hat we might have arrived at a different conclusion had we but
possessed his chief philosophical work in its entirety, or at least larger
portions of it. And I must candidly confess that if I were asked whether,
in my heart of hearts, I believed that a Greek of the sixth century B.C.
denied point-blank the existence of his gods, my answer would be in the
negative.

That Xenophanes was not considered an atheist by the ancients may possibly
be explained by the fact that they objected to fasten this designation on
a man whose reasoning took the deity as a starting-point and whose sole
aim was to define its nature. Perhaps they also had an inkling that he in
reality stood on the ground of popular belief, even if he went beyond it.
Still more curious is the fact that his religious view does not seem to
have influenced the immediately succeeding philosophy at all. His
successors, Parmenides and Zeno, developed his doctrine of unity, but in a
pantheistic direction, and on a logical, not religious line of argument;
about their attitude to popular belief we are told practically nothing.
And Ionic speculation took a quite different direction. Not till a century
later, in Euripides, do we observe a distinct influence of his criticism
of popular belief; but at that time other currents of opinion had
intervened which are not dependent on Xenophanes, but might direct
attention to him.

CHAPTER III

Ancient Greek naturalism is essentially calculated to collide with the
popular belief. It seeks a natural explanation of the world, first and
foremost of its origin, but in the next place of individual natural
phenomena. As to the genesis of the world, speculations of a mythical kind
had already developed on the basis of the popular belief. They were not,
however, binding on anybody, and, above all, the idea of the gods having
created the world was altogether alien to Greek religion. Thus, without
offence to them it might be maintained that everything originated from a
primary substance or from a mixture of several primary substances, as was
generally maintained by the ancient naturalists. On the other hand, a
conflict arose as soon as the heavenly phenomena, such as lightning and
thunder, were ascribed to natural causes, or when the heavenly bodies were
made out to be natural objects; for to the Greeks it was an established
fact that Zeus sent lightning and thunder, and that the sun and the moon
were gods. A refusal to believe