Without knowing it, he
was fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that of
reality in nature.
was fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that of
reality in nature.
A Short History of Greek Philosophy by J. Marshall
He seems to have formed a contrast to the preceding
philosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests of
civic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if not
the misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure,' from the
studied mystery in which he was supposed to involve his {16} [23]
teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Much
learning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, of
insight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in his
criticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, and
Archilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed.
Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted.
Some named his work 'The Muses,' as though it were chiefly a poetic
vision; others named it 'The sure Steersman to the Goal of Life';
others, more prosaically, 'A Treatise of Nature. '
[26]
The fundamental principle or fact of being Heraclitus formulated in the
famous dictum, 'All things pass. ' In the eternal flux or flow of being
consisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing,
and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continual
change; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is no
stability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes of
the unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will be
observed, from the _material_ basis of being as conceived by Thales,
with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement,
philosophy has wheeled round in Heraclitus to the other extreme; he
finds his permanent element in the negation of permanence; being or
reality consists in never 'being' but always 'becoming,' not in
stability but in change.
{17}
[27]
This eternal movement he pictures elsewhere as an eternal strife of
opposites, whose differences nevertheless consummate themselves in
finest harmony. Thus oneness emerges out of multiplicity, multiplicity
out of oneness; and the harmony of the universe is of contraries, as of
the lyre and the bow. _War_ is the father and king and lord of all
things. Neither god nor man presided at the creation of anything that
is; that which was, is that which is, and that which ever shall be;
even an ever-living Fire, ever kindling and ever being extinguished.
[28]
Thus in _Fire_, as an image or symbol of the underlying reality of
existence, Heraclitus advanced to the furthest limit attainable on
physical lines, for the expression of its essentially _motive_
character. That this Fire was no more than a symbol, suggested by the
special characteristics of fire in nature,--its subtlety, its mobility,
its power of penetrating all things and devouring all things, its
powers for beneficence in the warmth of living bodies and the
life-giving power of the sun,--is seen in the fact that he readily
varies his expression for this principle, calling it at times the
Thunderbolt, at others the eternal Reason, [29] or Law, or Fate. To
his mental view creation was a process eternally in action, the fiery
element descending by the law of its being into the cruder [30] forms
of water and earth, only to be resolved again by upward process into
fire; even as one sees the {18} vapour from the sea ascending and
melting into the [32] aether. As a kindred vapour or exhalation he
recognised the Soul or Breath for a manifestation of the essential
element. It is formless, ever changing with every breath we take, yet
it is the constructive and unifying force which keeps the body
together, and conditions its life and growth. At this point [33]
Heraclitus comes into touch with Anaximenes. In the act of breathing
we draw into our own being a portion of the all-pervading vital element
of all being; in this universal being we thereby live and move and have
our consciousness; the eternal and omnipresent wisdom becomes, through
the channels of our senses, and especially through the eyes, in
fragments at least our wisdom. In sleep we are not indeed cut off
wholly from this wisdom; through our breathing we hold as it were to
its root; but of its flower we are then deprived. On awaking again we
begin once more to partake according to our full measure of the living
thought; even as coals when brought near the fire are themselves made
partakers of it, but when taken away again become quenched.
[34]
Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled by
union with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, as
Heraclitus termed it, a moister element also in him, which is the
element of unreason, as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthiness
or otherwise of the senses, as the {19} channels of communication with
the divine, depends on the _dryness_ or _moistness_,--or, as we should
express it, using, after all, only another metaphor,--on the
_elevation_ or _baseness_ of the spirit that is within. To those whose
souls are base and barbarous, the eternal movement, the living fire, is
invisible; and thus what they do see is nothing but death. Immersed in
the mere appearances of things and their supposed stability, they,
whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead forms; their spirits are
dead.
[35]
For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which is
the union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, which
individual men [37] attain, in so far as their spirits are dry and
pure. Of absolute knowledge human nature is not capable, but only the
Divine. To the Eternal, therefore, alone all things are good and
beautiful and just, because to Him alone do things appear in their
totality. To the human partial reason some things are unjust and
others just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations [38] involved in
it, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as the
renewal of its life. And so, [39] in the great events of man's life
and in the small, as in the mighty circle of the heavens, good and
evil, life and death, growth and decay, are but the systole and
diastole, the outward and inward pulsation, of an eternal good, an
eternal harmony. Day and {20} night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and hunger--each conditions the other, all are part of God. It
is sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that gives its
pleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good.
[39]
This vision of existence in its eternal flux and interchange, seems to
have inspired Heraclitus with a contemplative melancholy. In the
traditions of later times he was known as the _weeping_ philosopher.
Lucian represents him as saying, "To me it is a sorrow that there is
nothing fixed or secure, and that all things are thrown confusedly
together, so that pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, the great
and the small, are the same, ever circling round and passing one into
the other in the sport of time. " "Time," he says elsewhere, "is like a
child that plays with the dice. " The highest good, therefore, for
mortals is that clarity of perception in respect of oneself and all
that is, whereby we shall learn to apprehend somewhat of the eternal
unity and harmony, that underlies the good and evil of time, the shock
and stress of circumstance and place. The highest virtue for man is a
placid and a quiet constancy, whatever the changes and chances of life
may bring. It is the pantheistic apathy.
The sadder note of humanity, the note of Euripides and at times of
Sophocles, the note of Dante and of the _Tempest_ of Shakespeare, of
Shelley and Arnold {21} and Carlyle,--this note we hear thus early and
thus clear, in the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus. The
mystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, the
intangibility and evanescence of all things earthly,--these thoughts
obscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained,
and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of the
world's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers.
{22}
CHAPTER III
PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS
_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of the
world--Music and morals_
[41]
The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the
Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that
island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of
Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of
Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others
tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete,
and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is
that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B. C. he removed
to Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, and
that there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even a
predominating political influence.
[46]
He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various grades
of learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all things
in common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}
[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Those
in the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher,
Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage,
Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the school
we need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek
cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who,
having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had
learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for
some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and
Pythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out.
Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to the
general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that
it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of
Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others.
The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leaders
of the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of as
that, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. Nor can we fix for
certain on one fundamental conception, upon which the whole structure
of their doctrine was built.
[52]
One dictum we may start with because of its analogies with what has
been said of the earlier {24} philosophies. The universe, said the
Pythagoreans, was constituted of _indefinites_ and _definers_, _i. e. _
of that which has no character, but has infinite capacities of taking a
character; and secondly, of things or forces which impose a character
upon this. Out of the combination of these two elements or principles
all knowable [53] existences come into being. "All things," they said,
"as known have _Number_; and this number has two natures, the Odd and
the Even; the known thing is the Odd-Even or union of the two. "
[66]
By a curious and somewhat fanciful development of this conception the
Pythagoreans drew up two parallel columns of antithetical principles in
nature, ten in each, thus:--
Definite Indefinite
Odd Even
One Many
Right Left
Male Female
Steadfast Moving
Straight Bent
Light Dark
Good Evil
Four Square Irregular
Looking down these two lists we shall see that the first covers various
aspects of what is conceived as the ordering, defining, formative
principle in nature; and that the second in like manner comprises
various {25} aspects of the unordered, neutral, passive, or
disorganised element or principle; the first, to adopt a later method
of expression, is _Form_, the second _Matter_. How this antithesis was
worked out by Plato and Aristotle we shall see later on.
[54]
While, in a sense, then, even the indefinite has number, inasmuch as it
is capable of having number or order imposed upon it (and only in so
far as it has this imposed upon it, does it become knowable or
intelligible), yet, as a positive factor, Number belongs only to the
first class; as such it is the source of all knowledge and of all good.
In reality the Pythagoreans had not got any further by this
representation of nature than was reached, for example, by Anaximander,
and still more definitely by Heraclitus, when they posited an
Indefinite or Infinite principle in nature which by the clash of innate
antagonisms developed into a knowable universe (see above, pp. 12, 16).
But one can easily imagine that once the idea of Number became
associated with that of the knowable in things, a wide field of
detailed development and experiment, so to speak, in the arcana of
nature, seemed to be opened. Every arithmetical or geometrical theorem
became in this view another window giving light into the secret heart
of things. Number became a kind of god, a revealer; and the philosophy
of number a kind of religion or mystery. And this is why the {26}
second grade of disciples were called Mathematicians; mathematics was
the essential preparation for and initiation into philosophy.
Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number or
Numbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had a
certain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, this
was merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whether
Number were something actually embodied in that which truly
exists--these were speculative questions which were variously answered
by various teachers, and which probably interested the later more than
the earlier leaders of the school.
[56]
A further question arose: Assuming that ultimately the elements of
knowable existence are but two, the One or Definite, and the Manifold
or Indefinite, it was argued by some that there must be some third or
higher principle governing the relations of these; there must be some
law or harmony which shall render their intelligible union [57]
possible. This principle of union was God, ever-living, ever One,
eternal, immovable, self-identical. [58] This was the supreme reality,
the Odd-Even or Many in One, One in Many, in whom was gathered up, as
in an eternal harmony, all the contrarieties of lower [61] existence.
Through the interchange and intergrowth of these contrarieties God
realises Himself; the {27} universe in its evolution is the
self-picturing of God. [62] God is diffused as the seminal principle
throughout [68] the universe; He is the Soul of the world, and the
world itself is God in process. The world, therefore, is in a sense a
living creature. At its heart and circumference are purest fire;
between these circle the sun, the moon, and the five planets, whose
ordered movements, as of seven chords, produce an eternal music, the
'Music of the Spheres. ' Earth, too, like the planets, is a celestial
body, moving like them around the central fire.
[71]
By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation of
God, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is the
realisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and the
life of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of such
unrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; the
whole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams and
omens.
[73]
Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible also
in the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts or
spirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies,
passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forth
again into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression now
another, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in the
outward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodily
life, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as it
were in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth till
the Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Roman
fitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are as
sentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders.
On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessary
for the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as it
were (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not in
the Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity in
Multiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss or
degradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised it
also became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]
change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; in
itself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body it
belonged to the realm of unreason.
This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally
developed in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_,
_perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching the
Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_,
_passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largely
influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further
followed here.
{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its
soothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of its
numerical relations. Reference has already been made (see above, p.
27) to their quaint doctrine of the music of the spheres; and the same
idea of rhythmic harmony pervaded the whole system. The life of the
soul was a harmony; the virtues were perfect numbers; and the influence
of music on the soul was only one instance among many of the harmonious
relations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagoras
described as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, by
rhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would be
astir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancient
hymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all the
tremors of his soul were calmed and still.
Night and morning also he prescribed for himself and his followers an
examination, as it were a _tuning_ and testing of oneself. At these
times especially was it meet for us to take account of our soul and its
doings; in the evening to ask, "Wherein have I transgressed? What
done? What failed to do? " In the morning, "What must I do? Wherein
repair past days' forgetfulness? "
But the first duty of all was truth,--truth to one's own highest, truth
to the highest beyond us. Through truth alone could the soul approach
the divine. {30} Falsehood was of the earth; the real life of the soul
must be in harmony with the heavenly and eternal verities.
Pythagoreanism remained a power for centuries throughout the Greek
world and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it
in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them
it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet
more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence.
{31}
CHAPTER IV
THE ELEATICS
_God and nature--Knowledge and opinion--Being and evolution--Love the
creator--The modern egotism_
[79]
I. XENOPHANES. --Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ionian
cities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-five
to leave his native city owing to some political revolution, he
wandered to various cities of Greece, and ultimately to Zancle and
Catana, Ionian colonies in Sicily, and thence to Elea or Velia, a Greek
city on the coast of Italy. This city had, like Miletus, reached a
high pitch of commercial prosperity, and like it also became a centre
of philosophic teaching. For there Xenophanes remained and founded a
school, so that he and his successors received the name of Eleatics.
His date is uncertain; but he seems to have been contemporary with
Anaximander [80] and Pythagoras, and to have had some knowledge of the
doctrine of both. He wrote in various poetic measures, using against
the poets, and especially against Homer and Hesiod, their own weapons,
to [83] denounce their anthropomorphic theology. If oxen {32} or lions
had hands, he said, they would have fashioned gods after their likeness
which would have been as [85] authentic as Homer's. As against these
poets, and the popular mythology, he insisted that God must be one,
eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or ending. [87] As Aristotle
strikingly expresses it, "He looked forth over the whole heavens and
said that God is one, [88] that that which is one is God. " The
favourite antitheses of his time, the definite and the indefinite,
movable and immovable, change-producing and by change produced--these
and such as these, he maintained, were inapplicable to the eternally
and [86] essentially existent. In this there was no partition of
organs or faculties, no variation or shadow of turning; the Eternal
Being was like a sphere, everywhere equal; everywhere self-identical.
[84]
His proof of this was a logical one; the absolutely self-existent could
not be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted any
external influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. The
prevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of the
universe, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existent
there could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would be
conditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent would
be gone. Anything different from the Self-existent must be of the
non-existent, _i. e. _ must be nothing.
{33}
One can easily see in these discussions some adumbration of many
theological or metaphysical difficulties of later times, as of the
origin of evil, of freewill in man, of the relation of the created
world to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solved
yet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. He
was content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary and
true, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a function
of, matter.
[89]
At the same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he
expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) _doxa_). As to
the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow
[90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are
the sources from which we spring; and he imagined a time when there was
neither sea nor land, but an all-pervading slough and slime; nay, many
such periods of inundation and emergence had been, hence the sea-shells
on the tops of mountains and the fossils in the rocks. Air and fire
also as agencies of change are sometimes referred to by him;
anticipations in fact are visible of the fourfold classification of the
elements which was formally made by some of his successors.
[91]
II. PARMENIDES. --The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES,
a native of Elea. In a celebrated dialogue of Plato bearing the name
of {34} this philosopher he is described as visiting Socrates when the
latter was very young. "He was then already advanced in years, very
hoary, yet noble to look upon, in years some sixty and five. " Socrates
was born about 479 B. C. The birth of Parmenides might therefore, if
this indication be authentic, be about 520. He was of a wealthy and
noble family, and able therefore to devote himself to a learned
leisure. Like his master he expounded his views in verse, and
fragments of his poem of considerable length and importance have been
preserved. The title of the work was _Peri Phueos_--_Of Nature_.
[93]
The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describes
himself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set in
highest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whose
leading having traversed the path of perpetual day and at length
attained the temple of the goddess, he from her lips received
instruction in the eternal verities, and had shown to him the deceptive
guesses of mortals. "'Tis for thee," she says, "to hear of both,--to
have disclosed to thee on the one hand the sure heart of convincing
verity, on the other hand the guesses of mortals wherein is no
ascertainment. Nevertheless thou shalt learn of these also, that
having gone through them all thou may'st see by what unsureness of path
must he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching
{35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimenting
habit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yet
being sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and the
chattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trial
judge what I shall say to thee. "
[94]
Thus, like Xenophanes, Parmenides draws a deep division between the
world of reason and the world of sensation, between probative argument
and the guess-work of sense-impressions. The former is the world of
Being, the world of that which truly is, self-existent, uncreated,
unending, unmoved, unchanging, ever self-poised and self-sufficient,
like a sphere. [98] Knowledge is of this, and of this only, and as
such, knowledge is identical with its object; for outside this known
reality there is nothing. In other words, Knowledge can only be of
that which is, and that which is alone can know. All things which
mortals have imagined to be realities are but words; as of the birth
and death of things, of things which were and have ceased to be, of
here and there, of now and then.
It is obvious enough that in all this, and in much more to the same
effect reiterated throughout the poem, we have no more than a
statement, in various forms of negation, of the inconceivability by
human reason of that passage from _being_ as such, to that world of
phenomena which is now, but was not before, {36} and will cease to
be,--from _being_ to _becoming_, from eternity to time, from the
infinite to the finite (or, as Parmenides preferred to call it, from
the perfect to the imperfect, the definite to the indefinite). In all
this Parmenides was not contradicting such observed facts as
generation, or motion, or life, or death; he was talking of a world
which has nothing to do with observation; he was endeavouring to grasp
what was assumed or necessarily implied as a prior condition of
observation, or of a world to observe.
What he and his school seem to have felt was that there was a danger in
all this talk of water or air or other material symbol, or even of the
_indefinite_ or _characterless_ as the original of all,--the danger,
namely, that one should lose sight of the idea of law, of rationality,
of eternal self-centred force, and so be carried away by some vision of
a gradual process of evolution from mere emptiness to fulness of being.
Such a position would be not dissimilar to that of many would-be
metaphysicians among evolutionists, who, not content with the doctrine
of evolution as a theory in science, an ordered and organising view of
observed facts, will try to elevate it into a vision of what is, and
alone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the more
blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation
may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the
wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most
commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a
law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which
gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which
the imagination of evolutionists places at the beginning of time as the
starting-point of this mighty process is not merely this or that, has
not merely this or that quality or possibility, it _is_; and in the
power of that little word is enclosed a whole world of thought, which
is there at the first, remains there all through the evolutions of the
protoplasm, will be there when these are done, is in fact independent
of time and space, has nothing to do with such distinctions, expresses
rather their ultimate unreality. So far then as Parmenides and his
school kept a firm grip on this other-world aspect of nature as implied
even in the simple word _is_, or _be_, so far they did good service in
the process of the world's thought. On the other hand, he and they
were naturally enough disinclined, as we all are disinclined, to remain
in the merely or mainly negative or defensive. He would not lose his
grip of heaven and eternity, but he would fain know the secrets of
earth and time as well. And hence was fashioned the second part of his
poem, in which he expounds his theory of the world of opinion, or
guess-work, or observation.
[99]
In this world he found two originative principles {38} at work, one
pertaining to light and heat, the other to darkness and cold. From the
union of these two principles all observable things in creation come,
and over this union a God-given power presides, whose name is Love. Of
these two principles, the bright one being analogous to _Fire_, the
dark one to _Earth_, he considered the former to be the male or
formative element, the latter the female or passive element; the former
therefore had analogies to Being as such, the latter to Non-being. The
heavenly existences, the sun, the moon, the stars, are of pure Fire,
have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the
extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the
centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause of
all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and
procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by
Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, Ruler, etc.
But while in so far as there was union in the production of man or any
other creature, the [102] presiding genius might be symbolised as
_Love_; on the other hand, since this union was a union of opposites
(Light and Dark), _Discord_ or _Strife_ also had her say in the union.
Thus the nature and character in every creature was the resultant of
two antagonistic forces, and depended for its particular excellence or
defect on the proportions in which these two elements--the {39} light
and the dark, the fiery and the earthy--had been commingled.
No character in Greek antiquity, at least in the succession of
philosophic teachers, held a more honoured position than Parmenides.
He was looked on with almost superstitious reverence by his
fellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides,"
whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosophers
together. " To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato's
dialogue _Parmenides_, he was "the founder of idealism and also of
dialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic. " Of
the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller
exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by
way of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked that
its substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness and
precision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theory
of the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in time
merely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquire
into. He practically admits that he does not see how to bridge over
the partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary,
existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever the
connection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced that
nothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in any
way or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the source
from which existence itself comes into being.
On this serenely impersonal position he took his stand; we find little
or nothing of the querulous personal note so characteristic of much
modern philosophy. We never find him asking, "What is to become of
_me_ in all this? " "What is _my_ position with regard to this
eternally-existing reality? "
Of course this is not exclusively a characteristic of Parmenides, but
of the time. The idea of personal relation to an eternal Rewarder was
only vaguely held in historical times in Greece. The conception of
personal immortality was a mere pious opinion, a doctrine whispered
here and there in secret mystery; it was not an influential force on
men's motives or actions. Thought was still occupied with the wider
universe, the heavens and their starry wonders, and the strange
phenomena of law in nature. In the succession of the seasons, the
rising and setting, the fixities and aberrations, of the heavenly
bodies, in the mysteries of coming into being and passing out of it, in
these and other similar marvels, and in the thoughts which they evoked,
a whole and ample world seemed open for inquiry. Men and their fate
were interesting enough to men, but as yet the egotism of man had not
attempted to isolate his destiny from the general problem of nature.
{41} To the _crux_ of philosophy as it appeared to Parmenides in the
relation of being as such to things which seem to be, modernism has
appended a sort of corollary, in the relation of being as such to _my_
being. Till the second question was raised its answer, of course,
could not be attempted. But all those who in modern times have said
with Tennyson--
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just,
may recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them.
Without knowing it, he
was fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that of
reality in nature.
{42}
CHAPTER V
THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)
_Zeno's dialectic--Achilles and the tortoise--The dilemma of being--The
all a sphere--The dilemmas of experience_
[106]
III. ZENO. --The third head of the Eleatic school was ZENO. He is
described by Plato in the _Parmenides_ as accompanying his master to
Athens on the visit already referred to (see above, p. 34), and as
being then "nearly forty years of age, of a noble figure and fair
aspect. " In personal character he was a worthy pupil of his master,
being, like him, a devoted patriot. He is even said to have fallen a
victim to his patriotism, and to have suffered bravely the extremest
tortures at the hands of a tyrant Nearchus rather than betray his
country.
His philosophic position was a very simple one. He had nothing to add
to or to vary in the doctrine of Parmenides. His function was
primarily that of an expositor and defender of that doctrine, and his
particular pre-eminence consists in the ingenuity of his dialectic
resources of defence. He is in fact pronounced by Aristotle to have
been the inventor of dialectic or systematic logic. The relation of
{43} the two is humorously expressed thus by Plato (Jowett, _Plato_,
vol. iv. p. 128); "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno is your
second self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way,
and would fain deceive us into believing that he is telling us what is
new. For you, in your poems, say, All is one, and of this you adduce
excellent proofs; and he, on the other hand, says, There is no many;
and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence. " To this Zeno
replies, admitting the fact, and adds: "These writings of mine were
meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who scoff at
him, and show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they
suppose to follow from the affirmation of the One. My answer is an
address to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with
interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of
many if carried out appears in a still more ridiculous light than the
hypothesis of the being of one. "
The arguments of Zeno may therefore be regarded as strictly arguments
_in kind_; quibbles if you please, but in answer to quibbles. The
secret of his method was what Aristotle calls Dichotomy--that is, he
put side by side two contradictory propositions with respect to any
particular supposed real thing in experience, and then proceeded to
show that both these contradictories alike imply what is {44} [105]
inconceivable. Thus "a thing must consist either of a finite number of
parts or an infinite number. " Assume the number of parts to be finite.
Between them there must either be something or nothing. If there is
something between them, then the whole consists of more parts than it
consists of. If there is nothing between them, then they are not
separated, therefore they are not parts; therefore the whole has no
parts at all; therefore it is nothing. If, on the other hand, the
number of parts is infinite, then, the same kind of argument being
applied, the magnitude of the whole is by infinite successive positing
of intervening parts shown to be infinite; therefore this one thing,
being infinitely large, is everything.
[107]
Take, again, any supposed fact, as that an arrow moves. An arrow
cannot move except in space. It cannot move in space without being in
space. At any moment of its supposed motion it must be in a particular
space. Being in that space, it must at the time during which it is in
it be at rest. But the total time of its supposed motion is made up of
the moments composing that time, and to each of these moments the same
argument applies; therefore either the arrow never was anywhere, or it
always was at rest.
Or, again, take objects moving at unequal rates, as Achilles and a
tortoise. Let the tortoise have a start of any given length, then
Achilles, however {45} much he excel in speed, will never overtake the
tortoise. For, while Achilles has passed over the originally
intervening space, the tortoise will have passed over a certain space,
and when Achilles has passed over this second space the tortoise will
have again passed over some space, and so on _ad infinitum_; therefore
in an infinite time there must always be a space, though infinitely
diminishing, between the tortoise and Achilles, _i. e. _ the tortoise
must always be at least a little in front.
These will be sufficient to show the kind of arguments employed by
Zeno. In themselves they are of no utility, and Zeno never pretended
that they had any. But as against those who denied that existence as
such was a datum independent of experience, something different from a
mere sum of isolated things, his arguments were not only effective, but
substantial. The whole modern sensational or experiential school, who
derive our 'abstract ideas,' as they are called, from 'phenomena' or
'sensation,' manifest the same impatience of any analysis of what they
mean by phenomena or sensation, as no doubt Zeno's opponents manifested
of his analyses. As in criticising the one, modern critics are ready
with their answer that Zeno's quibbles are simply "a play of words on
the well-known properties of infinities," so they are quick to tell us
that sensation is an "affection of the sentient organism"; ignoring in
{46} the first case the prior question where the idea of infinity came
from, and in the second, where the idea of a sentient organism came
from.
Indirectly, as we shall see, Zeno had a great effect on subsequent
philosophies by the development of a process of ingenious verbal
distinction, which in the hands of so-called sophists and others became
a weapon of considerable, if temporary, power.
[109]
IV. MELISSUS. --The fourth and last of the Eleatic philosophers was
Melissus, a native of Samos. His date may be fixed as about 440 B. C.
He took an active part in the politics of his native country, and on
one occasion was commander of the Samian fleet in a victorious
engagement with the Athenians, when Samos was being besieged by
Pericles. He belongs to the Eleatic school in respect of doctrine and
method, but we have no evidence of his ever having resided at Elea, nor
any reference to his connection with the philosophers there, except the
statement that he was a pupil of Parmenides. He developed very fully
what is technically called in the science of Logic [110] the _Dilemma_.
Thus, for example, he begins his treatise _On Existence_ or _On Nature_
thus: "If nothing exists, then there is nothing for us to talk about.
But if there is such a thing as existence it must either come into
being or be ever-existing. If it come into being, it must come from
the existing or the non-existing. Now that anything which exists, {47}
above all, that which is absolutely existent, should come from what is
not, is impossible. Nor can it come from that which is. For then it
would be already, and would not come into being. That which exists,
therefore, comes not into being; it must therefore be ever-existing. "
[111]
By similar treatment of other conceivable alternatives he proceeds to
show that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending in
time. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as an
example of loose reasoning, he concludes that the existent can have no
limit in space [112] either. As being thus unlimited it must be one,
therefore immovable (there being nothing else into which it can move or
change), and therefore always self-identical in extent and character.
It cannot, therefore, have any body, for body has parts and is not
therefore one.
[113]
Being incapable of change one might perhaps conclude that the
absolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity or
consciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came to
this conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle's
respecting this and previous philosophers of the school which certain
critics have [114] made to bear some such interpretation. He says:
"Parmenides seems to hold by a Unity in thought, Melissus by a Material
unity. Hence the first {48} defined the One as limited, the second
declared it to be unlimited. Xenophanes made no clear statement on
this question; he simply, gazing up to the arch of heaven, declared,
The One is God. "
But the difference between Melissus and his master can hardly be said
to be a difference of doctrine; point for point, they are identical.
The difference is a difference of vision or mental picture as to this
mighty All which is One. Melissus, so to speak, places himself at the
centre of this Universal being, and sees it stretching out infinitely,
unendingly, in space and in time. Its oneness comes to him as the
_sum_ of these infinities. Parmenides, on the other hand, sees all
these endless immensities as related to a centre; he, so to speak,
enfolds them all in the grasp of his unifying thought, and as thus
equally and necessarily related to a central unity he pronounces the
All a sphere, and therefore limited. The two doctrines, antithetical
in terms, are identical in fact. The absolutely unlimited and the
absolutely self-limited are only two ways of saying the same thing.
This difference of view or vision Aristotle in the passage quoted
expresses as a difference between _thought_ ((Greek) _logos_) and
_matter_ ((Greek) _hule_). This is just a form of his own radical
distinction between Essence and Difference, Form and Matter, of which
much will be said later on. It is like the difference {49} between
Deduction and Induction; in the first you start from the universal and
see within it the particulars; in the second you start from the
particulars and gather them into completeness and reality in a
universal. The substance remains the same, only the point of view is
different. To put the matter in modern mathematical form, one might
say, The universe is to be conceived as a _sphere_ (Parmenides) of
_infinite radius_ (Melissus). Aristotle is not blaming Melissus or
praising Parmenides. As for Xenophanes, Aristotle after his manner
finds in him the potentiality of both. He is prior both to the process
of thought from universal to particular, and to that from particular to
universal. He does not argue at all; his function is Intuition. "He
looks out on the mighty sky, and says, The One is God. "
Melissus applied the results of his analysis in an interesting way to
the question already raised by his predecessors, of the trustworthiness
of sensation. His argument is as follows: "If there were many real
existences, to each of them the same reasonings must apply as I have
already used with reference to the one existence. That is to say, if
earth really exists, and water and air and iron and gold and fire and
things living and things dead; and black and white, and all the various
things whose reality men ordinarily assume,--if all these really exist,
and our sight and our hearing give us _facts_, then each of these as
{50} really existing must be what we concluded the one existence must
be; among other things, each must be unchangeable, and can never become
other than it really is. But assuming that sight and hearing and
apprehension are true, we find the cold becoming hot and the hot
becoming cold; the hard changes to soft, the soft to hard; the living
thing dies; and from that which is not living, a living thing comes
into being; in short, everything changes, and what now is in no way
resembles what was. It follows therefore that we neither see nor
apprehend realities.
"In fact we cannot pay the slightest regard to experience without being
landed in self-contradictions. We assume that there are all sorts of
really existing things, having a permanence both of form and power, and
yet we imagine these very things altering and changing according to
what we from time to time see about them. If they were realities as we
first perceived them, our sight must now be wrong. For if they were
real, they could not change. Nothing can be stronger than reality.
Whereas to suppose it changed, we must affirm that the real has ceased
to be, and that that which was not has displaced it. "
To Melissus therefore, as to his predecessors, the world of sense was a
world of illusion; the very first principles or assumptions of which,
as of the truthfulness of the senses and the reality of the various
objects which we see, are unthinkable and absurd.
{51}
The weakness as well as the strength of the Eleatic position consisted
in its purely negative and critical attitude. The assumptions of
ordinary life and experience could not stand for a moment when assailed
in detail by their subtle analysis. So-called facts were like a world
of ghosts, which the sword of truth passed through without resistance.
But somehow the sword might pierce them through and through, and show
by all manner of arguments their unsubstantiality, but there they were
still thronging about the philosopher and refusing to be gone. The
world of sense might be only illusion, but there the illusion was. You
could not lay it or exorcise it by calling it illusion or opinion.
What was this opinion? What was the nature of its subject matter? How
did it operate? And if its results were not true or real, what was
their nature? These were questions which still remained when the
analysis of the idea of absolute existence had been pushed to its
completion. These were the questions which the next school of
philosophy attempted to answer. After the Idealists, the Realists;
after the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of matter.
{52}
CHAPTER VI
THE ATOMISTS
_Anaxagoras and the cosmos--Mind in nature--The seeds of existence_
[129]
I. ANAXAGORAS. --Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia,
about the year 500 B. C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, of
which city Clazomenae was for some time a dependency. This step on his
part may have been connected with the circumstances attending the great
invasion of Greece by Xerxes in the year 480. For Xerxes drew a large
contingent of his army from the Ionian cities which he had subdued, and
many who were unwilling to serve against their mother-country may have
taken refuge about that time in Athens. At Athens he resided for
nearly fifty years, and during that period became the friend and
teacher of many eminent men, among the rest of Pericles, the great
Athenian [118] statesman, and of Euripides, the dramatist. Like most
of the Ionian philosophers he had a taste for mathematics and
astronomy, as well as for certain practical applications of
mathematics. Among other books he is said to have written a treatise
on the art {53} of scene-designing for the stage, possibly to oblige
his friend and pupil Euripides. In his case, as in that of his
predecessors, only fragments of his philosophic writings have been
preserved, and the connection of certain portions of his teaching as
they have come down to us remains somewhat uncertain.
[119]
With respect to the constitution of the universe we have the following:
"Origination and destruction are phrases which are generally
misunderstood among the Greeks. Nothing really is originated or
destroyed; the only processes which actually take place are combination
and separation of elements already existing. [120] These elements we
are to conceive as having been in a state of chaos at first, infinite
in number and infinitely small, forming in their immobility a confused
and characterless unity. About this chaos was spread the air and
aether, infinite also in the multitude of their particles, and
infinitely extended. Before separation commenced there was no clear
colour or appearance in anything, whether of moist or dry, of hot or
cold, of bright or dark, but only an infinite number of the seeds of
things, having concealed in them all manner of forms and colours and
savours. "
There is a curious resemblance in this to the opening verses of
Genesis, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. " Nor is the next step in his philosophy without
its resemblance to that in the Biblical record. [122] As summarised by
Diogenes Laertius it takes this form, "All things were as one: then
cometh Mind, and by division brought all things into order. " [121]
"Conceiving," as Aristotle puts it, "that the original elements of
things had no power to generate or develop out of themselves things as
they exist, philosophers were forced by the facts themselves to seek
the immediate cause of this development. They were unable to believe
that fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account for
the order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they think
it possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance.
_One_ (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is the
ordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause of
order and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared with
those before him, as one sober amidst a crowd of babblers. "
[122]
Elsewhere, however, Aristotle modifies this commendation.
"Anaxagoras," he says, "uses Mind only as a kind of last resort,
dragging it in when he fails otherwise to account for a phenomenon, but
never thinking of it else. " And in the _Phaedo_ Plato makes Socrates
speak of the high hopes with which he had taken to the works of
Anaxagoras, and how grievously he had been disappointed. "As I
proceeded," he says, "I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Mind
or any other principle of order, and having {55} recourse to air, and
aether, and water, and other eccentricities. "
Anaxagoras, then, at least on this side of his teaching, must be
considered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of a
philosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence on
subsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than a
dead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety of
phenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he is
theoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels,' in practice he is
a materialist.
[12]
Mind he conceived as something apart, sitting throned like Zeus upon
the heights, giving doubtless the first impulse to the movement of
things, but leaving them for the rest to their own inherent tendencies.
As distinguished from them it was, he conceived, the one thing which
was absolutely pure and unmixed. All things else had intermixture with
every other, the mixtures increasing in complexity towards the centre
of things. On the outmost verge were distributed the finest and least
complex forms of things--the sun, the moon, the stars; the more dense
gathering together, to form as it were in the centre of the vortex, the
earth and its manifold existences. By the intermixture of air and
earth and water, containing in themselves the infinitely varied seeds
of things, plants and animals were {56} developed. The seeds
themselves are too minute to be apprehended by the senses, but we can
divine their character by the various characters of the visible things
themselves, each of these having a necessary correspondence with the
nature of the seeds from which they respectively were formed.
[128]
Thus for a true apprehension of things sensation and reason are both
necessary--sensation to certify to the apparent characters of objects,
reason to pass from these to the nature of the invisible seeds or atoms
which cause those characters. Taken by themselves our sensations are
false, inasmuch as they give us only combined impressions, yet they are
a necessary stage towards the truth, as providing the materials which
reason must separate into their real elements.
From this brief summary we may gather that Mind was conceived, so to
speak, as placed at the _beginning_ of existence, inasmuch as it is the
first originator of the vortex motions of the atoms or seeds of things;
it was conceived also at the _end_ of existence as the power which by
analysis of the data of sensation goes back through the complexity of
actual being to the original unmingled or undeveloped nature of things.
But the whole process of nature itself between these limits Anaxagoras
conceived as a purely mechanical or at least physical development, the
uncertainty of his view as between these two alternative ways of
considering it being {57} typified in his use of the two expressions
_atoms_ and _seeds_. The analogies of this view with those of modern
materialism, which finds in the ultimate molecules of matter "the
promise and the potency of all life and all existence," need not be
here enlarged upon.
After nearly half a century's teaching at Athens Anaxagoras was
indicted on a charge of inculcating doctrines subversive of religion.
It is obvious enough that his theories left no room for the popular
mythology, but the Athenians were not usually very sensitive as to the
bearing of mere theories upon their public institutions. It seems
probable that the accusation was merely a cloak for political
hostility. Anaxagoras was the friend and intimate of Pericles, leader
of the democratic party in the state, and the attack upon Anaxagoras
was really a political move intended to damage Pericles. As such
Pericles himself accepted it, and the trial became a contest of
strength, which resulted in a partial success and a partial defeat for
both sides. Pericles succeeded in saving his friend's life, but the
opposite party obtained a sentence of fine and banishment against him.
Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont, and there,
after some five years, he died.
{58}
CHAPTER VII
THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)
_Empedocles at Etna--Brief life and scanty vision--The four
elements--The philosophy of contradiction--Philosophy a form of
poesy--The philosopher a prophet--Sensation through kinship--The whole
creation groaneth_
[129]
II. EMPEDOCLES. --Empedocles was a native of Agrigentum, a Greek colony
in Sicily. At the time when he flourished in his native city (circa
440 B. C. ) it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful communities in
that wealthy and powerful island. It had, however, been infested, like
its neighbours, by the designs of tyrants and the dissensions of rival
factions. Empedocles was a man of high family, and he exercised the
influence which his position and his abilities secured him in promoting
and maintaining the liberty of his fellow-countrymen. Partly on this
account, partly from a reputation which with or without his own will he
acquired for an almost miraculous skill in healing and necromantic
arts, Empedocles attained to a position of singular personal power over
his contemporaries, and was indeed regarded as semi-divine. His death
was hedged about with mystery. According to one story he gave a great
feast to his friends and offered a {59} sacrifice; then when his
friends went to rest he disappeared, and was no more seen. According
to a story less dignified and better known--
Deus immortalis haberi
Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Aetnam
Insiluit. HOR. _Ad Pisones_, 464 _sqq_.
"Eager to be deemed a god, Empedocles coldly threw himself in burning
Etna. " The fraud, it was said, was detected by one of his shoes being
cast up from the crater. Whatever the manner of his end, the Etna
story may probably be taken as an ill-natured joke of some sceptic wit;
and it is certain that no such story was believed by his
fellow-citizens, who rendered in after years divine honours to his name.
Like Xenophanes, Parmenides, and other Graeco-Italian philosophers, he
expounded his views in verse; but he reached a poetic excellence
unattained by any predecessor. Aristotle characterises his gift as
Homeric, and himself as a master of style, employing freely metaphors
and other poetic forms. Lucretius also speaks of him in terms of high
admiration (_De Nat. Rer. i. 716 sqq. _): "Foremost among them is
Empedocles of Agrigentum, child of the island with the triple capes, a
land wondrous deemed in many wise, and worthy to be viewed of all men.
Rich it is in all manner of good things, and strong {60} in the might
of its men, yet naught within its borders men deem more divine or more
wondrous or more dear than her illustrious son. Nay, the songs which
issued from his godlike breast are eloquent yet, and expound his
findings wondrous well, so that hardly is he thought to have been of
mortal clay. "
[180]
Like the Eleatics he denies that the senses are an absolute test of
truth. "For straitened are the powers that have been shed upon our
frames, and many the frets that cross us and defeat our care, and short
the span of unsatisfying existence wherein 'tis given us to see.
Shortlived as a wreath of smoke men rise and fleet away, persuaded but
of that alone which each has chanced to light upon, driven hither and
thither, and vainly do they pray to find _the whole_. For this men may
not see or hear or grasp with the hand of thought. " Yet that there is
a kind or degree of knowledge possible for man his next words suggest
when he continues: "Thou therefore since hither thou hast been borne,
hear, and thou shalt learn so much as 'tis given to mortal thought to
reach. " Then follows an invocation in true Epic style to the
"much-wooed white-armed virgin Muse," wherein he prays that "folly and
impurity may be far from the lips of him the teacher, and that sending
forth her swift-reined chariot from the shrine of Piety, the Muse may
grant him to hear so much as is given to mortal hearing. "
{61}
Then follows a warning uttered by the Muse to her would-be disciple:
"Thee the flowers of mortal distinctions shall not seduce to utter in
daring of heart more than thou mayest, that thereby thou mightest soar
to the highest heights of wisdom. And now behold and see, availing
thyself of every device whereby the truth may in each matter be
revealed, trusting not more to sight for thy learning than to hearing,
nor to hearing with its loud echoings more than to the revelations of
the tongue, nor to any one of the many ways whereby there is a path to
knowledge. Keep a check on the revelation of the hands also, and
apprehend each matter in the way whereby it is made plain to thee. "
The correction of the one sense by the others, and of all by reason,
this Empedocles deemed the surest road to knowledge. He thus
endeavoured to hold a middle place between the purely abstract
reasoning of the Eleatic philosophy and the unreasoned first guesses of
ordinary observation suggested by this or that sense, and chiefly by
the eyes. The senses might supply the raw materials of knowledge,
unordered, unrelated, nay even chaotic and mutually destructive; but in
their contradictions of each other he hoped to find a starting-point
for order amidst the seeming chaos; reason should weigh, reason should
reject, but reason also should find a residuum of truth.
{62}
[181]
In our next fragment we have his enunciation in symbolical language of
the _four_ elements, by him first formulated: "Hear first of all what
are the root principles of all things, being four in number,--Zeus the
bright shiner (_i. e. _ fire), and Hera (air), and life-bearing Aidoneus
(earth), and Nestis (water), who with her teardrops waters the fountain
of mortality. Hear also this other that I will tell thee. Nothing of
all that perisheth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth an end
in death. There is naught but a mingling, and a parting again of that
which was mingled, and this is what men call a coming into being.
philosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests of
civic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if not
the misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure,' from the
studied mystery in which he was supposed to involve his {16} [23]
teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Much
learning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, of
insight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in his
criticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, and
Archilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed.
Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted.
Some named his work 'The Muses,' as though it were chiefly a poetic
vision; others named it 'The sure Steersman to the Goal of Life';
others, more prosaically, 'A Treatise of Nature. '
[26]
The fundamental principle or fact of being Heraclitus formulated in the
famous dictum, 'All things pass. ' In the eternal flux or flow of being
consisted its reality; even as in a river the water is ever changing,
and the river exists as a river only in virtue of this continual
change; or as in a living body, wherein while there is life there is no
stability or fixedness; stability and fixedness are the attributes of
the unreal image of life, not of life itself. Thus, as will be
observed, from the _material_ basis of being as conceived by Thales,
with only a very vague conception of the counter-principle of movement,
philosophy has wheeled round in Heraclitus to the other extreme; he
finds his permanent element in the negation of permanence; being or
reality consists in never 'being' but always 'becoming,' not in
stability but in change.
{17}
[27]
This eternal movement he pictures elsewhere as an eternal strife of
opposites, whose differences nevertheless consummate themselves in
finest harmony. Thus oneness emerges out of multiplicity, multiplicity
out of oneness; and the harmony of the universe is of contraries, as of
the lyre and the bow. _War_ is the father and king and lord of all
things. Neither god nor man presided at the creation of anything that
is; that which was, is that which is, and that which ever shall be;
even an ever-living Fire, ever kindling and ever being extinguished.
[28]
Thus in _Fire_, as an image or symbol of the underlying reality of
existence, Heraclitus advanced to the furthest limit attainable on
physical lines, for the expression of its essentially _motive_
character. That this Fire was no more than a symbol, suggested by the
special characteristics of fire in nature,--its subtlety, its mobility,
its power of penetrating all things and devouring all things, its
powers for beneficence in the warmth of living bodies and the
life-giving power of the sun,--is seen in the fact that he readily
varies his expression for this principle, calling it at times the
Thunderbolt, at others the eternal Reason, [29] or Law, or Fate. To
his mental view creation was a process eternally in action, the fiery
element descending by the law of its being into the cruder [30] forms
of water and earth, only to be resolved again by upward process into
fire; even as one sees the {18} vapour from the sea ascending and
melting into the [32] aether. As a kindred vapour or exhalation he
recognised the Soul or Breath for a manifestation of the essential
element. It is formless, ever changing with every breath we take, yet
it is the constructive and unifying force which keeps the body
together, and conditions its life and growth. At this point [33]
Heraclitus comes into touch with Anaximenes. In the act of breathing
we draw into our own being a portion of the all-pervading vital element
of all being; in this universal being we thereby live and move and have
our consciousness; the eternal and omnipresent wisdom becomes, through
the channels of our senses, and especially through the eyes, in
fragments at least our wisdom. In sleep we are not indeed cut off
wholly from this wisdom; through our breathing we hold as it were to
its root; but of its flower we are then deprived. On awaking again we
begin once more to partake according to our full measure of the living
thought; even as coals when brought near the fire are themselves made
partakers of it, but when taken away again become quenched.
[34]
Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled by
union with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, as
Heraclitus termed it, a moister element also in him, which is the
element of unreason, as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthiness
or otherwise of the senses, as the {19} channels of communication with
the divine, depends on the _dryness_ or _moistness_,--or, as we should
express it, using, after all, only another metaphor,--on the
_elevation_ or _baseness_ of the spirit that is within. To those whose
souls are base and barbarous, the eternal movement, the living fire, is
invisible; and thus what they do see is nothing but death. Immersed in
the mere appearances of things and their supposed stability, they,
whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead forms; their spirits are
dead.
[35]
For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which is
the union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, which
individual men [37] attain, in so far as their spirits are dry and
pure. Of absolute knowledge human nature is not capable, but only the
Divine. To the Eternal, therefore, alone all things are good and
beautiful and just, because to Him alone do things appear in their
totality. To the human partial reason some things are unjust and
others just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations [38] involved in
it, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as the
renewal of its life. And so, [39] in the great events of man's life
and in the small, as in the mighty circle of the heavens, good and
evil, life and death, growth and decay, are but the systole and
diastole, the outward and inward pulsation, of an eternal good, an
eternal harmony. Day and {20} night, winter and summer, war and peace,
satiety and hunger--each conditions the other, all are part of God. It
is sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that gives its
pleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good.
[39]
This vision of existence in its eternal flux and interchange, seems to
have inspired Heraclitus with a contemplative melancholy. In the
traditions of later times he was known as the _weeping_ philosopher.
Lucian represents him as saying, "To me it is a sorrow that there is
nothing fixed or secure, and that all things are thrown confusedly
together, so that pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, the great
and the small, are the same, ever circling round and passing one into
the other in the sport of time. " "Time," he says elsewhere, "is like a
child that plays with the dice. " The highest good, therefore, for
mortals is that clarity of perception in respect of oneself and all
that is, whereby we shall learn to apprehend somewhat of the eternal
unity and harmony, that underlies the good and evil of time, the shock
and stress of circumstance and place. The highest virtue for man is a
placid and a quiet constancy, whatever the changes and chances of life
may bring. It is the pantheistic apathy.
The sadder note of humanity, the note of Euripides and at times of
Sophocles, the note of Dante and of the _Tempest_ of Shakespeare, of
Shelley and Arnold {21} and Carlyle,--this note we hear thus early and
thus clear, in the dim and distant utterances of Heraclitus. The
mystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, the
intangibility and evanescence of all things earthly,--these thoughts
obscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained,
and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of the
world's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers.
{22}
CHAPTER III
PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS
_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of the
world--Music and morals_
[41]
The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the
Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that
island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of
Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of
Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others
tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete,
and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is
that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B. C. he removed
to Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, and
that there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even a
predominating political influence.
[46]
He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various grades
of learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all things
in common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}
[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Those
in the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher,
Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage,
Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the school
we need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek
cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who,
having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had
learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for
some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and
Pythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out.
Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to the
general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that
it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of
Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others.
The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leaders
of the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of as
that, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. Nor can we fix for
certain on one fundamental conception, upon which the whole structure
of their doctrine was built.
[52]
One dictum we may start with because of its analogies with what has
been said of the earlier {24} philosophies. The universe, said the
Pythagoreans, was constituted of _indefinites_ and _definers_, _i. e. _
of that which has no character, but has infinite capacities of taking a
character; and secondly, of things or forces which impose a character
upon this. Out of the combination of these two elements or principles
all knowable [53] existences come into being. "All things," they said,
"as known have _Number_; and this number has two natures, the Odd and
the Even; the known thing is the Odd-Even or union of the two. "
[66]
By a curious and somewhat fanciful development of this conception the
Pythagoreans drew up two parallel columns of antithetical principles in
nature, ten in each, thus:--
Definite Indefinite
Odd Even
One Many
Right Left
Male Female
Steadfast Moving
Straight Bent
Light Dark
Good Evil
Four Square Irregular
Looking down these two lists we shall see that the first covers various
aspects of what is conceived as the ordering, defining, formative
principle in nature; and that the second in like manner comprises
various {25} aspects of the unordered, neutral, passive, or
disorganised element or principle; the first, to adopt a later method
of expression, is _Form_, the second _Matter_. How this antithesis was
worked out by Plato and Aristotle we shall see later on.
[54]
While, in a sense, then, even the indefinite has number, inasmuch as it
is capable of having number or order imposed upon it (and only in so
far as it has this imposed upon it, does it become knowable or
intelligible), yet, as a positive factor, Number belongs only to the
first class; as such it is the source of all knowledge and of all good.
In reality the Pythagoreans had not got any further by this
representation of nature than was reached, for example, by Anaximander,
and still more definitely by Heraclitus, when they posited an
Indefinite or Infinite principle in nature which by the clash of innate
antagonisms developed into a knowable universe (see above, pp. 12, 16).
But one can easily imagine that once the idea of Number became
associated with that of the knowable in things, a wide field of
detailed development and experiment, so to speak, in the arcana of
nature, seemed to be opened. Every arithmetical or geometrical theorem
became in this view another window giving light into the secret heart
of things. Number became a kind of god, a revealer; and the philosophy
of number a kind of religion or mystery. And this is why the {26}
second grade of disciples were called Mathematicians; mathematics was
the essential preparation for and initiation into philosophy.
Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number or
Numbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had a
certain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, this
was merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whether
Number were something actually embodied in that which truly
exists--these were speculative questions which were variously answered
by various teachers, and which probably interested the later more than
the earlier leaders of the school.
[56]
A further question arose: Assuming that ultimately the elements of
knowable existence are but two, the One or Definite, and the Manifold
or Indefinite, it was argued by some that there must be some third or
higher principle governing the relations of these; there must be some
law or harmony which shall render their intelligible union [57]
possible. This principle of union was God, ever-living, ever One,
eternal, immovable, self-identical. [58] This was the supreme reality,
the Odd-Even or Many in One, One in Many, in whom was gathered up, as
in an eternal harmony, all the contrarieties of lower [61] existence.
Through the interchange and intergrowth of these contrarieties God
realises Himself; the {27} universe in its evolution is the
self-picturing of God. [62] God is diffused as the seminal principle
throughout [68] the universe; He is the Soul of the world, and the
world itself is God in process. The world, therefore, is in a sense a
living creature. At its heart and circumference are purest fire;
between these circle the sun, the moon, and the five planets, whose
ordered movements, as of seven chords, produce an eternal music, the
'Music of the Spheres. ' Earth, too, like the planets, is a celestial
body, moving like them around the central fire.
[71]
By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation of
God, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is the
realisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and the
life of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of such
unrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; the
whole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams and
omens.
[73]
Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible also
in the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts or
spirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies,
passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forth
again into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression now
another, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in the
outward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodily
life, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as it
were in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth till
the Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Roman
fitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are as
sentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders.
On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessary
for the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as it
were (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not in
the Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity in
Multiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss or
degradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised it
also became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]
change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; in
itself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body it
belonged to the realm of unreason.
This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally
developed in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_,
_perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching the
Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_,
_passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largely
influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further
followed here.
{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its
soothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of its
numerical relations. Reference has already been made (see above, p.
27) to their quaint doctrine of the music of the spheres; and the same
idea of rhythmic harmony pervaded the whole system. The life of the
soul was a harmony; the virtues were perfect numbers; and the influence
of music on the soul was only one instance among many of the harmonious
relations of things throughout the universe. Thus we have Pythagoras
described as soothing mental afflictions, and bodily ones also, by
rhythmic measure and by song. With the morning's dawn he would be
astir, harmonising his own spirit to his lyre, and chanting ancient
hymns of the Cretan Thales, of Homer, and of Hesiod, till all the
tremors of his soul were calmed and still.
Night and morning also he prescribed for himself and his followers an
examination, as it were a _tuning_ and testing of oneself. At these
times especially was it meet for us to take account of our soul and its
doings; in the evening to ask, "Wherein have I transgressed? What
done? What failed to do? " In the morning, "What must I do? Wherein
repair past days' forgetfulness? "
But the first duty of all was truth,--truth to one's own highest, truth
to the highest beyond us. Through truth alone could the soul approach
the divine. {30} Falsehood was of the earth; the real life of the soul
must be in harmony with the heavenly and eternal verities.
Pythagoreanism remained a power for centuries throughout the Greek
world and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it
in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them
it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet
more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence.
{31}
CHAPTER IV
THE ELEATICS
_God and nature--Knowledge and opinion--Being and evolution--Love the
creator--The modern egotism_
[79]
I. XENOPHANES. --Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ionian
cities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-five
to leave his native city owing to some political revolution, he
wandered to various cities of Greece, and ultimately to Zancle and
Catana, Ionian colonies in Sicily, and thence to Elea or Velia, a Greek
city on the coast of Italy. This city had, like Miletus, reached a
high pitch of commercial prosperity, and like it also became a centre
of philosophic teaching. For there Xenophanes remained and founded a
school, so that he and his successors received the name of Eleatics.
His date is uncertain; but he seems to have been contemporary with
Anaximander [80] and Pythagoras, and to have had some knowledge of the
doctrine of both. He wrote in various poetic measures, using against
the poets, and especially against Homer and Hesiod, their own weapons,
to [83] denounce their anthropomorphic theology. If oxen {32} or lions
had hands, he said, they would have fashioned gods after their likeness
which would have been as [85] authentic as Homer's. As against these
poets, and the popular mythology, he insisted that God must be one,
eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or ending. [87] As Aristotle
strikingly expresses it, "He looked forth over the whole heavens and
said that God is one, [88] that that which is one is God. " The
favourite antitheses of his time, the definite and the indefinite,
movable and immovable, change-producing and by change produced--these
and such as these, he maintained, were inapplicable to the eternally
and [86] essentially existent. In this there was no partition of
organs or faculties, no variation or shadow of turning; the Eternal
Being was like a sphere, everywhere equal; everywhere self-identical.
[84]
His proof of this was a logical one; the absolutely self-existent could
not be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted any
external influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. The
prevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of the
universe, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existent
there could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would be
conditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent would
be gone. Anything different from the Self-existent must be of the
non-existent, _i. e. _ must be nothing.
{33}
One can easily see in these discussions some adumbration of many
theological or metaphysical difficulties of later times, as of the
origin of evil, of freewill in man, of the relation of the created
world to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solved
yet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. He
was content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary and
true, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a function
of, matter.
[89]
At the same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he
expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) _doxa_). As to
the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow
[90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are
the sources from which we spring; and he imagined a time when there was
neither sea nor land, but an all-pervading slough and slime; nay, many
such periods of inundation and emergence had been, hence the sea-shells
on the tops of mountains and the fossils in the rocks. Air and fire
also as agencies of change are sometimes referred to by him;
anticipations in fact are visible of the fourfold classification of the
elements which was formally made by some of his successors.
[91]
II. PARMENIDES. --The pupil and successor of Xenophanes was PARMENIDES,
a native of Elea. In a celebrated dialogue of Plato bearing the name
of {34} this philosopher he is described as visiting Socrates when the
latter was very young. "He was then already advanced in years, very
hoary, yet noble to look upon, in years some sixty and five. " Socrates
was born about 479 B. C. The birth of Parmenides might therefore, if
this indication be authentic, be about 520. He was of a wealthy and
noble family, and able therefore to devote himself to a learned
leisure. Like his master he expounded his views in verse, and
fragments of his poem of considerable length and importance have been
preserved. The title of the work was _Peri Phueos_--_Of Nature_.
[93]
The exordium of the poem is one of some grandeur. The poet describes
himself as soaring aloft to the sanctuary of wisdom where it is set in
highest aether, the daughters of the Sun being his guides; under whose
leading having traversed the path of perpetual day and at length
attained the temple of the goddess, he from her lips received
instruction in the eternal verities, and had shown to him the deceptive
guesses of mortals. "'Tis for thee," she says, "to hear of both,--to
have disclosed to thee on the one hand the sure heart of convincing
verity, on the other hand the guesses of mortals wherein is no
ascertainment. Nevertheless thou shalt learn of these also, that
having gone through them all thou may'st see by what unsureness of path
must he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching
{35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimenting
habit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yet
being sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and the
chattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trial
judge what I shall say to thee. "
[94]
Thus, like Xenophanes, Parmenides draws a deep division between the
world of reason and the world of sensation, between probative argument
and the guess-work of sense-impressions. The former is the world of
Being, the world of that which truly is, self-existent, uncreated,
unending, unmoved, unchanging, ever self-poised and self-sufficient,
like a sphere. [98] Knowledge is of this, and of this only, and as
such, knowledge is identical with its object; for outside this known
reality there is nothing. In other words, Knowledge can only be of
that which is, and that which is alone can know. All things which
mortals have imagined to be realities are but words; as of the birth
and death of things, of things which were and have ceased to be, of
here and there, of now and then.
It is obvious enough that in all this, and in much more to the same
effect reiterated throughout the poem, we have no more than a
statement, in various forms of negation, of the inconceivability by
human reason of that passage from _being_ as such, to that world of
phenomena which is now, but was not before, {36} and will cease to
be,--from _being_ to _becoming_, from eternity to time, from the
infinite to the finite (or, as Parmenides preferred to call it, from
the perfect to the imperfect, the definite to the indefinite). In all
this Parmenides was not contradicting such observed facts as
generation, or motion, or life, or death; he was talking of a world
which has nothing to do with observation; he was endeavouring to grasp
what was assumed or necessarily implied as a prior condition of
observation, or of a world to observe.
What he and his school seem to have felt was that there was a danger in
all this talk of water or air or other material symbol, or even of the
_indefinite_ or _characterless_ as the original of all,--the danger,
namely, that one should lose sight of the idea of law, of rationality,
of eternal self-centred force, and so be carried away by some vision of
a gradual process of evolution from mere emptiness to fulness of being.
Such a position would be not dissimilar to that of many would-be
metaphysicians among evolutionists, who, not content with the doctrine
of evolution as a theory in science, an ordered and organising view of
observed facts, will try to elevate it into a vision of what is, and
alone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the more
blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation
may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the
wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most
commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a
law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which
gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which
the imagination of evolutionists places at the beginning of time as the
starting-point of this mighty process is not merely this or that, has
not merely this or that quality or possibility, it _is_; and in the
power of that little word is enclosed a whole world of thought, which
is there at the first, remains there all through the evolutions of the
protoplasm, will be there when these are done, is in fact independent
of time and space, has nothing to do with such distinctions, expresses
rather their ultimate unreality. So far then as Parmenides and his
school kept a firm grip on this other-world aspect of nature as implied
even in the simple word _is_, or _be_, so far they did good service in
the process of the world's thought. On the other hand, he and they
were naturally enough disinclined, as we all are disinclined, to remain
in the merely or mainly negative or defensive. He would not lose his
grip of heaven and eternity, but he would fain know the secrets of
earth and time as well. And hence was fashioned the second part of his
poem, in which he expounds his theory of the world of opinion, or
guess-work, or observation.
[99]
In this world he found two originative principles {38} at work, one
pertaining to light and heat, the other to darkness and cold. From the
union of these two principles all observable things in creation come,
and over this union a God-given power presides, whose name is Love. Of
these two principles, the bright one being analogous to _Fire_, the
dark one to _Earth_, he considered the former to be the male or
formative element, the latter the female or passive element; the former
therefore had analogies to Being as such, the latter to Non-being. The
heavenly existences, the sun, the moon, the stars, are of pure Fire,
have therefore an eternal and unchangeable being; they are on the
extremest verge of the universe, and corresponding to them at the
centre is another fiery sphere, which, itself unmoved, is the cause of
all motion and generation in the mixed region between. The motive and
procreative power, sometimes called Love, is at other times called by
Parmenides Necessity, Bearer of the Keys, Justice, Ruler, etc.
But while in so far as there was union in the production of man or any
other creature, the [102] presiding genius might be symbolised as
_Love_; on the other hand, since this union was a union of opposites
(Light and Dark), _Discord_ or _Strife_ also had her say in the union.
Thus the nature and character in every creature was the resultant of
two antagonistic forces, and depended for its particular excellence or
defect on the proportions in which these two elements--the {39} light
and the dark, the fiery and the earthy--had been commingled.
No character in Greek antiquity, at least in the succession of
philosophic teachers, held a more honoured position than Parmenides.
He was looked on with almost superstitious reverence by his
fellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides,"
whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosophers
together. " To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato's
dialogue _Parmenides_, he was "the founder of idealism and also of
dialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic. " Of
the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller
exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by
way of summing up what has been already said, it may be remarked that
its substantial excellence consists in the perfect clearness and
precision with which Parmenides enunciated as fundamental in any theory
of the knowable universe the priority of Existence itself, not in time
merely or chiefly, but as a condition of having any problem to inquire
into. He practically admits that he does not see how to bridge over
the partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary,
existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever the
connection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced that
nothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in any
way or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the source
from which existence itself comes into being.
On this serenely impersonal position he took his stand; we find little
or nothing of the querulous personal note so characteristic of much
modern philosophy. We never find him asking, "What is to become of
_me_ in all this? " "What is _my_ position with regard to this
eternally-existing reality? "
Of course this is not exclusively a characteristic of Parmenides, but
of the time. The idea of personal relation to an eternal Rewarder was
only vaguely held in historical times in Greece. The conception of
personal immortality was a mere pious opinion, a doctrine whispered
here and there in secret mystery; it was not an influential force on
men's motives or actions. Thought was still occupied with the wider
universe, the heavens and their starry wonders, and the strange
phenomena of law in nature. In the succession of the seasons, the
rising and setting, the fixities and aberrations, of the heavenly
bodies, in the mysteries of coming into being and passing out of it, in
these and other similar marvels, and in the thoughts which they evoked,
a whole and ample world seemed open for inquiry. Men and their fate
were interesting enough to men, but as yet the egotism of man had not
attempted to isolate his destiny from the general problem of nature.
{41} To the _crux_ of philosophy as it appeared to Parmenides in the
relation of being as such to things which seem to be, modernism has
appended a sort of corollary, in the relation of being as such to _my_
being. Till the second question was raised its answer, of course,
could not be attempted. But all those who in modern times have said
with Tennyson--
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just,
may recognise in Parmenides a pioneer for them.
Without knowing it, he
was fighting the battle of personality in man, as well as that of
reality in nature.
{42}
CHAPTER V
THE ELEATICS (_concluded_)
_Zeno's dialectic--Achilles and the tortoise--The dilemma of being--The
all a sphere--The dilemmas of experience_
[106]
III. ZENO. --The third head of the Eleatic school was ZENO. He is
described by Plato in the _Parmenides_ as accompanying his master to
Athens on the visit already referred to (see above, p. 34), and as
being then "nearly forty years of age, of a noble figure and fair
aspect. " In personal character he was a worthy pupil of his master,
being, like him, a devoted patriot. He is even said to have fallen a
victim to his patriotism, and to have suffered bravely the extremest
tortures at the hands of a tyrant Nearchus rather than betray his
country.
His philosophic position was a very simple one. He had nothing to add
to or to vary in the doctrine of Parmenides. His function was
primarily that of an expositor and defender of that doctrine, and his
particular pre-eminence consists in the ingenuity of his dialectic
resources of defence. He is in fact pronounced by Aristotle to have
been the inventor of dialectic or systematic logic. The relation of
{43} the two is humorously expressed thus by Plato (Jowett, _Plato_,
vol. iv. p. 128); "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno is your
second self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way,
and would fain deceive us into believing that he is telling us what is
new. For you, in your poems, say, All is one, and of this you adduce
excellent proofs; and he, on the other hand, says, There is no many;
and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence. " To this Zeno
replies, admitting the fact, and adds: "These writings of mine were
meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who scoff at
him, and show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they
suppose to follow from the affirmation of the One. My answer is an
address to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with
interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of
many if carried out appears in a still more ridiculous light than the
hypothesis of the being of one. "
The arguments of Zeno may therefore be regarded as strictly arguments
_in kind_; quibbles if you please, but in answer to quibbles. The
secret of his method was what Aristotle calls Dichotomy--that is, he
put side by side two contradictory propositions with respect to any
particular supposed real thing in experience, and then proceeded to
show that both these contradictories alike imply what is {44} [105]
inconceivable. Thus "a thing must consist either of a finite number of
parts or an infinite number. " Assume the number of parts to be finite.
Between them there must either be something or nothing. If there is
something between them, then the whole consists of more parts than it
consists of. If there is nothing between them, then they are not
separated, therefore they are not parts; therefore the whole has no
parts at all; therefore it is nothing. If, on the other hand, the
number of parts is infinite, then, the same kind of argument being
applied, the magnitude of the whole is by infinite successive positing
of intervening parts shown to be infinite; therefore this one thing,
being infinitely large, is everything.
[107]
Take, again, any supposed fact, as that an arrow moves. An arrow
cannot move except in space. It cannot move in space without being in
space. At any moment of its supposed motion it must be in a particular
space. Being in that space, it must at the time during which it is in
it be at rest. But the total time of its supposed motion is made up of
the moments composing that time, and to each of these moments the same
argument applies; therefore either the arrow never was anywhere, or it
always was at rest.
Or, again, take objects moving at unequal rates, as Achilles and a
tortoise. Let the tortoise have a start of any given length, then
Achilles, however {45} much he excel in speed, will never overtake the
tortoise. For, while Achilles has passed over the originally
intervening space, the tortoise will have passed over a certain space,
and when Achilles has passed over this second space the tortoise will
have again passed over some space, and so on _ad infinitum_; therefore
in an infinite time there must always be a space, though infinitely
diminishing, between the tortoise and Achilles, _i. e. _ the tortoise
must always be at least a little in front.
These will be sufficient to show the kind of arguments employed by
Zeno. In themselves they are of no utility, and Zeno never pretended
that they had any. But as against those who denied that existence as
such was a datum independent of experience, something different from a
mere sum of isolated things, his arguments were not only effective, but
substantial. The whole modern sensational or experiential school, who
derive our 'abstract ideas,' as they are called, from 'phenomena' or
'sensation,' manifest the same impatience of any analysis of what they
mean by phenomena or sensation, as no doubt Zeno's opponents manifested
of his analyses. As in criticising the one, modern critics are ready
with their answer that Zeno's quibbles are simply "a play of words on
the well-known properties of infinities," so they are quick to tell us
that sensation is an "affection of the sentient organism"; ignoring in
{46} the first case the prior question where the idea of infinity came
from, and in the second, where the idea of a sentient organism came
from.
Indirectly, as we shall see, Zeno had a great effect on subsequent
philosophies by the development of a process of ingenious verbal
distinction, which in the hands of so-called sophists and others became
a weapon of considerable, if temporary, power.
[109]
IV. MELISSUS. --The fourth and last of the Eleatic philosophers was
Melissus, a native of Samos. His date may be fixed as about 440 B. C.
He took an active part in the politics of his native country, and on
one occasion was commander of the Samian fleet in a victorious
engagement with the Athenians, when Samos was being besieged by
Pericles. He belongs to the Eleatic school in respect of doctrine and
method, but we have no evidence of his ever having resided at Elea, nor
any reference to his connection with the philosophers there, except the
statement that he was a pupil of Parmenides. He developed very fully
what is technically called in the science of Logic [110] the _Dilemma_.
Thus, for example, he begins his treatise _On Existence_ or _On Nature_
thus: "If nothing exists, then there is nothing for us to talk about.
But if there is such a thing as existence it must either come into
being or be ever-existing. If it come into being, it must come from
the existing or the non-existing. Now that anything which exists, {47}
above all, that which is absolutely existent, should come from what is
not, is impossible. Nor can it come from that which is. For then it
would be already, and would not come into being. That which exists,
therefore, comes not into being; it must therefore be ever-existing. "
[111]
By similar treatment of other conceivable alternatives he proceeds to
show that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending in
time. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as an
example of loose reasoning, he concludes that the existent can have no
limit in space [112] either. As being thus unlimited it must be one,
therefore immovable (there being nothing else into which it can move or
change), and therefore always self-identical in extent and character.
It cannot, therefore, have any body, for body has parts and is not
therefore one.
[113]
Being incapable of change one might perhaps conclude that the
absolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity or
consciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came to
this conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle's
respecting this and previous philosophers of the school which certain
critics have [114] made to bear some such interpretation. He says:
"Parmenides seems to hold by a Unity in thought, Melissus by a Material
unity. Hence the first {48} defined the One as limited, the second
declared it to be unlimited. Xenophanes made no clear statement on
this question; he simply, gazing up to the arch of heaven, declared,
The One is God. "
But the difference between Melissus and his master can hardly be said
to be a difference of doctrine; point for point, they are identical.
The difference is a difference of vision or mental picture as to this
mighty All which is One. Melissus, so to speak, places himself at the
centre of this Universal being, and sees it stretching out infinitely,
unendingly, in space and in time. Its oneness comes to him as the
_sum_ of these infinities. Parmenides, on the other hand, sees all
these endless immensities as related to a centre; he, so to speak,
enfolds them all in the grasp of his unifying thought, and as thus
equally and necessarily related to a central unity he pronounces the
All a sphere, and therefore limited. The two doctrines, antithetical
in terms, are identical in fact. The absolutely unlimited and the
absolutely self-limited are only two ways of saying the same thing.
This difference of view or vision Aristotle in the passage quoted
expresses as a difference between _thought_ ((Greek) _logos_) and
_matter_ ((Greek) _hule_). This is just a form of his own radical
distinction between Essence and Difference, Form and Matter, of which
much will be said later on. It is like the difference {49} between
Deduction and Induction; in the first you start from the universal and
see within it the particulars; in the second you start from the
particulars and gather them into completeness and reality in a
universal. The substance remains the same, only the point of view is
different. To put the matter in modern mathematical form, one might
say, The universe is to be conceived as a _sphere_ (Parmenides) of
_infinite radius_ (Melissus). Aristotle is not blaming Melissus or
praising Parmenides. As for Xenophanes, Aristotle after his manner
finds in him the potentiality of both. He is prior both to the process
of thought from universal to particular, and to that from particular to
universal. He does not argue at all; his function is Intuition. "He
looks out on the mighty sky, and says, The One is God. "
Melissus applied the results of his analysis in an interesting way to
the question already raised by his predecessors, of the trustworthiness
of sensation. His argument is as follows: "If there were many real
existences, to each of them the same reasonings must apply as I have
already used with reference to the one existence. That is to say, if
earth really exists, and water and air and iron and gold and fire and
things living and things dead; and black and white, and all the various
things whose reality men ordinarily assume,--if all these really exist,
and our sight and our hearing give us _facts_, then each of these as
{50} really existing must be what we concluded the one existence must
be; among other things, each must be unchangeable, and can never become
other than it really is. But assuming that sight and hearing and
apprehension are true, we find the cold becoming hot and the hot
becoming cold; the hard changes to soft, the soft to hard; the living
thing dies; and from that which is not living, a living thing comes
into being; in short, everything changes, and what now is in no way
resembles what was. It follows therefore that we neither see nor
apprehend realities.
"In fact we cannot pay the slightest regard to experience without being
landed in self-contradictions. We assume that there are all sorts of
really existing things, having a permanence both of form and power, and
yet we imagine these very things altering and changing according to
what we from time to time see about them. If they were realities as we
first perceived them, our sight must now be wrong. For if they were
real, they could not change. Nothing can be stronger than reality.
Whereas to suppose it changed, we must affirm that the real has ceased
to be, and that that which was not has displaced it. "
To Melissus therefore, as to his predecessors, the world of sense was a
world of illusion; the very first principles or assumptions of which,
as of the truthfulness of the senses and the reality of the various
objects which we see, are unthinkable and absurd.
{51}
The weakness as well as the strength of the Eleatic position consisted
in its purely negative and critical attitude. The assumptions of
ordinary life and experience could not stand for a moment when assailed
in detail by their subtle analysis. So-called facts were like a world
of ghosts, which the sword of truth passed through without resistance.
But somehow the sword might pierce them through and through, and show
by all manner of arguments their unsubstantiality, but there they were
still thronging about the philosopher and refusing to be gone. The
world of sense might be only illusion, but there the illusion was. You
could not lay it or exorcise it by calling it illusion or opinion.
What was this opinion? What was the nature of its subject matter? How
did it operate? And if its results were not true or real, what was
their nature? These were questions which still remained when the
analysis of the idea of absolute existence had been pushed to its
completion. These were the questions which the next school of
philosophy attempted to answer. After the Idealists, the Realists;
after the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of matter.
{52}
CHAPTER VI
THE ATOMISTS
_Anaxagoras and the cosmos--Mind in nature--The seeds of existence_
[129]
I. ANAXAGORAS. --Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia,
about the year 500 B. C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, of
which city Clazomenae was for some time a dependency. This step on his
part may have been connected with the circumstances attending the great
invasion of Greece by Xerxes in the year 480. For Xerxes drew a large
contingent of his army from the Ionian cities which he had subdued, and
many who were unwilling to serve against their mother-country may have
taken refuge about that time in Athens. At Athens he resided for
nearly fifty years, and during that period became the friend and
teacher of many eminent men, among the rest of Pericles, the great
Athenian [118] statesman, and of Euripides, the dramatist. Like most
of the Ionian philosophers he had a taste for mathematics and
astronomy, as well as for certain practical applications of
mathematics. Among other books he is said to have written a treatise
on the art {53} of scene-designing for the stage, possibly to oblige
his friend and pupil Euripides. In his case, as in that of his
predecessors, only fragments of his philosophic writings have been
preserved, and the connection of certain portions of his teaching as
they have come down to us remains somewhat uncertain.
[119]
With respect to the constitution of the universe we have the following:
"Origination and destruction are phrases which are generally
misunderstood among the Greeks. Nothing really is originated or
destroyed; the only processes which actually take place are combination
and separation of elements already existing. [120] These elements we
are to conceive as having been in a state of chaos at first, infinite
in number and infinitely small, forming in their immobility a confused
and characterless unity. About this chaos was spread the air and
aether, infinite also in the multitude of their particles, and
infinitely extended. Before separation commenced there was no clear
colour or appearance in anything, whether of moist or dry, of hot or
cold, of bright or dark, but only an infinite number of the seeds of
things, having concealed in them all manner of forms and colours and
savours. "
There is a curious resemblance in this to the opening verses of
Genesis, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. " Nor is the next step in his philosophy without
its resemblance to that in the Biblical record. [122] As summarised by
Diogenes Laertius it takes this form, "All things were as one: then
cometh Mind, and by division brought all things into order. " [121]
"Conceiving," as Aristotle puts it, "that the original elements of
things had no power to generate or develop out of themselves things as
they exist, philosophers were forced by the facts themselves to seek
the immediate cause of this development. They were unable to believe
that fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account for
the order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they think
it possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance.
_One_ (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is the
ordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause of
order and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared with
those before him, as one sober amidst a crowd of babblers. "
[122]
Elsewhere, however, Aristotle modifies this commendation.
"Anaxagoras," he says, "uses Mind only as a kind of last resort,
dragging it in when he fails otherwise to account for a phenomenon, but
never thinking of it else. " And in the _Phaedo_ Plato makes Socrates
speak of the high hopes with which he had taken to the works of
Anaxagoras, and how grievously he had been disappointed. "As I
proceeded," he says, "I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Mind
or any other principle of order, and having {55} recourse to air, and
aether, and water, and other eccentricities. "
Anaxagoras, then, at least on this side of his teaching, must be
considered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of a
philosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence on
subsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than a
dead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety of
phenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he is
theoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels,' in practice he is
a materialist.
[12]
Mind he conceived as something apart, sitting throned like Zeus upon
the heights, giving doubtless the first impulse to the movement of
things, but leaving them for the rest to their own inherent tendencies.
As distinguished from them it was, he conceived, the one thing which
was absolutely pure and unmixed. All things else had intermixture with
every other, the mixtures increasing in complexity towards the centre
of things. On the outmost verge were distributed the finest and least
complex forms of things--the sun, the moon, the stars; the more dense
gathering together, to form as it were in the centre of the vortex, the
earth and its manifold existences. By the intermixture of air and
earth and water, containing in themselves the infinitely varied seeds
of things, plants and animals were {56} developed. The seeds
themselves are too minute to be apprehended by the senses, but we can
divine their character by the various characters of the visible things
themselves, each of these having a necessary correspondence with the
nature of the seeds from which they respectively were formed.
[128]
Thus for a true apprehension of things sensation and reason are both
necessary--sensation to certify to the apparent characters of objects,
reason to pass from these to the nature of the invisible seeds or atoms
which cause those characters. Taken by themselves our sensations are
false, inasmuch as they give us only combined impressions, yet they are
a necessary stage towards the truth, as providing the materials which
reason must separate into their real elements.
From this brief summary we may gather that Mind was conceived, so to
speak, as placed at the _beginning_ of existence, inasmuch as it is the
first originator of the vortex motions of the atoms or seeds of things;
it was conceived also at the _end_ of existence as the power which by
analysis of the data of sensation goes back through the complexity of
actual being to the original unmingled or undeveloped nature of things.
But the whole process of nature itself between these limits Anaxagoras
conceived as a purely mechanical or at least physical development, the
uncertainty of his view as between these two alternative ways of
considering it being {57} typified in his use of the two expressions
_atoms_ and _seeds_. The analogies of this view with those of modern
materialism, which finds in the ultimate molecules of matter "the
promise and the potency of all life and all existence," need not be
here enlarged upon.
After nearly half a century's teaching at Athens Anaxagoras was
indicted on a charge of inculcating doctrines subversive of religion.
It is obvious enough that his theories left no room for the popular
mythology, but the Athenians were not usually very sensitive as to the
bearing of mere theories upon their public institutions. It seems
probable that the accusation was merely a cloak for political
hostility. Anaxagoras was the friend and intimate of Pericles, leader
of the democratic party in the state, and the attack upon Anaxagoras
was really a political move intended to damage Pericles. As such
Pericles himself accepted it, and the trial became a contest of
strength, which resulted in a partial success and a partial defeat for
both sides. Pericles succeeded in saving his friend's life, but the
opposite party obtained a sentence of fine and banishment against him.
Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont, and there,
after some five years, he died.
{58}
CHAPTER VII
THE ATOMISTS (_continued_)
_Empedocles at Etna--Brief life and scanty vision--The four
elements--The philosophy of contradiction--Philosophy a form of
poesy--The philosopher a prophet--Sensation through kinship--The whole
creation groaneth_
[129]
II. EMPEDOCLES. --Empedocles was a native of Agrigentum, a Greek colony
in Sicily. At the time when he flourished in his native city (circa
440 B. C. ) it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful communities in
that wealthy and powerful island. It had, however, been infested, like
its neighbours, by the designs of tyrants and the dissensions of rival
factions. Empedocles was a man of high family, and he exercised the
influence which his position and his abilities secured him in promoting
and maintaining the liberty of his fellow-countrymen. Partly on this
account, partly from a reputation which with or without his own will he
acquired for an almost miraculous skill in healing and necromantic
arts, Empedocles attained to a position of singular personal power over
his contemporaries, and was indeed regarded as semi-divine. His death
was hedged about with mystery. According to one story he gave a great
feast to his friends and offered a {59} sacrifice; then when his
friends went to rest he disappeared, and was no more seen. According
to a story less dignified and better known--
Deus immortalis haberi
Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Aetnam
Insiluit. HOR. _Ad Pisones_, 464 _sqq_.
"Eager to be deemed a god, Empedocles coldly threw himself in burning
Etna. " The fraud, it was said, was detected by one of his shoes being
cast up from the crater. Whatever the manner of his end, the Etna
story may probably be taken as an ill-natured joke of some sceptic wit;
and it is certain that no such story was believed by his
fellow-citizens, who rendered in after years divine honours to his name.
Like Xenophanes, Parmenides, and other Graeco-Italian philosophers, he
expounded his views in verse; but he reached a poetic excellence
unattained by any predecessor. Aristotle characterises his gift as
Homeric, and himself as a master of style, employing freely metaphors
and other poetic forms. Lucretius also speaks of him in terms of high
admiration (_De Nat. Rer. i. 716 sqq. _): "Foremost among them is
Empedocles of Agrigentum, child of the island with the triple capes, a
land wondrous deemed in many wise, and worthy to be viewed of all men.
Rich it is in all manner of good things, and strong {60} in the might
of its men, yet naught within its borders men deem more divine or more
wondrous or more dear than her illustrious son. Nay, the songs which
issued from his godlike breast are eloquent yet, and expound his
findings wondrous well, so that hardly is he thought to have been of
mortal clay. "
[180]
Like the Eleatics he denies that the senses are an absolute test of
truth. "For straitened are the powers that have been shed upon our
frames, and many the frets that cross us and defeat our care, and short
the span of unsatisfying existence wherein 'tis given us to see.
Shortlived as a wreath of smoke men rise and fleet away, persuaded but
of that alone which each has chanced to light upon, driven hither and
thither, and vainly do they pray to find _the whole_. For this men may
not see or hear or grasp with the hand of thought. " Yet that there is
a kind or degree of knowledge possible for man his next words suggest
when he continues: "Thou therefore since hither thou hast been borne,
hear, and thou shalt learn so much as 'tis given to mortal thought to
reach. " Then follows an invocation in true Epic style to the
"much-wooed white-armed virgin Muse," wherein he prays that "folly and
impurity may be far from the lips of him the teacher, and that sending
forth her swift-reined chariot from the shrine of Piety, the Muse may
grant him to hear so much as is given to mortal hearing. "
{61}
Then follows a warning uttered by the Muse to her would-be disciple:
"Thee the flowers of mortal distinctions shall not seduce to utter in
daring of heart more than thou mayest, that thereby thou mightest soar
to the highest heights of wisdom. And now behold and see, availing
thyself of every device whereby the truth may in each matter be
revealed, trusting not more to sight for thy learning than to hearing,
nor to hearing with its loud echoings more than to the revelations of
the tongue, nor to any one of the many ways whereby there is a path to
knowledge. Keep a check on the revelation of the hands also, and
apprehend each matter in the way whereby it is made plain to thee. "
The correction of the one sense by the others, and of all by reason,
this Empedocles deemed the surest road to knowledge. He thus
endeavoured to hold a middle place between the purely abstract
reasoning of the Eleatic philosophy and the unreasoned first guesses of
ordinary observation suggested by this or that sense, and chiefly by
the eyes. The senses might supply the raw materials of knowledge,
unordered, unrelated, nay even chaotic and mutually destructive; but in
their contradictions of each other he hoped to find a starting-point
for order amidst the seeming chaos; reason should weigh, reason should
reject, but reason also should find a residuum of truth.
{62}
[181]
In our next fragment we have his enunciation in symbolical language of
the _four_ elements, by him first formulated: "Hear first of all what
are the root principles of all things, being four in number,--Zeus the
bright shiner (_i. e. _ fire), and Hera (air), and life-bearing Aidoneus
(earth), and Nestis (water), who with her teardrops waters the fountain
of mortality. Hear also this other that I will tell thee. Nothing of
all that perisheth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth an end
in death. There is naught but a mingling, and a parting again of that
which was mingled, and this is what men call a coming into being.
