critical thinker towards the world and towards himself, as opposed to myth, but also as opposed to scepticism. Comte, with his positivism. endeavoured to rest content with critical and scientific thought as developed in the special sciences, and to justify such thought historically as the latest stage of evolution. But such a naïve historical outlook is inadequate; it is necessary, with Kant, to establish epistemologically the opposition between mythopoiesis and scientific thought. It is a case of criticism versus positivism.
From the history of European thought we learn how among the Greeks there occurred a gradual severance between mythical and critical thought. Philosophers became more fully aware of the contrast as soon as individualism and subjectivism gathered strength during the age of Socrates, the sophists, Plato, and Aristotle.[1] Thenceforward the opposition between mythology and philosophy had become established.
After Aristotle, philosophical thought grew weaker, mythology stronger. The mythical thought of the cast was superadded to that of Greece, and from this syncretism theology developed as Christian mythology. Christian mythology was the child of Greek philosophy. Theology, the name given to the most important section of the Aristotelian metaphysic, is the correct denotation for Christian dogma.
Just as classical mythology was contrasted with philosophy, so was Christian dogmatics, Christian mythology, contrasted with scholasticism. Primarily scholasticism was the handmaid of theology, but from it the new scientific philosophy developed, and promptly displayed its opposition to theology. This opposition was epistemologically expounded by Hume and Kant. Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science.
It is at length possible for us to come to an understanding concerning the relationship of philosophy to religion.
The reader need not be alarmed. I do not propose to say much to him about the essential nature of religion. He will know enough if he will turn the subject over in his own mind. It is a subject to which every one is compelled to attend in view of the existing situation."
Religion, piety. has hitherto been mythical in character. Religious knowledge was at first mythology, subsequently
- ↑ In his History of Greece, Grote, basing his demonstration upon the ideas of Comte, gives a clear account of this development.
