with the doctrine that there is nothing other than God. Thus he teaches
that there are four elements--earth, air, water and fire--out of which
all things are generated. He also anticipates Lucretius in his
pessimistic view of humanity's lot; and insists on the apparently
independent existence of a principle of discord or strife in the
Universe. It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him to have set
forth precociously the Darwinian theory of the struggle for life. For
his notion seems much more akin to the Zoroastrian imagination of
Ahriman. Again, he sings melodiously, but most unphilosophically, of a
former golden age, in which the lion and the lamb would seem to have
lain down together in peace; and trees yielded fruit all the year round.
At that time the only deity was Venus, who was worshipped with bloodless
offerings alone. Still, it must be remembered that, whether consistently
or not, Empedocles produced an elaborate work on the Nature of Things,
to which Lucretius makes eloquent and earnest acknowledgments. But that
very approval of Lucretius forbids us to regard the older poet as a
Pantheist in our sense of the term. For certainly to him the Universe
cannot have been a living God.

[Sidenote: Genesis of Modern Religious Pantheism.]

Between this philosophical idea of a Oneness, not thought of as God, and
the spiritual contemplation of a universal Life of which all things are
modes, the highest thoughts of men hovered during the process by which,
in some measure under extraneous influences, Greek speculation finally
produced Neo-platonism--or, as we might say in the current phraseology
of our time--a restatement of Plato's teaching. Of this school, arising
in the early Christian centuries, some leaders were undoubtedly
Pantheists. But we cannot say this of Plato himself, nor of his master
Socrates. For though these great men were more profoundly interested in