CHAPTER II.
PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS.
DIALOGUES: PARMENIDES―SOPHISTES―PROTAGORAS―GORGIAS―HIPPIAS―ECTHYDEMUS.
Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute."―Milton.
"Philosophy," says Plato in his 'Theætetus,' "begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas." It is the natural impulse of the savage, wherever he sees force and motion that he cannot explain, to invent a god; and so the first stage of Science is a sort of Fetishism, or worship of the powers of nature. The Greek, especially curious and inventive, carried this tendency to its furthest limits; and the result was an elaborate Mythology, in which every object and operation in the physical world was referred to a special god. Thus the thunder was caused by the wrath of Zeus; the earthquake was produced by Poseidōn; and the pestilence by the arrows of Apollo. Poets like Homer and Hesiod reduced these myths to a system, and perpetuated them in their verse; and so it may be said that Greek philosophy springs from poetry, for in this poetry are contained the germs of
