as but a step to the position that, if we cannot attain
truth by the natural means of thought, we will do so by a miracle. If
ordinary consciousness will not suffice, we will pass beyond ordinary
consciousness altogether. Neo-Platonism is founded upon despair, the
despair of reason. It is the last frantic struggle of the Greek spirit
to reach, by desperate means, by force, the point which it felt it had
failed to reach by reason. It seeks to take the Absolute by storm. It
feels that where sobriety has failed, the violence of spiritual
intoxication may succeed.

It was natural that philosophy should end here. For philosophy is
founded upon reason. It is the effort to comprehend, to understand, to
grasp the reality of things intellectually. Therefore it cannot admit
anything higher than reason. To exalt intuition, ecstasy, or rapture,
above thought--this is death to philosophy. Philosophy in making such
an admission, lets out its own life-blood, which is thought. In
Neo-Platonism, therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is
the end. The place of philosophy is taken henceforth by religion.
Christianity triumphs, and sweeps away all independent thought from
its path. There is no more philosophy now till a new spirit of enquiry
and wonder is breathed into man at the Renaissance and the
Reformation. Then the new era begins, and gives birth to a new
philosophic impulse, under the influence of which we are still living.
But to reach that new era of philosophy, the human spirit had first to
pass through the arid wastes of Scholasticism.

SUBJECT INDEX

A

Abortions, 291.

Absolute, The;
as many in one, 70-71, 197;
as reason, 240-1, 307;
as knowable, 299;
as form, 307.
Actuality, 279.
Air, as first principle, 28.
Antinomy, 54.
Appearance, 61.
Aristocracy, 324.
Asceticism, defect of, 317.
_Ataraxia_, 363.
Atoms, 88 et seq, 356.
Aufklaerung, 119-120.

B

Becoming;
Parmenides on, 44;
Heracleitus on, 73;
Empedocles on, 82;
Plato on, 192;
Aristotle on, 279-280

Being;
Parmenides on, 44 et seq;
Plato on, 191, 197.

C

Causation, 6-7;
as explanation, 64;
Aristotle's doctrine of, 267-73.
Classification, 199.
Comedy, 330-1.
Concepts;
defined, 143;
identified with definitions, 145;
Socrates's doctrine of, 143-6;
objectivity of, 183;
Stoics on, 345.
Condensation, 28.
Contract, the social, 323.
Cosmopolitanism, 353.
Counter-earth, 38.
Criterion, Th