“From out of thy passions, oh, man,” exclaimed an ancient, “thou hast derived the materials for thy gods,” just as the Easterns, and especially the Indians, did from the elements, powers and forms of Nature. One may add, “out of Thought thou takest the element and material for God.” Thus Thought is the ground from which God comes forth, but it is not Thought in its commencement that constitutes the first principle from which all culture must be grasped. It is quite the other way. In the beginning, thought comes forth as altogether poor, abstract, and of a content which is meagre in comparison to that given to his subject by the oriental; for as immediate, the beginning is just in the form of nature, and this it shares with what is oriental. Because it thus reduces the content of the East to determinations which are altogether poor, these thoughts are scarcely worth observation on our part, since they are not yet proper thoughts, neither being in the form of, or determined as thought, but belonging really to Nature. Thus Thought is the Absolute, though not as Thought. That is, we have always two things to distinguish, the universal or the Notion, and the reality of this universal, for the question here arises as to whether the reality is itself Thought or Nature. We find in the fact that reality at first has still the immediate form and is only Thought potentially, the reason for commencing with the Greeks and from the natural philosophy of the Ionic school. As regards the external and historical condition of Greece at this time, Greek philosophy commences in the sixth century before Christ in the time of Cyrus, and in the period of decline in the Ionic republics in Asia Minor. Just because this world of beauty which raised itself into a higher kind of culture went to pieces, Philosophy arose. Crœsus and the Lydians first brought Ionic freedom into jeopardy; later on the Persians were those who destroyed it altogether, so that the greater part of the inhabitants sought other spots and created colonies, more particularly in the West. At the time of the decline in Ionic towns, the other Greece ceased to be under its ancient lines of kings; the Pelopideans and the other, and for the most part foreign, princely races had passed away. Greece had in many ways come into touch with the outside world and the Greek inhabitants likewise sought within themselves for a bond of fellowship. The patriarchal life was past, and in many states it came to be a necessity that they should constitute themselves as free, organized and regulated by law. Many individuals come into prominence who were no more rulers of their fellow-citizens by descent, but who were by means of talent, power of imagination and scientific knowledge, marked out and reverenced, and such individuals came into many different relations with their fellows. Part of them became advisers, but their advice was frequently not followed; part