personal interest and personal happiness. The poetic enthusiasm with which a nobler age had longed for _truth_, and sought it as the highest good, has all disappeared, and now one sect seeks refuge from the storms and agitations of the age in Stoical indifference, the other in Epicurean effeminacy. If now we have succeeded in presenting the real problem of philosophy, it will at once be obvious that the inquiry was not, in any proper sense, _theological_. Speculative thought, during the period we have marked as the era of Greek philosophy, was not an inquiry concerning the existence or nature of God, or concerning the relations of man to God, or the duties which man owes to God. These questions were all remitted to the _theologian_. There was a clear line of demarkation separating the domains of religion and philosophy. Religion rested solely on authority, and appealed to the instinctive faith of the human heart. She permitted no encroachment upon her settled usages, and no questioning of her ancient beliefs. Philosophy rested on reason alone. It was an independent effort of thought to interpret nature, and attain the fundamental grounds of human knowledge--to find an ἀρχή--a first principle, which, being assumed, should furnish a rational explanation of all existence. If philosophy reach the conclusion that the άρχή was water, or air, or fire, or a chaotic mixture of all the elements or atoms, extended and self-moved, or monads, or τὸ πᾶν, or uncreated mind, and that conclusion harmonized with the ancient standards of religious faith--well; if not, philosophy must present some method of conciliation. The conflicts of faith and reason; the stragglings of traditional authority to maintain supremacy; the accommodations and conciliations attempted in those primitive times, would furnish a chapter of peculiar interest, could it now be written.