Note 112.1 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

Euripides.—The part played by Euripides in this spiritual history of Hellas was wholly different. Younger contemporary of Sophocles as he was, he seems to belong to a different age. In his work and thought is reflected far more vividly than in the older poets of the same century the new mental life which was fostered by the philosophers and the sophists. The influence of the physical speculations of the sixth century and of those of Demokritos and Anaxagoras of the fifth, which at some points advanced further in materialism, has had time to penetrate the more gifted minds and to compel the public to a certain attention. The paid ‘Sophist,’ the pioneer of modern education and the first champion of the critical spirit, was travelling around. And after 470 B.C. the imperial greatness of Athens had begun to attract the greatest teachers and thinkers of the age. It was of great moment for Euripides that such men as Anaxagoras and Protagoras were active in Athens for many years, and that he had enjoyed familiar intercourse with them as he also enjoyed with Sokrates. It is clear that the poet imbibed deeply their teaching and their spirit; he was also learned in Orphism, antiquarianism and remote folklore. Being by nature a great poet, he has also something of the weakness of the ‘polymath’ or the ‘intellectual’; he had not the steadiness of brain or strong conviction enough to evolve a systematic philosophy or clear religious faith; his was, in fact, the stimulating, eager, critical spirit, not the constructive. His mental sympathies and interests shift and range from pole to pole. He is a secularist in his view of a physical universe, and he foreshadows a secular treatment of ethics based on ideas of φύσις and heredity, though a chorus of his maidens may praise chastity as “the fairest gift of the Gods.” It was therefore possible, though most unjust, that Aristophanes should call him an atheist. On the other hand, he is capable of profound religious sentiment and exalted religious utterance, and strikes out flashes of light that might kindle and illuminate a higher religion. Therefore it was possible for Clemens of Alexandria to find in some of his words a foreshadowing of Christ.112.1 He remains for us an enigma, and probably no final judgment will ever be pronounced upon him, in which we shall all agree.