Abstract

A distinguished French scholar has recently set himself to delineate the history of Greek thought, from the time of Plato through the formation of the Hellenistic systems to the days of the empire, distinguishing two opposing tendencies, one towards pantheism and the other towards a philosophy of transcendence. But that distinction can be traced also in earlier periods than those with which Fr. Festugière is concerned, and it can be applied to theories of the soul equally with theories of God; this theme I hope to illustrate on a tiny scale in the early part of my paper, drawing attention to tendencies on the one hand to treat the soul as part of nature, on the other to place it outside nature. The former of these is the earlier