human sanctions, and it is this conclusion which, to the depraved soul, gives atheism all its value, while, if the intellect alone were concerned, it would shrink from it as from the very "blackness of darkness" itself. The ancient atheists saw that there could be no true natural morality without the belief in a God, and they did not pretend it. As in the moral and political philosophy of Plato, the Deity was the beginning, middle, and end: ó μὲν δὴ θεός (ὥσπερ ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος) ἀρχήν τε καὶ τελευ. τὴν καὶ μέσα τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων ἔχων, lib. iv., 715, or, as he says in another place, ὁ δὴ θεὸς ἡμῖν πάντων μέτρον äv ein μáλiota, 717; so, on the other hand, he justly represents those against whom he is here contending, as holding to no conscience, no law, no right and wrong, as well as no religion and no God. They reasoned, however, like their modern followers of the school of Hobbes, in a vicious circle. From an atheistic assumption, they proved that law was not by nature, but by art, and then from this latter position, taken as established, they argued that Divine worship, being enjoined by law, was also by art, and not by nature: θεοὺς εἶναι πρῶτόν φασιν οὗτοι τέχνῃ οὐ φύσει ἀλλά τισι vóμoç. Page 14, line 20. We see the absurdity of the thing in the way Plato states their positions and their πρ☎τоv fevdos; yet, by concealing this vicious and circular mode of reasoning, such writers as Hobbes have seemed to make out a most formidable argument. This atheistical dogma, that religion is the creation of law and the civil magistrate, is most strikingly set forth in the following fragment attributed by Sextus Empiricus (Advers. Mathem., lib. ix., sec. 54) to Critias, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, and by Plutarch (De Placit. Philosoph., i., 6 and 7) to Euripides, who, he says, utters these sentiments in the character of Sisyphus instead of his own, through fear of the Areopagus. We give these verses in full, because of their intrinsic interest as one of the most remarkable remains of antiquity, because they set forth in all its strength the substance of all that has ever been said on this head from that time down to the present, and because they furnish a specimen of most finished poetry, of a higher stamp than atheism could have been supposed to employ in the utterance of its dark oracles: Ἦν χρόνος ὅτ ̓ ἦν ἄτακτος ἀνθρώπων βίος Τοῦτ ̓ οὐχὶ λήσει τοὺς θεούς· τὸ γὰρ φρονοῦν Ὅθεν τε λαμπρὸς ἀστέρας σπέρχει μύδρος, Τὸν Δαίμον ̓ ὀγκῶν, ἐν πρέποντι χωρίῳ. A most masterly refutation of this atheistic dogma, espe cially as it was, in more modern times, advanced by Hobbes, may be found in Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe, in which there is a most thorough and conclusive examination of the general doctrine, that morality and religion are not by nature, or from the Divine mind, but are strictly conventional, that is, by human law. Plato also touches upon this subject in the Theætetus, 172, B., where he sets forth the unavoidable conclusions of that flowing philosophy, which, rejecting ideas, and making man, or, in other words, sensations the measure of all things (μέτρον πάντων), utterly sweeps away all morality, all religion, all law, in short, all foundations whether of a civil or religious kind: Οὐκοῦν καὶ περὶ πολιτικῶν (φασι), καλὰ μὲν καὶ αἰσχρά, δίκαια καὶ ἄδικα, καὶ ὅσια και μή, οἷα ἂν ἑκάστη πόλις οἰηθεῖσα (ξυμφέροντα εἶναι) θῆται νόμιμα ἑαυτῇ, ταῦτα καὶ εἶναι τῇ ἀληθείᾳ ἑκάστη· καὶ ἐν τούτοις μὲν οὐδὲν σοφώτερον οὔτε ἰδιώτην ἰδιώτου, οὔτε πόλιν πόλεως εἶναι. καὶ ἐν τοῖς δικαίοις καὶ ἀδίκοις, καὶ ὁσίοις καὶ ἀνοσίοις, ἐθέλουσιν ἰσχυρίζεσθαι, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι φύσει αὐτῶν οὐδὲν ΟΥΣΙΑΝ ἑαυτοῦ ἔχον, ἀλλὰ τὸ κοινῇ δόξαν, τοῦτο γίνεται ἀληθὲς τότε, ὅταν δόξῃ. Theætetus, 172, Β., C. They assigned a rather higher rank to the idea of the beautiful (τὸ καλὸν) than to that of the right. Καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰ καλὰ, φύσει μὲν ἄλλα εἶναι, νόμῳ δὲ ἕτερα· τὰ δὲ δὴ δίκαια οὐδ ̓ εἶναι τοπαράπαν φύσει. Page 14, line 23. “ The beautiful, they said, was partly by nature and partly by law (that is, conventional agreement or custom), but the Just (or Right) had no foundation at all in nature,” or, in other words, was the creation alone of arbitrary enactment. The doctrines of an immutable standard of morals and of an immutable standard of taste must go together. Both are necessarily and consistently rejected by the atheist, and both should be strenuously maintained by all consistent theists. Physical, moral, intellectual, and religious beauty, although not the same, can all be traced to one common foundation. All are harmonies; all spring from one root, and all are alike unmeaning notions, unless connected with that idea of God in which the Beautiful, the Righteous, and the Good (τὸ καλὸν, τὸ ἀγαθὸν, τὸ δίκαιον) are all embraced and regarded, not only as older than human art (vηTÒ TÉXvn), but also than puois, or Nature itself. Compare the argument of the atheist Callicles, in the Gorgias, 485: ȧ φύσει μὲν οὐκ ἔστι καλὰ νόμῳ δέ, κ. τ. λ. XV. The Figure Aposiopesis. PAGE 15, LINE 8. Ei μǹ pýoovov. The apodosis here is wanting, or, rather, interrupted in a manner, which, although frequent in Greek, would not be admissible in the English. This silent omission has sometimes a much more powerful effect than any expression of the apodosis, especially in the case of threatening and admonitions. The answer, in such examples, seems to be left entirely to conscience, as though it could not possibly mistake the proper response. There are very powerful and numerous instances of this in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and from thence in the Hebraistic Greek of the New. One of the most striking may be found, Luke, xiii., 9: kặv μèv ποιήση καρπόν—εἰ δὲ μήγε. Compare, also, Luke, xix., 42; xxii., 42; Acts, xxiii., 9; Romans, ix., 22; John, vi., 62. There is a very fine example, Iliad, i., 135: ἀλλ' εἰ μὲν δώσουσι γέρας μεγάθυμοι Αχαιοί εἰ δέ κε μὴ δώωσιν . . . ... See, also, the ninth book of the Laws, 854, C., kaì ¿àv μέν σοι δρῶντι ταῦτα λωφᾷ τι τὸ νόσημα —εἰ δὲ μὴ, &c. We have also an example very similar to the present in the Protagoras, 325, D., καὶ ἐὰν μὲν ἔχων πείθηται—εἰ δὲ un, &c., where, in the same manner, the answer is left to the inward voice, and the writer hurries on to the second condition as the principal clause. See, also, the Republic, ix., 575, D., οὐκοῦν ἐὰν μὲν ἑκόντες ὑπείκωσιν—ἐὰν δὲ μὴ, &c. ; Thucydides, iii., 3, καὶ ἢν μὲν ξυμβῇ, ἡ πεῖρα·πεἰ dè μǹ, &c.; Plato, Symposion, 220, D., ei dè ßoúλɛσƉɛ, k. T. 2. This has been most appropriately and beautifully styled by grammarians aposiopesis, or an omission arising from an excitement of the feelings, in which a gesture or a look is supposed to supply the place of the voice. Although these and similar cases may by some be regarded as defects or irregularities in the Greek language, every scholar who has any claim to taste or philosophy must regard them as its highest beauties. It is a great pity that our own tongue had not more of this flexibility, and did not admit more licenses of a similar kind, instead of being so stiffly confined in that strait jacket which has been put upon it in the rules imposed, for the most part, by pedantic, unphilosophical, and unclassical writers on English Grammar; for such, with some few exceptions, have been the great mass of those who have taken upon themselves to lay down the laws of this science, and to sit in judgment on Lowth and Murray. To return, however, to the sentence before us if it is desired to avoid the aposiopesis, this may be done by taking all from καὶ περὶ to γράφων inclusive, as a parenthesis, and then bringing in what follows as a repetition with an apodosis to εἰ μὴ φήσουσιν. The only thing in the way of this is the particle dé, the insertion of which, however, may be regarded as occasioned by the |