CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. — The term Christian Democracy was used several times during the 18th and 19th centuries, but it was only toward the end of that century that it came to designate a broad social movement (v. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL DOCTRINE), which developed in various Catholic countries and was widely encouraged by the Holy See itself. Christian Democracy thus denoted the tendency of Catholics to establish a new social order that could put an end to the injustices of liberalism without falling into Marxist collectivism. It was defined in this way by one of its greatest architects, G. Toniolo: «A civil order in which all social, legal, and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate proportionally for the common good, ultimately rejecting any result that favors the predominant advantage of the lower classes.» When, at the end of the last century, the mere use of the term Christian Democracy provoked controversy among Catholics, Leo XIII approved it in the aforementioned sense but urged that it not be given a political meaning, since, while all Catholics were bound to follow it as a social movement, they were free, in the political sphere, to be monarchists, aristocrats, or democrats, as the Church could not declare itself in favor of one or another form of government.
This did not, however, prevent social aims from giving rise, at certain moments, to political parties of militant Catholics. Indeed, political movements promoted by Christian Democrats arose in several countries: these movements held that social aims could not be achieved or safeguarded without the conquest of public powers through political action, without the democratic renewal of the State (v. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL DOCTRINE).
This transition, brought about by various historical contingencies, encountered particular difficulties in Italy, where, however, the political movement of Christian Democrats assumed, among other things, greater importance and historical significance.
Following the example of Catholics in Germany and Belgium, in Italy too an organized and coordinated action of Catholic laity arose to assist the hierarchy in defending religion against the attacks of liberals. After various attempts, the vital institution that emerged in 1868 was the Società della Gioventù Cattolica Italiana (v. ACTION), which promoted the first congress of Italian Catholics, held in Venice in June 1874. The congress was divided into several sections: religious works, charitable works, education and instruction, and the press. Political action was excluded. Instead, participation in the administrative life of municipalities and provinces was recommended. In Rome itself, the «Unione Elettorale Romana» (1877) was founded, which replaced G. Garibaldi with the Duke of Salviati in the Campidoglio. In Venice, the Superior Council of the Gioventù Cattolica constituted itself as a permanent committee for the next congress. This gathered the following year in Florence and established the «Opera dei Congressi e Comitati Cattolici». The presidency of the Opera was held by the «Acquaderi di Bologna, then by the Duke of Salviati from 1878, and, after his resignation (1884), by Marcellino Venturoli. But its flourishing period began when the Venetian Giambattista Paganuzzi took the presidency in 1889. It comprised five sections or groups: organization and Catholic action – Christian popular, or Christian Democratic, action; education and instruction; the press; and Christian art. The most important group was the second: Christian popular action, whose program was summarized in the motto: «For the people and with the people.»
Meanwhile, Leo XIII’s encyclical *Rerum Novarum* (15 May 1891) appeared. Its doctrinal foundations and practical directives were illustrated by the Unione Cattolica per gli Studi Sociali, which, at the Milan meeting of January 1894, enunciated the «program of Catholics in the face of socialism.» According to this program, to counter the socialist tide, it was necessary to «organize society into professional associations of employers and workers, officially recognized, on the model of medieval corporations.» It also demanded proportional representation, administrative decentralization, municipal and regional autonomy, the fixing of maximum working hours and minimum wages, the protection of small property and collective property, the establishment of an indivisible and inalienable family estate, tax reform, freedom of education, and reconciliation between Church and State. This was the program of Christian Democracy, whose principal elaborator was G. Toniolo. It aroused great enthusiasm, especially among the young, who founded the Fascio Democratico Cristiano in Milan and elsewhere, established professional associations, and obtained from Cardinal A. Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan, the institution of labor chaplains. On the political level, at the regional assembly of the Opera dei Congressi (Milan, 1896), Don D. Albertario proposed replacing the dead formula «neither elected nor electors» with the living one: «preparation in assent.» Albertario, along with F. Meda and others, desired that Catholics, in addition to participating in the administrative life of municipalities and provinces, should take part in the political life of Parliament and government. The State was regarded as the necessary organ of social life.
An initiative of this kind, especially in Italy given the unresolved Roman Question, could not be undertaken without the approval of the Holy See and without safeguarding the rights of the Supreme Pontiff. Moreover, the most qualified body at the time for such initiatives was the national assembly of the Opera dei Congressi. A group of young men, led by Don Romolo Murri, set out to «rejuvenate and democratize» the Opera, fully embracing Toniolo’s program, which the Opera dei Congressi had in fact already adopted.
The Catholic Congress held in Milan in 1897 marked the beginning of a youth campaign for the renewal of the entire Catholic organization. Unfortunately, Romolo Murri, leader of the most daring wing of the Christian Democrats, allowed himself to be carried too far in this struggle. In 1897, *Il Popolo Italiano* of Genoa was founded, directed by Giambattista Valente, and in 1898, *Cultura Sociale* of Rome, directed by Romolo Murri, who had just left the Roman university review *Vita Nova*. From his new newspaper, Don R. Murri launched a campaign that aimed not only to rejuvenate the social action of Catholics but also to renew the culture of the clergy and Catholics, their civil, moral, and religious life—though the political-social interest remained predominant.
The government repressions of 1898, which led to the dissolution of 6,000 Catholic organizations, did not mitigate antagonisms; on the contrary, they intensified upon the resumption of activity. Thus began Murri’s struggle against Paganuzzi, which, despite periods of truce, was to last until Paganuzzi’s resignation and the dissolution of the Opera. Murri wanted Catholic action to take advantage of the persecution it had suffered and to align itself with republicans and socialists in protesting against the unjustified violence and restrictions on political freedoms that were then being contemplated in liberal circles. In the face of the conflict that arose in Parliament between the majority, which supported the king and Pelloux in their attempt to restrict political freedoms, and the obstructionist minority, Murri sided with the latter, arguing that resistance to reaction, the campaign in defense of the constitution, and attempts to educate and introduce the lower classes to political life deserved not unfavorable judgment but sometimes praise.
In his early language, Murri was very similar to Don D. Albertario, a staunch opponent of the liberal State and defender of the Pope’s cause. His intransigence and his exacerbated Guelphism, however, bore too close a resemblance to the early stance of Lamennais and Gioberti.
Murri’s intransigence was not shared to the same degree by other groups of “young men.” More conciliatory were certainly the Milanese Christian Democrats who gathered around the editorial staff of *L’Osservatore Cattolico* (Meda, Vercesi, Arcarì, Molteni, Mauri) and who believed that the struggle against liberalism should not be confused with the struggle against the State: the latter was not to be destroyed but renewed and defended. A controversy then arose between Murri and Meda that revealed two tendencies within Christian Democracy, tendencies that indicated not so much a clash of ideas as a difference of temperament and methods of political action.
All the same, these young men were united in their discontent, which had been brewing for some years within the ranks of Italian Catholic Action against the defensive and static system established by Count Paganuzzi and defended by the “old guard.” The older generation, formed during a period when the conflict with liberals was at its most bitter and in an environment sheltered from the winds of contemporary heresies, had seen in the defensive method, in segregation and isolation, the only way to remain uncontaminated and faithful to revealed truth and the cause of the Church. Yet this isolation was also a weakness, for it rendered Catholics incapable of engaging with secular civilization as it developed independently of them. The young men demanded more intense social action and the democratization of the Opera. After making their voices heard at the Congress of Fiesole (1896) and that of Milan (1897), they intensified their attacks after 1898 against the existing system and the man who had created and passionately defended it, albeit with unflagging enthusiasm for the cause of the Church. The old ruling class, composed mainly of nobles, defended Paganuzzi and the “Venetians” against the young bourgeois professionals from the columns of *La Difesa* (edited by Zocchi) of Venice, *La Riscossa* (edited by Scotton) of Breganze, and *L’Unità Cattolica* (edited by Sacchetti) of Florence.
While Leo XIII encouraged and approved the social tendencies of the “young men,” he was deeply concerned by the political tendencies that manifested themselves among them. Pope Pecci desired absolute political intransigence; if the participation of Catholics in Italian political life was blameworthy, even more dangerous, in the Pope’s view, was the transformation of Christian Democracy from a social movement into a political one, for this would have bound Catholic Action and the Holy See to a well-defined political current.
In his final years, Leo XIII had to make great efforts to prevent the Christian Democrats from breaking into politics. Whenever the emergence of the proposed Christian Democratic Party, advocated by Murri, seemed imminent, the Holy See was always ready to intervene and prevent II. Upon the announcement in November 1900 of a new democratic newspaper, *Il Domani d’Italia*, which was to be launched in Turin in 1899 and serve as an expression of forces seeking “to give Catholics unity and strength as a political party,” the Pope responded in January 1901 with the encyclical *Graves de communi*, in which he reaffirmed the duty of Italian Catholics to engage in social but not political action and the absolutely non-political character of Christian Democracy. When, in November 1901, a circular was circulated announcing the official establishment of Italian Christian Democracy with political aims, the “Pontifical Instructions” of 27 January 1902 followed, stripping the youth movement of its autonomy and reaffirming the direct and formal dependence of the Opera upon ecclesiastical authority. Murri attempted to resist, but the majority of the democrats, and foremost among them those from Milan, obeyed; even Murri himself had to yield. The Pope’s action and that of the Christian Democrats most attentive to his directives, such as Prof. Toniolo, had prevented a rupture and led to an apparent pacification at the Congress of Taranto in 1901 (cf. *Deliberazioni del XVIII Congresso cattolico italiano tenutosi in Taranto nei giorni 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sett. 1901*, Venice 1901). It seemed that the word of Leo XIII, who in *Graves de communi* had called for social action in the name of Christian Democracy while opposing political action, had been accepted by all: Romolo Murri, a few months after the Congress, wrote an important article entitled *Con Roma e per Roma sempre!* Yet this calm proved to be only apparent. At the heart of the Opera dei Congressi remained the division between those who still regarded the organization as pure and simple Catholic Action and those who now saw it as a social and political movement. This contrast, which had already become evident at the end of the nineteenth century, was to be brought into sharp focus by the events of the early years of the new century. Moreover, it could not be concealed that there was also a dual tendency on the socio-political plane: a conservative part, composed mainly of the old guard, and a reformist and progressive part, made up of the young.
The inertia of the “old guard,” who failed to make any effort at understanding, the intransigence of the “young,” and mutual suspicion soon dashed the hopes raised at Taranto. On 14 August 1902, *Cultura sociale* published, under the title “Il crollo di Venezia,” a violent article against Paganuzzi, the man who had sacrificed everything to Catholic Action. Following this attack, the president, although reelected by the permanent committee of the Opera, resigned “given the state of public opinion,” and was succeeded by Count Grosoli, who was acceptable to the young. Almost simultaneously, the leader of the young men, in a speech delivered on 25 August in San Marino, extolled the modernism of Tyrrell and Loisy. Thus, at the very moment of the triumph of the Christian Democrats, the very motives that would most gravely compromise them were revealed. Murri had always wanted Christian Democracy not to be merely a political movement but “a religious impulse.” When the Holy See began to oppose him in his attempt at political action, he increasingly transferred the conflict onto the religious plane. The religiosity that was meant to permeate the political and social activity of the Christian Democrats then began to lose the characteristics of Catholic orthodoxy: Murrian Christian Democracy and theological modernism drew closer, almost to the point of identification. Murri thus drifted toward heresy, and the exhortations of Toniolo, who saw the achievements of the young men in peril, were of no avail. When, at the Congress of Bologna in 1903, the “young,” that is, Murri’s followers, achieved a definitive victory within the Opera dei Congressi, the fate of the organization was sealed. How could the Pope permit Catholic Action, whose attitudes implicated the responsibilities of the Church, to be effectively directed by one who continued to give fresh proofs of doubtful orthodoxy? In July 1904, the Opera, which Murri now described as “a hybrid and clashing mixture,” was dissolved by papal order. This dissolution struck Christian Democracy both in its political and social aspects: it destroyed the body that, in the democrats’ desire, was to direct in the future the intervention of Catholics in Italian political life in support of their own program, and it brought about the arrest and decline of the social movement, especially the workers’ movement. The professional unions, which had numbered 229 at the Congress of Bologna, fell to 195 in 1905, to 185 in 1906, and to 135 in 1907. The following year, Pius X suppressed the second group as well, replacing it with the Unione economico-sociale and establishing the Unione popolare on the model of the German Volksverein, as well as the Unione elettorale (*Il fermo proposito*, June 1905). Alongside the new organizations, the ancient Società della gioventù cattolica italiana continued to exist.
The subsequent events in Murri’s life after 1904 are initially intertwined with those of the Lega democratica nazionale, to which a portion of the Christian Democrats adhered. With the encyclical *Pieni l’animo* of 28 July 1906, Pius X forbade priests from belonging to II. Murri did not comply, and in 1907 he was suspended *a divinis*; in 1909, just after winning a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, he incurred excommunication. He now dreamed of a new Catholic synthesis uniting what was alive in Christianity with what was vital in modern civilization. On this path, he could not be followed by the Catholics who collaborated with him in the league—neither by Giuseppe Dornati, Eugenio Vaina de Pava, nor Eligio Cacciaguerra. At the Imola Congress of 1910, the latter declared: “In this conflict between Murri and the Roman Church, I do not follow Murri; I follow the Church.” Murri then abandoned his companions, who resumed the name Christian Democrats, and continued on his own path toward the construction of democracy and the State.
Pius X had uprooted Murrianism at its source, but not Christian Democracy; the former faded and died out, while the latter spread throughout the Catholic masses, preparing the way for the Partito popolare, whose Christian Democratic program was accepted by the great majority of militant Catholics. The Christian Democratic ideal, lived out after 1904 not only in its social aspect but also in its political one, took root in the hearts of many young people who, though increasingly distancing themselves from Murri and without renouncing strict religious orthodoxy, still hoped to revive their former political program. Catholic deputies such as Filippo Meda, Angelo Mauri, and Giuseppe Micheli, as well as labor organizers, leaders of Catholic Action, and municipal administrators like Don Luigi Sturzo, promoted and disseminated the political principles of Christian Democracy. In the letter *Il fermo proposito*, Pius X reaffirmed the principle while relaxing the discipline of *non expedit* and granting Catholics, for special reasons, permission to vote in political elections.
They therefore participated in the 1909 elections and, more broadly and systematically, in those of 1913. Several militant Catholics were elected. But the Holy Father did not wish, at least for the time being, a parliamentary Catholic party: Catholic deputies, not “deputies who are Catholic.” The participation of Catholics in political life invigorated their efforts, so that the Unione elettorale, unlike the Unione popolare—which was not intended to be appreciated—enjoyed days of great prosperity. The period from 1904 to 1919 thus constituted a necessary transitional moment in which Christian Democracy freed itself from the religious heterodox infiltrations that had compromised it and provoked the papal condemnations. The Catholics, now grouped in the Unione popolare, the Unione elettorale, and the Unione economico-sociale, were directly dependent on ecclesiastical authorities; yet even the Holy See, by opposing the formation of a Catholic party and distinguishing, during the war, its position from that of Italian Catholics, was preparing to give free rein to the emergence of an autonomous and non-denominational party.
Its creator would be the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo, who in his 1905 speech *Per un partito nazionale di cattolici in Italia*, delivered in Caltagirone, had already outlined the lines of the new party: it would not be clerical but autonomous, not confessional but non-denominational, not conservative but democratic; in short, it would transcend the clerical-moderate system that placed Catholics, guided by the clergy, at the service of conservative liberal forces. On 18 January 1919, when the clerical-moderate system had exhausted its function, the Partito popolare italiano made its appearance on the political scene. Its program was essentially Christian Democratic, and many of its leaders (Sturzo, Valente, Bertini, Micheli...) were Christian Democrats; yet a new name was preferred to the old, both because it “recalls a past that had lights and shadows and was too much debated” and because the Partito popolare was not merely a continuation of Christian Democracy but a synthesis of various currents that loyally accepted its program or hoped, through it, to advance their own particular political conceptions. In reality, the party succeeded in rallying Catholics of all shades, though this breadth of alignment would later prove a weakness. The party launched its program on 18 January 1919 and, in the elections of 16 November 1919, sent 100 representatives to the Chamber. Then came the phenomenon of Fascism, and the party’s fourth congress in Turin, where two wings began to take clearer shape. Don Sturzo, the party’s centrist secretary, was substantially victorious, but while the party’s representatives were traveling to the congress, an elderly Catholic, Deputy Cornaggia Medici, launched an appeal-program for a “constitutional union” among Catholics who did not intend to join the Partito popolare. Thus began the governmental crisis provoked by Mussolini’s intransigent stance, the exit of the Popolari from the government, and the sharpening of right- and left-wing tendencies within the party itself, leading to the departure of a number of deputies.
Bereft of many of its left-wing (Miglioli, Speranzini, Cocchi, Cavalli) and right-wing figures (Cornaggia, Boncompagni, Pestalozza, Tovini, Martire, Cavazzoni, Mattei Gentili), the Partito popolare could no longer effectively resist Fascism and shared the fate of the other democratic parties.
After 1941, the threads of the movement were rewoven and contacts multiplied among the survivors of the Partito popolare (De Gasperi, Spataro, Tupini, Gronchi, Cingolani, Fuschini...) and other groups of young Catholics—most of them drawn from the ranks of Catholic Action. Thus was born the Partito democratico cristiano, which revived the old name both because the reasons that had prevented its adoption in 1919 no longer existed and to meet the desire of young people and groups with no ties to the old party (“Guelfi” of Milan). After actively participating in the resistance against the Germans in 1943–45, the Christian Democrats, in 1946, pronounced in their majority for the republican form of government. Today they constitute the strongest political current in the new democratic Italian State.
Democracy and the Catholic movement
BIBL.:
G. Chiaudano, D. c. e movimento cattolico, Torino 1897; G. Sacchetti, Movimento cattolico e d. c. vera e falsa, Firenze 1899; R. Murri, La falsa democrazia e i veri reazionari, Roma 1899; L. Civardi, La d. c., 1899; P. B. Casoli, Al Congresso cattolico di Taranto, La d. c., e l'Opera dei congressi, Monza 1901; A. Gori, La d. c., in Italia, Firenze 1902; T. Veggi, Il movimento sociale cristiano nella seconda metà del XIX sec., 2a ed., Vicenza 1902; R. Murri, Battaglie d'oggi, 4 voll., Roma 1903-1904; R. Della Casa, Il movimento cattolico italiano, Milano 1905; F. Muda, Il programma politico della d. c., Bergamo 1906; L. Sturzo, Sintesi sociali, Roma 1906; R. Murri, La politica clericale e la democrazia, 1906; G. Prezzolini, Il cattolicesimo rosso, Studio sul presente movimento di riforma nel cattolicesimo, Napoli 1908; R. Murri, Della Religione, della Chiesa e dello Stato, Roma 1910; A. Della Torre, Il Cristianesimo in Italia dai filosofi ai modernisti, Milano 1912; P. Orano, La d. c., in Italia, in Discorde, Lanciano 1915, pp. 125-47; E. Vaina de Pava, La d. c., italiana e la guerra (1912-15), Bologna 1916; A. Cantono, Il programma del Partito popolare italiano, Torino 1919; F. Crispolti, Il Partito popolare italiano, in Nuova antologia, 1919, pp. 441-48; F. Olgiati, Storia dell'Azione cattolica in Italia (1865-1904), Milano 1920, pp. 82-93, 225-302; L. Sturzo, Dall'idea al fatto, Roma 1920; R. Murri, Dalla d. c. al Partito popolare italiano, Firenze 1920; G. De Rossi, Il Partito popolare italiano dalle origini al Congresso di Napoli, Roma 1920 (republished in part under the title Cronache politiche dell'altro dopoguerra, 1914); G. Salvemini, Il Partito popolare e la questione romana, Firenze 1922; L. Sturzo, Riforma statale e indirizzi politici, 1923; S. Jacini, I popolari, Milano 1923; G. Petrocchi, Collaborazione e ricostruzione popolare, Roma 1923; G. De Rossi, I popolari nella XXVI legislatura, 1923; E. Vercesi, D. Davide Albertario, Milano 1923; D. I. Movimento cattolico in Italia (1870-1922), Firenze 1923; L. Sturzo, Popolarismo e fascismo, Torino 1924; E. Vercesi, Giuseppe Toniolo nella storia del movimento sociale cattolico da alcune sue lettere inedite, Milano 1925; M. Ferrara, Luigi Sturzo, Roma 1925; anon., Raccolta di scritti in memoria di Giuseppe Toniolo, Milano 1926; G. Pecora, D. Davide Albertario campione del giornalismo cattolico, Torino 1934; G. Micheli, Filippo Meda e l'opera sua di scrittore, Parma 1940; anon., Giuseppe Toniolo, Milano 1943; G. Fuschini, Giuseppe Donati, Roma 1944; L. Sturzo, La Chiesa cattolica e la d. c., 1944; G. Dalla Torre, I cattolici e la vita pubblica italiana (1866-1920), Città del Vaticano 1944; M. Baronti, Giuseppe Toniolo, Roma 1945; R. Murri, D. C., Milano 1945; A. Canaletti Gaudenti, Sturzo, il pensiero e le opere, Roma 1945; G. Petrocchi, D. Luigi Sturzo, Note e ricordi, 1945; E. Fenu, Partito popolare e d. c., in Il Commento, 2 (1945), pp. 214-16; A. De Gasperi, Rinascita della d. c., in Studi ed appelli della lingua vigilia, Roma 1946, p. 175 ff.; G. Petrocchi, De Gasperi, la d. c., e la politica italiana, 1946; D. I. Romolo Murri e il modernismo, in Il Commento, 3 (1946), pp. 101-104; Q. Tosatti, Romolo Murri, Nel primo anniversario della morte, in Il Commento, 3 (1946); I. Giordani, Pioniere della d. c., Roma 1945; A. C. Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni, Torino 1948; L. Sturzo, La d. c., dal 1848 al 1948, Roma 1948; Le encicliche e i messaggi sociali dei papi da Pio IX a Pio XII (1864-1946), ed. I. Giordani, 1948; G. Volpe, L'Italia moderna, Il Firenze 1949; P. Altieri, Appunti per una storia del movimento cattolico in Italia, in Società, 5 (1949), pp. 244-63; G. Candeloro, L'Azione cattolica in Italia, Roma 1949; F. Fonzi, I cattolici transigenti italiani dell'ultimo Ottocento, in Convivium, nuova serie, 1 (1949), pp. 955-72; G. Toniolo, D. C., Concetti e indirizzi, 2 voll., Città del Vaticano 1949; B. Pulumbo, Il movimento democratico-cristiano in Italia, Roma 1950; A. Vian, Giambattista Paganuzzi, ivi 1950.
Democritus
The list of his works, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, is due to Thrasyllus of Mendes (1st century AD) and comprises 13 tetralogies, plus two groups (generally considered spurious) of works each under the double heading of Unclassified Works and Notes. The tetralogies include works on ethics, physics, mathematics, music (and also language, literature, and music) and on technique. The fragments that have come down to us, all authentic in their entirety, number about 300.
D. is the last natural philosopher of the pre-Socratic era and the first great scientific figure of the ancient world. A disciple of Leucippus, he developed atomism with greater logical rigor. The claim advanced by some modern scholars that, like Epicurus later, he also professed a mathematical atomism is unfounded and contradicted by the texts (cf. Aristotle, De gen. et corr., I, 2, 316 a 14). Texts of Archimedes, discovered only recently, have revealed that he found, though without providing a demonstration, the volume of the pyramid. Not inconsiderable must have been D.’s contribution to the special sciences, and to him is owed the first major systematization of that theory of progress which had its beginnings in Anaxagoras and became canonical in Epicurus. Yet above all he was a metaphysical mind, far removed from that vulgar empiricism which certain modern reconstructions have attributed to him. Continuing the spirit of the Eleatic tradition, he maintained and deepened the distinction between knowledge derived from the senses and that derived from the intellect, considering the former obscure and spurious and only the latter legitimate and true (B 11). It is the intellect, with its reasoning, that arrives at knowledge of the atoms and hence also of the void, and this is the only knowledge of which one can be certain. The rest, depending as it does on the disposition of the senses and the elements with which they come into contact, can only be a matter of opinion. All sensible qualities are by convention (νόμος), and since the constitution of individual things escapes our direct experience, “truth remains for us in the depths” (A 49; B 6-10; 117). To Protagoras’ alogical realism, which, from Anaxagoras’ panspermia, concluded that all sensations are true, D., appealing to the higher authority of the intellect, objects—as Aristotle would later do—that therefore the opposite is also true (A 114). The contrast between the difficulties of experience and the demands of reason did not, however, take on a dogmatic or skeptical character in him; rather, as appears from fragment 125, where the senses are introduced to refute reason, it was of a critical nature. Under such conditions, science could only be experience controlled by reasoning.
As regards the gods, the fundamental text is in Cicero (Nat. deor., I, 120 [A 74]): “Now he asserts that in the universe there are images (and the ἐνάργεια by which material images depart from bodies or form in the air is the source of sight and of mental vision), endowed with divinity; now he calls gods the atoms of which the soul of man is formed, these also being scattered throughout the universe; now he speaks of soul-images that are wont to help or harm men; now of images of such magnitude as to embrace the entire world from without.” This text must not be interpreted as meaning that D. admitted the existence of the gods, but rather that the theories just mentioned served him to explain mystical phenomena and visions, the reality of which he, as an observer, did not feel able to deny.
In the field of ethics, the contemplative life (βίος θεωρητικός) emerges in a more definite form with him, a life already known to the Greeks through Anaxagoras. The supreme ideal is