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Title: Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

Author: George Grote

Release date: August 7, 2012 [eBook #40435]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLATO AND THE OTHER
COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES, 3RD ED. VOLUME 1 ***

PLATO, AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PLATO,
and the

OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.

by

GEORGE GROTE

A NEW EDITION.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

Vol. I.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1885.

The right of Translation is reserved.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In the present Edition, with a view to the distribution into four volumes, there is a slight
transposition of the author’s arrangement. His concluding chapters (XXXVIII., XXXIX.), entitled
“Other Companions of Sokrates,” and “Xenophon,” are placed in the First Volume, as chapters III.
and IV. By this means each volume is made up of nearly related subjects, so as to possess a certain
amount of unity.

Volume First contains the following subjects:—Speculative Philosophy in Greece before
Sokrates; Growth of Dialectic; Other Companions of Sokrates; Xenophon; Life of Plato; Platonic
Canon; Platonic Compositions generally; Apology of Sokrates; Kriton; Euthyphron.

Volume Second comprises:—Alkibiades I. and II.; Hippias Major — Hippias Minor; Hipparchus
— Minos; Theages; Erastæ or Anterastæ — Rivales; Ion; Laches; Charmides; Lysis; Euthydemus;
Menon; Protagoras; Gorgias; Phædon.

Volume Third:—Phædrus — Symposion; Parmenides; Theætetus; Sophistes; Politikus; Kratylus;
Philebus; Menexenus; Kleitophon.

Volume Fourth:—Republic; Timæus and Kritias; Leges and Epinomis; General Index.

The Volumes may be obtained separately.

PREFACE.
The present work is intended as a sequel and supplement to my History of Greece. It describes a
portion of Hellenic philosophy: it dwells upon eminent individuals, enquiring, theorising, reasoning,
confuting, &c., as contrasted with those collective political and social manifestations which form
the matter of history, and which the modern writer gathers from Herodotus, Thucydides, and
Xenophon.

Both Sokrates and Plato, indeed, are interesting characters in history as well as in philosophy.
Under the former aspect, they were described by me in my former work as copiously as its general
purpose would allow. But it is impossible to do justice to either of them — above all, to Plato, with
his extreme variety and abundance — except in a book of which philosophy is the principal subject,
and history only the accessory.

The names of Plato and Aristotle tower above all others in Grecian philosophy. Many
compositions from both have been preserved, though only a small proportion of the total number
left by Aristotle. Such preservation must be accounted highly fortunate, when we read in Diogenes
Laertius and others, the long list of works on various topics of philosophy, now irrecoverably lost,
and known by little except their titles. Respecting a few of them, indeed, we obtain some partial
indications from fragmentary extracts and comments of later critics. But none of these once
celebrated philosophers, except Plato and Aristotle, can be fairly appreciated upon evidence
furnished by themselves. The Platonic dialogues, besides the extraordinary genius which they
display as compositions, bear thus an increased price (like the Sibylline books) as the scanty
remnants of a lost philosophical literature, once immense and diversified.

Under these two points of view, I trust that the copious analysis and commentary bestowed upon
them in the present work will not be considered as unnecessarily lengthened. I maintain, full and
undiminished, the catalogue of Plato’s works as it was inherited from antiquity and recognised by
all critics before the commencement of the present century. Yet since several subsequent critics have
contested the canon, and set aside as spurious many of the dialogues contained in it, — I have
devoted a chapter to this question, and to the vindication of the views on which I have proceeded.

The title of these volumes will sufficiently indicate that I intend to describe, as far as evidence
permits, the condition of Hellenic philosophy at Athens during the half century immediately
following the death of Sokrates in 399 B.C. My first two chapters do indeed furnish a brief sketch of
Pre-Sokratic philosophy: but I profess to take my departure from Sokrates himself, and these
chapters are inserted mainly in order that the theories by which he found himself surrounded may
not be altogether unknown. Both here, and in the sixty-ninth chapter of my History, I have done my
best to throw light on the impressive and eccentric personality of Sokrates: a character original and
unique, to whose peculiar mode of working on other minds I scarcely know a parallel in history. He

was the generator, indirectly and through others, of a new and abundant crop of compositions — the
“Sokratic dialogues”: composed by many different authors, among whom Plato stands out as
unquestionable coryphæus, yet amidst other names well deserving respectful mention as seconds,
companions, or opponents.

It is these Sokratic dialogues, and the various companions of Sokrates from whom they
proceeded, that the present work is intended to exhibit. They form the dramatic manifestation of
Hellenic philosophy — as contrasted with the formal and systematising, afterwards prominent in
Aristotle.

But the dialogue is a process containing commonly a large intermixture, often a preponderance,
of the negative vein: which was more abundant and powerful in Sokrates than in any one. In
discussing the Platonic dialogues, I have brought this negative vein into the foreground. It reposes
upon a view of the function and value of philosophy which is less dwelt upon than it ought to be,
and for which I here briefly prepare the reader.

Philosophy is, or aims at becoming, reasoned truth: an aggregate of matters believed or
disbelieved after conscious process of examination gone through by the mind, and capable of being
explained to others: the beliefs being either primary, knowingly assumed as self-evident — or
conclusions resting upon them, after comparison of all relevant reasons favourable and
unfavourable. “Philosophia” (in the words of Cicero), “ex rationum collatione consistit.” This is not
the form in which beliefs or disbeliefs exist with ordinary minds: there has been no conscious
examination — there is no capacity of explaining to others — there is no distinct setting out of
primary truths assumed — nor have any pains been taken to look out for the relevant reasons on
both sides, and weigh them impartially. Yet the beliefs nevertheless exist as established facts
generated by traditional or other authority. They are sincere and often earnest, governing men’s
declarations and conduct. They represent a cause in which sentence has been pronounced, or a rule
made absolute, without having previously heard the pleadings.1

1 Napoléon, qui de temps en temps, au milieu de sa fortune et de sa puissance,
songeait à Robespierre et à sa triste fin — interrogeait un jour son archi-
chancelier Cambacérès sur le neuf Thermidor. “C’est un procès jugé et non
plaidé,” répondait Cambacérès, avec la finesse d’un jurisconsulte courtisan. —
(Hippolyte Carnot — Notice sur Barère, p. 109; Paris, 1842.)

Now it is the purpose of the philosopher, first to bring this omission of the pleadings into
conscious notice — next to discover, evolve, and bring under hearing the matters omitted, as far as
they suggest themselves to his individual reason. He claims for himself, and he ought to claim for
all others alike, the right of calling for proof where others believe without proof — of rejecting the
received doctrines, if upon examination the proof given appears to his mind unsound or insufficient
— and of enforcing instead of them any others which impress themselves upon his mind as true. But
the truth which he tenders for acceptance must of necessity be reasoned truth; supported by proofs,

defended by adequate replies against preconsidered objections from others. Only hereby does it
properly belong to the history of philosophy: hardly even hereby has any such novelty a chance of
being fairly weighed and appreciated.

When we thus advert to the vocation of philosophy, we see that (to use the phrase of an acute
modern author2) it is by necessity polemical: the assertion of independent reason by individual
reasoners, who dissent from the unreasoning belief which reigns authoritative in the social
atmosphere around them, and who recognise no correction or refutation except from the counter-
reason of others. We see besides, that these dissenters from the public will also be, probably, more
or less dissenters from each other. The process of philosophy may be differently performed by two
enquirers equally free and sincere, even of the same age and country: and it is sure to be differently
performed, if they belong to ages and countries widely apart. It is essentially relative to the
individual reasoning mind, and to the medium by which the reasoner is surrounded. Philosophy
herself has every thing to gain by such dissent; for it is only thereby that the weak and defective
points of each point of view are likely to be exposed. If unanimity is not attained, at least each of the
dissentients will better understand what he rejects as well as what he adopts.

2 Professor Ferrier, in his instructive volume, ‘The Institutes of Metaphysic,’
has some valuable remarks on the scope and purpose of Philosophy. I transcribe
some of them, in abridgment.

(Sections 1-8) “A system of philosophy is bound by two main requisitions: it
ought to be true — and it ought to be reasoned. Philosophy, in its ideal
perfection, is a body of reasoned truth. Of these obligations, the latter is the
more stringent. It is more proper that philosophy should be reasoned, than that it
should be true: because, while truth may perhaps be unattainable by man, to
reason is certainly his province and within his power.… A system is of the
highest value only when it embraces both these requisitions — that is, when it is
both true, and reasoned. But a system which is reasoned without being true, is
always of higher value than a system which is true without being reasoned. The
latter kind of system is of no value: because philosophy is the attainment of
truth by the way of reason. That is its definition. A system, therefore, which
reaches the truth but not by the way of reason, is not philosophy at all, and has
therefore no scientific worth. Again, an unreasoned philosophy, even though
true, carries no guarantee of its truth. It may be true, but it cannot be certain. On
the other hand, a system, which is reasoned without being true, has always some
value. It creates reason by exercising it. It is employing the proper means to
reach truth, though it may fail to reach it.” (Sections 38-41) — “The student
will find that the system here submitted to his attention is of a very polemical
character. Why! Because philosophy exists only to correct the inadvertencies of
man’s ordinary thinking. She has no other mission to fulfil. If man naturally

thinks aright, he need not be taught to think aright. If he is already in possession
of the truth, he does not require to be put in possession of it. The occupation of
philosophy is gone: her office is superfluous. Therefore philosophy assumes and
must assume that man does not naturally think aright, but must be taught to do
so: that truth does not come to him spontaneously, but must be brought to him
by his own exertions. If man does not naturally think aright, he must think, we
shall not say wrongly (for that implies malice prepense) but inadvertently: the
native occupant of his mind must be, we shall not say falsehood (for that too
implies malice prepense) but error. The original dowry then of universal man is
inadvertency and error. This assumption is the ground and only justification of
the existence of philosophy. The circumstance that philosophy exists only to put
right the oversights of common thinking — renders her polemical not by choice,
but by necessity. She is controversial as the very tenure and condition of her
existence: for how can she correct the slips of common opinion, the oversights
of natural thinking, except by controverting them?” Professor Ferrier deserves
high commendation for the care taken in this volume to set out clearly
Proposition and Counter-Proposition: the thesis which he impugns, as well as
that which he sustains.

The number of individual intellects, independent, inquisitive, and acute, is always rare
everywhere; but was comparatively less rare in these ages of Greece. The first topic, on which such
intellects broke loose from the common consciousness of the world around them, and struck out
new points of view for themselves, was in reference to the Kosmos or the Universe. The received
belief, of a multitude of unseen divine persons bringing about by volitions all the different
phenomena of nature, became unsatisfactory to men like Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides,
Pythagoras, Anaxagoras. Each of these volunteers, following his own independent inspirations,
struck out a new hypothesis, and endeavoured to commend it to others with more or less of
sustaining reason. There appears to have been little of negation or refutation in their procedure.
None of them tried to disprove the received point of view, or to throw its supporters upon their
defence. Each of them unfolded his own hypothesis, or his own version of affirmative reasoned
truth, for the adoption of those with whom it might find favour.

The dialectic age had not yet arrived. When it did arrive, with Sokrates as its principal champion,
the topics of philosophy were altered, and its process revolutionised. We have often heard repeated
the Ciceronian dictum — that Sokrates brought philosophy down from the heavens to the earth:
from the distant, abstruse, and complicated phenomena of the Kosmos — in respect to which he
adhered to the vulgar point of view, and even disapproved any enquiries tending to rationalise it —
to the familiar business of man, and the common generalities of ethics and politics. But what has
been less observed about Sokrates, though not less true, is, that along with this change of topics he
introduced a complete revolution in method. He placed the negative in the front of his procedure;
giving to it a point, an emphasis, a substantive value, which no one had done before. His peculiar

gift was that of cross-examination, or the application of his Elenchus to discriminate pretended from
real knowledge. He found men full of confident beliefs on these ethical and political topics —
affirming with words which they had never troubled themselves to define — and persuaded that
they required no farther teaching: yet at the same time unable to give clear or consistent answers to
his questions, and shown by this convincing test to be destitute of real knowledge. Declaring this
false persuasion of knowledge, or confident unreasoned belief, to be universal, he undertook, as the
mission of his life, to expose it: and he proclaimed that until the mind was disabused thereof and
made painfully conscious of ignorance, no affirmative reasoned truth could be presented with any
chance of success.

Such are the peculiar features of the Sokratic dialogue, exemplified in the compositions here
reviewed. I do not mean that Sokrates always talked so; but that such was the marked peculiarity
which distinguished his talking from that of others. It is philosophy, or reasoned truth, approached
in the most polemical manner; operative at first only to discredit the natural, unreasoned intellectual
growths of the ordinary mind, and to generate a painful consciousness of ignorance. I say this here,
and I shall often say it again throughout these volumes. It is absolutely indispensable to the
understanding of the Platonic dialogues; one half of which must appear unmeaning, unless
construed with reference to this separate function and value of negative dialectic. Whether readers
may themselves agree in such estimation of negative dialectic, is another question: but they must
keep it in mind as the governing sentiment of Plato during much of his life, and of Sokrates
throughout the whole of life: as being moreover one main cause of that antipathy which Sokrates
inspired to many respectable orthodox contemporaries. I have thought it right to take constant
account of this orthodox sentiment among the ordinary public, as the perpetual drag-chain, even
when its force is not absolutely repressive, upon free speculation.

Proceeding upon this general view, I have interpreted the numerous negative dialogues in Plato as
being really negative and nothing beyond. I have not presumed, still less tried to divine, an ulterior
Affirmative beyond what the text reveals — neither arcana cœlestia, like Proklus and Ficinus,3 nor
any other arcanum of terrestrial character. While giving such an analysis of each dialogue as my
space permitted and as will enable the reader to comprehend its general scope and peculiarities — I
have studied each as it stands written, and have rarely ascribed to Plato any purpose exceeding what
he himself intimates. Where I find difficulties forcibly dwelt upon without any solution, I imagine,
not that he had a good solution kept back in his closet, but that he had failed in finding one: that he
thought it useful, as a portion of the total process necessary for finding and authenticating reasoned
truth, both to work out these unsolved difficulties for himself, and to force them impressively upon
the attention of others.4

3 F. A. Wolf, Vorrede, Plato, Sympos. p. vi.

“Ficinus suchte, wie er sich in der Zueignungsschrift seiner Vision ausdrückt,
im Platon allenthalben arcana cœlestia: und da er sie in seinem Kopfe

mitbrachte, so konnte es ihm nicht sauer werden, etwas zu finden, was freilich
jedem andern verborgen bleiben muss.”

4 A striking passage from Bentham illustrates very well both the Sokratic and
the Platonic point of view. (Principles of Morals and Legislation, vol. ii. ch. xvi.
p. 57, ed. 1823.)

“Gross ignorance descries no difficulties. Imperfect knowledge finds them
out and struggles with them. It must be perfect knowledge that overcomes
them.”

Of the three different mental conditions here described, the first is that
against which Sokrates made war, i.e. real ignorance, and false persuasion of
knowledge, which therefore descries no difficulties.

The second, or imperfect knowledge struggling with difficulties, is
represented by the Platonic negative dialogues.

The third — or perfect knowledge victorious over difficulties — will be
found in the following pages marked by the character τὸ δύνασθαι λόγον
διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι. You do not possess “perfect knowledge,” until you are
able to answer, with unfaltering promptitude and consistency, all the questions
of a Sokratic cross-examiner — and to administer effectively the like cross-
examination yourself, for the purpose of testing others. Ὃλως δὲ σημεῖον τοῦ
εἰδότος τὸ δύνασθαι διδάσκειν ἔστιν. (Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 981, b. 8.)

Perfect knowledge, corresponding to this definition, will not be found
manifested in Plato. Instead of it, we note in his latter years the lawgiver’s
assumed infallibility.

Moreover, I deal with each dialogue as a separate composition. Each represents the intellectual
scope and impulse of a peculiar moment, which may or may not be in harmony with the rest. Plato
would have protested not less earnestly than Cicero,5 against those who sought to foreclose debate,
in the grave and arduous struggles for searching out reasoned truth — and to bind down the free
inspirations of his intellect in one dialogue, by appealing to sentence already pronounced in another
preceding. Of two inconsistent trains of reasoning, both cannot indeed be true — but both are often
useful to be known and studied: and the philosopher, who professes to master the theory of his
subject, ought not to be a stranger to either. All minds athirst for reasoned truth will be greatly aided
in forming their opinions by the number of points which Plato suggests, though they find little
which he himself settles for them finally.

5 Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 11, 38.

The collocutor remarks that what Cicero says is inconsistent with what he
(Cicero) had written in the fourth book De Finibus. To which Cicero replies:—

“Tu quidem tabellis obsignatis agis mecum, et testificaris, quid dixerim
aliquando aut scripserim. Cum aliis isto modo, qui legibus impositis disputant.
Nos in diem vivimus: quodcunque nostros animos probabilitate percussit, id
dicimus: itaque soli sumus liberi.”

There have been various critics, who, on perceiving inconsistencies in Plato, either force them
into harmony by a subtle exegêsis, or discard one of them as spurious.6 I have not followed either
course. I recognise such inconsistencies, when found, as facts — and even as very interesting facts
— in his philosophical character. To the marked contradiction in the spirit of the Leges, as compared
with the earlier Platonic compositions, I have called special attention. Plato has been called by
Plutarch a mixture of Sokrates with Lykurgus. The two elements are in reality opposite,
predominant at different times: Plato begins his career with the confessed ignorance and
philosophical negative of Sokrates: he closes it with the peremptory, dictatorial, affirmative of
Lykurgus.

6 Since the publication of the first edition of this work, there have appeared
valuable commentaries on the philosophy of the late Sir William Hamilton, by
Mr. John Stuart Mill, and Mr. Stirling and others. They have exposed
inconsistencies, both grave and numerous, in some parts of Sir William
Hamilton’s writings as compared with others. But no one has dreamt of drawing
an inference from this fact, that one or other of the inconsistent trains of
reasoning must be spurious, falsely ascribed to Sir William Hamilton.

Now in the case of Plato, this same fact of inconsistency is accepted by
nearly all his commentators as a sound basis for the inference that both the
inconsistent treatises cannot be genuine: though the dramatic character of
Plato’s writings makes inconsistencies much more easily supposable than in
dogmatic treatises such as those of Hamilton.

To Xenophon, who belongs only in part to my present work, and whose character presents an
interesting contrast with Plato, I have devoted a separate chapter. To the other less celebrated
Sokratic Companions also, I have endeavoured to do justice, as far as the scanty means of
knowledge permit: to them, especially, because they have generally been misconceived and unduly
depreciated.

The present volumes, however, contain only one half of the speculative activity of Hellas during
the fourth century B.C. The second half, in which Aristotle is the hero, remains still wanting. If my
health and energies continue, I hope one day to be able to supply this want: and thus to complete
from my own point of view, the history, speculative as well as active, of the Hellenic race, down to
the date which I prescribed to myself in the Preface of my History near twenty years ago.

The philosophy of the fourth century B.C. is peculiarly valuable and interesting, not merely from
its intrinsic speculative worth — from the originality and grandeur of its two principal heroes —
from its coincidence with the full display of dramatic, rhetorical, artistic genius — but also from a
fourth reason not unimportant — because it is purely Hellenic; preceding the development of
Alexandria, and the amalgamation of Oriental veins of thought with the inspirations of the Academy
or the Lyceum. The Orontes7 and the Jordan had not yet begun to flow westward, and to impart their
own colour to the waters of Attica and Latium. Not merely the real world, but also the ideal world,
present to the minds of Plato and Aristotle, were purely Hellenic. Even during the century
immediately following, this had ceased to be fully true in respect to the philosophers of Athens: and
it became less and less true with each succeeding century. New foreign centres of rhetoric and
literature — Asiatic and Alexandrian Hellenism — were fostered into importance by regal
encouragement. Plato and Aristotle are thus the special representatives of genuine Hellenic
philosophy. The remarkable intellectual ascendancy acquired by them in their own day, and
maintained over succeeding centuries, was one main reason why the Hellenic vein was enabled so
long to maintain itself, though in impoverished condition, against adverse influences from the East,
ever increasing in force. Plato and Aristotle outlasted all their Pagan successors — successors at
once less purely Hellenic and less highly gifted. And when Saint Jerome, near 750 years after the
decease of Plato, commemorated with triumph the victory of unlettered Christians over the
accomplishments and genius of Paganism — he illustrated the magnitude of the victory, by singling
out Plato and Aristotle as the representatives of vanquished philosophy.8

7 Juvenal iii. 62:—

“Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes,” &c.

8 The passage is a remarkable one, as marking both the effect produced on a
Latin scholar by Hebrew studies, and the neglect into which even the greatest
writers of classical antiquity had then fallen (about 400 A.D.).

Hieronymus — Comment. in Epist. ad Galatas, iii. 5, p. 486-487, ed. Venet.
1769:—

“Sed omnem sermonis elegantiam, et Latini sermonis venustatem, stridor
lectionis Hebraicæ sordidavit. Nostis enim et ipsæ” (i.e. Paula and Eustochium,
to whom his letter is addressed) “quod plus quam quindecim anni sunt, ex quo
in manus meas nunquam Tullius, nunquam Maro, nunquam Gentilium literarum
quilibet Auctor ascendit: et si quid forte inde, dum loquimur, obrepit, quasi
antiqua per nebulam somnii recordamur. Quod autem profecerim ex linguæ
illius infatigabili studio, aliorum judicio derelinquo: ego quid in meâ amiserim,
scio … Si quis eloquentiam quærit vel declamationibus delectatur, habet in
utrâque linguâ Demosthenem et Tullium, Polemonem et Quintilianum. Ecclesia

Christi non de Academiâ et Lyceo, sed de vili plebeculâ congregata est.…
Quotusquisque nunc Aristotelem legit? Quanti Platonis vel libros novêre vel
nomen? Vix in angulis otiosi eos senes recolunt. Rusticanos vero et piscatores
nostros totus orbis loquitur, universus mundus sonat.”

CONTENTS.
PRE-SOKRATIC PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER I.

Speculative Philosophy in Greece, before and in the time of Sokrates.

Change in the political condition of Greece during the life of Plato 1
Early Greek mind, satisfied with the belief in polytheistic personal agents, as the real
2
producing causes of phenomena
Belief in such agency continued among the general public, even after the various sects of
3
philosophy had arisen
Thales, the first Greek who propounded the hypothesis of physical agency in place of personal.
4
Water, the primordial substance, or ἀρχή
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 ib.
doctrines
Anaximenes — adopted Air as ἀρχή — rise of substances out of it, by condensation and
7
rarefaction
Pythagoras — his life and career — Pythagorean brotherhood — great political influence
which it acquired among the Greco-Italian cities — incurred great enmity, and was violently 8
put down
The Pythagoreans continue as a recluse sect, without political power 9
Doctrine of the Pythagoreans — Number the Essence of Things ib.
The Monas — ἀρχή, or principle of Number — geometrical conception of number —
11
symbolical attributes of the first ten numbers, especially of the Dekad
Pythagorean Kosmos and Astronomy — geometrical and harmonic laws guiding the
12
movements of the cosmical bodies
Music of the Spheres 14
Pythagorean list of fundamental Contraries — Ten opposing pairs ib.
Eleatic philosophy — Xenophanes 16
His censures upon the received Theogony and religious rites ib.
His doctrine of Pankosmism; or Pantheism — the whole Kosmos is Ens Unum or God — Ἓν
17
καὶ Πᾶν. Non-Ens inadmissible
Scepticism of Xenophanes — complaint of philosophy as unsatisfactory 18

His conjectures on physics and astronomy ib.
Parmenides continues the doctrine of Xenophanes — Ens Parmenideum, self-existent, eternal,
19
unchangeable, extended — Non-Ens, an unmeaning phrase
He recognises a region of opinion, phenomenal and relative, apart from Ens 20
Parmenidean ontology — stands completely apart from phenomenology 21
Parmenidean phenomenology — relative and variable 23
Parmenides recognises no truth, but more or less of probability, in phenomenal explanations.
24
— His physical and astronomical conjectures
Herakleitus — his obscure style, impressive metaphors, confident and contemptuous
26
dogmatism
Doctrine of Herakleitus — perpetual process of generation and destruction — everything
27
flows, nothing stands — transition of the elements into each other backwards and forwards
Variety of metaphors employed by Herakleitus, signifying the same general doctrine 28
Nothing permanent except the law of process and implication of contraries — the
transmutative force. Fixity of particulars is an illusion for the most part: so far as it exists, it is 29
a sin against the order of Nature
Illustrations by which Herakleitus symbolized his perpetual force, destroying and generating 30
Water — Intermediate between Fire (Air) and Earth 31
Sun and Stars — not solid bodies, but meteoric aggregations dissipated and renewed —
32
Eclipses — ἐκπύρωσις, or destruction of the Kosmos by fire
His doctrines respecting the human soul and human knowledge. All wisdom resided in the
34
Universal Reason — individual Reason is worthless
By Universal Reason, he did not mean the Reason of most men as it is, but as it ought to be 35
Herakleitus at the opposite pole from Parmenides 37
Empedokles — his doctrine of the four elements and two moving or restraining forces ib.
Construction of the Kosmos from these elements and forces — action and counteraction of
38
love and enmity. The Kosmos alternately made and unmade
Empedoklean predestined cycle of things — complete empire of Love Sphærus — Empire of
39
Enmity — disengagement or separation of the elements — astronomy and meteorology
Formation of the Earth, of Gods, men, animals, and plants 41
Physiology of Empedokles — Procreation — Respiration — movement of the blood 43
Doctrine of effluvia and pores — explanation of perceptions — intercommunication of the
44
elements with the sentient subject — like acting upon like
Sense of vision 45
Senses of hearing, smell, taste 46
Empedokles declared that justice absolutely forbade the killing of anything that had life. His 46
belief in the metempsychosis. Sufferings of life, are an expiation for wrong done during an

antecedent life. Pretensions to magical power
Complaint of Empedokles on the impossibility of finding out truth 47
Theory of Anaxagoras denied — generation and destruction — recognised only mixture and
48
severance of pre-existing kinds of matter
Homœomeries — small particles of diverse kinds of matter, all mixed together ib.
First condition of things all — the primordial varieties of matter were huddled together in
confusion. Νοῦς or reason, distinct from all of them, supervened and acted upon this confused 49
mass, setting the constituent particles in movement
Movement of rotation in the mass, originated by Νοῦς on a small scale, but gradually
50
extending itself. Like particles congregate together — distinguishable aggregates are formed
Nothing (except Νοῦς) can be entirely pure or unmixed; but other things may be comparatively
51
pure. Flesh, Bone, &c., are purer than Air or Earth
Theory of Anaxagoras, compared with that of Empedokles 52
Suggested partly by the phenomena of of animal nutrition 53
Chaos common to both Empedokles and Anaxagoras: moving agency, different in one from the
54
other theory
Νοῦς, or mind, postulated by Anaxagoras — how understood by later writers — how intended
ib.
by Anaxagoras himself
Plato and Aristotle blame Anaxagoras for deserting his own theory 56
Astronomy and physics of Anaxagoras 57
His geology, meteorology, physiology 58
The doctrines of Anaxagoras were regarded as offensive and impious 59
Diogenes of Apollonia recognises one primordial element 60
Air was the primordial, universal element 61
Air possessed numerous and diverse properties; was eminently modifiable ib.
Physiology of Diogenes — his description of the veins in the human body 62
Kosmology and Meteorology 64
Leukippus and Demokritus — Atomic theory 65
Long life, varied travels, and numerous compositions, of Demokritus ib.
Relation between the theory of Demokritus and that of Parmenides 66
Demokritean theory — Atoms Plena and Vacua — Ens and Non-Ens 67
Primordial atoms differed only in magnitude, figure, position, and arrangement — they had no
69
qualities, but their movements and combinations generated qualities
Combination of atoms — generating different qualities in the compound 70
All atoms essentially separate from each other 71

All properties of objects, except weight and hardness, were phenomenal and relative to the
ib.
observer. Sensation could give no knowledge of the real and absolute
Reason alone gave true and real knowledge, but very little of it was attainable 72
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 72
Kosmos
Researches of Demokritus on zoology and animal generation 75
His account of mind — he identified it with heat or fire, diffused throughout animals, plants,
and nature generally. Mental particles intermingled throughout all frame with corporeal ib.
particles
Different mental aptitudes attached to different parts of the body 76
Explanation of different sensations and perceptions. Colours 77
Vision caused by the outflow of effluvia or images from objects. Hearing 78
Difference of tastes — how explained ib.
Thought or intelligence — was produced by influx of atoms from without 79
Sensation, obscure knowledge relative to the sentient: Thought, genuine knowledge —
80
absolute, or object per se
Idola or images were thrown off from objects, which determined the tone of thoughts, feelings,
81
dreams, divinations, &c.
Universality of Demokritus — his ethical views 82

CHAPTER II.

General Remarks on the Earlier Philosophers — Growth of Dialectic — Zeno and Gorgias.

Variety of sects and theories — multiplicity of individual authorities is the characteristic of
84
Greek philosophy
These early theorists are not known from their own writings, which have been lost. Importance
85
of the information of Aristotle about them
Abundance of speculative genius and invention — a memorable fact in the Hellenic mind 86
Difficulties which a Grecian philosopher had to overcome — prevalent view of Nature,
ib.
established, impressive, and misleading
Views of the Ionic philosophers — compared with the more recent abstractions of Plato and
87
Aristotle
Parmenides and Pythagoras — more nearly akin to Plato and Aristotle 89

Advantage derived from this variety of constructive imagination among the Greeks 90
All these theories were found in circulation by Sokrates, Zeno, Plato, and the dialecticians.
91
Importance of the scrutiny of negative Dialectic
The early theorists were studied, along with Plato and Aristotle, in the third and second
92
centuries B.C.
Negative attribute common to all the early theorists — little or no dialectic 93
Zeno of Elea — Melissus ib.
Zeno’s Dialectic — he refuted the opponents of Parmenides, by showing that their assumptions
93
led to contradictions and absurdities
Consequences of their assumption of Entia Plura Discontinua. Reductiones ad absurdum 94
Each thing must exist in its own place — Grain of millet not sonorous 95
Zenonian arguments in regard to motion 97
General purpose and result of the Zenonian Dialectic. Nothing is knowable except the relative 98
Mistake of supposing Zeno’s reductiones ad absurdum of an opponent’s doctrine, to be
99
contradictions of data generalized from experience
Zenonian Dialectic — Platonic Parmenides 100
Views of historians of philosophy, respecting Zeno 101
Absolute and relative — the first, unknowable ib.
Zeno did not deny motion, as a fact, phenomenal and relative 102
Gorgias the Leontine — did not admit the Absolute, even as conceived by Parmenides 103
His reasonings against the Absolute, either as Ens or Entia ib.
Ens, incogitable and unknowable 104
Ens, even if granted to be knowable, is still incommunicable to others ib.
Zeno and Gorgias — contrasted with the earlier Grecian philosophers 105
New character of Grecian philosophy — antithesis of affirmative and negative — proof and
ib.
disproof

CHAPTER III.

Other Companions of Sokrates.

Influence exercised by Sokrates over his companions 110
Names of those companions 111
Æschines — Oration of Lysias against him 112

Written Sokratic Dialogues — their general character 114
Relations between the companions of Sokrates — Their proceedings after the death of
116
Sokrates
No Sokratic school — each of the companions took a line of his own 117
Eukleides of Megara — he blended Parmenides with Sokrates 118
Doctrine of Eukleides about Bonum 119
The doctrine compared to that of Plato — changes in Plato ib.
Last doctrine of Plato nearly the same as Eukleides 120
Megaric succession of philosophers. Eleian or Eretrian succession 121
Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus — Ethical, not transcendental 122
Preponderance of the negative vein in the Platonic age 123
Harsh manner in which historians of philosophy censure the negative vein ib.
Negative method in philosophy essential to the controul of the affirmative ib.
Sokrates — the most persevering and acute Eristic of his age 124
Platonic Parmenides — its extreme negative character 125
The Megarics shared the negative impulse with Sokrates and Plato 126
Eubulides — his logical problems or puzzles — difficulty of solving them — many solutions
128
attempted
Real character of the Megaric sophisms, not calculated to deceive, but to guard against
129
deception
If the process of theorising be admissible, it must include negative as well as affirmative 130
Logical position of the Megaric philosophers erroneously described by historians of
131
philosophy. Necessity of a complete collection of difficulties
Sophisms propounded by Eubulides. 1. Mentiens. 2. The Veiled Man. 3. Sorites. 4. Cornutus 133
Causes of error constant — The Megarics were sentinels against them 135
Controversy of the Megarics with Aristotle about Power. Arguments of Aristotle ib.
These arguments not valid against the Megarici 136
His argument cited and criticised 137
Potential as distinguished from the Actual — What it is 139
Diodôrus Kronus — his doctrine about τὸ δυνατόν 140
Sophism of Diodôrus — Ὁ Κυριεύων 141
Question between Aristotle and Diodôrus, depends upon whether universal regularity of
ib.
sequence be admitted or denied
Conclusion of Diodôrus defended by Hobbes — Explanation given by Hobbes 143
Reasonings of Diodôrus — respecting Hypothetical Propositions — respecting Motion. His
145
difficulties about the Nowof time

Motion is always present, past, and future 146
Stilpon of Megara — His great celebrity 147
Menedêmus and the Eretriacs 148
Open speech and licence of censure assumed by Menedêmus 149
Antisthenes took up Ethics principally, but with negative Logic intermingled ib.
He copied the manner of life of Sokrates, in plainness and rigour 150
Doctrines of Antisthenes exclusively ethical and ascetic. He despised music, literature, and
151
physics
Constant friendship of Antisthenes with Sokrates — Xenophontic Symposion 152
Diogenes, successor of Antisthenes — His Cynical perfection — striking effect which he
ib.
produced
Doctrines and smart sayings of Diogenes — Contempt of pleasure — training and labour
154
required — indifference to literature and geometry
Admiration of Epiktêtus for Diogenes, especially for his consistency in acting out his own
157
ethical creed
Admiration excited by the asceticism of the Cynics — Asceticism extreme in the East.
ib.
Comparison of the Indian Gymnosophists with Diogenes
The precepts and principles laid down by Sokrates were carried into fullest execution by the
160
Cynics
Antithesis between Nature and Law or Convention insisted on by the Indian Gymnosophists 162
The Greek Cynics — an order of ascetic or mendicant friars 163
Logical views of Antisthenes and Diogenes — they opposed the Platonic Ideas ib.
First protest of Nominalism against Realism 164
Doctrine of Antisthenes about predication — He admits no other predication but identical 165
The same doctrine asserted by Stilpon, after the time of Aristotle 166
Nominalism of Stilpon. His reasons against accidental predication 167
Difficulty of understanding how the same predicate could belong to more than one subject 169
Analogous difficulties in the Platonic Parmenides ib.
Menedêmus disallowed all negative predications 170
Distinction ascribed to Antisthenes between simple and complex objects. Simple objects
171
undefinable
Remarks of Plato on this doctrine 172
Remarks of Aristotle upon the same ib.
Later Grecian Cynics — Monimus — Krates — Hipparchia 173
Zeno of Kitium in Cyprus 174
Aristippus — life, character, and doctrine 175

Discourse of Sokrates with Aristippus ib.
Choice of Hêraklês 177
Illustration afforded of the views of Sokrates respecting Good and Evil ib.
Comparison of the Xenophontic Sokrates with the Platonic Sokrates 178
Xenophontic Sokrates talking to Aristippus — Kalliklês in Platonic Gorgias 179
Language held by Aristippus — his scheme of life 181
Diversified conversations of Sokrates, according to the character of the hearer 182
Conversation between Sokrates and Aristippus about the Good and Beautiful 184
Remarks on the conversation — Theory of Good 185
Good is relative to human beings and wants in the view of Sokrates ib.
Aristippus adhered to the doctrine of Sokrates 186
Life and dicta of Aristippus — His type of character ib.
Aristippus acted conformably to the advice of Sokrates 187
Self mastery and independence — the great aspiration of Aristippus 188
Aristippus compared with Antisthenes and Diogenes — Points of agreement and disagreement
190
between them
Attachment of Aristippus to ethics and philosophy — contempt for other studies 192
Aristippus taught as a Sophist. His reputation thus acquired procured for him the attentions of
193
Dionysius and others
Ethical theory of Aristippus and the Kyrenaic philosophers 195
Prudence — good, by reason of the pleasure which it ensured, and of the pains which it was
197
necessary to avoid. Just and honourable, by law or custom — not by nature
Their logical theory — nothing knowable except the phenomenal, our own sensations and
197
feelings — no knowledge of the absolute
Doctrines of Antisthenes and Aristippus passed to the Stoics and Epikureans 198
Ethical theory of Aristippus is identical with that of the Platonic Sokrates in the Protagoras 199
Difference in the manner of stating the theory by the two 200
Distinction to be made between a general theory — and the particular application of it made by
201
the theorist to his own tastes and circumstances
Kyrenaic theorists after Aristippus 202
Theodôrus — Annikeris — Hegesias ib.
Hegesias — Low estimation of life — renunciation of pleasure — coincidence with the Cynics 203
Doctrine of Relativity affirmed by the Kyrenaics, as well as by Protagoras 204

CHAPTER IV.

Xenophon.

Xenophon — his character — essentially a man of action and not a theorist — the Sokratic
206
element is in him an accessory
Date of Xenophon — probable year of his birth 207
His personal history — He consults Sokrates — takes the opinion of the Delphian oracle 208
His service and command with the Ten Thousand Greeks, afterwards under Agesilaus and the
209
Spartans. — He is banished from Athens
His residence at Skillus near Olympia 210
Family of Xenophon — his son Gryllus killed at Mantineia ib.
Death of Xenophon at Corinth — Story of the Eleian Exegetæ 211
Xenophon different from Plato and the other Sokratic brethren 212
His various works — Memorabilia, Œkonomikus, &c. 213
Ischomachus, hero of the Œkonomikus — ideal of an active citizen, cultivator, husband,
214
house-master, &c.
Text upon which Xenophon insists — capital difference between command over subordinates
215
willing and subordinates unwilling
Probable circumstances generating these reflections in Xenophon’s mind 215
This text affords subjects for the Hieron and Cyropædia — Name of Sokrates not suitable 216
Hieron — Persons of the dialogue — Simonides and Hieron ib.
Questions put to Hieron, view taken by Simonides. Answer of Hieron 217
Misery of governing unwilling subjects declared by Hieron 218
Advice to Hieron by Simonides — that he should govern well, and thus make himself beloved
219
by his subjects
Probable experience had by Xenophon of the feelings at Olympia against Dionysius 220
Xenophon could not have chosen a Grecian despot to illustrate his theory of the happiness of
222
governing willing subjects
Cyropædia — blending of Spartan and Persian customs — Xenophon’s experience of Cyrus
ib.
the Younger
Portrait of Cyrus the Great — his education — Preface to the Cyropædia 223
Xenophon does not solve his own problem — The governing aptitude and popularity of Cyrus
225
come from nature, not from education
Views of Xenophon about public and official training of all citizens 226
Details of (so called) Persian education — Severe discipline — Distribution of four ages 227

Evidence of the good effect of this discipline — Hard and dry condition of the body 228
Exemplary obedience of Cyrus to the public discipline — He had learnt justice well — His
229
award about the two coats — Lesson inculcated upon him by the Justice-Master
Xenophon’s conception of the Sokratic problems — He does not recognise the Sokratic order
230
of solution of those problems
Definition given by Sokrates of Justice — Insufficient to satisfy the exigencies of the Sokratic
231
Elenchus
Biography of Cyrus — constant military success earned by suitable qualities — Variety of
232
characters and situations
Generous and amiable qualities of Cyrus. Abradates and Pantheia 233
Scheme of government devised by Cyrus when his conquests are completed — Oriental
234
despotism, wisely arranged
Persian present reality — is described by Xenophon as thoroughly depraved, in striking
236
contrast to the establishment of Cyrus
Xenophon has good experience of military and equestrian proceedings — No experience of
236
finance and commerce
Discourse of Xenophon on Athenian finance and the condition of Athens. His admiration of
ib.
active commerce and variety of pursuits
Recognised poverty among the citizens. Plan for improvement 238
Advantage of a large number of Metics. How these may be encouraged ib.
Proposal to raise by voluntary contributions a large sum to be employed as capital by the city.
ib.
Distribution of three oboli per head per day to all the citizens
Purpose and principle of this distribution 240
Visionary anticipations of Xenophon, financial and commercial 241
Xenophon exhorts his countrymen to maintain peace 243
Difference of the latest compositions of Xenophon and Plato, from their point of view in the
244
earlier

CHAPTER V.

Life of Plato.

Scanty information about Plato’s life 246
His birth, parentage, and early education 247

Early relations of Plato with Sokrates 248
Plato’s youth — service as a citizen and soldier 249
Period of political ambition 251
He becomes disgusted with politics 252
He retires from Athens after the death of Sokrates — his travels 253
His permanent establishment at Athens — 386 B.C. ib.
He commences his teaching at the Academy 254
Plato as a teacher — pupils numerous and wealthy, from different cities 255
Visit of Plato to the younger Dionysius at Syracuse, 367 B.C.Second visit to the same —
258
mortifying failure
Expedition of Dion against Dionysius — sympathies of Plato and the Academy 259
Success, misconduct, and death of Dion ib.
Death of Plato, aged 80, 347 B.C. 260
Scholars of Plato — Aristotle ib.
Little known about Plato’s personal history 262

CHAPTER VI.

Platonic Canon, as Recognised by Thrasyllus.

Platonic Canon — Ancient and modern discussions 264
Canon established by Thrasyllus. Presumption in its favour 265
Fixed residence and school at Athens — founded by Plato and transmitted to successors ib.
Importance of this foundation. Preservation of Plato’s manuscripts. School library 266
Security provided by the school for distinguishing what were Plato’s genuine writings 267
Unfinished fragments and preparatory sketches, preserved and published after Plato’s death 268
Peripatetic school at the Lykeum — its composition and arrangement 269
Peripatetic school library, its removal from Athens to Skêpsis — its ultimate restitution in a
270
damaged state to Athens, then to Rome
Inconvenience to the Peripatetic school from the loss of its library ib.
Advantage to the Platonic school from having preserved its MSS. 272
Conditions favourable, for preserving the genuine works of Plato ib.
Historical facts as to their preservation ib.

Arrangement of them into Trilogies, by Aristophanes 273
Aristophanes, librarian at the Alexandrine library ib.
Plato’s works in the Alexandrine library, before the time of Aristophanes 274
Kallimachus — predecessor of Aristophanes — his published Tables of authors whose works
275
were in the library
Large and rapid accumulation of the Alexandrine Library ib.
Plato’s works — in the library at the time of Kallimachus 276
First formation of the library — intended as a copy of the Platonic and Aristotelian Μουσεῖα at
277
Athens
Favour of Ptolemy Soter towards the philosophers at Athens 279
Demetrius Phalereus — his history and character ib.
He was chief agent in the first establishment of the Alexandrine Library 280
Proceedings of Demetrius in beginning to collect the library 282
Certainty that the works of Plato and Aristotle were among the earliest acquisitions made by
283
him for the library
Large expenses incurred by the Ptolemies for procuring good MSS. 285
Catalogue of Platonic works, prepared by Aristophanes, is trustworthy ib.
No canonical or exclusive order of the Platonic dialogues, when arranged by Aristophanes 286
Other libraries and literary centres, besides Alexandria, in which spurious Platonic works
ib.
might get footing
Other critics, besides Aristophanes, proposed different arrangements of the Platonic dialogues 287
Panætius, the Stoic — considered the Phædon to be spurious — earliest known example of a
288
Platonic dialogue disallowed upon internal grounds
Classification of Platonic works by the rhetor Thrasyllus — dramatic — philosophical 289
Dramatic principle — Tetralogies ib.
Philosophical principle — Dialogues of Search — Dialogues of Exposition 291
Incongruity and repugnance of the two classifications 294
Dramatic principle of classification — was inherited by Thrasyllus from Aristophanes 295
Authority of the Alexandrine library — editions of Plato published, with the Alexandrine
ib.
critical marks
Thrasyllus followed the Alexandrine library and Aristophanes, as to genuine Platonic works 296
Ten spurious dialogues, rejected by all other critics as well as by Thrasyllus — evidence that
297
these critics followed the common authority of the Alexandrine library
Thrasyllus did not follow an internal sentiment of his own in rejecting dialogues as spurious 298
Results as to the trustworthiness of the Thrasyllean Canon 299

CHAPTER VII.

Platonic Canon, as Appreciated and Modified by Modern Critics.

The Canon of Thrasyllus continued to be generally acknowledged, by the Neo-Platonists, as
301
well as by Ficinus and the succeeding critics after the revival of learning
Serranus — his six Syzygies — left the aggregate Canon unchanged, Tennemann —
302
importance assigned to the Phædrus
Schleiermacher — new theory about the purposes of Plato. One philosophical scheme,
conceived by Plato from the beginning — essential order and interdependence of the
303
dialogues, as contributing to the full execution of this scheme. Some dialogues not constituent
items in the series, but lying alongside of it. Order of arrangement
Theory of Ast — he denies the reality of any preconceived scheme — considers the dialogues
304
as distinct philosophical dramas
His order of arrangement. He admits only fourteen dialogues as genuine, rejecting all the rest 305
Socher agrees with Ast in denying preconceived scheme — his arrangement of the dialogues,
differing from both Ast and Schleiermacher — he rejects as spurious Parmenidês, Sophistês, 306
Politikus, Kritias, with many others
Schleiermacher and Ast both consider Phædrus and Protagoras as early compositions —
307
Socher puts Protagoras into the second period, Phædrus into the third
K. F. Hermann — Stallbaum — both of them consider the Phædrus as a late dialogue — both
of them deny preconceived order and system — their arrangements of the dialogues — they ib.
admit new and varying philosophical points of view
They reject several dialogues 309
Steinhart — agrees in rejecting Schleiermacher’s fundamental postulate — his arrangement of
ib.
the dialogues — considers the Phædrus as late in order — rejects several
Susemihl — coincides to a great degree with K. F. Hermann — his order of arrangement 310
Edward Munk — adopts a different principle of arrangement, founded upon the different
period which each dialogue exhibits of the life, philosophical growth, and old age, of Sokrates
311
— his arrangement, founded on this principle. He distinguishes the chronological order of
composition from the place allotted to each dialogue in the systematic plan
Views of Ueberweg — attempt to reconcile Schleiermacher and Hermann — admits the
preconceived purpose for the later dialogues, composed after the foundation of the school, but 313
not for the earlier

His opinions as to authenticity and chronology of the dialogues, He rejects Hippias Major,
314
Erastæ, Theagês, Kleitophon, Parmenidês: he is inclined to reject Euthyphron and Menexenus
Other Platonic critics — great dissensions about scheme and order of the dialogues 316
Contrast of different points of view instructive — but no solution has been obtained ib.
The problem incapable of solution. Extent and novelty of the theory propounded by
317
Schleiermacher — slenderness of his proofs
Schleiermacher’s hypothesis includes a preconceived scheme, and a peremptory order of
318
interdependence among the dialogues
Assumptions of Schleiermacher respecting the Phædrus inadmissible 319
Neither Schleiermacher, nor any other critic, has as yet produced any tolerable proof for an
ib.
internal theory of the Platonic dialogues
Munk’s theory is the most ambitious, and the most gratuitous, next to Schleiermacher’s 320
The age assigned to Sokrates in any dialogue is a circumstance of little moment ib.
No intentional sequence or interdependence of the dialogues can be made out 322
Principle of arrangement adopted by Hermann is reasonable — successive changes in Plato’s
ib.
point of view: but we cannot explain either the order or the causes of these changes
Hermann’s view more tenable than Schleiermacher’s 323
Small number of certainties, or even reasonable presumptions, as to date or order of the
324
dialogues
Trilogies indicated by Plato himself 325
Positive dates of all the dialogues — unknown 326
When did Plato begin to compose? Not till after the death of Sokrates ib.
Reasons for this opinion. Labour of the composition — does not consist with youth of the
327
author
Reasons founded on the personality of Sokrates, and his relations with Plato 328
Reasons, founded on the early life, character, and position of Plato 330
Plato’s early life — active by necessity, and to some extent ambitious 331
Plato did not retire from political life until after the restoration of the democracy, nor devote
333
himself to philosophy until after the death of Sokrates
All Plato’s dialogues were composed during the fifty-one years after the death of Sokrates 334
The Thrasyllean Canon is more worthy of trust than the modern critical theories by which it
335
has been condemned
Unsafe grounds upon which those theories proceed 336
Opinions of Schleiermacher, tending to show this 337
Any true theory of Plato must recognise all his varieties, and must be based upon all the works
339
in the Canon, not upon some to the exclusion of the rest

CHAPTER VIII.

Platonic Compositions Generally.

Variety and abundance visible in Plato’s writings 342
Plato both sceptical and dogmatical ib.
Poetical vein predominant in some compositions, but not in all 343
Form of dialogue — universal to this extent, that Plato never speaks in his own name 344
No one common characteristic pervading all Plato’s works ib.
The real Plato was not merely a writer of dialogues, but also lecturer and president of a school.
In this last important function he is scarcely at all known to us. Notes of his lectures taken by 346
Aristotle
Plato’s lectures De Bono obscure and transcendental. Effect which they produced on the
347
auditors
They were delivered to miscellaneous auditors. They coincide mainly with what Aristotle
348
states about the Platonic Ideas
The lectures De Bono may perhaps have been more transcendental than Plato’s other lectures 349
Plato’s Epistles — in them only he speaks in his own person ib.
Intentional obscurity of his Epistles in reference to philosophical doctrine 350
Letters of Plato to Dionysius II. about philosophy. His anxiety to confine philosophy to
351
discussion among select and prepared minds
He refuses to furnish any written, authoritative exposition of his own philosophical doctrine 352
He illustrates his doctrine by the successive stages of geometrical teaching. Difficulty to avoid
353
the creeping in of error at each of these stages
No written exposition can keep clear of these chances of error 355
Relations of Plato with Dionysius II. and the friends of the deceased Dion. Pretensions of
ib.
Dionysius to understand and expound Plato’s doctrines
Impossibility of teaching by written exposition assumed by Plato; the assumption intelligible
357
in his day
Standard by which Plato tested the efficacy of the expository process — Power of sustaining a
358
Sokratic cross-examination
Plato never published any of the lectures which he delivered at the Academy ib.

Plato would never publish his philosophical opinions in his own name; but he may have
360
published them in the dialogues under the name of others
Groups into which the dialogues admit of being thrown 361
Distribution made by Thrasyllus defective, but still useful — Dialogues of Search, Dialogues
ib.
of Exposition
Dialogues of Exposition — present affirmative result. Dialogues of Search are wanting in that
362
attribute
The distribution coincides mainly with that of Aristotle — Dialectic, Demonstrative 363
Classification of Thrasyllus in its details. He applies his own principles erroneously 364
The classification, as it would stand, if his principles were applied correctly 365
Preponderance of the searching and testing dialogues over the expository and dogmatical 366
Dialogues of Search — sub-classes among them recognised by Thrasyllus — Gymnastic and
ib.
Agonistic, &c.
Philosophy, as now understood, includes authoritative teaching, positive results, direct proofs ib.
The Platonic Dialogues of Search disclaim authority and teaching — assume truth to be
367
unknown to all alike — follow a process devious as well as fruitless
The questioner has no predetermined course, but follows the lead given by the respondent in
ib.
his answers
Relation of teacher and learner. Appeal to authority is suppressed 368
In the modern world the search for truth is put out of sight. Every writer or talker professes to
369
have already found it, and to proclaim it to others
The search for truth by various interlocutors was a recognised process in the Sokratic age.
370
Acute negative Dialectic of Sokrates
Negative procedure supposed to be represented by the Sophists and the Megarici; discouraged
371
and censured by historians of philosophy
Vocation of Sokrates and Plato for the negative procedure: absolute necessity of it as a
372
condition of reasoned truth. Parmenidês of Plato
Sokrates considered the negative procedure to be valuable by itself, and separately. His theory
373
of the natural state of the human mind; not ignorance, but false persuasion of knowledge
Declaration of Sokrates in the Apology; his constant mission to make war against the false
374
persuasion of knowledge
Opposition of feeling between Sokrates and the Dikasts 375
The Dialogues of Search present an end in themselves. Mistake of supposing that Plato had in
ib.
his mind an ulterior affirmative end, not declared
False persuasion of knowledge — had reference to topics social, political, ethical 376
To those topics, on which each community possesses established dogmas, laws, customs, 377
sentiments, consecrated and traditional, peculiar to itself. The local creed, which is never

formally proclaimed or taught, but is enforced unconsciously by every one upon every one
else. Omnipotence of King Nomos
Small minority of exceptional individual minds, who do not yield to the established orthodoxy,
382
but insist on exercising their own judgment
Early appearance of a few free-judging individuals, or free-thinkers in Greece 384
Rise of Dialectic — Effect of the Drama and the Dikastery 386
Application of Negative scrutiny to ethical and social topics by Sokrates ib.
Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the right of satisfaction for his own individual reason 386
Aversion of the Athenian public to the negative procedure of Sokrates. Mistake of supposing
387
that that negative procedure belongs peculiarly to the Sophists and the Megarici
The same charges which the historians of philosophy bring against the Sophists were brought
by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates. They represent the standing dislike of free 388
inquiry, usual with an orthodox public
Aversion towards Sokrates aggravated by his extreme publicity of speech. His declaration, that
false persuasion of knowledge is universal; must be understood as a basis in appreciating 393
Plato’s Dialogues of Search
Result called Knowledge, which Plato aspires to. Power of going through a Sokratic cross-
396
examination; not attainable except through the Platonic process and method
Platonic process adapted to Platonic topics — man and society 397
Plato does not provide solutions for the difficulties which he has raised. The affirmative and
negative veins are in him completely distinct. His dogmas are enunciations à priori of some 399
impressive sentiment
Hypothesis — that Plato had solved all his own difficulties for himself; but that he
401
communicated the solution only to a few select auditors in oral lectures — Untenable
Characteristic of the oral lectures — that they were delivered in Plato’s own name. In what
402
other respects they departed from the dialogues, we cannot say
Apart from any result, Plato has an interest in the process of search and debate per se.
403
Protracted enquiry is a valuable privilege, not a tiresome obligation
Plato has done more than any one else to make the process of enquiry interesting to others, as
405
it was to himself
Process of generalisation always kept in view and illustrated throughout the Platonic Dialogues
406
of Search — general terms and propositions made subjects of conscious analysis
The Dialogues must be reviewed as distinct compositions by the same author, illustrating each
407
other, but without assignable inter-dependence
Order of the Dialogues, chosen for bringing them under separate review. Apology will come
ib.
first; Timæus, Kritias, Leges, Epinomis last

Kriton and Euthyphron come immediately after Apology. The intermediate dialogues present
408
no convincing grounds for any determinate order

CHAPTER IX.

Apology of Sokrates.

The Apology is the real defence delivered by Sokrates before the Dikasts, reported by Plato,
410
without intentional transformation
Even if it be Plato’s own composition, it comes naturally first in the review of his dialogues 411
General character of the Apology — Sentiments entertained towards Sokrates at Athens 412
Declaration from the Delphian oracle respecting the wisdom of Sokrates, interpreted by him as
413
a mission to cross-examine the citizens generally — The oracle is proved to be true
False persuasion of wisdom is universal — the God alone is wise 414
Emphatic assertion by Sokrates of the cross-examining mission imposed upon him by the God ib.
He had devoted his life to the execution of this mission, and he intended to persevere in spite
416
of obloquy or danger
He disclaims the function of a teacher — he cannot teach, for he is not wiser than others. He
ib.
differs from others by being conscious of his own ignorance
He does not know where competent teachers can be found. He is perpetually seeking for them,
417
but in vain
Impression made by the Platonic Apology on Zeno the Stoic 418
Extent of efficacious influence claimed by Sokrates for himself — exemplified by Plato
ib.
throughout the Dialogues of Search — Xenophon and Plato enlarge it
Assumption by modern critics, that Sokrates is a positive teacher, employing indirect methods
419
for the inculcation of theories of his own
Incorrectness of such assumption — the Sokratic Elenchus does not furnish a solution, but
420
works upon the mind of the respondent, stimulating him to seek for a solution of his own
Value and importance of this process — stimulating active individual minds to theorise each
421
for itself
View taken by Sokrates about death. Other men profess to know what it is, and think it a great
422
misfortune: he does not know
Reliance of Sokrates on his own individual reason, whether agreeing or disagreeing with
423
others
Formidable efficacy of established public beliefs, generated without any ostensible author 424

CHAPTER X.

Kriton.

General purpose of the Kriton 425
Subject of the dialogue — interlocutors ib.
Answer of Sokrates to the appeal made by Kriton 426
He declares that the judgment of the general public is not worthy of trust: he appeals to the
ib.
judgment of the one Expert, who is wise on the matter in debate
Principles laid down by Sokrates for determining the question with Kriton. Is the proceeding
427
recommended just or unjust? Never in any case to act unjustly
Sokrates admits that few will agree with him, and that most persons hold the opposite opinion:
ib.
but he affirms that the point is cardinal
Pleading supposed to be addressed by the Laws of Athens to Sokrates, demanding from him
428
implicit obedience
Purpose of Plato in this pleading — to present the dispositions of Sokrates in a light different
ib.
from that which the Apology had presented — unqualified submission instead of defiance
Harangue of Sokrates delivered in the name of the Laws, would have been applauded by all the
430
democratical patriots of Athens
The harangue insists upon topics common to Sokrates with other citizens, overlooking the
431
specialties of his character
Still Sokrates is represented as adopting the resolution to obey, from his own conviction; by a
ib.
reason which weighs with him, but which would not weigh with others
The harangue is not a corollary from this Sokratic reason, but represents feelings common
432
among Athenian citizens
Emphatic declaration of the authority of individual reason and conscience, for the individual
ib.
himself
The Kriton is rhetorical, not dialectical. Difference between Rhetoric and Dialectic 433
The Kriton makes powerful appeal to the emotions, but overlooks the ratiocinative difficulties,
ib.
or supposes them to be solved
Incompetence of the general public or ἰδιῶται — appeal to the professional Expert 435
Procedure of Sokrates after this comparison has been declared — he does not name who the
ib.
trustworthy Expert is
Sokrates acts as the Expert himself: he finds authority in his own reason and conscience 436

CHAPTER XI.

Euthyphron.

Situation supposed in the dialogue — interlocutors 437
Indictment by Melêtus against Sokrates — Antipathy of the Athenians towards those who
437
spread heretical opinions
Euthyphron recounts that he is prosecuting an indictment for murder against his own father —
438
Displeasure of his friends at the proceeding
Euthyphron expresses full confidence that this step of his is both required and warranted by
439
piety or holiness. Sokrates asks him — What is Holiness?
Euthyphron alludes to the punishment of Uranus by his son Kronus and of Kronus by his son
440
Zeus
Sokrates intimates his own hesitation in believing these stories of discord among the Gods.
Euthyphron declares his full belief in them, as well as in many similar narratives, not in so ib.
much circulation
Bearing of this dialogue on the relative position of Sokrates and the Athenian public 441
Dramatic moral set forth by Aristophanes against Sokrates and the freethinkers, is here retorted
442
by Plato against the orthodox champion
Sequel of the dialogue — Euthyphron gives a particular example as the reply to a general
444
question
Such mistake frequent in dialectic discussion ib.
First general answer given by Euthyphron — that which is pleasing to the Gods is holy.
445
Comments of Sokrates thereon
To be loved by the Gods is not the essence of the Holy — they love it because it is holy. In
446
what then does its essence consist? Perplexity of Euthyphron
Sokrates suggests a new answer. The Holy is one branch or variety of the Just. It is that branch
447
which concerns ministration by men to the Gods
Ministration to the Gods? How? To what purpose? ib.
Holiness — rectitude in sacrifice and prayer — right traffic between men and the Gods 448
This will not stand — the Gods gain nothing — they receive from men marks of honour and
gratitude — they are pleased therewith — the Holy, therefore, must be that which is pleasing to 448
the Gods

This is the same explanation which was before declared insufficient. A fresh explanation is
ib.
required from Euthyphron. He breaks off the dialogue
Sokratic spirit of the dialogue — confessed ignorance applying the Elenchus to false
449
persuasion of knowledge
The questions always difficult, often impossible to answer. Sokrates is unable to answer them,
ib.
though he exposes the bad answers of others
Objections of Theopompus to the Platonic procedure 450
Objective view of Ethics, distinguished by Sokrates from the subjective 451
Subjective unanimity coincident with objective dissent ib.
Cross-examination brought to bear upon this mental condition by Sokrates — position of
452
Sokrates and Plato in regard to it
The Holy — it has an essential characteristic — what is this? — not the fact that it is loved by
454
the Gods — this is true, but is not its constituent essence
Views of the Xenophontic Sokrates respecting the Holy — different from those of the Platonic
Sokrates — he disallows any common absolute general type of the Holy — he recognises an ib.
indefinite variety of types, discordant and relative
The Holy a branch of the Just — not tenable as a definition, but useful as bringing to view the
455
subordination of logical terms
The Euthyphron represents Plato’s way of replying to the charge of impiety, preferred by
ib.
Melêtus against Sokrates — comparison with Xenophon’s way of replying

PLATO.

PRE-SOKRATIC PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER I.

SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY IN GREECE,
BEFORE AND IN THE TIME OF SOKRATES.

Change in the political condition
The life of Plato extends from 427-347 B.C.
of Greece during the life of He was born in the fourth year of the
Plato. 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
To us, as to Herodotus, in his day, the
the belief in polytheistic
philosophical speculation of the Greeks begins
personal agents as the real
with the theology and cosmology of Homer
producing causes of phenomena.
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.

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.

Belief in such agency continued
Hesiod represents the point of view ancient
among the general public, even
and popular (to use Aristotle’s expression3)
after the various sects of among the Greeks, from whence all their
philosophy had arisen. 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.

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.

Thales, the first Greek who
Even in the sixth century B.C., when the
propounded the hypothesis of habit of composing in prose was first
physical agency in place of introduced, Pherekydes and Akusilaus still
personal. Water, the primordial continued in their prose the theogony, or the
substance, or ἀρχή. 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

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.

Anaximander — laid down as
The next of the Ionic philosophers, and the
ἀρχή the Infinite or
first who published his opinions in writing,
indeterminate — generation of
was Anaximander, of Miletus, the countryman
the elements out of it, by
and younger contemporary of Thales (570-520
B.C.). He too searched for an Ἀρχή, a
evolution of latent fundamental
contraries — astronomical and primordial Something or principle, self-
geological doctrines. 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

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.

Anaximenes — adopted Air as
The third physical philosopher produced by
ἀρχή — rise of substances out of
Miletus, seemingly before the time of her
it, by condensation and
terrible disasters suffered from the Persians
rarefaction.
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

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.

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
Of Pythagoras I have spoken at some length
— Pythagorean brotherhood,
in the thirty-seventh chapter of my History of
great political influence which it
Greece. Speculative originality was only one
acquired among the Greco-
among many remarkable features in his
Italian cities — incurred great
character. He was an inquisitive traveller, a
enmity and was violently put
religious reformer or innovator, and the
down.
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.

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

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

The Pythagoreans continue as a
Though thus stripped of power, however,
recluse sect, without political
the Pythagoreans still maintained themselves
power.
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.

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.

Doctrine of the Pythagoreans —
The problem of physical philosophy, as then
Number the Essence of Things.
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

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).

The Monas — ἀρχή, or principle
The first principle or beginning of Number,
of Number — geometrical
was the One or Monas — which the
conception of number —
Pythagoreans conceived as including both the
symbolical attributes of the first
two fundamental contraries — the
ten numbers, especially of the
Determining and the Indeterminate.30 All
Dekad. 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

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.

Pythagorean Kosmos and
The Pythagoreans conceived the Kosmos, or
Astronomy — geometrical and
the universe, as one single system, generated
harmonic laws guiding the
out of numbers.35 Of this system the central
movements of the cosmical point — the determining or limiting One —
bodies. 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Pythagorean list of fundamental
Ten was, in the opinion of the Pythagoreans,
Contraries — Ten opposing
the perfection and consummation of number.
pairs.
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

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.

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.

45 Aristot. Metaph. A. 5, p. 985, b. 23. οἱ Πυθαγορεῖοι τῶν
μαθημάτων ἀψάμενοι π ρ ῶ τ ο ι τ α ῦ τ α π ρ ο ή γ α γ ο ν ,
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.

Eleatic philosophy —
Contemporary with Pythagoras, and like
Xenophanes.
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.

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

His censures upon the received
Xenophanes takes his point of departure,
Theogony and religious rites.
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

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.

His doctrine of Pankosmism, or
Though Xenophanes thus appears (like
Pantheism — The whole
Pythagoras) mainly as a religious dogmatist,
yet theogony and cosmogony were so

Kosmos is Ens Unum or God — intimately connected in the sixth century B.C.,
Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Non-Ens that he at the same time struck out a new
inadmissible. 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.

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.

Scepticism of Xenophanes —
It was thus from Xenophanes that the
complaint of philosophy as
doctrine of Pankosmism obtained introduction
unsatisfactory.
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

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.

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
Without attempting to define the figure of
astronomy.
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

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.”

Parmenides continues the
Parmenides, of Elea, followed up and gave
doctrine of Xenophanes — Ens
celebrity to the Xenophanean hypothesis in a
Parmenideum, self-existent,
poem, of which the striking exordium is yet
eternal, unchangeable, extended,
preserved. The two veins of thought, which
— Non-Ens, an unmeaning
Xenophanes had recognised and lamented his
phrase.
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

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.

He recognises a region of
In this subject Ens, with its few predicates,
opinion, phenomenal and
chiefly negative, consisted all that Parmenides
relative, apart from Ens.
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.

63 Parm. Frag. v. 96.

—— ἐπεὶ τό γε μοῖρ’ ἐπέδησεν
Οἶον ἀκίνητον τελέθειν τῷ πάντ’ ὄνομ’ ε ἶ ν α ι ,
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, ἀ λ λ ὰ μ ό ν ο ν
δ ο κ ε ῖ ν ἡ μ ῖ ν · 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.

Parmenidean ontology stands
The Ens of Parmenides thus coincided
completely apart from
mainly with that which (since Kant) has been
phenomenology.
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

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.”

Parmenidean phenomenology —
Apart from Ontology, Parmenides reckons
relative and variable.
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.

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.

Parmenides recognises no truth,
Yet though thus passing from Truth to
but more or less probability, in
Opinions, from full certainty to comparative
phenomenal explanations. —
and irremediable uncertainty,70 Parmenides
does not consider all opinions as equally true
or equally untrue. He announces an opinion of

His physical and astronomicalhis own — what he thinks most probable or
conjectures. 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

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.

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,
Herakleitus of Ephesus, known throughout
impressive metaphors, confident
antiquity by the denomination of the Obscure,
and contemptuous dogmatism.
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

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.

Doctrine of Herakleitus —
The expositors followed by Lucretius and
perpetual process of generation
Cicero conceived Herakleitus as having
and destruction — everything
proclaimed Fire to be the universal and all-
flows, nothing stands —
pervading element of nature;81 as Thales had
transition of the elements into recognised water, and Anaximenes air. This
each other, backwards and interpretation was countenanced by some
forwards. 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.

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.

Variety of metaphors employed
This endless process of transition, or ever-
by Herakleitus, signifying the
repeated act of generation and destruction in
same general doctrine.
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

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, μ ᾶ λ λ ο ν δ ὲ
οὐδὲ πάλιν οὐδὲ ὕστερον, ἀλλ’ ἅμα
συνίσταται καὶ ἀπολείπει, πρόσεισι καὶ

ἄπεισι. Ὅθεν οὐδ’ εἰς τὸ εἶναι περαίνει
τ ὸ γ ι γ ν ό μ ε ν ο ν α ὐ τ ῆ ς , 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.

Nothing permanent except the
The universal law, destiny, or divine
law of process and implication
working (according to Herakleitus), consists in
of contraries — the
this incessant process of generation and
transmutative force. Fixity of
destruction, this alternation of contraries. To
particulars is an illusion for
carry out such law fully, each of the particular
most part, so far as it exists, it is
manifestations ought to appear and pass away
instantaneously — to have no duration of its

a sin against the order of own, but to be supplanted by its contrary at
Nature. 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.

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.”

Illustrations by which
The theory of Herakleitus thus recognised
Herakleitus symbolized his
no permanent substratum, or Ens, either
perpetual force, destroying and
material or immaterial — no category either of
generating.
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

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 ο ὐ χ ’ ὡ ς
οὐσία τις γέγονεν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ ἐν γενέσει ἣ
φ θ ο ρ ᾷ , εἰ καὶ πεπερασμένον, ἀ λ λ ’ ἀ ε ί γ ε ἕ τ ε ρ ο ν
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.

Water — intermediate between
Such was the metaphysical or logical
Fire (Air) and Earth.
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.

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 ὁ μ ο ῦ τ ε
ἐξεφλογώθη καὶ εἰς λιγνὺν ἐκκαυθεῖσα
μ ε τ α π ο ι ή θ η , &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).

Sun and stars — not solid bodies
Herakleitus conceived the sun and stars, not
but meteoric aggregations
as solid bodies, but as meteoric aggregations
dissipated and renewed —
perpetually dissipated and perpetually renewed
Eclipses — ἐκπύρωσις, or
or fed, by exhalation upward from the water
destructions of the Kosmos by
and earth. The sun became extinguished and
fire.
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.

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).

His doctrines respecting the
The like blending of metaphysics and
human soul and human
physics — of the abstract and the concrete and
knowledge. All wisdom resided
sensible — is to be found in the statements
in the Universal Wisdom —
remaining from Herakleitus respecting the
individual Reason is worthless.
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

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
ν ο ε ρ ῷ . 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 ἕ π ε σ θ α ι τ ῷ ξ υ ν ῷ · — τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ,
ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν· ἡ δ’ ἔστιν οὐκ
ἄλλο τι ἀ λ λ ’ ἐ ξ ή γ η σ ι ς τ ο ῦ τ ρ ό π ο υ τ ῆ ς τ ο ῦ
π ά ν τ ο ς δ ι ο ι κ ή σ ε ω ς · 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.

By Universal Reason he did not
By this denunciation of the mischief of
mean the Reason of most men as
private judgment, Herakleitus did not mean to
it is, but as it ought to be.
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.

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 σ υ μ π α ρ ά θ ε ο ν α ὐ τ ο ῖ ς
ἐ φ ά π τ η τ α ι κ α ὶ ἐ φ α ρ μ ό ζ ῃ 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.

The absolute of Herakleitus stands thus at
Herakleitus at the opposite pole
from Parmenides.
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.

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, φ η σ ὶ ν , &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.

Empedokles — his doctrine of
After Herakleitus, and seemingly at the
the four elements, and two
same time with Parmenides, we arrive at
moving or restraining forces.
Empedokles (about 500-430 B. C.) 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

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.

Construction of the Kosmos
From the four elements — acted upon by
from these elements and forces
these two forces, abstractions or mythical
— action and counter action of
personifications — Empedokles showed how
love and enmity. The Kosmos
the Kosmos was constructed. He supposed
alternately made and unmade.
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

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

Empedoklean predestined cycle
This is the Empedoklean cycle of things,112
of things — complete empire ofdivine or predestined, without beginning or
Love — Sphærus — Empire of end: perpetual substitution of new for old
Enmity — disengagement or compounds — constancy only in the general
separation of the elements — principle of combination and dissolution. The
astronomy and meteorology. 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

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.

Formation of the Earth, of
From astronomy and meteorology
Gods, men, animals, and plants.
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.

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).

Physiology of Empedokles —
Empedokles farther laid down many
Procreation — Respiration —
doctrines respecting physiology. He dwelt on
movement of the blood.
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

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.

Doctrine of effluvia and pores —
The doctrine of pores and effluvia, which
explanation of perceptions —
formed so conspicuous an item in the physics
Intercommunication of the
of Empedokles, was applied by him to explain
elements with the sentient
sensation. He maintained the general doctrine
subject — like acting upon like.
(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

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.

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

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.

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

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).

Empedokles declared that
Empedokles held various opinions in
justice absolutely forbade the
common with the Pythagoreans and the
killing of anything that had life.
brotherhood of the Orphic mysteries —
His belief in the
especially that of the metempsychosis. He
metempsychosis. Sufferings of
represented himself as having passed through
life are an expiation for wrong
prior states of existence, as a boy, a girl, a
done during an antecedent life.
shrub, a bird, and a fish. He proclaims it as an
Pretensions to magic power.
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

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.

Complaint of Empedokles on
None of the remaining fragments of
the impossibility of finding out
Empedokles are more remarkable than a few
truth.
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

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.

Anaxagoras of Klazomenæ, a friend of the Athenian Perikles, and
contemporary of Empedokles, was a man of far simpler and less ambitious

Theory of Anaxagoras — denied
character: devoted to physical contemplation
generation and destruction —
and geometry, without any of those mystical
recognises only mixture and
pretentions common among the Pythagoreans.
severance of pre-existing kinds
His doctrines were set forth in prose, and in
of matter.
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.

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.

Homœomeries — small particles
But Anaxagoras did not accept the
of diverse kinds of matter, all
Empedoklean four elements as the sum total of
mixed together.
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.

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?

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

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.

First condition of things — all
In the beginning (said Anaxagoras) all
the primordial varieties of
things (all sorts of matter) were together, in
matter were huddled together in
one mass or mixture. Infinitely numerous and
confusion. Nous, or Reason,
infinite in diversity of magnitude, they were so
distinct from all of them,
packed and confounded together that no one
supervened and acted upon this
could be distinguished from the rest: no
confused mass, setting the
definite figure, or colour, or other property,
constituent particles in
could manifest itself. Nothing was
movement.
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

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).

Movement of rotation in the
But though other things could not act upon
mass initiated by Nous on a
mind, mind could act upon them. It first
small scale, but gradually
originated movement in the quiescent mass.
extending itself. Like particles
The movement impressed was that of rotation,
congregate together —
which first began on a small scale, then
gradually extended itself around, becoming

distinguishable aggregates aremore efficacious as it extended, and still
formed. 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.

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 ἀ π ο κ έ κ ο π τ α ι π ε λ έ κ ε ι , &c. Frag. 12, p.
122. ἐν παντὶ πάντα, οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι. — Frag. 15, p.
125.

Nothing (except Νοῦς) can be
Nevertheless other things approximate in
entirely pure or unmixed, but
different degrees to purity, according as they
other things may be
possess a more or less decided preponderance
comparatively pure. Flesh,
of some few ingredients over the remaining
Bone, &c. are purer than Air or
multitude. Thus flesh, bone, and other similar
Earth.
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

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.

Theory of Anaxagoras
In comparing the theory of Anaxagoras with
compared with that of
that of Empedokles, we perceive that both of
Empedokles.
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
The hypothesis of multifarious forms of
phenomena of animal nutrition.
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.

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

Chaos common to both
Both Empedokles and Anaxagoras begin
Empedokles and Anaxagoras:
their constructive process from a state of
moving agency, different in one
stagnation and confusion both tantamount to
from the other theory.
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.

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.).

Nous, or mind, postulated by
The Nous of Anaxagoras was understood by
Anaxagoras — how understood
later writers as a God;158 but there is nothing
in the fragments now remaining to justify the
by later writers — how intended
by Anaxagoras himself. 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

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).

Plato and Aristotle blame
This we learn from Plato and Aristotle, who
Anaxagoras for deserting his
blame Anaxagoras for inconsistency in
own theory.
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

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.”

Astronomy and physics of
In describing the formation of the Kosmos,
Anaxagoras.
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

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.

His geology, meteorology,
Besides these doctrines respecting the great
physiology.
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.

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.

The doctrines of Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras, residing at Athens and
were regarded as offensive and
intimately connected with Perikles, incurred
impious.
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.

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

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.

181 Plutarch, Nikias, 23.

Contemporary with Anaxagoras — yet
Diogenes of Apollonia recognises
one primordial element.
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.

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.

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

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.

Air was the primordial,
Now the fundamental substance, common to
universal element.
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

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).

Air possessed numerous and
Air, life-giving and intelligent, existed
diverse properties; was
everywhere, formed the essence of everything,
eminently modifiable.
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

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.

Physiology of Diogenes — his
The intelligence of men and animals, very
description of the veins in the
unequal in character and degree, was imbibed
human body.
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

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 τ ο ῦ θ ε ο ῦ — 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.

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.

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 ἀ σ τ έ ρ α 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.

Leukippus and Demokritus —
Nearly contemporary with Anaxagoras and
Atomic theory.
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.

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.

Long life, varied travels, and
Of Leukippus we know nothing: of
numerous compositions of
Demokritus, very little — yet enough to
Demokritus.
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

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.

Relation between the theory of
The theory of Leukippus and Demokritus
Demokritus and that of
(we have no means of distinguishing the two)
Parmenides.
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.

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.

Demokritean theory — Atoms
This bridge the atomists undertook to re-
— Plena and Vacua — Ens and
establish. They admitted that Ens could not
Non-Ens.
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

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, ο ὐ γ ὰ ρ ἂ ν δ ο κ ε ῖ ν 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.

Primordial atoms differed only
The bridge, broken down by Parmenides,
in magnitude, figure, position,
between the real and the phenomenal world,
and arrangement — they had no
was thus in theory re-established. For the real
qualities, but their movements
world, as described by Demokritus, differed
and combinations generated
entirely from the sameness and barrenness of
qualities.
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

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, κ α ὶ
ὅλως ἕτερον φαίνεσθαι ἑνὸς
μετακινηθέντος.

Combinations of atoms —
Among the various properties of bodies,
generating different qualities in
however, there were two which Demokritus
the compounds.
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

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.

All atoms essentially separate
We thus see that Demokritus, though he
from each other.
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
Pursuant to this theory, Demokritus
weight and hardness, were
proclaimed that all the properties of objects,
except weight, hardness, and softness, were

phenomenal and relative to the not inherent in the objects themselves, but
observer. Sensation could give simply phenomenal and relative to the
no knowledge of the real and observer — “modifications of our sensibility”.
absolute. 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

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

Reason alone gave true and real
True knowledge (in the opinion of
knowledge, but very little of it
Demokritus) was hardly at all attainable; but
was attainable.
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.

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.)

No separate force required to set
How this was done we cannot clearly make
the atoms in motion — they
out, not having before us the original treatise
moved by an inherent force of
of Demokritus, called the Great Diakosmos. It
their own. Like atoms naturally
is certain, however, that he did not invoke any
tend towards like. Rotatory
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
motion, the capital fact of the
Kosmos. 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

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.

Researches of Demokritus on
Among the researches of Demokritus there
zoology and animal generation.
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

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.

His account of mind — he
In regard to mind or soul generally, he
identified it with heat or fire
identified it with heat or fire, conceiving it to
diffused throughout animals,
consist in the same very small, globular,
plants, and nature generally.
rapidly movable atoms, penetrating
Mental particles intermingled
everywhere: which he illustrated by
throughout all the frame with
comparison with the fine dust seen in
corporeal particles.
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

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.

Different mental aptitudes
Though Demokritus conceived those mental
attached to different parts of the
particles as distributed all over the body, yet
body.
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

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.

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

226 Theophrastus, De Sensu, s. 64.

Explanation of different
Proceeding upon his hypothesis of atoms
sensations and perceptions.
and vacua as the only objective existences, he
Colours.
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

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.

Vision caused by the outflow of
Besides thus setting forth those varieties of
effluvia or images from objects.
atoms and atomic motions which produced
Hearing.
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.

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.

Differences of taste — how
Farther, Demokritus conceived that the
explained.
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

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.

Thought or Intelligence — was
As sensation, so also thought or
produced by influx of atoms
intelligence, was produced by the working of
from without.
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.

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, ὅ π ε ρ
(ἅπερ) οὐχ’ ἧττον ἔδοξε λέγεσθαι πρὸς
ἡ μ ᾶ ς , 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.

Sensation, obscure knowledge
Hence Demokritus termed sensation,
relative to the sentient; Thought,
obscure knowledge — thought, genuine
genuine knowledge — absolute,
knowledge.238 It was only by thought (reason,
or object per se. 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.

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, ο ὐ κ ἔ σ τ ι δ ὲ κ α τ ὰ
ἀ λ ή θ ε ι α ν τ α ῦ τ α · 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.

Idola or images were thrown off
As Demokritus supposed both sensations
from objects, which determined
and thoughts to be determined by effluvia
the tone of thoughts, feelings,
from without, so he assumed a similar cause to
dreams, divinations, &c.
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.

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.

Universality of Demokritus —
Among the lost treasures of Hellenic
his ethical views.
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

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.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE EARLIER
PHILOSOPHERS — GROWTH OF
DIALECTIC — ZENO AND GORGIAS.

Variety of sects and theories —
The first feeling of any reader accustomed
multiplicity of individual
to the astronomy and physics of the present
authorities is the characteristic
century, on considering the various theories
of Greek philosophy.
noticed in the preceding chapter, is a sort of
astonishment that such theories should have
been ever propounded or accepted as true. Yet there can be no doubt that
they represent the best thoughts of sincere, contemplative, and ingenious
men, furnished with as much knowledge of fact, and as good a method, as
was then attainable. The record of what such men have received as
scientific truth or probability, in different ages, is instructive in many ways,
but in none more than in showing how essentially relative and variable are
the conditions of human belief; how unfounded is the assumption of those
modern philosophers who proclaim certain first truths or first principles as
universal, intuitive, self-evident; how little any theorist can appreciate à
priori the causes of belief in an age materially different from his own, or
can lay down maxims as to what must be universally believed or
universally disbelieved by all mankind. We shall have farther illustration of
this truth as we proceed: here I only note variety of belief, even on the most
fundamental points, as being the essential feature of Grecian philosophy
even from its outset, long before the age of those who are usually
denounced as the active sowers of discord, the Sophists and the professed
disputants. Each philosopher followed his own individual reason, departing
from traditional or established creeds, and incurring from the believing
public more or less of obloquy; but no one among the philosophers acquired

marked supremacy over the rest. There is no established philosophical
orthodoxy, but a collection of Dissenters — ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλων γλῶσσα
μεμιγμένη — small sects, each with its own following, each springing from
a special individual as authority, each knowing itself to be only one among
many.

These early theorists are not
It is a misfortune that we do not possess a
known from their own writings,
complete work, or even considerable
which have been lost.
fragments, from any one of these philosophers,
Importance of the information
so as to know what their views were when
of Aristotle about them.
stated by themselves, and upon what reasons
they insisted. All that we know is derived from
a few detached notices, in very many cases preserved by Aristotle; who, not
content (like Plato) with simply following out his own vein of ideas,
exhibits in his own writings much of that polymathy which he transmitted
to the Peripatetics generally, and adverts often to the works of predecessors.
Being a critic as well as a witness, he sometimes blends together
inconveniently the two functions, and is accused (probably with reason to a
certain extent) of making unfair reports; but if it were not for him, we
should really know nothing of the Hellenic philosophers before Plato. It is
curious to read the manner in which Aristotle speaks of these philosophical
predecessors as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι), and takes credit to his own
philosophy for having attained a higher and more commanding point of
view.1

1 Bacon ascribes the extinction of these early Greek
philosophers to Aristotle, who thought that he could not
assure his own philosophical empire, except by putting to
death all his brothers, like the Turkish Sultan. This remark
occurs more than once in Bacon (Nov. Org. Aph. 67;
Redargutio Philosoph. vol. xi. p. 450, ed. Montagu). In so

far as it is a reproach, I think it is not deserved. Aristotle’s
works, indeed, have been preserved, and those of his
predecessors have not: but Aristotle, far from seeking to
destroy their works, has been the chief medium for
preserving to us the little which we know about them. His
attention to the works of his predecessors is something very
unusual among the theorists of the ancient world. His friends
Eudêmus and Theophrastus followed his example, in
embodying the history of the earlier theories in distinct
works of their own, now unfortunately lost.

It is much to be regretted that no scholar has yet employed
himself in collecting and editing the fragments of the lost
scientific histories of Eudêmus (the Rhodian) and
Theophrastus. A new edition of the Commentaries of
Simplikius is also greatly wanted: those which exist are both
rare and unreadable.

Zeller remarks that several of the statements contained in
Proklus’s commentary on Euclid, respecting the earliest
Grecian mathematicians, are borrowed from the γεωμετρικαὶ
ἱστορίαι of the Rhodian Eudêmus (Zeller — De Hermodoro
Ephesio et Hermodoro Platonico, p. 12).

During the century and a half between
Abundance of speculative genius
and invention — a memorable
Thales and the beginning of the Peloponnesian
fact in the Hellenic mind.
war, we have passed in review twelve distinct
schemes of philosophy — Thales,
Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Parmenides,
Herakleitus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, the Apolloniate Diogenes,
Leukippus, and Demokritus. Of most of these philosophers it may fairly be
said that each speculated upon nature in an original vein of his own.

Anaximenes and Diogenes, Xenophanes and Parmenides, Leukippus and
Demokritus, may indeed be coupled together as kindred pairs yet by no
means in such manner that the second of the two is a mere disciple and
copyist of the first. Such abundance and variety of speculative genius and
invention is one of the most memorable facts in the history of the Hellenic
mind. The prompting of intelligent curiosity, the thirst for some plausible
hypothesis to explain the Kosmos and its generation, the belief that a basis
or point of departure might be found in the Kosmos itself, apart from those
mythical personifications which dwelt both in the popular mind and in the
poetical Theogonies, the mental effort required to select some known
agency and to connect it by a chain of reasoning with the result — all this is
a new phenomenon in the history of the human mind.

Difficulties which a Grecian
An early Greek philosopher found nothing
philosopher had to overcome —
around him to stimulate or assist the effort,
prevalent view of Nature,
and much to obstruct it. He found Nature
established, impressive, and
disguised under a diversified and omnipresent
misleading.
Polytheistic agency, eminently captivating and
impressive to the emotions — at once
mysterious and familiar — embodied in the ancient Theogonies, and
penetrating deeply all the abundant epic and lyric poetry, the only literature
of the time. It is perfectly true (as Aristotle remarks2) that Hesiod and the
other theological poets, who referred everything to the generation and
agency of the Gods, thought only of what was plausible to themselves,
without enquiring whether it would appear equally plausible to their
successors; a reproach which bears upon many subsequent philosophers
also. The contemporary public, to whom they addressed themselves, knew
no other way of conceiving Nature than under this religious and poetical
view, as an aggregate of manifestations by divine personal agents, upon
whose volition — sometimes signified beforehand by obscure warnings
intelligible to the privileged interpreters, but often inscrutable — the turn of

events depended. Thales and the other Ionic philosophers were the first who
became dissatisfied with this point of view, and sought for some “causes
and beginnings” more regular, knowable, and predictable. They fixed upon
the common, familiar, widely-extended, material substances, water, air, fire,
&c.; and they could hardly fix upon any others. Their attempt to find a
scientific basis was unsuccessful; but the memorable fact consisted in their
looking for one.

2 Aristot. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1000, a. 10.

Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Ἡσίοδον, καὶ πάντες ὅσοι θεόλογοι,
μόνον ἐφρόντισαν τοῦ πιθανοῦ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτούς, ἡμῶν δ’
ὠλιγώρησαν· Θεοὺς γὰρ ποιοῦντες τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἐκ θεῶν
γεγονέναι, &c. Aristotle mentions them a few lines
afterwards as not worth serious notice, περὶ τῶν μυθικῶς
σοφιζομένων οὐκ ἄξιον μετὰ σπουδῆς σκοπεῖν.

Views of the Ionic philosophers
In the theories of these Ionic philosophers,
— compared with the more
the physical ideas of generation,
recent abstractions of Plato and
transmutation, local motion, are found in the
Aristotle.
foreground: generation in the Kosmos to
replace generation by the God. Pythagoras and
Empedokles blend with their speculations a good deal both of ethics and
theology, which we shall find yet more preponderant when we come to the
cosmical theories of Plato. He brings us back to the mythical Prometheus,
armed with the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of the
Pythagoreans: he assumes a chaotic substratum, modified by the intentional
and deliberate construction of the Demiurgus and his divine sons, who are
described as building up and mixing like a human artisan or chemist. In the
theory of Aristotle we find Nature half personified, and assumed to be
perpetually at work under the influence of an appetite for good or regularity,
which determines her to aim instinctively and without deliberation (like

bees or spiders) at constant ends, though these regular tendencies are
always accompanied, and often thwarted, by accessories, irregular,
undefinable, unpredictable. Both Plato and Aristotle, in their dialectical age,
carried abstraction farther than it had been carried by the Ionic
philosophers.3 Aristotle imputes to the Ionic philosophers that they
neglected three out of his four causes (the efficient, formal, and final), and
that they attended only to the material. This was a height of abstraction first
attained by Plato and himself; in a way sometimes useful, sometimes
misleading. The earlier philosophers had not learnt to divide substance from
its powers or properties; nor to conceive substance without power as one
thing, and power without substance as another. Their primordial substance,
with its powers and properties, implicated together as one concrete and
without any abstraction, was at once an efficient, a formal, and a material
cause: a final cause they did not suppose themselves to want, inasmuch as
they always conceived a fixed terminus towards which the agency was
directed, though they did not conceive such fixed tendency under the
symbol of an appetite and its end. Water, Air, Fire, were in their view not
simply inert and receptive patients, impotent until they were stimulated by
the active force residing in the ever revolving celestial spheres — but
positive agents themselves, productive of important effects. So also a
geologist of the present day, when he speculates upon the early condition4
of the Kosmos, reasons upon gaseous, fluid, solid, varieties of matter, as
manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests, but
manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances. The
defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was, that
possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either ascribed to
these physical agents powers and properties not real, or exaggerated
prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial substance chosen,
though bearing a familiar name, became little better than a fiction. The

Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers, ascribing to them
properties altogether fanciful and imaginary.

3 Plato (Sophistes, 242-243) observes respecting these
early theorists — what Aristotle says about Hesiod and the
Theogonies — that they followed out their own subjective
veins of thought without asking whether we, the many
listeners, were able to follow them or were left behind in the
dark. I dare say that this was true (as indeed it is true
respecting most writers on speculative matters), but I am
sure that all of them would have made the same complaint if
they had heard Plato read his Timæus.

4 Bacon has some striking remarks on the contrast in this
respect between the earlier philosophers and Aristotle.

Bacon, after commending the early Greek philosophers
for having adopted as their first principle some known and
positive matter, not a mere abstraction, goes on to say:—

“Videntur antiqui illi, in inquisitione principiorum,
rationem non admodum acutam instituisse, sed hoc
solummodo egisse, ut ex corporibus apparentibus et
manifestis, quod maximé excelleret, quærerent, et quod tale
videbatur, principium rerum ponerent: tanquam per
excellentiam, non veré aut realiter.… Quod si principium
illud suum teneant non per excellentiam, sed simpliciter,
videntur utique in duriorem tropum incidere: cum res plané
deducatur ad æquivocum, neque de igne naturali, aut
naturali ære, aut aquâ, quod asserunt, prædicari videatur, sed
de igne aliquo phantastico et notionali (et sic de cæteris) qui
nomen ignis retineat, definitionem abneget.… Principium

statuerunt secundum sensum, aliquod ens verum: modum
autem ejus dispensandi (liberius se gerentes) phantasticum.”
(Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol.
xi., p. 115-116, ed. Montagu.)

“Materia illa spoliata et passiva prorsus humanæ mentis
commentum quoddam videtur. Materia prima ponenda est
conjuncta cum principio motûs primo, ut invenitur. Hæc tria
(materia, forma, motus) nullo modo discerpenda, sed
tantummodo distinguenda, atque asserenda materia
(qualiscunque ea sit), ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut
omnis virtus, essentia, actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus
consecutio et emanatio esse possit. Omnes ferè antiqui,
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes. Heraclitus,
Democritus, de materiâ primâ in cæteris dissidentes, in hoc
convenerunt, quod materiam activam formâ nonnullâ, et
formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se principium motûs
habentem, posuerunt.” (Bacon, De Parmenidis, Telesii, et
Campanellæ, Philosoph., p. 653-654, t. v.)

Compare Aphorism I. 50 of the Novum Organum.

Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol.
xi. ed. Montagu, p. 106-107. “Sed omnes ferè antiqui
(anterior to Plato), Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes,
Heraclitus, Democritus, de materiâ primâ in cæteris
dissidentes, in hoc convenerunt, quod materiam activam,
formâ nonnullâ, et formam suam dispensantem, atque intra
se principium motûs habentem, posuerunt. Neque aliter
cuiquam opinari licebit, qui non experientiæ plané desertor
esse velit. Itaque hi omnes mentem rebus submiserunt. At
Plato mundum cogitationibus, Aristoteles verò etiam

cogitationes verbis, adjudicarunt.” … “Omnino materia
prima ponenda est conjuncta cum formâ primâ, ac etiam
cum principio motûs primo, ut invenitur. Nam et motûs
quoque abstractio infinitas phantasias peperit, de animis,
vitis, et similibus — ac si iis per materiam et formam non
satisfieret, sed ex suis propriis penderent illa principiis. Sed
hæc tria nullo modo discerpenda, sed tantummodo
distinguenda: atque asserenda materia (qualiscunque ea sit)
ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut omnis virtus, essentia,
actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus consecutio et emanatio
esse possit. Neque propterea metuendum, ne res torpeant,
aut varietas ista, quam cernimus, explicari non possit — ut
postea docebimus.”

Playfair also observes, in his Dissertation on the Progress
of Natural Philosophy, prefixed to the Encyclopædia
Britannica, p. 31:—

“Science was not merely stationary, but often retrograde;
and the reasonings of Democritus and Anaxagoras were in
many respects more solid than those of Plato and Aristotle.”

See a good summary of Aristotle’s cosmical views, in
Ideler, Comm. in Aristotel. Meteorologica, i. 2, p. 328-329.

Parmenides and Pythagoras —
Parmenides and Pythagoras, taking views of
more nearly akin to Plato and
the Kosmos metaphysical and geometrical
Aristotle.
rather than physical, supplied the basis upon
which Plato’s speculations were built. Aristotle
recognises Empedokles and Anaxagoras as having approached to his own
doctrine — force abstracted or considered apart from substance, yet not
absolutely detached from it. This is true about Empedokles to a certain

extent, since his theory admits Love and Enmity as agents, the four
elements as patients: but it is hardly true about Anaxagoras, in whose theory
Noûs imparts nothing more than a momentary shock, exercising what
modern chemists call a catalytic agency in originating movement among a
stationary and stagnant mass of Homœomeries, which, as soon as they are
liberated from imprisonment, follow inherent tendencies of their own, not
receiving any farther impulse or direction from Noûs.

Advantage derived from this
In the number of cosmical theories
variety of constructive
proposed, from Thales to Demokritus, as well
imagination among the Greeks.
as in the diversity and even discordance of the
principles on which they were founded — we
note not merely the growth and development of scientific curiosity, but also
the spontaneity and exuberance of constructive imagination.5 This last is a
prominent attribute of the Hellenic mind, displayed to the greatest
advantage in their poetical, oratorical, historical, artistic, productions, and
transferred from thence to minister to their scientific curiosity. None of their
known contemporaries showed the like aptitudes, not even the Babylonians
and Egyptians, who were diligent in the observation of the heavens. Now
the constructive imagination is not less indispensable to the formation of
scientific theories than to the compositions of art, although in the two
departments it is subject to different conditions, and appeals to different
canons and tests in the human mind. Each of these early Hellenic theories,
though all were hypotheses and “anticipations of nature,” yet as connecting
together various facts upon intelligible principles, was a step in advance;
while the very number and discordance of them (urged by Sokrates6 as an
argument for discrediting the purpose common to all), was on the whole
advantageous. It lessened the mischief arising from the imperfections of
each, increased the chance of exposing such imperfections, and prevented
the consecration of any one among them (with that inveterate and
peremptory orthodoxy which Plato so much admires7 in the Egyptians) as

an infallible dogma and an exclusive mode of looking at facts. All the
theorists laboured under the common defect of a scanty and inaccurate
experience: all of them were prompted by a vague but powerful emotion of
curiosity to connect together the past and present of Nature by some threads
intelligible and satisfactory to their own minds; each of them followed out
some analogy of his own, such as seemed to carry with it a self-justifying
plausibility; and each could find some phenomena which countenanced his
own peculiar view. As far as we can judge, Leukippus and Demokritus
greatly surpassed the others, partly in the pains which they took to elaborate
their theory, partly in the number of facts which they brought into
consistency with it. The loss of the voluminous writings of Demokritus is
deeply to be regretted.8

5 Karsten observes, in his account of the philosophy of
Parmenides (sect, 23, p. 241):—

“Primum mundi descriptionem consideremus.
Argumentum illustre et magnificum, cujus quanto major erat
veterum in contemplando admiratio, tanto minor ferè in
observando diligentia fuit. Quippe universi ornatum et
pulcritudinem admirati, ejus naturam partiumque ordinem
non sensu assequi studuerunt, sed mente informarunt ad eam
pulcri perfectique speciem quæ in ipsorum animis insideret:
sic ut Aristoteles ait, non sua cogitata suasque notiones ad
mundi naturam, sed hanc illa accommodantes. Hujusmodi
quoque fuit Parmenidea ratio.”

6 Xenophon, Memor. i. 1, 13-14.

7 Plato, Legg. ii. 656-657.

8 About the style of Demokritus, see Cicero De Orat. i. 11.
Orator. c. 20.

All these theories were found in
In studying the writings of Plato and
circulation by Sokrates, Zeno,
Aristotle, we must recollect that they found all
Plato, and the dialecticians.
these theories pre-existent or
Importance of the scrutiny of
contemporaneous. We are not to imagine that
negative Dialectic.
they were the first who turned an enquiring
eye on Nature. So far is this from being the
case that Aristotle is, as it were, oppressed both by the multitude and by the
discordance of his predecessors, whom he cites, with a sort of indulgent
consciousness of superiority, as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι).9 The dialectic
activity, inaugurated by Sokrates and Zeno, lowered the estimation of these
cosmical theories in more ways than one: first, by the new topics of man

and society, which Sokrates put in the foreground for discussion, and
treated as the only topics worthy of discussion: next, by the great acuteness
which each of them displayed in the employment of the negative weapons,
and in bringing to view the weak part of an opponent’s case. When we look
at the number of these early theories, and the great need which all of them
had to be sifted and scrutinised, we shall recognise the value of negative
procedure under such circumstances, whether the negationist had or had not
any better affirmative theory of his own. Sokrates, moreover, not only
turned the subject-matter of discussion from physics to ethics, but also
brought into conscious review the method of philosophising: which was
afterwards still farther considered and illustrated by Plato. General and
abstract terms and their meaning, stood out as the capital problems of
philosophical research, and as the governing agents of the human mind
during the process: in Plato and Aristotle, and the Dialectics of their age, we
find the meaning or concept corresponding to these terms invested with an
objective character, and represented as a cause or beginning; by which, or
out of which, real concrete things were produced. Logical, metaphysical,
ethical, entities, whose existence consists in being named and reasoned
about, are presented to us (by Plato) as the real antecedents and producers
of the sensible Kosmos and its contents, or (by Aristotle) as coeternal with
the Kosmos, but as its underlying constituents — the ἀρχαὶ, primordia or
ultimata — into which it was the purpose and duty of the philosopher to
resolve sensible things. The men of words and debate, the dialecticians or
metaphysical speculators of the period since Zeno and Sokrates, who took
little notice of the facts of Nature, stand contrasted in the language of
Aristotle with the antecedent physical philosophers who meddled less with
debate and more with facts. The contrast is taken in his mind between Plato
and Demokritus.10

9 Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 314, a. 6; 325, a. 2; Metaphys. Λ.
1069, a. 25. See the sense of ἀρχαϊκῶς, Met. N. 1089, a. 2,

with the note of Bonitz.

Adam Smith, in his very instructive examination of the
ancient systems of Physics and Metaphysics, is too much
inclined to criticise Plato and Aristotle as if they were the
earliest theorizers, and as if they had no predecessors.

10 Aristotel. Gen. et Corr. i. 316, a. 6. — διὸ ὅσοι
ἐνῳκήκασι μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς, μᾶλλον δύνανται
ὑποτίθεσθαι τοιαύτας ἀρχὰς, αἳ ἐπὶ πολὺ δύνανται
συνείρειν· οἱ δ’ ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν λόγων ἀθεώρητοι τῶν
ὑπαρχόντων ὄντες, πρὸς ὀλίγα βλέψαντες, ἀποφαίνονται
ῥᾷον· ἴδοι δ’ ἄν τις καὶ ἐκ τούτων ὅσον διαφέρουσιν οἱ
φυσικῶς καὶ λογικῶς σκοποῦντες, &c. This remark is
thoroughly Baconian.

Οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις is the phrase by which Aristotle
characterises the Platonici. — Metaphys. Θ. 1050, b. 35.

The early theorists were studied
Both by Stoics and by Epikureans, during
along with Plato and Aristotle,
the third and second centuries B.C.,
in the third and second centuries Demokritus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and
B.C.
Herakleitus were studied along with Plato and
Aristotle — by some, even more. Lucretius
mentions and criticises all the four, though he never names Plato or
Aristotle. Cicero greatly admires the style of Demokritus, whose works
were arranged in tetralogies by Thrasyllus, as those of Plato were.11

h

11 Epikurus is said to have especially admired Anaxagoras
(Diog. L. x. 12).

Negative attribute common to
In considering the early theorists above
all the early theorists — little or
enumerated, there is great difficulty in finding
no dialectic.
any positive characteristic applicable to all of
them. But a negative characteristic may be
found, and has already been indicated by Aristotle. “The earlier
philosophers (says he) had no part in dialectics: Dialectical force did not yet
exist.”12 And the period upon which we are now entering is distinguished
mainly by the introduction and increasing preponderance of this new
element — Dialectic — first made conspicuously manifest in the Eleatic
Zeno and Sokrates; two memorable persons, very different from each other,
but having this property in common.

12 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 32. Οἱ γὰρ πρότεροι
διαλεκτικῆς οὐ μετεῖχον. — M. 1078, b. 25; διαλεκτικὴ γὰρ
ἰσχὺς οὔπω τότ’ ἦν, ὥστε δύνασθαι, &c.

Zeno of Elea — Melissus.
It is Zeno who stands announced, on the
authority of Aristotle, as the inventor of
dialectic: that is, as the first person of whose skill in the art of cross-
examination and refutation conspicuous illustrative specimens were
preserved. He was among the first who composed written dialogues on
controversial matters of philosophy.13 Both he, and his contemporary the
Samian Melissus, took up the defence of the Parmenidean doctrine. It is
remarkable that both one and the other were eminent as political men in
their native cities. Zeno is even said to have perished miserably, in generous
but fruitless attempts to preserve Elea from being enslaved by the despot
Nearchus.

13 Diogen. Laert. ix. 25-28.

The epithets applied to Zeno by Timon are remarkable.

Ἀμφοτερογλώσσου τε μέγα σθένος οὐκ ἀλαπαδνὸν
Ζήνωνος πάντων ἐπιλήπτορος, &c.

Zeno’s Dialectic — he refuted
We know the reasonings of Zeno and
the opponents of Parmenides, by
Melissus only through scanty fragments, and
showing that their assumptions
those fragments transmitted by opponents. But
led to contradictions and
it is plain that both of them, especially Zeno,
absurdities.
pressed their adversaries with grave
difficulties, which it was more easy to deride
than to elucidate. Both took their departure from the ground occupied by
Parmenides. They agreed with him in recognising the phenomenal,
apparent, or relative world, the world of sense and experience, as a subject
of knowledge, though of uncertain and imperfect knowledge. Each of them
gave, as Parmenides had done, certain affirmative opinions, or at least
probable conjectures, for the purpose of explaining it.14 But beyond this
world of appearances, there lay the real, absolute, ontological, ultra-
phenomenal, or Noumenal world, which Parmenides represented as Ens
unum continuum, and which his opponents contended to be plural and
discontinuous. These opponents deduced absurd and ridiculous
consequences from the theory of the One. Herein both Zeno and Melissus
defended Parmenides. Zeno, the better dialectician of the two, retorted upon
the advocates of absolute plurality and discontinuousness, showing that
their doctrine led to consequences not less absurd and contradictory than the
Ens unum of Parmenides. He advanced many distinct arguments; some of
them antinomies, deducing from the same premisses both the affirmative
and the negative of the same conclusion.15

14 Diog. Laert. ix. 24-29.

Zeller (Phil. d. Griech. i. p. 424, note 2) doubts the
assertion that Zeno delivered probable opinions and

hypotheses, as Parmenides had done before him, respecting
phenomenal nature. But I see no adequate ground for such
doubt.

15 Simplikius, in Aristotel. Physic. f. 30. ἐν μέντοι τῷ
συγγράμματι αὐτοῦ, πολλὰ ἔχοντι ἐπιχειρήματα, καθ’
ἕκαστον δείκνυσιν, ὅτι τῷ πολλὰ εἶναι λέγοντι συμβαίνει τὰ
ἐναντία λέγειν, &c.

Consequences of their
If things in themselves were many (he said)
assumption of Entia Plura
they must be both infinitely small and
Discontinua. Reductiones ad
infinitely great. Infinitely small, because the
absurdum.
many things must consist in a number of units,
each essentially indivisible: but that which is
indivisible has no magnitude, or is infinitely small if indeed it can be said to
have any existence whatever:16 Infinitely great, because each of the many
things, if assumed to exist, must have magnitude. Having magnitude, each
thing has parts which also have magnitude: these parts are, by the
hypothesis, essentially discontinuous, but this implies that they are kept
apart from each other by other intervening parts — and these intervening
parts must be again kept apart by others. Each body will thus contain in
itself an infinite number of parts, each having magnitude. In other words, it
will be infinitely great.17

16 Aristotel. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1001, b. 7. ἔτι εἰ ἀδιαίρετον
αὐτὸ τὸ ἕν, κατὰ μὲν τὸ Ζήνωνος ἀξίωμα, οὐθὲν ἂν εἴη.

ὃ γὰρ μήτε προστιθέμενον μητὲ ἀφαιρούμενον ποιεῖ τι
μεῖζον μηδὲ ἕλαττον, οὔ φησιν εἶναι τοῦτο τῶν ὄντων, ὡς
δῆλον ὅτι ὄντος μεγέθους τοῦ ὄντος.

Seneca (Epistol. 88) and Alexander of Aphrodisias (see
the passages of Themistius and Simplikius cited by Brandis,

Handbuch Philos. i. p. 412-416) conceive Zeno as having
dissented from Parmenides, and as having denied the
existence, not only of τὰ πολλὰ, but also of τὸ ἕν. But Zeno
seems to have adhered to Parmenides; and to have denied
the existence of τὸ ἕν, only upon the hypothesis opposed to
Parmenides — namely, that τὰ πολλὰ existed. Zeno argued
thus:—Assuming that the Real or Absolute is essentially
divisible and discontinuous, divisibility must be pushed to
infinity, so that you never arrive at any ultimatum, or any
real unit (ἀκριβῶς ἕν). If you admit τὰ πολλὰ, you renounce
τὸ ἕν. The reasoning of Zeno, as far as we know it, is nearly
all directed against the hypothesis of Entia plura
discontinua. Tennemann (Gesch. Philos. i. 4, p. 205) thinks
that the reasoning of Zeno is directed against the world of
sense: in which I cannot agree with him.

17 Scholia ad Aristotel. Physic. p. 334, a. ed. Brandis.

Again — If things in themselves were many, they would be both finite
and infinite in number. Finite, because they are as many as they are, neither
more nor less: and every number is a finite number. Infinite, because being
essentially separate, discontinuous, units, each must be kept apart from the
rest by an intervening unit; and this again by something else intervening.
Suppose a multitude A, B, C, D, &c. A and B would be continuous unless
they were kept apart by some intervening unit Z. But A and Z would then be
continuous unless they were kept apart by something else — Y: and so on
ad infinitum: otherwise the essential discontinuousness could not be
maintained.18

18 See the argument cited by Simplikius in the words of the
Zenonian treatise, in Preller, Hist. Philos. Græc. ex font.
context. p. 101, sect. 156.

By these two arguments,19 drawn from the hypothesis which affirmed
perpetual divisibility and denied any Continuum, Zeno showed that such
Entia multa discontinua would have contradictory attributes: they would be
both infinitely great and infinitely small — they would be both finite and
infinite in number. This he advanced as a reductio ad absurdum against the
hypothesis.

19 Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. f. 30. καὶ οὔτω μὲν τὸ
κατὰ τὸ πλῆθος ἄπειρον ἐκ τῆς διχοτομίας ἔδειξε, τὸ δὲ κατὰ
τὸ μέγεθος πρότερον κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐπιχείρησιν. Compare
Zeller, Phil. d. Griech. i. p. 427.

Again — If existing things be many and
Each thing must exist in its own
place — Grain of millet not
discontinuous, each of these must exist in a
sonorous.
place of its own. Nothing can exist except in
some place. But the place is itself an existing
something: each place must therefore have a place of its own to exist in: the
second place must have a third place to exist in and so forth ad infinitum.20
We have here a farther reductio ad impossibile of the original hypothesis:
for that hypothesis denies the continuity of space, and represents space as a
multitude of discontinuous portions or places.

20 Aristotel. Physic. iv. 1, p. 209, a. 22; iv. 3, p. 210, b. 23.

Aristotle here observes that the Zenonian argument
respecting place is easy to be refuted; and he proceeds to
give the refutation. But his refutation is altogether
unsatisfactory. Those who despise these Zenonian arguments
as sophisms, ought to look at the way in which they were
answered, at or near the time.

Eudêmus ap. Simplik. ad Aristot. Physic. f. 131. ἄξιον γὰρ
πᾶν τῶν ὄντων ποῦ εἶναι· εἰ δὲ ὁ τόπος τῶν ὄντων, ποῦ ἂν

εἴη;

Another argument of Zeno is to the following effect:—“Does a grain of
millet, when dropped upon the floor, make sound? No. — Does a bushel of
millet make sound under the same circumstances? Yes. — Is there not a
determinate proportion between the bushel and the grain? There is. —
There must therefore be the same proportion between the sonorousness of
the two. If one grain be not sonorous, neither can ten thousand grains be
so.”21

21 Aristotel. Physic. vii. 5, p. 250, a. 20, with the Scholia of
Simplikius on the passage, p. 423, ed. Brandis.

To appreciate the contradiction brought out by Zeno, we must recollect
that he is not here reasoning about facts of sense, phenomenal and relative
— but about things in themselves, absolute and ultra-phenomenal realities.
He did not deny the fact of sense: to appeal to that fact in reply, would have
been to concede his point. The adversaries against whom he reasoned
(Protagoras is mentioned, but he can hardly have been among them, if we
have regard to his memorable dogma, of which more will be said presently)
were those who maintained the plurality of absolute substances, each for
itself, with absolute attributes, apart from the fact of sense, and independent
of any sentient subject. One grain of millet (Zeno argues) has no absolute
sonorousness, neither can ten thousand such grains taken together have any.
Upon the hypothesis of absolute reality as a discontinuous multitude, you
are here driven to a contradiction which Zeno intends as an argument
against the hypothesis. There is no absolute sonorousness in the ten
thousand grains: the sound which they make is a phenomenal fact, relative
to us as sentients of sound, and having no reality except in correlation with
a hearer.22

22 It will be seen that Aristotle in explaining this ἀπορία,
takes into consideration the difference of force in the
vibrations of air, and the different impressibility of the ear.
The explanation is pertinent and just, if applied to the fact of
sense: but it is no reply to Zeno, who did not call in question
the fact of sense. Zeno is impugning the doctrine of absolute
substances and absolute divisibility. To say that ten thousand
grains are sonorous, but that no one of them separately taken
is so, appears to him a contradiction, similar to what is
involved in saying that a real magnitude is made up of
mathematical points. Aristotle does not meet this difficulty.

Zenonian arguments in regard
Other memorable arguments of Zeno
to motion.
against the same hypothesis were those by
which he proved that if it were admitted,
motion would be impossible. Upon the theory of absolute plurality and
discontinuousness, every line or portion of distance was divisible into an
infinite number of parts: before a moving body could get from the
beginning to the end of this line, it must pass in succession over every one
of these parts: but to do this in a finite time was impossible: therefore
motion was impossible.23

23 Aristot. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239 b., with the Scholia, p. 412
seq. ed. Brandis; Aristotel. De Lineis Insecabilibus, p. 968,
a. 19.

These four arguments against absolute motion caused
embarrassment to Aristotle and his contemporaries. τέτταρες
δ’ εἰσὶ λόγοι Ζήνωνος οἱ παρέχοντες τὰς δυσκολίας τοῖς
λύουσιν, &c.

A second argument of the same tendency was advanced in the form of
comparison between Achilles and the tortoise — the swiftest and slowest
movers. The two run a race, a certain start being given to the tortoise. Zeno
contends that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. It is plain indeed,
according to the preceding argument, that motion both for the one and for
the other is an impossibility. Neither one nor the other can advance from the
beginning to the end of any line, except by passing successively through all
the parts of that line: but those parts are infinite in number, and cannot
therefore be passed through in any finite time. But suppose such
impossibility to be got over: still Achilles will not overtake the tortoise. For
while Achilles advances one hundred yards, the tortoise has advanced ten:
while Achilles passes over these additional ten yards, the tortoise will have
passed over one more yard: while Achilles is passing over this remaining
one yard, the tortoise will have got over one-tenth of another yard: and so
on ad infinitum: the tortoise will always be in advance of him by a certain
distance, which, though ever diminishing, will never vanish into nothing.

The third Zenonian argument derived its name from the flight of an arrow
shot from a bow. The arrow while thus carried forward (says Zeno) is
nevertheless at rest.24 For the time from the beginning to the end of its
course consists of a multitude of successive instants. During each of these
instants the arrow is in a given place of equal dimension with itself. But that
which is during any instant in a given place, is at rest. Accordingly during
each successive instant of its flight, the arrow is at rest. Throughout its
whole flight it is both in motion and at rest. This argument is a deduction
from the doctrine of discontinuous time, as the preceding is a deduction
from that of discontinuous space.

24 Aristotel. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239, b. 30. τρίτος ὁ νῦν
ῥηθείς, ὅτι ἡ ὀϊστὸς φερομένη ἕστηκεν.

A fourth argument25 was derived from the case of two equal bodies
moved with equal velocity in opposite directions, and passing each other. If
the body A B were at rest, the other body C D would move along the whole
length of C D in two minutes. But if C D be itself moving with equal
velocity in the opposite direction, A B will pass along the whole length of C
D in half that time, or one minute. Hence Zeno infers that the motion of A B
is nothing absolute, or belonging to the thing in itself — for if that were so,
it would not be varied according to the movement of C D. It is no more than
a phenomenal fact, relative to us and our comparison.

25 See the illustration of this argument at some length by
Simplikius, especially the citation from Eudêmus at the
close of it — ap. Scholia ad Aristotel. p. 414, ed. Brandis.

This argument, so far as I can understand its bearing, is not deduced (as
those preceding are) from the premisses of opponents: but rests upon
premisses of its own, and is intended to prove that motion is only relative.

General result and purpose of
These Zenonian reasonings are memorable
the Zenonian Dialectic. Nothing
as the earliest known manifestations of
is knowable except the relative.
Grecian dialectic, and are probably equal in
acuteness and ingenuity to anything which it
ever produced. Their bearing is not always accurately conceived. Most of
them are argumenta ad hominem: consequences contradictory and
inadmissible, but shown to follow legitimately from a given hypothesis, and
therefore serving to disprove the hypothesis itself.26 The hypothesis was
one relating to the real, absolute, or ultra-phenomenal, which Parmenides
maintained to be Ens Unum Continuum, while his opponents affirmed it to
be essentially multiple and discontinuous. Upon the hypothesis of
Parmenides, the Real and Absolute, being a continuous One, was obviously
inconsistent with the movement and variety of the phenomenal world:
Parmenides himself recognised the contradiction of the two, and his

opponents made it a ground for deriding his doctrine.27 The counter-
hypothesis, of the discontinuous many, appeared at first sight not to be open
to the same objection: it seemed to be more in harmony with the facts of the
phenomenal and relative world, and to afford an absolute basis for them to
rest upon. Against this delusive appearance the dialectic of Zeno was
directed. He retorted upon the opponents, and showed that if the hypothesis
of the Unum Continuum led to absurd consequences, that of the
discontinuous many was pregnant with deductions yet more absurd and
contradictory. He exhibits in detail several of these contradictory
deductions, with a view to refute the hypothesis from whence they flow;
and to prove that, far from performing what it promises, it is worse than
useless, as entangling us in contradictory conclusions. The result of his
reasoning, implied rather than announced, is — That neither of the two
hypotheses are of any avail to supply a real and absolute basis for the
phenomenal and relative world: That the latter must rest upon its own
evidence, and must be interpreted, in so far as it can be interpreted at all, by
its own analogies.

26 The scope of the Zenonian dialectic, as I have here
described it, is set forth clearly by Plato, in his Parmenides,
c. 3-6, p. 127, 128. Πῶς ὦ Ζήνων, τοῦτο λέγεις; ε ἰ
π ο λ λ ά ἐ σ τ ι τ ὰ ὄ ν τ α , ὡς ἄρα δεῖ αὐτὰ ὅμοιά τε εἶναι
καὶ ἀνόμοια, τοῦτο δὲ δὴ ἀδύνατον. — Οὐκοῦν εἰ ἀδύνατον
τά τε ἀνόμοια ὅμοια εἶναι καὶ τὰ ὅμοια ἀνόμοια,
ἀ δ ύ ν α τ ο ν δ ὴ κ α ὶ π ο λ λ ὰ ε ἶ ν α ι ; εἰ γὰρ πολλὰ
εἴη, πάσχοι ἂν τὰ ἀδύνατα. Ἆρα τ ο ῦ τ ό ἐ σ τ ι ν ὃ
β ο ύ λ ο ν τ α ί σ ο υ ο ἱ λ ό γ ο ι ; οὐκ ἀ λ λ ο τ ι ἢ
διαμάχεσθαι παρὰ πάντα τὰ λεγόμενα, ὡς
ο ὐ π ο λ λ ά ἐ σ τ ι ν ; Again, p. 128 D. Ἀντιλέγει οὖν
τοῦτο τὸ γράμμα πρὸς τοὺς τα πολλὰ λέγοντας, καὶ
ἀνταποδίδωσι ταῦτα καὶ πλείω, τοῦτο βουλόμενον δηλοῦν,

ὡς ἔτι γελοιότερα πάσχοι ἂν α ὐ τ ῶ ν ἡ ὑ π ό θ ε σ ι ς , ἡ
εἰ πολλά ἐστιν — ἢ ἡ τοῦ ἓν εἶναι — εἴ
τις ἱκανῶς ἐπεξίοι.

Here Plato evidently represents Zeno as merely proving
that contradictory conclusions followed, if you assumed a
given hypothesis; which hypothesis was thereby shown to be
inadmissible. But Plato alludes to Zeno in another place
(Phædrus, c. 97, p. 261) under the name of the Eleatic
Palamedes, as “showing his art in speaking, by making the
same things appear to the hearers like and unlike, one and
many, at rest and in motion”. In this last passage, the
impression produced by Zeno’s argumentation is brought to
view, apart from the scope and purpose with which he
employed it: which scope and purpose are indicated in the
passage above cited from the Parmenides.

So also Isokrates (Encom. Helen. init.) Ζήνωνα, τὸν ταὐτὰ
δυνατὰ καὶ πάλιν ἀδύνατα πειρώμενον ἀποφαίνειν.

27 Plato, Parmenides, p. 128 D.

Mistake of supposing Zeno’s
But the purport of Zeno’s reasoning is
reductiones ad absurdum of an
mistaken, when he is conceived as one who
opponents doctrines to be
wishes to delude his hearers by proving both
generalisations of data gathered
sides of a contradictory proposition. Zeno’s
from experience.
contradictory conclusions are elicited with the
express purpose of disproving the premisses
from which they are derived. For these premisses Zeno himself is not to be
held responsible, since he borrows them from his opponents: a circumstance
which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the Zenonian arguments as
paralogisms, because they assume the Continua, Space, and Time, to be

discontinuous or divided into many distinct parts.28 Now this absolute
discontinuousness of matter, space, and time, was not advanced by Zeno as
a doctrine of his own, but is the very doctrine of his opponents, taken up by
him for the purpose of showing that it led to contradictory consequences,
and thus of indirectly refuting it. The sentence of Aristotle is thus really in
Zeno’s favour, though apparently adverse to him. In respect to motion, a
similar result followed from the Zenonian reasonings; namely, to show That
motion, as an attribute of the Real and Absolute, was no less inconsistent
with the hypothesis of those who opposed Parmenides, than with the
hypothesis of Parmenides himself:—That absolute motion could no more be
reconciled with the doctrine of the discontinuous Many, than with that of
the Continuous One:—That motion therefore was only a phenomenal fact,
relative to our sensations, conceptions, and comparisons; and having no
application to the absolute. In this phenomenal point of view, neither Zeno
nor Parmenides nor Melissus disputed the fact of motion. They recognised
it as a portion of the world of sensation and experience; which world they
tried to explain, well or ill, by analogies and conjectures derived from itself.

28 Aristotel. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239 b. Ζήνων δὲ
παραλογίζεται· οὐ γὰρ σύγκεται ὁ χρόνος ἐκ τῶν νῦν ὄντων
τῶν ἀδιαιρέτων, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἄλλο μέγεθος οὐδέν &c.

Aristotle, in the second and third chapters of his Physica,
canvasses and refutes the doctrine of Parmenides and Zeno
respecting Ens and Unum. He maintains that Ens and Unum
are equivocal — πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα. He farther maintained
that no one before him had succeeded in refuting Zeno. See
the Scholia of Alexander ad Sophistic. Elench. p. 320 b. 6,
ed. Brandis.

Though we have not the advantage of seeing the Zenonian dialectics as
they were put forth by their author, yet if we compare the substance of them

as handed down to us, with those dialectics
Zenonian Dialectic — Platonic
Parmenides.
which form the latter half of the Platonic
dialogue called Parmenides, we shall find
them not inferior in ingenuity, and certainly more intelligible in their
purpose. Zeno furnishes no positive support to the Parmenidean doctrine,
but he makes out a good negative case against the counter-doctrine.

Views of historians of
Zeller and other able modern critics, while
philosophy respecting Zeno.
admitting the reasoning of Zeno to be good
against this counter-doctrine, complain that he
takes it up too exclusively; that One and Many did not exclude each other,
and that the doctrines of Parmenides and his opponents were both true
together, but neither of them true to the exclusion of the other. But when we
reflect that the subject of predication on both sides was the Real (Ens per
se) it was not likely that either Parmenides or his opponents would affirm it
to be both absolutely One and Continuous, and absolutely Many and
Discontinuous.29 If the opponents of Parmenides had taken this ground,
Zeno need not have imagined deductions for the purpose of showing that
their hypothesis led to contradictory conclusions; for the contradictions
would have stood avowedly registered in the hypothesis itself. If a man
affirms both at once, he divests the predication of its absolute character, as
belonging unconditionally to Ens per se; and he restricts it to the
phenomenal, the relative, the conditioned — dependent upon our sensations
and our fluctuating point of view. This was not intended either by
Parmenides or by his opponents.

29 That both of them could not be true respecting Ens per
se, seems to have been considered indisputable. See the
argument of Sokrates in the Parmenides of Plato, p. 129 B-
E.

Absolute and relative — the first
If, indeed, we judge the question, not from
unknowable.
their standing-point, but from our own, we
shall solve the difficulty by adopting the last-
mentioned answer. We shall admit that One and Many are predicates which
do not necessarily exclude each other; but we shall refrain from affirming or
denying either of them respecting the Real, the Absolute, the
Unconditioned. Of an object absolutely one and continuous — or of objects
absolutely many and discontinuous, apart from the facts of our own sense
and consciousness, and independent of any sentient subject — we neither
know nor can affirm anything. Both these predicates (One — Many) are
relative and phenomenal, grounded on the facts and comparisons of our
own senses and consciousness, and serving only to describe, to record, and
to classify, those facts. Discrete quantity or number, or succession of
distinct unities — continuous quantity, or motion and extension — are two
conceptions derived from comparison, abstracted and generalised from
separate particular phenomena of our consciousness; the continuous, from
our movements and the consciousness of persistent energy involved therein
— the discontinuous, from our movements, intermitted and renewed, as
well as from our impressions of sense. We compare one discrete quantity
with another, or one continual quantity with another, and we thus ascertain
many important truths: but we select our unit, or our standard of motion and
extension, as we please, or according to convenience, subject only to the
necessity of adapting our ulterior calculations consistently to this unit, when
once selected. The same object may thus be considered sometimes as one,
sometimes as many; both being relative, and depending upon our point of
view. Motion, Space, Time, may be considered either as continuous or as
discontinuous: we may reason upon them either as one or the other, but we
must not confound the two points of view with each other. When, however,
we are called upon to travel out of the Relative, and to decide between
Parmenides and his opponents — whether the Absolute be One or

Multitudinous — we have only to abstain from affirming either, or (in other
words) to confess our ignorance. We know nothing of an absolute,
continuous, self-existent One, or of an absolute, discontinuous Many.

Zeno did not deny motion as a
Some critics understand Zeno to have
fact, phenomenal and relative.
denied motion as a fact — opposing
sophistical reasoning to certain and familiar
experience. Upon this view is founded the well-known anecdote, that
Diogenes the Cynic refuted the argument by getting up and walking. But I
do not so construe the scope of his argument. He did not deny motion as a
fact. It rested with him on the evidence of sense, acknowledged by every
one. It was therefore only a phenomenal fact relative to our consciousness,
sensation, movements, and comparisons. As such, but as such only, did
Zeno acknowledge it. What he denied was, motion as a fact belonging to
the Absolute, or as deducible from the Absolute. He did not deny the
Absolute or Thing in itself, as an existing object, but he struck out variety,
divisibility, and motion, from the list of its predicates. He admitted only the
Parmenidean Ens, one, continuous, unchanged, and immovable, with none
but negative predicates, and severed from the relative world of experience
and sensation.

Gorgias the Leontine — did not
Other reasoners, contemporary with Zeno,
admit the Absolute, even as
did not agree with him, in admitting the
conceived by Parmenides.
Absolute, even as an object with no predicates,
except unity and continuity. They denied it
altogether, both as substratum and as predicate. To establish this negation is
the purpose of a short treatise ascribed to the rhetor or Sophist Gorgias, a
contemporary of Zeno; but we are informed that all the reasonings, which
Gorgias employed, were advanced, or had already been advanced, by others
before him.30 Those reasonings are so imperfectly preserved, that we can
make out little more than the general scope.

30 See the last words of the Aristotelian or Pseudo-
Aristotelian treatise, De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgiâ, p.
980.

Ἅπασαι δὲ αὖται καὶ ἑτέρων ἀρχαιοτέρων εἰσὶν ἀπόριαι,
ὥστε ἐν τῇ περὶ ἐκείνων σκέψει καὶ ταύτας ἐξεταστέον.

Ἅπασαι is the reading of Mullach in his edition of this
treatise (p. 79), in place of ἅπαντες or ἅπαντα.

His reasonings against the
Ens, or Entity per se (he contended), did not
Absolute, either as Ens or Entia.
really exist. Even granting that it existed, it
was unknowable by any one. And even
granting that it both existed, and was known by any one, still such person
could not communicate his knowledge of it to others.31

31 See the treatise of Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle, De
Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgiâ, in Aristot. p. 979-980,
Bekker, also in Mullach’s edition, p. 62-78. The argument of
Gorgias is also abridged by Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat.
vii. p. 384, sect. 65-86.

See also a copious commentary on the Aristotelian treatise
in Foss, De Gorgiâ Leontino, p. 115 seq.

The text of the Aristotelian treatise is so corrupt as to be
often unintelligible.

As to the first point, Ens was no more real or existent than Non-Ens: the
word Non-Ens must have an objective meaning, as well as the word Ens: it
was Non-Ens, therefore it was, or existed. Both of them existed alike, or
rather neither of them existed. Moreover, if Ens existed, it must exist either
as One or as Many — either as eternal or as generated — either in itself, or
in some other place. But Melissus, Zeno, and other previous philosophers,

had shown sufficient cause against each of these alternatives separately
taken. Each of the alternative essential predicates had been separately
disproved; therefore the subject, Ens, could not exist under either of them,
or could not exist at all.

Ens, incogitable and
As to the second point, let us grant that Ens
unknowable.
or Entia exist; they would nevertheless (argued
Gorgias) be incogitable and unknowable. To
be cogitated is no more an attribute of Ens than of Non-Ens. The fact of
cogitation does not require Ens as a condition, or attest Ens as an absolute
or thing in itself. If our cogitation required or attained Ens as an
indispensable object, then there could be no fictitious cogitata nor any false
propositions. We think of a man flying in the air, or of a chariot race on the
surface of the sea. If our cogitata were realities, these must be so as well as
the rest: if realities alone were the object of cogitation, then these could not
be thought of. As Non-Ens was thus undeniably the object of cogitation, so
Ens could not be its object: for what was true respecting one of these
contraries, could not be true respecting the other.

Ens, even if granted to be
As to the third point: Assuming Ens both to
knowable, is still
exist and to be known by you, you cannot
incommunicable to others.
(said Gorgias) declare or explain it to any one
else. You profess to have learnt what Ens is in
itself, by your sight or other perceptions but you declare to others by means
of words, and these words are neither themselves the absolute Ens, nor do
they bring Ens before the hearer. Even though you yourself know Ens, you
cannot, by your words, enable him to know it. If he is to know Ens, he must
know it in the same way as you. Moreover, neither your words, nor Ens
itself, will convey to the hearer the same knowledge as to you; for the same
cannot be at once in two distinct subjects; and even if it were, yet since you

and the hearer are not completely alike, so the effect of the same object on
both of you will not appear to be like.32

32 In this third branch of the argument, showing that Ens,
even if known, cannot be communicable to others, Gorgias
travels beyond the Absolute, and directs his reasoning
against the communicability of the Relative or Phenomenal
also. Both of his arguments against such communicability
have some foundation, and serve to prove that the
communicability cannot be exact or entire, even in the case
of sensible facts. The sensations thoughts, emotions, &c., of
one person are not exactly like those of another.

Such is the reasoning, as far as we can make it out, whereby Gorgias
sought to prove that the absolute Ens was neither existent, nor knowable,
nor communicable by words from one person to another.

Zeno and Gorgias — contrasted
The arguments both of Zeno and of Gorgias
with the earlier Grecian
(the latter presenting the thoughts of others
philosophers.
earlier than himself), dating from a time
coinciding with the younger half of the life of
Sokrates, evince a new spirit and purpose in Grecian philosophy, as
compared with the Ionians, the two first Eleates, and the Pythagoreans.
Zeno and Gorgias exhibit conspicuously the new element of dialectic: the
force of the negative arm in Grecian philosophy, brought out into the arena,
against those who dogmatized or propounded positive theories: the fertility
of Grecian imagination in suggesting doubts and difficulties, for which the
dogmatists, if they aspired to success and reputation, had to provide
answers. Zeno directed his attack against one scheme of philosophy — the
doctrine of the Absolute Many: leaving by implication the rival doctrine —
the Absolute One of Parmenides in exclusive possession of the field, yet not
reinforcing it with any new defences against objectors. Gorgias impugned

the philosophy of the Absolute in either or both of its forms — as One or as
Many: not with a view of leaving any third form as the only survivor, or of
providing any substitute from his own invention, but of showing that Ens,
the object of philosophical research, could neither be found nor known. The
negative purpose, disallowing altogether the philosophy of Nature (as then
conceived, not as now conceived), was declared without reserve by
Gorgias, as we shall presently find that it was by Sokrates also.

New character of Grecian
It is the opening of the negative vein which
philosophy — antithesis of
imparts from this time forward a new
affirmative and negative —
character to Grecian philosophy. The positive
proof and disproof.
and negative forces, emanating from different
aptitudes in the human mind, are now both of
them actively developed, and in strenuous antithesis to each other.
Philosophy is no longer exclusively confined to dogmatists, each searching
in his imagination for the Absolute Ens of Nature, and each propounding
what seems to him the only solution of the problem. Such thinkers still
continue their vocation, but under new conditions of success, and subject to
the scrutiny of numerous dissentient critics. It is no longer sufficient to
propound a theory,33 either in obscure, oracular metaphors and half-
intelligible aphorisms, like Herakleitus — or in verse more or less
impressive, like Parmenides or Empedokles. The theory must be sustained
by proofs, guarded against objections, defended against imputations of
inconsistency: moreover, it must be put in comparison with other rival
theories, the defects of which must accordingly be shown up along with it.
Here are new exigencies, to which dogmatic philosophers had not before
been obnoxious. They were now required to be masters of the art of
dialectic attack and defence, not fearing the combat of question and answer
— a combat in which, assuming tolerable equality between the duellists, the
questioner had the advantage of the sun, or the preferable position,34 and
the farther advantage of choosing where to aim his blows. To expose fallacy

or inconsistency, was found to be both an easier process, and a more
appreciable display of ingenuity, than the discovery and establishment of
truth in such manner as to command assent. The weapon of negation,
refutation, cross-examination, was wielded for its own results, and was
found hard to parry by the affirmative philosophers of the day.

33 The repugnance of the Herakleitean philosophers to the
scrutiny of dialectical interrogation is described by Plato in
strong language, it is indeed even caricatured. (Theætêtus,
179-180.)

34 Theokritus, Idyll, xxii. 83; the description of the
pugilistic contest between Pollux and Amykus:—

ἔνθα πολύς σφισι μόχθος ἐπειγομένοισιν ἐτύχθη,
ὁππότερος κατὰ νῶτα λάβῃ φάος ἠελίοιο·
ἀλλ’ ἰδρίῃ μέγαν ἄνδρα παρήλυθες ὦ Πολύδευκες·
βάλλετο δ’ ἀκτίνεσσιν ἅπαν Ἀμύκοιο πρόσωπον.

To toss up for the sun, was a practice not yet introduced
between pugilists.

APPENDIX.

To illustrate by comparison the form of Grecian philosophy, before
Dialectic was brought to bear upon it, I transcribe from two eminent French
scholars (M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire and Professor Robert Mohl) some
account of the mode in which the Indian philosophy has always been kept
on record and communicated.

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire (in his Premier Mémoire sur le Sânkhya, pp. 5-
11) gives the following observations upon the Sânkhya or philosophy of
Kapila, one of the principal systems of Sanskrit philosophy: date (as
supposed) about 700 B.C.

There are two sources from whence the Sânkhya philosophy is known:—

“1. Les Soûtras ou aphorismes de Kapila.

“2. Le traité déjà connu et traduit sous le nom de Sânkhya Kârikâ, c’est à
dire Vers Mémoriaux du Sânkhya.

“Les Soûtras de Kapila sont en tout au nombre de 499, divisés en six
lectures, et répartis inégalement entre chacune d’elles. Les Soûtras sont
accompagnés d’un commentaire qui les explique, et qui est d’un brahmane
nommé le Mendiant. Le commentateur explique avec des developpements
plus ou moins longs les Soûtras de Kapila, qu’il cite un à un.

“Les Soûtras sont en général tres concis: parfois ils ne se composent que
de deux ou trois mots, et jamais ils ne comprennent plus d’une phrase. Cette
forme aphoristique, sous laquelle se présente à nous la philosophie Indienne
— est celle qu’a prise la science Indienne dans toutes ses branches, depuis
la grammaire jusqu’à la philosophie. Les Soûtras de Panini, qui a réduit
toutes les régles de la grammaire sanscrite en 3996 aphorismes, ne sont pas
moins concis que ceux de Kapila. Ce mode étrange d’exposition tient dans
l’Inde à la manière même dont la science s’est transmise d’âge en âge. Un
maître n’a généralement qu’un disciple: il lui suffit, pour la doctrine qu’il
communique, d’avoir des points de repère, et le commentaire oral qu’il
ajoute à ces sentences pour leur expliquer, met le disciple en état de les bien
comprendre. Le disciple lui-même, une fois qu’il en a pénétré le sens
veritable, n’a pas besoin d’un symbole plus développé, et la concision
même des aphorismes l’aide a les mieux retenir. C’est une initiation qu’il a

reçue: et les sentences, dans lesquelles cette initiation se résume, restent
toujours assez claires pour lui.

“Mais il n’en est pas de même pour les lecteurs étrangers, et il serait
difficile de trouver rien de plus obscur que ces Soûtras. Les commentaires
mêmes ne suffisent pas toujours à les rendre parfaitement intelligibles.

“Le seul exemple d’une forme analogue dans l’histoire de l’esprit humain
et de la science en Occident, nous est fourni par les Aphorismes
d’Hippocrate: eux aussi s’adressaient à des adeptes, et ils réclamaient,
comme les Soûtras Indiens, l’explication des maîtres pour être bien compris
par les disciples. Mais cet exemple unique n’a point tiré à conséquence dans
le monde occidental, tandis que dans le monde Indien l’aphorisme est resté
pendant de longs siècles la forme spéciale de la science: et les
développements de pensée qui nous sont habituels, et qui nous semblent
indispensables, ont été reservés aux commentaires.

“La Sânkhya Kârikâ est en vers: En Grèce, la poésie a été pendant
quelque temps la langue de la philosophie; Empédocle, Parménide, ont écrit
leurs systèmes en vers. Ce n’est pas Kapila qui l’a écrite. Entre Kapila, et
l’auteur de la Kârikâ, Isvara Krishna, on doit compter quelques centaines
d’années tout au moins: et le second n’a fait que rediger en vers, pour aider
la mémoire des élèves, la doctrine que le maître avait laissée sous la forme
axiomatique.

“On conçoit, du reste, sans peine, que l’usage des vers mémoriaux se soit
introduit dans l’Inde pour l’enseignement et la transmission de la science:
c’était une conséquence nécessaire de l’usage des aphorismes. Les sciences
les plus abstraites (mathematics, astronomy, algebra), emploient aussi ce
procédé, quoiqu’il semble peu fait pour leur austérité et leur precision.
Ainsi, le rhythme est, avec les aphorismes, et par le même motif, la forme à
peu pres générale de la science dans l’Inde.”

(Kapila as a personage is almost legendary; nothing exact is known about
him. His doctrine passes among the Indians “comme une sorte de révélation
divine”. — Pp. 252, 253.)

M. Mohl observes as follows:—

“Ceci m’amène aux Pouranas. Nous n’avons plus rien du Pourana
primitif, qui paraît avoir été une cosmogonie, suivie d’une histoire des
Dieux et des families héroïques. Les sectes ont fini par s’approprier ce
cadre, après des transformations dont nous ne savons ni le nombre ni les
époques: et s’en sont servies, pour exalter chacune son dieu, et y fondre,
avec des débris de l’ancienne tradition, leur mythologie plus moderne. Ce
que les Pouranas sont pour le peuple, les six systèmes de philosophie le sont
pour les savants. Nous trouvons ces systèmes dans la forme abstruse que les
Hindous aiment à donner à leur science: chaque école a ses aphorismes, qui,
sous forme de vers mnémoniques, contiennent dans le moins grand nombre
de mots possible tous les résultats d’une école. Mais nous n’avons aucun
renseignement sur les commencements de l’école, sur les discussions que
l’élaboration du système a dû provoquer, sur les hommes qui y ont pris part,
sur la marche et le développement des idées: nous avons le système dans sa
dernière forme, et rien ne nous permet de remplir l’espace qui le sépare des
théories plus vagues que l’on trouve dans les derniers écrits de l’époque
védique, à laquelle pourtant tout prétend se rattacher. À partir de ces
aphorismes, nous avons des commentaires et des traités d’exposition et
d’interprétation: mais les idées premières, les termes techniques, et le
systeme en tier, sont fixés antérieurement. Tous ces systèmes reposent sur
une analyse psychologique très raffinée; et chacun a sa terminologie
précise, et à laquelle la nôtre ne répond que fort imparfaitement: il faut
donc, sous peine de se tromper et de tromper ses lecteurs, que les
traducteurs créent une foule de termes techniques, ce qui n’est pas la
moindre difficulté de ce travail.” R. Mohl, ‘Rapport Annuel Fait à la Société

Asïatique,’ 1863, pp. 103-105; collected edition, ‘Vingt-sept ans d’histoire
des Études Orientales,’ vol. ii. pp. 496, 498-9.

When the purpose simply is to imprint affirmations on the memory, and
to associate them with strong emotions of reverential belief — mnemonic
verses and aphorisms are suitable enough; Empedokles employed verse,
Herakleitus and the Pythagoreans expressed themselves in aphorisms —
brief, half-intelligible, impressive symbols. But if philosophy is ever to be
brought out of such twilight into the condition of “reasoned truth,” this
cannot be done without submitting all the affirmations to cross-examining
opponents — to the scrutiny of a negative Dialectic. It is the theory and
application of this Dialectic which we are about to follow in Sokrates and
Plato.

CHAPTER III.*
* As stated in the prefatory note to this edition, the present
and the following chapter have been, for convenience,
transferred from the place given to them by the author, to
their present position.

OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.
Having dwelt at some length on the life and compositions of Plato, I now
proceed to place in comparison with him some other members of the
Sokratic philosophical family: less eminent, indeed, than the illustrious
author of the Republic, yet still men of marked character, ability, and
influence.1 Respecting one of the brethren, Xenophon, who stands next to
Plato in celebrity, I shall say a few words separately in my next and
concluding chapter.

1 Dionysius of Halikarnassus contrasts Plato with τὸ
Σωκράτους διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν (De Adm. Vi Dic. Demosthen.
p. 956.) Compare also Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 762, where
he contrasts the style and phraseology of Plato with that of
the Σωκρατικοὶ διάλογοι generally.

Influence exercised by Sokrates
The ascendancy of Sokrates over his
over his companions.
contemporaries was powerfully exercised in
more than one way. He brought into vogue
new subjects both of indefinite amplitude, and familiar as well as
interesting to every one. On these subjects, moreover, he introduced, or at
least popularised, a new method of communication, whereby the relation of
teacher and learner, implying a direct transfer of ready-made knowledge
from the one to the other, was put aside. He substituted an interrogatory
process, at once destructive and suggestive, in which the teacher began by
unteaching and the learner by unlearning what was supposed to be already
known, for the purpose of provoking in the learner’s mind a self-operative
energy of thought, and an internal generation of new notions. Lastly,
Sokrates worked forcibly upon the minds of several friends, who were in

the habit of attending him when he talked in the market-place or the
palæstra. Some tried to copy his wonderful knack of colloquial cross-
examination: how far they did so with success or reputation we do not
know: but Xenophon says that several of them would only discourse with
those who paid them a fee, and that they thus sold for considerable sums
what were only small fragments obtained gratuitously from the rich table of
their master.2 There were moreover several who copied the general style of
his colloquies by composing written dialogues. And thus it happened that
the great master, — he who passed his life in the oral application of his
Elenchus, without writing anything, — though he left no worthy
representative in his own special career, became the father of numerous
written dialogues and of a rich philosophical literature.3

2 Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 60. ὧν τινὲς μικρὰ μέρη παρ’
ἐκείνου προῖκα λαβόντες πολλοῦ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπώλουν, καὶ
οὐκ ἦσαν ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος δημοτικοί· τοῖς γὰρ μὴ ἔχουσι
χρήματα διδόναι οὐκ ἤθελον διαλέγεσθαι.

3 We find a remarkable proof how long the name and
conception of Sokrates lasted in the memory of the Athenian
public, as having been the great progenitor of the philosophy
and philosophers of the fourth century B.C. in Athens. It was
about 306 B.C., almost a century after the death of Sokrates,
that Democharês (the nephew of the orator Demosthenes)
delivered an oration before the Athenian judicature for the
purpose of upholding the law proposed by Sophokles,
forbidding philosophers or Sophists to lecture without a
license obtained from the government; which law, passed a
year before, had determined the secession of all the
philosophers from Athens until the law was repealed. In this
oration Democharês expatiated on the demerits of many

philosophers, their servility, profligate ambition, rapacity,
want of patriotism, &c., from which Athenæus makes
several extracts. Τοιοῦτοι εἰσιν οἱ ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας
στρατηγοί· περὶ ὧν Δημοχάρης ἔλεγεν, — Ὥσπερ ἐκ
θύμβρας οὐδεὶς ἂν δύναιτο κατασκευάσαι λόγχην, οὔδ’ ἐκ
Σωκράτους στρατιώτην ἄμεμπτον.

Demetrius Phalereus also, in or near that same time,
composed a Σωκράτους ἀπολογίαν (Diog. La. ix. 37-57).
This shows how long the interest in the personal fate and
character of Sokrates endured at Athens.

Names of those companions.
Besides Plato and Xenophon, whose works
are known to us, we hear of Alexamenus,
Antisthenes, Æschines, Aristippus, Bryson, Eukleides, Phædon, Kriton,
Simmias, Kebês, &c., as having composed dialogues of this sort. All of
them were companions of Sokrates; several among them either set down
what they could partially recollect of his conversations, or employed his
name as a dramatic speaker of their own thoughts. Seven of these dialogues
were ascribed to Æschines, twenty-five to Aristippus, seventeen to Kriton,
twenty-three to Simmias, three to Kebês, six to Eukleides, four to Phædon.
The compositions of Antisthenes were far more numerous: ten volumes of
them, under a variety of distinct titles (some of them probably not in the
form of dialogues) being recorded by Diogenes.4 Aristippus was the first of
the line of philosophers called Kyrenaic or Hedonic, afterwards (with
various modifications) Epikurean: Antisthenes, of the Cynics and Stoics:
Eukleides, of the Megaric school. It seems that Aristippus, Antisthenes,
Eukleides, and Bryson, all enjoyed considerable reputation, as
contemporaries and rival authors of Plato: Æschines, Antisthenes (who was
very poor), and Aristippus, are said to have received money for their

lectures; Aristippus being named as the first who thus departed from the
Sokratic canon.5

4 Diogenes Laert. 1. 47-61-83, vi. 15; Athenæ. xi. p. 505 C.

Bryson is mentioned by Theopompus ap. Athenæum, xi.
p. 508 D. Theopompus, the contemporary of Aristotle and
pupil of Isokrates, had composed an express treatise or
discourse against Plato’s dialogues, in which discourse he
affirmed that most of them were not Plato’s own, but
borrowed in large proportion from the dialogues of
Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Bryson. Ephippus also, the
comic writer (of the fourth century B.C., contemporary with
Theopompus, perhaps even earlier), spoke of Bryson as
contemporary with Plato (Athenæ. xi. 509 C). This is good
proof to authenticate Bryson as a composer of “Sokratic
dialogues” belonging to the Platonic age, along with
Antisthenes and Aristippus: whether Theopompus is correct
when he asserts that Plato borrowed much, from the three, is
very doubtful.

Many dialogues were published by various writers, and
ascribed falsely to one or other of the viri Sokratici:
Diogenes (ii. 64) reports the judgment delivered by
Panætius, which among them were genuine and which not
so. Panætius considered that the dialogues ascribed to Plato,
Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Æschines, were genuine; that
those assigned to Phædon and Eukleides were doubtful; and
that the rest were all spurious. He thus regarded as spurious
those of Alexamenus, Kriton, Simmias, Kebês, Simon,
Bryson, &c., or he did not know them all. It is possible that
Panætius may not have known the dialogues of Bryson; if he

did know them and believed them to be spurious, I should
not accept his assertion, because I think that it is outweighed
by the contrary testimony of Theopompus. Moreover,
though Panætius was a very able man, confidence in his
critical estimate is much shaken when we learn that he
declared the Platonic Phædon to be spurious.

5 Diogen. Laert. i. 62-65; Athenæus, xi. p. 507 C.

Dion Chrysostom (Orat. lv. De Homero et Socrate, vol. ii.
p. 289, Reiske) must have had in his view some of these
other Sokratic dialogues, not those composed by Plato or
Xenophon, when he alludes to conversations of Sokrates
with Lysikles, Glykon, and Anytus; what he says about
Anytus can hardly refer to the Platonic Menon.

Æschines- — oration of Lysias
Æschines the companion of Sokrates did not
against him.
become (like Eukleides, Antisthenes,
Aristippus) the founder of a succession or sect
of philosophers. The few fragments remaining of his dialogues do not
enable us to appreciate their merit. He seems to have employed the name of
Aspasia largely as a conversing personage, and to have esteemed her highly.
He also spoke with great admiration of Themistokles. But in regard to
present or recent characters, he stands charged with much bitterness and ill-
nature: especially we learn that he denounced the Sophists Prodikus and
Anaxaras, the first on the ground of having taught Theramenes, the second
as the teacher of two worthless persons — Ariphrades and Arignôtus. This
accusation deserves greater notice, because it illustrates the odium raised by
Melêtus against Sokrates as having instructed Kritias and Alkibiades.6
Moreover, we have Æschines presented to us in another character, very
unexpected in a vir Socraticus. An action for recovery of money alleged to
be owing was brought in the Athenian Dikastery against Æschines, by a

plaintiff, who set forth his case in a speech composed by the rhetor Lysias.
In this speech it is alleged that Æschines, having engaged in trade as a
preparer and seller of unguents, borrowed a sum of money at interest from
the plaintiff; who affirms that he counted with assurance upon honest
dealing from a disciple of Sokrates, continually engaged in talking about
justice and virtue.7 But so far was this expectation from being realized, that
Æschines had behaved most dishonestly. He repaid neither principal nor
interest; though a judgment of the Dikastery had been obtained against him,
and a branded slave belonging to him had been seized under it. Moreover,
Æschines had been guilty of dishonesty equally scandalous in his dealings
with many other creditors also. Furthermore, he had made love to a rich
woman seventy years old, and had got possession of her property; cheating
and impoverishing her family. His character as a profligate and cheat was
well known and could be proved by many witnesses. Such are the
allegations against Æschines, contained in the fragment of a lost speech of
Lysias, and made in open court by a real plaintiff. How much of them could
be fairly proved, we cannot say: but it seems plain at least that Æschines
must have been a trader as well as a philosopher. All these writers on
philosophy must have had their root and dealings in real life, of which we
know scarce anything.

6 Plutarch, Perikles, c. 24-32; Cicero, De Invent. i. 31;
Athenæus, v. 220. Some other citations will be found in
Fischer’s collection of the few fragments of Æschines
Sokraticus (Leipsic, 1788, p. 68 seq.), though some of the
allusions which he produces seem rather to belong to the
orator Æschines. The statements of Athenæus, from the
dialogue of Æschines called Telaugês, are the most curious.
The dialogue contained, among other things, τὴν Προδίκου
καὶ Ἀναξαγόρους τ ῶ ν σ ο φ ι σ τ ῶ ν διαμώκησιν, where
we see Anaxagoras denominated a Sophist (see also Diodor.

xii. 39) as well as Prodikus. Fischer considers the three
Pseudo-Platonic dialogues — Περὶ Ἀρετῆς, Περὶ Πλούτου,
Περὶ Θανάτου — as the works of Æschines. But this is
noway established.

7 Athenæus, xiii. pp. 611-612. Πεισθεὶς δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ
τοιαῦτα λέγοντος, καὶ ἅμα οἰόμενος τοῦτον Αἰσχίνην
Σωκράτους γεγονέναι μαθητήν, καὶ περὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ
ἀρετῆς πολλοὺς καὶ σεμνοὺς λέγοντα λόγους, οὐκ ἄν ποτε
ἐπιχειρῆσαι οὐδὲ τολμῆσαι ἅπερ οἱ πονηρότατοι καὶ
ἀδικώτατοι ἄνθρωποι ἐπιχειροῦσι πράττειν.

We read also about another oration of Lysias against
Æschines — περὶ συκοφαντίας (Diogen. Laert. ii. 63),
unless indeed it be the same oration differently described.

Written Sokratic Dialogues —
The dialogues known by the title of Sokratic
their general character.
dialogues,8 were composed by all the principal
companions of Sokrates, and by many who
were not companions. Yet though thus composed by many different authors,
they formed a recognised class of literature, noticed by the rhetorical critics
as distinguished for plain, colloquial, unstudied, dramatic execution, suiting
the parts to the various speakers: from which general character Plato alone
departed — and he too not in all of his dialogues. By the Sokratic authors
generally Sokrates appears to have been presented under the same main
features: his proclaimed confession of ignorance was seldom wanting: and
the humiliation which his cross-questioning inflicted even upon insolent
men like Alkibiades, was as keenly set forth by Æschines as by Plato:
moreover the Sokratic disciples generally were fond of extolling the
Dæmon or divining prophecy of their master.9 Some dialogues circulating
under the name of some one among the companions of Sokrates, were
spurious, and the authorship was a point not easy to determine. Simon, a

currier at Athens, in whose shop Sokrates often conversed, is said to have
kept memoranda of the conversations which he heard, and to have
afterwards published them: Æschines also, and some other of the Sokratic
companions, were suspected of having preserved or procured reports of the
conversations of the master himself, and of having made much money after
his death by delivering them before select audiences.10 Aristotle speaks of
the followers of Antisthenes as unschooled, vulgar men: but Cicero appears
to have read with satisfaction the dialogues of Antisthenes, whom he
designates as acute though not well-instructed.11 Other accounts describe
his dialogues as composed in a rhetorical style, which is ascribed to the fact
of his having received lessons from Gorgias:12 and Theopompus must have
held in considerable estimation the dialogues of that same author, as well as
those of Aristippus and Bryson, when he accused Plato of having borrowed
from them largely.13

8 Aristotel. ap. Athenæum, xi. p. 505 C; Rhetoric. iii. 16.

Dionys. Halikarnass. ad Cn. Pomp. de Platone, p. 762,
Reiske. Τραφεὶς (Plato) ἐν τοῖς Σωκρατικοῖς διαλόγοις
ἰσχνοτάτοις οὖσι καὶ ἀκριβεστάτοις, οὐ μείνας δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς,
ἀλλὰ τῆς Γοργίου καὶ Θουκυδίδου κατασκευῆς ἐρασθείς:
also, De Admir. Vi Dicend. in Demosthene, p. 968. Again in
the same treatise De Adm. V. D. Demosth. p. 956. ἡ δὲ ἑτέρα
λέξις, ἡ λιτὴ καὶ ἀφελὴς καὶ δοκοῦσα κατασκευήν τε καὶ
ἰσχὺν τὴν πρὸς ἰδιώτην ἔχειν λόγον καὶ ὁμοιότητα, πολλοὺς
μὲν ἔσχε καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας προστάτας — καὶ οἱ τῶν
ἠθικῶν διαλόγων ποιηταί, ὧν ἦν τὸ Σωκρατικὸν
διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν, ἔξω Πλάτωνος, &c.

Dionysius calls this style ὁ Σωκρατικὸς χαρακτὴρ p.
1025. I presume it is the same to which the satirist Timon

applies the words:—

Ἀσθενική τε λόγων δυας ἢ τριὰς ἢ ἔτι πόρσω,
Οἶος Ξεινοφόων, ἤτ’ Αἰσχίνου οὐκ ἐπιπειθὴς
γράψαι —
Diogen. La. ii. 55.

Lucian, Hermogenes, Phrynichus, Longinus, and some
later rhetorical critics of Greece judged more favourably
than Timon about the style of Æschines as well as of
Xenophon. See Zeller, Phil. d. Griech. ii. p. 171, sec. ed.
And Demetrius Phalereus (or the author of the treatise which
bears his name), as well as the rhetor Aristeides, considered
Æschines and Plato as the best representatives of the
Σωκρατικὸς χαρακτήρ, Demetr. Phaler. De Interpretat. 310;
Aristeides, Orat. Platon. i. p. 35; Photius, Cods. 61 and 158;
Longinus, ap. Walz. ix. p. 559, c. 2. Lucian says (De
Parasito, 33) that Æschines passed some time with the elder
Dionysius at Syracuse, to whom he read aloud his dialogue,
entitled Miltiades, with great success.

An inedited discourse of Michæl Psellus, printed by Mr.
Cox in his very careful and valuable catalogue of the MSS.
in the Bodleian Library, recites the same high estimate as
having been formed of Æschines by the chief ancient
rhetorical critics: they reckoned him among and alongside of
the foremost Hellenic classical writers, as having his own
peculiar merits of style — παρὰ μὲν Πλάτωνι, τὴν
διαλογικὴν φράσιν, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ Σωκρατικοῦ Αἰσχίνου, τὴν
ἐμμελῆ συνθήκην τῶν λέξεων, παρὰ δὲ Θουκυδίδου, &c.
See Mr. Cox’s Catalogue, pp. 743-745. Cicero speaks of the

Sokratic philosophers generally, as writing with an elegant
playfulness of style (De Officiis, i. 29, 104): which is in
harmony with Lucian’s phrase — Αἰσχίνης ὁ τοὺς διαλόγους
μακροὺς καὶ ἀστείους γράψας, &c.

9 Cicero, Brutus, 85, s. 292; De Divinatione, i. 54-122;
Aristeides, Orat. xlv. περὶ Ῥητορικῆς Orat. xlvi. Ὑπὲρ τῶν
Τεττάρων, vol. ii. pp. 295-369, ed. Dindorf. It appears by
this that some of the dialogues composed by Æschines were
mistaken by various persons for actual conversations held by
Sokrates. It was argued, that because Æschines was inferior
to Plato in ability, he was more likely to have repeated
accurately what he had heard Sokrates say.

10 Diog. L. ii. 122. He mentions a collection of thirty-three
dialogues in one volume, purporting to be reports of real
colloquies of Sokrates, published by Simon. But they can
hardly be regarded as genuine.

The charge here mentioned is advanced by Xenophon (see
a preceding note, Memorab. i. 2, 60), against some persons
(τινὲς), but without specifying names. About Æschines, see
Athenæus, xiii. p. 611 C; Diogen. Laert. ii. 62.

11 Cicero, Epist. ad Atticum, xii. 38:—“viri acuti magis
quam eruditi,” is the judgment of Cicero upon Antisthenes. I
presume that these words indicate the same defect as that
which is intended by Aristotle when he says — οἱ
Ἀνθισθένειοι καὶ οἱ οὕτως ἀ π α ί δ ε υ τ ο ι , Metaphysic. Η.
3, p. 1043, b. 24. It is plain, too, that Lucian considered the
compositions of Antisthenes as not unworthy companions to
those of Plato (Lucian, adv. Indoctum, c. 27).

12 Diogen. Laert. vi. 1. If it be true that Antisthenes
received lessons from Gorgias, this proves that Gorgias must
sometimes have given lessons gratis; for the poverty of
Antisthenes is well known. See the Symposion of
Xenophon.

13 Theopomp. ap. Athenæ. xi. p. 508. See K. F. Hermann,
Ueber Plato’s Schriftsteller. Motive, p. 300. An extract of
some length, of a dialogue composed by Æschines between
Sokrates and Alkibiades, is given by Aristeides, Or. xlvi.
Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, vol. ii. pp. 292-294, ed. Dindorf.

Relations between the
Eukleides, Antisthenes, and Aristippus,
companions of Sokrates —
were all companions and admirers of Sokrates,
Their proceedings after the
as was Plato. But none of them were his
death of Sokrates.
disciples, in the strict sense of the word: none
of them continued or enforced his doctrines,
though each used his name as a spokesman. During his lifetime the
common attachment to his person formed a bond of union, which ceased at
his death. There is indeed some ground for believing that Plato then put
himself forward in the character of leader, with a view to keep the body
united.14 We must recollect that Plato though then no more than twenty-
eight years of age, was the only one among them who combined the
advantages of a noble Athenian descent, opulent circumstances, an excellent
education, and great native genius. Eukleides and Aristippus were neither of
them Athenians: Antisthenes was very poor: Xenophon was absent on
service in the Cyreian army. Plato’s proposition, however, found no favour
with the others and was even indignantly repudiated by Apollodorus: a man
ardently attached to Sokrates, but violent and overboiling in all his
feelings.15 The companions of Sokrates, finding themselves unfavourably
looked upon at Athens after his death, left the city for a season and followed

Eukleides to Megara. How long they stayed there we do not know. Plato is
said, though I think on no sufficient authority, to have remained absent from
Athens for several years continuously. It seems certain (from an anecdote
recounted by Aristotle)16 that he talked with something like arrogance
among the companions of Sokrates: and that Aristippus gently rebuked him
by reminding him how very different had been the language of Sokrates
himself. Complaints too were made by contemporaries, about Plato’s
jealous, censorious, spiteful, temper. The critical and disparaging tone of his
dialogues, notwithstanding the admiration which they inspire, accounts for
the existence of these complaints: and anecdotes are recounted, though not
verified by any sufficient evidence, of ill-natured dealing on his part
towards other philosophers who were poorer than himself.17 Dissension or
controversy on philosophical topics is rarely carried on without some
invidious or hostile feeling. Athens, and the viri Sokratici, Plato included,
form no exception to this ordinary malady of human nature.

14 Athenæus, xi. p. 507 A-B. from the ὑπομνήματα of the
Delphian Hegesander. Who Hegesander was, I do not know:
but there is nothing improbable in the anecdote which he
recounts.

15 Plato, Phædon. pp. 59 A. 117 D. Eukleides, however,
though his school was probably at Megara, seems to have
possessed property in Attica: for there existed, among the
orations of Isæus, a pleading composed by that rhetor for
some client — Πρὸς Εὐκλείδην τὸν Σωκρατικὸν
ἀμφισβήτησις ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ χωρίου λύσεως (Dion. Hal.,
Isæ., c. 14, p. 612 Reiske) Harpokr. — Ὅτι τὰ
ἐπικηρυττόμενα: also under some other words by
Harpokration and by Pollux, viii. 48.