Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/402

 370 HISTORY OF GREECE. them only with that state of the Greek mind' which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed among superior men ; but the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them ; and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the gods, to whom they were constantly praying for special succor and blessings. The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point of view was dealt with differently by different philosophers. Thus Socrates openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. He distributed phenomena into two class- es : one, wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was invariable and ascertainable by human study, and therefore fu- ture results accessible to a well-instructed foresight ; the other, and those, too, the most comprehensive and important, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their own unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable se- quence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some omen, prophecy, or other special inspired communication from themselves. Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and required to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radically in- compatible with the other. Socrates held it wrong to apply the scientific interpretation to the latter, or the theological interpre- tation to the former. Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, his doctrine of the three successive stages of the human mind in reference to scientific study the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive ; a doctrine laid down generally in his first lecture (vol. i. p. 4-12), and largely applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is also re-stated and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, vol. ii. p. 610. 1 " Human wisdom (('iv&puTclvi] aoipia), as contrasted with the primitiva theology (oi upxaloi KO.I 6iarpipovTrf irepl ruf fteohoyiaf)," to take the word* of Aristotle (Meteo->log. ii. 1. pp. 41-42, ed. Tauchnitz).