II NOTES 107 



the human figure. The ancient Chaldaeans and 

 Egyptians, like the modern Japanese, did wonders in 

 the representation of birds and quadrupeds ; they 

 even attained to something more than respectability 

 in human portraiture. But their utmost efforts never 

 brought them within range of the best Greek embodi- 

 ments of the grace of womanhood, or of the severer 

 beauty of manhood. 



It is worth while to consider the probable effect 

 upon the acute and critical Greek mind of the conflict 

 of ideas, social, political, and theological, which arose 

 out of the conditions of life in the Asiatic colonies. 

 The Ionian polities had passed through the whole 

 gamut of social and political changes, from patriarchal 

 and occasionally oppressive kingship to rowdy and 

 still more burdensome mobship no doubt with 

 infinitely eloquent and copious argumentation, on 

 both sides, at every stage of their progress towards 

 that arbitrament of force which settles most political 

 questions. The marvellous speculative faculty, 

 latent in the Ionian, had come in contact with 

 Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician theologies and 

 cosmogonies ; with the illuminati of Orphism and 

 the fanatics and dreamers of the Mysteries ; possibly 

 with Buddhism and Zoroasterism ; possibly even 

 with Judaism. And it has been observed that the 

 mutual contradictions of antagonistic supernatural- 

 isms are apt to play a large part among the genera- 

 tive agencies of naturalism. 



Thus, various external influences may have con- 

 tributed to the rise of philosophy among the Ionian 

 Greeks of the sixth century. But the assimilative 



