But the corruption of later times, though, in truth, on a less scale, has likewise been very great. Rapid, too, has been the passage from good to evil. Moreover, it is self-evident that in the primeval ages of a vivid natural faith, and of a life according to nature, that separation between life and nature that exists in these later times could not well have taken place--nay, at such a period it is totally inconceivable. On the contrary, science and life must have been in perfect unison. And this is true, not only of the virtuous knowledge in the first happy epoch of the world’s golden age, but also of the wicked ideas and the demoniac efforts of error in the succeeding periods of gigantic bewilderment and arrogant enmity to God. It is by reason of this unity between life and knowledge that this instance belongs to that gradation in the mutual relations of the two in the different ages of the world. Quite otherwise, however, was it, in this respect, with Grecian philosophy. In the most enlightened days of classical antiquity we behold it either coming forward in direct opposition to life, especially in its public aspect of politics and religion, or else as absolutely esoteric, retiring altogether and estranged from active duties. Now, in adducing the history of Grecian philosophy as my second instance, and as an eminently important moment in the history of the intellectual development of the ancient world, my object is to show that in the same way that, according to all grounds of analogy, a simpler natural faith, as the simple religion of the first patriarchs of the human race, preceded the later form of heathenism into which the worship of the Gentiles so wildly and so fearfully degenerated--so, also, in the philosophy of Greece, its later systems and sects, which were so thoroughly false and pernicious, were preceded by, at least, a comparatively better and higher view--by a purer theory of science and of truth.