GENERAL REMARKS ON THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHERS
--GROWTH OF DIALECTIC--ZENO AND GORGIAS.
[Side-note: Variety of sects and theories--multiplicity of individual
authorities is the characteristic of Greek philosophy.]
The first feeling of any reader accustomed to the astronomy and
physics of the present century, on considering the various theories
noticed in the preceding chapter, is a sort of astonishment that such
theories should have been ever propounded or accepted as true. Yet
there can be no doubt that they represent the best thoughts of
sincere, contemplative, and ingenious men, furnished with as much
knowledge of fact, and as good a method, as was then attainable. The
record of what such men have received as scientific truth or
probability, in different ages, is instructive in many ways, but in
none more than in showing how essentially relative and variable are
the conditions of human belief; how unfounded is the assumption of
those modern philosophers who proclaim certain first truths or first
principles as universal, intuitive, self-evident; how little any
theorist can appreciate _à priori_ the causes of belief in an age
materially different from his own, or can lay down maxims as to what
must be universally believed or universally disbelieved by all
mankind. We shall have farther illustration of this truth as we
proceed: here I only note variety of belief, even on the most
fundamental points, as being the essential feature of Grecian
philosophy even from its outset, long before the age of those who are
usually denounced as the active sowers of discord, the Sophists and
the professed disputants. Each philosopher followed his own individual
reason, departing from traditional or established creeds, and
incurring from the believing public more or less of obloquy; but no
one among the philosophers acquired marked supremacy over the rest.
There is no established philosophical orthodoxy, but a collection of
Dissenters--[Greek: a)/llê d' a)/llôn glô=ssa memigme/nê]--small
sects, each with its own following, each springing from a special
individual as authority, each knowing itself to be only one among
many.
[Side-note: These early theorists are not known from their own writings,
which have been lost. Importance of the information of Aristotle about
them.]
It is a misfortune that we do not possess a complete work, or even
considerable fragments, from any one of these philosophers, so as to
know what their views were when stated by themselves, and upon what
reasons they insisted. All that we know is derived from a few detached
notices, in very many cases preserved by Aristotle; who, not content
(like Plato) with simply following out his own vein of ideas, exhibits
in his own writings much of that polymathy which he transmitted to the
Peripatetics generally, and adverts often to the works of
predecessors. Being a critic as well as a witness, he sometimes blends
together inconveniently the two functions, and is accused (probably
with reason to a certain extent) of making unfair reports; but if it
were not for him, we should really know nothing of the Hellenic
philosophers before Plato. It is curious to read the manner in which
Aristotle speaks of these philosophical predecessors as "the ancients"
([Greek: oi( a)rchai=oi]), and takes credit to his own philosophy for
having attained a higher and more commanding point of view.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bacon ascribes the extinction of these early Greek
philosophers to Aristotle, who thought that he could not assure his
own philosophical empire, except by putting to death all his brothers,
like the Turkish Sultan. This remark occurs more than once in Bacon
(Nov. Org. Aph. 67; Redargutio Philosoph. vol. xi. p. 450, ed.
Montagu). In so far as it is a reproach, I think it is not deserved.
Aristotle's works, indeed, have been preserved, and those of his
predecessors have not: but Aristotle, far from seeking to destroy
their works, has been the chief medium for preserving to us the little
which we know about them. His attention to the works of his
predecessors is something very unusual among the theorists of the
ancient world. His friends Eudêmus and Theophrastus followed his
example, in embodying the history of the earlier theories in distinct
works of their own, now unfortunately lost.
It is much to be regretted that no scholar has yet employed himself in
collecting and editing the fragments of the lost scientific histories
of Eudêmus (the Rhodian) and Theophrastus. A new edition of the
Commentaries of Simplikius is also greatly wanted: those which exist
are both rare and unreadable.
Zeller remarks that several of the statements contained in Proklus's
commentary on Euclid, respecting the earliest Grecian mathematicians,
are borrowed from the [Greek: geômetrikai\ i(stori/ai] of the Rhodian
Eudêmus (Zeller--De Hermodoro Ephesio et Hermodoro Platonico, p. 12).]
[Side-note: Abundance of speculative genius and invention--a memorable
fact in the Hellenic mind.]
During the century and a half between Thales and the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war, we have passed in review twelve distinct schemes of
philosophy--Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras,
Parmenides, Herakleitus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, the Apolloniate
Diogenes, Leukippus, and Demokritus. Of most of these philosophers it
may fairly be said that each speculated upon nature in an original
vein of his own. Anaximenes and Diogenes, Xenophanes and Parmenides,
Leukippus and Demokritus, may indeed be coupled together as kindred
pairs yet by no means in such manner that the second of the two is a
mere disciple and copyist of the first. Such abundance and variety of
speculative genius and invention is one of the most memorable facts in
the history of the Hellenic mind. The prompting of intelligent
curiosity, the thirst for some plausible hypothesis to explain the
Kosmos and its generation, the belief that a basis or point of
departure might be found in the Kosmos itself, apart from those
mythical personifications which dwelt both in the popular mind and in
the poetical Theogonies, the mental effort required to select some
known agency and to connect it by a chain of reasoning with the
result--all this is a new phenomenon in the history of the human mind.
[Side-note: Difficulties which a Grecian philosopher had to
overcome--prevalent view of Nature, established, impressive, and
misleading.]
An early Greek philosopher found nothing around him to stimulate or
assist the effort, and much to obstruct it. He found Nature disguised
under a diversified and omnipresent Polytheistic agency, eminently
captivating and impressive to the emotions--at once mysterious and
familiar--embodied in the ancient Theogonies, and penetrating deeply
all the abundant epic and lyric poetry, the only literature of the
time. It is perfectly true (as Aristotle remarks[2]) that Hesiod and
the other theological poets, who referred everything to the generation
and agency of the Gods, thought only of what was plausible to
themselves, without enquiring whether it would appear equally
plausible to their successors; a reproach which bears upon many
subsequent philosophers also. The contemporary public, to whom they
addressed themselves, knew no other way of conceiving Nature than
under this religious and poetical view, as an aggregate of
manifestations by divine personal agents, upon whose
volition--sometimes signified beforehand by obscure warnings intelligible
to the privileged interpreters, but often inscrutable--the turn of events
depended. Thales and the other Ionic philosophers were the first who
became dissatisfied with this point of view, and sought for some
"causes and beginnings" more regular, knowable, and predictable. They
fixed upon the common, familiar, widely-extended, material substances,
water, air, fire, &c.; and they could hardly fix upon any others.
Their attempt to find a scientific basis was unsuccessful; but the
memorable fact consisted in their looking for one.
[Footnote 2: Aristot. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1000, a. 10.
[Greek: Oi( me\n ou)=n peri\ Ê(si/odon, kai\ pa/ntes o(/soi
theo/logoi, mo/non e)phro/ntisan tou= pithanou= tou= pro\s au)tou/s,
ê(mô=n d' ô)ligô/rêsan; Theou\s ga\r poiou=ntes ta\s a)rcha\s kai\ e)k
theô=n gegone/nai], &c. Aristotle mentions them a few lines afterwards
as not worth serious notice, [Greek: peri\ tô=n muthikô=s
sophizome/nôn ou)k a)/xion meta\ spoudê=s skopei=n.]]
[Side-note: Views of the Ionic philosophers--compared with the more
recent abstractions of Plato and Aristotle.]
In the theories of these Ionic philosophers, the physical ideas of
generation, transmutation, local motion, are found in the foreground:
generation in the Kosmos to replace generation by the God. Pythagoras
and Empedokles blend with their speculations a good deal both of
ethics and theology, which we shall find yet more preponderant when we
come to the cosmical theories of Plato. He brings us back to the
mythical Prometheus, armed with the geometrical and arithmetical
combinations of the Pythagoreans: he assumes a chaotic substratum,
modified by the intentional and deliberate construction of the
Demiurgus and his divine sons, who are described as building up and
mixing like a human artisan or chemist. In the theory of Aristotle we
find Nature half personified, and assumed to be perpetually at work
under the influence of an appetite for good or regularity, which
determines her to aim instinctively and without deliberation (like
bees or spiders) at constant ends, though these regular tendencies are
always accompanied, and often thwarted, by accessories, irregular,
undefinable, unpredictable. Both Plato and Aristotle, in their
dialectical age, carried abstraction farther than it had been carried
by the Ionic philosophers.[3] Aristotle imputes to the Ionic
philosophers that they neglected three out of his four causes (the
efficient, formal, and final), and that they attended only to the
material. This was a height of abstraction first attained by Plato and
himself; in a way sometimes useful, sometimes misleading. The earlier
philosophers had not learnt to divide substance from its powers or
properties; nor to conceive substance without power as one thing, and
power without substance as another. Their primordial substance, with
its powers and properties, implicated together as one concrete and
without any abstraction, was at once an efficient, a formal, and a
material cause: a final cause they did not suppose themselves to want,
inasmuch as they always conceived a fixed terminus towards which the
agency was directed, though they did not conceive such fixed tendency
under the symbol of an appetite and its end. Water, Air, Fire, were in
their view not simply inert and receptive patients, impotent until
they were stimulated by the active force residing in the ever
revolving celestial spheres--but positive agents themselves,
productive of important effects. So also a geologist of the present
day, when he speculates upon the early condition[4] of the Kosmos,
reasons upon gaseous, fluid, solid, varieties of matter, as
manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests,
but manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances.
The defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was,
that possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either
ascribed to these physical agents powers and properties not real, or
exaggerated prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial
substance chosen, though bearing a familiar name, became little better
than a fiction. The Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers,
ascribing to them properties altogether fanciful and imaginary.
[Footnote 3: Plato (Sophistes, 242-243) observes respecting these
early theorists--what Aristotle says about Hesiod and the
Theogonies--that they followed out their own subjective veins of thought
without asking whether we, the many listeners, were able to follow them
or were left behind in the dark. I dare say that this was true (as indeed
it is true respecting most writers on speculative matters), but I am
sure that all of them would have made the same complaint if they had
heard Plato read his Timæus.]
[Footnote 4: Bacon has some striking remarks on the contrast in this
respect between the earlier philosophers and Aristotle.
Bacon, after commending the early Greek philosophers for having
adopted as their first principle some known and positive matter, not a
mere abstraction, goes on to say:--
"Videntur antiqui illi, in inquisitione principiorum, rationem non
admodum acutam instituisse, sed hoc solummodo egisse, ut ex corporibus
apparentibus et manifestis, quod maximé excelleret, quærerent, et quod
tale videbatur, principium rerum ponerent: tanquam per excellentiam,
non veré aut realiter. . . . Quod si principium illud suum teneant non
per excellentiam, sed simpliciter, videntur utique in duriorem tropum
incidere: cum res plané deducatur ad æquivocum, neque de igne
naturali, aut naturali ære, aut aquâ, quod asserunt, prædicari
videatur, sed de igne aliquo phantastico et notionali (et sic de
cæteris) qui nomen ignis retineat, definitionem abneget. . . .
Principium statuerunt secundum sensum, aliquod ens verum: modum autem
ejus dispensandi (liberius se gerentes) phantasticum." (Bacon,
Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol. xi., p. 115-116,
ed. Montagu.)
"Materia illa spoliata et passiva prorsus humanæ mentis commentum
quoddam videtur. Materia prima ponenda est conjuncta cum principio
motûs primo, ut invenitur. Hæc tria (materia, forma, motus) nullo modo
discerpenda, sed tantummodo distinguenda, atque asserenda materia
(qualiscunque ea sit), ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut omnis
virtus, essentia, actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus consecutio et
emanatio esse possit. Omnes ferè antiqui, Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
Anaximenes. Heraclitus, Democritus, de materiâ primâ in cæteris
dissidentes, in hoc convenerunt, quod materiam activam formâ nonnullâ,
et formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se principium motûs habentem,
posuerunt." (Bacon, De Parmenidis, Telesii, et Campanellæ, Philosoph.,
p. 653-654, t. v.)
Compare Aphorism I. 50 of the Novum Organum.
Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol. xi. ed.
Montagu, p. 106-107. "Sed omnes ferè antiqui (anterior to Plato),
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Democritus, de materiâ
primâ in cæteris dissidentes, in hoc convenerunt, quod materiam
activam, formâ nonnullâ, et formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se
principium motûs habentem, posuerunt. Neque aliter cuiquam opinari
licebit, qui non experientiæ plané desertor esse velit. Itaque hi
omnes mentem rebus submiserunt. At Plato mundum cogitationibus,
Aristoteles verò etiam cogitationes verbis, adjudicarunt." . . . .
"Omnino materia prima ponenda est conjuncta cum formâ primâ, ac etiam
cum principio motûs primo, ut invenitur. Nam et motûs quoque
abstractio infinitas phantasias peperit, de animis, vitis, et
similibus--ac si iis per materiam et formam non satisfieret, sed ex
suis propriis penderent illa principiis. Sed hæc tria nullo modo
discerpenda, sed tantummodo distinguenda: atque asserenda materia
(qualiscunque ea sit) ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut omnis
virtus, essentia, actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus consecutio et
emanatio esse possit. Neque propterea metuendum, ne res torpeant, aut
varietas ista, quam cernimus, explicari non possit--ut postea
docebimus."
Playfair also observes, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Natural
Philosophy, prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 31:--
"Science was not merely stationary, but often retrograde; and the
reasonings of Democritus and Anaxagoras were in many respects more
solid than those of Plato and Aristotle."
See a good summary of Aristotle's cosmical views, in Ideler, Comm. in
Aristotel. Meteorologica, i. 2, p. 328-329.]
[Side-note: Parmenides and Pythagoras--more nearly akin to Plato and
Aristotle.]
Parmenides and Pythagoras, taking views of the Kosmos metaphysical and
geometrical rather than physical, supplied the basis upon which
Plato's speculations were built. Aristotle recognises Empedokles and
Anaxagoras as having approached to his own doctrine--force abstracted
or considered apart from substance, yet not absolutely detached from
it. This is true about Empedokles to a certain extent, since his
theory admits Love and Enmity as agents, the four elements as
patients: but it is hardly true about Anaxagoras, in whose theory Noûs
imparts nothing more than a momentary shock, exercising what modern
chemists call a catalytic agency in originating movement among a
stationary and stagnant mass of Homoeomeries, which, as soon as they
are liberated from imprisonment, follow inherent tendencies of their
own, not receiving any farther impulse or direction from Noûs.
[Side-note: Advantage derived from this variety of constructive
imagination among the Greeks.]
In the number of cosmical theories proposed, from Thales to
Demokritus, as well as in the diversity and even discordance of the
principles on which they were founded--we note not merely the growth
and development of scientific curiosity, but also the spontaneity and
exuberance of constructive imagination.[5] This last is a prominent
attribute of the Hellenic mind, displayed to the greatest advantage in
their poetical, oratorical, historical, artistic, productions, and
transferred from thence to minister to their scientific curiosity.
None of their known contemporaries showed the like aptitudes, not even
the Babylonians and Egyptians, who were diligent in the observation of
the heavens. Now the constructive imagination is not less
indispensable to the formation of scientific theories than to the
compositions of art, although in the two departments it is subject to
different conditions, and appeals to different canons and tests in the
human mind. Each of these early Hellenic theories, though all were
hypotheses and "anticipations of nature," yet as connecting together
various facts upon intelligible principles, was a step in advance;
while the very number and discordance of them (urged by Sokrates[6] as
an argument for discrediting the purpose common to all), was on the
whole advantageous. It lessened the mischief arising from the
imperfections of each, increased the chance of exposing such
imperfections, and prevented the consecration of any one among them
(with that inveterate and peremptory orthodoxy which Plato so much
admires[7] in the Egyptians) as an infallible dogma and an exclusive
mode of looking at facts. All the theorists laboured under the common
defect of a scanty and inaccurate experience: all of them were
prompted by a vague but powerful emotion of curiosity to connect
together the past and present of Nature by some threads intelligible
and satisfactory to their own minds; each of them followed out some
analogy of his own, such as seemed to carry with it a self-justifying
plausibility; and each could find some phenomena which countenanced
his own peculiar view. As far as we can judge, Leukippus and
Demokritus greatly surpassed the others, partly in the pains which
they took to elaborate their theory, partly in the number of facts
which they brought into consistency with it. The loss of the
voluminous writings of Demokritus is deeply to be regretted.[8]
[Footnote 5: Karsten observes, in his account of the philosophy of
Parmenides (sect, 23, p. 241):--
"Primum mundi descriptionem consideremus. Argumentum illustre et
magnificum, cujus quanto major erat veterum in contemplando admiratio,
tanto minor ferè in observando diligentia fuit. Quippe universi
_ornatum et pulcritudinem admirati_, ejus _naturam partiumque ordinem
non sensu assequi_ studuerunt, sed _mente informarunt ad eam pulcri
perfectique speciem quæ in ipsorum animis_ insideret: sic ut
Aristoteles ait, non sua cogitata suasque notiones ad mundi naturam,
sed hanc illa accommodantes. Hujusmodi quoque fuit Parmenidea ratio."]
[Footnote 6: Xenophon, Memor. i. 1, 13-14.]
[Footnote 7: Plato, Legg. ii. 656-657.]
[Footnote 8: About the style of Demokritus, see Cicero De Orat. i. 11.
Orator. c. 20.]
[Side-note: All these theories were found in circulation by Sokrates,
Zeno, Plato, and the dialecticians. Importance of the scrutiny of
negative Dialectic.]
In studying the writings of Plato and Aristotle, we must recollect
that they found all these theories pre-existent or contemporaneous. We
are not to imagine that they were the first who turned an enquiring
eye on Nature. So far is this from being the case that Aristotle is,
as it were, oppressed both by the multitude and by the discordance of
his predecessors, whom he cites, with a sort of indulgent
consciousness of superiority, as "the ancients" ([Greek: oi(
a)rchai=oi]).[9] The dialectic activity, inaugurated by Sokrates and
Zeno, lowered the estimation of these cosmical theories in more ways
than one: first, by the new topics of man and society, which Sokrates
put in the foreground for discussion, and treated as the only topics
worthy of discussion: next, by the great acuteness which each of them
displayed in the employment of the negative weapons, and in bringing
to view the weak part of an opponent's case. When we look at the
number of these early theories, and the great need which all of them
had to be sifted and scrutinised, we shall recognise the value of
negative procedure under such circumstances, whether the negationist
had or had not any better affirmative theory of his own. Sokrates,
moreover, not only turned the subject-matter of discussion from
physics to ethics, but also brought into conscious review the _method_
of philosophising: which was afterwards still farther considered and
illustrated by Plato. General and abstract terms and their meaning,
stood out as the capital problems of philosophical research, and as
the governing agents of the human mind during the process: in Plato
and Aristotle, and the Dialectics of their age, we find the meaning or
concept corresponding to these terms invested with an objective
character, and represented as a cause or beginning; by which, or out
of which, real concrete things were produced. Logical, metaphysical,
ethical, entities, whose existence consists in being named and
reasoned about, are presented to us (by Plato) as the real antecedents
and producers of the sensible Kosmos and its contents, or (by
Aristotle) as coeternal with the Kosmos, but as its underlying
constituents--the [Greek: a)rchai\], primordia or ultimata--into which
it was the purpose and duty of the philosopher to resolve sensible
things. The men of words and debate, the dialecticians or metaphysical
speculators of the period since Zeno and Sokrates, who took little
notice of the facts of Nature, stand contrasted in the language of
Aristotle with the antecedent physical philosophers who meddled less
with debate and more with facts. The contrast is taken in his mind
between Plato and Demokritus.[10]
[Footnote 9: Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 314, a. 6; 325, a. 2; Metaphys.
[Greek: L]. 1069, a. 25. See the sense of [Greek: a)rchai+kô=s], Met.
N. 1089, a. 2, with the note of Bonitz.
Adam Smith, in his very instructive examination of the ancient systems
of Physics and Metaphysics, is too much inclined to criticise Plato
and Aristotle as if they were the earliest theorizers, and as if they
had no predecessors.]
[Footnote 10: Aristotel. Gen. et Corr. i. 316, a. 6.--[Greek: dio\
o(/soi e)nô|kê/kasi ma=llon e)n toi=s phusikoi=s, ma=llon du/nantai
u(poti/thesthai toiau/tas a)rcha\s, ai(\ e)pi\ polu\ du/nantai
sunei/rein; oi( d' e)k tô=n pollô=n lo/gôn a)theô/rêtoi tô=n
u(parcho/ntôn o)/ntes, pro\s o)li/ga ble/psantes, a)pophai/nontai
r(a=|on; i)/doi d' a)/n tis kai\ e)k tou/tôn o(/son diaphe/rousin oi(
phusikô=s kai\ logikô=s skopou=ntes], &c. This remark is thoroughly
Baconian.
[Greek: Oi( en toi=s lo/gois] is the phrase by which Aristotle
characterises the Platonici.--Metaphys. [Greek: Th]. 1050, b. 35.]
[Side-note: The early theorists were studied along with Plato and
Aristotle, in the third and second centuries B.C.]
Both by Stoics and by Epikureans, during the third and second
centuries B.C., Demokritus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and Herakleitus
were studied along with Plato and Aristotle--by some, even more.
Lucretius mentions and criticises all the four, though he never names
Plato or Aristotle. Cicero greatly admires the style of Demokritus,
whose works were arranged in tetralogies by Thrasyllus, as those of
Plato were.[11]
[Footnote 11: Epikurus is said to have especially admired Anaxagoras
(Diog. L. x. 12).]
[Side-note: Negative attribute common to all the early
theorists--little or no dialectic.]
In considering the early theorists above enumerated, there is great
difficulty in finding any positive characteristic applicable to all of
them. But a negative characteristic may be found, and has already been
indicated by Aristotle. "The earlier philosophers (says he) had no
part in dialectics: Dialectical force did not yet exist."[12] And the
period upon which we are now entering is distinguished mainly by the
introduction and increasing preponderance of this new
element--Dialectic--first made conspicuously manifest in the Eleatic
Zeno and Sokrates; two memorable persons, very different from each other,
but having this property in common.
[Footnote 12: Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 32. [Greek: Oi( ga\r
pro/teroi dialektikê=s ou) metei=chon].--M. 1078, b. 25; [Greek:
dialektikê\ ga\r i)schu\s ou)/pô to/t' ê)=n, ô(/ste du/nasthai], &c.]
[Side-note: Zeno of Elea--Melissus.]
It is Zeno who stands announced, on the authority of Aristotle, as the
inventor of dialectic: that is, as the first person of whose skill in
the art of cross-examination and refutation conspicuous illustrative
specimens were preserved. He was among the first who composed written
dialogues on controversial matters of philosophy.[13] Both he, and his
contemporary the Samian Melissus, took up the defence of the
Parmenidean doctrine. It is remarkable that both one and the other
were eminent as political men in their native cities. Zeno is even
said to have perished miserably, in generous but fruitless attempts to
preserve Elea from being enslaved by the despot Nearchus.
[Footnote 13: Diogen. Laert. ix. 25-28.
The epithets applied to Zeno by Timon are remarkable.
[Greek: A)mphoteroglô/ssou te me/ga sthe/nos ou)k a)lapadno\n
Zê/nônos pa/ntôn e)pilê/ptoros], &c.]
[Side-note: Zeno's Dialectic--he refuted the opponents of Parmenides,
by showing that their assumptions led to contradictions and
absurdities.]
We know the reasonings of Zeno and Melissus only through scanty
fragments, and those fragments transmitted by opponents. But it is
plain that both of them, especially Zeno, pressed their adversaries
with grave difficulties, which it was more easy to deride than to
elucidate. Both took their departure from the ground occupied by
Parmenides. They agreed with him in recognising the phenomenal,
apparent, or relative world, the world of sense and experience, as a
subject of knowledge, though of uncertain and imperfect knowledge.
Each of them gave, as Parmenides had done, certain affirmative
opinions, or at least probable conjectures, for the purpose of
explaining it.[14] But beyond this world of appearances, there lay the
real, absolute, ontological, ultra-phenomenal, or Noumenal world,
which Parmenides represented as _Ens unum continuum_, and which his
opponents contended to be plural and discontinuous. These opponents
deduced absurd and ridiculous consequences from the theory of the One.
Herein both Zeno and Melissus defended Parmenides. Zeno, the better
dialectician of the two, retorted upon the advocates of absolute
plurality and discontinuousness, showing that their doctrine led to
consequences not less absurd and contradictory than the _Ens unum_ of
Parmenides. He advanced many distinct arguments; some of them
antinomies, deducing from the same premisses both the affirmative and
the negative of the same conclusion.[15]
[Footnote 14: Diog. Laert. ix. 24-29.
Zeller (Phil. d. Griech. i. p. 424, note 2) doubts the assertion that
Zeno delivered probable opinions and hypotheses, as Parmenides had
done before him, respecting phenomenal nature. But I see no adequate
ground for such doubt.]
[Footnote 15: Simplikius, in Aristotel. Physic. f. 30. [Greek: e)n
me/ntoi tô=| suggra/mmati au)tou=, polla\ e)/chonti e)picheirê/mata,
kath' e(/kaston dei/knusin, o(/ti tô=| polla\ ei)=nai le/gonti
sumbai/nei ta\ e)nanti/a le/gein], &c.]
[Side-note: Consequences of their assumption of Entia Plura
Discontinua. Reductiones ad absurdum.]
If things in themselves were many (he said) they must be both
infinitely small and infinitely great. _Infinitely small_, because the
many things must consist in a number of units, each essentially
indivisible: but that which is indivisible has no magnitude, or is
infinitely small if indeed it can be said to have any existence
whatever:[16] _Infinitely great_, because each of the many things, if
assumed to exist, must have magnitude. Having magnitude, each thing
has parts which also have magnitude: these parts are, by the
hypothesis, essentially discontinuous, but this implies that they are
kept apart from each other by other intervening parts--and these
intervening parts must be again kept apart by others. Each body will
thus contain in itself an infinite number of parts, each having
magnitude. In other words, it will be infinitely great.[17]
[Footnote 16: Aristotel. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1001, b. 7. [Greek: e)/ti
ei) a)diai/reton au)to\ to\ e(/n, kata\ me\n to\ Zê/nônos a)xi/ôma,
ou)the\n a)\n ei)/ê.
o(\ ga\r mê/te prostithe/menon mête\ a)phairou/menon poiei= ti mei=zon
mêde\ e(/latton, ou)/ phêsin ei)=nai tou=to tô=n o)/ntôn, ô(s dê=lon
o(/ti o)/ntos mege/thous tou= o)/ntos].
Seneca (Epistol. 88) and Alexander of Aphrodisias (see the passages of
Themistius and Simplikius cited by Brandis, Handbuch Philos. i. p.
412-416) conceive Zeno as having dissented from Parmenides, and as
having denied the existence, not only of [Greek: ta\ polla\], but also
of [Greek: to\ e(/n]. But Zeno seems to have adhered to Parmenides;
and to have denied the existence of [Greek: to\ e(/n], only upon the
hypothesis opposed to Parmenides--namely, that [Greek: ta\ polla\]
existed. Zeno argued thus:--Assuming that the Real or Absolute is
essentially divisible and discontinuous, divisibility must be pushed
to infinity, so that you never arrive at any ultimatum, or any real
unit ([Greek: a)kribô=s e(/n]). If you admit [Greek: ta\ polla\], you
renounce [Greek: to\ e(/n]. The reasoning of Zeno, as far as we know
it, is nearly all directed against the hypothesis of _Entia plura
discontinua_. Tennemann (Gesch. Philos. i. 4, p. 205) thinks that the
reasoning of Zeno is directed against the world of sense: in which I
cannot agree with him.]
[Footnote 17: Scholia ad Aristotel. Physic. p. 334, a. ed. Brandis.]
Again--If things in themselves were many, they would be both finite
and infinite in number. _Finite_, because they are as many as they
are, neither more nor less: and every number is a finite number.
_Infinite_, because being essentially separate, discontinuous, units,
each must be kept apart from the rest by an intervening unit; and this
again by something else intervening. Suppose a multitude A, B, C, D,
&c. A and B would be continuous unless they were kept apart by some
intervening unit Z. But A and Z would then be continuous unless they
were kept apart by something else--Y: and so on ad infinitum:
otherwise the essential discontinuousness could not be maintained.[18]
[Footnote 18: See the argument cited by Simplikius in the words of the
Zenonian treatise, in Preller, Hist. Philos. Græc. ex font. context.
p. 101, sect. 156.]
By these two arguments,[19] drawn from the hypothesis which affirmed
perpetual divisibility and denied any Continuum, Zeno showed that such
_Entia multa discontinua_ would have contradictory attributes: they
would be both infinitely great and infinitely small--they would be
both finite and infinite in number. This he advanced as a _reductio ad
absurdum_ against the hypothesis.
[Footnote 19: Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. f. 30. [Greek: kai\
ou)/tô me\n to\ kata\ to\ plê=thos a)/peiron e)k tê=s dichotomi/as
e)/deixe, to\ de\ kata\ to\ me/gethos pro/teron kata\ tê\n au)tê\n
e)pichei/rêsin]. Compare Zeller, Phil. d. Griech. i. p. 427.]
[Side-note: Each thing must exist in its own place--Grain of millet
not sonorous.]
Again--If existing things be many and discontinuous, each of these
must exist in a place of its own. Nothing can exist except in some
place. But the place is itself an existing something: each place must
therefore have a place of its own to exist in: the second place must
have a third place to exist in and so forth ad infinitum.[20] We have
here a farther _reductio ad impossibile_ of the original hypothesis:
for that hypothesis denies the continuity of space, and represents
space as a multitude of discontinuous portions or places.
[Footnote 20: Aristotel. Physic. iv. 1, p. 209, a. 22; iv. 3, p. 210,
b. 23.
Aristotle here observes that the Zenonian argument respecting place is
easy to be refuted; and he proceeds to give the refutation. But his
refutation is altogether unsatisfactory. Those who despise these
Zenonian arguments as _sophisms_, ought to look at the way in which
they were answered, at or near the time.
Eudêmus ap. Simplik. ad Aristot. Physic. f. 131. [Greek: a)/xion ga\r
pa=n tô=n o)/ntôn pou= ei)=nai; ei) de\ o( to/pos tô=n o)/ntôn, pou=
a)\n ei)/ê?]]
Another argument of Zeno is to the following effect:--"Does a grain of
millet, when dropped upon the floor, make sound? No.--Does a bushel of
millet make sound under the same circumstances? Yes.--Is there not a
determinate proportion between the bushel and the grain? There
is.--There must therefore be the same proportion between the
sonorousness of the two. If one grain be not sonorous, neither can ten
thousand grains be so."[21]
[Footnote 21: Aristotel. Physic. vii. 5, p. 250, a. 20, with the
Scholia of Simplikius on the passage, p. 423, ed. Brandis.]
To appreciate the contradiction brought out by Zeno, we must recollect
that he is not here reasoning about facts of sense, phenomenal and
relative--but about things in themselves, absolute and
ultra-phenomenal** realities. He did not deny the fact of sense:
to appeal to that fact in reply, would have been to concede his point.
The adversaries against whom he reasoned (Protagoras is mentioned, but he
can hardly have been among them, if we have regard to his memorable
dogma, of which more will be said presently) were those who maintained
the plurality of absolute substances, each for itself, with absolute
attributes, apart from the fact of sense, and independent of any
sentient subject. One grain of millet (Zeno argues) has no absolute
sonorousness, neither can ten thousand such grains taken together have
any. Upon the hypothesis of absolute reality as a discontinuous
multitude, you are here driven to a contradiction which Zeno intends
as an argument against the hypothesis. There is no absolute
sonorousness in the ten thousand grains: the sound which they make is
a phenomenal fact, relative to us as sentients of sound, and having no
reality except in correlation with a hearer.[22]
[Footnote 22: It will be seen that Aristotle in explaining this
[Greek: a)pori/a], takes into consideration the difference of force in
the vibrations of air, and the different impressibility of the ear.
The explanation is pertinent and just, if applied to the fact of
sense: but it is no reply to Zeno, who did not call in question the
fact of sense. Zeno is impugning the doctrine of absolute substances
and absolute divisibility. To say that ten thousand grains are
sonorous, but that no one of them separately taken is so, appears to
him a contradiction, similar to what is involved in saying that a real
magnitude is made up of mathematical points. Aristotle does not meet
this difficulty.]
[Side-note: Zenonian arguments in regard to motion.]
Other memorable arguments of Zeno against the same hypothesis were
those by which he proved that if it were admitted, motion would be
impossible. Upon the theory of absolute plurality and
discontinuousness, every line or portion of distance was divisible
into an infinite number of parts: before a moving body could get from
the beginning to the end of this line, it must pass in succession over
every one of these parts: but to do this in a finite time was
impossible: therefore motion was impossible.[23]
[Footnote 23: Aristot. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239 b., with the Scholia, p.
412 seq. ed. Brandis; Aristotel. De Lineis Insecabilibus, p. 968, a.
19.
These four arguments against absolute motion caused embarrassment to
Aristotle and his contemporaries. [Greek: te/ttares d' ei)si\ lo/goi
Zê/nônos oi( pare/chontes ta\s duskoli/as toi=s lu/ousin], &c.]
A second argument of the same tendency was advanced in the form of
comparison between Achilles and the tortoise--the swiftest and slowest
movers. The two run a race, a certain start being given to the
tortoise. Zeno contends that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise.
It is plain indeed, according to the preceding argument, that motion
both for the one and for the other is an impossibility. Neither one
nor the other can advance from the beginning to the end of any line,
except by passing successively through all the parts of that line: but
those parts are infinite in number, and cannot therefore be passed
through in any finite time. But suppose such impossibility to be got
over: still Achilles will not overtake the tortoise. For while
Achilles advances one hundred yards, the tortoise has advanced ten:
while Achilles passes over these additional ten yards, the tortoise
will have passed over one more yard: while Achilles is passing over
this remaining one yard, the tortoise will have got over one-tenth of
another yard: and so on ad infinitum: the tortoise will always be in
advance of him by a certain distance, which, though ever diminishing,
will never vanish into nothing.
The third Zenonian argument derived its name from the flight of an
arrow shot from a bow. The arrow while thus carried forward (says
Zeno) is nevertheless at rest.[24] For the time from the beginning to
the end of its course consists of a multitude of successive instants.
During each of these instants the arrow is in a given place of equal
dimension with itself. But that which is during any instant in a given
place, is at rest. Accordingly during each successive instant of its
flight, the arrow is at rest. Throughout its whole flight it is both
in motion and at rest. This argument is a deduction from the doctrine
of discontinuous time, as the preceding is a deduction from that of
discontinuous space.
[Footnote 24: Aristotel. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239, b. 30. [Greek: tri/tos
o( nu=n r(êthei/s, o(/ti ê( o)i+sto\s pherome/nê e(/stêken.]]
A fourth argument[25] was derived from the case of two equal bodies
moved with equal velocity in opposite directions, and passing each
other. If the body A B were at rest, the other body C D would move
along the whole length of C D in two minutes. But if C D be itself
moving with equal velocity in the opposite direction, A B will pass
along the whole length of C D in half that time, or one minute. Hence
Zeno infers that the motion of A B is nothing absolute, or belonging
to the thing in itself--for if that were so, it would not be varied
according to the movement of C D. It is no more than a phenomenal
fact, relative to us and our comparison.
[Footnote 25: See the illustration of this argument at some length by
Simplikius, especially the citation from Eudêmus at the close of
it--ap. Scholia ad Aristotel. p. 414, ed. Brandis.]
This argument, so far as I can understand its bearing, is not deduced
(as those preceding are) from the premisses of opponents: but rests
upon premisses of its own, and is intended to prove that motion is
only relative.
[Side-note: General result and purpose of the Zenonian Dialectic.
Nothing is knowable except the relative.]
These Zenonian reasonings are memorable as the earliest known
manifestations of Grecian dialectic, and are probably equal in
acuteness and ingenuity to anything which it ever produced. Their
bearing is not always accurately conceived. Most of them are
_argumenta ad hominem_: consequences contradictory and inadmissible,
but shown to follow legitimately from a given hypothesis, and
therefore serving to disprove the hypothesis itself.[26] The
hypothesis was one relating to the real, absolute, or
ultra-phenomenal, which Parmenides maintained to be _Ens Unum
Continuum_, while his opponents affirmed it to be essentially
multiple and discontinuous. Upon the hypothesis of Parmenides, the
Real and Absolute, being a continuous One, was obviously inconsistent
with the movement and variety of the phenomenal world: Parmenides
himself recognised the contradiction of the two, and his opponents
made it a ground for deriding his doctrine.[27] The counter-hypothesis,
of the discontinuous many, appeared at first sight not to be open to
the same objection: it seemed to be more in harmony with the facts of
the phenomenal and relative world, and to afford an absolute basis for
them to rest upon. Against this delusive appearance the dialectic of
Zeno was directed. He retorted upon the opponents, and showed that if
the hypothesis of the _Unum Continuum_ led to absurd consequences,
that of the discontinuous many was pregnant with deductions yet more
absurd and contradictory. He exhibits in detail several of these
contradictory deductions, with a view to refute the hypothesis from
whence they flow; and to prove that, far from performing what it
promises, it is worse than useless, as entangling us in contradictory
conclusions. The result of his reasoning, implied rather than
announced, is--That neither of the two hypotheses are of any avail to
supply a real and absolute basis for the phenomenal and relative
world: That the latter must rest upon its own evidence, and must be
interpreted, in so far as it can be interpreted at all, by its own
analogies.
[Footnote 26: The scope of the Zenonian dialectic, as I have here
described it, is set forth clearly by Plato, in his Parmenides, c.
3-6, p. 127, 128. [Greek: Pô=s ô)= Zê/nôn, tou=to le/geis? _ei) polla/
e)sti ta\ o)/nta,_ ô(s a)/ra dei= au)ta\ o(/moia/ te ei)=nai kai\
a)no/moia, tou=to de\ dê\ a)du/naton.--Ou)kou=n ei) a)du/naton ta/ te
a)no/moia o(/moia ei)=nai kai\ ta\ o(/moia a)no/moia, _a)du/naton dê\
kai\ polla\ ei)=nai?_ ei) ga\r polla\ ei)/ê, pa/schoi a)\n ta\
a)du/nata. A)=ra _tou=to/ e)stin o(\ bou/lontai/ sou oi( lo/goi?_ ou)k
_a)llo ti ê)\ diama/chesthai para\ pa/nta ta\ lego/mena, ô(s ou)
polla/ e)stin?_] Again, p. 128 D. [Greek: A)ntile/gei ou)=n tou=to to\
gra/mma pro\s tou\s ta polla\ le/gontas, kai\ a)ntapodi/dôsi tau=ta
kai\ plei/ô, tou=to boulo/menon dêlou=n, ô(s e)/ti geloio/tera
pa/schoi a)\n _au)tô=n ê( u(po/thesis, ê( ei) polla/ e)stin--ê)\ ê(
tou= e(\n ei)=nai--ei)/ tis i(kanô=s e)pexi/oi_].
Here Plato evidently represents Zeno as merely proving that
contradictory conclusions followed, _if you assumed a given
hypothesis_; which hypothesis was thereby shown to be inadmissible.
But Plato alludes to Zeno in another place (Phædrus, c. 97, p. 261)
under the name of the Eleatic Palamedes, as "showing his art in
speaking, by making the same things appear to the hearers like and
unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion". In this last passage,
the impression produced by Zeno's argumentation is brought to view,
apart from the scope and purpose with which he employed it: which
scope and purpose are indicated in the passage above cited from the
Parmenides.
So also Isokrates (Encom. Helen. init.) [Greek: Zê/nôna, to\n tau)ta\
dunata\ kai\ pa/lin a)du/nata peirô/menon a)pophai/nein.]]
[Footnote 27: Plato, Parmenides, p. 128 D.]
[Side-note: Mistake of supposing Zeno's _reductiones ad absurdum_ of
an opponents doctrines to be generalisations of data gathered from
experience.]
But the purport of Zeno's reasoning is mistaken, when he is conceived
as one who wishes to delude his hearers by proving both sides of a
contradictory proposition. Zeno's contradictory conclusions are
elicited with the express purpose of disproving the premisses from
which they are derived. For these premisses Zeno himself is not to be
held responsible, since he borrows them from his opponents: a
circumstance which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the Zenonian
arguments as paralogisms, because they assume the Continua, Space, and
Time, to be discontinuous or divided into many distinct parts.[28] Now
this absolute discontinuousness of matter, space, and time, was not
advanced by Zeno as a doctrine of his own, but is the very doctrine of
his opponents, taken up by him for the purpose of showing that it led
to contradictory consequences, and thus of indirectly refuting it. The
sentence of Aristotle is thus really in Zeno's favour, though
apparently adverse to him. In respect to motion, a similar result
followed from the Zenonian reasonings; namely, to show That motion, as
an attribute of the Real and Absolute, was no less inconsistent with
the hypothesis of those who opposed Parmenides, than with the
hypothesis of Parmenides himself:--That absolute motion could no more
be reconciled with the doctrine of the discontinuous Many, than with
that of the Continuous One:--That motion therefore was only a
phenomenal fact, relative to our sensations, conceptions, and
comparisons; and having no application to the absolute. In this
phenomenal point of view, neither Zeno nor Parmenides nor Melissus
disputed the fact of motion. They recognised it as a portion of the
world of sensation and experience; which world they tried to explain,
well or ill, by analogies and conjectures derived from itself.
[Footnote 28: Aristotel. Physic. vi. 9, p. 239 b. [Greek: Zê/nôn de\
paralogi/zetai; ou) ga\r su/gketai o( chro/nos e)k tô=n nu=n o)/ntôn
tô=n a)diaire/tôn, ô(/sper ou)d' a)/llo me/gethos ou)de/n] &c.
Aristotle, in the second and third chapters of his Physica, canvasses
and refutes the doctrine of Parmenides and Zeno respecting Ens and
Unum. He maintains that Ens and Unum are equivocal--[Greek: pollachô=s
lego/mena]. He farther maintained that no one before him had succeeded
in refuting Zeno. See the Scholia of Alexander ad Sophistic. Elench.
p. 320 b. 6, ed. Brandis.]
[Side-note: Zenonian Dialectic--Platonic Parmenides.]
Though we have not the advantage of seeing the Zenonian dialectics as
they were put forth by their author, yet if we compare the substance
of them as handed down to us, with those dialectics which form the
latter half of the Platonic dialogue called Parmenides, we shall find
them not inferior in ingenuity, and certainly more intelligible in
their purpose. Zeno furnishes no positive support to the Parmenidean
doctrine, but he makes out a good negative case against the
counter-doctrine.
[Side-note: Views of historians of philosophy respecting Zeno.]
Zeller and other able modern critics, while admitting the reasoning of
Zeno to be good against this counter-doctrine, complain that he takes
it up too exclusively; that One and Many did not exclude each other,
and that the doctrines of Parmenides and his opponents were both true
together, but neither of them true to the exclusion of the other. But
when we reflect that the subject of predication on both sides was the
Real (Ens _per se_) it was not likely that either Parmenides or his
opponents would affirm it to be both absolutely One and Continuous,
and absolutely Many and Discontinuous.[29] If the opponents of
Parmenides had taken this ground, Zeno need not have imagined
deductions for the purpose of showing that their hypothesis led to
contradictory conclusions; for the contradictions would have stood
avowedly registered in the hypothesis itself. If a man affirms both at
once, he divests the predication of its absolute character, as
belonging unconditionally to Ens _per se_; and he restricts it to the
phenomenal, the relative, the conditioned--dependent upon our
sensations and our fluctuating point of view. This was not intended
either by Parmenides or by his opponents.
[Footnote 29: That both of them could not be true respecting Ens _per
se_, seems to have been considered indisputable. See the argument of
Sokrates in the Parmenides of Plato, p. 129 B-E.]
[Side-note: Absolute and relative--the first unknowable.]
If, indeed, we judge the question, not from their standing-point, but
from our own, we shall solve the difficulty by adopting the
last-mentioned answer. We shall admit that One and Many are predicates
which do not necessarily exclude each other; but we shall refrain from
affirming or denying either of them respecting the Real, the Absolute,
the Unconditioned. Of an object absolutely one and continuous--or of
objects absolutely many and discontinuous, apart from the facts of our
own sense and consciousness, and independent of any sentient subject--we
neither know nor can affirm anything. Both these predicates (One--Many)
are relative and phenomenal, grounded on the facts and
comparisons of our own senses and consciousness, and serving only to
describe, to record, and to classify, those facts. Discrete quantity
or number, or succession of distinct unities--continuous quantity, or
motion and extension--are two conceptions derived from comparison,
abstracted and generalised from separate particular phenomena of our
consciousness; the continuous, from our movements and the
consciousness of persistent energy involved therein--the
discontinuous, from our movements, intermitted and renewed, as well as
from our impressions of sense. We compare one discrete quantity with
another, or one continual quantity with another, and we thus ascertain
many important truths: but we select our unit, or our standard of
motion and extension, as we please, or according to convenience,
subject only to the necessity of adapting our ulterior calculations
consistently to this unit, when once selected. The same object may
thus be considered sometimes as one, sometimes as many; both being
relative, and depending upon our point of view. Motion, Space, Time,
may be considered either as continuous or as discontinuous: we may
reason upon them either as one or the other, but we must not confound
the two points of view with each other. When, however, we are called
upon to travel out of the Relative, and to decide between Parmenides
and his opponents--whether the Absolute be One or Multitudinous--we
have only to abstain from affirming either, or (in other words) to
confess our ignorance. We know nothing of an absolute, continuous,
self-existent One, or of an absolute, discontinuous Many.
[Side-note: Zeno did not deny motion as a fact, phenomenal and
relative.]
Some critics understand Zeno to have denied motion as a fact--opposing
sophistical reasoning to certain and familiar experience. Upon this
view is founded the well-known anecdote, that Diogenes the Cynic
refuted the argument by getting up and walking. But I do not so
construe the scope of his argument. He did not deny motion as a fact.
It rested with him on the evidence of sense, acknowledged by every
one. It was therefore only a phenomenal fact relative to our
consciousness, sensation, movements, and comparisons. As such, but as
such only, did Zeno acknowledge it. What he denied was, motion as a
fact belonging to the Absolute, or as deducible from the Absolute. He
did not deny the Absolute or Thing in itself, as an existing object,
but he struck out variety, divisibility, and motion, from the list of
its predicates. He admitted only the Parmenidean Ens, one, continuous,
unchanged, and immovable, with none but negative predicates, and
severed from the relative world of experience and sensation.
[Side-note: Gorgias the Leontine--did not admit the Absolute, even as
conceived by Parmenides.]
Other reasoners, contemporary with Zeno, did not agree with him, in
admitting the Absolute, even as an object with no predicates, except
unity and continuity. They denied it altogether, both as substratum
and as predicate. To establish this negation is the purpose of a short
treatise ascribed to the rhetor or Sophist Gorgias, a contemporary of
Zeno; but we are informed that all the reasonings, which Gorgias
employed, were advanced, or had already been advanced, by others
before him.[30] Those reasonings are so imperfectly preserved, that we
can make out little more than the general scope.
[Footnote 30: See the last words of the Aristotelian or
Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgiâ, p. 980.
[Greek: A(/pasai de\ au)=tai kai\ e(te/rôn a)rchaiote/rôn ei)si\n
a)po/riai, ô(/ste e)n tê=| peri\ e)kei/nôn ske/psei kai\ tau/tas
e)xetaste/on].
[Greek: A(/pasai] is the reading of Mullach in his edition of this
treatise (p. 79), in place of [Greek: a(/pantes] or [Greek:
a(/panta].]
[Side-note: His reasonings against the Absolute, either as Ens or
Entia.]
Ens, or Entity _per se_ (he contended), did not really exist. Even
granting that it existed, it was unknowable by any one. And even
granting that it both existed, and was known by any one, still such
person could not communicate his knowledge of it to others.[31]
[Footnote 31: See the treatise of Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle, De
Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgiâ, in Aristot. p. 979-980, Bekker, also in
Mullach's edition, p. 62-78. The argument of Gorgias is also abridged
by Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. p. 384, sect. 65-86.
See also a copious commentary on the Aristotelian treatise in Foss, De
Gorgiâ Leontino, p. 115 seq.
The text of the Aristotelian treatise is so corrupt as to be often
unintelligible.]
As to the first point, Ens was no more real or existent than Non-Ens:
the word Non-Ens must have an objective meaning, as well as the word
Ens: it was Non-Ens, therefore it _was_, or existed. Both of them
existed alike, or rather neither of them existed. Moreover, if Ens
existed, it must exist either as One or as Many--either as eternal or
as generated--either in itself, or in some other place. But Melissus,
Zeno, and other previous philosophers, had shown sufficient cause
against each of these alternatives separately taken. Each of the
alternative essential predicates had been separately disproved;
therefore the subject, Ens, could not exist under either of them, or
could not exist at all.
[Side-note: Ens, incogitable and unknowable.]
As to the second point, let us grant that Ens or Entia exist; they
would nevertheless (argued Gorgias) be incogitable and unknowable. To
be cogitated is no more an attribute of Ens than of Non-Ens. The fact
of cogitation does not require Ens as a condition, or attest Ens as an
absolute or thing in itself. If our cogitation required or attained
Ens as an indispensable object, then there could be no fictitious
_cogitata_ nor any false propositions. We think of a man flying in the
air, or of a chariot race on the surface of the sea. If our _cogitata_
were realities, these must be so as well as the rest: if realities
alone were the object of cogitation, then these could not be thought
of. As Non-Ens was thus undeniably the object of cogitation, so Ens
could not be its object: for what was true respecting one of these
contraries, could not be true respecting the other.
[Side-note: Ens, even if granted to be knowable, is still
incommunicable to others.]
As to the third point: Assuming Ens both to exist and to be known by
you, you cannot (said Gorgias) declare or explain it to any one else.
You profess to have learnt what Ens is in itself, by your sight or
other perceptions but you declare to others by means of words, and
these words are neither themselves the absolute Ens, nor do they bring
Ens before the hearer. Even though you yourself know Ens, you cannot,
by your words, enable _him_ to know it. If he is to know Ens, he must
know it in the same way as you. Moreover, neither your words, nor Ens
itself, will convey to the hearer the same knowledge as to you; for
the same cannot be at once in two distinct subjects; and even if it
were, yet since you and the hearer are not completely alike, so the
effect of the same object on both of you will not appear to be
like.[32]
[Footnote 32: In this third branch of the argument, showing that Ens,
even if known, cannot be communicable to others, Gorgias travels
beyond the Absolute, and directs his reasoning against the
communicability of the Relative or Phenomenal also. Both of his
arguments against such communicability have some foundation, and serve
to prove that the communicability cannot be exact or entire, even in
the case of sensible facts. The sensations thoughts, emotions, &c., of
one person are not _exactly_ like those of another.]
Such is the reasoning, as far as we can make it out, whereby Gorgias
sought to prove that the absolute Ens was neither existent, nor
knowable, nor communicable by words from one person to another.
[Side-note: Zeno and Gorgias--contrasted with the earlier Grecian
philosophers.]
The arguments both of Zeno and of Gorgias (the latter presenting the
thoughts of others earlier than himself), dating from a time
coinciding with the younger half of the life of Sokrates, evince a new
spirit and purpose in Grecian philosophy, as compared with the
Ionians, the two first Eleates, and the Pythagoreans. Zeno and Gorgias
exhibit conspicuously the new element of dialectic: the force of the
negative arm in Grecian philosophy, brought out into the arena,
against those who dogmatized or propounded positive theories: the
fertility of Grecian imagination in suggesting doubts and
difficulties, for which the dogmatists, if they aspired to success and
reputation, had to provide answers. Zeno directed his attack against
one scheme of philosophy--the doctrine of the Absolute Many: leaving
by implication the rival doctrine--the Absolute One of Parmenides in
exclusive possession of the field, yet not reinforcing it with any new
defences against objectors. Gorgias impugned the philosophy of the
Absolute in either or both of its forms--as One or as Many: not with a
view of leaving any third form as the only survivor, or of providing
any substitute from his own invention, but of showing that Ens, the
object of philosophical research, could neither be found nor known.
The negative purpose, disallowing altogether the philosophy of Nature
(as then conceived, not as now conceived), was declared without
reserve by Gorgias, as we shall presently find that it was by Sokrates
also.
[Side-note: New character of Grecian philosophy--antithesis of
affirmative and negative--proof and disproof.]
It is the opening of the negative vein which imparts from this time
forward a new character to Grecian philosophy. The positive and
negative forces, emanating from different aptitudes in the human mind,
are now both of them actively developed, and in strenuous antithesis
to each other. Philosophy is no longer exclusively confined to
dogmatists, each searching in his imagination for the Absolute Ens of
Nature, and each propounding what seems to him the only solution of
the problem. Such thinkers still continue their vocation, but under
new conditions of success, and subject to the scrutiny of numerous
dissentient critics. It is no longer sufficient to propound a
theory,[33] either in obscure, oracular metaphors and
half-intelligible aphorisms, like Herakleitus--or in verse more or
less impressive, like Parmenides or Empedokles. The theory must be
sustained by proofs, guarded against objections, defended against
imputations of inconsistency: moreover, it must be put in comparison
with other rival theories, the defects of which must accordingly be
shown up along with it. Here are new exigencies, to which dogmatic
philosophers had not before been obnoxious. They were now required to
be masters of the art of dialectic attack and defence, not fearing the
combat of question and answer--a combat in which, assuming tolerable
equality between the duellists, the questioner had the advantage of
the sun, or the preferable position,[34] and the farther advantage of
choosing where to aim his blows. To expose fallacy or inconsistency,
was found to be both an easier process, and a more appreciable display
of ingenuity, than the discovery and establishment of truth in such
manner as to command assent. The weapon of negation, refutation,
cross-examination, was wielded for its own results, and was found hard
to parry by the affirmative philosophers of the day.
[Footnote 33: The repugnance of the Herakleitean philosophers to the
scrutiny of dialectical interrogation is described by Plato in strong
language, it is indeed even caricatured. (Theætêtus, 179-180.)]
[Footnote 34: Theokritus, Idyll, xxii. 83; the description of the
pugilistic contest between Pollux and Amykus:--
[Greek: e)/ntha polu/s sphisi mo/chthos e)peigome/noisin e)tu/chthê,
o(ppo/teros kata\ nô=ta la/bê| pha/os ê)eli/oio;
a)ll' i)dri/ê| me/gan a)/ndra parê/luthes ô)= Polu/deukes;
ba/lleto d' a)kti/nessin a(/pan A)mu/koio pro/sôpon].
To toss up for the sun, was a practice not yet introduced between
pugilists.]
APPENDIX.
To illustrate by comparison the form of Grecian philosophy, before
Dialectic was brought to bear upon it, I transcribe from two eminent
French scholars (M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire and Professor Robert Mohl)
some account of the mode in which the Indian philosophy has always
been kept on record and communicated.
M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire (in his Premier Mémoire sur le Sânkhya, pp.
5-11) gives the following observations upon the Sânkhya or philosophy
of Kapila, one of the principal systems of Sanskrit philosophy: date
(as supposed) about 700 B.C.
There are two sources from whence the Sânkhya philosophy is known:--
"1. Les Soûtras ou aphorismes de Kapila.
"2. Le traité déjà connu et traduit sous le nom de Sânkhya Kârikâ,
c'est à dire Vers Mémoriaux du Sânkhya.
"Les Soûtras de Kapila sont en tout au nombre de 499, divisés en six
lectures, et répartis inégalement entre chacune d'elles. Les Soûtras
sont accompagnés d'un commentaire qui les explique, et qui est d'un
brahmane nommé le Mendiant. Le commentateur explique avec des
developpements plus ou moins longs les Soûtras de Kapila, qu'il cite
un à un.
"Les Soûtras sont en général tres concis: parfois ils ne se composent
que de deux ou trois mots, et jamais ils ne comprennent plus d'une
phrase. Cette forme aphoristique, sous laquelle se présente à nous la
philosophie Indienne--est celle qu'a prise la science Indienne dans
toutes ses branches, depuis la grammaire jusqu'à la philosophie. Les
Soûtras de Panini, qui a réduit toutes les régles de la grammaire
sanscrite en 3996 aphorismes, ne sont pas moins concis que ceux de
Kapila. Ce mode étrange d'exposition tient dans l'Inde à la manière
même dont la science s'est transmise d'âge en âge. Un maître n'a
généralement qu'un disciple: il lui suffit, pour la doctrine qu'il
communique, d'avoir des points de repère, et le commentaire oral qu'il
ajoute à ces sentences pour leur expliquer, met le disciple en état de
les bien comprendre. Le disciple lui-même, une fois qu'il en a pénétré
le sens veritable, n'a pas besoin d'un symbole plus développé, et la
concision même des aphorismes l'aide a les mieux retenir. _C'est une
initiation qu'il a reçue: et les sentences, dans lesquelles cette
initiation se résume, restent toujours assez claires pour lui._
"Mais il n'en est pas de même pour les lecteurs étrangers, et il
serait difficile de trouver rien de plus obscur que ces Soûtras. Les
commentaires mêmes ne suffisent pas toujours à les rendre parfaitement
intelligibles.
"Le seul exemple d'une forme analogue dans l'histoire de l'esprit
humain et de la science en Occident, nous est fourni par les
Aphorismes d'Hippocrate: eux aussi s'adressaient à des adeptes, et ils
réclamaient, comme les Soûtras Indiens, l'explication des maîtres pour
être bien compris par les disciples. Mais cet exemple unique n'a point
tiré à conséquence dans le monde occidental, tandis que dans le monde
Indien l'aphorisme est resté pendant de longs siècles la forme
spéciale de la science: et les développements de pensée qui nous sont
habituels, et qui nous semblent indispensables, ont été reservés aux
commentaires.
"La Sânkhya Kârikâ est en vers: En Grèce, la poésie a été pendant
quelque temps la langue de la philosophie; Empédocle, Parménide, ont
écrit leurs systèmes en vers. Ce n'est pas Kapila qui l'a écrite.
Entre Kapila, et l'auteur de la Kârikâ, Isvara Krishna, on doit
compter quelques centaines d'années tout au moins: et le second n'a
fait que rediger en vers, pour aider la mémoire des élèves, la
doctrine que le maître avait laissée sous la forme axiomatique.
"On conçoit, du reste, sans peine, que l'usage des vers mémoriaux se
soit introduit dans l'Inde pour l'enseignement et la transmission de
la science: c'était une conséquence nécessaire de l'usage des
aphorismes. Les sciences les plus abstraites (mathematics, astronomy,
algebra), emploient aussi ce procédé, quoiqu'il semble peu fait pour
leur austérité et leur precision. Ainsi, le rhythme est, avec les
aphorismes, et par le même motif, la forme à peu pres générale de la
science dans l'Inde."
(Kapila as a personage is almost legendary; nothing exact is known
about him. His doctrine passes among the Indians "comme une sorte de
révélation divine".--Pp. 252, 253.)
M. Mohl observes as follows:--
"Ceci m'amène aux Pouranas. Nous n'avons plus rien du Pourana
primitif, qui paraît avoir été une cosmogonie, suivie d'une histoire
des Dieux et des families héroïques. Les sectes ont fini par
s'approprier ce cadre, après des transformations dont nous ne savons
ni le nombre ni les époques: et s'en sont servies, pour exalter
chacune son dieu, et y fondre, avec des débris de l'ancienne
tradition, leur mythologie plus moderne. Ce que les Pouranas sont pour
le peuple, les six systèmes de philosophie le sont pour les savants.
Nous trouvons ces systèmes dans la forme abstruse que les Hindous
aiment à donner à leur science: chaque école a ses aphorismes, qui,
sous forme de vers mnémoniques, contiennent dans le moins grand nombre
de mots possible tous les résultats d'une école. Mais nous n'avons
aucun renseignement sur les commencements de l'école, sur les
discussions que l'élaboration du système a dû provoquer, sur les
hommes qui y ont pris part, sur la marche et le développement des
idées: nous avons le système dans sa dernière forme, et rien ne nous
permet de remplir l'espace qui le sépare des théories plus vagues que
l'on trouve dans les derniers écrits de l'époque védique, à laquelle
pourtant tout prétend se rattacher. À partir de ces aphorismes, nous
avons des commentaires et des traités d'exposition et
d'interprétation: mais les idées premières, les termes techniques, et
le systeme en tier, sont fixés antérieurement. Tous ces systèmes
reposent sur une analyse psychologique très raffinée; et chacun a sa
terminologie précise, et à laquelle la nôtre ne répond que fort
imparfaitement: il faut donc, sous peine de se tromper et de tromper
ses lecteurs, que les traducteurs créent une foule de termes
techniques, ce qui n'est pas la moindre difficulté de ce travail." R.
Mohl, 'Rapport Annuel Fait à la Société Asïatique,' 1863, pp. 103-105;
collected edition, 'Vingt-sept ans d'histoire des Études Orientales,'
vol. ii. pp. 496, 498-9.
When the purpose simply is to imprint affirmations on the memory, and
to associate them with strong emotions of reverential belief--mnemonic
verses and aphorisms are suitable enough; Empedokles employed verse,
Herakleitus and the Pythagoreans expressed themselves in
aphorisms--brief, half-intelligible, impressive symbols. But if philosophy
is ever to be brought out of such twilight into the condition of
"reasoned truth," this cannot be done without submitting all the
affirmations to cross-examining opponents--to the scrutiny of a
negative Dialectic. It is the theory and application of this Dialectic
which we are about to follow in Sokrates and Plato.