84 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



tinguish these interesting early thinkers from the illustrious company 

 of the philosophers, headed by Thales, as if they belonged to different 

 orders of existence. Certain it is that Aristotle was not aware of any 

 such fundamental difference. " Even a lover of myth," he says, 19 " is 

 in a sense a philosopher." Thales he calls the founder of the school of 

 philosophy which inquires into the material cause of things ; but he 

 adds, 20 almost in the same breath, that "some think that the ancients 

 who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts 

 of the gods, had a similar view of nature." By late writers no distinc- 

 tion whatever is made between the two classes of thinkers ; thus Hip- 

 polytus says, 21 "The poet Hesiod himself declares that he thus heard 

 the Muses speak Ilepl <£iWos." Plato, on the other hand, says in a 

 playful vein of the early philosophers, 22 " Each appears to me to re- 

 count a myth for our entertainment, as if we were children. One says 

 that the things that are are three in number, and that certain of these 

 somehow go to war with one another from time to time ; then again 

 they become reconciled, contract marriages, beget children, and rear 

 their offspring. Another says there is a pair, — Moist and Dry, or 

 Hot and Cold, — and gives away the bride and lets the pair cohabit. 

 The Eleatic tribe out our way, however, going back to Xenophanes and 

 even farther, recounts its tales as if all beings, so called, were one." 

 However we may interpret the passage in detail, it is obvious that 

 Plato notes and emphasizes the fundamental identity in point of view 

 between the early cosmogonists and the golden tribe of philosophers. 

 He shows how easy it is to state philosophical conceptions in mytho- 

 logical terms, and suggests by implication that the opposite procedure 

 is equally easy. 



Aristotle also clearly correlates 6eo\6yoi and 6coXoyCa with <}>v<rio\6yoi 

 and <t>vo-Lo\oyLa in such sort as to show that in his view words and 

 concepts run alike parallel. 23 He likens the earliest philosophy to a 

 lisping child, 24 and makes repeated attempts to restate in more accept- 

 able form the opinions of his predecessors. 25 He would doubtless have 



19 Met. 982 b 18. 



20 Met. 983 b 20 and 27 foil., transl. Eoss. It is noteworthy that, though Aris- 

 totle does not expressly assent to the interpretation of the myth, he evidently has 

 no thought of refuting it. 



21 Philos. 26 (Diels, Dox. 574, 14). 



22 Plato, Soph. 242 C. For this passage see Diels, Vorsokr., 2 40, § 29. 



23 Cp., e.g., Met. 1071 b 26 foil., 1075 b 26 foil. 



24 Met. 993° 15 foil. Cp. the interesting prelude to the myth, Plato, Polit. 268 E. 

 This conception powerfully stimulated the tendency to allegorical interpretation, and 

 accounts for Aristotle's freedom in reinterpreting his predecessors. 



25 I directed attention to several instances of somewhat violent reinterpretation 



