EXCHANGE
8061 '12 WiVd 'A 'N 'asnoBJ
The Pre-Socratic Use of
As a Term for the Principle of Motion
BY
SISTER M. THOMAS AQUINAS, O. S. IX, M. A
OF T;
SISTEI;- 01 UINT DOMINI- , StNsiNA
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Catholic Sixters College of the Catholic < '// of America in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy
WASHINGTON, D. C. JUNE, 1915
The Pre-Socratic Use of
As a Term for the Principle of Motion
BY
SISTER M. THOMAS AQUINAS, O. S. D., M. A.
OF THE
SISTERS OF SAINT DOMINIC, SINSINAWA, WISCONSIN
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Catholic Sisters College of the Catholic University of America in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy
WASHINGTON, D. C. JT-TNE, 1915
NATIONAL CAPITAL PRESS, INC
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
WASHINGTON, D. C
PREFACE
The general purpose of this study is to modify some of the effects due to the necessities of language among the Greek philosophers of the fifth and sixth centuries B. C. There can be no doubt that ideas conceived at this time suffered from lack of adequate forms of expression. Later thinkers, exhibiting a disregard for the effects of inadequate terminology, have assigned to the pre- Socratic philosophers theories inconsistent with true growth of thought. A study of the word ^VM as standing for a kinetic principle in the minds of philosophers preceding Socrates cannot fail to emphasize the consideration of the need of terms as a factor in the history of philosophy.
On the positive side, this study would suggest an adjustment of the sources for Greek terms for the soul in an effort to account for the vocabulary of later philosophers regarding ^uxi? proper.
The method adopted in the collection of pre-Socratic terms would balance a too ready acceptance of words ascribed to early thinkers and an absolute rejection of terms colored by Aristotelian influence.
The scope of the study includes terms for apx^ for ^v\ij as a kinetic principle, and for would-be agent causes as used during the century and a half of Greek speculation from Thales (585 B.C.) to Democritus (420 B. C.).
The frequent mention of Diels' Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (abbreviated For.), of Diels' Doxographi Graeci (Dox.)9 of Ritter and Preller's Historia Philosophiae Graecae (R. P.), and of Hick's edition of Aristotle's De Anima indicates the free use of works invaluable in this study.
To the Reverend William Turner, S. T. D., at whose suggestion this thesis was written, is due grateful acknowledgement of encouragement and assistance.
Sister Thomas Aquinas. Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, O. P.,
March 7, 1915.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE I. Introduction.
1. The Purpose of a Study of Terms for Kinetic foxy- - 7
2. The Method of Treatment of Pre-Socratic Terms. ... 11
II. Study of Terms for Kinetic
1. Early Ionian Terms .............................. 14
2. Early Pythagorean Terms ......................... 21
3. Terms of Heraclitus .............................. 25
4. Eleatic Terms ................................... 29
5. Summary of Terms of Pre-Socratic Dynamism ....... 33
6. Terms of Empedocles ............................. 36
7. Terms of Anaxagoras ............................. 39
8. Terms of the Successors of Anaxagoras ............. 43
9. Summary ....................................... 46
III. Bibliography.
I. INTRODUCTION 1. THE PURPOSE OF A STUDY OF TERMS FOR KINETIC
Aristotle, in the first chapter of De Anima, justified his treatise on the soul when he said: "It would seem, too, that an acquaint- ance with this subject contributes to the whole domain of truth." Likewise a knowledge of the word 4/vxy as used in a particular sense by the early Greek philosophers seems well worth while as teaching that Truth is the First and the Last.
Since an understanding of the first attempts at a physical system implies a first-hand rather than a traditional knowledge of the words these thinkers used, a study of the kinetic fax?) is proper to an investigation of the theories of the physicists before Socrates.
The use of faxy in another sense than for the soul of man recurs from Thales to Democritus. Commonly held to stand for a principle of animation, in its earliest use it may have stood for only the principle of motion. For these early thinkers life was not necessarily coextensive with motion. Linguistic poverty accounts for the use of this term to express now the idea of mere mobility and again the quality of animation. According to an imperfect analogy — "a likeness and a difference" (Theophratus III, 152 Winimer) — objects could have been thought of as e/^xa — en- dowed with if/vxy — and the whole term could have been used when only the attribute of motion was being predicated of things.
We cannot too often recall, in a study such as this, that the object of speculation at this period was nature and that the purpose of the so-called philosophers of these days was to find an under- lying principle — a "one." Sometimes they cast the problem into another form and set it in terms of change when they asked how things were "moved."
It is fairly established that there was no definite speculation regarding the human soul in the early days of philosophy. It goes without saying that the three Aristotelian distinctions of ^ux1? were not in the minds of the pre-Socratics. The first philosoph- ical ^vxr] represented a kinetic principle rich in promise. The physiologers took the term faxy out of popular phraseology and raised it from its place in their Homeric and pre-philosophical
7
3 ' PRE-SGCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
inheritance to stand for a would-be cosmothetic force somewhat after the manner in which they adopted apxrj for philosophical terminology.
The knowledge of pre-Socratic systems has suffered from a con- founding of the term \f/vxn as used for a kinetic principle with the old (and later the new-old) term \f/vx"n as used for the principle of animation and for the soul of man. The identification of if/vxy and apx*] has branded the earliest lonians with latent materialism. The simplest explanation of the identification of these /terms is by no means final. To decide that, after the physicist had reduced all things to air, fire, or some other body, he postulated, by way of a corollary, this primary element as the cause of vital function is only to include \j/vxij taken as standing for the human soul, in apx'n ^ the material substratum of all things. Commentators were prone to read into a term the sense it held in their own time. The only meaning of the term faxy in the mind of most later thinkers was ^ux1? as it stood for the human soul and included the principle of life. Again, the analysis of this equation which discredits scepticism as a natural attitude is on the side of \f/vx~n as a term for soul proper. The fact that the power of the mind gives rise to processes mentally reproducing the nature of the object known has been noted as potent enough to cause early thinkers to infer that the soul is a mixture of all elements. If all things were reduced to a primitive substance, then would the mind that knows them be that substance; ^ux1?, the knowing part of us, becomes identical with apx'n > the first principle. However satisfactory as explanations of theories attributed to the philosophers who began to give attention to mental science, for the early lonians at least, who, as physicists, certainly used \f/vx~n in other than the old sense, these solutions of the equation are strained. The formation of what seems to us an equation was probably due to a lack of words, while \f/vxr) as the original member of it was merely kinetic in force. apx'n was the basis of all things and all things were moved, \f/vxn being the principle of motion. If apx'n and faxy coexisted hylokinetically, then \l/vxrj as a force in nature was the kinetic aspect of apx'n- Philosophy from the first tended toward physical dualism and fax*} buried in apx'n contained part of the efficient cause in germ. The crude but prophetic half -concept ion of a force causing things to move was impeded by a lack of words for this new element of thought. The growth of the notion of trans-
INTRODUCTION 9
lent force culminated in vovs or vovs /ecu twh- Anaxagoras was the true successor of the earlier thinkers; the Atomists were unworthy heirs of Ionian philosophy.
Recalling that distinctions very clear in our own day had not yet been made in philosophy at this time, we cannot project upon the pre-Socratics a system of causes which was the outcome of a synthesis of many threads of speculation. Nevertheless, the philosopher of that day was the forerunner of both the cosmologist and the scientist, whose conclusions can never be contradictory. These early explanations due to natural processes of thought carried phases belonging to separate fields of later philosophical speculation. When studying Greek philosophy in its beginnings, we must not overlook the fact that there was often mental dis- crimination on the part of the early thinkers where we find identity of term. Their lack of words for their new ideas should not convict them of the ancient errors of modern times.
Besides its effect on our knowledge of the physical theories of the pre-Socratics, a consideration of the exact sense of their use of il/vx'n and its derivatives should discredit the assumption of ethnological animism. Recent theorists, not emphasizing the distinction of kinetic \J/vxy as a principle for inanimate objects and ^UXT? as a principle of life and thought, have tried to convict the earliest Greek philosophers of animism in support of the * 'soul-theory" or "ghost-theory" of religion. This theory, which attacks the integrity of the history of religion, is insecurely based on evidence afforded by the mere necessity of language at a period before philosophy distinguished immanent and transient motion. Philology has offered opposition to this evolutionistic trend of thought by pointing out that objects called living were so called from a lack of words to represent qualities they were conceived as possessing. (Cf. Max Miiller — Lectures on the Origin of Religion.)
Viewed in our perspective, many of the terms for qualitative refinement and for quantitative indeterminateness applied to ij/vxy as a term for the principle of motion, now in reference to the kinetic aspect of apx'n and again to apx'n without regard to its principle of motion, contributed to the vocabulary used to describe fax*} proper when the heirs of Socrates began to turn their minds to conscious psychological speculation. Philosophy now easily passes from the notion of soul as a life-giving, animating principle to the idea of a sensitive or of a rational soul. The
10 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Greeks arrived at the complete notion of \l/vx"n by two lines of thought. One line began in the earliest physical systems of the pre-Socratics. Faintly drawn for themselves, it is almost obliter- ated for us through their lack of words. We know only that they used the term \l/vxh ; we do not know that they even perceived the analogy which led them to use a term wider than the power they intended to connote by it. We cannot regard the words gathering around this natural force as the sole influence in the development of terminology for iwxh proper. Kinetic \f/vxri may appear dis- torted in the isolation to which it is subjected in an effort to balance former lack of consideration of its claims as a factor in termi- nological progress. In offsetting the decided tendency to indicate the effect of the old popular term and idea and of the vague philo- sophical \f/vxr] proper on the ^u%i? of the physicist, we cannot disregard cross-lines of popular notions and terms with would-be philosophically technical thought and expression. Yet, while we admit this interaction as well as the unconscious subjective element in speculation by which the power of thought is trans- ferred to things, we would qualify for even the first Greek philos- pher the assertion that inanimate were assimilated to animate objects.
When philosophical speculation centered on the human soul, attention turned first to the element of sensation, that other source of knowledge and terms for if/vxy so often noted by Aris- totle. (Cf. De Anima 403 b 2). There is no sharp definition of the periods for the use of ^vx'n m physical and psychological senses. When the time came to consider the element of motion in the definition of the human soul and the ideas and terms for il/vxy as an objective principle were in turn caught up for "our soul," the use of the word faxy had completed an orbit in the history of philosophy. In seeking to determine how part of the vocabulary came to be at hand for the expression of Platonic and of Aristotelian notions for the new-old power in man, we find at least one source of terms in expressions for the force in nature for which the old terms for power, human or divine, had been borrowed by philosophy in its beginnings. The Homeric and popular inheritance of terms for faxy was not directly transmitted to the greatest Greek philosopher. The loan of terms was compensated for with interest by the physiologers who had, on the way, ground down many of these words to terms fitting the ideas of incorporeal-
INTRODUCTION 11
ity and of immortality as defined on the heights of philosophic thought.
2. THE METHOD OF TREATMENT OF PRE-SOCRATIC TERMS
We have aimed to follow a via media and to adopt in our method a mean between over-ready acceptance of terms for the pre- Socratics and a final rejection of all terms attributed to them on the authority of those affected by Aristotelian form of expression. Truth cannot be sacrificed to an exaggerated attitude of historical insight. The words of those thinkers were pre- Aristotelian, but the human mind philosophized even when the philosopher knew nothing of the nature of his own mode of thought. We shall not deny to the Greek thinkers before Socrates certain tendencies natural to speculation in every age.
"When a given symbol which represents a thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it undergoes a change like that which rest in a certain position gives iron. It becomes magnetic in its relations — it is traversed by strange forces which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it represents, is polarized." (O. W. Holmes. The Professor at the Breakfast Table.)
An appreciation of the early Ionian standpoint often demands that words attributed to Ionian thinkers be subjected in the days of developed terminology to a process of depolarization. The early philosophers themselves, though scarcely realizing its need, were unconsciously influenced by some such process when com- pelled to adopt for their new ideas terms in use as forms of religious and popular expression. The terms of religion suggested them- selves through the evident relativity of the new philosophical notions and of the old conceptions of the attributes of the gods, who, while not then in philosophy, were deep in the lives of these philosophers. The tendency of thinkers to stop on the brink of the great conclusion just short of a great contribution and to fall the lower for their ascent often accounts for a falling back on old catch-phrases and popular expressions.
The terms for kinetic ^v\ii used by the philosophers of the principal schools before the time of Socrates fall into two general classes: (1) the terms found at first hand in the fragments of the early thinkers themselves and (2) the terms occurring in mediate
12 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
and secondary sources which state opinions attributed to these thinkers.
Where we have an immediate and first-hand source in an authen- tic fragment, we must further consider the philosopher's termino- logical inheritance, whether popular or philosophical, as well as his attitude of mind in using his words. Later thinkers were often inclined to overrate an unscientific, popular, or casual use of a term. An unphilosophical expression remains in the class which Aristotle would call a mere oi/ojua. On the other hand, there was sometimes an effort for exactness in an attempt to express a thought which was ahead of current terminology. An old term had then taken on a new content or inner sense — Stawta, as Aristotle would call it. Again, even when the use of the term was scientific, the philosopher's temperament often dictated his form of expression, and style, or Xe£is, regulated the adoption of one word above another, as in the case of Empedocles and of Heraclitus. The point of view of the age and of the philosopher consciously using these terms largely determined the inner sense of the word. Philosophy in that age was taking for granted all things but apxrj- While turning full attention on the sense of faxy in one place, the philosopher could have accepted, as his age accepted, tvx*l with other terms as mere ovonara.
We may locate the second class of terms in two principal mediate sources: Aristotle and the Doxographers. The Doxographers include Theophrastus, the authors of the Placita, who, for the most part, drew from him, Plutarch, Simplicius and the other historians of opinions. Plato, whose references to pre-Socratic thinkers are comparatively few, can scarcely be regarded as a fruitful source for this period. To the Pythagoreans and Parmen- ides he gave some attention, presenting them, however, not as historical characters but as his own creations.
Aristotle has been accused of reading his own views into the theories of early philosophers. In the first chapter of De Anima and in the first book of Metaphysics he has given a synopsis of the opinions of those who went before him. It is true that this account is in his own terms, and yet he seemed to recognize the frequent attempts of the other seekers to bring their phraseology up to the level of their new ideas. While he censured, in some cases, it would seem, undeservedly, he did not fail to praise as well. In cautious qualifications, here and there, of his own terms in
INTRODUCTION 13
explaining the theories of his predecessors (Cf . De An. 404 and 405), Aristotle was evidently conscious that he was himself speaking on the heights of his own system.
We must observe a cautious discrimination of sources when accepting terms occurring in the Doxographers. (Cf. Fairbanks p. 263). An et7T€p or a X&ycrat were often dropped in the tradi- tion to which the words of Aristotle and of others were subjected. These historians of opinions, failing to depolarize the terms they cited, exhibit tendencies of "accommodation," of false inference, and of inaccurate listing of philosophers. In many cases the historian of philosophy has accepted doxographic tradition on faith. It should not be necessary to note that distinctions familiar enough today were contributed by periods subsequent to the fifth century B. C. The pre-Socratics did not deal in the full-grown ideas and much less in the words often attributed to them. The method of Theophrastus (and of those drawing on him as a source) of casting into Aristotelian terms the naive solutions offered in pre-Socratic times was sometimes responsible for distorted tradi- tion. We shall endeavor, then, not to transform a pre-Socratic thinker into a post-Aristotelian, but thus forewarned, we may accept the potent fact that the philosophers themselves strove for new words and that their minds "compelled by truth itself " (Arist. Met. 984, b 8) spoke words other than those afforded by their language.
II. STUDY OF TERMS FOR KINETIC 1. EARLY IONIAN TERMS
The early lonians were physicists; they were neither meta- physicians nor psychologists in the sense these words bear today. The method of each early Ionian philosopher might be described as corresponding to the method of Thales, who was led to his con- clusion about a first principle by things that appear to the senses. (Simpl. Phys. 23, 21 Dox. 475.) A recollection of this objective view-point discredits over-drawn deductions regarding Ionian theories. If the problem of change furnished by the senses was the problem these thinkers set out to solve, in their solutions they began, in a certain sense, to lay down a doctrine of causality. The word then used for "cause" was not atria but apx'n- By this was meant a principle approaching Aristotelian "material cause,'* and yet the Ionian said no more than that apx'n furnished the ground for the existence of other things. That a material cause should be held as actually giving being to its effect had not yet suggested itself to these early thinkers. Saint Thomas noted that those of the ancient philosophers who acknowledged motion in things admitted motion only as to accidents, as in rarity and density, aggregation and disgregation. (Summa Theolog. I, Q. LXIV, a. 2.) Yet while they were looking beneath the surface for a fundamental principle, they were at the same time developing a principle of motion. Aristotle (Met. 984 b I) seemed to see in the ideas of Parmenides the first recognition of the nature of such a cause. If we trust to the natural mode of thought and go back even of Parmenides, we find traces of the crude conception and of the imperfect and confused expression of some kind of force, which for the pre-Socratics averaged into an expression indicating kinetic power. To the Ionian physiologers at this point in the development of philosophy we leave wide margin for the unquestioning acceptance of the idea of a moving force. The popular god was dropped from the world of the physicists, who were considered adeoi (Cf. Simplicius, Phys. Dox. 475), but their habits of thought were not so easily changed since their need of words caused them to revert to the term 6e6s for this newly conceived force. Words heretofore used in quite another sphere, yet bearing for pre-Socratic thinkers a suggestive analogy, were frequently heard in the childish accents of their speculations. 14
EARLY IONIAN TERMS 15
The early Ionian inheritance of foxy as a general term for the source of human activity was strong enough to keep that word prominently before a thinker groping for a form of expression for his latent agent cause. Granting that the first agents for the human language were human agents, we may maintain that the anthropological element, and with it the element of life, was drop- ped when the old word foxy was retained by the physicist.
The two statements most directly attributed to Thales have reference to foxy in its kinetic sense, as the energizing force and the source of motion, //he said that the magnet has foxy be- cause it moves iron, said Aristotle (De An. 405 a. 19), then Thales conceived the soul as something having the power of motion — KLvyriKov n. Aristotle, consciously treating irepi foxy*, thus cited an instance of the early use of the term foxy- In this passage Aristotle was calling attention to the element of motion in the definition of the human soul which he was himself constructing. Thales would have regarded the soul as KivyrLKov TL since he used the word foxy for his moving force, yet it is quite possible that he would not recognize himself in the De Anima. His outlook was in quite another direction when he used the significant form foxy.
Perhaps, said Aristotle (De An. 411 a. 7), Thales said that all things are full of gods, because, "as some say,'* foxy is interfused (/z€ju€ix0cu) in things throughout (tv ro> 6Xo>). iravra here was for Thales the merest unification of the world of phenomena. The expression 0€ooi> ir\ypy iravTa, which has been elaborated for him as apxy Mto, Kai KivovfjL&y (Simpl. Phys. Dox. 475), further bespeaks the need of terms.
Plato (Leg. X, 899 B) decided to include foxai under the term 6eoL whether they order (/COOT/CIV) the whole heavens as living beings in bodies or whether they accomplish this in some other form and manner. Plato further showed that he was here only repeating the apothegm of Thales. We cannot explain the form and manner in which the moving force acted on the elementary water for the first Ionian philosopher. Plato himself, on the strength of the statement that things are full of gods, in Platonic phraseology called foxy y fox^ • • • amcu. This mov- ing force, hylokinetically present in things, is an instance of a prophetic conception held by the Greek mind.
Diogenes Laertius (1. 27) asserted that Thales held the world endowed with foxy (^fox°^) and full of Scu/zom in place of
16 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
the 6eoi of the apothegm quoted by Plato and Aristotle. Thales was* again (Cf. Aetius, Dox. 301) noted as holding TO irav as entvxov and full of daifjuovcs, but the tradition was too hard pressed by Stoic influence when it attributed to Thales the identi- fication of God with the mind of the universe, (vovs rov Kofffwv 6 0e6s). Cicero fell in with this doxography (Cf. Burnet p. 46) and even raised this tvx'h to the level of a full grown agent cause. (Cf . D. Deor. N. 10, 15 — earn mentem quae ex aqua cuncta fingeret.)
Since Thales in no conscious sense distinguished matter and its opposite, the heirs of Aristotelian thought and terminology have overdrawn decidedly in such statements as: "He supposed soul to be unsubstantial form." (Cf . Simpl. in Arist. De An. 8 r 31, 32). Tradition has assigned to Thales a fuller vocabulary than he possessed and thoughts that are beyond his highest conceptions. Although his first principle was "one and moved" (/ua KCU KLvovnevy) , his if/vxrj was a most elementary cause, the form and manner of whose activity is all hidden in the one word KIV&V. To say that for him a divine moving power (Swa/us 0ela /aprjri/o?) pervaded (drfKeiv) the elementary water (Aet. Dox. 301) is to distort the thought and much more the words of Thales. Yet when he said that the world was full of gods, Thales had fallen behind his own thought through need of words.
It can better be said what this first philosophical \l/vxy was not than what it was. It was not water nor was it the popular deity. The first principle, the object of speculation was one and moved. Everything came from water, but everything was full of gods. The dpxi? was determined and its /aVrjo-is was if/vx^l-
Aside from the inferences of his commentators, there is no evidence of an attempt on the part of Thales himself to give any terms to the human soul. We have noted that later efforts to fix \l/vxi) proper were significant in their appeal to the quality of motion which the physicists were forced to express in the old terms €%etv tvxfy-
The process of how things came out of the elementary water has been described for Thales as the purely accidental process of solidifying and melting. (Cf. irrjyvvffBat, and diavlevBaL of Hipp. Dox. 555.)
The point of transition from Thales to Anaximander is in the con- ception of a first principle. Thales was one of those who said that the material substratum of things was one and moved, but
EARLY IONIAN TERMS 17
he said also that it was limited. (TreTrepao-nevn — Simpl. Phys. Dox. 475.) Anaximander's first principle could not be quanti- tatively designated by any word then in use and so he adopted for philosophy a word to signify the boundlessness or the endlessness of his apxrj- He first imported (/co/afci?) the term aireLpos. (Cf. Simpl. Phys. Dox. 476). It is not so probable that Anaximander was the first to employ the term apx'n (Hipp. Dox. 559) in a philosophical sense. (Cf . Burnet p. 52.)
While there is no evidence for the qualitative determination of Anaximander's principle, we cannot doubt that he unquestioningly regarded it as material. Commentators tried qualitatively to determine this apx'n which was TO aireLpov by fixing it between air and water and again between air and fire on the strength of false interpretations of Aristotle, De Caelo 303 b. (Cf . R. P. 16 b.)
To Anaximander, among others, was attributed the statement (Theodoret Dox. 387) that the nature of ^vx'h is depots. This is perhaps significant as bringing into some relation the falsely determined apx'n and the element of motion within it, which Anaximander likewise may have expressed by the term fax*]-
In the consideration of the "process" as explained by early thinkers we find traces of the kineticism, general or particular, for which they seem to have made ^vx'n stand. Anaximander was not ready with words to describe this "process." Theo- phrastus (Dox. 476) has noted his poetic form of expression where it is said that things return of necessity (Kara TO xp^v) to that from which they spring, "paying the penalty to one another according to the order of time." The process for him was one requiring a separation of the opposites (airoKpivoiikvuv TUV havrluv) and this separation took place through eternal motion (5td TTJS cuStou /ai^o-ccos). This "eternal motion," postulated in addition to TO airtipov (Hipp. Dox. 559), is prominent in doxo- graphic tradition for Anaximander. Hermippus (Dox. 653) represented Anaximander asserting that apx'n w&s older (Trpe<rj3vT€pa) than water and was eternal motion (cu5ios KLVTJO-LS) by which (ravTy) things came to be and were destroyed.
Two fragments attributed to Anaximander occur in Aristotle's Physics (203 b) where Aristotle himself assumed TO aireLpov as the subject of irepitxew airavra Kal iravra, Kv&epvav. Of whatever the power to surround all and to direct all was predicated, it is
18 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
significant that these words are found in a verbal citation of one of those thinkers who, as Aristotle noted, gave no other cause than TO aTreipov. The Ionian was doubtless giving in these terms directive power to the kinetic aspect of TO aireipov. (Cf . Tannery p. 98). Aristotle further assumed TO aireipov to be TO Belov, be- cause it was for Anaximander and his contemporaries adavaTov /cat avu\edpov. However, in this passage Aristotle did not fail to cite vovs and <£iXia as instances of the progress of philosophy whereby the full grown if/vx'n cause came into its own.
Hippolytus (Dox. 559) repeated irepikxtw for Anaximander and gave to apx*) the aidios of the Kivrjais. He added for apxn the term ayrjpcos as kindred of the dfldz/aros and the d*>a>Xe0pos quoted by Aristotle for Anaximander. To these may be added the terms cos aytvrjTov re KCLL &<J)6apTov attributed by Simplicius (Phys. 465, 13 D) to the apxy of Anaximander. This apxy Simplicius called 6elov TO aiTiov. The use of the term Qtlov may indicate Anaximander's reversion to a form of the word deos for his partly inherent force. In the days of Anaximander apxh was elevated from popular to philosophic terminology according to the same principle by which ^vxh took on its new sense.
The "eternal motion" of Anaximander passed on to Anaximenes. With Anaximenes we have the continuance of the use of the term &7T€tpo$ as found in his predecessor, but to the qualitative deter- mination of the apx^i this philosopher seems to have given most of his attention. Since we find with him the most definite apxy, we may here endeavor to determine what these thinkers meant by that term.
Aristotle (Met. 983 a 27), in giving his own definition of "mater- ial cause," said (983 b) that most of the early philosophers thought that only first principles in the form of matter were the sources of things, (kv vX??* eifct . . . dpxcu.) (Cf. R. P. 10 a.) Aristotle, attempting in the same passage to define what early thinkers meant by apxy, decided that e£ ov 'tariv airavTa TO, OVTO, best fitted their principle, however the TrXrjflos and the ddos may have differed for the individual thinker.
Anaximenes identified his apxh with ar)p, a word said to have been used by him synonymously with Trvev^a. (Cf . Act. Dox. 278.) Simplicius (De Caelo 615 Heiberg) said that di?p was chosen as apx^i by Anaximenes because it was sufficiently adaptable to change. (euaXXotcoros Trpos ju
EARLY IONIAN TERMS 19
Conscious of the need of words, Anaximenes (Aet. Dox. 278) reverted to irepLexew of Anaximander to express the activity of arjp. Plutarch (de prim. frig, c 7, 947 F) gave x^Xapos as a new term for Anaximenes in attributing to him the statement that the relaxed state of matter is from heat.
Wherever arip-apx'h is assigned to Anaximenes, Klvijais is found with it. Theophrastus (ap. Simpl. Phys. Dox. 476) recorded that Anaximenes held an "underlying nature" (viroKeLnevrj <£ixris) which was fj.'ia and aTretpos. After describing the varying rarity and density of arip, Theophrastus added: "And he, too, posits eternal motion (idvrjo-Ls <U5ios) through which change takes place. (5t' f)v Kai rr\v fjLerapo\riv yivtaBai). We have as another form of expression for this eternal motion of Anaximenes Klvrjffis e£ aiavos. (Ps. Plut. Strom. Dox. 579.)
Olympiodorus (Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, p. 83), introducing the false fragment for Anaximenes tanv 6 ar)p rov acr^ndrov) said piav 5e KLVovfjLevrjV aireipov iravr&v r&v ovrwv . . . rbv depa.
Hippolytus (Dox. 560) repeated aweipos afip for Anaximenes and included 8tol Kai 6ela among the things of which the Ionian made it the source. Continuing, Hippolytus gave motion as one of the causes why air becomes perceptible and represented Anaximenes as having named motion with other changes, but as having had a special place for it in his mind when he added KLvtlffdai 8t ael. However, the remark that things would not change (/*era/3dXXe«') unless arjp were in motion (el M dvoi.ro} is evidently the statement of the doxographer himself.
In place of being the principle from which the gods and divine beings came, arjp was identified with 0eos by Anaximenes accord- ing to Aetius (Dox. 302) who especially noted the term 0e6s.
The fragment attributed to Anaximenes (Aet. Dox. 278) (olov 17 ifrvx'n V flUtTepa ar)p ovaa avYKparel was, KCLL 6\ov rov Koa^ov irvev- jua Kai arjp Treptex^t.) is especially noteworthy as marking off 17 \f/vx~n T? fintrepa from the new philosophical principle ^vx'n- The term for the human soul was used here only in a casual com- parison and is seen to be the same dpxi? as 6eol and all other things. Whence its power (rwyKparelv rmas if not frornihe funda- mental kinetic \fsvxy was a question that remained to be asked. The (rvjKparclv statement can scarcely be made significant as
20 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
describing a function of the old ^vx'n not yet an object of philos- ophy. For Anaximenes arip-apxr) was the real subject of irtpikyjuv .
The terms depia (Dox. 214) and depots (Dox. 287) assigned to Anaximenes as descriptive of fax*} were doubtless derived by direct inference if they refer to if/vxy proper. All things were arjp: then the soul must have been like d^p. Again, they may have been affected by the survival of the relation of arip-apx'h to fax?) as the kinetic aspect of d^p.
The fact that he postulated a qualitatively determined apxr) in no wise convicts Anaximenes of a retrogression. We have seen him taking advantage of the direipos of Anaximander to express the lack of quantification of his first principle. In the accounts of the process by which things came from "air-mist" he seems to have made an effort for words to describe differences demanding a higher complexity of expression than the terms for the "separa- tion" process of Anaximander.
Theophrastus (Dox. 476) described the process of "thickening and thinning," by which the nature of things was made to differ for Anaximenes, when he said that arjp becomes apaiovpevos and again irvwoviJLtvos. The forms dpcucoffis and TTVKVUO-IS are also used to describe the states of Ionian dpx*?. (Ps. Plut. Dox. 579).
Diogenes of Apollonia (423 B. C.) is found in the company of the lonians of this century as holding dpxi? identical with difa (Cf. Aristotle, Met. 984 a 5). Aristotle assigned the refinement of the arip-apx'n of Diogenes, which was iravTuv XeTrroMCpeo-raros, as the cause of the moving power of soul proper for those who identified ^ux^ with "air-mist." (Cf. De An. 405 a. 21— ^ux^ . . . 37 dt \eirT6TdTov KLVTJTLKOV elvai). Anaximenes had given a new turn to things by all unconsciously posing as a representative of immateriality. He appears to have sought a first principle from which all things including motion could in reality come. The criticism (Aet. Dox. 278) which rejected the semi-monism of Anaximenes is, of course, out of place. dXXd KCU TO TTOIOVV alnov vwoTiSkvai was not intelligible to an early Ionian philosopher.
2. TERMS OF THE EARLY PYTHAGOREANS
In a treatment of terms for the Pythagoreans the difficulty lies in keeping earlier and later Pythagorean doctrines and terms distinct. In most statements of opinions for "the Pythagoreans" Neo-Pythagorean influence is strong. The doctrine of opposites, the idea of harmony, and the substantiality of number colored many of their opinions, and yet the earlier thinkers of this school were working in the same direction as the early lonians.
The question of the human soul must have been for the Pytha- goreans, as members of an ethical society, a vital one. Few of these doctrines, however rich in significant phraseology, were connected with scientific speculation. One of the traditional works of Pythagoras himself is irepi ^ux*7* (Cf. Diog. L. VIII-7). Brotinos, a Pythagorean preceding Hippasus, has been credited with a work irepi vov KOLL Stadias. (Cf. lamblich. Vor. p. 29.) Some of the early terms of the Pythagoreans for the faculties of perception and knowledge would be in place in a study of the growth of terms for the element of sensation in the definition of the soul proper.
The possible emphasis with which the "soul of man" was dis- tinguished from any other fax*] in statements for the Pythago- reans draws a line between the popular term and the term for a kinetic principle. This distinction occurred in the traditional oath: "By him who transmitted to our soul the tetraktys, which has the spring and root of ever flowing nature." (For the apeTepa. $VX<L cf. avOpuirov ^vx'h of Herodotus, II, 123 where he ascribed the doctrine of immortality to the Egyptians and to the Pythagoreans. A further instance occurs in a statement of Pythagorean divisions of the soul — Alex. Polyh. ap. Diog. VIII, 30.)
The term Ke<£aXd replaces \l/vxa. in one form of the oath. (Cf. Aet. Dox. 280 and R. P. 65 (a).) (Od. 2, 237 has /ce<£aXcu for \l/vxal of Od. 3, 74.) For the iraya aevaov </>u<rea?s 'plfana T' of the oath cf. 71-77777 KCU apx^ Kivriffews of Plato. (Phaedr. 245 C.)
The terms aBavaros (Hipp. Dox. 557) and a<£0apros (Dox. 392) were traditionally ascribed to Pythagoras for ^vx"h- The term aevaos of the oath contributes to the notion of "eternity" so often connected with the Ionian concept of motion.
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22 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Doxographic tradition (Act. Dox. 280) assigned to Pythagoras dpxat . . . 01 apidjioi /cat <7U/-t/zerptat at kv rourots, as Kat apfjiovias KaXet. Of the dpxal, continued the doxographer, one tends toward the creative and form-giving cause which is intelligence, that is god (kiri TO TroirjTLKov CUTIOV Kat eldutov, oirep kariv vovs 6 0e6s) and the other tends toward the passive and material cause, which is the visible universe, (tiri TO TraOrjTiKdv TC Kat V\IKOV,
OTTep kffTlV 6 OpCLTOS KOO-jUOS.)
Although we may question this assertion for Pythagoras him- self, the words of the early representatives of this school indicate a tendency toward dualism and a probable use of the term ^u%i? for the principle of motion.
If we allow for doctrines peculiar to the philosophers in the west (Cf. Arist. Met. 987 a. 15), we find a decided correspondence between early Pythagorean and early Ionian terminology. For Pythagoras daijjMves were ^uxiKat ouoiat. (Aet. Dox. 307.) Ac- cording to secondary sources, Hippasus of Metapontum held TreTrepaffjj.€vov tlvai TO irav Kat detKt^ryrov. (Diog. L. VIII, 84.)
For Hippasus (and Heraclitus) we have from Aristotle (Met. 984, a. 7) the word xup as his dpxr/. Theophrastus (Dox. 475) filled in with ev Kat Kivovptvov Kat TrtTrepaffjjievov. Hippasus was again named with Heraclitus in a statement containing for TTVP the term deos (Cf. Clem. Protr. Vor. p. 31.) Aetius (Dox. 388) added to these the name of Parmenides in the statement 17 if/vxy - • • TrupcbSrjs.
A recurrence of thought gives an apx'n one and moved and here and there identified with Beds', the term ^xh then partakes of the qualitative determinateness of the double first principle. A recognition of the growing ideas of the early Pythagoreans should release them from the class of hylozoistic monists.
An instance of the use of ^ux1? at this time as a philosophical term to connote life may be found in the words of Epicharmus (480 B. C.). In the following first hand fragment (Vor. p. 91) Epicharmus marked a transition later to be noted :
dXX' 6<T<ra irep £77, TravTa Kat yv&jjLrjv <=x€t "
OV TtKT€t
f COPT (a) dXX' €7rto£et Kat Trotet
The context here differs from that in which the expression is found as a citation for Thales. When \f/vx"n is
EARLY PYTHAGOREAN TERMS 23
used in a statement regarding man, the element of motion is for us covered by the element of life, but for pre-Socratic philosophers there was as yet no formal distinction of immanent and transient activity.
An epigram of Epicharmus (Vor. p. 100) may be noted for a possible identification of 777 and 6eos. Again, his terms in a fragment (Vor. p. 93) wherein vovs was distinguished from all else command attention as expressions for faxy proper on the side of perception.
Even in his so-called monism, the Pythagorean divided the underlying substratum of things sometimes into two and sometimes into ten principles. dpt0/*6s, said Aristotle (Met. 986 a. 15) the Pythagoreans considered dpx*?, and of number the elements (oTotxeta) were TO &PTLOV KCLL TO TrepLTTov (Cf. Met. 985, b. 25.)
Aristotle placed Alcmaeon among those who held at dpxat dixa. Aside from this doctrine peculiar to himself as a Pythagorean ("and they seemed to be speaking about another heaven and other bodies than those perceived by senses" Met. 1090, a. 34) Alcmaeon continued in the same direction as the lonians. A term for per- petual motion occurs in De Anima (405 a 29) where Aristotle assigned to Alcmaeon a reason for the immortality of \f/vx"n- There if/vx'n is aj9a.va.Tos on account of its resemblance to ot d0d*>arot and it possesses this likeness by reason of being ever in motion (cbs dei Kivov^kvrf}. Aristotle further said that Alcmaeon had held Kiveladai, yap /cat TO, 0eta TravTa avvex&s det. The term TO. dela as standing for the heavenly bodies (De An. 405 b. I) is the evident contribution of popular belief.
Aristotle noted (De. An. 404 a. 18) that "some of the Pythago- reans" identified if/vxy and TO. kv T<# dept £u<r/-iara while others again called \f/vx"n TO TCLVTCL KLVOVV.
To Alcmaeon was assigned the opinion 0eot . . . . ot do-repes etcrt e^vxoL ovTes. (Clem. Protr. Vor. p. 102.) Built on the De Anima statement for Alcmaeon is the assertion of Aetius (Dox. 386) which repeats dittos Kivrjcns and gives ^vxrj as <£uerts avTOKlvr)Tos. The term <f>vai,s here recalls Plato's speculation (Cratyl. 399 D-400 A) that the word i^uxi? is derived from the expression 77 fyvviv 6x€t KGU €x«. Diog. Laert. VIII, 83 said that Alcmaeon held ^x1? to be aBavaTos and Kivelvdai (rvvexus-
It is doubtful whether we have in Philolaus an instance of a purely kinetic fax*]- The term occurs with the conventional
24 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
force in several fragments of Philolaus. (Cf. Vor. 243, 244, 254.) We meet with interesting and prophetic forms of expression in a doubtful citation for Philolaus regarding Oeos. (Cf. Vor. 247.)
Worthy of note for us is the fragment of Philolaus (Vor. 239) which says: a Averts 5' ev ro> /coo^ico apfjLoxOrj e£ airelpuv re /cat TrepdLvovTuv. (Cf. Act. Dox. 283.)
\ further instance of the harmony idea which illustrates the natural demand for a directive and harmonizing principle occurs in a statement of Philolaus (Vor. 241) which granted to dtStos evcra /cat aura a (f>v<n,s a certain 0cta /cat OVK avOpuTrivi] yvuais. He significantly added here: advvaTov rjs /ca aurats (rats dpxats) Koo'iJL'rjdrjvai, el JJLT) apjAovla eireyevro. We meet the term Kparelv also in another expression of the idea of the harmonizing and ordering force of Philolaus. (Procl. in Tim. Vor. 234.)
The harmony notion was brought to bear on \f/vx"fi proper in Aristotle's account of "a certain other opinion." (Cf. De An. 407 b. 30). ^vx'h is there ap^ovia TLS — that is Kpaons /cat (rvvdeais evavriuv. Plato (Phaedo 85 E) identified if/vxy of Philo- laus with apuovLa TLS wav and he further said (Polit. 1340 b. 18) that some of the "wise men" held that the soul has harmony and others that it was itself harmony.
A new term for Philolaus is found (Theol. Arith. Vor. 235) as \I/vxw-s & «£dSt, following Aristotle's identification of ^ux?7 Kal vovs with TWV apiB^v irddos (Cf. Met. 985 b 30).
The false fragment for Philolaus (Stob. Eel. Vor. 247), lending itself to the doctrine of the world soul, contains the expression dpxd rds KivfjffLos re /cat juera/3oXas and the significant combina- tion vovs /cat \^ux^-
Ecphantus of Syracuse, if faithfully represented by Hippolytus (Dox. 566), must be added to the number of those using the term if/vx'n as a kinetic force. In him too we see the combination vovs /cat -^vxh- For Ecphantus (Dox. 566) ra ff^nara were moved HTjre UTTO jSdpous fji^re Tr\rjj^s but vw6 Oelas Si^djuecos which Ecphan- tus, according to the doxographer, called vovs /cat ^vx^- (Cf. Plut. Dox. 217 where for Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle vovs 6 KIVOVV was said to be do-co/iaros.)
Although the terms ascribed to the early Pythagorean philos- ophers are often doubtful or colored, yet they bear evidence of the survival of ^vx~n as a term for a kinetic principle, at the same time foreshadowing the terminology of an actual distinction of matter and force.
3. TERMS OF HERACLITUS
The history of Ionian philosophy after 504 B. C. can be traced in first-hand sources as well as in the records of opinions. The terms in the fragments of Heraclitus, proverbially obscure, are influenced by the two phases of a theory more than half in line with the early Ionian solutions and yet carrying a new element of thought. The vague and figurative expression of a force apart from things appears to have begun with Heraclitus.
In a confession of his own effort for precision of expression Heraclitus says (Frag. 2 (Bywater) Vor. p. 61): "Men seem un- skilled when they make trial of words and matters such as I am setting forth in my effort to discriminate each thing according to its nature and to tell what its state is."
The fragments of this heir of the early lonians offer terms for the material principle, for the element of motion, and for the process by which things came from fire. ^vx"n in a kinetic sense appears to have been used by Heraclitus.
The directive phase of irvp is shown in Frag. 28 (Vor. p. 71) where the thunderbolt is said to direct the course of all things, (oicudfav) (Cf. Frag. 21, Vor. 67 where TrpTjarrjp is one of the irvpos rpowaL) The term oicud£eLV derived from ota£, the handle of the rudder, recalls the Kv^pvdv of Anaximander. Heraclitus himself used Kvpcpvav in relation to yvco^rj of Frag. 19 (Vor. 68). A further attempt to unfold two principles out of irvp was seen by Hip- polytus in the use by Heraclitus (Frag. 24, Vor. 71) of the words XprjvfMxrvvri and Kopos. Hippolytus thought that "want" was the process of arrangement (Sia/c60>c?7(7is) by fire and that "satiety" was the tKirvpuais, and so this commentator decided that irvp was <f)p6vLiJ.os and called it TTJS Stouiycreajs ruv 6Xcoj> atrtos. The activity of irvp may have been further described in Frag. 26 (Vor. 71). Heraclitus characteristically expressed his pan- metabolism in Frags. 41-42 (Vor. 64).
Frag. 20 (Vor. 66) offers important terms: "Order (KOCT/XOS) the same for all things, no one of the gods or men has made, but it always was and is and ever shall be an ever living fire — wvp dei^coof." For the oure rts Qeuv cure avBp&Truv e-jroLrjae of this frag- ment cf. Frag. 65 (Vor. 67) where wisdom (TO ao<t>ov) is tv and is willing and yet unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus. The
25
26 . PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
"process" is found in the same fragment (20) in the terms aTTTOjuej'os and aTroa^evvv]ji,€vos and this "kindling and quenching" took place according to fixed measure. (p.krpa). Frag. 77 (Vor 66) gives the same words for the process where Heraclitus said that man like a light (<j>aos) is kindled and put out. Frag. 78 (Vor. 74) also emphasizes the subjective view-point and applies directly to the phases of mortal life the universal law of change.
The words of Heraclitus so far noted mark a tendency on the part of the philosopher to draw out the note of efficiency in irvp, and it remains to be seen whether he ever expressed this aspect of a.px'n m terms of faxy- Heraclitean terms for the definition of \f/vx'n proper on the side of sensation occur in several fragments where the conventional force of \f/vxr) became philosophical. How- ever, the term ^vx'h was evidently employed in a kinetic sense by Heraclitus. In the spurious fragment (131 Bywater) faxy would undoubtedly bear that sense. (Cf. Diog. L. IX, 7— Travra \f/vx&v elvai KCLI daipovuv 7r\rjprj.) Frag. 71 (Vor. 68) ifsvxfis ireipaTo, OVK av c£cup6io may hold a survival of kinetic \l/vxrj- (Cf. dTTctpos . . . apx-f) of Anaximander.) Frag. 68 (Vor. 67) states that it is death (da.va.Tos) to ^uxdt to become water, for e£ u5aros 5e ^vx'n (ylvtTai). (Oavaros here stands for 17 eis 'drepov aroix^-ov /ieraj3o\i7 according to Philo. R. P. 38 a.) With this we take Frag. 25 (Vor. 73) where fire lives in the death of earth and air lives in the death of fire : water lives in the death of air, and air in that of water, (ftj irvp rbv yys davarov K. r, X. (Cf. Plut. de E. 18, 392 C-Vor. 73). A reconciliation of Frag. 68 and Frag. 25 is found in Frags. 41-42 (Vor. 64) where Heraclitus uses the new term avadvfjLLacrdai.
In his elementary attempt to fix psychological values, Heraclitus may have been affected in his use of tvx'h by the terms for the process. (Cf. Frags. 77-78.) Arius Didymus (Dox. 471) ascribed to Heraclitus a theory for \j/vxr) proper showing this tendency. "Wishing to make it clear that at if/vxat- aJ'aflu/ucojuepcu voepai ael ylvovTCLL, he likened them to rivers." Moreover, we have (Dox. 471) the inference for Heraclitus that \l/vxy was CUO-^TIKT)
It seems clear that the term \l/vxn will bear our interpretation in this later Ionian thinker. Standing for the principle of motion, was seemingly identified with one of the four elements just
TERMS OF HERACLITUS 27
as the material principle seemed to have been identified with irvp. (R. P. 38 b notes the explanation of Philoponus for whom the Heraclitean irvp was 17 £rjpa di>a0ujuia<ns and who also said
Aristotle's statement (De An. 405 a 25) for Heraclitus takes over for faxy proper the earlier thinker's terms for kinetic faxy- Here Aristotle, as in the case of Thales, qualified his assertion that Heraclitus identified apxrj and ^vxr) by the words "if he identifies it with 17 dya0u/ua<ns from which he derives all other things." Aristotle added the terms do-wjuarcbTaros and 'peov det for the if/vx'n-o-PX'n of Heraclitus. Aetius (Dox. 389) represented Heraclitus distinguishing between 17 rov KOCT/XOU $vx"n (which he called avadv^iaffLS kit ruv vypuv) and the ^vx'n & ™Zs T4x>ts- Theodoret (Dox. 386) gave for the \J/vxt of Heraclitus the term
Further secondary authorities keep Heraclitus in line with the early lonians. Aristotle (Met. 984 a. 7) named him with Hippasus as holding irvp for his apxrj- (Cf. also Aet. Dox. 292.) Theo- phrastus (Dox. 475) elaborated this statement with the terms ev and KWoviJLtvos and TreirepaffiJievos, with TTVKUV<TI,S and with navuffis as terms for the process. The Heraclitean process was thus described by Aetius (Dox. 283) : "As this (TTUP) is quenched all things come into order. (KO(7juo7roieZ<r0cu)." In the description of the origin of earth, water and air from fire, as conceived by Hera- clitus, Aetius (Dox. 283) offered a repetition of the new term dva0u/ua(70ai found in Frags. 41-42.
"Motion" for Heraclitus was variously described by the second- ary authorities. Plato (Cratyl. 402 A) said that for Heraclitus TTOLvra x^P^ K^ °^v M^ci. To the followers of Heraclitus (ot *pkovrts) he ascribed the doctrine iravTa Kivtlrai (Cf. Theaet. 180 D-181 A.) Again, Aristotle (De An. 405 a. 28) said that Heraclitus thought that all things were in idvrivis. Aetius (Dox. 320) distinguished for Heraclitus between eternal motion (dtStos KLvriffis) and ^Qapr-q /averts. Aetius (Dox. 303) offered for irvp the term d(5tos.
Up to this point Heraclitus had not departed from the old order, but the personification of a dual activity in some of the fragments of his work marks a turning point in the early efforts of Greek philosophy. The term epts and apuovla vaguely expressed the notion of a force apart from things.
28 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Frags. 20 and 65 would put Heraclitus philosophically among the aOtoi. In Frag. 36 (Vor. 71) 6 0eos was roXe/zos dp^vrj by one phase of the power there ascribed in the term dXXotouo-flai. In Frag. 44 (Vor. 69) we find TroXejuos TTCLVTUP pev Trarrjp tan iravruv 51 P<HTL\€vs. Frag. 62 (Vor. 73-74) gives both terms epis and TroXejuos and all things arise /car' epiv. (6(^77 is here identified with epis.) Frag. 46 (Vor. 63) combines both harmony and strife. "Opposition unites and from differences comes the most beautiful harmony." (xaXXto-rr/ apuovia.) Aristotle (Eud. Eth. 1234 a. 25) named Heraclitus as blaming Homer (S107) for his wish that strife would pass away.
Heraclitus himself was probably unconscious of the implications of the notion he conveyed in thus imperfectly speaking in terms of dualism. His other force, ^vxn inherent in dpx^> was not yet supplanted in his mind and survived here and there in his term- inology as the kinetic phase of his irvp-apxr}. Frag. 18 (Vor. 77) where ao<J>6v is TTCLVTUV Kex^piff^vov and Frag. 19 (Vor. 68) by the words yv^rj ore?? eKvpepvrjve iravra. 6td TTOLVTUV foreshadow later terms for a real second cause which will arise with the passing of kinetic \f/vxr) into vovs.
4. ELEATIC TERMS
Before tracing the idea of an external force as developed by the lonians, it is worth while to examine the terms of the Eleatic philosophers for the notion of efficient cause and for the ever growing tendency toward immateriality. These philosophers furnished terms for the powers of ^vxh proper on the side of knowledge and perception, but it is doubtful whether there is any trace in their writings of the term \l/vx"h in a kinetic sense.
Xenophanes was radical in his differences with the earlier philosophers. For him there was no change, and the unity was God. He was the first to philosophize on the Deity. Aristotle and Theophrastus have noted his method as unusual. Aristotle criticized Xenophanes for failing to make things clear. "Looking up into the broad heavens," Xenophanes asserted that unity is God. (Cf. Met. 986 b. 22.) Theophrastus admitted, according to Simplicius (Phys. Dox. 480), that the record of the opinion of Xenophanes came from some other source than to-ropia -rrepl
The effort of Xenophanes was strongest toward ideas and terms that would take away false notions of the deity that was being. Since for him there was no motion, a second principle, even as an aspect of apxri, should have been out of place. In some of the fragments, however, we find a reversion to the Ionian attitude. The terms 71-77717 and yeverup in Frag. 11 (Karsten) (Vor. p. 51) and the eK 7(1(775 iravra statement of Frag. 8 indicate a physi- ologer's interest. Earth and water form the twofold source in Frags. 9-10. In Frag. 9 we are all sprung (eKyevonevBa) from earth and water. In Frag. 10 all things oaa. ylvovr' rjdt (frvovrai are earth and water. In Frag. 12, offering forms for the limitation of one phase of the source, we find the terms TreZpas and aireipov.
The doctrine peculiar to Xenophanes and his school is found in Frag. 4 where he said Being or God always abides in the same place, not at all moved, (mvovnevos ovbkv). A strong effort for a term for incorporeality is found in a fragment usually accredited to Xenophanes. (Frag. 2.) The climax of the theodicy of Xenophanes is reached in the magnificent hexameter of Frag. 3: "Without effort (God) swings all things by the power of thought." (v6ov <t>ptvi) (Cf. Diog. L. IX, 19).
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30 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
The sole instance of the use of fax*! by Xenophanes occurs in Frag. 18 where he attested the acceptance of the doctrine of metempsychosis by Pythagoras. Diog. L. IX, 19 ascribed to Xenophanes the term irvev^a for his ^vx'fj-
Parmenides, striving to distinguish things according to opinion from things according to truth, although affected by the ideas and terms of Xenophanes, still reverted to old notions and time-worn terms. In his "metaphysics" according to reason (/card rov \6yov), as a consistent Eleatic denying all movement, he would have been excluded from the ranks of thinkers whose terms offer evidence for if/vx^i as a principle of motion. Nevertheless, an examination of the terms in which he expressed his "cosmology of the apparent" discloses a tendency to give to his irvp-apx'h an aspect of force.
Aristotle, censuring Xenophanes and Melissus for crudeness, said (Met. 986 b. 27) that Parmenides seemed to speak in some places with more care. OuaXXoj> fiKkiruv) "But being compelled to account for phenomena," continued Aristotle, "he assumed that things are one from the standpoint of reason (/card rov \byov) but plural from the standpoint of sense, (/card TT\V ai<r6r}(TLi>) "
Parmenides (Verses 83-84, Vor. p. 120) said that true belief completely rejected generation (7 kvevis) and destruction (6Xe0pos). Again in v. 77 generation is extinguished (dTreo-jSeorai) and des- truction is incredible. (dTruoros) Parmenides (v. 100) included generation (ylveadai) and destruction (6XXu<r0ai) among those things which mortals believed true but which he would himself consider but a name, (ow/za).
In the poem of Parmenides entitled rd Trpos a\rjdeLav we find the privative terms ayevrjTos and av&XeOpos (v. 59), drpc/z^s (v. 60), aKtvijTOS (v. 82), dreXeo-ros (v. 60), dreXeurrjros (v. 88), airavaros (v. 83), avapxos (v. 83) — all applied to TO kbv. His other expressions describing Being are important as terms later to be adopted generally by philosophy. (Cf . Verses 60, 62, 78-80, and 89).
The terms applied by Parmenides in his philosophy rd Trpos bbfrv to a new force on the way to the clear expression of the idea of efficient cause may be regarded as the results of the efforts of Ionian thinkers for terms for their principle of motion. Aris- totle's assertion (Met. 984 b. I) that none of those who affirmed that all is one understood the nature of an apxh rijs K<,vr)<reus ex-
ELEATIC TERMS 31
cepted Parmenides in so far as this Eleatic in reality held two causes. Aristotle (Met. 986 b. 33) especially noted the terms wvp and 777 used by Parmenides for his two air Lai. Parmenides himself (v. 113) said that there are two /uop<£ai which men have determined to name. These he described (vv. 116-117) as ethereal flame of fire (fine, (TJTTIOS), rarefied (dpcuos), and everywhere identified with itself) and (v. 119) flameless darkness, dense and heavy in character. (Cf. v. 122 for the terms <£dos and vv£). In v. 125 he gave to 5cu/ioji/ the term Kvftepvav.
In v. 120 Parmenides proposed to tell every seeming arrange- ment (5iaKo<rjuos) of his two principles. Aristotle (Met. 984 b. 25) cited the verse of Parmenides (132) which names "Epcos as the first of all deal. This "Desire" Aristotle called an airLa the activity of which he expressed by the words Kivclv and Parmenides (v. 127) mentioned a bainuv rj TTCLVTCL Simplicius (Phys. 39, 12) noted the TTOLTJTLKOP element of thought here. However correct may be the identification (Cf. Aet. Dox. 335) of AI/CT? (v. 69) and of 'AvayKrj (v. 86) with this dalnuv (v. 127), the doxographer saw in this bai^v (which he called Ku/Sep^rts /cat /cXTjpouxos) a source of motion and generation for all things.
The tendency of the Doxographers (cf . tradition for Pythagoras and for Heraclitus) to give an efficient aspect to one phase of the dpxr? may be seen in a statement of Theophrastus (Dox. 482) for Parmenides where TTVP is regarded as TTOLOVV. (Cf. also Hippolytus Dox. 564.) It is a question whether these statements are quite consistent with the concessions of Parmenides to popular opinion. He appears to have tended toward a second cause in his dalfju^v and at the same time to have emphasized the double aspect of apx*) by the terms irvp and 777.
The term irvp^dijs was attributed to Parmenides for ^i/xr?. (Cf. Aet. Dox. 388). Elsewhere (Aet. Dox. 443 and Theophr. Dox. 500) there is some evidence of the confusion of \l/vxh as a physical principle and \l/vxh perceptive and animate.
As a pupil of Xenophanes and a contemporary of Heraclitus, Parmenides possibly fell heir to terms by which he expressed his vague idea of a second cause, but that later division of philosophy which treated of \f/vx^i proper is particularly indebted to him for the distinction of truth and opinion.
32 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Zeno, the double-tongued Eleatic dialectician (Cf. Simpl. Phys. 30 r 138, 30), confined himself to proofs of the unity of being by a method earning Aristotle's irapo\oyi^a6ai. (Cf. Physics 239 b. 5.) Zeno brought out nothing peculiar to himself, but he started further difficulties. (Cf. Plut. Dox. 581.) Diog. L. IX, 72 noted Zeno's Eleaticism in his superficial denial of motion. The earlier terms dittos and aTreipos are attributed (Aet. Dox. 303) to Zeno and to Melissus. The doxographer there also as- signed to Zeno the term deia for his ^ux1?- In one of the apeo-Kovra of Zeno (Diog. L. IX. 29) we find ^vxy called /cpdjua.
Although consistent with true Eleaticism, Melissus offered interesting and significant terms. The fragments of the work Trepi <£u(recos fj Trepi TOV ovros bring out his method and indicate his inheritance of terminology. The Eleatic denial of motion was expressed by him in Frag. 10 (Vor. p. 149) thus: (TO kbv) Kivoviievov 5£ OVK av elrj. Discussing KOCTJUOS in Frag. 6, Melissus used the terms erepoioDo-fleu and ^ra.Koan.r]Sriva.L.
Simplicius, significantly prefacing Frag. 8 (Vor. 149), affirmed that Melissus meant Being to be aff&jjLarov. This fragment seems to indicate a very vague notion of incorporeality, and yet we cannot read the expression del crcbjua w exw as the contem- porary of Melissus read it. Olympiodorus (Vor. 142) represented Melissus employing as terms for his apxy the words /ua, cudvijTos, aTreipos (Cf. Parmenides v. 104) and 0eZos. (Cf. Aet. Dox. 303.)
The Eleatic philosophers, not so far from the world of sense as their own apparent efforts and the traditional titles of their works would imply, nevertheless enriched philosophic terminology and laid up for later thinkers modes of expression which could fairly convey newly conceived ideas. The field of philosophy had already begun to widen and the growth of tendencies in speculation concerning nature, in minds not wholly unaccustomed to notions shading into the idea of the incorporeal, could not fail to be influ- enced by terms for the activity that was first expressed by kinetic
5. SUMMARY OF TERMS OF PRE-SOCRATIC DYNAMISM
Allowing always for the fact that we are analyzing philosophy alive in men's minds when put out in certain terms, we find the dynamism of the predecessors of Anaxagoras expressed in three answers to the first question of philosophy. In one sense we may say that these early thinkers found three ways of avoiding the question of causality. The simplest course was the one taken by the early lonians who, "not at all displeased with themselves," said ev TO inroKtlntvov (Cf. Arist. Met. 984 a. 30), including an unexplained motion in the substratum of things. The Eleatics avoided the question for the time by altogether denying motion. Aristotle saw in this course the method of those who saw the difficulty and were conquered by it. (Cf. Met. 984.) Heraclitus took yet another course in his assertion that all is motion.
The early lonians reduced the many to a "one" in terms of physical matter and took for granted as their primitive substance a physical substratum which was eternally moved. Their genius for relations had, very probably, not so far exercised itself as to combine with their first principle physical things and the move- ment observed in qualitative change (not then so much as reduced to physical energy). This gap, if at all evident to them, they bridged by terms, old or new, for purely accidental change. A set of terms for the mode of action of their dynamic "one" is found along with the set of terms for the "one" itself, and the formula ^vxy-apx'n covers mere hylokineticism.
The phase of the notion of causality to which efficient action is in last analysis reduced was presented by the Pythagoreans, who left the sense-perceived world to answer the same question which had proposed itself to the early lonians. The Pythagoreans raised the quantitative property of things into that other sphere where Plato was to find his "Idea" and Aristotle his "Form." We have no means of knowing from the words of the Pythagoreans the nature of the contents of the quantity expressed by the earlier of these philosophers in terms which hold them in regions of matter. As physical speculation widened, that mode of action expressed in the condition of proportion was accounted for by the Pythagoreans in terms for "harmony." The union of the opposites of which their first principle was composed called for expression
33
34 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
supplied here and there by ^vx'h and even by \j/vxri *ai vovs denoting only a physical condition.
Before the Eleatics began in any way to develop the notion of cause, they struck a note of criticism. Before they attempted to account for things they tried to reduce the object of their inquiry by excluding from philosophy what they called non-Being. Although they fixed no ground for the distinction of truth and opinion, yet their efforts in this direction served to raise and to leave open a future question for philosophy. If judged by their terms, the attempt of the philosophers of Elea to get away from sense in knowledge and from physical in object was far from successful. From the "all" of Thales to the "unity" and "Being" of Parmenides there was certainly an advance in terms, and yet notions transcendent at first sound were probably on the level with the Eleatic concept of Being akin to our idea of space. However certainly the ideas of being and of bodilessness are reduced, on evidence afforded by their own words, to physical counterparts, philosophy cannot but be grateful for the contribu- tion of such terms as those of Parmenides for his "Being." There should have been for the Eleatics no chasm from the many to the one, and yet in their inconsistency or in their concessions to popular thought they, too, accounted for plurality in terms of accidental change. Parmenides may have been merely describing physical conditions of union for the two phases of his primitive substance in words that now seem to carry the true note of efficiency.
The time had not yet come for philosophy to see the final relation of things and their ultimate cause, but meanwhile thinkers here and there were defining a less inadequate notion of the Deity. The early Ionian (to adapt the words of Saint Augustine (De Civ. Dei VIII, 2) for Anaximenes) "nee . . . negavit aut tacuit, non tamen ab (Ipso) . . . factum . . . credidit." If, in the eyes of the old religion, to be a philosopher was to be cifleos, Truth soon supplied itself as an object for the mind of the philos- opher without a God. A study of the growth of terms for the "Deity" and for "mind" shows the Pythagorean and the Eleatic philosophers at their best in these regions of thought.
Heraclitus addressed himself to the genetffc as opposed to the static phase of things. No longer primarily concerned with that from which things originated, philosophic speculation now began to ask how the world came to be what it is, the very question
SUMMARY OF TERMS OF PRE-SOCRATIC DYNAMISM 35
that would compel these thinkers to arrive at the true notion of efficiency and all that it implies. Heraclitus was critical in his acceptance of sense evidence, but, although he looked beneath for reality, from his terms we may conclude that he saw only physical reality. For him the mode of activity expressed in the order that remains was as real as the continual passing of the individual, the truth of which he arrived at by a Greek guess. Ultimately a dynamist, Heraclitus spoke for mechanism the strongest words thus far found in philosophical terminology. So long as the relation of the material cause and its activity was expressed as Heraclitus expressed the relation of "fire" and its motion, kinetic faxy had still survived. Although he seemed to raise "fire" above the other elements which he postulated with it, his terms sometimes indicate that he conceived \f/vxrj in the sense of a more special energy. If there was a definite sense in his use of the term aelfaov for irvp — an actual introduction of the element of life in the motion of his dpxi? — and if he used if/vx'n as another term for the activity of apxrj, philosophy in the person of Heraclitus was on the point of seeing for the first time the immanent character of \f/vxr} as a physical activity. (Cf. Alcmaeon who, on secondary authority (Aet. Dox. 386), gave to $ueris the term avTOKlvrjTos). The element of immanency of the KlvrjffLs aldios of the first apxr} was not immediately evident to the first philosophers. The force directly combined with matter, which they called through dearth of words 6e6s and ^uxi?> still continued as a \f/vxr} principle of motion. Dynamism or hylo- kineticism we may call a system inaccurately described as hylozoism.
The notion of efficient cause may have entered with Heraclitus. He may have meant to convey by his epts a new idea of which he half saw the need, and yet this "Strife" might have been for him but a phase of deos (Frag. 36) in the sense of merely describing a physical condition. His conception of TTUP as de# uov is most noteworthy. If kinetic ^u%?7 had up to this time for the early thinkers no immanency, we take it as an evidence of the sincerity of their quest that they henceforth strove to separate matter and its motion.
6. TERMS OF EMPEDOCLES
From a glimmer of the idea of efficiency in the figurative forces epis and appovia existing for Heraclitus along with the dynamic aspect of his first principle irvp, we pass to Empedocles who, in his efforts to reconcile Heraclitus and the Eleatics, was the first (if we accept the word of Aristotle, Met. 985 a. 21) to express the notion of efficiency.
In his endeavors to determine true knowledge, Empedocles aimed at accuracy of expression. He believed that it is hard to get at the mind of man (vv. 367-368 Stein) and he realized that custom often dictates forms of expression. (Cf. v. 44.) He bade his hearers look with the eye of the mind (wos) at the well pointed report (v. 363) which he assumed they demanded from him as from an oracle. His effort appears again in his desire to speak forcefully in case there had been in his former words anything defective, (v. 96.)
Aristotle fixed the method of study of the philosophy of Empe- docles when he advised (Met. 985 b. 32) that we heed the Siawua of the pre-Socratic rather than a ^eXXi£"erai \kyuv. Although his expression was characteristically poetical and mythological, Empedocles has been placed for us in Aristotle's Poetics (1447 b. 17) as a <f>vai,o\6yos rather than a TTOITJTTJS.
Trying to work out a system where things are one and many (TroXXd re KO.L ev) (Cf. Plato Sophist. 242 D and Arist. Phys. 187, a. 20), Empedocles, in a reaction against prevailing thought, said that "fools" and those to whom far-reaching thoughts (v. 45) are denied think that "mingling" is coming into being and that "separation" is destruction. (Cf. vv. 36-39.)
Empedocles postulated the four elements as his material cause. The term 71-77777 occurs with him in v. 128 and the form dp%77 in v. 130. The elements are named in mythological terms in vv. 33-35. In vv. 104-107 Empedocles asserted that mortals and even OeoL arise from these elements which appear to have been also the means of the power <t>povelv. (Cf. v. 336-337.)
Aristotle's statement (Met. 985 a. 23) that Empedocles set irvp by itself (/ca0' auro) is witness to the tendency of those who are still dynamists to limit the activity of the material cause of one element and to make the rest of the apxy passive. Although Empedocles
36
TERMS OF EMPEDOCLES 37
seems to have made one of these elements predominant by setting "fire" over against the other three, still here and there he gave them all equal power. (Cf. vv. 87-89 and v. 112.) To "fire" in particular belong powers contained in the term Kparelv (Cf. v. 112). In v. 263 "fire" separating (KPLVO^VOV) caused men and women to arise (avayciv) . A doctrine peculiarly Empedoclean (vv. 265-267) maintains that irvp through its desire to reach its like, caused ouXcx^uels TVTTOL to spring up out of the earth. In a special application of the "elemental fire" (dry 67 iov irvp) to the theory of vision he used the term ravawrepos (v. 325) to denote the refined character of his irvp. However, although "fire" is more important than the other elements, it, too, plays a sub- ordinate part. (Cf. vv. 215-216.)
The mention of KuTrpts (v. 215) brings us to a consideration of the forces of Empedocles which Aristotle (Met. 985 a. 21) named as 3>iXta and NeZ/cos. Empedocles usually introduced these forces along with the elements and may even have used them as modes of expression for mere physical conditions of repulsion and attraction as Heraclitus used the terms "Strife" and "Harmony." (Cf. vv. 102-103, 66-68, 248-251.)
The activity of his own "Strife" and "Love" in the "process" was brought out by Empedocles in w. 171-175. Terms for the motion of things coming into being are found in vv. 69-73 where he tried to reconcile continual change and immobility. The terms for the forces of Empedocles vary. He usually expressed them by the words Net/cos and ^L\6rrjs (171-172). V. 250 has the term epis coupled with $1X67775 of v. 248. Again, in w. 190-195 he used 'AQpodiTT] and NcZicos "which wrought the birth of things."
"Love" under the names of Aphrodite and Kypris doubtless held the strongest note of efficiency for Empedocles. (Cf. v. 213, 215- 216, 240-241.) Empedocles himself was probably one of those whom he mentioned (405-407) as having had no 6eb<s but Kvpins Bao-t'Xeta.
The element of chance enters in v. 196 and again in v. 174 and v. 255. The term rvxy occurs in v. 195 where by the IOTTJS of TVXIJ all things Tre(f>p6vrjKev. (Cf. v. 231 where it is the property of all things to have (frpbv^ais and a share of j>w/*a.)
Plato (Leg. X 889 B) named Empedocles among those who relied on 06(7ts and rvxn rather than on rkx^i or vovs or any 0eos. (We note in this passage the term fyvxos which Plato applied to the elements of Empedocles.)
38 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Aristotle (De gen. et corr. 333 b. 20) said that for Empedocles "Love" separated the elements, which were before 0eos in origin. Empedocles himself identified these with Otoi (Cf. vv. 104-107.) A noteworthy attempt on the part of Empedocles to fix the notion of a deity is found in vv. 137-138 where a sphere rejoicing in solitude is said to have been fixed in a vessel of harmony. Nearest to incorporeality of all his notions and recalling a like attempt on the part of Xenophanes are the ideas conveyed by the terms of vv. 344-351 where a divine being is defined as sacred and ineffable mind alone. (<t>prjv tepi? KCU d0eo-$aros.)
The term ^uxi? is not found in the extant fragments of Empe- docles. His commentators used it when giving his doctrine of metempsychosis (Cf. Hipp. Ref. Dox. 558), but dv^os is his own word for the life of animals (v. 414) and of men (v. 435) who have changed their nop<f>*l (v. 430). The word (twos is found in v. 32 for the spirit in Hades.
The verses 333-335 of Empedocles were quoted by Aristotle (De An. 404 b. 11) as authority for the statement that for Emped- ocles the elements were apxr) and each element was ^vx'n- (Cf Theophr. Dox. 478 where six apxai were credited to Empedocles.) The terms of Empedocles could not have been omitted in an examination of the growth of words expressing the earliest notion of a real moving cause.
7. TERMS OF ANAXAGORAS.
Aristotle's assertion (Met. 984 a. 11) that Anaxagoras preceded Empedocles in age but followed him in works places Anaxagoras for our purpose. Difficult as it is to fix the dates of the later Ionian philosophers, it is quite impossible exactly to determine the influence and the dependence of each on the ideas and terms of the other. The task of all who followed Heraclitus and the Eleatics was to synthesize the elements of truth in both systems. Anaxa- goras, a true successor of the early lonians, inherited and developed the tendency of Heraclitus to advance toward ideas and terms which would destroy the identification of apxr] and its motion. Anaxagoras was for Aristotle (Met. 984 b. 15) the first "sober thinker," and yet by their "random talking" his predecessors had assisted him in the way of making the terms for his new ideas less inadequate than they would otherwise have been.
His effort for precision of expression, even in a particular instance, shows that Anaxagoras realized the value of accurate terminology. (Cf. Frag. 17, Diels. Vor. 320.) His critical tendency of method may be seen in the apothegm ascribed to him by Aristotle (Met. 1009 b. 25) : "Just such things as men assume will be real for them." Aristotle (Met. 989 b. 4) recognized the efforts of Anaxagoras for terms and noted that while Anaxagoras did not speak rightly or clearly, yet he meant almost the same thing as those who spoke later with greater clearness.
In a study of the terms of Anaxagoras, we find safety only in his own words since the whole tendency of his commentators has been to identify his term vovs with vovs as it came into meaning after Socrates. We have seen a growing tendency on the part of philosophers to fix epistemological values, and yet we find nothing of this in the extant fragments of Anaxagoras. By raising the notion of vovs, semi-popular and particular, to the idea of a directive cause is one way by which Anaxagoras may have come to postulate an efficient force. However, this seems a big step for a thinker at this stage of the development of thought. He might have taken out the if/vxy which was the dynamic term for the motion of the apxr] and have made it the separate cosmothetic force under a kindred term. By some such process as this, we think, Anaxagoras postulated vovs. He did not all at once arrive
39
40 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
at a full realization of the implication of his new idea, and so we find with him \l/vxn remaining in things as a cause of motion (and possibly restricted to animate being) while at the same time its powers had already passed over into vovs.
Before giving attention to the idea peculiar to Anaxagoras, we shall make the transition from the other lonians to him through his terms for what would correspond to the former apxy and Kivrjcris. Terms for the "surrounding mass" (TO irtpikxov) of Anax- agoras are found in Frag. 2 (Vor. 314) and Frag. 14 (Vor. 320). "Air and aether" (arjp /cat al6rjp) occur in Frags. 1 (Vor. 313), 2 (Vor. 314), 12 (Vor. 319). The terms nvclv, airoKpiveaOai, diCLKpiveffdai for "motion" occur in Frag. 13 (Vor. 319). Motion is frequently expressed in terms of "rotation" or "whirling" (Cf. Frag. 12 Vor. 318). Force (Biry) and swiftness as sources of motion are found in Frag. 9 (Vor. 317). One phase of the process of how things came from air and aether is described in Frag. 15 (Vor. 320) as a avyxupelv and an ixxwpelv. (Cf. also Frag. 16 Vor. 320 and Frag. 12 Vor. 319.)
Anaxagoras appears sometimes to have overlooked vovs as a source of special activity and to have substituted for it physical conditions. However, vovs as an omnipresent TTJS Kivfoeus alnov was at all times very real for him. (Cf. Frag. 8 Vor. 317 and Frag. 14 Vor. 320.) In his analysis of things as they now are, Anaxagoras insisted that, excepting vovs, nothing is absolutely separate or capable of existing apart or of itself. Many of his negative statements served only to emphasize the attributes of vovs. He frequently reverted to wavra TTCLVTOS iiolpav juerexci of Frag. 6 (Vor. 316). When things were all together, nothing was clear and distinct by reason of their smallness (UTTO o-^t/cpor^ros) , but finally of whatever "seeds" there were the most (pruv TrXetcrra) each object became and remained distinctly (evdrj\6rara) qualified by their character. (Cf . Frag. 1 Vor. 313 and Frag. 12 Vor. 319.)
In the answer to the question at once suggested by OTUV TrXeZcrra we come upon the notion of a "world of erTrcp/jara" peculiar to Anaxagoras. (0-Trepjuara became for Aristotle TO, 6/zoiojuepr;) . These are described in Frag. 4 (Vor. 315) where Anaxagoras said that in every compound there existed o-irepfiara iravruv xPWaruv.
Anaxagoras, explaining nepl rrjs CLTTOK pier LOS in Frag. 4, made certain mystifying references to another world or another order. Simplicius (Phys. 157, 9) noted this erepa TLS Sta/coo^o-is as
TERMS OF ANAXAGORAS 41
not CU0-077T17 and considered that Anaxagoras spoke cos irepi
and that his Sid/cpio-is was voepd. (Cf. Anaxagoras on "other
world swiftness" in Frag. 9 Vor. 317.)
It is safe to say that the fragments of Anaxagoras containing references to vovs itself are the most important words spoken thus far in philosophy. The phraseology is still far from strict terms for the incorporeal, but we can almost see the efforts of Anaxagoras in his emphasis on the simplicity of vovs as he aims to confer upon it powers yet new.
In Frag. 11 (Vor. 318) vovs is set apart from all other things. The end of Frag. 12 (Vor. 319) contains the same thought. There Anaxagoras maintained that vovs is mixed with no other thing but is ftovos CLVTOS eir' COJTOU. The significant term avroKpar^s occurs in Frag 12. (Cf. Plato, Cratyl. 413 C who gave to the vovs of Anaxagoras the terms auro/cpdrcop, ovOevi fjLeneiyfjLevos, Further terms for vovs are: aireipos and Kparelv and eyicrTOV (Frag. 12). The words XCTTTOTCLTOV iravruv XPV' fjLaTuv Kal KaOapuTCLTov of Frag. 12 indicate that the old striv- ing toward immateriality continued in Anaxagoras.
At this point we may compare with vovs the Heraclitean \6yos and TO (ro<j>6v and yvkw, which are not always clear. In Frag. 2 (Vor. 61) Heraclitus attested to the ignorance of men regarding \6jos and further said that all things ylvevdai Kara TOV \6yov. He complained (Frag. 18 Vor. 77) that no one had yet reached the conclusion that TO cro<j>6v is TTCLVTUV Kexupivntvov. He mentioned yvuM in Frag. 19 (Vor. 68), which Diels renders: "In Einen besteht die Weisheit, die Vernunft zu erkennen, als welche alles und jedes zu lenken weiss." In Frag. 65 (Vor. 67) Heraclitus represented TO ao<t>6v as willing and yet unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus.
If Anaxagoras took up for vovs the ideas of Heraclitus, it cannot but be seen that the yv&n-ri of Anaxagoras is something distinct from vovs itself. However much vovs, through the power by which it €7?co and bitKOffwat, excelled an unthinking agency, it cannot be reduced to one of its own attributes, even to the highest power it possesses.
The only instances of the use of $vxh by Anaxagoras lend them- selves to the interpretation of $vxh as a term for the principle of motion. Frag. 4 (Vor. 315) gives aiBpuiroL Kal TO. aXXa froa off a. x?)* exct. If iK\i? was here actually used in a restricted
42 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
sense as the principle of animation, we may conclude that it was at the point where vovs took its place in the terminology of cosmology that \f/vxrj became peculiar to animate being. The other instance of the Anaxagorean \f/vx~n (Frag. 12) repeats the expression 6aa if/vxyv exet. ^X5? may have been restricted in Frag. 4, but oaa \f/vxr)v exet (Frag. 12) has an extension as wide as ovrjv eKLvrjcrev 6 vovs of Frag. 13 (Vor. 319).
We cannot say how definitely vovs superseded \j/vxr) in the mind of Anaxagoras. In particular applications of vovs to the cosmological process the old way of thinking may have led him to couple \l/vxr) with vovs in portions of his work that have never reached us. Plato (Cratyl. 400 A) cited Anaxagoras as holding that the <£ixns of all things was vovs and that it was faxy which arranged (biaKoa^dv} and controlled (exeu>) all things. (Cf. Doxographic tradition for Ecphantus.) Aristotle's difficulty over the relation of faxy and vovs of Anaxagoras is well known. (Cf. De Anima 404 b 1, 405 a 13, 429 a 18).
It was natural that Plato and Aristotle, whose minds were ruled by Socratic standards and fixed conditions of knowledge, should have been disappointed at the failure of Anaxagoras to apply his doctrine of vovs. The new agency, vovs, was not yet alight with finality for Anaxagoras. It remained for Socrates to quicken vovs into a final cause. In the act of abandoning \f/vxv as a kinetic principle philosophy began to speak in such terms as t&v, €fj.\f/vxos, a\I/vxos and ^VX^CTLS. The real substitute for kin- etic il/vxy would appear only when Greek philosophy had reached its height.
8. TERMS OF THE SUCCESSORS OF ANAXAGORAS.
It is a question whether Anaxagoras deserved the reproach of Aristotle (Met. 985 a. 18 ff .) to the effect that, when he had used vovs as a wxavri irpos T-qv KOffnowouav, he reverted to it only when at a loss for a cause, in other cases accounting for things by any other cause rather than vovs. Philosophy at this period found new life in the doctrine of the vovs of Anaxagoras. Greek thought had been advancing all the way from Thales to Anaxagoras, but the heirs to the terms and ideas of the great pre-Socratic were unable or unwilling to take advantage of their heritage.
There are no extant fragments of the works of Archelaus. Diogenes Laertius (11, 16) has placed him for us as an Athenian or a Milesian, a pupil of Anaxagoras and a teacher of Socrates.
Aetius, Dox. 331, attributed a doctrine to him in these terms: UTTO depfJLov Kal kfjL^vx't'CLS (rv&Trjvai rov KOGIJLOV. For him ayp and vovs were 6 Qeos (Aet. Dox. 302), but the doxographer qualified 0eos as not KOOTXOTTOIOS.
The influence of Anaxagoras on Archelaus is apparent in the statement (Philop. de an. 71, 17 Hayd.) that Archelaus was among those who said that the all was moved UTTO rov vov. (We note in this passage rfj \f/vxy TO KLvelv.) A tendency to employ vovs in a particular sense appears in a statement attributed to Archelaus by Hippolytus wherein he granted vovs to all living things (Dox. 563) .
If the system of Anaxagoras were to be judged only by the representation it received at the hands of Diogenes of Apollonia, then Plato would have been justified in his assertion (Phaedo 98 B) that Anaxagoras made no use of vovs but treated "air" and "aether'* as causes. (Cf. Plato's word aroira as descriptive of these causes.)
Aristotle's statements regarding the aWrjp of Anaxagoras are in place in a consideration of the system of Diogenes. Aristotle (De Caelo 302 a. 31) noted that Anaxagoras used the words irvp and aWrip synonymously.
In an effort to explain the phenomena of animate life, Diogenes limited to living things the vovs of Anaxagoras which Aristotle (De An. 405 a. 13) has called the Anaxagorean dpx^- The term used by Diogenes is vorj<ns and vorjffis was for Aristotle himself (De An. 407 a. 20) vov Kivr)<ns.
43
44 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
Simplicius (Vor. 335) ascribed to Diogenes (Frag. 4 (Diels) Vor. 335) an arjp-apxrj which was the source of life as well as of \f/vxri *cu voxels. In the words of Diogenes (Frag. 4) ^u%i?, the same for all living things, was a^p. (Cf. Frag. 5.)
Frag. 5 (Vor. 335) contains as significant terms for d^p-vo^o-is Kvftepvav, Kparelv, Beds. Frag. 7 (Vor. 339) describes the first principle as aldi-ov KO.L adavarov ao>jua. (Cf. also Frag. 8 Vor. 339.) Theophrastus (Dox. 477) gave to the arjp of Diogenes the terms aTreipos and aldios.
Aristotle's statement (De An. 405 a. 21) has been given for Anaximenes as one of those included under "certain others," but Diogenes is deservedly the only one there named as identifying \l/vxh and di7p. di7p is there described as TTOLVTUV XeTrTojucpedraros. Aetius (Dox. 392) said that for Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Arche- laus, and Diogenes ov<rla ^uxrjs was aepudrjs. However, Diogenes is the only one whose words convict him of that charge. Of Diogenes it can be said as of no other philosopher before him that to have faxy was to be tfj,\l/vxos. In Diogenes we find true hylozoism. Whereas Anaxagoras caught his vovs from above by a brilliant stroke that did not fully succeed in bringing it down to things, Diogenes postulated vorjcrus inhering in arjp. He outlined his monistic system with open eyes in contrast to Xenophanes whose pantheism probably never presented itself to his own mind.
While on the one hand the strivings of Anaxagoras were wasted on Diogenes and their results appropriated by conscious dynamism, vovs failed equally of development with the Atomists. Leucippus is credited (Aet. Dox. 321) with a work irepi vov of which we have no fragments. In the fragments of the works of Democritus we find terms new and significant, ^vxt as a term for "our soul" was frequently used by Democritus (Cf. Frags. 171, 159, 187 Diels). Frag. 1 (Vor. 385) contains the term ^uxcoois.
Frag. 11 (Vor. 389), describing the two kinds of yv^rj as and ffKorirj, indicates a critical attitude and recalls 56£a of Empedocles (v. 343). The term aij/vxos (Frag. 164 Vor. 414-415) occurred for the first time with Demo- critus. (Cf. also the term a\oyos of this fragment (164) and the terms ejui/^xos and a\f/vxos of the introduction to the fragment by Sextus Empiricus.)
TERMS OF THE SUCCESSORS OF ANAXAGORAS 45
The phrase oaaa. if/vx^ ex« (Cf. Anaxagoras) recurs in Frag. 278 (Vor. 435). Here ^vxy is confined to mortals and other £coa.
We are indebted for the most part to Aristotle for the physical doctrines of the Atomists. He gave as their orotxeta the terms TO 7r\?7pes /cat TO Kevov. Simplicius (Phys. 36, 1) (Vor. 346) used the term arojua in describing the doctrine peculiar to cosmological atomism. Aristotle contributed the account regarding the "natural necessity" according to which the atoms came together. <£i>crts was given as the principle of motion. (Cf. Phys. 265 b. 24.) Simplicius (Phys. 327, 14 Vor. 364) criticized the Atomists for giving no atrt'a but airo rauro/idrou /cat Tvxns (Cf. Aristotle, Phys. 196 a. 24.) Cicero (De Deor. Nat. 1, 24, 66) in the words "sed concursu quodam fortuito" may have drawn on the apparent identification of CLVTOHCLTOV and TUXT? (Cf. Arist. Met. 984 b. 8).
The latent materialism of Democritus was brought out by Aristotle (De Resp. 471 b. 30) where 17 \f/vx"n was TO Bep^ov and certain fl-x^a^a in the air were called vovs /cat faxy- As a statement of Democritus we have (Plac. Dox. 390) the assertion that all things juerexet tvxw TTOIO.S. The "incorporeality" of the TTUP of the Atomists was described by Philoponus (Vor. 369) as ev ffujJuiffLV affunaTov Stct \eTTTOfJLepeiav.
Democritus received much attention from Aristotle in the De Anima. Although Aristotle admitted (405 a. 13) that Anax- agoras meant by vovs something different from \f/vxri, he seemed certain that Democritus used vovs and if/vx^ as interchangeable terms (Cf. 404 a. 28). ^i>xi? proper is for Democritus TTVP rt /cat depfiov (404 a. 1). "The spherical atoms," continued Aristotle, "Democritus called irvp /cat ^vx"n- These spherical soul- atoms most easily find their way through things and, being themselves in motion, they set other things in motion, for the Atomists assumed 17 \j/vxr) as that which furnished motion to living things." No such sharp lines as Aristotle drew around vovs existed for the Atomists whose use of the term was probably akin to its force in the phrase €/c TTCLVTOS voov of Herodotus (8, 97) .
Aristotle (De An. 405 a. 8) commended Democritus for neatness of expression. Perhaps the greatest contribution of systems that failed to develop the idea of vovs was the contribution of more precise and accurate terminology for ideas already in the mind of philosophy.
9. SUMMARY.
It remains to review in these systems, all of which were incom- plete, the instances of the use of \l/vxri as a term for motion. The early lonians, for the most part oblivious of the real problem, included motion in the generic notion of cause. In particular instances they used the expression \f/vx^ exew as merely equiv- alent to KLvrjriKov won. Again, when speaking of beings of a limited sphere, they expressed the property of life by the same phrase — ^vxhv 'extiv. \f/vxy possibly came to stand with some for the general principle of Klvrjcris which, while it had not yet worked itself out into a separate force, was nevertheless on the way to becoming a specific cause.
In the period of transition, when \f/vxr] as a dynamic force was passing into if/vxri KCLL i>ovs and into vovs as a term by itself for a mechanical and a final cause, whether through an over hasty advance or through a reaction, thinkers in all good faith gave the power of thought even to all things. \l/vxy in their minds had not yet fully separated from things when, with Heraclitus, a material principle that was falfwov replaced the apx?) which had before been aeiKtvrjTov. \l/vxh had not so much narrowed as it had con- tinued, almost in a faded sense, as the principle of motion for all things to which the term $uov had been extended. Thus "whatever has ^ux^" stood now for all things whatsoever and again for all things with life. Moreover, from philosophers yet lacking sharp distinctions of the power of life and the power of thought we may expect such statements as those of Epicharmus to the effect that all living being is endowed with thought and attempts such as those of Philolaus to distinguish the power of thought in man and in nature. Heraclitus and Empedocles were marked by this tendency to grant <j>povr)<ris to all things.
The pivotal idea of all philosophy before Socrates is the vovs of Anaxagoras. This cosmothetic force, vovs, was for him the only thing absolutely separate and unmixed, but his language at that time offered no better terms for it than XeTrroraros and Kadapuraros . The idea of an efficient force was for Anaxagoras paralleled by the notion of true immateriality. Empedocles had veiled the aspects of the separate moving power under poetical and figurative terms. The genius of Diogenes of Apollonia was
46
SUMMARY 47
not great enough for his inheritance and so, in the answer v6r)<ns-br]p he returned to a position which philosophy had outgrown and in his self-satisfied cosmological monism he can be rated only below the early lonians. The philosophers before Anaxagoras had all tended towards a separation of force from matter and in their hylokineticism may be regarded as the fore- runners of dualism in a sense in which the acknowledged hylozoist can never be so considered. At this point it took genius to see that the problem was not solved by the mere naming of yv&fjLrj or voi>s as a separate force.
While philosophy, rising to the distinction of the element of thought and the element of life, was separating a rational force from "first substance," it did not all at once desert its old position, but left the element of life inhering in all matter. At this time terms for life and terms for distinctions of powers came to be used in a more conscious sense.
In Diogenes of Apollonia we find frequent use of the terms for life and a distinction of \f/vxr] and vorj<ns. txtiv vorjcriv took on with him definite meaning, while there seems to have been in his mind a complete identification of the ideas connoted by the phrases eijuf/vxov elvai and ^vxrjv txw-
The inestimable value of the Anaxagorean vovs was ceded away and its true development was again thwarted when philosophy, in the system of the Atomists, turned into the lane that must lead to a dead wall. However, the appearance, at this point, of the first systems of latent panpsychism on the one hand and of latent materialism on the other can be regarded as part of the growth of philosophy in the sense that, while the natural tendency of the sincerely philosophizing mind is in neither direction, these systems, evolved before adequate notions or terms for the immaterial order had been advanced, in the light of the system of Aristotle would serve as instances of cast-off hypotheses.
Among the words of Democritus we find the terms £"0)77, \f/vx<*)<Ti>s and the noteworthy use of aXcryos and of a^vxos. The ova a x«t phrase recurring in Democritus is equivalent to without the uncertainty attending its use by Anaxagoras.
As the extension of the term \f/vxy became more restricted by lines of demarcation separating the regions of speculation, active specialization in one sphere attached more definite sense to terms hitherto used with a vague meaning. No clear notions of imma-
48 PRE-SOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF MOTION
nent and of transient motion had yet been conceived. </>u<ns and eaaa had appeared as terms of Philolaus, and Plato tells us, in a characteristic speculation on the derivation of the term ^vxn, that it was a refinement of the expression 17 fyvaiv b\el KCLL ex**- The Atomists, less inexcusably than the philosopher of today, thought to solve the problem of motion by the doctrine of "natural neces- sity" or self -movement. We have noted the terms </>u<ns and TO avTOfjLaTov ascribed to them by Aristotle. On secondary authority Alcmaeon has been credited with <£u<7is auro/d^ros KCLT' aidiov K.(vi}aiv. The term aeifaov for the dpxi? of Heraclitus, who attributed natural energy to his TrDp-dpx??, appeared simul- taneously with an incipient effort to separate original motion from original matter. A fragment occurring in Stobaeus (Flor. 1, 180 a.) and credited to Heraclitus by Diels (Vor. 78) reads: ^UXTJS kffTi \6yos eavTov av&v. Anaxagoras, refusing to other things existence c<£' eauroj, demanded an unmixed and separate char- acter for a vovs which was avroKparr]s. Aristotle (De. An. 404 a. 8) credited the Atomists with KLVov^eva KO.L CLVTCL as a term for their first principles. The language of all these attempts fore- shadows Plato's terms for the definition of ^vx'n proper (Cf. Phaedrus 245 C) — TO O.VTO eauro KIVOVV.
The "natural necessity" explanation, complete only when sup- plemented by the theory of matter and form, did not satisfy the Greek physicist whose science must be crowned by his cosmology. The first Greek thinkers set the problem in a question which for us would read: To what shall we refer the activity of transient material energy and the immanent principle of animation? This question later widened to include: To what shall we refer the spiritual activity within us which is but extrinsically dependent on its organism? faxy activity had from the first demanded Aris- totle's /w>p0i7. The connotation of kinetic \f/vxri in objective sys- tems which held no adequate notion of immateriality determines, from a certain standpoint, the position of each pre-Socratic phil- osopher.
The charge that the earliest of these thinkers endowed a\f/vxa with \l/vxy (Diog. L. I, 24) is unfair in the sense in which it is made. Out of his wealth of thought and term Aristotle (De. gen. an. 762 a. 18) could guardedly say: irai>Ta
SUMMARY \ : ..; &Q.
The subsequent history of Greek philosophy may be written in outline in the words of three men. The true development of the vovs of Anaxagoras came only in the doctrine, advanced on empirical principles by Socrates, that whatever exists for a useful purpose must be the work of an Intelligence. (Cf. Xen. Mem. 1, 4,4.)
Plato (Timaeus-29 D) on the way to truth said that 6 K6<7/zos was foios €{JL\l/vxos evvovs through the Trpovoia rov Beov.
Philosophy made a transition in the words of Aristotle (De Caelo 271 a. 33): 6 dt 6eos /ecu 17 <f>v<ns ovdev ^arrjv TTOLOIXTLV. There ever remains the a^oBavfjiaaroTepos of Socrates (Mem. 1, 4) regarding the Creator of foja en<j>pova /ecu evepya. Nature must seek the source of its laws in God. When the genius of Aristotle, never deserting his position in passing from kingdom to kingdom in philosophy, had contributed a irpurov KLVOVV aKivrjTov (Phys. 256 a.) and a v6rj<rt,s vojffeus (Met. 1071 b. 20), it remained for Christian philosophy to complete this last word of pagan thought with the necessary ideas of the providence and the personality of God. Christian philosophy in turn is complete only when religion binds the world of the physicist and the psychologist back to God, Who has endowed His creature man with a mind having as its object Truth, the First and the Last.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Texts of Sources and Commentaries.
ARISTOTLE, Works. Bekker. (Berlin, 1831-1870).
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Metaphysica, Christ. (Leipsig, 1895).
De Caelo, De Genera tione et Corruptione. Prantl. (Leipsig, 1881).
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De Anima, Hicks. (Cambridge, 1907).
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RITTER ET PRELLER, Historia Philosophiae Graecae. (Gotha, 1913). WIMMER, Theophrasti Opera. (Leipsig, 1862). JACKSON, Texts for the History of Greek Philosophy. (London, 1901).
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ZELLER, Die Philosophic der Griechen. (Leipsig, 1892).
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London, 1901). ADAMSON, The Development of Greek Philosophy. (Edinburgh and London,
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(Minister, 1890).
BEARE, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition. (Oxford, 1906). MILLERD, On the Interpretation of Empedocles. (Chicago, 1908). FAIRBANKS, The First Philosophers of Greece. (London, 1898). BAKEWELL, Source-book in Ancient Philosophy. (New York, 1907). ROHDE, Psyche. (Leipsig, 1898).
MULLER, Lectures on the Origin of Religion. (London, 1878). TURNER, History of Philosophy. (Boston and London, 1903). STOCKL, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic. (Ed. Ill, Mainz, 1888).
(Trans, by Finlay, Dublin, 1887).
WEBER, History of Philosophy trans, by Thilly. (New York, 1896). WINDELBAND, History of Philosophy trans, by Tufts. (New York, 1901). UEBERWEG, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic. (Berlin, 1894). GONZALEZ, Historia de la Filosofia. (Madrid, 1886). (French trans.
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TEICHMULLER, Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe. (Berlin, 1874). 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY 51
EISLER, Worterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe. (Berlin, 1910).
ARLETH, in Archiv f. d. Geschichte d. Phil., VIII. 1, pp. 59-85, VIII, 2, pp.
190-205.
ZELLER, in Archiv. f. d. Geschichte d. Phil., VIII, 2, pp. 151-152. HAMMOND, in Philosophical Review, Vol. IV. (July, 1895). AVELING, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III. (Cause.) DRISCOLL, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I. (Animism,)
VITA
The author of this dissertation, Sister Mary Thomas Aquinas O'Neill, O. S. D., was born March 7, 1884, in Madison, Wisconsin. She pursued her elementary studies in Saint Raphael's parochial school of her native city under the direction of the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. She was graduated from the Madison High School in 1902. In 1904 she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Saint Dominic, at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. From 1906 to 1911 she taught in Saint Clara Academy, Sinsinawa, and worked at intervals in the University of Chicago and in Saint Clara College. In 1911 she began work at the Catholic University of America, receiving the A. B. degree in 1912 and the M. A. degree in 1913.
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