cial Supremacy.--Her vast
Progress in Intelligence and Art.--Her Demoralization.--She
becomes the Intellectual Centre of the Mediterranean._

_Commencement of the Athenian higher Analysis.--It is
conducted by_ THE SOPHISTS, _who reject Philosophy, Religion,
and even Morality, and end in Atheism._

_Political Dangers of the higher Analysis.--Illustration from
the Middle Ages._

[Sidenote: Origin of Greek philosophy.]

In Chapter II. I have described the origin and decline of Greek
Mythology; in this, I am to relate the first European attempt at
philosophizing. The Ionian systems spring directly out of the
contemporary religious opinions, and appear as a phase in Greek
comparative theology.

[Sidenote: Its imperfections.]

Contrasted with the psychical condition of India, we cannot but be
struck with the feebleness of these first European efforts. They
correspond to that period in which the mind has shaken off its ideas of
sorcery, but has not advanced beyond geocentral and anthropocentral
conceptions. As is uniformly observed, as soon as man has collected
what he considers to be trustworthy data, he forthwith applies them to a
cosmogony, and develops pseudo-scientific systems. It is not until a
later period that he awakens to the suspicion that we have no absolute
knowledge of truth.

The reader, who might, perhaps, be repelled by the apparent
worthlessness of the succession of Greek opinions now to be described,
will find them assume an interest, if considered in the aggregate, or
viewed as a series of steps or stages of European approach to
conclusions long before arrived at in Egypt and India. Far in advance of
anything that Greece can offer, the intellectual history of India
furnishes systems at once consistent and imposing--systems not remaining
useless speculations, but becoming inwoven in social life.

[Sidenote: Commences in Asia Minor.]

Greek philosophy is considered as having originated with Thales, who,
though of Phoenician descent, was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in
Asia Minor, about B.C. 640. At that time, as related in the last
chapter, the Egyptian ports had been opened to foreigners by
Psammetichus. In the civil war which that monarch had been waging with
his colleagues, he owed his success to Ionian and other Greek
mercenaries whom he had employed; but, though proving victor in the
contest, his political position was such as to compel him to depart fr