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 

 embodiments 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 con- 

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

 arose out of the conditions of life in the Asiatic col- 

 onies. 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 to- 

 wards that arbitrament of force which settles most 

 political questions. The marvellous speculative fac- 

 ulty, latent in the Ionian, had come in contact with 

 Mesopotamian, Egjrptian, 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 



