CLASSIFICATION.
A few words will suffice to define our problem and classify its
elements. Where and when does philosophy begin? Manifestly, according to
the analysis made in § I., where a final philosophical principle, a
final ground of being is first sought in a philosophical way,—and hence
with the Grecian philosophy. The Oriental—Chinese and Hindoo—so named
philosophies,—but which are rather theologies or mythologies,—and the
mythic cosmogonies of Greece, in its earliest periods, are, therefore,
excluded from our more definite problem. Like Aristotle, we shall begin
the history of philosophy with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude
also the philosophy of the Christian middle ages, or Scholasticism. This
is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophizing or reflecting within
the already prescribed limits of positive religion. It is, therefore,
essentially theology, and belongs to the science of the history of
Christian doctrines.
The material which remains after this exclusion, may be naturally
divided into two periods; viz:—ancient—Grecian and Græco-Romanic—and
modern philosophy. Since a preliminary comparison of the characteristics
of these two epochs could not here be given without a subsequent
repetition, we shall first speak of their inner relations, when we come
to treat of the transition from the one to the other.
The first epoch can be still farther divided into three periods; (1.)
The pre-Socratic philosophy, _i. e._ from Thales to the Sophists
inclusive; (2.) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; (3.) The post-Aristotelian
philosophy, including New Platonism.