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.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
1 Knowledge from these various sources was brought together with youthful zeal.
The chief interest fell upon physical questions, particularly upon
1 The influence of the Orient upon the beginnings of Greek philosophy has been overestimated by Glabisch (Die Religion und die Philosophie in ihrer M<rltg**c\iehtlichen Enticicklung, Breslau, 1852) and Roth (Gesrhfthte unsrrer abrudl-indischen Philosophie, 2 Vols. , Mannheim, 1858 fl. ). In the case of information upon particular fields such influence is certainly to be recognised ;
-n the other hand, the scientific conceptions are throughout independent works ■A Greek thought.
27
28 The Philosophy of the Qreeka. [Part I.
the great elementary phenomena, to explain which many hypotheses were thought out. Besides this, interest turned chiefly to geo graphical and astronomical problems, such as the form of the earth, its relation to the sidereal heavens, the nature of the sun, moon,
and planets, and the manner and cause of their motion. On the other hand, there are but feeble indications of a zeal for knowledge applied to the organic world and man.
Such were the objects of experience studied by the first " philosophy. " It stood quite far removed from medical science, which, to be sure, was limited to technical information and proficiency in the art, and was handed down as a secret doctrine, guarded in priest-like fashion in orders and schools, such as those of Rhodes, Cyrene, Crotona, Cos, and Cnidus. Ancient medicine, which aimed expressly to be an art and not a science (so Hippocrates), came into contact with philosophy when this was an all-embracing science, only at a late period and quite transiently. Cf. Haser, Lehrbuch der Gesehichte der Medicin, I. (2d ed. , Jena, 1876).
So also the beginnings of mathematics go along independently beside those of ancient philosophy. The propositions ascribed to the Milesians make the im pression of individual pieces of information picked up and put together, rather than of results of genuine research, and are quite out of relation with their doctrines in natural science and philosophy. In the circles of the Pythagoreans, also, mathematical studies were at first evidently pursued for their own sake, to be drawn all the more vigorously into the treatment of general problems. Cf. G. Cantor, Gesehichte der Mathematik, I. (Leips. 1880).
The efforts of the Milesians to determine the nature of the one world-ground had already in the case of Anaximander led beyond experience to the construction of a metaphysical conception to be used for explanation, viz. the anupov, and thereby drew science away from the investigation of facts to the consideration of conceptions. While Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic School, drew the con sequences which result for the religious consciousness from the philosophical conception of the unity of the world, Heraclitus, in hard struggle with ideas that were obscure and religiously coloured, analysed destructively the presupposition of an abiding substance, and allowed only a law of change to stand as ultimate content of knowledge. All the more sharply, on the other hand, did the Eleatic School, in its great representative, Parmenides, shape out the con ception of Being until it reached that regardless boldness of formu lation which, in the following generation of the School, was defended by Zeno, and softened down in some measure only by Melissus.
Very soon, however, a series of efforts appeared, which brought anew into the foreground the interest in explanatory natural science that had been thrust aside by this development of the first meta physical antitheses. In behalf of this interest more comprehensive efforts were made toward an enrichment of knowledge ; this time, more than in the case of previous observations, questions and hypotheses from the organic and physiological realms were kept in
Ce*t. 1. } Hie Cotmological Period. 29
sind; and the attempt was made to mediate with explanatory theories between the opposing conceptions of Heraclitus and Par- amides.
Oat of* these needs arose, about the middle of the fifth century, ude by side, and with many reciprocal relations, positive and polem ical, the theories of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus, founder of the Atomistic School of Abdera. The number of these theories and their well-known dependence upon one another prove that in iph> of the distance- by which individual men and schools found taemselves separated, there was already a great vigour in exchange of thought and in literary activity. The picture of this life takes oo a much fuller form as we reflect that tradition, in sifting its material, has obviously preserved only the memory of what was nost important, and that each of the names remaining known to u indicates, in truth, an entire circle of scientific activity.
The Pythagoreans, during this same period, occupied a peculiar position at one side. They also took up the metaphysical problem oven by the opposition between Heraclitus and the Eleatics, but hoped to find its solution by the aid of mathematics, and, by their Omtry of numbers, as whose first literary representative Philolaus is K. io-rn, added a number of most important factors to the further ■aorenient of thought. The original purpose or tendency of their l*a*rue made itself felt in their doctrines, in that, in fixing these, they conceded a considerable influence to considerations of (ethical or esthetic) worth. They indeed attempted a scientific treatment •A ethical questions as little as did the entire philosophy of this priori, but the cosmology which they based upon their astronomical ideas, already widely developed with the help of mathematics, is
yet at the same time permeated by aesthetic and ethical motives.
Of the y*n^rf»n School only three names — Thales, Anaximaruler, and An* iitau iim — hare been handed down to us. From this it appears that the school tm'T-slml in what was then the Ionic capital during the entire sixth century, aa4 prnahed with the city itself, which was laid waste by the Persians in 494, «fi*r the battle of Lade.
Tnsl— sprung from an old merchant family, is said to have predicted the wiar eclipse in 585, and survived the invasion of the Persians in the middle of '■*• *wa oratory. He had perhaps seen Egypt, and was not deficient in mathe*
and physical knowledge. So early an author as Aristotle did not know from him.
tor seems to have been little younger. Of his treatise rtpl (piatus • -ijvjus fragment only is preserved. Cf. Neuhauser (Bonn, 1883). — Biisgen,
r-Vr 4as sr«#*r des A. (Wiesbaden, 1867).
H » difficult to determine the period of Anaximenes. It falls probably about
O M». Almost nothing of his work rtpl <t>vctut remains.
l»i>- from that given by Aristotle (in the beginning of the Metaphysics) we
•^ *xor BMagre information concerning the theories of the Milesians chiefly to •-»* Commentary of Simplicius. Cf. II. Ritter, Oeschichtt der jonitchen Philos- *»•. * Berlin. 1821) ; R. Seydel, Der Fnrtschritt der Metaphysik unter den altet-
PMlosopken (Leips. 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 influence of the Orient upon the beginnings of Greek philosophy has been overestimated by Glabisch (Die Religion und die Philosophie in ihrer M<rltg**c\iehtlichen Enticicklung, Breslau, 1852) and Roth (Gesrhfthte unsrrer abrudl-indischen Philosophie, 2 Vols. , Mannheim, 1858 fl. ). In the case of information upon particular fields such influence is certainly to be recognised ;
-n the other hand, the scientific conceptions are throughout independent works ■A Greek thought.
27
28 The Philosophy of the Qreeka. [Part I.
the great elementary phenomena, to explain which many hypotheses were thought out. Besides this, interest turned chiefly to geo graphical and astronomical problems, such as the form of the earth, its relation to the sidereal heavens, the nature of the sun, moon,
and planets, and the manner and cause of their motion. On the other hand, there are but feeble indications of a zeal for knowledge applied to the organic world and man.
Such were the objects of experience studied by the first " philosophy. " It stood quite far removed from medical science, which, to be sure, was limited to technical information and proficiency in the art, and was handed down as a secret doctrine, guarded in priest-like fashion in orders and schools, such as those of Rhodes, Cyrene, Crotona, Cos, and Cnidus. Ancient medicine, which aimed expressly to be an art and not a science (so Hippocrates), came into contact with philosophy when this was an all-embracing science, only at a late period and quite transiently. Cf. Haser, Lehrbuch der Gesehichte der Medicin, I. (2d ed. , Jena, 1876).
So also the beginnings of mathematics go along independently beside those of ancient philosophy. The propositions ascribed to the Milesians make the im pression of individual pieces of information picked up and put together, rather than of results of genuine research, and are quite out of relation with their doctrines in natural science and philosophy. In the circles of the Pythagoreans, also, mathematical studies were at first evidently pursued for their own sake, to be drawn all the more vigorously into the treatment of general problems. Cf. G. Cantor, Gesehichte der Mathematik, I. (Leips. 1880).
The efforts of the Milesians to determine the nature of the one world-ground had already in the case of Anaximander led beyond experience to the construction of a metaphysical conception to be used for explanation, viz. the anupov, and thereby drew science away from the investigation of facts to the consideration of conceptions. While Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic School, drew the con sequences which result for the religious consciousness from the philosophical conception of the unity of the world, Heraclitus, in hard struggle with ideas that were obscure and religiously coloured, analysed destructively the presupposition of an abiding substance, and allowed only a law of change to stand as ultimate content of knowledge. All the more sharply, on the other hand, did the Eleatic School, in its great representative, Parmenides, shape out the con ception of Being until it reached that regardless boldness of formu lation which, in the following generation of the School, was defended by Zeno, and softened down in some measure only by Melissus.
Very soon, however, a series of efforts appeared, which brought anew into the foreground the interest in explanatory natural science that had been thrust aside by this development of the first meta physical antitheses. In behalf of this interest more comprehensive efforts were made toward an enrichment of knowledge ; this time, more than in the case of previous observations, questions and hypotheses from the organic and physiological realms were kept in
Ce*t. 1. } Hie Cotmological Period. 29
sind; and the attempt was made to mediate with explanatory theories between the opposing conceptions of Heraclitus and Par- amides.
Oat of* these needs arose, about the middle of the fifth century, ude by side, and with many reciprocal relations, positive and polem ical, the theories of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus, founder of the Atomistic School of Abdera. The number of these theories and their well-known dependence upon one another prove that in iph> of the distance- by which individual men and schools found taemselves separated, there was already a great vigour in exchange of thought and in literary activity. The picture of this life takes oo a much fuller form as we reflect that tradition, in sifting its material, has obviously preserved only the memory of what was nost important, and that each of the names remaining known to u indicates, in truth, an entire circle of scientific activity.
The Pythagoreans, during this same period, occupied a peculiar position at one side. They also took up the metaphysical problem oven by the opposition between Heraclitus and the Eleatics, but hoped to find its solution by the aid of mathematics, and, by their Omtry of numbers, as whose first literary representative Philolaus is K. io-rn, added a number of most important factors to the further ■aorenient of thought. The original purpose or tendency of their l*a*rue made itself felt in their doctrines, in that, in fixing these, they conceded a considerable influence to considerations of (ethical or esthetic) worth. They indeed attempted a scientific treatment •A ethical questions as little as did the entire philosophy of this priori, but the cosmology which they based upon their astronomical ideas, already widely developed with the help of mathematics, is
yet at the same time permeated by aesthetic and ethical motives.
Of the y*n^rf»n School only three names — Thales, Anaximaruler, and An* iitau iim — hare been handed down to us. From this it appears that the school tm'T-slml in what was then the Ionic capital during the entire sixth century, aa4 prnahed with the city itself, which was laid waste by the Persians in 494, «fi*r the battle of Lade.
Tnsl— sprung from an old merchant family, is said to have predicted the wiar eclipse in 585, and survived the invasion of the Persians in the middle of '■*• *wa oratory. He had perhaps seen Egypt, and was not deficient in mathe*
and physical knowledge. So early an author as Aristotle did not know from him.
tor seems to have been little younger. Of his treatise rtpl (piatus • -ijvjus fragment only is preserved. Cf. Neuhauser (Bonn, 1883). — Biisgen,
r-Vr 4as sr«#*r des A. (Wiesbaden, 1867).
H » difficult to determine the period of Anaximenes. It falls probably about
O M». Almost nothing of his work rtpl <t>vctut remains.
l»i>- from that given by Aristotle (in the beginning of the Metaphysics) we
•^ *xor BMagre information concerning the theories of the Milesians chiefly to •-»* Commentary of Simplicius. Cf. II. Ritter, Oeschichtt der jonitchen Philos- *»•. * Berlin. 1821) ; R. Seydel, Der Fnrtschritt der Metaphysik unter den altet-
PMlosopken (Leips. 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.
