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GREEK PHILOSOPHY
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
THALES* PFO }PLATO
BY
JOHN BURNET
LONDON
MACMILLAN ἃ CO LTD
NEW ὙΟΕΚ ST MARTIN’S PRESS
1964
This book is copyright in all countries which
ave signatories to the Berne Convention
First Edition 1914
Reprinted 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1943, 1949
1950, 1953, 1955, 1960, 1961
Reset and Reprinted 1964
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED
St Martin’s Street London WC 2
also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
Toronto
ST MARTIN’S PRESS INC
New York
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
THE preparation of this volume was undertaken some years ago,
but was interrupted by my work on the Lexicon Platonicum, which
has proved a more formidable task than was at first anticipated. I
have to thank the editor of this series and the publishers for their
generous indulgence in the circumstances.
It is unfortunate in some respects that I have been obliged to
deal with certain parts of the subject in a form which does not
admit of detailed argument and still less of controversy. The second
edition of my Early Greek Philosophy (referred to as E. Gr. Ph.?)
makes this in large measure unnecessary in Book I., but there are
certain parts of Book III. where I have had to state my conclusions
baldly in the hope that I may have a later opportunity of discussing
their grounds. My chief aim for the present has been to assist
students who wish to acquire a firsthand knowledge of what Plato
actually says in the dialogues of his maturity. So long as they are
content to know something of the Republic and the earlier dialogues,
Platonism must be a sealed book to them.
I have not thought it well to present Greek names in a Latin
dress. I see no advantage, and many disadvantages, in writing
Herakleitos as Heraclitus. It often leads to his being called out of
his name, as the Emperor Herakleios usually is when disguised as
Heraclius. On the other hand, the Latin titles of Plato’s dialogues
are English words. Theaitetos of Athens is best left with the
beautiful name chosen for him by his father Euphronios, but ‘the’
Theaetetus is as much English as Thessalonians. We shall never, it
seems, reach agreement on this matter; I only wish to explain my
own practice.
I have to thank my friend and former colleague, Sir Henry Jones,
for many valuable suggestions and, above all, for his constant
encouragement. Mr. Hetherington of Glasgow University was
good enough to verify most of my references, and the proofs have
been carefully read by Mr. W. L. Lorimer, Lecturer in Greek at
the University of St. Andrews. For the imperfections which
remain I am solely responsible.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION I
BOOK I. THE WORLD
CHAPTER I
THE IONIANS 13
Miletos 13
The Breakdown of Ionian Civilisation 22
Religion 24
Enlightenment 25
CHAPTER II
PYTHAGORAS 29
The Problem 29
Life and Doctrine 30
Music 35
Medicine 39
Numbers 40
CHAPTER ΠΠ|
HERAKLEITOS AND PARMENIDES 45
Herakleitos 45
Parmenides 50
CHAPTER IV
THE PLURALISTS 55
Empedokles 56
Anaxagoras 60
Vill CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
ELEATICS AND PYTHAGOREANS Ἢ
Zeno 66
Melissos 69
The Later Pythagoreans 70
CHAPTER VI
LEUKIPPOS 76
BOOK II. KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER: Vil
THE SOPHISTS 85
Law and Nature 85
The ‘Sophists’ 87
Protagoras 89
Hippias and Prodikos 95
Gorgias 96
Eclectics and Reactionaries 99
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIFE OF SOKRATES 102
The Problem 102
The Platonic Sokrates 103
Aristophanes and Xenophon 116
CHAPTER IX
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES 123
The Associates of Sokrates 123
The Forms 125
Goodness 138
CONTENTS ΙΧ
CHAPTER X
PAGE
THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOKRATES 146
The Condemnation 146
The Alleged Offence 148
The Real Offence 150
The Pretext 153
The Death of Sokrates 155
CHAPTER XI
DEMOKRITOS ΤῸ
Theory of Knowledge 159
Theory of Conduct 162
BOOK ΤΠ. PLATO
CHAPTER XII
PLATO AND THE ACADEMY 167
Plato’s Early Life 167
Foundation of the Academy 174
Plato and Isokrates 175
The Methods of the Academy 179
The Programme of Studies 182
Eukleides and Plato 187
CHAPTER. X1i
CRITICISM 190
The Theaetetus 193
The Parmenides 206
CHAPTER Χαν
Locic 222
The Sophist 222
Χ CONTENTS
CHAPTER '(KV
POLITICS
The Statesman
Plato and Dionysios
The Laws
Education
CHAPTER XVI
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NUMBERS
I. Forms, Mathematicals and Sensibles
II. The One and the Indeterminate Dyad
The Philebus
CHAPTER XVII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOVEMENT
The Soul
God
The World
Conclusion
APPENDIX
INDEX
273
275
286
287
INTRODUCTION
I
No one will ever succeed in writing a history of philosophy; for
philosophies, like works of art, are intensely personal things. It
was Plato’s belief, indeed, that no philosophical truth could be
communicated in writing at all; it was only by some sort of
immediate contact that one soul could kindle the flame in another.
Now in dealing with the philosophy of an earlier age, we are wholly
confined to written records, and these are usually fragmentary and
often second-hand or of doubtful authority. They are written, too,
in a language which at best we only half understand, and have been
moulded by influences for the most part beyond our ken. It will
only, therefore, be in so far as the historian can reproduce the
Platonic contact of souls that his work will have value. In some
measure this is possible. Religious faith often seems able to break
through the barriers of space and time, and so to apprehend its
object directly; but such faith is something personal and incom-
municable, and in the same way the historian’s reconstruction of
the past is primarily valid for himself alone. It is not a thing he can
hand over ready-made to others. There is nothing mysterious
about this aspect either of religious faith or of philological inter-
pretation. On the contrary, all knowledge has the same character.
In the present case it only means that a man who tries to spend his
life in sympathy with the ancient philosophers? will sometimes
find a direct conviction forcing itself upon him, the grounds of
which can only be represented very imperfectly by a number of
references in a footnote. Unless the enumeration of passages is
complete — and it can never be complete—and unless each
passage tells exactly in the same way, which depends on its being
read in the light of innumerable other passages not consciously
present to memory, the so-called proofs will not produce the same
effect on any two minds. That is the sense in which philological
inquiry, like every other inquiry, requires an act of faith. It is clear,
1 This is what Plato calls τὸ συζῆν (Ep. vii. 341 c), but he is thinking of the
living, not the dead.
2 INTRODUCTION
however, that no one whose experience has not been identical can
be called on to repeat this act after another, and for this reason
professed histories of philosophy are often more of a hindrance
than a help. They seem only to interpose another obstacle where
there are obstacles enough already.
But though a history of philosophy is impossible, there are some
humbler tasks that can in a measure be performed, and of which
the performance may help to prepare the way for a more direct
vision. In the first place, there are certain external matters that
may be determined with considerable accuracy and which are not
without importance. We are more likely to understand a philo-
sopher rightly if we know the time he lived at and the surroundings
that may have helped to shape his thought, even though these can
never wholly explain him. It is particularly useful to know what
other philosophers he was acquainted with, either directly or
through their writings. In the second place, the development of
Greek philosophy depends on the progress of scientific, and
especially mathematical, discovery more than on anything else,
and it is possible to ascertain pretty accurately the stage Greek
science had reached by a given time. The records are full, and,
when critically used, trustworthy. It is for these reasons that this
work deals so largely with matters which may appear at first to lie
outside the province of philosophy. That is, in fact, its chief
justification. It is an attempt to lead the reader to the right point of
view, from which he may then see for himself. Lastly, there is
what may be called the cathartic or purgative function of history.
The greatest of all the obstacles we have to surmount is just the
mass of scholastic explanation and dogma which so soon over-
whelm the teaching of any original genius. To clear that away is
perhaps the greatest service that can be rendered in this field. We
do not wish to see Plato with the eyes of Aristotle, or even of
Plotinos, but if possible, face to face, and anyone who can help us
here deserves our thanks. It may seem a purely negative service,
but that lies in the nature of the case. In the long run the positive
construction must be left to the individual student, and no two
students will see quite alike. All the historian can do is to point the
way, and warn others off tracks which have already been found to
lead nowhere.
Even this, however, implies that we know already what philo-
sophy is, and clearly, unless we have some notion of that, we shall
MYTHOLOGY 3
be in danger of losing the thread of our story. We can nevertheless
dispense with such a definition as would be applicable to the
philosophy of all ages and peoples, for we shall find a pretty clear
notion of what philosophy was during the Hellenic period emerging
as we go on. This will at least do justice to one aspect of the sub-
ject, and that the one we are immediately concerned with. It will
be convenient to state at once, however, that for the purpose of
this work, I mean by philosophy all Plato meant by it, and nothing
he did not mean by it. The latter point is important; for it means
that philosophy is not mythology, and, on the other hand, that it is
not positive science, however closely it may be related to both of
these.
II
In the first place, philosophy is not mythology. It is true that
there is plenty of mythology in Plato, and we shall have to consider
the meaning of that later. It is also true that we shall have to take
account from the first of a mass of cosmogonical and eschatological
speculation which influenced philosophy in many ways. ‘These
things, however, are not themselves philosophy, and it cannot even
be said that they are the germ from which philosophy developed.
It is important to be quite clear about this; for in some quarters
Oriental cosmogonies are still paraded as the source of Greek
philosophy. The question is not one of cosmogonies at all. The
Greeks themselves had cosmogonies long before the days of Thales,
and the Egyptians and Babylonians had cosmogonies that may be
older still. Even savages have cosmogonies, and they are nearly as
advanced as those of more civilised peoples. It is possible, though
it has certainly not been proved, that the oldest Greek cosmogonies,
or some of them, came from Egypt or Babylon. It is still more
probable that systems such as that of Pherekydes have preserved
fragments of ‘Minoan’ speculation, which may be of indefinite
antiquity. These things, however, have nothing directly to do with
philosophy. From the Platonic point of view, there can be no
philosophy where there is no rational science. It is true that not
much is required —a few propositions of elementary geometry
will do to begin with — but rational science of some sort there
must be. Now rational science is the creation of the Greeks, and
we know when it began. We do not count as philosophy anything
anterior to that.
4 INTRODUCTION
III
It is true, of course, that science originated at the time when
communication with Egypt and Babylon was easiest, and just
where the influence of these countries was likely to be felt, and it is
a perfectly fair inference that this had something to do with its rise.
On the other hand, the very fact that for two or three generations
Greek science remained in some respects at a very primitive stage
affords the strongest presumption that what came to Hellas from
Egypt and Babylon was not really rational science. If the Egyptians
had possessed anything that could rightly be called mathematics,
it is hard to understand how it was left for Pythagoras and his
followers to establish the most elementary propositions in plane
geometry; and, if the Babylonians had really any conception of the
planetary system, it is not easy to see why the Greeks had to dis-
cover bit by bit the true shape of the earth and the explanation of
eclipses. It is clear that these things were not known at Babylon;
they were gradually worked out in South Italy, where we can
hardly assume Oriental influences. Of course everything depends
on what we mean by science. If we are prepared to give that name
to an elaborate record of celestial phenomena made for purposes
of divination, then the Babylonians had science and the Greeks
borrowed it from them. Or, if we are prepared to call rough rules
of thumb for measuring fields and pyramids science, then the
Egyptians had science, and it came from them to Ionia. But, if we
mean by science what Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler, and
Leibniz and Newton meant, there is not the slightest trace of that
in Egypt or even in Babylon, while the very earliest Greek ventures
are unmistakably its forerunners. Modern science begins just where
Greek science left off, and its development is clearly to be traced
from Thales to the present day. Copernicus says himself that he
was put on the track by what he read of the Pythagoreans in the
Placita ascribed to Plutarch.
The only remains that have come down to us show that the
Egyptians were not without a certain ingenuity in the solution of
particular arithmetical and geometrical problems, but there is not
the slightest trace of anything like general methods.? If incon-
1 E. Gr. Ph.? 1p. 349,n. 2. It was ‘the Pythagorean doctrine, taught also by Nicolas
Copernicus’, that was condemned by the Congregation of the Index in 1616.
* For the Rhind papyrus, see E. Gr. Ph.” pp. 22 ff., and, for a later discussion,
see v. Bissing in Neue Jahrbiicher, xxv. (1912), pp. 81 ff.
EGYPTIAN SCIENCE 5
venient remainders occur, they are simply dropped. In the same
way, the rules given for reducing triangles to rectangles are only
correct if the triangles are right-angled, though those given in the
diagrams are apparently meant to be equilateral. In fact the whole
system resembles the rough and ready methods of the Roman
agrimensores far more than anything we should call scientific. Nor
is there the slightest ground for the statement sometimes made that
the Egyptians had a more highly developed geometry which they
guarded as a mystery. That is based mainly on the story that Plato
went to Memphis to study under the priests, a story for which
there is no good evidence. In any case we know Plato’s opinion of
Egyptian mathematics, and it is that there was an element of
illiberality in it due to its preoccupation with merely practical ends.?
It is stated that, though hexagons are common on the Egyptian
monuments, the pentagon is never found.? If that is so, it is very
significant. Anyone can make hexagons, but the construction of the
regular pentagon is a different matter. We shall see that it was
known to the Pythagoreans, to whom the pentagon was of interest
as the side of the regular dodecahedron, the most important figure
in their system. It should be added that all mathematical terms,
‘pyramid’ included, are of pure Greek origin.®
It is true, of course, that in Hellenistic times, a certain number
of Egyptian priests applied the methods of Greek science to the
traditional lore of their own country. The Hermetic literature
proves it, and so does the elaborate astrological system the later
Egyptians erected on a Stoic foundation. All that, however, throws
no light on the origins of Greek science. On the contrary, if the
Egyptians of these days adopted the contemporary Greek science
and philosophy, it is only another indication of their own poverty
in such things.
IV
In the case of Babylon it is even more important to distinguish
the times before and after Alexander the Great. In the latter
period Babylon had become a Hellenistic city, and there was free
intercourse between the astronomers of Mesopotamia and Alexan-
1 Plato, Laws, 747 Ὁ, 6 sqq.
2 Zeuthen, Histoire des mathématiques (Paris 1902), p. 5.
8 The words πυραμίς, πυραμοῦς, which mean a cake made of wheat and honey,
are clearly derived from πυροί, ‘wheat’, though their form has been influenced
by the analogy of σησαμίς, σησαμοῦς. See also E. Gr. Ph.* p. 25, 7. 1.
6 INTRODUCTION
dria. It is certain that Hipparchos, for instance, made use of Baby-
lonian observations. But Greek science was fully constituted before
his time, and there can hardly be any doubt that Babylonian
astronomy attained its highest development under Greek influence.
What we have really to consider is whether there is any trace of it
in Hellas at a much earlier date. Now we know a few facts about
this, and they are instructive. According to Herodotos (11. 109),
it was from Babylon the Greeks got the instrument called the
gnomon, which indicated the solstices and equinoxes by a shadow.
Whether that is a scientific instrument or not depends on what you
do with it. The Greeks were also familiar at an early date with the
Babylonian duodecimal and sexagesimal systems of numeration,
but the use of these was limited to weights, measures, and currency,
or, in other words, to commercial purposes. They were not em-
ployed in science till Hellenistic times, when the circle was divided
into degrees. Arithmetic proper used only the decimal system. If
they had cared, the Greeks might have learned from the Baby-
lonians to distinguish the planets. These were of the greatest
importance for purposes of divination, but the Greeks paid no
attention to astrology before the third century B.c.? So long as there
was no cosmological system in which the ‘tramp-stars’ (πλανῆται),
as the Greeks irreverently called them, could find a place, they did
not strike them as of more consequence than shooting stars and the
like. The Pythagoreans appear to have worked out their planetary
theory quite independently after discovering the real nature of the
earth. It was said to be Pythagoras or Parmenides that first
identified the evening and the morning star. The Greek equiva-
lents for the Babylonian names of the planets, which we still use
in their Latin form, appear for the first time in the Platonic
Epinomis (987 Ὁ sq.). Evidently, then, the Greeks did not learn
from the Babylonians the single piece of real astronomical know-
ledge they possessed.
* For recent statements on this subject, see Jastrow in Enc. Brit. (11th edition),
vol. ii. pp. 796 f.; Boll in Neue fahrbticher, xxi. (1908), p. 116.
2 See Cumont in Neue Jahrbiicher, xxiv. (1911), pp. 1 ff. He says (p. 4): “The
universal curiosity of the Hellenes by no means ignored astrology, but their
sober understanding rejected its adventurous doctrines. Their acute critical
sense knew well how to distinguish between the scientific observations of the
Chaldeans and their erroneous inferences. It remains their everlasting glory
that they discovered and made use of the serious, scientific elements in the
confused and complex mass of exact observations and superstitious ideas, which
constitutes the priestly wisdom of the East, and threw all the fantastic rubbish
on one side.’
GREEK SCIENCE γι
They did, however, make use of one important achievement of
theirs in this field, namely, their records of eclipses, and the
various cycles established on the basis of these records. They used
these for the purposes of the calendar, and, as we shall see, for the
prediction of eclipses. Whether such observations and calculations
are scientific or not depends wholly on the purpose with which
they are made and the uses to which they are put. In itself an
eclipse of the sun is a phenomenon of purely local interest, and it
is no more scientific to record it than it would be to record rain-
bows. If the record suggests that something has really happened to
the sun, and that something may therefore happen to the King, it
is not only not science, but an instrument of positive nescience.
That, however, was the view taken by the astronomers of Babylon.
The only eastern people that can bear comparison with the
Greeks in science and philosophy are the Indians. How much of
Indian science is original, and how much may be traced to Greek
influence, is a very difficult question in view of the uncertainty of
Indian chronology. It does seem certain, however, that no Indian
scientific work, and therefore nothing we count as philosophy, can
be dated with probability before the time of Alexander. In parti-
cular, there is no ground for believing that the mathematical book
entitled the Sulva-sutras, or ‘rules of the cord’, is of earlier date, and
it is in any case far below the level of Greek science.1 The analogy
of Egypt and Babylon certainly suggests that this reached India
from the Hellenistic kingdom of the North West.
Vv
The truth is that we are far more likely to underrate the origi-
nality of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we do not always
remember the very short time they took to lay down the lines
scientific inquiry has followed ever since. By the early part of the
sixth century B.c. they had learnt the rough and ready system of
mensuration which was all Egypt could teach them, and a hundred
years later we find the study of arithmetical and geometrical pro-
gressions, plane geometry and the elements of harmonics firmly
established on a scientific basis. Another century saw the rise of
1 See A. B. Keith in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, pp. 589 ff.
It is a pity that M. Milhaud has been persuaded to accept an early date for the
Sulva-sutras in his Nouvelles études (1911), pp. 109 544.
8 INTRODUCTION
solid and spherical geometry, and the sections of the cone were
soon added. The Greeks learnt, directly or indirectly, from Baby-
lon that certain celestial phenomena recur in cycles, and may there-
fore be predicted. Within fifty years they had discovered that the
earth swings free in space, and the knowledge of its spherical
shape soon followed. A century saw the true account of eclipses
clearly stated, and this led up to the discovery that the earth was a
planet. A little later some Greeks even taught that the sun was not
a planet, but the centre of the planetary system. Nor must we
forget that hand in hand with this remarkable development of
mathematical and astronomical science there went an equally
striking advance in the study of the living organism. Most ‘of the
writings that have come down to us under the name of Hippokrates
belong to the fifth century B.c., and, while some of them show a
tendency to the speculative interpretation of vital phenomena
natural in an age of rapid scientific progress, there are others which
display in an almost perfect form the method of minute and pains-
taking observation that is alone appropriate in dealing with facts
of such complexity. The physicians of Alexandria discovered the
nervous system, but the native Egyptians, though accustomed for
some thousands of years to embalm dead bodies, show astounding
ignorance of the simplest anatomical facts.
The Greeks achieved what they did, in the first place, because
they were born observers. The anatomical accuracy of their
sculpture in its best period proves that, though they never say
anything about it in their literature, apparently taking it for
granted. The Egyptians, we may remember, never learnt to draw
an eye in profile. But the Greeks did not rest content with mere
observation; they went on to make experiments of a quite modern
character. That by which Empedokles illustrated the flux and
reflux of the blood between the heart and the surface of the body
is the best known; for we have a description of it in his own words.
It also established the corporeal nature of atmospheric air. We
should certainly hear of many more such experiments if our
sources were less meagre, and more intelligently compiled.
Further, the Greeks always tried to give a rational explanation
(λόγον διδόναι) of the appearances they had observed. Their
reasoning powers were exceptional, as we can see from the mathe-
matical work they have left us. On the other hand, they were also
1 See E. Gr. Ph.* p. 253.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY 9
quite conscious of the need for verification. This they expressed by
saying that every hypothesis must ‘save the appearances’ (σῴζειν
τὰ φαινόμενα); in other words, that it must do justice to all the
observed facts.1 That is the method of science, as we understand it
still. It should be added that the development of mathematical and
biological science at a given time to a large extent determines the
character of its philosophy. We shall see how the mathematical
influence culminates in Plato, and the biological in Aristotle.
VI
But, while philosophy is thus intimately bound up with positive
science, it is not to be identified with it. It is true that in early
times the distinction between the two is not realised. The word
σοφία covered all we mean by science and a great deal more be-
sides, such as the arts of making pontoons and guessing riddles.
But the distinction was there all the same. If we look at Greek
philosophy as a whole, we shall see that it is dominated from
beginning to end by the problem of reality (τὸ ov). In the last
resort the question is always, ‘What is real?’ Thales asked it no less
than Plato or Aristotle; and, no matter what the answer given may
be, where that question is asked, there we have philosophy. It is no
part of the historian’s task to decide whether it is a question that
can be answered, but there is one comment he may fairly make.
It is that the rise and progress of the special sciences depended, so
far as we can see, on its being asked. We find that every serious
attempt to grapple with the ultimate problem of reality brings
with it a great advance in positive science, and that this has always
ceased to flourish when interest in that problem was weak. ‘That
happened more than once in the history of Greek philosophy, when
the subordinate problems of knowledge and conduct came to
occupy the first place, though at the same time it was just the
raising of these problems that did most to transform the problem
of reality itself.
And this helps to explain why philosophy cannot be simply
identified with science. The problem of reality, in fact, involves
the problem of man’s relation to it, which at once takes us beyond
1 This requirement of Greek scientific method is often ignored, but Milton’s
Raphael knows all about it. See Paradise Lost, viii. 81: ‘how build, unbuild,
contrive To save appearances.’
Io INTRODUCTION
pure science. We have to ask whether the mind of man can have
any contact with reality at all, and, if it can, what difference this
will make to his life. To anyone who has tried to live in sympathy
with the Greek philosophers, the suggestion that they were
‘intellectualists’ must seem ludicrous. On the contrary, Greek
philosophy is based on the faith that reality is divine, and that the
one thing needful is for the soul, which is akin to the divine, to
enter into communion with it. It was in truth an effort to satisfy
what we call the religious instinct. Ancient religion was a some-
what external thing, and made little appeal to this except in the
‘mysteries’, and even the mysteries were apt to become external,
and were peculiarly liable to corruption. We shall see again and
again that philosophy sought to do for men what the mysteries
could only do in part, and that it therefore includes most of what
we should now call religion.
Nor was this religion a quietist or purely contemplative one, at
least in its best days. The mysteries had undertaken to regulate
men’s lives, and philosophy had to do the same. Almost from the
beginning it was regarded as a life. It was no self-centred pursuit
of personal holiness either. The man who believed he had seen the
vision of reality felt bound to communicate it, sometimes to a
circle of disciples, sometimes to the whole human race. The
missionary spirit was strong from the first. The philosopher be-
lieved that it was only through the knowledge of reality that men
could learn their own place in the world, and so fit themselves to
be fellow-workers with God, and believing this he could not rest
till he had spread the knowledge of it to others. The death of
Sokrates was that of a martyr, and ‘intellectualism’, if there is such
a thing, can have no martyrs.
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The Ionians
MILETOS
§ 1. Though neither the time nor the mi/eu can explain the rise
of so personal a thing as philosophy, they may have considerable
influence on the form it assumes. It is not, therefore, without in-
terest to observe that Miletos, ‘the pride of Ionia’, is just the place
where the continuity of prehistoric Aegean civilisation with that of
later times is most strongly marked. The Milesians themselves
believed their city to be a Cretan colony, and this belief has re-
ceived remarkable confirmation from recent excavations. We now
know that the old town of Miletos belonged to the last period of
the Late Minoan civilisation, and that here at least that civilisation
passed by imperceptible gradations into what we call the Early
Ionic. There is a Milatos in Crete as well as in Ionia, and the
name of Thales is at home in the island too. We may perhaps infer
that the greatness of Miletos was in some measure due to its
inheritance from that earlier age which has so recently become
known to us. The Milesians kept in close touch with Egypt and the
peoples of Asia Minor, especially the Lydians, and their colonial
empire extended to the northern coasts of the Euxine.
§ 2. There is no reason to doubt that Thales was the founder of
the Milesian school of cosmologists, and to all appearance he was
the first human being who can rightly be called a man of science.
The distinction between cosmologies such as the Milesian and
cosmogonies such as that of Pherekydes is a fundamental one, and
it is far more important to observe the points in which the
Milesians differed from their predecessors, whether Greek or
barbarian, than to look for survivals of primitive belief in their
speculations. No doubt these exist, and there may well have been
1 Herod, v. 28: τῆς ᾿Ιωνίης ἦν πρόσχημα.
2 See my paper, ‘Who was Javan?’ (Proceedings of the Classical Association of
Scotland, 1912, pp. 91 ff.).
14 THE IONIANS
more of them than we know; but for all that it is true to say that
with Thales and his successors a new thing came into the world.
Of Thales himself we know a great deal less than we should like
to know. In popular tradition he lived mainly as one of the ‘Seven
Wise Men’, and many tales were told of him. In one of these he is
the type of the unpractical dreamer, and falls into a well while
star-gazing; in another he shows himself superior to the ordinary
practical man by the use he makes of his scientific knowledge. He
is said to have foreseen an abundance of olives and made a corner
in oil, thus proving he could be rich if he liked. It is plain that
people in general had no idea of his real work, and regarded him
simply as a typical ‘sage’, to whose name anecdotes originally
anonymous might be attached. These stories, then, tell us nothing
about Thales himself, but they do bear witness to the impression
produced by science and scientific men when they first appeared
in a world that was half inclined to marvel and half inclined to scoff.
There is, however, another set of traditions about Thales from
which something may be learnt. They are not of a popular
character, since they attribute to him certain definite scientific
achievements. One of the most important of these, the prediction
of a solar eclipse, is reported by Herodotus (i. 74). The existence
at Miletos of a continuous school of cosmologists makes the pre-
servation of such traditions quite easy to understand. As, however,
Thales does not appear to have written anything, it cannot be said
that our evidence is complete. What makes strongly in its favour
is that the discoveries and other achievements ascribed to him are
for the most part just such developments of Egyptian and Baby-
lonian ‘science’ as we should expect to find. But even if the
evidence is considered insufficient, it makes little difference. In
that case Thales would become a mere name for us, but it would
still be certain that his immediate successors laid the foundations
of rational science. There can be no harm, therefore, in mentioning
some of these traditions and interpreting them partly in the light
of what went before and partly in that of what came after.
§ 3. We learn, then, from Herodotus! that the life of Thales
belonged to the reigns of Alyattes and Croesus, kings of Lydia,
and that he was still living shortly before the fall of Sardeis in 546
B.c. We are also told that at an earlier date he had predicted an
eclipse of the sun which put an end to a battle between the Lydians
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 2-7.
THALES 15
and the Medes. That was on May 28th (O.S.) 585 B.c. Now there
is nothing at all incredible in the story of this prediction, though
it is quite certain that the true cause of eclipses was not discovered
till after the time of Thales, and his successors gave quite erroneous
and fantastic accounts of them. The Babylonians, however, were
equally ignorant on the subject, and yet they predicted eclipses
with tolerable accuracy by means of a cycle of 223 lunations. It is
not even necessary to suppose that Thales had to visit Babylon to
learn as much as this. In Hittite times Mesopotamian influence
had been strong in Asia Minor, and Sardeis has been called an
advanced post of Babylonian civilisation. There may well have
been ‘wise men’ in Lydia who had preserved the old secret. It is
interesting to note also that the Lydian king seems to have employed
the Milesian as his scientific expert; for we are told that Thales
accompanied Croesus on the expedition that proved fatal to his
monarchy, and that he diverted the course of the river Halys for
him. We know, lastly, from Herodotos that he took a prominent
part in politics, and that he tried to save Ionia by urging the twelve
cities to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos.
§ 4. We are further told on the authority of Aristotle’s disciple
Eudemos, who wrote the first history of mathematics, that Thales
introduced geometry into Hellas. It is extremely probable that he
had learnt in Egypt the elementary rules of mensuration referred
to in the Introduction; but, if we may trust the tradition, he must
have advanced beyond his teachers. He is said to have taught the
Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids by means of
their shadows, and also to have invented a method of finding the
distance of ships at sea. It was common knowledge among the
peoples of the East that a triangle whose sides were as 3: 4:5 had
always a right angle, and right angles were laid out by means of
this triangle. What we are told of Thales suggests that he invented
some further applications of this primitive piece of knowledge, and
if so that was the beginning of rational science. At any rate, there
is no reason to doubt that he was the pioneer of those investiga-
tions which were to bear fruit later in the hands of Pythagoras,
though it is hardly safe to say more.
ὃ 5. According to Aristotle, Thales said that the earth floats on
the water, and he doubtless thought of it as a flat disc. That, at
least, was the view of all his successors except Anaximander, and it
remained characteristic of Ionic as distinct from Italic cosmology
τό THE IONIANS
down to the time of Demokritos. It sounds primitive enough, but
in reality it marks a notable advance. The whole history of
cosmology at this date is the story of how the solid earth was
gradually loosed from its moorings. Originally sky and earth were
pictured as the lid and bottom of a sort of box; but from an early
date the Greeks, as was natural for them, began to think of the
earth as an island surrounded by the river Okeanos. To regard it as
resting on the water is a further step towards a truer view. It was
something to get the earth afloat.
This was no doubt connected with what Aristotle regards as the
principal tenet of Thales, namely, that everything is made out of
water, or, as he puts it in his own terminology, that water-is the
material cause of all things. We have no trustworthy information
about the grounds on which this doctrine was based; for, in the
absence of any writings by Thales himself, Aristotle can only guess,
and his guesses are apparently suggested by the arguments used
in support of a similar theory at a later date. We are perhaps justi-
fied in interpreting it rather in the light of the doctrines afterwards
held by the Milesian school, and especially by Anaximenes; and, if
we try to do this, our attention is at once called to the fact that in
these days, and for some time after,j‘air’ (ἀήρ) was identified with
water in a vaporous state. In fact it was regarded as only a purer
and more transparent form of mist, while a still purer form was
‘aether’ (αἰθήρ), which is properly the bright blue of the Mediter-
ranean sky, and is fire rather than air. It was also believed that this
fire and that of the heavenly bodies was fed by vapour rising from
the sea, a view which, on these presuppositions, is the natural one
to take of evaporation. On the other hand, we see that water
becomes solid when it freezes, and Anaximenes at least held that
earth and stones were water frozen harder still. It may well have
seemed to Thales, then, that water was the original thing from
which fire on the one hand and earth on the other arose. That, of
course, is a more or less conjectural account; but, if Anaximenes
was in any sense his follower, the views of Thales must have been
something like this. His greatness, however, would lie in his having
asked the question rather than in the particular answer he gave it.
Henceforth the question whether everything can be regarded as a
single reality appearing in different forms is the central one of
Greek science, and the story we have to tell is how that in time gave
rise to the atomic theory.
ANAXIMANDER 17
δ.6. The next generation of the Milesian school is represented
by Anaximander. We are on surer ground with regard to his
doctrines; for he wrote a book which was extant in the time of
Theophrastos and later. It is probable that it was the first Greek
book written in prose, and it may be noted here that Ionic prose
was the regular medium of philosophical and scientific writing.
Two Greek philosophers, Parmenides and Empedokles, wrote in
verse at a later date, but that was quite exceptional, and due to
causes we can still to some extent trace. Anaximander was also the
first cartographer, and this connects him with his younger fellow-
citizen Hekataios, whose work formed, as has been said, the text of
Anaximander’s map.
Anaximander seems to have thought it unnecessary to fix upon
‘air’, water, or fire as the original and primary form of body. He
preferred to represent that simply as a boundless something
(ἄπειρον) from which all things arise and to which they all return
again. His reason for looking at it in this way is still in part ascer-
tainable. It is certain that he had been struck by a fact which
dominated all subsequent physical theory among the Greeks,
namely, that the world presents us with a series of opposites, of
which the most primary are hot and cold, wet and dry. If we look
at things from this point of view, it is more natural to speak of the
opposites as being ‘separated out’ from a mass which is as yet un-
differentiated than to make any one of the opposites the primary
substance. Thales, Anaximander seems to have argued, made the
wet too important at the expense of the dry. Some such thought,
at any rate, appears to underlie the few words of the solitary
fragment of his writing that has been preserved. He said that things
‘give satisfaction and reparation to one another for their injustice,
as is appointed according to the ordering of time’. This conception
of justice and injustice recurs more than once in Ionic natural
philosophy, and always in the same connexion. It refers to the
encroachment of one opposite or ‘element’ upon another. It is in
consequence of this that they are both absorbed once more in their
common ground. As that is spatially boundless, it is natural to
assume that worlds? arise in it elsewhere than with us. Each world
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 12 sqq.
2 T do not use the term ‘world’ for the earth, but as the equivalent of what was
called an οὐρανός at this date, and later a κόσμος. It means everything within
the heavens of the fixed stars. From our point of view, it is a ‘planetary system’,
though the earth and not the sun is its centre, and the fixed stars are part of it.
18 THE IONIANS
is a sort of vortex in the boundless mass. Our authorities attribute
this view to Anaximander, and no good reason has been given for
disbelieving them. It is obviously an idea of the greatest scientific
importance; for it is fatal, not only to the theory of an absolute up
and down in the universe, but also to the view that all heavy things
tend to the same centre. It was, in many ways, a misfortune that
Plato was led to substitute for this old doctrine the belief in a
single world, and thus to prepare the way for the reactionary
cosmology of Aristotle. The Epicureans, who took up the old
Ionic view at a later date, were too unscientific to make good use of
it, and actually combined it with the inconsistent theory of an
absolute up and down. We are told that Anaximander calied his
innumerable worlds ‘gods’. The meaning of that will appear
shortly.
§7. The formation of the world is, of course, due to the
‘separating out’ of the opposites. Anaximander’s view of the earth
is a curious mixture of scientific intuition and primitive theory.
In the first place, he is perfectly clear that it does not rest on any-
thing, but swings free in space, and the reason he gave was that
there is nothing to make it fall in one direction rather than in
another. He inferred this because, as has been observed, his
system was incompatible with the assumption of an absolute up and
down. On the other hand, he gives the earth a shape intermediate
between the disc of Thales and the sphere of the Pythagoreans.
He regarded it as a short cylinder ‘like the drum of a pillar’, and
supposed that we are living on the upper surface while there is
another antipodal to us. His theory of the heavenly bodies shows
that he was still unable to separate meteorology and astronomy.
So long as all ‘the things aloft’ (τὰ μετέωρα) are classed together,
that is inevitable. Even Galileo maintained that comets were
atmospheric phenomena, and he had far less excuse for doing so
than Anaximander had for taking the same view of all the heavenly
bodies. Nor was his hypothesis without a certain audacious
grandeur. He supposed that the sun, moon, and stars were really
rings of fire surrounding the earth. We do not see them as rings,
however, because they are encased in ‘air’ or mist. What we do
see is only the single aperture through which the fire escapes
‘as through the nozzle of a pair of bellows’. We note here the
beginning of the theory that the heavenly bodies are carried
round on rings, a theory which held its ground till Eudoxos
ANAXIMENES 19
replaced the rings by spheres. We are also told that Anaximander
noted the obliquity of these rings to what we should call the
plane of the equator. Eclipses were caused by stoppages of the
apertures.
§ 8. With regard to living beings, Anaximander held that all life
came from the sea, and that the present forms of animals were the
result of adaptation to a fresh environment. It is possible that some
of his biological theories were grotesque in detail, but it is certain
that his method was thoroughly scientific. He was much impressed
by the observation of certain viviparous sharks or dogfish, and
evidently regarded them as an intermediary between fishes and
land animals. His proof that man must have been descended from
an animal of another species has a curiously modern ring. The
young of the human species require a prolonged period of nursing,
while those of other species soon find their food for themselves. If,
then, man had always been as he is now he could never have
survived,
§9. The third of the Milesians was Anaximenes, whose activity
seems to fall in the period when Ionia had come under Persian
rule.1 He too wrote a prose work of which one fragment survives.
He was not a great original genius like Anaximander, and in some
respects his cosmology falls far short of his predecessor’s. His title
to remembrance is really based on his discovery of the formula
which for the first time made the Milesian theory coherent, that of
rarefaction and condensation. He regarded ‘air’ —the air we
breathe, but also that which thickens into mist and water — as the
primary form of body, and so far his theory resembled that we have
ascribed to Thales. On the other hand, he thought of this air as
boundless and as containing an infinite number of worlds, in this
respect following Anaximander. The solitary fragment quoted
from his work shows that he was influenced by the analogy of the
microcosm and the macrocosm. ‘As our soul,’ he says, ‘which is
air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole
world.’ The world is thought of as breathing or inhaling air
from the boundless mass outside it. This Air he spoke of as a
‘god’.
The cosmology of Anaximenes was reactionary in many ways.
It was felt, no doubt, that Anaximander had gone too far, though
we shall see that his audacities contained the promise of the future.
2 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 23 sqq.
20 THE IONIANS
According to Anaximenes, the earth is flat and floats upon the air
‘like a leaf’. The heavenly bodies also float on the air. Their paths
are not oblique, but the earth is tilted up, so that most of them are
hidden when they get behind the higher side of it. It is unfortunate
that Anaximenes did not know the spherical shape of the earth;
for this line of thought might have led him to discover the inclina-
tion of its axis. As it was, he regarded it as a disc, and said the
heavens surrounded it ‘like a hat’. Ionia was never able to accept
the scientific view of the earth, and even Demokritos continued to
believe it was flat. The suggestive theory of Anaximander was to
be developed in another region.
§ 10. It has recently been maintained that the Milesian ‘cosmo-
logy was based on the primitive and popular theory of ‘the four
elements’. It is not meant, of course, that the scientific conception
of an ‘element’ existed at this date. We shall see later that this was
due to Empedokles, and it is only the place that the old quaternion
of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water occupied in his system, and after-
wards in that of Aristotle, that has led to these being called ‘the four
elements’. It is an unfortunate confusion, but it is very difficult to
avoid it, and we must perforce continue to use the word ‘element’
in two senses which have very little to do with one another. It is
undeniable that, from an early date, a fourfold or threefold division
of this kind was recognised. It can be traced in Homer and Hesiod,
and it has been plausibly suggested that it is connected with the
myth of the ‘portions’ (μοῖραι) assigned to Zeus, Poseidon, and
Hades. We are tempted, then, to say that the early cosmologists
simply took one of these ‘portions’ after the other and regarded it
as primary. But, when we look closer, we shall be more inclined
to conclude that the originality of these men consisted precisely in
their ignoring the old popular view completely. In particular, we
hear nothing whatever of earth as a primary form of body, though
earth is never passed over in any popular list of so-called “elements’.+
This is still more striking if we remember the importance of
Mother Earth in early cosmogonies, an importance which she still
retains in Pherekydes. Here once more the breach between the
Milesian cosmology and everything that had gone before is really
the striking thing about it.
Indeed, if we take a broad view of it, we shall see that it depends
1 This is pointed out by Aristotle, Met. A, 8. 989 a, 5 sqg. Neither he nor
Theophrastos made an exception of Xenophanes. Cf. Diels, Vors.’ p. 52, 28.
MATTER 21
on the extension of the observed identity of ice, water, and steam
to earth and stones on the one hand, and to air and fire on the other.
In other words, it substitutes for the primitive ‘four elements’
something which bears a much closer resemblance to what are now
called the three states of aggregation, the solid, the liquid, and the
gaseous. At any rate, the Milesians believed that what appears in
these three forms was one thing, and this, as I hold, they called
φύσις." That term meant originally the particular stuff of which a
given thing is made. For instance, wooden things have one φύσις,
rocks another, flesh.and blood a third. The Milesians asked for the
φύσις of all things. Thales said it was water, and we cannot be far
wrong in guessing that he said so because, as we should put it, the
liquid state is intermediate between the solid and the gaseous, and
can therefore pass easily into either. Anaximander preferred to
leave his Boundless as something distinct from any special form of
body, so that the opposites might proceed from it. Anaximenes
saw that, after all, the primary substance must have some character
of its own, and identified it with ‘air’, that is, with the intermediate
stage between water and fire. This he was able to do because he
had introduced the idea of rarefaction and condensation, which
alone makes the whole theory intelligible. In a word, the Milesians
had drawn the outlines of the theory of matter in the physicist’s
sense of the word, and these outlines still survive in a recognisable
form in our text-books. That, and not the particular astronomical
doctrine they taught, is the central thing in the system, and that is
why it is reckoned as the beginning of philosophy. It is the earliest
answer to the question, ‘What is reality ?’)
The Milesian school doubtless came to an end with the fall of
Miletos in 494 B.c., but we shall see later that “The Philosophy of
Anaximenes’, as it was called, continued to be taught in other
Ionian cities, and that it regained its influence when Ionia was once
more freed from a foreign yoke. For the present, however, what we
1 Plato, Laws. 891 c: κινδυνεύει yap ὁ λέγων ταῦτα πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν Kal ἀέρα
πρῶτα ἡγεῖσθαι τῶν πάντων εἶναι, καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὀνομάζειν ταῦτα αὐτά. The question
really is whether the original meaning of φύσις is ‘growth’. Aristotle (Met. A,
4. 1014 b, 16) did not think so; for he says that, when it means ‘growth’, it is
as if one were to pronounce it with a long v. In other words, it did not at once
suggest to him the verb φύομαι (Aeol. φυίομαι). For controversy on this subject, see
Heidel, Περὶ φύσεως (Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
xlv. 4), and Lovejoy, ‘The Meaning of φύσις in the Greek Physiologers’ (Philo-
sophical Review, xviii. 4). To my mind the fact that the Atomists called the
atoms φύσις is conclusive. See Ar. Phys. 265 b, 25; Simpl. Phys. p. 1318, 34. Atoms
do not ‘grow’.
22 THE IONIANS
have to consider is the effect on philosophy of the Persian conquest
of the Hellenic cities in Asia.
THE BREAKDOWN OF IONIAN CIVILISATION
§11. The spirit of Ionian civilisation had been thoroughly
secular, and this was, no doubt, one of the causes that favoured the
rise of science. The origin of this secular spirit is to be found in the
world described by Homer. The princes and chiefs for whom he
sang must have been completely detached from the religious ideas
which we may infer from the monuments to have been potent
forces in the earlier Aegean civilisation. It cannot be said that the
Olympian gods are regarded with reverence in the Iliad, and some-
times they are not treated seriously. They are frankly human,
except that they are immortal and more powerful than men. To
the religious consciousness the word ‘god’ (θεός) always means an
object of worship, and this is just what distinguishes the gods from
other immortal and powerful beings (δαίμονες). In Homer, however,
the distinction is obscured. It is by no means clear that all the gods
in the [lad are thought of as objects of worship, and it is only to a
certain number of them that prayers and sacrifices are actually
offered. It is very significant that when Achilles does pray in dead
earnest, it is not to the ruler of Ida or Olympos he turns, but to the
far-off Pelasgic Zeus of Dodona.
The spirit of Hesiod is very different no doubt; for he is no
Ionian, and he feels himself to be in opposition to Homer, but the
influence was too strong for him. He really did even more than
Homer to dissociate the idea of god from that of worship. It is
certain that many of the ‘gods’ in the Theogony were never wor-
shipped by anyone, and some of them are mere personifications of
natural phenomena, or even of human passions. For our present
purpose, it is of most importance to observe that it was just this
non-religious use of the word ‘god’ which made it possible for the
Milesians to apply it to their primary substance and their ‘in-
numerable worlds’. That way of speaking does not bear witness to
any theological origin of Greek science, but rather to its complete
independence of religious tradition. No one who has once realised
the utterly secular character of Ionian civilisation will ever be
tempted to look for the origins of Greek philosophy in primitive
cosmogonies.
SECULARISM 23
§ 12. The feudal society pictured for us by Homer had been
replaced in the Ionic cities by a commercial aristocracy, but the
rhapsodes still recited Homer in the market-place, as the bards
had done at the feudal prince’s board. It was impossible to get
away from the humanised Olympian gods, and in practice it was of
these that men thought when they worshipped at the shrines
founded in earlier days, when the gods were still awful beings to
be approached with dread. A people brought up on Homer could
hardly think of the gods as moral beings, though they were sup-
posed to be the guardians of morality. Almost the only divine
attribute they possessed was power, and even that is retained
chiefly as a foil to human impotence, a thing of which the Ionians
are deeply conscious. The generations of men pass away like the
leaves of the forest, and there is no life to come, or at best a shadowy
one, of which the departed ‘soul’ is itself unconscious. Only so
much is left of it as will serve to explain dreams and visions; the
man himself is gone for ever when he dies. So it is wise for men to
think only mortal thoughts (ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν). ‘The mysterious
power that awards happiness and misery in this life, and is as often
called ‘the godhead’ (τὸ θεῖον) as God, appears to be jealous of
man, and brings low everyone that exalts himself. So we should eat,
drink, and be merry, but take heed withal to do ‘naught too much’
(μηδὲν ἄγαν). The man who observes the precept ‘Know thyself’
will not be puffed up. For overmuch prosperity (ὄλβος) brings
satiety (κόρος), which begets pride (ὕβρις), and that in turn the
blindness of heart (ἄτη), which God sends on those he is resolved
to ruin. A like doctrine appears in the Hebrew Wisdom literature
some generations later.
§ 13. Such a view of life comes naturally to the wealthier classes
in an over-civilised nation like the Ionia of the seventh and sixth
centuries B.C., but it can bring no satisfaction to the people, which
always demands some definite satisfaction for its religious instincts.
We can still see clear traces of a very different attitude towards the
gods even among the Ionians themselves. The Homeric Hymn to
Apollo is, no doubt, sufficiently secular in tone, but the sanctuary
of Delos still retained some memories of the old Aegean religion.
It is not for nothing that the boat, which in prehistoric times had
conveyed the ‘twice seven’ Ionian youths and maidens from
Athens to Crete, went to Delos instead in later days, and the legend
of the Hyperboreans connected Delos with still more remote and
B B.G.P,
24 THE IONIANS
wonderful regions. It was not, however, in Ionia itself that these
germs were to fructify; for the days of Ionian freedom were almost
at an end, and the citizens of one state after another had to seek
new homes in the far west. A new age had begun in which there
was no room for the light-hearted polytheism of Homer. When
men once more felt a real need of worship, that could not satisfy
them. It is easier to worship a tree or an animal, than a god who is
just a man freed from the restraints that keep ordinary men in
check. That is also why the worship of two agricultural gods, who
are almost unknown to Homer, Demeter and Dionysos, come to be
of such importance at this date. They had not been completely
humanised yet, though we can see the beginnings of the process in
the Homeric Hymns, so it was still possible for men to worship
them sincerely.
RELIGION
§14. The cult of Dionysos, in particular, had received a new
impulse from the similar Thracian and Phrygian worships of
Zagreus and Sabazios. The phenomenon of ‘ecstasy’, which was
prominent in all these, suggested an entirely different view of the
soul and its relation to the body from that we find in Homer, and
this was propagated by the Orphic religion, which we now find
spreading in every direction. It was distinguished from all earlier
Greek religion in two important respects. In the first place, it
appealed to a revelation which had been written down in sacred
books, and in the second place, it was organised in communities
not based on a real or fictitious tie of blood, but open to all who
became initiated and promised to obey the rule. Its teaching was
the exact opposite of the Ionian pessimism, which had widened the
gulf between its humanised gods and man so far that religion in
any real sense had become impossible. The Orphics taught, on the
contrary, that, though men were certainly fallen, they were yet
akin to the gods and might rise again by a system of ‘purifications’
(καθαρμοῦ); they might win ‘redemption’ (λύσις) from sin and
death, and dwell with the gods for evermore. For the soul of the
Orpic ‘saint’ (ὅσιος) was immortal; it had existed before his birth,
and would exist after his death. Indeed, these words are improperly
used. What men call life is really death, and the body is the tomb
of the soul (σῶμα σῆμα), which is imprisoned successively in
animal, and even in vegetable bodies, until its final purification
ENLIGHTENMENT 25
liberates it from the ‘wheel of birth’. Those souls, on the other
hand, which are incurable (ἀνήκεστοι, aviator) are condemned to
lie in the ‘Slough’ (βόρβορος) for ever. The ideas of heaven and
hell, salvation and damnation, were a new thing in Greek religion.
The Orphic religion was mainly the faith of obscure people.
We do not know the names of its preachers and missionaries, and
we only know it to have been a reality from certain gold plates
buried with believers in South Italy and Crete. It is true that rulers
like Peisistratos took up the religion of Orpheus for political
reasons; but, on the whole, it is for us anonymous. That it was apt
to degenerate into a mere superstition is natural; for there were no
great Orphic teachers, so far as we know, who could have pre-
served its purity, and it fell an easy prey to charlatans and im-
postors. We shall see, however, that certain elements, which
seemed to have permanent value, were taken up by the philosophers,
and so preserved to later ages. In this way Orphicism has pro-
foundly affected all subsequent religions and philosophies, and not
least those which seem, at first sight, to be furthest removed from it.
ENLIGHTENMENT
§15. It need hardly be said that such ideas were wholly foreign
to the enlightened men of the Ionian cities. The saying that ‘all
things are full of gods’ is attributed to Thales, and belongs in any
case to this period. The tendency it indicates is what we should
call pantheistic, in the sense in which pantheism has been called ‘a
polite atheism’. This is still plainer in another form of the same
saying, which is ascribed to Herakleitos. He asked his visitors to
come into the kitchen, saying ‘Here too are gods’. But the true
spirit of Ionian science is best seen in some of the writings ascribed
to Hippokrates, which are certainly not later than the fifth century
B.C. In the treatise on The Sacred Disease (epilepsy) we read —
‘I do not think that any disease is more divine or more sacred than
others. .. . I think that those who first called this disease sacred were
men such as there are still at the present day, magicians and purifiers
(xafaprai) and charlatans and impostors. They make use of the god-
head (τὸ θεῖον) to cloak and cover their own incapacity.’
And again in the treatise on Airs, Waters and Sites —
‘Nothing is more divine or more human than anything else, but all
things are alike and all divine.’
26 THE IONIANS
That is the true note of ‘enlightenment’, and it was the note of all
the Ionian schools. It is most strongly marked in an elegiac and
satirical poet, who approached the question from the standpoint
of the reformer rather than of the scientific investigator. I refer to
Xenophanes, who is often regarded as the founder of the Eleatic
school, a point we shall return to later. In any case, chronological
and other considerations make it most instructive to take him up
at this point in our story.
§ 16. It is difficult to determine the dates of Xenophanes’ life
with any accuracy; for those given by ancient authorities have
been arrived at by a mere process of combination.? The facts of his
life are also obscure. There is not the slightest evidence that he was
a rhapsode, and it is most improbable. He may have visited Elea
as well as other places, but no ancient authority states unam-
biguously that he did. He was certainly a citizen of Kolophon, and
we know from his own statement that he had lived in exile from
the age of twenty-five, and that he was still writing poetry when
he was ninety-two. There is no doubt that he lived chiefly in Sicily,
and it is practically certain that he was at the court of Hiero of
Syracuse, who reigned from 478 to 467 B.c. He is also said to have
been a disciple of Anaximander, and there are features in his poetry
which make this probable. On the whole, it is safe to say that Xeno-
phanes belongs mainly to the sixth century B.c., though he lived
well into the fifth. Herakleitos already speaks of him in the past
tense, and couples his name with that of Hekataios.
§ 17. If we look at the very considerable remains of his poetry
that have come down to us, we shall see that they are all in the
satirist’s and social reformer’s vein. There is one dealing with the
management of a feast, another which denounces the exaggerated
importance attached to athletic victories, and several which attack
the humanised gods of Homer.” The problem is, therefore, to find,
if we can, a single point of view from which all these fragments
can be interpreted. It may be that no such point of view exists; but,
if one can be found, it is likely that we shall understand Xeno-
phanes better. Now we know that a great change came over
Hellenic life at the end of the sixth century B.c. It was a reaction
against the somewhat effeminate refinement and daintiness
(ἁβρότης) of Ionia, which had its source in the court of Sardeis and
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 55 sqq.
® For a translation of the fragments, see E. Gr. Ph.? § 57.
PANTHEISM 27
had spread with Ionian colonisation even to the far West. It had
reached its highest point at the court of Polykrates of Samos, and
its singers were Mimnermos of Kolophon and Anakreon of 'Teos.
It was not coarse and brutal like the luxury of later days, but there
was an element of decadence in it. It was characterised at once by
pessimism and frivolity. The change came when ‘the Mede
appeared’ (Xenophanes, fr. 22), and the Ionians had no longer to
do with half-Hellenised Lydians, but with a sterner foe. They then
began to feel the gulf that divided the Hellene from the ‘barbarian’,
and to accentuate the differences between them more and more.
The general use of the name ‘Hellenes’ dates only from this time.
Thucydides (i. 6) notes the change in dress which marked the new
spirit, and his statement is confirmed by vase-paintings.1 In
architecture the Doric style supersedes the Ionic. Everywhere we
note a return to a simpler and more virile way of life. It seems to
me that Xenophanes is best understood as a pioneer of this
movement.’
δ 18. The religious reformers of the day turned their back on
the anthropomorphic polytheism of Homer and Hesiod, and
Xenophanes will have none of it either. In his case, however, this
revolt is based on a conviction that the tales of the poets are directly
responsible for the moral corruption of the time. ‘Homer and
Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a
disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceiving of
one another’ (fr. 11). And this he held was due to the representation
of the gods in human form. Men make gods in their own image;
those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the
Thracians have blue eyes and red hair (fr. 16). If horses or oxen or
lions had hands and could produce works of art, they too would
represent the gods after their own fashion (fr. 15). All that must be
swept away along with the tales of Titans and Giants, those ‘fig-
ments of an earlier day’ (fr. 1) if social life is to be reformed.
Xenophanes found the weapons he required for his attack on
polytheism in the science of the time. There are traces of Anaxi-
mander’s cosmology in the fragments, and Xenophanes may easily
have been his disciple before he left Ionia. He seems to have taken
the gods of mythology one by one and reduced them to meteoro-
logical phenomena, and especially to clouds. And he maintained
1 See Pernice in Gercke and Norden’s Einleitung, vol. ii. pp. 39-44.
2 See especially fr. 3.
28 XENOPHANES
there was only one god — namely, the world. That is not mono-
theism, as it has been called, but pantheism. It is a simple repro-
duction of that special use of the term ‘god’ we have seen to be
characteristic of the early cosmologists generally. There is no
evidence that Xenophanes regarded this ‘god’ with any religious
feeling, and all we are told about him (or rather about it) is purely
negative. He is quite unlike a man, and has no special organs of
sense, but ‘sees all over, thinks all over, hears all over’ (fr. 24).
Further, he does not go about from place to place (fr. 26), but does
everything ‘without toil’ (fr. 25). It is not safe to go beyond this;
for Xenophanes himself tells us no more. It is pretty certain that if
he had said anything more positive or more definitely religious in
its bearing it would have been quoted by later writers.
§ 19. But while Xenophanes makes use of contemporary science
to overthrow the Olympian hierarchy, it is plain that he was not
himself a scientific man. In spite of Anaximander, he still believes
in a flat earth extending to infinity in all directions, and boundless
in depth also. Consequently it is a different sun that traverses our
heaven every day. The same must apply to the moon, which he
further held to be superfluous. Both sun and moon are ignited
clouds. The stars, too, are clouds that go out in the day time, but
glow at night like charcoal embers. That is not science as science
was understood at Meletos, and it seems that Xenophanes merely
made use of cosmological ideas for his own purposes. Any stick
was good enough to beat the gods of Homer and Hesiod with. He
says distinctly that the accounts he gives of the gods are ‘guesses
like the truth’ (fr. 34), and he denies the possibility of certain
knowledge in this field — ‘Even if a man should chance to say the
complete truth, he cannot know that it is the truth’ (fr. 34). In all
this Xenophanes is the precursor of another philosophy that came
from Ionia at a later date, that of Epicurus. The difference is
mainly that it was less of an anachronism in the fifth century B.C.
than it was two hundred years later.
In this chapter we have seen how the traditional view of the
world broke down, and how its place was taken by Orphic mysti-
cism on the one hand and by enlightened scepticism on the other.
Neither of these contained in itself the promise of the future. ‘That
lay in the work of the man who first united science with religion,
Pythagoras of Samos.
I]
P ytha goras
THE PROBLEM
§ 20. Pythagoras must have been one of the world’s greatest
men, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say how much of the
doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due to the founder of the
society and how much is later development.1 We have met the
same difficulty in the case of Thales, and we shall meet it again
when we come to Sokrates. One general remark may be made
about it at once. So far as we know, all great advances in human
knowledge have been due to individuals rather than to the collective
work of a school, and so it is better to take the risk of ascribing a
little too much to the founder than to lose sight of him among a
crowd of disciples. On the other hand, it is certain that some
Pythagorean doctrines at least belong to a later generation, and it
will be well to reserve these for a future chapter. Such a division is
inevitable if we are to give an intelligible account of Pythagoreanism,
but it must be remembered that it is often quite uncertain whether
a particular doctrine belongs to the earlier period or to the later.
§ 21. It is also hard to say how much of what we are told about
the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy; for a mass of legend gathered
round his name at an early date. Sometimes he is represented as a
man of science, and sometimes as a preacher of mystic doctrines,
and we might be tempted to regard one or other of those characters
as alone historical. It is quite possible to picture Pythagoras as a
mere medicine-man, and to treat all Pythagorean science as the
work of his successors. It is also possible to rationalise the story of
his life and represent him mainly as a mathematician and statesman.
In that case we have to regard the miraculous tales told of him as
due to the Neopythagoreans of the early centuries of our era. There
1 Aristotle never attributes any doctrine to Pythagoras himself. He generally
speaks of ‘the so-called Pythagoreans’, and, often, still more cautiously, of ‘some
of the Pythagoreans’. References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.* §§ 37 sqq.
30 PYTHAGORAS
is a serious difficulty here, however; for many of these wonders
were already known to Aristotle. It is equally difficult to reject the
tradition that makes Pythagoras the true founder of mathematical
science; for that science was certainly in existence by the middle of
the fifth century B.c., and it must have been the work of someone.
If the credit is really due to another than Pythagoras, it is strange
that his name should have been forgotten. Further, Herakleitos in
the next generation tells us that Pythagoras practised inquiry
(ἱστορίη) beyond all other men, and he thinks the worse of him for
it. That is practically contemporary evidence, and it can only
mean that Pythagoras was famous as a man of science. The truth
is that there is no need to reject either of the traditional views. The
union of mathematical genius and mysticism is common enough.
It was also characteristic of the seventeenth century, which took
up once more the thread of Greek science. Kepler was led to dis-
cover the laws of planetary motion by his belief in the ‘harmony of
the spheres’ and in planetary souls.
LIFE AND DOCTRINE
§ 22. Pythagoras was a Samian, and, as we are told, he migrated
to Italy because he disliked the rule of Polykrates. That is why his
floruit is given as 532 B.C., the year Polykrates became tyrant. No
actual dates are known, but it is safe to say that his activity belongs
mainly to the last quarter of the sixth century B.c. When he left
Samos, he founded at Kroton in southern Italy a society which was
at once a religious community and a scientific school. Such a body
was bound to excite jealousy and mistrust, and we hear of many
struggles. Pythagoras himself had to flee from Kroton to Meta-
pontion, where he died. The chief opponent of Pythagoreanism,
Kylon, is expressly said to have been rich and noble, and there is
no evidence for the belief that Pythagoras and his followers took
the aristocratic side. That notion was based on the fancy that they
represented ‘the Dorian ideal’. It is far from clear what is meant by
the Dorian ideal; but in any case Pythagoras himself was an Ionian,
and his society was established in Achaian, not Dorian, colonies.
It is also certain that the earlier Pythagoreans used the Ionic dialect.1
1 Τὸ has been said that the name Pythagoras is Dorian in form. Herodotos and
Herakleitos and Demokritos call him ‘Pythagores’, and so no doubt he called
himself. The form ‘Pythagoras’ is no more Doric than ‘Anaxagoras’. It is simply
Attic.
THE PYTHAGOREAN ORDER 31
After the death of the Master, the disturbances went on more than
ever, and soon after the middle of the fifth century there was a
regular rising, in the course of which the Pythagorean lodges
(συνέδρια) were burnt down, and many of the brethren lost their
lives. Those who survived took refuge at Thebes and elsewhere,
and we shall hear more of them later.
Being a Samian, Pythagoras would naturally be influenced by
the cosmology of the neighbouring Miletos. It is stated that he was
a disciple of Anaximander, which is no doubt a guess, but probably
right. At any rate his astronomy was the natural development of
Anaximander’s theory of planetary rings, though it went far be-
yond that. The importance of the infinite (τὸ ἄπειρον) in the
Pythagorean cosmology suggests Milesian influence, and the iden-
tification of the infinite with ‘air’ by at least some Pythagoreans
points to a connexion with the doctrines of Anaximenes. The way in
which the Pythagorean geometry developed also bears witness to
its descent from that of Miletos. The great problem at this date
was the duplication of the square, a problem which gave rise to the
theorem of the square on the hypotenuse, commonly known still
as the Pythagorean proposition (Euclid, I. 47). If we were right in
assuming that Thales worked with the old 3 : 4 : 5 triangle, the
connexion is obvious, and the very name ‘hypotenuse’ bears
witness to it; for that word means the rope or cord ‘stretching over
against’ the right angle, or, as we say, ‘subtending’ it.
§ 23. But this was not the only influence that affected Pythagoras
in his earlier days. He is said to have been a disciple of Pherekydes
as well as of Anaximander, and the mystical element in his teaching
is thus accounted for. In any case, as has been indicated already,
the religion of the Delian and Hyperborean Apollo had a mystical
side. ‘The legends of Abaris and Aristeas of Prokonnesos are enough
to show that. There are several points of contact between this form
of mysticism (which seems to be independent of the Dionysiac)
and Crete. We have seen that the boat containing the seven youths
and seven maidens went to Delos in historical times, though
tradition remembered its original destination was Crete, and
Epimenides, the great purifier, was a Cretan. There are many
things, in fact, which suggest that this form of mysticism had
survived from ‘Minoan’ times, and it is therefore quite unnecessary
to seek its origin in Egypt or India. It is highly probable, then, that
Pythagoras brought his ascetic practices and mystical beliefs about
22 PYTHAGORAS
the soul from his Ionian home, and there was a statue of Aristeas
of Prokonnesos at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. ‘This does
not, of course, exclude the possibility that the religion of the
Pythagoreans was also influenced by contemporary Orphicism; it
is only meant that they derived it from a genuinely Ionic source,
and that Apollo, not Dionysos, was their special god.
§ 24. Now one of the leading ideas of the Apollonian religion
which had its centre at Delos in historical times was purification
(κάθαρσις), and that held an important place in the teaching of
Pythagoras. The longing for purity is something very deeply rooted
in human nature, and Catharism is always reappearing in new
forms. Of course we may mean very different things by purity. It
may be merely external, and in that case it can easily be secured by
the strict observance of certain abstinences and taboos. That these
were observed in the Pythagorean society is certain, and it is quite
likely that many members of it got no further. It is certain, how-
ever, that the leading men of the order did. There was an important
medical school at Kroton even before Pythagoras went there, and
it appears that the old religious idea of purification was early re-
garded in the light of the medical practice of purgation. At any
rate, Aristoxenos, who was personally acquainted with the Pytha-
goreans of his time, tells us that they used medicine to purge the
body and music to purge the soul. That already connects the
scientific studies of the school with its religious doctrine, since
there is no doubt that we owe the beginnings of scientific thera-
peutics and harmonics to the Pythagoreans. But that is not all. In
the Phaedo Sokrates quotes a saying that ‘philosophy is the highest
music’, which seems to be Pythagorean in origin. The purgative
function of music was fully recognised in the psychotherapy of
these days. It originated in the practice of the Korybantic priests,
who treated nervous and hysterical patients by wild pipe music,
thus exciting them to the pitch of exhaustion, which was followed
in turn by a healthy sleep from which the patient awoke cured. An
interesting light is thrown on this by what was known as “T'arantism’
in later days.? Taking all these things together, there is much to be
said for the view that the originality of Pythagoras consisted in this,
that he regarded scientific, and especially mathematical, study as
the best purge for the soul. That is the theory of the early part of
1 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv. PP. 295 5664.
2 See Enc. Brit. (11th edition) s.v. “Tarantula.
REBIRTH AND REMINISCENCE 33
Plato’s Phaedo, which is mainly a statement of Pythagorean
doctrine, and it frequently recurs in the history of Greek philo-
sophy. It may be added that tradition represents the word
‘philosophy’ as having been first used by Pythagoras. If that is so
(and there is much to be said for the tradition), we need not
hesitate to ascribe to him the saying mentioned in the Phaedo that
philosophy is the ‘highest music’, and so, since music was certainly
regarded as a soul-purge, we come to the same result in another
way. We still speak of ‘pure mathematics’,1 and that way of speak-
ing has given rise in turn to the phrase ‘pure scholarship’.
§ 25. Closely connected with this is the doctrine of the Three
Lives, the Theoretic, the Practical, and the Apolaustic, which is
probably to be referred to the founder of the society. There are
three kinds of men, just as there are three classes of strangers who
come to the Olympic Games. The lowest consists of those who
come to buy and sell, and next above them are those who come to
compete. Best of all are those who simply come to look on (θεωρεῖν).
Men may be classified accordingly as lovers of wisdom (φιλόσοφοι),
lovers of honour (φιλότιμοι), and lovers of gain (φιλοκερδεῖς). That
seems to imply the doctrine of the tripartite soul, which is also
attributed to the early Pythagoreans on good authority,” though it
is common now to ascribe it to Plato. There are, however, clear
references to it before his time, and it agrees much better with the
general outlook of the Pythagoreans. The comparison of human
life to a gathering (πανήγυρις) like the Games was often repeated in
later days,° and is the ultimate source of Bunyan’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
The view that the soul is a stranger and a sojourner in this life was
also destined to influence European thought profoundly.
§ 26. There can be no doubt that Pythagoras taught the doctrine
of Rebirth or transmigration,* which he may have learned from the
contemporary Orphics. Xenophanes made fun of him for pretend-
ing to recognise the voice of a departed friend in the howls of a
beaten dog (fr. 7). Empedokles seems to be referring to him when
he speaks (fr. 129) of a man who could remember what happened
ten or twenty generations before. It was on this that the doctrine
1 Cp. the use of καθαρῶς γνῶναι, εἰδεναι, etc., in the Phaedo, 65 e, 66 d, e.
2 The authority is Poseidonios. See my edition of the Phaedo, 68 c, 2, note.
__ > Cp. Menander, fr. 481 Kock (Pickard-Cambridge, p. 141. No. 68), Epictetus,
ii. 14, 23.
4 The word metempsychosis is not used by good writers, and is inaccurate; for
it would mean that different souls entered into the same body. The older word is
παλιγγενεσία, being ‘born again’. See E. Gr. Ph.? p. 101, n. 2.
34 PYTHAGORAS
of Reminiscence, which plays so great a part in Plato’s Meno and
Phaedo, was based.1 'The things we perceive with the senses, we
are told, remind us of things we knew when the soul was out of the
body and could perceive reality directly. We have never seen equal
sticks or stones, but we know what equality is, and it is just by
comparing the things of sense with the realities of which they
remind us that we judge them to be imperfect. I see no difficulty in
referring this doctrine in its mathematical application to Pythagoras
himself. It must have struck him that the realities he was dealing
with were not perceived by the senses, and the doctrine of Re-
miniscence follows easily from that of Rebirth.
§ 27. As has been indicated, there is more difficulty about the
cosmology of Pythagoras. Hardly any school ever professed such
reverence for its founder’s authority as the Pythagorean. ‘The
Master said so’ (αὐτὸς ἔφα, ipse dixit) was their watchword. On the
other hand, few schools have shown so much capacity for progress
and for adapting themselves to new conditions. The contradiction
here is doubtless more apparent than real, but it creates a difficulty
for the historian, and we can hardly ever feel sure to what stage
of development any given statement about Pythagoreanism refers.
One thing, however, we can see distinctly. There is a form of the
doctrine that precedes the rise of the Eleatic philosophy, and there
is a form that is subsequent to it. We shall do well, therefore, to
reserve for the present all doctrines which seem to imply the
Eleatic criticism. That is really the only criterion we can
apply.
§ 28. We can make out pretty clearly to begin with that Pytha-
goras started from the cosmical system of Anaximenes. Aristotle
tells us that the Pythagoreans represented the world as inhaling
‘air’ from the boundless mass outside it, and this ‘air’ is identified
with ‘the unlimited’. On the other hand, Pythagoras seems to have
learnt from Anaximander that the earth is not a flat disc. He still,
in all probability, thought of it as the centre of the world, though
his followers held otherwise at a later date, but he could no longer
regard it as cylindrical. As soon as the cause of eclipses came to be
understood, it was natural to infer that the earth was a sphere, and
we may probably attribute that discovery to Pythagoras himself.
With this exception, his general view of the world seems to have
been distinctly Milesian in character.
1 See my edition of the Phaedo, 72 e, 4 note.
THE LIMIT 35
When, however, we come to the process by which things are
developed out of the ‘unlimited’, we observe a great change. We
hear nothing more of ‘separating out’ or even of rarefaction and
condensation. Instead of that we have the theory that what gives
form to the Unlimited (ἄπειρον) is the Limit (πέρας). That is the
great contribution of Pythagoras to philosophy, and we must try
to understand it. We have seen that the Milesians had reached the
conception of what we call ‘matter’; it was the work of the Pytha-
goreans to supplement this by the correlative conception of ‘form’.
As this is one of the central problems of Greek philosophy, it is very
important for us to ascertain if we can what was originally meant by
the doctrine of the Limit.
Now the function of the Limit is usually illustrated from the arts
of music and medicine, and we have seen how important these two
arts were for the Pythagoreans, so it is natural to infer that the key
to its meaning is to be found in them. Let us see, then, what can be
safely affirmed with regard to early Pythagorean musical and
medical theory. The doctrines described in the following para-
graphs are all genuinely Pythagorean, but it will be remembered
that our ascription of any particular statement to Pythagoras
himself is conjectural. We cannot tell either whether music or
medicine came first, or, in other words, whether the purge of the
body was explained by the purge of the soul, or vice versa. It will,
however, be convenient to begin with music.
\MusIc~
§ 29. In the first place, it may be taken as certain that Pythagoras
himself discovered the numerical ratios which determine the con-
cordant intervals of the scale. Of course, when the Greeks called
certain intervals concordant (σύμφωνα) they were thinking primarily
of notes sounded in succession and not simultaneously. In other
words, the term refers to melodic progressions, and not to what
we call harmonious chords. The principle is ultimately the same,
indeed, but it is often of importance to remember that there was
no such thing as harmony in classical Greek music, and that the
word ‘harmony’ (ἁρμονία) means in the Greek language, first
‘tuning’, and then ‘scale’.
In the time of Pythagoras the lyre had seven strings, and it is not
improbable that the eighth was added later as the result of his
36 PYTHAGORAS
discoveries. All the strings were of equal length, and were tuned to
the required pitch by tension and relaxation (ἐπίτασις, ἄνεσις).
This was done entirely by ear, and the first thing was to make the
two outside strings (hypaté and nété)! concordant, in the sense
explained, with one another, with the middle string (mesé), and
with the string just above it (trité, later paramesé). ‘The notes
(φθόγγοι) of these four strings were called ‘stationary’ (ἑστῶτες),
and were similarly related to one another in every kind of scale; the
notes of the other three (or four in the eight-stringed lyre) were
‘movable’ (κινούμενοι), and scales were distinguished as enhar-
monic, chromatic, and diatonic (with their varieties), according as
these strings were tuned more or less closely to the same pitch as
the nearest fixed notes. They might differ from these in pitch by as
little as what we call a quarter-tone, or as much as what we call a
double tone. It is obvious that none of our scales could be played
on a seven-stringed lyre at all; an eight-stringed lyre, tuned to the
diatonic scale, is required for them. Even in that scale, however,
the Greeks did not recognise the interval we call the third as
concordant.*
§ 30. It is quite probable that Pythagoras knew the pitch of
notes to depend on the rate of vibrations which communicate
‘beats’ or pulsations (πληγαί) to the air. At any rate, that was quite
familiar to his successors; but neither he nor they had any means
of measuring the rate of vibrations. As, however, the rate of vibra-
tion of two similar strings is inversely proportional to their length,
it was possible for him to transform the problem and attack it on
that side. The lyre did not immediately suggest this; for its strings
were of equal length, but a few experiments with strings of un-
equal length would establish the truth. Pythagoras doubtless used
a simple apparatus, consisting of a string which could be stopped
at different intervals by a movable bridge (the monochord), and in
this way reduced the experiment to a simple comparison of lengths
on a single string. The result was to show that the concordant
intervals of the scale could be expressed by the simple numerical
ratios 2: 1, 3 : 2, and 4 : 3, or, taking the lowest whole numbers
1 Observe that the terms ὑπάτη and νήτη do not refer to pitch. As a matter of
fact, the ὑπάτη gave the lowest note and the νήτη the highest. The terms for ‘high’
and ‘low’ are ὀξύς (acutus, ‘sharp’), and βαρύς (gravis).
2 An elementary knowledge of the Greek lyre is essential for the understand-
ing of Greek philosophy. A useful introduction to the subject will be found
in the articles (by D. B. Monro) Lyra and Musica in Smith’s Dictionary of
Antiquities.
MUSIC 37
which have these ratios to one another, that the four stationary
notes of the lyre could be expressed thus:
6 8 9 12
For convenience let us represent these four notes by those of the
gamut in descending order:
Neété Paramesé Mesé Hypaté
Mi Si La Mi,
and we may explain the discovery of Pythagoras as follows:
(1) When he took a length of string double that which gave the
high Mi, it gave the low Mi. That is the interval which we call the
octave and the Greeks called diapdsén (διὰ πασῶν, sc. χορδῶν). It is
expressed by the ratio 2 : 1 (διπλάσιος λόγος).
(2) When he took a length of string half as long again as that which
gave the high Mi, it gave La. That is the interval which we call the
fifth and the Greeks called dia pente (διὰ πέντε, sc. χορδῶν). It is
expressed by the ratio 3 : 2 (ἡμιόλιος λόγος).
(3) When he took a length of string one-third again as long as that
which gave the high Mi, it gave Si. That is the interval which we call
the fourth and the Greeks called diatessaron (διὰ τεσσάρων, sc.
χορδῶν). It is expressed by the ratio 4 : 3 (ἐπίτριτος λόγος).
(4) The compass (μέγεθος) of the octave is a fifth and a fourth
(3 x $ =42), and the note which is a fifth from the nété is a fourth from
the hypaté, and vice versa.
(5) The interval between the fourth and the fifth is expressed by
the ratio 9 : 8 (ἐπόγδοος λόγος). This is called the ‘tone’ (τόνος) or
pitch par excellence (probably from its importance in attuning the two
tetrachords to one another).
(6) As there is no (numerical) mean proportional between 1 and 2,
neither the octave nor the tone can be divided into equal parts.
There is good reason for holding that Pythagoras did not go any
further than this, and that no attempt was made to determine the
ratios between the ‘movable’ notes of the tetrachord till the days of
Archytas and Plato. It is by no means clear, in fact, that there was
any strict rule with regard to these at this date. Aristoxenos tells
us that the diagrams of the older musical theorists all referred to
the enharmonic scale, which proceeded by what he called quarter-
tones and a double tone; but Pythagoras could not admit the
possibility of quarter-tones, since the tone did not admit of equal
division. The internal notes of the tetrachord must, then, have
? See Tannery, ‘A propos des fragments philolaiques sur la musique’ (Rev. de
philologie, 1904, pp. 233 544.).
38 PYTHAGORAS
been regarded as of the nature of the ‘unlimited’, and the ‘limit’
was represented only by the perfect concords.
§ 31. Now if we look at the four terms (ὅροι) which we have
discovered, we shall find that 8 and 9 are related to the extremes 6
and 12 as means. The term g, which represents the note of the
mesé, exceeds and is exceeded by the same number, namely 3. It is
what is called the arithmetical mean (ἀριθμητικὴ μεσότης). On the
other hand, the term 8, which represents the note of the paramesé,
exceeds and is ee by the same fraction of the extremes; for
8=12 —12=6+ 4. This was called the subcontrary (ὑπεναντία), or
later, for ‘obwious reasons, the harmonic mean (ἁρμονικὴ μεσότης).
The geometrical mean is not to be found within the compass of a
single octave.
Now this discovery of the Mean at once suggests a new solution
of the old Milesian problem of opposites. We know that Anaxi-
mander regarded the encroachment of one opposite on the other
as an ‘injustice’, and he must therefore have held there was a point
which was fair to both. That, however, he had no means of deter-
mining. The discovery of the Mean suggests that it is to be found
in a ‘blend’ (κρᾶσις) of the opposites, which might be numerically
determined, just as that of the high and low notes of the octave
had been. The convivial customs of the Greeks made such an idea
natural to them. The master of the feast used to prescribe the
proportions of wine and water to be poured into the mixing-bowl
before it was served out to the guests. That is why the Demiourgos
in Plato’s Timaeus uses a mixing-bowl (κρατήρ). It may well have
seemed that, if Pythagoras could discover the rule for blending
such apparently elusive things as high and low notes, the secret of
the world had been found.
§ 32. There remains one point of which the full significance
will not appear till later, but which must be mentioned here. It is
plain that the octachord scale could be increased by the addition of
one or more tetrachords at either end, and that it would therefore
be possible to obtain octave scales in which the smaller and larger
intervals! occurred in a different order. We can get some rough
idea of this by playing scales on the white notes of the piano alone.
It is fortunately unnecessary for our present purpose to discuss the
1 The example given by Aristoxenos is taken from the enharmonic tetrachord
in which, according to his terminology, we may have (1) 4 tone, 4 tone, ditone,
(2)4% tone, ditone, ¢ tone, or (3) ditone, ¢ tone, 4 tone.
MEDICINE 39
relation of these ‘figures of the octave’ (εἴδη τοῦ διὰ πασῶν), as they
were called, to the ‘modes’ (ἁρμονίαι, τρόποι) of which we hear so
much in Greek writers; for it cannot be said that this problem has
been satisfactorily solved yet.t All that is important for us is that
these scales were called ‘figures’ (εἴδη) just because they varied in
the arrangement of their parts. We have the authority of Aris-
toxenos for that,? and we shall see that it is a matter of fundamental
importance.
MEDICINE
§ 33. In Medicine we have also to do with ‘opposites’, such as
the hot and the cold, the wet and the dry, and it is the business of
the physician to produce a proper ‘blend’ (κρᾶσις) of these in the
human body. In a well-known passage of Plato’s Phaedo (86 b) we
are told by Simmias that the Pythagoreans held the body to be
strung like an instrument to a certain pitch, hot and cold, wet and
dry taking the place of high and low in music. According to this
view, health is just being in tune, and disease arises from undue
tension or relaxation of the strings. We still speak of ‘tonics’ in
medicine as well as in music. Now the medical school of Kroton,
which is represented for us by Alkmaion, based its theory on a very
similar doctrine. According to him, health depended on the
‘isonomy’ (écovouin) of the opposites in the body, and disease
was just the undue predominance of one or the other. We need not
be surprised, then, to find that Alkmaion was intimately associated
with the Pythagoreans, and that he dedicated his medical treatise
to some of the leading members of the society. Health, in fact, was
an ‘attunement’ (ἁρμονία) depending on a due blend of opposites,
and the same account was given of many other things with which
the physician is concerned, notably of diet and climate. The word
‘blend’ (κρᾶσις) itself was used both of bodily temperament, as we
still call it, and of the temperature which distinguished one climate
from another. When we speak of ‘temperance’ in eating and drink-
ing, we are equally on Pythagorean ground.
Now we find the word we have translated ‘figure’ (εἶδος) used
more than once in the literature of the fifth century B.c. in con-
1 See Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music (1894); Macran, The Harmonics
of Aristoxenus (1902); J. D. Dennistoun, ‘Some Recent Theories of the Greek
Modes’ (Classical Quarterly, vii. (1913), pp. 83 sqq.).
2 Aristoxenos, El. Harm. iii. 74, is quite clear that εἴδη here means ‘figures’,
διαφέρει δ᾽ ἡμῖν οὐδὲν εἶδος λέγειν 7) σχῆμα᾽ φέρομεν yap ἀμφότερα τὰ ὀνόματα ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό.
40 PYTHAGORAS
nexion with disease and death, and, as has been pointed out,? it
occurs in many places in close connexion with a verb (καθίστασθαι)
which has also a technical sense in ancient medicine. ‘The same
verb (and its substantive κατάστασις) is also applied to the in-
dividual constitution of a given body. It is surely natural to interpret
these uses of the word in the light of the ‘figures of the octave’
explained above. The opposites on which health and disease
depend may combine in various patterns, as it were, and such
variation of pattern is also the explanation of the differences
between the constitutions (καταστάσεις) of individual patients.
NUMBERS
§ 34. Having discovered that tuning and health were alike
means arising from the application of Limit to the Unlimited, and
that this resulted in the formation of certain ‘figures’ (εἴδη), it was
natural for Pythagoras to look for something of the same kind in
the world at large. The Milesians had taught that all things issued
from the Boundless or Unlimited, though they had given different
accounts of this. Anaximenes had identified it with ‘air’, and had
explained the forms this took by rarefaction and condensation. He
was thinking chiefly of ‘air’ as a form of mist. Pythagoras would
seem to have regarded it mainly from another point of view; for
the Pythagoreans, or some of them, certainly identified ‘air’ with
the void. This is the beginning, but no more than the beginning, of
the conception of abstract space or extension, and what chiefly inter-
ested Pythagoras, so far as we can see, was the problem of how it be-
came limited so as to present the appearance of the world we know.
There is a striking confirmation of this in the Second Part of the
poem of Parmenides, if, as we shall see reason for believing, that is
a sketch of Pythagorean cosmology. There the two ‘forms’ (uop¢at),
which men have erroneously assumed are Light and Darkness.
Darkness was still regarded in these days as a thing, not as a mere
privation of light, and ‘air’ was very closely associated with it. In
Plato’s Timaeus (58 d) we have what is no doubt the traditional
Pythagorean view, that mist and darkness were alike forms of ‘air’.
Now Light and Darkness are included in the famous Pythagorean
1See A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica (St. Andrews University Publications,
No. ix), p. 189. Professor Taylor has not cited the εἴδη τοῦ διὰ πασῶν in con-
firmation of his view, but it seems to me important, seeing that we have the ex-
press authority of Aristoxenos for εἶδος = σχῆμα in that case.
NUMBERS 41
table of ‘opposites’, where they come under the head of Limit and
the Unlimited respectively.
§ 35. Briefly stated, the doctrine of Pythagoras was that all
things are numbers, and it is impossible for us to attach any
meaning to this statement unless we have a clear idea of what he is
likely to have meant by a ‘number’. Now we know for certain that,
in certain fundamental cases, the early Pythagoreans represented
numbers and explained their properties by means of dots arranged
in certain ‘figures’ (εἴδη, σχήματα) or patterns. That is, no doubt,
very primitive; for the practice is universal on dice and such things
from the earliest times. The most celebrated of these Pythagorean
figures was the tetraktys,1 by which the members of the Order used
to swear. This showed at a glance what the Pythagoreans con-
ceived to be the most important property of the number ten —
namely, that it is the sum of the first four natural integers
(1+2+3+4=10), thus —
It is obvious that this figure could be extended indefinitely, and that
it takes the place of a formula for the sums of the series of successive
natural integers, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, and so on. These, therefore, were
called ‘triangular numbers’.
We hear in the next place of square (τετράγωνοι) and oblong
(ἑτερομήκεις) numbers. A square number meant (as it still does) a
number which is the product of equal factors, an oblong number,
one which is the product of unequal factors. These may be pre-
sented thus —
th
We see at once from these figures that the addition of successive
odd numbers in the form of a gnomon produces square numbers
1 For the form of this word cp. τρικτύς (Att. τριττύς). The forms τρικτύαρχος and
τρικτυαρχεῖν occur in Delian inscriptions (Dittenberger, Sylloge*, 588,19 sqq.).
42 PYTHAGORAS
(4, 9, 16, etc.), while the addition of successive even numbers
produces oblong numbers (6, 12, 20, etc.). We might go on in the
same way to study the properties of cubic numbers, but we cannot
tell how far Pythagoras had advanced in this direction. The
important thing to notice is that all these figures express the sums
of series of different kinds. The series of integers yields triangular
numbers, that of odd numbers yields square numbers, and that of
even numbers yields oblong numbers. Aristotle notes further that
the form (εἶδος) of the square numbers is always the same; it is the
ratio r : 1. On the other hand, each successive oblong number has
a different form (εἶδος). These correspond exactly to the concordant
intervals of the octave.}
Our knowledge of these things comes chiefly from Neopytha-
gorean writers, who regarded the ‘figures’ as more ‘natural’ than
the ordinary notation by letters of the alphabet, but they certainly
were known to Aristotle,2 and we need have no hesitation in
referring them to the very beginnings of Pythagorean science. In
spite of the introduction of the Arabic (or rather Hindu) system,
‘figurate numbers’, as they were called, survived the Middle Ages,
8 . . y . 4 . 8 .
and the term is still used, though in a more restricted sense. It is
not a little remarkable that the English language has retained the
name ‘figures’, though it is now applied to the ‘Arabic’ notation.*
In other languages the Arabic sifr has been adopted.
§ 36. This way of representing numbers by ‘figures’ would
naturally lead up to problems of a geometrical nature. The dots
which stood for the units were regularly called ‘terms’ (ὅρου,
termini, ‘boundary stones’), and the spaces marked out by them
were called ‘fields’ (χῶραι). ΤῈ question would naturally arise,
‘How many terms are required to mark out a square which is
double of a given square?’ There is no reason for doubting that
1 Thus the ratio between the sides of 2 (2 : 1) is the διπλάσιος λόγος (the octave);
the ratio between the sides of 6 (3 : 2) is the ἡμιόλιος λόγος (the fifth); the ratio
between the sides of 12 (4 : 3) is the ἐπίτριτος λόγος (the fourth).
2 Cp. especially Met. N, 5. 1092 b, 8 (Eurytos and of τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς ἄγοντες εἰς τὰ
σχήματα τρίγωνον καὶ τετράγωνον). In Phys. I’, 4. 203 a, 13, in explaining square
and oblong numbers, he uses the old word εἶδος instead of the more modern
σχῆμα. That εἶδος originally meant ‘figure’ in the sense of ‘pattern’ appears
from the use of εΐδη for the figures on a piece of embroidery (Plut. Them. 29).
3 The following quotations from the New English Dictionary are of interest in
this connexion: 1551 RECORDE Pathw. Knowl. ... ‘Formes (sc. produced by
arrangements of points in rows)... Wwhiche I omitte. .. considering that their
knowledge appertaineth more to Arithmetike figurall than to Geometrie.’ 1614
T. Bedwell, Nat. Geom. Numbers, i. 1, ‘A rationall figurate number is a number
that is made by the multiplication of numbers between themselves.’
THE PENTAGRAM 43
Pythagoras discovered that the square of the hypotenuse was equal
to the squares on the other two sides; but we know that he did not
prove this in the same way as Euclid did later (I. 47). It is probable
that his proof was-arithmetical rather than geometrical; and, as he
was acquainted with the 3 : 4 : 5 triangle, which is always a right-
angled triangle, he may have started from the fact that 37+ 47=5%.
He must, however, have discovered also that this proof broke
down in the case of the most perfect triangle of all, the isosceles
right-angled triangle, seeing that the relation between its
hypotenuse and its sides cannot be expressed by any numerical
ratio. The side of the square is incommensurable with the diagonal.
That is just the same sort of difficulty we meet with when we
attempt to divide the tone or the octave into two equal parts.
There is no indication that Pythagoras formed any theory on the
subject. He probably referred it simply to the nature of the Un-
limited.
§ 37. Another problem which must have exercised him was the
construction of the sphere. This he seems to have approached from
the consideration of the dodecahedron, which, of all the regular
solids, approaches most nearly to the sphere. Now the side of the
dodecahedron is the regular pentagon; and for its construction it is
necessary to divide.a line in extreme and mean ratio, the so-called
‘golden section’ (Euclid, II. 11). That introduces us to another
‘irrational magnitude’,! and we have evidence that this too played
an important part as one of the Pythagorean mysteries. The
pentalpha (so-called from its shape) or pentagram was used in its
construction, and the Pythagoreans are said to have appended it to
1In the scholium on Euclid, II. 11 (vol. v. p. 249, Heiberg) we have what
appears to be a Pythagorean way of expressing this. This problem, we are told,
οὐ δείκνυται διὰ ψήφων, ‘is not to be exhibited by means of pebbles’.
44 PYTHAGORAS
their letters. It continued to be used long afterwards for magical
purposes, and we meet with it in Goethe’s Faust, and elsewhere.
Tradition represented Hippasos as the man who divulged Pytha-
gorean secrets, and one story says he was drowned at sea for
revealing the incommensurability of the side and the diagonal,
another that he met with the same fate for publishing the construc-
tion of the regular dodecahedron. This is one of the cases where
tradition has preserved the memory of something which was real
and important.
§ 38. It was natural for Pythagoras to apply his discovery to the
heavenly bodies, and it is extremely probable that he regarded the
intervals between the three wheels of Anaximander as correspond-
ing to the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. That would be the most
natural explanation of the doctrine generally known by the some-
what misleading name of ‘the harmony of the spheres’. ‘There 15 no
reason to believe that the celestial spheres are older than Eudoxos,
and everything points to the conclusion that the Pythagoreans
retained the rings or wheels of Anaximander. They appear in the
Second Part of the poem of Parmenides and also in the myth of Er
in Plato’s Republic. We must further remember that there is no
question of ‘harmony’ in our sense of the word, but only of the
concordant intervals, which seemed to express the law of the
world. They yield the conception of ‘form’ as correlative to
‘matter’, and the form is always in some sense a Mean. ‘That is the
central doctrine of all Greek philosophy to the very end, and it is
not too much to say that it is henceforth dominated by the idea of
ἁρμονία or the tuning of a string.
ΠῚ
Herakleitos and Parmenides
HERAKLEITOS
§ 39. It is above all in dealing with Herakleitos that we are made
to feel the importance of personality in shaping systems of
philosophy. The very style of his fragments! is something unique
in Greek literature, and won for him in later times the epithet of
‘the dark’ (ὁ σκοτεινός). He is quite conscious himself that he writes
an oracular style, and he justifies it by the example of the Siby] (fr.
12) and of the God at Delphoi (fr. 11), who ‘neither utters nor
hides his meaning, but signifies it’. Here we see the influence of
what has been called the prophetic movement of the sixth century
B.C., though we are not entitled to assume without more ado that
Herakleitos was influenced by that in other respects. The truth is
that his central thought is quite simple, and that it is still quite
possible to disentangle it from its enigmatic surroundings. Only,
when we have done this, we must not suppose we have given a
complete account of the man. He is much too big for our formulas.
The date of Herakleitos is roughly fixed by his reference in the
past tense to Hekataios, Pythagoras, and Xenophanes (fr. 16), and
by the fact that Parmenides appears to allude to him in turn (fr. 6).
This means that he wrote early in the fifth century B.c. He was an
Ephesian noble, and it appears that the ancient dignity of Basileus
(at this date no doubt a religious office) was hereditary in his
family; for we are told that he resigned it in favour of his brother.
We get a glimpse of his political attitude in the quotation (fr. 114)
where he says: “The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves,
every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for
they have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying,
“We will have none that is best among us; if there be any such, let
him be so elsewhere and among others.” ’ There can be no doubt
1 For references to authorities and a translation of the fragments, see E. Gr.
Ph.* δὲ 63 sqq. The fragments are quoted by Bywater’s numbers.
46 HERAKLEITOS
that Herakleitos was a convinced aristocrat and had a sovereign
contempt for the mass of mankind.
But it was not only the common run of men that Herakleitos
despised; he had not even a good word for any of his predecessors.
He agrees, of course, with Xenophanes about Homer (with whom
he classes Archilochos), but Xenophanes himself falls under an
equal condemnation. In a remarkable fragment (fr. 16) he men-
tions him along with Hesiod, Pythagoras, and Hekataios as an
instance of the truth that much learning (πολυμαθίη) does not teach
men to think (νόον οὐ διδάσκει). The researches (toropin) of Pytha-
goras, by which we are to understand in the first place his harmonic
and arithmetical discoveries, are rejected with special emphasis
(fr. 17). Wisdom is not a knowledge of many things; it is the clear
knowledge of one thing only, and this Herakleitos describes, in
true prophetic style, as his Word (Adyos), which is ‘true evermore’,
though men cannot understand it even when it is told to them (fr.
2). We must endeavour, then, to discover, if we can, what Hera-
kleitos meant by his Word, the thing he felt he had been born to
say, whether anyone would listen to him or not.
§ 40. In the first place, it is plain that the Word must be some-
thing more than the doctrine of Fire as the primary substance, or
even the theory of Flux (πάντα ῥεῖ). If Herakleitos had merely
substituted fire for the ‘air’ of Anaximenes, that would only have
been a further advance on the lines of Anaximenes himself, who
had substituted ‘air’ for the water of Thales. It is not at once
obvious either that the doctrine of flux is an improvement on that
of rarefaction and condensation; and, even if it were, such an
improvement would hardly account for the tone in which Hera-
kleitos speaks of his Word. It is not in this direction we must seek
for his innermost thought. The doctrine of flux is, no doubt, a
great scientific generalisation, but no single scientific discovery is
attributed to Herakleitos. That is significant. Further, everything
we are told about his cosmology shows it to have been even more
reactionary than that of Xenophanes or the school of Anaximenes.
On the other hand, though he uses the language of the mysteries,
he condemns them in the strongest terms. The ‘Night-walkers,
magicians, Bakchoi, Lenai, and Mystai’ of whom he speaks (fr.
124) must be the contemporary Orphics, and we are told by
Clement of Alexandria, who quotes the words, that Herakleitos
threatened them with the wrath to come.
SOUL 47
Yet Herakleitos has one thing in common with the religious
teachers of his time, and that is his insistence on the idea of Soul
(ψυχή). To him, as to them, the soul was no longer a feeble ghost
or shade, but the most real thing of all, and its most important
attribute was thought (γνώμη) or wisdom (τό σοφόν). Now
Anaximenes had already illustrated the doctrine of ‘air’ by the
remark that it is breath which keeps us in life (§ 9), and we have
seen how the same idea affected the Pythagorean cosmology (§ 28).
The Delphic precept ‘Know thyself’ was a household word in those
days, and Herakleitos says ‘I sought myself’ (ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν,
fr. 80). He also said (fr. 71): ‘You cannot find out the boundaries of
soul; so deep a measure hath it.’ If we follow up these hints we
may perhaps find ourselves on the right track.
§ 41. A glance at the fragments will show that the thought of
Herakleitos was dominated by the opposition of sleeping and
waking, life and death, and that this seemed to him the key to the
traditional Milesian problem of the opposites, hot and cold, wet
and dry. More precisely, Life, Sleep, Death correspond to Fire,
Water, Earth, and the latter are to be understood from the former.
Now we see that the soul is only fully alive when it is awake, and
that sleep is really a stage between life and death. Sleep and death
are due to the advance of moisture, as is shown by the phenomenon
of drunkenness (fr. 73). ‘It is death to souls to become water’ (fr.
68). Waking and life are due to the advance of warmth and fire, and
‘the dry soul is the wisest and the best’ (fr. 74). We see further that
there is a regular alternation of the two processes; sleep alternates
with waking, and life with death. Fire is fed by the exhalations of
water, and these exhalations are in turn produced by the warmth
of the fire. If there were no water, there could be no fire; and, if
there were no fire, there could be no exhalations from the water.
If we look next at the macrocosm, we shall see the explanation
is the same. Night and day, summer and winter, alternate in the
same way as sleep and waking, life and death, and here too it is
clear that the explanation is to be found in the successive advance
of the wet and the dry, the cold and the hot. It follows that it is
wrong to make the primary substance an intermediate state like
‘air’. It must be the most living thing in the world, and therefore
it must be fire like the life of the soul; and as the fiery soul is the
wisest, so will the wisdom which ‘steers’ the world be fire. Pure
fire is to be seen best in the sun, which is lit up afresh every
48 HERAKLEITOS
morning, and put out at night. It and the other heavenly bodies
are just masses of pure fire ignited in a sort of basin in which they
traverse the heavens, and this fire is kept up by exhalations from
the earth. The phases of the moon and eclipses are due to a partial
or total turning round of the basins. Darkness too is an exhalation
from the earth of another kind. These last remarks prove we are
not dealing with a scientific man, as science was understood in Italy.
§ 42. But, if fire is the primary form of reality, it seems that we
may gain a clearer view of what Anaximander had described as
‘separating out’ (§ 7), and Anaximenes had explained by ‘rarefaction
and condensation’ (δ 9). The process of combustion is the key both
to human life and to that of the world. It is a process that:never
rests; for a flame has always to be fed by fresh exhalations as fuel,
and it is always turning into vapour or smoke. The steadiness of
the flame depends on the ‘measures’ of fuel kindled and the
‘measures’ of fire extinguished in smoke remaining constant. Now
the world is ‘an everliving fire’ (fr. 20), and therefore there will be
an unceasing process of ‘flux’. That will apply to the world at large
and also to the soul of man. ‘You cannot step twice into the same
river’ (fr. 41), and it is just as true that ‘we are and are not’ at any
given moment. “The way up and the way down’, which are ‘one
and the same’ (fr. 69) are also the same for the microcosm and the
macrocosm. Fire, water, earth is the way down, and earth, water,
fire is the way up. And these two ways are forever being traversed
in opposite directions at once, so that everything really consists of
two parts, one part travelling up and the other travelling down.
Now Anaximander had held (§ 6) that all things must return to
the Boundless, and so pay the penalty to one another for their
injustice, and what Herakleitos regarded as his great discovery
seems to attach itself to this very pronouncement. It is just the fact
that the world is ‘an everliving fire’ which secures its stability; for
the same ‘measures’ of fire are always being kindled and going out
(fr. 20). It is impossible for fire to consume its nourishment
without at the same time giving back what it has consumed already.
It is a process of eternal ‘exchange’ (ἀμοιβή) like that of gold for
wares and wares for gold (fr. 22); and ‘the sun will not exceed his
measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the auxiliaries of Justice, will
find him out’ (fr. 29). For all this strife is really justice (fr. 22), not
injustice, as Anaximander had supposed, and ‘War is the father of
all things’ (fr. 44). It is just this opposite tension that keeps things
FIRE AND FLUX 49
together, like that of the string in the bow and the lyre (fr. 45), and
though it is a hidden attunement, it is better than any open one
(fr. 47). For all his condemnation of Pythagoras, Herakleitos
cannot get away from the tuned string.
But, in spite of all this, it is possible for the ‘measures’ to vary
up to a certain point. We see that from the facts of sleeping and
waking, death and life, with which we started, and also from the
corresponding facts of night and day, summer and winter. These
fluctuations are due to the processes of evaportion or exhalation
(ἀναθυμίασις) and liquefaction (χύσις) which formed the starting-
point of all early Ionian physics. Yet these fluctuations exactly
balance one another, so that, in the long run, the ‘measures’ are
not exceeded. It appears to be certain that Herakleitos inferred
from this periodicity the survival of soul in some form or other.
We see that day follows night and summer follows winter, and we
know that waking follows sleep. In the same way, he seems to have
argued, life follows death, and the soul once more begins its up-
ward journey. ‘It is the same thing in us that is quick and dead,
awake and asleep, young and old’ (fr. 78). That is the game of
draughts that Time plays everlastingly (fr. 79).
§ 43. Such, so far as we can make it out, is the general view of
Herakleitos, and now we may ask for his secret, the one thing to
know which is wisdom. It is that, as the apparent strife of opposites
in this world is really due to the opposite tension which holds the
world together, so in pure fire, which is the eternal wisdom, all
these oppositions disappear in their common ground. God is
‘beyond good and bad’ (fr. 57, 61). Therefore what we must do to
attain wisdom is to hold fast to ‘the common’. “The waking have
one and the same world, but sleepers turn aside, each into a world
of his own’ (fr. 95). If we keep our souls dry, we shall understand
that good and evil are one, that is, that they are only passing forms
of one reality that transcends them both. Such was the conclusion
a man of genius drew from the Milesian doctrine of evaporation
and liquefaction.
§ 44. For, with all his originality, Herakleitos remains an
Ionian. He had learnt indeed the importance of soul, but his fire-
soul is as little personal as the breath-soul of Anaximenes. There
are certainly fragments that seem to assert the immortality of the
individual soul; but, when we examine them, we see they cannot
bear this interpretation. Soul is only immortal in so far as it is part
50 HERAKLEITOS
of the everliving fire which is the life of the world. Seeing that the
soul of every man is in constant flux like his body, what meaning
can immortality have? It is not only true that we cannot step twice
into the same river, but also that we are not the same for two
successive instants. That is just the side of his doctrine that struck
contemporaries most forcibly, and Epicharmos already made fun
of it by putting it as an argument into the mouth of a debtor who
did not wish to pay. How could he be liable, seeing he is not the
same man that contracted the debt? And Herakleitos is an Ionian,
too, in his theology. His wisdom, which is one and apart from all
things, ‘wills and wills not to be called by the name of Zeus’ (fr. 65).
That is to say, it is no more what the religious consciousness
means by God than the Air of Anaximenes or the World of
Xenophanes. Herakleitos, in fact, despite his prophetic tone and
his use of religious languages, never broke through the secularism
and pantheism of the Ionians. Belief in a personal God and an
immortal soul was already being elaborated in another quarter, but
did not secure a place in philosophy till the time of Plato.
PARMENIDES
§ 45. We have now to consider the criticisms directed against
the fundamental assumptions of Ionian cosmology from another
side. That Parmenides wrote after Herakleitos, and in conscious
Opposition to him, seems to be proved by what must surely be an
express illusion in his poem. The words ‘for whom it is and is not
the same and not the same, and all things travel in opposite
directions’ (fr. 6, 8), cannot well refer to anyone else, and we may
infer that these words were written some time between Marathon
and Salamis. We know from the poem that Parmenides was a
young man when he wrote it, for the goddess who reveals the truth
to him addresses him as ‘youth’, and Plato says that Parmenides
came to Athens in his sixty-fifth year and conversed with Sokrates,
who was then ‘very young’. That must have been in the middle of
the fifth century B.c., or shortly after it. Parmenides was a citizen
of Elea, for which city he legislated, and he is generally represented
as a disciple of Xenophanes. It has been pointed out, however,
that there is no evidence for the settlement of Xenophanes at Elea
(§ 16), and the story that he founded the Eleatic school seems to be
derived from a playful remark of Plato’s, which would also prove
THE PROEM 51
Homer to have been ἃ Herakleitean.1 We have much more
satisfactory evidence for the statement that Parmenides was a
Pythagorean. We are told that he built a shrine to the memory of
his Pythagorean teacher, Ameinias, son of Diochaitas, and this
appears to rest on the testimony of the inscription in which he
dedicated it. The authorities Strabo followed, in referring to the
legislation of Elea, expressly called Parmenides and Zeno Pytha-
goreans, and the name of Parmenides occurs in the list of Pytha-
goreans preserved by Iamblichos.?
§ 46. Parmenides broke with the older Ionic tradition by writing
in hexameter verse. It was not a happy thought. The Hesiodic
style was doubtless appropriate enough for the cosmogony he
described in the second part of his poem, but it was wholly unsuited
to the arid dialectic of the first. It is clear that Parmenides was no
born poet, and we must ask what led him to take this new de-
parture. The example of Xenophanes is hardly an adequate
explanation; for the poetry of Parmenides is as unlike that of
Xenophanes as it well can be, and his style is rather that of Hesiod
and the Orphics. Now it has been clearly shown that the well-
known Proem, in which Parmenides describes his ascent to the
home of the goddess who is supposed to speak the remainder of
the verses, is a reflexion of the conventional ascents into heaven
which were almost as common as descents into hell in the
apocalyptic literature of those days, and of which we have later
imitations in the myth of Plato’s Phaedrus and in Dante’s Paradiso.
But, if it was the influence of such an apocalypse that led Par-
menides to write in verse, it will follow that the Proem is no mere
external ornament to his work, but an essential part of it, the part,
in fact, which he had most clearly conceived when he began to
write. In that case, it is to the Proem we must look for the key to
the whole.
Parmenides represents himself as borne on a chariot and
attended by the Sunmaidens who have quitted the Halls of Night
to guide him on his journey. They pass along the highway till they
come to the Gate of Night and Day, which is locked and barred.
The key is in the keeping of Diké (Right), the Avenger, who is
persuaded to unlock it by the Sunmaidens. They pass in through
1 Plato, Soph. 242 d. See E. Gr. Ph.* Ὁ. 140.
2 For all this, see E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 84 sqq.
3 Diels, Parmenides Lehrgedichte, pp. 11 sqq.
52 PARMENIDES
the gate and are now, of course, in the realms of Day. The goal of
the journey is the palace of a goddess who welcomes Parmenides
and instructs him in the two ways, that of Truth and the deceptive
way of Belief, in which is no truth at all. All this is described
without inspiration and in a purely conventional manner, so it
must be interpreted by the canons of the apocalyptic style. It is
clearly meant to indicate that Parmenides had been converted, that
he had passed from error (night) to truth (day), and the Two Ways
must represent his former error and the truth which is now
revealed to him. We have seen reason to believe that Parmenides
was originally a Pythagorean, and there are many things which
suggest that the Way of Belief is an account of Pythagorean
cosmology. In any case, it is surely impossible to regard it as
anything else than a description of some error. The goddess says
so in words that cannot be explained away. Further, this erroneous
belief is not the ordinary man’s view of the world, but an elaborate
system, which seems to be a natural development of the Ionian
cosmology on certain lines, and there is no other system but the
Pythagorean that fulfils this requirement.
To this it has been objected that Parmenides would not have
taken the trouble to expound in detail a system he had altogether
rejected, but that is to mistake the character of the apocalyptic
convention. It is not Parmenides, but the goddess, that expounds
the system, and it is for this reason that the beliefs described are
said to be those of ‘mortals’. Now a description of the ascent of the
soul would be quite incomplete without a picture of the region
from which it had escaped. 'The goddess must reveal the two ways
at the parting of which Parmenides stands, and bid him choose the
better. ‘That itself is a Pythagorean idea. It was symbolised by the
letter Y, and can be traced right down to Christian times. ‘The
machinery of the Proem consists, therefore, of two well-known
apocalyptic devices, the Ascent into Heaven, and the Parting of the
Ways, and it follows that, for Parmenides himself, his conversion
from Pythagoreanism to Truth was the central thing in his poem,
and it is from that point of view we must try to understand him.
It is probable too that, if the Pythagoreans had not been a religious
society as well as a scientific school, he would have been content to
say what he had to say in prose. As it was, his secession from the
school was also a heresy, and had, like all heresies, to be justified
in the language of religion.
‘Is IT OR IS IT NOT?’ 53
§ 47. All the Ionians had taken for granted that the primary
substance could assume different forms, such as earth, water, and
fire, a view suggested by the observed phenomena of freezing,
evaporation, and the like. Anaximenes had further explained these
transformations as due to rarefaction and condensation (δ 9). That,
of course really implies that the structure of the primary substance
is corpuscular, and that there are interstices of some kind between
its particles. It is improbable that Anaximenes realised this con-
sequence of his doctrine. Even now it is not immediately obvious
to the untrained mind. The problem was raised at once, however,
by the use the Pythagoreans had made of the theory. According to
them, as we have seen (§ 28), the world inhaled ‘air’, or void, from
the boundless mass outside it, and this accounted for the extension
of the bodies whose limits were marked out by the ‘figures’. When
the thing was put in this way, further questions were inevitable.
§ 48. Now the rise of mathematics in this same Pythagorean
school had revealed for the first time the power of thought. To the
mathematician of all men it is the same thing that can be thought
(ἔστι νοεῖν) and that can be (ἔστιν εἶναι),Ϊ and this is the principle
from which Parmenides starts. It is impossible to think what is not,
and it is impossible for what cannot be thought to be. The great
question, Is it or is it not? is therefore equivalent to the question,
Can it be thought or not?
Parmenides goes on to consider in the light of this principle the
consequences of saying that anything zs. In the first place, it cannot
have come into being. If it had, it must have arisen from nothing
or from something. It cannot have arisen from nothing; for there
is no nothing. It cannot have arisen from something; for there is
nothing else than what is. Nor can anything else besides itself
come into being; for there can be no empty space in which it
could do so. Js it or is it not? If it is, then it is now, all at once. In
this way Parmenides refutes all accounts of the origin of the world.
Ex nthilo nihil fit.
Further, if it zs, it simply is, and it cannot be more or less. There
is, therefore, as much of it in one place as in another. (‘That makes
1 This is how Zeller (Phil. d. griech 1.5 Ὁ. 558, n. 1) took fr. 5 τὸ yap αὐτὸ νοεῖν
ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι, and it still seems to me the only possible rendering. I cannot
separate εἰσὶ νοῆσαι in fr. 4, which everyone takes to mean ‘are thinkable’ from
ἔστι νοεῖν in fr. 5. Nor do I believe that the infinitive is ever the subject of a
sentence even in such places.as Jl. x. 174 (see Leaf’s note). The traditional view
(given e.g. by Goodwin, M.T. § 745) implies that ποιεῖν is the subject in δίκαιόν
ἐστι τοῦτο ποιεῖν, Which is refuted by δίκαιός εἰμι τοῦτο ποιεῖν.
54 PARMENIDES
rarefaction and condensation impossible.) It is continuous and
indivisible; for there is nothing but itself which could prevent its
parts being in contact with one another. It is therefore full, a
continuous indivisible plenum. (That is directed against the
Pythagorean theory of a discontinuous reality.)
Further, it is immoveable. If it moved, it must move into empty
space, and empty space is nothing, and there is no nothing. Also it
is finite and spherical; for it cannot be in one direction any more
than in another, and the sphere is the only figure of which this can
be said.
What is (τὸ ἐόν) is, therefore a finite, spherical, motionless,
continuous plenum, and there is nothing beyond it. Coming into
being and ceasing to be are mere ‘names’, and so is motion, and
still more colour and the like. They are not even thoughts; for a
thought must be a thought of something that zs, and none of these
can be.
§ 49. Such is the conclusion to which the view of the real as a
single body inevitably leads, and there is no escape from it. The
‘matter’ of our physical text-books is just the real (τὸ ἐόν) of
Parmenides; and, unless we can find room for something else than
matter, we are shut up to his account of reality. No subsequent
system could afford to ignore this, but of course it was impossible
to acquiesce permanently in a doctrine like that of Parmenides. It
deprives the world we know of all claim to existence, and reduces
it to something which is hardly even an illusion. If we are to give
an intelligible account of the world, we must certainly introduce
motion again somehow. That can never be taken for granted any
more, as it was by the early cosmologists; we must attempt to
explain it if we are to escape from the conclusions of Parmenides.
IV
The Pluralists
§ 50. It was only possible to escape from the conclusions of
Parmenides on two conditions. In the first place, the belief that
all that zs is one, which had been held by everyone since the days of
Thales, must be given up. There was no reason why Parmenides
should have denied motion except this. Motion im pleno is quite
conceivable, though it would not explain anything on the assump-
tion of unity. If any part of the Parmenidean One were to move,
that could only mean that its place was taken at once by an equal
part of it. As, however, this part would be precisely the same as that
which it displaced, the result of the motion would be nil, and it
could not be distinguished from rest. We find accordingly that
both Empedokles and Anaxagoras, whose systems we have now to
consider, while accepting and insisting on the Parmenidean
doctrine that the real is without beginning and without end, agree
in maintaining also that there are more kinds of real than one. The
world we know may be explained as due to the mixture and separa-
tion of a number of primary ‘elements’. The word elementum is a
Latin translation of the Greek στοιχεῖον, ‘letter of the alphabet’,
which does not occur in this sense till a later date, though the con-
ception of an element was quite clearly formed. Empedokles called
his elements ‘roots’, and Anaxagoras called his ‘seeds’, but they
both meant something eternal and irreducible to anything else, and
they both held the things we perceive with the senses to be tem-
porary combinations of these.
The second condition that must be satisfied, if the world is to be
explained in spite of Parmenides, is that some account must be
given of the origin or source of the motion which had hitherto been
taken for granted as something inherent in the nature of body.
Accordingly, both Empedokles and Anaxagoras postulate causes of
motion, which the former calls Love and Strife, and the latter calls
Mind (νοῦς). What they were feeling after was obviously the later
ς B.G.P.
56 PLURALISM
physical conception of force, but it is equally clear that they were
still unable to disentangle this completely from that of body. They
both use language with regard to the forces they assume which
makes it plain that they were pictured as something corporeal, and
this will seem quite intelligible if we remember the part played by
‘fluids’ in the science of fairly recent times. It is to be observed
further that Empedokles felt obliged to assume two sources of
motion, like the force of attraction and the force of repulsion, or the
centripetal and centrifugal forces of later days, while Anaxagoras
only required a single force which was capable of producing
rotation. The rotatory motion itself could account for everything
else. ;
Taking these two things together, we can understand the
doctrine which is common to Empedokles and Anaxagoras, and
which they both express in almost exactly the same words. It is,
firstly, that there is in reality no such thing as coming into being
(γένεσις) and ceasing to be (φθορά). That has been settled by
Parmenides. But, secondly, it is obvious that the things in this
world do come into being and cease to be. That is proved by the
evidence of the senses. The only way in which these two things can
be reconciled is by regarding what is commonly called coming into
being as mixture, and ceasing to be as separation. From this it
follows, in the first place, that the real must be such as to admit of
mixture, or, in other words, that there must be different kinds of
real; and, in the second place, that there must be a cause of mixture
and separation.
EMPEDOKLES
§ 51. Empedokles was a citizen of Akragas in Sicily, and he
played a considerable part in his native city as a democratic leader.}
His date is roughly fixed for us by the well-attested fact that he
went to Thourioi shortly after its foundation in 444/3 B.c. That was
probably after his banishment from his native city. He was,
therefore, contemporary with the meridian splendour of the
Periklean age at Athens, and he must have met Herodotus and
Protagoras at 'Thourioi. In his case we know for certain that he
combined scientific study with a mystical religion of the Orphic
type, but he differed from Pythagoras in the direction his scientific
1 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 97 sqq. For a translation
of the fragments, see ib. § 105.
EMPEDOKLES 57
inquiries took. We know that Pythagoras was first and foremost a
mathematician, while Empedokles was the founder of the Sicilian
school of medicine. That accounts for the physiological interest
that marks his speculations. It is the same difference as that be-
tween Plato and Aristotle at a later date.
We are not directly concerned here with the religious teaching
of Empedokles, though we may note in passing his horror of
bloody sacrifices, which he justified from the doctrine of Rebirth
or transmigration. His ‘Purifications’ (Καθαρμοῦ), of which con-
siderable fragments remain, are, indeed, our oldest and best
authority for this type of religion. ‘They are written in hexameters,
and so is his more strictly philosophical poem. In this matter he
imitated Parmenides, as is proved by his sometimes reproducing
his actual words. The only difference is that he was a real poet, and
Parmenides was not.
§ 52. As has been indicated, Empedokles unreservedly accepts
the doctrine of Parmenides that ‘what 7s’ is uncreated and in-
destructible, and he only escapes from the further conclusions of
the Eleatic by introducing the theory of elements or ‘roots’. Of
these he assumed four — fire, air, earth, and water, — and in some
respects this was a return to primitive views which the Milesians
had already left behind them (ὃ 10). In particular, it was reactionary
to put earth on a level with the other three. It must be noticed,
however, that Empedokles at the same time made an advance by
co-ordinating air with fire and water, instead of identifying it with
vapour and regarding it as a transitional form between the two.
He had in fact discovered that what we call atmospheric air was a
body, and was quite distinct from empty space on the one hand
and from vapour or mist on the other. He was doubtless led to this
discovery by the polemic of Parmenides against the existence of
empty space. The plain man can imagine he has a direct per-
ception of this, and it was necessary for Empedokles to show he
was wrong. This he did by means of an experiment with the
klepsydra or water-clock. He showed that air could keep water out
of a vessel, and that the water could only enter as the air escaped.
This important discovery outweighs his error in regarding air and
water as elements. He had no means of discovering they were not.
He might, perhaps, have got a hint of the true nature of fire from
Herakleitos, but here we must remember that, so long as the sun
and stars were believed to consist of fire, it was not easy to discern
58 EMPEDOKLES
the truth. Even Aristotle adopted the four elements of Empedokles,
though Plato and his Pythagorean friends had declared that so far
from being ‘letters’ (στοιχεῖα), they were not even syllables.
§ 53. Besides these four ‘roots’, Empedokles postulated some-
thing called Love (φιλία) to explain the attraction of different
forms of matter, and of something called Strife (νεῖκος) to account
for their separation. He speaks of these quite distinctly as bodies.
The way in which they act seems to have been suggested by the
experiment with the klepsydra already referred to. We start with
something like the sphere of Parmenides, in which the four
elements are mingled in a sort of solution by Love, while Strife
surrounds the sphere on the outside. When Strife begins to enter
the Sphere, Love is driven towards its centre, and the four
elements are gradually separated from one another. That is clearly
an adaptation of the old idea of the world breathing. Empedokles
also held, however, that respiration depended on the systole and
diastole of the heart, and therefore we find that, as soon as Strife
has penetrated to the lowest (or most central) part of the sphere,
and Love is confined to the very middle of it, the reverse process
begins. Love expands and Strife is driven outwards, passing out of
the Sphere once more in proportion as Love occupies more and
more of it, just as air is expelled from the klepsydra when water
enters it. In fact, Love and Strife are to the world what blood and
air are to the body. The physiological analogy naturally influenced
the founder of a medical school, who had for the first time formu-
lated a theory of the flux and reflux of blood from and to the heart.
The conception of the attractive force as Love is also, as Empe-
dokles says himself, of physiological origin. No one had observed,
he tells us (fr. 17, 21-26) that the very same force men know in
their own bodies plays a part in the life of the great world too. He
does not seem to have thought it necessary to give any mechanical
explanation of the cosmic systole and diastole. It was just the life of
the world.
§ 54. A world of perishable things such as we know can only
exist when both Love and Strife are in the world. There will,
therefore, be two births and two passings away of mortal things
(fr. 17, 3-5), one when Love is increasing and all the elements are
coming together into one, the other when Strife is re-entering the
Sphere and the elements are being separated once more. The
elements alone are everlasting; the particular things we know are
LOVE AND STRIFE 59
unstable compounds, which come into being as the elements ‘run
through one another’ in one direction or another. They are mortal
or perishable just because they have no substance (φύσις) of their
own; only the ‘four roots’ have that. There is, therefore, no end to
their death and destruction (fr. 8).1 Their birth is a mixture and
their death is but the separation of what has been mixed. Nothing
is imperishable but fire, air, earth and water, with the two forces
of Love and Strife.
We have little information as to how Empedokles explained the
constitution of particular things. He regarded the four elements,
which could be combined in an indefinite number of proportions,
as adequate to explain them all, and he referred in this connexion
to the great variety painters can produce with only four pigments
(fr. 23). He saw, however, that some combinations are possible,
while others are not. Water mixes easily with wine, but not with
oil (fr. 91). This he accounted for by the presence or absence of
symmetry in the ‘passages’ (πόροι) or ‘pores’ of the elements which
enter into the mixture. It is unprofitable to inquire how he recon-
ciled this view with the denial of the void he had adopted from
Parmenides. For the rest, Aristotle attaches great importance to
his doctrine of the ‘ratio of mixture’ (λόγος τῆς μείξεως), which is
pretty certainly an adaptation of the Pythagorean theory of
‘blending’ (κρᾶσις) in fixed ratios (λόγοι). The tuned string makes
itself felt once more.
§55. The details of the cosmology present considerable
difficulties. We are told that, when the elements first separated,
fire occupied the upper hemisphere and air the lower. That dis-
turbed the equilibrium of the sphere and produced the diurnal
rotation (δίνη) of the heavens. This rotation, in turn, keeps the
earth in the centre. The idea was apparently that it would naturally
fall into the lower hemisphere, but is prevented from doing so by
the lower hemisphere constantly becoming the upper. It is clear
that there is great confusion of thought here. Empedokles has
reverted to the idea of an absolute up and down in the world,
which Anaximander had discarded already, and he does not seem
to have been consistent even in this. The fiery hemisphere is day,
and the airy hemisphere is night. The sun is only the light of the
fiery hemisphere reflected back from the earth and gathered in a
1] have adopted the interpretation of these verses suggested by Lovejoy
(Philosophical Review, xviii. pp. 371 sqq.).
60 EMPEDOKLES
sort of focus. We have no means of telling how Empedokles
worked out this singular theory in detail. We can only say that he
was primarily a physiologist, and that astronomy was not his
strong point.
And it is certainly the case that his physiology, though primitive
enough, makes a far more favourable impression. We have seen
the importance he attached to respiration, and how he connected
it with the heart’s action. It was natural, therefore, for him to
regard the blood as ‘what we think with’ (ᾧ φρονοῦμεν), and to
make the heart the central sensorium. In this he departed from the
theory of Alkmaion of Kroton, who had discovered the importance
of the brain for sense-perception, but he adopted from him the
explanation of the various senses by ‘pores’ or passages (πόροι).
Sensation was produced by ‘effluences’ (dzoppoai) fitting into these.
The origin of species was ascribed to the increasing action of Strife.
At the beginning of this world there were undifferentiated living
masses (οὐλοφυεῖς τύποι), which were gradually differentiated, the
fittest surviving. Empedokles also described how mortal beings
arose in the period when Love was gaining the mastery, and when
everything happened in just the opposite way to what we see in
our world. In that case, the limbs and organs first arose in
separation, and were then joined together at haphazard, so that
monsters were produced, ‘oxen with heads of men and men with
heads of oxen.’ This strange picture of a reversed evolution may
possibly have been suggested by the Egyptian monuments.
ANAXAGORAS
§ 56. Anaxagoras of Klazomenai is said by Aristotle to have
been older than Empedokles, but to come ‘after him in his works’
τοῖς δ᾽ ἔργοις vorepos). It is not clear whether this means that he
wrote later than Empedokles or that he was inferior to him in his
achievement. His date is quite uncertain, but we know he settled
at Athens and enjoyed the friendship of Perikles. Plato makes
Sokrates attribute the eloquence of Perikles to his association with
Anaxagoras. It was no doubt this very intimacy that exposed
Anaxagoras to the accusation for irreligion (ἀσέβεια) which was
brought against him. That is usually said to have happened just
1 Plato, Phaedo, 96 Ὁ.
2 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 120 sqq.
‘SEEDS’ 61
before the Peloponnesian War, but we do not really know either
the date of it or the precise nature of the charge. It must have been
something more definite than his speculations about the sun. We
happen to know that even Diagoras, the typical atheist of those
days, was not tried for his opinions, but for offences in language
against the temples and festivals.1 Perikles got Anaxagoras off in
some way, and he retired to Lampsakos, where he founded a
school. It is a remarkable fact that Plato never makes Sokrates
meet him, though he was interested in his system, and that of itself
suggests that the accusation for irreligion took place at an earlier
date than the one usually given. Like a true Ionian, Anaxagoras
wrote in prose, and considerable fragments of his book remain.
§ 57. Anaxagoras lays down that the Hellenes are wrong in
speaking of coming into being (γίνεσθαι) and ceasing to be
(ἀπόλλυσθαι). ‘They ought to call these ‘commixture’ (συμμίσγεσθαι)
and ‘decomposition’ (διακρίνεσθαι) (fr. 17). That is almost in so
many words the doctrine of Empedokles, with which Anaxagoras
certainly seems to have been acquainted. In any case, it is certain
that he started, like Empedokles, from the Parmenidean account
of ‘what is’. On the other hand, Anaxagoras was an Ionian. We are
told that he had been an adherent of ‘the philosophy of Anaxi-
menes’, and it is evident from the details of his cosmology that the
statement is correct. We shall be prepared to find, then, that he
started from quite different presuppositions, though these were
also derived from medical sources. Medicine was the great interest
of the time.
Like Empedokles, Anaxagoras postulated a plurality of in-
dependent elements which he called ‘seeds’. They were not,
however, the ‘four roots’, fire, air, earth, and water; on the con-
trary, these were compounds. Empedokles had supposed that bone,
for instance, could be explained as a compound of the elements in a
certain proportion, but this did not satisfy Anaxagoras. He pointed
out that from bread and water arose hair, veins, ‘arteries’,” flesh,
muscles, bones, and all the rest, and he asked ‘How can hair be
made of what is not hair, and flesh of what is not flesh?’ (fr. 10).
These words certainly read like a direct criticism of Empedokles.
1See the speech against Andokides preserved among the works of Lysias
(6. 17).
2 The true distinction between veins and arteries was not yet known. The
arteries were supposed to contain air and were connected with the wind-pipe or
trachea (τραχεῖα, sc. ἀρτηρία).
62 ANAXAGORAS
This way of speaking, however, led to a serious misunderstanding
of the theory. In Aristotle’s biological works the various ‘tissues’,
some of which Anaxagoras enumerates, are called ‘homoeomerous’
(ὁμοιομερῆ), a term which means that all their parts are similar to
the whole. 'The parts of bone are bone, and the parts of blood are
blood. That is just the distinction between such things as bone,
flesh, and blood, and ‘organs’ like the heart or the lungs. There is
no evidence that Anaxagoras himself used this terminology, and
indeed it is incredible that no fragment containing it should have
been quoted if he had. The Epicureans, however, attributed it to
him, and they also understood it wrongly. They supposed it to
mean that there must be minute particles in bread and watér which
were like the particles of blood, flesh, and bones, and the adoption
of this interpretation by Lucretius has given it currency.
§ 58. We have seen that Anaxagoras had been an adherent of
‘the philosophy of Anaximenes’, and he kept as close to it as he
could in the details of his cosmology. He could not say that every-
thing was ‘air’ more or less rarefied or condensed, for that view had
been destroyed by Parmenides. If the world was to be explained
at all, an original plurality must be admitted. He therefore substi-
tuted for the primary ‘air’ a state of the world in which ‘all things
(χρήματα) were together, infinite both in quantity and in small-
ness’ (fr. 1). This is explained to mean that the original mass was
infinitely divisible, but that, however far division was carried, every
part of it would still contain all ‘things’ (χρήματα), and would in
that respect be just like the whole. That is the very opposite of the
doctrine of ‘elements’, which seems to be expressly denied by the
dictum that ‘the things that are in one world are not separated
from one another or cut off with a hatchet’ (fr. 8). Everything has
‘portions’ (μοῖραι) of everything else in it.
But if that were all, we should be no nearer an explanation of the
world than before; for there would be nothing to distinguish one
‘seed’ from another. The answer to this is that, though each has a
‘portion’ of everything in it, however minutely it may be divided,
some have more of one thing and others more of another. ‘This was
to be seen already in the original undifferentiated mass where “all
things were together’; for there the portions of air and ‘aether’ (by
which word Anaxagoras means fire) were far more numerous than
the others, and therefore the whole had the appearance of air and
‘aether’. Anaxagoras could not say it actually was air, as Anaxi-
MIND 63
menes had done, because he had discovered for himself or learned
from Empedokles the separate corporeal existence of atmospheric
air. We have some references to the experiments by which he
demonstrated this. He used inflated skins for the purpose. The
effort to depart as little as possible from the doctrine of Anaximenes
is nevertheless apparent.
§59. We see, then, that the differences which exist in the world
as we know it are to be explained by the varying proportions in
which the portions are mingled. ‘Everything is called that of which
it has most in it’, though, as a matter of fact, it has everything in it.
Snow, for instance, is black as well as white,! but we call it white
because the white so far exceeds tne black. As was natural, the
‘things’ Anaxagoras chiefly thought of as contained in each ‘seed’
were the traditional opposites, hot and cold, wet and dry, and so
forth. It is of these he is expressly speaking when he says that ‘the
things in one world are not cut off from one another with a hatchet’
(fr. 8). Empedokles had made each of these four opposites a ‘root’
by itself; each of the ‘seeds’ of Anaxagoras contains them all. In
this way he thought he could explain nutrition and growth; for it is
clear that the product of a number of ‘seeds’ might present quite
a different proportion of the opposites than any one of them if they
were taken severally.
§ 60. The other problem, that of the source of motion, still
remains. How are we to pass from the state of the world when all
things were together to the manifold reality we know? Like
Empedokles, Anaxagoras looked to the microcosm for a suggestion
as to the source of motion, but he found one such source sufficient
for his purpose. He called it Mind (νοῦς); for that is the source of
motion as well as of knowledge in us. He did not, however, succeed
in forming the conception of an incorporeal force any more than
Empedokles had done. For him, too, the cause of motion is a sort
of ‘fluid’. It is ‘the thinnest of all things’ (fr. 12), and, above all, it
is ‘unmixed’, that is to say, it has no portions of other things in it,
and this is what gives it the ‘mastery’, that is, the power both of
knowing and of moving other things. Further, it enters into some
things and not into others, and that explains the distinction
between the animate and the inanimate. The way in which it
separates and orders things is by producing a rotatory motion
(περιχώρησις), which begins at the centre and spreads further and
1 Sextus, Pyrrh. hypot. 1. 33.
64 ANAXAGORAS
further. That is really all Anaxagoras had to say about it, and in the
Phaedo Plato makes Sokrates complain that he made Mind a mere
deus ex machina (98 b). Like a true Ionian he tried to give a
mechanical explanation of everything he could, and, when once he
had got the rotatory motion started, he could leave that to order the
rest of the world.
§ 61. It is hard to believe, however, that Anaxagoras was wholly
ignorant of Pythagorean science. Oinopides of Chios was intro-
ducing a more highly developed geometry into Ionia from the
west, and Anaxagoras himself is credited with certain mathematical
discoveries. He also knew, though he certainly did not discover,
that the sun is eclipsed by the interposition of the moon, ‘and that
the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, but he cannot have
been able to give the true account of lunar eclipses, seeing that he
was either ignorant of or deliberately rejected the discovery that
the earth was a sphere. In this respect, too, he adhered to the doc-
trine of Anaximenes and regarded it as a disc. That being so, he
had to assume dark bodies invisible to us to account for eclipses of
the moon. That is probably connected with the theory which
seems to have struck his contemporaries most. His attention had
been directed in some way to the huge meteoric stone which fell
into the Aigospotamos in 468/7 B.c., and this suggested to him that
portions of the earth might be detached and flung to a distance as
from a sling by the rotatory motion. That had once been far more
rapid than it is now, and so the sun, which was a mass of red-hot
iron ‘larger than the Peloponnesos,’ and the moon, which was
made of earth, had reached their present places. All this seems
retrograde enough when we compare it with Pythagorean science.
That was a thing the Ionians could never really assimilate. Even
Demokritos was nearly as backward in these matters as Anaxagoras,
and Aristotle himself could not grasp the Pythagorean conception
completely.
§ 62. Though Empedokles had distinguished Love and Strife
as the causes of mixture and separation from the four elements
which are mixed and separated, he continued to call them all ‘gods’
in the sense with which we are now familiar, and he gave the name
also to the Sphere in which they were all mixed together. Anaxa-
goras seems to have taken the step of calling only the source of
motion ‘god’. In that sense and to that extent it is not incorrect to
call him the founder of theism. On the other hand, it seems to have
RELIGION 65
been precisely for this that his contemporaries called him an
atheist. In his desire to exalt Nous, he seems to have followed the
lead of Xenophanes in denying the divinity of everything else, and
his statements about the sun and the moon are usually mentioned
in connexion with the charge of irreligion brought against him,
though we cannot tell now what that referred to, or whether the
charge was well founded or not. We can only say that Perikles
shared the secular spirit of the Ionians, and it is quite conceivable
that his immediate circle may have offended the religious suscepti-
bilities of old-fashioned Athenians by ridiculing ceremonies which
were still sacred in their eyes.?
1'The worship of Sun and Moon was no part of Athenian religion, but
Anaxagoras may have ridiculed the measures prescribed by the ἐξηγηταί on the
occasion of the solar eclipse of 463 B.c. That, no doubt, would be ἀσέβεια.
V
Eleatics and Pythagoreans
ZENO
§ 63. We have seen (§ 46) how Eleaticism originated in a revolt
from Pythagoreanism, and we have now to consider its detailed
criticism of that doctrine. The great critic was Zeno. According to
Plato,! his work, written when he was a young man, was intended
to support the teaching of Parmenides by showing that the
hypothesis of his opponents, ‘if things are a many’ (εἰ πολλά ἐστι)
led up, if thoroughly worked out, to consequences at least as
paradoxical as his master’s. We learn further from Plato that Zeno
was twenty-five years younger than Parmenides, and that he was
forty years old when he accompanied him on his celebrated visit to
Athens just after the middle of the fifth century B.c. All that agrees
admirably with the well-authenticated statement that Perikles
‘heard’ Zeno as well as Anaxagoras, and also with the accounts
which represent Zeno as engaged in controversy with Protagoras.
He also appears to have written against Empedokles.?
§ 64. It is significant that a work of Zeno’s is cited by the title, A
Reply to the Philosophers (Πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσόφους); for there 15 reason
to believe that in these days ‘philosopher’ meant Pythagorean. At
any rate, it is only if we regard the arguments of Zeno as directed
against the assumption that things are a many, that is to say a
‘multitude of units’ (μονάδων πλῆθος), that their real significance
can be understood. According to the Pythagorean view, geometry
was simply an application of arithmetic, and the point only differs
from the arithmetical unit in so far as it is a ‘unit having position’
(μονὰς θέσιν ἔχουσα). From this it ought to follow, though we need
not suppose the Pythagoreans to have said so in so many words,
that we should be able to say how many points there are in a given
terminated straight line, and further that all magnitudes must be
1 Parm. 128 c.
2 References to authorities are given in E. Gr. Ph.? §§ 155 sqq.
THE UNIT-POINT 67
commensurable. The Pythagoreans themselves, however, had
discovered at least two striking instances to the contrary. We have
seen that neither the most perfect triangle, the isosceles right-
angled triangle, nor the most perfect solid, the regular dodeca-
hedron, can be expressed numerically; for, as we should put it,
/2 and v5 are ‘surds’. The Pythagoreans must have been quite
well aware of these facts, though, as we have seen, they probably
explained them by referring them to the nature of the ‘unlimited’,
along with such similar cases as the impossibility of dividing the
octave and the tone into equal parts.
Zeno’s arguments are directed to showing that the ‘unlimited’ or,
as the Eleatics call it, the continuous (συνεχές, lit. ‘hanging to-
gether’) cannot be composed of units however small and however
many. We can always bisect a line, and every bisection leaves us
with a line that can itself be bisected. We never come to a point or
unit. It follows that, if a line is made up out of unit-points, there
must be an infinite number of such points in any given terminated
straight line. Now if these points have magnitude, every line will
be of infinite length; if they have no magnitude, every line will be
infinitely small. Again, if a point has magnitude, the addition of a
point to a line will make it longer and its subtraction will make it
smaller; but, if points have no magnitude, neither their addition
nor their subtraction will make any difference to the line. But that
of which the addition or subtraction makes no difference is nothing
at all. It follows that, if number is a sum of units (and no other
account of it has been suggested), there is an impassable gulf
between the discrete and the continuous, between arithmetic and
geometry. Things are not numbers. To put the thing in another
way, geometry cannot be reduced to arithmetic so long as the
number one is regarded as the beginning of the numerical series.
What really corresponds to the point is what we call zero.?
§ 65. The celebrated arguments of Zeno concerning motion
introduce the element of time, and are directed to showing that it is
just as little a sum of moments as a line is a sum of points. (1) Ifa
thing moves from one point to another, it must first traverse half
the distance. Before it can do that, it must traverse a half of the
half, and so on ad infinitum. It must, therefore, pass through an
1 This is the ultimate explanation of the dispute between mathematicians and
historians as to whether 1900 was the last year of the nineteenth century or the
first year of the twentieth. Astronomers call the year preceding 1 A.D. the year o,
while historical chronologists make 1 A.D. the year after 1 B.C.
68 ZENO
infinite number of points, and that is impossible in a finite time.
(2) Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. Before he comes up to
the point at which the tortoise started, the tortoise will have got a
little way on. The same thing repeats itself with regard to this little
way, and so on ad infinitum. (3) ‘The flying arrow is at rest. At any
given moment it is in a space equal to its own length, and therefore
at rest. The sum of an infinite number of positions of rest is not a
motion. (4) If we suppose three lines, one (A) at rest, and the other
two (B, C) moving in opposite directions, B will pass in the same
time twice the number of points in C that it passes in A. From the
interpreter’s point of view this last argument is the most important
of all. If it is directed against the view that the line is a sum of
points and time a sum of moments, it is a perfectly legitimate
reductio ad absurdum of these views, otherwise it has no meaning at
all.
§ 66. The arguments of Zeno are valid only on the assumption
that the nature of number is completely expressed by the natural
series of integers, but on that assumption they are unanswerable,
and no other view of number had yet been suggested. Even rational
fractions are unknown to Greek mathematics, and what we treat as
such are expressed as ratios of one integer to another.? Still harder
was it for the Greeks to regard a surd, for instance, as a number,
and it was only in the Academy that an effort was made at a later
date to take a larger view. What Zeno actually does prove is that
space and time cannot consist of points or moments which them-
selves have magnitude, or that the elements of a continuum cannot
be units homogeneous with the continuum constructed out of
them. He shows, in fact, that there must be more points on the
line, more moments in the shortest lapse of time, than there are
members of the series of natural numbers, or, what comes to the
same thing, that, though every continuum is infinitely divisible,
infinite divisibility is not an adequate criterion of continuity.” That,
however, is all he undertook to prove. We know from Plato that his
work was an argumentum ad homines, and as such it is entirely
successful.
1Cf. e.g. the ἡμιόλιος λόγος 3 : 2:and the ἐπίτριτος λόγος 4 : 3.
21 take this way of stating the matter from Prof. A. E. Taylor’s article
‘Continuity’ in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
MELISSOS 69
MELISSOS
§ 67. It is very significant that the next representative of the
Eleatic doctrine is a Samian. As a result of the Persian wars, the
Italic and Ionic philosophies had come into contact once more, and
their common meeting-ground was Athens. Both Empedokles and
Anaxagoras came under the influence of Parmenides, who had
himself visited Athens along with Zeno, who apparently continued
to reside there for some time. Anaxagoras lived at Athens for many
years, and Empedokles took part in the Athenian colonisation of
Thourioi. None of these men were themselves Athenians, but they
had Athenian disciples, and Sokrates was already in his ’teens.
Melissos was in command of the Samian fleet that fought against
Perikles in 441 B.c. We know nothing else about him. We can only
guess that he had become acquainted with Eleaticism at Athens,
and we can see that the modifications he introduced into it were
due to ‘the philosophy of Anaximenes’, which still survived in
Tonia.
§ 68. The main arguments of Melissos are just those of Par-
menides, except that they are expressed in simple Ionic prose.
His great innovation was that he regarded the real as infinite
instead of making it a finite sphere. It is said that he inferred its
spatial infinity from its eternity, and he does appear to have used
language that might suggest such an argument. He had, however,
a much more cogent reason than that. The real, he said, could only
be limited by empty space, and there is no empty space. For the
same reason there can be no motion and no change. ‘The real was,
of course, corporeal, as it was for Parmenides. The statement
sometimes made that Melissos held it to be incorporeal is based on
a misunderstanding.
There can be no doubt that Melissos was looked upon in his
own day as the most advanced representative of Eleaticism, and
‘the thesis of Melissos’ is an object of special aversion to the writer
of the Hippokratean treatise on The Nature of Man, while Plato
makes Sokrates couple his name with that of the great Parmenides
himself (Theaet. 180 e). From a historical point of view his most
remarkable saying is that, if things are a many, each one of them
would have to be such as he has shown the One to be. That is just
the formula of Atomism, as we shall see, and Melissos rejected it
DE. Groen 1693
70 THE LATER PYTHAGOREANS
because he denied the existence of empty space. In that, too, he
prepared the way for the atomic theory by making it necessary for
Leukippos to affirm the existence of the Void.
THE LATER PYTHAGOREANS
§ 69. It has been said already (§ 27) that the Pythagoreans had a
singular power of adapting their theories to new conditions, and it
is certain that at some time or other they felt called upon to give
an account of the new doctrine of elements in terms of their own
system. It is probable that this was the work of Philolaos, who lived
at Thebes towards the end of the fifth century B.c., but rettirned to
South Italy as soon as it was safe for Pythagoreans to show them-
selves in those parts once more. From that time forward Taras
(Tarentum) was the chief seat of the school, and we shall hear
more of it when we come to consider the relations of Plato with
Archytas. For reasons I have given elsewhere, I cannot regard the
fragments which have come down to us under the name of
Philolaos as authentic, but for all that they are old and contain
some valuable hints as to the development of Pythagorean
doctrine.?
§ 70. The most remarkable feature of later Pythagoreanism is
the way the religious side of the doctrine was dropped and the
effort that was made to clear the memory of Pythagoras himself
from the imputation of mysticism. We have the echo of this in the
remains of Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, but it must be older; for
in their day scientific Pythagoreanism had ceased to exist. The
statement that Hippasos of Metapontion was guilty of publishing a
mystic discourse ‘with the view of misrepresenting Pythagoras”
must go back to this generation of the school; for at a later date no
one would have any interest in making it. A book by Hippasos
almost certainly existed; for Aristotle is able to state that he made
fire the first principle like Herakleitos. That agrees very well with
what we can infer as to the earliest Pythagorean cosmology. There
are all sorts of stories about this Hippasos, who is said to have been
drowned at sea or to have been expelled from the order, which then
made a sepulchre for him as if he were dead. Finally, the story was
1 Ε΄. Gr. Ph.? §§ 138 sqq.
2 Diog. viii. 7 τὸν δὲ Mvarixov λόγον Ἱππάσου... εἶναι γεγραμμένον ἐπὶ διαβολῇ
Πυθαγόρου.
PHILOLAOS 71
put about that there had from the first been two grades in the
order, Mathematicians and Akousmatics, or Pythagoreans and
Pythagorists, and Hippasos was represented as the leader of the
lower grade. It is impossible, of course, for us to disentangle truth
from falsehood in all this; but we are, I think, entitled to infer that
there was a real struggle between those who held to the Pythagorist
religion and those who attached themselves exclusively to the
scientific side of the doctrine. In the fourth century the Pytha-
gorean scientific school expired and its place was taken by the
Academy; the Pythagorist religion, on the other hand, maintained
its existence even later, as we know from the fragments of the
comic poets.
§ 71. The distinctive feature of the later Pythagoreanism is its
effort to assimilate the Empedoklean doctrine of the four ‘elements’,
and there is reason for believing that the name itself (στοιχεῖον)
originated at this time. If Philolaos was the author of the theory,
that is natural enough. The fragment of Menon’s Jatrika recently
discovered in a London medical papyrus has revealed the fact that
he belonged to the Sicilian medical school, and that the theories of
that school depended on the identification of the old ‘opposites’,
hot and cold, wet and dry, with the four elements of Empedokles.?
The Pythagoreans had to find room for the elements in their sys-
tem somehow, though they continued to resist the doctrine that
they were ultimate. Plato has preserved this touch in his Timaeus
(48 b), where he makes the Pythagorean protest that, so far from
being ‘letters’, the four elements are not even syllables.
The view they actually took of them was that they were ‘figures’,
or, in other words, that they were made up of particles which had
the shapes of the regular solids. We need not doubt that the
derivation of those figures from the elementary triangles given in
Plato’s Timaeus is in substance Pythagorean, though, as the doc-
trine of the five regular solids was only completed by Theaitetos,
some of the constructions must belong to a later date than
Philolaos.
§72. The later Pythagoreans appear to have said that things
were like numbers rather than that they actually were numbers,
and here we shall probably be right in tracing the effect of Zeno’s
criticism. Aristotle quotes the doctrine in both forms, and he
1 The hot and cold, wet and dry are spoken of as εἴδη in Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰατρικῆς 15,
and Philistion called the four elements ἰδέαι (E. Gr. Ph.” p. 235, n. 2).
72 THE LATER PYTHAGOREANS
hardly seems to be conscious of any great difference between them.
Further, he treats what is usually called the Platonic ‘theory of
ideas’ as practically identical with some form of Pythagoreanism.
That raises questions we shall have to deal with later; for the
present, it will be enough to consider what the later Pythagoreans
probably meant by saying things were ‘like numbers’ instead of
saying that they actually were numbers. So far as we can see, it
must have been something like this. For the construction of the
elements we require, not merely groups of ‘units having position’,
but plane surfaces limited by lines and capable in turn of forming
the limits of solids. Now Zeno had shown that lines cannot be
built up out of points or units, and therefore the elementary
triangles out of which the ‘figures’ are constructed cannot be
identical with triangular numbers such as the tetraktys. In par-
ticular, the isosceles right-angled triangle is of fundamental
importance in the construction of the regular solids, and it cannot
be represented by any arrangement of ‘pebbles’ (7¢or),} seeing
that its hypotenuse i is incommensurable with its other two sides.
It only remains for us to say, then, that the triangles of which the
elements are ultimately composed are ‘likenesses’ or ‘imitations’
of the triangular numbers. The fateful doctrine of two worlds, the
world of thought and the world of sense, in fact originated from
the apparent impossibility of reconciling the nature of number
with continuity (τὸ συνεχές) as the Eleatics called it, or the un-
limited (τὸ ἄπειρον) as the Pythagoreans said. There was something
in the latter that seemed to resist the power of thought, and it was
inferred that it could not have true reality (οὐσία), but was at best a
process of becoming (γένεσις). You may go on bisecting the side
‘and the diagonal of a square as long as you please, but you never
come to a common measure, though you are always getting nearer
to it.
§ 73. The ‘figures’ (εἴδη) are now regarded, then, not as identical
with the numbers, but as likenesses of them, and we shall not be
surprised to find that, once the demand for a complete identifica-
tion had been given up, an attempt was made to explain other
things than the elements in this way. According to Aristotle, that is
exactly what happened. The Pythagoreans went on to say that
justice was a square number, and to give similar accounts of
marriage, opportunity, and the like. They only gave a few such
ΤΕ ps5) 1:
THE FORMS 73
definitions, however, and Aristotle observes that they were based
on mere superficial likenesses between numbers and things. The
most valuable piece of information he gives us is that Eurytos, a
disciple of Philolaos, and therefore one of the last of the pure
Pythagoreans, went on to express the nature of horse, man, and
plant ‘by means of pebbles’ or counters. Theophrastos said the
same thing, and there seems to be no doubt that the statement rests
on the authority of Archytas. Alexander gives, doubtless from the
same source, an account of this extraordinary method. ‘Let us
assume, for example,’ he says, ‘that 250 is the number which
defines man, and 360 that which defines plant. Having laid this
down, he took 250 counters, some green and some black, and others
red, and all sorts of other colours, and then, smearing the wall with
plaster and sketching on it a man and a plant, he proceeded to fix
some of the counters in the outline of the face, some in that of the
hands and some in that of other parts, and so he completed the
outline of the man he had imaged by a number of counters equal
in number to the units which he said defined the man.’
This precious testimony shows what the doctrine of ‘figures’
was capable of becoming when it ventured beyond its proper
sphere, and we must remember that Eurytos was not an early
Pythagorean, but a leading man in the latest generation of the
school. According to Aristotle, it was Sokrates that directed the
theory into another channel by his study of moral (and aesthetic)
forms, and Plato represents him in the Parmenides (130 c—d) as
saying that at one time he had thought such things as man, fire,
and the like should have forms as well, but that he had given up
the idea of finding forms for everything from fear of falling into an
ocean of nonsense (βυθὸς φλυαρίας). We now see what that means.
Nevertheless it is quite clear that Aristotle regards all this as the
origin of what we call ‘the theory of ideas’, and he even seems
anxious to minimise the differences between the Platonic and the
Pythagorean form of the theory, which did not, of course, in all
cases assume such an extravagant form as Eurytos gave it. It was
also the tradition of the Academy that the doctrine in question
was of Pythagorean origin. Proklos was well read in the ancient
commentaries on Plato, some of which went back to the early days
of the Academy, and he distinctly attributes the original form of
the theory to the Pythagoreans and its elaboration to Sokrates.
His words are: “The Pythagoreans, too, had the doctrine of forms.
74 THE EARTH A PLANET
Plato himself shows that by calling the wise men of Italy friends of
the forms (Soph. 248 a). But it was Sokrates above all that held the
forms in honour and most explicitly postulated them.’! We shall
return to this when we come to Sokrates; for the present it is
sufficient to point out that Proklos could hardly have spoken as he
does if any other interpretation of the phrase ‘friends of the forms’
(εἰδῶν φίλοι) had been known in the Academy.
§ 74. To the same generation of the school belongs a remarkable
advance in cosmology. It is probable that Philolaos still held the
geocentric theory, for that is the only one of which we get a hint in
the Phaedo; but there can be no doubt that the Pythagoreans in
Italy made the all-important discovery that the earth was one of the
planets. They did not, indeed, make it go round the sun, but they
postulated a Central Fire, round which the sun, moon, and planets
all revolved. This Central Fire was invisible to us because the
revolution of all the heavenly bodies was naturally explained on the
analogy of the moon, which is the only heavenly body that can be
properly observed by the naked eye. In other words, as the moon
always presents the same face to us, it was supposed that the sun
and the planets, including the earth, all turned the same face to the
centre. It follows that we on the earth can see the Central Fire just
as little as we can see the other side of the moon. In this system
there was also a body called the Counter-earth (ἀντίχθων), which
is invisible to us because it is between the earth and the Central
Fire. This body seems to have been assumed in order to explain
eclipses of the moon. The shadow of the earth did not seem to
account for them all, and another body casting a shadow was
required. It will be seen that this implies the view that the moon
shines by light reflected from the Central Fire, and it is not sur-
prising that the same explanation should have been given of the
sun’s light. The whole cosmology of this period depends, in fact,
on the extension of the observed facts regarding the moon to other
bodies.
§ 75. Perhaps the most remarkable thing in the Pythagorean
doctrine of this generation is that the soul has come to be regarded
as an ‘attunement’ (ἁρμονία) of the body. That is the belief ex-
pounded by Simmias, the Theban disciple of Philolaos, in the
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Σωκράτης ἐστίν.
THE SOUL ΑΝ ATTUNEMENT 75
Phaedo (86 b sq.), and we are also told that it was held by those
Pythagoreans who had settled at Phleious (88 d), from whom
Aristoxenos adopted it at a later date. It cannot be denied that such
a doctrine seems to follow quite naturally from the analogy of the
tuned string; but, on the other hand, nothing can be more incon-
sistent with the earlier Pythagorean view of the soul as something
that existed before the body, and will continue to exist after it has
left the body. This doctrine, on the contrary, makes the soul a
mere function of the body, and leaves no room for the belief in
immortality. It is probable, therefore, that its adoption is connected
with the desire, which has been noted already, to drop the religious
side of the Master’s teaching.
VI
Leukippos
§ 76. The first part of our story ends with Leukippos, the
founder of Atomism; for it was he that really answered the question
of Thales.t We know next to nothing about his life, and his book
appears to have been incorporated in the collected works of
Demokritos. No writer subsequent to Theophrastos seems to have
been able to distinguish his teaching from that of his more famous
disciple. Indeed his very existence has been denied, though on
wholly insufficient grounds. It is certain that Aristotle and Theo-
phrastos both regarded him as the real author of the atomic theory,
and it is out of the question that they should have been decieved
in such a matter, especially as Theophrastos distinguished the
teaching of Leukippos from that of Demokritos on certain points.
Theophrastos was uncertain whether Leukippos was a native of
Miletos or of Elea. The latter view is doubtless based on the
statement that he had been a disciple of the Eleatics, and, in
particular, of Zeno. We shall see that this is fully borne out by all
we know of the origin of his doctrine, and we may infer with some
probability that he was a Milesian who had come under the
influence of Parmenides at Elea or elsewhere. It is not likely that it
was at Athens; for the atomic theory does not appear to have been
well known there till the time of Aristotle. Plato, in particular,
does not appear to allude to it, though it would certainly have
interested him if he had known it.
§ 77. Aristotle, who in default of Plato is our chief authority on
the subject of atomism, gives a perfectly clear and intelligible
account of the way it arose. It almost appears as if he were anxious
to give a more strictly historical statement than usual just because
so little was known about atomism in the Academy. According to
himit originated in the Eleatic denial of the void, from which the
impossibility of multiplicity and motion had been deduced.
ΤῈ. Gr. Ph.* 8 171 sqq.
ATOMS AND THE VOID Wy
Leukippos supposed himself to have discovered a theory which
would avoid this consequence. He admitted that there could be no
motion if there was no void, and he inferred that it was wrong to
identify the void with the non-existent. What is not (τὸ μὴ ov) in
the Parmenidean sense 15 just as much as what is (τὸ ov). In other
words, Leukippos was the first philosopher to affirm, with a full
consciousness of what he was doing, the existence of empty space.
The Pythagorean void had been more or less identified with ‘air’,
but the void of Leukippos was really a vacuum.?
Besides space there was body, and to this Leukippos ascribed
all the characteristics of the Eleatic real. It was ‘full’ (ναστόν), or,
in other words, there was no empty space in it, but it was not one.
The assumption of empty space, however, made it possible to
afirm that there was an infinite number of such reals, invisible
because of their smallness, but each possessing all the marks of the
one Eleatic real, and in particular each indivisible (ἄτομον) like it.
These moved in the empty space, and their combinations can give
rise to the things we perceive with the senses. Pluralism was at
least stated in a logical and coherent way. As we have seen (§ 68),
Melissos had already suggested that, if things were a many, each
one of them must be such as he held the One to be. He intended
that for a reductio ad absurdum of pluralism, but Leukippos accepted
it, and made it the foundation of his system.
§ 78. The nature of the original motion ascribed by Leukippos
to the atoms has been much discussed. Ata later date the Epicureans
held that all the atoms are falling eternally downwards through
infinite space, and this made it very hard for them to explain how
they could come in contact with one another. There is no need to
attribute this unscientific conception to the early atomists. In the
first place they did not, as we shall see, regard weight as a primary
property of the atoms; and, in the second place, we have evidence
that Demokritos said there was neither up or down, middle or end
in the indefinite void.? Aristotle criticised all this from the point of
view of his own theory of absolute weight and lightness resulting
in the ‘natural motions’ of the elements upwards or downwards,
1 The Aristotelian derivation of Atomism from Eleaticism has been contested,
especially by Gomperz. It is true, of course, that the Milesian Leukippos was
concerned to vindicate the old Ionic cosmology, and, in particular, to save as
much of the ‘philosophy of Anaximenes’ as he could. So was Anaxagoras (§ 61).
That, however, has no bearing on the point at issue. Theophrastos stated dis-
tinctly that Leukippos had been a member of the school of Parmenides and Zeno.
3 Cic. de Finibus, i. 17; Diog. Laert. ix. 44.
78 LEUKIPPOS
as the case might be, and the Epicurean doctrine is probably the
result of this criticism. Even Epicurus, however, had the grace to
dispense with Aristotle’s absolute lightness. We may therefore
regard the original motion of the atoms as taking place in all
directions, and we shall see that this alone will account for the
formation of the worlds. Demokritos compared the motions of the
atoms of the soul to that of the motes in the sunbeam which dart
hither and thither in all directicns even when there is no wind,
and we may fairly assume that he regarded the original motion of
the other atoms in much the same way.
§79. The atoms are not mathematically indivisible like the
Pythagorean monads, but they are physically indivisible because
there is no empty space in them. Theoretically, then, there is no
reason why an atom should not be as large as a world. Such an
atom would be much the same thing as the Sphere of Parmenides,
were it not for the empty space outside it and the plurality of
worlds. As a matter of fact, however, all atoms are invisible. That
does not mean, of course, that they are all the same size; for there
is room for an infinite variety of sizes below the limit of the
minimum visibile.
Leukippos explained the phenomenon of weight from the size
of the atoms and their combinations, but he did not regard weight
itself as a primary property of bodies. Aristotle distinctly says that
none of his predecessors had said anything of absolute weight and
lightness, but only of relative weight and lightness, and Epicurus
was the first to ascribe weight to atoms. Weight for the the earlier
atomists is only a secondary phenomenon arising, in a manner to
be explained, from excess of magnitude.? It will be observed that
in this respect the early atomists were far more scientific than
Epicurus and even than Aristotle. The conception of absolute
weight has no place in science, and it is really one of the most
striking illustrations of the true scientific instinct of the Greek
philosophers that no one before Aristotle ever made use of it, while
Plato expressly rejected it.
§ 80. The differences between groups of atoms are due to
,(1) arrangement and (2) position. It is not clear whether the
illustration from the letters of the alphabet quoted by Aristotle
1 Aristotle, de Anima, 403 b, 31. frit j
2 There can be no question of mass; for the φύσις of all the atoms is identical,
and each atom is a continuum.
ATOMISM AND PYTHAGOREANISM 79
was given by Leukippos or Demokritos, but in any case it is
probably Pythagorean in origin, for it accounts satisfactorily for
the use of the word στοιχεῖον in the sense of element, and that is
found in Plato, who, as I believe, knew nothing of Atomism.
However that may be, the points of resemblance between Pytha-
goreanism and Atomism were already noted by Aristotle, and he
had direct knowledge on the subject. ‘Leukippos and Demokritos’,
he says, ‘virtually make all things numbers too and produce them
from numbers.’ I do not see how this statement can have any
meaning unless we regard the Pythagorean numbers as patterns
or ‘figurate numbers’, and, in that case, it is still more striking that
Demokritos called the atoms ‘figures’ or ‘forms’ (ἰδέαι). The void
is also a Pythagorean conception, though, as we have seen, it was
not formulated with precision before Leukippos. It is hardly, then,
too much to say that the atoms are Pythagorean monads endowed
with the properties of Parmenidean reality, and that the elements
which arise from the various positions and arrangements of the
atoms are, so far, like the Pythagorean ‘numbers’. Such, at any
rate, seems to be the view of Aristotle, though we should have been
glad if he had explained himself more fully.
§ 81. The first effect of the motion of the atoms is that the larger
atoms are retarded, not because they are ‘heavy’, but because they
are more exposed to impact than the smaller. In particular, atoms
of an irregular shape become entangled with one another and form
groups of atoms, which are still more exposed to impact and con-
sequent retardation. The smallest and roundest atoms, on the other
hand, preserve their original motions best, and these are the atoms
of which fire is composed. It will be observed that it is simply taken
for granted that an original motion will persist unless something
acts upon it so as to retard it or bring it to a stop. To Aristotle that
appeared incredible, and the truth had to be rediscovered and
established on a firm basis by Galileo and Newton. It was really
the assumption of all the earlier Greek philosophy. Before the time
of Parmenides it was rest and not motion that required explanation,
and now that Leukippos had discovered a way of escape from the
conclusion of Parmenides, it was possible for him to revert to the
older view.
§ 82. In an infinite void in which an infinite number of atoms of
countless shapes and sizes are constantly impinging upon one
another in all directions, there will be an infinite number of places
80 LEUKIPPOS
where a vortex motion is set up by their impact. When this
happens, we have the beginning of a world. It is not correct to
ascribe this to chance, as later writers do. It follows necessarily
from the presuppositions of the system. The solitary fragment of
Leukippos we possess is to the effect that ‘Naught happens for
nothing, but all things from a ground (Adyos) and of necessity’. It
will be observed that the vortex theory is derived from that of
Anaxagoras (§ 60), which in turn was a development of the older
Ionic doctrine. So far we see that Leukippos was a Milesian, but
he has thought the matter out much more carefully than his pre-
decessor. Anaxagoras had supposed that the analogy of a sling
would apply, and that the larger or ‘heavier’ bodies ‘would,
therefore, be driven to the furthest distance from the centre.
Leukippos left weight out of account altogether, as a property
which is not primitive, but only arises when the vortex has already
been formed. He therefore looked rather to what happens in the
case of bodies in an eddy of wind or water, and he saw that the
larger bodies would tend towards the centre.
§ 83. The first effect of the vortex motion thus set up is to bring
together those atoms which are alike in shape and size, and this is
the origin of the four ‘elements’, fire, air, earth, and water. This
process was illustrated by the image of a sieve which brings the
grains of millet, wheat and barley together. As this image is found
also in Plato’s Timaeus (52 e), it is probably of Pythagorean origin.
Another image was that of the waves sorting the pebbles on a
beach and heaping up long stones with long and round with round.
In this process the finer atoms are forced out towards the circum-
ference, while the larger tend to the centre. To understand this, we
must remember that all the parts of the vortex come in contact
(ἐπίψαυσις) with one another, and it is in this way that the motion
of the outermost parts is communicated to those within them. The
larger bodies offer more resistance (ἀντέρεισις) to this communi-
cated motion than the smaller, simply because they are larger and
therefore more exposed to impacts in different directions which
neutralise the vortex motion. In this way they make their way to
the centre where the motion is least, while the smaller bodies are
squeezed out towards the circumference where it is greatest. That
is the explanation of weight, which is not an ‘occult quality’, but
arises from purely mechanical causes.
§ 84. When we come to details, we find that Leukippos showed
THE VORTEX 81
himself a true Ionian. His Eleatic teachers doubtless warned him
off the Pythagorean cosmology, but they could not give him a
better. It was natural, then, that he should turn to the theories of
his distinguished fellow-citizen Anaximenes, and the little we
know of his system shows that he did so, just as Anaxagoras had
done before him. He deliberately rejected the Pythagorean dis-
covery that the earth was spherical, a discovery of which he cannot
have been ignorant, and taught that it was in shape ‘like a tam-
bourine’, resting on the air. The reason why it sloped toward the
south was that the heat there made the air thinner and therefore
less able to support it. In fact, the Atomists rejected the Pytha-
gorean theory of the earth exactly as Anaxagoras had done, and it
was only the fusion of Eastern and Western cosmology at Athens
that finally established the new view. Though Aristotle’s earth is in
the centre of the universe, it never occurs to him to doubt its
spherical shape.
§ 85. It is not worth while to follow in detail the application of
the atomic theory to particular phenomena, and the atomic ex-
planation of sensation and knowledge will be better kept till we
come to Demokritos, to whom it was chiefly due. All we need say
further here is that Leukippos has answered the question of Thales
in the sense in which Thales had asked it, and no further advance
was possible on these lines. Before that could take place it was
necessary that attention should be directed to the kindred prob-
lems of knowledge and of conduct, and we shall see in the next
book how that came about. The very completeness of the mechani-
cal theory of the world which had now been given brought science
to a standstill for a time, and it also provoked a revolt against
cosmology. On one side that came from specialists in the particular
sciences, especially medicine, who disliked the sweeping generali-
sations of the cosmologists, and maintained the right of each
science to deal with its own province. The Hippokratean treatise
on Ancient Medicine (by which is meant the art of medicine based
on experience and observation, as contrasted with the new-fangled
medical theories of the school of Empedokles and others) is the
best evidence of this. On the other side, there was a revolt against
science which proceeded from men whose chief interest was in prac-
tical life. How do you know these things are true, they said, and even
if they are, what does it matter to us? Those two questions can only
be dealt with by a theory of knowledge and a theory of conduct.
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KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
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The Sophists
LAW AND NATURE
§ 86. We have now to consider a period of breakdown and
reconstruction. Science had done all it could to make the world
intelligible, and the result was a view of reality in flat contradiction
to the evidence of the senses. Apparently it was not this world
science explained but another one altogether. What, then, are we
to say about this world? Why should we regard the world of science
as truer than it? After all, that world is a product of human think-
ing, and how can we tell that thought is not as misleading as sense
is said to be? Science proceeds on the assumption that there is
some fundamental reality (φύσις) which we can discover, but what
guarantee have we for that? It is very plain that men’s views of
right and wrong, fair and foul, vary from people to people, and
even from city to city, so there is no fundamental reality in them
at any rate. In the same way the scientific schools only agree in one
thing — namely, that all other schools are wrong. It is surely just
as unlikely that any of these schools should possess the truth as
that any of the the nations, Hellenic or barbarian, should have
established among themselves the true law of nature. Such were
the thoughts that must have kept suggesting themselves to culti-
vated men in the middle of the fifth century B.c.
It is very significant that the difficulties which were felt as to
knowledge and conduct should both have been summed up in the
same antithesis, that of nature (φύσις) and law (νόμος), though the
latter term has to do primarily with conduct and the former with
knowledge. This shows that the two problems were felt to be the
same. The use of the term Law was evidently due to the great
legislative activity of the preceding centuries. In early days the
regularity of human life had been far more clearly apprehended
than the even course of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of
law and custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless.
86 LAW AND NATURE
So much was this so that, when the regular course of nature began
to be observed, no better name could be found for it than Right or
Justice (δίκη), a word which properly meant the unchanging custom
that guided human life. We have seen that Anaximander spoke of
the encroachment of one element on another as ‘injustice’ (§ 6),
and, according to Herakleitos, it is the Erinyes, the avenging
handmaids of Right, that keep the sun from ‘overstepping his
measures’ (§ 42). But a code of laws drawn up by a human lawgiver
whose name was known, a Zaleukos, or a Charondas, or a Solon,
could not be accepted in the old way as part of the everlasting order
of things. It was clearly something ‘made’, and it might just as well
have been made otherwise or not made at all. A generation that had
seen laws in the making could hardly help asking itself whether
the whole of customary morality had not after all been made in the
same way. That is why we find the word which is properly applied
to the legislator’s activity (θέσις) used synonymously with law
(νόμος) in this connexion.
The best evidence of this state of feeling is the work of Hero-
dotos. He must certainly have known Protagoras at 'Thourioi, and
some have thought that they could detect the influence of Prota-
goras in his work. It may be so, but it is just as likely that he is the
mouthpiece of a feeling which was widely spread at the time, and
to which Protagoras gave expression in another form. In any case,
it is quite wrong to regard him as a representative of old-fashioned
morality and religion. He is utterly sceptical, and his respect for
conventions is due to his scepticism, just like that of Protagoras.
The strongest proof he can give of the madness of King Cambyses
is that he laughed at the rites and customs of other nations as if his
own were a bit less artificial. ‘If we were to set before all men a
choice, and bid them pick out the best uses (νόμοι) from all the uses
there are, each people, after examining them all, would choose
those of their own nation.’ So ‘it is not likely that any one but a
madman would laugh at such things’, and Pindar was right in
saying that ‘Law is king of all.’*
1 Whence ‘positive’ as opposed to ‘natural’ law.
2 Herod. iii. 38. The quotation from Pindar is the more significant that Pindar
meant something quite different (see below, § 97). It was therefore a familiar
‘text’ that could be made to mean anything.
THE SOPHISTS 87
THE ‘SOPHISTS’
§ 87. It is usual to speak of the men we have now to deal with as
‘the Sophists’, and so they called themselves and were called by
others. For us, however, the name Sophist is apt to be misleading
in more ways than one. It is misleading if it is used to indicate a
contrast between these men and the thinkers and teachers of an
earlier generation. Herodotus calls Pythagoras a Sophist (iv. 95).
It is still more misleading if it makes us think of them as forming
in any sense a sect or school, or even as teachers with identical
aims and methods. There is the further difficulty that, by the fourth
century B.C., the word had already begun to acquire the meaning
it still bears in ordinary language. This seems to have originated
with Isokrates, who was anxious to keep what he called ‘philosophy’
distinct from intellectual pursuits of another order. Plato, too, for
reasons we shall have to consider, was anxious to distinguish the
Sophist from the Philosopher, and in one of his later dialogues
defines the former as a paid huntsman of rich and distinguished
young men. Aristotle formulated all that, and defines the Sophist as
one who makes money out of apparent wisdom.
Now we must observe that the Sophists here referred to are
primarily contemporaries of Isokrates, Plato, and Aristotle them-
selves, not the distinguished teachers of the fifth century who
commonly go by the name, and we have no right to transfer the
polemics of a later generation to that of Protagoras and Gorgias.
Aristotle’s definition of the Sophist must, therefore, be left out of
account altogether, and we shall see that the people Isokrates calls
Sophists are certainly not those the word most naturally suggests
to a modern reader. Plato is a safe guide when he is dealing by
name with the great Sophists of the fifth century; his general
discussion in the dialogue entitled The Sophist has, we shall see,
another bearing.
We do learn from Plato, however, that, even in the fifth century,
there was a prejudice against the name which made it possible for
it to acquire the unfavourable sense it had in the fourth. That
prejudice took two forms, an aristocratic and a democratic. From
the democratic point of view, indeed, there was no blame attaching
to the title σοφιστής that did not equally attach to the word σοφός
itself. ΤῸ be ‘too clever’ was always an offence, and in the Apology
1 Plato, Soph. 223 b; Arist. Soph. El. 165 a, 22.
D B.G.P.
88 REACTION AGAINST SCIENCE
it is just the charge of being a ‘wise man’ that Sokrates is most
eager to rebut. From the aristocratic point of view, the name was
open to another objection. Its very form suggested professionalism,'
a thing the high-born Hellene shrank from instinctively. Above
all, the fact that these distinguished men were foreigners made
them unpopular at Athens. The Athenian public was full of
prejudices, and that against ‘the foreigner’ was particularly well
developed. It was in part the cause and in part the effect of the
growing stringency with which the privilege of citizenship was
guarded. An Athenian orator or comic poet had no more effective
weapon than the charge of foreign extraction. We know something
of such nationalism in our own day, and in democratic Athens it
was a very potent force indeed. Such considerations as these ex-
plain why Plato represents Protagoras as wearing the name of
Sophist with a certain bravado.?
This view is more or less common ground at the present day;
but it can hardly be said that all its consequences have been fully
realised. German writers in particular continue to be much
influenced by a superficial analogy between the ‘age of the Sophists’
and the eighteenth century Aufkidrung, with the result that the
Sophists are represented either as subverters of religion and
morality, or as champions of free thought, according to the personal
predilections of the writer. The truth is rather that, so far as there
is any parallel to the Aufkiarung in the history of Greek thought at
all, it occurs much earlier, and Xenophanes, not Protagoras, is its
apostle. It is not to religion but to science that Protagoras and
Gorgias take up a negative attitude, and we shall never under-
stand them if we lose sight of that fundamental distinction. The.
‘age of the Sophists’ is, above all, an age of reaction against science.
§ 88. It has been pointed out that the Sophists did not constitute
a school, but it is true for all that that their teaching had something
in common. They all aim chiefly at practical ends. Their profession
is that they teach ‘goodness’ (ἀρετή), and that is explained to mean
the power of directing states and families aright. In practice this
was apt to work out in a curious way, especially in a democratic
state like Athens. ‘The Sophists quite naturally taught people who
could pay them, and these were generally the well born and well-
1'The σοφιστής makes a profession of ‘being clever’ or ‘playing the wit’ (τὸ
σοφίζεσθαι) just as the κιθαριστής makes a profession of playing on the lyre.
* Prot. 317 Ὁ.
THE SOPHISTS 89
to-do, who were the natural prey of the democracy. To a large
extent, then, what they taught was the art of succeeding in a
democratic State when you do not yourself belong to the ruling
democracy, and, in particular, the art of getting off when you are
attacked in the courts of law. That is the questionable side of the
Sophist’s work, but it is hardly fair to make it a ground of accusation
against the men themselves; it was the natural outcome of the
political conditions of Athens at the time. There is no reason to
doubt that Protagoras was perfectly sincere in his profession that
he was a teacher of ‘goodness’: only the goodness demanded by
his clients was apt to be of a rather odd kind, and in practice his
teaching became more and more confined to the arts of rhetoric
and disputation. He would never have been entrusted by Perikles
with the highly responsible task of framing a code of laws for
Thourioi unless he had really possessed considerable skill in
politics and jurisprudence; but the young men he was called on to
train were more likely to be engaged in conspiracies against the
State than in legislation. ‘That was not his fault, and it will help us
to understand the Sophists much better if we bear in mind that,
from the nature of the case, they were compelled to depend mainly
for their livelihood on the men who afterwards made the oligarchic
revolutions. In that sense only were they the products of democracy;
what a sincere though moderate democrat really thought of them
we may gather from what Anytos is made to say in Plato’s Meno
(91 c sqq.).
PROTAGORAS
§ 89. The earliest Sophist in the sense just explained was
Protagoras of Abdera. In the dialogue called by his name, Plato has
described his second visit to Athens. He had been there once before
when Hippokrates, the Athenian youth who asks Sokrates for an
introduction to him, was still a boy. This time there is a great
gathering of Sophists from all parts of the Hellenic world in the
house of Kallias, son of Hipponikos, who was known to have spent
more money on Sophists than any man of his day. It is obvious
that such a gathering would have been impossible at any time
during the first stage of the Peloponnesian War. Alkibiades is quite
a lad, though he has a beard coming (309 a). Protagoras is repre-
sented as much older than Sokrates, and indeed he says (317 c)
there is no one in the company (which includes Hippias and
go PROTAGORAS
Prodikos) whose father he might not be, and also that he has been
engaged in his profession for many years. All through he addresses
his hearers as men who belong to a younger generation. In the
Hippias maior (282 e) Hippias is made to say that Protagoras was
‘far older’ than he was. From the Meno we get further information.
That dialogue is supposed to take place before the expedition of
Cyrus (401 B.c.) in which Meno took part, and Protagoras is
spoken of (91 e) as having died some considerable time before,
when he was seventy years old and had been forty years in practice,
in which time he had made more money than Pheidias and any
other ten sculptors put together. Lastly, in the Theaetetus, a
dialogue supposed to take place just before the trial of Sokrates,
Protagoras is spoken of as one long dead.
Now all these statements are perfectly consistent with one
another, and the total impression they make on us would not be
affected by one or two minor anachronisms, if such there are.*
They mean that Protagoras was born not later than 500 B.C., that
his second visit to Athens cannot have been later than 432 B.C., and
may have been some years earlier, and that he died in the early
years of the Peloponnesian War. These dates are perfectly con-
sistent with the well-attested fact that he legislated for Thourioi in
444/3 B.c.,2 and they are quite inconsistent with the statement that
he was prosecuted and condemned for impiety in the time of the
Four Hundred (411 B.c.). Indeed, Plato represents Sokrates as
saying things which make it impossible to believe Protagoras was
ever prosecuted for impiety at all.? In the Meno a special point is
made (91 e) of the fact that throughout his long life no one ever
suggested that he had done any harm to his associates, and that his
1 Though Protagoras is represented as putting up παρὰ Καλλίᾳ τοῦ “Ἱππονίκου
(311 a), that does not imply that Hipponikos was dead. In the Republic (328 b)
Sokrates and the rest go εἰς Πολεμάρχου, though Kephalos is certainly living. The
imperfect ἐχρῆτο (315 d) rather implies that Hipponikos was still living.
2 The traditional! date of Protagoras is based solely on this. Everyone connected
with Thourioi is supposed to have ‘flourished’ in the year of its foundation, and
to ‘flourish’ is to be forty years old. For that reason Empedokles, Herodotos, and
Protagoras are all said to have been born in 484/3 B.c. It seems probable, however,
that a lawgiver would be over forty.
3 The statement that Protagoras was accused by Pythodoros, son of Polyzelos
(Diog. Laert. ix. 54), sounds circumstantial, but the next words, ‘but Aristotle
says it was Euathlos’, shows that this notice really refers to the celebrated “Suit
for his Fee’ (Δίκη ὑπὲρ μισθοῦ). The story was (7b. ix. 55) that Euathlos was to
pay the fee when he had won his first case. When Protagoras demanded it, he
replied, ‘I have not won a case yet.’ The answer was that Protagoras would sue
him, and then he would have to pay. ‘If I win, because I have won; if you win,
because you have won.’
‘THE THROWERS’ ΟΙ
good name remained unsullied down to the supposed date of the
dialogue, several years after his death. Further, there is no reference
to any accusation of Protagoras in the Apology, though such a
reference would have been almost inevitable if it had ever taken
place. Sokrates has to go back to the trial of Anaxagoras to find a
parallel to his own case. It is therefore safer to dismiss the story
altogether.
The portrait Plato has drawn of Protagoras has been called a
caricature, but there does not seem to be much ground for such a
view. In the first place, we must observe that he does not speak of
him in his own person. It is Sokrates that describes him, and he
only applies to Protagoras the irony he habitually applied to him-
self. Such good-humoured raillery as there is refers mainly to the
enthusiastic admirers of the great man. Indeed, we are made to
feel that Sokrates has a genuine respect for Protagoras himself. It
is true that in the T’heaetetus he does caricature his teaching, but
he immediately confesses that it is a caricature, and goes on to give
a much more sympathetic account of it.
§go. There is considerable uncertainty about the number and
titles of the works of Protagoras, which is due, no doubt, to the
fact that titles, in the modern sense, were unknown in the fifth
century.” The work Plato refers to as The Truth (᾿ 4 λήθεια) is
probably identical with that elsewhere called The Throwers
(Καταβάλλοντες, sc. Adyor),? and was no doubt the most important.
If we reject the story that Protagoras was accused of impiety, we
must also, of course, reject that of the destruction of all copies of
his work by public authority. In any case, it is absurd. The book is
represented as widely read long after Protagoras died. In the
Theaetetus of Plato (152 a) the lad from whom the dialogue takes
its name says he has read it often, and in the Helen (10. 2) Isokrates
says: ‘Who does not know that Protagoras and the Sophists of that
time have written elaborate works and left them to us?’ And even
1 It is worth while noting that the oldest form of the story appears to have
made the accusation of Protagoras subsequent to that of Sokrates (cf. Timon, fr.
5 Diels). He was supposed to be a contemporary of Plato owing to the common
confusion of Sokrates and Plato, and was accordingly made a disciple of Demo-
kritos, who really belonged to a later generation.
* This statement refers primarily to prose works. Dramas had titles of a sort
(1.6. they were called after the chorus or the protagonist), and Plato followed this
custom in naming his dialogues.
8 Metaphors from wrestling are regular in this connexion, and καταβάλλειν
means ‘to throw’. The phrase καταβάλλειν τὰς αἰσθήσεις became technical for attacks
upon sensation as a source of knowledge.
92 PROTAGORAS
if the Athenians had been so silly as to burn all the copies they
could find at Athens, there must have been many others scattered
through the Greek world from Abdera to Sicily, and these would
not be at the mercy of the Athenian authorities. It is clear, then,
that the book was extant and widely read when Plato quoted it, and
that it would have been impossible for him to interpret the doctrine
of Protagoras in a sense not really suggested by it.
§ 91. That doctrine is the famous one that ‘Man is the measure
of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are
not that they are not.’ The meaning of this dictum has been much
canvassed, but the curious use of the word ‘measure’ has not been
sufficiently remarked. We have become so accustomed to the
phrase that it hardly strikes us as peculiar, and yet it is surely not
the most obvious way of expressing any of the meanings that have
been attributed to Protagoras. Why ‘measure’? To understand this,
we should probably start from the arithmetical meaning of the
word. It is recorded that Protagoras attacked mathematics, and in
particular the doctrine that the tangent touches the circle at a
point. There must, he urged, be a stretch for which the straight
line and the circle are in contact.! It is probable, then, that his use
of the word ‘measure’ was due to the controversies about incom-
mensurability which were so rife in the fifth century. The geometers
tell us, he may have said, that the side and the diagonal of the
square have no common measure, but in cases like that man is the
measure, that is, they are commensurable for all practical purposes.
Theories that set themselves in opposition to the commonsense of
mankind may safely be ignored. We shall find that this is just the
position Protagoras took up on other questions. In the great
controversy about Law and Nature he is decidedly on the side of
the former.
In this connexion it is interesting to note that tradition repre-
sents Protagoras as having met Zeno at Athens, which he may well
have done, and there was a dialogue in which the two men were
introduced discussing a question closely bound up with the prob-
lem of continuity. A quotation from it has been preserved, and its
authenticity is guaranteed by a reference to it in Aristotle.? “Tell
me, Protagoras,’ said Zeno, ‘does a single grain of millet make a
1 Arist. Met. B, 2. 998 a, 2.
2 Simplicius, Phys. 1108, 18 (R.P. 131), Ar. Phys. 250 a, 20. That such dia-
logues existed is the presupposition of Plato’s Parmenides. It professes to be one
of them,
HOMO MENSURA 93
noise in falling or the ten-thousandth part of a grain?’ And when
he said it did not, Zeno asked him, ‘Does a bushel of millet make a
noise when it falls or not?’ And, when he said it did, Zeno replied,
‘What then? Is there not a ratio of a bushel of millet to one grain
and the ten-thousandth part of a grain?’ When he said there was,
Zeno replied, ‘Well, then, will not the ratios of the sounds to one
another be the same? As the sounding objects are to one another,
so will the sounds be to one another; and, if that is so, if the bushel
of millet makes a noise, the single grain and the ten-thousandth
part of a grain will make a noise.’ This quotation proves at least
that it was thought appropriate for Protagoras and Zeno to discuss
questions of the kind, and so confirms the view that it really was
the Eleatic dialectic which made men turn away from science.
Moreover, Porphyry said he had come across a work of Protagoras
containing arguments against those who introduced the doctrine
that Being was one.?
§ 92. But who is the ‘Man’ who is thus ‘the measure of all
things’? Plato more than once explains the meaning of the doctrine
to be that things are to me as they appear to me, and to you as they
appear to you. It is possible that this may not be a verbal quotation,
but it is hard to believe that Plato could have ventured on such an
interpretation if there was no ground for it. It also seems to me
that the modern view which makes Protagoras refer, not to the
individual man, but to ‘Man as such’, attributes to him a distinction
he would not have understood, and would not have accepted if he
had. The good faith of Plato is further confirmed by the hint he
gives us, when he doves go on in the Theaetetus to develop an
elaborate sensationalist theory from the dictum of Protagoras, that
it was not so developed by Protagoras himself. He says it was
something he kept back from the common herd and only revealed
to his disciples ‘in a mystery’. We could hardly be told more
plainly that the theory in question was not to be found in the book
of Protagoras itself.
Nor does Plato stand alone in his interpretation of this dictum.
Demokritos, who was a younger fellow-citizen of Protagoras,
understood it precisely in the same way. We learn from Plutarch
that the Epicurean Kolotes had accused Demokritos of throwing
human life into confusion by teaching that ‘nothing was such rather
than such’ (οὐδὲν μᾶλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον). Plutarch (or rather his
1 Eus. P.E. x. 3, 25 (Bernays, Ges. Abh. i. 121).
94 PROTAGORAS
authority) replies that, so far from holding this view, Demokritos
combated Protagoras who did hold it, and wrote many convincing
arguments against him.? It is impossible to ignore that, and the
testimony of Demokritos is not only of the highest value in itself,
but is, of course, quite independent of Plato’s.
The practical inference to be drawn from all this is that on every
subject it is possible to make two opposite statements (λόγοι), both
of which are ‘true’, though one may be ‘weaker’ and another
‘stronger’. It is the business of the disputant to make the weaker
statement the stronger (τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν), and that is
an art which can be taught. It is important to notice that this is not
in itself an immoral doctrine. Plato distinctly tells us that though,
according to Protagoras, all beliefs are equally true, one belief may
nevertheless be better than another, and he seems to have regarded
as ‘better’ the beliefs which were most in accordance with those of
the man in a normal condition of body and mind. People who have
jaundice see all things yellow, and just so it is possible for a man to
have his moral beliefs coloured by some abnormal condition of
soul. The things that appear yellow to the jaundiced eye really are
yellow to it, but that does not alter the fact that it would be better
for the sick man if they appeared different to him. His belief would
not be truer, but it would be better. In the same way, then, as it is
the business of the doctor to bring his patient’s body into such a
condition that he may see normally, so it is the business of the
Sophist to make the better statement, which may be the weaker in
a given Case, not only better but stronger.
§93. This explains further how it is that Plato represents
Protagoras as a convinced champion of Law against all attempts
to return to nature for guidance. He was a strong believer in
organised society, and he held that institutions and conventions
were what raised men above the brutes. That, at any rate, is the
meaning of the myth Plato puts into his mouth in the dialogue
called by his name. So far from being a revolutionary, he was the
champion of traditional morality, not from old-fashioned prejudice,
but from a strong belief in the value of social conventions. In this
sense, he not only professed to teach ‘goodness’ himself, but he
believed it was taught by the laws of the state and by public
opinion, though not perhaps so well. He had a profound belief in
the value of such teaching, and he considered that it begins in early
1 Plut. adv. Col. 1108 f. sq. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math. vii. 389.
THE LAW 95
childhood. The less he could admit anything to be truer than
anything else, the more sure he felt that we must cleave to what is
normal and generally recognised.
The attitude of Protagoras to religion is generally looked at in
the light of the highly improbable story of his accusation for
impiety. We still have a single sentence from his work On the Gods,
and it is as follows: “With regard to the gods, I cannot feel sure
either that they are or that they are not, nor what they are like in
figure; for there are many things that hinder sure knowledge, the
obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.’ There is
surely nothing impious in these words from any point of view, and
certainly there is none from the Greek. Speculative opinions on
subjects like these were no part of Greek religion, which consisted
entirely in worship and not in theological affirmations or negations.+
And, in any case, the sentence quoted might just as well be the
prelude to a recommendation to worship according to the use of
one’s native city (νόμῳ πόλεως) as to anything else, and such a
recommendation would be in complete harmony with the other
views of Protagoras. If we cannot attain sure knowledge about the
gods by ourselves, we shall do well to accept the recognised
worship. That is what we should expect the champion of Law
against Nature to say.
HIPPIAS AND PRODIKOS
§ 94. The other Sophists mentioned as present in the house of
Kallias are of no great importance for the history of philosophy,
though they are of considerable interest as typical figures. Hippias
of Elis is chiefly memorable for his efforts in the direction of univer-
sality. He was the enemy of all specialism, and appeared at Olympia
gorgeously attired in a costume entirely of his own making down to
the ring on his finger. He was prepared to lecture to anyone on
anything, from astronomy to ancient history. Such a man had need
of a good memory, and we know that he invented a system of
mnemonics. There was a more serious side to his character,
however. This was the age when men were still sanguine of squaring
the circle by a geometrical construction. ‘The lunules of Hippo-
krates of Chios belong to it, and Hippias, the universal genius,
could not be behindhand here. He invented the curve still known
1Cf.§ 140.
96 THE SOPHISTS
as the quadratrix (τετραγωνίζουσα), which would solve the prob-
lem if it could be mechanically described. Prodikos of Keos is
chiefly known nowadays for the somewhat jejune apologue of the
Choice of Herakles which Xenophon has preserved. We shall see
presently how important the personality of Herakles was at the
time. The chief work of Prodikos, however, seems to have been the
discrimination of synonyms, a business which may possibly have
been important in the infancy of grammar. Protagoras too contri-
buted something to grammar. He called attention to the arbitrary
character of certain grammatical genders, no doubt in illustration
of the reign of Law or convention, and his classification of sen-
tences into command, wish, etc. prepared the way for the dis-
tinction of the moods.
GORGIAS
δος. Gorgias of Leontinoi in Sicily came to Athens as am-
bassador from his native city in 427 B.c., when he was already
advanced in years. His influence, therefore, belongs to a later
generation than that of Protagoras, though he need not have been
younger than Hippias and Prodikos. He had, it seems, been a
disciple of Empedokles, and we learn incidentally from Plato’s
Meno (76 c) that he continued to teach that philosopher’s doctrine
of ‘effluences’ even in his later days, when he had retired to Larissa
in Thessaly. He is said to have lived to a great age, but no precise
date can be given for his death. It is evident from Plato’s account
of him that he was not so much a teacher of politics, like Protagoras,
as a teacher of rhetoric. That is accounted for by the change in the
political situation brought about by the Peloponnesian War and
the death of Perikles. The relations between the democracy and the
well-to-do classes were becoming more and more strained, and the
importance of forensic rhetoric was accordingly increased. What
Gorgias did was to introduce to Athens the methods of persuasion
by means of artistic prose which had been elaborated during the
struggle of classes in Sicily. His influence on Athenian literature,
and through it on the development of European prose style in
general, was enormous. It does not concern us here, except
incidentally, but it is worth while to note that the terms ‘figure’
(εἶδος, σχῆμα) and ‘trope’ (τρόπος), which he applied to the
rhetorical devices he taught, are apparently derived from Pytha-
GORGIAS 97
gorean musical theory (§ 32), and mean primarily the arrangement
of words in certain patterns.!
§ 96. Like Protagoras, Gorgias had been driven by the Eleatic
dialectic to give up all belief in science. Protagoras, as we have
seen, fell back on ‘common sense’, but Gorgias proceeded in a
much more radical fashion. If Protagoras taught that everything
was true, Gorgias maintained there was no truth at all. In his work
entitled On Nature or the non-existent ([lepi φύσεως ἢ Tod μὴ
ὄντος)" he sought to prove (1) that there is nothing, (2) that, even
if there is anything, we cannot know it, and (3) that, even if we
could know it, we could not communicate our knowledge to
anyone else. We have two apparently independent accounts of the
arguments by which he established these positions; but, though
they agree generally with one another, they are obviously para-
phrases in the language of a later time. We can still see, however,
that they were borrowed in the main from Zeno and Melissos, and
that is a mark of their being in substance authentic. Isokrates, who
had been a disciple of Gorgias, mentions his assertion that Nothing
is in the Helen (10.3), and he couples his name with those of Zeno
and Melissos, thus confirming in a general way the later accounts.
The reasoning of Zeno and Melissos was of a kind that is apt to cut
both ways, and that is what Gorgias showed. The argument given
as peculiar to himself was to this effect. “What is not’ zs not, that is
to say, it 15 just as much as ‘what is’. The difficulty here raised is
one that was not cleared up till Plato wrote the Sophist. We shall
consider it when we come to that.
§97. In the ethical sphere the counterpart of this nihilism
would be the doctrine that there is no natural distinction between
right and wrong. Plato, however, is very careful not to represent
Gorgias as drawing this conclusion himself, and even his ardent
disciple Polos shrinks from the extreme consequences of opposing
natural to legal right. These are drawn by one Kallikles, who is
introduced as an Athenian democratic statesman. We know
nothing of him otherwise, but he impresses us as a real man of
flesh and blood. He is still young in the dialogue, and he may very
well have disappeared during the revolutionary period. It is not
Plato’s way to introduce fictitious characters, nor does he introduce
1 Taylor, Varia Socratica, i. p. 206, n. 1. Cf. also the uses of εἶδος and εἰδύλλιον
for poems.
2 The title cannot be ancient in this form, as is shown by the use of ἢ to
introduce an alternative.
98 MIGHT IS RIGHT
living contemporaries, except where, as in the Phaedo, that is made
necessary by historical considerations. In any case, we have
abundant evidence that the doctrine upheld by Kallikles, namely,
that Might is Right, was current at Athens towards the close of the
fifth century. In the Melian dialogue, Thucydides has shown us
how it might be used to justify the attitude of the imperial
democracy to its subject allies, and the Herakles of Euripides is a
study of the same problem.1 Its theme is that the ‘strong man’ is
not sufficient for himself, and is only safe so long as he uses his
strength in the service of mankind. This conception of the ‘strong
man’ (of which Herakles was the regular type) was not in itself an
ignoble one. It had its ideal side, and Pindar sings how Herakles
took the oxen of Geryones without paying for them in virtue of
that higher law, which ‘justifies even the most violent deed with a
high hand’, a passage duly quoted in Plato’s Gorgias (484 b). Such
theories are a natural reaction against that rooted jealousy of
everything above the common which is apt to characterise
democracy. In modern times Carlyle and Nietzsche represent the
same point of view. ‘The worship of the strong man or ‘hero’, who
can rise superior to all petty moral conventions — in fact, of the
‘superman’ — seems to have been fostered in the fifth century B.c.
by much the same influences as in the nineteenth century A.D. It is
clear, then, that even the doctrine of Kallikles is not a complete
ethical nihilism. Might really is Right. That is a very different
thing from saying Right is Might.
In the Republic that is the doctrine maintained by Thrasymachos.
According to him there is no Right at all, and what we call by that
name is only ‘the interest of the stronger’ which he is able to force
the weaker to accept as lawful and binding on themselves in virtue
of his strength. It is important to observe that Thrasymachos
belongs to the generation we are now considering; for readers of
the Republic are often led to suppose, by an illusion we shall have
to note more than once, that Plato is there dealing with the con-
troversies of his own day. It is well to remember, then, that
Thrasymachos was mentioned as a celebrated teacher of Rhetoric
in the earliest comedy of Aristophanes, which was produced in
427 B.C., the year Plato was born and Gorgias came to Athens. It
is not to be supposed that he was still living when the Republic was
1 See my paper “The Religious and Moral Ideas of Euripides’, in the Pro-
ceedings of the Classical Association of Scotland, 1907-8, pp. 96 sqq.
THRASYMACHOS 99
written; he belonged to a generation that was past and gone. We
can hardly imagine anyone maintaining such vigorous doctrine in
Plato’s day, but it was natural enough that it should find advocates
in the second half of the fifth century. It is the real ethical counter-
part to the cosmological nihilism of Gorgias.
Plato’s final judgment on the Sophists (in the sense in which we
have been using the word) is to be found in the Laws (889 e). It is
that, by thus insisting on the opposition between Law and Nature,
they tended to do away with the distinction between right and
wrong. If that distinction is not rooted in nature, but depends
solely on human laws and institutions, it is valid only so long as
we choose to recognise it. On the other hand, if we appeal from
human law to a supposed higher law, the law of Nature, all re-
straint is abolished. We are forbidden by Plato’s own account of
them to attribute immoral intentions of any kind to the great
Sophists; but we can hardly dispute his estimate of the inevitable
consequences of their teaching in a state of society such as existed
at Athens in the closing decades of the fifth century. It is an
impartial historical judgment; for, in Plato’s day, there were no
longer any Sophists in the proper sense of the word.
ECLECTICS AND REACTIONARIES
§ 98. Besides these men there were a good many others, also
called ‘Sophists’ by their contemporaries, who attempted to carry
on the traditions of the Ionian cosmological schools. They were
not, certainly, men of the same distinction as Protagoras or Gorgias,
but they have their place in history as the vehicles by which the
ideas of Ionian science were conveyed to Sokrates and his circle.
From this point of view the most important of them is Diogenes of
Apollonia, whose date is roughly fixed for us by the statement of
Theophrastos that he borrowed from Anaxagoras and Leukippos,
which shows that he belonged to the latter part of the fifth century
B.C.
We have considerable fragments of Diogenes, written in an
Ionic prose similar to that of some of the Hippokratean writings.
We find here the first explicit justification of the old Milesian
doctrine that the primary substance must be one, an assumption
which the rise of pluralism had made it necessary to defend. The
action and reaction of things on one another, he says, can only be
100 ARCHELAOS
explained in this way. We may also trace the influence of Anaxa-
goras in another matter. Diogenes not only said the primary
substance was a ‘god’, which was nothing new, but also identified
it with Mind (νοῦς). On the other hand, he follows Anaximenes in
holding that this primary substance 15 air, and in deriving all things
from it by rarefaction and condensation. It is possible to see the
influence of Herakleitos in the close connexion he established
between wisdom and the dryness of the air we breathe. ‘Damp
hinders thought’ was one of his dicta, and is burlesqued in the
Clouds (232) accordingly. In one respect only does Diogenes
appear to have shown some originality, and that was in his medical
work. His account of the veins was celebrated, and bears witness
to the influence of Empedokles.
Hippon of Samos is of less importance. He revived the doctrine
of ‘Thales that water was the primary substance, and defended it
on physiological grounds. We now know from Menon’s Jatrika
that he was a medical writer and that he was a native of Kroton.
He was, therefore, one of the men who brought Western medicine
to Ionia, and that accounts for the character of the arguments with
which he defended his thesis. It is probable that the reasoning
conjecturally attributed to Thales by Aristotle is really his. We
may be sure that Thales defended his theory on meteorological,
not physiological, grounds. That is just the difference between the
two periods.
Archelaos of Athens was a disciple of Anaxagoras, and the first
Athenian to interest himself in science or philosophy. He deserves
mention for this, since, with the exception of Sokrates and Plato —
a considerable exception certainly — there are hardly any other
Athenian philosphers. There is not the slightest reason to doubt
the statement that he had Sokrates for a disciple. The contemporary
tragic poet, Ion of Chios, said in his Memoirs that Sokrates came to
Samos in the company of Archelaos as a young man. We know that
Ion gave an account of the visit of Sophokles and Perikles on the
occasion of the blockade of Samos in 441/o, and this statement will
refer to the same occasion.1 Sokrates would be about twenty-eight
1 Ton, fr. 73 (K6pke). The title of Ion’s work was ᾿Επιδημίαι (‘Visits’). There is
no inconsistency between his statement and that of Plato (Crito, 52 b) that
Sokrates never left Athens except on military service. This is a case of military
service like the others we shall have to consider directly. It is most unlikely that
Ion should have meant any other Sokrates in this connexion, as has been
suggested.
ARCHELAOS AND SOKRATES IOI
at the time. Aristoxenos, as usual, repeats scandals about Archelaos
and Sokrates. We are not bound to believe them, but they would
have been pointless unless Sokrates had been generally known to
have associated with Archelaos. Aristoxenos says that he was
seventeen years old when this association began, and that it lasted
many years.! Though Plato does not mention Archelaos by name,
he refers unmistakably to his doctrines as having occupied Sokrates
in his early youth, and it is natural to suppose that the man who is
mentioned as reading aloud the book of Anaxagoras was no other
than his Athenian disciple.” It is, therefore, quite unjustifiable to
discredit the statement that Sokrates was his follower. It rests on
practically contemporary evidence, and Theophrastos accepted it.?
1 Aristoxenos, fr. 25 (F.H.G. ii. 280).
2 Phaedo, 96 b, 97 b, with my notes. The theory that the warm and the cold
gave rise by ‘putrefaction’ (σηπεδών) to a milky slime (ἰλύς), by which the first
animals were nourished, is that of Archelaos, and is mentioned first among the
doctrines Sokrates considered.
3 Phys. Op. fr. 4 (Diels).
VITl
The Life of Sokrates
THE PROBLEM
§ 99. It is possible to construct a biography of Sokrates from the
dialogues of Plato, and, on the face of it, they seem to present us
with an intelligible and consistent account of the man and his ways.
Xenophon has left us three or four works purporting to record
actual conversations of Sokrates, whom he had known as a young
man, but whom he saw for the last time just before he joined the
expedition of Cyrus as a volunteer (401 B.c.). He tells us himself
how he consulted Sokrates on the wisdom of that step, and was
referred by him to the Delphic oracle. He was careful, however,
not to ask the oracle whether he should join the expedition at all;
he only inquired to which of the gods he should offer prayer and
sacrifice so as to ensure a prosperous issue to the journey he had in
mind. He tells us frankly that Sokrates rebuked him for this evasion,
and that is really all we know about their intercourse. If there had
been much more to tell, we may be pretty sure Xenophon would
have told it; for he is by no means averse to talking about himself.
At this time he was under thirty, and Sokrates had passed away
before his return from Asia. Several of the Sokratic conversations
he records are on subjects we know Xenophon was specially
interested in, and the views put forward in them are just those he
elsewhere expresses in his own name or through the mouth of
Cyrus, the hero of his paedagogic romance. No one ever thinks,
accordingly, of appealing to such works as The Complete House-
holder (the Οἰκονομικός) for evidence regarding ‘the historical
Sokrates’. There are two other writings, the Apology and the
Symposium, which seem to have been suggested by the dialogues
of Plato bearing the same names, and these are generally left out of
account too. Since the eighteenth century, however, it has been
customary to make an exception in favour of a single work, the
Memorabilia, composed by the exiled Xenophon with the professed
THE MEMORABILIA 103
intention of showing that Sokrates was not irreligious, and that, so
far from corrupting the young, he did them a great deal of good by
his conversations. It is quite intelligible that the eighteenth century
should have preferred the Sokrates of the Memorabilia to that of
the Platonic dialogues; for he comes much nearer the idea then
current of what a philosopher ought to be.1 In other respects it is
hard to see what there is to recommend him. It is recognised that
Xenophon is far from being a trustworthy historian, and the
Cyropaedia shows he had a turn for philosophical romance. It is
certainly unsound methodically to isolate the Memorabilia from
Xenophon’s other Sokratic writings, unless very strong reasons
indeed can be given for doing so. Above all, it is quite impossible
to get anything like a complete picture of Sokrates from the
Memorabilia alone, and so in practice every writer fills in the out-
line with as much of the Platonic Sokrates as happens to suit his
preconceived ideas of the man.” Such a procedure is hopelessly
arbitrary, and can only land us in unverifiable speculations. It
would be far better to say at once that we cannot know anything
about Sokrates, and that for us he must remain a mere x. Even so,
however, the Platonic Sokrates is actual enough, and he is the only
Sokrates we can hope to know well. If he is a fictitious character,
he is nevertheless more important than most men of flesh and
blood. The only sound method, therefore, is to describe his life
and opinions without, in the first instance, using any other source.
Only when we have done that can we profitably go on to consider
how far the Sokrates we learn to know in this way will account for
the slighter sketch of Xenophon. We shall also have to consider
in what relation he stands to the caricature in the Clouds of
Aristophanes.
THE PLATONIC SOKRATES
§ 100. Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos, of the deme Alopeke, was
seventy years old, or a little more, when he was put to death (399
1 The first writer to prefer the Sokrates of the Memorabilia to the Platonic
Sokrates was apparently Brucker (1741). The only reason he gives is that
Xenophon had only one master, from whom he inherited not only moral
philosophy, but integrity of life, while Plato was taken up with a ‘syncretism’ of
various doctrines. He quotes also an anecdote about Sokrates hearing the Lysis
read, and observing, ‘Good heavens! what lies the young man tells about me!’
But Sokrates was dead before the Lysis was written.
* In particular the ‘irony’ of Sokrates comes entirely from Plato. The Sokrates
of the Memorabilia has no doubts or difficulties of any kind.
104 LIFE OF SOKRATES
B.C.).1 He was born, then, about 470 B.C., some ten years after
Salamis, and his early manhood was spent in the full glory of the
Periklean age. His family traced its descent to Daidalos, which
means apparently that it was of some antiquity, and Sophroniskos
must have been able to leave some property; for we shall find
Sokrates serving as a hoplite. His mother was a midwife, Phaina-
rete by name, and she had another son, Patrokles, by another
husband. It is worthy of note that the great Aristeides was of the
same deme, and his son Lysimachos speaks of Sophroniskos in the
Laches as a family friend. He says he never had any difference with
him to the day of his death. It is evident, then, that Sophroniskos
was a man of some position in his deme. Another fellow-demesman
was the wealthy Kriton, who was just the same age as Sokrates, and
remained deeply attached to him till the end.
Late in life Sokrates married Xanthippe, by whom he had three
sons. When his father was put to death, the eldest of them,
Lamprokles, was a lad; but the other two, Sophroniskos and
Menexenos, were children. The last named, indeed, was only a
baby in arms. There is no hint in Plato that Xanthippe was a
shrew. Her name and those of her eldest and youngest sons suggest
that she was a woman of good family.” In the Phaedo we are told
that the friends of Sokrates found Xanthippe and her baby in the
prison when the doors were opened. They must have passed the
night there, and she was in an overwrought condition. Sokrates
sent her home, but she returned later in the day with the other
women of the family and spent some time with Sokrates in an
inner room, where she received his final instructions in presence
of the faithful Kriton.®
Sokrates was very far from handsome. He had a snub nose and
strangely protruding eyes. His gait was peculiar, and Aristophanes
likened it to the strut of some sort of waterfowl. In other places,
1 Apol. 17 d; Crito, 52 e. We know the date of his death from Demetrios
Phalereus and the Marmor Parium. I have not given detailed references to the
passages of Plato on which this account is based. They are well known and easily
found. I do not think I have said anything which is not stated in Plato or to be
immediately inferred from what Plato says. If this account of Sokrates is a
‘construction’, it is Plato’s, not mine.
2 It is noteworthy that it is the second son who is called after the father of
Sokrates.
3 The scandal-monger Aristoxenos tried to fix a charge of bigamy on Sokrates.
He said he was married at the same time to Xanthippe and to Myrto, the daughter
of Aristeides. Aristeides died in 468 B.c., so Myrto must have been about as old
as Sokrates or older.
THE VOICE 105
his appearance is compared to that of a torpedo-fish, a Silenos, or a
Satyr. He always went barefoot, save on special occasions, and he
never went outside the town except on military service, and once
to the Isthmian games.
He was odd too in other ways. It was well known that, even as a
boy, he had a ‘voice’, which he called his ‘divine sign’, and which
he regarded as something peculiar to himself, and probably unique.
It came to him often, and sometimes on the most trivial occasions.
The remarkable thing about it was that it never prompted him to
do anything; it only opposed his doing something he was about to
do.! Besides this, Sokrates was subject to ecstatic trances. He would
stand still for hours together buried in thought, and quite forgetful
of the outer world. His friends were accustomed to this and knew
better than to disturb him when it happened. They simply left him
alone till he came to himself. There was a celebrated occasion in the
camp at Poteidaia, when Sokrates was not quite forty years old, on
which he stood motionless from early morning on one day till
sunrise on the next, buried in thought (φροντίζων τι), as we are
told in the Symposium. His comrades in arms were much
astonished, and some of them brought their camp-beds into the
open to see if he would really remain standing there all night.
When the sun rose next morning, he said a prayer and went about
his business.?
§ 101. A man of this temperament would naturally be influenced
by the religious movement of his time, and Plato indicates clearly
that he was. He was a firm believer in the immortality of the soul
and in the life to come, doctrines which were strange and unfamiliar
to the Athenians of his day. He even believed, though not without
reservations, in Rebirth and Reminiscence. When asked his
authority for these beliefs, he would refer, not only to inspired
poets like Pindar, but to ‘priests and priestesses who have been at
pains to understand the acts they perform’.* In particular he
professed to have been instructed by a wise woman of Mantineia
named Diotima. To the very end of his life, he was deeply in-
terested in what he called ‘sayings of yore’ or the ‘ancient word’,
1 Xenophon makes a point of contradicting Plato as to this. He says the ‘voice’
gave both negative and positive warnings. Obviously, if a young man asked
Sokrates whether to go on a military adventure or not, and the ‘voice’ gave no
sign, that could be interpreted as positive advice to go. The pseudo-Platonic
Theages throws much light on the subject.
2 Symp. 220 c—d. The statement would be pointless if it were not true.
3 Meno, 81 a.
τοῦ LIFE ΟΕ SOKRATES
and expressly attributed to Orpheus,! according to which the body
is a tomb in which the soul is kept in custody. It cannot attain to
perfect purity till it is released from the body by God, whose
chattel it is, and comes to be alone by itself. Then, and not till
then, can it dwell with God. The man who follows philosophy,
which is the highest music, will therefore practise death even
in his lifetime by accustoming his soul to concentrate upon
itself, and so to attain such wisdom as may be possible in this
world.
But, with all this, Sokrates was no mere visionary. He had a
strong vein of shrewd common sense that kept him from commit-
ting himself to the often fantastic details of Orphic and Pythagorean
religion, however powerfully these might appeal to his imagination.
He calls the doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body, a
‘high one and not easy to understand’, and though he was certain
that the souls of the righteous would be with God when they
departed from the body, he could not feel equally sure that they
would be with the saints. When he related eschatological myths in
the Orphic style, as he often did, he used to warn his hearers that
they were at best something like the truth. No man of sense would
insist on their literal accuracy. Besides this, he had a healthy
contempt for the common run of Orphic and other traffickers in
pardons and indulgences, whom he accused of demoralising the
nation by their gross descriptions of heavenly joys. That, however,
was perfectly consistent with the belief that Orphicism contained,
in however dim a form, a great truth not to be found in the ordinary
religion of the state. The manner of its expression he compared
to fables or riddles, of which not everyone can guess the true
sense.
§ 102. The truth is that there were two well-marked sides to his
character. He was indeed a visionary or ‘enthusiast’, in the Greek
sense of that word, but he was also uncommonly shrewd. His
critics called him ‘sly’, using a word (εἴρων), which is properly
applied to foxes. The Scots word ‘canny’ (not always a term of
praise) comes nearest in meaning to the Greek. He did not like to
commit himself further than he could see clearly, and he was apt
to depreciate both his own powers and other people’s. That was
not a mere pose; it was due to an instinctive shrinking from every-
thing exaggerated and insincere. As has been indicated, it is only
1 Crat. 400 c.
ENTHUSIASM AND IRONY 107
the opponents of Sokrates that charge him with ‘irony’ (εἰρωνεία), a
word which undoubtedly suggested the idea of humbug; but
Plato shows us over and over again the real trait in his character
which this uncomplimentary description was aimed at, with
the result that the word ‘irony’ has changed its meaning for us.
To a very large extent, we gather, ‘the accustomed irony’ of
Sokrates was nothing more or less than what we call a sense of
humour which enabled him to see things in their proper propor-
tions.
§ 103. His interest in religion of a mystic type would naturally
lead Sokrates to seek light from the science of his time. The two
things were very closely connected at this date, as we have seen
when dealing with Empedokles. In the Phaedo (96 a sqq.) Plato
makes Sokrates give an account of his intellectual development
which must be intended to be historical, seeing that the questions
described as occupying his mind are just those that were of interest
at Athens when Sokrates was a young man, and at no other time or
place.1 He asked himself whether life had arisen from the putre-
faction of the warm and the cold (a doctrine we know to have been
that of Archelaos), and whether the earth is flat (as the Ionians
taught) or round (as the Pythagoreans held). He was interested in
the relation between sensation, belief, and knowledge (a problem
raised by Alkmaion), and he considered whether ‘what we think
with’ is air (the doctrine of Diogenes) or blood (that of Empedokles).
In fact, he is represented as having been influenced by practically
every theory represented at Athens in the middle of the fifth
century. But none of these could give him satisfaction; for they
threw no light on what he chiefly wanted to know, the cause of
things, why things are what they are and become what they become.
They explained everything mechanically, whereas Sokrates wished
to be shown that everything is as it is because it is best for it to be
so. The system of Anaxagoras, indeed, seemed more promising at
1 For a detailed discussion of these see the notes in my edition of the Phaedo,
ad loc. The main point is that Sokrates is represented as hesitating between
Ionic doctrine, such as he would learn from Archelaos and Diogenes (cp. § 93),
and Italic doctrines, some of which belong to the school of Empedokles, whilst
others are Pythagorean. Sokrates may have learnt the latter directly or indirectly
from Philolaos. Empedokles, who took part in the colonisation of Thourioi,
probably visited Athens (for we know that Kritias adopted his theory of sensa-
tion) and it is not difficult to suppose that Philolaos came there too. Athens is the
only place where the Ionic and Italic philosophies could come into sharp conflict
like this, and the middle of the fifth century is the only time at which it could
happen.
τοϑ LIFE OF SOKRATES
first; for it attributed the origin of the world to Mind. But this
proved disappointing too; for Anaxagoras made no use of Mind
except when he was at a loss for another explanation. Otherwise
he spoke of ‘airs’ and ‘aethers’ just like the rest. Sokrates accordingly
turned his back on all such speculations, and resolved to work out
a new method for himself.
§ 104. According to Plato, Sokrates must have reached this
point when he was quite young; for he makes him discuss his new
theory with Parmenides and Zeno when they visited Athens
shortly after the middle of the century (§ 63). It is also made clear
that he came into contact with the great “Sophists’ of the day at a
very early age. The first visit of Protagoras to Athens must have
taken place before Perikles entrusted him with the important duty
of legislating for Thourioi in 444 B.c., that is to say, it must have
coincided very nearly with the visit of Parmenides and Zeno, and
we have seen that tradition represents Zeno and Protagoras as
engaged in controversy. On his second visit, several years later,
Protagoras remembers the young Sokrates quite well. He is made
to say that of all the people he meets he admires Sokrates most,
certainly far more than anyone else of his age. A very similar
compliment is put into the mouth of Parmenides.? Plato clearly
means us to understand that Sokrates had attracted the notice of
the most distinguished men of the time when he was not more
than about twenty-five. He was also intimate with Hippias and
Prodikos, and he used to say that he had attended one of the
cheaper courses on synonyms given by the latter. Gorgias, on the
other hand, did not visit Athens till Sokrates was over forty years
old.
It is clear, however, that Zeno, ‘the Eleatic Palamedes’,! had
more influence on Sokrates than anyone. As Aristotle said,® he was
the real inventor of Dialectic, that is to say, the art of argument by
question and answer. If the Periklean age had left any literature
we should probably hear more about his work at Athens than we
do, but the Athenians of the middle of the fifth century did not
1 Prot. 361 e. Protagoras adds that he would not be surprised if Sokrates
became distinguished for wisdom. Surely that is the remark of an old man to a
very young one, not that of aman under sixty to a man over forty. Cp. § 89.
*"Parm: 130 4: ΟἿ ΤΡ Ύ 528 αἱ
8 This is strikingly confirmed by the statement of Aristoxenos that Sokrates
became a disciple of Archelaos at the age of seventeen (p. 124, 7. 2).
4 Phaedr 261 d.
5 In his dialogue entitled the Sophist (ap. Diog. Laert. ix. 25).
THE DELPHIC ORACLE 109
write books. We have traces enough, however, of the impression
he left. We are told in the Parmenides of young Athenians who had
been his associates, and it is recorded that Perikles himself ‘heard’
him (§ 63). We shall see that the Eleatic philosophy was sedulously
cultivated at Megara, where its dialectical side was still further
developed. Dialectic is literally the art of conversation or discussion,
and its procedure is governed by strict rules. The ‘answerer’
(ὁ ἀποκρινόμενος) is required to reply to the questioner (ὁ ἐρωτῶν)
in the fewest possible words, and to answer the question exactly as
it is put. He is not allowed to ask other questions or to boggle at the
form of those put to him. Obviously this is a procedure which can
be employed in the most fallacious manner, and in the Euthydemus
we have a delightful sketch of its abuse. Even that, however, was
of service in directing attention to the nature of the most common
fallacies, and this helped in turn to indicate the direction in which
the real difficulties were to be looked for. At any rate, it was the
method that appealed most to Sokrates, and there can be little
doubt he learnt it from Zeno. The influence of Zeno is also attested
by the Phaedo (96 e), where Sokrates is represented as puzzled,
not only by the problem of growth, which was that of Anaxagoras
and Archelaos, but also, and even more, by that of the unit, which
was the special object of Zeno’s attention.
§ 105. If we bear in mind the extreme youth of Sokrates when
he began to strike out a line for himself, and also how unusual it
was for an Athenian to busy himself seriously with such matters,
we shall not be surprised to find that he had enthusiastic admirers
among the younger men. We see from the opening scene of the
Protagoras how some of them looked up to him as a guide even then,
and consulted him about their studies. One of these, Chairephon,
was particulary enthusiastic, and actually asked the Delphic oracle
whether there was anyone wiser than Sokrates. The Pythia of
course replied that there was no one. That proved a turning-point
in the life of Sokrates, but Plato is careful to let us know that he
did not accept the oracular response as its face value. His humour
(εἰρωνεία) did not fail him when he turned it on himself, and he at
once set out to prove the god in the wrong. He would find someone
wiser than himself, and use him to refute the oracle. So he went to
one of the politicians, whose name he does not think it necessary to
mention, and talked to him, with the result that he found him wise,
indeed, in his own opinion and that of other people, but really
10 LIFE OF SOKRATES
quite ignorant. And he had the same experience with one set of
people after another. The poets could give no intelligible account
of their own works. Apparently it was by some sort of divine
inspiration they succeeded; for they did not know how it was
themselves. The craftsmen, indeed, did as a rule know something
about their own trades, but unfortunately, on the strength of this
bit of knowledge, they fancied they knew a great many other things
of which they were quite ignorant, such, for instance, as how to
govern an empire. At last he saw what the god meant. Neither
Sokrates nor anyone else knew anything, but Sokrates was wiser
than other men in one respect, namely, that he knew he was
ignorant and other men did not know they were. From this time
forward, he regarded himself as having a mission to his fellow-
citizens. He had been set apart by God to convince them of their
ignorance.
Now according to Plato all this happened before the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War; for Sokrates is represented as resuming
his mission after his return from Poteidaia.1 We cannot, therefore,
date the oracle later than about his thirty-fifth year, and it is
obvious that he was already well known by that time. The inquiry
of Chairephon would be inexplicable on any other supposition.
Plato himself was not born yet, and of course what he tells us must
be based on the statements of Sokrates himself, and no doubt of
Chairephon. It does not require great literary tact to see that
Sokrates only took the oracle half-seriously, and that what he did
was to apply to it the same methods of interpretation that he
usually applied to Orphic and other mythology. On the other hand,
he clearly believed it quite possible that a higher powcr might
make use of oracles, dreams, and the like to communicate with
human beings. He was the least dogmatic of men on such subjects,
and his own ‘voice’ and his visions seemed a case in point. What is
quite certain is that he sincerely believed his mission to be imposed
on him by God. He gave up everything for it, and that was the
cause of his poverty in later life. He spoke of his service (λατρεία)
to God, and called himself the fellow-slave (ὁμόδουλος) of Apollo’s
swans. That, according to Plato, was a genuine faith, and he was
intensely in earnest about it.
§ 106. The mission of Sokrates was interrupted by the outbreak
of the Peloponnesian War, in which he was called on to do his duty
1 Charm. 153 ἃ.
BRAVERY IN THE FIELD III
as a citizen-soldier. He fought at Poteidaia (432 B.c.), at Delion
(424 B.c.), and at Amphipolis (422 B.c.), and Plato has been
careful to leave a record of his bravery in the field.1 In the Sym-
posium (220 d sq.) he makes Alkibiades describe his conduct with
enthusiasm. In one of the battles Alkibiades was wounded, and
Sokrates saved his life by watching over him till the danger was
past. The generals awarded the prize of valour to Alkibiades, but
he himself maintained it ought to go to Sokrates. Again at Delion,
when the Athenians had to retreat, Alkibiades tells how Sokrates
retired along with Laches, and far surpassed him in presence of
mind, so that they both came off unhurt. Laches is made to refer
to the same incident in the dialogue called by his name (181 b),
and he adds that, if everyone else had done his duty like Sokrates,
the defeat would have been turned into a victory. Sokrates was
then about forty-six.?
§ 107. As we shall see, he had by this time gathered round him
a circle of associates (ἑταῖροι), but these must be carefully dis-
tinguished from the young men he influenced in the course of his
public mission. It appears, in the first place, that he exercised a
singular fascination over those who were devoting themselves to
what was then the new calling of a professional soldier. ‘That was
only natural, and in the Republic Plato represents Sokrates as
strongly impressed by the necessity for a professional army.
Besides these there were, we are told, a number of young men of
good family, who had no profession on which they could be cross-
examined, and who took great pleasure in hearing the ignorance of
others exposed. Some of them even thought they might get a
better preparation for public life by listening to Sokrates than any
professional Sophist could give them. It is certain that Kritias
associated with Sokrates in this way, though he did not do so for
long. We hear of others, such as the fellow-demesman of Sokrates,
Aristeides, son of Lysimachos, who soon fell away. No doubt they
wished to learn the art of success, whereas Sokrates insisted on the
necessity of serious study for a politician, just as for any other
craftsman. There were others who were really devoted to him,
1 We have seen (δ 98) that he probably served at Samos in 441/0, but Plato has
no occasion to mention that. It was before the time of most of the speakers in his
dialogues. It is interesting to think that Sokrates fought against a force com-
manded by Melissos.
2 It is important to notice the way Plato insists on the military reputation of
Sokrates. It accounts for the interest taken in him by Meno, Xenophon and
others at a later date. See my edition of the Phaedo (Introduction, p. xiv).
112 LIFE OF SOKRATES
notably Alkibiades and Charmides. Charmides was Plato’s uncle,
and it was doubtless through him that Plato came to associate with
Sokrates. Even these, however, are not to be regarded as his
disciples, or even as his associates in the strict sense like Chaire-
phon. In the Apology he speaks of them as ‘those they say are my
disciples’.?
δ τοῦ. In speaking of his relations with these young men
Sokrates habitually used the language of love, tempered, of course,
by his usual sly humour. To understand this, we must remember
that at Thebes and Elis and in the Dorian States attachments of this
kind were a recognised institution. They had their origin in the
romantic relation of knight, squire and page in the Greek Middle
Ages, and they were believed to have great value for military
purposes.” In the Laws (636 b sq.) the Athenian Stranger, that is to
say Plato, criticises the institutions of Sparta and Crete on the very
ground that they were favourable to the abuse of such relation-
ships.* In the Ionian States generally, on the other hand, they were
considered disgraceful,* and, though the Dorian custom had made
its way into Athens before the time of Solon, its abuse was con-
demned both by law and by public opinion.® Plato makes it
abundantly clear, however, that it was the fashion in aristocratic
circles to ape this feature of Spartan life among others. If we may
trust the extremely vivid account of the matter he puts into the
mouth of Alkibiades — and it is surely incredible that he invented
it — it was Alkibiades himself that first posed as the ἐρώμενος of
Sokrates, though it is also made quite clear that it was only a pose,
The personal chastity of Sokrates is assumed as the foundation of
the whole story, and we have therefore no right to interpret his
language in a gross sense. What really surprises a modern reader is
the matter-of-fact way in which the abuse of such relationships is
spoken of. It will help us to understand that, if we remember that
at Megara, only a few miles from Athens, no disgrace attached to
it. In these circumstances, we can hardly look for the same reticence
1 Apol. 33 a. In his Bousiris (11. 5) Isokrates represents the matter exactly as
Plato makes Sokrates represent it himself. He criticises Polykrates (Cf. § 116,
infra) for making Alkibiades a disciple (μαθητής) of Sokrates, whereas no one
ever knew of him being educated (παιδευόμενον) by Sokrates.
See Bethe in Rhein. Mus. lxii. (1907), pp. 438 sqq.
8 Addressing a Spartan and a Cretan, he says: καὶ τούτων τὰς ὑμετέρας πόλεις
πρώτας av τις αἰτιῷτο (636 b).
4 Plato, Symp. 182 Ὁ.
ὃ Plato, Phaedr. 231 e: εἰ τοίνυν τὸν νόμον τὸν καθεστηκότα δέδοικας, μὴ πυθομένων
τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄνειδός σοι γένηται κτλ. Aischines Against Timarchos, passim.
EROS 113
on the subject as is commonly observed at the present day, though
Plato’s condemnation is unequivocal.
The thing appealed to Sokrates on another side, however, and
here we may note once more his accustomed humour. He had a
way of speaking of the birth of thoughts in the soul in language
derived from his mother’s calling. He professed, of course, that he
himself was incapable of giving birth to wisdom, but he claimed to
be an excellent man-midwife, well skilled in the art of bringing
new thoughts to the birth. Besides that, just as midwives are the
best matchmakers, he claimed to have a peculiar gift for discerning
who the best teacher for a young man would be. That is all playful,
to be sure, but we must never forget that Sokrates was a mystic as
well as a humorist, and the mystics have always found the language
of love more adequate than any other to express their peculiar
experience. The love of a fair body is only the earthly type of
something far higher. It leads on to the love of a fair soul, to the
love of fair studies and fair ways of life, and at last it brings us into
the very presence of the ‘forms’ of beauty, righteousness, and
holiness in that supercelestial region where they have their dwelling-
place.! When thus regarded as the objects of love, these ‘forms’ are
seen to be the realities of which the things in this world are but
shadows, and from which they derive such imperfect being as they
have. There can be no doubt Plato means us to believe that
Sokrates had actually attained to this beatific vision. It is not for
nothing that he is represented as having one of his trances just
before the conversation recorded in the Symposium. 'That must be
intended to throw light on that other trance of twenty-four hours
in the camp at Poteidaia more than a dozen years before. ‘The man
who saved the life of Alkibiades by his fearless devotion in the battle
was fresh from the contemplation of a far higher beauty than his.
§ 109. Plato has left us more than one description of the effect
the discourses of Sokrates had on young men. It will be well to
quote the words he puts into the mouth of Meno, a reluctant
admirer, and Alkibiades, an enthusiastic one. Meno says (Meno,
79 6):
Before I met you I was told you did nothing but confuse yourself
and make other people confused. And now I really think you are just
1 Phaedr. 247 c sqq. I cannot believe that this is a description of Plato’s own
experience. It is strictly in keeping with all we know about the temperament of
Sokrates.
114 LIFE OF SOKRATES
bewitching me and casting spells and enchantments over me, so that
I am full of confusion. I think, if I may be allowed the jest, you have a
strong resemblance, not only in figure but in other respects, to the
torpedo-fish. It benumbs anyone who comes near it and touches it,
and that is just what you have done to me. Both my soul and my lips
are literally benumbed, and I don’t know what answer to give you. I
have made speeches over and over again about goodness, and before
large companies, with complete success as I fancied, but now I can’t
even tell what it is. I think it extremely prudent on your part never to
take a voyage or leave your own country. If you were to do these
things as a stranger in a foreign land, you would probably be taken up
for a sorcerer.
And Alkibiades, who, with all his faults, or because of them, was
very dear to Sokrates, says this (Symp. 215 a):
I shall endeavour to praise Sokrates as well as I can by means of
images. Very likely he will think it is to make fun of him, but my
image is chosen for its truth and not its absurdity. I say he is just like
the figures of Silenos we see in the statuaries’ shops, those they make
with pipes or flutes in their hands, and when you open them you find
they have images of the gods inside them. And I say too that he is like
the satyr Marsyas. That you are like these in appearance, Sokrates, I
fancy you won’t deny yourself, and now let me tell you how you are
like them in other ways. You’re a wanton, aren’t you? If you don’t
admit it, I shall call witnesses. Ay, and aren’t you a piper? A far more
wonderful one than he was! He only charmed men by his instruments;
... you beat him because you produce the very same effect by words
alone without any instrument. When we hear anyone else speak, even
a very good speaker, none of us care a bit; but when anyone hears you
or anyone else repeating your words, even if the speaker is an in-
different one, and whether it is a woman or a man or a lad that hears
him, we are all confounced and inspired. My friends, unless I was
afraid you would think me quite drunk, I would tell you on my oath
the effect his words have had on me and still have. When I listen to
him my heart leaps even more wildly than those of people in a
Korybantic ecstasy, and his words make the tears gush from my eyes.
And I see many others affected in the same way. When I used to hear
Perikles and other good speakers, I thought they spoke very well, but
I had none of these feelings. My soul was not troubled or angry at the
idea that it was in a state like a slave’s. But I have often been put into
such a condition by this Marsyas here, that I thought life not worth
living so long as I remained as I was. And I am quite sure that if I
were to consent to lend him my ears now, I couldn’t hold out, but
should feel just the same. He forces me to confess that, though I
myself fall far short in many a thing, I neglect myself and busy myself
about the affairs of Athens. So I stop my ears and run away from him
as if from the Sirens, to prevent myself becoming rooted to the spot
ALKIBIADES ON SOKRATES 115
and growing old by his side. Why, he is the only human being that
has ever made me feel ashamed in his presence, a feeling of which I
might be supposed incapable. I know very well I can give no reason
for not doing what he tells me to, but, when I have left him, I find my
popularity too much for me. So I act like a runaway slave and a
fugitive, and whenever I see him, I am ashamed of the admissions I
have made. Many a time I feel that I should be glad to see him wiped
out of existence altogether, and yet, if that were to happen, I know I
should be far more distressed than relieved. In fact I don’t know what
to make of him.
Of course Plato himself was too young to hear Alkibiades talk like
that, but he had the opportunities enough of knowing about his
relations to Sokrates. It is at least plain that he believed Sokrates
to have been capable of exerting this fascination over Alkibiades as
late as 416 B.c., when the banquet described in the Symposium is
supposed to take place. It is natural, too, to regard the passage as
evidence of the effect produced by the discourses of Sokrates on
Plato himself in his youth.
§ 110. In 423 B.c. Aristophanes produced the Clouds, in which
Sokrates, then about forty-seven years old, was the central figure.
It will be necessary to say something later as to the picture there
drawn of him; here we have only to do with what Plato says about
it. It is true that, in the Apology, he makes Sokrates attribute much
of the popular prejudice against him to the Clouds. He had been
represented as walking on air and talking a lot of nonsense about
the things in the heavens and those beneath the earth, and that,
he says, suggested the notion that he was irreligious. It may very
well have done so at the time of his trial, when old memories of the
Clouds would occur to the judges in confirmation of the charges
Sokrates had then to face, but we gather also from Plato that no
one took it very seriously at the time, least of all Sokrates and his
circle. In the Symposium, Sokrates and Aristophanes are repre-
sented as the best of friends six or seven years after the production
of the Clouds, and Alkibiades does not hesitate to quote a burlesque
description of the gait of Sokrates from that very play. We are to
understand, then, that at the time no offence was taken, and we
need not suppose any was meant. It was only in the light of sub-
sequent events that the Clouds was resented, and even so the
matter is quite lightly treated in the Apology.
1 It is not easy to imagine such discourses as we find in Xenophon’s Memroa-
bilia producing such effects as these.
116 LIFE OF SOKRATES
§ 111. But more difficult times were at hand. We have seen that
Sokrates did his duty as a soldier, but he never held any office. The
‘voice’ would not allow him to take part in politics. In 406 B.c.,
however, it fell to his lot to be a member of the Council of Five
Hundred, and it so happened that it was the turn of the fifty
representatives of the tribe Antiochis, to which his deme belonged,
to act as the executive committee of the Council at the time the
generals were tried for failing to recover the bodies of the dead
after the naval battle of the Arginoussai. The conduct of the trial
showed that the democracy was getting into an ugly temper. It was
proposed to judge all the generals together instead of taking the
case of each separately. That was against the law, and Sokrates,
who presided, refused, in spite of the popular clamour, to put the
question to the meeting. The generals were ultimately condemned
by an illegal procedure, but the action of Sokrates made a deep
impression, and he referred to it with justifiable pride at his trial.
A little later, during the illegal rule of the Thirty, he had the oppor-
tunity of showing that he could not be intimidated by the other
side either. The Thirty sent for him along with four others and
gave them orders to arrest Leon of Salamis that he might be put to
death. The four others carried out the order, but Sokrates simply
went home. Plato makes him say that he would probably have
suffered for this if the Thirty had not been overthrown shortly
after. From this we may infer — and we shall see that the point is
of consequence — that Sokrates did not feel called upon to leave
Athens with the democrats, though his devoted disciple, Chaire-
phon, did so.
ARISTOPHANES AND XENOPHON
§ 112. Let us now consider how far this account of Sokrates is
confirmed or otherwise by Aristophanes and Xenophon. In the
first place, we must observe that Plato represents the life of
Sokrates as sharply divided into two periods by the response of the
oracle. In the earlier, he was chiefly occupied with the religious
and scientific movements of his time, and with his new theory of
the participation of sensible things in the ‘forms’; in the latter, his
mission to his fellow-citizens is his chief, and almost his sole
interest, though in the month that elapsed between his condemna-
tion and his death he naturally recurred to the themes that had
busied his youth. It is further to be noticed that the testimony of
THE SOKRATES ΟΕ ARISTOPHANES Ἐ1ΤῚ
Aristophanes refers to the first of these periods, and that of
Xenophon to the second. The Clouds was produced in 423 B.C.,
the year between the battles of Delion and of Amphipolis, in both
of which Sokrates fought. His mission, though begun, was inter-
rupted, and Aristophanes would be thinking mainly of the earlier
Sokrates. Chronology is vital in dealing with this question, and we
must never allow ourselves to forget that Sokrates was only forty-
seven when Aristophanes produced the Clouds, and that Plato and
Xenophon were babies. We must, therefore, compare the carica-
ture of Aristophanes only with what Plato tells us of the youth of
Sokrates, and not with what he tells us of the later period.
§ 113. That the Clouds is a caricature is obvious, and it must be
interpreted accordingly. There are two canons for the interpreta-
tion of comedy which are often neglected. In the first place, the
very occurrence of a statement in a comedy affords a presumption
that it is not a mere statement of fact. Statements of fact are not
funny. On the other hand, every such statement must have some
sort of foundation in fact; for absolute fictions about real people
are not funny either. What we have to ask, then, is what Sokrates
must have been in the earlier period of his life to make the carica-
ture of the Clouds possible. In the first place, he must have been a
student of natural science, and he must have been interested at one
time or other in the things in the heavens (ra μετέωρα) and the
things beneath the earth (τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς). Plato makes Sokrates declare
that these were the chief studies of his youth. Aristophanes
represents Sokrates as an adherent of a system which is recognisable
as that of Diogenes of Apollonia, and that is just why the chorus
consists of clouds. We know w that Diogenes had revived the theary
of Anaximenes that_ “everything i is condensed « or rarefied ‘air’, and
the clouds are one of the first results of the condensation of air.
Just so Plato makes Sokrates say that he had studied, among other
questions, whether ‘what we think with’ was air (the doctrine of
Diogenes) or blood (the doctrine of Empedokles), and Aristo-
phanes represents him as swinging in a basket in order to get pure
dry air for his thought. Aristophanes also knows of the spiritual
midwifery of Sokrates, for he has a jest about the miscarriage of a
thought. On the other hand, he represents him as a spiritualistic
medium, and he calls the inmates of the Phrontisterion ‘souls’, a
word which to the ordinary Athenian would only suggest ghosts.
He also ridicules them for going barefoot and unwashed, and
118 LIFE OF SOKRATES
speaks of them as ‘semi-corpses’. All that, and more of the same
kind, has a sufficient foundation in what Plato tells us of the
Sokratic doctrine of the soul and the ‘practice of death’. The only
thing that strikes us at first as inconsistent with everything we can
gather from Plato is that Sokrates teaches his pupils to make the
weaker argument the stronger. That is not true even of Protagoras
in the sense suggested, while the introduction of the Righteous and
the Wicked Logos (possibly a later addition) seems even wider of
the mark. And yet, if we look closer, we shall find there are suffi-
cient indications of features in the teachings of the Platonic
Sokrates to account for such a distortion on the part of a not too
scrupulous comic poet. We know from Plato that the new method
of Sokrates consisted precisely in the consideration of things from
the point of view of propositions (λόγοι) rather than from that of
facts (ἔργα), and Aristophanes would not be able, and certainly
would not care, to distinguish that from the ‘art of Adyou’, which
seemed so dangerous to conservative Athenians. As for the sugges-
tion that it was used for the purpose of establishing immoral
conclusions, we need only suppose that discussions like that
described in the Hippias minor had got talked about, as they cer-
tainly would. It would seem obvious to the plain man that anyone
who maintained the voluntary wrongdoer to be better than the
involuntary must be engaged in the subversion of morality. I
submit, then, that if the Sokrates of this date was much what Plato
represents him to have been, the caricature of the Clouds is quite
intelligible; if he was not, it is surely pointless.
§ 114. But, above all, Aristophanes confirms Plato in the most
explicit way by drawing a clear distinction between certain
‘disciples’ (μαθηταί), as he calls them, of Sokrates, of whom
Chairephon was the chief, and who were his permanent associates
(é€ratpov) in a scientific school, and the young men who frequented
his society or were sent to him by their parents in order to learn
how to succeed in life. What Plato tells us about Lysimachos and
Aristeides! is enough to justify the burlesque figures of Strepsiades
and Pheidippides. But the machinery of the Phrontisterion implies
that there was something much more serious. It is usually said,
indeed, that Aristophanes is taking Sokrates as a type of the
Sophists of the day, but that view is untenable. In the first place,
the Old Comedy does not deal in types but personalities, and when
1 Laches, 178 a sqq.; Theaet. 151 a.
XENOPHON’S SOKRATES 119
Aristophanes does introduce a type, as in the Birds, he gives him a
fictitious name. But apart from that, the Sophists of the day had no
permanent associates. They were here to-day and gone to-morrow,
and they only gave short courses of lectures to audiences that were
perpetually changing. Besides, they were the last people in the
world to trouble themselves with scientific inquiries such as
Aristophanes is obviously making fun of. The Phrontisterion, in
fact, is a burlesque of an organised scientific school of a type which
was well known in Ionia and Italy, but had not hitherto existed at
Athens, unless, indeed, Archelaos had established one. If Sokrates
did not, in fact, preside over such a society, are we to suppose that
Aristophanes himself invented the idea of a scientific school, or
that he knew of those in other cities by hearsay and transferred
them in imagination to Athens? It is surely very hard to see what
the point of that could be, and we must conclude, I think, that he
expected his audience to know what an institution of the kind was
like. If he has voluntarily or involuntarily confused Sokrates with
anyone, it is not with Sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias or their
followers, but with Anaxagoras and Archelaos; and, if the latter
did found a regular school, Sokrates would naturally succeed him
as its head. That, in fact seems to me the most probable account of
the matter. We have seen that Sokrates was a disciple of Archelaos
for a number of years.?
§ 115. When we come to Xenophon, we must remember, in the
first place, that he was very young, and Sokrates already an old
man, when he knew him, and that he left Athens never to return
about three years before Sokrates was put to death. In the second
place, we must remember that the Memorabilia is an apologia, and
must be judged by the canons of criticism applicable to such
writings. The chief of these is that most weight is to be attached
to statements not directly connected with the main purpose of the
work; above all, when they seem to involve admissions in any
degree inconsistent with that. Now what Xenophon wished to
prove is that Sokrates was unjustly accused of being irreligious,
and that his conversations, so far from corrupting the young, did
them a great deal of good. One of the chief arguments for the
soundness of his religious attitude is that he refused to busy
himself with natural science and dissuaded others from studying
it. What Plato tells us of the disappointment of Sokrates with
1 See p. 124, 7. 2.
E B.G.P,
120 LIFE OF SOKRATES
Anax2goras, and his renunciation of physical speculations at an
early age, is enough to explain what Xenophon says, and yet he
feels at once that he has gone too far. In fact he gives his point
away completely by adding twice over: “Yet he himself was not
unversed in these subjects’ — subjects of which he gives a list, and
which correspond exactly to the most highly developed mathe-
matics and astronomy of the time. Further, he knew that what
Aristophanes burlesqued as the Phrontisterion was a reality; for he
makes Sokrates tell the Sophist Antiphon, who was trying to rob
him of his disciples — a very significant touch — that he does in
fact study the writings of the older philosophers with his friends.
‘I spend my time with them,’ he says, ‘unrolling the treasures of
the men of old, which they have written down in books and left
behind them.’? Admissions like these are far more important than
the philistine words put into the mouth of Sokrates about scientific
study. No one who talked like that could have attracted Pytha-
goreans like Kebes and Simmias from Thebes to listen to him, as
Xenophon also says he did.
It would be possible to find a good many more admissions of
this sort in Xenophon, but it is not clear to me how far the
Memorabilia can be regarded as independent testimony at all. In
fact, it seems hardly possible to doubt that Xenophon got the
greater part of his information about Sokrates from the dialogues
of Plato. Otherwise, it would be very significant that he has heard
of the importance of ‘hypothesis’ in the dialectic of Sokrates.* I do
not feel able to rely on such things as first-hand evidence, however,
and therefore I make no use of them. Those who treat the
Memorabilia as a historical work are bound, on the other hand, to
admit a good many things that are hard to explain on the as-
sumption that Sokrates was the sort of man Xenophon wishes us to
think he was. In fact, Xenophon’s defence of Sokrates is too
successful. He would never have been put to death if he had been
like that.
§ 116. The conclusion we are, in my opinion, forced to is that,
while it is quite impossible to regard the Sokrates of Aristophanes
and the Sokrates of Xenophon as the same person, there is no
difficulty in regarding both as distorted images of the Sokrates we
know from Plato. The first is legitimately distorted for comic effect;
1 Mem. iv. 7. 3-5. 2 Mem. i. 6. 14.
3 Mem. iii. 11. 17. 4 Mem. iv. 6. 13.
THE PLATONIC SOKRATES 121
the latter, not so legitimately, for apologetic reasons. To avoid
misunderstanding, I should say that I do not regard the dialogues
of Plato as records of actual conversations, though I think it
probable that there are such embedded in them. I also admit fully
that the Platonic Sokrates is Sokrates as Plato saw him, and that
his image may to some extent be transfigured by the memory of
his martyrdom. The extent to which that has happened we cannot,
of course, determine, but I do not believe it has seriously falsified
the picture. Like Shakespeare, Plato had a marvellous gift of
suppressing his own personality when engaged in dramatic com-
position. That is why his personality is so elusive, and why that of
Sokrates has so often been substituted for it. We shall return to this
when we come to Plato himself, but first I must warn the reader
that there is another view of the evidence, according to which the
Sokrates of Plato and that of Aristophanes and that of Xenophon
are all alike pure fiction, so that we really know nothing at all
about the man. One of the most recent writers on the subject?
doubts whether there is even a grain of truth in the story of the
campaigns of Sokrates, and denies that he had any relations of any
kind with Alkibiades. According to him, that was a malicious in-
vention of the Sophist Polykrates,? who wrote a pamphlet against
Sokrates before 390 B.c. Plato did not stoop to contradict this
commonplace pamphleteer, and besides, the idea of bringing the
two men together appealed to him as an interesting one, so he
simply wrote a romance round it. Now, however incredible such
theories may appear, they are really far sounder than anything we
can get by picking and choosing whatever we please out of Plato,
and using it to embroider Xenophon’s bald tale. It seems to me that
we have to choose between the Platonic Sokrates and the thorough-
going nihilism of the view just indicated. It is really impossible to
preserve Xenophon’s Sokrates, even if he were worth preserving,
and, if we disbelieve the testimony of Plato on the most vital
points, it is impossible to assign any reason for accepting it on
1 A. Gercke in Gercke-Norden, Einleitung, vol. ii. Ὁ. 366 sq.
2 This statement is based on a passage in the Bousiris of Isokrates (11. 5),
which is supposed to mean that there was not the slightest ground for the
assertion that Alkibiades was a disciple of Sokrates. As I have pointed out (p.
138 γι. 1) Plato makes Sokrates himself say exactly the same thing. It is nowhere
suggested in Plato that Alkibiades was a μαθητής, or that Sokrates ‘educated’
him. It may be added that the Protagoras is almost certainly earlier than the
pamphlet of Polykrates, and that the relation between Sokrates and Alkibiades
is presupposed in it.
122 LIFE OF SOKRATES
others. The Platonic Sokrates would remain, indeed, as one of the
greatest characters in fiction, but some people would find it very
hard to read Plato with patience, if they supposed him capable of a
mystification such as this hypothesis credits him with.
ΙΧ
The Philosophy of Sokrates
THE ASSOCIATES OF SOKRATES
§117. We know pretty accurately who composed the inner
Sokratic circle at the end. In the Phaedo (59 b) we have a list of
fourteen associates (ἑταῖροι) who were present at the death of
Sokrates, and to these we must add the narrator, Phaidon of Elis,
who afterwards founded a school of his own. Of these men nine
were Athenians, Apollodoros, Kritoboulos and his father Kriton,
Hermogenes son of Hipponikos, Epigenes, Aischines, Antisthenes,
Ktesippos of Paiania, and Menexenos. Xenophon also gives us a
list of true Sokratics (Mem. i. 2, 48). It includes Chairephon, who
is absent from Plato’s list because, as we know from the Apology,
he had died a short time before. Kriton and Kritoboulos are also
mentioned, but not the other Athenians. Apollodoros and
Epigenes, however, occur in other parts of the Memorabilia, and
it is from Hermogenes that Xenophon professes to have got his
information about the trial of Sokrates.
The most striking thing about the list, however, is that it
includes the names of certain foreigners who are known to have
belonged to Italic schools of philosophy, and who are represented
as coming to Athens for the express purpose of seeing Sokrates
before his death. The three Thebans, Simmias, Kebes and Phai-
dondas, were Pythagoreans and disciples of the exiled Philolaos.
In the Crito (45 b) we learn that Simmias had brought a consider-
able sum of money with him to assist Sokrates in escaping.
Xenophon also mentions these three in his list of true Sokratics,
and in another place (iii. 11, 17) he lets us know that Sokrates had
attracted them from Thebes, and that they never left his side. In
the Phaedo (58 d) the Pythagoreans of Phleious are represented as
equally enthusiastic. Echekrates says that they are like their guest
Phaidon in loving above all things to speak of Sokrates and to hear
about him. Eukleides and Terpsion are interesting in a similar
124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
way. They were Eleatics and lived at Megara. The Academic
tradition preserved by Cicero makes Eukleides the successor of
Parmenides and Zeno, and we are told that he ‘handled’ the doc-
trines of Parmenides. The close relation between the Eleatics of
Megara and Sokrates is further illustrated in the Theaetetus, where
we are told (143 a) that Eukleides took notes of the discourses of
Sokrates, and it was with him that some of the Sokratics, including
Plato, took refuge after their Master’s death. Besides these men,
Aristippos of Kyrene and Kleombrotos were expected, but did not
arrive in time. It is evident that the condemnation of Sokrates had
deeply moved all the philosophical schools of Hellas.
§ 118. Now Plato unquestionably represents the Pythagoreans
as sharing a common philosophy with Sokrates, and even as
looking up to him as its most authoritative exponent. It is Sokrates
who instructs them in certain old doctrines that the contemporary
Pythagoreans had allowed to drop, and who refutes the theory held
both at Thebes and Phleious that the soul is an attunement of the
body. The Eleatic Eukleides is said not only to have taken notes of
his discourses, but to have had the accuracy of these notes con-
firmed by Sokrates himself when he visited Athens. In fact Plato
makes all these men regard Sokrates as their Master, and it is
impossible to suppose he could misrepresent their attitude
seriously at a time when most of them were still living and in close
intercourse with himself. The suggestion seems to be that, after
the departure of Philolaos for Italy, Sokrates became to all intents
and purposes the head of the Pythagoreans who remained behind.
On one point he is made to express surprise that Simmias and
Kebes had not been instructed by Philolaos (61 d), and Echekrates
of Phleious is shaken in his belief that the soul is an attunement as
soon as he is told that Sokrates does not share it (88 d). He also
accepts the main doctrine of Sokrates as soon as he hears it (102 a).
Plato’s account is, I think, confirmed by what we are told of
Aristoxenos. We know that he was acquainted with the last
generation of the Pythagoreans at Phleious, and that he maintained
the doctrine of Philolaos that the soul was an attunement even after
he had become a follower of Aristotle. We have seen too (§ 70) that
he and his friend Dikaiarchos made a great point of denying that
Pythagoras had ever practised any of the ascetic abstinences and
purificatory rites generally attributed to him. Now Aristoxenos is
the source of a great deal of scandalous gossip about Sokrates and
SOKRATES AND THE PYTHAGOREANS 125
Plato. He came from Taras and Dikaiarchos from Messene, and
Aristoxenos professed to have got his information about Sokrates
from his father Spintharos, who had known him personally. Why
should a Tarentine be anxious to blacken the character of Sokrates?
The answer suggests itself that the friends of Philolaos were
annoyed because Sokrates had corrupted their doctrine of the
nature of the soul and had revived the mystical side of Pytha-
goreanism, which they believed they had got rid of once for all
(§§ 70, 75). It is at any rate a fact that they laid special stress on the
very doctrine of the soul which Plato represents Sokrates as
refuting. From their point of view, he would be just another
Hippasos.
THE FORMS!
§ 119. In the Phaedo the doctrine Sokrates and the Pythago-
reans are represented as holding in common is that of ‘intelligible
forms’ (νοητὰ εἴδη), which we have seen reason for believing to
be Pythagorean in origin (§ 32). Further, Sokrates is described as
making an important original contribution to the theory which, in
fact, completely transforms it. Modern writers generally treat this
as fiction, and ascribe the doctrine of forms to Plato under the
name of ‘the Ideal Theory’ or ‘the Theory of Ideas’. The chief
ground for this ascription is that it is not to be found in the most
distinctively Sokratic of the dialogues, and it is generally said that
it makes its first appearance in the Phaedo. That, however, is a
circular argument; for the sole ground on which certain dialogues
have been singled out as specially Sokratic is just that the theory
in question is not supposed to occur in them. There is surely no
reason for thinking that Sokrates would drag it into all his con-
versations, and in fact it would have been inappropriate for him to
refer to it except in talking with people who would be likely to
understand. Nothing, then, can be inferred from his silence on the
subject in most of the dialogues, especially as that silence is not
unbroken. By a curious minor epicycle in the argument we are
warned indeed that, when the doctrine does appear to be referred
to in a Sokratic dialogue proper, we are not to understand the
words in the sense they afterwards acquired, but this is surely
1 T have purposely avoided the word ‘idea’. It inevitably suggests to us that the
‘forms’ (εἴδη, ἰδέαι) are concepts (νοήματα), whether our own or God’s, and this
makes a right interpretation of the doctrine impossible.
126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
arbitrary in the highest degree.’ It is much more to the point to
observe that the theory of forms in the sense in which it is main-
tained in the Phaedo and Republic is wholly absent from what we
may fairly regard as the most distinctively Platonic of the dialogues,
those, namely, in which Sokrates is no longer the chief speaker.
In that sense it is never even mentioned in any dialogue later than
the Parmenides (in which it is apparently refuted), with the single
exception of the Timaeus (51 c), where the speaker is a Pythagorean.
On the other hand, nothing can well be more explicit than the way
Plato ascribes the doctrine to Sokrates. In the Phaedo it is spoken
of (100 b) as ‘nothing new’, but just what Sokrates is always talking
about. In the Parmenides (130 b) Sokrates is asked by the founder
of Eleaticism whether he had thought of the theory himself, and
replies in the affirmative. That is supposed to happen at least
twenty years before Plato was born. Again in the Phaedo (76 b),
Simmias is made to say that he doubts whether ‘this time to-mor-
row’, when Sokrates has passed away, there will be anyone left who
is able to give an adequate account of the forms. If that is fiction,
it is at least deliberate, and I can only ask, as I have asked before,?
whether any philosopher ever propounded a new theory of his own
by representing it as perfectly familiar to a number of distinguished
living contemporaries some years before he had thought of it
himself. .
§ 120. The theory which is simply taken for granted in the first
part of the Phaedo, not only by Simmias and Kebes, but also by
Echekrates at Phleious, to whom the conversation is reported, is
as follows. There is a sharp distinction between the objects of
thought and the objects of sense. Only the former can be said to be;
the latter are only becoming. It is made clear that the origin of this
theory is to be looked for in the study of mathematics, and the
distinction between being (οὐσία) and becoming (γένεσις) must be
interpreted accordingly. We know what we mean by equal, but we
have never seen equal sticks or stones. The sensible things we call
1In the Euthyphro, for instance, Sokrates demands that Piety should be
referred to μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν (5 d), and asks for ἐκεῖνο τὸ εἶδος ᾧ πάντα τὰ ὅσια ὅσια
ἐστίν (6 c). He also speaks of this as ἃ παράδειγμα (6 e). In the Meno (72 c) he de-
mands to know the form (εἶδος) of Goodness. In the Cratylus (389 Ὁ) we have
the highly technical phrase αὐτὸ 6 ἐστι κερκίς. I entirely agree with Professor
Shorey (Unity of Plato’s Thought, Chicago, 1903) in holding that it is futile to
look for any variation or development of thought in Plato’s dialogues down to the
Republic, though at that point I must part company with him, as will be seen.
2 EB. Gr. Ph.? p. 355-
THE FORMS 127
equal are all ‘striving’ or ‘tending’ to be such as the equal, but they
fall far short of it. Still, they are tending towards it, and that is why
they are said to be becoming. Sensible equality is, as it were,
equality ‘in the making’; but, however near it may come to true
equality, it never reaches it. The connexion of this with the
difficulties raised by Zeno is obvious. The problem of an in-
definite approximation which never reaches its goal was that of the
age.!
As we have seen, this theory on its mathematical side is
essentially Pythagorean. Where it differs from anything we can
reasonably attribute to the Pythagoreans is in the systematic
inclusion of what we should call moral and aesthetic forms on an
equality with the mathematical. We have never seen anything that
is ‘just beautiful’ (αὐτὸ ὅ ἐστι καλόν) or ‘just good’ (αὐτὸ 6 ἐστιν
ἀγαθόν) any more than we have seen anything ‘just equal’ (αὐτὸ τὸ
ἴσον). This tends to emphasise that aspect of the forms in which they
are regarded as patterns or exemplars (παραδείγματα), the ‘upper
limits’ to which the manifold and imperfect things of sense tend to
approximate as far as possible. It may sound a little strange to say
that an isosceles right-angled triangle would be a triangular
number if it could, but such a way of speaking becomes quite
natural when we introduce moral and aesthetic forms. This is what
Aristotle appears to mean when he makes the preoccupation of
Sokrates with ethical matters play so important a part in the de-
velopment of the theory. The Pythagoreans, he tells us, had only
determined a few things numerically, such as opportunity, justice,
and marriage, and they had been influenced by superficial
analogies ;? it was Sokrates that suggested a systematic search for
the universal in other fields than mathematics.* It will be observed
further that we do not hear in the Phaedo of any attempt to connect
the forms with numbers, and this suggests that the persons whom
Aristotle refers to as those ‘who first said there were forms’, and
distinguishes from Plato on that very ground,‘ are no other than
the persons who call themselves ‘we’ in the Phaedo. I do not, how-
ever, quote that as external evidence; for I think we shall see reason
to believe that everything Aristotle tells us about Sokrates comes
1 We may illustrate the relation of γένεσις to οὐσία by the evaluation of 7 to any
number of decimal places.
® Met. M. 3. 1078 Ὁ, 21; A. 5. 987 4, 22.
8 Met. A. 6. 987 b, 1.
4 Met. M. 4. 1078 b, 11.
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
from the Platonic dialogues, and especially from the Phaedo itself.
§ 121. The account given by Sokrates in the Phaedo of the
process by which we come to know the forms is apt to be in-
sufficiently appreciated because it is expressed in the mythical
language of the doctrine of Reminiscence, which we are expressly
warned in the Meno (86 b, 6) not to take too literally. The question
really is, how we come to have a standard which enables us to
pronounce the things of sense to be imperfect. We certainly do not
start with such a standard in our possession; it is only our ex-
perience of sensible things that gives rise to our apprehension of it.
On the other hand, our apprehension of the standard when it does
arise cannot be produced by the sensible things, since it is some-
thing that goes beyond any or all of them. Now when we apprehend
a thing, and this apprehension gives rise at the same time to the
thought of another thing which the first thing is either like or unlike,
we call that being ‘reminded’ or put in mind of the one thing by the
other (73 c). The sticks and stones we call equal are like the equal,
and those we call unequal are unlike it, but both alike give rise to
the thought of what is ‘just equal’ (αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον). It follows that,
as we are put in mind of it both by things that are like it and things
that are unlike it, our knowledge of the equal must be independent
of sense altogether. And the same is true of ‘the beautiful itself?
and ‘the good itself’.
Aristotle expresses this in his own way by saying there are two
things that may fairly be attributed to Sokrates, universal definitions
and inductive reasoning. In the Prior Analytics (67 a, 21) he
definitely associates the doctrine of the Meno that learning is
Reminiscence with what he calls the ‘recognition’ of the universal
in a particular case. ‘In no case,’ he says, “do we find that we have
a previous knowledge of the particulars, but we get the knowledge
of the particulars in the process of induction by recognising them
as it were (ὥσπερ avayvwpilovras).’ There is no doubt, then, what
Aristotle means by saying that Sokrates may be credited with the
1 Τὰ must be remembered that Sokrates had been dead for over thirty years
when Aristotle first came to Athens at the age of eighteen. His summary and
highly ambiguous statements must, therefore, be interpreted, if possible, in the
light of the other evidence. To use them for the purpose of rebutting it appears
to me methodically indefensible. That is to employ hearsay and inference to
discredit first-hand testimony, and we must have some rules of evidence in
historical as well as in judicial inquiries. I believe that, if we allow for Aristotle’s
personal way of looking at things, his statements can be interpreted so as not to
do violence to the record; but, if not, that is a question which concerns the
interpreter of Aristotle, not the interpreter of Sokrates.
SENSE AND THOUGHT 120
introduction of inductive reasonings, and it is exactly the process
described in the Phaedo. It is also correct to say, as he does, that the
universal which we come to recognise in this way is ‘the What is
it?’ (τὸ τί ἐστι); for in the Phaedo (78 d) Sokrates describes the
sort of reality possessed by the forms as ‘that of the being of which
we give an account in our questions and answers’, that is, in the
dialectic process. It will be observed that there is nothing here
about abstracting the common attributes of a class and setting it up
as a Class-concept. That is a modern gloss on Aristotle’s words,
and his reference to the Meno shows he was quite aware of the real
meaning of the doctrine of Reminiscence. There is nothing to
suggest, then, that what he says on this point is derived from any
other source than Plato’s dialogues. He has expressed the thing
in his own way, no doubt, and it may be a question whether it does
full justice to the doctrine of Sokrates, but that is another matter.
If he was to express it in his own language, he could hardly say
anything else, and, after all, his own theory of induction is much
more like the doctrine of Reminiscence than the travesty of it given
in some text-books. It should be added that, when Aristotle says
certain things may ‘fairly’ (δικαίως) be attributed to Sokrates, he is
thinking, as he often does, of earlier philosophers as contributing
certain elements to his own system, and that he is contrasting
Sokrates in this respect with the Pythagoreans. He is not thinking
of any distinction between the ‘historical’ and the ‘Platonic’ Sok-
rates, and there is no evidence that he ever made such a distinction.
δ 122. Now it is with the soul by means of reasoning (λογισμός)
that we apprehend the forms, while particulars are apprehended
through the body by sensation. Indeed, the body and its senses are
only a hindrance to the acquisition of true wisdom, and the more
we can make ourselves independent of them, the nearer we shall
come to the knowledge of reality and truth. We have seen that the
things of sense cannot be said to have being (οὐσία) at all, but
only becoming (γένεσις), and that they are merely likenesses or
images of the eternal and immutable standards or patterns
(παραδείγματα) we are forced to postulate. Of these alone can
there be knowledge; our apprehension of the things of sense is
only ‘imagination’ («ixaoia)! or at best belief (δόξα, πίστις). If we
1 Rep. 534 a. There is an untranslatable play on words here; for εἰκασία is
properly ‘guess work’ (from εἰκάζεσθαι), but it also suggests the apprehension of
images (εἰκόνες).
120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
would have true knowledge, we must seek to rid ourselves of the
body, so far as that is possible in this life; for it is only when the
soul has departed from the body that it can have knowledge in its
purity. Yet even in this life, by the practice of dying daily, we may
so far mortify the flesh that for a brief space we may behold the
eternal realities in a vision, and so being ‘out of the body’ obtain a
foretaste of immortality. Such is the teaching of the first part of the
Phaedo, and there can be no doubt that it points to an almost com-
plete severance of the world of sense from the world of thought.
§ 123. But then, by one of those dramatic surprises so charac-
teristic of Plato’s dialogues, when we have been raised to this pitch
of spiritual elevation, we are brought to the ground once more, and
made to feel that, however beautiful and edifying the doctrine may
be, it does not really satisfy us. It is Plato’s way to mark the im-
portance of the different sections of an argument by the length and
elaboration of the digressions that precede them. In the present
case he uses every resource of his art to make us feel that we are
coming to something fundamental. In the first place, there is a
long and ominous silence (84 c), broken at length by a whispered
conversation between Simmias and Kebes. Sokrates sees they are
not convinced, and he urges them to state their difficulties; for, as
he allows, the doctrine is open to many objections if we discuss it
seriously. Then follows (84 e) the magnificent passage in which he
compares himself to the dying swan who sings in praise of their
common master Apollo, the lord of Delphoi and of Delos, who had
played so mysterious a part in the life of Sokrates himself, and was
also the chief god of the Pythagoreans. Simmias replies (85 c) that
Sokrates no doubt feels with him that certain knowledge is im-
possible on such subjects, but that we must test and try all theories,
and, in default of some divine doctrine (θεῖος λόγος), make the best
of the human one that approves itself most. The particular diffi-
culty he feels is just the theory, of which we have seen the great
historical importance, that the soul is an attunement (ἁρμονία) of
the body, and cannot therefore be immortal (85 e). Kebes has a
different theory, of which we do not hear elsewhere, but which
seems to be Herakleitean in origin, namely, that the soul is the
organising principle of the body which it weaves as a garment. The
body is always being worn out and woven afresh, and thus the soul
may properly be said to outlast many bodies. That does not prove,
however, that one of these bodies may not be the last, and that the
ΓΕΝΕΣΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΦΘΟΡΑ 131
soul may not perish before it (88 b). We are told (88 c) that the
effect of these words was to produce a feeling of profound de-
jection in the company. They felt as if they could never trust
themselves to believe any doctrine again, since this one had been
so easily overthrown. The narrative is even interrupted, and we are
taken back to Phleious, where Echekrates says the same effect has
been produced on him. Then comes the warming of Sokrates
against ‘misology’, or hatred of theories. It is just like misanthropy,
which arises from ignorance of the art of dealing with men. Just as
the man who knows the world knows that very good men and very
bad men are equally rare, so the man who knows the art of dealing
with theories will not expect too much of philosophical doctrines,
but neither will he lose faith (89 d sq.). The impression intended to
be left on us by all these digressions is certainly that the doctrine of
forms as expounded in the earlier part of the dialogue is somehow
inadequate, and we are prepared to find that it will be considerably
modified in the sequel. We are also intended to understand that the
later Pythagorean view of the soul is a serious obstacle to a sound
theory.
§ 124. This doctrine is disposed of without much difficulty,
chiefly by the consideration that, if the soul is an attunement and
goodness is an attunement, we have to assume an attunement of an
attunement, so that one tuning will be more tuned than another.
The theory of Kebes, however, raises a far more fundamental
question, namely, that of the cause of coming into being and ceasing
to be (γένεσις καὶ φθορά). To say that becoming is an image or
likeness of being explains nothing at all. It really amounts to saying
that there is a world of sense which is a vain show, standing in no
intelligible relation to reality. Unless we can overcome this
separation between appearance and reality in some way, we cannot
say anything at all, and least of all that the soul is immortal. What
we want is not merely a theory of being (οὐσία), but also a theory of
becoming (γένεσις). It is at this point that Sokrates gives the
sketch of his intellectual development already referred to (§ 103);
and, if words mean anything, it must be implied that we are now
coming to his personal contribution to the doctrine. He speaks of
this (97 b, 100 4) with characteristic irony as a ‘silly and muddled’
theory, and calls it a makeshift or pis-aller (δεύτερος πλοῦς, 99 d),
but we must not be deceived by this way of speaking. It is also the
hypothesis from which we will not suffer himself to be dislodged
132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
by anyone, and he believes it to be capable of showing the cause of
coming into being and ceasing to be in the world of sensible
experience, a thing the earlier form of the doctrine could give no
intelligible account of.
δ 125. Sokrates tells us, then, that when he could find no satis-
faction in the science of his time, and in particular no answer to the
question of the cause of becoming and ceasing to be (γένεσις καὶ
φθορά), he resolved to adopt a new method of inquiry. He would
no longer consider the question from the point of view of the
things (ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις) but from that of the judgements we make
about them and the propositions in which these are expressed
(ev tots λόγοις). He is represented both in the Meno and in the
Phaedo as much impressed by the efficacy of the mathematicians’
method of ‘hypothesis’, which Zeno had made matter of common
knowledge at Athens by this time. ΤῸ understand its meaning, we
must leave out of account for the present the special use of the
term ‘hypothesis’ in Aristotelian Logic, and also the popular
etymology alluded to by Plato in the Republic (511 b) which regards
the primary meaning of the word as foundation or basis, a sense in
which it is not used. If we do this, we shall be struck at once by the
fact that the corresponding verb (ὑποτίθεσθαι) has two chief
significations, firstly that of setting before oneself or others a task
to be done, and secondly that of setting before oneself or others a
subject to be treated, in a speech, for instance, or a drama. This
usage is as old as Homer,! and by a natural extension the verb is
freely used in Ionic of suggesting a course of action. That way of
speaking accounts for Euclid’s use of the word ‘given’, and also of
perfect imperatives like ‘let there be given’ (δεδόσθω). The original
idea is that of a piece of work given out to be done, and the proposi-
tion accordingly ends up with a statement that it has been done
(Q.E.F. ὅπερ ἔδει ποιῆσαι or Q.E.D. ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι).
The procedure is as follows. It is assumed that the proposition
stated in the ‘hypothesis’ is true (or that the required construction
has been performed), and then the consequences (τὰ συμβαίνοντα)
of that assumption are deduced till we come to a proposition we
know to be true (or a construction we are able to perform). If,
however, we come to a proposition which is absurd (or to a con-
1 See Liddell and Scott, s.v. ὑποτίθημι, ii. 2. The materials for a correct ac-
count of the term ὑπόθεσις are also to be found in Liddell and Scott, s.v., but they
require rearrangement. The article should be read in the order iii, iv, i. 2, ii. 2, ii. 1.
HYPOTHESIS 133
struction which is impossible), the hypothesis is ‘destroyed’
(ἀναιρεῖται, tollitur). The regular terminology accordingly is, ‘if A
is B, what must follow?’ (τί χρὴ συμβαίνειν:), and that explains why
the conjunction ‘if’ has come to be regarded as the mark of a
hypothesis. Plato’s Parmenides is the locus classicus for all this, but
the method is older. In the Hippokratean treatise on Ancient
Medicine, the fundamental doctrines of Empedokles and others
are called hypotheses, and the key to this way of speaking is also
to be found in Plato’s Parmenides. There the doctrine of Par-
menides is referred to as the hypothesis Jf zt 1s one, and that of his
opponents as the hypothesis If there are many.1 In the same way
the hypothesis of Empedokles might be stated in the form Jf there
are four. This is a result of the Eleatic dialectic. It is not implied in
the least that Parmenides or Empedokles regarded their theories
as ‘merely hypothetical’. That is a far later use of the word. It is
only meant that their method of exposition was to trace out the
consequences of their fundamental postulates. We can see for
ourselves that this is what Parmenides does in his poem. Zeno
systematised the procedure, and it was doubtless from Zeno
Sokrates learnt it.
Like all dialectical methods, this procedure is subject to strict
rules. We first take a statement which appears to have a high de-
gree of probability, and we set down as true whatever agrees with
that and as false whatever does not. It is not allowable for the
answerer to raise any questions about the hypothesis itself till this
has been done, and until it is seen whether the consequences of the
hypothesis involve anything absurd. If they do not, and there is
still any doubt about the hypothesis, the answerer may question it,
but not till then. The deduction of consequences must be kept
quite separate from the question of the truth of the hypothesis.
If that is not admitted even then, we may go on to show that it is a
consequence of some higher hypothesis which we assume in the
same way, till at last we come to some hypothesis which is adequate
in the sense that the answerer accepts it (101 d). It will be seen that
there is no question of demonstrating this ultimate hypothesis;
it only holds good because it is accepted by the other party to the
discussion. The whole fabric depends on the agreement of the two
parties to the debate.
1 Parm. 128 ἃ, 5. The reading of the best MSS. and Proclus is αὐτῶν ἡ ὑπόθεσις
εἰ πολλά ἐστιν.
134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
δ 126. In the present case, the hypothesis Sokrates starts from
is the distinction of the sensible from the intelligible, which is of
course allowed to be true by his Pythagorean interlocutor without
any hesitation (100 c). Assuming, then, that there is a form of the
beautiful, we have next to ask what makes us call a particular thing
beautiful. It is no answer to say it has a bright colour or anything
else of the kind; that throws no light on the meaning of the state-
ment, “This is beautiful.’ On the one hand, this is, of course, the
problem of predication, the question of what is involved in saying
‘A is B’, but that is not quite the form it takes in the Phaedo. We
are discussing coming into being and ceasing to be (γένεσις καὶ
φθορά), or, in other words, we are asking how there can be‘a world
of becoming alongside of the world of being which alone is the
object of knowledge. The question is better formulated, then, if
we say ‘What makes a thing beautiful? The ‘simple-minded
answer’ Sokrates gives to this is: If there is anything beautiful besides
Beauty itself, Beauty makes it beautiful, and this is explained to
mean that it is the ‘presence’ (παρουσία) of the form in it that
makes anything beautiful or whatever else we say it is. The
predicate of a proposition is always a form, and a particular
sensible thing is nothing else but the common meeting-place of a
number of predicates, each of which is an intelligible form, and in
that sense there is no longer a separation between the world of
thought and the world of sense. On the other hand, none of the
forms we predicate of a thing is present in it completely, and this
relation is expressed by saying that the thing ‘partakes in’ the
forms that are present in it. Apart from these, it has no independent
reality; and, if we know all the forms in which anything participates,
there is nothing more to know about it. The doctrine is most
distinctly stated in the Republic (476 a), where we are told that
each of the forms is one, but by reason of their communion
(κοινωνία) with actions and bodies and with one another, they appear
everywhere, and each seems to be many.? It is in that sense that
Sokrates — the Sokrates of the Phaedo and the Republic — does
not separate the forms from the world of sensible particulars,? and
it is just because he denies all reality to the sensible particulars
1 The κοινωνία of the forms with one another in the sensible world is quite
different from their κοινωνία with one another in the intelligible world which Plato
taught. That is just where Plato differs from Sokrates, as we shall see.
* Ar. Met. M. 4. 1078 b, 30. ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν Σωκράτης τὰ καθόλου οὐ χωριστὰ ἐποίει οὐδὲ
τοὺς ὁρισμούς. ᾿
PARTICIPATION 135
except what they derive from the partial presence of the forms in
them. The Pythagorean doctrine of imitation left the sensible and
intelligible as two separate worlds; the doctrine of participation
makes the sensible identical with the intelligible, except that in
sensible things the forms appear to us as a manifold instead of in
their unity, and that they are only imperfectly embodied in the
particulars. We should not be entitled to predicate the form of the
thing unless the form were really in it.
§ 127. We may say, then, that the problem of Sokrates was to
show how it was possible for the things of sense to be real, and he
answers it by saying that they are real in so far as they partake in
reality or as reality is present in them. He is conscious that these
are metaphorical expressions, and so is the formula he substitutes
in the latter part of the dialogue, namely, that the form ‘occupies’
or ‘takes possession of’ (κατέχει) particular things. That way of
putting the matter is adopted in the course of the final argument
for the immortality of the soul, which, though not an object of
sense, is nevertheless a particular thing and not a form. The proof
is briefly that, from its very nature, the soul partakes in the form
of life or is ‘occupied’ by it, and it is shown that a thing which is
necessarily and of its own nature occupied by a given form will not
admit the form opposite to that. If attacked by it it will either
withdraw or perish. The soul cannot perish, however, so it will
necessarily withdraw. For reasons which will be obvious, Sokrates
himself is not altogether satisfied with this argument, and Plato
found it necessary to defend the belief in immortality in quite
another way. The real result of the Phaedo is not this, but simply
that no particular thing can become anything except by partaking
in, or being occupied by, the form of what it becomes, nor cease to
be anything except by ceasing to partake in the form.? Such is the
doctrine Plato attributed to Sokrates, and it is as clearly dis-
tinguished from his own as from that of the Pythagoreans.
δ 128. But though the Pythagorean separation (χωρισμός) of
the things of sense from the things of thought has been overcome,
it still remains true that there is a gulf between the confused
manifold of sense and what is called in the Phaedrus (247 c) the
‘colourless, shapeless, intangible reality’ beheld by thought alone.
This gulf the soul is ever seeking to bridge over, and its striving
1 This is how Aristotle formulates the theory of the Phaedo in Gen. Corr. B. 6.
335 b, 10. He does not attribute it to Plato, but to ‘Sokrates in the Phaedo’.
136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
can only be described in the language of passionate love. That is in-
volved in the very name of philosophy itself, and is brought home to
us by calling philosophers ‘lovers of wisdom’ (ἐρασταὶ φρονήσεως),
where the verbal variation is meant to remind us of the original
meaning of the name. No one who is wholly dull and stupid feels
this craving, nor does he who is already wise, as God is. Love is the
child of Poverty and Resource. Now the soul itself and its strivings
can only be adquately described in mythical language; for they
belong to the middle region which is not yet wholly intelligible.
The objects of its yearning are not mythical at all. The inspired
lover is seeking the intelligible just as much and more than the
mathematician, and I can see no ground for holding that even in
the Phaedrus, the forms are regarded as supernatural ‘things’ of
any kind. ‘The ‘supercelestial region’ is clearly identified with that
of pure thought, and the forms the mind beholds in it — Righteous-
ness itself, Soberness itself, Knowledge itself —do not lend
themselves in any way to crude pictorial fancies. It is true that our
relation to this supreme reality can only be expressed in the lan-
guage of feeling, but it is not by feeling we apprehend it when and
in so far as we can do so. It is expressly said to be visible to mind
alone (μόνῳ θεατὴ νῷ). There is no suggestion of a different way
of knowing to which we may have recourse when reason and in-
telligence fail us. To put the matter in another way, allegory and
myth are not employed to express something above reason, but to
adumbrate what is below reason, so far as that can be done at all.
It has its place half-way up the scale and not at the top; for it is
only the poverty Love inherits from his mother that gives rise to
these passionate yearnings. When they are satisfied, there is no
more room for striving and longing. I suspect that all true mysti-
cism is of this nature, and that to set feeling above reason as a
means of knowing is only a perversion of it. However that may be,
I am firmly convinced that the mystical side of the doctrine of
forms is due to Sokrates and not to Plato. We know certain facts
about him, such as his ‘voice’ and his trances, which prove him to
have possessed the mystic temperament, and we know certain facts
which explain the manner in which he conceives the mystic love.
On the other hand, we have seen that there was another side to his
nature which would safeguard him from the spurious kind of
mysticism. I entirely agree with the demand? for a psychological
1See Professor Stewart’s Myths of Plato, which is far the best treatment of
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 137
explanation of the two sides of the doctrine of forms, but the soul
in which that is most easily to be found appears to me to be the soul
of Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos. It is certainly in the Symposium
that we have the most vivid picture of his personality, and there
the ‘enthusiasm’ and the ‘irony’ are in perfect unison.
δ 129. Nevertheless the Sokrates of the Phaedo does not
succeed in reaching the goal he has set before himself. He had
turned away from the science of his time just because it could not
show how everything is as it is because it is best for it to be so; and,
though coming into being and ceasing to be have been explained in a
sense, we cannot be said to be much nearer the fulfilment of that
demand. That is because we have assumed certain forms which
serve to explain the world of experience; but we have not gone on
to examine this hypothesis itself in the light of a higher one, and
therefore we cannot say why there should be a world of experience
at all. Sokrates is represented as quite conscious of this in the
Republic. There he is made to say (505 d sqq.) that we must look at
all the other forms in the light of the Form of the Good, which is
no mere hypothesis, but the true starting-point of knowledge. He
confesses, however, that he can only describe it in a parable, and it
is never referred to again in Plato’s dialogues. The passage in the
Republic stands quite by itself. We can see dimly what the Good
must be if we liken it to the Sun, which is the cause both of growth
and of vision in the sensible world, though it is neither growth nor
vision itself. In the same way the Good must be the cause of
knowledge and being in the intelligible world, though it is neither
of these, but far beyond both of them in glory and power." It is very
significant that Sokrates is made to regard this purely negative
characterisation of the Good as marking a failure to apprehend its
true nature; it was left for thinkers of a later age to find satisfaction
in it as a positive doctrine. That Sokrates really did speak of it in
some such way as this appears to be proved by the fact that
Eukleides of Megara identified the Good with the Eleatic One.
this part of the subject. It will be obvious that I am obliged to differ from it
in some important respects, but that does not impair my appreciation of the
work.
1 This language has led some to identify the form of the Good with God, but
that is certainly wrong. God is a soul and not a form, and in the Timaeus (which,
as we shall see, represents a highly developed form of Pythagoreanism) the Good
is above God. The difficulties raised by this doctrine led in later days to the
conception of a highest and unknowable God and a secondary creative God (the
Demiurge), but there is no trace of this till Hellenistic times. The Demiurge of
the Timaeus is the highest God there is.
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
That seems to be how he reconciled his Eleaticism with his position
as an ‘associate’ of Sokrates. The Pythagoreans would have little
or no difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the Phaedo, but an
Eleatic could not be expected to acquiesce in a plurality of forms.
If Sokrates hinted at the ultimate unity of all the forms in the Good,
we can understand what Eukleides meant; otherwise it would be
very hard to follow him. Even so, there is a rift here in the doctrine
of the Sokratic society, and we shall see how important that be-
came in the next generation.
GOODNESS
§ 130. The theory of goodness Plato attributes to Sokrates is
only intelligible in the light of the theory of knowledge and reality
we have been considering. It is made clear, in the first place, that
he was led to formulate it because he was dissatisfied with the teach-
ing of the ‘Sophists’, and we must try to understand exactly where
he differed from them. No doctrine is more closely associated with
the name of Sokrates or better attested than that of the identity of
goodness and knowledge, with its corollary that no one is volun-
tarily bad. No one who really knows what is good and what is bad
can possibly choose the bad, and badness is, therefore, in the last
resort, a form of ignorance. That Sokrates held this doctrine is
more universally admitted than any other fact whatsoever about
him.
That being so, it is not a little remarkable that, in a considerable
number of his dialogues, Plato represents Sokrates as arguing
against the doctrine, at least in its most obvious sense. He is made
to say, for instance, that goodness cannot be knowledge; for, if it
were, the great statesmen of Athens would certainly have taught
their own goodness to their sons, whereas most of these were
complete failures. Nor can it be said that the ‘Sophists’ really
teach it; for then these same statesmen would have had their sons
taught goodness just as they had them taught riding and music.
In fact, goodness appears to be something that comes by chance
or divine favour (θείᾳ μοίρᾳ) to some people and not to others.
Those who have it can give no account of it; they cannot even tell
what it is, and are therefore quite unable to impart it. They are
like the poets who compose under the influence of inspiration of
some kind, and cannot even give an intelligent interpretation of
GOODNESS AND KNOWLEDGE 139
their own works. The connexion of this with what we are told about
the mission of Sokrates in the Apology is obvious.
Nevertheless, the contradiction between these statements and
the doctrine that goodness is knowledge is puzzling at first sight.
It has been said, of course, that in these dialogues Plato is feeling
his way to a more advanced doctrine than that of ‘the historical
Sokrates’, but this line of interpretation breaks down as usual. It
is perfectly certain that the arguments about statesmen and their
sons was actually used by Sokrates himself, and we gather from
the Meno and from Xenophon that it was one of the things that
annoyed Anytos. As for Plato, he still maintains the doctrine that
goodness is knowledge, and that no one is voluntarily bad, in his
very latest work, the Laws (860 d).
§ 131. It will help us to understand this difficulty if we remem-
ber that the identification of goodness and knowledge was not
really a doctrine peculiar to Sokrates, but was implied in the
general belief of his time that goodness could be taught. The
question between Sokrates and his contemporaries was not that,
but the much more fundamental one of what goodness was identical
with knowledge and therefore teachable. The Sophists were not
wrong in holding that goodness could be taught; they were wrong
in so far as the goodness they professed to teach was just that which,
not being knowledge, could not be taught, and in so far as they
ignored altogether that higher kind of goodness which alone was
knowledge and therefore alone teachable. If we attribute this
distinction to Sokrates we shall find no real contradictions in the
dialogues dealing with the subject.
Nor are we without external evidence in support of this view.
In the Helen of Isokrates (10. 1) we read that there are certain
people who pride themselves on setting up a paradox and arguing
tolerably in favour of it. ‘Some have grown old in denying that it is
possible to say what is false, or to contradict, or to make two
opposite statements about the same thing.’ That, no doubt, is
meant for Antisthenes. ‘Others argue in detail that justice and
courage and wisdom are the same thing, and deny that any of these
things come by nature, saying that there is one knowledge of them
all.’ That, I take it, refers to Sokrates. ‘Lastly, there are those who
spend their time in contentions (περὶ τὰς épidas dvatpiBovar).’
Plato uses that phrase too, and we shall have to discuss its applica-
tion later. A little further on (10. 5) Isokrates makes light of the
140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
distinction between knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and belief (δόξα),
asserting that it is better to have a reasonable belief about useful
things than a precise knowledge of what is useless. Similarly in his
pamphlet Against the Sophists, he speaks (13. 1) of those who spend
their time in disputations, and who profess to teach the young their
duties and how to attain happiness (13. 3). Here too knowledge
and belief are contrasted, and finally Isokrates denies that
righteousness and morality can be learnt.
It is very difficult to believe that any of these references can be
intended for Plato, as is often supposed. Isokrates was older than
Plato, and both the Helen and the tract Against the Sophists are
dated with probability some time before 390 B.C., when Isokrates
opened his school, and therefore some time before Plato came
forward as a teacher. It is plain too that Isokrates is concerned with
the educational theories of his immediate predecessors, and it is
not very likely he should go out of his way to attack a younger
contemporary whom he had no reason at that date to regard as a
rival. On the other hand, the question of Sokrates was very actual
᾿ indeed at the time; for the Sophist Polykrates had just published
his pamphlet against him, with the object of showing he was
rightly put to death for the bad influence of the education he gave.
We know too from the Bousiris that Isokrates had busied himself
with this pamphlet. He must, then, have wished to make his
attitude to Sokrates quite clear, while there was no reason for him
to trouble about Plato yet awhile. But, if that is so, we may safely
attribute the distinction between belief (δόξα) and knowledge
(ἐπιστήμη) to Sokrates himself, and also the doctrine that goodness
is one and that the knowledge of it is one, and that means in turn
that there is no difficulty in attributing to Sokrates himself the
whole theory of goodness expounded in Plato’s earlier dialogues
down to and including the Meno, and even, in substance, that set
forth in the Republic.
§ 132. We are left in no doubt as to what ‘goodness’ (ἀρετή)
meant in the language of the time. The Sophists, we have seen,
professed to teach the goodness of the man and the citizen, and
that was explained as the art of managing states and families
rightly. It was, in fact, what we call efficiency. To the Greeks
goodness was always something positive; it meant a habit of soul
that enabled the possessor of it to do something, and not merely,
as it is apt to mean with us, one that leads him to abstain from
GOODNESS AND BELIEF 141
doing any particular harm. No Greek would have called a man
good on purely negative grounds like that; he must be good for
something. So far neither Sokrates nor Plato nor Aristotle would
have the least quarrel with the current view. We have seen, how-
ever (§ 88), that the political condition of Athens was such in those
days that the word tended to acquire a peculiar colour. ‘That comes
out better than anywhere else in the passage of Thucydides where
he tells us that Antiphon, the chief contriver of the Revolution of
the Four Hundred, was second to no other Athenian in ‘goodness’
(ἀρετή). That was, in practice, the only sort of goodness the
Sophists had the opportunity of teaching; for it was the only sort
demanded by those who could pay for it. It amounted to little
more than skill in the arts of party intrigue.
The goodness Sokrates identified with knowledge was naturally
of a different order, but he always admitted the relative value of
‘true belief’ (ἀληθὴς δόξα) for practical purposes. In the Meno he
says (97 b) that if you want to go to Larissa a true belief about the
way will take you there as well as knowledge. There is nothing
astonishing in such an admission in view of the account we have
given of his theory of knowledge. As we have seen, he was very
far from denying the relative value of ordinary experience. Its
objects are the same as those of knowledge, though they are
imperfect and confused. He never meant to say that the great
statesmen of Athens did no good at all, or to deny all value to the
works of the poets. If the statesmen of the past had no goodness of
their own, there would be nothing surprising in their failure to
impart goodness to their sons. The weak point of such goodness,
however, is that it is not based on any rational ground (Adyos) and
cannot therefore be counted on. It is mainly an affair of tempera-
ment and happy chance. It is only, we are told in the Meno
(98 a), when it has been chained fast by a reasoned knowledge
of its cause (αἰτίας λογισμῷ) that we can be sure of its not running
away like the Statues of Daidalos. Then, and then only, do we
have goodness which is also knowledge and can therefore be
taught.
It will be observed that this theory of goodness and the good is
the exact counterpart of the theory of knowledge and reality which
Plato ascribes to Sokrates, and this is another indication of the
correctness of that ascription. Just as we cannot explain the cause
(αἰτία) of things in the world of coming into being or ceasing to be
142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
unless we regard them as participating or ceasing to participate in
an intelligible ‘form’, so we cannot have true goodness unless each
act is referred by reasoning (λογισμός) to its true cause (αἰτία).
Everyday goodness is just like the world of sensible experience in
that it is inconstant and variable; true goodness must be constant
and invariable. According to the Phaedo (82 a) Sokrates distin-
guished the two as ‘philosophic goodness’ (φιλοσοφικὴ ἀρετή) and
‘popular goodness’ (δημοτικὴ ἀρετή), or the ‘goodness of the
citizen’ (πολιτικὴ ἀρετή). The former depends on intellect (νοῦς),
the latter on habit (ἔθος). It is the former alone that is teachable;
for it alone is knowledge, and nothing can be taught but know-
ledge. The latter is only good at all in so far as it participates
in the former. Apart from that, it is a shifting and uncertain
thing.
ment that may be acquired by anyone, and which he may exercise
or not at his pleasure. Plato has given us at full length two very
similar arguments on this point, and they bear every mark of being
genuinely Sokratic. In particular their constant reference to the
practice of artificers is highly characteristic. ‘The best known is the
argument with Polemarchos in the Republic, which is less likely to
be misunderstood if read in the light of the other, which occurs in
the Hippias minor. In the Republic (332 e sqq.) the argument is
directed to showing that, if goodness is an art (a view for which
Polemarchos and not Sokrates is responsible) the honest man will
be the best thief, just as the doctor will be the most successful
murderer. The argument of the Hippias minor is that wisdom is
required as much or more to tell lies as to tell the truth, and that it
is better to do wrong voluntarily than involuntarily. ‘The point is
the same in both cases. An art or capacity (δύναμις) is always ‘of
opposites’. The man who can make a good use of it is also the man
who can make a bad one, and therefore something more must be
implied in goodness than this. That too was forced on Sokrates by
the practice of the Sophists. Gorgias disclaims all responsibility
for the use his pupils may make of the art of Rhetoric which they
learn from him. We have no more right, he says (456 d) to blame
the teacher of rhetoric for the misdeeds of his pupils than we should
have to blame the teacher of boxing if his pupil used his art to
injure his neighbours. The question involved in the argument
GOODNESS IS NOT AN ART 143
with Polemarchos is really the same. Is it possible to regard good-
ness as a purely neutral accomplishment of this kind, or is it
something that belongs to the very nature of the soul that possesses
it, so that it is really impossible for the good man to do evil or to
injure anyone?
§ 134. Another question that was much discussed at this time
was that of the unity of goodness, and to Sokrates this question
was closely bound up with the other. The professional teaching of
goodness was apt to suggest that you could learn one branch of it
and not another. You might, for instance, learn courage without
learning honesty, or vice versa. If the different forms of goodness
are so many ‘arts’ or external accomplishments, they will stand in
no necessary connexion with one another, and we cannot say that
goodness is one. Sokrates approaches this question from the point
of view of the different kinds of goodness. The Laches, for example,
starts from courage, and the Charmides from soberness. In both
cases the particular virtue under discussion is identified with
knowledge, but the identification is not made by Sokrates. On the
contrary, his argument is entirely directed to showing that, if we
identify any particular form of goodness with knowledge, it is
impossible to maintain any distinction between it and any other
form of goodness. From that point of view they all become merged
in one.
Both these doctrines, that of the unity of goodness, and that
which refuses to identify goodness with an art, are supported by
another line of argument of which Sokrates is fond. A good ex-
ample of this too is to be found in the argument with Polemarchos
in the Republic (332 c). It is that, if you identify any form of good-
ness with an art, it is impossible to discover any use for it. The
whole field is already covered by the particular arts appropriate to
each department, and there is no room for the ‘virtue’. One might
suppose that honesty or justice was a virtue useful in partnerships,
but we should all prefer a good player to an honest man as our
partner in a game of skill or as an accompanist to our singing. If
goodness is looked at in this way, it will have no special function
to perform; there is no room for it alongside of the other arts. It
may be harmful, since it is a capacity of opposites, and it is in any
case superfluous.
§ 135. What, then, is the knowledge with which true goodness
is to be identified? In the first place it is knowledge of what is good
144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOKRATES
for the human soul. It is at this point we see most clearly how the
theory of conduct taught by Sokrates, like his theory of knowledge,
was influenced by Pythagorean doctrine. The Pythagoreans had
already regarded the health of the soul as something analogous to
the health of the body, and for them this was much more than a
metaphor. We have seen (§ 75) how they arrived at their funda-
mental notion of an attunement (ἁρμονία) or blend (κρᾶσις), and
it was this that dominated all medical theory so far as it fell under
Pythagorean influence. It was partly the necessity of explaining
goodness in this way that made Sokrates reject the later Pythago-
rean view that the soul itself was an attunement (§ 124), and he
preferred to work out the idea from the point of view of what was
probably an earlier Pythagorean doctrine, that of the parts of the
soul. In the Gorgias (504 a 544.) Sokrates says that goodness is due
to the presence of arrangement (τάξις) and order (κόσμος) in the
soul, and that this can only be produced by knowledge, not by
experience or routine. In the Republic the same theory is worked
out in the most elaborate fashion. It is shown that there are three
parts of the soul, the philosophical or reasoning part (φιλόσοφον,
λογιστικόν), temper (θυμός), and desire (ἐπιθυμία). The special
virtues of each of these are wisdom, courage, and soberness, while
justice or righteousness is the principle that keeps them all in their
proper place. It is shown how each of these virtues is represented
in the different classes of a well-ordered State, and we learn from
a consideration of that how the inner polity of the soul should be
ordered. We see that wisdom should command, while temper
assists in the execution of these commands, and how the desires
should be confined to their proper task of supplying the necessary
material basis for the rest, and how all this is to be secured by
justice, which assigns to each its proper part and sees that it keeps
to it. It is shown further how inferior types of State arise from the
usurped supremacy of one or other of the subaltern parts of the
soul, and how there are inferior types of character corresponding
to each of these and arising from the same cause. No doubt the
elaboration of this idea which we find in the Republic owes much
to the artistic genius of Plato, but it appears to me quite certain
that the leading idea is Sokratic, and indeed Pythagorean. Plato’s
own view of the soul was so different that he would not naturally
fall into this way of expressing himself, though he might quite well
use it for purposes of more or less popular exposition. As we shall
CONCLUSION 145
see, it is improbable that he had a definite original philosophy of his
own by the time the Republic was written.1
δ 136. This account of the Sokratic philosophy is in brief that
to which Plato gave currency within fifteen years or so of his
master’s death. It is, I submit, an intelligible and consistent whole,
and it is quite different from anything Aristotle ever ascribes to
Plato himself. If Plato had originally taught this system, and if the
doctrine Aristotle ascribed to him was only a development of his
later years, we may be sure that we should have heard something
about this remarkable change of opinion. As it is, there is no hint
anywhere in Aristotle that Plato ever taught anything else than
what he regards as the genuine Platonic doctrine. It is impossible,
of course, to decide the matter finally till we have seen what Plato’s
own philosophy was, but there are two considerations I should
like to urge before leaving the subject. In the first place, it is surely
worth while to try the experiment of taking Plato’s dialogues in
their natural sense. That is the ‘hypothesis’ on which this work
proceeds, and it can only be destroyed if we come to consequences
that are impossible or untrue. In the second place, I would urge
that the burden of proof does not lie with those who adopt this
hypothesis, but with those who deny it. We cannot be forced to
regard the Sokrates of Plato as a fiction unless some really cogent
argument can be produced for doing so, and I am not aware that
this has ever been done. It is not maintained, of course, that Plato
is ever a mere reporter. He is clearly a dramatic artist, and arranges
his material artistically. But he knew Sokrates well, and he wrote
for people who knew Sokrates well, and the dialogues made use of
in this sketch were probably all written before he came forward as
a teacher of philosophy himself. If Plato’s Sokrates is not meant
for the real Sokrates, I find it very hard to imagine what he can be
meant for.
1] have not thought it necessary to give the argument of the Republic in detail
as there are so many excellent accounts of it in existence already.
Χ
The Trial and Death of Socrates
THE CONDEMNATION
§ 137. In 399 B.c. Sokrates was brought to trial by Anytos, the
democratic leader, Meletos, a ‘youthful and unknown’ tragic poet,
‘with lanky hair, a scanty beard, and a hooked nose’,! and Lykon,
an even more obscure rhetorician. The indictment stated that he
was guilty of not worshipping (νομίζων) the gods the State
worshipped but introducing other new divinities, and further that
he was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them accordingly.
In the Apology, Plato gives us what profess to be the speeches
delivered by Sokrates at his trial. It is not to be supposed that even
here he is a mere reporter. It was usual for speeches to be carefully
revised and adapted for publication, and no doubt Plato meant to
do for Sokrates what other accused persons either did for them-
selves or more often had done for them by a professional speech-
writer. On the other hand it seems incredible that he should have
misrepresented the attitude of Sokrates before the court or the
general line of his defence. It is perfectly true, no doubt, that the
Apology is not a defence at all, but that makes it all the more
characteristic of the man. Sokrates treats the accusation with
contempt, and even goes out of his way to import things into the
case that were hardly of a nature to conciliate the judges. That does
not prove the Apology to be ᾿ς fiction, as it has been supposed to
do.’ Far from it.
§ 138. The actual conduct of the prosecution was entrusted to
Meletos, who bungled it, according to Plato. By a skilful cross-
examination Sokrates got him to admit that he believed him to be
1 Futhyphro, 2b.
2'The least inadequate translation of νομίζειν in its legal sense is ‘worship’.
The world does not refer primarily to ‘religious opinions’, but to the observance
of certain current ‘uses’ (νόμοι), though Plato makes Sokrates take advantage of
the secondary sense ‘think’ in order to confuse Meletos (Apo. 26 c).
8 See the Introduction to Schanz’s edition of the Apology with German notes.
THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES 147
an out-and-out atheist, which was of course inconsistent with the
indictment. In any case Sokrates did not stoop to defend himself
against either the one charge or the other, though he showed him-
self more sensitive to the accusation of corrupting the youth, and
offered to allow the fathers and elder brothers of his associates to
give evidence on the point. He was found guilty, however, in spite
of the failure of Meletos to make anything of the principal count
in the indictment, which he does not seem to have understood
himself. The majority was a considerable one, though Sokrates
says he had expected it to be larger. He knew therefore that there
was something else against him besides the trumpery charge of
introducing new divinities, which he did not for a moment treat
seriously.
The penalty proposed by the accusers was death, but there is
no reason to suppose Anytos really wished it to be carried out. By
a very ingenious provision of the Athenian law, it was ordained
that in cases of a certain class the condemned man should be
allowed to propose an alternative sentence. The idea was that an
adequate punishment would probably be arrived at in this way;
for the judges were bound to choose between the two penalties
proposed, and could not suggest another themselves. It was,
therefore, the interest of the condemned man to propose some-
thing the judges would be likely to accept. There can be no doubt
that if Sokrates had proposed exile or imprisonment till he had
paid a reasonable fine, everyone would have been satisfied, but he
refused to do anything of the sort. That, he said, would amount to
an acknowledgment of his guilt. If he had really to propose what
he thought he deserved, he would assess the penalty at free
quarters in the Prytaneion at the public expense, an honour
sometimes voted to Olympic victors and public benefactors.
Ultimately, however, he proposed a fine of one mina, an incon-
siderable sum, which his friends induced him to raise to thirty,
offering to become surety for the payment. Plato was one of these
friends, and this is the only act of his he has seen fit to put on
public record.
§ 139. The judges were apparently incensed by this way of
treating the court; for they condemned Sokrates to death by a
larger majority than that by which they had found him guilty. He
then delivered a short address to those judges who had voted for
his acquittal. He said that, even if death were the end of all things,
148 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
it was no more an evil than a dreamless sleep, and few waking days
are better than a night of that. He also hinted pretty plainly that,
in his own belief, the soul was immortal, and that a good man had
nothing to fear in the next life. And so he bade his judges farewell.
‘It is now time to depart, for me to die and for you to live. Which
of us is going to meet the better lot, none knows but God.”
THE ALLEGED OFFENCE
§ 140. We have now to ask why Sokrates was charged with
irreligion and why he was put to death. We must at once put aside
the idea that it was for not believing the stories told about the gods.
It is not likely that any educated man believed these, and un-
educated people probably knew very little about them.? There was
no church and no priesthood, and therefore the conception of
religious orthodoxy did not exist. So far as mythology was con-
cerned, you might take any liberty. No one appears to have found
fault with Aischylos for his Prometheus, though, judged by modern
standards, it is flat blasphemy. He did get into trouble for inad-
vertently revealing some Eleusinian formula, and the contrast is
instructive. If it had been required of anyone that he should treat
the stories about the gods respectfully, Aristophanes would not
have survived Sokrates. He does not scruple to make fun of Zeus
himself, and he represents Dionysos as a vulgar poltroon in a
comedy which was actually part of the service of that very god and
was presided over by his priest. In the Phaedrus (229 e sqq.)
Sokrates is described as totally indifferent to the truth or falsehood
of mythology, though he has the good taste to prefer the stories in
their traditional form to the versions produced by the ‘homely wit’
of rationalist historians. One thing he does indeed feel strongly,
namely, that it is dangerous to repeat stories that ascribe untruth-
fulness and wickedness and strife to the gods, and in the Euthyphro
(6 a) he does suggest that it is possibly for this that he is regarded
as an innovator in religion. The suggestion is certainly not serious,
however, and even Euthyphro is not shocked, though he himself
1 It has actually been inferred from the Apology that ‘the historical Sokrates’
had no fixed belief in immortality, and this has been used to discredit the Phaedo.
I can only ask anyone who holds this view to read the passage aloud and see what
effect it makes upon him. Of course Sokrates was addressing what was practically
a public meeting, and he knew that few of his hearers held such beliefs, so there
is some necessary reserve, but that is all.
5 Arist. Poet. 1451 b, 25.
THE CHARGE 149
believes these stories and others stranger still. The truth is that
belief in narratives of any kind formed no part of ancient religion;
anyone might reject or accept such things as he pleased. Mythology
was looked on as a creation of the poets, and ‘poets tell many
falsehoods’. No one could be prosecuted for what we call religious
opinions.
§ 141. Nor is it credible that the divine ‘voice’ should have had
anything to do with the prosecution. It is true that Euthyphro is
represented as jumping at once to the conclusion that it had; for
that is the sort of thing he himself is interested in. At the same time,
he makes it quite clear that, in his opinion, Sokrates need have no
fear of a charge like that, though he must expect to be laughed at.?
In the Apology Plato makes Sokrates himself say that the divine
voice is presumably what Meletos has caricatured and made the
ground of the charge in his indictment, but the way he says it
makes it quite clear that Meletos meant nothing of the sort and had
said nothing about the ‘voice’. The Athenians might and did think
Sokrates eccentric because of his voice and his trances, and, as
Euthyphro says, such things are ‘easily misrepresented’? and are
apt to make people jealous. But the belief in ‘possession’ (κατοκωχή)
was much too firmly established, and cases of it were much too
familiar, to allow of a charge of irreligion being based on anything
of the kind.® The accepted view was that such things were a sort
of disease which could be treated by ‘purifications’, but even mad-
ness and epilepsy were supposed to make the sufferer ‘holy’ (ἱερός).
From the point of view of the ordinary Athenian, the irreligion
would be on the side of anyone who treated the ‘voice’ disrespect-
fully.
δ 142. It must also be remembered that the charge of intro-
ducing new divinities was no novelty; for it had been definitely
formulated by Aristophanes a generation earlier. In the Clouds
Sokrates announces that Zeus has been dethroned and Vortex
reigned in his stead. He offers prayer to the Clouds and swears by
LCi p36 9-2: 2 Euthyphro, 3 Ὁ sq.
8 Apology, 31 ἃ. Professor Taylor’s interpretation of the words ὃ δὴ cal... ἐν
τῇ γραῇ . -. ἐγράψατο (Varia Socratica, i. p. 14) seems to me the only sound
one. Sokrates says he supposes (δὴ) that Meletos meant the divine voice when
he spoke of δαιμόνια in the indictment. It is clear, then, that Meletos said nothing
about it 1 his speech.
* The word εὐδιάβογα means no more.
5 The ‘voice’ would no doubt strike the average δεισιδαίμων as an ordinary
case of ἐγγαστριμυθία.
I50 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
Respiration, Chaos, and Air. It will be remembered that Diogenes
of Apollonia held Air to be a ‘god’. That being so, it is surely very
significant that Aristophanes does not make the most distant
allusion to the ‘voice’, though he must have known all about it, and
it would lend itself admirably to comic treatment. ‘The omission is
the more striking, as there is an allusion to the trances of Sokrates
(150). Xenophon is even more instructive. He says he got his
information about the trial from Hermogenes, and we may be sure
the religious Xenophon would be anxious to discover all he could
about the meaning of this charge. He does not appear, however, to
have got any definite explanation of it; for he only gives it as his
personal opinion that it must have been the ‘voice’ on which the
accusers chiefly relied, and it seems most probable that he is only
repeating this from Plato’s Apoiogy and Euthyphro. At any rate, in
his own Apology, he makes Sokrates speak about the ‘voice’ very
much as Plato does, and he makes him say, just like Euthyphro,
that the Athenians are jealous of it as an exceptional divine favour.
In fact, everyone speculates about the meaning of the charge, and
the one fact that stands out clearly is that no one — not even the
prosecutor — seems to know it. It surely follows that the charge
of introducing new divinities, though stated in the indictment,
was neither explained nor justified at the trial. Such things were
possible in an Athenian dikastery, which was more like a public
meeting than a court of justice. There was no judge to rule the
prosecution irrelevant to the indictment.
THE REAL OFFENCE
§ 143. But, if that is the true account of the matter, it follows
further that this accustation was a mere pretext. That would ex-
plain why Meletos falls so easily into the trap laid for him by
Sokrates, and substitutes the charge of atheism for that of intro-
ducing strange divinities. It will also make the conduct of the
judges more intelligible. We know that a number of them, after
voting for the acquittal of Sokrates on the charge brought against
him, turned round and voted for the death sentence. That is partly
to be explained, no doubt, by the attitude Sokrates took up in his
second speech, but this will not explain it altogether. Death is
surely an extreme penalty for contempt of court, and those judges
must have believed Sokrates to be guilty of something. Everything
HIS REAL OFFENCE 151
becomes clear if we suppose that the real ground of the accusation
could not for some reason be stated in the indictment, and that
some of the judges thought it unfair to condemn a man for an
offence with which he was not formally charged, even though they
might believe him guilty of it. The defiant attitude of Sokrates
would account for their change of mind in that case.
Now we know that Sokrates had refused to obey the illegal orders
of the Thirty, but we also know that he did not leave Athens. He
was therefore suspect of imcivisme, but the amnesty made it
impossible to charge him with a strictly political offence. Plato
indicates in the clearest possible manner that Sokrates really owed
his death to his political attitude. There are two passages in which
he is represented as criticising the democratic leaders of the fifth
century, including Perikles, in a very severe manner. One of these
is in the Gorgias, and there Kallikles, who is a democratic states-
man, bluntly tells him (521 c) that, if he refuses to flatter the
democracy instead of trying to make them see the error of their
ways, he is in danger of being dragged into court by some sorry
wretch, and then anything may happen to him. The other passage
is in the Meno, where Anytos himself is brought on the stage to
give a similar warning. That is surely meant to be significant.
Anytos is not the chief interlocutor, and is apparently introduced
solely for this purpose. After listening impatiently to the criticisms
of Sokrates on the heroes of the democracy, he says (94 e), “I think,
Sokrates, you are rather ready to abuse people. I should advise
you, if there was any chance of your taking my advice, to be care-
ful. Even in other cities, I fancy it is easier to do people a mischief
than a good turn, and most decidedly it is so in this one.’ ‘These
are very broad hints, and Plato set them down deliberately some
time after the event. They can only mean that the real offence of
Sokrates was his criticism of the democracy and its leaders. No
one in Plato ever gives him a hint that he had better be careful not
to talk about unauthorised divinities, as he frequently does, and
still less does anyone suggest that the ‘voice’ is a thing he would be
wise in keeping to himself.
δ 144. From this point of view one of the most important things
in the Apology is the statement of Sokrates (39 d) that his country-
men will not be able to rid themselves of criticism even if they put
him to death. There are many who will take up the task of ex-
posing them, and they will be more merciless inasmuch as they are
Ε B.G.P,
152 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
younger. That is, to all intents and purposes, a plea of guilty to
what the hints of Kallikles and Anytos suggest was the real ground
of the accusation, namely, that Sokrates had fostered in young
men that antidemocratic spirit which had led to the oligarchical
revolutions. About half a century later Aischines put the matter
quite bluntly. He says (1. 173) that the Athenians ‘put the Sophist
Sokrates to death because he was believed to have educated Kritias’,
and less than ten years after his trial the Sophist Polykrates
charged him, as we saw, with having educated Alkibiades. In fact,
it looks as if Polykrates simply wrote the speech Anytos would have
delivered at the trial, if the amnesty had not stood in the way. That
the point was actually made by Meletos, a less responsible person,
is strongly suggested by the allusion Sokrates makes in the Apology
(33 a) ‘to those they say are my disciples’. Xenophon also in the
Memorabilia (i. 2, 12 sqq.) makes a point of saying that Kritias and
Alkibiades were not really disciples of Sokrates.
δ 145. It is only fair to say that, from his own point of view,
Anytos was not altogether wrong. Xenophon, indeed, attributes
merely personal motives to him. He says in his Apology (29) that
he was angry with Sokrates for telling him he ought to give his son
a liberal education instead of bringing him up to his own business
as a tanner. It is impossible to say what truth there may be in that,
but in any case there were other reasons why Anytos should desire
to remove Sokrates from Athens. He had undoubtedly been an
uncompromising opponent of the Periklean democracy, the radical
vice of which, according to him, was that it denied the need for
expert knowledge in politics. It would take the advice of experts on
questions of shipbuilding or fortification; but when a vital point
of right or wrong in national policy had to be decided, anyone who
chose to get up and speak was supposed to be as good a judge as
anyone else. According to Plato, he went so far as to deny the title
of statesman to the democratic leaders of his time, including
Perikles. In the Republic we have an account of the democratic
State, which is certainly meant to be a description of Athens in the
fifth century, not of the humdrum bourgeois democracy of Plato’s
own time, and the description is by no means flattering. Of course
the young men who followed Sokrates about would be far less
impressed by his positive teaching than by this destructive criti-
cism of existing institutions. They would be prejudiced against
democracy to start with, and they would relish his attacks on it
ANDOKIDES ON THE MYSTERIES 153
keenly. It is a fact that many of them became vulgar oligarchs and
not statesmen. That is the tragedy of the situation. Sokrates was
not responsible for it, but it existed all the same. Now Anytos and
his friends were busily engaged in organising the restored demo-
cracy, and they could not afford to leave their work at the mercy of
reaction. They had every reason to believe that the teaching of
Sokrates was of a kind to imperil the constitution, and it is not
surprising that they took steps accordingly. It must be remembered
that they had probably no desire to see Sokrates put to death, but
it was natural they should wish to drive him into exile. In those
circumstances we can easily understand why some of the friends
of Sokrates thought it prudent to leave Athens for a time after his
death. Even Plato went, though, as we shall see, he had held aloof
from the oligarchical revolution in which his kinsmen were
implicated, and though he had intended to enter public life under
the restored democracy. Fortunately he found something better to
do.
THE PRETEXT
δ 146. Even assuming, however, that the charge of irreligion
was a mere pretext, it must have been a colourable one; for the
accusers ran the risk of being heavily fined if they did not secure a
fifth of the votes. We must ask, then, whether there was anything
that might be made to appear a justification of the charge, and on
which a statesman like Anytos might rely to produce the right kind
of prejudice against Sokrates. If we ask that question, we come at
once upon the fact that in the very same year as Sokrates was tried
Andokides appeared once more before the judges to explain his
connexion with the mutilation of the images of Hermes and the
profanations of the mysteries sixteen years before. We find also
that Anytos spoke in his favour, no doubt because his revelations
had been of service to the democratic party. We shall never know
the truth about this old scandal, but the speech of Andokides is a
precious document for the state of public feeling about it, not only
at the time, but under the restored democracy. It is certain that,
for the ordinary Athenian, the mutilation of the images was closely
bound up with the profanation of the mysteries, and that both
were supposed to be somehow directed towards the overthrow of
the democracy. No doubt this was a mistake. The mutilation had
probably nothing to do with the profanations of the mysteries, and
154 THE TRIAL OF SOKRATES
the latter were obviously distorted in the popular imagination. It
does not seem credible that some of the most gifted and enlightened
men in Athens should have found it amusing to parody Eleusinian
ritual, not once only or in a single place, though even that would
be silly enough, but systematically and in a number of private
houses. On the other hand, the evidence that certain proceedings
took place which were capable of being represented in that light is
far too strong to be rejected, and conveys to a modern reader the
idea that there may have been something resembling meetings of
masonic lodges, exaggerated by public rumour into blasphemous
mummeries of the most sacred rites.
Now many of the judges must have known quite well that some
of the most intimate associates of Sokrates were implicated in this
business. There is no doubt, for instance, about Axiochos of
Skambonidai, the uncle of Alkibiades and of Adeimantos son of
Leukolophides.? All three were denounced by Agariste, the wife of
Alkmeonides, a high-born dame who had been the wife of one
Damon before she married her kinsman.? This may very well be
the same Damon whom Sokrates refers to as an authority on music.
If that is correct, it is interesting to notice that one of the accused
was called Taureas, and that is the name of the master of the
palaistra in which Kritias introduced Charmides to Sokrates.®
Further, if we remember that the banquet described in the
Symposium is supposed to take place the very year the scandals
occurred, it is suspicious that we find the names of Akoumenos,
Eryximachos, and Phaidros among the persons inculpated.*
Akoumenos was a celebrated physician, and he has an unusual
name. We do not know of anyone else who bore it. He was not
present at the banquet, though his son Eryximachos, who was also
a physician, is one of the speakers there. Phaidros is not an un-
common name, and we cannot be sure that Phaidros of Myrrhinous
is meant. We are, however, told that he was an ‘associate’ (ἑταῖρος)
of Eryximachos,° and it is at the very least a remarkable coincidence
that all three names should occur. In any case, we know that public
interest in this old business had just been revived, and that of itself
1 The record of the public sale of his confiscated goods still exists on inscrip-
tions, where his name is given in full, “Agioyos ᾿Αλκιβιάδου Σκαμβωνίδης (Ditten-
berger, Sylloge*, 39, 41, 42, 45).
2 Andok. 1. 16.
SID πα σα Plato, Charm. 153 a.
4 Andok. 1. 15, 18, 35. 5 Plato, Phaedr. 268 a.
THE LAST SCENE 155
would be sufficient to create the atmosphere of prejudice required.
Memories of the Clouds would do the rest.
For reasons I have given, I do not think it likely that Sokrates
was explicitly charged with this or any other particular offence
against religion, but it was in everyone’s mind, and there were
circumstances enough in his life to connect him with it. It was
certainly believed at Athens that he had taken part in religious
rites of a strange kind; for Aristophanes could count on his audience
understanding his allusions to them. Aischines wrote a dialogue in
which Sokrates is represented as conversing with the Pythagorean
Telauges. Plato represents him as full of Orphic ideas, though, as
I have said, there is always a certain reservation which does not
allow us to suppose he accepted them implicitly. I do not think it
likely that his Pythagorean friends had much to do with this; for,
to all appearance, they had ceased to ‘practise’, and they had
dropped the Orphic theory of the soul, which was just the thing
that appealed most to Sokrates.1 In fact, it is Sokrates who is
represented as trying to bring them back to an earlier form of
Pythagorean belief. All this can hardly be fictitious. What motive
could Plato have had for inventing it? By his time Orphicism had
hopelessly degenerated, so far as we can see, and it is not probable
that it ever attracted him. In the youth of Sokrates things may well
have been different. We know that the doctrine had been able to
inspire a Pindar about the time Sokrates was born.
THE DEATH OF SOKRATES
§ 147. Sokrates was not put to death at once. It was the festival
of the Delian Apollo, and the ship the Athenians sent to Delos
every year had just been solemnly garlanded the day before the
trial. Now it was the law that the city should be kept free from the
pollution of death at the hands of the public authority till the ship
had gone to Delos and returned, and that sometimes took a long
time. So Sokrates had to spend a month in prison before his
sentence could be carried out, and he passed that time in dis-
cussions with his friends, some of whom came from other parts of
Hellas to bid him farewell. It would have been quite easy for him
1 Jt will be seen where I am obliged to differ from my colleague Professor
Taylor’s conclusions in Varia Socratica, and I need not insist further on that.
My agreement with him on other points will also be obvious.
156 THE DEATH OF SOKRATES
to escape at any time during this month, and his friends were
ready to bear any expense that might be needful. But, as we have
seen, Sokrates was a firm supporter of law, and he would not stoop
to the inconsistency of making an exception in his own case.
However unjust the sentence might be, it had been legally pro-
nounced, and a good citizen could only submit. He owed every-
thing to the laws of his country, and it was not for him to call them
in question.
In the Phaedo Plato has given an account of the last hours of
Sokrates on earth. It would be difficult to match this narrative in
the whole range of European literature, and it cannot be para-
phrased. The last words of it are: “Such, Echekrates, was the end
of our associate (ἑταῖρος), a man, as we should say, the best and
also the wisest and most righteous of his time.’
ΧΙ
Demokritos
§ 148. A quite independent attempt at reconstruction was made
by Demokritos. Like his contemporary Sokrates he faced the
difficulties about knowledge raised by his fellow-citizen Protagoras
and others, and like him he paid great attention to the problem of
conduct, which had also been forced to the front by the Sophists.
Unlike Sokrates, however, he was a voluminous author, and we
can still see from his fragments that he was one of the great writers
of antiquity. For us, however, it is almost as if he had written
nothing, and we really know less of him than we do of Sokrates.
That is because he wrote at Abdera, and his works were never
really well known at Athens, where they would have had a chance
of being preserved, like those of Anaxagoras and others, in the
library of the Academy. It is not clear that Plato knew anything
about Demokritos; for the few passages in the Timaeus and else-
where in which he seems to be reproducing him are easily explained
by the Pythagorean influences that affected them both. Aristotle,
on the other hand, knows Demokritos well; for he too was an
Ionian from the North.
It is certain, nevertheless, that the Demokritean corpus (which
included the works of Leukippos and others as well as those of
Demokritos) continued to exist; for the school maintained itself
at Abdera and Teos down to Hellenistic times. It was therefore
possible for Thrasyllos in the reign of Tiberius to produce an
edition of the works of Demokritos arranged in tetralogies just like
his edition of Plato’s dialogues. Even that did not suffice to preserve
them. The Epicureans, who ought to have studied the man to whom
they owed so much, were averse to study of any kind, and probably
did not care to multiply copies of a writer whose works would have
been a standing testimony to the lack of originality that marked
their own system.
§ 149. We know extremely little about the life of Demokritos.
158 DEMOKRITOS
He belonged like Protagoras to Abdera in Thrace, a city which
hardly deserves its proverbial reputation for dullness, seeing it
could produce two such men.! As to the date of his birth, we have
only conjecture to guide us. In one of his chief works he stated that
it was written 730 years after the fall of Troy, but we do not know
when he supposed that to have taken place. There were several
eras in use at the time and later. He also said somewhere that he
had been a young man in the old age of Anaxagoras, and from this
it was inferred that he was born in 460 B.c. That seems rather too
early, however; for it is based on the assumption that he was forty
years old when he met Anaxagoras, and the expression ‘young
man’ suggests something less than that. Further, we have to find
room for Leukippos between him and Zeno. If Demokritos died,
as we are told, at the age of ninety or a hundred, he was in any case
still living when Plato founded the Academy. Even on purely
chronological grounds, then, it is wrong to class Demokritos with
the predecessors of Sokrates, and it obscures the fact that, like
Sokrates, he tried to answer his distinguished fellow-citizen
Protagoras.?
§ 150. Demokritos was a disciple of Leukippos, and we have
contemporary evidence, that of Glaukos of Rhegion, that he also
had Pythagoreans for his teachers. A later member of the school,
Apollodoros of Kyzikos, says he learnt from Philolaos, and it
seems quite likely. That accounts for his geometrical knowledge,
and also, we shall see, for other features in his system. We know,
too, that Demokritos spoke of the doctrines of Parmenides and
Zeno in his works. These he would come to know through
Leukippos. He mentioned Anaxagoras, as we have seen, and he
appears to have said that his theory of the sun and moon was not
original. ‘That may refer to the explanation of eclipses, which was
generally attributed at Athens, and no doubt in Ionia, to Anaxa-
goras, though Demokritos would, of course, know it to be
Pythagorean.
He is said to have visited Egypt, but there is some reason for
believing that the fragment in which this is mentioned (fr. 298 b)
1 It has been plausibly suggested that the reputation of the Abderites may
have arisen from some satirical remark of Demokritos himself. The other side of
the same thing may be represented by the view of Demokritos as ‘the laughing
philosopher’, which appears for the first time in Horace.
* As has been pointed out above (p. 112, 2. 2), the stories which make Prota-
goras a disciple of Demokritos are based on the illusion that Protagoras was a
contemporary of Plato.
HIS LIFE 159
is a forgery. There is another (fr. 116) in which he says: ‘I went to
Athens and no one knew me.’ If he said that, he meant no doubt
that he had failed to make such an impression as his more brilliant
fellow-citizen Protagoras had done. On the other hand, Demetrios
of Phaleron said Demokritos never visited Athens at all, so this
fragment may be a forgery too. In any case, most of his time must
have been spent in study, teaching and writing at Abdera. He was
not a wandering Sophist of the modern type, but the head of a
regular school.
The real greatness of Demokritos does not lie in the theory of
atoms and the void, which he seems to have expounded much as
he had received it from Leukippos. Still less does it lie in his
cosmological system, which is mainly derived from Anaxagoras.
He belongs to another generation altogether than these men, and
he is not specially concerned in finding an answer to Parmenides.
The question he had to deal with was that of his own day. The
possibility of science had been denied and the whole problem of
knowledge raised by Protagoras, and that had to be met. Further,
the problem of conduct had become a pressing one. The originality
of Demokritos lay, then, precisely in the same directions as that of
Sokrates.
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
§151. Demokritos followed Leukippos in giving a purely
mechanical account of sensation, and it is probable that he is the
author of the detailed atomist doctrine on this subject. As the soul
is composed of atoms like everything else, sensation must consist
in the impact of atoms from without on the atoms of the soul, and
the organs of sense must be simply ‘passages’ (πόροι) through
which these atoms are introduced. It follows that the objects of
vision are not strictly the things we suppose ourselves to see, but
the ‘images’ (δείκελα, εἴδωλα) that bodies are constantly shedding.
The image in the pupil of the eye was regarded as the essential
thing in vision. It is not, however, an exact likeness of the body
from which it comes; for it is subject to distortion by the inter-
vening air. That is why we see things in a blurred and indistinct
way at a distance, and why, if the distance is very great, we cannot
see them at all. If there were no air, but only the void, between us
and the objects of vision, this would not be so; ‘we could see an ant
crawling on the sky.’ Differences of colour are due to the smooth-
160 DEMOKRITOS
ness or roughness of the images to the touch. Hearing is explained
in a similar way. Sound 15 a stream of atoms which flow from the
sounding body and cause motion in the air between it and the ear.
They therefore reach the ear along with those portions of the air
that resemble them. The differences of taste are due to differences
in the figures (εἴδη, σχήματα) of the atoms which come in
contact with the organs of that sense, and smell was similarly
explained, though not in the same detail. In the same way, touch,
regarded as the sense by which we feel hot and cold, wet and dry,
and the like, is affected according to the shape and size of the atoms
impinging upon it.
Aristotle says Demokritos reduced all the senses to that of
touch, and that is quite true if we understand by touch the sense
that perceives such qualities as shape, size and weight. This,
however, must be carefully distinguished from the special sense of
touch which has just been described. To understand this point,
we must go on to consider the doctrine of ‘trueborn’ and ‘bastard’
knowledge.
§ 152. It is here that Demokritos comes sharply into conflict
with Protagoras, who had declared all sensations to be equally true
for the sentient subject. Demokritos, on the contrary, regards all
the sensations of the special senses as false, inasmuch as they have
no real counterpart outside the sentient subject. In this he is of
course true to the Eleatic tradition on which the atomic theory
rests. Parmenides had said expressly that taste, colours, sound, and
the like were only ‘names’ (ὀνόματα), and it is quite likely Leukippos
said something of the same sort, though there is no reason to
believe he had elaborated a theory on the subject. Coming after
Protagoras as he did, Demokritos was bound to be explicit on the
point. His doctrine has fortunately been preserved to us in his own
words. ‘By use (νόμῳ),᾿ he said (fr. 125), ‘there is sweet, by use
there is bitter; by use there is warm and by use there is cold; by
use there is colour. But in sooth (ἐτεῃ) there are atoms and the
void.’ In fact, our sensations represent nothing external, though
they are caused by something outside us, the true nature of which
cannot be apprehended by the special senses. That is why the
same thing is sometimes felt as sweet and sometimes as bitter. “By
the senses,’ Demokritos said (fr. 9), ‘we in truth know nothing
sure, but only something that changes according to the disposition
of the body and of the things that enter into it or resist it.’ We
TRUEBORN AND BASTARD KNOWLEDGE 161
cannot know reality in this way; for ‘truth is in the depths’ (fr.
117). It will be seen that this doctrine has much in common with
the modern distinction between the primary and secondary
qualities of matter.
§ 153. Demokritos, then, rejects sensation as a source of know-
ledge just as the Pythagoreans and Sokrates did; but, like them,
he saves the possibility of science by affirming that there is a
source of knowledge other than the special senses. “There are’, he
says (fr. 11), ‘two forms of knowledge (γνώμη), the trueborn
(γνησίη) and the bastard (cxorin). To the bastard belong all these;
sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The trueborn is quite apart from
these.’ That is the answer of Demokritos to Protagoras. He had
said that honey, for instance, was both bitter and sweet, sweet to
me and bitter to you. In reality it was ‘no more such than such’
(οὐδὲν μᾶλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον). Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch tell
us expressly that Demokritos argued against Protagoras, and the
fact is therefore beyond question.
At the same time, it must not be overlooked that Demokritos
gave a purely mechanical explanation of this trueborn knowledge
just as he had done of the bastard. He held, in fact, that the atoms
outside us could affect the atoms of our soul directly without the
intervention of the organs of sense. The atoms of the soul were not
confined to any particular parts of the body, but permeated it in
every direction, and there was nothing to prevent them from
having immediate contact with the external atoms, and so coming
to know them as they really are. The ‘true-born knowledge’ is,
after all, of the same nature as the ‘bastard’, and Demokritos
refused, like Sokrates, to make an absolute separation between
sense and thought. ‘Poor Mind,’ he makes the senses say (fr. 125),
‘it is from us thou hast got the proofs to throw us with. Thy throw
is a fall.’! The ‘true-born’ knowledge is, after all, not thought, but
a sort of inner sense, and its objects are like the ‘common sensibles’
of Aristotle.
§ 154. As might be expected from a follower of the Pythago-
reans and Zeno, Demokritos busied himself with the problem of
continuity. In one remarkable passage (fr. 155) he states it in this
form: ‘If a cone is cut by a plane parallel to its base, what are we
to think of the surfaces of the two sections? Are they equal or
unequal? If they are unequal, they will make the cone uneven; for
ti Cpnpyr13,gniae
162 DEMOKRITOS
it will have many step-like incisions and roughnesses. If they are
equal, then the sections will be equal, and the cone will have the
properties of a cylinder, which is composed of equal, not unequal,
circles. Which is most absurd.’ From a remark of Archimedes? it
appears that Demokritos went on to say that the volume of the
cone was a third of that of the cylinder on the same base and of the
same height, a proposition first demonstrated by Eudoxos. It is
clear, then, that he was engaged on problems such as those which
ultimately gave rise to the infinitesimal method of Archimedes
himself. Once more we see how important the work of Zeno was
as an intellectual ferment.
THEORY OF CONDUCT
§ 155. The views of Demokritos on conduct would be even
more interesting than his theory of knowledge if we could recover
them completely. It is very difficult, however, to be sure which of
the moral precepts attributed to him are genuine. There is no
doubt that the treatise on Cheerfulness (Περὶ εὐθυμίης) was his. It
was freely used by Seneca and Plutarch, and some important
fragments of it have survived.
It started (fr. 4) from the principle that pleasure and pain
(τέρψις and ἀτερψίη) are what determine happiness. This means
primarily that happiness is not to be sought for in external goods.
“Happiness dwelleth not in herds nor in gold; the soul is the
dwelling-place of the daimon’ (fr. 171). To understand this, we
must remember that the word δαίμων, which properly meant a
man’s guardian spirit, had come to be used almost as the equiva-
lent of ‘fortune’. It is, as has been said, the individual aspect of
τύχη, and the Greek word we translate by ‘happiness’ (εὐδαιμονία)
is based on this usage. On one side of it, then, the doctrine of
happiness taught by Demokritos is closely related to that of
Sokrates, though it lays more stress on pleasure and pain. ‘The
best thing for a man is to pass his life so as to have as much joy and
as little trouble as may be’ (fr. 189).
This is not, however, vulgar hedonism. The pleasures of sense
are just as little true pleasures as sensations are true knowledge.
“The good and the true are the same for all men, but the pleasant
is different for different people’ (fr. 69). Further, the pleasures of
1 Cf. Diels, Vors.* ii. p. go n.
TRANQUILLITY 163
sense are of too short duration to fill a life, and they easily turn
into their opposite. We can only be sure of having an excess of
pleasure over pain if we do not seek our pleasure in what is
‘mortal’ (fr. 189).
What we have to strive after is ‘well-being’ (εὐεστώ) or ‘cheerful-
ness’ (εὐθυμίη), and that is a state of the soul. To attain it, we must
be capable of weighing, judging, and distinguishing the value of
different pleasures. Just like Sokrates, Demokritos laid down that
‘ignorance of the better’ (fr. 83) was the cause of failure. Men put
the blame on fortune, but that is only an ‘image’ they have
invented to excuse their own ignorance (fr. 119). The great
principle which should guide us is that of ‘symmetry’ or ‘harmony’.
That is, no doubt, Pythagorean. If we apply this test to pleasures,
we may attain to ‘calm’, calm of body, which is health, and calm of
soul, which is cheerfulness. That is to be found chiefly in the goods
of the soul. ‘He who chooses the goods of the soul chooses the
more divine; he who chooses the goods of the “tabernacle” (1.6. the
body)! chooses the human’ (fr. 37).
§ 156. For our present purpose it is not necessary to discuss the
cosmology of Demokritos in detail. It is thoroughly retrograde and
proves, if proof were needed, that his real interests lay in another
direction. He had inherited the theory of atoms and the void from
Leukippos, who was the real man of genius in this field, and he
was content for the rest to adopt the crude Ionic cosmology as
Leukippos had done. Yet he must have known the more scientific
system of Philolaos. The knowledge of the earth’s spherical shape
was widely spread by the days of Demokritos, and Sokrates is
represented in the Phaedo (108 e) as taking it for granted. For
Demokritos the earth was still a disc. He also followed Anaxagoras
in holding that the earth was supported on the air ‘like the lid of a
trough’, another view which Sokrates rejects with emphasis. On
the other hand, Demokritos appears to have made valuable con-
tributions to natural science. Unfortunately our information is far
too scanty to permit even an approximate reconstruction of his
system. The loss of the complete edition of his works by Thrasyllos
is perhaps the most deplorable of our many losses of this kind. It is
probable that they were left to perish because Demokritos came to
1'This use of σκῆνος for the body (found also in S. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1) is
probably Pythagorean, and connected with the representation of human life as a
πανήγυρις or ‘fair’, Our bodies are our temporary ‘booths’.
164 DEMOKRITOS
share in the discredit that attached itself to the Epicureans. What
we have of him has been preserved mainly because he was a great
coiner of telling phrases, and these have found their way into
anthologies. That is not the sort of material we require for the
interpretation of a philosophic system, and it is very doubtful
whether we know some of his deepest thoughts at all. At the same
time, we cannot help feeling that it is mainly for their literary merit
that we regret the loss of his works. He seems to stand apart from
the main current of Greek philosophy, and it is to that we must
now return. From our point of view, the only important fact about
Demokritos is that he, too, saw the need of an answer to Protagoras.
BOOK III
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XII
Plato and the Academy
PLATO’S EARLY LIFE
§ 157. If the Epistles are genuine — and some of the greatest
scholars and historians hold they are — we know more of the life
of Plato than of any other ancient philosopher.? Even apart from
the Epistles, we know a good deal. Besides what we may infer from
the dialogues, we have one or two statements resting on the
authority of Hermodoros, who was a member of the Academy in
Plato’s time, and these give us certain fixed points to start from.
The later Lives are almost entirely mythical. It is conceivable that
they may contain one or two stray facts derived from older sources
now lost, but their general character is such that it is safer to
neglect them in the first instance. The Epzstles, on the other hand,
are free from this mythology, which is the more remarkable as
Plato’s own nephew, Speusippos, already credited him with a
miraculous birth. If, then, the Epistles are forgeries, they are at
least the work of a sober and well-informed writer, whose use of
the Attic dialect proves him to have been Plato’s contemporary.
It would have been impossible to find anyone fifty years later who
could handle the language as he does.” Even the oldest and most
successful of the spurious dialogues betray themselves at every
turn. We may, indeed, go so far as to say that the supposed forger
of the Epistles must have been a man of almost unparalleled literary
skill, or he could not have reproduced so many of the little
1 The genuineness of the Epistles has been maintained by scholars like Bentley
and Cobet, and by historians like Grote and E. Meyer. In practice most accounts
of Plato really depend on them, though that is disguised by the custom of
referring instead to Plutarch’s Life of Dion. Plutarch, however, is obviously de-
pendent on the Epistles for most, if not all, of what he tells us; so this is an
legitimate evasion. I should add that the First Epistle stands by itself. In my
judgement, it has got into its present place by mistake. It is a genuine fourth-
century letter, but I do not think the writer, whoever he was, meant to pass for
Plato at all. I do not think either that he was Dion or meant to pass for Dion.
2 After the rise of Atticism it might have been just possible, but we know the
Epistles existed before that.
168 LIFE OF PLATO
peculiarities that marked Plato’s style at the very time of his life to
which the Epistles profess to belong, though with just those shades
of difference we should expect to find in letters as contrasted with
more elaborate literary work. I believe that all the letters of any
importance are Plato’s, and I shall therefore make use of them. As,
however, there are still eminent scholars who are not convinced, I
shall warn the reader when I have occasion to do so.
§ 158. Plato was born in 428/7 B.c., more than a year after
Perikles died and just before Gorgias came to Athens for the first
time. We learn from a poem quoted in the Republic (368 a) and
addressed to his brothers, Adeimantos and Glaukon, that his
father, Ariston, was a man of distinction. He must have died when
Plato was a child; for his wife, Periktione, afterwards married
Pyrilampes, whose son by her, Antiphon, was in his youth an
associate of Pythodoros son of Isolochos, who had been a disciple
of Zeno. Adeimantos and Glaukon must have been older than
Plato. The idea that they were younger is based on a misunder-
standing of the Republic. It is assumed that Plato could not talk as
he does there except to younger brothers, and it is forgotten, as
usual, that Sokrates, not Plato, is the speaker. In the Apology (34 a)
Sokrates says Adeimantos should have been called to give evidence
whether Plato had got any harm from associating with him, and
this implies that Adeimantos was so much older as to stand in loco
parentis to his brother. Further, we learn from the poem quoted
in the Republic that both Glaukon and Adeimantos had won dis-
tinction in the battle of Megara. It is natural, in the absence of
further qualifications, to suppose that the battle of 424 B.c. is
meant, though we cannot be quite certain. In any case, if both the
brothers won distinction in the same battle, they cannot have
differed widely in age. It may be added that it would not have been
in accordance with Plato’s usual practice to introduce his brothers
in the Republic if they had been still living when that dialogue was
written. Xenophon (Mem. iii. 6, 1) tells a story of how Glaukon
was restrained by Sokrates from speaking in the Assembly before
he had reached the legal age of twenty. Sokrates did that by asking
him a series of questions about Athenian finance and the national
defences, and it is impossible to read these questions without
feeling that Xenophon conceived the incident to have taken place
some time before the occupation of Dekeleia in 413 B.c. It is true
that he says Sokrates was interested in Glaukon because of Char-
PLATO’S FAMILY 169
mides and Plato, but that may be a slip. Charmides was at least
twenty years older than Plato, who would, perhaps, be too young
to attract the attention of Sokrates much before 413 B.c. The slip,
however, if it is one, is explicable enough in a writer so careless of
chronology as Xenophon, and cannot outweigh the other pre-
sumptions. As to Charmides, we know that Sokrates made his
acquaintance four or five years before Plato was born, so the
mention of his name is quite appropriate.
The family of Plato’s mother, Periktione, was also highly
distinguished, and traced its descent to Dropides, the friend and
kinsman of Solon. She herself was the cousin of Kritias and the
sister of Charmides, son of Glaukon, and the fact that Glaukon
bore the name of his maternal grandfather affords a further pre-
sumption that he was the second son. As we are told in the
Charmides (158 a) that Pyrilampes was the maternal uncle of
Charmides, we must assume that Periktione was his niece, and
that he married her when she was left a widow by the death of
Ariston. That would be in accordance with Athenian usage. The
last we hear of Pyrilampes is that he was wounded in the battle of
Delion, but Periktione reached a great age; for it appears from
Epistle xiii. (361 e) that she was still living in 366/5, though her
death was expected. The importance of all this is that it enables us
to identify the Glaukon and Adeimantos of the Parmenides with
those of the Republic, and also to fix the supposed date of the
latter dialogue before the departure of Polemarchos for Thourioi
instead of after his return. That explains how Kephalos is still
alive, and how Lysias, though present, does not take any part
in the conversation. We shall see that a good deal depends on
this.
Plato was undoubtedly proud of his illustrious kinsmen, and he
introduces them over and over again in his writings. The opening
scene of the Charmides is a glorification of the whole connexion.
It recalls the praises bestowed on the house of Dropides by Solon
and Anakreon, the youthful beauty and modesty of Charmides,
and the fair stature of Pyrilampes, who was accounted the tallest
and handsomest man in Asia when he went on an embassy to the
King. The elder Kritias plays an important part in the Timaeus
1 This has been used as an argument against the genuineness of Epistle xiii.,
but it involves no impossibility, even if Adeimantos and Glaukon fought at
Megara in 424 B.c. Athenian girls married very young, and it was a long-lived
family. See the genealogical table in the Appendix.
170 LIFE OF PLATO
and in the dialogue called by his name. Plato’s reticence about
himself stands in striking contrast to the way he celebrates the older
members of his family, especially as their memory was by no means
popular at the time he wrote. I have called attention elsewhere? to
the dramatic skill with which he keeps the shadow of the Revolu-
tions from falling on his picture. His dialogues are not only a
memorial to Sokrates, but also to the happier days of his own
family. Plato must have felt the events of the end of the fifth
century keenly, but he is so careful to avoid anachronisms in these
dialogues that no one could ever guess from them that they were
written after Kritias and Charmides had met with a dishonoured
end.
§ 159. The statement that Plato only made the acquaintance of
Sokrates when he was twenty does not rest on the authority of
Hermodoros, and is quite incredible. The nephew of Charmides
must have known Sokrates ever since he could remember. It does
not follow, however, that he was one of the inner circle of disciples,
and it is not very likely. It seems rather to have been the death of
Sokrates that converted him to philosophy. That, at any rate, is the
impression left by Epistle vii. There we are told quite distinctly
(324 b) that he had looked forward to a political career. Kritias and
Charmides — for they are no doubt meant — suggested that he
should enter public life under the Thirty, but he was disgusted by
their excesses, which made the former constitution seem like gold
by comparison (324 d). In particular, he was shocked by the treat-
ment of Sokrates in the affair of Leon of Salamis (§ 111). When the
democracy was restored, Plato thought once more of a political
career, but the trial and death of Sokrates convinced him that this
was impossible in the Athens of his time. He could do nothing,
he says (325 d), without joining a party, and neither of the existing
parties could satisfy him. It was just as well. Athenian politics at
this time were of no serious importance, and, as he says in another
letter (v. 322 a), ‘Plato was born late in the day for his country.’
He did, however, find an opening in politics later, and on a much
wider stage.
§ 160. It has become a commonplace to say that Plato’s birth
and connexions would incline him from the first to the oligarchic
side, but nothing can be more untrue. The traditions of the family
were rather what we should call ‘Whiggish’, as is shown by the
1 See p. 275,5. 1. 2 See my edition of the Phaedo, Introduction, § IX.
PLATO AND SOKRATES 171!
stress laid on its connexion with Solon. Even at the time of the
brief domination of the Four Hundred, Kritias was an opponent
of the oligarchical extremists. Charmides became an oligarch at
a later date, when he had been ruined by the war, but he did not at
first take any part in politics. According to Xenophon it was
Sokrates that urged him to overcome his natural shyness and enter
public life (Mem. iii. 7). Moreover, Plato’s stepfather and grand-
uncle, Pyrilampes, was a friend of Perikles and a convinced
democrat. It was not for nothing that he called his son Demos. It
appears also from the Republic that Glaukon and Edeimantos were
intimate with the family of Kephalos, the wealthy stranger whom
Perikles had persuaded to settle in Peiraieus. They were friends of
his son Polemarchos, who afterwards met his death at the hands of
the Thirty. In fact, so far as we can see, Plato’s early upbringing
would predispose him in favour of the Periklean régime. He says
in the Seventh Epistle (325 b) that he was at first impressed by the
moderation of the restored democracy, and such a thought would
not be likely to occur to one brought up in the oligarchic camp.
We can understand, then, why Plato’s own judgment of democracy,
as we have it in the Statesman and the Laws, is not nearly so harsh
as that he puts into the mouth of Sokrates.
§ 161. Plato tells us in the Phaedo (59 b) that he was ill at the
time Sokrates was put to death, and was therefore unable to be
present. He had been in court at the trial, as we know from the
Apology (38 b), and had offered with others to become surety for
the payment of a fine, if the court would accept that penalty. After
the death of Sokrates, Hermodoros said that he retired to Megara
with some of the other Sokratics. We have seen (§ 145) that they
may well have been in some danger. Eukleides would of course
receive them gladly, but we have no indication of the length of their
stay with him. The later Lives attribute extensive travels to Plato,
most of which are plainly apocryphal. It is probable, though by no
means certain, that he visited Egypt. In the Laws (656 e) he speaks
as if he had seen the monuments, and he shows some knowledge of
Egyptian methods of education (819 b). In any case, it was not to
study mathematics he went there; for we know that his opinion of
Egyptian science (747 c) was by no means so favourable as that he
expresses of Egyptian art. If he was in Egypt, it is likely that he
also went to Kyrene to visit the mathematician Theodoros, who
was a friend of Sokrates, but he may equally well have made his
172 PLATO
acquaintance at Athens, where he was teaching just before the
death of Sokrates. All this, however, is extremely doubtful, and the
earliest definite fact we know is that he visited Italy and Sicily for
the first time when he was forty years old (Ep. vii. 324 a). It is
likely that he wished to make the acquaintance of the distinguished
Pythagoreans who were becoming powerful once more in these
parts, and it was probably through them that he made the acquain-
tance of Dion, who was then about twenty. That brought him to
the court of Dionysios I. at Syracuse, where he was disgusted by
the luxurious life he had to lead. The story goes that his freedom
of speech offended Dionysios, who handed him over to the Spartan
ambassador Pollis, who sold him as a slave at Aigina. His life was
even in danger, but he was ransomed by a man of Kyrene named
Annikeris. If this story is true, it is strange that it is not mentioned
in the Seventh Epistle. Perhaps Plato may have thought it irrelevant
in what is really a narrative of his relations with Dion and the
younger Dionysios. A forger would hardly have omitted it, if the
story had been current, but Plato himself might conceivably do so.
In any case, he was back at Athens before long.
δ 162. At this time Plato was just over forty, and Sokrates had
been dead twelve years. One good reason for holding he did not
spend these years in continuous travel, as the later accounts
suggest, is that he must have written a very considerable number
of his dialogues already. Without deciding anything as to the order
in which they were composed, we are able to say with some ©
confidence that the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches,
Lysis, Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno at least were all
composed before Plato was forty.1 That is about one dialogue a
year, assuming that he wrote none of them before the death of
Sokrates. If we remember that the great tragedians often brought
out four plays in one year, that will not seem an excessive rate of
production, and I have little doubt that the Symposium and Phaedo
were also written by this date, and the Republic at least well
advanced. In any case, it seems clear that all these works must
have been completed before the foundation of the Academy, and
I think we may take it that the Phaedrus is not very much later.
In all these dialogues the dramatic interest seems to outweigh
every other, except in some portions of the Republic. Plato’s
1 T have ventured to assume the results of the stylistic researches inaugurated
by Lewis Campbell in 1867. It would take too long to discuss them here.
PLATO’S EARLY DIALOGUES 173
dramatic power, though often acknowledged in words, is seldom
done justice to. He had a marvellous gift of assuming the most
diverse personalities, and this gift is seen at its best in the Sym-
postum, which is certainly not one of the earliest dialogues, but
goes with the Phaedo and the Republic. I cannot imagine that the
man who could speak at will in the character of Protagoras or
Gorgias, or Aristophanes or Alkibiades, without revealing any-
thing of his own personality, should simultaneously, either
voluntarily or involuntarily, have used Sokrates as a mask for
himself. I do not therefore think it possible to learn much of
Plato’s own inmost thoughts from any of these dialogues, and I
believe we have a perfectly serious statement to that effect in the
Second Epistle. There he says (314 c): “There is no writing of
Plato, nor will there ever be. What go by the name really belong to
Sokrates turned young and handsome.’ The dialogues, in fact,
profess to be pictures of a generation that had passed away, and
that I believe them in the main to be. I do not think it likely that
Plato had as yet anything that could rightly be called a philosophy
of his own. He seems to have been one of those men whose purely
intellectual development was late and continued into old age. At
first the artistic interest was paramount; the purely philosophical
does not gain the upper hand till his artistic gift declined. It is only
in certain parts of the Republic and the Phaedrus that I can detect
anything so far that seems to be Platonic rather than Sokratic, and
I attribute that exception to the fact that Plato was about to open
the Academy. The higher education of the Guardians seems to be
a programme of the studies that were to be pursued there; and, as
we shall see, Plato is not quite at his ease in making Sokrates speak
of one of them, namely, solid geometry. Sokrates had proposed to
take astronomy immediately after plane geometry, but he corrects
himself and interpolates geometry of three dimensions, to which
Glaukon objects that this has not yet been invented. It had been
invented by Plato’s time, and by a friend of his own. The awkward-
ness he evidently feels in introducing it is to my mind very
instructive. If he had already attributed to Sokrates all manner of
scientific interests that were really foreign to him, why should he
boggle at solid geometry?
174 THE ACADEMY
FOUNDATION OF THE ACADEMY
§ 163. The foundation of the Academy by Plato soon after his
return to Athens was not only the most important event in his life,
but also in the history of European science. ‘The idea was no doubt
suggested to him in the first place by the school of Eukleides at
Megara, and by what he had seen of the Pythagorean societies in
southern Italy. The name Academy is derived from a gymnasium
outside the walls of Athens, which had been laid out as a public
park by Kimon. Here Plato had a house and garden, and this
remained for long the seat of the school, though it moved into the
town after the siege of Athens by Sulla in 86 B.c., and continued to
exist there till it was disestablished and disendowed by Justinian in
529 A.D. Like all societies of the kind, it was organised as a
religious guild. It had its chapel, dedicated to the Muses, and its
sacrifices at stated times. The members lived for the most part a
common life.
From the first the Academy attracted a large number of young
men, many of whom became distinguished afterwards. It is to be
observed that they came from almost every part of the Hellenic
world. That is one of the things that distinguish the fourth century
from the fifth. In the fifth century, the youth of Athens got their
higher education from a number of distinguished foreigners who
paid flying visits from time to time; in the fourth, the youth of all
Hellas came to Athens to sit at the feet of two Athenian citizens,
Isokrates and Plato. Athens had, in fact, become ‘the school of
Hellas’. It is of interest to note further that a goodly number of
these youths came from the North, and especially from the Greek
colonies in Thrace and on the Black Sea. That may have been due
in some measure to the existence of a mathematical school at
Kyzikos, of which Eudoxos was the head. At any rate, Eudoxos
transferred himself and his school bodily to the Academy, which is
all the more remarkable as he did not by any means see eye to eye
with Plato on mathematical and astronomical subjects. It can
hardly be an accident that Ionia proper is so poorly represented in
the Academy, so far as we know who composed it. The Ionians had
rejected Pythagorean science, partly no doubt because it was mixed
up with mysticism. The School of Demokritos continued to exist
at T’eos down to Hellenistic times. In Plato, Euthydemos and Diony-
sodoros comefrom Chios, and Euboulides, the adversary of Aristotle,
PHILOSOPHY 175
was a Milesian. That is all we can say of Ionia till the time when
Epicurus of Samos once more brought the old Ionic tradition to
Athens, where it had been unrepresented since the days of Archelaos.
It is of the utmost importance to remember that Plato’s real
teaching was given in the Academy, and that even his later
dialogues only contain what he thought fit to give to a wider public
in order to define his attitude to other schools of philosophy. This
fact, which is often overlooked, accounts for a great deal of the
difficulty we feel in passing from Plato to Aristotle. We seem to be
in a different world altogether, and that is natural; for we have
neither Plato’s lectures nor (except in fragments) the published
works of Aristotle, and we are thus comparing two quite different
things. If we only had Plato’s lecture on The Good and the
Protreptikos of Aristotle, we should get a very different impression.
As it is, we may fairly assume that Plato’s lectures had far more
resemblance to Aristotle’s than to his own dialogues.
§ 164. It will help us considerably to understand the purpose of
the Academy if we first consider what Plato meant by the word
‘philosophy’. In Ionia it had been used of a more or less scientific
curiosity which led men to visit strange lands and note their usages.
It may have been applied also to the researches (ἱστορίη) of the
Milesians, but there is no evidence of that. It was in all probability
Pythagoras that first gave it the deeper meaning of science ‘touched
with emotion’, and it was certainly in the Pythagorean community
that it came to be regarded as a ‘way of life’. For Sokrates too,
according to Plato, philosophy had been above all things a life.
At Athens, however, the word was current in a vaguer and shal-
lower sense, derived probably from the Ionian usage. It had, in
fact, a range of meaning something like that of our word ‘culture’.
The great teacher of philosophy in this sense was Isokrates, the
only Athenian of the time whose influence was at all comparable
to Plato’s. Much that has been written about the attitude of these
two men to one another is extremely fanciful, but the main facts
are clear enough. It will be well to state them briefly here, for it is
really necessary to understand Isokrates if we are to estimate
Plato aright.
PLATO AND ISOKRATES
§ 165. One thing was common to both men, and that was an
intense belief that the only remedy for the ills of Hellas was
176 PLATO AND ISOKRATES
enlightenment, though they differed enormously as to the kind of
enlightenment required. There is a striking passage at the end of
the Phaedrus, where Sokrates is made to contrast Isokrates with
mere professional advocates like Lysias. He says:
Isokrates is still young, but I am ready to tell you what I presage
for him.... 1 think that, so far as natural gifts go, he is capable of higher
things than the speeches of Lysias, and that his character is more
nobly tempered. It would be no wonder, then, as he grows older, if,
even in composing speeches, which is the task he is now engaged on,
he should make all who have ever taken up speech-writing seem
children compared to him. If, however, that should not satisfy him,
it would be no wonder if a divine impulse should lead him to higher
things still; for, my dear Phaidros, there really is philosophy in the
man (279 a).
It is important not to overlook the dramatic setting here. It is
Sokrates, not Plato, who pays Isokrates this handsome compliment,
and, of course, Sokrates cannot speak otherwise than prophetically
of anything but the forensic speeches of which Isokrates was
afterwards ashamed. On the other hand, Plato would not have
been likely to put into the mouth of Sokrates a prophecy that had
not in some measure been fulfilled. I take it, then, that this is a
perfectly sincere compliment, and that the tradition which repre-
sents Plato and Isokrates as friends is much more likely to be right
than modern speculations about a feud between them. They
differed, indeed, on fundamentals, but they had a good many
opinions in common, especially about politics. Plato must have
understood and sympathised with the ideals of Isokrates regarding
Greek union against Persia, while Isokrates would appreciate the
Sicilian projects of Plato, which we shall have to consider later,
though he doubtless thought it very absurd of him to begin the
training of a prince with mathematics. The main point is, however,
that both Isokrates and Plato were convinced that the future of
Hellas depended on the revival of monarchy, a conviction which
the course of history showed to be well founded.
δ 166. Where Plato and Isokrates differed was in their concep-
tion of education. Isokrates was what we call a humanist, and the
rivalry between him and Plato was really the first chapter in the
long struggle between humanism and science. It must be remem-
bered, however, that Greek humanism was of necessity a far
shallower thing than what we call by the name. In the first place,
modern humanism has gained immeasurably from having to deal
SCIENCE AND HUMANISM 177
with the language and literature of other peoples, and especially
with those of classical antiquity. An exclusive preoccupation with
the literature of one’s own country always tends to shallowness.
That is why even Roman humanism, as we know it in Cicero, for
instance, is a far deeper thing than the contemporary Greek
rhetoric. It has Greek antiquity as well as Roman behind it, and
that gave it strength. The humanism of the Renaissance, again,
was saturated with the results and spirit of Greek science, and so
prepared the way for the scientific discoveries of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, while Greek humanism inherited from the
Sophists of the fifth century a rooted distrust of science and scien-
tific methods. The humanism of Isokrates had, therefore, hardly
any real content, and tended to become little more than the art of
expressing commonplaces in a perfect form.
§ 167. At the same time, the form invented by Isokrates really
was perfect in its way, and he has, directly or indirectly, influenced
every writer of prose down to the present day. Even commonplace
thinking may have its value, and it is a very good test of that to
express it in an artistic way. If one has to utter one’s thoughts in
accordance with a prescribed scheme, they will at least gain in
lucidity and coherence, so far as they are reasonable at all. Thoughts
that are wholly unreasonable do not admit of artistic expression.
In this way Isokrates was quite entitled to claim that his teaching
was of service to his pupils, and he certainly did a great deal to
make Hellenism a possibility, in spite of the fact that his own
political thinking is unduly coloured by the rhetorical antithesis of
Hellenes and barbarians, a division of mankind which Plato
regarded as unscientific (Polit. 262 d). At any rate, whatever we
may think of Isokrates, there can be no doubt that Plato recognised
his merits, and it is curious to note how, the more he came to
diverge from him on matters of greater importance, the more he
fell under the fascination of his style. It is just in these later dia-
logues where the scientific spirit is most dominant that the influence
of Isokrates may be traced most clearly. In every other respect
such a work as the Sophist is wide as the poles asunder from any-
thing Isokrates was capable of understanding, and yet it is in that
very dialogue that Plato for the first time troubles to avoid hiatus,
and even adopts some specially Isokratean devices for doing so. It
seems as if, when he felt his own gift of artistic writing beginning
to fail, he was glad to reinforce it in this way.
178 PLATO AND ISOKRATES
§ 168. To Plato philosophy was, of course, something quite
different from what it was to Isokrates. If we look at the dialogues
he was writing about the time he founded the Academy, and
especially the Symposium, the Republic, and the Phaedrus, we shall
see, I think, that he regarded it chiefly in two lights. In the first
place, it is the conversion of a soul, and in the second place it is the
service of mankind. We shall take the latter point first, because it
is impossible to understand Plato’s object in founding the Academy
till it has been made clear. No one has insisted more than he has on
the necessity of disinterested scientific study, freed from all merely
utilitarian preoccupations, but at the same time no one has main-
tained more firmly that such study is only justified in‘ the last
resort by the service it can render to human life. The Sokratic
demand that the man who knows shall rule had, he tells us (Ep.
Vii. 326 a), taken the more precise form that the only hope for
mankind is that kings should turn philosophers or that philosophers
should become kings. That ideal never left him, and, though he
ceased to hope for its realisation, he was always ready to welcome
any approach to it. In default of the philosopher king much might
be effected by the co-operation of a philosopher and a tyrant,
especially if the latter was young and impressionable. He reaffirms
this conviction in the Laws (709 e), though he had already been
disappointed in one attempt to work upon that plan. The Academy
was first and foremost, then, an institution for training rulers and
legislators, and it was extremely successful in its task. It was, in
fact, made a charge against it that it produced tyrants, which is
true enough, and much to its credit, if the facts are rightly esti-
mated. It also produced its fair share of tyrannicides.
Isokrates boasts that his training was more practical than that of
his rivals, but most of his pupils turned out rhetorical historians or
rhetorical tragedians, while Plato trained statesmen and men of
science. We shall see later that the Academy was often applied to
for legislators by new communities. There is not the slightest
improbability in the story that Epameinondas, who had been an
associate of the Pythagorean Lysis, asked Plato himself to frame a
code of laws for Megalopolis, though we are told that Plato
declined.
ANALYSIS AND DIVISION 179
THE METHODS OF THE ACADEMY
§ 169. ‘Two methods are specially associated with Plato’s name,
that of Analysis and that of Division. The former, indeed, is said
to have been invented by Plato, who ‘delivered it’ to Leodamas,
and it is significant that in Book XIII. of Euclid, which is in a pre-
eminent sense the work of the Academy, analytical proofs are
given for the first time in addition to those in the usual form. It can
hardly be supposed, however, that analysis is no older than Plato.
The proof called apagogic (reductio ad absurdum) is an application
of the analytic method, and it was certainly used by the Pytha-
goreans. Moreover, Plato himself represents Parmenides as
teaching it to Sokrates, while in the Meno and Phaedo, as we have
seen (§ 121), Sokrates himself explains it. It follows that what Plato
did was at most to formulate the method more clearly, and very
probably to show the necessity of supplementing analysis by
synthesis, in order to secure that all the intermediate steps dis-
covered by the analysis are reciprocal.1 The chain of consequences
must be reversible if the proof is to be complete. Each analysis
given in Euclid is immediately followed by the corresponding
synthesis. This was revived by Galileo in the seventeenth century
as a substitute for the prevailing Aristotelian methods.?
δ 170. The other Platonic method is that of Division (διαίρεσις),
which even the comic poets knew to be characteristic of the
Academy. As analysis aims at explanation or proof, so division is
the instrument of classification or definition. The method is this.
The thing to be defined or classified is first referred to its genus,
and then, by a series of dichotomies, the genus is divided into
species and sub-species. At each division we ask to which of the
species it gives us the thing to be defined belongs, and that is
divided once more, the ‘left-hand’ species being left undivided as
irrelevant to our purpose. The definition is found by adding
together all the species ‘on the right-hand side’. The examples of
this method which Plato gives in the Sophist and Statesman are
only to be understood as more or less popular and playful applica-
tions of it, but just for that reason they serve to show what is meant
better than a serious example, where it would have been necessary
1 This was the view of Tannery. ‘
2 The metodo risolutivo is just the ἀναλυτικὴ μέθοδος. Galileo was a convinced
Platonist.
180 PLATO’S TEACHING
to justify each step elaborately. We shall return to this subject
when we come to the Philebus.
§171. As to the plan of teaching and study adopted in the
Academy we have, as is natural, but little direct evidence, but what
we have is at once trustworthy and instructive. In the first place,
there can be no doubt that Plato gave regular lectures (συνουσίαι,
ἀκροάσεις), and that his hearers took notes. Aristoxenos said that
Aristotle ‘was always telling’ how most of those who heard the
lecture on the Good were affected. 'They came expecting to hear
about some of the recognised good things, and when they heard
of nothing but Arithmetic and Astronomy and the Limit and the
One, they thought it all very strange. We know from Simplicius
that Aristotle, Speusippos, and Xenokrates had all published their
notes of this very discourse. We may infer that Plato did not write
his lectures, and that is confirmed by Aristotle’s reference to his
‘unwritten dogmas’ (ἄγραφα δόγματα). As we know, Plato did
not believe in books for serious purposes. In the Seventh Epistle he
complains that, even in his lifetime, some of his hearers had
published accounts of his doctrine of the Good, which, however,
he repudiates. The passage is worth quoting. He says:
There is no writing of mine on this subject, nor ever shall be. It is
not capable of expression like other branches of study; but, as the
result of long intercourse and a common life spent upon the thing, a
light is suddenly kindled as from a leaping spark, and when it has
reached the soul, it thenceforward finds nutriment for itself. I know
this, at any rate, that if these things were to be written down or stated
at all, they would be better stated by myself than by others, and I
know too that I should be the person to suffer most from their being
badly set down in writing. If I thought they could be adequately
written down and stated to the world, what finer occupation could I
have had in life than to write what would be of great service to man-
kind, and to reveal Nature in the light of day to all men? But I do not
even think the effort to attain this a good thing for men, except for the
very few who can be enabled to discover these things themselves by
means of a brief indication. The rest it would either fill with contempt
in a manner by no means pleasing or with a lofty and vain presumption
as though they had learnt something grand (341 c-e).
This is not mystery-mongering, as has been said; it is simply a
statement of the true theory of all higher education. To be of any
use, philosophy must be a man’s very own; it ceases to be philo-
sophy if it is merely an echo of another’s thought. The passage is
also a salutory warning to the interpreter of Plato. He may, in a
PROBLEMS 181
measure, recover the dry bones of his deepest thought; the spirit
of it is less easy to reproduce.
δ 172. We are to think, then, of Plato lecturing in the Academy
without notes, and of his more attentive hearers taking down what
they could. But the set discourse, though necessary, was by no
means the most important part of the work. It was better than a
book, no doubt, but it was only preparatory to the real thing. Its
function is to rouse the soul, to turn it to the light, but the soul
must see the light for itself. The Academy was no mere lecture-
hall; it was an institute for scientific research. Simplicius, who had
the library of the school at his disposal, tells us that Plato, who
held that the movements of the heavenly bodies must be regular,
‘propounded it as a problem’ to the mathematicians of the Academy
to find on what hypothesis (tiwwv ὑποτεθέντων) their apparent
irregularity could be explained so as to ‘save the appearances’.?
The word ‘problem’ calls for special attention in this connexion.
Both it and ‘protasis’, the verb corresponding to which (προτείνειν)
has been rendered ‘propound’ (proponere) in the passage just
referred to, originate in the Greek custom of asking riddles at
banquets, and the convivial associations of the words bear witness
to the idea of scientific research as a common life (τὸ συζῆν). That
accounts in turn for investigation taking the form of a quest for
solutions (λύσεις) of certain problems (προβλήματα) or difficulties
(ἀπορίαι). We have a collection of such in the Aristotelian corpus,
which is obviously derived from the work of his school, and the
passage of Simplicius just quoted shows that the method originated
in the Academy. It is, of course, the beginning of the system of
education through original research.
It is to be observed further that Plato by no means confined the
researches of his students to subjects of special interest to himself,
such as mathematics and astronomy. No doubt they had all to go
through a preliminary course of mathematical training, but there is
abundant evidence that biological studies were also pursued with
enthusiasm. The satire of the comic poets was largely directed to
this side of the Academy’s activity. Epikrates (fr. 5) laughs at Plato,
Speusippos and Menedemos for investigating by the method of
division to what genus the pumpkin belongs. Speusippos, Plato’s
nephew and successor, wrote many books on the classification of
animals and vegetables, and the few fragments that remain deal,
1 Simpl. de Caelo, pp. 488. 21; 492. 31 (Heiberg).
182 THE ACADEMY
for instance, with shell-fish and fungi. In the Critias (110 d sqq.)
Plato himself surprises us by an account of the geological history
of Attika and its economic consequences which is almost on a
level with the most modern discussions of the kind. The biological
work of Aristotle belongs to the early period of his life, and it is
natural to bring that into connexion with these facts. It remains to
be said that we must of course represent the Academy to ourselves
as well provided with scientific apparatus and collections. Aristo-
phanes takes it for granted in the Clouds that a scientific school
would possess maps and astronomical models as a matter of
course, and, if that was so in the fifth century, it may ΘΕΙΙΔΙΕΙΥ be
assumed in the fourth.
THE PROGRAMME OF STUDIES
δ 173. We may fairly take the higher education of the Guardians
outlined in the Republic as a guide to the course of study followed
in the Academy. We are expressly told that the mathematical part
of the course is to occupy the ten years from twenty to thirty, and
it has all the appearance of a regular programme. It would, how-
ever, be a mistake to suppose that what is said about the sciences in
the Republic represents the mature thought of Plato on the subject.
It was written either before the foundation of the Academy or very
shortly after, and the theories most characteristic of Plato’s
teaching are not yet elaborated. He is quite conscious of that. What
he proposed was a thorough criticism of the hypotheses of all the
sciences, and that had not yet been carried out. That is what he
means by the ‘longer way’, which has yet to be travelled (435 d,
504 b). We must be prepared to find, then, that in some important
respects the philosophy of the exact sciences given in the Republic
is completely transformed at a later date.
The programme is based on the principle that the function of
education is the conversion (περιστροφή) of the soul from the
contemplation of Becoming (γένεσις) to that of Being (οὐσία). As we
have seen, that distinction is Pythagorean, and it is therefore
natural that the course should consist of the four Pythagorean
sciences which survived in the medieval quadrivium, though with
this distinction, that plane and solid geometry are distinguished,
so as to give five studies (μαθήματα) instead of four. If we take these
in order, we shall see the point of view from which Plato started.
PROGRAMME OF STUDIES 183
1. Arithmetic. At this stage, Arithmetic is to be studied, not for
utilitarian or commercial purposes, but with a view to understand-
ing the nature of numbers by thought alone. It arises from the
ambiguity and relativity of sense perception. What appears one to
the senses also appears as many from another point of view. Two
appear as one and one as two, so it is the function of thought to
distinguish and separate these from the confusion in which they
are presented by sense. It is the business of Arithmetic to consider
numbers by themselves, not visible or corporeal numbers. A
visible or tangible unit admits of division, and so is many as well
as one, but unity itself is indivisible. Visible and tangible units are
not necessarily equal to one another, but the units of the arith-
metician are all absolutely equal. Such units cannot be apprehended
by sense, but only by thought, and that is what gives the study of
arithmetic its educational value (524 b — 526c).
2. Plane Geometry. Geometry too is to be studied for other than
utilitarian ends, for which, indeed, a very slight knowledge of it is
required. Though geometers talk of performing certain operations,
such as ‘squaring’ and ‘applying’ and ‘producing’, that is only a
manner of speaking, and Geometry too has to do with Being, not
with Becoming. Its objects are certain spatial relations which
simply are, whatever we may do, and do not come into being in
virtue of our constructions. This study too, then, is of value as
purifying an instrument of the soul (527 a-e).
3. Solid Geometry. Sokrates is about to pass from Geometry to
Astronomy, but recollects himself and points out that there is a
science intermediate between them, that which deals with the
‘third increase’ (τρίτη αὔξη), that is, with the cube, and generally
what has three dimensions, depth as well as length and breadth.
‘But’, says Glaukon, ‘that does not appear to have been invented
yet.’ Sokrates answers that this is because in the first place no state
holds such studies in honour, and in the second, because a director
(ἐπιστάτης) is required to guide them. If the state were to second
the efforts of such a director, they would soon be perfected. Even
as it is, their extreme elegance (χάρις, τὸ ἐπίχαρι) causes them to
make some progress (528 d).
As has already been indicated, this remarkable passage appears
to refer to the fact that, though the Pythagoreans had made a
beginning, the theory of the five regular solids was completed for
the first time by Theaitetos, while the problem of the duplication
G B.G.P.
184 THE ACADEMY
of the cube was not solved till a still later date. The term Stereo-
metry is not used here; it appears for the first time in the Epinomis
(990 d).
§ 174. The remaining studies deal with motion, and it is hinted
that there may be more than the two mentioned.
4. Astronomy. Astronomy is not to be studied merely for its use
in agriculture, navigation, or strategy, or even because it turns our
eyes upwards to a higher world. he visible motions of the heavenly
bodies with all their labyrinthine intricacy are related to true
astronomy only as the diagrams analysed by the geometer are
related to his science, that is to say, these apparent motions must
be regarded merely as illustrations (zapadetyyara).‘ We must
treat them as ‘problems’ (προβλήμασιν χρώμενοι), not as solutions.
What we have to study is ‘the true motions with which the real
velocity and the real slowness move in relation to one another, in
the true numbers and the true forms, and carry their contents with
them’ (529 d).
This sentence is easily misunderstood and requires elucidation.
In the first place, the visible motions of the heavenly bodies are
what we call their apparent motions, which are of great com-
plexity and at first sight seem quite irregular. ‘The planets move at
one time from east to west among the stars, at another from west to
east, and sometimes they are stationary altogether. That is the
‘problem’ we have to solve. The ‘real velocity’ (τὸ ὃν τάχος) is
spoken of simply as opposed to the apparent velocity. We should
not think it necessary to add ‘the real slowness’, but that is only an
instance of the Greek tendency to ‘polar expression’, and has no
serious importance. We may speak of a lesser velocity as a ‘slow-
ness’ if we please. Then this velocity is spoken of as carrying its
‘contents’ (τὰ ἐνόντα) with it. That is because the Greeks were in
the habit of attributing the orbital revolution to the orbit itself,
and not to the celestial body, which was regarded as occupying a
fixed place in its orbit. That again is due to their regarding all
orbital revolution as similar to that of the moon, the only case
which can be adequately studied without a telescope. The moon
always presents the same face to the earth (or nearly so), and, in the
absence of any indication to the contrary, it was not unreasonable
to suppose the other planets did the same. We say the rotation of
the moon upon its axis takes the same time as its revolution round
the earth; the Greeks expressed the same fact by saying the moon
PROGRAMME OF STUDIES 185
does not revolve at all relatively to its orbit. That is why Aristotle
can urge the fact of the moon’s always presenting the same face to
us in support of the view that none of the heavenly bodies rotate.
To us that is just what proves the moon does revolve on its axis,
but Aristotle is thinking of the orbit (or rather, in his case, the
sphere) to which the moon is attached. All this explains why it was
natural to speak of the heavenly bodies as the things ‘in the
velocity’ (ἐνόντα, sc. τῇ ταχύτητι). The ‘true numbers’ are the
number of days and years the revolutions take, and the ‘true forms’
are the circles, spirals, or whatever they may prove to be, which
they trace. What is meant, then, is simply that we must have a
science which will exhibit the true motions of the heavenly bodies
and not the motions they appear to have. The apparent motions
of the heavenly bodies no more express the laws of solid bodies in
motion than the diagrams of the geometer embody the truths of
geometry.
It is amusing to observe that such a utilitarian thing as “Green-
wich time’ has to take account of this. Our watches are set, not by
the visible sun, but by an ‘intelligible’ sun called the ‘mean sun’,
which only coincides with the visible sun four times a year, and
then only for an instant. That this illustration is not too far-
fetched is shown by the fact that the apparent anomaly of the sun’s
annual course was just one of the problems we know to have been
investigated in the Academy.? It may be added that this is fatal to
the interpretation which makes Plato’s astronomy refer to some
imaginary ‘ideal’ heavens. If it had, why should he have troubled
himself about the sun’s anomaly? It would have been so easy to say
that the intelligible sun had a uniform velocity, and to disregard
the shortcomings of the visible sun.
5. Harmonics. The next study is Harmonics, which the Pytha-
goreans regard as the counterpart of Astronomy. As the one deals
with motions apprehended by the eye, so does the other deal with
motions apprehended by the ear. The same principles will apply
here. Not to speak of those who attempt to determine the harmonic
intervals by ear, even the Pythagoreans themselves, who express
them by numerical ratios, do not sufficiently emancipate them-
selves from the sound as heard.° It is not enough to say that such
1 Adam’s interpretation of this passage is sufficiently refuted by the fantastic
account he has to give of τὰ ἐνόντα.
2 Simplicius im Phys. p. 292. 22 (Diels).
8 Aristoxenos represents the first class for us and Archytas the second.
186 THE ACADEMY
and such an interval is expressed by such and such a ratio; we
ought to consider which numbers are consonant with one another
and which are not, and to ask the reason of this in both cases.
Here, as in the case of Astronomy, we have an anticipation of the
science of a later age. The sounds we hear are produced by a
succession of ‘beats’ (πληγαί) of the air (we should say, of waves),
and the business of the musical theorist is to express the differences
of the musical intervals in terms of these, and not merely in terms
of the length of strings. So far as the Pythagorean system goes, it
would seem that the consonances might be expressed by any
other ratios just as well as those which have been experimentally dis-
covered. In fact, the Pythagorean intervals are a problem and not a
solution. The fact that some intervals are consonant, while others
are not, must be due to something in the nature of number itself.
δ 175. All these studies, however, are but the prelude to the
strain we have really to learn, and that is Dialectic. We know
already what Dialectic means in the Sokratic sense. It is the art of
question and answer, the art of giving a rational account of things
and of receiving such an account from others (διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι
λόγον). Even Xenophon knew that Sokrates made those who
associated with him ‘dialectical’, though he attributes to him an
erroneous etymology of the word.1 But here something more is
meant than the art of reasoning, or at any rate something more
special. In the Euthydemus (290 c) we are told that arithmeticians,
geometers, and astronomers must hand over their discoveries to
the dialectician for examination. Here we learn (533 b) that the
weakness of the method of hypothesis, as described for instance
by Sokrates in the Phaedo, is just this, that the hypothesis itself is
only established by the consistency of its consequences; it has not
itself been examined in the light of any higher principle. We are
told, accordingly, that, though geometers and the rest do in part
attain reality, they only see it ‘in a dream’. So long as they use
hypotheses and refuse to let them be moved, because they can give
no account of them, they cannot be said to behold true Being with
a waking vision. If we take for our starting-point what we do not
know, and our end and all the intermediate steps are only a con-
* Mem. iv. 5. 12. He makes him derive the verb διαλέγεσθαι from διαλέγειν κατὰ
γένη τὰ πράγματα. That is just like the derivation of σοφιστής from ὁ τῶν σοφῶν
ἴστης (-- ἐπιστήμων) in Prot. 312 ¢ or that of ὑπόθεσις from ὑποτίθημι, ‘lay a
foundation’, implied in Rep. 511 b. The Cratylus is full of such things, so Sok-
rates may really have said it.
DIALECTIC 187
catenation (συμπλοκή) of what we do not know, that is a mere
agreement (ὁμολογία) not to raise ultimate questions, and cannot
become science in the true sense of the word.
The defect of the special sciences is, then, that they depend on
hypotheses of which they can give no account, and are therefore
obliged to use sensible diagrams. We are told quite distinctly that
Dialectic proceeds by “destroying the hypotheses’ (ἀναιροῦσα τὰς
ὑποθέσεις). This has given much trouble to some interpreters, who
find it hard to believe that Plato desired, for instance, to ‘destroy’
the hypothesis of three kinds of angles, which he expressly men-
tions in this connexion (510 c) as fundamental in geometry. It is
impossible, however, to take the word I have rendered ‘destroy’
(ἐναιρεῖν, tollere) otherwise; for we have seen (δ 125) that it is a
technical term in this context. Further, the view of science taken in
the Republic really does demand the destruction of the hypotheses
of the special sciences. The hypothesis of three kinds of angles has
a spatial character, and that is just why the geometer is forced to
use sensible diagrams. The ideal is that Arithmetic, Geometry, and
the rest should all be reduced to one science, and this cannot be
done so long as their special hypotheses remain. It is only when
these have been removed that we can ascend to a first principle
which is no longer a postulate (to an ἀνυπόθετος ἀρχή), namely, the
Form of the Good. Then, and not till then, can we descend once
more without making use of sensible diagrams of any kind. The
whole of science would thus be reduced to a sort of teleological
algebra.
EUKLEIDES AND PLATO
§ 176. We shall understand this point of view better if we
consider how natural it was that, when Plato set himself to draw
up a scheme of scientific study for the Academy, he should be
influenced by the teaching of Eukleides of Megara. He had taken
refuge with him after the death of Sokrates, and the prominence
given to Phaidon as the narrator of the last discussion of Sokrates
on earth points in the same direction, for the school of Elis founded
by him was closely related to that of Megara. Plato was also
influenced, of course, by the Pythagorean associates of Sokrates,
but it looks as if he did not become personally intimate with the
leading Pythagoreans of his day till later. He would have little time
for that during his first visit to Italy and Sicily. This makes it
188 THE ACADEMY
necessary for us to learn all we can about Eukleides. It is not much,
unfortunately, but the few statements we have rest on the best
authority, and are of fundamental importance.
In the first place, as we have seen already (§ 117), Eukleides was
an Eleatic, and the doctrines of the Megaric school in a later
generation, as we know them from Aristokles,! still bear traces of
their Eleatic origin. Accordingly, though we are not entitled to
ascribe all these doctrines to Eukleides himself without more ado,
we cannot go far wrong in crediting him with those that are
definitely Eleatic in character. To begin with, we are told that the
Megarics considered it their business to ‘throw’ (καταβάλλειν)3
sensations and appearances and to trust to reasoning alone. That
goes without saying in an Eleatic. We are also told that they held
that Being was one and the Other is not, and that there was no
such thing as coming into being or ceasing to be or motion. That is
also sound Eleatic doctrine, and may be confidently attributed to
Eukleides. It is impossible, then, to suppose that he could have
accepted, and still less that he could have originated, the doctrine
Plato attributes to Sokrates in the Phaedo, for there we have a
plurality of forms which enter into the world of becoming.
Eukleides accordingly, though present, takes no part in the
discussion. On the other hand, he appears to have been deeply
interested in the teaching of Sokrates on the subject of the Good.
We still have a curious document written in the Doric dialect, in
which certain Sokratic doctrines about goodness are clearly
referred to. It is generally recognised that it belongs to the end of
the fifth century, and its ‘eristic’ character, taken in conjunction
with its Doric dialect, strongly suggest Megara as its place of origin.
At any rate, we know that Eukleides identified the Good with the
One, which is also called by other names, such as God or Wisdom.
It is only possible to guess his exact meaning, but the fact of the
identification is certain, and its connexion with the teaching of
Sokrates seems plain. As there is nothing else than the One, he
inferred that there is no such thing as evil. The method by which it
is shown that the senses and the things that appear to them are
unreal, is to show that there are ‘two statements’ (δισσοὶ λόγοι)
1 Aristokles was the teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias. The statements
referred to are preserved in Euseb. Pr. Ev. xiv. 17.
2 See p. 113, 7. 2.
3 The δισσοὶ λογοι (formerly known as Dialexeis). It is printed in Diels, Vors.* ii.
pp. 334 544. See Taylor, Varia Socratica, i. pp. 91 546.
THE GOOD 189
which may be made with equal truth and cogency about all of
them. That is what the Megarics called Dialectic and their
opponents called Eristic. If we may trust Aristotle’s account of the
matter, the method had degenerated by this time into a mere
quibbling about words. It does not follow that it was anything but
a serious doctrine in the hands of Eukleides; for Plato had not yet
cleared up the meaning of ‘is’ and ‘is not’, and we shall see good
grounds for believing it was just his interest in the teaching of
Eukleides that led him to do so. It is highly probable, then, that the
account of Dialectic in the Republic was written under this influence,
and in that case we can most easily understand it as an effort to do
justice to the position of Eukleides without following him in
reducing all the forms to the intelligible One, which is also some-
how the Good. I have said (§ 129) that I regard the doctrine of the
Good as Sokratic, but there are some things said about it in the
Republic which seem to be Plato’s own, for they are directed against
the identification of the form of Good with Being on the one hand
and Wisdom on the other, and these are the doctrines of Eukleides.
According to the Republic, the Good is neither Being nor Know-
ledge, but the cause of both. It altogether transcends and is ‘on the
other side’ of Being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας), as it transcends Know-
ledge. In some such way as this, it may have seemed to Plato at the
time, the monism of Eukleides might be avoided, while all that
was valuable in his system might be preserved.
The theory which would naturally follow from this way of
regarding the Good would be one of ‘emanation’, and that is in
fact the view which was associated with it when the doctrine was
revived in later days. To a considerable extent Neoplatonism may
be fairly described as a development of the thought that was in
Plato’s mind when he wrote this part of the Republic. We have no
means of knowing how far Plato himself had gone in this direction.
He could not in any case have made Sokrates the mouthpiece of
such a theory; and, as has been indicated, he has probably strained
historical verisimilitude to some extent in saying as much as he
does. We shall never know more on the subject, for he never
speaks in this way of the form of Good again, and Aristotle never
even alludes to this passage. As we shall see, the solution that
finally commended itself to Plato was reached on other lines, and
we have now to consider the steps by which he finally emancipated
himself from the Megaric doctrine.
κα δὶ
Criticism
§ 177. Plato’s emancipation from the influence of Eukleides
seems to have been gradual. For about twenty years he carried on
his work in the Academy without interruption, and it does not
appear that he published any more dialogues till towards the end of
that period. His hands were probably too full. A time came,
however, when he felt it necessary to define his attitude to other
philosophers, and that could only be done by writings addressed
to a wider circle than the school. We cannot estimate the interval
of time which separates the Theaetetus from the Republic and the
Phaedrus, but it was probably one of a good many years. When
Plato began to write dialogues again they had a different character
from those of his early life. This is marked first of all by a signi-
ficant change in form. Some of the very earliest dialogues had been
simple dramatic sketches in direct speech, but this form soon
proved inadequate for Plato’s purpose, so long as that was mainly
to give a picture of Sokrates as he lived and moved. Unless inter-
preted by action it makes too great a demand on the reader, who
has to supply the mise en scéne and the stage directions himself.
Narrated dialogue, on the other hand, allows of descriptions and
comments which make the picture live, and all the most artistic of
Plato’s dialogues are therefore narrated. When, however, the
scientific interest begins to prevail over the artistic, this form
becomes very cumbrous. We see it at its worst in the Parmenides,
the formula of which is ‘Antiphon said that Pythodoros said that
Parmenides said’. In the Theaetetus there is an express reference
to this question of form. Like the Phaedo and the Parmenides, that
dialogue opens with a short dramatic introduction; but this leads
up, not to a narrated dialogue as in their case, but to one which is
also dramatic in form. That, we are told (143 c), is to avoid the
troublesome repetition of such phrases as ‘And I said’, “He
assented’, ‘He agreed’. It is true that the Parmenides is probably a
THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES Ig!
little later than the Theaetetus, but they both belong to the same
period, and Plato may well have been engaged on the one when he
produced the other. If so, we can easily understand his conceiving
a distaste for the narrative form. At any rate, he never made use of
it again, and his latest dialogues are simply dramatic, just as his
earliest had been.
§ 178. Philosophically, the distinguishing feature of these
dialogues is Plato’s preoccupation with the Megarics. The
Theaetetus is dedicated to Eukleides, or rather to his memory; for
it is not likely that he was still living. Plato does not introduce
living characters if he can help it. He was about to criticise the
doctrine of Eukleides, and the Theaetetus is meant to lead up to
that criticism, but he still cherished, we may suppose, a feeling of
regard for the man. Nor is there anything in the dialogue that
directly impugns his doctrine. It does not, we shall see, go far
beyond the possibilities of discussion within the Sokratic society
itself. The rift, as has been pointed out (§ 129), was probably in
existence before the death of Sokrates, but was regarded as a
difference within the school. For the same reason, there is no
difficulty in making Sokrates the chief speaker. And yet the point
of view is no longer strictly Sokratic. Plato is now as much
impressed by the dangers of a one-sided intellectualism as by those
of a one-sided sensationalism. He avoids the doctrine of forms
altogether in this dialogue, though there are points in the argument
where we should expect it to be discussed. It was taking another
shape in his mind by this time, and he could not make Sokrates the
mouthpiece of that.
§ 179. This brings us face to face with the very important
question of the place assigned to Sokrates in the dialogues of
Plato’s maturity. The discussion narrated in the Theaetetus is
supposed to have been taken down by Eukleides and revised and
corrected by Sokrates himself (143 a). Further, it is supposed to
be read aloud at Megara years after the death of Sokrates. The
informal discussion of the earlier dialogues has become a deliberate
statement of doctrine intended to be read and criticised. As,
however, it only states a problem which had really been raised by
Sokrates, and does not give the solution, there is no difficulty in
his being the chief speaker, though by a curious device, certain
doctrines are said to have been known to him only ‘in a dream’.
The Parmenides is also represented as a deliberate statement; for it
Ι02 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
is supposed to have been learnt by heart and repeated long after-
wards, a fiction which would seem more credible then than in this
age of books. This dialogue contains a direct criticism of the
doctrine of forms as that is stated in the Phaedo and the Republic,
and the introduction of Parmenides as the chief speaker suggests
that it was the Eleatic criticism that in fact forced Plato to seek for
a more satisfactory formulation of it. He was bound to make his
position clear; for, whether he himself had ever held the doctrine
criticised or not, he had certainly done a great deal to propagate it
by his Sokratic writings. Clearly Sokrates cannot be the chief
speaker here, but it would have been unseemly to introduce
Eukleides, for instance, as criticising him. So Plato takes advantage
of the visit of Parmenides and Zeno to Athens almost a century
before to put the criticism into the mouth of the founder of the
school to which Eukleides belonged. It would have been too much,
however, to represent Parmenides as asserting the reality of ‘not
being’, which is the theme of the Sophist, so the leading part in that
dialogue and its sequel, the Statesman, is taken by an Eleatic
stranger, who is a very unorthodox disciple of the great Parmenides.
Plato seems to mean by introducing this enigmatic figure, who
certainly expresses his own views, that he himself, rather than the
disciples of Eukleides, was the true successor of Parmenides. In
the Philebus we seem to come nearer Plato’s own philosophy than
we do anywhere else, and yet Sokrates is once more the chief
speaker. That is a problem we shall have to face later. In the
Timaeus and Critias Sokrates is only a listener, and in the Laws he
does not appear at all. We are told in the Phaedo that Sokrates had
rejected all attempts at a mechanical explanation of the world, and
the Timaeus contains such an attempt. As to the works which deal
with human history and institutions, like the Critias and the Laws,
we learn from the Timaeus (19 a—d) why Sokrates can take no part.
He could paint the picture of an ideal state, but he could not make
the figures move. He is made to confess that he could not, for
instance, represent his state as engaged in the struggle for existence
with other states; to do that men are required who by nature and
training have a gift for practical politics as well as for philosophy.
This is a very valuable passage as evidence that Plato was conscious
that some themes were appropriate for Sokrates and others were
not. The implied criticism of his master’s political teaching should
also be noted. Plato knew very well that, on its constructive side,
THE THEAETETUS 193
it was too uncompromising and on its critical side too negative.
That is partly why so many followers of Sokrates turned out
reactionaries rather than statesmen.
THE THEAETETUS
§ 180. The purpose of the Theaetetus is to clear the ground by
showing that knowledge cannot be identified either with sensation
or with thought. Theaitetos, after whom the dialogue is named,
was one of the original members of the Academy and one of the
most distinguished, and we gather that he died of wounds and
dysentery after a battle at Corinth, which was probably that of
369 B.c. It was certainly before this dialogue was written; for the
beautiful description of his character in the introduction can only
be read as a tribute to a gifted disciple too soon lost. His eminence
as a mathematician is skilfully suggested by the story of how,
when a mere lad, he discovered a general formula for numbers of
which the square root is irrational. It seems probable that his
death was still recent when the dialogue was composed, and for that
and other reasons it is most probably dated in 368 B.c. or a little
later, when Plato was about sixty years old. The other speakers are
the ‘younger Sokrates’, the friend of Theaitetos, and like him an
original member of the Academy, and the mathematician 'Theo-
doros of Kyrene. He had been a follower of Protagoras and a
friend of Sokrates. He therefore belongs to an earlier generation
than the two lads whose teacher he is, and had certainly passed
away long before this dialogue was written. The dialogue is
supposed to take place just before the trial of Sokrates (210 d),
that is to say, more than thirty years before it was composed.
§ 181. The first serious answer given by Theaitetos to the
question, “What is knowledge?’ is that it is sensation (αἴσθησις).
That definition agrees with what Protagoras said in another form
about knowledge, namely, that man is the measure of all things, of
what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not. This means that
as a thing appears to me, so it is to me, and as it appears to you, so
it is to you. Instead of saying ‘as a thing appears to me’, we may
equally well say ‘as I am sensible of it’, for instance, ‘A wind
appears to me cold’ is the same thing as ‘I am sensible that a wind
is cold’. In a word, appearance (φαντασία) and sense (αἴσθησις) are
the same thing in the case of hot and cold and the like. Sensation,
194 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
then, is always sensation of what is, and cannot err; for what is is
that of which I am sensible (152 a-c).
That, however, was only a dark saying of Protagoras addressed
to the vulgar crowd; to the initiated he told the truth, and the truth
is this. It is not true to say that what appears 7s. In reality nothing
is, everything is becoming, as Herakleitos and others have taught.
Motion is the cause of growth, while rest is the cause of decay and
ceasing to be. Motion is good, and rest is evil. You cannot rightly
use the terms ‘something’, ‘such a thing’, ‘one’, ‘is’; for, if you say
‘Something is great’, it will appear small from another point of
view, and so with the rest (152 d).
In the light of this principle let us consider the case of sight. When
we use the words ‘white colour’, we must not suppose that what we
mean by these words is either something outside the eyes or some-
thing in the eyes. We must not suppose it to be in any place at all. We
must say rather that it results from the impact (προσβολή) of the eye
on the appropriate movement (zpos τὴν προσήκουσαν φοράν) out-
side it, being neither what impinges nor what is impinged upon, but a
something between the two having a proper character of its own for
each individual (154 a). Thus no one knows whether what appears to
him is the same as what appears to another, and everyone knows that
what appears to himself in one way at one time appears to him
differently at another. And so with other objects; for instance that
which after measurement and comparison we call great, that which
after touching we call hot, become respectively small and cold by the
presence of greater or hotter objects. Six dice compared with four are
‘more’ and ‘half as many again’; compared with twelve, they are ‘less’
and ‘half’, yet they are not changed in themselves. They become more
and less, and yet nothing has been added to them or subtracted from
them (153 d — 154d).
On the other hand, if we look into our own thought, we shall agree
in the three following propositions: (1) Nothing can become greater
or less either in size or number so long as it is equal to itself; (2)
Nothing can increase or decrease to which nothing is added or from
which nothing is taken away; (3) Nothing can be what it was not
before without becoming and having become. But all these proposi-
tions are in direct contradiction to the instance of the dice which we
considered above, or again to such a case as this — ‘I, Sokrates, am
now taller than you, Theaitetos; in a year, I shall be smaller (for
Theaitetos is still a growing lad), though nothing will have been taken
from me, nor shall I have become, though I shall be, what I was not
before’ (154 d — 155).
Let us go deeper into the mysteries of those wise men of whom we
spoke, taking care that none of the uninitiated hear us, the ‘hammer-
THE THEAETETUS 195
and-tongs persons’ (ἀντίτυποι ἄνθρωποι), who think that nothing
is but what they can clutch in their hands, and refuse the right of
being to actions and processes and everything invisible. The
hidden truth is this. Nothing is but motion, but there are two forms
(εἴδη) of motion, either of infinite extent, the one having the power
of acting, the other of being acted upon. ‘The mutual intercourse of
these motions begets an infinity of offspring (ἔκγονα), each of
which is a twin, being partly sensation and partly the sensible, the
one always simultaneously accompanying the other. Of the infinity
of sensations many have received names, warming and cooling,
sight, hearing and smell, pleasure and pain, desire and fear, and so
forth. The corresponding sensible things are colours, sounds, and
so forth. These motions are quick and slow; those that are slow
take place in one spot and in relation to what is in contact with
them, and are thus the producers; those that are produced are
swifter, for their motion is from place to place (155 d — 156 d).
Thus what we call seeing may be analysed as follows. On the one
side there must be the eye, on the other something commensurable
(σύμμετρον) with the eye. These are the ‘slower motions’ which take
place in one spot. If they come into one another’s presence, from the
former to the latter there is a motion, sight; from the latter to the
former there is a motion, whiteness. These are the ‘swifter motions’
which pass from place to place. This whiteness cannot be said to be
anything ; it is continually becoming as a result of motion. Nor can we
even say that what acts or what is acted upon 7s anything that can be fixed
and individualised in thought; for the one is not until it meets the
other, and the one in one combination appears as the other in another
combination (156 d — 157 8).
Strictly speaking, then, we must not admit any terms such as ‘this’,
‘that’, ‘something’, but must think of everything as a process of
becoming, being destroyed, being changed, and this both in the
case of particular sensible qualities and of aggregates (ἁθροίσματα)
of particular sensible qualitities, such as what we call ‘man’, ‘stone’,
and every individual object (157 c).
It only remains to consider the question of the sensations of
dreaming, insane and diseased persons. We cannot prove that what
we call dreaming is not waking, and vice versa; for in both states
the soul upholds the truth of what appears to it at the moment, and
so in the case of insanity and disease, except that these states last
longer than sleep. The answer is simple. Sokrates awake or in
health is, taken as a whole, other than Sokrates in sickness or
196 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
asleep. Accordingly, any natural agent will act upon him otherwise
in these different states, and the resultant of the agent and what it
acts on will be different. Now the resultant is what it is, not in
itself, nor relatively to the agent only, nor relatively to Sokrates
only, but relatively to both. When someone becomes sensible, he
becomes sensible of something, and, when something becomes
sensible, it becomes sensible to someone, and what the person is or
becomes, he is or becomes relatively to that thing, and so with the
thing. The being or reality (οὐσία), then, of the moment (1.6. the
coexistent, correlative sensation and sensible) is bound to both
the agents of which it is the resultant; and, from the side of the
person, sensation, the momentary state, is true; for it is 4 sensation
of what the person at the moment 7s (157 e — 160 d).
§ 182. This is obviously a well-thought-out and coherent theory
of sensation. We are not told whose it was, though it is made quite
plain that it was not to be found in the book of Protagoras (ὃ 92).
There are certain points in it which remind us of what we are told
about the Herakleitean Kratylos, who criticised his master for
saying that we cannot step twice into the same river. We cannot
do so even once. And yet, if the theory just expounded were his,
we should surely hear a great deal more about him than we do.
On the other hand, it can hardly be an improvised fiction; it is too
strongly characterised and too personal for that. It is, of course,
quite on the lines of the view of sensation everywhere attributed
to Sokrates, so there is no difficulty in putting it into his mouth;
but it must clearly have been worked out by someone who believed
in it as an adequate account of knowledge. On the whole, it seems
best to regard it as in this form Plato’s own. Aristotle tells us that
in his youth Plato had been familiar with the doctrine of Kratylos,
and had adopted it, and there is an earlier dialogue called by the
name of that thinker, in which Herakleitean doctrine is discussed.
Aristotle further tells us that Plato continued to hold this doctrine
to the end, and there is certainly nothing in it, as an account of
sensation, that he need ever have wished to retract. In fact, a
thorough-going sensationalism is the necessary foundation of
Platonism. I assume, then, that the doctrine is that of Kratylos,
while the elaboration of it is Plato’s. That will account for the
obvious zest with which he expounds it, and his equally obvious
1 It is probable, indeed, that this is only Aristotle’s inference from the Cratylus
and the Theaetetus, but it is a fair inference.
THE THEAETETUS 197
annoyance at the cheap objections which may so easily be made to
1t.
These objections are certainly captious enough, and Sokrates
himself protests that it is treating Protagoras unfairly to urge them.
He even undertakes to reply to them in the name of Protagoras,
since he himself is dead. They have a certain historical interest;
for some of them reappear in the eristic of the later Megaric
school, and that of itself suggests they may have originated in the
circle of Eukleides. To discuss them here would merely divert the
reader’s attention from the main argument. As Sokrates says
(165 d), there is no end to the attacks which might be made on the
senses by one of these ‘mercenary sharpshooters’, who take you
captive by the spell of their wisdom, and will not let you go again
without a ransom.! He proceeds, accordingly, to restate the theory
of Protagoras in a form which secures it against cheap criticism of
this kind.
§ 183. As restated by Sokrates, the doctrine of Protagoras is as
follows. However true it may be that the sensations of each indivi-
dual are his and his only (ἴδιαι ἑκάστῳ), and that what ἦς (if the word
is to be used at all) is what appears to the individual and to him
alone, Protagoras never intended to deny the distinction between
wise and unwise. He would say that the wise man is one who is
able to change bad beliefs to good. Belief, or what appears to one
man, differs from belief, or what appears to another, not as true
from false (for what appears to the individual zs, and is therefore
true and the only truth), but as good from bad, healthy from
diseased, and the wise man is he who by his words can make what
is good appear, and therefore be, good for the state and the indivi-
dual alike.
Let us examine this. We shall see the bearing of it best if we
consider questions of expediency or the advantageous (τὸ ὠφέλιμον).
In such questions it will be admitted that one man is a better
adviser than another, even by those who maintain that such
distinctions as right and wrong are only conventional, that is, that
they have no independent reality by nature, but depend for their
existence and duration on the opinion of the community. No one,
in fact, would maintain, except as a mere form of words, that what
a state thinks advantageous for it zs therefore advantageous for it.
1 The reference to the Megarics is unmistakable here. The rift within the
Sokratic school is evidently widening.
198 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
This will be still more obvious if we consider the whole ‘form’
(εἶδος) to which the advantageous must be referred. The general
characteristic of it is that it has to do with the future. Now we may
say that the present sensation of the individual is the only test
(κριτήριον) by which we can judge what is, but it will not be
maintained that it is also the test of what is to be. With regard to
that, the belief of the professional or the specialist always carries
more weight than that of the layman. Where the future is concerned,
it is not everyone, but the man who is wiser than others, who will
be the ‘measure’, and Protagoras himself admits this; for he holds
the wise man to be the man who can replace worse by better beliefs
with regard to these very things. We see, then, that when we state
the doctrine of Protagoras sympathetically, it at once takes us
beyond sensationalism. It is no longer true, even according to him,
that what appears to me zs to me, and what appears to you Zs to you.
This is specially noted (179 b) as the argument which is most fatal
to the doctrine of Protagoras, though there is another which also
disproves it. Protagoras must admit that the beliefs of other people
are valid for them, and most other people do not believe the theory
of Protagoras to be true. Therefore it is not true for them.!
§ 184. This piece of reasoning is interrupted by a magnificent
digression on the philosophic life, conceived as it was in the Gorgias
and the Phaedo. It is impossible to summarise a passage like this;
it must be read as it stands. Still, we are bound to ask ourselves
why it is inserted here. It comes in the middle of a discussion
intended to show that the wise man is the best judge of what is
advantageous for the community, and yet it describes in glowing
colours the aloofness of the philosopher from practical concerns
of every kind. The world is of necessity evil, and the philosopher
will strive to escape with all speed from it to a better. The only way
to do this is to become likened unto God, so far as that may be, and
this likeness is to be attained by the cultivation of holiness and
wisdom, and especially of geometry and astronomy. That is just
the doctrine Plato consistently attributes to Sokrates, but it can
hardly be an adequate representation of his own attitude to life at
the time he wrote the Theaetetus. He was shortly to become
involved in politics of a decidedly practical nature, as we shall see,
and the Academy was as much a school for statesmen and legis-
1 This is the argument which came to be known as the περιτροπή or ‘turning the
tables’. It was also used against Protagoras by Demokritos (Sext. Emp. vii 389).
THE THEAETETUS 199
lators as anything else. In the Timaeus Sokrates admits, as we have
seen, that practical politics is something foreign to his interests,
and we might therefore say that the present passage is inserted to
keep the picture of him true to life, at a time when Plato was
entering on a course his master would have shrunk from in-
stinctively. I believe that to be true, but it is not the whole truth.
I believe that Plato, though he had learnt the duty of philosophers
to descend in turn into the Cave,} still felt that the life here
described was in truth the highest. It is not uncommon for a man
of action to feel intensely the superiority of the contemplative life;
and it is not unnatural for such a man, if he is also a great artist, to
sing the praises of what has become for him an impossible ideal,
though he may recognise it in his inmost heart as saving truth. In
the ‘digression’ of the Theaetetus I think we may see Plato’s
reluctant farewell to the theoretic life. At any rate, he tells us
himself that it is a digression unconnected with the main theme of
the dialogue, and he must have had some motive for inserting it.
ὃ 185. We must now examine the claims of the theory of uni-
versal motion to give an account of knowledge. We must not
forget that Melissos and Parmenides have asserted an exactly
opposite theory, namely, that all is one and at rest in itself, having
no space to move in. We stand, then, in a cross-fire between two
hostile camps. Let us attack ‘the streamers’ (οἵ ῥέοντες) first. We
shall see that, on their theory, knowledge is impossible (179 d —
181 b).
When we say ‘everything moves’, what do we mean by ‘moves’?
There are two forms (εἴδη) of motion: (1) motion from place to place
(φορά); (2) motion from state to state (ἀλλοίωσις). In other words,
motion is either locomotion or alteration; and, if motion is universal,
it must include both. Since, then, everything not only moves its place,
but also alters its state, we cannot ascribe any quality to what moves;
for what we call qualities (ποιότητες) are nothing but perpetual pro-
cesses going on between what acts and what is acted upon, and
accordingly, in the very moment of being named, the quality is gone.
Similarly, as we may not speak of sensible qualities, so we may not
speak of sensations; for each sensation is in process, and cannot be
called sight, hearing, or the like, any more than not-sight, not-hearing,
and the like. And, if we cannot speak of sensation, we cannot speak of
knowledge, which we identified with sensation, and the answer of
Theaitetos was no answer, and the attempt to prove it by the theory
of universal motion has only resulted in proving that all answers are
1 Rep. 520 c: καταβατέον ἐν μέρει.
200 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
equally right. In fact, we are not entitled to distinguish one answer
from another; for such words as ‘thus’ and ‘not thus’ imply fixity, not
motion (181 b — 183 b).
Sokrates declines to examine the ‘partisans of the Whole’ (οἱ τοῦ
ὅλου στασιῶται), Melissos and Parmenides, for the present; we
must come back to the original answer of 'Theaitetos.
§ 186. In ordinary language we speak of ‘seeing with the eyes’,
‘hearing with the ears’, and so on, but strictly we ought to say, not
that the eyes are that with which we see (@ ὁρῶμεν), but that they
are the instruments (ὄργανα) through which (δὲ ὧν), or by means
of which, we see. For we cannot suppose ourselves to be like so
many Wooden Horses, each with a number of sensations sitting
inside; we must suppose that there is some one constituent element
(εἶδος) in us — call it soul or what not — in which all these sensa-
tions converge, and to which they serve as instruments when we
are sensible of objects. This distinction between the one identical
element and the instruments employed by it may be made clear as
follows. The instruments through which we are sensible of hot,
hard, light, sweet things are various parts of the body. Each of
these instruments has a specific power (δύναμις), and that which
one can do another cannot; we cannot be sensible of sound by
means of sight, nor of colour by means of hearing. If, then, we
have a thought of anything which is common both to sound and
colour, this must be due to some other instrument than seeing or
hearing, and it is certain that we do have thoughts of things which
are common to the objects of different senses. Let us see what these
are (184 b — 185 a).
To begin with, we have such thoughts as ‘colour and sound are’,
‘each is other than the other and the same as itself’, ‘both are two’,
‘each is one’, ‘they are like or unlike one another’, and so on. What,
then, is the power and what is the instrument through which it
acts, by which we are enabled to find this common element to
which we give such names as being and not-being (οὐσία καὶ τὸ μὴ
εἶναι), likeness and unlikeness (ὁμοιότης καὶ ἀνομοιότης), sameness
and otherness (τὸ ταὐτόν τε καὶ τὸ θάτερον), unity and number
(τὸ ἕν καὶ τὸν ἄλλον ἀριθμόν), odd and even (περιττὸν καὶ ἄρτιον),
fair and foul (καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρόν), good and bad (ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακόν)"
Not one of these common properties (κοινά) has any specific instru-
ment by which it is apprehended, as was the case with such
1 ChE: GrePhipit4o, mar
THE THEAETETUS 201
properties as sweetness, hardness, and so forth; it seems rather
that in those cases the soul is its own instrument (αὐτὴ δὲ αὑτῆς
ἐπισκοπεῖ), and acts by itself (καθ᾽ αὑτήν).
The simple sensation, then, of the sensible qualities of things
takes place through the affections of the body (τὰ τοῦ σώματος
παθήματα); such sensation begins with birth and is common to
man and beasts. On the other hand, the apprehension of the com-
mon qualities of things implies comparison and reflexion (τὸ
ἀναλογίζεσθαι, συλλογισμός, συμβάλλειν), whether of the most
common property, that of being, or of those of sameness and
difference and the rest, or of those of fair and foul, good and bad,
the investigation of which last implies comparison in a pre-
eminent degree in the bringing of past and present into relation
with future, which requires time and effort and education (185 a —
186 c).
It is at this point that we should expect Sokrates — the Sokrates
we have learnt to know from the Phaedo and the Republic — to
introduce the doctrine of incorporeal and intelligible forms; but
nothing whatever is said about them either here or in any other
part of the dialogue. Instead, we have the beginnings of a theory of
what were afterwards called Categories, and these are regarded as
certain common predicates which the soul apprehends without the
instrumentality of sense, and by means of which it organises the
manifold of sense. It is also to be observed that these common
predicates apprehended by the soul alone include not only
categories of reality (οὐσία), but categories of value (ὠφελία). The
practical is becoming more promiment than it was in the earlier
dialogues.
§ 187. Now, if there are predicates of this kind which are
common to the sensations of all the organs of sense, and are
apprehended by a purely mental activity, it follows that we cannot
identify knowledge with sensation. The apprehension of being is
essential to knowledge. Being and truth cannot be apprehended in
the affections of the body, but only in the soul’s reflexion about
them. We must, therefore, look for knowledge under the name
which describes the proper activity of the soul when it is concerned
with what is. That name is judgement (τὸ δοξάξειν). Is that to be
identified with knowledge? (186 ο — 187 a).
The definition of judgement is not given till later, but it will be
convenient to state it here. Thought (τὸ διανοεῖσθαι) is the dis-
202 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
course (διάλογος) that the soul holds alone with itself. When it
has come to a determination, whether slowly or by a swift dart at a
conclusion, and is at last at one and no longer at variance with
itself, we call this its judgement (δόξα). Here we have a very remark-
able change in terminology. In the Republic the word (δόξα), which
is now used to signify the completed result of thought (διάνοια),
means something lower than thought, and covers ‘imagination’
(εἰκασία) and belief (πίστις). Plato is preparing to attack the problem
of predication in his own way, and he wants a word for ‘judgement’,
and this seems the most natural to take. We must understand the
term here in the sense in which it is defined, and not in that which
it bears in earlier dialogues. It is the characteristically Platonic as
distinct from the Sokratic use of the word. It recurs in the later
dialogues, and in certain Academic passages of Aristotle. We have
to ask, then, whether knowledge is to be found within this activity
of the soul. Does simple judgement contain in itself the guarantee
of truth?
δ 188. The second section of the Theaetetus is accordingly
devoted to showing that no representation of the independent
(αὐτὴ καθ᾽ αὑτήν) action of the soul can be made to explain the
undoubted fact of the distinction between true and false judgement.
It is shown that thought alone is as incapable of yielding know-
ledge as sensation alone, nor is it clear how any combination of
sensation and thought can yield knowledge.
In the first place, we can only say that true judgement (ἀληθὴς
δόξα) 5 knowledge. 'True judgement or thought is to judge something
to be what it is; false judgement or thought is to judge something to
be other than it is. But this at once raises a difficulty. How can
thought as such be other than true? How can there be a false
judgement at all? So long as we confine ourselves to the inde-
pendent activity of soul, it would seem that false judgement is as
impossible as we have seen false sensation to be. Three possible
accounts of it are examined, and are all found το be equally un-
satisfactory. They either imply that it is possible to know and not
to know the same thing at the same time, or that we can judge
without judging anything, or that it is possible to judge one thought
to be another. 'To identify knowledge with the work of the mind is,
therefore, open to the same objections as its identification with
sensation. All judgements will be equally true, and the distinction
between knowledge and ignorance, wisdom and unwisdom, will
THE THEAETETUS 203
disappear. Thought, in fact, can be attacked with precisely the
same weapons as sensation (187 b — 190 e).
§ 189. It might seem more hopeful to regard true judgement as
the reference of an impression of sense to the right or correspond-
ing mental counterpart. We might suppose that memory is like a
waxen tablet in the soul on which images are impressed. It is
impossible that two impressions on this tablet should be confused,
or that a sensation which makes an impression on it should be
confused with another simultaneous sensation. It is, however,
possible that there should be error in the reference of a sensation
to the memory-image left by a former sensation, if that image was
not sharply impressed or if it has been worn out. That would be
false judgement. This, however, is still unsatisfactory; for it
would restrict true judgement, and therefore knowledge, to
judgements about actually present sensations. It would not ex-
plain, for instance, how some people can judge that 5+ 7=12,
and others that 5+7=11, where there is no present sensation of
such a number of objects. To explain this, we should have to make
a distinction between having and possessing knowledge (ἕξις
ἐπιστήμης and κτῆσις ἐπιστήμης), of which the latter may exist
without the former, just as we may possess a coat without actually
having it on. Let us compare the mind to a dovecot in which we
have shut up a number of birds that we have caught. We possess
these birds, indeed, but we cannot be said to have them till we
have caught them again. Now we may catch the wrong bird, and
in the same way we may catch the wrong piece of knowledge, and
that will be false judgement.
Even that, however, is unsatisfactory, unless we suppose there
are ignorances flying about in our mental dovecot also. But that
will not do either; for, when we have caught our bird, it is a bird
in the hand and we know what it is. We are not any nearer an
explanation of false judgement than we were before (191 b —
200 d).
Finally, it is certain that there may be true judgement without
knowledge. The pleaders in the law courts operate by means of
persuasion and not by means of instruction, and yet the jury may be
led by them to form a true judgement. This suggests to Theaitetos
a definition which he has heard of knowledge, namely, that it is
true judgement accompanied by a rational account of itself
(ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ λόγου). Sokrates identifies this definition of
204 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
knowledge with an elaborate theory he has heard ‘in a dream’.
There are some persons who maintain that the real is unknowable.
Our sensations are produced by simple elements (στοιχεῖα) which
are unknowable just because they are simple. They can only be
named and cannot be defined, nor can we predicate anything of
them, not even ‘being’ or ‘this’. Such properties as these are com-
mon to all sorts of things and cannot be regarded as properties of
the simple reals. These can, however, be apprehended by sense, and
we can give them names (ὀνόματα). They can also combine with
one another just as letters (στοιχεῖα) can form a syllable (avAAaB7).
If we combine their names, we get a statement or proposition (Adyos),
and that makes their combinations knowable (201 a — 203 Ὁ).
§ 190. The ‘dream’ of Socrates reminds us of the ‘mystery’ of
Protagoras, and we feel that they are both devices for going beyond
historical verisimilitude. There is also the same difficulty about
the authorship of this theory, as there is about that of the sen-
sationalist theory described in the early part of the dialogue. In the
first place, it must be observed that it is a thoroughly idealist
theory in the modern sense of that word. The simple reals are
themselves unknowable, and all our knowledge is the work of the
mind. In this respect it is the exact counterpart of the earlier
sensationalist theory. Thought is everything here as sensation was
everything there. Now there can be no doubt that the definition of
knowledge as true judgement accompanied by a rational account
of itself or ground (μετὰ λόγου) belongs to the Sokratic school.
It is the definition adopted by Diotima in the Symposium (202 a),
and it is also taught in the Meno (97 e sq.). It is more difficult to
say where the elaboration of it we find here comes from. Aristotle
appears to allude to it in a passage of the Metaphysics, in the course
of which he makes a remark about the view of Antisthenes ‘and
such uncultivated people’ that it is impossible to define the ‘What
is it?’, because a definition would be a ‘long enumeration’ (μακρὸς
λόγος), and on the strength of this the whole theory has been
attributed to Antisthenes. But all Aristotle says is that the theory
in question appears to give plausibility to the view of Antisthenes,
and, whatever we may think of it, it is not a theory likely to have
been set up by ‘uncultivated persons’.1 Antisthenes denied the
1 Met. B, 3. 1043 b, 5 sqqg. Antisthenes is not mentioned till b, 24, and the
passing manner in which he is alluded to seems to me to exclude the idea that
Aristotle was thinking of him at all when he began the chapter.
THE THEAETETUS 205
possibility of predication, whereas, according to this theory,
knowledge consists of nothing else. Nor is there any reason why
Sokrates should ‘dream’ of Antisthenes. The suggestion made
long ago by Lewis Campbell that the theory is that of ‘some
Pythagorean’ is much more plausible. The terminology of letters
(στοιχεῖα) and syllables (συλλαβαῦ is characteristic of the
Pythagoreans, and we can see quite well how these Pythagoreans
who refused to adopt the Sokratic doctrine of the participation of
sensible things in the forms might find themselves driven to some
such theory as this. In any case, the importance of the discussion
is missed altogether if it is not clearly understood that the doctrine
discussed is the exact opposite of the sensationalism Protagoras is
said to have revealed ‘in a mystery’, and that it is rejected as
equally unsatisfactory.
§ 191. For, when we come to examine it, we find that this theory
leads to very great difficulties. How are we to conceive the relation
between the prime elements and the complexes which are the
objects of knowledge? Either the syllable is only the sum of the
letters, in which case it is impossible to see how it should be more
knowable than they are, or it is an indivisible unity, in which case
it cannot be known either, since that would imply the separate
apprehension of its parts.
Further, we must ask precisely what we mean by an ‘account’
(λόγος) in this connexion. Obviously we do not mean merely the
expression of a judgement in articulate language. Nor can we
mean a simple enumeration of the elements which make up a
thing. Rather, we must mean a statement of the thing’s differentia
(διαφορότης), that which marks it off from all other things. If,
however, we mean by this that we have merely a judgement (δόξα)
as to the differentia, that brings us no further forward; while, if we
mean that we have knowledge of the differentia, our definition will
be circular. “I'rue judgement with a knowledge of the differentia’
is not a definition of knowledge.
The conclusion of the Theaetetus, then, is that knowledge can
neither be sensation nor the work of the mind. Sensation is merely
a resultant of motion, and gives us no reality outside itself.
Thought alone merely yields combinations of names. Nor have
we been able to show, except by clumsy images, how knowledge
1 Introduction to the Theaetetus, p. xxxix. The theory would harmonise well
enough with what we are told of the doctrine of Ekphantos of Syracuse.
206 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
can be due to any combination of sensation and thought. On the
other hand, we have incidentally made several discoveries as to the
nature of knowledge. We have found, in the first place, that it
implies certain ‘common’ or generic predicates, and, secondly, that
to know a thing we must know its differentia. A mere apprehension
of its common properties would not be an apprehension of 7¢ at all.
The next dialogue we have to consider really deals with the same
difficulties, though from another point of view.
THE PARMENIDES
§ 192. The Parmenides is a criticism of the doctrine of forms as
stated in the Phaedo and Republic, and the selection of Parmenides
as the chief speaker points to the conclusion that the objections to
the theory of participation contained in the first part of the dialogue
are of Eleatic origin. We know from the Theaetetus that Plato was
busy with Eukleides about this time. Besides that, we have a
remarkable piece of external evidence to the same effect. The most
telling argument against participation is that known as ‘the third
man’, which we shall come to presently. We have unimpeachable
evidence that this argument was introduced in some work or other
by the ‘Sophist’, Polyxenos.! He had been a pupil of the ‘Sophist’
Bryson, who had been an associate of Sokrates along with
Eukleides, and with him had founded the ‘Eristic’ of Megara. He
also stood in close relations of some kind with the Academy.” Now
the detractors of Plato asserted that he plagiarised the lectures
(διατριβαῦ) of Bryson, and that is most easily explained if we
assume that Bryson was the original author of this argument.
But, if these arguments are Eleatic in origin, it follows that they
are not directed against the reality of the intelligible, but against
that of the sensible. It would have been absurd to make Parmenides
the mouthpiece of an attack upon the One, and all we know of the
Megaric doctrine goes to show that it denied all reality to the
world of sense. The arguments of the Parmenides are not directed,
1 Alexander on Ar. Met. 990 b, 17. He quotes Polyxenos from Phanias of
Eresos, a disciple of Aristotle and friend of Theophrastos. See Baiimker in
Rhein. Mus. xxxiv. pp. 64 sqq. The word εἰσάγειν used by Phanias does not
necessarily imply that Polyxenos invented the argument. Cp. εἰσάγειν, ‘to bring
on the stage’.
2 This appears from the comic poet Ephippos, fr. 14 Kock. It is not clear
whether Bryson was a member of the Academy, but he may have been. It makes
no difference. What is important is that he was an associate of Sokrates.
3 'Theopompos, ap. Athen. 509 c.
THE PARMENIDES 207
then, against the doctrine of forms as such, but against the
Sokratic theory that sensible things come into being and cease to be
by partaking or ceasing to partake in the forms. An argument like
the ‘third man’ is clearly double-edged. It may be used to show
the impossibility of an αὐτοάνθοωπος, but it will serve equally to
demonstrate the unreality of particular men. Plato was, of course,
far too interested in the world of experience to accept the acosmism
of Eukleides, but he was clearly impressed by the force of the
arguments against ‘participation’ as an account of the relation
between the sensible and the intelligible. His own account of that
is not, however, given in the Parmenides.
§ 193. The subject of the dialogue is introduced as follows.
One of Zeno’s arguments against the opponents of Eleaticism was
that ‘if things are a many, they must be both like and unlike’. The
precise meaning of this does not concern us here; what we have to
deal with is the solution of the difficulty proposed by Sokrates, who
is not an old man, as in the Theaetetus, but “extremely young’
(127 c). He asks Zeno whether he does not believe in ‘forms’ which
are ‘apart from’ the things of sense, but in which these things
‘participate’. If that is the truth, there is no reason why sensible
things should not participate at once in the form of likeness and in
the form of unlikeness. A man, for instance, is both many and one;
he has many parts, but he is one man among others. Why should
not a sensible thing be at once like one thing and unlike another,
thus partaking in both forms? To show that stones, sticks, and the
like are both many and one is not to show that One is many or
Many is one. What would be surprising would be if a man should
set up separate forms such as Likeness and Unlikeness, One and
Many, Motion and Rest (1.6. the common predicates (κοινά) of the
Theaetetus), and should then show that these can mingle with and
be separated again from each other. It would be still more sur-
prising if he could show that the same contradictions which have
been shown to exist in the things of sense were also to be found in
forms apprehended by thought (129 a — 130 a).
The theory here stated by Sokrates is precisely that of the
Phaedo, where we are told that Simmias may be greater than
Sokrates and smaller than Phaidon, though Greatness and
Smallness exclude one another (102 b). It is to be noted, however,
that, even in the Phaedo, a doubt is expressed as to the adequacy
of the term ‘participation’, for the relation between a subject and
208 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
its predicates (100 d). If the Phaedo is in the substance historical,
it will follow that the Sokrates of the Parmenides is just Sokrates
himself before he had begun to feel these doubts. That Plato
should have meant his own earlier self will only be credible to
those who can believe that in the Phaedo he made use of Sokrates
as a mask for his own personality, while the view that by Sokrates
here he meant some callow Academic who held his own theory in a
crude form should be credible to no one. We might be reluctantly
convinced that Plato used Sokrates as a disguise for himself; but
it would surely have been impious to represent his own immature
disciples under the revered name of his master. The fact that it
has to make assumptions of that kind ought to be fatal to this line
of interpretation.
§ 194. Parmenides, who has evidently heard of ‘forms’ before
(130 a), and who is delighted by the philosophic aptitude of
Sokrates, as shown by his theory of ‘participation’, begins by
asking him whether, in addition to the mathematical forms, which
have been mentioned so far, he also believes in forms of the Just,
the Beautiful and the Good, and, as might have been expected
from the Phaedo, Sokrates at once assents. The next question is
whether he believes in forms of Man, Fire, and Water. Sokrates
confesses that he is in a difficulty about these. We have seen what
this means (§ 73). As to things like mud, hair, and dirt, though he
has sometimes been troubled by the thought that they must have
forms too, he had finally renounced the idea. That, says Parmen-
ides, is because Sokrates is still young, and philosophy has not yet
laid hold of him completely as it will do some day. Then he will
despise none of these things; at present he is too much influenced
by popular opinion (130 e).
In the mouth of Parmenides this remark must be ironical. He
must mean that, if such things as hair, mud, and dirt, are in any
sense real, they are quite as much entitled to have ‘forms’ as the
objects of mathematics. From Plato’s point of view, on the other
hand, the passage has probably another bearing. The doctrine of
forms, as hitherto stated is only plausible because it is confined
within certain limits. It is adequate in mathematics, where it
originated, because in that region even the particulars are objects
of thought and not of sense. In morals and aesthetics it is almost as
satisfactory; for actions in their moral aspect are not really objects
of sense, and beauty is a direct revelation of the form. On the other
THE PARMENIDES 209
hand, it is a serious weakness in the doctrine that it can only be
applied with difficulty in physics and biology, and that it breaks
down altogether when we come to things common and unclean.
If, now, we remember the way in which Plato insists in the
Theaetetus on the distinction between the ‘common’ predicates
(κοινά) which the soul apprehends by itself, and the objects of the
several senses, we shall be inclined to think that he is preparing
the way for a restriction of the doctrine to the former, while sug-
gesting at the same time that this very restriction may so modify
the doctrine that it will enable us to understand the whole world of
experience, even in its humblest manifestations. There is no
inconsistency in the restriction of the doctrine to purely intel-
lectual categories, and the extension of the operation of these
categories to the whole of the sensible world. Nor is any weight to
be attached to the fact that in the Timaeus we have forms of Fire and
the other elements; for there the speaker is a Pythagorean, and we
have seen reason to believe that it was just in the construction of the
elements that the later Pythagoreans made most use of the forms.
§ 195. Leaving this question for the present, Parmenides goes
on to discuss the difficulties involved in the specially Sokratic
conception that the many sensibles ‘partake in’ the one form, or
that the one form is ‘present to’ or ‘in’ the many sensibles.
In the first place, these sensibles must either all contain the
whole of the form or each of them only a part of it. In the first case,
the whole form will be present in each particular thing, which
means that it will be in more places than one, and so will be
separate from itself and divided. Sokrates suggests that it may be
like the day, which is present in many places and yet one, but
Parmenides will not accept this comparison. If a number of people
are covered by the same sailcloth, each one of them is covered only
by a part of it. We come, then, to the other alternative, that the
forms are divisible, and that what partakes in a form contains only
a part of it; or, in other words, that only a part of the form is
present in each of the many sensibles. In that case, however, the
forms will not serve to explain anything. A part of the form of
magnitude, if there could be such a thing, would be less than the
whole, and a thing could not become great by participating in it,
and many other absurd consequences would follow.?
1 For the details of these I must refer to Professor Taylor’s article in Mind
(N.S.), vol. xii. No. 45.
210 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
Further, the very grounds on which Sokrates bases the doctrine
of the one form in which innumerable sensible things partake
would really compel him to assume also the existence of equally
innumerable forms. If we require a form to explain the participa-
tion of particular things in a common predicate, we also require
a form to explain the participation of the form itself and the par-
ticular things in a common predicate, and so on ad infinitum (132 a).
Sokrates hereupon suggests that perhaps the forms are really
thoughts (νοήματα), and that they may only exist in souls, to which
Parmenides replies that a thought must be a thought of something
real, and further that, if the forms are thoughts, the things that
partake in them must be thoughts too. It would also follow either
that all things think or that there are unthought thoughts.!
The next suggestion made by Sokrates is that the forms may be
‘patterns’ (παραδείγματα), and that the true account of the par-
ticipation of sensible things in them may be that they are ‘likenesses’
(ὁμοιώματα) of them.? But, says Parmenides, if the things are like
the forms, the forms will be like the things, and we shall require
another pattern which both resemble to explain their likeness. We
are confronted once more by an infinite regress.
But there are far more serious difficulties than these. It would be
very hard to refute anyone who said that these forms, if they are
such as we describe them, are unknowable. We have said that they
are ‘alone by themselves’ and not in our world (ev ἡμῖν), and there-
fore, as they are relative by nature, they can only be relative to one
another. On the other hand, their ‘likenesses’ in our world can only
be relative to one another and not to the forms. A man is not the
master or slave of ‘mastership itself’ or of ‘slavery itself’, but of
another man; while, on the other hand, ‘mastership itself’ is
relative to ‘slavery itself’, and not to a particular slave. In the same
way ‘knowledge itself’ is relative to ‘truth itself’, but our know-
ledge is relative to the truth in our world. But, if that is so, the
forms must be entirely unknown. If we try to avoid this by saying
that God has ‘knowledge itself’, and therefore knows the forms,
the result is still worse. It will follow that God cannot know us or
1 The last point is somewhat obscure, but it does not affect the main argument.
Observe how clearly Conceptualism is formulated, and how deliberately it is
rejected.
2 According to Aristotle this was the Pythagorean view (Met. A. 6). We can,
therefore, draw no inference from its prominence in the Timaeus, where the
speaker is a Pythagorean, least of all the inference that Plato himself adopted
this view in later life.
THE PARMENIDES 211
anything that we know; for the knowledge he has is not relative to
the truth of our world. Nor can he be our Master; for ‘mastership
itself’ is not relative to us (134 d-e).
§ 196. This section is based on the argument of the ‘third man’,
which has already (§ 195) been used to throw doubt upon the
theory of participation. It will be well to give it here in the form in
which Phanias of Eresos quoted it from Polyxenos.? ‘If a man is a
man in virtue of participation or partaking in® the form or the
αὐτοάνθρωπος, there must be a man who will have his being
relatively to the form. Now this is not the αὐτοάνθρωπος, who is
the form, nor the particular man who is so in virtue of participation
in the form. It remains, then, that there must be a third man as
well who has his being relative to the form.’* I understand this to
mean that, as it is impossible for the particular sensible man to
stand in any relation to the form, and, as the form cannot be
related simply to itself, the theory of participation explains
nothing. ‘The only ‘man’ who could participate in the form of Man
would be a third man in the intelligible and not in the sensible
world, and it is quite superfluous to assume anything of the sort.
It will be observed that, as has been suggested above, this argument
is directed against the reality of the sensible and not of the in-
telligible. It is first and foremost an argument against the theory of
participation, and it is only an argument against the doctrine of
forms in so far as that implies many particular forms of man, etc.,
instead of a single absolute One. That explains further how it is
that, while Aristotle uses the argument against the doctrine of
forms, he also thinks it necessary to refute it.4 It was intended to
support a position with which he had still less sympathy.
§ 197. It almost seems as if we should be driven to the con-
clusion that the forms are unknowable, and that would be the end
of all philosophic discussion. It would destroy dialectic (τὴν τοῦ
διαλέγεσθαι δύναμιν). It is hinted, indeed, that a solution may be
found (135 a), but this is not followed up for the present. Instead
of that, Parmenides, who could hardly be expected to undertake
the task of justifying the world of experience, proposes to dismiss
1 See above, p. 254, 7. I.
2 It is important to notice that Polyxenos uses for ‘participation’ two terms
(μετοχή, μετουσία), which are never used by Plato. That goes to show that the
argument was not specially directed against Plato’s statement of the theory.
31 have adopted the transposition of Baiimker (Rhein. Mus. xxxiv. p. 75).
* Soph. El. 178 Ὁ, 36 sqq.
212 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
that from consideration altogether, and to consider the difficulties
that arise in the world of forms itself. The argument is still on
Megaric ground; for we know that Eukleides rejected the multi-
tude of forms and reduced them all to the One.
At the beginning of the dialogue (129 e sg.) Sokrates had de-
clared himself unable to understand how the forms themselves
could enter into combinations with one another, and still more
how a form can be both one and many, like and unlike, at rest and
in motion. It is easy enough, he repeats here (135 e), to see how
sensible things can have different predicates; the real difficulty
arises when we apply this to the forms. The way to deal with a
problem of this kind, says Parmenides, is the method of hypothesis,
and that both in its positive and negative application. We must
trace out all the consequences (συμβαίνοντα) of the hypothesis that
it 1s and also of the hypothesis that it is not. For instance, if we take
the hypothesis Zeno examined, ‘If things are a many...’, we
should go on next to the consequences of the hypothesis ‘If things
are not a many ...’, and in both cases we should ask what are the
consequences, not only to the subject of the hypothesis itself, but
also to the rest, and in each case we should consider the con-
sequences to the subject of the hypothesis and to the rest both in
themselves and in relation to one another. The same method must
be followed in the case of all the forms, such as likeness and un-
likeness, rest and motion, coming into being and ceasing to be,
being and not being, and so forth (or, in other words, the ‘common’
predicates of the Theaetetus).
§ 198. Parmenides naturally takes his own doctrine of the One
as the hypothesis to be examined. Plato has his own reasons for
this, as we shall see, but there is no ground for thinking that either
Parmenides or Sokrates is supposed to be conscious of them.
Parmenides is not represented as accepting the consequences of
his argument — he could not do that without destroying his own
system — and he expressly declares that the result of his examina-
tion of the first hypothesis is impossible (142 a). Sokrates is
reduced to silence, but we cannot suppose him to be convinced.
The whole thing is treated as a mental gymnastic (γυμνασία), a
‘laborious game’, valuable chiefly for the training it gives in method.
Plato means more than that, however, and he gives us the hint in
the dialogue itself. We must remember that the discussion is about
forms alone, and we are expressly warned against the idea that ‘the
THE PARMENIDES 213
rest’ of which he speaks are the things of sense (135 e). They are
just the other forms. Now Sokrates had said (129 d sqq.) that he
would be very much astonished if anyone could show that the
forms were capable of combination with one another. That form
of separation (χωρισμός) had been clearly taught in the Phaedo, for
instance. Sensible things could participate in the forms, but the
forms excluded one another. He would be still more astonished, he
adds, if anyone could show that there was the same sort of con-
fusion and uncertainty in the forms as there is in the sensible
things which participate in them, and that is exactly what Par-
menides does show. If you take such forms as One and Being
abstractly (χωρίς), they at once partake of and begin to pass into
one another and all the other forms, including even their opposites.
They are just as bad as water, which is cold to one hand and hot to
the other, or any other of the sensible things which we have seen
to be in continual flux. In fact, Parmenides proves that, if we take
the intelligible world by itself, it is quite as unsatisfactory as the
sensible, and by taking the One as his example, he really refutes the
Megaric doctrine, and that with the weapon of the Megarics
themselves. It adds to the humour of the situation that this
refutation is ruthlessly carried out by the revered Parmenides, and
it is even possible that we are to regard the description of his own
work given by Zeno in the introduction as a hint of the light in
which Plato wishes us to look at the second part of our dialogue.
Zeno says:
My work makes no sort of pretence to have been written with the
object you mention (1.6. to prove the doctrine of Parmenides in
another way).... It argues against those who maintain a multitude,
and gives them back as good or better than they gave, by trying to
show that their hypothesis will have even more absurd consequences
than his, if it is thoroughly discussed (128 c—d).
Just so we may say that Plato has no idea of proving the hypothesis
of his master, Sokrates, but he does propose to show that the
hypothesis of the Megarics has even more absurd consequences
than his if it is adequately followed out.
§ 199. It is from this point of view we must judge what strikes
a modern reader as the arid and repellent form of the discussion
with its occasional suggestion of sophistry. It is a display of the
dialectical method introduced by Zeno and assiduously cultivated
by his successors at Megara. Now Plato’s dramatic power is by no
214 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
means extinguished yet, and whatever impression it makes upon
us, we may be sure that his contemporaries would keenly appreciate
the virtuosity with which he plays on this alien instrument. It
should be added that, so far as the arguments are sophistical —
and one or two of them must certainly have been known by Plato
to be so — that is probably quite deliberate. We shall see that he
was coming to regard the disciples of Eukleides more and more as
‘eristics’, just because, as we saw in the Theaetetus, arguments
confined to the objects of thought alone consist of judgements
which are only combinations of names. There is, in fact, no
dialogue where it is more important to remember the dramatic
character of Plato’s writing than this, and where it is‘more im-
portant to realise the contemporary situation. It seems to me quite
possible that to Plato’s circle the second part of the Parmenides
seemed highly entertaining. Men who had laughed at the Euthy-
demus would find a subtler enjoyment here. I suspect, however,
that Bryson and his friends were not pleased. In introducing
Helikon some years later to Dionysios II. as a disciple of Eudoxos,
Isokrates, and Bryson, he says,! ‘And what is rare on the top of ail
this, he is not unpleasant to deal with, and he does not strike me as
malicious, but rather as easy-going and simple. I say this with fear
and trembling, seeing that I am expressing a judgement about a
man, and man is not a bad animal, indeed, but a changeable one.’
We shall have occasion to note other traces of the growing estrange-
ment of Plato from the Megarics. Let us now consider the
hypotheses.?
§ 200. There are properly speaking eight hypotheses to be
examined, but there is a sort of corollary to the first and second,
so that there appear to be nine.
Hypothesis I. — If itis One, what will be the consequences for itself?
(137 ¢).
If it is One, it cannot be Many, and therefore it cannot have parts,
and cannot be a whole (for that implies parts). Not having parts, it
cannot have beginning, middle or end; it has therefore no limits and
is infinite. Further, it will have no figure; for figure implies parts.
Further, it will be nowhere; for what is anywhere must either be
contained in something else or in itself. It cannot be contained in
1 Ep. xiii. 360 c.
51 have thought it right to analyse these somewhat fully as a guide to students
of the Parmenides. From what has been said, it will be clear that the reader may
omit them if he likes.
THE PARMENIDES 215
anything else; for it would then be in contact at different points with
what contained it, and that implies parts. Nor can it be contained in
itself; for then it would be both container and contained, and so two,
not one.
It cannot be in Motion or at Rest. If it suffered alteration
(ἀλλοίωσις), which is one form of motion, it would no longer be one.
It cannot have spatial motion (dopa), which is the other form of
motion, either motion of rotation (zepudopa), for that implies a centre
or axis of rotation, and so figure and parts, or motion of translation,
since it has no place. Further, it would have to be at once in the same
place and not in the same place, which implies parts. Nor can it be at
rest, since it is nowhere in space, neither in itself nor in anything else,
and cannot therefore be where it is (ἐν ταὐτῷ).
Nor can it be the Same as or Other than itself or anything else. It
cannot be other than itself, for then it would not be one; it cannot be
the same as anything else, for then it would be the same as what is
other than one; it cannot be other than anything else, for it is only the
other that can be other; it cannot be the same as itself, for if same
were one, how could anything be the same as many?
It cannot be Like or Unlike itself or anything else, for the like is
what has an identical property, and the only property of what is one
is to be one.
Nor can it be Equal or Unequal to itself or anything else. If it were
equal, it would have the same measures, but it does not participate in
the same. If it were unequal (greater or less), it would have as many
parts as measures, and so would not be one.
It cannot be older or younger than itself or anything else, or the
same age, since all these imply inequality or equality. It cannot,
therefore, be in time at all; for what is in time is always becoming
older than it is at a given moment, and therefore at the same time
younger than it is, and also, since this becoming lasts no longer or
shorter time than what becomes, it is always the same age as itself.
Further, since it does not participate in time, it does not participate
in Being; for it has not become and has not been, it will not become
and will not be, it is not becoming and it is not.
And, if it cannot be, it cannot be one, and cannot be named, spoken
of, judged of, known, or perceived by the senses.
As this result seems impossible, let us put the hypothesis in
another form. Let us consider One, not merely as one (τὸ ἕν ἕν),
but as being (τὸ ὃν ἕν).
Hypothesis II. — If One is, what are the consequences for itself?
(142 b, 1 — 155 e, 3).
If One is, it partakes in Being (for zs and one do not signify the
same). Therefore One as being (ἕν ὄν) must be a whole of which one
and being are parts. But, since each of these parts partakes in turn
H B.G.P.
216 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
both of one and being, each can be further subdivided into two parts,
and what always becomes two is not one but an infinite multitude.
Again, if we take One by itself, it is other than being. But One is
not Other, and Being is not Other, therefore Other is other than either.
Any pair of these three must be called two or both, and each of two is
necessarily one. If we add One to any of these pairs, we get three, and
three is odd while two is even; and two gives twice and three gives
thrice, so that we have twice two and thrice three and twice three and
thrice two. And so we may get any combination of odd and even
numbers, and thus an infinite multitude, every part of which partakes
in Being, so that Being is infinitely divided into parts. But each of
these parts is one, so One is divided into as many parts as Being, and
therefore not only One as being but One as one is an infinite multitude.
One as being is a whole, and parts are only parts as parts,of a whole,
and the parts are contained in the whole. Now that which contains is
a limit. But, if it is limited, it will have extremes, and, if it is a whole,
it will have beginning, middle and end. But, as the middle is equally
distant from the extremes, it will have figure, either rectilinear, or
circular or mixed, and will be finite.
Further, since all the parts which make up the whole are contained
in the whole, it must be in itself; and, since the whole is not contained
in the parts, it must, regarded as a whole, be in something else. ‘There-
fore it will be both at Rest and in Motion.
Further, it will be the Same as itself and everything else, and Other
than itself and everything else. It is other than itself because it is both
in itself and in something else, and other than everything else, since
these are not one. But it is also the same; for otherness cannot be a
property of anything. Therefore One and what is other than One,
cannot be other because of otherness, nor can they be so in themselves.
Nor can they stand in the relation of whole and parts; for what is not
One does not partake in number. Therefore they are the same.
Consequently, it must be Like and Unlike itself and everything
else, for One is other than everything else in the same way as every-
thing else than One, and therefore they are alike in so far as they are
other. On the other hand, they must be unlike in so far as they are the
same; for opposite antecedents must have opposite consequences.
Further, it will be in contact with itself and with what is other than
itself, since it is contained in something other. But, as contact always
implies at least two, since the number of points of contact is always
one less than that of the things in contact, it cannot be in contact
either with itself or anything else.
Further, it will be Equal and Unequal to itself and everything else.
If it were smaller, Small would be in it, either as a whole or in a part
of it. If it were in it as a whole, it would either pervade it completely,
in which case it would be equal to it, or exceed it, in which case it
would be greater. And the same contradiction arises if it is in a part of
it. The same applies mutatis mutandis to the Great. Besides, Great
and Small are relative to one another and not to One. Therefore One
THE PARMENIDES 217
is equal to itself and to what is other than itself. But One is in itself,
and therefore contains and is contained by itself, and is therefore
greater and smaller than itself. And, since there is nothing besides
One and what is other than One, and, since everything that is is in a
place, what is other than One is in One, and One is therefore greater
than what is other than One. But, for the same reason, One is in what
is other than One, and therefore smaller than it. The same reasoning
will apply to the parts as to the whole.
Further, it will participate in time; for it zs, and to be is just partici-
pation in being along with present time. But as time (of which the
present is a part) is always advancing, One, as sharing in this advance,
is always becoming older, and therefore at the same time younger,
than itself. But it cannot advance from past to future without passing
through the present; and so, when it comes to the present, advance is
arrested, so that the growing older and younger are already complete
in the present. But the present lasts for the One as long as it is; for it
is always now whenever it is. Therefore the present lasts as long as
time for the One, and its being older and younger coincides with its
becoming older and younger. Further, since it is not and does not
become for a longer time than it is and becomes, it is always the same
age as itself.
In the same way it is older than what is other than itself. What is
other than One must be more than One, and being a multitude must
partake in number, and One comes into existence before all other
numbers. But it is also younger than what is other than One; for it has
beginning, middle, and end, and the beginning comes first into
existence and the end last, and One only is when the end has come
into existence. Therefore One only comes into existence after its parts.
On the other hand, each part is itself one, and so One came into being
simultaneously with the beginning and with every subsequent part,
and must therefore be the same age as what is other than One.
So much for its having become and being older and younger than
what is other than One; we have still to consider its becoming older and
younger. On the one hand, it does not become either older or younger
than what is other than One; for, if the difference of two ages is given,
the addition of equal to unequal times does not alter the (arithmetical)
ratio between them. On the other hand, it does become older and
younger; for, if the difference of two ages is given, the addition of
equal to unequal times does alter the (geometrical) ratio between
them.
Therefore One partakes of past, present, and future; it was, it is,
it will be; it has become, is becoming, and will become. It can be the
object of knowledge, judgement, and sensation; it can be named and
spoken of.
218 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
COROLLARY
We have seen that One is (1) one and many and neither one or
many, and (2) that it partakes in time. We must now consider how the
second conclusion affects the first (155 e, 4 544.).
If One is both one and many, and also partakes in time, it follows
that it partakes in being at one time, viz. when it is one, and that it
does not partake in being at another time, viz. when it is not one. To
begin to partake in being is to come into being, to cease to partake in
it is to perish; therefore One must come into being and cease to be
(γένεσις καὶ φθορά). Therefore it must be compounded and de-
composed again; it must be assimilated and dissimilated again; it
must increase and decrease again and be equalised.
Further, it must pass from motion to rest, and again from rest to
motion. But how is that possible? How can it stop when it is moving,
or start moving when it is at rest? The transition from rest to motion
or from motion to rest cannot be either rest or motion, and there is no
time at which a thing is neither at rest nor in motion. Therefore the
transition must be out of time altogether; it must be in that strange
thing (τὸ ἄτοπον τοῦτο), the instantaneous (τὸ ἐξαίφνης), which has
position but not duration in time. It is the instantaneous which makes
all changes from one opposite to another possible, and it is in the
instant of change that what changes has neither the one nor the other
of its opposite qualities (155 e — 157 ὃ).
Hypothesis III. — If One is, what are the consequences for the
others? (157 b, 6 — 159b, 1).
The others are other than the One, but they will partake in it both
as a whole and as parts. For, since they are others, they are a multi-
tude, and this multitude must have parts or it would be one. Again, it
must be a whole and a whole must be one. For, if a whole were not one
but many, each part woud be part of a many of which it itself was one.
Then each would be a part of itself and of each of the others, which is
absurd. Therefore they are a whole, that is a complete one made up
of them all. Further, each part is also one since it is distinct from the
others. Therefore both as a whole and as parts the others partake in
One.
Therefore they will be both finite and infinite. For, since they are
more than one, they must be an infinite number; for, if we cut off in
thought the smallest imaginable portion of what is distinct from One,
it will be more than One, and therefore an infinite multitude. On the
other hand, at the moment when any part partakes in One, it has a limit
both with the other parts and with the whole, and the whole has in the
same way a limit with the parts. Therefore it is finite.
So too they will be both like and unlike each other and themselves.
As being all finite and all infinite they are like; while, as being both at
THE PARMENIDES 219
once, they are unlike. And in the same way it would be easy to show
that they are the same and other, at rest and in motion, etc., etc.
Hypothesis IV. — If it is One, what are the consequences for the
others? (159 Ὁ, 2 — 160 b, 4).
The others will participate in the One neither as a whole nor as
parts. For, since there is nothing which is at once other than one and
other than others (for One and the others are everything), One and
the others cannot be contained in the same thing. Therefore they are
quite apart. Further, since One as such has no parts, no part of it can
be in the others.
Further, since the others do not participate in One either as a whole
or as parts, they are not a whole. Nor can they have multitude or
number; for number consists of ones. Therefore they cannot have
two properties, such as likeness and unlikeness, to One, nor even one
property in themselves, such as Same, Other, Rest, Motion, etc.; for
that would imply participation in One.
§ 201. The result of our positive hypotheses, then, is this, One
is everything and nothing both in itself and in relation to the others,
and the same is true of the others. We now turn to the negative
hypotheses.
Hypothesis V. — If One is not, what are the consequences for itself?
(160 b, 5 — 163 b, 6).
If we can say that One is not, One must have a meaning, and
therefore it must be knowable and there must be knowledge of it.
And, as it is other than everything else, it must have altereity
(ἑτεροιότης). And it must partake in ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘anything’, etc.;
for otherwise it could not be spoken of, nor could what is other than
One be spoken of. There is nothing to hinder it partaking in many
things, even if it is not. On the contrary, it must do so, if it is that One
and can be named at all.
Further, in so far as it is other, it must be unlike the others and like
itself.
Further, it must be unequal to the others; for, if it were equal, it
would be, and would be in so far like them.
On the other hand, since Great and Small belong to the Unequal,
and what possesses inequality must possess them; and further, since
the possession of Great and Small implies that of Equal as a necessary
intermediate, it will possess all three.
Further, it will participate in Being. For, if it is true that the One is
not, then the One zs a not-being. The very bond of its not being is that
not-being is, just as the bond of what is is the not being of not-being.
But, if it has both being and not-being, there must be a transition,
that is, a movement from the one to the other, and this movement
must imply alteration (ἀλλοίωσις).
220 THE CRITICAL DIALOGUES
On the other hand, One, so far as it is not, and therefore is in no
place, cannot move from place to place, nor move in the same place
round a centre. Nor can it alter without ceasing to be the One which
is distinct from the others. Therefore it is immovable and unalterable.
Further, it follows that, in so far as it is moved and altered, it comes
into being and ceases to be; in so far as it is unmoved and unaltered,
that it neither comes into being nor ceases to be.
Hypothesis VI. — If there is no One, what are the consequences for
itself? (163 b, 7 — 164 Ὁ, 4).
If there is complete absence of being from One, it can neither
partake nor cease to partake in Being. Therefore it can neither come
into being nor cease to be; it can neither be in motion nar at rest; it
cannot stand in any relation to what is, for that would be to partake in
Being. Therefore it has neither greatness or smallness or likeness or
unlikeness to itself or anything else. Neither is it in a place or in a
time. Neither can there be knowledge, judgement or sensation of it;
it cannot be spoken of or named.
Hypothesis VII. — If One is not, what are the consequences for the
others? (164 Ὁ, 5 — 165 6, 1).
Since they are others, they must have something that they are other
than. They cannot be other than One; for One is not. Therefore they
must be other than themselves.
Further, they must be so, not as ones, but as multitudes or masses,
of which each can be broken into an innumerable number of similar
parts, so that we can never reach a smallest and least part, and that
what seemed small appears great compared with each one of the mul-
titude of which it is the sum.
Further, we never come to a beginning, middle, or end, but always
to something before the beginning or after the end or in the middle
of the middle.
The conclusion is that, if One is not, other things will appear both
finite and infinite, one and many.
Hypothesis VIII. — If there is no One, what will be the conse-
quences for the others? (165 e, 2 — 166¢, 1).
They will be neither one nor many; for many implies ones. Nor
have they even an appearance of one or many; for they can have no
communion with what is not, nor can anything which is not be present
to anything else; for what is not has no parts.
Therefore we must deny of them not only the reality, but even the
appearances of all the predicates which were formerly applied to them
really or apparently, likeness and unlikeness, sameness and otherness,
contact and separation, etc.
THE PARMENIDES 221
The conclusion of the whole matter is, then, that, whether we
assume that One is or that One is not, it itself and what is other
than it, regarded both in themselves and in relation to one another,
all are and are not, all appear and do not appear.
§ 202. And so it ends. No one has a word to say about this
portentous result. If, however, we attend to the hints given in the
course of the dialogue itself, we shall hardly be far wrong in draw-
ing the following conclusions from it. In the first place, the Megaric
doctrine is refuted. If we postulate a One which is only one (as the
Megarics did), we can say nothing whatever about it. Or if (as the
Megarics also did) we identify One with Being, we shall have to
predicate of it all sorts of incompatible predicates. “T'wo statements’
(δισσοὶ λόγοι) can be made about the One as well as everything
ise:
On the other hand, the Sokratic theory has also been refuted in
the early part of the dialogue, and that by arguments taken from
the Megarics. It was based on the view that, though sensible
things may partake in opposite forms, these forms themselves
exclude one another. As that is untenable, we must try to find some
other way in which things participate (ἄλλο δεῖ ζητεῖν ᾧ μεταλαμ-
βάνει).
The second part of the dialogue has shown once for all the
impossibility of maintaining the isolation of the forms from one
another. “The others’ are just as hard to grasp as ‘the One’. If we
regard them abstractly, we can say nothing whatever about them;
while, if we regard them as being, we are compelled to ascribe
contradictory predicates to them. In fact, the intelligible and
incorporeal forms vanish under our hands just as the things of
sense had done. It is clearly shown that we must now endeavour
to understand in what sense the forms can participate in one
another; for all the difficulties of the Parmenides arise from the
assumption that they cannot.
ΧΙΝν
Lo gic
THE SOPHIST
§ 203. The Sophist is linked externally to the Theaetetus, which
is all the more remarkable that the evidence of style.shows there
was a distinct interval of time between the Sophist on the one hand
and the Theaetetus and Parmenides on the other. The influence of
Isokrates is strongly marked for the first time, especially in the
avoidance of hiatus. In view of this interval of time, we shall be
justified in looking for some real connexion between the dialogue
and that of which it professes to be the sequel.
Sokrates, Theodoros, and Theaitetos, with the younger
Sokrates, his friend and later a member of the Academy, are
supposed to meet again on the following day to continue the
discussion reported in the Theaetetus, but the fiction of the dialogue
being read aloud at Megara is quietly dropped. The very title of
the work is evidence of the growing coolness between Plato and the
Megarics. Isokrates had already given the title of ‘Sophists’ to the
Sokratics generally, but more particularly to the ‘eristics’, by whom
he means mainly the Megarics. Plato adopts this way of speaking
from Isokrates, and he also draws a hard-and-fast line between
the Philosopher and the Sophist. That is made clear at the outset.
A stranger from Elea is introduced, who is represented as a per-
sonal disciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and Sokrates at once
professes alarm that he may prove to have a superhuman gift for
cross-examination. Theodoros reassures him, and says he is far
too good a man for an eristic; he is, indeed, a philosopher. Sokrates
answers that it is hard to tell Philosophers from Sophists and
Statesmen, and asks whether the Eleatics distinguished them. ‘The
Stranger replies that they did.
Now Plato seems to speak to us more directly than ever before
by the mouth of this Stranger, who, for that very reason, is
anonymous; and it seems, too, as if we were meant to understand
THE SOPHIST 223
once more that he claims to be the true successor of Parmenides,
even though he is obliged to dissent from his central doctrine that
‘not being is not’. What is this ‘not-being’ which nevertheless is?
We shall find that it is identified with ‘the Other’, and one of the
few facts we know about the Megarics is that they said ‘What is
is One and the Other zs not.’1 The name of Sophist is thus by
implication applied to the Megarics, and it stuck to them. In fact,
it more often means Megaric than not in the fourth century. We
have heard of the ‘Sophist’ Bryson and the ‘Sophist’ Polyxenos
already (§ 192). In Aristotle it is just the arguments of the Megarics
that are technically called ‘sophisms’, and it is with these he mainly
deals in his course on fallacies.? If this is correct, I do not think it
fanciful to suggest further that the reluctance of the Stranger to
differ from his master Parmenides with regard to his central
doctrine (241 d) is a hint of Plato’s own attitude towards Sokrates
at this time.
Like several other dialogues, the Sophist appears to be made up
of two wholly disparate sections bound together in an accidental
way. It consists, as has been said, of a kernel and a shell. The shell
is the attempt to find a definition of the Sophist by the method of
division; the kernel is a criticism of categories, especially that of
‘not being’ (τὸ μὴ ov). The ostensible link between the two
discussions is that the definition of the Sophist is found to imply
the existence of ‘not being’, but that is by no means all. We find
also that the reason why those who insist on the mere abstract unity
of ‘what is’ (τὸ ὄν) cannot advance beyond contradictory argument
(ἀντιλογία) like that of the Parmenides, is just that by so doing they
have put it out of their power to divide any subject under discussion
‘according to its forms’ or ‘kinds’ (κατὰ γένη, 253 c-d). That is
what the method of division aims at doing; but it requires to be
justified against those who deny that forms are a many, and that
defence can only take the shape of a proof that ‘not being’ (τὸ μὴ
ov) 15. Here, as in other cases, the real unity of the dialogue is left
for us to discover if we can.
§ 204. It would be tedious to examine in detail the divisions by
which the successive definitions of the Sophist are reached. ‘They
are not, of course, to be taken too seriously; but neither, on the
other hand, are they wholly without purpose. They are marked, in
1 Aristokles (ap. Eus. P.E. xiv. 17, 1; R.P. § 289).
2 The Περὶ σοφιστικῶν ἐλέγχων.
224 LOGIC
fact, by a certain not ill-humoured satire, the objects of which it
will not be hard to guess after what has just been said. The Angler
is first selected for definition, merely as an illustration of the method
to be followed. That seems innocent enough; but it soon appears
that the Sophist too is a fisher, a fisher of men, and this leads up to
the definition of him as ‘a paid huntsman of rich and distinguished
youths’. That suggests another definition from the point of view of
the art of exchange. He now appears as ‘a wholesale exporter of
spiritual goods manufactured by others’, though it is slyly added
that he does sometimes dispose of his goods in the home market,
and occasionally even manufactures them himself. Again, he may
be looked on as a fighting man, whose weapons are short questions
and answers; or, again, he may fall under the art of sifting and
purging. He purges the soul from beliefs that are a hindrance to
knowledge, and especially from the ignorance which consists in
thinking one knows what one does not know. Perhaps, however,
we are doing the Sophist too high an honour here, and this is a
higher art than his. We may have been deceived by a resemblance.
Obviously these last definitions do not apply to the great
Sophists of the fifth century. Protagoras and Gorgias are always
represented as averse to discussion by short questions and answers,
and it is Sokrates who forces this method upon them. Again, the
purging of the ignorance that consists in thinking one knows what
one does not know is in the highest degree Sokratic. We are forced,
then, to conclude that the persons aimed at are Sokratics, and the
doubt expressed at the end of the discussion is an insinuation that
they practised an imitation of the Sokratic method, though not
always in the true Sokratic spirit. Once more it can hardly be
doubtful who these are.
§ 205. The next section brings us to the real problem of the
dialogue. We shall find that the Sophist’s art is one that produces
deceptive images and so gives rise to false judgements. On the
other hand, the distinction of an image from the object imitated,
and also the opposition of false judgement to true, imply that ‘what
is not’ in some sense is, and this Parmenides forbade us to assume.
The argument proceeds as follows:
We have given several accounts of the Sophist, but that shows there
is something wrong with our method. His art is called by a single
name, and there must, therefore, be some element which all these
accounts of it have in common, and to which they all lead up. Now
THE SOPHIST 225
the account which seemed to point most clearly to this is the descrip-
tion of it as the art of Contradiction (ἀντιλογική). The Sophist
professes to dispute on all things visible and invisible, in heaven and
on earth, but it is impossible for one man really to understand all these
things. Therefore the Sophist is a master of the Art of Appearance.
He is like the painter who produces the appearance of solidity by lines
and colours on a flat surface, and we may therefore call his art the
Art of Imagery (εἰδωλοποιική). That art may be divided into two, that
which produces an exact counterpart (εἰκαστική) and that which
produces an apparent likeness by deliberately altering the real pro-
portions (φανταστική). The Stranger is about to assign the Sophist’s
art to the latter when a pressing question of great difficulty emerges
(232 a — 236 d).
How, indeed, can there be a deceptive image at all? And further,
how is it possible to say or think what is false, without which there
can be no deceit? In both cases we are forced to postulate that ‘what is
not’ ts (ὑποθέσθαι τὸ μὴ ὃν εἶναι), and that is just what Parmenides
would not allow. If we say ‘is not’, we must apply (προσφέρειν) the
words as a predicate to something. We cannot apply them to what zs,
and, if not, we cannot apply them to anything. But, if we are not
speaking of anything, we are speaking of nothing, and are not in fact
speaking at all. Nor can anything be applied (προσγίγνεσθαι) as a
predicate to ‘what is not’. We cannot even say that it is one or many;
for number is, and we cannot predicate what zs of what is not. But if
‘js not’ can neither be subject or predicate, it is unutterable and un-
thinkable. Nay, we have no right to say that it zs unutterable or un-
thinkable or even to call it ‘it’ (239 a).
Applying this to the Sophist, we find (1) that we cannot without
contradiction speak of him as producing an image; for, though an
image is really an image, to be really an image is to be really unreal or
really what is not (ὄντως οὐκ ὄν). Nor (2) can we speak of his pro-
ducing an unreal appearance (φάντασμα) without contradiction; for
that implies a judgement either that ‘what is’ zs not or that ‘what is
not’ zs, and we have seen that such judgements are impossible. ‘There
is nothing for it, then, but to consider the dictum of Parmenides and
to inquire whether we should not say that, in a certain sense, ‘what is
not’ zs, and ‘what is’ zs not (241 d).
A modern reader approaching this discussion for the first time
is apt to think either that Plato is about to propound a wanton
paradox or that his mind is obsessed by the spectre of some
fantastic ‘metaphysical’ conception of Non-being. That is, firstly,
because he is using the language of his time, a language which he
did not invent and for which he is not responsible. If he had been
writing for us, he would no doubt have formulated the problem in
another way. As it was, the Megarics had inherited from Par-
menides the doctrine that ‘what is not’ zs not (a doctrine which, in
226 LOGIC
the mouth of its author, had a purely cosmological significance),
and they had imported it into Dialectic, with the result that they
were led to deny the possibility of significant negation. In the
second place, the extreme simplicity with which the problem is
stated is disconcerting to the modern mind. That is characteristic
of Greek philosophy as a whole, and is one of the things that makes
it worthy of study. There is nothing like stating difficulties in their
baldest form to ensure that they will not be evaded. The modern
reader would feel no difficulty if Plato had announced a discussion
of the possibility of significant negative judgements, and that, as a
matter of fact, is the subject of this dialogue. It is a good thing,
however, to study it in its simplest form and stripped of con-
ventional terminology.
§ 206. In reality, the Stranger proceeds, the reason why we find
such difficulties in ‘not being’ is just that we do not know what is
meant by ‘being’. Earlier philosophers have not taken the pains to
think out clearly the import of certain elementary terms, the mean-
ing of which appears to be obvious, but is really very far from being
so. That is why they have only been able to tell fairy tales. Some
say the things that are (τὰ ὄντα) are two or three or some other
number. Others maintain that what is is one; others, again, seek
to combine these views. But no one has asked what we mean by
saying of anything that it zs. This is shown by a criticism of the
Pythagoreans, who said things were two, and of the Eleatics, who
said they were one.
If all things are two (e.g. hot and cold), how is the ‘being’ which this
implies related to the two? Either it must be a third thing besides
them, or it must be identified with one of them, in which case the
other would not be. Or, if we say that ‘being’ is true of both in the
same way, they will be one and not two (243 d — 244 a).
If all things are one, then ‘being’ and ‘one’ are the same, and only
two names for the same thing. But, apart from the absurdity of
having two names for the same thing, how can there be a name at all?
If the name is other than the thing, they are two and not one, so that,
if all things are one, there can only be a name which is a name of
nothing, or the thing itself will be a name, and its name the name of a
name (244 b—d).
But they also say that the one which ts (τὸ ὃν ἕν) is a whole. But a
whole has parts and is therefore other than one, which as such is
indivisible. If, then, ‘what is’ isa whole, it isa many. On the other hand,
1 ΤῈ is precisely the problem discussed in Bosanquet’s Logic, Bk. I. chap. vii.,
which will be found to throw light on the Sophist.
THE SOPHIST 227
if it is not a whole, it is not the whole of what is, and it can neither
come into being nor be; for what comes into being or is comes into
being or is as a whole (244 d — 245 d).
This is, of course, a summary of certain arguments in the
Parmenides, and has a similar purpose. It is as hard to grasp the
meaning of 7s as it is to grasp the meaning of is not. The difficulty is
even greater when we turn from the number of what is to its nature.
§ 207. With regard to this there is a regular battle of the gods
and giants between philosophers. Some identify reality or being
(οὐσία) with body, that which admits of impact and contact
(ὃ παρέχει προσβολὴν καὶ ἐπαφήν τινα), while others say that true
being consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal forms or
figures (νοητὰ ἄττα καὶ ἀσώματα εἴδη), while everything corporeal
is only a stream of becoming (φερομένη γένεσις).
We must pause here and ask to whom the Stranger is referring;
for this is one of the most pressing questions in the history of
Greek philosophy. In the first place, it must be observed that the
philosophers now under discussion are spoken of as if they be-
longed to a past generation. It can hardly be correct to suppose
that the school of Demokritos are intended by the ‘earth-born’
(γηγενεῖς). Demokritos, who asserted the reality of the void, could
not be spoken of as making impact and contact the test of being.
We have seen, however, that the doctrine of Parmenides paved the
way for materialism, and that Melissos, who was a very important
figure in the latter part of the fifth century, definitely taught a
materialistic monism (δ 68). As to the ‘friends of the forms’ (εἰδῶν
φίλοι), of whom Plato speaks with such aloofness by the mouth
of the Stranger, if our general view of the doctrine of forms is
correct, we have seen that there is no difficulty in identifying them
with the later Pythagoreans.! At any rate, they can hardly be the
Megarics, as is often supposed; for they rejected the plurality of
forms altogether, and identified the One and the Good (§ 129).
It is worthy of note that the Stranger speaks of them as persons
whom he understands, ‘thanks to his intimacy with them’ (διὰ
συνήθειαν), and that suggests they were to be found in Italy. The
language in which their doctrine is described is just that of the first
part of the Phaedo, and they may therefore be identified with the
‘we’ of that dialogue.
1 As we have seen (p. 91, 7. 1) this identification is made without hesitation by
Proclus, and is presumably the Academic tradition.
228 LOGIC
§ 208. The corporealists are hard to deal with; but, if we
imagine them for the moment to be more reasonable than they are,
we may get them to admit that by reality or being (οὐσία) they in
fact mean force (δύναμις).
They must admit that there is such a thing as a mortal animal, and
therefore as an animate body, and therefore as a soul. They must
further admit that a soul may be good or bad, wise or foolish, and
therefore that goodness and wisdom, the presence or absence of which
make it one or the other, are. Very likely they may say that the soul is
body, but they will hardly say that goodness or wisdom are bodies
(though it is to be feared the real earthborn would). But, once they
admit that a single incorporeal thing is, they must accept a definition
of being which will apply equally to it. Perhaps they may accept as a
definition of what is that it is anything that has the least power of
acting and being acted upon, that, in fact, being is force (246 e —
247 €).
It is to be observed that the Stranger does not put this definition
forward as one satisfactory to himself. Indeed, he says expressly
that we shall very likely take a different view later.
If we turn now to those superior persons, the ‘friends of the
forms’, we may expect them to be more tractable, and more ready
to admit that what zs is what can act and be acted upon. As a matter
of fact, however, we shall find them even less amenable to argument
than our reformed corporealists. They remain in the sky and do not
answer us at all, though the Stranger knows from his intimacy
with them that they regard us with contempt. They will not ascribe
any kind of motion at all to reality or being (οὐσία), and therefore they
will not speak of acting or being acted upon in connexion with it.
The ‘friends of the forms’ distinguish being (οὐσία) from becoming
(γένεσις) and say that our souls participate in constant being by
means of thought, and our bodies in variable becoming by means of
sense. But this participation surely implies that being has a power of
acting and being acted upon; for the thought that knows being must,
in so doing, either act or be acted upon or both, and the being that
thought knows must accordingly either act or be acted upon or both.
To this we may suppose them to reply that being is constant and
immovable, and cannot therefore either act or be acted upon. But they
must admit that we know being, and knowledge implies soul, and
soul implies life and motion. If these are excluded from being and
referred to becoming, there can be no knowledge at all. It is equally
true, however, that being would be unknowable if it were only
variable and in motion; for knowledge implies constancy, and that
implies rest (248 a — 249 d).
THE SOPHIST 229
We have not been able to get any answer out of the ‘friends of
the forms’; but our discussion with them has suggested that
knowledge is impossible unless being is both in motion and at rest.
But, as motion and rest are opposites, they cannot be united. On
the other hand, they both are, and therefore being must be a third
thing over and above them. From this it follows that being per se
is neither at rest nor in motion. What are we to make of this? We
see, at any rate, that it is just as hard to say what is meant by 15 as
to say what is meant by/s ποΐ, and this gives us a ray of hope. If we
can only discover what is means, the other difficulty may be got
rid of at the same time.
§ 209. We must start from the fact that, when we speak about a
thing, we not only name it, but apply many other names to it.
When we speak about a man, for instance, we apply to him the
names of colours, forms, sizes, virtues and so forth. Of course
there are youthful logic-choppers and elderly amateurs (Antis-
thenes?) who say we have no right to do this. Man is man, and
good is good; but, if we say ‘the man is good’, we are confusing the
One and the Many. Such theories are sufficiently refuted by the
fact that they cannot be stated without contradiction. Those who
forbid us to say that A is B in virtue of A’s ‘participation in being
affected by’! B (252 b) have themselves to use such terms as ‘is’,
‘apart from’, ‘from others’, ‘by itself’, and thus carry about with
them an inner voice that refutes their theory.
We must say (1) that all things are incapable of participating in one
another, or (2) that all things are capable of participating in one
another, or (3) that some things are capable of participating in one
another and others are not. In the first case, rest and motion cannot
participate in being, and so cannot be. That makes havoc of all the
theories we have considered hitherto. In the second case, it will be
possible for motion to rest and for rest to move. Only the third case
is left, namely, that some things can participate in one another and
others cannot (252 e).
We shall find that these simple considerations suggest the solution
of the difficulty we have been dealing with.
This solution is briefly that zs and zs not have no meaning except
in judgements or predications (λόγοι). In one sense, this doctrine
is not new. In the Phaedo Plato made Sokrates formulate the
1 The phrase κοινωνία παθήματος ἑτέρου is derived from the use of πεπονθέναι to
express the relation of a subject to a predicate. Cf. Parm. 139 e.
230 LOGIC
method of seeking for truth in judgements (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις), and
there too we have the terminology which represents the subject as
‘partaking’ in the predicate, and also the way of speaking according
to which the subject ‘is affected by’ (πέπονθεν) the predicate.2
What is new here is that, whereas in the Phaedo it is the particular
things of sense that ‘partake in’ the forms, we are now discussing
the participation of the forms or ‘kinds’ (γένη) with one another.
The need for such discussion has been shown in the Parmenides
(§§ 194, 199). It is to be observed further that these forms or
‘kinds’ of which we are now speaking are just the common predi-
cates (κοινά) of the Theaetetus (δ 186). We may say, if we like, that
these are the Platonic forms as distinct from the Pythagorean or
the Sokratic.
§ 210. We have found that some forms or kinds will participate
in one another and others will not, just as some letters will go with
one another and others will not. The vowels, in particular, pervade
all combinations of letters, so that without a vowel there cannot be
any combination at all. In the same way, some notes in the octave
are concordant and others are not. In these two cases we have the
arts of Grammar and Music to direct us, and so we require an art
which will show us what forms will harmonise with one another
and what forms will not, and especially whether there are any
kinds which (like the vowels) pervade all combinations and
disjunctions (e.g. 7s and zs not). That is just the art of Dialectic, and
the man who possesses that will be able to distinguish what forms
can enter into combination and what will not.
In particular, he will be able to distinguish (1) a single form
pervading many single and separate things, (2) many forms distinct
from one another but comprehended from without by one, (3) a single
form pervading in turn many such wholes and binding them together
in one, while many other forms are quite separate and apart from it
(253 d).
This passage gives us the foundation of Plato’s Logic. The follow-
ing points in it should be noted:
(a) He distinguishes clearly between (1) genus and (2) species,
though he uses the terms form and kind (εἶδος, ἰδέα, γένος) in-
differently of both.
(ὁ) The single forms described under (3) are the ‘highest kinds’
(μέγιστα γένη), such as Being, Rest, and Motion. These are all of
1 Phaed. 1044.
THE SOPHIST 231
them ‘manners of participation’, or, as Aristotle called them,
‘forms of predication’ (σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας). They have no
meaning except in a judgement.
(c) In the Phaedo the question was what particular things admit
a given form as their predicate; here the question is one of the
compatibility or incompatibility of the ‘highest kinds’ or forms
with one another. Is it possible for any of these to be predicated
of one another; and, if so, which can be so predicated and which
can not?
(d) As Being is only one of the categories, though the most
pervasive of all, it has no meaning except as entering into a
judgement. By itself the word ‘is’ means nothing; it is only the
bond that unites a subject to a predicate. We may put this by
saying that Plato for the first time discovered ‘the ambiguity of the
copula’, though, for reasons which will appear, he would certainly
not have put the thing in that way.
§ 211. To avoid confusion, let us select only a few of the ‘highest
kinds’ (μέγιστα γένη) and consider (1) their nature, and (2) which
combine with which and to what extent. In this way we may be
able to discover some sense in which we may safely say that there
really is such a thing as ‘not being’. To begin with, Rest and
Motion exclude one another, but both of them are, and therefore
combine with Being. That gives us three kinds, but each of the
three is other than the other two and the same as itself. That gives
us a fourth and a fifth kind, Same and Other; for we cannot
identify these with any of the first three.?
For (1) if we identify either Rest or Motion with any common
predicate of both, then it will be predicable of the other, so that
Motion will rest or Rest will move. But Same and Other are common
predicates of Rest and Motion, therefore neither Rest nor Motion
can be identified with Same or Other. Again, (2) if we identify Being
and Same, then, as Rest and Motion both are, they will be the same.
Lastly, (3) we cannot identify Being and Other; for Other is essentially
(τοῦτο ὅπερ εστίν) relative (πρὸς ἕτερον) and Being is absolute (καθ
αὑτό). Therefore Other is a fifth kind (255 a—d).
Now Other pervades all the rest, just like Same and Being; for
each of them is the same as itself and other than the rest, and this
amounts to saying that each of them 7s itself and is not any of the
others.
3 Cf. Theaet. 185 a sq. (above, p. 247).
232 LOGIC
Thus Motion, being other than Rest, zs not Rest, but it zs Motion.
Motion, being other than Same, zs not Same, but it zs the same as
itself. (We must not mind the apparent contradiction. If we had not
shown that Motion and Rest exclude one another, we might even
have to say that Motion was at rest.) Again, Motion, being other than
Other, zs Other in a sense and 15 not Other in a sense. Lastly, Motion,
being other than Being, zs not Being, but it zs Being because they all
partake in Being. Motion, then, is really both Not being and Being,
and the same thing will apply to all the other kinds, since each of them
is other than Being and each of them zs (255 e — 256e).
We may say, then, that each of the kinds, in virtue of its otherness,
has much Being and infinite Not being. And, as Being itself is
other than all the rest, we must say that Being zs not just as
many times as there are other things, and they are innumerable.
Not being these, it zs just itself, but it zs mot the rest innumerable
times.
§ 212. But this Not being which we have discovered is not the
opposite of Being (like the Not being Parmenides spoke of). The
negative term (ἀπόφασις) produced by prefixing ‘not’ to a word
only signifies something other than the word which follows the
negative, or rather than the thing that word denotes. Now other-
ness is subdivided into as many parts as knowledge, so, just as there
are many sciences and arts with names of their own the parts of
otherness will have names of their own. The part of otherness
opposed (ἀντιτιθέμενον) to the beautiful is the not-beautiful, which
is not other than anything else but beauty, and the not-beautiful zs
just as much as beauty, and so of the not-great, the not-just, and
so forth. It is in this combination with a particular part of Being
that Not being really zs; it is ‘not being so-and-so’, and it zs just as
much as what it is not. We need not trouble ourselves further,
then, about the question whether Not being as the opposite of
Being can be thought or spoken of or not. In the sense we have now
given it, it certainly zs and is all-pervasive. It is merely childish
to separate Being from Not being, and to argue that a thing must
either be or not be. The two forms are inseparably bound up
with one another, and this is what makes rational speech possible
(διὰ yap τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν κοινωνίαν 6 λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν
259 6).
What has been proved so far is (1) that everything that is
positively determined is also negatively determined, and (2) that
negative terms are an expression of reality (δηλώματα τῆς οὐσίας).
THE SOPHIST 233
It has been shown further, (3) that the reality expressed by a
negative term is not the contrary of the corresponding positive
term, but its contradictory. On the other hand, it has been shown
(4) that, as the negative term must always be understood in relation
to the corresponding positive, the reality it expresses is always a
particular part of reality, so that ‘not-great’, for instance, does not
include ‘beautiful’ or ‘just’, but only ‘small’.
§ 213. In the course of the foregoing discussion the remark was
thrown out that we have found the Not being which was necessary
to justify our account of the Sophist. This is not explained further,
but the point is quite simple. We called him an image-maker, and
he replied that there was no such thing as an image, since an image
is really not real. We now see that there is nothing in this objection;
for the art of image-making, like all other arts, includes a part of
Being and a part of Not being. The image is not the reality,
indeed, and the reality is not the image, but that involves no
difficulty. We are dealing with a particular art, that of Image-
making, and in it ‘not real’ has a perfectly definite and positive
signification. The ‘not real’ is not the unreal, but just the image,
which zs quite as much as that of which it is the image.
Even admitting this, however, the Sophist may still say that it is
impossible to say or think what is false. ‘Though we have shown
that Not being zs, or in other words that it combines with Being,
we have not shown that it combines with speech. But, unless it does
so, falsehood is impossible, and so therefore is deceit. We must,
therefore, scrutinise carefully (1) speech (λόγος), (2) judgement
(δόξα), and (3) appearance (φαντασία), with the view of seeing
whether Not being and consequently falsehood can enter into them
or not.
We must begin, as we did in the case of letters, by considering
whether all words combine with with one another, or whether some
will and some will not. There are two kinds of words that are ex-
pressions of reality (δηλώματα τῆς οὐσίας) nouns (ὀνόματα) and verbs
(ῥήματα). The latter express action or inaction or the reality of being or
not being (1.6. the reality expressed by a positive or negative term); the
former express the agent, or what is or is not so-and-so, A statement
(λόγος) cannot consist of nouns alone or of verbs alone; the very
simplest must have one of each, e.g. ‘man learns’. Further, every
statement must be ‘of some one or something’ (τινὸς εἶναι), and it
must have a certain quality (ποῖόν twa εἶναι), 1.6. it must express
something which is or becomes in the present, past or future (τῶν
234 LOGIC
ὄντων ἢ γιγνομένων ἢ γεγονότων ἢ μελλόντων).; Now let us make
a simple experiment. If I say “Theaitetos is sitting’, that is a statement
which is ‘of Theaitetos’, and it has the quality of expressing some-
thing which really zs at the present moment. But, if I say ‘Theaitetos,
to whom I am talking at the present moment (viv), is flying’, that is also
a statement which is ‘of Theaitetos’, but it has the quality of saying
something of him which, though expressing a real action, is something
other than what is real with regard to Theaitetos at the present moment.
It is, therefore, possible to speak of what is not as being, and that is
what we mean by falsehood (261 d — 263 d).
In fact, what we call truth and falsehood are not to be found in
terms, whether positive or negative, but only in the proposition,
which is a copulation (συμπλοκή) of terms.
§ 214. It will be observed that significant negative judgement is
explained as the affirmation of a negative predicate (ἀπόφασις),
but it would be altogether wrong to identify this with what
Aristotle calls an ‘indefinite’ predicate (ἀόριστον ῥῆμα), that is, a
predicate which may be truly predicated of everything alike,
whether existent or non-existent. In the present case, for instance,
‘is sitting’ excludes every other form of Rest, and therefore ‘is
sitting’ implies the negative judgements ‘is not lying’, ‘is not
standing’, and whatever other forms of Rest there may be. In the
second place, ‘is sitting’ excludes all the forms of Motion, which
cannot have any communion with Rest, and therefore implies the
negative judgements ‘is not walking’, ‘is not running’, ‘is not
flying’. The significance of the negative judgement depends, in
fact, on the system of kinds and forms to which it refers, what we
should call a ‘universe of discourse’. Plato held that there was a
perfectly definite number of such forms in each kind, which it is
the business of the dialectician to discover. That is why he insists
that ‘not being’ is subdivided into as many subdivisions as the arts,
and that each ‘part’ of ‘not being’ can be understood only in
relation to the corresponding ‘part’ of ‘being’. The negative
predicate ‘is not flying’ does not include ‘is beautiful’ or ‘is just’.
In the present case, the predicate ‘is flying’ expresses a real form
of action, a real form of the kind Motion, and it is ‘of Theaitetos’,
who is a real agent. The reason why the statement “Theaitetos is
flying’ is not true is just that, at the present moment (viv), Theai-
1 That ‘quality’ really means tense seems to follow from the context, and
especially from the emphasis on ‘to whom I am talking at the present moment’
in the illustration which follows.
THE SOPHIST 235
tetos ‘is sitting’, and that predicate excludes ‘is flying’. It does not
exclude ‘was flying’ or ‘will be flying’, and that is why we must
attend to the ‘quality’ of the statement.
§ 215. But, if it is possible to say what is false, it is also possible
to think what is false; for thought only differs from speech in this
respect, that it is ‘the conversation of the soul with itself taking
place without voice’, while speech is ‘the vocal stream issuing from
the soul through the lips’. Now we know that positive and nega-
tive predication (φάσις and ἀπόφασις) are found in speech, and,
when the same things occur silently in the soul, we call them
judgement (δόξα). Again, when affirmation and negation take place
in the soul, not in virtue of its own activity, but through the
agency of sensation, we call that appearance (φαντασία). It follows
that, as thought (διάνοια) is mental speech, and judgement (δόξα)
is ‘the completion of thought’, and appearance (φαντασία) is a
mixture of sensation and judgement, the truth and falsehood which
are possible in speech will also be possible in judgement and in
appearance.
Now that he has shown the possibility of false judgement and false
appearance, the Stranger goes on to give his final definition of the
Sophist. That is of no particular importance for us here, though
we may note some interesting points. Of these the most significant
is the way in which advantage is taken of the division of productive
art into divine and human to assert in impressive language the
doctrine that what we call natural objects are the work of God and
not of Nature or of Chance. We shall see presently that this thought
was occupying Plato’s mind at the time, and that he was already
trying to work out a rational justification of theism.
1 Most commentators understand by ‘quality’ the truth or falsehood of the
statement, but that would make the argument puerile. There is no point in
asking how we know that Theaitetos ‘is sitting’ now. We see him, of course.
ΧΥ
Politics
THE STATESMAN
§ 216. The dialogue entitled the Statesman (ΠἼ|ολιτικός) is in
form a sequel to the Sophist. The characters are the same and the
leading part is still taken by the Eleatic Stranger. There is no
reason to suppose that the two dialogues are separated by any
considerable interval of time.
The discussion begins by an attempt to find the definition of the
Statesman by the method of division, and it is easier to trace the
connexion of this with the principal theme of the dialogue than it
was in the case of the Sophist. 'The first definition we reach repre-
sents the King as the Shepherd of Men, as he is already called in
Homer. There is good reason for believing that this was the
Pythagorean view. The King to them was an ‘image’ of God upon
earth; for God was the shepherd of the world.+ This is, in fact, the
theocratic ideal of kingship. The Eleatic Stranger points out,
however, that it rests on a confusion between God and man, and
could only be realised if God were in person our ruler. That is the
point of the myth related by the Stranger. The course of the world
was once directed by God himself, but we are not living in that
age. There are seasons when the captain of the world-ship (a
Pythagorean conception)? retires to his conning-tower and leaves
the ship to itself. At those times the world goes round in the
opposite direction to that which God had given it, and all natural
processes are reversed (an idea which may have been suggested by
Empedokles). We are living in one of these periods, and there can
be no question for us of a divine ruler. There is a curious hint that,
after all, the ideal of mankind as a flock or a herd fed by the hand of
God may not be the highest. If the men of those days, who had no
need to take thought for the morrow, and who found everything
1 See Campbell’s Introduction to the Statesman, p. xxv sq.
2 E. Gr. Ph.” p. 342.
THE STATESMAN 237
bountifully provided for them without any labour on their part,
spent their time in gathering wisdom, and made use of their power
to communicate with the beasts in the interests of philosophy, then
indeed they were happier than we are. But if they and the beasts
spent their time in telling fables to each other such as have been
handed down by tradition to our own days, it is not hard to form
a judgement as to that either (272 c). This passage is very important.
It is plain that the theocratic ideal of the Pythagoreans had little
attraction for Plato. He did not think we could get rid of problems
by simplifying them out of existence.
§ 217. Let us turn, then, from the divine ruler to the human.
He will not be the feeder of his flock, but only its tender (275 e).
He will have complete knowledge of what is good for his subjects,
and he will secure it for them with or without their consent,
just as the doctor who knows what is good for the body will cure
his patients whether they like it or not. He will have no need of
laws. No law can take account of the infinite variety of particular
cases; it can only lay down certain principles in a rough and ready
way. If the ruler were able to attend to every case in person, and if
he could always be present, it would be absurd for him to trammel
himself with laws. If he had to go away for a time, he would no
doubt make laws to guide his subjects in his absence, just as a
doctor might leave behind him written instructions for his patient.
But, when the doctor came back, it would be ridiculous for him to
insist on keeping to these instructions. He would feel quite free to
alter the treatment if he saw fit. In the same way, if the philosopher
king were ever to appear on earth (as he may have done in the past),
there would be no need of laws. At present there is no appearance
of his return, so we must do as well as we can without him. We
must try to frame laws as nearly as possible in accordance with
what he would approve, and we must insist upon their being
scrupulously observed. If men found they were being badly treated
by the practitioners of the arts of medicine and navigation, they
would insist upon a code of rules for these arts being drawn up, and
upon all transgressions of these being punished, and that is the
true place of law in the state. It is only a makeshift (δεύτερος πλοῦς);
but, as things are, it is indispensable. It is in this way that Plato
deals with the philosopher king of the Republic. His rule is still the
ideal, but there is no immediate prospect of it being realised. The
use of such an ideal is nevertheless very great. In the first place, it
238 POLITICS
gives us a standard by which we can judge existing or possible
institutions, and in the second place, it will save us from the mistake
of attaching too high a value to these, and refusing in consequence
to contemplate any alteration of them. The true point of view from
which to regard existing laws and institutions is to look on them
as more or less tolerable expedients. They are all alike open to
criticism when compared with something higher, and ultimately
with the rule of the philosopher king. We may say, then, if we
please, that the purpose of the Statesman is to determine the
provinces of realism and idealism in politics. We must not put
the ideal too high, as the theocratic ideal did, but we may make
it as high as we please, so long as we take account of human
nature. The analogy of the beasts of the field is inapplicable to
mankind.
§ 218. Plato goes on to give a classification of constitutions from
this point of view, and, as might be expected, it is quite different
from that of the Republic. There are six constitutions altogether,
the rule of the philosopher king being excluded as hors concours.
The basis of division is twofold. The rulers may be one, few, or
many, and they may rule according to law or lawlessly. Of the legal
constitutions, kingship comes first, aristocracy second, and
democracy third; for the possibility of political knowledge is
inversely proportional to the number of rulers. But, when we come
to the lawless constitutions, the order is reversed. ‘There is only one
name for a constitutional and a lawless democracy, but they are
quite different in principle. Of all possible constitutions democracy
can do the least good and the least harm, so that, while a consti-
tutional democracy is inferior to aristocracy and still more to
constitutional monarchy, even a lawless democracy is far superior
to a lawless oligarchy, and still more to a lawless tyranny. Such is
the view of Plato, but it would be very hard to imagine Sokrates
accepting any such doctrine. Even the Periklean democracy is not
harshly treated. It is, of course, a lawless democracy, but it is not
condemned so bitterly as it was in the Gorgias and the Republic.
If it cannot do much good, it does relatively little mischief. The
legal democracy is more or less the Athenian democracy of Plato’s
own time, and is placed just below true aristocracy. All this is
quite in keeping with what we have learnt as to Plato’s political
upbringing and experience (§ 158), and it agrees very well with
what he says about his political attitude in Epvstle vii. It was
THE STATESMAN 239
impossible to maintain the Sokratic condemnation of all democracy
after the events which marked the end of the fifth century.
But that is not all. Plato does not insist in a doctrinaire fashion
on any rigid classification of constitutions. One of the chief
functions of the true ruler is just to unite the various elements in
the state, as the weaver unites the warp and the woof of his web,
and there is room for a number of mixed constitutions as well as
for the six types already described. In the Laws Plato’s final
conclusion is that, as things are, and in the absence of the philoso-
pher king, the best constitution will be a combination of legal
kingship with legal democracy.! He is thus able to take an extremely
practical view of political questions, and he is able to do so without
abating one jot of his idealism. That is where he goes beyond
Sokrates, whose political teaching had not, we have seen (§ 145),
been an unmixed blessing to his country.
PLATO AND DIONYSIOS
§ 219. Plato’s political teaching in the Academy had an enor-
mous influence through his pupils; for the foundations of Hel-
lenistic civilisation were mainly laid by them. His personal
intervention in the politics of the Hellenic nation, which was
already coming into being, was in some ways a failure, as the world
counts failure. He expected it to be so, and he entered upon it with
great misgiving; but it seemed worth trying, nevertheless. It was
just possible that he should succeed, and friends of his who were
in a position to form a judgement were confident that he would,
so he felt unable to shirk the task offered to him. To decline would
have been treason to philosophy (Ep. vii. 328 e). If he had
succeeded, the course of European history would have been
altered, and we shall see that his failure was due to causes beyond
his control.
In 367 B.c. Dionysios I. of Syracuse died at the age of sixty-
three, after a reign of thirty-eight years. He was in many ways a
great man, but he had failed in the main purpose of his life, which
1 In the Laws the best constitution is a mean between Persian monarchy and
Athenian democracy (756 e). Apparently Plato would have been an admirer of
the British Constitution. It is also worthy of note that his ideal is not very unlike
that of the speech of Perikles in Thucydides, and is just what might be expected
of the stepson of Pyrilampes. That does not, of course, imply approval of
Periklean democracy with Perikles left out. The illustration from the art of
weaving is common to the Statesman and the Laws (734 6 sqq.).
240 POLITICS
was to drive the Carthaginians from Sicily. He had been defeated
by Hanno the year before his death, and a peace was now concluded
on the basis of the status quo ante bellum. His successor, Dionysios
II., was nearly thirty years old, but he was quite unfit to take up
the reins of government. His father had always been jealous of
sharing his power with anyone, and had even sent his ablest
minister, Philistos the historian, into exile at Adria, near the
mouth of the Po. For the same reason he had purposely kept his
son at a distance from all public affairs, and encouraged him to find
amusement in such pursuits as amateur carpentry and turning.
The young man was not, we are told, without natural gifts, and it
seemed to Dion, who was his father’s brother-in-law and a‘devoted
admirer of Plato, that something might still be made of him. It was
too late to send him to the Academy at Athens, which by this time
was the recognised institution for the training of rulers and princes,
so Dion conceived the scheme of bringing Plato, now sixty years
old, to Syracuse. There was nothing in the least chimerical in the
project, and the problems Syracuse had to face made it essential
that she should have an enlightened ruler. The great question of
the day was once more how Hellenism could maintain itself
against the pressure of Persia on the one side and Carthage on the
other, and far-sighted statesmen saw clearly that the only hope lay
in taking the offensive. We hear most, as is natural, of Persia. The
conditions imposed by the King’s Peace of 387 B.c., which left the
Greek cities of Asia under Persian rule, were humiliating and
intolerable. That side of the problem was successfully dealt with
later by Alexander, and it was from the Academy that he derived
his inspiration ;! but the situation in Sicily was quite as serious.
The Carthaginian question was only another aspect of the Persian
question, and it is at least an instructive tradition that represents
the battles of Salamis and Himera as having been fought on the.
same day.?
§ 220. Plato refused, however, to let things be rushed. Dionysios
had a great deal of ground to make up, and it was necessary for him
to go through a serious course of higher study before he could be
1 Plut. adv. Col. 1126 d. Delios of Ephesos, an associate (ἑταῖρος) of Plato,
was sent to Alexander by the Hellenes who lived in Asia, and did most to enflame
him and stir him up to engage in war with the barbarians.
* It is interesting to note that the struggle between Hellenes and Semites had
also been going on in Cyprus, the other great ‘meeting-place of races’. Isokrates
phen a similar part there to that which Plato played in Sicily, — in his own way,
of course.
DIONYSIOS II. 241
trusted to make even a beginning with schemes of reform and
liberation.1 Unfortunately he was rather old for this. According to
Plato’s own principles, he ought to have begun these studies at the
age of twenty, so it was natural enough that, after the first en-
thusiasm had passed, he should feel them irksome. That was the
opportunity of the opposition who still clung to the principles of
the elder Dionysios. Philistos (or, as Plato calls him, Philistides)
had been recalled from exile, and he set himself at once to under-
mine the influence of Dion and Plato. The somewhat masterful and
haughty temperament of Dion also played into his hands, and it
was not hard to persuade Dionysios that his kinsman was taking
too much upon himself. Only four months after Plato’s arrival
Dion was banished, and Plato saw it was all over with the project
of reform. On the other hand, Dionysios had no idea of losing
Plato, to whom he had become deeply attached. He had, in fact,
been jealous of Dion’s intimacy with him, and hoped to have him
more to himself now Dion was out of the way. It was not to be
expected that Plato would give up his friend, however, and he
pressed his claim in season and out of season. A situation which
threatened to become impossible was ended by the outbreak of
war. Dionysios had to interrupt his studies, and Plato was free to
return to Athens. The understanding was that at the conclusion of
the war Dion should be restored to his old position, and that then
Plato would return. On his way home he visited Archytas at
Taras.
§ 221. It is not very likely that Dionysios was sincere in his
promise to become reconciled to Dion, but he was determined to
get Plato back at all costs. He tried to carry on his mathematical
studies in his absence, and made the subject quite fashionable at
court. At first Plato declined to return unless Dion was reinstated,
but he was urgently entreated to do so by Dion himself and by
1 Grote thinks Plato was wrong here, but that seems very doubtful. If he was
not to give Dionysios a regular training like that of the Academy, what was the
use of his coming to Syracuse at all? Possibly the men of those days believed too
much in science, but their belief in it was perfectly sincere. Prof. Bury’s view is
even more remarkable. He thinks (vol. ii. p. 247) that Plato should have con-
tented himself ‘with inculcating the general principles which he has expounded
with such charm in the Republic’, in which case ‘Dionysius would in all likelihood
have attempted to create at Syracuse a dim adumbration of the ideal state’! In
that case, we may add, the Carthaginians would have annexed Svracuse. Plato
was no utopian dreamer, and the notion that he pro_ τὰς ὦ doy ntroduce the
arrangements of the Republic at Syracuse (of all places) 1ϑι. 5 ν S4nsupported by
any sort of evidence. Arhill
242 POLITICS
Archytas, the most successful statesman of the day. He ought
certainly to have been a good judge of the situation, and he assured
Plato that Dionysios was really enthusiastic about philosophy, and
that everything would now go smoothly. With great reluctance
Plato accordingly made up his mind (361 B.c.) to ‘recross
Charybdis’ (Ep. vii. 345 e); but he soon discovered that Dionysios
had not the slightest intention of doing anything for Dion, and a
breach became inevitable. Plato wished to go home, but Dionysios
would not let him. No ship captain would venture to take him as a
passenger in the circumstances, and he had to wait a whole year.
At last a violent quarrel broke out on the occasion of a military
revolt. Dionysios made Herakleides, one of his officers, responsible
for it, and Plato with great difficulty got him off.! Dionysios could
not forgive the way in which he had been shamed into an act of
clemency, and bitterly reproached Plato with having hindered
him in the work of reform and the liberation of the Hellenic cities
under Carthaginian rule. Instead of that he had made him learn
geometry! Plato was excluded from the court and practically kept
a prisoner, until, on the intercession of Archytas, he was at last
allowed to return to Athens (360 B.c.). Even then there was no
final breach. Dionysios kept writing to Athens for explanations of
difficult points, and Plato answered him. He even wrote a book,
much to Plato’s annoyance, in which he professed to disclose the
Platonic philosophy. It is clear that Archytas and Dion were not
wrong in believing he had some natural gifts, but they had not
been cultivated early enough. He was vain and petulant, no doubt,
but his attachment to Plato was obviously sincere, and we cannot
help feeling a little sorry for him, when we remember what he
might have been if his father had given him a chance when he was
young enough to profit by it.?
§ 222. At this point Plato’s personal responsibility for the affairs
of Syracuse ceases, but Dion was still to be reckoned with. He was
not the sort of man to wait for ever, and he began to collect
adherents all over Hellas. He had determined to assert his rights
by force of arms. Plato would take no part in the adventure, but
the young hotbloods of the Academy were eager in the cause of
1 We gather from the Epistles that Plato was very unpopular with the mer-
cenary troops. These wild Keltic warriors knew very well that if Plato had his
way their day Nn i5ver.
2 This may hartvhy Dion had tried to secure the succession for the sons of
Dionysios I. by) istomache. They were much younger.
DION AND KALLIPPOS 243
their fellow-student, among them Plato’s nephew, Speusippos,
and Eudemos of Cyprus, the friend after whom Aristotle named his
dialogue on immortality. All preparations were completed by the
summer of 357 B.C., but difficulties began at once. Herakleides,
who had gone into exile after the incident described above, would
not subordinate himself to Dion and remained behind. With only
800 men Dion set sail for Sicily. Philistos was waiting for him in
the Adriatic; but Dion eluded him by sailing straight across the
sea instead of following the usual coast route. Once landed in
Sicily he received accessions of strength from every side. Dionysios,
who had not expected an attack in this direction, was in Italy, and
Dion made himself master of Syracuse. All might now have been
well had Dion been a little more conciliatory. Herakleides arrived
on the scene and had to be given a share in the government, but
this proved a constant source of weakness, and led at one time to
the temporary deposition of Dion. This is not the place to recount
the wretched details of the three-cornered struggle between
Dionysios, Dion, and Herakleides; it will be enough to indicate
its result. Herakleides was murdered at the instigation of Dion, and
Dion himself fell by the dagger of Kallippos, an Athenian and a
member of the Academy, who had been his most confidential
adviser. Kallippos only held power for about a year, when he was
once more expelled by Dion’s partisans.
Plato felt deeply the discredit which the treachery of Kallippos
had brought upon Athens and the Academy, but he never wavered
in his belief in Dion’s integrity. He was well aware of the defect in
his character which has been pointed out,? but he continued to
regard him as perfectly sincere and disinterested in his political
action. In support of this estimate it may be observed that it would
have been comparatively easy for Dion, who was closely related to
the royal house, to brush Dionysios aside at the beginning of his
reign and seize the power for himself. Instead of that he did his
best, in conjunction with Archytas, to fit the young prince for the
position he was called upon to occupy. If he was embittered by the
return he received for this act of self-abnegation, we can hardly
1 Eudemos lost his life in one of the combats round Syracuse.
2 In his letter congratulating Dion on his success (Epistle iv.) Plato tells him
that some people think him too deficient in complaisance, and warns him against
this fault (321 b). He is very anxious that the rule of Dion should do the Academy
credit. He reminds him that the ‘you know whos’ (τοὺς οἶσθα δήπου 320 0) are
expected to surpass others even more than grown men surpass children.
244 POLITICS
wonder at it. His property had been confiscated, and his wife had
been compelled to marry another man.
§ 223. The overthrow of Kallippos was the occasion of Plato’s
last endeavour to do something for Sicily. The partisans of Dion
asked him for advice with regard to the settlement of the con-
stitution, and this gave him the opportunity of writing the two
open letters to which we owe all our knowledge of these affairs.
The first (Epistle vii.) is a dignified defence of his own political
attitude throughout life, and it bears witness at once to his dis-
appointment in men whom he had trusted, and to his unshaken
confidence in his principles. He is willing to advise the partisans of
Dion, if they are really sincere in their desire to realise Dion’s
plans. He clearly does not feel sure of them. In the second letter
(Epistle vii.) he suggests, however, a scheme for the government
of Syracuse, in which Dionysios himself was to be asked to take a
share, if he would accept it, along with Hipparinos, his brother,
and Hipparinos, the son of Dion. It need hardly be said that this
proposal was too statesmanlike to be accepted by embittered party
men, and so the Syracusan Empire broke up for the time being.
As Plato saw, it was in danger of falling into the hands of the
Carthaginians or the Oscans.4
We have seen how very nearly Plato came to succeeding. At the
very least he might have done for Dionysios what the Pythagorean
Lysis did for Epameinondas. It was said at the time that the
prosperity of Thebes at this date was due entirely to the philoso-
phers.? And he might have done even more with more promising
material. If it had been an Alexander of Macedon that Plato had to
deal with instead of a Dionysios, a Greek king would have been
ruling at Carthage before many years had passed. As it was, it was
left for the Romans to carry out the task which seemed to fall
naturally to the ruler of Syracuse,? and that brought about the
division between Eastern and Western Europe which, to all ap-
pearance, will be the great political problem of the immediate future.
3 EP: Mii. 353 €. . ‘ : ἮΝ με ᾿ ἐ
το ὦ ἐν oo lel sa ἅμα οἱ προστάται φιλόσοφοι ἐγένοντο καὶ εὐδαιμόνησεν ἡ
8 The First Punic War broke out just eighty years after the final expulsion of
Dionysios II. from Syracuse by Timoleon. Plato did not live to see either the
brief restoration of Dionysios (345 B.c.) or his final overthrow (344 B.c.). After
that Dionysios lived the life of a dilettante at Corinth, where Aristoxenos saw
him, and asked him the cause of his quarrel with Plato. Dionysios answered that
no one tells a tyrant the truth, and that he had been robbed of Plato’s goodwill
by want of frankness in his so-called friends (Plutarch, Timoleon, 15).
THE LAWS 245
THE LAWS
§ 224. It must not be supposed, however, that Plato’s attempt
to make a constitutional ruler of Dionysios bore no fruit, even at
the time. It was the immedate occasion of his undertaking his
longest and most comprehensive work. It is true that a credible
tradition represents the Laws as having been published after Plato’s
death by Philip of Opous, and it is likely enough that he never gave
the finishing touch to the work. That is quite consistent, however,
with its having been begun a good many years earlier. It is a
treatise which goes into great detail, and which must have called
for considerable study of existing codes of law. Now in Epistle iii.
(316 a), writtern shortly after 360 B.c., we are told expressly that
Plato had been working with Dionysios at the ‘preambles’
(προοίμια) to laws during his second visit to Syracuse. This is
explained by a passage in the Laws itself (722 d sqq.), where we are
told that the legislator ought always to preface his laws by a
‘prelude’ (προοίμιον) in which he explains their motive. That gives
us some insight into Plato’s method of teaching politics and
jurisprudence, which is quite in accordance with the doctrine of
the Statesman. In order to frame a code of laws on any subject, we
must first of all lay down clearly the general principles which are
to guide us, and then go on to embody these in detailed enactments.
The general principles will as far as possible be such as would be
approved by the ideal ruler who can dispense with laws altogether;
the particular enactments will take account of the circumstances
of the state for which they are intended.
The fiction of the dialogue is that a colony is to be established
in Crete on a deserted site, and the magistrate of Knossos who is
charged with the duty of legislating for it is represented as consult-
ing an Athenian Stranger and a Spartan on the subject. The very
first questions asked before legislation in detail is attempted are
whether the new city is on the coast or inland, whether the soil is
fertile or not, and the like (704 a sqq.). There is no attempt to
legislate for a city in the abstract; we are dealing with a particular
colony, and we have to take account of all the special circumstances
affecting it.
§225. There is no work of Plato’s which has been so little
appreciated as the Laws, and yet it contains much of his maturest
thought which we should otherwise know nothing about, and
246 POLITICS
embodies the results of a long and varied experience of human life.
It is, of course, impossible to summarise it here; all that can be
done is to suggest certain points which may help the reader to a
juster view of what Plato himself probably considered his most
important work.
He still believed, in spite of his disappointment with Dionysios,
that the co-operation of a tyrant with a philosopher would result
in the greatest blessings for the Hellenic nation, and he reasserts
this conviction emphatically (709 e). Failing that, however, much
might be hoped from the influence of philosophy on law-givers
and framers of constitutions. He did not, therefore, think it an
unworthy use of his last years to codify what seemed best to him
in Greek Law, public and private, and especially in the Law of
Athens, supplementing it with legislative proposals of his own. To
understand this we must try to realise the condition of the Greek
world at the time. We are not accustomed in this country to
systematic legislation (what the Greeks called νομοθεσία), though
such things as the Code Napoléon may give us a notion of what is
meant, but it was very familiar to the Greeks. Every colony had a
written constitution and a code of laws, and the task of framing
these was regularly entrusted to a single individual or a small
commission. The situation presupposed in the Laws was of almost
everyday occurrence, and there is nothing extravagant in the idea
that a man like the Athenian Stranger — who is more or less Plato
himself — should be able to give valuable assistance in such
circumstances. It is certain, indeed, that many of the men who
gave laws to the Greek States at this time were members of the
Academy, and that several States applied to the Academy for an
expert legislator when they were amending their constitutions.?
The purpose of the Laws is, therefore, an eminently practical one,
and the work is designed to meet a real need of the time.
§ 226. No doubt it may seem strange to a modern reader that
Plato should devote so much attention as he does to minute police
regulations about water-supply and the picking of ripe fruits by
the passing wayfarer. As to that, there are two remarks to be made.
In the first place, one of Plato’s most deeply rooted convictions is
that all human affairs are very insignificant in comparison with the
1Plut. Adv. Col. 1126 ς Πλάτων δὲ τῶν ἑταίρων ἐξαπέστειλεν Ἀρκάσι μὲν ᾿Αριστώνυμον
διακοσμήσοντα τὴν πολιτείαν, ᾿Ηλείοις δὲ Φορμίνα, Μενέδημον δὲ Πυρραίοις. Εὔδοξος δὲ
Κνιδίοις καὶ ᾿Αριστοτέλης Σταγειρίταις, Πλάτωνος ὄντες συνήθεις, νόμους ἔγραψαν" παρὰ
δὲ Ξενοκράτους ᾿Αλέξανδρος ὑποθήκας ἤτησε περὶ βασιλείας.
THE LAWS 247
immensity of the world, and that the events of the day are only an
incident in the history of mankind through countless ages. Some-
times he feels that Man is perhaps no more than a plaything of
God, and that human life is not after all a serious thing. Un-
fortunately, whether it is serious or not, we have got to take it
seriously (803 b), but it is absurd to suppose there is much to
choose between one department of it and another in point of
worth and dignity. Nothing is too humble, as nothing is too
exalted, for the philosopher’s attention.
Closely connected with this is his belief that homely examples
are often the best to illustrate important principles. He had learnt
that from Sokrates, and he had discussed the matter in the States-
man. This is particularly the case in jurisprudence. Jurists, who
presumably know their business, do not quarrel with the Jnstitutes
for their minute discussions of the ownership of stray animals and
swarming bees. It is not to be supposed that these questions were
treated entirely for their own sake by the Roman lawyers; it is
because such simple instances are the best for the purpose of
bringing out the fundamental principles of law.
This brings us to another very important point. We have seen
that many of Plato’s associates became lawgivers, and it is hardly
too much to say that his work is the foundation of Hellenistic Law.
That explains the fact, which was perfectly well known to some of
the older jurists like Cujas, though it is often overlooked at the
present day, that many features of Roman Law are derived from
this source.! The direct influence of Greek philosophy on Roman
Law has probably been overestimated, but its indirect influence
has hardly been done justice to. The way in which this came about
was as follows. When the Romans came into closer contact with
non-Roman peoples, that is to say, especially with the Greek
communities of Italy and Sicily, it was found that the principles
of their civil law could not be applied easily to the relations be-
tween Romans and foreigners or to the relations of foreigners with
one another. Hence arose the jus gentium, which, in its origin, was a
sort of common law of Italy. This was administered by the praetor
peregrinus and embodied in his edict, which was simply an
announcement of the principles on which he intended to decide
1 See Cuiacii Comm. in lib. xlix. Pauli ad Edictum, ad ὃ ad Namusam et seq.:
multa ... auctores nostri ex Platone mutuati sunt. Examples are given in Obser-
vationum lib. xxiv. c. 24.
I B.G.P,
248 POLITICS
certain cases. The edict was handed down from praetor to praetor
with such modifications as were required from time to time, and
ultimately became a regular body of law, the jus honorarium. It
was inevitable that many of its provisions should be modelled on
the laws of the Hellenic states with which the Romans came in
contact, and these in turn were profoundly influenced by the
jurisprudence of the Academy. Now that Hellenistic law is
becoming better known from the papyri, we may confidently
anticipate some valuable discoveries in this field.
EDUCATION
§ 227. In the next chapter we shall be dealing with the most
abstract aspect of Plato’s philosophy, so it will be well to give here
a brief sketch of the educational system recommended in the Laws.
This will keep us in mind that these highly abstract speculations
went hand in hand with the most intense interest in concrete
detail. It will also be useful from another point of view. The
educational theories of Plato are chiefly known from the Republic,
and it is often forgotten that there is a much fuller and more
practical treatment of the subject in the Laws.
The first thing to secure is that babies shall be straight (788 d),
for everything depends on the start. A human being may go on
growing till he is twenty, but quite half of this growth is accom-
plished in the first five years. Now growth implies nourishment,
and the nourishment of babies is very great in proportion to their
size. It follows that they must have a great deal of bodily exercise
up to the age of five. The simplest way of putting this is to say that
babies should live as if they were always at sea. Even nurses know
that from experience, for when they wish to put babies to sleep
they employ action, not rest, for the purpose. They shake them up
and down in their arms, and they do not use silence, but sing to
them. The Korybantic purifications depend on the same principle
(790 d).
The next point to notice is that small babies scream and kick,
while larger ones shout and jump about in a disorderly fashion.
For three years babies can only express their wants by crying; and
as three years is a considerable portion of a human life to spend
well or ill, education must start from this fact, and build upon it.
Pleasure and pain are the only feelings young children know, and
THE LAWS 249
we might suppose it the right thing to give them all the pleasure
and save them all the pain we can. That, however, is wrong. What
we wish to train them to is that state of calm which is as far
removed from positive pleasure as from pain. In order to do this
we must take advantage of the fact that from the very earliest age
children take pleasure in tune and time. These two things must
therefore be our chief educational instrument for the first three
years of life; for, by developing this instinct, we can gradually
transform the natural screams and shouts into song, and the kicks
and jumps into dance. Punishment should begin at the age of three,
but we must be careful not to employ forms of punishment which
will produce:anger and sullenness. As to games, they are instinctive
at that age, and when a few small children are brought together,
they will invent them of their own accord. It is best to leave them
to do so.
From three to six children should be taken to the religious
services of their village, and this at once raises the thorny problem
of nurses. There must be a committee of twelve ladies appointed
by the head of the Education Department to supervise all the
nurses. They will divide the country into districts, and each will
visit all the temples and celebrations in her own district, at least
once a year, to see that the nurses behave. It is a good plan for the
grandparents to live at some distance and have the children sent
to visit them. In that way it is possible to make sure that they really
do get the outing they are supposed to get.
The education οἵ boys and girls should be separate from the age
of six, for at that age they begin actual lessons. The boys are to be
taught riding and archery and the use of the sling. The girls are
also to be taught the use of arms as far as possible. We must also
get rid of the superstition of mothers and nurses that the right hand
is to be preferred to the left. It makes us only half able-bodied.
The chief instruments of education at this stage will be music
and gymnastics, for which we have prepared the children by the
use of time and tune and by shaking them when they were small.
Gymnastics has two main divisions, dancing and wrestling. Music
has two functions — one the accompaniment of the noble words
of the poets, the other the accompaniment of dances and other
exercises of the limbs. We must not teach the children anything
elaborate or professional, but only simple physical drill with simple
songs, taking as our model what is required in war and the service
250 THE LAWS
of the gods. The question of games and toys becomes more
important at this age. The main thing is that each generation should
play the same games and have the same toys as the last, for only so
can the spirit of the constitution be preserved. The greatest of all
revolutionaries is the man who invents new games and finer toys,
for the boy who has played different games in youth will grow up a
different sort of man. In things which are not in themselves bad
change is dangerous, and therefore the preservation of the old
games is a fundamental interest of the state. As to music, we must
take it as our guiding principle that rhythms and melodies are
imitations of character. They are the most direct imitation there is
of anything — far more direct than painting and sculpture, for
instance — but what they imitate is not the outward appearance
but disposition of soul. These, then, must be preserved unaltered
too. New melodies and rhythms will destroy the spirit of the
constitution. Tragedy will be excluded, of course. We cannot allow
competing choruses to blaspheme in the immediate neighbourhood
of the altars.
The difficult task of selecting songs and dances will be left to a
jury consisting of men over fifty, who will accept or reject the old
ones, or, if necessary, call in expert assistance to correct their
melody and rhythm. If the children are once accustomed to the
sober and ordered Muse, when they hear the opposite kind of
music, the sweet kind, they will think it only fit for slaves. On the
other hand, if they have been habituated to the sweet Muse in early
life, they will find true music cold and harsh. There must be
separate songs for boys and girls, differing in pitch and time. ‘The
boys’ music will imitate the proud and brave character, the girls’
the modest and pure. Gymnastics must be taught to girls also.
There is no reason for supposing that riding and gymnastics are
suitable for boys and not for girls. It is true that women are not so
strong as men, but that is no reason for their not being made to do
what they can. A state that makes no call upon its women for
military service is not much more than half as strong as it might
be made at the same expense. It would be better that they should
be relieved to some extent from household occupations, which
might be simplified by the introduction of co-operative methods.
At any rate, the human race should be freed from the disgrace of
being the only one in which the females are incapable of defending
the life of their young.
EDUCATION 251
We have not yet touched on the manner in which these things
are to be taught. It is not merely a technical one. Everything
depends on the object we have in view. Just as a shipbuilder
constructs a ship with a view to a certain kind of voyage, so our
educational methods must be determined by a view of the best
way to make the voyage of life. Perhaps it does not matter from
the point of view of God, but we must at least play the game if it
is one, and who knows but it may be more. Even if men and women
are God’s playthings, that is, after all, the best thing about them.
The trouble is that people draw the distinction between jest and
earnest, work and play wrongly. They suppose, for instance, that
war is earnest and peace is not. That is wrong. Peace is more
earnest than war, and a great deal that is taken for play is really the
highest kind of work.
The question of school buildings is of great importance. The
teachers must have salaries, and therefore (this is very Greek) they
must be foreigners. Education must be compulsory. It cannot be
left to the fathers of families to educate their children or not as
they please, for they belong even more to the state than to their
fathers. So far we have been dealing with what we should call
elementary education, which was all the education most men had
in Plato’s time.
§ 228. But now comes the question what our young people are
to do now that their preliminary training is finished. Is there
something further, or are they to live the life of cattle being
fattened for the market? Certainly not. Now is the time for real
hard work; all the rest, including the military training, has really
been play. There is no time to lose. In very truth every day and
night of our lives, if devoted to that alone, is barely sufficient for a
complete, or even an adequate education. The employment of each
day must therefore be carefully ordered from one sunrise to the
next. It would be unseemly for the legislator to enter into domestic
details, but we may say at once that it is monstrous for those who
are to guard a city to sleep all night, and that it is not proper for the
mistress of a house to be wakened by her maids. She should be up
first and see that the maids are up. A man who is asleep is worth-
less, and he who cares most to be alive and thinking keeps awake
longest. It is wonderful how little sleep we need when we get into
the habit of doing with little. The boy must therefore go to school
before sunrise. He wants careful watching; for he is the most
252 THE LAWS
awkward of beasts to handle. That is just because he has what
other beasts have not, a native spring of thought in him which is
not yet settled or clear. Boys will now study things written, and
not all of them in metre. Along with that will go at first the tuning
of the lyre (not necessarily the playing of it), so much reckoning
as is useful for war and housekeeping, and a certain amount of
astronomy, enough to make the calendar intelligible. These things
are not to be confused with the sciences, which come later.
The question arises how far a man who is to be a good citizen
must go in these subjects. A boy should begin reading and writing
at the age of ten and spend three years on them; music need not be
begun till he is thirteen, and should be continued for three years.
These times should be made compulsory whether the boy or his
father has any taste for the subjects or not. It will be enough if the
boys can read and write intelligibly; it is only in cases of special
talent that we should encourage a higher degree of excellence. The
time and trouble it takes are better spared for the higher studies.
That the boys will read poetry of the right sort is a matter of
course, but prose seems a very dangerous thing. Even as to poetry
there is the question whether it should be read in masses and whole
poets learnt by heart, or whether we should use books of extracts
and make our pupils commit these to memory. But, as has been
suggested, the real difficulty is the educational use of prose. Books
about the principles of legislation may certainly be read, but the
works of philosophers and scientific men are not safe at this stage.
All these things will be regulated by the head of the Education
Department, but he will have expert advice on technical questions.
He will not allow the experts to dictate to him on general principles,
but will consult them as to the methods of carrying them out.
§ 229. We come now to the higher studies, beginning with
Mathematics, in its three chief divisions of Arithmetic, Geometry,
and Astronomy. Only a small number will pursue these studies to
the end, those, namely, who show themselves fit to become
members of the Nocturnal Council, but the prevailing ignorance
of them can only be described as ‘swinish’ (819 d). And that is not
the worst. Most teachers treat mathematical subjects in the most
perverse manner, and the greatest evil is not total ignorance, but
much learning and knowledge misdirected. Most people take it
for granted that all lengths, breadths and depths are commen-
surable, whereas it is really the problem of incommensurability
EDUCATION 253
that should hold the first place in mathematical education. The
study of questions arising out of this is a far better game than
backgammon. The teaching of astronomy must be reformed on
similar lines.
We may easily miss the significance of Plato’s proposals as to the
education of boys and girls from the age of ten onwards. We must
remember that in his day there were no regular schools for young
people of that age. They were taken to one teacher for music-
lessons and to another to be taught Homer, and there was no idea
of coordinating all these things in a single building under a single
direction with a regular staff of teachers. By founding the Academy
Plato had invented the university, and now he has invented the
secondary school. In consequence we find such schools everywhere
in the Hellenistic period, and the Romans adopted it with other
things, quaintly translating the Greek term σχολή by ludus. That
is the origin of the medieval grammar school and of all that has
come out of it since. It will be seen that the Laws is not a work we
can afford to despise if we wish to understand Plato’s influence, but
it is time to turn to a very different side of his activity.
XVI
The Philosophy of Numbers
§ 230. It is by no means easy for us at the present day to interpret
the central doctrine of Plato’s philosophy. As we have seen (§ 162),
he did not choose to commit it to writing, and we, are almost
entirely dependent on what Aristotle tells us. What makes matters
worse is that Aristotle is a very unsympathetic critic of Plato’s
teaching, and that he looks at it too much in the light of certain
results to which it had led in the Academy of his own day. In one
place he complains that the men of his time (οἵ νῦν) had replaced
philosophy by mathematics.! That was repugnant to him as a
biologist, and he made the teaching of Plato responsible for it. We
shall have to see how far he was justified.
In dealing with Aristotle’s evidence, it is necessary to make two
distinctions. We must, in the first instance at least, distinguish (1)
between doctrines attributed to Plato by name and doctrines
vaguely stated to be those of ‘some’, a way of speaking which may
include Pythagoreans and the contemporary Academy. We must
also distinguish even more carefully (2) between statements as to
facts which must have been well within Aristotle’s knowledge and
his interpretation of these facts. When he tells us, for instance, that
Plato held numbers to be unaddible, we are bound to believe him.
He could not have made such a statement unless it was true and
was known to be true by his contemporaries. On the other hand,
when he tells us what Plato really meant by this, we have to remem-
ber that he is one of those people who always know what another
man means better than he knows himself. Above all, when he
describes the historical origin of any doctrine, we must bear in
mind that he is speaking of things he could know nothing about
except from inference or hearsay. These obvious distinctions are
often ignored. Speculations as to the influence exercised on Plato
by Sokrates and Kratylos years before Aristotle was born are quoted
1 Met. A. 9, 992 8, 32: γέγονε τὰ μαθήματα τοῖς viv ἡ φιλοσοφία.
ARISTOTLE ON PLATO 255
as evidence of fact, and at the same time a philosophy is expounded
as Plato’s, which differs in the most important points from that
which Aristotle says he heard from his own lips.
One thing, at any rate, seems clear. Aristotle knows of but one
Platonic philosophy, that which identified the forms with numbers.
He never indicates that this system had taken the place of an earlier
Platonism in which the forms were not identified with numbers,
or that he knew of any change or modification introduced into his
philosophy by Plato in his old age.! That is only a modern specu-
lation. Aristotle had been a member of the Academy for the last
twenty years of Plato’s life, and nothing of the kind could have
taken place without his knowledge. We may be sure too that, if he
had known of any such change, he would have told us. It is not his
way to cover up what he regards as inconsistencies in his master’s
teaching. If the ‘theory of Numbers’ had been no more than a
senile aberration (which appears to be the current view), that is just
the sort of thing Aristotle would have delighted to point out. As it
is, his evidence shows that Plato held this theory from his sixtieth
year at least, and probably earlier.
§ 231. It is certain, then, that Plato identified forms and num-
bers; but, when we ask what he meant by this, we get into diffi-
culties at once. In the last two books of the Metaphysics (M and N),
which deal expressly with the objects of mathematics (τὰ μαθηματικά)
and with forms and numbers, the name of Plato is only mentioned
once (1083 a, 33), and the doctrine there attributed to him is that
numbers ‘are not addible to one another’ (οὐ συμβλητοὺς εἶναι τοὺς
ἀριθμοὺς πρὸς ἀλλήλους). In an earlier passage (1080 a, 12 sqq.)
three versions of the doctrine that numbers are ‘separate’ (χωριστά)
and the first causes of things are given as the only possible ones,
but no names are mentioned. We are even told (1081 a, 35) that
one of these versions had never been held by anybody, which does
not prevent Aristotle (if he is the author of these books) from re-
futing it as vigorously as the other two. Obviously we cannot make
anything of this for the present, and it is unsafe, at least in the first
instance, to use these books as evidence except for the single
doctrine attributed in them to Plato by name.
1In M. 4. 1078 Ὁ, 9 sqq., it seems to me impossible to identify those who ‘first
said there were forms’ with Plato, though it must be admitted that things are
said of them which are said of Plato in A. 6. The explanation is, I think, that in
pees eae Aristotle is thinking primarily of the εἰδῶν φίλοι in the Phaedo (cf.
Pp. 280).
256 ARISTOTLE ON PLATO
§ 232. There is, however, a chapter in the First Book of the
Metaphysics (A. 6) which seems more hopeful. It is the only place
where Aristotle professes to give a careful statement of Plato’s
philosophy, attributing it to him by name and distinguishing it
from other systems. The method he adopts is to compare Platonism
with Pythagoreanism, which, he says, it followed in most respects
(τὰ πολλα), though it had two peculiarities (ἴδια Πλάτωνος) which
distinguished it from ‘the Italic philosophy’. These two points of
difference were as follows: (1) The Pythagoreans said that numbers
were things, while Plato held not only that sensible things were
distinct from (παρά) numbers, but also regarded the objects of
mathematics as distinct from both and intermediate between them.
(2) The Pythagoreans held the matter of numbers to be the Un-
limited and their form the Limit; Plato regarded the elements of
number as the One and the dyad of the Great-and-Small.
These two points are all that Aristotle regards as really peculiar
to Plato; for he looks upon the substitution of the term ‘participa-
tion’ for ‘imitation’ as a merely verbal difference. Both the Pytha-
goreans and Plato left it an open question (ἀφεῖσαν ev κοινῷ ζητεῖν)
what imitation or participation of things in forms could be. That
is the outline of the chapter, but it is somewhat confused by a long
parenthesis intended to show that the first difference between
Plato and the Pythagoreans was due to the influence of Herakleitos
(through Kratylos) and Sokrates. That may or may not be correct,
but Aristotle’s statements on this subject do not stand on the same
level as his account of the peculiarities themselves, which he must
have heard Plato expound.
I, FORMS, MATHEMATICALS AND SENSIBLES
§ 233. The first of these peculiarities is, then, that, while the
Pythagoreans said numbers were things, Plato regarded sensible
things as distinct from numbers, and made the objects of mathe-
matics intermediate between the two. It is important to observe
that Aristotle is here contrasting Plato with the Pythagoreans and
not with Sokrates, who is only introduced to explain his divergence
from the Pythagorean theory of numbers. It is also to be noted that
by ‘Sokrates’ Aristotle means, as he usually does, the Sokrates of
the Phaedo. We are expressly told (987 b, 29) that the distinction
made between numbers and the sensibles and the ‘introduction’
ARISTOTLE ON PLATO 257
(εἰσαγωγή) of the forms was due to the practice of ‘considering
things in statements’ (διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἐγένετο σκέψιν) and that
is as clear a reference as can be to the new method introduced by
Sokrates in that dialogue (99 e sqq.). We are also told that the pre-
decessors of Sokrates were unversed in dialectic, and that is
explained by what has been said above (987 a, 20) about the
Pythagoreans. They began, we are told, to discuss the ‘What is it?’
of things (τὸ τί éo7w;), and to define them, but in a naive and
superficial way. Sokrates introduced universal definitions and
busied himself with ethical matters instead of with nature as a
whole, and it was Plato’s acceptance of his method that made it
impossible for him to follow the Pythagoreans in identifying
numbers with things. He had convinced himself of the Hera-
kleitean doctrine that sensible things were in flux, and he saw that
the definitions of Sokrates could not apply to them, so he gave the
name of forms to something other than sensible things, and said
that sensible things were distinct from these (παρὰ ταῦτα) and
were called after them; for the multitude of things sharing the
same name as the forms were what they were in virtue of their
participation in these forms. It will be observed that in this
passage Aristotle insists rather on the distinction of sensible things
from the forms than on that of the forms from sensible things, and
he implies that this is what distinguished Plato from Sokrates. We
have seen reason already for believing that Sokrates recognised no
reality in sensible things apart from the forms, and Aristotle’s
language here confirms this view. Of course it is equally true to say,
as Aristotle usually does, that the forms are distinct from the
sensible things, but it is significant that, when he first has occasion to
mention the point, he emphasises the other side of the distinction.
§ 234. Closely connected with this separation (χωρισμός) of
sensible things is what Aristotle calls the ‘introduction’ (εἰσαγωγή)
of the forms. This term does not imply that Plato invented them.
The metaphor is, I believe, derived from the use of the word for
bringing on the stage or ‘producing’, and the suggestion appears
to be that the ethical inquiries of Sokrates had made it necessary
to assume certain universals which were not numbers, and these,
of course, would be separate from the things of sense just as the
numbers were. ‘The Pythagoreans had defined Justice, for instance,
as a square number, but Sokrates had shown that we must postulate
a special form of Justice (αὐτὸ 6 ἐστι δίκαιον). That is not
258 ARISTOTLE ON PLATO
mentioned as an innovation of Plato’s. The only difference which is
implied between Sokrates and Plato is that the latter separated
sensible things from the forms while the former did not. That is
stated in so many words in the Tenth Book (1078 b, 17), though it
is also said (1086 b, 3) that Sokrates gave the impulse to (ἐκίνησε)
this separation. He is commended for not going further, and it is
implied that his doctrine was much the same as Aristotle’s own.
That can hardly be historical, but Aristotle may have thought it
a legitimate interpretation of the second part of the Phaedo, where
the forms are certainly im things. It seems to me a far more serious
anachronism to represent Sokrates as seeking for universals (τὰ
καθόλου), a term not yet invented, than to represent him as seeking
for ‘forms’. It is worse still to make him talk about ‘concepts’.
Realism is prior ro Conceptualism, and I doubt very much whether
anyone ever ‘hypostatised concepts’. As we have seen (§ 195),
Conceptualism is tentatively put forward in the Parmenides as a
solution of the problem of participation, but it is rejected at once.
§ 235. This parenthesis, then, is at best Aristotle’s speculative
reconstruction of history from his own point of view, and throws
very little light on his definite statement that Plato not only made
numbers distinct from sensible things, but also made the objects
of mathematics intermediate between them. It is that statement of
Aristotle, and not his historical notes upon it, which we have
really to interpret. He tells us further that the objects of mathe-
matics differed from the things of sense in being eternal and
immovable and from the forms in being many, whereas each form
is one and unique (αὐτὸ ἐν μόνον). If we can interpret that, we shall
know what Plato’s ‘separatism’ (χωρισμός) really meant.
The difference between the objects of sense and the objects of
mathematics is a simple matter, and is fully dealt with in the
Phaedo. 'The mathematician is not really speaking about the sen-
sible diagram he traces in the sand. The sensible circle is only a
rough ‘image’ (εἴδωλον) of what he really means. In the Phaedo,
however, the objects of mathematics are certainly regarded as
forms, and we have now to ask what is meant by distinguishing
them from the forms. It cannot, of course, be meant that mathe-
matical forms are on a lower level than others. That is the last
thing Plato would think of, and the point is rather that they are on
1 The term λόγος cannot possibly mean ‘concept’. So far as there is any Greek
word for ‘concept’ at this date, it is νόημα.
NUMBERS UNADDIBLE 259
a higher level. The object of the mathematician’s reasoning is not,
indeed, the sensible circle, but neither is it the circle, the form of
circularity. He speaks of circles of greater or smaller radius, and
even of two circles intersecting one another. Mathematical reason-
ing, then, has to do with many circles, whereas the circle is one and
one only. In the same way, the triangle about which we reason is
either equilateral, isosceles or scalene, but the triangle is none of
these. In fact, it is really the circles, triangles, etc., of which the
geometer speaks that are the ‘many’ which partake in the forms.
And this is even truer of numbers than of figures, the spatial
character of which has something of the sensible about it. We speak
of adding two and two to make four, as if there were many twos.
It is clear that we do not mean by these twos the pebbles or
counters we may use to symbolise them, but neither do we mean
the number two. There is only one number two, the form of two or
the dyad. The arithmetician’s twos, however, are even less like
things of sense than the geometer’s circles; they are the nearest
approach we can get to the purely intelligible. From this point of
view, Plato’s separatism is a good deal less arbitrary than Aristotle
seems to think.
§ 236. This distinction, moreover, furnishes the real explanation
of the doctrine Aristotle attributes to Plato by name, that numbers
are ‘unaddible’ (ἀσύμβλητοι). When we say ‘two and two is
four’, we mean that two units of a given kind added to two units of
the same kind are equal to four units of that kind; we do not mean
that the number two added to the number two is the number four.
That would be nonsense; for the number two does not consist of
two units nor does the number four consist of four units. Each
number is a universal, and every universal is one and unique. The
units we call ‘two’ somehow partake in the number two, but it is
not identical with them. There is only one number two. From this
it follows further that the relation between the numbers themselves
is not one that can be expressed by any additive formula. The
number five is not the number four plus a unit. The relation of four
and five is simply one of priority and posteriority. What, then, are
1 There is a hint, perhaps unconscious, of this doctrine in the Phaedo, where
Sokrates speaks of αὐτὰ τὰ ἴσα (74 c). These are not identical with the more or
less equal things of sense nor yet with αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον. Probably such things as the
two angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are meant.
31 am much indebted here to Professor Cook Wilson’s article in the Classical
Review, vol. xviii. (1904) pp. 247 sqq.
26ο THE ELEMENTS OF NUMBERS
the “two and two’ which we say make four? The answer will appear
if we remember that the particulars of the mathematical sciences
are objects of thought just as much as the universals. We can think
particular ‘twos’ without regarding them as inhering in any sensible
substratum, so that the ‘two and two’ which ‘make four’ are
distinguished on the one hand from the ‘two and two pebbles’
which make four pebbles, and on the other from the unique
universal, the number two.
It is clear, then, that numbers are unique forms, and we have
seen some reason for thinking that they are forms in a pre-
eminent sense. That is certainly the doctrine Aristotle attributes
to Plato, but we cannot understand it completely till we have
discussed the relation of the forms of number to the other forms.
That brings us to what Aristotle regards as the second peculiarity
(ἴδιον) of Plato’s philosophy.
II, THE ONE AND THE INDETERMINATE DYAD
§ 237. The Pythagoreans had regarded the Limit (πέρας) and the
Unlimited (ἀπειρον) or Continuous as the elements of number, and
therefore as the elements of things. Plato substituted for these the
One and the dyad of the Great-and-Small. The only difference,
according to Aristotle, is that the Pythagorean Unlimited was
single, whereas Plato regarded the ‘matter’ of numbers, and there-
fore of things, as dual in character. It also follows, as Aristotle
points out elsewhere, from Plato’s separation of numbers and
things that there will be what he calls ‘matter’ in the numbers as
well as in things. This is called the Indeterminate dyad (ἀόριστος
duds)! to distinguish it from the Determinate dyad, which is the
number two. From this dyad the numbers are generated as from a
sort of matrix (ἐκμαγεῖον).3
§ 238. Now it is at least clear that the term Indeterminate dyad
* The use of this term is not attributed to Plato by name, but Met. τορι a, 4
seems to imply that he used it.
* Aristotle’s account of the way in which the numbers are generated is ex-
tremely obscure. Mr. George A. Johnston has suggested a most interesting
explanation of the matter, which I have his permission to quote. We have seen
(p. 53, 7. 1) that the ratio between the sides of successive oblong numbers (1.6.
the sums of the series of even numbers) is always changing. It is a dyad, because
it is always a ratio between two numbers; it is indefinite because the ratio is
always changing. The one, on the other hand, is the square root of the successive
oblong numbers, \/2, ./6, ./12, etc., which are means between the sides of 2
(2: τὴ} 6 (3: <2), 12 (4.:12}» ‘ete.
ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY 261
is a new name for Continuity, and it expresses more clearly than
the old term Unlimited its twofold nature. It not only admits of in-
finite ‘increase’ (αὔξη), but also of infinite ‘diminution’ (καθαίρεσις).3
That is why it is also called the Great-and-Small. The new idea
which Plato intended to express was that of the infinitesimal, the
infiniment petit. The introduction of this conception involves an
entirely new view of number. That need not surprise us; for we
have learnt from the Republic that it is the business of Dialectic to
‘destroy the hypotheses’ of the special sciences, and also that the
hypothesis of Arithmetic is the series of natural integers, each
consisting of so many equal and indivisible units, and each either
odd or even. From our present point of view, these units and their
sums belong to the ‘intermediate’ region. They are not sensible,
indeed, but neither are they numbers in the true sense. The
destruction of this hypothesis allows us to extend the conception
of number so as to include quantities which are not a sum of units
(μονάδων πλῆθος), and which are neither odd nor even. We have
seen that it was the study of incommensurables that made this
extension necessary. That is indicated by the prominence given to
the study of quadratic surds in the Theaetetus. If ‘irrationals’ are
once regarded as numbers, the old hypothesis of Arithmetic is
destroyed.
This is not, as I understand it, tantamount to making the
numerical series itself continuous; for in that case number would
be identified with the mere potentiality of plus and minus, which is
the Indeterminate dyad. It does, however, get rid of the indivisible
unit, which was the source of all the trouble about irrational
numbers. We may now regard the origin of the numerical series,
not as 1 but as o, and there is no reason for refusing to call such
quantities as ./2 and ./5 numbers. The best proof that this was
really the step which Plato took is that Aristotle always insists
against him that there is no number but number made up of
units (μοναδικὸς ἀριθμός). It follows that Plato maintained there
was.
§ 239. The hypotheses of Geometry were, of course, submitted
to a precisely similar criticism. The new view of number had
really broken down the barrier which Zeno had erected between
1 Not necessarily by division (διαίρεσις). The term καθαίρεσις is more general,
and covers subtraction (ἀφαίρεσις). It is used in the extract from Hermodoros
given below, p. 330.
262 INDIVISIBLE LINES
Arithmetic and Geometry, and the old view of the point as ‘a unit
having position’ (μονὰς θέσιν ἔχουσα) was superseded. Aristotle has
preserved a very important piece of information as to Plato’s oral
teaching on this subject. He tells us that Plato objected altogether
to the conception of a point as being a mere ‘geometrical dogma’,
and preferred to speak of ‘the origin of a line’ (ἀρχὴ γραμμῆς).
That implies the view that the line is generated from the point by
what we know from other sources was called ‘fluxion’ (ῥύσις).
This corresponds to the doctrine that the numerical series has
zero, not the unit, for its origin. In the same way, the plane is a
fluxion of the line and the solid of the plane. On the other hand,
Aristotle adds, Plato often postulated indivisible lines.* Aristotle
says it is easy to refute this doctrine, and the later commentators
throw no light upon it. No doubt the term is paradoxical, but not
more so than ‘infinitesimals’. What Plato meant was clearly that, if
you postulate indivisible units and regard 1 as the origin of the
numerical series, you are also committed to indivisible or infini-
tesimal lines as the spatial unit. All this brings us very close to
Newton and Leibniz, and the historical connexion can still be
traced.*
§ 240. When we look at geometry in this way, we see that its
spatial character tends to become irrelevant. It becomes a form of
Arithmetic, dealing with continuity in general, whether spatial or
not. This view is fully developed in the Epinomis, where we are
told (g90 4) that Geometry (which is said in passing to be ‘a very
absurd name’) is really ‘an assimilation by reference to surfaces of
numbers not similar to one another by nature’. That is just the
development of what we read in the Theaetetus (148 a), to the
effect that certain numbers are incommensurable ‘in length’
(μήκει), but commensurable ‘by means of the surfaces of which they
are roots’ (τοῖς ἐπιπέδοις ἃ δύνανται). In precisely the same way
Stereometry is said to be the art by which certain numbers not
1 Met. A. 992 ἃ, 1: τούτῳ μὲν οὖν τῷ γένει (SC. τῷ τῶν στιγμῶν) καὶ διεμάχετο
Πλάτων ὡς ὄντι γεωμετρικῷ δόγματι.
2 Simpl. in Phys. p. 722, 28 (Diels): ἡ γραμμὴ ῥύσις στιγμῆς, Proclus in Eucl.
i. p. 97, 6 (Friedlein).
3 Met. ib.: τοῦτο δὲ πολλάκις ἐτίθει τὰς ἀτόμους γραμμάς.
“The recently discovered Discourse on Method by Archimedes has thrown
unexpected light on the development of the method of infinitesimals among the
Greeks. See Milhaud, Nouvelles études, pp. 134 sqqg., and especially p. 154.
Cavalieri’s ‘method of indivisibles’ is the connecting link between Greek and
modern higher Mathematics. Newton and Leibniz got their knowledge of the
former from Wallis and Barrow. Wallis translates ῥύσις by fluxus.
ARCHYTAS ON ARITHMETIC 263
naturally similar can be assimilated by being raised to the third
power. Aristotle strongly objects to what he regards as the con-
fusion of Geometry with Arithmetic. He insists that the proper
hypotheses of each science must be left undisturbed, and that it is
illegitimate to prove a geometrical proposition by Arithmetic. We
may infer that Plato held otherwise.
There is also a fragment of Plato’s friend Archytas which puts
the matter very clearly, and proves this was really the direction
mathematical thought was taking at the time. He says (fr. 4):
I think that in respect of wisdom Arithmetic surpasses all the other
arts, and especially Geometry, seeing it can treat the objects it wishes
to study in a far clearer way.... Where Geometry fails, Arithmetic
completes its demonstrations in the same way, even with regard to
figures, if there is such a thing as the study of figures.?
§ 241. In the last resort, then, geometrical figures are reduced
to numbers, and these in turn are generated from the One and the
Indeterminate dyad. What is new here is the assumption of a
material element even in the forms, though that element is nothing
more than abstract continuity. The importance of this is that it
tends to make the intelligible forms less disparate from the things
of sense. It will be observed that it is precisely because Plato
‘separated’ numbers from sensibles that it became possible for
him to justify the world of appearance. This cannot be fully
explained till the next chapter; all we have to note at present is that
the One combines with the Indeterminate dyad to generate the
numbers, just as the forms combine with the Great-and-Small to
generate sensible things. In that sense the elements of numbers
were the elements of things. That is how Aristotle states it, and by
great good fortune we possess a dialogue which must have been
written while he was a member of the Academy, and which,
though it deals primarily with another subject, and avoids the
doctrine of form-numbers altogether, contains nevertheless some
indications of Plato’s thought at the time. I refer to the Philebus,
one of his maturest works.
1 Diels, Vors.? i. p. 337, 6 καὶ δοκεῖ ad λογιστικὰ ποτὶ τὰν σοφίαν τῶν μὲν ἀλλᾶν
τεχνῶν καὶ πολὺ διαφέρειν, ἀτὰρ καὶ τᾶς γεωμετρικᾶς ἐναργεστέρω πραγματεύεσθαι ἃ
΄, a ~
θέλει... καὶ ἃ ἐπιλείπει al a γεωμετρία, καὶ ἀποδείξιας a λογιστικὰ ἐπιτελεῖ Kal ὁμῶς,
> A > / ‘ a
εἰ μὲν εἰδέωι τεὰ πραγματεία, καὶ περὶ τοῖς εἴδεσιν.
264 THE PHILEBUS
THE PHILEBUS
§ 242. From certain discussions in Aristotle’s Ethics we get a
hint of how the Philebus probably came to be written. Eudoxos had
introduced into the Academy the heresy that Pleasure is the Good,
a doctrine he probably received from the school of Demokritos, as
Epicurus did at a later date. This raised considerable discussion,
as was natural, and Speusippos in particular opposed Eudoxos
vehemently, going so far as to maintain that Pleasure was an evil.
Plato was interested, of course, and he did what he had not done
for years; he wrote a Sokratic dialogue on the subject. It was quite
an appropriate theme for Sokrates to discuss, and there is little in
the greater part of the dialogue which the Sokrates of the Gorgias
or the Phaedo might not have said. On the other hand, Plato’s
dramatic power is no longer what it was, and the characteristic
touches of the Sokratic manner are fewer than in the earlier
dialogues, though more than is often supposed. Undeniably, too,
the voice is sometimes that of the Stranger from Elea and some-
times that of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws, and in those cases
we are justified in thinking that we have a hint at least of Plato’s
personal thought. I propose, for the present, to summarise only
that portion of the dialogue which bears directly on the subject
we are now discussing; the general theory of Pleasure, though of
the highest importance in itself, can only be adequately treated in
connexion with the views of Eudoxos and Speusippos and of
Aristotle’s criticism of these. We get the impression from the
Philebus that we are dealing with a dispute between the younger
members of the Academy, in which Plato condescends to take part,
though, by transferring the conversation to the fifth century and
by making Sokrates the chief speaker, he avoids committing him-
self too much.
§ 243. Before the opening of the dialogue, Sokrates and
Philebos (a youth of whom nothing is known) have been discussing
the Good. Philebos has stated the position that the Good is
Pleasure (ἡδονή), while Sokrates has identified it with Thought
(φρόνησις) or Wisdom. Philebos declines to argue the question, and
Protarchos (another young man of whom nothing is known)*
1 He is addressed as ‘son of Kallias’ (19 b), but there is no ground for identify-
ing him with one of the two sons of Kallias son of Hipponikos, mentioned 1n the
Apology (20 b) as pupils of Euenos in 399 B.C.
PLEASURE AND THOUGHT 265
undertakes to replace him as the advocate of Pleasure. It is not a
little remarkable that the dialogue should be called after a per-
sonage who takes practically no part in it.
The two positions are more distinctly stated thus. That of
Philebos is that Pleasure, understood in its widest sense as
including joy, delight, and so forth, is the highest good for all living
beings without exception.! That of Sokrates is that Thought,
understood in its widest sense as including memory, right belief,
true reasoning, and so forth, is the highest good for all living
beings that are capable of it. The two positions agree in this, that
both make Happiness (εὐδαιμονία) a habit (ἕξις) or disposition
(διάθεσις) of soul.? It is further pointed out that there may prove
to be a third habit of soul which is better than either Pleasure or
Thought, in which case we must give the preference to whichever
of these two is most nearly akin to it (11 a — 12 8).
§ 244. Sokrates begins by calling attention to the fact that
pleasures may be very unlike and indeed opposite, so that we
cannot apply the same predicate to all of them, but it soon appears
that it will be necessary to go deeper than this. We cannot, in fact,
make any advance without coming to an understanding on the
troublesome.old question of the One and the Many. By this we do
not mean the puzzle about the predication of opposite attributes
like great and small, heavy and light, of the same subjects. ‘That 15
child’s play, and the solution has long been public property. Nor
do we mean the question arising from the fact that every sensible
thing has parts, and is therefore both one and many. ‘The real
difficulty is with regard to such units (monads, henads) as horse,
ox, beautiful, good (7.e. the ‘forms’ of the Phaedo and the Republic).
With regard to these we have to ask (1) in what sense we are to
hold that each of these units really is, (2) in what sense we are to
hold that each of them being one, and admitting neither coming
into being nor ceasing to be, nevertheless zs that one,® (3) in what
1 This seems to refer to the argument of Eudoxos that Pleasure must be the
Good, since all things, rational and irrational, aim at it (Arist. Eth. Nic. 1172 Ὁ,
9 544).
2’'The terms ἕξις and διάθεσις are taken from medicine. A ‘habit’ is a more
lasting ‘disposition’ (Arist. Cat. 9 a, 8). The doctrine that Happiness is a habit of
soul is characteristic of the Academy; Aristotle made it an ‘activity’ (ἐνέργεια).
See my edition of the Ethics, p. 3.
3 The sense of the second question (15 b, 2-4) has been much disputed. I
think that, if we read it with an emphasis on the first μίαν and on εἶναι, we shall
see that it refers to the difficulty that arises when we predicate ‘being’ of ‘one’,
266 THE PHILEBUS
sense we are to hold that these units can be present in the in-
numerable things of the sensible world, whether (a) in part, or (δ)
as wholes, so that (what seems quite impossible) they should be
identical both in their unity and in their plurality (12 ¢ — 15 c).
This section serves to link the Philebus to the Parmenides. At the
beginning of the latter dialogue, the question of the One and the
Many, so far as it refers to the predication of opposite attributes,
and to the relation of whole and parts, is disposed of by the
participation of sensible things in the forms, and it is then shown
that the real difficulty lies in the union of One and Many in the
forms themselves. If we say that the One 7s, it seems to become
two on our hands; while, if we say that sensible things participate
in it, it is either broken up into parts and so becomes infinitely
many, or the whole form must be present in each of the participants,
so that we have an infinite number of ones alongside of the one
One. No direct solution of this difficulty is given in the Parmenides,
but a hint was thrown out that a solution was possible. We shall
see that the Philebus puts us on the way to it.
§ 245. The difficulty that a thing turns into a one and many
whenever we speak of it, really pervades all statements (λόγοι) or
propositions we can make about anything whatsoever. It is ‘an
affection of propositions in our minds (ἐν ἡμῖν) that never dies
nor ages’. It is this that gives rise to all eristic disputation, and we
cannot get rid of that till we have formed a sound theory of it. The
only way to reach one is a way of which Sokrates has always been a
lover (ἐραστής), though it has often left him stranded, and it is the
way in which all inventions and discoveries in the arts have been
made. It is this.
The gods once revealed to mankind, and the ancients, who were
of a higher nature and nearer to the gods than we are, have handed
it down as a tradition, that everything we say at a given moment
(ded) is consists of one and many, and has Limit and Unlimitedness
innate in it. What we have to do, then, is first to find a single form
(ἰδέα) in the thing we say is, and then to look in that for two
subordinate forms, or three, or whatever number there may be.
After that we must look at each of these new units and see how
many forms are in them, until we are able to say of the original
unit, not only that it is one and many, but also how many it is.
that is, when we speak, not merely of τὸ ἕν ἕν, but of τὸ ἕν ὄν. When we do that
the One at once seems to become two. That is a chief crux of the Parmenides.
THE ONE AND THE MANY 267
We must not predicate the Unlimited (τὴν τοῦ ἀπείρου ἰδέαν) of the
manifold, before we have gained a clear image of the number which
is intermediate between the Unlimited and the One. Then, and
not till then, may we give it up and let the manifold slip into the
Unlimited. That is the genuine revelation of the gods, but the
wise men of to-day are both too quick and too slow in setting up a
One and a Many, and the middle terms (τὰ μέσα) escape them.
That is just the difference between dialectical and eristical dis-
cussion (15 d — 17 4).
Voice, for instance, is both one and many, but to know that does not
make you a ‘grammarian’ (phonetician). ‘To become that, you must
know also how many and of what nature the indefinite manifold is.
In the same way, he is not a musician who can only say of a note that
it is high or low or of the same pitch (as the keynote); he must know
also how many intervals there are and of what nature, and what are
the terms (ὅροι) of the intervals (1.6. the numbers, such as 12, 9, 8, 6,
which express them), and how many scales these give rise to. Further,
he must know to how many rhythms and metres the motions of the
body when measured by numbers give rise (17 a — 17 €).
Just in the same way, when we have to start from the side of the
Unlimited, we must not go straight to the One, but must carefully
note the number of the intermediate terms.
If we start from sound, which is unlimited, we find first that there
is a certain number of vowels, and then a certain number of liquids
(μέσα) and a certain number of mutes, and considering all these we
bring them under the single unity of letters (στοιχεῖα). Then, and
not till then, do we see clearly that the art of grammar has letters for
its province, and not merely sound (18 a — 18 d).
A good example of the premature introduction of the Unlimited
is afforded by the early Pythagorean treatment of the scale. If we
were right in holding that they only determined the intervals of the
fourth, the fifth, and the octave, referring all the internal divisions
of the tetrachord to the Unlimited (§ 30), that is just the sort of
thing Plato means here. It is the more likely he had this in mind
that we know Archytas and Plato busied themselves with this very
problem of the division of the tetrachord. We must also observe
carefully that we do not eliminate the Unlimited altogether, but
reach a point where we can no longer introduce number. ‘That, too,
can be illustrated from the musical scale, where we come ultimately
to intervals which cannot be expressed as the ratio of one whole
268 THE PHILEBUS
number to another. So far as we have yet gone, there is a point
where division must cease.
§ 246. To illustrate what he means by the Unlimited, Sokrates
takes the example of ‘the hotter and colder’, and this enables us to
elucidate his meaning with the help of the distinction between
heat and temperature, a distinction historically connected with
the Pythagorean doctrine, since, as we have seen, ‘temperature’ is a
translation of κρᾶσις.
If we consider the sensation or quality of heat, we see at once
that it varies in intensity. Water may be much hotter than our
hand or only a little hotter, or nearly as hot, or not nearly so hot.
In other words, heat ‘admits of plus and minus’ (τὸ μᾶλλον Kat
ἧττον). On the other hand, these degrees of intensity are quite
indefinite. We cannot attach any clear meaning to the statement
that one sensation of heat is equal to another, or that one sensation
of heat is the double of another. These considerations explain
what Plato meant by ‘the dyad of the Great-and-Small’, which was
his own name for what he calls the Unlimited in the Philebus. It 15
the possibility of indefinite continuous variation in both directions
from a fixed point. The Limit, on the other hand, does away with
this indefinite ‘more and less’. Its simplest form is ‘the equal and
the double’ (ξ and 4), and in general it is everything which ‘has the
ratio of one number to another or one measure to another’. ‘This is
the conception of quantity as distinct from that of quality, and its
chief characteristic is that it enables us to speak with perfect
clearness of equality and of addition, the simplest form of the latter
being ‘the double’. What enables us to do this is the introduction of
a unit, in terms of which we may measure degrees of intensity.
We cannot attach any clear meaning to the statement that it 15
twice as hot to-day as yesterday, but we do understand what is
meant by saying that 60° is twice 30°. That implies further that a
zero of temperature has been fixed, all temperatures above which
are plus and all below it minus. The conception of negative quantity
is thus clearly formulated for the first time in the history of science,
§ 247. Aristotle tells us further that the Great-and-Small was
identified with ‘not being’.1 This doctrine is not attributed to
Plato by name, but we fortunately possess a fragment of Hermo-
doros? which leaves no doubt upon the subject and also suggests
the explanation. He says:
1 Phys. 192 a, 6 sqq. 2 See Simpl. in Phys. p. 247, 30 sqq. (Diels).
OYSIA 269
Those things which are spoken of as having the relation of great to
small all have the ‘more or less’, so that they can go on to infinity in
the direction of the ‘still greater’ and the ‘still less’. And in the same
way, the broader and narrower, the heavier and lighter, and every-
thing which is spoken of in that way can go on to infinity. But what is
spoken of as equal and at rest and attuned has not the ‘more and less’
as their opposites have. There is always something more unequal than
what is unequal, something more in motion than what moves, some-
thing more out of tune than what is out of tune. [The text of the next
sequence is corrupt]. ... So that what is of this nature is inconstant
and formless and infinite, and may be called ‘not being’ by negation
of ‘being’ (κατὰ ἀπόφασιν τοῦ ὄντος).
If we have read the Sophist aright, the meaning of this is plain.
It is not meant that the indefinite continuum of the more and less
is nothing, but rather that it is not anything. We predicate of it the
significant negative term (ἀπόφασις), ‘not being’, not a blank
negation which has no meaning.
§ 248. From all this it appears that we shall have to assume a
third ‘kind’ in addition to the Limit and the Unlimited, namely,
the Mixture of both. We see this both in Medicine and in Music,
where health and ‘harmony’ are produced by the due mixture of
the two. We see the same thing in climate; for a temperate climate
is produced by such a mixture. The same explanation may be given
of all goodness whether of body or soul, beauty of body and order
of soul, and indeed all good things are due to such a mixture
(25 esqq.).
The thought here is obviously Pythagorean; it is just the tuned
string once more. But there is a fundamental change in the point
of view. The Pythagoreans had identified the Limit with good and
the Unlimited with evil, but here we are distinctly told that, so far
as human life is concerned, good things are all to be found in the
Mixture. It is just for that reason that the ‘mixed life’, which
includes both Thought and Pleasure, is found to be superior, not
only to the life of Pleasure alone, but also to the life of Thought
alone.
§ 249. Closely connected with this is the new sense in which
Plato uses the term ‘being’ (οὐσία) in this passage. The Pythagorean
doctrine simply identified the Form with being and the Unlimited
with becoming, but Plato distinctly states that the Mixture alone
is truly ‘being’. The process of mixing is indeed a ‘becoming’
(γένεσις), but it is a becoming which has being for its result (γένεσις
270 THE PHILEBUS
εἰς οὐσίαν) and the mixture itself is being, though a being which
has become (γεγενημένη οὐσία). Just in the same way we are told in
the Timaeus (35 a) that being (οὐσία) is a blend of the Same and the
Other. These are only hints, and there are no others of the same
kind in the dialogues, where they would be out of place, but they
supplement what Aristotle tells us in the most interesting way.
As the form-numbers are themselves a mixture, it follows that
even sensible things may be real in spite of the fact that they are
mixtures. In other words, the mature philosophy of Plato found
reality, whether intelligible or sensible, in the combination of
matter and form, and not in either separately.
§ 250. There has been considerable discussion as to the ‘kind’
to which the ‘ideas’ or forms belong in this scheme. The traditional
view was that they were represented by the Limit, and that is, of
course, in accordance with the earlier Pythagorean version of the
theory. It would be quite correct to refer the forms of the Phaedo
and the Republic to this kind. Professor Jackson, on the contrary,
maintains that the forms belong to the Mixed kind, and we have
seen that the forms were certainly regarded by Plato as a mixture.
On the other hand, it is surely plain that the Mixture of the
Philebus is the world of sense, and the forms must, therefore, be
referred to the Limit. The difficulty arises, I think, from the fact
that Plato refrains from giving his full doctrine on the subject in
this dialogue. From the point of view here taken, the forms belong
to the Limit, but that does not alter the fact that they themselves
are in turn a mixture. In the sensible world, their function is to
limit, but in the intelligible world they themselves appear as a
limited continuum, as a blending of matter and form, of the One
and the Indeterminate Dyad.
§ 251. Now this new view of reality clearly implies not only the
categories of Being and Not-being, Same and Other, but also that
of Motion, which was already associated with these in the Sophist
(§ 211), and this not only in the sensible but also in the intelligible
world. We could only explain the generation of lines, planes, and
solids by the help of this category (§ 239), and if the sensible world
is also a mixture, there must be a cause of the Mixture. That will
be a fourth ‘kind’ (27 b), and we must now go on to consider what
Movement implies. Unless we can give an intelligible account of
this, we have failed to explain the world we know.
ΧΙ
The Philosophy of Movement
THE SOUL
§ 252. It was his theory of Soul that enabled Plato to account for
Motion. Apart from that, we should have nothing but a string of
what we may best represent to ourselves as algebraical formulae.
The early Pythagoreans had grasped the conception of Soul as
something more than the mere ghost of popular belief, but their
later tenet that the soul is an ‘attunement’ of the body made them
lose hold of it again. Sokrates had insisted on the reality and eternity
of the soul; but Plato was the first to attempt a scientific justification
of this belief. It is significant that the argument which seemed
decisive to him does not occur in the Phaedo, though Sokrates 15
made to state it in the Phaedrus. In that dialogue we are told
(245 c) that what moves another thing, and is in turn moved by
something else, may cease to be moved and therefore cease to move
anything else; but what moves itself will never cease to move. It
is the source and beginning of motion (ἀρχὴ κινήσεως). Now sucha
beginning can never have come into being; for everything that
comes into being must have a beginning, while this is itself a
beginning. Nor can it have any end; for, if it perished, everything
would come to a standstill. Such a beginning is the soul; for it is
the self-moved (τὸ αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ κινοῦν), and is therefore without
beginning and without end.
§ 253. If this doctrine occurred only in the Phaedrus, it might
be set down as mythical, though, despite the enthusiasm of the
passage, the language is curiously technical and scientific. It might
also be said that it only proves the eternity of soul in general or of
the world-soul, not that of the individual soul. In fact, however,
the phraseology of the Phaedrus remained in use, and the question
of the ‘first mover’ continued to be a fundamental one. All doubt
on the point is set at rest by the perfectly matter-of-fact treatment
272 THE SELF-MOVER
of the subject in the Laws, where we have an indication of Plato’s
mature thought on the subject.
He begins (893 b) by distinguishing ten kinds of motion, of
which the ninth and tenth alone concern us at present. The ninth
is the motion that can move other things but cannot move itself,
and the tenth is that which can move both itself and other things.
It is really, Plato says, the first, since it is the beginning of motion
(ἀρχὴ κινήσεως) to the other nine. Now we do not find motion of
this kind in earth, fire, or water, but only in what lives, that is, in
what has a soul; and if we ask for a definition of the soul, we can
only say that it is ‘the motion which of itself can move itself’ (τὴν
αὐτὴν αὑτὴν δυναμένην κινεῖν κίνησιν). The other motions all belong
to body, and soul is therefore prior to body (896 b).
But, if soul is prior to body, it follows at once that all the
attributes of soul, such as characters, wishes, reasonings, beliefs,
forethought, and memories are prior to the attributes of body, such
as length, breadth, depth, and strength; and, if this is so, soul alone
can be the cause of good and bad, fair and foul, righteousness
and wickedness, and all other such opposites. There are such
things as bad habits and bad reasonings, so there must be at least
two souls, one that does good and the other that does the opposite
(896 e).
This passage is generally supposed to assert the existence of an
evil world-soul as well as of a good one, but it is important to
observe that this does not follow from the words of Plato. He does
not say that there are two souls, a good and a bad one, opposed to
one another, but that there are not less than two. It is as illegitimate
to infer that there is only one evil soul, as it would be to infer that
there is only one good soul, and it is rather implied that there is
a plurality of souls, some good and some evil. We shall see presently
that there is one pre-eminently good soul, namely God, but there is
no suggestion of a pre-eminently evil soul, and that view is ex-
pressly rejected in the Statesman (270 a). The main point is rather
that, since evil exists, there must be a plurality of souls; for evil as
well as good must be caused by a soul, whether by one soul or
many. ‘That is the important thing. We can no longer refer evil to
body or matter; the philosophy of movement requires us to attri-
bute it to soul just as much as good.
GOD AND THE GOOD 273
GOD
§ 254. Now, if we look at the motions of the heavenly bodies,
we see at once that they must be caused by a good soul or souls, and
indeed by the best, since they are the most regular of all motions.
That is due to their circular character, which must have been
given them by a good soul, since, if left to themselves, things do
not move in a circle but in a straight line.! These souls are what
we call gods, if there are many, or God, if there is one only, or one
which is the best of all. It is in this way that Plato reaches what he
believes to be a scientific proof of the existence of God, and it is
only when he has done this that he can explain the world. There
can be no sort of doubt that Plato regarded this as the central
thing in his philosophy, and we shall understand that just in pro-
portion as we realise this fact. At the same time, we must note at
once that, though he believes this line of argument sufficient to
demonstrate the existence of God, it tells us no more about him
than that he is the self-moving source of good motions. Even so
this is something quite different from anything the earlier philoso-
phers had meant when they spoke of God. The Ionians had called
fire, air, water and the like gods, but that only meant there were no
other gods but these. Anaximander and Xenophanes had called the
worlds or the World gods or God, but that was at most a sort of
pantheism, as it was also with Parmenides. Belief in God was
doubtless part of the Pythagorean religion, but it was hardly a part
of Pythagorean science. Plato brought the idea of God into philo-
sophy for the first time, and the form the doctrine took in his mind
was that God was a living soul and that God was good. So much
as that, but no more, he believed himself to have established by
strictly scientific reasoning.
We must not assume, therefore, that Plato meant by God
exactly what a modern theist would mean by the word. Plato’s God
is certainly a ‘personal’ god, as we should put it; for he is Mind
(νοῦς) existing in a living soul, but it does not follow that he is the
‘supreme being’. We have seen (§171) that Plato continued to
1 This was rightly insisted upon by the Platonist Atticus (2nd cent. A.D.) as the
fundamental distinction between the theories of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle
made the circular motion (κυκλοφορία) natural to the heavens, while Plato held
that it must have a cause. We call this cause Gravity, and we know much more
than Plato did of the way in which it acts, but we know no more than he did of
its nature. Plato knew there was a problem here; Aristotle denied that there was
any.
274 GOD AND THE GOOD
lecture on the Good to the last, and it is clear that his deepest
thought was expressed in this lecture, so far as it was expressed at
all. ‘The way in which one of his followers after another, including
Aristotle himself, endeavoured to publish an authentic report of it
proves that it was regarded as fundamental. The question that
arises, then, is whether we are to identify God with the Good or
not; and, if we are not, what relation we are to understand God to
have to the Good. This question is not so simple as it appears;
indeed, it is highly ambiguous. If it is asked whether the Good is to
be identified with the conception of God as held by modern theists,
the answer is that it is certainly included in that conception, though
it by no means exhausts it. If, on the other hand, it is asked ‘whether
the Good is to be identified with the God whose existence Plato
believed himself to have proved by the argument just explained,
the answer must certainly be that it is not. The Good is not a soul,
but a ‘form’. That is just how Plato avoids pantheism, which he
regards as equivalent to atheism.
§255. This conception is not without its difficulties, as Plato
was well aware. In the Timaeus he says (28 c) “To find the maker
and father of this universe is a hard task; and, when you have
found him, it is impossible to speak of him before all people.’ That
is a sentence of unquestioned authenticity, and fully explains the
enigmatic manner in which Plato speaks of the same difficulty to
Dionysios (who imagined he had solved it) in the Second Epistle
(312 e). It also explains why he never wrote or published the
Lecture on the Good, and why in the Laws, which was written for
publication, he always speaks of God and never of the Good,
though the Laws must be contemporary with that very lecture.
The problem continued to be discussed wherever there was living
Greek thought. Some later writers regarded the Good as the
supreme God, and made the Creator of the world subordinate to
him, and there were many other attempted solutions. The difficulty
is, in fact, the source of the controversies which were ultimately
settled by authority at the Council of Nicaea, though this did not
prevent it from continuing to trouble the minds of original
thinkers. ‘That does not concern us here. All we have to make clear
is that Plato’s God is not a form but a soul, and that he is the self-
moved mover of the best motions. The Good is not a soul, but
it is independent of God, and even above him, since it is the pattern
by which he fashions the world.
GOD AND THE GOOD 275
It is equally certain that God is not the only self-moved mover
but simply the best of them. No doubt the subordinate gods of the
Timaeus belong to the mythology of that dialogue, and we can
hardly doubt that Plato was a monotheist. The question, however,
of monotheism or polytheism was not an important one to the
Greeks, and Plato might have admitted other gods, so long as they
were strictly subordinate. The main point is that human souls,
though inferior, exist just as truly as the divine soul, and that in this
way Plato thought it possible to reconcile the existence of evil with
the absolute goodness of God. Here too we are faced by a difficulty
which continues to trouble mankind. Are individual souls in any
sense created by God, or is their existence entirely independent
of him? In the Timaeus there is a hint of a possible solution of this
question. We learn there that individual souls are indestructible,
not in their own nature, but because to destroy what he has made
is inconsistent with the goodness of God. How far such a solution
would really express the mind of Plato cannot be determined till
we have come to a conclusion about the principles on which the
Timaeus is to be interpreted.
THE WORLD
§ 256. The Timaeus, which was certainly written long after the
Republic, professes to describe a meeting which took place the day
after Sokrates repeated the conversation narrated in the earlier
dialogue, and consequently two days after that conversation itself.
That makes a busy three days, especially as the Timaeus was to be
followed at once by the Critias, which Plato has left unfinished,
and by the Hermocrates, which was never written at all. We learn
for the first time in the Timaeus that the audience to which
Sokrates repeated the Republic consisted of Plato’s great-grand-
father, Kritias,! ‘Timaios the Lokrian, Hermokrates, and an un-
named fourth person who is prevented by illness from being
present the next day. It is not very profitable to speculate who he
may have been, but it is at least certain that he was a Pythagorean;
1See Appendix. It is made perfectly clear that this Kritias is not the Kritias
who was one of the Thirty, but his grandfather, though the two are hopelessly
confused by modern writers. He is a very old man, who can hardly remember
what he was told yesterday, but remembers the scenes of his boyhood clearly
(26 b). At that time the poems of Solon were still recent (21 b). It seems clear to
me that most of the poetical fragments ascribed to the younger Kritias are really
his grandfather’s.
276 THE TIMAEUS
for ‘Timaios is represented as his understudy and agrees to replace
him. If a name has to be given, I would suggest that of Philolaos,
and I should explain his absence by the consideration that the
Timaeus, though certainly based on his system, in several points
goes beyond what we can reasonably attribute to him. If that is
so, we can understand the origin of the famous scandal that
Plato plagiarised the Timaeus from the ‘three books’ of Philolaos
which had come into his possession.?
However that may be —and I only offer the suggestion for
what it is worth — the elaborate mise en scéne must surely have
some significance. If Plato took so much trouble to attach the
Timaeus to the Republic, he must have meant the later dialogue to
supplement the earlier in some way, and this must be connected
with the startling fact that Sokrates begins by giving a recapitulation
of the Republic which includes Book V., but ignores Books VI. and
VII. altogether. We are not allowed to attribute this to an over-
sight; for Sokrates asks Timaios whether the summary is complete,
and receives the answer that nothing is lacking (19 b). This can
only mean that the Timaeus and its projected sequels were intended
to replace in some way the later books of the Republic. The fact is
that the central books of the Republic do not, except in the matter
of solid geometry, go materially beyond what Sokrates might have
learnt and probably did learn, from his Pythagorean associates,
and Plato now wishes to make a further advance. For the same
reason, Sokrates is no longer the chief speaker. The new views,
however, are introduced with great reserve and somewhat obscurely
expressed, so that there has been much dispute as to the meaning
of some of the most important passages. Plato does not forget that
the dialogue is supposed to take place in the fifth century.
δ 257. The Timaeus professes to give an account of the creation
of the world, and the question at once arises whether this represents
Plato’s own doctrine or not. It is quite certain that Xenokrates and
other early Platonists held it did not. The world, they said, was
represented as having a beginning in time only for purposes of
exposition (διδασκαλίας χάριν), just as the construction of a
diagram may be the best way to exhibit the properties of a figure.
Aristotle thought it necessary to argue against this principle of
interpretation, and we may say that, on the whole, the Platonists
regard the Timaeus as mythical, while the Peripatetics take it
ΣῈ: Gr. Ph.* § 140.
NECESSITY 277
literally. That, however, is impossible for anyone who has grasped
the central doctrine of Platonism. We can infer the existence of the
soul and of God from the fact of motion, but we cannot give any
scientific account of the way in which they act. The world of
experience is only, after all, an image, and it belongs to the region
of becoming, and we can therefore do no more than tell ‘likely
tales’ (eikdtes λόγοι) about it. Cosmology is not, and cannot be
science, any more than Theology or Psychology. It is only a form
of ‘play’ (παιδιά). Science, in the strict sense, must be mathe-
matical. And yet Cosmology is not mere play either, for our account
of the world will be related to the truth in the same way as the
world is related to reality. It will be truth in the making, just as the
sensible world is the intelligible world in the making. ‘The appro-
priate vehicle for half-truths of this kind is myth, and here we
must note once more that myth expresses something lower than
science, and not something higher. That is fundamental for the
interpretation of Plato. The matter is put quite clearly in the
Timaeus itself. We are dealing with what is always becoming and
never is, not with what always is and never becomes (27 d). ‘The
former is an image (εἰκών) of the latter (29 b), and the work of
ordering the sensible world after the pattern of the intelligible is
assigned to God. No description of this process can have a scientific
character, for we are dealing with what cannot be an object of
knowledge, but only of belief (29 b—c), and knowledge is higher,
not lower, than belief.
§ 258. We are first told that God found a visible mass moving
in a disorderly fashion, and resolved to bring it out of disorder into
order. If we ask why he did so, the answer is ‘He was good, and
the good has never at any time a feeling of jealousy towards any-
thing, so he wished everything to become as like himself as possible’
(29 e). This he brought about by creating a soul of the world, into
which he introduced mathematical and harmonic relations (35 a
544.).
We note here, in the first place, the phrase ‘as like himself as
possible’. This reservation is called for because Mind (νοῦς) is
confronted by Necessity (ἀνάγκη), and cannot, therefore completely
effect its purpose (47 e). We must, then, consider the ‘errant cause’
(πλανωμένη αἰτία). In particular, we must explain how the elements
came into being. For these cannot be ultimate. So far from being
‘letters’ (στοιχεῖα, elementa), they are not even syllables.
278 THE TIMAEUS
The conception of Necessity to which we are here introduced is
not by any means an easy one. It is certainly not what we call
physical necessity, for we are told that it can be ‘persuaded’ by
Mind. We are even told that it is a cause, and a cause ‘subservient
to’ the divine. It is a ‘concomitant cause’ (συναίτιον) of the good-
ness of the world, which could not be realised without it. This idea
is as old as the Phaedo, where the concausa as distinct from the
causa as defined as ‘that without which the cause would never be a
cause’ (99 b). We learn further that this ‘concomitant’ or ‘sub-
servient’ cause is corporeal, and that most people make the mistake
of confusing it with the true cause, explaining everything, as they
do, by warming and cooling, rarefaction and condensation, and so
forth. he true cause is Mind and Mind alone, and the corporeal
is a hindrance as well as a help. Mind could do nothing without
something to work on, but that of itself stands in the way of it
carrying out its purposes completely. We learn also that these
secondary causes ‘are moved by something else, and then of
necessity move something else’, as contrasted with the primary
cause, which is self-moved. That is to be understood in the light
of the doctrine of soul discussed above (§ 256). It may help the
reader to appreciate the account Plato makes Timaios give of
Mind and Necessity if he will compare it with the theory of
Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds. The difference
is that Plato regards his explanation as a myth, while Leibniz
considered his to be an adequate solution of the difficulty.
§ 259. This purely mythical character of the cosmogony becomes
still more evident if we consider its details. In particular, motion
is ascribed to the disordered mass before the world has received a
soul, and that is in flat contradiction to Plato’s doctrine that soul
alone is self-moved. Plutarch, one of the few Platonists who took
the Timaeus literally, can only get out of this difficulty by the help
of the evil world-soul supposed to be assumed in the Laws (§ 256).
That, according to him, is eternal, and is to be identified with
Necessity; only the good world-soul was created. But, even sup-
posing Plutarch to be right in finding an evil world-soul in the
Laws, there is certainly nothing said about it in the Timaeus, and it
is impossible to suppose it would not have been mentioned if so
much depended upon it. Besides that, we have seen that Necessity
is ‘subservient’ to Mind. A similar difficulty arises when we
consider what is said about Time. In the Timaeus it is spoken of as
TIME AND SPACE 279
a ‘moving image of eternity’ (37 d), and we are told that it comes
into being ‘along with the heavens’ (38 b), that is to say, after the
creation of the world-soul, which does not, therefore, take place
in time. That gives us the explanation of the necessarily mythical
character of the whole story. We can only think of motion as in
time, for time is just the measure of motion. On the other hand,
knowledge is of the eternal and not of the temporal. It follows that,
when we have to speak of motion, our language is perforce un-
scientific and pictorial. It can only convey an ‘image’ of the truth,
since time itself is only ‘a moving image of eternity’. This does not
mean, as we shall see, that time is subjective, but only that we fail
to grasp its true nature. It is really the continuum implied in the
conception of motion, but that cannot be known in abstraction
from motion itself.
§ 260. But, besides being temporal, the ‘errant cause’ is spatial.
This is also hard to express in words; for space is apprehended
neither by thought nor by sense, but by ‘a sort of bastard reasoning’
(λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ). It is a sort of ‘receptacle’ (ὑποδοχή) or ‘nurse’
(τιθήνη) of all things (49 a). To understand this, we must go back
to the elements, which we have already denied to be primary. We
see that they pass into one another by rarefaction and condensation,
and it is safest not to call any of them ‘this’, but only ‘such’ (49 d).
The only thing which can be called ‘this’ is that ‘in which’ (ἐν ᾧ)
they all appear to arise and pass away (49 e).
This may be illustrated by an example. If we were to make all
sorts of forms out of gold and keep constantly changing them, the
only answer to the question ‘what is that?’ would be ‘Gold’. We
should not speak of the transient forms it assumed as ‘things’ (ὡς
ὄντα) at all. It is the same with ‘the recipient of all things’ (τὸ
πανδεχές), the matrix (ἐκμαγεῖον) on which the forms are ‘impressed’
(ἐντυποῦνται). It has itself no form, but remains always the same,
taking on with complete indifference the forms that ‘pass in and
out of it’ (τὰ εἰσιόντα καὶ ἐξιόντα), and these in turn are ‘imitations
of what is ever’ (τῶν ὄντων ἀεὶ μιμήματα ). They are, in fact, the
elementary triangles and their products the regular solids, and we
know from Aristotle, though we are not told so in the Timaeus, that
they are imitations of numbers. We must, therefore, distinguish
three things, the Form, which is the father, the Recipient, which is
the mother, and the offspring of the two (the Mixture of the
Philebus), which is the Corporeal. The Recipient is altogether
K
B.G.P,
280 THE TIMAEUS
formless; all we can say of it is that it is an invisible, all-receptive
something, partaking in a mysterious way in the intelligible. It is,
in fact, space (χώρα).
§ 261. That the so-called ‘primary matter’ of the Timaeus is
space of three dimensions and nothing else is really quite certain
both from Plato’s own language on the subject and from the
statements of Aristotle. Nor is there any occasion in the system for
any other kind of ‘matter’. The ‘elements’ of the corporeal are
completely accounted for by the regular solids, and they in turn
can be constructed from the elementary triangles. Plato un-
doubtedly means to say that the corporeal can be completely
reduced to extension geometrically limited. Indeed, he goes a
great deal further than that, though he only gives us a few hints
of his real meaning here. We do not perceive space at all by the
senses ; we only infer it by a species of reasoning, and that reasoning
is a ‘bastard’ one. It is ‘in a dream’ that we say everything must be
in a place and occupy a space (52 b), and when the elementary
triangles are discussed, it is said that the principles (dpya) which
are higher than these God knows, and of men he who is dear to
God (53 d). Space is only one aspect of Continuity, and not an
essential one. ‘These considerations, however, take us beyond the
mythology of the Timaeus, for which space is ultimate.
§ 262. The Corporeal world, then, is in space and time, and for
that reason it can only be described in mythological language. That
does not, however, exhaust Plato’s teaching on the subject. What
we say of the world is not, indeed, the truth, but it may be more
or less like the truth, and it is our business to make it as like the
truth as possible. The boundary-line between the intelligible and
the merely sensible is not a fixed one, and the sensible may be
made progressively intelligible. It will, I think, be admitted that
this is the doctrine to which all the dialogues from the Theaetetus
onwards naturally lead up, and I believe we shall find proof that
Plato held it. Unfortunately, however, his followers were not able
to rise to this point of view, and Plato has been generally credited
with an absolute dualism. Xenokrates confined the province of
science to the things ‘outside the heavens’, and made the heavens
themselves the objects of belief (δόξα). They were intelligible by
the help of astronomy, but they belonged to the sensible world as
being visible. If this report does justice to him, he made absolute a
distinction which for Plato was merely relative. At the same time,
THE SENSIBLE AND THE INTELLIGIBLE 281
it is just possible that this report may be only a distortion of what
we shall find to be the true Platonic doctrine. There is no doubt
about Aristotle, however. It is certain that he introduced for the
first time the fatal notion that the nature of the heavens was quite
different from that of the sublunary world. It is this doctrine,
generally known as that of ‘the incorruptibility of the heavens’,
that the Platonist Galileo was chiefly concerned to disprove by
calling attention to such phenomena as the new star in Sagittarius,
and it is strange that Aristotle, who condemned Plato’s perfectly
legitimate separation of forms from sensible things, should himself
be responsible for a much more questionable ‘separation’ (χωρισμός)
like this. There is no trace of anything like it in Plato. He certainly
assigned an exceptional position to Astronomy and its sister-
science Music in his philosophy, but that was simply because, in
his own day, these were the sciences in which the intelligible was
most obviously advancing at the expense of the merely sensible.
Even in the Republic (530 d) it is hinted that there are more
sciences of motion in space than these two, and we can see from
the Parmenides (130 e) that a complete science would have to
account for ‘hair, mud and dirt’ as well as for the planetary
motions. It is, however, from his astronomy alone that we can gain
a clear idea of the relation Plato held to exist between the sensible
and the intelligible. It would be out of place to discuss it fully here;
it will be enough to look at a single branch of it, and I shall select
one which is commonly misunderstood.
§ 263. The great problem of the day was that of the planetary
motions. For the senses these are hopelessly irregular, and that is
probably why we hear in the Timaeus of the ‘errant cause’
(πλανωμένη αἰτία). In the first place, since the paths of the planets
are oblique to the equator, their apparent courses are spirals
(ἕλικες), not circles. In the next place, Mercury and Venus at one
time travel faster than the Sun, so that they get in front of it and
appear as morning stars; at another time they lag behind it and
appear as evening stars. In fact, these three bodies are always
‘overtaking and being overtaken by one another’ (38 d). The other
planets behave even more strangely. Sometimes they seem to
accelerate their velocity so as to appear stationary among the fixed
stars or even to get some way ahead of them; at other times, they
1 This applies even to the recent discussion of it in Sir T. L. Heath’s Aris-
tarchus of Samos, which in other respects is an excellent guide in such matters.
282 THE PLANETARY MOTIONS
are retarded and seem to have a retrograde motion. There is a
further irregularity in the Sun’s annual course. The solstices and
equinoxes do not divide it into four equal segments as we should
expect them to do.
Now this irregularity cannot be ultimate. If we ask why not, the
only answer is that the Artificer created the world on the pattern
of the Good, and disorder of any kind is opposed to the Good.
That is the ultimate ground of the rule that hypotheses are not to
be needlessly multiplied. The postulate of simplicity and regularity
which still guides scientific research is at bottom teleological,! and
we probably come nearest to Plato’s thought about the Good if we
say that, according to him, reality must be a system. ‘There is
something to be said, however, for his simpler way of expressing
this. At any rate, it does not admit of doubt that Plato conceived
the function of Astronomy to be the discovery of the simplest
hypotheses which would account for the apparent complexity of
celestial phenomena. We know as a fact that he propounded the
solar anomaly as a problem to his scholars (§ 174).
§ 264. Now we know further that Eudoxos invented a beautiful
hypothesis, that of concentric spheres, to account for all these
irregularities on the assumption of the earth’s central position,?
and we know also that Plato did not accept his solution as satis-
factory. The assumption of twenty-seven spheres did not seem
simple enough, and fuller study showed that still more were
required. Kallippos added to their number, and Aristotle had to
add still more. Finally, the concentric spheres were replaced by
eccentric spheres and epicycles, and what we call the Ptolemaic
system was the result. Besides this, Aristotle transformed the
geometrical hypothesis of Eudoxos into a mechanical system of
material spheres in contact with one another, and all that arrested
the growth of a true astronomy for nearly two thousand years.
§ 265. Plato, on the other hand, saw clearly that the geocentric
hypothesis was the source of the trouble. The later Pythagoreans
had taught that the earth revolves round the Central Fire, and it
was in this direction that a solution was to be looked for. Here
again we have direct first-hand evidence. Theophrastos (who came
to Athens before the death of Plato, and was almost certainly a
1 Τὸ is worth while to note that this term is derived from τέλειον, ‘complete’,
not immediately from τέλος. It has no implication of an external end.
2 For a clear account of this, see Heath, Avistarchus of Samos, pp. 190 544.
THE EARTH IS NOT THE CENTRE 283
member of the Academy) said that ‘Plato in his old age repented of
having given the earth the central place in the universe, to which
it had no right’. This is unimpeachable testimony, and no inter-
pretation which ignores it can be accepted.” It does not follow
from it, however, that Plato adopted the heliocentric hypothesis.
§ 266. Now there is a sentence in the Timaeus (40 Ὁ) which can
only refer to the same doctrine, if we adopt the best attested
reading.* The only admissible translation of this is ‘earth, our
nurse, going to and fro on its path round the axis which stretches
right through the universe’. The choice of a word which properly
means ‘to go backwards and forwards’ is specially significant; for
it is just that aspect of the terrestrial motion which accounts for the
apparently retrograde motion of the planets. This is enough for
our present purpose, and I do not propose to discuss here the
vexed question of whether the heliocentric hypothesis was mooted
in the Academy or not. I believe it was, but in any case Aristarchos
of Samos, who did propound it, must have got his inspiration
from the Academy and not from Eudoxos.
§ 267. Now let us see what light all this throws on Plato’s
philosophical position. In the first place, it is the phenomena of
the visible heavens that furnish the problem for solution, and the
assumption throughout is that it is possible to give an intelligible
account of these. There is no attempt to shirk the difficulty by
1 Plut. Quaest. Plat. 1006 c: Θεόφραστος δὲ καὶ προσιστορεῖ τῷ Πλάτωνι
πρεσβυτέρῳ γενομένῳ μεταμέλειν ὡς οὐ προσήκουσαν ἀποδόντι τῇ γῇ τὴν μεσην χώραν
τοῦ παντός. In the Life of Numa, 11, Plutarch says, doubtless on the same ‘authority:
Πλάτωνά φασι πρεσβύτην γενόμενον διανενοῆσθαι περὶ τῆς γῆς ὡς ἐν ἑτέρᾳ χώρᾳ
καθεστώσης, τὴν δὲ μέσην καὶ κυριωτάτην ἑτέρῳ τινι κρείττονι προσήκουσαν.
* Sir T. L. Heath (p. 186) says Theophrastos got the statement “from hearsay’.
No doubt, but he probably heard it from Plato himself, and certainly from his
immediate disciples.
5 This i is: γῆν δὲ τροφὸν μὲν ἡμετέραν, ἰλλομένην δὲ τὴν περὶ τὸν διὰ παντὸς πόλον
τεταμένον. Everything here depends upon the word τὴν, which is quite distinctly
written in Par. A, though omitted in all printed texts before by own. It can only
be explained on the principle of τὴν (sc. ὁδόν), and we must ‘understand’ περίοδον
or περιφοράν. No ‘scribe’ could have invented such a reading, which is: also that
of at least one other first-class MS. It is true that Par. A has εἱλλομένην for
ἰλλομένην, but that is an everyday confusion, and the agreement of the MSS. of
Aristotle, Plutarch and Proclus with other Plato MSS. turns the scale of evidence.
4 The verb ἴλλεσθαι (which cannot be etymologically connected with εἵλλεσθαι)
has no other meaning than this in classical Greek literature. It is used by
Sophokles (Ant. 340) of ploughs going backwards and forwards in the furrow,
and Xenophon (Cyn. 6) speaks of κύνες ἐξίλλουσαι τὰ ἴχνη, going to and fro till
they find the scent. If Apollonios Rhodios confused ἔλλω and εἵλλω, that proves
nothing. Aristotle certainly understood the word to mean motion of some sort
(De Caelo, 296 a, 5), and this is confirmed by the use of the present participle. It
is quite incredible to me that Aristotle should have misnuderstood or mis-
represented Plato’s teaching on a subject like this.
284 THE EARTH’S MOTION
referring the irregularity of the planetary motions to the short-
comings of the sensible world, or to ‘matter’ or to an evil world-
soul, as popular Platonism did later. Nor is there any attempt to
represent the phenomena as illusory; on the contrary, the whole
object of the inquiry is to ‘save’ them. The appearances remain
exactly what they were, only we now know what they mean. The
gulf between the intelligible and the sensible has so far been
bridged; the visible motions of the heavenly bodies have been
referred to an intelligible system, or, in other words, they have
been seen in the light of the Good. If we ask why they should
appear to us as they do, the answer must be on the same lines. It
is because we are placed on a spherical earth which revolves round
the axis of the universe, and that is because it is good that we
should be so placed, though we cannot clearly see why in the
present state of our knowledge. That, I take it, is how Plato laid
the ghost of the two-world theory which had haunted Greek
philosophy since the time of Parmenides, and that is what he meant
by saying that the sensible world was ‘the image of the intelligible’.
He had shown already in the Sophist that to be an image was not
to be nothing. An appearance is an appearance, and is only unreal
if we take it for what it is not.
CONCLUSION
§ 268. The account just given of Plato’s mature philosophy is of
necessity meagre and in a measure hypothetical. As to that, I can
only say that in this case the phenomena to be ‘saved’ are the
writings of Plato himself and the statements of Aristotle and others
who knew him, and the only proof or disproof the hypothesis
admits of is its efficacy in accounting for them. It cannot be
otherwise tested. Personally I have found this hypothesis efficacious
during a course of Platonic study extending over twenty years at
least. I claim no more for it than that, and also no less.1 I do not
pretend to impose my conclusions on the reader, who must make
the experiment for himself. He will certainly find it worth while.
There is another point still. It must be admitted that Plato’s
1It is nearly a quarter of a century ago that I found the current views of
Sokrates and Plato leading me into a hopeless scepticism and resolved to see
what could be done with the hypothesis that Pluto really meant what he said.
Since then I have edited the whole text of Plato, and an editor necessarily reads
his text through minutely many scores of times.
CONCLUSION 285
immediate follower’s fell very far short of the ideal I have attributed
to their master. Aristotle was impatient with the mathematical side
of the doctrine and did not even trouble to understand it. The
result was that this did not come to its rights for nearly two
thousand years. Even those men who were really carrying out the
work Plato began felt bound to put their results in a form which
Aristotle’s criticism would not touch. The Elements of Euclid are a
monument of that position.! Xenokrates confused Plato’s philo-
sophy of numbers with his philosophy of motion, and defined the
soul as a ‘self-moving number’. Speusippos held that the Good
was not primary, but only arose in the course of evolution. The
Neoplatonists did more justice to Plato’s doctrine of the Good and
of the Soul, but they failed to remember his warning that the
detailed application of these could only be ‘probable tales’ in the
actual state of our knowledge. Yet these very failures to grasp
Plato’s central thought bear witness to different sides of it and
justify the attempt to reconstruct in such a way as to explain how
it could be misunderstood in so many different ways. After all,
these ‘broken lights’ are also among the phenomena which have
to be ‘saved’, and for this reason many sides of Plato’s philosophy
will only appear in their true light when we have seen how it
fared in the hands of his successors, and especially in those of
Aristotle.
1 Perhaps the most significant touch is that he calls the axioms κοιαὶ ἔννοιαι or
‘innate ideas’. That is a stoic formula which enables him to avoid discussing the
true nature of hypothesis.
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INDEX
Abaris, 31
Abdera, 1581
Academy, 174 sqq., 247
Achilles and the tortoise, 68
Adeimantos, son of Ariston, 168 sq.
Aether (αἰθήρ) 16, (= Fire in Anaxa-
goras) 62
Aggregation, states of, 21
Aigospotamos meteor, 64
‘Air’ (1.6. mist), 16, 19, 31, 34, 40,
53,57) 77
Air (atmospheric), 57, 62
Aischines against Timarchos (1)
DIS" (3 75) 152
Akoumenos, 154
Alexander the Great, 240
Alkibiades, 111, 112 sq., 114, 121,
152, 154
Alkidamas, 244?
Alkmaion, 39, 60
Analysis, 179 544
Anaxagoras, 60-65
Anaximander, 17-19
Anaximenes, 19-20
Andokides, 153 sqq
Anthropomorphism, 22, 27
Antichthon, 74
Antisthenes, 139, 204 sq., 229
Anytos, 89, 146, 151, 152, 153
Apocalypses, 51
Apolaustic life, 33
Apollo, 31
Appearances, saving, 9
Arabic figures, 42
Archelaos of Athens, 100 sq., 119
Archimedes, 162, 2624
Archytas, 242, 263
Aristarchos of Samos, 283
Aristeas of Prokonnesos, 31
Aristeides the elder, 104
Aristeides the younger, 111
Aristokles, 1881
Aristophanes, 100, 115 sq., 117 sq.,
150 sq.
Aristotle, 9, 58, 281, 285; on Atom-
ism, 76; on Sokrates, 1281; on
Plato, 145, 2545qq.;Categories (ga,
8), 2652; Prior Analytics (67a, 21),
128; Sophistici Elenchi (165a, 22),
877.) (178), 30) 211: Pinysics
(1924, 6 sqq.), 268, (2034, 13) 425,
(250a, 20) 92 sq., (2655, 25) 213;
De Caelo (296a, 5) 2834; De
generatione (3350, 10), 135; Meta-
physics (987a, 20) 257, (9874, 22)
127, (987), 1) 127, (987), 29)
256, (989a, 5 544.) 207, (9924, 1)
262» ὃ, (9924, 32) 254", (998a, 2)
92, (10145, 16) 211, (1043), 5 544.)
204 sqq., (1078b, 9 544.) 255',
(10788, 11) 127, (10788, 17) 258,
(1078), 21) 127, (1078), 30) 134,
(1080a, 12 sqq.) 255, (10814, 35)
255, (1083a, 33) 255, (10868, 3)
258, (1091a, 4) 2601, (10928, 8)
42"; Poetics (14516, 25) 148
Aristoxenos, 32, 37, 39, 70, IOI,
1048, 1088, 124, 125, 180, 244°
Arithmetic, 67, 183, 263
Arteries, 61?
Astrology, 5, 62
Astronomy (Babylonian), 5 sqq.;
(Academic), 184 sqq.
Athens as the meeting-place of
Italic and Ionic philosophy, 69,
96, 99, 107, 174-5
Atomism (v. Leukippos and Demo-
kritos), 70; (origin of), 76; and
Pythagoreanism, 79
Atoms, motion of, 77
Atticus the Platonist, 273}
Axiochos, 154
288
Babylonian astronomy, 5 sqq., 14
Being (οὐσία) and becoming (γένεσις),
72, 126 sqq., 129, 132, 182, 231,
269
Biology, 19
Blend (κρᾶσις), 38
Blood, 60
Body, 24
Boundless, 17
Bryson, 206, 214
Campbell, Lewis, 721, 205
Carthaginians, 240, 244
Categories, 201, 209, 230 sq.
Catharism, 32
Charmides, 112, 169, 171
Conceptualism, 1251, 2101, 258
Condensation, v. Rarefaction
Constitutions, 238 sq.
Continuity, 67, 72, 92, 161 sq.,
260 sq.
Copernicus, 4
Cosmogony, 3, 13
Crete, 13, 23, 31
Croesus, 14
Cujas, 247
Cyprus, 240?
Damon, 154
Darkness, 40 sq., 48
Delios of Ephesos, 2401
Delos, 23
Demeter, 24
Demiourgos, 38
Democracy, 238 sq.
Demokritos, 157-164; and Pro-
tagoras, 93 sq., 1587, 160 sq., 1981
Diagoras, 61
Dialectic, 108 sqg., 133, 186 sq., 213,
230
Dialexeis, 188°
Diapason, 37
Dikaiarchos, 70, 124
Diogenes of Apollonia, 99, 117
Dion, 172, 240 sq.
Dionysios I., 172, 239 sq.
Dionysios II., 240 sq.
Dionysos, 24
INDEX
Division, 179
Dodecahedron, 5, 43, 67
Dramatic and narrated dialogue, 190
Dropides, 169
Dualism, 71
Dyad, indeterminate, 256, 260 sq.
Earth, Mother, 20
Earth (shape), 15, 16, 18, 20, 28, 34,
57, 64, 81; (place), 74, 282; (incli-
nation), 81; (as an ‘element’), 21
Echekrates, 124
Eclipses, 7, 14, 15, 19, 34, 48, 64, 74
Ecstasy, 24
Education, 248-253
Effluences, 60, 96
Egyptian mathematics, 4 sqq., 171
Elea, 26, 50
Eleatic Stranger, 192, 222
Elements (v. στοιχεῖα), 20, 48, 55> 57>
1. 61, 62; 70, 71,80
Empedokles, 33, 56-60, 96
Enlightenment, 25 sqq.
Epameinondas, 178, 244
Epicharmos, 50
Epicurus and Epicureans, 18, 28,
77,78, 157
Eristics, 139, 189, 197, 206, 214,
222
Eros, 112 sq.
Eryximachos, 154
Euclid (axioms) 285, (I. 47) 31, 43,
(11. 11) 43, (Χ111.) 179
Eudemos of Cyprus, 243
Eudemos of Rhodes, 15
Eudoxos, 18, 162, 174, 214, 264,
2651, 282
Eukleides of Megara,
187 sqq., 191
Eurytos, 422, 73 sq.
Evil, 272
Evolution, 19, 60
Experiment, 8, 57, 63
Explanation, 8
a
123, 171,
Figurate numbers, 42-3
Figures (Ὁ. εἴδη, ἰδέαι), 39, 40, 41, 42,
71 544.
INDEX
Fire, 47, 48; central, 74
Flux, 48
Fluxions, 262
Force, 56
Form and matter, 35, 44
Forms (v. εἴδη, ἰδέαι),
207 sqq.
Fractions, 68
125 $qq.,
Galileo, 18, 179, 281
Geocentric hypothesis, 74
Geometry, plane, 15, 183
Geometry, solid, 173, 183
Glaukon, son of Ariston, 168 sq.
Gnomon, 6, 41
God (gods), 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 27,
50, 64, 95, 100, 137", 235, 273 544.
Golden section, 43
Good, the, 138 sq., 180, 188 sq.,
273 546.
Goodness, 88 sq., 138 sq., 140 sqq.
Gorgias, 96 sqq.
Great-and-small, the, 256, 260 sqq.,
268
Gymnastics, 249 sq.
Harmonic mean, 38
Harmonics, 185 sq.
‘Harmony’ (ἁρμονία), 35; of the
spheres, 44
Health, 39
Heart, 58, 60
Hekataios, 17
Hellenes and barbarians, 27, 177
Herakleides, 242
Herakleitos, 45-50
Herakles, 96, 98
Hermodoros the
171, 268
Hermodoros of Ephesos, 45
Hermokopidai, 153
Herodotos, 86 sq., (i. 74) 14, (ii.
109) 6, (iii. 38) 86, (iv. 95) 87,
(v. 28) 13
Hesiod, 22, 27 sq.
Hiero, 26
Hipparchos, 6
Hipparinos, 244
Platonist, 167,
289
Hippasos, 44, 70 sq.
Hippias, 95
Hippokrates of Chios, 95
Hippokrates of Kos, 8, 25, 69, 81,
133
Hippon of Samos, 100 sq.
Hipponikos, go?
Homer, 22, 26 sq.
Homeric Hymns, 23 sq.
Homo mensura, 92 sq.
Hyperboreans, 23
Hypotenuse, 31
Hypothesis, 120, 132, 181, 182,
186, 212
Images, 72, 225 sqq., 233 $99.
256
Incommensurability, 43, 72, 92,
252
Indian science, 7
Indivisible lines, 262
Infinitesimals, 162, 261, 262
Infinity, 69
Injustice, 17, 38, 86
Intelligible and sensible, 257, 277
Intervals, musical, 35 sqq., 267
Tonia, 174 sq.
Irony, 107
Isokrates, 87, 140, 175 sqq., 222,
2407, (10.1) 139, (10.2) 91, (10.3)
97, (10.5) 139, (11.5) 1127, 121%,
(13.1, 3) 140
Justice (cosmological), 17, 48, 86
Kallias, 89
Kallikles, 97 sq., 151
Kallippos, 243
Kebes, 123
Kepler, 30
Klepsydra, 57, 58
Korybantes, 32
Kratylos, 196, 256
Kritias, son of Dropides, 169, 2751
Kritias, son of Kallaischros, 111,
152, 170 sq.
Kroton, 30, 32
Kylon, 30
290
Law and nature, 85 sqq., 94, 99
Lawgivers, 86
Leukippos, 74, 76-81
Likeness, v. Images
Limit and unlimited, 35, 40, 266 54.
Lives, the Three, 33
Love and strife, 58 sq.
Lydia, 13, 15
Lyre, 35
Lysimachos, 104
Lysis, 178, 244
Maieutic, 113 sq.
Man is the measure, 92 sq.
Materialism, 227 sq.
Mathematicians and Akousmatics,
γι
Mathematics, 30; v. Arithmetic and
Geometry
Matter and form, 21, 35, 44, 54
Mean, 38, 44
Measure, 92 sq.
Medicine, 32, 39 sqq., 71, 100 544.
Megarics, 109, 124, 187 sqg., 191,
197, 206, 221, 222 Sqq., 225 544.
Meletos, 146
Melissos, 69 sq., 77
Menon’s Jatrika, 71, 100
Metapontion, 30, 32
Metempsychosis, 33
Might is right, 98
Miletos, 13, 21
Mind, 63, 100
Mixture (v. Blend), 59, 61
Moon, 18, 28, 48, 64, 74, 184
More and less, the, 268 sqq.
Motion, 54, 55, 63, 67, 79, 199, 271,
275
Music, 32, 35 544.» 249
Mpyrto, 1048
Mysteries, 10, 153
Mysticism, 136
Myth, mythology, 3 sqq., 136 sqq.,
148
Narrated and dramatic dialogue,
190 sq.
Nature and law, 85 sq.
INDEX
Necessity, 277 sqq.
Negative quantity, 268
Not being, 223 sqq., 269
Numbers, 40-43, 66, 68, 71, 254-
263
Oinopides, 64
One and many, 214 sqq., 265 sqq.
Opposites, 17, 38, 39 sq., 63, 71
Orbits, planetary, 18
Orphicism, 24, 25, 46, 56, 105 sq.,
155
Parmenides, 40, 50-54, 198, 192
Participation, 134, 207 sqq., 229 544.»
256
Pentagon, regular, 5, 43
Pentagram, 43
Pentalpha, 43
Perikles and Anaxagoras, 60, 65;
and Zeno, 66; and Melissos, 69
Persia, 240
Phaidros, 154
Pherekydes, 3, 13, 20, 31
Philip of Opous, 245
Philistos, 240, 241
Philolaos, 70, 74, 124 sq., 276
Philosopher-king, 178, 237 sq.
Philosophy, 2 sqq., 33, 175
Phleious, 123
Pindar, 86, 98
Planets, 6, 184, 281, sq.
Plato, 147, 167-285; Euthyphro
(2b) 146, (36 sq.) 149, (5d) 126,
(6a) 148, (6c, e) 1261; Apology
146 sqq., (17d) 103, (26c) 1467,
(31d) 149° (334) 112, 152, (34a)
168, (384) 171, (39d) 151; Crito
(456) 151, (526) τοι, (52e) 104;
Phaedo 33, (58d) 123, (596) 123,
171, (61d) 124, (656, 66d, e) 337,
(73¢) 128, (74c) 259, (766) 126,
(78d) 129, (82a) 142, (84c) 130,
(84e) 130, (852) 130, (85e) 130,
(86d) 39, 75, (880) 131, (88c) 131,
(88d) 75, 124, (89d sq.) 131,
(96a sq.) 107, (960) 60, τοι, (g6e)
109, (975) 101, 131, (985) 64,
INDEX
(99d) 131, (996 544.) 257, (1006)
126, (100c) 134, (101d) 133,
(1ore) 131, (102a) 124, (1025)
207, (108e) 163; Cratylus (3980)
126}, (400c) 106; Theaetetus 190-
206, (1434) 124, 191, (1432) 190,
(148a) 262, (151a) 118, (1524) 91,
(180e) 69, (210d) 193; Sophist
177, 222-235, (2236) 87, (242d)
51, (248a) 74; Politicus 236-9
(262d) 177, (270a) 272; Par-
menides 206-221, (128c) 66,
(128d) 133, (130a) 108, (1300)
126, (130c-d) 73, (135d) 108;
Philebus 264-270; Symposium
(1826) 112, (202a) 204, (2154)
114 sq., (220d) 105, 111, (2154)
114; Phaedrus (229e sqq.) 148,
(231e) 112°, (2452) 271, (2472)
135, (247¢ sqq.) 113, (261d) 108,
(268a) 154, (279a) 176; Charmides
143 (1534) 110, 154, (158a) 169;
Laches 143, (178a sqq.) 118,
(1815) 111; Euthydemus tog,
(290c) 186; Protagoras (309a) 89,
(311a) 9οο᾽, (312c) 186", (315d)
901, (3175) 88, (3172) 89, (361e)
108; Gorgias (456d) 142, (4845)
98, (504a sq.) 144, (5216) 151;
Meno (72c) 126, (76c) 96, (796)
113, 204, (81a) 105, (865) 128,
(οτε sqq.) 89, (91e) 90, (946) 151,
(975) 141, (98a) 141; Hippias
maior (282e) 90; Hippias minor
142; Republic (328b) 901, (332c)
143, (3326 sq.) 142, (368a) 168,
(435d) 182, (476a) 134, (504)
182, (505d 544.) 137, (510c) 187,
(5115) 132, 186', (520c) 199,
(5246-5256) 183, (527α sq.) 183,
(528d sqq.) 183, (529d sqq.) 184,
(5335) 186, (5344) 129; Timaeus
275-284, (19a-d) 192, (28c) 274,
(35a) 270, (40b) 283, (48d) 71,
(51c) 126, (526) 80, (58d) 40;
Critias (110d sqqg.) 182; Laws
245-253, (636a sq.) 112 sgq.,
(656e) 171, (709e) 178, 206, (722d
291
544.) 245, (7346) 230᾽, (7475) 5,
(747¢) 171, (7566) 239%, (8036)
247, (819b) 171, (819d) 252,
(860d) 139, (889e) 99, (8916) 21’,
(893b-896e) 272; Epinomis (9876)
6, (990d sqq.) 184, 262; Epistles
1675q., ii, (312e) 274, (3146) 1733
iii (316a) 245; iv (320c, 3210)
2437; v (322a) 170; vii, viii, 244;
vii (3244) 172, (3245) 170, (3256)
171, (326a) 178, (328e) 239,
(341c-d) 11, 180, (3456) 242, vili
(3536) 244; xiii (360c) 214, (361e)
169
Pluralism, 55 sqq.
Point, 66, 67
Polykrates of Samos, 27, 30
Polykrates the sophist, 112, 121,
140, 152
Polyxenos, 206, 211
Pores, 60
Practical life, 33
Problem, 181
Prodikos, 96
Proklos on εἰδῶν φίλοι, 741
Protagoras, 89 sqq., 193 sqq.; and
Demokritos, 911, 158 sqq.; and
Zeno, 66, 92 sg.; and Sokrates,
108 sq.
Purgation, 32
Purifications, 24, 32, 57
Pyramid, 5?
Pyrilampes, 168, 169, 171
Pythagoras, 29-44
Pythagoreans, later, 70-5, 236 sq.,
256 sq., 267, 269; εἰδῶν φίλοι, 227
Pythagorists, 71
Quadratrix, 96
Rarefaction and condensation, 19
Ratio, 37
Reality, problem of, 9
Rebirth, 33, 57
Reminiscence, 34, 128 sqq.
Renaissance, 177
Respiration, cosmic, 19, 35, 53, 58
Rhetoric, 96
292
Rhind, papyrus, 4?
Rings, planetary, 18, 44
Roman Law, 247 sq.
Roots, 57
Rotation, diurnal, 59
Sabazios, 24
Sardeis, fall of (546 B.c.), 15
Saving appearances, 9
Scales, 36
Science and philosophy, 9-10
Seeds, 61
Sensation, 60, 159 sq., 193 sq.
Sensible and intelligible, 72 sq., 129,
134
Seven Wise Men, 14
Simmias, 123 sq.
Sokrates, 102-156, 50, 73,
150 54., 101
Sokrates the younger, 193
Solar anomaly, 282
Solids, regular, 71, 263
Sophists, 85-99, 138, 222
Soul, 19, 23, 24, 32, 47, 49, 74, 125,
130, 135, 144, 271 544.
Space, 40, 53, 280 sq.
Speusippos, 167, 181, 243, 264, 285
Sphere, 43
Spheres, ‘harmony’ of, 44
Stars, 18, 28
Stereometry, v. Geometry, Solid
Stewart, Prof. J. A., 1363
Sulva-sutra, 7
Sun, 18, 28, 59, 64, 185
Surds, 67, 68, 193, 261
Survival of the fittest, 19
100,
Tarantism, 32
Taras, 70
Taureas, 154
Taylor, A. E.,\401, 687, 149%, 155%
‘Temperament, 39
Temperance, 39
INDEX
‘Temperature, 39
Terms, 38
Tetraktys, 41
Thales, 13-16
Theaitetos, 71, 183, 193 54.
Thebes, 244
Theodoros, 171, 193
Theophrastos, 282
Theoretic life, 33
Thourioi, 56, 69, 86, 90
Thrasymachos, 98 sq.
Thucydides (i. 6), 27
Time, 278 sq.
Tranquillity, 162
Transmigration, 33
Triangles. .(3': 4°: 5), 15, 31,1433
(isosceles right-angled), 43, 67,
71, 127
Unit, 66, 261 sqq.
Unlimited, 35, 40, 67
Up and down, 18, 59 sq., 77
Voice of Sokrates, 149 sq.
Void, 77
Vortex, 80
Weight, 77, 78, 80
Worlds, innumerable, 17, 19, 80
Xanthippe, 104
Xenokrates, 276, 280 sq.
Xenophanes, 26-8
Xenophon and Sokrates, 102 sq.,
119 sqq., 150; Memorabilia (i. 2,
12. sqq:) 152, (is 2;:48) 125; (1: Ὁ;
14) 120, (ili. 6, 1) 168, (iii. 7) 171,
(111. 095 17)» 120. 125, 0ν- 5. 12)
186, (iv. 6, 13) 120, (iv. 7, 3-5)
120; Apology (29) 151
Zagreus, 24
Zeno, 66-8, 71, 92, 108, 127
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A CRITICAL HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
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THE FOUNDATIONS OF EMPIRICAL
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