taken here. But it is, nevertheless, necessary to outline very 

 briefly the religious conditions which prevailed in Greece when, 

 according to Aristotle, that change arose which produced what 

 has been called philosophy. This is necessary for two reasons. 

 First, it will help to differentiate the philosophical attitude from 

 that which preceded it. What were the features which made the 

 work of Thales, apparently, so different from that of Homer and 

 Hesiod? We say the atmosphere we breathe when we study the 

 Ion an philosophers is purer and clearer. What is meant by 

 this figurative language? An outline of the earlier periods should 

 answer this question. Secondly, such an outline is necessary 

 because, in seeking a definition of science, it is highly important 

 to study it in its first vague glimmerings. And, though this re- 

 ligious history may seem at first sight a veritable jungle-land of 

 contradictory myths and legends, yet there is to be seen amid 

 "the dark primaeval tangle of desires and fears and dreams" 

 the ever fascinating struggle of mankind toward clearer vision. 

 In that struggle, be it religious, moral or intellectual, man is always 

 exhibiting that attitude of mind which, after our investigation, we 

 shall be enabled to term scientific. 



It has been the custom, too frequently, to relegate to pre- 

 historic darkness the pre-Homeric era. It is still, no doubt, in 

 many ways, a region misty and half-lit. Recent literature, how- 

 ever, has been emphasizing its importance, and modern scholar- 

 ship has been able to trace out with some fair degree of accuracy 

 many of the customs and magical rites which prevailed long before 

 Olympus was peopled with the gods of Homer. Gilbert Murray 1 

 calls the first stage of religious growth among the Greeks, Primi- 

 tive Euetheia or the Age of Ignorance. Dr. Preuss has applied 

 to the same period the word Urdummheit or Primal Stupidity. 

 In man's long toiling upward, that age, however, was, doubtless, 

 a great advance upon earlier periods of which nothing is known. 

 In regarding the efforts of men, who have lived in the past, there is 

 need of a spirit of generosity, or, rather, of simple honesty, which 

 sees in their strivings earnest efforts after the better. However, 

 the name, by which that early stage in the development of Greek 

 religion is denoted, matters nothing, if only the investigation be 



1 Four Stages of Greek Religion. 



