BY philosophy is understood the knowledge acquired by reasoning,from the manner of the generation of anything,to the properties;or from the properties,to some possible way of generation of the same;to the end to be able to produce,as far as matter and human force permit,such effects as human life requireth.So the geometrician,from the construction of figures,findeth out many properties thereof;and from the properties,new ways of their construction,by reasoning;to the end to be able to measure land and water;and for infinite other uses.So the astronomer,from the rising,setting,and moving of the sun and stars in diverse parts of the heavens,findeth out the causes of day and night,and of the different seasons of the year,whereby he keepeth an account of time;and the like of other sciences.
By which definition it is evident that we are not to account as any part thereof that original knowledge called experience,in which consisteth prudence,because it is not attained by reasoning,but found as well in brute beasts as in man;and is but a memory of successions of events in times past,wherein the omission of every little circumstance,altering the effect frustrateth the expectation of the most prudent:whereas nothing is produced by reasoning aright,but general,eternal,and immutable truth.
Nor are we therefore to give that name to any false conclusions;for he that reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never conclude an error:
Nor to that which any man knows by supernatural revelation;because it is not acquired by reasoning:
Nor that which is gotten by reasoning from the authority of books;because it is not by reasoning from the cause to the effect,nor from the effect to the cause;and is not knowledge,but faith.
The faculty of reasoning being consequent to the use of speech,it was not possible but that there should have been some general truths found out by reasoning,as ancient almost as language itself.The savages of America are not without some good moral sentences;also they have a little arithmetic,to add and divide in numbers not too great;but they are not therefore philosophers.For as there were plants of corn and wine in small quantity dispersed in the fields and woods,before men knew their virtue,or made use of them for their nourishment,or planted them apart in fields and vineyards;in which time they fed on acorns and drank water:so also there have been diverse true,general,and profitable speculations from the beginning,as being the natural plants of human reason.But they were at first but few in number;men lived upon gross experience;there was no method;that is to say,no sowing nor planting of knowledge by itself,apart from the weeds and common plants of error and conjecture.And the cause of it being the want of leisure from procuring the necessities of life,and defending themselves against their neighbours,it was impossible,till the erecting of great Commonwealths,it should be otherwise.Leisure is the mother of philosophy;and Commonwealth,the mother of peace and leisure.Where first were great and flourishing cities,there was first the study of philosophy.The Gymnosophists of India,the Magi of Persia,and the Priests of Chaldaea and Egypt are counted the most ancient philosophers;and those countries were the most ancient of kingdoms.
Philosophy was not risen to the Grecians and other people of the West,whose Commonwealths,no greater perhaps than Lucca or Geneva,had never peace but when their fears of one another were equal;nor the leisure to observe anything but one another.At length,when war had united many of these Grecian lesser cities into fewer and greater,then began seven men,of several parts of Greece,to get the reputation of being wise;some of them for moral and politic sentences,and others for the learning of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians,which was astronomy and geometry.But we hear not yet of any schools of philosophy.
After the Athenians,by the overthrow of the Persian armies,had gotten the dominion of the sea;and thereby,of all the islands and maritime cities of the archipelago,as well of Asia as Europe;and were grown wealthy;they that had no employment,neither at home nor abroad,had little else to employ themselves in but either,as St.
Luke says,"in telling and hearing news,"or in discoursing of philosophy publicly to the youth of the city.Every master took some place for that purpose:Plato,in certain public walks called Academia,from one Academus;Aristotle in the walk of the temple of Pan,called Lycaeum;others in the Stoa,or covered walk,wherein the merchants'goods were brought to land;others in other places,where they spent the time of their leisure in teaching or in disputing of their opinions;and some in any place where they could get the youth of the city together to hear them talk.And this was it which Carneades also did at Rome,when he was ambassador,which caused Cato to advise the Senate to dispatch him quickly,for fear of corrupting the manners of the young men that delighted to hear him speak,as they thought,fine things.
From this it was that the place where any of them taught and disputed was called schola,which in their tongue signifieth leisure;and their disputations,diatribae,that is to say,passing of the time.Also the philosophers themselves had the name of their sects,some of them,from these their schools:for they that followed Plato's doctrine were called Academics;the followers of Aristotle,Peripatetics,from the walk he taught in;and those that Zeno taught,Stoics,from the Stoa:as if we should denominate men from More-fields,from Paul's Church,and from the Exchange,because they meet there often to prate and loiter.