C’est Socrate qui ouvre cette nouvelle ère et qui en représente le caractère en sa personne.” Plato followed him in this. His fundamental problem was how man might live like GOD. Aristotle turned men’s thoughts back again to physics and metaphysics; and then came a period of systematic scepticism, by which the vanity of the guesses of philosophy was exposed and derided. Zeno and Epicurus, so different in other respects, yet both brought men back to a better mind by teaching them that philosophy was the art of living aright rather than merely thinking aright; the former, because living aright was in accordance with nature,—the latter, because it made men happy, and happiness was the great end to be sought by all[13]. Zeno and Epicurus both had thus their share in training men to receive the great Truth of GOD; for they both proved that man of himself can do nothing but conceive of perfections that human nature alone cannot reach: while the believer in divine love and mercy learns to say with St Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” I have before intimated that Zeno has been said to have borrowed much of his philosophy from former masters, giving the truths new names. The various schools which at different times prevailed in Greece, amidst much contradiction, yet contained some germs of truth, and therefore so far had some agreement one with the other. But the truth was cumbered with so much rubbish that it was overpowered and hidden. These various schools of thought endeavoured to grasp the same object from different standpoints, and opposed all others. The Ionics looked around them, and from external objects tried to make one natural law for all subjects and combinations. They wished to reduce all things to accord with a settled physical law. They aimed at discovering a principle, a substance, of which every thing that exists is a combination. The Mathematical school reasoned from within themselves. As Thales looked on the external universe and thence turned within, so Pythagoras reasoned on external objects from within himself, from mental harmonies to physical. Then came the Eleatics, contradicting even reason itself. Zeno, the Eleatic, argued against motion and sensible unity. Parmenides declared that “thought and being are the same;” that “thought and that for which thought exists are one.” Indeed the great maxim of the school was τὰ πάντα ἕν. They taught that the sensible universe was purely phenomenal and accidental: that it was apparent, not real. The Megaric school, which Zeno Citticus attended soon after he came to Athens, taught somewhat similar doctrines, but in a dialectic form. Their tenets, Pliny tells us, produced in daily life, “rigorem quendam torvitatemque naturæ duram et inflexibilem.” I have already said that Stilpo placed the height of wisdom in impassivity. These doctrines, so various, so contradictory to reason oftentimes, made many men professedly sceptics.