52 NOTES 



istic supernaturalisms are apt to play a large part among the 

 generative agencies of naturalism. 



Thus, various external influences may have contributed to the 

 rise of philosophy among the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century. 

 But the assimilative capacity of the Greek mind its power of 

 Hellenizing whatever it touched has here worked so effectually, 

 that so far as I can learn, no indubitable traces of such 

 extraneous contributions are now allowed to exist by the most 

 authoritative historians of Philosophy. Nevertheless, I think 

 it must be admitted that the coincidences between the 

 Heracleito-stoical doctrines and those of the older Hindu 

 philosophy are extremely remarkable. In both, the cosmos 

 pursues an eternal succession of cyclical changes. The great 

 year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire cycle from 

 the origin of the universe as a fluid, to its dissolution 

 in fire " Humor initium, ignis exitus mundi," as Seneca 

 has it. In both systems, 'there is immanent in the cosmos 

 a source of energy, Brahma, or the Logos, which works 

 according to fixed laws. The individual soul is an efflux of 

 this world-spirit and returns to it. Perfection is attainable 

 only by individual effort, through ascetic discipline, and is rather 

 a state of painlessness than of happiness ; if indeed it can be 

 said to be a state of anything, save the negation of perturbing 

 emotion. The hatchment motto " In Coelo Quies " would serve 

 both Hindu and Stoic ; and absolute quiet is not easily dis- 

 tinguishable from annihilation. 



Zoroasterism, which, geographically, occupies a position inter- 

 mediate between Hellenism and Hinduism, agrees with the latter 

 in recognizing the essential evil of the cosmos ; but differs from 

 both in its intensely anthropomorphic personification of the two 

 antagonistic principles, to the one of which it ascribes all the 

 good ; and, to the other, all the evil. In fact, it assumes 

 the existence of two worlds, one good and one bad ; the latter 

 created by the evil power for the purpose of damaging the 

 former. The existing cosmos is a mere mixture of the two 

 and the ' last judgment ' is a root and branch extirpation of the 

 work of Ahriman. 



