The fundamental doctrine of Greek philosophy is always the unity of the world. Some conceive this unity under the form of God, others under the form of Nature. Heraclitus conceives this unity as the Divine Néyos, which constitutes the correla- tion and intelligibility of phenomena: and Anaxa- goras as vots or Reason. It is therefore the philo- sophie expression of that fate or order of nature
RELIGION OF GREECE
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which is recognized by the poets and by religion ; but the philosophers from the first maintain it as a knowable law.
The attitude of the philosophers towards the established religion is various. Some do not trouble themselves about it, others use it where it suits them. Heraclitus approaches most closel the Aischylean point of view; he declares that, whereas men see contradiction and perplexity in the world, God sees only unity and consistency ; and, like Aischylus, he calls the order of nature ‘ Jus- tice’ (Aik). Man learns what is this Justice, and in learning achieves his own character and works out his own fate: 7d 400s éxdorw daluwv (compare Esch. Hum. 520f.). On the other hand, the wor- ship of images and the offerings of beasts seem to Heraclitus hateful.
Democritus and Empedocles bring in the gods of the established religion as part of the system of things evolved from their primordial principles.
A third class of philosophers simply oppose the common religion, and would fain sweep it away to make room for a higher belief. Xenophanes cannot find strong enough terms to express his hatred for such doctrines as the plurality of gods, with all their moral failings. The anthropomorphism of the current religion, where gods are born and die, revolts him. God is infinite, and finite character- istics are foreign to His nature. God does not change and move like the vulgar deities; He is motionless, for He is all that exists, and there is nothing outside of Him into which He could move or change.
To the Sophists (who may be broadly dis- tinguished from the Greek philosophers by their utter lack of sense for the unity of nature, and the limitation of their view to the multiplicity of phenomena) religion was created by voluntary compact among men; the variety of religions proved that it could not exist by nature, for if it came by nature it would be one. That the variety of religious thought was the necessary consequence of the variety of character produced in men by variety of external circumstances, their analysis of the world was too superficial to show. But this very superficiality of theirs is more representative of popular thought than the philosophy of deeper men, and shows better what was the religion of the educated in their own time.
Nothing sets in so clear a light the degradation of the gods in popular thought as the comedies of Aristophanes. Much as he hates the Sophists, and bitterly as he attacks their irreligion, he himself shows the gods of the established religion in more _ ludicrous and degrading situations than any of the Sophists cared todo. TheSophists approved of these gods as a very useful device, and inculcated respect for them as the means of developing morality among the people. eis
Isolated outbreaks of popular fury, in times when calamity terrified the people into piety and roused in them a temporary and quickly evanescent re- action against the growing irreligion of the time, were of no avail ‘to stem the torrent of descending time.’ Purely conservative, without any provision for deepening its character and keeping pace with the rapid growth of thought and of political and commercial life, the established religion continued, as a trammelling and impeding institution, losing its hold year by year on all classes of the people. How intense was the religious feeling of Athens is shown by such outbreaks as took place in B.C. 415 and 410. A longing for something more is everywhere manifest in the literature, and history shows the dissatisfaction to have been as strong in the mass of the people. The feeling was vague,
for the people knew not what they sought ; and it showed itself at first only in blind outbursts of fury
against more prominent violations of the established religion, though in reality these violations were merely stronger examples of the universal dissatis- faction.
Only a prophet with a deeper revelation could bring the strong religious feeling of the people and the decay of the national worship into harmony ; and, after Socrates had sealed with his life his belief in freedom of religious thought, the succes- sion of philosophy to the position once occupied by the Delphic Oracle as leader of Greek religion was accomplished. It was, however, the misfor- tune of Greek life, and a proof of its religious weakness in comparison with the Hebrew race, that the prophetic mantle found no new wearer. In the dangerous path of pointing out the true and divinely ordained course in actual public life,— that path in which Palestine produced a constant succession of great thinkers to walk,—Socrates found no follower. Plato, while fully acknow- ledging that the true philosopher should take part in publie life, found the actual world too full of evil to allow philosophy to enter it. Greek thought therefore remained abstract from actual life; it found its work and its heavenly kingdom, not in the world, but apart from it. Thus, in Greece, there never took place that application of philosophy to practical work which makes for development in religion; and there was never exerted that influence of philosophy on public life and on the mass of the people which is the mar- vellous feature of Hebrew history.