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

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(3) All the Cosmologists were hylozoists. The etymological meaning of hylozoism is its true one—matter is alive. This is the fundamental characteristic of these pre-Socratics from Thales down to Anaxagoras, although some authorities contend that those from the time of Empedocles were not hylozoists. The meaning of hylozoism is simple enough, but the conception is a difficult one for the modern mind; for to-day we are accustomed to think of an impersonal nature under mechanical laws. To the Greek of the Cosmological period the substantial constitution of the universe is impersonal living matter; to us it is impersonal dead matter. Both these views are to be contrasted with the religious belief involved in Greek polytheism, in which the cosmos is conceived to be living personal spirits; this Homeric polytheism is again to be contrasted with the animism of the tribal period, in that it had organized into an æsthetic unity the early savage animism. These hylozoistic philosophers did not, however, give up the Homeric gods, but they treated their existence in a poetic way. They usually believed in their existence, but they always subordinated them to the one living world-ground.