Hades their respective domains. For this principle of Destiny 

 the mystical school cared nothing; behind their philosophy were 

 the troubled forms of Orpheus and Dionysus. Behind the work 

 of Anaximander and the atomists, however, was the Homeric 

 theology, polytheistic and anthropomorphic, but holding to the 

 fatalistic rule of Moira. In his work, "From Religion to Philo- 

 sophy", Cornford sums up in the following paragraph this influence 

 upon what he calls the Ionian Science. The scientific tendency in 

 Greek philosophy and the Olympian theology "are two similar 

 products of the same temperament. Both systems of thought 

 are governed by the notion of Moira, the distribution of the 

 world into spatial provinces. Both are pluralistic, rationalistic, 

 and fatalistic in tendency. Above all both are realistic, in the 

 sense that is opposed to other-worldliness. Science, no matter to 

 what heights of disinterestedness its specific emotion of curiosity 

 may sometimes rise, remains practical from first to last, and for 

 it all value lies in the sense-world. True it will mistake its own 

 conceptual model of atoms and void for the real structure of the 

 universe, and condemn the senses because we cannot see and 

 touch the supersensible. But its affections are never set upon 

 the metaphysical construction; the spectral dance of imaginary, 

 dead particles has n^ver smitten the human soul with home- 

 sickness. The intellect must find its satisfaction in the excitement 

 of pursuit, not in the contemplative fruition of anything it can 

 either discover or invent". 1 Perhaps the strongest single state- 

 ment which remains, that shows the influence of this conception of 

 Moira, is that of Leucippus already quoted, "Nothing happens 

 for nothing but everything from a ground and of necessity." 



It would appear, then, to be a superficial reading of the history 

 of philosophy which sees in these men no influence of the religious 

 conceptions which they had inherited. Just as in a later age the 

 same religious idea took hold of the minds of certain men and made 

 them Predestinarians, so, here, in this tendency, there is ex- 

 hibited the same principle. If we call the mystical school in 

 Greek philosophy, Arminians, then the Milesians and the Atomists 

 are the Calvinists of their day, but it must be remembered that to 

 the Greeks Moira signified not a god with foreknowledge but rather 

 what, to-day, might be called the interdependence of facts. It was 

 Law, supreme alike over nature, men and gods. 



1 Op. Cit. P. 143. 



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