[Part L
The question, what things really are, or what is the intrinsic nature of things, which is already contained in the Milesian con ception of the apxn, presupposes that the current, original and naive mode of thinking of the world has been shaken, although this pre supposition has not come to clear recognition in consciousness.
The question, what things really are, or what is the intrinsic nature of things, which is already contained in the Milesian con ception of the apxn, presupposes that the current, original and naive mode of thinking of the world has been shaken, although this pre supposition has not come to clear recognition in consciousness.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
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Th.
Ziegler, Arch.
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Philot.
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50 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part I.
matter in its successive changes in the universe. The observation that everything in the world is in process of constant change was exaggerated by Heraclitus to the claim that everything is con tinually changing into its opposite. The " other " was for him eo ipso the opposed. The "flux of things " became transformed in his poetic rhetoric into a ceaseless strife of opposites, and this strife (iroAt/ios) he declared to be the father of things. All that seems to be for a shorter or longer time is the product of opposed motions and forces which in their operation maintain themselves in equilib rium. The universe is thus at every moment a unity divided in itself and again re-united, a strife which finds its reconciliation, a want that finds its satisfaction. The essence of the world is the invisible harmony in which all differences and oppositions are solved. The world is Becoming, and Becoming is unity of oppo
sites.
These antitheses, according to the view of Heraclitus, present
themselves particularly in the two processes taking place in con trary directions, through which, on the one hand, fire becomes changed into all things, and, on the other hand, all things change back into fire. The same stages are passed through in both processes: on the "way downward" fire passes over, by condensation, into water and earth, on the "way upward" earth and water, by rare faction, pass over into fire ; and these two ways are alike. Change and counter-change run on side by side, and the semblance of a per manent thing makes its appearance where for a time there is as much counter-change upon the one way as there is change upon the other. The fantastic forms in which Heraclitus put these views envelop the essential thought of a sequence of changes taking place in conformity to law, and of a continual compensation of these
changes. The world is produced from the fire in ever-repeated rhythm and at fixed intervals of time, and then again flashes up in fire, to arise from it anew, a Phoenix. 1
In this ceaseless transformation of all things nothing individual persists, but only the order, in which the exchange between the contrary movements is effected, — the law of change, which consti tutes the meaning and worth of the whole. If in the struggle be tween opposites it seems as though something new were constantly arising, this new is at the same time always a perishing product. The Becoming of Heraclitus produces no Being, as the Being of Parmenides produces no Becoming.
1 In details his physical, and especially his astronomical, ideas are weak. Metaphysical inquiry is more important with him than explanatory investiga tion. He shares this with his opponent, Parmenides.
Chat. 1, f 5. ] Cosmic Processes : Parmenides, Empedocles. 51
4. In fact, the doctrine of Being held by the Eleatics excluded with plurality and change, events or cosmic processes, also. Ac cording to their metaphysics an event or occurrence is incomprehen sible, it is impossible. This metaphysics tolerates no physics. Parmenides denies to time, as to space, independent reality (iVAo
rm^u rov iovrof) : for him there is only timeless Being with no dis tinctions. Although Parmenides added to the first part of his didac- tic poem, which presents the doctrine of Being, a second part which treats physical problems, this is yet done with the protest in advance that he is here presenting not truth, but the " opinions of mortals. " At the basis of all these ordinary opinions lies the false presupposi tion, previously rejected, that in addition to Being there is still •Bother, Non-being. All becoming, all plurality and motion, rest on tie interaction of these, opposites, which are then further designated as light and darkness, warmth and cold A Weltanschauung is then portrayed in poetic imagery, in which fire shapes the dark empty space into corporeal structures, a mode of representation which in part reminds us of Heraclitus, and in part accords with the astro nomical teaching of the Pythagoreans. The all-ruling Fire-power lia^wr), as inexorable necessity (Sun/), with the help of love (ip<*t) {ones together what is akin, working from the centre of the world outward. Appropriation of the doctrines of others and polemic
against them appear in motley mixture, agreeably V) the purpose of the whole. Over this tissue thus interwoven hovers a poetic breath of plastic formative power, but original research and clear concep tions are lacking.
5. Ideas more definite, and more usable for explaining the par ticular, are found among the successors, who transformed the Eleatic conception of Being into the conceptions of element, homoiomeriae, and atom, expressly for this purpose. They all declare that by occurrence or coming to be nothing else is to be understood than the notion of unchangeable corporeal particles. Empedocles and Anax- apemu seem still to have sought to connect with this the denial of *=pty space, — a principle which they received from Parmenides. They ascribed to their substances universal divisibility, and re garded parts as capable of displacement in such a way that as these puts mixed and reciprocally interpenetrated, all space should be always filled out The motion in the world consists, then, in this
■TV hypothetical exposition of how the world would have to be thought addition to Being, Non-being, plurality, and becoming were also regarded as >w bad, on the one hand, polemic purpose; and on the other, met the
**ai A bi* disciple*, who probably demanded of the master an explanation of us awn of the empirical world.
a
it
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52 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Pabt I
displacement of the parts of matter, each of which is always crowd ing and displacing the other. Things at a distance from one another cannot act upon one another, except as parts of the one flow out and penetrate into the other. This action is the more possible in pro portion as the effluxes of the one body resemble in their spatial form the pores of the other. So at least Empedocles taught, and the assumption of an infinite divisibility of substances is attested in the case of Anaxagoras also. Another picture of occurrence more akin to the present way of thinking is that presented by Leucippus. The atoms which impinge upon each other in empty space act upon each other by pressure and impact, group themselves together, and so form greater or smaller things or masses which are not separated and destroyed until some impact or pressure of other masses comes from without. All occurrence and coming, to be consists in this process in which atom-complexes are successively formed and shattered.
The fundamental form of world-motion in all three systems, how ever, is that of the vortex, of circular rotation (Sivy). According to Empedocles it is brought about by the forces of love and hate acting among the elements ; according to Anaxagoras it is begun by the Reason-stuff acting according to ends, and then continues with mechanical consistency ; according to Leucippus it is the result always occurring from the collision of several atoms. The principle of mechanism was with Empedocles still enveloped in myth, with Anaxagoras it first made a half-successful attempt to break through the covering, and was completely carried through only by Leucippus. What hindered the first two from reaching this position was the introduction of considerations of worth into their explanatory theory. The one was for tracing the good and the evil back to cor responding powers of mind, which were, to be sure, not ascribed to any being, but mythically hypostatised ; the other believed that he could explain the order of the whole only from the assumption that purposive, rationally considered impulse had originated the motions. Yet both came so near the position of Leucippus as to demand a teleological explanation for the beginning only of the vortex-motion; the farther course of the motions, and thus every individual occur rence, they explained, as did Leucippus, purely mechanically, by the pushing and crowding of the particles of matter after these are once in motion in the manner determined. They proceeded so con sistently in this that they did not exclude from this mechanical explanation even the origination and functions of organisms, among which, moreover, plants are regarded as being as truly animate as are animals. Anaxagoras is reproached for this by Plato and Aristotle-,
C«at. 1. J 5. ] Cosmic Processes : Anaragoras, Leuctppus. 53
and an expression of Empedocles has been handed down,' according to which he taught that the animals had arisen here and there, with out any rule, in odd and grotesque forms, and that in the course of tune only those fitted for life maintained themselves. The principle of the survival of the fittest, which plays so great a part in the biology of to-day, i. e. in Darwinism, is here already clearly formu lated.
On the ground of these ideas, an interesting contrast discloses itself in the case of the three investigators, as regards their atti- tade toward cosmogonic theories. For Empedocles and for Leu-
•ippus, namely, the process of world-formation and world-dissolu tion is a perpetual one ; for Anaxagoras, on the contrary, it is one chat takes place once for all. Between the first two there is again the difference that Empedocles, like Heraclitus, teaches that the world arises and perishes in periodic alternation ; while Atomism, on the contrary, holds that a countless number of worlds come into being and pass away. According to the principles of Empedocles, so be more explicit, there are four different states of the elements ; their complete intermixture, in which love alone rules, and hate is exploded, he calls " when hate penetrates, this
o-tftaipos (sphere) ;
aomogeneous world-sphere becomes separated into the individual
things, until the elements are completely parted from one another ; tod out of this separate condition love brings them again together, until full union is again attained. Neither in the case of complete mixture, nor in that of complete separation, are there individual things ; in both cases the Eleatic acosmism makes its appearance.
A world of individual things in motion exists only where love and bate struggle with one another in mingling and separating the •leroents.
It is otherwise with Leucippus. Some of the atoms that dart shoot irregularly in the universe strike together here and there.
Frvm the various impulses to motion which the individual particles bnntf with them, where such aggregations occur, there results, «rrording to mathematical necessity (ivaynri), a whirling movement of the whole, which draws into itself neighbouring atoms and atom- -»*aplexes, and sometimes even whole " worlds," and so gradually
• Ari«t. P%yt. II. 8, 198 b 29. Moreover, wc find an expression already ■onfcoied to Anaximander, which teaches a transformation of organisms by alteration to changed conditions of life : Plut. Plae. V. 10, 1 {Dot. D. 430, 15). I■* ataa. aim, the oldest thinkers claimed no other origin than that of growth 3C. of the animal world : so Empedocles in Plut. Strom, fr. 2. {Dox. D. 679, IT).
'• £<id>ntly not without suggestion from the Kleatic world-sphere, which thix ■bassse. folly adjusted mingling of all elements, taught by Empedocles, miwli
54 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
extends. Meanwhile such a system in process of revolution is differentiating itself, since, by the rotation, the finer, more movable atoms are driven to the periphery, the more inert and massy are gathered in the centre ; and so like finds its way to like, not by inclination or love, but through their like conformity to the law of pressure and impact. So there arise at various times and in differ ent places in the boundless universe, various worlds, each of which continues in motion within itself, according to mechanical law, until it perhaps is shattered in pieces by collision with another world, or is drawn into the revolution of a greater. So, the Atomists main tained, the sun and moon were at one time worlds by themselves, which subsequently fell into the greater vortex of which our earth is the centre. How near in principle this whole conception is to the natural science of to-day is obvious.
The teleological point of view taken by Anaxagoras excludes, on the contrary, a plurality of worlds in time as well as a plurality of worlds in space. The ordering mind, which introduces the pur posive motion of the elements, forms just this one world only, which is the most perfect. 1 Anaxagoras, therefore, quite in the manner of the cosmogonic poetry, describes how the beginning of the world was preceded by a chaotic primitive condition, in which the ele ments were intermingled without order and without motion. Then came the vovs, the " Eeason-stuff " (Vernunftsloff), and set it into ordered motion. This vortex-motion began at one point, the pole of the celestial vault, and extended gradually throughout the entire mass of matter, separating and dividing the elements, so that they now perform their mighty revolution in a uniformly harmonious manner. The teleological motive of the doctrine of Anaxagoras is due essentially to his admiration of the order in the stellar world, which, after it has performed the rotations started by the voCs, moves on without disturbance always in the same track. There is no ground for assuming that this teleological
attention to the adaptation to ends in living beings, or even to the connected system of Nature as beneficent to man ; its gaze was fixed on the beauty of the starry heavens ; and what is related of the views of Anaxagoras on terrestrial things, on organisms, and on man, keeps quite within the setting of the mechanical mode of
explanation in vogue among his contemporaries. What he said, too. with regard to the presence of life on other heavenly bodies, might just as well have come from the Atomists.
1 This motive, fully carried out, is found in Plato, Tim. 81, with unmistak able reference to the opposition between Anaxagoras and the Atomists.
cosmology directed
Caar. 1, $ 5. ] Connie Proce»»e» : Zeno, the Pythagoreans. 55
Accordingly, although Anazagoras conceived of the vo\h as also the principle of animation, and thought of the particles of this substance as mingled in prater or leaser number with organic bodies, yet the central point in this con- arpcion is that of the authorship of the astronomical world-order. The other ••if, the moment or factor of the cause of animate life, is much more energeti cally emphasised in the transformation which a younger eclectic natural penkwopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, undertook to effect in the conception of Aaaxagoras by connecting it with the hylozoistic principle of Anaximenes. He designated air as &px1 [first principle, primitive element], fitted it out, kcwever, with the characteristics of the rout, — omniscience and force acting sKording to ends, — named this " rational air" also rvtuiia [spirit], and found this formative principle in man and other organisms as well as in the universe. A rich physiological knowledge enabled him to carry through in detail this •-i>ju£ht as applied to the structure and functions of the human body. With
t-ta teleology became the dominant mode of apprehending also the organic mid.
His fragments have been collected by Schorn (Bonn, 1820) and Panzerbieter Lops. 1830). Cf. K. Steinhart in Ersch und GrUber's Encyclopadie.
6. All these doctrines, however, presuppose the conception of motion as one that is intelligible of itself and in need of no further explanation. They thought they had explained qualitative change •hen they had pointed out as its true essence motion, whether between the parts of a continuously connected matter, or in empty
The opposition, therefore, which the Eleatic School brought tu bear upon all these doctrines was directed first of all against this conception of motion, and Zeno showed that this could by no means be taken so simply, but was rather full of contradictions which inca pacitated it for serving as principle of explanation.
Among Zeno's famous proofs of the impossibility of motion,1 the weakest is that which proceeds from the relativity of the amount of station, by showing that the movement of a wagon is variously esti mated if it is observed either from wagons also in motion but in different directions and at varying rates of speed, or again from two
vagons one of which is moving and one standing still. The three other proofs, on the contrary, which made use of the analysis into hscrete parts, infinitely many and infinitely small, of the space passed through by motion, and the time occupied by were ftronger. and for a long time were not overcome. The first proof was with reference to the impossibility of passing through a fixed space. This was regarded as proved by the infinite divisibility of
:he line, since the infinite number of points which must be attained before reaching the goal permitted no beginning of motion. The nae thought appears, somewhat varied, in the second argument, »Lxh seeks to prove the impossibility of passing through a space vA*A has movable boundaries. The argument (known as that of
int Pkfs VL 239 b. 9. Cf Ed. Wellmann, Ztnon't Beweise gegen die a*mr*mg umd ikrt Widerlegungen (Frankfurt a. O. 1870).
space.
.
»
0,
it,
56 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
Achilles and the tortoise) is, that since the pursuer in every inter val or subdivision of time must first reach the point from which the pursued simultaneously starts, it follows that the latter will always be in advance, though by an interval which becomes constantly smaller and approaches a minimum. The third argument has refer ence to the infinitely small extent of tlie motion performed in a. 7iy instant. According to this argument, called "the resting arrow," the moved body is in every instant in some one point of its track ; its movement in this instant is then equal to zero; but from ever so many zeros no real magnitude arises.
Together with the above-mentioned difficulties (<bropuu) with regard to space and plurality, these argumentations of Zeno set forth an extremely skilfully projected system of refuting the mechanical theories, especially Atomism, — a refutation which was intended to serve at the same time as indirect proof of the correct ness of the Eleatic conception of Being.
7. The number-theory of the Pythagoreans, too, was determined by Eleatic conceptions in so far as its procedure was, in the main, to demonstrate mathematical forms to be the fundamental relations of reality. When, however, they termed the actual world of reality an imitation of the mathematical forms, they thereby ascribed a sort of reality, even though of a derivative and secondary character, to individual things, and to what takes place among them. They were also the less inclined to withdraw from answering cosmological and physical questions as they were able to bring to philosophy the brilliant results of their astronomical investigation. They had come to a knowledge of the spherical form of the earth and of the heav enly bodies ; they were aware also that the change of day and night depends upon a movement of the earth itself. At first, indeed, they thought of this movement as a circuit performed about a central fire to which the earth presented always the same side, a side unknown to us. 1 On the other hand, they assumed that about this same cen tral fire there moved in concentric circles, outside the earth's track, successively the moon, the sun, the planets, and finally the heaven containing the fixed stars. They brought into this system, however, in a way, the metaphysical dualism which they had maintained be tween the perfect and the imperfect, inasmuch as they regarded the
1 Already in Plato's time the hypothesis of the central fire was given up by the younger Pythagoreans, Ecphantus, Hicetus of Syracuse (and with it that of the "counter-earth," which had hitherto been assumed as placed between the central fire and the earth, invented merely to fill out the number ten), and instead the earth was located in the centre of the universe and provided with a rotation on its axis. With this latter assumption that of a resting position of the heaven of the fixed stars was connected.
Chap. 1, § 6. ] Conceptions of Cognition. 57
heaven of the stars, on account of the sublime uniformity of its motions, as the realm of perfection ; the world " beneath the moon," on the contrary, on account of the unrest of its changing formations and motions, they regarded as that of imperfection.
This way of looking at things runs parallel to that of Anaxagoias, and leads, though in another way, to the interweaving and complica tion of theory with considerations of worth [ethical or aesthetic
It teas in connection with astronomical insight that the thought of an order of Nature in conformity to law dawned as clear knowledge upon the Grecian mind. Anaxagoras reasons from this to an ordering principle. Pythagoreanism finds in the heavens the divine rest of unchangeableness {Sichgleichbleibens) which it misses upon the earth. Here we have a meeting of the ancient religious ideas and the very different result yielded thus far by the scientific work of the Greeks. This latter, seeking a Permanent in the muta tion of occurrence, found such a permanence only in the great, simple relations, in the revolution of the stars, which abides ever the same. In the terrestrial world, with its whole change of manifold, con stantly intersecting motions, this uniformity remained still hidden from Greek science : she regarded this terrestrial world rather as a domain of the imperfect, the lower, which wants the sure order of that other world. In a certain sense this may be looked upon as the ultimate result of the first period, a result which had a determin ing influence for after time.
What the attitude of the Pythagoreans was to the question concerning a peri odic change of origination and annihilation of the world is uncertain. A plurality of co-existing worlds is excluded in their system. In their theory of world-for mation and in their particular physical doctrines they concede so prominent a place to fire that they come very near to Heraclitus. Aristotle even places one of the contemporaries of Philolaus, Hippasus of Metapontura, in immediate con nection with Heraclitus (Met. I. 3).
Their assumption of ether as a fifth element out of which the spherical shells of the heavens were formed, in addition to the four elements of Empedocles, is doubtless connected with the separation which they made between heaven and earth. It is not less difficult to decide whether they derived the elements from a common ground, and if so, how : according to many passages it would seem as if they had spoken of a progressive "attraction," i. e. in this case (cf. above, p. M), mathematical shaping out or forming of empty space by the Iv (one), the original number, which is exalted above limitation and the unlimited. Yet it max, too, that in regard to these questions various views were held within the •ebool side by side.
§ 6. The Conception! of Cognition.
values].
It Schneidewin, Uebtr dieKeime erkenntnitstheorttischer und ethiseher Phi- lotopkrme bei den vortokratischen Denkern, Pbilos. Monatshefte, II. (1860), pp. 157. 345, 429.
B. Mfinz, Die Keime der Brkenntnitstheorit in der vorsophittischen Periods in griechiteMn Philotophie. Vienna, 1880.
. 58 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part L
The question, what things really are, or what is the intrinsic nature of things, which is already contained in the Milesian con ception of the apxn, presupposes that the current, original and naive mode of thinking of the world has been shaken, although this pre supposition has not come to clear recognition in consciousness. The question proves that reflective thought is no longer satisfied with the ideas which it finds current, and that it seeks truth behind or above them. Those ideas are given, however, through sense-per ception and through the involuntary elaboration of this in thought, —an elaboration that has been transmitted from generation to generation, until it has became consolidated and fixed and embodied in language, and so forms a part of the thinker's data. When the individual with his reflection transcends these ideas so given — and it is in this that philosophical activity ultimately consists — he does it on the ground of logical needs which assert themselves as he re flects on the given. His philosophising, then, even though he takes no account of this fact, grows out of discrepancies between his expe rience and his thought — out of the inadequacy exhibited by what is presented to his perception or imagination, when set over against the demands and presuppositions of his understanding. However unconscious of this its inner ground naive philosophising may be at the outset, attention cannot fail to be turned in time to the diver sity in the sources of the conflicting ideas within.
1. The first observations, therefore, which the Grecian philosophers made on human knowledge concern this contrast between experience and reflection. The farther the explanatory theories of science became separated from the way of looking at things which belongs to daily life, the clearer it became to their authors that those theories sprang from another source than that of the customary opinions. To be sure they have not as yet much to say on this point. They set opinion (Sofa) over against truth, and this often means only that their own doctrines are true and the opinions of others false. So much only is certain to them, that they owe their own views to reflection, while the mass of mankind — concerning whose intellectual activity it is just the older philosophers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, who express themselves in an extremely depreciatory manner — persist in the illusion of the senses. Only through thinking (<f>p<wtiv, vohv, Aoyos), then, is the truth found ; the senses, if alone, give fraud and a lie. l So strong has reflection become in itself that it not only proceeds to con sequences which to the common thinking have become absolutely
» Heracl. Frag. (Schust. ) 11, 123 ; Parmen. Frag. (Karrten) 64 ft.
Caar. 1, $ 6. J Conceptions of Cognition: Heraclitus, Parmenidet. 59
paradoxical, but also maintains expressly that it is itself the sole •oarce of truth as opposed to opinions.
This, to be sure, works oddly when we notice that completely
illustrations of this same assertion are given by Heracli- t*s and Parmenides in close succession. The former finds the i«-eit caused by the senses, and the error of the multitude, to consist a the illusory appearance of the Being of permanent things, which j presented to men by sense-perception ; the Eleatic, on the contrary, u zealous against the senses, because they would fain ]>ersuade us thai there are in truth motion and change, becoming and arising, phuality and variety. Precisely this double form in which this
one claim is put forward shows that it is not the result of an jTestigation, but the expression of a demand made on other rrounds.
Moreover, this proposition fits very differently into the general theories of the two great metaphysicians. The flux of all things, with its restless change of individual phenomena, as taught by Heraclitus, makes it easy to comprehend also the possibility of the 'mergence of false ideas, and the seeming of permanence and Being sad besides a special explanation in the counter-course or opposi tion (ivamorpoiria) of the two " ways," for this causes the illusion of permanence or Being to arise where there is just as much change in one direction as in the other [i. e. from primitive fire into things and tier versa]. On the contrary, it is quite impossible to see where the •eat of illusion and error was to be sought in the one world-sphere of Parmenides, everywhere the same, which was held to be at the
tan* time the one, true world-thought. The search could be only aaong individual things and their changing activities, which were themselves declared to be illusion, non-existent. Nevertheless these is no support to be found in the literature preserved, for (apposing that this so simple a thought1 which would have over thrown the entire Eleatic system, ever occurred to the investigators %l that time. In any case, the Eleatics contented themselves with tie assertion that all particular existence and all change were decep- tnjo and illusion of the senses.
The same naive denial of that which they could not explain seems to lure been employed also by the successors of the Eleatics in the natter of the qualitative attributes of individual things. Emjted- ■<iei at least maintained that all things were mixtures of the ele-
aenu. The task that logically grew out of this was to show how tie other qualities arise from the mixture of the properties of the
opposite
> First carried out in I'lalo, Sophist, 237 A.
60 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
elements. But this he did not perform ; so far as our knowledge extends, he did not at all set himself this task; he probably re garded these particular qualities as not being (objectively), and as a deception of the senses, just as all qualities whatever were such in the view of Parmenides. And so the oldest view of the Ato- mists, as supported by Leucippus, may well have gone just to this point, maintaining that in" individual things only the form, arrange ment, situation, and motion of the constituent atoms were real, and that the other properties were a deceitful product of the senses, which here, too, found no further explanation. 1
These difficulties were perhaps jointly influential in the mind of Anaxagoras when he regarded all qualities as original, and not as having become what they are, and accordingly postulated countless elements. But for him arose the opposite difficulty of showing how it could come about, if all was regarded as contained in all, every quality in every thing, that only some of these qualities seemed to be present in individual things. He explained this in part from the consideration that many of the constituent parts are imperceptible because of their minuteness ; hence it is only by thought that we can learn the true qualities of things. 8 Besides this, however, he seems to have followed up the thought, found already in Anaximan- der's idea of the anapov, that a complete mingling of definite quali ties yields something indefinite. So, at least, he described the primitive mixture of all substances which preceded the formation of the world as completely devoid of quality,' and a similar thought seems to have permitted him to regard the four elements of Emped- ocles not as primitive substances, but rather as already mixtures. 4
The rationalism common to the pre-Sophistic thinkers assumes, among the Pythagoreans, the particular form of affirming that knowledge consists in mathematical thought. This, though in itself a narrowing, is yet, on the other hand, a great step in advance, in asmuch as there is here given for the first time a positive definition of "thought" as contrasted with "perception. " Only through number, taught Philolaus,* is the essential nature of things to be
known ; that when the definite mathematical relations lying at their basis are recognised that things are properly conceived or
It extremely improbable that the solution of the problem through the subjectivity of the sense-qualities, which found in Democritus, was presented already by Leucippus, and therefore before Protagoras, who universally regarded as the founder of this theory.
frag. (Schorn) From this passage the true light may, perhaps, be thrown upon the sense in which Anaximander designates the ireipov as &6f>irror.
Arist. De Gen. et Corr. 314 24. Frag. (Mull. ) 13.
Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 90
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is
Chap. 1, 5 6. ] Conception* of Cognition : Pkilolaus, Zeno. 61
understood. This had been the experience of the Pythagoreans in music and in astronomy, and this was the object of their desire and effort in all other fields. When, however, they ultimately came to the result that this requirement could be completely met only in
the knowledge of the perfect world of the stars, they concluded from this that science (<ro<t>ui) relates only to the realm of order and perfection, that to heaven, and that in the realm of the imper fect, of change not subject to order, i. e. on earth, only practical ability (<! *>«■>? ) of avail. 1
Another positive characteristic of the "thinking" which the earlier investigators had set over against "perceiving," without closer specification, appears obscurely in the reasonings of Zeno, viz. conformity to logical laws. At the basis of all his attacks against plurality and motion lie the principle of contradiction and the presupposition that that can not be actual of which the same thing must be affirmed and also denied. This principle and presup position were applied with clearness and certainty, though not ab stractly expressed. The Eleatic theory of the world, so highly paradoxical, forced its supporters to enter into polemic more than did others, and the accounts as to Zeno's treatise, which, as seems, was also logically well arranged and divided, offer notable evi dence of the developed technique of refutation to which the school attained in consequence. To be sure, this formal training which prevailed in Eleatic circles does not seem to have led as yet to the abstract statement of logical laws. " " "
2. The setting over against each other of thinking and per ceiving" arose, then, from an estimation of their relative epistemo- logical value (erkenntniastheoretischen Werthbestimmung) [i. e. from the postulate that one of these two forms of mental activity worth more epistemologically for attaining truth]. In decided contradiction with this, however, stand the psychological principles with which these same investigators sought to apprehend the origin and process of knowing. For although their thinking was directed first and chiefly toward the outer world, man's mental activity came under their attention in so far as they were obliged to see in this activity one of the formations, or transformations, or products of motion, of the universe. The mind or soul and its action are then at this time considered scientifically only in connection with the entire course of the universe, whose product they are as truly as are all other things and since among the men of this period the general principles of explanation are everywhere as yet conceived corpore-
Stob. Bel. 488.
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62 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part L
ally it follows that we meet also a thorough-going materialistic
psychology. 1
Now mind or soul is in the first place moving force. Thales
ascribed such a soul to magnets, and declared that the whole world was full of souls. The essential nature of individual souls was therefore sought at first in that which had been recognised as the moving principle in the whole. Anaximenes found it in air, Heraclitus and likewise Parmenides (in his hypothetical physics) in fire, Leucippus in the fiery atoms,' and Anaxagoras in the world- moving, rational substance, the vow. Where, as in the system of Empedocles, a corporeal moving principle was lacking, the mixed substance which streams through the living body, the blood, was regarded as soul. Diogenes of Apollonia found the essence of the soul in the air mixed with the blood. 8 With the Pythagoreans, too, the individual soul could not be considered as the same with the iv (One) which they conceived as moving principle of the world, nor regarded as a part of it ; instead, they taught that the soul was a number, and made this very vague statement more definite by say ing that it was a harmony, —an expression which we can only interpret4 as meaning a harmony of the body; that the living, harmonious activity of its parts.
If now to this moving force, which leaves the body in death, were ascribed at the same time those properties which we to-day designate as " psychical," we find clear characterisation of the specifically theoretical interest by which this oldest science was filled, in the fact that among these attributes that of ideation, of " knowing," which almost exclusively the object of attention. * Of feelings and volitions there scarcely incidental mention. * But as the
Besides those characterisations of the soul, which resulted from their gen eral scientific theory, we find in the tradition in case of several of these men
(Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Pythagoreans) still other doc trines which are not only not connected witli the former, but are even in con tradiction to them. A conception of the body as prison of the soul (ri. ua = <rijjui), personal immortality, recompense after death, transmigration of souls. — all these are ideas which the philosophers took from their relations to the mysteries and retained in their priestly teaching, however little they accorded with their scientific teachings. Such expressions are not treated above.
In like manner, some of the Pythagoreans declared the motes which the sunlight discloses in the air to be souls.
Since, with reference to this, he recognised the distinction between venous ami arterial blood, he meant by his irwO/ux what the chemistry of to-day calls oxygen.
Ace. to Plato. Phmdo, 85 ff. , where the view rejected ns materialistic.
The w>Bs of Anaxagoras only knowing air with Diogenes of Apollonia great, powerful, eternal, intelligent body. Being with Parmenides at the
same time votlv, etc. Only ^iXAttjs and w«o« with Empedocles are mythically hypostasised impulses, and these, too, have nothing to do with his psychological views.
With this connected the fact that in general we cannot once speak
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Cm*». 1,§ 6. ] Conception* of Cognition: Her aclitus, Anaxagoras. 03
individual soul in so far as it is moving force was held to be a part of the force which moves the entire universe, so also the " knowing " rf the individual could be conceived only as a part of the knowing activity of the world. ' This is clearest in the systems of Heraclitus lad Anaxagoras ; each individual has so much knowledge as there a contained in him of the general World-reason, —fire with Htraelitus,* the rofc with Anaxagoras. In the case of Leucippus and of Diogenes of Apollonia the ideas are similar.
This physical conception, which with Anaxagoras especially is portly quantitative, was given a turn by Heraclitus, in which the ;;&stemological postulate again forces its way to the front, and asserts itself in the interest of a deeper insight and a profounder new. The World-reason in which the individual participates in his knowledge is everywhere the same; the Xoyot of Heraclitus3 and the io£« of Anaxagoras, as homogenous Reason, are distributed through the whole universe as moving force. Knowing, then, is that which is common to all. It is therefore the law and order to »iich every one has to unite himself. In dreams, in personal opin ion, each one has his own world; knowing is common ((wov) to tlL By means of this characteristic, viz. that of universally valid law, the conception of knowing acquires a normative significance* aad subjection to the common, to the law, appears as a duty \z the intellectual realm as well as in the political, ethical, and religious. *
i at ethical investigation in this period. For single moralising reflections ana cannot be regarded as beginnings of ethics. On the only excep-
tm ef. below, note 6.
• Th« expression " World-soul " was first used by Plato, or at the earliest by
? VVWana (in the fragment which has certainly been much questioned just for t&s reason. Mull. 21). The idea is certainly present in Anaximenes, Heraclitus, aaexagnra*. and perhaps also among the Pythagoreans.
' Heoop
■araJBg u> guard the soul from the wet (intoxication).
the paradoxical expression, the dryest soul is the wisest, and the
• CI. , for this and the following, M. Heinze, Die Lthre vom Logos in der frwraurton Philotopkie (Oldenburg, 1872).
• Fr*g. (Schust. ) 123.
• This is the only conception in the development of pre-Sophistic thought, in a» iw ot which we can speak of an attempt to propound a scientific principle «< ttkir*. If Heraclitus had in mind a universal expression for all moral duties ■i •prxkme of this subordination to law, or at least hit upon such, he attached - at once u> the fundamental thoughts of his metaphysics, which declared thin
a* u> be the abiding essence of the world. Yet attention has above ($4) been aJed to the fact that in the conception of the world-order which hovered before I^m, he did not as yet separate consciously the different motives (especially the pcTacml from the ethical), and so ethical investigation does not as yet work
uctf cU»r from the physical to an Independent position. The same is true of '■*»pTthaxoreans, who expressed the conception of order by the term "harmony " »iaj> also might be adopted from Heraclitus), and therefore designated virtue • ~eannony. " To be sure, they used the term " harmony " for the soul, for
awe*, ami for many other things.
64 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part ,
3. If now we ask how under these assumptions the fact was explained that " knowledge " comes into the individual man, i. e. into his body, we find that the only answer offered by Heraclitus and the whole company of his successors "through the door of the senses. " When man awake, the World-reason streams into his body through the opened senses (sight and hearing are of course chiefly noticed1), and, therefore, he knows. This comes about, to be sure, only there besides, in the man himself, so much reason or soul that the motion coming from without met by an inner motion but upon this interaction, effected through the senses> between the outer and the inner reason knowledge rests.
A psychological distinction, then, between perceiving and think ing, which, as regards their respective epistemological values, are so abruptly opposed, Heraclitus does not know how to state. Par- menides,* however, was just as little in position to make such distinction. 4 Rather, he expressed more sharply still the dependence upon bodily relations in which the thinking of the individual man involved, when he said that every one so thought as the conditions constituted by the mixture of substances in the members of the body permitted, and when he found in this confirmation of his general thought of the identity of corporeality and thinking in general. * Still more express the testimony6 that Empedocles declared thinking and perceiving to be the same, that he thought change in thinking as dependent upon change of the body, and that he regarded the constitution of the blood as of decisive importance for the intellectual capacity of the man.
These two last-named thinkers did not hesitate, moreover, to make their conception more plain to the imagination by means of physio logical hypotheses. Parmenides taught in his hypothetical physics
Also smell (Empedocles) and taste (Anaxagoras). Only the Atomists, and in particular Democritus, seem to have given value to the sense of touch.
Arist. De An. 405 a 27.
Theophr. De Sens.
So, too, reported (Theophr. De Sens. 26) of Alcmseon, the Pythago-
reanising physician, that he declared thought or consciousness (Jh-i jiAwj \vrijpi) to be the characteristic which distinguishes man from the other animals. But a more precise determination lacking here also unless, in accordance with the expression, we think of something similar to the Aristotelian Kotviv al<rSrrr-^pu>w With this would agree the circumstance that the first attempts to localise the particular psychical activities in particular parts of the body seem to have been made in the circles of the Pythagoreans and of the physicians who stood in near relations to them localising, e. g. , thought in the brain, perception in the indi vidual organs and in the heart, and the emotions also in the latter organ. From them Diogenes of Apollonia, and after him Democritus, seem to have taken these beginnings of physiological psychology.
Frag. (Karst. ) vv. 146-149.
Arist. De An. 404 Theophr. De Sens. 10
III. 427 21 Met. III. 1009 17
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Caar. 1, | •. ] Conception* of Cognition : Parmenides, Empedocles. 65
a*t like is always perceived by like, warmth without by the warmth
:a man, the cold without by the cold even in the dead body.
jclea, with the aid of his theory of effluxes and pores, carried out
tae thought that every element in our body perceives the same ele ment in the outer world, so as to teach that each organ is accessible w the impress of those substances only whose effluxes fit into its pores ; i. e. he derived the specific energy of the sense organs from relations of similarity between their outer form and their objects, lad carried this out for sight, hearing, and smell, with observations vhich in part are very acute. 1
This view, that like is apprehended by like, was opposed by Anaxagoras, —on what ground it is not certain. ' He taught that perception is only of opposite by opposite, warmth without by the eoU in man, etc.
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50 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part I.
matter in its successive changes in the universe. The observation that everything in the world is in process of constant change was exaggerated by Heraclitus to the claim that everything is con tinually changing into its opposite. The " other " was for him eo ipso the opposed. The "flux of things " became transformed in his poetic rhetoric into a ceaseless strife of opposites, and this strife (iroAt/ios) he declared to be the father of things. All that seems to be for a shorter or longer time is the product of opposed motions and forces which in their operation maintain themselves in equilib rium. The universe is thus at every moment a unity divided in itself and again re-united, a strife which finds its reconciliation, a want that finds its satisfaction. The essence of the world is the invisible harmony in which all differences and oppositions are solved. The world is Becoming, and Becoming is unity of oppo
sites.
These antitheses, according to the view of Heraclitus, present
themselves particularly in the two processes taking place in con trary directions, through which, on the one hand, fire becomes changed into all things, and, on the other hand, all things change back into fire. The same stages are passed through in both processes: on the "way downward" fire passes over, by condensation, into water and earth, on the "way upward" earth and water, by rare faction, pass over into fire ; and these two ways are alike. Change and counter-change run on side by side, and the semblance of a per manent thing makes its appearance where for a time there is as much counter-change upon the one way as there is change upon the other. The fantastic forms in which Heraclitus put these views envelop the essential thought of a sequence of changes taking place in conformity to law, and of a continual compensation of these
changes. The world is produced from the fire in ever-repeated rhythm and at fixed intervals of time, and then again flashes up in fire, to arise from it anew, a Phoenix. 1
In this ceaseless transformation of all things nothing individual persists, but only the order, in which the exchange between the contrary movements is effected, — the law of change, which consti tutes the meaning and worth of the whole. If in the struggle be tween opposites it seems as though something new were constantly arising, this new is at the same time always a perishing product. The Becoming of Heraclitus produces no Being, as the Being of Parmenides produces no Becoming.
1 In details his physical, and especially his astronomical, ideas are weak. Metaphysical inquiry is more important with him than explanatory investiga tion. He shares this with his opponent, Parmenides.
Chat. 1, f 5. ] Cosmic Processes : Parmenides, Empedocles. 51
4. In fact, the doctrine of Being held by the Eleatics excluded with plurality and change, events or cosmic processes, also. Ac cording to their metaphysics an event or occurrence is incomprehen sible, it is impossible. This metaphysics tolerates no physics. Parmenides denies to time, as to space, independent reality (iVAo
rm^u rov iovrof) : for him there is only timeless Being with no dis tinctions. Although Parmenides added to the first part of his didac- tic poem, which presents the doctrine of Being, a second part which treats physical problems, this is yet done with the protest in advance that he is here presenting not truth, but the " opinions of mortals. " At the basis of all these ordinary opinions lies the false presupposi tion, previously rejected, that in addition to Being there is still •Bother, Non-being. All becoming, all plurality and motion, rest on tie interaction of these, opposites, which are then further designated as light and darkness, warmth and cold A Weltanschauung is then portrayed in poetic imagery, in which fire shapes the dark empty space into corporeal structures, a mode of representation which in part reminds us of Heraclitus, and in part accords with the astro nomical teaching of the Pythagoreans. The all-ruling Fire-power lia^wr), as inexorable necessity (Sun/), with the help of love (ip<*t) {ones together what is akin, working from the centre of the world outward. Appropriation of the doctrines of others and polemic
against them appear in motley mixture, agreeably V) the purpose of the whole. Over this tissue thus interwoven hovers a poetic breath of plastic formative power, but original research and clear concep tions are lacking.
5. Ideas more definite, and more usable for explaining the par ticular, are found among the successors, who transformed the Eleatic conception of Being into the conceptions of element, homoiomeriae, and atom, expressly for this purpose. They all declare that by occurrence or coming to be nothing else is to be understood than the notion of unchangeable corporeal particles. Empedocles and Anax- apemu seem still to have sought to connect with this the denial of *=pty space, — a principle which they received from Parmenides. They ascribed to their substances universal divisibility, and re garded parts as capable of displacement in such a way that as these puts mixed and reciprocally interpenetrated, all space should be always filled out The motion in the world consists, then, in this
■TV hypothetical exposition of how the world would have to be thought addition to Being, Non-being, plurality, and becoming were also regarded as >w bad, on the one hand, polemic purpose; and on the other, met the
**ai A bi* disciple*, who probably demanded of the master an explanation of us awn of the empirical world.
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52 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Pabt I
displacement of the parts of matter, each of which is always crowd ing and displacing the other. Things at a distance from one another cannot act upon one another, except as parts of the one flow out and penetrate into the other. This action is the more possible in pro portion as the effluxes of the one body resemble in their spatial form the pores of the other. So at least Empedocles taught, and the assumption of an infinite divisibility of substances is attested in the case of Anaxagoras also. Another picture of occurrence more akin to the present way of thinking is that presented by Leucippus. The atoms which impinge upon each other in empty space act upon each other by pressure and impact, group themselves together, and so form greater or smaller things or masses which are not separated and destroyed until some impact or pressure of other masses comes from without. All occurrence and coming, to be consists in this process in which atom-complexes are successively formed and shattered.
The fundamental form of world-motion in all three systems, how ever, is that of the vortex, of circular rotation (Sivy). According to Empedocles it is brought about by the forces of love and hate acting among the elements ; according to Anaxagoras it is begun by the Reason-stuff acting according to ends, and then continues with mechanical consistency ; according to Leucippus it is the result always occurring from the collision of several atoms. The principle of mechanism was with Empedocles still enveloped in myth, with Anaxagoras it first made a half-successful attempt to break through the covering, and was completely carried through only by Leucippus. What hindered the first two from reaching this position was the introduction of considerations of worth into their explanatory theory. The one was for tracing the good and the evil back to cor responding powers of mind, which were, to be sure, not ascribed to any being, but mythically hypostatised ; the other believed that he could explain the order of the whole only from the assumption that purposive, rationally considered impulse had originated the motions. Yet both came so near the position of Leucippus as to demand a teleological explanation for the beginning only of the vortex-motion; the farther course of the motions, and thus every individual occur rence, they explained, as did Leucippus, purely mechanically, by the pushing and crowding of the particles of matter after these are once in motion in the manner determined. They proceeded so con sistently in this that they did not exclude from this mechanical explanation even the origination and functions of organisms, among which, moreover, plants are regarded as being as truly animate as are animals. Anaxagoras is reproached for this by Plato and Aristotle-,
C«at. 1. J 5. ] Cosmic Processes : Anaragoras, Leuctppus. 53
and an expression of Empedocles has been handed down,' according to which he taught that the animals had arisen here and there, with out any rule, in odd and grotesque forms, and that in the course of tune only those fitted for life maintained themselves. The principle of the survival of the fittest, which plays so great a part in the biology of to-day, i. e. in Darwinism, is here already clearly formu lated.
On the ground of these ideas, an interesting contrast discloses itself in the case of the three investigators, as regards their atti- tade toward cosmogonic theories. For Empedocles and for Leu-
•ippus, namely, the process of world-formation and world-dissolu tion is a perpetual one ; for Anaxagoras, on the contrary, it is one chat takes place once for all. Between the first two there is again the difference that Empedocles, like Heraclitus, teaches that the world arises and perishes in periodic alternation ; while Atomism, on the contrary, holds that a countless number of worlds come into being and pass away. According to the principles of Empedocles, so be more explicit, there are four different states of the elements ; their complete intermixture, in which love alone rules, and hate is exploded, he calls " when hate penetrates, this
o-tftaipos (sphere) ;
aomogeneous world-sphere becomes separated into the individual
things, until the elements are completely parted from one another ; tod out of this separate condition love brings them again together, until full union is again attained. Neither in the case of complete mixture, nor in that of complete separation, are there individual things ; in both cases the Eleatic acosmism makes its appearance.
A world of individual things in motion exists only where love and bate struggle with one another in mingling and separating the •leroents.
It is otherwise with Leucippus. Some of the atoms that dart shoot irregularly in the universe strike together here and there.
Frvm the various impulses to motion which the individual particles bnntf with them, where such aggregations occur, there results, «rrording to mathematical necessity (ivaynri), a whirling movement of the whole, which draws into itself neighbouring atoms and atom- -»*aplexes, and sometimes even whole " worlds," and so gradually
• Ari«t. P%yt. II. 8, 198 b 29. Moreover, wc find an expression already ■onfcoied to Anaximander, which teaches a transformation of organisms by alteration to changed conditions of life : Plut. Plae. V. 10, 1 {Dot. D. 430, 15). I■* ataa. aim, the oldest thinkers claimed no other origin than that of growth 3C. of the animal world : so Empedocles in Plut. Strom, fr. 2. {Dox. D. 679, IT).
'• £<id>ntly not without suggestion from the Kleatic world-sphere, which thix ■bassse. folly adjusted mingling of all elements, taught by Empedocles, miwli
54 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
extends. Meanwhile such a system in process of revolution is differentiating itself, since, by the rotation, the finer, more movable atoms are driven to the periphery, the more inert and massy are gathered in the centre ; and so like finds its way to like, not by inclination or love, but through their like conformity to the law of pressure and impact. So there arise at various times and in differ ent places in the boundless universe, various worlds, each of which continues in motion within itself, according to mechanical law, until it perhaps is shattered in pieces by collision with another world, or is drawn into the revolution of a greater. So, the Atomists main tained, the sun and moon were at one time worlds by themselves, which subsequently fell into the greater vortex of which our earth is the centre. How near in principle this whole conception is to the natural science of to-day is obvious.
The teleological point of view taken by Anaxagoras excludes, on the contrary, a plurality of worlds in time as well as a plurality of worlds in space. The ordering mind, which introduces the pur posive motion of the elements, forms just this one world only, which is the most perfect. 1 Anaxagoras, therefore, quite in the manner of the cosmogonic poetry, describes how the beginning of the world was preceded by a chaotic primitive condition, in which the ele ments were intermingled without order and without motion. Then came the vovs, the " Eeason-stuff " (Vernunftsloff), and set it into ordered motion. This vortex-motion began at one point, the pole of the celestial vault, and extended gradually throughout the entire mass of matter, separating and dividing the elements, so that they now perform their mighty revolution in a uniformly harmonious manner. The teleological motive of the doctrine of Anaxagoras is due essentially to his admiration of the order in the stellar world, which, after it has performed the rotations started by the voCs, moves on without disturbance always in the same track. There is no ground for assuming that this teleological
attention to the adaptation to ends in living beings, or even to the connected system of Nature as beneficent to man ; its gaze was fixed on the beauty of the starry heavens ; and what is related of the views of Anaxagoras on terrestrial things, on organisms, and on man, keeps quite within the setting of the mechanical mode of
explanation in vogue among his contemporaries. What he said, too. with regard to the presence of life on other heavenly bodies, might just as well have come from the Atomists.
1 This motive, fully carried out, is found in Plato, Tim. 81, with unmistak able reference to the opposition between Anaxagoras and the Atomists.
cosmology directed
Caar. 1, $ 5. ] Connie Proce»»e» : Zeno, the Pythagoreans. 55
Accordingly, although Anazagoras conceived of the vo\h as also the principle of animation, and thought of the particles of this substance as mingled in prater or leaser number with organic bodies, yet the central point in this con- arpcion is that of the authorship of the astronomical world-order. The other ••if, the moment or factor of the cause of animate life, is much more energeti cally emphasised in the transformation which a younger eclectic natural penkwopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, undertook to effect in the conception of Aaaxagoras by connecting it with the hylozoistic principle of Anaximenes. He designated air as &px1 [first principle, primitive element], fitted it out, kcwever, with the characteristics of the rout, — omniscience and force acting sKording to ends, — named this " rational air" also rvtuiia [spirit], and found this formative principle in man and other organisms as well as in the universe. A rich physiological knowledge enabled him to carry through in detail this •-i>ju£ht as applied to the structure and functions of the human body. With
t-ta teleology became the dominant mode of apprehending also the organic mid.
His fragments have been collected by Schorn (Bonn, 1820) and Panzerbieter Lops. 1830). Cf. K. Steinhart in Ersch und GrUber's Encyclopadie.
6. All these doctrines, however, presuppose the conception of motion as one that is intelligible of itself and in need of no further explanation. They thought they had explained qualitative change •hen they had pointed out as its true essence motion, whether between the parts of a continuously connected matter, or in empty
The opposition, therefore, which the Eleatic School brought tu bear upon all these doctrines was directed first of all against this conception of motion, and Zeno showed that this could by no means be taken so simply, but was rather full of contradictions which inca pacitated it for serving as principle of explanation.
Among Zeno's famous proofs of the impossibility of motion,1 the weakest is that which proceeds from the relativity of the amount of station, by showing that the movement of a wagon is variously esti mated if it is observed either from wagons also in motion but in different directions and at varying rates of speed, or again from two
vagons one of which is moving and one standing still. The three other proofs, on the contrary, which made use of the analysis into hscrete parts, infinitely many and infinitely small, of the space passed through by motion, and the time occupied by were ftronger. and for a long time were not overcome. The first proof was with reference to the impossibility of passing through a fixed space. This was regarded as proved by the infinite divisibility of
:he line, since the infinite number of points which must be attained before reaching the goal permitted no beginning of motion. The nae thought appears, somewhat varied, in the second argument, »Lxh seeks to prove the impossibility of passing through a space vA*A has movable boundaries. The argument (known as that of
int Pkfs VL 239 b. 9. Cf Ed. Wellmann, Ztnon't Beweise gegen die a*mr*mg umd ikrt Widerlegungen (Frankfurt a. O. 1870).
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56 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
Achilles and the tortoise) is, that since the pursuer in every inter val or subdivision of time must first reach the point from which the pursued simultaneously starts, it follows that the latter will always be in advance, though by an interval which becomes constantly smaller and approaches a minimum. The third argument has refer ence to the infinitely small extent of tlie motion performed in a. 7iy instant. According to this argument, called "the resting arrow," the moved body is in every instant in some one point of its track ; its movement in this instant is then equal to zero; but from ever so many zeros no real magnitude arises.
Together with the above-mentioned difficulties (<bropuu) with regard to space and plurality, these argumentations of Zeno set forth an extremely skilfully projected system of refuting the mechanical theories, especially Atomism, — a refutation which was intended to serve at the same time as indirect proof of the correct ness of the Eleatic conception of Being.
7. The number-theory of the Pythagoreans, too, was determined by Eleatic conceptions in so far as its procedure was, in the main, to demonstrate mathematical forms to be the fundamental relations of reality. When, however, they termed the actual world of reality an imitation of the mathematical forms, they thereby ascribed a sort of reality, even though of a derivative and secondary character, to individual things, and to what takes place among them. They were also the less inclined to withdraw from answering cosmological and physical questions as they were able to bring to philosophy the brilliant results of their astronomical investigation. They had come to a knowledge of the spherical form of the earth and of the heav enly bodies ; they were aware also that the change of day and night depends upon a movement of the earth itself. At first, indeed, they thought of this movement as a circuit performed about a central fire to which the earth presented always the same side, a side unknown to us. 1 On the other hand, they assumed that about this same cen tral fire there moved in concentric circles, outside the earth's track, successively the moon, the sun, the planets, and finally the heaven containing the fixed stars. They brought into this system, however, in a way, the metaphysical dualism which they had maintained be tween the perfect and the imperfect, inasmuch as they regarded the
1 Already in Plato's time the hypothesis of the central fire was given up by the younger Pythagoreans, Ecphantus, Hicetus of Syracuse (and with it that of the "counter-earth," which had hitherto been assumed as placed between the central fire and the earth, invented merely to fill out the number ten), and instead the earth was located in the centre of the universe and provided with a rotation on its axis. With this latter assumption that of a resting position of the heaven of the fixed stars was connected.
Chap. 1, § 6. ] Conceptions of Cognition. 57
heaven of the stars, on account of the sublime uniformity of its motions, as the realm of perfection ; the world " beneath the moon," on the contrary, on account of the unrest of its changing formations and motions, they regarded as that of imperfection.
This way of looking at things runs parallel to that of Anaxagoias, and leads, though in another way, to the interweaving and complica tion of theory with considerations of worth [ethical or aesthetic
It teas in connection with astronomical insight that the thought of an order of Nature in conformity to law dawned as clear knowledge upon the Grecian mind. Anaxagoras reasons from this to an ordering principle. Pythagoreanism finds in the heavens the divine rest of unchangeableness {Sichgleichbleibens) which it misses upon the earth. Here we have a meeting of the ancient religious ideas and the very different result yielded thus far by the scientific work of the Greeks. This latter, seeking a Permanent in the muta tion of occurrence, found such a permanence only in the great, simple relations, in the revolution of the stars, which abides ever the same. In the terrestrial world, with its whole change of manifold, con stantly intersecting motions, this uniformity remained still hidden from Greek science : she regarded this terrestrial world rather as a domain of the imperfect, the lower, which wants the sure order of that other world. In a certain sense this may be looked upon as the ultimate result of the first period, a result which had a determin ing influence for after time.
What the attitude of the Pythagoreans was to the question concerning a peri odic change of origination and annihilation of the world is uncertain. A plurality of co-existing worlds is excluded in their system. In their theory of world-for mation and in their particular physical doctrines they concede so prominent a place to fire that they come very near to Heraclitus. Aristotle even places one of the contemporaries of Philolaus, Hippasus of Metapontura, in immediate con nection with Heraclitus (Met. I. 3).
Their assumption of ether as a fifth element out of which the spherical shells of the heavens were formed, in addition to the four elements of Empedocles, is doubtless connected with the separation which they made between heaven and earth. It is not less difficult to decide whether they derived the elements from a common ground, and if so, how : according to many passages it would seem as if they had spoken of a progressive "attraction," i. e. in this case (cf. above, p. M), mathematical shaping out or forming of empty space by the Iv (one), the original number, which is exalted above limitation and the unlimited. Yet it max, too, that in regard to these questions various views were held within the •ebool side by side.
§ 6. The Conception! of Cognition.
values].
It Schneidewin, Uebtr dieKeime erkenntnitstheorttischer und ethiseher Phi- lotopkrme bei den vortokratischen Denkern, Pbilos. Monatshefte, II. (1860), pp. 157. 345, 429.
B. Mfinz, Die Keime der Brkenntnitstheorit in der vorsophittischen Periods in griechiteMn Philotophie. Vienna, 1880.
. 58 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part L
The question, what things really are, or what is the intrinsic nature of things, which is already contained in the Milesian con ception of the apxn, presupposes that the current, original and naive mode of thinking of the world has been shaken, although this pre supposition has not come to clear recognition in consciousness. The question proves that reflective thought is no longer satisfied with the ideas which it finds current, and that it seeks truth behind or above them. Those ideas are given, however, through sense-per ception and through the involuntary elaboration of this in thought, —an elaboration that has been transmitted from generation to generation, until it has became consolidated and fixed and embodied in language, and so forms a part of the thinker's data. When the individual with his reflection transcends these ideas so given — and it is in this that philosophical activity ultimately consists — he does it on the ground of logical needs which assert themselves as he re flects on the given. His philosophising, then, even though he takes no account of this fact, grows out of discrepancies between his expe rience and his thought — out of the inadequacy exhibited by what is presented to his perception or imagination, when set over against the demands and presuppositions of his understanding. However unconscious of this its inner ground naive philosophising may be at the outset, attention cannot fail to be turned in time to the diver sity in the sources of the conflicting ideas within.
1. The first observations, therefore, which the Grecian philosophers made on human knowledge concern this contrast between experience and reflection. The farther the explanatory theories of science became separated from the way of looking at things which belongs to daily life, the clearer it became to their authors that those theories sprang from another source than that of the customary opinions. To be sure they have not as yet much to say on this point. They set opinion (Sofa) over against truth, and this often means only that their own doctrines are true and the opinions of others false. So much only is certain to them, that they owe their own views to reflection, while the mass of mankind — concerning whose intellectual activity it is just the older philosophers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, who express themselves in an extremely depreciatory manner — persist in the illusion of the senses. Only through thinking (<f>p<wtiv, vohv, Aoyos), then, is the truth found ; the senses, if alone, give fraud and a lie. l So strong has reflection become in itself that it not only proceeds to con sequences which to the common thinking have become absolutely
» Heracl. Frag. (Schust. ) 11, 123 ; Parmen. Frag. (Karrten) 64 ft.
Caar. 1, $ 6. J Conceptions of Cognition: Heraclitus, Parmenidet. 59
paradoxical, but also maintains expressly that it is itself the sole •oarce of truth as opposed to opinions.
This, to be sure, works oddly when we notice that completely
illustrations of this same assertion are given by Heracli- t*s and Parmenides in close succession. The former finds the i«-eit caused by the senses, and the error of the multitude, to consist a the illusory appearance of the Being of permanent things, which j presented to men by sense-perception ; the Eleatic, on the contrary, u zealous against the senses, because they would fain ]>ersuade us thai there are in truth motion and change, becoming and arising, phuality and variety. Precisely this double form in which this
one claim is put forward shows that it is not the result of an jTestigation, but the expression of a demand made on other rrounds.
Moreover, this proposition fits very differently into the general theories of the two great metaphysicians. The flux of all things, with its restless change of individual phenomena, as taught by Heraclitus, makes it easy to comprehend also the possibility of the 'mergence of false ideas, and the seeming of permanence and Being sad besides a special explanation in the counter-course or opposi tion (ivamorpoiria) of the two " ways," for this causes the illusion of permanence or Being to arise where there is just as much change in one direction as in the other [i. e. from primitive fire into things and tier versa]. On the contrary, it is quite impossible to see where the •eat of illusion and error was to be sought in the one world-sphere of Parmenides, everywhere the same, which was held to be at the
tan* time the one, true world-thought. The search could be only aaong individual things and their changing activities, which were themselves declared to be illusion, non-existent. Nevertheless these is no support to be found in the literature preserved, for (apposing that this so simple a thought1 which would have over thrown the entire Eleatic system, ever occurred to the investigators %l that time. In any case, the Eleatics contented themselves with tie assertion that all particular existence and all change were decep- tnjo and illusion of the senses.
The same naive denial of that which they could not explain seems to lure been employed also by the successors of the Eleatics in the natter of the qualitative attributes of individual things. Emjted- ■<iei at least maintained that all things were mixtures of the ele-
aenu. The task that logically grew out of this was to show how tie other qualities arise from the mixture of the properties of the
opposite
> First carried out in I'lalo, Sophist, 237 A.
60 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
elements. But this he did not perform ; so far as our knowledge extends, he did not at all set himself this task; he probably re garded these particular qualities as not being (objectively), and as a deception of the senses, just as all qualities whatever were such in the view of Parmenides. And so the oldest view of the Ato- mists, as supported by Leucippus, may well have gone just to this point, maintaining that in" individual things only the form, arrange ment, situation, and motion of the constituent atoms were real, and that the other properties were a deceitful product of the senses, which here, too, found no further explanation. 1
These difficulties were perhaps jointly influential in the mind of Anaxagoras when he regarded all qualities as original, and not as having become what they are, and accordingly postulated countless elements. But for him arose the opposite difficulty of showing how it could come about, if all was regarded as contained in all, every quality in every thing, that only some of these qualities seemed to be present in individual things. He explained this in part from the consideration that many of the constituent parts are imperceptible because of their minuteness ; hence it is only by thought that we can learn the true qualities of things. 8 Besides this, however, he seems to have followed up the thought, found already in Anaximan- der's idea of the anapov, that a complete mingling of definite quali ties yields something indefinite. So, at least, he described the primitive mixture of all substances which preceded the formation of the world as completely devoid of quality,' and a similar thought seems to have permitted him to regard the four elements of Emped- ocles not as primitive substances, but rather as already mixtures. 4
The rationalism common to the pre-Sophistic thinkers assumes, among the Pythagoreans, the particular form of affirming that knowledge consists in mathematical thought. This, though in itself a narrowing, is yet, on the other hand, a great step in advance, in asmuch as there is here given for the first time a positive definition of "thought" as contrasted with "perception. " Only through number, taught Philolaus,* is the essential nature of things to be
known ; that when the definite mathematical relations lying at their basis are recognised that things are properly conceived or
It extremely improbable that the solution of the problem through the subjectivity of the sense-qualities, which found in Democritus, was presented already by Leucippus, and therefore before Protagoras, who universally regarded as the founder of this theory.
frag. (Schorn) From this passage the true light may, perhaps, be thrown upon the sense in which Anaximander designates the ireipov as &6f>irror.
Arist. De Gen. et Corr. 314 24. Frag. (Mull. ) 13.
Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. VII. 90
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Chap. 1, 5 6. ] Conception* of Cognition : Pkilolaus, Zeno. 61
understood. This had been the experience of the Pythagoreans in music and in astronomy, and this was the object of their desire and effort in all other fields. When, however, they ultimately came to the result that this requirement could be completely met only in
the knowledge of the perfect world of the stars, they concluded from this that science (<ro<t>ui) relates only to the realm of order and perfection, that to heaven, and that in the realm of the imper fect, of change not subject to order, i. e. on earth, only practical ability (<! *>«■>? ) of avail. 1
Another positive characteristic of the "thinking" which the earlier investigators had set over against "perceiving," without closer specification, appears obscurely in the reasonings of Zeno, viz. conformity to logical laws. At the basis of all his attacks against plurality and motion lie the principle of contradiction and the presupposition that that can not be actual of which the same thing must be affirmed and also denied. This principle and presup position were applied with clearness and certainty, though not ab stractly expressed. The Eleatic theory of the world, so highly paradoxical, forced its supporters to enter into polemic more than did others, and the accounts as to Zeno's treatise, which, as seems, was also logically well arranged and divided, offer notable evi dence of the developed technique of refutation to which the school attained in consequence. To be sure, this formal training which prevailed in Eleatic circles does not seem to have led as yet to the abstract statement of logical laws. " " "
2. The setting over against each other of thinking and per ceiving" arose, then, from an estimation of their relative epistemo- logical value (erkenntniastheoretischen Werthbestimmung) [i. e. from the postulate that one of these two forms of mental activity worth more epistemologically for attaining truth]. In decided contradiction with this, however, stand the psychological principles with which these same investigators sought to apprehend the origin and process of knowing. For although their thinking was directed first and chiefly toward the outer world, man's mental activity came under their attention in so far as they were obliged to see in this activity one of the formations, or transformations, or products of motion, of the universe. The mind or soul and its action are then at this time considered scientifically only in connection with the entire course of the universe, whose product they are as truly as are all other things and since among the men of this period the general principles of explanation are everywhere as yet conceived corpore-
Stob. Bel. 488.
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62 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part L
ally it follows that we meet also a thorough-going materialistic
psychology. 1
Now mind or soul is in the first place moving force. Thales
ascribed such a soul to magnets, and declared that the whole world was full of souls. The essential nature of individual souls was therefore sought at first in that which had been recognised as the moving principle in the whole. Anaximenes found it in air, Heraclitus and likewise Parmenides (in his hypothetical physics) in fire, Leucippus in the fiery atoms,' and Anaxagoras in the world- moving, rational substance, the vow. Where, as in the system of Empedocles, a corporeal moving principle was lacking, the mixed substance which streams through the living body, the blood, was regarded as soul. Diogenes of Apollonia found the essence of the soul in the air mixed with the blood. 8 With the Pythagoreans, too, the individual soul could not be considered as the same with the iv (One) which they conceived as moving principle of the world, nor regarded as a part of it ; instead, they taught that the soul was a number, and made this very vague statement more definite by say ing that it was a harmony, —an expression which we can only interpret4 as meaning a harmony of the body; that the living, harmonious activity of its parts.
If now to this moving force, which leaves the body in death, were ascribed at the same time those properties which we to-day designate as " psychical," we find clear characterisation of the specifically theoretical interest by which this oldest science was filled, in the fact that among these attributes that of ideation, of " knowing," which almost exclusively the object of attention. * Of feelings and volitions there scarcely incidental mention. * But as the
Besides those characterisations of the soul, which resulted from their gen eral scientific theory, we find in the tradition in case of several of these men
(Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Pythagoreans) still other doc trines which are not only not connected witli the former, but are even in con tradiction to them. A conception of the body as prison of the soul (ri. ua = <rijjui), personal immortality, recompense after death, transmigration of souls. — all these are ideas which the philosophers took from their relations to the mysteries and retained in their priestly teaching, however little they accorded with their scientific teachings. Such expressions are not treated above.
In like manner, some of the Pythagoreans declared the motes which the sunlight discloses in the air to be souls.
Since, with reference to this, he recognised the distinction between venous ami arterial blood, he meant by his irwO/ux what the chemistry of to-day calls oxygen.
Ace. to Plato. Phmdo, 85 ff. , where the view rejected ns materialistic.
The w>Bs of Anaxagoras only knowing air with Diogenes of Apollonia great, powerful, eternal, intelligent body. Being with Parmenides at the
same time votlv, etc. Only ^iXAttjs and w«o« with Empedocles are mythically hypostasised impulses, and these, too, have nothing to do with his psychological views.
With this connected the fact that in general we cannot once speak
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Cm*». 1,§ 6. ] Conception* of Cognition: Her aclitus, Anaxagoras. 03
individual soul in so far as it is moving force was held to be a part of the force which moves the entire universe, so also the " knowing " rf the individual could be conceived only as a part of the knowing activity of the world. ' This is clearest in the systems of Heraclitus lad Anaxagoras ; each individual has so much knowledge as there a contained in him of the general World-reason, —fire with Htraelitus,* the rofc with Anaxagoras. In the case of Leucippus and of Diogenes of Apollonia the ideas are similar.
This physical conception, which with Anaxagoras especially is portly quantitative, was given a turn by Heraclitus, in which the ;;&stemological postulate again forces its way to the front, and asserts itself in the interest of a deeper insight and a profounder new. The World-reason in which the individual participates in his knowledge is everywhere the same; the Xoyot of Heraclitus3 and the io£« of Anaxagoras, as homogenous Reason, are distributed through the whole universe as moving force. Knowing, then, is that which is common to all. It is therefore the law and order to »iich every one has to unite himself. In dreams, in personal opin ion, each one has his own world; knowing is common ((wov) to tlL By means of this characteristic, viz. that of universally valid law, the conception of knowing acquires a normative significance* aad subjection to the common, to the law, appears as a duty \z the intellectual realm as well as in the political, ethical, and religious. *
i at ethical investigation in this period. For single moralising reflections ana cannot be regarded as beginnings of ethics. On the only excep-
tm ef. below, note 6.
• Th« expression " World-soul " was first used by Plato, or at the earliest by
? VVWana (in the fragment which has certainly been much questioned just for t&s reason. Mull. 21). The idea is certainly present in Anaximenes, Heraclitus, aaexagnra*. and perhaps also among the Pythagoreans.
' Heoop
■araJBg u> guard the soul from the wet (intoxication).
the paradoxical expression, the dryest soul is the wisest, and the
• CI. , for this and the following, M. Heinze, Die Lthre vom Logos in der frwraurton Philotopkie (Oldenburg, 1872).
• Fr*g. (Schust. ) 123.
• This is the only conception in the development of pre-Sophistic thought, in a» iw ot which we can speak of an attempt to propound a scientific principle «< ttkir*. If Heraclitus had in mind a universal expression for all moral duties ■i •prxkme of this subordination to law, or at least hit upon such, he attached - at once u> the fundamental thoughts of his metaphysics, which declared thin
a* u> be the abiding essence of the world. Yet attention has above ($4) been aJed to the fact that in the conception of the world-order which hovered before I^m, he did not as yet separate consciously the different motives (especially the pcTacml from the ethical), and so ethical investigation does not as yet work
uctf cU»r from the physical to an Independent position. The same is true of '■*»pTthaxoreans, who expressed the conception of order by the term "harmony " »iaj> also might be adopted from Heraclitus), and therefore designated virtue • ~eannony. " To be sure, they used the term " harmony " for the soul, for
awe*, ami for many other things.
64 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part ,
3. If now we ask how under these assumptions the fact was explained that " knowledge " comes into the individual man, i. e. into his body, we find that the only answer offered by Heraclitus and the whole company of his successors "through the door of the senses. " When man awake, the World-reason streams into his body through the opened senses (sight and hearing are of course chiefly noticed1), and, therefore, he knows. This comes about, to be sure, only there besides, in the man himself, so much reason or soul that the motion coming from without met by an inner motion but upon this interaction, effected through the senses> between the outer and the inner reason knowledge rests.
A psychological distinction, then, between perceiving and think ing, which, as regards their respective epistemological values, are so abruptly opposed, Heraclitus does not know how to state. Par- menides,* however, was just as little in position to make such distinction. 4 Rather, he expressed more sharply still the dependence upon bodily relations in which the thinking of the individual man involved, when he said that every one so thought as the conditions constituted by the mixture of substances in the members of the body permitted, and when he found in this confirmation of his general thought of the identity of corporeality and thinking in general. * Still more express the testimony6 that Empedocles declared thinking and perceiving to be the same, that he thought change in thinking as dependent upon change of the body, and that he regarded the constitution of the blood as of decisive importance for the intellectual capacity of the man.
These two last-named thinkers did not hesitate, moreover, to make their conception more plain to the imagination by means of physio logical hypotheses. Parmenides taught in his hypothetical physics
Also smell (Empedocles) and taste (Anaxagoras). Only the Atomists, and in particular Democritus, seem to have given value to the sense of touch.
Arist. De An. 405 a 27.
Theophr. De Sens.
So, too, reported (Theophr. De Sens. 26) of Alcmseon, the Pythago-
reanising physician, that he declared thought or consciousness (Jh-i jiAwj \vrijpi) to be the characteristic which distinguishes man from the other animals. But a more precise determination lacking here also unless, in accordance with the expression, we think of something similar to the Aristotelian Kotviv al<rSrrr-^pu>w With this would agree the circumstance that the first attempts to localise the particular psychical activities in particular parts of the body seem to have been made in the circles of the Pythagoreans and of the physicians who stood in near relations to them localising, e. g. , thought in the brain, perception in the indi vidual organs and in the heart, and the emotions also in the latter organ. From them Diogenes of Apollonia, and after him Democritus, seem to have taken these beginnings of physiological psychology.
Frag. (Karst. ) vv. 146-149.
Arist. De An. 404 Theophr. De Sens. 10
III. 427 21 Met. III. 1009 17
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a*t like is always perceived by like, warmth without by the warmth
:a man, the cold without by the cold even in the dead body.
jclea, with the aid of his theory of effluxes and pores, carried out
tae thought that every element in our body perceives the same ele ment in the outer world, so as to teach that each organ is accessible w the impress of those substances only whose effluxes fit into its pores ; i. e. he derived the specific energy of the sense organs from relations of similarity between their outer form and their objects, lad carried this out for sight, hearing, and smell, with observations vhich in part are very acute. 1
This view, that like is apprehended by like, was opposed by Anaxagoras, —on what ground it is not certain. ' He taught that perception is only of opposite by opposite, warmth without by the eoU in man, etc.
