The progression of thought is exemplified in all
particulars. Herodotus had a glimmering sense of the impossibility
of a violation of nature. Thucydides ignored the supernatural.
Polybius rationalised it. Plutarch raises it to its mystical
heights again, though he bases it on law. In a word, Plutarch felt
that while science brings the supernatural down to the natural, yet
ultimately all that is natural is really supernatural. To him, as
to many of our own day, religion was that transcendental attitude
of the mind which, contemplating a world resting on inviolable law,
is yet comforted and seeks to worship God not in the violation but
in the fulfilment of nature.
It may seem paradoxical to quote in connection with the priest of
Chaeronea such a pure rationalist as Mr. Herbert Spencer; yet when
we read as the last message of modern science that 'when the
equation of life has been reduced to its lowest terms the symbols
are symbols still,' mere signs, that is, of that unknown reality
which underlies all matter and all spirit, we may feel how over the
wide strait of centuries thought calls to thought and how Plutarch
has a higher position than is usually claimed for him in the
progress of the Greek intellect.
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