or is produced, or is known."[399] First principles,
therefore, include both elements and causes, and, under certain aspects,
elements are also causes, in so far as they are that without which a
thing can not be produced. Hence that highest generalization by
Aristotle of all first principles; as--1. The Material Cause; 2. The
Formal Cause; 3. The Efficient Cause; 4. The Final Cause. The grand
subject of inquiry in ancient philosophy was not alone what is the final
_element_ from which all things have been produced? nor yet what is the
_efficient cause_ of the movement and the order of the universe? _but
what are those First Principles which, being assumed, shall furnish a
rational explanation of all phenomena, of all becoming?_

[Footnote 398: As the writer of the article "Attica," in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.]

[Footnote 399: "Metaphysics," bk. iv. ch. i. p. 112 (Bohn's edition).]

So much being premised, we proceed to consider the efforts and the
results of philosophic thought in

THE PRE-SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.

"The first act in the drama of Grecian speculation was performed on the
varied theatre of the Grecian colonies--Asiatic, insular, and Italian,
verging at length (in Anaxagoras) towards Athens." During the progress
of this drama two distinct schools of philosophy were developed, having
distinct geographical provinces, one on the east, the other on the west,
of the peninsula of Greece, and deriving their names from the localities
in which they flourished. The earliest was the _Ionian;_ the latter was
the _Italian_ school.

It would be extremely difficult, at this remote period, to estimate the
influence which geographical conditions and ethnical relations exerted
in determining the course of philosophic thought in these schools.
Unquestionably those conditions contributed somewhat towards fixing
their individuality. At the same time, it must be granted that the
distinction in these two schools of philosophy is of a deeper character
than can be represented or explained by geographical surroundings; it is
a distinction reaching to the very foundation of their habits of
thought. These schools represent two distinct aspects of philosophic
thought, two distinct methods in which the human mind has essayed to
solve the problem of the universe.

The ante-Socratic schools were chiefly occupied with the study of
external nature. "Greek philosophy was, at its first appearance, a
philosophy of nature." It was an