undamental Idea.

In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth and
science, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose in
Greece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thus
obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. In
addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the
Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical,
and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and
the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the
universe.

In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition to
the speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which were
derived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world was
considered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus became
more conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected by
this combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. This
was what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, passing
beyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on the
movement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followed
the theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, of
bodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since,
however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimental
methods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded with
the mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogether
anthropomorphic conception of gods who were dissolved and formed again;
the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed the
ancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginary
forms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressive
and rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato,
and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up to
our time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to the
continuance of myth.

The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching;
if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical entities of
Plato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other his
theory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations in
physiology and anatomy, and his