62 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



open collections of moisture, whether flowing from a spring or not; 

 and it would then be seen that this influence, operating on the whole 

 surface of the Nile, must diminish it as well as other rivers, in sum- 

 mer, and therefore could not be the cause of its overflow. He would 

 thus have. corrected his first loose conjecture by a real study of na- 

 ture, and might, in the course of his meditations, have been led to 

 available notions of Evaporation, or other natural actions. And, in 

 like manner, in other cases, the rude attempts at explanation, which 

 the first exercise of the speculative faculty produced, might have beer, 

 gradually concentrated and refined, so as to fall in, both with the 

 requisitions of reason and the testimony of sense. 



But this was not the direction which the Greek speculators took. 

 On the contrary ; as soon as they had introduced into their philosophy 

 any abstract and general conceptions, they proceeded to scrutinize 

 these by the internal light of the mind alone, without any longer look- 

 ing abroad into the world of sense. They took for granted that phi- 

 losophy must result from the relations of those notions which are in- 

 volved in the common use of language, and they proceeded to seek 

 their philosophical doctrines by studying such notions. They ought 

 to have reformed and fixed their usual conceptions by Observation ; 

 they only analyzed and expanded them by Reflection : they ought to 

 have sought by trial, among the Notions which passed through their 

 minds, some one which admitted of exact application to Facts ; they 

 selected arbitrarily, and, consequently, erroneously, the Notions accord- 

 ing to which Facts should be assembled and arranged : they ought to 

 have collected clear Fundamental Ideas from the world of things by 

 inductive acts of thought ; they only derived results by Deduction, 

 from one or other of their familiar Conceptions. 6 



"When this false direction had been extensively adopted by the 

 Greek philosophers, we may treat of it as the method of their Schools. 

 Under that title we must give a further account of it. 



6 The course by which the Sciences were formed, and which is here referred to 

 is that which the Greeks did not follow, is described in detail in the Philosophy^ 

 r>ook xi., Of the Construction of Science. 



