[17] E.g., Schwegler: _History of Philosophy_; Cocker; _ut supra_, p. 412, ff. [18] xi, 6. [19] xi, 7. [20] Jules Simon: _Etudes sur la Théodicée de Platon et d'Aristote_, p. 88, _et al._; Davidson: _Theism and Human Nature_, p. 45. [21] Aristotle makes good use of the argument to design in a striking passage from a lost work quoted by Cicero in _De Natura Deorum_, II, 37, and in _Physica auscultatio_, II, 8, says: "The appearance of ends and means is a proof of design." [22] Cicero; _De Natura Deorum_, I, 16, 17, and frequently. See also Seneca; _Epist._, cxvii, whose Syncretism allows him to borrow from Stoic and Epicurean alike. See also Zeller; _Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics_, p. 465. [23] E.g., I, 36; II, 2, 5, ff. [24] Vacherot: _Histoire Critique de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie_, Vol. I, p. 142. [25] _Ibid._: Vol. I, p. 143, 144. [26] See e.g., the quotation in Stirling; _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 173. [27] _History of Philosophy_, Vol. I, § 114, 3. CHAPTER III THE PATRISTIC POINT OF VIEW The philosophy of the Greeks during the first century of our era presents a great contrast to that of the age of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. No longer do we find men engaged in the processes of positive, constructive thought, but we have presented to our view an age of retrospection, of literary criticism, and, to a great extent, of intellectual exhaustion. Men live amid the ruins of the systems constructed by their ancestors, and each one attempts to form for himself, out of the scattered fragments, a combination which may serve him as a sufficiently coherent rule of thought, and, especially, of life. Stoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, the "Orientalizing Hellenes," and the "Hellenizing Orientals," all by their restless, nervous, frequently erratic and aimless activity, bear witness to the fact that the mind of man has had revealed to it its own limitations, and is well on the way towards despair of ever arriving at truth. The Greek mind no longer exhibits that elasticity and spontaneity and enthusiasm in the search for truth, or that confidence in its results, which characterized the representatives of the best period of the thought of the race. The political fortunes of Greece do but typify the process which was going on in the Greek mind itself, and the period which we are considering is an age of intellectual as well as political decadence. This is manifested by the further fact that the thought of the age was largely turned backward and dwelt in the past. The day of original thought had passed by, and men were now content to deal with ideas at second hand--to be commentators rather than creators. This literary character which Greek philosophy now first began to exhibit was often seen and protested against. Thus Epictetus says: "If I study philosophy with a view only to its literature, I am not a philosopher, but a littérateur; the only difference is that I interpret Chrysippus instead of