Since the beginning, in which we are told whose reasoning it is, is

wanting, conjecture only applies it to Xenophanes. The writing begins

with the words “He says,” without any name being given. It thus depends

on the superscription alone whether Aristotle speaks of the philosophy

of Xenophanes or not, and it must be noticed that different hands have

put different superscriptions. Indeed, there is in this work (c. 2) an

opinion of Xenophanes mentioned in such a way that it appears as though

had what was previously quoted by Aristotle been by him ascribed to

Xenophanes, the expression would have been different. It is possible

that Zeno is meant, as the internal evidence abundantly shows. There

is in it a dialectic more developed in form, more real reflexion, than

from the verses could be expected, not from Xenophanes alone, but even

from Parmenides. For Aristotle expressly says that Xenophanes does not

yet determine with precision; thus the cultured reasoning contained in

Aristotle must certainly be denied to Xenophanes; at least, it is so

far certain that Xenophanes himself did not know how to express his

thoughts in a manner so orderly and precise as that found here. We find

it said:—

“If anything is, it is eternal (_ἀΐδιον_).” Eternity is an awkward

word, for it immediately makes us think of time and mingle past and

future as an infinite length of time; but what is meant is that

_ἀΐδιον_ is the self-identical, supersensuous, unchangeable, pure

present, which is without any time-conception. It is, origination and

change are shut out; if it commences, it does so out of nothing or

out of Being. “It is impossible that anything should arise from the

nothing. If everything could have arisen, or could it merely not have

been everything eternally, it would equally have arisen out of nothing.

For, if everything had arisen, nothing would once have existed. If some

were alone the existent out of which the rest sprang, the one would be

more and greater. But the more and greater would thus have arisen out

of the nothing of itself, for in the less there is not its more, nor in

the smaller its greater.”

Simplicius makes this note to the Physics of Aristotle (p. 22 b): “No

more can anything arise out of the existent, for the existent already

is, and thus does not first arise from the existent.”

“As eternal, the existent also is unlimited, since it has no beginning

from which it came, nor end in which it ceases. The infinite all is

one, for, if there were two or more, they would limit one another,”

and thus have a beginning and end. The one would be the nothing of the

other and come forth from this nothing. “This one is like itself; for

if it were unlike it would no longer be the one that was posited, but

many. This one is likewise immovable, inasmuch as it does not move

itself, since it does not pass out into anything. In passing out, it

would require to do so into what is full or what is empty; it could

not be into the full, for that is an impossibility, and just as little

could it be into what is empty, for that is the nothing. The one,

therefore, is in this way devoid of pain or suffering, not changing in

position or form, or mingling with what is different. For all these

determinations involve the origination of non-being and passing away

of Being, which is impossible.” Thus here again the contradiction

which takes place when origination and passing away are spoken of, is

revealed.

Now Melissus places opinion in opposition to this truth. The change

and multiplicity extinguished in Being appears on the other side, in

consciousness, as in what is opinionative; it is necessary to say this

if only the negative side, the removal of these moments, the Absolute

as destitute of predicate, is laid hold of. “In sensuous perception the

opposite is present for us; that is to say, a number of things, their

change, their origination and passing away, and their intermingling.

Thus that first knowledge must take its place beside this second,

which has as much certainty for ordinary consciousness as the first.”

Melissus does not seem to have decided for the one or the other, but,

oscillating between both, to have limited the knowledge of the truth to

the statement that, speaking generally, between two opposite modes of

presentation, the more probable opinion is to be preferred, but that

what is so preferred is only to be regarded as the stronger opinion,

and not as truth. This is what Aristotle says of him.

Since Aristotle, in distinguishing his philosophy from the philosophy

of Parmenides, maintains that in the first place Parmenides seems

to understand the One as the principle of thought, and Melissus as

matter, we must remark that this distinction falls away in pure

existence, Being, or the One. Pure matter, as also pure thought (if

I am to speak of such a distinction), are not present to Parmenides

and Melissus, since they are abrogated; and it must only be in the

manner of his expression that one of them—according to Aristotle

(Phys. I. 2), on account of his clumsier mode of treatment (_μᾶλλον

φορτικός_)—could seem to have conceived of the other sense. If the

difference consisted secondly in the fact that Parmenides regarded the

one as limited and Melissus as unlimited, this limitation of the one

would, in effect, immediately contradict the philosophy of Parmenides;

for since limit is the non-being of Being, non-being would thus be

posited. But when Parmenides speaks of limit, we see that his poetic

language is not altogether exact; limit, however, as pure limit, is

just simple Being and absolute negativity, in which all else said and

set forth is sublated. Necessity, as this pure negativity and movement

within itself, although impassive thought, is absolutely bound to

its opposite. In the third place it may be said that Parmenides set

forth a concomitant philosophy of opinion or reality, to which Being

as existence for thought was thus more opposed than was the case with

Melissus.

4. ZENO.

What specially characterizes Zeno is the dialectic which, properly

speaking, begins with him; he is the master of the Eleatic school in

whom its pure thought arrives at the movement of the Notion in itself

and becomes the pure soul of science. That is to say, in the Eleatics

hitherto considered, we only have the proposition: “The nothing has

no reality and is not at all, and thus what is called origin and

decease disappears.” With Zeno, on the contrary, we certainly see just

such an assertion of the one and removal of what contradicts it, but

we also see that this assertion is not made the starting point; for

reason begins by calmly demonstrating in that which is established as

existent, its negation. Parmenides asserts that “The all is immutable,

for, in change, the non-being of that which is would be asserted,

but Being only is; in saying that non-being is, the subject and the

predicate contradict themselves.” Zeno, on the other hand, says:

“Assert your change; in it as change there is the negation to it, or

it is nothing.” To the former change existed as motion, definite and

complete. Zeno protested against motion as such, or pure motion. “Pure

Being is not motion; it is rather the negation of motion.” We find it

specially interesting that there is in Zeno the higher consciousness,

the consciousness that when one determination is denied, this negation

is itself again a determination, and then in the absolute negation

not one determination, but both the opposites must be negated. Zeno

anticipated this, and because he foresaw that Being is the opposite

of nothing, he denied of the One what must be said of the nothing.

But the same thing must occur with all the rest. We find this higher

dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides; here it only breaks forth in respect

to some determinations, and not to the determination of the One and of

Being. The higher consciousness is the consciousness of the nullity of

Being as of what is determined as against the nothing, partly found in

Heraclitus and then in the Sophists; with them it never has any truth,

it has no existence in itself, but is only the for-another, or the

assurance of the individual consciousness, and assurance as refutation,

i.e. the negative side of dialectic.

According to Diogenes Laertius, (IX. 25) Zeno was likewise an Eleat;

he is the youngest, and lived most in company with Parmenides. The

latter became very fond of him and adopted him as a son; his own

father was called Telentagoras. Not in his State alone was his conduct

held in high respect, for his fame was universal, and he was esteemed

particularly as a teacher. Plato mentions that men came to him from

Athens and other places, in order to profit from his learning.[58]

Proud self-sufficiency is ascribed to him by Diogenes (IX. 28) because

he—with the exception of a journey made to Athens—continued to reside

in Elea, and did not stay a longer time in the great, mighty Athens,

and there attain to fame. In very various narratives his death was made

for ever celebrated for the strength of his mind evinced in it; it was

said that he freed a State (whether his own home at Elea or in Sicily,

is not known) from its Tyrant (the name is given differently, but an

exact historical account has not been recorded) in the following way,

and by the sacrifice of his life. He entered into a plot to overthrow

the Tyrant, but this was betrayed. When the Tyrant now, in face of the

people, caused him to be tortured in every possible way to get from him

an avowal of his confederates, and when he questioned him about the

enemies of the State, Zeno first named to the Tyrant all his friends as

participators in the plot, and then spoke of the Tyrant himself as the

pest of the State. The powerful remonstrances or the horrible tortures

and death of Zeno aroused the citizens, inspired them with courage to

fall upon the Tyrant, kill him, and liberate themselves. The manner of

the end, and his violent and furious state of mind, is very variously

depicted. He is said to have pretended to wish to say something into

the Tyrant’s ear, and then to have bitten his ear, and thus held him

fast until he was slain by the others. Others say that he seized him by

the nose between his teeth; others that as on his reply great tortures

were applied, he bit off his tongue and spat it into the Tyrant’s face,

to show him that he could get nothing from him, and that he then was

pounded in a mortar.[59]

It has just been noticed that Zeno had the very important character

of being the originator of the true objective dialectic. Xenophanes,

Parmenides, and Melissus, start with the proposition: “Nothing is

nothing; the nothing does not exist at all, or the like is real

existence,” that is, they make one of the opposed predicates to be

existence. Now when they encounter the opposite in a determination,

they demolish this determination, but it is only demolished through

another, through my assertion, through the distinction that I form, by

which one side is made to be the true, and the other the null. We have

proceeded from a definite proposition; the nullity of the opposite does

not appear in itself; it is not that it abrogates itself, i.e. that it

contains a contradiction in itself. For instance, I assert of something

that it is the null; then I show this by hypothesis in motion, and

it follows that it is the null. But another consciousness does not

assert this; I declare one thing to be directly true; another has the

right of asserting something else as directly true, that is to say,

motion. Similarly what seems to be the case when one philosophic system

contradicts another, is that the first is pre-established, and that men

starting from this point of view, combat the other. The matter is thus

easily settled by saying: “The other has no truth, because it does not

agree with me,” and the other has the right to say the same. It does

not help if I prove my system or my proposition and then conclude that

thus the opposite is false; to this other proposition the first always

seems to be foreign and external. Falsity must not be demonstrated

through another, and as untrue because the opposite is true, but in

itself; we find this rational perception in Zeno.

In Plato’s Parmenides (pp. 127, 128, Steph., pp. 6, 7, Bekk.) this

dialectic is very well described, for Plato makes Socrates say of

it: “Zeno in his writings asserts fundamentally the same as does

Parmenides, that All is One, but he would feign delude us into

believing that he was telling something new. Parmenides thus shows in

his poems that All is One; Zeno, on the contrary, shows that the Many

cannot be.” Zeno replies, that “He wrote thus really against those who

try to make Parmenides’ position ridiculous, for they try to show what

absurdities and self-contradictions can be derived from his statements;

he thus combats those who deduce Being from the many, in order to show

that far more absurdities arise from this than from the statements of

Parmenides.” That is the special aim of objective dialectic, in which

we no longer maintain simple thought for itself, but see the battle

fought with new vigour within the enemy’s camp. Dialectic has in Zeno

this negative side, but it has also to be considered from its positive

side.

According to the ordinary ideas of science, where propositions result

from proof, proof is the movement of intelligence, a connection brought

about by mediation. Dialectic is either (_α_) external dialectic,

in which this movement is different from the comprehension of the

movement, or (_β_) not a movement of our intelligence only, but what

proceeds from the nature of the thing itself, i.e. from the pure Notion

of the content. The former is a manner of regarding objects in such a

way that reasons are revealed and new light thrown, by means of which

all that was supposed to be firmly fixed, is made to totter; there

may be reasons which are altogether external too, and we shall speak

further of this dialectic when dealing with the Sophists. The other

dialectic, however, is the immanent contemplation of the object; it is

taken for itself, without previous hypothesis, idea or obligation, not

under any outward conditions, laws or causes; we have to put ourselves

right into the thing, to consider the object in itself, and to take it

in the determinations which it has. In regarding it thus, it shows from

itself that it contains opposed determinations, and thus breaks up;

this dialectic we more especially find in the ancients. The subjective

dialectic, which reasons from external grounds, is moderate, for it

grants that: “In the right there is what is not right, and in the false

the true.” True dialectic leaves nothing whatever to its object, as if

the latter were deficient on one side only; for it disintegrates itself

in the entirety of its nature. The result of this dialectic is null,

the negative; the affirmative in it does not yet appear. This true

dialectic may be associated with the work of the Eleatics. But in their

case the real meaning and quality of philosophic understanding was not

great, for they got no further than the fact that through contradiction

the object is a nothing.

Zeno’s dialectic of matter has not been refuted to the present

day; even now we have not got beyond it, and the matter is left in

uncertainty. Simplicius, writing on the Physics of Aristotle (p. 30),

says: “Zeno proves that if the many is, it must be great and small; if

great, the many must be infinite in number” (it must have gone beyond

the manifold, as indifferent limit, into the infinite; but what is

infinite is no longer large and no longer many, for it is the negation

of the many). “If small, it must be so small as to have no size,”

like atoms. “Here he shows that what has neither size, thickness nor

mass, cannot be. For if it were added to another, it would not cause

its increase; were it, that is to say, to have no size and be added

thereto, it could not supplement the size of the other and consequently

that which is added is nothing. Similarly were it taken away, the other

would not be made less, and thus it is nothing. If what has being is,

each existence necessarily has size and thickness, is outside of one

another, and one is separate from the other; the same applies to all

else (_περὶ τοῦ προὔχοντος_), for it, too, has size, and in it there is

what mutually differs (_προέξει αὐτοῦ τι_). But it is the same thing

to say something once and to say it over and over again; in it nothing

can be a last, nor will there not be another to the other. Thus if many

are, they are small and great; small, so that they have no size; great,

so that they are infinite.”

Aristotle (Phys. VI. 9) explains this dialectic further; Zeno’s

treatment of motion was above all objectively dialectical. But the

particulars which we find in the Parmenides of Plato are not his.

For Zeno’s consciousness we see simple unmoved thought disappear,

but become thinking movement; in that he combats sensuous movement,

he concedes it. The reason that dialectic first fell on movement is

that the dialectic is itself this movement, or movement itself the

dialectic of all that is. The thing, as self-moving, has its dialectic

in itself, and movement is the becoming another, self-abrogation. If

Aristotle says that Zeno denied movement because it contains an inner

contradiction, it is not to be understood to mean that movement did not

exist at all. The point is not that there is movement and that this

phenomenon exists; the fact that there is movement is as sensuously

certain as that there are elephants; it is not in this sense that Zeno

meant to deny movement. The point in question concerns its truth.

Movement, however, is held to be untrue, because the conception of it

involves a contradiction; by that he meant to say that no true Being

can be predicated of it.

Zeno’s utterances are to be looked at from this point of view, not as

being directed against the reality of motion, as would at first appear,

but as pointing out how movement must necessarily be determined, and

showing the course which must be taken. Zeno now brings forward four

different arguments against motion; the proofs rest on the infinite

divisibility of space and time.

(a) This is his first form of argument:—“Movement has no truth,

because what is in motion must first reach the middle of the space

before arriving at the end.” Aristotle expresses this thus shortly,

because he had earlier treated of and worked out the subject at length.

This is to be taken as indicating generally that the continuity of

space is presupposed. What moves itself must reach a certain end, this

way is a whole. In order to traverse the whole, what is in motion must

first pass over the half, and now the end of this half is considered as

being the end; but this half of space is again a whole, that which also

has a half, and the half of this half must first have been reached, and

so on into infinity. Zeno here arrives at the infinite divisibility of

space; because space and time are absolutely continuous, there is no

point at which the division can stop. Every dimension (and every time

and space always have a dimension) is again divisible into two halves,

which must be measured off; and however small a space we have, the

same conditions reappear. Movement would be the act of passing through

these infinite moments, and would therefore never end; thus what is in

motion cannot reach its end. It is known how Diogenes of Sinope, the

Cynic, quite simply refuted these arguments against movement; without

speaking he rose and walked about, contradicting them by action.[60]

But when reasons are disputed, the only valid refutation is one derived

from reasons; men have not merely to satisfy themselves by sensuous

assurance, but also to understand. To refute objections is to prove

their non-existence, as when they are made to fall away and can hence

be adduced no longer; but it is necessary to think of motion as Zeno

thought of it, and yet to carry this theory of motion further still.

We have here the spurious infinite or pure appearance, whose simple

principle Philosophy demonstrates as universal Notion, for the first

time making its appearance as developed in its contradiction; in the

history of Philosophy a consciousness of this contradiction is also

attained. Movement, this pure phenomenon, appears as something thought

and shown forth in its real being—that is, in its distinction of pure

self-identity and pure negativity, the point as distinguished from

continuity. To us there is no contradiction in the idea that the here

of space and the now of time are considered as a continuity and length;

but their Notion is self-contradictory. Self-identity or continuity is

absolute cohesion, the destruction of all difference, of all negation,

of being for self; the point, on the contrary, is pure being-for-self,

absolute self-distinction and the destruction of all identity and

all connection with what is different. Both of these, however,

are, in space and time, placed in one; space and time are thus the

contradiction; it is necessary, first of all, to show the contradiction

in movement, for in movement that which is opposed is, to ordinary

conceptions, inevitably manifested. Movement is just the reality of

time and space, and because this appears and is made manifest, the

apparent contradiction is demonstrated, and it is this contradiction

that Zeno notices. The limitation of bisection which is involved in

the continuity of space, is not absolute limitation, for that which

is limited is again continuity; however, this continuity is again not

absolute, for the opposite has to be exhibited in it, the limitation

of bisection; but the limitation of continuity is still not thereby

established, the half is still continuous, and so on into infinity.

In that we say “into infinity,” we place before ourselves a beyond,

outside of the ordinary conception, which cannot reach so far. It is

certainly an endless going forth, but in the Notion it is present,

it is a progression from one opposed determination to others, from

continuity to negativity, from negativity to continuity; but both of

these are before us. Of these moments one in the process may be called

the true one; Zeno first asserts continuous progression in such a way

that no limited space can be arrived at as ultimate, or Zeno upholds

progression in this limitation.

The general explanation which Aristotle gives to this contradiction, is

that space and time are not infinitely divided, but are only divisible.

But it now appears that, because they are divisible—that is, in

potentiality—they must actually be infinitely divided, for else they

could not be divided into infinity. That is the general answer of the

ordinary man in endeavouring to refute the explanation of Aristotle.

Bayle (Tom. IV. art. Zénon, not. E.) hence says of Aristotle’s answer

that it is “pitoyable: C’est se moquer du monde que de se servir de

cette doctrine; car si la matière est divisible à l’infini, elle

contient un nombre infini de parties. Ce n’est donc point un infini en

puissance, c’est un infini, qui existe réellement, actuellement. Mais

quand-même on accorderait cet infini en puissance, qui deviendrait

un infini par la division actuelle de ses parties, on ne perdrait

pas ses avantages; car le mouvement est une chose, qui a la même

vertu, que la division. Il touche une partie de l’espace sans toucher

l’autre, et il les touche toutes les unes après les autres. N’est-ce

pas les distinguer actuellement? N’est-ce pas faire ce que ferait un

géomètre sur une table en tirant des lignes, qui désignassent tous les

demi-pouces? Il ne brise pas la table en demi-pouces, mais il y fait

néanmoins une division, qui marque la distinction actuelle des parties;

et je ne crois pas qu’Aristote eut voulu nier, que _si_ l’on tirait une

infinité de lignes sur un pouce de matière, on n’y introduisît une

division, qui réduirait en infini actuel ce qui n’était selon lui qu’un

infini virtual.” This _si_ is good! Divisibility is, as potentiality,

the universal; there is continuity as well as negativity or the point

posited in it—but posited as moment, and not as existent in and for

itself. I can divide matter into infinitude, but I only can do so; I

do not really divide it into infinitude. This is the infinite, that no

one of its moments has reality. It never does happen that, in itself,

one or other—that absolute limitation or absolute continuity—actually

comes into existence in such a way that the other moment disappears.

There are two absolute opposites, but they are moments, i.e. in the

simple Notion or in the universal, in thought, if you will; for in

thought, in ordinary conception, what is set forth both is and is not

at the same time. What is represented either as such, or as an image

of the conception, is not a thing; it has no Being, and yet it is not

nothing.

Space and time furthermore, as _quantum_, form a limited extension,

and thus can be measured off; just as I do not actually divide space,

neither does the body which is in motion. The partition of space as

divided, is not absolute discontinuity [Punktualität], nor is pure

continuity the undivided and indivisible; likewise time is not pure

negativity or discontinuity, but also continuity. Both are manifested

in motion, in which the Notions have their reality for ordinary

conception—pure negativity as time, continuity as space. Motion itself

is just this actual unity in the opposition, and the sequence of both

moments in this unity. To comprehend motion is to express its essence

in the form of Notion, _i.e._, as unity of negativity and continuity;

but in them neither continuity nor discreteness can be exhibited as

the true existence. If we represent space or time to ourselves as

infinitely divided, we have an infinitude of points, but continuity is

present therein as a space which comprehends them: as Notion, however,

continuity is the fact that all these are alike, and thus in reality

they do not appear one out of the other like points. But both these

moments make their appearance as existent; if they are manifested

indifferently, their Notion is no longer posited, but their existence.

In them as existent, negativity is a limited size, and they exist as

limited space and time; actual motion is progression through a limited

space and a limited time and not through infinite space and infinite

time.

That what is in motion must reach the half is the assertion of

continuity, i.e. the possibility of division as mere possibility; it is

thus always possible in every space, however small. It is said that it

is plain that the half must be reached, but in so saying, everything

is allowed, including the fact that it never will be reached; for to

say so in one case, is the same as saying it an infinite number of

times. We mean, on the contrary, that in a larger space the half can be

allowed, but we conceive that we must somewhere attain to a space so

small that no halving is possible, or an indivisible, non-continuous

space which is no space. This, however, is false, for continuity is a

necessary determination; there is undoubtedly a smallest in space, i.e.

a negation of continuity, but the negation is something quite abstract.

Abstract adherence to the subdivision indicated, that is, to continuous

bisection into infinitude, is likewise false, for in the conception of

a half, the interruption of continuity is involved. We must say that

there is no half of space, for space is continuous; a piece of wood

may be broken into two halves, but not space, and space only exists in

movement. It might equally be said that space consists of an endless

number of points, i.e. of infinitely many limits and thus cannot be

traversed. Men think themselves able to go from one indivisible point

to another, but they do not thereby get any further, for of these there

is an unlimited number. Continuity is split up into its opposite,

a number which is indefinite; that is to say, if continuity is not

admitted, there is no motion. It is false to assert that it is possible

when one is reached, or that which is not continuous; for motion is

connection. Thus when it was said that continuity is the presupposed

possibility of infinite division, continuity is only the hypothesis;

but what is exhibited in this continuity is the being of infinitely

many, abstractly absolute limits.

(b) The second proof, which is also the presupposition of continuity

and the manifestation of division, is called “Achilles, the Swift.”

The ancients loved to clothe difficulties in sensuous representations.

Of two bodies moving in one direction, one of which is in front and

the other following at a fixed distance and moving quicker than the

first, we know that the second will overtake the first. But Zeno says,

“The slower can never be overtaken by the quicker.” And he proves it

thus: “The second one requires a certain space of time to reach the

place from which the one pursued started at the beginning of the given

period.” Thus during the time in which the second reached the point

where the first was, the latter went over a new space which the second

has again to pass through in a part of this period; and in this way it

goes into infinity.

c d e f g

B A

B, for instance, traverses two miles (c d) in an hour, A in the same

time, one mile (d e); if they are two miles (c d) removed from one

another, B has in one hour come to where A was at the beginning of the

hour. While B, in the next half hour, goes over the distance crossed

by A of one mile (d e), A has got half a mile (e f) further, and so

on into infinity. Quicker motion does not help the second body at all

in passing over the interval of space by which he is behind: the time

which he requires, the slower body always has at its avail in order to

accomplish some, although an ever shorter advance; and this, because of

the continual division, never quite disappears.

Aristotle, in speaking of this, puts it shortly thus. “This proof

asserts the same endless divisibility, but it is untrue, for the quick

will overtake the slow body if the limits to be traversed be granted to

it.” This answer is correct and contains all that can be said; that is,

there are in this representation two periods of time and two distances,

which are separated from one another, i.e. they are limited in relation

to one another; when, on the contrary, we admit that time and space

are continuous, so that two periods of time or points of space are

related to one another as continuous, they are, while being two, not

two, but identical. In ordinary language we solve the matter in the

easiest way, for we say: “Because the second is quicker, it covers a

greater distance in the same time as the slow; it can therefore come to

the place from which the first started and get further still.” After

B, at the end of the first hour, arrives at d and A at e, A in one and

the same period, that is, in the second hour, goes over the distance

e g, and B the distance d g. But this period of time which should be

one, is divisible into that in which B accomplishes d e and that in

which B passes through e g. A has a start of the first, by which it

gets over the distance e f, so that A is at f at the same period as

B is at e. The limitation which, according to Aristotle, is to be

overcome, which must be penetrated, is thus that of time; since it is

continuous, it must, for the solution of the difficulty, be said that

what is divisible into two spaces of time is to be conceived of as one,

in which B gets from d to e and from e to g, while A passes over the

distance e g. In motion two periods, as well as two points in space,

are indeed one.

If we wish to make motion clear to ourselves, we say that the body is

in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves, it is no

longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were it in either it

would be at rest. Where then is it? If we say that it is between both,

this is to convey nothing at all, for were it between both, it would

be in a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement

means to be in this place and not to be in it, and thus to be in both

alike; this is the continuity of space and time which first makes

motion possible. Zeno, in the deduction made by him, brought both these

points into forcible opposition. The discretion of space and time we

also uphold, but there must also be granted to them the overstepping of

limits, i.e. the exhibition of limits as not being, or as being divided

periods of time, which are also not divided. In our ordinary ideas we

find the same determinations as those on which the dialectic of Zeno

rests; we arrive at saying, though unwillingly, that in one period two

distances of space are traversed, but we do not say that the quicker

comprehends two moments of time in one; for that we fix a definite

space. But in order that the slower may lose its precedence, it must be

said that it loses its advantage of a moment of time, and indirectly

the moment of space.

Zeno makes limit, division, the moment of discretion in space and time,

the only element which is enforced in the whole of his conclusions, and

hence results the contradiction. The difficulty is to overcome thought,

for what makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps

apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really

united. It brought about the Fall, for man ate of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil; but it also remedies these evils.

(c) The third form, according to Aristotle, is as follows:—Zeno

says: “The flying arrow rests, and for the reason that what is in

motion is always in the self-same Now and the self-same Here, in the

indistinguishable;” it is here and here and here. It can be said of the

arrow that it is always the same, for it is always in the same space

and the same time; it does not get beyond its space, does not take in

another, that is, a greater or smaller space. That, however, is what

we call rest and not motion. In the Here and Now, the becoming “other”

is abrogated, limitation indeed being established, but only as moment;

since in the Here and Now as such, there is no difference, continuity

is here made to prevail against the mere belief in diversity. Each

place is a different place, and thus the same; true, objective

difference does not come forth in these sensuous relations, but in the

spiritual.

This is also apparent in mechanics; of two bodies the question as

to which moves presents itself before us. It requires more than two

places—three at least—to determine which of them moves. But it is

correct to say this, that motion is plainly relative; whether in

absolute space the eye, for instance, rests, or whether it moves,

is all the same. Or, according to a proposition brought forward by

Newton, if two bodies move round one another in a circle, it may be

asked whether the one rests or both move. Newton tries to decide this

by means of an external circumstance, the strain on the string. When I

walk on a ship in a direction opposed to the motion of the ship, this

is in relation to the ship, motion, and in relation to all else, rest.

In both the first proofs, continuity in progression has the

predominance; there is no absolute limit, but an overstepping of all

limits. Here the opposite is established; absolute limitation, the

interruption of continuity, without however passing into something

else; while discretion is presupposed, continuity is maintained.

Aristotle says of this proof: “It arises from the fact that it is taken

for granted that time consists of the Now; for if this is not conceded,

the conclusions will not follow.”

(d) “The fourth proof,” Aristotle continues, “is derived from similar

bodies which move in opposite directions in the space beside a similar

body, and with equal velocity, one from one end of the space, the other

from the middle. It necessarily results from this that half the time

is equal to the double of it. The fallacy rests in this, that Zeno

supposes that what is beside the moving body, and what is beside the

body at rest, move through an equal distance in equal time with equal

velocity, which, however, is untrue.”

1

_E_|——|——|——|——|_F_

_k_ _i_ _m_

_C_|——|——|——|——|_D_

_g_ _n_ _h_

_A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

In a definite space such as a table (A B) let us suppose two bodies

of equal length with it and with one another, one of which (C D) lies

with one end (C) on the middle (g) of the table, and the other (E F),

being in the same direction, has the point (E) only touching the end

of the table (h); and supposing they move in opposite directions, and

the former (C D) reaches in an hour the end (h) of the table; we have

the result ensuing that the one (E F) passes in the half of the time

through the same space (i k) which the other does in the double (g h);

hence the half is equal to the double. That is to say, this second

passes (let us say, in the point l) by the whole of the first C D. In

the first half-hour l goes from m to i, while k only goes from g to n.

1

_E_|——|——|——|——|_F_

_k_ _o_ _i_ _m_

_C_|——|——|——|——|_D_

_g_ _n_ _h_

_A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

In the second half-hour l goes past o to k, and altogether passes from

m to k, or the double of the distance.

1

_E_|——|——|——|——|_F_

_k_ _o_ _i_ _m_

_C_|——|——|——|——|_D_

_g_ _n_ _h_

_A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

This fourth form deals with the contradiction presented in opposite

motion; that which is common is given entirely to one body, while it

only does part for itself. Here the distance travelled by one body

is the sum of the distance travelled by both, just as when I go two

feet east, and from the same point another goes two feet west, we are

four feet removed from one another; in the distance moved both are

positive, and hence have to be added together. Or if I have gone two

feet forwards and two feet backwards, although I have walked four feet,

I have not moved from the spot; the motion is then nil, for by going

forwards and backwards an opposition ensues which annuls itself.

This is the dialectic of Zeno; he had a knowledge of the determinations

which our ideas of space and time contain, and showed in them their

contradiction; Kant’s antinomies do no more than Zeno did here. The

general result of the Eleatic dialectic has thus become, “the truth is

the one, all else is untrue,” just as the Kantian philosophy resulted

in “we know appearances only.” On the whole the principle is the same;

“the content of knowledge is only an appearance and not truth,” but

there is also a great difference present. That is to say, Zeno and

the Eleatics in their proposition signified “that the sensuous world,

with its multitudinous forms, is in itself appearance only, and has

no truth.” But Kant does not mean this, for he asserts: “Because we

apply the activity of our thought to the outer world, we constitute

it appearance; what is without, first becomes an untruth by the fact

that we put therein a mass of determinations. Only our knowledge, the

spiritual, is thus appearance; the world is in itself absolute truth;

it is our action alone that ruins it, our work is good for nothing.”

It shows excessive humility of mind to believe that knowledge has no

value; but Christ says, “Are ye not better than the sparrows?” and we

are so inasmuch as we are thinking; as sensuous we are as good or as

bad as sparrows. Zeno’s dialectic has greater objectivity than this

modern dialectic.

Zeno’s dialectic is limited to Metaphysics; later, with the Sophists,

it became general. We here leave the Eleatic school, which perpetuates

itself in Leucippus and, on the other side, in the Sophists, in such

a way that these last extended the Eleatic conceptions to all reality,

and gave to it the relation of consciousness; the former, however, as

one who later on worked out the Notion in its abstraction, makes a

physical application of it, and one which is opposed to consciousness.

There are several other Eleatics mentioned, to Tennemann’s surprise,

who, however, cannot interest us. “It is so unexpected,” he says (Vol.

I., p. 190), “that the Eleatic system should find disciples; and yet

Sextus mentions a certain Xeniades.”

D. HERACLITUS.

If we put aside the Ionics, who did not understand the Absolute as

Thought, and the Pythagoreans likewise, we have the pure Being of the

Eleatics, and the dialectic which denies all finite relationships.

Thought to the latter is the process of such manifestations; the world

in itself is the apparent, and pure Being alone the true. The dialectic

of Zeno thus lays hold of the determinations which rest in the content

itself, but it may, in so far, also be called subjective dialectic,

inasmuch as it rests in the contemplative subject, and the one, without

this movement of the dialectic, is abstract identity. The next step

from the existence of the dialectic as movement in the subject, is that

it must necessarily itself become objective. If Aristotle blames Thales

for doing away with motion, because change cannot be understood from

Being, and likewise misses the actual in the Pythagorean numbers and

Platonic Ideas, taken as the substances of the things which participate

in them, Heraclitus at least understands the absolute as just this

process of the dialectic. The dialectic is thus thre-fold: (_α_)

the external dialectic, a reasoning which goes over and over again

without ever reaching the soul of the thing; (_β_) immanent dialectic

of the object, but falling within the contemplation of the subject;

(_γ_) the objectivity of Heraclitus which takes the dialectic itself

as principle. The advance requisite and made by Heraclitus is the

progression from Being as the first immediate thought, to the category

of Becoming as the second. This is the first concrete, the Absolute, as

in it the unity of opposites. Thus with Heraclitus the philosophic Idea

is to be met with in its speculative form; the reasoning of Parmenides

and Zeno is abstract understanding. Heraclitus was thus universally

esteemed a deep philosopher and even was decried as such. Here we see

land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in

my Logic.

Diogenes Laertius says (IX. 1) that Heraclitus flourished about the

69th Olympiad (500 B.C.), and that he was of Ephesus and in part

contemporaneous with Parmenides: he began the separation and withdrawal

of philosophers from public affairs and the interests of the country,

and devoted himself in his isolation entirely to Philosophy. We

have thus three stages: (_α_) the seven sages as statesmen, regents

and law-givers; (_β_) the Pythagorean aristocratic league; (_γ_)

an interest in science for its own sake. Little more is known of

Heraclitus’ life than his relations to his countrymen the Ephesians,

and according to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 15, 3), these were for the

most part found in the fact that they despised him and were yet more

profoundly despised by him—a relationship such as we have now-a-days,

when each man exists for himself, and despises everyone else. In the

case of this noble character, the disdain and sense of separation

from the crowd emanates from the deep sense of the perversity of

the ordinary ideas and life of his people: in reference to this,

isolated expressions used on various occasions are still preserved.

Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. V. 36) and Diogenes Laertius (IX. 2) relate that

Heraclitus said: “The Ephesians all deserve to have their necks broken

as they grow up, so that the town should be left to minors” (people now

say that only youth knows how to govern), “because they drove away his

friend Hermodorus, the best of them all, and gave as their reason for

so doing that amongst them none should be more excellent than the rest;

and if any one were so, it should be elsewhere and amongst others.” It

was for the same reason that in the Athenian Democracy great men were

banished. Diogenes adds: “His fellow-citizens asked him to take part in

the administration of public affairs, but he declined, because he did

not like their constitution, laws and administration.” Proclus (T. III.

pp. 115, 116, ed. Cousin) says: “The noble Heraclitus blamed the people

for being devoid of understanding or thought. ‘What is,’ he says,

‘their understanding or their prudence? Most of them are bad, and few

are good.’” Diogenes Laertius (IX. 6) furthermore says: “Antisthenes

cites, as a proof of Heraclitus’ greatness, that he left his kingdom

to his brother.” He expresses in the strongest manner his contempt

for what is esteemed to be truth and right, in the letter preserved

to us by Diogenes (IX. 13, 14), in which, to the invitation of Darius

Hystaspes, “to make him acquainted with Greek wisdom—for his work

on Nature contains a very forcible theory of the world, but it is in

many passages obscure—to come to him and explain to him what required

explanation” (this is certainly not very probable if Heraclitus’ turn

of mind was also Oriental), he is said to have replied: “All mortal men

depart from truth and justice and are given over to excess and vain

opinions according to their evil understandings. But I, since I have

attained to an oblivion of all evil, and shun the overpowering envy

that follows me, and the vanity of high position, shall not come to

Persia. I am content with little and live in my own way.”

The only work that he wrote, and the title of which, Diogenes tells

us, was by some stated to be “The Muses” and by others “On Nature,”

he deposited in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. It seems to have been

preserved until modern times; the fragments which have come down to

us are collected together in Stephanus’ _Poësis philosophica_ (p.

129, seq.). Schleiermacher also collected them and arranged them in a

characteristic way. The title is “Heraclitus, the Dark, of Ephesus,

as represented in fragments of his work and by the testimony of the

ancients,” and it is to be found in Wolf and Buttmann’s “Museum of

ancient Learning,” vol. I. (Berlin, 1807) pp. 315-533. Seventy-three

passages are given. Kreuzer made one hope that he would work at

Heraclitus more critically and with a knowledge of the language.

He made a more complete collection, particularly from grammarians;

however, as, for lack of time, he left it to be worked up by a younger

scholar, and as the latter died, it never came before the public.

Compilations of the kind are as a rule too copious: they contain a

mass of learning and are more easily written than read. Heraclitus

has been considered obscure, and is indeed celebrated for this; it

also drew upon him the name of _σκοτεινός_. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I.

26; III. 14; De Finib. II. 5) takes up a wrong idea, as often happens

to him; he thinks that Heraclitus purposely wrote obscurely. Any

such design would, however, be a very shallow one, and it is really

nothing but the shallowness of Cicero himself ascribed by him to

Heraclitus. Heraclitus’ obscurity is rather a result of neglecting

proper composition and of imperfect language; this is what was thought

by Aristotle (Rhet. III. 5), who, from a grammatical point of view,

ascribed it to a want of punctuation: “We do not know whether a word

belongs to what precedes or what succeeds.” Demetrius is of the same

opinion (De Elocutione, § 192, p. 78, ed. Schneider). Socrates, as

Diogenes Laertius relates (II. 22; IX. 11-12), said of this book: “What

he understood of it was excellent, and what he did not understand he

believed to be as good, but it requires a vigorous (_Δηλίου_) swimmer

to make his way through it.” The obscurity of this philosophy, however,

chiefly consists in there being profound speculative thought contained

in it; the Notion, the Idea, is foreign to the understanding and

cannot be grasped by it, though it may find mathematics quite simple.

Plato studied the philosophy of Heraclitus with special diligence; we

find much of it quoted in his works, and he got his earlier philosophic

education most indubitably from this source, so that Heraclitus may

be called Plato’s teacher. Hippocrates, likewise, is a philosopher of

Heraclitus’ school. What is preserved to us of Heraclitus’ philosophy

at first seems very contradictory, but we find the Notion making its

appearance, and a man of profound reflection revealed. Zeno began

to abrogate the opposed predicates, and he shows the opposition in

movement, an assertion of limitation and an abrogation of the same;

Zeno expressed the infinite, but on its negative side only, in

reference to its contradiction as being the untrue. In Heraclitus we

see the perfection of knowledge so far as it has gone, a perfecting of

the Idea into a totality, which is the beginning of Philosophy, since

it expresses the essence of the Idea, the Notion of the infinite, the

potentially and actively existent, as that which it is, i.e. as the

unity of opposites. From Heraclitus dates the ever-remaining Idea which

is the same in all philosophers to the present day, as it was the Idea

of Plato and of Aristotle.

1. _The Logical Principle._ Concerning the universal principle, this

bold mind, Aristotle tells us (Metaph. IV. 3 and 7), first uttered the

great saying: “Being and non-being are the same; everything is and yet

is not.” The truth only is as the unity of distinct opposites and,

indeed, of the pure opposition of being and non-being; but with the

Eleatics we have the abstract understanding that Being is alone the

truth. We say, in place of using the expression of Heraclitus, that

the Absolute is the unity of being and non-being. When we understand

that proposition as that “Being is and yet is not,” this does not seem

to make much sense, but only to imply complete negation and want of

thought. But we have another sentence that gives the meaning of the

principle better. For Heraclitus says: “Everything is in a state of

flux; nothing subsists nor does it ever remain the same.” And Plato

further says of Heraclitus: “He compares things to the current of a

river: no one can go twice into the same stream,”[61] for it flows on

and other water is disturbed. Aristotle tells us (Met. IV. 5) that his

successors even said “it could not once be entered,” for it changed

directly; what is, is not again. Aristotle (De Cœlo, III. 1) goes on

to say that Heraclitus declares that “there is only one that remains,

and from out of this all else is formed; all except this one is not

enduring (_παγίως_).”

This universal principle is better characterized as Becoming, the truth

of Being; since everything is and is not, Heraclitus hereby expressed

that everything is Becoming. Not merely does origination belong to it,

but passing away as well; both are not independent, but identical.

It is a great advance in thought to pass from Being to Becoming,

even if, as the first unity of opposite determinations, it is still

abstract. Because in this relationship both must be unrestful and

therefore contain within themselves the principle of life, the lack of

motion which Aristotle has demonstrated in the earlier philosophies

is supplied, and this last is even made to be the principle. This

philosophy is thus not one past and gone; its principle is essential,

and is to be found in the beginning of my Logic, immediately after

Being and Nothing. The recognition of the fact that Being and non-being

are abstractions devoid of truth, that the first truth is to be found

in Becoming, forms a great advance. The understanding comprehends

both as having truth and value in isolation; reason, on the other

hand, recognizes the one in the other, and sees that in the one its

“other” is contained. If we do not take the conception of existence

as complete, the pure Being of simple thought in which everything

definite is denied, is the absolute negative; but nothing is the

same, or just this self-identity. We here have an absolute transition

into the opposite which Zeno did not reach, for he remained at the

proposition, “From nothing, comes nothing.” With Heraclitus, however,

the moment of negativity is immanent, and the Notion of Philosophy as

complete is therefore dealt with.

In the first place we have here the abstract idea of Being and

non-being in a form altogether immediate and general; but when we look

closer, we find that Heraclitus also conceived of the opposites and

their unification in a more definite manner. He says: “The opposites

are combined in the self-same one, just as honey is both sweet and

bitter.” Sextus remarks of this (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 29, §§ 210, 211; II. 6,

§ 63): “Heraclitus, like the Sceptics, proceeds from ordinary ideas; no

one will deny that healthy men call honey sweet, while those who are

sick will say it is bitter.” If it is only sweet, it cannot alter its

nature in another individual; it would in all places and even to the

jaundiced patient be sweet. Aristotle (De mundo, 5) quotes this from

Heraclitus: “Join together the complete whole and the incomplete” (the

whole makes itself the part, and the meaning of the part is to become

the whole), “what coincides and what conflicts, what is harmonious and

what discordant, and from out of them all comes one, and from one,

all.” This one is not an abstraction, but the activity of dividing

itself into opposites; the dead infinite is a poor abstraction as

compared with the depths of Heraclitus. All that is concrete, as that

God created the world, divided Himself, begot a Son, is contained in

this determination. Sextus Empiricus mentions (adv. Math. IX. 337) that

Heraclitus said: “The part is something different from the whole and

is yet the same as the whole; substance is the whole and the part, the

whole in the universe and the part in this living being.” Plato says in

his Symposium (p. 187, Steph.; p. 397, Bekk.) of Heraclitus’ principle:

“The one, separated from itself, makes itself one with itself like the

harmony of the bow and the lyre.” He then makes Eryximachus, who speaks

in the Symposium, criticize this thus: “In harmony there is discord, or

it arises from opposites; for harmony does not arise from height and

depth in that they are different, but from their union through the art

of music.” But this does not contradict Heraclitus, who means the same

thing. That which is simple, the repetition of a tone, is no harmony;

difference is clearly necessary to harmony, or a definite antithesis;

for it is the absolute becoming and not mere change. The real fact is

that each particular tone is different from another—not abstractly so

from any other, but from _its_ other—and thus it also can be one. Each

particular only is, in so far as its opposite is implicitly contained

in its Notion. Subjectivity is thus the “other” of objectivity and not

of a piece of paper, which would be meaningless; since each is the

“other” of the “other” as its “other,” we here have their identity.

This is Heraclitus’ great principle; it may seem obscure, but it

is speculative. And this to the understanding which maintains the

independence of Being and non-being, the subjective and objective, the

real and the ideal, is always difficult and dim.

2. _Natural Philosophy._ In his system Heraclitus did not rest content

with thus expressing himself in Notions, or with what is purely

logical. But in addition to this universal form in which he advanced

his principle, he gave his idea a real and more natural form, and

hence he is still reckoned as belonging to the Ionic school of natural

philosophers. However, as regards this form of reality, historians are

at variance; most of them, and amongst others, Aristotle (Met. I. 3,

8), say that he maintained fire to be the existent principle; others,

according to Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 360; X. 233), say it was air, and

others again assert that he made vapour to be the principle rather

than air;[62] even time is, in Sextus (adv. Math. X. 216), given as

the primary existence. The question arises as to how this diversity is

to be comprehended. It must not be believed that all these accounts

are to be ascribed to the inaccuracy of historians, for the witnesses

are of the best, like Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, who do not speak

casually of these forms, but definitely, without, however, remarking

upon any such differences and contradictions. We seem to have a better

reason in the obscurity of the writing of Heraclitus, which might, by

the confusion of its expression, give occasion to misunderstanding.

But when regarded closer, this difficulty, which is evident when

merely looked at superficially, disappears; it is in the profoundly

significant conceptions of Heraclitus that the true way out of this

difficulty manifests itself. Heraclitus could no longer, like Thales,

express water, air or anything similar as an absolute principle—he

could no longer do so in the form of a primeval element from which the

rest proceeds—because he thought of Being as identical with non-being,

or the infinite Notion; thus the existent, absolute principle cannot

with him come forth as a definite and actual thing such as water, but

must be water in alteration, or as process only.

_a._ Understanding the abstract process as time, Heraclitus said:

“Time is the first corporeal existence,” as Sextus (adv. Math. X. 231,

232) puts it. Corporeal is an unfortunate expression; the Sceptics

frequently pick out the crudest expressions or make thoughts crude

in the first place so that they may afterwards dispense with them.

Corporeal here means abstract sensuousness; time, as the first sensuous

existence, is the abstract representation of process. It is because

Heraclitus did not rest at the logical expression of Becoming, but gave

to his principle the form of the existent, that it was necessary that

time should first present itself to him as such; for in the sensuously

perceptible it is the first form of Becoming. Time is pure Becoming

as perceived, the pure Notion, that which is simple, and the harmony

issuing from absolute opposites; its essential nature is to be and not

to be in one unity, and besides this, it has no other character. It is

not that time _is_ or _is not_, for time _is_ non-being immediately in

Being and Being immediately in non-being: it is the transition out of

Being into non-being, the abstract Notion, but in an objective form,

i.e. in so far as it is for us. In time there is no past and future,

but only the now, and this is, but is not as regards the past; and this

non-being, as future, turns round into Being. If we were to say how

that which Heraclitus recognized as principle, might, in the pure form

in which he recognized it, exist for consciousness, we could mention

nothing else but time; and it quite accords with the principle of

thought in Heraclitus to define time as the first form of Becoming.

_b._ But this pure, objective Notion must realize itself more fully,

and thus we find in fact, that Heraclitus determined the process in a

more markedly physical manner. In time we have the moments of Being and

non-being manifested as negative only, or as vanishing immediately;

if we wish to express both these moments as one independent totality,

the question is asked, which physical existence corresponds to this

determination. To Heraclitus the truth is to have grasped the essential

being of nature, i.e. to have represented it as implicitly infinite,

as process in itself; and consequently it is evident to us that

Heraclitus could not say that the primary principle is air, water, or

any such thing. They are not themselves process, but fire is process;

and thus he maintains fire to be the elementary principle, and this is

the real form of the Heraclitean principle, the soul and substance of

the nature-process. Fire is physical time, absolute unrest, absolute

disintegration of existence, the passing away of the “other,” but also

of itself; and hence we can understand how Heraclitus, proceeding from

his fundamental determination, could quite logically call fire the

Notion of the process.

_c._ He further made this fire to be a real process; because its

reality is for itself the whole process, the moments have become

concretely determined. Fire, as the metamorphosis of bodily things, is

the transformation and exhalation of the determinate; for this process

Heraclitus used a particular word—evaporation (_ἀναθυμίασις_)—but it

is rather transition. Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) says of Heraclitus in

this regard, that, according to his view, “the soul is the principle

because it is evaporation, the origination of everything; it is what

is most incorporeal and always in a state of flux.” This is quite

applicable to the primary principle of Heraclitus.

Furthermore he determined the real process in its abstract moments

by separating two sides in it—“the way upwards (_ὁδὸς ἄνω_) and the

way downwards (_ὁδὸς κάτω_)”—the one being division, in that it is

the existence of opposites, and the other the unification of these

existent opposites. Corresponding to these, he had, according to

Diogenes (IX. 8), the further determinations “of enmity and strife

(_πόλεμος_, _ἔρις_), and friendship and harmony (_ὁμολογία_, _εἰρήνη_);

of these two, enmity and strife is that which is the principle of

the origination of differences; but what leads to combustion is

harmony and peace.” In enmity amongst men, the one sets himself up

independently of the other, or is for himself and realizes himself; but

unity and peace is sinking out of independence into indivisibility or

non-reality. Everything is thre-fold and thereby real unity; nature is

the never-resting, and the all is the transition out of the one into

the other, from division into unity, and from unity into division.

The more detailed accounts of this real process are, in great measure,

deficient and contradictory. In this connection, it is in some

accounts[63] said of Heraclitus that he defined it thus: “Of the forms

taken by fire there is first of all the sea, and then of it half is

the earth and the other half the lightning flash (_πρηστήρ_),” the fire

which springs up. This is general and very obscure. Diogenes Laertius

(IX. 9) says: “Fire is condensed into moisture, and when concrete it

becomes water; water hardens into earth and this is the way downwards.

The earth then again becomes fluid, and from it moisture supervenes,

and from this the evaporation of the sea, from which all else arises;

this is the way upwards. Water divides into a dark evaporation,

becoming earth, and into what is pure, sparkling, becoming fire and

burning in the solar sphere; what is fiery becomes meteors, planets and

stars.” These are thus not still, dead stars, but are regarded as in

Becoming, as being eternally productive. We thus have, on the whole, a

metamorphosis of fire. These oriental, metaphorical expressions are,

however, in Heraclitus not to be taken in their strictly sensuous

signification, and as if these changes were present to the outward

observation; but they depict the nature of these elements by which the

earth eternally creates its suns and comets.

Nature is thus a circle. With this in view, we find Heraclitus,

according to Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V. 14, p. 711), saying:

“The universe was made neither by God nor man, but it ever was and is,

and will be, a living fire, that which, in accordance with its laws,

(_μέτρῳ_) kindles and goes out.” We now understand what Aristotle says

of the principle being the soul, since the latter is evaporation; that

is to say, fire, as this self-moving process of the world, is the

soul. Another statement follows, which is also found in Clement of

Alexandria (Strom. VI. 2, p. 746): “To souls (to the living) death is

the becoming water; to water death is the becoming earth; on the other

hand from earth, water arises, and from water, the soul.” Thus, on the

whole, this process is one of extinction, of going back from opposition

into unity, of the re-awakening of the former, and of issuing forth

from one. The extinction of the soul, of the fire in water, the

conflagration that finally results, some, and amongst others, Diogenes

Laertius (IX. 8), Eusebius (Præp. Evang. XIV. 3) and Tennemann (Vol.

I. p. 218), falsely assert to be a conflagration of the world. What

Heraclitus is said to have spoken of as a conflagration of this world,

was thought to be an imaginary idea that after a certain time—as,

according to our ideas, at the end of the world—the world would

disappear in flames. But we see at once from passages which are most

clear,[64] that this conflagration is not meant, but that it is the

perpetual burning up as the Becoming of friendship, the universal life

and the universal process of the universe. In respect of the fact that,

according to Heraclitus, fire is the animating, or the soul, we find

in Plutarch (De esu. carn. I. p. 995, ed. Xyl.) an expression which

may seem odd, namely, that “the driest soul is the best.” We certainly

do not esteem the most moist the best, but, on the other hand, the one

which is most alive; however dry here signifies fiery and thus the

driest soul is pure fire, and this is not lifeless but life itself.

These are the principal moments of the real life-process; I will stop

here a moment because we here find expressed the whole Notion of

speculative reflection regarding Nature. In this Notion, one moment

and one element goes over into the other; fire becomes water, water

earth and fire. The contention about the transmutation and immutability

of the elements is an old one; in this conception the ordinary,

sensuous science of nature separates itself from natural philosophy.

In the speculative point of view, which is that of Heraclitus, the

simple substance in fire and the other elements in itself becomes

metamorphosed; in the other, all transition is abolished and only an

external separation of what is already there is maintained. Water is

just water, fire is fire, &c. If the former point of view upholds

transmutation, the latter believes in the possibility of demonstrating

the opposite; it no longer, indeed, maintains water, fire, &c., to

be simple realities, for it resolves them into hydrogen, oxygen,

&c., but it asserts their immutability. It justly asserts that what

is asserted and implied in the speculative point of view, must also

have the truth of actuality; for if to be the speculative means to be

the very nature and principle of its elements, this must likewise be

present. We are wrong in representing the speculative to be something

existent only in thought or inwardly, which is no one knows where. It

is really present, but men of learning shut their eyes to it because

of their limited point of view. If we listen to their account, they

only observe and say what they see; but their observation is not true,

for unconsciously they transform what is seen through their limited

and stereotyped conception; the strife is not due to the opposition

between observation and the absolute Notion, but between the one Notion

and the other. They show that changes—such as that of water into

earth—are non-existent. Even in modern times this transformation was

indeed maintained, for when water was distilled, a residuum of earth

was found. On this subject, however, Lavoisier carried on a number

of very conclusive researches; he weighed all the receptacles, and

it was shown that the residuum proceeded from the vessels. There is

a superficial process that does not carry us beyond the determinate

nature of substance. They say in reference to it, “water does not

change into air but only into moisture, and moisture always condenses

back into water again.” But in this they merely fix on a one-sided,

insufficient process, and give it out to be the absolute process. In

the real process of nature they, however, found by experience that the

crystal dissolved gives water, and in the crystal, water is lost and

solidifies, or becomes the so-called water of crystallization; they

found that the evaporation of the earth is not to be found as moisture,

in outward form in the air, for air remains quite pure, or hydrogen

entirely disappears in pure air; they have sought in vain to find

hydrogen in the atmospheric air. Similarly they discovered that quite

dry air in which they can show neither moisture nor hydrogen, passes

into mist, rain, &c. These are their observations, but they spoilt all

their perceptions of changes by the fixed conception which they brought

with them of whole and part, and of consistence out of parts, and of

the previous presence as such, of what manifests itself in coming into

existence. When the crystal dissolved reveals water, they say, “it is

not that water has arisen, for it was already present there.” When

water in its decomposition reveals hydrogen and oxygen, that means,

according to them, “these last have not arisen for they were already

there as such, as the parts of which the water subsists.” But they can

neither demonstrate water in crystal nor oxygen and hydrogen in water,

and the same is true of “latent heat.” As we find in all expression

of perception and experience, as soon as men speak, there is a Notion

present; it cannot be withheld, for in consciousness there always is a

touch of universality and truth. For the Notion is the real principle,

but it is only to cultured reason that it is absolute Notion, and not

if it remains, as here, confined in a determinate form. Hence these

men necessarily attain to their limits, and they are troubled because

they do not find hydrogen in air; hygrometers, flasks full of air

brought down from heights by an air-balloon, do not show it to exist.

And similarly the water of crystallization is no longer water, but is

changed into earth.

To come back to Heraclitus, there is only one thing wanting to the

process, which is that its simple principle should be recognized as

universal Notion. The permanence and rest which Aristotle gives, may be

missed. Heraclitus, indeed, says that everything flows on, that nothing

is existent and only the one remains; but that is the Notion of the

unity which only exists in opposition and not of that reflected within

itself. This one, in its unity with the movement of the individuals,

is the genus, or in its infinitude the simple Notion as thought; as

such, the Idea has still to be determined, and we shall thus find it

again as the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras. The universal is the immediate

simple unity in opposition which goes back into itself as a process of

differences; but this is also found in Heraclitus; he called this unity

in opposition Fate (_εἱμαρμένη_) or Necessity.[65] And the Notion of

necessity is none other than this, that determinateness constitutes the

principle of the existent as individual, but in that very way, relates

it to its opposite: this is the absolute “connection (_λόγος_) that

permeates the Being of the whole.” He calls this “the ethereal body,

the seed of the Becoming of everything”;[66] that to him is the Idea,

the universal as reality, as process at rest.

3. _Relation of the Principle to Consciousness._ There is still

something else to consider, and that is what position in this principle

Heraclitus gives to consciousness; his philosophy has, on the whole,

a bent towards a philosophy of nature, for the principle, although

logical, is apprehended as the universal nature-process. How does this

_λόγος_ come to consciousness? How is it related to the individual

soul? I shall explain this here in greater detail: it is a beautiful,

natural, childlike manner of speaking truth of the truth. The universal

and the unity of the principle of consciousness and of the object,

and the necessity of objectivity, make their first appearance here.

Several passages from Heraclitus are preserved respecting his views of

knowledge. From his principle that everything that is, at the same time

is not, it immediately follows that he holds that sensuous certainty

has no truth; for it is the certainty for which something exists as

actual, which is not so in fact. Not this immediate Being, but absolute

mediation, Being as thought of, Thought itself, is the true Being.

Heraclitus in this relation says of sensuous perception—according to

Clement of Alexandria—(Strom. III. 3, p. 520): “What we see waking

is dead, but what we see sleeping, a dream,” and in Sextus (adv.

Math. VII. 126, 127), “Men’s eyes and ears are bad witnesses, for

they have barbarous souls. Reason (_λόγος_) is the judge of truth,

not the arbitrary, but the only divine and universal judge”—this is

the measure, the rhythm, that runs through the Being of everything.

Absolute necessity is just the having the truth in consciousness; but

every thought, or what proceeds from the individual, every relation

in which there is only form and which has the content of the ordinary

idea, is not such; what is so is the universal understanding, the

developed consciousness of necessity, the identity of subjective and

objective. Heraclitus says in this connection, according to Diogenes

(IX. 1): “Much learning (_πολυμαθίν_) does not instruct the mind, else

it had instructed Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecatæus. The only

wisdom is to know the reason that reigns over all.”

Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 127-133), further describes the attitude of

the subjective consciousness, of particular reason, to the universal,

to this nature-process. That attitude has still a very physical

appearance, resembling the state of mind we suppose in men who are

mad or asleep. The waking man is related to things in a universal

way, which is in conformity with the relation of the things and is

the way in which others also regard them, and yet he still retains

his independence. If, and in so far as I stand in the objectively

intelligent connection of this state of mind, I am, just because of

this externality, in finitude; but waking, I have the knowledge of the

necessity of a connection in the form of objectivity, the knowledge

of the universal existence, and thus the Idea in finite form. Sextus

puts this in definite form: “Everything that surrounds us is logical

and intelligent”—yet not therefore accompanied by consciousness.

“If we draw this universal reality through our breath, we shall be

intelligent, but we are so waking only, sleeping we are in oblivion.”

The waking consciousness of the outer world, what belongs to the sphere

of the understanding, is rather what may be called a condition; but

here it is taken as the whole of rational consciousness. “For in sleep

the channels of feeling are closed and the understanding that is in

us is prevented from uniting (_συμφυΐας_) with the surroundings; the

breath is the only connection (_πρόσφυσις_) maintained, and it may

be compared to a root.” This breath is thus distinguished from the

universal breath, i.e. from the being of another for us. Reason is this

process with the objective: when we are not in connection with the

whole, we only dream. “Separated, the understanding loses the power of

consciousness (_μνημονικὴν δύναμιν_) that it formerly had.” The mind

as individual unity only, loses objectivity, is not in individuality

universal, is not the Thought which has itself as object. “In a waking

condition, however, the understanding—gazing through the channels of

sense as though it were through a window, and forming a relationship

with the surroundings—maintains the logical power.” We here have the

ideal in its native simplicity. “In the same way as coals which come

near fire, themselves take fire, but apart from it, go out, the part

which is cut off from the surroundings in our bodies becomes, through

the separation, almost irrational.” This confutes those who think that

God gives wisdom in sleep or in somnambulism. But in connection with

the many channels it becomes similar to the whole. This whole, the

universal and divine understanding, in unity with which we are logical,

is, according to Heraclitus, the essence of truth. Hence that which

appears as the universal to all, carries with it conviction, for it has

part in the universal and divine Logos, while what is subscribed to by

an individual carries with it no conviction from the opposite cause. He

says in the beginning of his book on Nature: “Since the surroundings

are reason, men are irrational both before they hear and when they

first hear. For since what happens, happens according to this reason,

they are still inexperienced when they search the sayings and the works

which I expound, distinguishing the nature of everything and explaining

its relations. But other men do not know what they do awake, just as

they forget what they do in sleep.” Heraclitus says further: “We do and

think everything in that we participate in the divine understanding

(_λόγος_). Hence we must follow the universal understanding. But

many live as if they had an understanding (_φρόνησιν_) of their own;

the understanding is, however, nothing but interpretation” (being

conscious) “of the manner in which all is ordered. Hence in so far

as we participate in the knowledge (_μνήμης_) of it, we are in the

truth; but in so far as we are singular (_ἰδιάσωμεν_) we are in error.”

Great and important words! We cannot speak of truth in a truer or less

prejudiced way. Consciousness as consciousness of the universal, is

alone consciousness of truth; but consciousness of individuality and

action as individual, an originality which becomes a singularity of

content or of form, is the untrue and bad. Wickedness and error thus

are constituted by isolating thought and thereby bringing about a

separation from the universal. Men usually consider, when they speak of

thinking something, that it must be something particular, but this is

quite a delusion.

However much Heraclitus may maintain that there is no truth in sensuous

knowledge because all that exists is in a state of flux, and that

the existence of sensuous certainty is not while it is, he maintains

the objective method in knowledge to be none the less necessary. The

rational, the true, that which I know, is indeed a withdrawal from the

objective as from what is sensuous, individual, definite and existent;

but what reason knows within itself is necessity or the universal

of being; it is the principle of thought, as it is the principle of

the world. It is this contemplation of truth that Spinoza in his

Ethics (P. II. propos. XLIV., coroll. II. p. 118, ed. Paul), calls “a

contemplation of things in the guise of eternity.” The being-for-self

of reason is not an objectless consciousness, or a dream, but a

knowledge, that which is for itself; but this being-for-self is

awake, or is objective and universal, _i.e._ is the same for all. The

dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know; fancy may

be instanced as just such a dream. Similarly it is by feeling that

something is for me alone, and that I have something in me as in this

subject; the feeling may profess to be ever so elevated, yet it really

is the case that for me as this subject, it is what I feel, and not an

object independent of me. But in truth, the object is for me something

essentially free, and I am for myself devoid of subjectivity; similarly

this object is no imaginary one made an object by me alone, but is in

itself a universal.

There are, besides, many other fragments of Heraclitus, solitary

expressions, such as his saying, “men are mortal gods, and gods

immortal men; living is death to the former and dying is their

life.”[67] Life is the death of the gods, death is the life of the

gods; the divine is the rising through thought above mere nature which

belongs to death. Hence Heraclitus also says, according to Sextus (adv.

Math. VII., 349): “the power of thinking is outside the body,” which,

in a remarkable way, Tennemann makes into: “outside of men.” In Sextus

(Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 24, § 230) we further read: “Heraclitus says that

both life and death are united in our life as in our death; for if we

live, our souls are dead and buried in us, but if we die, our souls

arise and live.” We may, in fact, say of Heraclitus what Socrates said:

“What remains to us of Heraclitus is excellent, and we must conjecture

of what is lost, that it was as excellent.” Or if we wish to consider

fate so just as always to preserve to posterity what is best, we must

at least say of what we have of Heraclitus, that it is worthy of this

preservation.

E. EMPEDOCLES, LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.

We shall take Leucippus and Democritus with Empedocles; in them

there is manifested the ideality of the sensuous and also universal

determinateness or a transition to the universal. Empedocles was

a Pythagorean Italian, whose tendencies were Ionic; Leucippus and

Democritus, who incline to the Italians, in that they carried on the

Eleatic school, are more interesting. Both these philosophers belong

to the same philosophic system; they must be taken together as regards

their philosophic thought and considered thus.[68] Leucippus is the

older, and Democritus perfected what the former began, but it is

difficult to say what properly speaking belongs to him historically.

It is certainly recorded that he developed Leucippus’ thought, and

there is, too, some of his work preserved, but it is not worthy of

quotation. In Empedocles we see the commencement of the determination

and separation of principles. The becoming conscious of difference is

an essential moment, but the principles here have in part the character

of physical Being, and though partaking also of ideal Being, this form

is not yet thought-form. On the other hand we find in Leucippus and

Democritus the more ideal principles, the atom and the Nothing, and we

also find thought-determination more immersed in the objective—that

is, the beginning of a metaphysics of body; or pure Notions possess the

significance of the material, and thus pass over thought into objective

form. But the teaching is, on the whole, immature, and is incapable of

giving satisfaction.

1. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.

Nothing is accurately known of the circumstances of Leucippus’ life,

not even where he was born. Some, like Diogenes Laertius (IX. 30), make

him out to be an Eleatic; others to have belonged to Abdera (because he

was with Democritus), or to Melos—Melos is an island not far from the

Peloponnesian coast—or else, as is asserted by Simplicius in writing

on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7), to Miletus. It is definitely stated

that he was a disciple and a friend of Zeno; yet he seems to have been

almost contemporaneous with him as well as with Heraclitus.

It is less doubtful that Democritus belonged to Abdera in Thrace, on

the Aegean Sea, a town that in later times became so notorious on

account of foolish actions. He was born, it would appear, about the

80th Olympiad (460 B.C.), or Olympiad 77, 3 (470 B.C.); the first date

is given by Apollodorus (Diog. Laert. IX. 41), the other by Thrasyllus;

Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415) makes his birth to fall about the 71st

Olympiad (494 B.C.). According to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 34), he was

forty years younger than Anaxagoras, lived to the time of Socrates, and

was even younger than he—that is supposing him to have been born, not

in Olympiad 71, but in Olympiad 80. His connection with the Abderites

has been much discussed, and many bad anecdotes are told regarding it

by Diogenes Laertius. That he was very rich, Valerius Maximus (VIII.

7, ext. 4) judges from the fact that his father entertained the whole

of Xerxes’ army on its passage to Greece. Diogenes tells (IX. 35, 36)

that he expended his means, which were considerable, on journeys to

Egypt and in penetrating into the East, but this last is not authentic.

His possessions are stated to have amounted to a hundred talents, and

if an Attic talent was worth about from 1000 to 1200 thalers, he must

undoubtedly have been able to get far enough with that. It is always

said that he was a friend and disciple of Leucippus, as Aristotle

relates (Met. I. 4), but where they met is not told. Diogenes (IX. 39)

goes on: “After he returned from his journeys into his own country,

he lived very quietly, for he had consumed all his substance, but

he was supported by his brother and attained to high honour amongst

his countrymen”—not through his philosophy, but—“by some prophetic

utterances. According to the law, however, he who ran through his

father’s means could not have a place in the paternal burial-place. To

give no place to the calumniator or evil speaker”—as though he had

spent his means through extravagance—“he read his work _Διάκοσμος_ to

the Abderites, and the latter gave him a present of 500 talents, had

his statue publicly erected, and buried him with great pomp when, at

100 years old, he died.” That this was also an Abderite jest, those who

left us this narrative, at least, did not see.

Leucippus is the originator of the famous atomic system which, as

recently revived, is held to be the principle of rational science.

If we take this system on its own account, it is certainly very

barren, and there is not much to be looked for in it; but it must be

allowed that we are greatly indebted to Leucippus, because, as it is

expressed in our ordinary physics, he separated the universal and

the sensuous, or the primary and the secondary, or the essential and

the nonessential qualities of body. The universal quality means, in

speculative language, the fact that the corporeal is really universally

determined through the Notion or the principle of body: Leucippus

understood the determinate nature of Being, not in a superficial

manner, but in a speculative. When it is said that body has those

universal qualities, such as form, impenetrability and weight, we think

that the indeterminate conception of body is the essence, and that its

essence is something other than these qualities. But speculatively,

essential existence is just universal determinations; they are existent

in themselves, or the abstract content and the reality of existence.

To body as such, there is nothing left for the determination of reality

but pure singularity; but it is the unity of opposites, and the unity

of these predicates constitutes its reality.

Let us recollect that in the Eleatic philosophy Being and non-being

were looked at as in opposition; that only Being is, and non-being, in

which category we find motion, change, &c., is not. Being is not as yet

the unity turning back, and turned back into itself, like Heraclitus’

motion and the universal. It may be said of the point of view that

difference, change, motion, &c., fall within sensuous, immediate

perception, that the assertion that only Being is, is as contradictory

to appearances as to thought; for the nothing, that which the Eleatics

abolished, is. Or within the Heraclitean Idea, Being and non-being

are the same; Being is, but non-being, since it is one with Being, is

as well, or Being is both the predicate of Being and of non-being.

But Being and non-being are both expressed as having the qualities of

objectivity, or as they are for sensuous perception, and hence they are

the opposition of full and empty. Leucippus says this; he expresses as

existent what was really present to the Eleatics. Aristotle says (Met.

I. 4): “Leucippus and his friend Democritus maintain that the full and

the empty are the elements, and they call the one the existent, and the

other the non-existent; that is, the full and solid are the existent,

the empty and rare, the non-existent. Hence they also say that Being

is no more than non-being because the empty is as well as the bodily;

and these form the material sources of everything.” The full has the

atom as its principle. The Absolute, what exists in and for itself,

is thus the atom and the empty (_τὰ ἄτομα καὶ τὸ κενόν_): this is an

important, if at the same time, an insufficient explanation. It is not

atoms as we should speak of them, such, for example, as we represent

to ourselves as floating in the air, that are alone the principle, for

the intervening nothing is just as essential. Thus here we have the

first appearance of the atomic system. We must now give the further

signification and determination of this principle.

_a. The Logical Principle_

The principal point of consideration is the One, existent for

itself: this determination is a great principle and one which we

have not hitherto had. Parmenides establishes Being or the abstract

universal; Heraclitus, process; the determination of being-for-self

belongs to Leucippus. Parmenides says that the nothing does not exist

at all; with Heraclitus Becoming existed only as the transition of

Being into nothing where each is negated; but the view that each is

simply at home with itself, the positive as the self-existent one and

the negative as empty, is what came to consciousness in Leucippus, and

became the absolute determination. The atomic principle in this manner

has not passed away, for it must from this point of view always exist;

the being-for-self must in every logical philosophy[69] be an essential

moment and yet it must not be put forward as ultimate. In the logical

progression from Being and Becoming to this thought-determination,

Being as existent here and now[70] certainly first appears, but

this last belongs to the sphere of finality and hence cannot be the

principle of Philosophy. Thus, though the development of Philosophy

in history must correspond to the development of logical philosophy,

there will still be passages in it which are absent in historical

development. For instance, if we wished to make Being as existent here

the principle, it would be what we have in consciousness—there are

things, these things are finite and bear a relation to one another—but

this is the category of our unthinking knowledge, of appearance.

Being-for-self, on the other hand, is, as Being, simple relation to

itself, but through negation of the other-Being. If I say I am for

myself, I not only am, but I negate in me all else, exclude it from

me, in so far as it seems to me to be external. As negation of other

being, which is just negation in relation to me, being-for-self is

the negation of negation and thus affirmation; and this is, as I call

it, absolute negativity in which mediation indeed is present, but a

mediation which is just as really taken away.