The recent work of Mr. F. M. Cornford, From Philosophy to Religion (1912), puts forth an interesting and ingenious theory to the effect that early Greek philosophy is a reduction to abstract terms of the practice of totemistic tribes. On this view, when the Gods are figured in Homer as subject to Moira (Destiny), there has taken place an impersonation of Nomos, or Law; and just as the divine cosmos or polity is a reflection of the earthly, so the established conception of the absolute compulsoriness of tribal law is translated into one of a Fate which overrules the Gods (p. 40 sq.). So, when Anaximandros posits the doctrine of four elements [he did not use the word, by the way; that comes later; see Burnet, ch. i, p. 56, citing Diels], "we observe that this type of cosmic structure corresponds to that of a totemic tribe containing four clans" (p. 62). On the other hand, the totemistic stage had long before been broken down. The "notion of the group-soul" had given rise to the notion of God (p. 90); and the primitive "magical group" had dissolved into a system of families (p. 93), with individual souls. On this prior accumulation of religious material early philosophy works (p. 138). It does not appear why, thus recognizing that totemism was at least a long way behind in Thales's day, Mr. Cornford should trace the Ionian four elements straight back to the problematic four clans of the totemistic tribe. Dr. Frazer gives him no data whatever for Aryan totemism; and the Ionian cities, like those of Mesopotamia and Egypt, belong to the age of commerce and of monarchies. It would seem more plausible, on Mr. Cornford's own premises, to trace the rival theories of the four elements to religious philosophies set up by the priests of four Gods of water, earth, air, and fire. If the early philosophers "had nothing but theology behind them" (p. 138), why not infer theologies for the old-established deities of Mesopotamia? Mr. Cornford adds to the traditional factors that of "the temperaments of the individual philosophers, which made one or other of those schemes the more congenial to them." Following Dr. F. H. Bradley, he pronounces that "almost all philosophic arguments are invented afterwards, to recommend, or defend from attack, conclusions which the philosopher was from the outset bent on believing before he could think of any arguments at all. That is why philosophical reasonings are so bad, so artificial, so unconvincing."