The most probable view here is, that Aaaximander
reproduced
in the form of an abstract conception the
conception
1 Sk*pL Pkf*.
conception
1 Sk*pL Pkf*.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
1801).
30 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part I.
At the head of the Eleatic School, Xenophanes, who at all events was concerned in its establishment, is generally placed. Born about 570 in Colophon, he fled in 646, in consequence of the Persian conquest of Ionia, and gained a living as wandering poet. At last, in Elea, founded by the Ionians who fled into Magna Graecia, he found a permanent dwelling. He died after 480. . The frag ments of his partly gnomic, partly philosophical, sayings have been collected by
Karsten (Amsterdam, 1835). Concerning him see Fr. Kern (Naumburg, 1864,
Oldenburg, 1867, Danzig, 1871, Stettin, 1874 and 1877) and J. Freudenthal (Bres-
lau, 1886).
Parmenidea, an Eleatic of renowned family, who was not a stranger to the
Pythagorean society, wrote about 470. / The fragments of his didactic poem have been collected by Peyron (Leips. 1810) and H. Stein (Leips. 1864). [Met. tr. in Jour. Spec. Phil, IV. ] The lost treatise of Zeno (about 490-430) was probably the first which was separated into chapters and arranged dialectically. He, too, came from Elea.
Melisaos, on the contrary, was the Samian general who conquered the Athe nians in 442. Concerning his personal connection with the Eleatic school nothing i» Known. A. Pabst, De M. Fragment is (Bonn, 1889).
The unimportant fragments of the Eleatics are in a measure supplemented by the accounts of Aristotle, Simplicity, and others. The pseudo-Aristotelian work, De Xenephone, Zenone, Gorgia (Arist. , Berl. ed. , 974 ff. ), which must be used with great discretion, gives an account in the first chapter probably of Melissos ; in the second, from confusedly intermingling sources, of Zeno ; in the third, of Gorgias.
Heraclitus of Ephesus ("the Obscure"), about 636-470, disgusted with the ever-growing power of the democracy, gave up the high position which was his by birth, and in the moody leisure of the last decade of his life, wrote a treatise which was pronounced difficult of comprehension even by the ancients, while the fragments of it which we possess are often very ambiguous. Collected and edited by P. Schuster (Leips. 1873) and J. Bywater (Oxford, 1877). Cf. Fr. Schleiermacher (Ges. W-, III. Abth. , Bd. 2, pp. 1-146); J. Bernays (Get. Abhand- lungen, Bd. I. , 1885); F. Lasalle (2 Bde. , Berlin, 1868); E. Pfleiderer (Berlin, 188B). [G. T. W. Patrick, Heraclitus in Am. Jour. Pay. , I. , 1888, contains trans, of the Fr. ]
The first Dorian in the history of philosophy is Empedocles of Agrigentum, about 490-430, a priestly and prophetic personality, much regarded in his char acter as statesman, physician, and worker of miracles. He had, too, relations with the Sicilian school of orators, of which the names of Koraz and Tisias are familiar ; and besides his KaSappol (Songs of Purification) has left a didactic poem, the fragments of which have been published by Sturz (Leips. 1806). Karsten (Amsterdam, 1838), and Stein (Bonn, 1852).
Anaxagoras of Klazomene (500 till after 430) settled, toward the middle of the fifth century, in Athens, where he made friends with Pericles. In 434 he was accused of impiety and obliged to leave the city, and founded a school in Lampsacus. Schaubach (Leips. 1827) and Schorn (Bonn, 1829) have col lected the fragments of his treatise, rtpl (f>i<rim. Cf. Breier (Berlin, 1840), Zevort (Paris, 1843).
So little is known of the personality of Leucippus. that even in ancient times his very existence was doubted. The great development of the atomistic theory by Democritus (see ch. 3) had completely overshadowed its founder. But traces of Atomism are to be recognised with certainty in the entire structure of thought after Parmenides. Leucippus, if not born in Abdera, yet active there as head of the school out of which Protagoras and Democritus went later, must have been contemporary with Empedocles and Anaxagoras, even though somewhat older. Whether he wrote anything is uncertain. Cf. Diels, Verh. der Stett. Philol. Vers. (1886). —A Brieger, Die Urbeieegung der Atome (Halle, 1884); H. Liepmann, Die Mechanik der leucipp-demokritischen Atome (Leips.
1885).
The Pythagorean Society first appeared in the cities of Magna Gnecia at
a religious-political association toward the end of the sixth century. Its founder was Pythagoras, of Sainos, who, born about 580, after long journeys, which probably led him toward Egypt also, made the aristocratic city of Crotona the starting-point of a reform movement which had for its aim a moral and religion!
Chap. 1, 5 4. ] Conceptions of Being. 31
purification. We are first apprised of the internal relations of the society through subsequent narratives ( Jamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica, and Porphy rius, De Vita Pythagora; published by Kiesling (Leips. 1815-16), whose trustworthiness is doubtful. It seems, however, to be certain that already the old society imposed definite duties upon its members, even for private life, and introduced the prac tice of working in common at intellectual pursuits, especially at music and mathematics. In consequence of its political position (in regard to which B. Krische, Gottingen, 1830) the external conditions of the society assumed at first a very favourable form, inasmuch as, after the plunder of the democratic Sybaris, 609, Crotona won a kind of hegemonic influence in Magna Grscia. In time, however, the Pythagoreans became the losers in the bitter party
strugKles of the cities, and often suffered bitter persecution, by which the society was finally destroyed in the fourth century.
To Pythagoras himself, who died about 500, we can trace back no philosoph ical writings, although the subsequent myth-making process sought so strenu ously to make him the idol of all Hellenic wisdom. (E. Zeller in Vortr. u. Ahkandl. , I. , Leips. 1866. ) Plato and Aristotle knew only of a philosophy of the Pythagoreans. Phllolaus, who seems to have been somewhat younger than Kmpedocles and Anaxagoras, appears as the most prominent representative of this philosophy. Almost nothing is known of the circumstances of his life, and the fragments of his treatise (ed. by Boeckh, Berlin, 1810 ; cf. C. Schaar- schmidt, Bonn, 1864) lie under considerable
suspicion.
Of the remaining adherents of the society, only the names are known. The
latest representatives came into so close relations with the Platonic Academy that, as regards their philosophy, they may almost be said to have belonged to it. Among them Archytas of Tarentum, the vryll -known savant and statesman, should be mentioned. Concerning the very doubtful fragments attributed to him, cf. G. Hartenstein (Leips. 1833), Fr. Petersen (Zeitschr. f. Alterthumsk ; 1838), O. Gruppe (Berlin, 1840), Fr. Beckman (Berlin, 1844).
The reports concerning the teaching of the Pythagoreans, especially in the later accounts, are clouded by so many additions from foreign sources, that perhaps at no point in ancient philosophy is it so difficult to determine the actual facts in the case as here, even if we sift out the most trustworthy, namely Aristotle and his best taught commentators, notably Simplicius, many dark points and contradictory statements remain, particularly in details. The reason for this lies probably in the fact that in the school, which for a time was widely extended, various trends of thought ran side by side, and that among these the general fun damental thought first brought forward perhaps by Philolaus, was worked out in different ways. It would be of great service to attempt such a separation.
H. Bitter, Oeschichte der pythagoreischen Philosophic (Hamburg, 1826) ; Rolhenbicher, Das System der Pythagoreer nach Aristoteles (Berlin, 1867) ; E. Cbaignet, Pythagore et la philosophie pythagoricienne (2 vols. , Paris, 1873).
§ 4. The Conceptions of Being.
The fact that things of experience change into one another was the stimulus to the first philosophical reflections, and wonder1 at this must indeed have arisen early among a people so mobile and with so varied an experience of Nature as the Ionians. To this fact, which furnished the fundamental motive of its reflection, the Ionic philosophy gave liveliest expression in Heraclitus, who seems to have been unwearied * in seeking the most pointed formulations for this universal mutability of all things, and especially for the sudden changes of opposites into each other. But while myth gave
» Ct upon the philosophical value of the tfau^dfeir, Arist. Met. I. 2, 982 b 12. * Fragm. (Schust. ) 41-44, 60, 63, 67.
32 The Greek* : Uosmological Period. [Part I.
to this view the garb of a fabled account of the formation of the world, science asked for the abiding ground of all these changes, and fixed this question in the conception of the cosmic matter, or "world-stuff" ( Weltstoff), which experiences all these transforma tions, from which all individual things arise, and into which they become again transformed (apxi)- 1° tn^s conception1 was tacitly contained the presupposition of the unity of the world; whether the Milesians * already sought to justify this we do not know. It was a later eclectic straggler * who first attempted to justify this Monism by the transformation of all things into one another, and by the inter-connection of all things without exception. ,
1. That, however, a single cosmic matter, or world-stuff, lies at the basis of the entire process of nature, appears in ancient tradi tion as a self-evident presupposition of the Ionic School. The only question was to determine what this elementary matter was. The nearest course was then to seek for it in what was given in experi ence, and so Thales declared it to be water; Anaximenes, air. To this choice they were probably determined only by the mobility, changeability, and apparent inner vitality * of water and air. It is evident, too, that the Milesians thought little in this connection of the chemical peculiarities of water and air, but only of the states of aggregation ' concerned. While the solid appears in itself dead, moved only from without, the liquid and volatile make the impres sion of independent mobility and vitality ; and the monistic prepos session of this first philosophising was so great that the Milesians never once thought of asking for a reason or ground of this cease less change of the cosmic matter, but instead assumed this as a self- intelligible fact — a matter/of course — as they did all change or occurrence; at most they /{escribed its individual forms. The cos
mic matter passed with—f! hem for something in itself living : they thought of it as animated, just as are particular organisms,* and for this reason their doctrine is usually characterised from the stand point of the later separation in conceptions as Hylozoism.
1 Which Aristotle in the Met. I. 3, 083 b 8, has defined, not without the admixture of his own categories.
* The expression ipx'hy which, moreover, bears in itself the memory of the chronological fancies of the Cosmologists, is said by Simplicius to have been used first by Anaximander.
8 Diogenes of Apollonia. Cf. Simpl. Pkyt. (D. ) 32r 151, 30, and Arist. Uen «f Corr. I. 6, 322 b 13.
♦ Schol. in Arist. 614 a 33.
6 For tSup, irypir is frequently substituted. With regard to the i-fip of Anaxi menes the accounts are such that the attempt has been made to distinguish his metaphysical "air" from the empirical : Hitter, I. 217 ; Brandis, I. 144.
• Pint. Plac. 1. 3 (Doxogr. D. 278). Perhaps this is intended in the conjee tore of Aristotle, Met. I. 3, 983 b 22.
Case. 1, 4j 4. ] Conceptions of Being : The Milesians. 38
2. If we ask, however, why Anaximenes, whose doctrine, like :aat of Thales, seems to have kept withia the bounds of experience, rabstituted air for water, we learn ' that he believed air to have a characteristic which water lacked, — a characteristic, too, which his predecessor Anaximander had postulated as indispensable for the
of primitive matter, viz. that of infinity. As motive for 'Jus postulate of Anaximander there is related the argument that a inite cosmic matter would exhaust itself in the ceaseless succession U productions. * But Anaximander had also seen that this demand aide by the conception of the &pxq could not be satisfied by any Salter or substance which we can perceive, and had on this account transferred the cosmic matter beyond experience. He maintained tetdly the reality of an original ground of things, possessing all the properties that are necessary, if we are to derive the changes in the world of experience from something itself abiding and raised above -iiange, — even though such a ground might not be found in experi- -are. /He drew from the conception of the apxy the consequence, •-bat though no object of experience corresponds to this conception, ve miut yet, to explain experience, assume such a conception behind it as real and conditioning it. He therefore called the cosmic mat ter "tke Infinite" (to awupov), and ascribed to it all the qualities postulated in the conception of the Apxn ■ that is, that it had never tiegnn to be, and was imperishable, inexhaustible, and indestructible.
The conception of matter, thus constructed by Anaximander is, 2«Tertheless, clear only in the respect that it is to unite within it fpacal infinity and the quality of being without beginning or end va time, and thus the mark of the all-embracing and all-determin- ;ar;* on the other hand, with reference to its qualitative deter mination, it cannot be made clear what the philosopher intended. Later accounts give us to understand that he expressly maintained tiat the original matter was qualitatively undetermined or indefinite
tun m),* while the statements of Aristotle* speak more for the Mscmption of a mixture of all kinds of matter known in experience, — a mixture completely adjusted or equalised, and therefore as a *Me indifferent or neutral.
The most probable view here is, that Aaaximander reproduced in the form of an abstract conception the
conception
1 Sk*pL Pkf*. (DA «» 24, 26.
' nm. PUtc. I. 3 (Dozogr. D. 277) ; ArUt. Phy>. III. 8, 208 a 8.
•ArtaL P%p. III. 4, 203 b 7.
• Scant. In Arist. 614 a 33 ; Herbart, Einleitung in die Philosophie (Gei.
r . l 1M).
' Jfcf. XIX 2, 1000 b 18, and especially Pkyi. I. 4, 187 a 20. CI. also Simpl.
Van fl». ) 3P 164, 14 (according to Theophrastus) . This much-treated contro- ■■V win be spoken of more In detail below (§ 6).
84 The Q-rer. ks : Gosmological Period. [Part. ! •
unclear idea of the mythical chaos which was "one "and yet also " all. " This he did by assuming as the cosmic matter an infinite, corporeal mass, in which the various empirical substances were so mixed that no definite quality could be ascribed to it as a whole. For this reason, however, the separation of the individual qualities out of this self-moved matter could no longer be regarded as properly a qualitative change in it. With this view the conception of the unity of the world as regards quality would be given up, to be sure, and an essential preparation made for the later development.
3. Still another predicate was given by Anaximander to the In finite, — to Qtiov, the divine. As a last remembrance of the religious home in which scientific reflection arose, it shows for the first time the inclination of philosophers, constantly recurring in history, to view as " Deity " the highest conception which theory has led them to use for explaining the world, and so to give it at the same time a sanction for the religious consciousness. Anaximander's matter is the first philosophic conception of God, the first attempt, and one which remains still entirely within the physical, to strip the idea of God of all mythical form.
But while the religious need thus maintained itself in the deter mination of metaphysical conception, the possibility of an influence of the results of science upon the religious life was brought nearer, the more these results met and responded to an impulse which hitherto had been dominant only in an obscure and uncertain manner within that life. The transformation which the Greek myths had undergone, as well in the import given them in cosmogonic fancy as in that given to their ethical interpretation, tended everywhere toward a mono theistic culmination (Pherecydes, Solon) ; /and to this movement its final result, a clearly outspoken monism, was now proffered by science.
This relation was brought to expression by Xenophanes, not a thinker and investigator, but an imaginative disciple of science, strong in his convictions, who brought the new teaching from East to West and gave it a thoroughly religious colouring. His mainte nance of monotheism, which he expressed as enthusiastic intuition in the saying,' that whithersoever he looked all was constantly flowing together for him into one Nature (/xiav <« <f>wriv), took on at once, however, that sharp polemic turn against the popular faith, by which he is principally characterised in literature. The scorn, which he poured out with abundant wit over the anthropomorphism of myth
ology,* the anger with which he pursued the poets as the portrayers » Tunon in Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 224. * Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 601 .
Omr. 1. $ 4. ] Conception* of Being : Xenophanet. 85
:' these divine figures provided with all the weaknesses and vices of auun nature,1 — these rest upon an ideal of God which will have Cite Supreme Being regarded as incomparable with man in both
•«Iily and mental characteristics. When he passes to positive at- '. r. butes, Xenophanes becomes more obscure. On the one hand, the iatj as tr tax Tag/is identified with the universe, and to this " World- GW are then ascribed all the predicates of the Milesian dpxv
(eternity, existence that has not become what it is, imperishability) ; on the other hand, qualities are ascribed to the deity, some of which are spatial, as the spherical form, while others are psychical func tions. Among these latter the omnipresence of the knowing activity and of the rational guidance of things is expressly mentioned. In tins respect the World-God of Xenophanes appears only as the i-^hest among the rest of " gods and men. "
While here a predominantly theological turn of philosophy is Lready manifested, the exchange of the point of view of metaphysics and natural science taken by Anaximander, for the religious point of view of Xenophanes shows itself in two essential deviations. The conception of the World-God is for the latter an object of r»lizious reverence, and scarcely a means for understanding Nature. Thf Colophonian's sense for knowledge of Nature is slight, his ideas »T* in part very childlike, and, as compared with those of the Mile- ■aas, undeveloped. And so for his views, the characteristic of
infinity, which Milesian science regarded as necessary in the cosmic asatter, could be dispensed with ; on the contrary, it seemed to him man in accordance with the dignity of the divine Nature,' to think of this as limited within itself, as entirely shut up or complete, con-
as regards its spatial aspect, spherical. And while the Milesians thought of the original ground of things as ever in motion 'P*«taneously, and as characterised by living variety in its inter- sal structure, Xenophanes struck out this postulate hitherto in use for the explanation of Nature, and declared the World-God to be rmmcmblc and perfectly homogeneous in all its parts. How, indeed, he thought that the variety of individual things whose reality he 6d not doubt, could be reconciled with this view, must remain ■arm iin.
4 As was required by the conception of change, the Milesian '*»r»ption of the World-substance had united without clear discrim- -sa:>on two essential elements : the one that of a substance re-
■ii--ir. g like itself, the other that of independent or self-subsistent
; H:ppo( B'f. 1. 14 (Doxogr. T>. ofio). In other passages, again, it is said A» bt woold bare the deity thought neither limited nor unlimited (? >.
«*q:*»ntly
1 Men. Kmp. Ait. Math. IX. 193.
S6 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part I.
changeability. In the thought of Xenophanes the first element was isolated ; the same process took place for the second through Hera- clitus. His doctrine presupposes the work of the Milesians, from the conclusion of which it is separated by a generation, in this way : their effort to determine or define in conceptions an abiding world- ground has been recognised as hopeless. There is nothing abiding, either in the world or in its constitution taken as a whole. Not only individual things, but also the universe as a whole, are involved in perpetual, ceaseless revolution: all flows, and nothing abides. We cannot say of things that they are ; they become only, and pass away in the ever-changing play of the movement of the universe. That, then, which abides and deserves the name of deity, is not a thing, and not substance or matter, but motion, the cosmic process, Becom ing itself.
To meet a strong demand that seems made by this turn to abstrac tion, Heraclitus found help in the sensuous perception in which this motion presented itself to him : that of fire. The co-operation of this in the conversion of things of Nature into each other had been already noticed by the Milesians ; to this may have been added ancient Oriental mystical ideas, which contact with the Persians made especially accessible to the Ionians of that day. But when Heraclitus declared the world to be an ever-living fire, and Fire, therefore, to be the essence of all things, he understood by this ipxv not a material or substance which survived all its transformations, but just the transforming process itself in its ever-darting, vibrating activity (ziingelnde), the soaring up and vanishing which corre spond to the Becoming and passing away. 1
At the same time, however, this idea takes on a still firmer form, in that Heraclitus emphasised much more strongly than the Mile sians the fact that this change is accomplished in accordance with definite relations, and in a succession that remains always the same. ' This rhythm of events (which later times have called the uniformity of Nature under law) is therefore the only permanent; it is termed by Heraclitus the destiny (ilfia. pfi. ivri), the order (8£ktj), the reason
(Aoyos) of the world. These predicates, in which physical, ethical,
1 The difficulty of ascribing to such a motion without any substrate, to a mere Becoming, the highest reality and the capacity to produce things, was evidently very much less for undeveloped thought not yet conscious of its categories than for later apprehension. The conception of Becoming as Are, hovering between the symbolic and the real meaning of the term, was supported by the use of language which treats of functions and relations as also substantives. inBut Heraclitus does not disdain to let the dim idea of a World -substance stand the background in his metaphors (of the clay kneaded ever anew, of the drink continually stirred).
1 Further in detail on this point in the following section.
C«af. 1, { 4. ] Conceptions of Being : Heraclitus, Parmenides. 37
ud logical order in the world appear as still identified, prove only the undeveloped state of thought which does not yet know how to
the different motives. The conception, however, which Heraelitos has grasped with complete clearness, and carried though vita all the strength of his austere personality, is that of order, a
separate
nevertheless, whose validity was for him as much a aatter of conviction as of knowledge.
5. In evident opposition to this theory of the Ephesian, the con- option of Being was worked out by Parmenides, the head of the Qeatic School, and the most important thinker of this period. Yet it is not easy to reconstruct his formulation of this conception from the few fragments of his didactic poem, the quite unique character of which consists in the union of dryest abstraction with grand and rich imagery. That there is a Being (fori yap tlvai), is for the Ele- itic a postulate of such cogent evidence that he only states this position without proving and that he explains only by nega tive turn of thought which first discloses to us completely the sense m which we are to understand his main thought. "Non-being"
<j$i umu), he adds, or that which " " not (to fiij i6t>), cannot be •ad cannot be thought. For all thought in relation to some thing that is, which forms its content. 1 This view of the correla tive nature of Being and consciousness leads so far with Parmenides that the two, thought and Being, are declared to be fully identical.
No thought to whose content Being does not belong, — no Being that not thought thought and Being are the same.
These propositions, which look so abstractly ontological we con sider only the words, take on quite another meaning when we con- uder that the fragments of the great Elean leave no doubt as to vhat he desired to have regarded as " Being " or that which " is. " This was corporeality, materiality (to wXiw). For him, " being" and - tilling space " are the same. This " Being," this function of filling
•pace, is precisely the same in the case of all that " " there is, thatefore, only the one, single Being which has no internal distinc- boat. " Non-being," or what is not [has not the attribute of Being], wu. 1. accordingly, incorporeality, empty space (to kcvoV). This table meaning of the cW (Being) employed by Parmenides, ac- «*ding to which the word means at one time " the full " and at an other time " Reality," leads then to the proposition that empty space
«uoi be.
Nov for the naive, sensuous way of looking at things which
«rk» even in these principles of Parmenides, the separateness of Fr. , ed. Kanten, vv. W fl.
conception,
1
is ;
if
is
:
is is
aa
it,
it
38 The Greeks : Cotmological Period. [Past L
things, by virtue of which they present themselves in their plurality and multiplicity, consists in their separation by empty space ; and, on the other hand, all that takes place in the corporeal world, i. e. all motion, consists in the change of place which the " full " experi ences in the "empty" (or the "Void"). If, therefore, the Void is not real or actual, then the plurality and motion of individual things cannot be real.
The number and variety of things presented in co-existence and succession by experience had given the Milesians occasion to ask for the common abiding ground of which all these things were metamorphoses. When, however, the conception of cosmic sub stance or world-stuff has culminated with Parmenides in the corr- ception of Being, there seems so little possibility of uniting these individual things with that reality denied them, and the one unitary Being remains also the only being. 1 The conception formed for the purpose of explanation has so developed internally that to maintain involves the denial of that which was to be explained by it. In this sense the Eleatic doctrine acosmism the mani- foldness of things has sunk in the All-one the latter alone " is," the former are deception and seeming.
According to Parmenides, however, we are to predicate of the One that eternal, has never come into being, imperishable, and especially (as Xenophanes had maintained) that through and through one in kind, one with itself, without any distinctions or differences, i. e. completely homogeneous and absolutely unchange able. He follows Xenophanes also in regarding the One as limited, complete, and definitive. Being then well-rounded sphere, per fectly homogeneous within itself, and this only and unitary world- body at the same time the world-thought,3 simple, excluding all particulars from itself to yap irAcov iarl vmjpa.
All these attempts, in part fantastic, in part regardlessly abstract, were needed in order to gain the presuppositions for the development of the first usable conceptions for apprehending Natura For important as were the motives of thought that had come to recognition therein, neither the world-stuff or cosmic matter of the Milesians, nor the "Fire-Becoming" of Heraclitus, nor the Being of Parmenides were available for explaining Nature. Now the imper fection of the first had become clear through the contrast which
A great role in these considerations of the Eleatios is obviously played by the ambiguities in language, by which, on the one hand, the Iv means both numerical unity and also qualitative unity or simplicity, while the verb cImu has not only the function of the copula, but also the meaning of " Reality. "
Hence, terms like " materialism " and " idealism " do not apply to this naive identification of consciousness and its object, the corporeal world.
11
6.
is
:
is a
is is
is it
:
is
it is
it
:
it,
Caar. 1, f 4. ] Conceptions of Being : Empedoclet. 39
the two latter as by a gulf, and with the recognition of this, occasion was given for the more independent investigators of the next period to separate in their conceptions the two motifs (being and becoming), and by setting them over against one another to think out new forms of relation, out of which permanently valua ble categories for the knowledge of Nature resulted.
These mediating attempts have in common, on the one hand, the recognition of the Eleatic postulate that that which " is " must be thought throughout not only as eternal, without a beginning and imperishable, but also as homogeneous, and as regards its qualities inchangeable ; on the other hand, however, they assent also to the thought of Heraclitus that an undeniable reality belongs to Becom ing and change (Oeschehen), and so to the manifoldness of things. Common to them, also, in their adjustment of these two needs of thought is the attempt to assume a plurality of beings, each of which
»hould satisfy for itself the postulate of Parmenides; while, on the other hand, by changing their spatial relations, they were to :ring about the changeful variety of individual things which expe rience shows. If the Milesians had spoken of qualitative changes
of the cosmic substance or matter, the Eleatic principle had ex cluded the possibility of it ; nevertheless, change ought to receive recognition, as with Heraclitus, and be attributed to Being itself,
most be reduced to kind of change which leaves untouched lie qualities of the existent. Such change, however, was think able only as a change of place, i. e. as motion. The investigators of Nature in the fifth century maintained, therefore, with the Eleatics, the (qualitative) unchangeableness of the existent, but against the Eleatics, its plurality and motion with Heraclitus, they insisted spon the reality of occurrence and change, and against Heraclitus, apon the Being of permanent and unchangeable substances as under lying and producing the same. Their common view this there
a plurality of existing beings which, unchangeable in them- ■errea, make the change and variety of individual things compre hensible.
This principle seems to have been asserted first and in its Boat imperfect form by Empedocles, — in form, however, that was widely influential historically. He put forward as "elements"* the looj which are still current in the popular modes of thought, — earth,
(Plato, Thtatl. 181 Arist. var. loc. ), iXXoiwfftt (qualitative change) ay4 (change of place) are contrasted an species of kIkijo-u or /irra^oXi).
separated
U rr»itiT tlit* done here, though the terms are as yet lacking.
Instead of the later expression troix'ta, we find in Empedocles the more
tnKtr term " root* of nil things," j><(iiiia. ra. .
>
7
in
;D
a
if,
a
is
it
is :
;
'
a
40 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
water, air, and fire. ' Each of these is according to this system, without beginning and imperishable, homogeneous and unchange able, but at the same time divisible into parts, and in these parts capable of change of place. Out of the mixture of the elements arise individual things, which in turn cease to exist when the mix ture is separated into the elements ; to the kind of mixture made are due the various qualities of individual things, which are often different from the properties of the elements themselves.
At the same time the note of unchangeableness and a deviation from the Milesian Hylozoism assert themselves in the system of Empedocles to the extent that he could not assign independent ca pacity of motion to these material elements which experience only changing states of motion and mechanical mixings. On this account he was obliged to seek a cause of motion independent of the four elements. As such a cause he designated love and hate. The out come, however, of this first attempt to set over against a dead matter, deprived by abstraction of all motion of its own, the force which moves as metaphysically independent something, was very obscure. Love and hate are, with Empedocles, not mere properties, functions, or relations of the elements, but rather independent powers set over against them but how we are to think the reality of these moving forces not disclosed in any satisfactory way in the fragments. " Only this seems certain, that in fixing the dual nature of the principle of motion the thought was also operative that two distinct causes, love and hate, were requisite to account for the good and the evil in the change of things of our experience,* — a first indication that determinations of " worth " or value are beginning to be introduced into the theory of Nature.
Empedocles thought possible to derive the special qualities of individual things from the proper mixture of the four elements whether he attempted so to derive them, and so, how, we do not indeed know. This difficulty was avoided by Anaxagoras, who, from the Eleatic principle that nothing that can arise or pass away, drew the conclusion that as many elements must be assumed*
Aside from dependence upon his predecessors, his selection was evidently due to the inclination to regard the different states of aggregation as the original essence of things. No importance seems to have attached to the number four, in this. The dialectical construction which Plato and Aristotle gave for this quite remote from the thought of the Agrigentine.
If <pi\ia and ttiKoi are occasionally counted by the later recorders as fifth and sixth apxt of Empedocles, we must not infer from this that he regarded them as substances. His obscure and almost mythical terminology rests, for the most part, upon the fact that conceptions standing for functions are substan tives in language. Arist. Met. 984 32.
He called them exipiiara (seeds of things), or also simply xpi>/uira (sab- stances
*21 ).
8.
»
I. 4,
if
b
i« :
is
it
is
;
it, a
Ciap. 1, j 4. ] Conception* of Being : Anaxagoras. 41
as there are simple substances in the things of experience, meaning br simple substances those which on repeated division always sep- irate into parts qualitatively the same with their wholes. Such ->mentary substances were later, in accordance with his definition, xlW komoiomeriai. At that time, however, when only mechanical hnsion or change of temperature were known as means of investi- . irion, this conception of element (in principle entirely correspond- aig to the conceptions of the chemistry of to-day) applied to the neater part of the substances given in experience,1 and on that ac count Anaxagoras maintained that there were countless elements dif fering in form, colour, and taste. He held that they were present throughout the entire universe in a very finely divided state.
30 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part I.
At the head of the Eleatic School, Xenophanes, who at all events was concerned in its establishment, is generally placed. Born about 570 in Colophon, he fled in 646, in consequence of the Persian conquest of Ionia, and gained a living as wandering poet. At last, in Elea, founded by the Ionians who fled into Magna Graecia, he found a permanent dwelling. He died after 480. . The frag ments of his partly gnomic, partly philosophical, sayings have been collected by
Karsten (Amsterdam, 1835). Concerning him see Fr. Kern (Naumburg, 1864,
Oldenburg, 1867, Danzig, 1871, Stettin, 1874 and 1877) and J. Freudenthal (Bres-
lau, 1886).
Parmenidea, an Eleatic of renowned family, who was not a stranger to the
Pythagorean society, wrote about 470. / The fragments of his didactic poem have been collected by Peyron (Leips. 1810) and H. Stein (Leips. 1864). [Met. tr. in Jour. Spec. Phil, IV. ] The lost treatise of Zeno (about 490-430) was probably the first which was separated into chapters and arranged dialectically. He, too, came from Elea.
Melisaos, on the contrary, was the Samian general who conquered the Athe nians in 442. Concerning his personal connection with the Eleatic school nothing i» Known. A. Pabst, De M. Fragment is (Bonn, 1889).
The unimportant fragments of the Eleatics are in a measure supplemented by the accounts of Aristotle, Simplicity, and others. The pseudo-Aristotelian work, De Xenephone, Zenone, Gorgia (Arist. , Berl. ed. , 974 ff. ), which must be used with great discretion, gives an account in the first chapter probably of Melissos ; in the second, from confusedly intermingling sources, of Zeno ; in the third, of Gorgias.
Heraclitus of Ephesus ("the Obscure"), about 636-470, disgusted with the ever-growing power of the democracy, gave up the high position which was his by birth, and in the moody leisure of the last decade of his life, wrote a treatise which was pronounced difficult of comprehension even by the ancients, while the fragments of it which we possess are often very ambiguous. Collected and edited by P. Schuster (Leips. 1873) and J. Bywater (Oxford, 1877). Cf. Fr. Schleiermacher (Ges. W-, III. Abth. , Bd. 2, pp. 1-146); J. Bernays (Get. Abhand- lungen, Bd. I. , 1885); F. Lasalle (2 Bde. , Berlin, 1868); E. Pfleiderer (Berlin, 188B). [G. T. W. Patrick, Heraclitus in Am. Jour. Pay. , I. , 1888, contains trans, of the Fr. ]
The first Dorian in the history of philosophy is Empedocles of Agrigentum, about 490-430, a priestly and prophetic personality, much regarded in his char acter as statesman, physician, and worker of miracles. He had, too, relations with the Sicilian school of orators, of which the names of Koraz and Tisias are familiar ; and besides his KaSappol (Songs of Purification) has left a didactic poem, the fragments of which have been published by Sturz (Leips. 1806). Karsten (Amsterdam, 1838), and Stein (Bonn, 1852).
Anaxagoras of Klazomene (500 till after 430) settled, toward the middle of the fifth century, in Athens, where he made friends with Pericles. In 434 he was accused of impiety and obliged to leave the city, and founded a school in Lampsacus. Schaubach (Leips. 1827) and Schorn (Bonn, 1829) have col lected the fragments of his treatise, rtpl (f>i<rim. Cf. Breier (Berlin, 1840), Zevort (Paris, 1843).
So little is known of the personality of Leucippus. that even in ancient times his very existence was doubted. The great development of the atomistic theory by Democritus (see ch. 3) had completely overshadowed its founder. But traces of Atomism are to be recognised with certainty in the entire structure of thought after Parmenides. Leucippus, if not born in Abdera, yet active there as head of the school out of which Protagoras and Democritus went later, must have been contemporary with Empedocles and Anaxagoras, even though somewhat older. Whether he wrote anything is uncertain. Cf. Diels, Verh. der Stett. Philol. Vers. (1886). —A Brieger, Die Urbeieegung der Atome (Halle, 1884); H. Liepmann, Die Mechanik der leucipp-demokritischen Atome (Leips.
1885).
The Pythagorean Society first appeared in the cities of Magna Gnecia at
a religious-political association toward the end of the sixth century. Its founder was Pythagoras, of Sainos, who, born about 580, after long journeys, which probably led him toward Egypt also, made the aristocratic city of Crotona the starting-point of a reform movement which had for its aim a moral and religion!
Chap. 1, 5 4. ] Conceptions of Being. 31
purification. We are first apprised of the internal relations of the society through subsequent narratives ( Jamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica, and Porphy rius, De Vita Pythagora; published by Kiesling (Leips. 1815-16), whose trustworthiness is doubtful. It seems, however, to be certain that already the old society imposed definite duties upon its members, even for private life, and introduced the prac tice of working in common at intellectual pursuits, especially at music and mathematics. In consequence of its political position (in regard to which B. Krische, Gottingen, 1830) the external conditions of the society assumed at first a very favourable form, inasmuch as, after the plunder of the democratic Sybaris, 609, Crotona won a kind of hegemonic influence in Magna Grscia. In time, however, the Pythagoreans became the losers in the bitter party
strugKles of the cities, and often suffered bitter persecution, by which the society was finally destroyed in the fourth century.
To Pythagoras himself, who died about 500, we can trace back no philosoph ical writings, although the subsequent myth-making process sought so strenu ously to make him the idol of all Hellenic wisdom. (E. Zeller in Vortr. u. Ahkandl. , I. , Leips. 1866. ) Plato and Aristotle knew only of a philosophy of the Pythagoreans. Phllolaus, who seems to have been somewhat younger than Kmpedocles and Anaxagoras, appears as the most prominent representative of this philosophy. Almost nothing is known of the circumstances of his life, and the fragments of his treatise (ed. by Boeckh, Berlin, 1810 ; cf. C. Schaar- schmidt, Bonn, 1864) lie under considerable
suspicion.
Of the remaining adherents of the society, only the names are known. The
latest representatives came into so close relations with the Platonic Academy that, as regards their philosophy, they may almost be said to have belonged to it. Among them Archytas of Tarentum, the vryll -known savant and statesman, should be mentioned. Concerning the very doubtful fragments attributed to him, cf. G. Hartenstein (Leips. 1833), Fr. Petersen (Zeitschr. f. Alterthumsk ; 1838), O. Gruppe (Berlin, 1840), Fr. Beckman (Berlin, 1844).
The reports concerning the teaching of the Pythagoreans, especially in the later accounts, are clouded by so many additions from foreign sources, that perhaps at no point in ancient philosophy is it so difficult to determine the actual facts in the case as here, even if we sift out the most trustworthy, namely Aristotle and his best taught commentators, notably Simplicius, many dark points and contradictory statements remain, particularly in details. The reason for this lies probably in the fact that in the school, which for a time was widely extended, various trends of thought ran side by side, and that among these the general fun damental thought first brought forward perhaps by Philolaus, was worked out in different ways. It would be of great service to attempt such a separation.
H. Bitter, Oeschichte der pythagoreischen Philosophic (Hamburg, 1826) ; Rolhenbicher, Das System der Pythagoreer nach Aristoteles (Berlin, 1867) ; E. Cbaignet, Pythagore et la philosophie pythagoricienne (2 vols. , Paris, 1873).
§ 4. The Conceptions of Being.
The fact that things of experience change into one another was the stimulus to the first philosophical reflections, and wonder1 at this must indeed have arisen early among a people so mobile and with so varied an experience of Nature as the Ionians. To this fact, which furnished the fundamental motive of its reflection, the Ionic philosophy gave liveliest expression in Heraclitus, who seems to have been unwearied * in seeking the most pointed formulations for this universal mutability of all things, and especially for the sudden changes of opposites into each other. But while myth gave
» Ct upon the philosophical value of the tfau^dfeir, Arist. Met. I. 2, 982 b 12. * Fragm. (Schust. ) 41-44, 60, 63, 67.
32 The Greek* : Uosmological Period. [Part I.
to this view the garb of a fabled account of the formation of the world, science asked for the abiding ground of all these changes, and fixed this question in the conception of the cosmic matter, or "world-stuff" ( Weltstoff), which experiences all these transforma tions, from which all individual things arise, and into which they become again transformed (apxi)- 1° tn^s conception1 was tacitly contained the presupposition of the unity of the world; whether the Milesians * already sought to justify this we do not know. It was a later eclectic straggler * who first attempted to justify this Monism by the transformation of all things into one another, and by the inter-connection of all things without exception. ,
1. That, however, a single cosmic matter, or world-stuff, lies at the basis of the entire process of nature, appears in ancient tradi tion as a self-evident presupposition of the Ionic School. The only question was to determine what this elementary matter was. The nearest course was then to seek for it in what was given in experi ence, and so Thales declared it to be water; Anaximenes, air. To this choice they were probably determined only by the mobility, changeability, and apparent inner vitality * of water and air. It is evident, too, that the Milesians thought little in this connection of the chemical peculiarities of water and air, but only of the states of aggregation ' concerned. While the solid appears in itself dead, moved only from without, the liquid and volatile make the impres sion of independent mobility and vitality ; and the monistic prepos session of this first philosophising was so great that the Milesians never once thought of asking for a reason or ground of this cease less change of the cosmic matter, but instead assumed this as a self- intelligible fact — a matter/of course — as they did all change or occurrence; at most they /{escribed its individual forms. The cos
mic matter passed with—f! hem for something in itself living : they thought of it as animated, just as are particular organisms,* and for this reason their doctrine is usually characterised from the stand point of the later separation in conceptions as Hylozoism.
1 Which Aristotle in the Met. I. 3, 083 b 8, has defined, not without the admixture of his own categories.
* The expression ipx'hy which, moreover, bears in itself the memory of the chronological fancies of the Cosmologists, is said by Simplicius to have been used first by Anaximander.
8 Diogenes of Apollonia. Cf. Simpl. Pkyt. (D. ) 32r 151, 30, and Arist. Uen «f Corr. I. 6, 322 b 13.
♦ Schol. in Arist. 614 a 33.
6 For tSup, irypir is frequently substituted. With regard to the i-fip of Anaxi menes the accounts are such that the attempt has been made to distinguish his metaphysical "air" from the empirical : Hitter, I. 217 ; Brandis, I. 144.
• Pint. Plac. 1. 3 (Doxogr. D. 278). Perhaps this is intended in the conjee tore of Aristotle, Met. I. 3, 983 b 22.
Case. 1, 4j 4. ] Conceptions of Being : The Milesians. 38
2. If we ask, however, why Anaximenes, whose doctrine, like :aat of Thales, seems to have kept withia the bounds of experience, rabstituted air for water, we learn ' that he believed air to have a characteristic which water lacked, — a characteristic, too, which his predecessor Anaximander had postulated as indispensable for the
of primitive matter, viz. that of infinity. As motive for 'Jus postulate of Anaximander there is related the argument that a inite cosmic matter would exhaust itself in the ceaseless succession U productions. * But Anaximander had also seen that this demand aide by the conception of the &pxq could not be satisfied by any Salter or substance which we can perceive, and had on this account transferred the cosmic matter beyond experience. He maintained tetdly the reality of an original ground of things, possessing all the properties that are necessary, if we are to derive the changes in the world of experience from something itself abiding and raised above -iiange, — even though such a ground might not be found in experi- -are. /He drew from the conception of the apxy the consequence, •-bat though no object of experience corresponds to this conception, ve miut yet, to explain experience, assume such a conception behind it as real and conditioning it. He therefore called the cosmic mat ter "tke Infinite" (to awupov), and ascribed to it all the qualities postulated in the conception of the Apxn ■ that is, that it had never tiegnn to be, and was imperishable, inexhaustible, and indestructible.
The conception of matter, thus constructed by Anaximander is, 2«Tertheless, clear only in the respect that it is to unite within it fpacal infinity and the quality of being without beginning or end va time, and thus the mark of the all-embracing and all-determin- ;ar;* on the other hand, with reference to its qualitative deter mination, it cannot be made clear what the philosopher intended. Later accounts give us to understand that he expressly maintained tiat the original matter was qualitatively undetermined or indefinite
tun m),* while the statements of Aristotle* speak more for the Mscmption of a mixture of all kinds of matter known in experience, — a mixture completely adjusted or equalised, and therefore as a *Me indifferent or neutral.
The most probable view here is, that Aaaximander reproduced in the form of an abstract conception the
conception
1 Sk*pL Pkf*. (DA «» 24, 26.
' nm. PUtc. I. 3 (Dozogr. D. 277) ; ArUt. Phy>. III. 8, 208 a 8.
•ArtaL P%p. III. 4, 203 b 7.
• Scant. In Arist. 614 a 33 ; Herbart, Einleitung in die Philosophie (Gei.
r . l 1M).
' Jfcf. XIX 2, 1000 b 18, and especially Pkyi. I. 4, 187 a 20. CI. also Simpl.
Van fl». ) 3P 164, 14 (according to Theophrastus) . This much-treated contro- ■■V win be spoken of more In detail below (§ 6).
84 The Q-rer. ks : Gosmological Period. [Part. ! •
unclear idea of the mythical chaos which was "one "and yet also " all. " This he did by assuming as the cosmic matter an infinite, corporeal mass, in which the various empirical substances were so mixed that no definite quality could be ascribed to it as a whole. For this reason, however, the separation of the individual qualities out of this self-moved matter could no longer be regarded as properly a qualitative change in it. With this view the conception of the unity of the world as regards quality would be given up, to be sure, and an essential preparation made for the later development.
3. Still another predicate was given by Anaximander to the In finite, — to Qtiov, the divine. As a last remembrance of the religious home in which scientific reflection arose, it shows for the first time the inclination of philosophers, constantly recurring in history, to view as " Deity " the highest conception which theory has led them to use for explaining the world, and so to give it at the same time a sanction for the religious consciousness. Anaximander's matter is the first philosophic conception of God, the first attempt, and one which remains still entirely within the physical, to strip the idea of God of all mythical form.
But while the religious need thus maintained itself in the deter mination of metaphysical conception, the possibility of an influence of the results of science upon the religious life was brought nearer, the more these results met and responded to an impulse which hitherto had been dominant only in an obscure and uncertain manner within that life. The transformation which the Greek myths had undergone, as well in the import given them in cosmogonic fancy as in that given to their ethical interpretation, tended everywhere toward a mono theistic culmination (Pherecydes, Solon) ; /and to this movement its final result, a clearly outspoken monism, was now proffered by science.
This relation was brought to expression by Xenophanes, not a thinker and investigator, but an imaginative disciple of science, strong in his convictions, who brought the new teaching from East to West and gave it a thoroughly religious colouring. His mainte nance of monotheism, which he expressed as enthusiastic intuition in the saying,' that whithersoever he looked all was constantly flowing together for him into one Nature (/xiav <« <f>wriv), took on at once, however, that sharp polemic turn against the popular faith, by which he is principally characterised in literature. The scorn, which he poured out with abundant wit over the anthropomorphism of myth
ology,* the anger with which he pursued the poets as the portrayers » Tunon in Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 224. * Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 601 .
Omr. 1. $ 4. ] Conception* of Being : Xenophanet. 85
:' these divine figures provided with all the weaknesses and vices of auun nature,1 — these rest upon an ideal of God which will have Cite Supreme Being regarded as incomparable with man in both
•«Iily and mental characteristics. When he passes to positive at- '. r. butes, Xenophanes becomes more obscure. On the one hand, the iatj as tr tax Tag/is identified with the universe, and to this " World- GW are then ascribed all the predicates of the Milesian dpxv
(eternity, existence that has not become what it is, imperishability) ; on the other hand, qualities are ascribed to the deity, some of which are spatial, as the spherical form, while others are psychical func tions. Among these latter the omnipresence of the knowing activity and of the rational guidance of things is expressly mentioned. In tins respect the World-God of Xenophanes appears only as the i-^hest among the rest of " gods and men. "
While here a predominantly theological turn of philosophy is Lready manifested, the exchange of the point of view of metaphysics and natural science taken by Anaximander, for the religious point of view of Xenophanes shows itself in two essential deviations. The conception of the World-God is for the latter an object of r»lizious reverence, and scarcely a means for understanding Nature. Thf Colophonian's sense for knowledge of Nature is slight, his ideas »T* in part very childlike, and, as compared with those of the Mile- ■aas, undeveloped. And so for his views, the characteristic of
infinity, which Milesian science regarded as necessary in the cosmic asatter, could be dispensed with ; on the contrary, it seemed to him man in accordance with the dignity of the divine Nature,' to think of this as limited within itself, as entirely shut up or complete, con-
as regards its spatial aspect, spherical. And while the Milesians thought of the original ground of things as ever in motion 'P*«taneously, and as characterised by living variety in its inter- sal structure, Xenophanes struck out this postulate hitherto in use for the explanation of Nature, and declared the World-God to be rmmcmblc and perfectly homogeneous in all its parts. How, indeed, he thought that the variety of individual things whose reality he 6d not doubt, could be reconciled with this view, must remain ■arm iin.
4 As was required by the conception of change, the Milesian '*»r»ption of the World-substance had united without clear discrim- -sa:>on two essential elements : the one that of a substance re-
■ii--ir. g like itself, the other that of independent or self-subsistent
; H:ppo( B'f. 1. 14 (Doxogr. T>. ofio). In other passages, again, it is said A» bt woold bare the deity thought neither limited nor unlimited (? >.
«*q:*»ntly
1 Men. Kmp. Ait. Math. IX. 193.
S6 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part I.
changeability. In the thought of Xenophanes the first element was isolated ; the same process took place for the second through Hera- clitus. His doctrine presupposes the work of the Milesians, from the conclusion of which it is separated by a generation, in this way : their effort to determine or define in conceptions an abiding world- ground has been recognised as hopeless. There is nothing abiding, either in the world or in its constitution taken as a whole. Not only individual things, but also the universe as a whole, are involved in perpetual, ceaseless revolution: all flows, and nothing abides. We cannot say of things that they are ; they become only, and pass away in the ever-changing play of the movement of the universe. That, then, which abides and deserves the name of deity, is not a thing, and not substance or matter, but motion, the cosmic process, Becom ing itself.
To meet a strong demand that seems made by this turn to abstrac tion, Heraclitus found help in the sensuous perception in which this motion presented itself to him : that of fire. The co-operation of this in the conversion of things of Nature into each other had been already noticed by the Milesians ; to this may have been added ancient Oriental mystical ideas, which contact with the Persians made especially accessible to the Ionians of that day. But when Heraclitus declared the world to be an ever-living fire, and Fire, therefore, to be the essence of all things, he understood by this ipxv not a material or substance which survived all its transformations, but just the transforming process itself in its ever-darting, vibrating activity (ziingelnde), the soaring up and vanishing which corre spond to the Becoming and passing away. 1
At the same time, however, this idea takes on a still firmer form, in that Heraclitus emphasised much more strongly than the Mile sians the fact that this change is accomplished in accordance with definite relations, and in a succession that remains always the same. ' This rhythm of events (which later times have called the uniformity of Nature under law) is therefore the only permanent; it is termed by Heraclitus the destiny (ilfia. pfi. ivri), the order (8£ktj), the reason
(Aoyos) of the world. These predicates, in which physical, ethical,
1 The difficulty of ascribing to such a motion without any substrate, to a mere Becoming, the highest reality and the capacity to produce things, was evidently very much less for undeveloped thought not yet conscious of its categories than for later apprehension. The conception of Becoming as Are, hovering between the symbolic and the real meaning of the term, was supported by the use of language which treats of functions and relations as also substantives. inBut Heraclitus does not disdain to let the dim idea of a World -substance stand the background in his metaphors (of the clay kneaded ever anew, of the drink continually stirred).
1 Further in detail on this point in the following section.
C«af. 1, { 4. ] Conceptions of Being : Heraclitus, Parmenides. 37
ud logical order in the world appear as still identified, prove only the undeveloped state of thought which does not yet know how to
the different motives. The conception, however, which Heraelitos has grasped with complete clearness, and carried though vita all the strength of his austere personality, is that of order, a
separate
nevertheless, whose validity was for him as much a aatter of conviction as of knowledge.
5. In evident opposition to this theory of the Ephesian, the con- option of Being was worked out by Parmenides, the head of the Qeatic School, and the most important thinker of this period. Yet it is not easy to reconstruct his formulation of this conception from the few fragments of his didactic poem, the quite unique character of which consists in the union of dryest abstraction with grand and rich imagery. That there is a Being (fori yap tlvai), is for the Ele- itic a postulate of such cogent evidence that he only states this position without proving and that he explains only by nega tive turn of thought which first discloses to us completely the sense m which we are to understand his main thought. "Non-being"
<j$i umu), he adds, or that which " " not (to fiij i6t>), cannot be •ad cannot be thought. For all thought in relation to some thing that is, which forms its content. 1 This view of the correla tive nature of Being and consciousness leads so far with Parmenides that the two, thought and Being, are declared to be fully identical.
No thought to whose content Being does not belong, — no Being that not thought thought and Being are the same.
These propositions, which look so abstractly ontological we con sider only the words, take on quite another meaning when we con- uder that the fragments of the great Elean leave no doubt as to vhat he desired to have regarded as " Being " or that which " is. " This was corporeality, materiality (to wXiw). For him, " being" and - tilling space " are the same. This " Being," this function of filling
•pace, is precisely the same in the case of all that " " there is, thatefore, only the one, single Being which has no internal distinc- boat. " Non-being," or what is not [has not the attribute of Being], wu. 1. accordingly, incorporeality, empty space (to kcvoV). This table meaning of the cW (Being) employed by Parmenides, ac- «*ding to which the word means at one time " the full " and at an other time " Reality," leads then to the proposition that empty space
«uoi be.
Nov for the naive, sensuous way of looking at things which
«rk» even in these principles of Parmenides, the separateness of Fr. , ed. Kanten, vv. W fl.
conception,
1
is ;
if
is
:
is is
aa
it,
it
38 The Greeks : Cotmological Period. [Past L
things, by virtue of which they present themselves in their plurality and multiplicity, consists in their separation by empty space ; and, on the other hand, all that takes place in the corporeal world, i. e. all motion, consists in the change of place which the " full " experi ences in the "empty" (or the "Void"). If, therefore, the Void is not real or actual, then the plurality and motion of individual things cannot be real.
The number and variety of things presented in co-existence and succession by experience had given the Milesians occasion to ask for the common abiding ground of which all these things were metamorphoses. When, however, the conception of cosmic sub stance or world-stuff has culminated with Parmenides in the corr- ception of Being, there seems so little possibility of uniting these individual things with that reality denied them, and the one unitary Being remains also the only being. 1 The conception formed for the purpose of explanation has so developed internally that to maintain involves the denial of that which was to be explained by it. In this sense the Eleatic doctrine acosmism the mani- foldness of things has sunk in the All-one the latter alone " is," the former are deception and seeming.
According to Parmenides, however, we are to predicate of the One that eternal, has never come into being, imperishable, and especially (as Xenophanes had maintained) that through and through one in kind, one with itself, without any distinctions or differences, i. e. completely homogeneous and absolutely unchange able. He follows Xenophanes also in regarding the One as limited, complete, and definitive. Being then well-rounded sphere, per fectly homogeneous within itself, and this only and unitary world- body at the same time the world-thought,3 simple, excluding all particulars from itself to yap irAcov iarl vmjpa.
All these attempts, in part fantastic, in part regardlessly abstract, were needed in order to gain the presuppositions for the development of the first usable conceptions for apprehending Natura For important as were the motives of thought that had come to recognition therein, neither the world-stuff or cosmic matter of the Milesians, nor the "Fire-Becoming" of Heraclitus, nor the Being of Parmenides were available for explaining Nature. Now the imper fection of the first had become clear through the contrast which
A great role in these considerations of the Eleatios is obviously played by the ambiguities in language, by which, on the one hand, the Iv means both numerical unity and also qualitative unity or simplicity, while the verb cImu has not only the function of the copula, but also the meaning of " Reality. "
Hence, terms like " materialism " and " idealism " do not apply to this naive identification of consciousness and its object, the corporeal world.
11
6.
is
:
is a
is is
is it
:
is
it is
it
:
it,
Caar. 1, f 4. ] Conceptions of Being : Empedoclet. 39
the two latter as by a gulf, and with the recognition of this, occasion was given for the more independent investigators of the next period to separate in their conceptions the two motifs (being and becoming), and by setting them over against one another to think out new forms of relation, out of which permanently valua ble categories for the knowledge of Nature resulted.
These mediating attempts have in common, on the one hand, the recognition of the Eleatic postulate that that which " is " must be thought throughout not only as eternal, without a beginning and imperishable, but also as homogeneous, and as regards its qualities inchangeable ; on the other hand, however, they assent also to the thought of Heraclitus that an undeniable reality belongs to Becom ing and change (Oeschehen), and so to the manifoldness of things. Common to them, also, in their adjustment of these two needs of thought is the attempt to assume a plurality of beings, each of which
»hould satisfy for itself the postulate of Parmenides; while, on the other hand, by changing their spatial relations, they were to :ring about the changeful variety of individual things which expe rience shows. If the Milesians had spoken of qualitative changes
of the cosmic substance or matter, the Eleatic principle had ex cluded the possibility of it ; nevertheless, change ought to receive recognition, as with Heraclitus, and be attributed to Being itself,
most be reduced to kind of change which leaves untouched lie qualities of the existent. Such change, however, was think able only as a change of place, i. e. as motion. The investigators of Nature in the fifth century maintained, therefore, with the Eleatics, the (qualitative) unchangeableness of the existent, but against the Eleatics, its plurality and motion with Heraclitus, they insisted spon the reality of occurrence and change, and against Heraclitus, apon the Being of permanent and unchangeable substances as under lying and producing the same. Their common view this there
a plurality of existing beings which, unchangeable in them- ■errea, make the change and variety of individual things compre hensible.
This principle seems to have been asserted first and in its Boat imperfect form by Empedocles, — in form, however, that was widely influential historically. He put forward as "elements"* the looj which are still current in the popular modes of thought, — earth,
(Plato, Thtatl. 181 Arist. var. loc. ), iXXoiwfftt (qualitative change) ay4 (change of place) are contrasted an species of kIkijo-u or /irra^oXi).
separated
U rr»itiT tlit* done here, though the terms are as yet lacking.
Instead of the later expression troix'ta, we find in Empedocles the more
tnKtr term " root* of nil things," j><(iiiia. ra. .
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40 The Greeks : Cosmological Period. [Part L
water, air, and fire. ' Each of these is according to this system, without beginning and imperishable, homogeneous and unchange able, but at the same time divisible into parts, and in these parts capable of change of place. Out of the mixture of the elements arise individual things, which in turn cease to exist when the mix ture is separated into the elements ; to the kind of mixture made are due the various qualities of individual things, which are often different from the properties of the elements themselves.
At the same time the note of unchangeableness and a deviation from the Milesian Hylozoism assert themselves in the system of Empedocles to the extent that he could not assign independent ca pacity of motion to these material elements which experience only changing states of motion and mechanical mixings. On this account he was obliged to seek a cause of motion independent of the four elements. As such a cause he designated love and hate. The out come, however, of this first attempt to set over against a dead matter, deprived by abstraction of all motion of its own, the force which moves as metaphysically independent something, was very obscure. Love and hate are, with Empedocles, not mere properties, functions, or relations of the elements, but rather independent powers set over against them but how we are to think the reality of these moving forces not disclosed in any satisfactory way in the fragments. " Only this seems certain, that in fixing the dual nature of the principle of motion the thought was also operative that two distinct causes, love and hate, were requisite to account for the good and the evil in the change of things of our experience,* — a first indication that determinations of " worth " or value are beginning to be introduced into the theory of Nature.
Empedocles thought possible to derive the special qualities of individual things from the proper mixture of the four elements whether he attempted so to derive them, and so, how, we do not indeed know. This difficulty was avoided by Anaxagoras, who, from the Eleatic principle that nothing that can arise or pass away, drew the conclusion that as many elements must be assumed*
Aside from dependence upon his predecessors, his selection was evidently due to the inclination to regard the different states of aggregation as the original essence of things. No importance seems to have attached to the number four, in this. The dialectical construction which Plato and Aristotle gave for this quite remote from the thought of the Agrigentine.
If <pi\ia and ttiKoi are occasionally counted by the later recorders as fifth and sixth apxt of Empedocles, we must not infer from this that he regarded them as substances. His obscure and almost mythical terminology rests, for the most part, upon the fact that conceptions standing for functions are substan tives in language. Arist. Met. 984 32.
He called them exipiiara (seeds of things), or also simply xpi>/uira (sab- stances
*21 ).
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Ciap. 1, j 4. ] Conception* of Being : Anaxagoras. 41
as there are simple substances in the things of experience, meaning br simple substances those which on repeated division always sep- irate into parts qualitatively the same with their wholes. Such ->mentary substances were later, in accordance with his definition, xlW komoiomeriai. At that time, however, when only mechanical hnsion or change of temperature were known as means of investi- . irion, this conception of element (in principle entirely correspond- aig to the conceptions of the chemistry of to-day) applied to the neater part of the substances given in experience,1 and on that ac count Anaxagoras maintained that there were countless elements dif fering in form, colour, and taste. He held that they were present throughout the entire universe in a very finely divided state.
