matter is necessarily a phantasm. When, therefore, the Athenians themselves commenced the cultivation of philosophy, it was with full participation in the doubt and uncertainty thus overspreading the whole subject. As Sophists, their action closed this speculative period, for, by a comparison of all the partial sciences thus far known, they arrived at the conclusion that there is no conscience, no good or evil, no philosophy, no religion, no law, no criterion of truth.

But man cannot live without some guiding rule. If his speculations in Nature will yield him nothing on which he may rely, he will seek some other aid. If there be no criterion of truth for him in philosophy, he will lean on implicit, unquestioning faith. If he cannot prove by Age of faith- physical arguments the existence of God, he will, its solutions. with Socrates, accept that great fact as self evident and needing no demonstration. He will, in like manner, take his stand upon the undeniable advantages of virtue and good morals, defending the doctrine that pleasure should be the object of life-pleasure of that pure kind which flows from a cultivation of ennobling pursuits, or instinctive, as exhibited in the life of brutes. But when he has thus cast aside demonstration as needless for his purposes, and put his reliance in this manner on faith, he has lost the restraining, the guiding principle that can set bounds to his conduct. If he considers. with Socrates, who opens the third age of Greek development-its age of faith

the existence of God as not needing any proof, he may, in like manner, add thereto the existence of matter and

the Sceptics.

ideas. To faith there will be no difficulty in such doctrines as those of Reminiscence, the double immortality Its continuaof the soul, the actual existence of universals; tion by Plato, and, if such faith, unrestrained and unrestricted, and its end by be directed to the regulation of personal life, there is nothing to prevent a falling into excess and base egoism. For ethics, in such an application, ends either in the attempt at the procurement of extreme personal sanctity or the obtaining of individual pleasure--the foundation of patriotism is sapped, the sentiment of friendship is destroyed. So it was with the period of Grecian faith inaugurated by Socrates, developed by Plato, and closed by the Sceptics. Antisthenes and Diogenes of Sinope, in their outrages on society and their self-mortifications, show to what end a period of faith, unrestrained by reason, will come; and Epicurus demonstrated its tendency when guided by self.

Thus closes the third period of Greek philosophical development.

In introducing us to a fourth, Aristotle insists that, though we must rely on reason, Reason itself must submit to be guided by Experience; and Zeno, taking Age of Reason up the same thought, teaches us that we must -its solutions. appeal to the decisions of common sense. He disposes of all doubt respecting the criterion of truth by proclaiming that the distinctness of our sensuous impressions is a sufficient guide. In all this, the essential condition involved is altogether different from that of the speculative ages, and also of the age of faith. Yet, though under the ostensible guidance of reason, the human mind ever seeks to burst through such self-imposed restraints, attempting to ascertain things for which it possesses no suitable data. Even in the age of Aristotle, the age of Reason in Greece, philosophy resumed such questions as those of the creation of the world, the emanation of matter from God, the existence and nature of evil, the immortality, or, alas! it might perhaps be more truly said, judging from its conclusions, the death of the soul, and this even after the Sceptics had, with increased force, denied that we have any criterion of truth, and showed to their own satisfaction that man, at the best, can do nothing but doubt; and, in