For Students
Early Greek religion contained among its many deities some whose natures might have supported pantheism; and certainly the mystery religions of later times stressed types of mystical union that are typical of pantheistic systems. But in fact the pantheism of ancient Greece was related almost exclusively to philosophical speculation. For this reason it is more rationalistic, possessing a style quite different from the pantheisms thus far examined. The first philosophers of Greece, all of whom were 6th-century-bce Ionians, were hylozoistic, finding matter and life inseparable. The basic substances that they identified as the elements of reality—the water proposed by Thales, ...(100 of 7500 words)