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ENGLISH POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TB/IO?!
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THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE : A Social History of Industrial America 18/1054

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THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS: From Tholes to Aristotle. TB/ioo8

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THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA. A novel. Intro, by Clinton Oliver TB/IOOS
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TIME OF HOPE. A novel TB/IO4O

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THE NEW TESTAMENT BACKGROUND: Selected Documents TB/86
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THE WORD OF GOD AND THE WORD OF MAN TB/I3
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FORM CRITICISM: Two Essays on New Testament Research. Translated &

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COSMOS AND HISTORY: The Myth of the Eternal Return TB/SO

THE RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS MIND: Kievan Christianity izjjo

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. Introduction by Karl Barth TB/I i

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MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY, FIRST THREE CENTURIES

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THE JOURNALS OF KIERKEGAARD: A Selection. Edited by A. Dru
THE PRESENT AGE. Trans, by A. Dru. Intro, by W. Kaufmann

THE POINT OF VIEW FOR MY WORK AS AN AUTHOR TB/88
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EROM RELIGION
TO PHILOSOPHY

A STUDY IN THE ORIGINS
OF WESTERN SPECULATION

P. M. COBNFOBD

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS
New York and Evanston

To
FRANCIS DARWIN

FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Printed in the United States of America

Reprinted ~by arrangement with Edward Arnold, London

First UABPER TOKCHBOOB: edition published 1957

Library of Congress catalogue card number: 57-10120

PREFACE

THE words, Eeligion and Philosophy, perhaps suggest to most
people two distinct provinces of thought, between which, if
(like the Greeks) we include Science under Philosophy, there
is commonly held to be some sort of border warfare. It is,
however, also possible to think of them as two successive phases,
or modes, of the expression of man's feelings and beliefs about
the world ; and the title of this book implies that our attention
will be fixed on that period, in the history of the western mind,
which marks the passage from the one to the other. It is gener-
ally agreed that the decisive step was taken by the Greeks about
six centuries before our era. At that moment, a new spirit of
rational inquiry asserted its claim to pronounce upon ultimate
things which had hitherto been objects of traditional belief.
What I wish to prove, however, is that the advent of this spirit
did not mean a sudden and complete breach with the older
ways of thought.

There is a real continuity between the earliest rational specula-
tion and the religious representation that lay behind it ; and this
-is no mere matter of superficial analogies, such as the allegorical
equation of the elements with the Gods of popular belief. Philo-
sophy inherited from religion certain great conceptions for
instance, the ideas of ' God/ * Soul/ ' Destiny/ ' Law 'which
continued to circumscribe the movements of rational thought
and to determine their main directions. Religion expresses
itself in poetical symbols and in terms of mythical personalities ;
Philosophy prefers the language of dry abstraction, and speaks
of substance, cause, matt&r, and so forth. But the outward
difference only disguises an inward and substantial affinity
between these two successive products of the same consciousness.
The modes of thought that attain to clear definition and explicit
statement in philosophy were already implicit in the unreasoned
intuitions of mythology. g3251 .21

rt FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Diogenes Laertius groups the philosophers in two successions,
Ionian and Italiote, headed by Anaximander and Pythagoras,
as if the Greeks themselves had divined that two tendencies
had been at work in shaping their systems of thought. This
instinct, as I shall try to show, was right : there were, in fact,
two traditions, which may be called * scientific ' and ' mystical/
moved by two distinguishable impulses along lines diverging,
more and more widely, towards opposite conclusions. These
impulses are still operative in our own speculation, for the simple
reason that they correspond to two permanent needs of human
nature, and characterise two familiar types of human temperament.

In our own time, the scientific tendency has been the more
easily understood and interpreted, because it falls in with
the habit of thought of a scientific age. Driven by a deep-
lying need to master the world by understanding it, science
works steadily towards its goal a perfectly clear conceptual
model of reality, adapted to explain all phenomena by the
simplest formula that can be found. Malheur au vague ; mieux
vaut le faux ! In the Ionian schools of Eastern Greece, science
comes to its fulfilment in Atomism. When we contemplate
the finished result, we see that, in banishing ' the vague/ it has
swept away everything in which another type of mind finds all
the value and significance of the world. The Gods have dis-
appeared ; the Soul is reduced to a dust of material particles ;
in a word, life has gone out of Nature. Such is the predestined
conclusion of a science inspired by the ideal lucidity of geometry,
and neglectful of biology. Admirable as a tool of research into
inorganic nature, it strikes a chill of horror into men of an
opposite temperament, who will not seek the living among the
dead.

The mystical spirit, prompted by a different need, works
along other lines. To Pythagoras, philosophy was not an
engine of curiosity, but a way of life and death. The Western
schools, overshadowed by Pythagoreanism, are rooted in certain
beliefs about the nature of the divine and the destiny of the
human soul. Upon those beliefs their philosophy of nature is
built. Holding, no less strongly than the scientific tradition,
to the characteristically Greek conviction that the world must
be rational, these western philosophies present themselves as a

PREFACE viz

series of attempts to justify faith to reason. Parmenides boldly
condemns the sensible world to unreality, when it seems to
conflict with the logical consequences of religious preconception.
Empedocles expends a wealth of ingenuity in devising a recon-
ciliation with science. Plato sinks in the Titanic effort to stand
with feet on earth and uphold the sky. What most concerns
all three is summed up in the words ' God * and ' Soul * those
very terms which science so complacently dispensed with.

Now, the two tendencies, or temperaments, which, in the series
of philosophical systems, have left so plain a record of their
characteristic aspirations and visions of life and nature, did not
suddenly spring into being in the century of Anaxhnander and
Pythagoras. The philosophic Muse is not a motherless Athena :
if the individual intellect is her father, her older and more
august parent is Religion. Behind Anaximander stands the
Ionian Homer, with his troop of luminous Olympians ; behind
Pythagoras we discern the troubled shapes of Orpheus and
Dionysus. It is natural to suppose that the two philosophic
traditions are severally related to the types of Greek religion
Olympian and Dionysian in which the same contrasted tem-
peraments had framed mythical symbols, to express what
they felt towards the life of nature and the life of man.

Beginning with the scientific tradition, I shall try to prove
that a real thread of continuity can be traced back from the
final achievement of science the representation of a world of
individual atoms, governed by Necessity or Chance to the
final achievement of Olympianism, mirrored in Homer's super-
natural world of individual Gods, subordinate to Destiny
(Moira). This subjection of all individual powers, divine and
human, to Moira is the prof oundest, and (at first sight) the
most baffling, dogma in this type of religion. In the first chap-
ter, I shall attempt an analysis of Moira, working backwards
from Anaximander to Homer and Hesiod, with a view to estab-
lishing the persistence of this conception, right on through the
course of Greek science, in which it holds the place now occupied
by Natural Law.

When we have gone back to Homer, most scholars will think
that we have touched the pillars of Hercules, and that we had
better not pry into the prehistoric darkness, which the accidents

viii FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

of tradition have left blank. But the problem, why the Greeks
believed that the Gods themselves were subject to the moral,
and yet impersonal and purposeless, ordinance of Destiny, is
too fascinating to be abandoned, and lures us to push out into
the misty ocean of hypothesis. The second chapter is the record
of this rash excursion. For our guide we take the theorem,
maintained by the new French school of sociologists, that the
key to religious representation lies in the social structure of the
community which elaborates it. To Professor Emile Durkheim
and his colleagues of the Annee Sodologique * I owe the solution
offered of this fundamental problem of Olympian religion. I
seem to myself, also, to have here found light thrown upon
certain singularly abstract schemes of conception, which persist
throughout ancient philosophy for instance, the grouping of
the four elements, and the separation and reunion of pairs of
contrary qualities. These particular applications of the main
theorem are put forward, not as results established with any
certainty, but rather as illustrations that may suggest to
students with a fuller ethnological and psychological equipment
a line of research hitherto neglected.

One great philosophico-religious concept remains, and that
the most fundamental of all the concept of the ' nature of
things/ Pfiysis. The object called by this name in Greek philo-
sophy is concrete : it is a material continuum, which is also
alive and divine, Soul and God a substance, therefore, invested
with mythical properties. This substance, rather than the
manifold phenomena which Nature presents to us through our
senses, is the primary object of early speculation; and from
its inherent properties, as material, living, and divine, the
various systems can be deduced, according as one or another
interpretation is put upon what those properties imply. I have

1 In particular, Professor Durkheim, 'Representations individuelles et
representations collectives,' Revue de Metaph. et de Morale, vi. (1898),
p. 273; 'Sociologie religieuse et theorie de la connaissance,' ibid. xvii.
(1909) ; De la division du travail social, ed. 3 (1911) ; MM. Durkheim
and Mauss, 'Classifications primitives/ Annexe Sociologique, vi. ; MM.
Hubert and Manas, *The*orie gene'rale de la magie,' Ann. Soc. vii. A
convenient account of Professor Durkheim's work is given by G. Davy, * La
sociologie de M. Durkheim,' Revue Philosophique, xxxvi. (1911), pp. 42-71
and 160-195. I am also indebted to Professor L. Levy-BruhFs Let
fonctions mentales dans les soddles inferieures, 1910.

PREFACE Ix

called it the Datum of Philosophy, to mark that it was not
invented by the philosophers, but derived from a representa-
tion which underlies all the shapes and symbols of religious
thought. The third chapter traces its origin from a magical
stage, older than religion itself, and follows out the process of
its differentiation into the several categories of Greek poly-
theism, especially the contrasted figures of the Mystery God
and the Olympian. The significance of that contrast, between
the religion whose most illustrious symbol was Apollo, and the
mystic faith of the suffering Dionysus, was, by sheer power of
imagination, divined by Friedrich Nietzsche, from a direct
study of the phenomenon of Greek Tragedy. From him we
learnt, in the sphere of art, why it is that Dionysus and Apollo
shared the heights of Parnassus ; but, since his day, fresh
knowledge has been gained, with respect to the problems of
historical genesis. A clear advance in the study of the earlier
phases, not only of Greek religion, but of religion in general,
is marked by the publication of Mss Jane Harrison's Themis
(Cambridge, 1912). I have had the great advantage of going
over all the main points with the author, and I have adopted
many of her conclusions. It is thus possible for me to treat
very briefly a number of points connected with the development
of Greek religion, referring the reader to the source from which
my own knowledge is derived. Mss Harrison's help has also
been of much value in the revision of this book, which may be
regarded as carrying on the same principles of interpretation
into the domain of philosophy.

From the standpoint reached in the third chapter, we seem
able to make out that Philosophy, when she puts aside the
finished products of religion and returns to the t nature of things/
really goes back to that original representation out of which
mythology itself had gathered shape. If we now call it * meta-
physical/ instead of f supernatural/ the thing itself has not
essentially changed its character. What has changed is, rather,
man's attitude towards it, which, from being active and
emotional, has become intellectual and speculative. His earlier,
emotional reaction gave birth to the symbols of myth, to objects
of faith ; his new procedure of critical analysis dissects it into
concepts, from which it deduces various types of systematic

x FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

theory. But in shaping these systems, the standards of value
characteristic of the two opposed temperaments continue to
exercise their unconscious influence, dividing the stream of
thought into those two channels whose cause we shall trace in
the two concluding chapters.

For the convenience of the English reader, I have frequently
referred to the second edition of Professor Burners Early
Greek Philosophy (E.G.P.*) ; and I have freely borrowed from
the excellent translation of the fragments which it contains.
For the fragments themselves references are given to Diels'
Fragmente der VorsoJcratiJcer, ed. 2, Berlin, 1906 (D.F.V*).

This book is dedicated to a man of science, with the hope that
he may find in it some saving touch of the spirit associated with
the name he worthily bears.

F. M. COKNFOKD

TRINITY COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE,
April 1912.

CONTENTS

Preface vii

I. DESTINY AND LAW 1

II. THE ORIGIN OF MOIBA 40

III. NATURE, GOD, AND SOUL 73

IV. THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 124
V. THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION 144

VI. THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 160

Index of Citations 264

General Index 270

DESTINY AND LAW

1. The Problem

THE origin of Greek philosophy is a problem which not only is
of extraordinary interest, but seems at first sight peculiarly
hopeful of solution. In the case of most questions of origins,
history fails us ; the earlier links of the tradition we seek to
account for are hidden in prehistoric darkness. The Homeric
Epos, for instance, comes before us as a finished product, and
not a single scrap of documentary evidence records the stages
which preceded the earliest parts of the Iliad. But it is gener-
ally acknowledged that the beginnings of philosophy lie well
within the field of history. Ever since the school of Aristotle
set about compiling the first histories of philosophy, it has been
agreed to date systematic speculation of a scientific character
from the Milesian school, whose activity about covers the
sixth century B.C. 1 Of the work of the philosophers in the
two centuries from Thales to Plato we have some direct know-
ledge from the surviving fragments of their writings ; we have
also a doxographic tradition, derived from the Peripatetics,
which records their ' opinions * on what were held to be the
most important topics of speculation. It is thus possible to
construct some sort of history, based on documents, of Greek
philosophy from its beginning to its end ; and when we take it
as a phenomenon to be accounted for and set in relation to
other activities and products of the Greek mind, we start at
least with the great advantage of knowing something, however
little, of the first stages of its career.

In spite of this advantage, the question how this speculation

1 The first certain date is given by an eclipse of the sun in the year 585,
which Thales, the founder of that school, is said to have predicted.

2 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

arose, and why it took its peculiar course, has not been satis-
factorily answered. Inquiry has failed in some measure because,
when the problem was first formulated, it was set in the wrong
light. The sources of Greek philosophy were supposed to be a
matter of e borrowing s and of ' influence/ More than one
attempt was made in the nineteenth century to show that the
Greeks * borrowed * the wisdom of the East ; but, when it was
seen that this fascinating theory led its advocates beyond all
bounds of historic possibility, the Orientalists were crushed in a
sort of antisemite reaction, and they are only now beginning to
lift their heads again. 1 The notion of ' borrowing * having been
dismissed, there remained the view that philosophy was ' in-
fluenced * by religious doctrines ; but against this account it
was rightly urged that the current forms of religion could
hardly be said to have any ' doctrines * at all ; and it was
certainly difficult to point to any definite dogma of theology
which was actually built into the systems known to us. So
students fell back into thinking of the early philosophers as
singularly isolated and independent.

The most recent historian, Professor Deussen, 2 in his opening
remarks upon the general characteristics of Greek thought,
repeats an observation which, in one form or another, figures
in all books upon this subject. As the fundamental trait of
Hellenism he takes that peculiar freedom, both in thought and
action, which the Greek enjoyed, standing in the presence of
Nature. The Greek, he says, was not encumbered by any early
implanted delusion, nor constrained by any close dogmatic
system, but could take in the nature of things with untroubled
eyes and with senses open to accept its revelations.

Now, it is true that the Greek philosophers were exceptionally
untrammelled by dogmatic prejudice and priestly persecution ;
they were fortunate enough to be born into a state of society
which was satisfied, in the main, with an outward conformity,
and allowed reason to pursue her inward task of seeking the
truth which makes us free. But, when we dwell upon this
liberty of thought, we must not be misled into putting another

1 See Eisler, Weltenmantel und ffimmelszelt, Munich, 1910,
3 Allgemeine Oeschichte d. Philos,> n. i. (1911) p. 3.

BESTESTY AOT3 LAW 3

construction upon it, and imagining that Thales or Anaximander
was like Adam on the day of his creation, with no tradition
behind him, no inherited scheme of things, opening his innocent
eyes on a world of pure sense impressions not as yet co-ordinated
into any conceptual structure. It is very easy to fall into an
error of this sort, especially if we begin our history of Greek
thought, as Professor Deussen does, by dividing the sources of
human knowledge into two classes : the outer experience,
which, by means of the senses, comes to us from the material
world in space ; and the inner experience of our own thoughts
and will and feelings. The object of outer experience is evidently
Nature ; the most remarkable object of inner experience is 'the
moral phenomenon ' our feeling of freedom, our consciousness
of responsibility, our impulse to do or to avoid what we have
learnt to regard as right or wrong. We then proceed to consider
what construction the earlier consciousness of Greece has put
upon these two classes of object in pre-scientific representation
the cosmogonies which account for outer Nature, and the ethical
reflection which has dealt with the inner self and its relation to
the world outside. When we approach the subject in this way,
the surviving fragments of cosmogony and ethical reflection
will soon be dismissed, because they do not, upon examination,
seem to throw much light on the work of the philosophers.
So, with a sense of relief, we dismiss the obscure question of
origins, and embark upon the descriptive history, based on
extant documents, of the several systems. We try to recon-
struct each in turn, and to trace its dependence on those that
went before and its influence on those that came after. But the
whole concatenation, so reconstructed and interrelated, is left,
as a whole, an unexplained, and even portentous, phenomenon.

The primary error in this method of procedure is the pre-
supposition that the first objects of speculation, the materials
upon which it sets to work, are the inner and outer experience
of the individual standing in presence of Nature. At first sight
this seems a truism; for what other materials can there be,
what else is there to speculate about ? We picture the philo-
sopher in his study. Inside him there is Ms consciousness,
his thoughts and feelings, awaiting Ms introspective analysis.

4 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Outside, there is the world, the data of sense-perception, lying
ready to be observed and explained. It seems as if he had
only to make his choice between psychology on the one side
and natural science on the other, and set to work.

That this picture is not complete, the following pages are
intended to show. If it were complete, the course taken by
Greek speculation would have been utterly different. We should
find the first philosophers attempting to analyse their own
consciousness, and to draw some rude distinctions between
thought and perception, or feeling and will. Or, if they turned
to the outer world, we should find them taking the elementary
and, as it seems to us, obvious precaution of looking at Nature,
and trying to observe and record her ways, before they ventured
upon generalisation and hypothesis. They would, in fact,
have begun by occupying the more accessible fields of natural
science, and feeling their way towards the laws of psychology,
biology, or what not. But every one knows that they did
nothing of the sort. The father of western philosophy, Thales
of Miletus, immediately announces that the ultimate e nature '
of all things is water, and that the universe is alive e has soul
in it ' (epfywxov) and is full of spirits or Gods. A little reflection
will convince us that these propositions do not simply formulate
the data of Thales' inward experience or of his outward observa-
tion of natural phenomena. They are not results likely to be
reached, at the outset, by our imaginary philosopher sitting
alone with himself and the sensible world.

These doctrines of Thales, which are almost all that survives to
us of his opinions about the general nature of the world, contain
three conceptions which are the principal subject of the following
pages : the ' nature 9 of things 1 physis, rerum natum (declared
by Thales to be water) ; e God ' or { Spirit ' ; and ' Soul.' Here
at once, in the very first utterance of philosophy, we encounter
conceptions which have a long history, as religious representa-
tions, before philosophy begins. Unless we have some grasp of
that history we are not likely to understand the speculation,

1 Professor Burnet, Early Greek Philos.*, p. 12, points out that #rf<rw was
used in this sense by the early cosmologists. He holds that d/>%^ is only
an Aristotelian term, not used by the earlier writers to mean 'primary
substance.'

DESTINY AND LAW 5

which, however scientific Its spirit may be, constantly operates
with these religious ideas, and is to a large extent confined in its
movement within the limits already traced by them.

Besides the notions of God and Soul, we shall find that philo-
sophy also inherits from religion the governing conception of a
certain order of Nature, variously regarded as a dominion of
Destiny, of Justice, or of Law. The character and origin of this
order, within which the life of Nature is confined, will be one of
the main subjects of our inquiry. It will soon appear that the
reign of Necessity is also and equally a moral rule, a kingdom of
Justice.

The first religious poet of Greece, Hesiod, 1 states in simple
form his conviction that the course of Nature is anything but
careless of right and wrong. He tells us that when men do justice,
and do not go aside from the straight path of right, their city
flourishes and they are free from war and famine. * For them
the earth brings forth food in plenty, and on the hills the oak
tree bears acorns at the top and *bees in the middle ; their sheep
have heavy fleeces, their wives bear children that are like their
parents/ 2 and so on. This is a clear statement that there is
(as it were) a sympathetic relation between human conduct and
the behaviour of Nature : if man keeps straight upon his path of
right, then her orderly processes of seed-time and harvest will
go forward too, and reward justice with the fruits of the earth.

So, on the other hand, when a sin has been committed such
as the unconscious incest of Oedipus 3 all Nature is poisoned
by the offence of man. The land of Thebes

* Wasteth in the fruitless buds of earth,
In parched herds, and travail without birth
Of dying women/

How did this belief arise : that Nature is moral, so that her
order is disturbed by the sins of man ? It is obviously not a
result of direct, unbiassed observation. When a king or a

1 Hes. Erga, 225.

2 I.e. not monstrous births (repara); cf. Aesehin. in Ctes. Ill, fjrfre yijv
/ta/>7rous <ppei.v fjurjre ywcuKas TKVCL rticreiv yovevcnv eoc/cora, dXXd rfyara, /wyre

fiOffK'/lfJMTa KOTO, $1J<rtV yOVOLS 7TOie?Cr#CU.

3 Soph. Oed. Mex, trans. G. Murray. Jebb compares Herod, vi. 139.

6 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

nation commits an act of wrong, it is not true that the harvest
is blighted and famine and plague follow. We have here to
do with one of those ancient, traditional beliefs which defy the
constant refutation of experience. As we shall see in a moment,
the earliest Greek philosophers express this conviction that the
order of Nature is a moral order as an obvious, unchallengeable
truth, and, indeed, the most important truth about the world.
It governs their conception of the process by which the world
came into being and will perish again. And, once established in
philosophy, it influences and colours the whole course of specula-
tion both about Nature and about morals and politics. Thus
the problem, how this belief first arose, and through what forms
it passed before it became the heritage of rational speculation,
is one of the central problems of the history of human thought.
It is the main subject of our first two chapters.

In the third chapter the investigation of the concept of
* Nature * (physis) will lead us on to the other two conceptions
we found in Thales* saying, ' the All has soul in it and is full
of spirits. 3 We shall try to show how the ideas of Spirit or God
and of Soul grew up out of ' Nature/ and passed into the inherit-
ance of philosophic, as well as religious, thought. The argument
cannot be anticipated here. The point that now concerns us is
simply this : that these three conceptions Nature, God, and
Soul had all of them a long history which lay behind the first
utterance of philosophy, and of which we must form some idea
before we can place ourselves at the point from which philosophy
starts. The last three chapters will contain a sketch of the
course of Greek philosophy, designed to show that, if we take the
starting-point so defined, the development of thought can be
better understood.

We shall begin with an explicit statement, made by Anaxi-
mander of Miletus, about the nature and order of the world.
We shall see that, considered as a result of innocent and un-
biassed observation of Nature, this statement is paradoxical,
absurd, even unintelligible. Then we shall try to show that,
when we take it as a restatement in rational terms of a pre-
scientific view of the world, and trace that view again back to
its origin, it becomes simple, natural, intelligible. The view in

DESTINY AND LAW 7

question is of fundamental importance for all Greek cosmology,
and it pervades political and ethical speculation as well. The
train of thought, whose earlier links we hope to reconstitute,
leads on into Plato and Aristotle, and through them into the
main current of European philosophy.

2. The Cosmology of Anaximander

Anaximander was the second and greatest of the three Milesians
who presided in succession over the first school of Greek philo-
sophers. The chief object of speculation for all of them was,
not man or human society, but ' Nature 3 (pJiysis)* Philosophical
writings of the sixth and fifth centuries were commonly entitled
Concerning Nature (Hepl <I>u<7e&>9).

* Nature * the nature of things was the name they gave to
the one ultimate stuff, from which, as they held, the world of
things we see has arisen and into which it will perish again.
It is at once apparent that we have no satisfactory rendering
for physis. ' Primary substance > is charged with Aristotelian
and scholastic associations ; ' matter * suggests something
contrasted with mind or life, whereas the primary meaning of
physis is "growth/ and its first associations are of life and
motion, not of stillness and death. The mere use of this term
already implies the famous doctrine which has earned for, the
Milesian school the designation * Hylozoist * the doctrine that
' the All is alive/ The universe * has soul in it/ in the same
sense (whatever that may be) that there is a 'soul* in the
animal body. We must not forget that the meaning of pJiysis,
at this stage, is nearer to ' life * than to * matter ' ; it is quite as
much 'moving* as 'material" self -moving, because alive.

Into the earlier, pre-scientific history of this living source of
all things we must inquire later. 1 For the present we shall be
more concerned with the forms or limits imposed upon its
spontaneous activity the twin conceptions of Destiny and Law.

Thales, the first of the school, identified the living and self-
changing world-stuff with water. Anaximenes, the third, held
that it was f air * or mist. Anaximander called it the f indefinite *
or ' limitless thing * (TO aireipov). Anaximander it was who

1 Chap. Hi.

8 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

first stated a systematic theory of the Nature of the world
not only of the stuff it is made of, but also of the process of its
growth out of the ' limitless thing ' into the manifold of definite
things. We are not concerned with the details, but only with
the most general conception of this process of growth, as it is
described in what is almost the sole surviving fragment of
Anaximander's writings :

' Things perish into those things out of which they have their
lirih, according to that which is ordained ; for they give reparation
to one another and pay the penalty of their injustice according to
the disposition of time. 3 l

Otto Gilbert 2 has explained this utterance as follows. We
have to do with three grades of existence.

First, there are ' things ' (&/ra) the multiplicity of individual
things we see around us. These are declared to perish into those
things out of which they came into existence. What, then, are
these secondary things, out of which natural objects came into
being ?

They are the primitive elements 3 of which all bodies are
composed earth, air, water, fire. These elements were recog-
nised long before philosophy began. The visible world groups
itself into masses of comparatively homogeneous stuffs, each
occupying a region of its own. There is first the great lump of
earth ; above it, and perhaps beneath it also, the ^ aters ; then
the space of wind and mist and cloud ; and beyond that, the
blazing fire of heaven, the aether. These elements are the
secondary stuffs out of which individual things were born and
into which they are resolved again.

But the elements themselves are not everlasting ; nor is the
separation of them into distinct regions more than a transient

1 JX F. F 2 . i p. 13: <M? &v fe i) yfreais &rrt,.To oiVt KCLLT^V <j>dopto e/y
ravra yivevBa.!, KOTO, rb XP ^' 6&6v(u jap ayrd MKIJV /cat -riffiv dXX^Xots TT?S d&day
Kara TTJV row XP^ VOV T<U'.

3 In a valuable article, < Spekulation u. Volksglaube in d. ionischen PMlo-
sopMe/ Arch.f. JRetigionswiss., xiii. 306 ff.

8 I use the term * elements * in a vague sense to denote earth, air, water,
and fire, which were popularly recognised (as Gilbert has shown, Mtteoro-
logische Theorien d. griech. Altertums, chap, i.) long before they were
introduced into science. The conception of * elements' C^ TOt X e * a ) i n tne
narrower sense of primary and unalterable bodies dates from Empedocles
(cf. Burnet, K O. P. 3 , p. 56).

DESTINY AFD LAW

arrangement. They themselves are destined to return into that
from which they came tie third and ultimate stage of exist-
ence, the * limitless thing/ which alone is called by Anaximander
* incorruptible and undying/ *

To sum up the process of growth : the formless indefinite stuff
separates first into the elemental forms, distributed in their
appointed regions ; and then these again give birth to things,
and, 'when they die, receive them back again.

The first important fact about the elements is that they are
limited ; the second is that they are grouped in pairs of opposites
or * contraries * : air is cold, fire hot, water moist, earth dry.
These contraries are at perpetual war with one another, each
seeking to encroach upon the domain of its antagonist. This
fact itself seems to have been used by Anaximander as a proof
that the elements must each be limited, for ' if any one of them
were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time/
for they would have been eaten up and destroyed. 2

The separation of the elements into their several regions was
caused by the * eternal motion 9 which perhaps we should
conceive as a e whirling ' motion (Swrj) of the whole universe,
which sifts out the opposites from the primary, indiscriminate
or * limitless ' mixture, in which they will again be all merged
and confused when they perish into that from which they
arose. 3

This cosmology thus contains three main factors or repre-
sentations : (1) a primary stuff (physis); (2) an order, disposition,
or structure into which this stuff is distributed ; (3) the process
by which this order arose. In the present chapter we shall be
chiefly concerned with the second of these representations the
scheme of order, which includes all the universe in a simple
primary classification. The point we hope to bring out is that
this scheme was not invented by Anaximander, but taken over
by him from pre-scientific representation, and that this fact

x Arist. Phys-. y4, 2035 6 ff. : Kal TOUT' efrcu rb detov addvarov yap teal

, .

2 Arist. Phys. y5, 2045 22; see Burnet, E. G. P. 2 , p. 55.

3 On this subject see Heidel, * Qualitative Change in Pre-Socrafcic Philo-
sophy, 5 Arch. /, Gesch. d. Philos. , xix. $13 ff. I am unconvinced by Professor
Burnet's objection to this view of the * eternal motion* (E. G. P** t p. 61).
But the question will be further discussed below, p. 146.

10 FJEIOM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

explains those of its characteristics which seem most obscure
and gratuitous.

3. The Provinces of the Elements

What especially strikes us in Anaximander's statement is
that the secular process of birth and perishing is described in
moral language. The passing away of things into the elements
is called ' making reparation/ ' paying the penalty of injustice/
The words imply that injustice was committed in the very fact
of their birth into separate existence. The manifold world,
in Anaximander's view, can arise only by robbery and mis-
appropriation.

Consider, for instance, the animal body. Its proper substance
is earth ; * but for its formation it misappropriates portions of
the other elements : water for its blood, air for its breath, fire
for warmth. The dissolution of death repays these robberies :
each stolen portion rejoins its like water to water, air to air,
fire to fire. Or take the clouds. To shape them, air draws
water to itself and plunders the rivers and seas. Then the
clouds dissolve in rain, which returns to the place of the waters.

We see, then, that the general scheme of the growth of the
world is this : the one primary stuff, called * Nature/ is segregated
into provinces, each the domain of one element. And this is a
moral order, in the sense that transgression of its boundaries,
the plundering of one element by another to make an individual
thing, is injustice, unrighteousness. The penalty is death and
dissolution. No single thing can begin to exist without an
infraction of this destined order. Birth is a crime, and growth
an aggravated robbery.

This is a strange, and to us a paradoxical, view of individual
existence. We are disposed to think of the ever-increasing
complexity of the world as an intricate order formed out of
primitive disorder or chaos. Anaximander may almost be said
to reverse this conception. To him order comes into being not
last, but first the order, namely, which is established when
the four elements are sifted by the eternal motion into their

1 See 0. Gilbert, < Spekulation u. Volksglaube,' Arck.f. Ed., xiii 306 ff. ;
and Meteorologische Theorien d. griech, AUertum&> p, 22.

DESTINY AND LAW 11

distinct regions. If tikis separation were ever complete, there
would be perfect order, and no individual things would exist at
all. Every step from that simple disposition of elemental
provinces towards the multiplicity of particular things, is a
breaking of bounds, an advance towards disorder, a declension
into the welter of injustice, rapine, and war.

And every step of this pilgrimage of wrong must be retraced
according to what is ordained * (tcara TO xpewv). In this word
are united the conceptions of Fate and of Right ; it means a
power which ordains both what must be and what ought to be.
This principle of Destiny and Justice has set the bounds of the
original elemental order, and it waits to exact the penally of
every transgression. The power which presides over the physical
order is moral.

Like Anaximander, most of the early philosophers, as we shall
see later, regard the order of the world as moral or just. We
have called Anaximander's conception strange and paradoxical.
The more we think about it, the more preposterous it seems.
But, it must be remembered that Anaximander was not a
paradox-monger. He was a man of a very sane and bold
scientific imagination, trying to state the most reasonable theory
of the origin and structure of the world, in straightforward terms
that would recommend it to the enlightened intellects of Ms time.
As a reasonable theory, and not as an absurd paradox, it was
received (we may conclude) by those enlightened intellects.
Yet the conception is one that could never occur to innocent
scientific curiosity, looking out with uncoloured vision upon the
world our senses show us. It is certain that both Anaximander
and Ms readers had already in their minds some traditional
representation of the order of Nature, as familiar to them as it is
strange to us, wMch the new theory only restated in rational terms.

That traditional representation it will be our next business
to discover and explain. What especially calls for explanation
is that moral character of the cosmos, upon wMch we have
insisted. The actual grouping of the four elements is an apparent
fact ; but why is tMs fact, of all others, taken as the key to the
making of the world, and why should it be associated with
justice ? Neither its peculiar significance nor its moral char-
acter is a sense-datum. The emphasis thrown upon it can only

12 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

be accounted for by showing that it was already emphasised in
religions representation ; and when that point is established, we
shall still have to look for the causes which led to its importance
in religion.

4. Moira above the Gods

We turn, then, from the first philosophers back to the eldest
poets of Greece, Homer and Hesiod, in the expectation of
finding some representation of the order of the world correspond-
ing to that which we have seen in Anaximander. We are not
disappointed. For Anaximander, as we saw, the elements are
ordered and assigned to their provinces ' according to what is
ordained" (fcara TO %pea>v) a conception in which Necessity
and Eight are united. So in Homer the Gods are subordinate to
a remote power, which is both primary older than the Gods
themselves and moral. It is called Moira, Destiny.

The subjection of the Gods to Fate is a belief that has passed
out of modern thought, or at least taken a quite different
form. With the origin of the conception of Destiny we shall
be concerned in the next chapter; our present business is to
define the notion at the stage at which we meet with it in Homer.

The Gods of Homer are limited. 1 They are indeed exempt
from age and death; but they are not eternal. They are
younger than the world, into which they were born. Nor are
they almighty, though man is powerless against them. What
limits their power, however, is not what we call natural law :
on the contrary, miracles are their peculiar function. They are
limited by Destiny (Moira), which they did not make and
against which they cannot stand.

The Gods cannot save even a man whom they love when the
* dread fate of death' lays hold upon him. 2 Zeus himself
laments that it is 'fate' that his son, Sarpedon, dearest to
him of all men, must die at the hands of Patroclus. 3 He * does
not venture to undo what fate decrees/ 4 ' It is impossible even

1 On this subject see Gruppe, Gr. Myth. u. Hel, p. 989 if.

2 Od. iii. 236 : oi)o 0co irep \ xal (f>L\q> avSpl dtivavrai, d\a\K^ev t oinr6T KCV

| y

3 11. xvi. 433 : & POL eyt^, 5 r^ /xot SapTTT/SiW, <pl\Ta.Tov avSpwv, \ /uotp* virb
Harp6^Xoio MepoiriacJao da^vat,

4 Find. Paean, vi. 94 : pbpo-ifjf avaXttv ZeOs 6 flew* crKOirbs ov r6X/ia.

DESTINY AND LAW 13

for a God to avoid the fate that is ordained/ 1 * What is or-
dained/ says Athena in Euripides, 2 using Anaximander's word
(TO %/>e<oi>), * is master of the Gods and thee/ Prometheus tells
the Okeanids that the Moirai and Erinyes hold the tiller of
Necessity, and that Zeus 3 if not weaker than they, cannot escape
what is decreed by fate. 3

5. Moira as moral

Further, as in the Ionian philosopher, so in Homer, the
ordinance of Fate is not a mere blind and senseless barrier of
impossibility : it is a moral decree the boundary of right and
wrong. We may even say that the two notions of Destiny and
Eight are hardly distinguished. This comes out in the phrase
* beyond what is ordained/ ' beyond fate * (vircp popov, virep
alcrav), which in Homer halts between the two meanings :
' beyond what is destined, and so must be/ and c beyond what
is right, and so ougtd to be/

Thus, when the first sense destiny is uppermost, it is
denied that God or man can make anything happen 6 beyond
fate/ 4 But elsewhere we find on the contrary that things do
happen ' beyond fate/ In the Iliad 5 the Achaeans prevail for
a time in battle virep cucrav. ( Alack/ cries Zeus in the Odyssey*

1 Herod, i. 91 : rty TCTrpcafi^v poLpav dSfoaTov <rrl dirotjiefryciv Kal Bef.
This passage is of great interest, as apparently stating the view of Delphic
theology. The Pythia explains that Apollo tried to persuade the Moirai
to postpone the vengeance hanging over Croesus* house till after Croesus'
death. The Moirai would not concede more than a delay of three years
later than was ordained (forepov TTJS ireTrpufL&ijs}.

2 /. jP., 1486 : aiv&' TO yap X/M&P <rou re KO! 8eQv Kparei.

3 Aesch. P. F., 531 : Xo. rts o$v dvdyKijs &TIV ota.KOffrp6<f>os ;

Up. Motpou rptftoptpoi fiy^ov^s r j 'E/wi/ey.
Xo. TotiTW &pa Zetfs c<rnv do-Qevt en-epos ;
Up. ofi/cow &v lic<f>tiyoi ye TTJV jreirpbjfLfryy.

4 For instance, H. vi. 487 : ou yap ris ^ fata al<rav dvrip *Ai5i vpotdfec
fwipar 5 J otf nvd $7] pi ir^vy^vov ifijtevat dvdpuw,.\ o^ Ka^v, otdt p.tv foG\6v y
fyrijv rd vp&ra, ytv-qrai. Cf . Find. PytJi. xii. 30 : TO tibpctfiov od Tap<f>VKroi>.
frag. 232 (256), TO Trea-pufj^vov oi) irvp, ov (riddpeov <rxfi<Ti TXOS,

5 xvi 780 : Kal Tore 5-/1 p 3 inrtp al<rav 'Axatoi foprepoi Jjo-av.

6 i. 32 : & x<5iroi, dov d$ yv faofc pporol alTi6wrrai.

% yptwv ydp fouri KC/C J ififievcu' ol $& Kal a&rol

cw icai vvv AXyurQos inrtp ftopov '

14 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

' see now how mortal men lay blame upon the Gods ! For they
say it is from us that evil comes ; and all the while they them-
selves, by their own naughtiness, have trouble beyond what is
ordained, even as now Aegisthus, beyond what is ordained, has
married the wedded wife of the son of Atreus/ Here, it is evi-
dent, the moral sense is uppermost. The offenders went beyond,
not their fate, but the bounds of morality. Hence in such cases
the balance is redressed by swiftly following vengeance, which
itself is ' beyond what is ordained * in the sense that the sinners
brought it upon themselves by their own wickedness, so that
they, and not Fate, are responsible (alnoi)}-

The truest account, perhaps, is that the clear notion of absolute
impossibility is wanting in Homer. The dSvvarov, which we
render * the impossible/ is rather that which lies beyond one's
power (Svvafus) ; it may lie beyond the power even of a God,
for, as we have seen, no God is all-powerful. But it is not abso-
lutely and strictly impossible ; power may be stretched for a
moment beyond its due and normal limits, so that Gods, and even
men, may achieve the impossible. But there is a strong sense
that such feats are undesirable and dangerous. For Gods and
men alike there are certain destined bounds which normally
and rightly circumscribe their power. It is just possible to
exceed them ; but only at the cost of provoking an instant nemesis.

Thus in Homer, and in Ionian thought generally, we find a
profound belief in Destiny (Moira) as an ordinance which limits
all individual powers, whether human or divine ; and we see,
moreover, that this ordinance is even more a decree of moral
obligation than a barrier of sheer physical impossibility.

Our next question must be : How came this power called
Moira to be supreme above both men and Gods ? What does
Moira mean 1 The conception and the view of the world
which it carries with it were no more the invention of ' Homer *
than they were of Anaximander. When we have succeeded in
defining Moira more clearly, we shall be in a position to recon-
struct the still earlier history of the idea.

1 Compare the Croesus passage (Herod, i. 91 above, p. 13, n. 1), in which
Apollo ends by throwing the responsibility on Croesus' pride (twurbv atriov
rtf), and Croesus acknowledges it.

DESTINY AOT) LAW 15

6. Moira as a system of provinces

Some scholars 1 ask us to believe that Moira is a personification
generalised from the individual lot or fate attached to each man
from the cradle to the grave. Against this view a single con-
sideration is decisive. It is inconceivable that an abstraction
generalised from the fates of individual men, and inapplicable to
the Gods, should ever have been erected into a power superior to
the Gods themselves. The notion of the individual lot or fate,
as we shall try to show later, comes last, not first, in the order
of development. We must seek the original meaning of Moira
elsewhere.

In the fifteenth Iliad Zeus awakes one day to find the Trojans
hard pressed in battle by the Achaeans, assisted by Poseidon.
After a sordid outburst against Hera, who, however, swears by
Styx that Poseidon is acting of his own will and not upon her
instigation, Zeus sends Iris with a threatening message, com-
manding Poseidon to cease from war and battle, and to with-
draw among the tribes of the gods or intg the bright sea. Posei-
don is very angry and protests (1. 186). r Alack/ he says, ' strong
though he be, these words are past all bearing, if he will constrain
me by violence against my will, though I am his equal in rank
(oporifMos). For we are three brothers, born of Kronos and
Bhea, Zeus, and I, and Hades is the third, the lord of the dead.
And in three lots are all things divided, and each took his appointed
domain (or privilege, status). 2 When we shook the lots, to
me fell the hoary sea, that I should dwell therein for ever ;
and Hades drew the misty darkness, and Zeus the broad heaven
among the aether and the clouds : the earth and high Olympus
are yet common to all. Therefore never will I live according
to the mind of Zeus ; no, masterful though he be, let him stay
quiet in^ his own third part (l/c^Ao? . . . ^evero* rpi^rdry evl
/ioijo?7)//Zeus may give orders to his own sons and daughters,
who, as inferiors, are bound to obey him.

Iris recommends submission, reminding Poseidon that the
spirits of vengeance, the Erinyes, are always in attendance upon
the elder-born. Poseidon gives way ; but declares that it is a
bitter pain 'when any one chides with angry words one to whom

1 For instance, Weizsacker in Roscher's Lexicon, s.v. * Moira, 3 ool. 3084. /

2 l f 189 : rptxBd $ irfora &a0Tcu, l/caoroy '

16 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

an equal portion and a like lot are ordained. 3 1 However, though
he feels resentment (nemesis), he yields, and retires to the sea,
his own undisputed element. 2

In this curious passage the original sense of Moira is clearly
apparent. Moira simply means ' part/ ' allotted portion ' ;
from that primary meaning it is agreed that the meaning
( destiny ' is derived. Poseidon's protestation shows how it is
that the Gods, as well as men, have moirai. Each God has his
own allotted portion or province a certain department of nature
or field of activity. This may also be regarded as his status
(TLfjurj) ; it gives him a determined position in a social system.
Sometimes it is called his * privilege ' (yepas). Within his own
domain his supremacy is not to be challenged ; but he must not
transgress its frontiers, and he will feel resentment (nemesis) at
any encroachment by another.

It is this conception, not that of the individual human fate,
that is generalised in Destiny, Moira. She represents the
apportionment to each God of his province, status, or privilege.
It is at once plain why she is above any or all of the Gods, and
how the limits she sets to their powers can be thought of as moral
limits. Hesiod definitely says that the Moirai, daughters of
Night, pursue the transgressions, not only of men, but of Gods. 3

The original conception of Moira thus turns out to be spatial,

1 1. 209 : oTTTrSr' cb i(r6/j,opoj> /ecu ofif Treirpu[j,&w ato"y

veiKeieLV i8K > gffi xoXwrotin.j' eireecrcri,

2 For the three divisions, Earth, Sea, Sky, cf. II. xviii. 483 : Hephaestos,
making the Shield, & pkv yaiav rreu', v 5' oi>pa,v6v } h $cL\a.<r<rav ; Qd. xii.
315 : yctiav irbvTov otipavSOev ; ffymn to Dem. 13 : ovpavbs etfpfo i/Vep^e yatd
re iracra, Kal &\fjLvpbv oldpa ffakdwr)*. See 0, Gilbert, Met. Theor., 27 2 .
Poseidon in the above passage takes a somewhat different view, according
to which Heaven (Olympos) and Earth, as parents of all the gods (see
below, p. 18), are 'common to all'; the three divisions included in the
Sa&pos are Aether (the fiery otipav6s) 3 Sea, and Darkness (Air) a conception
which is nearer to the * elements J (see below, p. 116).

3 Theog. 220 : at r' avdpuv re deCiv re irapaipacrtas e^TrovffLV. After
writing the above, I discovered that Walter Headlam had clearly stated
this view of Moira in his edition of Aesch. Agam. p. 234, note on v. 1007.
He says : * The Motpat are personifications of these fj.oipai or Siavo/tal (Mum.
726), apportionments or dispensations, provinces allotted to the various
divinities and severally administered by them. . . .' 'There exist in the
system over which Zeus presides certain "vested interests" or "spheres
of influence" assigned by Dispensation (Motpa). 1 Headlam adduces some
interesting evidence,

DESTINY AND LAW 17

ratter than temporal. We are to tMnk of a system of provinces*
coexisting side by side, with clearly marked boundaries. Tie
conception has been obscured by the in our opinion, later
mode of conceiving the three Fates as corresponding to divisions
of time Past, Present, and Future. The spatial character of
Moira will turn out in the sequel to be of fundamental importance,
as a representation which, persisting into Ionian science, governs
its whole course.

7. The Division of the World in Hesiod

If we turn now to the cosmogony of Hesiod, we shall find there
that very division of the world into provinces to which we have
traced back the original sense of Moira. Further, the supremacy
of Moira over the Gods is there reflected in a temporal form ;
that is to say, the separation of the world into elemental provinces
is older in time than the birth of the Gods.

The cosmogony begins (Theog. 116) with the coining into
being of ' Chaos/ Earth, and Eros ; then out of Chaos arose
Darkness and Night, and of them were born blazing Fire (aWrjp)
and Daylight. This opening act we shall discuss later. Next
follows (1. 124) the division of the world into three parts Earth,
Sky, and Sea.

( Earth (Gaia) first of all gave being to one equal to herself,
the starry Heaven (Ouranos), that he might enfold her all round,
that there might be for the blessed Gods a seat secure for ever.
And she brought forth the high mountains wherein the Gods
delight to inhabit. And she gave birth also to the waste Ocean,
swelling with rage, the Sea * (Pontos).

Here, then, we find, as a distinct stage in cosmogony, a
division of the world into three portions (moirai), just as in
Homer * all things were divided in three/ and the three provinces
were assigned to Zeus, Poseidon, and Hides. The starry
Heaven is for Zeus, the Sea for Poseidon ; for Hades remains
either the * misty darkness ' that is, the Air or the Earth,
according as it is believed that the dead, whose lord he is, dwell
in the western darkness beyond the sunset, or underground.

This triple division into the Sky, the dry Earth, and the Sea,
takes place, be it noted, * without love or the attraction of

18 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

desire* (arep C^XOTT/TO? efyipepov, 1. 132). It was not, that is
to say, an act of marriage and consequent birth, but of division,
repulsion, 'strife' (Necfcos), as Empedocles would say. Only
afterwards the sundered Sky and Earth were reunited in marriage
by Eros, and of that marriage the eldest Gods were born. So
Hesiod, by making the triple division older in time than the Gods
cosmogony older than theogony marks by temporal sequence
the supremacy of Moira the dimly personified principle of that
division over the later-born divinities.

In Hesiod's view the Gods arose out of the several provinces
of Nature the four elements and those other features of the
world, such as mountains and rivers, in which mysterious
powers and forces are felt to reside. His prelude x ends with an
invocation of the Muses, who are to sing of the race of the
immortals, * born of Earth and of the starry Heaven, of murky
Night and of the salt Sea. J c Say, how first the Gods and Earth
came into being, and the rivers and the limitless Sea, swelling
with rage, and the shining stars and the wide Heaven above, and
the Gods that were born out of these, the givers of blessing ; how
they parted among them their wealth and distributed their honour s, 2
and how first they took possession of Olympus/

In Earth and .the fiery Heaven, Night and the Sea, we
recognise the four elements. Three of them speak for them-
selves ; the fourth, ' murky Night/ evidently represents the
Air, which the Greeks regularly regarded as dark. 3 Accordingly,
when some of the sixth-century thinkers Pherekydes, for in-
stance, or Theagenes of Ehegium equated the elements with
the Gods, 4 this was no mere play of allegorising fancy. Some at
least of the provinces assigned by Moira to the Gods were nothing

1 Theofj. 104.

2 v. 112 ; &$ T* afavos Soura-ayro Kal ws rtjtccU 5tAovro. This dasmos, held by
the Gods themselves, will be discussed below, 9.

3 Cf. Plut. de primo frigido, 948 E : STL S 3 aijp rb TrptiTcos ffKoret.v6p to-riv,
o$8 rote iroL7)Ta$ \^\7]0f * Mpo. yap rd <r/c6roy Ka\ov(TLjf * * d?? p yap irapa vyval pa8el '
ty o$S ffeMjvri otipavbdev vpotiQaive* (Od. x. 143). Kal ird\iv ' ytpa ecrtrdfjLej'oi
7ra<rai> (poiTwaw eir' atav ' (Hes. Ergo,, 255), /c.r.X. Cf. Plut. 7s. et Os. 384 B, C,
and II. xv. 191 (above quoted, p. 15), where Hades takes the * misty dark-
ness * (fo(f>ov 7jp6vra}.

4 See 0. Gilbert, 'Spekulation und Volksglaube,' u.s.w., Arch. f. Eelig.
xiii. p. 317. For Theagenes see D. I*. F. 2 , p. 511 ; Pherekydes, ibid. p. 507.
Note especially Pherekydes' use of p.olpa : Ketvys 5t rrjs poLpas &ep0fr
Taprapir} ftoipa (frag. 5).

DESTINY AOT) LAW 19

but these elements, and out of them, as Hesiod very truly says,
the Gods themselves had come into being. The status of the
elements in cosmogony is precisely parallel to the status of the
Gods in Homeric theology. Both have their appointed regions
and departments ; both are subject to Moim.

Thus we have found a departmental ordering of the world
established in religious representation long before it is affirmed
by philosophy. Further, in religion and philosophy alike, this
disposition is both primary and moral. The physical order is
guarded by the same powers that punish moral transgression
those ministers of Justice or Erinyes, the Moirai in their darkest
aspect, who, f if the sun should overstep his measures, would
find him out/ x This conception of the primary world-order
is taken over by Anaximander with its main outline unchanged ;
and, above all, its moral character unquestioningly retained.
The mutual aggression of the elements in their perpetual strife
is an 'injustice' an infringement of moral boundaries. 2 So
far the philosophic representation is identical with the religious ;
where Anaximander innovates is in making the primary order
partly the effect of a mechanical cause the e eternal motion/
and in eliminating the Gods, whose place is taken by the elements,
out of which, according to Hesiod, the Gods had arisen. The
significance of these innovations will become clear to us later.

Meanwhile, we have to examine the religious representation
more closely. As presented by Hesiod, it is not a simple and
consistent scheme ; we can detect in it several layers superim-
posed on one another, which correspond to distinct stages of
religious development. We must accordingly attempt an analysis
which will bring out the successive phases.

8. M oira is impersonal, without intelligence or design

Let us note, in the first place, that a thoroughgoing polytheism
has the singular merit of allowing the order of the world, the
cosmos, to come into being without the intervention of any

1 Heracleitus, frag. 94 (Diels): ^Xtos -yap oi*x virep^crcrat /j^rpa' el 8t ftf,
'Eptvties fitv Aliajs Micovpot, t&vpfyrowiv.

2 Theagenes of Rhegiuin emphasised exactly this point, allegorising the
battles of the Gods in Homer as the IvavTlaxris of the elements (Gilbert, loc*
cU.). Cf. Pherekydes, frag. 4 (D.F. F. 2 , p. 508).

20 FROM BELIGIOF TO PHILOSOPHY

purposeful intelligence. All the Gods being merely departmental
powers, no one of them can at first claim to have designed and
created the whole disposition of things by an arbitrary, if bene-
volent, act of will. Such a claim will only gradually come to be
advanced on behalf of a supreme God, as polytheism gives way to
monotheism. In Greek religion this was fortunately a very
late development, partly owing to the fact that in the oldest
writers the tradition was firmly established that Zeus, the God
who reigns supreme in the present age of the world, was not
even one of the eldest-born divinities, but head of a later dynasty.
Behind him lay the age of Kronos and those vague Titanic deities
whose reign filled an interval of indefinite length separating the
birth of the world from the birth of Zeus in the island of Crete.
This representation was too clear and fixed to be overridden
until the religious consciousness had become so thoroughly
uncomfortable about the less edifying aspects of polytheism
that a monarchical revolution in the divine world was felt as an
imperative necessity. But this movement did not triumph till
a time when philosophy or science had already secured an inde-
pendent foothold. The spirited satire of Xenophanes is later
than the foundation of the Milesian School; and, besides,
philosophic monotheism tended at first rather to declare that the
universe itself was the one God, than to make it the work of a
creator distinct from itself. If we are to dwell on the freedom
of Greek thought from dogmatic prejudice, we cannot be too
grateful for the absence of this particular belief in a divine
creator. No hypothesis is more facile and supine ; nothing is
so likely to stupefy and lull to slumber that wonder which is the
parent of philosophy, than an explanation which will account
with equal readiness for every feature of the world, whether good
or bad, ascribing what is good to the transparent benevolence,
and what is bad to the inscrutable wisdom, of omnipotence.
Moira, it is true, was a moral power ; but no one had to pretend
that she was exclusively benevolent, or that she had any respect
for the parochial interests and wishes of mankind. Further
and this is the most important point she was not credited with
foresight, purpose, design; these belong to man and to the
humanised Gods. Moira is the blind, automatic force which
leaves their subordinate purposes and wills free play within

DESTINY AND LAW 21

their own legitimate spheres, but recoils in certain vengeance
upon them the moment that they cross her boundaries.

Moira, then, though we speak of her as a * personification/
has not the most important element of personality individual
purpose. She stands for the provincial ordering of the world ;
but she is not a deity who by an act of will designed and created
that order. She is a representation which states a truth about
the disposition of Nature, and to the statement of that truth adds
nothing except that the disposition is both necessary and just.
Considered in abstraction from the natural fact itself, Moira is
a representation of the Necessity and Justice (Must and Ought)
of the elemental disposition. That is the whole content of the
notion of Destiny.

Such, then, was the ultimate power in the universe as con-
ceived by Greek polytheism. But for its moral character, it
could hardly be said to be religious rather than scientific ; it
would be a conception of the same order as the notion of Natural
Law, which has taken its place in modern thought. That is
partly the reason why it is reinstated by nascent science in the
system of Anaximander. But what now concerns us is to
realise that this was a reinstatement the restoration to Moira
of a supremacy which, as religion developed, had been impaired,
and almost overthrown, by the growing power of the Gods.

9. The Dasmos of the Gods

Just because Moira was at first an impersonal power, an
opening was left for advancing theology to reverse the position,
and ascribe her ordinance of necessity and right to the will of
personal Gods, which formerly had been overridden by it. Thus
the Gods, who at first were younger than Moira and subject to
her, might now set up a claim to be the originators of the world-
order, substituting their individual will for her impersonal
decree. Hesiod himself shows us the stages of this process, and
combines, in his simple religious way, the two inconsistent
representations. On the one hand, as we have seen, the order of
Hesiod's cosmogony implies that the departmental division of
the world was older in time than the Gods, and he also declares
that the Gods took shape within its several provinces and arose

22 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

out of the elements themselves. On the other hand, in the same
breath he calls upon his Muse to describe how the Gods ' parted
among them their wealth and distributed their honours * as if
this disposition were not, after all, the work of Destiny, but a
distribution (Sao-po?) voluntarily carried out by the Gods them-
selves. The will of the Gods is beginning to assert its claims
against the inevitable appointment of Fate.

It is, however, curious to observe how the two views are
reconciled in the only possible compromise. In the fifteenth
Iliad, as we saw above (p. 15), the Gods, confronted by the
problem of distribution, acknowledge the supremacy of Fate
exactly as men would do on a similar occasion. They arrange
the matter by drawing lots. In other words, the three sons of
Kronos voluntarily surrender their volition, and abide by the
appointment of Moira, as the Lady of the Lots, Lachesis.

In this Homeric passage Lachesis is not mentioned ; but in
Pindar's description * of the division of the earth among the
Gods she presides in person. ' The ancient legends tell how
that, when Zeus and the immortals were dividing (Sareovro)
among them the earth, Ehodes had not yet appeared upon the
surface of the ocean, but the island lay hidden in the salt depths.
Helios was not there, so that no one designated a lot for him,
and they left the holy God without an allotted land. When
Zeus was reminded, he was about to order a fresh drawing of lots ;
but Helios would not suffer him, because he said that his own
eye saw within the grey sea, growing up from the bottom, a land
that would feed a multitude of men and be kindly to flocks.
And immediately he bade Lachesis of the golden frontlet hold
up her hands and not gainsay the Great Oath of the Gods, but
rather with the son of Kronos affirm, 2 that when the island
should be sent up into the open light of day, it should be a seat
reserved to him (yepas) for the time to come/

Here, in spite of the polite deference to the son of Kronos, it

1 01. vii. 54. This dasmos of the surface of the earth into seats of
worship is, as we shall see later (p. 38), an older representation, on which
the dasmos of the elemental provinces between the three sons of Kronos is
modelled.

2 1. 64 : 'EiK&evcrev d j aMica xpvtrd/iirwca fitv Adxecrtv

XctpctJ avreivai, Qe&v 5' SpKOv fj^yav

yUT? 7rap<pd/JLy t dXXd Kp6vov avv iraidi yeforcu, . . .

DESTINY AND LAW 23

is evident that Lachesis herself presides, and that Zeus can do
no more than confirm her decision with his nod.

10. The Great Oath of the Gods

Besides the appointment of Lachesis and the confirmatory
nod of Zeus, the distribution in this Pindaric passage is also
sanctioned by the Great Oath of the Gods (0e<z/ op/co? j*e<ya$).
The importance of this conception is that it opens another
avenue by which the will of the Gods can assert its claim to
supersede Destiny. An oath may come to be regarded as a
contract voluntarily entered upon ; and through this notion of
contractual obligation we may pass to conceiving the depart-
mental ordering of the universe as a system of constitutional
law an aspect under which we shall presently consider it. 1
But meanwhile we must dwell for a moment on this notion of
the Great Oath and its connection with the dasmos.*

The regular formula of the Great Oath will be found, for
instance, at the beginning of the fifteenth Iliad, where Hera
swears to Zeus that she has not been instigating Poseidon to go
beyond his moira. She swears by * Earth and the broad Heaven
above and the dripping water of Styx, which is the greatest
and most dreadful Oath for the blessed Gods/ In the same
form by Gaia, Ouranos, and Styx Leto, in the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo (83), swears to Delos that her island shall
always be the seat of Apollo's worship another case where the
Oath confirms the assignment of a divine province. In the
Great Oath, then, the Gods swear by the two great primary
divisions of the universe, Earth and Heaven, and by Styx.
What is the significance of Styx 1

1 It must be remembered, however, that originally the oath which
sanctions law is not a contract, but a curse. This may be visibly embodied
in a substance, such as the blood of a * sacred ' animal, which is charged
with sanctity, and so with that dangerous force which recoils upon a breach
of taboo. CL the oath-ritual in Plato's Atlantis (Kritias, 11 9 D), where the
bull was to be killed ( against the top of the column ' on which the laws
were engraved, so that his blood ran down over the inscription. On the
column was also a "Op/cos invoking maledictions on the disobedient. See
J. E. Harrison, Themis, 1912, p. 163 ff.

2 We shall see later that t^e Great Oath reappears in a curious way in the
system of Empedocles (p. 237).

24 ITEIOM REIJaiOH TO PHILOSOPHY

In the Theogony Hesiod describes in detail how the cold
water of Styx is administered to the Gods as an ordeal for perjury
and lying. When one of the Olympians is suspected of false-
hood, Zeus sends Iris to bring, in a golden phial, some of this
freezing stream, which falls from a Hack precipice of rock.
The God convicted of perjury lies for a Great Year breathless,
dumb, and paralysed by the chill draught of this ancient river,
which 'traverses that desolate place where are the sources and
limits of the Earth and Tartarus, of the Sea and of the starry
Heaven/ 1 Styx is one of ten branches of the heaven-stream,
Okeanos ; the other nine roll round the earth and the sea, but
Styx falls from its rock to be the great penalty of the Gods. 2

It is impossible to get from Hesiod's account any clear idea of
the position of Styx ; but it seems that this river is vaguely
conceived as a barrier which either encloses the world or separates
one division of it from another. It is placed in Tartarus, where
are the ' roots and fountains * of the four elemental provinces--
earth, misty Tartarus, sea, and sky and those Minolta whose
dankness strikes a shuddering chill even into Gods/ 3

Now, when we remember that Horkos, Oath, is the same word
as JierLs, ' fence/ 4 we can understand why Styx is the Great
Oath of the Gods. An oath is a fence which can be visibly
symbolised in ritual, when he who takes an oath stands between
the pieces of the divided victim, surrounding himself on all
sides by the sacred thing, charged with the dangerous, inviolable
power of sanctity. Styx is the 4 shuddering chill/ the awful
horror which is the negative, forbidding aspect of Power. Zeus,
on the eve of that quarrel with Poseidon we have already noticed,
concludes his angry message to his brother thus : 5 * I declare
that I am much greater than he in might (fity) and his elder in
birth : but his heart fears not to call himself equal to me whom
the other Gods hold in shuddering awe (trrvyeovaiy This

1 L 736.

2 L 790. The tenth branch is simply invented in order to reconcile the
two views that Styx is a ninefold stream running all round the world
(nowens Styx Interfusa coercet, Verg. Georg. iv. 480) and also an actual
stream which does run down a black rock in Arcadia. The Great Oath is
evidently not this stream, "but the ninefold barrier.

3 wel-pCLTa dpyoX^' efycfcyra, rd re 0riry<*ov<rt Beol wcp, Theog. 738.

4 G. Murray, Hise of the Greek Epic*, p. 338.

5 II xv, 165,

DBSTIKY AND LAW 25

plirase makes it clear why it is that Styx is specially associated
with the dasmos the apportionment of provinces, each the
domain of some God's f mastery * (Kpdro^) and limited by a
frontier of inviolable sanctity. Styx is a representation of Taboo. 1

II. The supremacy of Zeus conferred by Styx

When Zeus declares that the other Gods hold him in shuddering
awe (crrvyeovcn), he means that his might has the effect which the
waters of Styx used to produce upon the Gods who violated the
Oath. When we understand that Styx, the shuddering chill of
taboo, is nothing but the recoil, or negative aspect, of power,
we see in a new light that strange passage in the Tkeogony, where
it is said that the supreme power or mastery (tcparo?) of Zeus
came to him, after his conquest of the Titans, c by the counsel of
Styx/ 2 The whole passage is instructive, because it seems to
describe how the supremacy passed from an impersonal power
to the will of the personal God.

Styx and Pallas had four children, Zelos, Nike, Rratos, and Bia,
' No house nor seat of Zeus is without these ; no path is there,
upon which the God does not lead them, but they are established
for ever beside Zeus, the Thunderer. For such was the counsel
of Styx, the immortal daughter of Ocean/ This endowment of
Zeus with supreme power occurred on that day when, summoning
all the Gods to Olympus, Zeus declared that no God who had
fought on his side against the Titans should be deprived of Ms
privileges (yepdav), but each should keep that status (rifMijv)
which he had before enjoyed. Further, all who had no privilege
or status under the rule of Kronos should now enter into possession
of them. Then it was that Styx, with her children, was the first
to arrive at Olympus ; and Zeus honoured her with gifts above
all else. He ordained that she should be the Great Oath of the
Gods, and that her children should dwell with him for ever.
In the same way he fulfilled his promises to all the rest in turn ;
but the supreme power and lordship are his own.

1 This view of Styx in relation to Kratos and Bia (11) is due to Miss
J. E. Harrison (Themis, p. 72). For taboo as negative mana, see R. R.
Marett, Threshold of Religion, chap. Hi. The notion will become clearer as
we go on.

2 Hesiod, Theog. 383 ff. See J. K Harrison, loc. cit.

28 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

re fcal foov). Some of the plebeians were unsettled, ' having
received no portion of land (7% polpav) nor other advan-
tages/ Numa, by distributing (Siaveipas) land to them,
and giving a new status (ripd<$) to settlers, put an end to
dissension. 1

Now, in this redistribution the Gods, quite as much as men,
had their share. There was also an * ordering of sacred things '
(rj Trepl ra Oslo, Statfocr/^cr^). Exactly as Zeus in Hesiod
accepted the constitution of Kronos and only supplied its defici-
encies, so we are told that Numa ' took over all the arrangements
of Eomulus in respect of customs and laws, and left them un-
touched ' ; but he made good the omissions, ' in many cases
appointing precincts for those Gods who had not yet obtained a
recognised position (TO is /^TTGO TC/JL&V Tv<y%avovcn deots) ; in
other cases founding altars and temples, assigning (airove^v)
to each his festival, and legislating (vo^oOer^v) about their
services and honours (r^a?)/ 2

The parallel could not be more exact. If we are right in
thinking that Moira ultimately meant the division of the universe
into distinct provinces, it is clear that this division, as soon as it
comes to be the work of a personal God, can be conceived as a
nomothesia a laying down or fixing of nomoi ; and that this
process is simply a redistribution to Gods and men of their
domains, privileges, and honours. 3 Like other such redistribu-
tions, the lawgiving of Zeus for a long time wore the aspect of an
act of usurpation. It was not soon forgotten that the cosmic
order had not really been initiated by Zeus. Throughout the
Eumenides of Aeschylus, 4 until the final scene of reconciliation,
rises the protest of the ancient Moirai against the younger Gods
who have 'ridden down the old laws/ and taken from them
their status and functions (TJ/UM). They are only appeased
when Athena promises them a new ' seat ' and f function/

1 Dion. H. Ant. ii. 62.

2 Cf. also the language used by Plato In describing the division of the
territory of the State in Laws, 745 B ff.

3 Cf . Ath. Pol. 11:6 fJ.kv yap STJJJ.OS $ero ITO.VT' avdoaarra iroirjcrew awrbv (S6Xw^a).
E.g. 1. 781 : /a> 6eol

70? y Art-pos, /c.r.X.

, * to overrun territory with horse ' (r%v xtipyv Ka&Lwrr. , Herod.
ix. 14), revives the old spatial sense of v6pt presently to be considered.

BESTTN1T AIJTD LAW 29

and makes them 'portioners in the land, with honours all
entire/ l

13. Law as a Dispensation

The connection of Nomos (Law) with the verb nemein, to

* distribute ' or f dispense/ was clearly felt by the Greeks. Take,
for instance, the following passage in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue
Minos, which discusses the notion of law (317 D) :

' Who is it that knows how to dispense (Siavei/tai) the seed
over the soil ?

' The farmer.

4 And the farmer dispenses (Siavepet) to each soil the seed it
deserves ?

'Yes.

' The farmer, then, is a good dispenser (vopevs) of these things,
and for these matters his laws and dispensations (vo/j,ot, Kal
Siavofial) are right/

In this passage * laws * and ' dispensings ' are clearly synony-
mous. We find the same conjunction in the Eumenides. In one
place 2 the Chorus accuse Apollo of e abolishing ancient dispensa-
tions ' (Siavopd?), when he tricked the Moimi into releasing a
mortal from death ; in another and parallel passage 3 the same
God is accused of < breaking the law (vo/j,ov) of the Gods, by
respecting the cause of man and abolishing the ancient apportion-
ments (poipas). 9 These passages show that the notion of

* dispensation J links together Moira and Nomos 3 with either of

1 1. 891 : A6. fm

etvai 8tKat(t}$ Is r6
XO. ava
A 9. vdff

XO. Aral dy dtSeyfiaC rls fj.oi TI/JLTJ fjAvei ;
A0. ws itf TIP* oticov cfiSevety &vev <r6ev.

2 1. 730 : <ri5 rot TraXaias Siavofias KaTa^Qfoas

otvig TrapTjTrdrTjffas dpxatas 0e<is.

3 1. 172 : irapa y6jj.ov 0ev ppbrea fjv rttav,

iraXaiyeveis Se fioipas <f>6l<ras.

See W. Headlam on Agam. 1007; and cf. JoK Diac., eh HcrcoS. Qeoy, dXXij-
yoptcu 886 ^rt 8i Kal rds Mopas airb TTJS 6^cu5os Zeus yevvq, irap60"ov lv rats
6efju.o-Tela.is 5taj*0jua rives Kal i^epta-pol irpoff-fiKOVTes ytvovrac. Schol. ad Plat.
Legg. 625 A, iroXtre/as r^s /ttas fays TTJS 6'X^y ir6Xea?s, vbfitop 8 r(av tiuivefji&vTtov
Qv TJ v6\ts. Aesch. Supp. 403, Zi>s vepwv &8uca "fv Kama, farm

So Dobree ; T^ey' aftotpov codd. efifioipov t e/ijHp&> are also corijectured.

30 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

which the word ^iavo^r) is synonymous. In Pindar, 1 again, the
word nomos itself denotes the act of dispensing : Cheiron, the
wise centaur, taught Asclepios * the dispensing of medicines with
gentle hand ' fyapudic&v eSiSatfe ^oCkaKoj^eipa vojuov,

Another derivative, z/o/^ew, which in the extract from the
Minos means * dispenser/ is of course more commonly used of
shepherds who take their flock to feed on their allotted pasture
their z/o/zo? or VQJJLT), both of which substantives denote both

* pasturage ' or * feeding-place * and secondarily s dwelling-place/

* quarters/ Perhaps the nearest equivalent is * range/ 2

Hence the compound adjective eWo/^o?, which later means
' keeping within the law/ ' law-abiding/ has the older sense of

* quartered * or ' dwelling * in a country, which is, as it were, the
legitimate range of its inhabitants. 3

We have dwelt upon these details in order to bring out the
fact that behind the familiar sense of Nomos, ' custom/ * use/
e law/ He traces of an older spatial significance the notion of a
range or province, within which defined powers may be legiti-
mately exercised what the Romans meant by a provincial
This aspect of the idea has become obscured to us owing to the
prevalence of the scientific notion of Law, which has become
associated with causal sequences in time and has lost its old
connection with space. For the understanding of the Greek
word, it is necessary to grasp that Nomos does not suggest uni-
formity of temporal sequence, but exercise of power within
spatial or departmental boundaries. We must think of Law as
a dispensation or system of provinces, within which all the
activities of a community are parcelled out and coordinated.
The plural nomoi can mean a social order so constituted ; as when,
for instance, Pindar 5 speaks of the monstrous child of Ixion and
the Cloud as * having no status among men, nor yet in the social

1 Nem. iii. 55.

2 i/o/*6y is early used metaphorically : Wide is the range of words' Mw

vojudj &Ga xal tvffa, IL xx. 249 ; cf. Hesiod, Ergo,, 403 : axPWs & &""<"
voids. Procl. in Plat. Tim. 2 IE, p. 30 c, 6 pj& vofd* (Egyptian name)
rou vevepTJcrdat, rty yrjv.
* Aesch. Suppl. 565 : pporoi ot yfa r6r' %<ra.v twopoi. Find. P, ix. 69 :
HVOL ot x9 y b* alcrav . . . gwofiov ^wp^o-crat.

4 Cf. J. L. Myres, * Herodotus and Anthropology' in Anthropology and the
Classics (Oxford, 1908), p. 157. I owe much to this valuable essay, and
especially to Professor Myres' remarks on 0ftri$ and yrf/ios. 5 Pyth. ii. 43.

DESTE5TY AND LAW 31

order of the Gods ' our' ev avSpd&i, <ypa,a-<j)opov, OUT' ei> 6e&v
vocals. The portentous thing had no proper province in the
divine or the human order : it was an * outlaw 3 from the
classified structure of Nature and of society. Or again when
the same poet 1 speaks of the spirit of power of the infant
Herakles, strangling the snakes in his cradle, the word he uses
is e/o>6/uo9, where we should say * preternatural/ The half-
divine child outranged the normal sphere of an infant's strength.

14. Nemos and Nemesis

With this conception clearly before us, we may find that it
throws some light on two other cognates of Nomos and ve^eiv :
nemos and Nemesis. Nemos (the Latin nemus) is commonly
translated by 'grove*; but the word has no etymological
connection with trees, and to account for it we must suppose
that it did not at first mean simply a natural stretch of wood-
land. There is reason to believe that a nemos was at first rather
a sacred enclosure or clearing in a wood, perhaps a clearing
round a sacred tree.

Dr. Erazer, 2 dwelling on the practice of tree-worship by all
the Aryan races of Europe, says : * From an examination of the
Teutonic words for " temple " Grimm has made it probable that
amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods.
However this may be, tree-worship is well attested for all the
great European families of the Aryan stock. Amongst the Celts
the oak-worship of the Druids is familiar to every one, and
their old word for sanctuary seems to be identical in origin and
meaning with the Latin nemus, a grove or woodland glade, which
still survives in the name of NemL . . . Proofs of the prevalence
of tree-worship in ancient Greece and Italy are abundant/

Varro, 3 in his interesting discussion of the meaning of templum,

1 JYem. i. 56.

2 Golden Bough*, part I. vol. ii p. 8. Cf. Plin. & r at. Hist. xii. 1 : 'Haec
(i.e. trees) fuere numinum templa, priscoqne ritu simplicia rura etiam nunc
deo praecellentem arborem dicant, nee magis auro fulgentia atojie chore
simulacra quam lucos et in iis silentia ipsa adoramus.' N"i?6$ (temple) has
been derived from the same root (vaF-o) as wius (ship) : both seem to have
been hollow trees. Cf. O. Kern, *Zwei Kjiltinschr. aus Kleinasien' in
Bettr. z. Gesch. d. gr. Phil. u. Relig t p. 88. Berlin, 1895,

3 Ling. Lat. vii. 6.

32 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

brings out the fact that the two essentials of the augural templum
are its fixed and oriented boundaries and the marking of these
boundaries by trees. * A templum is a place whose limits are
defined with a set formula for purposes of augury and auspices/
He quotes the archaic formula for the templum in the Arx :

Templa tescaque me (i.e. mi] ita sunto quoad ego caste lingua
nuncupauero.

Olla ueter arbos, quirquir est, quam me sentio dixisse, templum
tescumque finito in sinistrum.

Olla ueter arbos, quirquir est, quam me sentio dixisse, templum
tescumque finito in dextrum.

Inter ea conregione, conspicione, cortumione, utque ea rectissime
sensi.

' In the making of this templum, 3 Varro concludes, * it is clear
that trees are taken as its boundaries/ The ancient word tesca,
he tells us, is applied ' to certain wild places which belong to
some God/ The augur also marked out with his official staff
(lituus) a certain limited region of the sky, within which the
desired sign was to appear. 1 In this augural templum, bounded
by trees, we seem to have a survival of the sacred clearing
in a grove, the ancient nemos sanctuary. It is a * range '
assigned for the peculiar working of a divine power. 2

What makes a place * sacred ' ? The presence in it of a
dangerous power which makes it, as the Greeks said, ' not to
be entered/ * not to be set foot on ' (aSvrov, aftarov) by the pro-
fane by persons, that is to say, who are not themselves sacred,
sanctified, ceremonially brought into a state in which contact
with the mysterious power is no longer dangerous.

Now, one ancient title of the sacred presence inhabiting a
grove or nemos is none other than Nemesis. 3 Nemesis has
commonly been held to be a mere abstraction, * Vengeance '
or the Anger which avenges transgression. Mr. Cook, however,
points out that her worship is not late (as we should expect with

1 See the description of the augury taken to determine whether Numa
should be king of Borne (Livy, i. xviii. 6).

2 Compare also Pindar's description of Herakles founding Olympia (01.
i. (xi.) 45). Herakles begins by 'measuring out a grove* (<mc0/mro &X<roj
and 'staking it round* (irepurda,i$ lt A.\rti' Si^Kptve).

8 I owe this interpretation of Nemesis entirely to Mr. A. B. Cook, who
kindly allows me to anticipate its publication in his forthcoming Zeus.

DESTINY AND LAW 33

a mere abstraction), but early, going back at least to the fifth
and sixth centuries at Ehamnus and Smyrna. Further, her
attributes are not such as might be implements of vengeance.
She is figured holding an apple-branch or an apple, and with
miniature stags as ornaments in her hair. She is the Woodland
Goddess, identical with Diana Nemorensis, Diana of the Woods.
Her name Nemesis is derived from nemos, precisely as Lachesis is
derived from laches (lot).

How came the Woodland Goddess to be regarded as the
abstraction ' Avenging Anger * ? 1 It is of course possible that
the identity of the two names is a coincidence ; that Nemesis
meaning vengeance is derived from nemein by a different channel,
and stands for ' retribution ' the dispensing of penalties. But
it seems not impossible that the Goddess of the Grove might
wear this aspect. She was a Goddess of fertility, closely allied
with Fortuna, the lady who ' bears/ brings forth * (ferre, fyepeiv)
the fruits of the earth. But she who dispenses good things can
withhold them, or dispense blights instead of blessings. The
awful power which haunts the nemos may blast the profane
invader of her sanctuary. In the far-off times, when a nemos was
the typical sacred place, Nemesis might well have been the
typical Avenger of trespass. In the same way figures of a fertility
spirit, Priapus, were set up as boundary marks to scare tres-
passers. And when the woodland enclosures fell into disuse,
Nemesis might become the guardian of law, of nomos instead of
nemos , losing all her ancient gift of fruitfulness all but the apple-
branch, which, in her character of Vengeance, she so inappropri-
ately retains.

It is perhaps something more than an odd coincidence that the
great Roman lawgiver, Numa, before he gave his nomoi, sought
inspiration and counsel from the Goddess of the Woodland
Nemus. And Rome herself, the centre from which law spread
to the furthest bounds of Europe, had her beginning in a place
of refuge which was nothing but a sacred grove, a woodland
sanctuary for desperadoes and outlaws. 2

3 Mr. Cook is not responsible for the answer I suggest to this question.

2 Livy, i. 8 : f locum, qui nunc saeptiis descendentibus inter dues lucos eat,
asylum aperit.' Dion. H. Ant. ii. 15: ^66(>u>v $votv Spvfi&v. See Frazer,
Totemism, L 96, and Golden Bough*, part I. voL ii. p. 176.

34 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Pindar, at any rate, does not forget that Nemesis, the Dis-
penser, may give good things as well as harm. He ends the
eighth Olympian x with a prayer for the victor's family : * that
Zeus may make Nemesis not to be of two minds in the apportion-
ment of blessings. Rather may he guide their life clear of harm,
and give increase to them and to their city/ The apportionment
of blessings, the giving of increase, is the positive aspect of the
dispensing power ; while its negative side is the vengeance which
recoils upon trespass across its defined boundaries. Correspond-
ing to these two aspects, Nomos and Moira, which, so long as
we considered their purely sr>atial associations, seemed almost
indistinguishable, tend to diverge. Moira, always static, a
system rather than a force, leans toward the negative side :
she limits and forbids, Nomos, on the contrary, is dynamic and
inclines to the positive. Though implying the fixed limitation of
a range or province, the word perhaps always meant also the
normal behaviour prescribed and enjoined within a given province,
and so custom. The word ethea seems to have a similar history.
Its older sense is ' haunts,' the country within which you range ;
later it means f customs, established behaviour, habits/ 2 Thus
Moira stands for the limit of what you may do, and for what will
happen if you exceed your limit. 3 Nomos rather means what
you must do within your limits, the regular and rightful
functions you must exercise or ' wield 'another sense of nemein,
as in nemein Jcratos, ' to wield authority/ * to dispense power/

But we may bear in mind that the positive and negative
aspects are only the two sides of one power or force. The power
which holds a certain field and is lawfully exercised within it

01. viii. 86 : etfxo^at &fJ><f>i Ka\w jj.otp$ N<fyee<np foxo^ouXop ^ 0<fyiev dXX'

&yuv plorov atfrotfs r' <teoi teal -rrfaw. AvfowTov, because
the more frequent gift of Kfyecrw : Hes. Theog. 223 : rfore $ *ai
irTJpa Qvr\rotffi /3p6rot<rt. Cf. Theol. Aritk. p. 32 (of Pythagoreans) :
KaXoOfft rty irf-vrdSa,' vfyci yo$j> Trpcxn/^rws rd re otpdpia, /cat 0e?a /cal
oroixeta rots wfrre.

3 The old sense of ^0os seems to survive in Empedocles, frag. 17, 1. 27,
who says of the elements :

raura y&p Icrd re TT&VTO, /cat ffXi/ea y&vav a<ri,
rt^s 5' dXXTys #XXo /4^5, irdpa 5* 1j6os f/cdtrry.

3 poTpa. means 'limit' in Od. xix. 592 (one cannot always go without sleep),
<hri ydp rot ^/cd<rrv poTpw tByKav MfoctToi Ov*iT<>t<n, and is almost equivalent to
taboo in Hesiod, Ergo,, 744 :

fJ,7}84 TTOr' Olvoxfyv TidtflW KpTJTTJpOS VlTp0e

DESTINY AND LAW 35

Is also tie power which recoils in anger upon an Invading power
from beyond its frontiers.

15. The Dispensation of Reason in Plato

This idea of a dispensation can be further illustrated from
several ' mythical ' passages in Plato which describe the con-
stitutional order of divine government In the Golden Age of
Kronos. In that age, according to the Stranger In the Politicus*
the revolution of the universe, under the guidance of God, went
in the direction contrary to its present motion. ' All the parts
of the ordered universe were divided amongst Gods appointed
to rule over them, just as now Gods rule over various places.
Moreover, living creatures according to their kinds were assigned
to daemons, as it were flocks to divine shepherds (2/0^779), each
daemon being sufficient in himself in all things for his own flock
(o?9 avro? evefjLev), so that there was then no savagery, no
devouring of one another, no war nor strife of any sort among
them/ This last trait is taken from Hesiod ; 2 It marks the
dominion of Justice In the Golden Age, with which the prevalence
of injustice in our own Age of Iron is in melancholy contrast.
For at the end of the Golden period, the Governor of the Universe
let go the tiller and left the world to the reverse impulse of Fate
and its own inborn desire. Then ' all the Gods who in their
several places had ruled together with the highest God, perceiving
what was happening, in their turn left their divisions of the
world-order without oversight/ 3

In the above passage the division of living creatures according

1 271 D : o>* v%v Kara T6vov$, rafobv rovro farb Qe&v Apx6vT(av KaLVTrj ret rou
/c6<r/*0i> ntpy du&qwLfra* /cat STJ Ktd ra faki xar& ytrq K al tiyfras olor vopfy &CLOI
&etX-#<e<rap' fal/wves, a&ra/wcfa efc irdyra &OOTOS l/cdtrrots 8>y ols afrrbs faftev,
&<rr* otfr* &ypiov ty otStv otfrc d\X-#X&>j> $a>5a, x6Xe/x6s r 1 Q$K &TJV o$$k <rr<<ris rb
irapdirav.

2 JZfTgo,) 276 : r6v8 yap avOp&iroiffi v&pov SITO$ Kpo^Cwy,

lx&v<rL (J^v Ktd Otjfxrl Kal otwois Trereijvois

Iff8fu~v dXXiJXous, fad o& Slioj karlv

a,v6p&irot(ri 5 J fSw/cc Sticqv . . .
Compare also Empedocles* Keign of Love, below, p. 236.

8 PoL 272 E. For Nemesis and the Daemons aeePs.-Timaeus, IT.
Kbfffua ICNt E : faravTa. de ravra (about the soul- wandering) b Sevrtpg, tr
a, JS4fu<ri$ (rvvditxpive abv Sot/tocri TraXa/xyoIoty x^ovtots re, rots eirtarrais TUV

36 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

to their natural kinds that ' original boundary ($po$) and law
by which Zeus distinguished their several natures and set each
kind apart * l is compared to the local distribution among the
Gods of their several seats of worship. In the Kritias* again, it
is declared that the Gods divided among them the whole earth,
place by place, not as the result of strife, but peacefully by draw-
ing e the lotsof Justice ' (8/^179 K\^po^ Xo^azwres) ; andmaMng
themselves at home in their several countries, ' as shepherds
(vo/ttjs) over their flocks, they fostered us, their creatures and
nurslings/ ruling us not by violence, but by persuasive reason.
Our duty in this present age is to restore this * dispensation of
Eeason * (vov Siavow), to which we shall give the name of ' Law '

(Nc/io?). 3

Thus, in his 'mythical* manner, Plato amplifies and re-
interprets the famous doctrine of Anaxagoras : ' All things were
confounded together, when Eeason came and introduced distinc-
tion and order/ Keason takes the place of Zeus, as Zeus had
taken the place of Moira. But the function of the supreme power
remains the same to ' introduce distinction and order/ to effect
a diakosmesis the very word that Dionysius, in his description
above cited (p. 27) of the legislation of Numa, uses to denote
the re-ordering of the cults of the Gods, the redistribution of
precincts and seats of worship.

What is interesting to note here is that philosophy seems to
repeat, in its own way, the two stages we traced in pre-scientific,
religious representation. Just as there we found the will of a
personal God superseding Moira, and claiming to ordain by a
legislative act what had before been simply the recognised fact
of classified structure in the universe, so in philosophy the creative
Mind makes a tardy appearance and claims to have designed a
system which for Anaximander was produced by motion.

The process itself, however, throughout all these stages
remains in essence the same. It is a process of apportionment
)> distinction (8w*/u w), dispensation (Siavojjj), lawgiving
ordering (Swweocrfw;w). The personal God of

1 Plut. Mor. 964 B=Porph. de abst. i. 5, p. 88 : o
% rto BLov toMfrftnit (hropfef % rty 8iKMOfftonp *X
Ml *po* jnMrrum itrf"HffM*> (be. A supra)
dfaevos Mq, rwv yevuv ttcdrepov 'Wfai pto, K.T.\. 109 A ff.

3 Laws, 713 D : TTJV rov Nou SM

DESTTffY AHD LAW 37

religion and the impersonal Reason of philosophy merely re-
enact as * dispensers * (No/^?) that old arrangement called Moira
which, as we saw, was really older than the Gods themselves,
and free from any implication of design or purpose.

16. The primitive religious representation in Greek
polytheism

The main upshot of the foregoing analysis is that in Greek
polytheism the departmental division of the world, vaguely
represented as Moira, was the ultimate and primary fact a
scheme or order whose provinces were first occupied by impersonal
powers, which later took the shape and attributes of individual
personality. We may now observe that this view agrees with
what the Greeks themselves believed about the development of
their own religion.

Herodotus 1 learnt at Dodona that the Pelasgians worshipped
nameless gods, whom they called simply theoi, because e they had
set all things in order (fc6<rjj,q> tfei/re?), and all dispensations
(voiids) were in their hands/

' It was only yesterday, so to speak, that they learnt of what
parentage was each God, or whether they were all from everlasting,
and what they were like in figure. 2 For, in my opinion, Homer
and Hesiod lived not more than four hundred years before my
time ; and it was they who composed a theogony for the Hellenes,
gave the Gods their titles, apportioned to them their functions
and arts, and made clear their figures/

This is a very valuable piece of religious history. Behind the
clear-cut and highly differentiated personalities of the Olympians,
it shows us older figures far less distinct and hardly personal.

The proper term for them in Greek is not theos, but daemon.
Theos always suggests individuality, whereas these daemons had
as yet no ' figures/ and no peculiar functions or arts which
differentiated one of them from another. We must give up the

1 ii. 52. For the association of Kotrpw and vtyew, cf. Plato, Protag. 320c :
The Gods ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus Kofffjtfj<r<u re Kal vet/tcu, Swd/tetsr
cKdffrots t&y T/j&rcc ; and the rest of that myth,

2 ctSea. For the meaning of etSos, see A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica,
L 184 (Oxford, 1911), who shows that the word in current usage means
' bodily form * or physique.

38 FROM BELIOION TO PHILOSOPHY

view, associated by Herodotus with his wrong derivation of
theos, that these daemons * set the universe in order/ They were
not cosmic powers, but local spirits, good spirits (ayaOol Safaoves),
each rooted to the portion of earth inhabited and cultivated by
Ms worshippers. This was his moira, and within it all dispensa-
tions (vo/Mal) were in his hands. He was the sole guardian and
saviour (<pv\a^ 9 a-aTijp) of his people in war, and he also and above
all gave them the fruits of earth in times of peace. These local
spirits of fertility simply consisted of their functions ; that was
all there was of them. Beyond that they had no personality ;
and they were only individuals in the sense that the power
residing in one moira of earth was numerically different from the
power residing in another. 1

We have had before us more than once two variant notions of
the dasmos : first, the division of the elemental provinces among
the three sons of Kronos ; second, the distribution of the surface
of the earth into separate seats of worship. It is now apparent
that the cosmic dasmos belongs to an advanced stage of Olympian
theology. Not only is it based on a doctrine of the elements,
but the Gods who take part in the division are known to have
had local histories before they were generally recognised as cosmic
powers. The old daemons of the type called Pelasgian by
Herodotus can have no place in the elemental dasmos ; but they
do fit into the other notion of a dasmos of earth into seats of
local worship. The natural inference is that the cosmic dasmos
is modelled upon this older one adapted from it when a pan-
hellenic theology was put together by the gathering of many
local divinities to a common Olympus. We may therefore look
back to the old dasmos of earth among these local spirits of
earth's fertility as the earlier conception. It gives us the
framework of primitive religious representation in Greek poly-
theism or polydaemonism. This is a system of departments
(moirai) dearly marked off from one another by boundaries of
inviolable taboo, and each the seat of a potency which pervades
that department, dispenses its power within it, and resists
encroachment from without.

1 The origin and nature of these local daemons, some of whom become
personal Gods and acquire elemental provinces, will be further discussed
in chap. iii. See also J. E. Harrison, Themis, chap, ix, From Daimon to
Olympian.

DESTINY AND LAW 39

We find, in fact, that the basis and framework of Greek
polytheism is an older form of that very order of Destiny and
Justice which is reaffirmed by nascent science in the cosmology
of Anaximander. Out of the provinces of that dispensation,
the personal powers which had taken shape within them have
disappeared again. The Gods have faded, and we are left with
the elements from which Hesiod tells us that the Gods arose.
Seen against the background of the destined order, the life of the
Gods from first to last shows up as a mere episode. Nature
the living and self-moving stuff of all things that exist and the
primary forms in which her upspringing life is confined by the
appointment of Destiny and Justice these are older than the
Gods and they outlast them. The course of philosophy starts
from the same point from which, centuries earlier, religion took
its departure on the way that led to the last and fatal ab-
surdities of complete anthropomorphism. The history of this
episode, called Olympian religion, we shall try to trace in the
third chapter. Meanwhile, what we have called the primitive
religious representation, to which our analysis has led us back,
still remains to be accounted for. Our task in the next chapter
will be to trace its yet remoter origin.

THE OKIGIN OF MOIRA

17. How did the representation of Moira arise ?

OUK inquiry in the last chapter led us from an apparently
paradoxical statement of the first systematic cosmologist,
through an analysis of Destiny and Law, to the conclusion that
for Greek religious representation, no less than for early philo-
sophy, the most significant truth about the universe is that it is
portioned out into a general scheme of allotted provinces or
spheres of power. The elements came into possession of their
fixed regions when the first limits were set up by the eternal
motion within the primary undifferentiated mass, called by
Anaximander e the limitless thing/ The Gods had their pro-
vinces by the impersonal appointment of Lachesis or Moira.
The world, in fact, was from very early times regarded as the
kingdom of Destiny and (in the sense we have defined) of Law.
Necessity and Justice' must * and ' ought ' meet together in
this primary notion of Order a notion which to Greek religious
representation is ultimate and unexplained.

Yet, if we reflect upon it, we shall see that some explanation is
called for. Why was it that, in Greek theology, cosmogony, and
philosophy alike, the primacy of Moira is so strikingly empha-
sised ? The departmental distribution of the four elements,
the segregation of pairs of ' contraries/ hot and cold, wet and
dry these are not features of the universe which could instantly
present themselves to innocent speculation as obviously the
important guiding threads in the bewildering maze of sense-data.
And if we accept the results of the last chapter and admit
that such general conceptions are taken by philosophers from
pre-scientific thought, we have only pushed the problem back
one stage. If the departmental ordering of the elements is
only the physical transcript of the departmental ordering of the

THE OBIGIK OF MOIRA

divine powers by Moim> how did that representation itself
arise ? No more than the cosmological application of it, is it
a matter of simple common-sense, which would occur to any
man who sat down, in presence of Nature, to invent a religion.

The question that now confronts us is whether we can trace
the notion back to a yet earlier stage. Hitherto we have been
guided by survivals in Greek thought and linguistic usage,
which gave us a sufficient basis for reconstruction. But at this
point we must either fold our hands and rest content, like the
Greeks themselves, in the contemplation of Moira as a final and
inexplicable fact, or we must have recourse to our knowledge of
other religious systems of a type indisputably more primitive
than any recorded for us in Greek sources. We must boldly
enter the domain of hypothesis, taking for our guide the com-
parative method.

18. The change from Religion to Philosophy

How does the cosmology of Anaximander differ from the
cosmology of Homer or of Hesiod ? We have seen that the
philosopher and the poets have the same fundamental scheme in
common. Why do we call Anaximander *s treatment philosophic
or scientific, and Hesiod's religious or mythical 1

One obvious difference is that Anaximander has expurgated
the supernatural, with a boldness and completeness to which
many of his successors failed to attain. To be more precise, he
has expurgated those features and factors, the supernatural or
mythical character of which he was able to detect. He has
eliminated Zeus and his fellow Olympians, and in so doing has
struck out of Ms scheme of things the objects on which the
religious consciousness of his time was, whether in name or reality,
focussed. The effect, as we have seen, is that he restores the
more ancient reign of Moira. The primary order is still said
to be * according to what is ordained 3 ; it is still a moral order
in which Justice prevails ; but the will of the personal God has
disappeared, and its place is partly taken by a natural cause,
the eternal motion. We seem to have left the supernatural
behind and to have passed at one step into the shining air of
reason*

42 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

The Milesian School strikes a new note, unheard before. It
has a fresh sense of the meaning of truth a feeling for what
might or might not be literally and prosaically true, and for the
sort of thing it is reasonable to suppose. The hypothesis it
characteristically deals in is concerned with the nature of the
one primary stuff ; and although we may be able to see that
about this entity there still clung much that was of mythical
origin, the Milesians seem to make a great conscious effort to
get at something which really does exist. They strike us as
throwing off the vast symbolic visions of mythology, and
waking, clear-headed, to see and touch real things. If we have
a rational temperament, we feel at once a refreshment. Here at
last is a statement about the world which is meant and offered as
true a logos, not a mythos.

It is perhaps the sudden pleasantness of this change of air that
has caused us to draw too hard a line between religion and
philosophy, and either to overlook the persistence of funda-
mental conceptions, or to follow the matter-of-fact Peripatetic
tradition and wave them aside as poetical metaphors. 1 We
may easily attach more importance than it deserves to the dis-
appearance of the Olympians from the framework of the world,
and suppose that, when they went, they took with them the whole
element of the mythical or supernatural. That is by no means
true. Homer's Gods had drifted so far out of touch with Nature
and with the demands of human morality that any man of
intellect like Anaximander could run a pen through them and
leave the world and the heart of man none the poorer. They
had grown so personal and individual and human that nothing
but a wide freedom of allegorical interpretation could keep the
old idols on their bases. But when the Gods were eliminated,
a moral or sacred character still clung to the framework of the
world itself, that system of provinces within which the Gods had
sprung up and developed, till they were overblown and died.
The stuff of the world, the pTiysis portioned out into those
provinces, was also, as we shall see, a conception of mythical

1 Cf. Simpl. Pkys. 24, 13, who, after quoting Anaximander J s sentence
about * pay ing the penalty for injustice,' adds : TrotT/rtjtwr^pots otfrwj fobfj-affw
atiTo, \4ycw. Similarly, Aristotle dismisses Plato's technical terms irapi^ay^a.
and ftertxew as ' poetical metaphors ' (Met. A 9) instead of trying to under-
stand them.

THE OBIGIK OF MO IE A 43

origin. In otter words, when Anaximander thought he was
getting to close quarters with Nature, this Nature was not
simply the outer world presented to us through our senses, but a
representation of the world-order, actually more primitive than
the Gods themselves. This representation was, moreover, of a
religious character; it was taken over by philosophy from
religion, not independently deduced from observation of the
world and its natural processes.

19. The moral order of the world as a collective
representation

It would, perhaps, be generally assumed that to think of the
world as moral through and through, as a kingdom of Justice,
belongs to a late period of reflection. The assumption hangs
together with that picture we drew at the outset, of the individual
philosopher examining his inner and outer experience and
drawing well-considered deductions from what he observed.
It would be long indeed before anything presented to Ms un-
biassed perceptions would lead him to suppose that Nature had
any respect whatever for moral standards. Wherever and
whenever a professed man of science upholds such an opinion,
we may be certain that he is not formulating a description of
observed facts, but turning Ms knowledge to the defence of a
belief which he has learnt, not direct from Nature, but at his
mother's knee ; in other words, a collective representation. And
this particular representation is not the outcome of long ac-
cumulated results of science and philosophy. On the contrary,
the further back we trace it, the more firmly planted it appears ;
and the daily contradiction of all experience has not yet up-
rooted it from the popular mind.

20. The nature of collective representations

The term f collective representation * has been made familiar
to us by the modern French school of sociologists. It is roughly
defined by one of them as follows : *

* Representations called collective can be recognised by the
1 L. L4vy-Bruhl, Fonctions mentales dans les sotittte infirieures, 1910, p. 1.

44 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

following marks : they are common to the members of a given
social group, within which they are transmitted from generation
to generation ; they are imposed upon the individuals, and
awaken in them, as the case may be, feelings of respect, fear,
adoration, etc., towards their objects. They do not depend for
their existence upon the individual; not that they imply a
collective subject distinct from the individuals composing the
social group, but in that they present themselves with characters
which cannot be accounted for merely by considering the in-
dividuals as such. It is thus that a language, although, properly
speaking, it exists only in the minds of the individuals who
speak it, is none the less indubitably a social thing, founded on a
mass of collective representations. It imposes itself on each of
the individuals ; it exists before each of them and survives him/

But, it may be objected, are we not here denying what we
before admitted that peculiar liberty of Greek thought from
dogmatic imposition, which made possible the free development
of ancient speculation ? To meet this objection and define our
meaning, we must make the notion of a collective representation,
in so far as it concerns our subject, more precise.

We do not mean that the Greek philosopher, at any rate in
Ionia, was compelled by society to profess his belief that Zeus
sat on a throne somewhere in the sky and controlled the course
of natural events ; or that he was liable to be burnt alive if he
publicly denied that the sun goes round the earth. Such
persecution, though not unknown in the pre-Christian world,
was in the main characteristic of later ages and of religions
which claimed to be universal. It was possible for a Greek to
dispense with the supernatural, and even openly to attack the
morality and the existence of the Gods of popular belief. Xeno-
phanes of Kolophon, who criticised Homeric theology with
unsparing plainness, lived to a good old age. The philosopher
was not in this sense trammelled by dogma ; and when we speak
of collective representation, it is not dogma a formulated creed
or collection of final truths about the world and its governance
that we mean.

But, when we have eliminated all such formulas and creeds
and put aside the supernatural, there remains embedded in
the very substance of all our thoughts about the world and

THE QBI&m OF MOIRA 45

about ourselves an inalienable and ineradicable framework
of conception, which is not of our own making, but given to
us ready-made by society a whole apparatus of concepts
and categories, witMn which and by means of which all our
individual thinking, however original and daring, is com-
pelled to move. This common inherited scheme of conception,
which is all around us and comes to us as naturally and un-
objectionably as our native air, is none the less imposed upon us
and limits our intellectual movements in countless ways all
the more surely and irresistibly because, being inherent in the
very language we must use to express the simplest meaning, it
is adopted and assimilated before we can so much as begin to
think for ourselves at all. This mass of collective representation
is, of course, constantly undergoing gradual change, largely due
to the critical efforts of individual thinkers, who from time to
time succeed in introducing profound modifications. It is
different for every age in history, for every well-marked group
in the intellectual chart of mankind, and even within such
groups, in a minor degree, for every nationality. Hence the
error of supposing that human nature is much the same at all
times, and that, since non-human nature is much the same too,
the Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., studying his
inner and outer experience, was confronted with the same
problems seen in the same light as the English philosopher of
to-day. The difference the immense difference between the
two lies in their several inheritances of collective representation.
It is a difference that comes home to any one who has to e trans-
late * (as it is called) from Greek into English. He will soon
discover that, when once we go beyond the names of objects like
tables or trees and of simple actions such as running or eating,
no Greek word has an exact equivalent in English, no important
abstract conception covers the same area or carries with it the
same atmosphere of association. Translation from one language
to another is impossible, from an ancient to a modern language
grotesquely impossible, because of these profound differences
of collective representation, which no ' translation 3 will ever
transfer.

It will now be clear in what sense Anaximander*s cosmological
scheme may be said to embody a religious representation. We

46 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

do not mean that it is any longer obligatory 1 imposed as a
matter of faith, either by society upon the philosopher, or by
the philosopher upon his readers. But the representation itself
is unchanged and still bears the marks of its collective origin ;
the only difference is that for Hesiod it had been a matter of
faith, while for Anaximander it is a theory.

21. How collective representations are imposed

But when we have classed the belief in Moira under the head
of collective representation, the question still remains open :
how did humanity first come by this particular belief ? If it is
not deduced by experience and observation, what is its origin ?
The notion of a universal order in all Nature is strikingly general
and abstract. Still more inexplicable, at first sight, seems the
moral or sacred character attributed to this order. Let us first
consider what we mean when we speak of it as * moral J or
* sacred/

In primitive societies, as we shall presently see, the nature
and order of the world, or certain specially important features
of this order, are a mystery, in the sense of a received doctrine,
revealed in many cases at the critical moment of adolescence,
when the mind is most plastic and impressionable. The rites of
initiation are of a terrifying character, often including protracted
torture. They are well calculated to effect their object, which is
to enforce these socially important representations with the
strongest emotional colour and power. They are not to be pale
intellectual opinions, at the option of the individual to take or
leave upon his own estimate of their probability ; they are to be
objects of indefeasible faith, charged with awful and tremendous
feelings, fraught with associations of the most terrific experiences. 2
If "morality touched with emotion ' is a bad definition of religion,
custom touched with emotion ' is a good definition of morality ;

1 Obligatoriness is taken by Durkheim ('Definition des phenomenes re-
ligieux,' Ann6e Social, ii. p. 1 ff.) as the essential characteristic of religious
representations ; and he points out that it is a sign of collective origin, since
the group is the only moral power superior to the individual, and capable
of imposing beliefs and communicating to them that mysterious or ' sacred '
character which marks the articles of religious faith.

3 See Le'vy-Bruhl, Lesfonctiona mentales dans lea aoctette inftrieures, p. 29.

THE ORIGIN OF MOIRA 47

and in primitive initiation ceremonies tlie confirmatory touch of
emotion is laid on with no light hand.

But the terrors and tortures of initiation are only an occasional
and specially lively enforcement of a power which pervades with
permanent and imperceptible dominance any social group of
mankind. This is the power now recognised by psychologists
under the name of * herd-suggestion/ Until quite recently this
factor of human psychology has been almost overlooked by
students of the history of religion ; yet it has had more to do
with the making of religious dogma than anything else. We
only begin to understand the meaning and origin of religious
belief and of morality, when we give up the fallacy of supposing
that these great fabrics are the work of autonomous individual
intellects, facing the facts of nature and constructing quasi-
rational hypotheses to account for them. This fallacy is by no
means yet abandoned ; even the scientific anthropologist some-
times relapses into the assumption that his own attitude in the
study of religion is the attitude of the social groups in whose
consciousness religion took shape. We still are apt to take at
least half seriously the c savage philosopher/ imagined as pro-
pounding hypotheses in much the same spirit as a Newton
hypotheses which have the misfortune to be absurd only because
they are based on incorrect observation. This conception of the
noble savage is excusable in Kousseau, because at the end of the
eighteenth century no one had cared to inquire what savages
were really like ; but it must be abandoned now. Eeligious
beliefs are not the clever inventions of individual minds, but
imposed upon the individual from without. Or, to speak more
strictly, we must for these purposes give up thinking of the
individual as having any separate existence over against society,
and rather conceive him as completely immersed in one continu-
ous social mentality.

It is true, of course, that every human being, in respect of a
certain part of his mental life, exists in a world that is exclusively
his own a world of inner and outer sensation, and of move-
ments directly connected with these states of the organism.
This is the * primary and inalienable basis of all individuality '
and is independent of the state of society. 1 But, for all that lies

1 See Durkheiin, Sw la division du travail social 3 , p. 175.

48 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

beyond the sphere of simple physical necessities on the plane
of representations of a higher kind, the primitive consciousness
seems to possess no individuality. Where the civilised man has
private and original opinions, beliefs, and inspirations, the
savage has no self-assertive individuality, no consciousness of
himself in distinction from his group. To this higher plane,
moreover, belongs the whole sphere of religion and morality.
In respect of these, the savage has no independent beliefs no
faith or practice that are not also and equally shared by every
other member of Ms group. Hence it is not even strictly correct
to say that these beliefs and practices are f imposed ' upon the
individual. That is how it now seems to us, among whom at
last individuality is beginning to lift its head and to be allowed
a very restricted field of toleration. But it is not so with the
savage, who in respect of this field of mentality can more truly
be said not to exist as an individual at all. The social group is
the compact unit ; it can no more be said to consist of individuals
than the wine in a bottle can be said to consist of distinct drops.
Religious and moral beliefs might be compared to the colour of
this wine, pervading every part of it in continuous distribution.
There is no question of this or that drop of wine holding out
against the infusion, and having the colour forced upon it by
other drops who have previously submitted. The liquid behaves
as a continuous and undivided whole : so also does the social
group. 1

Further, we should be deluded indeed, if we fancied that we
ourselves are in this respect very different from the savage.
A host of notorious facts would spring up to refute us. Why is
it that the religions of the world are geographically and socially
distributed, so that you can point to one area in which the
enormous majority are Buddhists, to another in which they are
Christians, to a third in which they are Mohammedans, and so

1 Cf. Durkheim, Sur la div. du trav. soc. 8 , p. 180 : * Si Ton a cru parfois
que la contrainte avait et6 plus grande autrefois qu'aujourd'imi, c'est en
vertu de cette illusion qui a fait attritmer & un regime coercitif la petite
place f alte a la libert individuelle dans lea society's inf erieures. En re"alite",
la vie sociale, partout ou elle est normale, est spontanee; et si elle eat
anormale, elle ne peut pas durer. C'est spontane'ment que 1'individu ab-
dique ; et meme il n'est pas juste de parler d'abdioation la ou il n'y a rien
a abdiquer.'

THE OBIOTPT OF MOIRA 49

on ? No one can suppose that in any one of these areas, by
some miraculous dispensation, each individual has been led by an
independent process of reason to accept the truth of the religion
which happens to prevail. Eeligions and moralities are epi-
demic now as they have always been. They are transmitted
contagiously by herd-suggestion, and each tends to spread over
as wide an area as is covered by a type of mentality homogeneous
enough to absorb that particular mode of belief. Hellenised
Borne was easily converted to Hellenised Christianity ; easy too
was the diffusion of the same religious system over Romanised
Europe. Anglicanism makes some advances in Anglicised India.
But missionaries best know the obstacles which stand in thek
way, when they have to deal with a comparatively untouched
civilisation, like the Chinese. Buddhism, on the other hand,
was readily absorbed in China, because its ruling conception of
Dharma (the order of the world and of morality) was practically
identical with the Chinese Too, and the same consciousness
that was satisfied with the one conception assimilated the other
without a struggle. 1

In our own country, perhaps the freest in the world, the heretic
and the innovator in morals are no longer burnt at the stake ;
but, like the Christian missionary in China, they alone are
conscious of the full weight of that collective feeling which
sanctions the creeds, and enforces the morality, of the herd.
But even the orthodox, who is so immersed in the collective
mind that he is no more aware of its pressure than a fish is
aware of the pressure of the water in which it floats, can yet
form some idea of what we mean, if he will attend for a moment
to what he experiences in the presence of something he regards
as * sacred * let us say, a king at his coronation in Westminster
Abbey. Or, let him isolate from all rational considerations the
emotional element in his state of mind, when he contemplates
committing some gross breach of social custom, which he person-
ally does not consider to be bad or harmful. He will then be
able to detect in himself the emotional charge communicated to
a collective representation by intense feeling diffused throughout

1 De Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 1910, p. 2: 'Buddhism eradicated
nothing ; the religion of the Crescent is only at the beginning of its work ;
that of the Cross has hardly passed the threshold of China, 5 See also p. 165.

50 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

his herd. Finally, let him imagine his emotion intensified a
hundredfold and quite freed from rational control, and he will
be in the way to understand the same force of suggestion in a
primitive group, undisturbed by heresy and individualism.

Now, it is precisely this emotional charge that makes a belief
or a custom religious or moral. It is the fading out of it that
marks the transition from faith to speculative opinion from
religion and morals to science and ethics. We have already
noted, in another context, the refreshing effect of this change of
atmosphere, which comes with the Milesian School. A repre-
sentation of the world-order which had once been a mystery,
fraught, in its earlier days, with awful emotion and serious
practical consequences, is now put forward as a rational theory,
which any one who can understand it is free to take or leave.
In that sense, this representation has ceased to be religious, and
become scientific : it is no longer imposed as a matter of faith,
but offered for intellectual acceptance. On the other hand, the
representation itself the view of the world so recommended is
still, through and through, a moral representation, in the sense that
a moral or sacred character is ascribed to the world-order itself.

22. The order of Nature e sacred,' because once continuous
with human society

So, once more, we come back into presence of our problem,
having learnt by the way something of what ' moral * or ' sacred '
means. We are still faced by the question : How did it come
about, in the first instance, that the disposition of the cosmos
and of its parts was charged with those tremendous emotions
which enforce human custom or morality ? How did it come to
be a religious or moral representation at all ?

We think we understand why positive laws of conduct are still
enforced by those emotions. If we were called upon to defend
them, we should urge that, in the main, they correspond to
practical interests at all times important for the existence or
wellbeing of socialised humanity. 1 But why should the same

1 I do not imply that I think this account true. I accept Durkheim's
view; *Le aeul caract&re commnn & tons les crimes, c'est qu'ils consistent
... en des actes universellement rriprouye's par les membres de chaque
soci6t6' (Sur la div. du trav. soc. 8 , p. 39).

THE ORIOOT OF MO IE A 51

emotional sanction ever have become attached to beliefs about
the order and structure of non-human nature ; and tMs so
firmly that, even when religion had decayed. It was long before
science could vindicate them for her own domain, in which no
belief is sacred, and all emotion, save curiosity, is out of place ?
When the question is thrown into this shape, the answer lies
near at hand. It is this :

Moira came to be supreme in Nature over all the subordinate
wills of men and Gods, "because she was first supreme in human
society, which was continuous with Nature. Here, too, we find
the ultimate reason why Destiny is moral : she defines the limits
of mores, of social custom.

This continuity of the order of Nature with the grouping of
society, foreign as it is to our modern ways of thinking, is
abundantly evidenced from various parts of the world, where
we shall find that the social structure is used as a framework,
into which all classes of natural phenomena are fitted.

23. Classification based on tribal structure

Among the Zunis, a totemistic tribe of North American Indians,
we are told l that all natural objects, and even abstractions, are
classified in one solid system, the parts of which are coordinated
according to degrees of kinship. The principle, moreover, of
this classification is the seven regions of space north, south,
east, west, zenith, nadir, and centre. To one or other of these
seven regions everything in the universe falls. Each region, too,
has a certain colour, the centre having all colours at once. 2 The
social structure corresponds : three clans of the tribe are assigned
to each region, except the centre, which has but one. 3 The

1 Durkheim et Manss, 'Classifications primitives,* Ann. Social. vi. p. 34.
Most of my evidence and, to a large extent, the theory based on it are taken
from this essay.

2 Similarly colours are attributed to the zones by Eratosthenes, ap. Ach.
Tat. and HeracL Pont., quoted by Conington on Verg. Qeorg. i. 233 : w&re
te ol $&v<u irepit\d8S {<nrctpijfro 9 ai dtfo ph yhavKOio K\aivorpat. KV&VQIQ,
% 8% /A/a ^tt^a/w} re Ktd K wpt>s dtov tpvffp-/}. . . .

* See also Levy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentdles dam Us soctitte inf&rieures,
p. 33 : * Les regions de Pespace, lea directions (points cardmaux) ont leur

52 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

two classifications are the same, in the sense that everything
belongs to some ' oriented clan/ though it is possible that the
orientation comes later, and is superimposed on an original clan
division. There are traces of an older scheme, with six regions ;
and an older still, with only four the cardinal points. To this
fourfold classification is traced the belief,, held by the Zunis,
that there are jfbw elements, belonging to the four regions.

It is held that orientation begins with the division of the
round tribal camp into quarters, occupied by groups of clans.
Among another tribe, the Ponkas of the Sioux Indians, we find
the camp divided into two phratries and four quarters, and
these quarters are respectively occupied by two clans of fire
(thunder) ; two of water ; two of wind ; two of -earth the four
elements.

In China there are similar schemes, some more complex, some
of a simple type, used as the basis for divination, astronomy,
geomancy, and horoscopy. In one of them, there are five ele-
ments earth, water, wood, metal, fire located in five regions
of space, earth being at the centre.

The aboriginal Mexicans, again, recognised four great Gods ;
four quarters of the heavens, the four chambers of Tlaloc t each
with its vessel containing a different species of rain ; and four
quarters of the pueUo of Mexico. Similarly in Peru we find four
elements, four principal huacas (the Creator, Sun, Thunder, and
Earth-mother), and the four quarters of Cuzco, ' a division subse-
quently extended to the Cuzco district between the Apurimac
and Paucartampu rivers, and later still applied to the wide-
stretching quarters of the Inca dominion/ 1

It seems clear that, in these and similar cases, the ultimate
basis of classification is the grouping of the tribe. The seg-
mentation of the tribe into two, or four, or however many
subdivisions there may be, is the primary fact. It can be
accounted for by causes such as the over-pressure of population
in a given area, leading to a fission like that which occurs in the

signification mystique. Quand les indigenes se rassemblent en grand nombre
en Australie, chaque tribu, et, dans cliaque tribu, chaque groupe tot&nique,
a une place qui lui est assignee par son affinity mystique avec telle ou telle
region de Fespace. Des faits du mSme genre sont signales dans I'Amerique
du Nord.'
1 Payne, History of the New World, ii. p. 283.

THE OBiarsr OF MOIEA 53

lowest types of biological organism. This segmentary structure
is tlien reflected outwards upon tlte rest of tlie universe. The
macrocosm was at first modelled upon the microcosm ; and the
primitive microcosm is the tribe. We are reminded that the
very word cosmos was a political term among the Dorians, before
it was borrowed by philosophy to denote the universal order. 1
In later days the situation is reversed, and the organisation of
society, or of the individual, comes to be regarded as a miniature
copy, in which the majestic order of the macrocosm is to be
reproduced.

The art of divination is employed to trace the area occupied
for social purposes, in accordance with the outlines of the dis-
position of nature. Thus, the Eoman comitium was inaugurated
as a templum. It was square in shape, and the four sides were
oriented to the four quarters of the sky. 2 Plutarch preserves
a curious account of the founding of Eome, from which we
learn that the boundary of the original comikium was actually
called mundus the Latin equivalent of cosmos. When
Romulus founded the city, we are told that he sent for men
of magical wisdom from Etruria. A circular trench was dug
round what is now the Comitium, and in it were deposited
specimen offerings (aTrapxai) of all things esteemed good by
custom or necessary by nature, and a portion of earth brought
from the country from which each man came. * This ditch is
called mundus the same name as is given to the firmament
("O/U/^Tro?)/ Then, taking this mundus as the centre, they
marked out the circuit of the walls with a plough drawn by a
bull and a cow. Where they planned to have a gate, they lifted
the ploughshare to make a break in the furrow ; so that the
whole wall is sacred (or f taboo/ lepov), except the gates. But
for this precaution, they could not without fear of spirits (ai/eu
$Lcri$aift,ovia$) have carried in or out necessaries which were
not pure. 3

1 It is a curious circumstance that Pindar (01. vii.) clearly suggests a
parallel between the triple political division of Dorian Bhodes (which was
settled 'according to tribes,' rpixfa & fatc^ey Ka.Ta<f>vKaS6v, II. IL 668) and
the division of the world among the Gods, which he describes in the con-
text. Kameiros, lalysos, and Liudos d?rdre/>0 &x,ov t dia, yaiav r/>(%a 5a<r<ra-
ficvoi irarpwtav, farrfav poTpav, jcfaltoirnu $4 <r$iv 25/xu. Cf. above, 9.

2 Pauly-Wissowa, Real-EncycL s.v. ^omitium. 1 * Plut. Vit. Rom. xi.

54 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

24. Moira a projection of Nomos

Now if, in various widely sundered parts of the world, the
separation of the four or more elements into the regions of
space was based on the quartering of the tribal camp among the
divisions of the social group, we here have tangible evidence of
that social, and therefore moral and religious, emphasis which
our hypothesis demanded to account for the prominence of this
representation in the historic religion and philosophy of Greece.
We can hardly resist the conclusion that it came down to Homer
and Hesiod and Anaximander from a primitive stratum of
thought, which we could never have reconstructed, had it not
lain fossilised to this day, in the beliefs and institutions of existing
races of mankind.

Here we touch at last the bedrock. Behind philosophy lay
religion ; behind religion, as we now see, lies social custom
the structure and institutions of the human group. In the
first chapter, we divined that Moira, the supreme power in the
universe, was very closely allied to Nomos, in the sense of
constitutional order. Now it appears that Moira is simply a pro-
jection, or extension, of Nomos from the tribal group to the ele-
mental grouping of the cosmos. We can read a new sense into
the apophthegm ascribed to Pythagoras, 1 that ' Themis in the
realm of Zeus, and Dike in the world below, hold the same place
and rank as Nomos in the cities of men ; so that he who does not
justly perform his appointed duty, may appear as a violator of
the whole order of the universe/ The eternal laws, of which
Antigone said that no one knew from whence they were pro-
claimed, can now be seen to have been projected, as a sort of
Brocken spectre, from those very laws of the state with which
she contrasts them. 2

1 Iambi. Vit. Pyth. ix. 46 : rota ybp &vQpd>irovs elSaras STL T<STTOS Unas 7rpo<r<5-
rcu SiKaioartivijs {JwOoTroieiv rrjv afcyv T&IV i-x tv iraph- T<? Ail rty Bfyiv Kal irapb
rf TLXotiruvi TTJV Alicyy teal /cctr<3t rds ir&\eis rbv N6jLtoj>, Vva 6 /*}j SuczlM ttf A
T&raKTCu TTOIUV &f*,a <pa.lvriT(u irdvra rbv Kfopov <rvva,8iK&v t The conception of
Dike will be further discussed below in chap. vi.

2 Soph. Ant. 449 :

KP. icai STJT* roX/ias roi5cr5' i/Trcp^aiVetv vtipovs ;
AN. otf ydp rl pot Zefo fy 6 Kijptigas rciSe,
o5' ^ iWiicoj TW KdrdJ Bevy Aticy
S' fr dv0p(t)vot<nv tipurev

THE ORIGIN OF MOIEA 55

We are now in a position to formulate the answer to our
main question, as follows :

Primitive beliefs about the nature of the world were sacred (religious
or moral) beliefs, and the structure of the world was itself a moral
or sacred order, because, in certain early phases of social develop-
ment, the structure and behaviour of the world were held to be
continuous with- a mere extension or projection of -the structure
and behaviour of human society. The human group and the
departments of Nature surrounding it were unified in one solid
fabric of moirai one comprehensive system of custom and taboo,
The divisions of Nature were limited by moral boundaries, became
they were actually the same as the divisions of society.

25. Totemism

To make this point clearer, we shall examine certain features
of the well-known early phase of social development called
Totemism. The reason for selecting this phase is partly that
a great mass of evidence has lately been put together in
convenient shape by the magnificent industry of Dr. Frazer. 1
But it especially suits our purpose because, as we shall see,
its essential principle involves an extension of the structure
and classification of human society to include the departments
of the non-human universe. In this phase, in fact, we shall find
Moira and Nomos established in undisputed sway over regions
from which, in the later ages of theology and philosophy, they
were very slowly driven out.

To guard against misapprehension, it must be clearly stated
that we do not mean either to assert, or to assume, that totemism,
in any complete form, ever prevailed among the remoter ancestors

rb, era

v6fUfj.a dfoaurOai dvyrbv 8vF far epd pa, pew, K.r.X.

The significance of the view above put forward for the origin of the notion
of the unwritten Law of Nature (cf. Arist. Ehet. i. 13. 2) will be apparent, but
it cannot here be f ollowed out. We shall find, as we go on, the same con-
ception pervading philosophic thought. Another instance of the idea in
Sophocles is Oed. Tyr, 863 ; where note that the Chorus invoke Moira to be
with them in the observance of these heavenly laws, and say that an evil
moira wiU overtake him who breaks them and fears not Dike.
1 Totemism and Exogamy, in four vols. Macmillan, 1910.

56 FBOM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

of the Greeks. It may Lave been so ; certain facts seem to
point in that direction ; but the question is open, and lies outside
our argument. No one denies that the races who peopled Greece
and Italy were, both in historic and in prehistoric times, given
to the practice of magic. It will appear later that a great part
of magical practice is essentially based on a certain relation of
continuity between a human and a non-human group a continu-
ity which is said to amount to identity. This is all our thesis
demands. Totemism is merely a social system in which this
fundamental representation has hardened into a permanent
framework, still extant for our observation. It is, therefore,
convenient to describe its institutions, just in so far as they
embody the principle under consideration a principle which
appears to have been, at one time or another, the property of
every division of mankind.

26. Solidarity of the Totemic Group

The first point to be noted about a society in the totemic
stage is that it is an aggregate, not of independent individuals,
but of groups. As we have already said, it is the group, not the
individual, that must be taken as unitary. These groups are
externally marked off from one another by the sharpest dis-
tinction, and internally united by the strongest solidarity.
The bond which unites the group, however, is not family relation-
ship, nor even blood-kinship (in our sense) at all.

The totem-clan is defined by a peculiar relation, possessed in
common by all its members and by them alone, to its particular
totem. A totem is not an individual thing, but, like the clan, a
groupa whole class of objects, ' generally a species of animals
or of plants, more rarely a class of inanimate natural objects,
very rarely a class of artificial objects/ * It must be remembered
that the distinctions between these three classes of object, im-
portant as they may seem to us, are much less obvious to the
savage. * Animate and inanimate * are not familiar categories
to him ; ' natural and artificial ' is probably a distinction of
little significance. Far more important than these distinctions
which interest us, is the property which all these objects have in
common, and which qualifies them to be totems. They must all

1 Frazer, Totemism, i. 4*

THE ORIGIN OP MOIRA 57

alike be of some social importance, in a sufficiently high degree
to focus attention upon them. They are, all of them, things
whose existence and behaviour in some way matters to society.
A great majority of them are connected with one of our most
fundamental interests f ood : they are either eatable species,
or phenomena (such as wind, rain, sun) on which the food supply
depends, or tools used in procuring food.

The nature of the relation which unites the human clan and
its totem-species perhaps defies exact analysis in our civilised
terminology. It is certainly an exceedingly close relation, which
some observers declare amounts to identity or, since negative
terms are safer, to the absence of any sense of distinction. The
word totem itself is said to mean simply * tribe ' ; and this fact
marks that the totem rather is the social group, embracing
human and non-human members alike, than an external badge,
or attribute, or anything of that sort. We must, therefore,
think of the totem-clan and its totem-species as forming one
continuous social group, with the highest degree of solidarity ;
and the less we distinguish between the clan and the species,
the nearer we shall keep to the true point of view.

The members of a totem-clan normally believe themselves
to be descended from a totem-ancestor, who is often half human
and half plant or animal a mythical representation which
significantly symbolises the identity of the clan and its totem-
species. By virtue of this descent, they are of one blood ; and
we may conceive the blood as a continuous medium running
through the whole group, as it were the material substrate of
its solidarity. Through it, every part of the group is in vital
sympathy with every other, so that in the blood-feud the group
is collectively responsible, and in some cases a man cannot cut
his own finger with his own knife without paying blood-money
to his mother's family. c Being of their blood, he is not allowed
to spill it without paying for it/ x Or, the blood may be thought
of as the life of the totem the one life derived from the common
ancestor and immanent throughout the clan.

Possibly derived from this continuity of the blood are two
great taboos which go with totemic social classification. The

1 Frazer, Totemism> i. 53.

5& FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

full member of a totem-clan may not, in ordinary circumstances,
eat his totem animal or plant ; and he may not marry a woman
of the same clan with himself. 1 The latter prohibition normally
involves the division of the tribe into two (or some multiple of
two) phratries, within each of which all marriage is incestuous.
This exogamous classification is combined with classification
into totem-clans in various complex schemes an exogamous
group (phratry) often including several totem-clans, none of
which may intermarry.

27. The primacy of the group

We have dwelt on these details with a view to making it clear
that, in a society so organised, the unit is the group, not the in-
dividual ; and, whether or no the ancestors of the Greeks had
a, developed totemic system, we maybe certain that, the further
we go back into the prehistoric past of any race of mankind,
the less the individual will count, and the more his social group,
however it may be defined, will be the unitary factor. As
evidence of this, survivals are not wanting among the Greeks.
Pindar makes us familiar with the daemon, or genius, of a clan,
to whom, rather than to the individual competitor, the glory
of success in the Great Games is ascribed in so many of his Odes
of Victory. 2 In the tragedians, especially Aeschylus, 3 we en-
counter the notion of hereditary guilt of those ' taints and
troubles which, arising from some ancient wrath, existed in
certain families/ 4 and were transmitted with the blood to the
ruin of one descendant after another, who, in the view of a later
individualistic morality, were personally innocent. These and

1 The view that endogamy is taboo because marriage involves the shed-
ding of blood is disputed ; but see Durkheim, 'La prohibition de I'lnceste,'
Annte Sociologigue, i. p. 1 if.

2 See my chapter on the Olympic Gam$s in J. E. Harrison, Themis,
p. 257.

3 The Agamemnon, 1451-1576 (Clytaemnestra and Chorus), brings out
most of the important aspects of this deep-seated belief. In the course of
it, Olytaemnestra successfully diverts the attention of the Chorus from her
personal motive, sexual jealousy, to the fal/uw ^vv^ of the house of Tan-
talus. By representing herself as an incarnation of this, she shifts responsi-
bility from her individual self on to the collective soul of her clan.

4 Plato, Phaedrus, 244 B : vtxrw /cai irlyw TUP peylffrwv, & fo) iraXaiSv e*
fj,i)vijj,6,Tw wo8iv fr rtcri TUV yevwv Ijv.

THE ORIGIN OF MOIRA 59

other suet representations illustrate the persistence of the moral
solidarity of the group. We may note, too, the implication of
this solidarity : namely, that the circumference of the group is,
so to say, the moral frontier. Inside that frontier, the group
as a whole has its proper duties, exercised in common, and its
collective rights, diffused over the whole area. Outside the
frontier are other groups, equally coherent and internally un-
distinguished. And this frontier is the surface at which moral
friction occurs.

Society, in a word, is a system of moirai ; and the boundaries
of its groups are also the boundaries of morality. Within them
lies Nomos all that you ought to do and must do the exercise
of the group functions, the expression of its peculiar magical
powers. Beyond them lies all you must not do all that is
taboo. 1 The sentinel at the frontier is Death. It may be
significant that moira is the counterpart of moros, death ; and
that the word moira itself easily passes from its sense of
allotted portion to mean doom e the grievous doom of death *
(p>olp 0X077 Gavdroio).

28. The social structure projected to include
the order of Nature

Now, the totemic social system, involving as it does the
identity of each human clan with a non-human species, rests,
in its essential principle, on an extension of the structure of
human society beyond what seem to us its natural limits, so as
to include in one solid system the departments of Nature with
which the clans are severally united. In the more advanced
cases, the social system is thus projected until it becomes con-
terminous with the visible universe, and every kind of natural
object belongs to some social group. 2 Thus, the whole universe

1 I am of course speaking of a very early stage. Later, when individu-
ality begins to assert itself in the moral area, repression of the individual
by his own group becomes necessary. But at first all taboos are imposed
upon classes as such, not on individuals.

2 Frazer, Totemism, i. US : 'There is something Impressive, and almost
grandiose, in the comprehensiveness, the completeness, the vaulting ambi-
tion of this scheme, the creation of a crude and barbarous philosophy. All
nature has been mapped out into departments ; all men have been distri-
buted into corresponding groups ; and to each group of men has been
assigned, with astounding audacity, the duty of controlling some one depart-

60 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

is brought within the bounds of human morality, and portioned
out into its provinces ; for each department of nature must
be subject to the same taboos, and bound to the observance of
the same customs, as the human group with which it is identified.
The-positive side observance of custom we shall consider later,
when we turn to magic. But on the negative side the side
of taboo we find at last the explanation of our problem the
supremacy of Moira in the universe, human and non-human
alike. The moral character of the physical order is finally
accounted for, when we see that the primitive boundaries of
Right are not the limits of the individual as against society, nor
yet those of society as against nature, but radiate in unbroken
lines from the centre of society to the circumference of the
cosmos. This, in the last resort, is the reason why the dis-
position of the elemental provinces persists, right into the age
of rational speculation, as the important feature of the universe.
The moral, or socially important, or sacred, force and colour,
with which in earlier ages it had been charged, have not yet
faded out of the imperious figures of Moira and Norms.

29. Survivals in Greek cosmology

There are two outstanding features of the Greek philosophic
cosmologies which seem to become intelligible in the light of
our hypothesis. They are (a) the recognition of four elements,
(&) the grouping of qualities in pairs of contraries. We will
briefly consider them in turn.

But first, to guard against misconception : our hypothesis
does not imply that Homer and Hesiod, any more than Anaxi-
mander, had ever heard of totemism and its peculiar institutions.
All it comes to is this. In every age of mankind certain aspects
of the world, certain features of the infinite manifold our senses
showus, are specially significant, attended to, emphasised,studied.
Further, the aspects and features dwelt upon by the early philo-

ment of nature for the common good.' Of. ibid. p. 134. The 'audacity'
involved, however, is only apparent, if we recognise that the whole process
was unconsciously and spontaneously effected by the collective mind, which
took it all as the most obvious and simple representation of nature, and
indeed did the whole thing, as we shall later see, before it felt the need of con-
ceiving the ' philosophy ' implicit in it. See also Levy-Bruhl, Fond. ment.
p. 284.

THE OBIGIN OF MOIEA 61

sophers often strike us as by no means superficially obvious ;
and what is also important they are remarkable for their
generality and abstract character. Physical science, neglecting
the task of accumulating detailed knowledge by observation,
immediately on its first appearance, attacks the problem of the
ultimate ' nature * of all things. Or again, it assumes, as an
admitted a priori truth, a maxim so general as ' Like can. only
act on like/ What we seek is the cause of this curious pheno-
menon ; and we hold that the reason why the early philosophers
attended to these ultimate problems, and presumed such uni-
versal maxims, is that they were already emphasised in religious
and popular representation. To take our present instance :
the disposition of the elemental provinces the importance
attached to this can only be explained by supposing that it had
once been of religious significance; and we saw in the last
chapter that such, in fact, was the case. In the present chapter
we have taken a further step, and made out that its religious
significance probably points back to a stage when it was con-
tinuous with the moral and social structure of the human group.
What we suggest is that this line of investigation gives the clue
to the early philosophers' choice of objects to speculate about.
They, one and all, constructed theories about the arrangement
of the universe, and again about meteoric phenomena sun
and moon, shooting stars, thunder, earthquakes, etc. because
these were objects on which religion and magic had concentrated
attention for uncounted ages. 1

30. (a) The Four Elements

The totemistic organisation of society is complex, involving,
as it does, the division of the tribe into a number of subordinate
groups, each with specialised functions. We cannot suppose
that a system which entails such a nicely adjusted division of
labour is the primitive form of human society. Eather, there are
good grounds for holding that the original society was a single

1 Tannery, Pour Vhistoire de la science hellene, p. 20, enumerates the
headings under which, in an order regularly observed, the doxographie
tradition, derived from Theophrastus, records the * opinions * of the various
philosophers. They are : Principle, God, Universe, earth, sea, rivers, Nile,
stars, sun, moon, milky way, meteors, wind, rain, hail, snow, thunder, rain-
bow, earthquakes, animals.

62 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

group or tribe a human herd, as yet undifierentiated and un-
specialised. The breaking up of this group may have been, as
biological analogy suggests, a simple process of segmentation,
due to the mere mechanical cause of the increase of population
in a given area. The primary homogeneous group was held
together by a solidarity of a low mechanical type, which has
much less binding force than the higher organic solidarity in-
volved in the mutual dependence of specialised groups. As
population grows, that mechanical solidarity is diffused over a
continually widening area, and grows thinner and thinner until
a trifling cause may make it snap. The tribe is like a pool of
mercury : the larger it is, the slighter the shock that will scatter
it into separate drops. Each of the new groups resulting from
this segmentation, being smaller, will be more strongly united. 1

Such a process, however, would give only an aggregate of
separate groups, each internally coherent, but not united to its
neighbours. In the totemic system (however it may be caused)
we find a structure of the higher type an organism. Besides
the strong solidarity of specialised function which holds together
each clan, there is a looser, but very real, bond linking all the
clans into one tribe. The older structure thus survives in the
new, the organic groups being superimposed upon, but not
altogether superseding, the primitive inorganic group.

Now, if we take the cosmological scheme of Anaximander,
and consider the relation of his one primary e nature ' (TO arreipov)
to the four subordinate elements with their allotted moirai, we
observe that this type of cosmic structure corresponds to that
of a totemic tribe containing four clans. The f limitless thing/
like the primitive herd, is continuous, homogeneous, undifferen-
tiated, and so loosely united that a mechanical cause the
* eternal motion * can make it fall asunder into smaller groups.
The four elements, like the subordinate totemic clans, are
differentiated and specialised, and each is drawn together into
a coherent mass by the attraction of like to like the solidarity
of affinity. The elements, moreover, are not utterly distinct
or indifferent to one another : there is also a repulsion between
unlikes, a war and feud, to which, as we saw, all individual

1 For this theory of the two kinds of solidarity and the cause of segmen
tation, see E. Durkheim, Sur la division du travail social.

THE OEIGIN OF MO1EA 63

existence was due. The cosmology is a transcript in represen-
tation of an organic structure, such as we find in a totemic tribe,
in which the primitive unitary tribal group and the organic
nexus of clans reappear as two separate stages the primary
physis and the four elements separated out from it.

31. The Philia and Neikos of Empedocles

In the system of Empedocles, we find the two opposed prin-
ciples of solidarity and repulsion actually distinguished as two
* elements/ over and above the four fundamental forms of
matter earth, air, water, and fire recognised in earlier systems.
Empedocles made these four elements ultimate irreducible
forms, the ' roots of all things/ and reasserted their ' equality/ 3L
Their complete mixture in a ' sphere * is one pole, their complete
separation in four homogeneous masses is the other pole, of his
two alternating hemicycles of existence. 2

If we press our analogy with the processes and factors of
tribal organisation, the Love which draws all the elements into
the indiscriminate mass, called the Sphere, corresponds to the
solidarity of the whole tribe. Strife, or feud, is the disintegrating
force, which causes segmentation into minor groups. Each
group, like a clan, has a solidarity of its own, and an internal
consistency. The separation of unlikes is the same fact as the
coming together of likes earth to earth, water to water, and so
forth ; so that the action of Neikos can also be interpreted as
the attraction of like by like the cause of the differentiated,
organic solidarity of groups within a larger group, of clans
within a tribe. 3

32. (6) The segregation of pairs of Contraries

We turn next to the process by which the elements come into
possession of their provinces. In Anaximander's scheme, this
process is conceived as the e separating out ' (efCKpio-ts, airoicpLo-^)
from the indeterminate One, of * contraries * (evavria). Two

1 Arist. de Gen. et Corr. j88, 333a 16.

2 The details of the system are discussed below, pp. 224 if.

8 This interpretation of the Philia and Neikos of Empedocles was first
suggested to me by Miss Harrison. It will be shown later how these
principles were inherent in what we shall call the datum of philosophy.

64 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

pairs of contraries appear to be primary the hot and the cold,
the wet and the dry and these are naturally identified with
fire and air, water and earth. The elements are thus not merely
separated into four distinct regions, but grouped in pairs. Two
contraries must be conceived as equal in nature and power,
neither of them the mere negation or absence of the other. 1
They are, like the three Homeric Gods, 2 equal in status or in lot
(IcrorifjLoi, or Icrofjbopoi,}. Empedocles 3 states this equality of the
elements in very distinct terms :

c For all of them are equal, and of equal birth. Each is lord
of a different function, each has its wonted range, 4 and in turn
they gain the mastery, as the cycle of time comes round/

Between the two members of each pair of contraries there is
antagonism, strife, feud. Each seeks to invade the province
of the other, to overmaster it and usurp part of its domain.
Out of this strife, as we have seen ( 3), arises, according to
Anaximander, all individual existence, which is the offspring
of aggression and injustice. And, since the moral order of
Nature demands that every injustice shall be atoned, every in-
dividual thing must ' pay the penalty J and ' perish into that
out of which it came into being/

This war of antagonistic principles, on the other hand, though
unjust, is not purely destructive ; in fact, it generates the whole
world of things we see. In other systems we shall encounter
the idea that not only all existence, but all goodness and per-
fection in the visible world, involve a balance or harmony of
opposed powers a reconciliation in which the claims of both
are, if only temporarily, adjusted. Besides War, there is also
Peace; besides Hatred and Feud (Neikos, Eris, etc.), there
is also Love and Agreement (Philia, Harmonia, etc.). This
general scheme of conception runs through all ancient physical

1 For all thia subject, see 0. Gilbert, Met. Theor. p. 28 ff,

2 See above, p. 15.
Frag. 17. 27:

ravra yap t<ra re irdvra, /cal ^Xi/ea y4vvcu> a<n,
rifjiys 5'

Sophocles, M. 86, follows Empedocles (Gilbert, Met. Theor. 35); <5
ayvbv KO.I yys Jo^yu-otp* d^/>.
4 For this meaning of ^0o$, see above, p. 34,

THE ORIGIN OF MO IE A 65

speculation, and, after all that has gone before, we shall not be
surprised to find it dominant in ethical speculation also. Its
moral and social colour is no mere trapping of superficial meta-
phor ; it is ingrained and essential.

But to go back to Anaximander's scheme of cosmology it
is not only with the birth and perishing of individual things that
we are concerned, but also with the previous stage, in which the
' contraries * were sifted out by the eternal motion into their
distinct regions the first appearance of distinction within the
limitless One. An examination of the pre-scientific cosmogonies
will show that this extremely general and abstract conception
can be traced further back to a very primitive social origin.

33. Sex the prototype of Contrariety

If we look more closely into this conception of pairs of con-
traries, we find that Anaximander is more purely rational than
many of his successors. In later systems notably in those
of Parmenides and Empedocles mythical associations and
implications, which he has expurgated, emerge again. In par-
ticular, we can discern that the prototype of all opposition or
contrariety is the contrariety of sex.

The Eleatic Stranger in Plato *s Sophist notes this feature,
in reviewing the early physical philosophers. He complains
that they treat us like children, and put us off with fairy tales.
One will tell us that there are three Beings, which * sometimes
carry on a sort of warfare with one another, and then again
become friends and go in for marriages and child-bearing and
nursing up of their offspring. 3 Another speaks of a pair Wet
and Dry, or Hot and Cold whom he ' marries off and makes them
set up house together.' l The Eleatics base their wondrous tale
on the doctrine that all things are really One. Then, certain
inspired sources in Ionia (Heracleitus), and later in Sicily (Em-
pedocles), saw that it was safest to combine both views and say
that * Being is both many and one, and is held together by Hatred
and Love * ; the sterner sort (Heracleitus) declaring that, ' being

1 242 C : 6 fifr eta rpla ret tfvrct, rroXejuc? 6t dXXT/Xow Ivlvre atruv &rra 71-77, r6re 5
Kal <f>t\a ytyv6fjva ydpovs re Kal T<5*ou5 Kal rpo0&$ r&v tKybvuv irapfyerai,* <5tfo W
dir&v, bypbv Kal frip&v 1) Qepi&v Kal $vxpb v > ffwouctfa rt aeirra Kal

66 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

drawn asunder always, it is always being drawn together ' ; *
the softer (Empedocles) relaxing this e always/ and saying that
the All is one and many in turn, now in a state of Love through
the power of Aphrodite, now at war with itself owing to a certain
' Feud/

Before cosmology were cosmogony and thzogony. Becoming
(iyez/ecw) was conceived as birth, and birth is the result of mar-
riage. The primal marriage in the early cosmogonies is the
union of Sky and Earth, represented in the anthropomorphic
religion of historic times by the ritual marriage of Zeus, or
Jupiter, and his female partner.

34. The Separation of Sky and Earth

But Sky and Earth cannot meet in fruitful marriage till they
have first been sundered from their original unity of form. The
cosmogonies open, not with the marriage, but with the separation
of Earth and Sky.

( First of all/ says Hesiod, 2 * Chaos came into being ; then,
Earth with her broad breast, for all things a seat secure for
ever, and misty Tartarus in the hollow of the wide-wayed Earth,
and Love, the fairest of the immortal Gods/

f First of all, Chaos came into being ' what does that mean ?
' Chaos ' was not at first, as we conceive it, formless disorder.
The word means simply the ' yawning gap 'the gap we now
see, with its lower part filled with air and mist and cloud,
between earth and the dome of heaven, 3 Originally Earth

1 Cf. [Arist.] de Mundo, 5T fa us te ruv tvavrtuv TJ (pfois yhtxerai Kal ^/c
rotiruv dtf-oTeXei rb vtifjupwov . . . ucrirep d/^X TO dppev (rvvrfyayt- irpbs rd 6ij\v
Kal oi5% ticdrepov irpbs rd 6/^60 v\ov, Heracl. frag. 10 (Diels), 59 (Byw.),
Siafapbuevov ffvpfaperai K.r.X., is quoted in illustration,

2 Theog. 116 : ^ TCH IJL& irp&r terra Xdos 'y&er', a^rAp ^ir

Pat' etipforeppos, irforuv ^5oy
Tdprapa r* yepbeitra, f

8 It is this gap that is filled with heat when Zeus makes his thunder-
storm, Theog, 700: /cafyut 8ea"irt<rtoi> K&Texev x<os. Schol. adv. 116: ol
te ctprjffBai 4>a<rlx6o* wpb T ^ Xec<r0cu, ^ kvn x&ff&aj,' ol 8t <pa,(riv drd TOU xa-detv,
8 t<m x v P ^ * ^ ^ e ^ s T< * ffrot X * a SL&KPWS Kal Siax&pyart,*, x<of. . . .
AA.AOS. x&* ^7" T ^ v K^xvftfvov Mptx., Kal yap Zyv68oros oflrws 0^<r/. RaKXvMfys
8% Xaos rbv afya Mpacf, \ty<av irepl rov derov' *Kwjaorat 5' fr &rpvytT(f xdet*
is the true reading, Bacch. v. 26). Cf. Ibycus, frag. 28 : xorarcu 5 1

THE OBIGIK OF MOIRA 67

and Heaven were one, as Melanippe the Wise, in Euripides, 1
had learnt from her half-divine mother :

c It is not my word, but my mother's word,
How Heaven and Earth were once one form ; but stirred,
And strove, and dwelt asunder far away :
And then, re-wedding, bore unto the day
And light of life all things that are, the trees,
Flowers, birds, and beasts, and them that breathe the seas }
And mortal man, each in his kind and law.'

The Orphic cosmogony used by Apollonius Khodius 2 tells
the same tale. Orpheus sang how earth and sky and sea were
at first joined together in one form, and then disparted, each
from each, by grievous strife/

This account of the beginning of the world is of enormous
antiquity. A hymn in the Rig-Veda (vii. 86} says of Vanrna,
whom some scholars identify with Ouranos :

6 Wise truly and great is Ms own nature,
Who held asunder spacious Earth and Heaven.
He pressed the sky, the broad and lofty, upward,
Ay, spread the stars and spread the Earth out broadly.' 3

In the Babylonian cosmogony, from which that of Gmesis is
derived, Marduk cut in two pieces the monstrous Tihamat, and
* one half of her he set in place, he spread out as heaven/ Tie
primitive Egyptians, likewise, described Shu as separating the
sky (Nut) from the earth (Seb). In the Taoism of China, an
original * Chaos * splits of its own accord into the two opposed
moieties called Yang and Yw, the regions of light and darkness
associated with heaven and earth. 4

1 Frag. 484 N 2 , ap. Diod. Sic. i. 7, trans. Professor Murray.

2 i. 496 (Diels, Frag, d, Tors. ii. p. 479) :

^feiSey 5 J u>j ycua
r& wplr t

3 Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, p. 124.

* Be Groot, Religion of the Chinese, New York, 1910, p. 152. It may be
noted that in this system there is no creator or God superior to the Tao or
order of the universe (pp. 102, 135) ; cf. the position of Moira as described
above, 8.

68 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

35. Social origin of this representation

We ought not to allow the familiarity of this conception of
the world's origin to blind us to the fact that it is not a simple
and obvious belief, which the mere appearance of the universe
would readily suggest to many independent observers. It is,
on the contrary, a commonplace that the dome of the sky, with
its apparently unchanging stars, seems, of all things in nature,
the most permanent, and indeed eternal. Why suppose that
it was ever ' joined in one form with the earth/ and then lifted
up to its present place ? How are we to account for such a
representation ?

The question is not commonly raised, and I do -not know how
it would generally be answered. One thing seems clear : the
conception is not an extravagant flight of some individual mind,
gifted with a specially wild and grotesque imagination. If it
had been so, it is hard to believe that it would have been accepted
and perpetuated, as an article of faith, even among one people ;
it is quite out of the question that it could have been inde-
pendently invented by several grotesquely imaginative indi-
viduals in various parts of the world, and in each case accepted.
The conception must have been elaborated, not by any singular
imagination, but by the collective mind ; and its wide diffusion in
independent centres could be explained, if we could point to
some actual fact capable of suggesting it.

The representation is this : the world began as an undiffer-
entiated mass, without internal boundaries or limits an aireipov.
This mass separated into two parts, which were opposed or
' contrary ' male and female. Finally, the male and female
were united by Eros, the contraries were combined, and gave
birth to individual existence to Gods, or to things.

Is it a mere coincidence that this description of the origin of
the cosmos reflects a social institution already mentioned, of
great importance in totemic societies the division of the tribe
into two exogamous phratries ? The principle of this division
(from whatever cause it may arise) is sex. In a sense, the two
exogamous segments are opposed as male and female, since the
male belonging to one phratry must marry a female from the
other. This contrariety is reconciled in marriage the union

THE ORIGIN OF MOIEA 69

of opposites. This exogamous principle, as we have seen, is of
equal importance with the totemic classification with which it
is combined. It is the focus of intense religious and moral
emotions, and guarded by impassable taboo. Moreover, the
continuity between human society and Nature on which we have
already dwelt, the actual identity of their structural grouping,
makes it inevitable that the same conception should be extended
to the divisions of the universe.

In support of this hypothesis, we have the express evidence of
an Omaha Indian, Francis Laflesche, who delivered in 1905 an
address at the unveiling of a statue of the Medicine Man. 1 He
described, as follows, the structure of Ms tribal camp. ' The plan,
or order, which was carried out when all the people camped
together, was that of a wide circle. This tribal circle was called
Hu-dhu-ga, and typified the cosmos. . . . The circle was divided
into two great divisions or halves * (the exogamous phratries).
' The one called In-shta-sun-da represented the Heavens ; and
the other, the Hun-ga-she-nu, denoted the Earth. . . . Each of
the two great divisions was subdivided into clans, and each of
the ten clans had its particular symbol ' (totem) * representing
a cosmic force, one of the various forms of life on the Earth/

It is true that Francis Laflesche is a sophisticated person, and
that on this occasion he was talking up to his white brothers ;
but any one who reads the authentic descriptions of the Omaha
rites of initiation, in which the child is introduced successively
to the various parts and provinces of the universe, 2 will not
doubt that in this particular statement he is telling the truth.
It gives us exactly the proof we need, that the heavens and
the earth were identified with the two contrary phratries, by
whose fission the exogamous grouping of society first came into
being.

36. The Pythagorean Table of Contraries

The Pythagorean community, as we shall see later, preserved,
more than any other ancient society, the characteristic traits of

1 F. Laflesche, Who was the Medicine Man ? 1905, p. 8. I did not meet
with this tract till the theory above put forward was already written down.

2 For an account of these rites, taken from Miss Alice Fletcher, see J. E.
Harrison, Themis, p. 69.

70 PROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

primitive social groups. In their earlier speculation an im-
portant place is given to the table of Contraries, the two
columns (o-vo-ro^iat) of opposites, in which, exactly as if in
two exogamous phratries, they grouped ten pairs of principles,
like so many clans. 1 At the head of the two columns stood
' the Even and the Uneven, one of which is unlimited, the other
limited/ the pair which were the elements of all number, and so
of all the world. 2 And the Even and the Uneven they held to
be, respectively, female and male ; while the undivided monad,
the One, was bisexed. Thus the Pythagorean cosmology, once
more, starts with the separation, out of an undifferentiated
unity, of a male and female principle.

37. Eros and the Marriage of Opposites

The coming into existence of individual things is variously
attributed by the early cosmologists to love or harmony, and to
feud, strife, or war. The two representations are, as Heracleitus
insisted, 3 not so irreconcilable as they seem to be at first sight.
They are only two ways of conceiving the meeting of contraries.
The two contraries are antagonistic, at perpetual war with each
other. It is a war of mutual aggression each seeking to invade
the province of the other. But this very invasion involves a
mixing of the two elements a reconciliation, or marriage, 4 in
which both combine to produce a compound, the individual thing.
Earth and Heaven are essentially the female and male principles
in Greek cosmology. In the ' gap J between their sundered
forms appears the winged figure of the cosmic Eros, whose
function is to reunite them. In the more primitive cosmogonies,
which make the world begin with the hatching of an egg, whose
two halves form Sky and Earth, Eros is the bird with golden
feathers who comes out of the egg. 5

When we come to the detailed discussion of the pre-Socratic
systems, we shall see how the war and marriage of opposites is
worked out. As late as Plato we shall find that a sexual char-

1 D. F. F. 2 , i. p. 271. 2 Arist. Met. A 5, 986a 15.

3 See below, p. 190.

4 /4ts, pfoyeffBai, ^tX^rT^rt, is perhaps the commonest metaphor for marriage
in Greek.

6 Ar. Birds, 693. For the world-egg see Eisler, Wdtenmantel, ii. 410 ff.

THS ORIGIN OF MO1&A 71

acter still clings to the great contraries, Form and Matter. ' We
must conceive three Hnds : first, that which comes into being ;
second, that in which the first comes to be ; third, that from which
the first is copied, when it is born into existence. And we may
fittingly compare the recipient to the mother, the model to the
father, and that which springs into life between them to the
offspring/ * Even in the desiccated terminology of Aristotle
the same representation persists, where he says that, whereas
one piece of matter can contain only one form, the cause which
imposes the form can generate many. c So is it with the female
and the male/ 2

38. Summary

At the outset of our inquiry, we called attention to three
factors in Anaximander's cosmology which needed explana-
tion: (1) the primary pfysis, (2) the disposition or structure
into which this living stuff is distributed, (3) the process by
which the order arose. We have now, by tracing back the con-
ceptions of Moira andiVmos to primitive social structure, thrown
some light on the second factor, and incidentally on the third.

We have seen how the social group is the original type on
which all other schemes of classification at first magical, and
later scientific are modelled. At a very early stage, the whole
of the visible world was parcelled out into an ordered structure,
or cosmos, reflecting, or continuous with, the tribal microcosm,
and so informed with types of representation which are of social
origin. To this fact the order of nature owes its sacred or moral
character. It is regarded as not only necessary but right or just,
because it is a projection of the social constraint imposed by the
group upon the individual, and in that constraint ' must ' and
' ought ' are identical. Such we believe to have been the process
by which Moira came to rule supreme over the G-ods, and Justice
to ordain the boundaries of the elements in Anaximander's
philosophy.

We must now turn to the consideration of physis that homo-
geneous living fluid which is parcelled out by Destiny or Justice
into the elemental provinces. It has already been hinted that
1 Timaeus, 50 c. 2 Met. A 6, 988 a 3.

72 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

this primary world-stuff is the material out of which daemons,
Gods, and souls were made. We have now to trace the process
of their making, and first of all to make out what was the primi-
tive representation which, as we believe, re-emerges at the
threshold of philosophy under the name of physis. We shall
seek for this conception also a social origin.

Ill

NATTOE, GOD, AND SOUL
39. Nature and Custom in the dynamic sense

THE term 'Nature' (physis, natura) has had a long and varied
history, which we cannot here attempt to trace even in outline,
No philosophical term is more dangerously ambiguous. We
seem able to distinguish, however, two main heads under which
its shifting senses may be grouped : * the static and the dynamic.
Statically conceived, Nature means the system of all phenomena
in time and space, the total of all existing things ; and the
r nature ' of a thing is its constitution, structure, essence. But
it has never lost its other, dynamic, sidethe connotation of
force, of primordial, active, upspringing energy a sense which,
as its derivation shows, is original. 2

Hitherto, in our study of the three great conceptions, Destiny,
Law, and Nature, we have been mainly concerned with their
static or spatial aspect. The first of them, M oira, leans, as we
have already seen, towards this side a process hastened by the
emergence of personal Gods, who, as they absorb the positive
functions, leave to Destiny the negative attitude of prohibitive
necessity and limiting taboo. Though it is not altogether for-
gotten that the Moirai preside at the three transitional crises
in the curve of life, at two of them birth and marriage they
fade into the background behind the newer and more definite
figures of Artemis and Aphrodite ; and only the third moment,
where life passes into the darkness of death, is left undisputed
by the deathless ones to the daughters of Night.

In the case of Law, again, the negative aspect has some

1 Cf. J. Dewey in Baldwin's Dictionary of PMos. and Psvchol s v.
Nature.'

2 Thus, by the ' nature ' of a thing the Scholastics understood its essence
specially ' considered as the active source (or principle) of the operations by
which the being realised its end* (Dewey, loc. cit.).

74 FROM BELtQION TO PHILOSOPHY

tendency to prevail "Wlien laws come to be written down,
' thou shalt not ' occurs much more frequently" than ' tkm shalt/
A customary action is performed unconsciously, and attracts no
attention ; we only come to think of it as a duty, and to feel the
binding obligation (TO Seov) to perform it, when some natural
impulse prompts us to do something else. But the mere mention
of ( custom ' (ra vo/jMfjLa, ra vo/jii,6/jievd) reminds us of the active
content of Nomos, which, before it means a prohibitive- enact-
ment, stands for behaving in a certain way, behaviour that is
standardised, moralised, socialised in a word, group-behaviour.
Against this, sometimes intolerable, imposition of herd usage,
our individual ' nature * occasionally cries out and denounces
convention as 'unnatural/ Custom and Nature are set at
variance. 1 But this outcry marks an age of individualism and
self-consciousness. 2 In earlier days, when the unitary moral
and religious consciousness was coextensive, not with the
individual, but with his group, no such conflict could arise :
custom and nature were at one.

40. Primitive identity of Nature and Custom

We may go a step further and say that custom and nature
were, not merely harmonious, but identical. If we recur to our
illustration of the totemic clan, our meaning will be clear. This
social group, consisting of its human members and their totem-
species, is defined by the collective function it exercises as a
continuous whole. If the nature or essence of a class of things
is something which all of them have, and which nothing else
has, in an early stage, when practical interests are paramount
and disinterested speculation is unknown, the essential ' nature '

1 Thus at the end of the fifth century #tf<m is used in the sense of natural
instincts as opposed to the restraint of morality. The Adikos Logos in
Aristophanes' Clouds, 1078, says : ^uol 5' 6fu\Qy xp& rf <$<*&, tr/apra, yt\a,
v6fj.ifc w$tv af<rxp<fr. Isocr., Areop. 38, says that, in presence of the august
Areopagus, you may see people who in other circumstances are unbearable
rrj 0tfcra xp^ai /cat /rnXXoy rots &ct VO^OLS 4} rats aCrwv /ca/c/ats

2 Cf. J. L. Myres, < Herod, and Anthrop.' (Anthropology and the Classics,
Oxford, 1908), p. 158, who points out that the opposition of vfyos and #i5<rt5
is not primitive. It does not become prominent in Greece until the age of
the Sophists.

KATUBB, GOB, ASTD SOUL 75

will be nothing but the social importance of the group all that
is expected of that division of society. It is, in fact, what it
collectively feels and does : all that matters about it, all that is
(as we say) c essential/ is its behaving as it ought, fulfilling its
function, performing its customs. It is, probably, in the light
of this idea that we should interpret the alleged * identity * of
the human clansmen with their totem-species. 1 They are, in
the literal sense, practically identical. The superficial differences
of appearance between (say) an emu-man and an emu-bird
are ignored, and if necessary denied, because they are of no
practical interest. The religious emphasis is entirely upon the
group-behaviour, the group-functions; and these, as we shall
presently see, are identical for all c emus/ whether they happen to
look like men or birds. It may, indeed, be doubtful how much
meaning this last phrase will have. The universals * man * and
* bird ' are conceptions which will not be formed at all, until
some practical interest calls for them. The Andamanese are
said to have no word in their language for * tree * or * animal ' ;
they have only a name for every species. They have no word
for ' fish ' : they call it simply * food/ because that expresses the
essential importance of fish in their economy. 2 Thus the * nature*
or * essence * is the social function : the pkysis is the nomoi ;
and both words denote the active, socially organised force
expressed by a group, or moira.

41. Primary Sympathetic Magic

Seen in this light, the mystic identity of nature or consub-
stantiality with the totem resolves itself into a set of common
duties and magical observances, centred on the totem; the
unity of the moira is the unity of its nomoi. The whole collective
function of the human members, we are told, is to control and
influence their non-human kindred of the same group. When
the totem is an edible species, their business is to multiply this
food for the common use of the tribe ; where it is a phenomenon
like rain, wind, or sun, they have to make the rain fall or cease

1 Cf. Levy-Bruhl, JFonctions mentales, p. 77, for illustrations, and p. 135.

2 I learnt these facts from Mr. A. B. Brown. Farther evidence to the
same effect k collected by Levy-Bruhl, Fonet* ment. p. 187 ff.

76 FBOM EELIGIOIST TO PHILOSOPHY

from falling, to raise or lay the wind, to regulate the sunshine.
The means employed are commonly mimetic dances, in which
men are disguised as impersonations of the totem, and which are
representations of the functions of a group.

When, however, we speak of these operations as ' controlling *
or f influencing * the natural species, we are wrongly anticipating
a later phase of magic. In a pure system of toteroism, the human
and non-human members, as we have insisted, are not distin-
guished, but considered as identical ; hence neither can be said
to * control ' the other. Their magical ceremonies are essentially
co-operative and sympathetic the common function of the group
as an undivided whole. So, too, when we speak of the dances
as mimetic, we must beware of interpreting that term from our
own civilised conceptions. ' Imitation * suggests to us the act
of deliberately copying or mimicking the external appearance
of something unlike oneself, with the object of creating an
illusion in the spectator. The mimetic magical dance is not
imitative in this sense ; the focus of attention is not centred on
an unlikeness which has to be overcome, or on any impression
to be imposed on the onlooker. The disguise is rather an in-
cidental means of helping out the emotion and desire of the
actors themselves. If they want to feel with religious intensity
what they at all times believe that they are emus or kangaroos,
it is obviously helpful to paint themselves so as to resemble the
animal, and to put themselves into contact with parts of it,
whether real or symbolically represented. But the chief and
overmastering desire of the performers is not to produce an
illusion, even in themselves ; it is to behave in the characteristic
way, to represent, or rather pre-present, 1 the group-behaviour
actually to produce, there and then, with more or less realism,
the action required of their totem, that is to say, of themselves
and their species in co-operation. The circumstances of the
performance exalt the sense of identity of nature by producing
identity of behaviour the practical expression of the common
nature.

The whole magical process, in this primary stage, is not to
be conceived as a mock ceremonial, mimicking a real process,
and designed to cause that real process to happen some time

1 For magic as pre-presentation, see J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 44.

NATTTBE, GOD, AKB SOUL 77

afterwards. That is how it may present itself to us, and perhaps
to the magician of a decadent age, when the faith of magic has
grown fainter. But, in the early stage now under consideration,
magical action consists in actually doing what you want done.
The rainmakers believe themselves simply to be ' maHng rain/
not to be imitating rain, so as to cause real rain to fall later. If
we are right in insisting on the identity and continuity of the
whole group rainmakers and rain and of their functions,
then rainmaMng and rainfall are, to the magicians, one and the
same, not distinct events related as cause and effect.

42. Collective emotion and desire

What is actually experienced is sympathetic or collective
emotion and desire. The emotion expresses itself in action,
which, being necessarily co-operative, is of a customary and
ritual kind, the rhythm of a dance or the prescribed gesture of a
pantomime, motions which both enhance the feeling and give
it vent. The desire is realised in the representation of its end.
When the totem-clan meets to hold its peculiar dance, to work
itself up till it feels the pulsing of its common life through all
its members, such nascent sense of individuality as a savage
may have it is always very faint * is merged and lost ; his
consciousness is filled with the sense of sympathetic activity.
The group is now feeling and acting as one soul, with a total
force much greater than any of its members could exercise in
isolation. The individual is lost, * beside himself/ in one of
those states of contagious enthusiasm in which it is well known
that men become capable of feats which far outrange their
normal powers. Yet here again we are inclined to misuse the
language of later phases of development. ' Ecstasy/ * getting
outside oneself/ implies that one ordinarily has a self, and
can only get outside it under the exceptional stimulus of excite-
ment, deliberately induced to that end. * Enthusiasm * means
being possessed by a power other than oneself which enters
one at privileged moments. Both these conceptions belong to
mystical religion, which must have recourse to ritual stimulants
precisely because it has lost the primitive sense of constant and

1 See P. Beck, Die Nackahmung, Leipzig, 1904, p. 84 ff.

78 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

continuous identity. The Australian savage, in whom that sense
is hardly, if at all, disturbed, goes about his magical operations
in a singularly businesslike way. His belief that he is a kan-
garoo is so unquestioned that he has no need to pretend that
he is one, or to induce a kangaroo to enter into him and possess
him for the nonce ; all he has to do is to be a kangaroo by
behaving as one.

43. Primary Magic needs no representation, and is
^re-religious

It appears, then, that the primitive magical fact is intense
emotional activity, collectively experienced by a group. We
shall presently have to inquire under what form this experience
is expressed in conception how it is represented. But in the
first stage of magic, at present under consideration, there is not,
as yet, any need for a representation at all. The collective
life pervades the whole group in undisturbed continuity ; the
collective emotion is felt, the customary actions are performed,
in sympathetic co-operation, by the group as a whole. Now,
so long as it is thus lived and immediately experienced, and the
distinction between my own power and the collective power has
not broken out, there will be no image, or idea, or conception
either of myself in contrast with it, or of it in contrast with
myself. There is nothing but the actually existing natural facts
of collective emotion, desire, and action. 1

In this primary stage we find a pre-religious condition of
mankind ; for in the definition of religion we include some repre-
sentation of a power which is in some sense ' not ourselves/
and at the level we have now reached, although there exists
such a power namely, the collective emotion and activity of the
group we may infer that it will not be represented, because no
need for representation wiU have arisen.

Even among societies which have passed beyond this primary
stage into a developed totemic system, there are some which
have advanced so little from the pre-religious condition that they
are reported to have no religion whatever (in the common sense
of the word). Messrs. Spencer and (Men expressly declare that

1 Of. L6vy-Bruhl, Fonct. ment. p. 283 ff.

HATTJBE, GOD, AOT) SOUL 79

' the Central Australian natives . . . have no idea whatever of
the existence of any supreme being who is pleased if they follow
a certain line of what we call moral conduct, and displeased if
they do not do so. They have not the vaguest idea of a personal
individual other than an actual living member of the tribe, who
approves or disapproves of their conduct, so far as anything like
what we call morality is concerned/ At initiation a boy is
instructed in his moral duties, but he is not taught to believe in
any supreme being. * In fact, he then learns that the spirit
creature whom up to that time* as a boy, he has regarded as
all-powerful, is merely a myth, and that such a being does not
really exist, and is only an invention of the men to frighten the
women and children/ I

Apart from these and similar reports from direct observers of
savage tribes comparatively untouched by white civilisation*
if we consider our primitive magical complex, we shall see that
it is perfectly self-contained and complete without any kind of
God. The sympathetic and continuous force which animates
the unitary group fully suffices, at first, to express the collective
emotion and to realise the desired end, involved in magical
practice. There is no need for a God outside this complex, no
room for him within it. Given that the object of a clan ceremony
is to multiply the totem-species and promote its right behaviour,
this object is immediately effected in mimetic representation.
The thing desired is felt as actually performed ; and that not
by way of influence or compulsion, but by sympathetic co-
operation of human and non-human clansmen alike. This is not
religion, but pure magic. The difference between the two is
seen to be this. The religious complex consists of worshippers
on the one side and a spirit or God, distinct from them in kind
and power, on the other. This distinction first makes it possible
for the worshippers to control, influence, persuade, worship, the
God ; they can offer Mm gifts and beg for benefits in return.
But in the stage of pure magic the distinction has not yet broken
out. The magical complex is one and continuous, both in kind
and in power. No distinction is felt between one part of it and

1 Northern Tribes of Centred Australia, p. 491 if. See further evidence in
Grazer, Totemum* voi i. p. 141 ff. In our view the * spirit creature 1 above
mentioned a religions representation, but it is minimal.

80 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

another, because no distinction, however superficially obvious,
is of any importance as against the identity of nature and
functions. Hence, anything of the nature of worship is excluded
by the very definition of such a group. A totem is not a God ;
it is in any case (as we must never forget) a species, not an
individual; and it has at first no powers that can be called
* divine/ because it has none that its human kin do not share
with it and exercise in common. All theology is the work of
doubt and criticism, not of simple and childlike faith, which
has at no time felt the need of it.

44. The first representation needed

How, then, will the need of representation first arise, and what
is it that will be represented ?

If we consider our primary complex the continuous human
group we observe that its mentality contains two distinguish-
able factors. The group is composed of individuals, each of
whom has his own private world of inner and outer experience.
But this by no means exhausts the psychology of these indi-
viduals ; otherwise, the group would be a casual aggregation
of independent atoms, destitute of continuity. Over and above
their individual experiences, all the members of the group alike
partake of what has been called the collective consciousness of
the group as a whole. Unlike their private experiences, this
pervading consciousness is the same in all, consisting in those
infectious or epidemic states of feeling, above described, which
at times when the common functions are being exercised, invade
the whole field of mentality, and submerge the individual areas.
To this group-consciousness belong also, from the first moment
of their appearance, all representations which are collective
a class in which all religious representations are included. These
likewise are diffused over the whole mentality of the group, and
identical in all its members. The psychological force which
diffuses them is known as ' suggestion * or ' herd-suggestion/

The collective consciousness is, thus, superindividual. It
resides, of course, in the individuals composing the group
there is nowhere else for it to exist but it resides in all of them
together, and not completely in any one of them. It is both in

NATURE, GOB, AND SOUL 81

myself and yet not myself. It occupies a certain part of my
mind, and yet it stretch.es beyond and outside me to tlie limits
of my group. And since I am only a small part of my group,
there is much more of it outside me than inside. Its force,
accordingly, is much greater than any individual force, and
the more primitive I am, the greater this preponderance
will be. Here, then, there exists in the world a power which, is
greater than any individual's superindividual, that is to say,
6 superhuman/

Because this force is continuous with my own consciousness,
it is, as it were, a reservoir to which I have access, and from which
I can absorb superhuman power to reinforce and enhance my
own. This is its positive aspect, to which we shall return in a
moment. But it will also have a negative aspect, which will
concern us later, and may here be touched upon. 1 In so far as
this power is not myself and greater than myself, it is a moral
and restraining force, which can, and does, impose upon the
individual the necessity of observing the uniform behaviour of
the group.

With the first dawning of a distinction between myself and the
social consciousness comes the first shadowy representation
which can be called religious or moral. The characteristic of
moral and religious representations is that they are obligatory
objects of faith which we are not allowed to question. The
reason of this is now apparent. When the power of society
the only known moral power in the universe, superior to the
individual first comes to be felt as different from my own
power, it is necessarily felt, in part, as a constraint, which imposes
from without some sort of control over my actions. At first
I shall feel myself powerless against it. Its dominance is absolute
because the force is not wholly external. The collective con-
sciousness is also immanent in the individual himself, forming
within him that unreasoning impulse, called conscience, which,
like a traitor within the gates, acknowledges from within the
obligation to obey that other and much larger part of the collec-
tive consciousness which lies outside. Small wonder that
obedience is absolute in primitive man, whose individuality is

1 See E. E. Marett, Threshold of Religion, chap, ill, * Is Taboo a Negative
Magic? 'and p. 127.

82 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

still restricted to a comparatively small field, wMle all the
higher levels of mentality are occupied by this overpowering
force.

We conclude, then, that the first religious representation is a
representation of the collective consciousness itself the only
moral power which can come to be felt as imposed from without,
and therefore need to be represented. Considered as moral
and prohibitive, it is the first e not ourselves which makes for
righteousness/ From its positive content come the two great
religious conceptions of God and Soul, and strange as it
may seem that idea of ' Nature* which lies at the root of
philosophy.

The negative aspect of this superindividual moral power
its aspect as repression, imposing an external constraint will
give rise to conceptions such as Avenging Anger (Nemesis),
Justice (Dike), and Destiny (Moira), when these are conceived
as keeping individuals in their places, and asserting against
arrogant egoism the self-protective instinct of the social group.
These abstractions are all various ways of conceiving what the
savage calls Taboo. We shall see, moreover, that when the
positive content of the superhuman power is absorbed in the
twin notions of God and Soul, its negative, repressive force
still rises above them both, in the figure of Necessity or
Destiny, Moira, to whom all Gods and souls are alike
subordinate.

But, as we before observed, this negative aspect is only the
recoil of a positive force, which we have now learnt to identify
with the collective power of the group. This power is only
incidentally manifested as repressive, on the rare occasions
when individual aggression calls it forth ; and, although it is
probably the sense of constraint that first causes it to be repre-
sented at all, the content of the representation will not be purely
negative, but rather consist of the positive, dynamic properties
which give it body and force. This energy is normally expressed
not in the repression of individuals, but in the exercise of the
group-functions. As such it really consists, as we have seen,
in collective emotion and desire, manifested in magical opera-
tions. These, then, we may expect to form the content of our
primary religious representation.

HATTJBE, aOB, AND SOUL S3

45. fFAe Sympathetic Continuum as the representation of the
collective consciousness

At tMs point, however, an obvious caution is required. When
we speak of the savage forming a representation of the collective
emotion and desire which animate a group in the performance
of its ceremonies, we seem to be attributing to him our latter-
day psychology and falling into the most elementary of errors.
The subsequent argument will show that, if the savage had
been capable of representing these facts of group-consciousness
as they now appear to us, either theology and philosophy would
never have existed, or their whole course would have been
totally different. What we mean to affirm is that, while the
real, natural fact embodied in the first religious representation
was the group-consciousness in its active and emotional phase,
the character of the representation formed of it by primitive
man was, to our modern thinking, so unlike the real fact that
we have only just come to recognise what it was that was
represented.

In the first place, we must remember that even civilised man,
right on into the age of philosophy, did not succeed in conceiving
anything as immaterial, or non-spatial. The Logos of Hera-
cleitus, the Being of Parmenides, the Now? of Anaxagoras,
the Love and Hate of Empedocles, are all indubitably possessed
of material and spatial properties. Even when the term ( bodi-
less/ * incorporeal 3 (dato/tarov), makes its appearance in Plato 3
it is often doubtful how many material properties it negates.
A ghost is * bodiless/ but, even when it is invisible and intangible,
it is still extended in space and perhaps endowed with some active
force. We may be certain, then, that when a savage was driven
to form a mental image of the collective nature or powers of his
group, he would conceive them as a subtle and mobile form of
matter, not distinguished from vital force.

An entity corresponding to this description does, in fact, hold
a fundamental place in the philosophy of existing savages in
various parts of the world. Accounts of its nature and qualities
have, of course, to be received with caution. Much so-called
savage philosophy and theology have been developed by contact
with Christian missionaries, who have forced upon savages the

84 mOM EEIiaiON TO PHILOSOPHY

need to raise their implicit beliefs to a level of consciousness at
which, mutual explanation can begin. The scientific inquirer is,
of course, exposed to the same risk of suggesting the categories
and ideas which he seeks to elicit. But when all allowances are
made for these sources of error, recent students seem to hare
agreed to postulate a conception now familiar under the various
forms of mana, wakonda, orenda, etc. These various forms,
though it appears from the descriptions of them that they have
developed in different places along diverging lines, appear to be
only varieties of one conception, which, as some think, lies at
the root alike of magic and of religion. 1

The mana of the Melanesians is thus described by Dr. Cod-
rington : 2 * The Melanesian mind is entirely possessed by the
belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost univer-
sally mana. This is what works to effect everything which is
beyond the ordinary power of man, outside the common pro-
cesses of nature ; it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches
itself to persons and to things, and is manifested by results
which can only be ascribed to its operation. "When one has got
it, he can use it and direct it, but its force may break forth at
some new point ; the presence of it is ascertained by proof.
A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes his fancy ;
its shape is singular, it is like something, it is certainly not a
common stone, there must be mana in it. So he argues with
himself, and he puts it to the proof ; he lays it at the root of a
tree to the fruit of which it has a certain resemblance ; ... an
abundant crop on the tree . . . shows that he is right, the
stone is mana, has that power in it. Having that power, it is
a vehicle to convey mana to other stones. . . . This power,
though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person
who directs it ; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some men/

In Noith America, we are told by a cautious and competent

1 MM. Hubert et Mauss ('Esquisse d'une theorie g4nerale de la magic,'
Annde fiocioL vii. p. 116), after an interesting analysis of mana, remark
that it may be taken as universally believed in, at a certain stage of
development. At later stages it is replaced by daemons and then by
metaphysical entities, c.gr. the Indian brahman, which ends by being an
active principle immanent in the world, the real (as opposed to illusion)
union (yoga) with which confers magical powers.

a The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891, p. 118.

NATTJBE, GOD, AHD SOTTL 85

observer, ' Tie OmaJias regard all animate and inanimate forms,
all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life which was con-
tinuous and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in
themselves. This mysterious power in all things they called
Wa-kon-da, and through it all things were related to man, and
to each other. In the idea of the continuity of life, a relation
was maintained between the seen and the unseen, the dead and
the living, and also between the fragment of anything and its
entirety/ *

We may note at once that these Indians, who, of course, have
long been in contact with whites, and assiduously urged by
monotheistic missionaries to acknowledge a single Great Spirit/
have generalised their conception into one common life pervading
all things. This is an inevitable stage, but probably not the
first stage, in its history. For reasons already touched upon, it
is likely that, the further back we could go, the more we should
find that every group of things, defined by its social importance,
would have a specific wakonda or mana of its own. 2 Indeed, we
are driven to this view by the consideration that this medium
is the vehicle of sympathetic action at a distance, ensuring that
persons and things related by it shall feel, act, and suffer together ;
and in systems of magic we find that sympathetic interaction
occurs not equally between any two objects whatever, but
specially within the area of a group of objects which are related
or akin. 3

A system of magic thus involves a system of classification.

1 A. C. Fletcher, * The Significance of the Scalp-lock/ Journ. of Anthrop.
Studies, xxvii. (1897-8), p. 436. For other accounts of the conceptions of
waJconda, orenda, mana, etc., see Hewitt, American Anthropologist, N.S.,
iv, 38; E. S. Hartland, Address to Anthrop. Section of the British Associa-
tion, 1906 ; B. R. Marett, Threshold of Religion, pp. 115 ff.; A. C. Haddon,
Magic and Fetichism, London, 1906, chap. vii. ; L6vy-Bruhl, Fonctions
mentales, 141 ff. ; Hubert et Harass, * Esquisse d'une the*orie generate de la
magie,' Annee SocioL vii (1904), p. 108 ff. On the work of these last-named
authorities, the theory put forward in this chapter is based.

2 On the other hand, the continuum is prior to distinct individuals. Of.
Le*vy-Bruhl, Fonctions mentales, p. 109.

3 Thus, * among the Wakelbura and kindred tribes of Northern Queensland
we are told that everything, animate and inanimate, belongs to one or other
of the two exogamous classes into which the tribes are divided. A wizard in
performing his incantations may use only things which belong to Us own class.*
Frazer, Totemism, i. 134.

86 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

We have akeady seen, too, that the primitive type of all classi-
fication is the grouping of society 1 a fact still marked in lin-
guistic usage by the use of the words ' genua / 'genre, 9 *Mnd/
etc., to designate any sort of class. In other words, all likeness
was originally represented as kinship. There exists, moreover,
within any group of kin a strong bond of solidarity, which finds
its characteristic expression in sympathetic emotion and collec-
tive action. The members of such a group are thus psycho-
logically en rapport with one another ; in literal fact they do
act and react on one another in a quite special degree. This
psychological fact is the basis of that early axiom of causality
which asserts that * like can only act on like ' an axiom assumed
by magic and expressly formulated by early philosophy. The
mysterious action of magical power only works within the field
of a certain group of things, which are ' akin/ Our suggestion
is that the notions of mana, wakonda, etc., were at first repre-
sentations of the bond of ' kinship * uniting a social group a
supposed vehicle of sympathetic interaction. Later, they have,
at least in some cases, been generalised into the typical form of
all * spiritual * substance. 2

When we consider under what form such an entity would be
represented, the answer lies near at hand. Kinship is to our
minds an immaterial entity a relation. But, as we have said,
to conceive anything as immaterial is a feat that is not achieved
till late on in the history of rational speculation. Just as, to
Empedocles, Philia (the solidarity of a group) was a mobile fluid
running between the particles of the denser forms of matter, so
to a savage the vehicle of kinship the sympathetic continuum,
as we shall henceforth call it can only be represented as a
fluid which takes the shape of the compartments which it fills.

Following our principle that the functions of a group define
its nature, we can see how inevitably the power resident in any
group would be identified with the material substrate of Hn-

1 See Durkheim et Mauss, * Classifications primitives,' Ann. SocioL vL

2 Of. L4vy-Bruhl, Fonctions mentales* etc., p. 145: 'Wakan (Wakonda
ne saurait mieux se comparer gw'efc un fluide qui circule, qui se rtpand dans
tout ce qui existe, et qui eat le principe mystique de la vie et de la vertu des
tre*. Of. also the mulungu of the Central African Yaos a conception which
covers the individual soul, collective soul, and the mystic property possessed
by all * sacred ' or * divine ' things (ibid., p. 141).

NATURE, GOD, AND SOtHD 87

ship-the blood of the group-kin. This actual substance
answers exactly to our description of the continuum, for the blood
is the life-the common life, derived, not from the natural parent
but from the totem-ancestor.^ The same fact, of kinship, is
expressed statically and materially in terms of continuity <>1 the
blood, and dynamically or vitally in terms of identity of function.
Both aspects are covered by the conception of ' nature ' (plysis).
The terms mana, wJconda, etc., specially emphasise its character
as force the expression of life in action. 2

A totemic society, as we have already remarked, is complex
and organic ; it is a group of groups. This complexity is of a
secondary or still higher order, developed out of the unitary
group, which is the primary social fact. It is now clear that
this primary group, with its collective consciousness, is sufficient
to give birth to the first religious representation. This, we have
argued, would be nothing but a representation of that collective
consciousness itself, in its emotional and active phase. But,
since a savage could not conceive such a thing as we conceive
it, we have suggested that it would present itself to his mind as
a subtle form of matter, not distinguished from life or from
the vehicle of life and sympathetic interaction the Hndred
blood.

46. Summary

We have now defined what, at the end of Chapter i., we called
the primitive religious fact, and seen in what sense it is also the
primitive social fact. We find it to be a social group (mom),
defined by its collective functions (nomoi); these functions
constitute its nature (fhysis), considered as a vital force proper
to that group. Keligion begins with the first representation of
this fact.

To resume the characteristics of this representation. (1) As
collective, it is superindividual, or superhuman. (2) Being

1 P. Beck, Die Nadic&immg, p. 87 : 'Die sinnliohe Vorstellnng, die mit
dem KollektivbewuBBtsein verbunden iat, ist das Blut. Wie der Hauch des
Mundes mit dem Einzelleben identifiziert wird, so das Blot mit dem Leben
des Stammes."

3 I shall try to show later how the notions of mana, etc., would come to
be differentiated from the kindred blood. I am only arguing that there was
probably an early stage in which this differentiation had not yet arisen.

88 FBOM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

imposed on the individual by the group, its force is felt as obli-
gatory and repressive. (3) But, on the other hand, its content
is, also and mainly, dynamic the energy of the group as ex-
pressed in collective emotion and activity, its mana. (4) It is
necessarily conceived in a material form, as fluid charged with
life. (5) And this fluid, since it takes the outline of a social
group, whose 'nature ' it is, will inevitably be identified with
the blood, which is common to the kin. (6) This kindred blood
Is, however, a mythical entity, in the sense that it may be con-
ceived as uniting members of a group who are not really akin
by blood, but may even (as in totemic clans) belong to different
natural species (e.g. men and emus).

47. The differentiation of ' God ' and c Soul *

In the Mowing pages we shall try to show how, out oUhe
simple and fundamental conceptions which compose this primi-
tive social fact, arose two collective representations which are
still discussed by philosophers as well as by theologians. ^ These
are the ideas which we name 'God' and the 'Soul/ Our
primary object in this inquiry wfll be to make out still more
clearly the fact, established in the first chapter, f hat throughout
the development of Greek polytheism, and on into rational
speculation, the notion constantly persists, of a system of moimi,
each filled by a specific living force, beneficently operative
within its sphere, maleficent in its recoil upon the intruder. We
have now to watch the process by which this force shapes itself
into spirits, Gods, and human souls, and to realise that this pro-
cess, with aE its advance in clearness of conception and imagery,
is as it were an overgrowth, which leaves untouched beneath it the
fundamental conceptual framework within which it springs up|

The primitive complex of notions we have just defined moira,
physis, and nomos was ineradicably fixed in collective repre-
sentation. The reinterpretation of it into terms of personal
Gods or human souls all took place inside the outlines of this
formula ; it did not break them down and sweep them away.
Hence, as we shall see, when the Milesian philosophers quietly
left the Gods out of their scheme of things, and supposed them-
selves to be dealing straight with natural facts, what really

STATURE, GOB, AND SOUL 89

happened was that they cleared away the overgrowth of theology,
and disinterred what had all the time persisted underneath.
Hylozoism, in a word, simply raises to the level of clear scientific
assertion the primitive savage conception of a continuum of
living fluid, portioned out into the distinct forms of whatever
classification is taken to be important. What the Milesians
called pJiysis has the same origin as what the savage calls mana* 1
The brief sketch, then, which follows, of the passage from
magic to religion, is not a digression; it is an attempt to
indicate the process of theological complication which was un-
ravelled again at the passage from religion to philosophy. But
not completely unraveled. Philosophy, in our view, tried to
cut away the superstructure of theological representation, and, in
so doing, unwittingly harked back to the magical representation
which preceded theology ; but meanwhile, in the religious age,
the ideas of God and of the soul had become too firmly estab-
lished. Philosophy could not sustain the effort of simply dis-
pensing with them altogether. They perpetually haunt the
philosopher, and distract speculation from the domain of observ-
able fact to a region of metaphysics which escapes the control
of scientific procedure. Hence, for the understanding of philo-
sophy, it is essential to grasp the character of these collective
representations, and to trace, if possible, their origin and growth,
with just so much detail as our purpose demands. The real
process of development must, it need hardly be said, be much
more complicated ; and in different parts of the world it must
have branched off along different lines, and been arrested at
different stages. All that we shall attempt is a hypothetical
reconstruction, in the barest outline, of the course which would
lead from the primitive fact above defined to the religion of
Greece as we know it in historic times, If we are right as to
the starting-point, we have both ends of the chain in our hands ;
and the only question is how, out of the confused, undifferen-
tiated primary datum, the factors of Greek polytheism came
to be distinguished and set up as separate classes of supernatural
or supersensible beings. To construct anything like a complete
history is impossible in the present state of our knowledge.

1 This identification was, so far as I know, first put forward by MM.
Hubert et Jktauss, Annte Social vii. p. 116 ff.

90 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Innumerable ethnographical and sociological changes will have
to be made out before this chapter of pre-histbry can be written.
We do not pretend to describe the causes. All that we attempt
is really little more than an analysis the drawing of certain
distinctions, which must, somehow and at some time, have
emerged out of the primary confused representation we have
outlined, to give us the categories of Greek polytheistic religion.
To define these, and to set them clearly before the reader, is our
main object.

In this inquiry, the two characters of the primary religious
representation which specially concern us are : (1) that it is,
from the first, a representation of the collective life in its positive,
dynamic expression it is thus the soul of the group ; (2) that
it is a superindividual or superhuman power, and so gives rise
to the notion of the divine, of ' God/ When we look at it in
this light, it appears that ' God * is, as it were, an offshoot of
' Soul/ The notion of the group-soul is closer to the original
fact of group-consciousness, of which, indeed, it is the first
mythical representation. The notion of God, as distinct from
Soul, arises by differentiation. Gods are projections into non-
human nature of the representation of the group-soul. At the
same time, Soul is only by one stage the older of the two con-
ceptions. After that, they develop side by side in parallel courses.

Our next question must be : how the differentiation occurs
in the first instance. It will soon appear that this is the same
as the problem : how * God * was projected from society into
Nature. The answer to both questions was implicitly contained
in the last chapter ; we have now only to deduce some further
consequences of the results there reached.

48. From Primary Magic to Religion

The outlines of the magical group are not, we must remember,
necessarily conterminous with the limits of a genuine natural
species, as recognised by our own science. In totemism, on the
contrary, as we have seen, its boundaries traverse these limits,
because the classification is based, not solely or primarily on
biological facts, but on the social importance of its various
elements. Man, for instance, is not a distinct species at all.

NATTJBE, GOB, AND SOUL 91

Even a tribe of men the largest group of mankind that is
conceived so far from being a single species, is divided up into
as many species as there are totems; and every totem-clan
traverses what seems to us the natural boundary between men
and other creatures, and brings a department of Nature inside
a subdivision of society. The Mndred blood pervading such a
group is a mythical, not a natural, fact, appropriately repre-
sented by the mythical totem-ancestor.

It is only when the dim consciousness of distinction has
dawned, and the nature and behaviour (say) of an emu begin
to appear in some degree different from, and independent of,
the nature and behaviour of Emu-men, that the first step is
taken from magic on the road to religion. The intaision of
this fatal doubt, which, if it prevail, must shatter the social
system, will for a long time be resisted by the whole force
of herd-suggestion, instinctively protecting the moral fabric.
Magical ceremonies, at first so simple and businesslike, will
gather round them the apparatus of mystical rites, which at all
times resort to emotional stimulants, with the very purpose of
restoring the old sense of perfectly unbroken communion. If
they are "successful, the system may last on, as it has lasted in
Australia, for an indefinite time. But, in less favourable
circumstances, it may at any moment be broken down, either
from without, by contact with the developed religion of some
foreign people, or from within, by the growth of the intellect.
Reason, whose advance is marked at every stage by the drawing
of some new distinction, by some fresh attempt to ' carve reality
at the joints/ may find an opening for a new classification,
in which the real differences between men and emus will be
too strong for their mystical identity. Then a time may
come when no amount of dressing up in emu feathers and
strutting about will bring back the old sense of communion
and co-operation. 1

1 It is perhaps probable that the cause of this change in representation,
where it is not due to foreign influence, should be sought in some change of
social structure, which again may be due to mechanical causes. With that
question we are not concerned, but only with the breaking down of the old
faith, however caused, and its consequences.

92 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

49, Corresponding change in representation : the two pools

If we consider what effect this weakening of the old faith
would have, in respect of the mythical continuum of magical
sympathy, it is clear that this hond of union will be strained
until it snaps. Or, to use a better metaphor, the mysterious
fluid will part into two pools one pool representing the magical
powers and nature of the human clan, the other those of the
natural species or department, formerly identified with it.

This crisis closes the first, or pure, stage of magic, and opens
the second, in which the magical energy of the human group is
directed upon a natural force other than itself, which it seeks to
control, to set in action, or to restrain. The threshold of this
second stage of magic is also the birthplace of what is currently
called religion. Here, for the first time, we encounter recog-
nition of a power 'not ourselves/ towards which the cult-
attitude is possible. There is something in Nature which we
can woo, flatter, cajole, intimidate, bribe. In proportion as this
something ceases to be human and familiar, it becomes divine
and mysterious. Its ways are no longer just the same as our
ways; it has begun to be incalculable, and acquired the rudiments
of a will of its own. In some departments, moreover, such as
the winds, the thunder, or the sea, the physical force now slipping
from control is enormous and terrific. The making of a God
has begun : where it will end, depends upon the genius and
development of the race. The liberated force may acquire, one
after another, any or all of the attributes of personality, by an
advance which moves, step for step, with the advance of self-
consciousness in its worshippers. At whatever point the wor-
shippers stop, the God will be arrested too. He may crystallise
as the vague, impersonal genius or daemon of his moira a
power resident in some department and strictly confined to it.
Or, like the Greek Gods, he may travel the whole road to com-
pletely self-conscious personality, and become a figure so dis-
tinct that, if he would visit mankind unrecognised, he is forced
to assume a disguise, since any one who met him in the street
would instantly know him by sight ; as men took the tall and
bearded Barnabas for Zeus and the eloquent Paul for Hermes.
Probably no other race of mankind has ever developed its Gods

NATURE, GOD, AND SOTJL 93

to tliis pitch of individual distinctness. For the moment, our
point is that the process implies and reflects a corresponding
development on the human side a passage from group-con-
sciousness to individual consciousness in the history of the
human mind.

The parting of the magical continuum into the two pools of
human and non-human force must he accompanied whether
as cause or efiect, we need not consider by the dissolution
of any social structure of a totemic type. Such structures imply
the identity of human groups with natural species ; when this
basis is weakened and destroyed, the elaborate departmentalism
must break down on the human side. On the natural side, on
the contrary, it may persist, because there the lines of division
to a large extent separate real biological species, or classes of
phenomena which really have a specific behaviour. Thus, in
Nature, the old provinces of Moim can remain undisturbed ;
but in the social organism the lines of demarcation, which
were once continuous with their boundaries, may be obliterated,
and superseded by a new grouping. This means, of course, a
new system of human kinship a change such as occurs, for
instance, when the natural fact of paternity is for the first time
recognised. Whatever it may be that causes a change of this
kind, it is clear that, when the outline of a group of kindred is
determined by real affinity of blood, the correspondence between
clan and natural department is doomed to break down. 1

50. Blood-loin and Magical Society differentiated

Such a regrouping of society will, moreover, be reflected by
a corresponding change in representation. In the present case,
we shall now have two types of group, where before there was
only one. The magical group will, henceforth, no longer coincide
with the group of blood-kin. Over and above the structure based
on consanguinity, there will accordingly emerge the magical
fraternity, not held together by any ties of blood or supposed

1 Of course, various changes in the mode of life will also profoundly
modify social structure and religious custom. A wandering pastoral tribe
will be focused on its herds ; a stationary society of agriculturalists will be
mainly interested in the behaviour of the weather, the round of the seasons,
the fertilising genius of its fixed portion of earth.

94 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

descent from a common totem-ancestor, but only by the common
possession of magical powers. The magical society will differ
from the groups of Mndred in the same sort of way as the Church
differs from the family.

This differentiation of the two types of group will cause a
distinction in representation between the two types of bond
which severally unite them. The magical society is united by
its magical powers its mana; the group of kindred by its
common blood. In the original sympathetic continuum we
supposed that these two notions were both contained in un-
distinguished union. Henceforth, they are in some degree
separate ; mana ceases to be a visible substance, but retains
the properties of a material fluid; while the blood, though
losing some of its magical power, remains the vehicle of life,
which is, as it were, its specialised mana,

51. Magical Societies

A magical society, then, is a group held together by the pos-
session of exceptional and secret powers, reserved to an initiated
order. These powers, moreover, being no longer limited to one
totem-species, naturally claim a wider control over Nature,
especially over the weather and the elements the hot and the
cold, the wet and the dry, rain and sun and thunder on whose
behaviour all life depends.

Now, whether or not the remote ancestors of the Greeks ever
passed through a phase of developed totemism, there certainly
existed among them magical fraternities of the type we have
just described. They were remembered in legend under the
names of Kouretes, Tekhines, Idaean Daktyls, Korybmtes, Satyrs,
etc., and in some cases actually survived as secret cult-societies
far into historic times. 1

52. The Group-Soul

A fraternity of this type has its existence as a whole; its
'nature/ as before, consists of its collective functions. The
individual, when he is initiated into the order, becomes just a

For these societies see J. B. Harrison, Themis, where they are so fully
treated that further discussion of them here IB unnecessary.

KATUEE, GOB, AOT) SOUL 95

Koures or a Dafayl, an undistinguished part of the whole. So,
to-day, tie first question to be asked about a monk is whether
lie is a Dominican or a Franciscan, not whether he is Brother
This or Brother That. His personalty is merged when he as-
sumes the uniform dress, behaviour, and beliefs of Ms order.

When we say of a man, * He has the soul of a Jesuit/ we convey
in a condensed form a large amount of information (true or false)
about the sort of behaviour that may be expected of him. Now,
as applied to a member of a magical fraternity, a phrase of this
type may be taken quite literally. The only ' soul ' a Koures has
is the group-soul of Ms order, and this consists of nothing beside
the group-functions, the behaviour expected of the group. This
is what Aristotle would call c the being what it really is to
be a Koures: The ' soul ' is the collective ' nature/ Kites of
initiation are regularly regarded as new births ; and this implies
that the admission of a candidate to the exercise of the new
functions is the same fact as Ms being born again and receiving
a new ' soul/ The soul is thus, at this stage, simply a pool of
mana, wMch takes the outline of a group distinguished by
specific functions and behaviour. 1

53. The Daemon of the Magical Society

Another point to be noted is that a secret society of this sort,
claiming as it does exceptional powers not possessed by aU

1 Of. L4vy-Bruhl, Functions mentales, etc., p. 92: Originairement (dans
la mesure ob Vusage de ce terme est permis], I'idte d'dme ne se trouve pas chez
les primitifs: Ce qui en tient la place, Jest la representation en general tr&s
6motionette, d'une ou de plusieurs participations qui coexistent et qui s'entre-
croisent, sans se fondre encore dans la conscience nette tfwie individuality
vraiment une. Le membre d'une tribu, (Fun totem, ffun clan, se sent mystique-
meni uni a son groupe social, mystiquement uni a Vespece animale ou veg&ale
qui est son totem, etc. ... Ces communions, dont FintensM se renouvette et
tfaccroit a des moments determine* (ceremonies sacrtes, rites d'initiation et
autres), ne 8*emp$chent nullement les unes lea autre*. Wttes n'ontpas besom de
s'exprimer par des concepts definis pour etre proj 'ondement senties, etpour ttrt
sentiespar torn les membre* du groupe. Plus tard, quand ces ceremonies et
ces rites auront peu d peu cess6 d'&re compris, puis d'&re pratique*, ces
participations conserves dans les usages et dans les mythes precipiteront, pour
ainsi dire, sous forme d } " dmes multiples " . . . et plus tard enjin, tout pres de
nous, comme le montre I'exemple des Qrecs, ces times multiples cristaUiseront A
leur tour en une dme unique, non sans que la distinction d*un principe vital et
d'un h6te spirituel du corps reste visible. 9

96 FEOM BELIGIOK" TO PHILOSOPHY

humanity, is lifted to a higher plane ; it is, in some peculiar
sense, sacred or holy ; its members are something more than
ordinary mortals, they are in some degree divine. Thus the
Kouretes are caEed daemones, and even tkeoi ; the magician for
Hesiod is a * divine man 3 (9elo<s avrip}}- The epithet ' divine/
the term ' daemon,' at this stage mean nothing more than that
tfcte group embodies that magical superhuman force, withheld from
the profane, which is its nature and collective soul. This col-
lective soul is the daemon of the society ; its members are daemones
in so far as it resides in them and they partake of it.

64:. The Daemon of the Gens

The second type of daemon or collective soul corresponds to
the new unitary group of a society whose structure is based on
real consanguinity. This is the daemon of the gens or house.
Such an entity was probably at first impersonal ; the process by
which it acquired personality and even individuality will be
discussed later*

The Spirit, Fortune, or Genius of a gens is the common factor
of a group united by kinship as it were their collective per-
sonality, all that the family of Mn have in common, underlying
their separate individualities, and making them different from
any other clan or house. It survives the death of any individual
or generation. It is the transmitted vehicle of hereditary
qualities, including the taint of hereditary guilt. It is also a
continuum* Identified with the blood, which entails collective
responsibility : any kinsman may be held accountable for any
action of the whole group or of any other kinsman. Hence the
blood-feud or vendetta. 2

55. Daemons of natural departments

If we turn now from the human side to external nature, we
can trace a parallel development.

1 For the suggested derivation of theos from thes- which appears in
TToX^eo-ros 0&r<ra(T0u, perhaps 0&fji6s 9 Latin festus and/erwze, see G. Murray
in Anthropology and the Classics, p. 77. For the 0etoj avfjp of Hesiod, ef.
J. E, Harrison, Themisj p. 95.

2 For some survivals of this daemon of apena see above, p. 54

STATURE, GOD, AOT) SOUL 97

It was suggested that the opening of the second stage of magic,
which supersedes pure totemism, might 1 be represented as tie
parting of the sympathetic continuum into two pools. The
human pool, as we have seen, is the reservoir of superhuman force
which makes the group of magicians something more than man.
Correspondingly, the natural pool is a reservoir of supernatural
force which makes the department of Nature the element, or
whatever species of natural objects you please something more
than a natural object. This something more is the raw material
of the elemental daemon or God. It is necessarily endowed with
some of the elements of human consciousness ; for (as we must
never forget) it really consists of emotion and will-power pro-
jected out of human consciousness into a non-human species
in the co-operative ceremonies of primary magic. It is now cut
loose from its human counterpart, and is entering upon an inde-
pendent existence. The power of the fire, for instance, is more
than the real, natural energy of the element as known to science ;
it is the life and will of the fire the will which the magician feels
opposing his own, and has to deal with by means of the similar
virtue in himself. The fire is, or has, a daemon in exactly the
same way as the magical group possesses, or is possessed by, a
daemon. Only, for reasons already pointed out, the one human
group is confronted by a host of natural daemons, each speci-
fically different, and occupying a distinct moira a fire-daemon,
a water-daemon, a fever-daemon, and so on indefinitely.

A nature-daemon is thus defined as the soul, or force, or tmna,
resident in some species of natural phenomena. It is, like its
human counterpart, the soul of a group, not of an individual
thing, except in cases where a species happens to have only one
member, as, for instance, the sun. The fire-daemon is mani-
fested in all fire ; for all fire has the same specific behaviour.
It is for this reason that daemons, in Greek theology as eke-
where, remain impersonal ; they consist of will and force without
individuality, because they are each the soul, not of an individual
object, but of a species or kind (^09), to which they are related
exactly as the daemon of a human kindred (761/09) is related to
his group.

With these daemons may be classed also the spirits of striking
natural features rivers, rocks, trees, mountains, wells, etc.

98 FBOM RELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

which in Greek religion tended to be female (nymphs). They
owe their existence to the same psychological causes which,
among the Australians and elsewhere, make any feature of the
landscape which is at all remarkable into an abode of spirits,
or * totem-centre/

56. Local Good Daemons of Fertility

Besides the elemental spirits who are the counterparts and
antagonists of the weather magician, Herodotus, in a passage
discussed above (p. 37), describes a class of divine beings who
belong to a phase of Greek religion which preceded Olympianism.
The essential feature of this phase was that the Gods, or more
properly daemons, were undifferentiated and local. Each
daemon was a daemon-of-all-work, and we may be sure that his
function mainly consisted in providing an abundant and regular
supply of the fruits of earth.

When a tribe passes into the agricultural stage, the focus of its
religious attention is centred on the portion of earth (its polpa
7*79) which gives it sustenance. The Earth, just because it is now
pre-eminently the source of life, will be pre-eminently * sacred/
endowed with the mysterious power which feeds the force of all
living things. This power, possessing the bare elements of per-
sonality, is centred, for each agricultural group, in the Good Spirit
(*A.yadb? Aat>o)z/), giver of the fruits of the soil. He was
worshipped sometimes beside the maternal figure of Tyche,
Fortuna, the power of Earth herself, who brings all things to
successful issue. 1

We must think of Greece, in pre-Olympian days, as parcelled
out among as many of these undifferentiated local fertility
spirits as there were distinct agricultural communities. This
view corresponds with Plato's ' mythical * reign of the daemons
in the age of Kronos. We have seen ( 15) how he expressly
compares the division of the parts of the universe among
daemons to the present distribution of the earth into the
seats of worship of the various Gods. He also tells us that
each daemon was * sufficient in himself in all things for his
1 The importance of the Good Spirit is brought out in Miss Harrison's
Themis, chap. viii. Sexb. Math. ix. 40 : Kaddwep rt TTJV yijv Beto vofjtlfru>, otf

9&\*KvroiM>vti&np $ AvatntarrofiA^ oforfop, dXAd r^v ftn^owrap tv aury *al

NATURE, GOD, AND SOUL 99

own flock/ Although Plato, for the purposes of his own
philosophy, puts a mythical interpretation upon this rule of the
daemons, it seems to reflect a genuine tradition of the phase
described by Herodotus.

57. Polydaemonism in China

The system of polydaemonism, which we can thus make out
in the background of the more familiar polytheism of later
Greece, appears to subsist to this day in China, arrested at the
stage of growth we have now reached. Taoism presents singu-
larly clear traces of a course of development parallel to that
which we have hypothetically reconstructed. We need only
quote a few statements from a first-rate authority on Chinese
religion. 1

* The universe consists -of two souls or breaths, called Yang
and Yin, the Yang representing light, warmth, productivity, and
life, also the heavens from which all these good things emanate ;
and the Yin being associated with darkness, cold, death, and the
earth. The Yang is subdivided into an indefinite number of good
souls or spirits, called shen, the Yin into particles or evil spirits,
called Jcwei, spectres ; it is these shen and Jcw&i which animate
every being and every thing. It is they also which constitute
the soul of man * (p. 3).

Too is the 'universal order which manifests itself by the
vicissitudes of the Yang and Yin. 3 * There is no god beyond
nature, no maker of it, no Jahweh, no Allah. Creation is the
spontaneous work of heaven and earth, repeating itself regularly
in every year, or in every revolution of time or the Too, the order
of the universe * (p. 102). * Chaos, before it split into Yang and
Yin and became the Too, occupies the principal place in the
pantheon under the name of Pan-ht,' (p. 152), 'The sub-
divisions of the universe, of heaven and earth, were the gods of
ancient China, and are the gods of China to this day * (p. 134).
* The gods are such shen as animate heaven, sun, moon, the stars,
wind, rain, clouds, thunder, fire, the earth, seas, mountains,
rivers, rocks, stones, animals, plants, things in particular also
the souls of deceased men * (p. 5).

1 De Groot, The Religion of the CMnese, New York, 1910.

100 FROM RELIGIOlSr TO PHILOSOPHY

On the human side, there is ' a Too or way of man (yen-too),
being a system of discipline and ethics based upon observation
and divination of nature, conducive to its imitation. This is a
system of occult science, magic, a Too of man pretending to be a
copy of the great Tao of heaven and earth 3 (p. 135). * Men who
possess the Tao by having assimilated themselves with nature,
also possess miraculous powers, the same as those which nature
"herself displays ; they are, indeed, gods or shen of the same kind
as those who constitute the Tao * (p. 159). * The human Tao is
synonymous with virtue; it is synonymous with classical or
orthodox doctrine ; it is synonymous with shen or divinity, and
also with harmony with the world of gods/ It is ' behaving as
nature behaves 9 (p. 138).

This departmental polydaemonism preserves all the main
features we have described above. The undifferentiated Chaos
splitting into the two contrary segments we can trace from
Hesiod's cosmogony, through Anaximander, to Parmenides, 1
whose two opposing principles of heavenly light and earthly
darkness are closely analogous to "Yang and Tin. What especi-
ally concerns us now is the parallelism between the magical
practitioners of the human Tao and their divine counterparts
the departmental spirits or Gods of the natural order. SJien is
manifestly the Chinese for beneficent mana ; it is the substance
of which Gods and the souls of e divine * or holy men are alike
composed. Its primitive continuity survives in the doctrine
that * the universal Athmos, or Shen, pervades everything, and
man's life is derived from an infusion of a part of it into himself.
Therefore he may prevent his death by constantly absorbing
Athmos from the world surrounding him ' (p. 146). 2

58. From Polydaemonism to Polytheism

In the foregoing discussion of the daemonic phase of religion
we distinguished four types of daemon in Greek theology. These
were (1) the daemon, or genius, of the gens, or social group united
by blood-kinship ; (2) the local Agathos Daimon, the Good Spirit

1 For Parmenides 5 system, see below, 115 ff.

2 Cf. Aristotle, de Anima, a v. 15 : * The account in the so-called Orphic
poems asserts that the soul enters from the universe in the process of
respiration, being borne upon the winds.' See further, p. 129 below.

NATURE, GOB, AOT) SOUL 101

or genius of fertility, embodying tie life-giving power of the
portion of earth inhabited by the social group ; (3) the daemon,
or collective soul, of a magical fraternity, which consists of their
collective powers or superhuman mana, exercised in magical
control of nature ; (4) the daemon of a natural element the
non-human (or dehumanised) counterpart of (3), the supernatural
mana of a natural department.

From these four types of daemon we have now to show by
what process there emerge four types of divine beings who are
individual the King, the Hero, the Mystery God, and the
Olympian. These are the four principal factors in Greek
polytheism, as known to us in historical times.

59. From impersonal daemon to individiutl soul and
personal God

When we call all these entities 'daemons/ we imply that
they are still impersonal, and not individual. They retain the
collective character which marks them as derived from the
common consciousness of a group, not from the individual
consciousness of one person. It is upon this point that we join
issue with animism as popularly understood. The animistic
theory of the origin of religion commonly states that the samge
believes everything in the world to possess a soul like his own.
Now, if we are right in supposing that individual self-conscious-
ness is quite a late growth, that it is only after an age-long
struggle that the individual soul comes to define itself in dis-
tinction from the group, it follows that animism, as so stated,
must be of correspondingly recent date. At first, the individual
has no soul of his own which he can proceed to attribute to other
objects in nature. Before he can find his own soul, he must first
become aware of a power which both is and is not himself a
moral force which at once is superior to his own and yet is
participated in by him.

Now, as we have seen, the only thing in the world which
answers to that description is the collective consciousness,which
both is immanent in every member of die group and also lies
beyond him, diffused throughout all the members in continuous
distribution. This, then, is the primal source of religious repre-

102 FBOM EELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

sentation. In proportion as it comes to be felt more and more
as 'not ourselves/ it becomes increasingly superhuman and
divine ; and, on the other hand, human individuality comes to
be defined, hardened, and consolidated in contrast with it.
The process, therefore, may be conceived as an externalisation, or
projection, of the collective power which once was ourselves,
into a power, at first daemonic and then personal, which is not
ourselves. What we have now to do, is to form some notion of
how this process takes place. How does the collective con-
sciousness or emotional and active life of a group come to be
externalised and projected into a personal daemon or God, while,
on the other hand, the group-soul gives place to the individual
soul?

60. The emergence of the Chief, or King

The collective authority of the tribal group was, at first, vested
in the group as a whole. This state of things survived in the
Hebrew organisation, where we find the criminal arraigned before
the whole tribe, which both gives and executes judgment. It
existed also in Germany as described by Tacitus. 1 So again,
under the laws of Solon, the r}\ia{a nominally consisted of all
citizens above the age of thirty. The social group as a whole is
the administrator, and even the source, of law, which immediately
affirms the emotional reaction of the common consciousness upon
crime.

The first individual embodiment of the repressive authority
of the tribe is the despotic chief. f The individuals, instead of
subordinating themselves to the group, subordinate themselves
to its representative ; and since the collective authority, when it
was diffused, was absolute, that of the chief, which is only an
organisation of it, naturally took the same character/ * It is
a general law that the pre-eminent organ of any society partakes
of the nature of the collective entity which it represents.
Accordingly, where society has that religious, and (so to say)
superhuman, character, which we have traced to its origin in
the constitution of the common consciousness, it is necessarily

1 Germ. II, 12. Ci E. Diirkheim, Sur la div. du trav. *oc. 8 , p. 42, from
whom these instances are taken.

, GOD, ASFD SOUL 103

transferred to the cMef who directs it, and who is thus elevated
high above the rest of men. Where the individuals are simply
dependent on the collective type, they quite naturally become
dependent on the central authority in which that type is
incarnated/ 1

Thus, out of the coUective life of the many, emerges the One.
But this one is not an independent individual. However abso-
lute his power may be, he is not a tyrant claiming to be the
original source of aU authority. He does not rule by Ms own
right, but solely as the representative of society. The authority
he wields is drawn from the group, and only temporarily de-
posited in him. He is an externalised group-soul-~~a daemon,
not yet a God. This representative character explains the
curious phenomenon of temporary kingships, upon which
Dr. Frazer's work has thrown so much light. This frequent
phenomenon shows how the authority deposited in a king
retains its collective character and remains distinguishable from
his personality.

Just because it remains distinguishable, a third and final stage
is possible, in which the collective authority rises above the
human sovereign and becomes transcendant in the impersonal
form of Law. It ascends from the daemonic plane to the divine.
Such was the position of the Mosaic Law in Hebrew society.
The divinity of the Law is, of course, represented by declaring
it to be the direct utterance of God. But the sovereign in a
society which calls itself theocratic is, of course, really the divine
Law itself. Thus, the collective authority first passes upwards
to the daemonic chief, and then, through him, to the heaven
above him, whose representative and functionary he now becomes,
ruling by * divine right/ At a much later stage of social de-
velopment, a similar phenomenon occurs in the Greek democracy,
the constitutional theory of which is that the sovereign is that
impersonal and dispassionate reason, called Nomos*

Such, too, appears to be the position of Moira, above and

1 E, Durkheim, Sur la division du travail social*, pp. 156, 172.

2 Herod, vii. 104 : eXeMepoi yap tf PTCS at vwra forfOcpol cln' ftiwr* yap <r0i
Seff^-njs mfios. Arist Pol 1287a 28, 6 /cy o& T&V Mju xeXefaw &p X ct* 5o*
K\fctr apxeiv rov Oebv Kai rbv vovv jibvovs, 6 VavOpuvov K\tuv vpoffrifapi K*l
totlpbv $ re yap iiriOvfda TQIOUTOV, K al 6 dvpte &pxovra$ K al rofc apterous &vd r <is
$ia<f>0dpt* Sriircp avev dptfrtas vote 6 pfycos <rrb>.

104 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

beyond the humanised polity of Olympus. She is the consti-
tutional Law of the universe, restricting the aggression of ^ in-
dividual egoism. When the divine community is patnarchahsed
-a change which presumably reflects a corresponding trans-
formation in human society^an attempt is made to substitute
for Destiny the patria potestas, the will of Father Zeus. But
the attempt is not wholly successful. It will be remembered
how in the fifteenth Iliad, Poseidon claims that his status and
moira are on the same level with Zeus he is io-Qfiop* and
KTOT^O?. Zeus, he adds, had better try to terrorise Ms own sons
and daughters, who must of necessity obey his commands. 1 Thus,
the patria potestas has its limits, and these are fixed by the social
consciousness of Olympus, which still rises, even above Father
Zeus, in the all-dominating figure of Moira.

61. The King as Arch-magician

But, as Dr. Frazer has pointed out, the functions of the
primitive king are not solely, or even chiefly, political. In the
light of what has gone before, the reason is clear. The
collective powers deposited in him were not merely repressive
and punitive; they were also magical. The king ^ is the
arch-magician. He has to regulate the weather, to stimulate
the growth of herds and crops, to see that the sun may shine
and the rain fall. 2

In this respect, he is the successor of the magical society, whose
appearance we described above. From such a society it is
possible that he may directly emerge, extending his scope from
magical to political power. But, here again, his position at
first is of the type we have called daemonic ; he gathers to him-
self the force derived from the group. Only later will he become

1 II. xv. 197 : QuyaTtyto-etv yap re xal vidfft peXrepov ettj

ol e6ev &rp6vwTO$ aKoticrovrai. /ecu
2 L6vy-Bruhl, Fonct. ment. p. 291. In most societies of a type slightly
higher than the Australian, the desired (magical) result is no longer assured
by the totemic group. * Un membre dit, groupe, particulterement quttfifi 9 est
souveiU le vhicu2e, oUigi oil choisi, de la participation qtfil s'agit ff&ablirS
The individual is sometimes designated by his birth, for a man is his
ancestors, or a particular ancestor reincarnated. ' G*&8t ainsi que les chefs
et les row, de par leur origine, sont souvettf lea interm^diaires nticessairesS

NATURE, COD, AOT> SOUL 105

the priest, who poses as the representative of a higher power
descending upon Mm from the divine region above.

Especially interesting, as marking a transitional phase, are
what Dr. Frazer calls the ' departmental kings of nature/ 1 ' In
the backwoods of Cambodia live two mysterious sovereigns,
known as the King of the Fire and the King of the Water, Their
royal functions are of a purely mystic or spiritual order ; they
have no political authority ; they are simple peasants, living by
the sweat of their brow and the offerings of the faithful/ They
hold office for seven years, spending their time, according to
one account, in absolute solitude, shut up in a tower on a moun-
tain. If they fall ill, they are stabbed to death. The offices are
hereditary in certain families, because these possess talismans
which would lose their virtue or disappear, if they passed out
of the family. When a vacancy occurs, the kinsmen of the
dead king flee to the woods to escape the dreadful office ; the
first who is hunted out is made King of the Fire or of the
Water.

It is transparently clear from this strange story that these
magical kings are simply human daemons the individual de-
positaries of the magical power possessed by a certain clan,
which power is the correlative of the daemonic power of the
elements they control.

There is abundant evidence from all quarters that this magical
control of nature remains as the primary function of kingships
of more developed types. Because at one time human society
and nature formed one solid system, the head of society is ipso
facto the head of nature also ; he is the source of law, which
governs the elements no less than mankind. In this sense, he
is pre-eminently f divine/ His judgments or * dooms y ($e/ucnrs)
are, as Hesiod 2 tells us, inspired. The word Themis, like its
cognate, the English ' doom/ means both ' judgment/ * decree
of right/ and also the oracular utterance of Fate ; once more we
find what ought to be undistinguished from what must and will
be. The king is spokesman of the world-order, of destiny and
law ; for he is the seer, and moves in the world of supersensible,
sacred things, in immediate and perpetual contact with that

1 Golden Bough*, part I. voL ii. p. 1 ff.

2 Theog. SO ff. For Themis, see J. E. Harrison, Themis, chap. xi.

106 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

power in nature winch is the magnified reflex of his own august
potency.

That reflex, that Brocken spectre, of the king of men will
come to be none other than the king of Gods ; for the divine
monarchy evolves step for step with the human institution
which it reflects. Hence we are not surprised to find the
human king conceived, by developed theology, as the
embodiment or representative of the divine king the Greek
Zeus or the Roman Jupiter. 1

62. The Eponymous Hero

Somewhat similar to the development of the king is the growth
of the representation called the eponymous hero. The source
of this figure is transparently revealed by the fact that his name
is not an individual appellation, but merely the singular form of
the tribal name. Ion, for instance, is neither more nor less than
the Ionian the type and genius of all lonians. As such, the
eponymous hero is not an individual, but a persona a mask,
a representation of the genius of a social group.

His life-history, if he has any, is, at least partly, made up out of
the life-history -of the tribe. Thus it has been shown conclusively
that many of the duels (avSpo/cTao-lat,) of the warriors in the Iliad
are simply real conflicts between the tribes, individualised into
the personal achievements of the eponyms that represent them. 2
This is mainly the work of epic poets, who endow a daemon
of purely mythical origin with a quasi-historic personality, so
vivid and distinct that the Euhemerists of all ages will defend
his historic existence.

The- tribal hero may reach the final stage of individualisation,
if the empty persona happens to be filled by an historic person-
ality. This may occur if some actual chieftain of great renown,
who renders exceptional services to his tribe, is looked upon as
the incarnation, par excellence, of the tribal genius. Thus a
real man may, after his death, become a patron saint; but
only because the empty frame into which he steps is already

1 So In II. L 238 the sceptre is held by the kings who are &*c<nroXot, ot re
0fai<rTas vpbs Ads cfyt/arcu. Their judgments are derived from Zeus.

2 E. Bethe, 'Homer nnd die Heldensage/ Neue Jahrb. Mass. Alt. 1902;
G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic 1 , p. 181.

HATUBB, GOB, AKB SOUL 107

provided in the representation of the f hero/ The individual
hero in this way resembles the individual king. He owes Ms
position, not merely to his really exceptional character and
powers, but to the fact that there already exists a representation
personalised and daemonic, of that superhuman mana which is
recognised as embodied in Ms individuality. The historic
circumstances of his life and character, which occasioned his
canonisation, are the least important part of Mm, and may soon
be forgotten. His actual achievements blend with the other
glorious acts of tribal history in a composite memory that defies
analysis.

63. Hero-ioorship

Since, as we have seen, the hero is not originally an individual
man, but represents the genius, or soul, or mana of a tribe, he
keeps, like the king, a functional character. Saints are wor-
shipped, not for the miracles which they performed in their life-
time, but because those miracles proved that they possessed
superhuman power, which may be counted upon to work more
miracles in the future. The expectation of these benefits to
come gives vitality to the cult. In precisely the same way, the
hero who saved his country while he lived, watches over it after
his death as guardian and saviour (<f>vha%, <ra>Tr}p) 9 and is the
object of worship.

His cult may easily blend with that of the local daemon of
fertility the Good Spirit who provides the fruits of the earth
to a society dependent on agriculture. 1 He will then become
a daemon-of-all-work, charged with all the main functions
which contribute to the social welfare a saviour in war,
and in peace *a giver of wealth, for that too is a kingly
function.*' 2

When such a fusion has taken place, the supposed life-history
of the hero will be further enriched by ritual myths. These
myths, which were originally representations of rites performed
in the service of the Good Spirit, come to be translated into
historical incidents in the hero's career. The Greek hero-

1 This explanation of hero-worship by the blend of Hero and Agathos
Daimon is dne to Miss J. E. Harrison (Themis, chap. viii.).
3 Hesiod, Urga, 125 of the Spirits of the Golden Race :

irXowro56roi* jcot TQVTO ytpas jSfeurtXi/wJ' foxo?.

108 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

legends are full of myths which have this ritual origin, and
require to be carefully distinguished from those personalised
exploits of tribal history which go to make another element in
the legends. 1

64. The Individual Soul and Immortality

In the Mug and the hero we have found transitional forms,
which make, as it were, a bridge from the daemon of a group to
the individual soul. The chief was, probably, the first individual. 2
The collective authority of the tribe, vested in him, must in-
evitably be confounded with his individual will, which it rein-
forces with superhuman power ; for he will not be capable of
those nice distinctions which modern officials love to draw
between the various * capacities ' in which they act. The most
successful tyrants, like Napoleon, are men of childish vanity,
who believe that their own will is the primary source of their
power. Thus, by a curious perversion, egoism establishes itself
by the absorption of force derived from the subjects of its tyranny.
The sense of individuality grows strong by feeding on the collec-
tive mana.

On the other hand, the Mng is still regarded by others as a
mere depositary of social authority a temporary embodiment
of a power which existed before him and will be transmitted to
his successor. The same holds true of the head of the gens
or of the patriarchal family. In other words, the soul possessed
by these individuals does not begin and end with their lifetimes,
but is immortal. The soul has been held to be immortal, primarily
because it was at first impersonal and superindividual the soul
of a group, which outlives every generation of its members.
Beginning as the collective and impersonal life of the group, it
becomes confounded, as we have seen, with the individual
personality of the chief ; and there was, probably, a stage in
which only chiefs or heroes had immortal souls. The tradition
of such a phase seems to survive in Hesibd's Age of Bronze a
class of immortals which consists of the heroes who fought at

1 In my chapter on the Olympic Games In Miss Harrison's TJtemis, I have
tried to show that the Pindaric legend of Pelops consists of ritual myths
of this kind.

2 See E. Durkheim, Sur la div. du travail social 3 , p. 172.

NATUBE, GOD, A3TO SOUL 109

Ilion and Thebes, but does not include the undistinguished mass
of their followers. 1

The democratic extension of immortality to all human
beings was perhaps partly helped by the rise of the patriarchal
family, as the unit of a new social structure. The family differs
from the original undifferentiated group, in that it is organic :
the father, the mother, the son, and the daughter, have each a
distinct function in the household economy, and this means a
distinct f nature/ essence, or ' soul/ 2 But, no doubt, many other
causes contributed to this result.

One such cause may have been the dream-image or memory-
image, in which some inquirers have sought the whole origin of the
belief in immortality. 3 The point to be noted about this image
(eidolon) is that it is from the first individual it is the visible
* shape * (eidos) or appearance, which is recognisable as belonging
to one particular person whom we have seen and known. It
would, therefore, be peculiarly effective in facilitating the idea
that some part of every human being survives Ms death.

The psychology of Homer shows that this eidolon may remain
distinct from that other kind of soul we have hitherto considered
the blood-soul, in which the vital powers or wiana reside. Man
in Homer has two souls. His eidolon or psyche escapes from his
mouth at the moment of death ; it is his recognisable shape,
which may, for a time, revisit his survivors in dreams. It does
not exist until the moment of death ; and it does not carry with
it to the world of shades any of his vital force. This resides in
the other soul (#u/w), whose visible vehicle is the blood ; and
it is only by drinking blood that the eidolon can recover its * wits *
(<j>peve$) or consciousness. In the mortal soul we find again the
same combination of blood and mana which composed the
sympathetic continuum of primary magic. As contrasted with
the individual and recognisable eidolon, it is less personal the

1 JBrga, 156 ff- They were aySpQv ^pc5w Beiov ylvos, -q/tftfeot, and ^Apwi
fjpweSj for whom the earth hears fruit three times a year so much functional
fertiiity-marca have they carried with them to the Isles of the Blest.

2 Some of the Sophists delighted in defining the virtue of the father, of the
wife, etc., i.e. their specific function.

3 Mr. A. E. Crawley (The Idea of the Soul, London, 1909) has defended
the memory-image in a new and interesting way, as against the older dream-
theory. While emphasising the importance of the group-soul, I would not
seem to underrate these other factors.

110 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

same In all men alike and thus bears the mark of its original
collective character. 1

The distinction between these two kinds of soul is important
for the later course of philosophic psychology. The eidolon soul,
the recognisable shape or image, is the soul as object (and later
as subject) of knowledge; the blood-soul is the soul as the
principle of force and motion. It is under these two heads that
Aristotle, in the first book of his Psychology, groups the theories
held by his predecessors, about the nature and functions of soul. 2

So, at last, we reach the notions of the individual Jeer, daemon,
and moira. The Jeer is an eidolon, or winged sprite, which wears a
sinister aspect is an object of fear. If it is angry and seeks
vengeance, it is an Erinys. Considered as allotted to the indi-
vidual at birth, it is his moira the span or limit of his vital
force, the negative and repressive aspect of his fate. Being
derived from a vanished group, the moira is necessarily shadowy,
negative, unreal. The daemon (genius) of a person, on the other
hand, retains the element of beneficent power, of functional
mana. When Heracleitus, for example, says that a man's
character is his daemon, he means that it is the force which
shapes his life from within, and makes or mars his fortunes, not
a * destiny * allotted him from without. 3

65. The formation of personal Gods, Mystic and Olympian

Such, in briefest outline, is the history of the king and of the
hero, leading to the individual soul. The two other types of
divine being recognised by Greek polytheism still remain to be
considered the Mystery God and the Olympian. "We shall

1 For Homeric psychology, see Rohde, Psyche, chap. i. Among the
Melanesians, *if a man has mana, it resides in his "spiritual part" or
" soul," which after death becomes a ghost. . . . Not every man has mana,
nor every ghost ; but the soul of a man of power becomes as such a ghost
of power. . . . Mana can come very near to meaning "soul" or *' spirit,"
though without th connotation of wraith-like appearance ' (Marett, Threshold
of 'Religion, p. 134).

2 See below, 77.

3 Cf. Isocrates, ix. 25, speaking of Euagoras : To<rafrn)v o Salfwv %<rxev afrrov
irp6voi(ur, 5rws JcaXws X^erai rjiv j8cw\euw, <Scr0 } &ra fv toayKcuw ty wapa-
ff-KevcarBTJvcu &' d<T/3etasv ravra fjv Irepoy torpo^cy, &v 5* oUv i* fy offlws KO!
Sticcdws \afietv r^v &p%n v > E5ay6/^ Ste^i/XaJcy. For the guardian, genius of the
individual, aee Rohde, Psyche*, ii. 316.

NATURE, GOB, AND SOUL III

try to exhibit their nature and origin by recurring to our con-
ception of the two pools of mana, into which the original sym-
pathetic continuum divided. The essential difference between
these two types of God, which persists in spite of all reaction
between them, is that the Mystery God is, from first to last, the
daemon of a human group, while the Olympian God develops
out of the daemon of a local department, who has become dis-
tinct from his worshippers. 1

66. The Mystery God

The typical Mystery God of Greek religion is, of course,
Dionysus. In his case, the cult organisation reflects the essential
fact that he is the daemon of a human group. From first to last
he is attended by this group, called his tMasos, whether it be in
the idealised form of the troop of Maenads and Satyrs, or the
actual band of human worshippers, of Bacchae and Bacchoi. The
group, moreover, becomes a religious, not a political, unit a
church, not a state. It is a secret and mysterious society;
admission to it is a matter of initiation, because Dionysus is a
wandering divinity, not a fixed part of an official state religion,
access to which is the birthright of every citizen. His church,
accordingly, is a trans-social organisation, and essentially of
the same type as the secret society of magicians, with which,
indeed, it easily amalgamates, if it does not directly arise from it. 2

It is true that Dionysus represents, not only the soul or life
of a human group, but also the life of all animate nature. But
we must note that this life of nature is modelled upon the cycle
of human life. The seasonal round of vegetation its death in
winter and rebirth in spring is a larger transcript of the phases
of human existence, birth and death and rebirth in the wheel
of reincarnation. Hence, in this type of religion the conceptual
framework is temporal the recurrent circle of the year, which
ends where it began ; whereas in the case of Olympian Gods

1 The distinction between these two types of religion has nevtr been
better stated than by Friedrich Nietzsche in his Qeburt der Tragddie, a work
of profound imaginative insight, which left the scholarship of a generation
toiling in the rear.

I do not, of course, deny that the group was originally local and tribal ;
I am only describing a later stage at which the religion had become de-
localised.

112 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

the framework is spatial the provincial order of Moira. Hence,
too, the mystery cult gathers up those older magical ceremonies
(in which at first sexual magic was prominent), designed to
promote by sympathetic co-operation the birth and flowering
and fruitfulness of trees and plants. The religion holds fast
to the sympathetic principle that all life is one, and conceives
Nature under that form which seems to keep her processes most
closely in touch with the phases of human experience. Dionysus,
then, and other such Mystery Gods, are fundamentally human
daemons, however much they may bfe naturised ; and the course
of their development is, to that extent, the reverse of the process
by which an Olympian, from being the impersonal daemon of a
department, becomes more and more humanised, or (as we say)
anthropomorphic.

Because the province of a Mystery God is always, primarily,
the human society from which he immediately springs, it is
possible for him to remain human as well as divine. In this lies
the secret of the vitality of mystical religions. The character-
istic rite is sacramental an act of communion and reunion with
the daemon. Its effect may be conceived under two comple-
mentary aspects : either as enthusiasm God enters into his
group and they become "ev6eoi; or as ecstasy man rises out
of, and above, the prison of his individuality and loses himself in
the common life of the whole, becoming ' immortal * and ' divine/
Thus, the God remains both human and daemonic, being per-
petually, at every celebration of thorite, re-created in the collec-
tive emotion of his congregation/ Orgiastic ritual ensures that
the passage from the human plane to the divine remains open,
and is continually traversed. God can enter into man, and man
can become God. 1 X"

In theology the same truth is reflected in the fact that
Dionysus, even when his worship was contaminated with Olym-
pian cults, never became fully an Olympian. His ritual, by per-
petually renewing the bond of union with his group, prevented
him from drifting away from his province, as the Olympians
had done, and ascending to a remote and transcendental heaven.
Moreover, a mystery religion is necessarily monotheistic or

1 Scbol. Ar. Knights, 406 : /Sd/cxov o rbv &i6vv<roy e/cdXcw fj.6vov y <iXXd /cat
TrojTcts rofo reXovyras rd Spyta*

1SFATUBE, GOD, AND SOUL 113

pantheistic. Teaching the unity of all life, it disposes of poly-
theism by the doctrine that all the Gods are only diverse shapes
of one divine principle, f one nature with many names/ Diony-
sus, accordingly, could not, for all the grotesque attempts of
theologians, be fitted into a subordinate place in the Olympian
polity. He was the God of his church a group not social or
organic, but defined precisely by its unique relation to its daemon-
soul. Such a group cannot have more than one God.

It is easy to see how this mystical scheme, rather than Olym-
pianism, provides the appropriate setting for half-human and
half-divine figures like Pythagoras, Buddha, and Jesus actual
living prophets, who, during their life or after their death, became
the daemons of religious societies. The several stages in the
deification of Jesus provide an instructive analogy to the at-
tempted Olympianisation of Dionysus. The process shows the
same tension between opposite forces. The upward-pulling
force is the metaphysical affiliation to an already transcenden-
talised Father God : the emphasis on the divine nature threatens
to exclude the human, and to draw the daemon away from his
group into a heaven of philosophical abstraction. But this tend-
ency is prevented from completely triumphing by those mystical
rites which perpetually reconstitute the emotional sense of
communion and realise the promise : * Where two or three are
gathered together, there am I in the midst/ In Eomanist
countries the real, human relation of Mother and Son has almost
completely eclipsed the Fatherhood, which was never more than
metaphysical. 1 The really living objects of Christian cult are
the figures of actual men and women the Virgin, her Son, the
saints and martyrs ; not the two other Persons of the Trinity, or
the angels, in whom the Christian Fathers recognised the daemons
of paganism.

In this type of religion, then, the central feet is the human
group, with a homogeneous, inorganic type of solidarity, 2 held
together by the unique relation in which it stands to its daemon
a relation by which man can participate in the divine, and,

1 M. Jacques Raverat points out to me that for the French peasant the
human father has effaced the divine. His trinity is Jesus-Marie- Joseph.

2 Hence the communism and equality of the Early Church and of the
Pythagoreans.

114 FEOM BELIGIOH TO PHILOSOPHY

conversely, the divine can enter into man. It is tlie parent of
mystical philosophies, of monistic and pantheistic systems,
which hold that the One can pass into the Many and yet remain
One. It is also idealistic in tendency, in the sense that it is
other-worldly : the One is not only within, but beyond and
above, the Many, and more real, because more powerful, than
they. Accordingly, the Many, as such, are condemned to un-
reality, to mere * seeming ' or appearance half -false represen-
tations of the One reality.

67, The Olympian God

In almost every important respect the Olympian presents a
striking contrast to the Mystery God. With the progress of
his worshippers towards increasing self-consciousness, he has
advanced to the stage of quasi-individual personality. Like
the tribal Hero, he has been endowed by the poets with a
definite character, and a biographical record. He stands on
his own feet, and is detached from the human group : he has
no church, no ihiasos. From this fundamental fact the chief
characteristics of Olympian religion can be deduced.

Since such a God has no human congregation, whose soul or
daemon he can be, the relation of worshipper to God cannot be
one of communion : the worshippers cannot re-create and feed
him with their own emotional experience in mystical rites.
God and worshippers do not form one solid group, but con-
front one another, as a social or political unit and a power of
Nature between which only an external relation, of a con-
tractual or commercial type, can subsist. 1 Accordingly, the
characteristic rite of Olympianism is the commercial sacrifice,
regarded as a gift or bribe, in exchange for which benefits are
to be returned. This ritual supersedes the attempt at direct
compulsion previously made by the magician, who still believed
that Ms own mana was a match for the divine mana of Nature.
He who can no longer feel himself strong enough to compel,
resorts to persuasion and the methods of commercial barter. 2

1 Cf. the analysis of religion in. Plato's Euthyphro.

2 Of. Plato, Rep. 364 B, where tlie mendicant magician at once describes
his power as * derived from the Gods ' (Sfoafus $K Beuv wopifrftivt}) and claims
to * induce the Gods to serve him ' (rod? Geofa vdBovrh a$ur

NATURE, <H)D ? AOT> SOIJL 115

Further, there is not for the Olympian God that bond of union
which prevents the Mystery God from drifting altogether away
from his province. The Olympian God sheds his functions,
and so is cut loose from his anchorage in the life of earth.
In proportion as he becomes anthropomorphic, he comes to
be less and less in touch with his natural region. The forma-
tion of a pan-hellenic religion meant that the Olympians left
their provinces, to go and form a polity of their own on the
top of a mountain. Finally, they leave the earthly Olympus,
and vanish into the sky. Nature, dispeopled of Gods, is left
free for science.

The grouping of the Gods into a patriarchal family involves
(as we saw in the case of human society) differentiation of
function. The Gods, as Herodotus says, from being an in-
distinct plurality of impersonal daemons, come to have separate
* arts " and * figures/ and to form a group of the organic type.
Thus, thanks to the extraordinary definiteness of Greek imagina-
tion, they acquire very clear personalities. But, though such
a God may become a person, this persona is not really more than
an empty mask not an individual. A God who was never a man,
can never acquire individuality, for the simple reason that the
indispensable basis of individuality is the unique world of inner
and outer experience which every real animal being has, but
nothing else can have. The Olympian God can never be more
than an eidos, a species* As such, moreover, he is without any
inward principle of life and growth immortal and immutable.
The only life he ever had was the daemonic and supernatural
energy of his province, derived from its source in human
emotion. As he recedes from this province and withdraws to
his humanised Olympus, the mana passes out of him. Whither
does it go 1

Much of it, no doubt, is retained by the local divinity, the
patron of the community, Athene at Athens, Hera at Argos, and
so forth. The Olympian system does not supersede and efface
the worship of a local spirit, any more than Catholic theology has
succeeded in universaEsing its divinities. The Notre Dame of
one village is distinct from, and may even be at enmity with, the
Notre Dame of the next. 1 But, for more intellectual minds, these

1 Sec A. Daudet, * La Diligence de Beaucaire* in Lettres de mon Moulin.

116 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

local Gods will be weakened and discredited by the mere existence
of an Olympian pantheon to which they half belong. The
Gods are uprooted, and what power is left to them must become
not local, but cosmic.

68. The Gods and the Elements

We seem to discern one attempt to provide the Gods with
new moirai in that cosmic dasmos of the elemental regions which
we described in Chapter i. It has akeady been remarked
that this is a late and artificial proceeding. It seems to be
based on a primitive elemental complex, which includes the
powers instrumental in providing man with food the thunder
(fire), the rain, the clouds, and the earth. These were at first
grouped in a pair earth and the thunder-cloud, which breaks
into fire and descends in rain to fertilise the dry ground in the
primal marriage of Earth and Heaven, united by Eros. In the
triple dasmos of the sons of Kronos, the trinity of Gods divide
among them the three superterrestrial factors. Zeus is the
thunder-God of all light and fire and warmth, who, for political
and other reasons, happened to prevail. Poseidon has in the
same way come to stand for all the powers of moisture, wells
and rivers and seas ; Hades is lord of the dark and cold air
the clouds and the western darkness. Earth remains yet
common to all ; but the agriculturalist is now taught to look
upwards to heaven for the powers that give increase. 1

In the climate of the Mediterranean, with its rainless summer,
the natural anxieties of the farmer, and consequently many of his
religious rites, are concentrated on the powers of heat and cold,
of wet and drought. The year divides itself into two well-marked
periods the depos and %e/ta of Homer in which the hot and
the dry are leagued against the cold and the wet, 2 and each pair

1 The battle of the Gods in Pherekydes is between the sons of Earth on
the one side and the Heaven-God with spirits of fire, water, and wind on
the other; see Eisler, Weltenmantel, ii. 660. For the Titanm/iachia,> see
J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 453.

2 This opposition peeps out in odd places; cf. the herald's speech in
Aesch. Agam. 655, Zvv&fjLOffav y</>, 6m-cs ^x&trrot rb irpfr, vvp Kal 0<Xew<ra, and
in Eurip. ZVooc&s, prologue s the same unholy alliance, on the same occasion,
of Athena, who contributes the thunder and fire of Zeus (80), and Poseidon
who raises a storm in the waters.

NATURE, GOB, A2H) SOUL 117

of allies has its appointed moiety and * prevails/ as Empedocles
says of Ms elements, * as the circle of time comes round/ For
the farmer the behaviour of the universe is satisfactory when
the aggression of these warring contraries is eounterchecked
and balanced, and he gets enough of each, and not too much
of either. From their due mixture and harmony arise the
individual things which interest him the birth and blossoming
and fruitage of his crops and trees. 1

Now, already in Homer it is clear enough that Zeus and
Poseidon have drifted out of touch with their elements, which
they rule only as absentee proprietors. Most of the time they
are occupied with quite other interests, such as the progress of
the siege of Troy. This means that the elements themselves
regain the divine mana and potency which a God who leaves
his department cannot carry away with him. The Hot (thunder,
fire), the Cold (mist, clouds, air), the Wet (rain, sea, water),
and the Dry (earth), are left to themselves as elements endowed
with daemonic, supernatural energy. They become the four
primary forms of physis. The perpetual war of these opposed
powers goes on, obviously enough, before our eyes in the pro-
cesses of Nature. In the phenomena of evaporation and pie
cipitation, we see e the fire of the sun and stars feeding itself
on the exhalation of the waters/ 2 This is taken by the early
physicists as the type of * rarefaction and condensation' by
which they explained qualitative change. 3

We can see now why Anaximander laid such stress on the
departmental ordering of the four elemental opposites, and on
their warfare and aggression. We must not, however, lose sight
of the fundamental principle of Moira, as ordaining the dis-
tinction of spatial provinces. Before we leave religion for
philosophy, we must bring out one more aspect of this principle,
because it will show us another contrast, of vital importance,
between Olympian and Mystic religion.

1 Hippocr. de Nat. Horn. 7 : &s yap 6 Iviavrbs /terlxet fjv xas irdrrw Kal T&V
QepfjMv mi r&y if/vxpQy xal rwy %ypQv Kal TUP iiypuv. .... Plato, Symp. 1 88 A,
quoted below, p. 12L

2 Aet. i. 3. 1 (Thales).

3 See Heldel, * Qiialitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy,' ArcLJ.
Gesch. d. PM* xix. 333, and 0. Gilbert, Meteor. Theorien. chap, i.

118 mOM KELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

69. The Olympian God cut off from man

For lack of the mystical link of communion, tlie Olympian
recedes from man, as well as from Nature. A cardinal principle
of Olympian theology is that man cannot become a God or
* immortal/ neither can God become man. Each is confined
to Ms own region, and the boundary of Moira set between them
cannot, and must not, be passed. Unfed by human emotion,
and shedding his own inherent life, the Olympian God is doomed
to perish of inanition.

Such psychology as the Gods possess mainly consists in the
old doctrine of Moim, reinterpreted into terms of human passion.
The power which pervades a department, and formerly used,
with law-abiding regularity, to dispense its benefits, is now
a capricious and arbitrary will, differing from a human will only
in the superiority of its strength. The negative aspect, which
defends the frontier against aggression from without, is a human
passion, sometimes still called nemesis, more familiarly known
as ' grudging jealousy * (<$>6ovo$). The prominence of this passion
in the psychology of an Olympian God, undignified as it has
often seemed, becomes intelligible when we realise that it covers
half the field of the divine morality indeed much more than
half, inasmuch as the God is far more acutely conscious of the
respect due to his position and privileges than of any duty
towards his equals or inferiors. This is a necessary consequence
of the growth of his humanised personality. The God who
develops even this much of a ' self/ loses his sense of duty. He
no longer consists solely of his function, which was at first his
raison d'etre : he forgets that his utility was once all that there
was of him. The history of the word rifjuj illustrates the transi-
tion. In Hesiod it retains much of its original sense : the
TL^TI of a God is the office which determines his status ; it is the
same as his yep a?, the privilege to do something, to operate in a
certain department. But, when we come to developed Olym-
pianism, the burden of r^ shifts from the God to his wor-
shipper : it comes to mean the honour which we are bound to
render to him, no longer the service he is bound to render to us.

GOD, AND SOUL 119

Anything lie may now be pleased to do for us is an act of grace,
with which he may, or may not, repay our dues of sacrifice.
His nemesis again is no more the * dispensation ' of good things ;
it passes wholly to the sense of anger against our presumption
in expecting too much of them.

Like other functionaries, he tends to withdraw into an attitude
of aloofness and majestic condescension, and to insist, corre-
spondingly, on humanity keeping its distance. Apollo's message
to his worshippers was : ' Know thyself, and do not go too far/
Greek morality of the Olympian type is governed by this precept.
Be conscious of yourself, realise yourself, make the most you can
of it, up to the boundaries which limit its sphere ; but be conscious
also of those limits and keep your head be <r&-$p&v. Going
too far is TrXeoz/ef^a ' having more than your equal stare * ; it
is vfipw, ' getting above yourself J ; or it is inrepftacrta, e stepping
across/ invading the sphere which your neighbour claims to
occupy from centre to circumference. With the instancy of an

electric shock, your intrusion will be met by a discharge of

70. Olympian and Mystic doctrines of Ero$

Once more Earth and Heaven are parted asunder, the Gap
has come into being ; and Olympian theology is clear that this
gap is not to be bridged by Eros. The space between Earth
and Olympus comes to be the great moral gulf which mortals
may never pass. * Of one race, one only, are men and Gods ;
both of one mother *s womb we draw our breath ; but far asunder
is all our power divided, and fences us apart: here there is
nothingness, and there, in strength of bronze, a seat un-
shaken, eternal, abides the heaven above/ 1 And it is
significant that the prevailing type of sinner who attempts
to pass this gulf is he who seeks marriage with the Queen
of Heaven,

f Destiny and Device, eldest of the Gods, are masters of all ;
but Strength has no winged sandals. Let no man ever fly aloft
to heaven, nor seek to wed Aphrodite, the Cyprian queen, or

1 Find. Nem. vL 1. Of. frag. 104c (Schroder) : rt/wil S j3poroi<ri jccjtpcAt&at,

120 FROM REUGICOT TO PHILOSOPHY

some fair daughter of Porkos, whose dwelling is in the sea.
. . . There is a vengeance of the Gods/ l

Ision's two offences were that he was the first who * imbrued
kindred blood/ and that he ' attempted the spouse of Zeus/ 2
Tityos, another typical sinner, committed the same act of un-
lawful aggression. 3 It is noteworthy that the Chorus in the
Prometheus Bound invoke the Moirai when they pray that they
may never share the bed of Zeus, nor approach in marriage any
of the inhabitants of heaven. 4 To do so would be to pass from
the moira of men, the earth, and invade the heavenly moira of the
Olympians. c Device ' (Poros), and his child Eros, thus come to
be conceived as symbols of unlawful and overweening ambition,

1 Alkman, Partheneion, L 13 :

Kpdryffe yap Alffa, vavrQv
[/cai n<S/>os] yepaLraroi
0i(2v* dXX' ebr^&Xos dX/c<.
&v & upavbv

v] &VO,<TffO.V 3 ij TW*
7 TTCutia. IL6pK(iJ

[dva\tu>. Xajpires S A

This is an instructive passage. Aisa is a synonym of Moira. Poros is
* device,' which is lord of all that is not prohibited or prevented by Aisa,
(So in Thucydides yvdw, man's foresight and decision, and Ttixy share the
world between them. See my Thucyd. Mythistoricus, p. 105.) In Plato's
Symposium, 203 B, Poros is father of Eros the Eros which does pass from
earth to heaven ; and we can understand why the Scholiast on the Alkman
fragment says that Poros =Hesiod's Chaos : Sn rov H6pov etpyice rbv aMv rut
rd row *H<rt6$ou pefivBcvfttvui %6.L. But Strength (man's mana) has not
winged sandals to cross * Chaos.' * Eros' is a bad passion. Only the
Charites (i.e. victory) may innocently exalt man to the Gods. (Cf. Emped.
frag. 116: xdpts arvyfei SverXijTov 'jLvdyKyv.) They are po-y\t<papoi: Eros
dwells in their eyes, and they may look up to heaven,

2 Pind. Pyth. ii. 30 : a.1 5i/o 5* &fjLTr\a.Klai | faptirovot. reKeOovrc rb jjikv jjfxas
Sri ( fjufi&\Lov aTjJ,& irpfaTiffros OI)K dr^p rx.vas fV^/u^e Qvarols. | STL re ... | Ai6s
&KOLTIV gireipcLTO. X/nJ 5^ Ka0* afrrbv atei iravros opav ptrpov. I suspect that in
the first offence, * the mingling of kindred blood,' we have a misunderstood
reminiscence of the introduction of patriarchal marriage within the pro-
hibited degrees of the matriarchal system, which is known U> have prevailed
among the Locrians. The two offences may be only two ways of regarding
this breach of taboo,

3 Pind. Pyth. iv. 90.

4 Aesch. P. F. 984 : fn, / /}wor /

v* piife irtMQelijv ya/j^rq. rwi r&v

NATURE, GOD, AND SOUL 121

like the insolence and violence of tie wooers of Penelope, which

* reached even to the iron heaven/ 1

In accordance with this condemnation of Eros by Olympian
theology, we shall find that the scientific tradition in philosophy,
derived from that theology, lays emphasis on the justice and
necessity of the separation of the elements, and regards their

* mixing ? or marriage as an injustice. Such was the view of
Anaximander. On the other hand, the mystical schools look
back to a quite opposite view of Eros, which any reader of
Plato's Syw/posiwm, and especially of the discourse of Diotima,
will know to be characteristic of mystical religion.

One of the speakers in the Symposium (p. 186 ff.),Eryxumchus,
a pythagorising physician, sets the two conceptions of Eros
the Olympian and the mystic in clear contrast. In opposition
to the Eros that goes with insolence and excess (o pera -rifc vfipe&v
"Epcas), he speaks of the Eros who is orderly (rocr/iio?), and indeed
is the principle which hinds all things into an order, a cosmos, or
a harmony. Both these Loves are present, he says, in the
blending of the seasons of the year ; and when tie hot and the
cold, the dry and the wet, are regulated in their relations to one
another by the Love which is orderly, and they are mixed in
temperate harmony, then they bring a good year and health to
men and beasts and plants, and there is no injustice. But when
the disorderly and excessive Love prevails in the yearly seasons,
there is much injustice and destruction done by pestilence and
various diseases. Frosts and hail and mildew are caused by
this aggression and want of orderly adjustment (xXeoi/e^/a? /cat
ascoo-filas), Such is the physician's point of view ; he regards
the whole medical art as concerned with establishing the orderly
and harmonious Eros between the opposites that make war
upon one another in the body, each being impelled by the bad
Eros to usurp the domain of its antagonist and set up * injustice *
and disease. 2

As the dialogue proceeds, a deeper conception of the cosmic
Eros is unfolded in the speech of Diotima. We cannot follow

1 Od. xvli 565 : TWV 5j9/Hj re {ttij re ffiStfpeov o&pay&v f/c.

2 Cf. Plato, Laws, 906 0: r?p wheovtZlay, IP pey crapjclyots a&ficuri

Iw $& <S/cwf ^TWP Kal &tavrv AOI^F, iv k wtikfin teal

122 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

it out in detail, but only notice the passage which directly contra-
dicts the Olympian doctrine of the impassable gulf between
Gods and men. Eros is a daemon, and intermediate between
the human world and the divine. He 'fills up the interval
between the two, so that the universe is bound together in one/ l
Plutarch, we believe, is unquestionably right in associating this
doctrine with the mystical cults centred round the figures of
those suffering daemons, like Adonis, Osiris, or Dionysus, .whose
passion (TraQrf) and death showed them to be partakers of a
common life with all things that live, and die, and are born again
in Nature. 2 When we come to the mystic tradition in philosophy,
it will become clear how fundamental is this doctrine that God
is not cut off from the world, nor man from God ; there is no
impassable gap between earth and a brazen heaven, but all things
are bound together in harmony and linked by permeable ways.
The soul can still regain its ancient continuity with the divine.

71. From Otympianism to Ionian Philosophy

In competition with a form of religion which held out to man
the prospect of union with God, it is easy to see why Olympianism,
with its doctrine of divine jealousy and of the impassable gulf
of Moira> failed and died, while mystic religion continued to be
a source of inspiration. The Olympians had passed beyond the
reach of human needs and the touch of human emotion ; they
had even left their provinces in Nature, and it was found out that
the business of the world could go forward without them, just
as it had been found out that the magnificent traffic of cloud
and sunshine, and the daily circling of the heavens, could go on
its appointed way without the impertinent aid of magical dances
and incantation. The time had come for religion to give place
to philosophy.

1 Symp, 202 E : Iv /i&ry <!> flp &/t0or^pw <rujLwrX^/)ot, uxrre rb irav aM avrq*
ffvvSeSfoBai. For this &j>8eff[ios, see Eisler, Wdtenmantel, ii. p. 418 ff.

2 Plut. Def. Orac. 415 A: Ifiol SOKQVVL irXcfovas Xi/crat /ccd petfrovas

ol T& r&v Saip&vwv 7&os & fj,ff(p dtvrcs 6s&v jcal toQp&iruv Kal r/>6irov TWO,
Kowwvtay TjjMtv ew&yov els raurd Kal <rw6,irTOv eeup6jTes* etre fidydjy ruv ire/>i
Zttfpodo-r/Mp o \6yos o0r6s ^crrw, efre Spaktos dir 3 'Op^ws etr' Alytiirrtos
&$ TKtMip6/jL$a, rats eKartptoQi TeXercuJ foafiefLiyfj^va TpAXd Qvqr*
T&V tipyiafofj^vw Kal

HATUEE, GOD, AND SOUL 123

The type of philosophy to which an Olympian theology wiU

give rise will be dominated by the conception of spatial exter-
nality, as M oira had dominated the Gods ; and it will tend
towards discontinuity and discreteness. Originating in an
essentially polytheistic scheme, it will be pluralistic. It will also
move steadily towards materialism, because, having no hold upon
the notion of life as an inward and spontaneous principle, it
will reduce life to mechanical motion, communicated by external
shock from one body to another. It will level down the organic
to the inorganic, and pulverise God and the Soul into material
atoms.

72. Phy$i$

But, when reason seemed to herself to have dispensed with
the supernatural, and to be left with nothing but Nature, what
was the Nature, physis, she was left with ? Not simply the
visible world as it would present itself to unbiassed sense-
perception, if such a thing as sense-perception unbiassed by
preconceived notions could ever exist, unless it be in a new-born
baby.

The ' Nature * of which the first philosophers tell us with
confident dogmatism is from the first a metaphysical entity;
not merely a natural element, but an element endowed with
supernatural life and powers, a substance which is also Soul and
God. 1

It is that very living stuff out of which daemons, Gods, and
souls had slowly gathered shape. It is that same continuum
of homogeneous matter, charged with vital force, which had
been the vehicle of magical sympathy, that now is put forward
explicitly, with the confident tone of an obvious statement, as
the substrate of all things and the source of their growth.

1 Cf. 0. Gilbert, Meteor. Thcmien t 703 : Dme Avffastuag der Materie (in
Ionian monism), nach der die anderen Mkmente Erzmgte du einen sind, bedarf
Jseiner lesonderen g&tlichen Kraft, die uler dem Sto/e als sdchem titehend, ihn
ordnet und be&tmmt, lewegt und leitet: der Stofselbst t cds der Grundsto/und
al$ die abgddttten Mnzdstoffe t lebt ; und ah lelmd und p&r&Snlieh gedachtes
W&sen bewegt er sich; der Sto/ ist die GoUheU sdbst, wdekt, in ihm waltend,
eim ist mil ihm.

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY
73. Recapitulation

IN the foregoing chapters we have tried to define the starting-
point of Greek philosophy, the fundamental representation of
the world which would persist, in the minds of men like Thales
and Anaximander, when the personal Gods of over-developed
Olympianism were put aside. Our conclusion was that the
representation they called physis, and conceived as the ultimate
living stuff out of which the world grew, could be traced back
to an age of magic actually older than religion itself. In that
first age, it was not as yet a representation at all, but a real fact
of human experience, namely the collective consciousness of a
group in its emotional and active phase, expressed in the practices
of primary sympathetic magic. The need for a representation
would first arise when the collective emotion and desire ceased
to find complete and immediate satisfaction in mimetic rites.
The tension of this deferred reaction would give an opening for
a representation of that power which is no longer available at
the first demand, but has to be recovered with something of an
effort. Here, then, would be formed the first conception of the
* something not ourselves * ; and this, we have argued, is pre-
cisely the collective consciousness itself. Because it is not our-
selves, it wears the negative aspect of a moral power imposing
constraint from without ; and this power, projected into the
universe, leads to the conception of a supreme force, above Gods
and men, in which Destiny and Right Moira and Dike are
united. Its positive content, on the other hand, we identified
with the sympathetic continuum, which is the vehicle of super-
normal, magical power. This, as constituting the functions,
and therefore the * nature/ of a group, could be visibly em-
bodied in the blood, which is the substrate of all kinship or

124

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 125

c likeness/ and so the medium of interaction between like and
like. Out of this primitive representation arose, by differen-
tiation, the notions of group-soul and daemon, and finally the
individual soul and the personal God.

These imaginary objects, souls and Gods, are made of the
same stuff ; their substance is simply the old sympathetic con-
tinuum, more or less etherealised. In the case of the Gods the
process has gone further than it has with souls, because Gods
or at least Olympian Gods I have no visible and tangible
bodies ; but it is still possible for souls, which have such bodies,
to be identified with the blood. On the other hand, the analogy
of the Gods helps souls to get clear of visible substances, and
enables men to conceive a sort of spiritual substance, common
to souls and Gods, a supersensible vital fluid, or gas, which is
not to be completely identified with any visible or tangible form of
body. This subtle and mobile stufi, considered as both animate
and divine endowed, that is to say, with all the properties that
are held to belong to Soul and God is what the Milesians called
pJiysis.

74. Philosophy as the analysis of religious material

In our survey of Greek speculation, we shall try to show that
the various systems are deduced from the properties inherent
from the outset in this primary datum of philosophy. The
philosophers, one and all, speculated about the * nature of things/
physis ; and the pJiysis about which they speculate is nothing
but this animate and divine substance. The several schools
attach themselves to one or another of the attributes of the
primitive complex, which they emphasise to the ultimate ex-
clusion of the rest, or interpret in various senses, thus reaching
highly diverse conclusions about tie nature of things. But they
hardly seem to travel outside the content of their original datum.
Bather they seem merely to sift and refine the material it gives
them, distinguishing factors in it which at first were confused,
and, in that progress toward clearness and complexity, dis-
covering latent contradictions and antinomies, which force

1 Gods like the sun and stars have of course visible bodies, but they too
are helped to get clear of them by the anthropomorphic Gods.

126 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

them to accept one alternative and reject another. The work
of philosophy thus appears as the elucidation and clarifying
of religious, or even pre-reMgious, material. It does not create
its new conceptual tools; it rather discovers them by ever
subtler analysis and closer definition of the elements confused
in its original datum.

From another point of view, which will be clear from what
has gone before, philosophy rediscovers in the world that
very scheme of representation which had, by a necessary pro-
cess, been projected into the world from the structure and in-
stitutions of society in its earlier stages of development. The
concepts and categories which the intellect brings with it to
its task, are precisely those by which the chaos of phenomena
had long ago been coordinated and organised into the signi-
ficant outlines of a cosmos. No wonder that they seem to
fit their object with a sort of pre-established harmony. The
philosophers may be compared to the medieval scholastics,
who were delighted to find that Christian theology could be
reconciled with Aristotelianism, not realising that almost the
whole of that theology had originally come from the schools of
Plato and Aristotle. This accounts for the confident and
successful tone in which the first philosophers unhesitatingly
declare their vision of those ultimate things which many prophets
and kings of thought, since their days, have desired to see and
have not seen. It accounts, too, for the a priori methods of
early science : in following the lines of its own concatenations
of concepts, it is ipso facto tracing the framework of the world.

After all, when we consider what it is that is presented to the
philosopher for his study, it is not the real world of things, as
it may be supposed to exist in objective independence of human
consciousness. It is from the first a representation, to which
the subject, as well as the object, contributes its quota. And
it is, of course, true that this representation does not consist
of a series of uncoordinated sense-impressions the fleeting
pageant of particular colours and sounds and tastes and muscular
feelings, immediately presented in the life of sensation from
moment to moment. It is, on the contrary, a persistent whole,
unified and organised by conception. Though each of us lives im-
prisoned in a world of his own, centred about his own conscious-

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 127

ness, with, sensations, feelings, and images which exist in no
otter brain but his, we are convinced that all these worlds
somehow fit together into one and the same world, and all
possibility of communication rests on the truth of that con-
viction. It is this common world that the philosophies seek to
account for and explain ; and, as we have tried to show, what
at first seems most significant in that cosmos is of religious, and
therefore of social, origin a product, not of individual in-
vention, but of collective mentality. When the individual
intellect gets to work upon it in what is called philosophic
speculation, it hardly succeeds in introducing any new con-
ceptions, but merely analyses the content of its datum, and
deduces from it diverging systems, 1

75. PJiysis as Substance, Soul, Divine

In order to establish our point, that Greek philosophy, in its
theories of the * nature of things/ does not travel outside the
elementary factors contained in the primary datum which it
inherited from religion, we must first try to distinguish these
elementary factors by a somewhat clearer analysis. When the
lonians said that the physis of things was water or air or fire,
what did they mean by the subject of these propositions ? What
was the content of that ultimate thing which they variously
identified with one or another of the sensible elements ?

The gist of the whole matter is contained in those three
doctrines of Thales which we have already quoted: (1) the
nature of things is water ; (2) the all is alive (has soul in it) ;
and (3) is full of daemons or Gods.

(1) The first of these propositions has been allowed to eclipse
the second and third, for no other reason than that it happened
to be the one which interested Aristotle, from whose school
our doxographic tradition is derived. Modem historians of
Greek philosophy are, of course, aware that Aristotle's review

1 It is, I hope, clear that I am speaking only of the theories put forward
about the nature or ultimate constitution of the universe, not of the detailed
explanations of various natural phenomena (earthquakes, thunder, meteors,
etc.), which are sometimes mere guesses, sometimes deduced from a priori
views about the structure of the world, sometimes supported by genuine
observation.

128 FROM BELiaiON TO PHILOSOPHY

of Ms predecessors' theories in the first book of the Metaphysics
is based upon Ms own distinction of the four ' causes/ His
point of view is not Mstorical ; what interests him is to point
out the process by wMch tMs distinction was reached, and so
he groups the earlier thinkers according as they recognised,
in his opinion, only a ( material cause/ or added to that a ' prin-
ciple of motion/ and so on. Governed by tMs scheme, he
ranks the primary substance of the Milesians under the head
of e material cause/ defined as ' that of which all tMngs consist,
from wMch they are originally generated, and into wMch they
are finally dissolved, its substance persisting, though its attri-
butes change/ The modern Mstorians, though aware of Aris-
totle's unMstorical methods, generally accept the emphasis
thus thrown on the * material ' properties of physis, as a con-
tinuous and homogeneous stuff, filling space. We shall not
further discuss tMs side of physis, because it is already over-
emphasised. What we have to make clear is that the other
properties attributed to physis under the names ' Soul ' and
' God * are of at least equal importance. It is, as we shall see,
the differences of opinion as to what these properties imply
that give rise to the main divergences between the various
philosopMc schools.

(2) The second proposition of Thales declares that the All
is alive, or has Soul in it (TO nav e/^t/%oz/). TMs statement
accounts for the mobility of physis. Its motion, and its power
of generating things other than itself, are due to its life (^v%^),
an inward, spontaneous principle of activity. 1 So misleading is
Aristotle's suggestion that the Milesians did not recognise
a ' principle of motion/

Further, tMs Soul in the universe is identical with physis
itself. In other words, the materiality of physis is supersensible,
a stuff of that attenuated sort wMch is attributed to all super-
sensible objects souls, spirits, Gods as well as to all sorts of
ghosts, concepts, images, etc. 2 It is soul-substance,

1 Cf. Plato, Laws, 892C : <j>titrw potiXovrai. \yeiv ytvtaw TTJV wept TO, irp&ra'
i 51 ^ap^erat iwtfi wp&rov, o TTI/P ou5 atfp, ^XT) 8' & Trpc&ray

8 On this subject see the valuable articles of P. Beck, * Erkenntnisstheorie
dea primitiven Denkens,' Zefaehr. /. Phil. u. phil Kritik, Leipzig, 1904,
bd. 123, p. 172 ff. and bd. 124, p. 9 ff.

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 129

not 'body/ differing from body in being intangible and in-
visible. The water or air or fire in which it is recognised is
related to it as body to soul ; these elements are embodiments
of physis, but physis itself is soul, with a supersensible substance
of its own that minimum of materiality without which nothing
could be conceived. That is one reason why none of the lonians
identified the nature of things with the fourth element, earth.
Earth is pre-eminently c bodily ' tangible, heavy, immobile
and so least suited to be the vehicle of the living soul-substance.
We understand also why the philosophers do not go on to
investigate the natural properties of water or air or fire ; these
are mere gross vehicles of the primary soul-substance upon
which their attention is fixed. The object of their speculation
is thus from the first a supersensible, metaphysical entity, or in
other words a representation, which moreover, as we have seen,
is of mythical origin.

(3) Finally, this soul-substance is declared to be * divine *
(TO Oelov) : the All, says Thales, is full of daemons or Gods.
This predicate preserves the attribute of superhuman force or
mana, which was contained in the notion of the magical con-
tinuum, and gave rise to the twin representations of Soul and
God. We saw in the last chapter that Greek religion included
two contrary notions of the divine and of its relations to man
and nature the Mystic notion and the Olympian. The divinity
of physis thus contains the germ of a latent contradiction, the
discovery of which will constitute a dilemma for philosophy.

In the following sections we shall establish in detail this
summary statement about the content of physu.

76. Phi/sis (is Said

It is a general rule that the Greek philosophers describe
physis as standing in the same relation to the universe as soul
does to body. Anaximenes/ the third Milesian, says : f As

1 Frag. 2 : of OF 7? ^vx?? "? ijfierfptt d%> o&ra trvyKparet jj/uur, Ktd 8\ay rbv
Kvevfia Kal %> vepifyei. Compare Pythagoras' * boundless breath * outside
the heavens, which is inhaled by the world (Arist, PJiys. 56, 2135 22), aud
Heracleitus* * divine reason,* which surrounds (r/xx) us and which we
draw in by means of respiration (Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. vii. 127). See
Burnet, KG.P.\ pp. 79, 120, 170, and Eiiler, Wdtenmantd, ii. 749.

130 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

our soul is ak and holds us together, so a breath or air embraces
the whole cosmos/ Aristotle remarks that * there are some,
too, who say that soul is interspersed throughout the universe :
which is perhaps why Thales supposed all things to be full of
Gods. But this view presents some difficulties. For why
should the soul not produce an animal, when present in air or
fire, and yet do so when present in a compound of these ele-
ments ; and that too, though in the former case it is believed
to be purer ? One might also inquire why the soul present in
ak is purer and more immortal than soul in animals. "Which-
ever of the two suppositions open to us we adopt, is absurd
and irrational. To speak of fire or ak as an animal is very
irrational ; and, on the other hand, not to call them animals
is absurd. But it would seem that the reason why they suppose
soul to be in these elements is that the whole is homogeneous
with its parts. So that they cannot help regarding universal
soul as also homogeneous with the parts of it in animals, since
it is through something of the surrounding element (rov
7re/H%oz>ro9) being cut off and enclosed in animals that the
animals become endowed with soul. But if the ak when split
up remains homogeneous, and yet soul is divisible into non-
homogeneous parts, it is clear that although one part of soul
may be present in the ak, there is another part which is not.
Either, then, soul .must be homogeneous, or else it cannot be
present in every part of the universe/ 1

Through the dry and obscure argumentation of Aristotle
shines the primitive conception of soul-substance, as a material
continuum charged with vital force, interfused through all
things, or * cut off and enclosed * in various living creatures.

1 De anim. av. 17 ff. The case of the Indian dtman appears to be exactly
parallel to that of physis and the individual soul in Greece. The oldest
Upanishads recognise only one soul : <It is thy soul, which is within all.'
* He who, while dwelling in the earth, the water, the fire, in space, wind,
heaven, sun, etc., is distinct from them, whose body they are, who rules
them all from within, "he is thy soul, the inner guide, the immortal.** . . .
This dtman who alone exists is the knowing subject in us . . . and with
the knowledge of the dtman, therefore, all is known. . . . The dtman created
the universe and then entered into it as soul, 3 and this gives rise to the later
conception of individual souls, imprisoned in the eternal round of samsdra
and needing deliverance. See Deu&sen, Relig. and Philos. of India, Upani-
shads, Eng. trans, 1906, p. 257.

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 131

e Soul * and pJiysis are not merely analogous, but Identical.
The two conceptions Soul, and ultimate matter are as yet
fused in one, just as we found that at a certain stage mana
and the blood-soul were fused in the magical continuum. The
later differentiation of the two conceptions will bring out one
of the latent contradictions which divide the philosophic schools.
As the properties of life come to be distinguished from those
of inanimate matter, philosophers will have to make their
choice between conceiving the ultimate reality as mind or as
matter, as living or as dead. Whichever choice they make,
the nature of Soul will still be the same as that of pJiysis.

77. Soul as Moving

In reviewing the psychological doctrines of the earlier schools,
Aristotle remarks : * There are two points especially wherein
that which Is animate Is held to differ from that which Is in-
animate, namely motion and the act of sensation (or perception) ;
and these are, speaking in general, the two characteristics of
soul handed down to us by our predecessors * (de anim. a 2, 2),

The two vital functions of moving and knowing were much
less clearly distinguished by the early philosophers than by
Aristotle. With regard to the first of them motion the
primitive assumption is that whatever Is capable of moving
Itself or anything else, is alive that the only moving force in
the world Is Life, or rather soul-substance. 1 The existence
of motion in the universe is thus an immediate proof of Thales*
doctrine : c The All has soul In it/ Aetius 2 describes the doctrine
as follows : * There extends throughout the elemental moisture
(Thales* phi/sis) a divine power capable of moving it/ Tills
divine or magical power is the same as that * soul * which Thales
ascribed to the loadstone, because It moves iron. 3 Aetius, a
late writer, distinguishes more clearly than Thales could have

1 Plato at the end of his life reasserts tills doctrine, defining 'soul 1 as
*that which is capable ol moving itself* (Law8 } 896 A), and deducing the
conclusion that the heavenly bodies have souls and * all things are full of
Gods * (&&v etwi w\^ r&ra), as Thales said (899 B). Cf. Arist. Phy*. 2655 32.

2 Aet. L 7. 11 : r& t& vay $JU//VX<M> fi/ta xal SaA/tforw rX^pes' SirjKew d fact. TOV
<rroixci&<8ov5 vypov Si/Fa/w #e!ay KivyrtKTiP ai/rou. In Diog, L, ix. 7, tr&^TA ifwx&v
etytu xal $<uftywt> irX^pij is attributed to Heracleitus. Cf. also Serfc. Math.
ix. 76. 2 Arist. de amma 9 a ii. 14.

132 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

done, between tie ' elemental moisture * and the divine power
pervading it. For Thales the moving soul was tlie same as
the ultimate element, recognised in water, which pervades all
things. The same holds of the * ever-living fire ' of Heracleitus.
At first, then, mechanical motion was not distinguished from
vital activity. Once more we shall reach a parting of the
ways when the distinction comes to be drawn ; and before the
two are recognised as independent and coordinate facts, science
will go to the opposite extreme, and, instead of interpreting
all motion as the spontaneous, internal activity of physis, will
try the expedient of levelling down life to external mechanical
motion, communicated by colliding particles of dead matter.

78. Soul as Knowing

The second function of Soul knowing was not at first dis-
tinguished from motion. Aristotle 1 says, ' The soul is said to
feel pain and joy, confidence and fear, and again to be angry,
to perceive, and to think ; and all these states are held to be
movements, which might lead one to suppose that soul itself
is moved/ Sense-perception (afod'rjcns), not distinguished from
thought, was taken as the type of all cognition, and this is a
form of action at a distance. 2 All such action, moreover, was
held to require a continuous vehicle or medium, uniting the
soul which knows to the object which is known. Further,
the soul and its object must not only be thus linked in physical
contact, but they must be alike or akin.

The early philosophers, almost or quite unanimously, 3 assumed
the maxim that * like knows like/ which is a special case of the
more general axiom : ' Like can only act on like/ 4 Here again

1 Deanim. a. 4, 40851.

2 >e anim. a 5, 410 a 25, Those who make soul consist of all the elements,
and hold that like perceives and knows like, * assume that perceiving is a
sort of being acted upon or moved (TT&(T%IV TL jcal KtveicrOai), and that the
same is true of thinking and knowing.*

3 Heidel, Arch. Otsch. Phil. xix. 357, disputes Aristotle's and Theo-
phrastus' exceptions to this rule.

4 Another application of this maxim, 'Like attracts like,* is assumed by
the philosophers down to Plato, and this assumption makes them to explain
weight and lightness by the tendency of all bodies to move towards their
'kindred 1 *) irpb* rb <rvyyevh 686s, Plato, Tim. 63 E; ct Burnet, E.G. P. 2 ,
p. 396.

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 133

we encounter a by no means obvious principle, which is surely
not drawn from experience, but accepted from collective repre-
sentation. Tlie formula which states that this action can only
take place between 'like' objects, is derived from that old
magical doctrine which grouped things into classes of kindred,
united by a sympathetic continuum. This continuum is, as
we have seen, a pervasive * soul * running through all the class.
It is the vehicle and medium of motion and interaction of all
kinds, and so of that special kind of action called c knowing * or
e perceiving/ which is an attribute of Soul. The maxim had
become embedded in common sense, and was accepted without
question by the philosophers.

It follows from this principle that, if the Soul is to know the
world, the world must ultimately consist of the same substance
as Soul. PJiysis and Soul must be homogeneous. Aristotle
formulates the doctrine with great precision :

' Those who laid stress on its knowledge and perception of all
that exists, identified the soul with the ultimate principles,
whether they recognised a plurality of these or only one. Thus,
Empedocles compounded soul out of all the elements, while at
the same time regarding each one of them as a soul. His words
are " With earth we see earth, with water water, with air bright
air, ravaging fire by fire, love by love, and strife by gruesome
strife/' In the same manner Plato in the Timaeus constructs
the soul out of the elements. Like, he there maintains, is known
by like, and the things we know are composed of the ultimate
principles. . . .

* Thus those thinkers who admit only one cause and one
element, as fire or air, assume the soul also to be one element ;
while those who admit a plurality of principles assume
plurality also in the soul. . . . Those who introduce pairs of
opposites among their principles make the soul also to consist
of opposites ; while those who take one or other of the two
opposites, hot or cold, etc., reduce the soul also to one or other
of them/ *

So, again, Aristotle tells us elsewhere that * Diogenes of Apol-
lonia, like some others, identified air with soul. Air, they thought,
is made up of the finest particles, and is the first principle ; and

1 De anima, a 2, 2, 6, 21.

134 FROM BELiaiON TO PHILOSOPHY

this explains the fact that the soul knows and Is a cause of
motion, knowing by virtue of being the primary element from
which all else is derived, and causing motion by the extreme
fineness of its parts/ l

Aristotle himself, though he refined upon the doctrine that
* like knows like/ by maintaining that perception involves a
process of assimilation, is really at one with previous thinkers.
6 At the basis of his whole theory of perception there is for him,
as for his predecessors, the thought that the fundamental com-
munity of elementary constitution in alad^rd (sense-objects) and
al<r6^rripta (sense-organs) is the cause of our being able to per-
ceive objects. The dXXot'oxrt? (i.e. the process of assimilation),
by which he reconciles these different views (that " like knows
like," and " like knows unlike ") implies in every case a medium
by, as well as through, which ala-d^rd and ala-O^rrjpia are
brought into correlation. For this medium has a common
nature with' both. 2

Thus, the possibility alike of motion and of knowledge is
explained by the Greek philosophers by means of a conception
of physis as soul-substance, in which all the chief characteristics
of the sympathetic continuum of magic are reproduced. The
main proof that the philosophic conception is lineally descended
from the magical one is the otherwise gratuitous and inex-
plicable assumption that ' Like can only act on, or know, like/
We can understand this assumption only when we know that
the sympathetic continuum was originally the substrate of
kinship; that it was the vehicle of interaction only within a
group of the same kin ; and that kinship is the primitive form
of all * likeness/

79. Physis as the Divine

Now that we have identified physis with that primitive sub-
stance out of which, by processes traced in the last chapter, all
the divinities of Greek religion took shape, we are prepared to
find that the early philosophers call physis the ' divine/ The
All is not only alive, but full of daemons. Thales' Water is

1 Arisfc. de anim. an. 15, 405a 21. Diog. Apoll. frag. 4 : &v6pwwoi yap /cat
rd &\Xa ffia avawv^ovTO, *<6ei r<j> &pc. /cai TOVTO adrtfis /cai ^t/xi? <rri /cai volant ,
. . . /cal to* TOVTO diraXXax^^, dro0pi}<rKei jcai TJ vo^arts iu\efrr.

2 I. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, p. 237.

THE BATtTM OF PHILOSOPHY 135

' pervaded by a divine power capable of moving it ' ; in other
words, the soul-substance possesses a superhuman mam, a
daemonic energy, distinct from the natural properties of water,
Of the * limitless * of Anaximander Aristotle * says that it is
' the divine (TO 8elov), immortal and imperishable/ The Air
of Anaximenes, similarly, is spoken of as a God. Diogenes of
ApoUonia says of the same element that * what men call air is
that which possesses thought, and it directs all and masters
all ; for just this is, I believe, God, and it reaches everywhere
and disposes all things and is in everything/ 2

Speaking of the heavenly bodies, Aristotle 3 says : ' Our fore-
fathers in the remote ages have handed down to us a tradition
in mythical form, that these substances (the firmament and the
heavenly bodies) are Gods, and that the divine encloses the
whole of nature (wcpte^* TO Gelov T%V O\TJV <f>wiv). The
rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form, to
persuade the multitude and for its utility with respect to the
laws and expediency : they say the Gods axe of human form,
or like the other animals, and so on. But, if we separate the
original point from these additions, and take it alone that
they thought the primary substances to be Gods, we might
regard this as an utterance divinely inspired (Betos e!pf]<r0ai),
and reflect that, while probably every art and science has often
been developed as far as possible and perished again, these
opinions have been preserved until the present, like relics of the
ancient treasure/

The importance of this attribute, * divine/ as applied to the
primary physis is overlooked by historians of philosophy;
yet it can hardly be over-emphasised. Philosophy is the im-
mediate successor of theology, and the conceptions held by
philosophers of the relation between the ultimate reality and
the manifold sense-world are governed by older religious con-
ceptions of the relation between God and the human group
or Nature. The main purpose of the rest of this book wiU be
to substantiate this statement. We shall try to show that there
are two main currents in Greek philosophy which severally
take their departure from those two types of religion mystical
and Olympian which we distinguished at the end of the last

1 Phys. <y4, 2Q3& 12, 2 Frag. 5. * Met. A 8, 10746 1.

136 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

chapter. It was not for nothing that metaphysics was still
called { theology ' as late as the time of Aristotle. 1

80. The treatment of Physis "by the 'philosophers

We have argued above that when the earliest philosophers
talked about physis, and declared that it was to be found in
water, or air, or whatever it might be, the subject of these pro-
positions physis itself was a soul-substance, a supersensible
and yet material thing, which was embodied in this or that
element, rather than identified with it (though on this point our
information is, naturally, not always clear). We know that they
regarded it as God and Soul ; and Gods and Souls have a material
of their own, an extended but intangible substance, which is
distinct from the tangible and visible 'body' in which they
may reside. This supersensible extended substance was, of
course, from the first and always, not a natural object ; although
it was called ' Nature/ it was really metaphysical a repre-
sentation whose mythical origin we have traced. Considered
as matter, apart from its life, it differs from (say) the ether of
modern physics chiefly in that it was not recognised to be a
merely hypothetical substance, but believed to be actually
existent. 2 Really, it was an entity of the same order as ether,
and it was regarded in the same way as amenable to a priori
mathematical treatment. You could take one or another of
its recognised properties and deduce the consequences. Thus,
the Eleatics emphasised its unity and perfect continuity to

1 For the divinity of the elements see Eisler, Weltenmantel, ii. 664 ;
O. Gilbert, * Spekulation u. Volksglaube in der ionischen Philosophic, 5 Arch.

f. Relig. xiii. 306 ff., and Arch. f. Gesch d. Philos. xxii. 279 : die ganze
ionische und eleatische, nicht minder aucli die Pythagoreische Speculation ist
iikht als ein Suchen nach der Gottheit, d. h. nach der die WdtentwicMung
bedingenden und tmgenden Gfottessubstanz.

2 It will be remembered that Dr. Erazer writes : * Both branches of magic,
the homoeopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be comprehended
under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that
things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the
impulse being transmitted from the one to the other by means of what we
may conceive as a sort of invisible ether, not unlike that which, I under-
stand, is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose
namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a
space which appears to be empty* (Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship, 1905, p. 40).

THE DATUM 0^ PHILOSOPHY 137

such a point that they were driven to deny it any possibility
of internal motion. This drove the Atomists to suppose that
the substance consisted, not of one atom, but of an infinite
number, and so they restored the possibility of motion. Now,
in this procedure the Atomists were behaving exactly as a
modern man of science would do, remodelling the hypothetical
substance to ' save appearances ? ; only, the Atomists thought
their atoms were real. The Eleatic Parinenides, on the other
hand, starts, not from a scientific supposition, but from a religious
belief a passionate conviction that the real being, which is
God, must be One. This conviction is the ultimate premiss
of Eleaticism ; it is a pure matter of religious faith, for which
no reason was, or could be, given. Our present point is that
the thing which Parmenides declared to be one, because it was
God, was in origin the same thing as that which the Atomists
declared to be innumerably many, because, having no prejudice
in favour of monotheism, they did not object to plurality, and
plurality had the scientific advantage of saving the obvious
fact of motion from one part of space to another. The * Being '
of both systems had the same properties : it was homogeneous
soul-substance, diffused in space. The real question between them
is whether the * divinity/ which had all along been ascribed to
this Being, implied ' unity/ in a sense that condemned all plur-
ality and motion to be unreal, or merely implied immutability
a property which a polytheistic tradition could ascribe to
material atoms without sacrificing plurality and motion. When
we look at Atomism in this light, we see that although it goes
the whole way to the extreme of f materialism/ the properties
of immutability and impenetrability ascribed to atoms are the
last degenerate forms of divine attributes.

In fine, the various schools treat this substance in an a priori
way, as if it were a mere scientific hypothesis ; but they all
alike believe that they are speculating about an actually exist-
ing ultimate reality. The reason why they do not realise its
hypothetical character is precisely that it was not invented
by any of them, but taken over from pre-philosophic religious
representation, Above all, the point on which we would insist
is that the principal object of Greek speculation is not external
nature as revealed through the senses, but a metaphysical

138 FEOM EELiaiOK TO PHILOSOPHY

representation of reality as a supersensible extended substance,
which, is at first both alive (Soul) and divine (God), and also has
a * matter * of its own, distinct, or distinguishable, from visible
and tangible e body * with its sensible properties. The problem,
all along, was : given thatt reality is a substance of this sort, how
can it- be related to the sense-world ; how can it be adapted
and remodelled so as to account for what we perceive ; how
can we get out of it the world we see around us ?

81, The causes of philosophic systems

Our contention, then, is that, in accounting for the dogmatic
systems of the first philosophers, who had nothing but theology
behind them, the two main causes are to be found in two op-
posed schemes of religious representation, and in the tempera-
ments of the individual philosophers, which made one or other
of those schemes the more congenial to them. As compared
with these two causes, those questions of the ' influence * of one
system or another, so fully discussed by historians, are of secon-
dary importance. One philosopher is influenced by another
chiefly because his temperament predisposes him. to a view
which happens either to agree or to disagree with the other's.
The form his reasonings take will, of course, be largely governed
by the feet that he will develop his views mainly in antagonism
to views which he detests. But this form is superficial, and
often misleading. It will rarely represent any train of thought
which really set Mm on the way to his conclusion. Almost all
philosophic arguments are invented afterwards, to recommend,
or defend from attack, conclusions which the philosopher was
from the outset bent upon believing, before he could think
of any arguments at all. That is why philosophical reasonings
are so bad, so artificial, and so unconvincing. To mistake
them for the causes which led to a belief in the conclusion, is
generally to fall into a naive error. The charm of the early
Greek philosophers lies in the fact that, to a large extent, they
did not trouble to invent bad arguments at all, but simply
stated their beliefs dogmatically. They produced a system
as an artist produces a work of art. Their attitude was : * That
is how the world is to be ' ; and the system itself, as distinct

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 139

from any arguments that may be constructed to Buttress the
fabric, is thrown out, like a statue or a poem, as the expression
of some thought or emotion that lies within and will have
utterance.

We shall, therefore, in what follows, say little of the influence
of one system on another ; questions of that sort must, of course,
be answered, but they have been excellently treated in the
histories. It is, also, of little use to discuss the temperaments
of individual thinkers, for the simple reason that in most cases
we know nothing whatever of their temperaments, except that
they must have been such as to lead them to this or that type of
system. What remains, then, is the systems themselves, taken
as coherent wholes, as typical schemes of representation, or
possible ways of conceiving the world. We shall try to show
that they can be better understood when we group them in
two lines of tendency, 1 which originate in the two types of
religious system above distinguished.

82. The Scientific Tendency : explanations and muses

It is now, perhaps, generally agreed that science has its princi-
pal root in magical art. Behind the systems of representation
which science elaborates and remodels, lies the practical impulse
which drives man to extend his power over Nature, an impulse
which found its first collective expression in magic. In order
to explain the characteristics of the scientific tendency in Greek
speculation, we must, therefore, recur to certain features of
magical practice which have already been described.

Sympathetic magic consists in the representation of the object
of passionate desire* Primarily, this representation is mimetic
in other words, the realisation of the desired end in dramatic
action. The emotion is satisfied by actually doing the thing
which is willed. Besides this, there is also the verbal expression
of the same emotion and desire the element of myth, which
at first is simply the statement of what is being done and willed. 2
At a later stage, the myth becomes * aetiological/ that is to say,

1 Of. Diog. L. proem. 13, <fx\o<ro<t>la$ 8* *&> ytyfoaffty dp%a,
vafriJuSafSpov K(d ij dird Hv0a,y6pw,

2 For tliis view of Myth, see J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 327.

140 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

a description of the action, alleged as an explanation of it;
tut the content of the myth remains, as before, a transcript or
representation of the action itself. The mimetic action and the
verbal expression are thus, at first, only two modes in which
the same desire finds vent and satisfaction.

In the earliest stage, we have supposed that the dramatic
action and the desired effect are not distinguished. The rain-
maker feels simply that he is making rain, not that he is imitat-
ing the fall of rain, in order to cause real rain to fall subsequently.
When the faith in magic begins to weaken, some distinction
must begin to arise between the mimetic action and the natural
event; some notion of carnality makes its first appearance.
This is a critical moment in the pre-history of science. It is
of cardinal importance to grasp the form under which the
relation of cause and efiect was originally represented.

Now, the fundamental fact about the class of causes and
effects which we are considering a class which, from their
social importance, will pre-eminently be the centre of attention
is that they are alike, since sympathetic magic produces its
effects by imitation. In the second place, all likeness, as we
have seen, is interpreted as kinship or membership of the same
group. Finally, all kinship is represented by means of a material
substrate or continuum, co-extensive with the group, and the
medium of sympathetic interaction within it. On this basis,
the emphasis is thrown entirely on the likeness, kinship, and
material continuity of the two events, not on their temporal
succession. The first notion of causality is, thus, not temporal
but static, simultaneous, and spatial. 1 Magic, then, is not at
all concerned with the order of time, but solely with classi-
fication. Its nascent science is occupied with more and more
elaborate schemes, in which all objects are ranged in groups
of Mndred clans of things which, being united by sympathetic
continuity, can interact on one another. Its framework is
not temporal, but spatial; it traces the boundaries of
moirai.

1 This is confirmed by the study of primitive languages. L6vy-Bmhl
(Fonct. ment. p. 165} quotes Gatschet (The Klamath Language, p. 554) :
* Zes categories de position, de situation dans Pespace, et de distance sont, dans
les representations des peuples sauvages, d'une importance aussi capitate que
cdles de temps et de causality le aontpour noits.*

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 141

At the same time, to the magician knowledge is power ; the
impulse which drives him is still the desire to extend the
influence of his mana (or the mana of the group, for the whole
process is collective) to its utmost bounds. To form a repre-
sentation of the structure of Nature is to have control over it. 1
To classify things is to name them, and the name of a thing,
or of a group of things, is its soul ; to know their names is
to have power over their souls. Language, that stupendous
product of the collective mind, is a duplicate, a shadow-soul,
of the whole structure of reality ; it is the most effective and
comprehensive tool of human power, for nothing, whether
human or superhuman, is beyond its reach. Speech is the
Logos, which stands to the universe in the same relation as
the myth to the ritual action ; it is a descriptive chart of the
whole surface of the real.

Early science seeks an intelligible representation or account
(logos) of the world, rather than laws of the sequence of causes
and effects in time a logos to take the place of mytlm* We
have spoken of the aetiological myth as the transcript in verbal
expression of the ritual performed. Such a verbal equivalent
was called an aitia or aition, in the sense rather of * explanation *
than of e cause/ It is true that the aitia is thrown into the
past, by that curious psychological process which transformed
the aorist tense (' this is done *) into the past ( e this was done *) ; 2
but the aitia remains rather a representation of the significance
of the rite than a mere historical account of its first enactment.
Similarly, early science does not always clearly distinguish
between explanatory representations and processes of genesis.
It wavers between cosmogony and cosmology, easily reversing
its own process of analysis, in taking the world to pieces, into
a process by which it supposes that the world first arose. Thus,
even when it appears to be describing how the universe came

1 As late as Anaxagoras we shaH find that Mind masters (*r/xzret) tlie world
because it knows It ; * for knowing defines and determines what is known *
(Simpl. de Caelo, 608, TJ yap yi*wcri$ oplfrt teal reparoi rb yvwadtv, D.F* F. 2 ,
p. 329). For this conception of the work of the intellect, see Bergson's
Evolution Cr6atmc,e.

2 P. Beck, f Erkenntnissth. d. prim. Denkens,* Zetischr. f. Phtt. u. phil.
Kritik, Leipzig, 1904, bd. 124, p. 9 ff. has some valuable remarks on this
phenomenon in connection with the concept of eternity.

142 FROM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

into being, Its Interest really lies in the analysis of the world
as it now is its aetiological logos. It is bent on the static aspect
of structure, arrangement, order, rather than on the temporal
questions of cause and effect which become prominent in modern

science. 1

The view that will here be put forward is that the dominant
aim of early philosophy, on what we have called the scientific
side, is to perfect and simplify a new tool a conceptual model
of reality, starting from the notion of physis above defined.
The first business of the intellect, driven by the impulse to power,
is to find its way about the world, to trace out the shapes and
contours of its parts, and to frame a perfectly clear plan of the
cosmos. With this intent, it will take for its point of departure
that aspect of physis which submits to this treatment its
aspect as material substance filling space. This aspect will be
emphasised to the ultimate exclusion of Soul, or Life, and of
God, in so far as these conceptions contain something that
defies exact analysis and measurement, for you cannot make
a map of vital energy. All that will be left of God is the attri-
bute of immutability, which can be ascribed to matter; all
that will be left of Soul is mechanical motion change of position
in space. Such philosophy is governed in its progress by the
ideal which it finds in the science of space-measurement,
geometry ; 2 and it reaches its own perfect fulfilment in
Atomism.

1 Plato in the Phaedo shows the same desire to discover a fixed, immutable
structure of the * nature of things J (the Ideal World, which is his $fois), and
insists that this supersensible ground (atria.) of the sensible world is the only
* cause J worth looking for.

2 Geometry is known to have had a strictly practical origin in an art of
social importance the land-measurement practised by the * cord -fasteners s
(faarpedonaptai)) who marked out the divisions of the soil in Egypt after the
inundations of the Kile (aee Bumet, JJ.<?.P. 2 , p. 24). Mr. Payne remarks
that geometry is the only mathematic science, beyond arithmetic, the
rudiments of which are found in aboriginal America. He adds that ' the
primary stimulus to measurement appears to have been the division, sub-
division, and redivisiou of land in densely peopled districts of limited
extent, such as Egypt and Babylonia, and Peru. Only in the valleys of
the latter district were these conditions produced in the New World ; aud
it is significant that the Peruvian peoples, in general less advanced than the
Mexicans, excelled the latter in the practice aad the proximate applications
of a rudimentary geometry J (History of the New World calltd America,, iu
p. 2S1).

THE DATUM OF PHILOSOPHY 143

83. Ionian Science and Olympianism
The scientific tendency is Ionian in origin : it takes its rise
among that race which had shaped Homeric theology, and it
is the characteristic product of the same racial temperament.
We may note, too, that its birthplace, Miletus, was one of the
most important centres of commerce at that time. Science
and commerce are, here as elsewhere, twin products of that
daring spirit of exploration and adventure which voyages over
strange seas with a strictly practical object in view. Baconian
science insists upon * fruit ' in exactly the same spirit as the
buccaneering admirals of the same Elizabethan age went in
pursuit of gold-dust, and accidentally discovered new lands,
In the same way, Thales, bent upon measuring the distance
from land of ships at sea, accidentally discovered trigonometry.
It will now be clear why we regard this tendency in philo-
sophy as succeeding to the place left vacant by Olympian
theology. They are two similar products of the same tempera-
ment. Both systems of thought are governed by the notion
of Moiror- the distribution of the world into spatial provinces,
Both are pluralistic, 1 rationalistic, and fatalistic in tendency.
Above all, both are realistic, in the sense that is opposed to
other-worldliness. Science, no matter to what heights of
disinterestedness its specific emotion of curiosity may some-
times rise, remains practical from first to last, and for it all
value lies in the sense-world. True, it will mistake its own
conceptual model of atoms and void for the real structure of
the universe, and condemn the senses because we cannot see and
touch the supersensible. But its affections are never set upon
this metaphysical construction ; the spectral dance of imaginary
dead particles has never smitten the human soul with home-
sickness. The intellect must find its satisfaction in the excite-
ment of pursuit, not in the contemplative fruition of anything
it can either discover or invent. 2

1 It is noteworthy that, whereas all the philosophers of the mystical
tradition (Heracleitns, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenldes, Empedocles,
and Plato) assert that there is only one cosmos, the scientific tradition
(Anaximander, Anaximenes, the Atomists) admit * innumerable worlds*

2 The description of the mystic tendency, which we contrast with the
scientific, is reserved to chap. vL

THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION
84. The course of Science

THE aim of science, described in the last chapter, was triumph-
antly achieved in Atomism. The course of what we have called
the scientific tendency is marked by a line of thinkers which
starts from the Milesian school, and leads, through Anaxagoras, 1
to Leucippus and Democritus. These Atomists succeeded in
reducing physis to a perfectly clear, conceptual model, such as
science desires, composed of little impenetrable pieces of homo-
geneous ' matter/ with none but spatial properties tiny geo-
metrical solids, out of which all bodies, of whatever shape or
size* could be built up.

85. The Milesian School : ANAXJMANDEB

As we saw at the outset, the reaEy important member
of the Milesian school is its second head, Anaximander. The
closer study of his system, from the point of view we have now
reached, will start us upon the track which leads science to
its goal in Atomism. We may also hope to clear up some
difficulties which have hitherto obscured the interpretation
of his cosmology.

Anaximander's great achievement, which stamps him as a
man of genius, is the partially successful effort of thought by
which he attempted to distinguish the primary physis from
the visible elements. He isolated in conception that soul-
substance which we have called the primitive datum of philo-

1 Of. Bumet, E.G.P* 9 p. 292, who points out that the doxographers*
statement that Anaxagoras was the * pupil * or * companion * of Anaximenes,
though not literally true, correctly describes the relation between their

systems.

THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION 145

sophy, from the water with which Thales tad confused it, and
kept it clear also of fire, air, and earth. This, as we can now
see, was really an effort of abstraction, which drew a line of
distinction between the supersensible soul-substance and its
sensible embodiments. God once more gets clear of Nature,
as he had done before in the age of religion ; only not this time
in the personal form which anthropomorphising theology had
reduced to absurdity, but in that older impersonal form from
which theology had started on its long side-track of delusion.
Anaxinander, putting aside the humanised shapes of divinity,
rediscovers the substance which had informed those shapes.
He rechristens it pkysis, because its function now is to inform
and animate, not Gods, but the world we see : it is the * nature
of things/

But, although we can see that this was simply an effort of
abstraction, it was not as such that it could present itself to
Anaximander, He thought he had found, not a mythical
representation, which was only entitled to be considered as
hypothetical, but the actually existing primitive substance.
Hence, instead of isolating it only in thought, he isolates it in
time, and conceives it as the first state of the world, out of which
the world we see must somehow have arisen. PJiym is not to
him an hypothesis, but a 'beginning* (ap%^). The problem
is, how to get the world out of it.

Now, owing to causes we have already traced, the most
important aspect of the visible world is the departmental
distribution of the four elements in their appointed moirai.
The breaking out of this division is, accordingly, the first act of
cosmology, as it had been of cosmogony. The elements are
parted by a process of separation (airo/spuns) out of the primal
continuous substance. Correspondingly, the important fact
about that substance is the absence of these secondary depart-
mental limits ; it is therefore described by the negative name,
'the limitless 5 (aireipop) a word which specially suggested
to the Greek mind the having no beginning, middle, or end,
Physis is thus called * the unlimited/ primarily in contradis-
tinction to the elemental provinces which axe limited, though,
as we shall soon see, this sense of the word is not distinguished
from others. Here, then, we have the first two stages of exist

146 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

ence, which precede the birth of individual things the third
stage.

The next question is : how to account for the passage from
the first stage to the second how do the limits of the elemental
provinces ever come to be imposed ?

To answer this question, Anaximander falls back upon the
moral character which had clung to physis ever since it had come
into existence as a representation of the social consciousness,
felt precisely as a power which imposes limits on individual
aggression. This character, as we have seen, had never passed
altogether from Moira to be vested in the will of the supreme
deity ; and, now that the Gods have vanished, it resides in the
divine soul-substance, physis itself, which * not only embraces
but governs all other things/ 3L This governance is moral,
showing itself in the dispensation of the elemental regions.
In presence of this transparently mythical conception, it is
probable that the f eternal motion/ which is said to have caused
the separation, should not be understood in a purely mechanical
sense. It is f eternal * because native to the divine, the * im-
mortal and imperishable * physis, whose motion, like itself,
must be without beginning or end ; but, since physis is alive,
its motion is probably not distinguished from growth the
characteristic movement of life. We may perhaps think of the
opposed elements as developed, or unfolded, out of the one by
a process of growth not clearly distinguished from a mechanical
sifting, due to the rotation of the universe a motion which,
being circular, is without beginning or end, and so limitless or
' eternal/ There is here a tangle of confusion and obscurity,
which it will be the business of Anaximander's successor to
unravel so far as he can. 2

Next, since the elements were separated out of the limitless
thing, their specific qualities must at first have been somehow

1 Arist. Phy*. 74, 2Q3& 6; o2 p&er dirayra K al Kv^pvay. 0. Gilbert,
Spekulation 12. Volksglaube,' Arch. /. Rdig. xiii. p. 312 : Damit tritt aber
dem tatsdMich bestehenden Kampf- und Raubzustande der Welt eine h&here
sittliche Ordnung gegenuber und diese Zetztere Jcann nur auf rd 0e<o*> sMecht-
kin, das abwlui Gtittlicke d^s&veipov^ zuruekgefuhrt werden.

2 Eisier ( WeUenmamtel, ii. 666) identifies Anaximander's direipov with the
* Orphic* supreme God Ckronos or A&w Aweipos. If this is right, as I incline
to think, <Jhret/K>* would mainly mean the unending revolution of Time.

THE SCIENTU1O TRADTHQIS 147

fused in it. Later authorities, familiar with, atomistic con-
ceptions, call Anaxlmander's limitless physis a * mixture *
(jjLdjjjia). Once more, it seems right to interpret the name
' limitless 3 in a negative way. It is not fire or air or water or
earth, and has not the distinct and United properties of any
or all of them. These properties must have been latent in it,
or they could not have come out of it ; but we must not think
of the primal mixture as containing portions of them aH in a
chaos. In that first stage, there was no such thing as fire or air,
earth or water. They were mixed, rather, as wine is mixed
with water, so that you cannot say that the mixture is either
wine or water, or that any part of it is only water or only
wine.

Finally, the moral character of the elemental disposition is
strongly marked in the doctrine already dwelt upon,, that in-
dividual things owe their existence to 'injustice/ consisting
in the encroachment of one element upon another. The becom-
ing of things (7ez/e<m) is birth, and all birth results from the
mixing of opposites. Anaximander emphasises the antagonism
of opposites, rather than the necessity of their union to give birth
to existence. In so doing, he unconsciously revives that primi-
tive morality which emphasises the absolute supremacy of the
group over the individual, and, as against the inflexible custom
of the tribe, bans all individuality and personal freedom as
arrogant aggression. The elements in Ms scheme correspond
to individuals; the moral ordinance of fhym enjoins them
to keep within their regions, exactly as Moiara, in Olympian
theology, restricted the Gods to their departments.

We need not pursue, in further detail, the evolution of the
visible world. Throughout our analysis of the various systems,
we shall only be concerned with views about the fundamental
f nature of things/ our purpose being to show how they can be
deduced from the primitive datum of philosophy. 1

1 If I have put Anaximander afc the head of the scientific tradition, I do
not overlook the mystical elements in his system, for which Eisler, Wdten-
ma,ntd t vol. ii. p. 666 ff., should be consulted. He seems to me to hold both
tendencies in solution, but his immediate successors went off in the scientific
direction. Empedocles, as we shall see (p. 231), when he aonght to reconcile
mysticism and science, went back to Anaximander.

148 FBOM BELKHOH TO. PHILOSOPHY

86. ANAXIMENES

Anaximander's successor, Anaximenes, was a lesser man tih.an
Ms master. So far from making any advance towards the
truth, that Anaximander's pJiysis was a hypothetical entity,
he could not even keep it distinct from one of the elements,
dark and cold air, or mist (??'/>)> which, by the way, had always
been regarded as the appropriate clothing of divinities (yepa
<r<rdjj,voi). He thus reverted to the position of Thales, merely
substituting air for water as the embodiment of physis, and
no doubt thinking that he was effecting a simplification. In
another direction, however, he really took a considerable step
towards that clearness of conception at which science instinc-
tively aims. He turned his attention to that point in Anaxi-
mander's scheme where obscurity and confusion most obviously
reigned the problem, how to get the qualitatively different
elements out of the indeterminate pJiysi-s.

To Anaximenes it seemed simple to identify the soul-sub-
stance with air; for air is breath, and breath is life, or soul.

* Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do a breath
and air encompass the whole world/ 1 Thus, the soul-substance
becomes again confused with an actually existing form of matter.
The advantage of this theory is that the other elemental forms
can be got out of it without resorting to the conception of Moira,
which is accordingly eliminated. Air is of the same order of
existence as the other elements, not a metaphysical substance
on a higher plane. Consequently, its transformation into them
can be interpreted in purely quantitative terms. For Anaxi-
mander qualitative differences were ultimate ; his ' Limitless *
was a perfect fusion of all qualities, which were afterwards

* separated out/ Anaximenes reduced all change and trans-
formation to * thickening and thinning 3 : the real fact which
underlies what we call qualitative differences is simply difference
of quantity more or less of the same stuff in a given space. 2
To get rid of quality in this way is to make an enormous advance
in amplification. Instead of the infinitely subtle gradations,
and innumerable varieties, of quality colours, sounds, tastes,
and so forth we have now only to conceive one uniform material

1 Frag. 2=Aet. i. 3. 4. * Cf. Buraet, .G.P* t p. 78.

THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION 149

with, differences of density, which are comparatively distinct
above all, commensurable. 1

On the other hand, it may be remarked that yon do not get
rid of qualities by saying they are caused by thickening and
thinning; you only get rid of the trouble and difficulty of
thinking about them : nor can you be said to have explained
them, until you can form some notion how qualitative differences
could result from changes of density. The truth seems to be
that Anaxinienes 3 theory is motived by the desire to simplify
and clarify the conceptual model of the world to explain
away, rather than to explain, the confused variety which
our senses show us. From this point of view, the impulse of
science, perpetually allured by the ideal clearness of geometrical
conceptions, is to turn away from aU sensible qualities,
which it has not yet learnt how to measure, and to dismiss
them as secondary, and derived from the spatial properties
of body.

Mnally, it is really only by confusion that the air which is
physis and soul-substance can be identified with atmospheric
air or mist. The latter is obviously not identical with fire or
water or earth. It exists, side by side with them, in a region of
its own, and has its own peculiar properties. The air which
is soul-substance, on the other hand, exists, one and the same,
in all the elements alike. Atmospheric air is considered to be
the primary or fundamental form of matter only because it is
confused with the mythical soul-substance. If it were taken
simply as a natural substance, there would be no reason what-
ever for calling it primary, rather than fire or earth or water.
It is selected for this position merely because it is the one of
the four elements which seemed to Aimximenes to be most Ike
soul-subatance the most appropriate vehicle of life. It is
qua soul-substance, not qw natural element, that it is called
divine, or God ; and it is really on the same metaphysical plane

1 Cf. 0. Milhaud, Les ph&o&ophes g&mMrts de la @r&ce (1900), p. 18 ff.
Aet. i 24. 2, brings out the point that this abandonment of quality and
transformation (dAAoiWts) for quantity and 'coming together and separa-
tion* leads on to Atomism: 'E/wreSbicXiys, 3 'Am&iT^/jas, A^jcpcros, 'JSn-Dcoupor,
jcal ir&rrvf S<rot xard arvya,0powjj&ii> rwv Xem-o/ne/Mwr orwjadrwf K0fffwvinowt s enty-
xptffeiy /M-y ical StaKpi&eis flff&yowiy yV&&t$ $ ical fiBopas ov ja/pl&*$* cv yap (ca.ro.
rb Trow dXXocctxrcwr, Kara. S rd uwdy ix ffwaQpourpov TCH/TOS

150 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

as Anaximander's pJiysis. From it, we are told, Anaximenes
said, f the things that are and have been and shall be, and the
G-ods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come
from its offspring/ 1 Thus, it is clear that, in Anaximenes'
system, pJiysis does not really shake off its metaphysical char-
acter. It is not a natural substance, but only confused with
one, and it retains properties which belong to God and Soul.

87. EMPEDOCLES as man of science

Empedocles, the wonder-worker, who went about among
men as an immortal God, crowned with fillets and garlands,
primarily belongs to the mystical tradition, whose home was
in the western Greece of lower Italy and Sicily, where he was
born. The detailed study of his system must, therefore, be post-
poned for the present ; but he has a place also in the scientific
tradition, for his exuberant genius combined the temperament
of a prophet with a really scientific turn of mind, which led Mm
so far as to illustrate his theories by experimental demon-
strations. As we shall see later, he makes a brilliant attempt
to combine the mystic view of the world with Ionian science, and,
in so doing, he takes a step beyond the Milesians in the direction
of Atomism. It is in respect of this advance only that we are
here concerned with his opinions.

The Milesians were hylozoists ; physis, for them, still retained
its original meaning of something containing a vital principle
within it and capable of growth. It was both a soul-substance,
living and self-moving, and yet could be identified (or confused)
with a bodily element. Now, in the spontaneous, procreant
movement of life there is something which defies analysis in
mechanical terms, something gratuitous and unaccountable,
of supreme importance to the mystical temperament, and corre-

1 HippoL Ref. L 7 ; tepa *T/M t<fa rfy dpxV clvai, If oS ri
rd yey&v6ra KO! TO, Ic^vo, K cd tfeotfs Ktd Beta ylve<r6cu, rd 8t \oiwa, K r&v TOI/TOU
dro-yfrw. 0. Gilbert, 'Spelt. XL Volksglaube,' Arch. f. Relig. xiii. 313,
holds that the three other elements are pre-eminently meant by 6coi Kal
0a, and correspond to Anaximander's second stage; while ra Xotird=the
&ra of Anaximander's third stage, particular things, which are born of
those offspring (dr^wot) of God, the three inferior elements.

THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION 151

spondingly abhorrent to a science that is bent upon making
physics conform to the perfect lucidity of geometry. The un-

conscious aim of such science must be to get the life out of
matter, and finally to eliminate life altogether from its con-
ceptual model of the real. Empedocles, mystic though he
was, and little aware of what he was doing, forwarded this
aim, and so has a place in the development of the scientific
tradition.

It was even partly because he was a mystic, that he was led
to this advance. Mystical religion, with its doctrine of immor-
tality, emphasises the distinction between the soul and the
body in which it is temporarily imprisoned. It is, therefore,
specially easy for a man of science, bred up in mysticism, to
get soul-substance clear of body-substance. Partly owing to
this cause, and partly because a severe logic had led Par-
memdes, by another track, to assert the absolute rigidity and
lifelessness of real being, Empedocles distinguished two kinds
of material substancethe four elements, which are bodily, and
two^ new soul-substances, Love and Strife, which move those
bodily elements mechanically from without. 1

The social origin of these two life-forces we have already
traced, and explained how they came to be inherent in phym,
so that Empedocles could get them out of it. 2 The detailed
consideration of the part they play in forming worlds must
be reserved for the present. The point which concerns us
here is that these two constituents into which physis is analysed,
as self-moving fluids, provide a vehicle for motion, outside, and
between, the portions of the bodily elements, which accordingly
lose their own inherent life. The coming into existence of in-
dividual bodies is, therefore, now no longer a birth. There is
no such thing as * coming into being/ no vital process of growth
; only a mixing of immutable elements, and a change

1 Aristotle (Met. A 5) says that Empedocles was the first to introduce the
cause of motion in a double form, assuming, not a single source of motion,
but a pair which are opposed to one another; and Aristotle implies that
Empedocles was led to this because he saw the necessity of a cause of good
things (Love) and a cause of evil things (Strife). See below, p. 230. Aris-
totle clearly regards these two principles of motion as different in kind
from the four bodily elements.

2 Above, 31.

152 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

of what is mixed. 1 And this mixing and remixing is caused,
from outside, by the two animate fluids.

In our view, then, these two fluids are not on a level with the
four visible or bodily elements; when Empedocles declares
them to be ' equal and coeval * with the rest, he merely means
that all alike are eternal and immutable. Love and Strife
are two life-forces, whose function is to perform mechanically
those acts of separation and recombination which, in Anaxi-
mander's system, were left to the mythical figure of Dike.
They thus fill a gap in the mechanical model of the world,
and, at the same time, leave for Atomism only the final step
of depriving these vital fluids both of life and matter, and
reducing them to motion in a void.

Besides this advance, Empedocles contributed to science the
notion, to which he had been helped by Parmenides, that each
of the four forms of body is a ' thing/ eternally distinct from
each of the others, an ultimate and irreducible 'element'
((jTot^lov). Material substances are built up out of portions of
these elements, which are conjoined in various proportions in a
temporary combination, but remain distinct from one another,
and simply come together and separate in space. We need
not dwell upon the point that this conception of elements as
discontinuous masses paves the way to a complete Atomism.
It eliminates that element of continuity which still survived
In Anaximenes* variations of density his processes of c thicken-
ing and tMnning/ which were to lie behind changes of quality.

Empedocles, then, is an incomplete Atomist. He has reached
the fundamental principle of the Atomistic conception, by build-
ing up bodies out of distinct parts, and treating motion as com-
municated from outside. Motion is still confused with life, and
caused by vital fluids, running between the bodily elements ;
but it is a great step to have got it out of body, and deposited
in a distinct soul-substance. The scientific tradition lays hold
of these new conceptions, leaving aside the rest of Empedocles'
extraordinary system.

1 Emped. frag. 8 ;

$foa ovdevos Iffrty

is re
ly $6ffi$ 8* hfl rots toojudferai

THE SCIEOTHTC TEADITIOS" 153

88. ANAXAGOBAS

Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, who first transplanted Ionian
science to Athens in the Periclean age, went a step beyond
Empedocles in the direction of Atomism. He put a more
rigorous construction npon the principle that what is cannot
come out of what is not. He is not content to say, with Em-
pedocles, that flesh, for instance, is made of earth and water
etc., mixed in a certain proportion ; for that would mean that
what is flesh has come out of what is not flesh. 1 That implies
a birth (<j>vcrt,$) 3 a sheer coming into existence, of something
which did not exist before the very thing Empedocles had
denied to be possible, when he said that all becoming was
nothing but mixing, and that 'birth 3 ($iW) was a mere
name.

If you take a hair and cut it in half, the two pieces are still
hair ; suppose you continue cutting them up into smaller and
smaller pieces, the same is true they are still bits of hair.
There is no moment at which you will suddenly find them
dividing into a portion of earth and a portion of fire, or whatever
it may be. Thus, every bodily substance is composed of parts
which are like itself, and into these it is infinitely divisible. 2
But, in spite of this infinite divisibility, Anaxagoras speaks
as if there were minimal parts, which could not actually be cut
into smaller ones, but are, in fact, atoms ; for he speaks of them
as * seeds 1 (vTreppara). The four elements of Empedocles
are not ultimate and irreducible: each of these masses is
a collection of heterogeneous seeds. The original indis-
criminate mass, out of which the order of the world arose, is
a 'mixture of all seeds/ 3 We have reached the notion of
a primitive disorder or chaos, which has to be sorted out
into a cosmos.

Like Empedocles, Anaxagoras needs a soul-substance or
animate fluid, to run through the mixture of bodies and move

1 Frag. 10 : w&$ yap &j &c fjfy rptx^s 76*04x0 $p2 xcd 0"ap tic frij ona//c<$$ Aet.
i. 3. 5.

8 Erag. 3 : * Of the small there is no smallest, but always a smaller/ etc.

8 Bmmet (&.G.P. 2 , p. 307} thinks Anaxagoras probably used the word
ray<rircpfjda. It is not our purpose to follow out the details of Auaxagoras'
interesting system,

154 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

them from without. It is characteristic of Anaxagoras that
his soul-substance is not emotional, like love and hate, but
intellectual : he calls it Mind fflous). He dwells on the fact
that it fonows everything, in a "way that suggests that its power
or mastery over things was due to its understanding. 1 Its task
is described as ' setting things in order * (Siatcoa-ftew), e distin-
guishing/ ' separating/ ' discriminating 5 (SidfcpLvts, aTrotcpKrw).
It is nothing but the scientific intellect itself, which has taken
the world to pieces, and now is projected to the further end, and
charged with the task of sorting out the heap, and reducing
it again to order. With an admirable scientific economy, its
action is restricted within the narrowest limits. It is invoked
to start mechanical motion : body, no longer being self-moving,
must receive its first motion from something which can move
itself, something which is alive, a soul-substance, a physis.
But, once the motion is started, the more we can explain the
structure of the world without falling back on this first cause,
the better. From the scientific point of view, Anaxagoras*
great merit lies in this economy, of which Socrates in the
Phaedo (98 B) so bitterly complains. Socrates would have
had Anaxagoras use his Nous at every turn, and explain every
cosmic arrangement by showing how it was best that it should
be &o and not otherwise, making Nous a benevolent God, who
designs everything for the best. Some modern writers appear
to sympathise with Socrates, as if they were unaware that the
progress of science demanded that, so far from endowing this
mythical soul-substance with additional attributes, such as
benevolence, it should be deprived even of intelligence and life
and reduced simply to motion. A purely mechanical ex-
planation of the world must be tried, before it is found wanting ;
and we ought rather to be thankful to Anaxagoras for refraining
(if it ever occurred to him) from setting up a mythical teleology,
and * explaining * the known by the unknown.

1 Frag. 12 : KQ! yv&wv ye repi Ta?rte ira^ay f<rjtet /cai /<r%i/ei ntyurrov. Of.
SimpL de CMo, SOS (D.F.V.\ p. 316) : xcbra yiy>&*K*u> . . > yyap
Tjrpro optfrt KO! reparot 76 ypvrffy. Nous con&titutes the world, as the
scientific intellect constitutes its representation of it, by introducing dis-
tinctions and discriminations.

THE SCIENTIFIC TRADITION 155

89. TJie Atomism of LEUKIPPUS

The author of the Atomic theory was a Milesian, who pro-
bably migrated to Elea, and certainly was influenced by the
arguments of the Eleatics, Pannenides and Zeno. 1 But, though
these arguments helped Mm to form Ms theory s he belongs,
in our view, to the scientific tradition which had originated
at Ms birthplace. The common opinion, reported by Theo-
phrastus, 2 instinctively recognised that Ms standpoint is really
opposed to that of the mystics. * LeuMppus of Elea, or Miletus,
(for both accounts are given of Mm) had associated with Par-
menides in philosophy, but he did not follow the same road
with Parmenides and Xenophanes in his explanation of things,
but, as is commonly believed, the opposite one. For, whereas
they held the All to be One, immovable, without beginning,
and limited, and did not allow us so much as to search for " what
is not," LeuMppus posited unlimited and ever-moving elements,
namely the atoms. He made their shapes infinite in number,
because there was no reason why they should be of one sort
rather than another, and because he saw there was an unin-
terrupted becoming and change in tMngs. Further, he held
that what is (i.e. atoms) is no more real than what is not (i.e.
empty space), and that both alike are needed to explain the
things that come into existence : for he postulated that the
substance of the atoms was " compact/' or full, and called them
what is (Sv) 9 saying that they move in the void, wMch he called
what is not (fwj ov), but declared to exist just as much as
what is. 9

LeuMppus accepted Parmenides' doctrine, that * out of what
is in truth one, a plurality cannot come, nor yet a unity out of
what is really many* 3 ; but here the two ways part. The
mystic, ' transgressing against sense-perception and ignoring it,
holds that he ought to follow the argument ' ; 4 and the premiss
of that argument, to wMch, as a mystic, he must hold, is :

1 For the Pythagorean number-atomism, see below, 114.

2 Ap. Simpl. Phy$. 28, 4 (D.F. T. 2 , p. 344).

s Arist. de Gen. et Corr. 325 a 34 : (Aafcanro? tffthft IK rw jcar' dX^faar o4s

4 Ibid. L 13 (of the Eleatics) : wxepjScbres rV a&r^ty Ktd irapt&Sjrer
&s T \6yt} $tw d/coXoi^y, alluding to Parm, frag. I. 33 ff.

156 FROM BEUGION TO PHILOSOPHY

The All is One, namely God. To save tlie unity of God, lie
will unhesitatingly condemn the world of seeming plurality as
unreal. The scientific tradition, on the other hand, is not tied to
this premiss, and LeuMppus can follow the argument to an
opposite conclusion. He feels, with Aristotle, 1 that f so far
as arguments go, the (Eleatic) conclusion seems to follow ; but
if we look at facts, such opinions border on madness ; for no
madman is so utterly out of his senses that fire and ice seem
to him one/ That is the scientific temper, which starts with
sensible facts, and will not fly in the face of them to save the
unity of God. Accordingly, we are told 2 that e LeuMppus
thought he had a theory which would agree with sense-percep-
tion, and not do away with becoming and perishing, or motion,
or the plurality of things/ What is consists of an infinite number
of indivisible bits of matter, impenetrable, and invisible because
of their smaflness. These atoms differ from one another, not
qualitatively at all, but only in shape and position. The whole
world and all it contains is resolvable into these tiny bodies.
The coming into being and perishing of all things is nothing
but the aggregation or dissipation of a set of atoms, moving
mechanically in the void.

Besides atoms and void, there is motion, which had once
been the spontaneous activity of life or soul. The incomplete
Atomists, Empedocles and Auaxagoras, had, as we have seen,
made this property reside in soul-substances, distinct from the
elements, and penetrating between them. But now there is
nothing between the elemental atoms save empty space, which
gives them room to move, without any soul-substance running
through. The soul-substance accordingly disappears; it has
become a superfluous hypothesis. LeuMppus took the strictly
scientific course of not attempting to account for motion at
all. 3 Aristotle, with his theistic prejudices, complains that
to dismiss the question of the origin of motion was a piece of
'slackness/ The modern reader will prefer the Atomist's
attitude to Aristotle's own grotesque doctrine of the Primum
Mc&He* LeuMppus declared plainly that ' nothing happens at

3 Ariit. de Gen. et Corr. 325a 17. 2 End. L 23.

8 Arist. Jjfei. A iv. 9855 : repi 5 *o^<res, &&ev % x$ vwdp%i ro<s oftrt *cat
ovrot (Leukipjms and Democritus) . . .

THE SCIENTIFIC TBADITIOK 157

random ; but everything for some reason and of necessity/ 1
What the necessity was, he did not, we are told, further define.
We may recognise in this Ananke the figure of Moira, still
pre-eminent in a world from which the Gods have utterly
vanished.

The soul, too, has become, like physis, a mere collection of
atoms. * Democritus affirms the soul to be a sort of fire or heat.
For the {( shapes " or atoms are infinite, and those wMch are
spherical he declares to be fire and soul : they may be compared
with the so-called motes in the air, which are seen in sunbeams
passing through windows. The aggregate of such seeds (pawr-
perww), he tells us, forms the constituent elements of the whole
of nature (and herein he agrees with LeuMppus), while those of
them which are spherical form the soul, because such figures
most easily find their way through everything, and, being them-
selves in motion, set other things in motion/ 2 If it is true, as
Aristotle says, that LeuMppus gave no account of the origin
of motion, we must not conceive this motion of the soul-atoms
as an inherent principle of spontaneous activity, but as due, like
that of other atoms, to mechanical shock and collision. 3 The
soul-atoms merely differ in that their round shape makes them
more easily movable, and so they are the first to be set in motion,
and impart the shock to other atoms of more stable figures.
At death, the atoms are dispersed ; there can be no question of
immortality. * The Atomists assume that it is the soul which
imparts motion to animals. Hence they take respiration as
the distinctive mark of life. For, when the surrounding air
compresses bodies and tends to extrude those atoms which,
because they are never at rest themselves, impart motion to
animals, then they are reinforced from outside by the entry
of other similar atoms in respiration, which, in fact, by helping
to check compression and solidification, prevents the escape

1 Frag. 2 : <H/5& XW/ 1 * P&np ytyvertti, dXXd w&tnru IK \6yov re xal far* d^d-y^s.
HippoL Ref. 1. 12 : ris 5 J &v cfiy ^ a&dyici}, oi/ $u&ptff&. Dieterich, Abraxas, 75,
compares Plato. Tim* 48 A : jLepiypepi} jap o*> y rwSe rou K&r/wu yiv&ts l
&ydyKi}s re xal vov <rwTTd<rews yewnj$3j.

8 Arist. de anim. aii. 4036 31.

s Alex, in Arist. Met. AIT. 9S55: ob*o* (Leuklppus and UNemocritui) yap
X^yowo' dXXTyAortnro&ras KOA KpQitQftty&s rpfo dAXijAas KtyeurStti ray dr^/tovy.
Arist. de anim. a.2, 3 and 4, contrasts the Atomists -with those who
describe the soul as self-moving.

158 PEOM EELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

of the atoms already contained in the animals; and life,
so they held, continues so long as there is strength to do
this/ *

That other function of the soul knowing must be similarly
explained. A soul which is nothing but a group of bodily atoms
can only know or perceive other groups by colliding with them,
or with filmy wraiths (deiJcela, eidola) thrown off by them. 2
Such, then, is the Atomists* doctrine of knowledge : they too
* follow the argument ' to its most strange conclusions. The
effect is that whatever is mysterious and unintelligible in the
ideas of * soul * and of ' life ' is, as completely as may be, ex-
purgated out of existence.

We are thus left with a conceptual model of the real, in which
perfect clarity of conception triumphed, and which, accordingly,
held the field in science till yesterday. The Gods and the im-
mortal soul have vanished in the dance of material particles.
Physis, though the name may be retained, has lost all its ancient
associations of growth and life. There is no such thing as
' growth * j nothing but the coming together and separating of
immutable atoms. All motion had once been the inherent
property of the living thing, the proper expression of its inward
life. Now the life is wrung out of matter ; motion, no longer
a spontaneous activity, lies not within, but between, the im-
penetrable atoms. Instead of life, nothing is left but the change
of space relations ; and the governance of the world returns to
Ananke-Moira.

90. Contrast with the Mystical Tradition

In one very important respect, the scientific tradition differs
from the mystic. Ionian science supersedes theology, and goes
on its own way, without drawing any fresh supply of inspiration
from religion. Science, with its practical impulse, is like magic
in attempting direct control over the world, whereas religion
interposes between desire and its end an uncontrollable and
unknowable factor the will of a personal God. The perpetual,

1 Arist* de anim* a 2, 3.

So all senses are reduced to one Touching 5 Arist. de Semu, 442a 29 :
Kpcros Kal oi TXerrot rQv ipwrioUyay, &rot \tywei wcpl
ri irotowrr Tdvra yap ra alcr&Tpra awra TotoiVt.

THE SCIEOTTilO TRADITION

If unconscious, aim of science is to avoid this circuit through

the unknown, and to substitute for religious representation,
involving this arbitrary factor, a closed system ruled throughout
by necessity. The Gods may be exiled to the intermundane
spaces, or pensioned ofi with the honorary position of First
Cause; what science cannot allow is that their incalculable
action should thrust itself in between the first cause and the
last effect. Thus, science turns its back on theology, and works
away from it with what speed it may ; It reaches, in a few rapid
strides, a very simple and clear model of the structure of reality,
from which the supernatural has all but disappeared.

Ergo uiuida uis animi peruicity et extra
processit longe ftammantia moenta mundi,
atque, ornne immensum peragranit mente animoque t
unde refert nolis uictor qwd possit oriri,
quid nequeaty finita potestas denique cuique
qttanam sit ratione clique alte terminus Aaereiw.
quare-relligw pedibus subjecta uicimm
opteritur, nos exaequat uictoria caelo. 1

In contrast with this steady advance away from religion and
theology, the mystic tradition Is continuously umpired by living
religious faith. The mystical systems will be best understood
if we consider them, not as following one upon another in a
logical deduction, but as a series of efforts to translate a certain
view of life, of God, and of the soul and its destiny, Into terms
of a physical system. Not, of course, that these efforts are
independent of one another, or unaffected by science ; each
profits by the failures of Its predecessor, and some at least
borrow the results of the scientific tradition. But the in-
spiration and the Impulse come fresh, each time, from a form of
religious faith which was kept alive in the Pythagorean com-
munities from the days of their founder, and survived their
dispersion in the latter half of the fifth century. Thus 3 we
regard the series of systems, now to be considered, as thrown
off in succession by a mystical religion, whose view of life and
of the world they, each and all, attempt to formulate.

1 Lucr. i. 72.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION
9L The representation of Time fundamental in Mysticism

IK the foregoing chapter, we have seen how the scientific tradition
in philosophy is dominated throughout by the concept of
spatial externality, as Olympian theology had been dominated
by the figure of Hoira, delimiting with rigid distinction the
provinces of all individual powers, divine and human. Guided
by that concept, science culminated in geometrical Atomism,
and the reign of M oira, under the name of Necessity. In the
mystical tradition, to which we now turn, the concepts of Time
and Number (the measure of Time *) hold the same predominant
position, and the notion of Eighteousness (Dike) replaces that
of Moira. In the explanation of this central fact lies the key
to the interpretation of the mystical systems. It has akeady
been suggested that, as science is the legitimate successor of
Olympian theology, so the mystical philosophies derive their
inspiration and their conceptual scheme from the religion of
Dionysus. Before we come to details, we must point out why
the notion of Time is fundamental in this type of religion.

We may start from the structure of the group the organisa-
tion of the cult-society itself ; for there, as we have learnt,
the origin of its typical system of representation may be

1 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 39s: tva, 3' cfy fj^rpov &ap7& ... 6 &ebs

. 8 5?J VVV KK\^Kdfi&f 1)\lQV t IvO, &Ti JulXwTd & ctTtt^Ttt falVQl T

ptTi<rx<H re dptSpov ro. |*$a, &ro yw ir/KW^/coK, /ia#6Fra wapa, rrp ra^rou icai
6/wilos; p4$opay. Distance in space is measurable psychologically, by ex-
penditure of strength ; but tune-distance can be measured only by counting
the rhythmical repetition of the same occurrence. Hence the extent of
time-consciousness depends on the extent of the number-system* Bee
P. Beck, * Erkenntnisstheorie des primitiven Denkens/ Zeitechr. /. Phttas.
u. phttos. Krtiik, Leipzig (1904), bd. 123, p. 172 ff.

160

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 161

sought. 1 The DIonysiac cult-society, we have seen, is a single
self-contained group, with a common life centred in its daemon*
TMs life is continuous in several senses.

First, in the spatial or distributive sense, the group is con-
tinuously animated by one soul or daemon, which both resides in
all its members at once, and also lies beyond any one of them.
Since there is only one group one church, no matter how far
asunder its members may be scattered 2 the organisation ex-
cludes any idea of its parts being confined within impenetrable
provinces ; the polytheistic notion of Moira is absent.

Next, in a temporal sense of continuity, the life of the group,
being a common life which transcends every individual, is
immortal, which, to the Greek, means * divine/ TMs conception
gives rise to several cardinal doctrines of mysticism.

The most primitive of these is Reincarnation (falingenema).
The essence of this belief is that the one life of the group, or
tribe, extends continuously through its dead members as well as
through the living ; the dead are still part of the group, in the
same sense as the living. This life, which is perpetually renewed,
is reborn out of that opposite state, called 4 death/ into which,
at the other end of its arc, it passes again. In this idea of
reincarnation, still widespread among savage races, we have
the first conception of a cycle of existence^ a Wheel of Life,
divided into two hemicycles of light and darkness, through
which the one life, or soul, continuously revolves. 3

1 Diodorus, v. 64, 4 (D.P. V." 2 , p. 473), preserves the statement of Ephorus
that Orpheus was the pupil of the Idaean Dactyls, who were magicians
(7&jjres) and practised spells, initiations, and mysteries, which Orpheus
first introduced into Greece. Pythagoras also was initiated in Crete by the
Idaean Dactyls and at Leibethra in Thrace, These traditions mark the
continuity between the Orphic cult-societies and the magical fraternities*
and also the fact that Orphism revived a primitive type of religion. See
J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 462.

2 Of. Porpk de abst. iv. 11 (of the Essenes) : pbt $Z om tenr ofa-fa a-^Xir,

dXX* & &<Urrg jrarOUCOWTi 1T0XXo, KT\.

3 Lgvy-Bruhl, Fonct. went. p. 358, points out that the sharp distinction
between living and dead does not exist at a low level of mentality : a
* dead ' person still lives in a certain sense, and belongs both to the living
society and to the dead. (We may note that * immortality * so conceived
precedes any clear conception of death. The belief in immortality is thus
partly due to a failure to grasp the nature of death. There is no need to
look further for & cause of the belief.) See also Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, The
Primitive Cmceptwm of Dtath, Hibbert Journal, 1912, p. 393,

162 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

How did the doctrine of rebirth come to be moralised ?
Among the Orphics and Pythagoreans, we find it associated
with the notions of a fall of the soul from its original divine
state, a purification of the soul's sins in this life and in an
underworld purgatory, and a final restoration to the heavenly
mansions whence it came. As we shall see later, this group of
doctrines is of fundamental importance for the understanding
of the mystic philosophy, and of the systems that emerged
from the Pythagorean school. It concerns us, therefore, to
give some account of the process by which the old savage doc-
trine of reincarnation came to have this moral significance.

92. The Cycle of Reincarnation

We need not discuss at length the origin of the belief in re-
incarnation, as it exists among savages. It is, probably, a very
simple matter. When the totemist is engaged in multiplying
his totem-species, Ms whole attention is bent upon the idea of
new animals, or plants, that have to be brought into existence.
The image of these animals or plants before his mind must
be the memory-image of those that have akeady existed and
been eaten. Thus, what he desires to bring into existence is
to Mm the same thing as what has existed already. How could
he help believing that the new animals and plants are the old
ones, come back again from the other world ? x But, however
that may be, it is certain that the notion of rebirth has none
of those associations with sin and retribution wMch we find
attached to it, when it recrudesces in OrpMsm. How did they
come there ? We are not in a position to answer tMs question
fully. It is complicated by the view, now being put forward,
that the characteristic doctrines of OrpMsm were derived from
Persian religion, and came into Greek thought in the sixth
century, when Persia was in contact with the Ionian colonies
of Asia Minor. 2 About this theory we must keep an open mind.
Religious ideas, as we have remarked, are easily assimilated
only when there already exists an indigenous system of thought

1 For the supersensible reality attributed to memory -images, see P. Beck,
op. dt.

s TMs theory is advanced by Eisler, Weltenmantel u. ffimmelszeU, vol. ii,
where a great mass of evidence is adduced.

THE MYSTICAL TBABITION 163

into wMeh they readily fit. OrpMsrn is 5 indubitably, a revival
and reformation of Dionysiac religion. Wherever the new

ideas came from, it is probable that they were not totally foreign
to the existing cults. Our object must be to throw into relief
the chief elements of Dionysiac belief, and to distinguish from
them, the later factors which can be classed as specially Orphic.
It will appear that, although OrpMsm was sufficiently like the
older worship to emerge from it, or be grafted upon it, there is
a latent contradiction between the two conceptions of immor-
tality and of the soul, which severally belong to the two systems.
This contradiction will give rise to two contrasted types of
mystic philosophy.

The philosophy that lay implicit in the old doctrine of re-
incarnation is drawn out by Socrates, when, on the day of his
death, he discusses with his Pythagorean friends the mystic
view of life on earth and in the otter world of the unseen. He
recalls * the ancient doctrine, that souls pass out of this world
to the other, and there exist, and then come back hither from
the dead, and are born again/ l One of the . arguments by
which this view is supported, is that there must be a constant
process of repayment (avraTroSotrw), according to which a set of
souls that are born must be balanced by another set that die.
If they did not thus ' go round in a circle/ but the process went
forward in a straight line, instead of bending round again
to its starting-point, a moment would come when all would
reach the same state, and becoming (y everts) would be at a stand-
still. The living are constantly going over to the dead : unless
the supply is renewed by a reverse process, life would be ex-
hausted, and all would end in death.-

Although Socrates refers this argument to the more general
principle, that all becoming is a passing from one to the other
of two opposite states, the notions involved are very simple

1 Plato, PkaedOf 7013 : iroXcu^s pi? oto i<m rts X6yo? * 05 /tqur^idftt,
rQMe d^otfyxeFcu &, xal r&Xty ye 5eu/>o d^txyourreu Kad ylyyonrroj. lie TWF

6irGjJTSi3W,

3 Plato, Phaeda, 72 B : el 70^ jdjj del fortLToStdobj ra Irepa rs r^pmy ytyv6~

eft; iy T^etra IK rav

els rb KOLrayrucfaff xal ju% foaKdjurrix fd\LP Irl T& Prepay /tajfe
o!tr0* Srt, irm TeXevrQyra r& aAr^ ffX%t tai &* irxply Ktil rd
teal u&ratro ytyrbtieva, ; . . . el yap IK pew TWF dAXwF ra fwrra ylyjfom, ro 51

c/$ rd

164 FROM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

and primitive. We are to conceive a limited quantity of soul-
substance, 1 which passes out of the living body into tie opposite
state of separation from it, and, in perpetual revolution, re-
appears again in new living bodies. Soul of tMs sort evidently
lias no organic connection with the series of bodies it tem-
porarily informs, 2 and it must be conceived as impersonal, con-
tinuous, and homogeneous. The same soul-stuff passes through
an endless succession of individual forms, and their individu-
alities leave no abiding mark upon it. Such a description
goes in no respect beyond the terms ia which the savage doc-
trine of reincarnation could be described, in that there is, so
far, no trace of a moral significance, but merely the notion of a
stream of living stuff, flowing perpetually in a circle. 3

93. Grades of Initiation

We advance one step further, when we add to this conception of
continuous life the perhaps equally primitive idea of Initiation.
Rites of initiation are the way-marks upon the road of life in
savage communities. We must think of the complete circle of
life and death as divided into a series of grades or phases,
through each of which in succession that life must pass. The
transition from each phase to the next is a rite of initiation
a rile de passage* The infant is initiated into the living world

1 The Interpreters who epeak of a * constant quantity ' of absolutely im-
material t spirit * seem to me to be using words without meaning.

2 Arist. de anim. 407 b 21 : &<nrep v$X&fj,VQv Kara TOI/S HvBojopucobs /ju&davs

s Of. Plutarch, Consd. ad Apoll. 10 (after quoting Heracleitus, frag. 78,
By w. ) : ws 7p & TW o-^rod mjXov Stivarai rtj xXdrrwy <pa WYXeiy jrc
5rX<rrty KQ.I ffvyyeiv Kal rovti' & trap 1 I? iroieTv dStaXe/xrwy, oflr&j Kal ij
ex T7?5 ai>r??s ^Xijs irdXai juer rods Tpoy&vov? -qi&v &'e<rxe*', etra ffwexus ai/roty
roi/s TaT^par, fW ^/ias, clr' <lXXous ^TT' 4XXour dya/cu/cX-^ffft. Kal o TTJ*
TT&TafLQS o$TCtj$ &8e\x>$ pfav ofeore crTTj^rerat, K<d vd\iv 6 % fravrias
o TTJS ^opay. Zeller (Phil. d. Grlech^ i. p. 6iO), following Bernays,
thinks that Plutarch derived the general drift of this whole passage from
Heracleitus, including the image of the potter. Cf. 0. Gilbert, jJ/eeor.
Theor. t 335. Le'vy-Brufal, Fond. ment. p. 398: Quand un enfant, nail,
une individuality d&firtie reparaU, ou, plus exactement, se reforme. Toute
naimance est une reincarnation. * . . La naismnce est done simplement le
passage d^um forme de vie ct une autre, tout comme la mort.

4 M. van Gennep, Mites de Passage, p. 107, has brought out this signifi-
cance of initiatory rites.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 165

soon after its birth ; * the youth is initiated into full membership
of the tribe on attaining manhood, and so on. Each of these
rites, moreover, is a new birth, and means the acquisition of
a new soul, or rather , perhaps, the growth of tie soul, its ex-
pansion to include new social rights and duties. The import-
ance of these initiations overshadows the mere physical fact
of birth ; the new-born child has little or no soul, until society
confers it upon him. 2 Its growth culminates in the full privi-
leges of manhood, and then passes into its decline. As his
social effectiveness drops away from Mm, the man's soul
dwindles, until, in old age, he has sunk again to a second,
soulless, childhood and is dead already, the physical death
being of little moment. This conception adds to the cycle
of life the idea of promotion upwards through a series of
grades, culmination, and degradation on tHe downward curve
of the arc. 3

94. The Cyde of att Life in Nature

At death, the soul passes into the underworld : the lower
half of the circle moves through the nether darkness. The
reason is that the earth is the source of all Me. 4 The plants
and trees spring up out of earth ; from her, too, must come the
souls of animals and men ; and hence, when they are dead,
they must be stored, like seeds, in the darkness of her womb.
Spring festivals, such as the Anthestena, are concerned alike
with the seeds which man requires for his tillage, and with
the revocation of souls ; 5 for, in the spring, all life needs to be

1 Of. the Omaha rites of infant initiation described "by Mist Alice Metcher.
See above, p, 69.

2 Cf. Dieterich, * Mutter Erde, 5 Arch.f. Melig. viii 1 ff.

* See Le*vy-Brnhl, Fonct* ment. p, 360, and Hertz, 'Represent, collectives
de la inert,' Anode sociol. x.

4 Enr. frag. 415, ap. Hut. Consol. ad ApolL 104s:
joJ/eXor -yot/> a&rfa K&pviftQts re 7775
y&ei ppariar re. rws JJL&>

5 See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, chap. iL, and Tbmw 3 p. 289. Cf.
also Plato, Pctiticm* 272 s, where the sonla, before each new birth, are
described as falling into the earth as seeds, vcuras cm<nTj$ rrp

166 ]?BOM BELIOION TO PHILOSOPHY

magically revived after the death of winter. In such com-
binations we see the basis upon which a doctrine of trans-
migration (metmsomatosis) can easily arise. If all life is one
and sympathetically continuous, the same soul-stufl may pass
at one time Into a man, at another into an animal or plant.
All alike are creatures of earth. 1 Further, the life of Nature
In the cycle of the seasons follows the same curve as the life
of man. Nature, likewise, has her phases and grades. Her
life waxes in spring, culminates In summer, and in autumn
wanes again, till her fruits decay and leave only the seed, which
must be burled in death, and Me in hope of resurrection. The
year with its two seasons of light and dark, warmth and cold,
drought and wet, corresponds to the two halves of man's life-
circle. * All mortal things, by necessity of Nature, revolve in
a wheel of changes. . . . When they are born they grow, and
when they are grown they reach their height, and after that
they grow old, and at last perish. At one time Nature causes
them to come to their goal in her region of darkness, and then
again out of the darkness they come back into mortal form,

.^ fott ty K<<rriy vpoffraxPtr, roffavra ds

Of. also Timaeus, 42 D, where God sows (^rsmpe) the souls into
earth, moon, and the other 'instruments of time.' Phaedo, 83 D: &<rre

rax*> -raXtv vlirrcur cfc &\\o trwjwa KO! ucnrep cnreipojMvrj tfififeffBau It is
significant that Aaaxagoras calls his primary bodies, as yet unordered by
JYotw, * seeds J (T^p/4ttra}, and (probably) described the primitive chaos, or
mixture oi these, as a panspermia (see p. 153), the word used of the pot of
all seeds offered at the spring festival of Souls and Seeds (cf . J. E. Harrison,
Tketrti, p. 292). Democritus used the same term (Arist. de anim. 404 a 4)
to denote 'the elements of all phyris,* the spherical seeds being soul-
atoms.
1 Masaeus, frag. 5(D.F. V. \ p. 485) :

&s 5' atfrws Kal ^tJXAa 0y fitSupos

Aesch. Ohoeph. 128 :

/cal Tatar at/rq?, $ T& vdvTd rJ/crercu

Eur. frag. 757 N. :

p* a0 /crarat vfa
i' /cat r<5* &X&OVTOI ftporol
els yrjv fopofres 7^* d^a^Kolws 6* &XEL
f-llov Bepigety &<rre KapTnpw crrdxyv . . .

See Dieterich, { Mutter Erde,' Arch. /. Jtdig. viii. 1 ff. for all this
snbjeet.

THE MYSTICAL TBABITIOE" 167

by alternation of birth and repayment of death, in the cycle
wherein Nature returns upon herself/ 1

95. The correspondence of Works and Days
Nor is it Nature alone that urges life along its perennial
round. Man, too, must do Ms share ; his Works must be fitted
into the cycle of Days. The Works and Days of Hesiod is 3 signi-
ficantly, both a treatise on agriculture and a hand-book of
morality. The primitive art of agriculture is deeply tinged
with magic : 2 mimetic ritual was, at first, even more important
than digging and sowing. The mere practical operations will
not be effective, unless there is a sympathetic correspondence
between man's ways and Nature's course. He must keep
straight upon the path of custom (nomos) or right (dike), or
else the answering processes of natural life will likewise leave
the track. 3 We seem to see in this the first interpretation of a
moral maxim that fills a large place in the ethical consciousness
of later days : Live according to Nature (171; Kara $vatv). We
understand, also, why the Works and Days opens with a long
discourse on Eight (Dike). In the very first lines, too, we
encounter the image of the wheel. The Muses are to sing of
Zeus, through whom mortal men become illustrious or obscure ;
' easily he lifts them up to strength, and then, when they are
strong, he casts them down ; easily he causes the light of one
that shines to wane, and another to wax from obscurity/ 4

1 Hippodamus the Pythagorean, ap. Stob. Flor. 98, 71 : T&rra /ifr &v T&
0?ar& &' fodiyicap $z5<rt0$ e^ ftTafio\ats KafovSetTat . . . rd ptr fab Qtotos eh rd

&7}\ov ai/ras rep/iarfl^/xeya /cai TaXcp <f/c roy a8/j\ov h TO Qvar&f iTUFVppx6ftcpa t
a]ULQt{3$ yey^a-tos Kal dyra-ro^ffei <$apas, xtfjcXoy at/rasfras <brarodib&ras. Com-
pare the mystical passage in Plato, Rep. 546 A ff. : o# ft&vov tjw"i$
ctAXa /ecu

ivavria's, jcrX.

2 See J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 423.

3 Porph. de abst. iii. 2? : fufttl*&f*e9* TO ^pwov^ 7^0$ . . .

Af/ci| ti)fiKct t 5rt ^PKQVPTQ Ttji IK yijs Kapr$' K&PTTQI? y&p
Upovpa. a^ro/tdTij iroXX^ rt Kal &ej>0ovw (Hes. Erga, 117).
Mrga t 3: &v re Sla pporol &^5pes o/iws &4>a.roi Te ^OTO! Te . . .
f>a i*v yhp jSpcdft, pta. Be fiptdorra

ei mi &$KJ\QV

Ar. Lys. 772 : rA 3* fatprepa wtprepa Brftrei Zcfc u^^Spc/i^T^s. Horai. Carm. L
34, 12 : ualei ima summis muiare tt in-signem attmu&t dens cfcscwra proment.

168 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Dike is the Hora, the Season, who brings wealth ; her sisters
are Eunomia (Law-abidingness), and Eirene (Peace), who was
represented in art, carrying the infant Wealth (Ploutos) In her
arms. Their mother is Themis. 1 Wealth must not be snatched
from another by robbery ; it is much better and more abiding
when it Is given of God, and comes in its duly appointed season
(icara /caipov) in the circle of the year. 2

This primitive correspondence between the ordered process
of the year bringing fruits, and the appointed path of c season-
able works ' (&pia, epya) which those fruits reward, helps to ex-
plain why the wheel of Time Is also the wheel of Eight, c Time,
In the length of his unnumbered years, gives birth to all things
out of the darkness, and. when they have come into the light,
hides them again/ 3 And so, too, there is a turn of the wheel

1 Hesiod. Theog. 901 ; Pind. OL xiii. 6 : h rf jap EiWj^a valet Kaffiyvijrai
re. . , . Atica. /ecu oftbrpairos Efptf**, racial avSpdcri ir\o&rov. Bgk. 3 Frag.
Adesp. HO, the Moirai are invoked to conduct flunomia, Dike, and Eirene
to the city. Cretan 'Hymn of the Konretes' (Brit. Sch. Annual, xv.

p. 357 ff.):

/cat j

Trdvra r* dypf

a ^IXoXjSoj Etptfva.

For this hymn, see J. E. Harrison, Themis, especially the concluding
chapter on Themis.
3 Hesiod, Srga, 320 :

XprjfjL&ra 5' ofy d/jra/crd, QeMora. iro\\bv CLf
ei yap rts Kol -^pal fity i^yav SXjSoy IX^rac .
pta Si fMv jj^Lvpovffi deot, /j.iv$8ovfft
a,vepi T<, iravpov

Solon, frag. 13 (Bgk 4 ) 9: irXourov 8* S? pev 5wd-t &ol vapayiyyeraL avbpl
ifiweSos . . . o3 5' &>5p? litrlwrw b<$ Sftos, ov /card K6fffiov tyxercu.
Tkeognu t 197 : xp^a . . . kibdev xa.1 aiiy StK-g . . . KappAvifiov, contrasted with
d5K? -rapd tccupdv. JBacch. xiv, 50-6*4, Dike, JZunomia, and Themis give
wealth ; Hybris, which snatches it from another, brings destruction. The
use of Kotp&s, to mean 'due measure,' and Kara, K(upfo as synonymous with
flMTplw, goes back to this association of Right with Time. Iambi. Vit. PytJi.
182 (D.J?. F. 2 p. 284): trupwrap^Trea'tfai rg roO /ctupov tfttiffe i rfy re foofjLafoft&Tjv
Sspav Kal rd Tpdwov xal rd dpfjidrrov. For Time and Justice see W. Headlain?
Journ. of Phtfal* xxx. p. 290 ff. Dike is daughter of Chronos (Eur. frag.
223 K.).
3 Soph. Ajax t 646 ;

CL frtavrfa in Plato, Cratylus, 410 1>; rb yap TO, 4>v6^va, Kal ra

? ^>wsf Kal atJro ly saury l^era^otf , . . o* ^F IviavrSv, 8rt tv

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 169

that abases pride. Ajax, in the speech which opens with the
above words, goes OB to acknowledge this necessity of abase-
ment. 'Even things dread and powerful yield to dignities
(n/iaw) : the snowy Winter gives place to fruitful Summer ;
Night's weary round makes room for Day, with her white steeds,
to kindle light. . . . And shall not I also learn to curb my
pride 1 ' i

In the age of the Sophists, when controversial writings on
the subject of politics began to appear, the disputants were
eager to claim the authority of Nature for the particular form
of government they were upholding. Several traces of one
such treatise survive in Euripides. 2 The author bases the rule
of justice, or equality, among men on the equality observed in
Nature's course. Thus, Jocasta in the Phoenissae 3 argues with
Eteocles :

* Equality is what is nakmally lawful for mankind : the more

ot & TOS, &ri trdfct. See my note on t Hermes, Pan, Logos,' Ckuncal
Quarterly , ill* p. 282. Kauck 2 , frag* adesp, 483 : opw y&p
&yov<rav et$ sp&$ pportis. Dietericfa, Abraxas, 96 : das ist ein ur
Zwammenhang zwiscken Schidfaal, jRecht,
1 Ajctx, 669 : /cat yap T& Setya jcal r& jf

Xf ifKQTr&Xtj} <pyyo$ Tjf

TTCtfS OV yPU&&fLff&CL

Hote the references to Time in the preceding and following chorases,
especially I. 711 : Sfofua, (Themis) cfooplg, fftjtw luytffTQ'jrdrff o

2 See F. Dfimmler, Prolegomma zu Platans Staa 9 Basel, 1891.
3

t 5* aid -

3* d^yyh jSX^^apor ^X/ow re
rbv $VLO.&ffiQy

ical rf

So again In tlie Suppliants, 406, the principle of democracy is derived from
the heavenly order (Diimmler, op* eft. p. 13} :

170 FEOM BEMGIOIST TO PHILOSOPHY

and the less are in eternal enmity, and herald the day of hatred.
Equality it is, that ordained for man measure, and the divisions
of weight, and the distinctions of number. Equal, on thek
yearly course, move the rayless eye of night and the light of the
sun, and neither of them grudges the victory of the other. So
the sunlight and the night are the servants of men ; and can
you not bear to hold an equal place with your brother, and
allow him an equal share ? *

96. Heaven-worship

From the seasonal round of summer and winter, it is an easy
step to the worship of the heavenly bodies, whose rhythmical
revolution numbers the circuit of the years. Among many
peoples, this shift has occurred when, first, the monthly waxing
and waning of the moon, and, later, the annual periodicity of
the sun, came to be regarded as sympathetically linked with
the growth and decay of vegetation. Sunshine was, perhaps, at
first regarded as a casual and capricious meteoric phenomenon,
like the clouds and rain which interrupt it ; the one, like the
other, needing to be specially induced by magical ceremonies.
But, with the .first occurrence of a vague notion that the fruits
of the earth, on which man's life depends, were not solely the
offspring of earth herself, fertilised by the rains of heaven, but
mysteriously connected with the periodic phases of the moon
and with the waxing of the sun's power in summer and its
waning in winter, moon and sun must become religious objects,
and the old divisions of time, the seasons or Hours, will be
worshipped with them as the givers of life and fertility. 1

Sophocles compares the turning wheel of human destiny to
the waxing and waning of the Moon, which can never stay in
one form, but grows out of darkness to the full, and then melts
away and returns to nothingness. 2 And again, the Women of

1 The seasonal year being probably older than the solar or even the
lunar calendar, the Horai would naturally be prominent before the moon
and the sun were worshipped as the measurers of time and the givers of
life. For the sequence of calendars seasonal year, moon year, sun year,
see Payne, History of the New World called America, i 474 ffl

2 Frag. 787 N 2 : dXX ofytds del wfofios eV rvicvf Beov

T PX$ KVK\lTOt

THE MYSTICAL TBADITION 171

TracMs sing to Deianeira, how 'the son of Kronos has not
appointed to mortal men a lot free from pain, but sorrow and
joy come round to all, as the Bear moves In his circling paths.
Nothing abides in one stay for men ; not starry night, nor
calamities ; no, nor yet wealth ; in a moment it is gone, and
another has his turn of gladness or of loss/ 1 These images are
not mere poetical comparisons, but look back to tie old belief
that the fate of man is sympathetically related to the circling
lights of heaven. Any attentive reader of Pindar's most Orphic
ode, the second Olympian, will see how the whole movement
of its thought follows the turning wheel of Destiny (Motto) and
Justice (Dike). 2 He will notice, too, the recurrence of Time,
the Father of all things Xpoyo? 6 irai/row varyjp (1. 19). If he
is also alive to Pindar's cryptic methods-~one of those en-
lightened ones, to whom the poet's words are to have a voice 3
he will observe that Zeus is addressed as the 4 son of Kronos
and Ehea/ and detect that these names signify Time and JPZotir. 4
The wheel of Time, in which all things flow and nothing abides,
is the same as the wheel of Eight (Dike).

dXX' dff^Xou vp&rav Ifpxeneu
rpbronra xaXXtfroucra xat v\7jpov

Xwra^Tep afrrip

[Hippoer.] de Victu, i. 5 (after Heracleitns) : %/>c? & rdmi ml Ma
a*ffp&TOKi &>w ml Kan* a/MifibfLeva, ty&w ml efyp6rq M T^
t\&Xi<rroy s ws ffeMpij Ivl rb PJKUFTW KO! ^Xdxtffrw, <:0frrws>
fuuepbrarov xal ppaxtra.. vdwra radra Kal ti raj/rd, ^os Z^pl,
^xo$ *A&3, <r/c6ros ZypfL <$HXT$ Kara & ;at rdSe Kfia-e, rZavv *
X&PW. . . . Selene is addressed as 'Aw&ym, Mmpa, and Aj, Onh. ffymm,
Abel, p. 292, 1. 49.

1 Track* 125 : ivaXjTjra y&p ov5 5 d xebra

H&ei Tap o#r' at&Xa | y^ Pp<rrffur o$re je^pes | ofrc -rXoyrof, dXX*
r<? 5' Mpxcrat \ xalpetv re KCU ffrtpeffBcu* Herod i. 207 : M$e,
&v0pwinqt(*}v tcrrl T/nry/tdTWF, ire/M^p^jOcwf SI oik ^ aid ro^y afroi/s
(wheel of TiJ^??}.

IJ Note e.g. tlie recurrence of Dike in all the Bpodes: 1. 18, ^ 51/c
r; 41, wheel of Moira; 65, &M^ei; 83, Ehadamanthys ; 106,

8 ^owderra trvrcTQifft (I. 93).

4 1. 13, & K/wW irai'Pcaj, an odd form of address, obviously used for the
sake of introducing both names. That Kronos =Chronos is rendered prac-
tically cerfeain by the tautometric responsion, 1. 19, Xp^os 6 veUiw xa-nf/>=
85, r6ffts o Trdyrtav f P^as (rs Kronos). The equation Chronos=KroEO8 is at

172 FROM EELiaiOK TO PHILOSOPHY

97. Too, $ta, and Asha

Dike means ' Way/ l In a passage of the Medea of Euripides,
the word means the * course of Nature/ After Medea's threat
of woman's vengeance upon man, the chorus opens : 2 * The
sacred river-founts flow upwards to their source, and Dike and
all the world are turned backwards/ There is probably an
allusion to the reversal of the revolution of the sky, which
ancient legend connected with the strife of Atreus and Thyestes, 3
and which Plato curiously turns to account in the myth of his
Politi&us* In the Laws, the solemn address to the citizens

least as old as Pherekydes (D.F. F. 2 , ii. p. 507), whose principles were Zen,
Chthonie, and Kronos : Zijva {JUEV rbv aldtpa., "KBoviyv Se ryv yyv, ~Kp6voJ> 5 rbv
Xpbvov . . . tv $ ra yi.yv6p.eva. For the Orphic Time-God and his antiquity
see below, p. 178, note 1, and Eisler, WeUenmantel, ii. chap. iv. especially
p. 378. For "Eihea,=Flow, Plato, Krat. 402 A : rbv "EpaK\eir6i> fJMt So/cw Ko.Bopav
xaXaf drra <ro0d \tyovra, drex^wy TO, M Kpfoov jrai'P&j . . . 6n irdvra %ajp /ecu
oi)5j> ju& (cf. Soph. Track. f loc. tit. fjt^iyaLpoijre . . .)Kaiirorapovpo-$&iretKdfaj>
ra fora Xyet ws 5ts Is rbv aMv VOTCL^V OVK &v fafiatT}*, followed by reference to
the Orphic Okeanos and Tethys. In Olympian ii. the Emmenidaiare e^c&w/iot
(I. 8), because their name means abiding (e/i/^mv), though they dwell by a
river (10), and mortals cannot reckon on unfailing happiness, but divers streams
(poa) of joy and pain flow upon men at different times (dXX6re), and reverse
of sorrow follows upon prosperity at another time (&XX<p xp^). Cf. Isth.
iii. 18 : <d&v te /tvXiySo/i&cus kfttpais &\\' dXXor' &\\a%V. 01. vii. 94 : iv Ik
fu$ fjLQipVXPfow fiXXor' dXXotat dLcu0t<r<roi(riv a^/wxt. [Eur.] frag. 594 N (Kritias,
frag. 18, D.F.V.\ p. 618): djcd^ay r Xpovos irepi y j de^d^ pei/^art TrX^s
$OIT$ rtKTuv aj)ros eavrdv, Stdvpat T' &PKTOL, /crX. Time, as he moves forward,
brings truth to light : o T' QeKiyxjuv fj.&vo$ a\d$iatf er^ru/iov Xp6vos. rb 5
<rd4ap& l&r v&fHTu Karetppaecv, OL x. (xi.) 53. There are other cryptic
and etymological meanings in 01. ii. ; for instance, the strange word ayporfya
(/A^/w^a), I. 60, is used because Q-fipuv is the * hunter * after dpe-Hj and fame ;
cf. Arist. frag. 625 : 'Apera Brjpafjia KdXXtcrrov . . . <rav dypevovres 8foa/uv.

1 This sense is still common in Homer, e.g. Od. 11, 218, avnj dtiy eeri
ftwwi>, *this is the way of mortals.' Plato, Laws, 904 E, brings together
this old use and the later, quoting atiry rot, Sfatj eerl &ev ofOXv^irov poverty
in connection with the Justice which assures that the soul shall be rewarded
according to its deeds, &Kyv . . . ^ ircur&p Suctiv &a0p&>Tws ZraJ;a.v ol rdgavres.

2 410 : &vw irora/jL&v iepuiv x^poi/crt irayatj

xal A'tKa Kal Trdvra ira\w (rrp<f>erai.

Verrall, ad. loc. t says, *5ka, the custom or order of nature/ and compares
Parmenides, frag. 6, Trdvrwv 5 TraXtyr/xwr^s- ^<rrt /c^Xei/^os.

3 Eur. Mectra,) 726. The chorus doubt whether the sun could be turned
backwards, #wros &^/e' iductas. Cf. also Electra's words in the following
scene, 771 : & fool, Akg re wlvO* op&v\ -i}\Q& wore, iroitp rp6wq> S Kal run,
fivfffjLtjj $6vov Krdvet Bi^ffrov vcuSa, fiotiXo/jMt fiaffeip^ where the words GueVrou
rcwSa point the reference to the preceding chorus.

4 268 E ff.; rb yap iray r65e rbre fjv a^rds 6 fobs ervfiirodiiyci TOpv6fJLVov

THE MYSTICAL TBADITIOB" 173

opens with the words : * God, as the ancient doctrine also has
it, containing the beginning and end and middle of all things
that are, moves straight upon his revolving journey in the
course of Nature. And always attendant upon him is Dike, the
avenger of all negligence of the divine law, after whom follows
closely, in orderly and humble fashion, whosoever desires that
it shall be well with Mm/ l The next paragraph opens thus :
* What, then, is that conduct which is pleasing to God and
follows after him 1 * And the answer is : the conduct which
observes measure, and therefore is like God, who is to ut> the
Measure of all things.

In these passages, the notion of Dike seems to come very

elf ra.va.yrla, />() erat, In the
former age of Kronos, men lived justly, without war or strife, or devouring
one another (271 E, from Hesiod, Ergo*, 276 : Zens gave men Son?, that they
should not eat each other like beasts), and * the seasons were tempered to
do them no hurt* (TO TWJ> wpujv adrow tfXvrop efflx/xxro, 272 A). The period is
the Great Year, which puts a term to the cycle of reincarnations of souls.
Note also the mention of the Seasons* names in the parallel passage deicrib-
ing the rale of the daemons in the Golden Age of Justice, Law*, 713 E, 6 defa
. . . 7^05 &pet.vov ^fiuy t$lffrq rb riar ocuudrw . . . fipjjvqv re ml alSw Kal
(tryoutav /cat a<j>&oviaif SLKTJS Tape^o/tew. For the reversal of the rotation
of the universe see J. Adam, Republic of Plato, 1902, vol. ii. p. 295 ff.

1 715 E (included by Diels, JIF, 2 , p. 474, among the older Orphic frag-
ments): 6 y^v STJ 0e<ta, &<nrep teal 6 ira\s X^yos, &pxfr Te K l reXevr^ /col
fdffa r&v &VTW a-jr&PTfdv ^%WF, &dciq, xepa/rei Kara ffiffw TecpnropevbpeFQt' rtf
5' del crweir^Tcu AiKti TWF a.voXeiirofJi^ydfp rev $eoi? v&fwv Tt(JUinp6s t rjs 6 fjtp cy5at-
jaor^reiy /tAXw^ ^x<S/teros ffwitceriu rairetF^s Kal KeKOffftaifM^fOf. ... 716 C:
His ofiv $% wpagts <f>i\*j Kai &K&\QV&QS ^cy; Compare Euripides, Troades,
886:

ZeiJs, ctr* dydyicr} $&&<*$ cfrc FOOT
ore"

Cf- [Archytas] Mnllach, Frag. Phil. Or. i, 599: the philosopher Bvrerfo

i rbv &&v KarofaiffBai iced irdrrn T& to T$ ffwrotxeig, Kal rd^ct T& Im'ww
Kal ravrav ray ap/taT5|X(TaF o5^r ^jcxopwrd/ieyot T^ ^^ urar*
' Kal reXeoSpo/uurcu rds dpxas? row yrtpa&t cri/Fa^as re jcai ^riyyo^r
j o ^eds dpxd TC /cal r&o$ Kal ju^<jw ^crrJ ^raJ'TWF TWF jcara 51/caF TC jcaZ r&y
oftfrw. The language refers to the Laws, above quoted,
and to Pkaedms, 246 E, where Zeds, XaiJi'i> trniw^ apfia, vopetierat Smicoff/uSp 1
^rdi^ra xal cxt/AeXc^/Aeyos, followed by the host of Gods and daemons. The
immortals emerge on to the back of the o%u?6j, and are carried round by its
7TfM.$op&. Pg.- Archytas uses icari $IKOV (wepahcffBai} as synonymous with
Plato's jrarct $&w (Tepaimt}. Soph. frag. 226 N 2 : dXX' els ffcto <r*

174 FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

near to the Chinese Tao, 1 a term, which, as we saw, also means
* Way * the daily and yearly revolution of the heavens, and
of the two powers of light and darkness, day and night, summer
and winter, heat and cold. ' It is heaven's Tao or way to give
felicity to the good, and bring misfortune upon the bad/ 2 * The
Tao, or order of the world, represents all that is correct, normal,
or right (ching or twari) in the universe ; it does, indeed, never
deviate from its course. It consequently includes all correct
and righteous dealings of men and spirits, which alone promote
universal happiness and life. All other acts, as they oppose the
Too, are incorrect, abnormal, unnatural/ 3 As in HesiocTs
Works and Days we traced a correspondence between the ordered
course of man's ways and the seasons called Dike,* Eunomia, and
Eir&ne, so among the Chinese, * T*ai~sui is the great year, the
planet Jupiter, whose path in the heavens governs the arrange-
ments of the almanack which is annually published by imperial
authority, and gives the various days suitable for the transactions
of the various business of life. This god thus rules the Tao, or
revolution of the universe, and, as a consequence, the Tao of
human life, which, in order to bestow happiness and prosperity,
must fit in with the universal Too/ 4

When Buddhism was transplanted to China, the Chinese
unhesitatingly identified with their own Tao the Dharma of
Mahayanism. * Dharma, the universal law, embraces the world
in its entirety. It exists for the benefit of all beings, for does not
its chief manifestation, the light of the world, shine for blessing on
all men and all things ? Salvation, which means conformity of life
to the dharma, consequently means in thefirst place manifestation
of universal love, both for men and animals. Indeed, as men and
animals equally are formed of the elements which constitute the

1 See above, 57. 2 Be Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 1910, p. IB.

3 Be Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 1910, p. 45. The Greek would be
etpA SCnjy. Find. OL ii. 17 : rw verpayfl&w tv ft* 9 re Kal nap* Sticar
*lT0%r0j' o } A* X/w5w o T&PTUV mrfyp Secure Q^v gpywv T&.OS. The original
sense of Stiaj remains clear in the compound fr&jcos. Of. Solon, frag. 36
(Bgk. 4 ) ap. AT. Ath. Pol. 12: <rvfJLiwpTVf>d7] ravr* fa iv Slicy xpbva

4 Ibid. p. 114. Cf. Iambi Fft. Pyth. 137 (6 Ilutfa-^pews) jSfos &ray mrtfrajcrcu
fo T$ d*0A(w#0' r< 0e, teal & \6yos oSroy ratfnjs tffrl T

owfotv foBp&Trot dXXo^ wodtv ftyrowTes T& e5 # wapb
. 2 , p. 283)-

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 175

universe itself, animals may become men, and through the human
state be converted into arhats, boddhisattwas and buddhas/ 1

Buddhism takes us to India, where a similar conception was
dominant in religion long before the time of Buddha. It goes
back, indeed, in all probability to a time before the separation
of the Indian and Iranian stocks, for it is found both in the
Veda and in the Persian Avesta, 2 The Vedic name for it is
Rta ; the Persian equivalent is AsJia. The processes, whose
perpetual sameness or regular recurrence give rise to the repre-
sentation of Order, obey Bta 9 or their occurrence is Rta. is The
rivers flow Ria.** " According to Rta the light of the heaven-
born morning has come/* . . . The year is the path of Rta. 9 3
The Gods themselves are born of the Rta or in the Rta ; they
show by their acts that they know, observe and love the jfZto,
In man's activity, the Rta, manifests itself as the moral law.

The sun is called the wheel of JRto ; the ritual and symbolism
of the wheel are closely associated with this conception. The
so-called praying-wheel of Buddhist religion is really an instru-
ment of sympathetic magic, a wheel turned, the way of the
sun, for the purpose of keeping the rotation of the heaven or
of the sun going upon the path of the cosmic order. 4 The wheel
of Fortune, familiar to us, does not symbolise chance or accident,
but the very reverse. The wheel is essentially a symbol of
regular recurrence. It is the wheel of Order and Right, on the
observance of which all prosperity or fortune depends,

When we have traced this conception across Asia from the
furthest east to Persia, we have reached a point at which the
possibility of contact with Greek thought cannot be ruled out
as impossible. Herodotus 5 remarks that the Persians above

1 De Groot, Religion of the Gkitme, 1910, p. 166. Cf. below, p. 182.

2 Maurice Bloomfield, Tk&Rdigion of the Veda, 1908, p. 125 ff. It is held
that the Tel-el- Amarna tablets guarantee for this notion an antiquity of at
least 1600 years B.C.

1 Oldenberg, Veda, p. 196.

4 W. Simpson, The Bwddhist Praying WMd t 1910. Theopompna, ap.
Diog, L. proem. 13, reports that the Magians said that they ' maintained
the order of the world by their invocations, * T& fora rais afrrwv

5 L 139. Herodotus says (ibid.) that the Persian names correspond (in
their meaning) to the nobleness of the individuals who bear them, and tells
us (vL 98) that Arta-xenes means ftya($) d/n$co$. Did he know that Aria-

176 FROM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

all things hate lies, and in the next place debts, because they
bring with them lying and fraud, which are punished by the
God of Light with leprosy. The Avesta confirms the truth of
this statement. Lying and Ahriman are so closely allied that
not only are the demons always treated as liars, because they
try to deceive the world with false doctrine, but falsity itself
is a work of the devil. Further, * the practical side of veracity
is Justice, whose celestial representative is the Asha. Justice
is the rule of the world's life, as Asha is the principle of all well-
ordered existence, and the establishment or accomplishment
of justice is the end of the evolution of the universe/ 1

Whether or not we accept the hypothesis of direct influence
from Persia on the Ionian Greeks in the sixth century, any
student of Orphic and Pythagorean thought cannot fail to see
that the similarities between it and Persian religion are so close
as to warrant our regarding them as expressions of the same
view of life, and using the one system to interpret the other.
The characteristic preoccupation of Pythagoreanism with
astronomy and the contemplation ($eo>pta) of the heavens,
becomes transparently clear, when we see it in the light of
notions like Tao, Rta, and Asha.

We cannot here follow further the various developments of
the wheel of Time, Fate, and Justice in Greek religious repre-
sentation.; 2 but we may note that in philosophy this notion of
periodicity has an important consequence. It excludes the
possibility of conceiving the process of change and evolution
as a progress in a straight line, a history which never repeats
itself. Onwards from Anaximander, who declares that all that
comes into being must pay the penalty of injustice by perishing
again, according to the order of time (tcara rrjv rov xpovov rdjtv)
and the ordinance of destiny, Greek philosophers are haunted

is the same as Asha^rta^ It seems possible that, if he could discuss the
derivation of names, his informants might have explained the idea.

1 Chantepie de la Saussaye, Manuel d'hi&oire des religions, Paris, 1904,
p, 467. Porph. Vit. Pyth. 41 : roiavra Trapr/vet (Hv8ay6pa$) /ttXt<rra te

TQI>S

eotK& at r6 /xfr ff&fJM (jxffrt, TTJV $ ^u%^j> dAtyflefg, Plut. Is. et 0$. 370, renders
Asha-Arta by dX^cta.
2 See Lobeck: Aglaoph. 798 ff. ; Dieterich, Nekyia, 88.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 177

by the Idea of the periodic growth, culmination, and destruction
of the world and all that It contains. They thought of the life
of the universe as following the same curve as the life of an
animal birth, growth, maturity., decay, and death, to be
followed by rebirth, and the same repeated round.

98. Orphic revival of Heaven-worship

The Orphic reformation of Dionyslac religion seeing to have
meant, among other things, the revival of the primitive worship
of the heavenly bodies, and especially of the Sim. Orpheus
is said to have honoured Helios instead of Dionysus, ' and rising
early in the morning he climbed the mountain called Pangaion,
and waited for the rising of the Sun/ i That the worship of the
heavenly measurers of time had belonged to an early phase of
religion in Greece Is probable, and Plato seems to preserve the
tradition of it. Socrates In the Kratylm (397 c) suspects that
e the first men in Hellas recognised only those Gods who are
now recognised by many other nations sun, moon, earth, stars,
and sky/ 2 e The Persians/ says Herodotus (i. 131), & do not
erect Images, temples, or altars ; indeed, they charge those who
do so with folly, because, I suppose, they do not, like the Greeks,
think that the Gods are of human shape. Their custom Is to
go up on to the mountain-tops and sacrifice, and they give the
name of Zeus to the whole circle of the sky/ When Xeno-
phanes, the satirist, took that step, which we have described in
a previous chapter, of deliberately wiping out the figures of the
anthropomorphic Gods, he too went back to an earlier phase of
religion which had preceded those too clear-cut human figures.
We are told of him that * he looked at the whole sky 3 and de-
clared that the One is, namely God/ 3 He disinterred, as it
were, that older nature-worship, in which the circle of the sky

1 Eratosth. Catast. xxiv, Gl J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 461 ;
T/temis, p. 465; Boscher, Lex. s,v. 'Orpheus.*

2 Cf. also Laws, 885 E, where the firsfe Gods whose existence is assarted
are 737 Kal ^Xios Arr/xt re rh, fftifivavTa teal ri TWF &pp fiuurejrmryuix/Lt&'
ofirws, Iwavrots re icai papl da&ifpf&a ; and it is implied that all
recognise these as divine.

3 Arist. MeL A v. 986 ; fe T&F ^Xo*' a&parfo dirojSX^as rb &> cbal tjnprt

178 FBOM EELIGION" TO PHILOSOPHY

and the heavenly bodies had ruled the destinies of man. The
Orphics seem to have stood for a similar revival of heaven-
worship. The ' Khapsodic Theogony/ which our best authorities
now agree to date from before the Persian wars, 1 starts, like
Pherekydes, from the divinity of Endless Time.

99. The heavenly origin and fall of the Soul

Whether or not this revival was occasioned by Oriental
influence, it is easy to see how well it agrees with the doctrines
characteristic of Orphism. 2 The wheel of birth or becoming
is now governed by the circling of the starry heaven. From
the stars the soul of man is believed to have fallen into the prison
of this earthy body, sinking from the upper region of fire and
light into the misty darkness of this ' roofed-in cave/ 3 The
fall is ascribed to some original sin, which entailed expulsion
from the purity and perfection of divine existence, and has to
be expiated by life on earth and by purgation in the underworld.
Caught in the wheel of birth, the soul passes through the forms
of man and beast and plant. But the cycle, instead of going
on for ever, is terminated by the limit of the Great Year of
ten thousand solar years ; at the end of this period, the soul
may escape and fly aloft to the fiery heaven whence it came,
regaining perfection and divinity. Then a new Great Year
begins (for the cycle of Time is endless), and a new world is
born, to pass away in its season, and give place to another. 4

When we analyse this conception, it becomes clear that the
cycle of the Great Year, which must have an astral origin, 5 has

1 This date for this Orphic Theogony (Abel, frag. 48 ff. D.F. F. 2 , p. 476)
was held by Lobeck, and is now accepted by Diels, Gomperz, Kern, Gruppe,
and Eisler; see Eisler, Orpheus, the Fisher (Third Internat. Congress for
the History of Religions, Oxford), who discusses its affinities to Iranian
Zrranism, especially the similarity of xp6yoy dyjpaTos to Zrvan aJcarana
(endless time). For the detailed statement of the theory of Persian
influence, see his WeUenmantd, vol. ii.

2 For references see Gruppe, Griech. Myth. u. Rdig. pp. 1028 ff.

3 Emped. frag. 120 ; Eisler, Weltenmantel, ii. p, 618.

4 Eudem. Pky*> 51 (SimpL Phys. 732, 26) : 6 k afobs x/wWj icbrepov ytyve-
rcu . . . ^ o#, faopfyreiev &y rut . . . et d TVS Trtcrre&rae row JlvBayapclois,

ftrw, leal rd dAAa Tdrra o/Mtus ^t, /cat rbv xpfow etiXoytv Ian rlv aMv elvat.
6 Eisler, Weltenmantdt ii. 502.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION

been superimposed upon the old cycle of reincarnation. That
primitive belief belonged to earth, not to heaven : it taught
the revolution of all life or soul in man and nature* passing in
an endless round from the underworld into the light of day, and
back again. There was no hope or possibility of any release ;
indeed, such an idea would have no meaning, since the individual
soul did not persist after death, but was reabsorbed in the one
life of all things. No part or fragment of this life had any
separate persistence. It had not come from the aether, and
could not fly off thither ; it came from earth, and returned to
earth again. In the later doctrine, a series of such periods is
fitted into a larger period or Great Year, based upon astro-
nomical theories, probably of Babylonian origin, of the length
of time required for all the heavenly bodies, in their various
revolutions, to come back to the same relative positions. 1 The
focus is thus shifted from the annual recurrence of earthly life
to the periodicity of the stars ; and with this change goes the
doctrine that, while the body is of earth, the soul conies from
the starry sky and claims to be of heavenly descent, 2

This contrast brings out what seems to be the essential differ-
ence between the ' Dionysiac J view of immortality (as we may
call it) and the Orphic. Orphism is focused on the individual
soul, its heavenly origin and immutable nature, and its persis-
tence, as an individual, throughout the round of incarnations.
It is * an exile from God and a wanderer * ; 3 and it is reunited
with God 5 and with other souls, only after its final escape at the
end of the Great Year. Hence, the Orphic is preoccupied with
the salvation, by purifying rites, of Ms individual soul.

This insistence on the individual soul, perhaps, gives us the

1 See W. Sclmltz, Pythagoras . HerdWt* 1005, P- 68. Plato, Tmaeui,
39 D: Bye T&OT Ap
TF &TW re/K&to? ret

TOM teal &itolwt . f

* OrpMc tablet from Petal!*, D.F. F. 2 , ii. p. 480, J. B. Hamaon,

gomena,, 661 ff. :

a Emped. frag. 115: foyte &&&&> wU tofait. Ploimns, Mm, iv. 8. li
*nm$\tj* re dri* ^aproF^crttts v^tor dw rats #ia& & Ama0tf cal
eJr& ^iryif ^c^cr ye**?*** * . - raroSrwr rttpeytfuw B*r*v mi
ol/tctt, xal oi dr'

180 FROM RELIGION" TO PHILOSOPHY

psychological key to the phenomena of Orphism. The cosmic
dualism, with its contrast of the principles of light and darkness,
identified with good and evil, reflects outwards upon the universe
that inner sense of the double nature of man and the war in our
members, which is called the e sense of sin/ It is also the sense
of separation from * God/ which goes with the intense desire for
reunion. We may, perhaps, see the psychological cause of all
this in the development of self-conscious individuality, which
necessarily entails a feeling of isolation from the common life,
and at the same time an increasing conflict between self-assertive
instincts and that part of the common consciousness which
resides in each of us, and is called s conscience/ If this is so,
it is significant that the conflict is represented as between ' body '
and * soul/ To ' body ' are assigned those senses and lusts
whose insurrection destroys the inward harmony. * Soul 5 still
covets the field of the common consciousness, or * conscience * ;
but it has shrunk from being the pervasive soul of the whole
group to being one among an aggregate of individual selves,
weakened by their novel isolation, and always longing for the
old undivided communion.

In the terms of religious representation, this is expressed as
* separation from God/ the loneliness of exile. As the barriers
of individuality close in upon the soul, the old Dionysiac faith,
with its sense of a communion easily and perpetually renewed,
grows fainter, and calls for ever greater efforts, if it is to be
recovered. The Orphic could no longer find a complete satis-
faction in the immediate union with his God in orgiastic ecstasy ;
Ms Way of Bighteousness was a long and painful round of ritual
forms, which easily degenerated into external observances, the
preservation of ceremonial purity, and all the vacant futilities
of ecclesiasticism. We know, too, that the baser sort of
Orphics, in the decline of the movement, believed that the
mere fact of initiation would secure to the believer the some-
what gross enjoyments of Elysium. Such debasements are
common in this type of religion ; but, on the other hand, the
conception of life which lies behind it is full of inspiration to
tite mystical temperament, and the old forms may at any time
be reanimated, when a new prophet arises to rekindle faith, by
means of what seems a profounder and more spiritual inter-

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 181

pretation. Such a prophet was Pythagoras ; the * Pythagorean
Life * was a new Way of Righteousness, which followed the old
tracks, but made it possible for the intellectually enlightened to
travel along them, by substituting a purification by * music *
(philosophy) for the mere ritual washing away of sin. 1

100. Mystical morality

Long and painful as this Way of Righteousness may be, at
least it is a way, and it leads, at the end, to God. It is here
that the morality of the mystic is in sharp contrast with Olym-
pianism. Olympian morality, as we have seen, rested on the
idea of Moim. The type of all offences was going beyond your
allotted province, overstepping its limits (virepjiaaria), trying
to have more than your due share (TrXeoi/efia). Eros and Elpis
are the two fatal passions ; Hybris, the cardinal sin. The whole
conception is static and geometrical ; everything has its limited
field, with bounds that must not be passed. Mystical morality
is totally different ; its fundamental idea is the Way of Righteous-
ness. The cycle of life is, indeed, divided into grades or phases,
but these are not impermeable compartments ; on the contrary,
all life must pass through every phase ; there is a rightful way
that leads through the whole round of existence, and, along
it, life moves from the lowest forms to the highest.

It is easy to see how a philosophy, starting from this stand-
point, must take a different course from a philosophy dominated
by Moira. The properties of the original datum to which it
must cling, will be precisely those which Science progressively
and triumphantly eliminated unity and continuity > Life (soul),
and God.

The mystic conception of Nomos shows a corresponding
contrast with that notion of a dispensation of rigidly exclusive
provinces which we analysed in the first chapter. Aristotle,
when he draws the distinction between the law peculiar to any
given state and that * common law * (KOLVO^ FO/ZO?) which is
* according to nature * and embodies what is naturally right and
wrong, cites Empedocles* declaration that the killing and eating

1 Aristoxenus (D.F. F. 2 , p. 282} ; o! TLvQayopucol Ka&dpv

dtct TTys /wwtjnjs.

182 FROM BELI&ION TO PHILOSOPHY

of tilings that have souls, is not right for some and wrong for
others, but is forbidden by that universal law which pervades
the whole universe. 1 This passage significantly connects the
idea of a Law of Nature with the unity of all Life. Sextus, 2
again, observes that * the schools of Pythagoras and Empedocles
and the Italian philosophy in general teach that we have com-
munity and fellowship (fcowosvla) not only with one another and
with the Gods, but also with irrational animals ; for there is
one spirit, which, like a soul, pervades the whole cosmos and
unites us to them. To Mil them is therefore an act of impiety/
To the mystic, the whole of Nature is bound together in one
society (xotvcovla), of which human communities are rnicrocosmic
parts. 3 All living things are under the universal sway of Dike.

In contrast with this view, the Olympian tradition draws its
fast line, not only between men and Gods, but between human
society and the rest of Nature. As a consequence of this
separation, the rule of Dike is confined to the ordered structure
of the human state. Hesiod tells us that fishes, beasts, and
birds prey upon one another because they have no Dike;
but the son of Kronos gave Dike to man, that he might
not follow their example. 4 The same notion is repeated in
the myth which Plato puts into the mouth of Protagoras. 5
There, Aidds and Dike are the final gift of God to mankind,
who up to that time had lived, scattered and without cities,
at the mercy of the beasts of prey. Two characteristic

. a IS, 2 : &m ydp 3 & ^ajfre^ovrat rt frdvres, $tf<m KOIVOV B[KCLLOV /cal

s 17
Ayet Tepl TOV JUT? KTeivctv r5 fyc^uxop* TQVTO yap a$ rtoi i^kv dltcaiov rtoi 8' ov

rb ply vdvTwv vkfJUjnov Std r' tvp
cd&tpos tycKlw r^rarat Sid r* dirX^TOu aS yrp (Frag. 135}.

2 The text is quoted below, p. 202, note 1. Compare also Pythagoras'
doctrine of Themis, Dike, and Nomoa, and the rule of Law in every part
of the universe, above, p. 54, note 1 ; aud Heracleitus* universal Law
Identified with the Logos, which is the Life of the world, below, p. 191.

* CL Heracleitus, frag. 91 6 : rp^ovrcu yip rdvres ot avBp&iretoi. v6fjiOL M
&&s rou fftiov" Kpa.Tt 7&p To<ro$TQV SKOO-QV 6\i /cat eap/te? ira<rt Kal Ttpvy
Hippocrates, de Victu, 11 (D.F.F. 2 , p. 83).

4 Ergo, 276 : rfotie y&p ArOpfarwi V&HQV $ifra(e "Kpovlwv, tyBfoi JJL& tea

ml dtayots TCTc^j'ots ttretyev dXXifXovy, iwei ov Stiaj iarlv lv a^rots* a.v&p&wQi<rt, &
idtaice Simjv . .

5 Plato, Protag. 320 D ff.

THE MYSTICAL TBADITION 183

opinions are contained in this representation. In the first
place, Law and Eight are held to be peculiar to man, who
lives within Ms ring-fence of custom and convention, wHIe the
rest of Nature is given over to a lawless struggle for existence.
Second, Eight, or Justice, dates only from the formation of
civil communities. In the hands of other sophists, this theory
became a weapon in a general attack upon the validity of all
human morality. ' Justice * was assailed as a mere arbitrary
convention, under which men, originally independent and free
from any restraint, surrendered their natural right of getting
the better of one another (irXeowrfia). 1 The Social Contract
theory marks an age of individualism. This view, moreover,
that Society is an aggregate, arbitrarily formed by the coming
together of independent individuals, is nothing but the equiva-
lent, in political theory, of the physical doctrine of Atomism,
according to which all things are casual aggregates of distinct
atoms, temporarily cohering. The two theories make their
appearance at the same time, and both belong to the scientific
tradition. Plato, who condemned both alike as atheistical and
immoral, devoted the argument of the Republic to the refutation
of political Atomism and the proof that the State is natural,
and, if reconstructed on ideal lines, might embody the same
principle of Justice that rules through every part of the

cosmos.

Before we consider Pythagoreankm, we have first to deal
with Heracleitus. His system of thought is dominated by the
twin conceptions of Time and Mow, Ghfonos and Shea. But the
type of his philosophy is distinct from the Pythagorean. It is
not Orphic, but Dionysiac. It is not inspired by any doctrine
of individual immortality, or of the persistence, through aU
transformations, of a plurality of soul-atoms, fallen from the
heavenly fires. Bather, he goes back to the older notion of the
one continuous and homogeneous Soul, or life, in all things
a perennial stream, on whose surface individual forms are mere

1 Cailicles in Plato's Goiyias, 483; Tfariujymachiis in the MepuUic,
Book i.; and the restatement of his argument by Glanoon, Rep. if. 358 B ft,
especially 369 C : *& TIJV TXeopc^btr, v&a
v6fUj3 $t $[% vapdyertu

184 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

momentary bubbles, bursting and leaving no trace of their
transient existence. 1

101. HERACLEITTJS

In Heraeleitus we see the mystic temperament in violent
reaction against Ionian rationalism and the mechanical tend-
encies of Science. His exalted contempt for 'polymathy*
includes all the characteristic manifestations of the Ionian
spiritthe popular polytheism of Homer, and, equally, the
rationalising critic of that polytheism, Xenophanes ; the * re-
search ' (lo-roplfj) of travellers like Hekataeus ; and physical
science. It has been pointed out that in cosmology and astro-
nomy Heraeleitus was, from the scientific standpoint, actually
behind the Milesians ; manifestly, the science of nature, as they
understood it, was a thing he rejected and despised as radically
on false lines. 2 Any attempt to represent Heraeleitus as con-
tinuing the work of the Milesian School is utterly mistaken.
He is pre-eminently an exponent of the opposed, mystical
tendency, which we have just described ; the older doctrines
characteristic of it are affirmed by him, in undisguised revolt
against rationalising science.

The frame of Ms cosmological scheme is temporal the cycle
of existence, that circle e whose beginning and end are the same *
(frag. 70) ; 3 indeed, he appears to have actually identified Time
with Ms one primary substance. 4 The movement round tMs
circle is not the mechanical motion of body, but the movement
of Life itself of the one, living and divine, soul-substance,
embodied in Fire, wMch perpetually dies into all other trans-
formations and is reborn again. 4 It will soon appear how this
fundamental conception leads Mm to * contradict all those

1 None of Heracleitua 5 obscure utterances about the fate of the soul seem
to me to point to a "belief in personal immortality. Frag. 68 (Byw.) ifaaiffL
ff&rraros $$up ycrMtu seems expressly to deny it. See Rohde, Psyche 3 , ii. 150.

2 Pfleiderer, fferaEU von Ephesus (1886), p. 19 ff. ; Diels, HeraklU von
Ephesos (19Q1), p. vi.

s For the fragments of Heraeleitus I give By water's numbering, which
Professor Burnet also follows in his Early Greek Philosophy.

4 Sext. adv. Math. x. 216: <rw/ta fib oSv IXe&y elvtu rbv xphvov Atvitfft8i)fju>s
Kara rdf 'Hpd/cXetroF* JJ.T} Stctftpcty yap atirbp rov &VTQS teal rov irp&TOV
Cf. 0* Gilbert, Griecft. ReligionspMosophie, Leipzig (1911), p. 60.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 185

principles of mechanical and materialistic explanation which
were already implicit in Anaximander.

We have seen tow, in Anaximander's Olympian cosmology,
the important fact about the order of the world was the separa-
tion of the elements in rigidly defined, spatial provinces ; so
that the mutual invasion of one another's spheres was an act
of unjust aggression. Heracleitus, on the contrary, insists
that they form a permeable cycle of transformations, which,
so far from being rigidly distinct, are perpetually passing one
into another. ' Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the
death of fire ; water lives the death of earth, earth that of
water ' (frag. 25), 1

'As this fragment, and others like it, show, the movement of
becoming or change is the movement of Life. The Dionysiac
mystic holds to the truth that life is not stationary, and that
there is no such thing as that fixed and changeless immortal-
ity which Olympian theology ascribed to its Gods, Life and
Death, Dionysus and Hades, are the same (frag. 127). Whereas
Milesian science interprets the becoming of the elements as
a mere process of mechanical separation (iwo#/*cr*9}, Heracleitus
will have it that all becoming is the becoming of life, namelv
birth ; and, as in the wheel of reincarnation, every birth is, also
and equally, a death. * Mortals are immortals, and immortals
are mortals, the one living the other's death, and dying the
other's life ' (frag. 67). 2 Fire is not ' deathless * (Mavarov), but
'ever-living* (aei&op) ; and it lives by death and rebirth into
all other forms.

Thus, * it is wisdom to confess that all things are one * (frag. 1) ;
' all things come out of one, and one out of all things * (frag. 59).
/We encounter here, as we should expect, the mystical belief
that the One can pass out of itself into the manifold, and yet
retain its oneness/ The secret seemed to Heracleitw to He in
the notion that the continuity of life is not broken by death,
but rather renewed. Death, in feet, is not ' perishing ' ; it
is neither an end nor a dissolution ; the One Life revolves in

1 Cl Arist, cfe <?*. a Corr* 337 a I ; Sib ml rlXXa 3*ra /tero^dXXet e

. . . (to TO, cbrAa ff&funu, fufuerat rty xfcty $apdbr* foot ydp $ $5aro*
y&nprQA Kcd <? d^wjs vvp K<d ir&kw ix rvpfo $5p jwkXcp tp&tJLer repu\y\v0foiu
yfreirar Bta, rb irdXw (dFcyrajLtTreiF.

2 This is the only occurrence of the word atoaroy in the fragments.

186 FROM RELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

an endless circle, and its unity is suet that it cannot be dis-
solved, or broken up into parts, like Anaximander's * Limitless/
Its unity is not that of a mixture, out of which the elemental
forms could come by separation ; it is continuous in substance,
as in time. Heracleitus insists on the unity and continuity of
the one real Being, just as emphatically as Parmenides ; and,
from this point of view, the histories of philosophy are misleading ,
when they set the two systems in polar antagonism. /

From the unity of the real follows the inevitable condem-
nation of the many to comparative unreality or f seeming/
This is the true ground of Heracleitus' contempt for Ionian
science and rationalism. He calls it ' polymathy/ a * learning
of many things/ which * does not teach insight * (frag. 16). Of
what use, he seems to argue, are their various explanations of
natural phenomena ? By what do they explain them ? By
other phenomena of the same order of unreality. Why run
about the world, like Hekataeus, picking up scraps of infor-
mation, and call that ' research ' (or ' science/ iVropwj) 1 You
will come back no wiser than you started. There is only one
truth, and that truth is within you, and in all things around
you. There is one logos, one reason for everything, through-
out * the one cosmos, which is the same for aU ' (frag. 20). Of this
one meaning all particular things are merely symbols ; no one
of them is a complete and independent expression of it ; taken
as such, they are as false as the idols which polytheism mistakes
for individual Gods, ' for they know not what Gods and Heroes
are ' (frag. 126). * Wisdom is one only ; it is willing and un-
willing to be called by the name of Zen * 1 (Life, which is God,
Zeus, frag. 65). 'I searched myself ' (frag. 80) 2 ; for ' it is open
to all men to know themselves and to be wise * (frag. 106). But
they will not find wisdom by running to the ends of the earth,
and trusting to their ' eyes and ears, which are bad witnesses
to men, if they have not souls that understand their language *
(frag. 4). 3 * Nature loves to hide herself ' (frag. 10) ; she hints her

The nominative Zfy was used by Pherekydes (frag. 1), and pro-
bably by Empedocles (=J4r, JD.F. V:\ p. 159, 1. 17). See Eisler, Wdten-
mantel, ii. p. 357.

2 Plot Enn. iv. 8. 1 : 6 'H/nLeXeiroj . . . d/teXijcray <ra5 yjuv roe$rat rbv

yov, (is 6oy foca* vap } afcroft frTttv, <<r7rep K o.l afrrfa ^?rij<ras efye**.

s I understand frag. 49, xp*) V*p *$ ;*Xa TTQ\\W f^ro/ms 0tXo<rf00v* totpat

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 187

one meaning under many forms, wMeli delude tie senses of the
fool ; she is like ' the lord at Delphi, who neither declares plainly,
nor jet conceals, Ms meaimg, but shows It by a sign/ 1 To the
mysticism of all ages, the visible world is a myth, a tale half
true and half false, embodying a logos, the truth which Is

nrm 2

one.

102. Sonl and Logos

What, then, is the one truth, the one reality which runs through
all these manifold transformations ? It is, as before, the divine
soul-substance, phym, only with all the emphasis thrown, not
upon its nature as material filling space, but upon its life, one
and continuous in the round of death and rebirth, which is like
the cycle of * the seasons that bear all things/ 3 It is God, who
is * day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit
and hunger ; only, he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it
is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of
each * (frag. 36). It is also Soul fyvxy)* the principle of life.
' Heracleitus takes soul for Ms first principle, as he identifies
it with the vapour from which he derives all other things, and
further says that it is the least corporeal of things and in cease-

eZ>eu, 'Lovers of Wisdom must know a great many things indeed,* as an
ironical sneer at 'polymaths,' perhaps especially directed at Pytiiagoms,
whose humility led him to call himself not * wise/ but a c lover of wisdom.*
To Heracleitns, convinced that 'wisdom is one 1 (frag. 19), and that lie
possessed it, such hnmility seemed mawkish and hypocritical, wAAwf
Faroes in his language is a term of contempt ; of. frag. 35 : &&jroXof &
nrXela-TW 'Hofaoar* TQVTQV iTrtffravrai irXerra ctf&ac, forty i&plaigr ml
ovx ylytMrKv~ fort 70^ fi%

1 Frag. 11:6 &*a, a$ r0 parT$br iort TO fa AeX^oc?, oftre Xfye efh-e
dX\a ffTjfMlpei. Ct p. 218, note I, for meaning of r%** (ftyio/pr).

2 Salinstins, de Diu tt Jfvndo, Si tfcm Tap xal row m^pm jiWw elrtw,
a-ufsAT&y fv Kal xpw&rw & Q.&T $fca*0/^iw f f i^w $ ical F$W Kporroftfrw.
See Pkto, Krat. 408 A, on derivations of Hermes, Pan, Logos, especially
o Uyoy vay ffifpatvet xal KUKXet x&l Xet del, *tU t&rt SiirXcsw, d\tfWff re
teal fev^f . . . rb p*v dX^s a^row . . . fetor ml <!w abaft ^r TOTS 0es,
rd 5^ ^cv5os JC<TW ^ r<uy roXAws ry fa>Bp&ww m For the antiquity of this
Hermes-Logos doctrine, see ZielimsM, * Hermes nnd die Hermetik, 9 Arch. f.
Mdig. ix. The equation Eeraies= Logos goes back to Theagenes of Rheginm
in the sixth century ; see !>. f. F.*, ii. p- 511.

s Irag, 34 : <Sp | rdbra $4pe*wn. <j>tptv t like * bear/ has a double sense :
(1) 'keep all things moving' in the yearly round, (2) 'bring all things to
birth.*

188 IHOM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

less flow ; and that it is by something in motion that what is
in motion is known ; for he, like the majority, conceived all
that exists to be in motion/ 1

Heracleitus, like the rest, could not conceive the divine Soul
as immaterial ; it is only ' the least corporeal of things ' ; and
its appropriate vehicle is Fire, the element which is e ever-living '
and ever-moving. Here again, the argument we put forward
about the 'Air"* of Anaximenes (p. 149) holds of the Fire of
Heracleitus. Visible flame fire as a natural object is only one
of many forms in the sense world, and, as such, is on a level
with water, air, and earth ; fire dies into air, just as air dies into
water, or water into earth. It is only one embodiment of a
substance which must, in some way, be other than it, since that
substance persists the same through all embodiments and
transformations. Fire is considered primary, only because its
mobile nature seems nearest to the moving force of life, and to
be its most transparent medium. The soul-substance itself is
a sort of metaphysical Fire, composed of the supernatural,
daemonic mana of fire, the least corporeal or most * spiritual '
form of matter, which can be identified with the force of life.

What is really constant, throughout all the transformations, is
Logos, which, in one of its senses, means the proportion of equiva-
lence. Every transformation is an exchange : * all things are
an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for
gold, and gold for wares * (frag. 22). That is to say, the ' measure '
or value remains constant, though the form assumed is different.
When earth becomes liquid sea, e it is measured by the same
tale as before it became earth * (frag. 23). The ever-living Fire
is described as c with measures kindling and with measures
going out ' (frag. 20).

103. The Way of Justice

This maintenance of measure, or constancy of proportion,
is the principle of Justice, and it is important as bringing out
another contrast between Heracleitus and Anaximander. To
Anaximander, as we have seen, Justice meant the keeping of
bounds : Dike, for Mm, is not the ' Way/ but the barrier, or the

1 Arist. de anim. a 2, 405 a 25.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 189

avenging power who guards the frontiers of Moira. Hera-

cleitus takes the opposite view : he identifies Justice precisely
with the living power which owns no barriers between the
elemental regions, but passes, on its ordered course, through
every phase and form. The doctrine is preserved for us in the
Kralylus of Plato (412 c). Discussing the derivation of St/caiov
(just), Socrates says that the school of thinkers who hold that
all things are in motion, say that there is something which
passes through the whole universe, and causes all things to come
into existence. It is the swiftest and subtlest of things :
nothing can keep it out, and it treats other things as if they
were stationary. Since, then, it governs all things, passing
through (Siaiov) thern^ it is rightly called * just * (Si(/e)cuov)*

Socrates complains that, to further questioning as to the nature
of Justice, he could only get conflicting answers. One would
reply that Justice is the Sun ; for he alone * passing through and
burning* (Sialovra /cal /cdovra? i.e. Bta-Ka-tov) governs all
things. Another, says, it is Fire ; another, the Heat that is in
Fire. 1 Another laughs at this, and says, with Anaxagoras, that
Justice is Mind ; for Mind has absolute mastery, and mixes with
nothing, and orders all things, and passes through all things.

It is evident that the successors of Heracleitus were puzzled
by their master's famous obscurity, and caught at various ex-
planations. In so doing, they introduced new distinctions
which were becoming obvious to them, but were foreign to the
mystical thought of Heracleitus. To him, the living Fire, which,
through all the cycle of its transformations, preserved its
measures, actually was Reason (another meaning of Logos) and
the principle of Justice. Its chief embodiment was the Sun,
who * will not overstep his measures, or the Spirits of Vengeance,
the ministers of Justice, would find him out * (frag. 29). Later
writers, as we should expect, identify this Justice with Destiny.
e The all is finite, and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is
consumed again by fire, alternately, through all eternity, in certain
cycles. This happens according to Fate (scad'

1 A material way of expressing what I have called the mama, or daemon
of the fire. It shows that this fiermesa, or ipirit of the fire, was half
distinguished from visible flame.

2 L. Diog. ix. 8.

190 FROM BELIGIOST TO PHILOSOPHY

Theophtastus adds, * He lays down a certain order (raf^) and
a determined time for the changing of the world s according to
a certain fated necessity/ l But, in Heracleitus* own time, the
principle of Dike, as he understood it, was in opposition to the
principle of Moira or Destiny, as understood by Ionian science.
His divine Fire is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life.

104. The Ear mony of Opposites

When once we understand that Justice is the Way of Life,
and also the force that moves along that way and owns no
barriers, the doctrine of the harmony of opposites falls into
line, as another contradiction of Anaximander's view. Anaxi-
mander held that all individual existence is unjust, because it
results from the mixing of the elements which ought to be
distinct, and can only combine by invading each other's pro-
vinces. The penalty is paid, and the reign of Moira restored,
by death or dissolution. Heracleitus convicts him out of his
own mouth. You admit, he seems to say, that * War (HoXe/ios:)
is the father of all things * (frag. 44), and yet you condemn the
parent of all life as unjust. The end of warfare would be the
end of life itself. c Homer was wrong when he said : " Would
that Strife might perish from among Gods and men ! " He did
not see that he was praying for the destruction of everything ;
for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away ' (frag. 43).
Death is not dissolution, but rebirth ; so, war is not destruction,
but regeneration. * War is common to all, and Strife is Justice,
and all things come into being through Strife/ 2 Strife is Justice ;
if it were not for these acts of * injustice/ as you call them, men
would not have known the name of Justice. 3 Justice is not
the separation of opposites, but their meeting in attunement
or * harmony/ Without opposition there were no agreement.
* What is at variance agrees with itself. It is the attunement

1 Theophr. ap. Simpl. Phys. 6 r 24, 4 D : iroisi 8 Kai raiv TIV& Kal

WpttT/A&OJ' T7JS TOU /c6<T/iOU /tCTajSoX^T JCttT< TWO. ifJLapfJL4vi}V CLVayKIJV.

2 Frag. 62 ; etS&ai 8t xpTj rbv T&Xeftov I&VTO. uv6v f Kal Atxy* *E/w /col yiyvb-
peya irdyra KILT* $$HV. . . .

* Frag. 60 : A!/o?s ftyo/JLa, O$K &v fy$e<rav t el raura JJLTJ ^p. I agree with Burnet
(J2.O.P. 2 , p. 151, note 5) that ravra. means *all kinds of injustice*; but I
think he especially meant what Anaximander called * injustice,' as Burnet
seems to recognise (pp. 158, 160).

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 191

of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre ' (frag. 45).
The give and take between the elements, then, without which
nothing can come into being, is an ' injustice ' that is also the
very essence of justice, a war that is peace not the peace of
changeless, * immortal * stagnation, but the peace of * harmony/
that hidden attunement of opposite tensions, which is better
than any that appears to the senses (frag. 47).

105. The Common Reason

This Justice or Harmony, again, is the Logos, the Spirit of
Life, observing measure, but passing al barriers. It is the
divine soul-substance, whose life consists in movement and
change. It is also the one divine Law, the law of Nature (physu),
which is the Will of God. * It is Law (nomos) to obey the will
of One * (frag. 110). This is true for the universe, no less than for
human society ; it is common (fwo?) to all things. * Those
who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common
to all, as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly.
For all human laws are fed by the one divine law. It prevails
as much as it will, and suffices for al things with something to
spare * (frag. 91 6). * So we must follow what is common ; yet
the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own * (frag. 92).
' It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep. The waking
have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into
a world of his own * (frag. 94, 95).

When we take these sayings in conjunction, we are tempted
to say that (strange as it may seem) Heracleitus had all but
divined what this book is intended to prove that physu is,
ultimately and in origin, a representation of the social conscious-
ness. At any rate, our theory could hardly have a stronger
confirmation than a system which identifies the one continuous
soul-substance, or nature of things, not only with Justice and
Law, but with that e common world * or * common reason *
which is accessible to all and present in all, if only their eyes
are open to perceive it, and they do not turn aside, as the many
do, to slumber each in his individual world of private opinion
or * seeming/ Heracleitus comes as near to describing the
social consciousness, as was possible for a man whose intellectual

192 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

apparatus was not yet refined enough, to enable Mm to dis-
tinguish it from a material continuum, and who still thought,
as theologians have thought before and since, that the social
consciousness, as the source of morality, was the will of God.

Further, it was Heracleitus* respect for the common con-
sciousness that led him to seek true wisdom in the most marvel-
lous product of its collective activity, language. He and his
followers, as we may see from Plato's Kratylus, constantly
appealed to words as embodying the nature of things, because
he saw in language an expression of that common wisdom
which is in all men, and thought that, as a collective product,
it might be free from, or at least only partly obscured by, the
false private opinions of individuals. The Logos is revealed in
speech. 1 The structure of man's speech reflects the structure
of the world ; more, it is an embodiment or representation of
it. The Logos is contained and immanent in it, as one meaning
may be contained in many outwardly different symbols. When
Heracleitus says that the Wise, which is One only, ' is willing
and unwilling to be called by the name of Z%n ' (Zeus, Life),
we are to understand that it is willing to be so called, because
that name reveals some of the truth about it ; unwilling, because
it is only some of the truth that is revealed, and more is con-
cealed. Language, like the visible world, is a manifold, and
so half unreal and false ; 2 yet, for those who have ears, the
one truth lives through all its varied forms.

We have dealt with Heracleitus at some length, because he
has been so frequently misunderstood by interpreters who did

1 The modern interpreters of the Kratylus who imagine that these
mystical interpretations of names are simply bad attempts at philological
derivation oi one word from another, are utterly at fault. Taken as such,
they are too obviously false and ridiculous for any sane person, however
innocent of philology, to mistake them for derivations. The point that
matters In mystical philology is what significant elements the name
contains ; the historical question, how they came to be there, is irrelevant
and never considered. To the mystic the * derivation ' of the name Nero is
not of the smallest account, nor does he inquire into it ; what matters is
that the number value of the letters (no matter how they came there) adds
tip to the number of the Beast For the number-mysticism of Eeracleitus*
^os-doctrine see Eisler, Wdtenmantd, ii. 694 ff.

2 Plato, Krat. 408 c : otaP $TI 6 Myos rb XLav <nujutb*t xa.1 Kw\ei Ka.1 vo\el
de, Kai ecrrt &7rXovs

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 193

not know that the mystical representation of is the key

to his famous obscurities, and supposed that he was working
on the same lines as the Milesians, One further point remains.
His insistence, in the truly mystical spirit, on the unity and
continuity of all Life seems, at first sight, inconsistent with Ms
personal attitude of solitary disdain towards his fellow-men.
Are we justified in classing him with Pythagoras, the founder
of a community and preacher of the common life ?

After what has been said of Heracleitus' respect for the
common consciousness, we need not be misled by his contempt
for the mass of mankind, whom he condemned precisely because
they slumbered, and could not wake to the wisdom that was in
them. All mystics have fled from the world to find their own
souls, as Jesus went into the wilderness, and Buddha into the
jungle. 1 Some, when they have found themselves, can stand
alone, in fiery freedom of spirit, and despise their folowers far
more than their opponents. Such were Heracleitus and Fried-
rich Nietzsche ; for the author of Beyond Good and Evil, more
than any other modern man, could understand the philosopher
who said that * Good and El are one/ and know the temper in
which, instead of founding a church or publishing Ms book,
Heracleitus dedicated the single copy of his Logos in the temple
of Ephesian Artemis, careless whether the * asses who prefer
straw to gold/ went there to drink its wisdom, or quenched
their thirst elsewhere. 2 Pythagoras, to whom we turn next,
was a preacher as well as a prophet 3 and, like Jesus and Buddha,
must needs have disciples, and cannot leave the world to go
its own way unenlightened. These, when they have discovered
the truth by searching themselves, will not find peace in a
hermitage, but are driven to externalise the common life in a
monastic church.

1 Porph. de abst> i. 36 : o$rf yap xal rwr wp&ffBfp &mifopj& irX/a
ni^70/>clwj' re KO! <ro0F, SF o! JUP r& ^pij/t&rara %p!a jrar^nw, ol $% (e,g.
Apolionius of Tyana) jcol rwr n"6Xew T& fcpd Ked T& 2X<n?

f The successors of Heracleltus, satirised by Plato (TkemeL 179 z f),
refused to be taught by one another, but * sprang up like mushrooms, 1 each
claiming a private inspiration, and denying that any of the others knew
anything at all.

194 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

106. PYTHAGORAS

The School of Pythagoras, in our opinion, represents the
main current of that mystical tradition which we have set in
contrast with the scientific tendency. The terms e mystical *
and ( scientific/ which have been chosen in default of better,
are, of course, not to be understood as if we supposed that all
the philosophers we class as mystic were unscientific. The fact
that we regard Parmenides, the discoverer of Logic, as an off-
shoot of Pythagoreanism, and Plato himself as finding in the
Italian philosophy the chief source of his inspiration, will be
enough to refute such a misunderstanding. Moreover, the
Pythagorean School itself developed a scientific doctrine closely
resembling the Milesian Atomism; and Empedocles, again,
attempted to combine the two types of philosophy.

What we do hope to establish is that the philosophy of the
western Greek colonies, however much its individual thinkers
may be influenced by the Milesians and their followers in the
East, however far they may severally go to join hands with

* science/ has at its root a different and opposed view of life,
a different type of religion, and, consequently, a different con-
ceptual scheme of the nature of things, which lies behind all its
manifestations, and is the point of departure which they all
have in common. What this was, we have already tried at some
length to describe. It was that type of religion, centred in Greece
round the figure of Dionysus, which has some claim to be called
the only form of religion that possesses the secret of vitality, just
because it is, at bottom, the religion of the Life of earth and man,
the life which, though it dies, is perpetually reborn. As if because
its faith has been rooted in this life, mystical religion has itself
been reborn a thousand times. Its history is a series of revivals ;
and every such revival is heralded by the doctrine of regeneration :

* Ye must be bom again/ But he that would save his life must
lose it ; this religion is also the religion of death and renunciation :
Hades and Dionysus are the same. Herein lies its almost irre-
sistible attraction for a certain type of emotional ascetic the
man whose nature demands intensity of passion, and who yet
rejects * bodily * passions as impure.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 195

107. The Orphic Revival

BeMnd the School of Pythagoras, we can discern* in the so-
called Orphic revival, one of these reformations of Dionyslac
religion. It is important for us to grasp its nature* because the
reforming principle, represented in the figure of Orpheus, is
Apolline in character, and therefore drawn partly within the
circle of Olympian theology. Orpheus, the ideal of the Orphic,
is a Dionysus tamed, and clothed, and in his right mind in a
word, Apoffinisgd.* When we come to the Pythagorean School,
which carries on this representation into philosophy, the same
combination of Dionysiac with Apolline elements will reappear ;
and we shall see, moreover, that (as we should expect) there is,
between the two ideals, a deep-lying contradiction, which dees
reconciliation. Dionysus may become Orpheus, without losing
all his life and mystery ; but, if he takes the further step (which
perhaps, in a sense, he actually did take at Delphi 2 ) and becomes
Apollo, then he ceases to be Dionysus. He has left the earth
and her cycle of life, which dies and is born again, and ascended
to his seat among the * deathless * ones, above the reach of
mortality. He is no longer a daemon in communion with Ms
church, but a God beyond the great fixed gulf of Ifoira. This
fatal sequence, from the group-daemon to the personal God,
is reflected in a curious way in the Pythagorean philosophy,
which is always passing from mysticism to science, as its religion
had passed from Dionysus to Apollo. Yet, philosophy and
religion alike do not cease to be mystical at the root ; and the
attempt to hold the two ends together involves religion in certain
contradictions, and leads philosophy to corresponding dilemmas,
which it will be our business to bring to light.

linis^^ that the Orphic movement was a

revival, as well as a reformation ; tihftt rl X8 jfco say, it wa$ ' return
tcT^a^tvpe of religion more primitive than the prevailing Olym-
piamsm. It must have been caused by one of those outbursts
of mystic fervour which, from time to time, upheave and shatter
the crystallised forms of theology and ecclesiaaticism, when the

1 For Orpheus as son, or Ip&fievQs, or tratpos of Apollo, see Boucher Lex*
8,v. * Orpheus*; Eisler, Weiti&mantel, ii. p. 681.

2 See J. E. Harrison, Thmu y p. 443.

FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

life that created them has died out of them, and they have drifted
away from all touch with genuine emotion. The rule in such
cases is that, with much clearing away of lumber, there is a
return to the simple, primitive type of organisation shaped by
the first impulse of the same spirit, which now resurges and
seeks once more to clothe itself in the bare essential form. The
Orphic movement was thus, in some degree, a return to Dionysus
and Ms thiasos the daemon and his church, held in one by the
img^^mjstical .relation. It is the organisation of the magical
secret society, adapted once more to a reviving human need.

But history jxeyer repeats itself. The Dionysus to whom the
Qrphics return, is not the old Dionysus of a group of satyrs,
but the Orpheus who was more at home with the Muses than
wjth the Maenads. It was the Maenads, indeed, that tore him,
the Muse's enchanting son, to pieces. Thus, Dionysus, though
revived^ is also reformed ; the more savage parts of Ms ritual
are expurgated, or toned down to a decent symbolism.

Above all, whatjhad formerly been the religion of earth and
of tEe Hfe and death of her trees and plants in the circling
seasons, becomes now a religion of the heavenly bodies, and
especially, oLth$ Sun. The Sun also moves through the circle
of tM yeaj^, wa^ina, in summer and waning in winter,; birt he
too easily comes to be conceived as an immutable and deathless
God.* The Olympian notion of immortality (atJianasia), as a
life that negates change and death, intrudes itself. With
the doctrine of the fall of tte soul frpBQ. .the stairs^, went, aa ,we
Save seen, the belief in an indestructible individual soul, per-
sisti^

After what has been said above of Heracieitus, it will be clear
that this Orphic notion of individual immortality is in contra-
diction with the other mystic representation, to which Hera-
cieitus remains true, that there is no life without death, and
that there is only one life, which dies and is reborn in every
shape of existence. This representation is the older, for it goes
back to days when only the group had a soul, and the atomic
individual soul was not yet invented. The soul of Hera-
cieitus" world is like the soul of the tribe which passes from the

1 Heracleitns characteristically protested against this, declaring that the
Sun, like everything else, changes, and is 'new every day' (frag, 32).

THE MYSTICAL TBABITIOlsr 197

living state to the dead, and round again. Tils was no * sorrow-
ful weary wheel/ from which any escape was either possible or
to be desired. The cycle movement simply was the movement
of life, and life could take no other course, no upward flight to a
mansion in the stars. Thus, the OrpMc religion already contains
two contradictory notions of the nature and destiny of the soul,
one Dlonysiac, the other Ouranian. Modem writers have failed
to see this contradiction, because they have been blinded by
the compromise in which OrpMsm attempts to * reconcile ' the
incompatible.

Further, throughout the mystical systems inspired by Orphism,
we shall find the fundamental contrast between the two prin-
ciples of Light and Darkness, identified with Good and Evil.
This cosmic dualism is the counterpart of the dualism in the
nature of the soul ; for, as always, ph/m and soul correspond,
and are, indeed, identical in substance. The soul in its pure
state consists of fire, like the divine stars from which it falls ;
in its impure state, throughout the period of reincarnation, its
substance is infected with the baser elements, and weighed down
by the gross admixture of the flesh. 1 In the cosmologies inspired
by this conception, we may expect to find, first, that the element
of fire will be set in contrast with the other three, 2 and second,
that the manifold world of sense will be viewed as a degradation
from the purity of real being. Such systems will tend to be
other-worldly, putting all value in the unseen unity of God, and
condemning the visible world as false and illusive, a turbid
medium in which the rays of heavenly light are broken and
obscured in mist and darkness. These characteristics are
common to all the systems which came out of the Pythagorean
movement Pythagoreanism proper, and the philosophies of
Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato.

1 AH this Is very clearly brought out "by Socrates in Plato's Phaedo ; see
below, p. 246.

2 It must be remembered, too, that Eire is the element of which fche
Measurers of Time (the heavenly bodies) consist. Biog. Laert, viiL 1, 27
(Pythagoras) : ffXtfo re xal o-eXign;? nal TQVS &XXoi/s do-rlpa* clrou 6eofa m

So, in aboriginal America, 'the Fire-God was especially associated with the
lapse of time,* and his vital force, enfeebled by use, was periodically re-
newed by the kindling of new fire. Payne, History of the New World, ii 330.

198 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

108. The Pythagorean reformation of Orphism

As OrpMsm was a reformation of Dionysiac religion, so Pytha-
goreanism may be regarded as a further reformation of Orphism, 1
which takes yet another step, away from Dionysus, away even
from Orpheus, towards Apollo. It is a further movement from
emotion towards intellect and reason, from religion towards
philosophy. Orphism was still a cult, in which the initiate, as
Aristotle 2 says, f was not expected to learn or understand any-
thing, but to feel a certain emotion and get into a certain state
of mind, after first becoming fit to experience it/ The means
to that emotional state of mind had formerly been ' orgiastic J
ritual, and especially those dramatic representations of the
passion and resurrection of the life-daemon, which point back
to the old mimetic dances of magic, and forward to the tragic
drama. The state of mind is that of passionate sympathetic
contemplation (Oecopia), in which the spectator is id.entifi.ed
with the suffering God, dies in his death, and rises again in his
new birth. By these and other ritual means the eating of
flesh or the drinking of wine the old sense of mystical one-
ness and participation can be renewed, and the daemon-soul of
the group re-created in collective emotion. The only doctrine
is the myth, the verbal counterpart of the action of the rite,
the Hfe-Hstory of the God, which is also the life-history of
the soul.

The doctrines of mysticism are secret, because they are not
cold, abstract beliefs, or articles in a creed, which can be taught
and explained by intellectual processes ; such beliefs no one has
ever desired to conceal, except from fear of persecution. The
* truth * which mysticism guards is a thing which can only be
learnt by being experienced (iradelv p,a6elv] ; it is, fundamentally,
not an intellectual, but an emotional experience that invasive,
flooding sense of oneness, of reunion and communion with the

1 For Pythagoras' relation to the Orphic communities in Western Greece
see Eisler, Weltenmantel, ii p. 679.

ft Arist. frag. 45, 1483 a 19 : ica.6dirp 'Apt0Tor&q$ df tot roi/s reXovptvovs otf
paBear rt Sety, clXA& va&eiv KO! StareB^fai SijXov&ri fy&oitfrovs ^Ttr^Setovs 1 . Cf.
Burnet, t.Cf.P.\ p. 91, who, however, ignores the importance of the emo-
tional state of mind. This, surely, not the ritual action, is the essential
thing.

THE MYSTICAL TBABITION 199

life of the world, which the mystical temperaments of all ages
seem to have in common, no matter in what theological terms
they may happen to construe it afterwards. Being an emotional,
non-rational state, it is indescribable, and incommunicable save
by suggestion. To induce that state, by the stimulus of collec-
tive excitement and all the pageantry of dramatic ceremonial,
is the aim of mystic ritual. The ' truth 3 can only come to those
who submit themselves to these influences, because it is a tMng
to be immediately felt, not conveyed by dogmatic instruction.
For that reason only a very sufficient one ' mysteries * are
reserved to the initiate, who have undergone ( purification/ and
so put themselves into a state of mind which fits them for the
consummate experience,

Pythagoreanism presents itself as an attempt to intellectuaMse
the content of Orphism, while preserving its social form, and as
much as possible of the spirit which that form had originally
clothed. Like Orphism itself, it is both a reformation and a
revival Like all reformations, it means that much of the
ceremonial overgrowth is shaken off : OrpMsm ceases to be a
cult, and becomes a Way of life. As a revival, Pythagoreanism
means a return to an earlier simplicity, a disinterring of the
essential form, whose outline is simple enough to 1 adapt itself
to a new movement of the spirit, Pythagoreanism is thus, from
the very first, a complex phenomenon, containing the germs of
several tendencies, which, when we come to the philosophies
that emerged from the school, we shall find separating towards
divergent issues, or intertwined in ingenious reconciliations.
Our analysis must take account of three strata, superimposed in
the order we have described Dionysus, Orpheus, Pythagoras.
From Dionysus come the unity of all life, in the cycle of death
and rebirth, and the conception of the daemon or coEective soul,
immanent in the group as a whole, and yet something more than
any or all of the members that partake of it. To Orpheus is
due the shift of focus from earth to heaven, the substitution for
the vivid, emotional experience of the renewal of life in nature,
of the worship of a distant and passionless perfection in the
region of light, from which the soul, now immortal, is fallen
into the body of this death, and which it aspires to regain by the
formal observances of asceticism. But the Orphic still clung

200 FROM BELiaiOK TO PHILOSOPHY

to the emotional experience of reunion and the ritual that in-
duced it, and, in particular, to the passionate spectacle (tJieoria)
of the suffering God. Pythagoras gave a new meaning to theoria ;
he reinterpreted it as the passionless contemplation of rational,
unchanging truth, and converted the way of life into a * pursuit
of wisdom ' (philosopJiia). The way of life is still also a way
of death ; l but now it means death to the emotions and lusts of
this vile body, and a release of the intellect to soar into the
untroubled empyrean of theory. 2 THs is now the only avenue
by which the soul can ' follow God * (eireadai ffew), who has
ascended beyond the stars. 3 Orgiastic ritual, which plays upon the
emotions, only drives a new nail into the coffin of the soul, and
binds it by a new chain to its earthly prison-house. All that
must go ; only certain ascetic prescriptions of the Orphic asJcesis
are retained, to symbolise a turning away from lower desires,
that might enthral the reason. 4

Such, in our opinion, is the trend of this new movement, called
Pythagoreanism. But, though it moves further from Dionysus
towards Apollo, it remains Dionysiac at the root, and keeps
alive something of the faith first delivered to the saints of mys-
ticism. Hence, in the analysis to which we now turn, we shall
try to distinguish what Pythagoreanism preserves from each

1 Plato, Phaedo, 64 A: Kiv$vvetov<ri. yap foot, Tvyxdvovvw 6p6&s
*j>t\offQ<folas \e\jj&lvat roi)s dXXous, STL ovStv <SXXo afoot tin.T7]5etiov<n.v % d7ro0jn?<r/ce>
re Kal reBvavai*

2 JTot to be confounded with, the Qetapta of Ionian science, which char-
acteristically means curiosity, such as led Hekataeus or Solon to travel about
the world as spectators of. its marvels. The &<apta of Pythagoras meant
especially contemplation of the heavens. Cf. his sermon on the Three Lives,
Heracl. Pont. ap. Cic. Tmc. v. 3 ; Iambi. Vit. Pyth. 58 : tiXucpLvfoTarov 5

i TOUTW avffp&TTOV TpfSirop, rbv awode^dfievov TTJV r&v /caXXttrrwv Qetaplav, fo Kal
<j>i\6<ra<f>ov. /caXip p& odv elvat ryv TOU (rtf/ixai'TOj otpavov 0av
icai TUJJ> v atirf Qopavfj^vw durr^pwj', el rts KttQoptfa rty rd&v . . . Plato,
though impatient of this star-gazing (Rep* 529 A), and of those who study
the * proportion ((rvftpcrpta) of day to night, and of day and night to month,
and of month to year, and of the other stars to sun and moon' (530 A), still
speaks of the philosopher as the * spectator of all time. 9

* For the escape of the soul from the wheel of birth, as Pythagorean
doctrine, see Rohde, Psyche* it 165. Plato, Theaet. 176A : 5ib /cat iretpad-flat

XPTJ &&&$ tKt<T $tytlV #Tt r^lffTOL, <^\Tf{\ k OflolwriS &( KO.TOL T& SfoaTQV.

4 Plato's rejection of the drama and of the orgiastic kinds of music is
partly motived by a similar condemnation of violent states of non -rational
emotion.

THE MYSTICAL TBABITIO^ 201

of the two strata Monysiac and OrpMc that lie below it.
In the actual history of the school, all the elements are, of comrse 3
present from the outset and blended together ; bat, in analysis,
it is worth while to isolate them, with a view to following out
their shifting combinations in the systems which derive from
the Pythagorean tradition.

109. Pythagoras as Daemon of Ms School

Dikaiarchos, 1 after describing the founding of the community

at Kroton, says that it is hard to get any certain knowledge of
what Pythagoras taught his disciples; but Ms best known
doctrines were, * first, that soul is an immortal thing, and that
it is transformed into other lands of living things ; farther, that
whatever comes into existence is born again in the revolutions
of a certain cycle, nothing being absolutely new ; and that al
things that are bom with life in them ought to be treated as
kindred * (opojevj]).

We have already dwelt at length on the significance of these
doctrines, of the unity and kinship of all life or soul, and its
continuous rebirth in periodic revolutions. Later legend told
how Pythagoras, like Francis of Assisi and the Spanish Car-
raelltes, preached to animals ; 2 and, when we remember that
Orpheus before him had made the wild things gather to Ms
music, there is no reason to doubt the substantial truth of the
tradition. What specially concerns us is to note that, for any-
thing Dikaiarchos says, the Master himself, like Hemcleitiis,

1 Ap. Porph. Vit. Pyth. 18, 19 : nrpSror i& &$ Mfcum efral 90%

elra /terajSdXXoi/ow els IXXa yirq &wr, rpfa & rwrws 5rt KO.TO, repc&ov* was

ra yevbfteva rare miXi? ylyyertu, rt 5% cftfew cbrXwj &rn, jral Sn r&wro, T&
ytvojJLCpa fjLi$firx.a. oiwyevirj Set vofilgety.

2 Iambi. 7%. Pyth. ariii. ; Porpk YiL Pytk. 24; G. Cmrningbame Graham,
Santa Teresa (1907), p. 51. Compare also* the Golden race of the Age of
Kronos in the Politwus of Plato (272 B), who * have the power to converse not
only with men but with beasts/ and use their opportunity els ^Xoro^oj',
* inquiring from all nature s (iro|3A r&njs Qbreut), in case any part of nature
may have some peculiar faculty, so as to perceive, better than any other*
what might contribute to the ingathering of -wisdom. In the Meno, 81 c,
where the Orphic doctrine of paKngeneria Is stated, it Is the * kinship of all
nature ' (S.re rip fyitrem aTdtrvp ffvyy&^m *$anj$) that makes it possible for the
soul, which has learnt all things in the other world, to recover its knowledge
liere by rendniscentce (

202 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

may have held, more closely than his later followers, to the primi-
tive Dionysiac belief in one all-pervading Soul, the substratum
of kinship which unites all forms of life into c one clan * (o>o<yez>7}). 1
It seems probable that he dwelt upon this unity, rather than
upon the inconsistent idea of a plurali ty of indestructible, atomic
souls, which always asserts itself in the popular mind as soon
as the sense of individuality has grown strong enough to insist
upon a personal immortality. Not that we are convinced that
Pythagoras himself saw the inconsistency or tried to avoid it ;
only, the very form which he gave to Ms community embodied
the value he set on unity and his attempt to keep in check the
self-assertion of individualism.

To this society men and women were admitted without dis-
tinction ; they had all possessions in common, and a * common
fellowship and mode of life/ 2 In particular, no individual
member of the school was allowed to claim the credit of any
discovery he might make. The significance of this rule has not
been fully understood. It was vulgarly supposed that the
school must have wished to keep its knowledge to itself as a
* mysterious ' doctrine, as if there were any conceivable reason

1 Sextus Bmp. Math. ix. 127: o! fjtev odv irepl rbv HvQaybpw Kal rbv

&ob$ elvat TWO, KQivuvtav, dXXa Kal irpbs ra &\oya r&v tyw. Iv yap
TrvevfM rb 5td iravrbs TOV /c6<r/iou SLTJKOV i/'u^^s" rpbirovj rb /cat evovv T}fjt,as irpos
Kwa. lambliehus (Vit. Pyth. 108) well expresses tlie doctrine in the
folio-wing words: Pythagoras 'taught them to abstain from things that
Iiad life (soul) in them (^t^xw) ; for, if they wished to reach the height of
just behaviour, they must of course do no wrong to any of the living things
that were their kindred (orvyyevuv fd)t(i}j>). How could they induce others to
behave justly if they themselves were convicted of aggression (irXeoj>eo),
although bound in the participation of kinship (a-vyyevitcfy tieroxw} with
living things, which are linked to us, as it were, in brotherhood by fellowship
(/COCFW^CW) in the same life and elements and the same mixture composed
of them/ If Aristoxenus (see Burnet, E.G. P.*, p. 102) is right in stating
that Pythagoras only prohibited, among animals, the ploughing ox and the
rani, he probably did so because the ram stood for the male fertilising
principle of animal life, and the ox which ploughs the earth for the same
principle in vegetation, which springs from the ploughed earth. The two
animals would be symbols of all life. Compare the doubtful fragment of
Empedocles 1546 (D.F. F. 2 ) which says that the first miserable men who ate
flesh |3ou;F yrdffavT* dpor^ptav.

2 Koivfy trwova-ia Kal 5/cura, Iambi. Vit. Pyth. 246. The admission of women
was 'Dionysiac' (the Maenads) rather than Orphic. Orphism was anti-
fernlnine.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 203

for tiding a theorem in geometry or harmonies. The truth
comes out in the story of Hippasos of Metapontion, who * was of
the Pythagoreans, but, because he published a treatise on the
sphere of the twelve pentagons, was cast away at sea, as having
committed an impiety and taken glory to himself for Ms dis-
covery, whereas all discoveries belonged to " Him ** (eicelvov row
aj/Spo?), for so they call Pythagoras. They say that a super-
natural vengeance overtook (TO Saiftomop v/j,cry<rai) those
who published what belonged to Pythagoras/ 1 This super-
natural or daemonic anger was the wrath of Pythagoras Mmself,
who after his death remained what he had been in life the
daemon in whom all the life of Ms church was centred and
incarnated. That Pythagoras worked miracles and was con-
scious of supernatural power, there is no reason whatever to
doubt ; he was probably the author of the doctrine : ' There
are Gods, and men, and beings like Pythagoras * beings who
are half-divine, daemons in human shape. 2 What is to be
gathered from the story of Hippasos is that the pious Pytha-
goreans believed that the Master's spirit dwelt continually
within Ms church, and was the source of all its inspiration. 3 The
impiety lay, not in divulging a discovery in mathematics, but
in claiming to have invented what could only have come from
'Hun/

Thus Pythagoras seems to have held to the conception of a
group-soul, incarnate in himself, but living on after Ms death
as the Logos of Ms disciples. Heracleides, who preserves the
famous story of his previous incamations 3 reports form as saying
that Hermes had offered hjm anything he wished for, except
deatMessness (atJianoMa) ; and that he chose to preserve, through
life and death, the memory of what happened to Mm. 4 The
legend may enshrine the truth that the * immortality * Pytha-
goras desired and claimed was not the deathless continuation

1 Iamb!. Vit. Pyth. 88=D.^.F. S *. tit. f Hippasos,' 4.

5 D.F. F. 2 p. 24. Of. the Introd. to the Hindu Tales of Somadeya : 'The
Gods have perpetual happiness, men are in constant tmhappinesa ; the actions
of those who are between men and Gfods are, "by the diversity of their lot,
agreeable. Therefore I will recount to yon the life of the Vidyadh&xw/
ie. demons and magicians (Kdtha-^ra^B&nt-Sagara, 1. 1. 47).

3 Of. ProcL tit Mud. i p, 419 : &rri & ApxaSa, ^aci* ol wept rfo
Kftl rfjt TO?** Hv&ayQpd&y Mo$<njf efff^/jmreu

* HeracL Pont. ap. Diog. viii 4 (D.F. F.*, p. 24).

204 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

of Individual personality, but the older Dionysiac continuity
of the one life that is born again in every generation of the
group. 1 But, as usual, his followers could not be content to live
in communion with a spirit of like passions with themselves,
but must needs exalt their daemon to the highest grade of
divinity. Pythagoras soon becomes the son of Apollo by a
virgin birth, 2 and even an incarnate God, Apollo Hyberoreios
himself. 8 But, through all the overgrowth of decadent super-
stition in the later legend, enough remains of the older faith
to warrant us in refusing to attribute these frigid inventions
to the Master himself. Apotheosis and athanasia are precisely
the fatal steps in the career of a * being like Pythagoras/ because
they put an end to the reality of that communion in which
the originators of such churches find the very meaning of the
common life.

If our view, then, be correct, the society of Pythagoras, so
long as the influence of his own ideal survived, realised once
more the primitive type of religious group, and that peculiar
relation, best called * participation ' (methexis), in which such
a group stands to its immanent collective soul. The passage
from the divine plane to the human, and from the human to
the divine, remains permeable, and is perpetually traversed.
The One can go out into the many ; the many can lose them-
selves in reunion with the One. This essential conception is
the key to the understanding of the number doctrine, on which
rests Pythagoras* claim to be a philosopher, as well as a founder
of mathematics.

110. TheTetradys*

The misguided followers who reckoned Pythagoras among
the Gods, were accustomed, Porphyry tells us, 5 to swear by

1 It will be remembered how Diotima in Plato's Symposium (207 D)
explains this immortality of perpetual renewal. Plato, too, thought of his
Zogoi as living on in the souls of his school and perpetually giving birth to
new thoughts in each generation that arose and passed away.

2 His mother is called Parthenis, in legend. See Eisler, Weltenmantel, ii.
p. 679 ff.; W. Sehultz, Altionische My stile, p. 97.

8 Arist. frag. 186 ; Porph. Vit. Pyth* 20 : jieroi r&v 6e&v rbv Hv8ay6pav

4 For the tetractys see W. Sehultz, ATTOS, Memnon, 1910 ; Eisler,
Wdteimantel, ii. p. 684. * VU. Pyth. 20.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 205

Mm, as the God who had left with them a symbol applicable to
the solution of many problems in nature the telractys.

s The so-called Pythagoreans/ says Aristotle, 1 4 attached them-
selves to the mathematics, and were the first to advance that
science by their education, in which they were led to suppose
that the principles of mathematics are the principles of al
things. So, as numbers are logically first among these prin-
ciples, and they fancied they could perceive in numbers many
analogies of what is and what comes into being s much more
readily than in fire and earth and water , . , and since they
further observed that the properties and determining ratios of
harmonies depend on numbers since, in fact, everything else
manifestly appeared to be modelled in its entire character
(<$>V<TIV) on numbers, and numbers to be the ultimate things in
the whole universe, they became convinced that the elements
of numbers are the elements of everything, and that the whole
" Heaven " is harmony and number/ Aristotle adds that the
decad was held to be perfect, and to embrace the whole e nature *
of number. 2 We may therefore look for the s nature * of all
things in the decad, as expressed in the symbol called the Mradys,
which, we have every reason to believe, goes back to Pythagoras
himself.

The original tetractys appears to have been the * tetracti/s of
the decad/ obtained by the addition, 1+2+3+4=10 :

* *

* This tetractys, 3 says Theon of Smyrna, 3 e is of great im-
portance in music, because all the consonances are to be found

1 Met. AS, trans. A. EL Taylor.

2 Met. A 5, 986 a : re<$^ T&eiar % 5e&s clrot foxe* KO! irras peXif$&u TIJF
TWF d/x0/uaF <f>ti&ur. Cf. Philol&na, frag. II ; tfewpeur Sftra Ip7a jca2 r^r ofaiar
r& &pL&fJLta Karroo Sifo'ttjtttJ' &Tt$ tori* fy rf Kd$i" fuyfatL 70^ ifttl raFreX^f Jcal
irarroepyoy ml Qeiw Kcd o^peHw jSlw *ai dr%nrfw dpx& icoi ayepu&ir Koowowm,
L&vy-Bruhl (Fernet, ment. p. 237) has an interesting discussion of the
mystic properties of numbers. He remarks that the numbers so enveloped
with a mystical atmosphere rarely go above 10. The Mgher numbers have
not, together with their names, passed into eoEective represeattiona, but
have generally been mere arithmetical numbers from the first.

3 wepl rer/KucTtJoj, p. 154, Bnpnis (189*2).

206 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

contained in it. But it is not only on tHs account that it has
been held in the highest honour by all Pythagoreans ; but also
because it is held to contain the nature of the universe. Hence
it was an oath by which they swore :

* By him who gave to our soul the tetractys, which hath the
fountain and root of ever-springing " nature " (pJiysis). 3 I

Theon proceeds to enumerate other forms of the tetractys*
The second is that used by Plato in the Timaeus to symbolise
the harmonic constitution of the world-soul :

2 3
4 9

8 27

These two tetractyes 'contain the musical, geometrical, and
arithmetical ratios, of which the harmony of the whole universe
is composed/

The later Pythagoreans delighted in using this symbol as
the master-key to the interpretation of the world. The third
tetractys is point, line, surface, solid ; the fourth is fire, air, water,
earth ; the fifth is pyramid, octahedron, eikosahedron, cube ;
the sixth is * of things that grow * (r&v <J>VQ/JLVQ>V) : the seed,
growth into length, into width, into height ; 2 the seventh is
that of societies : the individual, the family, the village, the

* oS fui rbv apertpq. ipvxS (yevfy, al.) TrapaSfora,

vayav aevdov Qfaios pifaftd T* %xov<rat>.

Diels, Arch. /. Gesch. d. Phil. in. 457, conjectures that these lines were
the opening of the poem often cited as the'Iepds A6yos or ILepl dewy, in which,
according to Theol. ArUh. p. 17, the might of the number 4 was celebrated,
and Metaphysics connected with it.

Of. Payne, History of the Neio World, ii. 283, 410 : *Nauh-, the Mexican
particle for this number (4), in the abstract form " Nahui " probably embodies
some conception analogous to " Nahua," the Command or Rule of Life, and
suggesting wholeness, perfection, or indefeasibility ; these austere and
orderly barbarians recall the Pythagorean philosophers, who held the
number 4 to be the root or source of all things.' NahuatlaeH is a general
name used by the Mexicans to denote * tribes living mainly by agriculture
in accordance with a settled Nahua or Rule of Life, dictated by a custom
administered by hereditary chiefs,*

2 Note this as the primitive form of the three 'dimensions' (et5oc,
6 growths ').

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 207

state ; the eighth is the four cognitive faculties : reason, know-
ledge, opinion, sense ; * the ninth is the rational, spirited, and
appetitive parts of soul, and the body; the tenth is spring,
summer, autumn, winter the seasons by which all things come
into being ; the eleventh is the four ages of man : infancy,
youth, manhood, old age.

' The cosmos composed of these tetractye is geometrically,
harmonically, and arithmetically adjusted, potentially contain-
ing every nature of number, and every magnitude and every
body, whether simple or composite. It is perfect because all
things are parts of it, and itself is not a part of anything. That
is the reason why the Pythagoreans swore by it, and said * all
things are like number." *

The details of some of these interpretations of the are,

of course, late ; they are expressed partly in Platonic terms. 2
But they are in a line with the earliest traditions of Pytha-
goreanism, and are typical of the whole tendency of the school
They satisfy the mystic's passion for unity, his desire to find
the meaning and nature of the whole in every part.

111. The Procession of Numbers

The real significance of the tetractys comes out in the second
line of the Oath, which describes it as f containing the fountain
and root of ever-springing nature (physis)* No words could
better express what we take to be the genuine Pythagorean
conception of the process by which the One goes out into the
manifold world. The Mractys is not only a symbol of static
relations linking the various parts of the cosmos ; it contains
also the cosmogonical movement of life, evolving out of primal
unity the harmonised structure of the whole. It is a fountain
of ever-flowing life.

The tetractys of the decad is a numerical series, the sum of
which is the perfect number, ten, which we are told that Pytha-
goras regarded as * the nature of number, because all men,

1 Arist. de Anim. a 2, 404ft 21*

s Cf . Arist. de Amm. a 2, 404 5 18. * It was explained In (Plato's) lectures on
philosophy that the self-animal (nniTerse) is composed of the form of One,
and the first length (Two), breadth (Three), and depth (Foor),' etc.

208 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

whether Hellenes or not, count up to ten, and, when they reach
it, revert again to unity/ 1 The word * revert * (avaTro&oa))
recalls the fragment, akeady quoted, of the Pythagorean Hippo-
damns, which tells us that this reversion is to be conceived as the
revolution of a wheel. * All mortal things under constraint of
Nature revolve in a wheel of changes. . . . When they are born
they grow, and when grown they reach their height, and after
that they grow old, and at last perish. At one time, Nature
causes them to come to their goal in her region of darkness, and
then back again out of the darkness they come round into
mortal form, by alternation of birth and repayment of death, in
the cycle wherein Nature reverts upon herself * (avairoSt ^ouo-a?). 2

We have seen that the whole nature of things, all the essential
properties of physis, were believed by the Pythagoreans to be
contained in the tetractys of the decad ; and it now appears
that, just as we should expect, this ( fountain of ever-flowing
nature" contains the periodic movement of life, evolving out
of unity and reverting to unity again, in the recurrent revolution
of a wheel of birth. It embodies the fundamental Dionysiac
representation of palingenesia.

But there is something more in it than this. Pythagoras
inherited the music of Orpheus, as well as the reincarnation
doctrine of Dionysus. From the Orphics he inherited also the
doctrine of the fall of the soul from its first perfect state of
union with the divine, its degradation into the darkness of this
life and of the underworld, and its final restoration to peace
and unity. Now, on the model of this doctrine of the fall of
the soul, the Pythagorean philosophy must hold that all exist-
ence proceeds out of the One and returns to it again; and
that the One alone is perfect, while the manifold world of visible
body is a turbid medium of appearance, in which the one truth
is half-revealed and half-concealed, as the divine soul is manifest
in the flesh and yet obscured by it and degraded.

There is thus, inherent in the representation handed down

1 Aetius, i. 3. 8: efrai 3 TTJV fyfaiv TOV d/x^yccov 8&a' p^xpt yap rQv Sfaa
irdvTcs "EXX-jjfes, irdvTcs pdpfiapot, dpi&fwv<nj>, t<p* & l\86vT$ iraXtv dvairoSovffLV
tori TTJ* Atwd&x. Professor Burnet (KG. P.*, p. 114) thinks we are probably
justified in referring this to Pythagoras himself. For x/>oxo5Mr/i6s ( e proces-
sion'), the opposite of dvaToSurpAs, see below, p. 209, note 1.

2 Hippodanms, ap. Stob, Flor* 98, 71, see above, p. 167, note 1,

THE MYSTICAL TBADITION 209

from Orphism to Pythagoras, not only the primitive wheel of
birth, but another aspect of the movement of life, which is best
described as a processional movement (TrpoTroSicr/io?) out of unity
into plurality, out of light into darkness. 1 This movement, also,
must be revealed in the nature of numbers, and contained in the
tetradys. Pythagoras found it in the procession of numerical
series, the study of which he originated, thereby founding the
science of number. It is practically certain , ako ? that in music
he discovered the ratios of the octave, the fifth, and the fourth,
contained in the harmonic proportion 12 : 8 : S. 2 Now a pro-
gression like those contained in the of Plato's world-

soul (p. 206) the series, 1:2:4:8, 1:3:9: 27 is what the
Pythagoreans called an faarmonia ; it is a continuous entity knit
together by a principle of unity running through it, namely the
logos or ratio (| or J) which links every term to its predecessor
by the same bond. 3 Both series, moreover, radiate from the One f
which in Pythagorean arithmetic was not itself a number, but
the source in which the whole nature of all numbers was gathered
up and implicit. When we note, further, that every number is
not only a many, but also one number, we can see how Pytha-
goras would find the whole movement of cosmic evolution con-
tained in the procession of series, in which the One passes out of
itself into a manifold, yet without losing ail its unity, and a
return from the many to the One is secured by that bond of
proportion which runs, backwards and forwards, through the
whole series and links it into a * harmony/ It is thus that we
must understand the doctrine that * the whole Heaven is har-
mony and number/ The processional movement of phyns is
modelled upon that of soul, which falls from its first state of
union with the divine, but yet remains linked to the One life

1 Theon Smym. p. 29 (Dapnis) : o,p$js&$ for* crftrrtycta ftoyd&wv {the atomic

Tiew discussed below, p. 212) % wpQwoSifffifo rMfiovs ci*"5 $wvd8w fyxfyurot *al

3 See Barnefc, ^,.P. 2 , p. 118.

3 Aetras, L 3* 8 : Hv0ay&pa.s - &PX&* T0fe &$tt&fw$s jtai rcb ffv/if&erpiaLS rm
IF rotfroif, &s ml &piu>te,s K&Ket Compare the logos of Heracleitus, aa con-
stancy of * measures r preserved throughout transformation, above, p. 188.
Plato, jKm, 31 C on the * bond J of proportion : Betr/my <S jcdXAwrror & &w afa6r
re jcal TCL ffwMf&em &TL /tdXwrra to woi' rovr $ vt$mev ciwAoylct icdXXwrra

210 FROM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

by mysterious bonds of harmony, and can return to it again,
purified by music. 1

In discussing the segregation of opposites and its possible origin,
as reflecting the exogamous segmentation of the undifferentiated
human herd, we have already pointed out that the Pythagorean
One, or Monad, splits into two principles, male and female, the
Even and the Odd, which are the elements of all numbers and
so of the universe. 2 The analogy reminds us that the One is
not simply a numerical unit, which gives rise to other numbers
by a process of addition. That conception belongs to the later
atomistic number-doctrine, presently to be considered. 3 In
the earlier Pythagoreanism, we must think of the One (which is
not itself a number at all) as analogous to Anaxirnander's
aTreipov. It is the primary, undifferentiated group-soul, or
physis, of the universe, and numbers must arise from it by a
process of differentiation or ' separating out ' (airo/cpicr^).
Similarly, each of these numbers is not a collection of units,
built up by addition, but itself a sort of minor group-soul a
distinct ' nature/ with various mystical properties. In the
same way, it is by dividing up the whole interval of the octave
that the harmonic proportions are determined. 4

1 See Theon Smyrn. p. 18 ft*. (Dupuis) for philosophy as purification and
initiation j Procl, M<?Ar<ra, Anec. Gr. et Lat. H. p, 25 : y ptv ye /u/picis, Tjns
etrriv appavia /cpeir-rw, IK TTJS TpL(aSov^p7}s yevo^vr} povaSos 67rt<TT/>a0e(cr7?$ els
eavrTp (i.e. 100x100), aTro/caraorari/o? rfc e0ri /cat re\e<novpy6s TT)S ^u%^
a ireffowav ets TTJV ofaya-iv wd\w &8sv TJKCL evpo, KaBdircp <pijfftv 6 &
S&wepdnys. The reference is to Phaedrus, 248 E, els fdv ykp TO avrb
SQev TjKfi ii 'fivxn eKdffTT) OVK d^c/c^etrat erwj/ pvpiuv, and, since this agrees with
Empedocles' doctrine that the fallen soul is exiled for 30,000 Spat = 10, 000
years (see below, p. 228), it is probable that Proclus* connection of the
return of the soul with the return to the monad is of old Pythagorean
origin, as indeed the character of the doctrine would lead us to expect.

a Above, p. 70. Also Theon Smymi. p. 34 (Dupuis) : 'Apurrtrrfrij* h r$
IlvBayopiKy TO v <f>r}<TLV d/i^orepwy (dpTtou /cat Treplrrou) /lere'^af TTJS (pfoew.

3 The methods of Eurytos described by Burnet (E.G. P.*, p. 110) belong,
as he points out, to the fourth century. By that time the atomistic doctrine
was developed.

4 Cf. the division of the soul in Plato's Timaeus, 35 B, and the distribution
of the whole mass of soul-substance, first into a number of portions, one for
each star, and secondly into individual souls (ibid. 41 D).

THE MYSTICAL TBADITIOK 211

112. Pythagorean Ethics

The Pythagorean conception of goodness (apery), including
both moral virtue and the physical excellences of health and
strength, is based entirely on the notion of ' arrangement J
(rdfa) and ' order y (cosmos). The best expression of it is to
be found in Plato's Gorgias. Socrates there argues that the
good artist will not work at random, but always with reference
to an ideal or pattern. Guided by this model, he will put Ms
material into a certain arrangement, making one part suitable
and fitting to another, until he has marshalled the whole "into
* an arranged and ordered thing.* * Trainers of the body and
physicians order and systematise the body (Ko<rpov<ri TO <rS/za
ical o-vvrdrTovcri), and this cosmos is health and strength. The
similar cosmos that is introduced into the soul, is Law, which
makes men law-abiding and orderly ; and this is Justice
Temperance. 2 The source from which this conception is de-
rived is acknowledged later, where Socrates says that * the wise
say that heaven and earth and Gods and men are held together
by fellowship, and friendship, and orderliness, and Temperance,
and Justice, and, for that reason, call this universe Cosmos.*
Their knowledge of geometry has taught them the great power,
among Gods and men, of Proportion; whereas the ignorant
believe in grasping more than one's due share. 3

1 Gorg. 503 E: tft rdgtr rcpd &CCUTTOJ rtfajw 5 fa ndjj, icai TfMrarayKdfri rd

trepov T$ Mptp Tf&rw re c&cu Kod ttp/xArmy, &* to r& ftro* nvrfynfrtu re-
rayftfror re K<U KeKotrftajpfrar rpay/ut. Iambi Y.P. 182, after Aristoxenua
(D.F. F. 2 , p. 284} : wfi,rap&rc<r9<u TT? TW *tupo$ ^srei r^
teal TO vpewoy Kcd TO &p/!0r7W.

2 504 D : rats 51 r%$ $uxfa TO|CCT ml K0fffi^ffffi v&fttitor xal

w6/MjJ,Oi yiyvovTOi xal K&fffuot* ravra & Ivn 81x010^ TC ical ffoffij,
Mep. 432 A, where Temperance is the concord {%wla}, compared to the
harmony of the octave (5i* SX^s ATCXF^S Tfoarau, 3ta waff&y raficxflp^n? ffw>$$w-
ras), an o/^^wa, CTU/I^FO. See also Pkaed 3 93 C, for yirtme as harmonfa.

s 507 E: $affl 5* oi <ro^ (Pythagoreans and Empedocles, Olympiod.) al
ovpavbr teal yyi> Kal &e&s ml dv0^vow r fy KOtruvtof ffvffyttr ica^ ^t\oF ico!
KocrjU&TTjTQ, jcot <Ft*4>pwrirq* Kal Suuu&njTa, KVA T& S^jov rovro $ifa ravra.
KaXovany . . . \i\ij0e <TC Sri ^ wonjs if 7cwpter|M^i| md &
iroty pya MVGLTCU" <rd 5c rXeoirefjaF ofec && do-xe<y* 7ew teetj.

Plutarch, *%mp. Q. viii 2. 2, says that thu principle of proportion is called
Mia} and N^uwy (Aristotle's 'distributive justice, 1 BW, v. 3. 13). Alex, in
Arist. Met, A 5, 0856 26: r* /E^F 70^ dutoKM-i^ flcoF &ro\a/i/3drarre; etvcu rd
ot TC *ai ro-oy (0! H^^pctat), cr TCW d^Bijms TOWTO

212 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

113. Pythagorean Science

The earliest * science ' of the Pythagoreans is simply a tran-
script of the procession of numbers into terms of space and
space-filling matter ; or, rather, we should say that they were
at first unable to conceive number and its behaviour except
under the forms of space and motion, and hence did not
distinguish at all between the procession of numbers out of
the Monad and the process which generates the visible world
in space. This process presented itself in the only possible
wa y a s the progressive conquest of a formless and unlimited
field (x^P a ) ^ darkness (the dark and cold air) by the light
and warmth radiating from a central nuclear unit. 1 We may
note, by the way, that this led to the displacement of earth
from the central position in the universe, which must be
occupied by the nuclear Fire, Hestia. The first great step away
from geocentric astronomy was thus due to the bold acceptance
of the consequences of an a priori theory, which simply restated
a purely mythical representation. Its importance for us is the
way it illustrates once more the truth of our hypothesis, that
the nature and behaviour of physis reproduce mythical and
religious beliefs about the nature and behaviour of Soul.

114. Number Atomism

Guided by the same hypothesis, we can predict the final stage
of Pythagorean science. It will inevitably reproduce the later
and inconsistent conception of the atomic, indestructible, in-
dividual soul. This, as we saw, was already present in Orphic
religion, fallen from its first Dionysiac faith in the one continuous
life in all things, towards the Olympian conception of atJianasia.
The later Pythagoreans of the fifth century * construct the whole
world out of numbers, but they suppose the units to have magni-
tude. As to how the first unit with magnitude arose, they

5ta TOWTO Ktd rbv fcraws tcrov &pi6fj.to (either 4 or 9) trpwrov $\eyov eivai SLKCLLO-
trtivriv. The mathematical education in Rep. vii. (530 A) culminates in the
conceptions of ffvfjufxavt* in harmonics and <rv/*/ier/>a in astronomy, and these
provide a bridge to dialectics and the study of beauty and goodness (531 c).
i See Buraet, W.Q.P.*, p. 120.

THE MYSTICAL TEADITION 213

appear to be at a loss/ l They might well be at a loss, because
they could not realise that this physical doctrine was nothing
but a relection of the belief in a plurality of immortal souls,
which contradicted their older faith that Soul was a Harmony
a bond linking all things in one. 2 This Soul had formerly been
the One G-od manifest in the logos ; now it is broken up into a
multitude of individual atoms 3 each claiming an immortal and
separate persistence. And the material world suffers a corre-
sponding change. In place of the doctrine of procession from the
Monad, bodies are built up out of numbers, now conceived as
collections of ultimate units, having position and magnitude.
Thus, Pythagoreanism is led on from a temporal monism to a
spatial pluralism a doctrine of number-atoms hardly distin-
guishable from the atoms of LeuMppus and Democritus, who,
as Aristotle says, 3 like these Pythagoreans, * in a sense make
all things to be numbers and to consist of numbers/ But the
development of this number-atomism was predestined by
religious representations of the nature of soul older than Pytha-
goreanism itself, and akeady contained in the blend of Dionysiac
and Olympian conceptions inherited by Pythagoras from
Orphism,

The tendency which impelled Pythagorean science towards a
materialistic atomism is only the recoil of that same tendency
which exalted Pythagoras, from Ms position as the indwelling
daemon of his church, to the distant heaven of the immortals.
It is the tendency to dualism. When God ceases to be the
immanent Soul of the world, living and dying in its ceaseless
round of change, and ascends to the region of immutable per-

1 Arist. Met. ^6, 1080& 18 ff. See Bumet, A T .C?.P. 2 p. 336 ff.

2 Bnraet (M.G.P. 3 , p. 343} says that the view that the soul is a harmony
cannot have belonged to the earliest form of Pythagoreamsm s * for, as shown
in Hato's JPAaeA?, it is quite inconsistent with the idea that the soul can
exist independently of the body/ The inference would hold, if It were
impossible for religions, or even philosophic, representation to be inconsis-
tent. I doubt, however, if it is even inconsistent ; see below on Empedodes*
logos-swal, p. 235. The doctrine that the soul is a harmony is attributed
to Pythagoras by Macrohins, S&nai. Scip. i. 14, 19. Of. Eohde, Psychf, ii.
169.

3 De Caelo* 7*, 303a 8. Of. de Anim. a 5, 4096 7, on the monads of
Xenoerateg and their likeness to atoms.

214 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

fection, it is because man has acquired a soul of Ms own, a little
indestractible atom of immortality, a self-subsistent individual.
* Nature ' likewise loses her unity, continuity, and indwelling
life, and is remodelled as an aggregate of little indestructible
atoms of matter. But note the consequence : she, too, is now
self-subsistent. The world of matter becomes the undisputed
dominion of Destiny, or Chance, or Necessity of Moira, Lackesis,
Ananke. There is no place in it for the God who has vanished
beyond the stars. We shall watch, in the sequel, the mystic
philosophers, who cannot dispense with God, exhausting their
ingenuity in devices to get him back into touch with Nature, to
restore to him the raison d'etre which he lost from the moment
that he ceased to animate the world from within, to be the
' nature of things * itself. All such attempts seem now to us
like efforts to draw down Apollo from the skies, and change him
back into Dionysus ; or, if that is impossible, to find a mediator
between God and Nature, some daemonic power, half-natural,
half-divine, an Eros who will fill up the chasm, and bind all
things again into one. But the time for these efforts is not yet.
We have first to consider two systems that emerged from the
Pythagorean tradition, before that tradition went aU the way
to join hands with scientific Atomism, and so became fatally
Olympianised. These are the systems of Parmenides and
Empedocles.

115. PARMENIDES

Parmenides wrote what he had to say * about the Nature of
Things * (?rpl <f)v<T&)<;) in hexameter verse, which combines a
certain oracular dignity and earnestness with the closely knit
sequence of logical argument. He is the first philosopher, so far
as we know, who cast his theory of Nature into the form of a
deduction, in this respect justifying the historians who throw
him into the sharpest contrast with the cryptic and interjectional
Heracleitus. But it is characteristic of him, too, that his theory
is stated as a revelation, accorded to him by the Goddess who
governs all things in person. Certain features of the proem
call for our attention.

Like Orpheus, Parmenides seeks wisdom by a descent, through
the western gate of the sunset, into the darkness of the under-

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 215

world. 1 He travels thither on the chariot of the Sun, attended

by the sun-maidens. In the nether darkness he remains with.
the Goddess Dike, after she has opened the gates of sunrise for
the chariot to pass up again to the region of light. She tells
Mm } in words wHch now have for us a new significance, that
he has been c conducted on Ms journey, not by an evil Moira
(for the way lies far apart from tie path which mankind tread),
but by Themis and Dike. 9 The Goddess tells Mm that lie must
learn ' both the unshaken heart of rounded Truth, and the
opinions of mortals, in which there is no true belief/ 2 Accord-
ingly, the poem is divided into two parts the Way of Truth and
the "Way of Opinion. These are * the only two ways of search
that can be thought of * (frag, 4). The one is a * much disputed
proof/ which Parmenides is told to judge by reasoning (Xctyg)) ;
the other is at the mercy of the senses, * the objectless eye, the
droning ear, and the tongue * (wMeh fashions * names * without
meaning). From this second path lie is warned to turn away Ms
thought, and not to let ' custom force Mm * along its misleading
track. 3

The Way of Truth is excellently described as a proof which
must be judged by reasoning, in abstraction from, and in de-
fiance of, the witness of the senses. 4 The nature of things is a

1 Parnienides* journey is generally regarded as a Heaven Journey ; see
Diels, Parmenides Le/irgedicht ; but O, Gilbert, Arch. /. Gesch. d. JPhilos*
xx. p, 25 ff., has argued that it is a Journey to the Underworld, See,
however, below, note 3 on p. 222, Epimenides s during Ms Initiatory sleep
in the Dictaean Cave, communed with A leiheia and Dile, Max. Tyr. p. 286
(D.F. F. s , ii 494). In the Ps. -Platonic Aziochw (371B) the

is in the Underworld.

2 Frag. 1, 28; xpcta 5c <re wdvra.

iJW pparwv 5as, rats owe tvt vtffns &\ii(Hjs.
3 Frag. 1. 33 : dXXiz 0$ TJJ(?$
<r' fflos

/cat y\w<T&at*, Kpwat 5^ \6ytp

I interpret &&KQWW as meaning * having no (real) object,* guided by
Parmenides' identification of the object of thought with * that for the sake
of which the thought exists * (frag. 8. 34). He does not distinguish * object *
from * aim ' or * mark. 9

4 Ci Arist. fa Gen. t Oorr. 325 a 13 (of the Eleaties) :

216 :FBOM BELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

rounded sphere of logical consistency, which threatens to leave
the world as known to the senses an inexplicable tissue of
delusion.

116. The Way of Truth

In the Thing which is (TO eov), as Parmenides called it, we
recognise, transparently enough, the primitive datum of philo-
sophy physis conceived as a material continuum, and, above
all, as divine. The ancients recognised the parent of Eleaticism
in Xenophanes, 1 who ' looked at the whole sky and declared
that the One is, namely God ' ; and this view expresses the
truth that Parmenides' ultimate premisses are : that God alone
is, and that he is One. It is from the divinity of physis that
his system is deduced. What he does is to argue, with his un-
relenting logic, that the attributes of unity, perfect continuity,
and divinity (now construed in the Olympian sense of deathless
immutability) exclude and negate plurality, discontinuity, and
the changing movement of life. The system of Heracleitus,
Ionian science, and the earlier forms of Pythagoreanism, all
in their various ways attempted to combine the two sets of
predicates, and to get the One to evolve somehow into the many.
Paxmenides declares that no such evolution is possible. His
cosmology faces, and accepts as unanswerable, an objection that
besets pantheism, and some other theisms, in all ages. If God
is one and perfect in himself, why should he ever leave that
state and go forth into unreality and imperfection ? Yet, if
he does not do so, he ceases to be the pervasive life and moving
soul of the world ; he crystallises into a being that cannot be-
come, or move, or change ; and, since life is change, he is lifeless
a complete, immovable, continuous, homogeneous substance,
unbegotten and imperishable. Necessity in all her forms,
moral, physical, fatal (and, we must now add, logical), deprives
him of the creative force of life. e Dike does not loose her
fetters and let anything come into being or pass away, but holds
it fast/ 2 * Mastering Ananke holds it in the bonds of the

1 See above, p. 177.

2 Farm. frag. 8. 13 : otfre yevfoffcu,

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 217

limit that fences it on every side/ 1 ' If mm has fettered it so
as to be whole and immovable/ 2 Thus al the original lie of
the ultimate physis is frozen out of it ; the World Egg is har-
dened to adamant, and cannot hatch. That it should become
and perish, both be and not be* change its place, or vary its
colour aU these are mere * names/ which mortals have agreed
to use, believing them to be true. 3 Thus, Parmenides absolutely
rejects the Heracleitean harmony of opposites.

The One Being of Parmenides' vision is the Monad of the
Pythagoreans, but it is no longer a * fountain of ever-flowing
nature/ The whole doctrine of the procession of numbers out
of the One is shorn away, because that One can no longer contain
within itself the principle of the manifold ; since it is absolutely
and strictly One, the opposites and the many are not implicit
within its nature, and therefore cannot come out of it. It is
also the ' Limitless * of Anaximander ; but- Moira, instead of
portioning it out into provinces, has now * fettered it so as to be
whole/ There can be no division or * separating out * (airoKpic-t^)
of opposites or elements. * Thou canst not cut off is from
holding fast to what is* neither scattering itself abroad in an
order (cosmos) nor coming together/ 4 Aristotle 5 called Par-
inenides an c unphysicist * (a^vo-wro?), because he did away with
the principle of motion, which is pliysis.

The disappearance of the doctrine of the procession of numbers
out of the One, which is cut off at one blow of Parmenides* logic,
has disguised from critics, ancient and modern, the fact that
the Way of Truth starts from Pythagoreanism ; but the Pytha-
gorean character of the Way of Opinion is recognised. In con-
sidering this second way of search, we will put aside for the

1 Frag, 8. 30 :

rclpaeros <F

2 Frag. 8. 37 : brcl r& ye

3 Frag. 8. 38 : r$ ardw* tfro/*' IOTCU

Hem ftportH KanHevro wvm&&T$ elyai

yljs>ff&a,t T KO! $Xkvff@at s dvtd re xal
ml r&r&jr dXXibvf IF &d re

4 Frag. 2 : o$ y&p &nrf&^& rb Ifo row faros

5 Ap. Soct Adv. JfoiA, r. 46.

218 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

moment the disputed question, what a philosopher can mean
by propounding a cosmology (the details of which, so far as we
know, were his own, and have been taken as such by most, if
not all, of Ms readers), and yet declaring that ' there is no true
belief * in them. Our first business must be to establish the type
of this physical system, and determine from what part of the
Pythagorean scheme of thought it is derived.

117. The Way of Opinion

This second part of the poem begins as follows (frag. 8. 50) :
' Here do I close my trustworthy speech and thought about the
truth. Opinions (Sofas), mortal opinions, thou must hence-
forward learn, hearkening to the deceptive ordering of my words.

* Two forms (poppas) there are, which mortals have made
up their minds to name (ovo^d^eiv), one of which they
ought not to name, and that is where they have gone astray.
They have distinguished them as opposite in body (Se/^a?), and
assigned them visible tokens 1 distinct from one another to
the one the Fire of heaven, a gentle thing, very light, in every
direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The
other is just the opposite to it, indiscernible Night, a dense
and heavy body (Sepas). Of these I declare to thee the whole
disposition, as it seems likely ; for so no mortal judgment shall
outstrip thee/

Two other fragments give us little more light : ' Now that all
things have been named (ovopao-rai) Light and Night, and
the names which belong to their several powers have been
assigned to these things and to those, everything is full at once

The word seems to mean 'visible signs,' * tokens/ almost
'symbols.* Fire, for instance, may be regarded as a visible embodiment
(Jeftas) of one c form/ rather than completely identical with it. It stands
for it, represents it visibly. That body is a mark or visible sign, is one of
the meanings of the Orphic dictum, trQfjia cr%ia, for cr^a means * tomb * only
because it meant a mark or sign of a place which is taboo, or 'impure/
and so a gravestone or pillar. Plato (Phaedr. 250 c) avails himself of both
senses : mBapol fores /cat aa^avroi TOTJTOV 8 vvv cr/ia Tepc^poirey dpo/^jtytep,
where do-^/rnvrot means that we are not marked 5y this gravestone called a
body. Cf. Heracleitus' use of irrifjLaJiveiv above, p. 187. See also J, Adam,
Religious Teachers of Greece (1908), p. 96,

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION

of Light and unapparent Night, both equal, since neither has
any part in the other/ J

At the end of the poem (frag. 19) : Thus, according to
Opinion 5 did these things come into being (e^>v)s and thus they
are now, and after this shall grow and come to their end. Men
have stamped them each with a name to know them by/ 2

The two fundamental * forms * in this scheme are Light and
Dark, and the other pairs of contrary attributes may be regarded
as attaching to these two substances (if substances they be) :

That which Is and TJmt Is Nat

Light and Dark

Warm and Cold (Aristotle)

Light and Heavy

(Rare) and Dense
Fire (Heaven) and Earth

Male and Female. 3

Now, we know that the Orphic said of himself : * I am the child
of Earth and of the starry Heaven/ 4 believing that the divine
and immortal soul came down from the heavenly fires, and was
imprisoned in the darkness of the earthy body. The same truth
is symbolised in the descent of Orpheus and Parmenides into the
dark underworld and their resurrection into the light of day.
Aristotle speaks of the * theologians * (Orphic) who made all tilings
come into being out of Night, and contrasts with the ancient
poets who said that Zeus was king of all, others who held that
the eldest Gods were Night and Heaven. 3 In the Way of Opinion
we are on Orphic ground, and the fundamental scheme is the
fall and descent from the region of heavenly light, reality, and
truth, to the darkness, unreality, and f alseness of bodily existence.

1 Frag. 9 : afrrap Iwi3i$ vdwra

Kod r& jcarct fffertpas twd/tet$ M rmfft
TO* TAla? Icrrly OJJLQV $fam xol wier&s a
few dpfartpuy, Ivd od&er

ois & bop* &r0pwoi Karl&ewr 1 hrlnjfw tedtrrtp. A *name* also Is a
, embodying or entombing a tMug or meaning, which It ff^/talm,
* See O. Kern, AreJLf. G&sck. d. Phil iii. p. 174, for the male and female
character of the two principles and the bisexed Iros in Parmenitles.

4 Orphic tablets, Z>.F. F, s , IL 480 ; above, p. 179.

5 Met. X6> 1071 5 26 ; *>4 10915 4. D.P. V.\ ii. 475.

220 FBOM RELIGIOST TO PHILOSOPHY

What Parmenides does in the Way of Opinion is to take this
purely Orphic conception of a descent from light to darkness, and
expurgate that other, Dionysiac, view of life and death as a
perpetual process of change revolving in a cycle, which Hera-
cleitus had championed against the Orphic and Olympian
notions of the destiny of the soul. Both views, we have seen,
were inherent in the religious tradition of mysticism, before philo-
sophy appeared ; they are now separated out, as their incon-
sistency becomes apparent, by Heracleitus and Parmenides. If
we start from this point, we can deduce the other characteristics
of the Way of Opinion, and perhaps gain new light upon them.

Let us note,in the first place, that Parmenides says that mortals
have decided to name two ' forms ' ; and that where they have
gone wrong is in naming the second. He does not say they
were wrong to name the first. Aristotle, moreover, says that
' he ranks the Warm under the head of That which Is, its opposite
under the head of That which Is Not/ 1 The natural conclusion
is that Parmenides meant that Fire, the principle of light and
warmth, is the embodiment (Se/w), or visible token (enj/wi), of
the real, as it were an efiluence from that inward omnipresent
God who alone Is, into the world of 'seeming* (Sofa). Par-
menides must have had in his mind some distinction between
' reality ' and * appearance/ Probably he did not ^distinguish
'appearance' from 'opinion': both are what 'seem' to
mortals, and Sofa probably covers both meanings. The con-
fusion makes Parmenides speak as if mortals were responsible
for the appearance of the world. He cannot have really thought
this, in any sense that we should put upon it ; his difficulties
arise largely because he cannot get his thought clear about the
meaning of Sofa.

If mortals were not wrong when they named the first ' form '
fire, they did go astray when they named the second, and they
ought not to have named it at all. Why not ? Because there
is no thing (Sv) to correspond to these names in the second
column of contraries. As Aristotle says, they come 'under
the head of That which Is Not/ These opposites, or antagonists,
of the principle of Light simply adtnot ; they are names which

1 Met. A5, 9865 35 : rotW 51 Kara pfr r& fli> rb 0epnbv rdrm, Hrepov 9k
jeari rb (ify &%

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 221

denote nothing, or a 'not-thing* (f4 lov), words that stand
for no positive existing tMngs whatever. 1

It Is here that Pannenides Joins issue with Ionian science
and with Heracleltus. Both these types of system had ex-
plained * becoming * by the separation and conflict, or har-
mony and reconciliation of opposites, regarded as equal and
balancing powers, each with a domain, or a force, of its own.
Parmenides sweeps this whole conception away. In these pairs
of antagonists which e men have agreed to name/ one member
Is a not-thing, a mere word ; only the other stands for anything
real. The War of Opposites, and all those views of life and
death which hang with it, are banished, by the same uncom-
promising logic that banished life from the real being of God.

If this is so, we can explain frag. 9, quoted above (p. 218), as
follows : When these names y Light and Night, have once been
given, and all the other pairs of contrary names that go with
them, then we have all things e full at once of Light and Night/
and these are equal, and independent of one another. The two
antagonists are set up, and they can go about their wars and
reconciliations. But the whole process Is Illegitimate : one
set of names denotes no positive things.

What, then, can Parmenides mean by declaring that cold,
heavy, dark, etc., are mere names, without things to correspond ?
Only one explanation seems possible ; It Is simple, and surely It
would easily occur to the father of Logic. It is that cold only
means not-hot, dark means not-light, and so on, 2 Heat and
light exist (or represent something that exists) ; cold and dark-
ness are absences of them. This explanation has the authority
of Aristotle; 3 and we cannot see what other conclusion

1 I do not think Parmenides meant by T& /AT? &v the o&idnt&ly nou-exittent as
we conceive it ; rather it was, as it were, a subject with no predicates, only
to be described negatively, like Anaximander's fa-ttpov, or Aristotle's formless
matter. The diitinction between negative existential propositions (x does
not exist) and negative Subject-Predicate propositions (x is not A] was not
yet drawn. Pannenides* fify &v is an x which Is not A t not B t etc., for all
positive predicates.

2 Cf. the 'not-things* (py 5rra) which the Eleatic Stranger in Plato's
Sophist allows himself, with due resjk,* to Pannenides, to reinstate from
being nothing to being otk&r things.

9 De Gm. et Oorr. 318 &, 3 ff. : oloy rb pv iep/j&v icanryopla rtt seal etfaf, if Bl
iftvxp&rq* ffr4fnffft$. 0. Gilbert, Griech, Rdiffiaiuiphilosopkie, p. 49, note 1.

222 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Paraenldes could have reached from Ms rigidly monistic
premisses, or what difficulty there was, that could arrest a mind
so powerful as his before he reached it.

We hold,, then, that to Parmerddes the process of becoming
which brought the visible world into existence was like the fall
of the Orphic soul a declension or degradation of light, till it
fails and dies out in darkness and nonentity. The fact that
the earth itself, which to the ordinary materialist seems so
solid and real, is at the lower end of this scale, did not stagger
Paxmenides : in the language of any mystic, s earthy ' means
dark, unreal, false. When he calls dark Night * a compact and
heavy body/ he evidently means the earth ; l the more com-
pact and heavy it is, the further is it from being a true embodi-
ment of the substance of God. But even the earth, though
low in the scale, has still some fire and heat and light in it.

If we sink still further, what do we reach at the nadir ? The
power of darkness, Moira, Lachesis, Ananke. Modern critics
apparently think of this figure, as of a lady whom it is not quite
decorous to accommodate with a seat in the centre of the earth,
presumably because they do not realise that the earth is verging
on non-existence. 2 She is Necessity, on whose knees is the
spindle with its turning whorls, in the vision of Er. But she
is also Aphrodite, who contrived Eros, first of the Gods,
and the axis of her spindle passes through the midst of the
c crowns ' up to the limits of the world. It is the path of souls,
who ascend upwards and fall downwards. 3 Light is also Soul ;

1 Cf. 0. Gilbert, Arch. GescL Phil. xx. p. 42.

2 Professor Burnet, who feels this impropriety (^.<?.P. 2 , p. 219), now
politely hands her to a place in the Milky Way, good-humouredly abandon-
ing his former effort to make a hole through the earth for her and turn it
from a sphere into a ring.

* Simpl, Pkys. 39, 18 : Tafrryv (^A^poSir^p) /ecu Qeuv alrta? ctvai tpycri \ty<av
{frag. 13), "TpfrriOTOv per "E/wra Beuv fiijrLa-aro ir&VTwv" /rat ras ^u%as
w4}jc.ww TTOT pfr IK TQV tK<pavov$ els rb detS^s, TTOT $ dvdira\ty <pt]<nv. Plato,
ep, 616 B ff., describes a 'straight pillar of light, stretched all through
the heaven and the earth/ which is apparently the axis of the cosmos
and the shaft of the spindle of Necessity (see J. Adam, ad loc.). The
souls journey to the centre of this light, i.e. the centre of the earth and
of the universe. I believe that Parmenides' path of souls is similar, and
that his Dike is at the centre. The difficulties of interpretation which
beset both Parmenides 1 and Plato's descriptions are ultimately due to the
attempt to combine the *Bionysiac J and * Orphic* conceptions, whose in-

THE MYSTICAL TRABITIOH 223

hence we are told that men were first bom from tie sun, 1 and
that the dead body cannot perceiYe light and warmth and
sound, because the fire has failed out of it. 2 Fke, or Light, is
thus the soul-substance, and nearest akin to the substance of
God.

But, finally, let us observe that the life which has gone out of
God, has come back into Nature. The Goddess, throned in the
centre, is the Queen of Life, Aphrodite ; and of her, Eros,
banished by Olympianiszn, is born again. The downward fall
of life from the heavenly fires is countered by an upward impulse
which e sends the souls back from the seen to the unseen/ We
have here a hint of the movement of life interpreted as desire for
perfection, which leads to important developments in later con-
ceptions of physis. The last resource of Nature, deserted by
God, is to aspire towards that perfection which lies above and
beyond her reach, and in that aspiration she regains the life
which God has lost.

We would not leave the impression that Parmenides was
satisfied with this physical system, obtained by developing the
Orphic view to its logical conclusion and expurgating the
Dionysiac. He was too much in earnest with Ms monism to be
content, and too penetrating and sincere to hide from himself
or others that he had not really reduced the power of darkness
to an empty name. So he calls the Way of Opinion misleading.

consistency we have pointed out. The * Dionysiae * path of souls is a circle,
from the upper region of light above the earth to th dark region below and
back again, Parmenides adopts this for his own journey to the underworld.
But according to that view DiX-c ought to be in Tartarus, under the earth,
not in the centre. The Orphic path of souls is from heaven down to earth,
and the lowest point is the centre of earth, where the Pythagorean central
ire and Dike, ought to be. Cf. Theol. Anih. p. 6 ff. ed. Art, which states
that the Pythagoreans place a craSuefo Sidvvpas rifh* repi rd /i&w TWP- TW-
adptav oTotxefap, and oZ rcpL 'E/tweSoK^a. Kcd Happcvitotw follow them in so far
as they maintain rV luaraSucfyr ffour 'Ecrlcis r^a-w ep jilo-^ ISpS&ffcu xai && T&
MppoTTor jtvMurrcuf rip aMp ttpar (see O. Oilbert, Joe. at. p. 42; and
<2WedL RcKgiongphHoaofMe (1911), pp. 185, 189 ff.). Plato (Rep. 016}
attempts to combine both by making the pillar of light at its two poles
spread out into a belt which runs all round the heavenly sphere (if &dam,
ad Joe., is right). The very fact that scholars are divided on the question
whether Parmenides' journey is to heaven or the underworld points to
Parmenides not being clear in his own mind.

1 Diog. ix. 22. 2 Theophr. de Semn, 3.

224 FROM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

We take Ms position to be tils. If God is really and absolutely
One and perfect, then there is nothing to be made of the world
we see ? with its plurality and changing life. The Way of Opinion
is the best that can be made of it ; but still it will not do. God,
with his unity and immutable perfection, has gone out of the
world, and animates it no longer. One or the other must be
given up : either such a God is not, or the world infected with
darkness and evil cannot come from him. It is Parmenides*
glory to have formulated this dilemma with unfaltering courage,
and made his choicethe choice of the * unphysicist/ the Mystic.

118. EMPEDOCLES

We have considerable fragments of two long poems by Em-
pedocles, called Purifications and About Nature. The current
opinion is that the religious views contained in the Purifications
are inconsistent with the physical theory of the other poem ;
and Professor Burnet adds that ' this is just what we should
expect to find. All through this period, there seems to have
been a gulf between men's religious beliefs, if they had any, and
their cosmological views. The few points of contact (between
the two poems) which we have mentioned may have been
sufficient to hide this from Empedocles himself/ 1

This is a hard saying ; and the following account of Em-
pedocles will, we hope, make it clear that it is not a true one.
In our view, there is no more inconsistency in Empedocles'
system of things religious and scientific than that which we
have pointed out as already inherent in the Orphic and Pytha-
gorean doctrines of immortality. Empedocles seems to us to
make a heroic and amazingly ingenious effort to reconcile these
views of the nature and destiny of the soul with Ionian physical

.\ p. 289. Of. Zeller, Phil. d. GriecbS, L p. 806 ; Anders verhalt
es sich mit gewissen religiosen Lehren und Vorsehriften, welche . . . nrit
den wiasenschaftlichen Grundsatzen nnseres Physikers in kelner slchtbaren
Yerbindung stehen. In diesen Satzen konnen wir nur Glaubensartikel
sell en. . . . Rohde, Psyche*, ii. 175: Zumeist aber stehen in seiner Vor-
steUungsweit Theologie tmd Naturwisseaschaft unverbunden neben ein-
ander. In spite of these authorities, the entertaining of religious beliefs
which, will not square with the same person's philosophical opinions, seems
to me characteristic rather of modern orthodoxy than of the Greek
philosophers.

THE MYSTICAL TBABITIOK 225

science, and lie comes witMn an ace of succeeding. We regard
Ms physical system as modelled on Ms religions beliefs and
dictated by them. We shall., therefore^ reverse the usual practice
of discussing first the poem About Nature and explaining its
conclusions as reached by purely rational processes of reasoning,
mainly in reaction against Parmenides. There is, of course,
truth in that point of view ; but what we are concerned to dis-
cover is the innermost convictions of Empedocles, the view of
life and of the world, wMch made Mm dissent from Parmenides
in some points and agree with him in others. The driving power,
the cause of Empedocles* system, is not only, or chiefly, intel-
lectual dissatisfaction with Parmenides 3 theories, but a pro-
found belief that a somewhat different interpretation of the
mystic view of the soul and God provides a scheme which, when
we use it to interpret nature, leads to conclusions not so para-
doxically at variance with sense-data and with Ionian science
as those of Parmenides. We shall, accordingly, begin with the
religious poem, in which that interpretation is plainly set forth.
It states in mytMcal form the very doctrine wMch the poem
About Nature attempts to throw into more scientific language.

We learn from Aristotle 1 that Empedocles* poems were
( esoteric/ in the sense explained by Professor Margoliouth in
Ms recent edition of the Poetics. 2 They were, that is to say,
first learnt by heart, without being understood, because it * took
time for them to be assimilated/ When the whole text had
thus got into the mind, one part of it would throw light upon
another, and so the Mdden meaning would gradually come out.
If Empedocles* writings were of tMs character, we should beware
of charging him with inconsistency, and rather look out for
cross-references, characteristic of tMs method of writing, of
which, in fact, we shal encounter some instances. 3 Probably
it will be found that Parmenides* poems are similarly esoteric.
This would explain die mekical form used by both pMIosopters ;

1 Kfh. Nic. q 5, 1147 a 18 : col jkp d & v&ffea-t TO&TQIS (states of drunken-
ness, etc.) &>Tf &rofcitt xol ftn? Xyoiw*r'E/Mre5o*Wow, Kdl ol fp&rov futures

trwdpovm fjv ro&s X&yow, from 3 ofav Set yk.p ffvpjvqMU, T0Sro yj^w
fetrcu. Schol* ad foe. : ffv/t$v$<u' l@ml $four y&la-Qcu TTJF l&j* iy cu/row.

2 D. S. Margoliottth, Tke Poetic* o/Arimtie, p. 22. London, 1911.

* I Jmd already obeerved these cross-references before I learned from
Profesior Margoliouth the nature of esoteric composition.

226 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

for it is convenient that such writings should be both compact
and easily committed to memory. 1

119. The PUBIFICATIONS

Parts of the introductions to both poems are fortunately
preserved ; and the impression we get by comparing them is
that Empedocles regarded the Purifications as containing a fuller
revelation of truth than the other. Addressing Pausanias at
the beginning of the physical poem, he dwells on the difficulty
and darkness that beset men in this mortal life ; how hard it is
for their mind to grasp truth through their eyes and ears. Pau-
sanias is not to distrust his senses altogether ; they leave some
* opening for understanding ' (frag. 4) . But it is only an imperfect
comprehension that can come that* way. * Thou, then, since
thou hast found thy way hither, shalt learn no more than mortal
mind hath power/ 2

He calls upon the Muse to allow him to hear what is lawful for
the children of a day, and tells her that no garlands of honour
offered by mortals shall force her to lift them from the ground,
at the cost of her speaking more than is religiously permissible
(ocrtV 7r\eoi>), or taking a seat upon the heights of wisdom
(frag. 4).

Contrast with this the opening of the Purifications. Em-
pedocles there says that he goes about among men f an im-

1 Our view of Empedocles agrees with that taken by Aristotle (Met.
$4, 1001 a 5 ff.), who discusses him under the head of *the school of
Hesiod and all theologians ' (0eo\6yoL) t who only think of what convinces
themselves and take no trouble about persuading us. He singles out
Empedocles as *the one whose statements might be expected to be moat
consistent 9 ($yjcep ol^deliej \yeiy fo TL$ /tdXurra 6fj,o\oyovfjL&bjs avrcjS), and says
that * even he ' makes the principle of destruction (Neikos) also that which
produces everything, except the One, that is God. This is not the incon-
sistency which modern writers discover between the two poems, but
belongs to both equally, and in itself it is no more an inconsistency than
Heracleitus* corresponding doctrine that 'Strife is Justice,* explained
above, p. 190.

2 Frag. 2 : <TJ> 5' oSv, eirel 5' Ateicr^y,

iretcrecu od vXebv % jSpoTefy ftifrts ftpupev.

I take this as meaning that Pausanias' soul, having 'found its way 5 into this
mortal body, must be content to look out through the senses and so gain
what imperfect knowledge can come to it through them.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 227

mortal God, no mortal now, Honoured among all as Is meet,
wreathed with fillets and flowery crowns/ He seems to have
no fear that ' garlands of honour * will uplift Mm too high ; 1
he has attained the heights of wisdom 5 and now does not scruple
to declare it. Why should I harp on these things, as if it were
any great matter that I should surpass mortal, perishable men?"
(frag. 113). * Friends, I know indeed that truth is in the words I
shall utter ; but it is hard for men* and jealous are they of the
assault of belief in their souls * (frag. 114). Empedocles does not
now invoke the Muse, or pray that his lips may be pure and not
go beyond what is lawful. He speaks as an immortal God s
uttering truth from the heights of wisdom. It is strange that
Ms modern interpreters should not seek in this poem the real
convictions of Empedocles , but should treat it as so much mere
* religious belief/ which we may expect to be inconsistent with
his theory of nature. On the contrary, his violent disapproval
of Parmenides to whom the words, * ye Gods, turn aside my
tongue from the madness of those men ! ! 2 are supposed to refer
may well have been due to the very fact, so creditable to Pax-
menides* logic and candour, that he had not been able to
construct a physical theory that would harmonise with the Way
of Truth. Empedocles 1 principal motive is to find a new Way
of Opinion, which will not contradict the religion he passionately
proclaims. He almost says as much when, in open contrast
with Parmenides, he bids Pausanias * listen to the course of Ms
argument which is not deceptive. 9 8 True, no theory of the sense
world can be free from that element of falsity and darkness wMch

1 Compare IlepZ &Arey, frag. 4. 6 (above paraphrased} :

* &i & 6cligs

ct al r&re $if ampins hi fapovn
and Kafapftol, frag. 112 :

wwn ren^&w, &rmp taxo,

f re wejArrerrm rr^e w re $Af Uu.
I take tbia for an esoteric cross-reference,
2 Frag. 4.
8 Frag. 17. 26 : <ri> $ &cw* Xfryw or6X 0% Mnj\ow> contrasted with

Farm. I, 52: ftdyfaFc K&ffiar IfL&y Iwtww dxorjfX^ ckw^. Note that
Eini>odoclea me& \6jos where Parmenides Jms Mm. Parmenldes* physical
system in (partly) a cosmos of words, names ; Empedoeles" system is a
-with a rational and consistent meaning.

228 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Infects its object ; but Empedocles is determined that it shall
not be in open conflict with the Truth.

120. The Exile of the Soul

The basis of Empedocles 5 position is disclosed in the famous
fragment describing the exile of the soul and its wanderings
round the wheel of rebirth : 1

f There is an oracle of Necessity, a decree of the Gods from
of old, everlasting, with broad oaths fast sealed, that, whensoever
one of the daemons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully
stained Ms hands with blood, or followed Strife 2 and sworn
a false oath, he must wander thrice ten thousand seasons 3
away from the Blessed, being born throughout the time in all
manner of mortal forms, passing from one to another of the
painful paths of life.

* For the power of the Air drives him seaward ; and the Sea
spews him out on the dry land ; Earth hurls him into the rays
of the blazing Sun, and Sun into the eddies of Air. One from
another receives him, and he is loathed of all.

' Of these now am I also one, an exile from God and a wanderer,
having put my trust in raging Strife/

That the doctrine contained in these lines was not invented
by Empedocles is certain from the fact that the essential features
of it are to be found in Pindar's second Olympian,* written for

1 Frag. 115 : $<TTIV *A.vdyKijs XP%"* & v lH0TA* a 7raXat6',
jfj irXarteffcrt /career ^/^yter/^yoy
aKlTj<n <t>6vy> <p\a yvta

SalfJioves olre paKpaiuvos \\dx<x-<ri filoio,
rpls fay fivpias upas <br6 /jt,a.Kdptai> a\d\7)cr6at t
<f>vofA&ovs

S ft* Is xQovbs o$8as aTr&rrucre, yata 6' & ai5yos
TjeXtov tf>at$ovTOs, 6 5' aWtpos gjj.pa\ Swats'

> K<tl c'7cb vvv d/u, <f>vya$ 069ev xal

2 I accept Diels* Nekei* as a certain restoration of the word lost at the
beginning of this line. Its appropriateness will appear later.

3 i.e. 10,000 years. Cf, Dieterich, Nehyia, 119.

4 The fragments of Pindar's (Threnoi supply further details. Rohde,

^ ii 216.

THE MYSTICAi TRADITION 229

Theron of Acragas, where Empedocles was bom, at a date when
Empedocles was a boy. Throughout the course of that majestic
Ode revolves, as we have seen, the wheel of Tlme s Destiny, and
Judgment. 1 The doctrine can be classed unhesitatingly as
* Orphic/ The soul is conceived as falling from the region of
light down into the * roofed-in Cave/ the * dark meadow of Ate *
(frag. 119, 120, 121), This fall is a penally for sin flesh-eating or
oath-breaHng. 2 Caught in the wheel of Time, the soul, preserv-
ing its individual identity, passes through all shapes of life.
This implies that man's soul is not * human * : human life
(0 avdp&mvo? /os) is only one of the shapes it
through. 3 Its substance is divine and immutable, and it is
the same substance as all other soul in the world. In this sense,
the unity of all life is maintained ; but, on the other hand, each
soul is an atomic individual, which persists throughout its ten
thousand years' cycle of reincarnations. The soul travels the
round of the four elements : * For I have been, ere now, a boy
and a girl, a bush (earth), a bird (air), and a dumb fish in the
sea * (frag. 117). These four elements compose the bodies which
it successively inhabits.

The soul is further called * an exile from God ($eo$F) and
a wanderer/ and its offence, which entailed this exile, is de-
scribed as f following Strife/ * putting trust in Strife/ At the
end of the cycle of births, men may hope to * appear among
mortals as prophets, song-writers, physicians, and princes ; 4
and thence they rise up, as Gods exalted in honour, sharing the
hearth of the other immortals and the same table, free from
human woes, delivered from destiny (awoKXifpot, ?) and harm *
(frag. 146, 147). Thus the course of tike soul begins with separa-
tion from God, and ends in reunion with Mm, after passing
through all the moirai of the elements.

f, Ho?/m, A&nj are the keywords throughout. See aboTe, p. 171.

2 That ' defiling the hands (or limbs, ywa) with Wood* means flesh -eating
and animal sacrifice is clear from frag. 128, 136, 137, 139; cf. Hippol. J?/*
viii. 29 (Z>. F. F, 2 , p. 206). Oath-breaking is taken from Hesiod, Tkeog. 793.

3 Cf. Xen. Ot/rop. viii. 7. 17 ff. and A. E. Taylor's remarks on the affinity
of this passage with Plato's Pkaedo ( Farm Socr, L 33). The flesh is a * strange
garment * (frag. 126), not native to the sornL

4 Compare Pindar's list (Thrcnoi, frag. 133, Christ) : kings, athletes, poets
(ffo<plg. /dyurrot), who are called * pure heroes * (%w* fryrot) ; and Plato's nine
stages (Phaedrw, 248 D}.

230 PBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Now It is chiefly, if not solely, on tie ground of this doctrine
of immortality, that the Purifications have been condemned as
inconsistent with the poem On Nature, where it is generally held
that * there can be no question of an immortal soul/ 1 We hope
to show that there is no inconsistency at all ; but before we can
do so, we must turn to the analysis of the physical system. The
remaining doctrines contained in the Purifications will most
conveniently be taken in connection with their counterparts in
the theory of nature.

121. The World Period

The course of the world, as we expect, is modelled on the
cyclic movement of the soul above described. It begins in a
state of unity, with all the elements mixed in the ' Sphere * by
Love. Then, as Love streams out of the mass, and Strife pours
in from outside, there is a process of separation which terminates,
at the lowest point of the circle, in complete segregation of the
elements into four regions. The process is then reversed.
Love begins to prevail and draws the elements into fusion again,
ending in the complete reunion of the Sphere.

The factors in this scheme have already been discussed
(p. 63), and we have followed ancient authority 2 in distin-
guishing the four elements as * bodily/ while Love and Strife
are of that attenuated and fluid consistency which belongs to
soul-substance, with the least conceivable degree of corporeality.
Empedocles, says Aristotle, identifies Love with the Good ; and
Love is both a moving principle, since it draws together, and
a material, since it is a part of the mixture. 3 To move is the
function of Soul, or God ; but Soul and God can still only be
thought of as the finest forms of matter.

The two new elements are invoked to cause motion, which
Parmenides had excluded from the real. Love and Strife are,
as it were, the two life-forces which once animated matter, but
now, as matter solidifies into impenetrable atoms, are squeezed
out of it and conceived as subtle and mobile fluids. Strife is

1 Bumet, KG.P*, p. 283.

2 M.g* Simpl. Phys. 25, 21 : ri jp^v tro/tartard 0rot%ta Trotet r^rrapa, ras &
xupitas &px&* . . . QiMav xai Net/cos. Cf. Arist. Met. A 5 ; Aet. i. 3. 20.

3 Met. XIO, 107562.

THE MYSTICAL TEABITIOK" 231

spoken of as ' running out * of the members of tie unlverse 3 and*
in proportion as it does so, * a soft, immortal stream of blameless
Love ' pours in to take its place. 1 We need not be surprised at
Aristotle's statement 2 that Empedoeles' Love is the substrate
of the One, in the same sense as the Water of Thales, the Fire of
Heracleitus, the Air of Anaxinaenes. For those earliest philo-
sophers, the primary element was still alive, and consequently
self-moving. Empedocles' fluids of Love and Strife are half-
way between this conception of an internal life spontaneously
moving matter from within, and the purely external and de-
materialised motion, by which, in developed Atomism, one piece
of matter moves another entirely by a mechanical shock from.
without. It is as living and self-moving soul-substances that
Love and Strife are like the pJiysis of the lonians.

Empedocles* scheme of the cycle of existence, in which worlds
pass into being and perish again, is an adaptation of Anaxi-
mander's stages of existence, which we have analysed above
(p. 8). 3 If we start from the e Sphere ' or Reign of Love, in
which all the elements are fused in one mass, it is easy to recog-
nise Anaximander's Limitless Thing, in its primal state, before
the distinction of opposites has broken out. At the opposite
pole, we have what he called the Reign of Jmtiee- all four
elements completely separated. In Empedocies, Strife plays
the part of Moira or Lachesis ; 4 only Strife is now no longer a
dim, mythical personality, like the moral power inherent in
Anaximander's Limitless, but a divine fluid substance doing its
work mechanically.

At this point, there is a significant difference between the two
systems* Empedocles interpolates the whole of the period of
our world's existence between the Reign of Love and the Reign

1 Frag. 35. 12: favor 5 1 attv foreicrpQJMoi, r&rov

8 Met. ftl, 996a7.

8 Thus Aristotle brings Anaximander's syateui and Empedocies 5 together ;
Phys. a 4, 187 a 20, oi 5' & row Ivfo tvatiffas T&S &aTi6n?ras ^jeplj*w#ea, Skrvep
crt Ku.1 few 5 s v jrcU TaXXd $ouw elrat, s&cnrep TS/iireSwcAf t icat
IK rou fieiyficiTas yfajp Kat o^rot HKKptvovfft, riXXa. <ka^|M>wi 5*
(Emp.) vcploSo* TMC& rofrrww, rfo & (Anaxsg.) lira|. , . .
4 So, in religious representation, the division of the world among the Gods
was regarded sometimes as fated and determined by drawing of lota, some-
times as the result of strife "between the Gods (2/xs ).

232 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

of Strife. It occupies one lialf of the circle, in which we pass
from zenith to nadir ; and it is balanced by the opposite half,
in which the movement is upwards from the Eeign of Strife back
to the Sphere, causing by the way the existence of another
world, as Love regains the mastery. In Anaximander's scheme
the Reign of Justice came next after the primal state of fusion
and before the existence of individual things. The motive of
Empedocles* rearrangement is clear. To him Strife is an evil
principle ; it causes separation, and, to the mystic, separation
is evil, union is good. Hence, the state of the world in which
Strife triumphs is the lowest depth of evil, not, as it was for
Anaximander, a Reign of Justice. When it is fitted into the
frame of the wheel, 1 it must occupy the lowest point, and the
existence of worlds must fall in the two hemicycles, between the
best state and the worst.

122. The Hemispheres of Day and Night

If we form a visual image of this world period, we see a circle
divided by a horizontal diameter into two regions. The upper
one is filled with light radiating from its pole, the lower with
darkness which deepens into utter night at the bottom. Now
this is precisely the picture which, in another connection, gives
us the physical doctrine of the two hemispheres of Day and
Night, which move round the earth in a circle. The diurnal
hemisphere consists of fire; the nocturnal, of air (the dark
principle) mixed with a little fire. 2 Day and Night are caused
by, or rather consist of, these two hemispheres ; the Sun is only
a reflection of the diurnal fire, focused on the crystalline vault,
and so it travels round with the daylight which causes it. This
physical theory is manifestly a counterpart in actual space of
the wheel of light and darkness, which in the world period is
the wheel of birth and death* As the scattered rays of fire or
light are gathered up into one focus, called the Sun, and then
spread abroad again in the * backward reflection/ 3 and mixed

1 Cf. the last words of the quotation from Aristotle in note 3, p. 231.

2 Ps. -Pint. Strom. (D.F. F. 2 , p. 158. 30).
s ayratiyeia is the technical word.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 233

with darkness, so, in the cosmos, the soft stream of Love is
gathered up into the unity of the Sphere^ and then,, as It Is mixed
with Strife, diffused and scattered in the opposite hemicycle
of the wheel of existence.

When we study the parts played by Fire and Air in the for-
mation of our world, it becomes clear that, of the * bodily *
elements, Fire is the nearest akin to Love, Air to Strife. Thus,
as Love draws things together, so Fire, in defiance ol the common
representation, 1 is credited with a power of soHcHfjing. The
firmament (avpavos) is solid, consisting of air compacted after
the fashion of ice by fire. 2 The astonishing doctrine that fire
freezes, can only be explained by this element's close kinship
with the attracting force of Love ; and this also accounts for
Aristotle's repeated statement that, though has

four elements, he reduces them to two,, opposing fire to all the
restj and treating earth, water } and air as one That

Air, similarly, is nearest to Strife, folows from the analogy
between the two hemispheres of Day (Fire) and Night (Air with a
little fire) and the two halves of the world cycle dominated by
Love and Strife. There is nothing in the doctrine of the equality
of the elements to prevent us from ranging them in a series :
Love, Fire, Water and Earth 3 Air, Strife.

123. The Sphere and the Reign o

Can we now form a clear picture of the process wMch is going
on at this moment, as our world passes from the Eeign of Love
to the Eeign of Strife 1 4

1 Arisi. de Gen. et Carr. 336 3 : treiSif jap T/^MCW, *3* $WIF, T& plr

2 Aet. ii. II. 2 : crept tuna* tlvat row oripaybr # aep&s avfaraytrrvs
ff/w<rraAAo5G*. Cf. Aet ii, 25. 15 ; B. &4pa

wro xvpos (T%P ffdrfnp'). * Fire in general had a solidifying power * {Bturoet,

Jf.<?.P. 2 p, 273). Plutarch's identification of fire with JV T eio*, and water
with Phitta (de prim. frig. ,952 B) appears to be mistaken. The firmament is
the shell of the egg {Aet. ii SI. 4} s whose shape Empedocles, following
Orphic traditian s attributed to the cosmos.

8 De Gen. e Corr. ft 3, 3305 19 (D.F. V. f , p. 159} ; Met A 4, 985a 31.

4 That our world does fall in this hemicycle, not in the other, I regard as
certain. See Baraet, E.G. P. 2 , p. 270.

234 IHOM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

The point of departure is the Sphere. We are to conceive the
four bodily elements in complete fusion. Outside them is
Strife, forming an envelope ' at the outermost limits of the
round/ and completely separated from the elements. 1 Where
is Love ? It is evidently diffused in equal distribution through-
out the whole. 2 If Empedocles had been a complete Atomist,
he would have conceived the Sphere as consisting of molecules,
each composed of five atoms of Love, Fire, Water, Earth, Air
Strife alone being absent. But, as it is, we must think of
portions, rather than atoms ; and we must remember that Love
is not a bodily element, but a soul-substance, and can therefore
be conceived as continuously diffused throughout the whole
mass, not broken up into discontinuous portions like the four
primary bodies. If we suppose for a moment the molecular
structure, then Love would not be a fifth atom, but the soul
pervading and unifying the four bodily portions. Love is also
called Harmonia ; it is of the same order of things as Hera-
cleitus* Fire-Logos ; that is to say, it is both a fluid and a
unifying principle which pervades the elements, as the soul
pervades the body and holds it together. The Sphere is the
body of God, and Love is the soul which pervades it, and binds
it together in the bonds of harmony, as Justice bound the Sphere
of Parmenides into indissoluble unity. e There is no discord or
unseemly strife in his limbs' (frag. 27). 'He was equal on
every side and quite limitless (aTreip&v), a rounded Sphere,
rejoicing in his circular solitude * (frag. 28).

Love in the Sphere is, thus, a thing of the same kind as the
harmony-soul of the Pythagoreans, which was both a ratio and
a spiritual substance a combination of notions which Plato

1 Frag. 36. 9, states this very clearly.

2 I believe this to be the sense of frag. 17. 19 :

NeZ/coy r' otiX&fjLevov <W%a ruty t drdXavTov &TrdyTT]i t
K&i 3>i\6T7js & roicrW) tiny /tTj/cos re irAdros re.

The contrasted words &x a * an <i & rotanv are pointless unless these lines
describe the Sphere ; and if they do, the description of Love as * equal in
length and breadth' may mean 'diffused over the whole extent of the
Sphere * ; while drdXavroy cbrcij'Tiji (der uberatt gleich wuchtige* Diels) I take
to mean that Strife envelops the whole mass in a covering that is * equally
balanced all round/ not thicker at any one point than at another. So
Parmenides says of his Sphere : rd ybp otfre rt [telfrv otfre n fiaifrrepov
Xpffo fort TTJI % riji (frag. 8. 44).

THE MYSTICAL TBABITION 235

stowed to be Inconsistent, and which puzzled Aristotle. After
dismissing the view that the soul can be a ' harmony * In either
of two senses the combining (crvvffeew) or fitting together of
separate parts, and the proportion {k&jos} of the components
of a mixture Aristotle goes on to say that * it is equally absurd
to regard the soul l as the c proportion of the mixture * (\ojo^ TTJ?
/leiffco)?). For the elements are not mixed in the same pro-
portion in flesh as in bone ; so that it will follow that there are
many souls, and that too all over tie body, if we that

all the members consist of the elements variously commingledj
and that the proportion (Xoyo?) determining the mixture is a
harmony, that is, soul. This is a question we might ask Em-
pedocles, who says that each of the parts is determined by a
certain proportion (Xo<y>). s Is the sou! 5 then., this proportion,
or is it rather something distinct wMch comes to be in the
members ? And further, is the mixture caused by Love a
random mixture, or a mixture in the right proportion ; and if
the latter, is Lme the proportion itself or
tfie proportion I * 3

The answer, not given by Aristotle, to the last question, is
that it is both the proportion or harmony, and also something
which Aristotle, but not Empedocles, would regard as * distinct/
namely, a substance. It is once more the group-soul^ the soli-
darity of a group still conceived,, as it had been by primitive
man, as a material medium.

In the Purifications, God (that is s Love) is further described
as * a sacred mind ($/>?*> %>?/)? unutterable^ flashing through
all the order of things with swift thoughts * (frag. IM) words
which show that this God is, in this respect, identical with the
Nous of Anaxagoras. He is also, like the Logos of Heracieitus*
the Law for all (TO Trdwwv vofjupav) which * stretches every-
where through the wide-ruling air and the infinite light of
heaven ' (frag. 135),

This primary state of the world has its mythical counterpart

2 Aristotle is of course discussing the fndindnal souL

s Ami, de Anim. a^ 410a I, gives Empedodes* formula for "bonej which
consists of 2 parts Earth, 2 Water, 4 Eire, tyfi&iip ^XA^tfiF apqp&ra. Afe
de Part. Anim. l t 642 a 17, he says that thia proportion (Xfryos) is the
ewe^ice (&&ffia.) or nature ($&*) of bone.

3 J}e Anim. <x4, 40S 13.

236 FROM EELIGIOK TO PHILOSOPHY

in the Purifications, which describe the earKest age of man
as the Eeign of Aphrodite, the Queen of Love. In that age
Strife was not : ' they had no Ares for a God, nor Kydoimos, no,
nor King Zens, nor Kronos, nor Poseidon, but Kypris the
Queen * (frag. 128). Her alone they worshipped with rites pure
from the taint of bloodshed, and f all things were tame and
gentle to man, both beasts and birds, and the flame of loving-
kindness burned * (^thotypoo-vvr} Se SeS^e^, frag. 130).

124. The breaking up of the Sphere and the Fall of the Soul

How was this state of bliss broken up ? Here again, we shall
find the religious doctrine coincide with the physical system.
The wheel of Time and Justice cannot stand still ; and, as it
turns, ( in the fulness of the alternate time set by the broad oath,
Strife leapt to claim his prerogatives, and waxed mighty in the
limbs of the God, and they all trembled in turn/ * As Strife
poured in on all sides into the mass, Love rushed out to meet it.
The bodily elements, too, are swept towards their proper regions,
and from the meeting and mixing of all these streams arise all
the individual things in the world. The elements ' prevail in
turn, as the circle comes round, and pass into one another, waxing
small and great in their appointed turn ; for they alone really
are (eo-r^), but as they run through one another they become
(yiyvovrat) men and all the tribes of beasts * (frag. 26). They
can only be said to * become/ and not to have an * abiding life/
in the sense that * they grow from many into one, and again are
divided and become many * ; but ' in so far as, in this perpetual
change, they never cease, in that respect they are for ever im-
mutable in the circle * (ibid.).

Can this doctrine of the becoming of individual things, as a
mixing and separation of portions of the elements, be reconciled
with the religious belief in an immortal, migrating soul ? If not,
we must accept the common view that Empedocles* physical

1 Frag. 30 : atir&p &rei ptya,

& rifjids T* av6pov<r reXeto/tt&'
8$ fffyv dfwtpcuos TrXar^os 7ra/>* A^Xarcu SpKov.
Frag. 31 : Trdvra yap tj-clijs reXe^ero -y wet 0Qio.

So Plato, Rep. 545 D, describing the fall from the perfect form of govern-
ment to Timarehy, Invokes the Muses to say, &TTUS ty wpwrov ordo-ts Zfirea-e.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 237

system did not square with Ms religion. But It will soon appear
that there is no discrepancy.

Empedocles uses, once in each poem, a curious phrase which
seems to be a cross-reference, 1 hinting that the doctrine of the
Purifications can be interpreted in physical terms. The appointed
moment of ' alternate time/ at which Strife leaps to claim
Ms privileges, is * set by a 'broatl oath 3 (TrXareos Trap* \^Xarai
op/cov). After what has been said above (p. 23) about Styx, it is
easy to recognise in this oath the Great Oath of the Gods, which
secured their privileges in the dasmos, and to understand that
it is called * broad * because it is a barrier or fence (herkos.) z
This broad barrier is actually identical with the enveloping
stream of Neikos, which enfolded the Sphere during the reign of
Love that chill stream which makes all the limbs of the God
shudder when it begins to pour into the mass, just as Styx
paralysed the God to whom her water was administered as an
ordeal for oath-breaking, * whenever quarrel and strife arose
among the immortals/ 3 Neikos, the daemon of strife and
division, has for his vehicle the icy stream of Styx. The meeting
of the opposed currents of Love and Strife attends the formation
of individual existents.

If we turn now to the famous Oracle of Necessity in the Puri-
fications, we find that this eternal decree of the Gods is c
by broad oaths * f jfKar(r<ii Kar<r^>p^ytcrfjLvov opicoi^ (frag.
115. 2). The oracle decrees the banishment from the Blessed,

1 See p. 225.

2 Empedoeles' eX^Xarat is reminiscent of Hesiod, Theog. 726 S r&y (Tdprapo?)
wpi x&\.Keoy ipKot A^Xareu, in the same context with the description of Styx.
His term for the elements, pt^/tara, comes, through the formula of the
Pythagoreans* Great Oath, the tetractys (vqyJir dcydov $0105 jtlfaim T' fyov-
(raj'), from the words which follow those just quoted from the

apupl S imv 2f#J Tptaroixel Jt^xurcu xepi Seiprjv* a&rap fartp8& yr$$ plfrtu T
Kal drpiry&rcRo 0oX&r<np. (Cf. Olympiad, in Arist* Meteor. 28 & A : 7%
(ol apxcuk) iTTfyas &<nrep rivas pifas.) Hut. de Is. el Os. 381 f; TJ M i
Terpaicrtis, TO, i xal r/KoicoyTa, figyiffros 3}w Spxos , . . jral sc&fffim
For Styx-Horkos associated in Orphic theogony with the heaven-stream.,
Okeanc, cf. Arist. MeL A3 3 983 b 27: elffl & rtref ol Kal robt "/tr
. , . Kal WP&TQVS ^coXoTTja-wras o&rws (like Thales) oforroi rcpl rs ^/i
vwQ\a$$iy' 'Qicear&r T jap ml T^f^ ewdtivaif rfc yevtfft&s waT^&$ jrcu rbv &
Ttav de&v $$up rijjf KaKov^vriv w* a&rwr "Zr&yai TWF xoc^rwi** ri}U&ra,rm> $j&y

3 Hes. Theog* 782 : oxar^r* Ipcs icol FCWCOJ CF aiayd.r

238 FBOM EELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

for a great year of thirty thousand seasons, of certain daemons
for shedding blood or for oath-breaking. 1 The offence is also
described as ' consorting with Strife/ ' putting trust in Strife/ 2
The fall of the individual soul thus means its separation from
the original unity of God, the principle of Love and Harmony
and its passing into an impure state, in which it is mixed and
tainted with the evil principle of Strife.

Mythically, the Fall of Man may be regarded as the passage
from an original state of innocence, through a primal sin, into the
troublesome condition of his present life. This myth is given
in the description, contained in the Purifications, of the break-
ing up of the Eeign of Aphrodite, which was the Golden Age
before evil came into man's existence. It is fairly clear that
bloodshed was the sin which caused the fall of man, as it was
for bloodshed that the daemon is banished by the oracle of
Necessity. In those days, we are told, ' the altar did not reek
with pure bull's blood, but this was the greatest abomination
(fivcros /jLeyicrrov) among men, to eat the goodly limbs after
tearing out the life ' (frag. 128). 3 Mesh-eating and the worship
of the Gods of Strife, Ares and Kydoimos, were introduced
together (frag. 128), and marked the fall of man and the end
of the reign of Love. The ' burning flame of lovingMndness *
(frag. 130) was extinguished, and the soul put its trust in Strife.

The exact correspondence between this fall of the soul and
the physical theory of the breaking up of the Sphere is now
obvious enough. When the Sphere is invaded by the inrushing
streams of Neikos, all the elements combine to make mortal
forms. The four bodily elements compose their bodies; the

1 Of. Hes. Theog. 793 : 8s K& TTJV MopKov dn-oXXetyas ^0/160-0-77

jcetrat vfivrfjux rereXej

The offender Is sundered (diro/tc/pcrot) from the Gods for a great year of nine

ordinary years, and in the tenth he mixes (^wi^ffyerai) with them again

(801-4).

2 Frag. 115. 4 and 14:

* We seem, by the way, to discern hehind this passionate disapproval of
the tearing and eating of flesh, besides the condemnation of Olympian
sacrifices, a rejection jjf those primitive Bacchic rites of raw-flesh-eating
(&tuxj>a.yla) which the Cretan Kouretes had still retained, though they
forswore the eating of flesh on other occasions.

THE MYSTICAL TEABITIO3ST 239

two soul-substances compose a fallen, impure soul, in which, a
portion of Love, now scattered like a fluid broken into drops, is
mixed with a portion of Strife. The principle of division has
broken up the one all-pervading God, or Soul, of the Sphere
into a plurality of daemons, each composed of Love and Strife,
of good and evil. 1 Such a daemon can pass from one body to
another and go the round of the elements, which all e loathe * it
for, does it not contain an admixture of loathsome Styx ? 2
It will find no rest till it is purified of this evil principle, and
the Love in it is freed from Strife once more, and gathered back
into the unity of God. This day will come at the end of our
world's existence, when the bodily elements are given over to
the rule of Strife, and Love passes out of the mass to form a
continuous fluid, enveloping it, as Neikos had done at the
opposite pole,

Aristotle's statement that Empedoeles makes the individual
soul consist of all the elements * for with earth we see earth,
etc/ is not inconsistent with the view we have stated, that
the immortal part of the soul consists only of Love and Strife.
It must be remembered that Aristotle also seems to think of
Empedocles* soul as the * proportion (Xayo?) of the mixture/
or the principle of harmony, which for a time holds the body
together. In any case, the bodily elements included in the
soul's nature during each incarnation will, of course s be dissolved
when the body decays. These compose its mortal part, con-
stituting its powers of sense-perception, by which the soul per-
ceives the bodily elements (but not Love and Strife), while it
lives in that body. The individuality resides, not in them s but
in the mixed portions of Love and Strife, which remain combined
so long as the soul is impure, and migrate to other bodies. That

1 Hence Plutarch, de awm tr&nq. p. 474 B :
Strrcd rwes jfjccurrop jtft&r y*&iterotr v&pahttppfowfft Kcd *aTi/3%0rre* fjm$Mt ml

Satftoves, t.e. & good one and an evil, a portion of Love and a portion of
Strife* Porphu de abst* iii 27 : el $ /f, dXX* Irrevffgy y* r& rijs qtfar&n ijjmw

ftrt T $e!0F dic^/wroy icol

2 Frag, 115. 12: AAof 5* 1$ AA0i> &xer<u, ffrvytwo-i $$ TOFTCJ. Of. j
9 15:

240 FHOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

there is no contradiction or difficulty in regarding the senses as
bodily and mortal, while another part of the soul is unseen and
immortal, is clear from Plato's Phaedo, 1 where Socrates states,
very precisely, just this Orphico-Pythagorean view of soul and
body, and draws a clear line between the higher, immortal
faculties, which know unseen things, and the senses and desires,
which belong to the body and perish with it. To Empedocles
the flesh is an 'alien garment/ and the senses belong to it. 2
That of which it is a garment persists and migrates to other
forms, as a weaver wears out many coats. 3

When we think of the immortal soul as a ratio (Xoyo?), or
proportion of numbers, it is easy to interpret the mixture in it
of Love and Strife on Pythagorean lines. A ratio, or harmony,
is a complex held together by a principle of unity. In so far as
it is one, it is bound together by Love ; in so far as it is complex,
it contains the principle of plurality, division, disunion, Strife.
As Heracleitus says, 4 e Combinations are wholes and not wholes,
drawn together and drawn asunder, consonant and dissonant,
one out of all things and all things out of one/

125. The consistency of Empedocles

It appears, then, that there is no more inconsistency in Em-
pedocles* doctrines than was akeady involved in the conception,
which he inherited from the Pythagorean tradition, of the soul
as both a 'harmony/ or ratio, and a fluid substance. This
inconsistency, or rather want of distinction, makes no discrepancy
between the scientific poem and the religious ; it lies equally
behind both. The two poems show us a religious doctrine, and
a translation of it into physical terms, which stands out as extra-
ordinarily ingenious and successful. We hope that it is also
clear that the physical system is simply the cosmology of Anaxi-

1 63Bff., especially 65c-66 A.

2 Frag. 126 : <rapK&y aKXoyv&ri ire/>t<rrAXovcra xirwia.

3 The illustration used by Kebes in Phaedo, 87 (see Em-net ad loc., who
connects it with the Orphic x iT( * JV )' The analogy between Empedocles* soul
and the soul as conceived by Chinese Taoism (above, p. 99) is remarkable.
The two systems are based on the same fundamental ideas,

4 Frag. 59 : crwd^tes 3\a icai o$x 8^** ffv^<f>p6fjLvotf 8i.a.<pp6fjLeyov,

al K TTO.VTWV fr xal # evbs w&vra.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 241

mander, with such modifications as were dictated by Empedocles"
religious beliefs, together with the new notion of elements as
' things/ which Empedocles had taken from Parmenides and
turned against its author. Given that notion, it is hardly too
much to say that a very acute critic, with a sufficient knowledge
of the mystic tradition, and nothing but the Purifications to go
upon, could have deduced the changes that Empedocles would
make in Anaximander's scheme, and reconstructed all the maia
lines of the new system. So far are we from accepting the view
that s all through this period there was a gulf between men's
religious beliefs, if they had any, and their cosmological views/
Empedocles, as we read Mm, exemplifies, in a most remarkable
way, the opposite view, that men's cosmological views were
almost entirely dictated by, and deduced from 3 their religious
convictions,

Empedocles is a candid dualist, and consequently annoying
to philosophers like Aristotle, who imagine that they have
evaded dualism by the fallacies of the * final cause/ and escaped
from mythology when they make * God * the prime mover.
Aristotle 1 complains that Empedocles does not explain the
reason of the change which brings Strife back to the possession
of Ms privileges, but only says that * that is how it is * (ofirw?
7re<j)VKv) y and speaks of the * fulness of time, fixed by the
broad oath/ implying that the change was necessary, but not
explaining why. The only reason is that the wheel of Time,
Justice, and Destiny must turn and bring in its revenges.
If we ask further why this must be, we can hardly expect an
answer. It is an oracle of Necessity, or Moira; and when
modern writers echo Aristotle's complaint, we may fairly ask
them how they propose to explain the presence of necessity in
the universe, without recourse to mythical representations,
To set up 'God* beyond Necessity or Destiny Zeos above
Moirar- IB only to add one more story to a tower of Babel,
whose top is already lost in the clouds. The dualist who is
content to match God and Destiny, as a pair of equal anta-
gonists, is no more, if no less, mythological ; and he does not
entangle himself in the difficulties which beset those who have

1 Met. 4, 1000 6 12.

242 FROM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

to make out that a world, half good and half bad, was designed
by pure benevolence united with omnipotence.

The later followers of Empedocles, attacked by Plato in his
Laws, 1 seem to have fallen into line with the scientific tradition,
keeping the four bodily elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and
dropping the two soul-substances Love and Strife. They held,
accordingly, that the world arose ' by nature and by chance '
(<f)ij(reL /col rvxy), and not ' by art ' or design (Te%z>?? t &t,a vovv)
which they regarded as a human thing. The four elements they
declared to be physis, and the soul to be a compound of them,
and secondary. 2 Their position was thus, in this respect,
identical with the Atomists", and, in their system, Chance (rv^)
holds the place of Moira.

126. PLATO : the Socratic and Mystic dialogues

The last and greatest attempt to formulate the mystical
faith in rational terms was made by Plato. It is impossible,
at the end of this essay, to do justice to the Platonic system ;
we can only try to indicate how it is related to the two main
tendencies we have traced in Greek speculation. Platonism,
if we take it to mean principally the theory of Forms or
' Ideas/ will turn out to belong to the mystic tradition. We
regard it as another offshoot of Pythagoreanism, another at-
tempt to succeed, where Parmenides had failed, in relating the
one God, who is good, to a manifold and imperfect world.

It is now generally agreed that we may distinguish a group
of early dialogues, commonly called * Socratic/ from a later
group in which the doctrines characteristic of Orphism and
Pythagoreanism for the first time make their appearance. 3
Typical of the Socratic group are the Apology, Laches, Char-
mides, and other minor dialogues, written within ten years after
the death of Socrates (399 B.C.). The mystical group, heralded
by the Gorgias, includes the Meno, Symposium, Phaedo, Republic,
PJiaedrus. It is held that the Gorgias was composed shortly

1 889 B ff. Cf. I>.F. F. 2 , p. 181. 48.

2 891 ; ?rOp /cat #5w/> /cai yrjv /cat atya wpwra yyticrQcu ruv iravTUv efrat /cal
T7)v <j>foiv 6voft,dfeiv raur' atfrd, \j/\}"x;h v ^ ^ rotiruv flffrepov.

3 For these questions Hans Raeder, Platons philosophische EntwicTcdung,
Leipzig, 1905, should be consulted.

THE MYSTICAL TEAB1TIOK 243

before or after 387 B.C., the year when Plato, at the age of forty,
set up his school at the Academy. Before he thus settled at
Athens, Plato, who went abroad after the death of Socrates*
had almost certainly spent some time with the Megarian
Socratics, 1 and also travelled in Sicily, where Pythagorean
thought must have survived the dispersion of the communities.
We have every reason to connect the change of tone and of
doctrine from the Socratic to the mystic group with these oppor-
tunities of contact with Pythagoreanism, a type of philosophy
which seems to have been little known to the Athens of Plato's
youth. The point we seek to bring out is that Plato's develop-
ment obeys the general rule we have seen at work throughout
pre-Socratic philosophy the rule that the view taken of the
* nature of things * reflects and is determined by belefs about
the nature and destiny of the soul. The theory of Ideas makes
its appearance at the same moment with the doctrine of the
soul's immortality and divinity ; and the whole argument
of the Phaedo is that the two doctrines stand or fall together. 2
There is therefore a strong prima case for holding that the
Theory of Ideas should be interpreted from the mystic stand-
point, and as inspired by the same view of the world and of life
and death that gave rise to the systems of Parmenides and
Empedocles.

The contrast between the two groups of dialogues comes out
strongly, when we compare the Afol^gy, Plato's version of
Socrates* speech at his trial, with the earlier part of the Phaedo,
which professes to record Socrates* last conversation with his
intimate friends. The comparison involves a problem which
has been solved in various ways. Before we state our own
solution, the facts must be briefly reviewed. We need only
premise that it is extremely difficult to believe that Plato can

1 Hermodoras ap. Diog. I*, ii. 106, iii. 6 ; see Burners edition of the
Pkaedo* Oxford, 191 1, Introd. I am glad to find myself largely in agree-
ment with the views stated in this valuable introduction, and with the
similar views of A. E. Taylor, VcariA Sacrattcm, i, Oxford 1911. 1 have

long been working towards the conclusion that Plato s s system is funda-
mentally Pythagorean ; and I owe to these books much that has helped me
to form a clearer opinion.

3 76 B : finj avdyia} ravrd (ra cEhf) re efwxi Kat rtb -^/icr^pas ^i^ds rpl* j
i, Ktd *l fdfr rawra, o6& r<lc.

244 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

have substantially misrepresented what Socrates said on either
of these occasions. 1 He was present at the trial, and had ample
opportunities of learning what had happened in the prison.

127. Immortality in the Apology

The Apology has two passages in which Socrates speaks of the
nature and significance of death. In the former (p. 29 A),
Socrates says that to be afraid of death is the same thing as
to think one is wise, when one is not ; for it is to suppose that
one knows what one does not know. No one knows even so
much as whether death may be the greatest of all goods for
man, and yet men fear it, as if they knew it to be the greatest of
evils. Herein, if anywhere, may lie Socrates' own superiority
in wisdom : having no sufficient knowledge about the things
in Hades, he does not suppose himself to have any ; what he
does know, is that it is bad to do wrong and disobey him who
is the better, be he God or man. He fears this evil which he
knows, rather than that other evil which may possibly be a
good.

In his final address after his condemnation (p. 40 c), he says
that there is considerable hope that his fate, after all, may be a
good one. Death is one of two things. Either it is ' like being
nothing * 2 and having no consciousness of anything ; or it may
be, as certain accounts say, a shift, or change of abode, to another
place. If it is like a dreamless sleep, that would be a great
gain ; for few indeed of our waking days and nights are better and
pleasanter than dreamless sleep. If, again, it is like a journey
to another country, and the accounts are true which say that
all the dead are there, what greater good could there be 1
Suppose that, on arriving in Hades, one will be rid of these men
who profess to be judges here, and find the true judges, Minos
and Ehadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other

1 TMs point has been brought out with great force by Burnet and Taylor,
opp. citt. I am, however, inclined to think that in the Phaedo Plato would
allow himself considerably more freedom than these writers will admit.

2 oloj> nydtv elvai. This does not mean sheer annihilation, complete non-
existence ; but being a shadow, a cipher, something that does not count ;
as when the dying hero in Tragedy says, ovdfr d/S eyti.

THE MYSTICAL TBADITIOX 2-io

demigods who proved themselves just in their lives. 1 "Who,
again, would not give much to be in the company of Orpheus,
Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer ? If that is true, Socrates would
gladly die many times. The company there would suit him to
a marvel ; for he would meet others who had been unjustly
judged, such as Paiamedes and Ajax, and compare his experi-
ences with theirs* Also, he could go on spending Ms time
examining people, to find out who was wise s and who thought
he was, and was not. It would be great happiness to question
Agamemnon, and Odysseus, and Sisyphus, and countless other
men and women. Anyhow, the dead are happier than the living,
for, if all that is said be true, they are deathless, snd therefore
cannot be put to death for practising dialectic !

It will hardly be denied that this passage, with its ironic tone,
leaves the impression that Socrates* attitude is agnostic ; but
we must remember that Socrates may not have chosen to express
his private convictions to such an audience at such a moment.
We can accept the Apology as a faithful report, without conclud-
ing that the totally different attitude towards death taken by
the Socrates in the PJmedo is not, in the main, historic.

128. Ideas and Souls in the Phaedo

The setting of the PJmedo marks it as dedicated to the Pytha-
gorean community at Phlius ; 2 and the principal interlocutors,
the Thebans, Simmias and Kebes, were alike Socratics and pupils
of Philolaus, the Pythagorean who settled at Thebes, Socrates
now declares 3 that he dies willingly, because he thinks he will
go to the company of good and wise Gods, and perhaps he will
find there also dead men who are better than men on earth,
Of this last he cannot be certain ; but that he will go to the
presence of Gods who are good masters, he is as sure as he can
be about any such matter. He has good hope that death is not
nothingness, and that, as the ancient accounts say, it is much
better for the good than for the bad.

2 It has been pointed out that these demigods may simply be Judges
among the dead, because they were exceptionally just, without any idea of
a * last judgment * of souls or of a distribution of rewards and punishments*

2 For details see introductions to Ferrai's and Burnet's editions.

3 Phaedo > 63 JR.

246 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Plato seems careful to mark that the discourse, opened by this
statement, is a sort of retractation of the Apology}- It contains
a statement of the Pythagorean view of life and death, with
which we are already familiar. Plato also indicates that it is
to be taken rather as an expression of faith a thing which is
earnestly believed, in its general outlines, to be true than as a
theory which can, as yet, be certainly established by argument.
It is a mythos, not a logos. 2

The famous sermon is too familiar to be repeated here. What
specially concerns us is the analogy between the soul and the
true * natures * or Ideas. The immortal thinking soul, which
alone knows reality, is sharply distinguished from the body,
with which are associated the lower faculties of sense, emotion,
and desire. Death is the complete release of the soul from the
infection and impurity of that lower nature ; philosophy is the
rehearsal of death, in which the soul retires by herself, shaking
off, so far as she can, the senses and lusts of the body, to com-
mune with those invisible and passionless existences, Justice,
Beauty, Goodness, and the rest.

The ruling conception of this new Apology is the already
familiar contrast of the two worlds. There is a supersensible
world, to which soul * by herself 9 and the objects of true know-
ledge belong ; and there is the sensible world of body, and of
visible and tangible things. The world of the body is a prison,
or a tomb ; that other world of the soul and of Ideas is the
realm of true life and reality, in which all worth resides.

In the course of the arguments that follow, it becomes still
clearer that souls and Ideas are things of the same kind. The
first two arguments aim at persuading us that the soul exists
before birth and after death, and that, before her birth into this
world, she not only existed, but had consciousness. The third

1 It begins, 63 B, with the words <f>tye STJ Treipadu iriBavdyrepov irpds vpSis
<hraXo7^<ra<r#cu % irpbs robs St/ccurrds, and ends, 69 E, e rt odv vjuv irtflaj'c&Tepta
clfjit v TT? dtTToXo-ytg, -^ rots 'Aftyvatuv fo/caarcus, eft &J* ^x ot -

2 This, I believe, is part of the significance of the passage (60 D) about the
dream in which Socrates has been warned to * work at music * (fj.ov<nKT}v woiei
/cat fyyd^ou). Socrates had hitherto taken ' music * to mean philosophy his
own rationalising dialectic ; but now he thinks it may mean literal * music/
fables not logoi. Not being fjivdoXoyucfc, he borrows the fables of Aesop and
turns them into poetry (61 B). At 61 E he describes the discourse which

ollows as pvOoXoycw. Cf . 70 B, $tajjLv8o\oy&u,v.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 247

tries to dispel Kebes* fear that the soul (which, like other
Greeks, he conceives as an extended gaseous substance) may be
dissipated, like smoke, when it leaves the body. This argument
(p. 77 ff.) may be resumed as follows :

We have to ask, what sort of objects can suffer dissolution,
and what cannot ; and to which class soul belongs* Only that
which is composite, or consists of pieces that have been put
together (TO crvirreOw teal wvQerov fo), can be dissolved ; and
it is probable that immutable objects like the Ideas are in-
composite, and so indissoluble, whereas the particular things,
belonging to the groups called after them, are always changing
and passing away.

Let us, then, divide things into two classesthe unseen, which
never change, and the seen, which are changing perpetually.
The body is more ' akin * (a-vyjev^) to the seen, the soul to
the unseen. The soul is invisible ; she is distracted and dazzled
by the perception of sense-objects through the bodily faculties ;
whereas, when she is withdrawn by herself, she finds rest in
contemplating those eternal, pure, immortal objects to wMch
she is akin. Moreover, soul rules over body ; and to rule is the
function of that which is divine. Hence ? the soul may be ex-
pected to be altogether indissoluble, * or nearly so * ; for even
the body holds together for a long time, and some parts of it
are * practically immortal/ Surely soul, the unseen thing, wMch
goes pure to the good and wise God, cannot he dissolved ; but,
if she escapes free from bodily contamination, she reaches that
which is like herself, divine, immortal, wise/ and becomes, in
the mystical sense, eudaimm.

129. Plato's conversion to Pythagoreanism

How are we to account for the apparent change of view from
the Apology to the PJiaedo 1 Professors Burnet and Taylor
have made out a strong case for believing that both dialogues
must be, in the main, historical ; and we have already remarked
that there is no difficulty in supposing that Socrates would
speak very differently to the judges in the court and to his
intimate friends in the prison. The argument points to the con-
clusion that Socrates was more familiar with Pythagorean ideas

248 FHOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

than has commonly been supposed ; though it must be noted
that none of the positive arguments advanced in the early part
of the Phaedo is regarded as conclusive, except the argument
from anamnesis that all true knowledge is recollection, in this
life, of knowledge of the Ideas, acquired by the soul in the other
world. 1

The problem that remains to be faced is this : If Socrates
really talked in this way, and discussed the mystic view of im-
mortality as bound up with the theory of Ideas, why is there no
trace of this association of doctrines in the earlier Socratic
dialogues ? If Plato learnt all this from Socrates, how could
he possibly have kept it out of the Charmides, Laches, and the
rest?

To this question the most probable answer seems to us to
be, that Plato did not learn it from Socrates, but from Pytha-
gorean friends after his master's death. Professor Burnet
points out that, though Plato must from his childhood have
known Socrates, and heard Mm talk, we have no ground for
supposing that he belonged to the inner circle of Socratics. 2
As a young man, he may have been chiefly interested in the
very exciting politics of that troubled time ; and the rationalis-
ing, dialectical side of Socrates may have been all he knew.
Suppose that this was so, and that after the death of Socrates,
when he was twenty-eight, he set himself to defend Socrates'
memory from the charge of having corrupted the youth of
Athens, by describing the sort of conversations he had witnessed
in the porticoes and gymnasia. The subject of these early dia-
logues is the definition of virtue, or of particular virtues, such
as courage and temperance ; the thesis they illustrate is the
Socratic doctrine that virtue is knowledge. Knowledge meant
clear thinking both that self-knowledge which refutes the
false conceit of wisdom, and the attempt to conceive clearly
and isolate in definition the meaning of a name like Justice, as
distinct from the many things called by that name. There is
no hint in these earlier dialogues that such a * meaning ' (Xo<yo<?)

1 See Phaedo t 90 B ff., where Socrates admits that he has been arguing as
one who has an interest in the conclusion, and not dispassionately, and 91 E,
where the anamnesis argument alone is reaffirmed as valid.

8 Burnet, Phaedo, 1911, Introd. p. xxvi.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 249

or ' form * (aSo?) is regarded as a substantial, existing tiling,
or aa more real than tie things called after it, or as in any sense
a cause of their existence. Probably Plato, in this first period,
thought of it as a secondary and unsubstantial thing, ike the
Atomist's eidolon, or wraith ; and s like other Greeks, imagined
the soul as a shadowy phantom of the same kind. The appar-
ently agnostic attitude of Socrates in the well
represent Plato's own standpoint at that moment, and all that
he then knew of Socrates* beliefs on the subject.

Now, consider the effect upon Mm of becoming lamiHar, within
a few years of Socrates* death, with those mystic Mends of the
inner circle who had sympathised with a different side of the
master's thought. Hitherto, Plato had known little about the
mystics. There was no Pythagorean community at Athens ;
Orphism existed there only in a degraded form, which moved.
Plato to the contempt freely expressed in the It might

well be some time before he could whole-heartedly the

new view of Socrates now put before him. He may have been con-
verted at the moment when it Sashed upon him that the * forms *
or 'meanings' which Socrates had sought, were not unsubstantial
wraiths, but the very living natures and indwelling souk of their
groups ; when he saw in them the mediators wMch would take
the place of the Pythagorean ' numbers/ and once more ill the
gap, left by Parmenides, between the immutable One and the
manifold world of sense. It would be very human and natural
that the sudden and tremendous illumination of this Idea should
mark the crisis of his conversion to mysticism, and carry with it
the conviction that this, after all, must have been what Socrates
was feeling after. His first duty would then be to write dia-
logues like the Symposium and the PAaedo, in which Socrates
figures as tie exponent of the new theory. 1

130, Ideas as

To our minds, the doctrine that souls are like Ideas, and
Ideas like souls, is strange and paradoxical A soul and a con-

* I would not leave the impression that I hold Soerates to h&Ye been
either an Orphic or a Pythagorean. I only suggest that Plato, helped by
his mystic Mends, may have read his new Pythagoreamsm hack into the
thought of Socrates,

250 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

cept, such as Beauty or Equality, seem to us to have little in
common. Hence we are inclined to assume, as a matter of
course, that the distinction must have been equally obvious to
Plato, and, proceeding on that assumption, to interpret him
as discovering analogies between very different classes of things.
This is to reverse the true state of the matter. Plato's task
was, not to find resemblances, but to differentiate two kinds of
supersensible reality, which had originally been almost or quite
indistinguishable. We need only recall the fact that his contem-
porary, Democritus, explained visual perception by the entrance
of ' images (eFSo>Xa) which flow off (aTroppeovra) continually
from the objects seen, are of like form (o/ioto/top^a) with them,
and impinge upon the eye/ * Democritus seems to have called
these images deikela, * semblances/ f appearances 3 ; 2 they were
nothing but soul-phantoms or wraiths, reduced, as Atomism
demanded, to filmy tissues of atoms. At this stage of thought,
images and concepts could still be credited with the properties
ascribed to phantoms or souls objective reality, existence in
time, extension and localisation in space, and even bodily
properties such as resistance. The task of philosophy was to.
get concepts clear of these soul-properties. Plato stUl conceives
Ideas as soul-substances, and assigns to them the same pro-
perties he now assigns to souls: both alike are immutable,
uniform (^oz/oe^S??), incomposite, immortal, divine.

131. Two grades of supersensible existence

Further, in his present stage, Plato seems to recognise two
grades of supersensible existence: (a) pure, unmixed with
body, and (6) impure, mixed with body. Moreover, he seems
to think that both Ideas and souls may be on either grade.

(a) The Soul may be withdrawn ' by itself ' (avrrj ica6 y avT^v),
and retire to that which is pure, ever-existent, immortal, and
unchangeable, and be with this for ever, being akin

1 Alex, in Arist. de Sens. p. 56 ; Beare, Greek Theories of Mem. Cognition,
p. 30.

2 Heaych : SJ/q/Xo?-- 0dcr/ia, %s, etduXop, /ufLijpa. Cic. adJFam. xv. 16. 1 :
quae ille Gargettius et iam ante Democritus ct5w\a, hie (Catius Insuber,
the Epicurean) spectra nominat. For the religious use of SlicrjXov see M. P.
Nilsson, Der Ursprung der Trago'die, Neue Jahrbticher (1911), xxvii. p. 692,

THE MYSTICAL TBADHTO^ 251

to it. 1 TMs retreat into the unseen world means a purification
of soul from the lower and bodily affections. Complete deliver-
ance from these is not attainable till death, when soul is separated
from body, and then only if the soul has been purified in life by
the pursuit of wisdom.

(5) During this mortal life, and even after death, the soul-
substance may be infected and permeated by the bodily. 2 In
life, it is tainted by passions and desires ; and ? after death ? if it
has not departed pure, it remains as a visible ghost, * wallowing
about graves and tombs, where certain shadowy phantoms of
souls are seen, the eidola of those souls which have not been
released in purity, but partake of the visible, and are therefore
seen/ 3 The substance of the soul is, again and again, of

as if it were capable of being * tainted/ * mixed/ * permeated *
with bodily substance. The possibility of its remaining in
impure state even after death is necessary to account for its
reincarnation ; for, if it escaped pure, * not with it

anything of the body/ there would be no reason why it should
fall back into another mortal form. 4 The language throughout
this part of the Phaedo indisputably describes the substance of
the soul as if it were spatially extended and capable of literal
admixture with bodily elements. Every term, appropriate to
such a conception is used, and there is not a hint that it is all
mere metaphor. To treat it as such is arbitrary and baseless.

1 Phaed, 79 D.

2 Phaedo, 67 A : fpqdi dyairtftirXw/ie^a (infected) rip TOI'TOV (TOW
^mkrwy, dXXi KftBapevutfiev* 66 B : &w fo T& ffQfut tytopjc.* gal

$ rjftwy 7} $vx%] /*T& rotovrou tco.KW 80 E ; ttF juj mftccpi oiraX

row fft&ftaTos ffwe<pni\KQiiff'a s tire o^B^y KQiyupwff&ai?Tij$ IF rip piy lieavffa, ??<u.

81 B : /jt,ftta,(rp,ifit /ca2 djcd^apras TO ffJifiaros. 81 C : dteLfaffijJtevT} (distendedj

permeated) &ro TOU ffutftaroeidovy.

3 PhaedOj 81 D. Compare my interpretation of Empedocles* view of soul

as consisting of an immortal part, composed of the good principle (Love)
tainted during the cycle of reincarnations "with, an admixture of the evil
principle (Strife), and a mortal part (senses) consisting of the four bodily
elements, p. 239.

4 Phaedo t 81 C. The soul which is * permeated by the bodily* and by con-
tinual association (o-upot/oia) with it has teortef the 'bodily into Us nature or
a%tbstance (berobpe <Tj/pt^uroF)j is weighed down and dragged back into the
visible world by this bodily admixture, which is Ijj.j3jpi&h f /Jopi', ye&Ses,
opar&y. Hence, in the Pkaedt*m 9 248, the disembodied soul retaine the two
lower * parts,* symbolised by the two horses of the chariot, and by these it
is dragged down again to earth. In these representations, however, strict
consistency is not to be expected.

252 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Now, the Ideas are described in very similar language. They
too may exist in transcendental purity, or as embodied, ' present/
in the things which they inform. In the second case, they are
what we should call ' instances * of the Idea the instances, for
example, of Beauty which are somehow ' communicated * to
beautiful things in the world of sense. 1

(a) As the soul in its pure state is said to be * by itself * (avrr]
/cad' avrrjv), steadfast, immutable, divine, and immortal, so
in the Symposium the Idea, when it is ' by itself * (avro Ka8'
avro) and free from matter, is called uniform, unmixed, pure,
divine. 2 The conclusion of the argument at Phaedo 80 D states
that soul is most like the divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform,
indissoluble, unchangeable Idea ; while body is like the human,
mortal, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble, and perpetually
changing.

(6) The immanent Idea, on the other hand, is described in the
same terms as the embodied soul which is permeated with
earthly substance. As the soul is * filled by the body with
passions and appetites and fears and all sorts of phantoms and
rubbish/ so the Idea, when it is involved ?n its visible embodi-
ments, is c infected with human flesh and colours and all sorts
of mortal rubbish/ 3

This comparison shows that the process of differentiating
concepts from souls has not yet gone very far in Plato's mind.
"We believe that, both in the early Socratic period and in these
mystical dialogues of his middle Hf e, Ideas and souls are things
of the same kind, or barely distinguishable ; and that, precisely
for that reason, his view of the nature of the Ideas changed
simultaneously with his view of the nature of soul, when he was

1 JButftyd. 300 B : The many beautiful things are different from Beauty
itself (atfrd r& m\6v), but a certain beauty (/cdXXoy rt] is present (jrdpeo-rt) to
each of them. Pttaedo, 100D : oik dXXo n iroiei aM (a beautiful thing) Ka\bv
fy TJ ticdvov rov KO\OV etre irapovcrta efre KQivwvlo. efre 6V?? Srj /cat SITUS Trpwyevo-
pvq. Throughout the concluding argument, the instance of the Idea in us
(e,g. rb Iv ijfuv ftfyeBos, 102 D) is in some sense distinguished from the Idea
itself (avrb rb MtyeBos), which is in nature (ev TTJ tpfoci).

2 Symp. 211 : fuwoet&, el\iKpiv& t KQ.6a.pbV) &fu.KTOP, Betov. See the whole
context.

8 Phaedo > 66 : (soul) <-/>C&TGJJP 8 /cal eTritivfuwv tcai tybfiw K.a.1 ei5c6Xwv wavro-
SairQy Kal <j>\vapta$ tfiirlfiirXycriP ^aas iroXX^r (rb <rcfyui). Symp. 211 E : (Idea)
trapicwv TC foQpwrlvwv /cat xpwfLdruv /cat dXXiyy iroXX^s <f>\vaplas 6vijTjj$ t

THE MYSTICAL TBADITIOH 253

converted to Pytiagoreanlsm. The Phaedo announces this
conversion as fully accomplished.

According to his new view of the constitution of reality,, the
' nature of things * I is to be found in these supersensible Ideas ,
each of which is the centre, and indwelling soul, of a group of
objects in the sense-world.

132. The Idea a$ Daemon and the nature of ' Participation *

We have seen how, in the P"haedo, the Platonic * Forms * or
* Ideas * are declared to be objects of the same kind with souls.
But the Ideas 3 it must be noted, are not individual souls, but
souls of groups, or classes of things, called by their names. They
are, in fact, descended from entities of the order as the

daemons described above (Chapter HI.) the impersonal spirits
of human groups or natural departments. 2 Justice^ for in-
stance, is the one collective soul-idea which is somehow shared
in common by aE just persons and things. How is this relation
to be conceived ? How is it possible for one form or nature
to be present in a plurality of things, and yet to remain one ?

s in Plato means the World of Ideas ; cf, Jfep. 597 A : (TJ K\lnj) 17 iw
ei otffftt t made "by God* identical with rd et&or 5 8$ $c/i cfVcw 6 |<cm
Phaedo, I03B: r& Ar rj f&rei (frcarrltar) contrasted with TO IF jjfur.

132B : TO. fiv et$ij ravra &ffvep vapa.Si-ffuiTa. tardy tu iw r$ $&<Feu

2 See Plato's description of the rule of the daemons in the age of KTOHGS
(above, p. 35), each daemon presiding over one kind. The close analogy
between Plato's Ideas and the * species-deities,' of which Tyler, Prim, Onto.
(1903), iL p. 243, gives examples, has long been pointed out, especially the

Finnish haltmt : * Every object in nature has a ** haltia,* 1 a guardian deity or
genius, a being which was its creator and thenceforth became attached to
it. These deities or genii are, however, not bound to each single transitory
object, but are free personal beings which have movement, form, body, and
souL Their existence in no wise depends on the existence of the individual
objects, for although no object in nature is without its gnardian deity, thia
deity extends to the whole race or species. THs ash-tree, this stone, thia
house has indeed its particular **halti%" yet these same * e haitiat Si concern
themselves with other ash-trees, stones, and houses, I which the individuals
may perish, but their presiding genii live on in the species s (p, 245). These
haltmt are obviously gronp-sonls or- daemons arrested in an earlier stage
than Plato's Ideas, retaining more soul-properties, which the Ideas have shed
on their way towards becoming mere concepts. The obscurity about the
relation of the "species-deity 1 to the particular instances of it present in
members of the group is precisely that which besets the relation of
eV ijfuy /tye#as in Plato's Pkaedo, 102 if.

254 FBOM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

This Is the much-vexed problem of * participation * (
which Plato could never solve to his satisfaction.

We understand the problem and its insolubility, when we
grasp that this relation called ' participation * (methexis) is, from
the first, a mystical, non-rational relation, which defies rational
analysis. The Idea is a group-soul, related to its group as a
mystery-daemon, like Dionysus, is related to the group of wor-
shippers, his thiasos. The worshippers of Dionysus believed
that, when they held their orgiastic rites, the one God entered
into each and all of them ; each and all became entheoi ; they
1 partook ' of the one divine nature, which was ' communicated 3
to them all, and ' present ' in each. It is thus we must interpret
the three terms methexis, parou^ia, Jcoinonia by which Plato
tries to describe the relation of an Idea to its group. Another
term mimesis has the same significance. Mimesis is not
' imitation * in the sense of an external resemblance : there is
no 'likeness' in this sense between the Idea 'Man" and a
human being, and Plato never could suppose that there was.
Mimesis has its old sense of ' embodying/ * representing * : it
is like the relation which an actor has to the character he im-
personates, only that it is essentially between a group and a
unity. A better illustration is to be found in a variety of sym-
bols, all of which embody or represent one meaning. This sense
of mimesis was preserved by the Pythagoreans. Aristotle is
exactly right when he says that ' whereas the Pythagoreans say
that things exist by " representing " numbers, Plato says it is
by " participation " ; he merely changed the name/ x

133. The problem of ( Participation 3

We have seen how the conception of this relation, subsisting
between a divine or daemonic being and a group, had been kept
alive by the Pythagorean community, which, during its founder's
life and after his death, believed itself to be continuously ani-
mated and inspired by the master's spirit. We have seen also

1 Arist. Met. avi, 9876 9: Kara fj6e%iv yap efoai ra iroXXd r&v
rots etSecrLv. r-rp $ fj.46e%iv Tofoofia ft6vov fjLr4pa\v* oi ply yap

ret TO fora. jcuriv eZ?at rwv apt&fjiv t TLXdruv St /jLcd^et. TTJJ* filvroi ye ft0
fj,t/jiy&iv tfris av efy TWV etdwv &<pet<rav & KOtvf ^rew .

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 255

how 3 in such cases, the image of the human prophet recedes and
gathers about it the glories of miraculous legend. Once more
the old story is repeated. Just as the Gods in their day ceased
to be functional daemons in close and perpetual relations with
their worshippers, and drifted away to OIympus 3 and finally to
the utmost heaven, so Pythagoras had passed from being a
marvellous man (Satpovio? avyp, ffciov av^p) s up the ladder
which leads from earth to heaven, to become identified with
Apollo himself. The penalty of this Olympian exaltation
is always the same : the old sense of intimate communion 9
based on community of nature, must fade and die. What
once a collective soul, becomes a distinct individual^ removed
by an impassable gulf from its group.

The same fate awaited the Platonic Idea. The
called metkexis will not bear rational analysis, Aristotle, after
saying that Plato adopted this relation from the Pythagoreans
and merely changed the name* adds that both alike s left it an
open question what on earth this or

may be/ As regards Plato, the statement is hardly true.
Already in the Phaedo he has become uncomfortable about it,
and declines to commit himself to the terms * presence" and
e communion/ 1 Later, in the Pammnides, he raises the intel-
lectual difficulties. 2 Parmenides asks whether we are to under-
stand that the whole Idea, or only a part, is present in each
thing which f partakes 3 of it. Either alternative is beset with
difficulties. The problem cannot be solved, until the Ideas alto-
gether cease to be indwelling group-souls ? or daemons, which
can impart themselves to a whole group, and yet remain one.
Their fate must ultimately be to dry up into mere * concepts/ or
logical objects of thought, immutable still and independent of
the subject which knows them, but without life and power.
The relation of methexis must be reduced to the relation of
logical subject to universal predicate. From the point of view
of logical theory, this step is an unmitigated gain ; but, although

1 Pha&do, 1000: owe iXXo n fotet CM/TO jfoX&r $ q ^jfcfroy row KoXoO *l?re
irapovffia etfre jcotrwFict eftre $rg 8$ xal SJT&W "x-jmryeyoiilpj} [Tpoffttyopewfi^w^
Wytt.)* 00 -yap In TOVTO foaxupljtyuu, aXX J $TI T%J KaXj3f vdvra ri JtaXa [ytyvc*
rat] /caXdL

Farm. 131.

256 FEOM BELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Plato, as a logician, is irresistibly driven towards it, the mystic
in Mm cries out against it. In the midst of his later and most
severely logical work, the protest breaks out : * Can we ever be
made to believe that motion, and life, and soul, and consciousness,
are not present in that which is perfectly real ? Can we imagine
it as neither alive nor conscious, but, in all its irreproachable
solemnity, a senseless, immovable fixture ? ' 1

The trouble is that, if the Ideas are allowed to cease to be
souls, and to become mere concepts, they can no longer be re-
garded as the causes the only true causes of the world. The
Socrates of the Phaedo describes how he has turned his back
on aU such causes of becoming and perishing as the earlier
physicists had alleged, and resorted to one type of explanation
for everything. If he is asked, for instance, why a thing is
beautiful, he will not say, ' because its colour, or its shape, is
so-and-so ' ; Ms only answer is : f for no other reason than that
it partakes of the Beautiful/ 2 TMs is well enough, so long as
it means that ' the Beautiful Itself * is a divine substance, wMch
imparts its nature to all beautiful things, and is somehow
' present ' in them. But, if ' the Beautiful Itself 3 is to be a mere
universal predicate, and ' partakes of' is to mean nothing but
the subject-predicate relation, what becomes of Socrates^ sole
and sufficient reason, why things are beautiful? ' TMs is
beautiful because it partakes of the Beautiful * will now mean
exactly the same as ' TMs is beautiful because it is beautiful * :
' partakes of * is a mere synonym of this sense of * is/ 3 The
Idea is a cause no longer.

In the latter part of the Pltaedo, it is clear that, partly owing
to the ambiguity of the word atiia, wMch means f explanation/
* reason/ ' ground/ and ' cause * of existence or of becoming,
Plato confuses two very different theories. One is logical, and

Sophist, 248x: ri te wp&s Ai&t ; ws dM rfn?w xol

w, aXXA ffcp&v /col 710?, vow ofa fyov, dxtvijToy forte clxat;
2 Phaedo, 1000. t J _

8 TMs obvious difficulty seems to escape those critics of the Phaedo who
speak as if Plato, when he wrote that dialogue, realised that methexi* was
only a figurative expression for a clearly conceived subject-predicate rela-
tion. We must remember that Plato has no words for * subject' or 'predi-
cat* ' or * relation. 3

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 25?

states that the explanation, or account, to be given of the pro-
position * this thing is beautiful/ is that there Is an Idea, Beauti-
ful, and this thing partakes of it. In modem terminology this
is no more than to say : s Every proposition of the type " x
is A 33 implies that there is a concept, or universal predicate, A 9
and that x has to it a certain relation/ l Taken simply as an
analysis of the subject-predicate proposition, this account is
unexceptionable; though it does not hold of the numerical
and relational propositions (' one and one are Two/ e Phaedo is
taller than Socrates ') to which Plato also applies it. But that
is not all. The logical theory is not distinguished from a meta-
physical doctrine, which may be stated thus : * This beautiful
thing exists (or begins to exist, jij^erat) for no other
that Beauty exists, and this thing partakes (or comes to partake)
of its nature/ On this interpretation, the existence of Beauty
Itself (avro TO xa\6v) is asserted to be the of the existence

of all particular beautiful things in the world of The

relation called methexis is not here the logical relation of subject
to predicate in a proposition, but a causal relation. The Idea
is to be, somehow, the supersensible (atria) of the

existence of sensible things which become and perish in time.
In order to be so, it must impart its nature in some inexplicable
way, which can only be described figuratively. It is like an
original (wapaSeij/jLa) which casts a copy (/u)tM7/ua), or like-
ness (eifc&v), of itself into a mirror, or some other reflecting
medium. The supersensible world is an immutable hierarchy
of Ideas, or Types, which throws its image upon the ever-
flowing stream of time. Or, it is a heaven of divine souls, which
impart themselves to the groups of transitory tMngp that bear
their names. The whole conception is manifestly mythical^
but it is of the essence of the theory. The logical interpretation
is struggling to get clear of the mythical ; the Idea threatens
to pass from being an indwelling group-soul to being a mere
universal concept, which does not exist at all, and, if it did,
could not cause the existence or becoming of particular things.

1 The characteristics of the relation are that it holds oaly between a
* particular 1 or thing and a concept; that it holds from the thing to the
concept, and not in the reverse senae ; and that every thing has thii relation
to some concept.

258 FEOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

Plato did not realise that he was only making an important
discovery in logic ; he thought he was discovering the causes
the sole, true causes of the existence of the world.

134. The Olympianisation of the Ideas

It is curious to observe how the development of the Platonic
Ideas corresponds to other developments already described.
Originally inherent in their group, they are, at first, partly dis-
engaged from it, and yet remain immanent throughout its
extent, and related to it as causes. Then, in the second stage,
they become completely distinct, and only externally related to
their logical extension. The process is like that by which the
myth, from being a verbal counterpart of the ritual action,
comes to be a generalised representation of it, as it were a uni-
versal, detached from the unlimited series of particular cele-
brations of the rite. It then becomes an ' explanation ' (aitiori),
professing to account for the existence and practice of the ritual,
just as the Idea is erected into an explanation or account (logos)
of the things that partake of it. Again, as we have pointed out,
the Idea is like the group-soul, at first projected as an ideal (para-
deigma) of the group, and then becoming a daemon, which is
regarded as something partly distinct, and yet the source, or
cause, of the supernatural powers of the group. Once more the
history of rational civilised philosophy repeats the history of
pre-rational religious representation.

For, it is in this way, as M. Levy-Bruhl points out, 1 that
* causes * were first sought and discovered by primitive maD.
The process is not one of associating two things or events, first
conceived as distinct, and then brought into connection as cause
and effect. * We ought not to say, as is often said, that primitive
men associate with all objects that strike their senses or imagina-
tion, occult forces, magical properties, a sort of soul or vital
principle, and that they add animistic beliefs to their perceptions,
There is here no association. The mystic properties of persons
and things are an integral part of the representation which the
primitive man has of them a representation which, at this

1 FonUions mentales, etc., p. 39.

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 259

stage, is an indecomposable whole. Later, at another period
of social evolution, what we caU the natural phenomenon will
tend to become the sole content of the perception, to the ex-
clusion of other elements, which will then take on the aspect
of beliefs, and even, finally, of superstitions. But, until this
" dissociation *' takes place 3 the perception remains an on-
differentiated unity/ We ought never to ask, * What ex-
planation must the primitive mind give itself of such and such
a natural phenomenon ? * The statement of the problem
implies a false hypothesis. There are, for the mentality of the
lower societies, no natural phenomena in our sense. For them,
the explanation has no need to be sought ; it is implicit in the
mystical elements of their collective representations. The
question that has to be asked is, how the phenomenon, little by
little, detached itself from the complex in which it was at first
enveloped, so as to be separately apprehended, and how
wets once an integral in &, an *

The Platonic Ideas seem to owe their existence to a process
of dissociation, like that which M. Levy-Brahl suggests. Their
genesis is, accordingly, paraEel to the genesis of * souls/ which
we have already described. They emerge from their class, as
the daemon or the Mng emerged from the social group, to be
the depositary of its collective consciousness, the externalised
and projected vehicle, or source, of its power. Finally, as the
group-soul gave place to the individual soul, a corresponding
fate is reserved for the Ideas, at the hands of Aristotle.
Plato's greatest follower will not shrink from declaring the
truth, that the * Ideas * these Forms, originally endowed with
the attributes of soul are really nothing but forma. They
have no independent existence, no life, no power of causing any-
thing to come into existence. 1 The highest degree of reality
will be taken away by Aristotle from that other world of im-
material Ideas* and restored to the world we see around us.
To him, the forms, or essences, of individual things will be
substances, realities, in the fullest sense.

In proportion as the Ideas cease to be causes and become mere
logical concepts, Platonism is threatened with the inevitable

* Met. A 9.

260 FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

fate of a system which attempts to place the source of life outside
and above Nature, in a metaphysical world of immutable reality.
When we consider this world of Forms, it turns out to be nothing
but a vast scheme of classification (moirai), a hierarchy of kinds,
broadening downwards from its highest genus to its lowest
individual species. It is the characteristic construction of the
Intellect, which can divide and analyse, but not create. At the
apex is enthroned that very Intellect itself. We call it Reason,
God, the Good ; but it is idle to pretend that it can create the
world. It is as impotent as the Parmenidean One, and for the
same reason its immutable perfection. The hierarchy of forms,
by which we seek to link this One to the manifold world of
change, is a channel without a stream. Plato, in his final
attempt to formulate a cosmology, falls back on the mythical
horn of the dilemma, which Parmenides had the courage to avoid.
He is forced to attribute to his deified Intellect an impossible
impulse of desire. It is the old religious necessity, realised long
before by Pherekydes, who said that, when Zeus set about
making the world, he changed himself into Eros. 1 This Desire
is the mythical Demiurge of the Timaeus, who, being good and
therefore without jealousy ((#01/05), ' desired that all things
should be as like unto himself as possible. This is that most
sovereign cause of becoming and of cosmic order, which we shall
most surely be right in accepting from men of understanding.
For God, desiring that all things should be good, and that, so
far as this might be, there should be nothing inferior, having
received all that is visible, not in a state of rest, but moving
without harmony or measure, brought it from its disorder into
order, thinking that this was in all ways better than the other/ 2
The mythical form of this whole cosmology is not a poetical
dress, in which Plato arbitrarily chooses to clothe a perfectly
definite and rational scheme, such as modern students set them-
selves to discover in it. If Plato could have stated it as a

1 Pherek. frag. 3=Procl. ad Tim. 32c: o *cpe/ciJ5^s 2Xeyev efc'Epwra /*cra-
{3ep\TJff6ai, rbv Ate /^XXoyra SyfJuavpyeLV.

2 Plato, Timaeus, 29s. The language supports the view held by J. Adam
that the Timcteus gives a picture of a reconstruction of the universe at the
beginning of one of the alternating periods, like those of Empedocles and of
the Politicw myth. Cf. A. E. Taylor, Plato, p. 144, London, 1908.

THE 1OBTICAL TRADITION 261

logos, he would have done so, only too gladly ; but he cannot.
It is not rational, but mystical a mythos in substance as well
as form, and drawn from mythical, mystical sources. There is
no tolerable explanation in rational terms. An immutable,

passionless Reason may trace the outlines of a scheme of classi-
fication, and divide Its concepts into duly subordinated genera
and species ; but it can do no more. To account for the eaist-
ence of anything whatever, we have to ascribe to it the unworthy
and lower faculty of desire, and give this desire an unworthy
and lower object the existence of an imperfect copy of per-
fection. But that is the language of reHgion 9 not of science.

135. The of the

When Greek philosophy deified the speculative intellect, it

made the supreme effort to work clear of all that was vague
and mythical in religion, only to find that the intellect had
become a deity and followed the elder Gods of emotional
to the seventh heaven. In the system of Aristotle (which it is
not within our scope to examine in detail), God is sublimated
to the topmost pinnacle of abstraction, and conceived as Form
without Matter a pure Thought, cut off from all active or
creative energy, for the Ultimate End can have no other end
beyond itself. It cannot even think of anything but itself, for
no other object is worthy of its attention. It is shut up in
unceasing and changeless contemplation of itself. We are
asked to believe that this condition is worthy of the names of
perfect activity, of life, of blessedness ; and that such a God,
though he cannot condescend to move the world in any other
way, can move it as being himself the object of love (tayei <&?
epwfu-vov). God cannot love the world, or send forth Ms Logos
into it ; but the world is expected to love him, and all its life
is to be caused by desire for this monastic and self-hypnotised
abstraction. It may be doubted whether this passion has ever
been genuinely felt even by the most intellectual of mystics*
much less by the rest of creation. It is only by calling it
* God/ and persuading ourselves that it is alive, and active.,
and blessed all which is manifestly mythical that we can
induce the faintest feeling of attraction towards it.

262 FROM BEI1OION TO PHILOSOPHY

In the system of Aristotle, the two factors of our original
complex the outline, shape, or ei&os of the moim, and the
functional force, the behaviour and nature (physis) pervading it
fall completely asunder at the two poles of existence. The form
has escaped from its content, and the life has passed out of it,
by a process analogous to that by which the Olympian Gods
shed the functional utility of their daemonic phase, and became
idle and impotent forms, floating above a world in which all the
processes of life and change go forward without their help.
Religion, indeed, left them with individual attributes and
capricious wills. But, now that science has left no room in nature
for such wills to operate, the divine loses every vestige of desire
and power, and is reduced to pure eidos a strengthless eidolon.

The philosopher, too, not obscurely aspires to imitate his
divine counterpart, and ' follow where all is fled/ At the con-
clusion of his Ethics, 1 Aristotle's ideal for humanity is clearly
enough disclosed. Of all moral, practical activities, he argues,
* war and politics are the noblest and on the grandest scale ;
but even these are incompatible with leisure, and chosen only
as a means to some end beyond themselves. The activity of
Reason is of higher worth, being speculative, and looking to no
further end. It has also a pleasure which is peculiar to it,
and enhances its activity. That being so, this activity is self-
sufficient ; it is free (so far as may be for man) from cares
and weariness ; it has all the other attributes of felicity. This,
then, will be the perfect wellbeing of man.

r Such a life as this, however, is higher than the measure of
humanity ; not in virtue of his humanity will man lead this
life, but in virtue of something divine within him ; and, by as
much as this something is superior to his composite nature,
by so much is its activity superior to the rest of virtue. If,
then, Reason is divine in comparison with man, the life of
Reason is divine in comparison with human life. We ought
not to listen to those who exhort man to keep to man's thoughts,

1 Eth. Nic. K vii. I am not convinced by those interpreters who deny
that the wise man, as here described, 'exists as an individual,' and say
that he is only * the formal element (of man's eudaimonia) abstracted and
personified' (J. A. StewarVJVbtes m the Nicom. Eth., vol. ii. p. 443 (1892)).

THE MYSTICAL TRADITION 263

or a mortal to the thoughts of mortality ; but, so far as may be;
to achieve Immortality, and do what man may to Eve accord*
rng to the highest thing that Is in him ; for, though It be little
IB btdk, in power and worth it is far above all the rest,
^ ' It wotdd seem, too, that this is the true self of every man,
since it is the supreme and better part.* It will be strange, then,
it he should choose not his own life, but some other's. What we
said before will be appropriate again here : that what is natur-
ally proper to every creature is the highest and pteasantest lor
him. And so, to mm, this will be the life of Reason, since
Reason is 3 in the highest sense, a man's self. Therefore, this
life will also be most blessed/

The ideal for the individual, then 3 is to escape from society,
as God has escaped from Ms functional utility in Nature.
soul rises, as the daemon had risen, above Ma social group. He
will withdraw, like the Stoic, into autonomous self-sufficiency
and Olympian, contemplation.

It is only a step further to the mystical trance of neo-
platonism, in which thought is swallowed up in the
vision of the absolute One, above being and above knowledge,
ineffable, unthinkable, no longer even a Reason, but ' beyond
Reason' (eVe/ccem vov) * the escape of the alone to the
alone/ 2 In this ecstasy, Thought denies itself; and PMlo-
sophy, sinking to the close of her splendid curving flight,
folds her wings and drops into the darkness whence she arose
the gloomy Erebus of theurgy and magic*

1 1178o 2: 56 5' &v xal etwu ixaffrm TQVTQ, etirep rft *&pu>v *<U fttvo*.

incline to read efcrep Ka l Ktipiw r & d/iFw, i.e. * since the better part is alao
that which makes him in the fullest sense (*upi*n) what he ishis truest
self.*

2 Plot. JSnn. VT. ix. II : K cd oCros 0usv td toep&rw 9dw ml c&8*tp&*u* plot,

INDEX OF CITATIONS

AESCHINES
in Gtes 111

PAGE
5

Aristotle
de A.nwn, <xii 2

PAGE
131

Aeschylus

a ii. 2, 6, 21,

. 133

Again. 655,
1451 ft, .
Choeph. 128,
JSvm. 172, .

. 116
. 58
. 166
. 29

aii. 3,
aii. 14,
av. 15,
av. 17,

. 157, 158
. 131
. 100
. 130

730, .

. 29

4035 31,

. 157

781, .

. 28

404a 4,

. 166

... 891, .

. 29

4046 18,

207

P.V. 244, .

. 27

405a21,

. 134

531, .

. 13

4076 21,

. 164

984, .

. 120

408a 13,

. 235

SuypL 565, .
Aetius
i. 8. 1,

. 30
. 117

40861,
4096 7,
410a 1,

. 132
. 213
. 235

i. 3. 4,

. 148

410a 25,

. 132

i, 3. 8, .
i. 3. 20, ...
i7.Il, . . .
i. 24. 2,

. 208,209

. 230
. 132
. 149

de Caelo, 803a 8,
JEth. ffic. v. 3. 13,
1147al8, .
KviL, ,

. 213
. . 211
. . 225
. 262

ii. 11. 2, ...

. 233

de @en. et Corr. 3186 3,

. 221

ii.25.15, .

. 233

325a 13,

. 215

ii. 31. 4, .

. 233

325a 34,

. 155

Alexander Aphrod.
in Arist. Met. 9856, .
9856 26, .
in Arist. de Sens. p. 56,
Alkman
Partheneion, 13, .
Anaxagoras
frag. 3,

. . 157
. 211
. 250

. 120
. 153

3306 19,
333a 16, .
336a 3,
337a 1,
Met. A4(Atomists), .
A 5 (Empedocles),
A 5 (Pythagoreans),
A 5 (Empedocles)

. 233
. 63
. 233
. 185
. 156
. 230
. 205
151

10,

153

A 9 (Platonism)

259

12, .

. 154

A9,

Anaximenes
frag. 2, . . .

. 129,148

9836 27,
985a 31,

. . 237
. 233

Apollonius Rhodius
i496,

. 67

986,
A 5 986a 15

. . 177

7(\

Archytas
Frag. Phil. Gr. i. 599,

. 173

986635,
98769,

. 220
254

Aristophanes
Birds, 693, .

. 70

A 6, 988a3,
996a 7

. 71
231

Clouds, 1078, .
Knights, 406SchoL, .
Ly&istr., 772,

. 74
. 112
. . 167

10006 12, .
lOOla 5, .
10716 26, . .

. 241
. 226

. 219

264

FEOM RBLIGIOK

PAGE
Aristotle continued.
Met, 10746 1, .... 135

TO PHILOSOPHY

Empetlocles continmd,
frag. 17. 28,

265

P1Q1

227

107562,

10806 18, ...
109164, .
de JHundo, 5, ...
de Part Anim. 642a 17, .

Phys. 187a 20, .
20366,
203612, .
2046 2, .
213622,

. 230 j
. 213
. 219
. 66 |
. 235:
. 231
9, 140
. 135
9
. 129

17. 27, .

34^ 84

26,

27, .

. 284

28, .
so, .
81, .

35. 12,
36. 9, .

112, .

. 234
. 2S6
. 236
. 231

, 234
. 237

_ 113

227

265632, .

Pol 1287a 28, ...
Met. a 13. 2, .
de Smm, 442a 29,
frag. 45, ...

. 131
. 103 :
55, 182
. 158
198

114, .

115, .
115. 2,
115. 4 r
115. 12,

117! . . '.
Hi, .
120, . . .
121, .

126, ,
128, .
128, .
130, ,
134, ,
135, ,
136, .
137, . .
- 139, .
140, .
147, .
1546, ,
Eratosthenes
Catast. xxfr.,
Bcdemiis
Phys. 51, .
Euripides
Elee, 726, ,

. 227

179, 210, 228
. 237
. . 288

, 120

. 229
. 229
. 178 4 221
, 220
, 229, 24
,
. 2S8
,
. 235
. 182, 2S5
. 229
. 229
. 229
. 229
. 229

. m

. 177
. 118
. 172

186, .

. 204

625, .

172

Aristoxeatis
ap. Cramer An. Par. L 172,

BACCHYLIDES

JUT. 50, ...

. 181

86
168

ClOEBO

adFam. XY. 16, 1,

DlKAlABCHOS

ap. Porpk Vit. Pyth. 18, .
Diodonis
.64.4, .

. 201
. 161

Diogenes olApoilonia
frag. 5, ....

135

Diog. Laert
proem, 13 .
ii. 106,

189, 175
243

iii. 6, .
Yiii. 1. 27, .

. 243
197

/. T. 1486, .
Med. 410, .
Melanippe, frag. 484, .
PAoen. 538,
Snppl, 406, .
Troeulctf prologue,
886, .
frag. 223, .
415, . . .
757, . . .

HlBACLIXIUES POKTICTS,

*p, Cic. ftuc. T. 8, .

ap. Diog. Till. 4,

. IS
. . 17S

. e?

. . 169
. 160
. 116
. 178
. . 168
. 165
. 166

200
. 203

ix. 7, .

131

ir. 8,
ix. 22,
Dion. Hal.
Ant. ii. 15, .
ii 62, .

. 189
. 223

. 33
27

EMPIDOCLES
frag. 2, ....

. 226

^ 4
4.' 6, '. '. ' '.
8, ....

. 226
. 227
. 152

17. 19, ...

. 234

266

INDEX OF CITATIONS

Heracleitus
frag. 1 (Byw.), .

PAGE

. 185

Hesiod continued.
JSrga, 320 .

PAGE

168

. 186

403, .

10,

. 186

744^

11,

. 187

Theog. 71

16,

. 186

104, .

19,

. 187

112,

20,

. 186, 188

116, .

. 22

. 188

116 and Schol

23,

. 188

220

25, .

. 185

223, .

. 34

29,

. 19, 189

383, .

- 32,

. 196

700, .

84,

. 187

726, .

237

. 187

736, .

36,

. 187

738, .

43,

. 190

782, .

. 237

44, . .
45, . .

47,

. . . 190
. . . 191
. 191

790, .
793, .
885,

. 24
. 229, 238
27

49,

. 186

901, .

168

59, . .
60, . .
62, . .
65, . .

. 185, 240
. 190
. 190
. 186

HesycMus
S. V. 8Licr)'\ov,
Hippocrates
de Nat. Horn. 7, .

. 250
. 117

67,

. 185

68, .

. 184

de Victu, i. 5, .
11,

. 171
. 182

70, .
78
80, .
916, .
92,

. 184
. 164
. 186
. 182, 191
191

Hlppodamus
ap. Stob. Flor. 98. 71,
Hippolytus
Rtf.L7, .

, 167, 208
. 150

ytj
95, . .
106, .
110, .

. 191
. 191
. 186
." 191

112, . . .
viii 29,
Homer
II. i. 238, .

. . 157
. . 229

. 106

126, .
127, . .
Herodotus
191, . . .
i. 131, .

. 186

. 185

13, 14
177

vi. 487,
xv. 36,
xv. 165,
xv. 186,

X v 191

. 13
. . 23
. 24
. 15
18

i. 139, .
i. 207,
ii. 52, .
vi. 139,
vii. 104,

. . . 175
. 171
37, 98

. . . 5
. 103

xv. 197, .
xvi. 433, .
xvi. 780, .
ami. 321, .
xviii 483

. 104
. 12
. 13

. 26
16

iz. 14, .

. 28

xx. 249,

. 30

Hesiod

Od, i.32, .

. 13

Erga, 3,
117, .

. 167
. 167

ill 236,
vi. 188,

. 12

. 27

125, .

. 107

x. 143,

. 18

156, .

109

xi. 218,

. 172

225, .

m 315,

. 16

255, .

xvii 565,

. 121

276, . .

. 35, 173, 182

adz. 589, .

. 34

FEOM BEL2

Homeric Hymn
Ap. 83,

aiOK *.

PA OK ;

TC> PHILOSOPHY

Parmeaides cimtimmd,
frag, 8. 34, .
8. 37, . , .
8. 38, .

267

P4OT

. 215
. 217

. 217

Dem. 13, .

Horace
Oarm. I 34. 12, .

IAMBLICHUS
Vit. Pyth, ix. 13,
46, ....

58, ....

. 167

. 201
. 54!
, 200 i

a 44, . , .

8. 50, .

a 52, ,

19, ; ". ;

Pherekydes*
frag. 1, . ,

PMioIans-
frag. 11, ...

. 2S4
. 218

. 218, 221
. 21

. 196

. MO

, 205

88, .

108, ....

. 203
202

137, ....

. 174

182, ....
246, ....

168 3 211
, 202

Pindar
Irih* iil. 18,
Nem, i 56 S ,

. . 172
. SI

Ibyktis
frag. 28, . . . .
Isocrates
Areop. 38, .
ix. 25, . ....

. 06

. 78
. 110

iii56. .

iv. 61,
-d.l, . . .

il 17, '. '.

. SO
. 26

, 171. 228

. 174

JOHANNES DIACONBS
in Bes. Theog. 886, .

KOUHETIS, Hymn of, .
Kritiaa

frag. 18, ....

. 29
. 168
. 172

Til., .
vii. 54,
vli. 94,
viii. 86,

xiii, 6,
Pnean. TI. 94, .

P/th. il. 30,

ir. 90, .
ix. 69, .

frag. 104c, ".
126, .

Plato
ApoL 29A, .
40 o .

. 53
, 22
. 172
. S4
. 32
. 172
. 163
T2 8 26
, 120
. 30
. 120
. 30
. 13

. 22S

. 244
. 244

LEUKIPPUS
frag. 2, ....

. 157

Livy

i. xviii. 6, .
Lucretius
i 72,

. 33

. 32

. 159

Lyr. Frag. Adesp. (Bgk. 3 ), 140,

MACEOBIUS
Sotnn. Sdp. I 14, 19, .
Musaeus

. 168

. 213
. 1S6

Aarioch. 371 B S .

Cratylm, 397 c, .
402 A, .
408 A .

. 215
. - 177
. 172
, 187

GLYMPIOBOBUS

inArist. Meteor. 28&A,
Orphic Tablet,

PAEMENIDBS

. 237
179, 219

. 215

408c, .

410 D,

. 192
. 168

. 189
. 252
. 114

frag. 1. 28, . . . .
1.33, . . . .
2, ....

. 215
155, 215
. 217

Gf&rgi&s, 483,
508 B ft, .

Kritias, 109 A, .

119 D, .

. 188
. 211

', 23

. 215

8. 13, .

. 216

. 217

Laws, 625;(Schol.), -

713 B. .

, 29
. 36

268

INDEX OF CITATIONS

Plato continued.
Laws, 713 E,

PAGE

. 173

Plato continued.
Rep. 432 A, .

PAGE

211

745 B, ,
885 E, .

. 28
. 177

529 A, .
530 A, .

. 200
212

889B, .

. 242

236

891 c, .

. 242

546A, .

167

892c, .

. 128

597 A, .

253

896 A, .

. 131

616s, .

222

899B, .
904. E .

. 131
. 172

Soph. 242 c,
248B, .

. 65

OKfi

906c, .
Meno 81 c

. 121
. 201

Symp. 186 ff.,
188 A, .

. 121

117

Minos, 317 D,

. 29

202E, .

122

Farm. 131, .

. 255

203B, .

120

., 132 B, .

. 253

207D, .

9(U

Phaedo, 60 D }

. 246

211, .

9 52

63Bff.,

. 240, 245

Theaet. 176 A, .

200

64 A .

. 200

179 B, .

193

66s .

, 251

Tim. 29 B, .

260

660, .

. 252

31 c, .

209

67 A, .

. 251

35 B, .

210

69 B, .

. 246

39B, .

160

70c, .

. 163

42D, .

166

72B, .

. 163

48A, .

157

76B, .

. 243

50c, .

77 ff., .

. 247

63s,.

132

79D, . . .

80D, .

. . 251
. 252

Pliny
Nat. Hist. xii. 1,

80s, .

8lB, .
8lD, .

83D, .
87 c, .
90E, .
93c, .

. 251
. 251
. . 251
. 166
. 240
. 248
. 211

Plotinus
Ennead iv. 8. 1, .
vi. 9. 11, .
Plutarch
de anim. tranq. 474 B,
Consol. ad Apoll. 10, .
104B, .

. 179, 186
. 263

. 239
. 164
165

98s, .

. 154

Def. Orac 415 A

122

100 c, .

. 256

Is. et Os. 370,

176

100D, .

102D, .

. 252, 255
. 252

881 P, .

. 237
IS

103B, .

. 253

deprim frig 948 E

Phaedrus, 244 D,

. 58

952s, .

233

246 B, .
248, . . .
248D, .

. 173
. 251
229

de soil. anim. 964 B, .
Sym/p. Qu. yiii. 2. 2, .
Vit. Rom* xi

. 36

. 211
53

248E, .

. 210

Porphyry

250 c, .

. 218

de abst. i 5

3fi

Politico, 268E, .
271E, .
_ 271 D, .

. 172
. 173
. 35

i. 36, .
iii. 27, .
-iv 11 .

. 193
. 167, 239
161

272B, .

. 201

Vit Pyth 18 19

201

272E, . . .
Protag. 320 c, .

. 165
. 37

20, . . .
24,

. . 204
. 201

320D, .

. . 182

41,

. 176

Rep. 358s, .
364B, . . .

. . 183
. 114

Proclus
in Eucl. i. 419. .

. 203

FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

269

Procius continued.

Sophocles continued.

MAr<ra, AmG. <7. it L. il 25 , .

210

Oed. X. S61

in Tim, 21 E,

Traeh. 125,

171

Ps.-PhoJeylidea, 15, ...

239

frag. 226 N S 4

173

Ps. -Timaens

787 N :

170

7T. ^y%aS K&fffJUa! s 104 E,

TACITUS

SALLUSTIUS

1 Germ. 11, 12, .

102

dfff ZWts rf Mund(J 3 3, .

1S7

Tlieognis

Sextus Empirlcus

197 S .

ies

Jtfatf . vii. 127, ....

129

Thtd. Antk.

p. 8(A3t},.

223

ir. 127, ....

202

p. 17,

j. 46,

217

p. 32,

x. 216, .

181

Theon Smyrnaem

Simplicras

7T. TTf}O,KT.

p. 15 i (Dupui.*}.

2CI5

d& Co^elo 608,

141

sr. api8fi. p.

,....

2^>0

Phys. 24, 13,' ....

p. 18,

210

25, 21, ....

230

p. 34,

210

28, 4,

155

Theophrafiios

39,18,. . . . .

222

ap. SimpL Phys. 6 r 24, 4D,

190

Solon-

de Sensu y 3

frag. 13,

16S

Traff.fray. admp. (^auck 9 ), 43 S .

163

36,

174

Sophocles
Ajox, 646,

168

VAEBO

669,

169

Liny. Lat.

Tii 6, . . .

Antig. 449,

Mec, 86,

\ XENOPHON

Oed. R. 25, .

1 Cyrop, viii,

7.17, . . .

229

GENERAL INDEX

A priori methods, 126 ; in treatment of
Physis, 137.

ddtivarov in Homer,. 14.

Agricultural Magic, 167.

Aisa, 120.

Aitia as explanation, 141 ; ambiguity in
Plato, 256; primitively discovered by
'dissociation,' 258.

Anamnesis, 248.

dvaroSdw, 208.

Anaxagoras, 144 ; system discussed, 153 ff.

Anaximander, his cosmology, 7 ff. ; ac-
cepts conception of primary world-
order, 19 ; cosmic structure compared
to clan organisation, 62 ; Limitless as
divine, 135 ; system discussed, 144 ff. ;
order of Time and Justice, 176 ; his
scheme adapted by Empedocles, 231.

Anaximenes, Air as God, 135; system
discussed, 148 ff.

Animism, 101.

d^ax65o<rw, 163, 167.

Anthcsteria, 165.

Aphrodite in Parmenides, 222.

Apollo, 195 ; and Pythagoras, 204.

Apology of Socrates, 244.

Aristotle, 'like knows like,' 134; treat-
ment of Plato's Ideas, 259 ; Form and
Matter, 261; ideal for man, 262.

Asha, 172 ff.

Atomism, 137 ; as goal of Science, 144.

of Leukippus, 155 ff.

like number doctrine, 213.

BLOOD of totem-clan, 57 ; of group-kin,

87,

Blood-feud, 57.
Blood-kin: differentiated from magical

group, 93; collective responsibility,

96.

Blood-soul, 109.

Broad Oath in Empedocles, 237.
Bronze Age (Hesiod), 109.
Buddha, 113, 193,

CALENDABS, succession of, 170.
Callicles, 183.

Causality, at first spatial, 140 ff. ; and
likeness, 86.

Causes, discovered by 'dissociation,' 258 ;
and explanations, 139 ff.

Chance, 242 ; world left to, 214.

Chaos, meaning of, 66 ; in Chinese cos-
mogony, 99 ; and Eros, 70 ; and
Poros, 120.

Chronos, 172 ; of OrpMcs, 146.

Classification and tribal structure, 57 ;
of tribe, including all Nature, 59 ; basis
of magic, 140 ; Plato's Ideas as system
of, 260.

Collective emotion, 77 ff. ; representation
defined, 43 ; responsibility, 57.

Comitium, 53.

Communion in mystical religion, 112.

Conscience. 81.

Contraries: grouped in pairs, 63; sepa-
ration of, 65 ; elemental, 116.

Cook, A. B., 32.

Cosmogony: Babylonian, 67; Egyptian,
67; Orphic, 67; Chinese, 67; Pytha-
gorean, 70.

Cosmology of Plato's Timaeus, 260.

Cosmos, as political term, 53 ; basis of
Pythagorean ethics, 211.

Crawley, A. E., 109.

DAEMON, rule in Golden Age (Plato),
35; in primitive Greece (Herod.), 37;
of house in Pindar, 58 ; explains
hereditary guilt, 58 ; of Magical
Society, 95 ; of Gens, 96 ; of natural
departments, 96; Good Spirits, 98;
reign of (Plato), 98 ; four types of
Greek daemon, 100 ; blended with
hero, 107 ; of individual, 110 ; rule in
Golden Age, 173 ; Pythagoras as, 201 ;
in Empedocles, 228 ff. ; good and evil
genii, 239 ; and Platonic Idea, 253.

Dasmos, of three sons of Kronos, 15, 17 ;
of the Gods, 21; secured by oath, 22 ;
of seats of worship, 36 ; cosmic dasmos
a late doctrine, 38 ; of Rhodes, 53 ; of
elements, 116 ; effected by lot or strife,
231.

270

FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

271

Dcad, as perfect number, 207.

DeiJala, 158 ; In Democritns, 250.

Destiny. See Moira.

Deussen, 2.

Dharma, 174.

Slmiov, 189.

Dike, reflection of Nmos> 54 ; avenging
Justice, 82 ; In mysticism, 160 ff, ; in
Heslod, 167 ; as Season, 168 ; as ' Way,"
172 ; only among men, 182 ; in Hera-
cleitus, 189 ; in Parmenides, 215 216
222. ' '

Diogenes of Apollonia, 133 ; Air as God,
135.

Dionysus as Mystery God, 111 ; and
Orpheus, 195.

Aibs al<ra, 26.

Diotima, 121.

Divine, meaning of, 96 j as attribute of
Physis, 129.

56a, in Parmenides, 220.

Dream-image and soul, 109.

Dualism, of Orphism, 197; in Pytita-
goreanism, 213 j of Empedocles, 241.

EABTH, sacred to agriculturalist, 98.

JSidola, of Atomists, 155 ; in Democritus,
250.

JBidolon-sonl, 109 ; visible ghost, 251.

Eleatics, 137 ; ignore senses, 155.

Elements, separated out of Physis (An-
aximander), 8ff.; provinces of, 10;
in Hesiod's Theogony, 17; equated
with Gods, 18 ; and clans, 52 ; four in
Greek cosmology, 60 ff. ; divided among
Gods, 116 ; as 'things/ 152.

Empedocles, Phtiia and Neikos, 63 ; Soul
and elements, 133 ; as man of science,
150 ff. ; unity of life, 182 ; system
discussed, 224 ff. ; successors of, 242 ;
view of soul compared with Plato's,
251.

Eniautos, 168.
$. 30.
s, 112.

Enthusiasm, 112.

Epiznenides, 215.

JSrinys, 110.

Eros and marriage of opposite*, 70 ; and
world-egg, 70; Olympian and mystic
views of, 119 ; in Symposium, 121 ; in
Parmenides, 222; and demiurge of
Titnaeus, 260.

Esoteric writing, 225, 237.

$0ea, as range, 64 ; haunts, habits, 34.

Eurytos, 210.

Exogamous segmentation, 68, 210,
Exogamy, 58.

FALL of man in Eznpedocles, 238.

Pate. See Moira.

Fertility spirits, local, 33.

Fire, primary in mystic philoiophies, 197.

Following God, 200.

Form and matter as male tad female, 71.
Frazer, J. G. f 31, 55 5 103 ff.

Freedom of Greek Thought, 2 5 20, 44.

GEOMBTBT, influence oa Science, 142,
149, 151.

God, a representation inherited by phil-
osophy from religion, 4 ; notion de-
veloped, 88; offshoot of *SouI,' 90;
advances with worshippers* develop-
ment, 92 ; eliminated by Science, 142 ;
as Intellect cannot create, 260.

Gods, subject to Moira, 12 ; arisa oat of
elements (Hesiod), 18 ; equated with
elements, 18 ; supersede Destiny, 21 ;
episodic character of, 39; Mystery
Gods, 110 ff.

Golden Age in Plato, 35 ; in Empedocles.
236.

Good Spirit of Fertility, 98.

Great Oath of Gtsds, 22 ff. ; in Em-
pedocles, 236 ff.

Great Year, 178, 288.

Group, primary in totemic society, 56 ;
prior to indiTidualy 58.

Groap-consciousness, 77; superindi-
vidnal, 80 ; content of religious repre-
sentation, 82.

Group-soul as group-fEnctioMj 94 ; and
rebirth, 161.

noliiat of Finns, 253.

Sanwmia, virtue as, 211; =FMi in
Empedocles, 234,

Harmonic proportions, 209.

Harmony, of oppositos^ 64 ; in Hem-
cleitus, 100; of Plato's world-sottl f
206 ; rejected by Parmenides s 217.

Headlam, Walter, 16.

Heaven-worsHpj 170; revived by Or-
pMsm, 177; of Persians, 177.

Heracleitus, universal law, 182 ; system
discussed, 184 ff. ; Bionyaiac, 183 ; con-
trast with Pythagoras, 198; Fire as
Soul, 132; Logo as soul-substance,
234.

Herd-suggestioE, 47, 49, 80.

Hereditary guilt, 58.

272

INDEX

Hermes, Pan, Logos, 187.

Hero : Eponymous, 106 ; worship of, 107 ;

blended with Good Spirit, 107.
Hestia, of Pythagoreans, 212, 223.
Hippasos, 203.
Horai, 168, 170.
Horkos, as Herkos, 24, 237. See Great

Oath.
Hylozoism, 89, 150.

IDAEAN DAKTYLS, 94.

Ideas : theory of, 242 ff. ; like souls, 246,
249 ff. ; communicated to things, 252 ;
immanent, 252 ; as Daemons of groups,
253 ; as causes, 256 ; as concepts, 257 ;
as paradeigmata, 257, 258.

Imitation in magic, 76.

Immateriality a late conception, 83.

Immortality, of chiefs and heroes, 108 ; in
mystical religion, 112 ; Dionysiac and
Orphic, 179; individual in Orphism,
196 ; in Heracleitus, 196 ; as conceived
by Pythagoras, 203 ; in Empedocles,
228 ff. ; Plato's views of, 243 ff. ; as
assimilation to God, 263.

Individualism of Orphism, 179 ; of
Sophistic, 183.

Individuality merged in social conscious-
ness, 47 ; weak in primitive mind, 77,
101; of the chief, 108.

Initiation enforcing morality, 46; in
Central Australia, 79; as new birth,
95 ; grades of, 164.

Injustice of individual existence, 147.

Ionian Philosophy and Olympianism, 122.

Ixion, 120.

JESTTS, 193 ; as daemon, 113.

Justice, of elemental order, 8, 11, 64 ;
guarding world-order, 19 ; assailed as
' conventional,' 183 ; identified with"
Fire, or Sun, 189 ; and Logos, of
Heracleitus, 191; Reign of, in An-
aximander, 232.

KEB, 110.

King, emergence of, 102; temporary
kings, 103 ; as magician, 104 ; depart-
mental kings of Nature, 105; repre-
sents world-order, 105; as first indi-
vidual, 108.

Kinship, primitive type of likeness, 86.

Knowledge, as action at a distance, 132;
as power, 141. ]

Koinonia, of Ideas in Plato, 254. i

Korybantes, 94.

Kouretes, 94 ; hymn of, 168.

Kronos=Chronos, 171.

LACHESIS at Dasmos, 22.

Laflesche, 69.

Language, as means of power, 141 ; in

Heracleitus, 192.
Law, administered by group, 102; as

sovereign, 103. See Nemos.
Lawgiving, of Zeus, 26.
Law of Nature, 55, 181 ; in Heracleitus,

191 ; in Empedocles, 235.
Leukippus, system discussed, 155ff.
Life, squeezed out of matter by Science,

151, 158, 230.

* Like acts on like/ 61, 86, 132.
Like knows like/ 132.
Likeness, as kinship, 132, 140.
Limitless, of Anaximander, meaning,

145.
Logos, * proportion of mixture '= soul, in

Empedocles, 235, 239 ; as c meaning,*

248 ; in Heracleitus, 186 ff.

MAGIC, in agriculture, 167; primary
sympathetic, 75; 'imitative/ 76; as
pre-presentation, 76 ; distinguished
from religion, 79; involves classifica-
tion, 85 ; based on classification, 140.

Magical compulsion, superseded by sacri-
fice, 114.

Magical societies, 93.

Mana, described, 84 ; of magical society,
94 ; of Gods and elements, 117 ; and
blood-soul, 131 ; and divinity, 129.

Marett, E. B., 25, 81, 110.

Marriage, of Sky and Earth, 66; with
God unlawful, 119.

MetensomatosiSy 166.

Methods, 204 ; in Plato, 254 ff. ; as
logical relation, 257.

Microcosm, tribe as, 53.

Mimesis, in Pythagoreans and Plato,
254.

Moira, above the Gods, 12 ; as moral, 13 ;
as system of provinces, 15 ; older than
Gods in Hesiod, 18 ; impersonal, 19 ;
negative aspect, 34 ; origin of, 40 ff. ;
projected from social structure, 51 ;
and Moros, 59 ; repressive, 82 ; classi-
fication survives social structure, 93 ;
above the Olympians, 104; as indi-
vidual fate, 110 ; spatial, 123 ; domi-
nating Science, 143 ; in Anaximander,
146 ; eliminated by Anaximenes, 148 ;

FEOM EEMGION TO PHILOSOPHY

273

and Anan&e of AJoxnists, 157; and

Borai, 168; in Olympian morality,

181.
Moirai, 16, 28 ; superseded by Gods, 73 ;

and marriage -with Gods, 120.
Moon and fate, 170.
Moral, meaning of, 46.
Moral Order of Nature, explained, 55 ff.
Mundns in comitram, 53.
Myres, J. L,, 30, 74
Mystery, as secret doctrine, 46,
Mystery God, 110 ff.
Mystic doctrines, why secret, 198.
Mystic Philosophy and mystical religion,

Mystic Religion, temporal framework.

111.

Mystic ritual, 77, 91.
Mystic Tendency, contrasted with

scientific, 159.
Myth, aetiologlcal, 189, 141, 258.

NAMES, as souls, 141 ; mystic 'deriva-
tions * of, 192. j

Nature, as a moral order, 5, 10 ; moral \
order survives Gods, 42; static and
dynamic senses, 73; opposed to
custom, 74; primitive identity with
custom, 74 ; opposed to Justice, 188.

* Natnre of Things/ See Physit.

Necessity in vision of Er, 222,

Nei&os and PhUia, social origin of, 63.

Nemesis, as resentment at encroachment,
16, 82 ; and Nemos, 31 ; of Gods, 118.

Nemos and Nemesis, 81.

Nietzsche, 193.

po/Aezfe, yo/tif, FopuSy, 30.

Nomos, as dispensation, 27 ff. ; province
and "behaviour, 34 ; dispensation of
Beason (Plato), 36 ; negative and posi-
tive aspects, 73 ; as group behaviour,
74 ; opposed to Nature, 74 ; primitive
identity with Nature, 74; mystical
conception of, 181.

Now of Anaxagoras, 154, 189.

Numa, 28, 83.

Number-Atomism, 212.

Number-doctrine, 205.

OATH of Pythagoreans, 205.

Okeanos, 237.

Olympian Gods, 114; their psychology,

118.
Qlympianisation of Pythagoras, 255 ; of

Plato's Ideas, 255 ; of the philosopher,

263.

Olympiaaiam and Science, 143.
Omaha Camp, 69 ; Wabanda, 85.

Omopkayia, 238.

One and Many, 114, 204.

Opposites, elements grouped as, 9. See

Qrenda, 84

Oriented clans, 52.

Orpheus worships San, 177 ; AS reformed

Dionysus, 195.
Orphic cosmogony, 67.
OrpHsm: doctrine of fell of soul, 162 ff. ;

reformation of Dionysiac religion^ 1SS ;

revives Heaven - worship, 177; In-

dividualistic, 179; dualism, 180, 1&7;

sense of sin, 180 ; as reformation, 1&5 ;

reformed by Pythagoras* 198.

PAIES of Contraries in Pannenides, 219.
Pan and Logo*, 187, 192.

P&mp&rmia, 153, 166.

Parmemdes, system discussed, 214.

Parmna in Plato, 254,

Participation, problem of, in Plato, 254 ;
of group in daemon, 204.

Patriarchal family, 109, 115.

Persia, 175 ; influtnee on Ox^hism, 162 ;
Heaven-worship, 177.

Personality of Gods, 115,

Pherekydes, 18, 172, 178, 260.

PhUia and Wdkm s 151, 230 ff. ; social
origin of, 68.

Ph&otqphia, as Way of Life, 200.

Philosophy ; its first object not external
Nature and inner experience, S;
analyses religions material, 125 ;
of philosophic systems, 138.

, 118 5 Grod free from ? in Timem t
280.

JP&jfw, a pre- philosophic representation,
4; implying Hfe s T; as natural in-
stincts, 74; as * essence* of group, 74 ;
as material, 127; as sool-saostaiioa,
128; divine, 129; liomogesitom
with Soul, 1SS S 1S4 ; and memo, 89 ;
and sympatiietie coEtitturaB s 128 ; mad
Ether, 1S6 ; dislangiDtislsted from element
Tby Anaxfmanderj 145 ; confused with
element, 145, 140 ; as pnxs of tirih
and growth, denied, 151 9 15S ;
of Ideas in Plato, 253.

Plato, system discussed, 242 ff. ; Soewfcie
and mystic dialogues, 242; contact
with Pythagoreans, 243 ; immortality
in Apology t 244 ; in Ptecfo t 245 ; con-

274

INDEX

version to Pythagoreanism, 247 ; cos-

mology in Timteus, 260.
Plurality of "Worlds, 143.
Polydaemonism, Chinese, 99.
Poros, 120.
Procession of Numbers, 207 ; rejected by

Parmenides, 217. '
wpowoSuTfibs, 209.
Psychology of Homer, 109 ; of pre-

Aristotelians, 110 ; of Olympian God,

118.
Pythagoras, 113 ; contrasted with Hera-

cleitus, 193 ; school of, 194 ff. ; reforms

Orphism, 198 ; as daemon, 201, 254 ;

source of all inspiration, 203.
Pythagoreans, table of contraries, 69 ;

unity of all life, 182.
Pythagorean Way of Life, 181, 199,

202.

QUANTITY and Quality, 148.

REASON supersedes Moira, 36.

Reincarnation, 161.

Religion: obligatory, 46, 81; epidemic,
49 ; derived from social custom, 54 ;
absent in lowest societies, 78; col-
lective, 80 ; succeeding magic, 90 ff.

Rhapsodic Theogony, 178.

Mites de Passage, 164.
Ritual myths, 107.
Rivers, W. H. R., 161.
Qta, 172 ff.

SA.OBED, meaning of, 46 ff.

Sacrifice, commercial, 114.

Satyrs, 94.

Science and commerce, 143; practical

character of, 143.
Scientific Tendency, 139 ff.
Seeds, elements as, 153 ; souls as, 165.
Segmentation of society, how caused, 62.
cn?/ta, 187, 218.
Sense of sin, 180.
Separation of Sky and Earth, 66 ; social

origin, 68.
Sex, contrariety of, 68 ; type of contra-

riety, 65.

Social Contract, 183.
Socrates in Apology and Phaedo, 243 ff.
Solidarity of Totemic Group, 56 ; organic

and mechanical, 62.
Soul : a representation inherited by philo-

sophy from religion, 4; notion de-

veloped, 88; new Soul at Initiation,
95; individual soul, 101, 108; as
nature or essence, 109; dream or
memory image, 109 ; as moving and
knowing, 110 ; and Phy$is t 128 ; ani-
mating universe, 130 ; as moving, 131 ;
as knowing, 132 ; in Timaeus, 133 ;
as name, 141 ; reduced to mechanical
motion, 142 ; reduced to atoms, 157 ;
conferred by initiation, 165 ; as seeds,
165 ; heavenly origin and fall of, 178 ;
as Harmony, 213, 234; exile of, in
Empedocles, 228, 237 ; as ' proportion
of mixture,' 235, 239; mortal soul,
239 ; as proportion, 240 ; like Platonic
Idea, 246, 249 ff. ; infected by body,
251.

Soul-substance, 128.

Species-deities, 253.

Stoics, 263.

Strife of Elements, 64; of Opposites,
116.

Styx= N&ikos in Empedocles, 237 ; and
N&ikos, 239 ; as Oath, 23 ; as Taboo,
25 ; confers Kratos on Zeus, 25.

Subject-Predicate Relation in Plato, 256.

Sun-worship, 196.

Sympathetic Continuum, 83 ; splits into
two pools, 92; combining blood and
mana, 109.

Sympathetic Magic, 139.

Too, Way of Man and Way of Universe,

100 ; 172.
Taoism, 99 ; analogy with Empedocles,

240.

Taylor, A. K, 37, 243, 244, 247, 260.
Telchines, 94.
Templvm and grove, 31.
Tetractys, 204 ff. ; as Great Oath, 237.
Thales, three doctrines, 127.
Theagenes of Rhegium, 18.
Themis, reflection of JVcwios, 54 ; as

* doom, '105.
Theoria: of Pythagoreans, 176; of Or-

pMc, 198 ; of Pythagoras, 200.
Thiasos, of Mystery God, 111.
Thrasymachus, 183.
0vju<5s-soul, 109.
Tijuri), shift of meaning, 118.
Time, importance in mystical systems,

160 ff. ; identified with Physis, 184.
Time-God, 172; of Orphics, 146.
Titanomachia, 116.
Tityos, 120.

FBOM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY

275

Totem defined, 56.

Totemism; illustrating projection of
Nomos^ 55 ff. ; identity of clan and
species, 75 ; how broken down, 91, 08.

Transmigration, 164, 166 ; in Empedocles,
229.

Trinity, 113.

Tycne as power of Earth, 98.

UNITY of Cosmos, 143.

Unity of Life, 113 ; in Pythagoreanism,

201.

Universals, 75.
virp fjibpov (altrav'), 13.

VIRGIN BIRTH, 204.

Wakonda, 85.

Way of Righteousness, 181.
Wheel of Birth in Empedoeles, 228.
Wheel of Dike, 188 ; in Pindar, 171.

Wheel of Life, 161 ff.
Wheel of Ria, 175.

XEHOCBATBS, 213.

XenophaaeSj 177 ; parent of Eleaticisia
216.

Yang and Fin,, $9.

I Zeus, supremacy conferred by Styx, 25.
1 Zunls, 51.

114173