GREEK SCIENCE IN EARLY ATTIC PERIOD 



close friend in a sense the teacher of Pericles and of 

 Euripides. Just how long he remained at Athens is not 

 certain ; but the time came when he had made himself 

 in some way objectionable to the Athenian populace 

 through his teachings. Filled with the spirit of the in- 

 vestigator, he could not accept the current conceptions 

 as to the gods. He was a sceptic, an innovator. 

 Such men are never welcome; they are the chief fac- 

 tors in the progress of thought, but they must look al- 

 ways to posterity for recognition of their worth ; from 

 their contemporaries they receive, not thanks, but per- 

 secution. Sometimes this persecution takes one form, 

 sometimes another; to the credit of the Greeks be it 

 said, that with them it usually led to nothing more 

 severe than banishment. In the case of Anaxagoras, 

 it is alleged that the sentence pronounced was death; 

 but that, thanks to the influence of Pericles, this sen- 

 tence was commuted to banishment. In any event, 

 the aged philosopher was sent away from the city of 

 his adoption. He retired to Lampsacus. "It is not 

 I that have lost the Athenians," he said; "it is the 

 Athenians that have lost me." 



The exact position which Anaxagoras had among his 

 contemporaries, and his exact place in the develop- 

 ment of philosophy, have always been somewhat in 

 dispute. It is not known, of a certainty, that he even 

 held an open school at Athens. Ritter thinks it doubt- 

 ful that he did. It was his fate to be misunderstood, 

 or underestimated, by Aristotle; that in itself would 

 have sufficed greatly to dim his fame might, indeed, 

 have led to his almost entire neglect had he not been 

 a truly remarkable thinker. With most of the ques- 



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