FHOM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 



15 



pass unheeded till they collide with the popular creed, 

 and. in thus attacking the gods, attack a seemingly 

 divinely settled order. Athens then, and long after, 

 while indifferent about natural science, was, under 

 the influence of the revival referred to above, actively 

 hostile to free thinking. The opinions of Anax- 

 agoras struck at the existence of the gods and 

 emptied Olympus. If the sky was but an air-filled 

 space, what became of Zeus? if the sun was only a 

 fiery ball, what became of Apollo? Mr. Grote says 

 (History of Greece, vol. i, p. 466) that " in the view 

 of the early Greek, the description of the sun, as 

 given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have 

 appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im- 

 pious; even in later times, Anaxagoras and other 

 astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for 

 dispersonifying Helios." Of Socrates, who was him- 

 self condemned to death for impiety in denying old 

 gods and introducing news ones, the same authority 

 writes : " Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, be- 

 longed to the divine class of phenomena, in which 

 human research was insane, fruitless, and impious." 

 So Demos and his " betters " clung, as the majority 

 still cling, to the myths of their forefathers. They re- 

 paired to the oracles, and watched for the will of the 

 gods in signs and omens. 



In his philosophy Anaxagoras held that there 

 was a portion of everything in everything, and that 

 things are variously mixed in infinite numbers of 

 seeds, each after its kind. From these, through the 



