| Name. | Place. | Approximate date B. C. | Speciality. | |
| Thales. | Miletus (Ionia). | 600 | Cosmological Theory as to the Primary Substance | }Water. |
| Anaximander. | “ | 570 | “ | the Boundless. |
| Anaximenes. | “ | 500 | “ | Air. |
| Pythagoras. | Samos (near the Ionian coast). | 500 | “ | Numbers: “a Cosmos built up of geometrical figures,” or (Grote, Plato, i, 12) “generated out of number.” |
| Xenophanes. | Colophon (Ionia). | 500 | Founder of the Eleatic school. | |
| Heraclitus. | Ephesus (Ionia). | 500 | “ | Fire. |
| Empedocles. | Agrigentum (Sicily). | 450 | “ | Fire, Air, Earth, and Water: ruled by Love and Strife. |
| Anaxagoras. | Clazomenae (Ionia). | 450 | Nous. | |
| Leucippus | ||||
| Democritus. | Abdera (Thrace). | 460 | Formulators of the Atomic Theory. | |
| Aristotle. | Stagira (Macedonia). | 350 | Naturalist. | |
| Epicurus. | Samos. | 300 | Expounder of the Atomic Theory and Ethical Philosopher. | |
| Lucretius. | Rome. | 50 | Interpreter of Epicurus and Empedocles: the first Anthropologist. | |
Part II.
THE ARREST OF INQUIRY.
A. D. 50-A. D. 400.
1. From the Early Christian Period to the Time of Augustine.
“A revealed dogma is always opposed to the free research that may contradict it. The result of science is not to banish the divine altogether, but ever to place it at a greater distance from the world of particular facts in which men once believed they saw it.”—Renan, Essay on Islamism and Science.
A detailed account of the rise and progress of the Christian religion is not within the scope of this book. But as that religion, more especially in the elaborated theological form which it ultimately assumed, became the chief barrier to the development of Greek ideas; except, as has been remarked, in the degree that these were represented by Aristotle, and brought into harmony with it; a short survey of its origin and early stages is necessary to the continuity of our story.
The history of that great movement is told according to the bias of the writers. They explain its rapid diffusion and its ultimate triumph over Paganism as due either to its Divine origin and guidance; or to the favourable conditions of the time of its early propagation, and to that wise adaptation to circumstances which linked its fortunes with those of the progressive peoples of Western Europe. In the judgment of every unofficial narrator, this latter explanation best accords with the facts of history, and with the natural causes which largely determine success or failure. The most partisan advocates of its supernatural, and therefore special, character have to show reason why the fortunes of the Christian religion have varied like those of other great religions, both older and younger than it; why, like Buddhism, it has been ousted from the country in which it rose; and why, in competition with Brahmanism, as Sir Alfred Lyall testifies in his Asiatic Studies (p. 110), and with Mohammedanism in Africa, it has less success than these in the mission fields where it comes into rivalry with them. Riven into wrangling sects from an early period of its history, it has, while exercising a beneficent influence in turbulent and lawless ages, brought not “peace on earth, but a sword.” It has been the cause of undying hate, of bloody wars, and of persecutions between parties and nations, whose animosity seems the deeper when stirred by matters which are incapable of proof. As Montaigne says, “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.” To bring the Christian religion, or, rather, its manifold forms, from the purest spiritualistic to such degraded type as exists, for example, in Abyssinia, within the operation of the law which governs development, and which, therefore, includes partial and local corruption; is to make its history as clear as it is profoundly instructive; while, to demand for it an origin and character different in kind from other religions, is to import confusion into the story of mankind, and to raise a swarm of artificial difficulties. “If,” as John Morley observes in his criticism of Turgot’s dissertation upon The Advantages that the Establishment of Christianity has conferred upon the Human Race (Miscell., vol. ii, p. 90), “there had been in the Christian idea the mysterious self-sowing quality so constantly claimed for it, how came it that in the Eastern part of the Empire it was as powerless for spiritual or moral regeneration as it was for political health and vitality; while in the Western part it became the organ of the most important of all the past transformations of the civilized world? Is not the difference to be explained by the difference in the surrounding medium, and what is the effect of such an explanation upon the supernatural claims of the Christian idea?” Its inclusion as one of other modes, varying only in degree, by which man has progressed from the “ape and tiger” stage to the highest ideals of the race, makes clear what concerns us here, namely, its attitude toward secular knowledge, and the consequent serious arrest of that knowledge. That a religion which its followers claim to be of supernatural origin, and secured from error by the perpetual guidance of a Holy Spirit, should have opposed inquiry into matters the faculty for investigating which lay within human power and province; that it should actually have put to death those who dared thus to inquire, and to make known what they had discovered; is a problem which its advocates may settle among themselves. It is no problem to those who take the opposite view.