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EARLY
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
BY
JOHN BURNET, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR
AND ST. LEONARD, ST. ANDREWS
Περὶ μὲν τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐσκόπουν, τὰ δ’ ὄντα ὑπέλαβον
εἶναι τὰ αἰσθητὰ μόνον.—ARISTOTLE.
_SECOND EDITION_
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908
_First Edition published April 1892._
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
It has been no easy task to revise this volume in such a way as to make
it more worthy of the favour with which it has been received. Most of it
has had to be rewritten in the light of certain discoveries made since
the publication of the first edition, above all, that of the extracts
from Menon’s Ἰατρικά, which have furnished, as I believe, a clue to the
history of Pythagoreanism. I trust that all other obligations are duly
acknowledged in the proper place.
It did not seem worth while to eliminate all traces of a certain
youthful assurance which marked the first edition. I should not write
now as I wrote at the age of twenty-five; but I still feel that the main
contentions of the book were sound, so I have not tried to amend the
style. The references to Zeller and “Ritter and Preller” are adapted
throughout to the latest editions. The Aristotelian commentators are
referred to by the pages and verses of the Berlin Academy edition, and
Stobaeus by those of Wachsmuth.
J. B.
ST. ANDREWS, 1908.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
No apology is needed for the appearance of a work dealing with Early
Greek Philosophy. The want of one has long been felt; for there are few
branches of philology in which more progress has been made in the last
twenty years, and the results of that progress have not yet been made
accessible to the English reader. My original intention was simply to
report these results; but I soon found that I was obliged to dissent
from some of them, and it seemed best to say so distinctly. Very likely
I am wrong in most of these cases, but my mistakes may be of use in
calling attention to unobserved points. In any case, I hope no one will
think I have been wanting in the respect due to the great authority of
Zeller, who was the first to recall the history of philosophy from the
extravagances into which it had wandered earlier in the century. I am
glad to find that all my divergences from his account have only led me a
little further in the path that he struck out.
I am very sensible of the imperfect execution of some parts of this
work; but the subject has become so large, and the number of authorities
whose testimony must be weighed is so great, that it is not easy for any
one writer to be equally at home in all parts of the field.
I have consulted the student’s convenience by giving references to the
seventh edition of Ritter and Preller (ed. Schultess) throughout. The
references to Zeller are to the fourth German edition, from which the
English translation was made. I have been able to make some use also of
the recently published fifth edition (1892), and all references to it
are distinguished by the symbol Z^5. I can only wish that it had
appeared in time for me to incorporate its results more thoroughly.
I have to thank many friends for advice and suggestions, and, above all,
Mr. Harold H. Joachim, Fellow of Merton College, who read most of the
work before it went to press.
J. B.
OXFORD, 1892.
CONTENTS
PAGES
INTRODUCTION 1-35
CHAPTER I
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL 37-84
CHAPTER II
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 85-142
CHAPTER III
HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS 143-191
CHAPTER IV
PARMENIDES OF ELEA 192-226
CHAPTER V
EMPEDOKLES OF AKRAGAS 227-289
CHAPTER VI
ANAXAGORAS OF KLAZOMENAI 290-318
CHAPTER VII
THE PYTHAGOREANS 319-356
CHAPTER VIII
THE YOUNGER ELEATICS 357-379
CHAPTER IX
LEUKIPPOS OF MILETOS 380-404
CHAPTER X
ECLECTICISM AND REACTION 405-418
APPENDIX
THE SOURCES 419-426
INDEX 427-433
ABBREVIATIONS
_Arch._ _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie._ Berlin,
1888-1908.
BEARE. _Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition_, by John
I. Beare. Oxford, 1906.
DIELS _Dox._ _Doxographi graeci._ Hermannus Diels. Berlin,
1879.
DIELS _Vors._ _Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, von Hermann
Diels, Zweite Auflage, Erster Band. Berlin,
1906.
GOMPERZ. _Greek Thinkers_, by Theodor Gomperz, Authorised
(English) Edition, vol. i. London, 1901.
JACOBY. _Apollodors Chronik_, von Felix Jacoby (_Philol.
Unters._ Heft xvi.). Berlin, 1902.
R. P. _Historia Philosophiae Graecae_, H. Ritter et L.
Preller. Editio octava, quam curavit Eduardus
Wellmann. Gotha, 1898.
ZELLER. _Die Philosophie der Griechen, dargestellt von Dr.
Eduard Zeller._ Erster Theil, Fünfte Auflage.
Leipzig, 1892.
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
[Sidenote: The cosmological character of early Greek philosophy.]
I. It was not till the primitive view of the world and the customary
rules of life had broken down, that the Greeks, began to feel the needs
which philosophies of nature and of conduct seek to satisfy. Nor were
those needs felt all at once. The traditional maxims of conduct were not
seriously questioned till the old view of nature had passed away; and,
for this reason, the earliest philosophers busied themselves mainly with
speculations about the world around them. In due season, Logic was
called into being to meet a fresh want. The pursuit of cosmological
inquiry beyond a certain point inevitably brought to light a wide
divergence between science and common sense, which was itself a problem
that demanded solution, and moreover constrained philosophers to study
the means of defending their paradoxes against the prejudices of the
unscientific many. Later still, the prevailing interest in logical
matters raised the question of the origin and validity of knowledge;
while, about the same time, the breakdown of traditional morality gave
rise to Ethics. The period which precedes the rise of Logic and Ethics
has thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated
apart.[1]
Footnote 1:
It will be observed that Demokritos falls outside the period thus
limited. The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of
Sokrates along with the “pre-Socratic philosophers” obscures the true
course of historical development. Demokritos comes after Protagoras,
and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem.
(See Brochard, “Protagoras et Démocrite,” _Arch._ ii. p. 368.) He has
also a regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alterth._ iv.
§ 514 n.).
[Sidenote: The primitive view of the world.]
II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the
primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather
what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here
and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre
background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that
lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in
out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more
cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essentially a
thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred
by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless
curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild
tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and
Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in _Custom and Myth_, to
the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in
its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two.
We must not allow ourselves to be misled by metaphors about “the
childhood of the race,” though even these, if properly understood, are
suggestive enough. Our ideas of the true state of a child’s mind are apt
to be coloured by that theory of antenatal existence which has found,
perhaps, its highest expression in Wordsworth’s _Ode on the Intimations
of Immortality_. We transfer these ideas to the race generally, and are
thus led to think of the men who made and repeated myths as simple,
innocent creatures who were somehow nearer than we are to the beginning
of things, and so, perhaps, saw with a clearer vision. A truer view of
what a child’s thoughts really are will help to put us on the right
track. Left to themselves, children are often tormented by vague terrors
of surrounding objects which they fear to confide to any one. Their
games are based upon an animistic theory of things, and they are great
believers in luck and in the lot. They are devotees, too, of that “cult
of odds and ends” which is fetishism; and the unsightly old dolls which
they often cherish more fondly than the choicest products of the
toy-shop, remind us forcibly of the ungainly stocks and stones which
Pausanias found in the Holy of Holies of many a stately Greek temple. At
Sparta the Tyndaridai were a couple of boards, while the old image of
Hera at Samos was a roughly-hewn log.[2]
Footnote 2:
See E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alterth._ ii. § 64; Menzies, _History of
Religion_, pp. 272-276.
On the other hand, we must remember that, even in the earliest times of
which we have any record, the world was already very old. Those Greeks
who first tried to understand nature were not at all in the position of
men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path. There was already in the
field a tolerably consistent view of the world, though no doubt it was
rather implied and assumed in ritual and myth than distinctly realised
as such. The early thinkers did a far greater thing than merely to make
a beginning. By turning their backs on the savage view of things, they
renewed their youth, and with it, as it proved, the youth of the world,
at a time when the world seemed in its dotage.
The marvel is that they were able to do this so thoroughly as they did.
A savage myth might be preserved here and there to the scandal of
philosophers; fetishes, totems, and magic rites might lurk in holes and
corners with the moles and with the bats, to be unearthed long
afterwards by the curious in such matters. But the all-pervading
superstition, which we call primitive because we know not how or whence
it came, was gone for ever; and we find Herodotos noting with unfeigned
surprise the existence among “barbarians” of beliefs and customs which,
not so long ago, his own forefathers had taught and practised quite as
zealously as ever did Libyan or Scyth. Even then, he might have found
most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas.
[Sidenote: Traces of the primitive view in early literature.]
III. In one respect the way had been prepared already. Long before
history begins, the colonisation of the islands and the coasts of Asia
Minor had brought about a state of things that was not favourable to the
rigid maintenance of traditional customs and ways of thought. A myth is
essentially a local thing, and though the emigrants might give the names
of ancestral sanctuaries to similar spots in their new homes, they could
not transfer with the names the old sentiment of awe. Besides, these
were, on the whole, stirring and joyful times. The spirit of adventure
is not favourable to superstition, and men whose chief occupation is
fighting are not apt to be oppressed by that “fear of the world” which
some tell us is the normal state of the savage mind. Even the savage
becomes in great measure free from it when he is really happy.
[Sidenote: 1. Homer.]
That is why we find so few traces of the primitive view of the world in
Homer. The gods have become frankly human, and everything savage is, so
far as may be, kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of
early beliefs and practices, but they are exceptional. In that strange
episode of the Fourteenth Book of the _Iliad_ known as _The Deceiving of
Zeus_ we find a number of theogonical ideas which are otherwise quite
foreign to Homer, but they are treated with so little seriousness that
the whole thing has even been regarded as a parody or burlesque of some
primitive poem on the birth of the gods. That, however, is to mistake
the spirit of Homer. He finds the old myth ready to his hand, and sees
in it matter for a “joyous tale,” just as Demodokos did in the loves of
Ares and Aphrodite. There is no antagonism to traditional views, but
rather a complete detachment from them.
It has often been noted that Homer never speaks of the primitive custom
of purification for bloodshed. The dead heroes are burned, not buried,
as the kings of continental Hellas were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In
the _Iliad_ we have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroklos, in close
connexion with the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. All
that was part of the traditional story, and Homer says as little about
it as he can. There is also the _Nekyia_ in the Eleventh Book of the
_Odyssey_, which has been assigned to a late date on the ground that it
contains Orphic ideas. The reasoning does not appear cogent. As we shall
see, the Orphics did not so much invent new ideas as revive old ones,
and if the legend took Odysseus to the abode of the dead, that had to be
described in accordance with the accepted views about it.
In fact, we are never entitled to infer from Homer’s silence that the
primitive view was unknown to him. The absence of certain things from
the poems is due to reticence rather than ignorance; for, wherever
anything to his purpose was to be got from an old story, he did not
hesitate to use it. On the other hand, when the tradition necessarily
brought him into contact with savage ideas, he prefers to treat them
with reserve. We may infer, then, that at least in a certain society,
that of the princes for whom Homer sang, the primitive view of the world
was already discredited by a comparatively early date.[3]
Footnote 3:
On all this, see especially Rohde, _Psyche_, pp. 14 sqq.
[Sidenote: 2. Hesiod.]
IV. When we come to Hesiod, we seem to be in another world. We hear
stories of the gods which are not only irrational but repulsive, and
these stories are told quite seriously. Hesiod makes the Muses say: “We
know how to tell many false things that are like the truth; but we know
too, when we will, to utter what is true.”[4] This means that he was
quite conscious of the difference between the Homeric spirit and his
own. The old light-heartedness is gone, and it is important to tell the
truth about the gods. Hesiod knows, too, that he belongs to a later and
a sadder time than Homer. In describing the Ages of the World, he
inserts a fifth age between those of Bronze and Iron. That is the Age of
the Heroes, the age Homer sang of. It was better than the Bronze Age
which came before it, and far better than that which followed it, the
Age of Iron, in which Hesiod lives.[5] He also feels that he is singing
for another class. It is to shepherds and husbandmen he addresses
himself, and the princes for whom Homer sang have become remote persons
who give “crooked dooms.” For common men there is no hope but in hard,
unceasing toil. It is the voice of the people we now hear for the first
time, and of a people for whom the romance and splendour of the Greek
Middle Ages meant nothing. The primitive view of the world had never
really died out among them; so it was natural for their first spokesman
to assume it in his poems. That is why we find in Hesiod these old,
savage tales, which Homer disdained to speak of.
Footnote 4:
Hes. _Theog._ 27. They are the same Muses who inspired Homer, which
means, in our language, that Hesiod wrote in hexameters and used the
Epic dialect. The new literary _genre_ has not yet found its
appropriate vehicle, which is elegy.
Footnote 5:
There is great historical insight here. It was Hesiod, not our modern
historians, who first pointed out that the “Greek Middle Ages” were a
break in the normal development.
Yet it would be wrong to see in the _Theogony_ a mere revival of the old
superstition. Nothing can ever be revived just as it was; for in every
reaction there is a polemical element which differentiates it completely
from the earlier stage it vainly seeks to reproduce. Hesiod could not
help being affected by the new spirit which trade and adventure had
awakened over the sea, and he became a pioneer in spite of himself. The
rudiments of what grew into Ionic science and history are to be found in
his poems, and he really did more than any one to hasten that decay of
the old ideas which he was seeking to arrest. The _Theogony_ is an
attempt to reduce all the stories about the gods into a single system,
and system is necessarily fatal to so wayward a thing as mythology.
Hesiod, no less than Homer, teaches a panhellenic polytheism; the only
difference is that with him this is more directly based on the legends
attached to the local cults, which he thus sought to invest with a
national significance. The result is that the myth becomes primary and
the cult secondary, a complete inversion of the primitive relation.
Herodotos tells us that it was Homer and Hesiod who made a theogony for
the Hellenes, who gave the gods their names, and distributed among them
their offices and arts,[6] and it is perfectly true. The Olympian
pantheon took the place of the old local gods in men’s minds, and this
was as much the doing of Hesiod as of Homer. The ordinary man had no
ties to this company of gods, but at most to one or two of them; and
even these he would hardly recognise in the humanised figures, detached
from all local associations, which poetry had substituted for the older
objects of worship. The gods of Greece had become a splendid subject for
art; but they came between the Hellenes and their ancestral religions.
They were incapable of satisfying the needs of the people, and that is
the secret of the religious revival which we shall have to consider in
the sequel.
Footnote 6:
Herod. ii. 53.
[Sidenote: Cosmogony.]
V. Nor is it only in this way that Hesiod shows himself a child of his
time. His _Theogony_ is at the same time a Cosmogony, though it would
seem that here he was following others rather than working out a thought
of his own. At any rate, he only mentions the two great cosmogonical
figures, Chaos and Eros, and does not really bring them into connexion
with his system. The conception of Chaos represents a distinct effort to
picture the beginning of things. It is not a formless mixture, but
rather, as its etymology indicates, the yawning gulf or gap where
nothing is as yet.[7] We may be sure that this is not primitive. Savage
man does not feel called upon to form an idea of the very beginning of
all things; he takes for granted that there was something to begin with.
The other figure, that of Eros, was doubtless intended to explain the
impulse to production which gave rise to the whole process. That, at
least, is what the Maoris mean by it, as may be seen from the following
remarkable passage[8]:—
From the conception the increase,
From the increase the swelling,
From the swelling the thought,
From the thought the remembrance,
From the remembrance the desire.
The word became fruitful,
It dwelt with the feeble glimmering,
It brought forth the night.
Hesiod must have had some such primitive speculation to work on, but he
does not tell us anything clearly on the subject.
Footnote 7:
The word χάος certainly means the “gape” or “yawn,” the Orphic χάσμα
πελώριον. Grimm compared it with the Scandinavian _Ginnunga-Gap_.
Footnote 8:
Quoted from Taylor’s _New Zealand_, pp. 110-112, by Mr. Andrew Lang,
in _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 52 (2nd ed.).
We have records of great activity in the production of cosmogonies
during the whole of the sixth century B.C., and we know something of the
systems of Epimenides, Pherekydes,[9] and Akousilaos. As there were
speculations of this kind even before Hesiod, we need have no hesitation
in believing that the earliest Orphic cosmogony goes back to that
century too.[10] The feature which is common to all these systems is the
attempt to get behind the gap, and to put Kronos or Zeus in the first
place. This is what Aristotle has in view when he distinguishes the
“theologians” from those who were half theologians and half
philosophers, and who put what was best in the beginning.[11] It is
obvious, however, that this process is the very reverse of scientific,
and might be carried on indefinitely; so we have nothing to do with the
cosmogonists in our present inquiry, except so far as they can be shown
to have influenced the course of more sober investigations. Indeed,
these speculations are still based on the primitive view of the world,
and so fall outside the limits we have traced for ourselves.
Footnote 9:
For the remains of Pherekydes, see Diels, _Vorsokratiker_, pp. 506
sqq. (1st ed.), and the interesting account in Gomperz, _Greek
Thinkers_, vol. i. pp. 85 sqq.
Footnote 10:
This was the view of Lobeck with regard to the so-called “Rhapsodic
Theogony” described by Damaskios, and was revived by Otto Kern (_De
Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis_, 1888). Its savage character
is the best proof of its antiquity. Cf. Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and
Religion_, vol. i. chap. x.
Footnote 11:
Arist. _Met._ Ν, 4. 1091 b 8.
[Sidenote: General characteristics of early Greek cosmology.]
VI. What, then, was the step that placed the Ionian cosmologists once
for all above the level of the Maoris? Grote and Zeller make it consist
in the substitution of impersonal causes acting according to law for
personal causes acting arbitrarily. But the distinction between personal
and impersonal was not really felt in antiquity, and it is a mistake to
lay much stress on it. It seems rather that the real advance made by the
scientific men of Miletos was that they left off telling tales. They
gave up the hopeless task of describing what was when as yet there was
nothing, and asked instead what all things really are now.
[Sidenote: _Ex nihilo nihil._]
The great principle which underlies all their thinking, though it is
first put into words by Parmenides, is that _Nothing comes into being
out of nothing, and nothing passes away into nothing_. They saw,
however, that particular things were always coming into being and
passing away again, and from this it followed that their existence was
no true or stable one. The only things that were real and eternal were
the original matter which passed through all these changes and the
motion which gave rise to them, to which was soon added that law of
proportion or compensation which, despite the continual becoming and
passing away of things, secured the relative permanence and stability of
the various forms of existence that go to make up the world. That these
were, in fact, the leading ideas of the early cosmologists, cannot, of
course, be proved till we have given a detailed exposition of their
systems; but we can show at once how natural it was for such thoughts to
come to them. It is always the problem of change and decay that first
excites the wonder which, as Plato says, is the starting-point of all
philosophy. Besides this, there was in the Ionic nature a vein of
melancholy which led it to brood upon the instability of things. Even
before the time of Thales, Mimnermos of Kolophon sings the sadness of
change; and, at a later date, the lament of Simonides, that the
generations of men fall like the leaves of the forest, touches a chord
already struck by the earliest singer of Ionia.[12] Now, so long as men
could believe everything they saw was alive like themselves, the
spectacle of the unceasing death and new birth of nature would only
tinge their thoughts with a certain mournfulness, which would find its
expression in such things as the Linos dirges which the Greeks borrowed
from their Asiatic neighbours;[13] but when primitive animism, which had
seen conscious life everywhere, was gone, and polytheistic mythology,
which had personified at least the more striking natural phenomena, was
going, it must have seemed that there was nowhere any abiding reality.
Nowadays we are accustomed, for good and for ill, to the notion of dead
things, obedient, not to inner impulses, but solely to mechanical laws.
But that is not the view of the natural man, and we may be sure that,
when first it forced itself on him, it must have provoked a strong sense
of dissatisfaction. Relief was only to be had from the reflexion that as
nothing comes from nothing, nothing can pass away into nothing. There
must, then, be something which always is, something fundamental which
persists throughout all change, and ceases to exist in one form only
that it may reappear in another. It is significant that this something
is spoken of as “deathless” and “ageless.”[14]
Footnote 12:
Simonides, fr. 85, 2 Bergk. _Il._ vi. 146.
Footnote 13:
On Adonis-Thammuz, Lityerses, Linos, and Osiris, see Frazer, _Golden
Bough_, vol. i. pp. 278 sqq.
Footnote 14:
The Epic phrase ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως seems to have suggested this.
Anaximander applied both epithets to the primary substance (R. P. 17
and 17 a). Euripides, in describing the blessedness of the scientific
life (fr. inc. 910), says ἀθανάτου ... φύσεως κόσμον ἀγήρω (R. P. 148
c fin.).
[Sidenote: Φύσις]
VII. So far as I know, no historian of Greek philosophy has clearly laid
it down that the word which was used by the early cosmologists to
express this idea of a permanent and primary substance was none other
than φύσις; and that the title Περὶ φύσεως, so commonly given to
philosophical works of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.,[15] means
simply _Concerning the Primary Substance_. Both Plato and Aristotle use
the term in this sense when they are discussing the earlier
philosophy,[16] and its history shows clearly enough what its original
meaning must have been. In Greek philosophical language, φύσις always
means that which is primary, fundamental, and persistent, as opposed to
what is secondary, derivative, and transient; what is “given,” as
opposed to that which is made or becomes. It is what is there to begin
with. It is true that Plato and his successors also identify φύσις with
the best or most normal condition of a thing; but that is just because
they held the goal of any development to be prior to the process by
which it is reached. Such an idea was wholly unknown to the pioneers of
philosophy. They sought the explanation of the incomplete world we know,
not in the end, but in the beginning. It seemed to them that, if only
they could strip off all the modifications which Art and Chance had
introduced, they would get at the ultimately real; and so the search
after φύσις, first in the world at large and afterwards in human
society, became the chief interest of the age we have to deal with.
Footnote 15:
I do not mean to imply that the philosophers used this title
themselves; for early prose writings had no titles. The writer
mentioned his name and the subject of his work in the first sentence,
as Herodotos, for instance, does.
Footnote 16:
Plato, _Laws_, 892 c 2, φύσιν βούλονται λέγειν γένεσιν (_i.e._ τὸ ἐξ
οὗ γίγνεται) τὴν περὶ τὰ πρῶτα (_i.e._ τὴν τῶν πρώτων). Arist. _Phys._
Β, 1. 193 a 21, διόπερ οἱ μὲν πῦρ, οἱ δὲ γῆν, οἱ δ’ ἀέρα φασίν, οἱ δὲ
ὗδωρ, οἱ δ’ ἔνια τούτων, οἱ δὲ πάντα ταῦτα τὴν φύσιν εἶναι τὴν τῶν
ὄντων.
The word ἀρχή, by which the early cosmologists are usually said to have
designated the object of their search, is in this sense purely
Aristotelian. It is quite natural that it should be employed in the
well-known historical sketch of the First Book of the _Metaphysics_; for
Aristotle is there testing the theories of earlier thinkers by his own
doctrine of the four causes. But Plato never uses the term in this
connexion, and it does not occur once in the genuine fragments of the
early philosophers. It is confined to the Stoic and Peripatetic
handbooks from which most of our knowledge is derived, and these simply
repeat Aristotle. Zeller has pointed out in a footnote[17] that it would
be an anachronism to refer the subtle Aristotelian use of the word to
the beginnings of speculation. To Anaximander ἀρχή could only have meant
“beginning,” and it was far more than a beginning that the early
cosmologists were looking for: it was the _eternal_ ground of all
things.
There is one very important conclusion that follows at once from the
account just given of the meaning of φύσις, and it is, that the search
for the primary substance really was the thing that interested the
Ionian philosophers. Had their main object been, as Teichmüller held it
was, the explanation of celestial and meteorological phenomena, their
researches would not have been called Περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίη,[18] but
rather Περὶ οὐρανοῦ or Περὶ μετεώρων. And this we shall find confirmed
by a study of the way in which Greek cosmology developed. The growing
thought which may be traced through the successive representatives of
any school is always that which concerns the primary substance, while
the astronomical and other theories are, in the main, peculiar to the
individual thinkers. Teichmüller undoubtedly did good service by his
protest against the treatment of these theories as mere isolated
curiosities. They form, on the contrary, coherent systems which must be
looked at as wholes. But it is none the less true that Greek philosophy
began, as it ended, with the search for what was abiding in the flux of
things.
Footnote 17:
Zeller, p. 217, n. 2 (Eng. trans. p. 248, n. 2). See below, Chap. I.
p. 57, _n._ 105.
Footnote 18:
We have the authority of Plato for giving them this name. Cf. _Phd._
96 a 7, ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν. So, in
the fragment of Euripides referred to on p. 12, _n._ 14, the man who
discerns “the ageless order of immortal φύσις” is referred to as ὅστις
τῆς ἱστορίας ἔσχε μάθησιν.
[Sidenote: Motion and rest.]
VIII. But how could this give back to nature the life of which it had
been robbed by advancing knowledge? Simply by making it possible for the
life that had hitherto been supposed to reside in each particular thing
to be transferred to the one thing of which all others were passing
forms. The very process of birth, growth, and decay might now be
regarded as the unceasing activity of the one ultimate reality.
Aristotle and his followers expressed this by saying that the early
cosmologists believed in an “eternal motion,” and in substance this is
correct, though it is not probable that they said anything about the
eternal motion in their writings. It is more likely that they simply
took it for granted. In early times, it is not movement but rest that
has to be accounted for, and we may be sure that the eternity of motion
was not asserted till it had been denied. As we shall see, it was
Parmenides who first denied it. The idea of a single ultimate substance,
when thoroughly worked out, seemed to leave no room for motion; and
after the time of Parmenides, we do find that philosophers were
concerned to show how it began. At first, this would not seem to require
explanation at all.
Modern writers sometimes give the name of Hylozoism to this way of
thinking, but the term is apt to be misleading. It suggests theories
which deny the separate reality of life and spirit, whereas, in the days
of Thales, and even far later, the distinction between matter and spirit
had not been felt, still less formulated in such a way that it could be
denied. The uncreated, indestructible reality of which these early
thinkers tell us was a body, or even matter, if we choose to call it so;
but it was not matter in the sense in which matter is opposed to spirit.
[Sidenote: The downfall of the primitive view of the world.]
IX. We have indicated the main characteristics of the primitive view of
the world, and we have sketched in outline the view which displaced it;
we must now consider the causes which led to the downfall of the one and
the rise of the other. Foremost among these was undoubtedly the widening
of the Greek horizon occasioned by the great extension of maritime
enterprise which followed the decay of the Phoenician naval supremacy.
The scene of the old stories had, as a rule, been laid just outside the
boundaries of the world known to the men who believed them. Odysseus
does not meet with Kirke or the Kyklops or the Sirens in the familiar
Aegean, but in regions which lay beyond the ken of the Greeks at the
time the _Odyssey_ was composed. Now, however, the West was beginning to
be familiar too, and the fancy of the Greek explorers led them to
identify the lands which they discovered with the places which the hero
of the national fairy-tale had come to in his wanderings. It was soon
discovered that the monstrous beings in question were no longer to be
found there, and the belief grew up that they had never been there at
all. So, too, the Milesians had settled colonies all round the Euxine.
The colonists went out with Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα in their minds; and, at
the same time as they changed the name of the Inhospitable to the
Hospitable Sea, they localised the “far country” (αἶα) of the primitive
tale, and made Jason fetch the Golden Fleece from Kolchis. Above all,
the Phokaians had explored the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of
Herakles,[19] and the new knowledge that the “endless paths” of the sea
had boundaries must have moved men’s minds in much the same way as the
discovery of America did in later days. A single example will illustrate
the process which was always going on. According to the primitive view,
the heavens were supported by a giant called Atlas. No one had ever seen
him, though he was supposed to live in Arkadia. The Phokaian explorers
identified him with a cloud-capped mountain in Africa, and once they had
done this, the old belief was doomed. It was impossible to go on
believing in a god who was also a mountain, conveniently situated for
the trader to steer by, as he sailed to Tarshish in quest of silver.
Footnote 19:
Herod. i. 163.
[Sidenote: Alleged Oriental origin of philosophy.]
X. But by far the most important question we have to face is that of the
nature and extent of the influence exercised by what we call Eastern
wisdom on the Greek mind. It is a common idea even now that the Greeks
in some way derived their philosophy from Egypt and Babylon, and we must
therefore try to understand as clearly as possible what such a statement
really means. To begin with, we must observe that no writer of the
period during which Greek philosophy flourished knows anything at all of
its having come from the East. Herodotos would not have omitted to say
so, had he ever heard of it; for it would have confirmed his own belief
in the Egyptian origin of Greek religion and civilisation.[20] Plato,
who had a very great respect for the Egyptians on other grounds,
distinctly implies that they were a businesslike rather than a
philosophical people.[21] Aristotle speaks only of the origin of
mathematics in Egypt[22] (a point to which we shall return), though, if
he had known of an Egyptian philosophy, it would have suited his
argument better to mention that. It is not till a far later date, when
Egyptian priests and Alexandrian Jews began to vie with one another in
discovering the sources of Greek philosophy in their own past, that we
first have definite statements to the effect that it came from Phoenicia
or Egypt. Here, however, we must carefully note two things. In the first
place, the word “philosophy” had come by that time to include theology
of a more or less mystical type, and was even applied to various forms
of asceticism.[23] In the second place, the so-called Egyptian
philosophy was only arrived at by a process of turning primitive myths
into allegories. We are still able to judge Philo’s Old Testament
interpretation for ourselves, and we may be sure that the Egyptian
allegorists were even more arbitrary; for they had far less promising
material to work on. Nothing can be more savage than the myth of Isis
and Osiris;[24] yet it is first interpreted according to the ideas of
later Greek philosophy, and then declared to be the original source of
that philosophy.
Footnote 20:
All he can say is that the worship of Dionysos and the doctrine of
transmigration came from Egypt (ii. 49, 123). We shall see that both
these statements are incorrect, and in any case they do not imply
anything directly as to philosophy.
Footnote 21:
In _Rep._ 435 e, after saying that τὸ θυμοειδές is characteristic of
the Thracians and Scythians, and τὸ φιλομαθές of the Hellenes, he
refers us to Phoenicia and Egypt for τὸ φιλοχρήματον. In the _Laws_,
where the Egyptians are so strongly commended for their conservatism
in matters of art, he says (747 b 6) that arithmetical studies are
valuable only if we remove all ἀνελευθερία and φιλοχρηματία from the
souls of the learners. Otherwise, we produce πανουργία instead of
σοφία, as we can see that the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and many
other peoples do.
Footnote 22:
Arist. _Met._ Α, 1. 981 b 23.
Footnote 23:
See Zeller, p. 3, n. 2. Philo applies the term πάτριος φιλοσοφία to
the theology of the Essenes and Therapeutai.
Footnote 24:
On this, see Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 135.
This method of interpretation may be said to culminate with the
Neopythagorean Noumenios, from whom it passed to the Christian
Apologists. It is Noumenios who asks, “What is Plato, but Moses speaking
Attic?”[25] It seems likely, indeed, that he was thinking of certain
marked resemblances between Plato’s _Laws_ and the Levitical Code when
he said this—resemblances due to the fact that certain primitive legal
ideas are similarly modified in both; but in any case Clement and
Eusebios give the remark a far wider application.[26] At the
Renaissance, this absurd farrago was revived along with everything else,
and certain ideas derived from the _Praeparatio Evangelica_ continued
for long to colour accepted views on the subject. Even Cudworth speaks
complacently of the ancient “Moschical or Mosaical philosophy” taught by
Thales and Pythagoras.[27] It is important to realise the true origin of
this deeply-rooted prejudice against the originality of the Greeks. It
does not come from modern researches into the beliefs of ancient
peoples; for these have disclosed absolutely nothing in the way of
evidence for a Phoenician or Egyptian philosophy. It is a mere residuum
of the Alexandrian passion for allegory.
Footnote 25:
Noumenios, fr. 13 (R. P. 624), Τί γάρ ἐστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωυσῆς ἀττικίζων;
Footnote 26:
Clement (_Strom._ i. p. 8, 5, Stählin) calls Plato ὁ ἐξ Ἑβραίων
φιλόσοφος.
Footnote 27:
We learn from Strabo (xvi. p. 757) that it was Poseidonios who
introduced Mochos of Sidon into the history of philosophy. He
attributes the atomic theory to him. His identification with Moses,
however, is a later _tour de force_. Philon of Byblos published what
purported to be a translation of an ancient Phoenician history by
Sanchuniathon, which was used by Porphyry and afterwards by Eusebios.
How familiar all this became, is shown by the speech of the stranger
in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, chap. xiv.
Of course no one nowadays would rest the case for the Oriental origin of
Greek philosophy on the evidence of Clement or Eusebios; the favourite
argument in recent times has been the analogy of the arts and religion.
We are seeing more and more, it is said, that the Greeks derived their
art and many of their religious ideas from the East; and it is urged
that the same will in all probability prove true of their philosophy.
This is a specious argument, but not in the least conclusive. It ignores
altogether the essential difference in the way these things are
transmitted from people to people. Material civilisation and the arts
may pass easily from one people to another, though they have not a
common language, and certain simple religious ideas can be conveyed by
ritual better than in any other way. Philosophy, on the other hand, can
only be expressed in abstract language, and it can only be transmitted
by educated men, whether by means of books or oral teaching. Now we know
of no Greek, in the times we are dealing with, who knew enough of any
Oriental language to read an Egyptian book or even to listen to the
discourse of an Egyptian priest, and we never hear till a late date of
Oriental teachers who wrote or spoke in Greek. The Greek traveller in
Egypt would no doubt pick up a few words of Egyptian, and it is certain
that somehow or other the priests could make themselves understood by
the Greeks. They were able to rebuke Hekataios for his family pride, and
Plato tells a story of the same sort at the beginning of the
_Timaeus_.[28] But they must have made use of interpreters, and it is
impossible to conceive of philosophical ideas being communicated through
an uneducated dragoman.[29]
Footnote 28:
Herod. ii. 143; Plato, _Tim._ 22 b 3.
Footnote 29:
Gomperz’s “native bride,” who discusses the wisdom of her people with
her Greek lord (_Greek Thinkers_, vol. i. p. 95), does not convince me
either. She would probably teach her maids the rites of strange
goddesses; but she would not be likely to talk theology with her
husband, and still less philosophy or science. The use of Babylonian
as an international language will account for the fact that the
Egyptians knew something of Babylonian astronomy; but it does not help
us to explain how the Greeks could communicate with the Egyptians. It
is plain that the Greeks did not even know of this international
language; for it is just the sort of thing they would have recorded
with interest if they had. In early days, they may have met with it in
Cyprus, but that was apparently forgotten.
But really it is not worth while to ask whether the communication of
philosophical ideas was possible or not, till some evidence has been
produced that any of these peoples had a philosophy to communicate. No
such evidence has yet been discovered, and, so far as we know, the
Indians were the only people besides the Greeks who ever had anything
that deserves the name. No one now will suggest that Greek philosophy
came from India, and indeed everything points to the conclusion that
Indian philosophy came from Greece. The chronology of Sanskrit
literature is an extremely difficult subject; but, so far as we can see,
the great Indian systems are later in date than the Greek philosophies
which they most nearly resemble. Of course the mysticism of the
Upanishads and of Buddhism were of native growth and profoundly
influenced philosophy, but they were not themselves philosophy in any
true sense of the word.[30]
Footnote 30:
For the possibility that Indian philosophy came from Greece, see
Weber, _Die Griechen in Indien_ (Berl. Sitzb. 1890, pp. 901 sqq.), and
Goblet d’Alviella, _Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce_ (Paris, 1897).
[Sidenote: Egyptian mathematics.]
XI. It would, however, be another thing to say that Greek philosophy
originated quite independently of Oriental influences. The Greeks
themselves believed their mathematical science to be of Egyptian origin,
and they must also have known something of Babylonian astronomy. It
cannot be an accident that philosophy originated in Ionia just at the
time when communication with these two countries was easiest, and it is
significant that the very man who was said to have introduced geometry
from Egypt is also regarded as the first of the philosophers. It thus
becomes very important for us to discover, if we can, what Egyptian
mathematics meant. We shall see that, even here, the Greeks were really
original.
There is a papyrus in the Rhind collection at the British Museum[31]
which gives us an instructive glimpse of arithmetic and geometry as
these sciences were understood on the banks of the Nile. It is the work
of one Aahmes, and contains rules for calculations both of an
arithmetical and a geometrical character. The arithmetical problems
mostly concern measures of corn and fruit, and deal particularly with
such questions as the division of a number of measures among a given
number of persons, the number of loaves or jars of beer that certain
measures will yield, and the wages due to the workmen for a certain
piece of work. It corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of
Egyptian arithmetic which Plato has given us in the _Laws_, where he
tells us that the children learnt along with their letters to solve
problems in the distribution of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller
numbers of people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so
forth.[32] This is clearly the origin of the art which the Greeks called
λογιστική, and they certainly borrowed that from Egypt; but there is not
the slightest trace of what the Greeks called ἀριθμητική, or the
scientific study of numbers.
Footnote 31:
I am indebted for most of the information which follows to Cantor’s
_Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik_, vol. i. pp. 46-63. See
also Gow’s _Short History of Greek Mathematics_, §§ 73-80; and
Milhaud, _La science grecque_, pp. 91 sqq. The discussion in the
last-named work is of special value because it is based on M. Rodet’s
paper in the _Bulletin de la Société Mathématique_, vol. vi., which in
some important respects supplements the interpretation of Eisenlohr,
on which the earlier accounts depend.
Footnote 32:
Plato, _Laws_, 819 b 4, μήλων τέ τινων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν
ἄμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυκτῶν καὶ
παλαιστῶν ἐφεδρείας τε καὶ συλλήξεως ἐν μέρει καὶ ἐφεξῆς καὶ ὡς
πεφύκασι γίγνεσθαι. καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ
καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πως
διαδιδόντες. In its context, the passage implies that no more than
this could be learnt in Egypt.
The geometry of the Rhind papyrus is of a similarly utilitarian
character, and Herodotos, who tells us that Egyptian geometry arose
from the necessity of measuring the land afresh after the inundations,
is obviously far nearer the mark than Aristotle, who says that it grew
out of the leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste.[33] We find,
accordingly, that the rules given for calculating areas are only exact
when these are rectangular. As fields are usually more or less
rectangular, this would be sufficient for practical purposes. The rule
for finding what is called the _seqt_ of a pyramid is, however, on a
rather higher level, as we should expect; for the angles of the
Egyptian pyramids really are equal, and there must have been some
method for obtaining this result. It comes to this. Given the “length
across the sole of the foot,” that is, the diagonal of the base, and
that of the _piremus_ or “ridge,” to find a number which represents
the ratio between them. This is done by dividing half the diagonal of
the base by the “ridge,” and it is obvious that such a method might
quite well be discovered empirically. It seems an anachronism to speak
of elementary trigonometry in connexion with a rule like this, and
there is nothing to suggest that the Egyptians went any further.[34]
That the Greeks learnt as much from them, we shall see to be highly
probable, though we shall see also that, from a comparatively early
period, they generalised it so as to make it of use in measuring the
distances of inaccessible objects, such as ships at sea. It was
probably this generalisation that suggested the idea of a science of
geometry, which was really the creation of the Pythagoreans, and we
can see how far the Greeks soon surpassed their teachers from a remark
of Demokritos which has been preserved. He says (fr. 299): “I have
listened to many learned men, but no one has yet surpassed me in the
construction of figures out of lines accompanied by demonstration, not
even the Egyptian _harpedonapts_, as they call them.”[35] Now the word
ἁρπεδονάπτης is not Egyptian but Greek. It means “cord-fastener,”[36]
and it is a striking coincidence that the oldest Indian geometrical
treatise is called the _Çulvasutras_ or “rules of the cord.” These
things point to the use of the triangle of which the sides are 3, 4,
5, and which has always a right angle. We know that this triangle was
used from an early date among the Chinese and the Hindus, who
doubtless got it from Babylon, and we shall see that Thales probably
learnt the use of it in Egypt.[37] There is no reason whatever for
supposing that any of these peoples had in any degree troubled
themselves to give a theoretical demonstration of its properties,
though Demokritos would certainly have been able to do so. Finally, we
must note the highly significant fact that all mathematical terms are
of purely Greek origin.[38]
Footnote 33:
Herod. ii. 109; Arist. _Met._ Α, 1. 981 b 23.
Footnote 34:
For a fuller account of this method, see Gow, _Short History of Greek
Mathematics_, pp. 127 sqq.; and Milhaud, _Science grecque_, p. 99.
Footnote 35:
R. P. 188.
Footnote 36:
The real meaning of ἁρπεδονάπτης was first pointed out by Cantor. The
gardener laying out a flower-bed is the true modern representative of
the “harpedonapts.”
Footnote 37:
See Milhaud, _Science grecque_, p. 103.
Footnote 38:
The word πυραμίς is often supposed to be derived from the term
_piremus_ used in the Rhind papyrus, which does not mean pyramid, but
“ridge.” It is really, however, a Greek word too, and is the name of a
kind of cake. The Greeks called crocodiles lizards, ostriches
sparrows, and obelisks meat-skewers, so they may very well have called
the pyramids cakes. We seem to hear an echo of the slang of the
mercenaries that carved their names on the colossus at Abu-Simbel.
[Sidenote: Babylonian astronomy.]
XII. The other source from which the Ionians directly or indirectly
derived material for their cosmology was the Babylonian astronomy. There
is no doubt that the Babylonians from a very early date had recorded all
celestial phenomena like eclipses. They had also studied the planetary
motions, and determined the signs of the zodiac. Further, they were able
to predict the recurrence of the phenomena they had observed with
considerable accuracy by means of cycles based on their recorded
observations. I can see no reason for doubting that they had observed
the phenomenon of precession. Indeed, they could hardly have failed to
notice it; for their observations went back over so many centuries, that
it would be quite appreciable. We know that, at a later date, Ptolemy
estimated the precession of the equinoxes at one degree in a hundred
years, and it is extremely probable that this is just the Babylonian
value. At any rate, it agrees very well with their division of the
celestial circle into 360 degrees, and made it possible for a century to
be regarded as a day in the “Great Year,” a conception we shall meet
with later on.[39]
Footnote 39:
Three different positions of the equinox are given in three different
Babylonian tablets, namely, 10°, 8° 15′, and 8° 0′ 30″ of Aries.
(Kugler, _Mondrechnung_, p. 103; Ginzel, _Klio_, i. p. 205.) Given
knowledge of this kind, and the practice of formulating recurrences in
cycles, it is scarcely conceivable that the Babylonians should not
have invented a cycle for precession. It is equally intelligible that
they should only have reached a rough approximation; for the
precessional period is really about 27,600 years and not 36,000. It is
to be observed that Plato’s “perfect year” is also 36,000 solar years
(Adam’s _Republic_, vol. ii. p. 302), and that it is probably
connected with the precession of the equinoxes. (Cf. _Tim._ 39 d, a
passage which is most easily interpreted if referred to precession.)
This suggestion as to the origin of the “Great Year” was thrown out by
Mr. Adam (_op. cit._ p. 305), and is now confirmed by Hilprecht, _The
Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania_
(Philadelphia, 1906).
We shall see that Thales probably knew the cycle which the Babylonians
used to predict eclipses (§ 3); but it would be a mistake to suppose
that the pioneers of Greek science had any detailed knowledge of the
Babylonian astronomy. It was not till the time of Plato that even the
names of the planets were known,[40] and the recorded observations were
only made available in Alexandrian times. But, even if they had known
these, their originality would remain. The Babylonians studied and
recorded celestial phenomena for what we call astrological purposes, not
from any scientific interest. There is no evidence at all that their
accumulated observations ever suggested to them the least
dissatisfaction with the primitive view of the world, or that they
attempted to account for what they saw in any but the crudest way. The
Greeks, on the other hand, with far fewer data to go upon, made at least
three discoveries of capital importance in the course of two or three
generations. In the first place, they discovered that the earth is a
sphere and does not rest on anything. In the second place, they
discovered the true theory of lunar and solar eclipses; and, in close
connexion with this, they came to see, in the third place, that the
earth is not the centre of our system, but revolves round it like the
other planets. Not very much later, certain Greeks even took, at least
tentatively, the final step of identifying the centre round which the
earth and the planets revolve with the sun. These discoveries will be
discussed in their proper place; they are only mentioned here to show
the gulf between Greek astronomy and everything that had preceded it.
The Babylonians had as many thousand years as the Greeks had centuries
to make these discoveries, and it does not appear that they ever thought
of one of them. The originality of the Greeks cannot be successfully
questioned till it can be shown that the Babylonians had even an
incorrect idea of what we call the solar system.
Footnote 40:
In classical Greek literature, no planets but Ἕσπερος and Ἑωσφόρος are
mentioned by name at all. Parmenides (or Pythagoras) first identified
these as a single planet (§ 93). Mercury appears for the first time by
name in _Tim._ 38 e, and the other divine names are given in _Epin._
987 b sq., where they are said to be “Syrian.” The Greek names Φαίνων,
Φαέθων, Πυρόεις, Φωσφόρος, Στίλβων, may be older, but this cannot be
proved.
We may sum up all this by saying that the Greeks did not borrow either
their philosophy or their science from the East. They did, however, get
from Egypt certain rules of mensuration which, when generalised, gave
birth to geometry; while from Babylon they learnt that the phenomena of
the heavens recur in cycles with the greatest regularity. This piece of
knowledge undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the rise of science;
for to the Greek it suggested further questions such as the Babylonian
did not dream of.[41]
Footnote 41:
The Platonic account of this matter is to be found in the _Epinomis_,
986 e 9 sqq., and is summed up by the words λάβωμεν δὲ ὡς ὅτιπερ ἂν
Ἕλληνες βαρβάρων παραλάβωσι, κάλλιον τοῦτο εἰς τέλος ἀπεργάζονται (987
d 9). The point is well put by Theon (Adrastos), _Exp._ p. 177, 20
Hiller, who speaks of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians as ἄνευ φυσιολογίας
ἀτελεῖς ποιούμενοι τὰς μεθόδους, δέον ἅμα καὶ φυσικῶς περὶ τούτων
ἐπισκοπεῖν· ὅπερ οἱ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀστρολογήσαντες ἐπειρῶντο
ποιεῖν, τὰς παρὰ τούτων λαβόντες ἀρχὰς καὶ τῶν φαινομένων τηρήσεις.
The importance of this last passage is that it represents the view
taken at Alexandria, where the facts were accurately known.
[Sidenote: The scientific character of the early Greek cosmology.]
XIII. It is necessary to say something as to the scientific worth of the
philosophy we are about to study. We have just seen that the Eastern
peoples were, at the time of which we write, considerably richer than
the Greeks in accumulated facts, though these facts had certainly not
been observed for any scientific purpose, and their possession never
suggested a revision of the primitive view of the world. The Greeks,
however, saw in them something that could be turned to account, and they
were never as a people slow to act on the maxim, _Chacun prend son bien
partout où il le trouve_. The most striking monument of this spirit
which has come down to us is the work of Herodotos; and the visit of
Solon to Croesus which he describes, however unhistorical it may be,
gives a very lively and faithful picture of it. Croesus tells Solon that
he has heard much of “his wisdom and his wanderings,” and how, from love
of knowledge (φιλοσοφέων), he has travelled over much land for the
purpose of seeing what was to be seen (θεωρίης εἵνεκεν). The words
θεωρίη, φιλοσοφίη, and ἱστορίη are, in fact, the catchwords of the time,
though they had, we must remember, a somewhat different meaning from
that which they were afterwards made to bear at Athens.[42] The idea
that underlies them all may, perhaps, be best rendered in English by the
word _Curiosity_; and it was just this great gift of curiosity, and the
desire to see all the wonderful things—pyramids, inundations, and so
forth—that were to be seen, which enabled the Greeks to pick up and turn
to their own use such scraps of knowledge as they could come by among
the barbarians. No sooner did a Greek philosopher learn half a dozen
geometrical propositions, and hear that the phenomena of the heavens
recur in cycles, than he set to work to look for law everywhere in
nature, and, with a splendid audacity, almost amounting to ὕβρις, to
construct a system of the universe. We may smile, if we please, at the
strange medley of childish fancy and true scientific insight which these
Titanic efforts display, and sometimes we feel disposed to sympathise
with the sages of the day who warned their more daring contemporaries
“to think the thoughts befitting man’s estate” (ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν). But
we shall do well to remember at the same time that even now it is just
such hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress
possible, and that nearly every one of the early inquirers whom we are
about to study made some permanent addition to the store of positive
knowledge, besides opening up new views of the world in every direction.
Footnote 42:
Still, the word θεωρία never wholly lost its early associations, and
the Greeks always felt that the θεωρητικὸς βίος meant literally “the
life of the spectator.” Its special use, and the whole theory of the
“three lives,” seem to be of Pythagorean origin. See my edition of
Aristotle’s _Ethics_, p. 19 n.
There is no justification either for the idea that Greek science was
built up solely by more or less lucky guesswork, instead of by
observation and experiment. The nature of our tradition, which mostly
consists of _Placita_—that is, of what we call “results”—tends, no
doubt, to create this impression. We are seldom told why any early
philosopher held the views he did, and the appearance of a string of
“opinions” suggests dogmatism. There are, however, certain exceptions to
the general character of the tradition; and we may reasonably suppose
that, if the later Greeks had been interested in the matter, there would
have been many more. We shall see that Anaximander made some remarkable
discoveries in marine biology, which the researches of the nineteenth
century have fully confirmed (§ 21), and even Xenophanes supported one
of his theories by referring to the fossils and petrifactions of such
widely separated places as Malta, Paros, and Syracuse (§ 59). This is
enough to show that the theory, so commonly held by the earlier
philosophers, that the earth had been originally in a moist state, was
not mythological in origin, but was based on, or at any rate confirmed
by, biological and palaeontological observations of a thoroughly modern
and scientific type. It would surely be absurd to imagine that the men
who could make these observations had not the curiosity or the ability
to make many others of which the memory is lost. Indeed, the idea that
the Greeks were not observers is almost ludicrously wrong, as is proved
by two simple considerations. The anatomical accuracy of Greek sculpture
bears witness to trained habits of observation, and those of the highest
order, while the fixing of the seasons by the heliacal rising and
setting of the stars shows a familiarity with celestial phenomena which
is by no means common at the present day.[43] We know, then, that the
Greeks could observe well in matters affecting agriculture, navigation,
and the arts, and we know that they were curious about the world. Is it
conceivable that they did not use their powers of observation to gratify
that curiosity? It is true, of course, that they had not our instruments
of precision; but a great deal can be discovered by the help of very
simple apparatus. It is not to be supposed that Anaximander erected his
_gnomon_ merely that the Spartans might know the seasons.[44]
Footnote 43:
These two points are rightly emphasised by Staigmüller, _Beiträge zur
Gesch. der Naturwissenschaften im klassischen Altertume_ (Progr.
Stuttgart, 1899, p. 8).
Footnote 44:
The gnomon was not a sundial, but an upright erected on a flat
surface, in the centre of three concentric circles. These were drawn
so that the end of the gnomon’s shadow touched the innermost circle at
midday on the summer solstice, the intermediate circle at the
equinoxes, and the outermost circle at the winter solstice. See
Bretschneider, _Die Geometrie vor Euklid_, p. 60.
Nor is it true that the Greeks made no use of experiment. The rise of
the experimental method dates from the time when the medical schools
began to influence the development of philosophy, and accordingly we
find that the first recorded experiment of a modern type is that of
Empedokles with the _klepsydra_. We have his own account of this (fr.
100), and we can see how it brought him to the verge of anticipating
both Harvey and Torricelli. It is once more inconceivable that an
inquisitive people should have applied the experimental method in a
single case without extending it to the elucidation of other problems.
Of course the great difficulty for us is the geocentric hypothesis from
which science inevitably started, though only to outgrow it in a
surprisingly short time. So long as the earth is supposed to be in the
centre of the world, meteorology, in the later sense of the word, is
necessarily identified with astronomy. It is difficult for us to feel at
home in this point of view, and indeed we have no suitable word to
express what the Greeks at first called an οὐρανός. It will be
convenient to use the word “world” for it; but then we must remember
that it does not refer solely, or even chiefly, to the earth. The later
word κόσμος bears witness to the growth of scientific ideas. It meant at
first the marshalling of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a
state. It was transferred from this to the world because in early days
the regularity and constancy of human life was far more clearly seen
than the uniformity of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of law and
custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless. That, too, is
why, when the regular course of nature was first realised, no better
word for it could be found than δίκη. It is the same metaphor which
still lives on in the expression “natural law.”[45]
Footnote 45:
The term κόσμος seems to be Pythagorean in this sense. It was not
familiar even at the beginning of the fourth century. Xenophon speaks
of “what the sophists call the κόσμος” (Mem. i. 11). For δίκη, see
below, §§ 14, 72.
The science of the sixth century was mainly concerned, then, with those
parts of the world that are “aloft” (τὰ μετέωρα), and these include,
along with the heavenly bodies, such things as clouds, rainbows, and
lightning. That is how the heavenly bodies came sometimes to be
explained as ignited clouds, an idea which seems astonishing to us. But
we must bear in mind that science inevitably and rightly began with the
most obvious hypothesis, and that it was only the thorough working out
of this that could show its inadequacy. It is just because the Greeks
were the first people to take the geocentric hypothesis seriously that
they were able to go beyond it. Of course the pioneers of Greek thought
had no clear idea of the nature of scientific hypothesis, and supposed
themselves to be dealing with ultimate reality. That was inevitable
before the rise of Logic. At the same time, a sure instinct guided them
to the right method, and we can see how it was the effort to “save
appearances”[46] that really operated from the first. It is, therefore,
to those men that we owe the conception of an exact science which should
ultimately take in the whole world as its object. They fancied—absurdly
enough, no doubt—that they could work out this science at once. We
sometimes make the same mistake nowadays; and it can no more rob the
Greeks of the honour of having been the first to see the true, though
perhaps unattainable, end of all science than it can rob our own
scientific men of the honour of having brought that end nearer than it
was. It is still knowledge of the kind foreseen and attempted by the
Greeks that they are in search of.
Footnote 46:
This phrase originated in the school of Plato. The method of research
in use there was for the leader to “propound” (προτείνειν,
προβάλλεσθαι) it as a “problem” (πρόβλημα) to find the simplest
“hypothesis” (τίνων ὑποτεθέντων) on which it is possible to account
for and do justice to all the observed facts (σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα). It
was in its French form, _sauver les apparences_, that the phrase
acquired the meaning it usually has now.
[Sidenote: Schools of philosophy.]
XIV. Theophrastos, the first writer to treat the history of Greek
philosophy in a systematic way,[47] represented the early cosmologists
as standing to one another in the relation of master and scholar, and as
members of regular societies. This has been regarded by many modern
writers as an anachronism, and some have even denied the existence of
“schools” of philosophy altogether. Such a reaction against the older
view was quite justified in so far as it was directed against arbitrary
classifications like the “Ionic” and “Italian” schools, which are
derived through Laertios Diogenes from the Alexandrian writers of
“Successions.” But the express statements of Theophrastos are not to be
so lightly set aside. As this point is of great importance, it will be
necessary to elucidate it still further before we enter upon our story.
Footnote 47:
See Appendix, § 7.
The modern view really rests upon a mistaken idea of the way in which
civilisation develops. In almost every department of life, we find that
the corporation at first is everything and the individual nothing. The
peoples of the East hardly got beyond this stage at all; their science,
such as it is, is anonymous, the inherited property of a caste or guild,
and we still see clearly in some cases that it was once the same among
the Hellenes. Medicine, for instance, was originally the “mystery” of
the Asklepiads, and it is to be supposed that all craftsmen
(δημιουργοί), amongst whom Homer classes the bards (ἀοιδοί), were at
first organised in a similar way. What distinguished the Hellenes from
other peoples was that at a comparatively early date these crafts came
under the influence of outstanding individuals, who gave them a fresh
direction and a new impulse. It is doubtless in some such way that we
should understand the relation of Homer to the Homeridai. The Asklepiads
at a later date produced Hippokrates, and if we knew more of such guilds
as the Daidalids, it is likely we should find something of the same
kind. But this does not destroy the corporate character of the craft;
indeed, it rather intensifies it. The guild becomes what we call a
“school,” and the disciple takes the place of the apprentice. That is a
vital change. A close guild with none but official heads is essentially
conservative, while a band of disciples attached to a master they revere
is the greatest progressive force the world knows.
It is certain that the later Athenian schools were organised
corporations, the oldest of which, the Academy, maintained its existence
as such for some nine hundred years, and the only question we have to
decide is whether this was an innovation made in the fourth century
B.C., or rather the continuance of an old tradition. As it happens, we
have the authority of Plato for speaking of the chief early systems as
handed down in schools. He makes Sokrates speak of “the men of Ephesos,”
the Herakleiteans, as forming a strong body in his own day,[48] and the
stranger of the _Sophist_ and the _Statesman_ speaks of his school as
still in existence at Elea.[49] We also hear of “Anaxagoreans,”[50] and
no one, of course, can doubt that the Pythagoreans were a society. In
fact, there is hardly any school but that of Miletos for which we have
not external evidence of the strongest kind; and even as regards it, we
have the significant fact that Theophrastos speaks of philosophers of a
later date as having been “associates of the philosophy of
Anaximenes.”[51] We shall see too in the first chapter that the internal
evidence in favour of the existence of a Milesian school is very strong
indeed. It is from this point of view, then, that we shall now proceed
to consider the men who created Hellenic science.
Footnote 48:
_Tht._ 179 e 4, αὐτοῖς ... τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἔφεσον. The humorous denial
that the Herakleiteans had any disciples (180 b 8, Ποίοις μαθηταῖς, ὦ
δαιμόνιε;) implies that this was the normal and recognised relation.
Footnote 49:
_Soph._ 242 d 4, τὸ ... παρ’ ἡμῖν Ἐλεατικὸν ἔθνος. Cf. ib. 216 a 3,
ἑταῖρον δὲ τῶν ἀμφὶ Παρμενίδην καὶ Ζήνωνα [ἑταίρων] (where ἑταίρων is
probably interpolated, but gives the right sense); 217 a, 1, οἱ περὶ
τὸν ἐκεῖ τόπον.
Footnote 50:
_Crat._ 409 b 6, εἴπερ ἀληθῆ οἱ Ἀναξαγόρειοι λέγουσιν.
Footnote 51:
Cf. Chap. VI. § 122; and, on the whole subject, see Diels, “Über die
ältesten Philosophenschulen der Griechen” in _Philosophische Aufsätze
Eduard Zeller gewidmet_ (Leipzig, 1887).
CHAPTER I
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL
[Sidenote: Miletos and Lydia.]
1. It was at Miletos that the earliest school of scientific cosmology
had its home. At the time it arose, the Milesians were in an
exceptionally favourable position for scientific as well as commercial
pursuits. They had, indeed, come into conflict more than once with the
neighbouring Lydians, whose rulers were now bent upon extending their
dominion to the coast; but, towards the end of the seventh century B.C.,
Thrasyboulos, tyrant of Miletos, had succeeded in making terms with King
Alyattes, and an alliance was concluded between them, which not only
saved Miletos for the present from a disaster like that which befell
Smyrna, but secured it against molestation for the future. Even half a
century later, when Croesus, resuming his father’s forward policy, made
war upon and conquered Ephesos, Miletos was still able to maintain the
old treaty-relation, and never, strictly speaking, became subject to the
Lydians at all. We can hardly doubt that the sense of security which
this exceptional position would foster had something to do with the rise
of scientific inquiry. Material prosperity is necessary as a foundation
for the highest intellectual effort; and at this time Miletos was in
possession of all the refinements of life to a degree unknown in
continental Hellas.
Nor was it only in this way that the Lydian connexion would favour the
growth of science at Miletos. What was called Hellenism at a later date
seems to have been traditional in the dynasty of the Mermnadai. There
may well be some truth in the statement of Herodotos, that all the
“sophists” of the time flocked to the court of Sardeis.[52] The
tradition which represents Croesus as what we should call the “patron”
of Greek wisdom, was fully developed in the fifth century; and, however
unhistorical its details may be, it must clearly have some sort of
foundation in fact. Particularly noteworthy is “the common tale among
the Greeks,” that Thales accompanied him on his luckless campaign
against Pteria, apparently in the capacity of military engineer.
Herodotos, indeed, disbelieves the story that he diverted the course of
the Halys;[53] but he does not attack it on the ground of any antecedent
improbability, and it is quite clear that those who reported it found no
difficulty in accepting the relation which it presupposes between the
philosopher and the king.
Footnote 52:
Herod. i. 29. Some other points may be noted in confirmation of what
has been said as to the “Hellenism” of the Mermnadai. Alyattes had two
wives, one of whom, the mother of Croesus, was a Karian; the other was
an Ionian, and by her he had a son called by the Greek name Pantaleon
(_ib._ 92). The offerings of Gyges were pointed out in the treasury of
Kypselos at Delphoi (_ib._ 14), and those of Alyattes were one of the
“sights” of the place (_ib._ 25). Croesus also showed great liberality
to Delphoi (_ib._ 50), and to many other Greek shrines (_ib._ 92). He
gave most of the pillars for the great temple at Ephesos. The stories
of Miltiades (vi. 37) and Alkmeon (_ib._ 125) should also be mentioned
in this connexion.
Footnote 53:
Herod. i. 75. He disbelieves it because he had heard, probably from
the Greeks of Sinope, of the great antiquity of the bridge on the
royal road between Ankyra and Pteria (Ramsay, _Asia Minor_, p. 29).
Xanthos recorded a tradition that it was Thales who induced Croesus to
ascend his pyre when he knew a shower was coming (fr. 19).
It should be added that the Lydian alliance would greatly facilitate
intercourse with Babylon and Egypt. Lydia was an advanced post of
Babylonian culture, and Croesus was on friendly terms with the kings of
both Egypt and Babylon. It is noteworthy, too, that Amasis of Egypt had
the same Hellenic sympathies as Croesus, and that the Milesians
possessed a temple of their own at Naukratis.[54]
Footnote 54:
Milesians at Naukratis, Herod. ii. 178, where Amasis is said to have
been φιλέλλην. He subscribed to the rebuilding of the temple at
Delphoi after the great fire (_ib._ 180).
I. THALES
[Sidenote: Origin.]
2. There can be no doubt that the founder of the Milesian school, and
therefore the first of the cosmologists, was Thales;[55] but all we can
really be said to know of him comes from Herodotos, and the romance of
the Seven Wise Men was already in existence when he wrote. He tells us,
in the first place, that Thales was of Phoenician descent, a statement
which other writers explained by saying he belonged to the Thelidai, a
noble house descended from Kadmos and Agenor.[56] This is clearly
connected with the view of Herodotos that there were “Kadmeians” from
Boiotia among the original Ionian colonists, and it is certain that
there really were people called Kadmeians in several Ionic cities.[57]
Whether they were of Semitic origin is, of course, another matter.
Herodotos probably mentions the supposed descent of Thales simply
because he was believed to have introduced certain improvements in
navigation from Phoenicia.[58] At any rate, the name Examyes, which his
father bore, lends no support to the view that he was a Semite. It is a
Karian name, and the Karians had been almost completely assimilated by
the Ionians. On the monuments, we find Greek and Karian names
alternating in the same families, and there is therefore no reason to
suppose that Thales was anything else than an ordinary Milesian citizen,
though perhaps with Karian blood in his veins.[59]
Footnote 55:
Simplicius, indeed, quotes from Theophrastos the statement that Thales
had many predecessors (_Dox._ p. 475, 11). This, however, need not
trouble us; for the scholiast on Apollonios Rhodios (ii. 1248) tells
us that Theophrastos made Prometheus the first philosopher, which is
merely an application of Peripatetic literalism to a remark of Plato’s
(_Phileb._ 16 c 6). Cf. Appendix, § 2.
Footnote 56:
Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d.); Diog. i. 22 (R. P. 9).
Footnote 57:
Strabo, xiv. pp. 633, 636; Pausan. vii. 2, 7. Priene was called Kadme,
and the oldest annalist of Miletos bore the name Kadmos. See E. Meyer,
_Gesch. des Alterth._ ii. § 158.
Footnote 58:
Diog. i. 23, Καλλίμαχος δ’ αὐτὸν οἶδεν εὑρετὴν τῆς ἄρκτου τῆς μικρᾶς
λέγων ἐν τοῖς Ἰάμβοις οὕτως—
καὶ τῆς ἁμάξης ἐλέγετο σταθμήσασθαι
τοὺς ἀστερίσκους, ᾗ πλέουσι Φοίνικες.
Footnote 59:
See Diels, “Thales ein Semite?” (_Arch._ ii. 165 sqq.), and Immisch,
“Zu Thales Abkunft” (_ib._ p. 515). The name Examyes occurs also in
Kolophon (Hermesianax, _Leontion_, fr. 2, 38 Bgk.), and may be
compared with other Karian names such as Cheramyes and Panamyes.
[Sidenote: The eclipse foretold by Thales.]
3. By far the most remarkable statement that Herodotos makes about
Thales is that he foretold the eclipse of the sun which put an end to
the war between the Lydians and the Medes.[60] Now, we may be sure that
he was quite ignorant of the true cause of eclipses. Anaximander and his
successors certainly were so,[61] and it is incredible that the right
explanation should once have been given and then forgotten so soon. Even
supposing, however, Thales had known the cause of eclipses, no one can
believe that such scraps of elementary geometry as he picked up in Egypt
would enable him to calculate one from the elements of the moon’s path.
Yet the evidence for the prediction is too strong to be rejected
off-hand. The testimony of Herodotos to an event which must have
happened about a hundred years before his own birth may, perhaps, be
deemed insufficient; but that of Xenophanes is a very different matter,
and it is this we have really to deal with.[62] According to
Theophrastos, Xenophanes was a disciple of Anaximander, and he may quite
well have seen and spoken with Thales. In any case, he must have known
scores of people who were able to remember what happened, and he had no
conceivable interest in misrepresenting it. The prediction of the
eclipse is really better attested than any other fact about Thales
whatsoever, and the evidence for it is about as strong as for anything
that happened in the early part of the sixth century B.C.
Footnote 60:
Herod. i. 74.
Footnote 61:
For the theories held by Anaximander and Herakleitos, see _infra_, §§
19, 71.
Footnote 62:
Diog. i. 23, δοκεῖ δὲ κατά τινας πρῶτος ἀστρολογῆσαι καὶ ἡλιακὰς
ἐκλείψεις καὶ τροπὰς προειπεῖν, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος ἐν τῇ περὶ τῶν
ἀστρολογουμένων ἱστορίᾳ, ὅθεν αὐτὸν καὶ Ξενοφάνης καὶ Ἡρόδοτος
θαυμάζει.
Now it is quite possible to predict eclipses without knowing their true
cause, and there is no doubt that the Babylonians actually did so. On
the basis of their astronomical observations, they had made out a cycle
of 223 lunar months, within which eclipses of the sun and moon recurred
at equal intervals of time.[63] This, it is true, would not enable them
to predict eclipses of the sun for a given spot on the earth’s surface;
for these phenomena are not visible at all places where the sun is above
the horizon at the time. We do not occupy a position at the centre of
the earth, and what astronomers call the geocentric parallax has to be
taken into account. It would only, therefore, be possible to tell by
means of the cycle that an eclipse of the sun would be visible
somewhere, and that it might be worth while to look out for it. Now, if
we may judge from a report by a Chaldaean astronomer which has been
preserved, this was just the position of the Babylonians. They watched
for eclipses at the proper dates; and, if they did not occur, they
announced the fact as a good omen.[64] To explain what we are told about
Thales no more than this is required. He simply said there would be an
eclipse; and, as good luck would have it, it was visible in Asia Minor,
and on a striking occasion.
Footnote 63:
The first to call attention to the Chaldaean cycle in this connexion
seems to have been the Rev. George Costard, Fellow of Wadham College.
See his _Dissertation on the Use of Astronomy in History_ (London,
1764), p. 17. It is inaccurate to call it the _Saros_; that was quite
another thing (see Ginzel, _Klio_, i. p. 377).
[Sidenote: Date of Thales.]
4. The prediction of the eclipse does not, then, throw much light upon
the scientific attainments of Thales; but, if we can fix its date, it
will give us a point from which to start in trying to determine the time
at which he lived. Modern astronomers have calculated that there was an
eclipse of the sun, probably visible in Asia Minor, on May 28 (O.S.),
585 B.C.,[65] while Pliny gives the date of the eclipse foretold by
Thales as Ol. XLVIII. 4 (585/4 B.C.).[66] This, it is true, does not
exactly tally; for May 585 belongs to the year 586/5 B.C. It is
sufficiently near, however, to justify us in identifying the eclipse as
that of Thales, and this is confirmed by Apollodoros, who fixed his
_floruit_ in the same year.[67] The further statement that, according to
Demetrios Phalereus, Thales “received the name of wise” in the
archonship of Damasias at Athens, agrees very well with this, and is
doubtless based on the story of the Delphic tripod; for the archonship
of Damasias is the era of the restoration of the Pythian Games.[68]
Footnote 64:
See George Smith, _Assyrian Discoveries_ (1875), p. 409. The
inscription which follows was found at Kouyunjik:—
“To the king my lord, thy servant Abil-Istar.
* * * * *
“Concerning the eclipse of the moon of which the king my lord sent to
me; in the cities of Akkad, Borsippa, and Nipur, observations they
made, and then in the city of Akkad, we saw part.... The observation
was made, and the eclipse took place.
* * * * *
“And when for the eclipse of the sun we made an observation, the
observation was made and it did not take place. That which I saw with
my eyes to the king my lord I send.”
Footnote 65:
For the literature of this subject, see R. P. 8 b, adding Ginzel,
_Spezieller Kanon_, p. 171. See also Milhaud, _Science grecque_, p.
62.
Footnote 66:
Pliny, _N.H._ ii. 53.
Footnote 67:
For Apollodoros, see Appendix, § 20. The dates in our text of Diogenes
(i. 37; R. P. 8) cannot be reconciled with one another. That given for
the death of Thales is probably right; for it is the year before the
fall of Sardeis in 546/5 B.C., which is one of the regular eras used
by Apollodoros. It no doubt seemed natural to make Thales die the year
before the “ruin of Ionia” which he foresaw. Seventy-eight years
before this brings us to 625/4 B.C. for the birth of Thales, and this
gives us 585/4 B.C. for his fortieth year. That is Pliny’s date for
the eclipse, and Pliny’s dates come from Apollodoros through Nepos.
For a full discussion of the subject, see Jacoby, pp. 175 sqq.
Footnote 68:
Diog. i. 22 (R. P. 9). I do not discuss the Pythian era and the date
of Damasias here, though it appears to me that the last word has not
yet been said upon the subject. Jacoby (pp. 170 sqq.) argues strongly
for 582/1, the date now generally accepted. Others favour the Pythian
year 586/5 B.C., which is the very year of the eclipse, and this would
help to explain how those historians who used Apollodoros came to date
it a year too late; for Damasias was archon for two years and two
months. It is even possible that they misunderstood the words Δαμασίου
τοῦ δευτέρου, which are intended to distinguish him from an earlier
archon of the same name, as meaning “in the second year of Damasias.”
Apollodoros gave only Athenian archons, and the reduction to Olympiads
is the work of later writers. Kirchner, adopting the year 582/1 for
Damasias, brings the archonship of Solon down to 591/0 (_Rh. Mus._
liii. pp. 242 sqq.). But the date of Solon’s archonship can never have
been doubtful. On Kirchner’s reckoning, we come to 586/5 B.C., if we
keep the traditional date of Solon. See also E. Meyer, _Forschungen_,
ii. pp. 242 sqq.
[Sidenote: Thales in Egypt.]
5. The introduction of Egyptian geometry into Hellas is universally
ascribed to Thales, and it is extremely probable that he did visit
Egypt; for he had a theory of the inundations of the Nile. In a
well-known passage,[69] Herodotos gives three explanations of the fact
that this alone of all rivers rises in summer and falls in winter; but,
as his custom is in such cases, he does not name their authors. The
first of them, however, that which attributes the floods to the Etesian
winds, is ascribed to Thales in the _Placita_,[70] and also by many
later writers. Now, those statements are derived from a treatise on the
Rise of the Nile attributed to Aristotle and known to the Greek
commentators, but now extant only in a Latin epitome of the thirteenth
century.[71] In this work the first of the three theories mentioned by
Herodotos is ascribed to Thales, the second to Euthymenes of Massalia,
and the third to Anaxagoras. Where did Aristotle, or whoever wrote the
book, get these names? We think naturally once more of Hekataios, whom
Herodotos so often reproduces without mentioning his name; and this
conjecture is much strengthened when we find that Hekataios actually
mentioned Euthymenes.[72] We may conclude, then, that Thales really was
in Egypt; and, perhaps, that Hekataios, in describing the Nile, took
account, as was only natural, of his distinguished fellow-citizen’s
views.
Footnote 69:
Herod. ii. 20.
Footnote 70:
Aet. iv. I. 1 (_Dox._ p. 384).
Footnote 71:
_Dox._ pp. 226-229. The Latin epitome will be found in Rose’s edition
of the Aristotelian fragments.
Footnote 72:
Hekataios, fr. 278 (_F.H.G._ i. p. 19).
[Sidenote: Thales and geometry.]
6. As to the nature and extent of the mathematical knowledge brought
back by Thales from Egypt, it seems desirable to point out that many
writers have seriously misunderstood the character of the tradition.[73]
In his commentary on the First Book of Euclid, Proclus enumerates, on
the authority of Eudemos, certain propositions which he says were known
to Thales.[74] One of the theorems with which he credits him is that two
triangles are equal when they have one side and the two adjacent angles
equal. This he must have known, said Eudemos, as otherwise he could not
have measured the distances of ships at sea from a watch-tower in the
way he was said to have done.[75] Here we see how all these statements
arose. Certain remarkable feats in the way of measurement were
traditionally ascribed to Thales, and it was assumed that he must have
known all the propositions which these imply. But this is quite an
illusory method of inference. Both the measurement of the distance of
ships at sea, and that of the height of the pyramids, which is also
ascribed to him,[76] are easy applications of what Aahmes calls the
_seqt_. These rules of mensuration may well have been brought from Egypt
by Thales, but we have no ground for supposing that he knew any more
about their _rationale_ than did the author of the Rhind papyrus.
Perhaps, indeed, he gave them a wider application than the Egyptians had
done. Still, mathematics, properly so called, did not come into
existence till some time after Thales.
Footnote 73:
See Cantor, _Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik_, vol. i. pp.
112 sqq.; Allman, “Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid”
(_Hermathena_, iii. pp. 164-174).
Footnote 74:
Proclus, _in Eucl._ pp. 65, 7; 157, 10; 250, 20; 299, 1; 352, 14;
(Friedlein). Eudemos wrote the first histories of astronomy and
mathematics, just as Theophrastos wrote the first history of
philosophy.
Footnote 75:
Proclus, p. 352, 14, Εὔδημος δὲ ἐν ταῖς γεωμετρικαῖς ἱστορίαις εἰς
Θαλῆν τοῦτο ἀνάγει τὸ θεώρημα (_Eucl._ i. 26)· τὴν γὰρ τῶν ἐν θαλάττῃ
πλοίων ἀπόστοσιν δι’ οὗ τρόπου φασὶν αὐτὸν δεικνύναι τούτῳ προσχρῆσθαί
φησιν ἀναγκαῖον. For the method adopted by Thales, see Tannery,
_Géométrie grecque_, p. 90. I agree, however, with Dr. Gow (_Short
History of Greek Mathematics_, § 84) that it is very unlikely Thales
reproduced and measured on land the enormous triangle which he had
constructed in a perpendicular plane over the sea. Such a method would
be too cumbrous to be of use. It is much simpler to suppose that he
made use of the Egyptian _seqt_.
Footnote 76:
The oldest version of this story is given in Diog. i. 27, ὁ δὲ
Ἱερώνυμος καὶ ἐκμετρῆσαί φησιν αὐτὸν τὰς πυραμίδας, ἐκ τῆς σκιᾶς
παρατηρήσαντα ὅτε ἡμῖν ἰσομεγέθης ἐστίν. Cf. Pliny, _H. Nat._ xxxvi.
82, _mensuram altitudinis earum deprehendere invenit Thales Milesius
umbram metiendo qua hora par esse corpori solet_. (Hieronymos of
Rhodes was contemporary with Eudemos.) This need imply no more than
the simple reflexion that the shadows of all objects will probably be
equal to the objects at the same hour. Plutarch (_Conv. sept. sap._
147 a) gives a more elaborate method, τὴν βακτηρίαν στήσας ἐπὶ τῷ
πέρατι τῆς σκιᾶς ἣν ἡ πυραμὶς ἐποίει, γενομένων τῇ ἐπαφῇ τῆς ἀκτῖνος
δυοῖν τριγώνων, ἔδειξας ὃν ἡ σκιὰ πρὸς τὴν σκιὰν λόγον εἶχε, τὴν
πυραμίδα πρὸς τὴν βακτηρίαν ἔχουσαν. This, as Dr. Gow points out, is
only another calculation of _seqt_, and may very well have been the
method of Thales.
[Sidenote: Thales as a politician.]
7. Thales appears once more in the pages of Herodotos some time before
the fall of the Lydian empire. He is said to have urged the Ionian
Greeks to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos.[77] We
shall have occasion to notice more than once in the sequel that the
early schools of philosophy were in the habit of trying to influence the
course of political events; and there are many things, for instance the
part played by Hekataios in the Ionian revolt, which point to the
conclusion that the scientific men of Miletos took up a very decided
position in the stirring times that followed the death of Thales. It is
this political action which has gained the founder of the Milesian
school his undisputed place among the Seven Wise Men; and it is owing
mainly to his inclusion among those worthies that the numerous anecdotes
which were told of him in later days attached themselves to his
name.[78]
Footnote 77:
Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d).
Footnote 78:
The story of Thales falling into a well (Plato, _Tht._ 174 a) is
nothing but a fable teaching the uselessness of σοφία; the anecdote
about the “corner” in oil (Ar. _Pol._ Α, 11. 1259 a 6) is intended to
inculcate the opposite lesson.
[Sidenote: Uncertain character of the tradition.]
8. If Thales ever wrote anything, it soon was lost, and the works which
were written in his name did not, as a rule, deceive even the
ancients.[79] Aristotle professes to know something about the views of
Thales; but he does not pretend to know how they were arrived at, nor
the arguments by which they were supported. He does, indeed, make
certain suggestions, which are repeated by later writers as statements
of fact; but he himself simply gives them for what they are worth.[80]
There is another difficulty in connexion with the tradition. Many a
precise-looking statement in the _Placita_ has no other foundation than
the habit of ascribing any doctrine which was, roughly speaking,
characteristic of the whole Ionic “Succession” to “Thales and his
followers,” and so producing the appearance of a definite statement
about Thales. But, in spite of all this, we need not doubt that
Aristotle was correctly informed with regard to the leading points. We
have seen traces of reference to Thales in Hekataios, and nothing can be
more likely than that later writers of the school should have quoted the
views of its founder. We may venture, therefore, upon a conjectural
restoration of his cosmology, in which we shall be guided by what we
know for certain of the subsequent development of the Milesian school;
for we should naturally expect to find its characteristic doctrines at
least foreshadowed in the teaching of its earliest representative. But
all this must be taken for just what it is worth; speaking strictly, we
do not know anything about the teaching of Thales at all.
Footnote 79:
See R. P. 9 e.
Footnote 80:
R. P. _ib._
[Sidenote: Conjectural account of the cosmology of Thales.]
9. The statements of Aristotle may be reduced to three:
(1) The earth floats on the water.[81]
(2) Water is the material cause[82] of all things.
(3) All things are full of gods. The magnet is alive; for it has
the power of moving iron.[83]
Footnote 81:
Arist. _Met._ Α, 3. 983 b 21 (R. P. 10); _de Caelo_, Β, 13. 294 a 28
(R. P. 11). Later writers add that he gave this as an explanation of
earthquakes (so Aet. iii. 15, 1); but this is probably due to a
“Homeric allegorist” (Appendix, § 11), who wished to explain the
epithet ἐννοσίγαιος. Cf. Diels, _Dox._ p. 225.
Footnote 82:
_Met._ Α, 3. 983 b 20 (R. P. 10). I have said “material cause,”
because τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχῆς (b 19) means τῆς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει ἀρχῆς (b 7).
Footnote 83:
Arist. _de An._ Α, 5. 411 a 7 (R. P. 13); _ib._ 2. 405 a 19 (R. P. 13
a). Diog. i. 24 (R. P. _ib._) adds amber. This comes from Hesychios of
Miletos; for it occurs in the scholium of Par. A on Plato, _Rep._ 600
a.
The first of these statements must be understood in the light of the
second, which is expressed in Aristotelian terminology, but would
undoubtedly mean that Thales had said water was the fundamental or
primary thing, of which all other things were mere transient forms. It
was, we shall see, just such a primary substance that the Milesian
school as a whole was seeking, and it is unlikely that the earliest
answer to the great question of the day should have been the
comparatively subtle one given by Anaximander. We are, perhaps,
justified in holding that the greatness of Thales consisted in this,
that he was the first to ask, not what _was_ the original thing, but
what _is_ the primary thing now; or, more simply still, “What is the
world made of?” The answer he gave to this question was: _Water_.
[Sidenote: Water.]
10. Aristotle and Theophratos, followed by Simplicius and the
doxographers, suggest several explanations of this answer. By Aristotle
these explanations are given as conjectural; it is only later writers
that repeat them as if they were quite certain.[84] The most probable
view of them seems to be that Aristotle simply ascribed to Thales the
arguments used at a later date by Hippon of Samos in support of a
similar thesis.[85] This would account for their physiological
character. The rise of scientific medicine had made biological arguments
very popular in the fifth century; but, in the days of Thales, the
prevailing interest was not physiological, but rather what we should
call meteorological, and it is therefore from this point of view we must
try to understand the theory.
Footnote 84:
_Met._ Α, 3. 983 b 22; Aet. i. 3, 1; Simpl. _Phys._ p. 36, 10 (R. P.
10, 12, 12 a). The last of the explanations given by Aristotle,
namely, that Thales was influenced by early cosmogonical theories
about Okeanos and Tethys, has strangely been supposed to be more
historical than the rest, whereas it is merely a fancy of Plato’s
taken literally. Plato says more than once (_Tht._ 180 d 2; _Crat._
402 b 4) that Herakleitos and his predecessors (οἱ ῥέοντες) derived
their philosophy from Homer (_Il._ xiv. 201), and even earlier sources
(Orph. frag. 2, Diels, _Vors._ 1st ed. p. 491). In quoting this
suggestion, Aristotle refers it to “some”—a word which often means
Plato—and he calls the originators of the theory παμπαλαίους, as Plato
had done (_Met._ 983 b 28; cf. _Tht._ 181 b 3). This is a
characteristic example of the way in which Aristotle gets history out
of Plato. See Appendix, § 2.
Footnote 85:
Compare Arist. _de An._ Α, 2. 405 b 2 (R. P. 220) with the passages
referred to in the last note. The same suggestion is made in Zeller’s
fifth edition (p. 188, n. 1), which I had not seen when the above was
written. Döring, “Thales” (_Zschr. f. Philos._ 1896, pp. 179 sqq.),
takes the same view. We now know that, though Aristotle declines to
consider Hippon as a philosopher (_Met._ Α, 3. 984 a 3; R. P. 219 a),
he was discussed in the history of medicine known as Menon’s
_Iatrika_. See Diels in _Hermes_, xxviii. p. 420.
Now it is not very hard to see how considerations of a meteorological
kind may have led Thales to adopt the view he did. Of all the things we
know, water seems to take the most various shapes. It is familiar to us
in a solid, a liquid, and a vaporous form, and so Thales may well have
thought that he saw the world-process from water and back to water again
going on before his very eyes. The phenomenon of evaporation naturally
suggests everywhere that the fire of the heavenly bodies is kept up by
the moisture which they draw from the sea. Even at the present day, the
country people speak of the appearance of sunbeams as “the sun drawing
water.” Water comes down again in the rain; and lastly, so the early
cosmologists thought, it turns to earth. This seems strange to us, but
it may have seemed natural enough to men who were familiar with the
river of Egypt which had formed the Delta, and with the torrents of Asia
Minor, which bring down unusually large alluvial deposits. At the
present day the Gulf of Latmos, on which Miletos used to stand, is
completely filled up. Lastly, they thought, earth turns once more to
water—an idea derived from the observation of dew, night-mists, and
subterranean springs. For these last were not in early times supposed to
have anything at all to do with the rain. The “waters under the earth”
were regarded as an entirely independent source of moisture.[86]
Footnote 86:
The view here taken most resembles that of the “Homeric allegorist”
Herakleitos (R. P. 12 a). That, however, is also a conjecture,
probably of Stoic, as the others are of Peripatetic, origin.
[Sidenote: Theology.]
11. The third of the statements mentioned above is supposed by Aristotle
himself to imply that Thales believed in a “soul of the world,” though
he is careful to mark this as no more than an inference.[87] The
doctrine of the world-soul is then attributed quite positively to Thales
by Aetios, who gives it in the Stoic phraseology which he found in his
immediate source, and identifies the world-intellect with God.[88]
Cicero found a similar account of the matter in the Epicurean manual
which he followed, but he goes a step further. Eliminating the Stoic
pantheism, he turns the world-intellect into a Platonic _demiourgos_,
and says that Thales held there was a divine mind which formed all
things out of water.[89] All this is derived from the cautious statement
of Aristotle, and can have no greater authority than its source. We need
not enter, then, upon the old controversy whether Thales was an atheist
or not. It is really irrelevant. If we may judge from his successors, he
may very possibly have called water divine; but, if he had any religious
beliefs at all, we may be sure they were quite unconnected with his
cosmological theory.
Footnote 87:
Arist. _de An._ Α, 5. 411 a 7 (R. P. 13).
Footnote 88:
Aet. i. 7, 11 = Stob. i. 56 (R. P. 14). On the sources here referred
to, see Appendix, §§ 11, 12.
Footnote 89:
Cicero, _de Nat. D._ 1. 25 (R. P. 13 b). On Cicero’s source, see
_Dox._ pp. 125, 128. The Herculanean papyrus of Philodemos is,
unfortunately, defective just at this point, but it is not likely that
the Epicurean manual anticipated Cicero’s mistake.
Nor must we make too much of the saying itself that “all things are full
of gods.” It is often supposed to mean that Thales attributed a “plastic
life” to matter, or that he was a “hylozoist.” We have seen already how
misleading this way of speaking is apt to be,[90] and we shall do well
to avoid it. It is not safe to regard such an apophthegm as evidence for
anything; the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven
Wise Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such
sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed now
to one sage and now to another.[91] On the other hand, it is extremely
probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls. That
is no apophthegm, but something more on the level of the statement that
the earth floats on the water. It is, in fact, just the sort of thing we
should expect Hekataios to record about Thales. It would be wrong,
however, to draw any inferences from it as to his view of the world; for
to say that the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything,
that other things are not.[92]
Footnote 90:
See Introd. § VIII.
Footnote 91:
Plato refers to the saying πάντα πλήρη θεῶν in _Laws_, 899 b 9 (R. P.
14 b), without mentioning Thales. That ascribed to Herakleitos in the
_de part. An._ Α, 5. 645 a 17 seems to be a mere variation on it. So
in Diog. ix. 7 (R. P. 46 d) Herakleitos is credited with the saying
πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι κα δαιμόνων πλήρη.
Footnote 92:
Bäumker, _Das Problem der Materie_, p. 10, n. 1.
II. ANAXIMANDER
[Sidenote: Life.]
12. The next name that has come down to us is that of Anaximander, son
of Praxiades. He too was a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos
described him as an “associate” of Thales.[93] We have seen how that
expression is to be understood (§ XIV.).
According to Apollodoros, Anaximander was sixty-four years old in Ol.
LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytos, who says he
was born in Ol. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny, who assigns his
discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to the same Olympiad.[94] We
seem to have here something more than a mere combination of the ordinary
type; for, according to all the rules of Alexandrian chronology,
Anaximander should have “flourished” in 565 B.C., that is, just half-way
between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty, not
sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodoros appears to have said that he had met
with the work of Anaximander; and his reason for mentioning this must be
that he found in it some indication which enabled him to fix its date
without having recourse to conjecture. Diels suggests that Anaximander
may have given his age at the time of writing as sixty-four, and that
the book may have contained some other statement showing it to have been
published in 547/6 B.C.[95] Perhaps, however, this hardly does justice
to the fact that the year given is just that which preceded the fall of
Sardeis and the subjugation of the Lydian empire by the Persians. It may
be a more plausible conjecture that Anaximander, writing some years
later, incidentally mentioned what his age had been at the time of that
great crisis. We know from Xenophanes that the question, “How old were
you when the Mede appeared?” was considered an interesting one in those
days.[96] At all events, we seem to be justified in believing that
Anaximander was a generation younger than Thales. When he died we do not
really know.[97]
Footnote 93:
R. P. 15 d. That the words πολίτης καὶ ἑταῖρος, given by Simplicius,
_de Caelo_, p. 615, 13, are the original words of Theophrastos is
shown by the agreement of Cic. _Acad._ ii. 118, _popularis et
sodalis_. The two passages represent quite independent branches of the
tradition. See Appendix, §§ 7, 12.
Footnote 94:
Diog. ii. 2 (R. P. 15); Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6 (_Dox._ p. 560); Plin.
_N.H._ ii. 31. Pliny’s dates come from Apollodoros through Nepos.
Footnote 95:
_Rhein. Mus._ xxxi. p. 24.
Footnote 96:
Xenophanes, fr. 22 (fr. 17, Karsten; R. P. 95 a). Jacoby (p. 190)
thinks that Apollodoros fixed the _floruit_ of Anaximander forty years
before that of Pythagoras, that is, in 572/1 B.C., and that the
statement as to his age in 547/6 is a mere inference from this.
Footnote 97:
The statement that he “died soon after” (Diog. ii. 2; R. P. 15) seems
to mean that Apollodoros made him die in the year of Sardeis (546/5),
one of his regular epochs. If this is so, Apollodoros cannot have said
also that he flourished in the days of Polykrates, and Diels is
probably right in supposing that this notice refers to Pythagoras and
has been inserted in the wrong place.
Like his predecessor, Anaximander distinguished himself by certain
practical inventions. Some writers credited him with that of the
_gnomon_; but that can hardly be correct. Herodotos tells us this
instrument came from Babylon, so perhaps it was Anaximander who made it
known among the Greeks. He was also the first to construct a map, and
Eratosthenes said this was the map elaborated by Hekataios.[98]
Footnote 98:
For the gnomon, see Introd. p. 31, _n._ 44; and cf. Diog. ii. 1 (R. P.
15); Herod. ii. 109 (R. P. 15 a). Pliny, on the other hand, ascribes
the invention of the gnomon to Anaximenes (_N.H._ ii. 87). The truth
seems to be that the erection of celebrated gnomons was traditionally
ascribed to certain philosophers. That of Delos was referred to
Pherekydes. For the map see Agathemeros, i. 1, Ἀναξίμανδρος ὁ Μιλήσιος
ἀκουστὴς Θαλέω πρώτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι, μεθ’
ὃν Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀνὴρ πολυπλανὴς διηκρίβωσεν, ὥστε θαυμασθῆναι
τὸ πρᾶγμα. This is from Eratosthenes. Cf. Strabo, i. p. 7.
[Sidenote: Theophrastos on Anaximander’s theory of the primary
substance.]
13. Nearly all we know of Anaximander’s system is derived in the last
resort from Theophrastos.[99] As to the credibility of what we are told
on his authority, it is enough to remark that the original work, which
was in the hands of Apollodoros, must certainly have existed in the time
of Theophrastos. Moreover, he seems once at least to have quoted
Anaximander’s own words, and he criticised his style. Here are the
remains of what he said of him in the First Book:—
Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and
associate of Thales,[100] said that the material cause and first
element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce
this name for the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any
other of the so-called[101] elements, but a substance different from
them which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the
worlds within them.—_Phys. Op._ fr. 2 (_Dox._ p. 476; R. P. 16).
He says that this is eternal and ageless, and that it encompasses all
the worlds.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).
And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once
more, “as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to
one another for their injustice according to the appointed time,” as
he says[102] in these somewhat poetical terms.—_Phys. Op._ fr. 2 (R.
P. 16).
And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in the course of which
was brought about the origin of the worlds.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6 (R. P.
17 a).
He did not ascribe the origin of things to any alteration in matter,
but said that the oppositions in the substratum, which was a boundless
body, were separated out.—Simpl. _Phys._ p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18).
Footnote 99:
See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given by Diels,
_Dox._ p. 133; _Vors._ pp. 13 sqq. In this and other cases, where the
words of the original have been preserved by Simplicius, I have given
them alone. On the various writers quoted, see Appendix, § 9 sqq.
Footnote 100:
Simplicius says “successor and disciple” (διάδοχος καὶ μαθητής) in his
Commentary on the _Physics_; but see above, p. 52, n. 2.
Footnote 101:
For the expression τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα, see Diels, _Elementum_, p.
25, n. 4. In view of this, we must keep the MS. reading εἶναι, instead
of writing νυνί with Usener.
Footnote 102:
Diels (_Vors._ p. 13) begins the actual quotation with the words ἐξ ὧν
δὲ ἡ γένεσις.... The Greek practice of blending quotations with the
text tells against this. It is very rare for a Greek writer to open a
verbal quotation abruptly. Further, it is safer not to ascribe the
terms γένεσις and φθορά in their technical Platonic sense to
Anaximander.
[Sidenote: The primary substance is not one of the “elements.”]
14. Anaximander taught, then, that there was one eternal, indestructible
substance out of which everything arises, and into which everything once
more returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is
continually being made good. This is only the natural development of the
thought we have ventured to ascribe to Thales, and there can be no doubt
that Anaximander at least distinctly formulated it. Indeed, we can still
follow to some extent the reasoning which led him to do so. Thales had
regarded water as the most likely of all the things we know to be that
of which all others are forms; Anaximander appears to have asked himself
how the primary substance could be one of these particular things. His
argument seems to be preserved by Aristotle, who has the following
passage in his discussion of the Infinite:—
Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite,
either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then
derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who
make this (_i.e._ a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and
not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed
by their infinity. _They are in opposition one to another_—air is
cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, _if any one of them
were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time_.
Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the
elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. _Phys._ Γ, 5. 204 b
22 (R. P. 16 b).
It is clear that in this passage Anaximander is contrasted with Thales
and with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the account
given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the form is
Aristotle’s own, and the mention of “elements” is an anachronism.[103]
Anaximander was struck, it would seem, by the opposition and strife
between the things which go to make up the world; the warm fire was
opposed to the cold air, the dry earth to the moist sea. These opposites
were at war, and any predominance of one over the other was an
“injustice” for which they must make reparation to one another.[104] We
may suppose that his thoughts ran somewhat as follows. If Thales had
been right in saying that water was the fundamental reality, it would
not be easy to see how anything else could ever have existed. One side
of the opposition, the cold and moist, would have had its way unchecked,
injustice would have prevailed, and the warm and dry would have been
driven from the field long ago. We must, then, have something which is
not itself one of the warring opposites we know, something more
primitive, out of which they arise, and into which they once more pass
away. That Anaximander called this something by the name of φύσις, is
clear from the doxographers; the current statement that the word ἀρχή in
the sense of a “first principle” was introduced by him, is probably due
to a misunderstanding of what Theophrastos said.[105]
Footnote 103:
The conception of elements is not older than Empedokles (§ 106), and
the _word_ στοιχεῖα, which is properly translated by _elementa_, was
first used in this sense by Plato. For the history of the term, see
Diels, _Elementum_ (1899).
Footnote 104:
The important word ἀλλήλοις was omitted in the Aldine Simplicius, but
is in all the MSS. We shall see that in Herakleitos “justice” means
the observance of an equal balance between what were called later the
elements (§ 72). See also Introd. p. 32, _n._ 45.
Footnote 105:
If the words quoted from Theophrastos by Simplicius, _Phys._ p. 24, 15
(R. P. 16), stood by themselves, no one would ever have supposed them
to mean that Anaximander called the Boundless ἀρχή. They would
naturally be rendered: “having been the first to introduce this name
(_i.e._ τὸ ἄπειρον) for the ἀρχή”; but the words of Hippolytos (_Ref._
i. 6, 2), πρῶτος τοὔνομα καλέσας τῆς ἀρχῆς, have led nearly all
writers to take the passage in the less obvious sense. We now know,
however, that Hippolytos is no independent authority, but rests
altogether on Theophrastos; so the natural view to take is that either
his immediate source, or he himself, or a copyist, has dropped out
τοῦτο before τοὔνομα, and corrupted κομίσας into καλέσας. It is not
credible that Theophrastos made both statements. The other passage
from Simplicius compared by Usener (p. 150, 23), πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀρχὴν
ὀνομάσας τὸ ὑποκείμενον, does not seem to me to have anything to do
with the question. It means simply that Anaximander was the first to
name the substratum as the “material cause,” which is a different
point altogether. This is how Neuhäuser takes the passage
(_Anaximander_, pp. 7 sqq.); but I cannot agree with him in holding
that the _word_ ὑποκείμενον is ascribed to the Milesian.
[Sidenote: Aristotle’s account of the theory.]
15. It was natural for Aristotle to regard this theory as an
anticipation or presentiment of his own doctrine of “indeterminate
matter.”[106] He knew very well, of course, that he himself was the
author of that; but it is in accordance with his method to represent his
own theories as the distinct formulation of truths which earlier
thinkers had only guessed at. It was to be expected, then, that he
should sometimes express the views of Anaximander in terms of the theory
of “elements.” He knew too that the Boundless was a body,[107] though in
his own system there was no room for anything corporeal prior to the
elements; so he had to speak of it as a boundless body “alongside of” or
“distinct from” the elements (παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα). So far as I know, no
one has doubted that, when he uses this phrase, he is referring to
Anaximander.
Footnote 106:
Arist. _Met._ Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c).
Footnote 107:
This is taken for granted in _Phys._ Γ, 4. 203 a 16; 204 b 22 (R. P.
16 b), and stated in Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). Cf. Simpl. _Phys._ p.
150, 20 (R. P. 18).
In a number of other places Aristotle speaks of a thinker, whom he does
not happen to name, who held that the primary substance was something
“intermediate between” the elements or between two of them.[108] Nearly
all the Greek commentators referred this to Anaximander also, but most
modern writers refuse to follow them. It is, no doubt, easy to show that
Anaximander can have never meant to describe the Boundless in this way,
but that is no real objection to the older interpretation. It is
difficult to see that it is more of an anachronism to call the Boundless
“intermediate between the elements” than to say that it is “distinct
from the elements”; and indeed, if once we introduce the elements at
all, the former description is in some ways the more adequate of the
two. At any rate, if we refuse to understand these passages as referring
to Anaximander, we shall have to say that Aristotle paid a great deal of
attention to some early thinker, whose very name has been lost, and who
not only agreed with some of Anaximander’s views, but also, as is shown
by one passage, used some of his most characteristic expressions.[109]
We may add that in one or two places Aristotle certainly seems to
identify the “intermediate” with the something “distinct from” the
elements.[110]
Footnote 108:
Aristotle speaks four times of something intermediate between Fire and
Air (_Gen. Corr._ Β, 1. 328 b 35; _ib._ 5. 332 a 21; _Phys._ Α, 4. 187
a 14; _Met._ Α, 7. 988 a 30). In five places we have something
intermediate between Water and Air (_Met._ Α, 7. 988 a 13; _Gen.
Corr._ Β, 5. 332 a 21; _Phys._ Γ, 4. 203 a 18; _ib._ 5. 205 a 27; _de
Caelo_, Γ, 5. 303 b 12). Once (_Phys._ Α, 6. 189 b 1) we hear of
something between Water and Fire. This variation shows at once that he
is not speaking historically. If any one ever held the doctrine of τὸ
μεταξύ, he must have known perfectly well which two elements he meant.
Footnote 109:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Γ, 5. 303 b 12, ὕδατος μὲν λεπτότερον, ἀέρος
πυκνότερον, ὃ περιέχειν φασὶ πάντας τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἄπειρον ὄν. That
this refers to Idaios of Himera, as suggested by Zeller (p. 258),
seems very improbable. Aristotle nowhere mentions his name, and the
tone of his reference to Hippon in _Met._ Α, 3. 984 a 3 (R. P. 219 a)
shows that he was not likely to pay so much attention to the ἐπίγονοι
of the Milesian school.
Footnote 110:
Cf. _Phys._ Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b), where Zeller rightly refers
τὸ παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα to Anaximander. Now, at the end (205 a 25) the
whole passage is summarised thus: καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ οὐθεὶς τὸ ἓν καὶ
ἄπειρον πῦρ ἐποίησεν οὐδὲ γῆν τῶν φυσιολόγων, ἀλλ’ ἢ ὕδωρ ἢ ἀέρα ἢ τὸ
μέσον αὐτῶν. In _Gen. Corr._ Β, 1. 328 b 35 we have first τι μεταξὺ
τούτων σῶμά τε ὂν καὶ χωριστόν, and a little further on (329 a 9) μίαν
ὕλην παρὰ τὰ εἰρημένα. In Β, 5. 332 a 20 we have οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἄλλο τί
γε παρὰ ταῦτα, οἶον μέσον τι ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος ἢ ἀέρος καὶ πυρός.
There is even one place in which he appears to speak of Anaximander’s
Boundless as a “mixture,” though his words may perhaps admit of another
interpretation.[111] But this is of no consequence for our
interpretation of Anaximander himself. It is certain that he cannot have
said anything about “elements,” which no one thought of before
Empedokles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The question
has only been mentioned at all because it has been the subject of a
lengthy controversy,[112] and because it throws great light on the
historical value of Aristotle’s statements. From the point of view of
his own system, these are abundantly justified; but we shall have to
remember in other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some
earlier thinker, we are not in the least bound to believe what he says
in a historical sense.
Footnote 111:
_Met._ Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c). Zeller (p. 205, n. 1) assumes an
“easy zeugma.” I should prefer to say that καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα
was an afterthought, and that Aristotle really meant τὸ Ἀναξαγόρου ἓν
... καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρου. _Met._ Α, 4. 187 a 20 does not assign the
“mixture” to Anaximander.
Footnote 112:
For the literature of this controversy, see R. P. 15. A good deal of
light is thrown on this and similar questions by W. A. Heidel,
“Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy” (_Arch._ xix. p. 333).
[Sidenote: The primary substance is infinite.]
16. Anaximander’s reason for conceiving the primary substance as
boundless was, no doubt, that indicated by Aristotle, namely, “that
becoming might not fail.”[113] It is not likely, however, that these
words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is
enough for us to know that Theophrastos, who had seen his book,
attributed the thought to him. And certainly the way in which he
regarded the world would bring home to him with more than common force
the need of a boundless stock of matter. The “opposites” of which our
world consists are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their
strife is marked by “unjust” encroachments on either side. The warm
commits “injustice” in summer, the cold in winter. To redress the
balance, they must be absorbed once more in their common ground; and
this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the
Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from
which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must
picture to ourselves, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the
opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the
heavens which bound the world we live in.[114] This mass is a body, and
out of it our world once emerged by the “separating out” of the
opposites, which one day will all be absorbed again in the Boundless,
and our world will cease to be.
Footnote 113:
_Phys._ Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). That this refers to Anaximander is
shown by Aet. i. 3, 3 (R. P. 16 a). The same argument is given in
_Phys._ Γ, 4. 203 b 18, a passage where Anaximander has just been
quoted by name, τῷ οὕτως ἂν μόνον μὴ ὑπολείπειν γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν, εἰ
ἄπειρον εἴη ὅθεν ἀφαιρεῖται τὸ γιγνόμενον. I cannot, however, believe
that the arguments given at the beginning of this chapter (203 b 7; R.
P. 17) are Anaximander’s. They bear the stamp of the Eleatic
dialectic, and are, in fact, those of Melissos.
Footnote 114:
I have assumed that the word ἄπειρον means _spatially infinite_
(though not in any precise mathematical sense), not _qualitatively
indeterminate_, as maintained by Teichmüller and Tannery. The decisive
reasons for holding that the sense of the word is “boundless in
extent” are as follows: (1) Theophrastos said that the primary
substance of Anaximander was ἄπειρον and contained all the worlds, and
the word περιέχειν everywhere means “to encompass,” not, as has been
suggested, “to contain potentially.” (2) Aristotle says (_Phys._ Γ, 4.
203 b 23) διὰ γὰρ τὸ ἐν τῇ νοήσει μὴ ὑπολείπειν καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς δοκεῖ
ἄπειρος εἶναι καὶ τὰ μαθηματικὰ μεγέθη καὶ τὰ ἔξω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ· ἀπείρου
δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω, καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι. (3)
Anaximander’s theory of the ἄπειρον was adopted by Anaximenes, and he
identified it with Air, which is not qualitatively indeterminate.
[Sidenote: The eternal motion.]
17. The doxographers say it was the “eternal motion” that brought into
being “all the heavens and all the worlds within them.” As we have seen
(§ VIII), it is not likely that Anaximander himself used the phrase
“eternal motion.” That is rather Aristotle’s own version of what he
found stated about the “separating out” of opposites. We are not told
expressly how Anaximander conceived this to operate, but the term
“separating out” suggests some process of shaking and sifting as in a
sieve. Now it is just such a process that Plato makes the Pythagorean
Timaios describe, and the most probable theory is certainly that here,
as in many other cases, he has reproduced a genuinely early view. As we
shall see, it is quite likely that the Pythagoreans should have followed
Anaximander in this.[115] In any case, it is wrong to identify the
“eternal motion” with the diurnal revolution of the heavens, as has
sometimes been done. That motion cannot possibly be eternal, for the
simple reason that the heavens themselves are perishable. Aristotle
says, indeed, that all who believe the world has come into being
represent the earth as having been forced into the centre by the
circular motion;[116] but, though this doubtless refers to Anaximander
among others, it is quite irrelevant here. It has to do only with the
formation of the world after it has been once for all separated off and
enclosed in its own heaven, and we shall have to remember it when we
come to that part of the theory. At present, we have only to do with the
motion of the Boundless itself; and, if we wish to picture that, it is
much safer to regard it as a sort of shaking up and down which sorts out
the opposites from the infinite mass.
Footnote 115:
Plato, _Tim._ 52 e, where the elements are separated by being shaken,
stirred, and carried in different directions: “just as by sieves and
instruments for winnowing corn, the grain is shaken and sifted, and
the dense and heavy parts go one way, and the rare and light are
carried to a different place and settle there.” For the relation of
Pythagoreanism to Anaximander, see below, § 53.
Footnote 116:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Β, 13. 295 a 9. The identification of the eternal
motion with the diurnal revolution is insisted on by Teichmüller and
Tannery, and is the real source of the very unnatural interpretation
which they give to the word ἄπειρον. It was obviously difficult to
credit Anaximander with a belief in an infinite body which revolves in
a circle. The whole theory rests upon a confusion between the finite
spherical κόσμος within the οὐρανός and the infinite περιέχον outside
it.
[Sidenote: The innumerable worlds.]
18. We are told more than once that Anaximander believed there were
“innumerable worlds in the Boundless,”[117] and it is now usual to
regard these with Zeller as an infinite series succeeding one another in
time. It may be allowed at once that his disproof of the idea that the
worlds are coexistent and eternal is decisive. To suppose that
Anaximander regarded this or any other world as eternal, is a flat
contradiction of everything we otherwise know, and of the Theophrastean
tradition that he taught the world was perishable. We have, then, to
decide between the view that, though all the worlds are perishable,
there may be an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time,
and the view that a new world never comes into existence till the old
one has passed away. Now, Zeller allows[118] that there is nothing in
the first of these views that is inconsistent with what we know of
Anaximander; but he thinks all the statements which have come down to us
point rather to the second. It seems to me that this is by no means the
case, and, as the matter is of fundamental importance, it will be
necessary to examine the evidence once more.
Footnote 117:
[Plut.] _Strom._ fr. 2 (R. P. 21 b). The words ἀνακυκλουμένων πάντων
αὐτῶν are most naturally to be interpreted as referring to an
ἀνακύκλησις or cycle of γένεσις and φθορά in each of a multitude of
coexistent worlds. It would be a very strange phrase to use of a
succession of single worlds.
Footnote 118:
Zeller, pp. 234 sqq.
In the first place, the doxographical tradition proves that Theophrastos
discussed the views of all the early philosophers as to whether there
was one world or an infinite number, and there can be no doubt that,
when he ascribed “innumerable worlds” to the Atomists, he meant
coexistent and not successive worlds. Now, if he had really classed two
such different views under one head, he would at least have been careful
to point out in what respect they differed, and there is no trace of any
such distinction in our tradition. On the contrary, Anaximander,
Anaximenes, Archelaos, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leukippos, Demokritos, and
Epicurus are all mentioned together as holding the doctrine of
“innumerable worlds” on all sides of this one,[119] and the only
distinction drawn between their views is that, while Epicurus made the
distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the worlds
were equidistant.[120] Zeller rejected this evidence, which he supposed
to be merely that of Stobaios, on the ground that we can have no
confidence in a writer who attributes “innumerable worlds” to
Anaximenes, Archelaos, and Xenophanes. With regard to the first two, I
hope to show that the statement is quite correct, and that it is not
even incorrect in the case of the last.[121] In any case, it can be
proved that the passage comes from Aetios,[122] and there is no reason
for doubting that, in the last resort, it is derived from Theophrastos,
though the name of Epicurus may have been added later. This is still
further confirmed by what Simplicius says in his commentary on the
_Physics_.[123]
Those who assumed innumerable worlds, _e.g._ Anaximander, Leukippos,
Demokritos, and, at a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into
being and passed away _ad infinitum_, some always coming into being
and others passing away.
Footnote 119:
Aet. ii. 1, 3 (_Dox._ p. 327). Zeller is wrong in understanding κατὰ
πᾶσαν περιαγωγήν here of the revolution of a cycle. It means simply
“in every direction we turn,” and so does the alternative reading κατὰ
πᾶσαν περίστασιν. The six περιστάσεις are πρόσω, ὀπίσω, ἄνω, κάτω,
δεξιά, ἀριστερά (Nicom. _Introd._ p. 85, 11, Hoche), and Polybios uses
περίστασις of surrounding space.
Footnote 120:
Aet. ii. 1, 8 (_Dox._ p. 329), τῶν ἀπείρους ἀποφηναμένων τοὺς κόσμους
Ἀναξίμανδρος τὸ ἴσον αὐτοὺς ἀπέχειν ἀλλήλων, Ἐπίκουρος ἄνισον εἶναι τὸ
μεταξὺ τῶν κόσμων διάστημα.
Footnote 121:
For Anaximenes, see § 30; Xenophanes, § 59; Archelaos, Chap. X.
Footnote 122:
This is shown by the fact that the list of names is given also by
Theodoret. See Appendix, § 10.
Footnote 123:
Simpl. _Phys._ p. 1121, 5 (R. P. 21 b). Zeller says (p. 234, n. 4)
that Simplicius elsewhere (_de Caelo_, p. 273 b 43) makes the same
statement more doubtfully. But the words ὡς δοκεῖ, on which he relies,
are hardly an expression of doubt, and refer, in any case, to the
derivation of the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” from that of the
ἄπειρον, not to the doctrine itself.
It is probable that this too comes from Theophrastos through Alexander.
Simplicius does not invent such things.
We come lastly to a very important statement which Cicero has copied
from Philodemos, the author of the Epicurean treatise on Religion found
at Herculaneum, or perhaps from the immediate source of that work.
“Anaximander’s opinion was,” he makes Velleius say, “that there were
gods who came into being, rising and passing away at long intervals, and
that these were the innumerable worlds”;[124] and this must clearly be
taken along with the statement of Aetios to the effect that, according
to Anaximander, the “innumerable heavens” were gods.[125] Now it is very
much more natural to understand the “long intervals” which Cicero
mentions as intervals of space than as intervals of time;[126] and, if
we take the passage in this way, we have a perfect agreement among all
our authorities.
Footnote 124:
Cicero, _de Nat. D._ i. 25 (R. P. 21).
Footnote 125:
Aet. i. 7, 12 (R. P. 21 a). The reading of Stob., ἀπείρους οὐρανούς,
is guaranteed by the ἀπείρους κόσμους of Cyril, and the ἀπείρους νοῦς
(_i.e._ οὐνους) of the pseudo-Galen. See _Dox._ p. 11.
It may be added that it is very unnatural to understand the statement
that the Boundless “encompasses all the worlds” of worlds succeeding one
another in time; for on this view there is at a given time only one
world to “encompass.” Moreover, the argument mentioned by Aristotle
that, if what is outside the heavens is infinite, body must be infinite,
and there must be innumerable worlds, can only be understood in this
sense, and is certainly intended to represent the reasoning of the
Milesians; for they were the only cosmologists who held there was a
boundless body outside the heavens.[127] Lastly, we happen to know that
Petron, one of the earliest Pythagoreans, held there were just one
hundred and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle,[128] which shows
that views of this sort existed long before the Atomists, and looks like
an attempt to introduce some order into Anaximander’s universe.
Footnote 126:
It is simplest to suppose that Cicero found διαστήμασιν in his
Epicurean source, and that is a technical term for the _intermundia_.
Footnote 127:
Arist. _Phys._ Γ, 4. 203 b 25, ἀπείρου δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω (sc. τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ), καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι (sc. ἄπειροι). It is
to be observed that the next words—τί γὰρ μᾶλλον τοῦ κενοῦ ἐνταῦθα ἢ
ἐνταῦθα;—show clearly that this refers to the Atomists as well; but
the ἄπειρον σῶμα will not apply to them. The suggestion is rather that
both those who made the Boundless a body and those who made it a κενόν
held the doctrine of ἀπειροι κόσμοι in the same sense.
Footnote 128:
See below, § 53. Cf. Diels, _Elementum_, pp. 63 sqq.
[Sidenote: Origin of the heavenly bodies.]
19. The doxographers have not left us in the dark as to the process by
which the different parts of the world arose from the Boundless. The
following statement comes ultimately from Theophrastos:—
He says that something capable of begetting hot and cold was separated
off from the eternal at the origin of this world. From this arose a
sphere of flame which grew round the air encircling the earth, as the
bark grows round a tree. When this was torn off and enclosed in
certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence.—Ps.-Plut.
_Strom._ fr. 2 (R. P. 19).
We see from this that when a portion of the Boundless had been separated
off from the rest to form a world, it first of all differentiated itself
into the two opposites, hot and cold. The hot appears as a sphere of
flame surrounding the cold; the cold, as earth with air surrounding it.
We are not told, however, in this extract how the cold came to be
differentiated into earth, air, and water; but there is a passage in
Aristotle’s _Meteorology_ which throws some light on the subject. We
read there:—
But those who are wiser in the wisdom of men give an origin for the
sea. At first, they say, all the terrestrial region was moist; and, as
it was dried up by the sun, the portion of it that evaporated produced
the winds and the turnings of the sun and moon, while the portion left
behind was the sea. So they think the sea is becoming smaller by being
dried up, and that at last it will all be dry.—_Meteor._ Β, 1. 353 b
5.
* * * * *
And the same absurdity arises for those who say that the earth and the
terrestrial part of the world at first were moist, but that air arose
from the heat of the sun, and that the whole world was thus increased,
and that this is the cause of winds and the turnings of the
heavens.[129]—_Ib._ 2. 355 a 21 (R. P. 20 a).
In his commentary on the passage, Alexander tells us that this was the
view of Anaximander and Diogenes; and what he says is amply confirmed by
Anaximander’s theory of the sea as it is given by the doxographers (§
20). We conclude, then, that after the first separation of the hot and
the cold, the heat of the sphere of flame turned part of the moist, cold
interior of the world into air or vapour—it is all one at this date—and
that the expansion of this mist broke up the sphere of flame itself into
rings. I give the theory which he adopted to explain the origin of the
heavenly bodies from these rings as it has been preserved by Hippolytos,
with some supplements from Aetios:—
The heavenly bodies are wheels of fire separated off from the fire
which encircles the world, and enclosed in air. And they have
breathing-holes, certain pipe-like passages at which the heavenly
bodies are seen. For this reason, too, when the breathing-holes are
stopped, eclipses occur. And the moon appears now to wax and now to
wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The circle
of the sun is twenty-seven times the size (of the earth, while that)
of the moon is eighteen times as large.[130] The sun is highest of
all, and lowest are the wheels of the fixed stars.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6
(R. P. 20).
Anaximander said the stars were hoop-like compressions of air, full of
fire, breathing out flames at a certain point from orifices. The sun
was highest of all, after it came the moon, and below these the fixed
stars and the planets.—Aetios, ii. 13, 7; 15, 6 (R. P. 19 a).
Anaximander said the sun was a ring twenty-eight times the size of the
earth, like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow and full of fire,
showing the fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a
pair of bellows.—Aet. ii. 20, 1 (R. P. 19 a).
Anaximander said the sun was equal to the earth, but the ring from
which it breathes out and by which it is carried round was
twenty-seven times as large as the earth.—Aet. ii. 21, 1 (_Dox._ p.
351).
Anaximander said the moon was a ring eighteen times the size of the
earth....—Aet. ii. 25, 1 (_Dox._ p. 355).[131]
Anaximander held that thunder and lightning were caused by the blast.
When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with violence,
then the breakage of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift gives the
appearance of a flash by contrast with the darkness of the cloud.—Aet.
iii. 3, 1 (_Dox._ p. 367).
Anaximander held that wind was a current of air (_i.e._ vapour) which
arose when its finest and moistest particles were set in motion or
dissolved by the sun.—Aet. iii. 6, 1 (_Dox._ p. 374).
Rain was produced by the moisture drawn up from the earth by the
sun.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6, 7 (_Dox._ p. 560).
Footnote 129:
Zeller’s difficulty about the meaning of τροπαί here (p. 223, n. 2)
seems to be an imaginary one. The moon has certainly a movement in
declination and, therefore, τροπαί (Dreyer, _Planetary Systems_, p.
17, n. 1).
Footnote 130:
I assume with Diels (_Dox._ p. 560) that something has fallen out in
our text of Hippolytos. I have, however, with Tannery, _Science
hellène_, p. 91, supplied “eighteen times” rather than “nineteen
times.” Zeller (p. 224, n. 2) prefers the text of our MS. of
Hippolytos to the testimony of Aetios.
Footnote 131:
Aetios goes on to say that the moon also is like a hollow cart-wheel
full of fire with an ἐκπνοή. The difference in the figures of
Hippolytos and Aetios is due to the fact that one refers to the
internal and the other to the external circumferences of the rings.
Cf. Tannery, _Science hellène_, p. 91; and Diels, “Ueber Anaximanders
Kosmos” (_Arch._ x. pp. 231 sqq.).
We saw above that the sphere of flame was broken up into rings by the
expansion of the air or vapour that its own heat had drawn up from the
moist, cold interior. We must remember that Anaximander knew nothing of
the ring of Saturn. There are three of these rings, that of the sun,
that of the moon, and, lastly, nearest to the earth, the circle of the
stars. The circle of the sun was twenty-seven times, and that of the
moon eighteen times as large as the earth, from which we may perhaps
infer that the circle of the stars was nine times as large. The numbers
nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, play a considerable part in primitive
cosmogonies.[132] We do not see the rings of fire as complete circles;
for the mist that formed them encloses the fire, and becomes an outer
ring of opaque vapour. These outer rings, however, have openings at one
point of their circumference, through which the fire escapes, and these
are the heavenly bodies we actually see.[133]
Footnote 132:
As Diels points out (_Arch._ x. p. 229) the explanation given by
Gomperz, p. 53, cannot be right. It implies the fifth century theory
of μύδροι. Anaximander knew nothing of the “great mass” of the sun.
Footnote 133:
The true meaning of this doctrine was first explained by Diels (_Dox._
pp. 25 sqq.). The flames rush forth _per magni circum spiracula
mundi_, as Lucretius has it (vi. 493). The πρηστῆρος αὐλός, to which
these are compared, is simply the nozzle of a pair of bellows, a sense
which the word πρηστήρ has in Apollonios Rhodios (iv. 776), and has
nothing to do with the meteorological phenomenon of the same name, for
which see Chap. III. § 71. It is not now necessary to refute the
earlier interpretations.
It will be observed that we only hear of three circles, and that the
circle of the sun is the highest. The circle of the stars presents some
difficulty. It is, in all probability, the Milky Way, the appearance of
which may well have suggested the whole theory.[134] It seems that
Anaximander must have thought it had more “breathing-holes” than one,
though the tradition is silent on this point. There is not the slightest
reason for supposing that he regarded it as a sphere. He could not have
failed to see that a sphere so placed would make the sun and moon
permanently invisible. What, then, are we to say of the fixed stars that
do not lie in the Milky Way? There seems to be no way of accounting for
them unless we assume that they are the “innumerable worlds” which we
have just discussed. As the fire and air which surrounded the world have
been broken up into rings, we must be able to see right out into the
Boundless, and the fixed stars must be just the worlds, each surrounded
by its fiery envelope. It does not seem possible to explain all we are
told in any other way; and, if this is right, the statement of some
authors, that Anaximander regarded the stars of heaven as gods, may be
more than the mere mistake which it is now generally taken to be.[135]
Footnote 134:
It cannot be the Zodiac; for the planets were not separately studied
yet.
Footnote 135:
The _Placita_ and Eusebios both have τοὺς ἀστέρας οὐρανίους instead of
τοὺς ἀπείρους οὐρανούς (see above, p. 65, n. 2), and it seems just
possible that this is not a mere corruption of the text. The common
source may have had both statements. I do not, however, rest the
interpretation given above on this very insecure basis. Quite apart
from it, it seems to be the only way out of the difficulty.
The explanation given of thunder and lightning was very similar. They
too were caused by fire breaking through compressed air, that is to say,
through the storm-clouds. It seems probable that this is really the
origin of the theory, and that Anaximander explained the heavenly bodies
on the analogy of lightning, not _vice versa_. That would be in perfect
agreement with the meteorological interest of the time.
[Sidenote: Earth and sea.]
20. We turn now to what we are told of the origin of earth and sea from
the moist, cold matter which was “separated off” in the beginning, and
which filled the inside of the sphere of flame:—
The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried
up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it.—Aet. iii. 16,
1 (R. P. 20 a).
He says that the earth is cylindrical in form, and that its depth is
as a third part of its. breadth.—Ps.-Plut. _Strom._ fr. 2 (R. P.
_ib._).
The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it
is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is convex
and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the surfaces, and
the other is on the opposite side.[136]—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6 (R. P. 20).
Footnote 136:
The MSS. of Hippolytos have ὑγρὸν στρογγύλον. Roeper read γυρὸν
[στρογγύλον], supposing the second word to be a gloss on the first;
but Diels has shown (_Dox._ p. 218) that both are wanted. The first
means “convex,” and applies to the _surface_ of the earth; while the
second means “round,” and refers to its circuit. As to κίονι λίθῳ, it
is not easy to say anything positive. It might, possibly, be a mere
corruption of κυλίνδρῳ (cf. Plut. _Strom._ fr. 2; R. P. 20 a); but, if
so, it is a very old one. Aetios (iii. 10, 2), who is quite
independent of Hippolytos, has λίθῳ κίονι; Roeper suggested κιονέῃ
λίθῳ; Teichmüller, κίονος λιθῷ; while Diels doubtfully puts forward
λιθῷ κίονι, which he suggests might be a Theophrastean modernisation
of an original λιθέῃ κίονι (_Dox._ p. 219).
Adopting for a moment the later theory of “elements,” we see that
Anaximander put fire on one side as “the hot,” and all the rest on the
other as “the cold,” which is also moist. This may explain how Aristotle
came to speak of the Boundless as intermediate between fire and water.
And we have seen also that the moist element was partly turned into
“air” or vapour by the fire, which explains how he could say the
Boundless was something between fire and air, or between air and
water.[137]
Footnote 137:
See above, p. 58, _n._ 48.
The moist, cold interior of the world is not, it will be noticed, pure
water. It is always called “the moist” or “the moist state.” That is
because it has to be still further differentiated under the influence of
heat into earth, water, and vapour. The gradual drying up of the water
by the fire is a good example of what Anaximander meant by “injustice.”
And we see how this injustice brings about the destruction of the world.
The fire will in time dry up and burn up the whole of the cold, moist
element. But then it will not be fire any longer; it will simply be the
“mixture,” if we choose to call it so, of the hot and cold—that is, it
will be the same as the Boundless which surrounds it, and will pass away
into it.
The view which Anaximander takes of the earth is a great advance upon
anything we can reasonably attribute to Thales, and Aristotle has
preserved the arguments by which he supported it. It is equally distant
from the extremes in every direction, and there is no reason for it to
move up or down or sideways.[138] Still, he does not attain to the idea
that it is spherical. He believes that we live on a convex disc, and
from this the cylindrical form follows as a matter of course. The really
remarkable thing is that he should have seen, however dimly, that there
is no absolute up and down in the world.
Footnote 138:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Β, 13. 295 b 10, εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἳ διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητά
φασιν αὐτὴν (τὴν γῆν) μένειν, ὥσπερ τῶν ἀρχαίων Ἀναξίμανδρος· μᾶλλον
μὲν γὰρ οὐθὲν ἄνω ἢ κάτω ἢ εἰς τὰ πλάγια φέρεσθαι προσήκειν τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ
μέσου ἱδρυμένον καὶ ὁμοίως πρὸς τὰ ἔσχατα ἔχον. That Aristotle is
really reproducing Anaximander seems to be shown by the use of
ὁμοιότης in the old sense of “equality.”
[Sidenote: Animals.]
21. We have seen enough to show us that the speculations of Anaximander
about the world were of an extremely daring character; we come now to
the crowning audacity of all, his theory of the origin of living
creatures. The Theophrastean account of this has been well preserved by
the doxographers:—
Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by
the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the
beginning.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 6 (R. P. 22 a).
The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in a
prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier
part. When the bark broke off,[139] they survived for a short
time.—Aet. v. 19, 1 (R. P. 22).
Further, he says that originally man was born from animals of another
species. His reason is that while other animals quickly find food by
themselves, man alone requires a lengthy period of suckling. Hence,
had he been originally as he is now, he would never have
survived.—Ps.-Plut. _Strom._ fr. 2 (R. P. _ib._).
He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes,
and after having been reared like sharks,[140] and become capable of
protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to
land.—Plut. _Symp. Quaest._ 730 f (R. P. _ib._).
Footnote 139:
This is to be understood in the light of what we are told about γαλεοί
below. Cf. Arist. _Hist. An._ Ζ, 10. 565 a 25, τοῖς μὲν οὖν σκυλίοις,
οὓς καλοῦσί τινες νεβρίας γαλεούς, ὅταν περιρραγῇ καὶ ἐκπέσῃ τὸ
ὄστρακον, γίνονται οἱ νεοττοί.
Footnote 140:
Reading ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί for ὥσπερ οἱ παλαιοί with Doehner, who
compares Plut. _de soll. anim._ 982 a, where the φιλόστοργον of the
shark is described. See p. 74, _n._ 141.
The importance of these statements has sometimes been overrated and
still more often underestimated. Anaximander has been called a precursor
of Darwin by some, while others have treated the whole thing as a
mythological survival. It is therefore important to notice that this is
one of the rare cases where we have not merely a _placitum_, but an
indication, meagre though it be, of the observations on which it was
based, and the line of argument by which it was supported. It is clear
from this that Anaximander had an idea of what is meant by adaptation to
environment and survival of the fittest, and that he saw the higher
mammals could not represent the original type of animal. For this he
looked to the sea, and he naturally fixed upon those fishes which
present the closest analogy to the _mammalia_. The statements of
Aristotle about the _galeus levis_ were shown long ago by Johannes
Müller to be more accurate than those of later naturalists, and we now
know that these observations were already made by Anaximander. The
manner in which the shark nourishes its young furnished him with the
very thing he required to explain the survival of the earliest
animals.[141]
Footnote 141:
On Aristotle and the _galeus levis_, see Johannes Müller, “Ueber den
glatten Hai des Aristoteles” (_K. Preuss. Akad._, 1842), to which my
attention has been directed by my colleague, Prof. D’Arcy Thomson. The
precise point of the words τρεφόμενοι ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί appears from
Arist. _Hist. An._ Ζ, 10. 565 b 1, οἱ δὲ καλούμενοι λεῖοι τῶν γαλεῶν
τὰ μὲν ᾠὰ ἴσχουσι μεταξὺ τῶν ὑστερῶν ὁμοίως τοῖς σκυλίοις, περιστάντα
δὲ ταῦτα εἰς ἑκατέραν τὴν δικρόαν τῆς ὑστέρας καταβαίνει, καὶ τὰ ζῷα
γίνεται τὸν ὀμφαλὸν ἔχοντα πρὸς τῇ ὑστέρᾳ, ὥστε ἀναλισκομένων τῶν ᾠῶν
ὁμοίως δοκεῖν ἔχειν τὸ ἔμβρυον τοῖς τετράποσιν. It is not necessary to
suppose that Anaximander referred to the further phenomenon described
by Aristotle, who more than once says that all the γαλεοί except the
ἀκανθίας “send out their young and take them back again” (ἐξαφιᾶσι καὶ
δέχονται εἰς ἑαυτοὺς τοὺς νεοττούς, _ib._ 565 b 23), for which compare
also Ael. i. 17; Plut. _de soll. anim._ 982 a. The _placenta_ and
umbilical cord described by Johannes Müller will account sufficiently
for all he says. At the same time, I understand that deep-sea
fishermen at the present day confirm this remarkable statement also,
and two credible witnesses have informed me that they believe they
have seen the thing happen with their own eyes.
[Sidenote: Theology.]
22. In the course of our discussion of the “innumerable worlds” we saw
that Anaximander regarded these as gods. It is true, of course, as
Zeller says,[142] that to the Greeks the word θεός meant primarily an
object of worship, and he rightly adds that no one would think of
worshipping innumerable worlds. This, however, is no real objection to
our interpretation, though it serves to bring out an interesting point
in the development of Greek theological ideas. The philosophers, in
fact, departed altogether from the received usage of the word θεός.
Empedokles called the Sphere and the Elements gods, though it is not to
be supposed that he regarded them as objects of worship, and in the same
way we shall find that Diogenes of Apollonia spoke of Air as a god.[143]
As we may learn from the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, it was just this way
of speaking that got philosophers the name of being ἄθεοι. It is of
great importance to bear this point in mind; for, when we come to
Xenophanes, we shall see that the god or gods he spoke of meant just the
world or worlds. It seems also that Anaximander called the Boundless
itself divine,[144] which is quite in accordance with the language of
Empedokles and Diogenes referred to above.
Footnote 142:
Zeller, p. 230.
Footnote 143:
For Empedokles, see Chap. V. § 119; and for Diogenes, Chap. X. § 188,
fr. 5. The cosmologists followed the theogonists and cosmogonists in
this. No one worshipped Okeanos and Tethys, or even Ouranos.
Footnote 144:
Arist. _Phys._ Γ, 4. 203 b 13 (R. P. 17).
III. ANAXIMENES
[Sidenote: Life.]
23. Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, was, according to
Theophrastos, an “associate” of Anaximander.[145] Apollodoros said, it
appears, that he “flourished” about the time of the fall of Sardeis
(546/5 B.C.), and died in Ol. LXIII. (528/524 B.C.).[146] In other
words, he was born when Thales “flourished,” and “flourished” when
Thales died, and this means that Apollodoros had no definite information
about his date at all. He most probably made him die in the sixty-third
Olympiad because that gives just a hundred years, or three generations,
for the Milesian school from the birth of Thales. We cannot, therefore,
say anything positive as to his date, except that he must have been
younger than Anaximander, and must have flourished before 494 B.C., when
the school was, of course, broken up by the destruction of Miletos.
Footnote 145:
Theophr. _Phys. Op._ fr. 2 (R. P. 26).
Footnote 146:
This follows from a comparison of Diog. ii. 3. with Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7
(R. P. 23). In the latter passage we must, however, read τρίτον for
πρῶτον with Diels. The suggestion in R. P. 23 e that Apollodoros
mentioned the Olympiad without giving the number of the year is
inadequate; for Apollodoros did not reckon by Olympiads, but Athenian
archons. Jacoby (p. 194) brings the date of his death into connexion
with the _floruit_ of Pythagoras, which seems to me less probable.
Lortzing (_Jahresber._, 1898, p. 202) objects to my view on the ground
that the period of a hundred years plays no part in Apollodoros’s
calculations. It will be seen, however, from Jacoby, pp. 39 sqq., that
there is some reason for believing he made use of the generation of
33⅓ years.
[Sidenote: His book.]
24. Anaximenes wrote a book which certainly survived until the age of
literary criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and
unpretentious Ionic,[147] very different, we may suppose, from the
poetical prose of Anaximander.[148] We may probably trust this
criticism, which comes ultimately from Theophrastos; and it furnishes a
good illustration of the truth that the character of a man’s thoughts is
sure to find expression in his style. We have seen that the speculations
of Anaximander were distinguished for their hardihood and breadth; those
of Anaximenes are marked by just the opposite quality. He appears to
have thought out his system carefully, but he rejects the more audacious
theories of his predecessor. The result is that, while his view of the
world is on the whole much less like the truth than Anaximander’s, it is
more fruitful in ideas that were destined to hold their ground.
Footnote 147:
Diog. ii. 3 (R. P. 23).
Footnote 148:
Cf. the statement of Theophrastos above, § 13.
[Sidenote: Theory of the primary substance.]
25. Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastos wrote a
special monograph;[149] and this gives us an additional guarantee for
the trustworthiness of the tradition derived from his great work. The
following[150] are the passages which seem to contain the fullest and
most accurate account of what he had to say on the central feature of
the system:—
Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, who had been an associate
of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying substance was one
and infinite. He did not, however, say it was indeterminate, like
Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it was Air.—_Phys. Op._ fr.
2 (R. P. 26).
From it, he said, the things that are, and have been, and shall be,
the gods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come
from its offspring.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7 (R. P. 28).
“Just as,” he said, “our soul, being air, holds us together, so do
breath and air encompass the whole world.”—Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).
And the form of the air is as follows. Where it is most even, it is
invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture and motion, make
it visible. It is always in motion; for, if it were not, it would not
change so much as it does.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7 (R. P. 28).
It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and
condensation.—_Phys. Op._ fr. 2 (R. P. 26).
When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds, on
the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by
felting;[151] and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water,
condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it
can be, to stones.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7 (R. P. 28).[152]
Footnote 149:
On these monographs see _Dox._ p. 103.
Footnote 150:
See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given in _Dox._ p.
135.
Footnote 151:
“Felting” (πίλησις) is the regular term for this process with all the
early cosmologists, from whom Plato has taken it (_Tim._ 58 b 4; 76 c
3).
Footnote 152:
A more condensed form of the same doxographical tradition is given by
Ps.-Plut. _Strom._ fr. 3 (R. P. 25).
[Sidenote: Rarefaction and condensation.]
26. At the first glance, this undoubtedly looks like a falling off from
the more refined doctrine of Anaximander to a cruder view; but a
moment’s reflexion will show that this is not altogether the case. On
the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into the
theory is a notable advance.[153] In fact, it makes the Milesian
cosmology thoroughly consistent for the first time; since it is clear
that a theory which explains everything by the transformations of a
single substance is bound to regard all differences as purely
quantitative. The infinite substance of Anaximander, from which the
opposites “in it” are “separated out,” cannot, strictly speaking, be
thought of as homogeneous, and the only way to save the unity of the
primary substance is to say that all diversities are due to the presence
of more or less of it in a given space. And when once this important
step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to make the primary
substance something “distinct from the elements,” to use Aristotle’s
inaccurate but convenient phrase; it may just as well be one of them.
Footnote 153:
Simplicius, _Phys._ p. 149, 32 (R. P. 26 b), says, according to the
MSS., that Theophrastos spoke of rarefaction and condensation in the
case of Anaximenes _alone_. We must either suppose with Zeller (p.
193, n. 2) that this means “alone among the oldest Ionians” or read
πρῶτου for μόνου with Usener. The regular terms are πύκνωσις and
ἀραίωσις or μάνωσις. Plutarch, _de prim. frig._ 947 f (R. P. 27), says
that Anaximenes used the term τὸ χαλαρόν for the rarefied air.
[Sidenote: Air.]
27. The air that Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we
should not call by that name. In its normal condition, when most evenly
distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our “air”; it
is identical with the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is
why he called it πνεῦμα. On the other hand, the old idea, familiar to us
in Homer, that mist or vapour is condensed air, is still accepted
without question. In other words, we may say that Anaximenes supposed it
to be a good deal easier to get liquid air than it has since proved to
be. It was Empedokles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we
call air was a distinct corporeal substance, and was not identical
either with vapour or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists
“air” is always a form of vapour, and even darkness is a form of it. It
was Empedokles who cleared up this point too by showing that darkness is
a shadow.[154]
Footnote 154:
For the meaning of ἀήρ in Homer, see Schmidt, _Synonomik_, § 35; and
for its survival in Ionic prose, Hippokrates, Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων,
τόπων, 15, ἀήρ τε πολὺς κατέχει τὴν χώρην ἀπὸ τῶν ὑδάτων. Plato is
still conscious of the old meaning of the word; for he makes Timaios
say ἀέρος (γένη) τὸ μὲν εὐαγέστατον ἐπίκλην αἰθὴρ καλούμενος, ὁ δὲ
θολερώτατος ὁμίχλη καὶ σκότος (_Tim._ 58 d). The view given in the
text has been criticised by Tannery, “Une nouvelle hypothèse sur
Anaximandre” (_Arch._ viii. pp. 443 sqq.), and I have slightly altered
my expression of it to meet these criticisms. The point is of
fundamental importance, as we shall see, for the interpretation of
Pythagoreanism.
It was natural for Anaximenes to fix upon Air in this sense as the
primary substance; for, in the system of Anaximander, it occupied an
intermediate place between the two fundamental opposites, the sphere of
flame and the cold, moist mass within it (§ 19). We know from Plutarch
that he fancied air became warmer when rarefied, and colder when
condensed. Of this he satisfied himself by a curious experimental proof.
When we breathe with our mouths open, the air is warm; when we breathe
with our lips closed, it is cold.[155]
Footnote 155:
Plut. _de prim. frig._ 947 f (R. P. 27).
[Sidenote: The world breathes.]
28. This argument from human breathing brings us to an important point
in the theory of Anaximenes, which is attested by the single fragment
that has come down to us.[156] “Just as our soul, being air, holds us
together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” The primary
substance bears the same relation to the life of the world as to that of
man. Now this, we shall see, was the Pythagorean view;[157] and it is
also an early instance of the argument from the microcosm to the
macrocosm, and so marks the first beginnings of an interest in
physiological matters.
Footnote 156:
Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).
Footnote 157:
See Chap. II. § 53.
[Sidenote: The parts of the world.]
29. We turn now to the doxographical tradition concerning the formation
of the world and its parts:—
He says that, as the air was felted, the earth first came into being.
It is very broad and is accordingly supported by the air.—Ps.-Plut.
_Strom._ fr. 3 (R. P. 25).
In the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies,
which are of a fiery nature, are supported by the air because of their
breadth. The heavenly bodies were produced from the earth by moisture
rising from it. When this is rarefied, fire comes into being, and the
stars are composed of the fire thus raised aloft. There were also
bodies of earthy substance in the region of the stars, revolving along
with them. And he says that the heavenly bodies do not move under the
earth, as others suppose, but round it, as a cap turns round our head.
The sun is hidden from sight, not because it goes under the earth, but
because it is concealed by the higher parts of the earth, and because
its distance from us becomes greater. The stars give no heat because
of the greatness of their distance.—Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7, 4-6 (R. P. 28).
Winds are produced when air is condensed and rushes along under
propulsion; but when it is concentrated and thickened still more,
clouds are generated; and, lastly, it turns to water.[158]—Hipp.
_Ref._ i. 7, 7 (Dox. p. 561).
The stars are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the
heavens.—Aet. ii. 14, 3 (_Dox._ p. 344).
They do not go under the earth, but turn round it.—_Ib._ 16, 6 (_Dox._
p. 346).
The sun is fiery.—_Ib._ 20, 2 (_Dox._ p. 348).
It is broad like a leaf.—_Ib._ 22, 1 (_Dox._ p. 352).
The heavenly bodies are diverted from their courses by the resistance
of compressed air.—_Ib._ 23, 1 (_Dox._ p. 352).
The moon is of fire.—_Ib._ 25, 2 (_Dox._ p. 356).
Anaximenes explained lightning like Anaximander, adding as an
illustration what happens in the case of the sea, which flashes when
divided by the oars.—_Ib._ iii. 3, 2 (_Dox._ p. 368).
Hail is produced when water freezes in falling; snow, when there is
some air imprisoned in the water.—Aet. iii 4, 1 (_Dox._ p. 370).
The rainbow is produced when the beams of the sun fall on thick
condensed air. Hence the anterior part of it seems red, being burnt by
the sun’s rays, while the other part is dark, owing to the
predominance of moisture. And he says that a rainbow is produced at
night by the moon, but not often, because there is not constantly a
full moon, and because the moon’s light is weaker than that of the
sun.—_Schol. Arat._[159] (_Dox._ p. 231).
The earth was like a table in shape.—Aet. iii. 10, 3 (_Dox._ p. 377).
The cause of earthquakes was the dryness and moisture of the earth,
occasioned by droughts and heavy rains respectively.—_Ib._ 15, 3
(_Dox._ p. 379).
Footnote 158:
The text is very corrupt here. I retain ἐκπεπυκνωμένος, because we are
told above that winds are condensed air, and I adopt Zeller’s ἀραιῷ
εἰσφέρηται (p. 246, _n._ 554).
We have seen that Anaximenes was quite justified in going back to Thales
in regard to his general theory of the primary substance; but it cannot
be denied that the effect of this upon the details of his cosmology was
unfortunate. The earth is once more imagined as a table-like disc
floating upon the air. The sun, moon, and planets are also fiery discs
which float on the air “like leaves.” It follows that the heavenly
bodies cannot be thought of as going under the earth at night, but only
as going round it laterally like a cap or a millstone.[160] This curious
view is also mentioned in Aristotle’s _Meteorology_,[161] where the
elevation of the northern parts of the earth, which makes it possible
for the heavenly bodies to be hidden from sight, is referred to. In
fact, whereas Anaximander had regarded the orbits of the sun, moon, and
stars as oblique with reference to the earth, Anaximenes regarded the
earth itself as inclined. The only real advance is the distinction of
the planets, which float freely in the air, from the fixed stars, which
are fastened to the “crystalline” vault of the sky.[162]
Footnote 159:
The source of this is Poseidonios, who used Theophrastos. _Dox._ p.
231.
Footnote 160:
Theodoret (iv. 16) speaks of those who believe in a revolution like
that of a millstone, as contrasted with one like that of a wheel.
Diels (_Dox._ p. 46) refers these similes to Anaximenes and
Anaximander respectively. They come, of course, from Aetios (Appendix,
§ 10), though they are given neither by Stobaios nor in the _Placita_.
Footnote 161:
Β, 1. 354 a 28 (R. P. 28 c).
Footnote 162:
We do not know how Anaximenes imagined the “crystalline” sky. It is
probable that he used the word πάγος as Empedokles did. Cf. Chap. V. §
112.
The earthy bodies, which circulate among the planets, are doubtless
intended to account for eclipses and the phases of the moon.[163]
Footnote 163:
See Tannery, _Science hellène_, p. 153. For the precisely similar
bodies assumed by Anaxagoras, see below, Chap. VI. § 135. See further
Chap. VII. § 151.
[Sidenote: Innumerable worlds.]
30. As might be expected, there is the same difficulty about the
“innumerable worlds” ascribed to Anaximenes as about those of
Anaximander, and most of the arguments given above (§ 18) apply here
also. The evidence, however, is far less satisfactory. Cicero says that
Anaximenes regarded air as a god, and adds that it came into being.[164]
That there is some confusion here is obvious. Air, as the primary
substance, is certainly eternal, and it is quite likely that Anaximenes
called it “divine,” as Anaximander did the Boundless; but it is certain
that he also spoke of gods who came into being and passed away. These
arose, he said, from the air. This is expressly stated by
Hippolytos,[165] and also by St. Augustine.[166] These gods are probably
to be explained like Anaximander’s. Simplicius, indeed, takes another
view;[167] but he may have been misled by a Stoic authority.
Footnote 164:
Cic. _de nat. D._ i. 26 (R. P. 28 b). On what follows see Krische,
_Forschungen_, pp. 52 sqq.
Footnote 165:
Hipp. _Ref._ i. 7, 1 (R. P. 28).
Footnote 166:
Aug. _de civ. D._ viii. 2: “Anaximenes omnes rerum causas infinito
aëri dedit: nec deos negavit aut tacuit; non tamen ab ipsis aërem
factum, sed ipsos ex aëre ortos credidit” (R. P. 28 b).
Footnote 167:
Simpl. _Phys._ p. 1121, 12 (R. P. 28 a). The passage from the
_Placita_ is of higher authority than this from Simplicius. Note,
further, that it is only to Anaximenes, Herakleitos, and Diogenes that
successive worlds are ascribed even here. With regard to Anaximander,
Simplicius is quite clear. For the Stoic view of Herakleitos, see
Chap. III. § 78; and for Diogenes, Chap. X. § 188. That Simplicius is
following a Stoic authority is suggested by the words καὶ ὕστερον οἱ
ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Cf. also Simpl. _de Caelo_, p. 202, 13.
[Sidenote: Influence of Anaximenes.]
31. It is not quite easy for us to realise that, in the eyes of his
contemporaries, and for long after, Anaximenes was a much more important
figure than Anaximander. And yet the fact is certain. We shall see that
Pythagoras, though he followed Anaximander in his account of the
heavenly bodies, was far more indebted to Anaximenes for his general
theory of reality (§ 53). We shall see further that when, at a later
date, science revived once more in Ionia, it was “the philosophy of
Anaximenes” to which it attached itself (§ 122). Anaxagoras adopted many
of his most characteristic views (§ 135), and some of them even found
their way into the cosmology of the Atomists.[168] Diogenes of Apollonia
went back to the central doctrine of Anaximenes, and once more made Air
the primary substance, though he also tried to combine it with the
theories of Anaxagoras (§ 188). We shall come to all this later on; but
it seemed desirable to point out at once that Anaximenes marks the
culminating point of the line of thought which started with Thales, and
to show how the “philosophy of Anaximenes” came to mean the Milesian
doctrine as a whole. This it can only have done because it was really
the work of a school, of which Anaximenes was the last distinguished
representative, and because his contribution to it was one that
completed the system he had inherited from his predecessors. That the
theory of rarefaction and condensation was really such a completion of
the Milesian system, we have seen already (§ 26), and it need only be
added that a clear realisation of this fact will be the best clue at
once to the understanding of the Milesian cosmology itself and to that
of the systems which followed it. In the main, it is from Anaximenes
that they all start.
Footnote 168:
In particular, the authority of Anaximenes was so great that both
Leukippos and Demokritos adhered to his theory of a disc-like earth.
Cf. Aet. iii. 10, 3-5 (Περὶ σχήματος γῆς), Ἀναξιμένης τραπεζοειδῆ (τὴν
γῆν). Λεύκιππος τυμπανοειδῆ. Δημόκριτος δισκοειδῆ μὲν τῷ πλάτει,
κοίλην δὲ τῷ μέσῳ. This, in spite of the fact that the spherical form
of the earth was already a commonplace in circles affected by
Pythagoreanism.