give a history of the armorers of Milan or the sword-manufacturers of Toledo.

The same principle which determines the selection of Epochs also determines the selection of the points of doctrine to be expounded. It is obvious that in nothing like the space to which this work is limited could even the barest outline of all the opinions held by all the philosophers be crowded; nor would ten times the space suffice for an exposition of those opinions with any thing like requisite detail. Brucker's vast compilation, and Ritter's laborious volumes, are open for any student desirous of more detailed knowledge; but even they are imperfect. My purpose is different; I write the Biography, not the Annals of Philosophy, and I am more concerned about the doctrines peculiar to each thinker than about those held by him in common with others. If I can ascertain and make intelligible the doctrines which formed the additions of each thinker to the previous stock, and which helped the evolution of certain germs of philosophy, collateral opinions will need only such mention as is necessary to make the whole course of speculation intelligible. Thus limited in scope, I may find myself more at ease in the discussion of those points on which attention should be fastened. More space can be given to fundamental topics. In restricting myself to Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, without noticing Cartesians, Spinozists, and Kantians, I also on the same principle restrict myself to what is in each thinker peculiar to him, and directly allied to the course of philosophical development. The student who needs the Pandects of Philosophy will have to look elsewhere this work only pretends to be a Summary.

:

FIRST EPOCH.

SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE.

CHAPTER I.

THE PHYSICISTS.

SI. THALES.

ALTHOUGH the events of his life, no less than the precise doctrines of his philosophy, are shrouded in mystery, and belong to the domain of fable, nevertheless Thales is very justly considered as the father of Greek Speculation. He made an epoch. He laid the foundation-stone of Greek philosophy. The step he took was small, but it was decisive. Accordingly, although nothing but a few of his tenets remain, and those tenets fragmentary and incoherent, we know enough of the general tendency of his doctrines to speak of him with some degree of certitude.

Thales was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. The date of his birth is extremely doubtful; but the first year of the 36th Olympiad (B. c. 636) is generally accepted as correct. He belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Phoenicia, and took a conspicuous part in all the political affairs of his country,-a part which earned for him the highest esteem of his fellow-citizens. His immense activity in politics has been denied by later writers, as inconsistent with the tradition, countenanced by Plato, of his having spent a life of solitude and meditation; while on the other hand his affection for solitude has been questioned on the ground of his political activity. It seems to us that the two things are perfectly compatible. Meditation does

not necessarily unfit a man for action; nor does an active life absorb all his time, leaving him none for meditation. The wise man will strengthen himself by meditation before he acts; and he will act, to test the truth of his opinions.

Miletus was one of the most flourishing Greek colonies; and at the period we are now speaking of, before either a Persian or a Lydian yoke had crushed the energies of its population, it was a fine scene for the development of mental energies. Its commerce both by sea and land was immense. Its political constitution afforded the finest opportunities for individual development. Thales both by birth and education would naturally be fixed there, and would not travel into Egypt and Crete for the prosecution of his studies, as some maintain, although upon no sufficient authority. The only ground for the conjecture is the fact of Thales being a proficient in mathematical knowledge; and from very early times, as we see in Herodotus, it was the fashion to derive the origin of almost every branch of knowledge from Egypt. So little consistency is there however in this narrative of his voyages, that he is said to have astonished the Egyptians by showing them how to measure the height of their pyramids by their shadows. A nation so easily astonished by one of the simplest of mathematical problems could have had little to teach. Perhaps the strongest proof that he never travelled into Egyptor that, if he travelled there, he never came into communication with the priests-is the absence of all trace, however slight, of any Egyptian doctrine in the philosophy of Thales which he might not have found equally well at home.

The distinctive characteristic of the Ionian School, in its first period, was its inquiry into the constitution of the universe. Thales opened this inquiry. It is commonly said: "Thales taught that the principle of all things was water." On a first glance, this will perhaps appear a mere extravagance. A smile of pity may greet it, accompanied by a reflection on the smiler's part, of the unlikelihood of his ever believing such an absurdity. But the serious student will be slow to accuse his predecessors of

sheer and transparent absurdity. The history of Philosophy may be the history of errors; it is not a history of follies. All the systems which have gained acceptance have had a pregnant meaning, or they would not have been accepted. The meaning was proportionate to the opinions of the epoch, and as such is worth penetrating. Thales was one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived, and produced an extraordinary revolution. Such a man was not likely to have enunciated a philosophical thought which any child might have refuted. There was deep meaning in the thought, to him at least. Above all, there was deep meaning in the attempt to discover the origin of things. Let us endeavor to penetrate the meaning of his thought; let us see if we cannot in some shape trace its rise and growth in his mind.

It is characteristic of philosophical minds to reduce all imaginable diversities to one principle. As it is the inevitable tendency of religious speculation to reduce polytheism to monotheism, to generalize all the supernatural powers into one expression, so also was it the tendency of early philosophical speculation to reduce all possible modes of existence into one generalization of Existence itself.

Thales, speculating on the constitution of the universe, could not but strive to discover the one principle-the primary Fact— the substance, of which all special existences were but the modes. Seeing around him constant transformations-birth and death, change of shape, of size, and of mode of existence-he could not regard any one of these variable states of existence as Existence itself. He therefore asked himself, What is that invariable Existence of which these are the variable states? In a word, What is the beginning of things?

To ask this question was to open the era of philosophical inquiry. Hitherto men had contented themselves with accepting the world as they found it; with believing what they saw; and with adoring what they could not see.

Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered relative to the beginning of things. He looked around him, and

the result of his meditation was the conviction that Moisture was

the Beginning.

He was impressed with this idea by examining the constitution of the earth. There also he found moisture everywhere. All things he found nourished by moisture; warmth itself he declared to proceed from moisture; the seeds of all things are moist. Water when condensed becomes earth. Thus convinced of the universal presence of water, he declared it to be the beginning of things.

Thales would all the more readily adopt this notion from its harmonizing with ancient opinions; such for instance as those expressed in Hesiod's Theogony, wherein Oceanus and Thetis are regarded as the parents of all such deities as had any relation to Nature. "He would thus have performed for the popular religion that which modern science has performed for the Book of Genesis: explaining what was before enigmatical."*

It is this which gives Thales his position in Philosophy. Aristotle calls him ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης αρχικής φιλοσοφίας, the man who made the first attempt to establist a physical Beginning, without the assistance of myths. He has consequently been accused of Atheism by modern writers; but Atheism is the growth of a much later thought, and one under no pretence to be attributed to Thales, except on the negative evidence of Aristotle's silence, which we conceive to be directly counter to the supposition, since it is difficult to believe Aristotle would have been silent had he thought Thales believed or disbelieved in the existence of any thing deeper than Water, and prior to it. Water was the dpyn, the beginning of all. When Cicero, following and followed by writers far removed from the times of Thales, says that he "held water to be the beginning of things, but that God was the mind which created things out of the water," he does violence to the chronology of speculation. We

* Benj. Constant, Du Polythéisme Romain, i. 167.

+ And uncritically followed by many moderns who feel a difficulty in placing themselves at the point of view of ancient speculation.