always tried to steer clear of logomachies, or verbal
arguing.

Still, there are questions which no system can de-
cline to answer, if it claim to be philosophical, espe-
cially in an age when a sceptical or critical inquiry
has sapped the foundations of belief. In the first
period of Greek philosophy, from Thales to Anaxa-
goras, scientific inquiry had gone boldly on to infer-
ences, transcending the phenomena of observation,
with a free faith in the power of reason to penetrate
all mysteries in the universe. The contradictory re-
sults obtained in the independent prosecution of this
method by a multitude of inquirers rather discredited
it. And in the second stage of philosophy, from
Socrates to Aristotle, the analysis of ideas, of their
connections and relations, had formed the main
topics of investigation. The mind sought to win
clearness in the intellectual world with a conviction
that when that was accomplished there was little fear
of contradiction in the external objects. It fancied
that if the order of ideas was sufficiently discovered,
the order of things would follow of itself. This
assumption was shaken by the destructive criticism of
the immediate successors of Plato and Aristotle, and
by Pyrrho. Accordingly, when we come to the Stoic
and Epicurean schools, the common question that is
raised is, How can we know when our ideas are true
and represent objective fact? Where is reality to be
found?

It is the same question which at a much later age
was asked in Germany as the reign of the idealists

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