THE COSMOLOGICAL PERIOD (625–480 B. C.):
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
When we enter upon the one hundred and fifty years of philosophical
beginnings of Greece, which are called the Cosmological Period, we find
ourselves confronted with an extremely interesting social situation,
which has been brought about partly by the political and geographical
environment of the Greek, partly by his inherited genius. On the one
hand, during this century and a half, the political troubles of the
Greeks became increasingly aggravated by the growth of Persia on the
east and of Carthage on the west. On the other hand, we find that the
Greek religion took a sudden turn to mysticism, and by its side a slow
but increasing interest in philosophical questions. All through this
period Greek politics and Greek religion were a constant peril to Greek
life. Greek philosophy proved to be its safety.
=The Peril in the Greek Political Situation: Persia and Carthage.= It
must be remembered that the Greek cities never united into a nation.
They were always fighting among themselves. We have already pointed
out the civil disturbances between the oligarchy and the democracy
throughout the land. These internal troubles continued to the end
of Greek history. In this period there was added to these internal
troubles a critical external situation which threatened the existence
of Greece itself. The sixth century was a momentous one for Greece. In
both the east and the west there arose mighty empires that threatened
to wipe out its civilization. “The expansion of the Persian power (on
the one hand) had suspended a stone of Tantalus over Hellas, and it
seemed likely that Greek civilization might be submerged in an Oriental
monarchy.”[6] Cyrus had laid the foundation of Persia by taking Media
in 550 B. C., Lydia in 546 B. C., Babylonia in 538 B. C.; Egypt was
added by Cambyses in 528 B. C.; and Darius organized the great Persian
possessions in his long reign from 528 to 486 B. C. On the west,
Carthage was threatening the Greek cities of Sicily, and at the
close of this period was acting in conjunction with Persia to obtain
possession of the Mediterranean.
=The Peril in the New Religion: The Mysteries and Pythagoras.= Already
in the seventh century B. C. the political society of Greece felt that
it was under the wrath of the gods because of some unatoned guilt.
“The earth is full of ills, of ills the sea,” sang the poet. Religious
depression became universal. Dissatisfied with the old polytheism,
especially as expressed in the theogony of Hesiod, the Greek in the
sixth century B. C. began to interpret it according to his present need.
Among the masses there appeared the craving for immortality and for
personal knowledge of the supernatural. The desire to solve the mystery
of life by a short road became universal. Men looked to rites to purify
them from the guilt of the world and for gaining personal contact
with the world of shades. This new religion became pan-Hellenic. It is
called the Mysteries or the Orgia. By Mysteries is not meant societies
founded on some occult intellectual belief, as the name might suggest.
The Mysteries were based on cult (ceremony), and not on dogma. The
special ceremonies were those of initiation and purification. They
were supposed to purify the participant and put him in a new frame of
mind. The soul would then be protected from the malicious spirits to
which it was constantly exposed. The ceremonies are reported to have
been attended sometimes by more than thirty thousand people. They
consisted of processions, songs, dances, and dramatic spectacles. The
most important of the Mysteries were the Orphic and the Eleusinian.
The Mysteries were the basis of the society of Pythagoreans.
Pythagoras of Samos was a remarkable man, who went to Italy and settled
at Crotona. His sect is of double importance to us because in later
times it developed a philosophy on its mathematical and astronomical
sides. Pythagoras and his immediate following must be distinguished
from the later Pythagoreans. Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans
were not philosophers, but a sect like the Orphic society of Mysteries,
yet the sect of Pythagoreans embraced much more in its scope. It tried
to control the public and private life of its members and to evolve
a common method of education.[7] Pythagoras was an exiled aristocrat,
and his sect was an aristocratic religious body in reaction against
the democratic excesses. The only doctrine upon which Pythagoras placed
any emphasis was that of immortality in the form of metempsychosis
(transmigration of the soul from one bodily form into another). The
sect was dispersed as a religious body about 450 B. C. The scattered
members formed a school of philosophy at Thebes until about 350 B. C.
Of these later philosophical Pythagoreans and their number theory, we
shall speak in the proper place.
At the time of the dispersion of the Pythagoreans there existed no
longer any peril from the new religion. The craze of the new religion
was passing away. During the sixth century B. C. it was a great peril
to the future intellectual life of Greece. Had it then gained a little
more power it would probably have been admitted by the priesthood to
the temples. In the exercise of such enormous sacerdotal power, the
priests would have enslaved the Greek mind to superstition, and the
priesthood in turn would have become an easy tool for tyrants. There
would then have been no Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle. The
Mysteries were a reaction toward asceticism as a religious salvation
from the political peril, but they were, however, equally as great
a peril to Greece. _The medium course along the line of a rational
philosophy, which the Greek genius actually took, proved its salvation._
=Characteristics of the Cosmologists.= There are certain
characteristics of this early philosophy that should be noted at the
beginning.
(1) All the Cosmologists were physical scientists, and with few
exceptions their scientific views were noteworthy. Aristotle calls
them physicists in distinction from their predecessors, whom he calls
theologians.
(2) They often worked together in schools. Tradition has been common
since Bacon that philosophy centres in individuals; but history
shows that frequently the Greeks worked in corporate bodies. These
philosophical scientists worked in schools; just as the Homeridæ
developed the epic; the Dædalidæ, a group of the earliest artists,
the secret of art; the Mysteries, religion. Philosophy now is in
the cloister, and the intellect of the time speaks from its retreat
from public life. While the Milesian school was undisturbed, owing to
the long peace that Miletus enjoyed, we shall find that most of the
philosophers of the Cosmological period were in retirement on account
of political persecution.
We must remember that by “school” is not necessarily meant a group of
pupils under the established instruction of a teacher. A school at this
early period is a group of learned men at work on the same problems.
Later on in history we shall find that one of the group more learned
than the others stands in the position of teacher: for example, Plato
in the Academy.
(3) All the Cosmologists were hylozoists. The etymological meaning of
hylozoism is its true one――matter is alive. This is the fundamental
characteristic of these pre-Socratics from Thales down to Anaxagoras,
although some authorities contend that those from the time of
Empedocles were not hylozoists. The meaning of hylozoism is simple
enough, but the conception is a difficult one for the modern mind;
for to-day we are accustomed to think of an impersonal nature
under mechanical laws. To the Greek of the Cosmological period
the substantial constitution of the universe is impersonal living
matter; to us it is impersonal dead matter. Both these views are to
be contrasted with the religious belief involved in Greek polytheism,
in which the cosmos is conceived to be living personal spirits; this
Homeric polytheism is again to be contrasted with the animism of
the tribal period, in that it had organized into an æsthetic unity
the early savage animism. These hylozoistic philosophers did not,
however, give up the Homeric gods, but they treated their existence in
a poetic way. They usually believed in their existence, but they always
subordinated them to the one living world-ground.
(4) In common with all ancient peoples these Greek philosophers did not
believe that the universe had unlimited space. On the contrary, they
believed that it was limited and in the shape of an egg.
=Table of Cosmologists.= The Cosmologists are divided into two classes:
(1) the earlier were monists――those who believe that the reality of
the universe is a simple, undifferentiated unity; (2) the later were
pluralists――those who believe that the reality of the universe consists
of several elements equally real. They are enumerated as follows:――
THE MONISTS
{ Thales }
1. The Milesian school { Anaximander } at Miletus.
{ Anaximenes }
2. Xenophanes at Colophon and Elea.
{ Parmenides }
3. The Eleatic school { Zeno } at Elea.
4. Heracleitus at Ephesus.
THE PLURALISTS
5. Empedocles at Agrigentum.
6. Anaxagoras at Clazomenæ.
7. The later Pythagoreans mainly at Thebes.
8. Leucippus at Abdera.
=How the Philosophical Question Arose.= The interests of these
philosophical scientists sharply differentiate them from the preceding
theogonists, like Hesiod and Epimenides, as well as from the masses who
were absorbed in the religion of the Mysteries. They were, moreover,
the men of Greece to whom the emotional excitement of a religious
revival would not appeal as a refuge from the troubles of the time.
Their own experience in the political troubles had made paramount the
question as to the permanence of things. Nevertheless, its answer must
be found in nature and in an intellectual way. When they turned to
the traditional theogonies they found no answer to their question, for
there was only a mythical chronicle of a succession of gods beginning
with the unknown. The question of the Cosmologists was not, therefore,
what _was_ the original form of this changing world, but what _is_
fundamental in the world _always_. The time factor is no longer
important. Not the _temporal prius_ but the _real prius_ is what they
seek. The idea of a temporal origin of things gives place to that of
eternal being, and the question finally emerges, _What is the real
substance that constitutes the universe?_
Illustration: MAP SHOWING WHERE THE COSMOLOGISTS LIVED
(None of the Cosmologists, except the later Pythagoreans,
lived in the motherland of Greece. Philosophical activity
during this period took place in the colonies. The map shows
the cities which were the centres of philosophy and the homes
of the philosophers as indicated.)
=The Greek Monistic Philosophies.= Turning back to our classification
on page 20, we see that the earliest Greek philosophers emphasized the
monistic tendency, which had become so prominent in Greek religion.
This group of monists was composed of the Milesians, Xenophanes, the
Eleatic School, and Heracleitus. The course of reasoning of these
early thinkers is naïvely simple, and like all naïve thought, it
contains such contradictions that the modern reader is likely to become
impatient with it. The value of the study of the philosophy of these
early Greeks is entirely historical. Its historical value, however, is
very great, for it is a revelation of the culture of the Greece of that
time, it throws light on many of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle,
and most of all it contains the germs of modern metaphysical problems.
These first Greek philosophers raised the question, What is the
constitution of the substance of the universe? Their answers are naïve
solutions to the historical metaphysical “riddle.”
The Milesians, who form the earliest philosophical school in European
history, seem to have assumed two facts as self-evident about the
substance of the universe: (1) There is a single cosmic substance
identical with itself, which is the basis of all the changes in
nature; (2) Moving matter is the same as life. The Milesians were
quite unconscious that these two assumptions were contradictory, but
the contradiction impressed their successors――Xenophanes, Heracleitus,
and the Eleatics; and divided them in their development of philosophy.
Matter which keeps identical with itself is the Unchanging[8] and is
brought into opposition with Life, the Changing, or matter which moves.
The question for Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and the Eleatics――and indeed
for all future philosophy――was: How can the changing processes of life
be explained by an unchanging substance?
Xenophanes, who was more of a religious reformer than a philosopher,
was so absorbed in the first of these assumptions that he developed
it for his purpose in his practical social reformation to the entire
neglect of the second assumption. The Eleatics, however, to whose city
Xenophanes had come, could not leave his doctrine in its one-sided
and undeveloped form. They accepted his teaching of the divine
Unchangingness of the universe, but this compelled these profounder
thinkers to offer some explanation of the natural processes of change.
Change to them cannot really exist. Heracleitus, on the other hand,
was impressed with the aspect of life that is expressed in the second
assumption of the Milesians――living matter is moving matter. He
therefore maintained in direct opposition to the Eleatics, that
the changing, living processes of nature alone are real. The two
contradictory assumptions that lay so mutually indifferent in the
Milesian doctrine thus became the basis of a sharp metaphysical
controversy between Heracleitus and the Eleatics. The substance of
the world is permanent, change is an illusion, said the Eleatics.
The substance of the world changes, permanence is an illusion, said
Heracleitus. Either all things are permanent or all things change.
These early philosophers had no wealth of empirical knowledge nor of
psychological reflection upon which to draw, and it is not strange
that they should take extreme positions and be blind to their practical
consequences.
=1. The Milesian School.= Of all the Greek cities in the sixth century
B. C. Miletus was the wealthiest and most prosperous. It was one of
the Ionian colonies and was situated on the coast of Asia Minor, and
it alone was able to preserve its autonomy as neighbor of the warring
eastern empires. Not until the battle of Lade was it captured and
destroyed (494 B. C.). From two generations of philosophers history has
preserved three names,――Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The school
is called indifferently the Milesian or the Ionic school. The proximity
of Miletus to Ephesus, Colophon, and Clazomenæ (as a glance at the
map will show) explains the influence of the Milesian school upon the
doctrines of Heracleitus, Xenophanes, and Anaxagoras. Undoubtedly the
contact of the Milesians with the Orient and Egypt had brought to them
knowledge and correct scientific observations of many sorts, especially
astronomical.
Thales (b. 640 B. C.) was a member of one of the leading families of
Miletus, and lived during the flourishing period of the city under the
tyranny of Thrasybulus. He is counted among the seven Wise Men, and
belonged to the rich commercial class. He probably engaged in commerce
and traveled in Egypt. He was versed in the current learning, predicted
an eclipse, and was acute in mathematics and physics. Probably he never
committed anything to writing. Aristotle’s comments are the only data
about him.
Anaximander (611–545 B. C.?) was an astronomer and geographer; he made
an astronomical globe, a sundial, and a geographical map. He was an
intimate disciple of Thales and wrote _Concerning Nature_, which is
referred to as the first Greek philosophical treatise. Nothing is known
of his life.
Anaximenes (560–500 B. C.?) was the disciple of Anaximander. One
sentence is preserved of his writings.[9]
=The Milesian Philosophy.= The Milesians lived upon the seacoast, and
the changes of the sea and air must have deeply impressed them. They
had an intellectual curiosity to find the cosmic matter which remained
identical with itself and at the same time moved. (See p. 22.) They
were not, therefore, interested to discover the chemical composition
of matter, but to find what matter was most moving and therefore most
alive. Thales said that it was water; Anaximenes, air; and Anaximander,
the Apeiron, or the Unlimited. Their respective choices were determined
by what seemed to possess the most mobility and the greatest inner
vitality. Thales thought water possessed this quality. Water is
always moving. Thales saw it moving. It therefore has life in itself.
Anaximander felt that no object in our perceptual experience would
fully explain the ceaseless mobility of nature, and he called it
the Unlimited or the Indeterminate――the Apeiron. It is a mixture in
which all qualities are lost. The changes in nature are endless, and
therefore the single cosmic substance, from which they come, must be
endless as well, for “from whatever source things come, in that they
have their end.” We learn that this is just the reason for Anaximenes
choosing the air for the single underlying cosmic substance. The air is
the most changeable thing and is Unlimited.[9]
Both Thales and Anaximenes still held to the traditional polytheism
of the Greek Epic. Anaximander rises above them in this respect. This
conception of the Unlimited, to which his scientific search led him, is
regarded by him as Deity. He calls it “the divine” (τὸ θεῖον); although
he speaks of it in the neuter gender it is, nevertheless, the first
European _philosophical conception of God_. It is the first attempt to
conceive of God as purely physical and yet without any mythical dress.
In Anaximander the Milesian monism has a religious aspect.
=2. Xenophanes, the Religious Philosopher= (570 B. C.). The scientific
monism of Anaximander was after all only expressive of that religious
dissatisfaction, first voiced by the Wise Men, against the Hesiod
cosmogony and the immorality of the Homeric myths. Now for the first
time a positive conflict between religion and philosophy arose through
Xenophanes, the rhapsodist of Colophon. Colophon, an Ionian city near
Miletus, was noted for its obscene and cruel religious practices,
and when his native city capitulated to the Persians, Xenophanes
charged its feebleness to its immoral religion. He went to Magna
Græcia, and, disguised as a musician, he wandered about for sixty-seven
years through its length and breadth declaiming in song against
the anthropomorphism, the mystic ecstasies, and the general social
practices of the Greeks. He finally settled in Elea, southern Italy
(see map), and on this account he is sometimes called the founder of
the Eleatic school.
Xenophanes’ influence upon the thought of Greece was threefold:
(1) He preached the Milesian philosophical monism to the people of
Greece in the form of a religious monism; (2) He carried this doctrine
from eastern Greece (Asia Minor) to Western Greece (Magna Græcia);
(3) He was the connecting link between the Milesian and the following
Eleatic school.
=The Philosophy of Xenophanes.= Based on one of the Milesian
assumptions, viz., a single cosmic substance remains identical with
itself in nature, Xenophanes felt that he had a right to set down two
principles about nature.
1. The single primordial substance below the changes of nature is
God. The reality below nature which Thales conceived to be water,
Anaximander to be unlimited substance without a name, Anaximenes to be
air, was said by Xenophanes to be God. The important point here is that
Xenophanes has not given the Greeks a spiritualistic conception of God;
but that he has positively stated that the substance of the universe
is an object of religious devotion. He calls the cosmic substance
God instead of calling it water, Apeiron, or air. It is a material
thing, and yet it is an object of reverence. He ascribes to this God a
spherical form, and yet also mental power of omniscience. God is “one
and all” ἓν καὶ πᾶν, and yet he is “one god, the greatest among gods
and men, neither in form and thought like unto mortals.” The positive
conception of God hangs confused in the mind of Xenophanes. He is
scarcely a monotheist, nor yet a pantheist. He is a hylozoist, who
conceives the underlying cosmic substance to be an object of religious
reverence.
2. The single cosmic substance below the changes of nature is
_un_changeable. To the Milesians the more moving is matter, the more
alive is it. Life and activity are the same thing. To Xenophanes
this is not the case, but, on the contrary, the opposite is true.
He conceives God to be a definite sphere that is unchangeable and
homogeneous. The material substance, God, always remains the same.
“He has no need of going about, now hither, now thither, in order to
carry out his wishes; but he governs all men without toil.” Xenophanes
thus becomes the forerunner of the Eleatic school.
=3. Heracleitus, “the Misanthropist” and “the Obscure”= (about
563–470 B. C.). Heracleitus was a native of Ephesus, belonged
to the aristocracy, and suffered at the hands of the democracy.
He wrote a treatise that was difficult to understand even by the
ancients, some fragments of which are preserved. He was called the
“weeping philosopher” because of his misanthropy, and also the “dark
philosopher” because of the obscurity of his writings. He was a
theorist rather than a physicist, and his doctrines foreshadow our
modern physical theories. His name is coupled with that of Parmenides
in the deep impression he made upon Greek thought. From his complacent
and gloomy retirement he looked forth upon the world around him with
profound contempt, as did the Stoics after him.
a. =Heracleitus’ Doctrine of Absolute and Universal Change.= The wonder
which the Ionians felt, that nature phenomena change into one another,
found its liveliest expression in Heracleitus. He not only found that
mutability was the primal aspect of nature phenomena, but he also
pointed out that human experiences also had their rapid and complete
transitions. Especially was he fond of citing the changes of opposites
into each other. But what shows his development over the early Milesian
doctrine was his isolation of the aspect of change from the Milesian
conception of the cosmic matter, thereby affirming that abiding
permanence is an illusion. It is one thing to affirm that reality is
essentially change; it is another to universalize change by affirming
that the permanent has no existence. The Milesian doctrine was too
naïve to go as far as that. Heracleitus piles up figures of speech
to show that there is no permanence whatever. All existing things are
only “becoming”-things, passing-away things. Being is always becoming,
about-to-be. The only unchanging thing is change. “You cannot step
into the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”
“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and
hunger.” “All things flow” (πάντα ῥεῖ). What abides and deserves the
name of Deity is not thing, but motion――Becoming.
b. =Fire is the Cosmic Substance.= Here we come to a difficulty in
explaining the doctrine of Heracleitus because of the confusion in his
own mind. He evidently goes a long way toward conceiving the cosmic
substance as an abstraction――as the process of change. But he could
not be wholly abstract. He stops and tells us that the cosmic substance
is fire, and he probably means by fire just the same sort of thing
as Anaximenes meant by air. Fire is the cosmic substance. It is the
essence of all material things because it is the most mobile. But,
after all, the fire of which Heracleitus is thinking is not a localized
thing, like the fire on the hearth. For the hearth fire in a sense is
ever identical with itself. The fire which Heracleitus means is ever
darting, ever transforming material. To sum up: Heracleitus does not
mean by fire an abstraction like the law of change; he does not mean,
on the other hand, a material ever remaining like itself: he does mean
a material, but a transforming material.
c. =The Definite Changes of Fire.= Heracleitus makes some acute
observations about the characteristics of the changing fire. The
Milesians had been content to observe atmospheric changes and to
name condensation and rarefaction as the forms of cosmic change.
Heracleitus goes farther and emphasizes definite relations of change.
The succession of changes always remains the same. Their definite
relation is the only permanence in the world, and Heracleitus’
conception foreshadows the modern conception of the uniformity of the
law of nature. The changes are (1) fateful, (2) rational, and (3) just.
They show that the world is a destiny, a reason, and a justice. This
identification of ethical and logical qualities with the physical
betrays the undeveloped condition of the thought of Heracleitus.
In general, there are two characteristics to be noted with reference
to Heracleitus’ conception of a definite succession of changes:
(1) the changes are always a harmony of opposites; (2) and the changes
are in a closed circuit. The process of change is not a flow in one
direction like a river over its bed, but it is a movement in two
opposite directions. By change Heracleitus means not only a passing
into something else but a passing into the opposite. Everything is the
union of opposites, and everything is the transition point of opposites
about to separate. The flux of things is thus poetically conceived as
a war of things, and this war is “the father of all things.” This unity
of opposites has an equilibrium that illudes us into thinking it is
permanent. The universe is an invisible harmony, divided into itself
and again united. Investigate life and there are antitheses everywhere.
War is life. The second general characteristic of the succession of
changes is their closed circuit. Fire changes into all things, and all
things are changing back into fire. These two movements are called the
“Upward Way” and the “Downward Way.” Downward, fire changes through
air and water into earth. Upward, earth changes back to water, air, and
fire. With every change, there is counter-change, action is accompanied
by a reaction. “Men do not know how that which is drawn in opposite
directions harmonizes with itself. The harmonious structure of the
world depends upon opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.”
d. =The Practical Philosophy of Heracleitus.= Heracleitus was more
of a metaphysician than a physicist, and his chief concern was in the
formation and the practical application of his theory of change. He
looked upon man as a bit of cosmic fire struck off and imprisoned in a
body of earth, water, and air. After death this fiery soul is released
and absorbed in the cosmic fire. In his present state man has a divided
existence: the life of the soul, or the fire of the reason; and the
life of the senses of the imprisoning body. The reason retires from
the illusions of sense, and sees in its aristocratic isolation how
illusory the sensations are. For the senses tell us that their objects
are permanent, while the reason sees through this deception to the
changingness of the world. Thus the beginning is made by Heracleitus
in distinguishing the reflections of the reason from sensations. Truth
is for the first time systematically set over against opinion. The
reasonable Wise Man resigns himself to whatever happens because he
knows that it is fateful, wise, and just. The Wise Man recognizes
that all is change, and he is happy because he sees providence in the
vicissitudes of his own life. Thus in the aristocratic hate, which
Heracleitus holds against democracies, he makes conformity to law the
only way to happiness. The reason of Wise Men, and not the senses of
the multitude, must be the true guide of society.
Heracleitus was a profound observer and theorist. His physical theory
foreshadowed the modern theories of natural law and of relativity; his
practical theories reappear in the psychology of Protagoras and the
ethics of the Stoics.
=4. The Eleatic School.= The town of Elea to which Xenophanes came in
the course of his wanderings had been recently settled by the Ionian
refugees from Phocæa, a great maritime city in Asia Minor, which had
been conquered by the Persians (543 B. C.). Elea is now Castellamare
on the west coast of Italy. It is celebrated as the birthplace of
Parmenides and Zeno, who founded the so-called Eleatic school.
a. =Parmenides= (b. 515 B. C.).
Parmenides wrote about 470 B. C. He is represented as a serious and
influential man, with a high moral character. He exercised strong
influence upon such philosophers as Plato and Democritus, and was a
political power in the city of Elea, of which he was a native. He was
not a stranger to the Pythagoreans. The large fragment of his poem is
the most ancient monument extant of metaphysical speculation among the
Greeks.
Parmenides takes the doctrine of Xenophanes with great seriousness,
and what Xenophanes says about the Godhead, Parmenides says about all
things. Xenophanes’ religious weapon of an unchanging cosmic substance
becomes in the hands of Parmenides an academic doctrine of science
and the basis of logical controversy. Parmenides used the conception
of Xenophanes in his great didactic poem, _The Way of Truth and the
Way of Opinion_, with the evident purpose of refuting the theory of
Heracleitus. The fragment of the poem reveals the driest abstractions
dressed in rich poetry. As a thinker Parmenides is the most important
in this period. Zeno was the friend and pupil of Parmenides.
(1) =The Cosmic Substance is Being.= The first assumption in the
Milesian doctrine――that there is a single matter that ever remains
identical with itself――was so self-evident to Parmenides that he
does not attempt to prove it. He assumes it, as if it were cogent to
everybody. However, he explains what he means by Being in a negative
statement: Not-Being, or what is not, cannot be thought. Being and
thought are so correlated that they are the same. Thinking always
has Being as its content, and there is no Being that is not thought.
_Being_ ＝ _Thought_. This explanation of Parmenides’ identification of
thought and Being may be put in this logical form:――
All thinking refers to something thought, and therefore has Being
for its content;
Thinking that refers to nothing, and is therefore contentless,
cannot be;
Therefore, not-Being cannot be thought, much less can it be.
These propositions look very abstract, and make us believe that we are
to plunge immediately into a kind of German idealism. But Parmenides
leaves us in no doubt that he is one of the hylozoists of his time.
Being is indeed thought, but Being is also matter. We may therefore
amend our equation to _Being_ ＝ _Thought_ ＝ _Matter_. Being is what
fills space, and all Being has this and only this property. All Being
is therefore exactly alike, and there is only one, single Being. There
are no distinctions in Being. By not-Being Parmenides means empty space
or that which is not material. So that Parmenides’ assumption of Being
as the cosmic substance means this: all that exists, including thought,
fills space; and all that does not exist does not fill space.
Being, the cosmic substance, is one, eternal, imperishable, homogeneous,
unchangeable, and material. When men see the world as it really is,
when they see its cosmic substance, they see it to be one continuous
material block. The world is not made up of parts with intervals of
nothing between them, but it is a solid, homogeneous whole. The cosmic
Being is a timeless, spaceless Being with no distinctions. The form of
Being is spherical. It is cosmic-body and cosmic-thought. This is the
assumption of Parmenides, which is so self-evident and so cogent to him
that he does not attempt to prove but only to explain it.
(2) =Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real
Existence.= If Being is space that is filled, not-Being is empty space.
However, empty space has no existence. But the existence of a plural
number of things depends upon the existence of empty spaces between
them. Furthermore, the motion of things and the change of things depend
upon the existence of empty spaces in which they can move and change.
Since empty space is not-Being and has no existence, the plurality of
things and the motion and change of things have also no existence. They
are illusions. The nature-world, with its richness of qualities and
variety of motions, before the logic of Parmenides “folds up its tents
like the Arabs and silently steals away.”
This logical drawing out of one of the aspects of the Milesian
conception of the cosmic matter has a curious result. The Milesians and
Xenophanes sought to explain by the cosmic substance the many nature
changes. But when in the hands of Parmenides the cosmic substance is
all of reality, then there is no reality to the changes. Consequently
the concept formed for the explanation of change has so developed as
to deny the existence of change. The cosmic substance excludes all
origination and decay, all space and time differences, all divisibility,
diversity, and movement. There is only one real, all else is illusion.
But what can we say of the varied world of nature as it appears to us?
Do we see, hear, and touch many things and motions? In Part II of his
poem he raises the question, Suppose man takes the world of change as
real how must he explain it? He answers by using the explanation of
Heracleitus. But these changes of eye and ear belong to the world of
sense, and Parmenides is talking, in Part I of his poem, about the real
world or that world known to thought. Parmenides insists as strongly
as did Heracleitus that the reason and not the sense shall be our guide
to what is real. Yet he arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion from
Heracleitus as to what the reason sees as real. The senses show us only
the many and the changing. The reason shows us nothing of the sort, but
only permanence and unchangingness.
b. =Zeno= (b. 490–430 B. C.).
Zeno was born in Elea. He was contemporary with those who tried to
reconcile the two sides of the metaphysical controversy,――Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. He wrote in prose in the form of question
and answer. This is the beginning of the dialogue literature, which
in the time of the Sophists, Socrates and Plato, was richly developed
and became known as dialectic. On the Greek stage during the time of
Pericles it came forth in dramatic form through Æschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides.
=The Philosophy of Zeno.= Zeno was the active controversialist of the
school of Elea, and he was not a constructive philosopher. He offered
no contribution to advance the thought of Parmenides. He appeared
rather as the master of logical argument in defense of his predecessor,
by tearing to pieces the arguments of his opponents. The opponents
that Zeno is attacking are the Atomists of Abdera, who were his
contemporaries, rather than Heracleitus. His contribution was negative
and formal, but it was nevertheless effective and searching. His
arguments and paradoxes will, however, lose their cogency unless
it be kept in mind that he is trying to show how absurd magnitude,
multiplicity, and change would be in discontinuous space such as the
Atomists describe. While his paradoxes have been attacked again and
again, they still have effectiveness against atomic theories.
His arguments are against magnitude, multiplicity, and motion. There
can be no magnitude, because a thing would then be both infinitely
small and infinitely great. There can be no multiplicity of things,
since they would be both limited and unlimited in number. There can be
no motion, because (1) it is impossible to go through a fixed space;
(2) it is impossible to go though a space that has movable limits; and
(3) because of the relativity of motion. The dilemmas which he proposed
of Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow at rest, and the bushel
of corn are classic.[10]
=The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides.=
1. One important result of this final conflict between the inconsistent
motives in the Milesian teaching was that reason was contrasted with
sense, reflection with experience. The more fully the philosophers
developed their doctrines, the more their doctrines became contrasted
with the opinions of unreflecting people. At first the contrast
appeared in this naïve form: that what they thought was right, and
what others thought must be wrong, if others differed from them. Then
the contrast came in this form: that reflection gives the true and
sensations the false. Thus reflection came to have such conclusiveness
that it gained independence. The philosopher began to feel the
supremacy of reason, to assert that he has truth, to call unreasoned
belief by the opprobrious name of “opinion.” This is curiously
illustrated in the case of Heracleitus and Parmenides. Their opposing
conceptions of the cosmic substance are claimed to be the result of
reason, while each calls the other’s theory “opinion.”
2. Another result was that in the Greek thought the monistic theory was
found to be useless in the study of nature. These early monistic views
led up as necessary steps to pluralism, but they were not in themselves
serviceable. The imperfection in the Milesian teaching appeared in the
impassable gulf between Heracleitus and Parmenides. It now remained
for the last Cosmologists to see if, on the basis of pluralism, they
could not reconcile the preceding views and at the same time obtain a
satisfactory metaphysics of nature.
3. The third result of the controversy between the Eleatics
and Heracleitus was that the peril from the Orphic Mysteries was
averted,――not immediately, nor in a year’s time, but after many years.
Philosophy became established. The Greek reason now had an object
of interest, in a sharp scientific issue. Mystery was not crushed,
but subdued. The mental life of the future Greek had a topic for its
reflection which supplanted, when the time came, its emotional interest
in the supernatural.