Greek philosophy was early divided into two great systems represented by Plato and Aristotle. The first gathered the moral beauty of his age into his teaching, and was the progenitor of moralists; while the second, who came upon the central highway of civilization at a later period, expressed the other half of the mental world, and was the patriarch of natural philosophers. The Platonists and Aristotleians were perpetuated in continuous but separate lines of disciples, until both schools had become quite degenerate in the third century before Christ, when they were mainly displaced during the Augustan age by the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus. Then began the dismemberment of Greek speculation, and the founder of the Academy, with his famous pupil and rival, the first of peripatetics, who in their joint action gave to philosophy all its parts, and constituted it a science, were virtually set aside. And yet portions of their several systems continually re-appeared in the multiform schools which subsequently arose; but so long as philosophical disquisition obtained in any sect, morals were an inheritance from Plato, and natural philosophy from Aristotle. Stoicism and Epicureanism originated at nearly the same time, and were in violent struggle with each other until about a century before the Christian era. When at the lowest degree of exhaustion, they passed into Rome, and were cultivated without any speculative originality, but became in many instances a favorite recreation with men of might. The Periclean age had been filled by a philosophy which, without forgetting the universe and God, had especially a human and moral character. The age which followed was intensely practical, and borrowed only such speculative theories as were suited to their martial and ambitious pursuits. The age of Augustus was characterized throughout by eclecticism in philosophy, and that not of the noblest kind. But the three great objects of thought, nature, man, God, were not overlooked; through the first the culminating point was reached, and as the epoch closed religious philosophy began to beam with auspicious light. As in the realm of art, we found the absence of all true grandeur and simplicity, so will the facts appear in the department now under consideration. The sublime folly of Stoicism only leads to the baseness of Epicurean belief. Such will doubtless be observed down to the second century of Christian truth on earth, when there was no longer any thing great to think or act under the empire, and the only genial asylum for aspiring souls was the invisible world.