HEIDEL. — IL-pi 4>v<T€WS. 89 



anthropomorphic passions, ill comported with the growth of reason 

 which demanded submission to universal law. Greek religion experi- 

 enced the inevitable conflict between the imagination, the flowering of 

 the capricious faculties of youth, and the reflective reason, in which the 

 maturing powers assert their right to fixed habits of thought. 



Now cpvarioXoyia is simply Ao'yos or to-Topta 7rept </>vcrews, — the child 

 of the maturing age which set itself to discard or disregard childish 

 things and to see things as they are. Thus Aoyos -n-epl <f>vo-ews succeeds 

 jxvdo<; iTcpl 6ewv. The transition is natural ; but it involves an element 

 of opposition which could not help but be painful and even bitter as 

 the extent and bearings of the inevitable conflict came to consciousness. 

 The history of pre-Socratic philosophy is the history of this conflict ; 

 but the opposition was not final. The strain of conflicting ideals re- 

 sulted in a new synthesis. Plato and Aristotle sought to effect such 

 a synthesis, and the endeavor to perfect it is the characteristic of 

 the main current of post- Aristotelian philosophy from the Stoics to 

 Plotinus. 



Gibbon's saying, 39 " Freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowl- 

 edge," nowhere finds fuller application or illustration than in the history 

 of Greek philosophical thought ; and nowhere did the early Greek 

 thinkers so much feel the need of asserting their freedom as in the 

 sphere of opinion where there was an actual or possible clash with the 

 received theology in the guise of fivOos. From the first, philosophers 

 had broken with it in intention, however much haunted they might 

 have been individually or collectively by presuppositions formulated in 

 their mythology. It should occasion no surprise to find inconsisten- 

 cies and lapses from their principles ; for such are common in all ages, 

 because of the imperfect fluidity of the mental content, which refuses 

 to be reshaped at a cast. Nor should we expect to find the principles 

 operating to the regeneration of thought explicitly stated at the be- 

 ginning : it is the rule that the clear enunciation of principles follows, 

 often tardily, the tacit application of them. Plato speaks of the ancient 

 feud between poetry and philosophy ; and the point of contention con- 

 cerns f*.v8os. i0 Plato also well expresses the fundamental difference be- 

 tween the two. To him the poet is a 6e7os di^p, 41 a seer who works by 

 inspiration ; 42 the philosopher must follow the argument, even against 



39 Decline and Fall, ch. 66. 



40 Repub. 607 B. See Adam's note ad loc. and The Religious Teachers of Greece, 

 2 foil., 401 foil. 



41 Repub. 368 A (with Adam's note). 



42 Apol. 22 A foil., etc. 



