FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 15 



pass unheeded till they collide with the popular creed, 

 and in thus attacking the gods, attack a seemingly 

 divinely settled order. Athens- then, and long after, 

 while indifferent about natural science, was, under 

 the influence of the revival referred to above, actively 

 hostile to free thinking. The opinions of Anax- 

 agoras struck at the existence of the gods and 

 emptied Olympus. If the sky was but an air-filled 

 space, what became of Zeus? if the sun was only a 

 fiery ball, what became of Apollo? Mr. Grote says 

 (History of Greece, vol. i, p. 466) that " in the view 

 of the early Greek, the description of the sun, as 

 given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have 

 appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im- 

 pious; even in later times, Anaxagoras and other 

 astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for 

 dispersonifying Helios." Of Socrates, who was him- 

 self condemned to death for impiety in denying old 

 gods and introducing news ones, the same authority 

 writes: " Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, be- 

 longed to the divine class of phenomena, in which 

 human research was insane, fruitless, and impious." 

 So Demos and his " betters " clung, as the majority 

 still cling, to the myths of their forefathers. They re- 

 paired to the oracles, and watched for the will of the 

 gods in signs and omens. 



In his philosophy Anaxagoras held that there 

 was a portion of everything in everything, and that 

 things are variously mixed in infinite numbers of 

 seeds, each after its kind. From these, through the 



