PRE-THALESIAN PHILOSOPHY 



By Melanchthon F. Libby 



Teil I, Abteilung V, of Teubner's admirable series, " Die Kultur der 

 Gegenwart," is the great collaboration entitled Allgemeine Geschichte der 

 Philosophie. This great history (541 large pages) is the result of the 

 combined work of Wundt, Aldenberg, Goldzicher, Grube, Tetsujiro 

 Inouye, von Arnim, Baeumker and Windelband. Those who had 

 believed that no better histories of philosophy than those of Ueberweg, 

 Windelband and Erdmann could be produced, may have to revise their 

 opinion. And the advance is not in scholarship so much as in a certain 

 freshness and originality of handling which quite unsettle the usual 

 notion that subjects grow pedantic under prolonged research. 



The whole work is an inspiration to a teacher of college philosophy. 

 Not only is the modern Weltanschauung handled with genuine freedom 

 and vigor, but also the Greek masters are treated with rare sympathy and 

 infectious culture. The work is an exposition of the broad and genial 

 spirit of present-day philosophy, and is a reproof to works like those of 

 Allen Upward, and other critics, who value themselves a good deal 

 because they ignore such works as these (and the writings of Paulsen, 

 Fischer, Hoffding and Eucken, to name a few), while they repeat stale 

 facetiae regarding Berkeley and Kant. How would any specialist like 

 to defend textbooks in his subject of from one hundred fifty to three 

 hundred years of age : textbooks for example in geology or biology ? 



However, the purpose of this paper is not to review this welcome 

 work, but merely to emphasize one division of it, namely, the thirty-page 

 chapter with which it opens, and which has for its subject, " The Begin- 

 nings of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Primitive Peoples." This 

 brilliant essay is by Wundt, and is not the least of his many contributions. 

 This history so far as I know is the first to give a serious treatment of 

 pre-Thalesian philosophy. In the earlier works it is not to be looked for 

 of course. From Negel to Erdmann there is no curiosity manifested 

 concerning the source of the interests that grew into philosophy. But 



