of the sub

All nations have been engaged in this search for Wisdom, Limitation those most actively which have left most records of themselves ject. in the History of the World. Buildings, poems, pictures, mechanical arts, above all polities, have indicated the direction which different periods, countries, individuals have taken in the pursuit. But the name "Philosopher" has been generally and rightly confined to one who has engaged deliberately in the search, and has traced out a method in it. Such a man interprets the less conscious striving of his contemporaries.

VIII.

history of

opinions and

systems, but of investigatione.

It would, however, be a fatal mistake to make even the Not a most rapid and superficial sketch of philosophical investigations merely a record of the conclusions at which different Schools have arrived. These conclusions are in general premature efforts to terminate the search for Wisdom, to confine the results of it within a few meagre propositions. To trace the thoughts which were working in the minds of those who founded Schools, to discover how they were affected by their characters, teachers, disciples, opponents, personal and political conflicts, to watch the processes by which they were expanded, completed, narrowed, is a far more interesting work, and one which falls far more properly within the province of the historian of philosophy. Those who busy themselves with the speculations and contradictions of Schools are likely to begin with extravagant expectations and to end in despondency. Earnest sympathising meditations upon the actual efforts of men to discover the secret of their life, and the ends for which they live, contain equal encouragements to humility and to hope.

Division of the subject.

IX.

This sketch will consist of two parts. It will treat of the Philosophy before and after the coming of Christ. The subjects considered in the first part will be-1st. The Hebrew Philosophy; 2nd. The Hindoo; 3rd. The Chinese; 4th. The Persian; 5th. The Greek; 6th. The Roman; 7th. The Græco-Hebraic or Alexandrian. In the second part the subjects will be-1. The Philosophy of the first six centuries; 2. The Philosophy of the Middle Ages; 3. The Philosophy of the centuries from the thirteenth to our own time.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER I.

THE HEBREWS.

SECTION I.

GROUNDS OF HEBREW PHILOSOPHY.

Scriptures

philosophy.

1. THE Hebrew Scriptures are commonly passed over by the Whether the historian of philosophy. Yet the book of Job describes philo- Hebrew sophy in particularly exact language. "Where is wisdom found, recognise and where is the place of understanding ?" this is said to be the the idea of inquiry in which man is more interested than in finding the veins of silver or in bringing the gold out of the earth. The book of Proverbs sets forth the search for wisdom as its subject and purpose. Man is to dig for it as for hid treasure. Such language is scarcely consistent with an opinion which has been eagerly maintained by persons holding the most opposite views respecting these books; that they assume all knowledge to be communicated from above, and therefore not to be an object for the search or investigation of man. This opinion, however, could not have been entertained so generally if there had been no facts or reasons to justify it. The writers of the book of Job and of the book of Proverbs presume the existence of a revelation, nay, ground their feeling of the possibility and the duty of a search for wisdom upon it. Evidently, then, this revelation must have a different meaning in their minds from that which it bears in the minds of many moderns. To know what sense it does bear, we must refer to those books which profess to record how God made himself known to man. In these we shall find not Hebrew philosophy itself, but the grounds and elements of it.

principles.

2. The book of Genesis opens with the creation of the World, Genesis. or Order, in which we are dwelling. Modern geological disco- First veries and speculations have done much to remove a veil which had been thrown over the meaning of this record, and to bring forth the all-important principle, that the sacred historian is Vol. I.

B