94 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



pocrates, 61 and was, apparently, the role assigned by Anaxagoras to his 

 Nous. Disguise it as he might, Aristotle could find no better solution 

 of the problem. Plato 62 puts the question sharply as between God 

 and Nature, and says that the majority favor the latter. Such, indeed, 

 was for the moment the logical outcome of the pre-Socratic movement 

 of thought. It might be allowed that the idea of God was innate ; 63 

 but, like all other ideas, it was more likely to be regarded as having a 

 history, and as requiring explanation along with the other immediate 

 (<£tW) or mediate (y6fxo<;) products of nature. Thus, among others, 

 Critias 64 explained belief in the gods as a deliberate fiction concocted 

 by a clever statesman to enforce morality beyond the reach of the law, 

 supporting it with the natural fears inspired in man by to. fxeriwpa. It 

 is not necessary here to rehearse the familiar story of rationalism as 

 applied to religion in the fifth century, B.C.; 65 but it is not too much 

 to say that philosophy had deliberately enthroned Nature in the place 

 of God. 



But nature, thus completely depersonalized, could not so remain 

 indefinitely. Conceived as the power that brings to pass all the events 

 constituting the sum of experience, nature became in fact a Creator 

 and Governor, only deprived of reason and purpose, and identified 

 with the sum of existence. 66 The Greek mind, with its plastic imagin- 

 ation, was not likely, however, permanently to acquiesce in this imper- 

 sonal view of nature, although <Ko-is was extremely late in attaining 

 personification as a deity. 67 Yet, as we shall see, 68 a good beginning 

 was made in the pre-Socratic period. The transfer of the functions 

 and attributes of the ancient gods to <Pu<m by the philosophers of the 



61 II. diairr]s, I. 11 (6, 486 Littre) <pvaiv 5t wavrwu deoi difKocrnrjaav. 



62 So})h. 265 C fya 5r) iravra 6urjTa. /ecu d'r) /ecu (pvrd . . . fiuiv &\\ov Ttvds i) deov 

 dij/juovpyovvros (pr/aofiev varepov yiyvecrOai vporepov ovk 6vra ; f) T<j> tu>v ttoWwv 56yp.ari 

 ko.1 pT]/j.a.Ti xP^M-woi . . . rrjv (puaiv aura, yewav dirb rtvos alrlas aOro/xdr^s /ecu dvev 

 diavoias <f>vovarjs, t) fiera \6yov re /ecu iiriarrj/uiTji c?e/as airb 6eov yiyvontvys ; 



63 Hippocrates, II. evaxrtlJ-oavvrfs, 6 (9, 234 Littre) /ecu yap ptdXiara 7) irepl Oewu 

 ci'Stjctis ei> v6uj avrrj ipurXifceTai. 



64 In the Satyr drama Sisyphus, fr. 25 (Diels). 



68 See Decharme, La Critique cles Traditions Religieuscs chez les Grecs,\904. 



66 Cp. n. 62. With the necessary additions drawn from that passage the follow- 

 ing definition of <pfois hy Iamblichus (Stobaeus, I. 80, 9 Wachsmuth) well expresses 

 the conception of the pre-Socratics : <pvaiv 5£ \iyu> rr)v axupiarov alriav rod ko<t/j.ov 

 ko.1 axupi-GTws wepUxowa-v rds SXcts airias rrjs yevicreus. Cp. also Hermes (Stobneus 

 I. 289, 26 Wachsmuth) r? (ptiais irdvTwv, cpuovtra. to. yiyvb/xeva, (pvqv (= <pvaiu) irapix ei - 

 ro?s (f>vofxfrots. 



67 See K. Preisendanz, Philologus, xlviii. (1908) pp. 474-5. $wns is worshipped 

 in the tenth Orphic Hymn. 



68 See below, notes 106 foil. 



