Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/401

 STUDY OF IMPERSONAL NAIUEE. 369 elemental analysis of Thales the one unchangeable cosmic sub- stance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggest- ed by Xenophanes, and the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of Pythagoras, all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in nature either independent of willing or designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispen- sable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. Xenophanes disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pro- nounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong, in affirmations respecting them i 1 while Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tenden- cies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became diffused throughout Greece in the sixth century before the Chris- tian aera. This was another point which placed him in antipathy with the simple, unconscious and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legends. If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phenomena of nature to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substitut- ing metaphysical eideola in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories we must remember that nothing else could be expected from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevita- ble law of intellectual progress. 2 At present, we have to compart. 1 Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric, vii. 50 ; riii. 326. Kal rd /j.sv ovv trapef ovrif uvrjp Idsv, oiire rt$ kariv 'Elduf afMpl dsuv re Kal uaaa Aeyo irspl irdvruv El -yap Kal TtJ fiaXtara TV%OI rereAeff^evov elir&v, Aurof ofiuf OVK oldc, J6/cof d' ircl Tract rerwcrfci. Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane, Zenone, et Georgii, capp. 1-2. VOL.I. 16* 24oc
 * See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (Cours de Philosophic Positive), and