82 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



further statements that "the search for the primary substance really 

 was the thing that interested the Ionian philosophers" and that " Greek 

 philosophy began, as it ended, with the search for what was abiding in 

 the flux of things ;" it must be said that so to define the scope of Greek 

 philosophy were to reduce it to terms which are well-nigh nugatory. 

 Greek philosophy did, indeed, seek the permanent amid the flowing ; 

 but, as the first determined effort of the human mind to frame a sci- 

 ence, it sought an explanation of the fleeting phenomena. This ex- 

 planation it found ultimately in that which abides, and gave to it 

 various names : but it was not the permanence, but the causality, of 

 the v-rroKeLfjievov to which, as scientists, the Greek philosophers devoted 

 their chief attention. 12 Aristotle was clearly right in refusing to regard 

 the Eleatics, in so far as they adhered to their metaphysical principles 

 which excluded causality and motion, as </>vo-ikoi. 



I. 



" One may say that primitive man has only religious apperceptive 

 masses." "No matter what historical phenomenon we may trace to 

 a remote past, we come at last to religion. All human conceptions, so 

 far as they fall within the intellectual horizon of a pre-scientific age, 

 have developed out of mythical conceptions ; but religious ideas con- 

 stitute the content, or at least, the garb of myth." These words from 

 the pen of the lamented Professor Usener 13 strike the key-note of this 

 portion of our study. 



As later Greek philosophy, so far as it was a philosophy of nature, 

 grew out of the teachings of the pre-Socratics with only here and there 

 a clearly marked infusion of metaphysics, ultimately derived from So- 

 crates : so Greek philosophy as a whole was not a creation e nihilo. 

 Long before the dawn of philosophy, properly so-called, the reflective 

 thought of the Greeks had busied itself with many of the problems 

 which later engaged the attention of the philosophers. 14 Even if we 

 had no evidence to prove it, we should still have to assume it as a fact. 

 We are not, of course, in position to trace even in the most general 



12 In my study, TJie Accessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System, 

 Chicago, 1896, pp. 7-10, I gave a brief analysis of the movement of pre-Socratic 

 thought in logical terms. Somewhat more at length a similar study appeared in The 

 Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy, published as Chapter IX. of Studies in Logical 

 Theory, by John Dewey, Chicago, 1903. 



13 Vortragc unci Aufsatze, pp. 43 and 45. 



14 There is much philosophy held in solution in Greek mythology ; but it is 

 impossible to utilize it for historical purposes, because the early history of the myths 

 is unknown. Unfortunately this is likely always to be the case. 



