[325] Now here I can tell you a little story of my own inquiries in past years. I had to give lectures---I "had" to give because I WANTED to give---lectures on the "History of the Philosophy of Religion^a," as they were called, with a very clumsy name. Now I was decided not to do this without changing the name. So what did I do? I gave what I call a theonomous history of philosophy, a history of philosophy where the SPECIAL history [i.e. philosophy--ed.] of religion was a very small section in my presentation, but there was a very large section dealing with the religious meaning of epistemology, or of Aristotelian logic, or of the metaphysical concepts or of the ethical ideals. That means: I tried to show---and to find out myself, first ---the style ^bof a period in its philosophical self-expression. But in doing so, it happened to me that I learned a little bit at that time about history of art and discovered that the history of art goes in a strict analogy with the history of philosophical thought, and that you can illustrate the one by the other. Now at the end of my showing you pictures, the last group, I will show you archaic gods and goddesses.

If I can show them to you, you will see it has explained to me---together with the temples in southern Italy which I saw, from the 6th century before Christ---the whole meaning of the philosophy of Parmenides^c. WITHOUT them I wouldn't have understood Parmenides;^d WITH them, it was suddenly like a lightning in which I felt able to understand not only the philosophical subject matter but also the expression of that subject matter in artistic form. Now in this way we have styles^e in all periods of history, and these styles are present in all