Note (return) — Chapter IX

In this survey of the speculations of the pre-Socratic schools of philosophy, we have followed the course of two opposite streams of thought which had their common origin in one fundamental principle or law of the human mind--the intuition of unity--"or the desire to comprehend all the facts of the universe in a single formula, and consummate all conditional knowledge in the unity of unconditioned existence." The history of this tendency is, in fact, the history of all philosophy. "The end of all philosophy," says Plato, "is the intuition of unity." "All knowledge," said the Platonists, "is the gathering up into one." 460