ed republication of savage animism. It invited lesser
minds than his to indulge in all sorts of noble vagueness and
impertinent jargon which continue to curse our popular discussions of
human affairs. He consecrated one of the chief foibles of the human
mind, and elevated it to a religion."

The philosophy of Aristotle is commonly known to be the reverse of
Plato's. Plato started with universals, the very existence of which was
a matter of faith, and from these he descended to particulars.
Aristotle, on the other hand, argued from particulars to universals, and
this inductive method was the true beginning of science. The accumulated
knowledge of his age did not furnish him facts enough upon which to
build and he had to resort to speculation. It does not detract from the
stupendous achievement of this man that the clergy of the Middle Ages,
in control of the few isolated centers of learning, looked upon the
philosophy of Aristotle as final and considered his works as
semi-sacred, and in their immersion in un-reason and unreality, exalted
as immutable and infallible the absurdities in the speculations of a
mind limited to the knowledge of centuries before theirs.

In the attempt to explain plant and animal life, Aristotle formulated
the theory that a special form of animating principle was involved. The
"elan vital" of Bergson and the theory of Joad are modern reiterations
of this conception. Aristotle is not quite consistent when he attempts
to give us his theistic beliefs. At times God is, for him, a mysterious
spirit that never does anything and has not any desire or will.
Elsewhere, he conceives God as pure energy; a prime mover unmoved.
Certain modern physicists still cling to this Aristotelian god. This
conception of a deity was far from the beliefs of his age, and it is not
strange that Aristotle was charged with impiety and with having taught
that prayer and sacrifice were of no avail. He fled from Athens and
shortly afterwards died in exile.

These three supreme Greek thinkers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, have
not contributed a single argument for the existence of a supreme being
which is now not discredited. Socrates relied on the now outmoded
argument from design; and only in a greatly modified form are the
arguments of Plato and Aristotle accepted by modern theists. Holding
such heretical views in an age when history was a frail fabric of
legends, and the scientific explanation of nature in its extreme