ABSTRACT
When we begin to study the first expressions of the attempt of Greek thought to obtain a more or less systematic representation of the universe and of the relationships which it embraces, there is one thing which we must not forget. That is the fact that we are in the presence of the products of a collective elaboration, and that that elaboration is not expressed in literature, and therefore does not begin to belong to history, until it has come to an end and is ready to yield place to other forms of thought. Our earliest literary documents of this kind are later, from four to perhaps twenty centurics later, than the evidences of a wealthy and varied civilization which have been brought to light, for example, by the discoveries at Troy and Myccnae and in Cyprus, the Cyclades, and Crete. With these evidences we are already a long way from what may be called a state of racial childhood. So what we positively reach is not the age in which the representation of the universe is still implied in the ritual practices which ensure the communion of the social group with the mysterious forces of nature. It is, on the contrary, the age in which they have become detached and organized into a system of definite representations, partly affective and partly intellectual.
