No More Learning

Although he was no such revolutionising
personality as Pythagoras he had nevertheless in his
wanderings the same bent and impulse to improve,
purify, and cure men. He was the ethical teacher,
but still in the stage of the rhapsodist; in a later time


## p. 121 (#187) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 121
he would have been a sophist. In the daring dis-
approval of the existing customs and valuations he
had not his equal in Greece; moreover he did not,
like Heraclitus and Plato, retire into solitude but
placed himself before the very public, whose exult-
ing admiration of Homer, whose passionate pro-
pensity for the honours of the gymnastic festivals,
whose adoration of stones in human shape, he criti-
cised severely with wrath and scorn, yet not as a
brawling Thersites. The freedom of the individual
was with him on its zenith; and by this almost limit-
less stepping free from all conventions he was more
closely related to Parmenides than by that last divine
unity, which once he had beheld, in a visionary state
worthy of that century. His unity scarcely had ex-
pression and word in common with the one "Being"
of Parmenides, and certainly had not the same origin.
It was rather an opposite state of mind in which
Parmenides found his doctrine of" Being. " On that
day and in that state he examined his two co-oper-
ating antitheses, the "Existent" and the "Non-
Existent," the positive and the negative qualities, of
which Desire and Hatred constitute the world and
the Becoming. He was suddenly caught up, mis-
trusting, by the idea of negative quality, of the "Non-
Existent. " For can something which does not exist
be a quality? or to put the question in a broader sense:
can anything indeed which does not exist, exist?
The only form of knowledge in which we at once put
unconditional trust and the disapproval of which
amounts to madness, is the tautology A = A. But
this very tautological knowledge called inexorably
to him: what does not exist, exists not! What is, is!
r


## p. 122 (#188) ############################################

122 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
Suddenly he feels upon his life the load of an enor-
mous logical sin; for had he not always without
hesitation assumed that there were existing negative
qualities, in short a "Non-Existent," that therefore,
to express it by a formula, A = Not-A, which indeed
could only be advanced by the most out and out
perversity of thinking. It is true, as he recollected,
the whole great mass of men judge with the same
perversity; he himself has only participated in the
general crime against logic. But the same moment
which charges him with this crime surrounds him
with the light of the glory of an invention, he has
found, apart from all human illusion, a principle,
the key to the world-secret, he now descends into
the abyss of things, guided by the firm and fearful
hand of the tautological truth as to " Being. "
On the way thither he meets Heraclitus—an un-
fortunate encounter! Just now Heraclitus' play with
antinomies was bound to be very hateful to him,
who placed the utmost importance upon the severest
separation of "Being" and "Not- Being"; propositions
like this : "We are and at the same time we are not"
—"'Being' and 'Not-Being' is at the same time the
same thing and again not the same thing," proposi-
tions through which all that he had just elucidated
and disentangled became again dim and inextric-
able, incited him to wrath. "Away with the men,"
he exclaimed, "who seem to have two heads and
yet know nothing! With them truly everything is
in flux, even their thinking! They stare at things
stupidly, but they must be deaf as well as blind so
to mix up the opposites"! The want of judgment
on the part of the masses, glorified by playful anti-


## p. 123 (#189) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 123
nomies and praised as the acme of all knowledge was
to him a painful and incomprehensible experience.
Now he dived into the cold bath of his awful ab-
stractions. That which is true must exist in eternal
presence, about it cannot be said "it was," "it will
be. " The "Existent" cannot have become; for out of
what should it have become? Out of the " Non-Ex-
istent"? But that does not exist and can produce
nothing. Out of the " Existent"? This would not
produce anything but itself. The same applies to
the Passing, it is just as impossible as the Becoming,
as any change, any increase, any decrease. On the
whole the proposition is valid: Everything about
which it can be said: "it has been " or " it will be"
does not exist; about the "Existent" however it can
never be said "it does not exist. " The "Existent" is
indivisible, for where is the second power, which
should divide it? It is immovable, for whither should
it move itself? It cannot be infinitely great nor in-
finitely small, for it is perfect and a perfectly given
infinitude is a contradiction. Thus the "Existent" is
suspended,delimited, perfect, immovable, everywhere
equally balanced and suchequilibriumequallyperfect
at any point, like a globe, but not in a space, for
otherwise this space would be a second "Existent. "
But there cannot exist several "Existents," for in
order to separate them, something would have to exist
which was not existing, an assumption which neutral-
ises itself. Thus there exists only the eternal Unity.
If now, however, Parmenides turned back his gaze
to the world of Becoming, the existence of which he
had formerly tried to understand by such ingenious
conjectures, he was wroth at his eye seeing the


## p. 123 (#190) ############################################

122 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
Suddenly he feels upon his life the load of an enor-
mous logical sin; for had he not always without
hesitation assumed that tliere were existing negative
qualities, in short a "Non-Existent," that therefore,
to express it by a formula, A = Not-A, which indeed
could only be advanced by the most out and out
perversity of thinking. It is true, as he recollected,
the whole great mass of men judge with the same
perversity; he himself has only participated in the
general crime against logic. But the same moment
which charges him with this crime surrounds him
with the light of the glory of an invention, he has
found, apart from all human illusion, a principle,
the key to the world-secret, he now descends into
the abyss of things, guided by the firm and fearful
hand of the tautological truth as to " Being. "
On the way thither he meets Heraclitus—an un-
fortunate encounter! Just now Heraclitus' play with
antinomies was bound to be very hateful to him,
who placed the utmost importance upon the severest
separation of "Being" and "Not- Being"; propositions
like this : "We arc and at the same time we are not"
—"'Being' and 'Not-Being' is at the same time the
same thing and again not the same thing," proposi-
tions through which all that he had just elucidated
and disentangled became again dim and inextric-
able, incited him to wrath. "Away with the men,"
he exclaimed, "who seem to have two heads and
yet know nothing! With them truly everything is
in flux, even their thinking! They stare at things
stupidly, but they must be deaf as well as blind so
to mix up the opposites"! The want of judgment
on the part of the masses, glorified by playful anti-
"
n


## p. 123 (#191) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 123
nomies and praised as the acme of all knowledge was
to him a painful and incomprehensible experience.
Now he dived into the cold bath of his awful ab-
stractions. That which is true must exist in eternal
presence, about it cannot be said "it was," "it will
be. " The "Existent" cannot have become; for out of
what should it have become? Out of the " Non-Ex-
istent "? But that does not exist and can produce
nothing. Out of the " Existent"? This would not
produce anything but itself. The same applies to
the Passing, it is just as impossible as the Becoming,
as any change, any increase, any decrease. On the
whole the proposition is valid: Everything about
which it can be said: "it has been " or " it will be"
does not exist; about the "Existent" however it can
never be said "it does not exist. " The " Existent" is
indivisible, for where is the second power, which
should divide it? It is immovable, for whither should
it move itself? It cannot be infinitely great nor in-
finitely small, for it is perfect and a perfectly given
infinitude is a contradiction. Thus the " Existent" is
suspended, delimited, perfect,immovable, every where
equally balanced and suchequilibriumequallyperfect
at any point, like a globe, but not in a space, for
otherwise this space would be a second "Existent. "
But there cannot exist several "Existents," for in
order to separate them, something would have to exist
which was notexisting, an assumption which neutral-
ises itself. Thus there exists only the eternal Unity.
If now, however, Parmenides turned back his gaze
to the world of Becoming, the existence of which he
had formerly tried to understand by such ingenious
conjectures, he was wroth at his eye seeing the


## p. 124 (#192) ############################################

124 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
Becoming at all, his ear hearing it. "Do not follow
the dim-sighted eyes," now his command runs, " not
the resounding ear nor the tongue, but examine
only by the power of the thought. " Therewith he
accomplished the extremely important first critique
of the apparatus of knowledge, although this critique
was still inadequate and proved disastrous in its
consequences. By tearing entirely asunder the
senses and the ability to think in abstractions, i. e.
reason, just as if they were two thoroughly separate
capacities, he demolished the intellect itself, and
incited people to that wholly erroneous separation
of" mind " and "body" which, especially since Plato,
lies like a curse on philosophy. All sense percep-
tions, Parmenides judges, cause only illusions and
their chief illusion is their deluding us to believe that
even the "Non-Existent" exists, that even the Be-
coming has a " Being. " All that plurality, diversity
and variety of the empirically known world, the
change of its qualities, the order in its ups and downs,
is thrown aside mercilessly as mere appearance and
delusion; from there nothing is to be learnt, there-
fore all labour is wasted which one bestows upon
this false, through-and-through futile world, the con-
ception of which has been obtained by being hum-
bugged by the senses. He who judges in such
generalisations as Parmenides did, ceases therewith
to be an investigator of natural philosophy in detail;
his interest in phenomena withers away; there de-
velops even a hatred of being unable to get rid of
this eternal fraud of the senses. Truth is now to
dwell only in the most faded, most abstract gener-
alities, in the empty husks of the most indefinite


## p. 125 (#193) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 125
words, as in a maze of cobwebs; and by such a
"truth" now the philosopher sits, bloodless as an
abstraction and surrounded by a web of fprmulae.
The spider undoubtedly wants the blood of its vic-
tims; but the Parmenidean philosopher hates the
very blood of his victims, the blood of Empiricism
sacrificed by him.
ii
And that was a Greek who " flourished " about the
time of the outbreak of the Ionic Revolution. At
that time it was possible for a Greek to flee out of
the superabundant reality, as out of a mere delusive
schematism of the imaginative faculties—not perhaps
like Plato into the land of the eternal ideas, into the
workshop of the world-creator, in order to feast the
eyes on unblemished, unbreakable primal-forms of
things—but into the rigid death-like rest of the cold-
est and emptiest conception, that of the " Being. " We
will indeed beware of interpreting such a remarkable
fact by false analogies. That flight was not a world-
flight in the sense of Indian philosophers ; no deep
religious conviction as to the depravity, transitori-
ness and accursedness of Existence demanded that
flight—that ultimate goal, the rest in the " Being,"
was not striven after as the mystic absorption in
one all-sufficing enrapturing conception which is a
puzzle and a scandal to common men. The thought
of Parmenides bears in itself not the slightest trace
of the intoxicating mystical Indian fragrance, which
is perhaps not wholly imperceptible in Pythagoras
and Empedocles; the strange thing in that fact, at
this period, is rather the very absence of fragrance,


## p. 126 (#194) ############################################

126 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
colour, soul, form, the total lack of blood, religiosity
and ethical warmth, the abstract-schematic—in a
Greek ! —above all however our philosopher's awful
energy of striving after Certainty, in a mythically
thinking and highly emotional - fantastic age is
quite remarkable. "Grant me but a certainty, ye
gods! " is the prayer of Parmenides, "and be it, in
the ocean of Uncertainty, only a board, broad enough
to lie on! Everything becoming, everything lux-
uriant, varied, blossoming, deceiving, stimulating,
living, take all that for yourselves, and give to me
but the single poor empty Certainty! "
In the philosophy of Parmenides the theme of
ontology forms the prelude. Experience offered
him nowhere a "Being" as he imagined it to himself,
but from the fact that he could conceive of it he
concluded that it must exist; a conclusion which
rests upon the supposition that we have an organ of
knowledge which reaches into the nature of things
and is independent of experience. The material of
our thinking according to Parmenides does not exist
in perception at all but is brought in from somewhere
else, from an extra-material world to which by
thinking we have a direct access. Against all simi-
lar chains of reasoning Aristotle has already asserted
that existence never belongs to the essence, never
belongs to the nature of a thing. For that very
reason from the idea of "Being"—of which the
essentia precisely is only the "Being "—cannot be
inferred an existentia of the "Being" at all. The
logical content of that antithesis "Being" and "Not-
Being" is perfectly nil, if the object lying at the
bottom of it, if the precept cannot be given from


## p. 127 (#195) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 127
which this antithesis has been deduced by abstrac-
tion; without this going back to the precept the
antithesis is only a play with conceptions, through
which indeed nothing is discerned. For the merely
logical criterion of truth, as Kant teaches, namely the
agreement of a discernment with the general and
the formal laws of intellect and reason is, it is true,
the conditio sine qua non, consequently the negative
condition of all truth; further however logic cannot
go, and logic cannot discover by any touchstone the
error which pertains not to the form but to the
contents. As soon, however, as one seeks the con-
tent for the logical truth of the antithesis: "That
which is, is; that which is not, is not," one will find
indeed not a simple reality, which is fashioned
rigidly according to that antithesis: about a tree I
can say as well "it is" in comparison with all the
other things, as well "it becomes" in comparison
with itself at another moment of time as finally also
"it is not," e. g. , "it is not yet tree," as long as I per-
haps look at the shrub. Words are only symbols for
the relations of things among themselves and to us,
and nowhere touch absolute truth; and now to crown
all, the word "Being" designates only the most
general relation, which connects all things, and so
does the word " Not-Being. " If however the Exist-
ence of the things themselves be unprovable, then the
relation of the things among themselves, the so-called
"Being" and "Not-Being," will not bring us any
nearer to the land of truth. By means of words and
ideas we shall never get behind the wall of the rela-
tions, let us say into some fabulous primal cause of
things, and even in the pure forms of the sensitive


## p. 128 (#196) ############################################

128 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
faculty and of the intellect, in space, time and
causality we gain nothing, which might resemble a
"veritas cBterna. " It is absolutely impossible for
the subject to see and discern something beyond
himself, so impossible that Cognition and "Being"
are the most contradictory of all spheres. And if in
the uninstructed naivete of the then critique of the in-
tellect Parmenides was permitted to fancy that out of
the eternally subjective idea he had come to a "Being-
In-itself," then it is to-day, after Kant, a daring
ignorance, if here and there, especially among badly
informed theologians who want to play the philoso-
pher, is proposed as the task of philosophy: "to
conceive the Absolute by means of consciousness,"
perhaps even in the form: "the Absolute is already
extant,else how could it be sought? " as Hegel has ex-
pressed himself, or with the saying of Beneke: "that
the' Being' must be given somehow, must be attain-
able for us somehow, since otherwise we could not
even have the idea of Being. '" The idea of "Being "!
As though that idea did not indicate the most miser-
able empiric origin already in the etymology of the
word. For esse means at the bottom: "to breathe,"
if man uses it of all other things, then he transmits
the conviction that he himself breathes and lives by
means of a metaphor, i. e. , by means of something
illogical to the other things and conceives of their
Existence as a Breathing according to human ana-
logy. Now the original meaning of the word soon
becomes effaced ; so much however still remains that
man conceives of the existence of other things ac-
cording to the analogy of his own existence, there-
fore anthropomorphically, and at any rate by means


## p. 129 (#197) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 129
of an illogical transmission. Even to man, therefore
apart from that transmission, the proposition: "I
breathe, therefore a 'Being' exists" is quite insuf-
ficient since against it the same objection must be
made, as against the ambulo, ergo sum, or ergo est.
12
The other idea, of greater import than that of the
"Existent," and likewise invented already by Par-
menides, although not yet so clearly applied as by
his disciple Zeno is the idea of the Infinite. Nothing
Infinite can exist; for from such an assumption the
contradictory idea of a perfect Infinitude would
result. Since now our actuality, our existing world
everywhere shows the character of that perfect
Infinitude, our world signifies in its nature a contra-
diction against logic and therewith also against
reality and is deception, lie, fantasma. Zeno especi-
ally applied the method of indirect proof; he said
for example, " There can be no motion from one
place to another; for if there were such a motion,
then an Infinitude would be given as perfect, this
however is an impossibility. " Achilles cannot catch
up the tortoise which has a small start in a race,
for in order to reach only the point from which the
tortoise began, he would have had to run through
innumerable, infinitely many spaces, viz. , first half
of that space, then the fourth, then the sixteenth,
and so on ad infinitum. If he does in fact overtake
the tortoise then this is an illogical phenomenon,
and therefore at any rate not a truth, not a reality,
not real "Being," but only a delusion. For it is never
possible to finish the infinite. Another popular ex-
9


## p. 130 (#198) ############################################

130 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
pression of this doctrine is the flying and yet resting
arrow. At any instant of its flight it has a position;
in this position it rests. Now would the sum of the
infinite positions of rest be identical with motion?
Would now the Resting, infinitely often repeated,
be Motion, therefore its own opposite? The Infinite
is here used as the aquafortis of reality, through it
the latter is dissolved. If however the Ideas are
fixed, eternal and entitative—and for Parmenides
"Being" and Thinking coincide—if therefore the In-
finite can never be perfect, if Rest can never become
Motion, then in fact the arrow has not flown at all;
it never left its place and resting position; no
moment of time has passed. Or expressed in an-
other way: in this so-called yet only alleged Actuality
there exists neither time, nor space, nor motion.
Finally the arrow itself is only an illusion; for it
originates out of the Plurality, out of the phantas-
magoria of the " Non-One" produced by the senses.
Suppose the arrow had a "Being," then it would be
immovable, timeless, increate, rigid and eternal—an
impossible conception! Supposing that Motion
was truly real, then there would be no rest, there-
fore no position for the arrow, therefore no space—
an impossible conception! Supposing that time were
real, then it could not be of an infinite divisibility;
the time which the arrow needed, would have to
consist of a limited number of time-moments, each
of these moments would have to be an Atomon—an
impossible conception! All our conceptions, as soon
as their empirically-given content, drawn out of this
concrete world, is taken as a veritas aterna, lead to
contradictions. If there is absolute motion, then


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EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 131
there is no space; if there is absolute space then
there is no motion; if there is absolute "Being," then
there is no Plurality; if there is an absolute Plurality,
then there is no Unity. It should at least become
clear to us how little we touch the heart of things or
untie the knot of reality with such ideas, whereas
Parmenides and Zeno inversely hold fast to the
truth and omnivalidity of ideas and condemn the
perceptible world as the opposite of the true and
omnivalid ideas, as an objectivation of the illogical
and contradictory. With all their proofs they start
from the wholly undemonstrable, yea improbable
assumption that in that apprehensive faculty we
possess the decisive, highest criterion of "Being" and
"Not-Being," i. e. ,of objective reality and its opposite;
those ideas are not to prove themselves true, to
correct themselves by Actuality, as they are after
all really derived from it, but on the contrary they
are to measure and to judge Actuality, and in case
of a contradiction with logic, even to condemn.
In order to concede to them this judicial competence
Parmenides had to ascribe to them the same" Being,"
which alone he allowed in general as the "Being ";
Thinking and that one increate perfect ball of the
"Existent" were now no longer to be conceived as
two different kinds of " Being," since there was not
permitted a duality of" Being. " Thus the over-risky
flash of fancy had become necessaryto declare Think-
ing and " Being" identical. No form of perceptibility,
no symbol, no simile could possibly be of any help
here; the fancy was wholly inconceivable, but it
was necessary, yea in the lack of every possibility
of illustration it celebrated the highest triumph over


## p. 132 (#200) ############################################

132 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
the world and the claims of the senses. Thinking
and that clod-like, ball-shaped,through-and-through
dead-massive, and rigid-immovable "Being," must,
according to the Parmenidean imperative, dissolve
into one another and be the same in every respect,
to the horror of fantasy. What does it matter that
this identity contradicts the senses! This contra-
diction is just the guarantee that such an identity
is not borrowed from the senses.
13
Moreover against Parmenides could be produced
a strong couple of argumenta ad hominem or ex con-
cessis, by which, it is true, truth itself could not be
brought to light, but at any rate the untruth of that
absolute separation of the world of the senses and
the world of the ideas, and the untruth of the iden-
tity of" Being" and Thinking could be demonstrated.
Firstly, if the Thinking of Reason in ideas is real,
then also Plurality and Motion must have reality, for
rational Thinking is mobile; and more precisely, it is
a motion from idea to idea, therefore within a plur-
ality of realities. There is no subterfuge against
that; it is quite impossible to designate Thinking
as a rigid Permanence, as an eternally immobile,
intellectual Introspection of Unity. Secondly, if
only fraud and illusion come from the senses, and if in
reality there exists only the real identity of " Being"
and Thinking, what then are the senses themselves?
They too are certainly Appearance only since they
do not coincide with the Thinking, and their pro-
duct, the world of senses, does not coincide with
"Being. " If however the senses themselves are


## p. 133 (#201) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 133
Appearance to whom then are they Appearance?
How can they, being unreal, still deceive? The
"Non-Existent" cannot even deceive. Therefore
the Whence? of deception and Appearance remains
an enigma, yea, a contradiction. We call these argu-
menta ad hominem: The Objection Of The Mobile
Reason and that of The Origin Of Appearance.
From the first would result the reality of Motion
and of Plurality, from the second the impossibility
of the Parmenidean Appearance, assuming that the
chief-doctrine of Parmenides on the "Being" were
accepted as true. This chief-doctrine however only
says: The "Existent" only has a "Being," the "Non-
Existent" does not exist. If Motion however has
such a " Being," then to Motion applies what applies
to the " Existent" in general: it is increate, eternal,
indestructible, without increase or decrease. But if
the " Appearance" is denied and a belief in it made
untenable, by means of that question as to the
Whence? of the "Appearance," if the stage of the
so-called Becoming, of change, our many-shaped,
restless, coloured and rich Existence is protected
from the Parmenidean rejection, then it is necessary
to characterise this world of change and alteration
as a sum of such really existing Essentials, existing
simultaneously into all eternity. Of a change in
the strict sense, of a Becoming there cannot natur-
ally be any question even with this assumption.
But now Plurality has a real "Being," all qualities
have a real "Being" and motion not less; and of any
moment of this world—although these moments
chosen at random lie at a distance of millenniums
from one another—it would have to be possible to


## p. 134 (#202) ############################################

134 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
say: all real Essentials extant in this world are with-
out exception co-existent, unaltered, undiminished,
without increase, without decrease. A millennium
later the world is exactly the same. Nothing has
altered. If in spite of that the appearance of the
world at the one time is quite different from that at
the other time, then that is no deception, nothing
merely apparent, but the effect of eternal motion.
The real "Existent" is moved sometimes thus, some-
times thus: together, asunder, upwards, downwards,
into one another, pell-mell.
14
With this conception we have already taken a step
into the realm of the doctrine of Anaxagoras. By
him both objections against Parmenides are raised
in full strength; that of the mobile Thinking and
that of the Whence? of " Appearance "; but in the
chief proposition Parmenides has subjugated him
as well as all the younger philosophers and nature-
explorers. They all deny the possibility of Becom-
ing and Passing, as the mind of the people conceives
them and as Anaximander and Heraclitus had as-
sumed with greater circumspection and yet still heed-
lessly. Such a mythological Originating out of the
Nothing, such a Disappearing into the Nothing, such
an arbitrary Changing of the Nothing into the Some-
thing, such a random exchanging, putting on and
putting off of the qualities was henceforth considered
senseless ; but so was, and for the same reasons, an
originating of the Many out of the One, of the mani-
fold qualities out of the one primal-quality, in short
the derivation ofthe world outof a primary substance,


## p. 135 (#203) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 135
as argued by Thales and Heraclitus. Ratherwas now
the real problem advanced of applying the doctrineof
increate imperishable " Being" to this existing world,
without taking one's refuge in the theory of appear-
ance and deception. But if the empiric world is not
to be Appearance, if the things are not to be derived
out of Nothing and j ust as little out of the one Some-
thing, then these things must contain in themselves a
real "Being," their matter and content must be uncon-
ditionally real, and all change can refer only to the
form, i. e. , to the position, order, grouping, mixing,
separation of these eternally co-existing Essentials.
It is just as in a game of dice; they are ever the
same dice; but falling sometimes thus, sometimes
thus, they mean to us something different. All older
theories had gone back to a primal element, as womb
and cause of Becoming, be this water, air, fire or the
Indefinite of Anaximander. Against that Anaxa-
goras now asserts that out of the Equal the Unequal
could never come forth, and that out of the one
"Existent" the change could never be explained.
Whether now one were to imagine that assumed
matter to be rarefied or condensed, one would never
succeed by such a condensation or rarefaction in
explaining the problem one would like to explain:
the plurality of qualities. But if the world in fact
is full of the most different qualities then these must,
in case they are not appearance, have a " Being," i. e. ,
must be eternal, increate, imperishable and ever co-
existing. Appearance, however, they cannot be,
since the question as to the Whence? of Appearance
remains unanswered, yea answers itself in the nega-
tive! The earlier seekers after Truth had intended


## p. 136 (#204) ############################################

136 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
to simplify the problem of Becoming by advancing
only one substance, which bore in its bosom the
possibilities of all Becoming; now on the contrary
it is asserted: there are innumerable substances,
but never more, never less, and never new ones.
Only Motion, playing dice with them throws them
into ever new combinations. That Motion however
is a truth and not Appearance, Anaxagoras proved
in opposition to Parmenides by the indisputable
succession of our conceptions in thinking. We have
therefore in the most direct fashion the insight into
the truth of motion and succession in the fact that
we think and have conceptions. Therefore at any
rate the one rigid, resting, dead "Being" of Par-
menides has been removed out of the way, there
are many " Existents" just as surely as all these
many "Existents" (existing things, substances)
are in motion. Change is motion—but whence
originates motion? Does this motion leave per-
haps wholly untouched the proper essence of those
many independent, isolated substances, and, accord-
ing to the most severe idea of the "Existent,"
must not motion in itself be foreign to them?
Or
does it after all belong to the things themselves?
We stand here at an important decision; according
to which way we turn, we shall step into the realm
either of Anaxagoras or of Empedocles or of Democ-
ritus. The delicate question must be raised: if there
are many substances, and if these many move, what
moves them? Do they move one another? Or is it
perhaps only gravitation? Or are there magic forces
of attraction and repulsion within the things them-
selves? 0r does the cause of motion lie outside


## p. 137 (#205) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 137
these many real substances? Or putting the question
more pointedly: if two things show a succession, a
mutual change of position, does that originate from
themselves? And is this to be explained mechani-
cally or magically? Or if this should not be the
case is it a third something which moves them?
It is a sorry problem, for Parmenides would still
have been able to prove against Anaxagoras the
impossibility of motion, even granted that there are
many substances. For he could say: Take two
Substances existing of themselves, each with quite
differently fashioned, autonomous, unconditioned
"Being"—and of such kind are the Anaxagorean sub-
stances—they can never clash together, never move,
never attract one another, there exists between them
no causality, no bridge, they do not come into con-
tact with one another, do not disturb one another,
they do not interest one another, they are utterly
indifferent. The impact then is just as inexplicable
as the magic attraction: that which is utterly foreign
cannot exercise any effect upon another, therefore
cannot move itself nor allow itself to be moved.
Parmenides would even have added: the only way
of escape which is left to you is this, to ascribe
motion to the things themselves; then however all
that you know and see as motion is indeed only a
deception and not true motion, for the only kind
of motion which could belong to those absolutely
original substances, would be merely an autogenous
motion limited to themselves without any effect.
But you assume motion in order to explain those
effects of change, of the disarrangement in space, of
alteration, in short the causalities and relations of


## p. 138 (#206) ############################################

138 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
the things among themselves. But these very effects
would not be explained and would remain as prob-
lematic as ever; for this reason one cannot conceive
why it should be necessary to assume a motion since
it does not perform that which you demand from it.
Motion does not belong to the nature of things and
is eternally foreign to them.
Those opponents of the Eleatean unmoved Unity
were induced to make light of such an argument by
prejudices of a perceptual character. It seems so
irrefutable that each veritable " Existent" is a space-
filling body, a lump of matter, large or small but in
any case spacially dimensioned; so that two or more
such lumps cannot be in one space. Under this
hypothesis Anaxagoras, as later on Democritus,
assumed that they must knock against each other;
if in their motions they came by chance upon one
another, that they would dispute the same space with
each other, and that this struggle was the very cause
of all Change. In other words: those wholly isolated,
thoroughly heterogeneous and eternally unalter-
able substances were after all not conceived as being
absolutely heterogeneous but all had in addition to a
specific, wholly peculiar quality, also one absolutely
homogeneous substratum: a piece of space-filling
matter. In their participation in matter they all
stood equal and therefore could act upon one another,
i. e. , knock one another. Moreover all Change did
not in the least depend on the heterogeneity of
those substances but on their homogeneity, as matter.
At the bottom of the assumption of Anaxagoras is
a logical oversight; for that which is the " Existent-
In-Itself" mustbewhollyunconditional and coherent,


## p. 139 (#207) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 139
is therefore not allowed to assume as its cause any-
thing,—whereas all those Anaxagorean substances
have still a conditioning Something: matter, and
already assume its existence; the substance " Red"
for example was to Anaxagoras not just merely red
in itself but also in a reserved or suppressed way a
piece of matter without any qualities. Only with
this matter the "Red-In-Itself" acted upon other
substances, not with the " Red," but with that which
is not red, not coloured, nor in any way qualitatively
definite. If the "Red" had been taken strictly as
"Red," as the real substance itself, therefore without
that substratum, then Anaxagoras would certainly
not have dared to speak of an effect of the "Red"
upon other substances, perhaps even with the phrase
that the "Red-In-Itself"was transmittingthe impact
received from the "Fleshy-In-Itself. " Then it would
be clear that such an " Existent" par excellence could
never be moved.
IS
One has to glance at the opponents of the Eleates,
in order to appreciate the extraordinary advantages
in the assumption of Parmenides. What embarrass-
ments,—from which Parmenides had escaped,—
awaited Anaxagoras and all who believed in a plur-
ality of substances, with the question, Howmanysub-
stances? Anaxagoras made the leap, closed his eyes
and said, " Infinitely many "; thus he had flown at
least beyond the incredibly laborious proof of a de-
finite number of elementary substances. Since these
"Infinitely Many" had to exist without increase and
unaltered for eternities, in that assumption was given
the contradiction of an infinity to be conceived as


## p. 140 (#208) ############################################

140 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
completed and perfect. In short, Plurality, Motion,
Infinity driven into flight by Parmenides with the
amazing proposition of the one "Being," returned
from their exile and hurled their projectiles at the
opponents of Parmenides, causing them wounds for
which there is no cure. Obviously those opponents
have no real consciousness and knowledge as to the
awful force of those Eleatean thoughts," There can
be no time, no motion, no space; for all these we
can only think of as infinite, and to be more explicit,
firstly infinitely large, then infinitely divisible; but
everything infinite has no ' Being,' does not exist,"
and this nobody doubts, who takes the meaning of
the word " Being" severely and considers the exist-
ence of something contradictory impossible, eg. , the
existence of acompletedinfinity. If however the very
Actuality shows us everything under the form of the
completed infinity then it becomes evident that it
contradicts itself and therefore has no true reality. If
thoseopponents howevershould object: "but in your
thinking itself there does exist succession, therefore
neither could your thinking be real and consequently
could not prove anything," then Parmenides perhaps
like Kant in a similar case of an equal objection
would have answered: "I can, it is true, say my
conceptions follow upon one another, but that means
only that we are not conscious of them unless with-
in a chronological order, i. e. , according to the form
of the inner sense. For that reason time is not a
something in itself nor any order or quality objec-
tively adherent to things. " We should therefore have
to distinguish between the Pure Thinking,that would
be timeless like the one Parmenidean " Being," and


## p. 141 (#209) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 141
the consciousness of this thinking, and the latter would
already translate the thinking into the form of ap-
pearance, i. e. , of succession, plurality and motion. It
is probable that Parmenides would have availed him-
self of this loophole; however, the same objection
would then have to be raised against him which is
raised against Kant by A. Spir (" Thinking And
Reality," 2nd ed. , vol. i. , pp. 209, &c). "Now, in the
first place however it is clear, that I cannot know
anything of a succession as such, unless I have the
successive members of the same simultaneously in
my consciousness. Thus the conception of a suc-
cession itself is not at all successive, hence also quite
different from the succession of our conceptions.
Secondly Kant's assumption implies such obvious
absurdities that one is surprised that he could leave
them unnoticed. Caesar and Socrates according to
this assumption are not really dead, they still live
exactly as they did two thousand years ago and only
seem to be dead, as a consequence of an organisation
of my inner sense. " Future men already live and if
they do not now step forward as living that organisa-
tion of the "inner sense" is likewise the cause of it.
Here above all other things the question is to be put:
How can the beginning and the end of conscious
life itself, together with all its internal and external
senses, exist merely in the conception of the inner
sense? The fact is indeed this, that one certainly
cannot deny the reality of Change. If it is thrown
out through the window it slips in again through the
keyhole. If one says: "It merely seems to me, that
conditions and conceptions change,"—then this very
semblance and appearance itself is something objec-


## p. 142 (#210) ############################################

142 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
tively existing and within it without doubt the suc-
cession has objective reality, some things in it really
do succeed one another. —Besides one must observe
that indeed the whole critique of reason only has
cause and right of existence under the assumption
that to us our conceptions themselves appear exactly
as they are. For if the conceptions also appeared
to us otherwise than they really are, then one would
not be able to advance any solid proposition about
them, and therefore would not be able to accomplish
any gnosiology or any "transcendental" investiga-
tion of objective validity. Now it remains however
beyond all doubt that our conceptions themselves
appear to us as successive. "
The contemplation of this undoubted succession
and agitation has now urged Anaxagoras to a
memorable hypothesis. Obviously the conceptions
themselves moved themselves, were not pushed and
had no cause of motion outside themselves. There-
fore he said to himself, there exists a something
which bears in itself the origin and the commence-
ment of motion ; secondly, however, he notices that
this conception was moving not only itself but also
something quite different, the body. He discovers
therefore, in the most immediate experience an effect
of conceptions upon expansive matter, which makes
itself known as motion in the latter. That was to
him a fact; and only incidentally it stimulated him to
explain this fact. Let it suffice that he had a regula-
tive schema for the motion in the world,—this motion
he now understood either as a motion of the true
isolated essences through the Conceptual Principle,
the Nous,or as a motion through a something already


## p. 143 (#211) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 143
moved. That with his fundamental assumption the
latter kind, the mechanical transmission of motions
and impacts likewise contained in itself a problem,
probably escaped him ; the commonness and every-
day occurrence of the effect through impact most
probably dulled his eye to the mysteriousness of
impact. On the other hand he certainly felt the
problematic, even contradictory nature of an effect
of conceptions upon substances existing in them-
selves and he also tried therefore to trace this effect
back to a mechanical push and impact which were
considered by him as quite comprehensible. For the
Nous too was without doubt such a substance exist-
ing in itself and was characterised by him as a very
delicate and subtle matter, with the specific quality
of thinking. With a character assumed in this way,
the effect of this matter upon other matter had of
course to be of exactly the same kind as that which
another substance exercises upon a third, i. e. , a
mechanical effect, moving by pressure and impact.
Still the philosopher had now a substance which
moves itself and other things, a substance of which
the motion did not come from outside and depended
on no one else: whereas it seemed almost a
matter of indifference how this automobilism was to
be conceived of, perhaps similar to that pushing
themselves hither and thither of very fragile and
small globules of quicksilver. Among all questions
which concern motion there is none more trouble-
some than thequestion as to the beginning of motion.
For if one may be allowed to conceive of all remain-
ing motions as effect and consequences, then never-
theless the first primal motion is still to be explained;


## p. 144 (#212) ############################################

144 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
for the mechanical motions, the first link of the chain
certainly cannot lie in a mechanical motion, since
that would be as good as recurring to the nonsensical
idea of the causa sui. But likewise it is not feasible
to attribute to the eternal, unconditional things a
motion of their own, as it were from the beginning,
as dowry of their existence. For motion cannot be
conceived without'a direction whither and where-
upon, therefore only as relation and condition ; but
a thing is no longer "entitative-in-itself" and "un-
conditional," if according to its nature it refers neces-
sarily to something existing outside of it In this
embarrassment Anaxagoras thought he had found
an extraordinary help and salvation in that Nous,
automobile and otherwise independent; the nature
of that Nous being just obscure and veiled enough
to produce the deception about it, that its assumption
also involves that forbidden causa sui. To empiric
observation it is even an established fact that Con-
ception is not a causa sui but the effect of the brain,
yea, it must appear to that observation as an odd
eccentricity to separate the "mind," the product of the
brain, from its causa and still to deem it existing after
this severing. This Anaxagoras did ; he forgot the
brain, its marvellous design, the delicacy and intri-
cacy of its convolutions and passages and he decreed
the " Mind-In-Itself. " This " Mind-In-Itself" alone
among all substances had Free-will,—a grand dis-
cernment! This Mind was able at any odd time to
begin with the motion of the things outside it; on
the other hand for ages and ages it could occupy
itself with itself—in short Anaxagoras was allowed
to assume a. first moment of motion in some primeval


## p. 145 (#213) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 145
age, as the Chalaza of all so-called Becoming; t. e. ,
of all Change, namely of all shifting and rearrang-
ing of the eternal substances and their particles.
Although the Mind itself is eternal, it is in no way
compelled to torment itself for eternities with the
shifting about of grains of matter; and certainly
there was a time and a state of those matters—it is
quite indifferent whether that time was of long or
short duration—during which the Nous had not
acted upon them, during which they were still un-
moved. That is the period of the Anaxagorean
chaos.
16
The Anaxagorean chaos is not an immediately
evident conception; in order to grasp it one must
have understood the conception which our philo-
sopher had with respect to the so-called "Becoming. "
For in itself the state of all heterogeneous " Ele-
mentary-existences " before all motion would by no
means necessarily result in an absolute mixture of
all "seeds of things," as the expression of Anaxa-
goras runs, an intermixture, which he imagined as a
complete pell-mell, disordered in its smallest parts,
after all these "Elementary-existences" had been,
as in a mortar, pounded and resolved into atoms of
dust, so that now in that chaos, as in an amphora,
they could be whirled into a medley. One might
say that this conception of the chaos did not contain
anything inevitable, that one merely needed rather
to assume any chance position of all those "exist-
ences," but not an infinite decomposition of them;
an irregular side-by-side arrangement was already
sufficient; there was no need of a pell-mell, let alone


## p. 146 (#214) ############################################

146 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
such a total pell-mell. What therefore put into
Anaxagoras' head that difficult and complex con-
ception? As already said: his conception of the
empirically given Becoming. From his experience
he drew first a most extraordinary proposition on the
Becoming, and this proposition necessarily resulted
in that doctrine of the chaos, as its consequence
The observation of the processes of evolution in
nature, not a consideration of an earlier philosophi-
cal system, suggested to Anaxagoras the doctrine,
that All originated from All; this was the conviction
of the natural philosopher based upon a manifold,
and at the bottom, of course, excessively inadequate
induction. He proved it thus: if even the contrary
could originate out of the contrary, e. g. , the Black out
of the White, everything is possible; that however
did happen with the dissolution of white snow
into black water. The nourishment of the body
he explained to himself in this way: that in the
articles of food there must be invisibly small con-
stituents of flesh or blood or bone which during
alimentation became disengaged and united with
the homogeneous in the body. But if All can become
out of All, the Firm out of the Liquid, the Hard out
of the Soft, the Black out of the White, the Fleshy
out of Bread, then also All must be contained in All.
The names of things in that case express only the
preponderance of the one substance over the other
substances to be met with in smaller, often imper-
ceptible quantities. In gold, that is to say, in that
which one designates a potiore by the name " gold,"
there must be also contained silver, snow, bread,
and flesh, but in very small quantities; the whole


## p. 147 (#215) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 147
is called after the preponderating item, the gold-
substance.
But how is it possible, that one substance pre-
ponderates and fills a thing in greater mass than
the others present? Experience shows, that this
preponderance is gradually produced only through
Motion, that the preponderance is the result of a
process, which we commonly call Becoming. On the
other hand, that" All is in All" is not the result of a
process, but, on the contrary, the preliminary condi-
tion of all Becoming and all Motion, and is conse-
quently previous to all Becoming. In other words:
experience teaches, that continually the like is added
to the like,^. ,through nourishment, therefore origin-
ally those homogeneous substances were not together
and agglomerated, but they were separate. Rather,
in all empiric processes coming before our eyes, the
homogeneous is always segregated from the hetero-
geneous and transmitted (e. g. , during nourishment,
the particles of flesh out of the bread, &c), conse-
quently the pell-mell of the different substances is the
older form of the constitution of things and in point
of time previous to all Becoming and Moving. If
all so-called Becoming is a segregating and presup-
poses a mixture, the question arises, what degree of
intermixture this pell-mell must have had originally.
Although the process of a moving on the part of the
homogeneous to the homogeneous—i. e. , Becoming—
has already lasted an immense time, one recognises
in spite of that, that even yet in all things remainders
and seed-grains of all other things are enclosed, wait-
ing for their segregation, and one recognises further
that only here and there a preponderance has been


## p. 148 (#216) ############################################

148 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
brought about; the primal mixture must have been
a complete one, i. e. , going down to the infinitely
small, since the separation and unmixing takes up
an infinite length of time. Thereby strict adherence
is paid to the thought: that everything which pos-
sesses an essential "Being" is infinitely divisible,
without forfeiting its specificum.
According to these hypotheses Anaxagoras con-
ceives of the world's primal existence: perhaps as
similar to a dust-like mass of infinitely small, con-
crete particles of which every one is specifically
simple and possesses one quality only, yet so ar-
ranged that every specific quality is represented in
an infinite number of individual particles. Such
particles Aristotle has called Homoiotnere in con-
sideration of the fact that they are the Parts, all
equal one to another, of a Whole which is homo-
geneous with its Parts. One would however com-
mit a serious mistake to equate this primal pell-mell
of all such particles, such "seed-grains of things" to
the one primal matter of Anaximander; for the
latter's primal matter called the " Indefinite" is a
thoroughly coherent and peculiar mass, the former's
primal pell-mell is an aggregate of substances. It
is true one can assert about this Aggregate of Sub-
stances exactly the same as about the Indefinite of
Anaximander, as Aristotle does: it could be neither
white nor grey, nor black, nor of any other colour;
it was tasteless, scentless, and altogether as a Whole
defined neither quantitatively nor qualitatively: so
far goes the similarity of the Anaximandrian Inde-
finite and the Anaxagorean Primal Mixture. But
disregarding this negative equality they distinguish


## p. 149 (#217) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 149
themselves one from another positively by the latter
being a compound, the former a unity. Anaxagoras
had by the assumption of his Chaos at least so much
to his advantage, that he was not compelled to de-
duce the Many from the One, the Becoming out of
the " Existent. "
Of course with his complete intermixture of the
"seeds" he had to admit one exception: the Nous
was not then, nor is It now admixed with any thing.
For if It were admixed with only one "Existent,"
It would have, in infinite divisions, to dwell in
all things. This exception is logically very dubi-
ous, especially considering the previously described
material nature of the Nous, it has something mytho-
logical in itself and seems arbitrary, but was how-
ever, according to Anaxagorean prcsmissa, a strict
necessity. The Mind, which is moreover infinitely
divisible like any other matter, only not through
other matters but through Itself, has, if It divides
Itself, in dividing and conglobating sometimes in
large, sometimes in small masses, Its equal mass
and quality from all eternity; and that which at this
minute exists as Mind in animals, plants, men, was
also Mind without a more or less, although dis-
tributed in another way a thousand years ago. But
wherever It had a relation to another substance,
there It never was admixed with it, but voluntarily
seized it, moved and pushed it arbitrarily—in short,
ruled it. Mind, which alone has motion in Itself,
alone possesses ruling power in this world and shows
it through moving the grains of matter. But whither
does It move them? Or is a motion conceivable,
without direction, without path? Is Mind in Its


## p. 150 (#218) ############################################

ISO VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
impacts just as arbitrary as it is, with regard to the
time when It pushes, and when It does not push?
In short, does Chance, i. e. , the blindest option, rule
within Motion? At this boundary we step into
the Most Holy within the conceptual realm of
Anaxagoras.
17
What had to be done with that chaotic pell-mell
of the primal state previous to all motion, so that
out of it, without any increase of new substances
and forces, the existing world might originate, with
its regular stellar orbits, with its regulated forms of
seasons and days, with its manifold beauty and order,
—in short, so that out of the Chaos might come a
Cosmos? This can be only the effect of Motion, and
of a definite and well-organised motion. This Motion
itself is the means of the Nous, Its goal would be
the perfect segregation of the homogeneous, a goal
up to the present not yet attained, because the dis-
order and the mixture in the beginning was infinite.
This goal is to be striven after only by an enormous
process, not to be realized suddenly by a mythological
stroke of the wand. If ever, at an infinitely distant
point of time, it is achieved that everything homo-
geneous is brought together and the " primal-exist-
ences" undivided are encamped sidebysidein beauti-
ful order, and every particle has found its comrades
and its home, and the great peace comes about after
the great division and splitting up of the substances,
and there will be no longer anything that is divided
and split up, then the Nous will again return into
Its automobilism and, no longer Itself divided, roam
through the world, sometimes in larger, sometimes



## p. 151 (#219) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 151
in smaller masses, as plant-mind or animal-mind, and
no longer will It take up Its new dwelling-place in
other matter. Meanwhile the task has not been
completed; but the kind of motion which the Nous
has thought out, in order to solve the task, shows a
marvellous suitableness, for by this motion the task
is further solved in each new moment. For this
motion has the character of concentrically progres-
sive circular motion; it began at some one point of
the chaotic mixture, in the form of a little gyration,
and in ever larger paths this circular movement tra-
verses all existing " Being," jerking forth everywhere
the homogeneous to the homogeneous. At first this
revolution brings everything Dense to the Dense,
everything Rare to the Rare, and likewise all that
is Dark, Bright, Moist, Dry to their kind; above
these general groups or classifications there are
again two still more comprehensive, namely Ether,
that is to say everything that is Warm, Bright, Rare,
and Aer, that is to say everything that is Dark,
Cold, Heavy, Firm. Through the segregation of the
ethereal masses from the aerial, there is formed, as
the most immediate effect of that epicycle whose
centre moves along in the circumference of ever
greater circles, a something as in an eddy made in
standing water; heavy compounds are led towards
the middle and compressed. Just in the same way
that travelling waterspout in chaos forms itself on
the outer side out of the Ethereal, Rare, Bright Con-
stituents, on the inner side out of the Cloudy, Heavy,
Moist Constituents. Then in the course of this pro-
cess out of that Aerial mass, conglomerating in its
interior, water is separated, and again out of the


## p. 152 (#220) ############################################

152 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
water the earthy element, and then out of the
earthy element, under the effect of the awful cold
are separated the stones. Again at some juncture
masses of stone, through the momentum of the rota-
tion, are torn away sideways from the earth and
thrown into the realm of the hot light Ether; there
in the latter's fiery element they are made to glow
and, carried along in the ethereal rotation, they ir-
radiate light, and as sun and stars illuminate and
warm the earth, in herself dark and cold. The whole
conception is of a wonderful daring and simplicity
and has nothing of that clumsy and anthropomor-
phical teleology, which has been frequently connected
with the name of Anaxagoras. That conception has
its greatness just in this, that it derives the whole
Cosmos of Becoming out of the moved circle, whereas
Parmenides contemplated the true " Existent" as a
resting, dead ball. Once that circle is put into motion
and caused to roll by the Nous, then all the order,
law and beauty of the world is the natural conse-
quence of that first impetus. How very much one
wrongs Anaxagoras if one reproaches him for the
wise abstention from teleology which shows itself in
this conception and talks scornfully of his Nous as
of a deus ex machina. Rather, on account of the
elimination of mythological and theistic miracle-
working and anthropomorphic ends and utilities,
Anaxagoras might have made use of proud words
similar to those which Kant used in his Natural His-
tory of the Heavens. For it is indeed a sublime
thought, to retrace that grandeur of the cosmos and
the marvellous arrangement of the orbits of the stars,
to retrace all that, in all forms to a simple, purely
X


## p. 153 (#221) ############################################

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY I S3
mechanical motion and, as it were, to a moved mathe-
matical figure, and therefore not to reduce all that to
purposes and intervening hands of a machine-god,
but only to a kind of oscillation, which, having once
begun, is in its progress necessary and definite, and
effects result which resemble the wisest computation
of sagacity and extremely well thought-out fitness
without being anything of the sort. "I enjoy the
pleasure," says Kant, " of seeing how a well-ordered
whole produces itself without the assistance of arbi-
trary fabrications, under the impulse of fixed laws of
motion—a well-ordered whole which looks so similar
to that world-system which is ours, that I cannot ab-
stain from considering it to be the same. It seems to
me that one might say here, in a certain sense without
presumption: 'Give me matter and I will build a
world out of it. '"
18
Suppose now, that for once we allow that primal
mixture as rightly concluded, some considerations
especially from Mechanics seem to oppose the
grand plan of the world edifice. For even though
the Mind at a point causes a circular movement
its continuation is only conceivable with great
difficulty, especially since it is to be infinite and
gradually to make all existing masses rotate. As
a matter of course one would assume that the pres-
sure of all the remaining matter would have crushed
out this small circular movement when it had
scarcely begun; that this does not happen pre-
supposes on the part of the stimulating Nous, that
the latter began to work suddenly with awful force,
or at any rate so quickly, that we must call the


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154 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
motion a whirl: such a whirl as Democritus him-
self imagined. And since this whirl must be in-
finitely strong in order not to be checked through
the whole world of the Infinite weighing heavily
upon it, it will be infinitely quick, for strength can
manifest itself originally only in speed. On the
contrary the broader the concentric rings are, the
slower will be this motion; if once the motion could
reach the end of the infinitely extended world, then
this motion would have already infinitely little speed
of rotation. Vice versd, if we conceive of the motion
as infinitely great, i. e. , infinitely quick, at the moment
of the very first beginning of motion, then the origi-
nal circle must have been infinitely small; we get
therefore as the beginning a particle rotated round
itself, a particle with an infinitely small material con-
tent. This however would not at all explain the
further motion; one might imagine even all particles
of the primal mass to rotate round themselves and
yet the whole mass would remain unmoved and
unseparated. If, however, that material particle
of infinite smallness, caught and swung by the
Nous, was not turned round itself but described
a circle somewhat larger than a point, this would
cause it to knock against other material particles, to
move them on, to hurl them, to make them rebound
and thus gradually to stir up a great and spread-
ing tumult within which, as the next result, that
separation of the aerial masses from the ethereal
had to take place. Just as the commencement of
the motion itself is an arbitrary act of the Nous,
arbitrary also is the manner of this commencement
in so far as the first motion circumscribes a circle of


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EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 155
which the radius is chosen somewhat larger than a
point.
Here of course one might ask, what fancy had
at that time so suddenly occurred to the Nous, to
knock against some chance material particle out of
that number of particles and to turn it around in
whirling dance and why that did not occur to It
earlier. Whereupon Anaxagoras would answer:
"The Nous has the privilege of arbitrary action;
It may begin at any chance time, It depends on It-
self, whereas everything else is determined from
outside. It has no duty, and no end which It
might be compelled to pursue; if It did once begin
with that motion and set Itself an end, this after
all was only—the answer is difficult, Heraclitus
would say—play! "
That seems always to have been the last solution
or answer hovering on the lips of the Greek. The
Anaxagorean Mind is an artist and in truth the most
powerful genius of mechanics and architecture, creat-
ing with the simplest means the most magnificent
forms and tracks and as it were a mobile architecture,
but always out of that irrational arbitrariness which
lies in the soul of the artist. It is as though Anaxa-
goras was pointing at Phidias and in face of the
immense work of art, the Cosmos, was calling out to
us as he would do in front of the Parthenon: "The
Becoming is no moral, but only an artistic pheno-
menon. " Aristotle relates that, to the question what
made life worth living, Anaxagoras had answered:
"Contemplating the heavens and the total order
of the Cosmos. " He treated physical things so


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156 VARIOUS PROSE ESSAYS
devotionally, and with that same mysterious awe,
which we feel when standing in front of an antique
temple; his doctrine became a species of free-think-
ing religious exercise, protecting itself through
the odi profanum vulgus et arceo and choosing its
adherents with precaution out of the highest and
noblest society of Athens. In the exclusive com-
munity of the Athenian Anaxagoreans the mytho-
logy of the people was allowed only as a symbolic
language; all myths, all gods, all heroes were con-
sidered here only as hieroglyphics of the interpreta-
tion of nature, and even the Homeric epic was said
to be the canonic song of the sway of the Nous and
the struggles and laws of Nature. Here and there
a note from this society of sublime free-thinkers
penetrated to the people; and especially Euripides,
the great and at all times daring Euripides, ever
thinking of something new, dared to let many things
become known by means of the tragic mask, many
things which pierced like an arrow through the senses
of the masses and from which the latter freed them-
selves only by means of ludicrous caricatures and
ridiculous re-interpretations.
The greatest of all Anaxagoreans however is Peri-
cles, the mightiest and worthiest man of the world;
and Plato bears witness that the philosophy of An-
axagoras alone had given that sublime flight to the
genius of Pericles. When as a public orator he stood
before his people, in the beautiful rigidity and immo-
bility of a marble Olympian and now, calm, wrapped
in his mantle, with unruffled drapery, without any
change of facial expression, without smile, with a
voice the strong tone of which remained ever the
. 2


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EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 157
same, and when he now spoke in an absolutely un-
Demosthenic but merely Periclean fashion, when
he thundered, struck with lightnings, annihilated
and redeemed—then he was the epitome of the
Anaxagorean Cosmos, the image of the Nous, who
has built for Itself the most beautiful and dignified
receptacle, then Pericles was as it were the visible
human incarnation of the building, moving, eliminat-
ing, ordering, reviewing, artistically-undetermined
force of the Mind. Anaxagoras himself said man was
the most rational being or he must necessarilyshelter
the Nous within himself in greater fulness than all
other beings, because he had such admirable organs
as his hands; Anaxagoras concluded therefore, that
that Nous, according to the extent to which It made
Itself master of a material body, was always form-1
ing for Itself out of this material the tools cor-
responding to Its degree of power, consequently the
Nous made the most beautiful and appropriate tools,'
when It was appearing in his greatest fulness.