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Change in the political condition of Greece during the life of Plato.

The life of Plato extends from 427–347 B.C. He was born in the fourth year of the Peloponnesian war, and he died at the age of 80, about the time when Olynthus was taken by the Macedonian Philip. The last years of his life thus witnessed a melancholy breach in the integrity of the Hellenic world, and even exhibited data from which a far-sighted Hellenic politician might have anticipated something like the coming subjugation, realised afterwards by the victory of Philip at Chæroneia. But during the first half of Plato’s life, no such anticipations seemed even within the limits of possibility. The forces of Hellas, though discordant among themselves, were superabundant as to defensive efficacy, and were disposed rather to aggression against foreign enemies, especially against a country then so little formidable as Macedonia. It was under this contemplation of Hellas self-acting and self-sufficing—an aggregate of cities, each a political unit, yet held together by strong ties of race, language, religion, and common feelings of various kinds—that the mind of Plato was both formed and matured.

In appreciating, as far as our scanty evidence allows, the circumstances which determined his intellectual and speculative character, I shall be compelled to touch briefly upon the various philosophical theories which were propounded anterior to Sokrates—as well as to repeat some matters already brought to view in the sixteenth, sixty-seventh, and sixty-eighth chapters of my History of Greece.

Early Greek mind, satisfied with the belief in polytheistic personal agents as the real producing causes of phenomena.

To us, as to Herodotus, in his day, the philosophical speculation of the Greeks begins with the theology and cosmology of Homer and Hesiod. The series of divine persons and attributes, and generations presented by these poets, and especially the Theogony of Hesiod, supplied at one time full satisfaction to the curiosity of the Greeks respecting the past history and present agencies of the world around them. In the emphatic censure bestowed by Herakleitus on the poets and philosophers who preceded him, as having much knowledge but no sense—he includes Hesiod, as well as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hekatæus: upon Homer and Archilochus he is still more severe, declaring that they ought to be banished from the public festivals and scourged.1 The sentiment of curiosity as it then existed was only secondary and derivative, arising out of some of the strong primary or personal sentiments—fear or hope, antipathy or sympathy—impression of present weakness—unsatisfied appetites and longings—wonder and awe under the presence of the terror-striking phenomena of nature, &c. Under this state of the mind, when problems suggested themselves for solution, the answers afforded by Polytheism gave more satisfaction than could have been afforded by any other hypothesis. Among the indefinite multitude of invisible, personal, quasi-human agents, with different attributes and dispositions, some one could be found to account for every perplexing phenomenon. The question asked was, not What are the antecedent conditions or causes of rain, thunder, or earthquakes, but Who rains and thunders? Who produces earthquakes?2 The Hesiodic Greek was satisfied when informed that it was Zeus or Poseidon. To be told of physical agencies would have appeared to him not merely unsatisfactory, but absurd, ridiculous, and impious. It was the task of a poet like Hesiod to clothe this general polytheistic sentiment in suitable details: to describe the various Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, and other quasi-human agents, with their characteristic attributes, with illustrative adventures, and with sufficient relations of sympathy and subordination among each other, to connect them in men’s imaginations as members of the same brotherhood. Okeanus, Gæa, Uranus, Helios, Selênê—Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Aphroditê—these and many other divine personal agents, were invoked as the producing and sustaining forces in nature, the past history of which was contained in their filiations or contests. Anterior to all of them, the primordial matter or person, was Chaos.

Belief in such agency continued among the general public, even after the various sects of philosophy had arisen.

Hesiod represents the point of view ancient and popular (to use Aristotle’s expression3) among the Greeks, from whence all their philosophical speculation took its departure; and which continued throughout their history, to underlie all the philosophical speculations, as the faith of the ordinary public who neither frequented the schools nor conversed with philosophers. While Aristophanes, speaking in the name of this popular faith, denounces and derides Sokrates as a searcher, alike foolish and irreligious, after astronomical and physical causes—Sokrates himself not only denies the truth of the allegation, but adopts as his own the sentiment which dictated it; proclaiming Anaxagoras and others to be culpable for prying into mysteries which the Gods intentionally kept hidden.4 The repugnance felt by a numerous public, against scientific explanation—as eliminating the divine agents and substituting in their place irrational causes,5—was a permanent fact of which philosophers were always obliged to take account, and which modified the tone of their speculations without being powerful enough to repress them.

Thales, the first Greek who propounded the hypothesis of physical agency in place of personal. Water, the primordial substance, or ἀρχή.

Even in the sixth century B.C., when the habit of composing in prose was first introduced, Pherekydes and Akusilaus still continued in their prose the theogony, or the mythical cosmogony, of Hesiod and the other old Poets: while Epimenides and the Orphic poets put forth different theogonies, blended with mystical dogmas. It was, however, in the same century, and in the first half of it, that Thales of Miletus (620–560 B.C.), set the example of a new vein of thought. Instead of the Homeric Okeanus, father of all things, Thales assumed the material substance, Water, as the primordial matter and the universal substratum of everything in nature. By various transmutations, all other substances were generated from water; all of them, when destroyed, returned into water. Like the old poets, Thales conceived the surface of the earth to be flat and round; but he did not, like them, regard it as stretching down to the depths of Tartarus: he supposed it to be flat and shallow, floating on the immensity of the watery expanse or Ocean.6 This is the main feature of the Thaletian hypothesis, about which, however, its author seems to have left no writing. Aristotle says little about Thales, and that little in a tone of so much doubt,7 that we can hardly confide in the opinions and discoveries ascribed to him by others.8

Anaximander—laid down as ἀρχή the Infinite or indeterminate—generation of the elements out of it, by evolution of latent fundamental contraries—astronomical and geological doctrines.

The next of the Ionic philosophers, and the first who published his opinions in writing, was Anaximander, of Miletus, the countryman and younger contemporary of Thales (570–520 B.C.). He too searched for an Ἀρχή, a primordial Something or principle, self-existent and comprehending in its own nature a generative, motive, or transmutative force. Not thinking that water, or any other known and definite substance fulfilled these conditions, he adopted as the foundation of his hypothesis a substance which he called the Infinite or Indeterminate. Under this name he conceived Body simply, without any positive or determinate properties, yet including the fundamental contraries, Hot, Cold, Moist, Dry, &c., in a potential or latent state, including farther a self-changing and self-developing force,9 and being moreover immortal and indestructible.10 By this inherent force, and by the evolution of one or more of these dormant contrary qualities, were generated the various definite substances of nature—Air, Fire, Water, &c. But every determinate substance thus generated was, after a certain time, destroyed and resolved again into the Indeterminate mass. “From thence all substances proceed, and into this they relapse: each in its turn thus making atonement to the others, and suffering the penalty of injustice.”11 Anaximander conceived separate existence (determinate and particular existence, apart from the indeterminate and universal) as an unjust privilege, not to be tolerated except for a time, and requiring atonement even for that. As this process of alternate generation and destruction was unceasing, so nothing less than an Infinite could supply material for it. Earth, Water, Air, Fire, having been generated, the two former, being cold and heavy, remained at the bottom, while the two latter ascended. Fire formed the exterior circle, encompassing the air like bark round a tree: this peripheral fire was broken up and aggregated into separate masses, composing the sun, moon, and stars. The sphere of the fixed stars was nearest to the earth: that of the moon next above it: that of the sun highest of all. The sun and moon were circular bodies twenty-eight times larger than the earth: but the visible part of them was only an opening in the centre, through which12 the fire or light behind was seen. All these spheres revolved round the earth, which was at first semi-fluid or mud, but became dry and solid through the heat of the sun. It was in shape like the section of a cylinder, with a depth equal to one-third of its breadth or horizontal surface, on which men and animals live. It was in the centre of the Kosmos; it remained stationary because of its equal distance from all parts of the outer revolving spheres; there was no cause determining it to move upward rather than downward or sideways, therefore it remained still.13 Its exhalations nourished the fire in the peripheral regions of the Kosmos. Animals were produced from the primitive muddy fluid of the earth: first, fishes and other lower animals—next, in process of time man, when circumstances permitted his development.14 We learn farther respecting the doctrines of Anaximander, that he proposed physical explanations of thunder, lightning, and other meteorological phenomena:15 memorable as the earliest attempt of speculation in that department, at a time when such events inspired the strongest religious awe, and were regarded as the most especial manifestations of purposes of the Gods. He is said also to have been the first who tried to represent the surface and divisions of the earth on a brazen plate, the earliest rudiment of a map or chart.16

Anaximenes—adopted Air as ἀρχή—rise of substances out of it, by condensation and rarefaction.

The third physical philosopher produced by Miletus, seemingly before the time of her terrible disasters suffered from the Persians after the Ionic revolt between 500–494 B.C., was Anaximenes, who struck out a third hypothesis. He assumed, as the primordial substance, and as the source of all generation or transmutation, Air, eternal in duration, infinite in extent. He thus returned to the principle of the Thaletian theory, selecting for his beginning a known substance, though not the same substance as Thales. To explain how generation of new products was possible (as Anaximander had tried to explain by his theory of evolution of latent contraries), Anaximenes adverted to the facts of condensation and rarefaction, which he connected respectively with cold and heat.17 The Infinite Air, possessing and exercising an inherent generative and developing power, perpetually in motion, passing from dense to rare or from rare to dense, became in its utmost rarefaction, Fire and Æther; when passing through successive stages of increased condensation it became first cloud, next water, then earth, and, lastly, in its utmost density, stone.18 Surrounding, embracing, and pervading the Kosmos, it also embodied and carried with it a vital principle, which animals obtained from it by inspiration, and which they lost as soon as they ceased to breathe.19 Anaximenes included in his treatise (which was written in a clear Ionic dialect) many speculations on astronomy and meteorology, differing widely from those of Anaximander. He conceived the Earth as a broad, flat, round plate, resting on the air.20 Earth, Sun, and Moon were in his view condensed air, the Sun acquiring heat by the extreme and incessant velocity with which he moved. The Heaven was not an entire hollow sphere encompassing the Earth below as well as above, but a hemisphere covering the Earth above, and revolving laterally round it like a cap round the head.21

The general principle of cosmogony, involved in the hypothesis of these three Milesians—one primordial substance or Something endued with motive and transmutative force, so as to generate all the variety of products, each successive and transient, which our senses witness—was taken up with more or less modification by others, especially by Diogenes of Apollonia, of whom I shall speak presently. But there were three other men who struck out different veins of thought—Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Herakleitus: the two former seemingly contemporary with Anaximenes (550–490 B.C.), the latter somewhat later.

Pythagoras—his life and career—Pythagorean brotherhood, great political influence which it acquired among the Greco-Italian cities—incurred great enmity and was violently put down.

Of Pythagoras I have spoken at some length in the thirty-seventh chapter of my History of Greece. Speculative originality was only one among many remarkable features in his character. He was an inquisitive traveller, a religious reformer or innovator, and the founder of a powerful and active brotherhood, partly ascetic, partly political, which stands without parallel in Grecian history. The immortality of the soul, with its transmigration (metempsychosis) after death into other bodies, either of men or of other animals—the universal kindred thus recognised between men and other animals, and the prohibition which he founded thereupon against the use of animals for food or sacrifice—are among his most remarkable doctrines: said to have been borrowed (together with various ceremonial observances) from the Egyptians.22 After acquiring much celebrity in his native island of Samos and throughout Ionia, Pythagoras emigrated (seemingly about 530 B.C.) to Kroton and Metapontum in Lower Italy, where the Pythagorean brotherhood gradually acquired great political ascendancy: and from whence it even extended itself in like manner over the neighbouring Greco-Italian cities. At length it excited so much political antipathy among the body of the citizens,23 that its rule was violently put down, and its members dispersed about 509 B.C. Pythagoras died at Metapontum.

The Pythagoreans continue as a recluse sect, without political power.

Though thus stripped of power, however, the Pythagoreans still maintained themselves for several generations as a social, religious, and philosophical brotherhood. They continued and extended the vein of speculation first opened by the founder himself. So little of proclaimed individuality was there among them, that Aristotle, in criticising their doctrine, alludes to them usually under the collective name Pythagoreans. Epicharmus, in his comedies at Syracuse (470 B.C.) gave occasional utterance to various doctrines of the sect; but the earliest of them who is known to have composed a book, was Philolaus,24 the contemporary of Sokrates. Most of the opinions ascribed to the Pythagoreans originated probably among the successors of Pythagoras; but the basis and principle upon which they proceed seems undoubtedly his.

Doctrine of the Pythagoreans—Number the Essence of Things.

The problem of physical philosophy, as then conceived, was to find some primordial and fundamental nature, by and out of which the sensible universe was built up and produced; something which co-existed always underlying it, supplying fresh matter and force for generation of successive products. The hypotheses of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, to solve this problem, have been already noticed: Pythagoras solved it by saying, That the essence of things consisted in Number. By this he did not mean simply that all things were numerable, or that number belonged to them as a predicate. Numbers were not merely predicates inseparable from subjects, but subjects in themselves: substances or magnitudes, endowed with active force, and establishing the fundamental essences or types according to which things were constituted. About water,25 air, or fire, Pythagoras said nothing.26 He conceived that sensible phenomena had greater resemblance to numbers than to any one of these substrata assigned by the Ionic philosophers. Number was (in his doctrine) the self-existent reality—the fundamental material and in-dwelling force pervading the universe. Numbers were not separate from things27 (like the Platonic Ideas), but fundamenta of things—their essences or determining principles: they were moreover conceived as having magnitude and active force.28 In the movements of the celestial bodies, in works of human art, in musical harmony—measure and number are the producing and directing agencies. According to the Pythagorean Philolaus, “the Dekad, the full and perfect number, was of supreme and universal efficacy as the guide and principle of life, both to the Kosmos and to man. The nature of number was imperative and lawgiving, affording the only solution of all that was perplexing or unknown; without number all would be indeterminate and unknowable.”29

The Monas—ἀρχή, or principle of Number—geometrical conception of number—symbolical attributes of the first ten numbers, especially of the Dekad.

The first principle or beginning of Number, was the One or Monas—which the Pythagoreans conceived as including both the two fundamental contraries—the Determining and the Indeterminate.30 All particular numbers, and through them all things, were compounded from the harmonious junction and admixture of these two fundamental contraries.31 All numbers being either odd or even, the odd numbers were considered as analogous to the Determining, the even numbers to the Indeterminate. In One or the Monad, the Odd and Even were supposed to be both contained, not yet separated: Two was the first indeterminate even number; Three, the first odd and the first determinate number, because it included beginning, middle, and end. The sum of the first four numbers—One, Two, Three, Four = Ten (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) was the most perfect number of all.32 To these numbers, one, two, three, four, were understood as corresponding the fundamental conceptions of Geometry—Point, Line, Plane, Solid. Five represented colour and visible appearance: Six, the phenomenon of Life: Seven, Health, Light, Intelligence, &c.: Eight, Love or Friendship.33 Man, Horse, Justice and Injustice, had their representative numbers: that corresponding to Justice was a square number, as giving equal for equal.34

Pythagorean Kosmos and Astronomy—geometrical and harmonic laws guiding the movements of the cosmical bodies.

The Pythagoreans conceived the Kosmos, or the universe, as one single system, generated out of numbers.35 Of this system the central point—the determining or limiting One—was first in order of time, and in order of philosophical conception. By the determining influence of this central constituted One, portions of the surrounding Infinite were successively attracted and brought into system: numbers, geometrical figures, solid substances, were generated. But as the Kosmos thus constituted was composed of numbers, there could be no continuum: each numerical unit was distinct and separated from the rest by a portion of vacant space, which was imbibed, by a sort of inhalation, from the infinite space or spirit without.36 The central point was fire, called by the Pythagoreans the Hearth of the Universe (like the public hearth or perpetual fire maintained in the prytaneum of a Grecian city), or the watch-tower of Zeus. Around it revolved, from West to East, ten divine bodies, with unequal velocities, but in symmetrical movement or regular dance.37 Outermost was the circle of the fixed stars, called by the Pythagoreans Olympus, and composed of fire like the centre. Within this came successively—with orbits more and more approximating to the centre—the five planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury: next, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. Lastly, between the Earth and the central fire, an hypothetical body, called the Antichthon or Counter-Earth, was imagined for the purpose of making up a total represented by the sacred number Ten, the symbol of perfection and totality. The Antichthon was analogous to a separated half of the Earth; simultaneous with the Earth in its revolutions, and corresponding with it on the opposite side of the central fire.

The inhabited portion of the Earth was supposed to be that which was turned away from the central fire and towards the Sun, from which it received light. But the Sun itself was not self-luminous: it was conceived as a glassy disk, receiving and concentrating light from the central fire, and reflecting it upon the Earth, so long as the two were on the same side of the central fire. The Earth revolved, in an orbit obliquely intersecting that of the Sun, and in twenty-four hours, round the central fire, always turning the same side towards that fire. The alternation of day and night was occasioned by the Earth being during a part of such revolution on the same side of the central fire with the Sun, and thus receiving light reflected from him: and during the remaining part of her revolution on the side opposite to him, so that she received no light at all from him. The Earth, with the Antichthon, made this revolution in one day: the Moon, in one month:38 the Sun, with the planets, Mercury and Venus, in one year: the planets, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in longer periods respectively, according to their distances from the centre: lastly, the outermost circle of the fixed stars (the Olympus, or the Aplanes), in some unknown period of very long duration.39

Music of the Spheres.

The revolutions of such grand bodies could not take place, in the opinion of the Pythagoreans, without producing a loud and powerful sound; and as their distances from the central fire were supposed to be arranged in musical ratios,40 so the result of all these separate sounds was full and perfect harmony. To the objection—Why were not these sounds heard by us?—they replied, that we had heard them constantly and without intermission from the hour of our birth; hence they had become imperceptible by habit.41

Pythagorean list of fundamental Contraries—Ten opposing pairs.

Ten was, in the opinion of the Pythagoreans, the perfection and consummation of number. The numbers from One to Ten were all that they recognised as primary, original, generative. Numbers greater than ten were compounds and derivatives from the decad. They employed this perfect number not only as a basis on which to erect a bold astronomical hypothesis, but also as a sum total for their list of contraries. Many Hellenic philosophers42 recognised pairs of opposing attributes as pervading nature, and as the fundamental categories to which the actual varieties of the sensible world might be reduced. While others laid down Hot and Cold, Wet and Dry, as the fundamental contraries, the Pythagoreans adopted a list of ten pairs. 1. Limit and Unlimited; 2. Odd and Even; 3. One and Many; 4. Right and Left; 5. Male and Female; 6. Rest and Motion; 7. Straight and Curve; 8. Light and Darkness; 9. Good and Evil; 10. Square and Oblong.43 Of these ten pairs, five belong to arithmetic or to geometry, one to mechanics, one to physics, and three to anthropology or ethics. Good and Evil, Regularity and Irregularity, were recognised as alike primordial and indestructible.44

The arithmetical and geometrical view of nature, to which such exclusive supremacy is here given by the Pythagoreans, is one of the most interesting features of Grecian philosophy. They were the earliest cultivators of mathematical science,45 and are to be recognised as having paved the way for Euclid and Archimedes, notwithstanding the symbolical and mystical fancies with which they so largely perverted what are now regarded as the clearest and most rigorous processes of the human intellect. The important theorem which forms the forty-seventh Proposition of Euclid’s first book, is affirmed to have been discovered by Pythagoras himself: but how much progress was made by him and his followers in the legitimate province of arithmetic and geometry, as well as in the applications of these sciences to harmonics,46 which they seem to have diligently cultivated, we have not sufficient information to determine with certainty.

Eleatic philosophy—Xenophanes.

Contemporary with Pythagoras, and like him an emigrant from Ionia to Italy, was Xenophanes of Kolophon. He settled at the Phokæan colony of Elea, on the Gulf of Poseidonia; his life was very long, but his period of eminence appears to belong (as far as we can make out amidst conflicting testimony) to the last thirty years of the sixth century B.C. (530–500 B.C.). He was thus contemporary with Anaximander and Anaximenes, as well as with Pythagoras, the last of whom he may have personally known.47 He composed, and recited in person, poems—epic, elegiac, and iambic—of which a very few fragments remain.

His censures upon the received Theogony and religious rites.

Xenophanes takes his point of departure, not from Thales or Anaximander, but from the same ancient theogonies which they had forsaken. But he follows a very different road. The most prominent feature in his poems (so far as they remain), is the directness and asperity with which he attacks the received opinions respecting the Gods—and the poets Hesiod and Homer, the popular exponents of those opinions. Xenophanes not only condemns these poets for having ascribed to the Gods discreditable exploits, but even calls in question the existence of the Gods, and ridicules the anthropomorphic conception which pervaded the Hellenic faith. “If horses or lions could paint, they would delineate their Gods in form like themselves. The Ethiopians conceive their Gods as black, the Thracians conceive theirs as fair and with reddish hair.”48 Dissatisfied with much of the customary worship and festivals, Xenophanes repudiated divination altogether, and condemned the extravagant respect shown to victors in Olympic contests,49 not less than the lugubrious ceremonies in honour of Leukothea. He discountenanced all Theogony, or assertion of the birth of Gods, as impious, and as inconsistent with the prominent attribute of immortality ascribed to them.50 He maintained that there was but one God, identical with, or a personification of, the whole Uranus. “The whole Kosmos, or the whole God, sees, hears, and thinks.” The divine nature (he said) did not admit of the conception of separate persons one governing the other, or of want and imperfection in any way.51

His doctrine of Pankosmism, or Pantheism—The whole Kosmos is Ens Unum or God—Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Non-Ens inadmissible.

Though Xenophanes thus appears (like Pythagoras) mainly as a religious dogmatist, yet theogony and cosmogony were so intimately connected in the sixth century B.C., that he at the same time struck out a new philosophical theory. His negation of theogony was tantamount to a negation of cosmogony. In substituting one God for many, he set aside all distinct agencies in the universe, to recognise only one agent, single, all-pervading, indivisible. He repudiated all genesis of a new reality, all actual existence of parts, succession, change, beginning, end, etc., in reference to the universe, as well as in reference to God. “Wherever I turned my mind (he exclaimed) everything resolved itself into One and the same: all things existing came back always and everywhere into one similar and permanent nature.”52 The fundamental tenet of Xenophanes was partly religious, partly philosophical, Pantheism, or Pankosmism: looking upon the universe as one real all-comprehensive Ens, which he would not call either finite or infinite, either in motion or at rest.53 Non-Ens he pronounced to be an absurdity—an inadmissible and unmeaning phrase.

Scepticism of Xenophanes—complaint of philosophy as unsatisfactory.

It was thus from Xenophanes that the doctrine of Pankosmism obtained introduction into Greek philosophy, recognising nothing real except the universe as an indivisible and unchangeable whole. Such a creed was altogether at variance with common perception, which apprehends the universe as a plurality of substances, distinguishable, divisible, changeable, &c. And Xenophanes could not represent his One and All, which excluded all change, to be the substratum out of which phenomenal variety was generated—as Water, Air, the Infinite, had been represented by the Ionic philosophers. The sense of this contradiction, without knowing how to resolve it, appears to have occasioned the mournful complaints of irremediable doubt and uncertainty, preserved as fragments from his poems. “No man (he exclaims) knows clearly about the Gods or the universe: even if he speak what is perfectly true, he himself does not know it to be true: all is matter of opinion.”54

Nevertheless while denying all real variety or division in the universe, Xenophanes did not deny the variety of human perceptions and beliefs. But he allowed them as facts belonging to man, not to the universe—as subjective or relative, not as objective or absolute. He even promulgated opinions of his own respecting many of the physical and cosmological subjects treated by the Ionic philosophers.

His conjectures on physics and astronomy.

Without attempting to define the figure of the Earth, he considered it to be of vast extent and of infinite depth;55 including, in its interior cavities, prodigious reservoirs both of fire and water. He thought that it had at one time been covered with water, in proof of which he noticed the numerous shells found inland and on mountain tops, together with the prints of various fish which he had observed in the quarries of Syracuse, in the island of Paros, and elsewhere. From these facts he inferred that the earth had once been covered with water, and even that it would again be so covered at some future time, to the destruction of animal and human life.56 He supposed that the sun, moon, and stars were condensations of vapours exhaled from the Earth, collected into clouds, and alternately inflamed and extinguished.57

Parmenides continues the doctrine of Xenophanes—Ens Parmenideum, self-existent, eternal, unchangeable, extended—Non-Ens, an unmeaning phrase.

Parmenides, of Elea, followed up and gave celebrity to the Xenophanean hypothesis in a poem, of which the striking exordium is yet preserved. The two veins of thought, which Xenophanes had recognised and lamented his inability to reconcile, were proclaimed by Parmenides as a sort of inherent contradiction in the human mind—Reason or Cogitation declaring one way, Sense (together with the remembrances and comparisons of sense) suggesting a faith altogether opposite. Dropping that controversy with the popular religion which had been raised by Xenophanes, Parmenides spoke of many different Gods or Goddesses, and insisted on the universe as one, without regarding it as one God. He distinguished Truth from matter of Opinion.58 Truth was knowable only by pure mental contemplation or cogitation, the object of which was Ens or Being, the Real or Absolute: here the Cogitans and the Cogitatum were identical, one and the same.59 Parmenides conceived Ens not simply as existent, but as self-existent, without beginning or end,60 as extended, continuous, indivisible, and unchangeable. The Ens Parmenideum comprised the two notions of Extension and Duration:61 it was something Enduring and Extended; Extension including both space, and matter so far forth as filling space. Neither the contrary of Ens (Non-Ens), nor anything intermediate between Ens and Non-Ens, could be conceived, or named, or reasoned about. Ens comprehended all that was Real, without beginning or end, without parts or difference, without motion or change, perfect and uniform like a well-turned sphere.62

He recognises a region of opinion, phenomenal and relative, apart from Ens.

In this subject Ens, with its few predicates, chiefly negative, consisted all that Parmenides called Truth. Everything else belonged to the region of Opinion, which embraced all that was phenomenal, relative, and transient: all that involved a reference to man’s senses, apprehension, and appreciation, all the indefinite diversity of observed facts and inferences. Plurality, succession, change, motion, generation, destruction, division of parts, &c., belonged to this category. Parmenides did not deny that he and other men had perceptions and beliefs corresponding to these terms, but he denied their application to the Ens or the self-existent. We are conscious of succession, but the self-existent has no succession: we perceive change of colour and other sensible qualities, and change of place or motion, but Ens neither changes nor moves. We talk of things generated or destroyed—things coming into being or going out of being—but this phrase can have no application to the self-existent Ens, which is always and cannot properly be called either past or future.63 Nothing is really generated or destroyed, but only in appearance to us, or relatively to our apprehension.64 In like manner we perceive plurality of objects, and divide objects into parts. But Ens is essentially One, and cannot be divided.65 Though you may divide a piece of matter you cannot divide the extension of which that matter forms part: you cannot (to use the expression of Hobbes66) pull asunder the first mile from the second, or the first hour from the second. The milestone, or the striking of the clock, serve as marks to assist you in making a mental division, and in considering or describing one hour and one mile apart from the next. This, however, is your own act, relative to yourself: there is no real division of extension into miles, or of duration into hours. You may consider the same space or time as one or as many, according to your convenience: as one hour or as sixty minutes, as one mile or eight furlongs. But all this is a process of your own mind and thoughts; another man may divide the same total in a way different from you. Your division noway modifies the reality without you, whatever that may be—the Extended and Enduring Ens—which remains still a continuous one, undivided and unchanged.

Parmenidean ontology stands completely apart from phenomenology.

The Ens of Parmenides thus coincided mainly with that which (since Kant) has been called the Noumenon—the Thing in itself—the Absolute; or rather with that which, by a frequent illusion, passes for the absolute—no notice being taken of the cogitant and believing apart from mind, as if cogitation and belief, cogitata and credita, would be had without it. By Ens was understood the remnant in his mind, after leaving out all that abstraction, as far as it had then been carried, could leave out. It was the minimum indispensable to the continuance of thought; you cannot think (Parmenides says) without thinking of Something, and that Something Extended and Enduring. Though he and others talk of this Something as an Absolute (i.e. apart from or independent of his own thinking mind), yet he also uses some juster language (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι), showing that it is really relative: that if the Cogitans implies a Cogitatum, the Cogitatum also implies no less its correlative Cogitans: and that though we may divide the two in words, we cannot divide them in fact. It is to be remarked that Parmenides distinguishes the Enduring or Continuous from the Transient or Successive, Duration from Succession (both of which are included in the meaning of the word Time), and that he considers Duration alone as belonging to Ens or the Absolute—to the region of Truth—setting it in opposition or antithesis to Succession, which he treats as relative and phenomenal. We have thus (with the Eleates) the first appearance of Ontology, the science of Being or Ens, in Grecian philosophy. Ens is everything, and everything is Ens. In the view of Parmenides, Ontology is not merely narrow, but incapable of enlargement or application; we shall find Plato and others trying to expand it into numerous imposing generalities.67

Parmenidean phenomenology—relative and variable.

Apart from Ontology, Parmenides reckons all as belonging to human opinions. These were derived from the observations of sense (which he especially excludes from Ontology) with the comparisons, inferences, hypothesis, &c., founded thereupon: the phenomena of Nature generally.68 He does not attempt (as Plato and Aristotle do after him) to make Ontology serve as a principle or beginning for anything beyond itself,69 or as a premiss from which the knowledge of nature is to be deduced. He treats the two—Ontology and Phenomenology, to employ an Hegelian word—as radically disparate, and incapable of any legitimate union. Ens was essentially one and enduring: Nature was essentially multiform, successive, ever changing and moving relative to the observer, and different to observers at different times and places. Parmenides approached the study of Nature from its own starting point, the same as had been adopted by the Ionic philosophers—the data of sense, or certain agencies selected among them, and vaguely applied to explain the rest. Here he felt that he relinquished the full conviction, inseparable from his intellectual consciousness, with which he announced his few absolute truths respecting Ens and Non-Ens, and that he entered upon a process of mingled observation and conjecture, where there was great room for diversity of views between man and man.

Parmenides recognises no truth, but more or less probability, in phenomenal explanations. — His physical and astronomical conjectures.

Yet though thus passing from Truth to Opinions, from full certainty to comparative and irremediable uncertainty,70 Parmenides does not consider all opinions as equally true or equally untrue. He announces an opinion of his own—what he thinks most probable or least improbable—respecting the structure and constitution of the Kosmos, and he announces it without the least reference to his own doctrines about Ens. He promises information respecting Earth, Water, Air, and the heavenly bodies, and how they work, and how they came to be what they are.71 He recognises two elementary principles or beginnings, one contrary to the other, but both of them positive—Light, comprehending the Hot, the Light, and the Rare—Darkness, comprehending the Cold, the Heavy, and the Dense.72 These two elements, each endued with active and vital properties, were brought into junction and commixture by the influence of a Dea Genitalis analogous to Aphroditê,73 with her first-born son Eros, a personage borrowed from the Hesiodic Theogony. From hence sprang the other active forces of nature, personified under various names, and the various concentric circles or spheres of the Kosmos. Of those spheres, the outer-most was a solid wall of fire—“flammantia mœnia mundi”—next under this the Æther, distributed into several circles of fire unequally bright and pure—then the circle called the Milky Way, which he regarded as composed of light or fire combined with denser materials—then the Sun and Moon, which were condensations of fire from the Milky Way—lastly, the Earth, which he placed in the centre of the Kosmos.74 He is said to have been the first who pronounced the earth to be spherical, and even distributed it into two or five zones.75 He regarded it as immovable, in consequence of its exact position in the centre. He considered the stars to be fed by exhalation from the Earth. Midway between the Earth and the outer flaming circle, he supposed that there dwelt a Goddess—Justice or Necessity—who regulated all the movements of the Kosmos, and maintained harmony between its different parts. He represented the human race as having been brought into existence by the power of the sun,76 and he seems to have gone into some detail respecting animal procreation, especially in reference to the birth of male and female offspring. He supposed that the human mind, as well as the human body, was compounded of a mixture of the two elemental influences, diffused throughout all Nature: that like was perceived and known by like: that thought and sensation were alike dependent upon the body, and upon the proportions of its elemental composition: that a certain limited knowledge was possessed by every object in Nature, animate or inanimate.77

Before we pass from Parmenides to his pupil and successor Zeno, who developed the negative and dialectic side of the Eleatic doctrine, it will be convenient to notice various other theories of the same century: first among them that of Herakleitus, who forms as it were the contrast and antithesis to Xenophanes and Parmenides.

Herakleitus—his obscure style, impressive metaphors, confident and contemptuous dogmatism.

Herakleitus of Ephesus, known throughout antiquity by the denomination of the Obscure, comes certainly after Pythagoras and Xenophanes and apparently before Parmenides. Of the two first he made special mention, in one of the sentences, alike brief and contemptuous which have been preserved from his lost treatise:—“Much learning does not teach reason: otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hekatæus.” In another passage Herakleitus spoke of the “extensive knowledge, cleverness, and wicked arts” of Pythagoras. He declared that Homer as well as Archilochus deserved to be scourged and expelled from the public festivals.78 His thoughts were all embodied in one single treatise, which he is said to have deposited in the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. It was composed in a style most perplexing and difficult to understand, full of metaphor, symbolical illustration, and antithesis: but this very circumstance imparted to it an air of poetical impressiveness and oracular profundity.79 It exercised a powerful influence on the speculative minds of Greece, both in the Platonic age, and subsequently: the Stoics especially both commented on it largely (though with many dissentient opinions among the commentators), and borrowed with partial modifications much of its doctrine.80

Doctrine of Herakleitus—perpetual process of generation and destruction—everything flows, nothing stands—transition of the elements into each other, backwards and forwards.

The expositors followed by Lucretius and Cicero conceived Herakleitus as having proclaimed Fire to be the universal and all-pervading element of nature;81 as Thales had recognised water, and Anaximenes air. This interpretation was countenanced by some striking passages of Herakleitus: but when we put together all that remains from him, it appears that his main doctrine was not physical, but metaphysical or ontological: that the want of adequate general terms induced him to clothe it in a multitude of symbolical illustrations, among which fire was only one, though the most prominent and most significant.82 Xenophanes and the Eleates had recognised, as the only objective reality, One extended Substance or absolute Ens, perpetual, infinite, indeterminate, incapable of change or modification. They denied the objective reality of motion, change, generation, and destruction—considering all these to be purely relative and phenomenal. Herakleitus on the contrary denied everything in the nature of a permanent and perpetual substratum: he laid down nothing as permanent and perpetual except the process of change—the alternate sequence of generation and destruction, without beginning or end—generation and destruction being in fact coincident or identical, two sides of the same process, since the generation of one particular state was the destruction of its antecedent contrary. All reality consisted in the succession and transition, the coming and going, of these finite and particular states: what he conceived as the infinite and universal, was the continuous process of transition from one finite state to the next—the perpetual work of destruction and generation combined, which terminated one finite state in order to make room for a new and contrary state.

Variety of metaphors employed by Herakleitus, signifying the same general doctrine.

This endless process of transition, or ever-repeated act of generation and destruction in one, was represented by Herakleitus under a variety of metaphors and symbols—fire consuming its own fuel—a stream of water always flowing—opposite currents meeting and combating each other—the way from above downwards, and the way from below upwards, one and the same—war, contest, penal destiny or retributive justice, the law or decree of Zeus realising each finite condition of things and then destroying its own reality to make place for its contrary and successor. Particulars are successively generated and destroyed, none of them ever arriving at permanent existence:83 the universal process of generation and destruction alone continues. There is no Esse, but a perpetual Fieri: a transition from Esse to Non-Esse, from Non-Esse to Esse, with an intermediate temporary halt between them: a ceaseless meeting and confluence of the stream of generation with the opposite stream of destruction: a rapid and instant succession, or rather coincidence and coalescence, of contraries. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, light and dark, come into one or come round into each other: everything twists round into its contrary: everything both is and is not.84

Nothing permanent except the law of process and implication of contraries—the transmutative force. Fixity of particulars is an illusion for most part, so far as it exists, it is a sin against the order of Nature.

The universal law, destiny, or divine working (according to Herakleitus), consists in this incessant process of generation and destruction, this alternation of contraries. To carry out such law fully, each of the particular manifestations ought to appear and pass away instantaneously—to have no duration of its own, but to be supplanted by its contrary at once. And this happens to a great degree, even in cases where it does not appear to happen: the river appears unchanged, though the water which we touched a short time ago has flowed away:85 we and all around us are in rapid movement, though we appear stationary: the apparent sameness and fixity is thus a delusion. But Herakleitus does not seem to have thought that his absolute universal force was omnipotent, or accurately carried out in respect to all particulars. Some positive and particular manifestations, when once brought to pass, had a certain measure of fixity, maintaining themselves for more or less time before they were destroyed. There was a difference between one particular and another, in this respect of comparative durability: one was more durable, another less.86 But according to the universal law or destiny, each particular ought simply to make its appearance, then to be supplanted and re-absorbed; so that the time during which it continued on the scene was, as it were, an unjust usurpation, obtained by encroaching on the equal right of the next comer, and by suspending the negative agency of the universal. Hence arises an antithesis or hostility between the universal law or process on one side, and the persistence of particular states on the other. The universal law or process is generative and destructive, positive and negative, both in one: but the particular realities in which it manifests itself are all positive, each succeeding to its antecedent, and each striving to maintain itself against the negativity or destructive interference of the universal process. Each particular reality represented rest and fixity: each held ground as long as it could against the pressure of the cosmical force, essentially moving, destroying, and renovating. Herakleitus condemns such pretensions of particular states to separate stability, inasmuch as it keeps back the legitimate action of the universal force, in the work of destruction and renovation.

Illustrations by which Herakleitus symbolized his perpetual force, destroying and generating.

The theory of Herakleitus thus recognised no permanent substratum, or Ens, either material or immaterial—no category either of substance or quality—but only a ceaseless principle of movement or change, generation and destruction, position and negation, immediately succeeding, or coinciding with each other.87 It is this principle or everlasting force which he denotes under so many illustrative phrases—“the common (τὸ ξυνον), the universal, the all-comprehensive (τὸ περιέχον), the governing, the divine, the name or reason of Zeus, fire, the current of opposites, strife or war, destiny, justice, equitable measure, Time or the Succeeding,” &c. The most emphatic way in which this theory could be presented was, as embodied, in the coincidence or co-affirmation of contraries. Many of the dicta cited and preserved out of Herakleitus are of this paradoxical tenor.88 Other dicta simply affirm perpetual flow, change, or transition, without express allusion to contraries: which latter, however, though not expressed, must be understood, since change was conceived as a change from one contrary to the other.89 In the Herakleitean idea, contrary forces come simultaneously into action: destruction and generation always take effect together: there is no negative without a positive, nor positive without a negative.90

Water—intermediate between Fire (Air) and Earth.

Such was the metaphysical or logical foundation of the philosophy of Herakleitus: the idea of an eternal process of change, manifesting itself in the perpetual destruction and renovation of particular realities, but having itself no reality apart from these particulars, and existing only in them as an immanent principle or condition. This principle, from the want of appropriate abstract terms, he expressed in a variety of symbolical and metaphorical phrases, among which Fire stood prominent.91 But though Fire was thus often used to denote the principle or ideal process itself, the same word was also employed to denote that one of the elements which formed the most immediate manifestation of the principle. In this latter sense, Fire was the first stage of incipient reality: the second stage was water, the third earth. This progression, fire, water, earth, was in Herakleitean language “the road downwards,” which was the same as “the road upwards,” from earth to water and again to fire. The death of fire was its transition into water: that of water was its transition partly into earth, partly into flame. As fire was the type of extreme mobility, perpetual generation and destruction—so earth was the type of fixed and stationary existence, resisting movement or change as much as possible.92 Water was intermediate between the two.

Sun and stars—not solid bodies but meteoric aggregations dissipated and renewed—Eclipses—ἐκπύρωσις, or destructions of the Kosmos by fire.

Herakleitus conceived the sun and stars, not as solid bodies, but as meteoric aggregations perpetually dissipated and perpetually renewed or fed, by exhalation upward from the water and earth. The sun became extinguished and rekindled in suitable measure and proportion, under the watch of the Erinnyes, the satellites of Justice. These celestial lights were contained in troughs, the open side of which was turned towards our vision. In case of eclipses the trough was for the time reversed, so that the dark side was turned towards us; and the different phases of the moon were occasioned by the gradual turning round of the trough in which her light was contained. Of the phenomena of thunder and lightning also, Herakleitus offered some explanation, referring them to aggregations and conflagrations of the clouds, and violent currents of winds.93 Another hypothesis was often ascribed to Herakleitus, and was really embraced by several of the Stoics in later times—that there would come a time when all existing things would be destroyed by fire (ἐκπύρωσις), and afterwards again brought into reality in a fresh series of changes. But this hypothesis appears to have been conceived by him metaphysically rather than physically. Fire was not intended to designate the physical process of combustion, but was a symbolical phrase for the universal process; the perpetual agency of conjoint destruction and renovation, manifesting itself in the putting forth and re-absorption of particulars, and having no other reality except as immanent in these particulars.94 The determinate Kosmos of the present moment is perpetually destroyed, passing into fire or the indeterminate: it is perpetually renovated or passes out of fire into water, earth—out of the indeterminate, into the various determinate modifications. At the same time, though Herakleitus seems to have mainly employed these symbols for the purpose of signifying or typifying a metaphysical conception, yet there was no clear apprehension, even in his own mind, of this generality, apart from all symbols: so that the illustration came to count as a physical fact by itself, and has been so understood by many.95 The line between what he meant as the ideal or metaphysical process, and the elementary or physical process, is not easy to draw, in the fragments which now remain.

His doctrines respecting the human soul and human knowledge. All wisdom resided in the Universal Wisdom—individual Reason is worthless.

The like blending of metaphysics and physics—of the abstract and the concrete and sensible—is to be found in the statements remaining from Herakleitus respecting the human soul and human knowledge. The human soul, according to him, was an effluence or outlying portion of the Universal96—the fire—the perpetual movement or life of things. As such, its nature was to be ever in movement: but it was imprisoned and obstructed by the body, which represented the stationary, the fixed, the particular—that which resisted the universal force of change. So long as a man lived, his soul or mind, though thus confined, participated more or less in the universal movement: but when he died, his body ceased to participate in it, and became therefore vile, “fit only to be cast out like dung”. Every man, individually considered, was irrational;97 reason belonged only to the universal or the whole, with which the mind of each living man was in conjunction, renewing itself by perpetual absorption, inspiration or inhalation, vaporous transition, impressions through the senses and the pores, &c. During sleep, since all the media of communication, except only those through respiration, were suspended, the mind became stupefied and destitute of memory. Like coals when the fire is withdrawn, it lost its heat and tended towards extinction.98 On waking, it recovered its full communication with the great source of intelligence without—the universal all-comprehensive process of life and movement. Still, though this was the one and only source of intelligence open to all waking men, the greater number of men could neither discern it for themselves, nor understand it without difficulty even when pointed out to them. Though awake, they were not less unconscious or forgetful of the process going on around them, than if they had been asleep.99 The eyes and ears of men with barbarous or stupid souls, gave them false information.100 They went wrong by following their own individual impression or judgment: they lived as if reason or intelligence belonged to each man individually. But the only way to attain truth was, to abjure all separate reason, and to follow the common or universal reason. Each man’s mind must become identified and familiar with that common process which directed and transformed the whole: in so far as he did this, he attained truth: whenever he followed any private or separate judgment of his own, he fell into error.101 The highest pitch of this severance of the individual judgment was seen during sleep, at which time each man left the common world to retire into a world of his own.102

By Universal Reason he did not mean the Reason of most men as it is, but as it ought to be.

By this denunciation of the mischief of private judgment, Herakleitus did not mean to say that a man ought to think like his neighbours or like the public. In his view the public were wrong, collectively as well as individually. The universal reason to which he made appeal, was not the reason of most men as it actually is but that which, in his theory, ought to be their reason:103 that which formed the perpetual and governing process throughout all nature, though most men neither recognised nor attended to it, but turned away from it in different directions equally wrong. No man was truly possessed of reason, unless his individual mind understood the general scheme of the universe, and moved in full sympathy with its perpetual movement and alternation or unity of contraries.104 The universal process contained in itself a sum-total of particular contraries which were successively produced and destroyed: to know the universal was to know these contraries in one, and to recognise them as transient, but correlative and inseparable, manifestations, each implying the other—not as having each a separate reality and each excluding its contrary.105 In so far as a man’s mind maintained its kindred nature and perpetual conjoint movement with the universal, he acquired true knowledge; but the individualising influences arising from the body usually overpowered this kindred with the universal, and obstructed the continuity of this movement, so that most persons became plunged in error and illusion.

Herakleitus at the opposite pole from Parmenides.

The absolute of Herakleitus stands thus at the opposite pole as compared with that of Parmenides: it is absolute movement, change, generation and destruction—negation of all substance and stability,106 temporary and unbecoming resistance of each successive particular to the destroying and renewing current of the universal. The Real, on this theory, was a generalisation, not of substances, but of facts, events, changes, revolutions, destructions, generations, &c., determined by a law of justice or necessity which endured, and which alone endured, for ever. Herakleitus had many followers, who adopted his doctrine wholly or partially, and who gave to it developments which he had not adverted to, perhaps might not have acknowledged.107 It was found an apt theme by those who, taking a religious or poetical view of the universe, dwelt upon the transitory and contemptible value of particular existences, and extolled the grandeur or power of the universal. It suggested many doubts and debates respecting the foundations of logical evidence, and the distinction of truth from falsehood; which debates will come to be noticed hereafter, when we deal with the dialectical age of Plato and Aristotle.

Empedokles—his doctrine of the four elements, and two moving or restraining forces.

After Herakleitus, and seemingly at the same time with Parmenides, we arrive at Empedokles (about 500–430 BC) and his memorable doctrine of the Four Elements. This philosopher, a Sicilian of Agrigentum, and a distinguished as well as popular-minded citizen, expounded his views in poems, of which Lucretius108 speaks with high admiration, but of which few fragments are preserved. He agreed with Parmenides, and dissented from Herakleitus and the Ionic philosophers, in rejecting all real generation and destruction.109 That which existed had not been generated and could not be destroyed. Empedokles explained what that was, which men mistook for generation and destruction. There existed four distinct elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—eternal, inexhaustible, simple, homogeneous, equal, and co-ordinate with each other. Besides these four substances, there also existed two moving forces, one contrary to the other—Love or Friendship, which brought the elements into conjunction—Enmity or Contest, which separated them. Here were alternate and conflicting agencies, either bringing together different portions of the elements to form a new product, or breaking up the product thus formed and separating the constituent elements. Sometimes the Many were combined into One; sometimes the One was decomposed into Many. Generation was simply this combination of elements already existing separately—not the calling into existence of anything new: destruction was in like manner the dissolution of some compound, not the termination of any existent simple substance. The four simple substances or elements (which Empedokles sometimes calls by names of the popular Deities—Zeus, Hêrê, Aidoneus, &c.), were the roots or foundations of everything.110

Construction of the Kosmos from these elements and forces—action and counter action of love and enmity. The Kosmos alternately made and unmade.

From the four elements—acted upon by these two forces, abstractions or mythical personifications—Empedokles showed how the Kosmos was constructed. He supposed both forces to be perpetually operative, but not always with equal efficacy: sometimes the one was predominant, sometimes the other, sometimes there was equilibrium between them. Things accordingly pass through a perpetual and ever-renewed cycle. The complete preponderance of Love brings alternately all the elements into close and compact unity, Enmity being for the time eliminated. Presently the action of the latter recommences, and a period ensues in which Love and Enmity are simultaneously operative; until at length Enmity becomes the temporary master, and all union is for the time dissolved. But this condition of things does not last. Love again becomes active, so that partial and increasing combination of the elements is produced, and another period commences—the simultaneous action of the two forces, which ends in renewed empire of Love, compact union of the elements, and temporary exclusion of Enmity.111

Empedoklean predestined cycle of things—complete empire of Love—Sphærus—Empire of Enmity—disengagement or separation of the elements—astronomy and meteorology.

This is the Empedoklean cycle of things,112 divine or predestined, without beginning or end: perpetual substitution of new for old compounds—constancy only in the general principle of combination and dissolution. The Kosmos which Empedokles undertakes to explain, takes its commencement from the period of complete empire of Love, or compact and undisturbed union of all the elements. This he conceives and divinises under the name of Sphærus—as One sphere, harmonious, uniform, and universal, having no motion, admitting no parts or separate existences within it, exhibiting no one of the four elements distinctly, “instabilis tellus, innabilis unda”—a sort of chaos.113 At the time prescribed by Fate or Necessity, the action of Enmity recommenced, penetrating gradually through the interior of Sphærus, “agitating the members of the God one after another,”114 disjoining the parts from each other, and distending the compact ball into a vast porous mass. This mass, under the simultaneous and conflicting influences of Love and Enmity, became distributed partly into homogeneous portions, where each of the four elements was accumulated by itself—partly into compounds or individual substances, where two or more elements were found in conjunction. Like had an appetite for Like—Air for Air, Fire for Fire, and so forth: and a farther extension of this appetite brought about the mixture of different elements in harmonious compounds. First, the Air disengaged itself, and occupied a position surrounding the central mass of Earth and Water: next, the Fire also broke forth, and placed itself externally to the Air, immediately in contact with the outermost crystalline sphere, formed of condensed and frozen air, which formed the wall encompassing the Kosmos. A remnant of Fire and Air still remained embodied in the Earth, but the great mass of both so distributed themselves, that the former occupied most part of one hemisphere, the latter most part of the other.115 The rapid and uniform rotation of the Kosmos, caused by the exterior Fire, compressed the interior elements, squeezed the water out of the earth like perspiration from the living body, and thus formed the sea. The same rotation caused the earth to remain unmoved, by counterbalancing and resisting its downward pressure or gravity.116 In the course of the rotation, the light hemisphere of Fire, and the comparatively dark hemisphere of Air, alternately came above the horizon: hence the interchange of day and night. Empedokles (like the Pythagoreans) supposed the sun to be not self-luminous, but to be a glassy or crystalline body which collected and reflected the light from the hemisphere of Fire. He regarded the fixed stars as fastened to the exterior crystalline sphere, and revolving along with it, but the planets as moving free and detached from any sphere.117 He supposed the alternations of winter and summer to arise from a change in the proportions of Air and Fire in the atmospheric regions: winter was caused by an increase of the Air, both in volume and density, so as to drive back the exterior Fire to a greater distance from the Earth, and thus to produce a diminution of heat and light: summer was restored when the Fire, in its turn increasing, extruded a portion of the Air, approached nearer to the Earth, and imparted to the latter more heat and light.118 Empedokles farther supposed (and his contemporaries, Anaxagoras and Diogenes, held the same opinion) that the Earth was round and flat at top and bottom, like a drum or tambourine: that its surface had been originally horizontal, in reference to the rotation of the Kosmos around it, but that it had afterwards tilted down to the south and upward towards the north, so as to lie aslant instead of horizontal. Hence he explained the fact that the north pole of the heavens now appeared obliquely elevated above the horizon.119

Formation of the Earth, of Gods, men, animals, and plants.

From astronomy and meteorology Empedokles120 proceeded to describe the Earth, its tenants, and its furniture; how men were first produced, and how put together. All were produced by the Earth: being thrown up under the stimulus of Fire still remaining within it. In its earliest manifestations, and before the influence of Discord had been sufficiently neutralized, the Earth gave birth to plants only, being as yet incompetent to produce animals.121 After a certain time she gradually acquired power to produce animals, first imperfectly and piecemeal, trunks without limbs and limbs without trunks; next, discordant and monstrous combinations, which did not last, such as creatures half man half ox; lastly, combinations with parts suited to each other, organizations perfect and durable, men, horses, &c., which continued and propagated.122 Among these productions were not only plants, birds, fishes, and men, but also the “long-lived Gods”.123 All compounds were formed by intermixture of the four elements, in different proportions, more or less harmonious.124 These elements remained unchanged: no one of them was transformed into another. But the small particles of each flowed into the pores of the others, and the combination was more or less intimate, according as the structure of these pores was more or less adapted to receive them. So intimate did the mixture of these fine particles become, when the effluvia of one and the pores of another were in symmetry, that the constituent ingredients, like colours compounded together by the painter,125 could not be discerned or handled separately. Empedokles rarely assigned any specific ratio in which he supposed the four elements to enter into each distinct compound, except in the case of flesh and blood, which were formed of all the four in equal portions; and of bones, which he affirmed to be composed of one-fourth earth, one-fourth water, and the other half fire. He insisted merely on the general fact of such combinations, as explaining what passed for generation of new substances without pointing out any reason to determine one ratio of combination rather than another, and without ascribing to each compound a distinct ratio of its own. This omission in his system is much animadverted on by Aristotle.

Physiology of Empedokles—Procreation—Respiration—movement of the blood.

Empedokles farther laid down many doctrines respecting physiology. He dwelt on the procreation of men and animals, entered upon many details respecting gestation and the fœtus, and even tried to explain what it was that determined the birth of male or female offspring. About respiration, alimentation, and sensation, he also proposed theories: his explanation of respiration remains in one of the fragments. He supposed that man breathed, partly through the nose, mouth, and lungs, but partly also through the whole surface of the body, by the pores wherewith it was pierced, and by the internal vessels connected with those pores. Those internal vessels were connected with the blood vessels, and the portion of them near the surface was alternately filled with blood or emptied of blood, by the flow outwards from the centre or the ebb inwards towards the centre. Such was the movement which Empedokles considered as constantly belonging to the blood: alternately a projection outwards from the centre and a recession backwards towards the centre. When the blood thus receded, the extremities of the vessels were left empty, and the air from without entered: when the outward tide of blood returned, the air which had thus entered was expelled.126 Empedokles conceived this outward tide of blood to be occasioned by the effort of the internal fire to escape and join its analogous element without.127

Doctrine of effluvia and pores—explanation of perceptions—Intercommunication of the elements with the sentient subject—like acting upon like.

The doctrine of pores and effluvia, which formed so conspicuous an item in the physics of Empedokles, was applied by him to explain sensation. He maintained the general doctrine (which Parmenides had advanced before him, and which Plato retained after him), that sensation was produced by like acting upon like: Herakleitus before him, and Anaxagoras after him, held that it was produced by unlike acting upon unlike. Empedokles tried (what Parmenides had not tried) to apply his doctrine to the various senses separately.128 Man was composed of the same four elements as the universe around him: and since like always tended towards like, so by each of the four elements within himself, he perceived and knew the like element without. Effluvia from all bodies entered his pores, wherever they found a suitable channel: hence he perceived and knew earth by earth, water by water, and so forth.129 Empedokles, assuming perception and knowledge to be produced by such intercommunication of the four elements, believed that not man and animals only, but plants and other substances besides, perceived and knew in the same way. Everything possessed a certain measure of knowledge, though less in degree, than man, who was a more compound structure.130 Perception and knowledge was more developed in different animals in proportion as their elementary composition was more mixed and varied. The blood, as the most compound portion of the whole body, was the principal seat of intelligence.131

Sense of vision.

In regard to vision, Empedokles supposed that it was operated mainly by the fire or light within the eye, though aided by the light without. The interior of the eye was of fire and water, the exterior coat was a thin layer of earth and air. Colours were brought to the eye as effluvia from objects, and became apprehended as sensations by passing into the alternate pores or ducts of fire and water: white colour was fitted to (or in symmetry with) the pores of fire, black colour with those of water.132 Some animals had the proportions of fire and water in their eyes better adjusted, or more conveniently located, than others: in some, the fire was in excess, or too much on the outside, so as to obstruct the pores or ducts of water: in others, water was in excess, and fire in defect. The latter were the animals which saw better by day than by night, a great force of external light being required to help out the deficiency of light within: the former class of animals saw better by night, because, when there was little light without, the watery ducts were less completely obstructed—or left more free to receive the influx of black colour suited to them.133

Senses of hearing, smell, taste.

In regard to hearing, Empedokles said that the ear was like a bell or trumpet set in motion by the air without; through which motion the solid parts were brought into shock against the air flowing in, and caused the sensation of sound within.134 Smell was, in his view, an adjunct of the respiratory process: persons of acute smell were those who had the strongest breathing: olfactory effluvia came from many bodies, and especially from such as were light and thin. Respecting taste and touch, he gave no further explanation than his general doctrine of effluvia and pores: he seems to have thought that such interpenetration was intelligible by itself, since here was immediate and actual contact. Generally, in respect to all the senses, he laid it down that pleasure ensued when the matter which flows in was not merely fitted in point of structure to penetrate the interior pores or ducts (which was the condition of all sensation), but also harmonious with them in respect to elementary mixture.135

Empedokles declared that justice absolutely forbade the killing of anything that had life. His belief in the metempsychosis. Sufferings of life are an expiation for wrong done during an antecedent life. Pretensions to magic power.

Empedokles held various opinions in common with the Pythagoreans and the brotherhood of the Orphic mysteries—especially that of the metempsychosis. He represented himself as having passed through prior states of existence, as a boy, a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a fish. He proclaims it as an obligation of justice, absolute and universal, not to kill anything that had life: he denounces as an abomination the sacrificing of or eating of an animal, in whom perhaps might dwell the soul of a deceased friend or brother.136 His religious faith, however, and his opinions about Gods, Dæmons, and the human soul, stood apart (mostly in a different poem) from his doctrines on kosmology and physiology. In common with many Pythagoreans, he laid great stress on the existence of Dæmons (of intermediate order and power between Gods and men), some of whom had been expelled from the Gods in consequence of their crimes, and were condemned to pass a long period of exile, as souls embodied in various men or animals. He laments the misery of the human soul, in himself as well as in others, condemned to this long period of expiatory degradation, before they could regain the society of the Gods.137 In one of his remaining fragments, he announces himself almost as a God upon earth, and professes his willingness as well as ability to impart to a favoured pupil the most wonderful gifts—powers to excite or abate the winds, to bring about rain or dry weather, to raise men from the dead.138 He was in fact a man of universal pretensions; not merely an expositor of nature, but a rhetorician, poet, physician, prophet, and conjurer. Gorgias the rhetor had been personally present at his magical ceremonies.139

Complaint of Empedokles on the impossibility of finding out truth.

None of the remaining fragments of Empedokles are more remarkable than a few in which he deplores the impossibility of finding out any great or comprehensive truth, amidst the distraction and the sufferings of our short life. Every man took a different road, confiding only in his own accidental experience or particular impressions; but no man could obtain or communicate satisfaction about the whole.140

Theory of Anaxagoras—denied generation and destruction—recognises only mixture and severance of pre-existing kinds of matter.

Anaxagoras of Klazomenæ, a friend of the Athenian Perikles, and contemporary of Empedokles, was a man of far simpler and less ambitious character: devoted to physical contemplation and geometry, without any of those mystical pretentions common among the Pythagoreans. His doctrines were set forth in prose, and in the Ionic dialect.141 His theory, like all those of his age, was all-comprehensive in its purpose, starting from a supposed beginning, and shewing how heaven, earth, and the inhabitants of earth, had come into those appearances which were exhibited to sense. He agreed with Empedokles in departing from the point of view of Thales and other Ionic theorists, who had supposed one primordial matter, out of which, by various transformations, other sensible things were generated—and into which, when destroyed, they were again resolved. Like Empedokles, and like Parmenides previously, he declared that generation, understood in this sense, was a false and impossible notion: that no existing thing could have been generated, or could be destroyed, or could undergo real transformation into any other thing different from what it was.142 Existing things were what they were, possessing their several inherent properties: there could be no generation except the putting together of these things in various compounds, nor any destruction except the breaking up of such compounds, nor any transformation except the substitution of one compound for another.

Homœomeries—small particles of diverse kinds of matter, all mixed together.

But Anaxagoras did not accept the Empedoklean four elements as the sum total of first substances. He reckoned all the different sorts of matter as original and primæval existences: he supposed them all to lie ready made, in portions of all sizes, whereof there was no greatest and no least.143 Particles of the same sort he called Homœomeries: the aggregates of which formed bodies of like parts; wherein the parts were like each other and like the whole. Flesh, bone, blood, fire,144 earth, water, gold, &c., were aggregations of particles mostly similar, in which each particle was not less flesh, bone, and blood, than the whole mass.

But while Anaxagoras held that each of these Homœomeries145 was a special sort of matter with its own properties, and each of them unlike every other: he held farther the peculiar doctrine, that no one of them could have an existence apart from the rest. Everything was mixed with everything: each included in itself all the others: not one of them could be obtained pure and unmixed. This was true of any portion however small. The visible and tangible bodies around us affected our senses, and received their denominations according to that one peculiar matter of which they possessed a decided preponderance and prominence. But each of them included in itself all the other matters, real and inseparable, although latent.146

First condition of things—all the primordial varieties of matter were huddled together in confusion. Nous, or Reason, distinct from all of them, supervened and acted upon this confused mass, setting the constituent particles in movement.

In the beginning (said Anaxagoras) all things (all sorts of matter) were together, in one mass or mixture. Infinitely numerous and infinite in diversity of magnitude, they were so packed and confounded together that no one could be distinguished from the rest: no definite figure, or colour, or other property, could manifest itself. Nothing was distinguishable except the infinite mass of Air and Æther (Fire), which surrounded the mixed mass and kept it together.147 Thus all things continued for an infinite time in a state of rest and nullity. The fundamental contraries—wet, dry, hot, cold, light, dark, dense, rare—in their intimate contact neutralised each other.148 Upon this inert mass supervened the agency of Nous or Mind. The characteristic virtue of mind was, that it alone was completely distinct, peculiar, pure in itself, unmixed with anything else: thus marked out from all other things which were indissolubly mingled with each other. Having no communion of nature with other things, it was noway acted upon by them, but was its own master or autocratic, and was of very great force. It was moreover the thinnest and purest of all things; possessing complete knowledge respecting all other things. It was like to itself throughout—the greater manifestations of mind similar to the less.149

Movement of rotation in the mass initiated by Nous on a small scale, but gradually extending itself. Like particles congregate together—distinguishable aggregates are formed.

But though other things could not act upon mind, mind could act upon them. It first originated movement in the quiescent mass. The movement impressed was that of rotation, which first began on a small scale, then gradually extended itself around, becoming more efficacious as it extended, and still continuing to extend itself around more and more. Through the prodigious velocity of this rotation, a separation was effected of those things which had been hitherto undistinguishably huddled together.150 Dense was detached from rare, cold from hot, dark from light, dry from wet.151 The Homœomeric particles congregated together, each to its like; so that bodies were formed—definite and distinguishable aggregates, possessing such a preponderance of some one ingredient as to bring it into clear manifestation.152 But while the decomposition of the multifarious mass was thus carried far enough to produce distinct bodies, each of them specialised, knowable, and regular—still the separation can never be complete, nor can any one thing be “cut away as with a hatchet” from the rest. Each thing, great or small, must always contain in itself a proportion or trace, latent if not manifest, of everything else.153 Nothing except mind can be thoroughly pure and unmixed.

Nothing (except Νοῦς) can be entirely pure or unmixed, but other things may be comparatively pure. Flesh, Bone, &c. are purer than Air or Earth.

Nevertheless other things approximate in different degrees to purity, according as they possess a more or less decided preponderance of some few ingredients over the remaining multitude. Thus flesh, bone, and other similar portions of the animal organism, were (according to Anaxagoras) more nearly pure (with one constituent more thoroughly preponderant and all other coexistent natures more thoroughly subordinate and latent) than the four Empedoklean elements, Air, Fire, Earth, &c.; which were compounds wherein many of the numerous ingredients present were equally effective, so that the manifestations were more confused and complicated. In this way the four Empedoklean elements formed a vast seed-magazine, out of which many distinct developments might take place, of ingredients all pre-existing within it. Air and Fire appeared to generate many new products, while flesh and bone did not.154 Amidst all these changes, however, the infinite total mass remained the same, neither increased nor diminished.155

Theory of Anaxagoras compared with that of Empedokles.

In comparing the theory of Anaxagoras with that of Empedokles, we perceive that both of them denied not only the generation of new matter out of nothing (in which denial all the ancient physical philosophers concurred), but also the transformation of one form of matter into others, which had been affirmed by Thales and others. Both of them laid down as a basis the existence of matter in a variety of primordial forms. They maintained that what others called generation or transformation, was only a combination or separation of these pre-existing materials, in great diversity of ratios. Of such primordial forms of matter Empedokles recognised only four, the so-called Elements; each simple and radically distinct from the others, and capable of existing apart from them, though capable also of being combined with them. Anaxagoras recognised primordial forms of matter in indefinite number, with an infinite or indefinite stock of particles of each; but no one form of matter (except Nous) capable of being entirely severed from the remainder. In the constitution of every individual body in nature, particles of all the different forms were combined; but some one or a few forms were preponderant and manifest, all the others overlaid and latent. Herein consisted the difference between one body and another. The Homœomeric body was one in which a confluence of like particles had taken place so numerous and powerful, as to submerge all the coexistent particles of other sorts. The majority thus passed for the whole, the various minorities not being allowed to manifest themselves, yet not for that reason ceasing to exist: a type of human society as usually constituted, wherein some one vein of sentiment, ethical, æsthetical, religious, political, &c., acquires such omnipotence as to impose silence on dissentients, who are supposed not to exist because they cannot proclaim themselves without ruin.

Suggested partly by the phenomena of animal nutrition.

The hypothesis of multifarious forms of matter, latent yet still real and recoverable, appears to have been suggested to Anaxagoras mainly by the phenomena of animal nutrition.156 The bread and meat on which we feed nourishes all the different parts of our body—blood, flesh, bones, ligaments, veins, trachea, hair, &c. The nutriment must contain in itself different matters homogeneous with all these tissues and organs; though we cannot see such matters, our reason tells us that they must be there. This physiological divination is interesting from its general approximation towards the results of modern analysis.

Chaos common to both Empedokles and Anaxagoras: moving agency, different in one from the other theory.

Both Empedokles and Anaxagoras begin their constructive process from a state of stagnation and confusion both tantamount to Chaos; which is not so much active discord (as Ovid paints it), as rest and nullity arising from the equilibrium of opposite forces. The chaos is in fact almost a reproduction of the Infinite of Anaximander.157 But Anaxagoras as well as Empedokles enlarged his hypothesis by introducing (what had not occurred or did not seem necessary to Anaximander) a special and separate agency for eliciting positive movement and development out of the negative and stationary Chaos. The Nous or Mind is the Agency selected for this purpose by Anaxagoras: Love and Enmity by Empedokles. Both the one and the other initiate the rotatory cosmical motion; upon which follows as well the partial disgregation of the chaotic mass, as the congregation of like particles of it towards each other.

Nous, or mind, postulated by Anaxagoras—how understood by later writers—how intended by Anaxagoras himself.

The Nous of Anaxagoras was understood by later writers as a God;158 but there is nothing in the fragments now remaining to justify the belief that the author himself conceived it in that manner—or that he proposed it (according to Aristotle’s expression159) as the cause of all that was good in the world, assigning other agencies as the causes of all evil. It is not characterised by him as a person—not so much as the Love and Enmity of Empedokles. It is not one but multitudinous, and all its separate manifestations are alike, differing only as greater or less. It is in fact identical with the soul, the vital principle, or vitality, belonging not only to all men and to all plants also.160 It is one substance, or form of matter among the rest, but thinner than all of them (thinner than even fire or air), and distinguished by the peculiar characteristic of being absolutely unmixed. It has moving power and knowledge, like the air of Diogenes the Apolloniate: it initiates movement; and it knows about all the things which either pass into or pass out of combination. It disposes or puts in order all things that were, are, or will be; but it effects this only by acting as a fermenting principle, to break up the huddled mass, and to initiate rotatory motion, at first only on a small scale, then gradually increasing. Rotation having once begun, and the mass having been as it were unpacked and liberated the component Homœomeries are represented as coming together by their own inherent attraction.161 The Anaxagorean Nous introduces order and symmetry into Nature, simply by stirring up rotatory motion in the inert mass, so as to release the Homœomeries from prison. It originates and maintains the great cosmical fact of rotatory motion; which variety of motion, from its perfect regularity and sameness, is declared by Plato also to be the one most consonant to Reason and Intelligence.162 Such rotation being once set on foot, the other phenomena of the universe are supposed to be determined by its influence, and by their own tendencies and properties besides: but there is no farther agency of Nous, which only knows these phenomena as and when they occur. Anaxagoras tried to explain them as well as he could; not by reference to final causes, nor by assuming good purposes of Nous which each combination was intended to answer—but by physical analogies, well or ill chosen, and especially by the working of the grand cosmical rotation.163

Plato and Aristotle blame Anaxagoras for deserting his own theory.

This we learn from Plato and Aristotle, who blame Anaxagoras for inconsistency in deserting his own hypothesis, and in invoking explanations from physical agencies, to the neglect of Nous and its supposed optimising purposes. But Anaxagoras, as far as we can judge by his remaining fragments, seems not to have committed any such inconsistency. He did not proclaim his Nous to be a powerful extra-cosmical Architect, like the Demiurgus of Plato—nor an intra-cosmical, immanent, undeliberating instinct (such as Aristotle calls Nature), tending towards the production and renewal of regular forms and conjunctions, yet operating along with other agencies which produced concomitants irregular, unpredictable, often even obstructive and monstrous. Anaxagoras appears to conceive his Nous as one among numerous other real agents in Nature, material like the rest, yet differing from the rest as being powerful, simple, and pure from all mixture,164 as being endued with universal cognizance, as being the earliest to act in point of time, and as furnishing the primary condition to the activity of the rest by setting on foot the cosmical rotation. The Homœomeries are coeternal with, if not anterior to, Nous. They have laws and properties of their own, which they follow, when once liberated, without waiting for the dictation of Nous. What they do is known by, but not ordered by, Nous.165 It is therefore no inconsistency in Anaxagoras that he assigns to mind one distinct and peculiar agency, but nothing more; and that when trying to explain the variety of phenomena he makes reference to other physical agencies, as the case seems to require.166

Astronomy and physics of Anaxagoras.

In describing the formation of the Kosmos, Anaxagoras supposed that, as a consequence of the rotation initiated by mind, the primitive chaos broke up. “The Dense, Wet, Cold, Dark, Heavy, came together into the place where now Earth is: Hot, Dry, Bare, Light, Bright, departed to the exterior region of the revolving Æther.”167 In such separation each followed its spontaneous and inherent tendency. Water was disengaged from air and clouds, earth from water: earth was still farther consolidated into stones by cold.168 Earth remained stationary in the centre, while fire and air were borne round it by the force and violence of the rotatory movement. The celestial bodies—Sun, Moon, and Stars—were solid bodies analogous to the earth, either caught originally in the whirl of the rotatory movement, or torn from the substance of the earth and carried away into the outer region of rotation.169 They were rendered hot and luminous by the fiery fluid in the rapid whirl of which they were hurried along. The Sun was a stone thus made red-hot, larger than Peloponnesus: the Moon was of earthy matter, nearer to the Earth, deriving its light from the Sun, and including not merely plains and mountains, but also cities and inhabitants.170 Of the planetary movements, apart from the diurnal rotation of the celestial sphere, Anaxagoras took no notice.171 He explained the periodical changes in the apparent course of the sun and moon by resistances which they encountered, the former from accumulated and condensed air, the latter from the cold.172 Like Anaximenes and Demokritus, Anaxagoras conceived the Earth as flat, round in the surface, and not deep, resting on and supported by the air beneath it. Originally (he thought) the earth was horizontal, with the axis of celestial rotation perpendicular, and the north pole at the zenith, so that this rotation was then lateral, like that of a dome or roof; it was moreover equable and unchanging with reference to every part of the plane of the earth’s upper surface, and distributed light and heat equally to every part. But after a certain time the Earth tilted over of its own accord to the south, thus lowering its southern half, raising the northern half, and causing the celestial rotation to appear oblique.173

His geology, meteorology, physiology.

Besides these doctrines respecting the great cosmical bodies, Anaxagoras gave explanations of many among the striking phenomena in geology and meteorology—the sea, rivers, earthquakes, hurricanes, hail, snow, &c.174 He treated also of animals and plants—their primary origin, and the manner of their propagation.175 He thought that animals were originally produced by the hot and moist earth; but that being once produced, the breeds were continued by propagation. The seeds of plants he supposed to have been originally contained in the air, from whence they fell down to the warm and moist earth, where they took root and sprung up.176 He believed that all plants, as well as all animals, had a certain measure of intelligence and sentiment, differing not in kind but only in degree from the intelligence and sentiment of men; whose superiority of intelligence was determined, to a great extent, by their possession of hands.177 He explained sensation by the action of unlike upon unlike (contrary to Empedokles, who referred it to the action of like upon like),178 applying this doctrine to the explanation of the five senses separately. But he pronounced the senses to be sadly obscure and insufficient as means of knowledge. Apparently, however, he did not discard their testimony, nor assume any other means of knowledge independent of it, but supposed a concomitant and controlling effect of intelligence as indispensable to compare and judge between the facts of sense when they appeared contradictory.179 On this point, however, it is difficult to make out his opinions.

The doctrines of Anaxagoras were regarded as offensive and impious.

Anaxagoras, residing at Athens and intimately connected with Perikles, incurred not only unpopularity, but even legal prosecution, by the tenor of his philosophical opinions, especially those on astronomy. To Greeks who believed in Helios and Selênê as not merely living beings but Deities, his declaration that the Sun was a luminous and fiery stone, and the Moon an earthy mass, appeared alike absurd and impious. Such was the judgment of Sokrates, Plato, and Xenophon, as well as of Aristophanes and the general Athenian public.180 Anaxagoras was threatened with indictment for blasphemy, so that Perikles was compelled to send him away from Athens.

That physical enquiries into the nature of things, and attempts to substitute scientific theories in place of the personal agency of the Gods, were repugnant to the religious feelings of the Greeks, has been already remarked.181 Yet most of the other contemporary philosophers must have been open to this reproach, not less than Anaxagoras; and we learn that the Apolloniate Diogenes left Athens from the same cause. If others escaped the like prosecution which fell upon Anaxagoras, we may probably ascribe this fact to the state of political party at Athens, and to the intimacy of the latter with Perikles. The numerous political enemies of that great man might fairly hope to discredit him in the public mind—at the very least to vex and embarrass him—by procuring the trial and condemnation of Anaxagoras. Against other philosophers, even when propounding doctrines not less obnoxious respecting the celestial bodies, there was not the same collateral motive to stimulate the aggressive hostility of individuals.

Diogenes of Apollonia recognises one primordial element.

Contemporary with Anaxagoras—yet somewhat younger, as far as we can judge, upon doubtful evidence—lived the philosopher Diogenes, a native of Apollonia in Krete. Of his life we know nothing except that he taught during some time at Athens, which city he was forced to quit on the same ground as Anaxagoras. Accusations of impiety were either brought or threatened against him:182 physical philosophy being offensive generally to the received religious sentiment, which was specially awakened and appealed to by the political opponents of Perikles.

Diogenes the Apolloniate, the latest in the series of Ionic philosophers or physiologists, adopted, with modifications and enlargements, the fundamental tenet of Anaximenes. There was but one primordial element—and that element was air. He laid it down as indisputable that all the different objects in this Kosmos must be at the bottom one and the same thing: unless this were the fact, they would not act upon each other, nor mix together, nor do good and harm to each other, as we see that they do. Plants would not grow out of the earth, nor would animals live and grow by nutrition, unless there existed as a basis this universal sameness of nature. No one thing therefore has a peculiar nature of its own: there is in all the same nature, but very changeable and diversified.183

Air was the primordial, universal element.

Now the fundamental substance, common to all, was air. Air was infinite, eternal, powerful; it was, besides, full of intelligence and knowledge. This latter property Diogenes proved by the succession of climatic and atmospheric phenomena of winter and summer, night and day, rain, wind, and fine weather. All these successions were disposed in the best possible manner by the air: which could not have laid out things in such regular order and measure, unless it had been endowed with intelligence. Moreover, air was the source of life, soul, and intelligence, to men and animals: who inhaled all these by respiration, and lost all of them as soon as they ceased to respire.184

Air possessed numerous and diverse properties; was eminently modifiable.

Air, life-giving and intelligent, existed everywhere, formed the essence of everything, comprehended and governed everything. Nothing in nature could be without it: yet at the same time all things in nature partook of it in a different manner.185 For it was distinguished by great diversity of properties and by many gradations of intelligence. It was hotter or colder—moister or drier—denser or rarer—more or less active and movable—exhibiting differences of colour and taste. All these diversities were found in objects, though all at the bottom were air. Reason and intelligence resided in the warm air. So also to all animals as well as to men, the common source of vitality, whereby they lived, saw, heard, and understood, was air; hotter than the atmosphere generally, though much colder than that near the sun.186 Nevertheless, in spite of this common characteristic, the air was in other respects so indefinitely modifiable, that animals were of all degrees of diversity, in form, habits, and intelligence. Men were doubtless more alike among themselves: yet no two of them could be found exactly alike, furnished with the same dose of aerial heat or vitality. All other things, animate and inanimate, were generated and perished, beginning from air and ending in air: which alone continued immortal and indestructible.187

Physiology of Diogenes—his description of the veins in the human body.

The intelligence of men and animals, very unequal in character and degree, was imbibed by respiration, the inspired air passing by means of the veins and along the blood into all parts of the body. Of the veins Diogenes gave a description remarkable for its minuteness of detail, in an age when philosophers dwelt almost exclusively in loose general analogies.188 He conceived the principal seat of intelligence in man to be in the thoracic cavity, or in the ventricle of the heart, where a quantity of air was accumulated ready for distribution.189 The warm and dry air concentrated round the brain, and reached by veins from the organs of sense, was the centre of sensation. Taste was explained by the soft and porous nature of the tongue, and by the number of veins communicating with it. The juices of sapid bodies were sucked up by it as by a sponge: the odorous stream of air penetrated from without through the nostrils: both were thus brought into conjunction with the sympathising cerebral air. To this air also the image impressed upon the eye was transmitted, thereby causing vision:190 while pulsations and vibrations of the air without, entering through the ears and impinging upon the same centre, generated the sensation of sound. If the veins connecting the eye with the brain were inflamed, no visual sensation could take place;191 moreover if our minds or attention were absorbed in other things, we were often altogether insensible to sensations either of sight or of sound: which proved that the central air within us was the real seat of sensation.192 Thought and intelligence, as well as sensation, was an attribute of the same central air within us, depending especially upon its purity, dryness, and heat, and impeded or deadened by moisture or cold. Both children and animals had less intelligence than men: because they had more moisture in their bodies, so that the veins were choked up, and the air could not get along them freely to all parts. Plants had no intelligence; having no apertures or ducts whereby the air could pervade their internal structure. Our sensations were pleasurable when there was much air mingled with the blood, so as to lighten the flow of it, and to carry it easily to all parts: they were painful when there was little air, and when the blood was torpid and thick.193

Kosmology and meteorology.

The structure of the Kosmos Diogenes supposed to have been effected by portions of the infinite air, taking upon them new qualities and undergoing various transformations. Some air, becoming cold, dense, and heavy, sunk down to the centre, and there remained stationary as earth and water: while the hotter, rarer, and lighter air ascended and formed the heavens, assuming through the intelligence included in it a rapid rotatory movement round the earth, and shaping itself into sun, moon, and stars, which were light and porous bodies like pumice stone. The heat of this celestial matter acted continually upon the earth and water beneath, so that the earth became comparatively drier, and the water was more and more drawn up as vapour, to serve for nourishment to the heavenly bodies. The stars also acted as breathing-holes to the Kosmos, supplying the heated celestial mass with fresh air from the infinite mass without.194 Like Anaxagoras, Diogenes conceived the figure of the earth as flat and round, like a drum; and the rotation of the heavens as lateral, with the axis perpendicular to the surface of the earth, and the north pole always at the zenith. This he supposed to have been the original arrangement; but after a certain time, the earth tilted over spontaneously towards the south—the northern half was elevated and the southern half depressed—so that the north pole was no longer at the zenith, and the axis of rotation of the heavens became apparently oblique.195 He thought, moreover, that the existing Kosmos was only of temporary duration; that it would perish and be succeeded by future analogous systems, generated from the same common substance of the infinite and indestructible air.196 Respecting animal generation—and to some extent respecting meteorological phenomena197—Diogenes also propounded several opinions, which are imperfectly known, but which appear to have resembled those of Anaxagoras.

Leukippus and Demokritus—Atomic theory.

Nearly contemporary with Anaxagoras and Empedokles, two other enquirers propounded a new physical theory very different from those already noticed—usually known under the name of the atomic theory. This Atomic theory, though originating with the Eleate Leukippus, obtained celebrity chiefly from his pupil Demokritus of Abdera, its expositor and improver. Demokritus (born seemingly in B.C. 460, and reported to have reached extreme old age) was nine years younger than Sokrates, thirty-three years older than Plato, and forty years younger than Anaxagoras.198 The age of Leukippus is not known, but he can hardly have been much younger than Anaxagoras.

Long life, varied travels, and numerous compositions of Demokritus.

Of Leukippus we know nothing: of Demokritus, very little—yet enough to exhibit a life, like that of Anaxagoras, consecrated to philosophical investigation, and neglectful not merely of politics, but even of inherited patrimony.199 His attention was chiefly turned towards the study of Nature, with conceptions less vague, and a more enlarged observation of facts, than any of his contemporaries had ever bestowed. He was enabled to boast that no one had surpassed him in extent of travelling over foreign lands, in intelligent research and converse with enlightened natives, or in following out the geometrical relations of lines.200 He spent several years in visiting Egypt, Asia Minor, and Persia. His writings were numerous, and on many different subjects, including ethics, as well as physics, astronomy, and anthropology. None of them have been preserved. But we read, even from critics like Dionysius of Halikarnassus and Cicero, that they were composed in an impressive and semi-poetical style, not unworthy to be mentioned in analogy with Plato; while in range and diversity of subjects they are hardly inferior to Aristotle.201

Relation between the theory of Demokritus and that of Parmenides.

The theory of Leukippus and Demokritus (we have no means of distinguishing the two) appears to have grown out the Eleatic theory.202 Parmenides the Eleate (as I have already stated) in distinguishing Ens, the self-existent, real, or absolute, on one side—from the phenomenal and relative on the other—conceived the former in such a way that its connection with the latter was dissolved. The real and absolute, according to him, was One, extended, enduring, continuous, unchangeable, immovable: the conception of Ens included these affirmations, and at the same time excluded peremptorily Non-Ens, or the contrary of Ens. Now the plural, unextended, transient, discontinuous, changeable, and moving, implied a mixture of Ens and Non-Ens, or a partial transition from one to the other. Hence (since Non-Ens was inadmissible) such plurality, &c., could not belong to the real or absolute (ultra-phenomenal), and could only be affirmed as phenomenal or relative. In the latter sense, Parmenides did affirm it, and even tried to explain it: he explained the phenomenal facts from phenomenal assumptions, apart from and independent of the absolute. While thus breaking down the bridge between the phenomenal on one side and the absolute on the other, he nevertheless recognised each in a sphere of its own.

Demokritean theory—Atoms—Plena and Vacua—Ens and Non-Ens.

This bridge the atomists undertook to re-establish. They admitted that Ens could not really change—that there could be no real generation, or destruction—no transformation of qualities—no transition of many into one, or of one into many. But they denied the unity and continuity and immobility of Ens: they affirmed that it was essentially discontinuous, plural, and moving. They distinguished the extended, which Parmenides had treated as an Unum continuum, into extension with body, and extension without body: into plenum and vacuum, matter and space. They conceived themselves to have thus found positive meanings both for Ens and Non-Ens. That which Parmenides called Non-Ens or nothing, was in their judgment the vacuum; not less self-existent than that which he called Something. They established their point by showing that Ens, thus interpreted, would become reconcilable to the phenomena of sense: which latter they assumed as their basis to start from. Assuming motion as a phenomenal fact, obvious and incontestable, they asserted that it could not even appear to be a fact, without supposing vacuum as well as body to be real: and the proof that both of them were real was, that only in this manner could sense and reason be reconciled. Farther, they proved the existence of a vacuum by appeal to direct physical observation, which showed that bodies were porous, compressible, and capable of receiving into themselves new matter in the way of nutrition. Instead of the Parmenidean Ens, one and continuous, we have a Demokritean Ens, essentially many and discontinuous: plena and vacua, spaces full and spaces empty, being infinitely intermingled.203 There existed atoms innumerable, each one in itself essentially a plenum, admitting no vacant space within it, and therefore indivisible as well as indestructible: but each severed from the rest by surrounding vacant space. The atom could undergo no change: but by means of the empty space around, it could freely move. Each atom was too small to be visible: yet all atoms were not equally small; there were fundamental differences between them in figure and magnitude: and they had no other qualities except figure and magnitude. As no atom could be divided into two, so no two atoms could merge into one. Yet though two or more atoms could not so merge together as to lose their real separate individuality, they might nevertheless come into such close approximation as to appear one, and to act on our senses as a phenomenal combination manifesting itself by new sensible properties.204

Primordial atoms differed only in magnitude, figure, position, and arrangement—they had no qualities, but their movements and combinations generated qualities.

The bridge, broken down by Parmenides, between the real and the phenomenal world, was thus in theory re-established. For the real world, as described by Demokritus, differed entirely from the sameness and barrenness of the Parmenidean Ens, and presented sufficient movement and variety to supply a basis of explanatory hypothesis, accommodated to more or less of the varieties in the phenomenal world. In respect of quality, indeed, all the atoms were alike, not less than all the vacua: such likeness was (according to Demokritus) the condition of their being able to act upon each other, or to combine as phenomenal aggregates.205 But in respect to quantity or magnitude as well as in respect to figure, they differed very greatly: moreover, besides all these diversities, the ordination and position of each atom with regard to the rest were variable in every way. As all objects of sense were atomic compounds, so, from such fundamental differences—partly in the constituent atoms themselves, partly in the manner of their arrangement when thrown into combination—arose all the diverse qualities and manifestations of the compounds. When atoms passed into new combination, then there was generation of a new substance: when they passed out of an old combination there was destruction: when the atoms remained the same, but were merely arranged anew in order and relative position, then the phenomenon was simply change. Hence all qualities and manifestations of such compounds were not original, but derivative: they had no “nature of their own,” or law peculiar to them, but followed from the atomic composition of the body to which they belonged. They were not real and absolute, like the magnitude and figure of the constituent atoms, but phenomenal and relative—i.e. they were powers of acting upon correlative organs of sentient beings, and nullities in the absence of such organs.206 Such were the colour, sonorousness, taste, smell, heat, cold, &c., of the bodies around us: they were relative, implying correlative percipients. Moreover they were not merely relative, but perpetually fluctuating; since the compounds were frequently changing either in arrangement or in diversity of atoms, and every such atomic change, even to a small extent, caused it to work differently upon our organs.207

Combinations of atoms—generating different qualities in the compounds.

Among the various properties of bodies, however, there were two which Demokritus recognised as not merely relative to the observer, but also as absolute and belonging to the body in itself. These were weight and hardness—primary qualities (to use the phraseology of Locke and Reid), as contrasted with the secondary qualities of colour, taste, and the like. Weight, or tendency downward, belonged (according to Demokritus) to each individual atom separately, in proportion to its magnitude: the specific gravity of all atoms was supposed to be equal. In compound bodies one body was heavier than another, in proportion as its bulk was more filled with atoms and less with vacant space.208 The hardness and softness of bodies Demokritus explained by the peculiar size and peculiar junction of their component atoms. Thus, comparing lead with iron, the former is heavier and softer, the latter is lighter and harder. Bulk for bulk, the lead contained a larger proportion of solid, and a smaller proportion of interstices, than the iron: hence it was heavier. But its structure was equable throughout; it had a greater multitude of minute atoms diffused through its bulk, equally close to and coherent with each other on every side, but not more close and coherent on one side than on another. The structure of the iron, on the contrary, was unequal and irregular, including larger spaces of vacuum in one part, and closer approach of its atoms in other parts: moreover these atoms were in themselves larger, hence there was a greater force of cohesion between them on one particular side, rendering the whole mass harder and more unyielding than the lead.209

All atoms essentially separate from each other.

We thus see that Demokritus, though he supposed single atoms to be all of the same specific gravity, yet recognised a different specific gravity in the various compounds of atoms or material masses. It is to be remembered that, when we speak of contact or combination of atoms, this is not to be understood literally and absolutely, but only in a phenomenal and relative sense; as an approximation, more or less close, but always sufficiently close to form an atomic combination which our senses apprehended as one object. Still every atom was essentially separate from every other, and surrounded by a margin of vacant space: no two atoms could merge into one, any more than one atom could be divided into two.

All properties of objects, except weight and hardness, were phenomenal and relative to the observer. Sensation could give no knowledge of the real and absolute.

Pursuant to this theory, Demokritus proclaimed that all the properties of objects, except weight, hardness, and softness, were not inherent in the objects themselves, but simply phenomenal and relative to the observer—“modifications of our sensibility”. Colour, taste, smell, sweet and bitter, hot and cold, &c., were of this description. In respect to all of them, man differed from other animals, one man from another, and even the same man from himself at different times and ages. There was no sameness of impression, no unanimity or constancy of judgment, because there was no real or objective “nature” corresponding to the impression. From none of these senses could we at all learn what the external thing was in itself. “Sweet and bitter, hot and cold (he said) are by law or convention (i.e. these names designate the impressions of most men on most occasions, taking no account of dissentients): what really exists is, atoms and vacuum. The sensible objects which we suppose and believe to exist do not exist in truth; there exist only atoms and vacuum. We know nothing really and truly about an object, either what it is or what it is not: our opinions depend upon influences from without, upon the position of our body, upon the contact and resistances of external objects. There are two phases of knowledge, the obscure and the genuine. To the obscure belong all our senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The genuine is distinct from these. When the obscure phase fails, when we can no longer see, nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch—from minuteness and subtlety of particles—then the genuine phase, or reason and intelligence, comes into operation.”210

Reason alone gave true and real knowledge, but very little of it was attainable.

True knowledge (in the opinion of Demokritus) was hardly at all attainable; but in so far as it could be attained, we must seek it, not merely through the obscure and insufficient avenues of sense, but by reason or intelligence penetrating to the ultimatum of corpuscular structure, farther than sense could go. His atoms were not pure Abstracta (like Plato’s Ideas and geometrical plane figures, and Aristotle’s materia prima), but concrete bodies, each with its own211 magnitude, figure, and movement; too small to be seen or felt by us, yet not too small to be seen or felt by beings endowed with finer sensitive power. They were abstractions mainly in so far as all other qualities were supposed absent. Demokritus professed to show how the movements, approximations, and collisions of these atoms, brought them into such combinations as to form the existing Kosmos; and not that system alone, but also many other cosmical systems, independent of and different from each other, which he supposed to exist.

No separate force required to set the atoms in motion—they moved by an inherent force of their own. Like atoms naturally tend towards like. Rotatory motion, the capital fact of the Kosmos.

How this was done we cannot clearly make out, not having before us the original treatise of Demokritus, called the Great Diakosmos. It is certain, however, that he did not invoke any separate agency to set the atoms in motion—such as the Love and Discord of Empedokles—the Nous or Intelligence of Anaxagoras. Demokritus supposed that the atoms moved by an inherent force of their own: that this motion was as much without beginning as the atoms themselves:212 that eternal motion was no less natural, no more required any special cause to account for it, than eternal rest. “Such is the course of nature—such is and always has been the fact,” was his ultimatum.213 He farther maintained that all the motions of the atoms were necessary—that is, that they followed each other in a determinate order, each depending upon some one or more antecedents, according to fixed laws, which he could not explain.214 Fixed laws, known or unknown, he recognised always. Fortune or chance was only a fiction imagined by men to cover their own want of knowledge and foresight.215 Demokritus seems to have supposed that like atoms had a spontaneous tendency towards like; that all, when uncombined, tended naturally downwards, yet with unequal force, owing to their different size, and weight proportional to size; that this unequal force brought them into impact and collision one with another, out of which was generated a rotatory motion, gradually extending itself, and comprehending a larger and larger number of them, up to a certain point, when an exterior membrane or shell was formed around them.216 This rotatory motion was the capital fact which both constituted the Kosmos, and maintained the severance of its central and peripheral masses—Earth and Water in the centre—Air, Fire, and the celestial bodies, near the circumference. Demokritus, Anaxagoras, and Empedokles, imagined different preliminary hypotheses to get at the fact of rotation; but all employed the fact, when arrived at, as a basis from which to deduce the formation of the various cosmical bodies and their known manifestations.217 In respect to these bodies—Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, &c. — Demokritus seems to have held several opinions like those of Anaxagoras. Both of them conceived the Sun as a redhot mass, and the Earth as a flat surface above and below, round horizontally like a drum, stationary in the centre of the revolving celestial bodies, and supported by the resistance of air beneath.218

Researches of Demokritus on zoology and animal generation.

Among the researches of Demokritus there were some relating to animal generation, and zoology; but we cannot find that his opinions on these subjects were in peculiar connection with his atomic theory.219 Nor do we know how far he carried out that theory into detail by tracing the various phenomenal manifestations to their basis in atomic reality, and by showing what particular magnitude, figure, and arrangement of atoms belonged to each. It was only in some special cases that he thus connected determinate atoms with compounds of determinate quality; for example, in regard to the four Empedoklean elements. The atoms constituting heat or fire he affirmed to be small and globular, the most mobile, rapid, and penetrating of all; those constituting air, water, and earth, were an assemblage of all varieties of figures, but differed from each other in magnitude—the atoms of air being apparently smallest, those of earth largest.220

His account of mind—he identified it with heat or fire diffused throughout animals, plants, and nature generally. Mental particles intermingled throughout all the frame with corporeal particles.

In regard to mind or soul generally, he identified it with heat or fire, conceiving it to consist in the same very small, globular, rapidly movable atoms, penetrating everywhere: which he illustrated by comparison with the fine dust seen in sunbeams when shining through a doorway. That these were the constituent atoms of mind, he proved by the fact, that its first and most essential property was to move the body, and to be itself moved.221 Mind, soul, the vital principle, fire, heat, &c., were, in the opinion of Demokritus, substantially identical—not confined to man or even to animals, but diffused, in unequal proportions, throughout plants, the air, and nature generally. Sensation, thought, knowledge, were all motions of mind or of these restless mental particles, which Demokritus supposed to be distributed over every part of the living body, mingling and alternating with the corporeal particles.222 It was the essential condition of life, that the mental particles should be maintained in proper number and distribution throughout the body; but by their subtle nature they were constantly tending to escape, being squeezed or thrust out at all apertures by the pressure of air on all the external parts. Such tendency was counteracted by the process of respiration, whereby mental or vital particles, being abundantly distributed throughout the air, were inhaled along with air, and formed an inward current which either prevented the escape, or compensated the loss, of those which were tending outwards. When breathing ceased, such inward current being no longer kept up, the vital particles in the interior were speedily forced out, and death ensued.223

Different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body.

Though Demokritus conceived those mental particles as distributed all over the body, yet he recognised different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body. Besides the special organs of sense, he considered intelligence as attached to the brain, passion to the heart, and appetite to the liver:224 the same tripartite division afterwards adopted by Plato. He gave an explanation of perception or sensation in its different varieties, as well as of intelligence or thought. Sensation and thought were, in his opinion, alike material, and alike mental. Both were affections of the same peculiar particles, vital or mental, within us: both were changes operated in these particles by effluvia or images from without; nevertheless the one change was different from the other.225

In regard to sensations, Demokritus said little about those of touch, smell, and hearing; but he entered at some length into those of sight and taste.226

Explanation of different sensations and perceptions. Colours.

Proceeding upon his hypothesis of atoms and vacua as the only objective existences, he tried to show what particular modifications of atoms, in figure, size, and position, produced upon the sentient the impressions of different colours. He recognised four fundamental or simple colours—white, black, red, and green—of which all other colours were mixtures and combinations.227 White colour (he said) was caused by smooth surfaces, which presented straight pores and a transparent structure, such as the interior surface of shells: where these smooth substances were brittle or friable, this arose from the constituent atoms being at once spherical and loosely connected together, whereby they presented the clearest passage through their pores, the least amount of shadow, and the purest white colour. From substances thus constituted, the effluvia flowed out easily, and passed through the intermediate air without becoming entangled or confused with it. Black colour was caused by rough, irregular, unequal substances, which had their pores crooked and obstructed, casting much shadow, and sending forth slowly their effluvia, which became hampered and entangled with the intervening medium of air. Red colour arose from the effluvia of spherical atoms, like those of fire, though of larger size: the connection between red colour and fire was proved by the fact that heated substances, man as well as the metals, became red. Green was produced by atoms of large size and wide vacua, not restricted to any determinate shape, but arranged in peculiar order and position. These four were given by Demokritus as the simple colours. But he recognised an infinite diversity of compound colours, arising from mixture of them in different proportions, several of which he explained—gold-colour, purple, blue, violet, leek-green, nut-brown, &c.228

Vision caused by the outflow of effluvia or images from objects. Hearing.

Besides thus setting forth those varieties of atoms and atomic motions which produced corresponding varieties of colour, Demokritus also brought to view the intermediate stages whereby they realised the act of vision. All objects, compounds of the atoms, gave out effluvia or images resembling themselves. These effluvia stamped their impression, first upon the intervening air, next upon the eye beyond: which, being covered by a fine membrane, and consisting partly of water, partly of vacuum, was well calculated to admit the image. Such an image, the like of which any one might plainly see by looking into another person’s eye, was the immediate cause of vision.229 The air, however, was no way necessary as an intervening medium, but rather obstructive: the image proceeding from the object would be more clearly impressed upon the eye through a vacuum: if the air did not exist, vision would be so distinct, even at the farthest distance, that an object not larger than an ant might be seen in the heavens.230 Demokritus believed that the visual image, after having been impressed upon the eye, was distributed or multiplied over the remaining body.231 In like manner, he believed that, in hearing, the condensed air carrying the sound entered with some violence through the ears, passed through the veins to the brain, and was from thence dispersed over the body.232 Both sight and hearing were thus not simply acts of the organ of sense, but concurrent operations of the entire frame: over all which (as has been already stated) the mental or vital particles were assumed to be disseminated.

Differences of taste—how explained.

Farther, Demokritus conceived that the diversities of taste were generated by corresponding diversities of atoms, or compounds of atoms, of particular figure, magnitude and position. Acid taste was caused by atoms rough, angular, twisted, small, and subtle, which forced their way through all the body, produced large interior vacant spaces, and thereby generated great heat: for heat was always proportional to the amount of vacuum within.233 Sweet taste was produced by spherical atoms of considerable bulk, which slid gently along and diffused themselves equably over the body, modifying and softening the atoms of an opposite character. Astringent taste was caused by large atoms with many angles, which got into the vessels, obstructing the movement of fluids both in the veins and intestines. Salt taste was produced by large atoms, much entangled with each other, and irregular. In like manner Demokritus assigned to other tastes particular varieties of generating atoms: adding, however, that in every actual substance, atoms of different figures were intermingled, so that the effect of each on the whole was only realised in the ratio of the preponderating figure.234 Lastly, the working of all atoms, in the way of taste, was greatly modified by the particular system upon which they were brought to act: effects totally opposite being sometimes produced by like atoms upon different individuals.235

Thought or Intelligence—was produced by influx of atoms from without.

As sensation, so also thought or intelligence, was produced by the working of atoms from without. But in what manner the different figures and magnitudes of atoms were understood to act, in producing diverse modifications of thought, we do not find explained. It was, however, requisite that there should be a symmetry, or correspondence of condition between the thinking mind within and the inflowing atoms from without, in order that these latter might work upon a man properly: if he were too hot, or too cold, his mind went astray.236 Though Demokritus identified the mental or vital particles with the spherical atoms constituting heat or fire, he nevertheless seems to have held that these particles might be in excess as well as in deficiency, and that they required, as a condition of sound mind, to be diluted or attempered with others. The soundest mind, however, did not work by itself or spontaneously, but was put in action by atoms or effluvia from without: this was true of the intellectual mind, not less than of the sensational mind. There was an objective something without, corresponding to and generating every different thought—just as there was an objective something corresponding to every different sensation. But first, the object of sensation was an atomic compound having some appreciable bulk, while that of thought might be separate atoms or vacua so minute as to be invisible and intangible. Next, the object of sensation did not reveal itself as it was in its own nature, but merely produced changes in the percipient, and different changes in different percipients (except as to heavy and light, hard and soft, which were not simply modifications of our sensibility, but were also primary qualities inherent in the objects themselves237): while the object of thought, though it worked a change in the thinking subject, yet also revealed itself as it was, and worked alike upon all.

Sensation, obscure knowledge relative to the sentient; Thought, genuine knowledge—absolute, or object per se.

Hence Demokritus termed sensation, obscure knowledge—thought, genuine knowledge.238 It was only by thought (reason, intelligence) that the fundamental realities of nature, atoms and vacua, could be apprehended: even by thought, however, only imperfectly, since there was always more or less of subjective movements and conditions, which partially clouded the pure objective apprehension—and since the atoms themselves were in perpetual movement, as well as inseparably mingled one with another. Under such obstructions, Demokritus proclaimed that no clear or certain knowledge was attainable: that the sensible objects, which men believed to be absolute realities, were only phenomenal and relative to us—while the atoms and vacua, the true existences or things in themselves, could scarce ever be known as they were:239 that truth was hidden in an abyss, and out of our reach.

Idola or images were thrown off from objects, which determined the tone of thoughts, feelings, dreams, divinations, &c.

As Demokritus supposed both sensations and thoughts to be determined by effluvia from without, so he assumed a similar cause to account for beliefs, comfortable or uncomfortable dispositions, fancies, dreams, presentiments, &c. He supposed that the air contained many effluences, spectres, images, cast off from persons and substances in nature—sometimes even from outlying very distant objects which lay beyond the bounds of the Kosmos. Of these images, impregnated with the properties, bodily and mental, of the objects from whence they came, some were beneficent, others mischievous: they penetrated into the human body through the pores and spread their influence all through the system.240 Those thrown off by jealous and vindictive men were especially hurtful,241 as they inflicted suffering corresponding to the tempers of those with whom they originated. Trains of thought and feeling were thus excited in men’s minds; in sleep,242 dreams, divinations, prophetic warnings, and threats, were communicated: sometimes, pestilence and other misfortunes were thus begun. Demokritus believed that men’s happiness depended much upon the nature and character of the images which might approach them, expressing an anxious wish that he might himself meet with such as were propitious.243 It was from grand and terrific images of this nature, that he supposed the idea and belief of the Gods to have arisen: a supposition countenanced by the numerous tales, respecting appearances of the Gods both to dreaming and to waking men, current among the poets and in the familiar talk of Greece.

Universality of Demokritus—his ethical views.

Among the lost treasures of Hellenic intellect, there are few which are more to be regretted than the works of Demokritus. Little is known of them except the titles: but these are instructive as well as multifarious. The number of different subjects which they embrace is astonishing. Besides his atomic theory, and its application to cosmogony and physics, whereby he is chiefly known, and from whence his title of physicus was derived—we find mention of works on geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, optics, geography or geology, zoology, botany, medicine, music, and poetry, grammar, history, ethics, &c.244 In such universality he is the predecessor, perhaps the model, of Aristotle. It is not likely that this wide range of subjects should have been handled in a spirit of empty generality, without facts or particulars: for we know that his life was long, his curiosity insatiable, and his personal travel and observation greater than that of any contemporary. We know too that he entered more or less upon the field of dialectics, discussing those questions of evidence which became so rife in the Platonic age. He criticised, and is said to have combated, the doctrine laid down by Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things”. It would have been interesting to know from what point of view he approached it: but we learn only the fact that he criticised it adversely.245 The numerous treatises of Demokritus, together with the proportion of them which relate to ethical and social subjects, rank him with the philosophers of the Platonic and Aristotelian age. His Summum Bonum, as far as we can make out, appears to have been the maintenance of mental serenity and contentment: in which view he recommended a life of tranquil contemplation, apart from money-making, or ambition, or the exciting pleasures of life.246

1. Diogen. Laert. ix. 1. Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· (οὐ φύει, ap. Proclum in Platon. Timæ. p. 31 F., p. 72, ed. Schneider), Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὐτίς τε Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον· τόν θ’ Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον εἶναι ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι, καὶ Ἀρχίλοχον ὁμοίως.

2. Aristophanes, Nubes, 368, Ἀλλὰ τίς ὕει; Herodot. vii. 129.

3. Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 8, p. 989, a. 10. Φησὶ δέ καὶ Ἡσίοδος τὴν γῆν πρώτην γενέσθαι τῶν σωμάτων· οὕτως ἀρχαίαν καὶ δημοτικὴν συμβέβηκεν εἶναι τὴν ὑπόληψιν.

Again in the beginning of the second book of the Meteorologica, Aristotle contrasts the ancient and primitive theology with the “human wisdom” which grew up subsequently: Οἱ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες περὶ τὰς θεολογίας—οἱ σοφώτεροι τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην σοφίαν (Meteor, ii. i. p. 353, a.)

4. Xenophon, Memor. iv. 7, 5; i. 1, 11–15. Plato, Apolog. p. 26 E.

5. Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23. Οὐ γὰρ ἠνειχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον.

6. Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 3, p. 983, b. 21. De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 294, a. 29. Θαλῆς, ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας, &c. Seneca, Natural. Quæst. vi. 6.

Pherekydes, Epimenides, &c., were contemporary with the earliest Ionic philosophers (Brandis, Handbuch der Gesch. der Gr.-Röm. Phil., s. 23).

According to Plutarch (Aquæ et Ignis Comparatio, p. 955, init.), most persons believed that Hesiod, by the word Chaos, meant Water. Zeno the Stoic adopted this interpretation (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 498). On the other hand, Bacchylides the poet, and after him Zenodotus, called Air by the name Chaos (Schol. Hesiod. Theogon. p. 392, Gaisf.). Hermann considers that the Hesiodic Chaos means empty space (see note, Brandis, Handb. d. Gesch. d. Gr.-Röm. Phil., vol. i., p. 71).

7. See two passages in Aristotle De Animâ, i. 2, and i. 5.

8. Cicero says (De Naturâ Deorum, i. 10), “Thales—aquam dixit esse initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem, quæ ex aquâ cuncta fingeret.” That the latter half of this Ciceronian statement, respecting the doctrines of Thales, is at least unfounded, and probably erroneous, is recognised by Preller, Brandis, and Zeller. Preller, Histor. Philos. Græc. ex Fontium Locis Contexta, sect. 15; Brandis, Handbuch der Gr.-R. Philos. sect. 31, p. 118; Zeller, Die Philos. der Griechen, vol. i., p. 151, ed. 2.

It is stated by Herodotus that Thales foretold the year of the memorable solar eclipse which happened during the battle between the Medes and the Lydians (Herod. i. 74). This eclipse seems to have occurred in B.C. 585, according to the best recent astronomical enquiries by Professor Airy.

9. See Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, vol. i. p. 157, seq., ed. 2nd.

Anaximander conceived τὸ ἀπειρον as infinite matter; the Pythagoreans and Plato conceived it as a distinct nature by itself—as a subject, not as a predicate (Aristotel. Physic. iii. 4, p. 203, a. 2).

About these fundamental contraries, Aristotle says (Physic. i. 4, init.): οἱ δ’ ἐκ του ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ Ἀναξίμανδρός φησι. Which Simplikius explains, ἐναντιότητές εἰσι, θερμὸν, ψυχρὸν, ξηρὸν, ὑγρὸν, καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι, &c.

Compare also Schleiermacher, “Ueber Anaximandros,” in his Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii. p. 178, seq. Deutinger (Gesch. der Philos. vol. i. p. 165, Regensb. 1852) maintains that this ἔκρισις of contraries is at variance with the hypothesis of Anaximander, and has been erroneously ascribed to him. But the testimony is sufficiently good to outweigh this suspicion.

10. Anaximander spoke of his ἄπειρον as ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀνώλεθρον (Aristotel. Physic. iii. 4, 7, p. 203, b. 15).

11. Simplikius ad Aristotel. Physic. fol. 6 a. apud Preller, Histor. Philos. Græco-Rom. § 57, ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταὐτὰ γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ τίσιν καὶ δίκην ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν. Simplikius remarks upon the poetical character of this phraseology, ποιητικωτέροις ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων.

12. Origen. Philosophumen. p. 11, ed. Miller; Plutarch ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, xv. 23–46-47; Stobæus Eclog. i. p. 510. Anaximander supposed that eclipses of the sun and moon were caused by the occasional closing of these apertures (Euseb. xv. 50–61). The part of the sun visible to us was, in his opinion, not smaller than the earth, and of the purest fire (Diog. Laert. ii. 1).

Eudêmus, in his history of astronomy, mentioned Anaximander as the first who had discussed the magnitudes and distances of the celestial bodies (Simplikius ad Aristot. De Cœlo, ap. Schol. Brand, p. 497, a. 12).

13. Aristotel. Meteorol. ii. 2, p. 355, a. 21, which is referred by Alexander of Aphrodisias to Anaximander; also De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 295, b. 12.

A doctrine somewhat like it is ascribed even to Thales. See Alexander’s Commentary on Aristotel. Metaphys. i. p. 983, b. 17.

The reason here assigned by Anaximander why the Earth remained still, is the earliest example in Greek philosophy of that fallacy called the principle of the Sufficient Reason, so well analysed and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, book v., ch. 3, sect. 5.

The remarks which Aristotle himself makes upon it are also very interesting, when he cites the opinion of Anaximander. Compare Plato, Phædon, p. 109, c. 132, with the citations in Wyttenbach’s note.

14. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. v. 19.

15. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 3; Seneca, Quæst. Nat. ii. 18–19.

16. Strabo, i. p. 7. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 1) states that Anaximander affirmed the figure of the earth to be spherical; and Dr. Whewell, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, follows his statement. But Schleiermacher (Ueber Anaximandros, vol. ii. p. 204 of his Sämmtliche Werke) and Gruppe (Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, p. 38) contest this assertion, and prefer that of Plutarch (ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, Placit. Philos. iii. 10), which I have adopted in the text. It is to be remembered that Diogenes himself, in another place (ix. 3, 21), affirms Parmenides to have been the first who propounded the spherical figure of the earth. See the facts upon this subject collected and discussed in the instructive dissertation of L. Oettinger, Die Vorstellungen der Griechen und Römer ueber die Erde als Himmelskörper, p. 38; Freiburg, 1850.

17. Origen. Philosophumen. c. 7; Simplikius in Aristot. Physic. f. 32; Brandis, Handb. d. Gesch. d. Gr.-R. Phil. p. 144.

Cicero, Academic. ii. 37, 118. “Anaximenes infinitum aera, sed ea, quæ ex eo orirentur, definita.”

The comic poet Philemon introduced in one of his dramas, of which a short fragment is preserved (Frag. 2, Meineke, p. 840) the omnipresent and omniscient Air, to deliver the prologue:

—— οὑτός εἰμ’ ἐγὼ

Ἀήρ, ὃν ἄν τις ὀνομάσειε καὶ Δία.

ἐγὼ δ’, ὃ θεοῦ’ στιν ἔργον, εἰμὶ πανταχοῦ—

πάντ’ ἐξ ἀνάγκης οἶδα, πανταχοῦ παρών.

18. Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, p. 917; Plutarch, ap. Euseb. P. E. i. 8.

19. Plutarch, Placit. Philosophor, i. 3, p. 878.

20. Aristotel. De Cœlo, ii. 13; Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. iii. 10, p. 895.

21. Origen. Philosophum. p. 12, ed. Miller: ὡσπερεὶ περὶ τὴν ἡμετέραν κεφαλὴν στρέφεται τὸ πιλίον.

22. Herodot. ii. 81; Isokrates, Busirid. Encom. s. 28.

23. Polybius, ii. 39; Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. 54, seq.

24. Diogen. Laert. viii. 7–15-78–85.

Some passages of Aristotle, however, indicate divergences of doctrine among the Pythagoreans themselves (Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, a. 22). He probably speaks of the Pythagoreans of his own time when dialectical discussion had modified the original orthodoxy of the order. Compare Gruppe, Ueber die Fragmente des Archytas, cap. 5, p. 61–63. About the gradual development of the Pythagorean doctrine, see Brandis, Handbuch der Gr.-R. Philos. s. 74, 75.

25. Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 985, b. 27. Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς, ἐνδόκουν θεωρεῖν ὁμοιώματα πολλὰ τοῖς οὖσι καὶ γιγνομένοις, μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν πυρὶ καὶ γῇ καὶ ὕδατι, &c. Cf. N. 3, p. 1090, a. 21.

26. Aristotel. Metaph. A. 9, p. 990, a. 16. Διὸ περὶ πυρὸς ἢ γῆς ἢ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν τοιούτων σωμάτων οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν εἰρήκασιν, &c. (the Pythagoreans); also N. 3.

27. Physic. iii. 4, p. 203, a. 6. Οὐ γὰρ χωριστὸν ποιοῦσι (the Pythagoreans) τὸν ἀριθμόν, &c. Metaphys. M. 6, p. 1080, b. 19: τὰς μονάδας ὑπολαμβάνουσιν ἔχειν μέγεθος. M. 8, p. 1083, b. 17: ἐκεῖνοι (the Pythagoreans) τὸν ἀριθμὸν τὰ ὄντα λέγουσιν· τὰ γοῦν θεωρήματα προσάπτουσι τοῖς σώμασιν ὡς ἐξ ἐκείνων ὄντων τῶν ἀριθμῶν.

28. An analogous application of this principle (Number as the fundamental substance and universal primary agent) may be seen in an eminent physical philosopher of the nineteenth century, Oken’s Elements of Physio-Philosophy, translated by Tulk. Aphorism 57:—“While numbers in a mathematical sense are positions and negations of nothing, in the philosophical sense they are positions and negations of the Eternal. Every thing which is real, posited, finite, has become this, out of numbers; or more strictly speaking, every Real is absolutely nothing else than a number. This must be the sense entertained of numbers in the Pythagorean doctrine—namely, that every thing, or the whole universe, had arisen from numbers. This is not to be taken in a merely quantitative sense, as it has hitherto been erroneously; but in an intrinsic sense, as implying that all things are numbers themselves, or the acts of the Eternal. The essence in numbers is nought else than the Eternal. The Eternal only is or exists, and nothing else is when a number exists. There is therefore nothing real but the Eternal itself; for every Real, or every thing that is, is only a number and only exists by virtue of a number.”

Ibid., Aphorism 105–107:—“Arithmetic is the science of the second idea, or that of time or motion, or life. It is therefore the first science. Mathematics not only begin with it, but creation also, with the becoming of time and of life. Arithmetic is, accordingly, the truly absolute or divine science; and therefore every thing in it is also directly certain, because every thing in it resembles the Divine. Theology is arithmetic personified.”—“A natural thing is nothing but a self-moving number. An organic or living thing is a number moving itself out of itself or spontaneously: an inorganic thing, however, is a number moved by another thing: now as this other thing is also a real number, so then is every inorganic thing a number moved by another number, and so on ad infinitum. The movements in nature are only movements of numbers by numbers: even as arithmetical computation is none other than a movement of numbers by numbers; but with this difference—that in the latter, this operates in an ideal manner, in the former after a real.”

29. Philolaus, ed. Boeckh, p. 139. seqq.

Θεωρεῖν δεῖ τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰν ἐσσίαν (οὐσίαν) τῶ ἀριθμῶ καττὰν δύναμιν, ἅτις ἐντὶ ἐν τᾷ δεκάδι· μεγάλα γὰρ καὶ παντελὴς καὶ παντοεργὸς καὶ θείω καὶ οὐρανίω βίω καὶ ἀνθρωπίνω ἀρχὰ καὶ ἁγεμὼν … ἄνευ δὲ ταύτας πάντα ἄπειρα καὶ ἄδηλα καὶ ἀφανῆ· νομικὰ γὰρ ἁ φύσις τῶ ἀριθμῶ καὶ ἁγεμονικὰ καὶ διδασκαλικὰ τῶ ἀπορουμένω παντὸς καὶ ἀγνοουμένω παντί. Compare the Fr. p. 58, of the same work.

According to Plato, as well as the Pythagoreans, number extended to ten, and not higher: all above ten were multiples and increments of ten. (Aristot. Physic. iii. 6, p. 203, b. 30).

30. See the instructive explanations of Boeckh, in his work on the Fragments of Philolaus, p. 54 seq.

31. Philolaus, Fr., p. 62, Boeckh. — Diogen. L. viii. 7, 85.

By ἁρμονία, Philolaus meant the musical octave: and his work included many explanations and comparisons respecting the intervals of the musical scale. (Boeckh, p. 65 seq.)

32. Aristotel. De Cœlo, i. 1, p. 268, a. 10. καθάπερ γάρ φασιν οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι, τὸ πᾶν καὶ τὰ πάντα τοῖς τρίσιν ὥρισται· τελευτὴ γὰρ καὶ μέσον καὶ ἀρχὴ τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἔχει τὸν τοῦ παντὸς, ταῦτα δὲ τὸν τῆς τριάδος. Διὸ παρὰ τῆς φύσεως εἰληφότες ὥσπερ νόμους ἐκείνης, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἁγιστείας χρώμεθα τῶν θεῶν τῷ ἀριθμῷ τούτῳ (i.e. three). It is remarkable that Aristotle here adopts and sanctions, in regard to the number Three, the mystic and fanciful attributes ascribed by the Pythagoreans.

33. Strümpell, Geschichte der theoretischen Philosophie der Griechen, s. 78. Brandis, Handbuch der Gr.-Röm. Phil., sect. 80, p. 467 seq.

The number Five also signified marriage, because it was a junction of the first masculine number Three with the first feminine Two. Seven signified also καιρὸς or Right Season. See Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 985, b. 26, and M. 4, p. 1078, b. 23, compared with the commentary of Alexander on the former passage.

34. Aristotel. Ethica Magna, i. 1.

35. Aristot. Metaph. M. 6, p. 1080, b. 18. τὸν γὰρ ὅλον οὔρανον κατασκευάζουσιν ἐξ ἀριθμῶν. Compare p. 1075, b. 37, with the Scholia.

A poet calls the tetraktys (consecrated as the sum total of the first four numbers 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) πηγὴν ἀενάου φύσεως ῥιζώματ’ ἔχουσαν. Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 94.

36. Philolaus, ed. Boeckh, p. 91–95. τὸ πρᾶτον ἁρμοσθὲν, τὸ ἕν ἐν τῷ μέσῳ τῆς σφαίρας ἑστία καλεῖται—βωμόν τε καὶ συνοχὴν καὶ μέτρον φύσεως—πρῶτον εἶναι φύσει τὸ μέσον.

Aristot. Metaph. N. 3, p. 1091, a. 15. φανερῶς γὰρ λέγουσιν (the Pythagoreans) ὡς τοῦ ἑνὸς συσταθέντος—εὐθὺς τὸ ἔγγιστα τοῦ ἀπείρου ὅτι εἱλκετο καὶ ἐπεραίνετο ὑπὸ τοῦ πέρατος.

Aristot. Physic. iv. 6, p. 213, b. 21. Εἶναι δ’ ἔφασαν καὶ οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι κενόν, καὶ ἐπεισιέναι αὐτὸ τῷ οὐράνῳ ἐκ τοῦ ἀπείρου πνεύματος, ὡς ἀναπνέοντι· καὶ τὸ κενόν, ὃ διορίζει τὰς φύσεις, ὡς ὄντος τοῦ κενοῦ χωρισμοῦ τινος τῶν ἐφεξῆς καὶ τῆς διορίσεως, καὶ τοῦτ’ εἶναι πρῶτον ἐν τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς· τὸ γὰρ κενὸν διορίζειν τὴν φύσιν αὐτῶν. Stobæus (Eclog. Phys. i. 18, p. 381, Heer.) states the same, referring to the lost work of Aristotle on the Pythagorean philosophy. Compare Preller, Histor. Philos. Gr. ex Font. Loc. Context., sect. 114–115.

37. Philolaus, p. 94. Boeckh. περὶ δὲ τοῦτο δέκα σώματα θεῖα χορεύειν, &c. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13. Metaphys. A. 5.

38. The Pythagoreans supposed that eclipses of the moon took place, sometimes by the interposition of the earth, sometimes by that of the Antichthon, to intercept from the moon the light of the sun (Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. 27, p. 560. Heeren). Stobæus here cites the history (ἱστορίαν) of the Pythagorean philosophy by Aristotle, and the statement of Philippus of Opus, the friend of Plato.

39. Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Respecting this Pythagorean cosmical system, the elucidations of Boeckh are clear and valuable. Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, Berlin, 1852, p. 99–102; completing those which he had before given in his edition of the fragments of Philolaus.

Martin (in his Études sur le Timée de Platon, vol. ii. p. 107) and Gruppe (Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, ch. iv.) maintain that the original system proposed by Pythagoras was a geocentric system, afterwards transformed by Philolaus and other Pythagoreans into that which stands in the text. But I agree with Boeckh (Ueber das Kosmische System des Platon, p. 89 seqq.), and with Zeller (Phil. d. Griech., vol. i. p. 308, ed. 2), that this point is not made out. That which Martin and Gruppe (on the authority of Alexander Polyhistor, Diog. viii. 25, and others) consider to be a description of the original Pythagorean system as it stood before Philolaus, is more probably a subsequent transformation of it; introduced after the time of Aristotle, in order to suit later astronomical views.

40. Playfair observes (in his dissertation on the Progress of Natural Philosophy, p. 87) respecting Kepler—“Kepler was perhaps the first person who conceived that there must be always a law capable of being expressed by arithmetic or geometry, which connects such phenomena as have a physical dependence on each other”. But this seems to be exactly the fundamental conception of the Pythagoreans: or rather a part of their fundamental conception, for they also considered their numbers as active forces bringing such law into reality. To illustrate the determination of the Pythagoreans to make up the number of Ten celestial bodies, I transcribe another passage from Playfair (p. 98). Huygens, having discovered one satellite of Saturn, “believed that there were no more, and that the number of the planets was now complete. The planets, primary and secondary, thus made up twelve—the double of six, the first of the perfect numbers.”

41. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 9; Pliny, H.N. ii. 20.

See the Pythagorean system fully set forth by Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, vol. i. p. 302–310, ed. 2nd.

42. Aristot. Metaphys. Γ. 2, p. 1004, b. 30. τὰ δ’ ὄντα καὶ τὴν οὐσιαν ὁμολογοῦσιν ἐξ ἐναντίων σχεδὸν ἅπαντες συγκεῖσθαι.

43. Aristot. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, a. 22. He goes on to say that Alkmæon, a semi-Pythagorean and a younger contemporary of Pythagoras himself, while agreeing in the general principle that “human affairs were generally in pairs,” (εἶναι δύο τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων), laid down pairs of fundamental contraries at random (τὰς ἐναντιότητας τὰς τυχούσας)—black and white, sweet and bitter, good and evil, great and little. All that you can extract from these philosophers is (continues Aristotle) the general axiom, that “contraries are the principia of existing things”—ὅτι τἀνάντια ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων.

This axiom is to be noted as occupying a great place in the minds of the Greek philosophers.

44. Theophrast. Metaphys. 9. Probably the recognition of one dominant antithesis—Τὸ Ἕν—ἡ ἀόριστος Δυὰς—is the form given by Plato to the Pythagorean doctrine. Eudorus (in Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. fol. 39) seems to blend the two together.

45. Aristot. Metaph. A. 5, p. 985, b. 23. οἱ Πυθαγορεῖοι τῶν μαθημάτων ἀψάμενοι πρῶτοι ταῦτα προήγαγον, καὶ ἐντραφέντες ἐν αὐτοῖς τὰς τούτων ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ἀρχὰς ᾠήθησαν εἶναι πάντων.

46. Concerning the Pythagorean doctrines on Harmonics, see Boeckh’s Philolaus, p. 60–84, with his copious and learned comments.

47. Karsten. Xenophanis Fragm., s. 4, p. 9, 10.

48. Xenophanis Fragm. 5–6-7, p. 39 seq. ed. Karsten; Clemens Alexandr. Strom. v. p. 601; vii. p. 711.

49. Xenophan. Fragm. 19, p. 60, ed. Karsten; Cicero, Divinat. i. 3, 5.

50. Xenophanis Fragment. 34–35, p. 85, ed. Karsten; Aristotel. Rhetoric. ii. 23; Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, b. 19.

51. Xenoph. Frag. 1–2, p. 35.

Οὖλος ὁρᾷ, οὖλος δὲ νοεῖ, οὖλος δε τ’ ἀκούει.

Plutarch ap. Eusebium, Præp. Evang. i. 8; Diogen. Laert. ix. 19.

52. Timon, fragment of the Silli ap. Sext. Empiric. Hypot. Pyrrh. i. 33, sect. 224.

ὄππη γὰρ ἐμὸν νόον εἰρύσαιμι,

εἰς ἓν ταὐτό τε πᾶν ἀνελύετο, πᾶν δε ὂν αἰεὶ

πάντη ἀνελκόμενον μίαν εἰς φύσιν ἴσταθ’ ὁμοίαν.

Αἰεὶ here appears to be more conveniently construed with ἴσταθ’ not (as Karsten construes it, p. 118) with ὄν.

It is fair to presume that these lines are a reproduction of the sentiments of Xenophanes, if not a literal transcript of his words.

53. Theophrastus ap. Simplikium in Aristotel. Physic. f. 6, Karsten, p. 106; Arist. Met. A. 5, p. 986, b. 21: Ξενοφάνης δὲ πρῶτος τούτων ἑνίσας, ὁ γὰρ Παρμενίδης τούτον λέγεται μαθητής—εις τὸν ὅλον οὔρανον ἀποβλέψας τὸ ἓν εἶναί φησι τὸν θεόν.

54. Xenophan. Fragm. 14, p. 51, ed. Karsten.

καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ γένετ’ οὔδε τις ἔσται

εἰδὼς, ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἄσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων·

εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσμένον εἰπὼν,

αὐτὸς ὁμῶς οὐκ οἶδε· δόκος δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται.

Compare the extract from the Silli of Timon in Sextus Empiricus—Pyrrhon. Hypot. i. 224; and the same author, adv. Mathemat. vii. 48–52.

55. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13.

56. Xenophan. Fragm. p. 178, ed. Karsten; Achilles Tatius, Εἰσαγωγὴ in Arat. Phænom. p. 128, τὰ κάτω δ’ ἐς ἄπειρον ἱκάνει.

This inference from the shells and prints of fishes is very remarkable for so early a period. Compare Herodotus (ii. 12) who notices the fact, and draws the same inference, as to Lower Egypt; also Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 40, p. 367; and Strabo, i. p. 49–50, from whom we learn that the Lydian historian Xanthus had made the like observation, and also the like inference, for himself. Straton of Lampsakus, Eratosthenes, and Strabo himself, approved what Xanthus said.

57. Xenophanes Frag. p. 161 seq., ed. Karsten. Compare Lucretius, v. 458.

“per rara foramina, terræ

Partibus erumpens primus se sustulit æther

Ignifer et multos secum levis abstulit ignis. …

Sic igitur tum se levis ac diffusilis æther

Corpore concreto circumdatus undique flexit: …

Hunc exordia sunt solis lunæque secuta.”

58. Parmenid. Fr. v. 29.

59. Parm. Frag. v. 40, 52–56.

τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.

Ἀλλὰ σὺ τῆς δ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ διζήσιος εἶργε νόημα,

μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω,

νωμᾷν ἄσκοπον ὄμμα καὶ ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουὴν

καὶ γλῶσσαν· κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηνιν ἔλεγχον

ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα.

60. Parm. Frag. v. 81.

αὐτὰρ ἀκίνητον μεγάλων ἐν πείρασι δεσμῶν

ἐστὶν, ἄναρχον, ἄπαυστον, &c.

61. Zeller (Die Philosophie der Griech., i. p. 403, ed. 2) maintains, in my opinion justly, that the Ens Parmenideum is conceived by its author as extended. Strümpell (Geschichte der theor. Phil. der Griech., s. 44) represents it as unextended: but this view seems not reconcilable with the remaining fragments.

62. Parm. Frag. v. 102.

63. Parm. Frag. v. 96.

—— ἐπεὶ τό γε μοῖρ’ ἐπέδησεν

Οἶον ἀκίνητον τελέθειν τῷ πάντ’ ὄνομ’ εἶναι,

Ὄσσα βροτοὶ κατέθεντο, πεποιθότες εἶναι ἀληθῆ,

γίγνεσθαί τε καὶ ὄλλυσθαι, εἶναί τε καὶ οὐκὶ,

καὶ τόπον ἀλλάσσειν, διά τε χρόα φανὸν ἀμείβειν·

v. 75:—

εἴ γε γένοιτ’, οὐκ ἔστ’· οὐδ’ εἴ πότε μέλλει ἔσεσθαι·

τῶς γένεσις μὲν ἀπέσβεσται, καὶ ἄπιστος ὄλεθρος

64. Aristotel. De Cœlo, iii. 1. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν ὅλως ἀνεῖλον γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν· οὐθὲν γὰρ οὔτε γίγνεσθαί φασιν οὔτε φθείρεσθαι τῶν ὄντων, ἀλλὰ μόνον δοκεῖν ἡμῖν· οἶον οἱ περὶ Μέλισσον καὶ Παρμενίδην, &c.

65. Parm. Frag. v. 77.

Οὐδὲ διαίρετόν ἐστιν, ἐπεὶ πᾶν ἐστὶν ὅμοιον,

οὐδέ τι τῇ μᾶλλον τό κεν εἴργοι μιν ξυνέχεσθαι,

οὐδέ τι χειρότερον· πᾶν δὲ πλέον ἐστὶν ἐόντος·

τῷ ξυνεχὲς πᾶν ἐστίν· ἐὸν γὰρ ἐόντι πελάζει.

Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, b. 29, with the Scholia, and Physic. i. 2, 3. Simplikius Comm. in Physic. Aristot. (apud Tennemann Geschichte der Philos. b. i. s. 4, vol. i. p. 170) πάντα γάρ φησι (Παρμενίδης) τὰ ὄντα, καθὸ ὄντα, ἑν ἐστίν. This chapter, in which Tennemann gives an account of the Eleatic philosophy, appears to me one of the best and most instructive in his work.

66. “To make parts—or to part or divide, Space or Time—is nothing else but to consider one and another within the same: so that if any man divide space or time, the diverse conceptions he has are more, by one, than the parts which he makes. For his first conception is of that which is to be divided—then, of some part of it—and again of some other part of it: and so forwards, as long as he goes in dividing. But it is to be noted, that here, by division, I do not mean the severing or pulling asunder of one space or time from another (for does any man think that one hemisphere may be separated from the other hemisphere, or the first hour from the second?), but diversity of consideration: so that division is not made by the operation of the hands, but of the mind.”—Hobbes, First Grounds of Philosophy, chap. vii. 5, vol. i. p. 96, ed. Molesworth.

“Expansion and duration have this farther agreement, that though they are both considered by us as having parts, yet their parts are not separable one from another, not even in thought; though the parts of bodies from which we take our measure of the one—and the parts of motion, from which we may take the measure of the other—may be interrupted or separated.”—Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. ch. 15. s. 11.

In the Platonic Parmenides, p. 156 D., we find the remarkable conception of what he calls τὸ ἐξαίφνης, ἄτοπός τις φύσις—a break in the continuity of duration, an extra-temporal moment.

67. Leibnitz says, Réponse à M. Foucher, p. 117, ed. Erdmann, “Comment seroit il possible qu’aucune chose existât, si l’être même, ipsum Esse, n’avoit l’existence? Mais bien au contraire ne pourrait on pas dire avec beaucoup plus de raison, qu’il n’y a que lui qui existe véritablement, les êtres particuliers n’ayant rien de permanent? Semper generantur, et nunquam sunt.”

68. Karsten observes that the Parmenidean region of opinion comprised not merely the data of sense, but also the comparisons, generalisations, and notions, derived from sense.

“Δοξαστὸν et νοητὸν vocantur duo genera inter se diversa, quorum alterum complectitur res externas et fluxas, notionesque quæ ex his ducuntur—alterum res æternas et à conspectu remotas,” &c. (Parm. Fragm. p. 148–149).

69. Marbach (Lehrbuch der Gesch. der Philos., s. 71, not. 3) after pointing out the rude philosophical expression of the Parmenidean verses, has some just remarks upon the double aspect of philosophy as there proclaimed, and upon the recognition by Parmenides of that which he calls the “illegitimate” vein of enquiry along with the “legitimate.”

“Learn from me (says Parmenides) the opinions of mortals, brought to your ears in the deceitful arrangement of my words. This is not philosophy (Marbach says): it is Physics. We recognise in modern times two perfectly distinct ways of contemplating Nature: the philosophical and the physical. Of these two, the second dwells in plurality, the first in unity: the first teaches everything as infallible truth, the second as multiplicity of different opinions. We ought not to ask why Parmenides, while recognising the fallibility of this second road of enquiry, nevertheless undertook to march in it—any more than we can ask, Why does not modern philosophy render physics superfluous?”

The observation of Marbach is just and important, that the line of research which Parmenides treated as illegitimate and deceitful, but which he nevertheless entered upon, is the analogon of modern Physics. Parmenides (he says) indicated most truly the contrast and divergence between Ontology and Physics; but he ought to have gone farther, and shown how they could be reconciled and brought into harmony. This (Marbach affirms) was not even attempted, much less achieved, by Parmenides: but it was afterwards attempted by Plato, and achieved by Aristotle.

Marbach is right in saying that the reconciliation was attempted by Plato; but he is not right (I think) in saying that it was achieved by Aristotle—nor by any one since Aristotle. It is the merit of Parmenides to have brought out the two points of view as radically distinct, and to have seen that the phenomenal world, if explained at all, must be explained upon general principles of its own, raised out of its own data of facts—not by means of an illusory Absolute and Real. The subsequent philosophers, in so far as they hid and slurred over this distinction, appear to me to have receded rather than advanced.

70. Parmen. Fr. v. 109.

ἐν τῷ σοὶ παύω πιστὸν λόγον ἠδὲ νόημα

ἀμφὶς ἀληθείης· δόξας δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦδε βροτείας

μάνθανε, κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν ἀκούων.

71. Parm. Frag. v. 132–142.

72. Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 5, p. 987, a. 1) represents Parmenides as assimilating one of his phenomenal principles (Heat) to Ens. and the other (Cold) to Non-Ens. There is nothing in the fragments of Parmenides to justify this supposed analogy. Heat as well as Cold belongs to Non-Ens, not to Ens, in the Parmenidean doctrine. Moreover Cold or Dense is just as much a positive principle as Hot or Rare, in the view of Parmenides; it is the female to the male (Parm. Fragm. v. 129; comp. Karsten, p. 270). Aristotle conceives Ontology as a substratum for Phenomenology; and his criticisms on Parmenides imply (erroneously in my judgment) that Parmenides did the same. The remarks which Brucker makes both on Aristotle’s criticism and on the Eleatic doctrine are in the main just, though the language is not very suitable.

Brucker, Hist. Philosoph., part ii. lib. ii. ch. xi. tom. 1, p. 1152–3, about Xenophanes:—“Ex iis enim quæ apud Aristotelem ex ejus mente contra motum disputantur, patet Xenophanem motûs notionem aliam quam quæ in physicis obtinet, sibi concepisse; et ad verum motum progressum a nonente ad ens ejusque existentiam requisivisse. Quo sensu notionis hujus semel admisso, sequebatur (cum illud impossibile sit, ut ex nihilo fiat aliquid) universum esse immobile, adeoque et partes ejus non ita moveri, ut ex statu nihili procederent ad statum existentiæ. Quibus admissis, de rerum tamen mutationibus disserere poterat, quas non alterationes, generationes, et extinctiones, rerum naturalium, sed modificationes, esse putabat: hoc nomine indignas, eo quod rerum universi natura semper maneret immutabilis, soliusque materiæ æternum fluentis particulæ varie inter se modificarentur. Hâc ratione si Eleaticos priores explicemus de motu disserentes, rationem facile dabimus, quî de rebus physicis disserere et phenomena naturalia explicare, salvâ istâ hypothesi, potuerint. Quod tamen de iis negat Aristoteles, conceptum motûs metaphysicum ad physicum transferens: ut, more suo, Eleatico systemate corrupto, eò vehementius illud premeret.”

73. Parmenides, ap. Simplik. ad Aristot. Physic. fol. 9 a.

ἐν δὲ μέσῳ τούτων Δαιμων, ἣ πάντα κυβερνᾷ, &c.

Plutarch, Amator, 13.

74. See especially the remarkable passage from Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. 23, p. 482, cited in Karsten, Frag. Parm. p. 241, and Cicero, De Natur. Deor, i. 11, s. 28, with the Commentary of Krische, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der alten Philosophie, viii. p. 98, seqq.

It is impossible to make out with any clearness the Kosmos and its generation as conceived by Parmenides. We cannot attain more than a general approximation to it.

75. Diogen. Laert. ix. 21, viii. 48; Strabo, ii. p. 93 (on the authority of Poseidonius). Plutarch (Placit. Philos. iii. 11) and others ascribe to Parmenides the recognition not of five zones, but only of two. If it be true that Parmenides held this opinion about the figure of the earth, the fact is honourable to his acuteness; for Leukippus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Diogenes the Apolloniate, and Demokritus, all thought the earth to be a flat, round surface, like a dish or a drum: Plato speaks about it in so confused a manner that his opinion cannot be made out: and Aristotle was the first who both affirmed and proved it to be spherical. The opinion had been propounded by some philosophers earlier than Anaxagoras, who controverted it. See the dissertation of L. Oettinger. Die Vorstellungen der Griechen über die Erde als Himmelskörper, Freiburg, 1850, p. 42–46.

76. Diogen. Laert. ix. 22.

77. Parmen. Frag. v. 145; Theophrastus, De Sensu, Karsten. pp. 268, 270.

Parmenides (according to Theophrastus) thought that the dead body, having lost its fiery element, had no perception of light, or heat, or sound; but that it had perception of darkness, cold, and silence—καὶ ὅλως δὲ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἔχειν τινα γνῶσιν.

78. Diogen. L. ix. 1. Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις τε Ξενοφάνεα καὶ Ἑκαταῖον, &c. Ib. viii. 1, 6. Πυθαγόρης Μνησάρχου ἱστορίην ἤσκησεν ἀνθρώπων μάλιστα πάντων, καὶ ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς συγγραφὰς ἐποίησεν ἑωϋτοῦ σοφίην, πολυμαθίην, κακοτεχνίην.

79. Diogen. Laert. ix. 1–6. Theophrastus conceived that Herakleitus had left the work unfinished, from eccentricity of temperament (ὑπὸ μελαγχολίας). Of him, as of various others, it was imagined by some that his obscurity was intentional (Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 26, 74, De Finib. 2, 5). The words of Lucretius about Herakleitus are remarkable (i. 641):—

Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanes

Quamde graves inter Græcos qui vera requirunt:

Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque

Inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cernunt.

Even Aristotle complains of the difficulty of understanding Herakleitus, and even of determining the proper punctuation (Rhetoric. iii. 5).

80. Cicero, Nat. Deor., iii. 14, 35.

81. To some it appeared that Herakleitus hardly distinguished Fire from Air. Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 127–129, ix. 360.

82. Zeller’s account of the philosophy of Herakleitus in the second edition of his Philosophie der Griechen, vol. i. p. 450–496, is instructive. Marbach also is useful (Gesch. der Phil. s. 46–49); and his (Hegelian) exposition of Herakleitus is further developed by Ferdinand Lassalle (Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen, published 1858). This last work is very copious and elaborate, throwing great light upon a subject essentially obscure and difficult.

83. Plato, Kratylus, p. 402, and Theætet. p. 152, 153.

Plutarch, De Εἰ apud Delphos, c. 18, p. 392. Ποταμῷ γὰρ οὔκ ἐστιν ἐμβῆναι δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, οὐδὲ θνητῆς οὐσίας δὶς ἅψασθαι κατὰ ἕξιν· ἀλλ’ ὀξύτητι καὶ ταχει μεταβολης σκιδνησι καὶ πάλιν συνάγει, μᾶλλον δὲ οὐδὲ πάλιν οὐδὲ ὕστερον, ἀλλ’ ἅμα συνίσταται καὶ ἀπολείπει, πρόσεισι καὶ ἄπεισι. Ὅθεν οὐδ’ εἰς τὸ εἶναι περαίνει τὸ γιγνόμενον αὐτῆς, τῷ μηδέποτε λήγειν μηδ’ ἵστασθαι τὴν γένεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ σπέρματος ἀεὶ μεταβάλλουσαν—τὰς πρώτας φθείρουσαν γενέσεις καὶ ἡλικίας ταῖς ἐπιγιγνομέναις.

Clemens Alex. Strom. v. 14, p. 711. Κόσμον τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτ’ ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν· ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα. Compare also Eusebius, Præpar. Evang. xiv. 3, 8; Diogen. L. ix. 8.

84. Plato, Sophist. p. 242 E. Διαφερόμενον γὰρ ἀεὶ ξυμφέρεται.

Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollonium c. 10, p. 106. Πότε γὰρ ἐν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ θάνατος; καὶ ᾗ φησιν Ἡράκλειτος, ταὐτό τ’ ἔνι ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκός, καὶ τὸ ἐγρηγορὸς καὶ τὸ καθεῦδον, καὶ νέον καὶ γηραιόν· τάδε γὰρ μεταπεσόντα ἐκεῖνα ἐστι, κἀκεῖνα πάλιν μεταπεσόντα ταῦτα.

Pseudo-Origenes, Refut. Hær. ix. 10, Ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη, εὐφρόνη—χείμων, θέρος—πόλεμος, εἰρήνη—κόρος, λίμος, &c.

85. Aristot. De Cœlo, iii. 1, p. 298, b. 30; Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 9. Φασί τινες κινεῖσθαι τῶν ὄντων οὐ τὰ μὲν τὰ δ’ οὔ, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ ἀεὶ, ἀλλὰ λανθάνειν τοῦτο τὴν ἡμετέραν αἴσθησιν—which words doubtless refer to Herakleitus. See Preller, Hist. Phil. Græc. Rom. s. 47.

86. Lassalle, Philosophie des Herakleitos, vol. i. pp. 54, 55. “Andrerseits bieten die sinnlichen Existenzen graduelle oder Mass-Unterschiede dar, je nachdem in ihnen das Moment des festen Seins über die Unruhe des Werdens vorwiegt oder nicht; und diese Graduation wird also zugleich den Leitfaden zur Classification der verschiedenen Existenz-formen bilden.”

87. Aristot. De Cœlo, iii. 1, p. 298, b. 30. Οἱ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα γίνεσθαί τέ φασι καὶ ῥεῖν, εἶναι δὲ παγίως οὐδέν, ἓν δέ τι μόνον ὑπομένειν, ἐξ οὗ ταῦτα πάντα μετασχηματίζεσθαι πέφυκεν· ὅπερ ἐοίκασιν βούλεσθαι λέγειν ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος. See the explanation given of this passage by Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 21, 39, 40, founded on the comment of Simplikius. He explains it as an universal law or ideal force—die reine Idee des Werdens selbst (p. 24), and “eine unsinnliche Potenz” (p. 25). Yet, in i. p. 55 of his elaborate exposition, he does indeed say, about the theory of Herakleitus, “Hier sind zum erstenmale die sinnlichen Bestimmtheiten zu bloss verschiedenen und absolut in einander übergehenden Formen eines identischen, ihnen zu Grunde liegenden, Substrats herabgesetzt”. But this last expression appears to me to contradict the whole tenor and peculiarity of Lassalle’s own explanation of the Herakleitean theory. He insists almost in every page (compare ii. p. 156) that “das Allgemeine” of Herakleitus is “reines Werden; reiner, steter, erzeugender, Prozess”. This process cannot with any propriety be called a substratum, and Herakleitus admitted no other. In thus rejecting any substratum he stood alone. Lassalle has been careful in showing that Fire was not understood by Herakleitus as a substratum (as water by Thales), but as a symbol for the universal force or law. In the theory of Herakleitus no substratum was recognised—no τόδε τι or οὐσία—in the same way as Aristotle observes about τὸ ἄπειρον (Physic. iii. 6, a. 22–31) ὥστε τὸ ἄπειρον οὐ δεῖ λαμβάνειν ὡς τόδε τι, οἷον ἄνθρωπον ἢ οἰκίαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἡ ἡμέρα λέγεται καὶ ὁ ἀγων, οἷς τὸ εἶναι οὐχ’ ὡς οὐσία τις γέγονεν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ ἐν γενέσει ἣ φθορᾷ, εἰ καὶ πεπερασμένον, ἀλλ’ ἀεί γε ἕτερον καὶ ἕτερον.

88. Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, c. 5, p. 396, b. 20. Ταὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτο ἦν καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῷ σκοτεινῷ λεγόμενον Ἡρακλειτῷ: “συνάψειας οὖλα καὶ οὐχὶ οὖλα, συμφερόμενον καὶ διαφερόμενον, συνᾷδον καὶ διᾷδον, καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἑ καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.” Heraclid. Allegor. ap. Schleiermacher (Herakleitos, p. 529), ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἰμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἰμέν: Plato, Sophist, p. 242, E., διαφερόμενον ἀεὶ ξυμφέρεται: Aristotle, Metaphys. iii. 7, p. 1012, b. 24, ἔοικε δ’ ὁ με Ἡρακλείτου λόγος, λέγων πάντα εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, ἅπαντα ἀληθῆ ποεῖν: Aristot. Topic. viii. 5, p. 155, b., οἷον ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν εἶναι ταὐτὸν, καθάπερ Ἡράκλειτός φησιν: also Aristot. Physic. i. 2, p. 185, b. Compare the various Herakleitean phrases cited in Pseudo-Origen. Refut. Hæres. Fragm. ix. 10; also Krische, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der alten Philosophie, vol. i. p. 370–468.

Bernays and Lassalle (vol. i. p. 81) contend, on reasonable grounds (though in opposition to Zeller, p. 495), that the following verses in the Fragments of Parmenides refer to Herakleitus:

οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται

κοὐ ταὐτὸν, πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.

The commentary of Alexander Aphrodis. on the Metaphysica says, “Heraclitus ergo cum diceret omnem rem esse et non esse et opposita simul consistere, contradictionem veram simul esse statuebat, et omnia dicebat esse vera” (Lassalle, p. 83).

One of the metaphors by which Herakleitus illustrated his theory of opposite and co-existent forces, was the pulling and pushing of two sawyers with the same saw. See Bernays, Heraclitea, part i. p. 16; Bonn, 1848.

89. Aristot. Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 30, εἰς τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἡ ἀλλοίωσις: also iii. 5, p. 205, a. 6, πάντα γὰρ μεταβάλλει ἐξ ἐναντίου εἰς ἐναντίον, οἷον ἐκ θερμοῦ εἰς ψυχρόν.

90. Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. i. p. 323.

91. See a striking passage cited from Gregory of Nyssa by Lassalle (vol. i. p. 287), illustrating this characteristic of fire; the flame of a lamp appears to continue the same, but it is only a succession of flaming particles, each of which takes fire and is extinguished in the same instant: ὥσπερ τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς θρυαλλίδος πῦρ τῷ μὲν δοκεῖν ἀεὶ τὸ αὐτὸ φαίνεται—τὸ γὰρ συνεχὲς ἀεὶ τῆς κινήσεως ἀδιάσπαστον αὐτὸ καὶ ἡνωμένον πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δείκνυσι—τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ πάντοτε αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ διαδεχόμενον, οὐδέποτε τὸ αὐτὸ μένει—ἡ γὰρ ἐξελκυσθεῖσα διὰ τῆς θερμότητος ἰκμὰς ὁμοῦ τε ἐξεφλογώθη καὶ εἰς λιγνὺν ἐκκαυθεῖσα μεταποιήθη, &c.

92. Diogen. Laert. ix. 9; Clemens Alexand. Strom. v. 14, p. 599, vi. 2, p. 624. Πυρὸς τροπαὶ πρῶτον θάλασσα, θαλάττης δὲ τὸ μὲν ἥμισυ γῆ, τὸ δ’ ἥμισυ πρηστήρ. A full explanation of the curious expression πρηστήρ is given by Lassalle (Herakl. vol. ii. p. 87–90). See Brandis (Handbuch der Gr. Philos. sect, xliii. p. 164), and Plutarch (De Primo Frigido, c. 17, p. 952, F.).

The distinction made by Herakleitus, but not clearly marked out or preserved, between the ideal fire or universal process, and the elementary fire or first stage towards realisation, is brought out by Lassalle (Herakleitos, vol. ii. p. 25–29).

93. Aristot. Meteorol. ii.e. p. 355, a. Plato, Republ. vi. p. 498, c. 11; Plutarch, De Exilio, c. 11, p. 604 A.; Plutarch. De Isid. et Osirid. c. 48, p. 370, E.; Diogen. L. ix. 10; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 17–22-24–28, p. 889–891; Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 594.

About the doctrine of the Stoics, built in part upon this of Herakleitus, see Cicero, Natur. Deor. ii. 46; Seneca, Quæst. Natur. ii. 5, vi. 16.

94. Aristot. or Pseudo-Aristot., De Mundo, ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.

95. See Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. s. 26–27, p. 182–258.

Compare about the obscure and debated meaning of the Herakleitean ἐκπύρωσις, Schleiermacher, Herakleitos, p. 103; Zeller, Philos. der Griech. vol. i. p. 477–479.

The word διακόσμησις stands as the antithesis (in the language of Herakleitus) to ἐκπύρωσις. A passage from Philo Judæus is cited by Lassalle illustrating the Herakleitean movement from ideal unity into totality of sensible particulars, forwards and backwards—ὁ δὲ γονορῥυὴς (λόγος) ἐκ κόσμου πάντα καὶ εἰς κόσμον ἀνάγων, ὑπὸ θεοῦ δὲ μηδὲν οἰόμενος, Ἡρακλειτείου δόξης ἑταῖρος, κόρον καὶ χρησμοσύνην, καὶ ἓν τὸ πᾶν καὶ πάντα ἀμοιβῇ εἰσάγων—where κόρος and χρησμοσύνη are used to illustrate the same ideal antithesis as διακόσμησις and ἐκπύρωσις (Lassalle, vol. i. p. 232).

96. Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathem. vii. 130. ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα.

Plutarch, Sympos., p. 644. νεκύες κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι.

Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i. 23, p. 884. Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἐστὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν.

97. See Schleiermacher, Herakleitos, p. 522; Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. viii. 286.

98. The passage of Sextus Empiricus (adv. Mathem. vii. 127–134) is curious and instructive about Herakleitus.

Ἀρέσκει γὰρ τῷ φυσικῷ (Herakleitus) το περιέχον ἡμᾶς λογικόν τε ὂν καὶ φρενῆρες—τοῦτον δὴ τὸν θεῖον λόγον, καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, δι’ ἀναπνοῆς σπάσαντες νοεροὶ γινόμεθα, καὶ ἐν μὲν ὕπνοις ληθαῖοι, κατὰ δὲ ἔγερσιν πάλιν ἔμφρονες. ἐν γὰρ τοῖς ὕπνοις μυσάντων τῶν αἰσθητικῶν πόρων χωρίζεται τῆς πρὸς τὸ περιέχον συμφυΐας ὁ ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦς, μονῆς τῆς κατὰ ἀναπνοὴν προσφύσεως σωζομένης οἱονεί τινος ῥίζης, χωρισθείς τε ἀποβάλλει ἢν πρότερον εἶχε μνημονικὴν δύναμιν. ἐν δὲ ἐγρηγορόσι πάλιν διὰ τῶν αἰσθητικῶν πόρων ὥσπερ διὰ τινῶν θυρίδων προκύψας καὶ τῷ περιέχοντι συμβάλλων λογικὴν ἐνδύεται δύναμιν. Then follows the simile about coals brought near to, or removed away from, the fire.

The Stoic version of this Herakleitean doctrine, is to be seen in Marcus Antoninus, viii. 54. Μηκέτι μόνον συμπνεῖν τῷ περιέχοντι ἀέρι, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ συμφρονεῖν τῷ περιέχοντι πάντα νοερῷ. Οὐ γὰρ ἧττον ἡ νοερὰ δύναμις πάντη κέχυται καὶ διαπεφοίτηκε τῷ σπᾶσαι βουλομένῳ, ἥπερ ἡ ἀερώδης τῷ ἀναπνεῦσαι δυναμένῳ.

The Stoics, who took up the doctrine of Herakleitus with farther abstraction and analysis, distinguished and named separately matters which he conceived in one and named together—the physical inhalation of air—the metaphysical supposed influx of intelligence—inspiration in its literal and metaphorical senses. The word τὸ περιέχον, as he conceives it, seems to denote, not any distinct or fixed local region, but the rotatory movement or circulation of the elements, fire, water, earth, reverting back into each other. Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 119–120; which transition also is denoted by the word ἀναθυμίασις in the Herakleitean sense—cited from Herakleitus by Aristotle. De Animâ, i. 2, 16.

99. Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. vii. 132) here cites the first words of the treatise of Herakleitus (compare also Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 5). λόγου τοῦδε ἐόντος ἀξύνετοι γίγνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον·—τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται.

100. Sext. Empiric. ib. vii. 126, a citation from Herakleitus.

101. Sext. Emp. ib. vii. 133 (the words of Herakleitus) διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ ξυνῷ·—τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν· ἡ δ’ ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἀλλ’ ἐξήγησις τοῦ τρόπου τῆς τοῦ πάντος διοικήσεως· διὸ καθ’ ὅ τι ἂν αὐτοῦ τῆς μνήμης κοινωνήσωμεν, ἀληθεύομεν, ἃ δὲ ἂν ἰδιάσωμεν, ψευδόμεθα.

102. Plutarch, De Superstit. c. 3, p. 166, C. See also the passage in Clemens Alexandr. Strom. iv. 22, about the comparison of sleep to death by Herakleitus.

103. Sextus Empiricus misinterprets the Herakleitean theory when he represents it (vii. 134) as laying down—τὰ κοινῇ φαινόμενα, πιστὰ, ὡς ἂν τῷ κοινῷ κρινόμενα λόγῳ, τὰ δὲ κατ’ ἰδίαν ἑκάστῳ, ψευδῆ. Herakleitus denounces mankind generally as in error. Origen. Philosophum. i. 4; Diog. Laert. ix. 1.

104. The analogy and sympathy between the individual mind and the Kosmical process—between the knowing and the known—was reproduced in many forms among the ancient philosophers. It appears in the Platonic Timæus, c. 20, p. 47 C.

Τὸ κινούμενον τῷ κινουμένῳ γιγνώσκεσθαι was the doctrine of several philosophers. Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2. Plato, Kratylus, p. 412 A: καὶ μὴν ἤ γε ἐπιστήμη μηνύει ὡς φερομένοις τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐπομένης τῆς ψυχῆς τῆς ἀξίας λόγου, καὶ οὔτε ἀπολειπομένης οὔτε προθεούσης. A remarkable passage from the comment of Philoponus (on the treatise of Aristotle De Animâ) is cited by Lassalle, ii. p. 339, describing the Herakleitean doctrine, διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ τῆς ἀναθυμιάσεως αὐτὴν ἔλεγεν (Herakleitus)· τῶν γὰρ πραγμάτων ἐν κινήσει ὄντων δεῖν καὶ τὸ γίνωσκον τὰ πράγματα ἐν κινήσει εἶναι, ἵνα συμπαράθεον αὐτοῖς ἐφάπτηται καὶ ἐφαρμόζῃ αὐτοῖς. Also Simplikius ap. Lassalle, p. 341: ἐν μεταβολῇ γὰρ συνεχεῖ τὰ ὄντα ὑποτιθέμενος ὁ Ἡράκλειτος, καὶ τὸ γνωσόμενον αὐτὰ τῇ ἐπαφῇ γίνωσκον, συνέπεσθαι ἐβούλετο ὡς ἀεὶ εἶναι κατὰ τὸ γνωστικὸν ἐν κινήσει.

105. Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. p. 58; and the passage of Philo Judæus, cited by Schleiermacher, p. 437; as well as more fully by Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 265–267 (Quis rerum divinar. hæres, p. 503, Mangey): ἓν γὰρ τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν τῶν ἐναντίων, οὗ τμηθέντος γνώριμα τὰ ἐναντία. Οὐ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὅ φασιν Ἕλληνες τὸν μέγαν καὶ ἀοίδιμον παρ’ αὐτοῖς Ἡράκλειτον, κεφαλαῖον τῆς αὐτοῦ προστησάμενον φιλοσοφίας, αὐχεῖν ὡς εὑρέσει καινῇ; παλαιὸν γὰρ εὕρημα Μωύσεώς ἐστιν.

106. The great principle of Herakleitus, which Aristotle states in order to reject (Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 10, φασί τινες κινεῖσθαι τῶν ὄντων οὐ τὰ μὲν τὰ δ’ οὐ, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ ἀεὶ· ἀλλὰ λανθάνειν τοῦτο τὴν ἡμετέραν αἴσθησιν) now stands averred in modern physical philosophy. Mr. Grove observes, in his instructive Treatise on the Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 22:

“Of absolute rest, Nature gives us no evidence. All matter, as far as we can discern, is ever in movement: not merely in masses, as in the planetary spheres, but also molecularly, or throughout its intimate structure. Thus every alteration of temperature produces a molecular change throughout the whole substance heated or cooled: slow chemical or electrical forces, actions of light or invisible radiant forces, are always at play; so that, as a fact, we cannot predicate of any portion of matter, that it is absolutely at rest.”

107. Many references to Herakleitus are found in the recently published books of the Refutatio Hæresium by Pseudo-Origen or Hippolytus—especially Book ix. p. 279–283, ed. Miller. To judge by various specimens there given, it would appear that his juxta-positions of contradictory predicates, with the same subject, would be recognised as paradoxes merely in appearance, and not in reality, if we had his own explanation. Thus he says (p. 282) “the pure and the corrupt, the drinkable and the undrinkable, are one and the same.” Which is explained as follows: “The sea is most pure and most corrupt: to fish, it is drinkable and nutritive; to men, it is undrinkable and destructive.” This explanation appears to have been given by Herakleitus himself, θάλασσα, φησὶν, &c.

These are only paradoxes in appearance—the relative predicate being affirmed without mention of its correlate. When you supply the correlate to each predicate, there remains no contradiction at all.

108. Lucretius, i. 731.

Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris ejus

Vociferantur, et exponunt præclara reperta:

Ut vix humanâ videatur stirpe creatus.

109. Empedokles, Frag. v. 77–83, ed. Karsten, p. 96:

φύσις οὐδενός ἐστιν ἁπάντων

θνητῶν, οὐδέ τις οὐλομένου θανατοῖο τελευτὴ,

ἀλλὰ μόνον μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων

ἐστι, φύσις δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ὀνομάζεται ἀνθρώποισιν. …

Φύσις here is remarkable, in its primary sense, as derivative from φύομαι, equivalent to γένεσις. Compare Plutarch adv. Koloten, p. 1111, 1112.

110. Emp. Fr. v. 55. Τέσσαρα τῶν πάντων ῥιζώματα.

111. Zeller, Philos. der Griech., vol. i. p. 525–528, ed. 2nd.

112. Emp. Frag. v. 96, Karst., p. 98:

Οὕτως ᾖ μὲν ἓν ἐκ πλεόνων μεμάθηκε φύεσθαι,

ἠδὲ πάλιν διαφυντὸς ἑνὸς πλέον ἐκτελέθουσι,

τῇ μὲν γίγνονταί τε καὶ οὔ σφισιν ἔμπεδος αἰών·

ᾗ δὲ τάδ’ ἀλλάσσοντα διαμπερὲς οὐδαμὰ λήγει,

ταύτῃ δ’ αἰὲν ἔασιν ἀκίνητα κατὰ κύκλον.

Also:—

καὶ γὰρ καὶ παρὸς ἧν τε καὶ ἔσσεται οὐδέ ποτ’, οἴω,

τούτων ἀμφοτέρων (Love and Discord) κεινώσεται ἄσπετος αἰών.

These are new Empedoklean verses, derived from the recently published fragments of Hippolytus (Hær. Refut.) printed by Stein, v. 110, in his collection of the Fragments of Empedokles, p. 43. Compare another passage in the same treatise of Hippolytus, p. 251.

113. Emped. Fr. v. 59, Karsten:

Οὕτως ἁρμονίης πυκινῷ κρυφῷ ἐστήρικται

σφαίρος κυκλοτέρης, μονιῇ περιηγέϊ γαίων.

Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunæ, c. 12.

About the divinity ascribed by Empedokles to Sphærus, see Aristot. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1000, a. 29. ἅπαντα γὰρ ἐκ τούτου (νείκους) τἄλλά ἐστι πλὴν ὁ θεός (i.e. Sphærus). — Εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἦν τὸ νεῖκος ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι, ἓν ἂν ἦν ἅπαντα, ὡς φησίν (Empedokles). See Preller, Hist. Philos. ex Font. Loc. Contexta, sect. 171, 172, ed. 3.

The condition of things which Empedokles calls Sphærus may be illustrated (translating his Love and Enmity into the modern phraseology of attraction and repulsion) from an eminent modern work on Physics:—“Were there only atoms and attraction, as now explained, the whole material of creation would rush into close contact, and the universe would be one huge solid mass of stillness and death. There is heat or caloric, however, which directly counteracts attraction and singularly modifies the results. It has been described by some as a most subtile fluid pervading things, as water does a sponge: others have accounted it merely a vibration among the atoms. The truth is, that we know little more of heat as a cause of repulsion, than of gravity as a cause of attraction: but we can study and classify the phenomena of both most accurately.” (Dr. Arnott, Elements of Physics, vol. i. p. 26.)

114. Emp. Fr. v. 66–70, Karsten:

πάντα γὰρ ἐξείης πελεμίζετο γυῖα θεοῖο.

115. Plutarch ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8, 10; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 6, p. 887; Aristot. Ethic. Nic. viii. 2.

116. Emped. Fr. 185, Karsten. αἰθὴρ σφίγγων περὶ κύκλον ἅπαντα. Aristot. De Cœlo, ii. 13, 14; iii. 2, 2. τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τῆς δίνης ἠρεμεῖν, &c. Empedokles called the sea ἵδρωτα τῆς γῆς. Emp. Fr. 451, Karsten; Aristot. Meteor. ii. 3.

117. Plutarch, Placit. Phil. ii. 20, p. 890.

118. Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 532–535, 2nd ed.: Karsten—De Emped. Philos. p. 424–431.

The very imperfect notices which remain, of the astronomical and meteorological doctrines of Empedokles, are collected and explained by these two authors.

119. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 8; Schaubach, Anaxag. Fragm. p. 175. Compare the remarks of Gruppe (Ueber die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, p. 98) upon the obscure Welt-Gebäude of Empedokles.

120. Hippokrates—Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰητρικῆς—c. 20, p. 620, vol. i. ed. Littré. καθάπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἢ ἄλλοι οἳ περὶ φύσιος γεγράφασιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὅ τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, καὶ ὅπως ἐγενετο πρώτον, καὶ ὅπως ξυνεπάγη.

This is one of the most ancient allusions to Empedokles, recently printed by M. Littré, out of one of the MSS. in the Parisian library.

121. Emp. Fr. v. 253, Kar. τοὺς μὲν πῦρ ἀνεπεμπ’ ἔθελον πρὸς ὅμοιον ἱκέσθαι, &c.

Aristot., or Pseudo-Aristot. De Plantis, i. 2. εἶπε πάλιν ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, ὅτι τὰ φυτὰ ἔχουσι γένεσιν ἐν κόσμῳ ἠλαττωμένῳ, καὶ οὐ τελείῳ κατὰ τὴν συμπλήρωσιν αὐτοῦ· ταύτης δὲ συμπληρουμένης (while it is in course of being completed), οὐ γεννᾶται ζῶον.

122. Emp. Frag. v. 132, 150, 233, 240, ed. Karst. Ver. 238:—

πολλὰ μὲν ἀμφιπρόσωπα καὶ ἀμφίστερν’ ἐφύοντο,

βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρωρα, &c.

Ver. 251:—

Οὐλοφυεῖς μὲν πρῶτα τύποι χθονὸς ἑξανέτελλον, &c.

Lucretius, v. 834; Aristotel. Gen. Animal. i. 18, p. 722, b. 20; Physic. ii. 8, 2, p. 198, b. 32; De Cœlo, iii. 2, 5, p. 300, b. 29; with the commentary of Simplikius ap. Schol. Brand. b. 512.

123. Emp. Frag. v. 135, Kar.

124. Plato, Menon. p. 76 A.; Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 324, b. 30 seq.

125. Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐξ ἀμεταβλήτων τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων ἡγεῖτο γίγνεσθαι τὴν τῶν συνθέτων σωμάτων φύσιν, οὕτως ἀναμεμιγμένων ἀλλήλοις τῶν πρώτων, ὡς εἴ τις λειώσας ἀκριβῶς καὶ χνοώδη ποιήσας ἰὸν καὶ χαλκῖτιν καὶ καδμείαν καὶ μίσυ μίξειεν, ὡς μηδὲν ἐξ αὐτοῦ μεταχειρίσασθαι χωρὶς ἑτέρου.

Galen, Comm. in Hippokrat. De Homin. Nat. t. iii. p. 101. See Karsten, De Emped. Phil. p. 407, and Emp. Fr. v. 155.

Galen says, however (after Aristot. Gen. et Corr. ii. 7, p. 334, a. 30), that this mixture, set forth by Empedokles, is not mixture properly speaking, but merely close proximity. Hippokrates (he says) was the first who propounded the doctrine of real mixture. But Empedokles seems to have intended a real mixture, in all cases where the structure of the pores was in symmetry with the inflowing particles. Oil and water (he said) would not mix together, because there was no such symmetry between them—ὅλως γὰρ ποιεῖ (Empedokles) τὴν μίξιν τῇ συμμετρίᾳ τῶν πόρων· διόπερ ἔλαιον μὲν καὶ ὕδωρ οὐ μίγνυσθαι, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ὑγρὰ καὶ περὶ ὅσων δὴ καταριθμεῖται τὰς ἰδίας κράσεις (Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensili, s. 12, vol. i. p. 651, ed. Schneider).

126. Emp. Fr. v. 275, seqq. Karst.

The comments of Aristotle on this theory of Empedokles are hardly pertinent: they refer to respiration by the nostrils, which was not what Empedokles had in view (Aristot. De Respirat. c. 3).

127. Karsten, De Emp. Philosoph. p. 480.

Emp. Fr. v. 307—τό τ’ ἐν μήνιγξιν ἐεργμένον ὠγύγιον πῦρ—πῦρ δ’ ἔξω διαθρῶσκον, &c.

Empedokles illustrates this influx and efflux of air in respiration by the klepsydra, a vessel with one high and narrow neck, but with a broad bottom pierced with many small holes. When the neck was kept closed by the finger or otherwise, the vessel might be plunged into water, but no water would ascend into it through the holes in the bottom, because of the resistance of the air within. As soon as the neck was freed from pressure, and the air within allowed to escape, the water would immediately rush up through the holes in the bottom.

This illustration is interesting. It shows that Empedokles was distinctly aware of the pressure of the air as countervailing the ascending movement of the water, and the removal of that pressure as allowing such movement. Vers. 286:—

οὐδέ τ’ ἐς ἄγγος δ’ ὄμβρος ἐσέρχεται, ἀλλά μιν εἴργει

ἀέρος ὄγκος ἔσωθε πεσὼν ἐπὶ τρήματα πυκνά, &c.

This dealing with the klepsydra seems to have been a favourite amusement with children.

128. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 2, p. 647, Schneid.

129. Emp. Frag. Karst. v. 267, seq.

γνῶθ’, ὅτι πάντων εἰσὶν ἀποῤῥοαὶ ὅσσ’ ἐγένοντο, &c.

ib. v. 321:

γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, ὕδατι δ’ ὕδωρ,

αἰθέρι δ’ αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀτὰρ πυρὶ πῦρ ἀῒδηλον,

στοργῇ δὲ στοργήν, νεῖκος δέ τε νείκεϊ λυγρῷ.

Theophrastus, De Sensu, c. 10, p. 650, Schneid.

Aristotle says that Empedokles regarded each of these six as a ψυχὴ (soul, vital principle) by itself. Sextus Empiricus treats Empedokles as considering each of the six to be a κριτήριον ἀληθείας (Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2; Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii. 116).

130. Emp. Fr. v. 313, Karst. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. viii. 286; also apud Diogen. L. viii. 77.

πάντα γὰρ ἴσθ’ φρόνησιν ἔχειν καὶ νώματος αἶσαν.

Stein gives (Emp. Fr. v. 222–231) several lines immediately preceding this from the treatise of Hippolytus; but they are sadly corrupt.

Parmenides had held the same opinion before—καὶ ὅλως πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἔχειν τινὰ γνῶσιν—ap. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 4.

Theophrastus, in commenting upon the doctrine of Empedokles, takes as one of his grounds of objection—That Empedokles, in maintaining sensation and knowledge to be produced by influx of the elements into pores, made no difference between animated and inanimate substances (Theophr. De Sens. s. 12–23). Theophrastus puts this as if it were an inconsistency or oversight of Empedokles: but it cannot be so considered, for Empedokles (as well as Parmenides) appears to have accepted the consequence, and to have denied all such difference, except one of degree, as to perception and knowledge.

131. Emp. Frag. 316, Karst. αἷμα γὰρ ἀνθρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα. Comp. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 11.

132. Emp. Frag. v. 301–310, Karst. τό τ’ ἐν μήνιγξιν ἐεργμένον ὠγύγιον πῦρ, &c. Theophr. De Sensu, s. 7, 8; Aristot. De Sensu, c. 3; Aristot. De Gen. et Corrupt. i. 8.

133. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 7, 8.

134. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 9–21.

Empedokles described the ear under the metaphor of σάρκινον ὄζον, “the fleshy branch.”

135. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 9, 10. The criticisms of Theophrastus upon this theory of Empedokles are extremely interesting, as illustrating the change in the Grecian physiological point of view during a century and a half, but I reserve them until I come to the Aristotelian age. I may remark, however, that Theophrastus, disputing the doctrine of sensory effluvia generally, disputes the existence of the olfactory effluvia not less than the rest (s. 20).

136. Emp. Frag. v. 380–410, Karsten; Plutarch, De Esu Carnium, p. 997–8.

Aristot. Rhetoric. i. 13, 2: ἐστὶ γὰρ, ὃ μαντεύονταί τι πάντες, φύσει κοινὸν δίκαιον καὶ ἄδικον, κἂν μηδεμία κοινωνία πρὸς ἀλλήλους ᾖ, μηδὲ συνθήκη—ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς λέγει περὶ τοῦ μὴ κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον· τοῦτο γὰρ οὐ τισὶ μὲν δίκαιον, τισὶ δ’ οὐ δίκαιον,

Ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πάντων νόμιμον διά τ’ εὐρυμέδοντος

Αἰθέρος ἠνεκέως τέταται διά τ’ ἀπλέτου αὐγῆς.

Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathem. ix. 127.

137. Emp. Frag. v. 5–18, Karst.; compare Herod. ii. 123; Plato, Phædrus, 55, p. 246 C.; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 26. Plutarch observes in another place on the large proportion of religious mysticism blended with the philosophy of Empedokles—Σωκράτης, φασμάτων καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἀναπλέω φιλοσοφίαν ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δεξάμενος, εὖ μάλα βεβακχευμένην, &c. (Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, p. 580, C.)

See Fr. Aug. Ukert, Ueber Daemonen, Heroen, und Genien, p. 151.

138. Emp. Fr. v. 390–425, Karst.

139. Diog. Laert. viii. 59.

140. Emp. Fr. v. 34, ed. Karst., p. 88.

παῦρον δὲ ζώης ἀβίου μέρος ἀθλήσαντες

ὠκύμοροι, κάπνοιο δίκην ἀρθέντες, ἀπέπταν,

αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος,

πάντοσ’ ἐλαυνόμενοι· τὸ δὲ οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν

αὔτως. οὔτ’ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ’ ἀνδράσιν οὔτ’ ἐπακουστὰ

οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά.

141. Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. i. 4, 5; Diogen. Laert. ii. 10.

142. Anaxagor. Fr. 22, p. 135, ed. Schaubach. τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομίζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες. Οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται, οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται· καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι.

143. Anaxag. Fr. 5, ed. Schaub, p. 94.

Τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ are the primordial particles themselves: ὁμοιομέρεια is the abstract word formed from this concrete—existence in the form or condition of ὁμοιομερῆ. Each distinct substance has its own ὁμοιομερῆ, little particles like each other, and each possessing the characteristics of the substance. But the state called ὁμοιομέρεια pervades all substances (Marbach, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, s. 53, note 3.)

144. Lucretius, i. 830:

Nunc et Anaxagoræ scrutemur Homœomerian,

Quam Grai memorant, nec nostrâ dicere linguâ

Concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas.

Lucretius calls this theory Homœomeria, and it appears to me that this name must have been bestowed upon it by its author. Zeller and several others, after Schleiermacher, conceive the name to date first from Aristotle and his physiological classification. But what other name was so natural or likely for Anaxagoras himself to choose?

145. Anaxag. Fr. 8; Schaub. p. 101; compare p. 113. ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ. Ἀλλ’ ὅτεῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν.

146. Lucretius, i. 876:

Id quod Anaxagoras sibi sumit, ut omnibus omnes

Res putet inmixtas rebus latitare, sed illud

Apparere unum cujus sint plurima mixta,

Et magis in promptu primâque in fronte locata.

Aristotel. Physic. i. 4, 3. Διό φασι πᾶν ἐν παντὶ μεμῖχθαι, διότι πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἑώρων γιγνόμενον· φαίνεσθαι δὲ διαφέροντα καί προσαγορεύεσθαι ἕτερα ἀλλήλων, ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ὑπερέχοντος, διὰ τὸ πλῆθος ἐν τῇ μίξει τῶν ἀπείρων· εἰλικρινῶς μὲν γὰρ ὅλον λευκὸν ἢ μέλαν ἢ σάρκα ἢ ὀστοῦν, οὐκ εἶναι· ὅτου δὲ πλεῖστον ἕκαστον ἔχει, τοῦτο δοκεῖν εἶναι τὴν φύσιν τοῦ πράγματος. Also Aristot. De Cœlo, iii. 3; Gen. et Corr. i. 1.

147. Anaxag. Frag. 1; Schaub. p. 65; Ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα. Καὶ γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον ἦν. Καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν εὔδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος. Πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν, ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα. Ταῦτα γὰρ μέγιστα ἔνεστιν ἐν τοῖς συμπᾶσι καὶ πλήθει καὶ μεγέθει.

The first three words—ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα—were the commencement of the Anaxagorean treatise, and were more recollected and cited than any other words in it. See Fragm. 16, 17, Schaubach, and p. 66–68. Aristotle calls this primeval chaos τὸ μίγμα.

148. Anax. Frag. 6, Schaub. p. 97; Aristotel. Physic. i. 4, p. 187, a, with the commentary of Simplikius ap. Scholia, p. 335; Brandis also, iii. 203, a. 25; and De Cœlo, iii. 301, a. 12, ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται (Anaxagoras) κοσμοποιεῖν.

149. Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 100, Schaub. Τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παντὸς μοῖραν ἔχει, νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνος αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ ἐστιν. Εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ ἦν, ἀλλά τεῳ ἐμέμικτο ἄλλῳ, μετεῖχεν ἂν ἁπάντων χρημάτων εἴ ἐμέμικτο τεῳ. … Καὶ ἀνεκώλυεν αὐτὸν τὰ συμμεμιγμένα, ὥστε μηδενὸς χρήματος κρατεῖν ὁμοίως, ὡς καὶ μόνον ἐόντα ἐφ’ ἑωϋτοῦ. Ἐστὶ γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον, καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει, καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον.

Compare Plato, Kratylus, c. 65, p. 413, c. νοῦν αὐτοκράτορα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμιγμένον (ὃ λέγει Ἀναξαγόρας).

150. Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 100, Sch. καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νοῦς ἐκράτησεν, ὥστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν. Καὶ πρῶτον ἀπὸ τοῦ σμικροῦ ἤρξατο περιχωρῆσαι, ἔπειτεν πλεῖον περιχωρέει, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον. Καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. Also Fr. 18, p. 129; Fr. 21, p. 134, Schau.

151. Anaxag. Fr. 8–19, Schaubach.

152. Anaxag. Fr. 8, p. 101, Schaub. ὅτεῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἕν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν. Pseudo-Origen. Philosophumen. 8. κινήσεως δε μετέχειν τὰ πάντα ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ κινούμενα, συνελθεῖν τε τὰ ὅμοια, &c. Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. i. p. 188, a. 13 (p. 337, Schol. Brandis).

153. Aristotel. Physic. iii. 4, 5, p. 203, a. 23, ὁτιοῦν τῶν μορίων εἶναι μῖγμα ὁμοίως τῷ πάντι, &c. Anaxag. Fr. 16, p. 126, Schaub.

Anaxag. Fr. 11, p. 119, Schaub. οὐ κεχώρισται τὰ ἑν ἑνὶ κόσμῳ, οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει, &c. Frag. 12, p. 122. ἐν παντὶ πάντα, οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι. — Frag. 15, p. 125.

154. Aristotle, in two places (De Cœlo, iii. 3, p. 302, a. 28, and Gen. et Corr. i. 1, p. 314, a. 18) appears to state that Anaxagoras regarded flesh and bone as simple and elementary: air, fire, and earth, as compounds from these and other Homœomeries. So Zeller (Philos. d. Griech., v. i. p. 670, ed. 2), with Ritter, and others, understand him. Schaubach (Anax. Fr. p. 81, 82) dissents from this opinion, but does not give a clear explanation. Another passage of Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 3, p. 984, a. 11) appears to contradict the above two passages, and to put fire and water, in the Anaxagorean theory, in the same general category as flesh and bone: the explanatory note of Bonitz, who tries to show that the passage in the Metaphysica is in harmony with the other two above named passages, seems to me not satisfactory.

Lucretius (i. 835, referred to in a previous note) numbers flesh, bone, fire, and water, all among the Anaxagorean Homœomeries; and I cannot but think that Aristotle, in contrasting Anaxagoras with Empedokles, has ascribed to the former language which could only have been used by the latter. Ἐναντίως δὲ φαίνονται λέγοντες οἱ περὶ Ἀναξαγόραν τοῖς περὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα. Ὁ μὲν γάρ (Emp.) φησι πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ ἀέρα καὶ γῆν στοιχεῖα τέσσαρα καὶ ἁπλᾶ εἶναι, μᾶλλον ἢ σάρκα καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν. Οἱ δὲ (Anaxag.) ταῦτα μὲν ἁπλᾶ καὶ στοιχεῖα, γῆν δὲ καὶ πῦρ καὶ ἀέρα σύνθετα· πανσπερμίαν γὰρ εἶναι τούτων. (Gen. et Corr. i. 1.) The last words (πανσπερμίαν) are fully illustrated by a portion of the other passage, De Cœlo, iii. 3, ἀέρα δὲ καὶ πῦρ μῖγμα τούτων (the Homœomeries, such as flesh and blood) καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σπερμάτων πάντων· εἶναι γὰρ ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν ἐξ ἀοράτων ὁμοιομερῶν πάντων ἠθροισμένων· διὸ καὶ γίγνεσθαι πάντα ἐκ τούτων.

Now it can hardly be said that Anaxagoras recognised one set of bodies as simple and elementary, and that Empedokles recognised another set of bodies as such. Anaxagoras expressly denied all simple bodies. In his theory, all bodies were compound: Nous alone formed an exception. Everything existed in everything. But they were compounds in which particles of one sort, or of a definite number of sorts, had come together into such positive and marked action, as practically to nullify the remainder. The generation of the Homœomeric aggregate was by disengaging these like particles from the confused mixture in which their agency had before lain buried (γένεσις, ἔκφανσις μόνον καὶ ἔκκρισις τοῦ πρὶν κρυπτομένου. Simplikius ap. Schaub. Anax. Fr. p. 115). The Homœomeric aggregates or bodies were infinite in number: for ingredients might be disengaged and recombined in countless ways, so that the result should always be some positive and definite manifestations. Considered in reference to the Homœomeric body, the constituent particles might in a certain sense be called elements.

155. Anaxag. Fr. 14, p. 125, Schaub.

156. See a remarkable passage in Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. i. 3.

157. This is a just comparison of Theophrastus. See the passage from his φυσικὴ ἱστορία, referred to by Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. i. p. 187, a. 21 (p. 335, Schol. Brand.).

158. Cicero, Academ. iv. 37; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, ix. 6, τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι κατ’ αὐτὸν θεὸς, &c.

Compare Schaubach, Anax. Frag. p. 153.

159. Aristot. Metaphys. A. p. 984, b. 17. He praises Anaxagoras for this, οἷον νήφων παρ’ εἰκῆ λέγοντας τοὺς πρότερον, &c.

160. Aristoteles (or Pseudo-Aristot.) De Plantis, i. 1.

Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2, 65–6-13.

Aristotle says that the language of Anaxagoras about νοῦς and ψυχὴ was not perfectly clear or consistent. But it seems also from Plato De Legg. xii. p. 967, B, that Anaxagoras made no distinction between νοῦς and ψυχή. Compare Plato, Kratylus, p. 400 A.

161. Anaxag. Fr. 8, and Schaubach’s Comm. p. 112–116.

“Mens erat id, quod movebat molem homœomeriarum: hâc ratione, per hunc motum à mente excitatum, secretio facta est. … Materiæ autem propriæ insunt vires: proprio suo pondere hæc, quæ mentis vi mota et secreta sunt, feruntur in eum locum, quo nunc sunt.”

Compare Alexand. Aphrod. ap. Scholia ad Aristot. Physic. ii. p. 194, a. (Schol. p. 348 a. Brandis); Marbach, Lehrbuch der Gesch. Philos. s. 54, note 2, p. 82; Preller, Hist. Phil. ex Font. Loc. Contexta, s. 53, with his comment.

162. Plato, Phædo, c. 107, 108, p. 98; Plato, De Legg. xii. p. 967 B; Aristot. Metaphys. A. 4, p. 985, b. 18; Plato, Timæus, 34 A. 88 E.

163. Aristoph. Nub. 380, 828. αἰθέριος Δῖνος—Δῖνος βασιλεύει, τὸν Δί’ ἐξεληλακώς—the sting of which applies to Anaxagoras and his doctrines.

Anaxagoras δίνους τινὰς ἀνοήτους ἀναζωγραφῶν, σὺν τῇ τοῦ νοῦ ἀπραξίᾳ καὶ ἀνοίᾳ (Clemens. Alexandrin. Stromat. ii. p. 365).

To move (in the active sense, i.e. to cause movement in) and to know, are the two attributes of the Anaxagorean Νοῦς (Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2, p. 405, a. 18).

164. Anaxagoras, Fr. 8, p. 100, Schaub.

ἐστὶ γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων, &c.

This means, not that νοῦς was unextended or immaterial, but that it was thinner or more subtle than either fire or air. Herakleitus regarded τὸ περιέχον as λογικὸν καὶ φρενῆρες. Diogenes of Apollonia considered air as endued with cognition, and as imparting cognition by being inhaled. Compare Plutarch, De Placit. Philos. iv. 3.

I cannot think, with Brücker (Hist. Philosop. part ii. b. ii. De Sectâ Ionicâ, p. 504, ed. 2nd), and with Tennemann, Ges. Ph. i. 8, p. 312, that Anaxagoras was “primus qui Dei ideam inter Græcos à materialitate quasi purificavit,” &c. I agree rather with Zeller (Philos. der Griech. i. p. 680–683, ed. 2nd), that the Anaxagorean Nous is not conceived as having either immateriality or personality.

165. Simplikius, in Physic. Aristot. p. 73. καὶ Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἐάσας, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος, καὶ αὐτοματίζων τὰ πολλὰ συνίστησιν.

166. Diogen. Laert. ii. 8. Νοῦν … ἀρχὴν κινήσεως.

Brücker, Hist. Philos. ut supra. “Scilicet, semel inducto in materiam à mente motu, sufficere putavit Anaxagoras, juxta leges naturæ motûsque, rerum ortum describere.”

167. Anaxag. Fr. 19, p. 131, Schaub.; compare Fr. 6, p. 97; Diogen. Laert. ii. 8.

168. Anaxag. Fr. 20, p. 133, Schau.

169. See the curious passage in Plutarch, Lysander 12, and Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 B; Diogen. Laert. ii. 12; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 13.

170. Plato, Kratylus, p. 409 A; Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 14; Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 7.

171. Schaubach, ad Anax. Fr. p. 165.

172. Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. ii. 23.

173. Diogenes Laert. ii. 9. τὰ δ’ ἄστρα κατ’ ἀρχὰς θολοειδῶς ἐνεχθῆναι, ὥστε κατὰ κορυφὴν τῆς γῆς τὸν ἀεὶ φαινόμενον εἶναι πόλον, ὕστερον δὲ τὴν (γῆν) ἔγκλισιν λαβεῖν. Plutarch, Placit. Phil. ii. 8.

174. See Schaubach, ad Anax. Fr. p. 174–181.

Among the points to which Anaxagoras addressed himself was the annual inundation of the Nile, which he ascribed to the melting of the snows in Æthiopia, in the higher regions of the river’s course. — Diodor. i. 38. Herodotus notices this opinion (ii. 22), calling it plausible, but false, yet without naming any one as its author. Compare Euripides, Helen. 3.

175. Aristotel. De Generat. Animal. iii. 6, iv. 1.

176. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. iii. 2; Diogen. Laert. ii. 9; Aristot. De Plantis, i. 2.

177. Aristot. De Plantis, i. 1; Aristot. Part. Animal. iv. 10.

178. Theophrastus, De Sensu, sect. 1—sect. 27–30.

This difference followed naturally from the opinions of the two philosophers on the nature of the soul or mind. Anaxagoras supposed it peculiar in itself, and dissimilar to the Homœomeries without. Empedokles conceived it as a compound of the four elements, analogous to all that was without: hence man knew each exterior element by its like within himself—earth by earth, water by water, &c.

179. Anaxag. Fr. 19, Schaub.; Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathem. vii. 91–140; Cicero, Academ. i. 12.

Anaxagoras remarked that the contrast between black and white might be made imperceptible to sense by a succession of numerous intermediate colours very finely graduated. He is said to have affirmed that snow was really black, notwithstanding that it appeared white to our senses: since water was black, and snow was only frozen water (Cicero, Academ. iv. 31; Sext. Empir. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. i. 33). “Anaxagoras non modo id ita esse (sc. albam nivem esse) negabat, sed sibi, quia sciret aquam nigram esse, unde illa concreta esset, albam ipsam esse ne videri quidem.” Whether Anaxagoras ever affirmed that snow did not appear to him white, may reasonably be doubted: his real affirmation probably was, that snow, though it appeared white, was not really white. And this affirmation depended upon the line which he drew between the fact of sense, the phenomenal, the relative, on one side—and the substratum, the real, the absolute, on the other. Most philosophers recognise a distinction between the two; but the line between the two has been drawn in very different directions. Anaxagoras assumed as his substratum, real, or absolute, the Homœomeries—numerous primordial varieties of matter, each with its inherent qualities. Among these varieties he reckoned water, but he did not reckon snow. He also considered that water was really and absolutely black or dark (the Homeric μέλαν ὕδωρ)—that blackness was among its primary qualities. Water, when consolidated into snow, was so disguised as to produce upon the spectator the appearance of whiteness; but it did not really lose, nor could it lose, its inherent colour. A negro covered with white paint, and therefore looking white, is still really black: a wheel painted with the seven prismatic colours, and made to revolve rapidly, will look white, but it is still really septi-coloured: i.e. the state of rapid revolution would be considered as an exceptional state, not natural to it. Compare Plato, Lysis, c. 32, p. 217 D.

180. Plato, Apol. So. c. 14; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7.

181. Plutarch, Nikias, 23.

182. Diogen. Laert. ix. 52. The danger incurred by Diogenes the Apolloniate at Athens is well authenticated, on the evidence of Demetrius the Phalerean, who had good means of knowing. And the fact may probably be referred to some time after the year B.C. 440, when Athens was at the height of her power and of her attraction for foreign visitors—when the visits of philosophers to the city had been multiplied by the countenance of Perikles—and when the political rivals of that great man had set the fashion of assailing them in order to injure him. This seems to me one probable reason for determining the chronology of the Apolloniate Diogenes: another is, that his description of the veins in the human body is so minute and detailed as to betoken an advanced period of philosophy between B.C. 440–410. See the point discussed in Panzerbieter, Fragment. Diogen. Apoll. c. 12–18 (Leipsic, 1830).

Simplikius (ad Aristot. Phys. fol. 6 A) describes Diogenes as having been σχεδὸν νεώτατος in the series of physical theorists.

183. Diogen. Ap. Fragm. ii. c. 29 Panzerb.; Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 39.

εἰ γὰρ τὰ ἐν τῷδε τῷ κόσμῳ ἐόντα νῦν γῆ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ τἄλλα, ὅσα φαινεται ἐν τῷδε τῷ κόσμῳ ἐόντα, εἰ τουτέων τι ἦν τὸ ἕτερον τοῦ ἑτέρου ἕτερον ἐὸν τῇ ἰδίῃ φύσει, καὶ μὴ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐὸν μετέπιπτε πολλαχῶς καὶ ἡτεροιοῦτο· οὐδαμῆ οὔτε μίσγεσθαι ἀλλήλοις ἠδύνατο οὔτε ὠφέλησις τῷ ἑτέρῳ οὔτε βλάβη, &c.

Aristotle approves this fundamental tenet of Diogenes, the conclusion that there must be one common Something out of which all things came—ἐξ ἑνὸς ἅπαντα (Gen. et Corrupt. i. 6–7, p. 322, a. 14), inferred from the fact that they acted upon each other.

184. Diog. Apoll. Fr. iv.-vi. c. 36–42, Panz. — Οὐ γὰρ ἂν οὕτω δέδασθαι οἷόν τε ἦν ἄνευ νοήσιος, ὥστε πάντων μέτρα ἔχειν, χειμῶνός τε καὶ θέρεος και νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρης καὶ ὑετῶν καὶ ἀνέμων καὶ εὐδιῶν. καὶ τὰ ἄλλα εἴ τις βούλεται ἐννοέεσθαι, εὕρισκοι ἂν οὕτω διακείμενα, ὡς ἀνυστὸν κάλλιστα. Ἔτι δε πρὸς τούτοις καὶ τάδε μεγάλα σημεῖα· ἄνθρωπος γὰρ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῶα ἀναπνέοντα ζώει τῷ ἀέρι. Καὶ τοῦτο αὐτοῖς καὶ ψυχή ἐστι καὶ νόησις——

—Καὶ μοὶ δοκέει τὸ τὴν νόησιν ἔχον εἶναι ὁ ἀὴρ καλεόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, &c.

Schleiermacher has an instructive commentary upon these fragments of the Apolloniate Diogenes (Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii. p. 157–162; Ueber Diogenes von Apollonia).

185. Diog. Ap. Fr. vi. καὶ ἐστι μηδὲ ἓν ὅ, τι μὴ μετέχει τούτου (air). Μετέχει δὲ οὐδὲ ἓν ὁμοίως τὸ ἕτερον τῷ ἑτέρῳ· ἀλλὰ πολλοὶ τρόποὶ καὶ αὐτοὺ τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ τῆς νοήσιός εἰσιν.

Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2, p. 405, a. 21. Διογένης δ’, ὥσπερ καὶ ἑτεροί τινες, ἀέρα [ὑπέλαβε τὴν ψυχήν], &c.

186. Diog. Ap. Fr. vi. καὶ πάντων ζώων δὴ ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ αὐτό ἐστιν, ἀὴρ θερμότερος μὲν τοῦ ἔξω ἐν ᾧ ἐσμέν, τοῦ μέντοι παρὰ τῷ ἡελίῳ πολλὸν ψυχρότερος.

187. Diogen. Apoll. Fr. v. ch. 38, Panz.

188. Diogen. Apoll. Fr. vii. ch. 48, Panz. The description of the veins given by Diogenes is preserved in Aristotel. Hist. Animal, iii. 2: yet seemingly only in a defective abstract, for Theophrastus alludes to various opinions of Diogenes on the veins, which are not contained in Aristotle. See Philippson, Ὕλη ἀνθρωπίνη, p. 203.

189. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iv. 5. Ἐν τῇ ἀρτηριακῇ κοιλίᾳ τῆς καρδίας, ἥτις ἐστὶ καὶ πνευματική. See Panzerbieter’s commentary upon these words, which are not very clear (c. 50), nor easy to reconcile with the description given by Diogenes himself of the veins.

190. Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. iv. 18. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 39–41-43. Κριτικώτατον δὲ ἡδονῆς τὴν γλῶτταν· ἁπαλώτατον γὰρ εἶναι καὶ μανὸν καὶ τὰς φλέβας ἁπάσας ἀνήκειν εἰς αὐτήν.

191. Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. iv. 16; Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 40.

192. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 42. Ὅτι δὲ ὁ ἐντὸς ἀὴρ αἰσθάνεται, μικρὸν ὢν μόριον τοῦ θεοῦ, σημεῖον εἶναι, ὅτι πολλάκις πρὸς ἄλλα τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντες οὔθ’ ὁρῶμεν οὔτ’ ἀκούομεν. The same opinion—that sensation, like thought, is a mental process, depending on physical conditions—is ascribed to Strato (the disciple and successor of Theophrastus) by Porphyry, De Abstinentiâ, iii. 21. Στράτωνος τοῦ φυσικοῦ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀποδεικνύων, ὡς οὐδὲ αἰσθάνεσθαι το παράπαν ἄνευ τοῦ νοεῖν ὑπάρχει. καὶ γὰρ γράμματα πολλάκις ἐπιπορευομένους τῇ ὄψει καὶ λόγοι προσπίπτοντες τῇ ἀκοῇ διαλανθάνουσιν ἡμᾶς καὶ διαφεύγουσι πρὸς ἑτέρους τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντας—ᾗ καὶ λέλεκται, νοῦς ὁρῆ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλά.

The expression ascribed to Diogenes by Theophrastus—ὁ ἐντὸς ἀὴρ, μικρὸν ὢν μόριον τοῦ θεοῦ—is so printed by Philippson; but the word θεοῦ seems not well avouched as to the text, and Schneider prints θυμοῦ. It is not impossible that Diogenes may have called the air God, without departing from his physical theory; but this requires proof.

193. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 43–46; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. v. 20. That moisture is the cause of dulness, and that the dry soul is the best and most intelligent—is cited among the doctrines of Herakleitus, with whom Diogenes of Apollonia is often in harmony. Αὔη ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη. See Schleiermach. Herakleitos, sect. 59–64.

194. Plutarch ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8; Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2; Diogen. Laert. ix. 53. Διογένης κισσηροειδῆ τὰ ἄστρα, διαπνοίας δὲ αὐτὰ νομίζει τοῦ κόσμου, εἶναι δὲ διάπυρα· συμπεριφέρεσθαι δὲ τοῖς φανεροῖς ἄστροις ἀφανεῖς λίθους καὶ παρ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτ’ ἀνωνύμους· πίπτοντα δὲ πολλάκις ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς σβέννυσθαι· καθάπερ τὸν ἐν Αἰγὸς ποταμοῖς πυρωδῶς κατενεχθέντα ἀστέρα πέτρινον. This remarkable anticipation of modern astronomy—the recognition of aerolithes as a class of non-luminous earthy bodies revolving round the sun, but occasionally coming within the sphere of the earth’s attraction, becoming luminous in our atmosphere, falling on the earth, and there being extinguished—is noticed by Alex. von Humboldt in his Kosmos, vol. i. p. 98–104, Eng. trans. He says—“The opinion of Diogenes of Apollonia entirely accords with that of the present day,” p. 110. The charm and value of that interesting book is greatly enhanced by his frequent reference to the ancient points of view on astronomical subjects.

195. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 8; Panzerbieter ad Diog. Ap. c. 76–78; Schaubach ad Anaxagor. Fr. p. 175.

196. Plut. Ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8.

197. Preller, Hist. Philosoph. Græc.-Rom. ex Font. Loc. Contexta, sect. 68. Preller thinks that Diogenes employed his chief attention “in animantium naturâ ex aeris principio repetendâ”; and that he was less full “in cognitione τῶν μετεώρων”. But the fragments scarcely justify this.

198. Diogen. Laert. ix. 41. See the chronology of Demokritus discussed in Mullach, Frag. Dem. p. 12–25; and in Zeller, Phil. der Griech., vol. i. p. 576–681, 2nd edit. The statement of Apollodorus as to the date of his birth, appears more trustworthy than the earlier date assigned by Thrasyllus (B.C. 470). Demokritus declared himself to be forty years younger than Anaxagoras.

199. Dionys. ix. 36–39.

200. Demokrit. Fragm. 6, p. 238, ed. Mullach. Compare ib. p. 41; Diogen. Laert. ix. 35; Strabo, xv. p. 703.

Pliny, Hist. Natur. “Democritus—vitam inter experimenta consumpsit,” &c.

201. Cicero, Orat. c. 20; Dionys. De Comp. Verbor. c. 24; Sextus Empir. adv. Mathem. vii. 265. Δημόκριτος, ὁ τῇ Διὸς φώνῃ παρεικαζόμενος, &c.

Diogenes (ix. 46–48) enumerates the titles of the treatises of Demokritus, as edited in the days of Tiberius by the rhetor Thrasyllus: who distributed them into tetralogies, as he also distributed the dialogues of Plato. It was probably the charm of style, common to Demokritus with Plato, which induced the rhetor thus to edit them both. In regard to scope and spirit of philosophy, the difference between the two was so marked, that Plato is said to have had a positive antipathy to the works of Demokritus, and a desire to burn them (Aristoxenus ap. Diog. Laert. ix. 40). It could hardly be from congeniality of doctrine that the same editor attached himself to both. It has been remarked that Plato never once names Demokritus, while Aristotle cites him very frequently, sometimes with marked praise.

202. Simplikius, in Aristotel. Physic. fol. 7 A. Λεύκιππος … κοινωνήσας Παρμενίδῃ τῆς φιλοσοφίας, οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐβάδισε Παρμενίδῃ καὶ Ξενοφάνει περὶ τῶν ὄντων δόξαν, ἀλλ’, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὴν ἐναντίαν. Aristotel. De Gener. et Corr. i. 8, p. 251, a. 31. Diogen. Laert. ix. 30.

203. It is chiefly in the eighth chapter of the treatise De Gener. et Corr. (i. 8) that Aristotle traces the doctrine of Leukippus as having grown out of that of the Eleates. Λεύκιππος δ’ ἔχειν ᾠήθη λόγους, οἵτινες πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν ὁμολογούμενα λέγοντες οὐκ ἀναιρήσουσιν οὔτε γένεσιν οὔτε φθορὰν οὔτε κίνησιν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὄντων, &c.

Compare also Aristotel. De Cœlo, iii. 4, p. 303, a. 6; Metaphys. A. 4, p. 985, b. 5; Physic. iv. 6: λέγουσι δὲ (Demokritus, &c., in proving a vacuum) ἓν μὲν ὅτι ἡ κίνησις ἡ κατὰ τόπον οὐκ ἂν εἴη, οὐ γὰρ ἂν δοκεῖν εἶναι κίνησιν εἰ μὴ εἴη κενόν· τὸ γὰρ πλῆρες ἀδύνατον εἶναι δέξασθαί τι, &c.

Plutarch adv. Kolot. p. 1108. Οἷς οὐδ’ ὄναρ ἐντυχὼν ὁ Κολώτης, ἐσφάλη περὶ λέξιν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς (Demokritus) ἐν ᾖ διορίζεται, μὴ μᾶλλον τὸ δὲν, ἢ τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι· δὲν μὲν ὀνομάζων τὸ σῶμα μηδὲν δὲ τὸ κενόν, ὡς καὶ τούτου φύσιν τινὰ καὶ ὑπόστασιν ἰδίαν ἔχοντος.

The affirmation of Demokritus—That Nothing existed, just as much as Something—appears a paradox which we must probably understand as implying that he here adopted, for the sake of argument, the language of the Eleates, his opponents. They called the vacuum Nothing, but Demokritus did not so call it. If (said Demokritus) you call vacuum Nothing, then I say that Nothing exists as well as Something.

The direct observations by which Demokritus showed the existence of a vacuum were—1. A vessel with ashes in it will hold as much water as if it were empty: hence we know that there are pores in the ashes, into which the water is received. 2. Wine can be compressed in skins. 3. The growth of organised bodies proves that they have pores, through which new matter in the form of nourishment is admitted. (Aristot. Physic. iv. 6, p. 213, b.)

Besides this, Demokritus set forth motion as an indisputable fact, ascertained by the evidence of sense: and affirmed that motion was impossible, except on the assumption that vacuum existed. Melissus, the disciple of Parmenides, inverted the reasoning, in arguing against the reality of motion. If it be real (he said), then there must exist a vacuum: but no vacuum does or can exist: therefore there is no real motion. (Aristot. Physic. iv. 6.)

Since Demokritus started from these facts of sense, as the base of his hypothesis of atoms and vacua, so Aristotle (Gen. et Corr. i. 2; De Animâ, i. 2) might reasonably say that he took sensible appearances as truth. But we find Demokritus also describing reason as an improvement and enlightenment of sense, and complaining how little of truth was discoverable by man. See Mullach, Demokritus (pp. 414, 415). Compare Philippson—Ὗλη ἀνθρωπίνη—Berlin, 1831.

204. Aristotel. Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 325, a. 25, τὰ πρῶτα μεγέθη τὰ ἀδιαίρετα στερεά. Diogen. Laert. ix. 44; Plutarch, adv. Koloten, p. 1110 seq.

Zeller, Philos. der Griech., vol. i. p. 583–588, ed. 2nd; Aristotel. Metaphys. Z. 13, p. 1039, a. 10, ἀδύνατον εἶναί φησι Δημόκριτος ἐκ δύο ἓν ᾒ ἐξ ἑνὸς δύο γενέσθαι· τὰ γὰρ μεγέθη τὰ ἄτομα τὰς οὐσίας ποιεῖ.

205. Aristotel. Gener. et Corr. i. 7, p. 323, b. 12. It was the opinion of Demokritus, that there could be no action except where agent and patient were alike. Φησὶ γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ ὅμοιον εἶναι τό τε ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον· οὐ γὰρ ἐγχωρεῖν τὰ ἕτερα καὶ διαφέροντα πάσχειν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων· ἀλλὰ κἂν ἕτερα ὄντα ποιῇ τι εἰς ἄλληλα, οὐχ ᾗ ἕτερα, ἀλλ’ ᾗ ταὐτόν τι ὑπάρχει, ταύτῃ τοῦτο συμβαίνειν αὐτοῖς. Many contemporary philosophers affirmed distinctly the opposite. Τὸ ὅμοιον ὑπὸ τοῦ ὁμοίου πᾶν ἀπαθές, &c. Diogenes the Apolloniate agreed on this point generally with Demokritus; see above, p. 61, note 1. The facility with which these philosophers laid down general maxims is constantly observable.

206. Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 2, p. 316, a. 1; Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 63, 64. Περὶ μὲν οὖν βαρέος καὶ κούφου καὶ σκληροῦ καὶ μαλακοῦ ἐν τούτοις ἀφορίζει· τῶν δὲ ἄλλων αἰσθητῶν οὐδενὸς εἶναι φύσιν, ἀλλὰ πάντα πάθη τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἀλλοιουμένης, ἐξ ἧς γίνεσθαι τὴν φαντασίαν, &c.

Stobæus, Eclog. Physic. i. c. 16. Φύσιν μὲν μηδὲν εἶναι χρῶμα, τὰ μὲν γὰρ στοιχεῖα ἄποια, τά τε μεστὰ καὶ τὸ κενόν· τὰ δ’ ἐξ αὐτῶν συγκρίματα κέχρῶσθαι διαταγῇ τε καὶ ῥυθμῷ καὶ προτροπῇ, &c.

Demokritus restricted the term Φύσις—Nature—to the primordial atoms and vacua (Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. p. 310 A.).

207. Aristotel. Gener. et Corr. i. 2, p. 315, b. 10. Ὥστε ταῖς μεταβολαῖς τοῦ συγκειμένου τὸ αὐτὸ ἐναντίον δοκεῖν ἄλλῳ καὶ ἄλλῳ, καὶ μετακινεῖσθαι μικροῦ ἐμμιγνυμένου, καὶ ὅλως ἕτερον φαίνεσθαι ἑνὸς μετακινηθέντος.

208. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 61. Βαρὺ μὲν οὖν καὶ κοῦφον τῷ μεγέθει διαιρεῖ Δημόκριτος, &c.

Aristotel. De Cœlo, iv. 2, 7, p. 309, a. 10; Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 326, a. 9. Καίτοι βαρύτερον γε κατὰ τὴν ὑπεροχήν φησιν εἶναι Δημόκριτος ἕκαστον τῶν ἀδιαιρέτων, &c.

209. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 62.

210. Demokritus, Fr. p. 205, Mullach; Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. p. 135; Diogen. Laert. ix. 72.

211. Aristotel. Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 325, a. 29. Ἄπειρα τὸ πλῆθος καὶ ἀόρατα διὰ σμικρότητα τῶν ὄγκων, &c.

Marbach observes justly that the Demokritean atoms, though not really objects of sense in consequence of their smallness (of their disproportion to our visual power), are yet spoken of as objects of sense: they are as it were microscopic objects, and the γνησίη γνώμη, or intelligence, is conceived as supplying something of a microscopic power. (Marbach, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, sect. 58, vol. i. p. 94.)

212. Aristotel. De Cœlo, iii. 2, 3, p. 300, b. 9. Λευκίππῳ καὶ Δήμοκριτῳ, τοῖς λέγουσιν ἀεὶ κινεῖσθαι, τὰ πρῶτα σώματα, &c. (Physic. viii. 3, 3, p. 253, b. 12, viii. 9, p. 265, b. 23; Cicero, De Finib. i. 6, 17.)

213. Aristot. Generat. Animal. ii. 6, p. 742, b. 20; Physic. viii. 1, p. 252, b. 32.

Aristotle blames Demokritus for thus acquiescing in the general course of nature as an ultimatum, and for omitting all reference to final causes. M. Lafaist, in a good dissertation, Sur la Philosophie Atomistique (Paris, 1833, p. 78), shows that this is exactly the ultimatum of natural philosophers at the present day. “Un phénomène se passait-il, si on lui en demandait la raison, il (Demokritus) répondait, ‘La chose se passe ainsi, parcequ’elle s’est toujours passée ainsi.’ C’est, en d’autres termes, la seule réponse que font encore aujourd’hui les naturalistes. Suivant eux, une pierre, quand elle n’est pas soutenue, tombe en vertu de la loi de la pesanteur. Qu’est-ce que la loi de la pesanteur? La généralisation de ce fait plusieurs fois observé, qu’une pierre tombe quand elle n’est pas soutenue. Le phénomène dans un cas particulier arrive ainsi, parceque toujours il est arrivé ainsi. Le principe qu’implique l’explication des naturalistes modernes est celle de Démokrite, c’est que la nature demeure constante à elle-même. La proposition de Démokrite—‘Tel phénomène a lieu de cette façon, parceque toujours il a eu lieu de cette même façon’—est la première forme qu’ ait revêtue le principe de la stabilité des lois naturelles.”

214. Aristotle (Physic. ii. 4, p. 196, a. 25) says that Demokritus (he seems to mean Demokritus) described the motion of the atoms to form the cosmical system, as having taken place ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτομάτου. Upon which Mullach (Dem. Frag. p. 382) justly remarks—“Casu (ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου) videntur fieri, quæ naturali quâdam necessitate cujus leges ignoramus evenire dicuntur. Sed quamvis Aristoteles naturalem Abderitani philosophi necessitatem, vitato ἀνάγκης vocabulo, quod alii aliter usurpabant, casum et fortunam vocaret—ipse tamen Democritus, abhorrens ab iis omnibus quæ destinatam causarum seriem tollerent rerumque naturam perturbarent, nihil juris fortunæ et casui in singulis rebus concessit.”

Zeller has a like remark upon the phrase of Aristotle, which is calculated to mislead as to the doctrine of Demokritus (Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 600, 2nd. ed.).

Dugald Stewart, in one of the Dissertations prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, has the like comment respecting the fundamental principle of the Epicurean (identical quoad hoc with the Demokritean) philosophy.

“I cannot conclude this note without recurring to an observation ascribed by Laplace to Leibnitz—‘that the blind chance of the Epicureans involves the supposition of an effect taking place without a cause’. This is a very incorrect statement of the philosophy taught by Lucretius, which nowhere gives countenance to such a supposition. The distinguishing tenet of this sect was, that the order of the universe does not imply the existence of intelligent causes, but may be accounted for by the active powers belonging to the atoms of matter: which active powers, being exerted through an indefinitely long period of time, might have produced, nay must have produced, exactly such a combination of things as that with which we are surrounded. This does not call in question the necessity of a cause to produce every effect, but, on the contrary, virtually assumes the truth of that axiom. It only excludes from these causes the attribute of intelligence. In the same way, when I apply the words blind chance to the throw of a die, I do not mean to deny that I am ultimately the cause of the particular event that is to take place: but only to intimate that I do not here act as a designing cause, in consequence of my ignorance of the various accidents to which the die is subjected while shaken in the box. If I am not mistaken, this Epicurean theory approaches very nearly to the scheme which it is the main object of the Essay on Probabilities (by Laplace) to inculcate.” (Stewart—First Dissertation, part ii. p. 139, note.)

215. Demokrit. Frag. p. 167, ed. Mullach; Eusebius, Præp. Evang. xiv. 27. ἄνθρωποι τύχης εἴδωλον ἐπλάσαντο πρόφασιν ἰδίης ἀβουλίης.

216. Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 604 seq.; Demokrit. Fragm. p. 207, Mull.; Sext. Empiricus adv. Mathem. vii. 117.

217. Demokrit. Fragm. p. 208, Mullach. Δημόκριτος ἐν οἷς φησι δίνη ἀπὸ παντὸς ἀποκρίνεσθαι παντοίων εἰδέων, &c.

Diog. Laert. ix. 31–44.

218. Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 612, ed. 2nd.

219. Mullach, Demokr. Fragm. p. 395 seqq.

220. Aristotle, Gen. et Corr. i. 8, p. 326, a. 5; De Cœlo, iii. 8, p. 306, b. 35; Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 64.

221. Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2, 2–3, p. 403, b. 28; i. 3, p. 406, b. 20; Cicero, Tuscul. Disput. i. 11; Diogen. Laert. ix. 44.

222. Aristotel. De Respirat. (c. 4, p. 472, a. 5), λέγει (Demokritus) ὡς ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ θερμὸν ταὐτὸν, τὰ πρῶτα σχήματα τῶν σφαιροειδῶν.

Lucretius, iii. 370.

Illud in his rebus nequaquam sumere possis,

Democriti quod sancta viri sententia ponit;

Corporis atque animi primordia singula privis

Adposita alternis variare ac nectere membra.

223. Aristotel. De Respiratione, c. 4, p. 472, a. 10; De Animâ, i. 2, p. 404, a. 12.

224. Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., i. p. 618, ed. 2nd.

Plutarch (Placit. Philos. iv. 4), ascribes a bipartite division of the soul to Demokritus: τὸ λογικὸν, in the thorax: τὸ ἄλογον, distributed over all the body. But in the next section (iv. 6), he departs from this statement, affirming that both Demokritus and Plato supposed τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν of the soul to be in the head.

225. Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iv. 8. Demokritus and Leukippus affirm τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὴν νόησιν γίνεσθαι, εἰδώλων ἔξωθεν προσιόντων· μηδενὶ γὰρ ἐπιβάλλειν μηδετέραν χωρὶς τοῦ προσπίπτοντος εἰδώλου.

Cicero, De Finibus, i. 6, 21, “imagines, quæ idola nominant, quorum incursione non solum videamus, sed etiam cogitemus,” &c.

226. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 64.

227. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 73 seq.; Aristotel. De Sensu, c. iv. p. 442, b. 10. The opinions of Demokritus on colour are illustrated at length by Prantl in his Uebersicht der Farbenlehre der Alten (p. 49 seq.), appended to his edition of the Aristotelian or Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, Περὶ Χρωμάτων (Munich, 1849).

Demokritus seems also to have attempted to show, that the sensation of cold and shivering was produced by the irruption of jagged and acute atoms. See Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, p. 947, 948, c. 8.

228. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 76–78. ἄπειρα τὰ χρώματα καὶ τοὺς χυλοὺς κατὰ τὰς μίξεις—οὐδὲν γὰρ ὅμοιον ἔσεσθαι θἄτερον θἀτέρου.

229. Theophrast. De Sensu, s. 50. τὸν ἀέρα τὸν μεταξὺ τῆς ὄψεως καὶ τοῦ ὁρωμένου τυποῦσθαι, &c. Aristotel. De Sensu, c. 2, p. 438, a. 6.

Theophrastus notices this intermediate ἀποτύπωσις ἐν τῷ ἀέρι as a doctrine peculiar (ἰδίως) to Demokritus: he himself proceeds to combat it (51, 52).

230. Aristotel. De Animâ, ii. 7–9, p. 419, a. 16.

231. Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 54.

232. Theophrastus, De Sensu, 55, 56. τὴν γὰρ φωνὴν εἶναι πυκνουμένου τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ μετὰ βίας εἰσιόντος, &c.

Demokritus thought that air entered into the system not only through the ears, but also through pores in other parts of the body, though so gently as to be imperceptible to our consciousness: the ears afforded a large aperture, and admitted a considerable mass.

233. Theophrast. De Sensu, 65–68.

234. Theophrast. De Sensu, 67. ἁπάντων δὲ τῶν σχημάτων οὐδὲν ἀκέραιον εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγὲς τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἑκάστῳ πολλὰ εἶναι … οὖ δ’ ἂν ἐνῇ πλεῖστον, τοῦτο μάλιστα ἐνισχύειν πρός τε τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν.

This essential intermixture, in each distinct substance, of atoms of all different shapes, is very analogous to the essential intermixture of all sorts of Homœomeries in the theory of Anaxagoras.

235. Theophrast. De Sensu, 67. εἰς ὁποίαν ἕξιν ἂν εἰσέλθῃ, διαφέρειν οὐκ ὀλίγον· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸ αὐτὸ τἀναντία, καὶ τἀναντία τὸ αὐτὸ πάθος ποιεῖν ἐνίοτε.

236. Theophrast. De Sensu, 58. Περὶ δὲ τοῦ φρονεῖν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον εἴρηκεν, ὅτι γίνεται συμμέτρως ἐχούσης τῆς ψυχῆς μετὰ τὴν κίνησιν· ἐὰν δὲ περίθερμός τις ἢ περίψυχρος γένηται, μεταλλάττειν φησί.

237. Theophrastus, De Sensu, 71. νῦν δὲ σκληροῦ μὲν καὶ μαλακοῦ καὶ βαρέος καὶ κούφου ποιεῖ τὴν οὐσίαν, ὅπερ (ἅπερ) οὐχ’ ἧττον ἔδοξε λέγεσθαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς, θερμοῦ δὲ καὶ ψυχροῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδενός.

This is a remarkable point to be noted in the criticisms of Theophrastus on the doctrine of Demokritus. Demokritus maintains that hot and cold are relative to us: hard and soft, heavy and light, are not only relative to us, but also absolute, objective, things in their own nature—though causing in us sensations which are like them. Theophrastus denies this distinction altogether: and denies it with the best reason. Not many of his criticisms on Demokritus are so just and pertinent as this one.

238. Demokritus Fragm. Mullach, p. 205, 206; ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. vii. 135–139, γνώμης δύο εἰσὶν ἰδέαι· ἡ μὲν γνησίη, ἡ δὲ σκοτίη, &c.

239. Democr. Frag., Mull., p. 204–5. Ἅπερ νομίζεται μὲν εἶναι καὶ δοξάζεται τὰ αἰσθητά, οὐκ ἔστι δὲ κατὰ ἀλήθειαν ταῦτα· ἀλλὰ τὰ ἄτομα μόνον καὶ κενόν. ἡμέες δὲ τῷ μὲν ἐόντι οὐδὲν ἀτρεκὲς ξυνίεμεν, μετάπιπτον δὲ κατά τε σώματος διαθιγήν, καὶ τῶν ἐπεισιόντων, καὶ τῶν ἀντιστηριζόντων … ἐτεῇ μέν νυν, ὅτι οἵον ἕκαστόν ἐστιν ἢ οὔκ ἐστιν, οὐ ξυνίεμεν, πολλαχῆ δεδήλωται, &c.

Compare Cicero, Acad. Quæst. i. 13, ii. 10; Diog. Laert. ix. 72; Aristotel. Metaphys. iii. 5, p. 1009, b. 10.

240. Demokriti Frag. p. 207, Mullach; Sext. Empiric, adv. Mathemat. ix. 19; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 10, p. 735 A.

241. Plutarch, Symposiac. v. 7, p. 683 A.

242. Aristotel. De Divinat. per Somnum, p. 464, a. 5; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 9, p. 733 E. ὅτι καὶ κόσμων ἐκτὸς φθαρέντων καὶ σωμάτων ἀλλοφύλων ἐκ τῆς ἀποῤῥοίας ἐπιῤῥεόντων, ἐνταῦθα πολλάκις ἀρχαὶ παρεμπίπτουσι λοιμῶν καὶ παθῶν οὐ συνήθων.

243. Plutarch, De Oraculor. Defectu, p. 419. αὐτὸς εὔχεται εὐλόγχων εἰδωλων τυγχάνειν.

244. See the list of the works of Demokritus in Diogen. Laert. ix. 46, and in Mullach’s edition of the Fragments, p. 105–107. Mullach mentions here (note 18) that Demokritus is cited seventy-eight times in the extant works of Aristotle, and sometimes with honourable mention. He is never mentioned by Plato. In the fragment of Philodemus de Musica, Demokritus is called ἀνὴρ οὐ φυσιολογώτατος μόνον τῶν ἀρχαίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰ ἱστορούμενα οὐδενὸς ἦττον πολυπράγμων (Mullach, p. 237). Seneca calls him “Democritus, subtilissimus antiquorum omnium”. — Quæstion. Natural. vii. 2. And Dionysius of Hal. (De Comp. Verb. p. 187, R.) characterises Demokritus, Plato, and Aristotle (he arranges them in that order) as first among all the philosophers, in respect of σύνθεσις τῶν ὀνομάτων.

245. Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, p. 1108.

Among the Demokritean treatises, was one entitled Pythagoras, which contained probably a comment on the life and doctrines of that eminent man, written in an admiring spirit. (Diog. Laert. ix. 38.)

246. Seneca, De Tranquill. Animæ, cap. 2. “Hanc stabilem animi sedem Græci Εὐθυμίαν vocant, de quo Democriti volumen egregium est.” Compare Cicero De Finib. v. 29; Diogen. Laert. ix. 45. For εὐθυμία Demokritus used as synonyms εὐεστώ, ἀθαμβίη, ἀταραξίη, &c. See Mullach, p. 416.