SCIENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 33 



and sciences to the gods and demi-gods, who are 

 always ready to appear among men, to build their 

 cities, and to beget heroes to be the fathers of the 

 nations, and to outwit the ancient shadowy powers, 

 looming distressfully in the background. 



As far back as the year 546 before Christ, the philo- 

 sophical poet, Xenophanes of Colophon, recognized 

 that, whether or no it be true that God made man in 

 His own image, it is quite certain that man makes 

 gods in his. And from the gods of the old Greek 

 mythology we get an insight into the genius of the 

 Greek that nothing else can give. We see the picture 

 of a race, false, boastful and licentious perhaps, but 

 with a sense of beauty, a confident joy in life, a 

 warmth of affection that bespeak a gallant, vigorous, 

 open-hearted, conquering people, a people of extra- 

 ordinarily brilliant original intellectual endowment, 

 tempered and purified by the rigours of the North, 

 and then placed in a land of glorious beauty, where 

 the wine-dark sea brought the trade and knowledge 

 of the world to their doors, where the climate smiled 

 upon their fortified homesteads, where abundant 

 slaves made life easy, and gave leisure for the 

 growth of the highest forms of philosophy, literature 

 and art. 



The main function of the Greek religion, as of 



many others, was to interpret nature and its processes 



Religion and m terms which could be understood 



Philosophy, to make man feel at home in the 



world. The animistic conceptions in which it was 



expressed were of unusual beauty and insight. Each 



fountain lived in its nymph, each wood in its dryad. 



3 



