ntages are all on one, the disadvantages on
the other side. As long as the immemorial religions of the different
branches of the human race remained in their natural state, and were not
pressed into the service of political parties or an ambitious priesthood,
they allowed great freedom of thought and a healthy growth of real piety,
and they were seldom disgraced by an intolerant or persecuting spirit.
They were generally either honestly believed, or, as we have just seen,
honestly attacked, and a high tone of intellectual morality was preserved,
untainted by hypocrisy, equivocation, or unreasoning dogmatism. The
marvellous development of philosophy in Greece, particularly in ancient
Greece, was chiefly due, I believe, to the absence of an established
religion and an influential priesthood; and it is impossible to overrate
the blessing which the fresh, pure, invigorating, and elevating air of
that ancient Greek philosophy has conferred on all ages, not excepting our
own. I shudder at the thought of what the world would have been without
Plato and Aristotle, and I tremble at the idea that the youth of the
future should ever be deprived of the teaching and the example of these
true prophets of the absolute freedom of thought. Unfortunately, we know
but little of the earliest fathers of Greek philosophy; we have but
fragments, and those not always trustworthy, nor easily intelligible, of
what they taught on the highest questions that can stir the heart of man.
We have been accustomed to call the oracular sayings of men like Thales,
Pythagoros, Xenophanes, or Herakleitos, philosophy, but there was in them
as much of religion as in the songs of Homer and Hesiod. Homer and Hesiod
were great powers, but their poems were not the only feeders of the
religious life of Greece. The stream of ancient wisdom and philosophy
flowed parallel with the stream of legend and poetry; and both were meant
to support the religious cravings of the soul. We have only to attend
without prejudice to the utterances of these ancient prophets, such as
Xenophanes and Herakleitos, in order to convince ourselves that these men
spoke with authority to the people,(24) that they considered themselves
the equals of Homer and Hesiod, nay, their betters, and in no way fettered
by the popular legends about gods and goddesses. While modern religions
assume in general a hostile attitude towards philosophy, ancient religions
have either included philosophy as an integ