Θ A SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY BY JOHN MARSHALL M. A. OXON., LL. D. EDIN. RECTOR OF THE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL, EDINBURGH FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY LONDON PERCIVAL AND CO. 1891 All rights reserved PREFACE THE main purpose which I have had in view in writing this book has been to present an account of Greek philosophy which, within strict limits of brevity, shall be at once authentic and interesting -authentic, as being based on the original works themselves, and not on any secondary sources; interesting, as presenting to the ordinary English reader, in language freed as far as possible from technicality and abstruseness, the great thoughts of the greatest men of antiquity on questions of permanent significance and value. There has been no attempt to shirk the really philosophic problems which these men tried in their day to solve; but I have endeavoured to show, by a sympathetic treatment of them, that these problems were no mere wars of words, but that in fact the philosophers of twenty-four centuries ago were dealing with exactly similar difficulties as to the bases of belief and of |