History of Philosophy

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I GREEK PHILOSOPHY FIRST PERIOD AGE OF METAPHYSICS PROPER OR PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE (600-400) 4. Origin of Greek Philosophy' The philosophy of the Hellenes emancipates itaelf from their religion in the form of theology and gnomic morality.3 Aryan naturalism, modified by the national geniusand the physical...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I GREEK PHILOSOPHY FIRST PERIOD AGE OF METAPHYSICS PROPER OR PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE (600-400) 4. Origin of Greek Philosophy' The philosophy of the Hellenes emancipates itaelf from their religion in the form of theology and gnomic morality.3 Aryan naturalism, modified by the national geniusand the physical conditions under which it developed, forms its starting-point. This naturalism had passed the period of infancy long before the appearance of philosophy. The luminous Ether (Diaus-Zeus), the Sun and its fire (Apollo), the Storm-cloud and its thunderbolts (Pallas-Athene), were originally taken for the gods themselves. Just as the child transforms its surroundings into an enchanted world, and regards its doll and wooden horse as living beings, so the humanity-child makes nature after ite own image. For the contemporaries of Homer and Hesiod, such objects are merely the sensible manifestations of the invisible divinity concealed behind them, a being that is similar to the human soul, but superior to it in power, and, like it, invested with immortality. The gods form a kind of idealized, transcendent humanity, whose vices as well as virtues are magnified. The world is their work, their empire, the theatre of their wishes, 1 Cf. chapters on mythology, etc., in .Grote's History of Greece (cited page 8); Preller's Myt/iotoyie (cited page 9); Lehrs, Po/tuliire Aafsalze (cited page 9); and histories of Greek philosophy. ? Tk.] 2 That is to say, philosophy is of comparatively recent origin, while religion, which precedes it historically, is us old as nations and humanity itself. Philosophy, leing a late product of human development, plays but a subordinate and intermittent part in history. Religion, on the other hand, guides its destinies. It is the primordial an...