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Lecture Si'S.TH'^Socrates and his Epoch-^Slate of the Sciences xip 

 to the tiine of Aristotle. 



Socrates — Plato; analysis of the Timreus — Herodotus — Xenophon; his 

 treatise on Hunting — Hippocrates ; liis errors in Anatomy and Physi- 

 ology — Ctesias. 



We have seen the origin and development of the philosophic 

 spirit among the Greeks, and the separation of the Grecian 

 philosophers into several sects. In the most ancient of these 

 sects or schools, gross physical ideas formed the basis of all their 

 speculations. In the second, something beyond matter wasalready 

 sought for ; some of the laws which govern it were discovered ; 

 the power of numbers and of harmony was invoked. In the 

 third, metaphysical ideas obtained the ascendency. Matter 

 was no longer thought worthy of consideration, its very exist- 

 ence was denied : bodies were but illusions, and the whole world 

 was in the intellect. The fourth, disgusted with these abstrac- 

 tions, went into the opposite extreme, and refused to admit any 

 thing but matter and motion. Lastly, Anaxagoras raised him- 

 self to the idea of an intelligence which arranged matter. 



Of the disciples of Anaxagoras, the most celebrated was So- 

 crates. The history of this sage is too well known to render it 

 necessary for us to speak particularly of it. Selecting from the 

 doctrines of his master all that was elevated and useful in them, 

 he tried to establish a more complete reform, and to force philo- 

 sophy into a path from which it should never afterwards deviate. 

 Rejecting all a priori positions, he endeavoured to subject me- 

 taphysics to logical reasoning, and physics to common sense and 

 observation. 



Socrates, after presenting during his whole life a model of 

 virtue, afforded by his death an example of the respect tliat 

 ought to be paid to the laws, by refusing to withdraw himself 

 from the unjust sentence by which he had been condemned. 

 He had been accused of impiety, and although no one had ever 

 before formed a more sublime idea of the Divinity, he fell under 

 the weight of the accusation. I'crhaps his death was less the 

 work of religious fanaticism than of political animosity. After 

 the expulsion of the thirty tyrants, it was remembered that he 



AI'IIIL — JUNE 1830. ]) 



