Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/262

240 240 HISTORY OF THE losophical poetry with prose compositions, as being* a limited and pecu- liar deviation from the usual practice with regard to philosophical writings. § 2. However the Greek philosophers may have sought after origin- ality and independence of thought, they could not avoid being influ- enced in their speculations by the peculiar circumstances of their own position. Hence the earliest philosophers may be classed according to the races and countries to which they belonged ; the idea of a schoo* (that is, of a transmission of doctrines through an unbroken series of teachers and disciples) not being applicable to this period. The earliest attempts at philosophical speculation were made by the Ionians ; that race of the Greeks, which not only had, in common life, shown the greatest desire for new and various kinds of knowledge, but had also displayed the most decided taste for scientific researches into the phenomena of external nature. From this direction of their in- quiries, the Ionic philosophers were called by the ancients, " physical philosophers," or " physiologers." With a boldness characteristic of inexperience and ignorance, they began by directing their inquiries to the most abstruse subjects ; and, unaided by any experiments which were not within the reach of a common man, and unacquainted with the first elements of mathematics, they endeavoured to determine the origin and principle of the existence of all things. If we are tempted to smile at the temerity with which these Ionians at once ventured upon the solution of the highest problems, we are, on the other hand, asto- nished at the sagacity with which many of them conjectured the con- nexion of appearances, which they could not fully comprehend without a much greater progress in the study of nature. The scope of these Ionian speculations proves that they were not founded on a 'priori rea sonings, independent of experience. The Greeks were always distin- guished by their curiosity, and their powers of delicate observation. Yet this gifted nation, even when it had accumulated a large stock of knowledge concerning natural objects, seems never to have attempted more than the observation of phenomena which presented themselves unsought; and never to have made experiments devised by the investi- gator. § 3. Before we pass from these general remarks to an account of the individual philosophers of the Ionic school, (taking the term in its most extended sense,) we must mention a man who is important as forming an intermediate link between the sacerdotal enthusiasts, Epimenides, Abaris, and others, noticed in the last chapter, and the Ionic physio- logers. Pherecydes, a native of the island of Syros, one of the Cyc- lades, is the earliest Greek of whose prose writings we possess any remains*, and was certainly one of the first who, after the manner of the
 * Sue chap. IS. o 3.