BOOK I. 



HISTORY OF THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY, WITH REFERENCE 



TO PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



CHAPTER I. 



PRELUDE TO THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



Sect. 1. First Attempts of the Speculative Faculty in Physical 



Inquiries. 



AT an early period of history there appeared in men a propensity to 

 pursue speculative inquiries concerning the various parts and 

 properties of the material world. What they saw excited them to 

 meditate, to conjecture, and to reason : they endeavored to account 

 for natural events, to trace their causes, to reduce them to their prin- 

 ciples. This habit of mind, or, at least that modification of it which 

 we have here to consider, seems to have been first unfolded among the 

 Greeks. And during that obscure introductory interval which elapsed 

 while the speculative tendencies of men were as yet hardly disentangled 

 from the practical, those who were most eminent in such inquiries 

 were distinguished by the same term of praise which is applied to 

 sagacity in matters of action, and were called wise men rfoipo;. Cut 

 when it came to be clearly felt by such persons that their endeavors 

 were suggested by the love of knowledge, a motive different from the 

 motives which lead to the wisdom of active life, a name was adopted 

 of a more appropriate, as well as of a more modest signification, and 

 they were termed philosophers, or lovers of wisdom. This appellation 

 is said' to have been first assumed by Pythagoras. Yet he, in Herod- 

 otus, instead of having this title, is called a powerful sophist 'EXXyjviJv 

 oj -TW d.<fdve<f<ra.ru tfoyHfry IIudayop?j ; 2 the historian using this word, 

 as it would seem, without intending to imply that misuse of reason 

 which the term afterwards came to denote. The historians of literature 



1 Cic. Tusc. v. C. = Herod, iv. 95. 



