Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.481struct a religion. They failed entirely in the unionof three things,67 a dogma and a morality foundedon that dogma, O / both of which should be exhibited, *brought before the eyes and worked into the heartsof men by a corresponding worship. To unitethese three things was needed an authority ofwhich above all they were destitute. Their dogmawas without the principle of faith; their moralitywithout binding power; but the worship whichshould blend the two they had not at all. And sothey presented no semblance of the society whichshould carry these three things in its bosom, andthey could not in the least satisfy the doubts orthe yearnings which they had raised.But the period beginning with the rise ofGreek philosophy and ending with the principateof Claudius will ever remain of the highest interestand importance as showing what human reason,putting forth its highest powers in the race inwhich it culminated, but at the same time morethoroughly separated from belief, tradition, andauthority than anywhere else, did actually achieve.It is in this respecthat the heathen philosophers,together with the poets and historians who pre-the fifth, in which he fused Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic doctrinestogether. S. Augustine, de Civ. Dei, viii. 3, puts his finger on the variationsof the Socratici.gmes,une mdonner a la societe une foi, une regie, et des pratiques, c'etait 1'ceuvre quele genre humain appelait de ses vreux, et sur laquelle pourtant tous lesefforts humains semblaient echouer," A. Thierrv. Tableau de V EmpireRoII.II