from the category of Skepticism every form of doubt not identical in terms with Pyrrhonism is a point worthy of remembrance. Perhaps we shall not go far wrong in crediting Demokritos with the modified uncertainty which will come before us in academic Skepticism, i.e. doubt engendered not so much by the consciousness of absolute Nescience, as by an eclectic variety of contending theories, and a definition of the highest attainable truth as a probability only. This is, in my opinion, the standpoint of his physical theory, and it harmonises with his views on ethical and political subjects.

A considerable portion of the Skeptical notoriety which Demokritos has always enjoyed rests on the supposed atheistic tendency of his teaching. The verdict of history on this subject is summed up with his usual trenchant, rhadamanthine terseness by Dante :

Democrito, che 'l mondo a caso pone1—

'Demokritos, who puts the world on chance.' In terms, nothing could be farther from the truth than such a judgment. The movement of the universe he describes as 'Vortex,' its principles are 'fate' and 'necessity.' If there is one thing more than another excluded by his terminology, it is the operation of accident or chance. In reality, however, and from the standpoint of volitional agency, the difference is purely verbal. A blind motionless power, no matter how inevitable its processes, can only be construed to human consciousness and experience in terms of uncertainty and therefore of accident. This is allowed by Demokritos himself in his admitted possibility of phenomena being other than the actual conceptions we are compelled to form of them. His scheme was thus as repellent to the old Greek theology as it is to our Christian ideas. If the Athenians suspected the vous of Anaxagoras, with its half-personal implications of directly infringing the rights of Olympian deities, they were hardly likely to be more favourably disposed to the 'Vortex' or 'Necessity' of Demokritos. Aristophanes only gives utterance to the popular feeling when he describes 'Vortex' as having dethroned Zeus.2 Nor did Demokritos leave any room for misconception as to his virtual Atheism. He opposed the vous of Anaxagoras as importing a volitional and theistic element into nature which he could not recognise, and he ascribed the origin of the popular theology to impersonation of the great

Inferno, canto iv.

Aristoph. Clouds, 380 and 828 :

Δίνος βασιλεύει, τὸν Δί' ἐξεληλακώς.

powers of nature and to the fear engendered by their operations. That he employs the language of theology to designate the reasoning and soul-like element which he not very consistently discerns both in nature and in man1 is only a phase of the distinction which he makes between the obscure and genuine methods of ascertaining truth; the soul or reason being itself material, though composed of finer and more subtle atoms.2

But skeptical and atheistic as is the physical system of Demokritos, his ethical system is in practice as full, determinate, and sound as could easily be conceived. Indeed the Skepticism of preSokratic free-thinkers, who lived before ordinary ethical conceptions and social regulations were submitted to the searching scrutiny of the sophists and Sokrates,3 was generally limited to the popular theology and cosmogony. On many points the maxims of Demokritos attain an ideal of purity and unselfish generosity approximating to the teaching of Christ himself, e.g. 'Self-conquest is the highest kind of victory'-'He is brave who subdues not his enemies but his appetites'-'Sensual enjoyment produces only a brief pleasure, with much pain, and does not insure the real satisfaction of the appetites'-Only mental possessions produce true happiness and inward peace'-'Wealth obtained by unrighteousness is an evil'-'Culture is better than riches'-'No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge''Moral purity in its perfection is a quality not only of act and word, but even of thought.'-On the subject of virtue he rises to the 'ethical sublime' of eternal and immutable morality. 'Good actions should be done not out of compulsion but from persuasion, not from hope of reward but on their own account.' 'A man should feel more shame in doing evil before himself than before all the world, and should shun evil just as much if no one as if all men were aware of it.' He agrees with Sokrates that to do wrong is a greater source of unhappiness than to suffer wrong, as well as in the opinion of the teachableness of virtue. It is needless to add

1 Comp. Zeller, i. 755.

* A curious outcome of the Demokritean teaching is the recognition of ghosts or shadows pertaining to men-an analogue, perhaps, of the atoms which are the invisible but real constituents of matter. These are semiimmortal beings, some of which are good, others evil. When visible and audible, they sometimes declare future events. Sext. adv. Math. vii. 116, . 117, and ix. 42.

3 Comp. Hegel, Gesch. der Philosophie, ii. 43: Die Athener vor Sokra tes waren sittliche nicht moralische Menschen.'

Comp. Mullach's Frag. i. pp. 340-56, and, for an ingenious arrangement of them, compare Zeller, i. 749-53..

that Demokritos excepts the human will from the iron chain of necessity in which the physical universe is involved, and this is not the only instance of a happy inconsistency in his thought. Hence he makes no attempt to find a theoretical basis for his moral practice beyond the teachings of experience as to the highest welfare of man and of the society of which he forms a part.

Some approximation to succeeding Skeptics may be found in the stress which Demokritos placed on ataraxia, or unrufflec mental calm. He is indeed one of the earliest Greek thinkers who employed in this sense a term destined to become in after-times a skeptical technicality. The end of all intellectual effort, the object of all ethical and social action, is ataraxia. This undisturbed serenity of mind, purchasable only, according to Demokritos, by zealous search after knowledge, by high moral purity, by untiring self-sacrifice, is the sole pleasure within the reach of mortals. But although in terms he makes happiness the summum bonum, it is needless to point out the enormous difference between his conception of that object and the self-indulgent Hedonism of Epikouros. Consequently he may be adduced as an example by no means unique of the fallacy of the opinion which makes a high ethical ideal an impossibility to all atheists. His own personal idiosyncrasies, so far as we may trust tradition, are precisely those we might have anticipated from his philosophy. Agreeing with Herakleitos in a half-supercilious and disdainful estimate of humanity, he differed from him as to the proper method of expressing his feeling. According to Demokritos, humanity is more fittingly the object of laughter than of tears. Not that the laughter is necessarily derisive, for it may imply merely the combination of equanimity with high animal spirits which would enable him to survey with good-humoured cynicism the ordinary actions and variable fortunes of his fellow-men.

His isolated life procured for him the character of a misanthropist, which was, if we may judge him by his moral precepts, altogether undeserved. Probably his repudiation of all human companionship was nothing more than the single-hearted devotion of all truth-seekers to the object of their quest

The last infirmity of noble minds,

To scorn delights and live laborious days

1 'Man is only a half-slave of necessity' is one of his dicta, perhaps akin to the modified Necessitarianism which in contemporary philosophy goes by the name of Determinism. Cf. Sir A. Grant's Aristotle's Ethics, i. 103.

-which was common to the great thinkers of Greece. He was called the 'mob-despiser,' an epithet which might probably be applied to every genuine philosopher. That some of his contempt for the unthinking crowd was, however, paid back with interest is shown by the satirical remark of Plutarch,' who contrasts his oracular explanation of the universe with his petty definitions of things more within the scope of his knowledge; for while in the former matter his utterances were like those of Zeus, in the latter he was not a whit above the vulgar, inasmuch as he defined man as that which we all know.'

Demokritos deserves a high place in the history of Skepticism, especially as being the founder of the atomistic schools of Epikouros and Lucretius, which have always occupied so polemical an attitude to all religious dogmas, and in which atheism is almost inevitably a primary axiom. That the physical theories he was the first to propound grew in elaboration and dogmatic intensity among succeeding thinkers is only what might have been expected. Nor can it be denied that such a development is in its assumed omniscience a deterioration. If we can know but little of the supreme mind which co-ordinated and arranged the universe, we know still less —and every day's further investigation into physical science affords additional confirmation of the truth-the primary material conditions out of which the realm of nature has been so wonderfully evolved.

The Sophists.

In every leader and every school of early Hellenic thought we have discovered distinct elements of free-thought, sometimes bordering upon, at other times involving, Skepticism. All the modes and objects of cognition hitherto tested have yielded the same verdict of uncertainty. This is the common link that connects speculations starting from different points, adopting different methods, and aiming at different results; this the common experience which has clung, like a shadow to its substance, to every dogmatic conception tentatively put forward. Matter, mind, language, religion, have all been tested with a final recognition of incomplete results. Greek philosophy had, therefore, prepared the way for an order of free teachers and free thinkers such as we have in the Sophists.

A similar preparation had been brought about in another direction. Parallel with the speculative advance was the political growth of Greece. This was undoubtedly in the direction of

1 Plutarch, adv. Colotem. p. 1108. Reisk, x. p. 561.

democratic institutions, and a fuller recognition of individual freedom. The supremacy Athens had attained since the Persian war; the prosperity, ease, and rapid development in culture of its inhabitants, made it the common centre for all the thought of Greece, while its commercial energy rendered it the emporium of foreign philosophies as well. Hence it became the resort of traffickers in free-thought, who flocked to it from every side, so that in addition to the varied and prolific harvests of speculation produced on its own soil, it imported whatever foreign commodities of the like kind it was able to procure.

Besides speculative and political there was another kind of progress, which tended to foster as it was itself engendered by Hellenic free-thought-I mean advance in literature. No ancient literature is so devoid of dogmatic aims and pretensions as that of the Hellenes. There is none which is so purely spontaneous and unforced, none in which the artistic feeling so completely preponderates over the didactic purpose, none in which thoughtproduction in and for itself has ever held such a prominent place. All genius is indeed necessarily individualistic, originality is but another name for this characteristic, and freedom is its indispensable condition. As Hellenic literature confessedly excels all others in original power, so is this a proof of its possessing a maximum of free energy and independence. This natural aptitude for freedom is manifested in the very earliest products of Greek thought. We find it in the imaginative wildness of their mythological legends, in the extempore fluency of their rhapsodists, in the varied and copious luxuriance of their lyric poetry, nor is it lost sight of in the more restrained products of the drama. The effect of Hellenic literature, even at an early period of its development, was still further to develop and strengthen the free instincts so profoundly grafted in the national character, and which was being evolved by its philosophical and political growth. Itself begotten of the individualism which marked every Greek thinker, it impressed everyone who came in contact with it with the same feeling of conscious independence and self-assertion. Hellenic literature trained the mental faculties of its votaries in a manner analogous to the physical education of its youths in the gymnasia. For its varied instruction, its diversified scope for reason and imagination, the intellectual athletics suggested by its different questions and literary products imparted to their minds strength and flexibility, just as wrestling with naked limbs gave a muscular power, a combination of freedom with grace of movement, to their bodies.