historical relationship with the earliest Greek philosophy. The two are as independent of each other as the Greek Charis, when she has become the wife of Hephaistos, is of the red horses of the Vedic dawn.

And herein, in this very independence, in this autochthonic character, lies to my mind the real charm of Indian philosophy. It sprang up when the Indian mind had no longer any recollection, had no longer even an unconscious impression, of its original consanguinity with the Greek mind. The common Aryan period had long vanished from the memory of the speakers of Sanskrit and Greek, before Thales declared that water was the beginning of all things; and if we find in the Upanishads such passages as In the beginning all this was water,' we must not imagine that there was here any historical borrowing, we have no right even to appeal to prehistoric Aryan memories-all we have a right to say is that the human mind arrived spontaneously at similar conclusions when facing the old problems of the world, whether in India or in Greece. The more the horizon of our researches is extended, the more we are driven to admit that what was real in one place was possible in another.

6

Was Greek Philosophy borrowed from the East?

In taking this position I know I am opposed to men of considerable authority, who hold that the ancient Greek philosophers borrowed their wisdom from the East, that they travelled in the East, and that whenever we find any similarity between early Greek and Oriental philosophy it is the Greeks who must be supposed to have borrowed, whether from

Egypt or from Babylon, or even from India. This question of the possibility of any influence having been exercised on early Greek philosophy by the philosophers of Egypt, Persia, Babylon and India requires a more careful consideration before we proceed further. It has been very fully discussed by Zeller in his great work Die Philosophie der Griechen. I entirely agree with his conclusions, and I shall try to give you as concisely as possible the results at which he has arrived. He shows that the Greeks from very early times were inclined to admit that on certain points their own philosophers had been influenced by Oriental philosophy. But they admitted this with regard to special doctrines only. That the whole of Greek philosophy had come from the East was maintained at a later time, particularly by the priests of Egypt after their first intercourse with Greece, and by the Jews of Alexandria after they had become ardent students of Greek philosophy. It is curious, however, to observe how even Herodotus was completely persuaded by the Egyptian priests, not indeed that Greek philosophy was borrowed from the Nile, but that certain gods and forms of worship such as that of Dionysos, and likewise certain religious doctrines such as that of metempsychosis, had actually been imported into Greece from Egypt. He went so far as to say that the Pelasgians had originally worshipped gods in general only, but that they had received their names, with few exceptions, from Egypt. The Egyptian priests seem to have treated Herodotus and other Greek travellers very much in the same way in which Indian priests treated Wilford and Jacolliot, assuring them that everything they

asked for, whether in Greek mythology or in the Old Testament, was contained in their own Sacred Books. If, however, the study of Egyptian antiquities has proved anything, it has proved that the names of the Greek gods were not borrowed from Egypt. Krantor, as quoted by Proclus (in Tim. 24 B), was perhaps the first who maintained that the famous myth told by Plato, that of the Athenians and the Atlantidae, was contained in inscriptions still found in Egypt. In later times (400 A. D.) Diodorus Siculus appealed freely to books supposed to be in the possession of Egyptian priests, in order to prove that Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Lykurgus, Solon, and others had studied in Egypt; nay, he adds that relics of Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Demokritus were shown there to attest their former presence on the shores of the Nile. Pythagoras is said to have acquired his knowledge of geometry and mathematics and his belief in metempsychosis in Egypt; Demokritus, his astronomy; Lykurgus, Solon, and Plato, their knowledge of laws. What was first stated by Egyptian priests from national vanity was afterwards, when the East was generally believed to have been the cradle of all wisdom, willingly repeated by the Greeks themselves. The Neo-Platonists, more particularly, were convinced that all wisdom had its first home in the East. The Jews at Alexandria readily followed their example, trying to prove that much of Greek religion and philosophy had been borrowed from their sacred writings. Clement spoke of Plato as the philosopher of or from the Hebrews (ὁ ἐξ ̔Εβραίων φιλόσοφος, Strom. i. 274 Β).

Zeller has shown how little historical value can be

ascribed to these statements. He might have pointed out at the same time that the more critical Greeks themselves were very doubtful about these travels of their early philosophers and lawgivers in the East. Thus Plutarch in his life of Lykurgus says that it was told that Lykurgus travelled not only to Crete and Asia Minor, where he became acquainted for the first time with the poems of Homer, but that he went also to Egypt. But here Plutarch himself seems sceptical, for he adds that the Egyptians themselves. say so, and a few Greek writers, while with regard to his travels to Africa, Spain, and India, they rest, he adds, on the authority of one writer only, Aristokrates, the son of Hipparchus.

On the other hand there seems to be some kind of evidence that an Indian philosopher had once visited Athens, and had some personal intercourse with Sokrates. That Persians came to Greece and that their sacred literature was known in Greece, we can gather from the fact that Zoroaster's name, as a teacher, was known perfectly well to Plato and Aristotle, and that in the third century B. C. Hermippus had made an analysis of the books of Zoroaster. This rests on the authority of Pliny (Science of Language, i. p. 280). As Northern India was under Persian sway, it is not impossible that not only Persians, but Indians also, came to Greece and made there the acquaintance of Greek philosophers. There is certainly one passage which deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. Eusebius (Prep. Ev., xi. 3) quotes a work on Platonic Philosophy by Aristocles, who states therein on the authority of Aristoxenos, a pupil of Aristotle, that an Indian

philosopher came to Athens and had a discussion with Sokrates. There is nothing in this to excite our suspicion, and what makes the statement of Aristoxenos more plausible is the observation itself which this Indian philosopher is said to have made to Sokrates. For when Sokrates had told him that his philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of man, the Indian philosopher is said to have smiled and to have replied that no one could understand things human who did not first understand things divine. Now this is a remark so thoroughly Indian that it leaves the impression on my mind of being possibly genuine.

But even granting this isolated case, I have no doubt that all classical scholars will approve of Zeller's judicious treatment of this question of the origin of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy is autochthonous, and requires no Oriental antecedents. Greek philosophers themselves never say that they borrowed their doctrines from the East. That Pythagoras went to Egypt may be true, that he became acquainted there with the solutions of certain geometrical problems may be true also, but that he borrowed the whole of his philosophy from Egypt, is simply a rhetorical exaggeration of Isokrates. The travels of Demokritus are better attested, but there is no evidence that he was initiated in philosophical doctrines by his barbarian friends. That Plato travelled in Egypt need not be doubted, but that he went to Phoenicia, Chaldaea, and Persia to study philosophy, is mere guesswork. What Plato thought of the Egyptians he has told us himself in the Republic (436) when he says that the special characteristic of