ABSTRACT
An immense period of nearly four centuries—that is the subject of this short chapter. Although much of our evidence comes from that time, and it saw great progress in the sciences, philosophical thought developed little. While the sciences became more and more specialized, the natural rationality of the old Greek spirit yielded more and more to the invasion of Oriental superstitions. It employed what vigour was left to it in working over its past achievement, or in mixing it all together in an alleged eternal philosophy, a pure negation of the individual efforts of thinkers, or in resuscitating it in another form. Certainly, there were still remarkable personalities, but they were remarkable chiefly for the intensity of their moral sentiment. Greek thought, as such, had exhausted its powers of invention. It became science, that impersonal thing, or it tended to founder in a turmoil of religiosity
