(ἄπειρον), absolute (αὐτοκρατές), simple in essence (μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι), subtlest and purest of things (λεπτότατον τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον), the unmoved cause of motion, omniscient (Távтa yvw voûs), unchangeable.* While mind can never mix with things, it yet rules whatever has a soul, is present in rational beings, whether great or small. All mind is similar, homogeneous; difference relates to degree, greater or less, not to kind.† And mind, as it existed in man, he did not distinguish from soul. The two were substantially identical, and, as Aristotle understood, had the same attributes. While then to Anaxagoras man was mortal, mind was not. The owμa could, the Vous could not, perish.

The Atomists, on the one hand, and the Sophists, on the other, had for our belief peculiarly little significance. The materialism of the first and the scepticism of the second were alike inimical to it. Each only helped to render a new method necessary, and the new method yielded more certain results. Meanwhile, we can see the inevitable tendency of pre-Sokratic thought. The starting-point had been extra-, though not anti-religious. Greek religion was peculiarly destitute of theological ideas. The words God and Creator were not to the

*

"Simpl. Phys.," i. fol. 33; R. & P., "Historia," § 53.

+ Zeller, "Philos. d. Griechen," i. 680 ff.

Arist., "De Anim.," i. 2; Zeller, i. 696.

Greek, as to the Hebrew, synonymous. To the Hellenic mind the creative process was Theogonic as well as Kosmogonic. Its primary question was not, How or why did God create the world? but, What created gods and men? Thus in no impious or atheistic spirit did the earlier thinkers attribute the creation to water, or air, or fire. They but obeyed the instinct or intuition which compelled them to seek what their religion did not offer-a cause for the world. But this search involved another. As in Mythology, the Chthonian court had to rise as a supplement to the Olympian, so in Philosophy the question as to man's whence involved the question as to his whither. The nature of the cause, too, determined the nature of the effect. The eschatological idea shared the fortunes of the theological, was with it materialized, spiritualized, impersonalized, validated, or dissolved. In the early physical philosophies soul is but life, inseparable from body, common to whatever can move or cause motion. As the cause is refined, so is the soul; as permanence, intelligence, feeling, volition, are attributed to the one, they are. attributed to the other. The point where mind becomes the creator is also the point where soul becomes mind. Thought thus drives the thinker to connect the Highest in the universe with the highest in himself; degree, not kind, quantity, not quality, distinguishes the two. The faith which had resulted from the more or less uncon

scious and collective action of the religious instincts, resulted also from the conscious and deliberate deductions of the reason-the faith that, while the body dies, the man survives.

VI. THE LYRIC AND TRAGIC POETS.

While philosophy was pursuing its quest after ultimate and necessary truth, and succeeding by failure, poetry was giving the most perfect expression possible to the living and creative thought of the people. Each represented in a different way the Greek mind-the one its inquisitive and intellectual side, the other its ideal and ethical. Philosophy was more individual; poetry more national. The first was a search after elements above and behind the accepted faith; the second, a growth from seeds contained in it. While, then, philosophy was the beginning of a new, poetry was the continuation of the old, cycle of Greek spiritual development. The two cycles could not fail now and then to touch, and even to blend, but in general their course was parallel, not identical, the one using the mythology of the past as the vehicle of the religious and ethical thought of the present, the other seeking to frame for the future terms to express universal and necessary truth. Hence we must trace in this section the growth of thought in the poetic sphere, so as to bring it abreast of the philosophic.

1. THE LYRIC POETS.

The earlier and minor lyric poets need not be examined. Their significance is political rather than religious. In general, what Bunsen says of Solon may be said of the others. They by no means deny or call in question the punishment of the evil-doer after death, but they are silent on the point.* Otherwise is it with Pindar. He is the pre-eminent religious poet of Greece, penetrated by the sense of the divine in man and nature, inspired by the highest religious ideas of the past and present. The Eleusinian mysteries, the Orphic theosophy, the new-born philosophy, have combined to purify and ennoble his faith. His theology is almost infinitely higher than the Homeric. Olympos has ceased to be in a state of chronic feud. The old names denote new deities. But our belief is the point where the contrast with Homer becomes sharpest. While mortal man is but the dream of a shadow (σkiâs ovap),§ his soul, the edwλov, lives in death, for it alone is from God. "The soul of man is immortal, and at one time Il

has an end, which is termed dying, and at another is

† See Bunsen's admirable chapter on Pindar, "God in Hist.,” ii. 132

ff.; Nägelsbach, "Nach-Hom. Theol.," 405-407.

K. O. Müller, "Hist. of Lit. of Anc. Gr.," i. 304.

§ "Pythia," viii. 136 (Heyne's ed., 1798).

"Fragm. ex Threnis," ii. 5.

born again, but never perishes.'

It was meant to

attain progressive happiness through progressive holiness. The souls of the impious, remote from heaven, flit in murderous pain beneath the inevitable yoke of woe; but the souls of the pious dwell in heaven, chanting hymns. Once sin is expiated, the soul returns to earth and becomes a king, or a man great in might or wisdom, a saint to after-ages; and death is followed by a happy life in Hades with the honoured of the gods. Then once they have been thrice tried by birth and death and kept their souls free from sin, they "ascend the path of Zeus to the tower of Kronos, where the Islands of the Blest are refreshed by the breezes of ocean, and golden flowers glitter."§

2. THE TRAGIC POETS.

The Dramas of Eschylos are more distinctly national, i.e., Homeric, than the odes of Pindar; mirror better the then faith of the people, unmodified by Orphic or other alien influences. Yet to Eschylos the soul has ceased to be a shadow. The mighty jaws of fire cannot consume the spirit of the dead. The dead are actual and potent

*Plato, "Meno," i. p. 81.

"Fragm. ex Threnis," iii.

Olymp.," ii. 123-130. But see also lines 103-144.

Ib., iv. See also Plato, "Meno," ut supra.

|| See the beautiful essay of Mr. Westcott on "Eschylos as a Religious

Teacher," Contemporary Review, vol. iii. pp. 351–373.

"Choeph.," 316.