London: C. J. CLAY AND SON, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Cambridge: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. JOSEPH B. MAYOR, M.A. LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, EDITED for the SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. Cambridge: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1885 [All Rights reserved.] PREFACE. THE readers whom I have chiefly had in my mind, in writing the following sketch of Ancient Philosophy, are Undergraduates at the University or others who are commencing the study of the philosophical works of Cicero or Plato or Aristotle in the original language. It has been my wish to supply to them, what I remember vainly seeking when I was in their position, something which may help them to find their bearings in the new world into which they are plunged on first making acquaintance with such books as Cicero's De Finibus or the Republic of Plato. The only helps which I had in similar circumstances some thirty years ago were a translation of Schleiermacher's Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, of which I could make nothing, and Lewes' small Biographical History of Philosophy, of which the aim, as far as I could judge, was to show that, as philosophy was moonshine, it was mere waste of time to read what the philosophers had written. Things have changed since then. The noblest defence of ancient philosophy which has ever appeared, is contained in the chapters on the |