Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK-PHILOSOPHY.459into physical effects, or were even sublimated intomoral lessons. Men were told that only soft Pha3a-cians could see in the loves of Mars and Venus aconsecration of adultery : to the man of sense itmeant that valour and beauty were worthy of eachother. Through all the following centuries thistone of mind continued. As to the stoical philosophersin particular, this physical allegorising wasthe perpetual instrument by which they reconciledtheir stern system of material Pantheism with allthe stage scenery of the poet's Olympus.curus, on the contrary, recognised the existenceof gods in countless numbers, but they were beingswho lived in the enjoyment of his philosophy, farremoved from the cares of providence and thethought of human things. On the other hand,Plato's attempt to purify, while he recognised,polytheism, and to sweep away all its fables aspurveyors of evil thoughts and desires, found littlesuccess, though his conception of the godhead asthe Idea of goodness, remained the highest everreached in that long process of thought; andthrough all this period the best and purest mindsfound in him a support against that bewildermentof the reason which the vulgar religion inflictedon them. But few and far between were thosewho followed Plato in this his highest conception,while the literature of that last century, in themidst of which Christ appeared, remains an abidingproof that the critical, scoffing, negative spirit of