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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; ply by his decided participation in all Euripides, who was threatened with the external religious ceremonies. an indictment for atheism, and others. The political tendency of many of How closely tolerance and intolerance these accusations establishes rather bordered upon each other in the than disproves their foundation in minds of the Athenians is best seen religious fanaticism. If the reproach in a passage from the speech against of doéßeia was one of the most effecAndokides (which, according to Blass, tual means of overthrowing even Att. Beredsamkeit, S. 566 ff., is not popular statesmen, not the letter of really by Lysias, although it is a the law only, but the passionate religenuine speech in those proceedings). gious zeal of the masses must obviThere it is urged that Diagoras of ously have existed; and accordingly Melos had only outraged (as a foreign- we must regard as inadequate the er) the religion of strangers, but An- view of the relation of church and dokides had insulted that of his own state in Schömann, Griech. Alterth., city; and we must, of course, be more i. S. 117, 3 Aufl., as well as many of angry with our fellow-countrymen the points in Zeller's treatment of the than with strangers, because the lat- question above referred to. And that ter have not transgressed against their the persecutions were not always in own gods. This subjective excuse connection with ceremonies, but often must have issued in an objective ac- had direct reference to doctrine and quittal, unless the sacrilege was espe- belief, appears to be quite clearly cially directed against the Athenian, proved by the majority of the accusaand not against a foreign religion. tions against the philosophers. But From the same speech we see further, if we reflect upon the by no means that the family of the Eumolpida was small number of cases of which we authorised, under certain circum- hear in a single city and in a compastances, to pass judgment against re- ratively short space of time, and upon ligious offenders according to a secret the extreme peril which they incode whose author was entirely un- volved, it will scarcely appear right to known. (That this happened under say that philosophy was attacked "in the presidency of the King Archon- a few only of its representatives." We comp. Meier u. Schömann, S. 117, u. have still rather seriously to inquire, f.-is for our purpose unimportant.) as again in the modern philosophy That the thoroughly conservative of the seventeenth, eighteenth (and Aristophanes could make a jest of the nineteenth ?) centuries, How far the gods, and even direct the bitterest influence of conscious or unconscious mockery against the growing super- accommodation to popular beliefs bestition, rests upon entirely different neath the pressure of threatening grounds; and that Epikuros was never persecution has left its mark upon the persecuted is of course explained sim- systems themselves?

centuries that immediately precede the brilliant period of Hellenic intellectual life, the colonies of the Ionians, with their numerous important cities, are distinguished for wealth and material prosperity, as well as for artistic sensibility and refinement of life. Trade and political alliances, and the increasing eagerness for knowledge, led the inhabitants of Miletos and Ephesos to take long journeys, brought them into manifold intercourse with foreign feelings and opinions, and furthered the elevation of a free-thinking aristocracy above the standpoint of the narrower masses. A similar early prosperity was enjoyed by the Doric colonies of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Under these circumstances, we may safely assume that, long before the appearance of the philosophers, a freer and more enlightened conception of the universe had spread amongst the higher ranks of society.

It was in these circles of men, wealthy, distinguished, with a wide experience gained from travel, that philosophy arose. Thales, Anaximander, Herakleitos, Empedokles took a prominent position amongst their fellow-citizens, and it is not to be wondered at that no one thought of bringing them to account for their opinions. This ordeal, it is true, they had to undergo, though much later; for in the last century the question of the atheism of Thales was eagerly handled in special monographs.

3 Comp. Zeller, i. S. 176, Anm. 2, 3 Aufl., and the works quoted in Marbach, Gesch. d. Phil., S. 53, which, and that by no mere coincidence, appeared at the period of the Materialist controversy of the last century. With regard to the statement of Zeller, who seems to me to rate Thales too low, I may observe, that the passage in Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. x. 23, formerly employed to prove the theism of Thales, with Cicero's characteristic shallowness, hy the expression "fingere ex," indicates a Demiurgus standing outside the world-stuff, while God, as "world

If we compare, in this

reason," especially in the Stoical sense, refers merely to an immanent, not anthropomorphic, and therefore also not a personal God. Even though the Stoic tradition may rest upon a mere interpretation of an older tradition in the sense of their own system, yet it does not follow from this that this interpretation (apart from the genuineness of the words) is also false. Judging from the connection, the probably genuine expression that all things are full of gods may very likely be the origin of the notion-an expression which even Aristotle (De An., i. 5, 17) obviously

respect, the Ionic philosophers of the sixth century with the Athenians of the fifth and fourth, we shall at once be reminded of the contrast between the English sceptical movement of the seventeenth and the French of the eighteenth century. In the one case, nobody thought of drawing the people into the war of opinions; 4 in the other, the movement was a weapon with which fanaticism was to be assaulted.

Hand in hand with this intellectual movement proceeded among the Ionians the study of mathematics and natural science. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes busied themselves with special problems of astronomy, as well as with the explanation of the universe; and Pythagoras transplanted the taste for mathematical and physical inquiry to the westward colonies of the Doric stock. The fact that, in the eastern portion of the Greek world, where the intercourse with Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, was most active, the scientific movement began, speaks more decidedly for the influence of the East upon Greek culture than the fabulous traditions of the travels and studies of Greek philosophers.5 The idea of an absolute originality

interprets symbolically; so that the doubt indicated by lows refers (and rightly) to his own interpretation only, which is, in fact, much more perverse and improbable than that of the Stoics. To refute (Zeller, i. 173) the view of the latter by Aristotle (Met., i. 3) is unsafe, because Aristotle is undoubtedly there bringing out the element in Anaxagoras which was related to his own philosophy, that is, the separation of the worldforming Reason, as of the cause of Becoming, from the matter upon which it works. That he is not content with this very element in Anaxagoras, as is shown by the very next chapter, because the transcendental principle appears only occasionally, and is not consistently carried out, is a necessary consequence of the transitional and by no means wholly

consistent position of Anaxagoras. So the way in which he speaks of his doubtful merit, as also the severe censure of his inconsistency, are in Aristotle only the continuation of the fanatical zeal with which the Platonic Sokrates, in the Phaedo, c. 46, handles the same point.

4 Comp. Buckle, History of Civilization, i. 497 sqq.

5 Compare the lengthy refutation of the views as to the rise of Greek philosophy from Oriental speculation in Zeller, i. S. 20 ff., 3 Aufl., and the concise but very careful discussion of the same question in Ueberweg, i., 4 Aufl., S. 32, E. T. 31. The criticism of Zeller and others has for ever displaced the cruder views that the East taught philosophy to the Greeks; on the other hand, the remarks of Zeller (S. 23 ff.) as to the influence of the

of Hellenic culture may be justified if by this we mean originality of form, and argue the hidden character of its roots from the perfection of the flower. It becomes, however, delusive if we insist upon the negative results of the criticism of special traditions, and reject those connections and influences which, although the usual sources of history fail us, are obviously suggested by a view of the circumstances. Political relations, and, above all, commerce, must necessarily have caused knowledge, inventions, and ideas to flow in many ways from people to people; and if Schiller's saying, "Euch ihr Götter gehöret der Kaufmann" ("To you, O gods, belongs the merchant"), is genuinely human, and therefore valid for all time, many an intercommunication will have been later connected by mythology with some famous names, whose true bearers have for ever been lost to memory.

Certain it is that the East, in the sphere of astronomy and the measurement of time, was ahead of the Greeks. The people of the East, too, possessed mathematical know

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common Indo-Germanic descent, and the continual influence of neighbourhood, may well gain an increased significance with the progress of Oriental studies. Especially with regard to philosophy, we may observe that Zeller as a result of his Hegelian standpoint obviously undervalues its connection with the general history of thought, and isolates too much the "speculative" ideas. If our view of the very intimate connection of speculation with religious rationalism, and with the beginning of scientific thought, is at all correct, then the stimulus to this changed mode of thought may have come from the East, but may in Greece, thanks to the more favourable soil, have matured more noble fruits. Compare the observation of Lewes, Hist. of Phil., i. p. 3: "It is a suggestive fact that the dawn of scientific speculation in Greece should be coincident

with a great religious movement in the East." Conversely, also, it is quite possible that particular philosophical ideas may have come from the East to Greece, and there have been developed just because suitable intellectual circumstances had been prepared by the Greeks' own development. The historians will also have to adopt scientific theories. The crude opposition of originality and tradition can no longer be employed. Ideas, like organic germs, fly far and wide, but the right ground alone brings them to perfection, and often gives them higher forms. And in this case, of course, the possibility of the origin of Greek philosophy without such stimulus is not excluded, although, of course, the question of originality bears quite a new aspect. The true independence of Hellenic culture rests in its perfection, not in its beginnings.

ledge and skill at a time when no one thought of such things as yet in Greece; although it was in this very sphere of mathematics that the Greeks were destined to outrun all the nations of antiquity.

With the freedom and boldness of the Hellenic mind was united an innate ability to draw inferences, to enunciate clearly and sharply general propositions, to hold firmly and surely to the premisses of an inquiry, and to arrange the results clearly and luminously; in a word, the gift of scientific deduction.

It has in our days become the fashion, especially amongst the English since Bacon, to depreciate the value of deduction. Whewell, in his well-known "History of the Inductive Sciences," is constantly unjust to the Greek philosophers, and notably to the Aristotelian school. He discusses in a special chapter the causes of what he regards as their failure, continually applying to them the standard of our own time and of our modern scientific position. We must, however, insist that a great work had to be done before the uncritical accumulation of observations and traditions could be transformed into our fruitful method of experiment. A school of vigorous thinking must first arise, in which men were content to dispense with premisses for the attainment of their immediate end. This school was founded by the Greeks, and it was they who gave us, at length, the most essential basis of deductive processes, the elements of mathematics and the principles of formal logic.6 The apparent inversion of the natural

6 Although the modern Aristotelians are so far right that the essential feature of the Aristotelian Logic, from its author's standpoint, is not the Formal Logic, but the logico-metaphysical Theory of Knowledge. At the same time he has also left us certain elements of Formal Logic, of course only collected and developed by him, which, as I hope to show in a later work, have a merely external connection with the principle of his

Notion, and frequently, indeed, contradict it. Much, however, as it may now be the fashion to despise Formal Logic, and to over-estimate the metaphysical doctrine of the Notion, yet a calm consideration establishes beyond question that the fundamental principles of Formal Logic are alone demonstrated strictly as the principles of Mathematics, and these only so far as they are not (as is the doctrine of the conclusions from modal judg

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