Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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The Native Tendencies of the Early Greek.

(1) This can be seen first in the development of his religion. The first step in the organization of his religion we have already seen, for the Homeric epic was the expression of a well-defined, poetic, and æsthetic polytheism developed out of a primitive savage naturalism. The Greek’s sense of measure was shown in the way both gods and men were placed as a part of the world of nature. He could accomplish this the more freely because he had no hierarchy of priests and no dogma of belief to cramp his imagination. The Greek priests did not penetrate into the private life nor teach religion. “They were not theologians but sacristans and liturgical functionaries.” In the fifty years before philosophy appeared, this tendency toward scientific religious organizing showed the beginning of another advance. Monistic belief, of which signs may be found even in the earlier Greek writings, came to the surface. This monism4 was expressed or implied by the Gnomic poets, “wise poets,” so called, because they made sententious utterances upon the principles of morality.