Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.389back as on one that had given its bent and directedits course during a thousand years, until the lastof its defenders19 will fight a hopeless battle withtriumphant Christianity, as the gods of Greecevanish, never more to return, and the lurid starof a false prophet teaching a false monotheismappears above the horizon, and takes the place,which they have left vacant, to be chief foe of theChristian name.The special principle of Socrates is thus de-scribed to us by an historian of Greek philoso-phy.20 "It is not merely an already existingmode of thought which was further developed bySocrates, but an essentially new principle and proceedingwhich were introduced into philosophy.Whilst all preceding philosophy had been directedimmediately on the object, so that the question ofthe essence and grounds of natural appearances isin it the radical question, on which all others depend,Socrates was the first to give utterance tothe conviction that nothing can be known respectinganything which meets our thought, before itsgeneral essence, its conception, be determinedlingly the trial ofttions by the standard of the conception is philosophicalself-cognition, the beginning and the conditionof all true knowing: whilst those who precededhim had arrived through the consideration13 Simplicius, in the sixth century.20 Zeller, i. p, 117.