expounded by Anaxagoras, that we can have no hesitation in receiving them as authentic. We will not pretend to penetrate into the darkness which envelopes the earlier era of the Ionic school while it remained in Asia Minor, or to decide whether the philosopher of Miletus really believed that WATER was the great principle of all things; that the earth was water condensed, air the same element rarified, and that from air was engendered fire. It seems clear that no authentic writings of Thales survived even to the time of Aristotle, nor is it at all certain that he ever committed his philosophy to writing. Diogenes Laertius appears to speak of Anaxagoras as the first who composed a treatise of philosophy. The opinions of Anaxagoras therefore were well known; those of Thales, and his two immediate successors, Anaximander and Anaximenes (preserved only by vague tradition in Ionia) were probably as imperfectly known at Athens as those which Pythagoras had taught in Italy, and which were already becoming an enigma in Greece even in the fourth century before the Christian era. If Thales really were the author of the paradoxical opinion that fire was produced from water, we may charitably attribute it rather to the condition of Greece in his day than to his own conviction. It was, perhaps, necessary to arouse the attention of the people by some startling assertion, in order to induce them to listen to the more solid doctrines which he had ultimately to propound. For this reason, Thales might represent fire as engendered from water; and Heraclitus, determined to excel him, might insist that water was engendered from fire. Every sect in Greece had its paradoxes, and without them we may presume that they would scarcely have obtained hearers. What we know with certainty is, that when Anaxagoras taught the Ionic philosophy on the west of the Ægean, he represented chaos as the first condition of things, and it seems reasonable to suppose that he derived this doctrine from the founders of his sect. The opinions of Thales as to the existence of a God and the immortality of the soul, are also matters of doubt and discussion, and in all probability were greatly misrepresented at a later age. The atheism of the early Ionian school scems clearly established by the evidence of Aristotle, and the bye-name bestowed upon Anaxagoras. The founder of the Lyceum represents Anaxagoras, compared to previous philosophers, as a sober man among a crowd of drunken enthusiasts. While his predecessors regarded only the materials of which the world was composed, he for the first time (observes Aristotle) assigns an NEW SERIES.-VOL. I., NO. I. D intentional and intelligent cause to the arrangement of the cosmos. The weak point of the Ionic philosophy was quickly discovered at Athens, and the acute Athenians probably laughed at the idea that fire, air, earth, and water, after having been intermixed from all eternity in one confused mass, should è§aípuns, and without any assignable cause (which had not at all times previously been equally operative), separate and arrange themselves into an order so harmonious and beautiful as to excite the admiration of the wisest of men, and to surpass by its vastness and perfection the utmost power of humanity to estimate and describe. To call in the aid of chance was merely to accumulate words without increasing ideas. In order to remedy this great flaw in his philosophy, Anaxagoras introduces for the first time the doctrine of a motive power in the arrangement of matter, which he termed vous, or mind. Πάντα χρήματα ἦν ὁμοῦ (said the philosopher, in the beginning of his great work) eta voûs ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε. This addition of the νοῦς,— “ Ὃς εξαπίνης ἐπαγείρας Πάντα συνεσφήκωσεν ὁμοῦ τεταραγμένα πρόσθεν,” gained for its author the bye-name of Nous, which at once records the innovation of the philosopher, and attests the previous atheism of the Ionic philosophy. In reality, however, the nous of Anaxagoras added little or nothing of sounder doctrine to the atheism of his predecessors. It was a concession forced upon him rather than a voluntary escape from error. His Mind or Intelligence was merely a substitute for a deity which he did not choose to admit. It does not appear to have been represented as intermixed with matter in the original chaos, but as existing apart and acceding (ev) to the chaos for the purpose of arranging it. But what the nous was, where it had previously existed, -what were its powers and attributes, of all these we are totally ignorant, and it is probable that the Athenians, who listened to Anaxagoras, remained in as great ignorance as ourselves. We only know that it was not God, but a bar interposed to render unnecessary the action of a deity. Others of the Grecian philosophers rejected the vous, and substituted púois, the natura of the Latins. This was even more ridiculous than the nous, and in reality reduced the motive principle to its original nullity. Upon the whole, therefore, we may perhaps (without being too rash) assume that the chaotic theory, and the negation of a God, were, from the first, the doctrines of the Ionic school, and that these doctrines were borrowed by Thales from the priests of Egypt, from whom he is admitted to have derived his philosophy. If it be asked why we thus disentomb the "dry bones" (as Dr. Stanley might term them)" of the oldest system of Grecian philosophy, the reply is obvious, that, in the age of Darwinian speculations upon the origin of species, it may be useful to induce our atheistic philosophers to compare their ideas upon the important subject of cosmogony and the origin of the human race, with those of two great nations of antiquity. If the primeval chaos appear to modern science an irrational dogma, let it examine its own theories in a manner equally unprejudiced; and they may eventually appear not less ridiculous. There is at least a nous to animate and enlighten the philosophy of Anaxagoras; but it would be difficult to discover anything like nous in the system of Darwin. CHAP. II. Grecian Polytheism, and its treatment by the Poets. According to the common chronological systems, Thales was born in the second year of the thirty-fifth Olympiad, B.c. 639, and died in the first year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, B.C. 548. But long before the Egyptian system of physics was taught methodically in the schools of Ionia, the doctrine of an original chaos had passed from the Nile into Greece, and had introduced the atheism which was its natural concomitant. We discover it first in the writings of the poets, and particularly in the theogony of Hesiod, who flourished, according to the Arundel marbles, about 944 years B.C. To Hesiod and Homer has been attributed the invention of the poetic theology of the Greeks, of which atheism was the basis and fable the superstructure. Herodotus treats the origin of this theology as a matter of yesterday. But though he speaks thus lightly of a period which he himself estimated at about four hundred years, it was a yesterday which he and his contemporaries knew only through the medium of wild fiction, and absurd and contradictory traditions. We must found our notions of the early history of Greece upon such lights as we can collect from the science of ethnology, and from a careful scrutiny of the various traditions of nations. "Dr. Stanley, in the commencement to his Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, compares ecclesiastical history, as it is treated by some writers, to the valley of dry bones described in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel. In order to "lay sinews" upon the bones, and "bring up flesh upon them,” he enlivens his work by the introduction of characteristic traits, local descriptions, anecdotes, etc. By this mode of treating the subject he has of course produced an amusing work. His lectures, though very far from equal either in learning or in original investigation to the elder D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, remind us of those very agreeable volumes. The Greek nation appears to have been composed of two distinct races; the Hellenes (who were probably Teutonic, and the original settlers), and the Pelasgi, who were certainly Semitic (probably from the borders of Assyria), and who, entering Greece as conquerors, became intermixed with the old inhabitants. The Greek language was formed from the intermixture of Teutonic and Semitic caused by this conquest. [?] In addition to these two original stems were colonies from Phoenicia and Egypt; the latter of whom may, perhaps, notwithstanding learned opinions to the contrary, be all placed during the dynasties of the Hyksos (or shepherd kings), for, at any other period, the Egyptians seem to have been little imbued with the spirit of colonization. The original deities of Greece were therefore most probably a medley of the Teutonic, Assyrian (the Phoenician being nearly the same as the Assyrian) and the Egyptian theologies. Among these, we think, the Assyrian or Phoenician predominated; although Herodotus (from very doubtful sources of information) gives the preference to the Egyptian. In the following statement he is entitled to more credence :"Whence the gods severally sprang, whether or no they had all existed from eternity, what forms they bore-these are questions of which the Greeks knew nothing till the other day, so to speak. For Homer and Hesiod were the first to compose theogonies, and give the gods their epithets, to allot them their several offices and occupations, and they lived but four hundred years before my time, as I believe. As for the poets, who are thought by some to be earlier than these, they are in my judgment decidedly later writers." 990 It will easily be seen how much meaning may be deduced from this passage of Herodotus. It seems to assume that almost everything which Greece believed of its deities, beyond the bare names, was a mere poetical dream. It attributes to the ancient poets of Greece such a vast influence, as to have completely modified and cast in their own mould the manners, religion, and mode of thinking of a whole nation. And, lastly, it would lead us (independent of the evident proof from their own writings) to infer that both Hesiod and Homer were atheists; for a sincere polytheist would neither invent new deities, nor attach any degrading legends to the old. This, however, we shall shew to have been the constant practice of Homer and Hesiod, in which they were followed by most of the subsequent poets of their nation. We propose, therefore, in the present chapter to con • Herodotus, ii., 53. sider: 1. The theological system of the Grecian poets, and the inherent evidence that it was based on atheism; and, 2. The views of Homer with respect to the Grecian Hades, and the future state of mortals after death. Sect. I. The Theology of the Grecian Poets.-The earliest complete system of Grecian theogony which has survived to modern times, is that of Hesiod. The Ascræan poet was evidently acquainted with the fundamental principles of the Egyptian philosophy, which might either have been imported into Greece before his time by the colonies from the land of Kemè, or introduced by some of that class of wandering philosophers who, from the earliest antiquity, had visited distant nations in search of knowledge. To the chaotic system of Egypt he adapted the rude Pantheon of the Greeks, connecting the whole (after his fashion) by a genealogy of the deities, and a superstructure of poetic fable. At the opening of his poem, the Muses are described as finding him feeding his flock at the foot of Mount Helicon. They bestow upon him as a sceptre a branch of green laurel, and bid him to celebrate the race of immortals. Thus authorized, or rather commanded, the poet expounds in verse to the Grecian world the history of the deities. The commencement of his system explains the whole. I. "First of all things was chaos." Chaos existed before the first of the gods, and as chaos could not make itself, it must have been eternal, while the gods (a race of yesterday) sprung from its womb. This is both Egyptian in its philosophy, and atheistic in its spirit. II. From chaos sprung the Earth (the solid seat of the immortals, who possess the summit of snowy Olympus), and dark Tartarus, in the recess [or most retired part] of the earth, and Love. III. From Earth proceeded Heaven, and Ocean; and, Such is the veil which Hesiod throws over his atheistic theory. By this he meant the initiated to understand, that chaos was the original of all things, and that earth, ocean, and heaven sprung from chaos, by the fortuitous adhesion of congenial elements,-which, in poetic phrase, he calls Love. To this philosophical system, he adds (as a fabulous superstructure for the vulgar), the gods and their theogony. But the gods (according to the system of Hesiod, and which all Greece adopted from him) were a race adverse to men-a sort of modification of the Evil principle. P Theogon., v., 116. |