, of course: Democritus, Eratosthenes,
Hippocrates, and to a great extent Aristotle. But in general there was a
strong tendency to follow Plato in supposing that people could really
solve questions by an appeal to their inner consciousness. One result of
this, no doubt, was a tendency to lay too much stress on mere agreement.
It is obvious, when one thinks about it, that quite often a large number
of people who know nothing about a subject will all agree and all be
wrong. Yet we find the most radical of ancient philosophers
unconsciously dominated by the argument _ex consensu gentium_. It is
hard to find two more uncompromising thinkers than Zeno and Epicurus.
Yet both of them, when they are almost free from the popular
superstitions, when they have constructed complete systems which, if not
absolutely logic-proof, are calculated at least to keep out the weather
for a century or so, open curious side-doors at the last moment and let
in all the gods of mythology.[129:1] True, they are admitted as
suspicious characters, and under promise of good behaviour. Epicurus
explains that they do not and cannot do anything whatever to anybody;
Zeno explains that they are not anthropomorphic, and are only symbols or
emanations or subordinates of the all-ruling Unity; both parties get rid
of the myths. But the two great reformers have admitted a dangerous
principle. The general consensus of humanity, they say, shows that there
are gods, and gods which in mind, if not also in visual appearance,
resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in barring the door, and admitted
nothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or
insisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, of
witchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonic
school, of more dangerous elements still.

I take the Stoics and Epicureans as the two most radical schools. On the
whole both of them fought steadily and strongly against the growth of
superstition, or, if you like to put it in other language, against the
dumb demands of man's infra-rational nature. The glory of the Stoics is
to have built up a religion of extraordinary nobleness; the glory of the
Epicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and humanity stark
upright amid a reeling world, and, like the old Spartans, never to have
yielded one inch of ground to the common foe.

The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot be
enlightened permanently by merely