Chapter V: The Greek Age of Faith

RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.

SOCRATES _rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and
asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby
inaugurating an Age of Faith.--His Life and Death.--The
schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of
Pleasure and Gratification of Self._

PLATO _founds the Academy.--His three primal Principles.--The
Existence of a personal God.--Nature of the World and the
Soul.--The ideal Theory, Generals or
Types.--Reminiscence.--Transmigration.--Plato's political
Institutions.--His Republic.--His Proofs of the Immortality of
the Soul.--Criticism on his Doctrines._

RISE OF THE SCEPTICS, _who conduct the higher Analysis of
Ethical Philosophy.--Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of
Knowledge.--Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference,
Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by
Epicurus.--Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems
in the later Academies.--Their Errors and Duplicities.--End of
the Greek Age of Faith._ 143

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREEK AGE OF REASON.

RISE OF SCIENCE.

THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN.--_Disastrous in its political Effects
to Greece, but ushering in the Age of Reason._

ARISTOTLE _founds the Inductive Philosophy.--His Method the
Inverse of that of Plato.--Its great power.--In his own hands
it fails for want of Knowledge, but is carried out by the
Alexandrians._

ZENO.--_His Philosophical Aim is the Cultivation of Virtue and
Knowledge.--He is in the Ethical Branch the Counterpart of
Aristotle in the Physical._

FOUNDATION OF THE MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA.--_The great Libraries,
Observatories, Botanical Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting
Houses.--Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact
Knowledge.--Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes,
Apollonius, Ptolemy, Hipparchus, on Geometry, Natural
Philosophy, Astronomy, Chronology, Geography._

_Decline of the Greek Age of Reason._ 171