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1~ ss 4 ἴ c ἕἔ ec t é { t : εξ y) : tec - “ εὐ ες ce Pe re Rm | iy: GS BARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated apart.’ II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essen- tially a thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in Custom and Myth, to the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by meta- phors about “the childhood of the race,” though even these, if properly understood, are suggestive enough. Our ideas of the true state of a child’s mind are apt to be coloured by that theory of antenatal existence which has — found, perhaps, its highest expression in Wordsworth’s ? It will be observed that Demokritos falls outside the period thus limited. The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of Sokrates along with the ‘‘ pre-Socratic, philosophers” obscures the true course of historical development. Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, ‘‘ Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has alsoa regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.). INTRODUCTION 3
2Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, ‘‘ Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has alsoa regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.). INTRODUCTION 3 Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. We transfer these ideas to the race generally, and are thus led to think of the men who made and repeated myths as simple, innocent creatures who were somehow nearer than we are to the beginning of things, and so, perhaps, saw with a clearer vision. A truer view of what a child’s thoughts really are will help to put us on the right track. Left to themselves, children are often tormented by vague terrors of surrounding objects which they fear to confide to any one. Their games are based upon an animistic theory of things, and they are great believers in luck and in the lot. They are devotees, too, of that “ cult of odds and ends” which is fetishism ; and the unsightly old dolls which they often cherish more fondly than the choicest products of the toy-shop, remind us forcibly of the ungainly stocks and stones which Pausanias found in the Holy of Holies of many a stately Greek temple. At Sparta the Tyndaridai were a couple of boards, while the old image of Hera at Samos was a roughly-hewn log.) On the other hand, we must remember that, even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the world was already very old. Those Greeks who first tried to understand nature were not at all in the position of men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path, There was already in the field a tolerably consistent view of the world, though no doubt it was rather implied and assumed in ritual and myth than distinctly realised as such. The early thinkers did a far greater thing than merely to make a beginning. By turning their backs on the savage view of things, 1 See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 64; Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 272-276. Traces of the >rimitive _ view in early ᾿ς iterature. 4 EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY they renewed their youth, and with it, as it proved, the youth of the world, at a time when the world seemed in its dotage. The marvel is that they were able to do this so thoroughly as they did. A savage myth might be pre- served here and there to the scandal of philosophers ; fetishes, totems, and magic rites might lurk in holes and corners with the moles and with the bats, to be unearthed long afterwards by the curious in such matters. But the all-pervading superstition, which we call primitive because we know not how or whence it came, was gone for ever ; and we find Herodotos noting with unfeigned surprise the existence among “ barbarians” of beliefs and customs which, not so long ago, his own forefathers had taught and practised quite as zealously as ever did Libyan or Scyth. Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas.
3Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas. III. In one respect the way had been prepared already. Long before history begins, the colonisation of the islands and the coasts of Asia Minor had brought about a state of things that was not favour- able to the rigid maintenance of traditional customs and ways of thought. -A myth is essentially a local thing, and though the emigrants might give the names of ancestral sanctuaries to similar spots in their new homes, they could not transfer with the names the old senti- ment of awe. Besides, these were, on the whole, stir- ring and joyful times. The spirit of adventure is not favourable to superstition, and men whose chief occupation is fighting are not apt to be oppressed by that “fear of the world” which some tell us is the normal state of the savage mind. Even the savage INTRODUCTION becomes in great measure free from it when he is really happy. That is why we find so few traces of the primitive 1. Homer. view of the world in Homer. The gods have become frankly human, and everything savage is, so far as may be, kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of early beliefs and practices, but they are exceptional. In that strange episode of the Fourteenth Book of the /ézad known as The Deceiving of Zeus we find a number of theogonical ideas which are otherwise quite foreign to Homer, but they are treated with so little seriousness that the whole thing has even been re- garded as a parody or burlesque of some primitive poem on the birth of the gods. That, however, is to mistake the spirit of Homer. He finds the old myth ready to his hand, and sees in it matter for a “ joyous tale,” just as Demodokos did in the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. There is no antagonism to traditional views, but rather a complete detachment from them. It has often been noted that Homer never speaks of the primitive custom of purification for bloodshed. The dead heroes are burned, not buried, as the kings of continental Hellas were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In the //ad we have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroklos, in close connexion with the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. All that was part of the traditional story, and Homer says as little about it as he can. There is also the Wekyia in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, which has been assigned to a late date on the ground that it contains Orphic ideas. The reasoning does not appear cogent. As we shall see, the Orphics did not so much invent new ideas as revive old ones, and if the legend took Odysseus to the abode of the See ππἀμὰ 2. Hesiod. 6 EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY dead, that had to be described in accordance with the accepted views about it.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1~ ss 4 ἴ c ἕἔ ec t é { t : εξ y) : tec - “ εὐ ες ce Pe re Rm | iy: GS BARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated apart.’ II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essen- tially a thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in Custom and Myth, to the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by meta- phors about “the childhood of the race,” though even these, if properly understood, are suggestive enough. Our ideas of the true state of a child’s mind are apt to be coloured by that theory of antenatal existence which has — found, perhaps, its highest expression in Wordsworth’s ? It will be observed that Demokritos falls outside the period thus limited. The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of Sokrates along with the ‘‘ pre-Socratic, philosophers” obscures the true course of historical development. Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, ‘‘ Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has alsoa regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.). INTRODUCTION 3
2Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, ‘‘ Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has alsoa regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.). INTRODUCTION 3 Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. We transfer these ideas to the race generally, and are thus led to think of the men who made and repeated myths as simple, innocent creatures who were somehow nearer than we are to the beginning of things, and so, perhaps, saw with a clearer vision. A truer view of what a child’s thoughts really are will help to put us on the right track. Left to themselves, children are often tormented by vague terrors of surrounding objects which they fear to confide to any one. Their games are based upon an animistic theory of things, and they are great believers in luck and in the lot. They are devotees, too, of that “ cult of odds and ends” which is fetishism ; and the unsightly old dolls which they often cherish more fondly than the choicest products of the toy-shop, remind us forcibly of the ungainly stocks and stones which Pausanias found in the Holy of Holies of many a stately Greek temple. At Sparta the Tyndaridai were a couple of boards, while the old image of Hera at Samos was a roughly-hewn log.) On the other hand, we must remember that, even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the world was already very old. Those Greeks who first tried to understand nature were not at all in the position of men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path, There was already in the field a tolerably consistent view of the world, though no doubt it was rather implied and assumed in ritual and myth than distinctly realised as such. The early thinkers did a far greater thing than merely to make a beginning. By turning their backs on the savage view of things, 1 See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 64; Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 272-276. Traces of the >rimitive _ view in early ᾿ς iterature. 4 EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY they renewed their youth, and with it, as it proved, the youth of the world, at a time when the world seemed in its dotage. The marvel is that they were able to do this so thoroughly as they did. A savage myth might be pre- served here and there to the scandal of philosophers ; fetishes, totems, and magic rites might lurk in holes and corners with the moles and with the bats, to be unearthed long afterwards by the curious in such matters. But the all-pervading superstition, which we call primitive because we know not how or whence it came, was gone for ever ; and we find Herodotos noting with unfeigned surprise the existence among “ barbarians” of beliefs and customs which, not so long ago, his own forefathers had taught and practised quite as zealously as ever did Libyan or Scyth. Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas.
3Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas. III. In one respect the way had been prepared already. Long before history begins, the colonisation of the islands and the coasts of Asia Minor had brought about a state of things that was not favour- able to the rigid maintenance of traditional customs and ways of thought. -A myth is essentially a local thing, and though the emigrants might give the names of ancestral sanctuaries to similar spots in their new homes, they could not transfer with the names the old senti- ment of awe. Besides, these were, on the whole, stir- ring and joyful times. The spirit of adventure is not favourable to superstition, and men whose chief occupation is fighting are not apt to be oppressed by that “fear of the world” which some tell us is the normal state of the savage mind. Even the savage INTRODUCTION becomes in great measure free from it when he is really happy. That is why we find so few traces of the primitive 1. Homer. view of the world in Homer. The gods have become frankly human, and everything savage is, so far as may be, kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of early beliefs and practices, but they are exceptional. In that strange episode of the Fourteenth Book of the /ézad known as The Deceiving of Zeus we find a number of theogonical ideas which are otherwise quite foreign to Homer, but they are treated with so little seriousness that the whole thing has even been re- garded as a parody or burlesque of some primitive poem on the birth of the gods. That, however, is to mistake the spirit of Homer. He finds the old myth ready to his hand, and sees in it matter for a “ joyous tale,” just as Demodokos did in the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. There is no antagonism to traditional views, but rather a complete detachment from them. It has often been noted that Homer never speaks of the primitive custom of purification for bloodshed. The dead heroes are burned, not buried, as the kings of continental Hellas were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In the //ad we have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroklos, in close connexion with the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. All that was part of the traditional story, and Homer says as little about it as he can. There is also the Wekyia in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, which has been assigned to a late date on the ground that it contains Orphic ideas. The reasoning does not appear cogent. As we shall see, the Orphics did not so much invent new ideas as revive old ones, and if the legend took Odysseus to the abode of the See ππἀμὰ 2. Hesiod. 6 EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY dead, that had to be described in accordance with the accepted views about it.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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