.NOTES 53 



Note 12 (p. 22). 



There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of 

 ancient lore, are more easily entangled, than that which is spread 

 by the similarity of the language of antiquity to modern 

 modes of expression. I do not presume to interpret the 

 obscurest of Greek philosophers ; all I wish is to point out, 

 that his words, in the sense accepted by competent interpreters, 

 fit modern ideas singularly well. 



So far as the general theory of evolution goes there is no 

 difficulty. The aphorism about the river ; the figure of the child 

 playing on the shore ; the kingship and fatherhood of strife seem 

 decisive. The 68os avw KU.TID (JLLTJ expresses, with singular aptness, 

 the cyclical aspect of the one process of organic evolution in 

 individual plants and animals ; yet it may be a question 

 whether the Heracleitean strife included any distinct conception 

 of the struggle for existence. Again, it is tempting to compare 

 the part played by the Heracleitean ' fire ' with that ascribed by 

 the moderns to heat, or rather to that cause of motion of which 

 heat is one expression ; and a little ingenuity might find a 

 foreshadowing of the doctrine of the conservation of energy, in 

 the saying that all the things are changed into fire and fire into 

 all things, as gold into goods and goods into gold. 



Note 13 (p. 23). 

 Pope's lines in the ' Essay on Man.' (Ep. i., 267 8.) 



" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 

 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul," 



simply paraphrase Seneca's " queui in hoc mundo locum deus 

 obtinet, hunc in homine animus : quod est illic materia, id nobis 

 corpus est." (Ep. Ixv. 24) ; which again is a Latin version of 

 the old Stoical doctrine, eis Q.TTO.V rov KOV^OV /xe'pos SI^KCI 6 vovs, 

 KadaTTfp a<j> i^u,a>v rj i(/v^r], 



So far as testimony for the universality of what ordinary 

 people call ' evil,' goes, there is nothing better than the writings 

 of the Stoics themselves. They might serve as a storehouse for the 

 epigrams of the ultra-pessimists. Heracleitus (circa 500 B.C.) says 

 just as hard things about ordinary humanity as his disciples 



