But much that has happened is, on his view, irrevocably gone. It has become a thing in itself, for it is an inaccessible real. The universe, if there is one, arbitrarily ejects portions of itself.

Finally, what is that religion, the only religion he admits, which is superseded and replaced by philosophy? There are two possible answers.

If we take philosophy to be a strictly speculative activity, which is surely the literal truth, then a religion, destined to be replaced by it, must be a theoretical doctrine; and this is what Croce seemed to say clearly that religion is. If so, we may venture to affirm, he simply and totally ignores the religious consciousness.

But another possibility is worth mentioning. Philosophy may in a sense replace religion if it contains, but elucidates, the genuine religious experience. But then it is no longer philosophy literally taken. It has been made into more than it necessarily is. Religion, the individual's self-subordination to supreme power and goodness-supernaturalism has nothing to do with the matter-will still be the most solid fact in the world. But philosophy-and this is how Hegel understood it, for the Absolute spirit includes and does not supersede its forms-would have for its task

'to show that religion is the truth, the complete reality, of the mind that lived in Art, that founded the State, and sought to be dutiful and upright; the truth, the crowning fruit of all scientific knowledge, of all human affections, of all secular consciousness. Its lesson [that of philosophy] ultimately is that there is nothing essentially common or unclean; that the holy is not parted off from the true and the good and the beautiful.'*

This conclusion would be a consequence of the attitude for which reality is the whole; and we should like to believe that so remarkable a thinker as Croce is not unsympathetic to it.

BERNARD BOSANQUET.

* Wallace, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind,' Introduction, p. xlvi.

Art. 7.-A CRETAN PROPHET.

1. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Edited by H. Diels. Vol. 1, pp. 185-194. Berlin: Weidmann, 1912. 2. The Commentaries of Isho'dad of Merv, Bishop of Hadatha. Edited and translated by Margaret D. Gibson, with an introduction by J. Rendel Harris. Vol. IV (Acts of the Apostles), 1913: vol. v, Part ii (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle), 1916. Cambr. Univ. Press.

3. Article on Epimenides. By Otto Kern. Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie.

4. Articles by J. Rendel Harris, in the Expositor, 1906, p. 305, 1907, p. 332, 1912, p. 348, 1915, p. 29; T. Nicklin, in the Classical Review, March 1916, p. 33; H. J. Lawlor, in the Irish Church Quarterly, July 1916, pp. 180-193; and Hugo Gressmann, in the Philologische Wochenschrift, July 1913, p. 935.

WHEN a great Cretan is reviving national cohesion and definiteness of aim, as well as patriotism and honesty, in the Hellenic nation, the memory recurs of a Cretan in ancient history, who played his part in remodelling Athenian life and policy. Crete has always offered a refuge for fragments of races, and has thus been a microcosm of the Eastern Mediterranean world from the time of Homer onwards; and it is in accordance with past history that the great Cretan of our day should bear the name of the Venetian,' and embody that mixture of races which has made Crete important in spite of its remoteness from Greece and its comparatively small size and unproductiveness. The old Venetian settlers, mainly aristocratic adventurers of enterprising character, have made an indelible impression on mediæval and modern Crete; but this page of history has never been written.

It was because Crete contained such a mixed population that it was important in the development of Hellenism and Hellenic unity of feeling as distinguished from the Greek or Græco-Asiatic type of civilisation out of which it grew. That fine product which we call Hellenism, with its freedom of view in politics and society, its delicate perception of symmetry in art and literature, its bold confidence in the individual man as

the governor of his own life, was evolved amid the strife of nations in the Levant and the Egean from the amalgamation of many diverse tribes. Hellenism was a product so many-sided that it could not arise amid a homogeneous race; so delicate that the proper balance of the various racial characteristics which produced it could not last very long; so important in the development of modern society that it cannot lose its value for us; so unique in type that it can never cease to interest educated men.

The enigmatic figure of the Cretan prophet, poet and religious lawgiver, Epimenides, is eminent in Athenian historical tradition in the sixth century B.C. He stands on the step from the old religion (let us call it GræcoAnatolian) to the new Olympian religion of Hellenism, fully conscious of the character, and sympathetic with the ideals, of both. He was a vigorous personality, sound in body and mind, who lived a long life through a period of rapid development, and appreciated the great changes that occurred around him. It is a poor and niggardly criticism which denies his historical character, because he altered with his times instead of standing selfconsistent and unmoved amid a changing world. Epimenides lived amid the rapid development of Hellenism in the sixth century B.C., growing with the time and helping to guide the progress of history; and German critics cannot see the process.

In a superficial view Epimenides does not inspire confidence. The few scraps preserved from his works do not correspond to his reputation, or afford sufficient ground for the eminence ascribed to him in tradition; but they have never been reasonably interpreted according to the nature of early thought. Epimenides is encrusted with legend (e.g. he slept for 57 years in a cave), and he became a centre round which gathered much folklore. The same thing happens in all periods to certain outstanding figures, not merely in the remote dawn of history, but even at the present day. There have always been figures in Oxford university life who become encrusted with stories, some of which isolate and exaggerate one feature in a complex personality, while others show the man in an unreal character as the undergraduate conceives him. The Jowett who was

created by several generations of undergraduates is an example of the former kind of travesty; the latter kind is more complex. Yet there must be some reason for

these mythical or semi-mythical caricatures.

One serious argument against the historicity of the Cretan prophet is chronological. The immense reputation which he enjoyed in all later Greek tradition is based on his visit to Athens; he was invited to purify that city from the guilt incurred when the adherents of Cylon were massacred about 612 B.C. The idea gradually formed itself that this crime was followed quickly by the purification; and the general belief, shared even by Aristotle, was that Epimenides visited Athens about 600 B.C. Plato, however, says that the visit was made about 500 B.C. That alleged first visit is due to later misinterpretation of old religious ideas. Guilt lasted even to the third and fourth generation. In Athens the guilt remained; it was used as a party weapon, and played a great part in politics for a full century. Solon attempted to atone for the guilt, but failed; he employed legal means, whereas this guilt was a religious fact and could not be expiated except by religious means.

Attic tradition mentions no second visit made by Epimenides; he came once and was successful. On his complete success depends his place in the historical memory of Greece. He was not a figure of the developed Hellenic science with the purely Hellenic outlook on life; there was about him something of the medicineman' and the seer of visions. Such a personage cannot survive failure. The reputation of the Cretan seer was founded on an eminent and instantaneous success. No supposition of a second visit to repair the failure of the first can account for his position in the Greek world. He swept away, once and for ever, the guilt and terror of a bad episode in Athenian history, and in achieving this result he did much more.

The eminent witness is Plato, who in 'The Laws ' twice refers to the Cretan with the highest respect. Plato describes an incident that occurred about forty years before his own birth and impressed his people both as epochal, because from it originated the alliance between Athens and Cnossos, and as regenerative, because this

Cretan was one of the great inventors who carried out in practice what Hesiod had preached of old, applying precepts of reason and forethought about healthy life to reform the thought and conduct of Athens. Plato clearly refers to an historical fact. Not even the most sceptical of critics imagines that he can be inventing a tale or apologue; yet no one explains how a legendary Epimenides could so quickly impose himself on Athenian memory as a real personage. The Cretan, the Spartan, and the Athenian who talked about him, all recognised in him not only a real person worthy to be ranked alongside of the great discoverers of ancient days, but ' actually a man of yesterday.'

Plutarch is one of our principal authorities. He lays great stress on the important effects produced by the visit of Epimenides. He describes the Cretan as a great religious figure, who was thought by his contemporaries to be of divine or semi-divine origin, and who purified Athens, reformed the spirit of Athenian life, and changed the half-Oriental features of Attic religion into the more orderly and restrained tone of Hellenism. He tells how Epimenides, by means of certain methods of propitiation and purification and by religious foundations, raised the standard of piety in the city, made the citizens obedient to the spirit of religious law, and put an end to the rage of partisan strife; and he relates a story which connects this visit with the period following the expulsion of the Peisistratidæ about 510 B.C., though he draws no chronological inference from the story. Then after describing the immense effect produced by the visit of the Cretan seer, he resumes the narrative of intestine war, and describes how the old partisan bitterness continued as before. The account is self-contradictory; but, if we read Plutarch in the light of Plato, with Plato's date in our minds, the narrative becomes luminous and self-consistent.

The Cretan belief in Epimenides, as a person whose 'ingenuity does indeed far overleap the heads of all their great men' and as one of the outstanding personages in history, culminated in his apotheosis. He was regarded as 'a divine man,' and 'a favourite of the gods,' to whom they revealed the truth, and as 'a new Koures' or god-priest teaching | religious ritual. The Cretan