could scarcely converse with an Egyptian on the articles of his
religion without discussing also the principles of his philosophy.
Whatever opinions the Greek might then form and promulge, being
sheltered beneath no jealous and prescriptive priestcraft, all had
unfettered right to canvass and dispute them, till by little and
little discussion ripened into science.

The distinction, in fine, between the Greeks and their contemporaries
was this: if they were not the only people that philosophized, they
were the only people that said whatever they pleased about philosophy.
Their very plagiarism from the philosophy of other creeds was
fortunate, inasmuch as it presented nothing hostile to the national
superstition. Had they disputed about the nature of Jupiter, or the
existence of Apollo, they might have been persecuted, but they could
start at once into disquisitions upon the eternity of matter, or the
providence of a pervading mind.

XIII. This spirit of innovation and discussion, which made the
characteristic of the Greeks, is noted by Diodorus. "Unlike the
Chaldaeans," he observes, "with whom philosophy is delivered from sire
to son, and all other employment rejected by its cultivators, the
Greeks come late to the science--take it up for a short time--desert
it for a more active means of subsistence--and the few who surrender
themselves wholly to it practise for gain, innovate the most important
doctrines, pay no reverence to those that went before, create new
sects, establish new theorems, and, by perpetual contradictions,
entail perpetual doubts." Those contradictions and those doubts made
precisely the reason why the Greeks became the tutors of the world!

There is another characteristic of the Greeks indicated by this remark
of Diodorus. Their early philosophers, not being exempted from other
employments, were not the mere dreamers of the closet and the cell.
They were active, practical, stirring men of the world. They were
politicians and moralists as well as philosophers. The practical
pervaded the ideal, and was, in fact, the salt that preserved it from
decay. Thus legislation and science sprung simultaneously into life,
and the age of Solon is the age of Thales.

XIV. Of the seven wise men (if we accept that number) who flourished
about the same period, six were rulers and statesmen. They were
eminent, not as physical, but as moral, philosophers; and their wisdom
was in their maxims and apothegms.