Will Durant

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art

Logic is the study of ideal method in thought and research

CHAPTER I

PLATO

I. THE CONTEXT OF PLATO

In 490-470 b. c. Sparta and Athens, forgetting their jealousies and joining their forces, fought off the effort of the Persians under Darius and Xerxes to turn Greece into a colony of an Asiatic empire.

the first Greek philosophers were astronomers.

Peloponnesian war (430-400 t. g.)> in which the military power of Sparta fought and at last defeated the naval power of Athens

was said that the Oracle at Delphi, with unusual good sense, had pronounced him the wisest of the Greeks; and he had interpreted this as an approval of the agnosticism which was the starting-point of his philosophy

Some who suffered from this "Socratic method," this demand for accurate definitions, and clear thinking, and exact analysis, objected that he asked more than he answered, and left men's minds more confused than before. Nevertheless he bequeathed to philosophy two very definite answers to two of our most difficult problems—What is the meaning of virtue? and What is the best state?

The Clouds (423 b. c.) Aristophanes had made great fun of Socrates and his "Thinking-shop,"

IV. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM