on between philosophy and religion, and herein public opinion
was not mistaken; the fact that polytheism furnished a religious
explanation for every natural event made it essentially antagonistic to
science. It was the uncontrollable advance of knowledge that overthrew
Greek religion. Socrates himself never hesitated to denounce physics for
that tendency; and the Athenians extended his principles to his own
pursuits, their strong common sense telling them that the philosophical
cultivation of ethics must be equally bad. He was not loyal to science,
but sought to support his own views by exciting a theological odium
against his competitors--a crime that educated men ought never to
forgive. In the tragedy that ensued the Athenians only paid him in his
own coin. The immoralities imputed to the gods were doubtless strongly
calculated to draw the attention of reflecting men, but the essential
nature of the pursuit in which the Ionian and Italian schools were
engaged bore directly on the doctrine of a providential government of
the world. It not only turned into a fiction the time-honoured dogma of
the omnipresence of the Olympian divinities--it even struck at their
very existence, by leaving them nothing to do. For those
personifications it introduced impersonal nature or the elements.
Instead of uniting scientific interpretations to ancient traditions, it
modified and moulded the old traditions to suit the apparent
requirements of science. We shall subsequently see what was the
necessary issue of this--the Divinity became excluded from the world he
had made, the supernatural merged in natural agency; Zeus was superseded
by the air, Poseidon by the water; and while some of the philosophers
received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates,
or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public
faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient
blunder, converted by time into a national imposture.

[Sidenote: Antagonism of science and polytheism.]

As I shall have occasion to speak of Greek philosophy in a detailed
manner, it is unnecessary to enter into other particulars here. For the
present purpose it is enough to understand that it was radically opposed
to the national faith in all countries and at all times, from its origin
with Thales down to the latest critic of the Alexandrian school.

[Sidenote: Secession of historians.]

As it was with philosophers, so it was with