Excerpt from Six Major Prophets The men I selected for study were those who, Whether they called themselves philosophers or not, seemed to me to have a definite philosophy of life, those who had a message for their own times Of sufficient importance and distinctiveness to merit public attention. It is my purpose in these sketches to show the trend and importance of these diverse theories, so that a reader who had not had the opportunity to range over the complete works of a dozen authors might find which of them was best adapted to serve him as guide, philosopher, and friend. In a word, my part is merely to act as the host at a reception who introduces his guests and then leaves them to follow up such acquaintance ships as seem profitable. My aim is exposition rather than criticism. Although I have not thought it necessary absolutely to suppress my own opinions, I trust this has not prevented me from giving a fair and sufficiently sympathetic presentation of each man's views in turn. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.