Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned." [877]
Empedocles also wages uncompromising war against all representations of the Deity in human form--
"For neither with head adjusted to limbs, like the human,
Nor yet with two branches down from the shoulders outstretching,
Neither with feet, nor swift-moving limbs,....
He is, wholly and perfectly, mind, ineffable, holy,
With rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the world." [878]
[Footnote 877: ][ (return) ] Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 431, 432.
[Footnote 878: ][ (return) ] Ibid., vol. i. pp. 495, 496.
When speaking of the mythology of the older Greeks, Socrates maintains a becoming prudence; he is evidently desirous to avoid every thing which would tend to loosen the popular reverence for divine things. [879] But he was opposed to all anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity. His fundamental position was that the Deity is the Supreme Reason, which is to be honored by men as the source of all existence and the end of all human endeavor. Notwithstanding his recognition of a number of subordinate divinities, he held that the Divine is one, because Reason is one. He taught that the Supreme Being is the immaterial, infinite Governor of all; [880] that the world bears the stamp of his intelligence, and attests it by irrefragable evidence; [881] and that he is the author and vindicator of all moral laws. [882] So that, in reality, he did more to overthrow polytheism than any of his predecessors, and on that account was doomed to death.