FIRST SECTION. MATERIALISM IN ANTIQUITY. CHAPTER I. THE EARLY ATOMISTS-ESPECIALLY DEMOKRITOS. MATERIALISM is as old as philosophy, but not older. The physical conception of nature which dominates the earliest periods of the history of thought remains ever entangled in the contradictions of Dualism and the fantasies of personification. The first attempts to escape from these contradictions, to conceive the world as a unity, and to rise above the vulgar errors of the senses, lead directly into the sphere of philosophy, and amongst these first attempts Materialism has its place.1 With the beginning, however, of consecutive thinking there arises also a struggle against the traditional assumptions of religion. Religion has its roots in the earliest 1 My first sentence, which has been sometimes misunderstood, is directed, on the one hand, against the despisers of Materialism, who find in this view of the universe an absolute contradiction of all philosophical thought, and deny it the possession of any scientific importance; and, on the other hand, against those Materialists who, in their turn, despise all philosophy, and imagine that their views are in no way a product of philosophical speculation, but are a pure result of expe rience, of sound common sense, and of the physical sciences. It might, perhaps, have been more simply maintained that the first attempt at a philosophy at all amongst the Ionic physicists was Materialism; but the consideration of a long period of development, reaching from the first hesitating and imperfect systems down to the rigidly consistent and calmly reasoned Materialism of Demokritos, shows us that Materialism can only be numbered "amongst the earliest crudely-inconsistent notions, which are ever being created afresh in indestructible strength by the ignorant masses. An immanent revelation, vaguely felt rather than clearly realised, lends it a deep content, while the rich embellishments of mythology and the venerable antiquity of tradition endear it to the people. The cosmogonies of the East and of Greek antiquity present us with ideas that are as little spiritual as they are material. They do not try to explain the world by means of a single principle, but offer us anthropomorphic divinities, primal beings halt sensuous half spiritual, a chaotic reign of matter and forces in manifold changeful struggle and activity. In the presence of this tissue of imaginative ideas awakening thought calls for order and unity, and hence every system of philosophy entered upon an inevitable struggle with the theology of its time, which was conducted, according to circumstances, with more or less open animosity. It is a mistake to overlook the presence, and indeed the momentous influence, of this struggle in Greek antiquity, although it is easy to see the origin of the mistake. If the generations of a distant future had to judge of the whole attempts." Indeed, unless we identify it with Hylozoism and Pantheism, Materialism only becomes a complete system when matter is conceived as purely material—that is, when its constituent particles are not a sort of thinking matter, but physical bodies, which are moved in obedience to merely physical principles, and being in themselves without sensations, produce sensation and thought by particular forms of their combinations. And thorough - going Materialism seems always necessarily to be Atomism, since it is scarcely possible to explain whatever happens out of matter clearly and without any mixture of supersensuous qualities and forces, unless we resolve matter into small atoms and empty space for them to move in. The distinction, in fact, between the soul-atoms and the warm air of Diogenes of Apollonia, despite all their superficial similarity, is of quite fundamental importance. The latter is an absolute Reason-stuff (Vernunftstoff"); it is capable in itself of sensation, and its movements, such as they are, are due to its rationality. Demokritos' soul-atoms move, like all other atoms, according to purely mechanical principles, and produce the phenomenon of thinking beings only in a special combination mechanically brought about. And so, again, the "animated magnet" of Thales harmonises exactly with the expression πάντα πλήρη θεῶν, and yet is at bottom clearly to be distinguished fron the way in which the Atomists attempt to explain the attraction of iron by the magnet. thought of our own time solely from the fragments of a Goethe and a Schelling, a Herder or a Lessing, they would scarcely observe the deep gulfs, the sharp distinctions of opposite tendencies that mark our age. It is characteristic of the greatest men of every epoch that they have reconciled within themselves the antagonisms of their time. So is it with Plato and Sophokles in antiquity; and the greatest man often exhibits in his works the slightest traces of the struggles which stirred the multitude in his day, and which he also, in some shape or other, must have passed through. The mythology which meets us in the serene and easy dress due to the Greek and Roman poets was neither the religion of the common people nor that of the scientifically educated, but a neutral territory on which both parties could meet. The people had far less belief in the whole poeticallypeopled Olympus than in the individual town or country deities whose statues were honoured in the temple with special reverence. Not the lovely creations of famed artists enthralled the suppliant crowd, but the old-fashioned, rough-hewn, yet honoured figures consecrated by tradition. Amongst the Greeks, moreover, there was an obstinate and fanatical orthodoxy, which rested as well on the interests of a haughty priesthood as on the belief of a crowd in need of help.2 This might have been wholly forgotten if Sokrates had not had to drink the cup of poison; but Aristotle also fled 66 2 In view of the completely opposite account of Zeller (Phil. d. Griechen, i. S. 44 ff. 3 Aufl.), it may be proper to remark, that we may assent to the proposition, The Greeks had no hierarchy, and no infallible system of dogmas," without needing to modify the representation in the text. "The Greeks," we must remember, had no political unity in which these could have been developed. Their system of faiths exhibited an even greater variety of development than the constitutions of the individual cities and countries. It was natural that the thoroughly local character of their cultus, in conjunction with an increasing friendly intercourse, should lead to a toleration and liberality which was inconceivable amongst highly credulous and at the same time centralised peoples. And yet, of all the Greek efforts towards unity, those of a hierarchic and theocratical tendency from Athens that the city might not a second time commit sacrilege against philosophy. Protagoras also had to flee, and his work upon the gods was publicly burnt. Anaxagoras was arrested, and obliged to flee. Theodorus, "the were perhaps the most important; and we may certainly consider, for example, the position of the priesthood of Delphi as no insignificant exception to the rule that the priestly office conferred " incomparably more veneration than power." (Comp. Curtius, Griech. Gesch., i. p. 451; Hist. of Gr., E. T., ii. 12, in connection with the elucidations of Gerhard, Stephani, Welcker, and others as to the share of the theologians of Delphi in the extension of Bacchus-worship and the mysteries.) If there was in Greece no priestly caste, and no exclusive priestly order, there were at least priestly families, whose hereditary rights were preserved with the most inviolable legitimism, and which belonged, as a rule, to the highest aristocracy, and were able to maintain their position for centuries. How great was the importance of the Eleusinian mysteries at Athens, and how closely were these connected with the families of the Eumolpidæ, the Kerykes, the Phyllidæ, and so on! (Comp. Hermann, Gottesi. Alterth., S. 31, A. 21; Schömann, Griech. Alterth., ii. S. 340, u. f. 2 Aufl.) As to the political influence of these families, the fall of Alkibiades affords the clearest elucidation, although in trials which bring into play high-church and aristocratic influences in connection with the religious fervour of the masses, the individual threads of the network are apt to escape observation. As to orthodoxy, this must indeed not be taken to imply a scholastic and organised system of doctrines. Such a system might perhaps have arisen if the Theocrasy of the Delphic theologians and of the mysteries had not come too late to prevent the spread of philosophic rationalism amongst the aristocratic and educated classes. And so men remained content with the mystery-worships, which allowed every man on all other points to think as he pleased. But all the more inviolable remained the general belief in the sanctity and importance of these particular gods, these forms of worship, these particular sacred words and usages, so that here nothing was left to the individual, and all doubt, all attempts at unauthorised changes, all casual discussion, remained forbidden. There was, however, without doubt, even with regard to the mythi cal traditions, a great difference between the freedom of the poets and the strictness of the local priestly tradition, which was closely connected with the cultus. A people which met with different gods in every city, possessed of different attributes, as well as a different genealogy and mythology, without having its belief in its own sacred traditions shaken thereby, must with proportionate ease have permitted its poets to deal at their own pleasure with the common mythical material of the national literature; and yet, if liberties thus taken appeared in the least to contain a direct or indirect attack upon the traditions of the local divinities, the poet, no less than the philosopher, ran into danger. The series of philosophers named in the text as having been persecuted in Athens alone might easily be enlarged; for example, by Stilpo and Theophrastos (Meier u. Schömann, Att. Prozess, S. 303, u. f.). There might be added poets like Diagoras of Melos, on whose head a price was set; Aeschylos, who incurred the risk of his life for an alleged violation of the mysteries, and was only acquitted by the Areopagus atheist," and probably also Diogenes of Apollonia, were prosecuted as deniers of the gods. And all this happened in humane and enlightened Athens. From the standpoint of the multitude, every philosopher, even the most ideal, might be prosecuted as a denier of the gods; for no one of them pictured the gods to himself as the priestly tradition prescribed. If we cast a glance to the shores of Asia Minor in the in consideration of his great services; Euripides, who was threatened with an indictment for atheism, and others. How closely tolerance and intolerance bordered upon each other in the minds of the Athenians is best seen in a passage from the speech against Andokides (which, according to Blass, Att. Beredsamkeit, S. 566 ff., is not really by Lysias, although it is a genuine speech in those proceedings). There it is urged that Diagoras of Melos had only outraged (as a foreigner) the religion of strangers, but Andokides had insulted that of his own city; and we must, of course, be more angry with our fellow-countrymen than with strangers, because the latter have not transgressed against their own gods. This subjective excuse must have issued in an objective acquittal, unless the sacrilege was especially directed against the Athenian, and not against a foreign religion. From the same speech we see further, that the family of the Eumolpida was authorised, under certain circumstances, to pass judgment against religious offenders according to a secret code whose author was entirely unknown. (That this happened under the presidency of the King Archoncomp. Meier u. Schömann, S. 117, u. f.-is for our purpose unimportant.) That the thoroughly conservative Aristophanes could make a jest of the gods, and even direct the bitterest mockery against the growing superstition, rests upon entirely different grounds; and that Epikuros was never persecuted is of course explained sim ply by his decided participation in all |