nd Isidorus, went as exiles to
Persia, expecting to find a retreat under the protection of the great
king, who boasted that he was a philosopher and a Platonist.
Disappointed, they were fain to return to their native land; and it must
be recorded to the honour of Chosroes that, in his treaty of peace with
the Romans, he stipulated safety and toleration for these exiles, vainly
hoping that they might cultivate their philosophy and practise their
rites without molestation.

So ends Greek philosophy. She is abandoned, and preparation made for
crowning Faith in her stead. The inquiries of the Ionians, the reasoning
of the Eleatics, the labours of Plato, of Aristotle, have sunk into
mysticism and the art of the conjurer. As with the individual man, so
with philosophy in its old age: when all else had failed it threw itself
upon devotion, seeking consolation in the exercises of piety--a frame of
mind in which it was ready to die. The whole period from the New Academy
shows that the grand attempt, every year becoming more and more urgent,
was to find a system which should be in harmony with that feeling of
religious devotion into which the Roman empire had fallen--a feeling
continually gathering force. An air of piety, though of a most delusive
kind, had settled upon the whole pagan world.

[Sidenote: Summary of Greek philosophy.]

From the long history of Greek philosophy presented in the foregoing
pages, we turn, 1st, to an investigation of the manner of progress of
the Greek mind; and, 2nd, to the results to which it attained.

The period occupied by the events we have been considering extends over
almost twelve centuries. It commences with Thales, B.C. 636, and ends
A.D. 529.

[Sidenote: Age of Inquiry--its solutions.]

[Sidenote: First problem. Origin of the world.]

1st. Greek philosophy commenced on the foundation of physical
suggestions. Its first object was the determination of the origin and
manner of production of the world. The basis upon which it rested was in
its nature unsubstantial, for it included intrinsic errors due to
imperfect and erroneous observations. It diminished the world and
magnified man, accepting the apparent aspect of Nature as real, and
regarding the earth as a flat surface, on which the sky was sustained
like a dome. It limited the boundaries of the terrestrial plane to an
insignificant extent, and asserted that it was the special and exclusive
property of man. The stars and other heav