=The Fundamental Problem of the Hellenic-Roman Period.= The fundamental attitude of this period being Skepticism, the fundamental problem presented to it was therefore a practical one. While at heart the age doubted the validity of the human reason, it was consciously engaged in solving a very practical problem. The period had an external side that was positive. No age can be merely skeptical, especially for so long a time as 800 years. To doubt the power of the human reason is usually the occasion of shunting human energies along other lines. The form of the practical problem of this time was, _What is the highest wisdom for practical life?_ This is consonant with the skeptical attitude of the Greek as indicated by these two facts: (1) he had no longer an interest in speculation except as it afforded a basis for practical wisdom, and (2) he had no longer an interest in special sciences except as they yielded practical results. To be sure, it will be found that theories took to themselves airs of great importance during this period and that empirical sciences made rapid advances; but it will also be found that they were always in the service of practical living. The Wise Man of this age is he who has a scientific doctrine of the purposes and ends of human life. For with his entrance into world-wide relations in the Ethical Period the Athenian found himself confronted with a very different situation from that which had engaged him during the age of Pericles. His national existence had gone and could no longer arouse his devotion, and with it his _ideal_ of a national life had crumbled to pieces. His epic polytheism had become a dim thing of the distant past, and there was no longer any external Greek institution to awaken his slumbering energies. He might, of course, go into retirement and engage in speculative inquiry, except that this was an age of pressing need. He was forced to be awake and to adjust himself as an individual to the many other peoples mixing and mingling in one common civilization. His relations were enlarged, but his interests were circumscribed. His philosophy was focused to one fundamental problem, _What, after all, is the object of human life, and what can give happiness to the individual amid the turmoil of the time?_ Philosophic studies were narrowed to ethics, logic, and physics in their practical bearing. How much narrower, then, the scope of the intellectual life of this time than that of those men of retired leisure, Plato and Aristotle!