This demand for a universal, even though still unproved principle, is henceforth present to knowledge. What answers to this demand now appears in the world through the inward necessity of mind—not externally, but as being in conformity with the Notion. This necessity has produced the philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans, New Academy, and Sceptics, which we have now to consider. If we have remained too long in the consideration of this period, we may now make amends for this protraction, for in the next period we may be brief.
IN this second period, which precedes the Alexandrian philosophy, we have to consider Dogmatism and Scepticism—the Dogmatism which separates itself into the two philosophies, the Stoic and the Epicurean; and the third philosophy, of which both partake and which yet differs from them both, Scepticism. Along with this last we would take the New Academy, which has entirely merged in it—while in the Older Academy, Plato’s philosophy indubitably still maintained its purity. We saw at the close of the previous period the consciousness of the Idea, or of the Universal, which is an end in itself—a principle, universal indeed, but at the same time determined in itself, which is thus capable of subsuming the particular, and of being applied thereto. The application of universal to particular is here the relationship that prevails, for the reflection that from the universal itself the separation of the totality is developed, is not yet present. There always is in such a relationship the necessity of a system and of systematization; that is to say, one determinate principle must consistently be applied to the particular, so that the truth of all that is particular should be determined according to this abstract principle, and be at the same time likewise recognized. Now since this is what we have in so-called Dogmatism, it is a philosophizing of the understanding, in which Plato’s and Aristotle’s speculative greatness is no longer present.