life is found in the national philosophy, and the history of
philosophy is the kernel of the history of nations. It was
but natural, then, that from the time of Alexander onwards
Greek philosophy should exhibit symptoms of decay.
The essential mark of the decay of Greek thought was
the intense subjectivism which is a feature of all the post-
Aristotelian schools. Not one of them is interested in the
solution of the world-problem for its own sake. The pure
scientific spirit, the desire for knowledge for its own sake,
is gone. That curiosity, that wonder, of which Aristotle
speaks as the inspiring spirit of philosophy, is dead. The
motive power of philosophy is no longer the disinterested
pursuit of truth, but only the desire of the individual to
escape from the ills of life. Philosophy only interests men
in so far as it affects their lives. It becomes anthropocen-
tric and egocentric. Everything pivots on the individual
subject, his destiny, his fate, the welfare of his soul. Reli-
gion has long since become corrupted and worthless, and
philosophy is now expected to do the work of religion, and
to be a haven of refuge from the storms of life. Hence it
becomes essentially practical. Before everything else it is
ethical. All other departments of thought are now subor-
dinated to ethics. It is not as in the days of the strength
and youth of the Greek spirit, when Xenophanes or {341}
Anaxagoras looked out into the heavens, and naively won-
dered what the sun and the stars were, and how the world
arose. Men’s thought no longer turns outward toward the
stars, but only inward upon themselves. It is not the riddle
of the universe, but the riddle of human life, which makes
them ponder.
This subjectivism has as its necessary consequences, one-
sidedness, absence of originality, and finally complete scep-
ticism. Since men are no longer interested in the wider
problems of the universe, but only in the comparatively
petty problems of human life, their outlook becomes ex-
clusively ethical, narrow, and one-sided. He who cannot
forget his own self, cannot merge and lose himself in the
universe, but looks at all things only as they affect him-
self, does not give birth to great and universal thoughts.
He becomes self-centred, and makes the universe revolve
round him. Hence we no longer have now great, univer-
sal, all-embracing systems, like those of Plato and Aristo-
tle. Metaphysics, physics, logic, are not studied for their
own sakes, but only as preparations for ethics. Narrowness,
however, is always compensated by intensity, which in the
end becomes fanaticism. Hence the intense earnestness and
almost miraculous heights of fanatical asceticism, to which
the Stoics attained. And an unbalanced and one-sided phi-
losophy leads to extremes. Such a philosophy, obsessed by a
single idea, unrestrained by any consideration for other and
equally important factors of truth, regardless of all other
claims, pushes its idea pig-headedly to its logical extreme.
Such a procedure results in paradoxes and extravagances.
Hence the Stoics, if they made duty their watchword, must
needs conceive it in {342} the most extreme opposition to
all natural impulses, with a sternness unheard of in any
previous ethical doctrine save that of the Cynics. Hence
the Sceptics, if they lighted on the thought that knowledge
is difficult of attainment, must needs rush to the extreme
conclusion that any knowledge is utterly impossible. Hence
the Neo-Platonists must needs cap all these tendencies by