M. C. b

x INTRODUCTION.
world. But while the former with the Ionic sensitiveness to all outward influences dwelt more upon the material element itself and the life which manifested itself in its ever-changing developments, the latter (who, if not themselves Dorian, were yet surrounded by Dorian settlers, with their Doric ideal of discipline, order, stability, superiority to sense, as opposed to the Ionic ideal of free growth, of ease, beauty and nature,) turned their thoughts more to the laws by which the world was governed, or the one unchanging substance which they believed to underlie its shifting phenomena.
The first name in Greek philosophy is the so-called founder of the Ionic or physical school, Thales of Miletus, a contemporary of Solon (B.c. 640—550), said to be of Phenician descent. With him begins the transition from the mythological to the scientific inter- pretation of nature, the transition, as Grote puts it, from the question Who sends rain, or thunder, or earthquakes, and why does he send it? to the question What are the antecedent conditions of rain, thunder, or earthquakes? The old cosmogonies and theogonies suggested the idea of development under the form of a personal history of a number of supernatural beings variously related to each other. The first parent of all, according to Homer, was Oceanus (Il. xiv. 201, 240), perhaps a nature-myth to be inter- preted of the sun rising and setting in the sea. Thales stripped him of his personality, and laid down the proposition that water is the one original substance out of which all things are pro- duced. Aristotle conjectures that he was led to this belief by observing that moisture is essential to animal and vegetable life: probably it was also from the fact that water supplies the most obvious example of the transmutation of matter under its three forms, solid, fluid and gaseous. Thales further held that the uni- verse is a living creature; which he expressed by saying that ‘all things are full of God,’ and in agreement with this he is reported to have said that ‘the magnet had a soul.’ It is this portion of his doctrine which is travestied by the Epicurean critic in Bk, 1 § 25.
The second of the Ionic philosophers was Anaximander, also an inhabitant of Miletus (p.c. 610—540). He followed Thales in seeking for an original substance to which he gave the name of apxy, but he found this not in Water, but in the azeipov, matter indeterminate (z.e. not yet developed into any one of the forms familiar to us) and infinite, which we may regard as bearing the same relation to Hesiod’s primacval Chaos, as Water did to the Homeric Oceanus.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. xl
The elementary contraries, hot, cold, moist, dry, are separated from this first matter by virtue of the eternal movement belonging to it ; thus are produced the four elements ; the earth was in the form of a cylinder, self-poised, in the centre of the universe; round it was air, and round that again a fiery sphere which was broken up so as to form the heavenly bodies. As al] substances are produced out of the Infinite so they are resolved into it, thus ‘atoning for their injustice’ in arrogating to themselves a separate individual existence. The Infinite is divine, containing and directing all things: divine too are the innumerable worlds which it is ever generating and re-absorbing into its own bosom. (N. D. 1 25.)
After Anaximander comes Anaximenes, also of Miletus, who is supposed to have flourished about 520 B.c. While his doctrine approaches in many respects to that of Anaximander, he nevertheless returned to the principle of Thales in so far that he assumed as the apxy, a definite substance, Air, in contradistinction to the indefinite drewpov of his immediate predecessor. Air is infinite in extent and eternal in duration. It is in continual motion, and produces all things out of itself by condensation and rarefaction, passing through successive stages from fire downwards to wind, cloud, water, earth and stone. As man’s life is supported by breathing, so the uni- verse subsists by the air which encompasses it. We are told that Anaximenes gave the name of God both to his first principle Air, and to certain of its products, probably the stars. (N. D. 1 26.)
The greatest of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Heraclitus of Ephesus, known among the ancients as the obscure and the weeping philosopher, was a little junior to Anaximenes. Following in the steps of his predecessor, he held that it was one and the self- same substance which by processes of condensation and rarefaction changed itself into all the elements known by us, but he preferred to name this from its highest potency fire, rather than to stop at the intermediate stage of air. But the point of main interest with him was not the original substance, but the process, the ever- lasting movement upwards and downwards, fire (including air), water, earth ; earth, water, fire. All death is birth into a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. There is properly no existence but only ‘becoming,’ 7. e. a continual passing from one existence into another. Each moment is the union of opposites, being and not- being: the life of the world is maintained by conflict, réAcuos mat7p
52
xll INTRODUCTION.
mavtwy. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All things are in flux like the waters of a river. One thing alone is per- manent, the universal law which reveals itself in this movement. This is Zeus, the all-pervading reason of the world. It is only the illusion of the senses which makes us fancy that there are such things as permanent substances. Fire exhibits most clearly the incessant movement and activity of the world: confined in the body it con- stitutes the human soul, in the universe at large it is God (the substance and the process being thus identified).
Heraclitus is the first philosopher of whom we read that he referred to the doctrines of other philosophers. He is said to have spoken highly of some of the seven Wise Men, but condemned severely Pythagoras and Xenophanes as well as the poets Hesiod, Homer and Archilochus. Though I agree with Ueberweg in classing him with the older Ionics, yet his philosophy was no doubt largely developed with a reference to the rival schools of Italy.
In the N. D. allusion is twice made to the obscurity of Heraclitus (1 74, 111 35), but he does not appear in the catalogue of philosophers criticized by Velleius, and this though Philodemus had certainly treated of him, as we may see from the allusions in the Fragments (Gompertz, pp. 70, 81). The reason for this omission is probably that, his philosophy having been incorporated into the Stoic system, it was unnecessary to discuss it separately. See Hirzel, p. 7 foll., and N. D. 1 35, 1 74.
We must now cross the water with Pythagoras of Samos, born 582 B.c., who settled at Crotona in Italy, 529 B.c., and there founded what is known as the Italic school. He seems to have found in the mysteries and in the Orphic hymns the starting point which Thales had discovered in Homer; and there can be little doubt that his doctrine and system were also in part suggested by his travels in Egypt. He established a sort of religious brotherhood with strict rules and a severe initiation, insisted on training in gymnastics, mathematics and music, and taught the doctrines of immortality and of the transmigration of souls, and the duty of abstaining from animal food, He is said to have committed nothing to writing himself, but his doctrines were religiously guarded by his disciples (cf. N. D. 1 10), and recorded by Archytas and Philolaus, the latter a con- temporary of Socrates.
The new and startling feature in the Pythagorean philosophy
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. xXili
as opposed to the Ionic systems, was that it found its apyy, its key of the universe, not in any known substance, but in number and proportion. This might naturally have occurred to one who had listened to the teaching of Thales and Anaximander. After all it makes no difference, he might say, what we take as our original matter, it is the law of development, the measure of condensation which determines the nature of each thing. Number rules the har- monies of music, the proportions of sculpture and architecture, the movements of the heavenly bodies. It is Number which makes the universe into a xoopos, and is the secret of a virtuous -and orderly life. Then by a confusion similar to that which led Heraclitus to identify the law of movement with Fire, the Pythagoreans went on to identify number with substance. One, the Monad, evolved out of itself Limit (order) and the Unlimited (freedom, expansiveness), the Dyad; out of the harmonious mixture of these contraries all par- ticular substances were produced. Again, One was the point, Two the line, Three the plane, Four the concrete solid (but from another point of view, as being the first square number, equal into equal, it was conceived to be Justice). Yet once more, One was the central fire, the hearth of the universe, the throne of Zeus, round which revolved not only the heavenly bodies, but the earth itself. The Decad is the ordered universe surrounded by its fiery envelope. The Pythagorean doctrine of the soul and of God is variously re- ported. Zeller thinks that Cicero’s representation belongs to the later teachers, and not to Pythagoras himself, as it is not supported by Plato and Aristotle. If we may trust the oldest accounts, there does not seem to have been any close connexion between the religious and philosophical opinions of Pythagoras. We are told that he believed in One God eternal, unchangeable, ruling and upholding all things, that the soul was a ‘harmony,’ that the body was its prison, in which it was punished for past sin and disciplined for a divine life after death, that those who failed to profit by this discipline would pass into lower forms of life, or suffer severer penalties in Hades (N. D.1 27, 74, 111 27, 88).
The second of the Italic schools was the Eleatic, founded by Xenophanes of Colophon in Asia Minor (b. 569 B.c.), who migrated to Elea in Italy about 540 B.c. While the Pythagoreans strove to explain nature mathematically and symbolically, the Eleatics in their later developments did the same by their metaphysical abstractions, Xenophanes himself seems to have received his first philosophical
X1V INTRODUCTION.
impulse in the revulsion from the popular mythology. He con- demned anthropomorphism and polytheism altogether, and said that Homer and Hesiod had attributed to the Gods conduct which would have been disgraceful in men. God is one, all eye, all ear, all understanding ; he is for ever unmoved, unchangeable, a vast all- embracing sphere. See N. D. 1 28. It is disputed whether the last expression is to be taken literally, implying that the universe is God, or whether it is a metaphor to express God’s perfection and omnipresence. The chief representative of the Eleatic School is Parmenides (b. 515 n.c.). He disengaged the doctrine of Xenophanes from its theological form, and ascribed to Being what his predecessor had ascribed to God. His philosophy is the antithesis of that of Iferaclitus. While Heraclitus said all is motion and change, the appearance of fixity is merely illusion of the senses; Parmenides asserted, with distinct reference to him, that all that exists has existed and will exist the same for ever, that it 1s change and multiplicity which is illusory. It is only by thought we can become conscious of the really existent; being and thought are the same, sense can only give rise to uncertain opinion. In such language we see partly a protest against the vagueness of the conception of
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development or ‘becoming, by which the Ionic philosophers en- deavoured to explain the origin of things, ‘You say fire becomes water, but each thing 7s what it zs, and can never be otherwise ;’ partly an idea of the indestructibility of matter; partly an antici- pation of the later distinction between necessary and contingent truth; thus one point dwelé upon by him was the impossibility of any separation of parts of space.
But though truth only belonged to the world of real existence, Parmenides condescended to give his romance of nature for the benefit of those who could not penetrate beyond the world of phe- nomena, He begins with two principles, light and darkness, also called fire and earth, or male and female; and supposes all things to proceed from their mixture. The existing universe consists of a central fire, the seat of the presiding Deity, and of several concentric rings of mingled light and darkness, bounded on the outside by a wall of flame. The first-born of Gods was Love, by whom the union of opposites is brought about. In this we may trace a reminiscence of the Hesiodic "Epws (N. D. 1 28).
Zeno of Elea (b. 490 B.c.) is chiefly known from his arguments showing the absurd consequences of the ordinary belief in the
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. XV
phenomenal world. Parmenides must be right in denying motion and multiplicity, for their assertion leads to self-contradiction. Zeno was in consequence called the inventor of Dialectic. His arguments, especially the famous ‘Achilles,’ still find a place in treatises on Logic (N. D. 111 82).
The clearly marked opposition between the Ionic and the Eleatic views of nature, as shown in Heracljtus and Parmenides, had a powerful influence on the subsequent course of philosophy. Em- pedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists agreed in accepting the Eleatic principle of the immutability of substance, while denying its absolute Oneness ; and they explained the Ionic ‘becoming’ as the result of the mixture of a number of unchangeable substances. Empedocles of Agrigentum (b. 500 B.c.) held that there were four eternal, self-subsistent elements or ‘roots of things,’ which were being continually separated and combined under the influence of Love and Hatred. At times Love has the upper hand, at times Hate. When Love has the complete supremacy the elements are at rest, united in one all-including sphere (S¢atpos): when Hate prevails, the elements are entirely separate. The soul, like all other things, is formed by the mixture of the elements, and is thus capable of perception, for like can only be perceived by like. In his opinions on the Gods and on religion, Empedocles was chiefly influenced by Pythagoras. He believed in the existence of Daemons intermediate between Gods and men, some of which had passed into mortal bodies as an atonement for former sins, and could only be restored to their original state after long ages of discipline. While he speaks of God at one time as one spirit pervading the world in swift . thought, in other places he speaks of Gods produced like men from the mixture of the elements, but possessed of a longer existence, and then again we find divinity attributed to Sphaerus and the four ele- ments and two moving powers (N. D. 1 29).
Returning now to Ionia, we see the effect of the Eleatic school in the speculations of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (b. 500 B.c.), of whom Aristotle says that he appeared among the older philosophers like a sober man among drunkards. Instead of the four elements of Empedocles, which he declared to be themselves compounds, he assumed an indefinite number of ‘seeds’ of the different kinds of matter. To these seeds later philosophers gave the distinctive name
XV1 INTRODUCTION.
of ‘homeomeries,’ denoting that the constituent particles of bodies were of the same nature as the bodies which they composed, while the unqualitied atoms of Democritus gave rise to the different qualities of their compounds by the mode in which they were compounded. In the beginning these seeds were huddled together in a confused chaos, then came Nous, the pure self-:moving intel- ligence, almighty and all-wise (this takes the place of the half conscious Love and Hate of Empedocles), and communicated a rotatory impulse to the inerf mass, by means of which the cognate particles were gradually brought together and reduced to order. Nous is the soul of the world and dwells in all living things, even plants, as the principle of their life. Whether Anaxagoras called it by the name of God is doubtful. Plato and Aristotle complain that, having begun well, he failed to make full use of the right principle with which he started, and turned his attention to mechanical causes, only having recourse to Vous as a deus ex machina when the others failed. (N. D. 1 26.)
Diogenes of Apollonia in Crete was a younger contemporary of Anaxagoras, against whom he took up a reactionary position and defended the older Ionic doctrine, assuming diz to be the one principle out of which all things were produced, and assigning to it all the attributes of Wows. Both he and Anaxagoras taught at Athens, but were compelled to leave it on a charge of impiety. (N.