Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.423answer, discussion and cross-examination; andlastly, the committing of doctrines to writing.With him too his written philosophical discourseswere reminders of his oral teaching, which theypresupposed and required as a key to their fullmeaning, and especially for the comprehension oftheir harmony as a system.The order of teaching which I have thus sketchedas being followed in practice by the two most eminentGreek philosophers belonged to them all.They had no other conception respecting the methodof communicating a doctrine efficiently tomen. They none of them considered"philosophymerely or chiefly as a literature: none of themattributed to a book the power of teaching it,Their conception was, a master and his scholars,and the living together, the moral subordinationand discipline which this involved. This schoolof education or training in knowledge80 was theirprimary thought : the committing of their doctrineto writing was both subsequent and secondary.Their writings were intended, as Plato says, tobe recollections81 of their teaching, and failed toconvey the real knowledge to those who had notthe stamp of this teaching impressed on theirminds.As Plato made a local habitationfor himself andhis doctrine in the Academia, and Aristotle in theLyceum, so Zeno, the founder of the third great80 81