A Brief View of Greek Philosophy from the Age of Socrates to the Coming of Christ

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1844 edition. Excerpt: ...instituted an especial mode of life, than a philoso Brucker Hist. Crit. Phil. Pars. n. lib. ii. c. 8. phical system; it was in fact, the mendicant order of philosophy; and, like the mendicant orders of the Christian church, and all other ascetics who require a severity of life which nature opposes, after the first enthusiasm was over, its professors degenerated, till in later times they became justly infamous. Crates was the master of Zeno of Cittieum, the founder of the Stoics. AAA ARISTOTELES AND THE PERIPATETICS. B. C. 335 TO--? MONG the pupils of Plato, about the..-same time that Xenocrates was learning to grace his slow parts with the higher beauty of moral virtue, another young man was seen, whose disposition and appearance was the reverse of the other in all but that last, best ornament of man, the love of virtue. Aristoteles, the son of a physician of Stagira, a small town on the borders of Macedon, but then an orphan, and the inheritor of a large fortune, --at seventeen years of age entered the Academy. His talents soon attracted the notice of his discerning master, who, having jestingly compared the slow mental pace of Xenocrates to that of an ass, always needing the spur; now likened the acuteness of Aristoteles to the headlong speed of a horse, which requires a bridle to prevent him from running away. He was of slight form and weak constitution, and was noted by his contemporaries for a more than ordinary attention to dress and ornament: but none of these things were any hindrance to his eager pursuit of science, which ceased not, but with his life. During twenty years he was the pupil and friend of Plato, who was wont to call him, "the mind of the Academy," and if he was not present, would exclaim, that " the...