The word 'philosophy' is Greek and so is the thing it denotes. Unless we are to use the term in so wide a sense as to empty it of all special meaning, there is no evidence that philosophy has ever come into existence anywhere except under Greek influences. In particular, mystical speculation based on religious experience is not itself philosophy, though it has often influenced philosophy profoundly, and for this reason the pantheism of the _Upanishads_ cannot be called philosophical. It is true that there is an Indian philosophy, and indeed the Hindus are the only ancient people besides the Greeks who ever had one, but Indian science was demonstrably borrowed from Greece after the conquest of Alexander, and there is every reason to believe that those Indian systems which can be regarded as genuinely philosophical are a good deal more recent still. On the other hand, the earliest authenticated instance of a Greek thinker coming under Indian influence is that of Pyrrho (326 B. C.), and what he brought back from the East was rather the ideal of quietism than any definite philosophical doctrine. The barrier of language was sufficient to prevent any intercourse on important subjects, for neither the Greeks nor the Indians cared to learn any language but their own. Of course philosophy may culminate in theology, and the best Greek philosophy certainly does so, but it begins with science and not with religion. By philosophy the Greeks meant a serious endeavour to understand the world and man, having for its chief aim the discovery of the right way of life and the conversion of people to it. It would not, however, be true to say that the word had always borne this special sense. At any rate the corresponding verb (φιλοσοφειν {philosophein}) had at first a far wider range. For instance, Herodotus (i. 30) makes Croesus say that Solon had travelled far and wide 'as a philosopher' (φιλοσοφεων {philosopheôn}), and it is clear from the context that this refers to that love of travel for the sake of the 'wonders' to be seen in strange lands which was so characteristic of the Ionian Greeks in the fifth century B. C. That is made quite plain by the phrase 'for the sake of sightseeing' (θεωριης ἑινεκεν {theôriês heineken}) with which the word is coupled. Again, when Thucydides (ii. 40) makes Pericles say of his fellow citizens 'we follow philosophy without loss of manliness' (φιλοσοφουμεν ανευ μαλακιας {philosophoumen aneu malakias}), it is certainly not of philosophy in the special sense he is thinking. He is only contrasting the culture of Athens with the somewhat effeminate civilization of the Ionians in Asia Minor. Even in the next century, Isocrates tried to revert to this wider sense of the word, and he regularly uses it of the art of political journalism which he imparted to his pupils.