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DISSERTATION I.
prophane in those days to account for the origin of things without a deity, that Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and others, who embraced that system of cosmogony, past unquestioned; while Anaxagoras, the first undoubted theist among the philosophers, was perhaps the first that ever was accused of atheism[1].
We are told by Sextus Empiricus[2], that Epicurus, when a boy, reading with his preceptor these verses of Hesiod:
Eldest of beings, chaos first arose;
Next earth, wide-stretcht, the seat of all.
Next earth, wide-stretcht, the seat of all.
the young scholar first betrayed his inquisitive genius, by asking, And choas whence? But was
- ↑ It will be easy to give a reason, why Thales, Anaximander, and those early philosophers, who really were atheists, might be very orthodox in the pagan creed; and why Anaxagoras and Socrates, tho' real theists, must naturally, in antient times, be esteemed impious. The blind, unguided powers of nature, if they could produce men, might also produce such beings as Jupiter and Neptune, who being the most powerful, intelligent existences in the world, would be proper objects of worship. But where a supreme intelligence, the first cause of all, is admitted, these capricious beings, if they exist at all, must appear very subordinate and dependent, and consequently be excluded from the rank of deities. Plato (de leg. lib. x.) assigns this reason for the imputation thrown on Anaxagoras, viz. his denying the divinity of the stars, planets, and other created objects.
- ↑ Adversus Mathem. lib. ix.
told
