HEIDEL. — Ilepl <j>v<recos. 95 



sixth and fifth centuries eventually so charged Nature with personal- 

 it}' that the Socratic teleology was a foregone conclusion. From Plato 

 onwards, with few exceptions, philosophers proceed with the synthesis: 

 the gods act according to the laws of nature, and Nature assumes the 

 divinity of the gods. 



II. 



After thus sketching the setting of those works which by common 

 consent bore the title Ilepi <£wreco9, it is proposed in this section to con- 

 sider the use of the term <£ixris among the Greeks of the pre-Socratic 

 period. Although this study is based upon a collection of passages 

 nearly if not quite complete, it is not intended to treat the subject ex- 

 haustively, classifying each occurrence of the term. Such an exhibit, 

 if carefully and intelligently made, would serve a valuable purpose ; its 

 main uses would, however, be lexicographical rather than historical 

 and philosophical. The purpose of this section is the more modest one 

 of determining somewhat roughly the range of the term </rW, in the 

 period under discussion, as an index of the scope of the conception of 

 Nature. While the chief emphasis will properly fall on works to be 

 dated before 400 B.C., we shall have occasion to use, with proper pre- 

 cautions, also certain writings of later date, such as those of Plato and 

 Aristotle. Indeed, the careful student is not likely to be greatly mis- 

 led in this matter by any text of ancient Greek literature. The reason 

 is already clear. The philosophy of the Greeks prior to 400 B.C., with 

 the sole exception of that of Socrates, may all be properly described as 

 concerning itself -n-epl Screws. As such it is sharply contrasted with 

 the later systems, the main interest of which, with few and relatively 

 unimportant exceptions, lies elsewhere : to wit, in the spheres of logic, 

 ethics, and metaphysics. This new interest did not date from Socra- 

 tes, but had, like all conceptions, an interesting history. If we were 

 here concerned with this history we should have to retrace our steps, 

 beginning once more with Homer and the popular notions of the 

 Greeks embodied in religion, mythology, and moral precepts. But all 

 this would yield at most a Vorgeschichte ; for the metkod, which alone 

 is of importance in philosophy proper, was created by Socrates. 



There are, strictly speaking, only two periods in the history of occi- 

 dental philosophy, the pre-Socratic and the Socratic. The first took 

 external Nature as its point of departure, and fixed for all time the 

 fundamental conceptions of physical processes. Even where it con- 

 sidered biological and intellectual processes, it started with mechanical 

 notions and arrived in the end at materialistic conclusions. We may, 

 if we choose, speak of the ethics or metaphysics of the pre-Socratics ; 



