| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/greekphilosoph01benn Project Gutenberg has the other volume of this work. Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58224/58224-h/58224-h.htm |
THE
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS
VOL I.
BY
ALFRED WILLIAM BENN
Εὑρηκέναι μὲν οὖν τινὰς τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ μακαρίων φιλοσόφωντὸ ἀληθὲς δεῖ νομίζειν· τίνες δὲ οἱ τυχόντες μάλιστα καὶ πῶς ἂνκαὶ ἡμῖν σύνεσις περὶ τούτων γένοιτο ἐπισκέψασθαι προσήκει
Plotinus
Quamquam ab his philosophiam et omnes ingenuas disciplinashabemus: sed tamen est aliquid quod nobis non liceat, liceat illis
Cicero
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1882
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
TO
J. B. B.
vii
A considerable portion of the present work, comprisingthe whole of the first volume and the first two chapters of thesecond, is reprinted with corrections and additions from theWestminster Review. The last chapter of the second volumehas already appeared under a slightly different title in Mindfor January and April 1882. The chapters entitled, ‘TheSceptics and Eclectics,’ ‘The Religious Revival,’ and ‘TheSpiritualism of Plotinus,’ are now published for the firsttime.
The subject of Greek philosophy is so vast that, inEngland at least, it has become customary to deal with it indetached portions rather than as a connected whole. Thismethod has its advantages, but it has also its drawbacks.The critic who singles out some one thinker for special studyis apt to exaggerate the importance of his hero and to credithim with the origination of principles which were reallyborrowed from his predecessors. Moreover, the appearanceof a new idea can only be made intelligible by tracing theprevious tendencies which it either continues, combines, orcontradicts. In a word, the history of philosophy has itself aphilosophy which requires that we should go beyond particularphenomena and view them as variously related partsof a single system.
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The history of Greek philosophy, whether conceived inthis comprehensive sense or as an erudite investigation intomatters of detail, is a province which the Germans have madepeculiarly their own; and, among German scholars, Dr.Zeller is the one who has treated it with most success. Myobligations to his great work are sufficiently shown by thecopious references to it which occur throughout t