Xenophon tells us (_Memorabilia_, i., i., 6-9) that among
phenomena Socrates distinguished between those which were within the
scope of human study and those which the gods had reserved for
themselves, and that he execrated the attempt of Anaxagoras to explain
everything rationally. His contemporary, Hippocrates, regarded diseases
as of divine origin, and Plato believed that the sun and stars were
animated gods with their souls (_Philebus_, cap. xvi., _Laws_, x.), and
only permitted astronomical investigation so long as it abstained from
blasphemy against these gods. And Aristotle in his _Physics_ tells us
that Zeus rains not in order that the corn may grow, but by necessity
(_ex anharchest_). They tried to mechanize and rationalize God, but God
rebelled against them.
And what is the concept of God, a concept continually renewed because
springing out of the eternal feeling of God in man, but the eternal
protest of life against reason, the unconquerable instinct of
personalization? And what is the notion of substance itself but the
objectivization of that which is most subjective--that is, of the will
or consciousness? For consciousness, even before it knows itself as
reason, feels itself, is palpable to itself, is most in harmony with
itself, as will, and as will not to die. Hence that rhythm, of which we
spoke, in the history of thought. Positivism inducted us into an age of
rationalism--that is to say, of materialism, mechanism, or mortalism;
and behold now the return of vitalism, of spiritualism.
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