SOURCE: W. K. C. Guthrie, "The Beginnings of Philosophy in Greece," in A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I, Cambridge at the University Press, 1962, pp. 26-38.

In the following essay, Guthrie discusses the cultures that influenced the thinking of the Presocratic philosophers and analyzes the environmental conditions from which philosophy grew. Guthrie explains that the leisure enjoyed by the men of this time contributed significantly to their pursuit of philosophical thinking.

Purely practical considerations ordain that we should not pursue our subject too far into its embryonic stage, or at least not to a time before its conception. What may we call the conception of Greek philosophy? It occurred when the conviction began to take shape in men's minds that the apparent chaos of events must conceal an underlying order, and that this order is the product of impersonal forces. To the mind of a prephilosophical man, there...