Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.457triumphal entry into Eome in spite of Cato andall the conservative force of the old Roman spirit.And if fusion had been the thought, the desire,and the attempt of the Ptolemies and the Seleu-cida3, even more certainly was it the only spiritby which Augustus and Tiberius could hope torule in peace the world made subject to them.And not less than the extinction of Greek autonomydid the loss of self-government accompanyingthe institution of the empire force the Romanalso back upon himself. When Cicero could nolonger sway the senate, he studied philosophicsystems at Tusculurn : and certainly his book ofOffices has been more valued by all posterity thanhis speeches against Catiline or his defence of Milo.A long train of waiters from the Fathers downwardshave seen in the civil unity of the Romanempire a providential preparation for a great reli-ion. But the field on which that empire arosehad already, so far as concerns the thinking classeslong been occupied by the Greek philosophy. Thetwo forces come into operation now together: andseventy years after the battle of Actium, when Au-ustus and Tiberius had completely establishedone ruling authority, and when this second outwardrevolution had had full time to give its im-pulse to thought, and had set before the eyes ofmen for two whole generations the vision of anempire which seemed conterminous with civilisationitself, we may fairly ask what philosophy had