Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.455genius : but there were also two great outwardevents which might be expected to favour andadvance such a result.The first of these was the subjection of thewhole East to the influence of the Greek mind bythe conquest of Alexander, the effect of whichcontinued in the kingdoms carried on by his successors.Originally the civil position of the Greek,as the free citizen of a free state, had been all inall to him. His country was his single measure.But during the lifetime of Plato and Aristotle thisposition had been more and more altering. Thephilosophy of Zeno and Epicurus was set up bymen who had lost it altogether, who were thrownback on themselves, on the intrinsic nature of man,for support. Their inmost thought was how toproduce tranquillity of mind, and so far as mightbe, happiness, for man, in something independentof his civil position. The loss of self-governmenthad opened to them perforce a field far wider thanthe narrow confines of a provincial citizenship.Henceforth the schools of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno,and Epicurus issued their mental legislation notfor the inhabitant of Attica, but for all that fusionof races whicl}, occupied the eastern coasts of theMediterranean, ' was ruled bv «/ Greek potentates, JL . 7 andspoke the Hellenic tongue. Thus the around takenup by philosophy was at once religious and cosmopolitan; the former because it attempted todeal with the nature of man as man, and to give