those of the Stoics. Such a
heterogeneous mixture demonstrates the pass to which speculative
philosophy had come, and shows us clearly that her disciples had
abandoned her in despair.

[Sidenote: End of the Greek age of Faith.]

So ends the Greek age of Faith. How strikingly does its history recall
the corresponding period of individual life--the trusting spirit and the
disappointment of youth. We enter on it full of confidence in things and
men, never suspecting that the one may disappoint, the other deceive.
Our early experiences, if considered at all, afford only matter of
surprise that we could ever have been seriously occupied in such folly,
or actuated by motives now seeming so inadequate. It never occurs to us
that, in our present state, though the pursuits may have changed, they
are none the less vain, the objects none the less delusive.

The second age of Greek philosophy ended in sophism, the third in
scepticism. Speculative philosophy strikes at last upon a limit which it
can not overpass. This is its state even in our own times. It
reverberates against the wall that confines it without the least chance
of making its way through.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREEK AGE OF REASON.

RISE OF SCIENCE.

THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN.--_Disastrous in its political Effects
to Greece, but ushering in the Age of Reason._

ARISTOTLE _founds the Inductive Philosophy.--His Method the
Inverse of that of Plato.--Its great power.--In his own hands
it fails for want of Knowledge, but is carried out by the
Alexandrians._

ZENO.--_His Philosophical Aim is the Cultivation of Virtue and
Knowledge.--He is in the Ethical Branch the Counterpart of
Aristotle in the Physical._

FOUNDATION OF THE MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA.--_The great Libraries,
Observatories, Botanical Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting
Houses.--Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact
Knowledge.--Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes,
Apollonius, Ptolemy, Hipparchus, on Geometry, Natural
Philosophy, Astronomy, Chronology, Geography._

_Decline of the Greek Age of Reason._

[Sidenote: The Greek invasion of Persia.]

The conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great is a most important event
in European history. That adventurer, carrying out the intentions of his
father Philip, commenced his attack with apparently very insignificant
means, having, it is said, at the most, only thi