Produced by Al Haines

A SHORT HISTORY

OF

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN MARSHALL

M.A. OXON., LL.D. EDIN.

RECTOR OF THE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL, EDINBURGH

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

IN THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE, LEEDS

LONDON

PERCIVAL AND CO.

1891

_All rights reserved_

PREFACE

The main purpose which I have had in view in writing this book has been to present an account of Greek philosophy which, within strict limits of brevity, shall be at once authentic and interesting--_authentic_, as being based on the original works themselves, and not on any secondary sources; _interesting_, as presenting to the ordinary English reader, in language freed as far as possible from technicality and abstruseness, the great thoughts of the greatest men of antiquity on questions of permanent significance and value. There has been no attempt to shirk the really philosophic problems which these men tried in their day to solve; but I have endeavoured to show, by a sympathetic treatment of them, that these problems were no mere wars of words, but that in fact the philosophers of twenty-four centuries ago were dealing with exactly similar difficulties as to the bases of belief and of right action as, under different forms, beset thoughtful men and women to-day.

In the general treatment of the subject, I have followed in the main the order, and drawn chiefly on the selection of passages, in Ritter and Preller's _Historia Philosophiae Graecae_. It is hoped that in this way the little book may be found useful at the universities, as a running commentary on that excellent work; and the better to aid students in the use of it for that purpose, the corresponding sections in Ritter and Preller are indicated by the figures in the margin.

In the sections on Plato, and occasionally elsewhere, I have drawn to some extent, by the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and his own, on Professor Jowett's great commentary and translation.

JOHN MARSHALL.

Transcriber's notes:

The passage numbers in the Ritter-Preller book mentioned in the second paragraph above are indicated in this book with square brackets, e.g. "[10]". In the original book they were formatted as sidenotes. In this e-book they are embedded in the text approximately where they appear in the original book, unless they are at the start of a paragraph, in which case they appear immediately before that paragraph.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Short History of Greek Philosophy by Marshall
• 2: Chapter V page 48 logos lambda
• 3: Owned Miletus for their mother city
• 4: Thales then was the putter of a question
• 5: Without pushing these fragmentary utterances too far
• 6: 21 To Anaximander this principle was
• 7: To these successors of Anaximander
• 8: This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes
• 9: ' not in stability but in change
• 10: In the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus
• 11: Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras
• 12: Does it become knowable or intelligible
• 13: The Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying
• 14: Xenophanes was a native of Colophon
• 15: The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES
• 16: As Parmenides preferred to call it
• 17: Held a more honoured position than Parmenides
• 18: May recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them
• 19: Between the tortoise and Achilles
• 20: The fourth and last of the Eleatic philosophers was Melissus
• 21: Aristotle is not blaming Melissus or praising Parmenides
• 22: Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae
• 23: All things else had intermixture with every other
• 24: Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus
• 25: Empedocles coldly threw himself in burning Etna
• 26: Which Aristotle notes as faults in Empedocles
• 27: To Empedocles there are four elements
• 28: As Empedocles said of the ordinary deaths of things
• 29: Questions 71 which Empedocles did not answer
• 30: 144 Democritus was a native of Abdera
• 31: But an innumerable number of atoms
• 32: The only realities are Atoms and Emptiness
• 33: It was greatly facilitated by it
• 34: To Athens Protagoras came as a teacher
• 35: Everything is in continual flux
• 36: How will Protagoras answer this argument
• 37: Being is predicable of that which is not
• 38: Without attempting to follow Gorgias further
• 39: It threatened to destroy humanity and 99 civilisation
• 40: Any reaction against the Sophists
• 41: Son of Sophroniscus a sculptor and Phaenarete a midwife
• 42: The Inductive process of reasoning
• 43: If the man whom Socrates interviewed was a skilful statesman
• 44: And therefore virtue is teachable
• 45: Euthydemus flatters himself he is that already
• 46: When brought into this condition by Socrates
• 47: Aristippus was a native of Cyrene
• 48: Was to Aristippus a method of social culture
• 49: As the Cyrenaic school was the school of the rich
• 50: Whereupon Socrates slily remarked
• 51: They were kindly entertained by Euclides at Megara
• 52: These dialogues are Charmides
• 53: But the immortal in another way
• 54: When he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate
• 55: And from fair practices to fair notions
• 56: Socrates argues that since he was never taught these axioms
• 57: The dialogue opens very beautifully
• 58: Of heavenly bliss and hellish punishments
• 59: The Timaeus is an attempt by Plato
• 60: The first of the 'psychological dialogues
• 61: Put into the mouth of Parmenides
• 62: These dialogues are extremely important
• 63: The process is the same in essence
• 64: Is not an antithesis of unrelated opposition
• 65: In Civic Excellence or Justice
• 66: Undoubtedly a far greater man than Speusippus or Xenocrates
• 67: They were brought out 176 and sold to one Apellicon
• 68: Of what most truly appertains to knowledge
• 69: Which is presented at the other by the bare predicate 'is
• 70: And predicates of them by apprehension of their properties
• 71: Is eternally and necessarily Entelechy
• 72: 339 Education is in like manner an entelechy
• 73: Was the teachableness of Virtue
• 74: Potentialities or capacities for such feelings
• 75: The justice which restrains all this is a civic quality
• 76: Not only Aristotle's conception of the divine entelechy
• 77: Thus the outer leaf is a protection to the pericarp
• 78: Potential and actual existences
• 79: Personality was that of Epicurus
• 80: To which was appended what Epicurus called Canonics
• 81: Epicurus made a curious addition
• 82: Professedly following in the footsteps of Epicurus
• 83: Their life is one of perfect blessedness and peace
• 84: Of Epicurus hang badly together
• 85: A native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia
• 86: 391 Logic the Stoics divided into two parts Rhetoric
• 87: The mere unqualified Matter remains indestructible
• 88: 408 In the universe evil of necessity exists
• 89: In comparison with the absolutely good
• 90: Through no fault of the Stoics
• 91: Then later through the conquest of Greece by Alexander
• 92: Visited by Parmenides and Zeno
• 93: Conditioned by dissimilarity in atoms
• 94: Works out His image in creation
• 95: Necessarily prior to sensation
• 96: Exponent of Roman Epicureanism
• 97: Relation to Aristotle's doctrine
• 98: See Statesman Potentiality Dynamic idea
• 99: Relation of Aristotle's theory to
• 100: Temperance and justice the fairest