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EARLY
GREEK PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN BURNET, M.A., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR

AND ST. LEONARD, ST. ANDREWS

Περὶ μὲν τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐσκόπουν, τὰ δ’ ὄντα ὑπέλαβον

εἶναι τὰ αἰσθητὰ μόνον.—Aristotle.

SECOND EDITION

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1908

First Edition published April 1892.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

It has been no easy task to revise this volume in such a way as to make it more worthy of the favour with which it has been received. Most of it has had to be rewritten in the light of certain discoveries made since the publication of the first edition, above all, that of the extracts from Menon’s Ἰατρικά, which have furnished, as I believe, a clue to the history of Pythagoreanism. I trust that all other obligations are duly acknowledged in the proper place.

It did not seem worth while to eliminate all traces of a certain youthful assurance which marked the first edition. I should not write now as I wrote at the age of twenty-five; but I still feel that the main contentions of the book were sound, so I have not tried to amend the style. The references to Zeller and “Ritter and Preller” are adapted throughout to the latest editions. The Aristotelian commentators are referred to by the pages and verses of the Berlin Academy edition, and Stobaeus by those of Wachsmuth.

J. B.

St. Andrews, 1908.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

No apology is needed for the appearance of a work dealing with Early Greek Philosophy. The want of one has long been felt; for there are few branches of philology in which more progress has been made in the last twenty years, and the results of that progress have not yet been made accessible to the English reader. My original intention was simply to report these results; but I soon found that I was obliged to dissent from some of them, and it seemed best to say so distinctly. Very likely I am wrong in most of these cases, but my mistakes may be of use in calling attention to unobserved points. In any case, I hope no one will think I have been wanting in the respect due to the great authority of Zeller, who was the first to recall the history of philosophy from the extravagances into which it had wandered earlier in the century. I am glad to find that all my divergences from his account have only led me a little further in the path that he struck out.

I am very sensible of the imperfect execution of some parts of this work; but the subject has become so large, and the number of authorities whose testimony must be weighed is so great, that it is not easy for any one writer to be equally at home in all parts of the field.

I have consulted the student’s convenience by giving references to the seventh edition of Ritter and Preller (ed. Schultess) throughout. The references to Zeller are to the fourth German edition, from which the English translation was made. I have been able to make some use also of the recently published fifth edition (1892), and all references to it are distinguished by the symbol Z⁵. I can only wish that it had appeared in time for me to incorporate its results more thoroughly.

I have to thank many friends for advice and suggestions, and, above all, Mr. Harold H. Joachim, Fellow of Merton College, who read most of the work before it went to press.

J. B.

Oxford, 1892.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION

The cosmological character of early Greek philosophy.

I. It was not till the primitive view of the world and the customary rules of life had broken down, that the Greeks, began to feel the needs which philosophies of nature and of conduct seek to satisfy. Nor were those needs felt all at once. The traditional maxims of conduct were not seriously questioned till the old view of nature had passed away; and, for this reason, the earliest philosophers busied themselves mainly with speculations about the world around them. In due season, Logic was called into being to meet a fresh want. The pursuit of cosmological inquiry beyond a certain point inevitably brought to light a wide divergence between science and common sense, which was itself a problem that demanded solution, and moreover constrained philosophers to study the means of defending their paradoxes against the prejudices of the unscientific many. Later still, the prevailing interest in logical matters raised the question of the origin and validity of knowledge; while, about the same time, the breakdown of traditional morality gave rise to Ethics. The period which precedes the rise of Logic and Ethics has thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated apart.[^[1]]

The primitive view of the world.

II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essentially a thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in Custom and Myth, to the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two.

We must not allow ourselves to be misled by metaphors about “the childhood of the race,” though even these, if properly understood, are suggestive enough. Our ideas of the true state of a child’s mind are apt to be coloured by that theory of antenatal existence which has found, perhaps, its highest expression in Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. We transfer these ideas to the race generally, and are thus led to think of the men who made and repeated myths as simple, innocent creatures who were somehow nearer than we are to the beginning of things, and so, perhaps, saw with a clearer vision. A truer view of what a child’s thoughts really are will help to put us on the right track. Left to themselves, children are often tormented by vague terrors of surrounding objects which they fear to confide to any one. Their games are based upon an animistic theory of things, and they are great believers in luck and in the lot. They are devotees, too, of that “cult of odds and ends” which is fetishism; and the unsightly old dolls which they often cherish more fondly than the choicest products of the toy-shop, remind us forcibly of the ungainly stocks and stones which Pausanias found in the Holy of Holies of many a stately Greek temple. At Sparta the Tyndaridai were a couple of boards, while the old image of Hera at Samos was a roughly-hewn log.[^[2]]

On the other hand, we must remember that, even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the world was already very old. Those Greeks who first tried to understand nature were not at all in the position of men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path. There was already in the field a tolerably consistent view of the world, though no doubt it was rather implied and assumed in ritual and myth than distinctly realised as such. The early thinkers did a far greater thing than merely to make a beginning. By turning their backs on the savage view of things, they renewed their youth, and with it, as it proved, the youth of the world, at a time when the world seemed in its dotage.

The marvel is that they were able to do this so thoroughly as they did. A savage myth might be preserved here and there to the scandal of philosophers; fetishes, totems, and magic rites might lurk in holes and corners with the moles and with the bats, to be unearthed long afterwards by the curious in such matters. But the all-pervading superstition, which we call primitive because we know not how or whence it came, was gone for ever; and we find Herodotos noting with unfeigned surprise the existence among “barbarians” of beliefs and customs which, not so long ago, his own forefathers had taught and practised quite as zealously as ever did Libyan or Scyth. Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas.

Traces of the primitive view in early literature.

III. In one respect the way had been prepared already. Long before history begins, the colonisation of the islands and the coasts of Asia Minor had brought about a state of things that was not favourable to the rigid maintenance of traditional customs and ways of thought. A myth is essentially a local thing, and though the emigrants might give the names of ancestral sanctuaries to similar spots in their new homes, they could not transfer with the names the old sentiment of awe. Besides, these were, on the whole, stirring and joyful times. The spirit of adventure is not favourable to superstition, and men whose chief occupation is fighting are not apt to be oppressed by that “fear of the world” which some tell us is the normal state of the savage mind. Even the savage becomes in great measure free from it when he is really happy.

1. Homer.

That is why we find so few traces of the primitive view of the world in Homer. The gods have become frankly human, and everything savage is, so far as may be, kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of early beliefs and practices, but they are exceptional. In that strange episode of the Fourteenth Book of the Iliad known as The Deceiving of Zeus we find a number of theogonical ideas which are otherwise quite foreign to Homer, but they are treated with so little seriousness that the whole thing has even been regarded as a parody or burlesque of some primitive poem on the birth of the gods. That, however, is to mistake the spirit of Homer. He finds the old myth ready to his hand, and sees in it matter for a “joyous tale,” just as Demodokos did in the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. There is no antagonism to traditional views, but rather a complete detachment from them.

It has often been noted that Homer never speaks of the primitive custom of purification for bloodshed. The dead heroes are burned, not buried, as the kings of continental Hellas were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In the Iliad we have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroklos, in close connexion with the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. All that was part of the traditional story, and Homer says as little about it as he can. There is also the Nekyia in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, which has been assigned to a late date on the ground that it contains Orphic ideas. The reasoning does not appear cogent. As we shall see, the Orphics did not so much invent new ideas as revive old ones, and if the legend took Odysseus to the abode of the dead, that had to be described in accordance with the accepted views about it.

In fact, we are never entitled to infer from Homer’s silence that the primitive view was unknown to him. The absence of certain things from the poems is due to reticence rather than ignorance; for, wherever anything to his purpose was to be got from an old story, he did not hesitate to use it. On the other hand, when the tradition necessarily brought him into contact with savage ideas, he prefers to treat them with reserve. We may infer, then, that at least in a certain society, that of the princes for whom Homer sang, the primitive view of the world was already discredited by a comparatively early date.[^[3]]

2. Hesiod.

IV. When we come to Hesiod, we seem to be in another world. We hear stories of the gods which are not only irrational but repulsive, and these stories are told quite seriously. Hesiod makes the Muses say: “We know how to tell many false things that are like the truth; but we know too, when we will, to utter what is true.”[^[4]] This means that he was quite conscious of the difference between the Homeric spirit and his own. The old light-heartedness is gone, and it is important to tell the truth about the gods. Hesiod knows, too, that he belongs to a later and a sadder time than Homer. In describing the Ages of the World, he inserts a fifth age between those of Bronze and Iron. That is the Age of the Heroes, the age Homer sang of. It was better than the Bronze Age which came before it, and far better than that which followed it, the Age of Iron, in which Hesiod lives.[^[5]] He also feels that he is singing for another class. It is to shepherds and husbandmen he addresses himself, and the princes for whom Homer sang have become remote persons who give “crooked dooms.” For common men there is no hope but in hard, unceasing toil. It is the voice of the people we now hear for the first time, and of a people for whom the romance and splendour of the Greek Middle Ages meant nothing. The primitive view of the world had never really died out among them; so it was natural for their first spokesman to assume it in his poems. That is why we find in Hesiod these old, savage tales, which Homer disdained to speak of.

Yet it would be wrong to see in the Theogony a mere revival of the old superstition. Nothing can ever be revived just as it was; for in every reaction there is a polemical element which differentiates it completely from the earlier stage it vainly seeks to reproduce. Hesiod could not help being affected by the new spirit which trade and adventure had awakened over the sea, and he became a pioneer in spite of himself. The rudiments of what grew into Ionic science and history are to be found in his poems, and he really did more than any one to hasten that decay of the old ideas which he was seeking to arrest. The Theogony is an attempt to reduce all the stories about the gods into a single system, and system is necessarily fatal to so wayward a thing as mythology. Hesiod, no less than Homer, teaches a panhellenic polytheism; the only difference is that with him this is more directly based on the legends attached to the local cults, which he thus sought to invest with a national significance. The result is that the myth becomes primary and the cult secondary, a complete inversion of the primitive relation. Herodotos tells us that it was Homer and Hesiod who made a theogony for the Hellenes, who gave the gods their names, and distributed among them their offices and arts,[^[6]] and it is perfectly true. The Olympian pantheon took the place of the old local gods in men’s minds, and this was as much the doing of Hesiod as of Homer. The ordinary man had no ties to this company of gods, but at most to one or two of them; and even these he would hardly recognise in the humanised figures, detached from all local associations, which poetry had substituted for the older objects of worship. The gods of Greece had become a splendid subject for art; but they came between the Hellenes and their ancestral religions. They were incapable of satisfying the needs of the people, and that is the secret of the religious revival which we shall have to consider in the sequel.

Cosmogony.

V. Nor is it only in this way that Hesiod shows himself a child of his time. His Theogony is at the same time a Cosmogony, though it would seem that here he was following others rather than working out a thought of his own. At any rate, he only mentions the two great cosmogonical figures, Chaos and Eros, and does not really bring them into connexion with his system. The conception of Chaos represents a distinct effort to picture the beginning of things. It is not a formless mixture, but rather, as its etymology indicates, the yawning gulf or gap where nothing is as yet.[^[7]] We may be sure that this is not primitive. Savage man does not feel called upon to form an idea of the very beginning of all things; he takes for granted that there was something to begin with. The other figure, that of Eros, was doubtless intended to explain the impulse to production which gave rise to the whole process. That, at least, is what the Maoris mean by it, as may be seen from the following remarkable passage[^[8]]:—

From the conception the increase,

From the increase the swelling,

From the swelling the thought,

From the thought the remembrance,

From the remembrance the desire.

The word became fruitful,

It dwelt with the feeble glimmering,

It brought forth the night.

Hesiod must have had some such primitive speculation to work on, but he does not tell us anything clearly on the subject.

We have records of great activity in the production of cosmogonies during the whole of the sixth century B.C., and we know something of the systems of Epimenides, Pherekydes,[^[9]] and Akousilaos. As there were speculations of this kind even before Hesiod, we need have no hesitation in believing that the earliest Orphic cosmogony goes back to that century too.[^[10]] The feature which is common to all these systems is the attempt to get behind the gap, and to put Kronos or Zeus in the first place. This is what Aristotle has in view when he distinguishes the “theologians” from those who were half theologians and half philosophers, and who put what was best in the beginning.[^[11]] It is obvious, however, that this process is the very reverse of scientific, and might be carried on indefinitely; so we have nothing to do with the cosmogonists in our present inquiry, except so far as they can be shown to have influenced the course of more sober investigations. Indeed, these speculations are still based on the primitive view of the world, and so fall outside the limits we have traced for ourselves.

General characteristics of early Greek cosmology.

VI. What, then, was the step that placed the Ionian cosmologists once for all above the level of the Maoris? Grote and Zeller make it consist in the substitution of impersonal causes acting according to law for personal causes acting arbitrarily. But the distinction between personal and impersonal was not really felt in antiquity, and it is a mistake to lay much stress on it. It seems rather that the real advance made by the scientific men of Miletos was that they left off telling tales. They gave up the hopeless task of describing what was when as yet there was nothing, and asked instead what all things really are now.

Ex nihilo nihil.

The great principle which underlies all their thinking, though it is first put into words by Parmenides, is that Nothing comes into being out of nothing, and nothing passes away into nothing. They saw, however, that particular things were always coming into being and passing away again, and from this it followed that their existence was no true or stable one. The only things that were real and eternal were the original matter which passed through all these changes and the motion which gave rise to them, to which was soon added that law of proportion or compensation which, despite the continual becoming and passing away of things, secured the relative permanence and stability of the various forms of existence that go to make up the world. That these were, in fact, the leading ideas of the early cosmologists, cannot, of course, be proved till we have given a detailed exposition of their systems; but we can show at once how natural it was for such thoughts to come to them. It is always the problem of change and decay that first excites the wonder which, as Plato says, is the starting-point of all philosophy. Besides this, there was in the Ionic nature a vein of melancholy which led it to brood upon the instability of things. Even before the time of Thales, Mimnermos of Kolophon sings the sadness of change; and, at a later date, the lament of Simonides, that the generations of men fall like the leaves of the forest, touches a chord already struck by the earliest singer of Ionia.[^[12]] Now, so long as men could believe everything they saw was alive like themselves, the spectacle of the unceasing death and new birth of nature would only tinge their thoughts with a certain mournfulness, which would find its expression in such things as the Linos dirges which the Greeks borrowed from their Asiatic neighbours;[^[13]] but when primitive animism, which had seen conscious life everywhere, was gone, and polytheistic mythology, which had personified at least the more striking natural phenomena, was going, it must have seemed that there was nowhere any abiding reality. Nowadays we are accustomed, for good and for ill, to the notion of dead things, obedient, not to inner impulses, but solely to mechanical laws. But that is not the view of the natural man, and we may be sure that, when first it forced itself on him, it must have provoked a strong sense of dissatisfaction. Relief was only to be had from the reflexion that as nothing comes from nothing, nothing can pass away into nothing. There must, then, be something which always is, something fundamental which persists throughout all change, and ceases to exist in one form only that it may reappear in another. It is significant that this something is spoken of as “deathless” and “ageless.”[^[14]]

Φύσις

VII. So far as I know, no historian of Greek philosophy has clearly laid it down that the word which was used by the early cosmologists to express this idea of a permanent and primary substance was none other than φύσις; and that the title Περὶ φύσεως, so commonly given to philosophical works of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.,[^[15]] means simply Concerning the Primary Substance. Both Plato and Aristotle use the term in this sense when they are discussing the earlier philosophy,[^[16]] and its history shows clearly enough what its original meaning must have been. In Greek philosophical language, φύσις always means that which is primary, fundamental, and persistent, as opposed to what is secondary, derivative, and transient; what is “given,” as opposed to that which is made or becomes. It is what is there to begin with. It is true that Plato and his successors also identify φύσις with the best or most normal condition of a thing; but that is just because they held the goal of any development to be prior to the process by which it is reached. Such an idea was wholly unknown to the pioneers of philosophy. They sought the explanation of the incomplete world we know, not in the end, but in the beginning. It seemed to them that, if only they could strip off all the modifications which Art and Chance had introduced, they would get at the ultimately real; and so the search after φύσις, first in the world at large and afterwards in human society, became the chief interest of the age we have to deal with.

The word ἀρχή, by which the early cosmologists are usually said to have designated the object of their search, is in this sense purely Aristotelian. It is quite natural that it should be employed in the well-known historical sketch of the First Book of the Metaphysics; for Aristotle is there testing the theories of earlier thinkers by his own doctrine of the four causes. But Plato never uses the term in this connexion, and it does not occur once in the genuine fragments of the early philosophers. It is confined to the Stoic and Peripatetic handbooks from which most of our knowledge is derived, and these simply repeat Aristotle. Zeller has pointed out in a footnote[^[17]] that it would be an anachronism to refer the subtle Aristotelian use of the word to the beginnings of speculation. To Anaximander ἀρχή could only have meant “beginning,” and it was far more than a beginning that the early cosmologists were looking for: it was the eternal ground of all things.

There is one very important conclusion that follows at once from the account just given of the meaning of φύσις, and it is, that the search for the primary substance really was the thing that interested the Ionian philosophers. Had their main object been, as Teichmüller held it was, the explanation of celestial and meteorological phenomena, their researches would not have been called Περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίη,[^[18]] but rather Περὶ οὐρανοῦ or Περὶ μετεώρων. And this we shall find confirmed by a study of the way in which Greek cosmology developed. The growing thought which may be traced through the successive representatives of any school is always that which concerns the primary substance, while the astronomical and other theories are, in the main, peculiar to the individual thinkers. Teichmüller undoubtedly did good service by his protest against the treatment of these theories as mere isolated curiosities. They form, on the contrary, coherent systems which must be looked at as wholes. But it is none the less true that Greek philosophy began, as it ended, with the search for what was abiding in the flux of things.

Motion and rest.

VIII. But how could this give back to nature the life of which it had been robbed by advancing knowledge? Simply by making it possible for the life that had hitherto been supposed to reside in each particular thing to be transferred to the one thing of which all others were passing forms. The very process of birth, growth, and decay might now be regarded as the unceasing activity of the one ultimate reality. Aristotle and his followers expressed this by saying that the early cosmologists believed in an “eternal motion,” and in substance this is correct, though it is not probable that they said anything about the eternal motion in their writings. It is more likely that they simply took it for granted. In early times, it is not movement but rest that has to be accounted for, and we may be sure that the eternity of motion was not asserted till it had been denied. As we shall see, it was Parmenides who first denied it. The idea of a single ultimate substance, when thoroughly worked out, seemed to leave no room for motion; and after the time of Parmenides, we do find that philosophers were concerned to show how it began. At first, this would not seem to require explanation at all.

Modern writers sometimes give the name of Hylozoism to this way of thinking, but the term is apt to be misleading. It suggests theories which deny the separate reality of life and spirit, whereas, in the days of Thales, and even far later, the distinction between matter and spirit had not been felt, still less formulated in such a way that it could be denied. The uncreated, indestructible reality of which these early thinkers tell us was a body, or even matter, if we choose to call it so; but it was not matter in the sense in which matter is opposed to spirit.

The downfall of the primitive view of the world.

IX. We have indicated the main characteristics of the primitive view of the world, and we have sketched in outline the view which displaced it; we must now consider the causes which led to the downfall of the one and the rise of the other. Foremost among these was undoubtedly the widening of the Greek horizon occasioned by the great extension of maritime enterprise which followed the decay of the Phoenician naval supremacy. The scene of the old stories had, as a rule, been laid just outside the boundaries of the world known to the men who believed them. Odysseus does not meet with Kirke or the Kyklops or the Sirens in the familiar Aegean, but in regions which lay beyond the ken of the Greeks at the time the Odyssey was composed. Now, however, the West was beginning to be familiar too, and the fancy of the Greek explorers led them to identify the lands which they discovered with the places which the hero of the national fairy-tale had come to in his wanderings. It was soon discovered that the monstrous beings in question were no longer to be found there, and the belief grew up that they had never been there at all. So, too, the Milesians had settled colonies all round the Euxine. The colonists went out with Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα in their minds; and, at the same time as they changed the name of the Inhospitable to the Hospitable Sea, they localised the “far country” (αἶα) of the primitive tale, and made Jason fetch the Golden Fleece from Kolchis. Above all, the Phokaians had explored the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Herakles,[^[19]] and the new knowledge that the “endless paths” of the sea had boundaries must have moved men’s minds in much the same way as the discovery of America did in later days. A single example will illustrate the process which was always going on. According to the primitive view, the heavens were supported by a giant called Atlas. No one had ever seen him, though he was supposed to live in Arkadia. The Phokaian explorers identified him with a cloud-capped mountain in Africa, and once they had done this, the old belief was doomed. It was impossible to go on believing in a god who was also a mountain, conveniently situated for the trader to steer by, as he sailed to Tarshish in quest of silver.

Alleged Oriental origin of philosophy.

X. But by far the most important question we have to face is that of the nature and extent of the influence exercised by what we call Eastern wisdom on the Greek mind. It is a common idea even now that the Greeks in some way derived their philosophy from Egypt and Babylon, and we must therefore try to understand as clearly as possible what such a statement really means. To begin with, we must observe that no writer of the period during which Greek philosophy flourished knows anything at all of its having come from the East. Herodotos would not have omitted to say so, had he ever heard of it; for it would have confirmed his own belief in the Egyptian origin of Greek religion and civilisation.[^[20]] Plato, who had a very great respect for the Egyptians on other grounds, distinctly implies that they were a businesslike rather than a philosophical people.[^[21]] Aristotle speaks only of the origin of mathematics in Egypt[^[22]] (a point to which we shall return), though, if he had known of an Egyptian philosophy, it would have suited his argument better to mention that. It is not till a far later date, when Egyptian priests and Alexandrian Jews began to vie with one another in discovering the sources of Greek philosophy in their own past, that we first have definite statements to the effect that it came from Phoenicia or Egypt. Here, however, we must carefully note two things. In the first place, the word “philosophy” had come by that time to include theology of a more or less mystical type, and was even applied to various forms of asceticism.[^[23]] In the second place, the so-called Egyptian philosophy was only arrived at by a process of turning primitive myths into allegories. We are still able to judge Philo’s Old Testament interpretation for ourselves, and we may be sure that the Egyptian allegorists were even more arbitrary; for they had far less promising material to work on. Nothing can be more savage than the myth of Isis and Osiris;[^[24]] yet it is first interpreted according to the ideas of later Greek philosophy, and then declared to be the original source of that philosophy.

This method of interpretation may be said to culminate with the Neopythagorean Noumenios, from whom it passed to the Christian Apologists. It is Noumenios who asks, “What is Plato, but Moses speaking Attic?”[^[25]] It seems likely, indeed, that he was thinking of certain marked resemblances between Plato’s Laws and the Levitical Code when he said this—resemblances due to the fact that certain primitive legal ideas are similarly modified in both; but in any case Clement and Eusebios give the remark a far wider application.[^[26]] At the Renaissance, this absurd farrago was revived along with everything else, and certain ideas derived from the Praeparatio Evangelica continued for long to colour accepted views on the subject. Even Cudworth speaks complacently of the ancient “Moschical or Mosaical philosophy” taught by Thales and Pythagoras.[^[27]] It is important to realise the true origin of this deeply-rooted prejudice against the originality of the Greeks. It does not come from modern researches into the beliefs of ancient peoples; for these have disclosed absolutely nothing in the way of evidence for a Phoenician or Egyptian philosophy. It is a mere residuum of the Alexandrian passion for allegory.

Of course no one nowadays would rest the case for the Oriental origin of Greek philosophy on the evidence of Clement or Eusebios; the favourite argument in recent times has been the analogy of the arts and religion. We are seeing more and more, it is said, that the Greeks derived their art and many of their religious ideas from the East; and it is urged that the same will in all probability prove true of their philosophy. This is a specious argument, but not in the least conclusive. It ignores altogether the essential difference in the way these things are transmitted from people to people. Material civilisation and the arts may pass easily from one people to another, though they have not a common language, and certain simple religious ideas can be conveyed by ritual better than in any other way. Philosophy, on the other hand, can only be expressed in abstract language, and it can only be transmitted by educated men, whether by means of books or oral teaching. Now we know of no Greek, in the times we are dealing with, who knew enough of any Oriental language to read an Egyptian book or even to listen to the discourse of an Egyptian priest, and we never hear till a late date of Oriental teachers who wrote or spoke in Greek. The Greek traveller in Egypt would no doubt pick up a few words of Egyptian, and it is certain that somehow or other the priests could make themselves understood by the Greeks. They were able to rebuke Hekataios for his family pride, and Plato tells a story of the same sort at the beginning of the Timaeus.[^[28]] But they must have made use of interpreters, and it is impossible to conceive of philosophical ideas being communicated through an uneducated dragoman.[^[29]]

But really it is not worth while to ask whether the communication of philosophical ideas was possible or not, till some evidence has been produced that any of these peoples had a philosophy to communicate. No such evidence has yet been discovered, and, so far as we know, the Indians were the only people besides the Greeks who ever had anything that deserves the name. No one now will suggest that Greek philosophy came from India, and indeed everything points to the conclusion that Indian philosophy came from Greece. The chronology of Sanskrit literature is an extremely difficult subject; but, so far as we can see, the great Indian systems are later in date than the Greek philosophies which they most nearly resemble. Of course the mysticism of the Upanishads and of Buddhism were of native growth and profoundly influenced philosophy, but they were not themselves philosophy in any true sense of the word.[^[30]]

Egyptian mathematics.

XI. It would, however, be another thing to say that Greek philosophy originated quite independently of Oriental influences. The Greeks themselves believed their mathematical science to be of Egyptian origin, and they must also have known something of Babylonian astronomy. It cannot be an accident that philosophy originated in Ionia just at the time when communication with these two countries was easiest, and it is significant that the very man who was said to have introduced geometry from Egypt is also regarded as the first of the philosophers. It thus becomes very important for us to discover, if we can, what Egyptian mathematics meant. We shall see that, even here, the Greeks were really original.

There is a papyrus in the Rhind collection at the British Museum[^[31]] which gives us an instructive glimpse of arithmetic and geometry as these sciences were understood on the banks of the Nile. It is the work of one Aahmes, and contains rules for calculations both of an arithmetical and a geometrical character. The arithmetical problems mostly concern measures of corn and fruit, and deal particularly with such questions as the division of a number of measures among a given number of persons, the number of loaves or jars of beer that certain measures will yield, and the wages due to the workmen for a certain piece of work. It corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of Egyptian arithmetic which Plato has given us in the Laws, where he tells us that the children learnt along with their letters to solve problems in the distribution of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller numbers of people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so forth.[^[32]] This is clearly the origin of the art which the Greeks called λογιστική, and they certainly borrowed that from Egypt; but there is not the slightest trace of what the Greeks called ἀριθμητική, or the scientific study of numbers.

The geometry of the Rhind papyrus is of a similarly utilitarian character, and Herodotos, who tells us that Egyptian geometry arose from the necessity of measuring the land afresh after the inundations, is obviously far nearer the mark than Aristotle, who says that it grew out of the leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste.[^[33]] We find, accordingly, that the rules given for calculating areas are only exact when these are rectangular. As fields are usually more or less rectangular, this would be sufficient for practical purposes. The rule for finding what is called the seqt of a pyramid is, however, on a rather higher level, as we should expect; for the angles of the Egyptian pyramids really are equal, and there must have been some method for obtaining this result. It comes to this. Given the “length across the sole of the foot,” that is, the diagonal of the base, and that of the piremus or “ridge,” to find a number which represents the ratio between them. This is done by dividing half the diagonal of the base by the “ridge,” and it is obvious that such a method might quite well be discovered empirically. It seems an anachronism to speak of elementary trigonometry in connexion with a rule like this, and there is nothing to suggest that the Egyptians went any further.[^[34]] That the Greeks learnt as much from them, we shall see to be highly probable, though we shall see also that, from a comparatively early period, they generalised it so as to make it of use in measuring the distances of inaccessible objects, such as ships at sea. It was probably this generalisation that suggested the idea of a science of geometry, which was really the creation of the Pythagoreans, and we can see how far the Greeks soon surpassed their teachers from a remark of Demokritos which has been preserved. He says (fr. 299): “I have listened to many learned men, but no one has yet surpassed me in the construction of figures out of lines accompanied by demonstration, not even the Egyptian harpedonapts, as they call them.”[^[35]] Now the word ἁρπεδονάπτης is not Egyptian but Greek. It means “cord-fastener,”[^[36]] and it is a striking coincidence that the oldest Indian geometrical treatise is called the Çulvasutras or “rules of the cord.” These things point to the use of the triangle of which the sides are 3, 4, 5, and which has always a right angle. We know that this triangle was used from an early date among the Chinese and the Hindus, who doubtless got it from Babylon, and we shall see that Thales probably learnt the use of it in Egypt.[^[37]] There is no reason whatever for supposing that any of these peoples had in any degree troubled themselves to give a theoretical demonstration of its properties, though Demokritos would certainly have been able to do so. Finally, we must note the highly significant fact that all mathematical terms are of purely Greek origin.[^[38]]

Babylonian astronomy.

XII. The other source from which the Ionians directly or indirectly derived material for their cosmology was the Babylonian astronomy. There is no doubt that the Babylonians from a very early date had recorded all celestial phenomena like eclipses. They had also studied the planetary motions, and determined the signs of the zodiac. Further, they were able to predict the recurrence of the phenomena they had observed with considerable accuracy by means of cycles based on their recorded observations. I can see no reason for doubting that they had observed the phenomenon of precession. Indeed, they could hardly have failed to notice it; for their observations went back over so many centuries, that it would be quite appreciable. We know that, at a later date, Ptolemy estimated the precession of the equinoxes at one degree in a hundred years, and it is extremely probable that this is just the Babylonian value. At any rate, it agrees very well with their division of the celestial circle into 360 degrees, and made it possible for a century to be regarded as a day in the “Great Year,” a conception we shall meet with later on.[^[39]]

We shall see that Thales probably knew the cycle which the Babylonians used to predict eclipses ([§ 3]); but it would be a mistake to suppose that the pioneers of Greek science had any detailed knowledge of the Babylonian astronomy. It was not till the time of Plato that even the names of the planets were known,[^[40]] and the recorded observations were only made available in Alexandrian times. But, even if they had known these, their originality would remain. The Babylonians studied and recorded celestial phenomena for what we call astrological purposes, not from any scientific interest. There is no evidence at all that their accumulated observations ever suggested to them the least dissatisfaction with the primitive view of the world, or that they attempted to account for what they saw in any but the crudest way. The Greeks, on the other hand, with far fewer data to go upon, made at least three discoveries of capital importance in the course of two or three generations. In the first place, they discovered that the earth is a sphere and does not rest on anything. In the second place, they discovered the true theory of lunar and solar eclipses; and, in close connexion with this, they came to see, in the third place, that the earth is not the centre of our system, but revolves round it like the other planets. Not very much later, certain Greeks even took, at least tentatively, the final step of identifying the centre round which the earth and the planets revolve with the sun. These discoveries will be discussed in their proper place; they are only mentioned here to show the gulf between Greek astronomy and everything that had preceded it. The Babylonians had as many thousand years as the Greeks had centuries to make these discoveries, and it does not appear that they ever thought of one of them. The originality of the Greeks cannot be successfully questioned till it can be shown that the Babylonians had even an incorrect idea of what we call the solar system.

We may sum up all this by saying that the Greeks did not borrow either their philosophy or their science from the East. They did, however, get from Egypt certain rules of mensuration which, when generalised, gave birth to geometry; while from Babylon they learnt that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles with the greatest regularity. This piece of knowledge undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the rise of science; for to the Greek it suggested further questions such as the Babylonian did not dream of.[^[41]]

The scientific character of the early Greek cosmology.

XIII. It is necessary to say something as to the scientific worth of the philosophy we are about to study. We have just seen that the Eastern peoples were, at the time of which we write, considerably richer than the Greeks in accumulated facts, though these facts had certainly not been observed for any scientific purpose, and their possession never suggested a revision of the primitive view of the world. The Greeks, however, saw in them something that could be turned to account, and they were never as a people slow to act on the maxim, Chacun prend son bien partout où il le trouve. The most striking monument of this spirit which has come down to us is the work of Herodotos; and the visit of Solon to Croesus which he describes, however unhistorical it may be, gives a very lively and faithful picture of it. Croesus tells Solon that he has heard much of “his wisdom and his wanderings,” and how, from love of knowledge (φιλοσοφέων), he has travelled over much land for the purpose of seeing what was to be seen (θεωρίης εἵνεκεν). The words θεωρίη, φιλοσοφίη, and ἱστορίη are, in fact, the catchwords of the time, though they had, we must remember, a somewhat different meaning from that which they were afterwards made to bear at Athens.[^[42]] The idea that underlies them all may, perhaps, be best rendered in English by the word Curiosity; and it was just this great gift of curiosity, and the desire to see all the wonderful things—pyramids, inundations, and so forth—that were to be seen, which enabled the Greeks to pick up and turn to their own use such scraps of knowledge as they could come by among the barbarians. No sooner did a Greek philosopher learn half a dozen geometrical propositions, and hear that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles, than he set to work to look for law everywhere in nature, and, with a splendid audacity, almost amounting to ὕβρις, to construct a system of the universe. We may smile, if we please, at the strange medley of childish fancy and true scientific insight which these Titanic efforts display, and sometimes we feel disposed to sympathise with the sages of the day who warned their more daring contemporaries “to think the thoughts befitting man’s estate” (ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν). But we shall do well to remember at the same time that even now it is just such hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress possible, and that nearly every one of the early inquirers whom we are about to study made some permanent addition to the store of positive knowledge, besides opening up new views of the world in every direction.

There is no justification either for the idea that Greek science was built up solely by more or less lucky guesswork, instead of by observation and experiment. The nature of our tradition, which mostly consists of Placita—that is, of what we call “results”—tends, no doubt, to create this impression. We are seldom told why any early philosopher held the views he did, and the appearance of a string of “opinions” suggests dogmatism. There are, however, certain exceptions to the general character of the tradition; and we may reasonably suppose that, if the later Greeks had been interested in the matter, there would have been many more. We shall see that Anaximander made some remarkable discoveries in marine biology, which the researches of the nineteenth century have fully confirmed ([§ 21]), and even Xenophanes supported one of his theories by referring to the fossils and petrifactions of such widely separated places as Malta, Paros, and Syracuse ([§ 59]). This is enough to show that the theory, so commonly held by the earlier philosophers, that the earth had been originally in a moist state, was not mythological in origin, but was based on, or at any rate confirmed by, biological and palaeontological observations of a thoroughly modern and scientific type. It would surely be absurd to imagine that the men who could make these observations had not the curiosity or the ability to make many others of which the memory is lost. Indeed, the idea that the Greeks were not observers is almost ludicrously wrong, as is proved by two simple considerations. The anatomical accuracy of Greek sculpture bears witness to trained habits of observation, and those of the highest order, while the fixing of the seasons by the heliacal rising and setting of the stars shows a familiarity with celestial phenomena which is by no means common at the present day.[^[43]] We know, then, that the Greeks could observe well in matters affecting agriculture, navigation, and the arts, and we know that they were curious about the world. Is it conceivable that they did not use their powers of observation to gratify that curiosity? It is true, of course, that they had not our instruments of precision; but a great deal can be discovered by the help of very simple apparatus. It is not to be supposed that Anaximander erected his gnomon merely that the Spartans might know the seasons.[^[44]]

Nor is it true that the Greeks made no use of experiment. The rise of the experimental method dates from the time when the medical schools began to influence the development of philosophy, and accordingly we find that the first recorded experiment of a modern type is that of Empedokles with the klepsydra. We have his own account of this (fr. [100]), and we can see how it brought him to the verge of anticipating both Harvey and Torricelli. It is once more inconceivable that an inquisitive people should have applied the experimental method in a single case without extending it to the elucidation of other problems.

Of course the great difficulty for us is the geocentric hypothesis from which science inevitably started, though only to outgrow it in a surprisingly short time. So long as the earth is supposed to be in the centre of the world, meteorology, in the later sense of the word, is necessarily identified with astronomy. It is difficult for us to feel at home in this point of view, and indeed we have no suitable word to express what the Greeks at first called an οὐρανός. It will be convenient to use the word “world” for it; but then we must remember that it does not refer solely, or even chiefly, to the earth. The later word κόσμος bears witness to the growth of scientific ideas. It meant at first the marshalling of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state. It was transferred from this to the world because in early days the regularity and constancy of human life was far more clearly seen than the uniformity of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of law and custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless. That, too, is why, when the regular course of nature was first realised, no better word for it could be found than δίκη. It is the same metaphor which still lives on in the expression “natural law.”[^[45]]

The science of the sixth century was mainly concerned, then, with those parts of the world that are “aloft” (τὰ μετέωρα), and these include, along with the heavenly bodies, such things as clouds, rainbows, and lightning. That is how the heavenly bodies came sometimes to be explained as ignited clouds, an idea which seems astonishing to us. But we must bear in mind that science inevitably and rightly began with the most obvious hypothesis, and that it was only the thorough working out of this that could show its inadequacy. It is just because the Greeks were the first people to take the geocentric hypothesis seriously that they were able to go beyond it. Of course the pioneers of Greek thought had no clear idea of the nature of scientific hypothesis, and supposed themselves to be dealing with ultimate reality. That was inevitable before the rise of Logic. At the same time, a sure instinct guided them to the right method, and we can see how it was the effort to “save appearances”[^[46]] that really operated from the first. It is, therefore, to those men that we owe the conception of an exact science which should ultimately take in the whole world as its object. They fancied—absurdly enough, no doubt—that they could work out this science at once. We sometimes make the same mistake nowadays; and it can no more rob the Greeks of the honour of having been the first to see the true, though perhaps unattainable, end of all science than it can rob our own scientific men of the honour of having brought that end nearer than it was. It is still knowledge of the kind foreseen and attempted by the Greeks that they are in search of.

Schools of philosophy.

XIV. Theophrastos, the first writer to treat the history of Greek philosophy in a systematic way,[^[47]] represented the early cosmologists as standing to one another in the relation of master and scholar, and as members of regular societies. This has been regarded by many modern writers as an anachronism, and some have even denied the existence of “schools” of philosophy altogether. Such a reaction against the older view was quite justified in so far as it was directed against arbitrary classifications like the “Ionic” and “Italian” schools, which are derived through Laertios Diogenes from the Alexandrian writers of “Successions.” But the express statements of Theophrastos are not to be so lightly set aside. As this point is of great importance, it will be necessary to elucidate it still further before we enter upon our story.

The modern view really rests upon a mistaken idea of the way in which civilisation develops. In almost every department of life, we find that the corporation at first is everything and the individual nothing. The peoples of the East hardly got beyond this stage at all; their science, such as it is, is anonymous, the inherited property of a caste or guild, and we still see clearly in some cases that it was once the same among the Hellenes. Medicine, for instance, was originally the “mystery” of the Asklepiads, and it is to be supposed that all craftsmen (δημιουργοί), amongst whom Homer classes the bards (ἀοιδοί), were at first organised in a similar way. What distinguished the Hellenes from other peoples was that at a comparatively early date these crafts came under the influence of outstanding individuals, who gave them a fresh direction and a new impulse. It is doubtless in some such way that we should understand the relation of Homer to the Homeridai. The Asklepiads at a later date produced Hippokrates, and if we knew more of such guilds as the Daidalids, it is likely we should find something of the same kind. But this does not destroy the corporate character of the craft; indeed, it rather intensifies it. The guild becomes what we call a “school,” and the disciple takes the place of the apprentice. That is a vital change. A close guild with none but official heads is essentially conservative, while a band of disciples attached to a master they revere is the greatest progressive force the world knows.

It is certain that the later Athenian schools were organised corporations, the oldest of which, the Academy, maintained its existence as such for some nine hundred years, and the only question we have to decide is whether this was an innovation made in the fourth century B.C., or rather the continuance of an old tradition. As it happens, we have the authority of Plato for speaking of the chief early systems as handed down in schools. He makes Sokrates speak of “the men of Ephesos,” the Herakleiteans, as forming a strong body in his own day,[^[48]] and the stranger of the Sophist and the Statesman speaks of his school as still in existence at Elea.[^[49]] We also hear of “Anaxagoreans,”[^[50]] and no one, of course, can doubt that the Pythagoreans were a society. In fact, there is hardly any school but that of Miletos for which we have not external evidence of the strongest kind; and even as regards it, we have the significant fact that Theophrastos speaks of philosophers of a later date as having been “associates of the philosophy of Anaximenes.”[^[51]] We shall see too in the first chapter that the internal evidence in favour of the existence of a Milesian school is very strong indeed. It is from this point of view, then, that we shall now proceed to consider the men who created Hellenic science.

[1]. It will be observed that Demokritos falls outside the period thus limited. The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of Sokrates along with the “pre-Socratic philosophers” obscures the true course of historical development. Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, “Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has also a regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.).

[2]. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 64; Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 272-276.

[3]. On all this, see especially Rohde, Psyche, pp. 14 sqq.

[4]. Hes. Theog. 27. They are the same Muses who inspired Homer, which means, in our language, that Hesiod wrote in hexameters and used the Epic dialect. The new literary genre has not yet found its appropriate vehicle, which is elegy.

[5]. There is great historical insight here. It was Hesiod, not our modern historians, who first pointed out that the “Greek Middle Ages” were a break in the normal development.

[6]. Herod. ii. 53.

[7]. The word χάος certainly means the “gape” or “yawn,” the Orphic χάσμα πελώριον. Grimm compared it with the Scandinavian Ginnunga-Gap.

[8]. Quoted from Taylor’s New Zealand, pp. 110-112, by Mr. Andrew Lang, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 52 (2nd ed.).

[9]. For the remains of Pherekydes, see Diels, Vorsokratiker, pp. 506 sqq. (1st ed.), and the interesting account in Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. i. pp. 85 sqq.

[10]. This was the view of Lobeck with regard to the so-called “Rhapsodic Theogony” described by Damaskios, and was revived by Otto Kern (De Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis, 1888). Its savage character is the best proof of its antiquity. Cf. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i. chap. x.

[11]. Arist. Met. Ν, 4. 1091 b 8.

[12]. Simonides, fr. 85, 2 Bergk. Il. vi. 146.

[13]. On Adonis-Thammuz, Lityerses, Linos, and Osiris, see Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. i. pp. 278 sqq.

[14]. The Epic phrase ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως seems to have suggested this. Anaximander applied both epithets to the primary substance (R. P. 17 and 17 a). Euripides, in describing the blessedness of the scientific life (fr. inc. 910), says ἀθανάτου ... φύσεως κόσμον ἀγήρω (R. P. 148 c fin.).

[15]. I do not mean to imply that the philosophers used this title themselves; for early prose writings had no titles. The writer mentioned his name and the subject of his work in the first sentence, as Herodotos, for instance, does.

[16]. Plato, Laws, 892 c 2, φύσιν βούλονται λέγειν γένεσιν (i.e. τὸ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται) τὴν περὶ τὰ πρῶτα (i.e. τὴν τῶν πρώτων). Arist. Phys. Β, 1. 193 a 21, διόπερ οἱ μὲν πῦρ, οἱ δὲ γῆν, οἱ δ’ ἀέρα φασίν, οἱ δὲ ὗδωρ, οἱ δ’ ἔνια τούτων, οἱ δὲ πάντα ταῦτα τὴν φύσιν εἶναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων.

[17]. Zeller, p. 217, n. 2 (Eng. trans. p. 248, n. 2). See below, Chap. I. p. 57, [n. 105].

[18]. We have the authority of Plato for giving them this name. Cf. Phd. 96 a 7, ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν. So, in the fragment of Euripides referred to on p. 12, [n. 14], the man who discerns “the ageless order of immortal φύσις” is referred to as ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας ἔσχε μάθησιν.

[19]. Herod. i. 163.

[20]. All he can say is that the worship of Dionysos and the doctrine of transmigration came from Egypt (ii. 49, 123). We shall see that both these statements are incorrect, and in any case they do not imply anything directly as to philosophy.

[21]. In Rep. 435 e, after saying that τὸ θυμοειδές is characteristic of the Thracians and Scythians, and τὸ φιλομαθές of the Hellenes, he refers us to Phoenicia and Egypt for τὸ φιλοχρήματον. In the Laws, where the Egyptians are so strongly commended for their conservatism in matters of art, he says (747 b 6) that arithmetical studies are valuable only if we remove all ἀνελευθερία and φιλοχρηματία from the souls of the learners. Otherwise, we produce πανουργία instead of σοφία, as we can see that the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and many other peoples do.

[22]. Arist. Met. Α, 1. 981 b 23.

[23]. See Zeller, p. 3, n. 2. Philo applies the term πάτριος φιλοσοφία to the theology of the Essenes and Therapeutai.

[24]. On this, see Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 135.

[25]. Noumenios, fr. 13 (R. P. 624), Τί γάρ ἐστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωυσῆς ἀττικίζων;

[26]. Clement (Strom. i. p. 8, 5, Stählin) calls Plato ὁ ἐξ Ἑβραίων φιλόσοφος.

[27]. We learn from Strabo (xvi. p. 757) that it was Poseidonios who introduced Mochos of Sidon into the history of philosophy. He attributes the atomic theory to him. His identification with Moses, however, is a later tour de force. Philon of Byblos published what purported to be a translation of an ancient Phoenician history by Sanchuniathon, which was used by Porphyry and afterwards by Eusebios. How familiar all this became, is shown by the speech of the stranger in the Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xiv.

[28]. Herod. ii. 143; Plato, Tim. 22 b 3.

[29]. Gomperz’s “native bride,” who discusses the wisdom of her people with her Greek lord (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 95), does not convince me either. She would probably teach her maids the rites of strange goddesses; but she would not be likely to talk theology with her husband, and still less philosophy or science. The use of Babylonian as an international language will account for the fact that the Egyptians knew something of Babylonian astronomy; but it does not help us to explain how the Greeks could communicate with the Egyptians. It is plain that the Greeks did not even know of this international language; for it is just the sort of thing they would have recorded with interest if they had. In early days, they may have met with it in Cyprus, but that was apparently forgotten.

[30]. For the possibility that Indian philosophy came from Greece, see Weber, Die Griechen in Indien (Berl. Sitzb. 1890, pp. 901 sqq.), and Goblet d’Alviella, Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce (Paris, 1897).

[31]. I am indebted for most of the information which follows to Cantor’s Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, vol. i. pp. 46-63. See also Gow’s Short History of Greek Mathematics, §§ 73-80; and Milhaud, La science grecque, pp. 91 sqq. The discussion in the last-named work is of special value because it is based on M. Rodet’s paper in the Bulletin de la Société Mathématique, vol. vi., which in some important respects supplements the interpretation of Eisenlohr, on which the earlier accounts depend.

[32]. Plato, Laws, 819 b 4, μήλων τέ τινων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν ἄμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυκτῶν καὶ παλαιστῶν ἐφεδρείας τε καὶ συλλήξεως ἐν μέρει καὶ ἐφεξῆς καὶ ὡς πεφύκασι γίγνεσθαι. καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πως διαδιδόντες. In its context, the passage implies that no more than this could be learnt in Egypt.

[33]. Herod. ii. 109; Arist. Met. Α, 1. 981 b 23.

[34]. For a fuller account of this method, see Gow, Short History of Greek Mathematics, pp. 127 sqq.; and Milhaud, Science grecque, p. 99.

[35]. R. P. 188.

[36]. The real meaning of ἁρπεδονάπτης was first pointed out by Cantor. The gardener laying out a flower-bed is the true modern representative of the “harpedonapts.”

[37]. See Milhaud, Science grecque, p. 103.

[38]. The word πυραμίς is often supposed to be derived from the term piremus used in the Rhind papyrus, which does not mean pyramid, but “ridge.” It is really, however, a Greek word too, and is the name of a kind of cake. The Greeks called crocodiles lizards, ostriches sparrows, and obelisks meat-skewers, so they may very well have called the pyramids cakes. We seem to hear an echo of the slang of the mercenaries that carved their names on the colossus at Abu-Simbel.

[39]. Three different positions of the equinox are given in three different Babylonian tablets, namely, 10°, 8° 15′, and 8° 0′ 30″ of Aries. (Kugler, Mondrechnung, p. 103; Ginzel, Klio, i. p. 205.) Given knowledge of this kind, and the practice of formulating recurrences in cycles, it is scarcely conceivable that the Babylonians should not have invented a cycle for precession. It is equally intelligible that they should only have reached a rough approximation; for the precessional period is really about 27,600 years and not 36,000. It is to be observed that Plato’s “perfect year” is also 36,000 solar years (Adam’s Republic, vol. ii. p. 302), and that it is probably connected with the precession of the equinoxes. (Cf. Tim. 39 d, a passage which is most easily interpreted if referred to precession.) This suggestion as to the origin of the “Great Year” was thrown out by Mr. Adam (op. cit. p. 305), and is now confirmed by Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1906).

[40]. In classical Greek literature, no planets but Ἕσπερος and Ἑωσφόρος are mentioned by name at all. Parmenides (or Pythagoras) first identified these as a single planet ([§ 93]). Mercury appears for the first time by name in Tim. 38 e, and the other divine names are given in Epin. 987 b sq., where they are said to be “Syrian.” The Greek names Φαίνων, Φαέθων, Πυρόεις, Φωσφόρος, Στίλβων, may be older, but this cannot be proved.

[41]. The Platonic account of this matter is to be found in the Epinomis, 986 e 9 sqq., and is summed up by the words λάβωμεν δὲ ὡς ὅτιπερ ἂν Ἕλληνες βαρβάρων παραλάβωσι, κάλλιον τοῦτο εἰς τέλος ἀπεργάζονται (987 d 9). The point is well put by Theon (Adrastos), Exp. p. 177, 20 Hiller, who speaks of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians as ἄνευ φυσιολογίας ἀτελεῖς ποιούμενοι τὰς μεθόδους, δέον ἅμα καὶ φυσικῶς περὶ τούτων ἐπισκοπεῖν· ὅπερ οἱ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀστρολογήσαντες ἐπειρῶντο ποιεῖν, τὰς παρὰ τούτων λαβόντες ἀρχὰς καὶ τῶν φαινομένων τηρήσεις. The importance of this last passage is that it represents the view taken at Alexandria, where the facts were accurately known.

[42]. Still, the word θεωρία never wholly lost its early associations, and the Greeks always felt that the θεωρητικὸς βίος meant literally “the life of the spectator.” Its special use, and the whole theory of the “three lives,” seem to be of Pythagorean origin. See my edition of Aristotle’s Ethics, p. 19 n.

[43]. These two points are rightly emphasised by Staigmüller, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Naturwissenschaften im klassischen Altertume (Progr. Stuttgart, 1899, p. 8).

[44]. The gnomon was not a sundial, but an upright erected on a flat surface, in the centre of three concentric circles. These were drawn so that the end of the gnomon’s shadow touched the innermost circle at midday on the summer solstice, the intermediate circle at the equinoxes, and the outermost circle at the winter solstice. See Bretschneider, Die Geometrie vor Euklid, p. 60.

[45]. The term κόσμος seems to be Pythagorean in this sense. It was not familiar even at the beginning of the fourth century. Xenophon speaks of “what the sophists call the κόσμος” (Mem. i. 11). For δίκη, see below, §§ 14, 72.

[46]. This phrase originated in the school of Plato. The method of research in use there was for the leader to “propound” (προτείνειν, προβάλλεσθαι) it as a “problem” (πρόβλημα) to find the simplest “hypothesis” (τίνων ὑποτεθέντων) on which it is possible to account for and do justice to all the observed facts (σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα). It was in its French form, sauver les apparences, that the phrase acquired the meaning it usually has now.

[47]. See Appendix, [§ 7].

[48]. Tht. 179 e 4, αὐτοῖς ... τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἔφεσον. The humorous denial that the Herakleiteans had any disciples (180 b 8, Ποίοις μαθηταῖς, ὦ δαιμόνιε;) implies that this was the normal and recognised relation.

[49]. Soph. 242 d 4, τὸ ... παρ’ ἡμῖν Ἐλεατικὸν ἔθνος. Cf. ib. 216 a 3, ἑταῖρον δὲ τῶν ἀμφὶ Παρμενίδην καὶ Ζήνωνα [ἑταίρων] (where ἑταίρων is probably interpolated, but gives the right sense); 217 a, 1, οἱ περὶ τὸν ἐκεῖ τόπον.

[50]. Crat. 409 b 6, εἴπερ ἀληθῆ οἱ Ἀναξαγόρειοι λέγουσιν.

[51]. Cf. Chap. VI. [§ 122]; and, on the whole subject, see Diels, “Über die ältesten Philosophenschulen der Griechen” in Philosophische Aufsätze Eduard Zeller gewidmet (Leipzig, 1887).

CHAPTER I
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL

Miletos and Lydia.

1. It was at Miletos that the earliest school of scientific cosmology had its home. At the time it arose, the Milesians were in an exceptionally favourable position for scientific as well as commercial pursuits. They had, indeed, come into conflict more than once with the neighbouring Lydians, whose rulers were now bent upon extending their dominion to the coast; but, towards the end of the seventh century B.C., Thrasyboulos, tyrant of Miletos, had succeeded in making terms with King Alyattes, and an alliance was concluded between them, which not only saved Miletos for the present from a disaster like that which befell Smyrna, but secured it against molestation for the future. Even half a century later, when Croesus, resuming his father’s forward policy, made war upon and conquered Ephesos, Miletos was still able to maintain the old treaty-relation, and never, strictly speaking, became subject to the Lydians at all. We can hardly doubt that the sense of security which this exceptional position would foster had something to do with the rise of scientific inquiry. Material prosperity is necessary as a foundation for the highest intellectual effort; and at this time Miletos was in possession of all the refinements of life to a degree unknown in continental Hellas.

Nor was it only in this way that the Lydian connexion would favour the growth of science at Miletos. What was called Hellenism at a later date seems to have been traditional in the dynasty of the Mermnadai. There may well be some truth in the statement of Herodotos, that all the “sophists” of the time flocked to the court of Sardeis.[^[52]] The tradition which represents Croesus as what we should call the “patron” of Greek wisdom, was fully developed in the fifth century; and, however unhistorical its details may be, it must clearly have some sort of foundation in fact. Particularly noteworthy is “the common tale among the Greeks,” that Thales accompanied him on his luckless campaign against Pteria, apparently in the capacity of military engineer. Herodotos, indeed, disbelieves the story that he diverted the course of the Halys;[^[53]] but he does not attack it on the ground of any antecedent improbability, and it is quite clear that those who reported it found no difficulty in accepting the relation which it presupposes between the philosopher and the king.

It should be added that the Lydian alliance would greatly facilitate intercourse with Babylon and Egypt. Lydia was an advanced post of Babylonian culture, and Croesus was on friendly terms with the kings of both Egypt and Babylon. It is noteworthy, too, that Amasis of Egypt had the same Hellenic sympathies as Croesus, and that the Milesians possessed a temple of their own at Naukratis.[^[54]]

I. Thales

Origin.

2. There can be no doubt that the founder of the Milesian school, and therefore the first of the cosmologists, was Thales;[^[55]] but all we can really be said to know of him comes from Herodotos, and the romance of the Seven Wise Men was already in existence when he wrote. He tells us, in the first place, that Thales was of Phoenician descent, a statement which other writers explained by saying he belonged to the Thelidai, a noble house descended from Kadmos and Agenor.[^[56]] This is clearly connected with the view of Herodotos that there were “Kadmeians” from Boiotia among the original Ionian colonists, and it is certain that there really were people called Kadmeians in several Ionic cities.[^[57]] Whether they were of Semitic origin is, of course, another matter. Herodotos probably mentions the supposed descent of Thales simply because he was believed to have introduced certain improvements in navigation from Phoenicia.[^[58]] At any rate, the name Examyes, which his father bore, lends no support to the view that he was a Semite. It is a Karian name, and the Karians had been almost completely assimilated by the Ionians. On the monuments, we find Greek and Karian names alternating in the same families, and there is therefore no reason to suppose that Thales was anything else than an ordinary Milesian citizen, though perhaps with Karian blood in his veins.[^[59]]

The eclipse foretold by Thales.

3. By far the most remarkable statement that Herodotos makes about Thales is that he foretold the eclipse of the sun which put an end to the war between the Lydians and the Medes.[^[60]] Now, we may be sure that he was quite ignorant of the true cause of eclipses. Anaximander and his successors certainly were so,[^[61]] and it is incredible that the right explanation should once have been given and then forgotten so soon. Even supposing, however, Thales had known the cause of eclipses, no one can believe that such scraps of elementary geometry as he picked up in Egypt would enable him to calculate one from the elements of the moon’s path. Yet the evidence for the prediction is too strong to be rejected off-hand. The testimony of Herodotos to an event which must have happened about a hundred years before his own birth may, perhaps, be deemed insufficient; but that of Xenophanes is a very different matter, and it is this we have really to deal with.[^[62]] According to Theophrastos, Xenophanes was a disciple of Anaximander, and he may quite well have seen and spoken with Thales. In any case, he must have known scores of people who were able to remember what happened, and he had no conceivable interest in misrepresenting it. The prediction of the eclipse is really better attested than any other fact about Thales whatsoever, and the evidence for it is about as strong as for anything that happened in the early part of the sixth century B.C.

Now it is quite possible to predict eclipses without knowing their true cause, and there is no doubt that the Babylonians actually did so. On the basis of their astronomical observations, they had made out a cycle of 223 lunar months, within which eclipses of the sun and moon recurred at equal intervals of time.[^[63]] This, it is true, would not enable them to predict eclipses of the sun for a given spot on the earth’s surface; for these phenomena are not visible at all places where the sun is above the horizon at the time. We do not occupy a position at the centre of the earth, and what astronomers call the geocentric parallax has to be taken into account. It would only, therefore, be possible to tell by means of the cycle that an eclipse of the sun would be visible somewhere, and that it might be worth while to look out for it. Now, if we may judge from a report by a Chaldaean astronomer which has been preserved, this was just the position of the Babylonians. They watched for eclipses at the proper dates; and, if they did not occur, they announced the fact as a good omen.[^[64]] To explain what we are told about Thales no more than this is required. He simply said there would be an eclipse; and, as good luck would have it, it was visible in Asia Minor, and on a striking occasion.

Date of Thales.

4. The prediction of the eclipse does not, then, throw much light upon the scientific attainments of Thales; but, if we can fix its date, it will give us a point from which to start in trying to determine the time at which he lived. Modern astronomers have calculated that there was an eclipse of the sun, probably visible in Asia Minor, on May 28 (O.S.), 585 B.C.,[^[65]] while Pliny gives the date of the eclipse foretold by Thales as Ol. XLVIII. 4 (585/4 B.C.).[^[66]] This, it is true, does not exactly tally; for May 585 belongs to the year 586/5 B.C. It is sufficiently near, however, to justify us in identifying the eclipse as that of Thales, and this is confirmed by Apollodoros, who fixed his floruit in the same year.[^[67]] The further statement that, according to Demetrios Phalereus, Thales “received the name of wise” in the archonship of Damasias at Athens, agrees very well with this, and is doubtless based on the story of the Delphic tripod; for the archonship of Damasias is the era of the restoration of the Pythian Games.[^[68]]

Thales in Egypt.

5. The introduction of Egyptian geometry into Hellas is universally ascribed to Thales, and it is extremely probable that he did visit Egypt; for he had a theory of the inundations of the Nile. In a well-known passage,[^[69]] Herodotos gives three explanations of the fact that this alone of all rivers rises in summer and falls in winter; but, as his custom is in such cases, he does not name their authors. The first of them, however, that which attributes the floods to the Etesian winds, is ascribed to Thales in the Placita,[^[70]] and also by many later writers. Now, those statements are derived from a treatise on the Rise of the Nile attributed to Aristotle and known to the Greek commentators, but now extant only in a Latin epitome of the thirteenth century.[^[71]] In this work the first of the three theories mentioned by Herodotos is ascribed to Thales, the second to Euthymenes of Massalia, and the third to Anaxagoras. Where did Aristotle, or whoever wrote the book, get these names? We think naturally once more of Hekataios, whom Herodotos so often reproduces without mentioning his name; and this conjecture is much strengthened when we find that Hekataios actually mentioned Euthymenes.[^[72]] We may conclude, then, that Thales really was in Egypt; and, perhaps, that Hekataios, in describing the Nile, took account, as was only natural, of his distinguished fellow-citizen’s views.

Thales and geometry.

6. As to the nature and extent of the mathematical knowledge brought back by Thales from Egypt, it seems desirable to point out that many writers have seriously misunderstood the character of the tradition.[^[73]] In his commentary on the First Book of Euclid, Proclus enumerates, on the authority of Eudemos, certain propositions which he says were known to Thales.[^[74]] One of the theorems with which he credits him is that two triangles are equal when they have one side and the two adjacent angles equal. This he must have known, said Eudemos, as otherwise he could not have measured the distances of ships at sea from a watch-tower in the way he was said to have done.[^[75]] Here we see how all these statements arose. Certain remarkable feats in the way of measurement were traditionally ascribed to Thales, and it was assumed that he must have known all the propositions which these imply. But this is quite an illusory method of inference. Both the measurement of the distance of ships at sea, and that of the height of the pyramids, which is also ascribed to him,[^[76]] are easy applications of what Aahmes calls the seqt. These rules of mensuration may well have been brought from Egypt by Thales, but we have no ground for supposing that he knew any more about their rationale than did the author of the Rhind papyrus. Perhaps, indeed, he gave them a wider application than the Egyptians had done. Still, mathematics, properly so called, did not come into existence till some time after Thales.

Thales as a politician.

7. Thales appears once more in the pages of Herodotos some time before the fall of the Lydian empire. He is said to have urged the Ionian Greeks to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos.[^[77]] We shall have occasion to notice more than once in the sequel that the early schools of philosophy were in the habit of trying to influence the course of political events; and there are many things, for instance the part played by Hekataios in the Ionian revolt, which point to the conclusion that the scientific men of Miletos took up a very decided position in the stirring times that followed the death of Thales. It is this political action which has gained the founder of the Milesian school his undisputed place among the Seven Wise Men; and it is owing mainly to his inclusion among those worthies that the numerous anecdotes which were told of him in later days attached themselves to his name.[^[78]]

Uncertain character of the tradition.

8. If Thales ever wrote anything, it soon was lost, and the works which were written in his name did not, as a rule, deceive even the ancients.[^[79]] Aristotle professes to know something about the views of Thales; but he does not pretend to know how they were arrived at, nor the arguments by which they were supported. He does, indeed, make certain suggestions, which are repeated by later writers as statements of fact; but he himself simply gives them for what they are worth.[^[80]] There is another difficulty in connexion with the tradition. Many a precise-looking statement in the Placita has no other foundation than the habit of ascribing any doctrine which was, roughly speaking, characteristic of the whole Ionic “Succession” to “Thales and his followers,” and so producing the appearance of a definite statement about Thales. But, in spite of all this, we need not doubt that Aristotle was correctly informed with regard to the leading points. We have seen traces of reference to Thales in Hekataios, and nothing can be more likely than that later writers of the school should have quoted the views of its founder. We may venture, therefore, upon a conjectural restoration of his cosmology, in which we shall be guided by what we know for certain of the subsequent development of the Milesian school; for we should naturally expect to find its characteristic doctrines at least foreshadowed in the teaching of its earliest representative. But all this must be taken for just what it is worth; speaking strictly, we do not know anything about the teaching of Thales at all.

Conjectural account of the cosmology of Thales.

9. The statements of Aristotle may be reduced to three:

• (1) The earth floats on the water.[^[81]]
• (2) Water is the material cause[^[82]] of all things.
• (3) All things are full of gods. The magnet is alive; for it has the power of moving iron.[^[83]]

The first of these statements must be understood in the light of the second, which is expressed in Aristotelian terminology, but would undoubtedly mean that Thales had said water was the fundamental or primary thing, of which all other things were mere transient forms. It was, we shall see, just such a primary substance that the Milesian school as a whole was seeking, and it is unlikely that the earliest answer to the great question of the day should have been the comparatively subtle one given by Anaximander. We are, perhaps, justified in holding that the greatness of Thales consisted in this, that he was the first to ask, not what was the original thing, but what is the primary thing now; or, more simply still, “What is the world made of?” The answer he gave to this question was: Water.

Water.

10. Aristotle and Theophratos, followed by Simplicius and the doxographers, suggest several explanations of this answer. By Aristotle these explanations are given as conjectural; it is only later writers that repeat them as if they were quite certain.[^[84]] The most probable view of them seems to be that Aristotle simply ascribed to Thales the arguments used at a later date by Hippon of Samos in support of a similar thesis.[^[85]] This would account for their physiological character. The rise of scientific medicine had made biological arguments very popular in the fifth century; but, in the days of Thales, the prevailing interest was not physiological, but rather what we should call meteorological, and it is therefore from this point of view we must try to understand the theory.

Now it is not very hard to see how considerations of a meteorological kind may have led Thales to adopt the view he did. Of all the things we know, water seems to take the most various shapes. It is familiar to us in a solid, a liquid, and a vaporous form, and so Thales may well have thought that he saw the world-process from water and back to water again going on before his very eyes. The phenomenon of evaporation naturally suggests everywhere that the fire of the heavenly bodies is kept up by the moisture which they draw from the sea. Even at the present day, the country people speak of the appearance of sunbeams as “the sun drawing water.” Water comes down again in the rain; and lastly, so the early cosmologists thought, it turns to earth. This seems strange to us, but it may have seemed natural enough to men who were familiar with the river of Egypt which had formed the Delta, and with the torrents of Asia Minor, which bring down unusually large alluvial deposits. At the present day the Gulf of Latmos, on which Miletos used to stand, is completely filled up. Lastly, they thought, earth turns once more to water—an idea derived from the observation of dew, night-mists, and subterranean springs. For these last were not in early times supposed to have anything at all to do with the rain. The “waters under the earth” were regarded as an entirely independent source of moisture.[^[86]]

Theology.

11. The third of the statements mentioned above is supposed by Aristotle himself to imply that Thales believed in a “soul of the world,” though he is careful to mark this as no more than an inference.[^[87]] The doctrine of the world-soul is then attributed quite positively to Thales by Aetios, who gives it in the Stoic phraseology which he found in his immediate source, and identifies the world-intellect with God.[^[88]] Cicero found a similar account of the matter in the Epicurean manual which he followed, but he goes a step further. Eliminating the Stoic pantheism, he turns the world-intellect into a Platonic demiourgos, and says that Thales held there was a divine mind which formed all things out of water.[^[89]] All this is derived from the cautious statement of Aristotle, and can have no greater authority than its source. We need not enter, then, upon the old controversy whether Thales was an atheist or not. It is really irrelevant. If we may judge from his successors, he may very possibly have called water divine; but, if he had any religious beliefs at all, we may be sure they were quite unconnected with his cosmological theory.

Nor must we make too much of the saying itself that “all things are full of gods.” It is often supposed to mean that Thales attributed a “plastic life” to matter, or that he was a “hylozoist.” We have seen already how misleading this way of speaking is apt to be,[^[90]] and we shall do well to avoid it. It is not safe to regard such an apophthegm as evidence for anything; the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven Wise Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed now to one sage and now to another.[^[91]] On the other hand, it is extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls. That is no apophthegm, but something more on the level of the statement that the earth floats on the water. It is, in fact, just the sort of thing we should expect Hekataios to record about Thales. It would be wrong, however, to draw any inferences from it as to his view of the world; for to say that the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything, that other things are not.[^[92]]

II. Anaximander

Life.

12. The next name that has come down to us is that of Anaximander, son of Praxiades. He too was a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos described him as an “associate” of Thales.[^[93]] We have seen how that expression is to be understood (§ XIV.).

According to Apollodoros, Anaximander was sixty-four years old in Ol. LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytos, who says he was born in Ol. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny, who assigns his discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to the same Olympiad.[^[94]] We seem to have here something more than a mere combination of the ordinary type; for, according to all the rules of Alexandrian chronology, Anaximander should have “flourished” in 565 B.C., that is, just half-way between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty, not sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodoros appears to have said that he had met with the work of Anaximander; and his reason for mentioning this must be that he found in it some indication which enabled him to fix its date without having recourse to conjecture. Diels suggests that Anaximander may have given his age at the time of writing as sixty-four, and that the book may have contained some other statement showing it to have been published in 547/6 B.C.[^[95]] Perhaps, however, this hardly does justice to the fact that the year given is just that which preceded the fall of Sardeis and the subjugation of the Lydian empire by the Persians. It may be a more plausible conjecture that Anaximander, writing some years later, incidentally mentioned what his age had been at the time of that great crisis. We know from Xenophanes that the question, “How old were you when the Mede appeared?” was considered an interesting one in those days.[^[96]] At all events, we seem to be justified in believing that Anaximander was a generation younger than Thales. When he died we do not really know.[^[97]]

Like his predecessor, Anaximander distinguished himself by certain practical inventions. Some writers credited him with that of the gnomon; but that can hardly be correct. Herodotos tells us this instrument came from Babylon, so perhaps it was Anaximander who made it known among the Greeks. He was also the first to construct a map, and Eratosthenes said this was the map elaborated by Hekataios.[^[98]]

Theophrastos on Anaximander’s theory of the primary substance.

13. Nearly all we know of Anaximander’s system is derived in the last resort from Theophrastos.[^[99]] As to the credibility of what we are told on his authority, it is enough to remark that the original work, which was in the hands of Apollodoros, must certainly have existed in the time of Theophrastos. Moreover, he seems once at least to have quoted Anaximander’s own words, and he criticised his style. Here are the remains of what he said of him in the First Book:—

Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales,[^[100]] said that the material cause and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce this name for the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any other of the so-called[^[101]] elements, but a substance different from them which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (Dox. p. 476; R. P. 16).

He says that this is eternal and ageless, and that it encompasses all the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, “as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time,” as he says[^[102]] in these somewhat poetical terms.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 16).

And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

He did not ascribe the origin of things to any alteration in matter, but said that the oppositions in the substratum, which was a boundless body, were separated out.—Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18).

The primary substance is not one of the “elements.”

14. Anaximander taught, then, that there was one eternal, indestructible substance out of which everything arises, and into which everything once more returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is continually being made good. This is only the natural development of the thought we have ventured to ascribe to Thales, and there can be no doubt that Anaximander at least distinctly formulated it. Indeed, we can still follow to some extent the reasoning which led him to do so. Thales had regarded water as the most likely of all the things we know to be that of which all others are forms; Anaximander appears to have asked himself how the primary substance could be one of these particular things. His argument seems to be preserved by Aristotle, who has the following passage in his discussion of the Infinite:—

Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another—air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. Phys. Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b).

It is clear that in this passage Anaximander is contrasted with Thales and with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the account given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the form is Aristotle’s own, and the mention of “elements” is an anachronism.[^[103]] Anaximander was struck, it would seem, by the opposition and strife between the things which go to make up the world; the warm fire was opposed to the cold air, the dry earth to the moist sea. These opposites were at war, and any predominance of one over the other was an “injustice” for which they must make reparation to one another.[^[104]] We may suppose that his thoughts ran somewhat as follows. If Thales had been right in saying that water was the fundamental reality, it would not be easy to see how anything else could ever have existed. One side of the opposition, the cold and moist, would have had its way unchecked, injustice would have prevailed, and the warm and dry would have been driven from the field long ago. We must, then, have something which is not itself one of the warring opposites we know, something more primitive, out of which they arise, and into which they once more pass away. That Anaximander called this something by the name of φύσις, is clear from the doxographers; the current statement that the word ἀρχή in the sense of a “first principle” was introduced by him, is probably due to a misunderstanding of what Theophrastos said.[^[105]]

Aristotle’s account of the theory.

15. It was natural for Aristotle to regard this theory as an anticipation or presentiment of his own doctrine of “indeterminate matter.”[^[106]] He knew very well, of course, that he himself was the author of that; but it is in accordance with his method to represent his own theories as the distinct formulation of truths which earlier thinkers had only guessed at. It was to be expected, then, that he should sometimes express the views of Anaximander in terms of the theory of “elements.” He knew too that the Boundless was a body,[^[107]] though in his own system there was no room for anything corporeal prior to the elements; so he had to speak of it as a boundless body “alongside of” or “distinct from” the elements (παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα). So far as I know, no one has doubted that, when he uses this phrase, he is referring to Anaximander.

In a number of other places Aristotle speaks of a thinker, whom he does not happen to name, who held that the primary substance was something “intermediate between” the elements or between two of them.[^[108]] Nearly all the Greek commentators referred this to Anaximander also, but most modern writers refuse to follow them. It is, no doubt, easy to show that Anaximander can have never meant to describe the Boundless in this way, but that is no real objection to the older interpretation. It is difficult to see that it is more of an anachronism to call the Boundless “intermediate between the elements” than to say that it is “distinct from the elements”; and indeed, if once we introduce the elements at all, the former description is in some ways the more adequate of the two. At any rate, if we refuse to understand these passages as referring to Anaximander, we shall have to say that Aristotle paid a great deal of attention to some early thinker, whose very name has been lost, and who not only agreed with some of Anaximander’s views, but also, as is shown by one passage, used some of his most characteristic expressions.[^[109]] We may add that in one or two places Aristotle certainly seems to identify the “intermediate” with the something “distinct from” the elements.[^[110]]

There is even one place in which he appears to speak of Anaximander’s Boundless as a “mixture,” though his words may perhaps admit of another interpretation.[^[111]] But this is of no consequence for our interpretation of Anaximander himself. It is certain that he cannot have said anything about “elements,” which no one thought of before Empedokles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The question has only been mentioned at all because it has been the subject of a lengthy controversy,[^[112]] and because it throws great light on the historical value of Aristotle’s statements. From the point of view of his own system, these are abundantly justified; but we shall have to remember in other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some earlier thinker, we are not in the least bound to believe what he says in a historical sense.

The primary substance is infinite.

16. Anaximander’s reason for conceiving the primary substance as boundless was, no doubt, that indicated by Aristotle, namely, “that becoming might not fail.”[^[113]] It is not likely, however, that these words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough for us to know that Theophrastos, who had seen his book, attributed the thought to him. And certainly the way in which he regarded the world would bring home to him with more than common force the need of a boundless stock of matter. The “opposites” of which our world consists are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their strife is marked by “unjust” encroachments on either side. The warm commits “injustice” in summer, the cold in winter. To redress the balance, they must be absorbed once more in their common ground; and this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must picture to ourselves, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the heavens which bound the world we live in.[^[114]] This mass is a body, and out of it our world once emerged by the “separating out” of the opposites, which one day will all be absorbed again in the Boundless, and our world will cease to be.

The eternal motion.

17. The doxographers say it was the “eternal motion” that brought into being “all the heavens and all the worlds within them.” As we have seen ([§ VIII]), it is not likely that Anaximander himself used the phrase “eternal motion.” That is rather Aristotle’s own version of what he found stated about the “separating out” of opposites. We are not told expressly how Anaximander conceived this to operate, but the term “separating out” suggests some process of shaking and sifting as in a sieve. Now it is just such a process that Plato makes the Pythagorean Timaios describe, and the most probable theory is certainly that here, as in many other cases, he has reproduced a genuinely early view. As we shall see, it is quite likely that the Pythagoreans should have followed Anaximander in this.[^[115]] In any case, it is wrong to identify the “eternal motion” with the diurnal revolution of the heavens, as has sometimes been done. That motion cannot possibly be eternal, for the simple reason that the heavens themselves are perishable. Aristotle says, indeed, that all who believe the world has come into being represent the earth as having been forced into the centre by the circular motion;[^[116]] but, though this doubtless refers to Anaximander among others, it is quite irrelevant here. It has to do only with the formation of the world after it has been once for all separated off and enclosed in its own heaven, and we shall have to remember it when we come to that part of the theory. At present, we have only to do with the motion of the Boundless itself; and, if we wish to picture that, it is much safer to regard it as a sort of shaking up and down which sorts out the opposites from the infinite mass.

The innumerable worlds.

18. We are told more than once that Anaximander believed there were “innumerable worlds in the Boundless,”[^[117]] and it is now usual to regard these with Zeller as an infinite series succeeding one another in time. It may be allowed at once that his disproof of the idea that the worlds are coexistent and eternal is decisive. To suppose that Anaximander regarded this or any other world as eternal, is a flat contradiction of everything we otherwise know, and of the Theophrastean tradition that he taught the world was perishable. We have, then, to decide between the view that, though all the worlds are perishable, there may be an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, and the view that a new world never comes into existence till the old one has passed away. Now, Zeller allows[^[118]] that there is nothing in the first of these views that is inconsistent with what we know of Anaximander; but he thinks all the statements which have come down to us point rather to the second. It seems to me that this is by no means the case, and, as the matter is of fundamental importance, it will be necessary to examine the evidence once more.

In the first place, the doxographical tradition proves that Theophrastos discussed the views of all the early philosophers as to whether there was one world or an infinite number, and there can be no doubt that, when he ascribed “innumerable worlds” to the Atomists, he meant coexistent and not successive worlds. Now, if he had really classed two such different views under one head, he would at least have been careful to point out in what respect they differed, and there is no trace of any such distinction in our tradition. On the contrary, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaos, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leukippos, Demokritos, and Epicurus are all mentioned together as holding the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” on all sides of this one,[^[119]] and the only distinction drawn between their views is that, while Epicurus made the distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the worlds were equidistant.[^[120]] Zeller rejected this evidence, which he supposed to be merely that of Stobaios, on the ground that we can have no confidence in a writer who attributes “innumerable worlds” to Anaximenes, Archelaos, and Xenophanes. With regard to the first two, I hope to show that the statement is quite correct, and that it is not even incorrect in the case of the last.[^[121]] In any case, it can be proved that the passage comes from Aetios,[^[122]] and there is no reason for doubting that, in the last resort, it is derived from Theophrastos, though the name of Epicurus may have been added later. This is still further confirmed by what Simplicius says in his commentary on the Physics.[^[123]]

Those who assumed innumerable worlds, e.g. Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, at a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into being and passed away ad infinitum, some always coming into being and others passing away.

It is probable that this too comes from Theophrastos through Alexander. Simplicius does not invent such things.

We come lastly to a very important statement which Cicero has copied from Philodemos, the author of the Epicurean treatise on Religion found at Herculaneum, or perhaps from the immediate source of that work. “Anaximander’s opinion was,” he makes Velleius say, “that there were gods who came into being, rising and passing away at long intervals, and that these were the innumerable worlds”;[^[124]] and this must clearly be taken along with the statement of Aetios to the effect that, according to Anaximander, the “innumerable heavens” were gods.[^[125]] Now it is very much more natural to understand the “long intervals” which Cicero mentions as intervals of space than as intervals of time;[^[126]] and, if we take the passage in this way, we have a perfect agreement among all our authorities.

It may be added that it is very unnatural to understand the statement that the Boundless “encompasses all the worlds” of worlds succeeding one another in time; for on this view there is at a given time only one world to “encompass.” Moreover, the argument mentioned by Aristotle that, if what is outside the heavens is infinite, body must be infinite, and there must be innumerable worlds, can only be understood in this sense, and is certainly intended to represent the reasoning of the Milesians; for they were the only cosmologists who held there was a boundless body outside the heavens.[^[127]] Lastly, we happen to know that Petron, one of the earliest Pythagoreans, held there were just one hundred and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle,[^[128]] which shows that views of this sort existed long before the Atomists, and looks like an attempt to introduce some order into Anaximander’s universe.

Origin of the heavenly bodies.

19. The doxographers have not left us in the dark as to the process by which the different parts of the world arose from the Boundless. The following statement comes ultimately from Theophrastos:—

He says that something capable of begetting hot and cold was separated off from the eternal at the origin of this world. From this arose a sphere of flame which grew round the air encircling the earth, as the bark grows round a tree. When this was torn off and enclosed in certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 19).

We see from this that when a portion of the Boundless had been separated off from the rest to form a world, it first of all differentiated itself into the two opposites, hot and cold. The hot appears as a sphere of flame surrounding the cold; the cold, as earth with air surrounding it. We are not told, however, in this extract how the cold came to be differentiated into earth, air, and water; but there is a passage in Aristotle’s Meteorology which throws some light on the subject. We read there:—

But those who are wiser in the wisdom of men give an origin for the sea. At first, they say, all the terrestrial region was moist; and, as it was dried up by the sun, the portion of it that evaporated produced the winds and the turnings of the sun and moon, while the portion left behind was the sea. So they think the sea is becoming smaller by being dried up, and that at last it will all be dry.—Meteor. Β, 1. 353 b 5.

And the same absurdity arises for those who say that the earth and the terrestrial part of the world at first were moist, but that air arose from the heat of the sun, and that the whole world was thus increased, and that this is the cause of winds and the turnings of the heavens.[^[129]]—Ib. 2. 355 a 21 (R. P. 20 a).

In his commentary on the passage, Alexander tells us that this was the view of Anaximander and Diogenes; and what he says is amply confirmed by Anaximander’s theory of the sea as it is given by the doxographers ([§ 20]). We conclude, then, that after the first separation of the hot and the cold, the heat of the sphere of flame turned part of the moist, cold interior of the world into air or vapour—it is all one at this date—and that the expansion of this mist broke up the sphere of flame itself into rings. I give the theory which he adopted to explain the origin of the heavenly bodies from these rings as it has been preserved by Hippolytos, with some supplements from Aetios:—

The heavenly bodies are wheels of fire separated off from the fire which encircles the world, and enclosed in air. And they have breathing-holes, certain pipe-like passages at which the heavenly bodies are seen. For this reason, too, when the breathing-holes are stopped, eclipses occur. And the moon appears now to wax and now to wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times the size (of the earth, while that) of the moon is eighteen times as large.[^[130]] The sun is highest of all, and lowest are the wheels of the fixed stars.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20).

Anaximander said the stars were hoop-like compressions of air, full of fire, breathing out flames at a certain point from orifices. The sun was highest of all, after it came the moon, and below these the fixed stars and the planets.—Aetios, ii. 13, 7; 15, 6 (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was a ring twenty-eight times the size of the earth, like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow and full of fire, showing the fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.—Aet. ii. 20, 1 (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was equal to the earth, but the ring from which it breathes out and by which it is carried round was twenty-seven times as large as the earth.—Aet. ii. 21, 1 (Dox. p. 351).

Anaximander said the moon was a ring eighteen times the size of the earth....—Aet. ii. 25, 1 (Dox. p. 355).[^[131]]

Anaximander held that thunder and lightning were caused by the blast. When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with violence, then the breakage of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift gives the appearance of a flash by contrast with the darkness of the cloud.—Aet. iii. 3, 1 (Dox. p. 367).

Anaximander held that wind was a current of air (i.e. vapour) which arose when its finest and moistest particles were set in motion or dissolved by the sun.—Aet. iii. 6, 1 (Dox. p. 374).

Rain was produced by the moisture drawn up from the earth by the sun.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6, 7 (Dox. p. 560).

We saw above that the sphere of flame was broken up into rings by the expansion of the air or vapour that its own heat had drawn up from the moist, cold interior. We must remember that Anaximander knew nothing of the ring of Saturn. There are three of these rings, that of the sun, that of the moon, and, lastly, nearest to the earth, the circle of the stars. The circle of the sun was twenty-seven times, and that of the moon eighteen times as large as the earth, from which we may perhaps infer that the circle of the stars was nine times as large. The numbers nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, play a considerable part in primitive cosmogonies.[^[132]] We do not see the rings of fire as complete circles; for the mist that formed them encloses the fire, and becomes an outer ring of opaque vapour. These outer rings, however, have openings at one point of their circumference, through which the fire escapes, and these are the heavenly bodies we actually see.[^[133]]

It will be observed that we only hear of three circles, and that the circle of the sun is the highest. The circle of the stars presents some difficulty. It is, in all probability, the Milky Way, the appearance of which may well have suggested the whole theory.[^[134]] It seems that Anaximander must have thought it had more “breathing-holes” than one, though the tradition is silent on this point. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that he regarded it as a sphere. He could not have failed to see that a sphere so placed would make the sun and moon permanently invisible. What, then, are we to say of the fixed stars that do not lie in the Milky Way? There seems to be no way of accounting for them unless we assume that they are the “innumerable worlds” which we have just discussed. As the fire and air which surrounded the world have been broken up into rings, we must be able to see right out into the Boundless, and the fixed stars must be just the worlds, each surrounded by its fiery envelope. It does not seem possible to explain all we are told in any other way; and, if this is right, the statement of some authors, that Anaximander regarded the stars of heaven as gods, may be more than the mere mistake which it is now generally taken to be.[^[135]]

The explanation given of thunder and lightning was very similar. They too were caused by fire breaking through compressed air, that is to say, through the storm-clouds. It seems probable that this is really the origin of the theory, and that Anaximander explained the heavenly bodies on the analogy of lightning, not vice versa. That would be in perfect agreement with the meteorological interest of the time.

Earth and sea.

20. We turn now to what we are told of the origin of earth and sea from the moist, cold matter which was “separated off” in the beginning, and which filled the inside of the sphere of flame:—

The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it.—Aet. iii. 16, 1 (R. P. 20 a).

He says that the earth is cylindrical in form, and that its depth is as a third part of its. breadth.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.).

The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is convex and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the surfaces, and the other is on the opposite side.[^[136]]—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20).

Adopting for a moment the later theory of “elements,” we see that Anaximander put fire on one side as “the hot,” and all the rest on the other as “the cold,” which is also moist. This may explain how Aristotle came to speak of the Boundless as intermediate between fire and water. And we have seen also that the moist element was partly turned into “air” or vapour by the fire, which explains how he could say the Boundless was something between fire and air, or between air and water.[^[137]]

The moist, cold interior of the world is not, it will be noticed, pure water. It is always called “the moist” or “the moist state.” That is because it has to be still further differentiated under the influence of heat into earth, water, and vapour. The gradual drying up of the water by the fire is a good example of what Anaximander meant by “injustice.” And we see how this injustice brings about the destruction of the world. The fire will in time dry up and burn up the whole of the cold, moist element. But then it will not be fire any longer; it will simply be the “mixture,” if we choose to call it so, of the hot and cold—that is, it will be the same as the Boundless which surrounds it, and will pass away into it.

The view which Anaximander takes of the earth is a great advance upon anything we can reasonably attribute to Thales, and Aristotle has preserved the arguments by which he supported it. It is equally distant from the extremes in every direction, and there is no reason for it to move up or down or sideways.[^[138]] Still, he does not attain to the idea that it is spherical. He believes that we live on a convex disc, and from this the cylindrical form follows as a matter of course. The really remarkable thing is that he should have seen, however dimly, that there is no absolute up and down in the world.

Animals.

21. We have seen enough to show us that the speculations of Anaximander about the world were of an extremely daring character; we come now to the crowning audacity of all, his theory of the origin of living creatures. The Theophrastean account of this has been well preserved by the doxographers:—

Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the beginning.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 22 a).

The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier part. When the bark broke off,[^[139]] they survived for a short time.—Aet. v. 19, 1 (R. P. 22).

Further, he says that originally man was born from animals of another species. His reason is that while other animals quickly find food by themselves, man alone requires a lengthy period of suckling. Hence, had he been originally as he is now, he would never have survived.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.).

He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes, and after having been reared like sharks,[^[140]] and become capable of protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to land.—Plut. Symp. Quaest. 730 f (R. P. ib.).

The importance of these statements has sometimes been overrated and still more often underestimated. Anaximander has been called a precursor of Darwin by some, while others have treated the whole thing as a mythological survival. It is therefore important to notice that this is one of the rare cases where we have not merely a placitum, but an indication, meagre though it be, of the observations on which it was based, and the line of argument by which it was supported. It is clear from this that Anaximander had an idea of what is meant by adaptation to environment and survival of the fittest, and that he saw the higher mammals could not represent the original type of animal. For this he looked to the sea, and he naturally fixed upon those fishes which present the closest analogy to the mammalia. The statements of Aristotle about the galeus levis were shown long ago by Johannes Müller to be more accurate than those of later naturalists, and we now know that these observations were already made by Anaximander. The manner in which the shark nourishes its young furnished him with the very thing he required to explain the survival of the earliest animals.[^[141]]

Theology.

22. In the course of our discussion of the “innumerable worlds” we saw that Anaximander regarded these as gods. It is true, of course, as Zeller says,[^[142]] that to the Greeks the word θεός meant primarily an object of worship, and he rightly adds that no one would think of worshipping innumerable worlds. This, however, is no real objection to our interpretation, though it serves to bring out an interesting point in the development of Greek theological ideas. The philosophers, in fact, departed altogether from the received usage of the word θεός. Empedokles called the Sphere and the Elements gods, though it is not to be supposed that he regarded them as objects of worship, and in the same way we shall find that Diogenes of Apollonia spoke of Air as a god.[^[143]] As we may learn from the Clouds of Aristophanes, it was just this way of speaking that got philosophers the name of being ἄθεοι. It is of great importance to bear this point in mind; for, when we come to Xenophanes, we shall see that the god or gods he spoke of meant just the world or worlds. It seems also that Anaximander called the Boundless itself divine,[^[144]] which is quite in accordance with the language of Empedokles and Diogenes referred to above.

III. Anaximenes

Life.

23. Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, was, according to Theophrastos[Theophrastos], an “associate” of Anaximander.[^[145]] Apollodoros said, it appears, that he “flourished” about the time of the fall of Sardeis (546/5 B.C.), and died in Ol. LXIII. (528/524 B.C.).[^[146]] In other words, he was born when Thales “flourished,” and “flourished” when Thales died, and this means that Apollodoros had no definite information about his date at all. He most probably made him die in the sixty-third Olympiad because that gives just a hundred years, or three generations, for the Milesian school from the birth of Thales. We cannot, therefore, say anything positive as to his date, except that he must have been younger than Anaximander, and must have flourished before 494 B.C., when the school was, of course, broken up by the destruction of Miletos.

His book.

24. Anaximenes wrote a book which certainly survived until the age of literary criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and unpretentious Ionic,[^[147]] very different, we may suppose, from the poetical prose of Anaximander.[^[148]] We may probably trust this criticism, which comes ultimately from Theophrastos; and it furnishes a good illustration of the truth that the character of a man’s thoughts is sure to find expression in his style. We have seen that the speculations of Anaximander were distinguished for their hardihood and breadth; those of Anaximenes are marked by just the opposite quality. He appears to have thought out his system carefully, but he rejects the more audacious theories of his predecessor. The result is that, while his view of the world is on the whole much less like the truth than Anaximander’s, it is more fruitful in ideas that were destined to hold their ground.

Theory of the primary substance.

25. Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastos wrote a special monograph;[^[149]] and this gives us an additional guarantee for the trustworthiness of the tradition derived from his great work. The following[^[150]] are the passages which seem to contain the fullest and most accurate account of what he had to say on the central feature of the system:—

Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, who had been an associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was indeterminate, like Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it was Air.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

From it, he said, the things that are, and have been, and shall be, the gods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come from its offspring.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).

“Just as,” he said, “our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.”—Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).

And the form of the air is as follows. Where it is most even, it is invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture and motion, make it visible. It is always in motion; for, if it were not, it would not change so much as it does.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).

It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and condensation.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds, on the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by felting;[^[151]] and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water, condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it can be, to stones.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).[^[152]]

Rarefaction and condensation.

26. At the first glance, this undoubtedly looks like a falling off from the more refined doctrine of Anaximander to a cruder view; but a moment’s reflexion will show that this is not altogether the case. On the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into the theory is a notable advance.[^[153]] In fact, it makes the Milesian cosmology thoroughly consistent for the first time; since it is clear that a theory which explains everything by the transformations of a single substance is bound to regard all differences as purely quantitative. The infinite substance of Anaximander, from which the opposites “in it” are “separated out,” cannot, strictly speaking, be thought of as homogeneous, and the only way to save the unity of the primary substance is to say that all diversities are due to the presence of more or less of it in a given space. And when once this important step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to make the primary substance something “distinct from the elements,” to use Aristotle’s inaccurate but convenient phrase; it may just as well be one of them.

Air.

27. The air that Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should not call by that name. In its normal condition, when most evenly distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our “air”; it is identical with the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is why he called it πνεῦμα. On the other hand, the old idea, familiar to us in Homer, that mist or vapour is condensed air, is still accepted without question. In other words, we may say that Anaximenes supposed it to be a good deal easier to get liquid air than it has since proved to be. It was Empedokles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we call air was a distinct corporeal substance, and was not identical either with vapour or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists “air” is always a form of vapour, and even darkness is a form of it. It was Empedokles who cleared up this point too by showing that darkness is a shadow.[^[154]]

It was natural for Anaximenes to fix upon Air in this sense as the primary substance; for, in the system of Anaximander, it occupied an intermediate place between the two fundamental opposites, the sphere of flame and the cold, moist mass within it ([§ 19]). We know from Plutarch that he fancied air became warmer when rarefied, and colder when condensed. Of this he satisfied himself by a curious experimental proof. When we breathe with our mouths open, the air is warm; when we breathe with our lips closed, it is cold.[^[155]]

The world breathes.

28. This argument from human breathing brings us to an important point in the theory of Anaximenes, which is attested by the single fragment that has come down to us.[^[156]] “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” The primary substance bears the same relation to the life of the world as to that of man. Now this, we shall see, was the Pythagorean view;[^[157]] and it is also an early instance of the argument from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and so marks the first beginnings of an interest in physiological matters.

The parts of the world.

29. We turn now to the doxographical tradition concerning the formation of the world and its parts:—

He says that, as the air was felted, the earth first came into being. It is very broad and is accordingly supported by the air.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3 (R. P. 25).

In the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are of a fiery nature, are supported by the air because of their breadth. The heavenly bodies were produced from the earth by moisture rising from it. When this is rarefied, fire comes into being, and the stars are composed of the fire thus raised aloft. There were also bodies of earthy substance in the region of the stars, revolving along with them. And he says that the heavenly bodies do not move under the earth, as others suppose, but round it, as a cap turns round our head. The sun is hidden from sight, not because it goes under the earth, but because it is concealed by the higher parts of the earth, and because its distance from us becomes greater. The stars give no heat because of the greatness of their distance.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 4-6 (R. P. 28).

Winds are produced when air is condensed and rushes along under propulsion; but when it is concentrated and thickened still more, clouds are generated; and, lastly, it turns to water.[^[158]]—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 7 (Dox. p. 561).

The stars are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the heavens.—Aet. ii. 14, 3 (Dox. p. 344).

They do not go under the earth, but turn round it.—Ib. 16, 6 (Dox. p. 346).

The sun is fiery.—Ib. 20, 2 (Dox. p. 348).

It is broad like a leaf.—Ib. 22, 1 (Dox. p. 352).

The heavenly bodies are diverted from their courses by the resistance of compressed air.—Ib. 23, 1 (Dox. p. 352).

The moon is of fire.—Ib. 25, 2 (Dox. p. 356).

Anaximenes explained lightning like Anaximander, adding as an illustration what happens in the case of the sea, which flashes when divided by the oars.—Ib. iii. 3, 2 (Dox. p. 368).

Hail is produced when water freezes in falling; snow, when there is some air imprisoned in the water.—Aet. iii 4, 1 (Dox. p. 370).

The rainbow is produced when the beams of the sun fall on thick condensed air. Hence the anterior part of it seems red, being burnt by the sun’s rays, while the other part is dark, owing to the predominance of moisture. And he says that a rainbow is produced at night by the moon, but not often, because there is not constantly a full moon, and because the moon’s light is weaker than that of the sun.—Schol. Arat.[^[159]] (Dox. p. 231).

The earth was like a table in shape.—Aet. iii. 10, 3 (Dox. p. 377).

The cause of earthquakes was the dryness and moisture of the earth, occasioned by droughts and heavy rains respectively.—Ib. 15, 3 (Dox. p. 379).

We have seen that Anaximenes was quite justified in going back to Thales in regard to his general theory of the primary substance; but it cannot be denied that the effect of this upon the details of his cosmology was unfortunate. The earth is once more imagined as a table-like disc floating upon the air. The sun, moon, and planets are also fiery discs which float on the air “like leaves.” It follows that the heavenly bodies cannot be thought of as going under the earth at night, but only as going round it laterally like a cap or a millstone.[^[160]] This curious view is also mentioned in Aristotle’s Meteorology,[^[161]] where the elevation of the northern parts of the earth, which makes it possible for the heavenly bodies to be hidden from sight, is referred to. In fact, whereas Anaximander had regarded the orbits of the sun, moon, and stars as oblique with reference to the earth, Anaximenes regarded the earth itself as inclined. The only real advance is the distinction of the planets, which float freely in the air, from the fixed stars, which are fastened to the “crystalline” vault of the sky.[^[162]]

The earthy bodies, which circulate among the planets, are doubtless intended to account for eclipses and the phases of the moon.[^[163]]

Innumerable worlds.

30. As might be expected, there is the same difficulty about the “innumerable worlds” ascribed to Anaximenes as about those of Anaximander, and most of the arguments given above ([§ 18]) apply here also. The evidence, however, is far less satisfactory. Cicero says that Anaximenes regarded air as a god, and adds that it came into being.[^[164]] That there is some confusion here is obvious. Air, as the primary substance, is certainly eternal, and it is quite likely that Anaximenes called it “divine,” as Anaximander did the Boundless; but it is certain that he also spoke of gods who came into being and passed away. These arose, he said, from the air. This is expressly stated by Hippolytos,[^[165]] and also by St. Augustine.[^[166]] These gods are probably to be explained like Anaximander’s. Simplicius, indeed, takes another view;[^[167]] but he may have been misled by a Stoic authority.

Influence of Anaximenes.

31. It is not quite easy for us to realise that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, and for long after, Anaximenes was a much more important figure than Anaximander. And yet the fact is certain. We shall see that Pythagoras, though he followed Anaximander in his account of the heavenly bodies, was far more indebted to Anaximenes for his general theory of reality ([§ 53]). We shall see further that when, at a later date, science revived once more in Ionia, it was “the philosophy of Anaximenes” to which it attached itself ([§ 122]). Anaxagoras adopted many of his most characteristic views ([§ 135]), and some of them even found their way into the cosmology of the Atomists.[^[168]] Diogenes of Apollonia went back to the central doctrine of Anaximenes, and once more made Air the primary substance, though he also tried to combine it with the theories of Anaxagoras ([§ 188]). We shall come to all this later on; but it seemed desirable to point out at once that Anaximenes marks the culminating point of the line of thought which started with Thales, and to show how the “philosophy of Anaximenes” came to mean the Milesian doctrine as a whole. This it can only have done because it was really the work of a school, of which Anaximenes was the last distinguished representative, and because his contribution to it was one that completed the system he had inherited from his predecessors. That the theory of rarefaction and condensation was really such a completion of the Milesian system, we have seen already ([§ 26]), and it need only be added that a clear realisation of this fact will be the best clue at once to the understanding of the Milesian cosmology itself and to that of the systems which followed it. In the main, it is from Anaximenes that they all start.

[52]. Herod. i. 29. Some other points may be noted in confirmation of what has been said as to the “Hellenism” of the Mermnadai. Alyattes had two wives, one of whom, the mother of Croesus, was a Karian; the other was an Ionian, and by her he had a son called by the Greek name Pantaleon (ib. 92). The offerings of Gyges were pointed out in the treasury of Kypselos at Delphoi (ib. 14), and those of Alyattes were one of the “sights” of the place (ib. 25). Croesus also showed great liberality to Delphoi (ib. 50), and to many other Greek shrines (ib. 92). He gave most of the pillars for the great temple at Ephesos. The stories of Miltiades (vi. 37) and Alkmeon (ib. 125) should also be mentioned in this connexion.

[53]. Herod. i. 75. He disbelieves it because he had heard, probably from the Greeks of Sinope, of the great antiquity of the bridge on the royal road between Ankyra and Pteria (Ramsay, Asia Minor, p. 29). Xanthos recorded a tradition that it was Thales who induced Croesus to ascend his pyre when he knew a shower was coming (fr. 19).

[54]. Milesians at Naukratis, Herod. ii. 178, where Amasis is said to have been φιλέλλην. He subscribed to the rebuilding of the temple at Delphoi after the great fire (ib. 180).

[55]. Simplicius, indeed, quotes from Theophrastos the statement that Thales had many predecessors (Dox. p. 475, 11). This, however, need not trouble us; for the scholiast on Apollonios Rhodios (ii. 1248) tells us that Theophrastos made Prometheus the first philosopher, which is merely an application of Peripatetic literalism to a remark of Plato’s (Phileb. 16 c 6). Cf. Appendix, [§ 2].

[56]. Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d.); Diog. i. 22 (R. P. 9).

[57]. Strabo, xiv. pp. 633, 636; Pausan. vii. 2, 7. Priene was called Kadme, and the oldest annalist of Miletos bore the name Kadmos. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 158.

[58]. Diog. i. 23, Καλλίμαχος δ’ αὐτὸν οἶδεν εὑρετὴν τῆς ἄρκτου τῆς μικρᾶς λέγων ἐν τοῖς Ἰάμβοις οὕτως—

καὶ τῆς ἁμάξης ἐλέγετο σταθμήσασθαι

τοὺς ἀστερίσκους, ᾗ πλέουσι Φοίνικες.

[59]. See Diels, “Thales ein Semite?” (Arch. ii. 165 sqq.), and Immisch, “Zu Thales Abkunft” (ib. p. 515). The name Examyes occurs also in Kolophon (Hermesianax, Leontion, fr. 2, 38 Bgk.), and may be compared with other Karian names such as Cheramyes and Panamyes.

[60]. Herod. i. 74.

[61]. For the theories held by Anaximander and Herakleitos, see infra, §§ [19], [71].

[62]. Diog. i. 23, δοκεῖ δὲ κατά τινας πρῶτος ἀστρολογῆσαι καὶ ἡλιακὰς ἐκλείψεις καὶ τροπὰς προειπεῖν, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος ἐν τῇ περὶ τῶν ἀστρολογουμένων ἱστορίᾳ, ὅθεν αὐτὸν καὶ Ξενοφάνης καὶ Ἡρόδοτος θαυμάζει.

[63]. The first to call attention to the Chaldaean cycle in this connexion seems to have been the Rev. George Costard, Fellow of Wadham College. See his Dissertation on the Use of Astronomy in History (London, 1764), p. 17. It is inaccurate to call it the Saros; that was quite another thing (see Ginzel, Klio, i. p. 377).

[64]. See George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries (1875), p. 409. The inscription which follows was found at Kouyunjik:—

“To the king my lord, thy servant Abil-Istar.

“Concerning the eclipse of the moon of which the king my lord sent to me; in the cities of Akkad, Borsippa, and Nipur, observations they made, and then in the city of Akkad, we saw part.... The observation was made, and the eclipse took place.

“And when for the eclipse of the sun we made an observation, the observation was made and it did not take place. That which I saw with my eyes to the king my lord I send.”

[65]. For the literature of this subject, see R. P. 8 b, adding Ginzel, Spezieller Kanon, p. 171. See also Milhaud, Science grecque, p. 62.

[66]. Pliny, N.H. ii. 53.

[67]. For Apollodoros, see Appendix, [§ 20]. The dates in our text of Diogenes (i. 37; R. P. 8) cannot be reconciled with one another. That given for the death of Thales is probably right; for it is the year before the fall of Sardeis in 546/5 B.C., which is one of the regular eras used by Apollodoros. It no doubt seemed natural to make Thales die the year before the “ruin of Ionia” which he foresaw. Seventy-eight years before this brings us to 625/4 B.C. for the birth of Thales, and this gives us 585/4 B.C. for his fortieth year. That is Pliny’s date for the eclipse, and Pliny’s dates come from Apollodoros through Nepos. For a full discussion of the subject, see Jacoby, pp. 175 sqq.

[68]. Diog. i. 22 (R. P. 9). I do not discuss the Pythian era and the date of Damasias here, though it appears to me that the last word has not yet been said upon the subject. Jacoby (pp. 170 sqq.) argues strongly for 582/1, the date now generally accepted. Others favour the Pythian year 586/5 B.C., which is the very year of the eclipse, and this would help to explain how those historians who used Apollodoros came to date it a year too late; for Damasias was archon for two years and two months. It is even possible that they misunderstood the words Δαμασίου τοῦ δευτέρου, which are intended to distinguish him from an earlier archon of the same name, as meaning “in the second year of Damasias.” Apollodoros gave only Athenian archons, and the reduction to Olympiads is the work of later writers. Kirchner, adopting the year 582/1 for Damasias, brings the archonship of Solon down to 591/0 (Rh. Mus. liii. pp. 242 sqq.). But the date of Solon’s archonship can never have been doubtful. On Kirchner’s reckoning, we come to 586/5 B.C., if we keep the traditional date of Solon. See also E. Meyer, Forschungen, ii. pp. 242 sqq.

[69]. Herod. ii. 20.

[70]. Aet. iv. I. 1 (Dox. p. 384).

[71]. Dox. pp. 226-229. The Latin epitome will be found in Rose’s edition of the Aristotelian fragments.

[72]. Hekataios, fr. 278 (F.H.G. i. p. 19).

[73]. See Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, vol. i. pp. 112 sqq.; Allman, “Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid” (Hermathena, iii. pp. 164-174).

[74]. Proclus, in Eucl. pp. 65, 7; 157, 10; 250, 20; 299, 1; 352, 14; (Friedlein). Eudemos wrote the first histories of astronomy and mathematics, just as Theophrastos wrote the first history of philosophy.

[75]. Proclus, p. 352, 14, Εὔδημος δὲ ἐν ταῖς γεωμετρικαῖς ἱστορίαις εἰς Θαλῆν τοῦτο ἀνάγει τὸ θεώρημα (Eucl. i. 26)· τὴν γὰρ τῶν ἐν θαλάττῃ πλοίων ἀπόστοσιν δι’ οὗ τρόπου φασὶν αὐτὸν δεικνύναι τούτῳ προσχρῆσθαί φησιν ἀναγκαῖον. For the method adopted by Thales, see Tannery, Géométrie grecque, p. 90. I agree, however, with Dr. Gow (Short History of Greek Mathematics, § 84) that it is very unlikely Thales reproduced and measured on land the enormous triangle which he had constructed in a perpendicular plane over the sea. Such a method would be too cumbrous to be of use. It is much simpler to suppose that he made use of the Egyptian seqt.

[76]. The oldest version of this story is given in Diog. i. 27, ὁ δὲ Ἱερώνυμος καὶ ἐκμετρῆσαί φησιν αὐτὸν τὰς πυραμίδας, ἐκ τῆς σκιᾶς παρατηρήσαντα ὅτε ἡμῖν ἰσομεγέθης ἐστίν. Cf. Pliny, H. Nat. xxxvi. 82, mensuram altitudinis earum deprehendere invenit Thales Milesius umbram metiendo qua hora par esse corpori solet. (Hieronymos of Rhodes was contemporary with Eudemos.) This need imply no more than the simple reflexion that the shadows of all objects will probably be equal to the objects at the same hour. Plutarch (Conv. sept. sap. 147 a) gives a more elaborate method, τὴν βακτηρίαν στήσας ἐπὶ τῷ πέρατι τῆς σκιᾶς ἣν ἡ πυραμὶς ἐποίει, γενομένων τῇ ἐπαφῇ τῆς ἀκτῖνος δυοῖν τριγώνων, ἔδειξας ὃν ἡ σκιὰ πρὸς τὴν σκιὰν λόγον εἶχε, τὴν πυραμίδα πρὸς τὴν βακτηρίαν ἔχουσαν. This, as Dr. Gow points out, is only another calculation of seqt, and may very well have been the method of Thales.

[77]. Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d).

[78]. The story of Thales falling into a well (Plato, Tht. 174 a) is nothing but a fable teaching the uselessness of σοφία; the anecdote about the “corner” in oil (Ar. Pol. Α, 11. 1259 a 6) is intended to inculcate the opposite lesson.

[79]. See R. P. 9 e.

[80]. R. P. ib.

[81]. Arist. Met. Α, 3. 983 b 21 (R. P. 10); de Caelo, Β, 13. 294 a 28 (R. P. 11). Later writers add that he gave this as an explanation of earthquakes (so Aet. iii. 15, 1); but this is probably due to a “Homeric allegorist” (Appendix, [§ 11]), who wished to explain the epithet ἐννοσίγαιος. Cf. Diels, Dox. p. 225.

[82]. Met. Α, 3. 983 b 20 (R. P. 10). I have said “material cause,” because τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχῆς (b 19) means τῆς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει ἀρχῆς (b 7).

[83]. Arist. de An. Α, 5. 411 a 7 (R. P. 13); ib. 2. 405 a 19 (R. P. 13 a). Diog. i. 24 (R. P. ib.) adds amber. This comes from Hesychios of Miletos; for it occurs in the scholium of Par. A on Plato, Rep. 600 a.

[84]. Met. Α, 3. 983 b 22; Aet. i. 3, 1; Simpl. Phys. p. 36, 10 (R. P. 10, 12, 12 a). The last of the explanations given by Aristotle, namely, that Thales was influenced by early cosmogonical theories about Okeanos and Tethys, has strangely been supposed to be more historical than the rest, whereas it is merely a fancy of Plato’s taken literally. Plato says more than once (Tht. 180 d 2; Crat. 402 b 4) that Herakleitos and his predecessors (οἱ ῥέοντες) derived their philosophy from Homer (Il. xiv. 201), and even earlier sources (Orph. frag. 2, Diels, Vors. 1st ed. p. 491). In quoting this suggestion, Aristotle refers it to “some”—a word which often means Plato—and he calls the originators of the theory παμπαλαίους, as Plato had done (Met. 983 b 28; cf. Tht. 181 b 3). This is a characteristic example of the way in which Aristotle gets history out of Plato. See Appendix, [§ 2].

[85]. Compare Arist. de An. Α, 2. 405 b 2 (R. P. 220) with the passages referred to in the last note. The same suggestion is made in Zeller’s fifth edition (p. 188, n. 1), which I had not seen when the above was written. Döring, “Thales” (Zschr. f. Philos. 1896, pp. 179 sqq.), takes the same view. We now know that, though Aristotle declines to consider Hippon as a philosopher (Met. Α, 3. 984 a 3; R. P. 219 a), he was discussed in the history of medicine known as Menon’s Iatrika. See Diels in Hermes, xxviii. p. 420.

[86]. The view here taken most resembles that of the “Homeric allegorist” Herakleitos (R. P. 12 a). That, however, is also a conjecture, probably of Stoic, as the others are of Peripatetic, origin.

[87]. Arist. de An. Α, 5. 411 a 7 (R. P. 13).

[88]. Aet. i. 7, 11 = Stob. i. 56 (R. P. 14). On the sources here referred to, see Appendix, [§§ 11], [12].

[89]. Cicero, de Nat. D. 1. 25 (R. P. 13 b). On Cicero’s source, see Dox. pp. 125, 128. The Herculanean papyrus of Philodemos is, unfortunately, defective just at this point, but it is not likely that the Epicurean manual anticipated Cicero’s mistake.

[90]. See Introd. [§ VIII].

[91]. Plato refers to the saying πάντα πλήρη θεῶν in Laws, 899 b 9 (R. P. 14 b), without mentioning Thales. That ascribed to Herakleitos in the de part. An. Α, 5. 645 a 17 seems to be a mere variation on it. So in Diog. ix. 7 (R. P. 46 d) Herakleitos is credited with the saying πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι κα δαιμόνων πλήρη.

[92]. Bäumker, Das Problem der Materie, p. 10, n. 1.

[93]. R. P. 15 d. That the words πολίτης καὶ ἑταῖρος, given by Simplicius, de Caelo, p. 615, 13, are the original words of Theophrastos is shown by the agreement of Cic. Acad. ii. 118, popularis et sodalis. The two passages represent quite independent branches of the tradition. See Appendix, [§§ 7], [12].

[94]. Diog. ii. 2 (R. P. 15); Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (Dox. p. 560); Plin. N.H. ii. 31. Pliny’s dates come from Apollodoros through Nepos.

[95]. Rhein. Mus. xxxi. p. 24.

[96]. Xenophanes, fr. 22 (fr. 17, Karsten; R. P. 95 a). Jacoby (p. 190) thinks that Apollodoros fixed the floruit of Anaximander forty years before that of Pythagoras, that is, in 572/1 B.C., and that the statement as to his age in 547/6 is a mere inference from this.

[97]. The statement that he “died soon after” (Diog. ii. 2; R. P. 15) seems to mean that Apollodoros made him die in the year of Sardeis (546/5), one of his regular epochs. If this is so, Apollodoros cannot have said also that he flourished in the days of Polykrates, and Diels is probably right in supposing that this notice refers to Pythagoras and has been inserted in the wrong place.

[98]. For the gnomon, see Introd. p. 31, [n. 44]; and cf. Diog. ii. 1 (R. P. 15); Herod. ii. 109 (R. P. 15 a). Pliny, on the other hand, ascribes the invention of the gnomon to Anaximenes (N.H. ii. 87). The truth seems to be that the erection of celebrated gnomons was traditionally ascribed to certain philosophers. That of Delos was referred to Pherekydes. For the map see Agathemeros, i. 1, Ἀναξίμανδρος ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀκουστὴς Θαλέω πρώτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι, μεθ’ ὃν Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀνὴρ πολυπλανὴς διηκρίβωσεν, ὥστε θαυμασθῆναι τὸ πρᾶγμα. This is from Eratosthenes. Cf. Strabo, i. p. 7.

[99]. See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given by Diels, Dox. p. 133; Vors. pp. 13 sqq. In this and other cases, where the words of the original have been preserved by Simplicius, I have given them alone. On the various writers quoted, see Appendix, [§ 9] sqq.

[100]. Simplicius says “successor and disciple” (διάδοχος καὶ μαθητής) in his Commentary on the Physics; but see above, p. 52, [n. 2].

[101]. For the expression τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα, see Diels, Elementum, p. 25, n. 4. In view of this, we must keep the MS. reading εἶναι, instead of writing νυνί with Usener.

[102]. Diels (Vors. p. 13) begins the actual quotation with the words ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσις.... The Greek practice of blending quotations with the text tells against this. It is very rare for a Greek writer to open a verbal quotation abruptly. Further, it is safer not to ascribe the terms γένεσις and φθορά in their technical Platonic sense to Anaximander.

[103]. The conception of elements is not older than Empedokles ([§ 106]), and the word στοιχεῖα, which is properly translated by elementa, was first used in this sense by Plato. For the history of the term, see Diels, Elementum (1899).

[104]. The important word ἀλλήλοις was omitted in the Aldine Simplicius, but is in all the MSS. We shall see that in Herakleitos “justice” means the observance of an equal balance between what were called later the elements ([§ 72]). See also Introd. p. 32, [n. 45].

[105]. If the words quoted from Theophrastos by Simplicius, Phys. p. 24, 15 (R. P. 16), stood by themselves, no one would ever have supposed them to mean that Anaximander called the Boundless ἀρχή. They would naturally be rendered: “having been the first to introduce this name (i.e. τὸ ἄπειρον) for the ἀρχή”; but the words of Hippolytos (Ref. i. 6, 2), πρῶτος τοὔνομα καλέσας τῆς ἀρχῆς, have led nearly all writers to take the passage in the less obvious sense. We now know, however, that Hippolytos is no independent authority, but rests altogether on Theophrastos; so the natural view to take is that either his immediate source, or he himself, or a copyist, has dropped out τοῦτο before τοὔνομα, and corrupted κομίσας into καλέσας. It is not credible that Theophrastos made both statements. The other passage from Simplicius compared by Usener (p. 150, 23), πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀρχὴν ὀνομάσας τὸ ὑποκείμενον, does not seem to me to have anything to do with the question. It means simply that Anaximander was the first to name the substratum as the “material cause,” which is a different point altogether. This is how Neuhäuser takes the passage (Anaximander, pp. 7 sqq.); but I cannot agree with him in holding that the word ὑποκείμενον is ascribed to the Milesian.

[106]. Arist. Met. Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c).

[107]. This is taken for granted in Phys. Γ, 4. 203 a 16; 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b), and stated in Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). Cf. Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18).

[108]. Aristotle speaks four times of something intermediate between Fire and Air (Gen. Corr. Β, 1. 328 b 35; ib. 5. 332 a 21; Phys. Α, 4. 187 a 14; Met. Α, 7. 988 a 30). In five places we have something intermediate between Water and Air (Met. Α, 7. 988 a 13; Gen. Corr. Β, 5. 332 a 21; Phys. Γ, 4. 203 a 18; ib. 5. 205 a 27; de Caelo, Γ, 5. 303 b 12). Once (Phys. Α, 6. 189 b 1) we hear of something between Water and Fire. This variation shows at once that he is not speaking historically. If any one ever held the doctrine of τὸ μεταξύ, he must have known perfectly well which two elements he meant.

[109]. Arist. de Caelo, Γ, 5. 303 b 12, ὕδατος μὲν λεπτότερον, ἀέρος πυκνότερον, ὃ περιέχειν φασὶ πάντας τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἄπειρον ὄν. That this refers to Idaios of Himera, as suggested by Zeller (p. 258), seems very improbable. Aristotle nowhere mentions his name, and the tone of his reference to Hippon in Met. Α, 3. 984 a 3 (R. P. 219 a) shows that he was not likely to pay so much attention to the ἐπίγονοι of the Milesian school.

[110]. Cf. Phys. Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b), where Zeller rightly refers τὸ παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα to Anaximander. Now, at the end (205 a 25) the whole passage is summarised thus: καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ οὐθεὶς τὸ ἓν καὶ ἄπειρον πῦρ ἐποίησεν οὐδὲ γῆν τῶν φυσιολόγων, ἀλλ’ ἢ ὕδωρ ἢ ἀέρα ἢ τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν. In Gen. Corr. Β, 1. 328 b 35 we have first τι μεταξὺ τούτων σῶμά τε ὂν καὶ χωριστόν, and a little further on (329 a 9) μίαν ὕλην παρὰ τὰ εἰρημένα. In Β, 5. 332 a 20 we have οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἄλλο τί γε παρὰ ταῦτα, οἶον μέσον τι ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος ἢ ἀέρος καὶ πυρός.

[111]. Met. Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c). Zeller (p. 205, n. 1) assumes an “easy zeugma.” I should prefer to say that καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα was an afterthought, and that Aristotle really meant τὸ Ἀναξαγόρου ἓν ... καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρου. Met. Α, 4. 187 a 20 does not assign the “mixture” to Anaximander.

[112]. For the literature of this controversy, see R. P. 15. A good deal of light is thrown on this and similar questions by W. A. Heidel, “Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy” (Arch. xix. p. 333).

[113]. Phys. Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). That this refers to Anaximander is shown by Aet. i. 3, 3 (R. P. 16 a). The same argument is given in Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 18, a passage where Anaximander has just been quoted by name, τῷ οὕτως ἂν μόνον μὴ ὑπολείπειν γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν, εἰ ἄπειρον εἴη ὅθεν ἀφαιρεῖται τὸ γιγνόμενον. I cannot, however, believe that the arguments given at the beginning of this chapter (203 b 7; R. P. 17) are Anaximander’s. They bear the stamp of the Eleatic dialectic, and are, in fact, those of Melissos.

[114]. I have assumed that the word ἄπειρον means spatially infinite (though not in any precise mathematical sense), not qualitatively indeterminate, as maintained by Teichmüller and Tannery. The decisive reasons for holding that the sense of the word is “boundless in extent” are as follows: (1) Theophrastos said that the primary substance of Anaximander was ἄπειρον and contained all the worlds, and the word περιέχειν everywhere means “to encompass,” not, as has been suggested, “to contain potentially.” (2) Aristotle says (Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 23) διὰ γὰρ τὸ ἐν τῇ νοήσει μὴ ὑπολείπειν καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς δοκεῖ ἄπειρος εἶναι καὶ τὰ μαθηματικὰ μεγέθη καὶ τὰ ἔξω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ· ἀπείρου δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω, καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι. (3) Anaximander’s theory of the ἄπειρον was adopted by Anaximenes, and he identified it with Air, which is not qualitatively indeterminate.

[115]. Plato, Tim. 52 e, where the elements are separated by being shaken, stirred, and carried in different directions: “just as by sieves and instruments for winnowing corn, the grain is shaken and sifted, and the dense and heavy parts go one way, and the rare and light are carried to a different place and settle there.” For the relation of Pythagoreanism to Anaximander, see below, [§ 53].

[116]. Arist. de Caelo, Β, 13. 295 a 9. The identification of the eternal motion with the diurnal revolution is insisted on by Teichmüller and Tannery, and is the real source of the very unnatural interpretation which they give to the word ἄπειρον. It was obviously difficult to credit Anaximander with a belief in an infinite body which revolves in a circle. The whole theory rests upon a confusion between the finite spherical κόσμος within the οὐρανός and the infinite περιέχον outside it.

[117]. [Plut.] Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 21 b). The words ἀνακυκλουμένων πάντων αὐτῶν are most naturally to be interpreted as referring to an ἀνακύκλησις or cycle of γένεσις and φθορά in each of a multitude of coexistent worlds. It would be a very strange phrase to use of a succession of single worlds.

[118]. Zeller, pp. 234 sqq.

[119]. Aet. ii. 1, 3 (Dox. p. 327). Zeller is wrong in understanding κατὰ πᾶσαν περιαγωγήν here of the revolution of a cycle. It means simply “in every direction we turn,” and so does the alternative reading κατὰ πᾶσαν περίστασιν. The six περιστάσεις are πρόσω, ὀπίσω, ἄνω, κάτω, δεξιά, ἀριστερά (Nicom. Introd. p. 85, 11, Hoche), and Polybios uses περίστασις of surrounding space.

[120]. Aet. ii. 1, 8 (Dox. p. 329), τῶν ἀπείρους ἀποφηναμένων τοὺς κόσμους Ἀναξίμανδρος τὸ ἴσον αὐτοὺς ἀπέχειν ἀλλήλων, Ἐπίκουρος ἄνισον εἶναι τὸ μεταξὺ τῶν κόσμων διάστημα.

[121]. For Anaximenes, see [§ 30]; Xenophanes, [§ 59]; Archelaos, Chap. X.

[122]. This is shown by the fact that the list of names is given also by Theodoret. See Appendix, [§ 10].

[123]. Simpl. Phys. p. 1121, 5 (R. P. 21 b). Zeller says (p. 234, n. 4) that Simplicius elsewhere (de Caelo, p. 273 b 43) makes the same statement more doubtfully. But the words ὡς δοκεῖ, on which he relies, are hardly an expression of doubt, and refer, in any case, to the derivation of the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” from that of the ἄπειρον, not to the doctrine itself.

[124]. Cicero, de Nat. D. i. 25 (R. P. 21).

[125]. Aet. i. 7, 12 (R. P. 21 a). The reading of Stob., ἀπείρους οὐρανούς, is guaranteed by the ἀπείρους κόσμους of Cyril, and the ἀπείρους νοῦς (i.e. οὐνους) of the pseudo-Galen. See Dox. p. 11.

[126]. It is simplest to suppose that Cicero found διαστήμασιν in his Epicurean source, and that is a technical term for the intermundia.

[127]. Arist. Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 25, ἀπείρου δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω (sc. τοῦ οὐρανοῦ), καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι (sc. ἄπειροι). It is to be observed that the next words—τί γὰρ μᾶλλον τοῦ κενοῦ ἐνταῦθα ἢ ἐνταῦθα;—show clearly that this refers to the Atomists as well; but the ἄπειρον σῶμα will not apply to them. The suggestion is rather that both those who made the Boundless a body and those who made it a κενόν held the doctrine of ἀπειροι κόσμοι in the same sense.

[128]. See below, [§ 53]. Cf. Diels, Elementum, pp. 63 sqq.

[129]. Zeller’s difficulty about the meaning of τροπαί here (p. 223, n. 2) seems to be an imaginary one. The moon has certainly a movement in declination and, therefore, τροπαί (Dreyer, Planetary Systems, p. 17, n. 1).

[130]. I assume with Diels (Dox. p. 560) that something has fallen out in our text of Hippolytos. I have, however, with Tannery, Science hellène, p. 91, supplied “eighteen times” rather than “nineteen times.” Zeller (p. 224, n. 2) prefers the text of our MS. of Hippolytos to the testimony of Aetios.

[131]. Aetios goes on to say that the moon also is like a hollow cart-wheel full of fire with an ἐκπνοή. The difference in the figures of Hippolytos and Aetios is due to the fact that one refers to the internal and the other to the external circumferences of the rings. Cf. Tannery, Science hellène, p. 91; and Diels, “Ueber Anaximanders Kosmos” (Arch. x. pp. 231 sqq.).

[132]. As Diels points out (Arch. x. p. 229) the explanation given by Gomperz, p. 53, cannot be right. It implies the fifth century theory of μύδροι. Anaximander knew nothing of the “great mass” of the sun.

[133]. The true meaning of this doctrine was first explained by Diels (Dox. pp. 25 sqq.). The flames rush forth per magni circum spiracula mundi, as Lucretius has it (vi. 493). The πρηστῆρος αὐλός, to which these are compared, is simply the nozzle of a pair of bellows, a sense which the word πρηστήρ has in Apollonios Rhodios (iv. 776), and has nothing to do with the meteorological phenomenon of the same name, for which see Chap. III. [§ 71]. It is not now necessary to refute the earlier interpretations.

[134]. It cannot be the Zodiac; for the planets were not separately studied yet.

[135]. The Placita and Eusebios both have τοὺς ἀστέρας οὐρανίους instead of τοὺς ἀπείρους οὐρανούς (see above, p. 65, [n. 2]), and it seems just possible that this is not a mere corruption of the text. The common source may have had both statements. I do not, however, rest the interpretation given above on this very insecure basis. Quite apart from it, it seems to be the only way out of the difficulty.

[136]. The MSS. of Hippolytos have ὑγρὸν στρογγύλον. Roeper read γυρὸν [στρογγύλον], supposing the second word to be a gloss on the first; but Diels has shown (Dox. p. 218) that both are wanted. The first means “convex,” and applies to the surface of the earth; while the second means “round,” and refers to its circuit. As to κίονι λίθῳ, it is not easy to say anything positive. It might, possibly, be a mere corruption of κυλίνδρῳ (cf. Plut. Strom. fr. 2; R. P. 20 a); but, if so, it is a very old one. Aetios (iii. 10, 2), who is quite independent of Hippolytos, has λίθῳ κίονι; Roeper suggested κιονέῃ λίθῳ; Teichmüller, κίονος λιθῷ; while Diels doubtfully puts forward λιθῷ κίονι, which he suggests might be a Theophrastean modernisation of an original λιθέῃ κίονι (Dox. p. 219).

[137]. See above, p. 58, [n. 48].

[138]. Arist. de Caelo, Β, 13. 295 b 10, εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἳ διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητά φασιν αὐτὴν (τὴν γῆν) μένειν, ὥσπερ τῶν ἀρχαίων Ἀναξίμανδρος· μᾶλλον μὲν γὰρ οὐθὲν ἄνω ἢ κάτω ἢ εἰς τὰ πλάγια φέρεσθαι προσήκειν τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ μέσου ἱδρυμένον καὶ ὁμοίως πρὸς τὰ ἔσχατα ἔχον. That Aristotle is really reproducing Anaximander seems to be shown by the use of ὁμοιότης in the old sense of “equality.”

[139]. This is to be understood in the light of what we are told about γαλεοί below. Cf. Arist. Hist. An. Ζ, 10. 565 a 25, τοῖς μὲν οὖν σκυλίοις, οὓς καλοῦσί τινες νεβρίας γαλεούς, ὅταν περιρραγῇ καὶ ἐκπέσῃ τὸ ὄστρακον, γίνονται οἱ νεοττοί.

[140]. Reading ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί for ὥσπερ οἱ παλαιοί with Doehner, who compares Plut. de soll. anim. 982 a, where the φιλόστοργον of the shark is described. See p. 74, [n. 141].

[141]. On Aristotle and the galeus levis, see Johannes Müller, “Ueber den glatten Hai des Aristoteles” (K. Preuss. Akad., 1842), to which my attention has been directed by my colleague, Prof. D’Arcy Thomson. The precise point of the words τρεφόμενοι ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί appears from Arist. Hist. An. Ζ, 10. 565 b 1, οἱ δὲ καλούμενοι λεῖοι τῶν γαλεῶν τὰ μὲν ᾠὰ ἴσχουσι μεταξὺ τῶν ὑστερῶν ὁμοίως τοῖς σκυλίοις, περιστάντα δὲ ταῦτα εἰς ἑκατέραν τὴν δικρόαν τῆς ὑστέρας καταβαίνει, καὶ τὰ ζῷα γίνεται τὸν ὀμφαλὸν ἔχοντα πρὸς τῇ ὑστέρᾳ, ὥστε ἀναλισκομένων τῶν ᾠῶν ὁμοίως δοκεῖν ἔχειν τὸ ἔμβρυον τοῖς τετράποσιν. It is not necessary to suppose that Anaximander referred to the further phenomenon described by Aristotle, who more than once says that all the γαλεοί except the ἀκανθίας “send out their young and take them back again” (ἐξαφιᾶσι καὶ δέχονται εἰς ἑαυτοὺς τοὺς νεοττούς, ib. 565 b 23), for which compare also Ael. i. 17; Plut. de soll. anim. 982 a. The placenta and umbilical cord described by Johannes Müller will account sufficiently for all he says. At the same time, I understand that deep-sea fishermen at the present day confirm this remarkable statement also, and two credible witnesses have informed me that they believe they have seen the thing happen with their own eyes.

[142]. Zeller, p. 230.

[143]. For Empedokles, see Chap. V. [§ 119]; and for Diogenes, Chap. X. [§ 188], fr. [5]. The cosmologists followed the theogonists and cosmogonists in this. No one worshipped Okeanos and Tethys, or even Ouranos.

[144]. Arist. Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 13 (R. P. 17).

[145]. Theophr. Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

[146]. This follows from a comparison of Diog. ii. 3. with Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 23). In the latter passage we must, however, read τρίτον for πρῶτον with Diels. The suggestion in R. P. 23 e that Apollodoros mentioned the Olympiad without giving the number of the year is inadequate; for Apollodoros did not reckon by Olympiads, but Athenian archons. Jacoby (p. 194) brings the date of his death into connexion with the floruit of Pythagoras, which seems to me less probable. Lortzing (Jahresber., 1898, p. 202) objects to my view on the ground that the period of a hundred years plays no part in Apollodoros’s calculations. It will be seen, however, from Jacoby, pp. 39 sqq., that there is some reason for believing he made use of the generation of 33⅓ years.

[147]. Diog. ii. 3 (R. P. 23).

[148]. Cf. the statement of Theophrastos above, [§ 13].

[149]. On these monographs see Dox. p. 103.

[150]. See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given in Dox. p. 135.

[151]. “Felting” (πίλησις) is the regular term for this process with all the early cosmologists, from whom Plato has taken it (Tim. 58 b 4; 76 c 3).

[152]. A more condensed form of the same doxographical tradition is given by Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3 (R. P. 25).

[153]. Simplicius, Phys. p. 149, 32 (R. P. 26 b), says, according to the MSS., that Theophrastos spoke of rarefaction and condensation in the case of Anaximenes alone. We must either suppose with Zeller (p. 193, n. 2) that this means “alone among the oldest Ionians” or read πρῶτου for μόνου with Usener. The regular terms are πύκνωσις and ἀραίωσις or μάνωσις. Plutarch, de prim. frig. 947 f (R. P. 27), says that Anaximenes used the term τὸ χαλαρόν for the rarefied air.

[154]. For the meaning of ἀήρ in Homer, see Schmidt, Synonomik, § 35; and for its survival in Ionic prose, Hippokrates, Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, τόπων, 15, ἀήρ τε πολὺς κατέχει τὴν χώρην ἀπὸ τῶν ὑδάτων. Plato is still conscious of the old meaning of the word; for he makes Timaios say ἀέρος (γένη) τὸ μὲν εὐαγέστατον ἐπίκλην αἰθὴρ καλούμενος, ὁ δὲ θολερώτατος ὁμίχλη καὶ σκότος (Tim. 58 d). The view given in the text has been criticised by Tannery, “Une nouvelle hypothèse sur Anaximandre” (Arch. viii. pp. 443 sqq.), and I have slightly altered my expression of it to meet these criticisms. The point is of fundamental importance, as we shall see, for the interpretation of Pythagoreanism.

[155]. Plut. de prim. frig. 947 f (R. P. 27).

[156]. Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).

[157]. See Chap. II. [§ 53].

[158]. The text is very corrupt here. I retain ἐκπεπυκνωμένος, because we are told above that winds are condensed air, and I adopt Zeller’s ἀραιῷ εἰσφέρηται (p. 246, [n. 554]).

[159]. The source of this is Poseidonios, who used Theophrastos. Dox. p. 231.

[160]. Theodoret (iv. 16) speaks of those who believe in a revolution like that of a millstone, as contrasted with one like that of a wheel. Diels (Dox. p. 46) refers these similes to Anaximenes and Anaximander respectively. They come, of course, from Aetios (Appendix, [§ 10]), though they are given neither by Stobaios nor in the Placita.

[161]. Β, 1. 354 a 28 (R. P. 28 c).

[162]. We do not know how Anaximenes imagined the “crystalline” sky. It is probable that he used the word πάγος as Empedokles did. Cf. Chap. V. [§ 112].

[163]. See Tannery, Science hellène, p. 153. For the precisely similar bodies assumed by Anaxagoras, see below, Chap. VI. [§ 135]. See further Chap. VII. [§ 151].

[164]. Cic. de nat. D. i. 26 (R. P. 28 b). On what follows see Krische, Forschungen, pp. 52 sqq.

[165]. Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 1 (R. P. 28).

[166]. Aug. de civ. D. viii. 2: “Anaximenes omnes rerum causas infinito aëri dedit: nec deos negavit aut tacuit; non tamen ab ipsis aërem factum, sed ipsos ex aëre ortos credidit” (R. P. 28 b).

[167]. Simpl. Phys. p. 1121, 12 (R. P. 28 a). The passage from the Placita is of higher authority than this from Simplicius. Note, further, that it is only to Anaximenes, Herakleitos, and Diogenes that successive worlds are ascribed even here. With regard to Anaximander, Simplicius is quite clear. For the Stoic view of Herakleitos, see Chap. III. [§ 78]; and for Diogenes, Chap. X. [§ 188]. That Simplicius is following a Stoic authority is suggested by the words καὶ ὕστερον οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Cf. also Simpl. de Caelo, p. 202, 13.

[168]. In particular, the authority of Anaximenes was so great that both Leukippos and Demokritos adhered to his theory of a disc-like earth. Cf. Aet. iii. 10, 3-5 (Περὶ σχήματος γῆς), Ἀναξιμένης τραπεζοειδῆ (τὴν γῆν). Λεύκιππος τυμπανοειδῆ. Δημόκριτος δισκοειδῆ μὲν τῷ πλάτει, κοίλην δὲ τῷ μέσῳ. This, in spite of the fact that the spherical form of the earth was already a commonplace in circles affected by Pythagoreanism.

CHAPTER II
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Migrations to the West.

32. So far we have not met with any trace of direct antagonism between science and popular beliefs, though the views of the Milesian cosmologists were really as inconsistent with the religions of the people as with the mythology of the anthropomorphic poets.[^[169]] Two things hastened the conflict—the shifting of the scene to the West, and the religious revival which swept over Hellas in the sixth century B.C.

The chief figures in the philosophical history of the period were Pythagoras of Samos and Xenophanes of Kolophon. Both were Ionians by birth, and yet both spent the greater part of their lives in the West. We see from Herodotos how the Persian advance in Asia Minor occasioned a series of migrations to Sicily and Southern Italy;[^[170]] and this, of course, made a great difference to philosophy as well as to religion. The new views had probably grown up so naturally and gradually in Ionia that the shock of conflict and reaction was avoided; but that could no longer be so, when they were transplanted to a region where men were wholly unprepared to receive them.

Another, though a somewhat later, effect of these migrations was to bring Science into contact with Rhetoric, one of the most characteristic products of Western Hellas. Already in Parmenides we may note the presence of that dialectical and controversial spirit which was destined to have so great an influence on Greek thought, and it was just this fusion of the art of arguing for victory with the search for truth that before long gave birth to Logic.

The religious revival.

33. Most important of all in its influence on philosophy was the religious revival which culminated about this time. The religion of continental Hellas had developed in a very different way from that of Ionia. In particular, the worship of Dionysos, which came from Thrace, and is barely mentioned in Homer, contained in germ a wholly new way of looking at man’s relation to the world. It would certainly be wrong to credit the Thracians themselves with any very exalted views; but there can be no doubt that, to the Greeks, the phenomenon of ecstasy suggested that the soul was something more than a feeble double of the self, and that it was only when “out of the body” it could show its true nature.[^[171]] To a less extent, such ideas were also suggested by the worship of Demeter, whose mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis; though, in later days, these came to take the leading place in men’s minds. That was because they were incorporated in the public religion of Athens.

Before the time with which we are dealing, tradition shows us dimly an age of inspired prophets—Bakides and Sibyls—followed by one of strange medicine-men like Abaris and Aristeas of Prokonnesos. With Epimenides of Crete, we touch the fringe of history, while Pherekydes of Syros is the contemporary of the early cosmologists, and we still have some fragments of his discourse. It looked as if Greek religion were about to enter upon the same stage as that already reached by the religions of the East; and, but for the rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked this tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were saved from a religion of the Oriental type by their having no priesthood; but this is to mistake the effect for the cause. Priesthoods do not make dogmas, though they preserve them once they are made; and in the earlier stages of their development, the Oriental peoples had no priesthoods either in the sense intended.[^[172]] It was not so much the absence of a priesthood as the existence of the scientific schools that saved Greece.

The Orphic religion.

34. The new religion—for in one sense it was new, though in another as old as mankind—reached its highest point of development with the foundation of the Orphic communities. So far as we can see, the original home of these was Attika; but they spread with extraordinary rapidity, especially in Southern Italy and Sicily.[^[173]] They were first of all associations for the worship of Dionysos; but they were distinguished by two features which were new among the Hellenes. They looked to a revelation as the source of religious authority, and they were organised as artificial communities. The poems which contained their theology were ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus, who had himself descended into Hades, and was therefore a safe guide through the perils which beset the disembodied soul in the next world. We have considerable remains of this literature, but they are mostly of late date, and cannot safely be used as evidence for the beliefs of the sixth century. We do know, however, that the leading ideas of Orphicism were quite early. A number of thin gold plates with Orphic verses inscribed on them have been discovered in Southern Italy;[^[174]] and though these are somewhat later in date than the period with which we are dealing, they belong to the time when Orphicism was a living creed and not a fantastic revival. What can be made out from them as to the doctrine has a startling resemblance to the beliefs which were prevalent in India about the same time, though it seems impossible that there should have been any actual contact between India and Greece at this date. The main purpose of the Orgia[^[175]] was to “purify” the believer’s soul, and so enable it to escape from the “wheel of birth,” and it was for the better attainment of this end that the Orphics were organised in communities. Religious associations must have been known to the Greeks from a fairly early date;[^[176]] but the oldest of these were based, at least in theory, on the tie of kindred blood. What was new was the institution of communities to which any one might be admitted by initiation.[^[177]] This was, in fact, the establishment of churches, though there is no evidence that these were connected with each other in such a way that we could rightly speak of them as a single church. The Pythagoreans came nearer to realising that.

Philosophy as a Way of Life.

35. We have to take account of the religious revival here, chiefly because it suggested the view that philosophy was above all a “way of life.” Science too was a “purification,” a means of escape from the “wheel.” This is the view expressed so strongly in Plato’s Phaedo, which was written under the influence of Pythagorean ideas.[^[178]] Sokrates became to his followers the ideal “wise man,” and it was to this side of his personality the Cynics mainly attached themselves. From them proceeded the Stoic sage and the Christian saint, and also the whole brood of impostors whom Lucian has pilloried for our edification.[^[179]] Saints and sages are apt to appear in questionable shapes, and Apollonios of Tyana showed in the end where this view may lead. It was not wholly absent from any Greek philosophy after the days of Pythagoras. Aristotle is as much possessed by it as any one, as we may see from the Tenth Book of the Ethics, and as we should see still more distinctly if we possessed such works as the Protreptikos in their entirety.[^[180]] Plato, indeed, tried to make the ideal wise man of service to the state and mankind by his doctrine of the philosopher king. It was he alone, so far as we know, that insisted on philosophers descending by turns into the cave from which they had been released and coming to the help of their former fellow-prisoners.[^[181]] That was not, however, the view that prevailed, and the “wise man” became more and more detached from the world. Apollonios of Tyana was quite entitled to regard himself as the spiritual heir of Pythagoras; for the theurgy and thaumaturgy of the late Greek schools was but the fruit of the seed sown in the generation before the Persian Wars.

No doctrine in the “Mysteries.”

36. On the other hand, it would be wrong to suppose that Orphicism or the Mysteries suggested any definite doctrines to philosophers, at least during the period which we are about to consider. We have admitted that they really implied a new view of the soul, and we might therefore have expected to find that they profoundly modified men’s theory of the world and their relation to it. The striking thing is that this did not happen. Even those philosophers who were most closely in touch with the religious movement, like Empedokles and the Pythagoreans, held views about the soul which really contradicted the theory implied by their religious practices.[^[182]] There is no room for an immortal soul in any philosophy of this period. Up to Plato’s time immortality was never treated in a scientific way, but merely assumed in the Orphic rites, to which Plato half seriously turns for confirmation of his own teaching.[^[183]]

All this is easily accounted for. With us a religious revival generally means the vivid realisation of a new or forgotten doctrine, while ancient religion has properly no doctrine at all. “The initiated,” Aristotle said, “were not expected to learn anything, but merely to be affected in a certain way and put into a certain frame of mind.”[^[184]] Nothing was required but that the ritual should be correctly performed, and the worshipper was free to give any explanation of it he pleased. It might be as exalted as that of Pindar and Sophokles, or as material as that of the itinerant mystery-mongers described by Plato in the Republic. The essential thing was that he should duly sacrifice his pig.

I. Pythagoras of Samos

Character of the tradition.

37. It is no easy task to give an account of Pythagoras that can claim to be regarded as history. Our principal sources of information[^[185]] are the Lives composed by Iamblichos, Porphyry, and Laertios Diogenes. That of Iamblichos is a wretched compilation, based chiefly on the work of the arithmetician Nikomachos of Gerasa in Judaea, and the romance of Apollonios of Tyana, who regarded himself as a second Pythagoras, and accordingly took great liberties with his materials.[^[186]] Porphyry stands, as a writer, on a far higher level than Iamblichos; but his authorities do not inspire us with more confidence. He, too, made use of Nikomachos, and of a certain novelist called Antonius Diogenes, author of a work entitled Marvels from beyond Thule.[^[187]] Diogenes quotes, as usual, a considerable number of authorities, and the statements he makes must be estimated according to the nature of the sources from which they were drawn.[^[188]] So far, it must be confessed, our material does not seem promising. Further examination shows, however, that a good many fragments of two much older authorities, Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, are embedded in the mass. These writers were both disciples of Aristotle; they were natives of Southern Italy, and contemporary with the last generation of the Pythagorean school. Both wrote accounts of Pythagoras; and Aristoxenos, who was personally intimate with the last representatives of scientific Pythagoreanism, also made a collection of the sayings of his friends. Now the Neopythagorean story, as we have it in Iamblichos, is a tissue of incredible and fantastic myths; but, if we sift out the statements which go back to Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, we can easily construct a rational narrative, in which Pythagoras appears not as a miracle-monger and religious innovator, but simply as a moralist and statesman. We might then be tempted to suppose that this is the genuine tradition; but that would be altogether a mistake. There is, in fact, a third and still earlier stratum in the Lives, and this agrees with the latest accounts in representing Pythagoras as a wonder-worker and a religious reformer.

Some of the most striking miracles of Pythagoras are related on the authority of Andron’s Tripod, and of Aristotle’s work on the Pythagoreans.[^[189]] Both these treatises belong to the fourth century B.C., and are therefore untouched by Neopythagorean fancies. Further, it is only by assuming the still earlier existence of this view that we can explain the allusions of Herodotos. The Hellespontine Greeks told him that Salmoxis or Zamolxis had been a slave of Pythagoras,[^[190]] and Salmoxis is a figure of the same class as Abaris and Aristeas.

It seems, then, that both the oldest and the latest accounts agree in representing Pythagoras as a man of the class to which Epimenides and Onomakritos belonged—in fact, as a sort of “medicine-man”; but, for some reason, there was an attempt to save his memory from this imputation, and that attempt belonged to the fourth century B.C. The significance of this will appear in the sequel.

Life of Pythagoras.

38. We may be said to know for certain that Pythagoras passed his early manhood at Samos, and was the son of Mnesarchos;[^[191]] and he “flourished,” we are told, in the reign of Polykrates.[^[192]] This date cannot be far wrong; for Herakleitos already speaks of him in the past tense.[^[193]]

The extensive travels attributed to Pythagoras by late writers are, of course, apocryphal. Even the statement that he visited Egypt, though far from improbable if we consider the close relations between Polykrates of Samos and Amasis, rests on no sufficient authority.[^[194]] Herodotos, it is true, observes that the Egyptians agreed in certain practices with the rules called Orphic and Bacchic, which are really Egyptian, and with the Pythagoreans;[^[195]] but this does not imply that the Pythagoreans derived these directly from Egypt. He says also in another place that the belief in transmigration came from Egypt, though certain Greeks, both at an earlier and a later date, had passed it off as their own. He refuses, however, to give their names, so he can hardly be referring to Pythagoras.[^[196]] Nor does it matter; for the Egyptians did not believe in transmigration at all, and Herodotos was simply deceived by the priests or the symbolism of the monuments.

Aristoxenos said that Pythagoras left Samos in order to escape from the tyranny of Polykrates.[^[197]] It was at Kroton, a city already famous for its medical school,[^[198]] that he founded his society. How long he remained there we do not know; he died at Metapontion, whither he had retired on the first signal of revolt against his influence.[^[199]]

The Order.

39. There is no reason to believe that the detailed statements which have been handed down with regard to the organisation of the Pythagorean Order rest upon any historical basis, and in the case of many of them we can still see how they came to be made. The distinction of grades within the Order, variously called Mathematicians and Akousmatics, Esoterics and Exoterics, Pythagoreans and Pythagorists,[^[200]] is an invention designed to explain how there came to be two widely different sets of people, each calling themselves disciples of Pythagoras, in the fourth century B.C. So, too, the statement that the Pythagoreans were bound to inviolable secrecy, which goes back to Aristoxenos,[^[201]] is intended to explain why there is no trace of the Pythagorean philosophy proper before Philolaos.

The Pythagorean Order was simply, in its origin, a religious fraternity of the type described above, and not, as has sometimes been maintained, a political league.[^[202]] Nor had it anything to do with the “Dorian aristocratic ideal.” Pythagoras was an Ionian, and the Order was originally confined to Achaian states.[^[203]] Nor is there the slightest evidence that the Pythagoreans favoured the aristocratic rather than the democratic party.[^[204]] The main purpose of the Order was to secure for its own members a more adequate satisfaction of the religious instinct than that supplied by the State religion. It was, in fact, an institution for the cultivation of holiness. In this respect it resembled an Orphic society, though it seems that Apollo, rather than Dionysos, was the chief Pythagorean god. That is doubtless why the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios.[^[205]] From the nature of the case, however, an independent society within a Greek state was apt to be brought into conflict with the larger body. The only way in which it could then assert its right to exist was by identifying the State with itself, that is, by securing the control of the sovereign power. The history of the Pythagorean Order, so far as it can be traced, is, accordingly, the history of an attempt to supersede the State; and its political action is to be explained as a mere incident of that attempt.

Downfall of the Order.

40. For a time the new Order seems actually to have succeeded in securing the supreme power, but reaction came at last. Under the leadership of Kylon, a wealthy noble, Kroton was able to assert itself victoriously against the Pythagorean domination. This, we may well believe, had been galling enough. The “rule of the saints” would be nothing to it; and we can still imagine and sympathise with the irritation felt by the plain man of those days at having his legislation done for him by a set of incomprehensible pedants, who made a point of abstaining from beans, and would not let him beat his own dog because they recognised in its howls the voice of a departed friend (Xenophanes, fr. 7). This feeling would be aggravated by the private religious worship of the Society. Greek states could never pardon the introduction of new gods. Their objection to this was not, however, that the gods in question were false gods. If they had been, it would not have mattered so much. What they could not tolerate was that any one should establish a private means of communication between himself and the unseen powers. That introduced an unknown and incalculable element into the arrangements of the State, which might very likely be hostile to those citizens who had no means of propitiating the intruding divinity.

Aristoxenos’s version of the events which led to the downfall of the Pythagorean Order is given at length by Iamblichos. According to this, Pythagoras had refused to receive Kylon into his Society, and he therefore became a bitter foe of the Order. From this cause Pythagoras removed from Kroton to Metapontion, where he died. The Pythagoreans, however, still retained possession of the government of Kroton, till at last the partisans of Kylon set fire to Milo’s house, where they were assembled. Of those in the house only two, Archippos and Lysis, escaped. Archippos retired to Taras; Lysis, first to Achaia and then to Thebes, where he became later on the teacher of Epameinondas. The Pythagoreans who remained concentrated themselves at Rhegion; but, as things went from bad to worse, they all left Italy except Archippos.[^[206]]

This account has all the air of being historical. The mention of Lysis proves, however, that those events were spread over more than one generation. The coup d’état of Kroton can hardly have occurred before 450 B.C., if the teacher of Epameinondas escaped from it, and it may well have been even later. But it must have been before 410 B.C. that the Pythagoreans left Rhegion for Hellas; Philolaos was certainly at Thebes about that time.[^[207]]

The political power of the Pythagoreans as an Order was now gone for ever, though we shall see that some of them returned to Italy at a later date. In exile they seem to have dropped the merely magical and superstitious parts of their system, and this enabled them to take their place as one of the scientific schools of Hellas.

Want of evidence as to the teaching of Pythagoras.

41. Of the opinions of Pythagoras we know even less than of his life. Aristotle clearly knew nothing for certain of ethical or physical doctrines going back to the founder of the Society himself.[^[208]] Aristoxenos only gave a string of moral precepts.[^[209]] Dikaiarchos is quoted by Porphyry as asserting that hardly anything of what Pythagoras taught his disciples was known except the doctrine of transmigration, the periodic cycle, and the kinship of all living creatures.[^[210]] The fact is, that, like all teachers who introduce a new way of living rather than a new view of the world, Pythagoras preferred oral instruction to the dissemination of his opinions by writing, and it was not till Alexandrian times that any one ventured to forge books in his name. The writings ascribed to the earliest Pythagoreans were also forgeries of the same period.[^[211]] The early history of Pythagoreanism is, therefore, wholly conjectural; but we may still make an attempt to understand, in a very general way, what the position of Pythagoras in the history of Greek thought must have been.

Transmigration.

42. In the first place, then, there can be no doubt that he really taught the doctrine of transmigration.[^[212]] The story told by the Greeks of the Hellespont and Pontos as to his relations with Salmoxis could never have gained currency by the time of Herodotos if he had not been known as a man who taught strange views of the life after death.[^[213]] Now the doctrine of transmigration is most easily to be explained as a development of the savage belief in the kinship of men and beasts, as all alike children of the Earth,[^[214]] a view which Dikaiarchos said Pythagoras certainly held. Further, among savages, this belief is commonly associated with a system of taboos on certain kinds of food, and the Pythagorean rule is best known for its prescription of similar forms of abstinence. This in itself goes far to show that it originated in the same ideas, and we have seen that the revival of these would be quite natural in connexion with the foundation of a new religious society. There is a further consideration which tells strongly in the same direction. In India we have a precisely similar doctrine, and yet it is not possible to assume any actual borrowing of Indian ideas at this date. The only explanation which will account for the facts is that the two systems were independently evolved from the same primitive ideas. These are found in many parts of the world; but it seems to have been only in India and in Greece that they were developed into an elaborate doctrine.

Abstinence.

43. It has indeed been doubted whether we have a right to accept what we are told by such late writers as Porphyry on the subject of Pythagorean abstinence. Aristoxenos, whom we have admitted to be one of our earliest witnesses, may be cited to prove that the original Pythagoreans knew nothing of these restrictions on the use of animal flesh and beans. He undoubtedly said that Pythagoras did not abstain from animal flesh in general, but only from that of the ploughing ox and the ram.[^[215]] He also said that Pythagoras preferred beans to every other vegetable, as being the most laxative, and that he was partial to sucking-pigs and tender kids.[^[216]] Aristoxenos, however, is a witness who very often breaks down under cross-examination, and the palpable exaggeration of these statements shows that he is endeavouring to combat a belief which existed in his own day. We are therefore able to show, out of his own mouth, that the tradition which made the Pythagoreans abstain from animal flesh and beans goes back to a time long before there were any Neopythagoreans interested in upholding it. Still, it may be asked what motive Aristoxenos could have had for denying the common belief? The answer is simple and instructive. He had been the friend of the last of the Pythagoreans; and, in their time, the merely superstitious part of Pythagoreanism had been dropped, except by some zealots whom the heads of the Society refused to acknowledge. That is why he represents Pythagoras himself in so different a light from both the older and the later traditions; it is because he gives us the view of the more enlightened sect of the Order. Those who clung faithfully to the old practices were now regarded as heretics, and all manner of theories were set on foot to account for their existence. It was related, for instance, that they descended from one of the “Akousmatics,” who had never been initiated into the deeper mysteries of the “Mathematicians.”[^[217]] All this, however, is pure invention. The satire of the poets of the Middle Comedy proves clearly enough that, even though the friends of Aristoxenos did not practise abstinence, there were plenty of people in the fourth century, calling themselves followers of Pythagoras, who did.[^[218]] History has not been kind to the Akousmatics, but they never wholly died out. The names of Diodoros of Aspendos and Nigidius Figulus help to bridge the gulf between them and Apollonios of Tyana.

We know, then, that Pythagoras taught the kinship of beasts and men, and we infer that his rule of abstinence from flesh was based, not upon humanitarian or ascetic grounds, but on taboo. This is strikingly confirmed by a fact which we are told in Porphyry’s Defence of Abstinence. The statement in question does not indeed go back to Theophrastos, as so much of Porphyry’s tract certainly does;[^[219]] but it is, in all probability, due to Herakleides of Pontos, and is to the effect that, though the Pythagoreans did as a rule abstain from flesh, they nevertheless ate it when they sacrificed to the gods.[^[220]] Now, among savage peoples, we often find that the sacred animal is slain and eaten sacramentally by its kinsmen on certain solemn occasions, though in ordinary circumstances this would be the greatest of all impieties. Here, again, we have to do with a very primitive belief; and we need not therefore attach any weight to the denials of Aristoxenos.[^[221]]

Akousmata.

44. We shall now know what to think of the various Pythagorean rules and precepts which have come down to us. These are of two kinds, and have very different sources. Some of them, derived from the collection of Aristoxenos, and for the most part preserved by Iamblichos, are mere precepts of morality. They do not pretend to go back to Pythagoras himself; they are only the sayings which the last generation of “Mathematicians” heard from their predecessors.[^[222]] The second class is of a very different nature, and the sayings which belong to it are called Akousmata,[^[223]] which points to their being the property of that sect of Pythagoreans which had faithfully preserved the old customs. Later writers interpret them as “symbols” of moral truth; but their interpretations are extremely far-fetched, and it does not require a very practised eye to see that they are genuine taboos of a thoroughly primitive type. I give a few examples in order that the reader may judge what the famous Pythagorean rule of life was really like.

• 1. To abstain from beans.
• 2. Not to pick up what has fallen.
• 3. Not to touch a white cock.
• 4. Not to break bread.
• 5. Not to step over a crossbar.
• 6. Not to stir the fire with iron.
• 7. Not to eat from a whole loaf.
• 8. Not to pluck a garland.
• 9. Not to sit on a quart measure.
• 10. Not to eat the heart.
• 11. Not to walk on highways.
• 12. Not to let swallows share one’s roof.
• 13. When the pot is taken off the fire, not to leave the mark of it in the ashes, but to stir them together.
• 14. Do not look in a mirror beside a light.
• 15. When you rise from the bedclothes, roll them together and smooth out the impress of the body.

It would be easy to multiply proofs of the close connexion between Pythagoreanism and primitive modes of thought, but what has been said is really sufficient for our purpose. The kinship of men and beasts, the abstinence from flesh, and the doctrine of transmigration all hang together and form a perfectly intelligible whole from the point of view which has been indicated.

Pythagoras as a man of science.

45. Were this all, we should be tempted to delete the name of Pythagoras from the history of philosophy altogether, and relegate him to the class of “medicine-men” (γόητες) along with Epimenides and Onomakritos. This, however, would be quite wrong. As we shall see, the Pythagorean Society became one of the chief scientific schools of Hellas, and it is certain that Pythagorean science as well as Pythagorean religion originated with the master himself. Herakleitos, who is not partial to him, says that Pythagoras had pursued scientific investigation further than other men, though he also says that he turned his much learning into an art of mischief.[^[224]] Herodotos called Pythagoras “by no means the weakest sophist of the Hellenes,” a title which at this date does not imply the slightest disparagement.[^[225]] Aristotle even said that Pythagoras first busied himself with mathematics and numbers, and that it was later on he attached himself to the miracle-mongering of Pherekydes.[^[226]] Is it possible for us to trace any connexion between these two sides of his activity?

We have seen that the aim of the Orphic and other Orgia was to obtain release from the “wheel of birth” by means of “purifications,” which were generally of a very primitive type. The new thing in the Society founded by Pythagoras seems to have been that, while it admitted all these half-savage customs, it at the same time suggested a more exalted idea of what “purification” really was. Aristoxenos tells us that the Pythagoreans employed music to purge the soul as they used medicine to purge the body, and it is abundantly clear that Aristotle’s famous theory of κάθαρσις is derived from Pythagorean sources.[^[227]] Such methods of purifying the soul were familiar in the Orgia of the Korybantes, and will serve to explain the Pythagorean interest in Harmonics. But there is more than this. If we can trust Herakleides so far, it was Pythagoras who first distinguished the “three lives,” the Theoretic, the Practical, and the Apolaustic, which Aristotle made use of in the Ethics. The general theory of these lives is clear, and it is impossible to doubt that in substance it belongs to the very beginning of the school. It is to this effect. We are strangers in this world, and the body is the tomb of the soul, and yet we must not seek to escape by self-murder; for we are the chattels of God who is our herdsman, and without his command we have no right to make our escape.[^[228]] In this life, there are three kinds of men, just as there are three sorts of people who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, and next above them are those who come to compete. Best of all, however, are those who come simply to look on (θεωρεῖν). The greatest purification of all is, therefore, disinterested science, and it is the man who devotes himself to that, the true philosopher, who has most effectually released himself from the “wheel of birth.” It would be rash to say that Pythagoras expressed himself exactly in this manner; but all these ideas are genuinely Pythagorean, and it is only in some such way that we can bridge the gulf which separates Pythagoras the man of science from Pythagoras the religious teacher.[^[229]] We must now endeavour to discover how much of the later Pythagorean science may reasonably be ascribed to Pythagoras himself.

Arithmetic.

46. In his treatise on Arithmetic, Aristoxenos said that Pythagoras was the first to carry that study beyond the needs of commerce,[^[230]] and his statement is confirmed by everything we otherwise know. By the end of the fifth century B.C., we find that there is a widespread interest in such subjects and that these are studied for their own sake. Now this new interest cannot have been wholly the work of a school; it must have originated with some great man, and there is no one but Pythagoras to whom we can refer it. As, however, he wrote nothing, we have no sure means of distinguishing his own teaching from that of his followers in the next generation or two. All we can safely say is that, the more primitive any Pythagorean doctrine appears, the more likely it is to be that of Pythagoras himself, and all the more so if it can be shown to have points of contact with views which we know to have been held in his own time or shortly before it. In particular, when we find the later Pythagoreans teaching things that were already something of an anachronism in their own day, we may be reasonably sure that we are dealing with survivals which only the authority of the master’s name could have preserved. Some of these must be mentioned at once, though the developed system belongs to a later part of our story. It is only by separating its earliest form from its later that the true place of Pythagoreanism in Greek thought can be made clear, though we must always remember that no one can now pretend to draw the line between its successive stages with any certainty.

The figures.

47. Now one of the most remarkable statements that we have about Pythagoreanism is what we are told of Eurytos on the unimpeachable authority of Archytas. Eurytos was the disciple of Philolaos, and Aristoxenos expressly mentioned him along with Philolaos as having taught the last of the Pythagoreans, the men with whom he himself was personally acquainted. He therefore belongs to the beginning of the fourth century B.C., by which time the Pythagorean system was fully developed, and he was no eccentric enthusiast, but one of the foremost men in the school.[^[231]] We are told of him, then, that he used to give the number of all sorts of things, such as horses and men, and that he demonstrated these by arranging pebbles in a certain way. It is to be noted further that Aristotle compares his procedure to that of those who bring numbers into figures like the triangle and the square.[^[232]]

Now these statements, and especially the remark of Aristotle last quoted, seem to imply the existence at this date, and earlier, of a numerical symbolism quite distinct from the alphabetical notation on the one hand and from the Euclidean representation of numbers by lines on the other. The former was inconvenient for arithmetical purposes, just because the zero was one of the few things the Greeks did not invent, and they were therefore unable to develop a really serviceable numerical symbolism based on position. The latter, as will appear shortly, is intimately bound up with that absorption of arithmetic by geometry, which is at least as old as Plato, but cannot be primitive.[^[233]] It seems rather that numbers were represented by dots arranged in symmetrical and easily recognised patterns, of which the marking of dice or dominoes gives us the best idea. And these markings are, in fact, the best proof that this is a genuinely primitive method of indicating numbers; for they are of unknown antiquity, and go back to the time when men could only count by arranging numbers in such patterns, each of which became, as it were, a fresh unit. This way of counting may well be as old as reckoning with the fingers, or even older.

It is, therefore, very significant that we do not find any adequate account of what Aristotle can have meant by “those who bring numbers into figures like the triangle and the square” till we come to certain late writers who called themselves Pythagoreans, and revived the study of arithmetic as a science independent of geometry. These men not only abandoned the linear symbolism of Euclid, but also regarded the alphabetical notation, which they did use, as something conventional, and inadequate to represent the true nature of number. Nikomachos of Gerasa says expressly that the letters used to represent numbers are only significant by human usage and convention. The most natural way would be to represent linear or prime numbers by a row of units, polygonal numbers by units arranged so as to mark out the various plane figures, and solid numbers by units disposed in pyramids and so forth.[^[234]] He therefore gives us figures like this:—

α              α α α

α      α α             ααα

α     α α                     α α             α α α

α α     α α             ααα

α α             α α α

Now it ought to be obvious that this is no innovation, but, like so many things in Neopythagoreanism, a reversion to primitive usage. Of course the employment of the letter alpha to represent the units is derived from the conventional notation; but otherwise we are clearly in presence of something which belongs to the very earliest stage of the science—something, in fact, which gives the only possible clue to the meaning of Aristotle’s remark, and to what we are told of the method of Eurytos.

Triangular, square, and oblong numbers.

48. This is still further confirmed by the tradition which represents the great revelation made by Pythagoras to mankind as having been precisely a figure of this kind, namely the tetraktys, by which the Pythagoreans used to swear,[^[235]] and we have no less an authority than Speusippos for holding that the whole theory which it implies was genuinely Pythagorean.[^[236]] In later days there were many kinds of tetraktys,[^[237]] but the original one, that by which the Pythagoreans swore, was the “tetraktys of the dekad.” It was a figure like this—

•

• •

• • •

• • • •

and represented the number ten as the triangle of four. In other words, it showed at a glance that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. Speusippos tells us of several properties which the Pythagoreans discovered in the dekad. It is, for instance, the first number that has in it an equal number of prime and composite numbers. How much of this goes back to Pythagoras himself, we cannot tell; but we are probably justified in referring to him the conclusion that it is “according to nature” that all Hellenes and barbarians count up to ten and then begin over again.

It is obvious that the tetraktys may be indefinitely extended so as to exhibit the sums of the series of successive numbers in a graphic form, and these sums are accordingly called “triangular numbers.”

For similar reasons, the sums of the series of successive odd numbers are called “square numbers,” and those of successive even numbers “oblong.” If odd numbers are added to the unit in the form of gnomons, the result is always a similar figure, namely a square, while, if even numbers are added, we get a series of rectangles,[^[238]] as shown by the figure:—

It is clear, then, that we are entitled to refer the study of sums of series to Pythagoras himself; but whether he went beyond the oblong, and studied pyramidal or cubic numbers, we cannot say.[^[239]]

Geometry and harmonics.

49. It is easy to see how this way of representing numbers would suggest problems of a geometrical nature. The dots which stand for the pebbles are regularly called “boundary-stones” (ὅροι, termini, “terms”), and the area which they occupy, or rather mark out, is the “field” (χώρα).[^[240]] This is evidently a very early way of speaking, and may therefore be referred to Pythagoras himself. Now it must have struck him that “fields” could be compared as well as numbers,[^[241]] and it is even likely that he knew the rough methods of doing this which were traditional in Egypt, though certainly these would fail to satisfy him. Once more the tradition is singularly helpful in suggesting the direction that his thoughts must have taken. He knew, of course, the use of the triangle 3, 4, 5 in constructing right angles. We have seen (p. 24) that it was familiar in the East from a very early date, and that Thales introduced it to the Hellenes, if they did not know it already. In later writers it is actually called the “Pythagorean triangle.” Now the Pythagorean proposition par excellence is just that, in a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the other two sides, and the so-called Pythagorean triangle is the application of its converse to a particular case. The very name “hypotenuse” affords strong confirmation of the intimate connexion between the two things. It means literally “the cord stretching over against,” and this is surely just the rope of the “harpedonapt.”[^[242]] An early tradition says that Pythagoras sacrificed an ox when he discovered the proof of this proposition, and indeed it was the real foundation of scientific mathematics.[^[243]]

Incommensurability.

50. One great disappointment, however, awaited Pythagoras. It follows at once from the Pythagorean proposition that the square on the diagonal of a square is double the square on its side, and this ought surely to be capable of numerical expression. As a matter of fact, however, there is no square number which can be divided into two equal square numbers, and so the problem cannot be solved. In this sense, it is doubtless true that Pythagoras discovered the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side of a square, and the proof mentioned by Aristotle, namely, that, if they were commensurable, we should have to say that an even number was equal to an odd number, is distinctly Pythagorean in character.[^[244]] However that may be, it is certain that Pythagoras did not care to pursue the subject any further. He had, as it were, stumbled on the fact that the square root of two is a surd, but we know that it was left for Plato’s friends, Theodoros of Kyrene and Theaitetos, to give a complete theory of the matter.[^[245]] The fact is that the discovery of the Pythagorean proposition, by giving birth to geometry, had really superseded the old view of quantity as a sum of units; but it was not till Plato’s time that the full consequences of this were seen.[^[246]] For the present, the incommensurability of the diagonal and the square remained, as has been said, a “scandalous exception.” Our tradition says that Hippasos of Metapontion was drowned at sea for revealing this skeleton in the cupboard.[^[247]]

Proportion and harmony.

51. These last considerations show that, while it is quite safe to attribute the substance of the First Book of Euclid to Pythagoras, the arithmetic of Books VII.-IX., and the “geometrical algebra” of Book II. are certainly not his. They operate with lines or with areas instead of with units, and the relations which they establish therefore hold good whether they are capable of numerical expression or not. That is doubtless why arithmetic is not treated in Euclid till after plane geometry, a complete inversion of the original order. For the same reason, the doctrine of proportion which we find in Euclid cannot be Pythagorean, and is indeed the work of Eudoxos. Yet it is clear that the early Pythagoreans, and probably Pythagoras himself, studied proportion in their own way, and that the three “medieties” in particular go back to the founder, especially as the most complicated of them, the “harmonic,” stands in close relation to his discovery of the octave. If we take the harmonic proportion 12 : 8 : 6,[^[248]] we find that 12 : 6 is the octave, 12 : 8 the fifth, and 8 : 6 the fourth, and it can hardly be doubted that it was Pythagoras himself who discovered these intervals. The stories which have come down to us about his observing the harmonic intervals in a smithy, and then weighing the hammers that produced them, or of his suspending weights corresponding to those of the hammers to equal strings, are, indeed, impossible and absurd; but it is sheer waste of time to rationalise them.[^[249]] For our purpose their absurdity is their chief merit. They are not stories which any Greek mathematician or musician could possibly have invented, but genuine popular tales bearing witness to the existence of a real tradition that Pythagoras was the author of this momentous discovery.

Things are numbers.

52. It was this too, no doubt, that led Pythagoras to say all things were numbers. We shall see that, at a later date, the Pythagoreans identified these numbers with geometrical figures; but the mere fact that they called them “numbers,” when taken in connexion with what we are told about the method of Eurytos, is sufficient to show this was not the original sense of the doctrine. It is enough to suppose that Pythagoras reasoned somewhat as follows. If musical sounds can be reduced to numbers, why should not everything else? There are many likenesses to number in things, and it may well be that a lucky experiment, like that by which the octave was discovered, will reveal their true numerical nature. The Neopythagorean writers, going back in this as in other matters to the earliest tradition of the school, indulge their fancy in tracing out analogies between things and numbers in endless variety; but we are fortunately dispensed from following them in these vagaries. Aristotle tells us distinctly that the Pythagoreans explained only a few things by means of numbers,[^[250]] which means that Pythagoras himself left no developed doctrine on the subject, while the Pythagoreans of the fifth century did not care to add anything of the sort to the school tradition. Aristotle does imply, however, that, according to them the “right time” (καιρός) was seven, justice was four, and marriage three. These identifications, with a few others like them, we may safely refer to Pythagoras or his immediate successors; but we must not attach much importance to them. They are mere sports of the analogical fancy. If we wish to understand the cosmology of Pythagoras, we must start, not from them, but from any statements we can find that present points of contact with the teaching of the Milesian school. These, we may fairly infer, belong to the system in its most primitive form.

Cosmology.

53. Now the most striking statement of this kind is one of Aristotle’s. The Pythagoreans held, he tells us, that there was “boundless breath” outside the heavens, and that it was inhaled by the world.[^[251]] In substance, this is the doctrine of Anaximenes, and it becomes practically certain that it was that of Pythagoras, when we find that Xenophanes denied it.[^[252]] We may infer, then, that the further development of the idea is also due to Pythagoras himself. We are told that, after the first unit had been formed—however that may have taken place—the nearest part of the Boundless was first drawn in and limited;[^[253]] and further, that it is just the Boundless thus inhaled that keeps the units separate from each other.[^[254]] It represents the interval between them. This is a very primitive way of describing the nature of discrete quantity.

In the passages of Aristotle just referred to, the Boundless is also spoken of as the void or empty. This identification of air and the void is a confusion which we have already met with in Anaximenes, and it need not surprise us to find it here too.[^[255]] We find also, as we might expect, distinct traces of the other confusion, that of air and vapour. It seems certain, in fact, that Pythagoras identified the Limit with fire, and the Boundless with darkness. We are told by Aristotle that Hippasos made Fire the first principle,[^[256]] and we shall see that Parmenides, in discussing the opinions of his contemporaries, attributes to them the view that there were two primary “forms,” Fire and Night.[^[257]] We also find that Light and Darkness appear in the Pythagorean table of opposites under the heads of the Limit and the Unlimited respectively.[^[258]] The identification of breath with darkness here implied is a strong proof of the primitive character of the doctrine; for in the sixth century darkness was supposed to be a sort of vapour, while in the fifth, its true nature was well known. Plato, with his usual historical tact, makes the Pythagorean Timaios describe mist and darkness as condensed air.[^[259]] We must think, then, of a “field” of darkness or breath marked out by luminous units, an imagination which the starry heavens would naturally suggest. It is even probable that we should ascribe to Pythagoras the Milesian view of a plurality of worlds, though it would not have been natural for him to speak of an infinite number. We know, at least, that Petron, one of the early Pythagoreans, said there were just a hundred and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle;[^[260]] and Plato makes Timaios admit, when laying down that there is only one world, that something might be urged in favour of the view that there are five, as there are five regular solids.[^[261]]

The heavenly bodies.

54. Anaximander had regarded the heavenly bodies as wheels of “air” filled with fire which escapes through certain openings ([§ 19]), and there is evidence that Pythagoras adopted the same view.[^[262]] We have seen that Anaximander only assumed the existence of three such wheels, and held that the wheel of the sun was the lowest. It is extremely probable that Pythagoras identified the intervals between these rings with the three musical intervals which he had discovered, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. That would be the most natural beginning for the later doctrine of the “harmony of the spheres,” though that expression would be doubly misleading if applied to any theory we can properly ascribe to Pythagoras himself. The word ἁρμονία does not mean harmony, and the “spheres” are an anachronism. We are still at the stage when wheels or rings were considered sufficient to account for the motions of the heavenly bodies. It is also to be observed that sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars must all be regarded as moving in the same direction from east to west. Pythagoras certainly did not ascribe to the planets an orbital motion of their own from west to east. The old idea was rather that they were left behind more or less every day. As compared with the fixed stars, Saturn is left behind least of all, and the Moon most; so, instead of saying that the Moon took a shorter time than Saturn to complete its path through the signs of the Zodiac, men said Saturn travelled quicker than the Moon, because it more nearly succeeds in keeping up with the signs. Instead of holding that Saturn takes thirty years to complete its revolution, they said it took the fixed stars thirty years to pass Saturn, and only twenty-nine days and a half to pass the Moon. This is one of the most important points to bear in mind regarding the planetary systems of the Greeks, and we shall return to it again.[^[263]]

The account just given of the views of Pythagoras is, no doubt, conjectural and incomplete. We have simply assigned to him those portions of the Pythagorean system which appear to be the oldest, and it has not even been possible at this stage to cite fully the evidence on which our discussion is based. It will only appear in its true light when we have examined the second part of the poem of Parmenides and the system of the later Pythagoreans.[^[264]] For reasons which will then be apparent, I do not venture to ascribe to Pythagoras himself the theory of the earth’s revolution round the central fire. It seems safest to suppose that he still adhered to the geocentric hypothesis of Anaximander. In spite of this, however, it will be clear that he opened a new period in the development of Greek science, and it was certainly to his school that its greatest discoveries were directly or indirectly due. When Plato deliberately attributes some of his own most important discoveries to the Pythagoreans, he was acknowledging in a characteristic way the debt he owed them.

II. Xenophanes of Kolophon

Life.

55. We have seen how Pythagoras identified himself with the religious movement of his time; we have now to consider a very different manifestation of the reaction against that view of the gods which the poets had made familiar to every one. Xenophanes denied the anthropomorphic gods altogether, but was quite unaffected by the revival of more primitive ideas that was going on all round him. We still have a fragment of an elegy in which he ridiculed Pythagoras and the doctrine of transmigration. “Once, they say, he was passing by when a dog was being ill-treated. ‘Stop!’ he said, ‘don’t hit it! It is the soul of a friend! I knew it when I heard its voice.’”[^[265]] We are also told that he opposed the views of Thales and Pythagoras, and attacked Epimenides, which is likely enough, though no fragments of the kind have come down to us.[^[266]] His chief importance lies in the fact that he was the author of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry which culminated in Plato’s Republic.

It is not easy to determine the date of Xenophanes. Timaios said he was a contemporary of Hieron and Epicharmos, and he certainly seems to have played a part in the anecdotical romance of Hieron’s court which amused the Greeks of the fourth century much as that of Croesus and the Seven Wise Men amused those of the fifth.[^[267]] As Hieron reigned from 478 to 467 B.C., that would make it impossible to date the birth of Xenophanes much earlier than 570 B.C., even if we suppose him to have lived till the age of a hundred. On the other hand, both Sextus and Clement say that Apollodoros gave Ol. XL. (620-616 B.C.) as the date of his birth, and the former adds that his days were prolonged till the time of Dareios and Cyrus.[^[268]] Again, Diogenes, whose information on such matters mostly comes from Apollodoros, says that he flourished in Ol. LX. (540-537 B.C.), and Diels holds that Apollodoros really said so.[^[269]] However that may be, it is evident that the date 540 B.C. is based on the assumption that he went to Elea in the year of its foundation, and is, therefore, a mere combination.[^[270]]

What we do know for certain is that Xenophanes had led a wandering life from the age of twenty-five, and that he was still alive and making poetry at the age of ninety-two. He says himself (fr. 8 = 24 Karst.; R. P. 97):—

There are by this time threescore years and seven that have tossed my careworn soul[^[271]] up and down the land of Hellas; and there were then five-and-twenty years from my birth, if I can say aught truly about these matters.

It is tempting to suppose that in this passage Xenophanes was referring to the conquest of Ionia by Harpagos, and that he is, in fact, answering the question asked in another poem[^[272]] (fr. 22 = 17 Karst.; R. P. 95 a):—

This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the winter-time, as we lie on soft couches after a good meal, drinking sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: “Of what country are you, and how old are you, good sir? And how old were you when the Mede appeared?”

We cannot, however, be sure of this, and we must be content with what is, after all, for our purpose the main fact, namely, that he refers to Pythagoras in the past tense, and is in turn so referred to by Herakleitos.[^[273]]

Theophrastos said that Xenophanes had “heard” Anaximander,[^[274]] and we shall see that he was certainly acquainted with the Ionian cosmology. When driven from his native city, he lived in Sicily, chiefly, we are told, at Zankle and Katana.[^[275]] Like Archilochos before him, he unburdened his soul in elegies and satires, which he recited at the banquets where, we may suppose, the refugees tried to keep up the usages of good Ionian society. The statement that he was a rhapsode has no foundation at all.[^[276]] The singer of elegies was no professional like the rhapsode, but the social equal of his listeners. In his ninety-second year he was still, we have seen, leading a wandering life, which is hardly consistent with the statement that he settled at Elea and founded a school there, especially if we are to think of him as spending his last days at Hieron’s court. It is quite probable that he visited Elea, and it is just possible that he wrote a poem of two thousand hexameters on the foundation of that city, which was naturally a subject of interest to all the Ionic émigrés.[^[277]] But it is very remarkable that no ancient writer expressly says that he ever was at Elea, and the only thing besides the doubtful poem referred to which connects him with it is a single anecdote of Aristotle’s as to the answer he gave the Eleates when they asked whether they should sacrifice to Leukothea and lament her or not. “If you think her a goddess,” he said, “do not lament her; if not, do not sacrifice to her.” That is absolutely all, and it is only an apophthegm.[^[278]] It is strange there should be no more if Xenophanes had really found a home at last in the Phokaian colony.

Poems.

56. According to a notice preserved in Diogenes, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and also composed elegies and iambics against Homer and Hesiod.[^[279]] No good authority says anything about his having written a philosophical poem.[^[280]] Simplicius tells us he had never met with the verses about the earth stretching infinitely downwards (fr. [28]),[^[281]] and this means that the Academy possessed no copy of such a poem, which would be very strange if it had ever existed. Simplicius was able to find the complete works of much smaller men. Nor does internal evidence lend any support to the view that he wrote a philosophical poem. Diels refers about twenty-eight lines to it, but they would all come in quite as naturally in his attacks on Homer and Hesiod, as I have endeavoured to show. It is also significant that a considerable number of them are derived from commentators on Homer.[^[282]] It seems probable, then, that Xenophanes expressed his theological and philosophical views incidentally in his satires. That would be quite in the manner of the time, as we can see from the remains of Epicharmos.

The satires themselves are called Silloi by late writers, and this name may go back to Xenophanes himself. It is also possible, however, that it originates in the fact that Timon of Phleious, the “sillographer” (c. 259 B.C.), put much of his satire upon philosophers into the mouth of Xenophanes. Only one iambic line has been preserved, and that is immediately followed by a hexameter (fr. [14] = 5 Karst.). This suggests that Xenophanes inserted iambic lines among his hexameters in the manner of the Margites, which would be a very natural thing for him to do.[^[283]]

The fragments.

57. I give all the fragments of any importance according to the text and arrangement of Diels.

Elegies

(1)

Now is the floor clean, and the hands and cups of all; one sets twisted garlands on our heads, another hands us fragrant ointment on a salver. The mixing bowls stand ready, full of gladness, and there is more wine at hand that promises never to leave us in the lurch, soft and smelling of flowers in the jars. In the midst the frankincense sends up its holy smoke, and there is cold water, sweet and clean. Brown loaves are set before us and a lordly table laden with cheese and rich honey. The altar in the midst is clustered round with flowers; song and revel fill the halls.

But first it is meet that men should hymn the god with joyful song, with holy tales and pure words; then after libation and prayer made that we may have strength to do right—for that is in truth the better way—no sin is it to drink as much as a man can take and get home without an attendant, so he be not stricken in years. And above all men is he to be praised who after drinking gives goodly proof of himself in the trial of skill, as memory and voice will serve him. Let him not sing of Titans and Giants—those fictions of the men of old—nor of turbulent civil broils in which is no good thing at all; but ever give heedful reverence to the gods.

(2)

What if a man win victory in swiftness of foot, or in the pentathlon, at Olympia, where is the precinct of Zeus by Pisa’s springs, or in wrestling,—what if by cruel boxing or that fearful sport men call pankration he become more glorious in the citizens’ eyes, and win a place of honour in the sight of all at the games, his food at the public cost from the State, and a gift to be an heirloom for him,—what if he conquer in the chariot-race,—he will not deserve all this for his portion so much as I do. Far better is our art than the strength of men and of horses! These are but thoughtless judgments, nor is it fitting to set strength before our art. Even if there arise a mighty boxer among a people, or one great in the pentathlon or at wrestling, or one excelling in swiftness of foot—and that stands in honour before all tasks of men at the games—the city would be none the better governed for that. It is but little joy a city gets of it if a man conquer at the games by Pisa’s banks; it is not this that makes fat the store-houses of a city.

(3)

They learnt dainty and unprofitable ways from the Lydians, so long as they were free from hateful tyranny; they went to the market-place with cloaks of purple dye, not less than a thousand of them all told, vainglorious and proud of their comely tresses, reeking with fragrance from cunning salves.

Satires

(10)

Since all at first have learnt according to Homer....

(11)

Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another. R. P. 99.

(12)

They have uttered many, many lawless deeds of the gods, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another. R. P. ib.

(14)

But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes[^[284]] like theirs, and voice and form. R. P. 100.

(15)

Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds. R. P. ib.

(16)

The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. R. P. 100 b.

(18)

The gods have not revealed all things to men from the beginning, but by seeking they find in time what is better. R. P. 104 b.

(23)

One god, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form like unto mortals nor in thought.... R. P. 100.

(24)

He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over. R. P. 102.

(25)

But without toil he swayeth all things by the thought of his mind. R. P. 108 b.

(26)

And he abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all; nor doth it befit him to go about now hither now thither. R. P. 110 a.

(27)

All things come from the earth, and in earth all things end. R. P. 103 a.

(28)

This limit of the earth above is seen at our feet in contact with the air;[^[285]] below it reaches down without a limit. R. P. 103.

(29)

All things are earth and water that come into being and grow. R. P. 103.

(30)

The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither in the clouds (would there be any blasts of wind blowing forth) from within without the mighty sea, nor rivers’ streams nor rain-water from the sky. The mighty sea is father of clouds and of winds and of rivers.[^[286]] R. P. 103.

(31)

The sun swinging over[^[287]] the earth and warming it....

(32)

She that they call Iris is a cloud likewise, purple, scarlet and green to behold. R. P. 103.

(33)

For we all are born of earth and water. R. P. ib.

(34)

There never was nor will be a man who has certain knowledge about the gods and about all the things I speak of. Even if he should chance to say the complete truth, yet he himself knows not that it is so. But all may have their fancy. R. P. 104.

(35)

Let these be taken as fancies[^[288]] something like the truth. R. P. 104 a.

(36)

All of them[^[289]] that are visible for mortals to behold.

(37)

And in some caves water drips....

(38)

If god had not made brown honey, men would think figs far sweeter than they do.

The heavenly bodies.

58. The intention of one of these fragments (fr. [32]) is perfectly clear. “Iris too” is a cloud, and we may infer that the same thing had just been said of the sun, moon, and stars; for the doxographers tell us that these were all explained as “clouds ignited by motion.”[^[290]] To the same context clearly belongs the explanation of the St. Elmo’s fire which Aetios has preserved. “The things like stars which appear on ships,” we are told, “which some call the Dioskouroi, are little clouds made luminous by motion.”[^[291]] In the doxographers this explanation is repeated with trifling variations under the head of moon, stars, comets, lightning, shooting stars, and so forth, which gives the appearance of a systematic cosmology.[^[292]] But the system is due to the arrangement of the work of Theophrastos, and not to Xenophanes; for it is obvious that a very few hexameters added to those we possess would amply account for the whole doxography.

What we hear of the sun presents some difficulties. We are told, on the one hand, that it too was an ignited cloud; but this can hardly be right. The evaporation of the sea from which clouds arise is distinctly said to be due to the sun’s heat. Theophrastos stated that the sun, according to Xenophanes, was a collection of sparks from the moist exhalation; but even this leaves the exhalation itself unexplained.[^[293]] That, however, matters little, if the chief aim of Xenophanes was to discredit the anthropomorphic gods, rather than to give a scientific theory of the heavenly bodies. The important thing is that Helios too is a temporary phenomenon. The sun does not go round the earth, as Anaximander taught, but straight on, and the appearance of a circular path is solely due to its increasing distance. So it is not the same sun that rises next morning, but a new one altogether; while the old one “tumbles into a hole” when it comes to certain uninhabited regions of the earth. Besides that, there are many suns and moons, one of each for every region of the earth.[^[294]] It is obvious that things of that kind cannot be gods.

The vigorous expression “tumbling into a hole”[^[295]] seems clearly to come from the verses of Xenophanes himself, and there are others of a similar kind, which we must suppose were quoted by Theophrastos. The stars go out in the daytime, but glow again at night “like charcoal embers.”[^[296]] The sun is of some use in producing the world and the living creatures in it, but the moon “does no work in the boat.”[^[297]] Such expressions can only be meant to make the heavenly bodies appear ridiculous, and it will therefore be well to ask whether the other supposed cosmological fragments can be interpreted on the same principle.

Earth and water.

59. In fr. [29] Xenophanes says that “all things are earth and water,” and Hippolytos has preserved the account given by Theophrastos of the context in which this occurred. It was as follows:—

Xenophanes said that a mixture of the earth with the sea is taking place, and that it is being gradually dissolved by the moisture. He says that he has the following proofs of this. Shells are found in midland districts and on hills, and he says that in the quarries at Syracuse has been found the imprint of a fish and of seaweed, at Paros the form of an anchovy in the depth of the stone, and at Malta flat impressions of all marine animals. These, he says, were produced when all things were formerly mud, and the outlines were dried in the mud. All human beings are destroyed when the earth has been carried down into the sea and turned to mud. This change takes place for all the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 14 (R. P. 103 a).

This is, of course, the theory of Anaximander, and we may perhaps credit him rather than Xenophanes with the observations of fossils.[^[298]] Most remarkable of all, however, is the statement that this change applies to “all the worlds.” It really seems impossible to doubt that Theophrastos attributed a belief in “innumerable worlds” to Xenophanes. As we have seen already, Aetios includes him in his list of those who held this doctrine, and Diogenes ascribes it to him also.[^[299]] In this place, Hippolytos seems to take it for granted. We shall also find, however, that in another connexion he said the World or God was one. If our interpretation of him is correct, there is no difficulty here. The main point is that, so far from being a primeval goddess, and “a sure seat for all things ever,” Gaia too is a passing appearance. That belongs to the attack upon Hesiod, and, if in this connexion Xenophanes spoke, with Anaximander, of “innumerable worlds,” while elsewhere he said that God or the World was one, that is probably connected with a still better attested contradiction which we have now to examine.

Finite or infinite?

60. Aristotle tried without success to discover from the poems of Xenophanes whether he regarded the world as finite or infinite. “He made no clear pronouncement on the subject,” he tells us.[^[300]] Theophrastos, on the other hand, decided that he regarded it as spherical and finite because he said it was “equal every way.”[^[301]] This, however, leads to very serious difficulties. We have seen already that Xenophanes said the sun went right on to infinity, and this agrees with his view of the earth as an infinitely extended plain. Still more difficult to reconcile with the idea of a spherical and finite world is the statement of fr. [28] that, while the earth has an upper limit which we see, it has no limit below. This is attested by Aristotle, who speaks of the earth being “infinitely rooted,” and adds that Empedokles criticised Xenophanes for holding this view.[^[302]] It further appears from the fragment of Empedokles quoted by Aristotle that Xenophanes said the vast Air extended infinitely upwards.[^[303]] We are therefore bound to try to find room for an infinite earth and an infinite air in a spherical and finite world! That comes of trying to find science in satire. If, on the other hand, we regard these statements from the same point of view as those about the heavenly bodies, we shall at once see what they most probably mean. The story of Ouranos and Gaia was always the chief scandal of the Theogony, and the infinite air gets rid of Ouranos altogether. As to the earth stretching infinitely downwards, that gets rid of Tartaros, which Homer described as situated at the bottommost limit of earth and sea, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth.[^[304]] This is pure conjecture, of course; but, if it is even possible, we are entitled to disbelieve that such startling contradictions occurred in a cosmological poem.

A more subtle explanation of the difficulty commended itself to the late Peripatetic who wrote an account of the Eleatic school, part of which is still extant in the Aristotelian corpus, and is generally known now as the treatise on Melissos, Xenophanes, and Gorgias.[^[305]] He said that Xenophanes declared the world to be neither finite nor infinite, and he composed a series of arguments in support of this thesis, to which he added another like it, namely, that the world is neither in motion nor at rest. This has introduced endless confusion into our sources. Alexander used this treatise as well as the great work of Theophrastos, and Simplicius supposed the quotations from it to be from Theophrastos too. Having no copy of the poems he was completely baffled, and until recently all accounts of Xenophanes were vitiated by the same confusion. It may even be suggested that, but for this, we should have heard very little of the “philosophy of Xenophanes,” a way of speaking which is in the main a survival from the days before this scholastic exercise was recognised as having no authority.

God and the world.

61. In the passage of the Metaphysics just referred to, Aristotle speaks of Xenophanes as “the first partisan of the One,”[^[306]] and the context shows that he means to suggest he was the first of the Eleatics. We have seen already that the certain facts of his life make it very unlikely that he settled at Elea and founded a school there, and it is probable that, as usual in such cases, Aristotle is simply reproducing certain statements of Plato. At any rate, Plato had spoken of the Eleatics as the “partisans of the Whole,”[^[307]] and he had also spoken of the school as “starting with Xenophanes and even earlier.”[^[308]] The last words, however, show clearly enough what he meant. Just as he called the Herakleiteans “followers of Homer and still more ancient teachers,”[^[309]] so he attached the Eleatic school to Xenophanes and still earlier authorities. We have seen in other instances how these playful and ironical remarks of Plato were taken seriously by his successors, and we need not let this fresh instance of the same thing influence our general view of Xenophanes unduly.

Aristotle goes on to tell us that Xenophanes, “referring to the whole world,[^[310]] said the One was god.” This clearly alludes to frs. [23-26], where all human attributes are denied of a god who is said to be one and “the greatest among gods and men.” It may be added that these verses gain very much in point if we may think of them as closely connected with frs. [11-16], instead of referring the one set of verses to the Satires and the other to a cosmological poem. It was probably in the same context that Xenophanes called the world or god “equal every way”[^[311]] and denied that it breathed.[^[312]] The statement that, there is no mastership among the gods[^[313]] also goes very well with fr. [26]. A god has no wants, nor is it fitting for one god to be the servant of others, like Iris and Hermes in Homer.

Monotheism or polytheism.

62. That this “god” is just the world, Aristotle tells us, and the use of the word θεός is quite in accordance with Anaximander’s. Xenophanes regarded it as sentient, though without any special organs of sense, and it sways all things by the thought of its mind. He also calls it “one god,” and, if that is monotheism, then Xenophanes was a monotheist, though this is surely not how the word is generally understood. The fact is that the expression “one god” wakens all sorts of associations in our mind which did not exist at all for the Greeks of this time. His contemporaries would have been more likely to call Xenophanes an atheist than anything else. As Eduard Meyer excellently says: “In Greece the question of one god or gods many hardly plays any part. Whether the divine power is thought of as a unity or a plurality, is irrelevant in comparison with the question whether it exists at all, and how its nature and its relation to the world is to be understood.”[^[314]]

On the other hand, it is wrong to say with Freudenthal that Xenophanes was in any sense a polytheist.[^[315]] That he should use the language of polytheism in his elegies is only what we should expect, and the other references to “gods” can be best explained as incidental to his attack on the anthropomorphic gods of Homer and Hesiod. In one case, Freudenthal has pressed a proverbial way of speaking too hard.[^[316]] Least of all can we admit that Xenophanes allowed the existence of subordinate or departmental gods; for it was just the existence of such that he was chiefly concerned to deny. At the same time, I cannot help thinking that Freudenthal was more nearly right than Wilamowitz, who says that Xenophanes “upheld the only real monotheism that has ever existed upon earth.”[^[317]] Diels, I fancy, comes nearer the mark, when he calls it a “somewhat narrow pantheism.”[^[318]] But all these views would have surprised Xenophanes himself about equally. He was really Goethe’s Weltkind, with prophets to right and left of him, and he would have smiled if he had known that one day he was to be regarded as a theologian.

[169]. For the theological views of Anaximander and Anaximenes, see [§ 22] and [30].

[170]. Cf. Herod. i. 170 (advice of Bias); vi. 22 sqq. (Kale Akte).

[171]. On all this, see Rohde, Psyche, pp. 327 sqq. It is probable that he exaggerated the degree to which these ideas were already developed among the Thracians, but the essential connexion of the new view of the soul with Northern worships is confirmed by the tradition over and over again.

[172]. See Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 461. The exaggerated rôle often attributed to priesthoods is a survival of French eighteenth century thinking.

[173]. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. §§ 453-460, who rightly emphasises the fact that the Orphic theogony is the continuation of Hesiod’s work. As we have seen, some of it is even older than Hesiod.

[174]. For the gold plates of Thourioi and Petelia, see the Appendix to Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, where the text of them is discussed and a translation given by Professor Gilbert Murray.

[175]. This was the oldest name for these “mysteries,” and it simply means “sacraments” (cf. ἔοργα). Orgia are not necessarily “orgiastic.” That association of ideas merely comes from the fact that they belonged to the worship of Dionysos.

[176]. Herodotos mentions that Isagoras and those of his γένος worshipped the Karian Zeus (v. 66), and it is probable that the Orgeones attached by Kleisthenes to the Attic phratriai were associations of this kind. See Foucart, Les associations religieuses chez les Grecs.

[177]. A striking parallel is afforded to all this by what we are told in Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites, p. 339. “The leading feature that distinguished them” (the Semitic mysteries of the seventh century B.C.) “from the old public cults with which they came into competition, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments.”

[178]. The Phaedo is dedicated, as it were, to Echekrates and the Pythagorean society at Phleious, and it is evident that Plato in his youth was impressed by the religious side of Pythagoreanism, though the influence of Pythagorean science is not clearly marked till a later period. Note specially the ἄτραπος of Phd. 66 b 4. In Rep. x. 600 b 1, Plato speaks of Pythagoras as the originator of a private ὁδός τις βίου.

[179]. Cf. especially the point of view of the Auction of Lives (Βίων πρᾶσις).

[180]. For the Προτρεπτικός of Aristotle, see Bywater in J. Phil. ii. p. 55; Diels in Arch. i. p. 477; and the notes on Ethics, i. 5, in my edition.

[181]. Plato, Rep. 520 c 1, καταβατέον οὖν ἐν μέρει. The allegory of the Cave seems to be Orphic, and I believe Professor Stewart’s suggestion (Myths of Plato, p. 252, n. 2), that Plato had the κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου in mind, to be quite justified. The idea of rescuing the “spirits in prison” is thoroughly Orphic.

[182]. For Empedokles, see [§ 119]; for the Pythagoreans, see [§ 149].

[183]. Cf. Phd. 69 c 2, καὶ κινδυνεύουσι καὶ οἱ τὰς τελετὰς ἡμῖν οὗτοι καταστήσαντες οὐ φαῦλοί τινες εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι πάλαι αἰνίττεσθαι κ.τ.λ. The gentle irony of this and similar passages ought to be unmistakable.

[184]. Arist. fr. 45, 1483 a 19, τοὺς τελουμένους οὐ μαθεῖν τι δεῖν, ἀλλὰ παθεῖν καὶ διατεθῆναι.

[185]. See E. Rohde’s admirable papers, “Die Quellen des Iamblichus in seiner Biographie des Pythagoras” (Rh. Mus. xxvi., xxvii.).

[186]. Iamblichos was a disciple of Porphyry, and contemporary with Constantine. The Life of Pythagoras has been edited by Nauck (1884). Nikomachos belongs to the beginning of the second century A.D. There is no evidence that he added anything to the authorities he followed, but these were already vitiated by Neopythagorean fables. Still, it is to him we chiefly owe the preservation of the valuable evidence of Aristoxenos.

[187]. Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras is the only considerable extract from his History of Philosophy, in four books, that has survived. The romance of Antonius is the original parodied by Lucian in his Vera Historia.

[188]. The importance of the life in Laertios Diogenes lies in the fact that it gives us the story current at Alexandria before the rise of Neopythagoreanism and the promulgation of the gospel according to Apollonios of Tyana.

[189]. Andron of Ephesos wrote a work on the Seven Wise Men, called The Tripod, in allusion to the well-known story. The feats ascribed to Pythagoras in the Aristotelian treatise remind us of an ecclesiastical legend. For example, he kills a deadly snake by biting it; he was seen at Kroton and Metapontion at the same time; he exhibited his golden thigh at Olympia, and was addressed by a voice from heaven when crossing the river Kasas. The same authority stated that he was identified by the Krotoniates with Apollo Hyperboreios (Arist. fr. 186).

[190]. Herod. iv. 95.

[191]. Cf. Herod. iv. 95, and Herakleitos, fr. [17] (R. P. 31 a). Herodotos represents him as living at Samos. On the other hand, Aristoxenos said that he came from one of the islands which the Athenians occupied after expelling the Tyrrhenians (Diog. viii. 1). This suggests Lemnos, from which the Tyrrhenian “Pelasgians” were expelled by Miltiades (Herod. vi. 140), or possibly some other island which was occupied at the same time. There were also Tyrrhenians at Imbros. This explains the story that he was an Etrurian or a Tyrian. Other accounts bring him into connexion with Phleious, but that is perhaps a pious invention of the Pythagorean society which flourished there at the beginning of the fourth century B.C. Pausanias (ii. 13, 1) gives it as a Phleiasian tradition that Hippasos, the great-grandfather of Pythagoras, had emigrated from Phleious to Samos.

[192]. Eratosthenes identified Pythagoras with the Olympic victor of Ol. XLVIII. 1 (588/7 B.C.), but Apollodoros gave his floruit as 532/1, the era of Polykrates. He doubtless based this on the statement of Aristoxenos quoted by Porphyry (V. Pyth. 9), that Pythagoras left Samos from dislike to the tyranny of Polykrates (R. P. 53 a). For a full discussion, see Jacoby, pp. 215 sqq.

[193]. Herakl. fr. [16], [17] (R. P. 31, 31 a).

[194]. It occurs first in the Bousiris of Isokrates, § 28 (R. P. 52).

[195]. Herod. ii. 81 (R. P. 52 a). The comma at Αἰγυπτίοισι is clearly right. Herodotos believed that the worship of Dionysos was introduced from Egypt by Melampous (ii. 49), and he means to suggest that the Orphics got these practices from the worshippers of Bakchos, while the Pythagoreans got them from the Orphics.

[196]. Herod. ii. 123 (R. P. ib.). The words “whose names I know, but do not write” cannot refer to Pythagoras; for it is only of contemporaries that Herodotos speaks in this way (cf. i. 51; iv. 48). Stein’s suggestion that he meant Empedokles seems to me convincing. Herodotos may have met him at Thourioi. Nor is there any reason to suppose that οἱ μὲν πρότερον refers specially to the Pythagoreans. If Herodotos had ever heard of Pythagoras visiting Egypt, he would surely have said so in one or other of these passages. There was no occasion for reserve, as Pythagoras must have died before Herodotos was born.

[197]. Porph. V. Pyth. 9 (R. P. 53 a).

[198]. From what Herodotos tells us of Demokedes (iii. 131) we can see that the medical school of Kroton was founded before the time of Pythagoras. Cf. Wachtler, De Alcmaeone Crotoniata, p. 91.

[199]. It may be taken as certain that Pythagoras spent his last days at Metapontion; Aristoxenos said so (ap. Iambl. V. Pyth. 249), and Cicero (De Fin. v. 4) speaks of the honours which continued to be paid to his memory in that city (R. P. 57 c). Cf. also Andron, fr. 6 (F.H.G. ii. 347).

[200]. For these distinctions, see Porphyry (V. Pyth. 37) and Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 80), quoted R. P. 56 and 56 b. The name ἀκουσματικοί is clearly related to the ἀκούσματα, with which we shall have to deal shortly ([§ 44]).

[201]. For the “mystic silence,” see Aristoxenos, ap. Diog. viii. 15 (R. P. 55 a). Tannery, “Sur le secret dans l’école de Pythagore” (Arch. i. pp. 28 sqq.), thinks that the mathematical doctrines were the secrets of the school, and that these were divulged by Hippasos; but the most reasonable view is that there were no secrets at all except of a ritual kind.

[202]. Plato, Rep. x. 600 a, implies that Pythagoras held no public office. The view that the Pythagorean sect was a political league, maintained in modern times by Krische (De societatis a Pythagora conditae scopo politico, 1830), goes back, as Rohde has shown (loc. cit.), to Dikaiarchos, the champion of the “Practical Life,” just as the view that it was primarily a scientific society goes back to the mathematician and musician Aristoxenos. The former antedated Archytas, just as the latter antedated Philolaos (see Chap. VII. [§ 138]). Grote’s good sense enabled him to see this quite clearly (vol. iv. pp. 329 sqq.).

[203]. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 502, Anm. It is still necessary to insist upon this, as the idea that the Pythagoreans represented the “Dorian ideal” dies very hard. In his Kulturhistorische Beiträge (Heft i. p. 59), Max C. P. Schmidt imagines that later writers call the founder of the sect Pythagoras instead of Pythagores, as he is called by Herakleitos and Demokritos, because he had become “a Dorian of the Dorians.” The fact is simply that Πυθαγόρας is the Attic form of Πυθαγόρης, and that the writers in question wrote Attic. Similarly, Plato calls Archytas, who did belong to a Dorian state, Archytes, though Aristoxenos and others retained the Dorian form of his name.

[204]. Kylon, the chief opponent of the Pythagoreans, is described by Aristoxenos (Iambl. V. Pyth. 248) as γένει καὶ δόξῃ καὶ πλούτῳ πρωτεύων τῶν πολιτῶν. Taras, later the chief seat of the Pythagoreans, was a democracy. The truth is that, at this time, the new religion appealed to the people rather than the aristocracies, which were apt to be “free-thinking” (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii. § 252). Xenophanes, not Pythagoras, is their man.

[205]. We have the authority of Aristotle, fr. 186, 1510 b 20, for the identification of Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios. The names of Abaris and Aristeas stand for a mystical movement parallel to the Orphic, but based on the worship of Apollo. The later tradition makes them predecessors of Pythagoras; and that this has some historical basis, appears from Herod. iv. 13 sqq., and above all from the statement that Aristeas had a statue at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. The connexion of Pythagoras with Zamolxis belongs to the same order of ideas. As the legend of the Hyperboreans is Delian, we see that the religion taught by Pythagoras was genuinely Ionian in its origin.

[206]. See Rohde, Rh. Mus. xxvi. p. 565, n. 1. The narrative in the text (Iambl. V. Pyth. 250; R. P. 59 b) goes back to Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos (R. P. 59 a). There is no reason to suppose that their view of Pythagoras has vitiated their account of what must have been a perfectly well-known piece of history. According to the later story, Pythagoras himself was burned to death in the house of Milo, along with his disciples. This is merely a dramatic compression of the whole series of events into a single scene; we have seen that Pythagoras died at Metapontion before the final catastrophe. The valuable reference in Polybios ii. 39 (R. P. 59) to the burning of Pythagorean συνέδρια certainly implies that the disturbances went on for a very considerable time.

[207]. Plato, Phd. 61 d 7, e 7.

[208]. When discussing the Pythagorean system, Aristotle always refers it to “the Pythagoreans,” not to Pythagoras himself. That this was intentional seems to be proved by the phrase οἱ καλούμενοι Πυθαγόρειοι, which occurs more than once (e.g. Met. Α, 5. 985 b 23; de Caelo, Β, 13. 293 a 20). Pythagoras himself is only thrice mentioned in the whole Aristotelian corpus, and in only one of these places (M. Mor. 1182 a 11) is any philosophical doctrine ascribed to him. We are told there that he was the first to discuss the subject of goodness, and that he made the mistake of identifying its various forms with numbers. But this is just one of the things which prove the late date of the Magna Moralia. Aristotle himself is quite clear that what he knew as the Pythagorean system belonged in the main to the days of Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and Leukippos; for, after mentioning these, he goes on to describe the Pythagoreans as “contemporary with and earlier than them” (ἐν δὲ τούτοις καὶ πρὸ τούτων, Met. Α, 5. 985 b 23).

[209]. The fragments of the Πυθαγορικαὶ ἀποφάσεις of Aristoxenos are given by Diels, Vors. pp. 282 sqq.

[210]. V. Pyth. 19 (R. P. 55).

[211]. See Diels, Dox. p. 150; and “Ein gefälschtes Pythagorasbuch” (Arch. iii. pp. 451 sqq.). Cf. also Bernays, Die Heraklitischen Briefe, n. 1.

[212]. The proper Greek term for this is παλιγγενεσία, and the inaccurate μετεμψύχωσις only occurs in late writers. Hippolytos and Clement of Alexandria say μετενσωμάτωσις, which is accurate but cumbrous. See Rohde, Psyche, p. 428, n. 2.

[213]. On the significance of this, see above, p. 93.

[214]. Dieterich, “Mutter Erde” (Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, viii. pp. 29 and 47).

[215]. Aristoxenos ap. Diog. viii. 20, πάντα μὲν τὰ ἄλλα συγχωρεῖν αὐτὸν ἐσθίειν ἔμψυχα, μόνον δ’ ἀπέχεσθαι βοὸς ἀροτῆρος καὶ κριοῦ.

[216]. Aristoxenos ap. Gell. iv. 11, 5, Πυθαγόρας δὲ τῶν ὀσπρίων μάλιστα τὸν κύαμον ἐδοκίμασεν· λειαντικόν τε γὰρ εἶναι καὶ διαχωρητικόν· διὸ καὶ μάλιστα κέχρηται αὐτῷ; ib. 6, “porculis quoque minusculis et haedis tenerioribus victitasse, idem Aristoxenus refert.” It is, of course, possible that Aristoxenos may be right about the taboo on beans. We know that it was Orphic, and it may have been transferred to the Pythagoreans by mistake. That, however, would not affect the general conclusion that at least some Pythagoreans practised abstinence from various kinds of food, which is all that is required.

[217]. The sect of the “Akousmatics” was said to descend from Hippasos (Iambl. V. Pyth. 81; R. P. 56). Now Hippasos was the author of a μυστικὸς λόγος (Diog. viii. 7; R. P. 56 c), that is to say, of a superstitious ceremonial or ritual handbook, probably containing Akousmata like those we are about to consider; for we are told that it was written ἐπὶ διαβολῇ Πυθαγόρου.

[218]. Diels has collected these fragments in a convenient form (Vors. pp. 291 sqq.). For our purpose the most important passages are Antiphanes, fr. 135, Kock, ὥσπερ Πυθαγορίζων ἐσθίει | ἔμψυχον οὐδέν; Alexis, fr. 220, οἱ Πυθαγορίζοντες γάρ, ὡς ἀκούομεν, | οὔτ’ ὄψον ἐσθίουσιν οὔτ’ ἄλλ’ οὐδὲ ἓν | ἔμψυχον; fr. 196 (from the Πυθαγορίζουσα), ἡ δ’ ἑστίασις ἰσχάδες καὶ στέμφυλα | καὶ τυρὸς ἔσται· ταῦτα γὰρ θύειν νόμος | τοῖς Πυθαγορείοις; Aristophon, fr. 9 (from the Πυθαγοριστής), πρὸς τῶν θεῶν οἰόμεθα τοὺς πάλαι ποτέ, | τοὺς Πυθαγοριστὰς γενομένους ὄντως ῥυπᾶν | ἑκόντας ἢ φορεῖν τριβῶνας ἡδέως; Mnesimachos, fr. 1, ὡς Πυθαγοριστὶ θύομεν τῷ Λοξίᾳ | ἔμψυχον οὐδὲν ἐσθίοντες παντελῶς. See also Theokritos, xiv. 5, τοιοῦτος καὶ πρᾶν τις ἀφίκετο Πυθαγορικτάς, | ὠχρὸς κἀνυποδητός· Ἀθηναῖος δ’ ἔφατ’ ἦμεν.

[219]. See Bernays, Theophrastos’ Schrift über Frömmigkeit. Porphyry’s tract, Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων, was doubtless saved from the general destruction of his writings by its conformity to the ascetic tendencies of the age. Even St. Jerome made constant use of it in his polemic against Iovianus, though he is careful not to mention Porphyry’s name (Theophr. Schr. n. 2). The tract is addressed to Castricius Firmus, the disciple and friend of Plotinos, who had fallen away from the strict vegetarianism of the Pythagoreans.

[220]. The passage occurs De Abst. p. 58, 25 Nauck: ἱστοροῦσι δέ τινες καὶ αὐτοὺς ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἐμψύχων τοὺς Πυθαγορείους, ὅτε θύοιεν θεοῖς. The part of the work from which this is taken comes from one Clodius, on whom see Bernay, Theophr. Schr. p. 11. He was probably the rhetorician Sextus Clodius, and a contemporary of Cicero. Bernays has shown that he made use of the work of Herakleides of Pontos (ib. n. 19). On “mystic sacrifice” generally, see Robertson Smith, Rel. Sem. i. p. 276.

[221]. Porphyry (V. Pyth. c 15) has preserved a tradition to the effect that Pythagoras recommended a flesh diet for athletes (Milo?). This story must have originated at the same time as those related by Aristoxenos, and in a similar way. In fact, Bernays has shown that it comes from Herakleides of Pontos (Theophr. Schr. n. 8). Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 5. 25) and others (Diog. viii. 13, 47) got out of this by supposing it referred to a gymnast of the same name. We see here very distinctly how the Neoplatonists for their own ends endeavoured to go back to the original form of the Pythagorean legend, and to explain away the fourth century reconstruction.

[222]. For these see Diels, Vors. pp. 282 sqq.

[223]. There is an excellent collection of Ἀκούσματα καὶ σύμβολα in Diels, Vors. pp. 279 sqq., where the authorities will be found. It is impossible to discuss these in detail here, but students of folklore will see at once to what order of ideas they belong.

[224]. Herakl. fr. [17] (R. P. 31 a). The word ἱστορίη is in itself quite general. What it chiefly means here we see from a valuable notice preserved by Iamblichos, V. Pyth. 89, ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ ἡ γεωμετρία πρὸς Πυθαγόρου ἱστορία. Tannery’s interpretation of this statement is based on a misunderstanding, and need not be discussed here.

[225]. Herod. iv. 95.

[226]. Arist. Περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορείων, fr. 186, 1510 a 39, Πυθαγόρας Μνησάρχου υἱὸς τὸ μὲν πρῶτον διεπονεῖτο περὶ τὰ μαθήματα καὶ τοὺς ἀριθμούς, ὕστερον δέ ποτε καὶ τῆς Φερεκύδου τερατοποιΐας οὐκ ἀπέστη.

[227]. Its immediate source is to be found in Plato, Laws, 790 d 2 sqq., where the Korybantic rites are adduced as an instance. For a full account see Rohde, Psyche, p. 336, n. 2.

[228]. Plato gives this as the Pythagorean view in Phd. 62 b, for the interpretation of which cf. Espinas in Arch. viii. pp. 449 sqq. Plato distinctly implies that it was not merely the theory of Philolaos, but something older.

[229]. See Döring in Arch. v. pp. 505 sqq. There seems to be a reference to the theory of the “three lives” in Herakleitos, fr. [111]. It was apparently taught in the Pythagorean Society of Phleious; for Herakleides made Pythagoras expound it in a conversation with the tyrant of Phleious (Cic. Tusc. v. 3; Diog. pr. 12, viii. 8), and it is developed by Plato in a dialogue which is, as it were, dedicated to Echekrates. If it should be thought that this is interpreting Pythagoras too much in the light of Schopenhauer, it may be answered that even the Orphics came very near such a theory. The soul must not drink of Lethe, but go past it and drink of the water of Memory, before it can claim to become one of the heroes. This has obvious points of contact with Plato’s ἀνάμνησις, and the only question is how much of the Phaedo we are to ascribe to Pythagorean sources. A great deal, I suspect. See Prof. Stewart’s Myths of Plato, pp. 152 sqq.

[230]. Stob. i. p. 20, 1, ἐκ τῶν Ἀριστοξένου περὶ ἀριθμητικῆς, Τὴν δὲ περὶ τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς πραγματείαν μάλιστα πάντων τιμῆσαι δοκεῖ Πυθαγόρας καὶ προαγαγεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσθεν ἀπαγαγὼν ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν ἐμπόρων χρείας.

[231]. Apart from the story in Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 148) that Eurytos heard the voice of Philolaos from the grave after he had been many years dead, it is to be noticed that he is mentioned after him in the statement of Aristoxenos referred to (Diog. viii. 46; R. P. 62).

[232]. Arist. Met. Ν, 5. 1092 b 8 (R. P. 76 a). Aristotle does not quote the authority of Archytas here, but the source of his statement is made quite clear by Theophr. Met. p. vi. a 19 (Usener), τοῦτο γὰρ (sc. τὸ μὴ μέχρι του προελθόντα παύεσθαι) τελέου καὶ φρονοῦντος, ὅπερ Ἀρχύτας ποτ’ ἔφη ποιεῖν Εὔρυτον διατιθέντα τινὰς ψήφους· λέγειν γὰρ ὡς ὅδε μὲν ἀνθρώπου ὁ ἀριθμός, ὅδε δὲ ἵππου, ὅδε δ’ ἄλλου τινὸς τυγχάνει.

[233]. Arithmetic is older than geometry, and was much more advanced in Egypt, though still in the form which the Greeks called λογιστική rather than as ἀριθμητική proper. Even Plato puts Arithmetic before Geometry in the Republic in deference to the tradition. His own theory of number, however, suggested the inversion of this order which we find carried out in Euclid.

[234]. Nikomachos of Gerasa, Introd. Arithm. p. 83, 12, Hoche, Πρότερον δὲ ἐπιγνωστέον ὅτι ἕκαστον γράμμα ᾧ σημειούμεθα ἀριθμόν, οἷον τὸ ι, ᾧ τὸ δέκα, τὸ κ, ᾧ τὰ εἴκοσι, τὸ ω, ᾧ τὰ ὀκτακόσια, νόμῳ καὶ συνθήματι ἀνθρωπίνῳ, ἀλλ’ οὐ φύσει σημαντικόν, ἐστι τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ, κ.τ.λ. The same symbolism is used by Theo, Expositio, pp. 31 sqq. Cf. also Iambl. Introd. p. 56, 27, Pistelli, ἰστέον γὰρ ὡς τὸ παλαιὸν φυσικώτερον οἱ πρόσθεν ἐσημαίνοντο τὰς τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ ποσότητας, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ νῦν συμβολικῶς.

[235]. Cf. the formula Οὐ μὰ τὸν ἁμετέρᾳ γενεᾷ παραδόντα τετρακτύν, which is all the more likely to be old that it is put into the mouth of Pythagoras by the forger of the Χρυσᾶ ἔπη, thus making him swear by himself! See Diels, Arch. iii. p. 457. The Doric dialect shows, however, that it belongs to the later generations of the school.

[236]. Speusippos wrote a work on the Pythagorean numbers, based chiefly on Philolaos, and a considerable fragment of it is preserved in the Theologumena Arithmetica. It will be found in Diels, Vorsokratiker, p. 235, 15, and is discussed by Tannery, Science hellène, pp. 374 sqq.

[237]. For these see Theon, Expositio, pp. 93 sqq. Hiller. The τετρακτύς used by Plato in the Timaeus is the second described by Theon (Exp. p. 94, 10 sqq.). It is no doubt Pythagorean, but hardly as old as Pythagoras.

[238]. Cf. Milhaud, Philosophes géomètres, pp. 115 sqq. Aristotle puts the matter thus (Phys. Γ, 4. 203 a 13): περιτιθεμένων γὰρ τῶν γνωμόνων περὶ τὸ ἓν καὶ χωρὶς ὁτὲ μὲν ἄλλο ἀεὶ γίγνεσθαι τὸ εἶδος, ὁτὲ δὲ ἕν. This is more clearly stated by Ps.-Plut. (Stob. i. p. 22, 16), Ἔτι δὲ τῇ μονάδι τῶν ἐφεξῆς περισσῶν περιτιθεμένων ὁ γινόμενος ἀεὶ τετράγωνός ἐστι· τῶν δὲ ἀρτίων ὁμοίως περιτιθεμένων ἑτερομήκεις καὶ ἄνισοι πάντες ἀποβαίνουσιν, ἴσως δὲ ἰσάκις οὐδείς. I cannot feel satisfied with any of the explanations which have been given of the words καὶ χωρίς in the Aristotelian passage (see Zeller, p. 351, n. 2), and I would therefore suggest ταῖς χώραις comparing Boutheros (Stob. i. p. 19, 9), who says, according to the MS. reading, Καὶ ὁ μὲν (ὁ περισσός), ὁπόταν γεννῶνται ἀνὰ λόγον καὶ πρὸς μονάδας, ταῖς αὑτοῦ χώραις καταλαμβάνει τοὺς ταῖς γραμμαῖς περιεχομένους (sc. ἀριθμούς).

[239]. In the fragment referred to above (p. 113, [n. 236]), Speusippos speaks of four as the first pyramidal number; but this is taken from Philolaos, so we cannot safely ascribe it to Pythagoras.

[240]. We have ὅροι of a series (ἔκθεσις), then of a proportion, and in later times of a syllogism. The signs :, ::, and ∴ are a survival of the original use. The term χώρα is often used by the later Pythagoreans, though Attic usage required χωρίον for a rectangle. The spaces between the γραμμαί of the abacus and the chess-board were also called χῶραι.

[241]. In his commentary on Euclid i. 44, Proclus tells us on the authority of Eudemos that the παραβολή, ἔλλειψις, and ὑπερβολή of χωρία were Pythagorean inventions. For an account of these and the subsequent application of the terms in Conic Sections, see Milhaud, Philosophes géomètres, pp. 81 sqq.

[242]. The verb ὑποτείνειν is, of course, used intransitively. The explanation suggested in the text seems to me much simpler than that of Max C. P. Schmidt (Kulturhistorische Beiträge, Heft i. pp. 64 sqq.). He explains the hypotenuse as the longest string in a triangular harp; but my view seems more in accordance with analogy. So ἡ κάθετος is, literally, a plumb-line.

[243]. The statement comes from Eudemos; for it is found in Proclus’s commentary on Euclid i. 47. Whether historical or not, it is no Neopythagorean fancy.

[244]. Arist. An. Pr. Α, 23. 41 a 26, ὅτι ἀσύμμετρος ἡ διάμετρος διὰ τὸ γίγνεσθαι τὰ περιττὰ ἴσα τοῖς ἀρτίοις συμμέτρου τεθείσης. The proofs given at the end of Euclid’s Tenth Book (vol. iii. pp. 408 sqq., Heiberg) turn on this very point. They are not Euclidean, and may be substantially Pythagorean. Cf. Milhaud, Philosophes géomètres, p. 94.

[245]. Plato, Theaet. 147 d 3 sqq.

[246]. How novel these consequences were, is shown by the fact that in Laws, 819 d 5, the Athenian Stranger says that he had only realised them late in life.

[247]. This version of the tradition is mentioned in Iamblichos, V. Pyth. 247, and looks older than the other, which we shall come to later ([§ 148]). Hippasos is the enfant terrible of Pythagoreanism, and the traditions about him are full of instruction.

[248]. Plato (Tim. 36 a 3) defines the harmonic mean as τὴν ... ταὐτῷ μέρει τῶν ἄκρων αὐτῶν ὑπερέχουσαν καὶ ὑπερεχομένην. The harmonic mean of 12 and 6 is therefore 8; for 8 = 12 - 12/3 = 6 + 6/3.

[249]. For these stories and a criticism of them, see Max C. P. Schmidt, Kulturhistorische Beiträge, i. pp. 78 sqq. The smith’s hammers belong to the region of Märchen, and it is not true either that the notes would be determined by the weight of the hammers, or that, if they were, the weights hung to equal strings would produce the notes. These inaccuracies were pointed out by Montucla (Martin, Études sur le Timée, i. p. 391).

[250]. Arist. Met. Μ, 4. 1078 b 21 (R. P. 78); Zeller, p. 390, n. 2. The Theologumena Arithmetica, wrongly attributed to Nikomachos of Gerasa, is full of fanciful doctrine on this subject (R. P. 78 a). Alexander in Met. p. 38, 8, gives a few definitions which may be old (R. P. 78 c).

[251]. Arist. Phys. Δ, 6. 213 b 22 (R. P. 75).

[252]. Diog. ix. 19 (R. P. 103 c). It is true that Diogenes is here drawing from a biographical rather than a doxographical source (Dox. p. 168), but this touch can hardly be an invention.

[253]. Arist. Met. Μ, 3. 1091 a 13 (R. P. 74).

[254]. Arist. Phys. Δ, 6. 213 b 23 (R. P. 75 a). The words διορίζει τὰς φύσεις have caused unnecessary difficulty, because they have been supposed to attribute the function of limiting to the ἄπειρον. Aristotle makes it quite clear that his meaning is that stated in the text. Cf. especially the words χωρισμοῦ τινος τῶν ἐφεξῆς καὶ διορίσεως. The term διωρισμένον is the proper antithesis to συνεχές. In his work on the Pythagorean philosophy, Aristotle used instead the phrase διορίζει τὰς χώρας (Stob. i. p. 156, 8; R. P. 75), which is also quite intelligible if we remember what the Pythagoreans meant by χώρα (cf. p. 115, [n. 240]).

[255]. Cf. Arist. Phys. Δ, 6. 213 a 27, οἱ δ’ ἄνθρωποι ... φασὶν ἐν ᾦ ὅλως μηδέν ἐστι, τοῦτ’ εἶναι κενόν, διὸ τὸ πλῆρες ἀέρος κενὸν εἶναι; de Part. An. Β, 10. 656 b 15, τὸ γὰρ κενὸν καλούμενον ἀέρος πλῆρές ἐστι; de An. Β, 10 419 b 34, δοκεῖ γὰρ εἶναι κενὸν ὁ ἀήρ.

[256]. Arist. Met. Α, 3. 984 a 7 (R. P. 56 c).

[257]. See Chap. IV. [§ 91].

[258]. Arist. Met. Α, 5. 986 a 25 (R. P. 66).

[259]. Plato, Tim. 58 d 2.

[260]. This is quoted by Plutarch, de def. orac. 422 b, d, from Phanias of Eresos, who gave it on the authority of Hippys of Rhegion. If we may follow Wilamowitz (Hermes, xix. p. 444) in supposing that this really means Hippasos of Metapontion (and it was in Rhegion that the Pythagoreans took refuge), this is a very valuable piece of evidence.

[261]. Plato, Tim. 55 c 7 sqq.

[262]. This will be found in Chap. IV. [§ 93].

[263]. For a clear statement of this view (which was still that of Demokritos), see Lucretius, v. 621 sqq. The view that the planets had an orbital motion from west to east is attributed by Aetios, ii. 16, 3, to Alkmaion ([§ 96]), which certainly implies that Pythagoras did not hold it. As we shall see ([§ 152]), it is far from clear that any of the Pythagoreans did. It seems rather to be Plato’s discovery.

[264]. See Chap. IV. [§§ 92]-[93], and Chap. VII. [§§ 150]-[152].

[265]. See fr. 7 (= 18 Karst.), ap. Diog. viii. 36 (R. P. 88).

[266]. Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97). We know that Xenophanes referred to the prediction of an eclipse by Thales (Chap. I. p. 41, [n. 62]). We shall see that his own view of the sun was hardly consistent with the possibility of such a prediction, so it may have been in connexion with this that he opposed him.

[267]. Timaios ap. Clem. Strom. i. p. 533 (R. P. 95). There is only one anecdote which actually represents Xenophanes in conversation with Hieron (Plut. Reg. apophth. 175 e), but it is natural to understand Arist. Met. Γ, 5. 1010 a 4 as an allusion to a remark made by Epicharmos to him. Aristotle has more than one anecdote about Xenophanes, and it seems most likely that he derived them from the romance of which Xenophon’s Strom. is an echo.

[268]. Clem., loc. cit.; Sext. Strom. i. 257. The mention of Cyrus is confirmed by Hipp. Strom. i. 94. Diels thinks that Dareios was mentioned first for metrical reasons; but no one has satisfactorily explained why Cyrus should be mentioned at all, unless the early date was intended. On the whole subject, see Jacoby, pp. 204 sqq., who is certainly wrong in supposing that ἄχρι τῶν Δαρείου καὶ Κύρου χρόνων can mean “during the times of Dareios and Cyrus.”

[269]. Strom. xxxi. p. 22. He assumes an early corruption of N into M. As Apollodoros gave the Athenian archon, and not the Olympiad, we might with more probability suppose a confusion due to two archons having the same name.

[270]. As Elea was founded by the Phokaians six years after they left Phokaia (Herod. i. 164 sqq.) its date is just 540-39 B.C. Cf. the way in which Apollodoros dated Empedokles by the era of Thourioi ([§ 98]).

[271]. Bergk (Litteraturgesch. ii. p. 418, n. 23) took φροντίς here to mean the literary work of Xenophanes, but it is surely an anachronism to suppose that at this date it could be used like the Latin cura.

[272]. It was certainly another poem; for it is in hexameters while the preceding fragment is in elegiacs.

[273]. Xenophanes, fr. 7 (above, p. 124, [n. 265]); Herakleitos, frs. [16], [17] (below, p. [147]).

[274]. Diog. ix. 21 (R. P. 96 a).

[275]. Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 96). The use of the old name Zankle, instead of the later Messene, points to an early source for this statement—probably the elegies of Xenophanes himself.

[276]. Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97) says αὐτὸς ἐρραψῴδει τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, which is a very different thing. Nothing is said anywhere of his reciting Homer, and the word ῥαψῳδεῖν is used quite loosely for “to recite.” Gomperz’s imaginative picture (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 155) has no further support than this single word. Nor is there any trace of Homeric influence in the fragments. They are in the usual elegiac style.

[277]. The statement is justly suspected by Hiller (Rh. Mus. xxxiii. p. 529) to come from Lobon of Argos, who provided the Seven Wise Men, Epimenides, etc., with stichometric notices, all duly recorded in Diogenes. Even if true, however, it proves nothing.

[278]. Arist. Rhet. Β, 26. 1400 b 5 (R. P. 98 a). Anecdotes like this are really anonymous. Plutarch transfers the story to Egypt (P. Ph. Fr. p. 22, § 13), and others tell it of Herakleitos. It is hardly safe to build on such a foundation.

[279]. Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97). The word ἐπικόπτων is a reminiscence of Timon, fr. 60; Diels, Ξεινοφάνης ὑπάτυφος Ὁμηραπάτης ἐπικόπτης.

[280]. The oldest reference to a poem Περὶ φύσεως is in the Geneva scholium on Il. xxi. 196 (quoting fr. 30), and this goes back to Krates of Mallos. We must remember, however, that such titles are of later date than Xenophanes, and he had been given a place among philosophers long before the time of Krates. All we can say, therefore, is that the Pergamene librarians gave the title Περὶ φύσεως to some poem of Xenophanes.

[281]. Simpl. de Caelo, p. 522, 7 (R. P. 97 b). It is true that two of our fragments (25 and 26) are preserved by Simplicius, but he got them from Alexander. Probably they were quoted by Theophrastos; for it is plain that Alexander had no first-hand knowledge of Xenophanes either. If he had, he would not have been taken in by M.X.G. (See p. 138, [n. 305].)

[282]. Three fragments ([27], [31], [33]) come from the Homeric Allegories, two ([30], [32]) are from Homeric scholia.

[283]. Cf. Wilamowitz, Progr. Gryphiswald. 1880.

[284]. I formerly, with Zeller, preferred Theodoret’s reading αἴσθησιν, but both Clement and Eusebios have ἐσθῆτα, and Theodoret is entirely dependent on them.

[285]. Reading ἠέρι for καὶ ῥεῖ with Diels.

[286]. This fragment has been recovered in its entirety from the Geneva scholia on Homer (see Arch. iv. p. 652). The words in brackets are added by Diels. See also Praechter, “Zu Xenophanes” (Philol. xviii. p. 308).

[287]. The word is ὑπεριέμενος. This is quoted from the Allegories as an explanation of the name Hyperion, and doubtless Xenophanes so meant it.

[288]. Reading δεδοξάσθω with Wilamowitz.

[289]. As Diels suggests, this probably refers to the stars, which Xenophanes held to be clouds.

[290]. Cf. Diels ad loc. (P. Ph. Fr. p. 44), “ut Sol et cetera astra, quae cum in nebulas evanescerent, deorum simul opinio casura erat.” Cf. Arch. x. p. 533.

[291]. Aet. ii. 18, 1 (Dox. p. 347), Ξενοφάνης τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν πλοίων φαινομένους οἷον ἀστέρας, οὓς καὶ Διοσκούρους καλοῦσί τινες, νεφέλια εἶναι κατὰ τὴν ποιὰν κίνησιν παραλάμποντα.

[292]. The passages from Aetios are collected in P. Ph. Fr. pp. 32 sqq. (Vors. p. 42).

[293]. Aet. ii. 20, 3 (Dox. p. 348), Ξενοφάνης ἐκ νεφῶν πεπυρωμένων εἶναι τὸν ἥλιον. Θεόφραστος ἐν τοῖς Φυσικοῖς γέγραφεν ἐκ πυριδίων μὲν τῶν συναθροιζομένων ἐκ τῆς ὑγρᾶς ἀναθυμιάσεως, συναθροιζόντων δὲ τὸν ἥλιον.

[294]. Aet. ii. 24, 9 (Dox. p. 355). πολλοὺς εἶναι ἡλίους καὶ σελήνας κατὰ κλίματα τῆς γῆς καὶ ἀποτομὰς καὶ ζώνας, κατὰ δέ τινα καιρὸν ἐμπίπτειν τὸν δίσκον εἴς τινα ἀποτομὴν τῆς γῆς οὐκ οἰκουμένην ὑφ’ ἡμῶν καὶ οὕτως ὥσπερ κενεμβατοῦντα ἔκλειψιν ὑποφαίνειν· ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς τὸν ἥλιον εἰς ἄπειρον μὲν προιέναι, δοκεῖν δὲ κυκλεῖσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀπόστασιν. It is clear that in this notice ἔκλειψινἕκλειψιν has been erroneously substituted for δύσιν, as it has also in Aet. ii. 24, 4 (Dox. p. 354).

[295]. That this is the meaning of ὥσπερ κενεμβατοῦντα appears sufficiently from the passages referred to in Liddell and Scott.

[296]. Aet. ii. 13, 14 (Dox. p. 343), ἀναζωπυρεῖν νύκτωρ καθάπερ τοὺς ἄνθρακας.

[297]. Aet. ii. 30, 8 (Dox. p. 362), τὸν μὲν ἥλιον χρήσιμον εἶναι πρὸς τὴν τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὴν τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ζῴων γένεσίν τε καὶ διοίκησιν, τὴν δὲ σελήνην παρέλκειν, The verb παρέλκειν means “to cork.” Cf. Aristophanes, Pax, 1306.

[298]. There is an interesting note on these in Gomperz’s Greek Thinkers (Eng. trans. i. p. 551). I have translated his conjecture φυκῶν instead of the MS. φωκῶν, as this is said to involve a palæontological impossibility, and impressions of fucoids are found, not indeed in the quarries of Syracuse, but near them. It is said also that there are no fossils in Paros, so the anchovy must have been an imaginary one.

[299]. Aet. ii. 1, 2 (Dox., p. 327); Diog. ix. 19 (R. P. 103 c). It is true, of course, that this passage of Diogenes comes from the biographical compendium (Dox. p. 168); but, for all that, it is a serious matter to deny the Theophrastean origin of a statement found in Aetios, Hippolytos, and Diogenes.

[300]. Arist. Met. Α, 5. 986 b 23 (R. P. 101), οὐδὲν διεσαφήνισεν.

[301]. This is given as an inference by Simpl. Phys. p. 23, 18 (R. P. 108 b), διὰ τὸ πανταχόθεν ὅμοιον. It does not merely come from M.X.G. (R. P. 108), πάντῃ δ’ ὅμοιον ὄντα σφαιροειδῆ εἶναι. Hippolytos has it too (Ref. i. 14; R. P. 102 a), so it goes back to Theophrastos. Timon of Phleious understood Xenophanes in the same way; for he makes him call the One ἴσον ἁπάντῃ (fr. 60, Diels = 40 Wachsm.; R. P. 102 a).

[302]. Arist. de Caelo, Β, 13. 294 a 21 (R. P. 103 b).

[303]. I take δαψιλός as an attribute and ἀπείρονα as predicate to both subjects.

[304]. Il. viii. 13-16, 478-481, especially the words οὐδ’ εἴ κε τὰ νείατα πείραθ’ ἵκηαι | γαίης καὶ πόντοιο κ.τ.λ. Iliad viii. must have seemed a particularly bad book to Xenophanes.

[305]. In Bekker’s edition this treatise bears the title Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, περὶ Ζήνωνος, περὶ Γοργίου, but the best MS. gives as the titles of its three sections: (1) Περὶ Ζήνωνος, (2) Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, (3) Περὶ Γοργίου. The first section, however, plainly refers to Melissos, so the whole treatise is now entitled De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia (M.X.G.). It has been edited by Apelt in the Teubner Series, and more recently by Diels (Abh. der k. Preuss. Akad. 1900), who has also given the section dealing with Xenophanes in P. Ph. Fr. pp. 24-29 (Vors. pp. 36 sqq.). He has now withdrawn the view maintained in Dox. p. 108 that the work belongs to the third century B.C., and holds that it was a Peripatetico eclectico (i.e. sceptica, platonica, stoica admiscente) circa Christi natalem conscriptum. If that is so, there is no reason to doubt, as I formerly did, that the second section is really meant to deal with Xenophanes. The writer would have no first-hand knowledge of his poems, and the order in which the philosophers are discussed is that of the passage in the Metaphysics which suggested the whole thing. It is possible that a section on Parmenides preceded what we now have.

[306]. Met. Α, 5. 986 b 21 (R. P. 101), πρῶτος τούτων ἑνίσας. The verb ἑνίζειν occurs nowhere else, but is plainly formed on the analogy of μηδίζειν, φιλιππίζειν, and the like. It is not likely that it means “to unify.” Aristotle could easily have said ἑνώσας if he had meant that.

[307]. Tht. 181 a 6, τοῦ ὅλου στασιῶται. The noun στασιῶτης has no other meaning than “partisan.” There is no verb στασιοῦν “to make stationary,” and such a formation would be against all analogy. The derivation στασιώτας ... ἀπὸ τῆς στάσεως appears first in Sext. Math. x. 46, from which passage we may infer that Aristotle used the word, not that he gave the derivation.

[308]. Soph. 242 d 5 (R. P. 101 b). If the passage implies that Xenophanes settled at Elea, it equally implies this of his predecessors. But Elea was not founded till Xenophanes was in the prime of life.

[309]. Tht. 179 e 3, τῶν Ἡρακλειτείων ἤ, ὥσπερ σὺ λέγεις Ὁμηρείων καὶ ἔτι παλαιοτέρων. In this passage, Homer stands to the Herakleiteans in exactly the same relation as Xenophanes does to the Eleatics in the Sophist.

[310]. Met. 981 b 24. The words cannot mean “gazing up at the whole heavens,” or anything of that sort. They are taken as I take them by Bonitz (im Hinblicke auf den ganzen Himmel) and Zeller (im Hinblick auf das Weltganze). The word ἀποβλέπειν had become much too colourless to bear the other meaning, and οὐρανός, as we know, means what was later called κόσμος.

[311]. See above, p. 137, [n. 301].

[312]. Diog. ix. 19 (R. P. 103 c), ὅλον δ’ ὁρᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἀκούειν, μὴ μέντοι ἀναπνεῖν. See above, p. 120, [n. 252].

[313]. [Plut.] Strom. fr. 4, ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ περὶ θεῶν ὡς οὐδεμιᾶς ἡγεμονίας ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης· οὐ γὰρ ὅσιον δεσπόζεσθαί τινα τῶν θεῶν, ἐπιδεῖσθαί τε μηδενὸς αὐτῶν μηδένα μηδ’ ὅλως, ἀκούειν δὲ καὶ ὁρᾶν καθόλου καὶ μὴ κατὰ μέρος.

[314]. Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 466.

[315]. Freudenthal, Die Theologie des Xenophanes.

[316]. Xenophanes calls his god “greatest among gods and men,” but this is simply a case of “polar expression,” to which parallels will be found in Wilamowitz’s note to the Herakles, v. 1106. Cf. especially the statement of Herakleitos (fr. [20]) that “no one of gods or men” made the world.

[317]. Griechische Literatur, p. 38.

[318]. Parmenides Lehrgedicht, p. 9.

CHAPTER III
HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS

Life of Herakleitos.

63. Herakleitos of Ephesos, son of Blyson, is said to have “flourished” in Ol. LXIX. (504/3-501/0 B.C.);[^[319]] that is to say, just in the middle of the reign of Dareios, with whom several traditions connected him.[^[320]] We shall see that Parmenides was assigned to the same Olympiad, though for another reason ([§ 84]). It is more important, however, for our purpose to notice that, while Herakleitos refers to Pythagoras and Xenophanes by name and in the past tense (fr. [16]), he is in turn referred to by Parmenides (fr. 6). These references are sufficient to mark his proper place in the history of philosophy. Zeller holds, indeed, that he cannot have published his work till after 478 B.C., on the ground that the expulsion of his friend Hermodoros, alluded to in fr. [114], could not have taken place before the downfall of Persian rule. If that were so, it might be hard to see how Parmenides could have known the views of Herakleitos; but there is surely no difficulty in supposing that the Ephesians may have sent one of their foremost citizens into banishment at a time when they were still paying tribute to the Great King. The Persians never took their internal self-government from the Ionian cities, and the spurious Letters of Herakleitos show the accepted view was that the expulsion of Hermodoros took place during the reign of Dareios.[^[321]]

Sotion said that Herakleitos was a disciple of Xenophanes,[^[322]] which is not probable; for Xenophanes seems to have left Ionia for ever before Herakleitos was born. More likely he was not a disciple of any one; but it is clear, at the same time, that he was acquainted both with the Milesian cosmology and with the poems of Xenophanes. He also knew something of the theories taught by Pythagoras (fr. [17]).

Of the life of Herakleitos we really know nothing, except, perhaps, that he belonged to the ancient royal house and resigned the nominal position of Basileus in favour of his brother.[^[323]] The origin of the other statements bearing on it is quite transparent.[^[324]]

His book.

64. We do not know the title of the work of Herakleitos[^[325]]—if, indeed, it had one at all—and it is not very easy to form a clear idea of its contents. We are told that it was divided into three discourses: one dealing with the universe, one political, and one theological.[^[326]] It is not likely that this division is due to Herakleitos himself; all we can infer from the statement is that the work fell naturally into these three parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand.

The style of Herakleitos is proverbially obscure, and, at a later date, got him the nickname of “the Dark.”[^[327]] Now the fragments about the Delphic god and the Sibyl (frs. [11] and [12]) seem to show that he was quite conscious of writing an oracular style, and we have to ask why he did so. In the first place, it was the manner of the time.[^[328]] The stirring events of the age, and the influence of the religious revival, gave something of a prophetic tone to all the leaders of thought. Pindar and Aischylos have it too. They all feel that they are in some measure inspired. It is also the age of great individualities, who are apt to be solitary and disdainful. Herakleitos at least was so. If men cared to dig for the gold they might find it (fr. [8]); if not, they must be content with straw (fr. [51]). This seems to have been the view taken by Theophrastos, who said that the headstrong temperament of Herakleitos sometimes led him into incompleteness and inconsistencies of statement.[^[329]] But that is a very different thing from studied obscurity and the disciplina arcani sometimes attributed to him; if Herakleitos does not go out of his way to make his meaning clear, neither does he hide it (fr. [11]).

The fragments.

65. I give a version of the fragments according to the arrangement of Mr. Bywater’s exemplary edition.[^[330]]

(1) It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.[^[331]] R. P. 40.

(2) Though this Word[^[332]] is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep. R. P. 32.

(3) Fools when they do hear are like the deaf: of them does the saying bear witness that they are absent when present. R. P. 31 a.

(4) Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that understand not their language. R. P. 42.

(5) The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with, nor do they mark them when they are taught, though they think they do.

(6) Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.

(7) If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.[^[333]]

(8) Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little. R. P. 44 b.

(10) Nature loves to hide. R. P. 34 f.

(11) The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign. R. P. 30 a.

(12) And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her. R. P. 30 a.

(13) The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize the most. R. P. 42.

(14) ... bringing untrustworthy witnesses in support of disputed points.

(15) The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.[^[334]] R. P. 42 c.

(16) The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios. R. P. 31.

(17) Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and choosing out these writings, claimed for his own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.[^[335]] R. P. 31 a.

(18) Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from all. R. P. 32 b.

(19) Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things. R. P. 40.

(20) This world,[^[336]] which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling, and measures going out. R. P. 35.[^[337]]

(21) The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.[^[338]] ... R. P. 35 b.

(22) All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares. R. P. 35.

(23) It becomes liquid sea, and is measured by the same tale as before it became earth.[^[339]] R. P. 39.

(24) Fire is want and surfeit. R. P. 36 a.

(25) Fire lives the death of air,[^[340]] and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water. R. P. 37.

(26) Fire in its advance will judge and convict[^[341]] all things. R. P. 36 a.

(27) How can one hide from that which never sets?

(28) It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things. R. P. 35 b.

(29) The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out. R. P. 39.

(30) The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus.[^[342]]

(31) If there were no sun it would be night, for all the other stars could do.[^[343]]

(32) The sun is new every day.

(33) See above, Chap. I. p. 41, [n. 62].

(34) ... the seasons that bring all things.

(35) Hesiod is most men’s teacher. Men think he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night! They are one.[^[344]] R. P. 39 b.

(36) God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire,[^[345]] when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each. R. P. 39 b.

(37) If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

(38) Souls smell in Hades. R. P. 46 d.

(39) Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moisted.

(40) It scatters and it gathers; it advances and retires.

(41, 42) You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. R. P. 33.

(43) Homer was wrong in saying: “Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!” He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.[^[346]]... R. P. 34 d.

(44) War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free. R. P. 34.

(45) Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions,[^[347]] like that of the bow and the lyre. R. P. 34.

(46) It is the opposite which is good for us.[^[348]]

(47) The hidden attunement is better than the open. R. P. 34.

(48) Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.

(49) Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

(50) The straight and the crooked path of the fuller’s comb is one and the same.

(51) Asses would rather have straw than gold. R. P. 31 a.

(51a) Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.[^[349]] R. P. 48 b.

(52) The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive. R. P. 47 c.

(53) Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.

(54) ... to delight in the mire.

(55) Every beast is driven to pasture with blows.[^[350]]

(56) Same as 45.

(57) Good and ill are one. R. P. 47 c.

(58) Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, demand a fee for it which they do not deserve to get. R. P. 47 c.[^[351]]

(59) Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.[^[352]]

(60) Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.[^[353]]

(61) To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right. R. P. 45.

(62) We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away (?) through strife.

(64) All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in slumber are sleep. R. P. 42 c.[^[354]]

(65) The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus. R. P. 40.

(66) The bow (βιός) is called life (βίος), but its work is death. R. P. 49 a.

(67) Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others’ death and dying the others’ life. R. P. 46.

(68) For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth; and from water, soul. R. P. 38.

(69) The way up and the way down is one and the same. R. P. 36 d.

(70) In the circumference of a circle the beginning and end are common.

(71) You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any direction, so deep is the measure of it.[^[355]] R. P. 41 d.

(72) It is pleasure to souls to become moist. R. P. 46 c.

(73) A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist. R. P. 42.

(74-76) The dry soul is the wisest and best.[^[356]] R. P. 42.

(77) Man is kindled and put out like a light in the night-time.

(78) And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted[^[357]] and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former. R. P. 47.

(79) Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s. R. P. 40 a.

(80) I have sought for myself. R. P. 48.

(81) We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. R. P. 33 a.

(82) It is a weariness to labour for the same masters and be ruled by them.

(83) It rests by changing.

(84) Even the posset separates if it is not stirred.

(85) Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

(86) When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms—or rather to rest—and they leave children behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.

(87-89) A man may be a grandfather in thirty years.

(90) Those who are asleep are fellow-workers....

(91a) Thought is common to all.

(91b) Those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common to all as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are fed by the one divine law. It prevails as much as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare. R. P. 43.

(92) So we must follow the common,[^[358]] yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own. R. P. 44.

(93) They are estranged from that with which they have most constant intercourse.[^[359]] R. P. 32 b.

(94) It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.

(95) The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

(96) The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. R. P. 45.

(97) Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. R. P. 45.

(98, 99) The wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

(100) The people must fight for its law as for its walls. R. P. 43 b.

(101) Greater deaths win greater portions. R. P. 49 a.

(102) Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle. R. P. 49 a.

(103) Wantonness needs putting out, even more than a house on fire. R. P. 49 a.

(104) It is not good for men to get all they wish to get. It is sickness that makes health pleasant; evil,[^[360]] good; hunger, plenty; weariness, rest. R. P. 48 b.

(105-107) It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire.[^[361]] Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul. R. P. 49 a.

(108, 109) It is best to hide folly; but it is hard in times of relaxation, over our cups.

(110) And it is law, too, to obey the counsel of one. R. P. 49 a.

(111) For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good. For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.[^[362]] R. P. 31 a.

(112) In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest. (He said, “Most men are bad.”)

(113) One is ten thousand to me, if he be the best. R. P. 31 a.

(114) The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying, “We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.” R. P. 29 b.

(115) Dogs bark at every one they do not know. R. P. 31 a.

(116) ... (The wise man) is not known because of men’s want of belief.

(117) The fool is fluttered at every word. R. P. 44 b.

(118) The most esteemed of them knows but fancies;[^[363]] yet of a truth justice shall overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.

(119) Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochos likewise. R. P. 31.

(120) One day is like any other.

(121) Man’s character is his fate.[^[364]]

(122) There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream of. R. P. 46 d.

(123) ... [^[365]]that they rise up and become the wakeful guardians of the quick and dead. R. P. 46 d.

(124) Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bakchos and priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers....

(125) The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries. R. P. 48.

(126) And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a man’s house, knowing not what gods or heroes are. R. P. 49 a.

(127) For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat. R. P. 49.

(129, 130) They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing thus, would deem him mad. R. P. 49 a.

The doxographical tradition.

66. It will be seen that some of these fragments are far from clear, and there are probably not a few of which the meaning will never be recovered. We naturally turn, then, to the doxographers for a clue; but, as ill-luck will have it, they are far less instructive with regard to Herakleitos than we have found them in other cases. We have, in fact, two great difficulties to contend with. The first is the unusual weakness of the doxographical tradition itself. Hippolytos, upon whom we can generally rely for a fairly accurate account of what Theophrastos really said, derived the material for his first four chapters, which treat of Thales, Pythagoras, Herakleitos, and Empedokles, not from the excellent epitome which he afterwards used, but from a biographical compendium,[^[366]] which consisted for the most part of apocryphal anecdotes and apophthegms. It was based, further, on some writer of Successions who regarded Herakleitos and Empedokles as Pythagoreans. They are therefore placed side by side, and their doctrines are hopelessly mixed up together. The link between Herakleitos and the Pythagoreans was Hippasos of Metapontion, in whose system, as we know, fire played an important part. Theophrastos, following Aristotle, had spoken of the two in the same sentence, and this was enough to put the writers of Successions off the track.[^[367]] We are forced, then, to look to the more detailed of the two accounts of the opinions of Herakleitos given in Diogenes,[^[368]] which goes back to the Vetusta Placita, and is, fortunately, pretty full and accurate. All our other sources are more or less tainted.

The second difficulty which we have to face is even more serious. Most of the commentators on Herakleitos mentioned in Diogenes were Stoics,[^[369]] and it is certain that their paraphrases were sometimes taken for the original. Now, the Stoics held the Ephesian in peculiar veneration, and sought to interpret him as far as possible in accordance with their own system. Further, they were fond of “accommodating”[^[370]] the views of earlier thinkers to their own, and this has had serious consequences. In particular, the Stoic theories of the λόγος and the ἐκπύρωσις are constantly ascribed to Herakleitos by our authorities, and the very fragments are adulterated with scraps of Stoic terminology.

The discovery of Herakleitos.

67. Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all previous inquirers into nature. This must mean that he believed himself to have attained insight into some truth which had not hitherto been recognised, though it was, as it were, staring men in the face (fr. [93]). Clearly, then, if we wish to get at the central thing in his teaching, we must try to find out what he was thinking of when he launched into those denunciations of human dulness and ignorance.[^[371]] The answer seems to be given in two fragments, [18] and [45]. From them we gather that the truth hitherto ignored is that the many apparently independent and conflicting things we know are really one, and that, on the other hand, this one is also many. The “strife of opposites” is really an “attunement” (ἁρμονία). From this it follows that wisdom is not a knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of the warring opposites. That this really was the fundamental thought of Herakleitos is stated by Philo. He says: “For that which is made up of both the opposites is one; and, when the one is divided, the opposites are disclosed. Is not this just what the Greeks say their great and much belauded Herakleitos put in the forefront of his philosophy as summing it all up, and boasted of as a new discovery?”[^[372]] We shall take the elements of this theory one by one, and see how they are to be understood.

The One and the Many.

68. Anaximander had taught already that the opposites were separated out from the Boundless, but passed away into it once more, so paying the penalty for their unjust encroachments on one another. It is here implied that there is something wrong in the war of opposites, and that the existence of the Many is a breach in the unity of the One. The truth which Herakleitos proclaimed was that there is no One without the Many, and no Many without the One. The world is at once one and many, and it is just the “opposite tension” of the Many that constitutes the unity of the One.

The credit of having been the first to see this is expressly assigned to Herakleitos by Plato. In the Sophist (242 d), the Eleatic stranger, after explaining how the Eleatics maintained that what we call many is really one, proceeds:—

But certain Ionian and (at a later date) certain Sicilian Muses remarked that it was safest to unite these two things, and to say that reality is both many and one, and is kept together by Hate and Love. “For,” say the more severe Muses, “in its division it is always being brought together” (cf. fr. [59]); while the softer Muses relaxed the requirement that this should always be so, and said that the All was alternately one and at peace through the power of Aphrodite, and many and at war with itself because of something they called Strife.

In this passage the Ionian Muses stand, of course, for Herakleitos, and the Sicilian for Empedokles. We remark also that the differentiation of the one into many, and the integration of the many into one, are both eternal and simultaneous, and that this is the ground upon which the system of Herakleitos is contrasted with that of Empedokles. We shall come back to that point again. Meanwhile we confine ourselves to this, that, according to Plato, Herakleitos taught that reality was at once many and one.

We must be careful, however, not to imagine that what Herakleitos thus discovered was a logical principle. This was the mistake of Lassalle’s book.[^[373]] The identity in and through difference which he proclaimed was purely physical; logic did not yet exist, and as the principle of identity had not been formulated, it would have been impossible to protest against an abstract application of it. The identity which he explains as consisting in difference is simply that of the primary substance in all its manifestations. This identity had been realised already by the Milesians, but they had found a difficulty in the difference. Anaximander had treated the strife of opposites as an “injustice,” and what Herakleitos set himself to show was that, on the contrary, it was the highest justice (fr. [62]).

Fire.

69. All this made it necessary for him to seek out a new primary substance. He wanted not merely something out of which the diversified world we know might conceivably be made, or from which opposites could be “separated out,” but something which of its own nature would pass into everything else, while everything else would pass in turn into it. This he found in Fire, and it is easy to see why, if we consider the phenomenon of combustion, even as it appears to the plain man. The quantity of fire in a flame burning steadily appears to remain the same, the flame seems to be what we call a “thing.” And yet the substance of it is continually changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its place is always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds it. This is just what we want. If we regard the world as an “ever-living fire” (fr. [20]), we can understand how it is always becoming all things, while all things are always returning to it.[^[374]]

Flux.

70. This necessarily brings with it a certain way of looking at the change and movement of the world. Fire burns continuously and without interruption. It is therefore always consuming fuel and always liberating smoke. Everything is either mounting upwards to serve as fuel, or sinking downwards after having nourished the flame. It follows that the whole of reality is like an ever-flowing stream, and that nothing is ever at rest for a moment. The substance of the things we see is in constant change. Even as we look at them, some of the matter of which they are composed has already passed into something else, while fresh matter has come into them from another source. This theory is usually summed up, appropriately enough, in the phrase “All things are flowing” (πάντα ῥεῖ), though, as it happens, it cannot be proved that this is a quotation from Herakleitos. Plato, however, expresses the idea quite clearly. “Nothing ever is, everything is becoming”; “All things are in motion like streams”; “All things are passing, and nothing abides”; “Herakleitos says somewhere that all things pass and naught abides; and, comparing things to the current of a river, he says that you cannot step twice into the same stream” (cf. fr. [41])—these are the terms in which he describes the system. And Aristotle says the same thing, “All things are in motion,” “nothing steadfastly is.”[^[375]] Herakleitos held, in fact, that any given thing, however stable in appearance, was merely a section in the stream, and that the matter composing it was never the same in any two consecutive moments of time. We shall see presently how he conceived this process to operate; meanwhile we remark that the idea was not altogether novel, and that it is hardly the central point in the system of Herakleitos. The Milesians held a similar view. The flux of Herakleitos was at most more unceasing and universal.

The Upward and Downward path.

71. Herakleitos appears to have worked out the details of the perpetual flux with reference to the theories of Anaximenes.[^[376]] It is unlikely, however, that he explained the transformations of matter by means of rarefaction and condensation.[^[377]] Theophrastos, it appears, suggested that he did; but he allowed it was by no means clear. The passage from Diogenes which we are about to quote has faithfully preserved this touch.[^[378]] In the fragments, at any rate, we find nothing about rarefaction and condensation. The expression used is “exchange” (fr. [22]); and this is certainly a very good name for what happens when fire gives out smoke and takes in fuel instead.

It has been pointed out that, in default of Hippolytos, our best account of the Theophrastean doxography of Herakleitos is the fuller of the two accounts given in Laertios Diogenes. It is as follows:—

His opinions on particular points are these:—

He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were an exchange for fire, produced by condensation and rarefaction. But he explains nothing clearly. All things were produced in opposition, and all things were in flux like a river.

The all is finite and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is consumed again by fire alternately through all eternity in certain cycles. This happens according to fate. That which leads to the becoming of the opposites is called War and Strife; that which leads to the final conflagration is Concord and Peace.

He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the world comes into being in virtue of this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and when compressed it turns to water; water being congealed turns to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And, again, the earth is in turn liquefied, and from it water arises, and from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the evaporation from the sea. This is the path upwards. R. P. 36.

He held, too, that exhalations arose both from the sea and the land; some bright and pure, others dark. Fire was nourished by the bright ones, and moisture by the others.

He does not make it clear what is the nature of that which surrounds the world. He held, however, that there were bowls in it with the concave sides turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations were collected and produced flames. These were the heavenly bodies.

The flame of the sun was the brightest and warmest; for the other heavenly bodies were more distant from the earth; and for that reason gave less light and heat. The moon, on the other hand, was nearer the earth; but it moved through an impure region. The sun moved in a bright and unmixed region, and at the same time was at just the right distance from us. That is why it gives more heat and light. The eclipses of the sun and moon were due to the turning of the bowls upwards, while the monthly phases of the moon were produced by a gradual turning of its bowl.

Day and night, months and seasons and years, rains and winds, and things like these, were due to the different exhalations. The bright exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day, and the preponderance of the opposite exhalations produced night. The increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer, and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation produced winter. He assigns the causes of other things in conformity with this.

As to the earth, he makes no clear statement about its nature, any more than he does about that of the bowls.

These, then, were his opinions. R. P. 39 b.

It is obvious that, if we can trust this passage, it is of the greatest possible value; and that, upon the whole, we can trust it is shown by the fact that it follows the exact order of topics to which all the doxographies derived from the great work of Theophrastos adhere. First we have the primary substance, then the world, then the heavenly bodies, and lastly, meteorological phenomena. We conclude, then, that it may be accepted with the exceptions, firstly, of the probably erroneous conjecture of Theophrastos as to rarefaction and condensation mentioned above; and secondly, of some pieces of Stoical interpretation which come from the Vetusta Placita.

Let us look at the details of the theory. The pure fire, we are told, is to be found chiefly in the sun. This, like the other heavenly bodies, is a trough or bowl, or perhaps a sort of boat, with the concave side turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations from the sea collect and burn. How does the fire of the sun pass into other forms? If we look at the fragments which deal with the downward path, we find that the first transformation that it undergoes is into sea, and we are further told that half of the sea is earth and half of it πρηστήρ (fr. [21]). The full meaning of this we shall see presently, but we must settle at once what πρηστήρ is. Many theories have been advanced upon the subject; but, so far as I know, no one[^[379]] has yet proposed to take the word in the sense which it always bears elsewhere, that, namely, of hurricane accompanied by a fiery waterspout.[^[380]] Yet surely this is just what is wanted. It is amply attested that Herakleitos explained the rise of the sea to fire by means of the bright evaporations; and we want a similar meteorological explanation of the passing of the fire back into sea. We want, in fact, something which will stand equally for the smoke produced by the burning of the sun and for the immediate stage between fire and water. What could serve the turn better than a fiery waterspout? It sufficiently resembles smoke to be accounted for as the product of the sun’s combustion, and it certainly comes down in the form of water. And this interpretation becomes practically certain when taken in connexion with the report of Aetios as to the Herakleitean theory of πρηστῆρες. They were due, we are told, “to the kindling and extinction of clouds.”[^[381]] In other words, the bright vapour, after kindling in the bowl of the sun and going out again, reappears as the dark fiery storm-cloud, and so passes once more into sea. At the next stage we find water continually passing into earth. We are already familiar with this idea ([§ 10]), and no more need be said about it. Turning to the “upward path,” we find that the earth is liquefied in the same proportion as the sea becomes earth, so that the sea is still “measured by the same tale” (fr. [23]). Half of it is earth and half of it is πρηστήρ (fr. [21]). This must mean that, at any given moment, half of the sea is taking the downward path, and has just been fiery storm-cloud, while half of it is going up, and has just been earth. In proportion as the sea is increased by rain, water passes into earth; in proportion as the sea is diminished by evaporation, it is fed by the earth. Lastly, the ignition of the bright vapour from the sea in the bowl of the sun completes the circle of the “upward and downward path.”

Measure for measure.

72. The question now arises, How is it that, in spite of this constant flux, things appear relatively stable? The answer of Herakleitos was that it is owing to the observance of the “measures,” in virtue of which the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run remains the same, though its substance is constantly changing. Certain “measures” of the “ever-living fire” are always being kindled, while like “measures” are always going out (fr. [20]); and these measures the sun will not exceed. All things are “exchanged” for fire and fire for all things (fr. [22]), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. “The sun will not exceed his measures” (fr. [29]).

And yet the “measures” are not to be regarded as absolutely fixed. We gather from the passage of Diogenes quoted above that Theophrastos spoke of an alternate preponderance of the bright and dark exhalations, and Aristotle speaks of Herakleitos as explaining all things by evaporation.[^[382]] In particular, the alternation of day and night, summer and winter, were accounted for in this way. Now, in a passage of the pseudo-Hippokratean treatise Περὶ διαίτης which is almost certainly of Herakleitean origin,[^[383]] we read of an “advance of fire and water” in connexion with day and night and the courses of the sun and moon.[^[384]] In fr. [26], again, we read of fire “advancing,” and all these things seem to be intimately connected. We must therefore try to see whether there is anything in the remaining fragments that bears upon the subject.

Man

73. In studying this alternate advance of fire and water, it will be convenient to start with the microcosm. We have more definite information about the two exhalations in man than about the analogous processes in the world at large, and it would seem that Herakleitos himself explained the world by man rather than man by the world. In a well-known passage, Aristotle implies that soul is identical with the dry exhalation,[^[385]] and this is fully confirmed by the fragments. Man is made up of three things, fire, water, and earth. But, just as in the macrocosm fire is identified with the one wisdom, so in the microcosm the fire alone is conscious. When it has left the body, the remainder, the mere earth and water, is altogether worthless (fr. [85]). Of course, the fire which animates man is subject to the “upward and downward path,” just as much as the fire of the world. The Περὶ διαίτης has preserved the obviously Herakleitean sentence: “All things are passing, both human and divine, upwards and downwards by exchanges.”[^[386]] We are just as much in perpetual flux as anything else in the world. We are and are not the same for two consecutive instants (fr. [81]). The fire in us is perpetually becoming water, and the water earth; but, as the opposite process goes on simultaneously, we appear to remain the same.[^[387]]

(a) Sleeping and waking.

74. This, however, is not all. Man is subject to a certain oscillation in his “measures” of fire and water, and this gives rise to the alternations of sleeping and waking, life and death. The locus classicus on this subject is a passage of Sextus Empiricus, which reproduces the account of the Herakleitean psychology given by Ainesidemos (Skeptic, c. 80-50 B.C.).[^[388]] It is as follows (R. P. 41):—

The natural philosopher is of opinion that what surrounds us[^[389]] is rational and endowed with consciousness. According to Herakleitos, when we draw in this divine reason by means of respiration, we become rational. In sleep we forget, but at our waking we become conscious once more. For in sleep, when the openings of the senses close, the mind which is in us is cut off from contact with that which surrounds us, and only our connexion with it by means of respiration is preserved as a sort of root (from which the rest may spring again); and, when it is thus separated, it loses the power of memory that it had before. When we awake again, however, it looks out through the openings of the senses, as if through windows, and coming together with the surrounding mind, it assumes the power of reason. Just, then, as embers, when they are brought near the the fire, change and become red-hot, and go out when they are taken away from it again, so does the portion of the surrounding mind which sojourns in our body become irrational when it is cut off, and so does it become of like nature to the whole when contact is established through the greatest number of openings.

In this passage there is obviously a very large admixture of later phraseology and of later ideas. In particular, the identification of “that which surrounds us” with the air cannot be Herakleitean; for Herakleitos can have known nothing of air, which in his day was regarded as a form of water ([§ 27]). The reference to the pores or openings of the senses is probably foreign to him also; for the theory of pores is due to Alkmaion ([§ 96]). Lastly, the distinction between mind and body is far too sharply drawn. On the other hand, the important rôle assigned to respiration may very well be Herakleitean; for we have met with it already in Anaximenes. And we can hardly doubt that the striking simile of the embers which glow when they are brought near the fire is genuine (cf. fr. [77]). The true Herakleitean doctrine doubtless was, that sleep was produced by the encroachment of moist, dark exhalations from the water in the body, which cause the fire to burn low. In sleep, we lose contact with the fire in the world which is common to all, and retire to a world of our own (fr. [95]). In a soul where the fire and water are evenly balanced, the equilibrium is restored in the morning by an equal advance of the bright exhalation.

(b) Life and death.

75. But in no soul are the fire and water thus evenly balanced for long. One or the other acquires predominance, and the result in either case is death. Let us take each of these cases in turn. It is death, we know, to souls to become water (fr. [68]); but that is just what happens to souls which seek after pleasure. For pleasure is a moistening of the soul (fr. [72]), as may be seen in the case of the drunken man, who, in pursuit of it, has moistened his soul to such an extent that he does not know where he is going (fr. [73]). Even in gentle relaxation over our cups, it is more difficult to hide folly than at other times (fr. [108]). That is why it is so necessary for us to quench wantonness (fr. [103]); for whatever our heart’s desire insists on it purchases at the price of life, that is, of the fire within us (fr. [105]). Take now the other case. The dry soul, that which has least moisture, is the best (fr. [74]); but the preponderance of fire causes death as much as that of water. It is a very different death, however, and wins “greater portions” for those who die it (fr. [101]). Apparently those who fall in battle share their lot (fr. [102]). We have no fragment which tells us directly what it is, but the class of utterances we are about to look at next leaves little doubt on the subject. Those who die the fiery and not the watery death, become, in fact, gods, though in a different sense from that in which the one Wisdom is god. It is probable that the corrupt fragment [123] refers to this unexpected fate (fr. [122]) that awaits men when they die.

Further, just as summer and winter are one, and necessarily reproduce one another by their “opposite tension,” so do life and death. They, too, are one, we are told; and so are youth and age (fr. [78]). It follows that the soul will be now living and now dead; that it will only turn to fire or water, as the case may be, to recommence once more its unceasing upward and downward path. The soul that has died from excess of moisture sinks down to earth; but from the earth comes water, and from water is once more exhaled a soul (fr. [68]). So, too, we are told (fr. 67) that gods and men are really one. They live each others’ life, and die each others’ death. Those mortals that die the fiery death become immortal,[^[390]] they become the guardians of the quick and the dead (fr. [123]);[^[391]] and those immortals become mortal in their turn. Everything is really the death of something else (fr. [64]). The living and the dead are always changing places (fr. 78), like the pieces on a child’s draught-board (fr. 79), and this applies not only to the souls that have become water, but to those that have become fire and are now guardian spirits. The real weariness is continuance in the same state (fr. [82]), and the real rest is change (fr. [83]). Rest in any other sense is tantamount to dissolution (fr. [84]).[^[392]] So they too are born once more. Herakleitos estimated the duration of the cycle which preserves the balance of life and death as thirty years, the shortest time in which a man may become a grandfather (frs. 87-89).[^[393]]

The day and the year.

76. Let us turn now to the world. Diogenes tells us that fire was kept up by the bright vapours from land and sea, and moisture by the dark.[^[394]] What are these “dark” vapours which increase the moist element? If we remember the “Air” of Anaximenes, we shall be inclined to regard them as darkness itself. We know that the idea of darkness as privation of light is not natural to the unsophisticated mind. We sometimes hear even now of darkness “thick enough to cut with a knife.” I suppose, then, that Herakleitos believed night and winter to be produced by the rise of darkness from earth and sea—he saw, of course, that the valleys were dark before the hill-tops,—and that this darkness, being moist, so increased the watery element as to put out the sun’s light. This, however, destroys the power of darkness itself. It can no longer rise upwards unless the sun gives it motion, and so it becomes possible for a fresh sun (fr. [32]) to be kindled, and to nourish itself at the expense of the moist element for a time. But it can only be for a time. The sun, by burning up the bright vapour, deprives himself of nourishment, and the dark vapour once more gets the upper hand. It is in this sense that “day and night are one” (fr. [35]). Each implies the other, and they are therefore to be regarded as merely two sides of the one, in which alone their true ground of explanation is to be found (fr. [36]).

Summer and winter were easily to be explained in the same way. We know that the “turnings” of the sun were a subject of interest in those days, and it was natural for Herakleitos to see in its retreat further to the south the gradual advance of the moist element, caused by the heat of the sun itself. This, however, diminishes the power of the sun to cause evaporation, and so it must return to the north once more that it may supply itself with nourishment. Such was, at any rate, the Stoic doctrine on the subject,[^[395]] and that it comes from Herakleitos seems to be proved by its occurrence in the Περὶ διαίτης. It seems impossible to refer the following sentence to any other source:—

And in turn each (fire and water) prevails and is prevailed over to the greatest and least degree that is possible. For neither can prevail altogether for the following reasons. If fire advances towards the utmost limit of the water, its nourishment fails it. It retires, then, to a place where it can get nourishment. And if water advances towards the utmost limit of the fire, movement fails it. At that point, then, it stands still; and, when it has come to a stand, it has no longer power to resist, but is consumed as nourishment for the fire that falls upon it. For these reasons neither can prevail altogether. But if at any time either should be in any way overcome, then none of the things that exist would be as they are now. So long as things are as they are, fire and water will always be too, and neither will ever fail.[^[396]]

The Great Year.

77. Herakleitos spoke also of a longer period, which is identified with the “Great Year,” and is variously described as lasting 18,000 and 10,800 years.[^[397]] We have no definite statement, however, of what process Herakleitos supposed to take place in the Great Year. We have seen that the period of 36,000 years was, in all probability, Babylonian, and was that of the revolution which produces the precession of the equinoxes.[^[398]] Now 18,000 years is just half that period, a fact which may be connected with Herakleitos’s way of dividing all cycles into an “upward and downward path” It is not at all likely, however, that Herakleitos, who held with Xenophanes that the sun was “new every day,” would trouble himself about the precession of the equinoxes, and we seem forced to assume that he gave some new application to the traditional period. The Stoics, or some of them, held that the Great Year was the period between one world-conflagration and the next. They were careful, however, to make it a good deal longer than Herakleitos did, and, in any case, we are not entitled without more ado to credit him with the theory of a general conflagration.[^[399]] We must try first, if possible, to interpret the Great Year on the analogy of the shorter periods discussed already.

Now we have seen that a generation is the shortest time in which a man can become a grandfather, it is the period of the upward or downward path of the soul, and the most natural interpretation of the longer period would surely be that it represents the time taken by a “measure” of the fire in the world to travel on the downward path to earth or return to fire once more by the upward path. Plato certainly implies that such a parallelism between the periods of man and the world was recognised,[^[400]] and this receives a curious confirmation from a passage in Aristotle, which is usually supposed to refer to the doctrine of a periodic conflagration. He is discussing the question whether the “heavens,” that is to say, what he calls the “first heaven,” is eternal or not, and he naturally enough, from his own point of view, identifies this with the Fire of Herakleitos. He quotes him along with Empedokles as holding that the “heavens” are alternately as they are now and in some other state, one of passing away; and he goes on to point out that this is not really to say they pass away, any more than it would be to say that a man ceases to be, if we said that he turned from boy to man and then from man to boy again.[^[401]] It is surely clear that this is a reference to the parallel between the generation and the Great Year, and, if so, the ordinary interpretation of the passage must be wrong. It is true that it is not quite consistent with the theory to suppose that a “measure” of Fire could preserve its identity throughout the whole of its upward and downward path; but it is exactly the same inconsistency that we have felt bound to recognise with regard to the continuance of individual souls, a fact which is really in favour of our interpretation. It should be added that, while 18,000 is half 36,000, 10,800 is 360 × 30, which would make each generation a day in the Great Year.[^[402]]

Did Herakleitos teach a general conflagration?

78. Most modern writers, however, ascribe to Herakleitos the doctrine of a periodical conflagration or ἐκπύρωσις, to use the Stoic term.[^[403]] That this is inconsistent with the theory, as we have interpreted it, is obvious, and is indeed admitted by Zeller. To his paraphrase of the statement of Plato quoted above (p. 159) he adds the words: “Herakleitos did not intend to retract this principle in the doctrine of a periodic change in the constitution of the world; if the two doctrines are not compatible, it is a contradiction which he has not observed.” Now, it is in itself quite likely that there were contradictions in the discourse of Herakleitos, but it is very unlikely that there was this particular one. In the first place, it is a contradiction of the central idea of his system, the thought that possessed his whole mind ([§ 67]), and we can only admit the possibility of that, if the evidence for it should prove irresistible. In the second place, such an interpretation destroys the whole point of Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles ([§ 68]), which is just that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns. Zeller’s interpretation obliges us, then, to suppose that Herakleitos flatly contradicted his own discovery without noticing it, and that Plato, in discussing this very discovery, was also blind to the contradiction.[^[404]]

Nor is there anything in Aristotle to set against Plato’s emphatic statement. We have seen that the passage in which he speaks of him along with Empedokles as holding that the heavens were alternately in one condition and in another refers not to the world in general, but to fire, which Aristotle identified with the substance of his own “first heaven.”[^[405]] It is also quite consistent with our interpretation when he says that all things at one time or another become fire. This does not necessarily mean that they all become fire at the same time, but is merely a statement of the undoubted Herakleitean doctrine of the upward and downward path.[^[406]]

The only clear statements to the effect that Herakleitos taught the doctrine of a general conflagration are posterior to the rise of Stoicism. It is unnecessary to enumerate them, as there is no doubt about their meaning. The Christian apologists too were interested in the idea of a final conflagration, and reproduce the Stoic view. The curious thing, however, is that there was a difference of opinion on the subject even among the Stoics. In one place, Marcus Aurelius says: “So that all these things are taken up into the Reason of the universe, whether by a periodical conflagration or a renovation effected by external exchanges.”[^[407]] Indeed, there were some who said there was no general conflagration at all in Herakleitos. “I hear all that,” Plutarch makes one of his personages say, “from many people, and I see the Stoic conflagration spreading over the poems of Hesiod, just as it does over the writings of Herakleitos and the verses of Orpheus.”[^[408]] We see from this that the question was debated, and we should therefore expect that any statement of Herakleitos which could settle it would be quoted over and over again. It is highly significant that not a single quotation of the kind can be produced.

On the contrary, the absence of anything to show that Herakleitos spoke of a general conflagration only becomes more patent when we turn to the few fragments which are supposed to prove it. The favourite is fr. [24], where we are told that Herakleitos said Fire was Want and Surfeit. That is just in his manner, and it has a perfectly intelligible meaning on our interpretation, which is further confirmed by fr. [36]. On the other hand, it seems distinctly artificial to understand the Surfeit as referring to the fact that fire has burnt everything else up, and still more so to interpret Want as meaning that fire, or most of it, has turned into a world. The next is fr. [26], where we read that fire in its advance will judge and convict all things. There is nothing in this, however, to suggest that fire will judge all things at once rather than in turn, and, indeed, the phraseology reminds us of the advance of fire and water which we have seen reason for attributing to Herakleitos, but which is expressly said to be limited to a certain maximum.[^[409]] These appear to be the only passages which the Stoics and the Christian apologists could discover, and, whether our interpretation of them is right or wrong, it is surely obvious that they cannot bear the weight of their conclusion, and that there was certainly nothing more definite to be found.

It is much easier to find fragments which are on the face of them inconsistent with a general conflagration. The “measures” of fr. [20] and fr. [29] must be the same thing, and they must surely be interpreted in the light of fr. [23]. If this be so, fr. [20], and more especially fr. [29], directly contradict the idea of a general conflagration. “The sun will not overstep his measures.”[^[410]] Secondly, the metaphor of “exchange,” which is applied to the transformations of fire in fr. [22], points in the same direction. When gold is given in exchange for wares and wares for gold, the sum or “measure” of each remains constant, though they change owners. All the wares and gold do not come into the same hands. In the same way, when anything becomes fire, something of equal amount must cease to be fire, if the “exchange” is to be a just one; and that it will be just, we are assured by the watchfulness of the Erinyes (fr. [29]), who see to it that the sun does not take more than he gives. Of course there is, as we have seen, a certain variation; but this is strictly confined within limits, and is compensated in the long run by a variation in the other direction. Thirdly, fr. [43], in which Herakleitos blames Homer for desiring the cessation of strife, is very conclusive. The cessation of strife would mean that all things should take the upward or downward path at the same time, and cease to “run in opposite directions.” If they all took the upward path, we should have a general conflagration. Now, if Herakleitos had himself held that this was the appointment of fate, would he have been likely to upbraid Homer for desiring so necessary a consummation?[^[411]] Fourthly, we note that in fr. [20] it is this world,[^[412]] and not merely the “ever-living fire,” which is said to be eternal; and it appears also that its eternity depends upon the fact that it is always kindling and always going out in the same “measures,” or that an encroachment in one direction is compensated by a subsequent encroachment in the other. Lastly, Lassalle’s argument from the concluding sentence of the passage from the Περὶ διαίτης, quoted above, is really untouched by Zeller’s objection, that it cannot be Herakleitean because it implies that all things are fire and water. It does not imply this, but only that man, like the heavenly bodies, oscillates between fire and water; and that is just what Herakleitos taught. It does not appear either that the measures of earth varied at all. Now, in this passage we read that neither fire nor water can prevail completely, and a very good reason is given for this, a reason too which is in striking agreement with the other views of Herakleitos.[^[413]] And, indeed, it is not easy to see how, in accordance with these views, the world could ever recover from a general conflagration if such a thing were to take place. The whole process depends, so far as we can see, on the fact that Surfeit is also Want, or, in other words, that an advance of fire increases the moist exhalation, while an advance of water deprives the fire of the power to cause evaporation. The conflagration, though it lasted but for a moment,[^[414]] would destroy the opposite tension on which the rise of a new world depends, and then motion would become impossible.

Strife and “harmony.”

79. We are now in a position to understand more clearly the law of strife or opposition which manifests itself in the “upward and downward path.” At any given moment, each of the three forms of matter, Fire, Water, and Earth, is made up of two equal portions,—subject, of course, to the oscillation described above,—one of which is taking the upward and the other the downward path. Now, it is just the fact that the two halves of everything are being “drawn in opposite directions,” this “opposite tension,” that “keeps things together,” and maintains them in an equilibrium which can only be disturbed temporarily and within certain limits. It thus forms the “hidden attunement” of the universe (fr. [47]), though, in another aspect of it, it is Strife. Bernays has pointed out that the word ἁρμονία meant originally “structure,” and the illustration of the bow and the lyre shows that this idea was present. On the other hand, that taken from the concord of high and low notes shows that the musical sense of the word, namely, an octave, was not wholly absent. As to the “bow and the lyre” (fr. [45]), I think that Professor Campbell has best brought out the point of the simile. “As the arrow leaves the string,” he says, “the hands are pulling opposite ways to each other, and to the different parts of the bow (cf. Plato, Rep. 4. 439); and the sweet note of the lyre is due to a similar tension and retention. The secret of the universe is the same.”[^[415]] War, then, is the father and king of all things, in the world as in human society (fr. [44]); and Homer’s wish that strife might cease was really a prayer for the destruction of the world (fr. [43]).

We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported his theory of the attainment of harmony through strife by a multitude of examples; and, as it happens, some of these can be recovered. There is a remarkable agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, entitled The Kosmos, and the Hippokratean work to which we have already referred. That the authors of both drew from the same source, namely, Herakleitos, is probable in itself, and is made practically certain by the fact that this agreement extends in part to the Letters of Herakleitos, which, though spurious, were certainly composed by some one who had access to the original work. The argument was that men themselves act just in the same way as Nature, and it is therefore surprising that they do not recognise the laws by which she works. The painter produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of colours, the musician by that of high and low notes. “If one were to make all things alike, there would be no delight in them.” There are many similar examples in the Hippokratean tract, some of which must certainly come from Herakleitos; but it is not easy to separate them from the later additions.[^[416]]

Correlation of opposites.

80. There are a number of Herakleitean fragments which form a class by themselves, and are among the most striking of all the utterances that have come down to us. Their common characteristic is, that they assert in the most downright way the identity of various things which are usually regarded as opposites. The clue to their meaning is to be found in the account already given of the assertion that day and night are one. We have seen that Herakleitos meant to say, not that day was night or that night was day, but that they were two sides of the same process, namely, the oscillation of the “measures” of fire and water, and that neither would be possible without the other. Any explanation that can be given of night will also be an explanation of day, and vice versa; for it will be an account of that which is common to both, and manifests itself now as one and now as the other. Moreover, it is just because it has manifested itself in the one form that it must next appear in the other; for this is required by the law of compensation or Justice.

This is only a particular application of the universal principle that the primary fire is one even in its division. It itself is, even in its unity, both surfeit and want, war and peace (fr. [36]). In other words, the “satiety” which makes fire pass into other forms, which makes it seek “rest in change” (frs. [82], [83]), and “hide itself” (fr. [10]) in the “hidden attunement” of opposition, is only one side of the process. The other is the “want” which leads it to consume the bright vapour as fuel. The upward path is nothing without the downward (fr. [69]). If either were to cease, the other would cease too, and the world would disappear; for it takes both to make an apparently stable reality.

All other utterances of the kind are to be explained in the same way. If there were no cold, there would be no heat; for a thing can only grow warm if, and in so far as, it is already cold. And the same thing applies to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. [39]). These, it will be observed, are just the two primary oppositions of Anaximander, and Herakleitos is showing that the war between them is really peace, for it is the common element in them (fr. [62]) which appears as strife, and that very strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had taught, an injustice which they commit one against the other, and which must be expiated by a reabsorption of both in their common ground.[^[417]] The strife itself is the common ground (fr. [62]), and is eternal.

The most startling of these sayings is that which affirms that good and evil are the same (fr. [57]). This does not mean in the least, however, that good is evil or that evil is good, but simply that they are the two inseparable halves of one and the same thing. A thing can become good only in so far as it is already evil, and evil only in so far as it is already good, and everything depends on the contrast. The illustration given in fr. [58] shows this clearly. Torture, one would say, was an evil, and yet it is made a good by the presence of another evil, namely, disease; as is shown by the fact that surgeons expect a fee for inflicting it upon their patients. Justice, on the other hand, which is a good, would be altogether unknown were it not for the existence of injustice, which is an evil (fr. [60]). And that is why it is not good for men to get everything they wish (fr. [104]). Just as the cessation of strife in the world would mean its destruction, so the disappearance of hunger, disease, and weariness would mean the disappearance of satisfaction, health, and rest.

This leads to a theory of relativity which prepares the way for the doctrine of Protagoras, that “Man is the measure of all things.”[^[418]] Sea-water is good for fish and bad for men (fr. [52]), and so with many other things. At the same time, Herakleitos is not a believer in absolute relativity. The process of the world is not merely a circle, but an “upward and downward path.” At the upper end, where the two paths meet, we have the pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there is no relativity. We are told expressly that, while to man some things are evil and some things are good, all things are good to God (fr. [61]). Now by God there is no doubt that Herakleitos meant Fire. He also calls it the “one wise,” and perhaps said that it “knows all things.” There can hardly be any question that what he meant to say was that in it the opposition and relativity which are universal in the world disappear. It is doubtless to this that frs. [96], [97], and [98] refer.

The Wise.

81. Herakleitos speaks of “wisdom” or the “wise” in two senses. We have seen already that he said wisdom was “something apart from everything else” (fr. [18]), meaning by it the perception of the unity of the many; and he also applies the term to that unity itself regarded as the “thought that directs the course of all things.” This is synonymous with the pure fire which is not differentiated into two parts, one taking the upward and the other the downward path. That alone has wisdom; the partial things we see have not. We ourselves are only wise in so far as we are fiery (fr. [74]).

Theology.

82. With certain reservations, Herakleitos was prepared to call the one Wisdom by the name of Zeus. Such, at least, appears to be the meaning of fr. [65]. What these reservations were, it is easy to guess. It is not, of course, to be pictured in the form of a man. In saying this, Herakleitos would only have been repeating what had already been laid down by Anaximander and Xenophanes. He agrees further with Xenophanes in holding that this “god,” if it is to be called so, is one; but his polemic against popular religion was directed rather against the rites and ceremonies themselves than their mere mythological outgrowth. He gives a list (fr. [124]) of some of the most characteristic religious figures of his time, and the context in which the fragment is quoted shows that he in some way threatened them with the wrath to come. He comments upon the absurdity of praying to images (fr. [126]), and the strange idea that blood-guiltiness can be washed out by the shedding of blood (fr. [130]). He seems also to have said that it was absurd to celebrate the worship of Dionysos by cheerful and licentious ceremonies, while Hades was propitiated by gloomy rites (fr. [127]). According to the mystic doctrine itself, the two were really one; and the one Wisdom ought to be worshipped in its integrity.

The few fragments which deal with theology and religion hardly suggest to us that Herakleitos was in sympathy with the religious revival of the time, and yet we have been asked to consider his system “in the light of the idea of the mysteries.”[^[419]] Our attention is called to the fact that he was “king” of Ephesos, that is, priest of the branch of the Eleusinian mysteries established in that city, which was also connected in some way with the worship of Artemis or the Great Mother.[^[420]] These statements may be true; but, even if they are, what follows? We ought surely to have learnt from Lobeck by this time that there was no “idea” in the mysteries at all; and on this point the results of recent anthropological research have abundantly confirmed those of philological and historical inquiry.

Ethics of Herakleitos.

83. The moral teaching of Herakleitos has sometimes been regarded as an anticipation of the “common-sense” theory of Ethics.[^[421]] The “common” upon which Herakleitos insists is, nevertheless, something very different from common sense, for which, indeed, he had the greatest possible contempt (fr. 111). It is, in fact, his strongest objection to “the many,” that they live each in his own world (fr. [95]), as if they had a private wisdom of their own (fr. [92]); and public opinion is therefore just the opposite of “the common.”

The Ethics of Herakleitos are to be regarded as a corollary of his anthropological and cosmological views. Their chief requirement is that we keep our souls dry, and thus assimilate them to the one Wisdom, which is fire. That is what is really “common,” and the greatest fault is to act like men asleep (fr. [94]), that is, by letting our souls grow moist, to cut ourselves off from the fire in the world. We do not know what were the consequences which Herakleitos deduced from his rule that we must hold fast to what is common, but it is easy to see what their nature must have been. The wise man would not try to secure good without its correlative evil. He would not seek for rest without exertion, nor expect to enjoy contentment without first suffering discontent. He would not complain that he had to take the bad with the good, but would consistently look at things as a whole.

Herakleitos prepared the way for the Stoic world-state by comparing “the common” to the laws of a city. And these are even more than a type of the divine law: they are imperfect embodiments of it. They cannot, however, exhaust it altogether; for in all human affairs there is an element of relativity (fr. [91]). “Man is a baby compared to God” (fr. [97]). Such as they are, however, the city must fight for them as for its walls; and, if it has the good fortune to possess a citizen with a dry soul, he is worth ten thousand (fr. [113]); for in him alone is “the common” embodied.

[319]. Diog. ix. 1 (R. P. 29), no doubt from Apollodoros through some intermediate authority. Jacoby, pp. 227 sqq.

[320]. Bernays, Die Heraklitischen Briefe, pp. 13 sqq.

[321]. Bernays, op. cit. pp. 20 sqq.

[322]. Sotion ap. Diog. ix. 5 (R. P. 29 c).

[323]. Diog. ix. 6 (R. P. 31).

[324]. See Patin, Heraklits Einheitslehre, pp. 3 sqq. Herakleitos said (fr. 68) that it was death to souls to become water; and we are told accordingly that he died of dropsy. He said (fr. 114) that the Ephesians should leave their city to their children, and (fr. 79) that Time was a child playing draughts. We are therefore told that he refused to take any part in public life, and went to play with the children in the temple of Artemis. He said (fr. 85) that corpses were more fit to be cast out than dung; and we are told that he covered himself with dung when attacked with dropsy. Lastly, he is said to have argued at great length with his doctors because of fr. 58. For these tales see Diog. ix. 3-5, and compare the stories about Empedokles discussed in Chap. V. [§ 100].

[325]. The variety of titles enumerated in Diog. ix. 12 (R. P. 30 b) seems to show that none was authentically known. That of “Muses” comes from Plato, Soph. 242 d 7. The others are mere “mottoes” (Schuster) prefixed by Stoic editors, and intended to emphasise their view that the subject of the work was ethical or political (Diog. ix. 15; R. P. 30 c).

[326]. Diog. ix. 5 (R. P. 30). Bywater has followed this hint in his arrangement of the fragments. The three sections are 1-90, 91-97, 98-130.

[327]. R. P. 30 a. The epithet ὁ σκοτεινός is of late date, but Timon of Phleious already called him αἰνικτής (fr. 43, Diels).

[328]. See the valuable observations of Diels in the Introduction to his Herakleitos von Ephesos, pp. iv. sqq.

[329]. Cf. Diog. ix. 6 (R. P. 31).

[330]. In his edition, Diels has given up all attempt to arrange the fragments according to subject, and this makes his text unsuitable for our purpose. I think, too, that he overestimates the difficulty of an approximate arrangement, and makes too much of the view that the style of Herakleitos was “aphoristic.” That it was so, is an important and valuable remark; but it does not follow that Herakleitos wrote like Nietzsche. For a Greek, however prophetic in his tone, there must always be a distinction between an aphoristic and an incoherent style. See the excellent remarks of Lortzing in Berl. Phil. Wochenschr. 1896, pp. 1 sqq.

[331]. Both Bywater and Diels accept Bergk’s λόγου for δόγματος and Miller’s εἶναι for εἰδέναι. Cf. Philo, leg. all. iii. c, quoted in Bywater’s note.

[332]. The λόγος is simply the discourse of Herakleitos himself; though, as he is a prophet, we may call it “the Word.” It can neither mean a discourse addressed to Herakleitos nor yet “reason.” (Cf. Zeller, p. 630, n. 1; Eng. trans. ii. p. 7, n. 2.) A difficulty has been raised about the words ἐόντας αἰεί. How could Herakleitos say that his discourse had always existed? The answer is that in Ionic ἐών means “true” when coupled with words like λόγος. Cf. Herod. i. 30, τῷ ἐόντι χρησάμενος λέγει; and even Aristoph. Frogs, 1052, οὐκ ὄντα λόγον. It is only by taking the words in this way that we can understand Aristotle’s hesitation as to the proper punctuation of the fragment (Rhet. Γ 5. 1407 b 15; R. P. 30 a). The Stoic interpretation given by Marcus Aurelius, iv. 46 (R. P. 32 b), must be rejected altogether. The word λόγος was never used like that till post-Aristotelian times.

[333]. I have departed from the punctuation of Bywater here, and supplied a fresh object to the verb as suggested by Gomperz (Arch. i. 100).

[334]. Cf. Herod, i. 8. The application is, no doubt, the same as that of the last two fragments. Personal inquiry is better than tradition.

[335]. See Chap. II. p. 107, [n. 224]. The best attested reading is ἐποιήσατο, not ἐποίησεν, and ἐποιήσατο ἑαυτοῦ means “claimed as his own.” The words ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς συγγραφάς have been doubted since the time of Schleiermacher, and Diels has now come to regard the whole fragment as spurious. This is because it was used to prove that Pythagoras wrote books (cf. Diels, Arch. iii. p. 451). As Mr. Bywater has pointed out, however, the fragment itself makes no such statement; it only says that he read books, which we may presume he did. I would further suggest that the old-fashioned συγγραφάς is rather too good for a forger, and that the omission of the very thing to be proved is remarkable. The last suggestion of a book by Pythagoras disappears with the reading ἐποιήσατο for ἐποίησεν. Of course a late writer who read of Pythagoras making extracts from books would assume that he put them into a book of his own, just as people did in his own days. For the rest, I understand ἱστορίη of science, which is contrasted with the κακοτεχνίη which Pythagoras derived from the συγγραφαί of men like Pherekydes of Syros.

[336]. The word κόσμος must mean “world” here, not merely “order;” for only the world could be identified with fire. This use of the word is Pythagorean, and there is no reason to doubt that Herakleitos may have known it.

[337]. It is important to notice that μέτρα is internal accusative with ἁπτόμενον, “with its measures kindling and its measures going out.”

[338]. On the word πρηστήρ, see below, p. 165, [n. 380].

[339]. The subject of fr. 23 is γῆ, as we see from Diog. ix. 9 (R. P. 36), πάλιν τε αὖ τὴν γὴν χεῖσθαι; and Aet. i. 3, 11 (Dox. p. 284 a 1; b 5), ἔπειτα ἀναχαλωμένην τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τοῦ τυρὸς χύσει (Dübner: φύσει, libri) ὕδωρ ἀποτελεῖσθαι. Herakleitos might quite well say γῆ θάλασσα διαχέεται, and the context in Clement (Strom. v. p. 712) seems to imply this. The phrase μετρέεται εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον can only mean that the proportion of the measures remains constant. So practically Zeller (p. 690, n. 1), zu derselben Grösse.

[340]. With Diels I adopt the transposition (proposed by Tocco) of ἀέρος and γῆς.

[341]. I understand ἐπελθόν of the πυρὸς ἔφοδος, for which see below, p. 168. Diels has pointed out that καταλαμβάνειν is the old word for “to convict.” It is, literally, “to overtake,” just as αἱρεῖν is “to catch.”

[342]. In this fragment it is clear that οὖρος = τέρματα, and therefore means “boundary,” not “hill.” As αἴθριος Ζεύς means the bright blue sky, I do not think its οὖρος can be the South Pole, as Diels says. It is more likely the horizon. I am inclined to take the fragment as a protest against the Pythagorean theory of a southern hemisphere.

[343]. We learn from Diog. ix. 10 (quoted below, p. [164]) that Herakleitos explained why the sun was warmer and brighter than the moon, and this is doubtless a fragment of that passage. I now think the words ἕνεκα τῶν ἄλλων ἄστρων are from Herakleitos. So Diels.

[344]. Hesiod said Day was the child of Night (Theog. 124).

[345]. Reading ὅκωσπερ πῦρ for ὅκωσπερ with Diels.

[346]. Il. xviii. 107. I add the words οἰχήσεσθαι γὰρ πάντα from Simpl. in Cat. (88 b 30 schol. Br.). They seem to me at least to represent something that was in the original.

[347]. I cannot think it likely that Herakleitos said both παλίντονος and παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη, and I prefer Plutarch’s παλίντονος (R. P. 34 b) to the παλίντροπος of Hippolytos. Diels thinks that the polemic of Parmenides decides the question in favour of παλίντροπος; but see below, p. 184, [n. 415], and Chap. IV. p. 198, [n. 438].

[348]. This, I now think, is the medical rule αἱ ἰατρεῖαι διὰ τῶν ἐναντίων, e.g. βοηθεῖν τῷ θερμῷ ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχρόν (Stewart on Arist. Eth. 1104 b 16).

[349]. Fr. 51a was recovered by Bywater from Albertus Magnus. See Journ. Phil. ix. p. 230.

[350]. On fr. 55 see Diels in Berl. Sitzb. 1901, p. 188.

[351]. I now read ἐπαιτέονται with Bernays and Diels.

[352]. On fr. 59 see Diels in Berl. Sitzb. 1901, p. 188. The reading συνάψιες seems to be well attested and gives an excellent sense. It is not, however, correct to say that the optative could not be used in an imperative sense.

[353]. By “these things,” he probably meant all kinds of injustice.

[354]. Diels supposes that fr. 64 went on ὁκόσα δὲ τεθνηκότες ζωή. “Life, Sleep, Death is the threefold ladder in psychology, as in physics Fire, Water, Earth.”

[355]. I think now with Diels that the words οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει are probably genuine. They present no difficulty if we remember that λόγος means “measurement,” as in fr. [23].

[356]. This fragment is interesting because of the great antiquity of the corruptions which it has suffered. According to Stephanus, who is followed by Bywater and Diels, we should read: Αὔη ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη, ξηρή (or rather ξηρά—the Ionic form would only appear when the word got into the text) being a mere gloss upon the somewhat unusual αὔη. When once ξηρή got into the text, αὔη became αὐγή, and we get the sentence: “the dry light is the wisest soul,” whence the siccum lumen of Bacon. Now this reading is certainly as old as Plutarch, who, in his Life of Romulus (c. 28), takes αὐγή to mean lightning, as it sometimes does, and supposes the idea to be that the wise soul bursts through the prison of the body like dry lightning (whatever that may be) through a cloud. I do not think that Clement’s making the same mistake proves anything at all (Zeller, p. 705, n. 3; Eng. trans. i. p. 80, n. 2), except that he had read his Plutarch. Lastly, it is worth noticing that, though Plutarch must have written αὐγή, the MSS. vary between αὕτη and αὐτή. The next stage is the corruption of the corrupt αὐγή into οὗ γῆ. This yields the sentiment that “where the earth is dry, the soul is wisest,” and is as old as Philo (see Mr. Bywater’s notes).

[357]. I understand μεταπεσόντα here as meaning “moved” from one γραμμή or division of the draught-board to another.

[358]. Sext. Math. vii. 133, διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ ξυνῷ. It seems to me that these words must belong to Herakleitos, though Bywater omits them. On the other hand, the words τοῦ λόγου δὲ ὄντος ξυνοῦ (so, not δ’ ἐόντος, the best MSS.) seem clearly to belong to the Stoic interpreter whom Sextus is following, and who was anxious to connect this fragment with fr. [2] (ὀλίγα προσδιελθὼν ἐπιφέρει) in order to get the doctrine of the κοινὸς λόγος. The whole context in Sextus should be read.

[359]. The words λόγῳ τῳ τὰ ὅλα διοικοῦντι, which Diels prints as part of this fragment, seem to me to belong to Marcus Aurelius and not to Herakleitos.

[360]. Adopting Heitz’s κακὸν for καὶ with Diels.

[361]. The word θυμός has its Homeric sense. The gratification of desire implies the exchange of dry soul-fire (fr. 74) for moisture (fr. 72). Aristotle understood θυμός here as anger (Eth. Nic. Β 2, 1105 a 8).

[362]. This seems to be a clear reference to the “three lives.” See Chap. II. [§ 45], p. [108].

[363]. Reading δοκέοντα with Schleiermacher (or δοκέοντ’ ὧν with Diels). I have omitted φυλάσσειν, as I do not know what it means, and none of the conjectures commends itself.

[364]. On the meaning of δαίμων here, see my edition of Aristotle’s Ethics, pp. 1 sq. As Professor Gildersleeve puts it, the δαίμων is the individual form of τύχη, as κήρ is of θάνατος.

[365]. I have not ventured to include the words ἔνθα δ’ ἐόντι at the beginning, as the text seems to me too uncertain. See, however, Diels’s interesting note.

[366]. On the source used by Hippolytos in the first four chapters of Ref. i. see Diels, Dox. p. 145. We must carefully distinguish Ref. i. and Ref. ix. as sources of information about Herakleitos. The latter book is an attempt to show that the Monarchian heresy of Noetos was derived from Herakleitos instead of from the Gospel, and is a rich mine of Herakleitean fragments.

[367]. Arist. Met. Α, 3. 984 a 7 (R. P. 56 c): Theophr. ap. Simpl. Phys. 23, 33 (R. P. 36 c).

[368]. For these double accounts see Dox. pp. 163 sqq. and Appendix, [§ 15].

[369]. Diog. ix. 15 (R. P. 30 c). Schleiermacher rightly insisted upon this.

[370]. The word συνοικειοῦν is used of the Stoic method of interpretation by Philodemos (cf. Dox. 547 b, n.), and Cicero (N.D. i. 41) renders it by accommodare. Chrysippos in particular gave a great impulse to this sort of thing, as we may best learn from Galen, de Plac. Hippocr. et Plat. Book iii. Good examples are Aet. i. 13, 2; 28, 1; iv. 3, 12,—where distinctively Stoic doctrines are ascribed to Herakleitos. What the Stoics were capable of, we see from Kleanthes, fr. 55, Pearson. He proposed to read Ζεῦ ἀναδωδωναῖε in Il. xvi. 233, ὡς τὸν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀναθυμιώμενον ἀέρα διὰ τὴν ἀνάδοσιν Ἀναδωδωναῖον ὄντα.

[371]. See Patin, Heraklits Einheitslehre (1886). To Patin undoubtedly belongs the credit of showing clearly that the unity of opposites was the central doctrine of Herakleitos. It is not always easy, however, to follow him when he comes to details.

[372]. Philo, Rer. Div. Her. 43 (R. P. 34 c).

[373]. The source of his error was Hegel’s remarkable statement that there was no proposition of Herakleitos that he had not taken up into his own logic (Gesch. d. Phil. i. 328). The example which he cites is the statement that Being does not exist any more than not-Being, for which he refers to Arist. Met. Α, 4. This, however, is not there ascribed to Herakleitos at all, but to Leukippos or Demokritos, with whom it meant that space was as real as matter ([§ 175]). Aristotle does, indeed, tell us in the Metaphysics that “some” think Herakleitos says that the same thing can be and not be; but he adds that it does not follow that a man thinks what he says (Met. Γ 3. 1005 b 24). I take this to mean that, though Herakleitos did make this assertion in words, he did not mean by it what the same assertion would naturally have meant at a later date. Herakleitos was speaking only of nature; the logical meaning of the words never occurred to him. This is confirmed by Κ, 5. 1062 a 31, where we are told that by being questioned in a certain manner Herakleitos could be made to admit the principle of contradiction; as it was, he did not understand what he said. In other words, he was unconscious of its logical bearing.

Aristotle was aware, then, that the theories of Herakleitos were not to be understood in a logical sense. On the other hand, this does not prevent him from saying that according to the view of Herakleitos, everything would be true (Met. Δ, 7. 1012 a 24). If we remember his constant attitude to earlier thinkers, this will not lead us to suspect either his good faith or his intelligence. (See Appendix, [§ 2].)