a course of public lectures delivered during the first three
months of
- The original division into lectures has been dropped,
the matter
being more conveniently redivided into chapters.
The audience to whom the lectures were delivered was com-
posed of
members of the general public, and not only of students.
For the most
part they possessed no previous knowledge of philosophy.
Hence this
book, like the original lectures, assumes no previous special
knowledge, though it assumes, of course, a state of general
education
in the reader. Technical philosophical terms are carefully
explained
when first introduced; and a special effort has been made
to put
philosophical ideas in the clearest way possible. But it must
be
remembered that many of the profoundest as well as the
most difficult
of human conceptions are to be found in Greek philosophy.
Such ideas
are difficult in themselves, however clearly expressed. No
amount of
explanation can ever render them anything but difficult to
the
unsophisticated mind, and anything in the nature of “phi-
losophy made
easy” is only to be expected from quacks and charlatans.
Greek philosophy is not, even now, antiquated. It is not
from the
point of view of an antiquary or historian {vi} that its
treasures are
valuable. We are dealing here with living things, and not
with mere
dead things—not with the dry bones and debris of a bygone
age. And I
have tried to lecture and write for living people, and not
for mere
fossil-grubbers. If I did not believe that there is to be found
here,
in Greek philosophy, at least a measure of the truth, the
truth that
does not grow old, I would not waste five minutes of my
life upon it.
“We do not,” says a popular modern writer, [Footnote 1]
“bring the