With this profound and lofty feeling for Nature, did the early philosophers of Greece, who were chiefly Ionians, like Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, consider respectively water, air, and fire, as the primary powers of Nature and of all things; and it was only Anaxagoras, the master of Socrates, who first clearly expounded the nature of that supreme and divine Intelligence which created nature and regulates the world. Prior to this philosopher, Heraclitus had asserted this doctrine, perhaps with greater purity--certainly with more depth and penetration; but in his obscure writings it is less intelligibly expressed. With his supreme Intelligence in Nature, Anaxagoras conjoined the ομοιομερσα, that is to say, not the real atoms of a lifeless matter, but rather the animated substance of material life. Thus his doctrine was a simple system of dualism, quite in harmony, it would seem, with the feelings of those early ages, as we have noticed a similar system in the history of Indian philosophy. These old Ionian philosophers in general regarded only the internal life in Nature and all existence--the constant change and endless vicissitude in the world and in all things; and hence many of them began to doubt, and at last finally denied, the existence of anything steadfast and enduring. According to that law and march of contrast, which Grecian intellect, whether consciously or unconsciously, invariably pursued, these Ionian philosophers were now opposed by the school of Parmenides, which inculcated the doctrine of an all-pervading unity--and taught that this principle was the first and last, the sole, true, permanent, and eternal Being. Although this system was at first propounded in verse, it was by no means, in its essential and ruling spirit, a poetical Pantheism, like that of the Indians--but more congenial with the intellectual habits of the Greeks, it was a Pantheism thoroughly dialectic, which at first regarded all change as an illusion and idle phenomenon, and at last positively denied the possibility of change. Between these two extreme schools appeared the great disciple of Socrates, who sought, by a path of inquiry completely new, completely foreign to the Greeks--by a range of speculation which soared far above the world of sense, and outward experience, as well as above mere logic, to return to the supreme God-head, infinitely exalted above all nature--deriving the notion of the Deity from immediate intuition, primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence. By this doctrine of reminiscence, which is the fundamental tenet of the Platonic system, this philosophy has a strong coincidence or affinity with the Indian doctrine of the Metempsychosis, by the supposition it involves of the prior existence of the human soul. To such a notion of the pre-existence of the soul, in the literal sense of the term, no system of Christian philosophy could easily subscribe. But if, as there is no reason to prevent us, we should understand this