Science is bridging the gap closer today with the mysterians twiddling sore thumbs, which is why all philosophical conundrums of Alice are actually hypothetical so she reads on finding a veritable juncture for answers to philosophical, religious, psychological, sociological questions and getting acquainted with William McDougall whose idea about the dual-aspect theory maintained both psychological and biological data from spirit and matter universe determining thus the spiritual presumptive of physiological processes. Would that the polymath lived to this day to uphold his “hormic psychology.”

Alice peered once again in the looking-glass and found her hair standing on its end, atop the same mantel-piece and exclaimed “Why, I do declare I am beginning to look like Einstein!”

The Greeks invented philosophy. Alice can only hazard a guess as to why. The letters read backwards so the answer is barely discernible. God made men who invented these time-immemorial and interminable questions that had philosophy branching out to religion, psychology, science and politics, the first three of which has Alice reading more on divergent fields that make sapient learning accessible to her as far as the imagination goes, eschewing only politics because the same imagination goes haywire from lack of insight.

The Greeks invented philosophy so back to Alice hazarding a guess. She very soon came to a fancy that the philosophy of psychology, with Dr. Danah Zohar identifying this instinctive “spiritual intelligence” of man, is evident in the ancient Greeks.

Imagine then if you will in the recesses of the brain is the mysterious region that escaped notice in their time because the philosophy of the mind did not as yet entail the study of the human brain.

A brain researcher of the most recent time, Andrew Neuberg noted the increase activity of the temporal lobes of Franciscan nuns and Buddhist monks who were deep in meditation confirming the earlier studies of Dr. Zohar that identified the particular “god spot” in the region of the brain that oscillates 40 megahertz when man explores the significance of life or deliberates on profound questions that may have had the early Greeks’ high-flying erudition inventing philosophy for want of prolific repository i.e., for profundities.

“Man can’t think on an empty stomach.” Alice retorts combing down her electrified coiffure and finding the book on Greek Mythology in the drawing room through the looking-glass.

Greece while divided into distinct territories had self-sufficient economic life, religion, culture, political system and institutions allowing development of earliest arts and sciences. Ancient Greek mythology had two surviving epic poems of Homer: Iliad and Odyssey, both of which dealt with the legend of mortals and gods based on actual events of Trojan war some four centuries before Homer. The apparent synthesis of both his historical and implausible accounts were traced from the oral narratives of it before written literature began so that embellishments were added to glamorize the heroes of the stories that had the Greeks identifying them as progenitors.

Hesiod, contemporary of Homer wrote Theogony, a “pure myth” which has reference to religion and ritual, cataloguing divine family tree that defined and outlined the early relationships between man and gods: and the religious rituals. This “pure myth” contained Greek accounts of the creation of the world, its colossal gods and mortals. Hesiod’s myth “The Ages of Man” illustrated the unfortunate end of “Golden Age” in Greece; man’s downfall was inevitable with the departure of the gods whose favor he eventually lost by greed and war. The educational motive of this myth was to have served as implicit guidelines intended for the royal audience to cause the return to the ways of the “Golden Age”, the same motive evident in the works of succeeding poets. Ancient Greek philosophers could not abide with the religious implications inferred pedagogy instead with open-ended questions that marked the inception of nascent philosophy. Xenophanes (560-478B.C.) was quoted to have said: “It is naïve to worship the gods because they all behave irrationally and immorally.”

So thus began the trend of thinking from religious to scientific with the questions on reality of ancient Greek philosophers exceeding the temporal, tangible and palpable understanding of it.

There are little known facts about early Greek philosophers except for their propensity for predominantly cerebral pursuits. The rest is history so to speak.

Alice has her hair tied now in ribbons and comfortably settled in the armchair with Kitty on her lap and has began to read another treatise on Abraham Maslow’s theory on hierarchy of man’s needs if she is to understand the trend of thoughts of these ancient Greeks who invented philosophy.
Maslow illustrated these needs in a pyramid of five levels starting with the first four levels of what he calls “deficiency needs” from the bottom up: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem all leading eventually to what he classifies as “being needs.” His theory asserts the notions that humans pursue higher needs on top of the hierarchy when their basic needs are sufficiently met.

If Alice thinks hard enough, she may as yet be able to solve the riddle how Ancient Greeks evolved to sophisticated thinking individuals with high degree of self awareness, vision and unrelenting pursuit of knowledge, who in turn influenced great thinkers after them.

Alice though is not a thinker, so to aspire for greatness is akin to aspiring for sainthood - both being pipe dreams, hers exclusively.
The efforts put into them is one of her many exercises in futility, she has only a healthy heart to show for it.

The body to achieve homeostasis needs: food, drink, air, adequate sleep and comfortable temperature and when unmet takes absolute priority over higher needs. Alice shudders, remembering Tolstoy’s accounts of the Russian inhumanity in his writing - tumultuous history that regrettably repeats itself in other countries of divergent cultures and origins in all preceding and succeeding generations because men never learns from the lesson of Adam and the story of Goethe’s Faustus.

Was the continuous search for satisfaction of physiological needs of the primitive man an instinctive behavior to ensure survival as it is understood pattern of animals? Was this notion entertained in the mind of Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” which Darwin later employed though they did not specify which specie? Did man evolve from basic physiological needs to seek fulfillment of emotional needs, those contained in Maslow’s succeeding “D” needs? Were selection of similar species grouped instinctively together seeking security in number and in order? Was discrimination apparent then? Were the species paired off first and the union sought eventual convergence in a group after?

If satisfaction of physiological needs of prehistoric man took precedence over emotional needs, would this not somehow replicate the same phase of evolution of animals, difference being man’s ego; and his capacity for introspection and reasoning?
“And humor,” Alice quickly adds.
Humor it is, indeed.

Was this hierarchy of needs evident in Greece where Philosophy had been thought of to have taken roots from Maslow’s “Being Needs” specifically: actualization especially so with his description of it reflecting generally on the ancient Greek philosophers? Were these inadvertent attempts towards self-transcendence repeated in the great thinkers of the succeeding centuries and still evident today? What of the venerable Saints, Martyrs and historical figures?

The study of the Greek mythology brings one to the extraordinary works of the great bard, William Shakespeare whose seemingly masked profundities are cleverly infused in immortal lines of his pulchritudinous plays and sonnets long escaping scrutiny of the monarchy in Tudor London then and literary pundits centuries later. But of course, Alice can only hazard a guess or two again because she has yet to read and understand the turbulent panorama of historical events from the development of Christian society in early England when Druidic religious culture did not preclude its political influence, and to the Elizabethan Age with its religious, cultural, economic and political background surrounding his life and works.

William Shakespeare’s extraordinary skills in the mastery of language are transfused into the creative representations of historical and mythological prodigious events in his plays catapulting the genius to the literary sage he is today, certainly one who has us quoting by heart the enigma of his lines whether they be philosophical, pragmatic or whimsical are all irrefutably phenomenal. Had his genius found him rewriting the earliest Greek literature, the consummate playwright in him would have championed the cause of Prometheus.

Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice “ said “…if you prick us, do we not bleed?If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

There was a long pause.

“Is that all?” Alice timidly asked.

“That’s all,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Goodbye”

This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a very strong hint that she ought to be going, she felt that it would hardly be civil to stay. So she got up, and held out her hand.

“Goodbye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

“I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet.” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake “you’re so exactly like other people.”

“The face is what one goes by, generally.” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

“That’s what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has - the two eyes, so _” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance - or the mouth at the top - that would be some help.”

“It wouldn’t look nice,” Alice objected.

But Humpty Dumpty shut his eyes and said “Wait till you’ve tried.”

“She’s in that state of mind,” said the White Queen, “that she wants to deny something - only she doesn’t know what to deny!”

“Contrariwise,” continues Tweedledee, “if it was so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

“Thirst quenched, I hope?” said the Queen.