CHAPTER V.
RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Socrates rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby inaugurating an Age of Faith.—His Life and Death.—The schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of Pleasure and Gratification of Self.
Plato founds the Academy.—His three primal Principles.—The Existence of a personal God.—Nature of the World and the Soul.—The ideal Theory, Generals or Types.—Reminiscence.—Transmigration.—Plato's political Institutions.—His Republic.—His Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul.—Criticism on his Doctrines.
Rise of the Sceptics, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy.—Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge.—Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epicurus.—Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems in the later Academies.—Their Errors and Duplicities.—End of the Greek Age of Faith.
Greek philosophy on the basis of ethics.
The Sophists had brought on an intellectual anarchy. It is not in the nature of humanity to be contented with such a state. Thwarted in its expectations from physics, the Greek mind turned its attention to morals. In the progress of life, it is but a step from the age of Inquiry to the age of Faith.
Socrates: his mode of teaching.