CHAPTER IV HeraclitusTWO opposite attitudes towards the Greeks are common at the present day. One, which was
practically universal from the Renaissance until very recent times, views the Greeks with almost
superstitious reverence, as the inventors of all that is best, and as men of superhuman genius
whom the moderns cannot hope to equal. The other attitude, inspired by the triumphs of science
and by an optimistic belief in progress, considers the authority of the ancients an incubus, and
maintains that most of their contributions to thought are now best forgotten. I cannot myself take
either of these extreme views; each, I should say, is partly right and partly wrong. Before entering
upon any detail, I shall try to say what sort of wisdom we can still derive from the study of Greek
thought.
As to the nature and structure of the world, various hypotheses are possible. Progress in
metaphysics, so far as it has existed, has consisted in a gradual refinement of all these hypotheses,
a development of their implications, and a reformulation of each to meet the objections urged by
adherents of rival hypotheses. To learn to conceive the universe according to each of these
systems is an imaginative delight and an antidote to dogmatism. Moreover, even if no one of the
hypotheses can be demonstrated, there is genuine knowledge in the discovery of what is involved
in making each of them consistent with itself and with known facts. Now almost all the
hypotheses that have dominated modern philosophy were first thought of by the Greeks; their
imaginative inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too highly praised. What I shall have
to say about the Greeks will be said mainly from this point of view; I shall regard them as giving
birth to theories which have had an independent life and growth, and which, though at first
somewhat infantile, have proved capable of surviving and developing throughout more than two
thousand years.