230 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



our own time it has assumed new forms, derived 

 from the rapid progress made in cosmic and ex- 

 perimental sciences, even in those which are ap- 

 parently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in 

 Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, nor is it difficult to trace 

 it in the latest and artificial theories of the schools 

 of Schopenhauer and Hartrnann. In all these cases 

 the entincation of logical conceptions is evident ; in 

 all there is an arbitrary personification of a conception 

 or of a fundamental Idea. 



In order fully to understand the evolution of 

 thought in myth and science, it is necessary to con- 

 sider the other schools which arose in Greece, prior 

 to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall 

 thus obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course 

 of such a development. In addition to the natural 

 and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the Elcatic, the 

 Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of 

 Leucippus, Deinocritus, and Epicurus, which might 

 be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which 

 takes a middle course between the idea and the fact, 

 between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation 

 of the universe. 



In an intellectual people like the Greeks there 

 arose, in addition to the speculative theories already 

 mentioned, other opinions which were derived from 

 minds singularly free from mythical ideas ; the 

 world was considered as a concourse of indepen- 

 dent atoms ; its genesis thus became more conform- 



