Note 180 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

Philosophically, however, he counted for less than he did as an innovating rationalist. His doctrine of Nous amounted in effect to a reaffirmation of deity; and he has been not unjustly described180 as the philosophic father of the dualistic deism or theism which, whether from within or from without the Christian system, has been the prevailing form of religious philosophy in the modern world. It was, in fact, the only form of theistic philosophy capable of winning any wide assent among religiously biassed minds; and it is the more remarkable that such a theist should have been prosecuted because his notion of deity was mental, and excluded the divinization of the heavenly bodies.