50 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Turn we then to the Greeks, and there we have three distinct 

 periods : i. The pre-Socratic Philosophy, beginning with Thales, 

 and ending with the Sophists : 2. The period which includes the 

 three great names of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 3. The post 

 Aristoteli m Philosophy,includingStoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, 

 and ending with Neo-Platonism. These periods represent to us 

 respectively, the origin and growth, the maturity and richness, and 

 lastly the gradual decline ot the efforts of Greek thought to solve the 

 problems of nature and of mind. With the first of these periods we 

 are now chiefly concerned. 



For the present let the Sophists drop out of sight ; they form a 

 distinct group by themselves, as we shall see hereafter. And if we 

 drop them out of sight, then we can say that pre-Socratic Philosophy 

 occupied itself almost entirely with one problem, viz. : How shall 

 we explain Nature ? By Nature, is here meant the material world, 

 that which is most palpable, which lies nearest to the eye. In this, 

 its childhood. Philosophy concerned not itself with the problems of 

 Mind or of Morals. Like a child it was occupied with that which 

 lies without, which is perceived through the senses. As with the 

 child, so with Philosophy, to look within, to make the human self, 

 with its thoughts and its moral obligation, the subject of considera- 

 tion, tliis was a process reserved for an after stage ; to bridge the gulf 

 between Mind and Matter, Thought and Extension, of this it did 

 not yet dream. 



Nature first excited the spirit of inquiry. "Under its changeful 

 forms, its multiplex phenomena, there must lie, it was thought, a 

 first and permanent fundamental principle. What is this principle ? 

 What, it was asked, is the primitive ground of things ? " 



The first who attempted an answer to these questions was 

 Thales, who flourished about 600 B. C, about the time of 

 Jeremiah the prophet, of the fall of Jerusalem, of the commencement 

 of the Captivity in Jewish History ; while Tarquinius Prisons occu- 

 pied the throne, the fifth of the seven early kings of Rome, the 

 history of all of whom is exceedingly uncertain ; while Croesus was 

 amassing his proverbial wealth, and while Solon was framing his code 

 of laws for the Athenians, Thales, for his part, was trying to arrive 

 at " the primitive ground of things." Philosophy was born, not in 

 Athens, but amongst the Ionian colonists on the coast of Asia Minor, 

 in the city of Miletus. We have three lonians for our first group, 



