The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate

This remarkable work of scholarship sought to deal with the very roots of European civilisation and thought: the fundamental beliefs about life, mind, body, soul and human destiny which were embodied in the myths, legends and customs of the ancients and later emerged, often unrecognized, in literature, philosophy and science. Professor Onians adduces an extraordinary range of comparative evidence, predominantly from Greece and Rome, but also from Norse, Celtic, Jewish, Indian, Chinese and Christian sources. The volume remains a fascinating compendium of ideas, conjectures and explanations which can continue to stimulate and inform the anthropologist, historian of science and philosophy, and classicist.

Preface to the first edition; Preface to the second edition; Introduction; Part I. The Mind and the Body: 1. Some processes of consciousness; 2. The organs of consciousness; 3. The stuff of consciousness; 4. Cognition - the five senses; 5. The liver and the belly; Part II. The Immortal Soul and the Body: 6. The psyche; 7. The Genius, Numen, etc; 8. Anima and Animus; 9. The knees; 10. The strength; 11. The stuff of life; 12. River-worship and some forms of the life-substance; 13. The world: beginnings of Greek ‘philosophy’; 14. Death and cremation; 15. The offerings to the dead and to the Gods; 16. Nectar and Ambrosia; Part III. Fate and Time: 17. ‘On the knees of the Gods’; 18. Peirata; 19. Kairos; 20. The ewaving of fate; 21. Other peoples - fate and magic; 22. Moiran epitithenal, pepromenos; 23. Hyper moron and the relation of the Gods to fate; 24. The Jars of Zeus, the scales of Zeus, and the Keres; 25. Time - Emar; 26. Lachesis, Klotho, and Atropos; 27. Phases of body and mind, sorrow, sleep, death, etc; 28. Telos; Addenda; Indexes.