Produced by Don Kostuch [Transcriber's Notes] This text is derived from a copy in the Ave Maria University library, catalog number "B 171 .S8" [End Transcriber's Notes] A CRITICAL HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA - MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO DALLAS - SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd TORONTO A CRITICAL HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY BY W. T. STACE MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1920 COPYRIGHT GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. {v} PREFACE This book contains the substance, and for the most part the words, of a course of public lectures delivered during the first three months of 1919. The original division into lectures has been dropped, the matter being more conveniently redivided into chapters. The audience to whom the lectures were delivered was composed of members of the general public, and not only of students. For the most part they possessed no previous knowledge of philosophy. Hence this book, like the original lectures, assumes no previous special knowledge, though it assumes, of course, a state of general education in the reader. Technical philosophical terms are carefully explained when first introduced; and a special effort has been made to put philosophical ideas in the clearest way possible. But it must be remembered that many of the profoundest as well as the most difficult of human conceptions are to be found in Greek philosophy. Such ideas are difficult in themselves, however clearly expressed. No amount of explanation can ever render them anything but difficult to the unsophisticated mind, and anything in the nature of "philosophy made easy" is only to be expected from quacks and charlatans. Greek philosophy is not, even now, antiquated. It is not from the point of view of an antiquary or historian {vi} that its treasures are valuable. We are dealing here with living things, and not with mere dead things--not with the dry bones and debris of a bygone age. And I have tried to lecture and write for living people, and not for mere fossil-grubbers. If I did not believe that there is to be found here, in Greek philosophy, at least a measure of the truth, the truth that does not grow old, I would not waste five minutes of my life upon it.