rtain things for which it possesses no
suitable data. Even in the age of Aristotle, the age of Reason in
Greece, philosophy resumed such questions as those of the creation of
the world, the emanation of matter from God, the existence and nature of
evil, the immortality, or, alas! it might perhaps be more truly said,
judging from its conclusions, the death of the soul, and this even after
the Sceptics had, with increased force, denied that we have any
criterion of truth, and showed to their own satisfaction that man, at
the best, can do nothing but doubt; and, in view of his condition here
upon earth, since it has not been permitted him to know what is right
and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, his wisest course is
to give himself no concern about the matter, but tranquilly sink into a
state of complete indifference and quietism.

How uniformly do we see that through such variations of opinion
individual man approaches his end. For Greek philosophy, what other
prospect was there but decrepitude, with its contempt for the present,
its attachment to the past, its distrust of man, its reliance on the
mysterious--the unknown? And this imbecility how plainly we witness
before the scene finally is closed.

[Sidenote: Duration of these ages.]

If now we look back upon this career of the Grecian mind, we find that
after the legendary prehistoric period--the age of credulity--there came
in succession an age of speculative inquiry, an age of faith, an age of
reason, an age of decrepitude--the first, the age of credulity, was
closed by geographical discovery; the second by the criticism of the
Sophists; the third by the doubts of the Sceptics; the fourth, eminently
distinguished by the greatness of its results, gradually declined into
the fifth, an age of decrepitude, to which the hand of the Roman put an
end. In the mental progress of this people we therefore discern the
foreshadowing of a course like that of individual life, its epochs
answering to Infancy, Childhood Youth, Manhood, Old Age; and which, on a
still grander scale, as we shall hereafter find, has been repeated by
all Europe in its intellectual development.

[Sidenote: Boundaries of these ages.]

In a space of 1150 years, ending about A.D. 529, the Greek mind had
completed its philosophical career. The ages into which we have divided
that course pass by insensible gradations into each other. They overlap
and intermingle, like a gradation of colours,