i THALES TO LUCRETIUS 29 



during the last sixty years, has done little more 

 than fill in the outline which the insight of Lucretius 

 enabled him to sketch. As to the second, he 

 anticipates, well-nigh in detail, the ghost-theory of 

 the origin of belief in spirits generally which Herbert 

 Spencer and Dr. Tylor, following the lines laid down 

 by Hobbes, Hume, and Turgot, have formulated, 

 and sustained by an enormous mass of evidence. 

 The credit thus due to Lucretius for the original 

 ideas in his majestic poem Greek in conception, and 

 Roman in execution has been obscured in the general 

 eclipse which that poem suffered for centuries through 

 its anti-theological spirit. Grinding at the same 

 philosophical mill, Aristotle, because of the theism 

 assumed to be involved in his 'perfecting principle/ 

 was cited as * a pillar of the faith ' by the Fathers 

 and Schoolmen ; while Lucretius, because of his 

 denial of design, was * anathema maranatha.' Only 

 in these days, when the far-reaching effects of the 

 Theory of Evolution, supported by observation in 

 every branch of enquiry, are apparent, are the merits 

 of Lucretius as an original seer, more than as an 

 expounder of the teachings of Empedocles and 

 Epicurus, made clear. 



Standing well-nigh on the threshold of the 

 Christian era, we may pause to ask what is the sum 

 of the speculation into the causes and nature of 

 things which, begun in Ionia by Thales (with impulse 

 more or less slight from the East, in the sixth century 

 before Christ), ceased, for many centuries, in the 

 poem of Lucretius, thus covering an active period 

 of about five hundred years. The caution not to 



