68 History of Philosophy. 



he had lived, sealing in his last moments the truth of his doctrines by 

 the equanimity and firmness with which he met his fate. From his 

 time we may date the regeneration of philosophy and the practice of 

 systematic morality and virtue. In many of the schools that sprung 

 from the seed he had sown, his doctrines were perverted, but in his 

 instructions are to be found the germs of true knowledge. With him 

 originated all that is worth preserving except as a matter of curiosity, 

 in the philosophy of the Ancients. 



Before we proceed to examine the merits of his great disciple 

 Plato, we will draw the reader's attention to the schools, which imme- 

 diately profited by the instructions of Socrates. The Cynics founded 

 by Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaics by Aristippus, are two of the best 

 known among these ; though but few records of their doctrines re- 

 main to us. Each of these philosophers considered human happiness 

 to be the great end of knowledge : but each pointed out a different 

 road by which to arrive at it. Antisthenes, of an austere disposition, 

 and indignant at the corrupt manners of the times regarding voluptu- 

 pusness and effeminacy as the source of the disorders which afflicted 

 society, formed the most rigid notions of virtue, and made it consist 

 in a mastery over the passions, a persevering endurance of pains and 

 privations, and a contempt of the luxuries and pleasures of civilized 

 life. Aristippus, of a softer nature, thought happiness the foundation 

 of virtue,|but made that happiness to consist in a due enjoyment of the 

 pleasures which Providence has placed within our reach. Both had 

 attended to the precepts of Socrates ; but each had deduced his own 

 conclusions, and as we have seen, they were of a different, nay, of 

 an opposite character. 



Of the Eretriac school of Elis we know little more than the name; 

 but at Megara Euclid endeavoured to engraft the method of So- 

 crates on the traditionary lore of his predecessors, and preserving 

 those^'ancient principles to present them under anew form, by the help 

 of the exact and mathematical diction that he employed. But Plato 

 has the honour of being the first who employed the powerful engines 

 which had been prepared for his use, with due effect; and, the ground 

 having been cleared of the rubbish that encumbered it, the proper 

 limits assigned, the position marked out, and the materials furnished 

 by the labours of his instructor, he raised an edifice corresponding to 

 the designs of the projector, and honourable to the skill of the archi- 

 tect. We must, however, defer our examination of the principles of 

 the Platonic philosophy till the appearance of the ensuing number. 



( To be continued. ) 



