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THREE:If, in the philosophy of Epict��tus, physics and morality become entirely identified with religion, religion, on the other hand, remains entirely natural and moral. It is an offering245 not of prayer but of praise, a service less of ceremonies and sacrifices than of virtuous deeds, a study of conscience rather than of prophecy, a faith not so much in supernatural portents as in providential law.380 But in arriving at Marcus Aurelius, we have overstepped the line which divides rational religion from superstition. Instances of the good emperor��s astonishing credulity have already been given and need not be repeated. They are enough to show that his lavish expenditure on public worship was dictated by something more than a regard for established customs. We know, indeed, that the hecatombs with which his victories were celebrated gave occasion to profane merriment even in the society of that period. On one occasion, a petition was passed from hand to hand, purporting to be addressed to the emperor by the white oxen, and deprecating his success on the ground that if he won they were lost.381 Yet the same Marcus Aurelius, in speaking of his predecessor Antoninus, expressly specifies piety without superstition as one of the traits in his character which were most deserving of imitation.382 And, undoubtedly, the mental condition of those who were continually in an agony of fear lest they should incur the divine displeasure by some purely arbitrary act or omission, or who supposed that the gods might be bribed into furthering their iniquitous enterprises, was beyond all comparison further removed from true wisdom than the condition of those who believed themselves to be favoured by particular manifestations of the divine beneficence, perhaps as a recompense for their earnest attempts to lead a just and holy life. We may conclude, then, that philosophy, while injuriously affected by the supernaturalist movement, still protected its disciples against the more virulent forms of superstition, and by entering into combination with the popular belief, raised it to a higher level of feeling and of thought. It was not, however, by Stoicism that the final reconciliation of ancient religion with philosophy could be246 accomplished, but by certain older forms of speculation which we now proceed to study.We may consider it a fortunate circumstance that the philosophy of Form,��that is to say, of description, definition, classification, and sensuous perception, as distinguished from mathematical analysis and deductive reasoning,��was associated with a demonstrably false cosmology, as it thus became much more thoroughly discredited than would otherwise have been possible. At this juncture, the first to perceive and point out how profoundly an acceptance of the Copernican theory must affect men��s beliefs about Nature and the whole universe, was Giordano Bruno; and this alone would entitle him to a great place in the history of philosophy. The383 conception of a single finite world surrounded by a series of eternal and unchangeable crystal spheres must, he said, be exchanged for the conception of infinite worlds dispersed through illimitable space. Once grant that the earth has a double movement round its own axis and round the sun, and Aristotle��s whole system of finite existence collapses at once, leaving the ground clear for an entirely different order of ideas.545 But, in this respect, whatever was established by the new science had already been divined by a still older philosophy than Aristotle��s, as Bruno himself gladly acknowledged,546 and the immediate effect of his reasoning was to revive the Atomic theory. The assumption of infinite space, formerly considered an insuperable objection to that theory, now became one of its chief recommendations; the arguments of Lucretius regained their full force, while his fallacies were let drop; Atomism seemed not only possible but necessary; and the materialism once associated with it was equally revived. But Aristotelianism, as we have seen, was not alone in the field, and on the first symptoms of a successful revolt, its old rival stood in readiness to seize the vacant throne. The question was how far its claim would be supported, and how far disputed by the new invaders. It might be supposed that the older forms of Greek philosophy, thus restored to light after an eclipse of more than a thousand years, would be no less hostile to the poetic Platonism than to the scientific Aristotelianism of the Renaissance. Such, however, was not the case; and we have to show how an alliance was established between these apparently opposite lines of thought, eventually giving birth to the highest speculation of the following century.