Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/262

 later age the sense of a less ignorant community would not be revolted by incredible details as to the personal intervention of divinities in the history of their progenitors when such events were relegated to a dimly realized past. But, although a belief in revelation as seen through the mists of antiquity prevails readily at all times among the unthinking masses, a spirit of scepticism and inquiry arises with the advent of civilization and increases concurrently with the vigour of its growth. Then the national mythology is submitted to the test of a dispassionate logic, and its crude constituents become more and more rejected by the sagacity of a cultured class. They, however, always hitherto an inconsiderable minority, feel constrained to an indulgence more or less qualified of the superstitions of the vulgar for fear of disturbing the political harmony of the state.

The early Greek philosophers awoke into life to find themselves endowed with vast intelligence in a world of which they knew nothing. No record of the past, no forecast of the future disturbed the serenity of their intellectual horizon. In a more aesthetic environment they renewed the impulse to interpret nature with a finer sense of congruity than was possessed by their rude ancestors, but their methods were identical, and they believed they could advance beyond the bounds of experience by the exercise of a vivid imagination. The coarse myths of polytheism were thrust aside, and the void was filled with fantastic cosmogonies, some of which included, whilst others dispensed with, the agency of a Deity. The truth and*