but the characteristics of
each are perfectly distinct.

[Sidenote: Determination of the law of variations of opinions.]

[Sidenote: Philosophical conclusions finally arrived at by the Greeks.]

2nd. Having thus determined the general law of the variation of
opinions, that it is the same in this nation as in an individual, I
shall next endeavour to disentangle the final results attained,
considering Greek philosophy as a whole. To return to the illustration,
to us more than an empty metaphor, though in individual life there is a
successive passage through infancy, childhood, youth, and manhood to
old age, a passage in which the characteristics of each period in their
turn disappear, yet, nevertheless, there are certain results in another
sense permanent, giving to the whole progress its proper individuality.
A critical eye may discern in the successive stages of Greek
philosophical development decisive and enduring results. These it is for
which we have been searching in this long and tedious discussion.

There are four grand topics in Greek philosophy: 1st, the existence and
attributes of God; 2nd, the origin and destiny of the world; 3rd, the
nature of the human soul; 4th, the possibility of a criterion of truth.
I shall now present what appear to me to be the results at which the
Greek mind arrived on each of these points.

[Sidenote: As to God--His unity.]

(1.) Of the existence and attributes of God. On this point the decision
of the Greek mind was the absolute rejection of all anthropomorphic
conceptions, even at the risk of encountering the pressure of the
national superstition. Of the all-powerful, all-perfect, and eternal
there can be but one, for such attributes are absolutely opposed to
anything like a participation, whether of a spiritual or material
nature; and hence the conclusion that the universe itself is God, and
that all animate and inanimate things belong to his essence. In him they
live, and move, and have their being. It is conceivable that God may
exist without the world, but it is inconceivable that the world should
exist without God. We must not, however, permit ourselves to be deluded
by the varied aspect of things; for, though the universe is thus God, we
know it not as it really is, but only as it appears. God has no
relations to space and time. They are only the fictions of our finite
imagination.

[Sidenote: But their solution is Pantheism.]

But this ultimate effort of the Greek