1
GREEK THINKERS
FIRST EDITION . ^ § January, 1901
Reprinted . , ^ ^^ Igo6
Reprinted . ^w7> Igao
GREEK THINKERS
A HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
BY THEODOR GOMPERZ
PROFESSOR AT THE UKTVEMITT OF VI EN K A, AHD MEMBKK Of
THB IMPERIAL ACADEMY J HON. LL.D., DUBLIH J
HON. PH.D., KONIGSBEKG
AUTHORIZED EDITION
VOLUME I
TRANSLATED BY
LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A.
VAGDALEN OOLLBGE, OXFORD
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1920
€0 tt)*
MEMORY OF HIS MOTHER
DEC. 19, 1792 : APRIL 30, 1881
THE AUTHOR
DEDICATES THIS VOLUME-
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
THE present version of the first volume of Griechische
Denker has been rendered directly from the German edition
of 1896, published by Veit & Company of Leipsic, which
was placed in my hands in June, 1899. ^n the later stages
of my work I have incurred a considerable obligation to
the author, whose masterly knowledge of English has
helped to purge the proof-sheets of my translation from
the errors into which I had been betrayed. The confidence
with which I now present it to English readers is largely
due to the fact that every doubtful point has been
thoroughly discussed in proof and revise between Professor
Gomperz and myself. In no single instance has he failed
to make his meaning clear to me, and I must take the
sole responsibility for any errors that may remain. I
welcome this opportunity, too, of expressing my cordial
thanks to Frau Professor Gomperz, whose interest in the
book and complete command of its subject have been of
the utmost service to me throughout the course of my
labours.
It would be a work of supererogation on my part,
though it would add considerably to my pleasure, to
introduce this book to English scholars ; but I may at least
express the hope that I have not been entirely unsuccessful
in conveying in the English language something of the
brilliance and charm of style which the author's German
readers recognize and admire in his own. In many of the
V1U TRANSLATORS PREFACE.
passages quoted by Professor Gomperz from Plato and
Thucydides I have availed myself of the renderings by the
late Dr. Jowett, now the property of Balliol College, Oxford,
and I am glad to acknowledge the benefit which my work
has derived from them.
The second volume of " Greek Thinkers," dealing mainly
with Socrates and Plato, will, it is hoped, be published in
the course of this year ; and since, to my regret, I am not
at leisure to continue the work myself, steps have already
been taken to find a competent translator. The third
volume of the German edition will include the author's
indexes, but I have thought it advisable to supply the
present instalment of the work with a provisional index
of subjects and names. I should add that, in translating
the notes and additions to this volume, I have, with the
author's sanction, introduced sundry technical changes,
chiefly in reference to English books or to foreign works in
English editions. In the instance of Zeller's Philosophie
der Griechen, I have made an exception to this practice.
Professor Gomperz quotes uniformly from the last German
edition of that work, which has been considerably modified
and enlarged since the English rendering was effected.
L. M.
LONDON,
Jan. i, 1901,
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
MY design in the present undertaking is to compose a
comprehensive picture of the department of knowledge in
which, during several decades past, I have been at pains
to increase the material and to sift the problems. The
work, which summarizes the labours of a lifetime, will be
complete in three volumes, and will, it is hoped, be
accessible to wide circles of cultivated readers. The point
of view from which I have written is not that of any one-
sided and exclusive school. I endeavour to do equal
justice to the different tendencies of ancient thought, every-
one of which has contributed its part to the complete
structure of modern intellectual civilization, to consider
them all impartially, and to judge them fairly. The
historical relief in which the narrative is set will not be
unduly contracted, and its subjective features will be con-
fined to emphasizing what is essential as sharply as possible,
and to sundering as thoroughly as possible what is enduring
and significant from what is indifferent and transient.
Portions of the story of religion, of literature, and of the
special sciences, indispensable to an understanding of
the speculative movement, its causes and effects, will be
incorporated in the work. The boundaries dividing these
provinces appear to me in all cases to be floating. The
ideal I have in view could only completely be realized in
an exhaustive universal history of the mind of antiquity.
When so monumental an undertaking has been successfully
X AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
effected I shall be the first to admit that the present far
more modest attempt is superseded and antiquated.
The second volume and the third or concluding volume
will comprise the remaining six books, entitled respectively,
(4) "Socrates and the Socratics," (5) "Plato and the
Academy," (6) "Aristotle and his Successors," (7) "The
Older Stoa," (8) "The Garden of Epicurus," and (9)
" Mystics, Sceptics, and Syncretists." In order not
unduly to increase the compass of the work, the evidence
of authorities has had to be reduced to the smallest
dimensions, and, with regard to references to the later
literature of the subject, economy has had to be practised
in all cases excepting those where rny own exposition may
claim the greatest originality and those, again, where it
can claim the least. In the latter instance the obligation
has arisen of acknowledging my close dependence on pre-
decessors, and, in the former, of advancing grounds for
my radical divergence from traditional views.
Finally, I may be permitted, not to palliate, but to
apologize for, the shortcomings of rny work in the phrase
employed in a letter of Gustave Flaubert to Georges Sand :
"Je fais tout ce que je peux continucllement pour <£largir
rna cervelle, et je travaille dans la since*rit6 de mon cceur ;
le reste ne depend pas de moi."
TH. GOMPERZ.
VIENNA.'
CONTENTS.
BOOK L
THE BEGINNINGS.
§3
§4
§5
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
3
§6
. , ... .. 7
fi 7
II
§8
14.
§0
I?
PAGH
24
31
34
37
CHAPTER I.
OLD IONIAN NATURE-PHILOSOPHERS.
§2
§3
43
46
48
§4
§5
56
59
CHAPTER IL
ORPHIC SYSTEMS OF COSMOGONY.
80 I §3
84 I
90
Xll
CONTENTS.
§2
CHAPTER III
PYTHAGORAS AND HIS DISCIPLES,
§ 3
PAQB
99
102
PAGE
I IO
CHAPTER IV.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE.
§ I H2 | §2 117
CHAPTER V.
ORPHIC AND PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINES OF THE SOUL.
123
I2S
130
§4
§5
138
BOOK II.
FROM METAPHYSICS TO POSITIVE SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
XENOPHANES
§1
§2
155 1 §3
158
CHAPTER II.
PARMENIDES.
§2
$ 3
165
166
170
§4
§5
176
179
CONTENTS.
xm
CHAPTER IIL
THE DISCIPLES OF PARMENIDES.
§t
§2
§1
§2
§2
PAGE
... 184
... 191
§3
§4
CHAPTER IV.
ANAXAGORAS.
§3
208
213
CHAPTER V.
EMPEDOCLES.
CHAPTER. VI.
THE HISTORIANS.
255
258
§3
§4
PACK
194
199
219
222
§ I
§5
2,4 T
§6
<* A *»
§ 3
§ 7
... <£.$$
§ 4.
2*6
S8 ...
9.£9
262
269
BOOK III.
THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE PHYSICIANS.
§»
$2
... 270
§5
§ 6
if •*
§3
§4
282
286
V
§7
295
303
310
XIV
CONTENTS.
§2
§3
§4
§5
CHAPTER II.
THE ATOMISTS.
PAGE.
31*
§6
3*9
§7
327
§8
332
§ o
.341
§ 10
PACE
348
353
356
363
366
CHAPTER III.
THE ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHERS OF NATURE.
§'
$2
370
377
37*
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OK MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCK.
§2
§3
§4
... 381
- 384
... 387
... 390
§5
§6
§7
§8
394
401
405
407
§2
§3
CHAPTER V.
THE SOPHISTS.
412
4*5
422
§4
§5
425
430
434
CHAPTER VL
PROTAGORAS OF ABDERA.
438
441
445
44S
§5
§6
§7
450
462
466
471
GREEK THINKERS.
INTRODUCTION.
ALL beginnings are obscure, whether owing to their
minuteness or their apparent insignificance. Where they do
not escape perception, they are liable to elude observation.
The sources of history, too, can only be tracked at a
foot-pace. They must be followed to their fount, like the
current of a stream which springs in a mountain fastness*
Such steps or paces are called inferences. They are of
two kinds, according as they proceed from causes or
from effects. In the second case, we try to infer the
existence and the nature of causes from the existence
and the nature of effects. Inferences of that type are
indispensable, but frequently fallacious. For though every
cause, taken by itself, produces the same invariable effect,
yet the converse proposition does not by any means
hold good. Each effect is not invariably tie product of
one and the same cause. The condition known as " plurality
of causes" plays an important part in the intellectual no
less than in the ^physical universe. The contrary process
yields more trustworthy results. It starts from the causes,
from the series of great and tangible factors, plainly
manifest or readily to be found, which must have in-
fluenced the events to be accounted for, and in which
the degree of such influence is the sole object of doubt.
In the present instance, where we are dealing with the
higher intellectual life of a nation, the first place is
VOL, I. B 2
4 GREEK THINKERS.
claimed by its geographical conditions and the peculiar
character of its homes.
Hellas is a sea-girt mountain-land. The poverty of her
soil corresponds to the narrowness of her river-valleys.
And here we find the first clue to some of the essential
features of Hellenic evolution proper. It is clear, for
instance, that a permanent home and a steady and manifold
care and attention were offered to any seeds of civilization
which might be deposited in her soil. Her mountain-
barriers served her in the office of stone walls, breaking the
force of the storm of conquest which sweeps unchecked
across the plains. Each hilly canton was a potential seat
of culture. Each could develop a separate type of that
strongly marked individualism, which was ultimately to
prove so favourable to the rich and many-sided civilization
of Greece, so fatal to the political concentration of her
powers. The country was full of piquant contrasts. Her
Arcadia — an inland canton, sunk in torpid provincialism — •
vas matched at the opposite extreme by the extent and cur-
vature of the coast. Her sea-board was larger than Spain's,
her mainland smaller than Portugal's. Other conditions,
too, fostered this variety of natural gifts. The most diverse
trades and professions were practised in the closest
proximity. Seamen and shepherds, hunters and husband-
men, flourished side by side, and the fusion of their
families produced in ater generations a sum of talents
and aptitudes complementary to each other. Again, the
good fairies who presided at the birth of Greece could
have laid no more salutary blessing in her cradle than the
"poverty which was ever her familiar friend/1 It worked
powerfully in three ways for the advancement of her
civilization. It acted as a spur to compel her to exert all
her powers ; it served as a further defence against invasion,
for the comparatively poor country must have seemed but
indifferent booty — a fact noted in connection with Attica
by the most philosophical historian of antiquity ; and last,
and chiefly, it lent a forcible Impulse to commerce,
navigation, emigration, and the foundation of colonies*
The bays that offer the best harbourage on the Greek
COUNTRY AND COLONIES. 5
peninsula open towards the east, and the islands and
islets, with which that region is thickly sown, afford, as it
were, a series of stepping-stones to the ancient seats of
Asiatic civilization. Greece may be said to look east and
south. Her back is turned to the north and west, with
their semi-barbaric conditions. Another circumstance of
quite exceptional good fortune may be ranged with these
natural advantages. There was Greece in her infancy on
the one side, and the immemorial civilizations on the
other: who was to ply between them? The link was
found — as it were by deliberate selection — in those hardy
adventurers of the sea, the merchant-people of Phoenicia^
a nation politically of no account, but full of daring and
eager for gain. Thus it happened that the Greeks acquired
the elements of culture from Babylon and Egypt without
paying the forfeit of independence. The benefits of this
ordinance are obvious. The favoured country enjoyed a
steadier rate of progress, a more unbroken evolution, a
comparative immunity from the sacrifice of her national
resources. And if further proof be required, take the fate
of the Celts and Germans, whom Rome enslaved at the
moment that she civilized; or take the sad lot of the
savage tribes of to-day, who receive the blessing of
civilization at the hands of almighty Europe, and wear it
too often as a curse.
Still, the determining influence in the intellectual life of
Greece must be sought in her colonial system. Colonies
were founded at all times, and under every form of govern-
ment. The Monarchy, a period of perpetual conflict, fre-
quently witnessed the spectacle of settled inhabitants giving
way to immigrating tribes, and seeking a new home beyond
the seas. The Oligarchy, which rested entirely on the
permanent alliance between noble birth and territorial
possession, was often constrained to expel the "pauvre
gentilhomme," the type and symbol of disorder, and to
furnish him with fresh estates in foreign parts, whither he
would speedily be followed by further victims of the incessant
party strife Meantime, the growth of the maritime trade
of Greece, the flourishing condition of her industries, and
6 GREEK THINKERS.
her increasing population, soon made it necessary to
establish fixed commercial stations, an uninterrupted
supply of raw material, and safe channels for the importa-
tion of food. The same outlets were utilized, chiefly
under the Democracy, to relieve the indigent poor and to
draft off the surplus population. Thus, at an early period,
there arose that vast circle of Greek plantations which
stretched from the homes of the Cossacks on the Don to
the oases of the Sahara, and from the eastern shore of
the Black Sea to the coast-line of Spain. Great Greece
and Greater Greece, — if the first name belong to the
Hellenic portion of Southern Italy, the second might
well be given to the sum of these settlements outside.
The mere number and diversity of the colonies practically
ensured the prospect that any seeds of civilization would
happen on suitable soil, and this prospect was widened
and brightened to an incalculable degree by the nature
of the settlements and the manner of their founda-
tion. Their sites were selected at those points of the
coast which offered the best facilities for successful com-
mercial enterprise. The emigrants themselves were chiefly
young men of a hardy and courageous disposition, who
would bequeath their superior qualities to their numerous
issue. Men of duller parts, who lived by rule and rote,
were not likely to turn their backs on their homes except
under stress of necessity. Again, though a single city-
state took the lead in the foundation of each colony, it
would frequently be reinforced by a considerable foreign
contingent, and this cross-breeding of Hellenic tribes would
be further extended by an admixture of non-Hellenic
blood, owing to the preponderance of the men over the
women among the original emigrants. Thus, every colony
served the purpose of experiment Greek and non-Greek
racial elements were mixed in varying proportions, and
the test was applied to their resulting powers of resistance
and endurance. Local customs, tribal superstitions, and
national prejudices swiftly disappeared before the better
sense of the settlers. Contact with foreign civilizations,
however imperfectly developed, could not but enlarge their
COLONIAL LIFE. 7
mental horizon to a very appreciable degree. The average
of capacity rose by leaps and bounds, and the average of
intellect was heightened by its constant engagement in
new and difficult tasks. Merit counted for more than
descent. A man there was a man ; good work could
command a good wage, and poor work meant a hard bed
and indifferent protection. The whole system of economic,
political, and social life cried out to be reorganized and
reformed, and in these circumstances the force of mere
tradition and the reign of unintelligent routine were
involved in rapid decline. True, some of the settlements
succumbed to the attacks of hostile residents ; others,
again, were so far outnumbered by the natives that their
individuality was gradually absorbed. But from first to
last the communication of the colonies with their mother-
city and mother-country — a communication fostered by
religious ties and frequently strengthened by later arrivals
— was sufficiently intimate to preserve in all its parts the
reciprocal benefits which proved so eminently fruitful
Greece found in her colonies the great playground of her
intellect. There she proved her talents in every variety
of circumstances, and there she was able to train them to
the height of their latent powers. Her colonial life retained
for centuries its fresh and buoyant spirit. The daughter-
cities in most respects outstripped their mother in the race.
To them can be traced nearly all the great innovations,
and the time was to come when they would steep them-
selves in intellectual pursuits as well, when the riddles of
the world and of human life were to find a permanent
home and enduring curiosity in their midst.
2. There is a period in Greek history which bears a
most striking resemblance to the close of our own Middle
Ages, when the repetition of similar causes produced
similar effects.
On the threshold of modern Europe stands the era of
the great discoverers, and the geographical limits of the
Greek horizon at this time were likewise wonderfully
extended. On the far east and west of the world, as it
was then known, the outline emerged from the mist.
8 GREEK THINKERS.
Precise and definite knowledge replaced the obscurity of
legend. Shortly after 800 B.C., the eastern shore of the
Black Sea began to be colonized by Milesians; Sinope
was founded in 785, and Trapezunt about thirty years
later. Soon after the middle of the same century, Eubcea
and Corinth sent out the first Greek settlers to Sicily,
where Syracuse was founded in 734 B.C., and before the
century's end the ambition and enterprise of Miletus had
taken fast foothold at the mouths of the Nile. Three
conclusions are involved in the fact of this impulse to
expansion. It points to a rapid growth of population on
the Greek peninsula and in the older colonies. It presumes
a considerable development of Greek industry and com-
merce ; and, finally, it serves to measure the progress in
ship-building and in kindred arts. Take navigation, for
instance. Where vessels formerly had hugged the shore,
and had not ventured in deep waters, now they boldly
crossed the sea. The mercantile marine was protected by
men-of-war. Seaworthy battleships came into use with
raised decks and three rows of oars, the first of them being
built for the Samians in 705 B.C. Naval engagements
were fought as early as 664 B.C., so that the sea acquired
the utmost significance in the civilization of Hellas for
the commerce of peace and war. At the same time, the
progress of industry was fostered by a notable innovation.
A current coinage was created. The " bullocks " of hoary
antiquity and the copper "kettles" and "tripods" of a
later date successively passed into desuetude, and the
precious metals replaced these rougher makeshifts as
measures of value and tokens of exchange. Babylonian
and Egyptian merchants had long since familiarized the
market with silver and gold in the form of bars and rings,
and the Babylonians had even introduced the official stamp
as a guarantee of standard and weight. A convenient
shape was now added to the qualities of worth and dura-
bility which make gold and silver the most practical
symbols of exchange, and the metals were coined for
current use. This invention, borrowed from Lydia about
700 B.C. by the Phocaeans of Ionia, conferred remarkable
SOCIAL CHANGES. g
benefits on commerce. It facilitated intercourse and
extended its bounds, and its effects may be compared with
those of the bill of exchange, introduced in Europe by
Jewish and Lombardy merchants at the close of the Middle
Ages. Similar, if not greater, in effect was the change
in the methods of warfare. The old exclusive service of
the cavalry, which had flourished in the dearth of pastoral
and corn-land as the privilege of wealthy landowners, was
now reinforced by the hoplites, or heavy-armed infantry,
who far exceeded the cavalry in numbers. The change was
analogous — and its consequences were equal in importance
— to that which enabled the armed peasantry of Switzer-
land to disperse the chivalry of Burgundy and Austria.
New orders of the population achieved prosperity and
culture, and were filled with a strong sense of self-esteem.
A sturdy middle class asserted itself by the side of the
old squirearchy, and bore with increasing impatience
the yoke of the masterful nobles. But here, as elsewhere,
the contradiction between actual conditions of strength
and legal dues of prerogative became the cause of civil
strife. A battle of classes broke out. It spread to the
peasants, where persistent ill-usage and by no means
infrequent serfdom had sown the seeds of revolt, and out
of the rents and ruins of society there was hatched a brood
of usurpers, who partly destroyed and partly set aside the
existing order of things. They constructed in its place a
form of government which, though commonly short-lived,
was not without notable results. The Orthagorides, the
Cypselides, the Pisistratides, a Polycrates, and many
another, may be compared with the Italian tyrants of the
late Middle Ages — the Medici, the Sforza, or the Visconti
— precisely as the party feuds of the one epoch recall in
the other the conflict between the lords and the guilds.
The obscure origin and questionable title of these newly
founded dynasties were discreetly veiled in the glitter of
warlike undertakings, of alliances with foreign potentates,
public works on a lavish scale, splendid buildings, and
munificent benefactions, combined with an enhanced regard
for the safety of the national sanctuaries and for the
10 GREEK THINKERS.
encouragement of the fine arts. But we must look deeper for
the most lasting result of this entr'acte in history. It tran-
quillized party feeling ; it overthrew the rule of the nobles
without breaking the foundations of social welfare ; it
poured new wine in the old vessels, revealing unsuspected
possibilities in the extant forms of the constitution. The
" tyranny " served as a bridge to the system of democracy,
first in a moderate, and at last in its fully developed shape.
Meantime, the stream of intellectual culture found
broader and deeper channels. The ballads of the heroes,
which had been sung for centuries in the halls of Ionian
nobles to the accompaniment of the lyre, slowly fell into
desuetude. New forms of poetry began to emerge, and
with them, in some instances, the poet's personality emerged
from the material of his song. Subjective poetry came
into existence, as was bound to happen, when, as now,
men escaped in ever-increasing numbers from the groove
of hereditary conventions. The State was involved in
change and vicissitude, society was governed by uncertain
conditions, and individual life accordingly acquired a more
adventurous complexion. Men's talents would be more
sharply defined, their independent activity stimulated, their
self-reliance encouraged. In civic and party business a
man would play his own part, advising and blaming as
counsellor or critic, and boldly giving vent among his fellows
to his sentiments of expectation or disappointment, his joy,
his sorrow, his anger, and his scorn. He became a unit
in society, self-made for the most part, and entirely self-
dependent, and would deem his private concerns of
sufficient importance to display them in the light of
publicity. He poured out his heart to his fellow-citizens,
making them the arbiters in his love-suits and law-suits,
and appealing to their sympathy in the injuries he suffered,
the successes he achieved, the pleasures he enjoyed. A
new spirit, too, was breathed in the older poetical forms.
Myth and legend were refashioned by the masters of choric
song in differing, if not in contradictory, modes. The
didactic poets still aimed at system, order, and harmony
in their treatment of the material, but side by side with
TRAVEL AND OBSERVATION. II
those endeavours a manifold diversity was to be remarked,
and a licence in criticism, expressing itself in a prejudice
or preference in respect to this or that hero or heroine of
holy tradition. Thus, the neutral tints of the background
were ever more and more relieved by strong, self-conscious
figures standing out from the uniform mass. Habits of
free-will and feeling were created, and with them there
grew the faculty of independent thought, which was
constantly engaged and exercised in wider fields of
speculation.
3. The Greeks were naturally keen-sighted. The faith-
ful representation of sensible objects and occurrences con-
stitutes one of the chief charms of the Homeric poems, and
the imitation of figures and gestures by a hand that
waxed in cunning now began to succeed to the arts of
language and speech. Greece became the apprentice of
older civilized countries, turning to Egypt above all for
the paramount example of artistic instinct, natural joy, and
engaging humour. But even in the limited sphere of the
observation of men's ways and manners, fresh material
was constantly collected. As travelling grew easier, its
occasions would be multiplied. Not merely the merchant,
ever intent on new gain, but the fugitive murderer, the
exiled loser in the civil strife, the restless emigrant wander-
ing on the face of the earth, the adventurer whose spear
was at the service of the highest bidder, who would eat
the bread of an Assyrian monarch to-day and to-morrow
would pour down his burning throat the barley-water of
Egypt, who was equally at home in the fruit-laden valley
of the Euphrates and in the sands of the Nubian desert, —
all of these would add to the sum of knowledge about
places, peoples, and mankind. The frequent meeting or
regular congregation in certain centres of Greeks of all
cities and tribes served the purpose of huge reservoirs, in
which the observations of individuals and the reports they
made to their fellow-townsmen were collected and stored
The shrine of the oracle at Delphi was a chief example
of the first, while the second condition was fulfilled by the
recurring festivals of the Games, among which those at
12 GREEK THINKERS.
Olympia held the foremost rank. The sanctuary at Delphi,
sacred to * Pythian Apollo, was situated in the shadow of
steep, beetling crags. Thither would come, and there
would meet, an endless line of pilgrims from all parts of
Greece and her colonies — private citizens, representatives
of whole states, and, since the middle of the seventh
century at least, occasional envoys from foreign courts.
They all came to consult the god ; but the answers they
received were mostly the result of the priest' s ingenious
manipulation of the stock of useful knowledge deposited
by former clients. And f<tw indeed can have departed
from that romantic mountain glen without finding their
imagination quickened and their experience augmented by
contact with their companions on the road. The Games
which we have mentioned were celebrated in the broad
river-valley of the Alpheius, and the attractiveness of that
brilliant spectacle increased with each generation. The
programme was constantly extended by the inclusion of
new kinds of competitions, and the spectators, who at first
were drawn merely from the surrounding country, gradually
began to arrive — as is shown by the winners' lists, extant
since 776 B.C. — from all points in the circumference of the
wide Hellenic world. Nor would their intercourse be
confined to the exchange of news and information. Men
would take one another's measure ; opinions would be
freely canvassed ; the merits of the different institutions in
that land of many subdivisions — their customs, habits,
and beliefs — would form topics of general discussion.
Comparison engendered judgment, and judgment brought
reflection in its train to bear on the causes of the differ-
ences and on the permanent element in change. It
induced, that is to say, an inquiry for the common canons
which obtained in the commerce and dogma of daily life.
The observation of common things, growing keener and
richer by experience, led to comparative discussion and
estimation, and, 'finally, to reflective criticism. Many a
proud stream was nourished by that source. To it we
refer sententious poetry, the invention of types of human
character, and the proverbial wisdom which thoughtful
THE ART OF WRITING. IJ
citizens and philosophic statesmen have sown broadcasl
in the world.
The art of writing, the main vehicle for the exchange
of thought, helped to distribute the fresh acquisitions ol
knowledge. Writing, it is true, was no novelty in Greece
When we read in the Homeric poems of the intimate
intercourse with Phoenicia, we readily conceive that the
sharp-witted Greek would have borrowed that wonderfu
aid to the preservation and communication of thought frorr
the Canaanitish dealers, for the customer must often have
surprised the merchant making entries in his account-book
Nay, the art of writing would appear to have been familiar
to some of the Greeks at least, even before that date. 11
is no more possible that the syllabic writing on the recentl}
discovered Cypric monuments, with its awkward and clumsj
devices, could have been later than the use of the simple
Semitic letters, than that the invention of the battle-axe
could have followed that of the musket. All that was
wanted was a convenient and easily fashioned material,
The want took some time to supply. The remedy
was not found till soon after 660 B.C., when Greek trade
with Egypt under Psammetich I. received a notable
impulse. Then a writing-material of a kind which can
hardly be improved was afforded by the pulp of the papyrus
shrub, split into slender and flexible strips. From city tc
city, from land to land, from century to century, the sheets
of written symbols now began to fly. The circulation
of thought was accelerated, the commerce of intellect
enlarged, and the continuity of culture guaranteed, in a
degree which can well-nigh be compared with that which
marked the invention of the printing-press at the dawn oJ
modern history. To the oral delivery of poems, designed
to captivate the hearer, there was presently to be addec
their silent appeal to the solitary enjoyment of the reader
who could weigh, compare, and discriminate to the top o:
his critical bent. Yet a little while, and literary com-
munication was to break the last of its bonds, and the
beginnings of prose composition were to supersede the
era of metric language.
14 GREEK THINKERS.
4. The west coast of Asia Minor is the cradle of the
intellectual civilization of Greece. Its line stretches from
north to south, but the heart of the movement must be
sought in the country enclosing the centre of the line, and
in the adjacent islands. There nature poured her gifts
with lavish profusion, and those on whom they fell
belonged to the Ionian tribe, at all times the most talented
among Hellenes. The birthplace of the lonians is obscure.
We know that their blood was mixed with elements from
central Greece, if, indeed, they were not a mere product
of such fusion, and their diverse origin is doubtless mainly
accountable for the complexity of their natural gifts. At
least, it was not till they were settled in their new Asiatic
home that their individuality reached its full powers. As
bold seafarers and energetic traders, they enjoyed every
benefit of the keen and fertilizing influence to be derived
from intercourse with foreign nations in a more advanced
state of civilization. They had the further advantage of
intermarrying with other fine races, such as the Carians
and Phoenicians, a fact which indisputably increased their
original diversity of talent. The lonians were the furthest
removed of all Greeks from that fatal stagnation to
which dwellers in isolated countries succumb so readily,
It must be added that they lacked the sense of security
which friendly mountain-barriers and an infertile soil
bestow. The proximity of civilized nations, highly de-
veloped and united in a State, was as prejudicial to
the political independence of the lonians as it was bene-
ficial to their intellectual progress. The yoke of foreign
dominion which was laid on one part of the people, the
compulsory exile in which another part was driven, the
slow but sure corrosion of its manhood by the inroad of
Oriental luxury, — these were among the consequences of
the devastating attacks by barbarians from Cimmeria,
followed by the victories of the Lydians and Persians.
The nett result of this cross-series of good influences and
bad was the rapid rise and swift decline of a period of
prosperity. The ripe fruit fell all too soon, and the seeds
it dropped were borne by fugitives from the foreigner's
RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 15
yoke, who would return now and again to the safe pro-
tection of Attica's fertile soil.
The evolution we have been describing took its course
in but a few centuries ; its splendid results included the
full bloom of heroic minstrelsy, the triumph of the new
forms of verse we have mentioned as the heirs of epic
poetry, and, lastly, the rise of scientific pursuits and philo-
sophical speculation. New answers were given to the
eternal question of mankind — What is the meaning of
self, God, and the world ? and these new answers gradually
replaced or reshaped the former acceptations of religious
belief.
5. Greek religion is a vessel which has been replenished
from the treasury of enlightened minds. Poets and artists
have combined to idealize its gods as types of perfect
beauty. Still, its ultimate springs are those from which
mankind has derived an infinite variety of figures and
forms, partly beautiful and wholesome, partly hurtful and
ugly.
Human thought follows twin channels. It obeys the
law of likeness, and it obeys the law of contiguity.
While similar ideas suggest one another, yet the same
result is evolved by ideas which occur simultaneously or
in immediate succession. An absent friend, for instance,
may be recalled to our thoughts not merely by the sight
of his portrait ; the rooms in which he dwelt, the tools
which he handled, serve the purpose just as well. These
laws are summarily known as the laws of the association
of ideas, and the conception of natural phenomena, which
may be called the personification of nature, is directly and
inevitably due to their action. Whenever the savage
perceives a motion or some other effect, which, whether
by its rarity or by its intimate connection with his interests,
strikes his mind strongly enough to set his associative
faculties at work, he will infallibly conclude that the occur-
rence is the outcome of an exercise of will. The reason
is extremely simple. A savage or civilized man perceives
the connection of will-power with movement — or, indeed,
with effects of any kind — every day and hour of his life ;
1 6 GREEK THINKERS.
and no other combination whatever enters in his direct
experience.
Observation of other living beings continually strengthens
the association which springs from this inner experience.
Indeed, effects of all kinds and the deliberate exercise of
will-power are connected so frequently in our mind that
where one of the two is found we confidently look for the
other. This expectation has been gradually confined to
narrower limits by the operation of experiences of a
different order, chief of which may be mentioned the
gradual dominion which man has usurped over nature.
But in instances where the associative force of ideas is
strengthened by powerful passions, or where it is insuffi-
ciently checked by experience of an opposite tendency,
or, again, where it is reinforced by the second principle
of association, which would here be expressed by a likeness
between an unintentional and an intentional event, in such
instances our expectation breaks all bounds, and reduces
the civilized man, for moments at least, to the level of the
primitive savage. These are cases in which we are enabled
to test the truth of that explanation by a kind of experi-
ment. Take the view of the savage, for example. A
watch, or a gun, or any other unfamiliar mechanism, he
regards as a living being. But in our own instance, we
are not thrown back on such primitive conceptions. We
do not unconditionally refer lightning and thunder, plague
and volcano, to the activity of such beings. Nevertheless,
there are moments when even a scientific man admits the
thought of outside purpose and power, even though he be
unable to assign a definite form to the power whose in-
tervention he believes in. Among such occasions may
be counted any exceptional windfall, or any unparalleled
misfortune, especially when the obvious causes of the
event happen not to be in adequate proportion to the
effect that is produced. Even a trivial effect may afford
an illustration of our argument when the conditions of its
origin — as in the dispensations of the gambling-table —
defy all . human calculation. Such inarticulate thoughts
stand wholly apart from the religious beliefs held at this
ANIMATE NATURE. 17
date by civilized mankind. It is not merely that the un-
believer is affected by them ; the man of orthodox creed
is frequently quite unable to bring the suggestions that
flash across his mind into harmony with the dogmas that
he has' formed for himself or accepted from others as to
the government of the world and the nature of its ruler.
This Puck of superstition, from whose visitation no man
is completely exempt, is the wan and spectral image of
that mighty and universal generating power whence is
derived an endless host of phantoms of all shapes and
colours.
A second step towards the formation of religion follows
imperceptibly on the first. We have marked the assump-
tion that an effect is due to an exercise of will. Next
comes the observation that a series of frequently recurring
effects is to be referred to one and the same natural object.
Thus natural objects would be regarded as the animate
and volitional authors of such processes, and human instinct
and inclination, human passion and design, were ascribed
to them in their capacity of exercising an effective will-
power after the human pattern. Wonder and admiration
were paid to them, and according as their operations were
useful and wholesome, or the reverse, they were regarded
with love or fear. The great objects of nature exert a very
considerable influence over human life, and it was chiefly in
such cases that man would feel himself impelled to win their
favour, to confirm their good will, and to turn their possible
hostility to an auspicious disposition. He would endeavour
to persuade the heaven to send fertilizing rain on earth
instead of destructive storm ; he would try to induce the
sun to impart a gentle warmth instead of a scorching heat ;
he would implore the flood not to sweep away his
dwelling, but to bear his frail craft uninjured on its mighty
stream. He would seek to mollify the powers that govern
his existence by petitions, thanksgivings, and offerings —
means he found so efficacious in the instance of his earthly
masters. He would invoke their gracious protection, he
would thank them for their benefactions in the past, and
he would supplicate for their forgiveness when he feared
VOL. I. c
1 8 GREEK THINKERS.
to have Incurred their displeasure. In a word, he would
employ both prayer and sacrifice in the forms suggested
by his limited experience. He would possess a religion
and a cult.
Hosts of spirits and demons, not wholly disembodied,
and yet not wholly material, speedily range themselves in
line with these objects of worship, which we may call
natural fetishes. Savage man, unacquainted as he was
with the finer distinctions of scientific thought, was led to
believe in these beings by a triple set of inferences. The
first was drawn from real or apparent observations of the
outer world ; the second from the inner or moral life ;
and the third depended on observations taken at the
transition from life to death in the human and animal
creation.
The smell of a flower teaches the primitive man that
there afe objects not the less real because they evade his
sight and touch. The wind, whose material nature he can
but partially understand, makes him acquainted with
objects that can be felt, but not seen. Shadows, that
contain the outline of an object without its material resist-
ance, and still more the coloured images reflected in a
sheet of water, bring astonishment and confusion to the
mind of primitive man. In both instances he is aware of
something precisely resembling the material object, which
yet mocks his endeavour to seize it and touch it Dream-
pictures serve but to increase his confusion. He perceived
them, he thought, with all his senses at once ; they stood
in bodily shape before his eyes, and still in the morning
the doors of his hut were as firmly closed as overnight.
Men and beasts, plants, stones, and tools of all kinds,
stood indisputably before him, plainly perceptible to sight,
hearing, and touch, and yet in many instances there could
actually have been no room for them in the limited
accommodation of his dwelling. Thus he is driven to the
conclusion that, like perfumes and winds, shadows and
reflections, they wore the souls of things. Occasionally it
happens that the visions of sleep require and demand a
different sort of explanation. The dreamer is not always
DEMONS AND OBJECT-SOULS. 19
receiving visits from the souls of other persons or things.
Frequently he believes himself to be traversing long dis-
tances, and conversing with his friends in far-off homes.
Hence he concludes that something — his own soul or one
of his souls, the belief in a plurality of souls being both
natural and common, — has temporarily left his body. He
is subject to the same experiences with the same
train of inferences in the state which we have learnt to
call hallucination. The irregular life led by primitive man,
with its long fastings and sudden excesses, rendered him
as liable to such attacks as to heavy and exciting dreams.
Those souls or essences of things must be taken as standing
in the closest relation with the things themselves, which
are affected by whatever affects their souls. In popular
belief it is still a bad omen to tread on a man's shadow,
and in one of the tribes of South Africa the crocodile is
believed to get a man in its power if it merely snaps at
the reflection of the man which is thrown on the water
from the bank. So the doings and sufferings of persons
in dreams is of the gravest import to the living originals.
But popular belief endows the soul with far greater
power and with practical independence by a second series
of considerations, depending, not on the observations of
sense, but on those of the processes of will. So long as
the inner life of primitive man moves in a uniform and
even groove, he has little cause to reflect on the seat and
origin of his will and endeavour. It is when the blood
begins to surge in his veins, when he glows and thrills
with emotion, that his beating heart teaches him of its
own accord how that region of his body is the theatre
of occurrences which he is impelled to explain to himself
by the light of his own perception and of the analogies
already at his disposal. Hitherto he has been accustomed
to connect each particular effect with a particular Being ;
and the more violent and sudden the change, the less he
will be able to rid himself of the impression that some
Being of the kind is stirring and ruling in his own breast.
There are moments when he is seized by an overpowering
passion. Rage, for instance, fills his heart and drives him
20 GREEK THINKERS.
to a deed of bloodshed that he may presently bitterly
repent. Or, again, in the very act of committing it, a
sudden impulse makes him hold his hand ; and it is in
moments such as these that he is overcome by an irresis-
tible belief in one or more Beings, within him or without
him, who drive him to action or restrain him from the
act. Man's belief in the soul reaches its most effective
point in the circumstances which accompany the extinction
of the individual life. It is once more the cases of
sudden change which make the deepest impression on
the observer, and give the lead to his reflection. If dying
were always a gradual decay and a final folding of the hands
to sleep, or if the dead man were always changed beyond
recognition, the inferences drawn from the cessation of life
might have taken a different form. Frequently, however,
no outward changes disturb the features of the dead.
Death comes as a sudden transition from complete vigour
to complete silence, and the spectator asks himself to
what causes is due this dread and terrifying transformation.
Something, he says in answer to himself, has departed
from the dead man that lent him life and movement
A cessation of powers and qualities which a moment ago
were in evidence is taken literally as a departure and as a
separation in space. The warm breath, so mysterious in
its origin, which the living body always exhaled, has been
extinguished, and the reflection is obvious that the source
of the arrested processes of life has perished simultaneously
with the breath. Violent deaths, when life seems to leave
the body with the blood pouring from the wound, awaken
sometimes a belief that life itself Is borne on that crimson
stream, A second theory is to be remarked among some
other peoples. The reflection in the pupil of the eye which
vanishes at the approach of death is there regarded as the
source of the processes of life and animation. But these
attributes, after all, are most commonly ascribed to the
warm breath or steam which proceeds from within the
living organism, and by far the most of the words which
are used In different languages to signify "soul" and
" spirit w express that primary meaning. We saw in both
SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL. 21
explanations of the visions of sleep that the soul was
supposed to be separable from the body. Their temporary
separation accounts for states of unconsciousness, catalepsy,
and ecstasy, just as the explanation of pathological con-
ditions of all kinds, such as madness, convulsions, and the
like, may best be sought in the entry of a foreign soul
into the body. The instance of demonic possession is a
case in point. The difference is that the separation of
the two elements in death is regarded as enduring and
final.
We see, then, that the breath is regarded as an
independent being, but there is no ground to assume
that when it has left the body it must perish as well.
On the contrary, the picture of the beloved dead is an
unfading possession ; his soul, in other words, hovers round
us. And how — so primitive man asked himself — should it
be otherwise ? The soul is plainly impelled to haunt as
long as it can the old familiar places, and to linger about
the objects which it cared for and loved. The last doubt
on this question is dispelled by the frequent visitation
of the image of the departed in the dreams of survivors
in the night-time.
Two results ensue from the assumption of independent
souls or spirits outliving their connection with the human
and maybe the animal body. In the first place, it gave
rise to a second class of objects of worship parallel to the
natural fetishes. Secondly, it supplied a pattern on which
imagination could mould a series of other Beings, which
either existed independently or temporarily occupied a
visible habitation. There was no lack of urgent motives
for the adoption of this creed, and for such operations of
the fancy on the part of primitive man. He was governed
by outward circumstances in a hardly conceivable degree.
His desire to enlighten the darkness that surrounded him
at every step was only matched by his inability to give it
practical satisfaction. Sickness and health, famine and
plenty, success and failure in the chase, in sport, and in war,
followed one another in bewildering succession. Savage
man naturally wished to recognize the agents of his fortune,
22 CREEK THINKERS.
and to influence them on his own behalf, but his power-
lessness to fulfil that longing in any rational manner was
stronger than the wish itself. A maximum of curiosity in
each individual was combined with a minimum of collec-
tive knowledge. Fancy was set in motion on every side
with hardly a noticeable exception in order to span that
gulf, and it is difficult to form an approximate conception
of the amount of imagination at play. For the protective
roof which civilization has built over man is at the same
time a party-wall interposed between him and nature.
The objects of natural worship were indefinitely extended.
Forest and field, bush and fountain, were filled with them.
But the needs of primitive man outgrew their rate of
increase ; he could not but observe that his weal and woe,
his success and misfortune, were not invariably connected
with objects perceptible to sense. He observed a sudden
scarcity where game had formerly been abundant ; he
found himself all at once no match for the foe he had
frequently routed ; he felt a paralysis creep through his
limbs, or a mist obstruct his consciousness, and in none
of these instances could he blame any visible being.
He seized on any outward circumstance which gave a
momentary direction to his bewildered thought as an
infallible guide. He would assume a close and definite
connection between occurrences that happened in fortuitous
coincidence or succession. If an unknown animal, for
instance, were suddenly to burst from the thicket at a
time when a pestilence was raging, he would straightway
worship it and implore its good graces as the author of
the plague j and through all this uncertainty primitive
man never ceased anxiously to look for the agents of his
good luck and ill. His longing for help and salvation re-
mained insatiable throughout. Presently he turned for aid
to those who had watched over him in life, and addressed
his prayers to the spirits of his departed kinsfolk, parents,
and forefathers. The worship of ancestors was started,
and with it went the supplication of spirits not confined
to natural objects, but associated in thought with the
ordinances and occurrences of life. Spirits were assumed
THREEFOLD OBJECTS OF WORSHIP. 2$
with powers of protection and mischief. We are thus
presented with three classes of objects of worship,
overlapping one another at various points. They began
to react on one another, and to pass into one another's
spheres.
The legendary figure of some remote ancestor,
the forefather of a whole tribe or race, would be ranked
on a footing of equality with the great natural fetishes.
It might happen, indeed, that just as a nation or an
illustrious tribe would regard and worship the sun or the
sky as the author of its existence, so this legendary fore-
father would be identified with c#ie of those fetishes. Nor
need it arouse our surprise that objects of nature or art
should come to be looked on as the homes of ancestral or
other spirits, and as such should receive a form of worship
and be ranked as secondary fetishes. They would owe
these honours not so much to any palpable influence they
exercised as to their strangeness, their unaccustomed shape
or colour, or their accidental connection with the memory
of some important event. Finally, it is obvious that spirits
or demons, originally confined to no fixed abode, would
be confused at times with a natural fetish through their
similarity in name or qualities, and would at last be
merged with it in a single being. It is wholly illegitimate
to infer from occurrences of this more or less isolated
character that any of the three great classes of objects of
worship, natural fetishes or independent spirits, for example,
is foreign to the original belief of the people, or of later and
adventitious derivation. As well might one conclude from
the proved worship of animals, as such, or from the deifi-
cation of men, which has been frequently observed, and
which still obtains through the great Hindoo civilization,
that these are the sole or even the chief sources of religious
belief. It is always difficult and often hopeless to attempt
to follow the details of such a process of transformation,
and to sift the nucleus of a religion from its gradual accre-
tions. But the fact that such transformation took place,
and that the course of religious development was thereby
deeply affected, is a truth which may be stated without
24 GREEK THINKERS.
reserve. At this point, however, it will be well to
return to the more modest path from which we have
digressed.
6. The gods of Greece assembled in Olympus round
the throne of Zeus, hearkening the song of Apollo and
the Muses, sipping nectar from golden goblets, involved in
adventures of war and love — we cannot but perceive how
little they resemble the earliest and roughest products of
religious imagination. They are severed by a yawning gulf
which it would seem to be impossible to bridge over. Never-
theless, the appearance is fallacious. The exact observer will
remark a vast number of links and stepping-stones, till he will
hardly venture to distinguish between the beginning of the
one series of beings and the end of the other ; above all, be-
tween the end of the natural fetish and the beginning of the
anthropomorphic god. Comparative philology tells us that
Zeus, the chief of the gods of Olympus, was originally no
other than the sky itself. Hence he was said to rain, to
hurl the lightnings, and to gather the clouds. Homer
himself still entitles the Earth-goddess "broad-bosomed"
or " broad-wayed " indifferently, and thus shifts, like the
colours of the chameleon, between two quite contrary con-
ceptions. When Earth is represented by an old theological
poet as giving birth to high mountains and to the starry
heaven that it may wholly encompass her, or when Earth
as the bride of Heaven is represented as the mother of
deep-eddying Ocean, and Ocean again with Tethys as
engendering the rivers, we are plainly standing with both
feet in the realm of the pure worship of nature. Presently,
however, we are confronted with a different set of stories.
Fair-flowing Xanthus is represented by Homer as subject
to a wrathful mood ; Achilles fills his bed with dead men ;
he is sorely pressed by the flames ignited by Hephaestus,
smith of the gods ; he is in danger of defeat ; he stays his
course in order to escape from the conflagration ; and he
implores Hera the white-armed, the woman-like consort of
the king of the gods, to help him to resist the savage
onslaught of her son. In all these instances we are surely
conscious of two fundamentally different kinds of religious
ANTHROPOMORPHIC GODS. 2$
imagination, of two strata, as it were, which a volcanic
eruption has thrown into hopeless confusion.
The following reply may be attempted to the question
why Greek religion, like that of countless other peoples,
has undergone this transformation. It was an intrinsic
tendency of the associative faculty, which led to the per-
sonification of nature, to lend more and more of a human
character to the objects of worship. First came the con-
nection in thought between movements or effects and
the impulses of the human will. Next volition was con-
nected with the whole range of human emotion; and,
finally, the range of human emotion was associated in
thought with the external form of man and the sum of the
conditions of human life. This development took a slow
course. It was delayed by man himself, who, on the
confines of savagery, knowing no law but that of need,
and harassed as he was by real and imaginary dangers,
was not yet sufficiently in conceit with himself to form
these supreme powers in his own mean and ignoble image.
Still, the gradual beginnings of civilization tended to
level the differences and to reduce the distance between
the heights and the depths. No people, we may conjec-
ture, ever yet came to regard the great powers of nature
as savages living on roots and berries in a state of
semi-starvation. But a tribe with an abundance of rich
hunting-grounds might conceive a heavenly huntsman such
as the Germanic Wotan, or, like the farmers of ancient
India, would figure the god of heaven and his clouds as
a shepherd with his flock. And this tendency was
notably strengthened by the auspicious circumstances of
external life, which awoke the desire for clearness, dis-
tinctness, and a logical sequence of ideas. It is now the
exception, and no longer the rule, to meet with such
vague, indefinite, and contradictory conceptions as that of
a sensitive stream, or of a river brought to birth by
generation. We may not be able to assert conclusively
whether the worship of ancestors or of fetishes was the
earlier in time, but we can assert that, old as demonism
may have been, it must have been extended by the division
26 GREEK THINKERS.
of labour and the growing diversity of life. Fresh demons
had to be created to meet the multiplicity of human
business and experience. But these independent spirits
offer less opposition to the personifying faculty than objects
of natural worship, and they presently formed the model
on which the last-named were moulded. Demons, like
souls, were conceived as entering human bodies. Our
remarks about demonic possession will recur in this con-
nection, and the process which nothing prevented and
many conditions assisted was speedily adapted to the case
of natural fetishes. Spirits and gods whose habitation is
confined to external things, which they use as their instru-
ments, now replace or accompany the volitional and con-
scious objects of nature* Thus the god and the external
thing are no longer completely identified. They merely
stand in the relation of tenant and abode. The god
becomes more independent of the destiny of the object
he inhabits ; his sphere of activity is no longer confined to
it, but he obtains an allowance of free action.
The graceful feminine figures which the Greeks wor-
shipped as nymphs afford an instructive example of this
transformation. Homer's hymn to Aphrodite takes cog-
nizance of dryads who share in the dance of the Immortals
and sport with Hermes and the fauns under the shadows
of the rocks. But the pines and the high-branching oaks
they inhabit are something more than their mere dwelling-
place* These beings are but half divine ; they are born,
they grow, and they die together with the abodes they
haunt. Other nymphs are exempt from that fate. They
dwell in water-brooks, meadows, and groves, but they are
numbered with the Immortals, and they are not missing
from the great council of the gods when Zeus gathers
them in his gleaming halls. We may draw the following
conclusion. There was a time when the tree itself was
personified and* worshipped. Next came a period when
the spirit of its life was regarded as an independent being,
separable from it, but closely bound up with its destiny*
Finally, this last bond was severed as well ; the divine
being was liberated, as it were, and hovered indestructibly
VICTORY OF POLYTHEISM. 2?
over the perishable object of its care. This final and
decisive step put polytheism in the place of fetishism.
Traces of the era of fetishes linger about but a few of the
great unique objects of nature, such as the earth, the stars,
and the legendary Oceanus. And even in these instances
fresh figures were created under the influence of the new
thought to accompany the older deities, barely touched as
they were by the finger of anthropomorphism. A further
development may here be remarked. These natural spirits,
released from their external objects, were set an appointed
task just as certain independent deities presided over whole
categories of occupation. They were appointed to wood
or garden, to the fountain, the wind, and so forth, and
became what has appropriately been termed " class-gods."
This transformation was assisted, apart from the influence
of demonisra, by the progressive perception of the intrinsic
likeness in whole series of beings. Man's generalizing
powers found here their earliest satisfaction, and his artistic
and inventive faculties were provided with inexhaustible
material in the contemplation of the free action of the
gods.
The Greeks were furnished in a pre-eminent degree
with the conditions requisite for the progress of personifi-
cation, and for the idealization of the divine powers which
depended on it. The demand for clearness and distinct-
ness may have been a birthright of the Greeks ; it was
obviously strengthened by the bright air and brilliant sky
enjoyed through the greater part of Hellas, by the sharp
outline of its hills, by its wide and yet circumscribed
horizon. The Greek sense of beauty was constantly fed
on landscapes combining in the smallest compass all the
loveliest elements of nature. Green pastures and snowy
peaks, dusky pine-woods and smiling meadows, wide
prospects over land and sea, fascinated the eye at every
turn. And the inventive spirit which was later to display
itself in the rich and teeming inheritance of Greek poetry
and art must surely have seized on the first material
at its disposal, and therein have spent the powers which
were denied expression elsewhere.
28 GREEK THINKERS.
It is difficult to follow the course of this evolution in
detail, and our difficulty is enhanced by the character of
the literary monuments that have reached us. It was
a cherished belief of former generations that Homer's
poems were produced in the infancy of Greece. Schlie-
mann's spade has destroyed this illusion. A notable
degree of material civilization clearly distinguished the
eastern portions of Greece — the islands, and the shore
of Asia Minor — soon after 1500 B.C. The conditions
of human life depicted by the Homeric poems are the
result of a comparatively long development contami-
nated by Egypt and the East. When we recall the
splendid banqueting-halls, with their plates of beaten
metals, their blue glazed friezes on a gleaming alabaster
ground, their ceilings artistically carved, and their drinking-
cups of embossed gold, we look in vain for traces of
primitive man in the princes and nobles whose Round
Table was the theme of the Homeric poems. Their
passions, it is true, were still uncontrolled. Otherwise the
insatiable wrath of Achilles or Meleager would never have
become a favourite subject for poetic description. We
recall the period in which the Niebelungenlied was com-
posed, when the original and untamed force of passionate
sensibility fell on an era of foreign manners and imported
refinement of taste. But we find no trace in these heroes of
the timidity and awe with which the almighty forces of nature
were regarded by primitive man. The gods were fashioned
by the nobles after the pattern of their own existence, as
they acquired more and more self-esteem, more and more
security, in the stress of life. Olympus became a mirror
of heroic experience, and its gorgeous and frequently
tumultuous features were faithfully reproduced, Gods and
men approached each other with a familiarity never since
repeated. Men wore no little of divine dignity ; the gods
took no mean share of human weakness. The virtues
ascribed to the gods were the virtues dearest to those
warriors — qualities of valour and pride, and steadfastness
in friendship and hate. Gods, like men, were affected by
strong individual motives ; the obligation of duty was
THE GODS OF HOMER. 29
almost always a matter of personal loyalty, and in the
Iliad at least they but rarely appear as the champions of
abstract justice. To their worshippers who lavished
precious gifts on them, to the cities that dedicated
splendid temples to them, to the tribes and races which
traditionally enjoyed their favour, they lent their faithful
protection with a loyalty as resolute as it was untiring.
They were but little restrained by any scruples of
morality ; nay, their special favourites were endowed by
them with talents for perjury and theft. They seldom
paused to consider the rights or wrongs of the matter to
which they devoted their assistance, else how could some
of the gods have been found on the side of the Greeks,
while others with equal interest and trouble supported the
Trojan cause ? How, again, could Poseidon in the
Odyssey have persecuted patient Ulysses with inex-
haustible hate, while Athene proved herself in every
danger his trusty counsellor and shield ? Their obedience
was solely due to the god of heaven, chief of the gods,
and more often than not they obeyed him with reluctance,
and used every artifice of deceit and guile to evade the
obligation of his command. Moreover, the heavenly over-
lord resembled his earthly prototype in that his power
did not rest on the immovable foundation of law. He
found himself frequently obliged to extort the fulfilment
of his orders by the employment of threats, and even by
violent maltreatment. There was a single peremptory
exception to the chaos induced by the acts and passions
of the Immortals. Moira, or Fate, was supreme over gods
and men alike, and in her worship we recognize the faint
and earliest perception of the operation of law throughout
the range of experience. Thus the oldest monuments of
the Greek intellect that have reached us show us the
gods in as humaa a form as is compatible with reverent
worship, and instances indeed could be found where that
last limit was transgressed. Take, for example, the love-
story of Ares and Aphrodite ; it stirred the Phaeacians
to ribald mirth, and it evinces a worldliness in religious
conception which, like the exclusive cult of beauty of the
30 GREEK THINKERS.
Cinquecento, could hardly have spread over wide classes
of the population without seriously affecting the heart of
religious belief. The majesty of the ancient Greek religion
is not to be found in the confines of the courtly epic,
where the joys of the world and the flesh and the frank
deliciousness of life disperse the gloomier aspects of
belief, and clothe them, so to speak, with their brilliance.
The exceptional occurrences that seem to contradict this
view will be found to be its clearest illustration.
Homeric man believed himself to be constantly and
universally surrounded by gods and dependent on them.
He attributed his good luck and ill, his successful spear-
thrust or his enemy's escape, to the friendship or hostility
of a demon. Every cunning plan, every sound device,
was credited to divine inspiration, and every act of in-
fatuated blindness was ascribed to the same cause. It was
the aim of all his endeavours to win the favour of the
Immortals and to avert their wrath. But despite this de-
pendence, and despite the occurrence, in the Iliad especially,
with its shifting battle-scenes, of situations fraught with
dire peril, it is to be noted that man himself, the costliest
of human possessions, is never offered as a sacrifice to the
gods. The religion of the Greeks, like that of most other
peoples, was familiar with human sacrifices ; but though it
survives till the full light of historic times, it is completely
missing from the picture of civilization displayed by the
Homeric poems. Or rather, the abominable custom is
mentioned therein on one single occasion, as the exception
which proves the rule. At the splendid obsequies devised
by Achilles in honour of Patroclus, the well-beloved, we
are told that, besides innumerable sheep and oxen, besides
four horses and two favourite hounds, twelve Trojan youths
were first slaughtered and then burnt with the body
of his dead friend. This complete consumption of the
offering by fire is proved by more recent ritual evidence
to have been the ceremony in vogue among worshippers of
the infernal deities. The blood of the slaughtered beasts and
men is first suffered to trickle over the corpse, and the soul
is supposed to be present and to be refreshed and honoured
HUMAN SACRIFICE ABSENT. 31
by the gifts It receives. Achilles performs by this act a
solemn obligation to the dead, and narrates it to the soul,
when it appears to him by night, and again at the
funeral itself. But, strangely enough, the description of
this revolting deed has none of that sensuous breadth and
detail which we correctly call the epic style, and find so
characteristic of Homer. Rather the poet9 glides, as it
were, with deliberate haste over the horrible story. He
and his audience seem to shrink from it ; it is the legacy
of a world of thought and feeling from which the vitality
has departed, and this impression Is strengthened by other
and kindred observations. Except for this single instance,
hardly any trace whatsoever is found in the Homeric
poems of the whole series of rites connected with and
dependent on the belief in the protracted existence of
powerful beings rising with spectral influence from the
grave, and constantly demanding fresh tokens of propitia-
tion. There are no sacrifices to the dead, whether bloody
or bloodless, there is no purification for homicide, no
worship of souls or ancestors. The souls, it is true, survive
the bodies, but they are well-nigh exclusively confined to
the far infernal realms of death, where they wander as
" powerless heads," vagrant shadows, and bloodless ghosts,
of no efficacy and of little account. It was quite different
in later times, and, as we learn from trustworthy discoveries
and equally trustworthy conclusions, in earlier times too.
We may appropriately dwell on this point, which is of
great importance to the history of the belief in souls and
to religious history in general.
7. The sacrifice of prisoners or slaves is a funeral
custom of remote antiquity, and one which is widely
spread in our own times. The Scythians, when they
buried their king, used to strangle one of his concubines
and five of his slaves — the cook, the cup-bearer, the
chamberlain, the groom, and the doorkeeper — and these,
together with his favourite horses, and with a quantity of
costly vessels, of golden goblets and so forth, would be
committed to the royal grave. After the lapse of a year,
fifty more chosen slaves were strangled, set upon as many
32 GREEK THINKERS.
slaughtered horses, and stationed round the tomb like a
guard of honour.
Many pages and chapters might be filled with the
enumeration of similar customs, from which the Hindoo
suttee is also derived. Naturally they show a long course of
gradations, varying from the savage and barbarous to the
tender and refined. Human sacrifices were followed by
animal sacrifices, and these in their turn by drink sacrifices
and other bloodless offerings. -^Eschylus and Sophocles
represent Agamemnon's tomb in Mycenae as the recipient
of libations of milk, locks of hair, and garlands of flowers.
But newly discovered tombs of the kings in that city,
dating from hoary antiquity, show traces of sacrificial
offerings of a far more substantial kind. Bones of animals,
and human remains too, were found there, besides innu-
merable most costly weapons, drinking-cups, and other
vessels. Taking these objects in connection with the
altars discovered in the vaulted tomb at Orchomenus in
Bceotia, we may infer that the souls of the dead enjoyed
adoration and worship in the proper sense of the word.
The cult of ancestors and souls has been in almost universal
vogue. It is still as widely spread among the most debased
savages in all regions of the earth as among the highly
civilized Chinese, in whose state-religion it plays the most
important part. It takes precedence, too, in the beliefs ot
nations of Aryan descent. The Romans observed it no less
than the Greeks, and the "Manes" of ancient Rome were
the " pitaras " of the Hindoos. The extinction of a family at
Athens was regarded as ominous, inasmuch as its ancestors
would be deprived of the honours that were due to them.
The whole population of Greece, and the communities of
which it was composed in a series, as it were, of concentric
circles, addressed their prayers to real or imaginary fore-
fathers. And so imperious was this need that professional
brotherhoods or guilds would invent a common ancestor,
should they otherwise not possess one. The custom was
bound up with the origins of state and society, which were
originally ranked as merely extended family groups. But
our immediate interest is confined to the deepest root of
PRE-IIOMERIC IDEAS. - 33
this custom — the belief in the protracted existence of the
soul as a powerful being with enduring influence on the
success and failure of its living descendants. We have
already discussed the source of this belief, and we shall
later be occupied with the changes that it underwent. At
present we have to dispel a misunderstanding which might
darken our historical insight.
The souls depicted by Homer have dwindled to pale
and ineffectual shadows. Their worship, and the customs
that arise from it, are practically obsolete in his poems, but
it would be erroneous to conclude from these facts that the
evidence from comparative ethnology should be neglected,
or that the oldest form of this part of the Greek religion
is preserved in epic poetry. The discoveries dating from
the period of civilization which is now called the Mycensean
have shattered the last foundation of every possible doubt.
The causes that induced this change in religious ideas can
only be arrived at by conjecture. It plainly depended, not
merely on temporal, but also on local conditions, and at
first, at least, it was probably confined to certain classes of
the population. At the period of which we are speaking
the custom of burning the dead body prevailed, and the
consequent belief obtained, and was clearly expressed by
Homer, that the consuming flames finally severed body
from soul, and consigned the soul to the realm of shadows.
In connection with the development of Greek religion,
considerable influence has been attached to this custom
and its results. Of hardly secondary account may be
reckoned the local separation of colonists from their
ancestral tombs, and from the seats of worship appertain-
ing to them in the mother-country. But of greater
importance than all was the joy in life and the world, so
repellent to melancholy and gloom, which pervades the
Homeric poems. It shrank from the sinister and the
spectral with the same invincible optimism that banished
the ugly and the grotesque from its purview. Nor was
it only the shades of the dead that had to recede into
the background. Spectral godheads such as Hecate,
horrible spirits such as the Titans witft their hundred arms
VOl, I, p
34 GREEK THINKERS.
and fifty heads, coarse and revolting myths such as that
of the emasculation of Uranus, were similarly compelled
to give way to the instinct of joy ; and monsters of the
type of the round-eyed Cyclops were treated in a more
playful humour. Two alternative inferences present them-
selves. We may either regard the gradual growth of the
sense of beauty and the rise in the standard of life
dependent on the progress of material civilization as the
chief factor of development ; or we may ascribe to the
people who invented philosophy and natural science the
possession, even in those early times, of the elements of
rationalistic enlightenment. In other words, is the change in
the soul-idea which confronts us in Homer to be attributed
in the first instance to the lightness or to the brightness
of the Ionian genius ? This question does not yet admit
of a definite answer. We owe the possibility of its dis-
cussion to the brilliant intellectual and analytical powers
of a contemporary student in these fields,
8. The personification of Nature must, then, primarily
be thanked for the inexhaustible material it supplied to
the play, first of imagination and next of imagination
heightened to art. But it must further be recognized as
having been the earliest to satisfy the curiosity of man,
and his craving for light in the deep darkness in the
midst of which we live and breathe. The "why" and
"wherefore" of sensible phenomena are questions that
cannot be avoided, and the spontaneous presumption that
everything which happens is due to the impulse of voli-
tional beings — a presumption springing from the unlimited
dominion of the association of ideas — affords, it must be
admitted, a sort of answer in itself. It is a kind of philo-
sophy of nature, capable of infinite extension in proportion
to the increase of the number of phenomena observed, and
to the more and more clearly defined shapes of the powers
of nature, regarded as living beings. Primitive man is not
merely a poet, believing in the truth of his inventions ; he
is, In his way, a kind of investigator as well. The mass of
answers which he gives to the questions continually pressing
on him is gradually composed to an all-embracing weft,
NA TURE-MYTHS. 3 5
and the threads thereof are myths. As evidence of this,
we may instance the popular legends of all times and
countries with their remarkable points of likeness and their
no less striking points of difference. The two greatest
heavenly bodies figure in almost every nation as a related
pair, whether in the relation of husband and wife or of
sister and brother. Numberless myths represent the phases
of the moon as the wandering of the lunar goddess, and
the occasional eclipses of sun and moon as the consequences,
partly of domestic strife, partly of the hostile attacks of
dragons and monsters. The Semite, for example, explained
the weakness of the sun in winter by the story of Samson's
—the sun-god's — bewitchment by the seductive goddess of
the night, who robbed him of his shining hair ; as soon as
his long locks, the sunbeams, in which his strength resided,
were cut off, it was an easy task to blind him. The
ancient Indian regarded the clouds as cows — as soon as
they were milked the fruitful rain poured down ; if the
quickening moisture were long delayed, the drought was
ascribed to evil spirits who had stolen the herds and
hidden them in rocky caves, and Indra, the god of heaven,
had to descend on the storm-wind to free them from
their bondage, and rescue them from the robbers. The
dreadful spectacle afforded to the gaze of primitive man
by a mountain emitting flames would forthwith seem to
him the work of a demon dwelling in the bowels of the
earth. Many tribes would content themselves with this
explanation, but one or another would presently ask why
it was that so mighty a spirit should be confined in infernal
darkness. The answer would suggest itself spontaneously,
that he had been vanquished in conflict with a yet more
powerful being. Thus Typhon and Enceladus were looked
on by the Greeks as the vanquished opponents of the great
god of heaven, bearing the heavy penalty of their crime.
Or take the instance of the earth, from whose womb came
forth a constant procession of fruits. How natural it was
to represent her as a woman impregnated by the heaven
above her, who sent down his life-giving rain. This world-
wide myth has been turned to various forms. The Maoris
36 GREEK THINKERS.
and Chinese, the Phoenicians and Greeks, would ask why
husband and wife were kept so far apart from each other,
instead of dwelling in the intimate relations of a conjugal
pair. The inhabitants of New Zealand replied with the
story that the offspring of Rang! (heaven) and Papa (earth)
had no room to live as long as their parents were united.
So at last they made up their minds to relieve themselves
from the pressure and the darkness, and one of them — the
mighty god and father of the forests — succeeded, after
many vain attempts on the part of his brethren, in sunder-
ing their parents by force. But the love of heaven and
earth survived their separation. Passionate sighs, which
men call mist, still rise to heaven from the breast of mother-
earth, and tears still trickle from the eyes of the sad god
of heaven, and are called by men drops of dew. This
ingenious and highly poetical myth of the Maoris gives
the key to a similar but far coarser legend which obtained
in Greece, and of which merely fragments have come down
to us. Hesiod tells us that the earth was cramped and
oppressed by her teeming burden of children, of which
heaven was the father. But heaven, adds the poet, would
not suffer them to come to birth, but thrust them back
in their mothers womb. Panting from her labours, she
devises a cunning scheme, and confides its execution to
one of her sons. Cronos whets his sickle and mutilates
Uranus his father, so that he is debarred from further pro-
creation, and Gaia is released thenceforward from her
husband's embraces, and is enabled, we may add, to find
room for the offspring with whom she is teeming.
We may mark at this point the following conclusion*
The process of personification was not confined to mere
objects, but was extended to forces, states, and qualities.
Night, darkness, death, sleep, love, appetite, infatuation,
were all looked on by the Greeks as individual beings
more or less successfully personified* Some are completely-
embodied, others stand out from the background of their
content as imperfectly as a bas-relief. The relations
existing between these forces or states are explained by
s from Juiman or apimal }ife, l^eness, fo^
PROCESS OF PERSONIFICATION. 37
instance, figures as relationship, death and sleep are twin
brothers ; consecution figures as generation, so that day
is the offspring of night, or night of day indifferently. All
groups of like nature appear as tribes, kindred, or families,
and traces of this process of thought are to be found in
our language to this day. Finally, the habit of explaining
an enduring condition or the recurring incidents of the
world by mythical fictions led to the attempt to solve the
great riddles of human life and fate in a similar manner.
The Greek in his dark hour of pessimism would ask why
the evils of life were so much in excess of its blessings,
and the question immediately suggested a second one —
Who and what brought evil in the world ? And his answer
mainly resembles that of the modern Frenchman, the sum
of whose researches into the source of innumerable trans-
gressions was contained in the words " cherchez la femme."
But the ancient Greek cast his indictment of the weaker
and fairer sex in the form of a single charge. He relates
that Zeus, with the help of the rest of the gods, in order
to punish Prometheus for his theft of fire and the conse-
quent arrogance of mankind, created a woman adorned
with all the graces as the mother of the female race, and
sent her down to the earth. At another time the Greek,
still groping for enlightenment on this subject, accused
curiosity or the thirst for knowledge as the root of all evil.
If the gods, he said, had endowed us with every blessing,
and had locked up all evils in a box, and had straightly
warned us not to open it, human — and chiefly woman's —
curiosity would have set at nought the divine prohibition.
Both myths are merged in one: Pandora, the woman, as
her name implies, adorned with every seductive gift, is
the woman, stung by curiosity, who lifts the lid of the
fateful box and lets its perilous contents escape. Once
more we are astounded at the similarity of mythical
invention obtaining among the most diverse peoples, and
one almost involuntarily recalls the allied Hebraic story
of Eve — the mother of all life — and the ominous conse-
quences of her sinful curiosity.
9. The multiplicity of myths and the crowd of deities
38 GREEK THINKERS.
must at last have proved a weariness and a stumbling-
block to the orthodox Greek, Legends clustered like
weeds in a pathless and primeval forest, obstructed by
ever-fresh undergrowth. The thinning axe was wanted,
and a hand was presently found to wield it with thew
and sinew. A peasant's vigour and a peasant's shrewd-
ness accomplished the arduous task, and we reach in
him the earliest didactic poet of the Occident, Hesiod
of Ascra, in Bceotia, flourished in the eighth century B.C.
He sprang from a soil where the air was less bright
than in the rest of Greece, and man's heart was less light
in his breast. His intellect was clear but clumsy ; he
was versed in the management of house and field, and
was not a stranger to lawsuits. His imaginative
powers were of comparatively restricted range, and his
disposition was yet more unyielding, A Roman among
Greeks, the author of " Works and Days " was distinguished
by sober sensibilities, by a strict love of order, and by
the parsimonious thrift of a good business man trained
in the manufacture of smooth account-books, averse from
any hint of contradiction, and shy of all superfluity.
It is in this spirit, so to speak, that he took an inventory
of Olympus, fitting each of the Immortals in the frame-
work of his system by the genealogical clamps. He
pruned the luxuriance of epic poetry, reviving the im-
memorial but dimly understood traditions extant among
the lower orders of Greece without respect to their claims
to beauty. Thus his theogony comprised a complete and
comprehensive picture, with but rare gleams of true
poetry and hardly a breath of the genuine joy of life.
The names of Homer and Hesiod were coupled in remote
antiquity as the twin authors of Greek religion* But they
stand, in point of fact, in strong contrast. The unchecked
imagination of Ionian poets, which made light of the
contradictions and diversities of legend, differed as widely
from the home-keeping, methodical wisdom of the Boeotian
peasant as the brilliant insouciance of their noble audience
from the gloomy spirit of the meek hinds and farmers
for whom Hesiod's poems were composed.
HESIO&S THEOGONY. 39
The " Theogony " is at once a cosmogony ; the " Origin
of the Gods " included the origin of the world. We are
chiefly concerned with the last named of these pairs, and
may let the poet speak for himself. At the beginning, he
tells us, there was Chaos: then come Gaia, the broad-
bosomed earth, and next, Eros, loveliest of the gods, who
compels the senses of mortals and immortals alike, and
melts the strength of their limbs. Chaos engendered
Darkness and Black Night, and Air and Day — ^Ether and
Hemera — sprang from their union. Gaia first created
of her own accord the starry heaven, the high mountains,
and Pontus, the sea ; then, as the bride of Uranus, she
brought forth Oceanus, the stream that encompasses the
earth, and a long series of children, some of them mighty
monsters, and others of an almost allegorical description,
besides the gods of the lightning called Cyclopes, and
Tethys, the great goddess of the sea. From the marriage
of Ocean and Tethys sprang fountains and the streams.
The sun-god, the moon-goddess, and the Dawn were
born to two other children of Heaven and Earth. Dawn
is united to her cousin Astrseus, god of the stars, and the
Winds, the Morning-star, and the rest of the luminaries
were born of that marriage.
Part of this exposition is so puerile in its simplicity,
that hardly a word of comment is required. " The greater
is the author of the less : " hence the mountains were
born of the Earth; mighty Oceanus and the smaller
streams and rivers stood in the relation of father and
sons ; the little Morning-star was the son of the wide-
spreading Dawn, and the rest of the stars were clearly
to be set down as his brothers. It is less obvious
why the Day should have sprung from the Night, for the
opposite theory would have been equally admissible, and
an old Indian hymn-writer actually poses the question
whether Day or Night was created first. Still, Hesiod's
opinion may perhaps be called the more natural. Darkness
appears to us as a permanent state requiring no explana-
tion ; light, at each manifestation, is due to a special
event, whether it be the rise of the sun, the lightning of
40 CREEK THINKERS.
the storm-cloud, or the ignition of a flame by human
hand. So far, then, we have merely had to deal with the
earliest reflections of thoughtful and bewildered man.
These tell their own story, but a more attentive examina-
tion is required when we come to the most important
part of Hesiod's work, where he discusses the origin of the
world.
The brief and arid character of this exposition is the
first point that we notice, and it arouses our astonish-
ment The stage-bell rings, as it were, and Chaos,
Gaia, and Eros appear as the curtain rises. No hint is
vouchsafed as to the reason of their appearance. A bare
" but then " connects the origin of Earth with the origin
of Chaos. Not a single syllable of explanation is given
of the When and How of this process, whether Earth was
born of Chaos or not, and what were the aids to birth ; and
the same unbroken silence is preserved on the promotion
of the Love-god to the prominent part which he fills. Of
course one may say, the principle of love or generation
must have entered the world before any procreation
could take place. But why should the didactic poet drop
it without a word, why should he never refer to that
function of Eros at all, and why should he rather disguise
it, as we plainly perceive to be the fact ? Various epithets
are here predicated of the Love-god, and in a later passage
he is given a place next to Himeros — craving — in the
train of Aphrodite. But none of these allusions recalls in
the remotest degree the mighty, vitalizing creative Being
who alone is appropriate in this connection, and whom we
shall meet later on in other cosmogonic experiments, where
the origin and function of Eros come to adequate ex-
pression. One thing is as clear as noonday* A wide gulf
is fixed between the summary and superficial methods of
Hesiod's inquiry into origins and the devotion of those
who applied the whole force of their immature philosophy
to the solution of the great enigma. Hesiod's system is
a mere husk of thought which must once have been filled
with life. It has survived the loss of its contents, just as
the shell survives the shell-fish. We seem to be gazing
THE CHAOS. 41
at a kortus siccus of conceptions, the growth and develop-
ment of which we are no longer able to watch. Inference
has to take the place of direct observation, and a start
must be made at the terms the poet used, presumably with
but partial comprehension. These terms will help us to
construct the process of thought of which they are the dead
deposit. We shall be assisted herein by the consideration
of kindred phenomena, not merely in Greece, but in other
countries as well. We have already briefly described the
nature of Eros, and may now proceed to discuss the mean-
ing of Chaos.
Chaos resembles empty space as closely as the inexact
thought of primitive man approximates to the speculative
conceptions of advanced philosophers. Primitive man
endeavours to imagine the primordial condition of things,
in all its striking contrast to the world as he knows it.
The earth, and all that is therein, and the dome of the
sky were not extant. All that remained was a something
stretching from the topmost heights to the uttermost
depths, and continuing immeasurably on either side the
hollow emptiness interposed between the Heaven and the
Earth. The Babylonians called it apsu, " the abyss," or
tiamat, " the deep." The Scandinavians knew it as ginmmga
gap, "the yawning gap/' a term of which the first word
belongs to the same root as the Greek Chaos. This
gaping void, this abysmal deep, was conceived as obscure
and dark simply because — in accordance with the principles
of this system — none of the sources of light had as yet
been put in action. For the same reason, the observer
confined his imagination to the depths rather than the
heights of Chaos, height and light being hardly dis-
tinguishable in his mind. Chaos filled the whole space
known to or even suspected by primitive man. Earth and
her complement — the dome of heaven with its luminaries
— sufficed for his knowledge and his thought ; even his
vague and aspiring curiosity was content to flutter in those
limits. His intellect stopped short at the idea of the
distance between heaven and earth stretching into the
infinite. The two other dimensions of space troubled him
42 GREEK THINKERS.
scarcely at all, and whether he believed in their finite or
infinite extension it would be equally futile to inquire.
Thus Hesiod's inventory included not merely the
simple popular legends but also the oldest attempts at
speculation. These last, indeed, are presented in so rough
and incomplete a guise that his sparse allusions can only
acquaint us with the existence of such attempts at his
time, and with their barest and most general outline. We
shall have to trust to later accounts to discover their
contents more accurately, though our knowledge at the
best can only be approximate. Then, too, we shall have
occasion to examine the standard of thought to which
such experiments belong. Meantime, our survey of Hcsiod
would be incomplete without a reference to one side of
his scheme which also bears a more speculative character.
Many of the beings he presents to us, and interweaves in
his genealogies, show little or nothing of the vivid per-
sonification which marks the figures of simple popular
belief. " Lying Speeches," for instances, would hardly
impress any one at first sight as individual personages.
Yet they are found with " Toilsome Labour," " Tearful
Pains/' *' Battles/* and " Carnage " in the enumeration of
the offspring of Eris, or Strife. The experience is repeated
in the instance of the children of Ni^ht These do not
merely include mythical figures of a comparatively life-like
kind, such as Eris herself, Sleep, Death, the Moinu, or
goddesses of Fate, and so forth, but also blank, spectral
personifications, such as "Deceit" and "Ruinous Old
Age." " Deceit's " title to that place would appear to rest
on its habit of avoiding the light ; Old Age is promoted
to it on no other ground than that every untoward and
unwelcome event seems appropriate to the region of dark-
ness and gloom, very much in the same way as we our-
selves speak of "gloomy thoughts" and * black cares."
No one can exactly determine Hesiod's debt to his pre-
decessors either here or elsewhere ; but it is fair to believe
that in such purely speculative excursions he was trusting
to his own imagination.
( 43 )
CHAPTER 1.
THE OLD IONIAN NATURE-PHILOSOPHERS.
BEFORE speculation could flourish, a considerable mass of
detailed knowledge had to be collected. In this respect
the Greeks were exceptionally lucky in their inheritance.
The cause of Greek science was unconsciously served by
the ancient Chaldaeans and Egyptians. The Chaldeans
laid the foundations of astronomy, when they computed
.the empiric laws of eclipses in their observation of the
courses of the stars in the crystal sky of Mesopotamia. The
Egyptians invented an art which comprised the elements
of geometry, when they measured the ploughland, alter-
nately wasted and fertilized by the Nile, in order to
determine the amount of taxes it should yield. The
Greeks were ever the favourites of fortune, and here again
must be recorded what is perhaps the chief instance of,-
their good luck. So far as the evidence of history extends,
an organized caste of priests and scholars, combining the
necessary leisure with the equally necessary continuity of
tradition, was at all times indispensable to the beginnings
of scientific research. But its beginning and its end in
such cases were only too likely to coincide, for when
scientific doctrines are mixed up with religious tenets, the
same lifeless dogmatism will commonly benumb them both.
The child's indispensable leading-strings become an in-
tolerable chain when the child has grown to manhood.
Thus we may account it a double blessing for the free
progress of thought among the Greeks that their pre-
decessors in civilization possessed an organized priest-
hood, and that they themselves lacked it The pioneers
>1 t tiRKKK '/Y//A7v'A'AV>'.
of human knowledge had all the advantages without any
of the disadvantages derived from the existence of a
learned priesthood in their midst. Supported on the
shoulders of Kjjypt and Babylon, the genius of (mvce
could take wing without check or restraint, and amid
venture on a flight that was to lead it to the hijjht'St
attainable goals. The relation between the (3 reeks and
their forebears in the work of civilization, between the
authors of true generalising science and the purveyors
and preparers of the necessary raw material recalls
Goethe's picture of himself us a citizen of the world,
between n prophet on the ri^ht hum! and a prophet tin
the left
Two series of effects are to be traced from the extension
of natural science and of human dominion over nature
acquired by the Greeks in these centuries. Take the
religious sphere first The conception of the universe as
u playground of innumerable capricious and counteracting
manifestations of Will was more and more undermined.
The subordination of the many separate ddtieH to the
supreme will of a single; arbiter of destiny was here the
expression of the steady growth of man's insight into
the regularity of natural phenomena. Polytheism im'Iineil
more and more to monotheism, and we shall later have to
deal with the gradual phases uf this transformation. But
the better knowledge and closer observation of tlu? pro-
cesses of nature led at the same time to npeculatium; on
the constitution of material factors ; the eye of the student
of nature was no longer exclusively occupied with the
world of gtnls, spirit*, and demons. Cosmogony began to
free itself from theogony, and the problem of matter
emerged into the foreground of men'* thought**, They
began to wonder if matter existed in as many separate
kinds as the difference of material thing* suggested to
their senses, or 5f> on the contrary, it wurc possible that
this endless variety could be reduced to st smaller, pcrh&pa
a very small, number, if not to unity itself. They observed
that the plant*, which depend for their nourishment on
earth, air, and water, servo animals for nourishment in
THE PROBLEM OF MATTER. 45
their turn ; they observed that animal excretions helped
to nourish the plants, and that both are finally resolved
into earth, air, and water once more. So they would ask
if these beings in their steady circular course were really
of alien nature, or if they were not rather mere variations
of originally homogeneous substances — nay, it might be oi
a single substance. The world, they would go on to con-
jecture, instead of springing from chaos, might have come
from some such single substance and might return to it
again, and they would look for a general rule by which
to characterize the series of the variations of form thai
they observed. Such were the questions which began tc
occupy the mind of the more profound thinkers familial
with the beginnings of positive science. Even the
Homeric poems are not absolutely free from traces o:
similar speculation. Take the passages, for instance
where earth and water are mentioned as the elements
into which the human body is dissolved ; or, better still
take the references to Oceanus as the source of al
things, and to the derivation of all the gods from the
marriage of Oceanus with Tethys, goddess of the seas. Th<
last strains of immemorial fetishism and the overture o
positive philosophy are combined in those passages. Now
however, a stricter method supervenes. The veil o
mythology was rent and the ideas were pressed will
ruthless consistency to their utmost logical content. Tw<
of the corner-stones of modern chemistry — the exist
once of elements, and the indestructibility of matter — no\
come into sight: each is important in itself, and thei
importance is doubled in combination. A twofold serie
of considerations led to the belief in the indestructibilit;
of matter. Matter was seen to emerge unhurt from th
manifold phases of the course of organic life, and it wa
by no means a long step to the conjecture that matte
could not be destroyed, and that its annihilation was neve
more than apparent. Moreover, a keener observatio
refuted the theory of absolute destruction, in the sense c
a reduction to nothing, in instances which afforded th
Wrongest ^sumption in its favour, When boiling waU
dried up, or when solid bodies wore burnt, there was seen
to remain a residue of steam, smoke, or ashes, Here, then,
we find that genius anticipated science. The full truth of
these doctrines was not finally established till the ;;tvat
era of chemistry in the eighteenth century, led by Lavnisier
with the balance in his hand. At another point the
"physiologists" of Ionia actually outstripped the results of
modern knowledge The bold flight, of their imagination
did not stop at the assumption of a plurality of indestruc-
tible elements; it never rested till it reached the concep-
tion of a single fundamental or primordial matter as the
source of material diversity. Here it may almost be siid
that inexperience was the mother of wisdom. The impulse
to simplification, when it hud onro been aroused, was li!vt»
a stone set in motion which mils continuously till it is
checked by an obstacle. It advanced from infinity to
plurality, from plurality to unity ; no inconvenient farts
could place impediments in its path* nor could call a
peremptory halt Thus the impetuous uninstructcd srnse
of that early epoch attained an intuition which i* jtK
hcgitminK to dawn through countless doubts and difficulties
on our own mature and enlightened knowledge. Once
more the belief i* breaking on the most illustrious of
modern philosophers that the seventy-odd elements
reckoned by chemistry to-day are not the ultimate destina-
tion in the journey of that science, but an* merely ,t sta^e
in its progress towards the final decomposition of matter,
3. Thales of Mik'tiw is regarded un the forefather of4 this
whole line nf philosophers. This remarkable man w«w the
product of u mixture of races ; Greek, Curian, am! Hum!*
cian blood flowed in his veins, He was accordingly a tyjie
of the peculiar many-sidedness of Ionian descent, ami his
image flashes on our eyes In the most varied colours of
tradition* Now he appears as the embodiment of the remote
and contemplative «&${«?, who tumbles headlong in the well
while K<i?.ititf at the stars uf heaven ; now he i« represented
as* turning his knowledge to his private advantage ; and in
a third version we see him offering Im fellow-coiintrymen,
the Ionian^ of A.si;t Mimtr, cum^els of cxtraorUinary politkiU
THALES OF MILETUS. 47
acumen directed to the creation of a federal state — a
conception absolutely novel to the Greeks of that age.
Indisputably he combined the roles of merchant, states-
man, engineer, mathematician, and astronomer. He owed
his rich intellectual training to travel in distant parts. He
had been as far as Egypt, where he devoted himself, among
other problems, to that of the rise of the Nile. He was the
first to raise the clumsy methods of land-surveying current
among the Egyptians, and directed merely to the require-
ments of single cases, into a deductive science of geometry
resting on general principles, and his name is still given
to one of the most elementary geometrical demonstrations,
We may readily credit the tradition that Thales supplied
his Egyptian masters with the method they had sought in
vain of computing the height of the towering pyramids which
arc the wonders of their home. He pointed out to them
that at the time of day when a man's shadow — or that of
any other object presenting no difficulty to mensuration —
is exactly equal to the size of the original, then, too, the
shadow of the pyramid can neither be longer nor shorter
than its actual height He had probably familiarized
himself in Sardis with the elements of Babylonian wisdom,
and he borrowed from it the law of the periodicity of
eclipses, which enabled him to foretell the total eclipse of
the sun on May 28, 585 B.C., to the utmost astonishment
of his fellow-countrymen. It is impossible that he could
have reached this insight on theoretical lines, for he was
still dominated by the old childish conception of the earth
as a flat disc resting on the water. His weather prognos-
tications wore probably derived from the same source. He
turned them to commercial uses, and would hire a number
of oil-presses in order to exploit his advantage if he
happened to foresee an exceptional harvest in the olive
gardens. The knowledge of astronomy ho acquired was
put at the disposal of the seafarers, for his fellow-country-
men practised commerce and navigation more extensively
than any of their contemporaries. He directed their
attention to the Little Bear as the constellation which
most precisely marks the north, Jt 155 doubtful if he wrote
4 S <7;V £ X A"
books, Jjut his doctrine of primary matter can hardly have
boon published by that meansjj Aristotle, at least; though
acquainted with it, is plainly at a loss to know how Thales
supported it, and approaches his reasons from a conjec-
tural point of view;,/ The food of the animal and vegetable
world being damp; organic warmth has its origin in damp-
ness ; further, the same quality is displayed by vegetable
and animal seeds. On this account, according to Aristotle,
Thales would have regarded water, the principle of nil damp-
ness, as the primary element, Hut whether or not Thales
was actually influenced by such considerations, whether or
not he was affected by older speculations, both native ami
foreign, and to what extent, if at all, he was dependent
on them, is as much a riddle to us, at the present date at
least, as his attitude towards things theological.
The doctrine of primary matter admitted ancl required
extension on three several lines. First, the rank assigned
by Thales to water in the precedence of matter could not
remain unassailed. Air as the most volatile, and fire as
the most powerful, of the widest-spread elements, would
inevitably find advocates to contest the prominence to
which the fluid element was promoted. Secondly, it would
occur to some reflective and far-sighted genius that it was
vain to look for the primordial form of matter in the circle
of its present and visible manifestations, but that it was
necessary to go behind and beyond them. Lastly, the
theory of a primary element contained a germ of scepticism
which was destined sooner or later to come to maturity of
growth. Thales might be content to conclude that ail
things proceed from water and return to it again, but his
doctrine was obviously liable to be expanded in course of
time Into the contention that the primary form of matter
was its only true and real shape, and that the rest were
mere delusions. And if it were once believed that wood
and iron, for example, were not wood and iron, but water
or air, there was not the remotest reason why the suspicion
of the evidence offense should make a pause at that point
Anaximander, who was bom in 610 B.C*, followed
1 ' qf these lines of thought Hf wa* the *>n of
ANAXLUANDER OF MILETUS. 49
Praxiades, and, like Thales, a native of Miletus, and may
well have been his friend and disciple. We may fairly look
on Anaximander as the author of the natural philosophy of
Greece, and consequently of the Occident. /He was the
first to attempt to introduce a scientific method in answer-
ing the vast questions as to the origin of the universe, the
earth, and its inhabitants, ' He had an extraordinary sense
for identity, a remarkable faculty for recognizing elusive
analogies, and an impressive talent for inferring the imper-
ceptible from the perceptible. Childish as some of his
endeavours were to grope out the way of nature, yet his
merits as a pioneer and a path-finder command our awe and
respect Unfortunately, we have frequently to depend on
scanty, detached, and partly contradictory reports for our
knowledge of his ideas. His work on "Nature" is the
first account of scientific doctrines which we know of 'in
Greek prose, and this monument of a life devoted to deep
reflection and .pccupied partly with affairs of state, suffered
untimely loss/ Anaximander did not decide to publish it
till shortly before his death at the age of sixty-three.
Manifold and eminently meritorious were the preliminary
labours which were crowned by this latest production, of
which but a few lines have reached us, with no sentence
entire. Anaximander first gave the Greeks a map of the
earth and a globe of the sky. Though his name was not
illustrious in the annals of travel, yet his map comprised
the researches of all the travellers who returned from their
voyages over land and sea to his Ionian home, which en-
joyed exceptional advantages as the centre of the tourists'
world. Ancient Egypt had not been ignorant of the art
of map-making, but the practice had been confined to the
graphic reproduction of separate districts. The dwellers in
the valley of the Nile had never conceived the thought of a
general map of the world, nor indeed were their unfamiliarity
with the sea and their lack of distant colonies adapted
to the collection of the necessary material We are told
that a characteristic feature of Anaximander's chart of the
world was the assumption of a sea-basin surrounded by
land, and again of an outer sea encircling the earth with
I. E
5O GKKXK1 77//ATAV<;A\V.
a girdle. Doubtless the father of .scientific geography was
acquainted with the Babylonian invention of the ^nnmot%
or pointer, as a means to mathematical and astronomical
mensuration. The pointer rested on a horizontal basis,
and the length of its shadow, varying with the hours ami
seasons, served to determine the true* meridian of any
given locality, and to discover the four cardinal points and
the winter and summer solstices, Anaximandnr, or his
successor Anaximenes- -the tradition halts between their
namc8"—is said to have set up a gnomon of this kind in
Sparta, This history of science does not rceo;jm;*,e our
philosopher as the author of new mathematical doctrines,
though it credits him \vith a systematic exposition of ^<»o-
metry. But at least ho cannot be written down as lacking
mathematical training; his accounts of the ,%i;t* of tin!
heavenly bodies, thou;»h hardly intelligible at this datc»
afford good evidence to the contrary. As an a^tr^nomer,
tmr Milesian was the first to make a wrll-nijjh complete
breach with the puerile conceptions of antiquity. If ho
stilt failed to conceive the earth as a globe, he was equally
far from imagining it as a flat disc, resting on a IMM,<;
and covered by the bell-like vault of heaven, IJr did not
represent the sun as sinking every night into Ottawjs
that fie wet 1 round the earth, nor yet as following in its
channel from the west to thr east. If some r.t«M«ly ami
regular movement was to account for the fad that the
sun and the rest of the .stars, after tltry had set In the
west, ruse once more in the east, Aitaxinmnder was com-
pelled to suppose that they continued underground the
revolving movement which we watch abow the* horiwm,
His supposition was supj>orted by the observation tiut
the constellations next tu the {K>le never set, but tlegcrilte
a revolution* Hence the he.avcnly hemisphere that we we
must actually form a half of a complete .sphere. The dome
of heaven stretched abuvo our heads was pcriWtal by a
complementary dome beneath our feet Earth wan deprived
of the basis stretching to unfuthomed depths un which she
have been supported, and vvifj left free tu float in
The pancake theory was ubanUunal in favour of a
ASTRONOMER AND COSMOGONIST. 51
columnar or cylindrical earth, with its equilibrium guaran-
teed by the condition of a base-diameter longer than the
measure of its height. The proportion of three to one,
which fulfilled that condition, probably commended itself
to the ancient philosopher by its simplicity. But he em-
ployed a remarkable argument to explain the equipoise
of the drum-shaped earth, ascribing its undistracted condi-
tion to the equal distance it maintained from all parts of
the heavenly vault This doctrine commits the Milesian
philosopher to two opinions : on the one hand, gravity
cannot have been identified by him with a downward
tendency ; on the other hand, he is obviously a precursor
of that school of metaphysicians who preferred to base the
law of inertia on d priori grounds rather than on expe-
rience. It has been said that a body at rest could not
begin to move except by the impulse of some outside
cause, for if it did it would have to move either up or
down, or forwards or backwards. But as there was no
reason why it should do the one rather than the other,
therefore it did not move at all Thus Aristotle, who
called the argument of this ancient philosopher a brilliant
mistake, compared Anaximander's earth at rest to a hungry
man who would have to starve because he had no reason
to stretch his hand to the right rather than to the left, in
front of him rather than behind him, in order to reach the
food disposed at equal distances all round. For the present,
however, we must turn our attention to Anaximander's
attempts at cosmogony.
Hesiod's theogony has already made us acquainted with
the immemorial conception of the universe beginning
in chaos. We saw that the idea of chaos was produced by
the endless extension of the void yawning between heaven
and earth. We saw, too, that those early philosophers took
account of one only of the three dimensions of space —
height or depth — without respect to its relation with
length and breadth. This conception, logically followed
out, put space, unbounded in all directions, in the place
of the gaping chasm, and such space, filled with matter,
was what Anaximander's theory started from. But
5*
thr question arnse, What w,is this primary m.iUrr r*c-
trwlrd in infinite space? Wr ran stair at nm:e that it
UMS no matter with which \vr? an* ;u'<jtuiinU'd, Such
nf matter, with their rntiatant fusion and
wrrc rrgankd by Atiaximan<li*r .is factors nf r*jti,il
ant! rights anil hr would rrrtainly not have pmmntrd
one of them tn be the authnr or progenitor of the rent. Anil
of all the unsuitable ratulufatcH for that |«i>t the Hrmriital
water of Th.ilr* muni have? appeared to him tn Jic fhr tvnr*t,
It?* very existence* requiretl the prrnuinptinn of warmth
whirh, orcimlinR in the philoMiphy of that »i^e. wan r;iUiric
matter, or fur, For solids are changetl to fliii*!?* hy melt*
ing, that in, hy the application of heat c?r ralortc mailer.
Similarly .iir»Htil»*tance*, such an steam, are pnivliicrd by
the action nf (ire on fluids. Thus the solitl anil the fiery
Hcemcct to lie wnlcly ijualificil to Icail off the tine of itult*
viilual roncrptiniiH* And the very contrast between the
two causril them to he looked on iui a united |»atr* the
eum]iU?mrntary membern of which had come smiulUncoujOy
lo r?<ifftenccf, /Thufi they actually figure in Anaxirnamlcr
nn (l the cold IV nnd " the warm/4 and he set them down to
a process of "differentiation* fram the original primary
matter which cnmpriscd all material variationn. Hut we
are not acquainted with his further idea* on the origin of
the endless scries of separate substances. We can merely
conjecture that a progressive "differentiation" from the
fundamental forms of matter wan auppcwcd to continue
the process jui»t described* But however that may have
been, the ftubrtancei were at least arranged about and
above one another in the order of their weight and density*
The earth was the innermost kernel ; its surface was
covered by water; next came a layer of air; and the
whole was enclosed by a ring of fire, as "the tree by ft*
bark*9 At this point a twofold problem obtrtidcd Itself oo
the*orderly mind of Anaxiraander* He saw that the earth
still formed the kernel of the structure, with the air as its
Mfeer raiment, but there was no longer a uniform wveftntf
rf water, and fins was merely visible at separate points of
Sl^ though these Indeed were Innwersbte So he
A Ar- f AYJ/W AWiflV!' COSMCH10XY. 5 3
began to ask whence arose this disturbance of the pri-
mordial uniform programme for the distribution of matter,
His answer took shape as follows: The existing sea was
merely a residue of the original roof of water, the content
of the sea having been reduced in course of time by
the evaporating action of the sun. His assumption was
supported by the evidence of geology, which plainly showed
that the sea had retreated at many points of the Mediter-
ranean basin* Whether he relied on the formation of
deltas or on the discovery of sea-shells on dry land,
AnaximandtT drew the most far-reaching conclusions in
support of his doctrine from phenomena of that kind. As
to the ring of fire, he believed that it burst at some tirfie,
doubtless by the violent dislocation of masses on the
principle of the sling-stone, a theory which reminds us of
the doctrine of Kant and Laplace. Our philosopher
would obviously have been acquainted with the operation
of centrifugal force, by watching the games of children
and the use of sling-stones in war. 1 le would have noticed
that the centrifugal force operated with greater intensity
in proportion to the larger sixe of the stone slung at the
end of the line. Hence he seems to have concluded
that, taking the earth as the centre of the world, the great
mass of the sun had been flung to the furthest distance;
next, at u lesser distance, the smaller mass of the moon ;
and, nearest of all, the little .stars in their order, planets
and fixed stars alike. But Anuximundcr'a imagination did
nut .stop at this point* He thought that masses of air
were torn away by the same force, that thuy became con-
geaicd in the process, and elused on the masses* of lire*
These husks of air, so to speak, with their fiery content*
inside, he conceived in the apix'urance of whucta, provided
with opening like the month of a bellow^ from which a
constant stream of fire Issued, One wonders how he
reached this conception, and a conjectural answer may be
Ijivcn UH follows ; nun, moon, and Htara revolved round the
earth, but while there was no known analogy for the
regular revolution in space of masses of fire, the rotation
of wheels was a mutter of daily observation. Thus,
54 GREEK THINKERS.
concrete objects took the place of abstract orbits, and the
difficulty of the problem was very considerably reduced.
As long as the wheels existed, and their motory impulse
lasted, the rotation of the stars was assured. Finally,
Anaximandcr explained the eclipses of the sun and moon
by temporary obstructions in the orifices of the sun-wheel
and the moon-wheel.
The ingenuity of the philosopher of Miletus was like-
wise devoted to the problem of organic creation. lie
conceived the first animals to have sprung from sea-
slime, presumably because the animal body is composed
of solid and fluid elements. Hence, as we saw in the
Homeric poems, water and earth were supposed to be its
elements. But the presumption may have been strengthened
by the wealth of all kinds of life contained in the sea, not
to mention the discovery of the remains of pro-historic
marine monsters. Further, Anaximander attributed to
those primeval animals a bristly integument, which they
cast at the transition from sea to land ; it is likely enougli
that the analogous change sustained by some insect larvai
may have led him to this hypothesis. We can hardly
doubt that he traced the forefathers of terrestrial fauna
from the descendants of these marine animals, thus
obtaining a first vague glimpse of the modern theory of
evolution. His statements on the origin of human species
were more definite. Mythology represented the earliest
men as having sprung directly from the earth, but Anaxi-
mander found the following objection to the adoption of
that theory. The helpless human Infant, who requires
more lasting attention than any other species of being,
could never have kept himself alive — at least, by natural
means, So our philosopher looked for analogies to
facilitate the reading of this riddle* He found his best
counsellor in the shark, who was popularly believed to
swallow her young when they crept out of their shell, to
vomit them forth and swallow them again, and go on
repeating the process till the young animal was strong
enough to support an independent existence. Similarly,
he supposed that the ancestors of the human race had
COSMIC PERIODS. 55
their origin in the bellies of fish, and did not quit that
habitation till they had reached full vigour. Possibly
Anaximander was influenced in this belief by the old
Babylonian theory of a primeval race of fish-men, but that,
at least, we cannot assert with confidence.
But, whatever his views of the origin of separate worlds,
separate forms of matter, and separate beings and substances
may have been, one point, at any rate, does not admit of the
least doubt. He was quite clear that every created thing Is
doomed to destruction. Primary matter alone, the source
and destination of all life, he regarded as "without begin-
ning and without end." And his conviction afforded him
a satisfaction which we may characterize as a moral or
religious sentiment. Each separate existence he regarded
as an iniquity, a usurpation, for which the clashing and
mutually exterminating forms of life would " suffer atone-
ment and penalty in the ordinance of time." All single
substances were destructible, all forms of life decomposed and
died, and Anaximander extended these material processes
to a comprehensive natural order which transformed itself
in his mind to a comprehensive order of justice. He might
have cried with Mephistopheles that " all that hath exist-
ence is worthy to decay." Nothing seemed to him "divine1*
but Matter, the repository of force, dateless, " eternal and
unaging." Divine, too, in his conception were the separate
worlds or heavens, but their divinity was limited by the
fact that, having been created, they were liable to decay,
and they ranked as gods of an inferior order, as it were,
who could count on a protracted life in succession to, if
not in co-existence with, one another, but whose life at the
best was but temporal. We are not told by what processes
they returned again and again to the womb of primary
matter, but we may conjecture that such processes were
connected with the principle of differentiation. We saw that
"differentiation" was responsible for the origin of the worlds^,
and their separate existence was doubtless put an end to in
the course of long cosmic periods by fresh admixtures and
combinations of their elements. Everything would be
gradually brought back to the undivided unity of the
56 CREEK THINKERS.
original universal Being, which would thus prove its
inexhaustible vital force by ever-fresh transmutations, and
would realize its invincible supremacy in ever-fresh acts
of destruction.
4. Anaximenes, son of Eurystratos, the third great
citizen of Miletus, who died between 528 and 524 U.C.,
walked in the footsteps of Thales. He substituted air for
water as the primary principle which engendered " all that
was, that is, and that shall be." So completely did air
succeed to the inheritance of the discredited element that
Anaximenes conceived it as the basis of the earth, which
figured once again as a flat disc. Nor is it hard to explain
the preference shown to air. Its greater mobility and its
greater extension doubtless prompted its choice instead of
the fluid element, The first of these qualities was ex-'
pressly mentioned by Anaximenes himself in the sole
fragment of his work that we possess, composed, we are
told, in " simple unadorned " prose. Matter, we remember,
in the doctrine of all these philosophers — the so-called
Ionian physiologists — was commonly supposed to contain
in itself the cause of its own motion, and nothing could
be more natural than that precedence should be given to
its more mobile form, the form that ranks in organic life
as the vehicle of vital and psychic force, in which con-
nection it is useful to recall that " psyche," or soul, .signifies
"breath." Anaximenes himself compared the breath of
life with the air. The one, as he believed, held together
human and animal life, and the other composed the world
to unity. When he came to the question of its extension,
he had merely to imagine earth, water, and fire as islands
in an ocean of air which spread about them on all sides,
penetrating all the pores and interstices of the rest of
material substances, and bathing their smallest particles.
Like his predecessor, Anaximenes ascribed to the primary
matter unlimited diffusion and incessant motion. But the
process by which he derived from it other material sub-
stances rested in his argument, not on speculative imagina-
tion, but on actual observation. He was the first to pro-
claim as the ultimate reason of all material transformation
ANAXIMENES OF MILETUS. $J
"true cause/' a vera causa in Newton's sense of the words,
id thereon rests his title to immortality. He did not
>llow Anaximander in deriving "the warm" and "the
Did" from primary matter by the enigmatic process of
differentiation," but he ascribed the separation of material
ibstances to Condensation and Rarefaction, or differences
f proximity and distance in the particles. When most
yenly diffused — in its normal state, so to speak — air is
ivisible ; when most finely diffused it becomes fire, and
i its progress towards condensation it becomes liquid, and
nally solid. All substances—we may read into the text
f the fragment from Anaximenes — are in themselves
apable of assuming each of the three forms of aggrega-
ton, whether or not we have hitherto succeeded in
ffecting the transformation. The importance of this
»hilosophic discovery will be obvious to every one, if he
emembers that it was not till a hundred years ago that
t became the common property of the most advanced
hinkers, and even then not without a struggle. More-
>ver, to read between the lines of Anaximenes' meditations,
f our senses were fine enough, we should recognize through
til these transformations the identical particles of matter
low drawing nearer to one another, and now withdrawing
.0 a greater distance. Thus his doctrine affords a foretaste
>f the atomic theory, a conception of the material world
vhich, whether or not it pronounces the last word on the
subject, has at least proved down to contemporary times
in invaluable aid to philosophy. It detracts but little
rom his claim to immortality that Anaximenes took the
:rouble to support his teaching by miserably misunderstood
experiments. One of these may be mentioned in illustra-
tion : he urged as a serious argument on behalf of his
doctrine that the air of the whistle is cold, and the air of
the yawn is warm.
The doctrine of matter, as we have seen, made immense
strides under the comprehensive induction of Anaximenes,
and one might fairly expect that similar progress would
be recorded in the instance of astronomy. Unfortunately,
such expectation will be disappointed. Now for the first
58 GREEK THINKERS.
time we arc presented with a spectacle which the history
of the sciences brings again and again before our eyes.
We need not entirely defer to Mr. Buckle's plausible
view of the essential opposition between the inductive
and the deductive methods ; but we may fairly admit
that the representatives of either seldom or never exhibit
a talent for both. Turning from the general to the
particular, it is hardly surprising to find that Anaxi-
mander's temerity of thought left many errors of fact for
his more pedestrian successor to fasten on. Anaximenes,
the successor in question, was keen-sighted enough to
repudiate the puerile explanation of eclipses by temporary
obstructions in the sun-wheel and moon-wheel ; unluckily,
he was not far-sighted enough to recognize the merits
and extend the conclusions of the clever anticipation of
the theory of attraction designed to justify the equipoise
of the earth. Thus his critical intellect and smaller
endowment of imagination united their qualities and
defects, and Anaximenes descended a few paces from the
height reached by his predecessor. We have already
mentioned his return to the disc-and-basis conception of
the earth. Consequently the sun could not move under
the earth at night, but only sideways round -it. Thus,
in order to account for its invisibility at night, lie was
reduced to suppose that it was hidden behind high
mountains in the north, or that it receded further from
the earth than during the day. We need not dwell on
the details of his somewhat crude astronomy. It was
partly redeemed by the statement that the luminaries are
accompanied by dark earth-like bodies, and Anaximenes
doubtless made this statement in order to account for
eclipses on the theory — correct enough in principle — of
occupation. We are occasionally astounded at the happi-
ness, sometimes at the correctness, of his guesses at the
nature of meteorological and other natural phenomena. He
dealt with the lightning, the rainbow, earthquakes, saline
phosphorescence, hail, and snow, the last two with especial
success, and even where his explanation was totally wrong,
it was extremely ingenious and significant in principle.
HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS. 59
The reasoning on which he based his views of saline
phosphorescence may, for example, be reconstructed as
follows. Air in its finest state of diffusion turns to fire,
and accordingly burns and shines ; but these qualities do
not spontaneously arise from that state of diffusion, but
are indigenous to air, and in favourable circumstances may
be recognizable even in another state. Now, an exception-
ally dark background, such as the sea by night, will give
visibility to the most dimly luminous body. Thus set in
relief, the particles of air which enter the hollows where
the waves are parted by the oar, become bright and
shining. Here we meet the earliest gleams of the thought
that the qualities of bodies are not liable to abrupt
changes. It is a thought which will reappear as the
qualitative constancy of matter, and which we shall find
maintained by the later nature-philosophers with uncom-
promising vigour. Finally, Anaximenes agrees with
Anaximander in his theoiy of cosmic periods and of
quasi-secondary gods, or of gods derived from the
"divine" primary substance, and therefore intrinsically
perishable.
5. Far from the streaming life of the market and the
roaring docks of Miletus, the teachings of Heraclitus
were matured in the shadow of a sanctuary. Heraclitus
was the first of the philosophers of Greece whom we are
passing in review by whom the counting-board, the
measuring-tape, and the drawing-block were alike eschewed.
Without using his hands in any way, he devoted himself
entirely to speculation, and the really remarkable fertility
of his mind is still a source of instruction and refresh-
ment. At the same time he was a mere philosopher, in
the less complimentary sense of the term. He was a man,
that is to say, who, though master in no trade, sat in
judgment over the masters in all. We have still many
fragments of his work, composed in language somewhat
florid in style and not devoid of artificial touches; and
these, with a few important details of his life, bring the
Imposing figure of " the obscure or dark " man nearer to
us than that of any of his predecessors or contemporaries.
60 GREEK THINKERS.
Moreover, legend was early employed in spinning its threads
about the head of the " weeping " philosopher. The years
of his birth and death are unknown to us ; his " floruit "
was placed about the sixty-ninth Olympiad (504-501 B.C.),
presumably on the ground of some occurrence with a
specific date in which he took a part. He was a descendant
of the city-kings of Ephesus, with claims of his own to
the joint hierarchic and monarchical office ; and though
he yielded these claims to his brother, there is no doubt
that he frequently intervened in the politics of his birth-
place, and he is even said to have induced the ruling
prince, Melancomas, to resign his usurped authority. But
the date of the completion of his work, on account of its
political references, cannot be placed before 478 B.C.
Solitude and the beauty of nature were the muses of
Heraclitus. He was a man of abounding pride and self-
confidence, and he sat at no master's feet. If we seek
the first springs at which he satisfied his thirst for know-
ledge, and caught the intimations of universal life and of the
laws that rule it, we must go back to his pensive boyhood,
when he roamed in the enchanting hills, with their well-
nigh tropical luxuriance/that surrouridec} his native city.
The greats poets of his country fed his childish fancy,
and filled it with gorgeous images, but they afforded no
lasting satisfaction to his mature intellect. For, chiefly
owing to the influence of Xenophanes, men began to
doubt the reality of the myths, and the Homeric gods,
with their human lusts and passions, began to be replaced
in sensitive souls by the products of a higher ideal.
The poet who, according to Herodotus, was associated
with Hesiod in the invention of Greek religion would
not have been honoured by H^eraclitus, but "banished
from public recitations and scourged with rods." For
Heraclitus was equally opposed to all objects of
popular belief. He contemned the worship of images,
which was as if "a man should chatter to a stone wall;"
he despised the system of sin-offerings which expiated
one stain by another/" just as if a man who had stepped
into mud were to wash himself clean with mud / and he
HIS CONTEMPT OF MEN. 6 1
inveighed against the "abominable" rites of the Bac-
chanalia as strongly as against the " unhallowed observance"
of the Mysteries. Hesiod "the polymath, whom most
men follow as their master," Pythagoras the philosophizing
mathematician, Xenophanes the philosophic . rhapsodist,
Hecataeus the historian and geographer, were all tarred
with the same brush. He learnt from them all, but he
owned the mastery of none. For Bias alone, with his simple
practical counsels of wisdom, he reserved a word of warm
praise, and he acknowledges his debt to Anaximander,
whose influence is real and lasting, by omitting him, with
Thales and Anaximenes, from the list of the proscribed
masters of polymathy "which does not instruct the mind.'*
The best in himself he believed that he owed to himself, for
" of all whose opinions "^he was acquainted with " none had
attained true insight" ''And if his attitude towards poets
and thinkers was distinguished by sullenness or mistrust,
we can conceive the contempt he must have felt for the
mass of the people. His invectives fall on them like
hailstones; "they fill their bellies like cattle," and "ten
thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of
worth." We can hardly expect that a man who held the
mob in such light esteem should have cared to court
its favour, or should even have troubled himself to make
his meaning understanded of the people. His enigmatic
philosophy is addressee! to the fit and few, without regard
to the multitude "baying like curs at a stranger," or to
" the ass that preferred the bundle of hay to the nugget
of gold," Heraclitus was aware of the adverse criticism
which would attach to the oracular form and melancholy
contents of his work, but he met it by an appeal to the
most illustrious examples. The Pythian god " expresses
naught and conceals naught, but merely hints at his
meaning ; " and " the voice of the Sibyl rings through the
centuries by the power of the god that speaks through her
and proclaims its joyless message to mankind, naked and un-
adorned." Nor was Heraclitus troubled by theipostponement
of his reward ; "one thing," says a fragment/ "worthy men
choose in preference to all others — renown incorruptible."
62 GREEK THINKERS.
The political and moral condition of Ephesus served
to feed the contempt which Heraclitus felt for his fellow-
men. The stranger's yoke had oppressed the Greeks of
Asia Minor for half a century or more. Oppressive though
it was, its immediate harshness was frequently relieved
by the fact that indigenous dynasties interposed between
the subject states and the loosely knit feudal empire of
Persia. Still, it would have been nothing less than a
miracle, if the loss of national independence had not
brought in its train a depression of public spirit and an
excessive growth of private interests. Indeed, the soil
for such symptoms of decay had been long since prepared.
The heightened standard of luxury and the refinement
of the East had partly sapped the vigour, while it
corrected the savagery, of ancient Greece. Given these
conditions, and given the gall and venom of Heraclitus,
we are not surprised that his criticism fastened unfavourably
on his fellow-countrymen, and that he found them little
suited to wield the sceptre at the time that democracy
arose from the wreck of the Persian sway. Be this as
it may, he was found in the party-feuds of that epoch on
the side of the aristocrats, whose cause he espoused with
a zeal proportionate to the contempt he cherished for his
antagonists. The climax of his hate was reached in the
following embittered utterance : —
" The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves man by man,
and to deliver their city to their infant sons, seeing that they
expelled Hennodorus, saying, c No worthy man shall be among
us ; if there arise such a man, let him dwell elsewhere and with
another people. ' "'
The exile who is the subject of this eulogy found a
new and honourable field for his activity in a distant home.
His juristic advice was consulted by the authors of the
Roman laws of the Twelve Tables, and a monument was
erected to his memory which was seen as recently as by
Pliny. But the veteran friend of Hermodorus was weary
of the yoke of popular rule. He withdrew to the solitude
of the mountains, where he ended his days, having first
HIS ORIGINALITY. 6^
deposited in the temple of Artemis a roll of manuscripl
containing the result of his life's work as an inheritance
for generations to come.
The full enjoyment of this precious book was denied
even to the ancients. It was so heterogeneous and self-
contradictory that Theophrastus could find no othei
explanation than that its author had been subject tc
occasional mental aberrations. Aristotle complained oi
its bewildering grammatical difficulties, and a host oJ
commentators — some of them of the best repute — have
endeavoured to illumine the dark places in which the
work abounds. The broken fragments that have reached
us defy all attempts to restore them to their origina
consecution, or to attribute them with certainty to the
three sections — physics, ethics, and politics — in which the
work was divided.
Heraclitus' great claim to originality does not rest 01
his theory of matter, nor yet on his theory of nature. I
is rather to be discovered in the fact that he was the firs1
to build bridges, which have never since been destroyed
between the natural and the spiritual life, and that h<
constructed comprehensive generalizations comprising botl
realms of human knowledge, as it were, with a might}
bow. In principle he is most closely allied with Anaxi
mander. Both were equally impressed by the transitori
ness of all single objects, the ceaseless mutation anc
transformation of things, and the aspect of the order o
nature as an order in law. But Heraclitus parted from hi;
greatest predecessor in the restlessness of his temperament
so averse from all patient research, in the more poetii
trend of his imagination, and in his demand for conception;
of a richer and more sculpturesque kind. The priman
matter of Anaximandcr, devoid of all qualitative distinction
and the colourless, invisible First Substance of Anaximenet
were alike alien to his taste. The form of matter whic]
seemed to Heraclitus best to correspond to the process of th«
world, and therefore the most dignified, was fire. It neve
bore the remotest appearance of rest or even of minima
movement ; it was the principle of vital heat in beings c
64 GREEK THINKERS.
higher organism, and thus it appeared as the element of
animation engendering and consuming all things. "This
one order of all things," he exclaims, "was created by
none of the gods, nor yet by any of mankind, but it
ever was, and is, and shall be — eternal fire — ignited by
measure, and extinguished by measure." He represents
primary fire as sinking to the other and lower forms of
matter in a minor and a major circle, and as rising again
through the same gradations to its original form, for " the
up-road and the down-road are one." Fire changes to
water, and as water half of it returns directly to heaven as
"fire-steam," half of it changes to earth, which becomes
water again, and thus is finally changed back to fire.
Evaporation, melting, and freezing may be regarded as the
processes which operate in this circular system. We must
remember, too, that the extinction of a burning substance
by water would have counted in the primitive physics of
Heraclitus as a transformation of fire to water. The first
principle of our poet-philosopher is not merely the ceaseless
spring of birth and decay ; it is not merely divine, as it
was to his predecessors. Heraclitus regarded it as the
source of the world's intelligence, as the conscious regula-
tive principle of all existence which "will not be called
Zeus," since it is not a personal being with individuality
of its own, and yet " will be called Zeus," since it is the
supreme principle of the world, and accordingly the highest
principle of life. In this connection it should be remem-
bered that the Greek "zen" means "to live," and the
corresponding forms of the name Zeus may well be kept
in recollection. Still, we should not regard this primary
being as a divinity acting with a fixed purpose, and
selecting the means appropriate to his end. We are rather
taught to regard him as a " boy at play," amusing himself
with counters, and building castles on the sea-shore for
the sake of throwing them do\Vn again. Construction
and destruction, destruction and construction — this is the
principle which regulates all the circles of natural life,
from the smallest to the greatest. Cosmos itself, which
sprang from primary fire, 13 bound to return to it
FROM FIRE TO FIRE. 65
by a double process which, however protracted its duration,
operates in fixed periods, and will constantly repeat its
operation.
The speculations of Heraclitus in this respect were
assisted by the geological observations of Xenophanes and
Anaximander. He seems to have followed the last-named
thinker in concluding, from the obvious evidence of the
Mediterranean Sea, that the extension of the water had been
greater in past time than it was in the present ; and we
can quite well understand that he should push his physical
doctrines to the further inference that, as land proceeded
from water, so water proceeded from fire. Thus he reached a
point of departure when nothing but fire existed. But seeing
that he was pledged to Anaximander's belief in a circular
order of occurrences, he could not regard that process of
evolution as a single and unique event. All other material
substances sprang from fire, and into fire they were bound
to return, in order that the process of differentiation
might begin anew and again reach the same end. In
breadth of view Heraclitus is here akin to the greatest of
modern philosophers, and, whether by chance or by genius,
he is in agreement with them at least in respect to the
solar system, even in the details of his conception of the
cyclical system of the world. To him as to them a ball
of fire marks the starting-point and the goal of each cosmic
period.
So much, perhaps, for the broad lines of Heraclitus'
doctrine. Unluckily he found himself in occasional contra-
diction, not merely with the nature of things, but with the
principles of his own teaching, and it is hard to say how
far he was conscious of these objections, and how he
reconciled them in his own mind. When we read his
axiom that "fire feeds on vapours which rise from the
damp/* we are impelled to wonder if the gradual diminu-
"fiSTand final extinction of the fluid element would not
involve the destruction of the source of the food of fire.
And again, if space were already full, what room could be
found there for Matter when its volume was increased by
heat ? The Stoics who followed fleraclitus found a way
VOL, i. F
66 GREEK THINKERS.
out of his difficulty by putting a vast expanse of empty
space at his disposal for that purpose. We can assert
with complete confidence, however, that Heraclitus was
innocent of this expedient. The assumption of an empty
space would have stamped him as a precursor of Leucippus,
and our authorities would never have failed to acquaint us
with that fact.
Heraclitus, then, ascribed to matter an unceasing trans-
mutation of forms and qualities. We have next to note
that he regarded it as constantly moving in space. Matter,
moreover, was alive to him, and its life was life not merely
in the sense in which his immediate predecessors were
correctly entitled " hylozoists " or animators of substance.
In as far as they placed the cause of movement in matter
itself, and not in an outside agent, they were followed by
the Ephesian philosopher. But his " everlasting fire " was
not merely alive in that sense. He watched the circula-
tion of matter, as visible in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, and the fact impressed him so strongly that
he used its analogy as the leading principle of all his
reflections on material processes. All life was involved in
continual decomposition and renewal ; and if matter was
regarded as alive in the first-named meaning of that word,
it is by no means surprising that by the association of
ideas it should eventually be regarded as organically alive
in the secondary meaning of the term. Hence was
derived Heraclitus' doctrine of the flux of things. It was
a mere optical delusion if we looked on anything as
stationary: the thing was actually subject to incessant
transformation. And if it were objected that the trans-
formation did not lead to the destruction of the object,
Heraclitus explained that as the particles of matter were
detached from it they were constantly replaced and
reunited in uninterrupted succession. His favourite simile
was that of the flowing stream. "We cannot step into
the same river twice, for fresh and ever fresh waters are
constantly pouring into it." And since the river regarded
as an enduring mass of water was the same, but regarded
as a combination of particles was not tfee same, this
THE FLUX OF THINGS. 67
reflection was pointed to the paradox that " we step into
the same river, and we do not step into it ; we are, and
we are not."
The half-truths of Heraclitus* analogy were interwoven
with correct observations and far-reaching Inferences,
Among the inferences may be mentioned the supposition
that our impressions of smell and of sight — the inclusion
of sight was natural to the belief of those times — were pro-
duced by particles of matter continually detaching them-
selves from their respective objects. But be that as it may,
his reasoning terminated in a theory of nature which displays
quite remarkable points of likeness with the doctrines of
modern physics. The agreement is so exact that a com-
prehensive summary of those doctrines corresponds almost
verbatim to an ancient account of the teaching of Hera-
clitus. Aristotle, in a passage which plainly refers to the
Ephesian and his disciples, states that " it is held by certain
people that it is not the fact that some objects move while
others do not, but that all objects are always moving,
though their movements elude our observation." And a
natural philosopher of our own times remarks that " modern
science takes it for granted that the molecules of matter
are always vibrating or in movement, . . . though these
movements may be imperceptible." In these circum-
stances, it is astonishing to recall the conditions of scientific
knowledge at the date when Heraclitus was writing. It
was an age which was equally ignorant of our theories of
heat, light, and sound, which had no more reached the con-
ception of waves of air and ether than it had perceived that
a molecular movement underlies the sensation of heat even
in solid bodies ; which had not the faintest acquaintance
with chemical and cellular processes ; and which, finally, was
without the microscope whereby our astonished gaze is made
familiar with movements in places where the naked eye can
only see blank rest, and whereby we are irresistibly per-
suaded that the rule of motion extends infinitely further
than our feeble observation can pursue it. Taking all these
considerations in account, we are struck with the greatest
admiration for the genius and insight of Heraclitus, and
68 GREEK THINKERS.
perhaps one is most astonished that his brilliant anticipa-
tions produced so poor a crop of detailed knowledge of
nature. But our disappointment should not dimmish the
renown of the Ephesian philosopher. His mere recogni-
tion of the fact that imperceptible motions exist served
to break down the wall between the secrets of nature and
their investigators. In order to render his discovery really
useful and fertile, a second departure was required. The
assumption had to be made of similarly invisible, inde-
structible, and unchangeable particles which enter into the
composition of all material substances and emerge unhurt
from all their vicissitudes of form ; and this was the great
contribution of the Atomists to the evolution of thought.
Heraclitus himself was not to inaugurate the mechanical
explanation of nature. For that task he was disqualified
by the poetic bias of his mind. But he succeeded in
drawing conclusions from his principle which served to
illuminate some other departments of knowledge.
The succession in qualitative mutations found its exact
counterpart in co-existent diversity. Here too the attentive
observer is confronted by a multiplicity which seems to
threaten the unity of an object and of its constituent pro-
perties. The action of an object may vary, even to the
point of contradiction, with the varieties of the object on
which it acts. *' Sea-water is the purest and most disgust-
ing ; it is drinkable and wholesome for fishes, undrinkable
and noxious for men/' I Every one who is acquainted with
the fragments extant of Heraclitus* work will be aware
that he was not recording an isolated observation in that
sentence. Rather he was announcing for the first time the
principlg of the relativity of qualities which he pushed
forthwith, as his manner was, to its extreme consequences,
in the words " good and bad are the same," reminding us
of his former paradox, "We are and we are not/' And
in point of fact the Ephesian's doctrine of flux and his
doctrine of relativity lead to the same result ; the succes-
sive states of an object, as well as its simultaneous qualities
frequently both bear the stamp of a far-reaching diversity
which amounts at times to complete contradiction. Our
COEXISTENCE OF CONTRARIES. 69
philosopher believed that he had rid himself of all definite-
ness and fixity in being ; he revelled in phrases that set
common sense at naught, and he forgot or neglected the
reservations by which, and by which alone, such statements
become comprehensible and acceptable. In one sense the
river remains the same, in another sense it becomes a
different river; in one aspect X is "good/* in another
aspect it is "bad." Such distinctions troubled Heraclitus
but little ; the inexperience of his thought played into
the hands of its arrogance ; the more unfamiliar the results
he reached, the more they satisfied his delight in paradox,
his predilection for enigmatic oracles, and the light esteem
in which he held all plain and obvious truths. Hence-
forward he regarded it as proven, as a fundamental law
in the natural as well as in the spiritual world that con-
traries were not mutually exclusive, but rather presupposed
and conditioned, or were even identical with, each other.
It would be purblind folly to bear him a grudge for this, for
in the case of mistaken or neglected truths, and especially
in the instance of such truths as naturally lend themselves
to mistake or neglect, the thing of supreme and primaiy
importance is that they should be discovered at all. The
exaggerations into which their discoverer is betrayed are
as pardonable as they are intelligible, and in the long
run they may be found to do more good than harm. The
logician with his rod is not likely to keep them waiting
very long ; and sooner or later the shears which are to
clip the luxuriance of thought will do their remorseless
work. Meantime the extravagance and assertiveness with
which these elusive truths were originally invested will
have set them in such brilliant relief that they can never
again be overlooked. Above all, the point of their paradox
will have penetrated the mind of their inventor, who will
keep them in constant readiness as an inalienable posses-
sion. Therefore the "speculative" revels of Heraclitus
may be regarded by us as the source of the most precious
contribution with which- he has enriched the treasury of
human knowledge/ For verily the pen of the historian might
hesitate where to' begin or end if he endeavoured to write
70 GREEK THINKERS.
an adequate account of the inexhaustible range of funda-
mental truths contained in the exaggerated statements of
Heraclitus. /His theory of relativity, for example, contained
like a folded flower the correct doctrine of sense-perception
with its recognition of the subjective factor ; and it taught
Greek thinkers the lesson they were bound to acquire if
they were to be saved from a bottomless scepticism?' that
one and the same object in the outside world acts '"'differ-
ently on different objects and individuals, and may even
exercise varying effects on the varying states of the same
individual. Nay, it brought the deeper and the more in-
dispensable admission that opinions, laws, and institutions
appropriate and wholesome for one phase of human develop-
ment become inadequate, and unwholesome when another
stage has been reached/ "Reason becomes nonsense, the
blessing is turned to a curse" — simply because, as time
changes and as constituent elements vary, the same
object may come to exercise a very different and even
a contradictory effect. Relativism is the spur which
pricks the side of a sluggish conservatism in all depart-
ments of life — taste and morals, politics and society — and
it is the absence of relativism in the present as in the past
which lends the cry of " it has always been thus " its force
in opposition to reform. And it serves not merely the
cause of progress, but the cause of sound conservatism as
well ; without a sense of relativity no sufficient explanation
can be given, no satisfactory estimate made, of the changes,
vicissitudes, and contradictions between the good and evil
of yesterday and to-day. Without it, every actual alteration
in existing institutions, every barest observation that the
same laws are not always and universally valid, gives rise
to a far-reaching and incurable scepticism as to the justifica-
tion of all institutions whatever. Human life fulfils itself
in many ways, and human nature adapts itself to its con-
ditions of time and place, so that an adequate philosophy
of life must be amenable to these Protean transformations,
and no philosophy of life will be adequate which finds its
salvation in a frigid rigidity and identifies every evolutionary
change with the arbitrary dominion of chance.
THE LAW OF CONTRAST. J I
And now at last we reach the doctrine of the coexistence
of contraries. Our poet-philosopher is never weary of its
statement and illustration. He tells us that " the dissonant
is in harmony with itself;" he assures us that "the
invisible harmony which springs from contraries is better
than the visible ; " and he states that " sickness has made
health desirable, satiety hunger, and weariness rest." Now
tvith oracular brevity, now with the clearness and breadth
:>f sunlight, Heraclitus pointed his lesson that the law of
:ontrast is supreme in nature no less than in human life,
and that " it would not be better for mankind if they were
jiven their desires ; " if, that is to say, all contraries were
iissolved in an unalloyed harmony. Homer himself is
Dlamed by Heraclitus as much for wishing to expel "all
the evils of life " as for desiring to be rid of " strife from
:he circle of gods and men," and thus promoting " the down-
"all of the universe." The pithy dicta we have quoted
-equire or admit of countless explanations. They express
mplicitly or explicitly a long series of modern concep-
:ions. They contain all that we denominate in the widest
sense of the word "polarity" in the realm of natural
orces ; they contain the necessity of change for the opera-
:ion of sensation, and especially of pleasurable sensa-
:ions ; they include the condition of the opposite evil in
svery conception of good ; they include the indispensa-
Dility of competition and of what we have learnt to call
:he " struggle for existence," if human powers are to
develop and increase ; and among much else they comprise
:he necessity of the coexistence of antagonistic elements
n state and society. And our philosopher's eye is ever
jlancing from the inanimate to the animate, from animate
;o inanimate creation. Or rather, the distinction was non-
existent for him. To his eye the whole world was
eternally living fire, and the soul, the vehicle of life, nay,
:he godhead itself, were fire and nothing but fire.
The hardest point in our inquiry is to credit Heraclitus
tfith the sociological insight to which allusion was just
now made ; but precisely in this regard the wording of one
Df his dicta is absolutely unequivocal. He entitles war
72 GREEK THINKERS.
"the father and king" of all things or beings. Now, if
the fragment had broken off here, no one would think of
understanding it in any but its purely physical and cosmo-
logical sense. On all sides the eye of the philosopher of
Ephesus discovered the play of opposite forces and qualities,
which reciprocally promoted and conditioned one another.
He conceived a law of polarity encompassing the whole of
life and comprising all separate laws in itself. Rest
without struggle led in his conception to universal sleep,
coma, and destruction ; " the mixture," he wrote, " which
Is not shaken becomes decomposed." The principle of
struggle and strife is at the bottom of that incessant motion
which is the source and preservative of life ; and its
qualities as progenitor, ruler, and guardian are characterized
by the titles "father and king." Formerly one might
have stopped at this point, but now we are enabled
to go further, since a lucky discovery made about forty
years ago has put us in possession of the continuation of
the fragment. " Some," it goes on, " war has proved to
be gods, others to be men ; some he has made slaves,
others he has made freemen." The slaves are the prisoners
of war and their descendants ; their conquerors and rulers
are the freemen. Thus it is clear, from the drift of
Heraclitus' argument, that he conceived war as testing and
preserving the qualities of mankind, as making a distinction
between the competent and the incompetent, as founding
the state and organizing society. He praises war for
bringing this differential value to full expression, and we
perceive what significance he attached to it by his co-ordi-
nation of gods and men with the categories of slaves and
freemen. For war too effected the division between the
human and divine : the man become god stood to the
average man in the same relation as the freeman to the
slave, and Heraclitus imagined that there were chosen
spirits exalted from earthly life to divine being, besides
the crowd of common souls hidden in the under-world and
limited in that region of damp and misery to the single
sense of smell in the place of the higher perceptions. He
conceive'd a ladder of beings with different rungs of rank,
HERACLITUS' SOCIOLOGY. 73
different merits, different abilities, different excellences.
He referred the succession of rank to a gradation of merit,
and then inquired into its causes. These he discovered in
the friction of forces which sometimes manifested itself as
war in the strictest sense of that term, and sometimes as a
kind of more or less metaphorical warfare. Such shades
of meaning provided the requisite links between the
cosmological and sociological significance of the phrase.
Still, too much stress ought not to be laid on the use
of metap&orical language. We have to allow for the
degeneracy of his Ionian kinsfolk, whom Xenophanes
was already castigating for their effeminate luxury; we
have to reckon with the indolence of his fellow-citizens,
against which Callinus was protesting, and with the heavy
misfortunes which his country was suffering, before we can
fully appreciate his estimation of the virtues of war. " The
fallen in war," he exclaims, "are honoured by gods and
men, and the greater the fall the louder the psean " of
honour and admiration. But for the thinker whose strength
lay in his genius for generalization, the most painful
experiences were merely a spur to the pursuit of his track
of thought. Its goal in this instance was no meaner object
than the triumphant realization of the truth that struggle
and resistance are a fundamental condition of the preser-
vation of human power on its road to progressive perfection.
However deep and numerous the truths may be which
Heraclitus has taught us hitherto, the greatest surprise is
yet in store for us. He pursued his observations of nature
and human life through the series of single rules which he
noted to one all-embracing rule. His eye perceived a
universal law in strict unexceptional operation. And his
recognition and proclamation of the universal rule of law,
of the dominion of unexceptional causality, marks a
distinct turning-point in the intellectual development of
mankind. We may quote in this connection the following
dicta of Heraclitus : —
" The sun will not transgress his measures : were he to do so,
the Erinyes, abettors of Justice, would overtake him.
74 GREEK THINKERS.
" He who speaks with, understanding must take his foothold
on what is common to all, even more firmly than the city stands
on the foothold of law; for all human laws are nourished by
divine law. '
" Though this logos — this fundamental law — existeth from all
time, yet mankind are unaware of it, both ere they hear it and in
the moment that they hear it,"
If we were asked how Heraclitus succeeded in climb-
ing to these heights of knowledge, a provisional answer
might be given that he was here summarizing tendencies
which pervaded the spirit of his age. It was an age when
man's acquaintance with nature had been extended, and
his moral aspirations enlarged to a degree which could
not rest satisfied with an explanation of the world based on
the capricious and arbitrary interference of supernatural
beings. The progressive exaltation of the supreme god —
the god of heaven — kept pace with his moral refinement ;
the attempt was constantly renewed to derive the many-
coloured multiplicity of objects from a single material
source, and in these phenomena we may mark the growing
belief in the uniformity of the universe and in the unity
of its rule. The road was open for the pursuit of all-
comprehensive laws, and its pilgrims submitted to more
and more stringent conditions. The astronomers had
been the first to lay the foundations of exact natural
science, and these had speedily been followed by the
mathematical physicists, among whom Pythagoras takes
the foremost place. We can hardly conceive the impres-
sion that must have been produced when Pythagoras
announced the results of his experiments in acoustics.
Sound, the most volatile of phenomena, had been im-
prisoned by number and measure, and had passed under
their yoke; and what, men asked themselves, would in
future be able to resist those tyrants ? The cry spread
from Lower Italy through Greece, " number is the essence
of things," It is perfectly plain that the Ephesian
philosopher did not shut himself off from these influences.
The ideas of harmony, of contrast, and especially of
measure, are prominent features in his speculations, a
UNIVERSAL LAW. 75
large part of which may indisputably be referred to
Pythagoras, and a minor part to the influence of Anaxi-
mander. Heraclitus was not cast for the r&le of an exact
investigator ; his passions were too free, he lacked the
requisite soberness, and he was too prone to seek satiety
in a debauch of metaphors ; but he was admirably suited
to be the herald of the new philosophy. In this respect,
as well as in his frequent injustice towards the actual
promoters of science, he may fairly be compared with
Francis Bacon, between whom and himself less convincing
points of likeness have recently been remarked. But the
power of Heraclitus was not confined to his force of language
and his talent for plastic expression. The explanations he
vouchsafed in single instances may have been childish to a
degree ; he may have written that " the drunken man is led
by a beardless boy and stumbles because his soul is wet," or
that "a dry soul is the wisest and best;" but he was
marked in an extraordinary degree by a genius for identity,
for distinguishing likenesses under the most illusory dis-
guises. He possessed an almost unparalleled faculty for
pursuing views that he had obtained in a limited and special
field through the whole perspective of life and through the
twofold vista of the natural and spiritual worlds. We
have already seen that he had no need of constructing a
bridge between nature and spirit ; for him and his imme-
diate predecessors the gulf no longer existed. And in
this respect he was considerably assisted by his choice of
a primary matter. This world was built of fire, or "soul-
stufif," and starting from this assumption he was completely
at liberty to extend his generalizations from any and
every department of nature to the phenomena of soul
and the political and social phenomena that proceed from
them. To this we owe his comprehensive collection of
generalizations, the pinnacle of which was reached in the
recognition of universal law at the root of all mundane
occurrences.
We have now to remark the particular impulse depend-
ing on Heraclitus' theory of flux, together with his very
imperfect theory of matter, which impelled him to climb
7 6 GREEK THINKERS.
that summit and to proclaim with all the emphasis at his
disposal that the highest goal of knowledge was the one
law regulating all events. Otherwise he must have appre-
hended that no object of trustworthy knowledge would
have been left extant, and the reproach unjustly levelled
at him by Aristotle would have appeared to be thoroughly
merited. But this was now out of court. Universal law
stood unmoved and unshaken through all the changes of
individual objects and all the vicissitudes of material
forms, in defiance of the destruction on which the cosmic
system hastened at regular intervals, and from which it
was reconstructed anew ; and under the vague mystic
description of universal reason or universal godhead it
took its place by the side of primary matter, endowing
it with reason and soul, as the one thing permanent in
the cyclic stream of occurrences, without beginning and
without end. To recognize universal law or reason
was the highest function of intellect ; to bow to it and to
obey it was the ultimate test of conduct. Obstinacy
and self-will were the embodiments of falsehood and evil,
which were fundamentally one. "Self-conceit" was com-
pared with "epilepsy," one of the most terrible diseases
that can befall mankind, and one which throughout
antiquity was looked on as sent by demons. " Insolence,"
again, "must be extinguished like a conflagration."
" Wisdom consists in this alone, to understand reason (or
universal intelligence), which steers all things through
all." It was by no means easy to satisfy this condition,
for truth was paradoxical. " Nature," wrote the philosopher,
"loves to hide herself, and escapes detection by her in-
credibility." But the patient inquirer must use his best
efforts, must keep his cheerful courage at the sticking-
place, and be constantly equal to surprises, for "if ye
expect not the unexpected, ye shall not find truth, seeing
that it is hard to discern and not readily accessible."
Again, we read that "we must not speculate about the
highest things in lightness of heart," we must not be
governed by caprice, for "punishment will overtake the
lie-smith and the false witness," Human institutions
ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES. 77
were limited in duration and extent by their agreement
with divine law, which " ruleth as far as it listeth, sufficeth
for all, and overcometh all things." But within those
limits the law shall prevail, which "the people shall
defend like a rampart." But law was by no means the
arbitrary whim of the many-headed unreasoning mob ;
it was rather the insight and frequently uthe counsel of
one man," to whom " obedience was due " on account of
his superior wisdom.
Heraclitus exerted on posterity a curiously two-edged
influence, and as an historical factor he reveals the same
double aspect which is shown by natural objects in his
theory. He became the head and fount, not merely of
religious and conservative tendencies, but also of scepticism
and revolution. If we may echo his own cry, he was and
he was not a bulwark of conservatism, he was and he
was not the champion of revolt. Still it was in accord-
ance with his idiosyncrasy that the weight of his influence
should have leaned to the side of defence. Within the
school of the Stoics, his tendency was precisely opposed
to the radical tendency of the Cynics. His views on
the subordination of all occurrences to fixed laws were
responsible for the strict and implacable determinism of the
Stoics, which was liable in all but the clearest brains to
pass into fatalism. From those views were derived the
quality of resignation, not to say of quietism, which we
meet as early as Cleanthes, and the willing submission to
the dispensations of destiny of which Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius were the apostles. Heraclitus, too, is the first to
introduce us to the Stoic manner of moulding and adapting
philosophy to the requirements of popular belief. Similarly
we" niay recall Hegel, his disciple in modern times, the
author of the "philosophy of restoration," of the meta-
physical glorification of tradition in church and state, and
of the famous dictum, "the real is reasonable, and the
reasonable is real." Yet the Neo-Hegelian radicalism, too,
as is shown by the example of Lassalle, is also closely
akin to Heraclitus. And for the most striking parallel,
the exactest counterpart to the Ephesian which modern
78 A GREEK THINKERS.
&.
philosophy has produced, we must refer to the great
revolutionary spirit of Proudhon. In separate and highly
characteristic doctrines they are as alike as two peas, and
Proudhon's mental habits and his consequent love of
paradox remind us most vividly of Heraclitus.
The key to the contradiction is not far to seek. The
innermost essence of Heraclitism was its insight into the
many-sidedness of things, and the breadth of its intellectual
horizon as opposed to every kind of narrow-mindedness.
The habit and capacity of broad views tend to reconcile
us to the imperfectness of nature and the hardship of
history. Frequently they help us to perceive the remedy
beside the disease, the antidote beside the poison. They
teach us to discern the deep inner harmony in apparent
conflict, and to discover in what is ugly and hurtful inevitable
bridges and stepping-stones to the beautiful and wholesome.
Thus they lead to an indulgent judgment of the universe
in its natural and historical aspects, and pave the way for
" theodicies " and for attempts to redeem the character of
single individuals as well as of entire epochs. They foster
the historical sense, and are akin to movements of religious
optimism. Such tendencies, indeed, were actually strength-
ened by the revival of Heraclitism that took place in the
age of Romance. But the same capacity and habit of
mind produce a contrary effect. They are inimical to
authority in that they forbid the formation of one-sided
judgments. Dogmatism in laws and institutions is entirely
incompatible with a high-strung versatility and flexibility
of thought. A moment's reflection will make this clear.
Heraclitus assumed a state of universal flux. Each single
phenomenon in his theory was a link in the chain of
causality, a transitory phase of evolution, and it would
obviously have been impossible for him to bend the knee
to an isolated product of the incessant series of trans-
formations, as though it were eternal and immune.
We may justly assert that Heraclitism is conservative,
since it discerns the positive side in things negative ; it is
revolutionary, since it descries the negative side in things
positive. It recognizes nothing absolute either in good or
DUALITY OF HERACLITISM; Jg
in evil ; therefore there is nothing that it unconditionally
rejects, nothing, too, that it unconditionally accepts. This
habit of relative judgments brings historical justice in its
train, but it prevents the acquiescence in any state of things
as final. The doctrines of Heraclitus have been fruitful
even till our own times, but from these recent manifestations
of his influence we must revert to its sources. The names
of Pythagoras and Xenophanes have occurred more than
once in our mention of the men who exerted an influence
on Heraclitus, and Pythagoras and Xenophanes themselves
were not without their precursors. The vivid intellectual
life of these centuries flowed in so many streams parallel
or partly identical with one another, that it is hardly
possible to keep our eyes fixed on one without temporarily
losing sight of others which are of no less importance.
Hence we may fitly sound a retreat at this point, and
pick up what we may have neglected too long.
80 GREEK THINKERS*
CHAPTER II.
ORPHIC SYSTEMS OF COSMOGONY,
I. MUST it be said that the courtly epic poetry, with its
enlightened traits, with its delight — at times its frivolous
delight — in the pleasures of this world, brought about a kind
of reaction, or was it merely that, as the lower classes rose
to power and prosperity, their views of life — the views of
the bourgeois and the peasant — usurped the determining
place? Be that as it may, the religion and morality of
post-Homeric Greece wear a thoroughly altered aspect.
Solemn, gloomy, and dismal features begin to predominate.
We hear for the first time of the expiation of murder, the
worship of souls, and the sacrifices to the dead, or where
such customs were formerly the exception they now
become the rule. The many essential points of likeness
between these observances and opinions and those
which obtained among kindred peoples, especially among
the nations of Italy, as the most closely allied to the
Greeks, show us that we are not dealing with wholly
new ideas, but rather, to a considerable extent at least,
with the revival or the first visible appearance of an
immemorial tradition. There is one reservation to be
made. The doctrine of immortality undoubtedly under-
went a progressive transformation, and its serious influence
on the development of Greek speculation compels us to
discuss it at greater length.
Men's thoughts have always been busy with images
of the next world, though the shapes and colours it
assumes vary with national moods and circumstances. At
VIEWS OF THE NEXT WORLD. 8 1
first the future would be conceived as the mere continua-
tion of the present. The happy looked forward to it with
joy, the heavily-laden with fear. Princes and nobles
viewed the next world as a kind of limitless vista of the
pleasures of the chase and the table ; serfs and slaves
discerned in it an unending chain of hard and exacting
duties. Still, the uncertainty which is inseparable from
the future, left an ample field for the tremors of anxiety
as well as for the flights of hope. For, if the wish is
father to the thought, care may be called its mother, and
their offspring show in varying proportions the features
of both their parents. If a man's lot on earth has been
running over with pleasure, he will readily conceive the
future as a pale and shadowy reflection of his mortal
experience ; if such experience has left him a wide
margin for wishes and longings, then fancy will dip her
brush in the rosy colours of hope ; finally, excess of
suffering, and the habit of sufferance it engenders, blunt
the edge of hope as well as that of desire, and imagina-
tion is left to exercise its skill on purely joyless pictures
of the future. And to outward conditions must be
added the differences of national temperament. But,
speaking generally, and confining our attention to the
factors already enumerated, the conception of the future
may be taken as resembling the actual present ; its
lights and shades will be distributed according to the
idiosyncrasies we have mentioned. Nevertheless, it is not
hard to conjecture at what points in the course of time
imagination will have burst those bonds. The key to the
departure is to be sought in that theory of the next world
which may be described in one word as the retributive. It
is a doctrine which rested in the first instance on the fact
of common observation that a man's moral and mental
qualities determine to a great extent his lot. Power and
fortune in this life are apt to favour the brave, the strong,
the circumspect, the resolute; and hence, by an obvious
inference, or by the mere association of ideas, he expects
the same fate to attend him in the life to come. Another
factor must be looked for in the likes and dislikes of the
VOL. X. Q.
82 GREEK THINKERS.
gods. Clearly the favourites of the gods, and especially
their descendants, must preserve in the next world the
advantages gained in this over persons bound by no such
tie to the rulers of human destiny. And if prayer and
sacrifice can win the good-will of heaven, there is plainly
no reason to suppose that the liking thus bestowed will
lose its efficacy under the conditions of future existence.
This, then, is the sum of the matter. As state and society
grow, the mighty forces of nature acquire a moral signi-
ficance; they are ranged with the family gods as the
guardians and defenders of human laws and institutions,
and this process gives rise to the thought — though it ripens
but late and slowly — that the sceptre of heavenly justice
is bound by no earthly confines, but that even beyond
the limits of this life it is strong to pursue and overtake
with the reward of righteousness and the punishment
of wrongdoing.
In reviewing the development of Greece we are
confronted with some of these phases. An age or a
sphere of life drowned in immoderate passions and
drenched In incessant conflicts, affording ample employ-
ment for the complete scale of human sensibility, is as
ill-adapted for dreaming of futurity as for repining at the
days that are no more. The active and actual hour
absorbs the distant future no less than the distant past,
and Homer's heroes, in their rare intervals of repose when
war and fighting were laid aside, would beguile their
leisure by descriptions of battles and adventures — their
own, their ancestors', or their gods', whom they conceived
so completely in their own likeness. No one envied the
inhabitants of Hades their nerveless, noiseless existence.
The warrior of Troy asked nothing better than to walk in
the light of the sun. Achilles would rather endure a poor
journeyman's humble lot on earth than reign as a monarch
among the shades. Even if one of the warriors should
be exalted by the gods to a share in heavenly bliss, such
a distinction was a purely personal affair ; it was not the
reward of glorious action, nor was its recipient therefore
superior to any of his less-favoured fellows, The instance
BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 83
of Menelaus is a case in point. It was otherwise in
Hesiod's time, or rather in the classes of people to whom
his writings were addressed. These were confronted with
a gloomy present, and imagination was bound to supply
the missing happiness and brightness by embellishing the
past as well as the future. They fondly looked back at
a long-vanished " Golden Age ; " the gradual deterioration
of man's lot on earth was stated by them as a fact, and it
became a problem whose solution was a constant puzzle
to the thoughtful. The state of the souls after death
was frequently taken as glorified. The dead were often
promoted to spirits who watched over the destinies of the
living. The " Elysian Fields " and the " Fortunate Islands "
began to fill with inhabitants. But with all this there
was no dogmatic precision ; the whole range of these ideas
was vague, vacillating, misty, and it remained so for some
time. Homer, it is true, shows traces of a germ of the
retributive doctrine, in the torments of hell that overtook
certain irrepressible wrongdoers and " enemies of the gods ; "
but many centuries were still to elapse before the seed
came to flower. Tantalus and Sisyphus in agony are
succeeded by Ixion and Thamyras ; but apart from the
penalties exacted in Tartarus for exceptional insolence
against the gods, the average lot of humanity in the next
world was still regarded as completely independent of
moral feelings and deserts. And above all, though the
radiance of eternity might be stained by many shafts
of colour, yet the state religion as the final expression
of the conscience of the ruling classes, took but slight
account of the belief in immortality. Antiquity — so far,
at least, as its public religious systems are a guide to its
thoughts and desires — was intent on this side of the
grave.
We have been speaking of the main current of
religious life. It should not be forgotten, however, that
cross-currents and under-currents were at work which
gradually gained in strength, though liable to temporary
shallows, till they grew to a mighty stream hollowing its
greedy course through the very heart of Hellenic religion.
84 GREEK THINKERS.
One feature was common to all. The worshippers of the
Mysteries and the disciples of Orphic Pythagoreanism
were moved alike by a heightened interest in the future
of the soul, based in the first instance on their disdain
for earthly life, and resting ultimately on the gloomy view
which they took of it.
2. The Orphic doctrines — called after Orpheus, the
legendary minstrel of Thrace, whose name was attributed
to all the sacred books of those sects — have come down
to us in various recensions widely differing in parts from
one another. Our fullest source of information dates
from the evening of antiquity when Plato's latest heirs,
the so-called Neo-Platonists, were delighted to revert to
teachings so acceptable and congenial to their own. They
introduced in their writings frequent references to the
Orphic poems, and quoted directly from them. Now,
when we remember that the Orphic doctrine is not a
homogeneous whole, but is the compilation of diverse
hands in various epochs of history, it is not surprising
that the evidence of these late witnesses should have been
received with suspicious scrutiny. It would appear at
first sight a sound principle of criticism to discredit all
evidence of this kind except for the age of its origin.
But some of the most recent discoveries have afforded a
striking proof of the will-o'-the-wisp character of such
critical lights. In the tombs of Lower Italy, for example,
dating from the third century B.C., which have lately been
opened, gold plates have been found inscribed with Orphic
verses formerly known to us merely by a reference in
Proclus, a Neo-Platonist of the fifth century A.D. Thus
seven hundred years were added at a stroke to their
presumptive antiquity. Similarly Phanes, one of the
most important figures of Orphic worship, was vouched
for by no writer earlier than the Augustan historian
Diodorus, till we found his name invoked on another of
these tablets of Thurii. Criticism has thus been exposed
as hypercriticism in these instances, and the excess of
cautious foresight as a defect of sound insight. It is
wiser on the whole to allow a fair margin for errors in
PHERECYDES OF SYROS. 85
detail than to shut out the view into the inter-connection
of these doctrines by the obstructive use of the principle
— not wholly unreasonable in itself — which would limit
the validity of each piece of evidence to the age to which
it indubitably belongs. The new criticism, too, has tried
to compensate for the absence of direct testimony by
carefully sorting and comparing such hints and allusions
as occur.
Let us first try to focus the intellectual endowment of
the men whom Aristotle calls the " theologians," and whom
we may perhaps describe as the right wing of the oldest
group of Greek thinkers. Their mind was less scientific
than that of the " physiologists." They made a far keener
demand for a vivid representation of the origin and develop-
ment of the world. The common mythology of the
Hellenes did not fully satisfy them, partly because it was
at variance with their standard of morality, partly because
it answered the questions of cause and descent in too
vague or too crude a fashion. Still, their original specu-
lations were quite rudimentaiy. But they could not remain
so. The demand for mythological completeness was still
too strong to be neglected. The blank spaces had to
be filled up, and they were filled up by traditions from
other sources. There was an eager hunt for such adjuncts,
and where were they more likely to be found than in
isolated local legends, in the records of foreign peoples,
and especially in those of nations with a halo of imme-
morial civilization ? These three elements — original cos-
mogonic speculation, the local legends of Greece, and
the complementary traditions of foreign people — would
constitute the threads on which the new learning was
strung. That such was really the fact may be gathered
from a glance at the contents, and above all at the character,
of the Orphic and allied doctrines. The admixture is clearly
seen in the theory of origin propounded by Pherecydes
of Syros. We place him at the head, not by any means
because he is the oldest, but because he is the first repre-
sentative of this movement whose date can be fixed with
well-nigh absolute certainty, About the middle of the
86 GREEK THINKERS.
sixth century B.C., he published a prose composition
under the title of Pentemychos, out of which some
verbatim quotations have come down to our times. He
was influenced by older co-religionists, one of whom, the
poet Onomacritus, is known to us by name. He lived at
the court of Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, where he founded
an Orphic community, though how far he was the disciple
and prophet of the Orphic doctrines we are hardly able
to say. Pherecydes was further devoted to astronomical
research. He probably borrowed the principles of the
science from Babylon, and his observatory was for a long
time one of the sights which were shown to visitors to
Syros. As a philosopher, then, he recognized three pri-
mordial beings — Chronos, or the Time-principle; Zeus,
whom he called Zas ; and Chthonie, the goddess of earth.
The variant " Zas " was doubtless connected with that
signification of the name which we have already met in
Heraclitus, and which sought to represent the chief of
the gods as the highest principle of life. From the seed
of Chronos sprang " Fire, Air, and Water," and from
these again "many generations of the gods." In later
and therefore possibly contaminated traditions "we come
across two more elements under the names of "Smoke"
and " Darkness ; " and thus the quintett of first principles
alluded to in the title of Pherecydes* work is completed.
Each was originally supposed to inhabit a separate region
of the world. But a battle of the gods broke out in which
Ophioneus, the serpent-god, and his followers attacked
Chronos and his attendant deities. The struggle closed
with the disappearance of one set of combatants in the
sea, which figures in Pherecydes as " Ogenos," presumably
a Babylonian name corresponding to the Greek Okeanos.
Some further features of his cosmology may be noted.
Zas, or Zeus, is transformed as the creator of the world
into the Love-god Eros; next he fashions "a mighty
and beautiful garment wherein are inwrought the pictures
of Earth and Ogenos and his habitations," and this garment
he spreads over "the winged oak;" lastly, "beneath the
Earth is the region of Tartarus guarded by the Harpies
HIS COSMOGONY. 87
and Thyella, the daughters of Boreas, whither a god who
sins by overweening pride is ever hurled by Zas." Add
to this that Chthonie changes her name to Ge "after Zas
had given her the earth as her portion," and that Rhea
the mother of the gods is called Rhe, perhaps to counter-
balance Ge, and our account of Pherecydes* teachings about
the gods and the world is complete as far as we know it.
It is a wonderful mixture of a little science, a bit of
allegory, and a lump of mythology. Let us try to find
our bearings in the maze of speculation. Our thinker is
at one with the "physiologists" in his recognition of first
principles dating from eternity, and in his endeavour to
derive the manifold forms of the material world from a
few fundamental elements. Another and very characteristic
point of agreement is this, that he represents the bulk of
the minor gods as proceeding from those material elements.
But he parts company from them in the following details :
He does not go as far as the " physiologists " in the
reduction of matter, so as to recognize a single funda-
mental element. If we understand him correctly, he does
not even refer to air as an independent element. But,
above all, his elements are not primeval. Primary beings
take their place in that respect, and are not conceived as
coarsely material. From them the material elements are
supposed to spring. This mode of origin is specified
merely of the three elements operating in the upper
world. Still, the parallelism in his account seems to
warrant the assumption that the two materials belonging
to the region of Darkness — our acquaintance with which
is solely due to chance references in S. Augustine — are
likewise to be traced to the serpent-god presiding in the
under-world. It is tempting to speak in this connection
of the middle place taken by our " theologian " between
Hesiod on the one side and the nature-philosophers on
the other. But this would not be an exhaustive account
of the matter. The chief parts in the " Theogony " — apart
from certain divine principles — are sustained by natural
agents conceived as possessing souls, such as the "broad-
bosomed Earth," the "wide heaven," and many others.
88 GREEK THINKERS.
In the instance of Pherecydes, it is no longer legitimate to
speak of natural fetishes. Zas and Chronos appear rather
as spiritual beings, and Chthonie is expressly distinguished
from " Earth," whose name the goddess does not bear till
she has received the material earth from the hands of Zas.
We may imagine Pherecydes stating, "The earth-spirit
precedes the earth and is joined later with the earth as the
soul is with the body." Here there is foreshadowed a
mode of thought which has no little bearing on the
conception of body and soul, characteristic of the
Orphics, strictly so called, as well as of Pherecydes
himself.
We have noted the statement that a battle of the gods
preceded the final disposition of the world, and we meet it
so frequently in Greek and non-Greek mythologies alike,
that it is not surprising to find it again in Pherecydes. A
twofold consideration probably lies at the root of this wide-
spread belief, and its obvious connection with the thought
of primitive man makes it not lun worthy of mention. He
could hardly have looked on the rule of law as an imme-
morial fact, for he ascribed to the powers whom he postu-
lated behind the visible world a will and passions as strong
and as unbridled as belonged to the superior members of
human society — the sole society which he knew, and which
was far removed from discipline and law. And if, thus,
primitive man must have held that the regularity which he
observed in natural phenomena was the arbitrary law imposed
by the victors on the vanquished, this presumption would
be strengthened by the fact that the most powerful factors
in nature are, comparatively speaking, but seldom in the
exercise of their full force. Earthquakes, tempests, and
active volcanoes form but rare and short interruptions of the
prevalent peace of nature. This state of things, men would
argue, could not have dated from everlasting. The terrible
powers inimical to man must at one time have reigned
unmolested. Yet mightier powers must then have engaged
them in conflict, and their ultimate defeat in that struggle
would account for the restricted limits of their sway. The
more closely we examine the features of the battle of the
EARLIEST OF THE ECLECTICS. 89
gods according to the version of Pherecydes, the more we
are reminded in many details of Babylonian cosmology.
Eminent scholars, indeed, incline to the theory of plagiar-
ism. Further, when Zas transforms himself into the god
of love to assist his creation of the world, we have not far
to look to discover the source of this legend. Hesiod has
already familiarized us with the thought borrowed from
organic life and extended by a process of generalization,
that it is the procreative instinct alone which unites con-
genial elements and warrants the continuity of existing
orders and races. And the Hesiodic account is set in such
rigid lines that we perceive that the theory must have
flourished long before he adopted it. We must probably
look to the worship of the love-god in some ancient sanctu-
aries— that of Thespise in Bceotia, for instance — for the
home of the mythical speculation touching the "love that
built the world." And, finally, we may fairly conjecture that
the garment spread by Zas over the winged oak was merely
a pictorial expression of the belief that the kernel or
framework of earth was adorned by this first principle of
life with the beauty that it now wears. Moreover, there
is considerable plausibility in the recent conjecture that
Pherecydes attributed wings to the framework of earth
because he had rejected the disc-and-basin theory of earth
which Thales maintained in favour of Anaximander's con-
ception of the earth floating freely in space. Lastly, it is
not so much the detailed doctrines of the " theologian " of
Syros that vex our understanding as the habit of mind
from which they directly sprang, and which wavered so
strangely between science and myth. We have no reason
to question the earnest enthusiasm by which Pherecydes
was inspired, nor is his memory sullied by any trace of
miracle- mongery. Accordingly, the problem he presents
is difficult to solve. He offers a minute description of the
origin of the gods and the world, and yet he was no poet ;
he assumes the confidence of the orthodox believer, and
yet he was a stranger to the " fine frenzy " of inspiration
in which the secrets of the universe are revealed. We at
least can suggest no other solution of the riddle than
90 GREEK THINKERS.
that alluded to above. Pherecydes may have owed some
features of his doctrine, especially in his theory of the
elements, to his own speculative thought ; some other
features, as we have seen, he borrowed from the researches
of his predecessors ; but the brilliant picture as a whole
cannot have been composed by either of these methods.
It was indebted to native and foreign traditions alike.
The philosopher believed them because they agreed in
principle with his own conclusions, and on that account he
turned, changed, and fused them with a licence which he
himself failed to realize. Nothing is at once so difficult
and so indispensable to our task as to frame a conception
of the imperfect state of criticism at that day. Many
separate legends it did away with altogether. Others which
rested on precisely the same foundation it adopted with
complete faith, so that its attitude towards tradition in
general, so far from being systematic, was of the kind
which naively expected to discover a key to the deepest
secrets of the universe in the names and fables of individual
gods. Pherecydes, then, may be regarded as one of the
earliest representatives of that half-critical, half-credulous
eclecticism which serves to typify so many thinkers of
other peoples and times.
3. The life and teaching of the founder of the Orphic
sect were subject to the same disadvantage which we meet
in other religious communities. Diverse and contradic-
tory reports accompanied or succeeded one another. In
our opinion it would be wholly as illegitimate to speak
of "forgery" or "apocryphal" writings in this connection
as in that of the second covenant of Moses in the Old
Testament, or of the doctrine of the Logos in the New.
Thus the Orphic theory of cosmogony appears in various
recensions whose consecution in time it is impossible to
fix with certainty. And we may even assume that several
of them were current at the same time without supposing
that their readers were more repelled by the contradictions
they contained than the students of other holy writings.
Four such versions or fragments of them have come down
to our time, (i) We owe one of these versions to Eudemus,
THE ORPHIC COSMOGONIES. 9!
the historian of science and disciple of Aristotle. Unfortu-
nately, his account has dwindled down to little more than
the bare mention that Night in Pherecydes was the supreme
primary being. The conception is interesting as reminding
us of the Homeric verse which relates how Zeus was re-
frained from acting contrary to Night, where we see the faint
gleam of the belief that Night was superior even to the father
of the gods. The Maoris, too, recognize " a first mother,
Night," and the doctrine comes to frequent expression in
the cosmogony of the Greeks themselves. It plays the chief
part in the legendary Musaeus no less than in Epimenides
the seer, in Acusilaus the fabulist, as well as in a fourth
writer whose name is unknown. (2) We need hardly
mention the second version, which consists of a dozen
verses describing the origin of the world put by Apollonius,
the Alexandrian poet, in his " Argonautica " into the mouth
of Orpheus. For while it makes no claim to historical
value, its contents would wholly disqualify it from making
good such a claim. The principle of "Discord," which
here divides the four elements, is taken, with the elements
themselves, from the young nature-philosopher Empedocles.
Next the battle of the gods is described in partial agree-
ment with Pherecydes, and the slight departures that are
made do not create an impression of any greater faithfulness
to tradition. Pherecydes, for instance, makes Ophioneus and
Chronos fight for the mastery and gives the upper world to
the victor and the under world to the vanquished as their
habitation and empire. In Apollonius, however, we find
Ophioneus in possession of Olympus, and as serpent-beings
belong by nature and accordingly by myth to the region
of earth, we cannot but recognize here a further divagation
from the original form of the legend, and an artificial
continuation of it. (3) Nor need the third version delay
us long. It is expressly stated by its authorities to be
opposed to the current Orphic doctrine, and its distinctive
features, which rest on the evidence of Hieronymus and
Hellanicus, witnesses of doubtful date and personality, are
by no means such as to warrant a respectable antiquity. (4) It
is completely otherwise with the fourth and last version of
92 GREEK THINKERS.
Orphic theogony and cosmogony, which was formerly con-
tained in the so-called " Rhapsodies." Modern scholarship,
following the masterly lead of Christian August Lobeck, has
found clear evidence that it was known to the poets and
thinkers of the sixth century B.C., and was employed by them ;
and the arguments hitherto and still levelled against this
claim to antiquity have been shown to be completely in-
valid. This controversy involves some important questions
of principle, and we cannot altogether avoid it. First, how-
ever, we should enumerate the chief contents of this theory
of cosmogony. As in Pherecydes, Chronos or the Time-
principle stands once more at its head. It existed from
eternity, whereas Light-stuff or Fire-Stuff, under the name
of ^Ether, and the "huge gulf" under the name of Chaos,
came next into existence. Then " mighty Chronos " formed
" a silver egg " out of ^Ether and Chaos with its contents
of "dark mist" From the "egg" sprang the first-born
of the gods, who is variously known as Phanes the shining
one, Eros the love-god, Metis or counsel, and Ericapaeus,
a name which has not yet been interpreted. As the reposi-
tory of all the seeds of being, Phanes was at once male and
female, and produced spontaneously Night and Echidna, a
horrible serpent-deity, and with Night Uranus and Gaia,
heaven and earth, the progenitors of the "secondary race"
of the gods. We shall not dwell on the Titans, Giants,
Moirse, and the Hecatonchires, for the account given of
them in the Orphic theogony differs hardly at all from
that of Hesiod. Further, Chronos and Rhea belong to the
secondary generation of gods. But their son "Zeus, at
once head and centre and author of all things," " Zeus the
cause of the earth and of the star-sown heaven," swallows
Phanes, and thus becomes the universal progenitor in his
turn, and the father of the third and youngest race of the
gods and of the whole visible world.
We have now to try to master the fundamental principle
of this theory, to acquaint ourselves with its peculiar
characteristics, to discover as far as possible its historical
sources, and thus to contribute our share to the solu-
tion of the problem mentioned above, The impression
FUNDAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 93
forces itself on our belief that the separate parts of this
cosmogony are not fully homogeneous, but have been
gradually fused into a complete whole. For it seems,
if not in actual contradiction, at least alien to the nature
of myths that ^Ether, the element of light and fire, should
appear at an earlier stage of the cosmic process than
Phanes, whose name signifies "shining," and who is
represented as the first-born of the gods. Mythology
always aims at strong effects, and has no taste for anti-
climax. We are thus led to imagine that two streams of
speculative myth-making have here mingled their waters ;
the one would display more naturalistic features, and the
other would allow for the creative activity of proper god-
like beings. If we look for the actual thought which
found its mythical expression in the first part of that
cosmogony, we should cast it somewhat in this form :
As a plant unfolds and grows under the animating rays of
the sun, so "the world was formed in course of time out
of the matter floating darkly in space under the influence
of light and heat." A second and essentially different
thought may be expressed as follows: "A divine being
of light sprang, in order to create the world, out of the
original shapeless darkness." In the passages of Orphic
poetry where Phanes is designated as "the son of
resplendent ./Ether" we find a link between these two
views. Similarly, the fable of the world-egg would seem
no longer to confront us in its original form. It must
obviously have been first invented by some such argument
as this : The world is alive, and it must have had a
beginning. Its origin, continued the argument, must be
like that of a living being ; and then the round vault of
heaven reminded the authors of this argument of the
shape of an egg. Such an egg, they inferred, would once
have existed, and when it burst, its upper portion went to
form the dome of the sky, the lower part engendered the
earth and all that is therein. We are by no means com-
mitted to the belief that the transformation of the fable
of the' world-egg took place on the soil of Greece. It is,
indeed, a world-wide myth. It is found not merely
94 GREEK THINKERS.
among the Greeks, the Persians, and the Indians, but
these share it in common with Phoenicia, Babylon, and
with Egypt, where, indeed, it appears in precisely the
same form as in the Orphic cosmogony. We may quote,
for instance, the following Egyptian account of the creation
of the world : —
" In the beginning was neither heaven nor earth. The universe
was surrounded by thick darkness, and was filled with boundless
water [known to the Egyptians as Nun] which carried in its lap
the germs of male and female, or the beginnings of the future
world. The divine First Spirit, inseparable from the watery First
Matter, felt an impulse to create activity, and his word called the
world into life. . , . The first act of creation began with the
formation of an egg out of the elemental waters, and from the egg
went forth R§, the Daylight, the direct source of earthly life."
In another version — and it may not be useless to notice
the variations of the legend in the valley of the Nile —
it was the "god Ptah who, according to his worshippers,
turned the egg, from which the world issued, like a potter
on his wheel." It will unot have escaped the attentive
reader that in the male and female germs mentioned in
the Egyptian fable a parallel is found to the Light-god
of the Orphic legend who creates the world and whose
nature combines both male and female attributes. We
are yet more strongly reminded by the twofold nature of
Phanes of the epicene godheads who occur by no means
infrequently in the Babylonian Pantheon. Add to this
that, according to the unimpeachable testimony of Eudemus,
the Phoenician cosmogony reproduces the Time-principle
that stands at the head of our cosmogony, not to speak of
the Persian Avesta, where it appears as Zrvan Akarana or
boundless time, and our readers will have been suffi-
ciently familiarized with the thought that foreign traditions
exercised no inconsiderable influence on the origin of the
Orphic doctrine. The centre from which these lights radi-
ated may almost certainly be identified with the country
which was not merely one of the oldest homes, but practically
the cradle of human civilization ; it was the country ruled by
FOREIGN INFLUENCES. 95
Babylon and situated between the Euphrates and the Tigris.
In stating this conviction, we are prepared to encounter
opposition. We shall draw on our heads the bitter con-
tempt of many worthy antiquarians who would regard it
as derogatory to the Greeks to send them to school among
older civilized nations, and to assume them to have bor-
rowed thence the sources of their knowledge and belief.
But the narrow-minded obstinacy which would rigidly
isolate the Greeks and withdraw them from the influence
of other and older civilizations, cannot possibly be main-
tained in the face of the evidence which is constantly
presented with stronger and clearer force. To-day hardly
any one attempts to deny that the Greeks owe to the
Orient the elements of material civilization as well as the
beginnings of their art, though a score of years ago this pro-
position was disputed with equal confidence and vehemence.
The same views would be valid in the spheres of science and
religion if their acceptation had not been checked by the
hasty, partial, and unsystematic efforts of previous genera-
tions. But here, too, the opposition must finally be van-
quished. Though it is led by men as illustrious as Lobeck,
whom we have mentioned above, yet it must ultimately yield
to the unprejudiced and universal appreciation of historical
facts. At this point a question might be asked as to the
means by which religious and speculative views were trans-
ferred from the older nations to Greece, and the problem re-
calls a striking parallel from the literary history of mediaeval
Europe. Practically the entire fairy-lore of the Occident
is derived from India. No one disputes this assertion
to-day, but no one as yet can give a completely clear
account of the ways and means by which its journey was
accomplished. The Greeks, as we have seen, came at an
early time into frequent and intimate contact with foreign
peoples as soldiers and merchants, as adventurous seamen
and warlike settlers. They would meet in the camp, at
the bazaar, and in the caravanserai. They would exchange
ideas on the starlit decks of merchant vessels or in the
intimate darkness of the nuptial chamber when a Greek
settler took a native as his bride, and it is likely enough
96 GREEK THINKERS.
that their confidences on such occasions would have ranged
from earth to heaven. Other circumstances, too, contributed
to the welcome extended to foreign doctrines of religion.
From them the Greek had already borrowed several of his
gods and heroes, such as the Semitic Astoreth (Afthoret or
Aphrodite), and Adonis her lover, and later the Thracian
Bendis and the Phrygian Cybele ; and as his ancient native
traditions failed more and more to satisfy his increasing
curiosity and thirst for knowledge, foreign sources would be
drawn on more freely in an age of acute intellectual vigour
and progress. Moreover, national pride was no great op-
posing force* The Greeks were always ready to recognize
their own gods in those of other nations, and to reconcile
contradictions between native and foreign traditions by their
nimble and pliant genius for adaptation. This process,
which was developed to a remarkable degree, is admirably
illustrated by many amusing instances in Herodotus. To
revert to Babylon and its central and important position
in the history of religion, the striking results of modern
research may be summarized quite briefly. A few years
ago the present writer was desirous of establishing the
possibility of the transference of religious doctrines from
Mesopotamia to Egypt. To that end he was at pains to
collect a mass of evidence directed to prove the early and
active intercourse of the inhabitants of both countries.
This evidence may now be cheerfully committed to the
waste-paper basket, since it has been more than confirmed
by the splendid .discoveries of a yet later date. I refer to
the cuneiform archive found at El-Amarna in Egypt, which
contains a diplomatic correspondence between the monarchs
of both empires written about fifteen hundred years B.C.
Nor is its interest exhausted by its contents. In conjunc-
tion with the latest finds at Lachish in Palestine, it shows
us that the language and writing of Babylon were a current
means of intercourse in wide regions of Western Asia ; that
they found exact scholars in Egypt itself; that, finally, to
the confusion of the incredulous, the Egyptians took suffi-
cient interest in the religious traditions of Babylon, to
transcribe some of them from the brick libraries of
PANTHEISTIC FEATURES. 97
Mesopotamian sanctuaries, where they had lain since hoary
antiquity. Further, to prove that India was likewise not
unaffected by the influence of that centre of civilization,
we may cite a single significant word which was borrowed
from Babylon. The term "Mine" as a token of weight
occurs in the hymns of the Rig- Veda. The lands of the
Euphrates and Tigris, and those of the Indus and Ganges,
stood of old in reciprocal relations of culture, and the
addition of important evidence to this effect will, we trust,
be presently published by an eminent authority.
But after this necessary digression, let us revert to our
subject. The swallowing of Phanes by Zeus is fashioned
on older precedents. Chronos, for instance, swallowed
his children, and Zeus again swallowed Metis, and Athene,
with whom she was pregnant, then sprang from his head.
But the use of this crude motive would appear to have
been governed by a desire to unite a congeries of myths
into a harmonious whole. At the root of it there obviously
lies an older pantheistic conception of the supreme god
bearing within him all "the force and seeds of life."
But now that the new cosmogony ascribed the generative
part to Phanes, or the god of light, some means had to be
found of rescuing that dignity from " the first-born of the
gods " on whom mythology had hastily bestowed it, and of
conferring it in turn on the last ruler of the world as the
final link in the long chain of the races of gods. A doubt,
entirely baseless in our opinion, has been thrown on the
antiquity of the Orphic doctrine on account of this pan-
theistic current. If we recall the uncompromisingly
pantheistic trend of the oldest nature-philosophers, or if
we remember that before the middle of the fifth century
^Eschylus ventured from the stage to address the assembled
people of Athens in verses like the following : —
" Zeus is the heaven, Zeus the earth, Zeus the air,
Zeus is the universe and all besides,"
we shall not hesitate to believe that this comparatively
tame pantheism flourished in the sixth or even in the
seventh century in the restricted circle of the Orphic con-
venticles. Considerable points of agreement no less than
VOL. L H
98 GREEK THINKERS.
of divergence result from a comparison of this theory as a
whole with that of Pherecydes. Chronos, ^Ether, and
Chaos correspond to Pherecydes' trinity of primary Beings —
Chronos, Zas, and Chthonie. Hesiod has already acquainted
us with Chaos and ^Ether, but their present place and
constitution have in some respects been changed. The
Hesiodic Either is but one of several beings of light ; it
ranks by no means as a favourite. Chaos, too, has altered
its nature. It is no longer merely the symbol of the gulf
yawning between the highest height and the lowest depth ;
it represents a " dark mist," a mass of unorganized matter
floating in that gulf. The Orphic ./Ether, or the light- and
fire-stuff, is probably the animating or vivifying element —
as opposed to the inanimate mass — which was refined and
clarified by Pherecydes to Zas, the divine principle of life.
Doubtless the same relation exists between Chaos and
Chthonie, the spirit or godhead of the earth. So far as a
definite statement can be made on so difficult a question,
it may be said that the doctrine which stands philoso-
phically halfway between Hesiod and Pherecydes belongs
to an intermediate date. This view is supported by the
observation that the Orphic theogony agrees with Hesiod
in attributing a temporal origin to ^Ether and Chaos,
whereas the thinker of Syros, in rare and almost unique
conformity with the " physiologists," ascribes ' eternal
existence to his three world-principles indifferently. But
the Orphic attempts at cosmology were at the best but
the work of children. Of far greater moment and con-
sequence were their psychological speculations. These are
connected with an entirely new conception of life. They
parted company With the old Hellenism, undermining the
beauty and harmony of the Greek view of life, and pre-
paring the way for its final overthrow. But at this point
the threads of the Orphic doctrine are so closely interwoven
with the threads of another and deeper intellectual move-
ment, that we cannot continue till we have considered this
course of evolution aud its great author.
( 99 )
CHAPTER III.
PYTHAGORAS AND HIS DISCIPLES.
" PYTHAGORAS, son of Mnesarchus, has practised research
and inquiry more than all other men, and has made up
his wisdom out of polymathy and out of bad arts." This
invective of Heraclitus and another quoted by us above,
comprise almost the sole contemporary testimony to the
life-work of a man whom an endless train of disciples has
lauded and admired to the utmost, and whom posterity has
honoured like a demi-god. Pythagoras was born at Samos,
an island famous at that time for its navigation, Its
industry and commerce, between 580 and 570 B.C. The
son of Mnesarchus a stonecutter, he was one of the most
original figures in Greece, and indeed in all the world.
As a mathematician of brilliant parts, as the founder of
acoustics and the guide in untrodden paths of astronomy,
as the author of a religious sect and of a brotherhood
which admits comparison with the orders of mediaeval
chivalry, as a man of science, a theologian, and a moral
reformer, Pythagoras commanded a kingdom of talents
of the most composite and sometimes of the least com-
patible kinds. It is hard to rescue the prototype from the
flood of tradition which increases in volume the further it
is removed from the source. No line from his own pen
has been preserved, and it seems well-nigh certain that he
did not avail himself of written communication, but relied
for his influence on his disciples on the power of the
spoken word and the speaking example.
According to one tradition, which is not completely
100 GREEK THINKERS.
vouched for, Pythagoras was the pupil of Pherecydes. It
appears to be beyond doubt that he was engaged in
distant journeys which late antiquity has exaggerated
into a kind of Odyssey, and the various elements of
culture which he collected in his travels formed the stones
of his brilliant house of learning. By no other means, we
may be confident, could he ever have satisfied his thirst
for knowledge in an age comparatively poor in literary
monuments, and in no other way could he have deserved
the eulogy implied in the gibe of the sage of Ephesus. It
would have been almost miraculous if the adept at
mathematics had failed to visit Egypt, the cradle of that
science, whither a century or two later a Democritus, a
Plato, and a Eudoxus turned their steps for the same
purpose. Moreover, it can scarcely be doubted that he
borrowed from the priesthood of Egypt all kinds of
practices that have ranked as distinctive features of his
foundation. Herodotus the historian, a trustworthy
witness in this instance, does not hesitate to speak of the
" Orphics and Bacchics " as " Pythagoreans and Egyptians/1
and he hints emphatically enough at the like origin of
another corner-stone of Pythagoreanism — the belief in the
transmigration of souls. Whether or not Pythagoras saw
the golden spires of Babylon, who shall say ? It is at
least probable that the curious Greek would have visited
this seat of immemorial civilization, and have dipped in
its treasury of native and foreign traditions. When Samos
was ruled by the tyrant Polycrates, Pythagoras, arrived
at man's estate, left his island home and found in Southern
Italy a ripe soil for his experiments in reform. His chief
field of activity was Croton, famous at that time for its
wholesome situation, excellent physicians, and powerful
athletes, but fallen now into decay, with its once proud name
transferred to the miserable fishing-village of Cortona.
This Achaean colony had just been worsted in battle by
luxurious Sybaris, its ancient rival ; and the humiliating
defeat had prepared men's minds for moral, religious,
and political innovations. The new settler took ad-
vantage of this receptive mood for the promotioq of
THE PYTHAGOREAN COMMUNITY. IOI
his schemes of reform. He forthwith founded his com-
munity, which admitted both men and women in its
fold, and recognized distinct degrees of membership ; and
the ingenious system by which the rigours of the order
were graduated extended its influence over wide classes
of candidates. The fruit of the reform was a revival in
the public spirit, manifested by a strong aristocratic
government within the walls of the city, and by success in
arms abroad ; and this result was not long confined to
Croton, but extended itself to other cities in Magna
Grsecia, such as Tarentum, Metapontum, and Caulonia.
A reaction was bound to ensue. The cohesion of the
aristocrats in a religious and social community with beliefs
and observances of its own which set them apart from the
mass of the citizens as a kind of populus in populo and
rendered them haughtier and less accessible than ever,
could not but increase the bitterness of the existing battle
of the classes. The clamour for further political rights
rose to a higher pitch ; the outcry against the foreign
intruder and his new-fangled notions grew louder, and to
these manifestations was added the personal resentment
of unsuccessful candidates for admittance to the brother-
hood. So the Pythagorean community in Croton was
doomed. A catastrophe as horrible as that which destroyed
the Knights Templar overtook it about 500 B.C., when its
members were burnt alive, presumably in their place of
assembly. The accounts are too vague to enable us to
decide whether Pythagoras himself was a victim, or whether
he had died at an earlier date. A similar fate overtook
the branches of the order. True, there were always
disciples of Pythagorism, but the Pythagoreans as a
community were destroyed. In Greece itself the last
adherents of the school lingered on in Boeotia, where the
ffreat Epamipondas received instruction from its members.
Others again went to Athens and began the fusion of
Pythagorean doctrines with those of other schools of
philosophy, among which that of Socrates was the foremost.
Finally, Pythagorism dissolved into those constituent ele-
ments compressed by the force of one great genius
102 GREEK THINKERS.
into the limits of a system which was anything but homo-
geneous. The positive science of the doctrine and its
mathematical and physical methods fell to the care of
specialists, while its religious and superstitious maxims
and practices were preserved in Orphic circles.
2. The claim to immortality which this school may
advance rests on its contributions to science. We reverently
do homage to the genius of the men who first showed the
way to a thorough comprehension of the forces of nature
and to their final mastery. And here we must pause to
make a remark of more universal import. The ancients
and moderns have both, with partial correctness, reproached
the Pythagoreans with a want of sobriety and a caprice of
imagination. But it is a pleasure to be able to point out
that this play of fancy and emotion, and the corresponding
delight in what is beautiful and harmonious, though they
occasionally obstructed the path of scientific research, yet
in many decisive instances smoothed the obstacles away
and lent wings to inquiry. Pythagoras was always passion-
ately devoted to music, an art to which his disciples ever
gave the chief place among the means for exciting and
appeasing the emotions. And without this kind of artistic
delight he would certainly never have attained his insight
into the dependence of the pitch of sound on the length
of the vibrating chord, which ranks as his greatest and
most important discovery. The monochord which he used
for his experiments in the physics of sound, " consisted of
a string stretched over a resounding-board with a move-
able bridge, by means of which it was possible to divide
the string into different lengths, and thus to produce the
various high and low notes on one and the same string."
Great was the surprise of the inquirer, well versed as he
was both in mathematics and music, when this simple
experiment revealed at a single stroke the most wonderful
operations of law in a field hitherto completely closed to
scientific investigation. He was still unable to determine
the vibrations on which the separate sounds depended,
but inasmuch as he could now measure the vibrating chord
which was the material cause that produced the sound,
SOUND AND NUMBER. 103
rule and law and spatial quantity were thus imposed on
something that had hitherto been wholly Intangible, unde-
finable, and almost of another world. The history of
science contains no luckier hit than this. In other
departments of nature, such as those of dynamics, the
underlying laws are hidden away from the eye of the
spectator, and can only be reached by extremely artificial
contrivances. Here, however, the simplest conceivable
experiment sufficed to bring to light a great regulative
principle embracing a wide domain of nature. The
intervals between the sounds — the fourth, the fifth, the
octave, and so forth — which had hitherto solely been per-
ceptible to the fine ear of the professional musician, but
which could neither be communicated to others nor referred
to comprehensible causes, were now reduced to clear and
fixed numerical relations. And as soon as the foundations
had been laid for the mechanics of sound, all other systems
of mechanics might seem to be open to investigation.
Great was the delight aroused by this wonderful discovery,
and we can hardly be surprised if the further speculations
of the Pythagoreans transgressed the bounds of moderation.
The brilliance and obscurity of their doctrine lie within a
step of one another, and we reach at once the Pythagorean
mysticism of number, which strikes us at first sight as
opposed to reason and understanding. Sound, one of the
most volatile of phenomena, had been shown to be measur-
able in space. But number is the measure of all space ;
it is the expression of the regularity so suddenly observed
to pervade every department of nature, and it was an easy
inference to regard it as the heart and essence of things.
It reminds us of the Ionian "physiologists" with their
contradictory and therefore fruitless attempts to discover
the single primary matter which underlay and survived all
change. The theories of Thales and Anaximander could not
give lasting satisfaction, but their common desire to discover
the fixed pole in the flight of phenomena could not but
survive the failure of their several experiments. Then
came Pythagoras and his disciples. Their astonished eyes
were suddenly opened to the suggestive spectacle of a
104 GREEK THINKERS.
universal uniformity ruling nature and dependent on num-
bers. What wonder if the material principle was temporarily
eclipsed by the formal, masquerading as quasi-material?
The question of a primary principle was dropped for a time,
or rather it appeared in another shape. Fire and Air, and
Anaximander's "infinite," comprising all material con-
traries, were deposed as the Principle of the world, and
the vacant throne was taken by Number as the expression
of universal law. We have just now marked the historical
explanation of this view, which, in defiance of the natural
order of things, regarded Number as their most intimate
essence, and not merely as the expression of relations and
proportions. We may now reach the same goal from
another point of departure. In the researches undertaken
by this school the quality of matter is of considerably less
account than the forms which it wears in space. But here
the growing habit of abstract thought led the philosopher
to regard a conception as more primordial and valuable,
according as it was more refined and further removed from
concrete reality. We possess the faculty of dissociating in
our minds the body itself from the planes in which it lies,
and the planes from the lines that bound them ; or, to put
it more accurately, we can temporarily make abstraction of
the corporeal and superficial areas, and regard the planes
and lines as things existing by themselves. These abstrac-
tions, as Aristotle expressly tells us, were accorded by the
Pythagoreans, not merely complete reality, but actually a
higher reality than the concrete objects from which they
were derived. The planes, they argued, are conditional to
the existence of the bodies, but can themselves exist without
them. And they passed a similar judgment on the lines
in relation to the planes ; and, finally, on the points of
which the line is composed. Points are the smallest units
of space. We abstract from them not merely thickness
and breadth, but length likewise, thus completing their
abstraction from spatial extension. It is an abstraction
which is of use where the limits of extension are con-
cerned rather than extension as such. Now these points
were identified by the Pythagoreans with Unity — that is,
THE DOCTRINE OF NUMBER. 105
with the element of Number. Number, then, appeared to
them as a kind of fundamental principle, in which the
objective world was not merely dissolved by thought, but
from which it proceeded. It was, as it were, composed
and built up of Number, so that the line which consisted
of two points would represent duality, the plane would
represent the conception of three, and the body the con-
ception of four. This delusion was supported by an
idiosyncrasy of Greek language and thought as innocent
in its origin as it was perilous in its consequences. The
analogy between numbers and spatial relations led to the
description of qualities of the former by epithets which
are strictly appropriate to the latter alone. Nor are we
wholly free from the influence of our masters, the Greeks.
If we no longer speak of oblong or cyclic numbers, we
still have square and cubic numbers ; but all that we mean
by these phrases is that the products stand to their factors
in the same proportion as the spatial-content of a plane or
body to the key-numbers of the lines containing its super-
ficial area or corporeal volume. We shall hardly be accused
of exaggeration if we say that this kind of linguistic artifice
is expressly calculated to confuse a mind unversed in the
practice of abstraction. The parallelism between the two
series of phenomena would inevitably rank as identity;
the spatial form or figure would appear as substantially the
same as the number indicating the mass of spatial-units it
contained ; number would, or could at least, be regarded as
a principle, or, as we still say, a " root " of the plane and
consequently of the body too ; the expression "raising a
number to its cube " would lead to the illusion that a body
or object grew out of Number as an object is composed
out of its elements ; and in these misleading terms are we
not justified in perceiving the origin of the whole, or at
least of more than the half, of the Pythagorean doctrine
of number ?
More than half at least, for one branch of the doctrine
and that by no means the least important, seems at first
not to be covered by this explanation. Number was the
ultimate basis of the spiritual no less than of the material
106 GREEK THINKERS.
world. Seven, for instance, was identified with health ;
eight with Love and Friendship, as a harmony best
expressed by the octave ; Justice figured as a square
number, doubtless because the " eye for eye " theory of
retribution recalled the composition of a number out
of two like factors. And in instances where we are no
longer able to perceive the association between numbers
and ideas, the same principle obviously operated. But what
was the purpose of this game of thought played in quite
sober earnest ? And how, we wonder, are we to account for
the Pythagorean numerical explanation of the essence of all
things in the moral and spiritual world ? The true answer
would probably take this shape : As soon as Number had
once been exalted to the type of reality in the physical
universe, other realities too would inevitably have been
co-ordinated with the same type, and in that age and long
afterwards our abstractions were their realities. It is hard
for us to conceive the dilemma in which they were placed.
They had to choose between two alternatives : either they
must deny the existence of health, virtue, love, friendship,
and so forth, or they must discern their inmost essence in
Number, the root of all other reality. Further, we must
bear in mind the fascination exercised by numbers on
the senses of mankind. They do not merely fill the
multitude with intellectual delusions, as is shown in the
history of religions, but strong men of rare and subtle
powers are sometimes liable to their sway. We ought to
realize the intoxicating force of these all-comprehensive
abstractions, working as they did on minds at home only
in the thin air of those intellectual heights, or at least
debarred from the counterpoise afforded by gifts and
occupations of a widely differing kind. The sacredness of
the number three meets us as early as Homer, where a
trinity of gods, Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, are addressed
in a single supplication. Three, again, and its square
play the most prominent part in the rites of the Greeks
and Romans and of the Eastern branches of the Aryans.
We find it in ancestor worship, where the father, grand-
father, and great-grandfather are selected out of the whole
SACRED NUMBERS. 1 07
lineage as Tritopatores or paternal triad. We find it again
in the number of the expiatory sacrifices, of the dedicatory
offerings, of the funeral festivals, of the Graces, the Fates,
the Muses, and so forth, and we need merely mention the
Indian Trimurti — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — and kindred
religious conceptions, and the trinity of primary beings of
Pherecydes and the Orphics generally. The Pythago-
reans sought to establish the sacred character of this
number by claiming that it contained a beginning, a
middle, and an end, an argument which was not entirely
without effect on the highly cultivated mind of Aristotle.
It is not without surprise that we are strongly reminded
of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in the speculations
of Giordano Bruno and Auguste Comte. The importance
assigned to the numbers three, four, and ten in the Comtist
philosophy is replaced in the master's later and religious
phase by the significance he attaches to the prime numbers.
Finally, Lawrence Oken, a leader of the modern school
of " nature-philosophy," did not hesitate to incorporate the
following sentence among his aphorisms : " Everything
that is real, posited, finite, has become this out of numbers,
or, more strictly speaking, every Real is absolutely nothing
else than a number." After that no one can be astonished
at the curious teachings which issued from the Pytha-
goreans. We read there without surprise that Unity, or
the Monad, contains the two fundamental contraries — the
Unlimited and the Limited — which form the basis of the
universe ; we are told that their harmonious mixture
engendered the numbers on which all being depends, and
is thus accountable for the origin of the world ; the odd
numbers correspond to the Limited, and the even to the
Unlimited. Further, this doctrine informs us that the
number ten, as the sum of the first four numbers, 1+2
+ 3 + 4, is the most perfect of all, and so forth, and so
forth. Nor need we be astonished at the "table of con-
traries" which reached the Pythagoreans from Babylon,
and was eagerly adopted and highly honoured by them.
According to that table, the original opposites of the
Limited and the Unlimited brought forth a series of nine
108 GREEK THINKERS.
other pairs — the Odd and Even, the One and Many, the
Right and Left, the Male and Female, the Straight and
Crooked, the Light and Dark, the Good and Evil, the
Square and the Oblong. At this point there presently
arose a mist which obscured the brilliance of Plato's theory
of ideas in the mind of its ageing author, and threw its
shadow over many of the movements of more recent
speculation. Towards the beginning of the Christian era
antiquity, which was falling in a decline, gathered the
multiplicity of positive systems into one collective whole.
It was a period of decadence, when the palate of thought
required more stimulating diet, and the last appetizing
touch was added to the philosophic brew by the mysticism
of the Neo-Pythagoreans.
We can imagine our astonished readers inquiring if the
pioneers of exact science were at the same time the pioneers
and the most influential prophets of mysticism. The fact
is undoubted, but the astonishment seems to us to argue
an insufficient acquaintance with the peculiarities of the
mathematical temperament. It is true that inductive
reasoning, lighted by the steady torch of the sciences of
space and number, leads to a brightness and clearness
of perception which may even fringe on a one-sided
disregard for the dark riddles of the universe. Experiment
and observation, however, played a comparatively re-
stricted part in Pythagorean practice ; first, the art of
experimentation was still in its infancy, and, secondly, the
knowledge of mathematics was still too little advanced to
be applied on an extensive scale in the cause of physical
research. With the sole exception of the fundamental
experiment in acoustics mentioned above, we are acquainted
with no other similar contribution on the part of the
founder of the school, though when we remember the pro-
position in geometry which is called after his name, and
his doctrine of proportion, we see that Pythagoras was
of indisputable service to the cause of the mathematical
sciences. But a one-sided mathematical genius shows very
different features. The mere mathematician tends inevitably
to dogmatic judgments, a tendency which is doubtless due
MATHEMATICAL GENIUS. 1 09
to the fact that his proofs must either be valid or must fail.
He is a complete stranger to the nuances of thought, to the
delicate intellectual refinement, and the open-minded plia-
bility which characterize the historian. This contrast may be
illustrated by the polar examples of Heraclitus, the father
of relativism, and the absolutism of the " mathematicians."
The mathematician's attitude, when he is confronted with
mere probabilities and plausibilities incapable of demonstra-
tion, will depend in a remarkable degree on the accidents
of temperament and training. In religion and folklore as a
whole he will be completely at a loss. At one time he will
reject them root and branch with the impatience of reason
towards nonsense ; at another time he will willingly bow his
neck under the yoke of tradition. Finally, the proud struc-
ture of these sciences is composed of a series of deductions.
The foundation of experience which is at the bottom of the
building is lost under the towering superstructure, and its
loss is the less remarkable in that its area was small and
was familiar at so early a stage that its empirical origin is
likely to be overlooked. Thus it happens that those who
cultivate these branches of knowledge are but too frequently
apt to mistake the firm concatenation of a doctrine as an
adequate substitute for its defects on the side of outward
proof. The rigour of deduction is often compatible in
their minds with an arbitrary and subjective looseness in the
premises. Other facts, too, should be remembered if we are to
grasp the key to the mystery. In the first place, the school
was founded in an era of overweening credulity. Secondly,
Pythagoras himself was as much a man of religious tem-
perament as of scientific training. His personality, too, was
imposing, and he had the further advantage of having
successfully inaugurated new doctrines and customs which
had invested him with a kind of halo. The old Pythagoreans,
with their defective criticism and their proneness to super-
stition, were mocked at as men of clumsy and ungainly
intellect More than the disciples of any other school,
they swore to the words of their master. " Ipse dixit "
was their favourite cry ; it was the magic shield which
yarded off every doubt and repelled every hostile attack.
110 GREEK THINKERS.
Nor have they been spared the reproach of having adapted
the facts of nature to suit their preconceived opinions, and
of having filled up by fictions the lacunae in their system.
They lived and moved in the science of numbers, and
Aristotle tells us that —
"they collected and fitted together any points of agreement
they could discover between the numbers and harmonies on the
one side, and the conditions and parts of heaven and the universe
on the other. And where therej was a slight misfit, some gentle
pressure would be applied for the sake of rendering their theory a
homogeneous whole. I mean, for instance," he continues, " that
since they regard the number ten as a perfect whole comprising the
rest of the numbers, therefore they assert tbat the moving luminaries
of heaven are also ten in number. Now, as a matter of fact,
merely nine are visible, so they invented the counter-earth as a
tenth."
The same authority condemns their malpractice yet
more sharply as follows : —
" Further, they construct a second earth in opposition to our
own, which they call the counter-earth, and therein they do
not look for theories and explanations, but corrupt the facts in
reference to certain theories and favourite opinions, and thus, it
may be said, they display themselves as co-operators in the creation
of the universe."
3. The justice of Aristotle's indictment cannot ac-
curately be estimated till we have briefly examined the
Pythagorean astronomy. The qualities and defects of
their method are displayed most clearly in that field, and
their combination is at times so close as to produce an
inextricable confusion. Anaximander, we remember, has
already delivered the earth from its supposititious basis,
and had let it float freely in space as the centre of the
world. Neither Pythagoras nor the train of his immediate
successors seems to have questioned the equilibrium or
the central position of the earth. But whereas Anaxi-
mander had merely departed from the primeval conception
of a flat disc-like earth, so far as to give it the shape of
a drum, Pythagoras now went further. He recognized
THE BALL-SHAPED EARTH. Ill
stated that the earth is spherical. There are three
ble ways by which Pythagoras may have reached this
lal discovery. He may have based it on the right
pretation of phenomena, above all on the round
DW cast by the earth in the eclipses of the moon.
LC may have extended the groundless assumption of
lerical sky to the separate luminaries of heaven. Or,
y, he may have been prepossessed in favour of a
shape by his view of it as the "most perfect" of
>real forms. But whichever alternative we adopt, it
in all circumstances a grand and new step in the
fcion of the true, the Copernican view of the universe,
not merely was the earth now indued with spherical
;, but the moon, whose phases had perhaps been the
contribution to the right theory, and the sun, and
>lanets were also looked on as globular, so that the
ptional privileges of our own luminary were repealed,
fjcame a star among the stars. And the spherical
5 was best suited to its progressive movement in
;. The vessel, we might say, was constructed in the
i most convenient for its voyage ; the moorings were
ind nothing but an urgent motive-force was wanted
.unch it from the harbour where it lay. The motive
supplied by the stress of the greater accuracy
led in the observation of facts, combined with the
iples of the Pythagorean school, and a system of
tiomy was built up which has frequently been mocked
ridiculed, but which is seen, in the clear light of
:rn impartial research, to have been one of the most
lal and brilliant creations of the Greek intellect.
112 CREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE.
i. VOLTAIRE called the later Pythagorean astronomy,
connected with the name of Philolaus, a " Gallimathias,"
and Sir George Cornewall Lewis indicts it as "wild and
fanciful." But the great French writer with his frequently
over-hasty judgments and the Englishman with his excess
of conscientiousness have fallen into the same mistake. It
is true that the doctrine in question is a tissue of truth
and invention, but its features of truth were its vital and
fundamental parts, whereas the fictitious portions were
merely a superficial covering which was soon to dissolve
like smoke-wreaths. But if we are to understand the
motives which inspired the cosmology of Philolaus, we
must pause a moment at the commonest phenomena of
the heavens.
Each day the sun runs his course from east to west.
Simultaneously he climbs higher up the sky to sink at the
end of a few months from the height he has reached.
The combination of his daily and annual movements has
the effect of the windings of a screw or spiral — something
like the shell of a snail — and like it, too, the intervals
between the circles contract as the zenith is approached.
This view was hardly likely to satisfy inquirers who
had approached the question of celestial motion in the
confident belief that it was " simple, steady, and regular/'
It may be permissible to blame this belief as a
prejudice ; but though it was in part a preconceived
opinion, yet the closer observation of facts tended
THE SYSTEM OF PHILOLAUS. 113
generally to confirm it. And even where such confirma-
tion was wanting, the belief was of excellent use as a
principle of research, just like the kindred assumption of
a teleological purpose in the structure of organisms. It
was possible to get rid of the confusing irregularity. For a
complex movement may be irregular while the partial
movements that compose it are regular. What was needed
was an act of mental separation. And the clue was found
by separating the daily movement of the sun from its
annual movement At this point our early philosophers
had a brilliant flash of inspiration. They conceived the
daily movement of the sun and moon, and indeed of all the
whole starry heaven, as not real at all, but merely apparent.
Their supposition that the earth was moving from west to
east enabled them* to dispense with the assumption that
the sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars were moving in
an opposite direction. The question suggests itself here,
Did these Pythagoreans recognize and teach the rota-
tion of the earth round its axis ? Our answer is : They
did not do that, but they did recognize and teach the
existence of a movement which operated in a precisely
similar manner. It was, so to say, the rotation round
its axis of an earth-ball with a considerably enlarged
circumference. They represented the earth as circu-
lating in twenty-four hours round a central point, the
nature of which will presently occupy us. Here, how-
ever, the reader should familiarize himself with a simple
feature of this doctrine. A moment's reflection will
show him that, for any given point in the earth's surface,
and for its shifting relations with the sun, moon, and
stars, it makes not the remotest difference whether the
ball on which it is situated revolves on its axis in the
course of a day, or describes a circular course, while
facing the same directions, which brings it back to
its starting-point in the same limit of time. We can
hardly exaggerate the importance of this discovery. The
revelation that there were apparent heavenly motions
broke the barrier that obstructed the path to further pro-
gress. The central position of the earth and its immobility
VOL. I. I
114 GREEK THINKERS.
had both been given up, and the way was open for
the Copernican doctrine which followed after an interval
the extraordinary brevity of which is hardly sufficiently
recognized. Nor need we be at all surprised that an
equivalent for the theory of rotation was adopted instead
of the theory. For though we never actually see a
luminary turning on its axis, yet changes in its position
are matters of daily and hourly observation. Nothing,
then, could be more natural than that, scientific imagina-
tion, which had just succeeded by a mighty effort in
freeing itself from the delusions of sense, should have
been content to replace the apparent immobility of the
earth by a movement moulded on familiar models, and
not by one unique in its kind and entirely without a
parallel.
The centre round which the earth was now admitted
to move served equally as the centre of the rest of the
luminaries, which had formerly been supposed to revolve
round the earth. The moon accomplished its course once
a month; the sun once a year; the five planets visible
to the naked eye required various periods, which, with
the exception of Mercury and Venus, were considerably
longer; finally, the firmament of fixed stars, whose daily
rotation had been recognized as apparent, was similarly
equipped with a circular movement of its own, though of
a very much slower order — a conception which may either
have been due to the mere desire for conformity, but
which is far more probably to be ascribed to that change
of position already observed and taken in account which
we call the precession of the equinoxes. The daily move-
ment of the sun — or rather, according to this theory, of the
earth — took place in a plane which was now recognized
to incline towards the plane in which the annual movements
of the sun, moon, and planets were situated ; in other
words, the obliquity, whether of the equator or of the
ecliptic, had been recognized, and the new conception
was thus completely adequate to explain the changes of
the seasons.
We come now to the problem of the central point round
THE CENTRAL-FIRE. 115
which the heavenly bodies were to move in concentric
circles. It was no ideal centre, but rather an actual
body, consisting of universal or central fire. The enemies
of Philolaus call it "a dreary and fantastic fiction," but
those who try to throw themselves with temperate judgment
into the modes of thought obtaining in the dawn of science
will rather call it "the product of analogical inferences,
the force of which must have been well-nigh irresistible/'
The assumption that the heavenly bodies described circles
was not merely approximately true, but apart from the
circular segments traversed by the sun and moon on the
firmament, it appeared that no other conclusion could be
derived from the circular courses described before our eyes
by the circumpolar fixed stars that never set ; and though
that movement, like the movement of the whole firmament
of fixed stars, had now been recognized as purely apparent
yet the daily motion of the earth that took its place was
bound to have the same circular character. Here, accord-
ingly, the type was given, conformably with which all the
heavenly bodies had to move. But human experience
supplies no example of circular movements without an
actual centre. A wheel turns on its axis ; a stone, attached
to a string for the purpose of slinging, turns round the
hand which holds it and which sets it in motion; and,
finally, when divine worship invited Greek men and women
to the dance, the altar of the god formed the centre of
their solemn and rhythmic paces. It may be asked, how-
ever, what need there was of inventing a central fire, when
it actually existed and was visible to every man's eye.
What was wanted was a centre of motion and a source
of vigour and life. But instead of accrediting the universal
light of the sun with the rank that belonged to it, a lumi-
nous body was invented whose rays no mortal eye had
seen, and, considering that the habitable side of the earth
was turned away from the central fire, no mortal eye would
ever see. It was an hypothesis removed by a perverse in-
genuity from every chance of verification, and one wonders
why its mistaken authors did not rather jump straight away
at the heliocentric doctrine, and rest satisfied therewith.
Il6 GREEK THINKERS.
Three sufficiently valid solutions may be suggested for
this problem. Remembering that the delusions of sense
are only abandoned by degrees, and that the human mind
habitually follows the path of least resistance, we have first
to note that the heliocentric theory was bound to be later
than that of rotation round an axis. It was obviously
impossible to let the earth revolve round the sun in a daily
and yearly course simultaneously, and we have already
learned to justify the precedence of the Pythagorean
equivalent over the rotation theory. A second consider-
able obstacle to the prompt admission of a heliocentric or
Copernican astronomy lay, we conceive, in the exact simi-
larity between the sun and moon. The great luminary of
day and his more modest sister of the night were visible
to men as two heavenly bodies regularly relieving each
other and combining to measure time by their revolutions,
and it was plainly impossible that, except by a process of
elimination, shutting out every other issue, men would ever
be brought to believe that luminaries so closely connected
differed in the fundamental point that the moon was con-
demned to ceaseless wandering while the sun was vowed to
eternal rest. But, thirdly and chiefly, universal fire was
more satisfactory as the centre of the world than the sun.
Our sun is the central point of a system of luminaries
by the side of which countless other systems exist without
visible design or recognizable order. Human intelligence
resists this belief, as it resists every other call to renuncia-
tion, till the compulsion of fact leaves it no second alterna-
tive. But first it demands a uniform picture of the world
instead of a fragmentary view of this kind, and the demand
springs from the natural impulse towards lightening and
simplifying the intellectual complexus — >an impulse assisted
in the present instance, indeed, by highly developed aesthetic
and religious wants.
It will be readily admitted that this picture of the
universe owed no little to the contribution of the emotions
and the fancy. The circular course of the divine luminaries
which had been raised by the fictitious counter-earth to the
sacred number ten was described as a "dance," The
THE HARMONY OF THE SPHERES. ll^
rhythm of this starry dance was set to the sounds arising
from the motion itself, and making unceasing music, which
was recognized and known as the " harmony of the spheres."
Next, the universal fire, which was the central point of the
celestial procession, was known by many names. It was
called the "mother of the gods/' the "citadel of Zeus/'
and so forth, but two of its titles may be mentioned as
especially characteristic. These were the " altar " and the
"hearth of the universe." The stars revolved round the
sacred source of all life and motion like worshippers round
an altar, and the universal hearth was the centre of the
world or cosmos as a man's domestic hearth was honoured
as the sacred centre of his home, or as the flame that burned
and was never extinguished in the civic hearth of the
Prytaneum formed the holy rallying-point of every Greek
community. Hence streamed the rays of light and heat,
hence the sun derived his beams and communicated them
again to both earths and to the moon, just as the mother
of the bride lighted at a Greek wedding the fire of the
new home from the parental hearth, or as a new colony
would borrow its fire from the hearth of the mother-city.
All the threads of the Greek view of life are combined
here. We see the exalted joy in existence, the loving awe
for the universe ruled by divine forces, the sublime sense
of beauty, symmetry, and harmony, and not least the
comfortable affection for civic and domestic peace. Those,
then, who held these views, and whose universe was sur-
rounded by the fire-circle of Olympus as by a strong wall,
found in it their home, their sanctuary, and the type of
their art Nowhere else do we find a picture of the uni-
verse at once so genial and so sublime.
2. The emotional faculties, then, were satisfied in a
truly wonderful degree, though at the cost of the intel-
lect We have now to estimate the price which reason had
to pay, and which will be found to have been by no means
exorbitant. Even the " dreams of the Pythagoreans " con-
tained a modicum of truth ; or, where that modicum was
wanting, there was at least an indication given of the road
which would ultimately lead to truth. At first sight, for
Il8 GREEK THINKERS.
instance, no doctrine could appear more arbitrary than that
of the harmony of the spheres. It obviously sprang in the
last resort from an aesthetic demand which was formulated
as follows : Our eyes are filled with the grandest sights ;
how is it, then, that the twin sense of our ears should go
empty ? But the premise on which the answer rested was
not wholly unreasonable. For unless the space in which the
stars revolve is completely void, the matter that fills it must
undergo vibrations which in themselves are capable of being
heard. Even in recent times, no meaner philosopher than
Karl Ernst von Baer, the great founder of embryology, has
asked if there is not " perhaps a murmur in universal space,
a harmony of the spheres, audible to quite other ears than
ours." Now, it was objected to the Pythagoreans that we
do not actually hear such sounds ; but they deprecated
the astonishment of the cavillers by the following happy
analogy. A blacksmith, they said, is deaf to the con-
tinuous, regular beat of the hammers in his workshop ; and
herein they anticipated the teaching of Thomas Hobbes,
who argued that the operation of the senses depends on a
change in the stimuli ; the stimulation must be interrupted,
or altered in degree or kind. There was nothing fanciful
in the Pythagorean doctrine except only the belief that
the differences of velocity in the movements of the stars
were capable of producing a harmonious orchestration and
not merely sounds of varying pitch. At this point their
artistic imagination had a freer rein, inasmuch as they
were completely unable to determine the relative distances
of the planets and the absolute velocities that ensued from
them, though they could arrive, approximately at least, at
the circular segments which the planets described in a given
time — in other words, at the angular velocities of their
movements.
But here, too, we shall presently find ourselves ready
to mitigate our judgment. We have to remember that
the premise of law and order, as pervading the universe,
could hardly have been applied by the Pythagoreans to
atjy other relations than those of geometry, arithmetic,
and music — the last named because of the importance of
"ALL NUMBER AND HARMONY." IIQ
acoustics in their natural philosophy. Simplicity/symmetry,
and harmony were ascribed indifferently to all three.
They neither knew nor divined anything of the forces
which produce celestial movements, so that, even had
they been acquainted with the elliptic orbits of the
planets, that knowledge, we may remark, would never
have satisfied their demand for order. They would
not have recognized the curve as the resultant of two
rectilinear forces. Their heaven, says Aristotle, "is all
number and harmony," and we may add that a correct
intuition of the highest significance was still clothed in
unsuitable shape. The seekers were incapable of dis-
covering law where it was really in operation, and it was
anyhow better to look for it where it did not exist than
not to look for it at all. Further, the assumption that
the sun shines with borrowed light may be traced in the
main to the parallelism between the sun and the moon
which we mentioned just now. Moreover, the homo-
geneous conception of the universe might conceivably
have suffered if a second independent source of light had
been assumed so near the centre of the world. But since
they could not altogether dispense with such an assumption,
they found it in the Olympus alluded to above as the
girdle of the universe, containing all the elements in their
unsullied beauty. The firmament of fixed stars, and
possibly the planets, derived all their light from Olympus,
and the sun borrowed a part of his from the same source,
to make amends, we presume, for his otherwise too
frequent obscurations. The porous and glass-like qualities
of the sun, which enabled it to collect the rays of light
and to emit them again, should be noted in this connec-
tion. Next we come to the second great fiction of the
Pythagoreans — that of the counter-earth. We may readily
follow Aristotle in believing that the sacredness of the
number ten played a part in this conception. But the
introduction of a new luminary and its insertion between
the earth and the central fire had many important conse-
quences, and there is no reason to doubt that this fiction
of the counter-earth was recommended to its inventors as
120 GREEK THINKERS.
much for the sake of its results as for the reason alleged
by the Stagirite. The lacunae in the information at our
disposal do not permit us to pass definite judgment ; but
Boeckh's opinion that the counter-earth was to act as a
screen of the central fire, so as to explain its invisibility,
is certainly defective. For the supposition that the un-
inhabited western hemisphere of the earth was turned
towards the fire was a quite sufficient explanation. It is
more probable that the counter-earth was invented partly
as an ostensible cause for the eclipses of the moon which
occurred so frequently as to seem to require the shadow
of the counter-earth in addition to the shadow of the earth.
The facts of history, however, are more eloquent than
all the arguments. Historically considered, the theory
of central fire promoted and did not retard the progress
of scientific research. In less than a century and a half it
engendered the heliocentric doctrine. The fantastic excre-
scences of the Philolaic system fell away piece by piece.
The counter-earth was the first to go : the death-blow was
struck at this fiction by the extension of the geographical
horizon. The foundations of the hypothetical^ structure
built by the Pythagoreans began to give way in me fourth
century at latest. At that time exacter new^s reached
Greece of discoveries in the west and in the east. Hanno,
the Carthaginian, had made his great voyage of discovery,
and had passed the barrier of the Pillars of Hercules,
where the Straits of Gibraltar now are, which had ranked
till then as the furthest limit of the Western world ; and
shortly afterwards the outline of the East was more
clearly defined by Alexander's march in India. AjcoJgtT
of observation had been reached from which the counter-
earth should have been visible, and since neither the
counter-earth nor the central fire, thus robbed of its last
protection, came in view at that point, this portion of
the Pythagorean cosmology was spontaneously shattered.
Nor was this all : the daily circular movement of the earth
disappeared with the fictitious centre that conditioned it,
and the doctrine of rotation took the place of the theory
we have described as its equivalent Ecphantus, one of
THE COPERNICUS OF ANTIQUITY. 121
the youngest of the Pythagoreans, taught that the earth
turned on its own axis. The second step on the road to
the heliocentric doctrine followed swiftly on the first. The
marked increase in luminosity which the planets occasion-
ally display was first noticed in Mercury and Venus,
and the true cause of the phenomenon suggested itself
inevitably as the occasional closer propinquity of these
wandering stars to the earth. Thus it was clearly
impossible that they could revolve concentrically round
the earth. These two nearest neighbours of the sun had
plainly confessed their dependence on that luminary by
the revolution they respectively accomplished in the course
of a solar year. Accordingly they were the first of the
planets whose movements were combined with the sun's.
This was the masterly discovery of Heraclides of Heraclia
on the Black Sea, a man whose powerful genius, contained
in a misshapen body, was familiar with the most diverse
regions of science and literature, who had visited the
schools of Plato and Aristotle, and had kept up a lively
intercourse with the latest Pythagoreans. But here, again,
there was no finality. Mars likewise displayed a con-
spicuous change in his degree of brightness even to the
incomplete observation which obtained in that age, and
thus a link was forged to unite the two inner planets
with one at least of the outer ones. Philosophy was
approaching the point of view reached in later times by
Tycho de Brahe, who represented all the planets with
the exception of the earth as revolving round the sun,
while the sun with his train of planets revolved round
the earth. The last and final step was taken by
Aristarchus of Samos, the Copernicus of antiquity, about
280 B.C., who completed what the astronomer from
the Pontus, to whom allusion has just been made, had
less definitely begun. Eudoxus had given the clue to
this great intellectual achievement by his discovery that
the size of the sun is considerably greater than the earth's.
Aristarchus computed their relative proportion at seven to
one ; and inadequate as this estimate was in comparison
with the actual fact, it was sufficient to expose the
122 GREEK THINKERS.
absurdity of setting the great ball of fire to revolve like
a satellite round the small world that we inhabit. The
earth had to lay down the sceptre which had recently been
restored to it ; heliocentricity superseded geocentricity, and
the goal was reached for which Pythagoras and his disciples
had smoothed and pointed the way. As things turned
out, however, it was soon to be abandoned again, and its
place to be taken for another long series of centuries
by-.the immemorial delusions fostered in the name of
religion.
But it is time to return from this historical forecast to its
starting-point at the old Pythagorean doctrines, and there
is now nothing to prevent our resuming the thread of
the inquiry which we dropped at the close of the last
chapter but one.
-o
CHAPTER V.
ORPHIC AND PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINES OF
THE SOUL.
I. ORPHICISM and Pythagorism might be called the male
and female forms of the same conception. In the one
there is a surplus of visionary and fantastic elements ; In
the other, of rational and scientific method. The one
answers to the need for personal salvation ; the other to the
requirements of state and society. The one Is dominated
by a love of purity and by a fear of contamination ; the
other promotes the cause of morality and civil order.
The one is wanting in vigorous self-confidence, and tends
to a contrite asceticism ; the other exhibits the resolute
discipline of an ethical culture, nourished on the arts and
on self-examination. Among the Orphics it is a religious
brotherhood which unites the members of the community,
whereas the union of the Pythagoreans takes the form of a
semi-political knightly order. Orphicism takes no account of
mathematical or astronomical research ; Pythagorism holds
aloof from the speculations of cosmogony and theogony.
But despite every difference ia degree, and in the midst
of these distinctions, there is yet a most striking concord-
ance, strong enough at many points to fuse the two sects
in one, and to make it almost impossible to say which gives
to or takes from the other.
In one respect, however, the difference may be stated
with comparative clearness. The two sects may be dis-
tinguished by that important part of their doctrine which
refers to metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls,
124 GREEK THINKERS.
Aristotle tells us that, "according to the Pythagorean
myths, any soul goes into any body," and, to say nothing
of the evidence of countless authorities of a later date,
Xenophanes, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, relates
a story which illustrates this point. His verses on the
subject are still extant. He tells us that Pythagoras,
seeing a dog being maltreated, and hearing him howl, cried
out in pitying tones, " Leave off beating the dog, for I re-
cognize in his tones the voice of the soul of a friend," An
anecdote of this kind — and its anecdotal character is vouched
for by the words "it is related," with which Xenophanes
introduces the story — could hardly have been invented,
unless the incident had been typical of the man of whom
it was told. As a matter of fact, Pythagoras — as we see
from Empedocles, for instance — had many wonderful tales
to tell of the previous existence of his own soul. It
will be instructive to pause for a moment at this strange
doctrine. We call it strange, but if we remember how
widely it was spread we shall perhaps revise the epithet.
It is shared by the Gallic Druids and the Druses of the
Middle Ages ; it is maintained to-day by the Zulus and
the Greenlanders, by the Indians of North America and the
Dayaks of Borneo, by the Karens of Burma and the in-
habitants of Guinea ; it counts among its adherents the
worshippers of Brahma and Buddha, and it attracted the
sympathetic assent of a Spinoza and a Lessing. The
wide extension of this theory in space and time is sufficient
evidence of its deep roots in human thought and senti-
ment. It must be noted as a preliminary condition
that the doctrine of the transmigration of human souls
into animals and plants and conversely, which, it may be
added, is not admitted in all the instances we have cited,
was incompatible with the pride of species, which would
place impassable barriers between these natural kingdoms.
In this connection we may trace the following development
of thought. In the first place, from the phenomena of
dreams, ecstasy, and obsession was derived the right of free
movement, one might almost say the right of free domicile,
which the soul enjoyed ; and, this being granted, there was
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVE. 125
no reason why, when its temporary abode broke up, the
soul should not seek and choose a new dwelling-place for
itself. There was no more reason why the soul should not
change its body than why a man should not change his
clothes. Next, it would be asked whence all the souls
were derived which inhabit and animate men, animals, and
plants for a brief period of time ; and, further, if they were
as numerous as the short-lived beings with whom they
were temporarily joined. Take the child, for example, who
dies at a tender age : was his soul created for that span
of time, or had it been waiting since the beginning of the
universe for its little term of incarnation ? And what was
to happen to it afterwards ? Was the spiritual being,
with its power of animating a human or an animal body,
to exercise that capacity for a few weeks, or days, or
hours, or moments alone, and then to return to the eternal
silence ? And even apart from this exceptional instance, it
was surely more natural to regard these imperishable or
hardly perishable higher beings as more limited in number
than the swiftly falling material beings, constantly vanishing
and constantly replaced, over which the souls preside. The
officers of an army, we remember, are less numerous than
the soldiers they command And finally, as soon as thought
began to assume a stricter logical precision, the analogical
inferences here concerned must likewise have become more
rigid. The survival of the body by the soul was and is, almost
without exception, a universal belief of mankind. And as
there was no reason to contemplate the later extinction of
the soul, its survival became more and more unlimited, till,
with the doctrine of eternity, it was promoted to eternal
existence. And as everything that is created is demon-
strably perishable, the thought was bound to occur with
irresistible force that the imperishable was also the un-
created, that the eternity of after-existence was the guar-
antee of an eternity of pre-existence. In periods of more
advanced civilization a further conclusion was drawn. It
was seen that even in the material world things were not
actually created and destroyed, but were rather involved
in constant Qhange and circulation ; and, transferring this
126 GREEK THINKERS.
observation to the spiritual universe, a similar circulation
was postulated, in pursuance of which one and the same
being changed its earthly form innumerable times, and,
after an incalculable series of transformations, returned at
last to an earlier or even to its earliest shape.
The Greeks, equally with other nations, might have
derived their belief in metempsychosis from these and
kindred speculations. Nevertheless, this does not seem to
have been the case. No one tells us anything of the kind,
and if the belief had been established in Hellas from of
old, it would not have escaped the notice of Xenophanes,
who had travelled so much and was well versed in such
topics. It would hardly have occurred to him to mention
this doctrine as peculiarly characteristic of Pythagoras,
and to have ridiculed him on that account. Our opinion
is supported by a consideration of a more general kind.
Though kindness to animals was the foundation on which
the doctrine rested, yet the temperament of the Greek
people was never especially friendly to animals. With a
few quite isolated exceptions, there were no sacred animals
in Greece, as there were in India and Egypt. Finally,
it is d priori in the highest degree improbable that
Pythagoras invented a belief which was already firmly
seated in many popular creeds. The general problem,
then, is reduced to the particular question, From what
people or creed did the sage who was famous above all
for his far - reaching " inquiry " borrow the doctrine of
metempsychosis? Herodotus replies by a reference to
Egypt, whence men, whose names he knew, but was reluc-
tant to mention, had transplanted the doctrine to Greek
soil. Unfortunately, the direct evidence which we now
possess of the Egyptian theory of the soul prevents our
complete acquiescence in that account. The " Book of the
Dead" recognizes the privilege of good souls to assume
various shapes of animals and plants ; it may " appear
one day as a heron, another as a cockchafer, and yet
another as a lotus-flower on the water ; " it may display
itself as the winged phoenix, as a goose, a swallow,
a plover, a crane, or a viper. And the wicked soul, too,
EGYPT OR INDIA! 127
the restless vagabond between heaven and earth, seeks a
human body in which to pitch its tent, in order to torment
it with sickness, and to h?'/ry it to bloodshed and madness.
But when Herodotus goes on to speak of the regular course
pursued by the soul of the dead, " through all departments
of life, on land, in the sea, and in the air, till after the
expiry of three thousand years it returns to a human body
again," we note that he is exceeding his Egyptian text, at
least as far as it has hitherto been deciphered. Whether
or not the last word has been said by the antiquarians on
a subject so constantly changing and so rife with contra-
dictions, for the present at any rate we are unable to
accept the statement of Herodotus. There is a far closer
agreement between Pythagorism and the Indian doctrine,
not merely in their general features, but even in certain
details, such as vegetarianism ; and it may be added that
the formulae which summarize the whole creed of the "circle
and wheel " of births are likewise the same in both. It
is almost impossible for us to refer this identity to mere
chance. It is true that no account would be acceptable
which would require Pythagoras to have sat at the feet of
Indian priests or to have been even indirectly influenced
by the newly hatched Buddhistic religion. But we may
dispense alike with both of these wild assumptions. The
Indian doctrine of metempsychosis is older than the
Buddhists, and it is not too much to assume that the
curious Greek who was the contemporary of Buddha, and
it may have been of Zarathustra too, would have acquired
a more or less exacf knowle3ge of the religious specula-
tions of the East, in that age of intellectual fermentation,
through the medium of Persia. It must be remembered
in this connection that the Asiatic Greeks, at the time
when Pythagoras still dwelt in his Ionian home, were
united with a part of the Indian nation under the single
sway of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire. Still,
be the origin of the belief what it may, it was fused at an
early date with Orphic doctrines. These were originally
severed from Pythagorism, though we now know them
better in combination ; and, in attempting to explain these
128 GREEK THINKERS.
common theories, we must dwell, above all, on their funda-
mental doctrine, of which metempsychosis was only a part,
though a part of considerable magnitude.
2. This common doctrine may be epitomized in a single
significant phrase as the " fall of the soul by sin." The soul
was of divine origin, and its earthly existence was unworthy
of it. Its body was a fetter, a prison, a grave. Nothing
but its own guilt could degrade it from heavenly excellence
to the impurity of earthly life. Its sin involved it in peni-
tential punishment, for through atonement and purification
alone would it be able to return to the divine home whence
it came. This process of purification and atonement was
accomplished in two ways — by the penalties of Hades, and
by the cycle of births. We can hardly believe that two
such different means for the attainment of a single end
should have been combined from the beginning. For this
reason and others, we may conjecture that the penalties of
Hades were a later accretion to the Pythagorean doctrine
of metempsychosis, derived from the Orphics, and fused
with it through their influence.
We have hitherto been acquainted with the Orphics
merely as the founders of an original doctrine of cosmogony,
and in that connection have obtained a purely casual insight
into their methods of thought. To distinguish these more
accurately, we must glance at the myth which took a central
position in their creed. It is known as the legend of
Dionysus Zagreus. As the son of Zeus and Persephone,
Dionysus was still a child when his heavenly father en-
trusted him with the empery of the world. He was per-
secuted by the Titans, who had formerly been worsted in
their struggle with Uranus. The divine boy escaped from
their wily attacks in divers shapes and forms, till he was
finally caught by them in the form of a bull, whom they
tore to pieces and devoured. His heart alone was rescued
by Athene, and Zeus presently swallowed it in order to
create from it "the new Dionysus." To punish the Titans
for their crime, Zeus struck them with his thunderbolt Out
of their ashes rose the race of mankind, whose nature
contained both elements — the Titanic and the Dionysic,
THE CIRCLE OF BIRTHS. I2Q
springing from the blood of Zagreus. The Titans were
the embodiment of the principle of evil, Dionysus of the
principle of good, and in their fusion were contained the
seeds of that conflict between the godlike and the ungod-
like which occurs but too frequently in the human breast.
Thus this strange legend, the other characteristics of which
do not concern us here, abuts in an elucidatory myth to
explain the duality of human nature, and to account for
the inward conflict which rends it and bends it continually.
This conflict went deep. The glaring contrast between
earthly suffering and earthly imperfection on the one part,
and heavenly bliss and heavenly purity on the other, lies
at the heart and core of the philosophy of the Orphics
and Pythagoreans. Hence came their longing for purifica-
tion, for atonement and final redemption. The goal they
aimed at was hard to attain ; a single earthly existence
was not enough to cleanse the soul from its original sin
and to redeem it from the defilement with which later
misdeeds had sullied it. A long series of palingeneses
formed a kind of continuous pilgrimage, extending through
thousands of years, and interrupted and embittered by the
penalties suffered by the soul in the " pool of mire." Late,
if at all, the soul was freed from its labours, and returned
to the starting-point of its journey. As a pure spirit once
more, it re-entered its home and rejoined the brotherhood
of the gods. The three gold tablets committed to the
tombs of dead men during the fourth and third centuries
B.C. in the neighbourhood of ancient Thurii * — a district
formerly hospitable to Pythagoreans — contain some illus-
trative references in this connection. " I escaped from the
burdensome circle of lamentation" — this was the cry of
hope raised by the purified soul which had "fully atoned
for its works of iniquity," and which approached "holy
Persephone, Queen of the Shades," in the guise of "a
suppliant for protection," proud to belong to the "blissful
race" of that goddess and her peers in the under-world.
They would send it "to the seats of the innocent," and
would utter the redeeming word in its expectant ears — " a
h.IL§ 2.
VOL. I. K
130 GREEK THINKERS.
god shalt thou be instead of a mortal," These series of
verses are clearly the variant recensions of a common and
an older text. They combine with several other fragments,
partly belonging to the same age and to neighbouring
localities, partly to the island of Crete and the later Roman
epoch, to form the scanty remains of what we might
conveniently call the Orphic "Book of the Dead." In
them we can trace the journey of the soul in the under-
world; their different recensions display an exact corre-
spondence with one another as well as with the tablets of
Thurii, and recent experience warrants the good hope
that our information may presently be more complete.
3. We have here to reckon with a possible fact. The
" fall of the soul by sin " is as completely unknown to the
texts we have just discussed as it is to the writings of
Pindar the poet and Empedocles the philosopher, who
are our most ancient authorities on the teachings of the
Orphics. Both instances may be due to pure chance, for
our information in either case is of a fragmentary character.
But another explanation may be offered. It is conceivable
that that central doctrine of the Orphics has undergone
a further development, and the allegation of a cause for the
fall of the soul — " this evil, too, is the expiation of a crime "
— may have been a later accretion. Taking this assumption,
three elements are left as native to that doctrine. First,
we have the melancholy view of life which depreciated
earthly existence and the goods of this world ; secondly,
an assured confidence in the justice of the gods, who
punished every misdeed and rewarded every merit ; and,
thirdly, the fixed belief in the divine nature and the
divine origin of the soul. At present we have merely to
note that pessimistic view of life which contrasted so
grimly with the brilliant insouciance of the Homeric age.
We may postpone the explanation, though we marked the
beginnings of the change as early as Hesiod. It will be
readily conceded that Hesiod and Homer were dealing with
different orders of the population, and stern indeed must
have been the experience of war and peace which prepared
the Greek mind for such gloomy views of life. A man who
MOTIVE OF ORPHIC BELIEF. 131
believed In the retributive justice of Heaven must have based
his belief on a recognition of the dominion of the principle
at least of right and law ; for it is obvious that as long as
personal favour, or personal loyalty at best, was the govern-
ing factor in State and society, the confidence of reasonable
expectation could have had no leg to stand on. We have
already referred to the nature of the belief in retribution,
but it will assist us to understand its details if we recall
the image of the Erinyes, for instance, who were origin-
ally conceived as the souls of the murdered men, wrath-
fully seeking their own revenge. The private vengeance
of the individual and the family formed the basis of the
penal code in earthly states, and the blood-code of the
gods in the courts of the after-world was due to a similar
extension. We may quote as evidence for this conclusion
those pictures of the infernal regions where we see the
evil-doer persecuted by the soul or avenging spirit of his
victim. Next, it is to be noted that the direction to the
future life given to the belief in retribution would have
gained most ground in pessimistic times and climes. An
Aeschylus, for instance, who held this belief more stoutly
than any other Greek poet, hardly glances beyond the
confines of earthly existence. The hero of Marathon was
content with the grand spectacle of divine justice of which
he had been the witness and abettor. Here, however, if
we are to gain a clear understanding of the divine descent
of the soul, we must arm ourselves against misleading
analogies.
The conception of the soul of the dead fully partici-
pating in the bliss of the gods, joining their table, sharing
their carouses, and abandoning itself to all kinds of sensual
enjoyment, was common to the ancient Indians and
Germans, as well as to the Indians of Central America,
and probably to the Thracians too. It should be clearly
stated that it had next to nothing in common with
the main lines of the Orphic doctrine, and it is equally
illegitimate to refer that belief in the higher nature of the
soul to the mere evidence of spiritual phenomena which
are the property of the mystics of all countries and times.
132 GREEK THINKERS.
The goals at which the religious mystic aims have
everywhere and always been the same. By direct inter-
course and gradual assimilation, he strives after a final
identification with his god. But though the aim be
uniform, the ways which lead to it are many. Some
have accompanied their progress by the beating of drums,
the tinkling of cymbals, and the shrilling of flutes,
Others approach their deity through the sensuous mazes
of the dance, and others, again, seek his presence by an
absorption in monotonous contemplation or by the hypnotic
trance engendered by continuous gazing at some gleaming
object. By this means the Maenad of Greece, the Brahman
ascetic, the Mohammedan dervish, and the Buddhistic monk
were exalted to ecstasy, were relieved of the burden of
self-consciousness, and were admitted to the freedom of
the godhead or of the source of light. In wide circles
of the people, as soon as the storm of a spiritual epidemic
of that kind had blown over, the nervous frenzy or
stupefaction would be succeeded by the "mysterion," or
" sacramentum," which gave the true believer the feeling
of identity with the godhead and freed him for awhile from
the burdensome coil of individual existence. Those acts
and excitements, by which man lost his manhood and felt
himself a god — we need but mention the Bacchants and
Sabazians, the Ras and Osirises of Egypt, and the like —
were superseded by symbolic ceremonies, by the bearing
of holy vessels, the tasting of sacred food and drink, and
occasionally by symbolic sexual unions, all of which cere-
monies helped to create the illusion of an identity with the
gods, wherein we meet the essence of the Greek mysteries,
connected with Bacchus, Eleusis, and so forth. Religion was
here, as elsewhere, wholly divorced from morality. Since the
ecstasy loosened each and every restraint, it tended to im-
morality rather than its converse, and the enthusiasm of the
Bacchanalia has always formed a striking contrast with the
strict propriety of respectable conduct. It is a contrast
which renders it superfluous to speak of certain hole-in-a-
corner mysteries, the excesses of which were a disgrace to
Greece no less than to pther countries. But in tracing
RELIGIOUS MYSTICISM. 133
the development of human altruism, which was at first
confined to the circle of family sentiments, we see that
the gods were exalted from their original non-moral
attributes to the rank of guardians and protectors of all
that State and society held dear; and the refinement of
the new ideals which was shed on the objects of worship
reacted in turn on the worshippers. Thus the mystic rites
of Greek religion, with the important mysteries of Eleusis
sacred to the infernal deities at their head, became by
no means wholly indifferent to the claims of morality.
Evildoers were excluded from the rites which gave their
participants a foretaste of eternal bliss, .and the prohibition
was probably not confined to the class of murderers alone.
The Orphics too possessed a mystic cult, of which we
know little more than that it embodied the chief myth of
that sect, though this embodiment fell behind theJElgifc.
sinian representation of the myth of Demeter in JtSL.
•'^sggguous^and bnlliant 'qualities. TJut 'the grand feature
^wHicITcJistinguishes the Orphic" branch of Greek religion
from the rest of the mysteries was the consistent energetic
force of its morality, the sole approximation to which
was found in the religion of Apollo with its centre at
Delphi. In the emphasis which was laid on the ethical
consciousness we are justified in recognizing the essential
portion of the third, the most significant and the most
characteristic part of the Orphic doctrine of the soul.
A parallel will help to make our meaning clearer. In
chapter cxxv. of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead,"
there is contained a negative confession of sin which reads
like a long-drawn-out version of what is epitomized in a
few words on the gold tablets of Lower Italy to which
allusion has so frequently been made. In both, the
soul of the dead man emphatically calls itself " pure," and
it is solely on the ground of this purity that it bases its
claim to everlasting bliss. But here a distinction is to be
noted. The soul of the Orphic worshipper contends that it
has done atonement for its " works of iniquity," and there-
fore is conscious of its freedom from their consequent
pollution. The soul of the Egyptian, on the contrary,
134 GREEK THINKERS.
recounts the full tale of the iniquities which it avoide
in its earthly pilgrimage. There are not many facts i
the history of religion and morality which are so we
calculated to arouse our astonishment as the archives c
this ancient confessional. Sins against the ceremonial la1
are mentioned in it, but not in any great numbe
And by the side of the precepts of civil morality commo
to all ethical codes we find traces there of a refinemer
of moral feeling in an uncommon and partly in a surprisin
degree. The following quotations will illustrate th
point : —
" I have not oppressed the widow.
<£ I have not withdrawn the milk from the mouth of tl
suckling.
" I have not made the poor man poorer.
" I have not made the journeyman work beyond his contracte
time.
" I was not negligent ; I was not idle.
" I have not traduced the slave to his employer*
" I have not made any man's tears to flow."
Moreover, the ethical teaching which shines between th
lines of this confession enjoined acts of positive benevolenc
as well as the avoidance of wrongdoing. The soul of th
departed cries out, "I have spread the canopy of jo
everywhere ; I have fed the hungry, given drink to th
thirsty, clothed the naked. I have provided a boat fc
the retarded voyager/' and so forth. Finally, the righteoi;
soul, its long discipline over, attains to the chorus of th
gods. " My impurity is cleansed," it cries, with exultatioi
" and the sin that lay on me is cast off. I reach this Ian
of the blessed, and ye who stand before me " — the goc
mentioned just now — "reach me your hands : I am becom
one of you."
It is impossible for us to decide whether the parall<
which confronts us here is a mere accidental likeness, c
the result of historical causation. But we should remembe
in this context that the development of the Orphic doctrin
ensued — and ensued by no means remotely — on the begir
nings of an intimate intercourse between Egypt and Greeo
AN EGYPTIAN PARALLEL. 135
The Greeks, too, it will be noted, looked up to the monu-
ments of Egyptian architecture and sculpture with reverent
sentiments of awe. To borrow Plato's expression, they
with their young civilization felt themselves mere "children,"
when they contemplated the hoary institutions of Egypt
It would not, accordingly, be surprising if they had
borrowed from that source religious and ethical features
of far-reaching significance. We must leave to the
investigators of the future the task of deciding this
question by a final and impartial judgment For our
purposes, the example drawn from Egypt is sufficient to
show the connection in other countries too between a
deeper conception of morality and the belief in the divine
nature of the soul. And if we mark the discrepancy
between the exalted demands which a man of fine ethical
ideals makes on his will and sentiment and the brutish
instincts which so frequently oppose the satisfaction of
those demands, we shall see that nothing could be more
natural. This discrepancy would obviously contribute to
the belief that a deep gulf was fixed between the two
parts of human nature, and that they could by no means
have sprung from the same source. This view of human
nature, dividing it in its elements into alien and hostile
halves, must have reacted favourably on the development
of the conscience and on its struggle against impulses
inimical to good and human deeds. But all light has its
shadow, and the shadow in this instance was the duality
of self, the disturbance of man's mental harmony, the
hostility to nature, and the ascetic abnegation of its
harmless and even of its wholesome demands. All these
features are combined in this ancient system of Puritanism
which brought in its train a long series of unprofitable
customs and unlovely versions of mythology. The move-
ment in itself was a great one, dimmed though its great-
ness has been by these tributary accretions.
We shall gain a better knowledge of the origin of the
movement if we take in consideration the historical condi-
tions under which it arose. The religious crisis was clearly
a reflex of the social crisis. It was the accompaniment
GREEK THINKERS.
of the battle of the classes which filled the seventh
century and a part of the sixth. Distress, as ever, was
the mother of prayer ; and the first to gaze with longing
eyes at a more blissful future, and to look to the gods to
redress the inequalities of earth, were doubtless the victims
of conquest and of the harsh rule of the oligarchs. At
least it may be stated with certainty that Orphicism took
its rise among the middle classes, and not among the
nobles. A prominent tenet in the creed of its adherents
was their horror of bloodshed, and this moral idea points
to a class of society which neither yearned for warlike
renown nor was famous for its prowess in arms. Further,
'Justice and Law, which occupy as Dike and Nomos a high
place in the Orphic pantheon, have always been mentioned
in the prayers of the weak and oppressed rather than of
the strong and mighty. It is almost legitimate in this
connection to speak of a conscious opposition to the life
and ideals of tne ruling classes no less than of an^open
..rebelliojti^agaiust.the . Jjiiling^jeligion,.. To this last factor
it is due that the Thracian god Dionysus, who was a
comparatively late arrival in the Hellenic heaven, took so
prominent a place in the system of the Orphics. It is
important, moreover, to note that when the new religion
proceeded to build up its mythical structure it took no
account of heroic deeds, such as those of Hercules, the
heavenly aristocrat, but it exalted the unmerited "suffer-
ings " of a popular god like Dionysus. Take the story of
the wicked Titans and of the helpless child Dionysus,
and we perceive that it reflects as in a mirror the insolence
of the violent oppressor whom the vengeance of heaven
will overtake at the last, and the impotence of the blame-
less sufferer whose confidence in Justice will be crowned
with ultimate victory. It must be acknowledged that this
was not the original meaning of the legend. It was
rather intended to explain, as has been conjectured
with reasonable certainty, a rude orgy of sacrificial rites
in which live animals were torn to pieces and devoured.
But in this instance, as in others, religious imagination
transformed the material at its disposal, invested it with
ORPHICS AND TYRANTS.
a new meaning, and turned it to the purpose of new ideas.
There were two factors at work to promote the opposition
to the nobles, who were at once the trustees of the State
religion and the guardians of the national traditions : first, \
the courts of the tyrants, and, secondly, the conventicles of
the Orphics. If the view we have taken be correct,
Orphics and tyrants alike were the representatives of the
same classes of the people — of the citizens, that is to say,
who were devoid of rights, and of the peasants who had
bowed their neck.* The parallel works out with remark-
able closeness. Take the case of Clisthenes, for example.
It was he who broke up the oligarchy in Sicyon, and
substituted grossly abusive epithets for the grand old
titles of the Doric tribes ; and it was he, again, who forbade
the recital of the Homeric poems, who deprived Adrastus,
the national hero and demigod, of his honours, and tacked
them on to Dionysus. The resemblance may further be
traced in the political habits of those dynasties. They
were eager to form alliances with foreign potentates, and
some of their members — the instance of Corinth occurs to
us — even went so far as to adopt outlandish names from
Phrygia or Egypt such as Gordius and Psammetich. In
precisely the same way the Orphic worshippers introduced
gods from Thrace and Phoenicia — the Kabiroi — by the side
of the Hellenic deities, and were not averse, as we have
been at pains to show, from adapting their cosmogony to
the teachings of Egypt and Babylon.f Taking all these
points into consideration, it was plainly something more
than mere chance that Onomacritus, the founder of the
Orphic community at Athens, enjoyed the protection of
the Pisistratides, and dwelt as a guest at their court.
In the course of our inquiry, we shall frequently
have occasion to cross the path of Orphicism. We shall
become acquainted with the fruits of its harvest, and mark
the misgrowths that disfigured it We shall see the
influence that it exercised on Plato, and through him on
posterity. And here we shall hardly fail to note that
the psychical dualism which divided body and soul was
* Vide Introd., § 2. t ?&* Ch. II. § 3-
138 GREEK THINKERS,
extended and expanded at this point to a real dualism
between the world and the Deity. This consequence was
implicit in the fundamental principles of Orphicism, though
the Orphics never drew it themselves. They acquiesced
in an enlightened Pantheism, in which the chief' stress
was laid on the unity of universal life. Finally, we
shall watch the descent of the mighty stream in the clear
light of the wonderful discoveries of modern times, and
especially of the restoration of the "Apocalypse of St.
Peter." The sources of that stream are still shrouded in
obscurity, but the sun has risen on the era of early
Christianity to which it flows, and on the wide reaches of
that movement in which its current can be traced.
4. The origin of Orphicism is obscure to this day, but
it may be stated without hesitation that it was crossed at
an early date by the beginnings of Pythagorism. There
is internal evidence in support of this view, and there is,
further, the authority of trustworthy traditions. The names
of men are mentioned in antiquity as the authors of Orphic
poems who are partly known to us as members of the
Pythagorean circle, and partly as dwellers in precisely
those regions — Lower Italy and Sicily — where the
doctrines of Pythagoras were first and most widely sown.
We have, accordingly, to resign all attempts to draw a
clear line of demarcation, but in the region which more
particularly concerns us we are able to point to tenets
which, on traditional grounds and by internal testimony,
we may describe as Pythagorean rather than as Orphic.
The Orphics, for instance, were satisfied to locate the soul
between one incarnation and another in the reformatories
of Hades, but the Pythagoreans, with their more scientific
tendencies, went on to ask how it happened that there
was always a soul at hand and ready to enter a body
whenever and wherever a new being came into existence.
In this respect, as they perceived, it was immaterial whether
they took the moment of conception, or the moment of
birth, or some period of time between the two. Having
posed this question, they went on to answer it themselves.
They pointed to the example of the particles of dust in
PYTHAGOREAN IDEAS. 139
the sunlight There they were provided with corpuscles
which surround us on all sides, and which we inhale with
every breath we draw, but which stand on the border-line
of perceptibility, and are not visible till the sunlight falls
on them. It is true, indeed, that the continuous vibration
of those sensitive particles of dust, even when the air was
apparently quite still, reminded the observer of the cease-
less motion which was ascribed to the soul, and thus
assisted the identifying process ; but even without this
adventitious aid the theory was intelligible, and from its
author's point of view was an eminently reasonable one.
It was customary at that epoch to regard the soul, not as
an immaterial being, but as one so finely composed of
matter as to be invisible or hardly visible. Thus the
question and its answer were alike completely justified.
Modern science, it may be added, has reached a well-
founded conclusion on precisely the same lines. It has
observed that certain lower organisms are spontaneously
engendered wherever the conditions are favourable to their
development, and hence it has inferred that the air is full
of invisible germs of that kind.
We are far less completely acquainted with the
theology of the Pythagoreans. There is no evidence to
show that their theology stood in any kind of sharp
contrast with the popular religion. It exhibits an ap-
parent leaning to monotheism, or, according to other
accounts, to a sort of dualism. In this connection we are
reminded of the fantastic theory of numbers, which identified
unity, as the principle of good, with the godhead, and
duality, as the principle of evil, with the material world.
But such speculations, in so far as they are credible at all,
clearly belong to later phases in the development of the
Pythagorean doctrine. It is otherwise, as it seems, with
the dogmas of the exhalation of the world, which makes
it appear as an animate being, and of the origin of
the world, which was supposed to have started from
one point and to have been continued and completed
by the attraction of that point on its nearest surround-
ings and on ever-wider portions of space. But tenets
140 GREEK TI-I INKERS.
of this kind bear the unmistakable mark of the child-
hood of science. Of far greater importance is a doctrine
of equal antiquity for which we depend on the authority
of a very striking remark by Eudemus. Eudemus was a
pupil of Aristotle whose careful study of the history of
astronomy and geometry must have given him an exact in-
sight into Pythagorism, and in one of his lectures on the
conception of time and of temporal identity he uttered the
following words : " If we are to believe the Pythagoreans,
I shall once more gossip among you with this little staff in
my hand, and again as now will ye be sitting before me,
and likewise will it be with all the rest." The excellent
Eudemus merits our hearty thanks for having let slip this
allusion in the heat of his discourse, and we shall be hardly
less grateful to his industrious disciples who preserved the
remark in their note-books for the benefit of posterity.
The delightful picture is conjured up vividly before our
eyes : the master sitting on his marble chair, smiling at
his humorous fancy and playing with the badge of his
office ; the pupils facing him in long rows of seats, and
listening half puzzled, half amused. But the thoughts that
are contained in this brief piece of information are virtually
inexhaustible, and, it may be said at once, they redound to
the greatest credit of the Pythagoreans. For the pregnant
little sentence is neither more nor less than an unconditional
surrender to the theory of universal law. It is an inference
derived with strict logical precision from the union of that
theory with the belief in cyclical succession. Anaximander
and Heraclitus have already familiarized us with this
belief, and since we shall presently meet it again in Empe-
docles and in far later authors, it will be well to consider
more closely the question of its origin.
To this end we must revert to the motives of cosmogonic
speculation as such. The problem of the origin of the
world was first and chiefly obtruded on men's minds by
their daily experience of the rise and decay of fresh visible
objects. For what was found to be true of single objects
was believed to be true of their totality, the world. At
a later stage an impulse was added by all the real and
CYCLICAL COSMIC PROCESS. 141
supposed evidences of order and regularity in the world,
especially by the existence of Air, Earth, and Sea,
the three vast agglomerations of homogeneous matter,
which never quite came to be regarded as primordial.
Further and finally, the process was assisted by the
changes that close observation revealed on the surface
of the globe, such as the formation of deltas, the shifting
of land and sea, and so forth. The earlier experi-
ments in cosmogony had commonly been confined to
the presumption and description of a beginning of the
existing order ; they had rarely gone on to ask what
preceded that beginning, and whether or not the existing
order would endure till eternity. Thus a second problem
awaited the more mature development of thought, and
when the philosophers approached it they were confronted
with the_ alternative supposition of an absolute beginning
and an absolute end, or of a cosmic process without
beginning or end in the proper sense of those terms.
The Greek thinkers, who were apt at seizing analogies
serious, as a rule, though not always well-interpreted,
adopted at once and with practical unanimity the
second alternative of a ceaseless process of transformation
without a proper beginning and without a proper end.
And here, too, there was a parting of the ways. Geo-
metrically speaking, the cosmic process might be com-
pared either with a trajectory or with a cycle. As the
one it would be a journey to an unknown goal, as the
other it would be a circular course of phenomena always
returning to its starting-point. And with these alterna-
tives before him the Greek thinker could not hesitate
which to choose. There was no decisive analogy to impel
him to adopt the first. In favour of the cyclical theory
he could quote the spectacle of dec
which constantly renewed itself hT'tlie life of
it was further supported by the circulation of matter, the
recognition of which may have been the original motive
of the doctrine of primary matter, and which Heraclitus, at
least, presents with complete clearness of expression. And
to this uniformity of natural life there was but a single
142 GREEK THINKERS.
exception ; the souls of the dead, whether they were
regarded as shadows in Hades or were exalted to the seats
of the blessed, broke the law of cyclical succession. At the
same time the doctrine of metempsychosis, which itself
depended to some extent on the more general analogy,
was calculated to redress the harmony which this single
exception disturbed. Furthermore, the circulation of the
seasons must have been of paramount significance. We
can conceive nothing more convincing than the regular
return of the great gleaming luminaries with the
beneficent powers that they exercised on natural and
human life, and the consequent veneration they enjoyed
as beings of a godlike order. We may parenthetically
note at this point the greatest boon which astronomy
conferred on mankind. It was the first science which com-
bined the notions of God and law. It spread the halo of
divinity over the conceptions of order and rule, and, more
than that, it preserved the conception of divine dominion
from the risk of ultimate and inseparable confusion with
that of arbitrary power.
Thus, then, the belief was reached in the cyclical suc-
cession of phenomena. It acquired a more rigid shape
by its adaptation to the doctrine of the "world-year" or
"great year" due to the astronomical researches of the
Babylonians or perhaps of still older civilized peoples which
had extended over thousands of years. From such obser-
vations and their consequences men came to recognize or
guess at immense tracts of time. The solar year, for
example, stood to the world-year of Babylon in the relation
of a second to a day — a second equal to two of our own
seconds, since the Babylonians divided the day into twelve
instead of twenty- four hours. And the great year of this
computation was itself but a day in the life of the universe.
If we look for the motive of these gigantic units of time,
we shall doubtless find it in the belief that the rest of
the heavenly luminaries, whose changes of position had
become discernible by observations extending over a series
of centuries, were governed by the same laws as the sun,
nioon, and stars, which returned after regular intervals
BABYLONIAN " WORLD-YEAR" 143
to the positions they had originally occupied. The
framework of astronomy thus devised in the East was
filled up by the cyclical doctrines of Hellenic as well as of
Indian philosophers. Our readers are already acquainted
with Heraclitus's belief in the periodical consumption of
the world by fire.* The Babylonians had likewise assumed
periodical conflagrations and floods. But while we render
all honour to the wide intellectual horizon of the authors of
this conception, we cannot but characterize its details as
fantastic in the extreme. Their conflagration was fixed for
the time when all the planets should be congregated in the
sign of Cancer, and their flood for the date of their meeting
in Capricorn. It is perfectly clear that this rested on the
fact that the division of the zodiac which the sun reaches
at the period of the summer solstice is associated with
burning heat, whereas that of the winter solstice is asso-
ciated with pouring deluge. The Pythagoreans apparently
kept free from this wild play of associated ideas, though their
theory of a " double destruction " by the fall of heavenly
fire and of the lunar water would appear to have been
influenced by the Babylonian doctrines But the remark-
able theory which Eudemus reports to us cannot otherwise
be explained than by the presumption of a cyclical disso-
lution of existing cosmic or earthly conditions. We cannot
admit that it is directly derivable from the theory of the
world-year by the intermediate maxim, "when the stars
resume their former places, all occurrences will repeat
themselves as before." Such an admission would ascribe to
the Chaldean astrology a quite unwarranted influence on
Pythagorism, no trace of which is elsewhere perceptible.
On the contrary, Theophrastus himself, a fellow-pupil of
Eudemus, expresses the greatest astonishment at the
sham-science of Babylon which then became known in
Greece. And it is equally inadmissible, in our opinion,
to drag in the transmigration of souls to account for
this doctrine. In the first place, it was eagerly adopted
by the later school of the Stoics, who did not believe in
metempsychosis ; secondly, the soul, as we shall presently
* Vide Ch. I. § 5 (p. 64).
144 GREEK THINKERS.
have reason to show, was not conceived in the whole course
of this period as the sum of the intellectual or moral
qualities by which the individual is constituted, and apart
altogether from these objections, the doctrine of the trans-
migration of souls does not explain what needs explanation.
The theory we are dealing with requires the simultaneous
resurrection of innumerable men in the identical shapes of
body as well as of soul. Furthermore, if Eudemus was
to come to life again with the same corporal and psychical
disposition which clothed him at that moment, his physical
progenitors and their ancestors in turn, no less than the
whole series of his intellectual forebears, Aristotle his
master, and his masters Plato, Socrates, and so forth, must
previously have returned to existence. Again, if the staff
which he was then swinging was to be placed in his hands
once more, the tree from which it was cut must have grown
afresh, it must have sprung from the same seed and taken
root in the same soil as aforetime. But we need not
elaborate these details ; we are doubtless correct in assuming
that Eudemus was merely exemplifying for his own disciples
and contemporaries a universal law which he deemed valid
for all other generations and events. Briefly stated, each
several recurrence of all existing persons, things, and phe-
nomena can solely be accomplished by the fresh unwinding
of a finished web of causation. And here we believe we are
confronted, not with a contingent circumstance, but with the
central essence of the doctrine. It embraces two conditions :
First, the belief in the strict causal concatenation of every-
thing that happens ; secondly, the belief in a fresh and abso-
lutely similar starting-point for this series of causation. It
is with no sense of surprise that we discover the first condi-
tion in Pythagorism. We have already met it in Heraclitus
in passages which we correctly interpreted as the echo of
the fundamental innovations introduced by Pythagoras into
physics. And the theory of numbers itself is at bottom
nothing but a belief in the rule of universal law embracing
all occurrences. In this connection we note that Heraclitus
drew no sharp line of demarcation between psychical and
physical processes, and we have no reason to be surprised
RECURRENCE OF THE BEGINNING. 145
at what we may call the natural and naive determinism
of an age when the problem of will had not yet been formu-
lated. We reach now the second premiss of the Pytha-
gorean doctrine contained in the remark of Eudemus. It
is merely the assertion of the principle with almost mathe-
matical precision of the cyclical recurrence of an original
condition of the world. The presumption of the same
natural factors in equal number and like distribution, and
pervaded by the same powers, is itself the presumption of
a source from which the stream of causation, flowing a
second time, will reproduce its occurrences with faithful
and detailed exactitude. Now, is it legitimate, we may
ask, for those of our own philosophers who expect
that the solar system at least will return to its starting-
point, to draw the same conclusions which the Pytha-
goreans drew? The resisting medium with which space
is presumably filled is to effect a gradual decay of the
original impulse of planetary motion ; it is to bring about
the prevalence of the central attraction, which is con-
stantly renewed, and it is finally to cause the precipitation
of the planets into the sun, which will be followed by the
production of an immense amount of heat and by the trans-
formation of the whole system into that nebulous mass from
which it first proceeded. Starting from these premises,
must we not reach the conclusion of a universal and minute
repetition of all earthly processes ? The conclusion is
unavoidable, we reply, provided that the region which is
occupied by the sun, the planets, and their satellites be
enclosed in a kind of ring-fence, shut in and shut out on
all sides. But there is no district of the universe which
can be compared with Fichte's "close community." Not
to speak of the ^normous quantities of heat which in the
course of millions of years have been radiated into space
and have never returned, every meteorite and every
meteoric particle which has wandered into our system
from another sphere of attraction, or from ours into another,
every ray of light that has passed from Sirius to the sun
or from the sun to Sirius — all have contributed to shift the
balance of matter ?ind force in gur system in a degree
. VOI* J, k
146 GREEK THINKERS.
which prevents the possibility of its exact reproduction from
the beginning. The " universal formula," to adapt a well-
known reflection of Laplace, from which a mind adequate to
the task could deduce the whole sequence of development
down to its smallest details could not conceivably be the
same in both cases. It may be argued, however, that the
whole of tlie universe, and not any part of it, should be
taken as the field in which this process of identical causation
is enacted. To this we reply that spectrum analysis has
revealed to us growing worlds by the side of decaying
worlds, so that various phases of development are simul-
taneously exhibited in different parts of the universe. But
neither the one nor the other of these objections could
have occurred to the philosophers of antiquity. Once
more they were saved by the comparative narrowness of their
science, which permitted them, undistracted by the limi-
tations or the misgivings of detailed knowledge, to hold fast
to thoughts true in their essence and pregnant with great
results. Thus they were able to think their thoughts out
to the end, and to express them in splendid pictures which
seize the imagination of mankind.
The theory of cosmic uniformity spinning itself out
without beginning or end might conceivably be pillorized
as a joyless and comfortless doctrine. The greater, then,
is the honour due to the author who proved himself
completely free from the weakness of condemning a thesis
as false, if it does not flatter the wishes of our heart.
In searching for this author, the name of Hippasus of
Metapontum occurs to us. He was counted among
the Pythagoreans, but in common with Heraclitus, he
regarded the primary matter as fire, and taught the
doctrine of the destruction and reconstruction of the
world in definite periods. As a thinker who followed
in Heraclitus' footsteps, he would obviously empha-
size the reign of universal law in natural and huma^n
life. The Stoics, too, who looked up to Heraclitus
with reverent awe, would not refuse to accept a theory
which played a considerable part in their own system
from the hands of a Pythagorean who was at the same
ALCM&ON OF CROTON. 147
time half a Heraclitean. But we must resign the hope of
complete certainty. In all discussions of this school of
thought it is always difficult and generally purposeless to
attempt to draw distinctions of that kind. The very piety
of the Pythagoreans towards the Master, on whose head
they heaped all the honours without regard to their per-
sonal claims, is an obstacle in the path of this inquiry.
No field of literature is more crowded with apocryphal
monuments, and it is on these that we have chiefly to
depend for the record of the work of individuals. Many
names have reached us of the earlier adherents of the
school, but they are little more than names. The men
and women they conceal — for women too took an eager
part in the semi-religious movement inaugurated by
Pythagoras— were united in a close community. Their
loyalty to one another, the communistic solidarity of
their interests, and the altruistic friendship they displayed,
are features as characteristic of the brotherhood as their
earnest endeavour to moderate and control their passions.
For the ideas of harmony and measure which prevailed
in their philosophy were likewise the ideals of their life.
One man only, of marked individuality, is in clear relief
against this background. His astronomy shows us that the
influence of the early lonians was stronger than that of
Pythagoras, but his intimate connection with some mem-
bers at least of the Pythagorean community is obvious from
the dedication of his work.
5. " Alcmseon of Croton, son of Pirithous, to Brontinus,
Leon, and Bathyllus, saith" — thus runs the beginning of
the book, which unfortunately survives but in a few frag-
ments. "The gods alone," it continues, "possess full
certainty touching the invisible things, but, in order to
draw contingent conclusions after the fashion of mankind"
here, unhappily, the sentence is interrupted like a broken
sign-p6st on the road to truth. The physician of Croton,
a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, was fully conscious
of the limits of human knowledge. In departments where
the evidence of the senses was excluded he confined him-
self to conjectural utterances, and to the drawing of
148 GREEK THINKERS.
inferences in which we confidently expect to see traces of
careful observation and of some regard for circumspect
reasoning. The sentence we have quoted just now raises
hopes of a series of detached tenets and not of a com-
plete system embracing all things human and divine. It
promises more because it pledges itself to less.
Alcmseon's chief work was accomplished in the fields of
anatomy and physiology. His claim to immortality rests
on the fact that he was the first to recognize the brain as
the central organ of intellectual activity. A trustworthy
tradition relates that he used the evidence of animal dis-
section, and his own references seem to support this
account. By this means he discovered the chief nerves of
sense, which he agrees with Aristotle in calling " conduits/1
or " canals," and traced them to their termination in the
brain. Modern science reinforces the functional significance
of such anatomical facts by observations taken during
illnesses or lesions, and Alcmseon followed the same method.
We know for certain that he employed in this way the
disturbances of the senses which result from concussion
of the brain. He explained them in a rational though
somewhat one-sided fashion by what we should call an
interruption of the conducting lines. Deafness and blind-
ness, according to Alcmaeon, were caused by the shifting
of the brain out of its normal position, and by the conse-
quent closing of the roads by which impressions of sight
and hearing commonly reached it. The widespread
belief that the sperma originates in the spinal marrow he
refuted by the direct evidence of animals killed immediately
after coition and showing no diminution of the marrow
contained in the vertebrae. It will readily be under-
stood that Alcmaeon's positive contributions to the theories
of procreation and embryology could have had no particu-
lar value. Of more importance was his doctrine concern-
ing sickness and health, which was not without influence
on succeeding philosophers. Health he represented as
maintained by the equilibrium or "isonomy" of the
material qualities existing in the body. A surplusage of
of those qualities would be the cause of illness, and the
HIS DOCTRINE OF THE SENSES. 149
cure would be effected by the restoration of the disturbed
equilibrium, whether by natural or by artificial means. As
" the majority of human things," including the qualities
aforesaid, occur at once as contraries and pairs, the remedy
was obviously easier. An excess of cold would be cured
or corrected by an increase of heat, too much dryness by
an antidote of moisture, and so forth. This theory enjoyed
a long life. We meet it as late as in the writings of
Geber, the master of the Arabian alchemists. But it was
contracted and petrified, as it were, by the Hippocratic
pathology of the humours, in which the causes of sickness
were referred to the excess and undue diminution of the
chief fluids of the body.
Alcmseon submitted the several senses to a searching
investigation, with the exception of the sense of touch.
This omission redounds to his credit, inasmuch as he
apparently disdained to fill up by arbitrary guesswork
the blanks that could not but occur here in his scanty
empirical knowledge. In each instance his starting-
point was the anatomical constitution of the respective
organs of sense. The air-hole in the ear, for example,
he regarded as a resounding-board, and he explained the
capacity of the tongue to reduce solid bodies to fluids, as
a preliminary to the sensation of taste, by the moisture,
softness, and flexibility of that member, and by its fulness
of blood, which he called heat Furthermore, Alcmaeon
was the first to turn his attention to the subjective im-
pressions of sense, thus opening the path which was
ultimately to lead to a deeper insight into the nature of
the act of perception and of the process of cognition in
general. Plainly, however, he merely took the first step.
His curiosity was aroused by the photopsy in an eye
which has received a heavy blow, and this phenomenon
stimulated his powers of scientific imagination. It forms,
we conceive, no mean evidence of Alcmaeon's genius for
science that he realized the significance of this rare and
abnormal phenomenon, and regarded it as the key to the
normal act of vision. It was inevitable that his explana-
tion should be crude and childish in character, He seized
150 GREEK THINKERS.
on a purely material factor, where we speak of the
specific energy of the nerve of sense. He postulated fire
in the eye ; and in the fire which it does not contain and
the water which it does he found his two indispensable
vehicles of visual perception — a light-giving and a trans-
parent element.
The rudiments of physiology led to the rudiments of
psychology. In this field Alcmseon's contemporaries
confounded well-nigh indiscriminately the functions of
the intellect, and his endeavours were directed to im-
posing order on the chaos. He derived memory from
sense-perception, and ideation or opinion (Doxa) from
memory. From memory and Doxa combined he derived
the reason or insight which distinguished human-kind
alone from the lower orders of being. The soul, as he
taught, was immortal, and he based his conviction on
an argument which sounds strangely in our ears. The
immortality of the soul was due to its likeness' to the
immortals, and that likeness consisted in the incessant
motion which it displayed in common with the gods, for
sun, moon, stars, and the whole firmament were conceived
as never at rest It is obvious that no one who held this
belief could regard the soul as wholly immaterial ; other-
wise he would hardly have compared it with the luminaries
which, despite their divine and indestructible attributes, yet
possess a body and dimension. Still less would he have
based its claim to immortality on its resemblance to those
luminaries in respect, not to their divinity, but to their
ceaseless motion in space. When we come to ask what
led Alcmseon to attribute constant motion to the soul,
we see that he could not have derived it from the un-
interrupted psychical processes of ideation, emotion,
and volition. For even if he left the possibility of
an absolutely dreamless sleep wholly out of account, he
must have perceived that body and soul stood precisely
on a level in this respect. Pulsation, respiration, and so
forth, which are processes of the body, are incessant
movements too. It is clear, then, that Alcmseon con-
ceived "psyche" in some wider sense, which included
AND OF THE SOUL. 151
the source of all spontaneous bodily processes — in one
word, as the vital force. He must actually have regarded
it as a well-spring of force, a conception fully confirmed
by Plato, who transformed and extended the doctrine, and
spoke of the soul in precisely this connection as the
" source and spring " of movement. At the present date,
it must be added, the whole argument is very irrelevant.
We no longer regard the stars as truly imperishable,
and we have ceased to look elsewhere than to the chemical
processes attendant on respiration and nutrition for the
springs of vital force. But, to revert to Alcmseon, our philo-
sophic physician undertook the further task of proving the
perishability of the body. " Men perish," he wrote — and his
dictum may be extended to animals — "because they are
unable to join their beginning to their end." The words
sound enigmatic, but they are fully illuminated by the
context in which Aristotle, our authority, employs them.
Alcmseon's meaning is simply this : If old age were not
merely figuratively but literally a second ' childhood, men
(and animals) would be able to live for ever, since a cycle
would be created which could be constantly renewed. But
the series of changes suffered at the various periods of
human (and animal) life follow a progressive, and not a
cyclical line. It is quite conceivable, therefore, that the pro-
gress should lead to an ultimate goal. There was nothing
to prompt Alcmaeon to adopt a third hypothesis lying out-
side of these alternatives, that the aforesaid series of changes
resemble a straight or a crooked line continued to infinity.
The natural processes, by the analogy of which he was
led, suggested but those alternatives ; and, parenthetically
remarked, it is greatly to his credit that he used the
analogical method, and did not acquiesce in the d priori
assumption, " All that is created must necessarily decay."
It is an assumption which has frequently been repeated
from antiquity down to the most recent times, despite the
fact that it is untenable in itself, and that, as we now know,
it is refuted by the example of the simplest organic forma-
tion, the protoplasm. Modern science, we may add, has
not made much progress with this problem since the date
152 GREEK THINKERS.
of the " Father of Physiology." It recognizes changes due
to old age which, apart from the countless injuries by which
the complicated human organism is constantly threatened,
tend of themselves to its final decay. But when it comes
to the question of the causes governing these changes, the
mists are as thick to-day as they were four and twenty
centuries ago.
It would be interesting to inquire more deeply into the
intellectual life of the sage of Croton, to discover, if we
could, his thoughts about the Deity, about primary matter,
and the origin of the human race. But our authorities
are dumb. And this conspiracy of silence is plainly not
accidental. Alcmseon differed from his predecessors in not
proposing a solution for every problem that confronted
him. And his reticence reminds us that we are no longer
watching the " beginnings " of Greek science. It reminds
us that we have already crossed the threshold of the era
in which the spirit of criticism and scepticism takes loftier
flights than heretofore.
BOOK II.
FROM METAPHYSICS TO POSITIVE SCIENCE.
" Ein metaphysischer Schluss ist entweder ein Trugschluss oder em
versteckter Erfahrungsschluss,"—H, VON HELMHOLTZ,
( 155 )
CHAPTER I.
XENOPHANES.
I. MANY whose wanderings led them through the provinces
of Greece about 500 B.C. would have met an aged minstrel
sturdily stepping1 along, and followed by a slave who
carried his guitar and his slender household utensils. In
the public squares and market-places he would be thronged
by crowds of the populace, and he would offer the gaping
multitude the commonest wares that he bore, stories of
heroes and of the foundation of cities, of his own or alien
manufacture. For his more trusted customers, however, he
would dive in the recesses of his memory for stores of a
more select kind, which his happy art would successfully
press on the reluctant acceptation of his audience. The poor
rhapsodist, who regarded a palatable meal as the fit reward
for artistic fame, was the greatest and the most influential
innovator of his age. This minstrel's calling was by no
means remunerative, but it served to screen the perilous
activity of the religious and philosophic missionary. The
wrinkled and white-haired veteran had fought in the hey-
day of youth against the national foe. At the age of five
and twenty years, when victory crowned the standard of the
conqueror, and Ionia became a Persian province,* Xeno-
phanes ranged himself with the Phocseans, the most hot-
blooded of his countrymen, to found a new home in the
far West in the Italian townstead of Klea. The old name
still belongs to a single soaring tower overhanging a deep-
receding bay at the gorge of a wide valley divided by a
* 545 B.C.
156 GREEK THINKERS.
double range of hills into three narrower chasms, with the
snows of the Calabrian mountains in the background. Here
Xenophanes made his home, and here, at more than ninety-
two years old, he closed his tired eyes, bequeathing his
work to disciples, who revered him as the master of a
powerful and influential school. Oblivion has fallen on
the epic poems that he wrote, describing in thousands of
verses the foundation of piny Colophon, his mother-city,
and the settlement in Elea. But many a precious
fragment remains of his didactic poem with its philosophic
depth of thought, as well as of his fascinating elegies,
pointing to so much genuine wit and genial warmth in
their author, whom one cannot but love and honour as a
man of fearless mind and unimpeachable intentions.
True, he poured the vials of his scorn over much that
was dear to the heart of his people; the figures of the
epic gods were especially reserved for his indignation on
account of the example they supplied. Homer and Hesiod,
he maintained, taught men no better lessons than "theft,
adultery, and mutual deceit." And, generally, the anthropo-
morphic conception of the divine aroused his most vehement
opposition. If bulls, horses, and lions, he argued, had
hands to paint pictures or mould statues, they would
represent the gods as lions, horses, and bulls, just as men
represent them in their own image. And Xenophanes
stood equally aloof from other departments of national
life, which he regarded with no less hostility. In his
view it was the height of absurdity to crown the victor in the
boxing match or wrestling bout, in the foot-race or chariot-
race, with the highest honours. And it seemed to increase
the humiliating aspect of his own fortune in life when he
saw the brilliant reception accorded by the mass of the
people to the brute strength of the prize-fighter. " It is
ill done," wrote Xenophanes, "to cherish the strength of
the body higher than beneficent wisdom," and "better is
our wisdom than the strength of horses and men." " Thus,
one after another, he attacked the institutions sacred to
Greek tradition. He had no more respect for the high,
heavenly images of earthly existence than for the worship
HIS BREAK WITH TRADITION. 157
of the powers of the human body and of the beauty of
man. It is impossible to pursue this inquiry without
asking how it happened that Xenophanes broke away so
suddenly from the habits of his own people, and whence
he derived this reaction from the national standards of
sensibility and thought — a reaction which opened and
pointed the way to the boldest innovations of later times.
The answer is found in the ominous decree of history,
of which Xenophanes was a witness in the impres-
sionable days of youth. He saw Ionia fall before the
sceptre of the Great King. He saw its inhabitants bow
with hardly a show of resistance to the yoke of the
stranger. Phocaea and Teos alone chose freedom in
exile before bondage at home, and the rising generation
which watched these stirring events could not but feel
their influence in its views on life and the world. Self-
knowledge and reform have at all times been the message
which great minds have received from the downfall of
their country and the loss of national independence.
When Napoleon had triumphed over Germany, and Jena
and Auerstadt had been fought and lost, national senti-
ment and historical Romanticism began to succeed to the
reign of Rationalism and cosmopolitan ideas, and a no
less far-reaching change took place after the victories of
Cyrus over the Greeks of Asia Minor. That crushing
defeat could not satisfactorily be accounted for by
blaming the luxury and effeminacy of Oriental life.
Xenophanes did not fail to accuse the upper "thousand"
of his fellow-citizens who had "previously learnt useless
splendour from the Lydians, and had walked across the
market-place clothed in purple and dripping with unguents."
But his penetrating wisdom did not stop at this point He
subjected to a searching examination the moral standards
and the ideals of the people, their masters and their
sources; and it is not to be wondered at that a man
of penetrating intellect and character should have de-
nounced as the root of the evil the materialized religion
of the Greeks, and the epic poetry, its mouthpiece, with
which the rhapsodist would be but too well acquainted.
158 GREEK THINKERS.
Though his heart bled at the necessity, yet he tore himself
away from the traditions of his nation ; he turned his back,
not merely on his dishonoured country but on the ideals
that it cherished. The iconoclastic criticism that he
practised was eminently favoured by his long period of
vagabondage, which he himself computed at no less
than sixty-seven years, with the exceptional breadth of
his horizon in the world of space and time. Nor was
his withering sarcasm confined to the contradictions, the
absurdities, and the degrading features of the legends of
the gods and heroes. He scrutinized the workshop of
anthropomorphism with all the discrepancies and con-
trarieties of its various religious products. Xenophanes
knew that the negro represented his gods as snub-nosed
and black, whereas the gods of the Thracians displayed
blue eyes and red hair ; and the philosopher could conceive
no reason why the Greeks should be right, but the
Thracians and negroes wrong. His acquaintance with
the Phoenician lament for Adonis did not exclude an
acquaintance with the Egyptian lament for Osiris, and
his ban fell on both alike and on the allied rites of the
Greeks. When they wept for their dead gods, he scorn-
fully bade them take their choice; let them mourn such
beings as mortal men or worship them as immortal gods.
Thus Xenophanes was the first to use the methods of
indirect attack and of mutual demolition which rest on
comparison and parallelism — methods which proved such
effective weapons in the war against positive tenets and
dogmas when wielded by a Voltaire or a Montesquieu.
2. But the sage of Colophon, like the sage of Ferney, was
not a mere mocker at religion, Xenophanes too worshipped
" a Supreme Being," for —
" There is a greatest god among gods as well as among men,
Nor is he mortal in form, nor is his thought as a mortal's."
This god is not the creator of the universe : he is neither
outside the world nor above it; but though never ex-
pressly so called, he is, virtually, the soul or spirit of
the universe. In a passage of Aristotle, which is plainly a
XENOPHANES SUPREME GOD. 159
transcript and not deductive in character, we are told that
" Xenophanes looked at the whole structure of heaven, and
declared this One to be the Deity." And Timon the
Phliasian,* who composed a satiric poem ridiculing the
teachings of philosophy, puts the following words in the
mouth of Xenophanes : " Wherever I turn my mind, every-
thing resolves itself in a single Unity." Our thinker him-
self says of his supreme god that "he governs everything
by the power of his mind," and we should be inclined to
discover a dualistic tendency in that phrase if it were not
corrected by expressions that meet us at the same time.
The god is denied the possession of human members and
organs when he is said by Xenophanes "to see and hear
and think as a Whole," but he is not therefore regarded
as outside the conditions of space. And when we further
read of him that " he clings undisturbed to the same place,
and is averse from every movement," this description
expressly shows that he is extended in space, as the
universe, we may add, is immovable and changeless as a
whole, though this cannot be predicated of its parts. At
, this point we cannot help smiling at the sight of the stout
assailant of anthropomorphism made the victim of an an-
thropomorphic attack. The changeless rest of the Supreme
Deity is justified on the ground that " it does not beseem
him to wander hither and thither." It is a striking phrase
but it obviously means nothing more than that the chief
of the gods must not hurry officiously to and fro like an
obsequious serving-man ; he must cultivate the majestic
inactivity of a king on his throne. But the conception of
the Highest Being hovering between mind and matter
may be proved with certainty on other grounds as well.
Dualistic theism is as alien to the predecessors of Xeno-
phanes as to his contemporaries and followers, and the
philosopher's " God-Nature " is not a jot more remarkable
than the Primary Being of Anaximander, which was at
once material and divine, or the thought-endowed Fire of
Heraclitus. The system of the disciples of Xenophanes did
not afford any room for a creator of the world, or for the
* Born circa 300 B.C.
l6o GREEK THINKERS,
deliberate methods of a master- craftsman, still less for a
heavenly father manifesting his anxiety by single acts of
interference, or for a judge dispensing punishments and
rewards. Yet who would ever have thought of regarding
the Eleatic metaphysicians as the disciples of Xenophanes
if they had differed from him, who was theologian far more
than metaphysician, in respect to his fundamental theory
of the godhead ? And when we come to the question of
Xenophanes as a Pantheist, we see that there was nothing
so terribly novel in his views. They fall into their place
in the development of the popular religion, depending
on the growing conviction of the uniformity of nature
and on the heightened standard of the moral conscious-
ness. At the root of the popular religion there lay the
bias to nature-worship, and in so far it might be more
correct to speak of reaction than of innovation. The
reformer in this instance was in no slight degree a restorer
as well. Beneath the ruins of the temple which he
destroyed he discovered another and an older sanctuary.
He removed the anthropomorphic stratum of religion,
which was the exclusive contribution of the Greeks
embodied in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, and laid
bare the earlier stratum which was common to the Aryans,
and which had been preserved intact by thg JjQclians and
^especially^by. the , Persians as th ej^Tigjop nf r> atutg. At this
point we are confronted by the contentious problem
whether or not Xenophanes admitted individual gods by
the side of his universal Being. Literary authorities,
whose evidence is now recognized as worthless, have
denied it ; but an affirmative answer is given by utter-
ances of the philosopher himself, the authenticity of which
is beyond dispute. We refer especially to an explanation
of the relation of the lower gods to the supreme god,
which is vouched for as genuine by an imitation in
Euripides. That relation was not intended to recall the
attitude of an overlord to his serfs. The rule of law is
precisely the contrary of the rule of might, and it is the
recognition of universal order and uniformity which meets
qur eyes in that utfer^ncQ. Nor is there the remotQSt
AND THE PANTHEON. l6l
reason to withhold our acceptance from this solution. It
is obvious that the sage of Colophon would never have
addressed his prayers to the children of Leto and the
white-armed consort of Zeus. He regarded it as a
delusion, which it was his duty to combat to the utmost,
that "the gods, as mortals believed, were born and
possessed the sensibility, the voice, and the form of mortal
men." At the same time, his philosophy was quite as
reluctant as that of his contemporaries and predecessors
to admit a conception of nature at once soulless and god-
less. The Orphics had emphasized the uniformity of cosmos,
but had in no wise denied the multiplicity of divine beings ;
Heraclitus had tolerated subordinate deities by the side of
his thought-endowed First Fire ; Plato and Aristotle them-
selves had shrunk from immolating the star-gods to their
supreme Deity; and pure monotheism in its strict exclusive-
ness was always regarded by Greek minds as a sacrilege.
This, then, being the rule, it would have been hardly less
than a miracle if Xenophanes, a man of deep religious
feeling and of .essentially Greek modes of thought, had
formed an exception to the rule at so early a date. There
is much to foster the belief, and nothing at all to gainsay it,
that Xenophanes paid divine homage to the great factors
of nature. The master of the Eleatics was not the pioneer
of monotheism ; he was rather the herald of a pantheism
corresponding to the natural bent of his countrymen, and
saturated in the civilization of his age.
3. The account of the genius of Xenophanes is not
exhausted by this survey. The poet and thinker was like-
wise a student and scholar of the first rank, and in this
capacity he was praised or blamed by his younger con-
temporary Heraclitus.* The surprise that we might have
experienced at the multifarious activity of the sage has
already been discounted, for it was plainly his search for
knowledge that put the pilgrim's staff in his hand, and
" drove his musing mind to and fro in Greece " for many
restless decades. He would have sought rather than avoided
the farthest boundaries of the wide colonial area, for it was
* Bk. I. Ch. I. § 5 (p. 65).
VOL. i. 'M
1 62 GREEK THINKERS.
precisely at these outposts of Hellenic culture, among the
Egyptians of Naucratis or the Scythians of Olbia, that the
wayfarer would have been most welcome. Like a modern
lecturer from a European country in St. Louis or New York,
he brought a message from the seat of national learning
Thus in an age in which personal inquiry was far more
important than book-knowledge, Xenophanes had ample op-
portunity of gathering and utilizing the richest intellectua
harvest Geology was the chief of the separate science!
which counted him among its oldest experts. So far as w€
know, he was the first to draw correct and far-reaching in-
ferences from the fossilized remains of animals and plants
He found impressions of fishes, and probably of seaweeds
in the younger Tertiary strata of the celebrated quarries o
Syracuse, and he discovered all kinds of marine shells ii
the older Tertiary stratum of Malta. Hence he deduce<
certain changes which the surface of the earth had under
gone in remote periods, and as an anticatastrophist, t
follow Sir Charles Lyell's definition, he regarded thes
changes, not as the result of immense separate crises, bu
as the outcome of steady and imperceptibly minute prc
cesses gradually consummated to effects of colossal dimen
sions. He assumed a slow graduated periodical change c
land and sea, and the assumption reminds us of the cyclic*
doctrine which we met in our consideration of his nornim
teacher, Anaximander. Xenophanes combined it with
similar theory in respect to the regular and natural d«
velopment of human civilization —
" Never the gods showed mortals everything from the beginning,
But they search for themselves until they discover the better."
Here a note of strict scientific reason is unmistakabl
struck, and it invests the picture of the sage of Colophc
with a new and by no means insignificant feature.
Let us review once more the successive stages in tl
lifework of this extraordinary man. The poignant suffe
ings which he experienced in early youth aroused in h
mind a spirit of scepticism towards the worth ai
tenability of the popuUr traditions, especially where the
XENOPHANES' DEVELOPMENT. 163
dealt with religion. Nearly seventy years of wandering
deepened and confirmed this scepticism by the wide ac-
quaintance which he obtained with the beliefs and habits
and customs of many peoples and tribes. They placed
in his ready hands the most effective engines of iconoclasm.
The religious reformer was now fully equipped to enter
on the road which he had opened. He did not reject the
influence of his own moral ideals, of impulses which might
be described as inherited or atavistic, and of the results of
the scientific culture of his age. His mind, a storehouse
of refined humanity and justice, was naturally averse from
the employment of rude force, and led him to make a
clean sweep of all the elements of popular belief which
were hostile to his higher standard. The worship of
nature was imbibed by the Greeks with their mothers'
milk, and it came to more exalted expression through the
poetical and religious personality of Xenophanes, who
united with it the belief in the rule of universal law
which he shared with his more enlightened contem-
poraries. Thus he attained to a conception of the supreme
godhead as a uniform and all-pervading power, governing
the universe as the soul governs the body, endowing it
with motion and animation, but inseparably bound up in
it. The picture we are drawing is not complete with-
out the mention of yet another impulse. Xenophanes
was distinguished by a deep-seated instinct for truth which
was fostered and cherished by his criticism of the myths.
It led him to condemn the conventional theology, not
merely on account of its ethical inadequacy, but by reason
of its defective justification in fact. The accepted tenets,
he would have us understand, do not only tell us what, in
respect to the most exalted topics, we should not believe,
but they tell us what we cannot believe. Some of the
statements repel him by their worthlessness, others by
their arbitrariness as well. He brought his hand down
sharply on conceptions morally innocuous, but monstrous
and adventurous, describing, for instance, as an "invention of
the ancients " the belief in " giants, Titans, and centaurs."
Further, the teaching of Xenophanes did not merely
1 64 GREEK THINKERS.
differ from that of his theological forebears, but he taught
less than they did. He was content to dwell on a few
fundamental conceptions without investing them with
fuller and more exact form. In the words of Aristotle's
grumble, " Xenophanes has expressed himself with broad
distinctness on no subject." And his reticence went yet
further. In ever-memorable verses he disputed dogmatic
certainty in general with an implied reflection on his own
teaching, and thus it may be said that he repudiated before-
hand all responsibility for the excesses of dogmatizing
disciples. " No one," he exclaims, " has attained complete
certainty in respect to the gods and to that which I call
universal nature, nor will any one ever attain it. Nay, even
if a man happened to light on the truth, he would not know
that he did so, for appearance is spread over all things."
We shall meet this immortal maxim more than once in the
course of our labours. First, in the work of an eminent
champion of sound methods of natural philosophy, the
friend of Hippocrates, if not Hippocrates himself, in
the monograph " On Ancient Medicine," the determined
attack on the arbitrariness of the nature-philosophers
which this pamphlet contains is led by the motto we have
quoted from Xenophanes. But to this we shall revert
later on. At present we may close our delineation with
the remark that Xenophanes, like all genuinely great men,
was an amalgam of contrary qualities whose apparent in-
compatibility went deep. He united in his own person
the inspiration of a god-intoxicated enthusiast and the
sober perception of a critic acquainted with the limits of
human knowledge. He was at once sower and reaper.
With one hand he sowed the seed from which a stately
tree was to rise in the forest of Greek speculation ; with
the other hand he sharpened the axe which was to fell^
not that tree alone, but many another mighty trunk.
CHAPTER II.
PARMENIDES.
r. POLYBUS, son-in-law of Hippocrates, the founder of
scientific medicine, opened his treatise "on the nature of
man" with a lively polemic. He attacked physicians and
litterati who represented the human body as composed
of a single substance. Some declared this " All-in-one "
to be air, others fire, and others again water, and each of
them, according to Polybus, "supported his doctrine by
evidence and proofs which in reality mean nothing." The
truth of the assertion, declared its author, becomes as clear
as daylight if one watches the dialectic tourneys devised
for the entertainment of the public. For while he who
is In possession of the truth makes it triumph always
and everywhere, here victory falls to the chance possessor
of the most persuasive tongue. And this memorable
polemic concludes by saying, " So far as I can see, these
people throw one another successfully by means of their
speeches, and by their imprudence they help the thesis
of Melissus on its legs." Now, arguments which help a
doctrine on its legs, which support it and strengthen it,
that is to say, may fairly be supposed to have prepared
the way for it and to have contributed to its first appear-
ance. We shall, therefore, be well advised not to lose
sight of this incisive remark, but to bear it in mind, when
we are looking for the principle of the Eleatic doctrine. Its
fullest expression is associated with Melissus, a Samian
noble, whose date is definitely fixed by the naval victory
which he won over the Athenians in 441 B.C. Above
1 66 GREEK THINKERS.
all, we shall have to fix our attention on two important
aspects of this inquiry. We shall have to determine what
relation was borne by Polybus to the nature-philosophers
whom he attacked with such uncompromising vigour, as
well as to the metaphysician of Samos, whom we may
fairly include as a member of the Eleatic school. Polybus
is severed from his adversaries by wide differences of
opinion, but the worst reproach that he levels at them is
that they assisted the victory of Melissus. This sounds like
the admonition of a good patriot to whom party conflicts and
differences are immaterial when a worse enemy is knock-
ing at the door. And such was actually the case. The
sharpest contrast with the physicists and natural philo-
sophers, of all kinds and schools, was formed by those whom
the biting wit of their contemporaries stigmatized as "un-
natural philosophers" or " stoppers-of-the-universe." The
" thesis " of Melissus meant nothing else, to use his
own words, than that " we neither see nor know what is."
The brilliant world by which we are surrounded, and of
which our senses bring us tidings, is a mere semblance and
deception. All change, all motion, all growth, and all
occurrences, everything that provides matter for natural
science and speculation is a dream, a shadow, and nothing
more. The one reality behind this phantasmagoric illusion
is — what ? The two pioneers of this school of thought part
company here. In the destructive part of their doctrines
they agree, but they are not completely at one in the
positive solutions that succeed it. It will be well, then, to
consider the doubts and negations which they shared in
common, having previously acquainted ourselves with the
older and more important representative of the doctrines.
2. The senior of Melissus was Parmenides, the veritable
founder of the famous doctrine of unity. He was born at
Elea as the son of prosperous and respected parents,
whose position would naturally have entitled him to take
part in political life. He is said to have drawn up a code
of laws for Elea, and the well-authenticated reference
which fixes his flowit in the 6gth Olympiad (504-501 B.C.)
may be taken as the date of some public act of this kind.
Xenophanes, whose death must have occurred after 478 B.C.,
survived that Olympiad by a quarter of a century, and the
two great men had undoubtedly been intimately acquainted.
But we shall do well to beware of regarding Parmenides
as the pupil of Xenophanes, for the brief sojourn of the
wandering rhapsodist in the home of his adoption pre-
cluded him from working as a teacher. On the other
hand, we are acquainted with the names of two Pytha-
goreans, one of whom, Aminias, is said to have given
Parmenides an impulse to philosophic inquiry, while to the
other, Diochaites, he felt himself so much indebted that
he dedicated a "heroon," or memorial chapel, to the
memory of his master. We shall presently see that, as a
matter of fact, the philosophic system of Parmenides
owed as much to Pythagoras as to Xenophanes. The
disciple of Pythagoras was ready to build up his pantheistic
doctrine in the forms of strict evidence borrowed from the
science of mathematics, but the peculiar direction of
thought which he gave to it shows beyond dispute that
Pythagorism did not fully satisfy him. And if his thought
was founded on the pantheism of Xenophanes, and its lines
were determined by the mathematics of Pythagoras, it set
its compass by yet a third system, namely, that of
Heraclitus. For it was the doctrine of flux, first formu-
lated by the sage of Ephesus, which made the deepest
impression on the mind of Parmenides. It sounded the
bottom of his scepticism, and impelled him, as it impelled
his successors, to adopt conclusions of the kind in which
the characteristic speculation of the Eleatics found its
most powerful expression. The younger representative of
the school may perhaps be taken as the mouthpiece of
this scepticism. His lucid and flowing prose will at least
be more refreshing in our ears than the didactic poetry of
his master, with its closely-packed arguments and crowded
sentences. Melissus' account runs as follows: — •
"If earth, water, air, and fire, likewise iron and gold, are; if
the one be living and the other dead, if this be white and that be
black, and so on through the whole range of things of which men
168 GREEK THINKERS.
say that they really are; if these things are, and we see and hear
aright, then each and every object would have to be as it seemed
to us at first, and not change and become an object of a different
form, but it would ever be whatever it is. Furthermore, we claim to
see and to hear and to recognize aright ; but what is hot seems to
us to become cold, and what is cold to become hot, and the hard
thing soft, and the soft thing hard, and the living to die and to be
engendered from the not-living, and all these changes to take place,
and what a thing was and what it now is to be in no wise alike.
Rather doth iron, which is hard, seem to become rubbed away by
the finger that it encircles [as a ring] ; and gold and precious stones,
and all else that we regarded as strong, suffer the same change,
and earth and stones seem to be engendered by water. Where-
fore it ensueth," concludes the thesis of Melissus, "that we
neither see nor know what is"
Two conditions are accordingly required in the things
of sense : the inviolable stability of their existence, and
the inviolable stability of their qualities. In respect to
each of these demands, they are weighed in the balance
and found wanting. They are reproached at once for
their perishability and for their mutability. And if
the two demands, and respectively the two conclusions,
appear as if they were one, the fault lies in the
ambiguity, which had not yet been recognized, of the
verb "to be" in its two-fold sense, (i) of "existence/' as
"the sun is," and (2) jof ^jjaere^jgopula^^a^'. lUhe^un^s""a
shall we discuss the question whetEeT 'or
not Melissus was justified in dismissing the perishable
and mutable to the realm of visionary appearance. But
we can very well conceive that the search for a sound,
we might say a robust, object of cognition was not
successful in the province of sensible things in an
age when the science of matter was in so rudimentary a
stage. The leaf which is full of sap and verdant to-day
is sere and yellow to-morrow, and brown and shrivelled
the day after. Where, then, are we to seize the Thing
itself; how recognize and grasp its permanent element?
Heraclitus compendiously summarized these everyday
experiences, and extended them beyond the confines of
HIS ATTACK ON HERACLITUS. 169
actual observation, clothing his resultant scepticism with
a paradoxical garb which challenged the common
sense of mankind. Thus, supposing the impulse to
knowledge could not rest satisfied in the view of the bare
uniform succession of phenomena, not merely was it now
deprived of its foothold, but the natural desire for a
harmony of thought, wholly free from contradictions, was
disturbed and impelled to protestation. It was unsatis-
factory enough to have to acquiesce in the view that "the
things of the sensible world are involved in incessant
transformation," but sound reason rose in revolt against
the further principle that "things are and they are not,"
and the spirit of rebellion was strongest among men of
most disciplined minds. No wonder, then, that those who
had enjoyed the benefits of a Pythagorean or mathe-
matical training were most strongly affected by this re-
action, and it is not surprising that Parmenides, with his
Pythagorean traditions, should have stigmatized as "the
twin roads of error " the common philosophy that basked
in the reality of the sensible world, and, secondly, the
doctrine of Heraclitus. He assailed that doctrine with the
most poisoned shafts of his invective. Those "to whom
being and not-being are at once the same and not the same"
he denounces as "deaf and blind, helplessly staring, a
confused herd ; " "double-headed" he calls them on account
of the double aspect of their Janus-like theory of things ; and
the fate which his satire reserves for them is to fall into their
own stream of flux and be carried away on its flood ;
" know-nothings " he calls them, and " retrograde is their
path," like the metamorphoses of their primary matter.
Characteristic as these outbreaks are for the spirit of
the Eleatic philosopher and his relation to the doctrine of
Heraclitus, his quarrel with his second and more important
adversary, the general opinion of mankihd, is yet more
fascinating and instructive. The excitement by which he
was moved can be felt in his panting sentences and
verses ; with breathless energy he struck at the popular
conception of the world, and the ringing strokes of his
scepticism fell like the blows of an axe. His iconoclastic
170 GREEK THINKERS.
method was applied to the reality of sensible objects, to
birth and death, and every motion and change. We may
quote the following phrases from the negative part of his
work : —
" How should the thing that is ever be unmade ; how should it
ever have come into being? If it came into being, there must
have been a time when it was not, and the same holds good if its
beginning is still in the future. . . .
" Where wilt thou seek for the origin of the thing that is ; how
and whence did it grow ? I shall not permit thee to say or think
that it came forth from the thing that is not, for the not-being is
unspeakable and unthinkable. And what need, moreover, would
have driven it to existence at one time rather than another ? . . .
" Furthermore, the power of insight will prevent thee from
believing that out of the thing that is another can become by its
side."
And next to these negatives we may put the following
affirmative utterances. The thing that is is not merely
" not-become and imperishable/' and accordingly " without
beginning and end ; " not merely are " changes of place
and shiftings of hue unknown to it," but it is a limited
and thinking being, an "indivisible whole, uniform, con-
tinuous, similar in all its parts, not being less here and
greater there, but resembling the bulk of a well-rounded
and equably weighted ball." At these words the reader
experiences somewhat the same kind of shock as when he
is startled from a dream. A moment ago we were soaring
beyond the aerial stars, and now the confines of reality are
closing in on us again. Parmenides, too, it would appear,
essayed a flight on the wings of Icarus above the region
of experience into the ethereal domains of pure being.
But his strength betrayed him halfway ; he sank, and fell
to the familiar plains of corporeal existence. The truth is,
his theory of Being prepared the way for the kindred con-
ceptions of later ontologists without being identical with
those theories. It was still of the earth earthy ; it brings
us to the forecourt, but not to the fane, of metaphysics.
3, At this point we shall do well to revert to the dictum
SOURCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF UNITY.
of Polybus, from which we started. The philosophic
physician recognized that the self-contradictory statements
of the physicists lent force to the scepticism of Elea.
He would doubtless have had us understand that those
who declared all things to be air denied, with but a single
reservation, the trustworthiness of the evidence of the
senses ; that the same held good, with merely a change
in the reservation, of those who replaced air by water
or fire. Representatives of this doctrine must have played
into the hands of thinkers, if they did not actually engender
them, who would lump together the concordant negatives
and strike out the contradictory affirmatives ; these would
cancel one another, like the items on a balance-sheet, and the
thinkers would merely have to add the separate negations
of the " physicists " to one grand total negation.* No one
who follows out this thought will cherish a moment's hesita-
tion as to the source of Parmenides' theory of Being. It
is a kind of dividend, the residue or deposit of the spon-
taneous disintegration of the doctrine of primary matter.
The various forms in which that doctrine had clothed
itself in turn were full of implicit contradictions which
presently disproved one another, and the greater then was
the influence on mankind of the common truth that under-
lay them when the clash of opinions had cleared away.
In Aristotle's words, it is "the common doctrine of the
physicists," by whom he meant the nature-philosophers
from Thales downwards, that matter is neither generated
nor destroyed. This doctrine was domiciled in the mind
of the cultivated Greek for the full span of a century ; and
considering how often it changed its form, and how
brilliantly it survived those transformations, it is not
surprising that it should ultimately have ranked as unim-
peachable, and have been invested with well-nigh axiomatic
force. To quote Aristotle once more, this "ancient and
undisputed tenet" derived point and pith from the reaction
against the doctrine of Heraclitus, and at the same
time it was extended by other contributions into the
source of which we have now to inquire.
* Cp. Bk. LCh. I. §2.
172 GREEK THINKERS.
We are already acquainted with the first and most
important of these contributions. Unchangeability was
added to eternity as an attribute of the universal being,
filling all space, in the system of Parmenides. It differed
from the primary beings of Thales, Anaximander, Anaxi-
menes, and Heraclitus in escaping the liability to manifold
modification, transformation, and rehabilitation. It is to-day
in nature and condition the same as it ever was and as it
ever will be. Nay, one of Parmenides' expressions even
seems to cast doubt on the passage of time itself; and,
seeing that nothing happened in time, that reality was
denied to each and every temporal process, there was
actually nothing left for the time-conception to denote.
Parmenides' power of abstraction reached its zenith at this
point, but his mind did not dwell there for long, and he
reverted with increased impressiveness to the unchange-
ableness of his spatial being. He added the condition of
qualitative constancy to that of quantitative constancy,
the germ of which, at least, had been contained in the
doctrine of primary matter from the very beginning, and
had gradually come to clearer expression through the
influence of AnaxJmenes in particular. The constitution
of matter was to remain unaltered at the same time that
its mass was to be exempt from increase and diminution.
This extension of the doctrine was entirely native to its
spirit, as we hope to show by a brief digression lying a
little outside the chronological limits of our immediate
inquiry. Anaxagoras, whose name will occupy us presently,
was, so far as we know, in no wise influenced by the
teaching of Parmenides. Still, the common foundations
of their theories were surmounted by the same super-
structure, and a telling fragment from his work which
has only recently been discovered, will best illustrate the
method by which he and many others arrived at this
extension of the doctrine of primary matter. " How," he
asks, " should hair have come from not-hair and flesh from
not- flesh ?" and herein he fancies he has disproved a sheer
impossibility. In order to follow Anaxagoras, we must re-
member the fascination exercised by language on the minds
THE POSTULATES OF MATTER. 173
even of the deepest philosophers. Matter Is eternal, and
out of nothing there can never come something ; this, as
we saw just now, had already passed into a commonplace.
The transition thence to the new axiom was easy and
imperceptible. If a being never comes from a not-being,
why should such-and-such a being ever come from not-
such-and-such a being ? Both postulates would be covered
by a single formula : no being can come from a not-being,
no white from a not-white, and so forth. We have already
had occasion to remark the equivocal use of the word
"to-be," and its vacillation between the meaning of
"existence" and its employment as a copula to join the
subject to the predicate. But though the new postulate
may and must have arisen in this way, though the asso-
ciation of ideas and the ambiguity of language may have
helped to call it in existence, yet its value and significance
are not therefore condemned. The belief in causation was
likewise born in darkness, as the child of the associative
faculty, but the obscurity of its origin would not reconcile
us to abandoning its lead, now that experience is ever
confirming the ample promise it contained, and now that
the scion of the inductive canon has been grafted on the
wild stock. Nay, supposing the impossible were to
happen ; supposing the staff which guided the steps of
our forebears on this planet through myriads of years
were to break asunder in our hand ; supposing water
were suddenly to cease to quench our thirst, and oxygen
to feed the process of combustion ; even on this wild
hypothesis we should yet have had no alternative, we
should yet be unrepentant of having held the belief that
the future would resemble the past ; we should yet not
regret having followed the only path open to us through
the maze and wilderness of natural phenomena.
The case is similar, though not quite the same, when we
come to the twofold postulates for the stability or constancy
of matter. Not quite the same, because the world would
still not necessarily be reduced to chaos ; purposeful action
would not be an impossibility, provided there existed
phenomenal processes, held together by the bond of causal
174 GREEK THINKERS.
uniformities, even without any permanent substratum. But
no good purpose is served by fantastic suppositions of this
kind. Presupposing the existence of material bodies, and
presupposing likewise the series of experiences on which,
as we have seen, the doctrine of primary matter
depended for its source and strength, the progress of
science was then indeed bound up with the growing
belief in the permanence, quantitatively and qualitatively,
of the contents of space. This was the sole condition
for comprehending the universe and for inferring the
future from the past ; and the demand for this condition
must have powerfully fostered the popularity of the new
belief, if it did not actually engender it But there
are still, even at this date, considerable distinctions to be
drawn between the two branches of the doctrine. We
believe to-day that nothing comes from nothing, and
nothing passes into nothing. The opposite opinion has
been proved to be nugatory time after time, especially in
departments of thought where modern science has made
most progress ; we possess, too, the additional negative
proof that no single trustworthy instance has ever been
adduced to the contrary. Still, the statement that nothing
can come from nothing, and that nothing can pass into
nothing, is one that we have no right to concede either to
Parmenides himself or to his countless anti-empirical suc-
cessors. Its apparent philosophic necessity is the merest
delusion. The method was to introduce new elements in
a conception — in this instance, the conception of being —
and then, when they had coalesced among themselves and
with their verbal husk, to mistake the artificial product
for a natural, if not for a supernatural, product. Eternal per-
manence was first given the name of "being," and subse-
quently it was clearly demonstrated that such a being could
neither arise nor decay, inasmuch as in that case it would
not be a being at all. It is otherwise with the second of
these twin postulates, which is still the almost exclusive
property of the strict scientist of to-day. Its opposition to
the evidence of sense is considerably greater than that
of the older twin* It is far more a guiding star for the
AND MODERN SCIENCE. 175
investigators than a goal which they have reached and
maintained by means of experience, Briefly stated,
as developed by modern science, the postulate amounts
to simply this : In all natural phenomena there is a
central string of occurrences which radiates in countless
branches. That central string is composed of nothing
but processes of motion, and we may call the objects in
which these movements or changes of position occur with
approximate accuracy bodies devoid of quality. The
branches or radii are the sensuous impressions which
produce the appearance of a change of quality. We
may illustrate this theorem by a few examples. There
is the wave of air, and the impression of sound which
corresponds to it ; there is the wave of ether, and the
corresponding impression of light ; and there is a chemical
process denoting in the ultimate resort a separation, con-
junction, or shifting of particles of matter, with the
corresponding impression of taste or smell. We are
already acquainted with the processes of motion in the
realm of optics and acoustics, corresponding with the quali-
tative impressions which they radiate. When we come
to chemistry, however, our information is by no means
so complete. It was only the other day that a dis-
tinguished physiologist described as the task of the future
" Newton of chemistry " —
" The reduction of the simplest chemical processes to terms of
mathematical mechanics. Chemistry," he continued, " will never
become a science in the highest sense of the word till we have
succeeded in comprehending the energies, the velocities, the stable
and unstable equilibria of particles as thoroughly as the motions
of the stars."
And the same author declares, touching the beginnings
of this ideal science, that he is not aware of
ce any more wonderful production of the mind of man than structural
chemistry. It was hardly more difficult to build up the mechanics
of the planetary system out of the movements of luminous points
than to develop step by step such a doctrine as that of the isomeric
relations of the carburetted hydrogens out of the apparent quality
176 GREEK THINKERS.
and transformation of matter as revealed to the five naked
senses."
4. Our digression has led us a long way from
Parmenides, but we felt it due to the curiosity of our
readers and to the memory of the old philosopher to hint
at the fruits folded in his doctrine of the unchangeability
of matter like the flower in the bud. Moreover, it will
have helped us to understand and to appreciate the most
paradoxical portions of his teaching. We perceive with-
out overmuch surprise that, granting the postulate or
assertion of material unchangeability, with the nourish-
ment it derived, by means not unfamiliar to us, from
correct conjecture and delusive association, the reverse
side of the theory was the rejection of the evidence of the
senses. Their testimony contradicted the postulate, and
their trustworthiness was accordingly denied. There is a
gap, however, in the logical consistency of this argument,
for no other witness than that of touch, or rather of
muscular resistance, could be conclusively quoted for the
belief in the existence of the contents of space, and even
of space itself. Still, Parmenides was plainly quite honest
in his conviction that he had expelled from his universe
everything dependent on the perception of the senses.
He erred in this conviction. He shared with Immanuel
Kant, to mention but one out of many, his mistake of the
sensuous origin of the idea of space, but he cannot fairly
be blamed for it. It is more astonishing that, while he
left space and its corporeal contents undisturbed, he
dismissed to the limbo of appearance that movement
in space which depends on the same evidence. The con-
tradiction cannot be evaded, and we may perhaps explain
it as follows. The fact most' incredible to Parmenides
was the change of quality. Now, if we remember how
much is comprised in the conceptions of organic structure,
growth, development, and decay ; if we reflect that in wide
tracts of natural life these changes of quality go hand-in-
hand with movement in space, including changes of volume ;
if we further add that the essential connection of both series
of facts came to exalted expression in Heraclitus* doctrine
THE UNIVERSE OF PARMENIDES. 177
of flux, which coupled incessant changes of place with
incessant changes of quality, we shall see that it was
perfectly natural that the sworn foe of that doctrine should
never have succeeded in dividing the halves so intimately
bound together, but should rather have included them both
in a common condemnation. This tendency, so strong
in itself, was considerably strengthened by an outside in-
fluence. Parmenides contested in unequivocal language,
which however has but seldom been rightly understood,
the existence of a vacuum. His argument, we may remark
in parenthesis, is of considerable historical importance as
affording the sole evidence of the presence of the opinion
at that date. Nor was it present in a mere rudimentary
form. It had already assumed that developed shape which
distinguished and comprised the conceptions of continuous
space void of corporeal contents, and of interstices
existing in the bodies themselves and separating their
particles from one another. As to the origin of this theory,
it is merely a conjecture, but a safe one, that, designed as it
was to explain the fact of motion, it sprang from the circle of
the Pythagoreans, who were unique at that time in devoting
serious attention to the problems of mechanics. Parmenides
and those who thought with him would have seen in the ac-
knowledgment of a vacuum a being or existence of the not-
being. He was accordingly impelled to dispute the empti-
ness of space, and thus the fact of movement itself would
appear to him inexplicable and, therefore, impossible. In
this way the universe of Parmenides rises visibly before
our eyes, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that
it visibly grows less and less. We have watched the
disappearance of all differences in sensuous objects and
their various states ; we have watched the vanishing of all
changes of place from the universe which was not denied
spatial extension and Contents, and what, we may ask, is
now left? Nothing but a bare uniform homogeneous
mass, a lump of matter without form or contour, — nothing
else would have been left to the mind of any one but a
Greek, with his instinct for form and beauty, who was
at once a poet and a disciple of Pythagoras. It was
VOL. I. N
178 GREEK THINKERS.
solely due, in our opinion, to this combination of qualities
that the infinite became finite, and the formless became
beautiful in the shape of that " well-rounded ball " with
which we have already made acquaintance. For there
is no possible doubt that, consistently with the premises
of the system of Parmenides, we should have expected
an infinite rather than a finite extension of the spatial
Being. Every boundary is a barrier ; and how, one might
ask, could it corne to pass that the only genuine all-
inclusive Being, suffering nothing, not even nothingness,
to exist beside itself, was at once bounded and barred ?
Proofs of this kind would doubtless have been adduced
to fill up any lacuna in the doctrine of Parmenides, and a
considerable degree of inner credibility would have
attached to them. But, as a matter of fact, there is no
such lacuna at all. Parmenides tells us the precise
contrary in quite unequivocal language ; and though,
owing to the loss or irremediable mutilation of that
portion of his work, we shall never know his logical
defence of it, yet we can hazard a very fair guess at
its psychological foundation. We have already antici-
pated one part of this inquiry. Parmenides was a Greek,
which is equivalent to saying that his mind was imaginative
and poetical, and was thus protected from the logical
consequences of his premises. Add to this that in the
Pythagorean tables of contraries the unlimited was ranged
with the imperfect Moreover, ludicrous as it sounds,
it can hardly be denied that the sworn foe of sensuous
appearances fell a victim at this point to a grave optical
delusion. For did not in truth the apparent globe of
heaven, which is stretched as a vault above our heads,
give rise to the Parmenidean conception of the globular
form of the only true Being? There is yet another
question to be considered. Was the universal Being
of Parmenides merely matter, merely corporeal and
extended ? And did its author, who valued rigour of
thought above all things, relegate thought and conscious-
ness to the outer darkness of appearance ? This seems
well-nigh incredible ; the supposition is rather forced on
UNIVERSAL MATTER: UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. Ijg
us that for Parmenides, as Spinoza might have said,
thought and extension were the two attributes of one
substance, and the real was at once the thinking and
the extended. We cannot support this opinion by any
fragment of his teaching that has come down to us.
There are but two sentences which could possibly be
interpreted in that sense — "thinking and being are the
same," and " thinking, and that of which it is the thought,
are the same ; " but the context in each instance forbids
it. They mean nothing more than that the genuine thing
that is is the only object of thought, and that thinking can
never be directed to the thing that is-not. But, in default
of direct statement and unimpeachable testimony, the fact
may be determined by internal evidence. The doctrine
of Parmenides supplied dogmatic materialism with some of
its most powerful weapons, but the master himself was never
a consistent materialist. As such he could not have been
reputed a disciple of Xenophanes. As such his place would
have been untenable within the Eleatic school between
the pantheists Xenophanes and Melissus. As such Plato,
the bitter enemy of materialists and atheists, would never
have addressed him as " the great," and would never have
rendered him a degree of homage which he withheld from
the rest of his predecessors in philosophy. And if the
supposition be simply incredible on these grounds, the last
traces of hesitation are removed by the example of
Spinoza, which we have quoted already, and the parallelism
in the Vedanta philosophers of India. The material Being
of Parmenides was incontestably a spiritual Being as
well. It is universal matter and universal spirit at once,
but the matter is sterile because capable of no expansion,
and the spirit powerless because capable of no action.
5. Parmenides built a lofty system of philosophy, but
it strikes cold on the senses with a dismal feeling of
monotony. One almost wonders if the architect entirely
escaped that impression. Hardly, it would seem ; for he
did not rest satisfied with the formulation of his "Words
of Truth," but he followed them up — on phenomenal lines,
as we should now say — by his " Words of Opinion." Many
l8o GREEK THINKERS.
previous workers in this field have been unable to contain
their astonishment that Parmenides should have taken this
step ; to our own thinking, it would have been more
remarkable if he had omitted it. He was a man deeply
immersed in the science of his age ; his mind was excep-
tionally inventive and exceptionally agile, and he was not
likely to content himself with the reiterated repetition of
a few meagre principles, important enough in their con-
sequences, but mostly of a negative tendency. He found
himself prevailed on, or, as Aristotle put it, "impelled to
trace — or account for — phenomena." And in this there was
nothing inconsistent ; for, though he rejected sense-percep-
tion as illusory, yet it had not therefore vanished from the
world. Trees still grew green before his eyes, the brook
still whispered in his ears, flowers were still fragrant, and
fruits still palatable to his taste. And if this held good in
his instance, it held good of the rest of mankind, yesterday
as to-day, there as here, whenever and wherever they
existed. Nor was he in any wise precluded from trans-
gressing these limits of time and space. He was free to
speak of the rise of the human race, the origin of the
earth, or the mutations of the universe, for he merely
implied that "such-and-such phenomena would have pre-
sented themselves to me and to those like me, if we had
been alive then and there." Though Kant's " General
History and Theory of the Heavens" actually preceded
his " Critique of Pure Reason," yet their order tnight as
well have been reversed: the sage of Konigsberg's belief
that only the "thing in itself" possessed objective reality
need no more have prevented his derivation of the solar
system from a primeval nebula than the sage of Elea's
ontology need have stood in the way of his cosmogony.
This was the point of view which Parmenides maintained
in the composition of Part II. of his didactic poem ; or rather,
he would have maintained it with complete consciousness
if the distinctions of "subjective and objective," "abso-
lute and relative," and the like, had been clearly and
logically grasped by him, and had been fixed, with their
corresponding terminology, as part of the furniture of
THE "WORDS OF OPINION? iSl
his mind. But this, as we know, was not the case. His
own expressions betray him, chiefly the Greek word
tJo^ct, which we have to render by "opinion," but which
really conveys several finer shades of meaning. It signifies
the sense-perception — the thing that appears to men ; and
it signifies equally the idea, or view, or opinion — the thing
that appears to men to be true. Thus Parmenides was
precluded, by the habits of thought and speech prevailing
in his times, from treating and approaching with any degree
of confidence what we designate subjective or relative truth.
What he offered were "the Opinions of Mortals ; " and this
description did not merely cover other people's opinions.
It included his own as well, as far as they were not confined
to the unassailable ground of an apparent philosophic
necessity. He laid them before his reader with the specific
warning not to yield them unquestioning credence; he
spoke of the "misleading structure" of his theory, and
called its exposition "plausible" or acceptable in contrast
with the "convincing force of truth" which belongs to
ideal reason. As he wrote in his dithyrambic introduction,
both parts of his didactic poem were put in his mouth by a
goddess. The second half contains some of his most original
dogmas, which were taken in earnest and widely esteemed
In antiquity, and cannot therefore have been intended to
act merely as a foil for the brilliance of his " Doctrine of
Truth." Doubtless he was also glad of the opportunity of
displaying the amount of his learning in this form, for he
straightly wrote that the reader of his work would be
" second to no mortal in knowledge " or insight. Further,
besides satisfying the desire of his own heart, he enjoyed
the welcome chance of finding himself in no too great
opposition to the religious traditions and sentiment of his age.
He adopted the same method in this instance as in that of
his doctrine of phenomena, ranging himself, that is to say,
with the popular belief modified by Orphic influences, and
introducing deities such as the "all-controlling goddess"
enthroned in the centre of the universe, and "Eros the
first-created." Meantime it is doubtful how far such god-
heads were mere personifications of natural forces and
1 82 GREEK THINKERS.
factors. We shall hardly be wrong If we presume that
the mind of the philosophic poet was torn by as deep a
misgiving as that which quite recently gave us Fechner's
"Day and Night Views " by the side of his "Atomic
Theory."
The cosmogony of Parmenides starts from the assump-
tion of two primary matters. They bear a striking resem-
blance to the first differentiation of the primary Being of
Anaximander, with the thin, the bright, and the light on
the one side, and the thick, the dark, the heavy on the
other. Parmenides conceived the origin of the world as
inexplicable, except by the co-operation of both factors,
which were sometimes called light and darkness. He
explicitly condemns the assumption of a single primary
matter and the rejection of the second — a condemnation
which was intended to apply to the theories of Thales,
Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, but which fell chiefly on the
last-named of the three, who was the principal opponent
of the Eleatic philosopher. In verses which have not
come down to us, Parmenides described the creation of
" the earth, the sun, the moon with its borrowed light, the
common ether, the heavenly milk, the outermost Olympus/'
already known to us, "and the warm force of the stars."
We can credit him with a knowledge of the globular shape
of the earth without any hesitation. He is said to have
been the first to give literary form to the theory, and to
follow the older Pythagoreans In not disputing the centra]
position of the earth-ball in the universe. Moreover, he
developed the doctrine of the different zones ; and, misled
apparently by false analogies drawn from the heavenly
zones, which he transferred to the central earth, he consider-
ably exaggerated the size of that strip of the earth which
is rendered uninhabitable by its heat. The different
regions of the heaven were known to him as "wreaths."
He represented them as enclosing one another in con-
centric circles composed partly of "unmixed fire," and
partly of fire mixed with the dark or earthy matter. A<
a natural philosopher he followed both Anaximander anc
Pythagoras, and we have already shown cause to believe
PARMENIDES PHYSIOLOGY. 183
that he was influenced by the " table of contraries." That
influence becomes clearer when we pass to Parmenides'
theory of generation. He referred the difference of sex
in the embyro to its local position, so that the contrast of
male and female corresponded with that of right and left.
In the same theory we mark the tendency, so characteristic
of a Pythagorean or mathematical training, to derive dis-
tinctions of quality from differences of quantity. He
followed Alcmseon in using the hypothetical proportions of
the male and female generative elements to account for
idiosyncrasies of character, and above all for the peculiar
sexual inclinations of the male and female products.
In precisely the same way he referred the intellectual
differences of individuals and their mental condition with
its temporary variations to the greater or smaller share of
the two primary matters which their bodies contained.
Empedocles, as we shall presently see, repeated this mode
of thought, which led him to an important and genuinely
scientific modification of the doctrine of elements. These
two philosophers, Parmenides and Empedocles, display
other points of contact, to which we shall return later on.
At present we have merely to pass in review the younger
representatives of the Eleatic school before we say a last
word on the work of Parmenides as a whole.
184 GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER III.
THE DISCIPLES OF PARMENIDES.
I. MELISSUS is the enfant terrible of metaphysics. The
childish clumsiness of his false conclusions betrays many
a secret which the finer art of his successors was careful
to preserve. In this way we may explain the striking
change in their attitude towards him which constantly
surprises us. At one time they shun his intimacy and
deny their uncouth predecessor much in the same way as
a man's family will turn his back on him in order to
avoid disgrace. At another time they are delighted to
find that their own views were shared by so early a
representative of their school ; they pat their awkward
champion encouragingly on the back, and exert themselves
to explain away the worst blemishes that sully the service-
able philosophy of Melissus. Thus the thinker is alternately
called clumsy and clever, crude and creditable, and these
epithets succeed one another in pictorial succession from
the times of Aristotle till the present day.
We are already acquainted with the starting-point of
the doctrine of Melissus, and, further, with its goal — so far,
at least, as it coincided with ttfiat of Parmenides. So far
as we are aware, they diverged from each other at three
places. Melissus kept extension as an attribute of being,
but purged it of everything that was grossly material.
He added infinity in space to infinity in time, and finally
he ascribed an emotional life to being — a life that was
innocent of " grief and pain," and which we must there-
fore call a condition of undisturbed bliss. Thus we
MELISSUS OF SAAIOS. 185
see that considerable progress had been made in the
process of abstraction inaugurated by Parmenides. So
successful has been the decomposition of the material
picture of the universe, that its features are liable to
vanish altogether and to make room for a blissful being.
In this respect Melissus must be numbered with the
mystics, but in one particular, at least, he was dis-
tinguished from the great majority of them, whether in
the East or in the West. He endeavoured, with what
success he might, to support his conclusions on logical
grounds, and not on mere inward light or intuition. It will
be well to gain acquaintance with his logical processes,
though it seems hardly possible to give a fair and simple
account of them without submitting them to a critical
examination. The first words which Melissus placed at
the head of his work were the following : " If nothing is,
how should we come to speak of something as being?" We
are grateful to him for having admitted the possibility that
the starting-point of his discussion could be illusory, and
for having attempted to clear it up by an argument.
Nor shall we linger to ask if the argument was tenable,
or if one might not have replied that the conception of
being, in the strict sense in which alone it can bear the
consequences which are here tacked on to it, may possibly
have rested on an illusion of the human mind, which
Melissus himself believed to be liable to so many illu-
sions. But without pausing at this point, we may continue
our quotation from Melissus :
" What is," he went on, " was from everlasting and will be to
everlasting ; for, if it had become, before it became it must have
been nothing; and if it was nothing, then we ought to say that some-
thing can never arise out of nothing. But if it has not become,
and yet it is, then it was from everlasting and will be to everlast-
ing. It possesses no beginning and no end, but it is infinite.
For if it had become, it would possess a beginning (for it would
have begun, if it had become) ; and an end (for it would at some
time have ended if it had become). But if it has neither begun
nor ended, and always was, and always shall be, then it
possesses no beginning and no end. Furthermore, it is impossible
1 86 GREEK THINKERS.
that anything be everlasting which does not comprise everything
in itself."
To avoid the possibility of a mistake, we must quote
at this point two more brief fragments :
" As Being is for ever, it must also be infinite for ever in size,"
" That which possesses beginning and end, is neither everlasting
nor infinite."
Every one must perceive the desperate leap from
temporal to spatial infinity which Melissus hazarded at
this point. Aristotle remarked on it justly and emphati-
cally enough, but the most surprising and memorable
feature in the argument is the following. Whatever
really requires demonstration is taken as self-evident,
or at the best the proof is left to be read between the
lines ; the really tautological and therefore self-evident
proposition is clothed in the forms of a wide-spun and
tedious argumentation. As an example of the first
class we may quote the thesis, "that which has
arisen must decay," to which the parenthetic little
sentence, "for if it had become it would at some time
have ended," is added by way of assertion rather than of
proof. Moreover, the proposition, which is neither more
nor less than a fully intelligible generalization from actual
experience, could not have been proved, in the strict sense
of that term. It is precisely the same with another
thesis, similarly derived from the facts of experience:
"Only that which has nothing outside of it whereby it
could be injured or destroyed can be everlasting." This
is a thought which must have been present to the mind
of Melissus, since it is the sole possible justification of
his statement that the universe alone is eternal. Not
a jot more proof is adduced In support of the thesis on
which the whole argument is based, that "something can
never come from nothing." Here the metaphysician was
borrowing from the physicists ; he took from them the
chief principle of their doctrine of primary matter, which
had first been based on actual evidence, which had been
confirmed by the progress of observation, but which could
HIS RATIOCINATION. 187
never have been deduced from any necessity of thought.
Melissus, on the contrary, used the strict forms of logical
demonstration, drawing consequences and conclusions
where nothing was proved or concluded, but where the
statement actually rested on a mere verbal change : " that
which begins has a beginning ; that which ends has an
end ; that which neither begins nor ends has no begin-
ning and no end ; that which has no beginning and no
end is infinite." /'It would be erroneous to conclude that
this apparent series of demonstration was entirely devoid of
a progress in thought, but it was due to the help of equivo-
cation or of the ambiguity of language, which imperceptibly
replaced the temporal beginning and end with the corre-
sponding spatial conceptions, that it moved forward/ at all
and broke the spell of tautology. On the whole we may
call it a model and masterpiece of d priori reasoning which
renounces every appeal to experienc^ By this act of
renunciation the philosopher starts without any provision
for his journey. We can hardly wonder, accordingly,
that he should pick up whatever he encounters on his way
— substantial products of experience no less than threads
of fantastic dreams — concealing his sleight of hand by a
glib equivocation which clothes with fresh and ever-
rich meaning the old husks of language. And by the
time he reaches his goal, our eyes are dazzled with the
borrowed gaudy colours in which his proud a priori truths
conceal their contraband origin, or we fail to mark the
tacit presumptions and slippery parentheses by which the
concealment is effected.
The belief in the spatial infinity of being having thus
been obtained, its unity was deduced from it " For if,"
wrote Melissus^" there were two beings, then being would
be bounded by another being."-' In other words, the thing
which is unlimited in space cin neither be bounded nor
limited by another being in space. The principle is as
unimpeachable as it is unproductive, nor was it made
productive till the apparatus of equivocation was set to
work again, and the quantitative conception was changed
1 88 GREEK THINKERS.
delay into uniformity and homogeneity. And these ideas
' were employed to draw conclusions touching the character
of being, which were just as appropriate as if one said that
a die ceases to be one as soon as all its six sides cease to
display the same colour. But let us listen to Melissus in
his own defence:
' "Thus," he declared, "being is everlasting, and infinite,
and one, and wholly homogeneous. It is incapable of decay or
increase, nor can it suffer a cosmic change. It is equally insensible
to pain or grief, for if it could experience any of these, it would
no longer be one."/
These principles were defended by their author in
detail, but we shall merely have occasion to draw attention
to a few points. In the first place, we may note the
argument which led to the denial of every change. Melissus
maintained that a change of being, since it prevents its
remaining homogeneous, would destroy what had been, and
would bring what had not been into existence. So the
impossibility of rise and decay was not confined to the
existence of being, but was extended to its nature, and
thus it came about that the attribute of homogeneity was
extended from the simultaneous to the successive states of
being. Our previous inquiry has prepared us for this
transition from the "What" to the "How," but the
argument by which the loss of former qualities and the
acquisition of fresh ones are made coincident with the decay
of what had been and the rise of what had not been is a
new feature in the reasoning. The following reflection is
calculated to excite our surprise : " If the Universe were to
change in ten thousand years by as much as a hair's breadth,
it would be destroyed in the course of all time." We are
delighted here at the wide perspective which is in such
striking contrast to the narrow horizon of older philo-
sophers with their childish cosmogonic and mythological
speculations. It is greatly to the credit of Melissus that
he should have learnt to cast up minute processes to a
total of incalculable effects — a lesson which was chiefly due
to the geological researches of Xenophanes. But creditable
NEITHER PAIN NOR GRIEF. 1 89
as this was to the elasticity of his mind, it was bound
to injure the logical accuracy of his thought: inferences
drawn from empirical facts had no business in his system,
which was openly at war with experience. We are
confronted with the same employment of the results of
experience and with a similar illicit generalization there-
from in the argument intended to confirm the exemption
of being from pain and grief :
" It is sensitive to no pain," wrote Melissus, " for it is
impossible that it could be wholly filled with pain, seeing that
a thing filled with pain cannot exist for ever. But the
thing that suffers is not of the same nature as the thing that is
sound, wherefore, if it suffered (partial) pain, it would no more
be homogeneous. Further, it would suffer pain only by some
loss or accretion, and would then — for this reason too — not be
homdgeneous. Further, it is impossible that a sound thing
should feel pain, for then would the sound thing that is be
destroyed, and the thing that is-not would arise* And in respect
to grief there is the same proof as in respect to pain."
The reader is already familiar with some of the
fallacies contained in this exposition, and they call for
no special mention. There is a striking instance of the
naive employment of experience in the argument from the
empiric fact that pain is an accompaniment of inward
disturbance, and that the inward disturbance is frequently
at least the precursor of dissolution. It was an observation
transferred from the animal organism to the conception of
being, which resembled it in well-nigh no respect Our
philosopher appears to have forgotten one of the commonest
causes of physical pain, which lies in functional disturb-
ances. His eye was fixed on its most obvious causes, in
the loss of a limb or in the formation of malignant growths.
We are quite unable to determine how he would have
modified his argument in order to prove the second part of
his contention, which denied all suffering of the spirit or
soul. It may almost be conjectured that he shrank from
the difficulties of the task, Melissus' campaign against the
possibility of the movement of being was fought with
1 90 GREEK THINKERS.
the well-known weapons of Parmenides. There could be no
movement — thus much the physicists had shown — without
a vacuum ; emptiness is nothing, and nothingness cannot
exist. Further, the admitted homogeneity of Being was
employed to deny it any different degrees of density.
Here we reach the last and the most difficult portion of
the doctrine of the philosopher of Samos. He granted, as
we have been told with wearisome iteration, the spatial
extension of being ; how did this agree with his contention
that it possessed no corporeity — that, in his own words,
" since it is one, it cannot have a body ; for if it had thick-
ness, it would have parts, and then it would no longer be
one" ? It is true that Parmenides had expressly stated of
his primary being that it was "not divisible." But we
are by no means obliged to credit him with the absurdity
of giving it a globular shape and denying it the possession
of parts. We shall doubtless be correct in taking his
negation to imply, not the impossibility of ideal partition,
but of actual separation into parts. The indivisibility of
being in this sense is only a special case of its general
incapacity to move as maintained by Parmenides. In the
instance of Melissus, this loophole of escape is closed
against us, since he expressly denies not the separability,
but the existence of parts. No one will seriously con-
tend that in denying the thickness of being Melissus
was merely denying its third dimension, and declaring it a
being in two dimensions or a mere plane. Such a con-
ception would be foreign to the whole of antiquity, and it
further contradicts the actual statement of Melissus that
all space was filled by his primary being. We are reduced,
then, to the belief that Melissus did not identify the filling
of space with corporeity, but was anxious to free his omni-
present and completely blissful universal being from every
trace of gross materialism. The conception is too indistinct
to admit of precise formulation, but it does not lack parallels
even of the most recent date, among which will be re-
membered the newly revived identification of space with
the Deity. It would have been more comprehensible, or
at least more consistent, if Melissus had used the arguments
ZENO OF ELEA. 191
we have cited to relieve his being of the categories of
space and time altogether. For absolute unity is incom-
patible with all coexistence and succession. Numerical
ideas, including the idea of unity, are known to us purely
as relative ; the tree is singular in relation to its fellows in
the forest, but plural in relation to its branches; the
branches are singular to one another, but plural to their
leaves, and so forth. Now, if we agree to forget this, and
to take our conception of unity in earnest, we shall be
entering a path which will lead us to no minor goal than
the complete " emptification," not merely of material exist-
ence, but of spiritual existence as well, inasmuch as our
states of consciousness describe a temporal succession. At
this point unity, dispossessed of all its contents, passes
into naked nothingness. Later, we shall have to consider
the history of a revolution of this kind, by which nihilism
or the doctrine of nothingness proceeded from the Eleatic
ontology or doctrine of being.
2. We feel that in parting from Melissus we have not
been over-lenient towards him, but, blameworthy though
he may have been in much of his methods and results, no
one can desire to deprive him of one title to fame. The
gallant admiral was a thinker of undiminished fearlessness,
He followed up his line of thought with entire indifference
to the reception, whether favourable or otherwise, which
might be awaiting him at the end. Grave fallacies must
be laid to his charge, but there is not the least ground to
impute to him any deliberate imposture or any deception
save the deception of himself. This brave and honest
philosophic courage was the best inheritance bequeathed
by Xenophanes to the school, and it likewise characterized
the great champion of criticism with whom we have
now to occupy ourselves. The champion was Zeno of
Elea. He was a tall man of distinguished presence, who
enjoyed the intimacy of Parmenides, and shared his interest
in political life, though his junior by five and twenty years.
He died the death of a martyr owing to the part he took
in a conspiracy aimed at the overthrow of a usurper, and
the unexampled endurance with which he bore his torments
92 GREEK THINKERS.
as been a theme of admiration to this day. He was a
•orn fighter and a born master of dialectic, and an early
all to self-defence provided a use for that talent.
5armenides* doctrine of unity had set a peal of laughter
inging through the whole of Greece, and this outburst of
nirth and ridicule, as noisy as that which less than two
:enturies ago greeted Bishop Berkeley's denial of matter,
summoned Zeno to the lists. He was burning to retaliate,
and he promptly seized his opportunity. He paid the
scoffers, as Plato tells us, "with their own coin in full, and
added something in the bargain."
He challenged them somewhat in this wise : " You laugh
at us because we reject all movement as absurd and im-
possible ; you rail at us for fools because we rail at the
senses for liars ; because we see in the plurality of objects
nothing but idle delusion, therefore you throw stones at
us. See to it that you are not yourselves living in a glass
house ! " And then he began to empty the quiver of his
polemic, teeming with pointed barbs. Like a row of
pearls, he strung the silken thread of his dialectic with
the chain of subtle arguments which have puzzled the
heads of generations of readers, and have proved insur-
mountable obstacles to more than one powerful intellect,
of whom we need but mention Peter Bayle.
We take a grain of millet and let it fall to the ground.
It sinks noiselessly to the earth. The same thing happens
with a second and a third, and with every one in turn of
the ten thousand grains which the bushel in front of us
contained. Now we collect the grains and pour them back
into the bushel and turn it over. The fall of the grains is
accompanied this time by a great noise, and Zeno asked
how it could happen that the combination of ten thousand
noiseless processes should result in one full of noise. He
deemed it inexplicable that the sum of ten thousand
noughts, instead of being nought, should make a sensible,
and a veiy clearly sensible, magnitude. Zeno's difficulty
is our own difficulty too, nor can it be solved till we have
looked a little closer at the nature of this puzzling process.
This deeper insight was not possible in the age when Zeno
THE " GRAIN OF MILLET? 193
lived, and his paradox or "apory" possesses the great
merit of having brought the impossibility home to every
thinking person. It gave a voice to the cry for a psy-
chology of sense-perception. There was no way out of
the difficulty as long as the sensible qualities were regarded
as the pure objective possessions of the objects, but a way
is found at the moment that we take hold of the act
of perception and recognize the essentially complicated
character of the process which seems so simple. Such
complication is always present, and its ramifications are at
times very many. And, likewise, we must first admit the
possibility that here, as elsewhere, an expenditure of force
without palpable effect need not therefore be lost, nor its
value equivalent to nil. A single instance will help us to
comprehend both truths. Take a child's hand pulling at
a bell-rope. It sets the bell in no perceptible motion.
Now add a few more children to pull, and their combined
effort will succeed in swinging the bell with its clapper.
With twice or three times the number of little hands they
may be able to set the clapper beating on the rim of the
bell, but the stroke may still perhaps not be strong enough,
and the concussion of air too weak to produce the physical
changes in our auditory apparatus indispensable for the
effect of sound. And an exertion of force sufficient for that
purpose may still be inadequate to the amount requisite
for the physiological process which we call a stimulation of
the auditory nerve. Further, such stimulation may ensue,
but its degree of intensity may be inferior to that required
to produce the decisive process in the brain depending on
the nerve-stimulus. And, finally, this process too may be
effected, and yet its strength may be too little to raise the
corresponding psychical impression over the threshold of
consciousness. Our own psychical condition at the time
must also be taken in account. If our senses are subdued
by sleep, or if our attention is concentrated elsewhere, the
resistance to be overcome will be greater than under other
and more favourable conditions. The failure of the ulti-
mate end is no proof whatever that any one of the mediate
processes, whose number we have certainly underestimated,
VOL. I. O
194
GREEK THINKERS,
did less than its own share in contributing to the final
success. Even the first and apparently ineffectual effort
of a single child's hand performed its due part in the whole *
it assisted in lessening the resistance which would only be
fully overpowered when the number of hands had been
multiplied. But the demand that each unit of force exerted
at the beginning of the process should produce a hundredth
part of the success finally attained by a hundred such units
is wholly unjustified in such cases. A cog-wheel may
measure one inch or ninety-nine inches in diameter, but
it will not be able to catch the next cog-wheel till its
diameter has been increased to a hundred inches if that
be the distance to be covered. Then, and then only, will
the whole series of consequences ensue which depend on
the revolution of the second wheel, and the relations of the
second to the third, of the third to the fourth, and so on,
are determined by the same conditions. The ultimate
working of the machine depends for its success or failure
on the presence or absence of the hundredth inch.
Zeno's paradox which we have discussed so minutely
gave an impulse to speculations of this kind, and may
claim its share in the progress of the doctrine of sense-
perception. It was about this time that sense-perception
was recognized, not as a mere reflection of objective
qualities, but as the result of the influence of an object on
a subject derived through a long chain of causal processes.
And the light kindled at Zeno's torch began to spread in
all directions.
3. We reach now the famous paradoxes respecting
movement in space. Zeno began by submitting the con-
ception of space itself to a not very searching criticism.
He argued that if every being, every real thing or object,'
is discovered in space, space itself, unless it lacks reality^
must be in space— in a second space, that is to say— and •
this secondary space must be in a tertiary space, and so
on ad infinitum. We are accordingly left with the alter-
native of saying ditto to this absurd reasoning, or of denying
the reality of space. It would be paying Zeno an unde-
served compliment to refer here to the criticism which Kant
"ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE? 195
and other modern philosophers have brought to bear on the
conception of space. The word TOTTCC, which was used in Greek,
might equally well be translated " place " without the least
injury to the argument. Every object lies in a place, and that
place, if it is something real, must be situated in a second
place, and so forth. Moreover, the paradox which Zeno
applied to the juxtaposition of objects might have been
extended to their existence. Every real or existent thing
possesses existence ; such existence, unless it be chimerical,
must possess a second existence, and so forth. In short,
we are merely dealing with the deep-rooted tendency of
language arising from the use of substantives as the names
of abstractions of every kind — of forces, qualities, conditions,
and relations — to measure every such conception by the
standard of concrete things. A conception of that kind had
to pass the thing-test, as it were, or it failed to qualify
for existence. According as it passed or failed, or, rather,
according as its existence was regarded as indispensable or
otherwise, it would be relegated to the realm of fancy, or,
far more frequently, it would be conceived as a kind of
thing, as the spectre of an object. The value of the
paradox consists in setting clearly before our eyes this
fatal tendency of the human mind, to which we may trace
the worst and most obstinate errors and delusions, and
the absurdities which it engendered serve to warn us from
its influence.
When we reach the puzzles to which Zeno himself
gave expression in respect to the problems of motion, we are
on far less primitive ground. Every one knows "Achilles
and the Tortoise." The type of swiftness and one of the
slowest of creatures agree to run a race, and, strangely
enough, we are hardly able to understand how the first is
to overtake and pass the second. Achilles, according to
the terms of the competition, gives the tortoise a start and
runs ten times as fast. Taking the start to be a metre in
length, as soon as Achilles has completed the metre, the
tortoise is a decimetre in advance ; when Achilles has run
that decimetre, the tortoise has crawled on another
centimetre ; by the time he has covered that centimetre,
1 96 GREEK THINKERS.
his opponent is a millimetre further on, and so on ad
infinitum. Thus we see the two coming nearer and nearer
to each other, but we cannot perceive how the minimum
interval which finally divides them is ever to be completely
bridged over, and accordingly the conclusion is that
Achilles will never overtake the tortoise. The tyro at
mathematics is greatly astonished to learn that this ex-
position, apart from its conclusion, is wholly vouched for
by mathematical experts. The swift-footed son of Thetis
will actually never reach his clumsy adversary at any of
the points here mentioned or alluded to, not at the tenth,
nor at the hundredth, nor at the thousandth, ten-thousandth,
hundred-thousandth, nor millionth of the second metre
of its creeping progress. But simple arithmetic will show
us that Achilles will reach the tortoise at the moment it
has completed the ninth part of this journey, for he runs
ten-ninths of a metre, or one metre and a ninth, in the
time that the tortoise crawls one-ninth, and the whole
endless series TV + T&F + Tinnr + -nmnr + nrtW +
•loooooo + - • - does not exceed the amount of \. Let us
put the problem and its solution in a more universal form.
If the two velocities stand in the proportion of I : », the
overtaking will not occur at any point in the series
i.i. i.i. i.i
~ + + + 6**'; but thls infinite
is included in the finite quantity — — — So far all is in
order. A quantity may be divisible into infinite parts, but
it does not therefore cease to be a finite quantity. Infinite
divisibility and infinite quantity are two very different con-
ceptions, though the danger of confusing them be great.
Further, it is easy to account for the apparent permanence
of the distance which divides the two competitors in our
mental sight Our capacity to realize minute fractions of
space is strictly limited. We sfoon reach a barrier which
imagination cannot transgress. We may go on diminish-
ing by words the smallest unit of space which we are able to
•conceive, we may go on talking of the hundred-thousandth
pr millionth part of a metre or foot, but the same smallest
DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROBLEM. 197
unit of space which our imagination can grasp is in
reality ever before us. It emerges again and again after
each attempt at division, and it defies our endeavour to
bring it nearer to nothingness. But though we may admit
all this, it is still legitimate to ask if we have completely
and finally solved the difficulty so clearly perceived and
so brilliantly expounded by Zeno. The great master of
dialectic has helped us to answer this question by recasting
his paradox in a simpler and less insinuating form. How,
he asks, can we ever traverse a portion of space ? For
before we attain the end we must first have completed
half our journey, and then a half of the remaining half, a
quarter of the whole, that is to say ; and then a half of the
last quarter, or an eighth of the whole ; and then a sixteenth,
a thirty-second, a sixty-fourth part, and so on adinfinitwn.
The answer generally given is that, in order to traverse an
infinitely divisible space, the time requisite for that purpose
must likewise be infinitely divisible ; and, as far as it goes,
this is correct. But it does not go very far, for the crux
of this problem too lies in the relation of an infinite series
to a finite quantity. It is true that mathematicians assure
us and prove that the series reached here by division by
two no more exceeds a finite quantity than the former
series in tens. Just as ^ + _j_. 4. ^^ +. . . do not
exceed -J-, so £ + \ + £ + . . . do not exceed i. And
this presents no great difficulty. But what startles us is
their further assurance, which alone is valid for our purpose,
that each of these infinite series actually reaches the re-
spective finite quantities of -J- and I. We cross at one step
a certain length of space, and experience no shock if we
are told that that length is divisible in infinite parts. But
now, working backwards, let us take the synthetic instead
of the analytic road, and endeavour to build up the finite
quantity out of the given infinitude of parts. Will there
not always be a remainder, a fragmentary part, however
small, wanting to complete the structure ? Is it possible
to exhaust the inexhaustible ? If we take counsel with
the mathematicians, we shall be advised to neglect the
infinitesimally small or vanishing quantity at the end of a
198 GREEK THINKERS.
series, just as they proceed in converting a recurring
decimal fraction to a vulgar fraction. Such artifices are
quite legitimate and of eminent service to the purposes
of natural science, but they seem to contain the confession
that it is impracticable to deal in full earnest with the
conception of infinity, and this, we believe, rather than the
empirical conception of motion, was the true objective of
the paradoxes we have discussed, however contrary it
may have been to the intention of their author.
It is with a positive sense of relief that we turn from
the perplexities of thought with which we have just been
exercised to the two last paradoxes of Zeno concerning
the problem of motion. The third paradox has not come
down to us in a very distinct form, but it may be stated
approximately as follows : An arrow is sped from its bow ;
it measures one foot in length, and traverses ten feet a
second ; is it not accordingly legitimate to say that the
dart occupies a space equal to its length in every tenth
part of that period of time ? Now, to occupy a space
and to rest are the same ; and the paradox consists in
asking how ten states of rest can result in one state of
motion. The question can be put in a yet more captious
form : Does an object move in the space in which it is, or
in the space in which it is not ? Neither alternative is
defensible, for to be in a space and to occupy it are equi-
valent to resting there, whereas in the space in which an
object is not, it can neither act nor be acted on. This
is the paradox, and its solution is simple enough. We
have only to reply that the premise is as false as it is
insidious. A body in continuous motion does not occupy
a space even in the smallest conceivable fraction of time.
On the contrary, it is always engaged in passing from
one portion of space to another. But the paradox is
valuable inasmuch as it compels us to form a clear idea
of continuousness and to hold fast by it. The difficulty
arose from the vagueness of the outline of this idea ; from
the confusion, that is to say, between the notion of steadi-
ness or continuousness and that of discontinuous units — a
contrast which we shall presently meet in another shape.
A PROBLEM OF VELOCITY. 1 99
The fourth and last of the paradoxes of motion relates
to a problem of velocity. We shall perhaps be able to
explain it best if we modernize the ancient " arena " in
the following fashion. Three railway trains of equal
length are on three parallel pairs of rails. The first train
(A) is in motion ; the second (B) is at rest ; the third (C)
is moving at the same rate as A, but in the opposite
direction. Now, it is clear to every one that A will reach
the end of B in twice the time that it requires to reach
the end of C, though C and B are of equal length.
Hence, if we are asked to state the velocity with which A
moved, we must give different answers according as we
measure it by the standard of C, which was moving at an
equal rate, or by that of B, which was at rest. The objec-
tion will probably be raised that the last-named standard
is the normal one. We use it in the considerable majority
of cases, and we are compelled to use it in all cases where
the thing to be determined is the expenditure of force
underlying the velocity. But this objection carried no
weight with Zeno. He would have replied that truth and
error are not determined by a plebiscite of instances. It is
enough, he would have said, to be able to point to examples
such as the one given above, in which it may correctly be
contended that the moving body completed the same
distance in the whole time and half the time at once. If
the standard of movement in time is relative, how, he
would have asked, can movement itself be something
absolute and objective, and thus be something real ?
4. The plurality of objects guaranteed by the evidence
of the senses was supposed to be annulled by the follow-
ing double argument. It was represented as leading to
two contradictory conclusions, under which the many
objects would be at once without magnitude and infinitely
great. They would be without magnitude because there
would not be a plurality of objects unless each of the
objects was a unit But a veritable unit cannot be divisible,
whereas an object remains divisible as long as it possesses
parts. Now, it possesses parts when it is extended, so
that if it is to be a veritable unit it must be without
200 GREEK THINKERS.
extension and consequently without magnitude. On the
other hand, the many objects would at the same time be
infinitely great, for each object, if existence is to be ascribed
to it at all, must possess a magnitude. Its possession of
a magnitude implies that it consists of parts with a mag-
nitude belonging to each part. Further, if those parts are
to be different, they must be separate from one another,
and they could only be separate from one another if
other parts were situated between them. This process
goes on ad infinitum, for the intermediary parts would
always have to be separated from one another by another
set of parts endowed with a certain magnitude. Thus
every body would comprise an endless number of parts
each of which would possess a certain magnitude ; in other
words, it would be infinitely great.
The premises of this reasoning are not quite as
arbitrary as they appear at first sight For one thing, it
must be remembered that the conceptions of unity and
plurality are not used here in the relative sense in which
we commonly meet them. We have already proved to
our satisfaction that a unity which is always and everywhere
to remain a unity can actually possess no parts, and that it
is, accordingly, not to be found either in the world of co-
existence or of succession. A unity of this kind is absolute,
not relative, and it is therefore quite true to say that it
is incompatible with the idea of spatial extension and
magnitude. Considered in this light, the first part of
the argument is really irrefutable. And this character of
absoluteness belongs equally to the premise of plurality
which underlies the second part of the argument. If
two parts of a body are never and nowhere to be regarded
as a unity, there must at least be a sharp line of demarca-
tion, and the reservation implied by our "at least" goes
to show that we consider the present argument as less
powerful than its counterpart. The line or boundary must
be real ; accordingly, if an object without magnitude is to
be accounted unreal, this boundary in question must possess
magnitude or bodily extension. But an extended object
consists once more of parts, and therefore the line of
UNITY AND PLURALITY. 2OI
demarcation is characterized by precisely the same con-
ditions as have just been proved of the parts of the body
which it holds asunder. And this reasoning may be
pressed ad infinitum* Each argument may be summarized
by a single convenient formula as follows : —
If each of the objects is really one, it must therefore
be indivisible ; that is to say, it must be unextended and
without magnitude.
Secondly, If objects are multiple, then each pair
of them must be separated by an intercalary object
possessing extension and therefore parts, which in their
turn must be similarly separated, and so on ad in-
finitum.
The double argument thus stated does not appear to
us to be entirely valueless for the progress of knowledge.
Unity and plurality are not absolute conceptions, but
purely relative. If I have an apple before me, it will
depend entirely on my point of view, on the purpose by
which I am directed, whether I regard it as a unit, as a part
of a collection of apples, or as a plurality, as the aggregate
of its constituent parts. Unity and plurality cannot be
treated as absolutes. We cannot talk of units which in
no circumstances could become plural objects, nor yet
of plural objects which in no circumstances could become
units, without assuming premises as wild and grotesque
in character as those which we have just followed to
their suicidal conclusions.
We stumble here against the roots of many other
actual and possible paradoxes, for our inquiry first brings
to light the essential opposition between unity and
plurality, and their common hostility to the conception of
reality. A real object, according to the tenets of this school,
is an object which possesses magnitude, which, accordingly,
is extended, divisible, and plural. But a plural object
requires preliminary units of which it is the aggregate.
Such units, however, as true and absolute units, must be
indivisible and unextended. They must be conceived
to be without -magnitude, and therefore without reality.
Thus we see that the conception of being or reality was
202 GREEK THINKERS.
full of flaws, and was burdened with contradictions from
the start. Every real object was an aggregate composed
of units, but the units were devoid of reality, and the
Colossus of the Real rested on the clay feet of the Unreal.
Nor should we be attended by better fortune if we made
the endeavour to liberate reality from its delusive founda-
tion and to set it on a firmer basis. It would still crumble
to pieces by internal decay. For if the plural object
remains an aggregate, and the parts of which it must be
composed in order to possess extension, magnitude, and
consequently reality, are not reducible to units, it will lack
all tenable or untenable foundation ; it will be infinitely
divisible ; it will fall to pieces more and more till it is
completely annihilated. Thus we may take it as proved
that neither together nor apart are the notions of " unity "
and "plurality" suitable vehicles for the notion of reality
or being. The "one" is unreal at the start ; the "many"
becomes unreal whether it is left to rot on its own founda-
tion or whether it is rebuilt on the sands of the "one"
till they go to pieces together.
We should wrong the memory of Zeno if we looked
on the reflections which we have freely rendered here as
a mere puppet-show of idle abstractions. They contain a
criticism of the conception of matter, partly prevalent to
this day, as serious in intention as it was successful in
execution. The infinite divisibility alleged of matter was
threatening [it with extinction when the thought arose,
probably in the Pythagorean circle, that this divisibility
would not transgress a limit which, though distant, was
definite. Certain minute nuclei, which might be com-
pared with pin-points or motes in the sun, would set a
limit to its further division. It is Zeno's indisputable
merit to have pointed out the contradictions implied in
this view. Either those nuclei possessed magnitude and
extension, in which case they would be subject to the law
of divisibility, or they did not possess those attributes, in
which case they could not have been employed to build
up the structure of the material world. For one object
without magnitude added to another does not make a
OCTRJNE OF MATTER CRITICISED. 203
magnitude ; we may pile up a mountain of nothings, and
the result will still be nothing.
But here our agreement must pause, and even within
these limits it requires a considerable reservation. The
authors of the theory which Zeno vanquished so valiantly
worked with a contradictory premise, but they were not on
the wrong road. We shall presently become acquainted
with a doctrine of matter which followed the same path
without falling into the same contradiction ; it is the path
which has led the natural science of recent times from one
triumph to another. The point is that, though a whole must
possess parts if it is to fall asunder, yet its possession of
parts need not imply their disintegration in the near, the
remote, or even the remotest future. There is undoubtedly
a connection in thought between ideal divisibility and
actual separability, but they need not therefore be con-
nected in fact. The assumption of such material nuclei
not devoid of extension in space, but actually indestructible,
may or may not be a final truth ; at least it contains a con-
siderable element of truth, or, more strictly speaking, its
logical consequences agree so well with actual phenomena
that they become an engine of unparalleled force in the
hands of physical research. Except for the blasphemy of
the thought, we are almost tempted to exclaim that
perhaps the Creator of the world was not quite as clever as
Zeno. At any rate, His sublime wisdom did not require to
be as much on the alert for victories of logic and logo-
machy as the wit of the pugnacious Eleatic. More
seriously stated, Zeno's rigour of thought is not always
of true weight and measure. His arguments frequently
contain traces of two points of view, each of which is
defensible on its merits, but is completely incompatible
with the other. Zeno would play off the one against the
other ; he would couple the conception of the finite with
that of the infinite, of continuous space with discreet units
of time, of continuous time with discreet units of space.
We return at last to our guiding principle, which is the
historical point of view, Did Zeno remain till the end,
as he started at the beginning of his task, a faithful acolyte
204 GREEK THINKERS,
of Parmenides ? The answer is frequently given in the
affirmative, but it does not appear to be tenable. True,
he wielded a stout club to punish the anti-Eleatics, but
we should hesitate to say that the Eleatic philosophers
enjoyed the fruits of their victory. We should even
venture to doubt if the " continuous one " of Parmenides
— his globular universal Being — emerged unscathed from
the fray. The artifices of interpretation would have to be put
to quite illegitimate uses in order to make the assertion.
No ; an impartial witness will admit that the fundamental
conceptions of the Eleatics, unity, extension, and reality
itself, were shaken or, rather, crushed by this criticism. In
the immediate circle of the school and its adherents no
doubt was entertained on that point. Plato makes Zeno say
that his work was the production of his untamed youth
when the blood ran hot in his veins ; it was purloined
without his knowledge, and published without his consent.
Readers of Plato will know how to interpret these remarks.
His admiration of the "great" Parmenides made him keenly
alive to the fact that Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides,
wielded a two-edged weapon with only too much dexterity.
The " inventor of dialectic " was invested with a halo, but
its rays were not equally to illumine all portions of his
work. As a matter of fact, his genius took the bit between
its teeth, and Zeno was carried far beyond the goal he
originally had in view. As an ontologist, he entered the
field as an ardent believer in the doctrine of unity ; he
left it as a sceptic, or, rather, as a nihilist. We have re-
peatedly had occasion to refer to the spontaneous decom-
position of the theory of primary matter ; in Zeno's lifework
we are presented with the spontaneous decomposition of
the Eleatic theory of being.
It is far cry from Xenophanes to Zeno, yet the begin-
ning and the end stand in close relationship. At the
one extreme the soluble character of the great problems
of life is disputed on principle j * at the other, the knife is
ruthlessly applied to existing attempts at their solution.
The history of the school is the history of the gradual
k. II. Ch. L
KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. 205
growth and enfranchisement of the spirit of criticism.
Hercules begins by strangling two serpents in his cradle.
It is fair to expect some further feats of strength when
the infant reaches maturity. Criticism first laid sacrilegious
hands on the brilliant tissue of mythology. Next, it rent
the brilliant tissue of the sensible world, till finally it
exposed the inherent contradictions in that part of the con-
ception of the world which had eluded its previous attacks.
The development followed a straight line. The three chief
representatives of the Eleatic school form a group of that
class of intellectual firebrands, whose business it is to rouse
mankind from indolence of thought and the disposition to
dogmatic slumber. These pioneers of criticism were as
confident as they were bold. It was their firm conviction
that the designs which they conceived as reasonable must
be stamped on the face of the universe. But as excess of
fire and a sensibility impatient of control are not inexcus-
able in youth, so the overweening self-dependence which
marked the early years of scientific thought may fairly
claim the same privilege. Thus much we concede. It is
rather the middle period of the movement which causes
misgivings in the spectator. The results attained are
neither complete nor coherent. An unwarrantable quantity
of dogmatism is left over, which is not merely a deposit
from former conceptions of the universe, but is the less
acceptable, inasmuch as it is due to an arbitrary process
of transformation and malformation, as unsatisfactory to
the natural instinct as to the trained intelligence. The
unfavourable impression is relieved if we take a com-
prehensive view, and join the baseless affirmation with
the negation that succeeds to it. For it is this con-
secutive progress of criticism which gives the Eleatic move-
ment its true value and historical significance. It was
the first considerable trial of strength, the first school in
which Western philosophy was tempered and steeled till it
became conscious of its powers.
A proof of this progress is the clear distinction, hinted
at in Xenophanes but now defined by Parmenides, be-
tween Knowledge and Belief— Reason and Opinion. The
206 GREEK THINKERS.
distinction gains in importance if we recall the hopeless
confusion of these elements in the contemporary teaching
of the Pythagorean School. We are standing here at the
parting of the currents. Two streams flow from one fount,
and take different directions. Nor are their waters
destined to meet again till they mingle in the flood of
decadence.
"Double-headed" was the reproach of the Eleatic,
levelled at the disciples of the Ephesian. The epithet
recoils on himself. For, like locaste, his doctrine is preg-
nant with twin brothers at strife. Consistent Materialism
and consistent Spiritualism are diametrically opposed to
each other in the realm of metaphysics. Yet they grew on
one stem. They trace their descent in common from that
strict conception of Substance which, though it did not
originate at Elea, was most clearly extracted — not to say
isolated — by the Eleatics from the doctrines of Primary
Matter. Abstraction having ventured thus far securely,
its next step brought the inevitable bias, first towards
Anti-Materialism, and then towards Spiritualism proper.
The evidence of the muscular sense — the sense of resist-
ance— was sent the way of the rest, and nothing was left
save the bare conception of Substance, the complexus,
that is to say, of the attributes of eternal persistence and
eternal immutability. Once more there was a parting of
the ways. New metaphysical entities had been created
which might or might not be treated as the vehicles of
force and consciousness. The choice was determined in
each instance by the requirements of the individual thinker,
and on occasions, as we shall see in Plato, it varied with the
taste of the chooser. Eleaticism worked here by indirect
rather than by direct means. For the precedent set by
Melissus found no successor worth mentioning. Except
in the Megaric School, the least important of the Socratics,
we hear no echo of his efforts. If we had to discover an
exact parallel to the blissful Primary Being of Melissus,
with its total lack of initiative and influence, we should
have to turn to India. In the lore of the Vedanta philo-
sophers the world is similarly represented as mere delusive
INFLUENCE OF ELEATICISM. 2OJ
appearance with a central Being whose sole attributes are :
Essence, Thought, and Bliss (sat, cit, and dnanda). The
second alternative, which substituted innumerable material
substances for the extended One, is of infinitely greater
importance in the history of science. We shall meet it
presently in the beginnings of Atomism, a theory which
agrees with Parmenides in his strict conception of
Substance, but parts company with him in his negative
attitude towards the plurality of objects, the 'vacuum
dividing them, and the movement in space depending
on it. Here, too, an historical connection is at least
not improbable. The next question that suggests itself
is far less easily dismissed : Was such an intervening link
between the old forms of the doctrine of Primary Matter
and this, its latest and maturest presentation, necessary at
all ? and, if so, to what extent ? The answer will be found
in the consideration of two thinkers, connected so closely
by likeness and contrast as not to admit of separate treat-
ment
2CS GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER IV.
ANAXAGORAS.
i. Two contemporaries stand before us : their minds were
directed to the same problems, their methods were based
on similar assumptions, and their results showed signs of
a very striking consentaneity. And yet the contrast is
most remarkable. The one was a poet, the other a
geometer. The one was gifted with glowing imagination,
the other with cool and sober judgment. The one
was swollen with vainglory and self-esteem, the other
completely disappeared behind his work. The one was all
flowers and flourishes of expression, the other a model of
language unadorned. The one was so malleable and
versatile that his joints seemed positively liquid, the other
so rigidly consistent as at times to appear grotesque. The
best qualities of each were more or less the defects of the
other. Empedocles excelled in the wit and brilliance of
his apergtts / his elder contemporary was distinguished by
the coherence and uniformity of his majestic system of
thought.
Anaxagoras brought philosophy and natural science from
Ionia to Attica. The son of aristocratic parents, he was
born at Clazomenae, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Smyrna, in or about 500 B.C. He is said to have neglected
his patrimony and to have devoted himself at an early age
to the exclusive pursuit of wisdom. We have no record
of the schools he visited nor of the places where he acquired
his knowledge. He shows frequent signs of contact with
the doctrines of Anaximander and Anaximenes, but the
ANAXAGORAS OF CLAZOMEN&. 209
tradition which makes him a disciple of Anaximenes is
refuted by the evidence of dates. About his fortieth year
he migrated to Athens, where the great statesman, whose
ideal Athens was to be the literary no less than the
political centre of Greece, honoured the philosopher with
his friendship. For full thirty years Anaxagoras adorned
the select circle with which Pericles had surrounded him-
self. He was fated, too, to be drawn into the whirlpool
of party politics. In the dawn of the Peloponnesian war
when the star of Pericles, the leading statesman first
began to wane, his philosopher friend, like the charming
and accomplished companion of his life, was arraigned on
a charge of impiety. The sentence of exile brought him
back to his home in Asia Minor, and there in Lampsacus
he died, surrounded by faithful disciples, in the seventy-third
year of his blameless life. Considerable fragments survive
of his work, complete in several volumes, and written in
unaffected but not ungraceful prose. It was published by
the author at some date subsequent to 467 B.C., the year
of a groat fall of meteorites which was mentioned in the
work, and it is interesting to add that it was the first book
illustrated with diagrams which Greek literature possessed
He resembled his older Ionian fellow-countrymen in
his preoccupation with the problem of matter, but the
solution which he offered was entirely original. It com-
pletely distinguished him from all previous thinkers and
it showed that the new criticism inaugurated by the
Eleatics had not affected him in the least. He may have
been acquainted with the didactic poem of Parmenides,
but its contents had failed to exercise any influence on
his mind. We need look no further than at the doubts
which Parmenides voiced so emphatically as to the value
of the evidence of the senses and as to the plurality of
objects, in both of which crucial instances Anaxagoras
neither accepted nor opposed his teachings. There is no
reference to them in any of the fragments which have
come down to us, nor in any of the supplementary testimony
of antiquity. The precise contrary is the case. His system
was based on the unconditional belief in the testimony '
VOL, L y
210 GREEK THINKERS.
of the senses, and its cornerstone was not merely a
bare plurality of objects, but an inexhaustible crowd
of fundamentally different entities existing from the
beginning of things. For a moment at least we are
accordingly the more surprised to find Anaxagoras in
complete agreement with Parmenides with respect to the
double postulate which we have already sufficiently dis-
cussed. His system recognized no beginning and no
perishing, nor any change in the qualities of things.
" The Greeks," he wrote, " err in speaking of a beginning
and a perishing of things, for no object begins, neither
does it perish, but it is composed by a mixture of existing
objects, and it is decomposed into them by separation.
Thus it would be better to call the beginning a mixture,
and the perishing a separation." We have already learnt
to recognize how the second and later of these propositions
— the dawn of which we saw in Anaximenes — sprang
from the earlier postulate, which was described, in the
pregnant phrase of Aristotle, as " the old common undis-
puted doctrine of the physicists." Nor are we reduced to
conjecture in order to explain the actual process of develop-
jnent in the mind of Anaxagoras himself. A brief fragment
of his work, the claims of which, as we saw,* were over-
looked for so long, has thrown a clear light on this process.
The doctrine of matter which is emblazoned with the name
of Anaxagoras, was based on the following trinity of postu-
lates : The nature of objects is such as the senses perceive ;
they have not become and they are not destructible ;
and as it is with the objects so it is with their qualities.
His doctrine bears the traces of the rigid consistency of his
thought, and it is equally conspicuous by its lack of the
philosopher's indispensable instinct to reject the guidance of
logic when it deviates from the highway of truth. In brief,
this theory of Anaxagoras was almost the exact opposite
of what science has taught us about matter and its consti-
tution. His fundamental or elemental matter was sought
in organic combinations which are really the most compli-
cated, and materials which, if not exactly simple, are at
* Bk. II. Ch.IL §3.
COUNTLESS MATERIAL ELEMENTS. 211
least far less complicated, such as water and atmospheric
air, ranked in his system as the most composite combina-
tions. If ever a man of powerful intellect chose a wrong
path and maintained it with imperturbable perseverance,
Anaxagoras did so in his doctrine of matter. It bore the
same relation to the results of chemistry as the reverse
of a carpet bears to its face. The following argument may be
framed to illustrate his method of reasoning. A loaf of bread
lies before us. It is composed of vegetable matters, and
helps to nourish our body. But the constituent parts of the
human or animal body are multiple : it has skin, flesh,
blood, veins, sinews, cartilages, bones, hair, etc. Each of
these parts is distinguished from the rest by its light or dark
hue, its softness or hardness, its elasticity or the contrary,
and so forth. How, then, could it happen, Anaxagoras asked
himself, that the uniformly constituted bread should produce
this rich multiplicity of objects ? A change of qualities
was incredible, so that the sole remaining hypothesis
was that the bread which nourishes us already contained the
countless forms of matter, as such, which the human body
displays. Their minuteness of size would withdraw them
from our perception. For the defect or " weakness " of
the senses is the narrowness of their receptive area. These
elusive particles are rendered visible and tangible by the
process of nutrition which combines them. What was
true of the bread was likewise true of the corn. Hence
Anaxagoras was led to ask how the variegated medley of
particles could have entered in the corn if it had not
already been present in the sources of its nourishment,
earth, water, air, and solar fire. Moreover, such particles
would be discoverable there in the greatest number and
variety, corresponding to the countless different beings
which derived their nourishment from those sources ; so
that earth, water, fire, and air, which were apparently the
simplest of all bodies, were in reality shown to be the
most composite. They were full of " seeds" or elements of
matter of every conceivable kind, and were little more than
mere collections or storehouses. And, as it was with
the characteristics of the parts of the human body so it
212 GREEK THINKERS.
,vas, according to Anaxagoras, with the fragrance of every
roseleaf, the hardness of the sting of every bee, the
blended colours in every eye of the peacock's tail. The
primary particles were, in all these and innumerable other
cases, extant from all eternity, but in a state of extreme
dispersion, awaiting the circumstances favourable to their
congregation which alone could render them perceptible.
The elements of primary matter must have been as
inexhaustible in number as the differences, down to their
least perceptible shades, which our senses record, and
as the combinations, in the utmost possible variety,
which a single and simple material object could display.
No one can fail to perceive that the contents of this
doctrine stand in the most glaring contradiction with
the actual results of modern science, but the point to
be noticed is this : that the methods and motives of
both display the most striking concordance. Anaxagoras,
too, was concerned to render the processes going on in
the universe thoroughly intelligible. He reduced chemistry
to mechanics, and he stripped physiology of every taint of
mysticism till it was likewise brought within the purview
of mechanics. He used combinations and separations
changes of site, that is to say— to explain all the most
secret alterations and transformations. The theory of
matter taught by the sage of Clazomenae was an experi-
ment, rough and immature though it may have been, to
conceive all material occurrences as effects of mechanical
motion. We are for the most part ignorant of the manner
in which the details of the theory were worked out We
cannot say, for instance, how Anaxagoras dealt with the
alterations in the aspect and character of objects which ac-
company the change in their state of aggregation. In this
connection we have to rely on a single saying of the master
which is itself not a little enigmatic in meaning. He con-
tended that snow must be as dark as the water from which
it comes, and that to no one who knew this would it ever
again appear white. We appreciate the difficulty which con-
fronted his theory at this point. It consisted in the problem
pf the change of colour which ensues when the particles of
MATTER AND MOTION. 213
water are brought in closer contact by cold. The appeal
to the " weakness " of our sense-perception had no force
in this instance. Anaxagoras' fixed conviction that the
particles of water were necessarily dark-coloured in all
circumstances rendered the philosopher, we would venture
to believe, a victim to a gross delusion of senses. We
conceive that in his desire to see clearly, he gazed at the
white quilt stretched across the landscape and gleaming in
the wintry sun, till his dazzled sight began to see every-
thing black, and he was misled into reading in that
optical delusion the confirmation of his preconceived
opinion. If we recall the hardly less crude misinterpreta-
tion of facts which we marked in the reasoning of Anaxi-
menes,* the crudity of the mistake will be mitigated.
And when the representatives of the old doctrine of
primary matter lifted up their voices against his theory,
their criticism was robbed of half its force by Anaxagoras'
appeal to the invisible particles of matter and their in-
visible movements, which Heraclitus had been the first to
defend. They asked him how objects fundamentally
different could be actively and passively related with one
another, and he answered that each contained a portion of
each ; " the objects in this one world," cried Anaxagoras,
" are not completely divided nor hewn asunder as with an
axe " — a phrase, we may remark in parenthesis, containing
the sole metaphorical expression in all the fragments of
his work. Each several object was described, according to
this theory, by the kind of matter which prevailed in it, and
therefore took precedence of the rest And to minimize
the disbelief in the reality of the Invisible in general, he
quoted the example of the invisible air imprisoned in an
inflated bag, and the resistance it offers to our endeavours
to compress it.
2. The cosmogony of Anaxagoras moves up to a
certain point in the lines laid down by Anaximander and
seldom deserted by his successors to any serious extent.
Here too there is a kind of Chaos at the beginning. But
the place of the single primary matter extended without
* Bk, I. Ch. L § 4.
214 GREEK THINKERS.
bounds is taken by an untold number of primary matters in
the same boundless extension. " All things were together ; "
the infinitesimal primary particles in their indiscriminate
confusion formed an original composite medley, and their
indistinguishable quality corresponded to the still absent
difference of quality in the one universal Being of Anaxi-
mander. The " seeds " or elements were primarily endowed
with material characteristics, and a mechanical separation
took the place of the old dynamic "differentiation."
Anaxagoras did not feel himself impelled to arrive at the
necessary physical process by mere inferences nor to con-
struct it on familiar analogies. He presumed that he saw
it in the apparent revolution of the firmament — a phe-
nomenon that is still enacted before our eyes every day
and every hour. This revolution was not merely sup-
posed to have brought the first material separation to
pass in the beginning of time, but the same cause
was supposed to produce still and now the same effect
in other parts of universal space. This attempt to con-
nect the most distant past with the immediate present,
and the present again with the most distant future, be-
speaks a firmness of conviction which arouses our keenest
surprise. Anaxagoras' belief in the uniformity of the forces
that govern the universe and in the regularity of its phe-
nomena was in striking contrast with the mythical mode
of thought prevailing in former ages. The question arises
how the revolution of the firmament could have operated in
the manner alleged of it, and the answer he gave took about
the following form. At one point of the universe a
rotatory movement first took place which described ever
wider and wider circles, and will continue so to describe
them. The north pole may be regarded with some pro-
bability as the starting-point of this movement, which
would obviously be continued in circular lines due in each
instance to the shock or pressure exercised by each
particle of matter on its environment. By this means
alone could the first shock, the origin of which will
presently occupy our attention, bring to pass in a natural
way the extraordinary effects which Anaxagoras ascribed
INTERVENTION OF " A'OUS:9 21 5
to it. The inconceivable " violence and velocity " of this
rotatory motion, we may interpret Anaxagoras as thinking,
produced such a jarring and clashing that the former co-
hesion of the mass was relaxed, the friction of the particles
was overcome, and they were enabled to follow the bias
of their specific gravity. Then for the first time masses of
uniform matter were enabled and obliged to form themselves
together and to inhabit various regions of the universe. At
its centre, " where the earth is now, was the meeting-place
of the Thick, the Fluid, the Cold, and the Dark, but the
Thin, the Warm, and the Dry escaped far away into the
ether." The primary process which began with a rotation
in a limited area of space, engendered, it will be perceived,
an endless chain of consequences. But the process itself
required a causal explanation, and in this instance physical
analogies no longer served our philosopher. He was
reduced to what we may half correctly call a supernatural
expedient. Half correctly, we say, because the agent
which he summoned to his help was neither wholly
material nor wholly immaterial. It was neither composed
of a common element, nor was it completely divine ;
moreover, though it was described as "boundless and
self-governing," yet its force was so rarely, nay, so excep-
tionally employed that its actual dominion over nature might
be called a sovereignty in principle, but never a sovereignty
in fact. It was the Nous which was supposed to have
given that first shock, and we prefer to leave this word
in the original Greek, since every translation, whether we
render it by "mind" or by "thought- element," introduces
something foreign to its nature. According to Anaxa-
goras* own account, it was "the finest and purest of all
things ; " it was " alone free from admixture with any
other thing, for had it been so mixed it would have
participated with all other things " — it will be remembered
that the segregation of elements was incomplete —
"and its admixture would have prevented it from
exercising the same force over any single object" as
its pure condition enables it to do. Further explana-
tions describe the Nous as possessing "all knowledge
2i6 GREEK THINKERS.
about everything, past, present, and future," and endow
it with " supreme power." But the temptation to rank it
with the highest godhead is opposed by other considera-
tions no less essential to its character. We read of a
" more and less of" Nous ; it is described as divisible and
as " inhabiting some things," by which all living beings are
to be understood.
This doctrine can be traced to two quite distinct
motives which mutually kept each other in check. The
universe is full of indications of order and beauty ; its
factors are linked together in the guise of means to an end,
and this spectacle suggests the thought of conscious
government and deliberate operation. In fact, the
design-argument is still the strongest weapon in the
armoury of philosophic Theism. Later thinkers have
entrusted this exalted task to a Being purged from every
material element, but Anaxagoras believed that its re-
quirements would be satisfied by a kind of fluid or ether.
In this he was following the precedent of Anaximenes and
Heraclitus, whose Air and Fire, though they did not set
definite ends before them, were yet honoured as the vehicles
of universal intellect, and he agreed likewise with nine-
tenths of the ancient philosophers in so far as they regarded
the individual "soul" as a substance not immaterial, but of
an extremely refined and mobile materiality. With this
theory the teleological problem entered on the field for the
first time, never again to disappear, and it involved a serious
danger to the progress of science. But happily Anaxa-
goras, who so frequently drove his logic to excess, was
content to be illogical in this instance. Plato and Aris-
totle both blamed him for his lack of consistency. They
were delighted at the introduction of the new agent, but
their pleasure was considerably tempered by its use as a
stop-gap or makeshift. They complained that Anaxagoras
employed the Nous as the deits ex machind of the dramatists,
whose function it was to descend from heaven and cut the
tragic knot when no milder means could be found of dis-
entangling its confusion. For all minor details Anaxagoras
had recourse to "air, and ether, and water, and other
ANAXAGORAS AND THE SUN. 2lJ
eccentricities/' to anything, in short, in preference to his
curious reasoning fluid. Of course he might have acted
otherwise ; he might have satisfied Plato's condition, and
have made his whole inquiry from the point of view of
" the better ; " at every separate phenomenon he might have
asked why and to what end it occurred instead of how and
under what conditions it came to pass, but in such cir-
cumstances his contribution to human knowledge would
have been yet far more modest than was actually
the case. Our own limited horizon and the consequent
impossibility of guessing the intentions of the Being who
governs the world would make this road a path of
error and delusion, which Anaxagoras was fortunate to
avoid. He was not merely half a theologian, but he was
a full-grown natural philosopher as well, though his endow-
ment was extremely one-sided. To his own contemporaries
he appeared a very type of that kind, the more so as
the new theology, by which the Nous doctrine may be
described, had completely released him from the old
mythological fetters. The great objects of nature were
no longer divine in his eyes : they were masses of matter,
obedient to the same natural laws as all other material
aggregates whether great or small. It was a constant
topic of adverse criticism among his own contemporaries
that he looked on the sun, for instance, no longer as
Helios the god, but as nothing more or less than " an
ignited stone." There was only a single point in his
theory of the formation of the firmament and the universe
in which he deserted his mechanical and physical principles
to assume an outside intervention. That first shock which
set in motion the process of the universe that had hitherto
been in repose reminds us in a most striking fashion of
the first impulse which the Deity is supposed by some
modern astronomers to have given to the stars. Or
rather, it would be more correct to say that both ideas
are practically identical. They were intended to fill up the
same lacuna in bur knowledge ; they sprang from the same
desire to introduce in the mechanism of heaven a second force
of unknown origin to take its place by the side of gravity,
218 GREEK THINKERS.
We would not by any means be understood to credit the
sage of Clazomenas with an anticipation of Newton's law
of gravitation or with a knowledge of the parallelogram
of forces, and of the twofold composition of the orbits
described by the stars, consisting of gravity on the one
part, and on the other of a tangential force harking back
to that one original shock. But a brief consideration will
show how nearly his thought was allied with the principles
of modern astronomy. In the course of his cosmogony he
taught that the sun, moon, and stars had been torn away
from the common centre of the earth by the violence of
the cosmic revolution. Thus he assumed a series of pro-
jections or " hurlings-off " in precisely the same kind as
the theory of Kant and Laplace assumes for the formation
of the solar system. They were caused, according to
Anaxagoras, by a force which could only effect that
result after the cosmic revolution had begun and had
attained considerable strength and velocity. This force
we call the centrifugal. Next Anaxagoras turned his
attention to the gigantic meteorite of ./Egospotami which
we mentioned above, and which was compared to a millstone.
He argued that as this stone had fallen from the sun, so all
the starry masses would fall down on the earth as soon as
the force of rotation relaxed and no longer kept them in
their courses. Thus, from the most diverse coigns of
observation his eye was led back to the same starting-
point, at what we may venture to call the primeval secret
of mechanics. The force of gravity did not appear to
him to be adequate. His conception of it, parenthetically
remarked, was imperfect, including as it did a belief in the
absolute lightness of certain substances. He could not
employ it to explain the separation of the masses of matter
nor the origin, duration, and motion of the luminaries and
firmament He concluded that an opposite force was at work.
Its operation was at once direct and indirect, and in the latter
category was chiefly comprised the opportunity that it gave
to the action of centrifugal force. In both categories it
released an immeasurable series of effects indispensable
to the comprehension of universal phenomena. The origin
THE HUMAN HAND. 21 q
of this force was hidden in outer darkness. Anaxagoras
referred it back to an impulse which was intended to com-
plete the operation of gravity in precisely the same way
as the shock in which the predecessors of Laplace had
affected to discover the starting-point of tangential force.
3. The cosmogony of Anaxagoras was distinguished by
the spirit of true science. It was especially displayed in
his acceptation of bold hypotheses where the facts left
him no alternative, while he brought to bear on such
hypotheses an extraordinary degree of ingenuity, thus
enabling them to fulfil a large number of requirements at
once, like the best examples of the legislative art. A
minimum of hypothesis, that is to say, was to cover a
maximum of explanation. We have already sufficiently
shown in what admirable stead this talent stood him in
the single instance of quasi-supernatural intervention. We
have next to mention the remarkable attempt which
sprang from the same mental tendency to explain the
intellectual superiority of man. Anaxagoras referred it
to the possession of the single organ of the hand, and
compared it, in all probability, with the corresponding part
of the body in the animal structures that stand next to
us. The theory reminds us of Benjamin Franklin's phrase
about the " tool-making animal." We are not acquainted
with the details of his argumentation, and we readily
admit that it may have substituted the part for the whole.
But it bore witness to that deep-rooted objection to piling
specific differences on one another and multiplying inexplic-
able final facts, which is perhaps the chief feature by
which the genuine philosopher may be distinguished from
his counterfeit.
The rest of the astronomy of Anaxagoras was little
more than an heirloom of Miletus. The great man might
almost be said to have inherited the self-satisfaction of the
lonians of the Twelve Cities whom Herodotus satirized
so bitterly. He was quite unamenable to any influence
which did not proceed from his own country. He ignored
or rejected as incredible the globular shape of the earth
which Parmenides had promulgated* He agreed with
220 GREEK THINKERS.
Anaximenes in regarding the earth as flat, and in the
explanation of its state of rest. At this point, however,
we are met by a difficulty which has still to be realized
and explained. According to Aristotle's account, Anaxagoras
conceived the earth as closing the centre of Cosmos like
a lid and resting, as it were, on an air-cushion, from which
the air underneath was unable to escape. But, according
to other equally trustworthy accounts, his theory admitted
that the stars moved under the earth as well as above it,
and it is impossible to reconcile these two versions. We
must note, by the way, that in the beginning of time the
stars moved sideways round the earth, and thus never sank
below the horizon, so that the second proposition of
Anaxagoras had not always held good in his theory. He
would not accept the inclination of the earth's axis as a
primeval fact, evidently because it failed to satisfy his
strong bias to uniformity. So he believed it to have taken
place at a later date, by what means we are not told. It
was dated after the beginning of organic life, doubtless
because that extraordinary event required a com-,
plete revision of existing cosmological conditions, and was
perhaps better compatible with a permanent spring than
with the changes of the seasons. In other respects the
views of Anaxagoras were childish enough. His notions of
the size of the heavenly bodies may be illustrated by his
statement that the sun was greater than the Peloponnesus.
He could suggest no more fortunate explanation for the
solstice than that the density of the air compelled the sun
to turn round. And the moon with its milder heat was
supposed to be less capable of resisting the dense air, and
therefore to be obliged to turn more frequently. Still, if
we may trust the reports, despite all these blemishes 'on
his astronomy, Anaxagoras can point to one important
achievement. He may claim to have been the first to
have elaborated the correct theory of the phases of the
moon and of eclipses. In the last-named instance, it must
be acknowledged that he detracted from his own merits
by adding the non-luminous stars of Anaximenes to the
shadows of the earth and moon as the causes of an eclipse.
THE MILKY WAY. 221
Another part of the doctrine of Anaxagoras is extremely
instructive for the weaknesses as well as the strong points
of the spirit he brought to his inquiries. He made an
attempt to explain the accumulated clusters of stars in the
Milky Way by which he dismissed them as merely apparent
and due to the strong contrast in that region of the sky
between the light of the stars and the shadow of the earth.
We may suppose him to have reasoned as follows. The
daylight prevents us altogether from seeing the stars in the
sky, which only become visible in the darkness of night.
Additional darkness, therefore, will be accompanied by
additional visibility, and the greatest visible number of
stars will merely afford evidence that the darkness in that
region had been the greatest. And he had no other
explanation to offer of this maximum of darkness save
the one mentioned above. At the best the theory was
at variance with the facts of common observation. It
illustrates afresh the one-sided deductive bias of the
mind of Anaxagoras and his indifference to the justifica-
tion of his hypotheses. If his explanation were correct,
the Milky Way would have to coincide with the ecliptic,
whereas it is actually inclined to it, and an eclipse of the
moon would be bound to occur whenever it passed over the
Milky Way. Nevertheless we must recognize his argument
as exceptionally ingenious, and must admit that the problem
he approached was no idle intellectual riddle. Anaxagoras
was probably a little exorbitant in his demands on the
symmetry of cosmic phenomena. We have already had
occasion to mark this tendency, which is by no means
surprising in the author of the doctrine of Nous. But the
sage of Clazomense may claim some points of contact with
the astronomers of to-day. They too are not content to
explain the Milky Way as due to an original irregularity
in the distribution of cosmic matter. And they likewise
seek for a mere optical delusion behind that huge exception,
and they find it in they crowded condition which the stars
assume in our eyes owing to the presumed lenticular
shape of the Milky Way system to which the earth
belongs.
222 GREEK THINKERS.
In the meteorology of Anaxagoras his correct explana-
tion of the winds as due to changes of temperature and atmo-
spheric density is worthy of mention ; and in his geography
we may instance the account given of the rise of the Nile as
the result of the melted snows in the mountains of Central
Africa — an account which antiquity pursued with ridicule,
but which is at least partially correct Anaxagoras followed
in Anaximander's footsteps with respect to the beginnings
of organic life, but he struck out a path of his own in his
doctrine that the first vegetable germs had fallen on the
earth with the rain out of the air, which was filled with
"seeds" of all kinds. This doctrine is probably to be
connected with the great significance attached by the sage
to the operation of air in organic life. Plants, for instance,
In his theory were represented as breathing after a fashion,
though the statement could have rested on no exact obser-
vations, and he was the first to discover that fishes breathed
through their gills. In other respects, too, Anaxagoras did
not recognize any impassable gulf between the animal and
the vegetable creations. Plants were supposed to participate
at least in feelings of pleasure and pain, the pleasure
being the accompaniment of the growth of trees, and pain
of the loss of their leaves. Similarly, though no hint of the
doctrine of evolution was compatible with his theory of
matter, he refused to regard the various orders of the
animal kingdom — to transfer his expression from another
context — as "hewn asunder with an axe." It is diffi-
cult to overpraise his tendency, which we have already
had occasion to notice with approval, not needlessly to
pile up specific differences on one another, and it saved
him in this instance too from the mistakes of some later
thinkers. In intellectual endowment he recognized only
differences of degree, and his Nous was located by him in
all animals without exception, the great and the small,
the high and the low, with no other difference except
that of quantity.
4. Anaxagoras' theory of the senses need not detain us
long. We should note, however, that it did not admit the
principle of relativity except where the facts were quite
ANAXAGORAS AND THE SENSES. 22$
unequivocal. In the feeling of temperature he was ready to
allow that an object such as water will make a warmer
impression on the sense, the colder the hand that tries
it. But in general it may be said that he regarded the
evidence of the senses as truthful, but weak. He
affected to build up on it a completely true conception
of the outer world, and our readers are already well
acquainted with the doctrine of matter which the sage
of Clazomense based on that foundation. Still, it will not
be out of place to recall its features once more. There
were two original premises, the first of which stated that
"there is no change of qualities/' and the second of which
asserted that " objects really possess the qualities which the
senses reveal to us/' From these premises the inevitable
conclusion was deduced that " every difference of sensible
qualities is fundamental, original, and inalienable." There
is, therefore, not one primary matter, or a few of them, but
absolutely countless primary matters. Or, more precisely
stated, nothing was left but the distinction between homo-
geneous accumulations (homoiomeries) and heterogeneous
mixtures, thus involving the disappearance of that between
original and derivative forms of matter. Anaxagoras
had reverted to the crude conception of nature held by
primitive man ; he had abandoned the doctrine of primary
matter which previous philosophers had taught, and he had
even gone back on those early endeavours towards the
simplification of the material world which are found in
Homer, in the Avesta, or in the book of Genesis. The
arguments underlying that doctrine were nevertheless not
shaken. Their irresistible force still overwhelmed the
inquirer with a conviction of the interdependence of the
countless elements of matter, so that it might almost be
said that postulates of equal cogency stood in irrecon-
cilable opposition. The problem of matter, in a word, had
been stranded on the shallows. It was a cid-de-sac from
which there was but one possible outlet. The premises of
the theory of primary matter had been completely refuted by
the conclusions derived from them — conclusions thoroughly
false, as we now know, and incredible in themselves, as
224 GREEK THINKERS.
Anaxagoras' own contemporaries had not failed to per-
ceive. But the premises were not therefore necessarily
wrong ; they might merely have been incomplete, and if
so, it would have been enough to supplement them without
altogether rejecting them. The stumbling-block was
rolled out of the way, and the belief in the qualitative
constancy of matter, which we have learnt to call the
second postulate of matter, could be permanently main-
tained as soon as one condition was fulfilled. This
condition was to recognize a part only of sensuous
qualities as truly objective, and not their totality. The
new doctrine of cognition came to the rescue of the old
doctrine of matter. A distinction arose between objective
and subjective, primary and secondary qualities of things,
and this was the great intellectual feat which was alone
calculated to reconcile the hitherto irreconcilable demands
and which actually effected their reconciliation. A fresh tiej
was added — a higher one, though surely not the highest — tc
the rising mansion of science, and the name of Leucippu:
must always be mentioned with honour in connection will
this great service to philosophy. The vessel which hac
grounded on the sands was floated once more through hi
handiwork. And Anaxagoras deserves a hardly les
honourable meed. It was his supreme merit, in our opinior
to have made visible to the weakest sight the necessity c
thus supplementing the theory of matter, for the unde
viating logic of his arguments had not even shrunk fror
absurdities.
As often happens, the renown which Anaxagora
enjoyed in antiquity was due as much to the defects c
to the qualities of his mind. His teaching was marke
by a patriarchal dogmatism. His method of thought, an
doubtless his manner as well, were stiff and hard ; the doi
trines with which he frequently did violence to the commc
sense of mankind were promulgated with oracular convi
tion, and we can hardly doubt that by this he succeeded :
exercising a fascinating influence far and wide. For h
characteristics would have contrasted as sharply as possib
with the vague uncertainty of his times. It was an aj
ANAXAGORAS AND HIS TIMES. 22$
of excessive mental suppleness, when thought was as full of
the germs of scepticism as the air or water in the doctrine
of Anaxagoras with the " seeds " of things. Nor can we
altogether escape the record of a second impression. There
was bound to be a little curling of the lips among the con-
temporaries of Anaxagoras when their esteemed teacher
paraded so intimate an acquaintance with all the secrets
of the universe, as if he had personally assisted at the
origin of the world ; when he proclaimed the wildest
paradoxes — his doctrin- of matter, for instance — in tones
of the calmest infallibility ; and when, with the confidence
of revelation, he told stories of other worlds, worlds which
repeated in detail the procession of earthly phenomena,
worlds inhabited by a race of men who built their home-
steads and ploughed their fields and carried their produce
to the market — and all this with the reiterated assurance,
occurring like the burden of a song, "just as it is with us."
Yes, it is quite comprehensible that Xenophon should have
been expressing not merely his personal conviction, but
a current opinion of his age, when he stated that the
great philosopher was " a little off his head." The times
in which he lived were seething with scepticism, but he
stood apart from it in all respects except his attitude of
disdain towards the popular religion. For the rest, he
clung to the evidence of senses as it were to a rock,
reminding us by his unquestioning faith of the least philo-
sophic of modern followers of natural research ; he betrayed
no taste or understanding for dialectic discussion, and
probably neglected if he did not despise the subtle doubts
and arguments of Zeno ; like a greater thinker —
" for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone,"
he pursued his course with the unsuspecting temerity of
a sleep-walker unconscious of obstacles, undisturbed by
doubts, and undistracted by the difficulties of the way ;
his arid teachings were unillumined by a spark of poetry
or humour; and the solitary author of these apodictic
and venturesome doctrines cannot always have cut the
VOL. I. Q
226 GREEK THINKERS.
best figure among the great men of his age with their
versatile gifts and their almost excessive pliability. Many
people were greatly impressed by his fine air of calm
and his confident self-esteem ; others execrated his bold-
ness for looking too deeply into the secrets of the gods ;
others, again, and these by no means the least numerous,
must at least have regarded him as a little "twisted," if
not as absolutely awry. To our thinking, Anaxagoras was
a man of great deductive powers, of exceptional inventive-
ness, and with a strongly developed sense of causation ;
but these advantages were counteracted by a striking want
of sound intuition, and by a virtual indifference to the
justification by fact of his finely wrought hypotheses.
CHAPTER V.
EMPEDOCLES. " "*~
THE modern traveller who visits Girgenti is reminded at
every step of Empedocles, for the beautiful piety of the
Italians, fostered by the continuity of their civilization,
takes no count of chronological barriers. What Virgil Is
to his Mantuans, Stesichorus to the inhabitants of Catania,
and the great Archimedes to his fellow-citizens of Syra-
cuse, so dear and so beloved is the memory of their great
fellow-countryman Empedocles, the philosopher and the
leader of the people, to the inhabitants of Girgenti.* He
is worshipped as a democrat by the disciples of Mazzini
and Garibaldi, because he overthrew the rule of the nobles
who had oppressed Acragas for three years, and refused
the royal crown for his own head. This tradition, which
is credible in itself, is in unison with all that we know of
the circumstances of his life and of the condition of his
native city. Moreover, similar stirring scenes were enacted
about that time in other Sicilian communities. The family
of Empedocles was one of the most aristocratic in the
country. It was at the height of its wealth and splendour
at the date of his own birth — between 500 and 480 B.C.
In the year 496 B.C. another Empedocles, his grandfather,,
had taken the prize at Olympia in the four-horse chariot
race. A quarter of a century later, in 470 B.C., Meto, the
father of the philosopher, had taken an active and promi-
nent part among the citizens of Acragas in overthrowing the
tyranny of Thrasidseus. We are, therefore, not overmuch
* Agrigentum, Acragas*
228 GREEK THINKERS,
surprised to learn that the road to royal power stood open
for his high-spirited and high-born son. Nor need we
ascribe it to the motive of pure love for the people that
Empedocles resigned the chance of solitary rule as well as
a participation in the oligarchic government. His decision
may well have been due to the force of shrewd common
sense. As one of the founders of rhetoric, he was an
orator as well as a thinker, and he may conceivably have
hoped to play a more distinguished part under democratic
institutions than in the narrow circle of his peers. Further-
more, it is no mean title to fame to have refused a crown ;
the crown that has not been worn is innocent of blood
and mud, but the throne that has arisen from the troubled
waters of revolution may lightly sink back into them.
Empedocles lived in an age of ferment, when the princely
dignity itself was not exempt from the changes of popular
favour. But as a private man he was safe at least from
the vengeful steel of the republican fanatic. If the wayward
mob grew tired of his leadership it could drive him into
exile, and this would appear to be the fate which actually
overtook Empedocles. At the age of threescore years he
succumbed to an accident in the Peloponnese, and died a
stranger in a strange land. Antiquity deemed this end
unworthy of the wonderful man, and, according to one fable,
he perished in consequence of a leap into the crater of -^Etna,
while another account sent him straight to heaven in a
cloud of flame.
But the strenuous ambition of Empedocles soared
higher than all princely thrones. A shining palace on
the bank of "the yellow Acragas " might be tempting
enough, but the dominion over 800,000 subjects is in-
significant in comparison with the mastery exercised over
countless souls bound by no temporal or local conditions,
by the sage, the seer, the miracle-worker. A king is
inferior to a god, and no meaner boast did Empedocles
make to his elect — "I am an immortal god unto you;
look on me no more as a mortal." In purple vestments,
with a golden girdle, with the priestly laurel bound in
the long hair that framed his melancholy features, and
EMPEDOCLES A "GOD." 22Q
surrounded by the hosts of men and women who worshipped
him, Empedocles made his progress through the Sicilian
land. He was acclaimed by thousands and tens of
thousands of the populace, who clung at his feet and
implored him to direct them to a prosperous future, as well
as to heal in the present their sickness and sores of all
kinds. He claimed the sceptre of the winds, the key of
the burning sunbeams and destructive falls of rain. And
he could point to examples of his might. It was he who
had freed the city of Selinus from its deadly pestilence by
draining its soil ; it was he who had bored through a rock
and opened a road for the north wind to give his native
city a wholesome climate. His achievements as an
engineer were matched by his achievements or promises
as a physician. He had wakened from catalepsy a victim
who had lain thirty days like a dead woman "without
pulse or breath," and Gorgias, his disciple, had seen him
" perform magic feats," a piece of evidence which cannot
fairly be interpreted as referring to hypnotic or other
cures due to the power of the imagination.
It is difficult to form a just estimate of a mind and
character in which the true gold of genuine merit was
mixed with so strange an alloy of tawdry and showy
tinsel. It is an excuse, though hardly a justification, to
recall the peculiarities of the fellow-countrymen, and
perhaps fellow-citizens, of Empedocles. The inhabitants
of the island which proved the cradle of rhetoric, were
always disposed to ostentation and pretence. The very
ruins of the temples which crown the heights of Girgenti
create a disagreeable impression of an exaggerated desire
for effect. It is yet more difficult to trace the doctrines of
our philosopher to their fountain-head, for they appear, at
first sight at least, to be deficient in the virtue of strict
consistency, and have not escaped the reproach of a vicious
eclecticism.
2. The physician, the hierophant, the orator, the
politician, the author of works for the common good,
whatever their secondary tastes, are united by their prime
interest in man. We shall therefore expect to find that
230 GREEK THINKERS.
Empedocles the philosopher was an anthropologist as well
as a cosmologist, and that his investigation of nature led
him to the regions of physiology, chemistry, and physics,
rather than to those of astronomy and mathematics. And
the facts justify our expectation. The sage of Acragas never
concerned himself with the science of space and numbers,
and he was but an indifferent student of the science of the
stars. In biological research, on the contrary, he intro-
duced some fresh contributions which proved by no means
unfertile ; but the crowning point of his work was attained
in his doctrine of matter. It is hardly an exaggeration to
say that Empedocles takes us at a bound into the heart of
modern chemistry. We are confronted for the first time
with three fundamental conceptions of that science : the
assumption of a plurality, and of a limited plurality, of
primary elements ; the premise of combination in which
such elements enter ; and, finally, the recognition of
numerous quantitative differences or proportional variations
of the said combinations.
It is not improbable in this connection that the
practical physician led the footsteps of the speculative
chemist Alcmaeon, who preceded Empedocles by about
half a century, has already familiarized us with the theory
that illnesses are caused by the conflict or disproportion of
the heterogeneous elements contained in the animal body.
It was a doctrine which had taken firm hold in medical
circles at least, and which was used, according to Polybus,
in a passage quoted above,* as a chief weapon against
material monism. But apart from the attack from this
quarter, that doctrine was obviously not well suited to give
an exact account of the phenomena. No one can fail to
perceive that with the progress of the study of nature the
vague process of generalization was bound to defer more
and more to detailed investigation and research. The old
Ionian philosophers, with the honourable exception of
Anaximenes, had acquiesced in an indefinite "transform-
ism " which rested neither on well ascertained facts nor yet
on precise reflection ; and when its defects had been exposed,
* Bk. II. Ch. II. init.
DOCTRINE OF FOUR ELEMENTS. 231
no second alternative remained but to refer the plurality
of phenomena to an original plurality of material substances.
Anaxagoras, the older contemporary and intellectual con-
gener of Empedocles, approached the new task of philosophy
in a spirit of defiance. He threw away the wine with the
lees, rejecting at a single stroke all differences between
the elements and the substances derived from them, thus
returning for the nonce to the infancy of human thought.
But Empedocles took a less violent method. In rejecting
the single element he did not throw overboard the whole
theory of elements. He may have learnt to appreciate
the value of compromise in the school of practical politics,
and this experience may have saved him from the error
of the rigid " this or that " — either one primary element or
nothing but primary elements. The problem was to secure
a plurality of fundamental elements, and in order to gain
this end it was sufficient to join together the doctrines
of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus ; or, to speak more
precisely, it was sufficient to take a comprehensive view
of the popular system of physics which lay at the root of
the teaching of those philosophers, and in accordance
with its tenets, to combine the Earth with Air, Fire, and
Water. The "four elements" which compose and pre-
serve the world, now surviving merely in folklore and
poetry, have a long and glorious history* Aristotle
embodied them in his theory of nature, and his authority
sped them over the stream of the centuries, and impressed
on the doctrine the stamp of unimpeachability. Never-
theless it was devoid from the start of all intrinsic justifi-
cation. It obviously rests on the crudest possible confusion,
for we shall hardly be asked to prove that it reverts in
the last instance to the distinction of the three states of
aggregation — the solid, fluid, and gaseous — and that the
fourth element which was added to these fundamental
states was the mere accessory of a process, and was
nothing but the phenomenon, so dazzling to the senses,
which accompanies combustion. The mistake was to re-
gard the fundamental forms of substance as homogeneous
kinds and as the only fundamental kinds of substance.
232 GREEK THINKERS.
Despite these objections, the merit of the doctrine was
incalculable. The value of a doctrine in the history of
science is not always commensurate with its degree of
objective truth. A theory may be wholly true, and yet
the unpreparedness of human understanding may make
it useless and abortive, whereas a second theory, though
wholly untrue, may render abundant service to the progress
of knowledge precisely on account of that stage of intellectual
development. In the age with which we are dealing, and
far beyond its confines, the doctrine of a single primary
matter belongs to the first-named category of ineffectual
theories ; in the same era and in those immediately
succeeding to it the doctrine of the four elements belongs
to the second of our categories. We may make as many
deductions from the truth of the doctrine as we choose ;
we may explain that no one of the elements was a genuine
element ; that Water, which had the best claim to that
title, was a compound combination ; that Earth and Air, on
the contrary, were each but a single name for countless
material substances partly simple and partly^ complex, each
respectively in but one of its phenomenal shapes ; and we
may discreetly pass over the nonentity of the element of
Fire : still, this pseudo-science was, as it were, the bud from
which the true flower of science was to unfold. A model
was given which represented the fundamental conceptions
of chemistry, and from which alone those conceptions
could be derived. If philosophy had waited to form the
conceptions of elements and combinations till it had
become familiar with real elements and real combinations
of the same, it might have waited for ever. For the goal
of the theory of matter, like that of astronomy itself, was
only to be reached by paths of error.* The reflections
of Empedocles in this connection were as correct as their
application was misleading. He was as reluctant as any
of his predecessors to recognize an absolute beginning and
end, and, moreover, he surpassed his predecessors in the
clear grasp which he obtained of the positive counterpart
of those negations. To him, as to Anaxagoras, each
* Bk. L Ch. IV. § i (pp. 114, 115).
PROPORTIONAL COMBINATIONS. 233
apparent beginning was really "only a mixture," each
apparent end a mere separation of the mixture. But he
leaves Anaxagoras behind in his perception and statement
of the fact that the sensible qualities of a compound
depend on the manner in which it is composed. His first
hint of this perception is contained in a remarkably
significant simile. To illustrate the endless multiplicity of
qualities which objects offer to our senses, he recalled the
process that is constantly at work on the artist's palette.
He compared his four primary substances with the four
primary colours used by the artists of his day, from the
mixed proportions of which were derived the countless
shades and gradations of hue. It may be urged that this
is a mere simile, and not an explanation, but it is a simile
which at least contains some of the elements of an expla-
nation. It brings one important fact very clearly to light,
that a merely quantitative difference in a compound of
two or more elements causes a qualitative difference in its
sensible qualities. It is not a mere matter of inference
that Empedocles was master of this fact ; it may be
directly proved by the testimony of his own writings. For
with a venturesomeness which reacted on the details of
the experiment, he attempted to reduce the qualitative
differences in the parts of the human body to quantitative
differences of composition. Thus flesh and blood were
supposed to contain equal parts of the four elements —
equal in weight, and not in volume — whereas the bones
were composed of £ Fire to \ Earth and i Water. It
cannot be disputed that he was obliged to employ this
aid to explanation in the most comprehensive fashion,
otherwise he could never have maintained with such
emphasis the dependence of sensible qualities on the mode
of composition as in the simile mentioned just now. The
four elements in themselves could give but a very small
number of possible combinations, viz. one four, four threes,
and six twos. But as soon as the principle of proportional
combination was admitted the possible number was infinitely
extended, and the doctrine of Empedocles rose to the
height of its intention, and was able to account for a
234 GREEK THINKERS.
really inexhaustible variety of substances. And here
let us pause to remark that we are confronted with one
of the most striking anticipations of the results of modern
science. The chemistry of our century from Dalton down-
wards is dominated by the theory of proportions or
equivalents. In the realm of organic chemistry in especial,
where the four primary elements C, H, O, N completely
justify the comparison with the four primary colours
borrowed from ancient painting, Its value is most signifi-
cant, and in recent times we owe to it the discovery that
the number of atoms in albuminoids, for instance, can be
counted by their hundreds.
3. Empedocles is at one with the modern chemist in
his recognition of the changeless condition of the primary
elements side by side with the Protean variation of their
compounds. But of all the intermediate links in this chain
of thought one alone, so far as we are aware, was fully
grasped by Empedocles, namely, the significance mentioned
above of proportional quantities in combination. He may
have perceived, but he never clearly expressed his knowledge
or acceptance of the second and more important fact that the
qualities of a compound are affected by its structure, by the
conditions of its parts in respect to situation and movement,
and that a body which is distinguished from another body
by these conditions will exercise a different influence on
other bodies and on our organs of sense. Yet we fancy
that Empedocles must have guessed at this fact, else he
must have been content to forego every explanation of
the circumstance that the elements in their combination
"traverse each other," to use his own words, "and
show a different face." And we miss something else in
Empedocles. We look in vain in this connection for the
full recognition and appreciation of the part which is
played by the subjective factor in our sense-perceptions,
though he comes much nearer to it than any of his pre-
decessors except one. The exception is Alcmseon, the
independent thinker and observer included in the Pytha-
gorean circle, with whom time has dealt a little hardly.
Alcmseon gives us the first hint of subjective sensible
THEORY OF VISUAL PERCEPTION. 235
phenomena, and Empedocles, as may be abundantly testi-
fied, followed in his footsteps. Alcmseon was the first and
Empedocles was the second, and there was no intermediary
thinker, who represented the interior of the eye as consisting
almost entirely of Fire and Water. Hereon was based
the comparison of the structure of the eye with the making
of a lantern. The transparent plates to protect the flame
from the wind which might extinguish it correspond in the
eye to the thin films covering the contents of the orbit,
which are partly of a fiery and partly of a watery nature.
Next came the principle, probably derived from the
analogy of the sense of touch and resistance, that like is
recognized by like, and in accordance therewith the fiery
parts of the eye were to recognize external fire, and the
watery parts external water, those two elements being taken
as the types of light and darkness. The act of perception
was accomplished as follows. At the approach of fiery or
watery effluvia from the substances, fiery or watery par-
ticles went out to meet them from the funnel-shaped pores
of the eye. The meeting was caused by the mutual attrac-
tion of similar materials, and the perception was brought
about by the contact of the particles entering the pores
from without with those quitting them from within at a
point outside the eye, though presumably close to its
surface. Thus sight was assimilated to touch, light being
touched by light and dark by dark, and it depended on
which of the two elements was less strongly represented,
and therefore more susceptible of its complement, in the
eyes of the respective kind of animals or individuals whether
they were better adapted to receive colour-impressions
and to see clearly by daylight or by dusk. This view
of the mechanism and the process of the act of sight
is crude and fanciful enough. It does not even explain
what it professes to explain, and countless questions arise
to which it does not pretend to give an answer. Still it
possesses one undisputed merit. It was an attempt, how-
ever inadequate, to explain perception by intermediate
processes,* It was an attempt, moreover, which admitted,
* Cp. Bk. II. Ch. III. §2.
236 GREEK THINKERS.
however reluctantly, the subjective factor, thus completing
one stage of the journey whose ultimate goal it is to recog-
nize that our sense-perceptions are anything rather than
the mere reflections of exterior objective qualities of things.
Further, this theory of Empedocles did not wholly reject
the principle of relativity. We saw that the increased mass
of the fiery or watery matter contained in different eyes
was to explain the differences of perception, and we may
add that the shape and size of the pores were here, as in
other instances of sensation, to permit or prevent the entry
of the " effluvia." Such effluvia alone as corresponded with
the pores were regarded as perceptible. Thus error once
more was justified of its offspring, and this erroneous theory
smoothed the way for a true insight into the nature of
sense-perception. The old stumbling-block which left the
human intelligence no choice save between a blind accept-
ance and an equally blind rejection of the evidence of sense
receded further and further in the distance. That evidence
was more carefully guarded against the objections arising
from individual or temporary differences of impression, and
thus the knowledge derived from this source was at once
restricted to narrower limits and more firmly secured
within them.
4. Empedocles displays in the rest of his allied doctrines
the same merits and defects as in his physiology of sense.
They exhibit a common tendency to reduce the physical
and psychical phenomena of the human, animal, and
vegetable worlds to universal natural processes. The
barriers between the organic and inorganic, between the
conscious and unconscious, were to be destroyed ; better
still, they were never to be erected or completed. It was
at once the strength and weakness of our philosopher that
he looked so deeply into the unity of all natural and
spiritual life. It was his weakness because his com-
prehensive generalizations rested rather on a neglect of
differences than on the evidence of likeness in difference,
and because the experiment is fully as crude and pre-
mature as the kindred attempt of Anaxagoras.* The
* Cp.Bk. Il.Ch. IV. §i.
ATTRACTION OF LIKE BY LIKE. 237
perception that made the deepest impression on the mind
of Empedocles was that of the mutual attraction of like
by like. This doctrine applied equally to the masses
of homogeneous matter, earth, air, clouds, and sea, as to
the parallel observation, taken from social life and raised
to the dignity of a proverb, "like to like." On the other
hand, the attraction depending on the difference of sex was
but little taken in account, and the natural phenomena
with which we have been familiarized by the doctrine
of electricity, and which contradict this principle of
attraction, were unknown at that time. Thus there
was nothing to prevent the constant and general appli-
cation of this so-called universal law. At one time it
was used to explain the growth of plants ; at another the
origin of the human race, and in both cases the fire in
the interior of the earth was supposed to yearn towards
the external fire, and thus impel to the surface and beyond
it the various forms of vegetable life and the yet un-
formed human "lumps" consisting of earth and water.
Another illustration may be taken from the phenomenon
of breath. Respiration was due, according to the doctrine
of Empedocles, to the fire in the living organism which
was impelled by the same force to drive out the air
contained therein, and thus to bring about expiration.
A further point to be noticed is that the dwelling-place
of the various kinds of animals is determined, no less
than the rest of their qualities, by the same fundamental
principle of the predominance of a single element in each.
Animals full of air seek the air, those full of w^ter make
for the water, and those with a preponderance of earth
in their composition have a natural bias to the earth.
The perception of like by like ranks as a universal rule
applicable not merely to the region of sense-perception,
as we have already seen, but to the realm of thought
itself. In the theory of sight which we have just
examined we saw that like required to be completed
by like, and the same principle was taken to govern all
manifestations of desire, such as that of hunger, for
instance, and to account no less for the sensation of
238 GREEK THINKERS.
pleasure in the satisfaction of desire than for that of
pain in its non-satisfaction. Such doctrines, of course,
were one-sided and partly fanciful, but we cannot escape
the impression of grandeur which they create, recalling
to our memory the breadth of the Heraclitean philosophy.
Still, there is something refreshing in the occasional
interruption of these monotonous elucidatory endeavours
by a genuine observation of nature, however imperfectly
it may have been applied. We come across an obser-
vation of this kind, or, to speak more correctly, across a
truth ascertained by experiment, in the account of the
breathing, or exhalation, which takes place through the skin.
Empedocles employed in this connection a very apt
illustration. He took the case of a bottle held mouth
downwards in a basin of water with a finger closely
pressed against the opening, and remarked that even
after the removal of the finger the bottle would not fill
with water, though in other circumstances it would be
flooded forthwith ; and he was quite clear on the point
that it was the air which had been prevented from
escaping from the bottle that kept the water from enter-
ing. In the same way, so he argued, external air could
only enter the body when the blood had receded from
the surface and had welled back to the inner organs.
The regular consecution of this tidal process of the blood
accounted, according to his doctrine, for the exhalation
through the pores of the skin. We see that Empedocles
ascribed very considerable influence to this pretended
universal law of the attraction of like by like. At the
same time he could not possibly have regarded it as
the only regulating principle. He must have sought
some explanation of the origin and self-preservation of
organic beings, each of which he perceived to contain
more than one of the four elements or all the four at
once. Hence he conceived, in the tendency of like to
separate from like and of unlike to combine with unlike, a
second principle precisely contrary to the first to check
and control its operations. The existing order of things
represented a kind of compromise between the two
"FRIENDSHIP" AND "DISCORD" 239
natural causes. The origin of each individual was due
to the operation of the second tendency ; its nourishment,
especially in the Empedoclean sense which we noticed just
now, and its dissolution of earth to earth, air to air, and so
forth, were due unmistakably to the first. At this point
we must revert for a moment to the teaching of Anaximander
and Anaxagoras about the differentiation of matter and
the separation of the elements. Those philosophers had
taught that such processes were not primeval, but that they
were preceded in time by a condition of complete homo-
geneity of matter in which the individual substances were
either not yet differentiated or were thoroughly mixed and
combined. Now, by adopting this belief, whether at the
hands of his predecessors or by his own investigations,
Empedocles reached a point in time at which one of the
two fundamental tendencies in all natural life would
have reigned in solitary splendour. That was the time
when the attraction of like by like was entirely out-
weighed by the rival principle of the attraction of unlikes.
Having reached that point, the symmetry of thought
would have rendered it practically necessary to provide a
similar period of solitary reign for the first and more
powerful principle. Finally, Empedocles, following in the
footsteps of Anaximander, Heraclitus, and at least a
proportion of the Pythagoreans,* and regarding all
phenomena as cyclical in character, would not have con-
sidered the succession of these two epochs of the world
as having taken place once for all, but as a constantly
recurring alternation of such periods. This, in fact, was
his teaching, and he selected as its vehicles a couple
of forces, working in consecutive epochs of temporary
superiority. These powers dominated matter under
the names of " Friendship " and " Discord." It was the
part of the first to combine and unite substances
of different natures, whereas Discord, as soon as its
turn arrived, broke those bonds of union and left the
elements free to obey their natural tendency of like to
like. It was not supposed that each of the two powers
* Bk. I. Ch. V. § 4.
240 GREEK THINKERS.
vanquished the other suddenly or at one blow. The
steady conflict went on during each of the successive
periods, and one by one they obtained the mastery, till
the weaker in each instance was gradually supplanted, and
then devoted itself again to recuperative efforts with a view
to reversing the victory. Thus Empedocles distinguished in
the ebb and flow of this movement between two eras of
rise and decay, first, the triumph of Friendship and the
ensuing growth of Discord ; next, the triumph of Discord and
the growth of Friendship. We have tried to give a correct
account of the nature of this conception, but there is
still one feature which calls for further remark. There
is something eminently characteristic of the deep insight
into nature which distinguished Empedocles in the
gradual method of transition by which he conceived
the supremacy to pass from one power to the other.
It manifests his incredulous attitude towards sudden
and immediate changes and his view of their continuity
as a fundamental law of the universe. Taking the
successive periods as the zenith and the nadir, then the
first, when Friendship is at its height, will correspond to
a condition of things which 'we may compare with the
primeval " confusion " of Anaxagoras and its analogue in
Anaximander. An immense sphere contains the elements,
which are molten and mingled in indiscriminate chaos.
The zenith of Discord presents us with quite a contrary
picture. The four fundamental types of matter will be
almost completely sundered from one another, and will be
gathered separately in a conglomerate mass before our
eyes. But the attention of Empedocles was chiefly
directed to the problem of organic life, and this can
neither begin nor prosper at one or the other culminating
point of the successive periods. For each organism is
composed of several elements combined with one another
* in varying proportions. Such elements exist, in the
external world from which the organism derives its
nourishment, in a state of at least partial separation —
or rather easily separable — but at the same time they must
be capable of combining with one another. At neither
COSMOLOGY OF EMPEDOCLES. 241
of the t\vo culminating points are both conditions present
at once ; the first is wanting when Friendship has the
upper hand, and the second In the reign of Discord.
They are never found in conjunction except In the two
transitional stages which divide the extremes of cosmic
evolution. Thus organic life can only originate and
flourish at the two focal points where the streams of
tendency cross each other; and as soon as one or other
of the upward movements reaches its goal or zenith, organic
life will always be annihilated.
5. We have now briefly to advert to the details of the
Empedoclean cosmology. Neither by its virtues nor by ;
its faults has its influence been considerable, and our in-
formation in this respect is, moreover, defective. We can
but suggest a conjectural answer to the question whether
our philosopher regarded the earth as round or cylindrical in
shape. He agreed with Anaxagoras in supposing that the
quality of order or " cosmos " had hitherto been acquired
by a part only of primeval matter. At the period when
friendship was at its zenith, the communion and com-
minglement of the elements lent it the shape of a
motionless ball which was invested with the attributes of
personality and bliss under the name of Sphairos.
Material separation began, according to a verse of Empe-
docles, with a severance of " the heavy " and " the light,"
and it is legitimate to conjecture that the mechanical
agent was a kind of whirlwind which collected the heavier
matter, consisting of mixed earth and water, in the central
spot which is now our own place of habitation. One point
remains obscure. We are unable to identify the original
notive in this process, which made it possible for "all
:he limbs of the god to move in turn." Fire first, and
i portion of the air, escaped upwards. The air was
supposed to have been fastened to the crystalline vault of
leaven under the influence of fire, and to have acquired a
dnd of glaze. The remaining central mass soon came to
i standstill, but the regions round the earth continued
:heir rotatory movement/ and their pressure squeezed the
yater out of the quiescent mass. Meantime the heavenly
VOL. I. R
242 GREEK THINKERS,
fire drew the air that still remained for some unknown
reason In this sea or " sweat of the earth " by the process
of evaporation. The problem suggests itself why the earth
should have stood still, and why it should not have sunk
downwards, and Empedocles met his questioners by an
argument from analogy which, if it failed to do anything
else, would at least excite our admiration for the vivid and
mobile genius by which he united the most discrepant
conceptions. While he was groping about to explain the
apparent quiescence of the earth, he remembered by a
happy inspiration a trick as familiar in the fairs of
antiquity as in those of this day. Several goblets are
filled with water or with some other fluid, and are then
tied to a hoop with their open mouths pointing inwards.
The hoop is then set in swift rotation, and the essence of
the trick is that the water does not escape. Empedocles
seized on this mountebank's exploit for the solution of his
problem. Set the goblets revolving quickly, and their
contents will not escape ; set the firmament revolving
quickly, and the earth at its centre will not slip. Empe-
docles was content with this analogy, though it provokes
a smile to-day and is hardly intelligible at first sight We
know that the fluid is constantly impelled to the bottom
of the goblet, and its attempts to escape are counteracted
by centrifugal force. But that force could never have been
brought into play if the fluid itself had not been made to
rotate together with the goblet that contained it, and we
ask with surprise how any one could have come to
compare the relative quiescence of the fluid with the
presumptive absolute quiescence of the earth. But Em-
pedocles was not in possession of that causal insight.
In both cases he regarded the smaller force and velocity
of the downward tendency as overcome by the " quicker "
rotatory movement Empedocles, we must remember, was
a warm-blooded Sicilian, whose brilliant intellect was dis-
tinguished by breadth rather than by depth of thought.
He had a keen scent for analogies, and the mistake he
made in this instance was characteristic of his hasty con-
clusions. He explained the alternation of day and night
HIS THEORY OF ORGANIC LIFE. 243
by the revolution of the firmament, which consisted in
his theory of two hemispheres, the one light and the
other dark. Furthermore, the sun was not conceived as
shining by its own light, but as a kind of glass-like body
absorbing and reflecting the light of ether. In this
doctrine Empedocles may have given a lead to the
younger Pythagoreans.* He agreed with Anaxagoras in
supposing that the light of the moon was borrowed from
the sun, and, further, in his correct explanation of the
eclipses of the two luminaries. He agreed with Alcmaeon
in distinguishing between the fixed stars, literally fixed in
heaven, and the freely moving planets. At this point,
however, we may leave his meteorological speculations.
They were partly correct and generally ingenious, but we
may return more profitably to his theories about organic
life and its origin.
6. Two modes were suggested for the beginnings of
organic being. On the one which rests on the progress
of the separation of the elements our information is in-
complete ; we have already made acquaintance with the
shapeless lumps from which mankind was later to be
formed, and which constitute the sole reference to this
aspect of the question. When we come to the gradual
and continuous perfection of the forms of animal and
vegetable life under the sign of " Friendship," our authority
is fuller. The vegetable world was supposed to have
preceded the animal, and to have belonged to a period
anterior to the present inclination of the axis of the earth
— a detail which once more reminds us of Anaxagoras,
The belief that the less perfect preceded the more perfect
is the guiding thought of his zoogony, which, fanciful as it
was, was yet not wholly devoid of scientific significance.
First of all, single limbs were supposed to have sprung
from the earth — "heads," for instance, "without neck and
trunk/' "arms without shoulders," and "eyes without a
face." Some of these fragmentary creatures were bound
together by Friendship, others were driven to and fro in a
solitary condition, unable to effect a landing and gain a
* Cp, Bk. I. Ch. IV. § 2.
244 GREEK THINKERS.
foothold on the "shore of life." Whenever such com-
binations took place, all kinds of monsters would be created,
"double-headed and double-breasted beings," "human
forms with heads of bulls," "bodies of bulls with human
heads," and so forth. These grotesque shapes disappeared
as quickly as the original separate limbs, and only such
combinations as exhibited an inner harmony evinced
themselves as fit for life, maintained a permanent place,
and finally multiplied by procreation. It is impossible not
to be reminded here of the Darwinian survival of the fittest.
There is nothing to prevent and everything to favour the
belief that we are confronted with an attempt, as crude as
it could be, but yet not entirely unworthy of respect, to
explain in a natural way the problem of design in the
organic world. Empedocles used the processes of vegetable
and animal life as the favourite playground of his genius
for research. Gleams of inspiration are crossed by glimpses
of childish impertinence in which the philosopher fondly
expects to rob nature of her veil before he has learnt the
A B C of renunciation. Among the inspired utterances
we may quote the saying that "hair and foliage and the
thick plumage of birds are one." It is a thought which
makes Empedocles a predecessor of Goethe in the realm
of comparative morphology, and though its author hardly
used it, it was yet a fresh contribution towards the theory
of descent. The child in Empedocles must answer for the
fantastic attempts to explain the deepest secrets of pro-
creation— the birth of male or female offspring, their
resemblance to the father or the mother, the production
of twins or triplets, the shocks sustained by pregnant
women and their supposed relation to birthmarks, the
origin of monstrosities, and the sterility of mules. Less
fanciful was his conception of sleep as a partial, and of
death as a total, chilling of the blood.
We have already directed attention to the links by
which the Empedoclean theory of matter is closely united
with his theory of cognition. We have made acquaintance
with his maxim that like is recognized by like, " earth by
earth, water by water, divine ether by ether, destructive
EMPEDOCLES AND HYLOZOISM. 245
fire by fire," and the conjecture lay ready to hand that
Empedocles regarded matter Itself as endowed with con-
sciousness, and that he drew no strict distinction between
the animate and the inanimate worlds. The conjecture is
justified by the facts. Empedocles did not merely follow
Anaxagoras in ascribing sensibility to plants, but he
taught that, without exception, " everything possesses the
power of thought and a share in understanding." Attempts
have been made to divide Empedocles from his prede-
cessors, the Hylozoists, and even to represent him as
opposed to them in principle, on account of his doctrine
of the two immaterial forces causing the succession of
universal periods. That doctrine, it must be admitted,
introduced a dualistic germ in his system, but it never
took root nor made any growth, and we are now in a
position to see how completely erroneous these attempts
were. For beside the two alternately ruling powers,
and superior to them, there was, as our readers are
aware, a single natural force of truly universal sway
inherent to matter itself — the attraction of like to
like. Next, there is the extraordinary power of thought
which he ascribed to matter, and the universal extension
of the franchise of consciousness. The doctrine of Em-
pedocles might be called Hylozoism in excekis. It gave
to matter not merely life, but a soul. And there is a
second point to be mentioned in contravention of the view
that Empedocles regarded matter as something dreary
and dead, responsive to outside impulses alone, but not as
the seat of motion in itself. If this had been his opinion
by no conceivable right could he have given to his four
elements the names of gods, and of gods, moreover, who,
like Hera and Zeus, occupied the highest places in the
Greek Pantheon. It has been urged that this was nothing
but a poetic licence without any serious meaning. But we
are not convinced by that argument. The author of a new
theory, in our opinion, is commonly fully aware of the
innovation he is making, and of its contrast with older
doctrines ; he tends rather to emphasize those features
than to weaken and destroy their force by clothing them
£46 GREEK THINKERS.
in antiquated forms. Further, It may be noticed that
Aristotle at least took those names as signifying some-
thing more than mere rhetorical devices. He expressly
states of the Empedoclean elements that " these, too, are
gods to him." But without enumerating these more or
less secondary arguments, we need but refer to the verse
quoted above, in which the problem whether its author was
or was not a champion of the theory of universal anima-
tion is decided once and for all. And if any shadow of
doubt should yet remain, it will be allayed by the following
consideration. We remember that the recurring triumph
of " Friendship " which united the aggregate of matter to
indivisible unity raised it each time to the highest divine
honours under the name of Sphairos ; and we are unable
to believe that the mere fact of combination could have
endowed with consciousness, filled with force, and exalted
to divine bliss substances which in their separate condition
were dead, powerless, inert, and responsive merely to
impulses from without And our belief is the less con-
strained since the Sicilian philosopher was here a
strict logician, and maintained his fundamental theory
in its ultimate consequences. Thus, though he would doubt-
less have been inclined to ascribe every kind of cognition
to this "most blessed god," yet the divinity was found
wanting' in one respect. He lacked the knowledge of
" Discord," inasmuch as Discord was foreign to the pious
peace of his universe. For not merely was each element
perceived and recognized by that same element, but
" Friendship " was recognized " by Friendship," and
" Discord by horrid Discord."
7, We have eulogized Empedocles on account of his
consistency, but when we come to his psychological
teaching it would seem that our praise must be recalled.
It was dualistic in character. It comprised on the one side
what is practically his physics of the soul. Turning to
this first, we see that he reduced the psychical to the
material without exception and without intervention. He
did not even postulate an intermediate soul-substance,
but lie based all differences of psychical properties and
PHYSICS AND THEOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 247
functions on corresponding material differences, as well in
the species of beings as in individual beings, and in the
varying states of the individual —
" E'en as the matter at hand, so man increaseth in wisdom ; "
and —
" Ever as men do change, there cometh in constant succession
One thought after another."
Every preferential endowment was traced by Empe-
docles to the wealth of material composition and the
success of the admixture. Thus he explained the
superiority of organic beings to the inorganic creation
containing but a few elements or one only. Thus, too,
he explained the superiority of individual gifts, such as
the pre-eminent tongue of the orator and the master-hand
of the sculptor. And hence, further, he derived the adapta-
tion of the blood, as that part of the body in which the
combination was most complete, to be the agent of the
highest functions of the soul. Empedoctes conceived
the blood welling forth from its source in a pure and un-
troubled stream as displaying the four elements in their
most equable proportions. And in this belief he wrote
that "the blood of the heart is thought."
The other side of the dualism we have mentioned is
found, if the expression be permissible, in the Empedoclean
theology of the soul. Every soul is a "demon" which
has been thrust out of its heavenly home to "the
unamiable fields," "the joyless place," the valley of
lamentation. There it assumes the most diverse shapes.
Empedocles himself claimed to have passed through the
metamorphoses of a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird, and a fish.
The soul is bound to that habitation by its native guilt,
especially of bloodshed or perjury, and the "vagrant fugitive"
cannot return to its original home, if at all, till after the
lapse of 30,000 wpaij or 10,000 years. We have already
made acquaintance with this doctrine. It is a reproduction
of the Orphic-Pythagorean psychology depicted in glowing
colours and adorned with all the magic of an inspired and
fervid eloquence; and, appropriately enough, we find
248 GREEK THINKERS
Empedocles extending a meed of eulogy and honour to
the "mighty mind" of Pythagoras. He describes in
moving verse the fatal mistakes to which orthodoxy itself
may impel those who are uninitiated in metempsychosis.
There was the blinded father, for example, who was fain
to offer an acceptable sacrifice to the gods and slew
unwittingly the son of his own loins, thus preparing a
fatal meal for himself with the very words of prayer on
his lips. Similarly, sons devoured their mother, and not
till too late did the guilty appeal to Death, who might
have saved them from the execution of their horrible
misdeed. The road of purification was a long road, and
its steps were marked by centuries ; nor could sinful men
regain their lost divinity till they had climbed the topmost
rungs of the ladder of earthly existence as seers or poets
or physicians or princes. Side by side with the process
of moral perfection went a series of outward ceremonies,
initiations, and libations, to which Empedocles devoted
an entire poem which was called the book of "Purifica-
tions." Its remnants combine with the fragments of his
three books " On Nature " to form his literary bequest.
Here, then, we have the two parts of the Empedqclean
psychology, and it may reasonably be asked how two
such different doctrines, which practically exclude each
other, could have found a common resting-place in one
mind. It is little or no explanation to utter the word
Eclecticism. We have seen that, apparently, at least, a
great gulf was fixed between the spiritualistic doctrine on
the one side and the materialistic on the other, and
if this gulf really existed there are but two conclusions we
can draw. Either the philosopher himself must have been
lacking in reason and judgment or he must have counted
on finding those defects in his readers, to whom he
offered this contradictory dualism as the expression of
his serious conviction. But in point of fact there is no
need for any such desperate resort. The apparent con-
tradiction was partly non-existent, and was partly by no
means limited to Empedocles. His "soul-demon," like
the " soul " or psyche of most of his predecessors, was not
HOMERS TWO-SOUL THEORY. 249
the vehicle of psychical qualities denoting an individual or
a kind of beings.* In proof of this we may quote his own
express statements in the passages that refer to his
previous existence ; for the bush, the bird, or the fish,
which he claimed to have been, obviously bore no remotest
resemblance to the richly dowered human personality
which he felt himself at the time. It was the same
with the popular belief which the Homeric poems had
already embodied. The psyche of Homer played pre-
cisely the same idle part in the existence of man on
earth as the "soul-demon" in Empedocles. The fact
may arouse our surprise, but it is beyond dispute. Psyche's
sole raison d'etre would appear to be her separation from
the body at death and her survival in the underworld.
Not a single instance can be quoted in which she
appears as the agent of human thought, will, or emotion.
We may go further than this. Those functions, so far
from being performed by the Homeric psyche, actually
belonged to a being of quite a different formation — to
a perishable being which dissolved in air at the death
of animals and men. To that extent it is even legiti-
mate to speak of a two-soul theory in Homer, and
this second mortal soul went by the name of Thymos.
The word is identical with the Latin fumus, or smoke,
with the Sanskrit dhumas, the Old Slavonic dymu> and so
forth. We were ignorant of the nature of this smoke-soul
till it was illustrated by a remark of Alfred von Kremer,
who in the course of his inquiries into Oriental peoples
and civilizations, stated that "the steam ascending from
the warm and freshly-shed blood" was regarded as the
psychic agent. The smoke-soul is older in origin than
the exclusively Greek psyche. Its antiquity is proved
by the existence of the word with partially the same
meaning in the allied languages, and traces of its original
signification still linger in some isolated references in
Homer, as when, in awaking from unconsciousness, Thymos,
who was nearly scattered, is collected in the breast or
diaphragm. Thus when the breath-soul came in the field,
* Cp. Bk. I. Ch. V. § 4 (p, 144).
250 GREEK THINKERS.
the ground was already occupied by the smoke-soul or
blood-soul, and the later comer had to be content with a
more modest though nobler part. The situation remained
unchanged for many centuries. The poet Pindar, for
instance, wrote that " Psyche, who alone is descended from
the gods, slumbers as long as the limbs are in motion,"
and the popular religion agreed with him in ascribing no
activity to Psyche except in dreams. It was not till
science began to extend itself to the phenomena of the
soul that the old process of thought, dating from centuries
before, was repeated afresh. Thymos had long since lost its
original meaning, and was therefore altogether inadequate
to the demand for a material principle of explanation ;
so that Empedocles, in placing the seat of psychic activity
in the blood of the heart, may be said to have invented
the blood-soul for the second time in its history. And
if he still retained a belief in the immortal soul, he was
not, therefore, more inconsistent than the poets of the
Homeric age, or even than his immediate predecessor
Parmenides. For Parrnenides too reduced to material
causes not merely the moral qualities, but the temporary
psychic states of men.* Moreover, he ascribed a partial
perception of darkness and cold and silence even to dead
human bodies, and in his theory no beings whatsoever,
not even the objects that at no stage of their existence
were connected with a psyche, were without some kind
of perception. Nevertheless, his doctrine did not exclude
a belief in the soul and its immortality. Under Orphic
influence, no doubt, he represented the souls as descending
into Hades, and as reascending thence to the upper world.
Philolaus, a younger Pythagorean, proved himself in this
respect an apt follower of Parmenides. The elder master
had derived the "mind of man" from the composition
and elemental mixture of his bodily parts, and Philolaus
called the soul itself a "mixture and harmony" of such
parts, though this in no wise prevented him from
assuming the existence of a substantial soul, and from
believing, in accordance with the teaching of "old divines
* Cp. Bk. II. Ch. ILj?*.
SELF-CONTRADICTIOX. 2 5 I
and soothsayers," that it was exiled to the body as the
penalty of guilt.
And this is the conclusion of the whole matter. The
belief in an immortal psyche might very well have been
dispensed with, but Empedocles was no more inclined to
reject it than were the representatives of the popular religion
or his own philosophical forebears and contemporaries. In
other words, he was liable to the same religious as well as
scientific motives as was the rest of the world. We next
come to the question of his self-contradiction. He made
the fate of the soul dependent on the acts of the men
whose bodies it temporarily inhabited ; at the same time
he reduced the mental disposition of those men — the source
of their conduct, that is to say — to the material composition
of their bodies. Such is the charge, and it is admittedly
proven. But he shares the responsibility for the contradic-
tion, not merely with the Orphics, whose psyche certainly
meant nothing more than that of a Pindar or a Parmenides,
but its germ can clearly be traced back to the Homeric
poems themselves. For even there the contradiction is
glaring. Some souls at least, such as those of Tityus,
Tantalus, and Sisyphus, are paying, in the eleventh book
of the Odyssey, the penalty for crimes which the immortal
souls cannot be held to have committed, according to the
doctrine prevailing in the totality of the poems even down
to their latest additions. The history of religion in all ages
is rife with similar anomalies. We need hardly refer to the
conflict between predestination and retribution in the eccle-
siastical canons of medievalism, or to the Buddhistic doc-
trine, so completely parallel to the Orphic, of the retributive
reincarnation of the dead, who were at the same time denied
the possession of a substantial soul. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to explain away this contradiction from the
central tenets of the widest-spread of all religions ; and
the " Questions of King Milinda," with their extraordinary
endowment of ingenious subtlety, are sufficient testimony
to that fact The spirit of science was as strong in Empe-
docles as the sway of religious emotion, so that both con-
flicting tendencies were intensified in his instance. That
252 GREEK THINKERS.
was the characteristic of Empedocles, and it stamps him
with a grotesque trait. He appears at one and the same
time as an orthodox member of the Orphic community,
filled with pious faith, and as an eager champion of
scientific natural research, as the heir of venerable mystics
and priests, and as the immediate precursor of the atomic
physicists. This duality may have interrupted the con-
sistency and uniformity of his system, so rigidly maintained
up to a certain point, but it affords a shining testimony to
the universality of his sympathies and to the wealth of his
natural endowments.
8. Curiously enough, in the theology of Empedocles,
where it would seem most likely that his dualism would
have displayed itself, there is scarcely a trace of it to be found.
Here he succeeded in welding the two halves of his system of
thought in a practically undisturbed harmony. On the top
of his conception of matter as endowed with force and
consciousness there was obviously no room for an extra-
mundane deity controlling, ordering, or even creating the
world. But there was no obstacle to his belief in divine
beings of the kind which we met with in the other Hylo-
zoists and designated gods of the second rank. We are
already aware that the four divinely conceived elements
of Empedocles disappear at the time of their union in
Sphairos, and lose their separate existence ; and we now
have to add that the same fate, presumably in the same
moment of the restoration of the original universal 'unit}',
likewise overtook the rest of the gods to whom Empedocles
expressly denied immortality, calling them long-lived, but
not eternal. The universal periods by which their longevity
was limited presumably served to measure the fate of the
soul-" demons " as well. Thus his theology and psychology
were linked by a common bond ; one and the same term
was set to all the separate existences which might disturb
the perfect unity of being. Except in a single instance,
no details are forthcoming anent these secondary gods,
but in some memorable verses about Apollo, Empedocles
describes him as not possessed of human limbs, and calls
him "a spiritual being (Phren), holy, ineffable, hastening
EMPEDOCLES AND THE ELEATICS. 253
with swift thoughts through the world." To our thinking
it is as inadmissible to identify this "demon*1 with
Sphairos — the animate universe or universal godhead — as
to subordinate Sphairos, in whom all things are comprised,
to this deity.
There is, therefore, no serious reason to reproach Em-
pedocles with eclecticism or with borrowing other men's
thoughts without taking overmuch trouble to see that they
were suitable. But a certain weight is lent to the charge
by a defect of the philosopher's mind which was intimately
blended with its qualities. He was a thinker of restless
activity, constantly engaged in the pursuit of fresh problems
and standing in the closest communion with nature, and
thus his spirit lacked the patience which Is absolutely
necessary for the prosecution of every thought to its goal.
At the same time, despite the wealth of his teeming imagi-
nation, he failed to exhibit that sovereign self-security
which would have enabled him to neglect the bounds of
empirical knowledge, and which enabled Anaxagoras, for
instance, to raise his pseudo-chemistry to a system as de-
ficient in outward proof as it was internally homogeneous.
The best illustration of this habit of his mind will be found
in his relation with the Eleatics. We may safely assume
that Empedocles was acquainted with the didactic poem of
Xenophanes ; indeed, the fact is vouched for by the occa-
sional attitude of hostility which he assumed towards it,
and we may fairly trace the influence of the sage of
Colophon in the pantheistic doctrine of Empedocles, culmi-
nating in the conception of Sphairos, and in his dislike for
the anthropomorphism of the popular religion, which in
one instance at least, as we have just now seen, came to
unequivocal utterance. Further, his acquaintance with a
second Eleatic philosopher is proved by his frequent imita-
tion of verses by Parmenides, with whose poems he must
have been familiar. An enduring impression was made on
his mind by the teachings of his predecessor contained In the
" Words of Opinion," and relating to physics in the widest
sense of that term. The same is true in a less degree of
the metaphysics of Parmenides Empedocles adopted in
254 GREEK THINKERS.
an almost literal form Ms a priori demonstration of the
impossibility of birth and decay. But we have to go back
to Anaxagoras to find a clearer and more precise statement
than is to be found in Empedocles of what we have called
the second postulate of matter. Empedocles, it is true,
was convinced of the general stability of the elements, but
what we miss is an accurate application of that principle.
His optics were based on the presumption that every ele-
ment had a fixed and original property of colour, but we
look in vain for a clear explanation of the endless multi-
plicity of coloured substances proceeding from these primary
colours. Anaxagoras's theory of matter was capable of
explaining how the four elements "traversing one another
showed a different face." His account, though contradicted
by the facts, was consistent with itself and with the postu-
late of qualitative constancy. But Empedocles failed in
both particulars. And as it is impossible to believe that
Anaxagoras was acquainted with or appreciated even the
outline of the didactic poems of Parmenides, our conviction
is strengthened that both postulates of matter — the second
no less than the first — were necessarily evolved from the
theories of Ionian physiologists, and that they owed to the
Eleatics, not their invention, but merely their stricter for-
mulation.* At the close of an earlier chapter f we left it
doubtful whether and to what extent an intermediary link
was required to connect the older forms of the theory of
primary matter with the later stages of its development
That doubt, we venture to think, has now been satisfac-
torily resolved.
* Bk. II. Clu II. § 3- t Cp. Bk. II. Ch, III./?*.
255
CHAPTER VI.
THE HISTORIANS.
i. THE intellectual enfranchisement of the Greeks did not
exclusively follow the lines of natural research. The con-
ditions of time as well as of space by which their horizon
was contracted were responsible for the endurance of
mythological modes of thought. We have already been
occupied by occasional attempts to widen the spatial
bounds, and the limits of both were extended simultaneously
and permanently by the rise of twin-sciences which were
soon united in the same hands.
Greek historiography began with the civic chronicles,
the lists of priests, and the records of victors in the national
games. Mercenaries, freebooters, merchants, and colonists
were the pioneers of Greek geography, and the powerful
independent intellect of Hecataeus was the first to combine
in one grand sweep both these regions of knowledge. His
wide travels and his still wider inquiries had supplied him
with a treasury of information which he was able to put at
the disposal of his Ionian countrymen in their insurrection
against the Persian rule (502—496 B.C.) in his capacity as a
master of statecraft and an accomplished diplomatist. The
results of his investigation were contained in two works of
which we possess merely fragmentary remains. The first
was entitled "A Description of the Earth," and its three
books were called after the names of the continents, Europe,
Asia, and Libya, and the second was comprised in his four
volumes of " Genealogies." This historical work was prefaced
by a motto which, in its intellectual pride and the cold clarity
256 GREEK THINKERS.
of its reason, sounds in our ears to-day like the blare of
trumpets at dawn. " Thus speaketh," it runs, " Hecataeus
of Miletus. I have written everything down as it appeared
to me to be true ; for manifold and laughable are the
sayings of the Hellenes, as they seem to me." Once more,
then, we find ourselves at the cradle of criticism. The
same light that Xenophanes had poured on the natural
universe Hecataeus was now to pour on the universe of
human affairs. The cause and method of his doing so are
practically revealed in the very wording of his audacious
prelude. He was obliged to exercise his selective faculty
in the contradictions of historical tradition, and we see
that the spirit of rationalism had already taken hold of him
in the courage he displayed in applying the knife of criticism
to the historical absurdities incompatible with his standards
of credibility and possibility. Nor was he content to accept
one tradition and to reject another. He felt himself
justified to revise those legends and to extract the kernel
of truth from its legendary husk. His object was to
relate the facts as they appeared to him to be true. He
had no archives or evidences at his disposal whose age and
origin and mutual dependence he might have sifted, for
the practice of recording contemporary events in a trust-
worthy manner was of late growth in Greece. The myths
and the poets who related them were the vehicles of by
far the greater part of historical material, though prose
authors began to range themselves by the side of the
poets somewhile after 600 B.C. Hecataeus was accordingly
precluded from questioning witnesses and authorities, and
from testing their degree of credibility. His faculty of
judgment was confined to the use of inner criteria. He
had to abandon criticism or to practise subjective criticism
alone. His method was one which has been called the
semi-historical — an expression we prefer to that of " the
rationalistic," which is liable to abuse. Meanwhile we have
still to mention a factor of decisive importance. The wide
view of foreign legends and histories did not merely con-
tribute its considerable share to the distrust of national
traditions ; it also pointed the way which would have to
HECAT&US IN EGYPT. 257
be followed unless the investigator was determined with
undiscriminating iconoclasm to throw the whole mythology
overboard. One experience that occurred to Hecateus
may be related here as typical of the impressions which he
and his like had frequently to derive from their contact
with older civilizations. He was talking to the priests in
Egyptian Thebes, and he had shown them, doubtless with
a certain complacency, his genealogical tree, which began
with a divine ancestor separated from Hecataeus only by
fifteen generations. Thereupon the priests led him into a
hall where the statues of the high priests of Thebes were
placed. They numbered no less than three hundred and
forty-five, and Hecataeus was assured by his close-shaven
guides that each of the statues had been erected during the
lifetime of its original, that the priestly dignity was
hereditary, and that the high office had descended unin-
terruptedly throughout the series before him from father to
son ; that all its incumbents had been mortal men, and not
one of them a god or even a demigod ; and they added for
his information that at an earlier date there had been
gods on earth, but that from the time of the first high
priest downwards history had been the history of mankind
alone, fully authenticated by documentary evidence. It Is
difficult to describe the impression, at once astounding and
convincing, which this priestly rebuke made on the traveller
from Greece. He must have felt as if the roof of the hall
in which he stood had been lifted high above his head, and
had narrowed the dome of heaven. The region of human
history stretched before him in infinite, and the field of
divine intervention was diminished in proportion. Gods
and heroes, he perceived, could not possibly have taken
part in such events as the Trojan war or the expedition of
the Argonauts, to which indisputable authority assigned a
comparatively recent date. Things must have occurred in
those circumstances much as they occur at present. The
canons of the possible, the natural, and therefore of the
credible, had to be applied to the events of an age which
had formerly been the playground of supernaturalism and
miracles. Hecatseus rose to the occasion, and applied those
VOL. I. S
5 GREEK THINKERS.
anons to the myths. He rejected the conventional story
>f Hercules, who drove the cattle he had stolen from
jeryon out of the fabulous Erythea, situated presumably
n the neighbourhood of Spain, to Mycenae in Greece. In
ais revised version Geryon appeared as the ruler of territories
in Epirus, in the north-west of Hellas, whose cattle were
renowned for their beauty and strength. The country
seemed to deserve the name of Erythea, or the Red Land,
from the colour of its soil. Similar nominal resemblances,
and the boundless resources of etymology, played in the
main a considerable part in Hecatseus' reconstruction of the
myths. In the same way he applied the historizing method
— and we shall see it repeated in Herodotus — to the events
connected with the Trojan war. Further, our critic displayed
from his judgment-stool no mercy to a fabulous monster
such as Cerberus, the three-headed watch-dog of hell. Heca-
taeus identified it, on grounds that we cannot now verify, with
a mighty serpent which had once inhabited the Laconian
promontory of Tsenarum. But, not to multiply these details,
we have quoted enough to show how the spirit of criticism
and scepticism effected its first entry in the historical studies
of the Greeks, and we have illustrated the shapes which
by an inner necessity it began to assume and to maintain.
For when Hecataeus, the Milesian historian, makes room
for his greater successor, we shall see that he too followed
in the same lines of reform.
2. That greater successor was Herodotus of Halicar-
nassus. The date of his birth falls not long before 480 B.C.,
and as the author of the most perfect masterpiece of the
historical art, which will delight the heart of man till the end
of all time, Herodotus too was a thinker in his kind. We
lack the requisite material for comparison in order to fix the
precise degree of his originality, but it is the more necessary
to consider his work at some length inasmuch as he does
not speak to us merely with his own voice, but with the
voices of several of his contemporaries whose writings have
not come down to us. And indeed we can conceive no
more delightful labour than to return again and again to
the refreshing fountain of his histories. The very beginning
HERODOTUS OF HALICARNASSUS. 259
of his work is full of instructive merits, displaying as it
does his consummate art of combining or rather of coalescing
historical with geographical science, and of uniting in a
uniform perspective of narration the stories of the most
diverse peoples. He searched for the origin of the ancient
strife between the Orient and the Occident which reached
its zenith in the Persian wars, the goal and summit of the
histories of Herodotus. He went back to the Trojan war,
and the abduction of Helen that led to it, before he ap-
proached King Croesus of Lydia, the first conqueror of
Greek cities in Asia ; and he led up to the tragedy of Troy
by the narratives akin to it in his conception of the fate of
lo, Europa, and Medea. The figures and events so familiar
to us in Greek mythology and legend were transformed by
the art of Herodotus to new, nay, to modern shapes.
It was no longer the jealousy of Hera which drove lo to
wander in distant lands, lo the favourite of Zeus meta-
morphosed in a cow ; it was no longer the Father of
Heaven who ravished Europa in the form of a bull ; Medea
the sorceress, the granddaughter of the Sun-god, disappeared,
and with her went her share in the capture of the Golden
Fleece. Colourless princesses replaced the brilliant heroines
of antiquity, and Phoenician merchants, pirates from Crete,
and freebooters from Hellas did the work of the supreme god
and of Jason, the godlike hero. The second abduction was
represented as the atonement of the first, and the third of the
second. Heralds and envoys protested against the violation
of international law, and might only took the office of right
on the principle of "like for like " when the evildoers refused
to make restitution. Here once more we observe the
traces of the semi-historical method formerly practised by
Hecatasus, but its range had now been enlarged to include
a causal connection between the so-called authentic events.
Herodotus appealed to the evidence of Phoenicians and
Persians, who alleged that the Greeks had intensified the
existing racial strife. The Greeks, they said, had been the
first seriously to undertake to avenge the abduction of a
woman, to build a powerful fleet, to besiege Ilion and
destroy it for one woman's sake alone. Similar attempts
260 GREEK TPI INKERS.
were made by the Phoenicians to exculpate themselves.
They contended that lo had not been carried on the ship
by force, but rather that her illicit relations with the
master of the vessel had made her ready to flee from the
anger of her parents before they discovered the traces of
her guilt. If we look for the key to this petty historical
method and to the decline of the greatness of the heroes
of mythology, we shall find it in the last resort in the
motive we marked in Hecataeus, in his desire, that is
to say, to widen the historical horizon and to contract
the limits of the supernatural. The exalted figures
of the legends drenched in the colours of poetry were
degraded by those means to the level of the natural
and credible till they verily sank to the plane of triviality.
Herodotus himself was shrewd enough to reserve his
judgment on the historical value of the accounts he repro-
duced. But between the lines of his narrative it may
clearly be read that in his own mind too the credulous
faith of earlier generations had been damaged and shaken
by these combinations of foreign scholars or " the learned "
who maintained a cold and alien attitude towards the
mythology of Hellas. He betrayed his alienation yet
more distinctly in his own treatment of the legend of
Troy. He followed Hecataeus in the statement that during
the siege of Ilion Helen was residing in Egypt, and not in
the beleaguered city. Adverse winds had driven Paris to
Egypt, where the high-minded King Proteus detained the
wife of Menelaus in order to restore her to her lawful and
injured lord. We need not concern ourselves here with
the questions how this belief arose in Egypt itself, how
its way was made smooth by the poet Stesichorus, nor how
Herodotus tried to support it by quotations from the Iliad.
But it was extremely characteristic of the new method of
thought that Herodotus should have been at pains to
establish this pseudo-historical version as intrinsically the
one possible and true account. He argued that the sole
reason why the Trojans did not put a stop to the long
miseries of war by the surrender of Helen was that she
was not in Troy, "for surely Priam could not have been
THE SEMI- HISTORICAL METHOD. 261
so infatuated, nor the others his relatives, as to be willing
to expose their own persons, their children, and the city
to danger, in order that Paris might cohabit with Helen." *
Their refusal might have been conceivable at the begin-
ning of the siege, but not after the loss of so large a
number of citizens, and when at least two or three of the
sons of Priam were numbered among the victims ; there
was also the consideration that Hector, the heir to the
throne, was the elder and more capable prince, and not
Paris, the younger brother. We turn to a second
example of the semi-historical method. The priestesses
at Dodona had given the historian the following account
of the origin of the oracle. A black dove had flown thither
from Thebes in Egypt, and, speaking with a human voice,
had ordained from her perch on a tree the foundation of
an oracular shrine. But "how," so Herodotus objects, in
almost querulous tones, "could a dove speak with a human
voice ? " And when the priestesses went on to tell him
that a second black dove had flown to Libya, where she
had founded the oracle of Ammon, the historian rushed to
the conclusion that that legend was an echo of another
which he had himself heard at Thebes. According to that
account, two women employed in the temple had been
carried away by the Phoenicians and sold as slaves, the one
into Libya, and the other into Greece, where they had re-
spectively established those two famous shrines. This plump
invention, due to the arrogance of the Egyptians, aroused In.
Herodotus a transient emotion of scepticism which found
vent in the question " how they knew this for a certainty/'
but he presently accepted it as a fact, for the consentaneity
of the whole thing was so complete. The inhabitants of
Dodona had regarded the strange woman as a bird, because
her barbarous language had reminded them rather of the
chattering of birds than of human speech. Further, in
saying that the dove was black they showed that she had the
dark skin of an Egyptian. After a time she acquired the
language of the country, and this was the meaning of the
report that the dove had spoken after the fashion of men.
* Herod., ii. 120 : trans. Gary.
262 GREEK THINKERS.
Finally, news reached her of the fate of her sister who had
been taken to Libya, and she disseminated it in Dodona.
We smile at this strange medley of childish simplicity and
subtle sophistication, but the smile dies on our lips, and we
cease to be annoyed at the unlovely transformation of the
naive popular mythology when we reflect on the significant
part played in the intellectual progress of mankind by the
historizing process of interpretation. The poesy of legend
had claimed the dignity of reality, and it was hardly
surprising that the reality in turn should have broken the
bounds of poesy. In the existing state of the methods of
research, it was not even approximately possible strictly to
distinguish the frontier-line. Nay, the ancient territorial
dispute is not yet completely settled to this day. If the
" Father of History " was inclined to admit the historical
claim of every legendary tradition which might possibly
have its origin in historical truth, it is the opposite tendency
which has obtained the upper hand at the present time.
3. We have seen that this transformation of the myths
was due to two causes. There was first the extension of
the horizon of space and time, and secondly the exchange
of thought with critics of native traditions whose foreign
nationality excluded them from sympathy with Greek
mythology. But we have still to mention a third factor,
which was perhaps the most efficacious of all. It was to be
found in the painful conflict between the ancient faith and
the new science, which were seeking reconciliation, The
increased store of empirical knowledge, and the growing
mastery of nature by man, had visibly strengthened the
belief in the stability of the phenomenal universe. Thus
the problem was to avoid as far as possible a sudden and
irreparable breach with the hallowed traditions of antiquity.
The historizing interpretation of the myths sacrificed a part
in order to save the rest. It was one of those half-measures
or compromises which are due to promptings of instinct, and
which, despite unintelligent ridicule, are really of the highest
value. They may be compared to the " fictions " of the
law which formed at a certain stage of human development
the foundation of all true and enduring progress. Another
HERODOTUS AS GEOLOGIST. 263
instance of these beneficent compromises related to the
activity of the gods themselves. Herodotus tells us that
the Thessalians explained the deep gulf that formed the
river-bed of the Peneius as the work of Poseidon :
" and their story is probable," he adds ; " for whoever thinks that
Neptune shakes the earth, and that rents occasioned by earthquakes
are the works of this god, on seeing this would say that Neptune
formed it. For it appears evident to me that the separation of
these mountains is the effect of an earthquake." *
The conclusion suggests itself that Herodotus entirely and
deliberately rejected the intervention of supernatural agents ;
that he regarded every god merely as the president of a
department of nature or life regulated by fixed forces.
Such a conclusion, however, would be in the highest degree
unjust to the double thread of positive science and tradi-
tional religion which traversed the mind of the historian of
Halicarnassus with equal force and strength. He had
noted the changes on the surface of the earth, and had
paid them the compliment of systematic reflection ; he
had reduced the single phenomena back to general
causes, and might therefore presume to dispense in that
connection with the theory of direct divine interposition.
To that extent at least he was a pupil of Anaxi-
mander or Xenophanes, his predecessors, and of Xanthus,
the historian of Lydia, whose work was composed in
Greek ; and he was no less the pupil, without injury to
himself on this occasion, of his Egyptian masters. By
their example he was enabled to explain the origin of the
Nile delta in a manner as rational as it was correct,
and we hardly know whether to be more surprised at the
keenness of his natural observation or at the confidence
with which he dealt with immense periods of time ; he
estimated the present age of the earth at no less than
twenty thousand years. Other instances might be quoted
in which Herodotus expressed his doubt as to the direct
intervention of the gods. The Persian magi had charmed
a severe storm by sacrifices and incantations, but Herodotus,
* Herod., vii. 129 : trans. Gary.
264 GREEK THINKERS.
In reporting this account, added the sceptical remark, "or
perhaps it abated of its own accord." Moreover, he refused
to decide the question whether this storm, which had been
so destructive to the Persian fleet, had or had not been
caused by the prayers of the Athenians to Boreas and
the sacrifices they had likewise offered. His doubts may
have been aroused by the proximity of similar appeals
uttered by Greeks and Barbarians ; but in instances where
such a corrective was wanting, or where the passion of the
circumstances thrust his sober doubts in the rear, our
historian surpassed himself in his narratives of miraculous
divine apparitions, of heaven-sent dreams which he con-
trasted with those due to natural causes, of significant
presages, and of the wonders of the soothsayers' art. In
this respect there is a striking difference between various
parts of his work, and some short-sighted critics have
hastened to the conclusion that the several books were
composed at long intervals of time corresponding to changes
in Herodotus' speculative views. But hypotheses of this
kind are at once uncalled-for by the circumstances, and
without any secure foundation. They would, further, be
quite inadequate to expunge the elements of contradiction
from the historian's theology. His conception of the*affairs
of the gods is essentially vacillating and parti-coloured.
He might be claimed as an opponent, not merely of
anthropomorphism, but of polytheism itself, when we recall
his eager endeavours to trace back no few of the Greek
divinities and ceremonials to Egyptian prototypes and influ-
ences, and when we read his audacious declaration that —
Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before my timej and
not more ; and these were they who framed a theogony for the
Greeks, and gave names to the gods and assigned to them honours
and arts, and declared their several forms." *
In this connection it Is to be noted that he expressly
contrasted the nature-worship of the Persians with the
anthropomorphism of the Greeks, relating, not without a
trace of inner agreement, that they offered sacrifices to the
* Herod., ii. 53 : trans. Gary.
AND AS THEOLOGIAN. 265
great forces of nature, sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and
winds, and conceived Zeus as merely the " complete firma-
ment" It can, indeed, hardly be disputed that Hero-
dotus was liable to similar fits of scepticism through the
influence, perhaps, of Xenophanes and other philosophers.
But the doubts had not taken root in his soul. We could
prove this in many ways, but we may refer especially to
the anxious humility with which he concluded a scathing
criticism of a Greek heroic legend with an appeal for the
forgiveness of the gods and heroes whom he might have
offended. It is in the same passage, too, that he reserved
the epithet of " the truest " for the Greek doctrine of a
double Hercules, one more ancient and veritably divine,
the other of later date and merely a hero or deified mortal,
distinct from each other and worshipped at separate
shrines. The doctrine, we may add in parenthesis, affords us
the earliest example of an artifice of criticism, more popular
in later times, by which the contradictions in legendary
traditions were obviated. The outcome of the scepticism
of Herodotus was probably chiefly his conviction that
human knowledge at the best is but a poor standard by
which to measure divine things, and that, looking at
these through the descriptions of the poets, we see them
through a glass darkly. The reservation made by Herodotus
on one particular occasion — " if we may otherwise trust the
epic poets " — has a deep and wide-reaching significance,
and there is a bitter earnest in his complaint that " all
men know equally much," that is, equally little, " about the
gods."
We can well understand how some critics have mistaken
Herodotus for a monotheist in disguise. The description
is erroneous, but it is none the less surprising that in
places where he discusses questions of religion from an
independent point of view he does not speak of Apollo or
Athene, or of Hermes, or of Aphrodite, but almost ex-
clusively of "the god" and of "the divine." Still, our
astonishment is diminished when we remark that in all
those passages the reference is to general laws regulating
the course of nature and of human life. Homer speaks
266 GREEK THINKERS.
In such cases of " the gods " and " Zeus " almost without
discrimination, and even in immediate proximity. In the
magnificent verses, for instance, in which the frailty of the
human lot is incomparably brought before our eyes, we
read —
" Lo, he thinks that he shall never suffer evil in time to come,
while the gods give him happiness, and his limbs move lightly.
But when, again, the blessed gods have wrought for him sorrow,
even so he bears it, as he must, with a steadfast heart, for the
spirit of men upon the earth is even as their day, that comes upon
them from the father of gods and men." *
And everywhere, in brief, where the point to be
emphasized is not the separate endeavours of the gods,
but the common action resulting from their uniform will,
they tend to be regarded either as executing the decree
of the highest god or as the vehicles of a uniform principle
shared by all alike. This at least was the view of Herodotus,
and it would be illegitimate on that account to attribute
to him a negative attitude towards the individual deities,
uncertain though his knowledge about them may have
been, and serious though his objections undoubtedly were
to the coarser forms of anthropomorphism. There are
three distinct points at which his method of thought
may be contrasted with that of Homer. In the first
instance, long and earnest reflection on the order of nature
and on the lot of mankind united with the increased
comprehension, to which we have so often referred, of
the uniformity of the universe, to give more frequent
occasion for the discussion of the general laws that
govern it. Secondly, the diminished confidence in the
literal truth of the myths robbed the figure of the
supreme god of many a human trait which had
formerly attached to him. And, finally, the philoso-
phers who had long since discovered the source of
all existence in an impersonal principle superior to the
separate deities had not failed to leave traces of their
* " Odyssey," xviii. 139 : trans. Butcher and Lang.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND JEALOUSY. 267
influence. That ruler of the universe was supreme over
the destiny of mankind and over the will of the gods,
but he possessed at present no strictly personal character,
or rather a character deficient in individual marks. He
could accordingly be termed, without too great a sacrifice
of consistency, "the god" or "divine" indifferently. We
reach now another instance of the self-contradiction of
Herodotus, and one which may be termed the most
important of all. It is connected with this primary
Principle itself, which vacillated so indecisively between
the personal and the impersonal. Sometimes we see it
as a tender and intrinsically benevolent being, sometimes
as mischievous and intrinsically malevolent ; nor have any
attempts succeeded in explaining away or even in reduc-
ing the differences. t" Divine Providence, in its wisdom,"
is represented as having bestowed a rich gift of fertility
on weak and timorous animals, while restraining the
reproductive powers of strong and noxious animals.
Thus far, then, the Divinity was concerned for the
preservation and the prosperity of creation. Frequently,
too, it fostered the acts and happiness of mankind by
favourable decrees and dispensations ; but there were
occasions, on the other hand, when it took delight in over-
throwing "all the proud" and "mutilating all the pre-
eminent" just as the "lightning discharges itself on high
buildings and trees." In a speech, then, that Herodotus
put in the mouth of the wise Solon, he said that the
divinity was "always jealous and delights in confusion."
And the supreme deity who is here identified with the idea
of destiny is conceived as dispensing at once, not merely
the tenderness of a father, the envy of a jealous god, but
likewise the justice of a bitter avenger of the guilt of
mankind. These contradictory features were not wholly
unknown to ancient mythology, but men's reflections on
the idea of purpose in the world had been extended
by this time; their pessimism had increased, and their
ethical consciousness had been deepened by sudden
changes of fortune and great historical revolutions ;
and thus the differences in the self-contradictory theories
268 GREEK THINKERS.
of earthly phenomena had been intensified. Nor are we
concerned with a mere distinction of degree. The conflict
of tendencies and intentions, in passing from a variety
of separate beings into the keeping of one supreme
god, had passed into another and more glaring condition
of discord*
With regard to the judicial office of the godhead alluded
to above, we are struck by a very remarkable distinction.
At one time it is represented as a part of what might almost
be called the automatic order of things ; at another time
the divine judge appears as a purposeful power artfully
selecting the means for the accomplishment of his ends,
deriding all human intentions, and compelling them to
serve his own purpose. Take, for instance, the story of
the heralds sent by Darius to the cities of Greece in order
to demand their submission. In Athens, as well as in
Sparta, the time-honoured requirements of international
law had been set at nought by the execution of those
envoys. " What calamity befell the Athenians," as a retri-
bution of this misdeed, says Herodotus, "I cannot say,
except that their territory and city were ravaged. But I
do not think," he adds, " that happened in consequence of
that crime." On the Spartans, however, his story con-
tinues, there alighted the anger of the semi-divine ancestor
of the Spartan heralds' guild of the Talthybiadse. He
was incensed against his countiymen on account of the
murder of the Persian heralds. For years the sacrifices
to the gods were accompanied by unfavourable omens;
then two of the noblest sons of the Lacedaemonians,
Bulis and Sperthies, resolved to free their native city
from its pollution by going as a free-will offering to Susa
and surrendering to the successor of Darius. The Persian
monarch did not accept the sacrifice, but the mere offer
sufficed temporarily to abate the wrath of Talthybius.
After a long interval, however, in the first years of the
Peloponnesian war, his anger was again aroused, and the
sons of Bulis and Sperthies, who had been sent as
ambassadors to Asia, were captured by a Thracian king,
and, being carried to Attica, were put to death by the
HERODOTUS AS CRITIC. 269
Athenians. That event was regarded by Herodotus as
a signal instance of the direct intervention of the deity.
"For that the wrath of Talthybius," he writes, "alighted on mes-
sengers, and did not cease until it was satisfied, this was but right
(and natural) ; but that it should fall on the sons of the men who
went up to the king on account of that wrath . . . this does seem
to me to be plainly the doing of the godhead." *
In other words, Herodotus recognized that the hand of
deity had interposed.
4. Apart from deviations due to his religious sensi-
bility, the judgment of Herodotus displays in other
places too a remarkable vacillation between the critical
and the uncritical methods. Antiquity ridiculed his
credulity and blamed him as a mere "story-teller," but
for our own part we are hardly less surprised at his
occasional display of hypercriticism. He is frequently
credulous where he should be sceptical, but, on the
contrary, he is frequently sceptical where belief would be
better in place. He had only heard a vague account, for
example, of the long polar nights ; but, instead of availing
himself of the means at his disposal and applying the
method of concomitant variation to the legendary tale —
the higher the latitude the longer the night — he preferred
to commit it to the limbo of fable by his emphatic
declaration that " men are found who sleep six months
at a time, but this I do not at all admit." t Similarly, he
was quite well aware that the Greeks depended on the
north of Europe for their tin no less than for their amber ;
he refused, however, to permit them to locate the home of
that metal in the group of islands of Great Britain, which
the Greeks entitled the "Isles of Tin" precisely on
account of that important product. The reason he alleges is
that no trouble on his part had availed to discover an
authority who could vouch for the existence of the sea as
the boundary of Northern Europe by the evidence of his
own eyes. Again, he was acquainted with the tendency of
* Herod., vii. 137 : trans, author.
j- Herod., iv. 25 : trans. Gary.
270 GREEK THINKERS.
the human mind to expect in the products of nature rather
more than a common degree of regularity and symmetry,
and accordingly he was not unjustly disposed to ridicule
his predecessors who had drawn their map of the earth with
Europe and Asia as continents of an equal circumference.
But he went on to "smile" at the further description of
the geographers — the reference is to Hecatseus in especial
who represented the earth as " made circular as if by a
lathe." * It is abundantly clear that Herodotus was not
prepared to accept the doctrine published by Parmenides
of the globular shape of the earth. But in this connection
the most remarkable fact is that Herodotus himself fell a
victim on one occasion to the same misleading tendency.
Even where his predecessors had happened on the right
path, he suspected them of adopting fictitious proofs of
regularity, and this was precisely his own method in Sie
parallelism which he affected to discover between the streams
of the Nile and the Danube as the two greatest rivers
of his acquaintance. It was at all times an extremely
difficult task to pronounce with any degree of certainty on
the limits of possible variations in the organic world.
We could, therefore, forgive Herodotus for not rejecting as
incredible in itself the existence of winged serpents in
Arabia, but we cannot avoid an expression of surprise
that the alleged gigantic gold-digging ants of the Indian
desert, which were "larger than foxes, but smaller than dogs,"
should not have been dismissed as fabulous ; for this at
least was the fate of the one-eyed Arimaspians, of whom
our historian explicitly declared, " neither do I believe this
that men are born with one eye, and yet in other respects
resemble the rest of mankind."$f
We shall conclude this discussion by accompanying
Herodotus to the extreme point which he reached in his
advance of scientific thought. Among all the various
attempts to explain the flood of the Nile there was none
which he treated with such contemptuous disdain as
the attempt to connect that enigmatic phenomenon, in a
* Herod., iv. 36 : trans. Gary.
t Herod., iii. 116; trans. Gary.
A TOUCH OF POSITIVISM.
manner difficult for us to follow, with the stream of Ocean
that flowed round the earth. Herodotus indicted this
mode of explanation as the second of two ways which
were "scarcely worth mentioning;" he wrote of it that
"it shows still less judgment than the first, but, if I
may say so, is more marvellous," and he went on to
say in regard to this phenomenon, that "the person
who speaks about the Ocean, since he has transported
the question to the domain of the inscrutable, does not
admit of refutation." But it must not, therefore, be supposed
that he reserved his judgment in this instance, or that he
held the question of the correctness of the theory to be
intrinsically insoluble. The precise contrary was the case.
The undisguised contempt of the passage we have quoted
above is supported by the ridicule of the words that imme-
diately follow : " for I do not know any river called the
Ocean, but suppose that Homer or some other ancient poet,
having invented the name, introduced it into poetry." His
meaning practically amounts to this: A supposition so
entirely remote from the region of fact and sense-perception
as not even to provide a handle for refutation, is ipso facto
convicted. In other words, an hypothesis with claims on
our respect, and therefore on our discussion, must in the
last resort be capable of verification. Herodotus stood for
the nonce on purely positive, not to say positivist, ground.
He recognized a gulf that could not be filled up between
the inquirer in search of scientific facts and the poet
creating amiable fictions. For once, though doubtless for
once only, Herodotus is revealed in a brilliant flashlight as
a modern of the moderns. Inspired by the heat of conflict,
and moved by a passionate desire to outstrip his prede-
cessors and rivals, a fundamental truth of methodology,
namely, that those hypotheses only are legitimate which
can be wholly or partly verified, became as clear to him
as noonday, and he would doubtless have been the first to
take alarm at his own boldness if he had perceived the
full meaning of his thought. But there was no such risk.
Batteux's shrewd maxim applies here as elsewhere : that
" the ancients must never be credited with the consequences
272 GREEK THINKERS.
of their principles or with the principles of their conse
quences "—least of all, we may add, ancients like Hero
dotus and Hecataeus, whose activity fell in the midst of ;
great period of transition. Of that period we have nov
to take leave, though we may have occasion to return to i
in detached references in the future.
BOOK III.
THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
" Ce furent les Grecs qui . . , fonderent . . la science rationelle
de'pouillee de myst£re et de majie, telle que nous la pratiquons
maintenant."— MARCELLIN BERTHELOT.
"Vielleicht wird die atomistische Hypothese einmal durch eine
andere verdrangt ; vielleicht, aber nicht wahrscheinlich.1' — LUDWIG
BOLTZMANN.
"rttv fjLtv fiiov
5c KO\WS ffiv I? TC^yTJ."
UNKNOWN DRAMATIC POET
CHAPTER I.
THE PHYSICIANS.
i. MORE than one title to fame is the inheritance of Greece.
The men of genius to whom she gave birth dreamed the
brightest speculative dreams. To them it was given to
create incomparable works in likeness and in speech, but
there was one creation of the Greek intellect which was
not merely incomparable — the positive or rational science
of Greece was no less than unique.
We boast of our extensive dominion over nature, and
of our insight into nature, on which that dominion depends.
Our eye sees deeper every day — not indeed into the essence
of things, but into the sequences of phenomena. The adepts
of the mental sciences, following in the footsteps of natural
research, have begun to recognize the causal laws that govern
even human affairs. They have slowly but surely trans-
figured tradition, till we see them building a rational system
of the order of life corresponding to the relation of means to
ends. In all these triumphs of the intellect our humble
acknowledgment is due to the founders of science in Greece.
The threads that bind antiquity with modern times lie open
to view, and our present inquiry will have to take them in.
account. Inevitably we ask, On what did It rest — this
prerogative of the Greek intellect ? We may confidently
reply that it was no peculiar privilege vouchsafed to the
inhabitants of Hellas and denied to all other nations.
Scientific thought is no magician's wand, efficacious in the
hands of Greeks alone to conjure the gold of wisdom out
of the mine of facts. Other peoples too might advance a
VOL. I. T -2
o;6 GREEK THINKERS.
just claim for genuine contributions to science. The
chronology of the Egyptians, and the phonetics of the old
Indian grammarians, need not fear comparison with the
products of the Hellenic mind. To explain the supremacy
of the last-named, we may recall a saying of Herodotus,
who ascribed the good luck of Hellas to the fact that she
" enjoys by far the best-tempered climate.'1* Here, as
elsewhere, the secret of success lay in the combination and
inter-communion of opposites. We can trace the springs
of Greek success achieved and maintained by the great
men of Hellas on the field of scientific inquiry to a remark-
able conjunction of natural gifts and conditions. There
was the teeming wealth of constructive imagination united
with the sleepless critical spirit which shrank from no test of
audacity ; there was the most powerful impulse to generali-
zation coupled with the sharpest faculty for descrying and
distinguishing the finest shades of phenomenal peculiarity ;
there was the religion of Hellas, which afforded complete
satisfaction to the requirements of sentiment, and yet left
the intelligence free to perform its destructive work ; there
were the political conditions of a number of rival centres of
intellect, of a friction of forces, excluding the possibility of
stagnation, and, finally, of an order of state and society
strict enough to curb the excesses of " children crying for
the moon," and elastic enough not to hamper the soaring
flight of superior minds. At the point of development to
which we have now attained it was chiefly the critical
faculty which advanced with great strides, and which stood
in need of ever-new reinforcement. We have already made
acquaintance with two of the sources from which the spirit
of criticism derived its nourishment — the metaphysical and
dialectical discussions practised by the Eleatic philosophers,
and the semi-historical method which was applied to the
myths by Hecatseus and Herodotus. A third source is to
be traced to the schools of the physicians. These aimed
at eliminating the arbitrary element from the view and
knowledge of nature, the beginnings of which were bound
up with it in a greater or less degree, though practically
* Herod., iii. 106 : trans. Gary.
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 277
without exception and by the force of an inner necessity.
A knowledge of medicine was destined to correct that
defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious
fruits in the increased power of observation and the
counterpoise it offered to hasty generalizations, as well as
in the confidence which learnt to reject untenable fictions,
whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by a priori
speculations, on the similar ground of self-reliant sense-
perception. But before we turn to the consideration of
medicine and to its influence on the thought of the age,
we must first acquaint ourselves with the authors and
representatives of that branch of human knowledge, and
take its rudiments in account.
"One man practised in medicine verily outweigheth
many other men " — this compliment greets the medical pro-
fession at the rise of Greek literature, and posterity would not
recall it The art of healing in its earliest stages, springing
as it does from crude superstitions and hardly less crude
and frequently misinterpreted experience, is a wilderness of
magical customs and of practices partly efficacious, though
dependent on unanalyzed observation, and partly thoroughly
nonsensical. The medicine-man among savage tribes is
more than half a conjuror and less than half a custodian of
old guild-secrets reposing on genuine or apparent experience.
The science of healing among the original Indo-Europeans
had scarcely advanced beyond this stage. A monument
of it still survives in a formula of blessing, of which the
Germanic and Indian versions are so precisely in agree-
ment that their identical origin is beyond dispute. There
is a fascinating picture, too, of the earliest practice of
medicine in India in the extant "Song of a Physician."
We see him making his jovial journey through the land
with his fig-wood chest of drugs, and wishing for the sick
recovery and for himself a rich reward, seeing that he
lacks "cob, cow, and coat." His "herbs overthrow every-
thing that afflicteth the body," and " disease flyeth before
them as before the bailiff's grasp." But he does not
merely claim to be an " expeller of sickness," but a " slayer
of demons " too ; for in India, as elsewhere, all illness was
2;S GREEK THINKERS.
looked on partly as a heaven-sent punishment, partly as
the work of hostile demons, and partly, too, as the con-
sequence of human imprecation and black arts. The wrath
of the offended deity might be appeased by prayer and
sacrifice ; the mischievous spirit might be mollified by soft
speeches or exorcised by spells ; and, similarly, the noxious
effects might be averted by counter-charms, and where
possible they would be made to recoil on their author
Besides the formulae of spells, amulets, and symbolic
acts, herbs and salves had also their uses, and it might
happen that one and the same means of healing would
be applied to quite different cases. In the Indian art of
medicine, as revealed to us principally in the Atharva-
Veda, and in that of all other primitive peoples, the fore-
going remarks hold good. Nor will they be found less
applicable to the popular medical notions of the Middle
Ages and of modern or even of recent times-. The fact
that the selection of the means of healing was determined
as much, if not more, by the force of the association of
ideas as by specific experience, left ample room for the play
of the element of fancy. In this way the plant eye-bright
was prescribed as a cure for diseases of the eye, because a
black speck which is contained in the flower suggested the
idea of the pupil. Similarly, the red colour of the blood-
stone, or haematite, formed its pretended qualification to
stop a haemorrhage. An Egyptian belief maintained that
the blood of black animals could prevent the whitening of
the hair, and modern Styria reproduces the ancient Indian
doctrine that jaundice may be expelled into yellow birds.
As was only natural, the art of surgery through all its
stages was the least affected by any kind of superstition,
and we are positively astonished at its high degree of
cultivation among the nations of antiquity, and even in
prehistoric times, as well as among the savages of to-day.
They did not even shrink from operations of so bold a
character as trepanning or the Caesarian section.
Turning now to the earliest evidences of Greek civiliza-
tion, it is a somewhat striking fact that there is no
mention in the Iliad of medical incantations. Weapons
THE PHYSICIAX LV EARLY GREECE. 279
are drawn out of the bodies of wounded heroes, the flowing
blood is staunched, and the wounds are smeared with
ointments ; exhausted warriors are restored with wine, pure
or mixed, but there is not a single word about any kind of
superstitious customs or spells. It is a fact which perplexed
the ancient commentators on Homer, and it agrees with
other indications which point to the dawn of an era of
enlightenment. When we come to Hesiod and the later
literature in general, in which incantations and amulets and
beneficial dreams play an important part, we see that such
enlightenment was confined to the circle of nobles. Even
in the Odyssey, which describes the beginnings of civic
life, and the hero of which was rather the ideal of enter-
prising merchants and intrepid seamen than of noble
warriors, there is at least one passage — the episode of
the boar-hunt on Parnassus — in which the incantation or
epode is used as a means for the curative treatment of a
wound. And in the same younger Epic poem we hear for
the first time of professional medical practitioners, who,
like the physician in the Rig- Veda, take their way through
the land, and are summoned into men's homes like the
carpenter, the minstrel, or the soothsayer, in order to sell
their services to those who have a use for them.
2. The physician's profession was amply recognized in
Hellas at an early date- Its oldest and most famous seats
were the lovely island of Cos and the neighbouring
peninsula of Cnidus, in the southern portion of the west
coast of Asia Minor, Croton, in the toe of Italy, and
Cyrene, far away in Africa, where grew the umbelliferous
plant Silphion, so highly valued on account of its medicinal
virtues that it formed a royal monopoly. Cities and princes
competed with one another for the services of eminent
physicians. Democedes of Croton, for instance, was
retained one year by the city of Athens, and in the next
year by the commonwealth of ./Egina, and the third year
by the tyrant of Samos. His annual salary reached a sum
of which the mere quotation of the figures — 8,200, 10,000,
and 16,400 drachmae, or francs — is hardly an adequate
expression in view of the greatly diminished purchasing-
2 SO GREEK THINKERS.
power of money. After the fall of Polycrates, Democedes
was taken as a captive from Samos to Susa, where we
presently meet him at the royal table and as confiden-
tial adviser to King Darius (521-485 B.C.). Indeed, so
admirably had he treated the king and his consort Atossa
that the Egyptian body-physicians who had hitherto
enjoyed the royal favour fell swiftly in disgrace, and were
in actual danger of their lives. Again, about the middle
of the fifth century, we find the Cypriot physician Onasilus
and his brothers, who had rendered medical service in the
field during the siege of Edalion by the Persians, enjoying
the highest honours and equipped in a princely style with
ample crown property. It is to be noted in this connection
that the esteem in which physicians were held corresponded
to the moral demands that were made on them. A guild,
the members of which were rewarded so richly and
honoured so highly, was not likely to lack its charlatans
and ignorant swindlers. But the conscience of the pro-
fession which was composed for the most part of honour-
able and capable physicians, suppressed, if it did not expel,
those parasites on the noble tree.
At this point we have to mention a document of which
the antiquity is not its sole claim to veneration. " The
Physician's Oath " is a monument of the highest rank in
the history of civilization, and it is full of interest for the
study of the internal constitution of the guild as well as
for that of the ethical standard to which physicians were
required to conform. We can trace therein the transition
from a close professional caste to the free and general exer-
cise of an art. The apprentice'promised to honour his master
as his parents, to assist him in all his necessities, and to
impart gratuitous instruction to his offspring should they
choose the same vocation, but to no one else save only to
his own sons and to pupils bound by contract and by oath.
He swore that he would help the sick "according to his
knowledge and power ; " that he would rigidly abstain from
every evil and criminal abuse of the means and instruments
of his art ; that he would not give poison even to those
who asked for it ; that he would supply no woman with
DUTIES AND STATUS. 28 1
means to procure abortion ; that he would not perform
castration — the abomination of Greek sentiment — even
where it appeared to be medically advisable ; and, finally,
he bound himself to avoid every abuse, erotic or otherwise,
of his position towards his patients of both sexes, whether
free or slaves, and to keep an inviolable silence about all
the secrets which he learnt in the exercise of his calling
or even outside of it. This oath brings the memorable
document to a close, with repeated solemn adjurations to
the gods, and it adds considerably to the significance of
the record that, in the complete absence of State control,
it formed the one public set of regulations for the practice
of the art of medicine. It is supplemented by numerous
passages in the medical writings of those times, in which
the same pungent satire is directed at the arrogance of
ignorance as at the humbug of quackery. Physicians who
are such " in name, but not in fact " are compared with
the " mute persons " or supernumeraries of the stage. The
courage of wisdom is contrasted with the foolhardiness
of ignorance. Touting for fees is deprecated, and a con-
ference with other physicians in cases of doubt or hesita-
tion is urgently enjoined. We quote here a fine remark :
" Where there is love of humanity there will be love of the
profession." If two or more ways of medical treatment
were possible, the physician was recommended to choose
the least imposing or sensational ; it was an act of " deceit "
to dazzle the patient's eye by brilliant exhibitions of skill
which might very well be dispensed with. The practice
of holding public lectures in order to increase his reputa-
tion was discouraged in the physician, and he was especially
warned against lectures tricked out with quotations from
the poets. Physicians who pretended to infallibility In
detecting even the minutest departure from their prescrip-
tions were laughed at ; and, finally, there were precise bye-
laws to regulate the personal behaviour of the physician.
He was enjoined to observe the most scrupulous cleanliness,
and was advised to cultivate an elegance removed from all
signs of luxury, even down to the detail that he might use
perfumes, but not in an immoderate degree.
3. \Ve have entered imperceptibly that region of litera-
ture in which "the father of medicine" reigns supreme.
Hippocrates the Great, as Aristotle is the first to entitle
him, was born in 4jD B.C in the island of Cos, and was
recognized by all antiquity as the type of the perfect
physician and author of medical treatises. His fame
eclipsed that of all his professional brethren, and a large
collection of writings have been ascribed to his pen which
bear unmistakable traces of a diversity of authorship and
sometimes of a feud of schools. The ancients were fully
aware of this fact, though the attempts of their scholars
to adjudicate the authorship were hardly more successful
than those of modern or recent critics. This problem is
one of the most delicate in the history of literature, and
we shall not attempt to arrive at a solution in this place.
The names of the authors of the books must remain hidden
from us, and the same is true in most cases of the dates
of their composition. We must be content with expressing
the conviction that no portion of the so-called corpus Hippo-
craticum^ with a few inconsiderable exceptions, is later
than the close of the fifth century B.C. Those treatises,
accordingly, may be accepted as affording ample testimony
for the intellectual movement of the age that we are now
considering. An irrefutable proof of the correctness of this
view is contained in the special subject with which we are
immediately concerned, for the names of two philosophers
only— Melissus * and Empedocles — are contained in this
multifarious mass of literature. Other thinkers whose
influence may be traced in it are Xenophanes, Parme-
nides, Heraclitus, Alcmseon, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes of
Apollonia, whose acquaintance we have not yet made.
But the treatises contain not the faintest indication what-
ever to lead us outside of the chronological limit we have
set to them. This in itself is evidence of the existence of
that limit, for it would surely be astounding if, in an age
of the most rapid intellectual development and of the most
facile circulation of ideas, the authors of medical works had
in their pros, and cons confined themselves exclusively to
* Cp, BL IL Ch.. II. init.
MEDICINE AXD PHILOSOPHY. 283
systems which were either already antiquated or were swiftly
becoming so. Nor does the spectacle of a few belated
stragglers, if in reality there were any, affect the certainty
of our view of the reciprocal influence of medical and
philosophical thought.
Those mutual relations existed, though they have often
been sought in the wrong place and at an insufficient depth
below the surface. We find external points of resemblance,
for instance, such as the Hippocratic parallel to the four
elements of Empedocles in his view of the quadruple
nature of the humours of the body — blood, phlegm, yellow
and black bile — determining health and disease. Or we
find mere verbal analogies, which do not always point
to the fact of a loan, nor even, when the language
has been borrowed, to the borrowing of the doctrines as
well. We must look deeper for the features of genuine
resemblance in the spirit and method of the two sciences.
Another glance backward will assist us in this search.
Doubtless there had been a time when the treasury of a
Greek practitioner, like that of his brother in Egypt, had
contained little else than magical spells and prescriptions.
The elimination of the superstitious elements from thera-
peutics went hand-in-hand with the release of the nations
of antiquity from their general burden of primitive super-
stition. In some orders of society it occurred at a remarkably
early period, in others comparatively late, but it was never
complete. The system of popular medicine in which the
chief part was played by amulets and charms was never
completely expelled. But the lapse of time may be recog-
nized by one very distinct mark. As superstition grew
old it preferred to cover its nakedness with more and more
meretricious finery ; it glittered with foreign authorities,
such as the physicians of Thrace, the Getic and Hyper-
borean miracle-mongers Zalmoxis and Abaris, and the
magicians of Persia, till the overflowing stream of Chaldean
and Egyptian pseudo-science swept up these rags and tags
of superstition and bore them down on its flood. More-
over, the healing arts of the priests always asserted their
place by the side of worldly or lay therapeutics. We
284 GREEK THINKERS.
need but mention In this connection the cure by sleeping
in a temple, and the beneficial dreams which commonly
occurred in the sanctuaries of Asclepius. Though advanced
thinkers poured their contempt* on these superstitious
practices sanctioned by the national religion, yet they
were held in undiminished respect by wide classes of the
populace, and their efficacy was occasionally proclaimed in
the ravings of learned but foolish men, such as Aristides,
the rhetorician of Imperial Rome. By these means they
survived the era of Paganism. Indeed, the seats in which
they were located owed a part of the virtual permanence
of their attraction to their combination with rational
methods of treatment, and another part to their salubrious
situation and surroundings. Epidaurus, for example, the
most famous of these priestly health resorts, was situated
in hilly country in the heart of beautiful pine-woods at no
great distance from the sea. It was sheltered on the north
by a range of mountains, and with its precious springs of
water it fulfilled all the requirements of a modern sana-
torial establishment. Nor was the public at that watering-
place deprived of the means of recreation and enjoyment.
It possessed a racecourse and a theatre, the stately ruins
of which we are still able to admire. It was contended in
antiquity that lay medicine derived considerable benefit
from the comments on the treatment and course of diseases
made by the priestly physicians. We find it difficult, how-
ever, to place credence in that statement We have lately
come in possession of a long series of such notes discovered
in Epidaurus itself, and we are bound to confess that they
would be adapted to any other purpose better than to that
of the study of medicine. It would not be inappropriate,
for instance, to find them a home in the fables of the
"Arabian Nights," Among other tales which we owe to
the inscriptions on those stones, there Is a story of a broken
goblet which was made whole again without human inter-
vention ; and another of a head severed from its trunk,
which the inferior demons who had cut it off were unable to
replace till Asclepius had hastened in person to accomplish
* Cp. Aristophanes, " Plutus."
LAY AND SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE. 285
the miracle. In these accounts of the priestly cures,
as in other annals of wonder-working, the dietetic and
therapeutic factors, which had been genuinely efficacious,
were either overlooked by the scribes or were purposely
omitted. Progress was made in the lay art of medicine
because the material for observation was constantly
accumulating, and successive generations benefited by
their dower of centuries of experience, and because the
physicians of Greece shared with her poets and sculptors
the same splendid faculties of keen sight and of faithful
reproduction of the thing seen. Still, all this accumulation
and sifting of the raw material sufficed to provide little
more than a foundation-stone for a scientific system of
medicine. The complete structure was yet in the dim
perspective. Other preliminaries, other powerful incentives,
were required for its realization, and these may be claimed
as the contribution of that impulse towards generalization
which grew and flourished more than elsewhere in the
Greek schools of philosophy.
We need hardly remind our readers of Alcmseon, the
philosopher-physician, and of the important discoveries con-
nected with his name. The various parts for which Empe-
dodes was cast included the character of the physician, and
among other figures in which the physician was concealed
by the philosopher there were — as a recent discover}' has
shown — Philolaus, Hippo, and Diogenes of Apollonia, who
has been mentioned just above. But the ideal union of
these two sciences is of far more importance than the fact
that both were occasionally practised by one and the
same person, and it was fostered by the conviction which
gradually grew out of the culture of those times, and
which may be formulated as follows : —
The human being is a part of the wftole of nature, and cannot
be understood without it. What is wanted is a satisfactory general
view of the process of the universe. Possessing this, we shall find
the key in our hand which will open the most secret recesses of the
art of medicine.
A number of the alleged treatises of Hippocrates
take the attitude therein defined displaying a common
286 GREEK THIXKERS*
leaning to the systems of the nature-philosophy, and a
common eclecticism, though in varying degrees, in
employing them ; the majority, too, are marked by
their connection with the medical teachings of the
school founded at Cnidus, though it is impossible at
this date to determine with certainty whether such
connection was mainly accidental or depended on the
peculiar character of the doctrines of the school. In support
of the last-named alternative, we may instance the fact
that the Cnidian physicians preferred with Empedocles *
the more physical method of viewing the phenomena of
life. Accordingly we have to distinguish between two
great groups of medical treatises, those, namely, that were
dominated by this standard of thought, and those that
were opposed to it We place them in this order, not
because we can assert with certainty that each number in
the first group is older than each number in the second,
but rather because their principles and chief examples are
related in that way. The philosophy of nature gained an
influence on medicine and began to transform it. Then came
the reaction against its influence, and the attempt to hark
back to the older and more empiric art of medicine. In the
ensuing pages we shall describe this conflict and its issue,
but in accordance with the proportions of our undertaking,
we shall be content to illustrate the doctrines and methods
most characteristic of both movements.
4. The author of the work in four books entitled " On
Diet " opened with a discussion of principles.
" I contend"— *so runs the conclusion of his preface— « that he
who will write correctly on the subject of human diet must first of
all know and understand the nature of man. He must know the
parts of that nature out of which it is originally composed, and he
must understand which of those parts predominates in its govern-
ment. For if he be ignorant of its original composition, he will be
unable to know what effects it produces ; and if he do not under-
stand what part is supreme in the body, he will not be enabled to
recommend to man what is beneficial to him."
* Cp. Bku II. Ch. V. § 3.
Among other demands which the author brought
forward were a knowledge of the constitution of all
food-stuffs and drinks, and a comprehension of the far-
reaching contrast between work and nutrition. "For the
performances of work," he wrote, " are directed to the con-
sumption of what exists, and food and drink are intended
to replenish the void thus created." The fundamental
condition of health is a correct proportion between work
and nutrition in view of the constitution of the individual
and of the differences of age, season, climate, and so
forth. Except for the one factor of the individual con-
stitution which previous to illness was unknown to the
physician, good health, in the opinion of our author, could
be preserved from all disturbance. Next he turned to the
elements of the animal and human body, which he de-
scribed as two in number, and it will not be fanciful to
trace the influence of Parmenides in a writer who is
otherwise strongly influenced by Heraclitus when we
discover that he defined those two elements as fire and
water. Fire he recognized as the universal principle of
movement, and water as the universal principle of nutrition.
In a passage which unmistakably refers to the movement
of the luminaries we read that —
" when fire reaches the outermost boundary of water it begins to
lack nourishment, so it turns round and reverts to the sources of
its nourishment; when water reaches the outermost boundary of
fire it begins to lack movement, so stands still and becomes . . .
the prey of the fire in want of nourishment."
The condition of the permanence of the universe in its
existing state is that neither of the two elements shall
gain dominion over the other, and the connecting link
between the physiological and material doctrines is the
idea, borrowed perhaps from Alcmaeon, of an equilibrium
between the performance of work and nourishment on the
one part, and between the cosmic agents of those functions
on the other.
Here for the moment we may call a halt. Enough
been said to enable the attentive reader to acquaint
288 GREEK THINKERS.
himself, approximately at least, with the character of this
work in its weakness as well as in its strength. We are
confronted with a reflection, the greatness of which is
not diminished because its significance was exaggerated
by its author. Its effect is : The integrity of the organic
economy rests on the equilibrium of its income and
expenditure. We chose the method of verbal quotation
above in order to avoid the suspicion of crediting
even unconsciously an old and old-fashioned author
with modern habits of thought We shall gain a
clearer conception of his great generalization if we
remember that similar though less far-reaching re-
flections were made by other medical writers of pre-
sumably an earlier date. Euryphon, the head of the
Cnidian school and an older contemporary of Hippo-
crates, conjectured that the causes of illness lay in a
surplus of food ; and Herodicus, another Cnidian, ap-
proached even more closely to the dictum of the author
of " On Diet " in his statement that " men fall ill when
they indulge in food on insufficient exercise." At the
same time our author may claim the merit of having
been the first to give expression to a fundamental truth
in its full capacity, while he is no more affected by the
reproach that he discovered in a single condition the sole
operative cause of health than were his less far-sighted
predecessors. It is one thing to discover new significant
truths, it is another thing to realize the limits of their
capacity ; it is one thing to give the reins to the general-
izing instinct, it is another thing to know when to check
it, and it would be foolish to ask an early pioneer of
science to display both qualities at once. The value of
that performance was more seriously affected by the
attempt, laudable in itself, but unattainable by the methods
then — and even since — at the disposal of science, to build
physiology on a cosmological foundation. Some mischief
was bound to be wrought by the purely speculative
doctrine of matter and the strangely primitive, not to say
anthropomorphic, astronomy which were used in this
connection. Similarly, the thought that man was a
HERACLITISM AND ECLECTICISM. 289
model of the universe, a microcosm by the side of a
macrocosm, was bound to lead to fanciful interpreta-
tions. It was a grand idea in itself, but even in more
advanced ages it was found to darken rather than to
illumine the path of natural research, and it contains
features which remind us of the philosophy of Schelling and
Oken, such as, for example, the comparison between "the
sea" and "the belly," as the universal "storeroom which
provides for all and receives from all." Nor does the
ambitious start of our dietetic author come to grief merely
at these objective obstacles. His mind was like a stream
which runs deep but not clear. He was well-nigh intoxi-
cated by the enigmatic wisdom of Heraclitus, and the quiet
and orderly disposition of his subject-matter was disturbed
by his constant desire to illustrate the teachings of his master
by ever fresh examples taken from the most various depart-
ments of life. Nor did he disdain to imitate and surpass
the Ephesian in the use which he made of the rights of
paradox and self-contradiction. At one time he spoke in
the manner and the very words of Heraclitus of the steady
ceaseless " transformation " of matter ; at another time he
agreed with Anaxagoras and Ernpedocles in reducing all
"birth and decay" to "combinations and separations,"
and apologized for the use of those expressions as a con-
venience of popular usage. In other respects, too, much
that he borrowed from Empedocles is not even verbally
harmonized with his Heraclitean principles. Thus it
happened that the great principle originally promulgated
failed to perform all that it promised. It remained the
leading point of view for a large number of dietetic pre-
cepts, especially in questions of nourishment and gymnastic
exercises, elaborated with a wealth of instructive detail.
But even these most important parts of his undertaking
were injured by the vain attempts, repeated with weari-
some iteration, to derive the differences of physical and
even psychical conditions from the proportion of the two
fictitious primary substances, though many actual ex-
periences were turned to good account in this connection,
and at least one original experiment was made, namely,
VOL, I. U
290 GREEK THINKERS.
that of artificial vomiting in order to test the respective
digestible qualities of food-stuffs simultaneously con-
sumed.
And now for the concluding book. It is entitled " On
Dreams," and we might say of it, after Horace, that it
formed a fish-like tail of a lovely figure of a woman. It
begins with the distinction, already familiar to us from
Herodotus, between supernatural and natural visions. The
first kind was left to the interpretation of soothsayers who
were quite gravely alleged — and we regret the absence of
irony — to possess "an exact knowledge" on the subject.
Dreams which sprang from natural causes, however, were
used as the basis of inferences as to the constitution of the
body, and we may readily agree that certain dreams can
be traced back to over-feeding, and treated by an aperient.
But in his desire to exploit the inquiry to some purpose, our
author speedily transgressed the limits which at least pre-
served him from absurdity. He set full sail on the flood of
child-like superstition, and by reasonings in the style of
Artemidorus he attained to goals of childishness to which
we are indisposed to follow him.
Mention must be made of a further treatise " On the
Muscles," which we perceive, from its references to a fore-
going and a succeeding book, to have been but a brief
section of a comprehensive work "On the Science of
Medicine," and which exhibits the same characteristics of
attractive self-contradiction. The author is here revealed
as a practitioner of ripe experience who has seen much
and observed keenly, as long, at least, as his faculties of
sight and observation were not obstructed by preconceived
opinions. He was the first to recognize that the so-called
spinal marrow is entirely distinct from the common marrow
of the bones, that it possesses membranes, and is related with
the brain. Thus he came considerably nearer than his prede-
cessors to a correct appreciation of its nature and meaning.
Again, he had seen suicides who had attempted to cut
their throats, and who had been robbed of their speech
by the knife penetrating the trachea; speech had been
restored to them by the closing of the scission, and thence
EXPERIMENTS AND ASSUMPTIONS. 2gi
he drew the correct conclusion that it had been the air
escaping through the wound which had made it impossible
for them to speak, and he used his observation to confirm
his true theory of the formation of vocal sounds. Nor was
he content with mere observations of this kind and the
occasional experiment of a lesion and its surgical treatment.
He undertook deliberate experiments of his own, though
on a modest basis. He was aware, for example, of the
coagulation of blood drawn from the body, but he had
prevented the formation of a clot by shaking the blood.
Again, in order to distinguish the composition of the various
tissues he subjected them to the process of boiling, and
drew conclusions as to their constitution from the relative
ease and difficulty with which they could be boiled. We
cannot conceal our admiration of these accurate observa-
tions, methodical experiments, and logical conclusions,
which were accompanied, nevertheless, by misobservations
and arbitrary assumptions to an almost incredible extent.
Thus his belief in the efficacy of the number seven in all
processes of natural and human life practically blinded him
to the evidence of facts. He was bold enough to declare
that no eight-months child ever remained alive. Besides
the normal term of pregnancy — -nine months and ten days, or
40 X 7 days — he would only admit a prospect of preservation
for a seven-months child. On the other hand, he asserted
that he had seen embryos of seven days old in which all
the parts of the body were plainly discernible. He was
equally prepared to prove that abstention from food and
drink could not last longer than seven days without causing
death, whether within that period, or— as he naively added
— at a later date. Even people who, after the expiry of
seven days, desisted from this kind of suicide — by no means
rare in antiquity — were likewise irretrievably lost, for
their body, he stated, proved incapable of assimilating
nourishment.
The rigour of our author's thought did not save him
from the spell of number, and in other directions too he
succumbed to the wiles of imagination. But their victim
may well be pardoned, for it is difficult to see how
292 GREEK THINKERS
questions which defy the resources, not of that age merely,
but of this, could have been answered save by fancy. Nay,
more. His attempts at solution were predestined to
sterility, and the questions themselves have been prohibited
by modern science. For our author was engaged with no
smaller task than the problem of organic creation. No
hint of the doctrine of evolution had crossed his mind.
Accordingly he did not search, as the boldest of our own
contemporaries have hitherto searched in vain, for the
possible mode of the origin of the simplest organisms on
earth, but he sought to derive man himself, the crown
of earthly existence, directly from material substances.
And from what substances ! The single tissues and their
combinations were to be derived by putrefaction and
coagulation, by condensation and rarefaction, by melting
and boiling, from the warm and the cold, the moist and
the dry, and the fat and the gelatinous. It was only by
way of exception, too, that an element of doubt or reser-
vation was introduced by an occasional " it seems to me "
in the dogmatic and self-confident argumentation. " Thus
came the lungs into existence," "thus was the liver formed/'
"the spleen was composed as follows," "the joints were
composed in this manner," " thus the teeth grew " — one para-
graph after another with wearisome uniformity opens with
some such phrase. We need not trouble about their con-
tents, but our interest is aroused by the level of thought
attained by these premature attempts to penetrate the most
intimate secrets of natural life. An important distinction
must here be drawn. We have to get rid of the first dis-
agreeable impression, difficult though it may be, with which
we are filled by the temerity of the undertaking. By that
means alone shall we be able to reach the sound kernel of
the work which is concealed under the adventurous exterior.
It brings a thought to light which would not be belied even
by the science of our own times. We yield assent to the
statement that the art of healing must be based on a know-
ledge of pathological processes, and that this must in turn
be founded on an acquaintance with life in health. The
science of corporeal functions presupposes an acquaintance;
SOUND KERNEL OF THE TREATISE. 293
with the organs by which they are conditioned, nor can
that acquaintance be gained without understanding their
elementary constituent parts and the substances and forces
which are at work in them • and on them. Finally, in
Aristotle's words, "he who sees things grow from the
beginning will have the finest view of them." In other
words, therapeutics must be founded on pathology,
pathology on physiology and anatomy, physiology and
anatomy on histology, chemistry, and physics. The theory
of evolution shows us the road which leads from the lowest
or simplest organisms to the highest or most complicated,
and the goal of the long journey is faintly seen in the
perspective in the revelation of the causes of the develop-
ment of the organic from the inorganic world. In the
experiment with which we are dealing the intermediate
links are omitted or are sketched in the faintest colours,
and the end of the long series is connected directly with
the beginning. Our author's work is characterized accord-
ingly by an extraordinary audacity which we shall better
understand if we are content to regard it as an indication
of the self-confidence of youth. To the bright hopes of
the childhood of the ages which no failure had yet availed
to dim, the ultimate goals of science may well have appeared
so near as to be within arm's length. The author of the
book " On the Muscles " is just such a disciple of nature-
philosophy. Countless details of his doctrine, not to
speak of the spirit which inspired him, show him plainly
as a man who had learned from Heraclitus, Empe-
docles, and Anaxagoras, and had written in an era when
the eclectic fusion of their doctrines had already begun.
At the very introduction of his treatise he referred to the
"common teachings " of predecessors to whose work he has
contributed his part, and he felt himself bound to premise
as much "about heavenly things" as was necessary to
show "what man and the other animals are, how they
originated and arose, what is the soul, what health, what
sickness, what evil and good in man, and whence death
comes to him." As the primary principle he selected
"the warm, which is immortal, which sees, hears, and
294 GREEK THINKERS.
understands all things, and is cognizant'of the present and
the future." Its bulk had disappeared into the heights of
celestial space in consequence of that " concussion " of the
universe which he agreed with Anaxagoras and Empedocles
in describing as the starting-point of cosmic phenomena,
and that warm he states to be what the ancients had
called ^Ether. When we have added that the "rotation"
of cosmos also appeared to him as a consequence of that
concussion, we shall have carried sufficiently far our inves-
tigation into the details of his fundamental doctrine.
The book "On Muscles," with its somewhat unfortu-
nate title, had its sequel in the work "On the Number
Seven." This treatise, the bulk of which has only been
preserved in an Arabic and a Latin translation, need not
delay us very long. It marks the most flourishing epoch
in the popular belief in the wonderful efficacy of that
number. Once more we are told that " the embryo takes
shape after seven days, and proves itself a human being."
Once more, as in the books " On Diet," we are introduced
to the " seven vowels " or rather the seven vocal signs of the
Greek language, among which e and 5 are included, while a
and I and y are absent, because in the Greek alphabet they
happen to have no distinctive symbols. No less a man
than Solon had already considered the dominion of the
number seven in the demarcation of the ages of man, but
now the whole world, the winds, the seasons, the human
soul, the human body, the functions of the head, each and
all were to be stamped with the hall-mark of seven.
Another ruling thought in this treatise has likewise been
made familiar to us by our discussion of the work "On
Diet" It consists in the comparison between the individual
and the universe, the analogy between the microcosm and
the macrocosm. We may quote at this point our author's
own words —
"Animals and plants on earth have a constitution which
resembles that of the universe. Wherefore, since the whole agrees,
its parts must likewise show the same composition as the parts of
the world. . . . The earth, being firm and immovable, resembles
the bones in its stony and solid parts. . . . That which surrounds
EXCESSES OF IMAGINATION. 295
them is like the soluble flesh of man. , . . The water in the rivers
resembles the blood that flows in the veins,"
and so forth. Both thoughts are combined in the almost
ludicrous comparison of the earth with the human body,
in which seven parts of the body and seven parts of the
earth are arbitrarily selected and ranged with one another.
A parallel, for instance, is discovered between the Pelo-
ponnesus as "the seat of high-minded men " and the "head
and face," between Ionia and the diaphragm, between
Egypt with its sea and the belly. These and similar
excesses of an unbridled imagination were calculated to
produce a reaction. There is nothing like them in history,
except perhaps the alchemy of the Arabs with their seven
metals, seven stones, seven volatile bodies, seven natural
and seven artificial salts, seven kinds of alum, seven chief
chemical operations, etc. The reaction that ensued marks
the first dawn of the true science of Greece and the
Western world.
5. Without soaring aspiration and without daring deed
there is no science, no knowledge of nature. The conquest
of a new region of knowledge resembles in many respects
the occupation of virgin territory. First come the road-
makers, who unite a number of isolated points ; then
come the bridge-makers, who span many a yawning chasm ;
and last come the temporary shelters, which must ultimately
be replaced by statelier buildings on deeper foundations
and composed of more durable materials. These processes
correspond respectively to the preliminary generalizations
restrained by no manner of obstacles, to the bold argu-
ments from analogy, and to the first construction of hypo-
theses. But woe to the settlement where the hand of its
founders has been guided by blind enthusiasm rather than
by shrewd calculation. Traffic will retire from the deserted
streets, palaces will fall in ruins, and the homesteads will
remain untenanted. That fate threatened the intellectual
achievements of the epoch with which we are dealing.
The apprentice-years of the mere collection of facts were
followed by the Wanderjahre of vague, restless speculation.
296 GREEK THINKERS.
These had now lasted long enough, and it was time for
the Mdsterjahre of quiet, methodical research to succeed
if science was to acquire steady and sedentary habits instead
of losing itself in a maze of phantasies, revolving in idle
circles. It is the undying glory of the medical school of Cos
that it introduced this innovation in the domain of its art,
and thus exercised the most beneficial influence on the whole
intellectual life of mankind. " Fiction to the right ! Reality
to the left ! " was the battle-cry of this school in the war they
were the first to wage against the excesses and defects of the
nature-philosophy. Nor could it have found any more
suitable champions, for the serious and noble calling of the
physician, which brings him every day and every hour in
close communion with nature, in the exercise of which mis-
takes in theory engender the most fatal practical conse-
quences, has served in all ages as a nursery of the most
genuine and incorruptible sense of truth. The best
physicians must be the best observers, but the man who sees
keenly, who hears clearly, and whose senses, powerful at the
start, are sharpened and refined by constant exercise, will
only in exceptional instances be a visionary or a dreamer.
The line of demarcation dividing reality from the fictions of
the imagination is dug more deeply in his instance, as it were,
till it becomes an impassable gulf. He can never be absent
from his post in the campaign against the encroachments
of fancy on the domain of reason. Even in our own
century we have to thank the physicians for our liberation
from the tyranny of the nature-philosophy. The bitterest
denunciations of that error and of the mischief that it
works still proceed from the lips of men who have sat at
the feet of Johannes Mtiller, the great physiologist and
anatomist It is no valid argument to reply that there is
merely a nominal and external likeness between the nature-
philosophy of Schelling and that of Heraclitus or Empe-
docles. The point to be remembered is that the defective
logic which was a common characteristic both of the
modern and of the ancient schools was far more pardon-
able and comprehensible in the earlier than in the latter
growth. The signs of degeneracy, of reaction, and of
REACTION AGAINST NATURE-PHILOSOPHY. 297
senile decay in the one are but the natural accompaniment
in the other of the slow emancipation of science from the
mythological traditions of the childhood of the world. But
whether the light was newly kindled, or whether it had
long been burning with a steady flame, the shadows that
threatened to darken it had to be dispelled in either
instance.
The author of the treatise " On Old Medicine " was
the first to open the campaign along the whole line of
battle. With a deep sense of the dignity of his calling,
and with a keen appreciation of Its significance for the
welfare and prosperity of mankind, he refused to be
indifferent to a movement which tended to degrade its
worth, to annul the distinction between good physicians and
bad, and — what was most important — to undermine the
structure of the science itself. His attack was not directed
at isolated details in the system of his adversaries ; he
went to the root of the evil. He condemned the method
of the " new-fangled " art of healing, without respect and
without reserve. The science, he urged, was not to be
founded on hypothesis, though this was the primrose path.
It was taking things too easily to assume —
" a single primary cause for illnesses and for death, and the same
cause in every instance, and to postulate as that cause one or two
factors, whether the warm or the cold, the damp or the dry, or any-
thing else that occurred. . . . But the healing art " — which was no
pseudo-science, and had, moreover, to deal with sensible objects —
ce possesses all things from of old, a principle, and a beaten track
along which in the course of ages many splendid discoveries have
been made, and along which the science will be perfected, if men
of adequate talent, equipped with the knowledge of the discoveries
made hitherto, take these as their starting-point, and set out thence
on further inquiries. He who rejects and despises all this, however,
and undertakes his investigations on another road and in other
forms and claims to have discovered something, he is deceived
and deceives himself, for it is impossible."
At first we might seem to be listening to the voice of
some old crusted Tory who held aloof from every kind of
298 GREEK THINKERS.
innovation. But such a judgment would be wholly unjusti-
fied. Our author was fully capable of defending his
exclusive preference for the old empiric — we do not say
inductive — method. He began by pointing to its merits,
placing them in the clearest light by extending the
conventional bounds covered by the art of healing. Nor
was it merely dietetics, in the full sense of that term,
which he regarded as a constituent branch of the art. He
included in his inquiry the transition from the coarse
nourishment, which, as he pertinently remarked, men origi-
nally shared with the brute creation, to the refined cuisine
of civilized peoples. This transition, which we take as a
matter of course, he characterized as "a great invention,
elaborated and perfected in the course of centuries with no
mean display of intelligence and imagination." Precisely
parallel to the experiments by which the indigestible quality
of that primitive diet had been proved of old were the fresh
experiments which enabled the physician to vary the
nourishment appropriate to a healthy man with that fit
and wholesome for an invalid. In the instance of the
treatment of health, every one was more or less an expert,
and it is not surprising that it was separated from the
treatment of disease which demanded professional know-
ledge. Nevertheless, the science was uniform, and its process
in both cases was precisely the same. In the one as in the
other, it was advisable to correct the foods which the human
body could not assimilate by mixing them, mitigating
them, or diluting them, so that the healthy organism in
the one case and the diseased organism in the other could
master them and derive benefit from them. Our author
next turned to individual differences in matters of diet,
which he illustrated by many examples. He found that
they rested partly on original distinctions of constitution and
partly on distinctions of habit. They were not reducible to
any one common principle, but could only be discerned and
taken in account by the most careful and unremitting obser-
vation. It was an obvious consequence of this need of strict
individual treatment that precise accuracy could not always
be guaranteed. Another and no less fruitful source of error
MEDICINE AND EXACT SCIENCE. 299
was the fact that there are dangers of a precisely opposite
kind. The physician was bound to be on his guard against
excess as well as against defect, against a too strong as well
as against a too weak quality of the means of nourishment.
At this point we are first confronted by the conception of
an " exact " science — of a science, that is to say, admitting
determination by quantities. In its present stage it was
purely an ideal, the attainment of which in the realm of
dietetics and medicine had to be abandoned on the spot.
"One must aim at a standard," we read, "but a standard,
weight, or number which shall serve thee as a sure guide
thou shalt not find, seeing that there is no other than the
sensibility of the body." And precisely because this was
merely an approximate standard without strict exactitude,
slight divagations to the right or the left of the mean were
practically inevitable. The highest praise was due to that
physician who committed merely trivial blunders ; the
majority were like those steersmen who repeatedly err with
impunity in a quiet sea and under a cloudless sky, but whose
mistakes are fraught with fatal consequences if a storm
arise.
The new medicine was swiftly exposed to another reproach
of more incisive importance. Its premises and precepts
were alleged not to cover the actual many-sidedness of
objects. The new-fangled teaching— an epithet which
applied to the doctrine of Alcmaeon as well as to that of
the books "On Diet" — recommended the application of
" the cold against the warm, the warm against the cold ; the
moist against the dry, the dry against the moist." Every
time that —
"one of these factors had wrought mischief, it was to be
corrected by the application of the opposite factor. . . . But those
physicians, so far as I know," continued our author, " have hitherto
discovered or invented no warm, or cold, or dry, or moist which
is so in itself, unalloyed with any other quality. It is rather my
opinion that they are acquainted with no other foods and drinks
than those which we all employ. It is impossible, then, for them
to order the invalid to feed on a 'warm,' for he would instantly
ask, On what kind oi a * warm ' ? And thereupon they would
300 GREEK THINKERS.
have recourse either to empty verbiage or to one of the substances
with which we are familiar."
It would make considerable difference, too, whether the
"warm" were an astringent or aperient, or which of
the other natural qualities it possessed ; and this differ-
ence in effect would not merely apply to men, but to
wood and leather, and many other objects by no means
as sensitive as the human body.
We reach now the most important part of the book,
in which the fundamental principles of our author came to
their clearest expression.
" Some people say," he wrote, " physicians as well as sophists "
— by whom, as we conceive, he merely meant philosophers — " that
it is not possible to understand the medical art except by learning
what man is. He who would treat men in the right way must
first understand this. This saying of theirs is directed at philosophy
as it has been practised by Empedocles and others who have
written about nature and have discussed the origin of man, how
he came into existence, and how his parts were joined together.
But I believe," he continued, "that all that sophists or physicians
have said or written about nature belongs less to the art of medicine
than to that of painting. It is my opinion, on the contrary, that
certain knowledge about nature can be gained from no other
point of view than from that of medical science. This is attainable,
however, by any one who chooses to approach that study in a
proper fashion, and with regard to the fulness of its extent. But
it seems to me that there is a long road still to be travelled before
that degree of erudition is reached which shall know what man
is, by what cause he was created, and all else to the least detail."
We may pause here, not unprofitably, in order to explain
some points. Our readers will note the almost verbal
resemblance of the above introductory words with the
passage quoted just now, at the beginning of section 4, from
the work "On Diet," where the proposition that is here
so energetically disputed is vindicated with equal energy.
We can hardly fail to recognize a direct polemical intention,
and it affords a glaring instance of the so-called uniformity
of the Hippocratic canon. The mention of painting in
this connection gives, us a momentary shock, but a brief
SCIENCE AND FINE ARTS. 301
consideration will show that the author could hardly have
chosen a more appropriate expression for his thought.
He obviously wanted to say that descriptions of the origin
of animals and men, of the kind attempted by Empedocles,
might be attractive, fascinating, and seductive, but they
were not science. Now, the contrary of science, which
aims at truth rather than at pleasure, is found in such
cases in the region of the fine arts, inasmuch as the im-
agination can deal freely therein with the shapes and
colours that it invents. The type which we should obvi-
ously select is that of poetry, but it would have been out of
place for the present purpose of inveighing at the contents
of the work of Empedocles on account of the poetic form
in which that work was composed. The sharp and almost
harsh manner in which our author contrasted fiction and
fact, and dismissed the first from the realm of serious atten-
tion, reminds us of the contempt expressed by Herodotus
about the stream of ocean, and quoted by us at the close
of the last book. We should be glad to see the hint that
medicine, practised in a proper fashion and in its full
capacity, is the beginning of all true knowledge of nature
developed more fully to its conclusions. For we may
almost detect in the saying the insight, or at least the
conjecture, that all our knowledge about nature is relative,
and that the true goal of human inquiry is not what nature
is in herself, but what she is in her relation to man's
perceptive faculties. This at least is the trend of the
sequel of this important passage, with which we hasten to
acquaint our readers :
" For to me too," continues our author, " it seems necessary
that every physician should possess knowledge about nature, and
that he should give himself the utmost pains in that respect if he
wishes to be equal to his task. He must know the relation of
man to the food and drink that he consumes, and to all else that
he does and practises. He must know what effect each thing
exercises on each man. Nor is it enough to be of opinion that
cheese is a bad food because it inconveniences him who is satiated
with it. The physician must know what kind of inconvenience it
produces, and what is its cause, and with what part of the human
302 GREEK THINKERS.
body it fails to conform. For there are many other foods and
drinks which are naturally injurious, which yet do not affect men in
the same way. Let me select the instance of wine, which, if enjoyed
unmixed and in krge quantities, will affect men in a certain way.
And observation shows to all that this is the work and the effect
of wine. We know, too, through what parts of the body it chiefly
produces that result, and I could wish that equal clarity should be
shed over all the other instances." .
These remarks too require a word of explanation. The
first point to be noticed is the incisive and doubtless
deliberate contrast between our author's everyday language
and his homely example and the high-flown matter and no
less aspiring manner of Empedocles and those who thought
like him. We can conceive the anti-philosopher addressing
his adversaries in this wise : " I too am striving after a
comprehensive knowledge of nature, the threads of whose
1 most intimate secrets ye think ye have already unravelled
' and proclaim your triumph in gorgeous phrases. But how
modest are my immediate ends, how far I remain behind
the proud flight of your thought, how verily I creep along
the ground of trivial occurrences and everyday questions
which have yet been solved but in the smallest proportion."
Yes, our excellent author deemed himself as free as possible
from the taint of temerity and the disease of scholar's
pride, and yet fate overtook him precisely at that point
The bitter contempt that he poured from a full horn over
his predecessors was avenged by fate on his owntperson,
and in view of the evidence we have collected as to the
soundness of his knowledge we are well-nigh tempted to
exclaim, his modesty was rooted in immodesty, and his
was the pride that vainly aped humility. The modicum of
certain knowledge to which he laid claim and which he
considered as self-evident truth was but the semblance of
knowledge. For since he was entirely ignorant of the
chemistry of digestion no less than of the physiology of
the brain, the heart, and the blood-vessels, his explanations
of the indigestibleness of cheese and of the intoxication
produced by wine, whatever forms they may have taken,
were certainly built on a false foundation.
NATURE OF HYPOTHETICAL RESEARCH. 303
We are startled and almost confused at the result of
the preceding investigation. The question rises to our
lips, Was it all in vain — this reaction on the part of the
clear-sighted physician against the arbitrary methods, his
enthusiastic return to the genuine evidence of facts, and
his unremitting polemic against those of his predecessors
who had "misled the art of medicine from its ancient
track and started it on the road of hypothesis " ? For he
too had fallen unwittingly into the toils of hypothetical
research, nor was his relapse confined to a few false
observations more or less, nor to the misinterpretation of
isolated facts ; it involved complete explanatory attempts
proceeding wholly from the region of a physiology based
on hypothesis. Let us guard against the risk of mis-
understanding. We would not, therefore, depreciate or
condemn our author's achievements, still less would we
brand his polemic as altogether vain and ineffectual. In
order to frame an adequate judgment, we must make a
further slight digression ; and, in choosing the longer
road, we may hope to attain to a height from which we
shall be able to form a truer and more comprehensive
appreciation of the two conflicting tendencies of thought.
6. An hypothesis is an assumption or a supposition.
Where and as long as full certainty of knowledge eludes
us, it is necessary to set up mere assumptions. That
necessity is twofold. It is indispensable to the matter
discussed and inevitable to the man discussing. Humanly
inevitable, because the mind has not yet been created
which can receive and retain a long series of details with-
out encircling them and connecting them by a common
bond. Memory craves relief, and in the realm of the
co-existence of phenomena that craving is satisfied by
classification, whereas in the realm of causal succes-
sion the aid of hypothesis has to be invoked. And
if the demands of reason and of the causal sense possess
sufficient strength in the investigator's mind, they cannot
remain idle even at the beginning of his task. Tenta-
tively at least, hypotheses must be formed in the earlier
stages of an inquiry which shall serve as the rungs of
304 GREEK THINKERS.
the ladder to ascend to the ultimate goal. It has
been acutely remarked that every approved theory of
to-day was at one time an hypothesis. It is subjectively
impossible, in dealing with the countless details of which
a comprehensive theory is ultimately to be composed, to
keep them during its construction in their original segrega-
tion and to preserve their psychical isolation ; and a similar
objective impossibility would attend the endeavour lo
descry, gather, and sift the elements of experience, or even
to create them by the artificial means provided in natural
science, unless the light of a preliminary hypothesis were
shed over the path of the investigator to guide his footsteps
to his end. Precisely the same process is set in motion
when the end in view is not the attainment of general
truths, but the ascertainment of single occurrences. Before
a judge comes to consider his verdict he will generally have
begun by considering the grounds of suspicion, and every
such ground of suspicion is expressed in a supposition or
hypothesis. Moreover, if his mind be awake through the
trial, the depositions of witnesses and the other evidence
collected on the basis of such an early hypothesis will give
rise in the course of the proceedings to ever-fresh hypotheses,
and, supposing him to have a logical as well as a wakeful
mind, to ever-fresh and more exact approximations to the
ultimate verdict or truth. Two causes alone can affect
the value of the preliminary assumption as a stage on the
victorious road to truth. The first is due to a subjective
error to be traced to the mind of the inquirer, and the
second to an objective defect attaching to the means of
inquiry. The hypothesis will obstruct and hinder, instead
of facilitating, the attainment of a final solution, if the
inquirer's mind be lacking in the requisite pliability and
adaptability. He will then overlook the provisional character
of his assumptions ; he will disband the forces of his
intellect at too early a date, and will mistake a portion, of
his journey, and a very short portion perhaps, for the com-
pletion of his task. And the hypothesis will be devoid of
scientific value, or at least of the highest scientific value, if
it be intrinsically incapable of emerging from a provisional
ITS NECESSITY AND DANGERS. 305
and assumptive truth into an ultimate and definitive one
— in other words, if it offer not the least handle for the
purpose of verification. It would be idle to expect
complete clearness on this and on kindred questions of
method from the earliest author who offers us any dis-
cussion whatsoever on the value of hypothetical investiga-
tions, and who, indeed, as far as any record has come
down to us, is the first to. have used the word "hypothesis "
in its technical sense. The greater is the credit that
redounds to him that he was by no means unfamiliar with
the most far-reaching of the distinctions that are here
to be considered. It must be conceded that he used the
word "hypothesis" in a somewhat loose fashion, without
expressly distinguishing between verifiable and non-
verifiable assumptions ; but the brunt of his attack fell on
the second of these classes, which was more or less the
object of all his invectives against hypothetical investiga-
tion. For when he argued against the application of that
new method to medicine, he supported his cause by the
following significant remarks : that science needed no
" empty hypotheses," he wrote, as did —
" the invisible and unfathomable things. Any one who should
attempt a description of such things would have to avail himself
of hypothesis. Thus with regard to things in heaven or to those
under the earth. And even though he knew and said what was
correct about them, yet neither he nor his hearers would be aware
if it were the truth or not, for he has no standard which he can
apply in order to attain full certainty."
The term " empty " in this connection is a jewel in the
crown of science. It is meant to stigmatize hypotheses,
in themselves incapable of proof, and likened to idle
fictions which are refused admittance across the threshold
of genuine science. Let us renew our recollection of two
similar treasures before we attempt to estimate its worth.
There was first the passage from Xenophanes* which
emphasized, in language closely similar to our present
quotation, and still more so to the Greek original, the
* Bk. II. Ch. I. § 3,/».
VOL. L X
306 GREEK THINKERS.
significance of verification ; and there was, secondly, the
similarly inspired utterance of the historian Herodotus, to
which we have already had occasion to refer.* Taking
these in account, and remembering that our author's feud
against hypothetical investigation was essentially directed
at a special kind of hypotheses, we see that there was
nothing to prevent him from using hypotheses on his own
account without incurring the charge of inconsistency. It
was inevitable that he should have formed hypothetical
conceptions about the nature of the digestive process and
the causes of drunkenness ; they were as natural to the
childhood of physiology and its sister sciences as was
their subsequent correction when the sciences matured.
But it is one thing to make an erroneous hypothesis, it is
quite another thing to make an unscientific hypothesis
which is entirely or partially incapable of verification. It
may be urged that every hypothesis is not clearly
brand-marked as unverifiable or the contrary, as doomed
to remain a hypothesis for ever, or as possessing the
power to develop its own means of proving, approxi-
mately at least, its truth or falsehood. But though this
is generally the case, it is not universally so. These retorts
and counter retorts, however, need not occupy us long, for
" the hot " and " the cold," " the dry " and " the moist,"
as the fundamental constituent parts of the human
organism, or even as the chief factors that affect it, were,
to speak precisely, even less than mere hypotheses — they
were fictions, or rather abstractions disguised as realities.
Certain qualities were segregated from the complex of
attributes with which they were really indissolubly con-
nected, and were moreover invested with a supremacy
that did not reasonably belong to them ; for these varia-
tions of temperature and of the state of aggregation, which
were there brought into play, do not always bring in their
train a decisive change in all the rest of the attributes. It
was one of the great positive merits of the treatise which
we are discussing, that it emphasized this consideration and
hinted at the comparatively greater significance of the
* Bk. II. Ch. VI.
THE CONFLICT OF METHODS. 307
chemical qualities of bodies, throwing at the same time a
side glance at the influences these. exercised on substances
not belonging to the living organism. Our author was there-
fore justified in describing heat and cold as qualities which
possess a comparatively very small power over the body,
and in recalling such phenomena of reaction as the effect
of inward heat produced by taking a cold bath.
But it is time to abandon these details. The question
whether this or that hypothesis was more or less scientific
in character, whether a greater or a less degree of legiti-
macy attached to it, is not as important to our purpose
as the broad conflict of methods with which our readers
should by this time be familiar, and which /-presents no
very great difficulties. The rule of sound common sense,
"to start from the known or the sensible and thence to
infer the unknown," was as obvious to Herodotus and
Euripides as at a later date to Epicurus, and we have here
to remark that it was violated quite openly and crudely
by the physicians who planted their footsteps in the lines
of nature-philosophy. Problems, such as that of the
origin of organic life or of the human race, which modern
science still regards as insoluble, were placed at "the head
of their programme, and medical precepts were founded on
attempts to solve them which bore not merely a hypothe-
tical, but a fantastic character. We cannot affect to be
surprised that a reaction should have set in, nor should we
attempt to deny that such a reaction was wholesome. Still,
we must be on our guard against one-sided and exaggerated
views. The new way was a necessary way, and it would be
false to describe it as wholly and solely a misleading way.
It was inevitable that the doctrines of nature-philosophy
should penetrate the several sciences and begin to transform
their methods. We have already seen reason to believe that
the arbitrary element which clung to most of those theories
was bound to be expelled, but its elimination did not
necessarily destroy all the effects of its influence ; some of
them, and those not the least beneficial, might survive.
Above all, an ideal that has once been erected, however
pitiable, however grotesque its subsequent failure may be,
308 GREEK THINKERS.
Is not lost to posterity, and the attempt to rescue the
science of medicine from the isolation which threatened to
swallow it, and to regard it as a single branch on the great
tree of universal science, was at any rate an ideal. At
first, it must be conceded, and for long afterwards, this
ambitious undertaking failed for want of the requisite
foundations, and thus a return became necessary which
was almost equivalent to a retreat to the older methods
of research and to the narrow limits in which they
had been confined. But here too we must guard against
misunderstanding. It is not enough to summarize the
relation between the two conflicting tendencies in the
conventional formula : the false deductive method was
buried in the ruins of the philosophical theoiy of medicine,
and the correct inductive method was borne in on the
triumph of Hippocrates. For in dealing with highly com-
plicated phenomena, with aggregate processes composed
of innumerable details, no other method is recommended
to investigators than that which builds up the whole out
of its parts, and refers the so-called empiric or derivative
laws to the simple or ultimate causal laws from which
they spring. The secret of the former and even of the
present employment of cruder and less suitable methods is
not to be found in the intrinsic falsehood of the deductive
method. It is rather a sign that that method can only be
applied with success in an infinitely more advanced stage in
the development of science, and an indication that pathology
was then found wanting in its anatomical and physiological
basis, and that physiology then, as partly even now, rested
on an insecure foundation of cellular-physiology, of physics,
and of chemistry. We are dealing here with the beginnings
of a period of transition which has continued down to our
own times, for it is only to-day that the most advanced
portions of organic science admit at least a partial use of
deduction, and have thus begun to enter the last and
highest stage of scientific treatment The type of deduc-
tion is calculation, and calculation is most fully employed
at this date in the business of the oculist, so far as
it is founded on optics. But there are other branches
THE GLORY OF COS, 309
of therapeutics in a high degree of development which
rest on a deductive basis. Take, for instance, the anti-
septic treatment of wounds, the object of which is the
destruction of micro-organisms which have been recognized
with complete certainty as the agents of disease — an object
which is attained by the use of substances the chemical
qualities of which hold out with equal certainty a prospect
of the desired result. This method offers the completest
contrast with the proceeding in cases where there is no
clear evidence of causation, and where the defect cannot
be supplied either by direct, unequivocal, and drastic cures
— the genuine experimental method, — nor yet by the
decisively favourable results of observations taken in such
numbers as to eliminate the element of chance — in other
words, by the statistical method. Those are the medica-
ments of which it is correctly said that they are "re-
commended to-day, eulogized to-morrow, and forgotten
two years hence." The undying glory of the school of Cos
does not rest on their selection and use of methods of re-
search better in themselves or nearer to ideal perfection.
Their chief title to esteem is rather the insight they
displayed in perceiving that the premises for the applica-
tion of the deductive method were not yet extant, that
they had not even come in view, and that fantastic con-
ceptions were taking the place of the requisite and valid
inductions. The pioneer virtues which distinguished the
Coic masters from their opponents were a self-abnegation,
and a timely renunciation of ambitions, fascinating enough
and even exalted in themselves, but at that era and long
afterwards out of reach, and these virtues entitle them to
our ungrudging admiration at this day. We recognize their
supreme merit in having developed, with tireless powers of
observation and extraordinary faculties of clear sight and
strong sense, those branches of the art of healing which
were capable of extension without digging their foundations
more deeply. Above all, we may specify their contributions
to symptomatology which, by their endless supply of nice
distinctions and acute observations, are a source of pleasure
and instruction to modern students of that branch of learning.
310
GREEK THINKERS.
Unfortunately, however, they could not wholly renounce the
construction of comprehensive theories. They too dabbled
in hypotheses which, as far as they went, were as fruitful of
errors as those of their predecessors, and were only less
fruitful because they did not go as far. Their humoural
pathology, for instance, which is the hall-mark of the Hip-
pocratic school, and which referred all internal diseases
to the constitution and proportion of the four presumable
cardinal humours, possesses, in the judgment of modern
science, not a jot more truth than the anthropogony of
the book " On Muscles " or the fictitious theory of matter
which was combated in the treatise " On Old Medicine."
7. This, then, at least must be conceded. The genius
of the physicians of Cos was fertile in generalizations of all
kinds, whether true or false, and their motive-power may
most probably be traced to the speculations of the nature-
philosophers. This "old medicine" of the alleged reaction
was no more the real old medicine than the France of the
Restoration was the France of the Ancien Rdgime. The
eroal and trend of the movement were determined hence-
o
forth by the critical sense and sceptical genius of the
Hippocratic school At an early date it assumed as
definite an attitude towards the supernatural theology as
it had already assumed towards the fantastic excesses of
some doctrines of the nature- philosophy, and towards those
metaphysical theories which transgressed all bounds of
experience.* Here, as elsewhere, we are struck by the
contrast between Cos and Cnidus. The treatise " On the
Nature of Women," which is as full of the influence of
Cnidus as the larger work " On the Diseases of Women,"
to which it went back, exalts "the divine" and "divine
things" to a place of differential superiority over and
above all other factors. "The divine" is mentioned at
the opening of the Hippocratic " Prognosticon " as an agent
of occasional efficacy, so little removed from the operations
of natural law, that physicians are expressly enjoined to
take account of its activity in their "foresight." But in
two productions of the Hippocratic school war was declared
* Bk. II. Ch, L § 3, j«fc»
THE HIPPOCRATICS AND "THE DIVINE" 311
against all supernaturaHsm with extraordinary energy.
The first of these passages is to be found in the book
"On Water, Air, and Sites," which forms one of the
most remarkable pieces of the Hippocratic collection. We
are there listening to a man who had trodden the soil of
South Russia as well as the valley of the Nile, whose
critical eye had surveyed all sorts and conditions of cir-
cumstances, and whose thoughtful mind had endeavoured
to weave the countless details to a uniform and consistent
design. But his many valuable observations, his many partly
premature conjectures about the connection between climate
and health, between the succession of the seasons and the
course of diseases, these were all surpassed by the undying
honour that attached to the first attempt to establish a
causal bond between the characters of nations and their
physical conditions. We may call the writer of this treatise
the precursor of Montesquieu, and the founder of national
psychology. He it was who, in discussing the so-called
" feminine disease " of the Scythians, uttered an energetic
protest against the assertion that this or any other Illness
was the effect of a particular divine visitation; and in
almost precisely the same words the notion was combated
afresh in the treatise " On the Sacred Disease," by which
name epilepsy was designated in popular superstition on
account of its supposed divine origin. In both cases alike
the denial of supernatural intervention was accompanied
by an expression of belief in the strict compatibility of a
uniform obedience to law in all natural phenomena with
the religious faith in a divine fountain-head as the ultimate
source of those phenomena. " Everything is divine and
everything is human," thus ran the wonderfully suggestive
formula invented by the author of the work "On the
Sacred Disease;" and he added that it meant nothing
more than that it is unreasonable to call one illness more
divine than another. All alike were caused by the great
natural agents of heat and cold, and sun and winds, all of
which were divine in their nature, but no one of which in
itself was "unfathomable and untractable" or removed
from human insight and human influence. And a yet
312 GREEK THINKERS. '
wider generalization was promulgated in the maxim, " The
nature and cause of this illness arise from precisely
the same divine from which all else proceeds " — a maxim
reproduced by the writer of the book '"On Water, Air,
and Sites " in his statement of belief that " to me, too, these
complaints appear divine, and all others likewise, since no
one is more divine or more human than another. Each of
them possesses nature [z>. a natural cause], and no one of
them originates without it." The more pugnacious author
of the work on epilepsy gave vent to discursive and scornful
attacks on the " windbags and street-corner prophets " who
undertook to cure diseases by their superstitious practices
of " purifications and incantations," who " sought to conceal
their own ignorance and impotence under the mantle of
the divine," and who might be shown in the clear light of
day to disbelieve in the truth of their own teaching. This
last was the sharpest barb in our author's quiver of in-
vectives :
" For if these sufferings," he wrote, " could be cured by the purifi-
cations and the rest of the treatment they recommend, what should
prevent their creation for the infliction of mankind by other similar
contrivances ? But then their cause would no longer be divine, but
human, for the physician who is able to expel a disease by magical
and purificatory means could introduce it by setting other means at
work, and then there would be an end of the divine and of its
efficacy."
The same argument was applied to the whole gamut of
.proceedings, which rested collectively, as he asserted, on
the supposition that there were no gods, or that they were
devoid of power :
" For if it were true," he wrote, " that a man could fetch down
the moon and make the sun disappear, could summon the storm,
and recall fair weather by sacrifices and the black arts, I should
hold that there were nothing divine in all that, but that it were all
human, for in such cases the power of the divinity would be
subdued to the yoke of human intellect."
This treatise too, we may remark in parenthesis, is
extremely notable for its reaffirmation of the significance
ESTIMATE OF VALUE AND RESULTS. 313
of the brain in the physical and especially in the psychical
life. The discovery had been made by Alcmaeon,* but it
was used here in its widest extension and with increased
emphasis. As a physician our author, with his eclectic
tendencies in philosophy, was not a pure Hippocratic, and
he was led to this important digression by his discovery,
which modern science has confirmed, that epilepsy springs
from a disease of the central organ.
We might close the present section at this point
Nothing is lacking to the proof of the contention from
which we set out — that the study of medicine was the
source of the third great wave of criticism which poured
its fertilizing stream over the fields of Greek learning.
The authors of the book " On Old Medicine " and the two
treatises we have just discussed were as free from every
taint of mythical thought as Hecatseus or Xenophanes —
as free, or actually freer. Nor were these heralds of the
dawn content with banishing from their minds every appeal
to primitive modes of thought They differed from their
predecessors, who had opened the epoch of transition, in
not stopping at mere negation. They unlocked the doors
of their reflection to positive methods of scientific research,
and took as their guiding star the inspired maxim of
Kpicharmus, the philosophic playwright of Syracuse :
'* A sober sense of honest doubt
Keeps human reason hale and stout."
Nor was this the limit of their achievement. By their
theory of the gods, which was compatible with the un-
trammelled progress of knowledge, they paved the way for
every conceivable advance ; but they further endeavoured
to assist the advance themselves by their not inconsider-
able successes in their special region of inquiry. The
proportions of the present work do not, unfortunately,
permit us to bring forward the evidence for this view, but
we are reluctant to part from the precious collection of
the Hippocratic writings, which are still so little known
and appreciated, without offering a few mere proofs of
* Cp. Bk. I. Ch. V. § 5, init.
314 GREEK THINKERS.
the sound scientific spirit which penetrates a considerable
portion of them. One of the most generous marks of
that spirit is a respect and appreciation for great thoughts
which derive their descent from an opposite or hostile
school, and thus we find the valuable doctrine of the
necessary' equilibrium between exercise and nourish-
ment, which was taught by the physicians of Cnidus,
reappearing in the work "On Diet in Acute Illnesses/*
though -it opened with a bitter polemic against the chef
d'ccuvre of that school, "The Cnidian Sentences." The
author in that instance was as innocent of vain pretensions
to originality as he was free from the vulgar eagerness for
cheap and superficial triumphs. He displayed a genuine
spirit of research in his endeavour to strengthen the doctrine
which he was combating by fresh and weighty arguments,
as when he wrote in one place, "my opponent's view will
be assisted by the following consideration." No less
sturdy and incorruptible was the instinct for the truth
evinced by the author of the work " On the Joints," which
Littr6 characterized as "the great surgical monument of
antiquity and a model for all future ages." The writer, a
physician of noble mind and lofty thought, did not
shrink from recording his own failures for the informa-
tion of his fellow-investigators. In the immortal language
in which one such passage was composed, we read, " I
have written this down deliberately, for it is valuable to
learn of unsuccessful experiments, and to know the causes
of their non-success." In that instance he was obviously
anxious to withhold no means to knowledge from the
service of those who came after him ; and in another he
exceeded the wonted limits of didactic writing on account
of his desire to protect the patient from any burden that
could possibly be avoided :
<c It may be urged," he wrote, " that such questions lie outside
the precincts of medicine* for what profit is there in a further study
of cases that have already become incurable ? Such arguments, I
answer, are very wide of the mark. In curable cases all pains
must be used to prevent their becoming incurable j but incurable
FIRST COMPARATIVE ANATOMIST. 315
cases must be recognized as such, in order to save the sick man
from useless maltreatment."
Nor was he otherwise disposed to spare his own exertions.
He had the joy of work which is a true mark of genius.
In this way he extended anatomical research from the
human to the animal creation ; he compared the structure
of the human skeleton with that of other vertebrate
animals, and two passages in his work speak so eloquently
of the grandeur of this attempt that we do not hesitate to
entitle him an early if not the earliest pioneer of compara-
tive anatomy. But we conclude by citing an important
generalization due to the same powerful intellect, the
brilliancy of which is testified by the wide range that it
described, by the evidence, constantly increasing, of the
truth of its contents, and by the deep significance of its
consequences. We refer to the maxim touching the
necessity of function for the preservation of health in an
organ.
" All parts of the body," he wrote, " which are designed for a
definite use are kept in health, and in the enjoyment of fair growth
and of long youth, by the fulfilment of that use, and by their appro-
priate exercise in the employment to which they are accustomed.
But when they are disused they grow ill and stunted, and become
prematurely old."
31 6 GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTEP. II.
THE ATOMISTS.
i. AT an early date rumour was busily engaged in spinning
threads of intercourse between "the father of medicine"
and the man whom we may call the father of physics.
The worthy citizens of Abdera had been alarmed by the
strange conduct of their great countryman Democritus, so
they summoned the master of the art of healing to examine
his mental condition. The master came, convinced them
of their error, and enjoyed an instructive intercourse with
the sage, which was presently continued by letter. Their
correspondence formed a romance in letters, which the
Hippocratic collection has preserved to us, and which
may to a certain extent be the mirror of genuine facts.
It is at least in the highest degree probable that two
philosophers born in the same year — 460 B.C. — and both
of them great travellers, should have been brought Into
personal contact. It is clear, too, that Hippocrates was
actually at one time in Abdera. We are still able to
accompany him on his round of professional visits that
took him by turns to the Thracian Gate, the Sacred Way,
and the High Street. And thus there may be an element
of truth in the legendary picture of the hoase and garden
in the shadow of a tower of the city wall, with the
umbrageous plane-tree beneath whose spreading foliage
the great sage of Abdera used to sit and write with his
knee for a table, surrounded by his scrolls and by the
anatomical specimens at which he was at work.
The wealthy commercial colony of Abdera had been
LEUCIPPUS AND HIS DISCIPLE. 317
founded by lonians. It was situated opposite the island
of Thasos, in the neighbourhood of lucrative gold-mines
on the borders of Thrace and Macedonia, and it played
a short but exceptionally brilliant part in the history of
Greek learning. It is associated with the name of
Leucippus, the friend and teacher of Democritus, who
was older than his pupil by a score or so of years. For,
though the master was probably born at Miletus, and
enjoyed instruction, according to trustworthy evidence,
at Elea, under the sharp-witted Zeno, yet he certainly
died in the city of Abdera, and founded there the school
to which his disciple Democritus lent imperishable fame.
The figure of the teacher has been dwarfed by the giant
proportions of the pupil, and his few literary remains were
included in the comprehensive collection of the works of
Democritus. Even in antiquity, his personality and the
more intimate circumstances of his life were so little
known, that doubts were even expressed as to his
historical reality. Still, we may assert, on the evidence
of few witnesses but fit, that Leucippus devised the plan
of the building which Democritus completed, adorning it
with an inexhaustible wealth of facts based on experience,
and composing it with a literary art which made him
a master of Greek prose. To Leucippus we owe the
sentence in which the universal rule of causation was
proclaimed in unequivocal language: " Nothing happens
without a cause, but everything with a cause and by
necessity." His book, " On the Order of the Universe,"
which, to distinguish it from the smaller compendium on
the same subject by Democritus, was known as " The Great
Order of the Universe," contained the essence of atomic
physics, and his treatise " On the Mind," doubtless sup-
plied the outline of the psychology of the school. Time
has robbed us of the privilege of considering apart the
intellectual legacies of these two men. We are therefore
compelled to renounce such distinctions, and to discuss
the atomic theory as a whole. But we may pause at the
outset, to glance at the personal characteristics of its
younger and far more famous representative.
318 GREEK THINKERS.
We possess some valuable material for this purpose,
and our first evidence may be taken down at the lips of
Democritus himself.
"I am the most travelled/' he wrote, " of all my contemporaries;
I have extended my field of inquiry wider than any one else ; I have
seen more countries and climes, and have heard more speeches
of learned men. No one has surpassed me in the composition of
lines accompanied by demonstration, not even the Egyptian
knotters of ropes, or geometers."
The emphasis that was laid here on the mere scope of
his culture and achievements is in full accord with our
conception of the man in whom we recognize less of the
initiative faculty of invention than of the erudition that
continues and expands it. Nor should we be repelled by
the boastful tone that is taken. Lessing said, with a very
slight exaggeration, that " politeness was a thing unknown
to the ancients," and his saying might be transferred to
modesty with even better right. Besides the example before
us, the instance of Empedocles will be fresh in our readers'
memory, and there is, further, the case of Thucydides, whose
cooler judgment weighed his words more carefully, and who
yet did not hesitate to entitle his history " a possession for
all time." Moreover, Plato himself, who eclipses himself
in his Dialogues so completely behind Socrates his master,
felt no constraint in quoting a verse in which he and his
brothers were described as " the god-like issue of a glorious
father." Another circumstance, too, should be taken in
account in considering the self-praise of Democritus. He
appears as long as he lived to have enjoyed a purely local
reputation. " I came to Athens, and no one knew me," so
runs a second fragment of autobiography, and it may well
have been his resentment at finding himself still unknown
.in the capital of the Greek intellect, despite his enormous
exertions and achievements, that induced him to blow his
own trumpet. Be that as it may, his fame was at least
well earned. He had trodden with equal vigour all the
paths of learning, from mathematics and physics to ethics
and poetics. His writings were almost innumerable, and
DEMOCRITUS AND HIS "HYPOTHESIS? 319
we may quote the testimony of Aristotle to the intellec-
tual value of their contents. That most competent and
impartial critic did not hesitate to declare of Democritus
that no one before him had " dealt with growth and change
except in the most superficial way." In this connection he
spoke of him as a man who seemed " to have thought about
everything." And not his piety towards his master Plato,
not the deep gulf of dissent that divided him from the
atomists, prevented him from crowning Democritus and
Leucippus at the expense of Plato with an incomparable
crown of eulogy. Their theory of nature, too — such is the
drift of his remarks — was marred by great defects, but it
was based on an hypothesis ripe with valuable conclusions.
The following was the difference to be noted. The habit
of natural observation induced the faculty of building
hypotheses to connect long series of facts with one another.
That faculty was diminished by predominant intercourse
with mere concepts which alienates us from reality, contracts
our vision on a narrow circle of facts, and leads us through
such straits of observation to the formation of inadequate
theories.
2. With that "hypothesis" we are now concerned.
Its non-hypothetical basis, however, must be our first con-
sideration. It belongs to the theory of knowledge and to
the attempt to solve the problem of matter. We left that
problem in a parlous condition in the hands of Anaxa-
goras, and have lost sight of it since then. It was torn
asunder by claims of equal weight which were at once
unreconciled and irreconcilable.* One of two courses
was open to it — to renounce either qualitative constancy
or the internal inter-dependence of substances. The
alternative left was between one or very few elements of
desultorily changing qualities and numberless primary
substances foreign to 'one another and with no kind of
bond of relationship, nor was there any other choice.
We have already remarked by anticipation that the
school of Abdera came to the rescue here, and put an
end to that fatal dilemma.* The glory of the act, as
* Cp. Bk, II. Ch. IV. § 4-
320 GREEK THINKERS.
Aristotle leads us to believe, belongs to the mind of Leu-
cippus, but we know the epoch-making theory only in the
form in which it was clothed by Democritus. " According
to convention/' he said, " there are a sweet and a bitter, a
hot and a cold, and according to convention there is colour.
In truth there are atoms and a void." Let us first leave
the atoms and the vacuum out of account, and then turn
to the significant negative portion of the passage. We say
"the negative portion," because the stress laid on what
exists in truth can imply nothing else than that the first-
named qualities, temperature, colour, and taste, and, let
us add, smell and sound, are denied objective truth. In
this connection the expression "according to conven-
tion " requires a few words to make it clear. The contrast
between nature and convention was familiar to the intel-
lectual life of that age. Men's conventions — their habits,
customs, and laws—changing and varying from city to
city, from country to country, and from generation to
generation, were then a favourite type of contrast with the
unchangeableness of nature. Thus convention became as it
were the symbol of the changeable, the arbitrary, and the
accidental. With respect to the perceptions of the senses,
there were numerous observations at the disposal of Demo-
critus to convince him of their dependence on the
respective constitutions of individuals, on the variations
in the conditions of the same individual, and, finally,
on the multifarious forms assumed by the same particles
of matter. Thus a jaundiced subject feels a bitter taste
in honey, the degree of cold or heat in air or water
is determined by whether or not we ourselves are warm,
many minerals display different colours before and after
pulverization, and so forth through countless examples.
We who command the resources of a modern vocabulary
have learnt to express these differences in more appropriate
language. We distinguish between relative and absolute
qualities, between subjective and objective truth. Our
analysis has struck deeper roots. It has discovered at least
a subjective element in the so-called objective or primary
ciualities of thines, and, on the other hand, it has left us no
DEMOCRITUS AND GALILEL $21
shadow of doubt that the production of the infinite varieties
of subjective impressions is not an anarchical process, but
is indissolubly bound by strict laws of causation. The
discovery of that subjective element in the objective qualities
of things will occupy us at a later period, when we reach
the so-called Cyrenaic philosophers, of whom Berkeley
and Hume were the intellectual heirs, and we shall
presently see that Democritus, no less than his modern
successors, Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, was familiar
with the second of these discoveries. Nay, even the
indefeasible validity of the law of causation as taught by
Leucippus admitted no exception whatsoever. On the
present occasion, however, Democritus was merely
concerned to give utterance as emphatically and un-
reservedly as possible to a novel truth of fundamental
importance. A striking parallel is supplied by the
manner in which another and perhaps yet greater thinker
seized and expressed the same fundamental principle. The
following words, in which it might be erroneous to trace
the influence of Democritus, occur in the polemic entitled,
" The Assayer," and written * by Galileo Galilei : —
" If I represent a material or bodily substance to myself, I
cannot but represent it as bounded by limits and as possessed of
this or that shape, . . . situated in this or that spot, . . . as at rest
or in motion, as touched or not touched by another body," and so
forth. At the same time he was equally convinced " that those
tastes, smells, colours, etc., in relation to the object in which they
appear to reside are nothing but mere names (nonsieno altro chepuri
nomt)"
Across the twenty-two centuries that stretched between
these giants of thought Democritus and Galilei were both
fully aware that the so-called secondary qualities of things
were more than mere arbitrary assumptions, conventional
opinions, or appellations. Still, their agreement was not
confined to the promulgation of that highly important
distinction. They agreed, too, in proclaiming it in a manner
* 1623 A.D.
VOL. L Y
322 GREEK THINKERS.
which was eminently liable to produce a false and mis-
leading impression, so far, at least, as it was not corrected
by other of their own utterances. And seldom or never,
we may add, have new fundamental truths made their
entry in the world, or even in the minds of their inventors,
in a less objectionable form.
But it is full time to pass from the outward shape of
the doctrine to the more interesting consideration of its
intrinsic meaning. Its appearance meant the disappear-
ance of the stumbling-block at which investigation had
halted so long. The maturity of research had arrived
and it was no longer a matter of vexation that the leaf
which was green to-day should be yellow to-morrow and
brown the day after. The old obstacles were removed
from the path of the inquirer, and he saw with indifference
that the blossom faded and that its fragrance departed, or
that the savour of fruit was turned to gall when it began
to rot. Moreover, Zeno's paradox of the grain of millet
lost its point and perplexed no one any more, for all these
qualities of things were divested of their objective validity,
and were expelled from the realm of reality. Here, we
may remark in parenthesis, we perceive a clue to the
possibility that Leucippus had received from Zeno the
impulse that led to his solution of the problem of matter.
But be that as it may, a true, solid, unchangeable object
of cognition in the corporeal world had at last been
gained, and persistent matter stood out as the genuine
reality in opposition to the volatile and variable qualities
of sensation which we call secondary, and which are not
properly the attributes of objects. The individual bodies,
as the constituent parts of such matter, were distin-
guished from one another by their sizes and shapes alone,
inclusive of their degree of capacity, determined by the
size and shape, to exert an effect on other bodies by impact
and pressure.
These fundamental differences of bodies have been ex-
pressed more clearly by Democritus with respect, too, to their
reciprocal relations. He drew the following distinctions,
which he stamped with particular technical terms. Thus
ATOMISM AND IONIAN PHYSIOLOGY. 323
there were (i) the shape, Including size, we may add ; (2) the
arrangement ; and (3) the position of bodies. When Aris-
totle took up the theme, he visualized these three concep-
tions by examples which he borrowed from the shapes
of the letters in the Greek alphabet. The difference of
shape he illustrated by the opposition of A and N ;
that of arrangement, which Democritus called "contact,"
by the double symbol of AN and NA ; and that of position,
which Democritus called "turning," by the conversion of
N to Z. It must be remarked, however, that Democritus
was not considering the great material structures which rise
into the sphere of visibility and were spoken of by him as
" apparent to the eye ; " he had in view rather the minutest
constituent parts of those structures, which were no longer
perceptible, but were merely to be inferred under the names
of "atoms," or "indivisibles." It may be asked how he
and Leucippus reached their assumption of atoms and
their peculiar employment of the conception of a vacuum ;
nor can this question be answered without reminding the
reader of some part of their former knowledge. For here,
as elsewhere, their theory was the sum of the labours of
their predecessors. Atomism, we may state with all pos-
sible emphasis, was the ripe fruit on the tree of the old
doctrine of matter which had been tended by the Ionian
physiologists.
We revert, then, to the Ionian schools. When Anaxi-
menes explained the changes in the form of his primary
matter by condensation and rarefaction, when he taught
that its fundamental form proceeded intact from each suc-
cessive variation, the thought must plainly have dawned
on him that minute imperceptible particles were there at
work, now coming closer together and now departing from
one another.* Again, when Heraclitus proclaimed his
doctrine of the ceaseless transformation of things, and
declared the uninjured existence of an individual object
to be a mere delusion brought about by the constant
accession of fresh particles in the place of those that had
been severed, he was obviously assuming the presence of
* Bk. I. Ch. I. $ 4.
324 GREEK THINKERS.
invisible parts of matter as well as of their invisible move-
ments.* And finally, when Anaxagoras complained of the
"weakness" of our senses, when he combined in every
corporeal structure an infinite number of " seeds " or of the
minutest primary particles, and made the appearance of the
structure depend on the predominance of one sort of those
particles,t he was stating in unambiguous words the very
doctrine which inference alone enables us to attribute to his
two predecessors. Nor, indeed, do we feel the remotest
surprise at the early appearance of beliefs which must have
been induced every day and all day by common observa-
tion. Take, for instance, the example of a piece of linen or
cloth which has been soaked by the rain and dried by the
returning sun ; the watery particles with which it was
drenched have taken their departure, though no eye saw
them departing. Or take the example of a scent-bottle
which has perfumed the room in which it is kept, though no
one has seen the particles that convey the fragrance distribu-
ting themselves through the room, while its contents have
nevertheless been gradually diminished. These experiences
and others of equally frequent occurrence secured the admis-
sion of invisible ways or paths besides the invisible particles
and movements, breaking through the apparently uninter-
rupted consistency of bodies. We would further remind
our readers that the kindred conception of vacant spaces
emptied of matter, which was probably due to the Pytha-
goreans, had already been known to Parmenides, and had
formed an objective of his energetic attack.J
These two agents, invisible moving particles and
invisible vacant interstices, comprised, as it were, the raw
material for the atomistic theory. It derived its form
and shape from two ideal factors. We refer to the twin
postulates of matter which we have already discussed to
satiety, and which we may claim with equal right as the
contribution of the philosophers of Ionia. Parmenides was
indeed the first to have moulded them to a definite
shape, but the postulate of quantitative constancy was
* Bk. L Ch. I. § 5. f Bk. II. Ch. IV. § 2.
t Bk. II. Ch. II. § 4, and cp. § 5 below.
EMPIRICAL BASIS OF ATOMISM. 325
the key to the whole doctrine of primary matter, and had
originated and controlled all the attempts at moulding this
doctrine from Thales downwards. With regard to the second
postulate of qualitative constancy, we have already dis-
covered its earliest traces in Anaximenes ; next, we saw it
developed to its full extent in Anaxagoras, who agreed with
the Eleatics in no other point, and was diametrically opposed
to them on every important question, whereas Empedocles,
who was demonstrably a disciple of the school of Parme-
nides, laid far less stress on that postulate, and employed
it in a far less perfect form. When we reach Leucippus
we find that he clung with the utmost rigour to both these
postulates, the fulfilment of which was correctly conceived
as the indispensable condition of the steady process of
nature in the kingdom of corporeal existence. Still, the
rigour displayed by Leucippus did not mislead him either
to deny nature like Parmenides or to do violence to her
like Anaxagoras. We may reserve our opinion as to
whether or not he was aware that even these most important
postulates are at bottom nothing but questions addressed
to nature by the inquirer ; nor are we certain that he sup-
ported the new doctrine merely by sound conclusions drawn
from empiric facts. For we cannot neglect the temptation
that besets many great discoverers. They are not content
to build their most splendid achievements on the only trust-
worthy foundation of knowledge — experience ; they prefer
to try to increase their certainty by resting them on pre-
tended necessities of thought. Something of this kind might
not unreasonably be expected from the pupil of Zeno the
metaphysician. But be that as it may — and we shall revert
to it later — the one decisive factor is still lacking to com-
plete our account of the origin of the atomic theory. We
have marked the conceptions of the indestructibility and
unchangeableness of matter contained in its twin postulates,
and we have now to add a physical insight of the utmost
value. We refer to the recognition of the impenetrability
of matter. Experiments of the kind, one of which we saw
attempted by Anaxagoras,* must have led to_the promotion
* Bk. II. Ch. IV. § i /».
*26 GREEK T PI INKERS.
\j
of this quality as a universal attribute of substances. The
resistance offered to every attempt at compression by the
air contained in the inflated bag selected as an example
by Anaxagoras must have led to the perception of a pal-
pable and rapidly increasing resistance. And with that
perception a fresh difficulty arose. It was a difficulty which
could not have arisen as long as the homogeneous character
of the material world, so far from being known, was obscured
and disguised by the difference of the states of aggregation.
When the air is at rest, or nearly so, no obstacle worth
mentioning, certainly no impassable obstacle, opposes the
movement of our body. But then came experiments of
the kind tried by Anaxagoras, to which may be added the
test applied by Empedocles to confirm the pressure of the
atmosphere and the theories of matter resting doubtless
on kindred observations, especially that of Anaximenes,
which deprived the difference in the states of aggregation
of its fundamental significance. With these facts and
doctrines that difficulty could no longer be overlooked.
It was no longer feasible to doubt that one was dealing
with impenetrable matter, whether air, or water, or solid
bodies, and the question necessarily arose — How was
movement within that region possible at all? Other
questions suggested themselves as the corollaries of this
problem. Whence came, it was asked, the remarkable differ-
ences of resistance offered to one and the same movement
in different media ? How did it happen that a flying arrow
met with no noticeable opposition from the air, but was
impassably resisted by a rock ? At this point the theory
of a vacuum, wliich, as we have seen, was not wholly new,
afforded a welcome outlet to the bewilderment of thought.
The material world, it was argued, was not continuous ;
rather it consisted of separate impenetrable nuclei divided
from one another by empty penetrable interstices. Inas-
much and in so far as one impenetrable nucleus could give
way to another, therefore, and to that extent, motion
was possible. And such motion would take place with
case or difficulty or not at all, according as the constitution
and the distances of such nuclei rendered it easy, difficult,
SERVICES OF THE ATOMIC DOCTRINE.
or impossible for one to give way to another. Those atoms
or units of matter were actually inseparable, though not
ideally indivisible or unextended in space. Their minute-
ness caused them to escape observation, and it was their
indestructibility, unchangeableness, and impenetrability
which really invested matter with those qualities. The
complex was the aggregate of its simple parts, and the
shape and size of the primary particles gave the key to
the attributes of the composite body.
3. Words fail us to express the value and importance
of this great doctrine. We must begin by speaking of the
services which the theory was calculated to render, and
which it actually has rendered, to the cause of modern
science. It will then be time enough to consider the im-
perfections of its oldest form and of its earliest employ-
ment. It explains spatial movement of every kind. It
makes it compatible with the impenetrability of matter,
and it unravels the processes of motion In every sort and
degree, whether they are enacted in universal space or in
a drop of water. Its clear light is shed on the differences
of the three states of aggregation. The same groups of
atoms or molecules of a fluid are contracted under the
influence of cold, and coalesce in a solid body ; they are
segregated under the influence of heat and volatilized in
a gas. Nothing but the external and superficial appear-
ance contradicts any more the indestructibility of matter.
The growth of an apparently new material structure is
revealed as the union of a hitherto distributed complexus
of atoms, its decay as the separation of a complexus
hitherto united. We advance from the mechanics of masses
— the relations of movement and equilibrium in com-
prehensive groups of atoms — to the mechanics of atoms
and of the groups immediately superior to them, the
minutest atomic combinations, or the molecules with which
chemistry deals. The proportions of weight and volume
in such a combination of several substances would often
be numerous, but would never show arbitrary variations,
and this fact of their fixed recurrence is explained by
modern science by the theory of equivalents, or atomic
328 GREEK THINKERS.
weights, which meant that a fixed number of atoms of one
kind entered in combination with a fixed number of atoms
of another kind or of several other kinds. The qualities of
sense in a body, and in part its physical attributes, are
necessarily dependent on the relations of position and the
conditions of movement in its minutest parts. Nothing,
then, would be more natural than a change of colour, for
instance, in the same collection of similar atoms according
to the disposition of the atomic groups or molecules. Thus
by allotropy common phosphorus is yellow and amorphous
phosphorus is red. The same observation holds good of
chemical combinations. By the law of isomery the qualities
vary according to the structure of the compound though
the same atoms be mixed in precisely the same proportions.
" According to the manner in which the atoms are disposed,"
we may add, in the words of Fechner, "the object will
assume different qualities in different directions (differences
of expansion, foliation, hardness, and so forth)/' But the
atomic theory applied to chemistry is not as simple as it
sounds. The relation of the qualities of a compound to
those of its constituent parts can never be quite perspicuous.
Deep-going changes take place at the entry of substances
into a chemical combination. They are condensed, for
instance, or their latent heat is released, or some other
result is effected with all the consequences it entails. We
have no right, therefore, to expect that the qualities of the
compound will be the sum of those of its ingredients, and
neither more nor less. John Stuart Mill, for example, was
not the only great thinker who has been startled into
questioning the perfectibility of chemistry by such facts as
that the qualities of water are not merely the total of those
of oxygen and hydrogen, nor the colour of blue sulphate
of copper a mere mixture of the colours of sulphuric acid
and copper. These facts, however, as we have just shown
reason to believe, by no means contradict the view that
the atoms in a compound remain precisely the same as
they were before they entered it, and as they will be after
they emerge from it Even now direct proof can be offered
of the continuous unchanged condition of some of their
DEDUCTION IN CHEMISTRY. 329
qualities, and recent science has begun to smooth the way
for the accumulation of fresh evidence of that kind, as well
as for the more comprehensive illustration of the causal
dependence of the qualities of a compound on those of
their constituents. Thus the specific heat of elements
persists in their combinations, the power of carbon to
refract light is maintained in carbon compounds, and other
proofs of the connection between the qualities of a compound
and those of its parts are constantly coming to light. We
should add that it is occasionally possible to foretell the
qualities of a compound not yet experimentally produced.
Without multiplying this evidence, enough will have been
said to show that chemistry, resting as it does wholly on
the atomic theory, approximates more and more closely to
that stage of perfection in which deduction or inference
replaces the crude method of empiricism. Quite recently,
indeed, it has succeeded in deriving physical qualities of
elements, such as their extensibility, fusibility, and volatility,
from the weight and volume of the respective atoms ; and
even in rivalling the astounding feats of astronomy, by
foretelling the existence and the nature of elements, and
in subsequently confirming its predictions by actual dis-
covery. Here, then, we pause. We have seen enough of
the record of the atomic theory to appreciate Cournot's
dictum to the full measure of its truth : " None of the ideas
that antiquity has bequeathed to us has had a greater or
even a similar success." Nor is the modern atomic theory
a mere sister-doctrine to that of Leucippus and Democritus :
it is rather its direct descendant, flesh of its flesh and
bone of its bone. It is difficult to determine how far
Galilei, the founder of modern natural science,* who was
certainly acquainted with the teachings of Democritus, was
influenced by them, and how far he thought out anew for
himself some of their fundamental principles. But we
know that Ren6 Descartes t was obliged to meet the reproach
that that portion of his theory was nothing but a " patch-
work of tags from Democritus," and Pierre Gassendi^ the
French dean and prebendary, who finally introduced the
* Born 1564. t Born 1596, J Born 1592.
330 GREEK THINKERS.
atomic theory in modern physics, was directly inspired by
the study of the teachings, writings, and the life of
Epicurus, who walked in the footsteps of Leucippus and
Democritus, and contributed very materially to their
better understanding and appreciation.
The atomic theory looks back on a long and eventful
history, which has lately been narrated in a manner as
pleasant as it is thoughtful, though, unfortunately, the
narrative does not take account of the rudiments of the
doctrine. It is not our intention to discuss its changes
and transformations, nor yet the objections that have been
levelled at it by the so-called dynamic philosophers. We
shall confine our attention to a few of the chief differences
between ancient and modern atomism. Contemporary
physics no longer admit the conception of a vacuum.
Ether has taken its place, and the assumption has shown
itself of far greater service in the explanation of natural
processes. But in the decisive point before us both
conceptions are found completely to coincide. Ether, no
less than the vacuum, is absolutely penetrable, since abso-
lute elasticity is ascribed to it ; the impenetrable substances
are imbedded in it, as it were ; it surrounds them and
encloses them. A second distinction with still more
important consequences is the following. The chemistry
of our day does its work with seventy-odd elements, and
modern chemists believe — especially since the discovery of
"the natural series" of the elements — that their number
will be considerably diminished in the future, and that the
whole collection will in all probability ultimately be reduced
to a single primary element. Leucippus, on the contrary,
had felt himself compelled to assume an infinite variety
of the atoms in respect to their size and shape, though
in no other relation. His hypothesis accordingly proved
more serviceable than it appeared in the conception of
its author, and this is not his least title to renown. The
number of qualitative differences due merely to variations
in the number and disposition of the atoms combined
on each occasion in one structure was proved incalculably
larger than was dreamed of by Leucippus and Democritus.
COUNTLESS DIFFERENCES OF SHAPE. 331
Alcohol and sugar, for example, are so distinct in appear-
ance and effect that no one could ever have conjectured that
both are compounded out of the same three kinds of atoms
merely in different proportions. Muscarine, again, is a deadly
poison, and neurine Is a substance to be found in all animal
and vegetable cells, and yet the one differs from the other
merely by a single atom's weight of oxygen. These and
similar facts were as foreign to them as that the inexhausti-
ble multiplicity of organic structures Is for the most part to
be referred to four different kinds of atoms in their various
proportions and dispositions. The question leaps to the
lips, why, in that case, those atomists were not satisfied
with a more modest hypothesis ; and it is reasonable to
reply that their exaggeration was a kind of reaction against
the popular and unscientific conception of the material
world, and, further, in the instance of Democritus, against
the doctrine of matter associated with the name of
Anaxagoras. " There is no need," cried the authors of the
new theory to their opponents, "there is no need of your
assumption of innumerable qualitative differences ; not a
single such difference need really be assumed. Differ-
ences in the size and shape of the primary substance
are in themselves completely adequate to explain the
inexhaustible multitude of the differences of phenomena."
With this declaration an immense step was taken towards
simplifying fundamental hypotheses. At a single blow
the lavishness of nature had been checked on the qualita-
tive side. Was she also to be impelled to thrift on the
quantitative side ? At first there was no necessity for this
measure. The whole object of the founders of the doctrine
was to adapt the new hypothesis to the most ambitious
and even to exaggerated demands, and it was surely not
too much to expect that nature would display in this im-
portant instance the same wealth and lavishness which she
showed in other respects. Measure and limit would only
be imposed by the gradual growth of positive knowledge.
Moreover, though the theory of Democritus recognized
isolated instances of double atoms, yet in general it
excluded the conception of groups of atoms or molecules*
332 GREEK THINKERS.
The atom itself had to fulfil the task that is performed in
modern science by the molecule, and its richer variety was
an obvious condition. We do not dispute that this part
of the hypothetical structure may have been equipped with
too generous a hand, but we would urge that at least the
wealth was not squandered, but was applied in the most
lucrative manner possible. All physical differences of
simple substances were referred without any exception to
those differences of size and shape. Democritus felt him-
self on sure enough ground to dispense with any other
assumption of distinctions. It is true that we are in-
sufficiently informed on some points important to this
inquiry. But we are acquainted with his explanation of
specific gravity, which he derived entirely from the greater
or less density of the material structure. If of two bodies
with the same volume one were lighter than the other, the'
one would contain a larger vacuum than the other. Here,
however, a difficulty arose. According to the premise the
hardness of the body would likewise have to increase and
decrease with its density, and with its density alone. And
some explanation was required for instances where the hard-
ness and the specific gravity did not go together. Thus
iron, for instance, is harder than lead, but lead is heavier
than iron. A further ingenious expedient here came to
the philosopher's aid. He accounted for this contradiction
by fixing the responsibility on a difference in the dis-
tribution of the vacuum. A piece of lead, Democritus
contended, contained more body and less vacuum than a
piece of iron of the same size, otherwise its weight could not
be greater. But the distribution of the vacuum in the lead
must, he argued, be more equable, the solid matter must be
interrupted by more numerous though by smaller empty
interstices, otherwise its hardness could not be less.
4. We have no exact information as to which bodies in
the theory of Democritus were simple and which were
complex. The rays of enlightenment break through at
two points only of what we may -term his physiology of
the senses. In the light of those rays, we may assert with
confidence at least one negative conclusion. The infinite
SIMPLE AND COMPLEX SUBSTANCES. 333
multiplicity which he recognized in the sizes and shapes of
atoms did not arise from his incompetence to perceive or
to conjecture a complex in an apparently simple body.
Thus his eminently noteworthy theory of colours, which,
parenthetically remarked, is in dire need of fresh expert
treatment, started from the assumption of four primary
colours — white, black, red, and green. These, with the
exception of green, which had taken the place of yellow,
were likewise the primary colours in the scheme of Em-
pedocles. All other colours were designated as mixed,
and we see that all the numerous bodies which were not
equipped with one of the four primary colours must have
been of a composite nature. That is to say, they must
have included other than merely homogeneous elementary
particles. Passing to Democritus* attempt to explain
the difference in the impressions of taste, we find that it
was based in principle on the differences in the shape, and
secondarily on those of the size of the atoms contained in
the respective substances. Pungency he derived from
sharp or pointed particles of matter, sweetness from the
rounded form of moderately big particular atoms, and the
same doctrine was applied to tartness, saltness, bitterness,
and all other impressions of the palate. First, let us
advert to these explanatory attempts, based on mere
vague resemblances between impressions of taste and
touch. That they were fallacious is beyond dispute, and
their clumsiness may excite our surprise. But our readers
may be inclined to temper their justice with mercy if
they recollect that practically the same theories of the
differences of taste as depending on the differences in the
shapes of particular atoms were current in the eighteenth
century, and enjoyed a well-nigh unchallenged authority,
as we learn from Alexander von Humboldt's "Essay
on the stimulated nervous and muscular fibre/' The
point on which our interest is concentrated, however,
is rather the relation of those theories to the doctrine of
simple and complex substances. The statements about
the atomic forms underlying the several tastes give rise at
first to the impression that each of the countless "juices"
334 GREEK THINKERS.
or materials of taste Is composed of homogeneous atoms
possessing the size and shape required for the purpose.
But this, we plainly perceive, was not the opinion of
Democritus. His own view of the mixed colours cries
against it. The homogeneity of the atoms was admissible
in the case of white salt, but it was not admissible in
that of yellow-gold honey or of brownish-yellow human
bile. It is true that he must have referred the sweetness
of the one and the bitterness of the other to the presence
of the atomic forms by which those impressions were
produced. But yellow and brown were mixed colours
in his theory, and he must accordingly have inferred that
honey and bile alike contained atoms of other forms as
well. The true meaning of those statements should there-
fore be expressed as follows : In all substances of mixed
colours at least the kind of atoms which lends them their
specific taste is merely the predominant and preponderant
kind, and without wasting more words on this subject,
Theophrastus, who is our best authority for Democritus'
theory of sensation, relates that this doctrine was expressly
taught by him.
We pass from individual atoms to atomic groups.
These were regarded by Democritus as combinations or
concatenations, in the literal sense of that word. Their
contact in his eyes was the result of their being linked or
"hooked" together, and the infinite variety of shapes
which the atoms possessed in the theory of Democritus
helped him to account for such processes. He drew in-
structive distinctions between the gregarious capacities of
his atoms. Some were unsociable particles, affording no
handle for combination except by enclosing them in a
shell ; others were supplied with hooks and eyes, with
balls and sockets, with involuted edges, with mortice and
dovetail, or with some other of the countless means of
rendering them attachable, some at one and others at two
points. This last distinction, with certain similar differences,
was presumably intended to account for the greater or less
degree of mobility in the particular atoms, their faster or
looser combination, and for the corresponding nature of
COSMOGONY OF THE ATOMISTS. 335
the complex body in each instance. The last echo of
this mode of explaining chemical/combinations was heard
in Descartes and Huyghens, and since then its voice has
grown unfamiliar. But at the same time we should
remember that the conceptions of chemical affinity which
have partially replaced this crude mechanical view are
equally inadequate to their task ; that they enjoy their
existence as mere conveniences of expression, as plausible
fictions, or, to quote a modern chemical philosopher, as
phrases "in the room of a clear conception." We may
further remark that contemporary science is more and
more under the sway of the doctrine of contact — albeit
through the medium of ether — instead of that of attraction,
to explain the union of particles, a revolution of thought
which may be traced to Huyghens' important " Discourse
on the Cause of Gravity" (1690). But, despite these con-
siderations, we might still apostrophize Democritus in
Pascal's dictum anent the Cartesian theory of matter:
" Roughly we may say that this happens through shape
and motion, but to presume these and to set the machine
at work . . , that is uncertain, useless, and idle trouble."
Let us now see how out of the infinitesimally small arose
the infinitely great The atoms fit for combination flit
about in empty space and occasionally meet one another.
They are woven to larger wholes till they gradually form a
shell which encloses and imprisons the hosts of free, errant
atoms, and thus, severing themselves from the infinite
vacuum, they finally become a separate world or cosmos, of
which there are infinitely many. These are constructed
where all the conditions favourable to their growth are
found, and they are destroyed and revert to their constituent
parts as soon as the conditions cease to be favourable. But
for a cosmos such as that familiar to our experience the
presence of enormous atomic groups and their combination
on the largest scale do not suffice ; the discrimination of
the substances on an equal scale is also requisite. No
mere conglomeration of vagabond atoms, but a collection
of groups of matter few in number but wholly or nearly
homogeneous, is the spectacle that meets our eyes— heaven
V,6 GREEK THINKERS.
\j «j
and earth, and the wide expanse of ocean. The old riddle
was set to the atomists, and they found a new, though not
a completely new, answer. Empedocles had constructed the
universe by the attraction of like to like, and his solution
was now revived, though in a somewhat altered form. For
Democritus also recognized a regulative principle in the
universe in the endeavour of like substances to consort with
like. But he did not dismiss it as inaccessible to explana-
tion or as an ultimate fact requiring none. He sought to
understand it and to discover its cause ; and, seeing that
the problem was material, he looked for a physical or a
mechanical cause. He saw homogeneous substances collected
together in groups ; one particle of earth lay next to another,
one drop of water found a sister-drop, and these observations
ranged themselves in his mind with the fact that the atoms
or atomic groups which determined the qualities of earth,
water, and so forth, had once been united and agglomerated
in immense masses. Thus he found himself confronted
with a problem which he was at pains to solve. His
solution may be expressed in axiomatic language as
follows : Particles of equal size and shape have an equal
power of reaction, and particles of different sizes and
shapes have a relatively different power of reaction.
Reflecting on the great processes which have lent our
world its present appearance, Democritus recalled the
effects produced by the winnowing-fan or by the tide
breaking on the seashore. The heterogeneous grains
swung to and fro by the farmer with the winnowing-fan
in his hand would be sifted and separated owing, in the
opinion of Democritus, to the consequent current of air,
" Lentils lie next to lentils, barley to barley, and wheat to
wheat." And a similar effect was to be remarked on the
seashore, where "the movement of the waves flung long
stones next to long stones, and round pebbles next to
round pebbles."
The vortex of atoms played in cosmic processes the
part of the winnowing-fan and the tide. The sidewise
contact of moving chains of atoms in any part of space
produced a rotatory or whirling movement which affected
SOURCE OF THEIR DOCTRINE. 337
the two chains in the first instance, and next extended
itself to the neighbouring tissues of atoms till it finally
sifted and severed all the agglomerated masses. The
axiom mentioned above governed this process of separa-
tion in so far that atoms of similar size and shape reacted
in a similar manner on the impulse they received, the
resistance increasing and diminishing according to the size
of the primary particles. Nor was it only the attraction
of like substances — watery particles situated next to
watery, particles of air next to particles of air, and so
forth — that was traced to this cause. It accounted further
for the order of the masses thus agglomerated, inasmuch
as their resistance to the motory impulse would be weaker
or stronger according as the particles were smaller in size
and more mobile in shape, or larger in size and less mobile
in shape. Therefore the mass of earth, composed of the
atoms which were larger and less mobile, formed the
central point, and the ether, consisting of the smaller and
rounded particles of fire, formed the exterior shell of the
cosmos that was thus composed. It is about ten years
since this cosmogonic doctrine was correctly interpreted
by two independent investigators, each of whom succeeded
in clearing away the accumulated parasites of centuries of
error, and in restoring the thoughts of Leucippus and
Democritus in their pristine purity. But the admirable
services of these two writers were defective at one point.
Neither of them noted that the use of the vortex as the
vehicle of cosmic order was by no means an innovation on
the part of the atomists. We have met with similar
assumptions in Anaxagoras as well as in Empedocles, and
we can name the common source from which all these
speculations were derived with at least a high degree of
probability. We refer to Anaximander of Miletus, the
patriarch of cosmogonic speculation. His were the as-
sumptions based on experiments with the slingstone which
we mentioned in the first chapter of this work, and the
Anaximandrian parentage of this theory is vouched for in
a passage from Aristotle. But important as these signs
of agreement are, the differences that meet us in the
VOL. I. %
338 GREEK THINKERS.
employment of this aid to cosmogony are no less remarkable.
Anaxagoras traced the first Impulse of the rotatory move-
ment to an immaterial or at least a half-material principle.
The masses which had hitherto been huddled together in
wild confusion were extricated by that principle, relieved of
their internal friction, and enabled to follow the bias of their
specific gravity and to sort themselves in due order. We
cannot determine at what point Empedocles discovered the
first impulse in his process of motion, which likewise pro-
duced a vortex and caused the separation of the material
mass conglomerated hitherto in the one "divine ball."
Certain it is, however, that his mechanical process served
the purpose of Discord — one of his two powers not inherent
in matter. But no trace of this dependence was preserved by
the atomists. The cosmogonic process was the means to
no preconceived end whatsoever ; it did not spring from the
intention of a Nous forming the universe, nor was it the
emanation of any other power regulating and controlling
phenomena. It was due wholly and solely to natural forces,
in the strictest sense of the word, which were immanent in
matter itself. It was an assumption purely due to the need
of scientific explanation, and its only object was to supply
without reservation or prejudice a satisfactory answer to
the question, how could it happen that here and there in
the infinite expanse of empty space, and at this and that
point in the extent of infinite time, there should have
occurred that severance and disposition of material masses
of which the world that surrounds us is obviously no
isolated instance? We must pause here to illustrate the
misunderstandings that accrued at an early date to a
portion of the atomists' answer.
In our opening remarks in this context we spoke
of atoms flitting about in the vacuum. We related
how, in the theories of Leucippus and Democritus, hosts
of such atoms would meet together, how those suited
for combination would then be combined, and how those
not so suited would partly at least be kept together by a
shell of atomic tissues, and thus preserved from total
dispersion. Finally, we have considered the mobile
THE COSMOGONIC VORTEX, 339
complexes of atoms whose sidewise Impact on one
another produced the cosmogonic vortex. Two questions
here arise, one of detail and the other of principle. The
first relates to the vortex and to the effects ascribed to it.
For these effects were the precise contrary of what they
should have been by the laws of physics. The centrifugal
force which is released by a rotatory movement is doubtless
admirably adapted to sift an agglomerated mass of matter.
But, as every centrifugal machine would show, it is the
heaviest substances which are hurled to the greatest
distance. Anaximander, whose theory we have just men-
tioned, would appear to have been aware of this, and the
essentially deductive bias of his genius drew direct inferences
from his observations of everyday centrifugal movements
to the effects of similar forces which he conceived to be at
work in the formation of the world. The successors of
Anaximander would appear to have been alarmed at the
audacity of thought which connected the immensely great
with the minutely small. So in adopting the hypothesis of
rotation they looked for more exact parallels in their earthly
experience to the cosmogonic vortex. Such a parallel they
discovered in the region of meteorological phenomena, and
they were promptly misled by their discovery. An eddy
of comparative strength, like that not unfrequently produced
in Greece by the summer north winds, would carry away
lighter objects, though it was too weak to lift heavier ones
as well. Further, the motion of every whirlwind takes
an inward direction as it approaches the ground in con-
sequence of the friction there ensuing, so that a heap of
matter is actually deposited at its centre which remains
unmoved. Thus the erroneous belief might arise that such
consequences were inherent to a vortex-like movement as
such, and that they must have accompanied the motion of
the supposed cosmic vortex as well.
Of far greater importance is the question of the causes
of all these movements and inhibitions of movements. It
was a question which perplexed thought at an early date,
and gave rise to the most notable protests with which the
atomic theory has had to contend. To a certain, indeed
340 GREEK THINKERS.
to a very great, extent, a direct, satisfactory, and luminous
answer was available.. The factors borrowed from experi-
ence and conceived as efficacious in those cosmical pro-
cesses were impact, pressure, counter-shock, and resistance,
increasing with the mass. It may be fatal to the atomic
theory in its customary form that it implies the resilience
of atom from atom, and thus assumes the elasticity of abso-
lutely hard bodies. But this has nothing to do with the
question of principle here concerned. Those factors further
proved themselves more amply adapted to explain the earlier
phases of the cosmic process than a superficial view might
lead us to suppose. For even the atoms flitting in the
vacuum might have met other atoms in the infinite extent
of time past, and thus have been set in motion by the blows
they received. This expedient, however, could by no means
be regarded as final. It supposed that A was struck by
B, B by C, C by D, and so forth, and that these shocks
set them in motion. But when philosophy began to trace
the process backw.ards, it was inevitably brought to the
question of the starting-point of the series, however
numerous its members may have been. The reply offered
by Democritus to these interrogatories displeased many
succeeding thinkers, and we may now inquire into the
justice of their displeasure. His explanation was that
such atomic motion was original, eternal, and without
beginning, and that it would be a wild-goose chase to
seek for the beginning or the cause of a process that
never began. Hereupon he was told that his explana-
tion was at variance with the principle of universal
causation so emphatically proclaimed by him and his
master, that he was exalting causelessness and accident
to a controlling rank in the universe, that he was placing
chance at the head of the universal process, and so forth,
and so forth. The recriminations have been sustained
from the time of Aristotle till our own day, and in order
to decide fairly between the combatants we must first get
a clear idea of what we mean by "cause." If we take its
German equivalent Ursache^ we shall see at a glance how
its ambiguity may have arisen and have produced this
AMBIGUITY OF THE WORD "CAUSE." 341
ancient conflict* For Ursache may mean a Sacke — a thing
in the widest sense of the term, a being or substance of
any kind — which was present before a phenomenon and
called it into existence. Demrocritus was evidently fully
entitled to decline to search for such a cause of an
aboriginal process. For if he regarded the atoms as
existing from all eternity, he was certainly not obliged by
his belief in causation to send something yet more aboriginal
in advance of that aboriginal thing. But the word
Ursache has a second meaning which is the predominant
meaning in scientific usage to-day. Briefly stated, we
understand by the word " cause " the totality of conditions
by which an event is produced. It is irrelevant whether the
conditions are partially at least exterior to the object which
forms the scene of the event, or whether they are exclusively
forces or qualities immanent in it and determining the kind
of its action. In this second meaning of the word the
question of the cause even of an aboriginal event is admis-
sible to research. In the present instance such a question
would lead us to a definition of the quality of the atoms
which enables them to move previously to *any impulse
from without and independently of it. And if the answer
were to satisfy more rigid demands, it would have to
include the regulative law as well as the quality ; in other
words, the strength and direction of that aboriginal motion.
Democritus fulfilled the first but not the second part of
this demand. He declared the original or natural condition
of atoms to be a state of motion, but he stopped short at
the problem of the direction and strength with which
they moved. Nor indeed could he have done otherwise,
inasmuch as no material of observation was placed at his
disposal. In his world as in ours matter had long since
emerged from its aboriginal period in which the desired
law of motion could alone have been studied* The
philosophy of Democritus, moreover, was especially hostile
to such study, in consequence of the vortex from which
he dated the beginning of the world as it exists. And,
these considerations apart, where was he to look for a
* Or cp. the derivation of Fr. chose and Ital cosa from Lat. causa*
342 GREEK THINKERS.
particle of matter which in the course of the ages had
never yet collided with other particles, nor suffered any
impact or pressure ? N"ay, even if he had found it, and if it
had proved amenable to observation, and fit in itself to yield
up that law of aboriginal motion, how, we may ask, could
Democritus have prosecuted the inquiry, ignorant as he
was of its past history in mechanics or of its lack of such
a past ? Thus his rejection of that demand as superfluous
and vain was not merely pardonable but inevitable. He
was content with declaring that the atoms had been in
motion since all eternity, and no one who is conversant or
duly familiarized with the foundation and the course of his
philosophy will doubt the legitimacy of that declaration.
Leucippus and his disciple were concerned with the present
phenomena of the universe, and their especial attention was
given to the preliminary condition of those phenomena, and
to attempts to explain the composition and origin of a
cosmos such as ours and the separation and disposition
of its constituent material parts. As genuine scientific
thinkers, working from the known to the unknown, they
were at pains to construct the minimum basis of assumption
on which, together with the qualities of matter discovered
by empirical methods, they might construct the universe
and devise a reasonable theory of the activity of its
component parts. It was one of these assumptions that
the primary particles of matter had originally existed in a
state of motion and not in a state of rest. By this means
they could meet one another, by this means they could
combine with one another, by this means the aggregates
of atoms which had met in a specific way could and must
produce a vortex, and so forth. But there was no cause
whatever to make statements or to form conjectures as to
the character of that motion. It was not necessary to the
nature of the problem, nor could it be justified on any other
ground. This refusal to meet his opponents on their own
terms, In the midst of so many instances of temerity, does
credit to the scientific moderation and self-restraint of the
philosophers of Abdera.
At this point, however, our progress is obstructed by
PREJUDICES OF METAPHYSICS. 343
various pretended metaphysical difficulties which are really
the rooted prejudices of metaphysics. Their roots strike
so deep that we should be tempted to call them ineradicable
in the face of the fact that a famous natural philosopher of
recent times has once more spoken of the problem of a bond
between matter and motion as one of the insoluble " riddles
of the universe.*' And that, we may add, is the least
pretentious disguise in which our apparent difficulty has
clothed itself. For all ultimate facts of creation are at
bottom riddles of the universe in as far as they are in-
accessible to what we call explanation. The existence
of matter itself is as great a riddle as its motion. But
when we come to the idea that the "conception" of matter
contains something that makes it particularly difficult —
not to say, with most metaphysicians, impossible — to
associate it with primordial movement, then, we venture to
assert, we are presented with one of the most remarkable
of the illusions to which the credulous mind of man has
ever fallen prone. In this, as in other similar difficulties or
impossibilities of thought, we see nothing but an effect of
habit. The unique feature to be remarked in this habit
of thought which usurps the dignity of a 'principle of
thought is the fact that we can point to its source with
absolute definiteness in the extremely narrow limits of our
faculties of perception. So far as we are acquainted with
the universe, matter in motion, and not matter at rest, is
the practically unexceptional rule. The whole treasury of
science does not contain a single genuine instance of more
than relative rest. The luminary which we inhabit and
those revealed to our sight are involved in ceaseless
velocity. They are as exempt from rest as the atoms and
molecules of which every bodily substance is composed.
But by an accident of vision we are not directly aware
of the circumgyration by which we and our planet and
all that it contains are borne through space. And another
accident of vision withdraws from our limited senses the
unceasing circulation of the particles of matter. Thus, by
this combination of accidents, our eyes are almost exclu-
sively accustomed to substances of a moderate size, and
344 GREEK THINKERS.
such a substance, it is to be noted, when we cease to
regard it as a part of its whole or as the whole of its
parts, will frequently produce the impression of a permanent
peace, though there is merely a temporary truce to its motory
forces. Here and here alone, we presume, is the root of
that remarkable opinion which grew to dogmatic strength,
and which presumed that a state of rest was more natural
to matter than a state of motion, or even that it was
absurd to consider motion as a part of the primordial
endowment of matter.
' From the dawn of modern times a little band of
chosen spirits set themselves to oppose this dogma. Giordano
Bruno and Francis Bacon were united in this purpose, and
Leibniz and Spinoza repudiated the authority of Descartes
as emphatically as eminent philosophers of the nineteenth
century. One of these, John Tyndall, coined a beautiful
phrase : " If Matter starts as a ' beggar/ it is because the
Jacobs of theology have deprived it of its birthright." We
would correct but a single word in this dictum. Instead of
theology we should blame metaphysics, which has so fre-
quently fanned and flattered the prejudices of mankind.
For it better accords with the omnipotence and the omni-
science ascribed by the theologians to the Deity that He
should have given movement to matter at the outset than
that He should have added it as a kind of afterthought.
Democritus, at any rate, was not troubled by such questions.
He flourished before the times when matter was regarded as
" an inert mass " or " a quiescent load " obedient to exterior
impulses alone. The future still guarded " that invention
of the human intellect," to speak in the words of Bacon,
"spoliated and passive matter." It was unknown to the
hylozoists, and it seems proper to point out that the
Atomists too, though they were disposed to regard the
universe as a mechanism, were yet fortunately preserved
from this fallacious generalization founded on the mechanics
of earthly masses. In this instance as in others they were
the heirs of their great forefathers, the physiologists of Ionia.
5. It is more common, we admit, to dwell on the debt
of gratitude which the authors of Atomism owed to the
ATOMISM AND RLE A. 345
Eleatic philosophers. Our readers will already be in a
position to decide with approximate accuracy for them-
selves the extent and the nature of the obligation, but we
need not hesitate to quote the view expressed on the
subject by Theophrastus, the most important of ancient
authorities.
" Leucippus," he wrote, " who was a native of Elea or Miletus,
was familiar with the doctrine of Parmenides, but did not follow in
his footsteps nor in those of Xenophanes, but, methinks, pursued
the opposite road. For while they represented the universe as uni-
form, moveless, changeless, and limited, and turned aside from the
bare question of non-being [i.e. the vacuum], Leucippus presumes an
infinite number of primary bodies, the atoms, involved in ceaseless
movement. He declares their forms to be infinite in number,
because " — not to mention other reasons — " he perceived in the
objects incessant birth and incessant change. Further, he did
not regard being as more real than non-being, and he recognizes
in both equally the cause of every process."
Without reading into the introductory words the state-
ment, which we believe to be untrue, that Leucippus was a
pupil of Parmenides, we may remark that he would have
proved as unsatisfactory a disciple to that sage as Voltaire
must have been to his Jesuit fathers. But the passage is
more instructive in displaying the error of those who
account the second postulate of matter as the creation of
Parmenides. The fundamental contradictions so justly and
emphatically mentioned by Theophrastus do not prevent
them from assuming the far-reaching dependence of the
atomistic on the Eleatic doctrine. We should exhaust
the patience of our readers -if we were to recapitulate the
grounds on which we have recognized both postulates of
matter as the product and property of the Ionian school.
Still, we are anxious to give Parmenides the full credit of
having formulated them strictly — a credit, indeed, which
is not inconsiderably diminished by the vain attempt to
support them by d priori arguments. It was not entirely
to no purpose that the Eleatic metaphysicians exercised
their intellect in great efforts of abstraction. The accept-
ance of the second postulate of the qualitative constancy
346 GREEK THINKERS.
of matter left the alternative between two ways of thought,
and two only, which may briefly be designated as the road
of Anaxagoras and the road of Leucippus. The one theory
of matter presumed as many primary substances as there
were actual combinations of the qualities of sense, and the
other presumed one primary matter, possessing all the
common fundamental qualities of bodies, but excluding
the diverging qualities of sense. The ground preliminary
to this last-named view was prepared by Parmenides, who
likewise drew a line of demarcation between qualities
characteristic of bodily substances as such and those that
we may call the accidents of bodily substance. The " Being "
of Parmenides, by which space was filled, possessed bare
eternity and unchangeableness. Motion was inconceivable
to him, and was therefore deemed impossible, and the me-
chanical qualities of substance, by which all motion is caused
and controlled, were therefore also meaningless in his eyes.
This doctrine was silent about impact and pressure, and
all the modifications of those processes. Thus the hard
and fast line which he drew between true Being and mere
delusive appearance did not coincide with the distinc-
tion drawn by Leucippus between the objective and merely
subjective reality, between the primary and secondary
attributes of things. On the contrary, it relegated motion,
the centre and pivot of the atomistic theory of the
universe, to the realm of appearance. Still, it was some-
thing that he drew such a distinction at all, that he
recognized a difference between the essential attributes of
his Being and other non-essential attributes, and that he
kept them firmly apart ; and, inasmuch as he did this, he
may be said to have promoted that theory of the universe
almost in his own despite. The paths of intellectual pro-
gress cross one another so wonderfully that the very man
who denied all movement, all change, and all process, and
who therefore robbed natural research of its contents,
advanced the cause of natural research. Unconsciously
and unwillingly he served the cause of the science which
recognized change and process, which reduced them to
mechanical motion and which was solely concerned with
OLDER UNKNOWN INFLUENCES. 347
such problems. Full justice has thus been done to the
contribution of the Eleatics in the advancement of positive
knowledge. And more than this, perhaps. For who
shall say if Leucippus, face to face with that alternative,
would not have espoused the right side, and have entered
the lists against Anaxagoras even without being prompted
by Parmenides ? It is idle to discuss what mi^ht have
been, but it would be wrong to conclude from the points
of contact of both doctrines that the one was dependent
on the other. Contradiction is contact, and to that extent
it is fair to say that these two theories were related. The
Eleatics argued as follows : —
"Without a vacuum there is no motion.
There is no vacuum.
/. There is no motion."
The Atomists argued on the contrary : —
" Without a vacuum there is no motion.
There is motion.
.'. There is a vacuum."
The conclusions are plainly in striking contrast, but it is
legitimate to ask if the Atomist did not owe the Eleatic
the major premise common to both, and thus the corner-
stone, as it were, of at least that portion of his philosophy.
An affirmative answer has frequently been returned to this
question, but we venture to regard it as wholly erroneous.
The Eleatics could not have been the authors of this
common premise, Melissus had already treated of empty
space in a manner which does not lead us to believe that
he set up the hypothesis in order to knock it down, and
the tone in which Parmenides himself refuted the assump-
tion of the vacuum or non-being makes it impossible to
doubt that he found the doctrine ready-made as an aid to
the explanation of nature. No, it was not Parmenides
who influenced Leucippus in this instance. That influence
must be traced to older anonymous thinkers anterior to
both — probably, as we have twice had occasion to remark,
to Pythagoreans.* We venture to go one step further.
* Bk. II. Ch. II. § 4 ; and cp. § 2 above.
348 GREEK THINKERS.
These nameless philosophers did not only invent the
vacuum, but they bequeathed to their successors an
analogue to the atoms. Parmenides speaks of something
in which nothing but vacuum can be seen, but which,
according to the assumptions of teachers whom he bitterly
opposed, occupied in part a continuous space and in part
was "regularly distributed throughout space." In other
words, he was acquainted with the doctrine which assumed
not merely continuous space empty of all matter, but
also empty interstices traversing the whole material
world. The islets of matter, as we may call them,
surrounded by these interstices as though by a network
of canals, approximate very closely in their object and
intention to the atoms of Leucippus. Moreover, the con-
ception of a material mass regularly and unexceptionally
interrupted can hardly have been due to any other demand
than the need of explaining a universal fact Finally, the
fact requiring explanation can hardly have been other than
the fact of motion. These conclusions we believe to be
true — not the less true, indeed, because they have never
been drawn before. Here once more the attentive reader
will remark the organic growth of ideas and that progres-
sive development which enhances the value of scientific
achievements without seriously detracting from the merits
of their authors.
6. We are now at liberty to ask what was the chief
contribution made by Leucippus to science, and what part
of his doctrine bore most conspicuously the impress of his
original genius. He did not introduce the conception of
the vacuum, nor did he do more than to refine and to raise
to the dignity of a self-contained system the atomic theory
which existed before him, though in a rough, rudimentary,
and imperfect shape. Whether the labours of Parmenides
were indispensable or not, Parmenides at least preceded
Leucippus, and prepared the way for the distinction of
essential and unessential attributes, or, to speak with John
Locke, of the primary and secondary qualities of objects.
But Leucippus entered a virgin field in his attempt to
relate the world of substances with the world of phenomena,
UNDYING MERIT OF LEUCIPPUS. 349
instead of following the Eleatics in rejecting the world of
phenomena as a phantasm and delusion to be expelled
from the fane of science* He tried to build a bridge
between two worlds which had once been combined
without distinction, and which, when they had afterwards
been distinguished, were utterly sundered from each other ;
and this grand undertaking, this endeavour to prove
that the totality of the sensible qualities is, mathematically
speaking, a function of their corporeal qualities, of their
size, shape, position, situation, nearness, and distance, and
thus to approach the universe as a whole, not as a sceptic,
not -as an iconoclast, but -in the humble spirit of explana-
tion, this is the crown and apex of the intellectual work of
Leucippus. The most original part of his achievement
was also the most permanent: yea, we may call it indestruc-
tible. Atomism may be superseded ; the theory of cognition
in its progress has already weakened the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities ; but the attempt to corre-
late all qualitative differences with differences of size, and
shape, and situation, and movement, is destined to survive
all changes of opinion and thought. The exact know-
ledge of nature rests entirely on this attempt to reduce
qualities to quantities, or, to speak more precisely, to
establish fixed relations between the two. Mathematical
physics were contained there as in a germ, and modern
research took its starting-point thence. Galilei, Descartes,
Huyghens, — they all followed the same path. " I do not
believe," declared Galilei, "that anything else is required
than magnitudes, shapes, quantities, and slow movements
or swift, to produce in us tastes, smells, sounds." Huyghens
presupposed bodies formed of homogeneous matter, "in
which no qualities were distinguished, but only different
magnitudes, shapes, and movements ; " and this was like-
wise the point of view which was maintained before him by
Descartes. These philosophers led the van of the natural
science of to-day, and they were united, as they expressly
testify, in their acquaintance with the doctrine which they
describe as Democritean, though its true author was Leucip-
pus." And here we shall do well to remark that the links
350 GREEK THINKERS.
thus discerned In the chain of natural phenomena, and the
dominion over nature which such discernment implies, are
wholly independent of all systems of philosophy, whether
that which we ourselves prefer, or that which our descendants
may adopt. The electric lamp loses none of its brightness
for the agnostic, dark as he may deem the innermost
essence of nature. The laws of optics are the same for
the champion of the mechanics of the universe as for
him who derives the essence of the world's process from
something other than material substance and its move-
ments. Whatever answer the future may return to these
fundamental problems of human knowledge, there is
one fact that can never be shaken : Corporeal movements,
as an element that can be quantitatively determined, are
the " Open, Sesame/1 that has unlocked countless secrets
in the system of nature, and that will unlock countless
more. Here, if anywhere, it is legitimate to speak of
finality. And that Leucippus by his theory put this key
in the hand of mankind — this is his highest title to honour,
this his imperishable renown.
It detracts very little from his merit that his own
attempts to prove the great doctrine with which he endowed
the world frequently bore the stamp of that d priori reason-
ing which he probably learnt from Zeno. Thus he was
not content to found his supreme hypothesis on those facts
of experience which really underlie it, on a reference to
the facts of spatial movement, rarefaction and condensa-
tion, compression and other changes of volume, which thus
were accounted for, and of which the growth of organic beings
is an important special instance. He was also at pains to
equip his arguments with the compelling force which should
deprive an adversary of every outlet, and refute him by an
ad absurdum, or reduce him to a self-contradiction when
he contradicted the new theory. One of his ratiocinations,
for example, is said to have begun as follows : " The full
cannot take in anything." Certainly not, we may add,
since fulness in the strict sense of the word, and incapacity
to take in anything, are but synonymous expressions.
When we have poured water into a vessel till it cannot
HIS A PRIORI DEMONSTRATIONS. 35!
Hold any more we call it full, and if we are told that a
vessel is full we invariably understand that it cannot take
in anything more. We shall presently see if Leucippus
employed this tautology merely as an innocent device to
expound the conception of fulness. He is said to have
continued as follows : —
" But if the full were to take in anything more, and if in that
way two bodies [of equal magnitude] were to find room where
hitherto there was only room for one, then there would be no end
to the number of bodies which could be located in the same place,
and the smallest could contain the greatest."
In making this last statement, Leucippus had played
his trump card. It concealed an ambiguity, however, in
which the fate of the whole argument was involved. No
anti-atomist was really committed to the belief that the
smallest could contain the greatest, as such, in the sense that
a nutshell could hold an elephant. But that a substance
with the size of an elephant can be so far compressed as
to enter a nutshell or eggshell, though actually untrue, is
neither an absurd nor a self-contradictory proposition. It
would only become so if the incompressibility of matter
had already been granted ; if, that is to say, the thing to
be proved were already taken as proven. But the opening
words of the argument served to beg that question. There
the conception of fulness, which was first employed in a
purely empirical sense compatible with either theory, was
transferred into the conception of impenetrability or in-
compressibility by the pseudo-explanatory phrase about
"taking nothing in." The second meaning replaced the
first, and it was only when this transference was effected
that the desired conclusion could be drawn from the
premises. Otherwise the process of inference would have
been invalid. We may here note another demonstration
of a still less innocent kind which belonged to the same
category* From Leucippus downwards the atomists were
at pains to prove the infinite number of different forms of
atoms, " There is no reason why the atoms should possess
this form rather than that," and therefore, it was argued,
352 GREEK THINKERS.
they represented all conceivable forms. To a certain extent
this simply expressed the expectation that the exuberant
wealth of forms displayed by nature in other respects
would be repeated in the present instance, and so far — as
we have remarked before — it contained an inference by
analogy, to which it is impossible to deny some small
measure of justification as a presumption or provisional
opinion. But any claim advanced by the argument to the
force of dogmatic truth is evidently null and void. It
attempted to trespass the eternal barriers of human know-
ledge by prying into the resources of nature, and by
forming a judgment on their limited or unlimited range.
Its method recalls Anaximander's sham proof that the
earth is at rest, as well as the kindred attempts at
demonstration which we have mentioned above on the part
of metaphysical mechanicians to found the law of inertia on
a priori considerations instead of an empirical basis.* But
the likeness has at least one point of difference. Those
other speculations supplied an untenable proof to a veritable
fact of nature, but in the present instance the fact which
awaited demonstration, apart from its erroneous proof, was
itself a dubious fact. When we reach the following direct
attempt to prove the existence of a vacuum, we are pro-
bably correct in ascribing it to Democritus with his marked
bias to empiricism. He stated it in this form : A vessel
filled with ashes will take in as much water — by which
he probably meant '* nearly as much water " — as if there
were no ashes there ; the condition that renders this
possible is that the ashes contain a very large amount of
vacuum. We need hardly point out to our readers that
the interpretation of the fact was erroneous. Porous
bodies, such as ashes, contain great quantities of air,
and these are expelled by the water poured into the
ash-pail. It is true that Democritus, if he had been
informed of this, might have retorted by the question:
Whither can the air escape, when it makes room for the
water, if the whole space be already occupied by impene-
trable matter ? And, in this modified form, the argument
* Bk. I. Ch. I, § 3.
VALUE OF ATOMIC HYPOTHESIS. 353
would have implied neither more nor less than any other
reference to a progressive movement in space which
demands the assumption of vacua as soon as the impene-
trability of matter is already taken as proved.
7. Such were some of the mistakes committed by
these giants of thought, and neither separately nor col-
lectively are they calculated to detract seriously from their
renown. Still, we are bound to mention them, as well on
other grounds as because they help to show, what is true
beyond a doubt, that the atomic theory has never properly
been proved either in ancient or in modern times. It was,
it is, and it remains, not a theory in the strict sense of
the word, but merely an hypothesis, though an hypothesis,
it is true, of unparalleled vitality and endurance, which
has yielded a splendid harvest to physical and chemical
research down to our own day. By its aid old facts have
ever been satisfactorily explained and new facts have been
discovered, so that it must fairly be conceded a large degree
of objective truth, or, more precisely expressed, it must
follow for a long way a road parallel to the real objective
condition of things. Still, as has been said, it is an hypo-
thesis, and its assumption of facts that lie far beyond the
limits of human perception deprives it for all time of
direct verification. Now, the indirect proof of an hypothesis
can only become a complete proof if it be shown not
merely that it provides a most satisfactory explanation of
the phenomena, but that no other possible hypothesis would
do equally well or better. In the present instance, where
the phenomena concerned are the most secret processes of
nature and those furthest removed from our sense-perception,
the more than approximate proof of this kind will hardly
ever, nay, will certainly never be attainable. The most
cautious thinkers of to-day, accordingly, while paying every
honour to the atomic hypothesis, do not affect to regard it
as more than a conjecture which comes sufficiently close
to the finality of truth to be used with considerable advan-
tage and success, but which yet should never be employed
without the silent reservation that it is perhaps not an
ultimate truth, nor even the ultimate truth at our disposal.
VOL. L 2 A
354 GREEK THINKERS.
And when we change our point of view and look at the
theory of cognition instead of the facts of nature, we find
ourselves impelled to another and a deeper reservation.
The student of that theory is doubtful whether in the last
resort he can learn anything about the exterior world, or
at .least can learn anything else, except what is taught
him by the existence of series of sensations connected by
laws of uniformity. The difference between primary and
secondary qualities, which plays so prominent a part in the
foreground of cognition, loses its fundamental importance in
his eyes. His mature self-consciousness obliges him to refer
back to sensations not merely smells, tastes, colours, and
sounds, but also all the essential characteristics of material
substance, and to acknowledge that the conception of matter
itself is robbed of its contents when the perceiving and feeling
subject of sensation is abstracted. But the atomic theory
is not valueless even in the eyes of thinkers who take the
above point of view. They recognize in it " a mathematical
model for the statement of facts," and they ascribe to it
" a function in physics similar " to that possessed by " cer-
tain auxiliary mathematical conceptions." To this, as we
have stated before, we shall have occasion to return. We
have merely considered it in this place, hastily and cursorily
though it may have been, in order to add the remark that
the authors of atomism took no account whatsoever of the
dubiety that marked a later phase in the development of
speculation. And in general we may say it works for the
salvation of science that its pioneers in their respective
periods are not distracted from the direct and limited
task set before them by the confusion and bewilderment of
higher and more distant views.
Atomism and Materialism — the question now arises,
how far these two are identical. These early Atomists
were content to be confined to the bodily world, nor was
their complacency disturbed by the ghost of a scruple
arising from the theory of cognition ; and the name of
Idealism having been given to the reverse of this nal've
philosophy, Leucippus and Democritus may fairly be called
materialists. They were materialists, too, in as far as they
WERE THE ATOMISTS MATERIALISTS? 355
did not assume the continued existence of the psyche or
breath-soul, but rather outdid Parmenides and Empedocles,
in whose systems the conception played a sorry part
wholly irrelevant to the explanation of actual facts, by
rejecting it altogether and replacing it by soul-atoms. But
they were not materialists if by that term we mean thinkers
who deny or dispute the existence of spiritual substances,
for the simple reason that the transference of the conception
of substance from the material world, its original home, had
not yet taken place. And, in common with the rest of their
predecessors and contemporaries in natural philosophy, with
the sole exception of Anaxagoras, they were materialists in
as much as they looked for the only causes or conditions
of the states and qualities of consciousness in the material
world alone. Nor did they differ essentially from the great
majority of their precursors in their relation to the divine.
Like these, they acknowledged no divine creator of the world,
and they were as loth as Empedocles to admit immortal
individual gods. Democritus derived the belief in such
deities and their might from the terror with which thunder
and lightning, solar and lunar eclipses, and similar marvels
had impressed the imagination of primitive man. At the
same time, he is said to have admitted the divinity of the
stars, doubtless on account of their fiery nature, in accord-
ance, that is to say, with his doctrine that they were
composed of soul-atoms, and he shared the belief of
Empedocles in supernatural Beings of long though not of
unlimited life. On the whole, he was inclined to regard
the course of the universe as unaffected by the gods, and
his assumption accordingly lacked a true scientific pretext
But he was still unable to make up his mind to dismiss to
the limbo of fiction all that had been told of the gods and
their influence on mankind. The combination and con-
catenation of his innumerable and multiform atoms afforded
a teeming material for such constructions, and doubtless he
used these resources to account for the origin of Beings sur-
passing all human standards in size and in beauty. They
were designed to move in aerial space. The images eman-
ating from them were; to enter in our bodies and in their
356 GREEK THINKERS.
most diverse organs. Thus by indirect means and by direct
impressions on our senses — by appearing to us in dreams
and speaking to us — they were to exercise in all kinds of
ways their beneficial and malignant influences,
8. The reader will have been able to gather some
acquaintance with the psychology of Democritus and his
master, and especially of their perceptive theories, from
some of the preceding extracts. That portion of their
teaching was not particularly fertile, though Epicurus and
his disciples did not hesitate to incorporate it in their system
of philosophy. For both those reasons, therefore, we shall
deal with it here as briefly as possible, leaving its further
significance to be discussed in the history of Epicurism,
which possesses the additional advantage that far ampler
evidence is there at our disposal than the destructive
criticism of antagonists such as that which Theophrastus
levelled at isolated points in the Democritean theory of cog-
nition. The vehicles of psychic functions in the system of
Democritus were the most mobile of the atoms — a fact which
was partly due to the apparent need of such a vehicle for the
proverbial swiftness of thought,* and partly to the picture of
ceaseless change presented by the process of life,- which
was also regarded as a product of the soul in its identity
with vital force. On this account the atoms actually em-
ployed for the functions of the soul were conceived as small,
round, and smooth. It was obvious that their great mobility
would keep them constantly endeavouring to escape from
the body, and respiration was accordingly entrusted with
the task of counteracting such attempts. It worked in
two ways : first, by holding the atoms back by a current of
air ; and secondly, by continually renewing them. Mean-
while the extinction of this process would bring about their
final dissipation. Another consideration suggests itself here.
These soul-atoms being derived from the external world,
It is quite comprehensible that Democritus, following in the
footsteps of Parmenides and Empedocles, should have drawn
no sharp line of demarcation between the animate and the
inanimate creation, but should have distinguished the twor
* Cp, Homer, " Swift as a wing or as thought."
ATOMIC PSYCHOLOGY AND OPTICS. 357
merely by a difference of degree. And lastly, we may
remark his identification of the soul-atoms with the
atoms of fire, thus again reminding us of Heraclitus —
a conclusion to which he was led as much by the vital
heat of the higher organisms as by the ceaseless
vibration of the atoms resembling the movement of a
flame. Our philosopher took account of all the processes
of perception, but his closest attention was given to the
visual function. The wonderful fact that distant objects
affect our organs of sight was held by Democritus to be
inexplicable without the assumption of an intervening
agent. Even to-day, when use and wont have blunted the
edge of the wonder, it strikes us with ever fresh surprise,
and, where modern physics speaks of the medium of ether,
Democritus believed that the explanation was to be found
in air. The air was supposed to receive impressions from
the objects of sight and to transfer them to our organs
of vision, such impressions being literally impressed like
the mark of the signet on wax. He represented the objects
themselves as incessantly shedding thin husks or membranes,
which entered the eye that happened to be in their immediate
neighbourhood, and there became visible as the picture in
the pupil ; when the eye was at a distance, he conceived
this effect to be produced by the intermediary action of
the air. Air, then, was indispensable for this purpose, but
yet it was not regarded as a wholly favourable agent in
visual perception. The disturbing influence of the medium
was held to account for the darkening and final disappear-
ance of the most distant objects of sight Except for such
disturbance, according to Democritus, we should be able
to perceive an ant crawling on the vault of heaven. The
reader will be able to gather even from this hasty sketch
that the great thinker was still wholly unacquainted with
even the elements of optics ; nor will it escape him that
Democritus was misled in this instance by his attempt,
partially successful in other respects, to derive every effect
of one object on another from direct contact, and from its
immediate mechanical manifestations in pressure and im-
pact It must further be acknowledged that this feature in
358 GREEK THINKERS.
the fundamental doctrine of Democritus made his specula-
tions on optics suffer in comparison with those of Alcmseon
and Empedocles. They represent a cruder and a more
primitive stage of thought, nor are we in a position to say
how he himself dealt with the difficulties that arose out of
his own hypothesis. Two possibilities suggest themselves.
Either he must have failed to notice that this incessant
shedding of thin atomic layers or membranes (called by
him "idols" or images) must in course of time have
brought about a considerable diminution in the substantial
bulk of bodies, or else he must have met this objection by
a reference to the perishableness of all objects of sense.
One point only in this strange theory is deserving of praise.
So far as it traced hallucinations and so-called subjective
sensations of all kinds to these " images " introduced from
outside, it agreed with modern science in not destroying
every link of community between the sensations produced
by the most diverse kinds of stimulus, and in that point
alone. But, instead of emphasizing the common subjective
factor, it rather did the reverse ; instead of recognizing and
asserting, as we now do, the specific energy of the nerves of
sense, and thus assimilating perception to hallucination, it
rather assimilated hallucination to perception. In all this
we have no right to be surprised. We have only to recall
the foundation of the doctrine on the unshaken and un-
reasoning belief in matter as the sole and only reality, a
belief undisturbed by any scepticism or any trace of
refined and matured self-consciousness, in order to extend
it our free pardon.
We have spoken of the mind of Democritus as exempt
from scepticism, and we repeat this claim, though there
are several utterances in the sparse fragments of his
works which may produce the opposite appearance. But
it is merely apparent and nothing more. Three groups
of sentiment may be distinguished which have not been
kept apart with sufficient care. Democritus, like Faust,
was " consumed at heart " because, despite the thought and
trouble and research of a long life devoted to science, his
sum of knowledge was so small that he could only cast a
WAS DEMOCRITUS A SCEPTIC? 359
few fitful and furtive glances Into the secrets of nature.
" Truth dwelleth in the deep ; " " reality is shut out from
human ken ; " — these and similar sighs of a labouring spirit
are still preserved in the fragments of his work entitled "Cor-
roborations," which pursued mainly an inductive or empirical
method, in deliberate opposition, perhaps, to the a priori
tendencies of Leucippus. In a further passage of the same
treatise we read the following plaintive protest: "We per-
ceive in fact nothing certain, but such things only as change
with the state of our body, and of that which enters it, and
which resists it." The attempt might be made to infer from
this passage that Democritus was a victim, though merely
for a time, to the principles of scepticism. But in drawing
such a conclusion we should err with the ancient sceptic,
to whom we owe the quotation, and who forced it to sub-
serve his own teaching, in overlooking one point which is
really sufficiently obvious. The protest in question was
founded on the very nature of the body about which the
philosopher, when he penned those words, was no more
dubious than at any other time. " In truth there are atoms
and vacuum " — this was the fundamental theory of Demo-
critus, and no shadow of a doubt ever approached him as
to its unconditional validity. We may assert this the more
definitely because Sextus himself, the ancient sceptic who
would have greeted the great Atomist as a brother, and
who searched through his writings to this end with tireless
industry and persistency, was yet wholly unable to discover
the evidence that he looked for.
We pause at the challenge of Colotes. He quotes
a remark from Democritus which utterly destroyed all
certainty of knowledge, and which, in the words of this
favourite pupil of Epicurus, "brought life itself into confu-
sion." But the challenge has long since been met. The
seemingly incriminating remark is not a proof of the loose
hold which his principles possessed over the mind of
Democritus ; it affords, on the contrary, direct evidence
of the unshaken confidence with which he clung to his
fundamental view and to the consequences it entailed.
The sentence in question ran as follows: "An object is
360 GREEK THINKERS.
not naturally constituted in one way any more than in
another," but the context in which it occurs makes it irre-
futably clear that it refers expressly to those qualities of
objects which modern science terms "secondary," and to
which, as our readers already know, Democritus denied
objective reality. And the remark proscribed by Colotes
was admirably suited to point this distinction in the most
emphatic way possible. The sweet taste of honey to
a man in good health, its bitter taste to the jaundiced
palate, — these and similar facts were comrtionly known
and acknowledged ; but, as generally stated, they were at
variance not merely with that important distinction, but
even with ordinary common sense. The expressions used
were as loose and inexact as they are on the lips of most
cultivated people to-day. u Honey," they said, as they still
say, " is sweet ; but to those patients it seems bitter." To
this Democritus demurred. Truth and untruth, he con-
tended, were not to be determined by a plebiscite. In
such a case, if many men had jaundice and only a few
were free from it, the standard of truth would be altered.
It was not a difference of fact and semblance, but merely
of majority and minority. The one sensation, he main-
tained, was just as subjective, just as relative, just as
exterior to the object, as the other. Normal sweetness
was no more an objective quality of honey than its ab-
normal bitterness. Honey was not sweet " any more than "
it was bitter. What honey was in his theory was a com-
plex of atoms of such and such a shape, size, and position,
and containing such and such a proportion of vacuum.
The rest was nothing but the effect exercised by it on other
bodies, and among them on the human organs of taste.
That effect, again, must partly depend on those organs
and on their permanent or temporary, common or individual
qualities. Democritus was never assailed by any scruple
whatsoever as to the objective existence of bodies and
their attributes. He was rather animated by the desire to
sever as sharply and as definitely as possible the unchange-
ableness of these causes from the changeableness of the
effects which they exerted in combination with the varying
GENUINE AND OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE. 36!
subjective factor, and thus to prevent the spread of the
scepticism aroused by those changes into the domain of
the unchangeable. On this account alone Democritus said
,what he did say.
The third and last of the groups in which these frag-
ments of Democritus fall contains the celebrated passage
in which a distinction was drawn between genuine and
obscure knowledge. His chef d'czuvre was a work in three
books on reasoning, entitled " The Canon," which presum-
ably founded and discussed a system of inductive logic.
Somewhere in this work the following sentences occurred.
"There are two kinds of insight, the genuine and the
obscure. To the obscure belong all these : sight, hearing,
smell, taste, touch ; but the genuine, which is severed
from it " But here the haste of Sextus, our authority,
has robbed us of the end of the extract Still, enough has
been preserved to lend a show of correctness to those critics
who would call the physicist of Abdera a metaphysician or
ontologist. It may well be argued that he made a clean
sweep of the evidence of the senses, and that nothing was
left to him, accordingly, save to take refuge on the heights
of pure Being. But cavalierly as Sextus dealt with his
author, the extract can nevertheless be used to rectify this
first erroneous impression. After a brief interlude he
iresumed the dropped thread of his disquisition, and added
a second sentence to the first. Unfortunately, it is like-
wise a mutilated, probably a decapitated, sentence. Genuine
cognition begins, so Democritus wrote, " where the obscure
is no longer (adequate), where it cannot perceive the minutely
small either by sight or hearing, or smell or taste or touch,
but the object becomes too fine for that purpose." In a
word, Democritus was longing for a microscope of ideal power.
Had he possessed such an instrument, he would have sub-
tracted colour from what it showed him as a subjective
accretion, and would have accepted what was left as the
highest attainable objective truth. The reproach that he
levelled at the senses collectively was that their evidence did
not extend far enough ; that they deserted us at the point
where the minutest bodies and the most delicate processes
362 GREEK THINKERS.
were to be got at, from which the material masses and
the processes obtaining in them are composed. Corporeal
things and material processes were likewise in his view the
objects of the genuine or undisturbed knowledge which
transcended the limits of obscure or disturbed cognition.
Lacking the ideal instruments of precision, which we still
do not possess, the aids to knowledge which Democritus
obtained were naturally nothing but inferences, though they
were inferences of a kind intended for no other purpose than
to lighten the darkness of the material world, and resting on
no other foundation than the evidence of the senses, inade-
quate and untrustworthy indeed, but not wholly to be
rejected, and capable of considerable use by their mutual
powers of self-correction and control. These inferences of
his were obviously based on analogy, or rather, in as far as
they were more strictly formulated, they were inductive
inferences which started from perceptible facts, and, pre-
mising that the forces or qualities thus obtained were valid
beyond the limits of perception, attempted to overstep those
limits both in space and time. We are now in a position to
resume in a few words the facts bearing on the scepticism of
Democritus. Beyond its pale may be placed not merely his
belief in the corporeal world, but also his fundamental hypo-
theses anent the composition of bodies out of atoms and
vacuum as well as the primary qualities of matter. This
region of the highest knowledge was situated on the heights
above scepticism, whereas another region was situated below
it. That second region was occupied by those secondary
or subjective phenomena which, strictly speaking, are
neither true nor false, but simply the effects of natural
causes, at once inevitable and undeniable. It was the
middle region between the two, that of the detailed
explanation of nature, which formed the play-ground
of the doubts and scruples by which Democritus was
tormented and confused. He was constantly engaged in
trying to reconcile the two spheres of thought. He was
constantly asking himself what real processes, remote from
direct perception, were to be presumed behind the pheno-
mena that were revealed to the senses ; and what bodily
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE. 363
movements were to be pre-supposed in order to harmonize
these phenomena with the known forces of nature or
qualities of things. The mind of Deinocritus dwelt by
choice on the details of investigation, and it was problems
of this kind that drove him again and again to question
the adequacy of his internal and external auxiliaries, and
that drew from his heart the bitter reiterated complaint
which affords such striking evidence of his insatiable
thirst for knowledge and his unappeasable criticism of
self.
9. The rules of investigation contained in the " Canon "
of Democritus have long since been lost and forgotten. We
can only deduce them to-day from his practice, or rather
from the criticism which that practice entailed. His chief
critic was Aristotle, who deserves our best thanks in that
respect, though we cannot always subscribe to his views.
One reproach, indeed, directed by Aristotle at the method
of Democritus is changed in our eyes into a title to the
highest honour. He blamed the philosopher of Abdera for
proposing in the ultimate resort no other solution of the
problems of natural processes than " it is so or it happens
so always," or " it has happened heretofore likewise." In
other words, Democritus recognized experience as the ulti-
mate source of our knowledge of nature. The chain of our
deductions might be infinitely long and its links might be
as many as possible, but at last, he argued, we must reach
a point where elucidation stops short, and where nothing is
left to us but to admit a fact capable of no further deduc-
tion. Every deductive process rests in the last resort on
inductions— this is a fundamental truth which Aristotle
himself never actually disputed. But in individual instances
his desire for explanation would frequently not rest satisfied
with the admission of ultimate facts based solely on ex-
perience and entirely impervious to human insight Too
often his theory of nature introduced a pseudo-explanation
where it ought actually to have abandoned all further search
for knowledge. Democritus had no such disposition to sub-
stitute sham explanations derived for the most part from
an insidious prejudice. As he had rejected the arbitrary
364 GREEK THINKERS.
assumption, which we have already discussed to satiety,
that matter must have received its first motive impulse
from without, so he stood aloof from the Platonic- Aristo-
telian theory of "natural places" — the tendency of fiery
matter upwards, of earthy matter downwards, and so forth.
Accordingly, when Aristotle accuses Democritus and Leu-
cippus of "carelessly neglecting to investigate the origin
of motion," modern science adopts unreservedly the cause of
the defendants and not of the plaintiff.* There is a marked
resemblance between the criticism directed by Aristotle at
the treatment of these questions by the Atomists, and the
reproaches aimed against Galilei and his method of natural
research in the correspondence of Descartes with Mersenne.
In the one case as in the other we see the spirit of meta-
physics incapable of appreciating the work of the less pre-
tentious but more fruitful empirical methods.
When we come to the problem of design and its treat-
ment, it is more difficult to frame a fair judgment on the
rights and wrongs of this controversy. The Atomists left
the conception of design altogether on one side in their
view of the origin and arrangement of the world, or rathef
of the worlds. They confined their efforts to following and
tracing back as far as possible the road of the mechanical
explanation of nature. Nay, even when they reached the
processes of organic life, they did not attempt to strike out
a new path of elucidation. On both charges alike they
incurred the reproach of Aristotle. In his eyes the assump-
tion that the order and beauty of the universe were of
spontaneous growth was just as inadequate as the second
assumption, that the adaptation of means to ends in the
structure of animals and plants had occurred without the
control of an immanent principle of purpose, or, to use the
word coined by Karl Ernst von Baer and precisely corre-
sponding to Aristotle's meaning, had been developed without
Ziehtrebigkeit or "spontaneous teleology." In his eyes,
again, their proceeding in this respect was just as silly as
to argue that in tapping a dropsical patient the cause of
the process was the lancet of the surgeon, and not the
desired purpose of curing the subject by the operation.
THE PROBLEM OF DESIGN. 365
Here we enter the field of a controversy which Is still
raging to-day, and we know so little of the details of the
Atomistic doctrines that it would be difficult to adjudi-
cate between the disputants even if the points at issue
had been settled at least in principle. Let us put the
question in a concrete form. In popular handbooks of
Materialism we frequently meet a solution which may be
stated compendiously as follows : Stags have long legs not
in order that they may run swiftly, but they run swiftly
because they have long legs. True, cause and effect are
likely enough to be confused with means and end, and this
confusion plays a conspicuous part in the history of human
thought. It is not the less true that the teleological method
can frequently be successfully refuted by the argument
that only such forms as are fit to endure can acquire consis-
tency and permanence, and that unfit forms, though they
may often arise, must sooner or later be destroyed, and
must especially succumb in the struggle for existence. But
neither of these views would suffice for a complete settle-
ment of the problem of design, unless two fundamental
facts in the region of organic life which seem to point to
different explanations could first be got rid of. These facts
are : (i) the reciprocity and co-operation of several and
sometimes very numerous organs and parts of organs in one
common function ; (2) the structure of the organs, and
especially of the organs of sense in animal life, with their
wonderful suitability to the influence of outward agents.
Science, invincible science, has not yet despaired of finding
the key to these great riddles, though the expectations
which attended the birth of Darwin's attempt at solution
in the middle of the nineteenth century have been some-
what disappointed in the progress of research, till the most
advanced thinkers of to-day recognize in his " spontaneous
variation" and "survival of the fittest" only one of the
factors required instead of their totality. But, be this as it
may, the Atomists' experiment in the mechanical explana-
tion of nature proved eminently fertile — far more so, in
point of fact, than the opposite theories which paused at an
earlier stage on the path of research, and set a premature
366 GREEK THINKERS.
goal to the pursuit of knowledge, whether by the assump-
tion of supernatural intervention or by the Introduction
of equivocal forces defying all exact demarcation, such as
the " vital force " of the earlier vitalists.
10. In the doctrine of Democritus there were no immov-
able barriers between the several departments of terrestrial
phenomena, and the philosopher at the same time withheld
his assent from the plausible division of the universe into
essentially different regions. He recognized no contrast
between the sublunary world of change and the changeless
steadiness of the divine stars, important and fatal though that
difference became in the Aristotelian system. At this point
Democritus was once more fully in agreement not merely
with the opinions of great men like Galilei, who released
modern science from the fetters of Aristotelianism, but even
with the actual results of the investigations of the last
three centuries. It is almost miraculous to observe how
the mere dropping of the scales from his eyes gave Demo-
critus a glimpse of the revelation which we owe to the
telescope and to spectrum analysis. In listening to Demo-
critus, with his accounts of an infinitely large number of
worlds different in size, some of them attended by a
quantity of moons, others without sun or moon, some of
them waxing and others waning after a collision, others
again devoid of every trace of fluid, we seem to hear the
voice of a modern astronomer who has seen the moons of
Jupiter, has recognized the lack of moisture in the neigh-
bourhood of the moon, and has observed the nebulae and
obscured stars which the wonderful instruments that have
now been invented have made visible to his eyes. Yet this
consentaneity rested on scarcely anything else than the
absence of a powerful prejudice concealing the real state
of things, and on a bold but not an over-bold assumption
that in the infinitude of time and space the most diverse
possibilities have been realized and fulfilled. So far as
the endless multiformity of the atoms is concerned, that
assumption has not won the favour of modern science, but
it has been completely vindicated in respect to cosmic
processes and transformations, It may legitimately be
DEMOCRITEAN COSMOLOGY AND ETHICS. 367
said that the Democritean theory of the universe deposed
in principle the geocentric point of view. Nor would it
be unfair to suppose that Democritus smoothed the way
for its actual deposition at the hands of Aristarchus of
Samos. We shall return to this subject in a subsequent
chapter, where we shall have to show the partially hidden
threads by which Democritus is bound no less to the
Copernicus of antiquity than to the great physicists of
Alexandria and their disciple Archimedes, and by which
Archimedes in his turn is connected with Galilei and other
pioneers of modern science.
To-day, as two thousand years ago, the question is
asked whether our earth is the only home of living
beings, and our experience is still without data on
which to base a reply. But Democritus and those who
thought with him are not necessarily to be charged with
temerity because they refused to make an exception in
that respect in favour of the one star of which our know-
ledge is exact Democritus contended that only a few
worlds were without animals and plants because the requi-
site fluid was lacking which should supply them with
nourishment And this dictum of the sage is especially
remarkable, inasmuch as it was obviously based on the
assumption of the uniformity of the universe in the sub-
stances composing it and in the laws controlling it which the
sidereal physics of our own day has proved beyond dispute.
He evinced the same spirit which animated Metrodorus of
Chios, himself a Democritean, in his brilliant parable : " a
single ear of corn on a wide-spreading champaign would
not be more wonderful than a single cosmos in the infini-
tude of space."
The genius of Democritus did not stop at anticipating
modem cosmology, but inherent in those speculations was
his yet more striking view of life. How petty must man
appear ; how worthless his aims, pursued by most of us
with such breathless haste; how great his modesty and
humility, how small fyis arrogance and pride, if the
world he lives in is deprived of every prerogative, if it
loses all claim to unique distinction, and becomes in his
368 GREEK THINKERS.
eyes a grain of sand on the shore of the infinite ! Here, we
venture to believe, is the key to the ethics of Democritus.
Posterity has characterized the sage as "the laughing
philosopher," because he saw the disproportion of the
business of man with his actual place and meaning. Un-
fortunately, the sources from which we are accustomed and,
to some extent, constrained to draw for the details of his
moral philosophy, are mostly troubled and untrustworthy,
but we know enough of one of his chief ethical treatises
to sketch in outline at least a portion of its tenour.
It treated of the tranquillity of the soul, of its tvQvfda, or
"cheerfulness," and.it was remarkable for the modesty
of the goal which it set before human endeavour. Not
bliss, not happiness, was the end to be attained, but a
state of bare "well-being," of a souFs peace undis-
tracted alike by superstitious fears as by overmastering
passions, of a "composure" or equanimity similar to
the "smooth mirror" of the stormless sea. The treatise
opened with a description of the miserable condition
of the majority of mankind, ever unquiet, ever impelled
on a vain search for happiness, now seizing one thing and
now another, without obtaining permanent satisfaction.
The immoderateness of human desires, the neglect of the
narrow limits by which mortal happiness is confined, the
disturbances wrought by superstition on man's peace of
mind, — these, it would seem, were the chief sources of un-
happiness, as characterized by Democritus. Our authorities
deny us the pleasure of reconstructing these fundamental
ideas in all their brilliant detail. In the large quantity of
the so-called utterances of Democritus in the field of moral
philosophy there is much that is demonstrably false, and
in the rest of the fragments the critics have not yet suc-
ceeded in sifting the false from the true. Still, there are
many statements with a distinctive individuality of inspira-
tion and style which one would fain claim as the genuine
property of the sage. Foremost among these is the
brilliant fragment, unluckily very much mutilated, but yet
capable of restoration with practical certainty, in which the
worst evil of democratic institutions is assailed. It attacks
ARE THE ETHICAL FRAGMENTS GENUINE? 369
the dependence of the authorities on the judgment of the
populace — on the very persons, accordingly, whom it is
their bounden duty to hold in check. This significant
fragment must have run more or less as follows : —
" In the existing order of the State it is not possible that the
rulers should never do wrong, even though they be the very best.
As things are, it is like delivering the (royal) eagle into the power
of the reptiles. But some means ought to be devised to ensure that,
however severely he may punish the evildoers, yet he should not
be given over into their power. Rather some law or other institu-
tion ought to guarantee complete protection to him who dispenses
judgment."
The genuineness, perhaps, of no one of these fragments
can be warranted beyond all possibility of doubt ; their
totality, however, paradoxical as it may sound, is none the
less characteristic of the ethics of Democritus. For let us
conceive how great a recoil from his exclusively mechanical
view of nature was made by heathen no less than by Chris-
tian orthodoxy. And yet, despite that recoil, Christian and
heathen writers of antiquity vied with one another in their
eagerness to fill the mouth of the founder of Atomism with
a series of utterances, each and all of which were stamped
with the seal of sublime sentiment, and were designed to lead
human life on a path of noble aspiration. Whence, then,
it may fairly be asked, could this impression have been
derived, save from the genuine works of Democritus?
They must have borne the stamp of a personality exciting,
or, rather, irresistibly compelling men's admiration and awe ;
they can have contained no word that could have given
.even the weakest handle to the misinterpretation or depre-
ciation of prejudice or partisanship. Even at this day a
widespread prejudice exists, to the effect that there is a
necessary connection between scientific materialism and
what may be called ethical materialism. But nothing is
better calculated to dispel that obstinate prejudice than the
picture of the sage of Abdera as it was known to antiquity
and as tradition has preserved it unimpaired.
VOL. I.
370 GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER III.
THE ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHERS OF NATURE.
I. WITH the promulgation of the Atomic theory, a halt
was called to the endeavours of more than one century at
solving the problem of matter. It might be thought that
an hypothesis which has maintained itself for over two
thousand years would succeed in satisfying contemporary
thought and in providing a starting-point for the immediate
further progress of knowledge. But there were many
obstacles in the way. The art of experimentation and the
mathematical sciences were still imperfect, and the fruitful
germ that was contained in atomism did not fall on a
fortunate soil. A second circumstance which hindered the
supremacy of the new doctrine was the traditional respect
enjoyed by its older rivals. The shifting shapes successively
assumed by material monism were calculated, as we have
already seen reason to believe,* to cancel one another in
turn, to destroy the exclusive validity of every one of the
old theories of matter, and even to arouse a scepticism
which affected the evidence of the senses themselves and
shook the common basis of the doctrine. But here a second
effect followed inevitably from these causes. Purely negative
or merely sceptical results rarely satisfy more than a small
part of the minds that are athirst for knowledge. Moreover,
the contrast between the distinctive individual doctrines oi
a Thales, an Anaximenes, a Heraclitus, and so forth was
counterbalanced by the underlying harmony of theii
fundamental assumptions. Meantime, too, other importanl
* Bk, II. Ch. II. §
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA. 371
doctrines, promulgated by important men, had arrived on
the scene. Nothing, then, was more natural than the
attempt to reconcile these authorities one with another,
to put prominently forward the elements they contained
in common, and to touch up and transform those teach-
ings by which they were kept apart. This attempt was
considerably facilitated by the following circumstance.
All the ways open, or at least those open in the ex-
isting state of knowledge, to a solution of the problems
of the universe had already been trodden. Compromise
and eclecticism, these are the redeeming words. Under
their sign stood a series of new systems, which now
come into view, and which form the real conclusion
of the era of research, at the several stages of which
we have made so long a pause. In a previous chapter
we have made the acquaintance of Hippasus of Meta-
pontum,* an eclectic philosopher of this kind, who sought
to reconcile the teaching of Heraclitus with that of
Pythagoras, and we shall presently have to consider other
representatives of that movement. Its most distinguished
member was Diogenes of Apollonia. He was a native of
Crete, an island prominent in Greek history in the dawn
of the fine arts, but without significance in her literary
development, and it was perhaps the fame of Anaxagoras
which attracted him from those distant shores to the
learned capital of Athens, where his attitude as a free-
thinker involved him in a perilous experience similar to
that which attended the great philosopher of Clazomenae.
A comprehensive anatomical fragment of his treatise " On
the Nature of Man " gives evidence of his familiarity with
the medical knowledge of his age, and supports the con-
jecture that he was himself a professional physician. The
object at which he aimed was to harmonize Anaxagoras
with Anaximenes, or, more exactly said, to harmonize the
Nous-theory of the one with the other's theory of matter.
In a less degree he stood under the influence of Leucippus,
from whom he had borrowed the doctrine of the cosmogonic
vortex, and echoes of whose expressions he reproduces, as,
* Cp. Bk. I. Ch. V, §
372 GREEK THINKERS.
for instance, in his favourite word "necessity." Nor can
we doubt, from the ridicule that was poured on him by
the comic writers, and from the references to his doctrine
in the dramas of Euripides no less than in professional
treatises on medicine, that Diogenes of Apollonia was
one of the foremost figures in the age of Pericles.
We are not dependent, however, on merely indirect
testimony for the contents of the system of Diogenes,
which, it must be conceded, was conspicuously wanting in
originality and consistency. We possess comparatively
extensive fragments of his masterwork " On Nature," and
these thoroughly justify, by their elevated yet simple style
and unambiguous clarity, the claims to literary distinction
which he advanced in the preface to his book. Thus
they provide us with a remarkably clear insight into the
motive and methods of his inquiry, and they frequently
tell us in express language what, in the instance of his
predecessors, we could only ascertain inferentially. Nor
does this apply least of all to the fundamental motive of
the monistic theory of matter itself. Its truth was
established by Diogenes to his own satisfaction in the
following words : —
" If that which is now in this world, earth and water and
.whatever else plainly existeth in this world, if one of these were
different from the rest, if it were different by its own nature, and
not rather the same, though frequently changed and altered, then
neither would objects be able to mingle with one another, nor
could one object affect another, prejudicially or beneficially ; then,
too, no plant could grow out of the earth, no animal or anything
else be born, if it were not the same according to its composition.
Nay, but all this proceedeth from the same, becometh by alteration
some other thing at some other time, and returneth to the same
again.57
Diogenes was further strongly influenced by the
teleological argument of Anaxagoras.
" For it is impossible," he wrote, " that everything should thus
be distributed without intelligence [more exactly, without the
intervention of a Nous], that summer and winter, night and day,
EXTENSIVE FRAGMENTS OF DIOGENES. 3/3
rain, wind, sunshine, and all else, should be regulated by measure.
And he who reflecteth over this and the rest, will find that it is
arranged as beautifully as possible."
We see, however, that Diogenes was not satisfied with
the Nous-theory of Anaxagoras. He felt himself con-
strained to supplement it by the older air-theory of
Anaximenes, and two causes may have induced him to
take this step. The theory of matter promulgated by
Anaxagoras may well have appeared to him as absurd
and unjustified as it actually is. We venture to infer this
from the fact that he simply dropped it. On the other hand,
he was obviously anxious to relate the Nous, or the principle
of order in the universe, with one or other of the forms of
matter with which we are acquainted. In that way alone
did its government, its universal diffusion and efficacy, seem
to him comprehensible and explicable. He tells us this
himself in the following unequivocal words: —
" And that which possesseth the intelligence seemeth to me to be
what men call air, and this it is in my opinion that governeth and
controlleth all things. For from air, meseemeth, doth Nous
proceed, and" — by means of this vehicle — " penetrateth uni-
versally, ordereth all things, and existeth in all. And there is no
single object that is without its share, but none hath the same
share as another. There are rather many varieties of air, as of
intelligence itself. For it is of many kinds, now colder and now
warmer, now drier and now moister, now quieter and now more
violently moving, and it displayeth countless other differences in
respect to smell and colour. Moreover, the soul of all living things
is the same, namely air, which is wanner than the external air
surrounding us, though much colder than the air about the sun.
But, comparatively speaking, this heat is not the same in any two
animals or in any two men. The difference is not considerable ;
it is sufficient to exclude complete equality, though not to exclude
similarity. But of all things liable to change, no one thing can
become any other thing before it hath become the same."
In other words, the necessary condition and inter-
mediate step for the issue of one particular form of matter
from another is its preliminary transition through the
primary form of matter.
374 GREEK THINKERS.
" Since the alteration is of many kinds," continued Diogenes,
" so too are living beings, and in consequence of the great number of
alterations they resemble one another neither in appearance, nor
in mode of life, nor in intelligence. Nevertheless that by which
all of them live, and see, and hear is one and the same, and the
rest of their intelligence cometh to them all from the same, namely,
from air."
The conclusion of a second fragment, from which we
have already quoted, supplies the evidence for the last of
these statements.
" Moreover," it runs, " this too is a powerful proof. Man and
the rest of the animals live by the air they breathe. This is
their soul as well as their intelligence, and when it departeth from
them they die, and their intelligence leaveth them."
Diogenes further entitled that primary being "an
eternal and immortal body," or substance ; at another
time he called it "a great, mighty, eternal, immortal, and
multiscient being," and occasionally, too, he spoke of it as
the "deity."
It is hardly necessary to discuss in detail all the
teachings of Diogenes as they were expounded in his
"Theory of Heaven" as well as in the two treatises we
have mentioned. He was an encyclopaedist whose mobile
genius traversed all the fields of knowledge which the
science of his age had discovered. He derived his
impulses from every side, he learned from all masters,
and, though he never completely reconciled either for
himself or for his readers all their various teachings, yet
he impressed on them the common seal of his own mind.
All the roads of investigation which his predecessors had
trodden led him to his principle of air, and the secret of
the success he attained lay in his combination of versatility
and one-sidedness, of indiscriminate eclecticism united
with an obstinate consistency. There were many mansions
in the house of his eclectic system. It contained the
mechanical theory of the universe, the teleological view of
nature, material monism, and the rule of an intelligent
principle in matter. It did not abandon the doctrine of a
HIS ECLECTICISM AND ONE-SIDEDNESS. 375
single primary substance, which had been familiar to
Greek learning for several generations. It did not reject
the assumption of a directing principle which adapted
means to ends, indispensable in the recent opinion of
many thinkers. The origin of cosmos in the blind
government of Necessity had been admirably argued and
widely adopted, and this doctrine too was an ingredient in
the new philosophic cauldron. The vortex of Leucippus
found a place side by side with the Nous of Anaxagoras,
and the Nous had to make up its mind to live at peace
with the air-god of Anaximenes. Nor was there anything
in the new-fangled science to shock the beliefs of the
orthodox. Homer, declared Diogenes, was not the
author of myths or fairy tales ; he merely used such aids
as a vehicle for telling the truth. His Zeus was air and
nothing but air. In other words, Diogenes was the first
to break fresh ground in introducing the allegorical
method in national poetry and religion. In this he was
the forerunner of the Stoics, who owed to him likewise,
through the intervention of the Cynics, several of their
doctrines In physics.
And now for the reverse of the medal, where we reach
the extreme one-sidedness of Diogenes, who affected to
recognize in all phenomena, physical, cosmological, physio-
logical, and even psychical, the operation of a single prin-
ciple of matter. Air, in his opinion, was the vehicle of
all sense-perception. In imitation doubtless of Leucippus,
he explained visual perception as an impression made by
the object perceived on the pupil of the eye through the
medium of air, but he added the original complementary
explanation that the pupil communicated the impression
to the brain through the same medium once more. We
may remark, by way of parenthesis, that he probably learnt
from Alcmseon to regard the brain as the sensorium proper.
Further, Diogenes was acquainted with the inflammation
of the nerve of sight and with the blindness that results
from it, a process which he explained in the following
manner. The nerve he regarded as a vein, and he believed
that the vein, when inflamed, hindered the entrance of the
376 GREEK THINKERS.
air into the brain, and thus prevented the visual per-
ception, though the picture might appear on the pupil cf
the eye. Man's higher intelligence, in the opinion of this
thinker, was the boon of his upright gait. He breathed a
purer air than the four-legged animals who walked with
their heads bowed earthwards ; and this view, that they
inhaled an air tainted by the moistures of the soil, was
applied by Diogenes in a less degree to children also with
their smaller stature. Air and its influence on the blood
were likewise invoked to explain the passions as well.
When the nature of the air was unsuited to mingle with
the blood, which became accordingly less mobile and more
coagulated, a feeling of pain was produced ; and, in the
contrary instance, when the movement of the blood was
accelerated by air, the result was a sensation of pleasure.
Here, however, we may fitly pause. Though this theory,
owing to the reasons we have mentioned above, did not
fail to exercise a powerful influence on its author's contem-
poraries, yet its omissions incurred the biting criticism of
posterity, and its absurdities were the butt of the ridicule
of the comic Muse. Thus Theophrastus, in his brilliant
critical review of the psychology of Diogenes, exclaimed
that the birds should surpass us in understanding, if it be
true that the purity of the air we breathe is the measure
of the excellence and refinement of our reason. Why, he
asked, should not our whole thought be changed with every
change of residence according as we breathe the air of the
mountains or the marshes ? The erudite pupil of Aristotle
found himself for once in striking agreement with "the
undisciplined favourite of the Graces," for Aristophanes in
his "Clouds," produced in the year 423 B.C., lashed with
his biting satire the most diverse manifestations of the era
of enlightenment, and did not spare, as has long since been
remarked, the doctrines of the sage of Apollonia. We
hear this in the blasphemous cry, " Long live King Vortex,
who has dethroned Zeus ; " we see it in the spectacle of
Socrates swinging in his basket above the earth in order
to inhale the purest intelligence through an atmosphere
undefiled by the moisture of the soil ; we mark it again in
HIPPO, ARCHELAUS, AND METRODORUS. 377
the goddess " Respiration " to whom the Socratic disciples
lift up their hands in prayer ; and we discern it finally in
the Chorus of the Cloud-women, who were provided with
enormous noses in order to take in as much of the spirit
of the air as possible. Each and all of these examples of
the wit of Aristophanes were aimed at the philosophy of
Diogenes, and were doubtless received in the theatre at
Athens with storms of laughter and applause,
2. The derision of the philosophy of the age was not
confined to Aristophanes. An older comic writer, the
bibulous poet Cratinus, devoted one of his dramas to that
theme. It was called "The Omniscients" (irav6irraL)y a
title properly applied only to Zeus himself and to Argus,
the thousand-eyed guardian of lo, but here extended to
characterize with bitter satire the adepts of philosophy who
affected to hear the grass grow. The " Omniscients " who
formed the Chorus of the play were recognizable at once
by their masks composed of two heads and countless eyes.
The butt of the satire in this instance was not Diogenes,
but Hippo — Hippo the atheist, either alone or with others,
who had come to Athens from Lower Italy, if not from
Samos. We are but imperfectly acquainted with the
life and work of this thinker, of whose writings there sur-
vives but a single brief fragment, and whom Aristotle
reckoned as one of the " coarser " minds, hardly deserving
the name of philosopher, on account of "the tenuity of his
thought." We range him here with the eclectics because
he was obviously at pains to weld the teachings of Parme-
nides with those of Thales. Thus the van of his cosmic
process was led by "the moist," from which "the cold"
and " the warm " (water .and fire) proceeded, with fire as
the active cosmogonic principle, and water as the passive
matter.
Nearer to Diogenes than Hippo was Archelaus, a native
of Athens or Miletus. He was known as a disciple of
Anaxagoras, though he transformed his master's teaching
so considerably that he may almost be said to have reformed
it on older models. His cosmogony in especial bore the
traces of these differences. He did not admit the application
378 GREEK THINKERS.
of Nous to matter from outside in order to organize it and to
mould it to a cosmos. Archelaus, if we have understood the
evidence aright, was rather of opinion that Nous was origi-
nally inherent to matter, and in that respect he approached
more closely to the older representatives of the philosophy
of nature, and likewise, it is legitimate to add, to the spirit
of the old Greek view of the world. Taking these facts in
connection with his craving to discern something divine in
substance — a craving that was not satisfied by the dispersion
of matter whether into infinitesimally small "seeds" or
into the atoms of Leucippus — it was but natural that Arche-
laus employed himself similarly to Diogenes of Apollonia
in building a serviceable bridge between the doctrines of
Anaxagoras and Anaximenes. He did not reject the
countless elements which the sage of Clazomense had
entitled "seeds" or o/zoto^lpacu ; but the great material
forms which had played the chief part in the theory of the
"physiologists" were again brought into prominence. The
primary form of those "seeds," and at the same time the
seat of Nous, the intellectual principle which first regulated
cosmos, was represented by air, as the most immaterial,
so to say, of material substances. Out of this intermediate
stage fire and water, the vehicles of motion and rest, were
produced by rarefaction and condensation, or by the dis-
junction and conjunction of the "seeds." It is hardly
necessary to remind the reader that Archelaus was influenced
at this point, not merely by the philosophy of Anaximenes,
but by that of Parmenides, if not of Anaximander himself.
A higher degree of originality would appear to attach to his
attempt to describe the rudiments of human society and
the fundamental conceptions of Ethics and Politics. To
this, however, we shall have to return in another connection.
3. Another pupil of Anaxagoras was Metrodorus of
Lampsacus. He displayed the same desire to reconcile
the old with the new, to harmonize, in the present instance,
the new science with the old faith. Unfortunately, our first
impression of his allegorical key to Homer is one of disgust
at its grotesque extravagance. We cannot conceive what
induced him to identify Agamemnon with ether, Achilles
ALLEGORIZING INTERPRETATION OF HOMER. 379
with the sun, Hector with the moon, Paris and Helen with
the air and the earth, or to establish a parallel between
portions of the animal body, the liver, the spleen, and the
bile, on the one part, and Demeter, Dionysus, and Apollo
on the other. We are reminded by these experiments of
the worst excesses of the interpreters of the myths in our
own day, not to speak of kindred fantastic exercises of
other epochs, in all of which the desire is manifest to dis-
cover in sacred writings, the literal truth of which can no
longer be upheld, the mere husk of completely different
beliefs. We may recall, for instance, the Greek Jew, Philo
of Alexandria, with his religious philosophy, who perceived
in the garden of Eden the symbol of the divine wisdom,
in the four streams that issued from it the four cardinal
virtues, in the altar and tabernacle the "intelligible" or
ideal objects of cognition, and so forth. Rightly, indeed,
did Ernest Renan remark about Philo's allegorizing inter-
pretation of the scriptures, that the root of his method,
which was fraught with such important consequences, alien
though it be to the true spirit of science, is founded in piety,
and not in arbitrary wantonness. " Before one determines/*
he wrote, " to reject the teachings of a cherished faith " (or
the authority of highly-esteemed writings) " one has recourse
to every kind of identification, even to the most untenable ; "
one has recourse, that is to say, to explanations which
create a sense of wild absurdity outside the charmed circle of
believers. In the present instance Metrodorus was entering
and courageously pursuing a path which had been opened
long before his day. Already in the sixth century Thea-
genes of Rhegium had applied the panacea of allegory to
the authority of Homer which Xenophanes had assailed so
bitterly. The battle of the gods in the twentieth book of
the Iliad had given considerable offence. The sound
reason, not to speak of the sound morality, of mankind
had naturally been scandalized by the sight of the heavenly
powers, who had come to be regarded more and more as
the types of a uniform order in nature as in conduct, joined
in actual hand-to-hand combat. The scandal had to
be explained away, and an expedient was found in the
380 GREEK THINKERS.
sense that the Homeric deities represented partly inimical
elements, partly contrary qualities of human nature. A
kind of handle was afforded for the first of these categories
of explanation by the fact that Hephsestus the god of fire,
and Poseidon the lord of the sea, the twins Apollo and
Artemis, who, if not originally identical with the sun and
the moon, were at least frequently identified with those
divinities, and lastly Xanthus the river-god, were all par-
ticipants in the fight. Another considerable aid was the
inexhaustible stores of etymology which the ancients found
so malleable, and all kinds of moralizing reflections were
added, among which may be mentioned the happy thought,
worthy of an Elihu Burritt, that Ares the war-god was the
personification of un-reason, and was thus the antagonist
of reason incarnate in Athene. In this connection we first
meet the name of Theagenes as the earliest " apologist "
for the Homeric poems. Even Democritus and Anaxa-
goras did not disdain to contribute their mite to the
allegorical interpretation of the national poetry ; Diogenes
of Apollonia has already been mentioned in the same
context ; and in Antisthenes, the disciple of Socrates, we
shall meet yet another representative of the movement,'
which passed from the keeping of his followers, the Cynics,
into that of the Stoic school, where it attained its highest
development.
CH AFTER IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE.
I. THE constant increase in the attempts to effect a com-
promise between the old and the new in the national
view of the universe and human life helps us to measure
the gulf which had opened between the two. Our readers
are already acquainted with the chief manifestations of
this cleavage. They have learnt of the silent growth of
the empirical knowledge of nature. They have seen the
spirit of criticism seeking its springs of nourishment in the
deepened speculation of philosophers, in the wider intel-
lectual horizon, revealed by geographers and ethnologists,
in the schools of disputatious physicians, and in the larger
faith in sense-perception, as opposed to arbitrary assump-
tions of all kinds, which resulted from that cause. Here, then,
we must go back in order to go forward. We must inquire
into the changes undergone by Greek politics and society
since the age of the tyrants,* in order to extend our survey
of the progress of Hellenic civilization. In Athens, which
is henceforward to be considei'ed as the seat and centre of
the Greek mind, the social struggle, as elsewhex-e, had ended
with the victory of the middle classes. The privileges of
the nobles had been more and more curtailed, and a cor-
responding impulse had been given, at the expense of the
landed interest, to the influence of the mobile wealth
derived from industry and trade. The population of the
city had been increased by rural and foreign immigrants, and
the new residents, who included many emancipated slaves*
* Cf> Bk. I., Intro., § 3.
382 GREEK THINKERS.
were added in larger numbers to the civic lists. The
reforms of Clisthenes (509 B.C.), which followed swiftly
on the downfall of the Pisistratidee, had been expressly
designed to bring about the inner reconciliation of these
diverse elements in Athens, and a chief factor in this move-
ment, which finally ended in a fully developed democracy,
was supplied by the Persian wars. The nation was threat-
ened by an enemy in overwhelming force, who could only
be met with any prospect of success by a rally of all the
powers at its disposal. At an earlier date, as we saw, the
rise of the heavy-armed middle-class infantry and the decline
of the mounted nobles produced far-reaching effects, and
this experience was now repeated in the employment of
the masses for service at sea. Universal conscription was
followed in a score or so of years by universal suffrage.
Athens, resting on her sea-power, became the head of a
confederacy which gradually transformed the conditions of
economic as well as of political life. She enjoyed lucrative
commercial monopolies ; she derived a rich income from
the tolls, and from the tributes and judiciary fees of the
confederates ; and, finally, the confiscated lands of a rene-
gade ally would fall to her from time to time for repartition.
By these means she was enabled to meet the cost of a
numerous civil population. The democracy built on this
foundation became the model for the states dependent
on Athens, and was imitated by various communities
outside of the federation. And whether the sceptre
wielded by the democrats was moderate or unlimited, the
chief instrument of government in practically the whole of
Greece was the power of the tongue. More than this. It
was not merely in the council-chamber and the popular
assembly that the efficacy of speech was supreme. In the
law courts too, where hundreds of jurymen would some-
times be sitting together, words were the universal weapons,
the clever manipulation of which was more than half the
battle. The gift and faculty of speech were the sole road
to honour and power. And speech, too, was the sole pro-
tection against injustice of every kind. Without that weapon
a man was exposed to the dangers of hostile attack, in his
RHETORIC AND POLITICS. 383
own city and in times of peace, as hopelessly and defence-
lessly as a warrior without sword or shield on the battle-
field. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the
art of speech should have been cultivated for the first
time in the democratic communities of that age as
a profession, and that it should have assumed a promi-
nent if not actually the first place in the education of
the young. But the art of rhetoric is double-faced ; it
is half dialectic, and half style or grammar. Its would-
be masters were required to attain to an infallible certainty
of expression, in addition to complying with the demands
on their quickness of thought and on their control
of the manifold principles regulating public life in all
its various departments. Nor was the tendency of the
times exhausted by the increased variety and earnestness
in the ideals of formal culture. Thought and research
were supplied with new riches and resources by the prob-
lems of political life which sprang from the transformation
of society and State, and which were grasped and attacked
with passionate devotion. Every one was interested in the
results of the discussion, and the conflict of opinions and
sentiments took as lively a course as the struggle of interests
itself. And the science of politics, like that of its formal
handmaiden, rhetoric, quickened the intellectual movement
on several sides at once. The question of right and wrong
in certain particular circumstances led by a very slight tran-
sition to the second and wider question of political justice in
general. Nor did the awakened curiosity pause at the con-
fines of politics. It was inevitable that it should extend its
barriers to embrace all spheres of human activity and
business. In other words, the study of politics led to the
study of economics, of education, of the arts, and especially
of ethics. Moreover, when the inquiry had been widened to
include the rules of human action, it gave rise to a further
investigation into the sources of those rules and into the
origin of State and of society. To complete our picture of
the factors at work in that age we must recollect its intel-
lectual conditions. The critical spirit, with its hostile attitude
towards authority, was already in full vigour, and the social
384 GREEK THINKERS.
and political life of the fifth century must obviously have
reinforced its powers. The foundation of all criticism is
comparative observation, and in this respect the Greeks
were fortunate in their contact with foreign populations,
though it occurred by way of conflict during the Persian
wars. Even more significant, perhaps, was the develop-
ment of commercial and personal intercourse within the
pale of the Attic naval confederacy. Considerable portions
of the wide and scattered dominions of Hellas were now
included in a common league. A constant stream of
travellers was passing between the capital and the outlying
members of the confederation, familiarizing reciprocally the
Greeks of Athens with those of Asia Minor and the
islands. The crowding of the cities — largely by immigra-
tion from other parts of Greece and from abroad — must
have assisted that exchange of information and opinion
which has been aptly defined as the friction of intellects.
Finally, we must recollect the introduction of foreign cults
which ensued on the Persian wars, and which led to a
notable growth of religious sects in Athens. Burghers,
metics, and visitors were united on the same spot ; the
'autocracy of the established faith was broken down, and
thus, indirectly at least, a considerable step was taken
towards the emancipation of thought
2. These, then, so far as we can judge, were the con-
'ditions and circumstances obtaining in Greece at the time
of her great intellectual progress, and of its contribution
to the history of the world. Moral or mental philosophy
took its place by the side of the natural philosophy that had
preceded it, and its scope was at once the fullest possible,
though its powers were somewhat limited. For, having
sprung from practical needs, it was unable to repudiate its
connection with the soil of practice. Hence, indeed, were
derived its freshness and its warmth of pulsating life, but
hence, too, in many cases, its marked defect in logical
rigour and systematic completeness. Moreover, its flight
was hampered by another restraining fetter, which, con-
sisting as it did of the search for artistic diction, might
be called a chain of flowers. Apart, perhaps, from the
INTELLECTUALISM. 385
professional rhetoricians, there was no expert public in any
of these fields of learning. The art of rhetoric was supplied
with dry and dreary, but methodical, text-books, but in
other departments of knowledge the professors had to
appeal to the cultured classes in general, whose pampered
taste had to be tempted by all kinds of artifices of style.
It is only on the heights of learning that a permanent union
can be effected between beauty and truth. In laying the
foundations of a science, and particularly of a science the
fundamental conceptions of which require above all a
clearness of outline and a sharpness of demarcation, the
popularizing method is almost incompatible with success.
In the age with which we are dealing, several excellent
men were concerned in the attempt to overcome this
difficulty. There was Prodicus, whose reputation rests on
his studies in the differences of synonyms, and chief of all
there was Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, whose labours
were at once the least pretentious and the most fruitful of
results. His unadorned dialogues rose from the homeliest
to the highest themes. He paused at every step to Inter-
rupt the flow of thought in order to test its depth and
purity. Each fresh conception had to deliver its passport
in the course of cross-examination ; every slumbering doubt
was awakened ; every hidden contradiction was exposed ;
and thus a splendid contribution was made to that sifting
and purifying of fundamental ideas of which this early age
stood in the greatest need.
In a later volume of the present work we shall be
occupied with the name of Socrates, but here we may
remark that if he surpassed the majority of his contem-
poraries at this point, he was fully in agreement with them
at another. We refer to that heightened respect for reason
and reflection as the supreme arbiters of human affairs
which may perhaps be termed Intellectualism. This intel-
lectualism was by far the most characteristic feature of the
age. On the soil of Italy and Sicily, in particular, the new
confidence which was produced by the reign of criticism and
by the revolt from authority, went hand- in-hand with the
growth of refinement of thought. Our readers will recollect
VOL. I. 2 C
386 GREEK THINKERS.
the subtle and pointed arguments of Zeno of Elea, and,
about fifty years earlier, Charondas, the legislator at Catania,
had filled his office in a manner which won from Aristotle
the praise that " by his sharpness and subtlety he has
surpassed even the lawgivers of to-day." One example may
stand as a type. The law of Charondas relating to the
guardianship of orphans distributed their care between the
relatives on the father's and on the mother's side, giving
the first-named the charge of their fortune, and the second
the charge of their person. Thus the administration of
their fortune was committed to the hands of their presump-
tive heirs, who would have the greatest interest in increas-
ing it, and the life and health of the orphans were entrusted
to those of their relatives who would have no sinister
motive to injure them. Meantime the conscious art of
life, which aimed at reducing practice to fixed and reason-
able laws, had made uninterrupted progress. The time had
come when undisciplined empiricism had more and more
to give way to the conscious rule of art. There was hardly
any department of life which remained unaffected by that
tendency. What was not reformed was codified, and both
processes went almost hand-in-hand. Professional author-
ship took its rise on all sides ; a profusion of text-books was
poured forth ; all the business of mankind, from cooking a
dinner to painting a picture, from going a walk to waging a
war, was guided by rules and, where possible, reduced to
principles. A few examples will help to make this clearer,
Mithaecus discussed the art of cooking ; Democritus the
philosopher wrote on tactics and warfare ; Herodicus of
Selymbria made a systematic study of diet as a branch of
science separate from medicine ; and even the treatment
of horses was professionally described by Simo. All depart-
ments of the fine arts were theoretically elaborated. Lasus
of Hermione, who, as early as the sixth century B.C., had
added to the means of musical expression and supplied
them with a basis of theory, now found several followers,
among whom may be mentioned Damon, a personal friend
of Pericles, and Hippias of Elis, who lectured on rhythm
and harmony. Sophocles, too, following in the steps of an
PRIMEVAL SPECULATION. 387
otherwise unknown Agatharchus, did not consider it beneath
him to write a technical treatise on the stage ; and the
great sculptor Polycletus reduced in his " Canon " the
proportions of human anatomy to numerical equivalents.
Democritus discussed the theory of painting, and both he
and Anaxagoras were authors of treatises on the perspec-
tive of the stage. Agriculture, too, which was first raised
to the dignity of literature by Hesiod in his peasants'
calendar, the " Works and Days," was likewise treated by
Democritus as a subject of philosophic discussion. Nor
did the practitioners of prophecy or soothsaying lack their
handbooks. Nothing was to be left any more to the
mercy of chance or caprice. Urban architecture was re-
formed by Hippodamus of Miletus, a man of marked
originality, who displayed his love of innovation even in
his clothing and headdress, and we may perhaps regard
the rectilineal and rectangular system of streets which
Hippodamus introduced as a symbol of the increasing
demand for the universal rule of reason.
3. An age of eager and restless innovation will spon-
taneously ask itself whence are derived right, law, and
custom. What is the source of their sanction, and what
are the supreme standards by which to direct the uni-
versal endeavours at reform? Now, every such inquiry
beginning with " whence ? " must go back to the origin of
mankind. Mythology and didactic poetry had long ago
painted in brilliant hues the raptures of a golden age.
Hesiod is our earliest authority for this tendency of
sentiment and thought to throw a halo on the distant past. '
It was a tendency which expressed the bias to gloom
and pessimism by which he and his readers were '
affected. For the genius of the Greeks, like that of other
peoples, escaped to the Elysian fields of past or future
bliss in reaction from the stress and sorrow of their every-
day life.* But in a critical epoch triumphing in its own
culture and looking forward to further progress in that
unlimited sphere, the picture of the primordial past takes
a different complexion. An era which believes itself
* Bk. I. Ch. II. § i.
3 88 GREEK THINKERS.
superior to Its ancestry, which views its own enlightenment
not without pride, perhaps not without arrogance, is unlikely
to seek its ideals in the dim spaces of past or future time,
looking forward to the one with admiration, or back to the
other with repining. This tendency of sentiment was
accompanied by some facts of correct perception. It be-
came a common conviction, we might almost say a self-
evident commonplace, that the prehistoric ages were
barbaric. The progress of humankind through the rising
stages of civilization was a slow and gradual ascent from
the depths of animal savagery. " Slow and gradual " by
the evidence of scientific thought which had abandoned its
belief in supernatural and miraculous intervention, and
which, in the sphere of natural research, had obtained an
insight into the method by which the minutest processes
were gradually consummated to great results. We recollect
in this connection the rudiments of the theory of descent
which we found in Anaximander,* and the anticatastrophic
geology of Xenophanes,f with his complementary view of
the anticatastrophic course of civilization. We recollect,
too, the medical writer J who distinguished the men of his
day from their less civilized ancestors and from the animal
world in the matter of the culinary art.
The age of the Troglodytes was no more. They, with
their ignorance of the plough and of iron instruments of
all kinds, with their deeds of violence that did not shrink
from cannibalism, had made way for civilized men who
sowed the field and planted the vineyard, built their home-
steads, fortified their cities, and finally had learnt to pay
funeral honours to the dead. Thus Moschion, the tragic
poet, who properly belongs to the fourth rather than the
fifth century B.C., described the origin of civilization,
leaving it doubtful, however, whether we owed it to the
philanthropy of the Titan Prometheus, or to the force of
necessity, or to "long practice" and gradual habituation
in which " Nature played the part of schoolmistress." Nor
had the leading men of the fifth century been free from
* Bk. I. Ch. I. § 2. t Bk. II. Ch. I. § 3.
$ Bk. III. Ch. I. § 5.
ORGANIC AND MECHANICAL VIEWS. 389
similar reflections. Take, for instance, the opening verses
of the tragedy " Sisyphus " by the Athenian statesman
Critias, or take the title of a lost book by Protagoras of
Abdera " On the Aboriginal State of Mankind," to which
Moschion was presumably referring in the first words of
the fragment we have mentioned, " Let man's first form
be to your eyes revealed." The dominant conception of
progress in that fragment of Moschion may be defined as
organic, for though, as we have seen, it touched incident-
ally on the legend of Prometheus, yet the weight of its
attention was given to the effects brought about by Nature,
by Necessity, by Habit, and above all by "Time, that
produceth all things and nourisheth all things." The idea
of development was supreme ; its fruit was the order of
society. Similarly, in the work of Critias, "the starry
radiance of heaven " was spoken of as the " handiwork of
the wise artist, Time." Now, Protagoras had treated these
problems from a slightly different point of view. We
might fairly speak of a mechanical — or, in the sense we
have explained, of an intellectualistic — view of progress,
as distinct from the organic. Design, Deliberation, and
Invention fill the room of Nature, Habit, and uncon-
scious Instinct So much at least we may infer with
approximate certainty from Plato's reproduction of that
description. The account doubtless is partly a travesty,
but its exaggeration of the details to be caricatured makes
the features of the original more recognizable. Primeval
man, so we read, could not gain the victory in his conflict
with the wild animals, because they did not as yet possess
the "art of government, of which the art of war is a
part." Again, their want of the art of government per-
mitted them to injure one another. The theft of fire,
which the legend ascribed to Prometheus, was here explained
as the theft of the wisdom of art from the chamber
where Athene and Hephaestus presided over it. The fact
that he stole the fire as well and gave it to mankind was
merely because the " wisdom of art " would have availed
them very little without that aid. Further, when Zeus
sent " Justice " and " Reverence " on earth, Hermes, who
390 GREEK THINKERS.
was charged to distribute the boon, asked if the precious
gift should be distributed to all men equally, or should
be given in the proportion of the arts, with many lay-
men, that is to say, to one master or expert. By " art,"
too, men began to articulate their sounds and to invent
language. By "art," "wisdom," or "virtue" — the words
are deliberately used as equivalents, and are frequently
put one for the other— they built houses, governed the
State, and fulfilled the moral law. Art and its masters,
in the sense that we should rather speak to-day of
handicraft and artisans, formed a permanent contrast
with nature and chance. Through all the Platonic
caricature there shines that conception of life which our
study of the conditions of this age has fully prepared us to
encounter. We think we discern a pedantic note in these
utterances, a hint of the schoolmaster's exaggerated rever-
ence for what is founded on reflection, reduced to rule,
and teachable by precept. Such a view of life was
eminently suited to the childhood of the mental and moral
sciences, and in no instance out of many, as we shall have
occasion to remark, was it more strongly or more clearly
developed than in the person of Socrates.
4. We need hardly say that this projection into the
misty past of the achievements of an age of ripe reason
is an unhistorical method. The genius and inventiveness
of individual minds were of course at all times indispens-
able. Many of the greatest works of progress in which
adult humanity acquiesces as self-evident were doubtless
wrought by anonymous heroes of civilization, and we
gladly join in the eulogistic paean which George Forstcr
raises in honour of the great Unknown who first subdued
the horse and pressed him into the service of mankind.
But progress depends on something more than the work
of individual great men. Account must also be taken of
the slow and imperceptible achievements of the moderately
gifted multitude, climbing, as it were, the rungs of a ladder
provided by Nature herself. It would be wholly incorrect,
and at variance with historical facts, if the first stage Instead
of the last stage of evolution were taken as marking the
DOCTRINE OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. 39!
possession of a system or network of rules, which is what we
mean by a practical art, and it is precisely this mistake in
historical perspective which commonly characterizes the
great epochs of intellectual emancipation. Unwittingly
they shape the past according to their own image, and
they are fain to adorn the childhood of the race with the
features of precocious wisdom. Thus in such epochs we
frequently meet the doctrine of the Social Contract. Minds
that have repudiated the yoke of tradition, that have
virtually outgrown the discipline of supernatural authority,
and that perceive in the institutions of State and society
nothing but means to human ends, are far too prone to
ignore the different ages of mankind, and to ascribe to
their remotest ancestors modes of thought and action
corresponding exactly to their own. The fact is that the
individual as such was originally of no account whatever.
He was merely a member of his family, his tribe, or his
clan. His adherence to the group of which he formed a
part was conditioned by his birth, or imposed on him by
force ; his obedience was given blindly, and no play at all
was permitted to his powers of free-will or self-determina-
tion. These were the facts, which the apostles of enlighten-
ment promptly proceeded to neglect, and to distort into an
opposite significance. Moreover, that natural tendency was
often considerably strengthened by the demands of practical
politics. We begin to doubt the evidence of our own
eyes when we see what views were expressed by John
Locke * in his two treatises " On Civil Government."
This acute and profound thinker maintained in all serious-
ness that the political community rested in all instances
on voluntary combination and on the free choice of the
rulers and of the forms of government ; and we watch with
astonishment his eager but idle efforts to press the facts
of history and ethnology into the service of this fallacious
theory. Our astonishment abates, however, on homoeo-
pathic principles, when we glance at Locke's opponents,
the theoretical defenders of absolutism. Those champions
of the divine right of kings contended that the Creator
* A. D. 1632-1704.
392 GREEK THINKERS.
had endowed Adam with the plenitude of governing powers,
and that from Adam they had descended on all the
monarchs of the earth. And the question was discussed
throughout as if there were no alternative offered to con-
temporary thought except between these two doctrines
thus at variance with history and reason. It is true that
gleams of correct judgment flashed across the mind of
Locke. He was aware that "an argument from what
has been to what should of right be, has no great force."
But the light of this perception did not prevent him
from considering the cause of political freedom through
hundreds of pages, as if it were bound to stand or fall
with the triumph or defeat of his pseudo-historical theory.
Reverting from Locke to the dawn of modern philosophy
at the opening of the fourteenth century, and passing
over the many intermediate links in that great chain of
development, we are met by similar tendencies of thought.
Marsilius of Padua, for example, the older contempo-
rary of Petrarch, and the friend of William of Occam, the
bold Minorite friar, was the author of a treatise, "The
Defender of Peace," inscribed to Lewis of Bavaria, in which
he asserted the doctrine of the Social Contract. He too,
as we find, was filled with the belief that the war against
priestly pretensions could only hope to end in the com-
plete triumph of monarchical rule limited only by semi-con-
stitutional or democratic checks, if it were waged under the
standard of the sovereignty of the people and of this pseudo-
historical fact on which it rested. In the earlier Middle Ages
similar effects had been produced by a precisely contrary
tendency. The wish to exalt ecclesiastical authority at the
expense of the secular power had fostered the spread of the
opinion that the State had sprung from the anarchy which
ensued on the fall of man ; that it was not created by divine
dispensation, but owed its origin to the disasters of man-
kind and to the Social Contract erected as a barrier against
them.
If some one were to forbid us to ,walk upright unless
we could prove that we had never crawled on all-fours in
infancy, we should be hardly less surprised than at the
ORIGIN OF THE THEORY. 393
prohibition imposed on modern men to exercise a free choice
in political affairs unless their ancestors had exercised it in
remote antiquity. We have just now alluded to the manner
in which this mode of thought, which rests on a great over-
estimate rather than on any under-estimate of the value
of positive law, has re-arisen in more recent times, and
every one is acquainted with the manner in which it reached
its summit in Rousseau, the precursor of the French Rev-
volution. Though this argument in favour of the theory
of the Social Contract was not known to the ancients, yet
the theory itself was familiar to them. We have already
struck its psychological root. Reduced to its elements,
the theory can be expressed in the form of a question
and an answer, in which the answer will appear as wholly
unprejudiced and impartial, but imbued with an error
derived from the total lack of historical understanding.
The question was, " How did our ancestors happen to
resign their apparent individual self-independence, and to
consent to those limitations of it which the State laid on
them ? " The answer was, " They accepted this disadvan-
tage for the sake of a greater advantage. They resigned
to a certain degree their own liberty in order to be
protected from the abuse of liberty by other people
— in order to protect life and property, their own as
well as that of their dependents, from outside violence."
In the light of common sense, this will be seen to be
nothing but a special instance of a far-reaching tendency
to error. Anything that fulfils a purpose may readily be
regarded, by virtue of a false generalization, as necessarily
owing its existence to a deliberate dispensation expressly
directed to that end. Plato was acquainted with that
doctrine, and at the beginning of the second book of the
" Republic " he put it in the mouth of Glaucon, in the words :
" And when men have done and suffered [injustice] and had
experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain
the other, they think that they had better agree with one another
to have neither."
Here, then, was the beginning of laws and covenants ;
394 GREEK THINKERS.
hence the ordinances of the law were entitled right and
just, and this was the nature and the origin of justice.
Epicurus adopted that theory ; and his heavy debt to
Democritus suggests that in this instance too he was
following in the steps of his great predecessor — a con-
jecture, however, which cannot yet be asserted with more
than a moderate degree of probability.
5. The probability is supported by the fact that in an
allied sphere of learning the mind of Democritus took a
similar bent. In the question of the origin of language,
antiquity was divided into two hostile camps. Their
conflict of opinions was a striking illustration of what John
Stuart Mill has somewhere called the bandying of half-
truths. One party asserted that language had a natural
origin, the other party that it was based on convention.
In the theory of the natural origin of language, two
different contentions were involved. First, that the
formation of language does not arise from deliberate
design, but from a spontaneous impulse of instinct ; and,
secondly, that the primordial natural connection between
sound and meaning may still be recognized and proved in
existing forms of language — that is to say, in the words
of the Greek tongue. Now, contemporary philologers are
convinced that the first of these contentions is true, but
the second totally false. We know how ill we succeed in
obtaining absolute certainty as to genuine original types of
speech. Comparative analysis has disclosed many roots of
the aboriginal Indo-Germanic language, but even there we
are scarcely ever certain of standing in the presence of
words without a past, — of true examples of the primordial
impulse to language, free from all previous history. And
yet we are far better equipped for that purpose than were
the ancient Greek grammarians who hardly ever knew any
other language than their own, and who lacked the means
for all deeper analysis equally with the means for com-
parison. Philosophers approached the problem of the origin
of language, which has never yet been completely solved,
with the same helplessness and the same confidence with
which they attacked the problem of the origin of organic
WORDS AND IDEAS. 395
life. In both instances alike they succumbed to the
temptation of mistaking the highly complicated as simple,
and the last link in a long chain of development as ab-
original. Th£ result was obviously an etymological
scrimmage. An overwhelming subjective factor of error
in the habitual mental association between the word and
its meaning contributed to the breakdown in consequence
of the difficulties of the facts. We are reminded of the
Frenchman who maintained that his mother-tongue was
constructed more naturally than English, because in Eng-
lish pain is called " bread," whereas in French it is called
fain and it is pain. And even when attempts were made to
treat the subject more rationally, to analyze the words and
compare them with the impressions they produced, fresh
delusions defeated the experiment, which failed to attain a
single tenable result Even in cases where the endeavours
of the etymologists possessed a certain plausibility, their
speculations, which Plato ridiculed in his dialogue " Craty-
lus," suffered the same fate as the lay philologers of our day
who affect to perceive in the verb " to roll " a consonance
with the sound of rolling thunder or of rolling wheels. They
do not know that the word is derived from the Low Latin
rotula, a diminutive of rota (" a wheel "), and that rota, like
the German Rad, springs from the same root as rasA* so
that the consonance is completely accidental. Heraclitus
was the first to maintain this doctrine with its curious
mixture of falsehood and truth. Or, rather, it is probably
more correct to say that he tacitly assumed the theory
than that he expressly promulgated and supported it.
Undoubtedly he discerned in the consonance of words a
reference to the affinities of the ideas to which they corre-
sponded, as indeed may be gathered from some of his un-
translatable sentences.t Similarly, he was evidently pleased
at finding his doctrine of the coexistence of contraries
foreshadowed in the Greek language, in the sense that one
and the same word (/3/oe and ]3ioc) meant at one time
" life " and at another time an instrument of death, namely,
* N.B.— The German rasch = " swift."
t Bk. I. Ch I, § 5.
396 GREEK THINKERS.
" the bow." It is at least questionable, however, if Hcra-
clitus discussed the origin of linguistic formations and
expressed his views on that subject. But, considering
that he regarded all human activity as the image and
emanation of the divine, he must have been very far from
believing that the vocal incorporation of the processes of
the mind was something merely artificial, and he would
probably have rejected the assumption, even if, as is
hardly credible, it had found a champion among his own
contemporaries.
The name of Democritus is mentioned as the author,
or at least as the earliest champion, of this counter-theory.
At the same time we are made acquainted with the out-
line of the arguments which he marshalled against the
doctrine of the natural origin of language. The sage of
Abdera referred to the plurality of meanings borne by
certain words (homonymy), and to the plurality of words
used to designate certain objects (polyonymy). Further, he
was struck by the occasional phenomenon of a change of
appellations, and lastly by the "anonymity" of certain objects
or ideas. The point of the first two of these arguments is
quite clear. If, as had been assumed, it were true that an
inner and necessary relation exists between an object and
its name, cases could not arise as in the instances of "bill,"
or " gin," or " seal," in which the same complex of sounds
denotes objects of different kinds* Similarly, the assump-
tion was incompatible with the fact that one object could
be called by more than one name. Thus the same locality
is now a "room," now a "chamber ;" the same piece of fur-
niture is now a " chair," and now a " seat ; " the same animal
now a "dog," now a "hound." The third argument is
little more than a variant of the first. For it makes but
little difference whether an object is called by several
names simultaneously, or whether these appellations are
given to it in temporal succession. Thus " placket " was
the seventeenth-centuiy word for the petticoat of to-day,
and we speak of " sherry " to-day in the place of Fal-
stafFs "sack." The fourth and last argument, however,
seems to transgress these bounds of reasoning, for it is
DEMOCRITUS AS PHILOLOGER. 397
hardly a proof against the existence of an Inner connection
between the names of things and the things named that
certain objects or ideas are without appellations. Here,
we fancy, Democritus must have been trying to express
something of a different and more comprehensive kind. He
would appear to have argued to this effect : If language
were a divine gift or a product of nature, we should recog-
nize in its manifestations a higher degree of adaptation
than is actually apparent. But the alternating picture of
excess and defect, of change and inconstancy, and finally
of a total lack of the requisite means to an end, though
familiar enough in the imperfect types of human inven-
tion, should not appertain to creations which we ascribe
to the government of nature or to the control of divine
agencies. And, rendering this reflection of Democritus
into the language of modern thought, we may interpret
him as follows : Language is not an organism, for ex-
perience teaches us that organisms contain a far higher
degree of perfection than is contained in language — a con-
cession to experience with which Democritus may fairly be
credited despite his strong anti-teleological bias.
The incisive criticism thus directed at the theory of a
natural origin of language affected it merely in its rudest
and most incomplete form. Democritus succeeded in
proving that men have not been constrained as if by an
invincible necessity to describe objects by the names apper-
taining to them and by no other names. But this result
might have been reached by a mere reference to the fact
that there exist more languages than one. Democritus, it
must be added, was as guilty as any of his opponents of
the fundamental crime of that theory. He too confused
what is original with what is the result of development, and
he too neglected all the facts pointing to what we call the
growth and evolution of language. In order to evade the
difficulties which threatened the theory of his adversaries,
he was compelled to adopt an hypothesis which brought
no less serious difficulties in its train. Language, according
to this hypothesis, was to be entirely conventional in origin ;
primeval men were to have agreed together to call the
398 GREEK THINKERS.
objects by such-and-such names in order that they might
keep as a permanent possession this important aid to
instruction and communication. The objections to that
view are obvious. The critics of antiquity, led by Epicurus,
were quick to ask the awkward question, How could such
agreement have been reached in an age when language
itself, the most important means of communication, did not
yet exist ? Thus the Epicurean author of a book written on
stone which has only lately been discovered, asked if the
"name-giver" was to be represented as a kind of school-
master, who showed his pupils at one time a stone and at
another time a flower, and insisted on their learning the
proper names. If so, he wondered, what would bind them
to use those names and no others when the schoolmaster's
eye was removed ; and what would preserve those names
for the information of posterity, or even for the use of remote
quarters of the country ? or were we to suppose that this
remarkable lesson was imparted at one time to great masses
of men, and if so, did it take place by written communica-
tions, which could certainly not precede the invention of
language, or by the concourse in one spot of scattered multi-
tudes of men in an age which was deficient in all perfected
means of locomotion ? This was the kind of ridicule which
was poured on the exposition of Democritus, and we are
unable to say at this date how far he really deserved it.
It is quite possible that he refrained from elaborating his
central thought in detail, and that he was content to set up
the theory of convention as the sole solution of the problem
adequate to replace the old theory of nature which, as a
whole, he could not but condemn. Be that as it may, it
was left to Epicurus to dispel a portion of the darkness
which surrounded this theme, and by the assumption of a
natural as well as of a conventional element in language to
untie the knot as efficiently as his inadequate resources
permitted. At that point, if not earlier, in the present
history, we shall have to come to closer contact with the
problem, and to examine Epicurus's attempt at a solution,
correct in principle as it was, in relation to the subsequent
teachings of comparative philology.
NATURE AND CONVENTION IN LANGUAGE. 399
A single example will suffice to help us to realize the
conceptions of the natural and the conventional element
in speech. The original Indo-European language possessed
a root pu, which carried with it the meaning of " to cleanse."
Presuming, as is extremely probable, that this is a genuine
original root and not derivative, we may be permitted to
speculate on the manner in which this little syllable reached
its fundamental significance. If we employ the mouth
itself, the organ of speech, to perform an act of cleansing,
this is done by blowing away the particles of dust, straw,
etc,, which cover and pollute any superficial plane. If we do
this energetically by a determined narrowing of our pro-
truded lips, we produce sounds like fy pfy or /#, In this
way the last-named sound might at least have obtained
its primitive significance. Presuming our conjecture to be
correct, a definite position and movement of the organs
of speech formed in this instance, as doubtless in count-
less others, the bond between sound and meaning. In
our opinion, too, this imitation of movements was by far
the most fertile source in the formation of language — far
more fertile, indeed, than the imitation of sounds merely
at second hand and not self-produced, such as the name
" cuckoo " or the verb " to mew." Opinions of course may
differ on this point, but both instances may fairly be
claimed as cases of what, without any taint of mysticism,
we may call the natural element in language. When we
come to look at the various offshoots of that root, how-
ever, in the separate Indo-European languages, we are con-
fronted at once with the arbitrary forces of selection and
preference — in other words, with the element of convention.
For side by side with this one appellation of the cleansing
process, numerous others are found to describe precisely the
same operation, though with different shades of meaning.
There was nothing to compel the Roman to use the adjec-
tive purus ("clean"), which sprang from that root, nor to
compel the Roman and Greek to employ the substantives
pana and point (" punishment "), springing from the same
root. We can only say that several uses of those words,
especially their combination with expressions signifying
400 GREEK THINKERS.
soul, disposition or sentiment, such as "mens pura," "purcte
d'ame," "purity of mind," and so forth, corresponded fairly
exactly to the fundamental meaning of the root, and formed
a kind of reflection of its primitive significance. Further,
the conception of punishment as a religious atonement or
purification would be more appropriately expressed by the
derivatives of/# than by descendants of other roots, such as
sweeping, scouring, washing, etc., which import an additional
conception of coarse material violence into their expression
of the same operation. There was, of course, no compulsion
to use this or that word in any given context. We can
only speak of tendencies which were as liable to be defeated
by the accidents of use and wont as they were likely to
profit by favourable circumstances. As we descend more
deeply into the history of a language, to reach at last the
new formations of later epochs or of the present, we per-
ceive more and more the importance of the alternating
fortunes of the long historical process, and we watch the
gradual disappearance of the tendency originally apper-
taining to the natural element as it yields to the caprice
of the speaker or the writer. For a word which popular
parlance or authors of decisive authority have used for a
definite conception becomes dedicated, as it were, to that
purpose. Thus words become more and more mere signs
of conventional agreement, mere coins that have passed
from hand to hand till their original impress can only be
read or renewed by the inventive genius of the artist of
speech, and, above all,, of the poet. In other instances a
breath of their vanished perfume still haunts these withered
flowers of thought, and teaches even the coarser senses of the
multitude how to use them aright. And now to revert to
pu and its offspring. If one of the new forms of dentifrice
was advertised as " Puritas," this was solely due to the prefer-
ence of one man, its inventor ; but even in the French word
feine, and transcend ently in &peine, meaning "scarcely," in
the -German Pein, or the English pain, there is no trace what-
soever of their original meaning. The Puritans received
their party-name on account of their endeavour to restore
the ecclesiastical institutions in their original shape, free (or
"7 POOH-POOH THE PURITY? 401
pure) from later accretions. But the shade of meaning in
the root of the word had hardly any marked effect on the
choice of the name, though it may indeed have operated
tacitly and unconsciously in the fact that the appellation
was presently transferred to the ethical sphere, in which the
term " moral Puritanism " became a familiar phrase.
The same example will serve to show that the argument
derived by Democritus from homonymy admits of refuta-
tion even in such cases as exhibit the vocal identity of
original, not of derivative forms of speech. If we blow
something away, we are not always moved by the inten-
tion of cleansing the object ; we may also do it from a
desire, or, if instinctively, with the effect, of removing from
ourselves something ugly or repugnant. In this way,
as Darwin tells us, numerous nations of the earth use this
gesture to express repugnance and contempt, and the
spoken equivalent of the gesture, such as the German
pfui, or the English pooh, which is likewise used by the
Australian aborigines, serves to express those emotions.
Similarly, Greek and Latin words denoting foul smells and
the like, were derived from the same root, as we may
still see in suppuration, putrescence, pyemy. The course of
language-formation flows nowadays with but a sluggish
stream, but it never entirely runs dry, and English in recent
times has come to employ the exclamation we are speaking
of as a verb, so that an Englishman, wishing to cast doubts
on the honesty of another man's purpose in an emphatic
form, may combine both fundamental meanings of that
phonetic gesture in the sentence, " I pooh-pooh the purity
of your intentions."
6. The fascination of this great controversy over the
origin of language is second in importance, however, to the
contrast it involves between nature on the one part and
convention on the other. We are already familiar with
the distinction. We met it in the theory of sense-percep-
tion formulated by Leucippus and Democritus, in which
we learned to recognize convention as the tj'pe of change,
subjectiveness, and relativity, in opposition to the change-
less constancy of the objective world. But the true home
VOL. I. 2 D
402 GREEK THINKERS.
of this contrast was not the sphere of sense-perception, nor
was it the domain of language ; it was rather to be found
in political and social phenomena. Archelaus, the pupil of
Anaxagoras, is mentioned as the first representative in
literature of this fundamental antithesis, but little more
than this fact is known to us. His works have been lost,
and we can only say with certainty that he discussed
"Beauty, Justice, and the Laws" in the sense of that
distinction, that he considered in this connection the
" severance " of mankind from the rest of animal life, and
that he treated of the rudiments of the social state. The
antithesis between law and nature was foreign to all epochs
in which the spirit of criticism was still in a rudimentary
stage. Wherever authority and tradition reigned in undis-
puted supremacy, the extant rules of life were accepted as
the only natural laws, or, more exactly stated, their relation
to nature was outside the region of doubt or even of dis-
cussion. This is the attitude of the Mohammedan of
to-day, who walks among us like a living fossil, clothed in
the impassivity of that early era of thought, and invoking
the revelation of Allah, as manifested in the Koran, as the
supreme authority beyond the reach of appeal in all ques-
tions of religion, law, ethics, and politics. To revert to
the distinction, however, between nature and convention,
we see that its recognition entails two great series of con-
sequences. On the one part, it supplies the weapons for
the incisive and destructive criticism of all extant and valid
laws ; on the other part, it provides a new and paramount
standard for the reform which is presently inaugurated in
the most diverse fields. But the ambiguity in the word
"nature," which was clearly recognized in later antiquity,
rendered that standard extremely vacillating and uncertain
— a fact that seems to have increased the readiness of
mankind to use it, inasmuch as the vagueness of the
formula made it easier for them to include the most
various aims and desires. Thus the poet Euripides, when
he exclaimed, "This Nature does, who no convention
knows/' was thinking of the power of natural impulse which
laughs at law and locksmiths ; but when he said of a
RELATIVISM IN MORALS AND POLITICS. 403
bastard, " His name's his fault, no difference Nature knows/'
the dramatist was thinking of the actual individual nature
of men and of its independence of the artificial distinctions
of society. In a similar, though not in completely the
same sense, Alcidamas the rhetorician* exclaimed in his
" Messenian Speech," " the Deity made all men free : Nature
has enslaved no man/' The speaker was here dominated
by the conception of an imaginary primeval state in which
universal equality was the rule ; or else he was thinking
'of a natural law, founded on this or on some other basis,
which took precedence of all human institutions.
A distinction of this kind was bound to serve as a means
of criticism and negative attack. History and ethnology had
widened the study of the moral and political conditions of
various tribes, nations, and epochs, and hence was derived
a keener perception of the Protean multiformity of human
customs and laws. People began to busy themselves with
applying the comparative method to the most glaring con-
trasts. A new literature sprang up about this subject,
which reached its summit in antiquity in the treatise " On
Fate," by Bardesanes, the Syrian Gnostic, f and which reaped
a rich harvest in the age of the Encyclopaedists. Herodotus
himself took pride in parading antitheses of this kind. A
notable instance occurs in one of his stories about Darius.
He relates that the monarch sent for the Greeks at his court
to ask them their price for devouring the corpses of their
ancestors. They replied that no price would be high
enough. Thereupon the Persian king summoned the
representatives of an Indian tribe which habitually prac-
tised the custom from which the Greeks shrank, and asked
them through the interpreter, in the presence of the
Greeks, at what price they would burn the corpses of their
ancestors. The Indians cried aloud and besought the king
not even to mention such a horror. From these circum-
stances the historian drew the following notable moral for
human guidance : If all existing custom-? could somewhere
be set before all men in order that they might select the
most beautiful for themselves, every nation would choose
* Fourth century B.C. ; cp. Ch. VII. § 4, inf/a. t Born circ. 200 A.D.
404 GREEK THINKERS.
out, after the most searching scrutiny, the customs they
had already practised. And he ends his tale by giving
Pindar right in his remark, " Convention is the king of all
men." The same thought is developed at greater length
and with even more point in a treatise which may probably
also be referred to this age. There we find the opinion
expressed that " if all men were to gather in a heap the
customs which they hold to be good and noble, and if they
were next to select from it the customs which they hold to
be base and vile, nothing would be left over, but all would
be distributed among all.'* We can hardly conceive a more
direct and definite expression of the belief that no act or
institution is so bad or ugly as not to be held in high
honour by some portion of humanity. This relativist point
of view has an enlightening and emancipating effect on
which we may pause for a moment. We see it most clearly
in the dramas of Euripides, the great poet and prophet of
free thought. We marked just now his indifference to the
stain of illegitimacy, and we would add here that he made
no more account of the brand on the forehead of the slave.
In his opinion it was the convention and the name, not
nature, that imposed slavery :
u The name alone is shameful to the slave ;
In all things else an honest man enslaved
Falls not below the nature of the free."
He was equally explicit, too, on the question of the differ-
ence between noble and humble birth :
** The honest man is Nature's nobleman.
Who keeps not justice, though the son of Zeus,
Or sprung more highly, count I but as mean."
We see that little was wanting to break down the barriers
of nationality and to make room for the cosmopolitan ideal
which we shall meet in full splendour in the Cynics. That
ideal was anticipated by Hippias of Elis, in whose mouth
Plato put the words —
" All of you who are here present I reckon to be kinsmen and
and fellow-citizens, by nature and not by law; for by
DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHT. 405
nature like is akin to like, whereas law is the tyrant of mankind,
and often compels us to do many things which are against nature."
7. While Nature meant here the social instinct, the real
or probable original equality of mankind, it is obvious that
the opposite opinion would not go begging for champions.
The victory of the stronger over the weaker and the
superiority of talent to mediocrity were bound to attract
attention and to be regarded as an emanation of Nature,
especially in a society founded on conquest and slavery. We
may recall the glorification of war by Heraclitus as " the
father and king " * of all things, which had differentiated
free and slaves as well as gods and men. The sage of Ephe-
sus was the first to recognize and exalt the significance of
war or the application of force in the foundation of State
and society. When we come to Aristotle we shall meet a
kindred point of view, though somewhat less comprehensive
and marred by a national prejudice. Aristotle undertook to
discover a natural basis for slavery. He justified it in the
interests of the barbaric slaves themselves, who were unfit
for self-government, and he combated the view that slavery
was merely the work of arbitrary convention. Whether
or not the literature of the age of enlightenment contributed
to this tendency is uncertain, but the probability is on the
negative side. Plato at least, who rejected it, selected as
its champion among the contemporaries of Socrates, not
an author or a teacher of youth, but one of their bitterest
foes, a practical politician, who plumed himself on his
extreme practicality, and who is otherwise unknown to us.
It is in the dialogue called " Gorgias " that this Callicles
made a passionate plea for the right of might He there
refers to the dominion which the strong exercises over the
weak as a fact founded in nature, and to be characterized
accordingly as a "natural law." The natural law changed
forthwith on his lips to a "natural right" or to a dis-
pensation of "natural justice." The bridge between the
recognition of a natural fact and the approval of the con-
duct corresponding to it was built with considerable ease,
* Bk. I. Ch. I. § 5 (p, 73).
406 GREEK THINKERS.
and the operation was assisted by the fact that there was
one domain at least in which antiquity could perceive hardly
any difference between the two. In international relations
it was deemed at once natural and right that the strong states
should overthrow and absorb the weak. This explanation,
however, is not exhaustive in the present instance. For,
though Callicles appeals to the right of conquest as well
as to the example of the whole animal creation, yet he
differs in two essential points both from Heraclitus and
from Aristotle. He aims at the subjection, not of a
portion, but of the whole of mankind, and his sympathies,
if not exclusively, are yet mainly on the side of the strong
and the clever rather than of the weak and dull. He
takes the part of the man of genius, the " hero " as we
should say to-day, against the multitude which tried at
once to enslave his soul and to reduce him to the level
of their own mediocrity. Callicles rejoiced to think that
the man of genius, like a young half-tamed lion, would rise
in the fulness of his strength —
£t will shake off and break through and escape from all this ; he
will trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms,
and all our laws sinning against nature : the slave will rise in
rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice
will shine forth."
Such remarks as these express the aesthetic delight in
the untamed force of a strong human nature. They
represent, moreover, the feeling expressed by a modern
champion of absolutism in the words, "the rule of the
mightier is the eternal ordinance of God." A little later
on, Callicles in Plato is made to defend a tenet which
was less bitterly at variance with the spirit of popular
institutions. The better and more intelligent man in
his view was to exercise supremacy, and, as we do
not live in an ideal world, he was not to be robbed of
the right of personal profit. In other words, the fittest
and most competent men were to exert the strongest
influence and to draw the richest rewards in political
Hfe. But the character of Callicles underwent a strange
HERO-WORSHIP AND ABSOLUTISM. 407
transformation In the further course of the dialogue. The
champion of a Carlylean hero-worship, of Mailer's political
theories, and of the principle of uncorrupted aristocra-
cies, was suddenly turned to the evangelist of the gospel
of an unbridled lust for pleasure. It is clear that this
view had not found a spokesman in that age, from the
ingenuous remark of Plato himself, " For what you say
is what the rest of the world think, but are unwilling to
say." We may confidently assert that the philosopher-
poet combined this theory with the others so alien to
it, in order to increase the odium which he desired to
attach to them. But what was undoubtedly genuine and
heartfelt was Plato's indignation at the yoke of average
mediocrity and the frequent blunders of democratic in-
stitutions. It formed an intelligible protest against
the existing order of the State with its shifting lights
and shades. The ideal Athens varied according to the
critic's mood. Some were disposed to hero-worship, with
Alcibiades at that moment as their idol. Others were
inclined to revive the institutions of aristocracy either
in whole or in part. Finally, Plato himself, who was a
thorough hater of democracy, preached the Utopian
doctrine of the philosophic kings. Thus " nature " and
"natural law" were on one side the chosen shibboleth of
the growing love of equality with its steady advance to
cosmopolitanism, and on the other side they served the
aristocrats and the worshippers of a strong personality.
One ambition was common to both tendencies. They
were moved alike by the desire to break loose from the
bonds in which tradition and authority had fettered the
mind of mankind.
8. We are met here by a double question. How far
did the diminishment of authority extend, and what were
the effects that accompanied it ? We are not in a position
to give even an approximately exact answer to either of
these questions. But one thing at least is quite clear —
that no domain of life or faith was exempt from the
attacks of criticism. The inquisitorial scepticism of the
age did not pause even at the gates of heaven. Diagoras
408 GREEK THINKERS.
of Melos, a dithyrambic versifier, whose sparse poetical
remains are steeped in awe of the gods, fell a victim to
some unavenged injury, and became in consequence a
sceptic as to the divine justice. He gave expression to
this change of view in a volume of " Crushing Speeches,"
a title which affords a glimpse into the blasphemous
disposition of the orthodox poet now turned revolutionary.
In a later chapter we shall have to deal with the religious
doubts' of Protagoras, clothed in far more moderate garb,
as well as with the theory of Prodicus on the origin of
religion. The abandoned throne of authority was usurped
on all sides by reason and reflection. Every question
of human conduct was treated by way of ratiocination,
and one and all were submitted to the verdict of Reason.
Nor was this innovation confined to philosophy and
rhetoric. The poets and the historians, too, surprise us
by the subtlety of their arguments. The dialogue of the
dramatists, which even as early as Sophocles showed
traces of the influence of the new tendency, became in
the pliant hands of Euripides the playground of intellectual
tournaments. Not old Herodotus himself, with his patri-
archal modes of thought, escaped the spirit of his age
and the temptation to discuss the great problems of
human existence from a philosophizing moralist's point
of view. Both he and Euripides started a discussion on
human happiness and brought similar methods to bear
on it. Herodotus, in his conversation between Solon and
Croesus, set up two abstract types, the first of the man
who had lost every claim to happiness except his bare
title to wealth, and the second of the poor man. favoured
in all other respects by good fortune. In the same way, in
a fragment of the " Bellerophon " of Euripides, we find three
rivals competing for the palm of happiness. Unlike the
artificial creations of Herodotus, these types are taken from
real life. They are (i) the low-born but rich man, (2) the
high-born but poor man, and (3) the man without great
riches or good birth, to whom by a paradoxical argument
the meed of victory was awarded. In the passage where
Herodotus introduced three Persian nobles disputing about
REFLECTION SUPERSEDES AUTHORITY. 409
the best form of government, he equipped the champion
of his own favourite, democracy, with the strongest show
of reason, but at the same time he displayed considerable
dialectic skill by providing the defenders of monarchy
and oligarchy with no mean arguments for their cases.
In the times of which we are speaking, the problem of
education occupied the foreground of interest. Questions
were constantly asked, and the most diverse answers were
returned, whether instruction or natural disposition was
the more important factor, and whether theoretical teach-
ing or practical habituation was to be preferred. Euripides,
with his usual adaptability, laid equal emphasis on the
teachable quality of " manly virtue," and on the necessity
of familiarizing youth at a tender age with good examples.
In this connection we may quote the following exclamation
ef one of his tragic characters : —
" Nature is all in all ; in vain men try
To teach the evil to be changed to good."
The parallel between the cultivation of the intellect and
the sowing of a field with fruits became a commonplace
of the age. Talent was compared with the constitution of
the soil ; instruction with the planting of the seed ; the
industry of the learner with the labour of the husbandman,
and so on throughout the resources of the metaphor. In
this simile, to the features of which we shall probably
have occasion to return, we see that the doctrines of
education, which were originally kept rigidly apart, have
already been merged in one thesis.
The same epoch was remarkable for its fertility in
schemes of reform. Thus Fhaleas of Chalcedon, in the
second half of the fifth century, expressed himself in
favour of the equalization of wealth, and formulated
proposals to that end, which, so far as we are aware,
however, would have affected real property alone. Another
item in his programme was the state control of all
industrial labour, its organization, that is to say, by a
system of state slaves. Hippodamus of Miletus, again,
whose acquaintance our readers have already made, and
410 GREEK THINKERS.
who was slightly senior to Phaleas, recommended a
complete transformation of the internal constitution of
states as well as of the external arrangement of cities.
His ideal polity comprised three classes, in the respective
spheres of industry, agriculture, and war. Of his three
divisions of the land one-third only was to be private
property ; another third was to be devoted to the purposes
of divine worship, and the remainder to military supply.
All the public officials were to be elected by the suffrages
of the total community of 10,000 men. The magic
number three was also efficacious in Hippodamus' division
of the criminal code into three sections, applied respectively
to offences against life, honour, and property. The adminis-
trative work of government similarly fell in three categories,
dealing respectively with the citizens, the orphans, and
the foreigners. It is in this scheme that the thought was
first expressed of the duty of the State to honour with
special marks of distinction the authors of useful inven-
tions. Moreover, the creation of a supreme court of
appeal, and the acquittal of defendants ab instantia> were
innovations first recommended by Hippodamus, and,
except for the counter-testimony of Aristotle, we should
add to the list of his original projects the principle of
educating at the expense of the State the children of the
victims of war. But it was the disciples of Socrates who
first soared to the summits of boldness ; the doubts that
still gnaw at the foundations of social order took their rise
in that select band.
But apart altogether from the extreme consequences
first drawn by Plato and the Cynics from the sovereignty
of reason, the spectacle is vivid enough to recall the
radicalism of the French Revolution. The two epochs
are divided, however, by one deep line of cleavage. The
age of Greek emancipation was innocent of any serious
attempt to transfer its theories into the practice of social
and political life. A single parallel may be taken as
typical in this connection. In Paris the " goddess Reason "
enjoyed a real though ephemeral worship, and the Athens
of the epoch we are discussing was also acquainted with
ANCIENT RADICALISM. 41!
that goddess. Her shrine, however, was on the stage of
comedy, and her priests were the buffoons of Aristophanes,
who put in the mouth of Euripides the prayer, " Hear me,
O Reason, and ye olfactory organs ! " Nor did the other
Radical doctrines of that age try to escape from the
shadows of literature and the schools into the light of
reality. At the same time it would be completely
erroneous to conclude that ancient Radicalism was
deficient on the side of intensity. The history of
Cynicism will show us that there was no lack of persons
ready to push their break with tradition to the extreme
length of their serious convictions. Moreover, the indirect
influence of philosophic radicalism on the culture of the
succeeding centuries will loom before us in huge proportions.
Still, generally speaking, philosophy may be said to have
been a powerful intellectual fermentation without directly
becoming a factor in practical life. And the cause of this
suspense in its development is probably to be sought in the
following circumstances. The economic condition of those
times, which afforded a pointed contrast with that obtaining
in Sparta in the third century B.C., was at least not intoler-
able to the masses. Violent collisions were indeed not
unfrequent, but they did not differ essentially from the
conflicts of the classes in former generations. Their
acuteness in the course of the Peloponnesian War was
due to the influence of transient political constellations.
The Greek religion was pliant enough to follow the
immense changes in philosophic thought; and, finally,
the national character of the Greeks, and pre-eminently
of the Athenians, was instinctively averse from all sudden-
ness and precipitancy, and was marked by a sense of
measure and tact favourable to a gradual progress in all
fields of development. So much, perhaps, by way of
provisional reply to the questions asked at the beginning
of this section. Before we go further we must pass in
review some of the rhetoricians, teachers, poets, and
historians, who formed the chief figures in this great
intellectual movement.
412 GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER V.
THE SOPHISTS.
I. FERTILE though the fifth century had been in literary
productions, it was far from earning the character of "an
age of scribblers." The Greek still preferred to take
his knowledge through the ear instead of the eye. The
old-time rhapsodist was gradually vanishing1, but his place
in the public life of Hellas was being filled by a new
figiire. The " sophist " at Olympia and elsewhere wore the
same purple raiment, attended the same great festivals,
and delivered original harangues and panegyrics, instead
of the old heroic poems, before the assembled holiday-
makers. Moreover, elaborate lectures on the various
questions of learning and life had become familiar in
smaller social circles.* And thus we are able to
measure the revolution which had taken place in the
education of youth shortly before the last third of the
century. The higher demands of political life, and
the claims of an increased intellectual activity, were no
longer satisfied with the old scanty instruction in the
elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which, to-
gether with music, gymnastics, and ultimately draw-
ing, had formed the complete curriculum of instruction.
There had been no provision, either from the public or
from private sources, for the kind of education which is
imparted in our public schools and in our non-professional
universities, but the time came when men of original
talents voluntarily undertook to fill up these gaps in
. * Cp. Bk. II. Ch. II. § i.
HALF JOURNALIST — HALF PROFESSOR. 413
education. Itinerant teachers began to wander from
city to city, gathering young men round them and
giving them lessons. Their instruction comprised the
elements of the positive sciences, the doctrines of the
nature-philosophers, the interpretation and criticism of
poetry, the distinctions of the newly-founded rudiments of
grammar, and the subtleties of metaphysics. But the
central point of the education consisted, as was proper, of
a preparation for practical, and especially for public, life.
Thus Protagoras of Abdera, whom we hear of as the
earliest and most renowned of these itinerant teachers,
formulated his educational ideal, according to Plato, in the
following words : —
" And this is prudence in affairs private as well as public ; he
will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and he
will be best able to speak and act in affairs of the state."
The essence of the instruction, in a word, was contained
in the moral and political sciences, or in such rudiments
thereof as were constructed or in course of construction.
The art of eloquence, however, the high significance and
constant care of which we have already had occasion to
discuss,* was the soul of practical politics. These self-
styled sophists, these masters or teachers of wisdom, would
obviously not confine their activity to the education of the
young. They brought to the altars of rhetoric and literature
the same gifts and resources which served them in their teach-
ing capacity. In a certain sense, too, it was a necessity of
their position that they should be restlessly engaged in
these different pursuits, for they were entirely without subsidy
from the State, they relied absolutely on ^their own efforts,
they resided more frequently abroad than at home, and
thus handicapped, they were compelled to enter on a
keen competition among themselves. Modern life contains
no exact parallel to the sophists. They were like the
German professor of to-day, but were distinguished from
him by the lack of all relationship to the State, whether
* Bk. III. Ch. IV. § i.
4 14 GREEK THINKERS.
useful or hurtful to their calling, as well as by the absence
of all facultative narrowness and specialist limitations.
Their standard of attainments for the most part was well-
nigh encyclopaedic, and they resembled the journalists and
men of letters of to-day in their constant readiness for the
war of words. Half professor and half journalist — this is
the best formula that we can devise to characterize the
sophist of the fifth century L.C. They earned a rich meed
of applause no less than of material success, and the
enthusiasm that their foremost representatives aroused in
the youth of Greece, with its keen worship of beauty of
form and intellectual culture, was almost immeasurable.
The sophists, as Plato expresses it, were borne on
the shoulders of their disciples, and the appearance of one
of these heroes was the signal for an outburst of excite-
ment in wide circles of the young men of Athens. We
are told — in a passage of Plato from which we borrow the
following account — how even before daybreak the house
and bedchamber of Socrates were stormed by a high-born
pupil, who woke the master with the cry, " Hast heard the
great news ? " and how the sage answered in alarm, " For
heaven's sake, what evil tidings dost thou bring ? " " God
forbid," replied the pupil, " 'tis the best of all. He has
come." " Who ? " « The great sophist of Abdera." The
youth then besought Socrates to put in a good word for
him with the renowned Protagoras, that he might be
admitted in the band of his disciples. In the morning,
they went together to the house of the wealthy Callias,
where the guest from Abdera was lodging. There they
found the liveliest excitement. Protagoras was walking to
and fro in the vestibule, with three distinguished friends
on either side of him, including his host and the two sons of
Pericles, and followed by a troop of secondary worshippers.
" And nothing," adds the Platonic Socrates in his satiric vein —
" nothing amused me so much as to see how the young men took
pains to give precedence to the master, and how, as soon as the
van of the procession reached one end of the hall, the train parted
itself asunder, in order to close tip again in due order behind the
great man and his companions."
WHAT WAS COMMON TO THE SOPHISTS. 415
In various apartments of the interior of the house other
sophists were holding their court, each surrounded by a
bevy of admirers like the belle of a ball. And now
Socrates preferred his request in an ordinary conversational
tone, and the rhetorician replied in measured language, with
a long set speech delivered with impressive ceremony. A
philosophic discussion sprang up between the two, and the
rest of the company, hurriedly collecting all the benches
and seats in the house, sat down to the feast of ear and
mind. Protagoras left it to the audience to decide whether
he should answer Socrates in a concise or discursive manner,
whether by a speech or by the narration of a myth. The
listeners, as soon as he began to speak, hung with eager
expectation on his lips, and broke, when the discourse was
ended, into storms of long-pent applause : the imperishable
charm of Plato's style has made the whole story familiar,
and though it contains a strong element of caricature, yet
its realistic features are still clearly perceptible.
2, We may be asked, What was the genuine common
factor in the several sophists ? and to that question we can
but reply that it consisted merely of their teaching pro-
fession and the conditions of its practice imposed by the
age in which they lived. For the rest, they were united,
as other people were united too, by the part they took in
the intellectual movements of their times. It is illegiti-
mate, if not absurd, to speak of a sophistic mind, sophistic
morality, sophistic scepticism, and so forth. It would have
been miraculous if the sophists, the paid teachers of youth,
whether they were found in the Thracian colony of Abdera,
or in the Peloponnesian province of Elis, in Central Greece,
or in Sicily, had stood nearer to one another in sentiment
and thought than to the other representatives of con-
temporary thought. The most that we can say is, that
the majority of popular writers and teachers of every age
have been on the side which made for victory, and have not
backed the losing or retrograde cause. And this was true
of the sophists as of the rest Dependent as they were
on their public, they necessarily became the mouthpiece of
ideas which, if not dominant, were at least rising into
416 GREEK THINKERS.
predominance, It is, therefore, not wholly inadmissible to
regard the members of this profession in general as the
vehicles of emancipation, though not all sophists were the
leaders of emancipated thought, nor-— far less — all emanci-
pators sophists. Furthermore, we shall see that the majority
of them, possibly on account of that very dependence, main-
tained in the main a moderate attitude, and that no one of
them was so advanced a Radical in social or political
thought as Plato and the Cynics.
But before we go further, if our readers are not to be
misled by false associations of ideas, we must acquaint
them with the history of the words "sophist," "sophistical,"
"sophistry." The name (7o0«m'/e, or "sophist," is derived
from the adjective o-o^oc ("wise"), and directly from the verb
(7otf> f^ojucu ("to think out," or "to devise'*). Thus it originally
means more or less any man who has attained to eminent
success in some faculty or other. The name was^applied to
great poets, important philosophers, famous musicians, and
to the seven wise men whose sententious maxims made them
renowned in public and private life. At an early time the
word seems to have acquired a tinge of disfavour, but at first
at least the tinge must have been very slight, for otherwise
Protagoras and his successors would never have selected the
title for themselves. It was a disfavour which was destined
to increase, however, and it flowed from various sources. In
the first place, it is to be noted that any attempt to penetrate
the secrets of nature aroused the mistrust of pious men.
Theologians looked on the natural philosophers with sus-
picion, and even other words, originally neutral in their signifi-
cance, acquired an unfavourable bye-taste. Thus in the
popular decree introduced by Diopeithes and directed at
Anaxagoras the science of the heavens, or meteorology, was
associated with a disbelief in the gods, and a flavour of
suspicion attached to the word "meteorologist." It was
hardly to be wondered that the new speculation about
problems of knowledge, and questions of morality and right,
should likewise have brought on their authors the charge of
an indiscreet curiosity. And to this fear, whether genuine
or pretended, of the pursuit of knowledge in geneial, there
WHY THE SOPHISTS WERE DISLIKED. 417
was added now a dislike from a fresh and fertile spring
for the new professional class devoted to the practice
and spread of science. The Greek view of life was at all
times aristocratic. Their respect for wage-earning stood
even lower than in other slave-owning communities, Hero-
dotus, in asking if the Greeks had learnt their contempt of
industry from the Egyptians, tells us that " the Corinthians
despise manual labour least and the Lacedaemonians most.''
In Thebes there was a law that no one should be eligible to
public office who had not absented himself from the markets
for the space of ten years ; and even Plato and Aristotle
were of opinion that artisans and traders should be excluded
from full civic rights. Only a very few wage-earning pro-
fessions, such as that of the physician, were not wholly
incompatible with social respect. An especial reproach
attached to the employment of intellectual labour for the
benefit of some one else who paid for it ; this was regarded
as a degradation, as a yoke of servitude that was volun-
tarily assumed. When the development of the law courts
engendered the calling of the orator or advocate, his pro-
fession was ridiculed by the comic writers no less than that
of the sophist. Past members of the profession did their
best to wipe out the recollection, as may be seen in the
instance of Isocrates ; and he, too, when reduced to founding
a school of rhetoric, is said to have wept tears of shame
on receiving his first fee. We are reminded of the embar-
rassment felt by Lord Byron, as well as by the aristocratic
founders of the Edinburgh Review, on accepting their
earliest -honorarium as authors. A third cause for the dis-
favour which attached to the calling of a sophist was
discovered in the feeling of those persons who were unable
to pay for such instruction, and who were accordingly placed
at a disadvantage, in their own opinion at least, in public
affairs no less than in private quarrels, in comparison with
their opponents or rivals who had enjoyed a training of
that kind. In this respect the position of the sophists has
been aptly compared with that of professors of fencing
in a community where the duel is an established institu-
tion— a parallel particularly applicable to the litigious
VOL. L 2 E
41 8 GREEK THINKERS.
community of Athens, the city of law-suits. Lastly, these
tacit and spontaneous factors which operated to discredit the
sophist were reinforced by the deliberate purpose of a power-
ful personality whose hand wielded the engine of a mag-
nificent literary style. Plato contemned the whole existing
order of society. Its greatest statesmen seemed to him
as despicable as its poets and other intellectual leaders.
He was anxious, above all, to separate by fosse and wall,
so to speak, his own teaching and his own school, in which
he saw the sole chance of salvation, from everything which
could possibly be confused with them, or which might even
distantly resemble them. As a man of brilliant parts and
of noble birth, he might have contended for honour and
glory in the open day of public life. Instead of so doing,
he chose to live in the shadow of a school, where he
wove his words and spun his ideas " conversing in low tones
with two or three admiring youths." For this he was
severely censured, and certainly by no one more severely
than by his nearest friends. Accordingly, he was earnestly
at pains to distinguish as sharply as possible his own methods,
aimed, as he believed, at the regeneration of mankind, from
those which seemed to be directed at less exalted goals.
Socrates, his master, in contemporary opinion had been
ranked more or less as a sophist, and had even served as
the type of that order ; but in a later passage we shall see
how thoroughly Plato succeeded, though not altogether
without violence, in consecrating to the honour of his master
a particular niche in the memory of posterity.
No resources of satire were foreign to the art of Plato.
He would as lief be coarse as delicate, and his attacks on
the sophists were even more remarkable for their extent
than for their intensity. Every member of that order, as
he trod the boards of the Platonic dialogue, was received
with terms of contempt or at the best with marks of ridi-
cule. But no : this rule has one exception. In an unguarded
moment, as we must suppose, Plato let slip an expression of
unqualified appreciation in respect to one of the sophists. In
the dialogue " Lysis" he spoke of Miccus in one breath as
" a friend and eulogist of Socrates " and " a clever man and
PLATO* S ATTACKS ON THE SOPHISTS. 419
an excellent sophist." Miccus is otherwise completely un-
known to us, and perhaps we may add that his insignificance
saved him from attack. For otherwise Plato gave his malice
full rein. Even in instances where the doctrines of the
sophist revealed not the slightest blemish even to his jealous
eye, still a comic effect would be produced by bringing him
in at an awkward moment and in an obtrusive way. This
was the fate of Prodicus and Hippias, who were further
ridiculed respectively for their weak health and their fussy
versatility. It is true that Protagoras was accorded the
full tribute of respect due to his exalted personality and
honour, but the old-fashioned and obsolete texture of his
rhetoric was submitted with perfect mimicry to the ridicule
of the reader, while every real or supposed error in his
argument was remorselessly dragged into the light. But
Plato's most emphatic language was reserved for the
features at which the aristocratic sense of his countrymen,
and especially of his peers, took particular umbrage. He
delighted in jeering at the professional element in sophistry,
which he considered vulgar and banal, with especial refer-
ence to the system of fees. If the reward were small,
he affected to regard it as a proof of the worthlessness of
the service performed, and if it were large, he represented
it as entirely disproportionate and undeserved. Modesty,
as we know, was not a virtue of that age,* and Plato
himself, by the way, was no exception. It is extremely
probable, therefore, that the sophists, whose business it
was to advertise themselves in difficult circumstances, dis-
played a degree of over-confidence in the manner of their
appearance. Nor would the members of that class fail to
display the petty jealousies and rivalries which are inevitable
to all competitive professions. But this should by no means
be taken as implying that the picture of the profession
was complete when its share in our common human weak-
ness had been described. It would be as unfair to draw
that conclusion as to apply the same method to the modern
successors of the sophists — teachers, and popular authors —
or to the members of any other class, such as barristers or
* Cp. Bk. III. Ch. II. § i.
420 GREEK THINKERS.
members of Parliament. Plato's contempt of the sophists
stands on the same plane of thought as Schopenhauer's
scoffs at the "philosophy professors" or Comte's assault
on the "Academicians."
In one instance, however, Plato's criticism hit the mark.
We see his sophists measuring themselves with Socrates
in dialectic bouts and suffering complete defeat. The
dialogues as such were pure fiction, but this particular
feature may be taken as an historical fact, for Socrates'
championship in dialectic forms an undisputed title to fame
and is one of the secrets of his influence on posterity. In
this connection, however, a curious point is to be noted.
When Plato abandons the rapier-thrusts of ridicule in order
to attack the sophists with the heavy artillery of serious
argument, the names of Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus
disappear, and sophistry itself wears a different face. Those
genuine old sophists had shown themselves incapable of
adopting the Socratic method of cross-examination. They
had no champion to enter for the contest of short questions
and answers ; but when Plato became serious, the sophists
whom he introduced were precisely the men for that work.
The key to this riddle has long ago been found. It is to be
discovered in the fact that Plato's literary activity embraced
more than half a century. We are not, accordingly,
surprised that between his youth and his old age a new
race of sophists should have arisen. Indeed, at the time
when Plato first took up the pen, the old generation was
dying out. Thus the composition of three at least of the
comedies which made a butt of the activity of the sophists
and of their pedagogic innovations fell in the same decade
in which Plato was born. The " Epulones " of Aristophanes
was produced in the winter of 427 B.C., a few months
before the birth of Plato, who was four years old when
the " Clouds " was produced, and six at the time of the
" Flatterers " of Eupolis. It is entirely natural, therefore,
that the Athenian thinker in the evening of his long life
should have thought much less of these sophists than
of other philosophers whom he hated, and whom he
delighted to call by ill names. In a word, the sophists
SOPHISTRY VARIES IN PLATO'S LIFETIME. 421
who were assailed with such bitter mockery in the
Platonic " Sophistes " itself, and in other similar dialogues
composed at about the same date, were the disciples of
Socrates and the disciples of his disciples, above all
Antisthenes and his crew — the deadliest enemy of Plato.
It must be conceded that the art of Plato sought to
weave threads of connection between these sophists and
those others to whom the name properly belonged, but
the artificiality of such attempts can escape no intelligent
reader of the " Euthydemus " and " Sophistes." Aristotle,
as may readily be conceived, inherited this convention of
language. In not a single passage of his numerous writings
was the expression " sophist " ever used to designate a
member of that profession in the older generation, while
once at least, in speaking of the system of fees, the name
of Protagoras was honourably mentioned by him in sharp
contrast with the sophists. Aristotle used the word in three
senses: First, in the old simple, blameless significance,
in which he too described the seven sages as sophists ;
secondly, to describe a few philosophers personally in little
sympathy with himself, such as Aristippus, a disciple of
Socrates ; and, thirdly and chiefly, the term was employed
as a title for the "Eristics/* for the dialecticians, that is to
say, with whom Aristotle was engaged in a life-long feud,
and who emerged, spoiling for a fight, from the schools of
Antisthenes and Euclides, the Socratic resident in Megara.
Now, as the wits of these philosophers were engaged in
contriving puzzles and fallacies, the result was that the
words " sophism " and " sophistical " were added to
" sophist " and " sophistry " in the vocabulary of the polemic
waged by Plato in his old age and by Aristotle against
the Eristics, and the meaning which has since become
dominant was won and established at that time. The use
of the term "sophist/' as employed by Aristotle, was
preserved till the end of antiquity. Even then it was
still occasionally used in its originally neutral if not
precisely honourable sense. At times, indeed, such as that
of the later sophistry of the Roman Empire, this became
once more the predominant usage, but it has been far
422 GREEK THINKERS.
more frequently employed as a more or less scornful term
of reproach. Nor did Plato himself escape this con-
temptuous appellation. He was rebuked as a sophist in
that sense by his contemporary adversaries and rivals, the
rhetoricians Lysias and Isocrates ; Aristotle incurred the
same fate by the verdict of the historian Timseus ; his
cousin Callisthenes by that of Alexander the Great ;
Anaxarchus the Democritean by that of Hermippus the
Aristotelian ; Eubulides the Socratic by that of Epicurus ;
Carneades the Academician by that of Posidonius the
Stoic, and so on with scarcely an exception through the
whole catalogue of the philosophers and their opponents,
till we reach the name of the Founder of Christianity,
whom Lucian designated a sophist. I
3. The history of this change of meaning is not related
here for the first time. Still, it is well to pause on it, to
dwell ever more fondly on its details, and to impress its
significance on the reluctant senses even of the experts in
this branch of learning. For many who cannot but admit
the correctness of these statements are too apt to forget or
to neglect them. They begin with a handsome acknowledg-
ment of the ambiguity of the word " sophist," and of the
injustice done to the bearers of that name in the fifth
century B.C. by the ugly sense in which the term came to
be used, and they admit that restitution is due. But the
debt is forgotten before it is paid ; the debtor reverts to the
old familiar usage, and speaks of the sophists once more as
if they were really mere intellectual acrobats, unscrupulous
tormentors of language, or the authors of pernicious teach-
ings. The spirit may be willing, but the reason is helpless
against the force of inveterate habits of thought. Verily
the sophists were born under an evil star. Their one short
hour of triumphant success was paid for by centuries of
obloquy. Two invincible foes were banded together
against them — the caprice of language, and the genius of
a great writer, if not the greatest writer of all times. Little
indeed did he imagine, when he played upon them with
the lightnings of his wit and irony, that the airy creations
of his fertile invention and of his exuberant youthfulness
TREATISE "ON THE ART" 423
would one day be called to the bar of serious historical
investigation. He made game of the living, and not of the
dead, and it was the third and most fatal calamity which
befell the sophists that their vitality departed, and that they
became a part of the dead past The restless itinerant
teachers founded no schools. No faithful bands of disciples
watched over their writings and kept their memory green.
After the lapse of a few centuries, of all their literary pro-
ductions but a few sorry fragments were preserved, and
merely fragments of those fragments are at our disposal
to-day. We are almost totally deprived of first-hand
witnesses to their work.
We shall presently turn to the individual sophists, and
endeavour to gain acquaintance with their personality and
their teachings. But first we are bound to mention a
literary monument, which, though it does not bear the
name of a sophist on its title-page, is yet admirably
adapted to help us to realize the character of at least a
portion of what is called sophistic literature. The Hippo-
cratic collection comprises, our readers will remember, a
great variety of contents. Among them is a treatise which
may confidently be ascribed to the age and the circle that
we are discussing, apart -altogether from any attempt to
identify its author. It is entitled "On the Art," and,
treating of the art of medicine, it undertakes to defend it
against the attacks which it encountered from an early
date. This " apology for medicine " displays all the features
which we should expect to find in the intellectual work
of a sophist of that age. It is not so much a set treatise as
an address designed for oral delivery, carefully constructed
for that purpose, and polished with consummate mastery.
These facts alone would go far to exclude the theory of its
authorship by a physician, even if other circumstances did
not remove the last possibility of doubt. At the close of
the work, for instance, the writer contrasted his own
discourse with the "evidence of facts from professional
medical men," thus, so to say, taking a courteous leave of
the physicians and claiming the dues of mutual respect for
himself and his brothers of the pen. Further, he referred
424 GREEK THINKERS.
to another speech which he hoped to compose in the future
in respect to the remaining arts ; and a discussion of the
theory of knowledge, in which, parenthetically remarked,
he was clearly an opponent of Melissus, led him to mention
a longer disquisition on the same theme which may
almost certainly be ascribed to no other author but him-
self. He was so habituated to polemics that it had
become his second nature to rig up an adversary before
his eyes and meet his arguments with counter-arguments.
His learning was encyclopaedic. He jumped at every
opportunity of trespassing the narrow limits of the matter
before him, now for the sake of a brief allusion, and again
for longer excursions in which to display his familiarity
with ideas of the widest range. Thus in- the course of
a very few pages he touched on the problems of causality
and of the origin of language, on the element of chance in
human action, on the relation of perception to objective
reality, of natural disposition to the means of culture, of
the industrial arts to the raw material, and so forth. He
may fairly be entitled half rhetorician and half philosopher ;
nor can we fail to mark the unmistakable trait of the
schoolmaster. He betrayed his pedagogic habit by his
dogmatic tone of complacent self-confidence as well as by
his anxiety to subdivide and to define when new ideas
were introduced. The deliberate though successful attempt
to attain to a rhythmic euphony of style reminds us that
the ornate diction had but lately been released from the
fetters of verse. At the same time the scrupulously
regular structure of the sentences, the timid separation of
the whole into small sections, and the prominent relief
given to emphatic words and thoughts likewise testify to
the infancy of the art of prose. The treatise, with its
wealth of ideas and its ambitious eloquence, serves us as
a test by which to measure the enthusiasm which was
aroused by the new kind of style, and we realize the
powerful influence it exerted on contemporary minds. Nor
can we fail to perceive the weaknesses and shadows it
displayed, thus affording so many weapons to the enemy.
No refined ear could endure the emphatic tone of the
PRODICUS OF CEOS. 425
rhetorician, and the blatant self-consciousness with which
he displayed his own wisdom and learning, just as
Xenophanes the rhapsodist had plumed himself on his
wisdom in his own day.* The unbridled sweep of language
over the shallows of thought was little calculated to
guarantee trustworthiness and consistency of argument.
Nor would a taste for surprises and a preference for the
terminology of polemics escape the suspicion of a striving
after effect. In general it may be said that the rhetorical
style, with its somewhat rigid forms, its stiff regularity, and
its glaring colour-effects, was a reminiscence of archaic
sculpture, and as such it was foredoomed to decay. It
could not but create the impression of a coldness and
pettiness, in comparison with the richer and more
harmonious language, with the freer gait and more plastic
power of the prose of Plato and, to some extent, of
Isocrates.
4. Here, however, a warning is required. Among the
features referred to in the foregoing description there is
certainly more than one which is purely individual, and
we should fall into the error of undue generalization if we
were to regard the treatise " On the Art " as throughout
a type of its kind. The generalization would be yet
more illicit if we were to extend it to the important
thoughts, to which we shall have occasion to revert, which
the treatise contains. For the sophists were so distinct in
the details and in the spirit of their teaching that it is rather
from habit than from conviction that we are induced to
discuss them together. We would certainly guard against
the false impression that they formed a separate class
or school in the history of Greek philosophy.
Prodicus of Ceos was sent as his countrymen's ambas-
sador to Athens, where he obtained considerable influence.
A distinct position is frequently created for him under the
title of "the precursor of Socrates," with whom he was
certainly bound in ties of personal friendship. Plato,
however, tarred him with the same brush as the rest of
his professional brethren. The "all-wise" Prodicus was
* Cp. Bk. II. Ch. I. § i.
426 GREEK THINKERS.
the constant butt of the searching and somewhat coarse
satire in which the early Dialogues delighted, nor was he
exempt from attack on the part of the comic writers. In
the " Broilers " of Aristophanes, for example, the follow-
ing distich occurred : —
" Though he escaped corruption by a book,
'Twas done by Prodicus, the babbling brook.1*
In the same way ./Eschines the Socratic, in his dialogue
" Callias," joined the two " sophists Anaxagoras and
Prodicus " — a remarkable combination — in a common in-
dictment, and Prodicus was reproached with having edu-
cated Theramenes the opportunist, who, though frequently
charged with being unprincipled, was regarded by Aristotle,
as we have lately learnt, as a highly reputable politician.
We cannot help being startled at these remarks of ^Eschines,
so striking is the parallel with the experience of Socrates.
He too was charged with the corruption of youth, by the
comic writers in the first instance, and he too was confronted
with the living results of his education, Alcibiades and
Critias. But neither the parallel with Socrates, nor the
mention of the great name of Anaxagoras in the same
breath, availed to save the memory of Prodicus. His
salvation was rather due to the notable circumstance that
other and impartial witnesses were ranged in his defence,
and that their testimony conflicted with that of the phi-
losopher and the playwright, who paid, by the way, in
another passage a marked compliment to the wisdom of
the sophist.
Prodicus was a man of very earnest character, who
has exercised a very considerable influence on posterity,
mainly through the intervention of Cynics. We are no
longer able to measure his achievements in nature-philo-
sophy. The titles only of two books have come down
to us on that side of his scientific labours — " On Nature "
and " On the Nature of Man " respectively. The little we
know of another branch of learning to which his activities
were directed is derived almost entirely from some satirical
references in Plato. From these we learn that he attempted
THE SYNONYMICS OF PRODICUS. 427
to deal with synonymy — to collect and to compare, that is
to say, words of kindred meaning and to distinguish their
shades of signification. But when we ask what motive led
him to that work or what degree of success he attained,
no answer can be given. He may have wished to create
an aid to the art of style, by which, as a matter of fact,
Thucydides is said to have profited, or he may have desired
to advance the cause of science by a sharper demarcation
of the limits of ideas, or he may have aimed at both these
ends at once. One fact only can be positively asserted —
that in undertaking this work he was supplying a real
demand. The speculations on language had followed the
cosmic theories to the tablelands of science, where they
were confronted by problems which were practically
insoluble, at least for the age we are dealing with. It
was a wholly meritorious achievement to bring them down
from the heights and to substitute an inquiry into the
material and forms of contemporary speech for the investi-
gation of the origin of language. We shall find that Prota-
goras was busy with an analysis of the forms of speech, while
Prodicus was the first to submit its material to the methods
of scientific study. In this connection it is a matter of
indifference whether or not his labours contributed to the
artistic use of language : they must at least have helped
to perfect it as an instrument of thought. We may even
sincerely regret that his example was not more assiduously
followed. Our consideration of the Eleatic doctrines has
already served to show us how rich a source of error was
contained in the ambiguity of words, and in the absence of
clear definitions of the ideas expressed by them. If the road
opened by Prodicus had been followed by more numerous
successors, many of the mistakes from which the Platonic
writings themselves are by no means wholly exempt might
well have been avoided, and the harvest of d priori pseudo-
demonstrations and of eristic fallacies would certainly have
been far less abundant.
We are much more accurately informed about the
views of Prodicus on moral philosophy. His melancholy
view of life may fairly entitle him to the description of
428 GREEK THINKERS,
the earliest of the pessimists. Euripides, speaking of the
man who made the evils of life turn the scale of its
blessings, had Prodicus in his mind. We cannot determine
at this date how far his weakly constitution was answer-
able for his gloom, nor how far it was due to the inherited
character of his countrymen, the inhabitants of Ceos — an
island where suicide was of more frequent occurrence than
in any other part of Greece. But whatever the cause
may have been, the effect was always the same. A pro-
found emotion shook the ranks of his audience when
they heard his deep voice, that came with so strange
a sound from the frail body that contained it. Now he
would describe the hardships of human existence ; now he
would recount all the ages of man, beginning with the
new-born child, who greets his new home with wailing,
and tracing his course to the second childhood and the
grey hairs of old age. Again he would rail at death as
a stony-hearted creditor, wringing his pledges one by one
from his tardy debtor, first his hearing, then his
sight, and next the free movement of his limbs. At
another time, anticipating Epicurus, he sought to arm his
disciples against the horrors of death by explaining that
death concerned neither the living nor the dead. As
long as we live, death does not exist ; as soon as we die,
we ourselves exist no longer. Nor were occasions wanting
for enheartening reminders of this kind. For the pessimistic
wisdom of Prodicus did not find its goal in a mere mute
resignation, nor in an ascetic retreat from the world ;
still less was it satisfied with the advice to gather from
the troubled waters of human life as many pearls of
pleasure as possible. Higher than pleasure Prodicus
exalted work, and his practice agreed with his theory.
He was famous in antiquity among the few who, despite
their physical infirmities, had completely fulfilled their
civic duties. He was frequently sent on ambassadorial
missions on behalf of his native island. His hero and
model was Hercules, the type of manly strength and
wholesome activity, and the fact that he took as his
patron-saint the ancestor of the Lacedaemonian kings may
HIS IDEALS AND ETHICS. 429
have contributed to the honourable welcome which he
received in Sparta, where foreigners, and, above all, foreign
teachers of wisdom, were otherwise so severely discouraged.
Every one is acquainted with the fable of " Hercules at the
parting of the ways." It is a masterpiece of admonitory
eloquence in imitation of the Sophoclean fable of the strife
between Athene and Aphrodite in the "Judgment of
Paris," and it became in its turn an example for all
antiquity. Its influence continued till early Christian
times, when its echoes may be heard in literature in the
"Shepherd of Hennas" and elsewhere. The work to
which this fable of Hercules belonged was entitled " The
Seasons." The rest of its contents is unfortunately un-
known to us. Perhaps it contained the pessimistic utter-
ances we have mentioned just now; perhaps, too, as
a counterpart to these, it sang the praises of the whole-
some pleasures least open to abuse, such as the joy
in nature and her works which our philosopher could
hardly have omitted in the eulogy of agriculture that is
ascribed to him. Thus, then, we have been able to
construct no uncertain outline of the views of Prodicus
and of his ideal of life. He had drained the dregs of
human bitterness, and he resisted the effects of that
draught by exalting the virtue of manly valour. It was
to expect but little from passive enjoyment, but was rather
to look for satisfaction to the exercise of its own strong
powers, combined with a preference for simple manners
and plain living. Nor was Prodicus merely the eloquent
preacher of a partially new ideal. The subtle intellect
betrayed in his disquisitions " On Correct Language " was
not wanting in his ethical studies. He introduced a con-
ception in moral philosophy which played an important
part in the school of the Cynics, and in that of the Stoics,
their successors. It was the conception of objects in-
different in themselves, on which a value was impressed
only by the right use to which they were put if the dictates
of reason were obeyed. In this class of objects he reckoned
riches, and most of what we call external goods. We
shall presently have occasion to remark how nearly he
430 GREEK THINKERS.
approached in this connection to the teachings of Socrates.
Meantime, we have still to consider one doctrine of the
sage of Ceos — his speculation on the origin of the belief
in gods. He conjectured that those natural objects which
exercise the most lasting and beneficent influence on
human life were the first to be paid divine honours.
Among these he counted the sun, the moon, the rivers
(reminding his readers at that point of the Egyptian
worship of the Nile), and he added to the list the fruits of
the field, at which point he might have mentioned certain
Babylonian customs. Next to these natural objects he
reckoned the heroes of civilization who were deified by
mankind in grateful recognition of their important and
beneficial inventions. On this theory Dionysus would at
one time have been a man, an argument which tallies
with the phrase of John Henry Voss in our own century *
about "the deified inventor of wine." It is to be noted
that Prodicus, though by no means completely on the
right road, succeeded at least in exposing the fetishistic
among the roots of religious conceptions. And if it be asked
whether he assumed that a real objective basis was at the
back of those conceptions, or that the reality of the
Divine was to be repudiated once for all, we may safely
reply that the first supposition is correct. Otherwise it
would be inexplicable that a man of such orthodox
tendencies as Xenophon should have spoken of Prodicus
with unfailing honour and respect, and that Perseus, a
famous representative of the Stoics and the favourite
pupil of Zeno, the founder of that rigidly Pantheistic
school, should have expressed his approval of these
tenets of Prodicus, in his book " On the Gods/' We are
accordingly impelled to the opinion that the edge of
the polemic in that explanatory attempt was aimed at
the gods of popular belief, and was not intended to
divest the universe of all that it contained of divinity.
5. We have seen that Prodicus was occupied with
studies in nature and language, with problems of moral
philosophy, and with the history of religion, When wq
* 1834-
HIP PI AS OF ELIS. 431
reach the name of Hippias, however, we find that Prodicus
was greatly surpassed in versatility of talents and employ-
ments. The kaleidoscopic genius of Hippias was applied to
all the arts in turn. He was astronomer, geometer, arithme-
tician ; he wrote on phonetics, rhythm, and music ; he
discussed the theories of sculpture and painting ; he was
at once mythologist and ethnologist, and a student of
chronology and mnemonics. Moreover, he was the author
of moral admonitions, and he had acted in the capacity of
ambassador on behalf of his native city, Elis, in the
Peloponnesus. Nor does this exhaust the sum of his
achievements. Poetical works of the most diverse kinds
— epics, tragedies, epigrams, and dithyrambs — flowed con-
tinuously from his pen. Finally, he had mastered most
of the industrial arts. On one occasion he appeared
at the Olympic gathering in garments every part of
which, from the sandals on his feet to the plaited girdle
round his waist, and the very rings on his fingers, had
been manufactured by his own hand. We children of
this generation, who have carried the principle of the
division of labour to extremes, are hardly able to take in
serious account a Jack-of-all-trades of this kind. But
previous ages have felt and judged differently. There
have been times when the man counted for much more
than his work, when the necessary dissipation of forces
entailed did not seem too heavy a price to pay for giving
full play to personality, for the complete development
of our slumbering powers, the consciousness of being
equal to almost any task, and of being helpless before no
difficulty, and for the ambition and ability to master
every kind of employment. Thus men thought in the
age of Pericles, and thus too in the Italian Renaissance.
In the last-named era, indeed, we meet an exact counter-
part to Hippias. Leone Battista Alberti of Venice, who
lived from 1404 to 1472, was equally brilliant as architect,
painter, musician, prose-writer, and poet, in the Italian as
well as in the Latin tongue. He discussed the theory of
domestic economy in the intervals of his studies on the
plastic arts ; he was renowned among the wits of his age,
432 GREEK THINKERS.
and he bore himself like a master among the gym-
nasts. Finally, he had acquainted himself with " all the
industries of the world" by questioning "craftsmen of
every kind, even down to the shoemaker, on their secrets
and experiences."
It is obvious that the value of these various achievements
could not possibly be uniformly excellent. The poems of
Hippias have disappeared without a trace, not altogether,
we may presume, to the loss of the poet He made no
mean contributions to the progress of geometry. H is system
of mnemonics, in which the poet Simonides was his sole
precursor, is said to have produced remarkable results.
By its aid he was enabled, even as an old man, to repeat
fifty proper names which he* had heard for the first time
without omitting or misplacing a single one. His chrono-
logical work was a " List of the Olympic Victors," which
undoubtedly supplied an urgent demand of the age, with
its deficient historiographical resources, and which was
supplemented by kindred attempts, such as the history
of Hellanicus, with its divisions corresponding to the suc-
cession of the priestesses of Hera at Argos. Plutarch,
we are bound to add, disputed the trustworthiness of the
lists compiled by Hippias, and we are unable to deter-
mine how far, if at all, the criticism was deserved.
Except for an insignificant fragment, we possess no
remains of his "Collection" of memorable events, save
only the brief preface, which affords us pleasing evidence
of the grace of his style, and by no means justifies the
reproach of a pompous self-conceit which has been levelled
at Hippias in consequence of Plato's satire. The Hippias
of that prologue is a wholly unpretentious compiler, whose
aim it was to select the most important information from
the narratives of poets and prosewriters, whether Greek or
barbarian, and to arrange them in homogeneous groups,
without advancing any other claim whatsoever to origi-
nality or versatility as an historian. His work, destined
as it was for entertainment rather than for instruction,
afforded but a slight handle for critical acumen. Yet
many valuable remarks were scattered through its pages.
THE "TROJAN DIALOGUE? 433
Accident, for instance, has preserved for us the philo-
logical memorandum that the word "tyrant" (rvpawoe)
occurred for the first time in the poems of Archilochus.
Of the work of Hippias "On National Names" we
know extremely little, but the little itself would suffice to
show that this versatile and busy sophist did not shrink
from labour of a dry-as-dust kind. We may conjecture
that his studies of the habits and traditions of the most
diverse peoples may have caused Hippias to attribute such
considerable importance to the distinction between nature
and convention which we have already had occasion to
discuss.* Further, we may remark as a proof of the
above-mentioned leanings to cosmopolitanism, that
Hippias the sophist employed non-Hellenic sources of
history and devoted himself to the annals of barbarian
tribes with equal impartiality. His life's ideal, which he
shared with the Cynics whom he had influenced, was " self-
sufficiency " (av-apKeia). Unluckily, we possess no remains of
his ethical discourses. His chef (Pceuvre in this field was
a duologue, the scene of which was fallen Troy, and the
persons of which were Nestor, the old man eloquent, and
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. In this " Trojan Dia-
logue," as it is called, probably the earliest instance of its
kind, the venerable greybeard prince imparted a wealth of
wise and noble counsel to the youthful, ambitious heir of the
bravest of the Greeks, and sketched out for him a rule of
life. Another of the moralist's themes was a comparison
between Achilles and Ulysses, in which the palm was
bestowed on the first-named on account of his greater love
for truth, a virtue which the Greeks did not commonly
prize too highly. These and similar pieces, which were
composed by Hippias in a choice but flowing and natural
style, won their author .very considerable success when he
recited them at the great games and in all quarters through
the length and breadth of Hellas. He was made a free-
man of a large number of cities, and the material rewards
that accrued to him were by no means on a small scale.
With Hippias, as with Prodicus, it is a significant feature
* Bk. IILCh. IV. §6.
VOL. I. 2 F
434 GREEK THINKERS.
that he was held In high esteem by the Spartans, with
their old-fashioned and home-keeping ideas, whom he
seems to have delighted by his lectures on history ana
ethics.
6. It is hardly legitimate to count Hippias of Ells as
a product of the age of emancipation, and in the instance
of the sophist Antiphon, such a view would be wholly
inadmissible. Though he is reckoned among the less
important members of his order, yet at one and the same
time he was not merely moralist and metaphysician,
physicist and geometer, but also a soothsayer and an
interpreter of dreams. He was the author of a work
" On Truth," consisting of two books, in the fragmentary
remains of the second of which we encounter physical
teachings with a strong reminiscence of older doctrines
of the kind. The first book treated more generally of
metaphysics or the theory of knowledge. It was the
occasion for a polemic against the hypostasy or " objecti-
fication" of ideas. We no longer know at whom its
point was directed, nor would it be easy to determine
it to-day. When Antiphon speaks of time as "a con-
ception or a measure, not a substance," it is just conceiv-
able that he was thinking of those mythical or half-
mythical representations in which Chronos or the time-
principle appeared as a primary being.* This expedient,
however, it must be acknowledged, is incompatible with
another fragment, in which we read as follows : " He
who recognizes any long objects neither sees length
with his eyes nor can perceive It with his mind." The
idea of length apparently had a typical meaning in that
instance. The true point at issue was undoubtedly the
substantial existence of general ideas, and Antiphon
might fairly be called the earliest of the nominalists.
We hear of very similar utterances in Antisthenes
and Theopompus, who disputed the Platonic theory
of ideas, but that theory was not in existence at the
time that Antiphon, the contemporary of Socrates, was
wielding his pen. We must accordingly abandon the
* Cp.Bk. I. CLII.fa.
THE SOPHIST ANTIPHON. 435
search for the actual adversary with whom Antiphon was
fighting. It is enough to recollect that the language
which expresses abstractions by substantives, thus lending
them the semblance of objectivity, has always paved the way
for a naive and rudimentary realism,* in the philosophical
sense of the word, traces of which, indeed, are not wanting
in the age we are considering. Among the other lost works
of Antiphon antiquity possessed his " Art of Consolations/'
from which we trace the beginning of a new and fertile
branch of letters. But the chief of all his writings was a
treatise "On Concord." It was renowned in anti-
quity for its rich style, for the even flow of its diction, and
for the extraordinary wealth of its ideas — virtues which
can still be traced in its few fragmentary remains. It
was a work of practical philosophy, in which self-seeking,
and weak will, and the sluggishness which looks on life
as though it were a game of chess that could be renewed
after a defeat, and anarchy — "the worst of human
evils " — were mercilessly flagellated, while the self-
control that is produced by a thorough knowledge of
the appetites, and, above all, the power of education,
were warmly praised and brilliantly delineated.
The fragments of this treatise have lately received a
considerable addition through a discovery as ingenious as
it is certain, and its new pieces will be found to teem with
passages of fruitful instruction. They reveal, for instance,
a fine sense of human nature, as may be seen from the
following extract : " Men never wish to render honour to
another, for they believe that thereby they derogate from
their own respect." But it is more important to note that
in these long connected fragments we possess our earliest
example of the kind of moral instruction which was im-
parted by the sophists. We gain at last authoritative
evidence for a fact long ago perceived and expressed by
the more thoughtful historians, though never credited except
by isolated readers. Thus Grote, about half a century ago,
wrote that the sophists "were the regular teachers of
Greek morality, neither above nor below the standard of
*Bk. Il.Ch. II
436 GREEK THINKERS.
the age." It is possible that this generalization went a
little too far and taxed the originality of individual sophists
too heavily, but on one point at least there should
never have been any doubt. It was a sheer impossibility
for the sophists, dependent as they were on wide orders
of the public, to promulgate anti-social doctrines. They
were far more liable to the danger of preaching, if we
may so express ourselves, doctrines of a hyper-social
tendency, and of subjecting the individual to the tyranny
of public opinion in perhaps too high a degree, or, not to
exaggerate their influence, of becoming at least the mouth-
piece of opinions of that kind.
Such, at any rate, is the impression which we derive
from the new fragments. We recognize there modes of
thought and feeling conceivable only in a democratic com-
munity, and realized at the present time hardly anywhere
else than in the Swiss Republic and in the United States
of America. The desire to conciliate the good-will of one's
fellow-citizens, and to take one's place among them as a
man of reputation and esteem, was manifested here with
exceptional intensity. It is not our business to form a
judgment on the advantages and disadvantages of a social
condition of this kind, or of the moral atmosphere which
it is calculated to engender. But it is legitimate to point
out that the wholesome effects it exercises in the repression
of impulses for the common hurt, and in stimulating
enterprises for the common weal, must necessarily be
counterbalanced by a danger of no mean significance. It
is a danger which would affect that domain of life in which
multiformity of development and independence of action are
indispensable to the success of individual life, and tend
therefore indirectly to promote the general prosperity of all.
It may be conceded that individual liberty in the Athens of
the fifth century B.C. was far less exposed to this risk at the
hands of the tyrannous majority than among most other
peoples and in most other times. In evidence of this, we
commend to the attention of every one who has not yet
made acquaintance with it the funeral oration of Pericles,
which Thucydides has preserved, and which forms one ol
ANTAGONISM OF ANTIPHON AND CALLICLES. 437
the most precious monuments to the spirit of genuine
freedom in the possession of mankind. Still, the new
fragments of Antiphon bear witness to a mode of thought
which submitted the individual once for all to the service
of the community, or rather, as not a few may have held,
which submitted him to the servitude of collective medi-
ocrity, And, this being the case, we are now in a position
to understand the protest and reaction of some superior
and self-conscious minds. Speeches such as Plato put in
the mouth of Callicles, the sworn foe of the sophists and
the contemner of the mob, become still more comprehen-
sible to us than they previously were. Nay, in some of
the expressions of the resurgent Antiphon, in the bitter
polemic, for instance, against the erroneous doctrine that
obedience to the laws is cowardice, we seem to be listening
to a protest against the opinions sustained by Callicles in
the "Gorgias," and incarnated in real life in the persons
of a Critias and an Alcibiades.
Education, to come back to that topic, was promoted
by Antiphon to the highest rank in human affairs. "Ac-
cording to the seeds," he tells us, "that are sown in the
earth, so are the fruits that the reaper may expect. And
if a noble disposition be planted in a young mind, it will
engender a flower that will endure to the end, and that
no rain will destroy, nor will it be withered by drought,"
This paragraph reminds us of similar reflections expressed
in like style by Protagoras, the chief and noblest of the
sophists. Our readers are already acquainted with the
name of this extraordinary man, and we have now to try
to delineate his features as fully and faithfully as our scanty
materials permit
438 CREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER VI.
PROTAGORAS OF ABDERA.
i. PROTAGORAS was a son of Abdera, where he breathed
the air of free thought. It is hardly to be doubted that he
enjoyed the intercourse of Leucippus, his older fellow-
countryman, and of Democritus, his younger contemporary.
But the investigation of Nature did not by any means
monopolize his interest, which was primarily directed to
human affairs. Before his thirtieth year he had adopted
the profession, new at that time, of an itinerant teacher or
sophist. He had paid repeated visits to Athens, where he
was honoured with the in,timate friendship of Pericles, and
stood in close relationship with Euripides and other eminent
men. As a teacher his services were in eager requisition,
and his instruction centred, as we have seen, in a
preparation for public life. It admitted excursions in every
direction : oratory and its auxiliary arts, education, juris-
prudence, politics, and ethics, engaged his fertile and re-
sourceful mind. He was a man of many-sided endowments,
and was equally successful in inventing an apparatus for
the use of porters as in performing the task of a legislator.
He wac employed in the last-named capacity in the spring
of 443, when the colony of Thurii was founded by Athens in
the heart of a fruitful plain, close to the ruins of Sybaris.
The instructions which Protagoras received from Pericles
on that occasion were probably to the effect that he should
adapt the laws of the "subtle" Charondas, which were
current in many parts of Lower Italy, to the peculiar
Conditions of the new settlement. And Protagoras carried
PROTAGORAS IN ATHENS. 439
out his instructions by making those laws yet more subtle
than they had been. This political mission was the summit
of his life and work. Some of the most illustrious Greeks
of that age made their home at Thurii, and others
were constantly passing through it, so that Protagoras,
wandering through the halls of the beautiful and regular
city built on the plans of Hippodamus, might converse one
day with Herodotus on questions of ethnology, and on
another with Empedocles on problems of natural science.
All the Greek tribes were represented in the brilliant life
of Thurii, and the division of the citizens into ten pro-
vinces was a proof of the Pan-Hellenic principle of its
foundation, which, in conjunction with its rapid and peace-
ful rise, might be taken as a happy omen for the future
unity of Hellas. But if Protagoras and his brother sophists,
with the rest of the prose-writers and poets who were the
true vehicles of the national idea, were buoyed up by hopes
of this kind, they were doomed to the bitterest disappoint-
ment. Hardly ten years elapsed before the two leading
powers, Athens and Sparta, were ranged against one
another in a death struggle. All Hellas was split into
two hostile camps. Protagoras was in Athens at the time
when the fearful ravages of pestilence were added to the
horrors of war. He was thus a witness of the heroism
displayed by his patron Pericles under the heaviest
calamity :
" His sons," wrote Protagoras, after Pericles' too early death,
" perished within a week in the beauty of their youth, and he bore
it without repining. For he clung to his attitude of serene repose,
which permitted him every day to enjoy welfare, tranquillity, and
popular fame, for every man who saw him bear his own. sorrow
with strength would recognize that Pericles was noble and manly
and much better than himself, seeing that he would be found
wanting in a similar trial."
Thus the closing years of the life of Protagoras were
darkened by the shadows of national misfortune, in which
Athens was the greatest sufferer, but he was at least spared
the burdens of extreme old age. For this he was indebted
440 GREEK THINKERS.
to one of those sudden impulses of intolerance against
which the populace of Athens was never sufficiently proof.
Protagoras was almost seventy years of age when, in
reliance on his reputation and on the record of an honour-
able career, he ventured to give undisguised, though at the
same time temperate, utterance to somewhat more auda-
cious ideas than usual. It is said to have been in the house
of Euripides that he first had his book " On the Gods " re-
cited, thus introducing it to publicity according to ancient
usage. A smart cavalry officer, the wealthy Pythodorus, was
the self-chosen instrument of the salvation of society. Pytho-
dorus was a political malcontent, who was presently to take
part in the conspiracy of the Four Hundred against the
existing constitution. In the present instance he was the
chief cause of the prosecution of Protagoras for impiety.
The book ** On the Gods " was condemned. The copies
that had already been published were confiscated and burnt.
Protagoras himself probably left Athens before his convic-
tion, and betook himself to Sicily, but he suffered shipwreck
on the way, and found a watery grave. Euripides, his friend,
dedicated, if we are not mistaken, an elegy to him in the
two concluding verses of the chorus in the tragedy of
"Palamedes," produced in the spring of 415 B.C., "Yea,
ye have killed her, the all-wise ; alas for the blameless
nightingale of the Muses ! "
Well might the fate of Protagoras, surnamed " Wisdom "
itself, recall the memory of Palamedes, Palamedes the
inventor, envied for his wisdom, the victim of a hateful
charge. But for us, at least, it is difficult to gain a clear
conception of the grounds on which the contemporary
admiration of Protagoras rested. We seek them in vain
in the fragments, barely twenty lines long, the very mean-
ing of which is contested by the commentators. We
inquire for them in vain from witnesses whose evidence is
largely coloured by prejudice, who have bequeathed to us
a chaotic collection of partly unwarranted and partly in-
comprehensible tidings, preserved by the pen of a positively
miserable compiler. We review the description of Plato,
the brilliancy of which is dimmed by its plainly polemical
EDUCATION AND GRAMMAR. 441
tendency, and we compare with that description the
contradictory Platonic allusions in which fact and infer-
ence, jest and earnest, mingle their diverse hues. For
these, and of this kind, are the materials out of which we
have to reconstruct the image of the significance of Prota-
goras.
2. Protagoras, in the first instance, was a successful
and a celebrated teacher. In that capacity he had
reflected on the problem of education, and his utterances
on that subject betoken a calm and impartial mind,
wholly free from prepossessions. We read that " Teaching
requires natural disposition and exercise, and must be
begun in youth," that "Neither theory without practice
nor practice without theory avails at all," and, again
that " Culture does not flourish in the soul unless one
reaches a great deepness." The last of these fragments,
selected from the few that have been preserved to us,
recalls in a striking degree a weighty maxim in the
gospels.* As a teacher Protagoras was the first to
introduce grammar in his curriculum, and it is one of the
most remarkable facts in the history of Greek thought
that before him there was not the remotest attempt to dis-
tinguish the forms of expression nor to analyze and reduce
them to principles of speech. It is true that a few of the
most obvious differences, such as that between a verb and
a noun, were known in the uses of language, but even
in respect to these elementary notions much had to be
done before their boundaries were sharply defined or their
names consistently employed. As to what is meant by
an adverb or preposition, or the rules of the moods and
tenses, neither Pindar nor ^Eschylus had the faintest
conception of those matters. The art of language never
passed through its days of apprenticeship. The master
was born with full powers before any attempts had been
made to define the rules of his craft. This fact obviously
contained a useful hint for practice. It suggested that
the proper use of language might be largely independent
of the conscious knowledge of its rules, and that it might
* Matt. xiii. 5,
442 GREEK THINKERS.
be neither necessary nor advantageous to dazzle the brain
of a mere child with the lights of grammatical and logical
abstractions. But we do not propose to discuss these
questions here. The age of Protagoras was marked by a
great awakening of curiosity, by an attempt to co-ordinate
all the material of knowledge, and by a universal search
for causes and rules. Nothing, then, was more natural or
more just than that the chief instrument of thought and
its communication should have been submitted to the
methods of philosophy. So Protagoras wrote his studies
in grammar in the form of a book "On Correct Speech/1
and the title affords some indication of the intention of
the author. The sole really profitable road in the study of
language — the historical — was as foreign to Protagoras as
to the rest of the ancients. Still, the codification of the
rules of speech afforded a rich field for labour ; nor could
such an undertaking be attempted in an age which prided
itself on its reason without occasionally being accompanied
by experiments in reform. The recognition of a rule of
language led to the inquiry for its cause, or rather, ac-
cording to the view obtaining in that epoch, for the
intention of the legislator in the sphere of language. Now
that intention was found to be either incompletely or in-
consistently carried out, and an attempt would accordingly
be made to restore the work of the legislator in its pristine
purity by removing the apparent exceptions, much as a
corrupt manuscript is purged of the mistakes of copyists.
It was probably in this spirit that Protagoras, whom we
have good reason to regard as an adherent of the "con-
ventional " theory of language, approached the problems of
that study. The knowledge of linguistic rules resting on
observation, and the consequent instructions for the correct
use of language, formed probably the chief contents of
his book. There were added to them a few suggestions for
linguistic reforms. Protagoras was the first to distinguish
the several tenses of the verb and the moods of predica-
tion. These last he entitled the " stems " of speech, with
wishes, questions, answers, and commands as their several
branches, and those four kinds of clauses were expressed
ATTEMPTS AT LINGUISTIC REFORM. 443
In his opinion by the four moods of the verb which we
call optative, conjunctive, indicative, and imperative. In one
instance — the conjunctive — it must be admitted, however,
that the identification was not established without a certain
amount of violence. Protagoras seems to have gone chiefly
to Homer for his examples of these and other rules of
speech, and for the exceptions which he affected to find
to them. For we cannot put it down to mere chance that,
out of the three excursions in grammatical criticism
which have reached us from the works of Protagoras, two
refer to the first two words of the first verse of the Iliad.
It may have gratified the critic to add the charge of
linguistic inaccuracy to the severe judgment which
Xenophanes had passed on the contents of that renowned
poem. Thus he argued that the imperative in "Sing,
goddess, the wrath," was incorrectly employed, inasmuch as
the poet, In addressing the Muse, would not use a command,
but merely a wish or a prayer. Further, the Greek word
jUTjvie (" wrath ") should in his opinion have been masculine,
and not of the feminine gender. We cannot pretend to
dogmatize on the meaning of this last remark. It has
probably been correctly taken to convey the opinion that
the passion of anger is a manly rather than a womanly
characteristic. It would, however, be extravagant to assume
that Protagoras was bold enough to undertake the whole-
sale reform of the genders of substantives through the
length and breadth of the Greek language. If he had
made so audacious an attempt, we should certainly have
heard more about it than an occasional reference in
Aristotle to jurjvtc and one other word.
The following account is probably more correct. In
no domain of language are the traces of its wild growth
so clear as in the genders of impersonal substantives. The
remarkable fact that several language-groups regard the
inanimate to a large extent as animate, and therefore as
partly masculine and partly feminine, springs from the
same personifying impulse which we have already seen at
work in the beginnings of religious conceptions.* The
* Cp, Introd., § 5.
444 GREEK THINKERS.
impulse to personification proper was accompanied by a
sense of analogy of an extraordinarily refined and sensitive
character. The moving, active, nervous, sharp, spare, and
hard were regarded as masculine ; the resting, passive,
gentle, tender, broad, and soft, as feminine. But opposed
to these analogies of sense were secondary analogies of
form, and the two influences crossed one another at various
points. If a substantival termination had once been appro-
priated by preference to either sex, a new formation of
the same kind would take the same gender, frequently
without regard to the meaning of the word. In other
instances, and especially in times when the creative force
of language was still unbroken, the authority of the mean-
ing would outweigh the authority of the form. These
factors help to explain the confusing abundance of excep-
tions to the rules of gender, built partly on the community
of sense and partly on that of form, which are the despair
of the modern schoolboy. Now, Protagoras, as a son of
the age of free thought, felt no restraint of piety in deal-
ing with the naivetg of primitive man ; he had, as we shall
find in other instances, a strong sense for rational correctness,
and he was accordingly at pains to introduce occasionally
something like order in the chaotic condition of language.
The second authentic example of the grammatical criticism
of Protagoras attached to the word 7r?iAii£» meaning a helmet
of war. This word, though feminine in Greek, he wished to
see employed as masculine. If we search for his reasons
we may probably reject the supposition that he was
following a common principle which would make all
substantives relating to the manly arts of warfare of the
masculine gender. He was probably guided by a less
general consideration. The termination -£ is commonly a
sign of the feminine gender, but the rule is by no means
without exceptions. And among those exceptions three
words are found which designate parts of the accoutre-
ments of war. Protagoras, examining these three words,
made that community of meaning responsible for their
exception, and he wished accordingly to bring the fourth
word under the same exceptional legislation. Further
PROTAGORAS' ETHICAL WRITINGS. 445
in respect to the word firjvig mentioned above, his criticism
may have been supported by the observation that the
termination -*c is very far from being confined to sub-
stantives of the feminine gender. We cannot hope to
determine whether or not a jest of Aristophanes, which is
doubtless justly referred to our sophist's attempts at reform,
was founded on an actual fact. But if it was, we see
that Protagoras wished to supply a defect in the older
Greek language which used the word corresponding to our
" cock " for both sexes indifferently. He wished to form a
feminine "cockess," much in the same way as we speak
of a " lioness " and " tigress " as well as of a " lion " and
"tiger."
3. The conception of correctness confronts us again as
a leading thought peculiar to Protagoras in other fields of
his activity. One of the writings in which he treated of
ethics bore the title " On the Incorrect Actions of Man-
kind." Another of his works on moral philosophy was
called " The Imperative Speech " — a title which is consistent
with the tone of dogmatic certainty in which Plato's Pro-
tagoras speaks in his most characteristic vein. We are
not aware how he treated the subject of ethics, though we
may presume that he did not make any very original
departure from the common Greek type. And we are
similarly ignorant of the contents of his treatise "On the
State" or "On the Constitution." There he may have
discussed the question of criminal law which will shortly
engage our attention, and in which he endeavoured to
determine who "in accordance with correct opinion" was
the truly guilty man. We are reminded at this point of
the ridicule poured by Plato on the attempts of Protagoras
to reduce all human action and conduct to arts or systems
of rules, and we may recall, for the sake of comparison,
two sentences from the above-mentioned treatise " On the
Art," * which in thought and expression is so closely akin '
to Protagoras. " But is it not Art," we read, " when the
correct and the incorrect both have their limits assigned
to them? For I call it non-Art when there is neither
* Cp. Bk. III. Ch.V.§3.
446 GREEK THINKERS.
anything correct nor anything incorrect." Here we see
the same powerful craving for rational insight, and the
rationalization of all departments of human life, which we
have already marked as a characteristic of the whole age,
which we shall find in its fullest development in the
doctrines of Socrates, and which was extremely active
in Protagoras himself. It enabled him to drag the
creations of law, not less than those of language, before
the judgment-seat of reason. We are but slightly ac-
quainted with what he achieved in that direction, but the
little we know is eminently noteworthy.
The gossips of Athens used to amuse themselves by
telling of a conversation protracted for many hours betweer
Pericles, the leading statesman, and Protagoras, the foreigr
sophist. Its theme seemed hardly worthy of the time and
interest of at least the first of the interlocutors. One of
the participators in the game of throwing the spear had
unintentionally killed a bystander, and Pericles and Prota-
goras were said to have argued a whole day long as tc
who was the guilty party. Was it the deviser of the game,
or the competitor who threw the spear, or, finally, the
spear itself ? It is this item of the interrogatory which
excites our astonishment, and tempts us to regard the whole
story, despite its excellent authority, as a sorry jest. But,
as a matter of fact, it is precisely this problem of the speat
which affords the key to the whole matter. To our thinking
the conviction of inanimate objects is just as absurd as the
execution of unreasoning animals. But the ancients held
a different opinion, which did not expire with the Greeks,
Lawsuits against animals were admitted in the Greek and
Roman codes, as well as in the old Scandinavian, the old
Persian, the Hebraic, and the Slavonic. Medievalism is
full of them, and they extend far across the frontier oi
modern times. The judicial rolls of France tell us ol
bulls and swine who ended their life on the gallows
in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and even in the beginning
of the seventeenth century. The custom still flourishes
in the East, and the last traces of it in Western history are
found as late as 1793 and 1845 A,D. The first-named date
THEORY OF PUNISHMENT. 447
refers to the very time when Cambacer&s was occupied in
elaborating the judicial reform which has found its place in
the Code Napoleon. If he had attended the execution of
a sentence passed on a dog by the revolutionary tribunal
on the twenty-seventh of Brumaire in the year II. at the
sign of "The Bull Fight" in Paris, the disgust of this
modern master of jurisprudence could not have been in any
way greater than that of the Greek sophist at Athens,
who saw weapons and other inanimate objects which had
caused the death of a man convicted, purified, and
solemnly banished from the country. It is quite con-
ceivable, then, that the conversation in question may have
grown out of some spectacle of that kind. But it is fair
to believe that it would not have stopped there. It was
a quarrel, as Hegel said, "about the great and important
question of responsibility ; " nay, we may add, about the
yet greater and more important question of the purpose of
punishment. Protagoras was just the man to found on
that extreme case of glaring unreason, or "incorrectness/*
as he would have said, familiar to every one from such
proceedings of the tribunal near the Prytaneum, a discussion
which was gradually to lead to an exalted goal, which was
to examine the value and nature of the existing criminal
law, to lay bare its chief bases — the instinct of retaliation,
and the craving for atonement — and thence to proceed to
the question whether it were legitimate for such reasons to
afflict members of human society with grievous suffering,
and, finally, to seek for some more tenable basis on which
to build up a system of criminal law. Nor, when we ask
where he found that basis, are we reduced to mere guess-
work. We may listen to Protagoras in the Platonic dia-
logue of that name raising an emphatic protest against the
mere brutal retaliation of an injury done, and energetically
proclaiming the deterrent theory of punishment; and,
listening thus, we may fancy ourselves once more in
the chamber of Pericles overhearing the earnest and
eager commerce of speech, and better fathoming the
depths of the argument than was vouchsafed to Xanthip-
pus, our authority, the degenerate son of Pericles, or to
448 GREEK THINKERS.
Stesimbrotus, the scavenging pamphleteer, to whom he
confided the tidings.
4. The question suggests itself, What was the attitude
of the powerful and critical mind of Protagoras towards the
problems of theology ? That early literary auto-da-fc which
it has been our melancholy duty to report, has robbed us
of the accurate answer to this question. One sentence alone
has been saved in its entirety from the ruins. It was the
sentence which stood at the beginning of the doomed book,
and which ran as follows : —
" In respect to the gods, I am unable to know either that they
are or that they are not, for there arc many obstacles to such
knowledge, above all the obscurity of the matter, and the life of
man, in that it is so short."
We are overwhelmed here by a flood of questions. What,
we ask first, can have been the contents of the book, the
opening sentence of which removed the subject it treated
from the domain of human knowledge, and thus, as it
might seem, settled it out of court ? We can do nothing
more than take the few, words that have been preserved,
scrutinize them as closely as possible, and expatiate on
them as accurately as we may. And the first point that
strikes us is the repetition of the word "know/' and the
emphasis that it derives from such repetition. For the
ancients distinguished the two conceptions of knowledge
and belief in the domain of which we are speaking, fully as
strictly as we are wont to do ourselves. We need hardly
recall the definite distinction drawn by Parmenides, with
all the consequences it entailed, between cognition and
opinion which engaged our attention in speaking of Par-
menides and of his disciples. Even in the Greek vernacular
we find that religious convictions, headed by the assumption
of the existence of gods, were expressed by a term (vo/u&iv)
which had nothing whatsoever in common with scientific
cognition. We are accordingly impelled to follow the
valuable hint given by Christian August Lobeck, and to
contend that the subject of those discussions was not the
belief in the gods, but the cognition of the gods. Add to
COGNITION OF THE GODS DISPUTED. 449
this that there are various other circumstances which make
it in the highest degree improbable that Protagoras would
have consented to assail such beliefs or even to call them
in doubt. In the first place, Plato tells us of the remarkable
procedure by which the sophist was accustomed to settle
any quarrel about the amount of the honorarium owing
to him. If a disciple refused to pay the fee demanded by
his teacher after the conclusion of the course, the sophist
would invite him to declare on oath in a temple the amount
at which he himself estimated the value of the instruction
he had received. And, secondly, we may quote the by no
means negligible evidence of the manner in which the
Platonic Protagoras described the beginnings of human
society. For it is at least extremely improbable that a
master of characterization like Plato should have put a
legend, filled from beginning to end with the gods and their
intervention in the fate of mankind, in the mouth of a man
who, though only at the end of his life, stood revealed as
an opponent of divine worship. The improbability is
heightened by the following sentence, to which Protagoras
was made to give expression : —
" Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first
the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone
was of their kindred; and he would raise altars and images of
them."
Thus everything leads us to the conclusion that the Prota-
gorean fragment above mentioned did not call in question
the theological belief, but the scientific or reasonable know-
ledge of the existence of the gods. Next we may take the
Greek word which we have rendered by " obscurity." In the
original it possesses a particular shade of meaning signifying
the contrary of " sensibleness." In that connection the
reference to the "obscurity" as an obstacle to cognition
signified neither more nor less than that the gods were
not the objects of direct sense-perception. But in default
of perception its place is taken by inference — a generali-
zation not only common to universal human thought,
but directly traceable in the literature of the age we
VOL. I. 3 G
450 GREEK THINKERS.
are discussing. Thus the warning as to the shortness
of the life of man could have been inserted for no other
purpose than to remind us that the brief span of time by
which our existence is bounded affords no adequate em-
pirical material on which to base the requisite arguments
for affirming or denying the existence of gods. Thus far
this valuable fragment may be interpreted with certainty,
The rest is conjecture. We do not know what contem-
porary experiments Protagoras had in his mind to prove or
disprove the existence of the gods, in order to justify his
indictment of their inadequacy, and to recommend in their
stead the suspension of judgment as the one safe method
of thought ; nor, without that knowledge, have we any
trustworthy ground for argument. All that we can say is
that Protagoras replaced the confidence of Yea and Nay
by reminding his readers of the narrow limits of human
cognition. Thus his name marks an important chapter in
the history of the development of scientific thought. It
may well be that he would have assented to the words
written down by Ernest Renan shortly before his death in
1892 : "'We know nothing.* That is all that can be said
with certainty on what lies beyond the Finite. Let us
affirm nothing, let us deny nothing, let us hope."
5. From theology to metaphysics is only a step. Here
again a single sentence has to do duty for a whole book.
The work in question was known by three different titles,
"On Being," "Truth," and "The 'Throwing1 Discourses."
The third of these titles, with its metaphor from wrestling,
shows us that a considerable portion of this treatise was
polemical in character, and we are not wholly unaware of
the butt of the attack. According to a late reader of the
work in antiquity, the Neo-Platonist Porphyry, who died not
long after 300 A.D., Protagoras directed the shafts of his
polemic against the Eleatics. The single sentence which
has been preserved, and which was again the opening
sentence of the book, ran as follows : " Man is the measure
of all things, of those which are, that they are, and of those
which are not, that they are not." We are struck at once
by the resemblance in style between the metaphysical ancj
MAN THE MEASURE OF THINGS. 451
the theological fragments, and we are struck no less by
their common need of interpretation. The first thing to be
done in this instance is to determine what the important
and, unfortunately, wholly isolated fragment cannot be. It
cannot possess an ethical meaning ; it cannot be the shib-
boleth of any moral subjectivism, to which the sentence has
not unfrequently been turned in the hands of popular expo-
sitors. Neither the text of the utterance nor its point
directed against the Eleatic doctrine of unity offers the
slightest handle to any explanation of that kind. One fact
may be stated with absolute certainty. The phrase about
man as the measure of things — the homo-mensura tenet,
as it has been suitably abbreviated — was a contribution
to the theory of cognition. Moreover " man/* as opposed to
the totality of objects, was obviously not the individual, but
mankind as a whole. No unprejudiced reader will require
to be convinced that this is at least the more natural and
the more obvious meaning. Goethe, for example, was a
reader of that kind. He made but a cursory reference to
the Protagorean phrase, but the intuitive instinct of his
genius was a better guide to its meaning than a thousand
uninspired commentators :
"We may watch Nature," wrote Goethe, "measure her,
reckon her, weigh her, etc., as we will. It is yet but our measure
and weight, since man is the measure of things."
We have thus seen reason to favour the non-individual
but generic interpretation of " man," and our preference,
we believe, can be turned to a certainty by a strictly
logical argument Hitherto the tradition of the experts,
which has only recently been seriously shaken, has held
fast to the individualistic meaning, the adherents of which,
in our opinion, must take one or the other of two roads
of thought, both of which we venture to characterize as
erroneous. In the one instance the facts may just be brought
into harmony with the interpretation, but the grammar
breaks down ; in the other instance the grammar is admis-
sible, but the facts are not Supposing that Protagoras
wished to assert that the individual was the measure of all
452 GREEK THINKERS.
things, he must have been thinking either of the properties
or of the existence of the things. The first of these
assumptions is the one which we have called admissible on
the facts. For the individual differences of sensuous per-
ceptions had already in that age begun to attract the atten-
tion of philosophers. But the assumption must surrender
unconditionally to the little Greek word cJc, which, in
common with the large majority of philological critics,
we have rendered by "that," and not by "how," and
which, as numerous parallel passages, among them the frag-
ment about the gods by Protagoras himself, show beyond
dispute, cannot possibly be rendered otherwise. And we
might further remark, by the way, that by the contrary
supposition the negative branch of the sentence — "of
those which are not, how they are not" — would be devoid
of all reasonable meaning. For no one would ever have
been at pains to inquire into the negative properties of
that which was devoid of being. Thirdly and lastly, the
appearance of this sentence at the opening of the whole
book, the comprehensive phrases in which it is clothed,
and the importance which its author plainly ascribed to
it — all this is hardly compatible with the view that it
was the promulgation of a truth not unimportant in
itself, but yet of a subordinate and special character,
devoted, that is to say, to the individual variation of the
sense perceptions, honey tasting bitter to a man suffering
from jaundice, and so forth. Coming next to the second
species of individualistic meaning, we may refute it by
the following simple consideration. We have only to ask
what could be meant by setting up the human individual
as the criterion or standard for the existence of objects,
in order to see that it would involve the complete jettison
of -the doctrine of objective reality. It would be an
expression, and, parenthetically remarked, a somewhat
awkward expression, for that aspect of the theory of
knowledge which in modern times is known as the
phenomenalistic, and which was represented in antiquity
by that school of Socratics who derived their name of
Cyrenaics from their seat in Cyrene, in Africa* It is
GENERIC MEANING OF THE TENET. 453
the aspect in which there is no room either for " objects "
' or for the conception of objective being or for
existence at all, but solely for subjective " affections."
But, so far as the teaching of Protagoras is concerned,
there is internal as well as external evidence to show
beyond the possibility of dispute that it did not coincide
with that of Aristippus and the 'adherents of his school.
Let us summarize the heads of our verdict. The famous and
much controverted fragment which opened "The 'Throwing*
Discourses" belongs to the theory of cognition. The "man"
it speaks of is not this or that specimen of the genus, not
any individual Tom, Dick, or Harry, but universal man.
The sentence has a generic and not an individual significance.
Finally, man in this sense is exalted to the measure, not
of the properties, but of the existence of the objects.
The evidence of Porphyry in respect to the polemic
directed against the Eleatic doctrine affords us additional
support in the attitude we have adopted. It is meet,
in the .first place, to recall Melissus, the nearest con-
temporary of Protagoras, and we may account it a
piece of luck that in . the " Thesis of Melissus " we
meet the exact counterpart of the Protagorean tenet.
The Eleatic repudiation of the testimony of the senses
found a clear exponent in Melissus in the words, " where-
fore it ensueth that we neither see nor know what is"
(properly, the beings). This summary denial of the
reality of the sensuous world is counterbalanced in Pro-
tagoras by its equally summary affirmation : Man or
human nature is the standard for the existence of the
things. In other words, only what is real can be per-
ceived by us. The unreal cannot supply any object
to our perception. So much for the leading thought
of Protagoras, the proof of which has not been preserved
for us. The emphasis laid on the conception of man
was doubtless responsible for his secondary thought that
we men cannot break through the limits of our own
nature ; that the truth attainable by us must lie within
those limits ; that, if we reject the evidence of our per-
ceptive faculties, we have no right to confide in our
454 GREEK THINKERS.
remaining faculties ; and, above all, that in such circum-
stances there would be no material for cognition left over '
for us. Nay, how should we seek for a criterion of truth,
and what significance could we ascribe to the words " true "
and "untrue," if we had repudiated root and branch
human truth, the sole truth within our reach ?
In the treatise " On the Art," to which we have more
than once had occasion to refer, the doctrine of Protagoras
assumed a shape in which it was more closely related,
and accordingly more sharply contrasted, with the doctrine
of Melissus. It was promulgated as follows : " What is "
(properly, the beings) " may always be seen and known, but
what is-not" (properly, the non-beings) "may never be
either seen or known." We can imagine the author of the
treatise posing Melissus with the questions, How can objects
which we perceive be unreal ? and, How could the unreal
enter in our field of perception ? At this point we may go
back to the words preceding the above quotation. We
read, quite literally, that " if what is-not be equally percep-
tible with what is, I do not know how any one can regard
it as non-being, inasmuch as it can be seen with the eye
and known by the mind as being. But that will not be
the case. Rather what is " and here ensues the passage
which we have already cited. It is obvious that we are here
confronted with an extremely notable argument. A flash of
relativistic or phenomenalistic thought has illuminated the
author's mind. He holds fast by the belief that something
perceptible, some objective reality, corresponds in each
instance to our perception. But even if that expectation
happened not to be fulfilled, a man, according to our
author, would still have to rest contented with what his
faculties of perception set before his vision. If we may
venture to complete his argument, he would have said that
this was the sole truth attainable by man, that it was the
relative or human truth. " But that will not be the case."
And here, accordingly, our author turned from the rela-
tivistic road, revealed to him in a flash of lightning, back to
the old and naive conception of the world.
This rehabilitation of the evidence of the senses must
PROTAGORAS AND MELISSUS. 455
have reversed the relations between Protagoras and the
natural philosophers on the one part, and Protagoras and
Melissus, the " un-natural philosopher," the " stopper-of-the-
universe," on the other. And, in point of fact, we find in
the treatise "On the Art," not merely, as has just been
shown, the homo-mensura tenet, but also the foundations of
a strictly empirical method and philosophy. We shall
revert later to these features, but one remark will here be
in place. There is one scanty piece of testimony for the
fact that Protagoras occupied himself with mathematics, on
which, indeed, he wrote a book, and that too makes it clear
that his mind followed empirical channels. The testimony
is found in Aristotle, who wrote (in support of his own
remark, " Lines sensibly perceptible are not of the kind
which the geometer supposes, for nothing sensibly percep-
tible is so curved or so straight ") that " Protagoras, in his
polemic against the geometers, mentions that the tangent
does not touch the circle at one point only." Now, this
means neither more nor less than that, to use expressions
employed by John Stuart Mill, " There exist no real things
exactly conformable to the definitions. There exist no
points without magnitude ; no lines without breadth, nor
perfectly straight ; no circles with all their radii exactly
equal," etc. On this point, however, there never was any
conflict of opinion between the adherents of the most diverse
schools. The conflict began at a later stage, when the
question was asked whether the definitions of geometry were
derived from the sensible world, and therefore were only
approximately true, as abstractions adapted to serve the
ends of science, or whether they were of & priori origin and
contained absolute truth in themselves. Protagoras, it Is
hardly to be doubted, subscribed to the first of these
opinions. He may even be regarded as its earliest mouth-
piece, and thus, as a precursor of the thinkers who, like
Sir John Leslie, Sir John Herschel, Mill, and Helmholtz
in our own times, have maintained the empirical origin of
the tenets of geometry, its axioms as well as its defi-
nitions.
We have accordingly established the empirical nature
456 GREEK THINKERS.
of the Protagorean method, and our conclusion is corro-
borated by Plato's view of the homo-mensura tenet. He
regarded it as wholly identical with the thesis, " Cognition is
sense perception," or all knowledge rests on such perception.
And this marks the last legitimate stage in our employ-
ment of the testimony of Plato. The reason for our re-
nouncement is simple enough. Henceforward Plato's utter-
ances on this subject are not the evidence of a witness,
but attempts to derive from the Protagorean thesis con-
sequences really or ostensibly contained therein. Plato
argued somewhat as follows : If the perceptions of sense
necessarily contain truth, but the perception of one indi-
vidual differs frequently from that of another, then it is fair
to infer from that tenet that an equal measure of truth
belongs even to contradictory perceptions. Moreover, it
is probable that Protagoras, like the majority of his con-
temporaries, failed to distinguish with the requisite strict-
ness between veritable perceptions and the conclusions
derived from them, thus opening an avenue for Plato's
further deduction from the tenet of Protagoras that even
contrary opinions possess the same degree of truth ; in a
word, that "what appears to each man to be true, is true
for each man." Here, then, we are face to face with
the famous so-called Protagorean doctrine, which it would
be too high an honour to regard as the expression of
extreme subjectivism or scepticism. As a matter of fact,
it is hardly distinguishable from blank nonsense. It
deals the death-blow to all orderly thought, all merely
rational conduct, as well as to all education, all foresight,
all science and instruction. And yet this iconoclast, who
was supposed to have destroyed objective truth, and with it
to have carried away all rules of universal import, laboured
for more than forty years in every part of Greece as a
teacher highly esteemed and in great request, as a celebrated
rhetorician and author ; he was yet a lecturer whose wealth
of positive tenets were not merely delivered from the plat-
form, but were pointed and inculcated with extraordinary
emphasis, and were promulgated with the force of the pulpit
And it was the same reputed iconoclast who, as we have
ALLEGED SCEPTICISM OF PROTAGORAS. 457
seen, and as we shall still have occasion to see, assumed
the functions of a legislator in the most various depart-
ments of life, and whose distinction between the correct
and the incorrect, between the right and the wrong, obtained
in the circle of his thought too much rather than too little
consideration and esteem.
The reader may object at this point that we have
heard expressions of scepticism from the very lips of our
sophist himself; that he published his doubts as to the
existence of the gods in language which amply testifies to
his mental disposition. Perfectly true, we reply. And
it is precisely from the fragment about the gods that
we derive our final and irrefutable argument to prove that
the kind of scepticism which Plato read into the homo-
mensura tenet was completely alien to the thought of
its author. For Protagoras based his suspension of judg-
ment in that single instance on grounds of fact, the roots of
which were deeply embedded in the nature of the special
problem itself. Hitherto, we may conceive him to say, no
one has seen gods ; but human life is too short, and the
field of our observation too restricted, to affirm or to deny
with certainty the traces of their activity in the world of
nature and man. Accordingly he withheld his verdict ;
in respect to that question, he framed no definite answer
either in the positive or in the negative. But if the
maxim that " every man's truth is the truth which appears
to him" had really been the lodestar of his mind, his
answer, we take it, would have been different In that
case we conceive he must necessarily have expressed him-
self to this effect : Gods exist for those who believe in
them ; they do not exist for those who do not believe in
them.
Nor are we reduced to the sophists own sparse authentic
utterances in order to refute this misconception. Plato
himself bore witness against it. In the dialogue entitled
" Protagoras " he drew a picture of the man, the main
features of which are obviously genuine, though the colours
are in places too glaring, and though we could dispense with
some of the less amiable detail. But, as it stands, it has
45 S GREEK THINKERS.
nothing whatsoever in common with the sham portrait in
the "Theaetetus." The same thinker appears in both
dialogues, but he is characterized in the " Protagoras " by
an excess rather than a defect of definiteness and dogma-
tism, though he is represented in the "Thesetetus" as
denying every distinction between truth and error. It is
significant, too, that in the earlier of the two dialogues
Protagoras is introduced as a living man, while in the
second and much later study he is mentioned as one long
since dead. In the one the biographer is working on the
memory of things seen, in the other fancy is playing with
a shadow or a phantom. The one is a person, the other a
formula ; in the one case the author is governed by intui-
tion, in the other by inference. In a word, the " Protagoras "
shows us a lifelike and finished portrait ; the " Theaetetus "
is composed of superfine and thin-spun ratiocinations. No
true student of Plato, whose attention has been called to
this contrast, will hesitate at all where to look for historical
truth, nor will doubt where Plato himself intended that
search to be successful.
When we come to discuss the " Theaetetus " at length,
we shall do our best to illustrate the particular object
which its author had in view, but for the purpose of the
present discussion a few preliminary remarks will not be
out of place. The conversational style which Plato
affected landed him in a difficulty of a quite exceptional
kind. He exalted his master Socrates to the chief rdle
in his dialogues. Nevertheless he could not and would
not renounce altogether the controversial discussion of
post-Socratic doctrines. We do not pretend that Plato
was particularly at pains to avoid anachronisms. One
thing, however, was plainly inadmissible. Socrates could
not be armed for the fray against the champions of tenets
which had arisen subsequently to his death. Now, in
order to circumvent this difficulty, the ingenuity of the
poet-philosopher had to cast around for artificial ex-
pedients. At one time, for instance, his Socrates learnt
of the existence of a doctrine " in a dream/' There was
no other reason for this proceeding except that, inasmuch
PURPOSE OF PLATO'S " THE&TE TVS? 459
as the doctrine was due to his own pupil Antisthenes, he
could hardly have heard of it through the orthodox
channels of information. Now let us take the " Theaetetus "
with its notable divergences from the " Protagoras." In the
"Theaetetus" Socrates is represented as expounding and
combating the theory of cognition which is described as
a " secret doctrine " of Protagoras, and as very different
from that which the sophist published to "the great
multitude." An ardent admirer of Protagoras who took
part in the conversation, and who was at the same time
intimately acquainted with his chief metaphysical treatise,
is plainly taken aback by the revelations of Socrates. In
other words, Plato tells his readers, as clearly as the con-
ventions of his self-imposed style permit, that he is making
use of a fiction. His real object was to establish his
position with regard to the theory of knowledge pro-
mulgated by Aristippus. This object has long since been
recognized, though it has not yet been universally acknow-
ledged. Now, of Plato, the prince of artists, it may
legitimately be said nil molitur inepte. If this particular
fiction had not suited him, he might readily have selected
another. Accordingly we may conclude that Plato was
anxious to establish an inner relationship between the
doctrines of Aristippus and Protagoras. In this light we
are now able to see that the indispensable preliminary step
to the whole transparent mystification was precisely that
exposition of the homo-mensura tenet which engaged
our attention above. It was Plato's deliberate intention
to enter the lists of the problem of cognition, and to
encounter its difficulties in his own person. The introduc-
tion, for controversial purposes, of the doctrine of
Aristippus under a shallow disguise was but a single step
on this long road of thought. The mention of Protagoras
was merely an artistic necessity of the fictitious treatment
of the whole theme, and nothing was further from the
original aim of Plato than to write an appreciative memoir
of the historical personage to whom that name appertained.
These, then, being the circumstances of the case, Plato,
so far from being hindered, was actually encouraged to
460 GREEK THINKERS.
dissociate, as it were, the Protagorean tenet from its
author and its environment. He was not required to ask
what it signified to its author, nor how its author
employed it. On the contrary, he was completely at
liberty to read into the formula whatever meaning its
wording would warrant. It would be unfair to speak of
the violation of historical truth in an instance where the
whole attitude of the writer is directed towards the emanci-
pation of his readers' minds from the trammels of history.
But we have now to reckon with a factor which we did
not anticipate. The " godlike" Plato was wholly innocent
in intention, but in this particular instance, as well as
in respect to the so-called sophists in general, he perverted
history despite himself by the authority of his mighty
name. All antiquity accepted Plato's interpretation^ the
doctrine as naked truth ; nor have modern times been able
to escape from his guidance till the most recent past.
Here and there in the references of isolated authors of
antiquity there are feeble traces of dissent, but the great
majority of them never once took the trouble seriously to
examine the text of the tiny fragment Our surprise at
this omission is lessened by the fact that Timon, who was
born just before the dawn of the third century B.C., did not
give himself the pains, as his comic verses plainly show, to
gain even a correct grammatical acquaintance with the
fragment of Protagoras about the gods. We have seen that
the influence of Plato was responsible for a negative source
of error in the depreciation and neglect of the literature of
the sophists, and in this particular instance a positive
factor was added by the interpretation put by Plato on the
fragment. To these causes it was due that no one till very
recently had the curiosity to ask how the gulf was to be filled
up that yawned before the eyes of every one between the
expositions in -the " Protagoras " and in the " Theaetetus."
It was nobody's business to determine how the sacred
fragment and the other sparse remains were compatible
with the universal scepticism which was ascribed to their
author. The suggestion leaps to the lips — Surely Aristotle
was not guilty of the widespread misconception. We have
ARISTOTLE AND THE TENET. 461
to answer both Yes and No. In two passages of his
"Metaphysics" he mentions the homo-mensura tenet in
such a manner as to suggest that Plato in the " Thesetetus,"
and again almost literally in the " Cratylus," was writing
with historical authority. But, in a third passage,
Aristotle grapples with the same subject again and comes
to quite a different conclusion. There the "man" is not
the individual, but is equipped with the qualities of his
kind. The individualistic interpretation passes into the
generic. And the Protagorean tenet, which is elsewhere
regarded by Aristotle as a dangerous paradox fatal to all
intelligible argument, is here dismissed as a pretentious
triviality :
" But if Protagoras says," we read, " that man is the measure of
all things, that means that the Knowing or the sensibly Perceiving is
the measure, inasmuch as the one possesses the sensible perception,
and the other the knowledge, which we describe as the measure
of their objects. Thus though the doctrine of Protagoras really
says nothing at all, it seems to say goodness knows what."
The foregoing attempt at an explanation may not merely
Incur the reproach of breaking with the tradition of nearly all
antiquity ; it may also be censured as incomplete. Nor, we
are fain to confess, would the rebuke be wholly unmerited.
There is still much that might be said more or less hypo-
thetically about the attitude of Protagoras towards the
problems of cognition. But we cannot think it advisable
to discuss questions of secondary import while the dispute
on the leading question is still unsettled. A superstructure
of hypothesis should only be reared on a basis of certainty.
Still, we shall not deny ourselves the expression of just
one conjecture. Many circumstances make it probable that
Protagoras, in his feud against the Eleatics and their re-
pudiation of the testimony of the senses, pointed to
subjective truth and to the infallibility, or rather the
inevitableness, of eveiy sensation. It is further probable
that in this connection he failed to distinguish with the
requisite degree of accuracy between sensation, perception,
perceptive judgment, and judgment in general. On these
462 GREEK THINKERS.
accounts the reproach which he incurred of maintaining
an equal degree of truth in all ideas and opinions
may have been, if not deserved, at least provoked by his
own attitude. The reproach may then have contributed
to the false interpretation of the homo-mensura tenet
But, be this as it may, however little we know of the Pro-
tagorean theory of cognition, one fact stands like a rock.
Protagoras may or may not have been carried away by
the zest of polemic ; he may or may not have been misled
by the incomplete psychological vocabulary of his times
into uttering at some place or on some occasion something
that gave a handle to the charge of scepticism ; but the
Protagorean fragments that have come down to us, few
and sparse though they are, are in themselves fully
sufficient to support the belief that the universal scepticism
ascribed to him was never a guiding star of his own
thought.
6. "On every question there arc two speeches, which
stand in opposition to one another." This precious fragment
has likewise been pressed into the service of the theory
against which we have been arguing so long. Those who
have t&rned it to this use, however, have overlooked the
simple fact that if it really possessed the meaning ascribed
to it, and were a corollary of the assertion that every
opinion is equally true, it would have had to refer, not to
two speeches only, but to an infinite number. Now, the
genuine meaning of the fragment may be illustrated from
its reproduction by Euripides, the friend of Protagoras, as
well as by the context in which it recurs in Isocrates.
Amphion, in the " Antiope " of Euripides, employs almost
the same turn of expression :
" In every matter can the speaker's art
Awaken conflict by a double tongue."
And Isocrates the rhetorician numbers among the use-
less and absurd paradoxes in which a former generation
delighted, the contraiy proposition, that " it is impossible
to make two opposite speeches on the same subject"
Accordingly, it is idle to look for a sceptical bias in the
DIDEROT, MILL, AND GOETHE. 463
statement of Protagoras. It contains nothing more than
the expression of a truism, familiar enough to modern
times, which Diderot once formulated as follows : " In all
questions, with the single exception of mathematics, there
are a pro and a con? Many pages might be filled with
the salutary applications of this dictum. Thus the cen-
tral thought of the first half of Mill's " Liberty" has been
correctly defined as " the necessity of taking account of
the negative to every positive affirmation ; of laying down,
side by side with every proposition, the counter-proposition?
And to come down to practical questions, every intelligent
reader of Parliamentary debates and newspaper articles will
be aware of the futility and delusiveness of a discussion
which is confined to the illustration of one side only, whether
it be the advantages or the disadvantages of a measure or
institution. He will be aware that no prospect of a salutary
decision can be opened to the feeble judgment of men
unless both sides are treated with impartial completeness
and are weighed the one against the other. The decisive
factor, in practice as well as in theory, is not, to refer to
Mill once more —
" what can be said for an opinion, but whether more can be said
for it than against it. There is no knowledge, and no assurance
of right belief, but with him who can both confute the opposite
opinion, and successfully defend his own against confutation."
The principle described in this passage as " the principal
lesson of Plato's writings " was foreshadowed in the dictum
of Protagoras with which we are now engaged. The great
sophist himself, in promulgating his doctrine, was probably
chiefly impressed by its educational value. He would have
shared the sentiment of Goethe, who eulogized the Moham-
medans for beginning —
" their course of philosophy with the lesson that nothing exists of
which the contrary cannot be affirmed. Thus," Goethe continues,
" they exercise the mind of youth by setting them the task of dis-
covering and defining the contrary to every proposition in their
ken, whence there is bound to proceed a high degree of versatility
in thinking and speaking."
464 GREEK THINKERS.
Doubt is awakened by these means, and from doubt, as
Goethe put it, the mind was led to nearer scrutiny and
proof, with certainty as its ultimate goal :
" You see," he says, at the close of his conversation with the faith-
ful Eckermann, " that nothing is wanting to this teaching, and that
we with all our systems have not arrived any further."
And when Goethe warmly assented to the remark of his
friend, that he was "thereby reminded of the Greeks, whose
method of philosophic instruction must have been similar,"
we may add that it was precisely the Protagorean " Anti-
logies " which headed the list of auxiliaries to this course
of instruction.
Unfortunately, of the two books of the celebrated work
we possess not a single line save the short sentence quoted
above, which probably stood at the beginning. Nor are
we in better plight when we come to indirect sources of
information. The most important testimony we possess is
an incomplete report of Aristoxenus, a philosophic writer on
music, from which we can infer, with a moderate degree of
confidence, that Plato based the brilliant dialectic discussion
of the conception of justice in the first book of the "Republic"
to some extent on this work. And even though the report
be rejected as untrue, it is not wholly without value. For
Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, and a younger contem-
porary of Plato, could not have made himself its mouthpiece
if the contents of the " antilogies/' which had not yet passed
into oblivion, were not in agreement at various points with
the Platonic masterpiece. The inference may be stated in
the following positive form : The " antilogies " discussed
problems of ethics and politics in a dialectic fashion. In
other words, Protagoras was in this respect a precursor of
Socrates, and a successor of Zeno, " the inventor of dialectic."
Furthermore, the "cunning wrestler," as Timon entitles him,
' is associated by anecdote and tradition with "the Pala-
medes of the Eleatics." Thus the argument of the grain of
millet, which our readers will recollect, has been preserved in
the form of a game of question and answer between Zeno
and Protagoras. Protagoras defends, and Zeno disputes in
THE DIALECTICS OF PROTAGORAS. 465
a series of captious questions, the evidence of the senses.
The Eleatic accordingly is the active partner in the dialogue,
and the Abderite the passive, and this distribution of parts
tallies admirably with the dialectic impotence of Protagoras,
despite his renown as an acute sophist, when exposed in
Plato to the cross-examinations of Socrates. It further
tallies with the fact that the whole rich tradition of
apophthegms does not credit Protagoras with a single
sophism or fallacy.
At this point we may sum up the dialectic art of
Protagoras with comparative certainty in its general
outline. He was evidently unpractised in the interchange
of question and answer which was founded by Zeno, and
developed by Socrates, and of which the chief exponents
were the Socratics of Megara. His own favourite dialectic
was obviously of a more rhetorical kind. He did not try
to confuse his antagonist nor to goad him to contradiction
by the method of curt interrogation. The chief weapon
in his armoury was that of long speeches delivered succes-
sively to refute one another. The prototype of these
rhetorical tournaments was found in the contest of speeches
which was fought in bitter earnest in the law courts and
on the platform, and they helped in turn to train the
muscles of the intellectual athletes in the arena of public
life.
It is impossible to doubt that dramatic writers like
Euripides derived part of their strength from the same
sources. The distich from the "Antiope," which we quoted
just now, may well have been a token of gratitude from
the disciple to his master. But there is another Greek
writer in whose work we find the greatest variety of points
of view, and who possessed an unrivalled art of sounding
the contrasts of interests and arguments hidden in any
situation, and of displaying them before our eyes in all
their immeasurable abundance ; and it would have been
nothing less than miraculous if Thucydides, the writer in
question, had escaped this influence. Nor was it only that
philosopher among the historians whose strength was steeted
and tempered at this well-spring of inspiration. Plato himself
YOU I 3 U
466 GREEK THINKERS.
went down to its waters to drink, nor is it any argument to
the contrary that one of his latest dialogues, the "Sophistes,"
is a thorough-going invective against every kind of
" antilogy." Plato in his old age grew averse from all
dialectic. In the " Laws," the last product of his pen, he
actually turned his back on it, and filled its vacant place,
at the head of his curriculum of education, with mathe-
matics and astronomy. Now, supposing the "Sophistes"
were lost, we might reconstruct this portion of its contents
by a kind of d priori method. For before the anti-dialectic
tendency of Plato's mind attained its last and highest
triumph, it must necessarily have won its victories where
it met with less resistance. Before abandoning his own
dialectic, which had served the cause of his theory of ideas,
he must first have dismissed those variations of it which
he had less immediately at heart. He was waging war
in that instance with Antisthenes, but his feud against the
Antisthenic handling of the dialectic method was aggra-
vated by his excursions into the past to search for the
origins of "antilogic." Here again we meet with the
name of Protagoras in a context which merits our serious
attention.
7. The sophist, according to the passage we are speaking
of, makes all who come in contact with him, in whatever
department of life, argumentative and litigious — in divine
affairs as well as in earthly, in respect to development
and existence as well as to the laws and the totality of
civil institutions. "Further," the speaker continues, "in
respect to all the arts and to each separate art, the seeker
will find abundance of material in these writings for
attacks on every craftsman." "You refer," runs the
answer, "to the Protagorean discussions on the art of
wrestling, and on the other arts ? " " Yes, my friend ; his
writings, and those of many others as well." This, then,
is all that we know about that branch of Protagoras1 work
as an author. We see that he had written treatises or
controversial speeches on the art of wrestling, and proba-
bly on other special arts, apart from his book on the
arts as a whole. The tendency of those writings cannot
TREATISE "ON THE ART" RECONSIDERED. 467
be gathered from the cursory reference to them in the
present place. The hasty manner in which Plato
touched on the theme merely to leave it again at once
leads us to suppose that he regarded it as but a weak
aid to the argument he was sustaining. It is more
important to remark, however, that the treatise "On
the Art," which we have had repeated occasion to mention,
affords a specimen of that kind of literary production
which is here being spoken of. That treatise, as our
readers are aware, is an apology for the art of medicine
written by a pugnacious sophist It contains several
gross inaccuracies and occasional instances of exaggera-
tion, but it is composed with an extraordinary degree
of dialectic acuteness and rhetorical cleverness ; and,
as a defence of medicine, it succeeds in making the
difficulties of the art, and the incompetence of many
of its practitioners, rather than the art itself, responsible
for its mistakes. Thus we are told, for example, that
" Those who blame the physicians for not treating sufferers from
incurable diseases require them to do what is unsuitable as well
as what is suitable, and in so far as they make this demand they
are admired by the nominal physicians, but are laughed at by the
genuine members of the profession. For its masters do not stand
in need of such foolish praise or blame, but they want critics who
will tell them when their work attains its goal and when it falls
short, and whether in such cases its deficiencies are to be
ascribed to the artists [literally, the craftsmen] themselves, or to
the objects of their care."
And at the close of the next paragraph we read —
" It [namely, the treatment of diseases open to view] has not
been discovered for those who want to practise it, but for those of
their number who can practise it ; but those only can whose
nature is not repugnant, and who have not lacked the means of
training."
Here too, then, we perceive that there is no lack of
censorious references to the " craftsmen," and that,
to this extent at least, the one characteristic of those
468 GREEK THINKERS.
controversial orations which is emphasized in the passage
in the " Sophistes " tallies more or less with the surviv-
ing example. But there is another and a more important
point Reverting to the passage first quoted from the
close of a chapter in the treatise, we find that the
ensuing sentence runs as follows : " Now what concerns
the other arts, that shall be taught at another time and in
another discourse." Thus the author held out a promise
of a treatise to be devoted to the remaining arts, in words
which precisely correspond to the language employed by
Plato in the " Sophistes " in mentioning the existence of
such a treatise by Protagoras. This consentaneity,
combined with numerous other circumstances, has induced
us to ascribe the authorship of the pseudo-Hippocratic
little work " On the Art " to no other than to Protagoras,
the sophist of Abdera. Our readers arc already aware
that the chief metaphysical tenet of Protagoras is
repeated in that treatise, which further contains a
reference to " other discourses," perhaps " The ' Throwin^ '
Discourses," with which we have made acquaintance, which
were to illustrate it more accurately. The conjectural
identity which we have thus ventured to establish is
rendered highly probable by the fact that the dialect,
style, and tone of the treatise recall the very epoch!
surroundings, and personality of Protagoras himself,
down to countless notable echoes of his peculiar mode
of speaking, as imitated in Plato. Additional evidence
is afforded by the following consideration : According to
this very passage in the "Sophistes," the separate arts
possessed an abundant literature of their own, and, so
far at least, there would be little to support the identity.
Rut in both these cases, besides the treatment of the
individual arts, there is in the one instance a mention,
and in the other a promise, of a general discussion.
Now, we may well be startled at this coincidence. If it
were an opponent of Protagoras who was competing with
him in this field as well, we should have less ground for
surprise ; but the similarity of the metaphysical principles
rules that hypothesis out of court. Thus, if we refuse to
WAS PROTAGORAS ITS AUTHOR? 469
adopt the theory of identic authorship, we are placed on
the horns of a remarkable dilemma. We must either
suppose that Protagoras, who was far from lacking in
originality, had adventured on this occasion on an out-
worn track, or else that a sophist, who was closely allied
to him in many respects, including questions of principle,
and was thus presumably his disciple, had undertaken to
beat him out of the field. We do not know how Prota-
goras treated the separate arts, but we may fairly con-
jecture that he adapted his treatment to their differences.
Thus the art of medicine required that its suspect reality
should be justified and vindicated, but this was by no
means the case with the manual arts. It had often been
denied that the art of the physician created health, but
it had never been denied that the art of the weaver made
woven fabrics, or the art of the shoemaker shoes. Ac-
cordingly, certain portions of a composite work of that
kind would possess a critical character, and others an
apologetic. But in both instances alike there was ample
opportunity for inveighing against the performances of
the "craftsmen." The release of an art from the
reproaches levelled against it meant more frequently than
not the transference of the charge on its practitioners.
And finally, even if such reproaches were followed by
a refutation, still they had been uttered, and Plato accord-
ingly could use them in the sense mentioned above.
We have lingered on this subject at greater length
because the treatise " On the Art " contributes much, and
much that is of importance, to the picture of the activity
of the sophists in the fifth century, and, if its Protagorean
authorship be conceded, to the picture of the earliest and
the noblest of the sophists. We cannot discuss all the
details here, but we may fairly say that the spirit of
positive science, nay, of modern positive science, speaks
to us from no other literary monument of that age with
equal vigour or clearness. The evidence of the senses,
and the inferences derived from it, are the author's sole
source of medical and other knowledge. Reluctant Nature
is put on the rack and compelled to bear witness — $
470 GREEK THINKERS.
Baconian simile which, though so familiar to modern
times, was otherwise, so far as we are aware, unknown to
antiquity. Where observation, experimentation, and the
conclusions thus derived proved inadequate, there the
impassable barriers of human cognition were erected.
Universal causation was recognized and promulgated as
the unexceptional law of all occurrences, with a rigour
and strictness unparalleled in that age, save only In the
theory of the Atomists. The relation between cause and
effect was the foundation of all foresight, and foresight the
foundation of all deliberate action. Objects possessed
fixed qualities with definite bounds. To produce different
effects, different causes had to be brought in play; what
was serviceable in one case would be hurtful in a very
different or in an opposite case ; what proved beneficial
by rightful use would prove pernicious by wrongful use.
The limitation of human powers was clearly recognized
and emphatically expressed. The author was not disposed
to extravagant demands in respect to man's dominion
over nature, nor yet to the exercise of an arbitrary fancy
in the interpretation of natural phenomena. It is
astonishing, in our opinion, that the treatise which gives
so clear and forcible an expression to the gospel of the
inductive spirit should have hitherto wholly escaped the
attention of historians and philosophers. But our state-
ment is too sweeping. There is one exception at least to
that indifference which surprises us. Pierre Jean Georges
Cabanis, a brilliant representative of the last great era of
enlightenment, in his work " On the Degree of Certainty
in Medicine," rendered to the treatise " On the Art/' which
he supposed to be the work of Hippocrates, the full homage
that is due to it. At every turn of his argument Mirabeau's
physician did not merely display the closeness of his contact
with the doctrines of that treatise, he was never tired of
making long excerpts from it. And at the close of his
own work, when he was resuming his conclusions, he
practically reproduced in a very slightly altered shape
the fundamental thoughts of the treatise with which
he was so well acquainted.
PROTAGORAS* USE OF RHETORIC. 471
8. And here we might take leave of Protagoras, if his
practice of rhetoric did not call for a few remarks. We
have to reckon with the disrepute which clung to him on
that account. The Greeks, according to the testimony of
Aristotle, were justly incensed with Protagoras for boasting
that he could turn the weaker speech or cause into the
stronger one. At this point an explanation is due. Aris-
totle's words were consonant with the standing reproach
that was levelled at philosophers as well as at rhetoricians.
It is mentioned by Socrates in the Platonic "Apology"
among the "ready-made charges which are used against
all philosophers." It occurs again in a similar context
in a speech of Isocrates, who was likewise accused by
his adversaries of perverting justice and corrupting the
young. Now, it imposes a somewhat severe strain on our
credence to imagine that Protagoras, who, in Timon's words,
" always carefully avoided what was unseemly," would have
boasted of precisely that talent which not many years later
was reckoned as so shameful a reproach. Two alternatives
are possible with regard to the testimony of Aristotle. He
may have been able to quote text and verse for his state-
ment, or he may have been misled by a fallacious tradition,
but in either case we are bound to discriminate between
the formula and its contents. The formula was un-
popular and offensive because it seemed to imply that
the rhetorician, in supporting the weaker cause, was sup-
porting the worse cause too — in other words, that he was
supporting injustice. But the question on its merits was
entirely independent of morality and justice. The common
aim of the rhetoricians of antiquity was to turn the weaker
cause into the stronger, that is to say, to help arguments
weaker in themselves to gain the victory over the stronger.
This fact may be stated without exception. It applies to
Aristotle, whose text-book of rhetoric lies before us, as well
as to any of the orators. Nor was there any difference of
opinion among the ancients as to the liability of this dialectic
talent to abuse, nor of the evil to which it might be turned
in the hands of malicious adepts. On these and on other
grounds Plato repudiated rhetoric in the " Gorgias." It is
472 GREEK THINKERS.
to be noted, however, that he built it up again on new
foundations in the " Phaedrus," and it is further to be noted
that Aristotle himself protested against its rejection with
the greatest possible emphasis. He argued as incisively
as he could that the art of eloquence was governed by the
same laws as other useful things. Nearly all of them were
liable to abuse and
" the most useful of them to the worst abuse. This was the case
with bodily strength, health, riches, and the art of generalship, all
of which, justly employed, were capable of the utmost service,
but, unjustly employed, of the utmost disservice."
Accordingly, it was not the capacity which deserved to be
censured, but the disposition to pervert it to evil uses. In
general Aristotle gives us to understand that it was just
as disgraceful, if not actually more so, for a man to be
unable to defend himself with his tongue as with his fists.
In this context we meet the comparison between the
art of rhetoric and a weapon, which was first introduced
by Plato in the "Gorgias" itself, and was afterwards
repeated, occasionally merely in order to refute it, by the
representatives of every other school, Stoics, Epicureans,
Sceptics, and so forth. Eloquence was a weapon which
was to serve just and not unjust ends ; it was not to be
condemned simply for the sake of the facilities it offered to
abuse. "The athlete," according to one of these authors,
"who maltreats his father, does not act thus by reason of
his athletic skill, but by reason of his moral perversity."
When we reach the " Rhetoric " of Aristotle, we find that
he too was at pains to extract the strongest possible
effects from the existing store of evidence. He does not
withhold his hints on the arts of "magnifying" and " mini-
mizing," of inflating an insignificant object, that is to say,
and of detracting from the significance of an important
one. He follows the example of Gorgias in teaching that
the perfect rhetorician must keep two ends in view: he
must be ready to weaken the heavy artillery of his opponent
by a skirmish of wit, and he must receive his opponent's
shafts on the impenetrable shield of his own serious
HIS PERSONAL INTEGRITY. 473
«
arguments. Aristotle was opposed in principle to no trick
of barrister's eloquence. It was doubtless the necessities
of ancient life* which induced him to go considerably
further in this direction than modern practice would
approve. And even to-day we account it in the better
interests of justice that the accusation and defence be con-
ducted with every resource of the pleader's art and power.
We are anxious to see the most trivial argument developed
to its fullest extent, even at the risk of disturbing the
judgment of the court and of misleading its verdict in
cases where a too clever advocate is confronted with an
inferior opponent. Aristotle at least was always guided
by the presumption that no one of these artifices would be
employed with disloyal intention ; nor have we any ground
to doubt that the same reservation held equally good in
the instance of Protagoras. His personal integrity is
vouched for by his attitude in the matter of his pupils' fees,
which is mentioned by Plato and eulogized by Aristotle,
no less than by the whole of the Platonic description of
his personality. Whenever Protagoras, in the dialogue of
that name, has to choose between a lower or a, higher
standard of ethics, Plato invariably represents him as pre-
ferring the higher point of view ; and in one instance at
least his choice is accompanied by the express justification
that he took it "having regard not only to" his "present
answer, but also to the rest of" his "life." Finally, to
show that the ethical treatises of Protagoras, among which
we have still to mention those " On the Virtues " and " On
Ambition," displayed at least as high a standard of morality
as was characteristic of his age, we may quote, not merely
the statements of Plato, but also the significant silence of
his opponents in other fields.
Protagoras never forgot his principle of education, that
practical exercise was fully as valuable as theoretical
preparation. Accordingly he devised many methods to
develop the faculties of his pupils and to strengthen their
powers. As a teacher of rhetoric, he invented themes on
which his pupils were to argue the pros and cons, Such
* Cp. Bk, III. Ch, IV. § i.
474 GREEK THINKERS.
themes were questions of a general kind, isolated or
insulated, as it were, from the complications of reality, and
thus affording a suitable preliminary to the treatment of
the more difficult and more involved problems which life
itself would propose. We are reminded of the advice
offered by Aristotle to would-be and to actual poets, who
were to reduce the complex contents of an epic or dramatic
poem to its briefest possible expression before attempting
to clothe it with individualizing circumstances. Another
branch of this mental training was the production of what
the ancients called commonplaces. Instead of discovering
and arranging the arguments for or against a theme, the
task in this instance was to divert the stream of eloquence
into a particular channel, where nothing would Interrupt its
free current The subjects of such exercises were speeches
of praise or blame which admitted no countervailing cir-
cumstances, virtues and vices, or their human prototypes,
states of existence, modes of conduct, and so forth. The
aim of the themes was to train the pupils' keenness and
dexterity in argument ; that of the commonplaces was to
develop their force, clearness, and fertility of expression,
and at the same time to equip them with a stock of
thoughts and phrases to be kept in constant readiness for
use. Thus, in Qulntilian's language, the members were
given, out of which the future orator was to create his
statue.
These aids in rhetorical training have descended directly
to our own times in the form of the "English Essay,"
which is found in the curriculum of many public schools.
Complaints have not unreasonably been made against the
dead weight of an unsound formalism, and the habit thus
developed of glibly reproducing other people's thoughts and
sentiments at second hand. But the blame, so far as it is
deserved, recoils on ourselves. It is our own fault entirely
if we fail to get rid of an outworn tradition, and no blame
attaches to the eminent men who more than two thousand
years ago invented for the Greeks those forms of education
which were appropriate to the circumstances of their times.
We need not trouble to apologize for Protagoras. The
CONTRIBUTIONS OF FORENSIC ELOQUENCE. 475
advance that is marked by 'his name in the forensic branch
of eloquence corresponds in a second great department of
the art to the work of his contemporary and brother orator
to whose brilliant achievements we have now to turn our
attention.
476 GREEK THINKERS.
CHAPTER VII.
GORGIAS OF LEONTINI.
i. ON a late summer morning in the year 427, the hill of
the Piiyx, which descends in rocky terraces to the west of
the Athenian Acropolis, was the scene of unwonted com-
motion. A deputation from Sicilian cities had arrived
there to petition for protection and assistance against the
aggression of Syracuse. After the envoys had introduced
their mission to the Council of the Five Hundred, they
were brought from the council chamber to the popular
assembly on the Pnyx in order to plead their cause.
Gorgias, son of Charmadas, was their chief spokesman on
that occasion. He was the ambassador of Leontini his
native city, then a flourishing community, but now the
degenerate hamlet of Lentini, situated on the railway line
which joins Catania and Syracuse. The Athenians of that
date were no longer wholly unacquainted with the pro-
fessional art of eloquence. Only a few months earlier the
famous rhetorician Thrasymachus of Chalcedon had been
ridiculed by Aristophanes in his " Epulones." His
vehement and high-handed personality was reserved for
the scathing satire of Plato, who was now lying in his
cradle ; but neither he nor Pericles the Olympian, who had
died but two years before, with his powerful gift of
naturalism, had ever tempted the jaded sense of the
Athenians with so exquisite a feast of ear and mind as
was now provided by the Ionian from Sicily, whose voice
was heard by them for the first time as the envoy of his
fellow-townsmen on the Pnyx. On one other occasion at
GORGIAS A FOUNDER OF GREEK PROSE. 477
least Gorgias returned to Athens. There, as elsewhere in
Greece, at the great festivals of Delphi and Olympia
especially, he achieved triumphant successes. Princes,
such as Jason the ruler of Pherse in Thessalia, vied with
the populace in rendering him honour, and when he closed
his career, upwards of a hundred years old, his natural
force was not abated. "Already is sleep beginning to
transfer his charge of me to his brother " — with this jest on
his lips, he folded his hands to the sleep that knows no
earthly waking. His fame was proclaimed to posterity by
two statues, a golden one that he himself dedicated to
the Delphic god, and another erected at Olympia to the
childless old man by his grand-nephew Eumolpus, "as
well in love as in gratitude for the instruction received
from him." The inscription on the base of the Olympic
statue has only recently been discovered, and there we
read besides that "none of the mortals invented a finer art
to steel the souls of men for works of virtue."
Gorgias was one of the founders of the art of Greek
prose. Ancient writers on style distinguish between two
great types of eloquence and a third intermediary type.
The first, which has chiefly found its way into pane-
gyric orations, was brilliant, exalted, stately, flowery,
and full of colour ; it soothed the soul by its harmonious
euphonies, or it excited the quivering senses by the bold-
ness and grandeur of its imagery. The second, which
became the model for forensic oratory, was sharp, cool,
clear, and sober ; it moved with hasty steps which quickened
at times into an impetuous gait, and its effects were pro-
duced by reason rather than imagination, on the judgment
rather than on the fancy. The development of the last-
named type owed its chief impetus to Protagoras, whereas
the name of Gorgias is associated mainly with the first
A sparkling wit, a fertile and powerful imagination, were
among the gifts which Nature had laid in the cradle of
Gorgias, and some brilliant phrases which we can still
listen to at his lips justify our admiration of his talents.
Take, for instance, his utterance on stage-illusion, in which
"the deceived is wiser than the not-deceived;" or take
478 GREEK THINKERS.
his indictment of those who turn their back on philosophy
to cultivate special sciences, and whom he compared with
the "suitors of Penelope, dallying with her maidens."
Some of his similes have been censured by the purists
of antiquity on account of their extravagant character ;
thus, not unlike Shakespeare in "Macbeth," he spoke of
- vultures as " living tombs," and of Xerxes as " the Persian
Zeus." Nor can we withstand the influence of the changes
of time and taste in reviewing a somewhat longer fragment
in which the artificiality of his style becomes palpable. We
may be permitted to quote in this place a portion of the
most comprehensive extant remains of his "Funeral Ora-
tion" delivered in honour of the Athenian victims in war:
" For what was absent in these men," he asked, " which should
be present in men, and what was present of things which should
be absent ? Would that I could say what I wish and wish what
I should, evading divine displeasure and eluding human jealousy.
For the virtue of these men was a divine possession; their
mortality was human. Frequently they preferred the clemency of
equity to the harshness of law ; frequently, too, the righteousness
of reason to the rigidity of codes. For this they held to be the
most godlike and most universal code : in the right place to do
aright and to speak aright, to keep silence aright, and to bear
aright."
We must remember that in epochs of great reforms in
style the artificial commonly precedes the artistic. The
prose of Gorgias and the faults for which it has been
blamed in ancient and modern times find parallels of an
extraordinary closeness in the productions of the Renais-
sance. How admirably, for instance, the following descrip-
tion applies to the oratory of Gorgias with its —
"Predilection for an equal number of words in collateral or
antithetical sentences, well balanced often to the number of
syllables, the corresponding words being pointed out by allitera-
tion, consonance or rhyme, [combined with] an exaggerated
hyperbolical style or quaint metaphorical diction."
Yet we have taken it from a criticism of the alto estilo
borrowed by John Lyly in England from Guevara the
GORGIAS AND "EUPHUISM? 479
Spaniard, whose " Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius "
appeared in 1529. Lyly's "Euphues" was published just
less than fifty years later, and the Euphuistic style, to
which it gave a name, did not escape the occasional
ridicule of Shakespeare. The turns of expression in which
it was parodied by the great Elizabethan playwright recall
precisely the excrescences of the style of Gorgias. We
may quote, for example, FalstafTs speech to the Prince,
" For, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink but in
tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only,
but in woes also." We may well speak of excrescences in
this connection, for the history of every new method of
style — and the phenomenon is not confined to the arts of
speech — may be traced through three stages. It begins
with its vigorous employment by those who invented it or
who reintroduced it ; but in that stage the vigour is not
excessive, and, moreover, it is mitigated by the fertility of
the thoughts to be expressed. Next comes its exaggerated
abuse on the part of imitators, in whose clumsier hands
the manner becomes a mannerism. Finally, the circle of
available methods of art is widened to receive the new
aid, which is now employed in due proportion and in
appropriate circumstances. In modern times, according
to the judgment of experts, the names of Guevara and
Lyly stand for the first two of these stages ; in antiquity
they were represented by Gorgias and by the author or
authors of the two declamations by pseudo-Gorgias ("The
Praise of Helen " and " Palamedes "), and, finally, partly by
Isocrates. But so far as Shakespeare is concerned, Euphuism
was not merely a butt for his satire. One feature which is
common to Guevara and Gorgias is common likewise to
Shakespeare and Calderon, and has become flesh of their
flesh* We refer to the " tennis with concetti" and to that
teeming wealth of gorgeous images which no longer serve
the purpose of interpreting or vivifying the thought, which
are no longer means to an end, but to a certain extent
an end in themselves. The characteristic features of the
language of Gorgias and of its counterpart in the Renais-
sance may be referred to two fundamental causes. The
480 GREEK THINKERS.
first is the natural desire at the beginning of a great literary
epoch to strike out new modes of expression, the novelty
of which is at first taken as the measure of their value.
The second is the streaming and unbridled vitality of an
age in which the young blood leaps with a wayward
pulse, and the mind's activity is in excess of the matter at
its disposal. To-day, too, we occasionally meet men whose
wit is enlarged beyond the capacity of their control, and
who cannot express even the commonest ideas except by
uncommon phrases. Thought disdains, so to speak, the
ready-made garb of the vernacular ; on every occasion it
fashions, as it were, new raiment of its own.
Five only of the speeches of Gorgias are known to us,
through the usual sources of brief information or frag-
mentary remnants. There arc the Olympic and the
Pythian speeches, there arc eulogies of Achilles and the
Eleans, and there is the funeral oration which we have
mentioned above. The first and the last in this order
were distinguished by their Pan-Hellenic tendency. We
have once before had occasion to remark * that the itinerant
teachers, who found themselves at home in every corner
of Greece, equalled or surpassed the poets in Greek
universal patriotism, and naturally came to carry the
idea of national unity through the sundered cities of Hellas.
We may quote at this point two passages from Gorgias
which confirm our remarks. In the Olympian oration the
sophist urged the Greeks who were engaged in an intestine
struggle "to make, not their own cities, but the land of
the barbarians the prey of their spear." And in the
Athenian funeral oration he commemorated the great
deeds wrought in common in the struggle against the
Persians, and he delivered himself of the final warning
that "victories won over barbarians call for paeans of
triumph ; victories wrung from the Greeks call for dirges
of lament."
2. We pass from Gorgias the reformer of Greek style,
from Gorgias the rhetorician and patriot, to his third phase,
which concerns us most particularly, as a Greek thinker,
* Cp. Bk.IIL Ch. VI. §r.
HIS NATURAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 481
He was occupied with natural philosophy, with ethics, and
last, but not least, with dialectics. Unfortunately, time has
robbed us of all accurate information of his work in the first
two of these departments. We only know that as a natural
philosopher he followed in the footsteps of Empedocles his
master in his study of the problems of optics, and undertook
from that point of view to explain the use of burning-
reflectors. He never made an appearance as a teacher of
virtue, and on this account, if it were possible to draw a
strict distinction between rhetoricians and sophists, the name
of Gorgias would fall in the first category only. Yet, in
the extended meaning of the term " sophist," Gorgias, who
was half a rhetorician and half a philosopher, may properly
claim the title. He never taught virtue, but he was
occupied with it from its literary aspect. As an author
he did not aim at simplifying the conception of virtue,
nor at reducing its various ramifications to a common
root ; he was rather at pains to display and discuss in
their native multiformity the several special virtues, dis-
tinguishing, among other points, their variation according
to the difference of sex. As a dialectician he pushed the
self-destruction of the Eleatic doctrine of being, which
we met with in Zeno, to still further conclusions, which
brought him at last to an absolute negation of the con-
ception of Ens. Here, too, we have to deplore the loss
of his book " On Nature or Not-Being/' the first part of
which would doubtless have informed us of the arguments
on which his theory was based, while the second part was
probably devoted to physics. As it is, our chief authority
is a little work which used to be ascribed to Aristotle, but
which must really be regarded as a late product of his
school. This treatise further discusses the doctrines of
Xenophanes and Mclissus in a manner, as is universally
acknowledged, which is not wholly trustworthy. On the
other hand, its evidence for the teachings of Gorgias is
commonly accepted as fully credible, but it should not be
forgotten that our greater confidence in that instance corre-
sponds to a total absence of original fragments, and to a
well-nigh equal lack of verificatory or complementary reports.
VOL. I. 2 I
482 GREEK THINKERS.
Gorgias undertook to prove a threefold case: First,
that a Being does not exist ; secondly, that if it existed
it would not be cognizable ; and, thirdly, that if It were
cognizable, the cognition would not be communicable.
Two proofs are advanced for the first of these three
theses. The following is given as "the first proof, and
that peculiar to Gorgias." An insignificant and seemingly
innocent little sentence is set up in the words, "Not-
Being is Not-Being." From this small beginning the
most far-reaching conclusions were derived. It was argued
that even if Not-Being is nothing but Not-Being, still it
is something ; it is ; existence can be predicated of it. Thus
the distinction between Being and Not-Being was re-
moved, and Being lost its superiority over Not-Being.
Further, if, as was just shown, Not-Being is or exists ; it
followed that Being, as its opposite, is, or exists, not.
We are accordingly placed in this dilemma: either the
difference between Being and Not-Being must be taken
as annulled, according to the first part of the argument,
in which case nothing exists ; for Not-Being docs not
exist, and, therefore, Being, its equivalent, cannot exist Or
the distinction is not to be regarded as annulled, in which
case, according to the second part of the argument, Being
once more does not exist, precisely on account of its
opposition to the Not-Being of which existence has been
predicated.
The critic follows hot-foot on the trail of the exponent
of this doctrine. It is almost superfluous to direct atten-
tion to the fact that " Being " and " Not-Being " are here
used indiscriminately as equivalent to "to be" and "not
to be," a confusion which may be due either to Gorgias
himself or to our second-hand authority. Nor need we
trouble to point out that Not-Being ceases to be Not-
Being as soon as Being is predicated of it. But the
author of this series of arguments operates in a really
remarkable manner. He takes alternately the negative
and the pseudo-affirmative sides of the conception and
plays them off against one another. And now, when we
come to the little clause of identity itself from which the
(i) A BEING DOES NOT EXIST.
argument started, we cannot but regard it as inadmissible
— nay, if we look at it more closely, as devoid of sense.
The sentence, " white is white," conveys in our opinion no
self-evident proposition nor even an intelligible meaning.
The idea of the subject is simply repeated as the idea of
the predicate, whereas it is the function of a judgment or
proposition to combine the two conceptions or terms of
subject and predicate with one another, and thereby to
impart information about connections actually existing in
nature. But this is not the place to discuss these matters at
length, and we may the more readily transfer our attention
to a weightier and less contentious topic. The identic
clause with which we are dealing is made to yield conclusions
by the ambiguous meaning inherent in the word " is." In
the sentence "Not-Being is Not-Being," the verb is
simply a copula, though it is afterwards interpreted as if
it signified existence — outward, objective existence. By
a similar method of reasoning, the sentence, "a centaur is
an image of the fancy," might be used to prove, not
merely its legitimate conclusion, that the conception of a
centaur must pre-exist in our mind before we can discuss
it, but also that the centaur possesses external and objective
existence. Add to this that in the second part of the
argument there is an illicit logical conversion. For even
if it were proper to admit that " Not-Being is," no ground
would therefore be afforded for the inference that " Being
is not" Otherwise it would be permissible to turn the
proposition, "Not-white exists," into the converse propo-
sition, "White exists not." But serious though these
errors may be, they are by no means peculiar to Gorgias.
The abuse of identic propositions, the abuse of the
copula, and illicit logical conversions, will all frequently
recur in our narrative — most frequently in Plato himself,
where they were not confined to the display of dialectic
fireworks which is known as the " Parmenides."
We stand on different ground when we reach the second
argument that was advanced for the first thesis of Gorgias.
The sophist started from the contradictory assertions pro-
mulgated by his predecessors, and balanced them against
484 GREEK THINKERS.
each other. Being must either be one or many, it must
either have been generated or not. Now, each of these
assumptions had been severally and equally refuted on suffi-
cient— or sufficiently plausible — grounds partly by Zeno,
partly by Melissus, and partly, we must add, by Zeno and
Melissus combined. But, if the Being is neither one nor
many, neither generated nor ungenerated, it cannot exist at
all. When all its conceivable predicates had dropped away
from it one by one, its very reality disappeared. At a later
stage of our history we shall come to recognize and discuss
this logical expedient as the principle of the excluded middle.
It is the less necessary to dwell on it here because it is at
least reasonable to doubt whether Gorgias ascribed more
than a conditional value to this second argument of his.
Perhaps he meant by it no more than this : The contra-
dictory arguments of the philosophers, and especially the
doubts thrown by Melissus and Zeno on the plurality, the
unity, and other attributes of Being, would, if granted full
power, lead inevitably to the conclusion not drawn by
either of those thinkers that that alleged Being does
not exist at all. Our chief authority at least seems to
hint at this interpretation by speaking of the first proof
as "his own," but of the second as "the sum of what other
people have said."
We pass to the second thesis of Gorgias, the incogniza-
bility of Being even in the case where its existence must be
admitted. We may be allowed to render the proof in a
somewhat looser form. If Being is to be known, there
must somewhere be a warrant of the correctness of the
alleged knowledge, but when we come to look for that
warrant, we find ourselves disappointed. It is not to be
discovered in sense-perception, the infallibility of which
has been so vehemently disputed, nor yet in our thought
or imagination, for otherwise we should not be able to
imagine what is known to be false— a chariot-race on the
sea, for example. And if the concordance of many wit-
nesses affords no valid proof of the correctness of our
sense-perceptions, their evidence must also be rejected in
the sphere of thought and imagination. It might be
(2) IS INCOGNIZABLE, IF EXISTENT. 485
valid if we lost our faculty of imagining the unreal, but
the instance that has just been given completely demon-
strates the contrary.
At this point we have two remarks to make, the first
of a more general, the second of a more special character.
The special remark is due to the philosophic tendencies of
that age, and of Parmenides in especial. Our readers will
recollect his words, " the Not-Being is unspeakable and
unthinkable ; " * and again, " thinking and being are the
same."t Expressions of this kind might really have
been thought to imply the proposition that the untrue
was also unimaginable. Further, if we recollect that the
express champion of the fallibility of the senses was no
other than Melissus, we may reasonably conjecture that
Gorgias aimed this shaft also at the Eleatics. His argu-
ment would thus have amounted in intention to the
following statement : Melissus taught the unreality of
sensuous objects, and directed our desire for knowledge
to the " Being " latent behind them. The next thing is to
discover a foundation for this knowledge of ours. It can
but rest on thought or imagination, according to the
verdict of Parmenides that this makes for reality alone.
But then we are confronted with the example given of our
power to imagine the unreal as well. We come now to
the more general remark to which we adverted above.
It is at once true and untrue that our imagination
cannot make for mere phantoms of the brain. It
is true in so far as it refers to the elements of our
ideas, it is untrue as it applies to the combinations
of those elements. A chariot-race on the open sea
is an arbitrary combination of ideas foreign to the
nature of things ; it belongs to the same category as a
centaur or a winged lion. But the several ingredients out
of which the complex is composed must previously have
entered our consciousness through the channel of experience.
Accordingly, they may claim at least the possession of
empiric truth ; and, whether or not we chose to identify
* ttk.II.Ch. II. §2/;*.
t Bk. II. Ch. II.
486 GREEK THINKERS.
it with absolute truth, the distinction that has just been
drawn between the elements and the combinations of the
ideas is at least a distinction of deep import which is
wholly neglected in the ratiocination of Gorgias. Once
more we must warn our readers that the mistake was not
confined to Gorgias, but must be laid to the common
charge of his epoch. The thinkers of that age and the
next found a serious difficulty in the question, Is it possible,
and how can it be possible, to imagine what is false ? Plato
in the " Thesetetus," as we shall see, grappled vigorously with
this question, and came off not altogether without success.
The third thesis ran as follows. The knowledge of the
Being, even if it existed and were cognizable, would not be
communicable. The proof of this was to the effect that,
the means of communication being language, it was im-
possible to convey through words anything else but words.
Language and other symbols, not being of the same
nature as the thing they symbolize, can only communicate
symbols. How, for instance, can the sense of colour be
communicated? "The ear is as incapable of perceiving
colours as the sight of knowing sounds." And if the
person wishing to communicate a colour were to show
another person the object which aroused the colour-im-
pression in himself, he would still have no solid ground for
assuming that the second impression would precisely resemble
his own. Far less, then — thus we may reconstruct the lost
conclusion of the argument — can language, a part of our
nature, be suited to communicate to others information
about external Being foreign to our subjective selves, even
if we had knowledge of it. In the proof of this thesis it
is to be noted that a really valuable thought is expressed
and demonstrated in a manner that admits no contradic-
tion. It is the thought that we can never be certain of
the complete identity of our elementary sensations with
those of other people. More than one fallacy current in
those times was embodied in the argument. Twice at
least the confusion was preserved between the Identity of
species and the identity of number. Thus we read that
"in two subjects the same idea cannot exist, for then the
PURPOSE OF THE TRIPLE THESIS. 487
one would likewise be two ; " and again, " even granted
this, still the one could always appear different from both,
since they are not completely similar ; for if they were
completely similar they would be not two, but one." But
we quote these passages without pretending that they
affect the value of the thought itself.
3. The logical value of this sequence of theses is not so
difficult to determine as the problem of its purpose. No
one doubts that it was modelled on the polemical pamphlet
of Zeno, and it is at least legitimate to ask if it was not
dominated by a parallel leading motive. Zeno, as our
readers are aware, was retaliating the attacks suffered
by Parmenides his master,* and it is quite conceivable that
Gorgias was animated by some similar motive. Gorgias
was a disciple of Empedocles, and there is certainly a
wide gulf between the comparatively naive belief in
the evidence of the senses, to which Empedocles sub-
scribed, and its repudiation at the hands of the Eleatics.
The Empedoclean theory of nature was bound to wither
at the rise of the new luminaries in the intellectual firma-
ment. It could not but provoke the ridicule and contempt
of a Zeno and a Melissus. Indeed, Zeno composed a
"critical discussion" of the doctrines of Empedocles, which
was extant in antiquity. Now the shafts of Gorgias, as we
have seen, were preferentially, if not exclusively, aimed at
the Eleatics. Above all, he delighted in setting the two
younger representatives of the doctrine of Ens to fight it
out with one another. This was his attitude in a portion
of the second argument appertaining to the first of his
theses, to which we must now revert. Taking it in closer
consideration, we see that Melissus had deduced the spatial
infinity of the world from the old physical doctrine of its
temporal infinity, or its eternity. Now, Gorgias exerted
himself to prove to a hair's breadth that such an infinite
could not exist. He looked in vain for the place of its
existence. If it existed in itself, there would be two
infinites, the one containing and the other contained ; if
it existed in another, it would not be infinite, and both
* Cp.Bk. II.Ch.III. §2,
488 GREEK THINKERS.
objections were fatal to the proposition. Moreover, our
authority is quite clear on the point that Gorgias was here
supporting himself on Zeno's reasoning about space. It
was a source of keen delight to him to confute one of the
younger Eleatics by the other, and it is legitimate to con-
jecture that his delight was at least not wholly impersonal.
When we reach the question whether the so-called
nihilism of Gorgias was in truth intended or suited to
overthrow the foundations of all knowledge, we can make
a more definite reply. Here too no one but George Grote
has had the courage to deny this almost universal opinion.
Grote believed that Gorgias wanted to demolish, not the phe-
nomenal world, but the " ultra-phenomenal or Noumenon."
But this belief has provoked the remark that " our reports do
not contain the faintest hint of any such limitation." The
remark is valid as far as it goes, but where the facts them-
selves speak with unequivocal certainty it becomes un-
necessary to listen for outspoken or whispered statements.
Grote expressed himself in a way which was rather too
modern to be quite pertinent. Nevertheless, the relation
between the sensible world and the "Being" of Parme-
nides and Melissus is completely analogous to that which
obtains between the phenomenon and the Noumenon or
"thing in itself" of Kant In making this admission,
however, we must be careful to note that the " Being " had
not yet lost every trace of its empiric origin, that it was
still chiefly conceived as extended in space. It is true
that the surviving fragments of Gorgias and of his authori-
ties will be searched in vain for a single expression bringing
this contrast into sharp relief. But we may fairly ask if
any one seriously believes that Gorgias, in renouncing the
" Being," was prepared thereby to renounce all acquaintance
with the nature of things ; that he was content to deny
every regularity in the processes of nature ; that he was
opposed to his brother philosophers in neither expecting
nor assuming the rise of the morrow's sun, the burgeoning
of the spring next year, the repetition of similar processes
in similar circumstances — in a word, stability of qualities
itself. We need not accept this belief. We need not
MOTIVE OF THE GORGIAN POLEMIC. 489
load the subtle genius of Gorgias with the crudest and
grossest inconsistency. But we must assume that this line
of demarcation was present to his mind, whether or not he
had nailed it down to a fixed terminology. And it will
perhaps not be inadmissible to look for the missing word
in the sole place where Gorgias speaks to us out of his own
mouth, in the title, that is to say, of his work " on Nature
or the Not-Being." Quite recently that title has been dis-
missed as a "grotesque farce," and has been quoted as
evidence that Gorgias set up his theses merely by way of
a jest. We beg to differ from that view. We venture to
quote the example of Xeniades, a Corinthian philosopher
and contemporary of Democritus, who maintained that
everything proceeded "from the Not-Being," and sank
back "to the Not-Being again." And we would add that
Plato's doctrine of matter will introduce us to a form of the
conception of Not-Being which was intended to be taken
quite seriously.
It is when we reach the second of the theses, however,
that, if all the indications do not mislead us, we meet the
real and fundamental motive of the polemics of Gorgias.
There we learn that the point of his quarrel with the
Eleatic school was one with which the impartial reader of
to-day must likewise gravely quarrel. With all due
respect to the doctrines of Parmenides and Melissus, we
feel bound to give expression to one important protest.
We are tempted to ask both those thinkers how they
could have dismissed to the limbo of delusion so consider-
able a part of all human knowledge with such confident
certainty, and yet, with equal confidence, have treated the
rest of it as truth unassailable. Where, we ask, was their
warrant for assuming that a part of their faculties caused
them utterly to err, while another part led them to
unerring insight ? And where, we wonder, did they dis-
cover the bridge, which should translate them from the
world of subjective appearance, in which they themselves
were completely submerged, to the region of pure objective
Being ? The doctrine of Parmenides was plainly open to
this reproach — the more so, indeed, because he based the
49° GREEK THINKERS.
psychical processes wholly and solely on the physical.
This fact is expressed in his "Words of Opinion"*
alone, but it is nowhere contradicted in his "Words of
Truth." He and his adherents could not avail themselves
of the saving device by which the body was held to be
encompassed by error, while our immortal soul brought us
tidings from the world of pure truth. For by no single
word are we given to believe — and all inner probability
is against it — that Parmenides ascribed to "psyche" any
share in the life of the waking intellect, and thus in the
process of knowledge, though he agreed with t]^e Pytha-
goreans and Orphics in letting it survive the body and
experience various destinies.t We shall hardly be wrong,
then, in marking as the strongest motive in the polemic of
Gorgias against the Eleatics and the theory of Being which
they upheld, his amazement at the confident dogmatism
which they themselves had been at pains to deprive of its
basis.
4, At this point we may revert to the allied features of
the age. In surveying the change effected by Hippocrates
and his disciples in the domain of medicine, we saw that its
chief monument was to be found in the growth of modesty,
and in the reaction from the self-satisfied dogmatism of
older schools. This trait was naturally connected with a
tendency to Relativism, the first traces of which we
perceived as early as HeraclZtus. The far-sighted author
of the treatise "On Old Medicine" described as the
modest but hardly attainable goal of research, not what
man is in himself, but what he is in relation to what he
eats and drinks, and to the rest of the business of his life.t
He contrasted the comparatively meagre certainties due to
experiment and observation with the pretentious fictions
which he expelled from the domain of his art ; and now,
if we revert to the sole surviving literary monument of
the movement known as sophistry — the work "On the
Art "—we meet the same contraction of formerly high-
flown ambitions, and the same spirit of Relativism. And
* Bk. II. Ch. II. § s>/. t Bk. II. Ch. V. § 7.
I Bk. III. Ch. I. § $ft*.
ADVANCES OF EXACT THOUGHT. 49!
whether or not we may call Protagoras its author, we have
still seen reason to recognize there the chief metaphysical
tenet of that sophist in a form that is likewise an
obvious reflection of the Relativistic spirit. Nor need we
dwell on the fact that the thinker who pushed " man " so
decisively into the foreground of the problem of cognition,
must have been more or less conscious of the limitation of
all knowledge by the bounds of human faculties.
Modesty and Relativism — the teachings of Socrates,
the next great chapter of our inquiry, will be true to these
kindred points. And we shall there be confronted with a
third token of the increased stringency of the claims of
science in the endeavour sharply to define conceptions.
An early milestone on this road was marked by the
attempt of Prodicus, surviving unfortunately but in the
barest outline, exactly to distinguish synonymous words.
Further, the speeches put by Plato in the mouth of Pro-
tagoras show a respect for the precise value of words ; nor
does Plato's satirical aim prevent us from recognizing that
advance. Thus, when the Platonic Protagoras remarks of
the culinary use of oil, that it is intended merely " to correct
the discomfort which is a concomitant of the sensations
conveyed to us through the nose at eating meats and sauces,"
the humour lies in the disproportion between the subtlety
of the expression and the trivial, not to say the repulsive,
character of the subject. But this artifice of the incom-
parable caricaturist cannot destroy our perception of the
great gain to philosophy in the strict and novel distinction
drawn between the sensible impression and its object on
the one part, and the sensation itself and its concomitant
pleasure or pain on the other. The earliest experiment in
definition proper occurs in the treatise "On the Art,"
where we read —
" and first of all I shall lay down what I regard as the essence
[or end] of the art of healing, namely, the complete removal of
the suffering from the patients, and the mitigation of its severity,
and" — he adds with intentional paradox — " the not-daring-at-all to
meddle with cases where the patients are already overcome by
disease,"
492 GREEK THINKERS.
Democritus, again, began a definition 'which he speedily
let fall, in the little sentence " Man is — what we all know,"
and Aristotle was acquainted with his definitions of the
conceptions of hot and cold, though they have not been
preserved. It was natural enough that mathematics should
have been the home of these experiments. There was
first a definition of number commonly ascribed to Thales,
and apart from that we are acquainted with the polemic
of Protagoras against the definition of tangential lines, as
well as with the definitions with which Autolycus opened
his two elementary treatises, "On the Moving Sphere"
and ' " On the Rise and Setting of the Stars." For
though these writings belong to the close of the fourth
century, yet they plainly testify to a long series of
precursors. It was obviously not due to chance that the
Pythagoreans, the cultivators of mathematics, had, as Aris-
totle tells us, already begun to define a few ethical ideas.
Finally, we are acquainted with two definitions of Gorgias.
One, with which we need not concern ourselves at present,
dealt with the conception of rhetoric, and the other with
that of colour. The definition of colour was stated in a
solemn form of speech which excited the ridicule of Plato
when he mentioned it for the first time. Its contents,
however, were incorporated in a work of Plato's maturity,
and the respect which he paid throughout to the person of
Gorgias was extended, in a work of his old age, to the
ethical doctrines of that sophist. The definition in question
was based 011 the Empedoclean doctrine of " pores " and
"effluvia," according to which colours could only be
perceived when the two were in conformity, and it ran as
follows: "Colour is an effluvium which proceeds from a
form extended in space, which corresponds to sight, and
which is liable to perception." According to the " Meno "
of Plato, the youth of that name had heard this definition at
the lips of Gorgias himself during his residence in Thessaly
in the last years of his life.
An important consequence follows on this fact. Plato,
who never committed mere arbitrary anachronisms, may
be quoted to show that Gorgias, even in his ripe old
EVIDENCE OF PUPILS OF GORGIAS. 493
age, and a considerable time after the publication of his
dialectic theses, was engaged in the discussion of physical
problems. This view is supported by the observation that
most of the pupils of Gorgias, though their interest gravi-
tated to rhetoric and politics, were still by no means without
traces of the discipline of the natural sciences. Our readers
are already acquainted with the name of Alcidamas * as
the champion of the law of nature, and we still possess
from his pen an admirable oration praising the art of ready
improvisation, and declaring its productions to be far
more valuable than elaborate written discourses. But
what is to be noted in this connection is that he was like-
wise the author of a work on physics composed perhaps
in the form of a dialogue. Another and less Important
pupil of Gorgias was Polus the rhetorician, whom Plato
also mentions as a student of nature. And, finally,
though Isocrates renounced physics no less than dialectic,
yet he immortalized his teacher Gorgias, as, above
all, his teacher in the natural sciences. On the richly
carved monument which marked the tomb of Isocrates,
Gorgias was represented directing his attention to a
globe. And, as a master does not readily survive in
the memory of his disciples as the representative of
an earlier phase of activity since abandoned by himself,
this circumstance likewise refutes the assumption that
the paradoxes of Gorgias formed a kind of break in his
career, sundering it into two completely dissimilar halves.
We are quite unable to say whether he thereafter clothed
his physical doctrines, after the manner of Parmenides,
with a cloak of reservation ; whether, in disputing the con-
ception of Ens, he kept its strict Eleatic form with rigid
exclusiveness before his eyes ; or whether he advanced
to a purely phenomenalistic view and like his pupil
Lycophron, avoided the use of the verb "to be" alto-
gether, even as a copula, And our ignorance on these
points is the less surprising since we cannot even solve the
primary, contradiction between the two statements in our
chief authority, which asserts that Gorgias maintained that
* Cp. Bk. III. Ch. IV. §6.
494 GREEK THINKERS.
" nothing exists," and that he disputed the conception of
Non-Ens as vehemently as that of Ens.
The so-called nihilism of Gorgias has given rise to
the opinion that he had abandoned thenceforward every
true search for knowledge, and had devoted himself
exclusively to the art of persuasion, or rather, that this,
in despite of the facts, would have been his more logical
, proceeding. But the curious thing is that, in a case
where the circumstances are virtually repeated, no one
has tried to draw the same conclusion. The Xenophontic
Socrates exposes the contradictions of his predecessors in
philosophy in a way not dissimilar to the procedure of
Gorgias. Some maintained that the Being was single,
others that it was infinite in number. Some had taught
the doctrine of incessant motion, others of total im-
mobility: some had maintained the birth and decay of
all things, others had repudiated those processes m toto.
On these grounds Socrates inferred the vanity and fruit-
lessness of those kinds of investigations which, in his
opinion, exceeded the bounds of human capacity. But
he did not go even so far as to draw the conclusion that
all endeavours to understand nature are vain. Rather
he desired that his disciples should acquire a degree of
natural science adequate for their practical purpose, that
the young steersman, for example, should have the
requisite astronomy at his disposal. He never conceived
the idea that the mere conflict of opinions excluded, as
long as it lasted, the possibility of scientific instruction.
Nay, so inconceivable was it to him, that we rather identify
his name with the opening out of a fresh region for investi-
gation, inasmuch as Socrates was at pains to exalt " human
affairs" to an object of more thorough insight than had as
yet been attained in any department of knowledge. And
his prospect of success in that fresh field of inquiry was
not marred by the scepticism arising from his exposure of
the contradictions we have mentioned.
Socrates, it is true, unlike Gorgias, never attacked
in a spirit of critical destructivcncss the conception
of "Being." At the same time it would be idle
ANTHROPOLOGY v. COSMOLOGY. 495
to pretend that the conception played even the smallest
part in his intellectual life. He was as indisposed
as Gorgias to ascribe to it with confidence any predicates
whatsoever. The one certain fact is that he left the
old and beaten track of investigation because it seemed
to lead to no prosperous goal. And here we reach a
point which is of the utmost importance to our study
of the civilization of the age. We have marked in
many isolated phenomena the indications of an in-
tellectual revolution, and we are now in a position to
characterize as one of the factors in that change the
difference as to the assumed solubility of problems with
which former generations had grappled with strenuous
eagerness. Cosmology, in the widest sense of that term,
was superseded more and more by Anthropology in an
equally comprehensive sense. Other factors, some of which
we have already tried to appreciate,* worked in combina-
tion with this one. But we have still to mention the factor
which was at once the least obtrusive and perhaps the most
efficacious, namely, the simple lapse of time. Many years
were required before man regarded himself as a worthy
subject of scientific treatment. And with the many years
went the growth of self-respect consequent on the improved
dominion of man over nature, on the gradual perfection of
civil and social order, and, not least, on the steady increase
of the treasures and resources of the intellect. At first the
rising spirit of curiosity had been directed almost exclusively
to external nature. Man did not wholly forget himself,
but at most he regarded himself as a kind of fragile mirror,
in which the external world was seen through a glass
darkly. But the moment came when his maturer self-
consciousness reminded him that his own faculties were
the limit and condition of all knowledge, when he was
discouraged by the series of vain attempts to solve
the riddle of the universe at one guess, and when he
had gradually reached a higher degree of self-respect.
Then it was that the attention of the inquirer was directed
to man as "the proper study of mankind." And when
* Cp. Bk. IIT.Ch. IV. §i.
GREEK THINKERS.
the change had been effected, one of its foremost tokens
was the deeper seriousness and intensity with which
the field of history was cultivated. The leading minds
which fifty .years before would have reinforced the
ranks of the nature-philosophers now obeyed the in-
vitation of Socrates, their contemporary, and turned to
the study of "human affairs." He it was who formu-
lated this demand most clearly, and who realized it most
vigorously. But before we open a new book with the
name of the Athenian thinker, whom we have mentioned
so frequently, it will be appropriate to glance at the
changes in historiography which may be traced to the
tendencies we have been describing.
( 497 )
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ADVANCE OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE.
I. THE study of history in this age had reached enormous
dimensions. Side by side with the great compilations of
legendary matter, such as the work of Pherecydes con-
tained, went descriptions of the living present. The
historian's pen turned from Uranus and Cronos to Pericles
and Cimon. His sceptre stretched from the pellucid tran-
quillity of Olympus to the turbid scandal of his own day.
It happened sometimes that the same mind made itself
equally at home on the heights and in the depths of its
art. Thus Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who, in his work " On
the Mysteries," was a diligent student of the echoes of for-
gotten myths, proved at the same time a no less industrious
scavenger » in the mire of the contemporary gossip with
which he sullied the figures of the great statesmen of
Athens. Moreover, he found leisure to expatiate in a
special study on the life of Homer and on the interpretation
of his poems. Nor did the history of art and literature
suffer otherwise from lack of cultivation. Damastes and
Glaucus of Rhegium are mentioned as the two earliest
labourers in that field. Damastes was the compiler of a
treatise " On Poets and Sophists/* in which the " sophists "
obviously meant nothing else than philosophers, if for no
other reason than because of their association with poets.
And Glaucus, a contemporary of Democritus, had written
on ancient poets and musicians. The prince of encyclo-
paedists, Democritus hmiself, who had discussed the begin-
nings of poetry in his works on the composition and language
YOU I, 2 K
498 GREEK THINKERS.
of Homer, was occupied in other treatises with the begin-
nings of music, and he was the first to utter the thought,
elaborated at a later date by Plato and Aristotle, that
leisure and a certain amount of material prosperity are
the most favourable soil for the productions of art and
science. A list of poets and musicians, chronologically
arranged, preserved in Sicyon, and consulted by Hera-
elides of Pontus, may have been older than the works we
have just mentioned. Nor was chronology any longer the
mere handmaid of historical research, as in this special
catalogue and in the lists of Hellanicus and Hippias.*
It was a subject of independent study. Cleostratus
worked at it in verse as early as the sixth century,
and his labours were continued in the fifth by Harpalus
and others, among whom may be named QEnopides
and Meton, the great reformers of the calendar.
About this time, too, the Greeks began to write the
history of other nations besides their own. Histories of
Persia were composed by Charon of Lampsacus and
Dionysius of Miletus ; and Xanthus the Lydian, in nar-
rating the history of his own people, set a precedent to
other foreigners at a later date in availing himself of the
vehicle of the Greek language. History was constantly
being provided with fresh material by the reports of
explorers such as Scylax of Carianda and Euthymenes of
Massalia, as well as by the growing literature of memoirs.
To this class belonged the "Pilgrimage" of Ion the
poet, of which but a few delightful fragments survive.
So much, perhaps, for the extension of the horizon of
history. The inward change through which it passed is
of far greater importance* Political wisdom presently
attained a height from which the historians looked down
on the Herodotean view of politics as the mature and
supple intellect of the grown man looks down on the
limitations of his childhood. The earliest traces of this
change are found in the sole surviving remnant of the
rich literature of pamphlets which distinguished the close
of the fifth century.
* 13k. III. Ch. V.
THE "CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS." 499
2. The treatise "On the Constitution of Athens" is
one of the most remarkable literary productions of all
ages. It bears the marks of a strong political passion,
but that passion is tempered by so notable a tendency to
scientific method that we recognize at once the powerful
brain and the embittered heart which went together to its
composition. The author might be compared to an
officer sent to reconnoitre a hostile fortress in order to
spy out its weaknesses and to devise the best means of
attack. But the officer, to press the simile home, must
be conceived as struck with surprise at the perfect
plan of the fortress, and at the intelligent manner in
which all its parts are suited to one another and to the
common purpose they are intended to fulfil. Hence we
must suppose him not merely to deprecate any hasty
assault, but even to give unreserved expression to his
admiration of the architectural design, and thus to
become the eulogist, as it were, of his deeply hated foe.
Hatred it was, at least, which put a fine edge on the
keenness of the vision of this oligarch, and opened his
eyes to many a political principle hitherto undisclosed.
The harmony of political institutions with the conditions
of society, and the agreement between the outward forms
and the inner contents of a community, were here
discovered for the first time. This treatise took account
of the sea-power of Athens, and of the commercial
supremacy which rested thereon. It discussed Athenian
modes of warfare, and the relation between the army and
the fleet. It subjected the democratic constitution to a
searching criticism, in the course of which many recog-
nized and deplorable evils, such as the judiciary com-
pulsion of confederates, the delays of the law, the
arrogant and undisciplined character of the metics and
slaves, were shown to be no mere accidental abuses, but to
be inherent to democracy. Superficial views were dis-
carded throughout; links of connection and common
causes were looked for, and the whole treatise was in-
formed with so strong a logical light that, despite its
unpretentious character, it has earned its significant title
500 GREEK THINKERS.
to the rank of the earliest model of the deductive method
as applied to society and politics.
Yet this title cannot be conceded by us without
making some deductions. We fully appreciate the en-
deavour by which the author of the treatise was moved
to reduce the abundance of isolated phenomena to a few
great common principles. Nor would we detract from
the value of the sense of causation which that endeavour
brought into play. Still, the fact remains that the
deductive method is but poorly adapted to account for
the results of historical development and to illustrate its
processes. Our author may fairly claim to have com-
manded an exceptional wealth of fine observations and
penetrating inferences, In some of his isolated passages
he has not unjustly been called a worthy predecessor of
Burke, Machiavelli, and Paolo Sarpi. But it is an ex-
aggeration to speak of his work as the " earliest contribution
to the knowledge of the natural laws governing political
institutions." The starting-point of all his researches was
the inner bond of connection between sea-power and de-
mocracy. But, although we may grant that this connection
was a specific product of Athenian evolution, we need but
glance at the stories of Carthage, Venice, Holland, and
England herself, to prove that it was not governed by any
"law of nature," Nor can the author invariably be ac-
quitted of the charge of straining his conclusions. The
thesis which he undertook to prove was announced at the
opening of his treatise in the following words : —
" I praise the Athenians not because they preferred this kind
of political constitution, for therein they preferred the welfare of
the evil to the welfare of the good. But I praise them because,
having made their decision, they knew how to preserve the con-
stitution they chose, and because in other respects likewise, where
the rest of the Greeks think them wrong, they attain what they
aim at. This, then, is what I shall prove."
And near the end of the treatise we read again —
"Much might be devised to improve the constitution; but
BIAS OF THE TREATISE. 50!
nothing could readily be discovered to preserve the democracy and
yet to effect any serious improvement. Such a work could only
be done in an insignificant degree by adding something in one
place and taking something away in another."
Thus we see that our author regarded the Athenian
democracy as a finished work of art. If it was to fulfil its
aim of satisfying the masses, its essentials must remain
unchanged. At the same time there is no attempt to
disguise the fact that "baseness and ignorance" were
rampant, and that " madmen " played the chief parts in
the council and in the popular assembly. This opinion
was rather over-emphasized than otherwise, but the readers
were given to suppose that the populace was right in pro-
secuting its own interests, and was better served by the
" ignorance, baseness, and good-will " of its present
authorities than by the "virtue, wisdom, and ill-will" of
the " good " or " noble." All the same, the best constitu-
tion would not be obtained by such conduct, though it
afforded the best guarantee for the preservation of the
democracy.
" For the people do not want," wrote our author, " in a lawfully
administered state, to be the bond-slaves of their rulers, but they
claim freedom and supremacy. Out of the very circumstances which
thou regardest as the travesty of law and order the people derive
the sources of their strength and freedom."
We need hardly point out that, despite the apparent
objectivity and actuality of these political arguments, they
are yet largely the reasoning of an embittered doctrinaire,
or rather of a man cloaking his bitterness in a doctrinal
disguise. How would it have been, for example, if the
ignorance, the baseness, and the madness of the rulers had
endangered the power of the state, and had led to the
loss of the fleet, the tributes, and of the empire itself ? How
would it then have been with the advantage of the populace,
which was supposed to be so well protected ? The truth
is that, though our oligarch hit the bull's-eye in many
single instances, yet he wrote with a biassed mind. His
reason was subservient throughout to his passion as a
502 GREEK THINKERS.
partisan, the subtlety of his mind was the instrument of his
gall. The Athenian democracy in every respect and in
every sense of the word was to be incapable of improve-
ment. Its worst evils, and those which pressed most
heavily on members of the author's class and party, were
to be exposed without exception as the inevitable con-
sequences of the ruling principle of the state. It was his
pleasure to condemn the Athenian constitution root and
branch, to strike at the very pulse of its existence. Reading
between the lines of his treatise, we can conceive him
warning his friends to put no faith in reform, and to
expect nothing from compromise. He would have told
them that what in their view were occasional mistakes,
accidental evils, and temporary signs of decay, were really
manifestations of the one fatal principle of the common-
wealth. With that principle the prosperity of the multitude
must stand or fall, and therefore the multitude would
support it at all times and at every cost. Hence he would
have urged them to avoid all half-measures and to attempt
nothing precipitate ; above all, to beware of striking at
the wrong time and with inadequate forces. If the great
blow were ever to be struck, it would have to be final and
decisive, and to get rid once for all of what the factious
language of the times described as the " accursed Demos."
So he would have bid them close their ranks and arm
their persons and provide themselves with sturdy allies,
"for" — and here we may quote the ipsissima vcrba of our
author — "for no few are wanted to make an end once
for all of the Athenian popular supremacy."
3. This extraordinary product of political passion and
political reason was first published in 424 B.C. The date
has another significance. It was the year in which leisure
for the completion of his lifework descended on a man
whose nature contained practically the same elements,
though they were developed to a far greater splendour and
mingled in far more wholesome proportions. The leisure,
it must be added, was not voluntary. Thucydides, son of
Olorus, was a man of considerable wealth, and of noble
origin, in whose veins Thracian blood flowed as well as
THUCYDIDES. 503
Greek. At the time of the siege of Amphipolis he was
in command of a naval division stationed at the Island of
Thasos, and he failed to bring his ships quickly enough
to the relief of the beleaguered city. His failure was
punished by a twenty years' exile, which he employed
partly in preliminary travel, and partly in completing,
at his country-house on the Thracian coast, the work
which possesses an indisputable and seldom disputed
claim to rank as the greatest historical monument of
antiquity. It is our intention to glance as rapidly as we
can at the spirit of Thucydides as an historian, at his
methods of historical research, and at other points of
capital interest to the purpose of our studies. And if we
should make a somewhat longer pause than is absolutely
necessary at the name of the great Athenian and his im-
mortal legacy, our readers may account it to us for righteous-
ness. For here we have reached a veritable peak of
intellectual development. We are standing on the table-
lands of earnest truth, on the summits of richly dowered
thought, and on the heights of artistic power.
There is hardly any pair of contemporaries who offer a
more glaring contrast than Herodotus and Thucydides.
Barely a score of years divided their works from one
another, but a gulf of centuries seems to yawn between
their temper and inspiration. Herodotus creates through-
out an entirely old-fashioned impression ; Thucydides is a
modern of the moderns. He made a clean sweep of the
poetical and religious bias, the legendary and novelistic
sympathies, and the primitive beliefs, rarely mitigated by
the light of criticism, which marked the elder historian.
The gaze of Thucydides was primarily fixed on the political
factors, on the actual relations of forces, on the natural
foundation, so to speak, of historical phenomena. He
looked for their springs, not in the dispensations of super-
natural beings, nor yet, except in a moderate degree, in
the caprices and passions of individual men. Behind those
he always sought for the universal forces that animated
them, for the conditions of the peoples, and the interests of
the states. Thus he prefaced his discussion of all the points
504 GREEK THINKERS.
of difference which led to the Peloponnesian war by the
pregnant observation —
" The real though unavowed cause (of the war) I believe to
have been the growth of the Athenian power, which terrified the
Lacedaemonians and forced them into war." *
His biographer states that he was a pupil of Anaxagoras,
the mechanical physicist, and the report, whether true or
not, is fully in harmony with his view of the world as
well as with his treatment of history. It was his con-
stant endeavour to describe the course of human affairs as
though it were a process of nature informed by the light of
inexorable causality. His pursuit of strict objectivity was
so keen that long passages of his work may be read without
obtaining a hint to which side his favour inclined, and to
which side his disfavour. Yet his power of dispassionate
narration is no proof of the absence of passion. No one
can doubt this who knows that complete devotion to
human affairs, and their faithful reproduction, can only
successfully be founded on an intense and absorbing
personal interest. Moreover, it is not in isolated instances
alone that the objective tranquillity which Thucydides so
carefully preserved was interrupted by a sudden outcry
of emotion ; his description of the fatal Sicilian expedition
affects us with the pathos of tragedy.
Herodotus wrote history " in order," in his own words,
" that the actions of men may not be effaced by time, nor
the great and wondrous deeds . . . deprived of renown." f
Nor is there any doubt that Thucydides, in his inmost
soul, was moved by similar impulses. But in the
foreground of his narrative, as though in self-justification,
he wrote —
" But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture
of the events which have happened, and of the like events which
may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human
things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I
shall be satisfied." \
* Thuc., I 23 : trans. Jowett. f Herod., I i : trans. Gary,
J Thuc., i. 22': trans. Jowett.
END AND MEANS OF HIS HISTORY. 505
In this sense, and because he was conscious that the
rejection of all legendary issues had made his work
less " fascinating," he spoke of it with strong but just
self-respect as "an everlasting possession, not a prize
composition which is heard and forgotten." * The strict
sobriety in the demarcation of his purpose was reproduced
by Thucydides when he came to choose the means to his
end. Surprise has recently been expressed that he pre-
ferred to deal with a short span of contemporary history
rather than to fill his canvas with pictures of universal
historical interest. But the historian has returned his own
reply to such expressions of surprise. Again and again
he bitterly complained of the difficulty of attaining complete
accuracy about the events even of his own day : —
" Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from
any chance information, nor according to any notion- of my own.f
I have described nothing," he continued, " but what I either saw
myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful
and particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one, because
eye-witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts
of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions
of one side or the other." *
Bitter indeed is the cojnplaint : ** So little trouble do
men take in the search after truth ; so readily do they
accept whatever comes first to hand" (recalling Bacon's
£,t- Us qu& pr&sto sunt). With that delight in criticism
which the Greeks seemed to imbibe with their mothers'
milk, and the influence of which Herodotus himself,
good-humoured though he was, did not escape in respect
to his predecessor Hecatseus, Thucydides likewise was
infected. He sought out errors which Herodotus had
committed with special reference to Spartan institutions, and
accompanied them with the remark that " there are many
other matters, not obscured by time, but contemporary,
about which the other Hellenes are equally mistaken," \
* Thuc., i. 22 : trans. Jowett.
t Cp* the Preface of Hecatseus, Bk* II. Ch. VI. § i.
i Time,, i. 20: trans, Jowett.
506 GREEK THINKERS.
Nevertheless, Thucydides could not or would not
altogether avoid the claims of the history of dim
antiquity. On such occasions, his method was marked
by certain peculiarities, which require to be characterized.
Two essential points may be mentioned. Thucydides
was the first historian to employ the method of inverse
deduction. When trustworthy authority failed him, he
would argue back from the conditions and institutions
— even the names — of the present to those of times past.
Thus, in seeking to establish the fact that the room occupied
by the Acropolis at Athens had once contained the whole
city, he reminded his readers of the vernacular usage by
which the word "city," or Polis, signified Acropolis, or
"the city on a height." And a similar purpose inspired
the second fact quoted by him in this connection, namely,
that the most important shrines of the gods were partly
included in that district and partly found in its im-
mediate neighbourhood, and that certain religious rites
were associated with a spring situated in that spot. The
same method may be observed in Aristotle's constitutional
treatise, which has been discovered in quite recent times.
The second point to be noted is the use made by Thu-
cydides— and by him first of all — of the present conditions
of less highly developed peoples to illustrate the earlier
stages of civilization of more advanced communities. The
historians of morality, religion, and law in our own day
employ them to the full extent of their capacity, and have
brought the study of ethnology into close connection with
that of prehistoric man. In Central Brazil, for instance,
there is still an actual "Stone Age," and the pile-work
in the New Guinea of to-day recalls the similar buildings
in prehistoric Europe. At this point we may give an
instance of the comparative method of Thucydides.
Nestor in the Odyssey, in questioning Tclemachus, on
his arrival at Pylos, about the objects of his voyage,
mentions piracy in the same breath as the business of
commerce, and with no trace of moral disapproval. The
courtly savants of Alexandria and the dry-as-dust scholars
of the nineteenth century have vied with one another
THUCYDIDES AND THE LEGENDS. 507
in their painful astonishment at the state of Nestor's
conscience, and in their attempts to explain it away. The
first had lost their sympathy with the na'ive primitiveness
of the ancients, and the second had not yet regained it
In this respect Thucydides stood on a pinnacle above
them both. He had no intention or desire to force the
Homeric verses into a Procrustean bed of meaning.
He was rather at pains to shed a brilliant light on the
rude minds of Homeric heroes by comparing them
with the modes of life and sentiment among backward
Greek tribes ' of his own day. For here, as in other
passages, he was true to his principle of vivifying and
enriching his picture of antiquity by appropriate parallels.
No doubt can subsist as to the legitimacy of this use
of the evidence of Homer. If popular poems can tell
us nothing else with certainty, at least they afford trust-
worthy evidence of the sentiment of those for whom they
were intended. But Thucydides went further. He
summoned the Homeric poems to the bar of history
in his attempt to reconstruct the early annals of Greece.
And if we measure that attempt by modern canons of
criticism, we are constrained to arraign Thucydides,
with Herodotus, on the charge of adopting the semi-
historical method. But at least he erred in good
company. To the names of Hecatseus and Herodotus
must be added that of Aristotle and those of almost all
the thinkers and authors of antiquity. We may ac-
cordingly try to fix more precisely the point of view
from which Thucydides surveyed his theme. He believed
on the whole in the historical reality of the human
personages and of their deeds mentioned in the epic
poems; and to a certain extent in legend generally.
Hellen, the ancestor of the Hellenic race, was as good an
historical personage for Thucydides as Ion, the ancestor
of the lonians, was for Aristotle. So far, then, the issues
are quite clear. We are justified of our scepticism,
and even the most critical of the Greeks were the victims
of their own credulity. But when we come to the race
of the Atridte, to Agamemnon, and to the Trojan War, we
508 GREEK THINKERS.
cannot speak with equal certainty. Scholarship at least
has not yet said its last word on these matters. It is the
habit of heroic legends in the great majority of instances
to go to reality for their central figures and their chief
events, however freely they may subsequently deal with
them. The mediaeval epicists in France, for example,
turned the ages upside down and made Charlemagne
participate in the Crusades. But despite this violence to
chronology, they cannot be said to have invented either
Charlemagne or the Crusades, nor yet to have borrowed
them from the storehouse of mythology. And when we
revert to the method of Thucydides, we find that his
faithfulness to tradition was limited to the principal
features displayed by the narratives of the poets. Again
and again he expressed in emphatic language his distrust
of the details of their stories, and he never lent the least
favour to the method of historical patchwork so much
beloved by his predecessors. It was not his purpose to
transform, nor to harmonize, but rather to supplement the
materials with whkh he dealt. He was clearly convinced
that he had no means at his disposal which would enable
him to extract anything like a trustworthy picture of the
distant past from the embellishments, exaggerations, and
disfigurements of the poets. Accordingly he struck out a
wholly new path of investigation, and pursued it in a
manner which testifies at once to the depth of his insight
and the breadth of his mental horizon. The great
instrument which the historian employed, without fear,
but without temerity, was the deductive method, In the
sole form in which it is adapted to unravel the problems
of history, namely, as inverse deduction. This, then,
was the equipment of Thucydides. He was, further,
gifted with a faculty of vision, to which nothing was too
great or too small, and he was free from every bias and
limitation of national conceit or flattering predilection.
Dowered with these advantages, and employing the handful
of data which he considered trustworthy, he succeeded in
producing a sketch of the earliest stages of Greek evolution,
which in its outline is certainly correct. We may briefly
TREATMENT OF PREHISTORIC TIMES. 509
summarize Its chief features. It showed that the Greeks
were late in evolving the consciousness of national
unity ; that in an earlier phase of their civilization
they were hardly distinguishable from the Barbarians
or non-Greeks ; that pillage and piracy by land and
by sea afforded them a chief means of subsistence ; and
that their advance was retarded for a long time by
the difficulties of intercourse and by the sparseness and
poverty of the population. Moreover, the evidence was
adduced, and skilfully employed, of the changes effected in
course of time in the situation of cities, of the gradual
progress in the art of shipbuilding, of the fashion in clothing
and headgear, and of the alterations in the garb of the
competitors at the Olympic games. Nor did Thucydides
omit to mention the sterility of the soil of Attica, the
security thus guaranteed from foreign attack,* and the
stability which was thus afforded — a stability favourable
in turn to the immigration of foreign families, with its
natural consequence in the more rapid increase of popu-
lation, and the eventual colonization of Ionia. Similarly,
he noted the diminished sedentary habit and the increased
love of wandering among Greek tribes, due to the lack of
regular agriculture ; he was aware of the change of
proprietors which fell most frequently on the most fertile
regions ; and he remarked how the increase of wealth
assisted the transformation of the patriarchal monarchy
into the so-called tyranny. With the foregoing examples
we may fitly illustrate the deductive method as employed
by Thucydides, and the conclusions to which it led him.
4. The attitude of our historian towards the poets in
their accounts of human events and natural contingencies
may be described as one of cool scepticism. In respect
to their tales of gods and miracles, however, his distrust
rose to absolute repudiation. Moreover, it is apparent
that he belonged to a circle of thoughtful minds within
which this disbelief passed as something self-evident and
not requiring any special mention or justification. There
is no trace, for example, of the boisterous tone in which
* Cp. Introd.j § I.
GREEK THINKERS.
dotus contested the truth of some of the tales which
msidered incredible. Thucydides obviously never con-
d the possibility that he could be suspected of giving
;nce to an interruption of the course of nature. Accord-
• he treated the oracles and soothsayers with chilling
impt, sometimes diversified by biting satire. Moreover,
as thoroughly aware of the weaknesses of the mind
h foster such superstitions, and he characterized them
aces with a brilliant word. Thus when the outbreak of
Dlague at Athens increased the sufferings of war, some
»le remembered an alleged ancient oracle which ran :
Dorian war will come, and a plague with it." This
ig led, according to the historian's account, to a conflict
Dinions, some people maintaining that the verse referred
mos (" a famine ") and not to loimos (" a plague ") : —
vertheless, as might have been expected, for men's memories
;ted their sufferings, the argument in favour of loimos prevailed
e time. But if ever in future years another Dorian war arises
i happens to be accompanied by a famine, they will probably
it the verse in the other form." *
was the destructive satire of Thucydides confined to
see of anonymous vaticination. He expressed himself
. equal emphasis about an oracle of the Pythian god.
*n the people streamed into Athens from the country-
devastated by the Peloponnesians, the so-called Pelasgtc
^elargic field to the north-west of the Acropolis was
invaded by the fugitives, despite an ancient oracle
dbiting such occupation. Necessity took 110 account
he divine prohibition, but its violation was presently
iened with a part of the guilt for the heavy calamities
which Athens was afflicted : —
d to my mind the oracle came true in a sense exactly contrary
e popular expectation ; for the unlawful occupation to which
were driven was not the cause of the calamities which befcl the
but the war was the cause of the occupation ; and the oracle
>ut mentioning the war foresaw that the place would be in-
ed some day for no good." f
* Thuc., ii. 54 : trans. Jowett.
t Time:., ii. 17 ; trans. Jowett.
ATTITUDE TO POPULAR RELIGION. 511
And Thucy elides denounced not merely as baseless, but
as positively hurtful, the superstitious
" error of which so many are guilty, who, although they might still
be saved if they would lake the natural means, when visible grounds
of confidence forsake them, have recourse to the invisible, to
prophecies nml oracles and the like, which ruin men by the hopes
which they inspire in them." *
Bearing these and kindred utterances in mind, we may
fairly assume that the historian's mention of the sole piece
of prophecy which he knew has been fulfilled — that,
namely, which stated that the Peloponnesian war "would
last thrice nine years " — was merely intended to point to a
noteworthy coincidence. Much the same explanation applies
to the catalogue of natural occurrences partly ominous and
threatening in character, and partly destructive, which ac-
companied the course of the great war and enhanced its
terrors. At that point of his exordium Thucydides stood
cm the threshold of the mighty drama on which the curtain
was to be raised. He was ready to turn the limelight on
the majesty and greatness of the period to which he had
consecrated his pen, and it would have been wholly inappro-
priate in that place to introduce a recommendation to
caution* At another time he did not withhold it. When
he was telling his readers of the prophecies of the sooth-
sayers and of the earthquake at Delos, which, as was "gene-
rally believed," presaged the outbreak of war, Thucydides
did not omit to utter the pregnant hint, "and everything
of the sort which occurred was curiously noted." t
It is perfectly obvious by this time that the great
Athenian had been thoroughly alienated from the faith of
hi.s countrymen. The word " mythical " on his lips carried
the same derogatory sense as on the lips of Epicurus. It
would be interesting to know, however, not what he denied,
but what he affirmed; above all, what attitude he took
towards the great problems of universal origin and govern-
ment. There is no word in his works from which his views
* Time., v. 103 : trans. Jowett.
t Thuc., ii. 8 : trans. Jowett.
512 GREEK THINKERS.
on those subjects may be gathered. We have already
sufficiently shown that he did not subscribe to the belief
in supernatural interventions. He was fond of tracing
back to their natural causes phenomena which had been
regarded as . miraculous or at least as significant. In
this manner he disposed of eclipses, thunderstorms,
floods, and the vdrtex of Charybdis ; and apart altogether
from his campaign against superstition, he was admirably
fitted by taste and endowment for the observation and
interpretation of nature. In this connection we need
but recall his extremely careful discussion of the geo-
graphical conditions which brought the group of islands
situated near the mouth of the Achelous ever nearer and
nearer to the mainland, or, again, his masterly description
of the plague at Athens which has been the admiration of
experts in eveiy age. In so far, then, we may assume
that the sympathies of Thucydidcs tended to the physicists
and the "meteorologists," and we must regard it as
an especial boon that he preferred, notwithstanding, his-
toriography to physics. But we can scarcely assume
that he was satisfied for any length of time with either of
the attempts then hanging in the balance to solve the great
riddle of the universe, whether with that of Leucippus or
with that of Anaxagoras. His repugnance to both would
probably have been due not so much to their divergence
from the tenets of popular religion as to their intrinsic
boldness and undemonstrableness. Thucydicles himself
complained that it was impossible to obtain information on
the course of a battle from the depositions of soldiers on
both sides who had participated in it Every one, he re-
marked, could only accurately relate the events in his imme-
diate neighbourhood. And, guided by this attitude, we may
fairly assume that he would have withheld his assent from
the philosophers who presumed to report on the origin of
the universe with the circumstantial precision of an eye-
witness. Doubtless Thucydides gave his deep attention to
the greatest questions which can occupy the human mind, but
we can best characterize the results of his long and earnest
thought as a halting suspension of judgment
THE ARTIFICE OF SPEECHES. 513
Thucydides was absolutely tireless in his search for
truth. He shrank in its pursuit from no sacrifice and from
no trouble, and this devotion, together with the high
standard which he maintained, is perhaps the most promi-
nent feature in the historian's character. He was anxious
to preserve the artistic finish of his work, but his anxiety
did not prevent him from occasionally breaking its bounds,
nor oven from destroying the level flow of his language in
order to give his readers full authentic information on
important documentary evidence. Among such interrup-
tions may be mentioned the report of a general, and some
treaty Acts composed partly in the Dorian dialect. A
possible objection may be urged at this point Apart from a
few petty mistakes, which merely prove the superfluous point
that Thucydides too was a fallible mortal, it may be asked
how the high estimate we have formed of the veracity of the
historian is compatible with his frequent habit of reporting
speeches of historical personages when a faithful reproduc-
tion of their words was actually impossible. The answer
lies ready to hand. It is supplied by the historian himself
in a prominent place In his work, where he explained his
attitude in this matter in a way which was designed and
suited to prevent all misconception. He aimed, we are
there informed, at the utmost conceivable " exactness " in
his description of events, but in his reproduction of speeches
he renounced that aim as unattainable. In such cases he
was content to arrive at an "approximate" objective truth,
or even at nothing but an inner verisimilitude corre-
sponding to the respective situation and character of the
speaker. Thus he developed his interpolation of speeches
into the great artistic instrument by which he was enabled
to infuse a soul into the body of history.
5. Nothing is more wonderful than the use which
Thucydides made of this artifice, which, though he did not
discover it, he was the first to use in the grand style. He
employed it for two purposes apart from its dramatic value
in animating the narrative. First, it served to characterize
the speaker, and, secondly, to communicate the author's
thought. It was a very considerable aid to the sharpness
VOL. I. 2 L
514 GREEK THINKERS.
of characterization that the speeches were mostly introduced
as portions of a debate, in which opposite tendencies were
played off on one another, thus frequently producing a
marked effect of contrast. We may instance as a type of
this method the speeches delivered by Alcibiades and
Nicias in the popular assembly at Athens on the Sicilian
Expedition. Every word spoken by Alcibiades bore wit-
ness to the fire, the impetuosity, and the high aspirations
of that passionate genius, and deepened the effect of the
cautious judgment and caustic wit of the experienced old
man whose strength in criticism was shortly to be
matched by his weakness in action. Sometimes, too, a
character is revealed to us as much by its silence as by
its speech. It cannot possibly be due to chance that
the magnificent funeral oration of Pericles, which in-
evitably included some concessions to convention in
addition to its nobler contents, should have omitted
all allusion to the figures of the popular religion. The
omission was obviously intentional, and we recognise the
historian's wish to characterize the free-thinking pupil of
Anaxagoras in his true colours as the champion of philo-
sophic doubt in respect to the whole system of mythology.
Finally, it was not merely individuals who were distin-
guished by the manner of their speech, but Thucydiclcs
used the same means to typify classes and nations. Thus
the passionate but unintellectual Boeotians were made to
deliver speeches appealing to the feelings rather than to the
reason of their audience ; and when a Spartan plebeian,
such as the Ephor Sthenelaidas, was introduced, he was
characterized not merely by his laconic pithiness of
expression, but also by the homely and ready mother-wit
which was the common heritage of the Dorian race.
We pass from the purpose of characterization aimed at
by the introduction of speeches to that of the communica-
tion of the author's own thought. And here it is almost
impossible to avoid the appearance of exaggeration in any
attempt to do justice to the historian's success in creating
an inexhaustible storehouse of ideas without unduly
obtruding his own personality* For keen observations,
ITS TWOFOLD PURPOSE. 515
penetrating proofs, and maxims of enduring validity are
presented in extraordinary profusion. To find a parallel to
this treasury of political wisdom we must go to the works
of Machiavelli. And even that comparison will be found
to be in favour of the Athenian rather than of the Floren-
tine, if we take the circumstance in account that every
reflection in Thucydides arose spontaneously out of its his-
torical environment, and was free from all traces of dry
and systematic didacticism. And sometimes, too, the
occasional speeches in Thucydides open out into philo-
sophic discussions of the most comprehensive kind. In an
earlier chapter of this work we have expressed our opinion
that Protagoras was the earliest champion of the deterrent
theory of punishment. It is appropriate accordingly to
remark that Thucydides took a suitable opportunity to
combat this doctrine by an incisive oration placed in the
mouth of Diodotus the Athenian, and directed perhaps
against Protagoras himself. The topic then under discus-
sion was the penalty to be meted out to the Lesbian rebels,
and Diodotus drew an incomparable picture of the irre-
sistible force of passion and of its subversive influence on
the evildoer's judgment. In other cases Thucydides sub-
stituted for a systematic treatment scattered passages of
description up and down the pages of his work which the
intelligent reader could collect into a complete account.
Of such a kind is his description of the character of the
Athenian people.
It might be expected that the two objects served by
the artifice of historical speeches should occasionally have
defeated each other, especially that the exposition of the
author's thoughts should have been injurious to the charac-
terization. Thucydides had so much to tell us that it would
not be surprising if he should sometimes have chosen an
unsuitable mouthpiece. It was difficult, too, if not impos-
sible, to attain complete harmony in that respect, inasmuch
as the situations which suggested certain lines of thought
and invited their development, and the personages in whose
mouths they were placed, were alike circumscribed by actual
and given conditions. We do not contend that Thucydides
5*5 GREEK
was never beaten by this difficulty, but we do venture to
contend that he succumbed to it merely in isolated instances,
that the circumstances of his defeat, moreover, have
an especial attraction of their own, and are full of the most
welcome instruction. For through such flaws in the edifice
of his art the personality of the artist shines like a flame.
Take, for example, the funeral oration of Pericles. There
the philosophy of Athenian politics is reduced to its quint-
essence. The wonderful chapters read as if the ancient
material had been informed by a great modern mind— by
the mind of a De Tocquevillc, for instance. They form a
valuable jewel, perhaps the most valuable jowel, in the
treasury of Greek prose. In unequivocal tones they pro-
claim individual liberty, the unfettered freedom and variety
of the private life of the citizens, exempt from the tyranny
of the greatest number, as the feature most characteristic
of Athenian social life. The historian resumes this theme
elsewhere. He puts the praises of this feature, the most
precious fruit of Greek civil institutions, in the mouth of
Nicias in his last speech just before the decisive battle in
the harbour of Syracuse. And we may legitimately urge
that the exhortation comes far less appropriately from the
lips of that type of narrow orthodoxy and conventional
morality than from those of Pericles, the philosophers' friend
We may fairly say that in this instance Thucytlides was more
concerned to preserve the probabilities of the situation than
those of the personages, and that it was his o\vn teeming
sentiment which flowed from the mouth of Nicias, Lapses
of this kind may occasionally escape our notice because
Thucydicles Is generally our sole authority for the characters,
which we cannot accordingly test by comparison with other
witnesses. But even taking all this in account, such instances
are certainly but rare exceptions. For this is the point at
which the incomparable art of the master attained the height
of its triumph. Let us take as an example on which to
found this judgment the one figure on the historical stajfc of
Thucydides with whom the author was least in sympathy—
Cleon the tanner. And yet how wonderfully he sneered* in
turning that orator whom he dislikes to the purposes of his
THUCYBIDES AND CLEON. 517
narrative when he wants to show the spots on the sun, the
shadows on the virtues of the Athenians ! Thucydides him-
self was obviously convinced that his clever countrymen
were sometimes too clever, that the refinement of their
thought was not unfrequently prejudicial to its wholesome-
ness and soundness, and that the sons of Attica were often
the victims of their own versatility. To this conviction he
could give no more effective expression than by the mouth of
the coarse demagogue who was not particularly distinguished
by the higher qualities of intellect. It was Cleon, there-
fore, in the pages of Thucydides, who roundly reproached
his fellow-countrymen, saying, You are the slaves of para-
dox, the conternners of what is familiar. You follow debates
on the most vital questions of the hour with the same atti-
tude of mind as though you were attending a barren tourna-
ment of wits. You look at facts through no medium save
that of speech ; you look to speech to disclose the future
and to judge the past. Appearance and reality, actuality
and its image, have changed their places in your con-
ception.
The name of Cleon recalls us to the path of discussion
from which we fear that we have digressed too far. We
were speaking of the historian's love of truth, and it is
precisely in respect to Cleon that his impartiality has been
most strongly, and, we readily admit, most justifiably
attacked. We cannot doubt that the demagogue's noisy
vehemence, his plebeian conduct, with its manifest contempt
for the refinements of life, were as repugnant to Thucydides
as to Aristotle in his " Athenian Constitution," and pro-
duced a similar blindness to Cleon's solid deserts. But
though we hold this opinion, we hold it solely by the favour
of the evidence supplied to us without diminishment or
malice by Thucydides himself. The occurrences on the
island of Sphacteria in especial reveal a striking contradic-
tion between the facts related by the historian and the
verdict passed by him on those facts. The most casual
reader could not miss it. Cleon had pledged himself to
bring the four hundred Spartan hoplites, who were cut off
in that islet from every chance of relief, alive or dead
1 8 GREEK THINKERS.
ithin twenty days to Athens. He commanded an over-
•helming force ; he associated himself with Demosthenes,
le best general then at the disposal of the Athenians ;
ad the success of his undertaking completely answered
is expectation. Nevertheless the historian, who cannot
e said to have been free from a feeling of contempt and
ven of personal hatred, spoke of Cleon's promise as
"mad" one. Yet it is precisely this instance of gross
artiality which supplies us with the strongest argument
:>r the historian's love of truth. How readily might he
iave narrowed, if he could not wholly have filled in, the
;ulf that yawned between his account of the facts and his
ndgment on them. He might at least have referred to
ome unforeseen pieces of luck which contributed to the
ulfilment of Cleon's " mad " undertaking. But there is not
. syllable in the whole of his report which contains any
dnt of this kind. In circumstances where his judgment
iras actually poisoned by hatred, his narrative was wholly
ree from every suspicion of deceit; nor was there the
emotest attempt to shape or adapt the facts to suit the
>ias of his prejudice. The same stringency in narrative
narked the work of the historian in instances where his
udgment was coloured by favour. When Nicias, for
example, atoned with his life for the failure of the Sicilian
ixpedition, which he had conducted with such conspicuous
vant of skill, Thucydides broke out into a lament which
lid not merely express his deep sympathy with the tragic
ate of the unfortunate general, but bore emphatic witness
:o the historian's high estimate of his character. Ncver-
,heless, there was no attempt to hush up or to whitewash
my of the numerous and hardly conceivable mistakes which
Sficias committed. Despite his love for the man, he framed
in indictment of the general which is an absolutely crush-
ng document. For to Thucydides too, intellectual giant
hough he was, there was given that singleness, that " sim-
plicity " of heart, which, to speak in his own words, " is so
arge an element in a noble nature."
But, reluctant though we may be, we must part from
Thucydides for the present The parting will not be of
long duration, for we shall have to use his evidence for
the circumstances of moral and political thought, when we
seek to sketch in outline at least the conditions under
which Socrates began his wonderful career, There we shall
meet the first serious attempt at a systematic foundation
of ethics, The writings of the poets, and of the tragedians
in especial, will supply us for the most part with the evi-
dence we require, but we shall not omit to refer to the
testimony of the rhetoricians and historians, of whom
Thucydidcs, as the deepest thinker, will claim our chief
NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
BOOK I.
THE motto of this book is taken from Sir H. S. Maine's Rede Lecture^
May 22, 1875, p. 38.
Pago 4. Cp. Bursian, Geographic von Griechenland, i. 5-8 ;
Nissen, Italische Laiidcskunde^ i. 216 : ** Nowhere else in so restricted
an area is so striking a variety of bays, promontories, mountain
ranges, valleys, plains, highlands, and islands of all kinds to be found."
Cp,, too, G. Perrot, Revue des deux- Monties, Feb., 1892 : " Le sol ct le
climat de la C.rece," especially p* 544. For the " poverty . * . her
familiar friend," cp. Herodotus, vii. 102 ; and for " the most philo-
sophical historian . * . ," cp. Thuc., i. 2.
Page 6. On the extension of the geographical horizon, rp. further
1 1. Merger, Geschtchtc dcr tvisMnschaftlichen Erdkundc^ i. iGy/T ; KcU
Meyer, Gestfiichte ^Egyptem^ 367. Settlers from Samos in the Libyan
desert arc mentioned by Herodotus, iii. 26.
Page 7, § 2, Cp., for the points of view taken here, 15. Krclmanns-
dorfer, l*reu$$i$ch& Jahrbuchcr, 1869 : u Das Zeitalter der Novclle in
Hellas/
1'age 8,1. 27. On " kettles" and u tripods," op. Iliad, 5x. 264 /;
Odyssey, xiii, I3/. and 217. They were used as units of value in the
laws of Crete (Comparetti, in ft&Musco Italian^ iii.^4jtf/>//),and were
finally represented as an accessory design on Cretan coins. Though
the laws way possibly refer to these coins, as Svorcmos* contends
(//////<?//>/ de Corr. //£//., xii. 405), yet the Homeric passages arc clear
enough in themselves.
Page 10, 1. 36. "Masters of choric song :" we are thinking more
especially of Stesichorus and his peculiar treatment of the myth of
Helen ; rp. K. C). Miiller, Jtistory oft/ie Literature of Ancient Grttcs
(London^ 1840), i, 262 and 267.
Page n, § 3, On Asiatic and Egyptian influences in Mycenean
art, cp. Schuchhardt, SeMffMa/w's tixawatfotis (London,
522 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
p- 3°3 ; and Reisch, " Die Mykenische Frage," in the VerUandlungen
der 42. Versammlung dcutscher Philologen, p. 104. While the Myce-
nean style continued to develop in other regions, esp. in Attica and the
islands, its development was interrupted in the Peloponnesus, probably
in consequence of the Dorian invasion. The influence of Egypt on
the origins of Greek sculpture is acknowledged, amongst others, by
Collignon (Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque^\. 119) and by Lcchat
(Bull, de Corr. Hellen^ xiv. 148^).
Page i r, 1. 25 . " Adventurer : " Greek mercenaries have commemo-
rated their names by inscribing them on the feet of a colossal
statue at Abu Simbel, in Nubia]; Inscript. Graces antiquissima, ed.
Roehl (Berlin, 1882), pp. 127 Jf. Psammetich I. and Psammetich II.
employed such mercenaries by thousands (cp. Ed. Meyer, op. cit,
360 ff^ Antimenidas, brother of the poet Alcseus, lived as a mer-
cenary in Babylon (cp. Strabo, xiii. 617).
Page 14, § 4. The climate of Ionia is described by Herodotus, i. 142.
On the origin of the lonians, cp. Ed. Meyer, Pkilologus, New
Series, ii. 273 ; also von Wilamowitz, in Hermes, xxi. 108.
On their versatility and its causes, cp. the excellent remarks of
Grote, History of Greece, iii. 4 (10 vols. 1888).
On the blessings of a mixture of races, cp. Sprenger, " Versuch
einer Kritik von Hamdinis Beschreibung," in vol. xlv. (separate ed.)
of the Zeitschrift dcr detttschm morgenlandischen GcseUscltaft, p.
367 : " We may say that the Moslem civilization, which we commonly
call Arabian, has sprung from a cross between the Arab blood and
spirit and those of Persia."
Page 15, § 5- The author treated the same questions in a little
pamphlet (Traumdeutung wid Zauberei, Vienna, 1866), and still
adheres to the position formulated by David Hume in his Natural
History of Religion : " There is an universal tendency among mankind
to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object
those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which
they are intimately conscious" (Essays and Treatises, Edinburgh,
1817, ii. 393). .The science of religion is at present labouring seriously
under the want of a fixed terminology. The eminent investigator who,
more than any one else, gave currency to the important term " ani-
mism," and whose works we have here freely used, himself owns to
employing the term sometimes in a looser and at other times in a
stricter sense (Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 100), It is still worse
with the term "fetishism," which is variously used to denote the
worship of (i) the great natural objects, (2) certain classes of inani-
mate objects, (3) insignificant single things, such as an oddly-shaped
stone, a gaudy-coloured shell, etc. Here the ambiguity of the word
has seriously hindered the progress of knowledge. The legitimate
reaction against the assumption that the last-named sort of fetishism
was the original form of all religions has, we think, far exceeded its
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 523
aim, and has led many, notably Herbert Spencer, to underestimate the
importance of fetishism in general. The just perception that among the
objects of worship called fetishes many are merely secondary religious
creations, and that they are often revered solely as the lasting or
transient dwelling-places of a spirit or divinity, has been generalized
into the sentence, " that fetishism is a sequence of the ghost theory n
(H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 345). We think ourselves
entitled to use the word in its traditional sense, which, indeed, does
not agree with etymology (cp. Rdville, ProUgomlnes de Phistoire des
religions ) $rd ed., p. 130), and declare that we are not at all convinced
by the illustrious English thinker's attempt to reduce all nature-worship
to the worship of ghosts, and especially of ancestral ghosts.
The great plausibility of the hypothesis that all religion was origi-
nally the worship of ancestors or ghosts is due to the following circum-
stance among others. There is a continual after-growth of such gods,
e.g* in India (cp. Grant Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of Godt 1897,
p. 32 ; Lyall, Asiatic Studies, ed. 2, 1-54). The great objects of nature
have long ago found their representatives, as have also the chief interests
of human life, in old traditional divinities. Now, all generally acknow-
ledged gods have a certain tendency to wear out. There arises a
craving for ever new special divinities, with whom their own worshippers
may enter in a closer relation. For this reason, that part of religious
evolution which we see going on under our own eyes is chiefly soul-
worship.
The statement in the text about the origins of religion is meant to
include all the forces that contribute to its formation, though they may
not all have been at work in each single instance* The latest scien-
tific researches have revealed many unsuspected differences in this
respect. The long-sought evidence of a tribe living utterly without
any religion has at last been given by P. and F. Sarcasm in their work
on Di& Wcddas auf Ceylon, Wiesbaden, 1892-3. Karl von don
Steinen, hi his Unter den Natunwlkern Central- Brasili ens (Ucrlin,
1894), introduces us to communities who exhibit faint traces of sacri-
iicc to the dead only in their funeral rites, when they burn the goods
of the deceased and trickle blood over his ileshless bones. But
ancestor-worship, or spirit-worship of any kind, is as foreign to them
as, at present at least, the cult of natural objects. This last form of
worship, according to verbal communications received from Dr* Oscar
Baumann, is also unknown — or, at least, is known only in the secondary
phase mentioned above— to the Bantu tribes in Africa. Accordingly,
when we speak in the text of primitive or primeval man, we wish it to
be understood in a typical sense, with the restriction just mentioned.
Page x8, L 37* *c Souls of things" or objects : cp. Tylor, Prhnitwt
Culture^ i. 431. The importance of dream-phenomena for the belief
in the existence and immortality of the soul has been set in the
clearest light by Tylor, Spencer, and their followers. Oscar Pcschel,
524 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Volkerkunde, 271 (Leipsic, 1875), fully acknowledges the justice of this
deduction. On the other hand, Siebeck, Geschichte der Psychologies,
i. 6, opposes it with arguments that strike us as inadequate, while he
speaks (ibid., 9) of the circumstances attending the extinction of life,
and interprets the same, much in the manner of our own text (p. 20).
Page 19,1. 1 6. " The Basutos . . . think that if a man walks on the
river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw
him in " (Tylor, op. cit., i. 388). We have not scrupled to draw largely
on Tyler's statements.
Page 22, 1. 26. "It was during an epidemic of small-pox that the
Jakutes first beheld a camel, and they declared it to be the hostile
deity that had brought the small-pox on them " (Wuttke, Geschicht*
des Heidentums, i. 72).
Here should be mentioned the fear of the uncanny power of the
dead, which equals, and perhaps surpasses, the desire for their help,
Cp,, though his statements are somewhat exaggerated, I her ing, Vorgc-
schicJite der Indoeiirop'aer, 60 (1894).
Page 24, 1. 23. " An old theological poet :" Hesiod, Theogony, 126 ff.
Page 24, 1. 31. " By Homer : " Iliad, xxi. 356^
Page 26, 1. 22. Hymn to Aphrodite, 258^.
Page 26, L 32. Iliad, xx. 8, 9.
Page 27. Cp. Welckcr, Gricchische Gotterlchrc, i. 38^
Page 28, 1, 5. Cp. especially Schuchhardt, Schltemantfs Excava-
tions, chiefly the concluding chapter.
Page 29, 1. 1 6. In the Odyssey the ethical point of view comes far
more strongly to the fore. Its conclusion, in particular, in the slaughter
of the suitors, appears as a divine chastisement (cp. especially xxii. 413
j^). On top of it, however, there ensue traces of the wildest barbarism
(ibid., 475 J^). After the surprisingly fine ethical passage (xix. 109^),
it is not a little disconcerting to find theft and perjury enumerated
among the gifts which Hermes bestowed on his favourite Autolycus
{ibid., 395). In the Iliad, Zeus appears as the avenger of wrong
(xvL 385^) ; penalties in tlie lower world for perjury (iii. 278).
Page 20, 1. 8. Cp. Diels, Sibyllinische B tatter, 78, n. r.
Page 30, L 26. "Human sacrifices :" cp. Preller, GriecMsche My-
thologie, ed. 2, L 99, 201^, 542 ; ii. 310.
For the obsequies of Patroclus, cp. Iliad, xxiii. 22 f., 174-177,
Here ample use has been made of Erwin Rohde's pioneer-work,
Psyche : Scdenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechcn, especially
L 100^ ed. 2.
Page 31, § 7* On the funeral sacrifices of the Scythians, cp*
Herodotus, iv. 71, 72.
Page 32, 11. 10 'if. Cp. Schuchhardt, op. tit*, 147^, 159, 205, 287, 295.
Page 32, 11. ziffi Cp. Rohde, op. tit., i. 251, n. r ; also the author's
Beitr'age zur Kritik und Erklarung griedmchtr Schriftsteller, ii. 35.
Page 33, 1. 27, These views on the influence of the custom of burning
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 525
were expressed by Rohde, op. tit., i. 27, But we find "both kinds of
burial . . . practised side by side in Vedic antiquity " (Zimmer,
Altindisches Leben, 401 £. ; cp. also 41$)? without detriment to
ancestor-worship.
Pages 33, 34. Cp., e.g.) Iliad, i. 396^, with Hesiod, Theogony>
148^-— the one, the battle of the Titans ; the other, virtually a palace-
revolution of the Olympians.
Page 35, 1. 4. On the sun and moon, cp. Tylor, op. <://., i. 260-262.
On the solar character of Samson, cp. Gohlziher, Der Mythos bd
dot Hcbracrn, 128. The story is one of the most transparent of
all nature-myths.
For what follows, cp. A. Kaegi, Der Rigvcda, ed. 2, 59/.
Cp. Tylor, op. tit,, ii. 189 ; also ^Eschylus, Prometheus^ 369 ft
(Kirohhoff).
Page 36, 1. 4. The poetical myth of the Maoris was recorded by
Sir George (key about the middle of the nineteenth century (cp* Tylor,
op. cit., i. 290^.). Another version, in substantial agreement with the
first, is given by Bastian, A Her lei aus I'otts- tmd Menschenkunde, i.
314. There, after one of the children of Rangi and Papa "has seen the
sunlight shine forth from under the armpit of Rangi," /.*?., when the
yearning for the light hitherto unknown to them has been once awa-
kened, they all cry out together, " We will kill our father, because he
imprisoned us in darkness." But they finally follow the advice of on<!
who proposes not to kill their father, but to hoist him aloft* For the
parallel Chinese legend, cp. Tylor, op. «"/., i. 294. The Phoenician
legend is hinted at by Euscbius, Prepf*. Kvtwg.> i. ro, following Philo
of Byblos and his authority, Sanchunmthon. Note particularly the
words, && Kal SmfTrf/vcu AXA-^Awz', and <> S£ oft/mv^f i7ro;t«/>»5«ras avrqs KTC.
Page 36, L 19. Hesiod, Tfaogtwy> 154 /A
Page 37,1. 16* "Chcrchcz la fcinnie :" those words arc put by
Alexandra Oum,-xs,/^;r,Xn the mouth of an experienced chief of police
in /.*v M&Jncans <fa JPnnjf^ ii. 16.
For what follows, cp. Hesiod, TJict\<rony> 570^ » llfwk$ and Days >
yojf. On the myth of Pandora, cp., too, JJuttniann, Myt/wtogust i.
4%Jf'i w^° correctly compared it with the legend of Kve, but wrongly
identified the two.
Page 38, 1. 31. Homer and Hesiod are coupled in this sense by
Herodotus, ii* 53.
Page 39, 1. 34- Cp. Kaegi, op. cit., 1 17.
In Homer, too (//to/, xiv. 259^)> Night is introduced as an exalted
goddess whom Zeus himself regards with reverential awe. In the
cosmogony of the Maoris the "primeval mother Night'7 heads the
pedigree of all Doings. After her come Morning:, Day, Empty Space,
etc, (cp. Bastian, <//. *#., 307),
Page 40,1. ii. "Eros;" on the Love-god in Hcsiod, cp. Sehoe-
nmnn, OpusM/a Academica^ ii, 64-67.
526 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 41, 11. 22, 23. On Apsu and Tiamat, cp. Sayce, Records of the
Past, 2nd Series, i. 122^ ; Lenormant-Babelon, Histoire andenne dc
rOrienf,ed. 9, v. 230^; Halevy, Melanges Graux, 58-60; Jensen,
Kosmologie der Babylonier, 300. Fritz Hommel renders Apsti by
"heaven's-ocean" and fnummu-t? amafby " chaos," z".<?. "sea-bottom "
(Deutsche Rundschau, July, 1891, pp. no, in). On the chaos of the
Scandinavians, cp. James Darrnesteter, Essais Orientaux, 177 jf.
Analogous to chaos is the aboriginal, immense, and desert sea in the
cosmogony of the Chippeway Indians (cp. Fritz Schultze, Der Fcti-
sckismuS) 209). There is an old Indian parallel in the Rig- Veda, x.
129, 1-4 (F. Max Muller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, 1859,
p. 564) :—
"Nor aught nor naught existed ; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all ? What sheltered ? What concealed ?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss ? "
[The translator is indebted for the use of this version to the courtesy
of Mrs. Max Muller.]
Page 42, Li. If Schoemann, op. tit., infers from the idea of
gaping, contained in the Greek " chaos " (cp. xa^w and x^Ma), that
this chaos was conceived as limited, he attributes, in our opinion, far
more precise ideas to those primitive thinkers than it is right to expect
of them/; (1L 19^) : Cp. Hesiod, Thcogony^ 224^". and 211^ For a
correct judgment on the " progeny of night "-—apart from what he says
about the " compiler," who may well have been Hesiod himself— see
O. Gruppe, Die griechischen Kulte imd Mythen, i. 571. Much more
life-like than these shadows of Hesiod are those figures in Homer
which, like "ATT? (" Infatuation") and the Air at (" Prayers "), may, rather
than any others perhaps, be called allegorical (cp, especially Iliad^
xix. 91 ff., and ix. 502^).
BOOK L— CHAPTER L
Page 43, Some questions of more general import may here be
alluded to. We consider the limits between philosophy and science
as fluctuating, and all attempts at sharply defining the scope of philo-
sophy seem to us equally unsuccessful. The usual definitions arc
either too wide or too narrow. They apply, in fact, either to a portion
only of the subject, e.g. Hcrbart's Elaboration of Conceptions, or they
are not restricted to philosophy alone. For if one speaks of " the
science of principles," or of "the investigation of the essence of things
and the universal laws of all processes," there is no apparent reason
why the fundamental truths of physics and chemistry should lie out-
side the bounds of such definitions. There surely is a groat difference
between questions of principle and questions of detail in scientific
matters. Yet the claim to detach the former from the complex of the
special sciences, and hand them over to an independent branch of
NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
knowledge, can be raised and approved only by him who believes that
there arc other means of knowledge available for solving questions of
principle than for solving questions of detail. Every science contains
its own philosophy. The philosophy of language, for example, forms
but the topmost storey in the science of language, and is not a kind of
separate and distinct edifice. Any one applying the terms "philo-
sophy of nature," " philosophy of language" to aught save the highest
generalizations of the respective sciences would nowadays hardly be
taken in earnest by the devotees of those sciences. Clearness here is
only obtained by viewing the subject historically. Philosophy from
the first was " universal science," considered, as the ancients did con-
sider it, as a power guiding and determining human conduct. In
proportion as the separate branches of knowledge increase in size,
especially when they are able to occupy the entire life of an inquirer,
they crystallize out of the matrix, so to speak, and become special
branches of knowledge. It might seem not unlikely that the fate of
the old " universal science " is to suffer, in the course of time, entire
disruption into special sciences. Yet this would be asserting too
much, for two things will for ever remain : (i) the elements of know-
ledge common to all studies, z>. the theory of cognition and the theory
of methods, in the widest sense ; and (3) the occasional, though rare,
attempts of superior minds to gather the highest results of many and,
if possible, of all the branches of knowledge — the peaks of all cognition,
so to say — and form them into a homogeneous unity whereon to found
a view of life and of the world. The nearest approach to this our con-
ception will be found in Wundt's introduction to his System dcr Philo-
sophic (Leipsic, 1889). In the present work the treatment of the subject
is restricted within the boundaries prescribed and imposed by the
limits of space, as well as of the knowledge possessed by the author,
and to be presumed in his readers.
We shall not discuss at length the chronological division of our
subject. The different schools and groups of schools will appear in
turn upon our field of vision without requiring special introductions**
The most appropriate division of the whole of ancient civilization
iicems to be that proposed by Paul Tannery, Pour PHistoirc dc la
Science Ilclftns (Paris, 1887), pp. 1*9. H e would divide the time
between 600 tt.c. and 600 A.D. into four periods of about 300 years
each, which may shortly be styled the Hellenic, Hellenistic, Gnvco-
Roinati, and Karly Byzantine periods. The first extends from the
beginnings of prose-writing to the age of Alexander the Great, the
second reaches to that of Augustus, the third to Constantino, and
the fourth to Justinian, or, as Tannery prefers, to Hcraclius. The chief
recommendation of this division is that the four epochs tally with real
turning-points in the history of civilization. Its drawback is that the
four periods are of such very unequal value — at least, as fur ns concerns
the historical matter here treated* The contents of the first period
528 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
alone will, according to the plan of the present work, occupy about two-
thirds of our space, while the second and third periods, with only a few
glimpses of the fourth, must be compressed within the remaining
third. Another point of view, not unworthy of consideration, was
indicated by Laertius Diogenes (iii. 56, modified by i. 18). The
gradual unfolding of philosophy is compared to that of tragedy, which
employed first one, then two, and finally three actors. Thus, to
physics, which originally stood alone, dialectic was added by Zeno of
Elea, and, finally, ethics by Socrates. This comparison, which for its
ingenuity deserves to be quoted, is neither perfectly apt in itself, nor,
for obvious reasons, available as a principle of demarcation. The
mighty figure of Socrates may, indeed, be taken to mark the division
between two main epochs, for after his entrance on the scene philo-
sophy moved in a different, though not entirely new, path. The pre-
dominant place of nature-philosophy was henceforth usurped by
ethics.
Here, also, we may touch on the question of the aims which" the
study of the history of Greek philosophy is meant to serve. They arc
the aims of all historical investigation in general, modified by the
peculiar nature of this particular branch of knowledge. Historical
interest flows from three main sources : a simple curiosity about the
past, especially about all its greatness and glory ; a desire to utilize
the lessons taught by this knowledge ; and, lastly, the purely scientific
and, as it were, disinterested craving after knowledge, which, in
matters of history, is directed to an understanding of the laws of
historical development. In our particular case, something- might be
said on the first and third of these motives ; but on the second there
is much more to say. Considering the immense progress which
science has made in the course of these many centuries, we may well
feel doubts as to the usefulness of occupying ourselves with the
thoughts and doctrines of such distant ages. To allay these doubts, it
may be remarked that progress has been by no means uniform in the
various branches of knowledge, and that it has been much slower in
moral than in natural science. Even in natural science there are
many fundamental questions awaiting solution ; the most universal
and most difficult problems have, indeed, often changed their outward
guise, but have intrinsically remained the same. Still more important
is it to remind the reader of an indirect kind of use or application of
the highest significance in our instance. Almost the whole of our
intellectual culture is of Greek origin* A thorough comprehension of
those origins is indispensable if we are to escape from the overpower-
ing despotism of their influence. It is not only highly undesirable,
but in this case simply impossible, to ignore the past. Even those
who have no acquaintance with the doctrines and writings of the great
masters of antiquity, and who have not even heard the names of Plato
and Aristotle, are, nevertheless, under the spell of their authority. It
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 529
is not only that their influence is often transmitted to us by their fol-
lowers, ancient and modern : our whole mode of thinking, the cate-
gories in which our ideas move, the forms of language in which we
express them, and which therefore govern our ideas, — all these are to
no small extent the products of art, in large measure the art of the
great thinkers of antiquity. If we arc not to mistake a result of
development for something aboriginal, and a product of art for a
natural product, we must try thoroughly to understand this process of
evolution. Auguste Comte said, and with perfect justice, thai, where
practice is concerned, " on ne ddtruit que cc qu'on remplace : " so,
with respect to theory, we may say, " we refute only what we
account for."
A few words as to the chief sources of our knowledge may likewise
be inserted at this point. But very little of the works of the great
original thinkers of antiquity has come down to us. Of works pre-
served to us in their full entirety, Plato alone is complete. We pos-
sess about half of the works of Aristotle— his didactic writings, that is
to say, but not his popular books, which were written exclusively, or
almost exclusively, in the form of dialogues. Separated from these by
a considerable difference of bulk, we have in their integrity a few of
the smaller pieces of Epicurus, and, finally, the Enneades of the Neo-
Platonist Plotinus. All the rest are either fragments or the work of
disciples, continuators, collectors, commentators, and reporters. The
whole prc-Socratic philosophy is one vast field of ruins. The Socratics>
of whom only Plato and Xenophon remain, in spite of the many
branches of this school, the Middle and New Academy, the Noo-
1'ythagorcans, the Old and Middle Stoics, and, with the one exception
of the didactic poem of Lucretius, the Epicureans, — all these have left
mere ruined heaps. In the case of the Epicureans our fragments arc
very numerous and ample, thanks to the protecting ashes of Ilercula-
ncum. Of all the schools, the New Stoics have been best treated by
fate. Seneca, Epictclus, and Marcus Aurelius still speak to us as
they spoke to their contemporaries. The doctrines and reasonings of
the Sceptics have also, to a large extent, been preserved to us in the
comprehensive extract made by Sextus (about 200 A.D.), and the
religious philosophy of the Alexandrian Jews in the original works
of I'hilo* Further details will be given later on. For the present,
enough has been said to show the reader the importance of indirect, as
an adjunct to direct, tradition.
Two chief branches of tradition must be distinguished : the cloxo-
gmphic and the biographic, i.& writings which treat respectively of
the doctrines and of the lives of philosophers. The former arc now,
for the most part, collected in the justly esteemed work of Hermann
Diets {DosQgr&phi Grtra, Berlin, 1879)* The chief source and root
of all the latter doxographers — at least, so far as concerns physics in
the ancient and comprehensive sense — has been shown to he an
l. L 2 M
530 NOTES AND ADDITIONS,
historical work by Theophrastus (QvcriKal 5<f£«t). This has been utilized
by numerous authors, sometimes directly, at other times indirectly ;
amongst others, by Cicero and by ALtius (between 100 and 130 A.D.),
whose work is presented to us in several versions. One such version is
the Placita Philosophorum, falsely attributed to Plutarch ; another,
certain pieces in the Florilegium of Johannes Stobaeus (about 500
A.D.) ; and a third version is the work of Theodoret, an ecclesiastical
historian in the middle of the fifth century. Similarly, though indi-
rectly, based on the doxography of Theophrastus, is another and very
important authority — the Refutation of All Heresies^ by the presbyter
Hippolytus, in the beginning of the third century. Its first book was
long known under the title of Philosophumcna, and was ascribed to
Origen, the great Father of the Church. But in 1842 books iv,-x. were
discovered, and the authorship of Hippolytus immediately ascertained.
The other traditions, chiefly of a biographical character, have been
mostly collected in that veritable reservoir of material, the work of
Laertius Diogenes (not Diogenes of Laerte). He was himself a writer
of very low standing, and his work is characterized by the grossest
thoughtlessness. Yet his work, composed, or rather concocted, pro-
bably in the first third of the third century A.D., has an immense
value for us. His principal immediate authority was, as Dicls and
Usener discovered, the work of an author of the time of Nero, Nicias
of Nicsea, in Bithynia. This writer selected his materials from an
extremely copious literature, the ultimate sources of which were the
biographies of philosophers, first put in the form of " Diadochies," i.e.
w successions," or histories of the different schools, by Sotion of Alex-
andria, about the end of the third century r>.c. Two samples of this
kind of historical writing, from the pen of Philodcmus the Epicurean,
have been recovered in recent times* The compilation of Lacrtius
Diogenes contains the residue of the whole literature so richly
developed during the four centuries that lie between him and
Sotion.
In each separate section we shall enumerate the chief authorities
and the more important collections of fragments that refer to our
subject, but modern monographs and reports will be quoted only to
the extent mentioned in the author's Preface. The most numerous
literary references are to be found in Ueberweg-HeinEe," Grundriss
der Gcschichte der Philosophic des Alterthums y the most compre-
hensive and profound discussions of all the problems connected with
the subject in Eduard Zeller's masterly work, Die Pltilosophic der
Griechens and a compendious rlsumt of the whole of our great
theme in Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophic. Of older but not
antiquated works on the subject, mention must first be given to
Christian Aug. Brandis, Handbuch^ der Geschichte der griechisch*
romischen Philosophic. A complete collection of philosophical frag-
ments, or even a tolerably good treatment of a considerable part of
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 53!
them, is still lacking-. The want is partly supplied by Ritter and
Preller, Historia Philosophic Gmct?, ed. 7, by Schultcss and
Wellmann, 1888.
Pa^e 48, 1. 9. " Elements of geometry." Our knowledge of Egyptian
geometry has lately been increased by the Rhind papyrus, A. Eiscn-
lohr's Ein mathcmatischcs Handlntch der altm Agypter^ Leipsic, 1877.
Cp. also Bretschneider, Die Geometric unddie Geometer vor Euklidcs^
16-20.
Cp. Herodotus, ii. 109 ; Aristotle, Metaphysica, L I ; Plato,
PhtPdntS) 274 C. Herodotus, loc. c/f., is likewise our authority for
the fact that the Greeks borrowed the elementary astronomical instru-
ments from the Babylonians. On the prediction of eclipses by the
^Babylonians, cp. Lcnormant, La Divination chez les Chaldcen^ i. 46,
antl ]. Menant, La Bibliotheqitc de Ninfate, 93^
Page 45, 1. 17, Iliad^ vii. 99, &AV fye'ts (J&v TTWTCS CfSwp xal yeuy,
7tW<r0t; and Iliad, xiv. 211, 246. Cp. also Gen. i. 3, 19.
Page 46, 1. 24. Justus Licbig wrote to Fricdrich Wohler, April 15,
1857, " It may be foolish even to speak of such a thing, but we must
never lose sight of the fact that the metals count as simple substances,
not because we know that they are so, but because we do not know
that they arc not" (ftriefwechsel, ii. 43). Very similarly Herbert
Spencer said, in a paper first published in 1865, "What chemists,
for convenience, call elementary substances, arc merely substances
which they have thus far failed to decompose ; but - . . they do not
dare to say that they are absolutely undecomposable M (£ssays, iii. 234).
Cp. L. "Bnrth in the Almanack derKaise.rlichenAkadcmiederWissen-
schaftai (Vienna, 1880), p. 224 : " In fact, there is hardly any chemist
who now deems certain, absolutely and beyond dispute, the existence
of the seventy-odd elements as such ; every expert . „ . will have
admitted the probability, nay, the necessity, of their reduction to
smaller numbers." Lothar Meyer, Die modcrncn Theories dcr Chcwie^
ed. 4, p, 133, says, " It is quite conceivable that the atoms of all
or of many elements arc composed for the most part of smaller
elementary particles of a single original material, perhaps hydro-*
tfcn. . * ." A sketch of the history of this hypothesis, which was
originated by Prout in 1815, will be found in the same place.
Pages 46, 47, § 2. Tluilcs. Chief sources : Laert Diog., i. ch. t,
and Doxographi tirtvti, passim. Herodotus, i. 170, calls him "a Phaml-
dzm by origin," <& wtttaOw y*Vo? ttvrw tfo/w/coy. The objections lately
brought forward against this, and summed up by K. Meyer (/V///«>/<>-
gwift new series, ii. 268^), may be reduced to one, viz. that Herodotus
may fiombty here have made a mistake. But as we are totally in
ignorance of the foundations of his assumption, and as it is & priori
most unlikely that the Greeks would choose to represent their great
men as foreigners, we think the above-named possibility extremely
remote from any degree of certainty. The mother had a Greek name.
532 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Cleobuline ; the father's name, Examycs, is Carian (cp. Dicls, Arckiv
fiir Geschichtc der Philosophic, ii. 169).
For what follows the chief references are : Plato, Thcatetus, 174 A ;
Herodotus, i. 170 ; (the story in Herodotus, i. 75, very doubtful). Eudc-
mus, the fellow-disciple of Theophrastus, in his highly important history
of geometry, tells of Thales in Egypt (cp. L. Spengel, Eudvni RJwdii
qua supersunt, 113^). Thales3 attempts to explain the rise of the
Nile (cp. Laert. Diog., i. 37 ; Diodorus, i. 38, etc.). On Thales as a
geometrician, cp. Allman, Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid,
iff.
Page 47, 11. 22,^ Lydia's position as an outpost of Assyrio-Baby-
lonian culture is vouched for by the pedigree of its dynasty, traced
back to its god Bel ; many legendary features in its history ; and,
above all, the Assyrian protectorate over the kings Gyges and Ardys,
established by cuneiform inscriptions. No doubt the inquisitive
Jonians who visited the gorgeous capital, Sardis, situated in their
immediate neighbourhood (cp. Herodotus, i. 29), there first became
acquainted with the elements of Babylonian science (cp. Georges
Radet, La Lydie et le Monde Grec au temps des MermnadeS) Paris,
1893). The eclipse of the sun predicted by Thales is No. 1489 in Th.
von Oppolzer's " Canon of Eclipses," Denkschr. der math^naturwiss.
Klasse derkais. Akademie d. Wisscnscli* (Vienna), vol. 52. On Thales
as an astronomer, cp. Sartorhis, Die Entwicklung der Astronomic bci
den Griechen, Halle, 1883.
On the shape of the earth : cp. Aristotle, Be CW0, ii. 13 ;
Doxogr a/phi Graci, 380, 21.
Meteorological forecasts, like that mentioned by Aristotle,
Politics^ i. ii, are frequent "dans le grand tniittf astrologique,"
according to Lenormant, op, at*
Page 48, 1. i. Even in antiquity the writings ascribed to Thales
were declared spurious, according to Laert. Diog., i. 23.
Page 48, 1. 2. On Thales' doctrine of primary matter, cp. Aristotle,
Metaphysics, i. 3. Aristotle, De Anima^ i. 2, accepts the traditional
account (*{ fa cwrojun7iuov€t5ov<n) which made Thales declare the magnet
to possess a soul. If this report is well founded, it may be said that
we have here a survival of primeval fetishistic views. The statement
which Aristotle (ibid^ i. 5) ascribes to Thales (" AU is full of gods ") is
ascribed to Pythagoras by another authority, in the words, "The air
is full of souls, and those are called heroes and demons " (Laert. Diog.,
viii. 32). This again is a specimen of the simplest primitive concep-
tion of nature. In our own day it is found among1 the Finns, the
Khonds of India, and the North American Algonquin Indians (cp.
Tylor, Primitive Cultitre^ ii. 169-172, i87/. May \ve conjecture that
Thales was here influenced by Babylonian, i.q* by Accadian,
religious ideas? In them were included numberless spirits whose
affinity to those recognized by the Finns has been traced tentatively
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 533
by Lenormant, La Magic dies Us Chald&ns (cp. his index, s&.
" Esprits ").
The picture which Thales formed of the world — viz. the earth
floating like a flat piece of wood on the water, and the universe
filled with his primary matter, and therefore virtually a liquid mass
— corresponds nearly to the Egyptian idea of the primeval water
Nun, and its division into two separate masses (cp. Tannery, Pour
Vhistoire de la Science Hellene^ 70^). This assumption of an upper
and lower ocean is also old Babylonian : cp* Fritz Hommel, Dcr
babylomschs Urspruug dcr agyjbtischcn A^/tar (Munich, 1892), p. 8;
cp, also Gen. i. 7. We are quite in the dark as to the agreement
between the fundamental doctrine of Thales and that of the half-
Jewish sect of the Sampseans (cp. Hilgenfelcl, Judcntum undjudcn-
christcntitm, 98) ; his authority is Ephan. hacres., xix. i ; cp, also
Plutarch on the Syrians, Quast, Coiwiv., viii. 8, 4 (891, if., Dubncr).
The recent increasing tendency to regard Thales merely as the
middleman in the importation of foreign science is refuted by the way
in which our best authority, Eudcmus, speaks of Thales' geometrical
achievements and their relation to Egyptian mathematics.
I 'age 48, § 3. Anaximander : chief sources, Lacrt, Diog., ii. ch. r
(very scanty), and Doxog}faphi Grceci. One little sentence is preserved
by Simplicius, In AristoUL Phys., xxiv. 13, Dicls. (This diligent
commentator on Aristotle's works lived in the sixth century A.n., and
has preserved for us more fragments of the pre-Socnitic philosophical
literature than any other writer.) Besides this, a few words are quoted
by Aristotle, Phys^ iii. 4.
Page 49, I. 30. Egyptian maps: two are preserved, one of a
mining district, the other of a region that cannot be identified, cf.
Krman, Lift: in Ancient Egyfif, 466 (translated by H. M. Tirard,
London, 1894)*
Page 50, 1. ro. The borrowing of the gnomon from ttabylon is
attested, as we have already mentioned, by Herodotus, ii, 109. Lacrt.
Diog, (/(>& <?//.) knew that a gnomon had been set up at Sparta by
Anaximander, while Pliny (///>/. Nat,, 11.76, 187) names Anaximenes.
For what follows, cf. Brctschncidcr, op. <://., 62.
Page Jo, 1. IJ. " Accounts of the sue of the heavenly bodies:" cf.
Ihwogr., 68* On the shape of the earth, cf. Ilippolytus, i. 6 ; Doxtigr^
559. 22. On Us floating state, cf. Aristotle, Dt Cu'lo} ii. 13.
Page 51, L 15. " It has been said ;M the reference is to J, S, Mill,
vV, vol. ii., bk. v. ch. iii. § 5,
Page 52, 1. i. Anaximander called his primary matter "th«
Infinite " (r& fau$w\ and declared it to be devoid of any material
differentiation ; hence Thoophrastus calls it an undefined matter
v ^0; cf. D&wgrn 476*^18, and 479. 13,
Page 52, 1. 22* "Differentiations" of primary matter: according
to Theophrastus (Ztov#r,, 133-4)*
534 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 52, 1. 33. " As ' the tree by its bark : ' " Pseudo-Plutarch in
Eusebius, Pr&p. Evang., i. 8 (Doxogr., 579. 15). For the facts
adduced in the following, see Doxogr., 133-4, 342, 345? 381, 494-5-
Page 53, 1. 8. Retreat of the sea: cf. Philo, De jEfcrnitate
Mundiy c. 23-4 (according to Theophrastus).
Page 53, ad fin. Cf. Teichmiiller, Studien zur Geschlchte der
Begriffe, pp. 14-16 ; and Neue Stiidien sur Geschichte der Begrijfe, ii.
276 sqq.i also Doxogr., 25.
Page 54, 11. 9 ff. The problem of organic creation, cf. Doxogr.
135, 430, and 579 ; also Plutarch, Qucest. Convhf^ viii. 8. 4, with the
excellent emendation by Dohner, yaXeot instead of va\a.ioC. My
colleague Eduard Suess has kindly called my attention to the two
following points : (i) The opinion of Anaximander — later on typically
expressed in the phrase owns i/ivum ex aqua — is more and more
considered by palaeontologists as ascertained truth. (Still, the theory
of the " pelagic origin " of all organic life is emphatically contested by
Simroth, Die EntsteJmng der Landtiere, Leipsic, 1892. Yet even
this authority conies near to Anaximander's hypothesis [sea-slime],
p. 67 : " In the coastal zone the three great promoters of life meet
together — water, air, and the solid, with its profusion of nourishment.")
(2) Anaximander here may very likely have been influenced by the
observation that frogs originally live in water as tadpoles (provided
with gills), and only gradually (by the formation of lungs) become
fitted for existence on land.
Page 55, 1. 4. On the Babylonian fish-man, Cannes, cf. George
Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis, 39_#
Page 55> 1- 2& " Gods of an inferior order : w cf. Cicero, De Natura
Deorum, i. 10, 25 (where, by-the-by, what he says about Thales
straightly contradicts Aristotle's description of the progressive develop-
ment of philosophy, in Metaphys.^ i. 1-5, and is therefore wholly
untrustworthy); also Doxogr^ 302, 579, and Simplic. Phys.9 iiax. 5
sqq^ Diels.
Perishable gods as well as perishable worlds are also recognized by
Buddhism (Buddhistischer KatecJiismm^ Brunswick, 1888, pp. 27, 54).
Page 56, § 4. Anaximenes: Chief sources, jDiog., ii. ch. 2; Thco-
phrast, ajfwd Simplic., ^^.,24, 26, Diels ;' Hippolytus, i. 7 (Doxogrt<i
476 and 560).
Page 56, 11. 8, 9. These words seem to be Anaximenes' own. Cf.
Philodemus, On Piety (edited by the author of the present work), p. 65^
completed by Diels, Doxogr., 532, and Hippolytus, foe. tit. (also
Doxogr., 560. 14).
Page 56, 1. 26. Comparison of the breath of life with the air :
Doxogr., 278.
Page 57, init. Nothing is more curious than to see how, as late as
the eighteenth century, metaphysical arguments were produced against
what Anaximenes had recognized with the penetration of a man of
NOTMS AND ADDITIONS. 535
genius. In the year 1731 the chemist G. E. Stahl wrote in his
Experimenta^ Observations ct Animadver stones, § 47, as follows,
" Elastica ilia expansio aeri ita per esscntlam propria est^ ut nunquam
ad vere densam aggregationem nee ipse in se nee in ullis mixlionibus
coivisse sentiri possit." Four years earlier the plant-physiologist
Stephen Hales, in his Vegetable Staticks, had taught, again precisely as
Anaximenes, "qucl'air de Patmosphere . . . cntre dans la composition
clc la plus grande partie des corps ; qu'il y existe sous forme solidc,
dtSpouille" de son dlasticitd ; . . . que cet air cst, en quelque fa^on, le
lien universel de la nature. . . . Aussi M. Hales finit-il par comparer
1'air a un veritable ProtcSe," etc. (CEiwrcs de Lavoisier, i. 459-460).
Page 57, 1. 30. "Miserably misunderstood experiments:" cf.
Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, 7, 3 (1160. 12 Diibner).
Page 58, ad Jin. Cf. Hippolytus, loc. tit.) and Aristotle, Meteor^ ii.
I (354 A 28). Remarkable concordance with Egyptian conceptions :
" Elle [la barque solaire] continuait sa course, en dehors du cicl dans
tin plan parallcle & celui de la tcrre, ot courait wrs le Nord, cach<5e
aux ycux des vivants far las vwnta%ms^ qui servaicnt d'appui au
firmament " (Maspero, Bibliothcque Egypt ologique, ii. 335). For the
meteorological attempts of Anaximenes, cf. Doxogr.^ 136-7, accord-
ing to Theophrastus.
Page 59, § ^fai. Cf. Augustine, De Civitate Det\ viii. 2.
Page 59, § 5. Hcraclitus. Chief authorities : Laert Diog., ix. ch. T,
and more than 100 fragments, now collected, with all the literary
mute-rial connected with them, in Heracliti Ephesli ReUqnitf recens.
I. l»y wilier, Oxford, 1887. The so-called IJeraclitean letters, dating
from various epochs and composed by various writers, now also
printed in Bywalcr's book, may be regarded as an authority of
secondary importance.
Page 60, 1. 3. Since his "floruit" is placed at the time of the
Ionian revolt, we may conjecture that his attitude to that event
(perhaps as an antagonist of I Iccatiuus, whom he upbraids) was the
occasion of this reference. The man who, according to tradition,
corresponded with King Darius (cf, letters 1-3) may have clearly
recognized the hopelessness of such an uprising, and, moreover, have
doomed the aristocratic government, which he preferred, bettor
guaranteed under a Persian protectorate. In truth the national
liberation in 479 did lead to democracy, the existence of which is
presupposed in the fragments of his work.
Page 60, 1. 23. " His native city : " the author speaks of Kphesus
as an eye witness* Cf. Fragm., no., 126, 130, 127, 125, 16.
Pages 60, 6 1. Cf. Fragm,, 112, 18, m, 1x3.
Page 61, 1. 22. "The mob :M Timon the Phliasian, in his satiric
poem on the philosophers, calls him dxx^ofltopoj (Silfagraphorum
(.trtfcorwn AWitfttttet ed. C Wachsmuth, p. 135, Frugm, 29)* On
what follows, cf. Fragm,, 115, 51, u, 12, in.
NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 62. Cf. Fragm. 114, and Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxiv. 5, 21.
Page 63, 1, 6. Theophrastus : apud Laert. Diog., ix. 6.
Page 63, ]. 8. Aristotle : Rhetor^ iii. 5.
Page 63, 1. 10. Commentators : among them Cleanthes, the
second head of the Stoa (Laert. Diog., vii. 174). The division into
three sections (1. 15) may perhaps be due to the Alexandrine
librarians.
Page 64. Cf. Fragm. 20, 69, 21, 65, 79.
Page 65, ad fin. Cf. Fragm. 32 and By water's remarks on it.
The theory of the conflagration of the world has been denounced as a
Stoic accretion by several modern writers, e.g., by Schleiennacher, who
first collected and edited the fragments (P kilos. Werke, ii. 1-146), by
Lassalle (Die. Philosophic Herakleitos des Dimklen^ 1858), and lastly
by Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy ', London, 1892). Against them,
however, cf., above all, the decisive Fragm. 26,
Pages 66, 67. Cf. Fragm. 41 and 8r.
Page 67, 1. 16. Aristotle, Phys., viii. 3. And cf. Lewes, Problems
of Life and Mind) ii. 299. Likewise Grove, On the Correlation of Physi-
cal Forces^ p. 22, " though as a fact we cannot predicate of any portion
of matter tlaat it is absolutely at rest." Also Herbert Spencer, The
Study of Sociology ', ed. 4, p. 1 18 : " but now when we know that all stars
are in motion, and that there are no such things as everlasting hills —
now when we find all things throughout the Universe to be in a
ceaseless flux? etc.
Page 67, 1. 21. Cf. Schuster, Heraklit von Ephesits, in the Acta
Societ, PhiloL Lips^ iii. 211.
Page 68, 1. 25. Cf. Fragm. 52.
Page 68, 1. 33. Cf. Fragm. 57. In what follows we have made
ample use of our own treatise, Zu Heraklits Lehre und den Ulwresten
seines Werkes (Wiener Sitzungsber., 1886, 997^).
Page 71. " Coexistence of contraries :" cf. Fragm. 45, 47, 104,
Page 7t, 1. 13. Cf. Fragm. 43, Numerous illustrations of what
follows in Gomperz, op. cih, 1039-40.
Page 72, 1. i, Cf. Fragm. 44, 84.
Page 72, 1. 17. " A lucky discovery "—namely, that of the portions
of the work of Hippolytus which were lost till 1842.
Page 72, L 31. Cf., besides Fragm. 38, the highly important
Fragm. 47, and thereon our own treatise, p. 1041, In this case I
cannot agree with E. Rohde (Psyche, ed. 2, ii. 150).
Page 73, 1. 14. Callinus, Fragm. i in Bergk, Poehe Lyrid Gneet\ ed.
4,11. 3. (11. 16-18). Cf. Fragm. 101, 102.
Pages 73, 74. " Dicta : J> Fragm, 29, 91, 2.
Page 75. *• i°- Schuster (op. at., 41, n. i) compares him with
Francis Bacon. For what follows, cf. Fragm, 73 and 74.
Page 76, L 6. Aristotle: cf. Metaphys., i, 6: As <r<3y «t<r$yr$v *e)
J abrwv oJ/c otfcrijy,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 537
Pages 76, 77. Cf. especially Fragm, 24, 36 ; and Laert. Diog., ix.
S. Reference should further be made to Laert. Diog,, ix. 7 ; to Fragm.
103, 19, 10 and 116, 7, 48, 118 ; also to 91, 100, no.
Page 77, 1. 32. Hegel: cf, Haym, Ilcgcl und seine Zeit, 357^". ;
also Hegel, GesammcUc Wcrke^ xiii. 328 and 334.
Page 78, 1. 4. Proudhon: on his intellectual affinity with
Ileraclitus, see Gomperz, op, £//., 1049-1055.
Page 79, Ch. I., ad fin. Just a word by way of justifying our
order of arrangement, by which we treat Heraclitus before Pythagoras
and Xenophanes, while admitting that he was influenced by both.
The links in the intellectual development of those centuries may be
compared to a row of parallel threads, running lengthwise, and
connected by a quantity of cross-threads. Two alternatives are
offered— either to pursue the principal threads (represented in our
case by the series of development : Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
Ileraclitus and Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, etc.), and to
mention the side influences by anticipation, or else constantly to
jump to and fro between one principal thread and others, thus
rendering the picture intolerably disturbing. Xenophanes and
Parmenides belong very closely together. Now, Heraclitus knew
Xenophnnes, and Parmenides, again, engaged in polemics with
Ileraclitus. So, to do full justice to all these relationships, one would
have to put Heraclitus after Xenophanes and before Parmcnides,
thus violently tearing asunder what is intimately bound together.
BOOK L— CHAPTER II.
Page Bo, 1. TO. " Expiation of murder, worship of souls, sacrifices to
the dead : >? cf. Lobcck, A^laophamus^ i. 300 ft ; and Grote, History
*yoVvw, i. 23 (10 vols. 1888), who, however, here overrates foreign
influences. Diels has shown (SihyUinische Blatter^ 42, 78, and else-
where) that the primeval in custom and belief was far more pro-
bably driven into the background by the civilization mirrored in
epic poetry. Cf., likewise, Rohcle's epoch-making exposition in
l\vcht\ e.g., i. i57j^C and 259 ff. (2nd ed.)- The growth of the
rttrilntthn-thwry out of what Tylor called the continuance-theory is
admirably described in Primitive Culture^ ii. 77 f^ and frequently
elsewhere.
Page 82, L x6, "Reward and punishment." The simplest form
of punishment is annihilation. The experts are at variance as to
whether, in the views of the Vedas, the wicked are considered
worthy of continued existence at all. Roth, the late eminent Sanskritist,
denied it, whereas Ximmer (AltinttiscJies £#twt, 416) affirms the thesis,
and supports his affirmation by arguments which can scarcely be called
decisive. For an epoch succeeding the Rig- Veda, there is, anyhow,
undoubted proof of the belief in a place of punishment and in infernal
tortures (7M/,, 420-1)*
538 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 84, § 2. The Orphic poems were last collected by Eugen
Abel (Orphzcs, Leipsic and Prague, 1885) ; previously by Gottfried
Hermann, Leipsic, 1805.
Page 84, 1. 24. "The most recent discoveries : * cf. Kaibel,
Inscriptiones Graca Sicilicz et Italia, Nos. 638-642. His omissions
may be supplemented by Comparetti, Not hie dcgl! scavi> 1880, p. 155 ;
and Journal of Hellenic Studies, iii. 1 14^ The tablets belong partly
to the fourth century for certain, partly perhaps to the beginning of
the third.
Page 84, 1. 29. "Reference in Proclus : " Fragm. 224, Abel:
<S7T7r<$T€ 5' foepcewos irpoKtiry <f>&os fotioto, which is almost identical with No.
642, I : aXXMrcLiji.tyvxti'ffpoMvyQoiosa.&toto. These and several other
coincidences have also been pointed out by O. Kern, A us dcr Anomia
(Berlin, 1890), p. 87.
Page 84, 1. 32. Phanes : cf. Diodorus, i. n, 3.
Page 85, L 10. "Theologians:" e.g. Aristotle, Me.taptty$t, xii. 6,
where they are opposed to the Physicists.
Page 85, 1. 35. Pherecydes of Syros. The fragments are now
collected and combined with allied remains in O. Kern, DC, Orfihei
Epintenidis Pherecydis theogonis quastioncs crftiae, ] Scrim, 1888. Sec
also Diels, in the Ardivufur Geschichte dcr Philas^ ii. 91, 93-4, 656-7.
Page 86. I am building here on Augustine, Confess/ones, iii. i r,
and on K. von Raumer's commentary on the passage. Others too, as
soon as their attention is directed to the point, will probably discern
that this Manichsean doctrine goes back to Pherecydes.
"Ogenos :" Hommel, Der babylomsche Ur sprung dcr iigyplischen
Kultur^ p. 9, derives the Greek 'a«eav<Js from the Sumcrian Uginna —
" circle," " totality." It would be more appropriate to derive from it
the enigmatic and quite unique Ogenos, of course on the supposition
(hereafter to be proved) that Pherecydes took account of foreign
traditions. Besides the resemblance of the names, the following
circumstance has to be considered. The vanquished in the battle of
the gods are hurled into Ogenos. Now, the chief of the tlefwiietl,
however, is the serpent-god Ophioneus, evidently a Chthonic or
terrestrial deity. The permanent home of him and his companions is
the nether-world, which, according to the Greek view, is in the depths of
the earth, and, according to the Babylonian (cf. Hommel, op. r/A, p, 8),
under the ocean. May not the Ophioneus of Phcrocydcs be identical
with the Babylonian serpent-like goddess of the Chaos? Cf, Jensen,
Kosmologie der Babylonier^ 302. Such a borrowing from the Ph< unician
mythology, so closely related to the Babylonian, was assumed by Philon
of Byblus at least (afud Euseb., Prop* Evatig*, i. 10, p, 41 as i, 93,
Gaisf.). It is no longer possible to follow Zeller (Wrilos. ii Gr^ edit. 5,
i. 86), in rejecting Philon's evidence as that of a " forger : w cf. G!
Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Stud, der alt Geschichti, 406, Leipsic,
1895, At this point it is especially note worthy that Halevy
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 539
Graux, 5$ ft) has proved the essential identity of the Phoenician cos-
mogony as described by Philon (or in his source Sanchuniathon) with
the Babylonian ; cf. also Renan in M&tn* de P Academic des Inscr.,
xxiii, 251.
Page 89, L 25. On the relation of Pherecydes to Anaximander, cf.
Diels, Archivfur Gescluchte der Philos^ i. 14-15.
Pages 90, 91. For the four versions of the Orphic theogony, cf.
now Kern, op. tit.
Page 92, 1L 2, 3. Kern, op. tit., especially, following the precedent
set by Lobeck in Aglaophamus, has established the much-disputed
high antiquity of the rhapsodist theogony, or at least of its essential
contents, on grounds that seem to me completely pertinent. Gruppe's
would-be proof that Plato was not acquainted with the rhapsodist the-
ogony (Jahrb'uchcr fur PhiloL, S-itppL xvii. 689 ft) I regard as wholly
unsuccessful, despite the remarkable fact that it won the assent of Rohde :
Psyche^ ii. 416 (cd. 2). Viewed in full light, however, the difference
between Rohde and myself shrinks to a minimum. For while Rohde
grants that " the agreement of the rhapsodies with old Orphic doctrine
and poetry is still " demonstrable at many points, I willingly concede
that the huge bulk of that work — twenty-four books — and the clear indi-
cations of an interweaving of various versions of the legends compel
us to assume that the rhapsodist theogony was somewhat considerably
removed from the starting-point of Orphic literature. We lack, at
present at least, the requisite means for converting this relative deter-
mination of age into an absolute one. This view is also held by
Diels, who thinks it " probable 7; that " the original form of the Orphic
rhapsodist theogony belongs to the sixth century," and adds that " the
Orphio eschatological mysticism" seems "a good deal older still"
(ArcJtiv9 ii. 91).
Of decisive importance for fixing the age of those Orphic poems
an which the god Phanes appears, is the occurrence of that name
on the above-mentioned tablets in Lower Italy. How improbable
the assertion of Zeller now sounds (Philos* d. Gr.9 edit. 5, i. 98) :
*' In Aristotle it is also unmistakable that in the Orphic theogony
which he used the figure of Phanes was still lacking," Indeed, the
passages adduced by Zeller (pp. 88 n. 5, 90 n. 3) to support his assertion,
were in themselves scarcely convincing. Because Aristotle {Metafhys*
xiv. 4) speaks of " old poets " who assume primeval deities " such as
Night and Heaven, or Chaos or Oceanus," therefore he must not have
known any account wherein Phanes plays a part. Yet in truth Phanes,
even according to the rhapsodist theogony, is not properly the primeval
Being, as Zeller himself acknowledges (p. 95). Rather, he is preceded
by Chronos (Time), who engenders ** Jfether and the dark unfathom-
able abyss, or Chaos," and out of both forms the world-egg, from which
Phanes issues. I cannot regard as well founded the conclusion drawn
by teller from this passage of the Metaphysics^ viz. " that these
540 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
words . . . presuppose a cosmology, in which Night, alone, or together
with other similarly primeval principles, occupied the first place." It is
otherwise in Mctaphys., xii. 6, where "Theologians'* are spoken of
"who make everything issue out of night" (oi&cNy/cT&y 7ww;/re$),
Nor can I follow Zeller in referring both these passages to one and the
same Orphic cosmogony, when the mere use of the word olw (as) in the
first of the passages seems to point to more than one. The plurals
("the old poets" and "the theologians") likewise suggest anything
rather than a homogeneous, uniform system. And the least acceptable
point in Zeller's treatment of this subject seems to me his assumption
that at about the third century one had begun to invest Stoic thought
with a completely new mythical garb. Risky as all such general state-
ments are, yet the fact that the power of myth-making was practically
extinct in the Hellenistic age may be boldly stated, and much more
confidently at least than that pantheistic myths in the sixth or seventh
century could not have been created, or produced by the transforma-
tion partly of older local, partly of non-Greek traditions.
Page 92, 11. 30, 31. The verses will be found in Abel, Qrphica^ 167.
Page 94, L i. The world-egg : in Persia and India, cf. Darmesteter,
Essais Orientanx, 169, 173, 176; in Phoenicia and Babylon, cf.
Halevy, M Manges Graux, 61 ; also Welcker, Griechische Goiter I thr<\
i. 195 ; finally, the remarkable statement in:Alberuni's India (trans-
lated by Sachau, i. 222, 223) : " If this our book were not restricted to
the ideas of one single nation, we should produce from the belief of
the nations who lived in ancient times in and round Babel ideas similar
to the egg of Brahman.7'
Page 94, L 5. In Egypt : the quotation is from Brugsch, Religion
und Mythologie der alien Agyptcr^ 101. The version (L 16) relating
to the god Ptah will be found in Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt^ trans, by
Tirard (London, 1894). Cf. also Dieterich, " Papyrus magica/1 in
Jakrb.fur PhiloL, SupfL xvi. 773. Lepage- Renouf is hitherto unsup-
ported in his judgment which denies the world-egg to Egyptian \\\y-
iho\Qgy\(Proceedings of the Soc. of Bill Arc/iteolQgy,xv. 64 and 289 iu
2). We must not omit to mention that we find this myth of the worhl-
egg in places where borrowing is most unlikely or utterly impossible,
e.g. among the Lettes, in the Sandwich Islands, among the Peruvians
(cf. Lukas, Die Grundbegri/e in den Kosmogonien <kr alfan VSlktr,
261^), and among the Finns (cf. Comparetti, The Traditional l>wtry
^the Finns, trans, by J, M. Anderton, London, 1898, pp. 15^60), Still,
no impartial consideration could well miss the more exact agreement
between the forms this myth has assumed among some of the nations
mentioned in the text.
Page 94, L 26. " Epicene godheads * in Babylon ; cf, Lenormant-
Babelon, Hist anc* de V Orient^ edit. 9, v. 250.
Page 94, 1. 28, Testimony of Eudemus : in Kudeml Fragment*
coll, Spengel, 172, cf. also 171 ; where the doctrine of the Magi is spoken
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 541
of, Le. the religion of Zoroaster and the place occupied in it by the
Time-principle.
Page 94, 1. 31. Zrvan Akarana : cf. Avesta i., trans, by James
Darmestetcr (Sacred Books of the East ^ iv.), Introduction, p. 82 ; and
Fargard, xix. 9, p. 206.
Page 95, 1. 28. " Fairy lore : " On the wanderings of fairy talcs, cf.
Schcrer, Jacob Grimm, edit. 2, p. \iiff- One vehicle for their disper-
sion was Islam, which in the tenth century was propagated in India,
and thus permitted the collections of talcs to spread to Persia and
Arabia, where they found a second home. Thus they wandered on
the one hand "through the lands of Islam to Byzantium, Italy, and
Spain," and on the other hand, by virtue of community in the, Bud-
dhistic faith, to China, Thibet, " and to the Mongols, and, through their
200 years of European domination, to Europe once again from that
side."
Page 96, 1. 29, On the cuneiform archives of Tell-el-Amarna and
Lachish, cf, Winklcr, in the Mttthcilungcti ans dm orientaltschen
Samnilitngen dcr kgL Musecn sit Berlin, i.-iii. ; Bezold and Budge, The
Tcll-el-Amama Tablets m the Brit. Mus^ 1892 ; and finally, Flinders
Petrie, Tdl-cl-Hesy (Lachish), 1890. Parts of them have been trans-
lated by Sayce, Records of the Past, New Series, vol. iii. No. 4, 1890.
Page 97, 11. 34, 35. The two verses of >Eschylus here quoted are
from his drama, " The Daughters of the Sun," in Nauck, Fmgmcnta
Tragiconun Grcscontm^ edit, 2, Fragm. 70, p. 24.
[BOOK L— CHAPTER III.
Page 99, jnit. Pythagoras : Apollodorus (Laert. /?/<%-., vtii. i) fixes
his u floruit" in the year 532-1. Diels, ChroiiofagischG Untersuch-
ungen liber Afiollodors Chronika (Rheinischcs Museum, New Series,
31, pp, 35, 26), should be consulted*
The few contemporary notices of him are mentioned in the text.
The next earliest more detailed information about his life, mixed up
with many inventions, is furnished by Porphyry (in his Lift of Pytha-
/jwvw) and by lamblichus in his similar treatise (both printed in the
appendix to Lacrt. Diog. in the Finnin-Didot edition, Paris, 1850) ; cf.
A. Nauck, Porphyrii Qpuscula Sc/acfa9 ed. 2, Leipsic, 1886, and
hmblichi De Vita Pythagorica Liber, ed. Nauck, St. Petersburg,
1884, Cf. Zcller, Pythagoras und die Pythagorassagf^ in Vortrtige
nnd Abhandlung&i gcschichtUchm Inhalts (Leipsic, 1865), p. 47.
Page 99, 1. 22. " No line from his own ])cn." This is a correct
Inference from Lacrt. I^iofr, via, 6. The " Golden Sentences w ascribed
to him arc as a whole a fabrication probably belonging to the begin-
ning of the fourth century A.D, Still, they contain some isolated old
and genuine portions^ verses that belong to the age of Pythagoras,
and perhaps are actually his own. Cf» Nauck's masterly investigation,
542 NOTES AND ADDITIONS,
in the publications of the Imp. Russian Academy of Sciences
(Melanges Grttco-Romatns, iii. 546^).
Page 100, Li. " The pupil of Pherecydes." The doubt as to the
trustworthiness of this tradition might have been even more sharply
expressed than in the text. Rohde, Psyche, ii. 167, n. i. (ed. 2), is
obviously correct in remarking that it was the (as we add, supposed)
agreement between their doctrines that "caused later writers to make the
old theologian the master of Pythagoras." The report that Pherecydes
had actually taught metempsychosis rests solely on the authority of
the Byzantine lexicographer Suidas (s.v. fre/ie/c^y). And even he makes
the reservation, rives to-ropova-i, " some people relate,5' just as he grounds
the status pupillaris of Pythagoras on a mere A<fyos, or " it is said."
The instability of the foundation of all this may be judged from the
very statement [to ivhich Rohde — incorrectly, as we believe — attaches
some weight : " In his (i.e. Pherecydes') mystic writings one must
have found such doctrines hinted at (cp. Porphyry, Antr. Nymph.
31)." If Porphyry alleges in this passage that Pherecydes, by his
doctrine of the various caverns, doors, and so forth, was hinting darkly
(alvmAiLGvos) at the fate (yeveoreis and cbro-yeveVeis) of the souls, I for my
part believe that one conclusion only can be drawn with certainty
from the words, viz. that no definite reference to that doctrine,
obtained otherwise than by neo- Platonic arts of interpretation, was
discovered in the treatise of Pherecydes. Nothing, in fact, remains of
Preller's proofs (Rliein. Mus., New series, iv. 388), to which Rohde
appeals, save the vague statement of Cicero (Tusc., i. 16. 38), that
Pherecydes taught the immortality of the soul — a statement which
leaves us in the dark on the essential point as to wherein Pherecydes
modified the primeval doctrine of Greek religion about the survival of
souls.
Page 100, 1. 12. Good grounds for the credibility of the news that
Pythagoras visited Egypt are given by Chaignet, Pythagore et la
Phil. Pythag.^ i. 40, 41, and 48.
Page 100, 1. 1 6. On the practices borrowed from the Egyptian
priesthood, cp. Herodotus, ii. 81 (and ii. 37, where the Pythagoreans
are not mentioned by name, but where the agreement is a striking
one in view of the universal knowledge in antiquity of the prohibition
against beans. An apt explanation of the denial of this by Aristoxenus
is given in Rohde, op. cit^ ii. 164, n. i).
Page 102, 1. 37. The quotation is from Roth, Gcschlchtc uuscrtr
abendltindischcn Philosophic^ ii. 785, 786, whose view and exposition
of this fundamental experiment in -acoustics I adopt likewise in what
follows.
Page 104, 1. 26. Aristotle: see Mctaph., i. 5 ; iii. 5 ; vii. 3-
Page 105, 1. ii. "Analogy between numbers and spatial rela-
tions." Precisely similar ideas on this point will be found in Zcller,
Philos, der Griechen, ed. 5, i, 404*
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 543
Pages 105, 106. For the widely scattered evidence in the pre'sent
context, see T5randis, Handbuch der Gcschichtt der gricchisch-romischcn
Philosophic^ i. 469^
Page 107, 1. ii. Cf. Aristotle, DC Ccelo, i. i. For what just
precedes about the sacrcdness of the number three, cf. Usencr, Der
heilige Thcodosios^ 135 ; and " Ein altes Lehrgebiiudc der Philologie,"
M'unchncr akad. Sitsungsbcr., 1892, p, 591^
Page 107, 1. 14. Giordano Bruno: cf. his book, DC Monadc
Numcro ct Figura. Auguste Comtc : cf. his PoUtiquc Positive, vol. i.
Preface and " Synthese subjective."
Page 107, 1. 1 6. Laurence Okcn : Naturphilosophie, p. 12, and in
what follows, cf. Aristotle, toe. tit*
Page 107, 1. 35. " Table of contraries/1 The chief passage is
Aristotle, Mctaphys.^ i. 5. That it is of Assyrio-Babylonian origin I
gather from a remark in Lcnormant-Babelon, Hist* anc. de VOrient,
ed. 9, v. iSr.
Page 108, 1. 36. Services of Pythagoras to geometry and
arithmetic : The chief testimony is that of Eudemus, 1 14 (Spengel) j
cf. Cantor, Vorlesungcn ubcr die Gesch. der Mathematik, i. 1 24 J/.
Page no, 1. 15. The references in Aristotle arc to Mctaphys.^ i. 5
and De. C<vlo, ii. 13 respectively.
Page 1 10, ad fin. On the equilibrium and central position of the
earth, and what follows, cf. chiefly Schiaparelli, / Precursor* di
Copcmtco nelV Antithit^ in Memorie del R* Istituto Lombardo^ xii.
383. This conclusive exposition is borrowed by H. Berger, Wi$$cn-
schaftl. Krdkitndc der Gricchoi^ ii. 4 ff^ who also offers much
excellent matter of his own. Cf. too Rudolf Wolf, Gesch. der
Astronomic^ 5, 26, 28. The question whether the globular shape of
the earth was discovered in Greece or abroad is left open by Bcrgcr.
i f e might well have decided in favour of Greece, for he had only to
refer to Diodorus, ii. 31, whose statement is fully confirmed by the
examination of the original authorities, in order to convince himself
that such insight was denied to the Babylonians. But when H,
Martin, in an essay quoted by Berger (p. 7, n. 3), c< credits the
"Egyptians with a knowledge of the earth-ball," he is contradicted by
the conception of the earth's shape which Maspcro, a leading authority
on these subjects, brings forward and expounds in his Hist, anc* das
Pwpl&s de FQrimt dassiquc^ pp. 16, 17.
BOOK I.— CHAPTER IV.
Page 112, I, t* Voltaire: (Riwres compl^ics^ ed* Baudoinn, vol.
58, p. 249*
Page U2, 1. 3. Sir George Cornewall Lewis: An Historical
Surwy of the Astronomy of the Ancients^ p, 189. The material here
employed is for the main part collected in the epoch-making treatise
544 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
of Schiaparelli mentioned above. We are considerably indebted, too,
to the rich contents of this and of a second masterly work by the same
author, Le sfcre omocentriche, etc., Milan, 1876. The first to shed light
on this confusion was Boeckh, in his Philolaos dcs Pythagorean
Lchrcn. In another connection we shall have to deal with the
personality of this Pythagorean, and with the other doctrines that
may with greater certainty be attributed to him.
Page 112, 1. 24. "Simple, steady, and regular:11 cf, Geinmus,
in Simplicius, P/tys., 292, 26, 27 D.
Page 114, 1. 23. We are of opinion that Schiaparelli errs in
disputing the movement of the firmament of fixed stars in the
Philolaic system, / Prccursori di Copernico, etc. (separate edition),
p. 7. For then we should have to credit our authorities, above all
Aristotle, who speaks of ten heavenly bodies in motion (Metaphys., i.
5), with a hardly conceivable mistake. It is, further, contrary to the
strongly marked sense of symmetry shown by the Pythagoreans, that
they should ascribe immobility solely to the firmament of the fixed
stars. It is true they could no longer believe in the daily movement
of this firmament, since it had been superseded by the movement of
the earth. "What then remains," asks Bockh, op. <://., 118, "but to
assume that the movement of the firmament of the fixed stars is the
precession of the equinoxes?" Later, Bockh renounced this opinion
(Mane f ho und die Hundssterngeriod^ 54) j still later he returned to it,
though with hesitation (Das KosmiscJu System de$ Plato ft^ 95). In
this we unconditionally agree with him, chiefly on account of the
following consideration. The precession of ^the equinoxes is a
phenomenon which, as Martin justly remarks (Etudes sur U Timfo dc
Platon, ii. 38), " requires only long and steady observations without
any mathematical theory, in order to be recognized," It is in itself
hardly credible that a deviation in the position of the luminaries,
which in the course of a single year amounts to more than fifty
seconds of an arc, could remain unnoticed for long. It becomes quite
incredible on the following consideration, to which an expert authority,
Dr. Robert Frobe, of the Vienna Observatory, has directed my
attention. The data derived from Philolaus or other early Pytha-
goreans for the angular velocities of the planetary movements are
approximately correct. Only prolonged observations of the stars could
have made them so, since there was no other means of eliminating the
grossest of the errors then inevitable to observation.
Page 117, 1. 6. Cf. Stobseus, Eclogues, i. 22 (i. 196 Wachsmuth)
=^tius in Doxogr.) 336, 337. It has been conjectured on the best
grounds that the torch which the bride's mother waved at the
marriage ceremony was "kindled at the parental hearth" (cf.
Herman-Bliimner, Griech. Privataltertumer^ 275, n. i: "Hence faf
terfa tyeiv ywatKct, Iambi, Vit* Pytha^or^ c. 18, § 84"), It seems an
almost unavoidable assumption that the new hearth was kindled
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 545
with the same torch, especially in view of the similar custom obtain-
ing at the foundation of colonies. For this last ceremony, cf.
Herodotus, i. 146 ; Scholiast to Aristides, iii.p. 48, 8 Dindorf ; Etymol.
Magn*, p. 694, 28 Gaisford.
Page 1 1 8, 1. ir. Karl Ernst von Baer: Reden . . . und Kleincrc
Auf sateen, St. Petersburg, 1864, i. 264. On the harmony of the spheres
and the reason why it is inaudible, cf. especially Aristotle, De Casio, ii. 9.
Page 119, 1. 9. Aristotle, Mctaphys^ i. 5.
Page 120, 1. 10. " Eclipses of the moon, which occurred so
frequently." As a matter of fact, eclipses of the sun are more frequent ;
thus in the period of time comprised in Oppolzer's Canon der Finstsr-
ftfssf there arc 8000 eclipses of the sun against 5200 of the moon. At
every .single point of the earth, however, very many more of the latter
than of the former are visible.
Page 120, 3. 20. " Extension of the geographical horizon : " On
Hauno's Pcriplus and the influence of that voyage of discovery on the
transformation of the doctrine of a central fire, cf. Schiaparelli, /
Precursor^ etc. (separate edition), p. 25, and H. Berger, Wissenschaft-
lie he Erdkunde., ii. 387.
Page 121, 1. 15. Heraclides : cf. chiefly Laert. Diog., v. ch. 6, The
view taken in the text of Ileraclidcs as the immediate precursor of
Aristarchus, is based on the account by Geminus, in Simplicius,
P/rys., 292, 2oy/. D. — a passage not without its difficulties. After the
most ample consideration, I iind myself compelled to dissent from
Dicls* view of the passage (fiber das physik. System dcs Straton> in
the Berliner Siisungs-Berichte) 1893, p. 18, n. i). Either the passage
must be emended, precisely or similarly as Bergk proposed (Funf
AbhamUungcn zitr Gescli. dcr griech. Philos. u. Astronomic, 149), or
the words *Hf)a/e\«/5i?$ 6 now tufa must be taken as inserted by a (well-
informed) reader. The evidence for the progress of astronomy
described in the text, and likewise the explanation of that progress,
arc tjiveii by Schiaparelli, <$. dL The doctrine of Aristarchus was
mentioned by Copernicus, in a passage which he afterwards sup-
pressed : " Credibile cst bisce similibusque causis Philolaum mobilit;i-
tcm terrio sensisse, quod etiam nonnulii Aristarcbum Samium fcrunt
in eadem fuissc scntentia/* etc. (Dc Rwohtt. CW^/., ccl. Thorun,,
L— CUAPTKR V,
124, 1. r. Aristotle : Da Anima^ i. 3 Jin.
124, 1.4. Xenophanes: a$ud Lacrt Diog., viii. 36, The
suspicions lately uttered concerning the reference to Pythagoras m
these verses seem to me totally groundless— as groundless as the
similar doubt that has been expressed as to the testimony of Empe-
doclcs (1. i$)» <*> Stein, 415^
VOL. L 2 N
546 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page ,124, 1. 20. Gallic Druids: cf. Wilkinson's account in
G. Rawlinson, History of 'Herodotus •, ed. 3, ii. 196.
The Druses: cf. Benjamin of Tudela (i2th century) in Tylor,
Prim. Culture, ii. 13. The other ethnographical details are also
taken from Tylor, op. cit^ ch. 12, though his derivation of the belief in
metempsychosis from the physical and spiritual resemblance between
descendants and ancestors (ii. 14), seems to me quite an inadequate
explanation.
Page 126, 1. 8. Indirect evidence of the non-Greek origin of
metempsychosis is afforded by the vain endeavours of the most bitter
antagonists of that origin ; Dieterich, for example, in his valuable
book Nekyia, p. 90, finally contents himself with pointing out mere
vague possibilities.
Page 126, 1. 28. Herodotus, ii. 123.
Page 126, 11. 35^ The quotation is from Erman, Life, in Ancient
Egypt* 306 (English trans., London, 1894). What follows is based on
Maspero, Bibliotheque Igyptologique^ ii. 467, n. 3, and 466. Maspero,
ibid.) i. 349, ascribes metempsychosis to the Egyptian belief in the age
when the country came into contact with Greece. He considers that
in later times these theories fell into discredit or even almost entirely
disappeared. In a later treatise (the passage first quoted), Maspero
modifies this judgment of his, in the words : " II ne faut pas oublier
que 1'assomption de toutes ces formes est purement voloutairc ct nc
marque nullement le passage de 1'ame hurnaine dans un corps do
bate."
Page 127, 11. ^ff. On the pre-Buddhistic origin of the Indian
belief in metempsychosis, cf. Jacob, A Manual of Hindu Pantheism,
ed. 2, p. 25. As I have learned from my colleague, Professor Biihlcr,
that belief arose in an age that cannot be fixed quite accurately,
though it fell in a very early period of the Brahman religion and
literature. The chief work promulgating the new doctrine is regarded,
even in the oldest Buddhist writings, as of primeval legendary
antiquity. On the lifetime of Buddha (who died not long after
500 B.C.), cf. Oldenberg, Buddha, ed. 2, p, 2. On that of Xarathustra,
cf. Justi, Geschichte Persicns^ 67, 68. " In India Cyrus bad already
subjugated the Gandarians south of the river Kabul " (//;/</, 96).
Page 128, § 2. On what follows, cf. especially Rolide (/'JW/T).
He seems to me to err only in a tendency to overrate the influence of
the Thracians, whom Herodotus justly speaks of as living ** wretchedly
and in a very uncivilized manner " (iv. 95, trans. Gary), and who in
truth were savage and predatory, and to underrate the moral elements
of Orphicism* To discuss these questions here would Icatl us too far*
With regard to the second point we may refer to Dieterich's AW;jv>/,
I93> *94 ; with regard to the first, the reader may be briefly reminded
that the features most characteristic of Orphicism, such as con-
sciousness of sin, craving for purification and redemption, the
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 547
penalties of Hades, etc., are absolutely undiscoverable among the
Thracians.
Page 130, 1. 5. For Crete, cf. Joubin, " Inscription crctoise relative
a POrphisme," in the Bulletin dc correspondence helUniqitc, xvii, 121-
124.
Page 131, 1. 7. On the belief in retribution, cp. pp. 8r, 82. !
Page 131, 1. 9. Image of the Erinyes : cf. Rohdc, Psyche, i. 270,
(ed. 2), and more details in Rltcin. Mus., L. p. 6.
Page 131, 11. 29 Jf. On these crude representations of a blissful
after-life, cf. Dieterich, op. tit., 79, So. The numerous parallels
adduced by him, to which I might add the wide selection (from
various ancient Indian sources) given by Muir, Sanscrit Texts, v, 307
ft, make the conclusion that the Orphic dogmas were of Thracian
origin appear extremely hazardous.
Page 132, L 10. "Hypnotic trance:" on the use of hypnotism
in the ascetic meditation of the Buddhists, cfc H. Kern, J)er Bud-
dhismus und seine Geschichte in Indien (trans* into German by
Jacobi), i. 502.
For what follows, the reader may be referred to Rohde, ibid,, ii.
14 ; Eduard! Meyer, Geschichte Agyptens, 87 ; Fr. Lenormant's
article, *c Eleusis," in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire dcs Anti-
and Dicterich, De hymnis Orphicis capitula quinque, 38.
Page 133, L 29. Confession of sin : cf. Maspero, fiibliothtyue
ii. 469 jf-
Page 134, 11. 13-15. I have added two items of the confessional
from Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bihclwort, 253, 254, a quite justi-
fiable "contaminatio," as experts assure me, since the negative con-
fession of sins displays manifold variants in different texts. Cf. also
Maspero, Hist, anticnne, etc., 191.
Pajje 135, 1. 3. "Plato's expression: " Timccits, 22 B.
Page 136, 1. 10. "Horror of bloodshed:" cf. Aristoph,, Frogs
JO32, Mcincke : 'Op^cta V&v ykp rcXsras 5* fyuy fcaW5«j£e <^^WI/T* a7rt'x$<r0ai.
Page 136, 1. 13. "Dike and Nomos:" cf. OrpMcn^ passim, and
especially Fragm. 33 j 125, i ; 126, Abol.
Page 138, 1 19. " Authors of Orphic poems : " cf* Rohdc, Psyche,
ii. 106 (ecL 2),
Page 138, 1 39. " Particles of dust in the sunlight:" according to
Aristotle, De Ant ma > i. 2,
Page 139, 1. 26. " Leaning to monotheism : " according to Cicero,
Df Jlcontm Nalura, i. 1 1 (27).
Page 139, 1. 27. " Dualism : " according to /Etius, apud Stobfttum,
KdQgUM) i. I - Doxogr. Gr., 302.
Page 139, L 34. 4| Exhalation of the world;" Aristotle, Phys., iv.
6, p. 2J(3» 15 22, where I read a,M and cancel Mtfyaros (as Chaignct
also tentatively proposed).
Page 140, 1. 4* " Remark of Eudemus : " pp. 73, 74, SpcngeU
548 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 142, 11. i$Jf. " The ' world-year ' ... of the Babylonians : "
cf. Lenormant-Babelon, Histoire de V Orient^ ed. 9, v. 175. Somewhat
differently Berossus, in Syncellus (C. Miiiler, Fragm* Hist. 6r., ii.
4995-
Page 143, L 7- "Periodical conflagrations and floods :" cf.
Seneca, Quaest Naf.9 Hi. 29, as well as Censorinus, De Die Naf.,
18, II.
Page 143, 1. 19. "Double destruction:" cf. Doxogr. Gr. 333,
7^
Page 143, 1. 24. " We cannot admit," etc. : the opinion here con-
tested is that of Zeller : " When the stars resume their former places,
everything else must return to the same condition, and similar per-
sons must likewise be present in the same circumstances as before "
(Philos. der Griechen, ed. 5, i. 443)-
Page 143, 1. 31* Theophrastus ; cf. Engelbrecht, in Eranos Vindo-
bouensis, 129. The Pythagoreans may be credited with the know-
ledge of isolated tenets of the Babylonian astronomy, just as Heraclitus
was acquainted with the fundamental doctrine of their astrology, as
shown by Engelbrecht, ibid^ 126. But it is too great a jump from
this to the assumption that old Greek philosophers — above all, the
Pythagoreans, or any considerable section; of them — simply followed
the lead of the Babylonians on a fundamental question intimately
bound up with the whole view of the world, or rather followed their
astrological system to its extreme consequences, and developed it
further. We may add that Eudcmus, who occasionally touches on
religious doctrines of the Phoenicians and the (Zoroastrian) Magi
(p. 171, Spengel), would then have been just the man to recognize
and point out such a connection.
Page 146, 1, 28. Hippasus of Metapontum : cf. Aristotle, Metaphys.
i. 3, and Theophrastus (in Doxogr. Gr. 475, 476) ; also ^Etius, /#/</,
283, 284.
Page 147, § 5. Cf. for the whole of this section, the collection and
discussion of the fragments in the supplement appended to the pro-
gramme of the Gymnasium at Wittenberg: Alkmceon von AmVw, by
Julius Sander (Wittenberg, 1893). Alcmacon and his significance
were to a certain extent rediscovered by Philippson, in his "TAT? ar0/>*..
vtt>y (Berlin, 1831). Note, for example, what he says (pp. 20, 21) on
a passage of Theophrastus overlooked by all previous scholars,
The proem of his book, ^/;/^Laert. Diog. via, 5, 2. In translating
the concluding words, I have read bs 5' ^WTTOV r^afpeotfai, instead of
<&$ 8' wQpc&vois re«/wJp«ff0cu, which seems to me impossible. Some such
phrase as £x« TTOV £$e may have followed.
Page 148, 1. 9. "The brain as the central organ;" according to
Theophr., De Sensibus, § 26 = Doxogr. Gr^ 507.
Page 148, 1. 28. "The . . . belief that the sperma originates in
the spinal marrow " is not merely a Greek, but also aa Indian an.d
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 549
a Persian belief ; cf. Darmcsteter, Zend-Avesta^'^ 164, n. i (Sacred
Books of the East, vol. iv.).
Page 148, 1. 35. " Doctrine concerning sickness and health : " cf.
Doxogr. Gr., 442. In that connection, cf. the much-disputed doctrine
of contraries, Aristotle, Mctaphys.^ i. 5.
Page 149, 1. 8. The echoes in Geber I take from Berthelot's essay
in the R&vuc ctes Deux Mondcs^ 1893, p. 551 : " Quand il y a dquilibre
ontre leurs natures " (he is speaking of the four elements, and the four
fundamental qualities, the hot, the cold, the dry, and the moist), " les
choses deviennent inaltcrables. , . . Tel est encore le principe de 1'art
mddical, appliqud a la gudrison dcs maladies." Berthelot here recog-
nizes Greek influences, without expressly recalling Alcmzeon. Nor,
indeed, was Alcmoeon alone in proclaiming the four fundamental
qualities just mentioned. But even as early as Aristotle they occur
exclusively in a connection which clearly reveals the influence of
Alcmajon ; cf. Sander, op. eft., 31. Likewise in the treatise of
Poly bus, DC Natura Hominis (Littrd, (Etwrcs cPHippocratc, vi. 38).
The traces of Alcmaion are most unmistakable in the following
passage : vo\\& ydp £<rriv £v rtfi <r&tx.aTi ZVG&VTO.^ & 6ic<$ra,v for* ctaA^Aay irapu
</>t'i<rtP QipfiAtviiral T€ Ka.1 tf/tfxTjrac Ko.1 ^(Kttvnrai re teal {lypah/TiraL, vovarov*
rJ/cTu (ibid., 36). Littrd himself (i. 562) clearly recognized that
Alcmixion was a precursor of Hippocrates.
Page 149, 11. 14^ On Alcmceon's doctrines of the several senses,
cf. Thcophrastus op. cit»; ^Etius and ^Eius Didymus in Doxogr* G?'.9
223, 404, 456. To these may be added the pertinent remarks of
Dicls, "Ciortfias und Empcdoklcs," Berliner Sitsungsberichte, April,
1884, pp. II, 12, and Hermes, xxviii. 421, n. 2, where, by-the-by, the
reference to Aristotle, De Gencrat. AnimaL^ must be read B 6, 744 A 7
(and not 363 A 7). My colleague, Professor Biihler, has directed my
attention to the very remarkable similarity between Alcmo;onjs theory
of vision and the Indian theory, most completely elaborated in the
Nyaya-Vitfscshika. According to that doctrine the organ of sight
consists of "fire;" this combines with the object and assumes its
shape. The impression thus produced is received by the " inner
ortfan," the mana$> and is transmitted by it to the dtman^ the soul
proper-
Page 150, 1, 8* Psychology of AlcniiEon; recording to Theo-
phrasttis, ofl. cit. § 35 = Doxogr. Gr., 506 ; supplemented by Plato,
J*/itfd#) 96 B, and P/uedrn^ 249 B. On its after effects in Aristotle^
<*f. Sunder, op, £//., 25, 26, following HirzeVs precedent, especially
with reference to Analytica Post^ ii. 19,
Page 150, 1. 16. On the proof of the immortality of the soul, cf.
Aristotle, Dt Anima^ i. 2.
Page 151, 1. 4. Hato: Ph&dru$> 245 c*
Page 151, 1. 13. For the proof of " the perishability of the body/'
cf. Aristotle, VrobL 17, 3.
550 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
BOOK II.
The motto is from Helmholtz, Vortrage. und Reden, ii. 189 (" Das
Denken in der Medicin").
BOOK II. — CHAPTER I.
Page 155. The surviving writings of the Eleatics are collected in
Mullach, Aristotelis de Mdisso Xenopliane et Gorgia Disputations
cum Eleaticorum Philosophoruw Fragmentis, etc., Berlin, 1845. This
alleged Aristotelian book is the work of a late and in many respects an
ill-informed Peripatetic, as has at last been established after long
discussion among scholars. Mullacli's collection of fragments (in
which Zeno is not represented) has been added to, as far as Xenophanes
is concerned, by Ferdinand Diimmler, Rhdn. Mus^ xlii. 139, 140, and
N. Bach, Jahrb.fur wiss. Kritik, 1831, L 480. Cf. also the author's
" Beitrage zur Kritik u. Erklarung griech. Schriftstellcr," iii., Wiener
Sitzungsber.) 1875, 57° ft The literary remains of Xenophanes,
Parinenides, and Empedocles have been collected and interpreted by
Karsten, in his work, Philosophorum Gr&corum Veterwn . . . Qfrwum
Reliquia^ Amsterdam, 1830-38.
Xenophanes : chief sources, Laert. Diog., ix. ch. 2 ; also Aristotle,
Clement of Alexandria, Sextus Empiricus.
As to the chronology of Xenophanes, we must start from the
evidence given by his own fragments, and, in the second instance,
from the fact that he mentions Pythagoras, and in his turn is mentioned
by Heraclitus. According to Fragm. 24, he left his home at the age of
twenty-five ; his emigration may very possibly have been due to the
Persian conquest (545 B.C.), especially as Fragm. 17 almost certainly
shows that it did not anyhow occur before that date. If this calculation
is correct, he was born in 570 ; and since, according to the evidence of
Fragm. 24, he reached the age of at least 92 (and of more than 100
according to Censorinus, De Die Natalt, 15, 3), the statement of the
historian Timaeus (apud Clement of Alexandria, Stremat^ i. 353, Pott.)
that Xenophanes lived in the time of lliero I. (478-467) may be
defended as correct.
Page 155, 1. 12. " The poor rhapsodist : " His penurious condition
is vouched for by the apophthegm in Gnomofog. Paris^ ed. Sternbach,
Cracow, 1895, No. 160, where Xenophanes, questioned by Hiero as
to how many slaves he owns, answers, " Two only, and even these 1
can hardly support." An anecdote like this would never have been
circulated if he had been one of the highly paid members of his pro-
fession. Cf. also Fragm. 22.
Page 155, U, 25, 26. The local description is based on the author's
personal observation. The " single soaring tower " is called Torre di
Velia, and is not of ancient origin.
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 551
Page 157, 1. 8 to p. 158, 1. 4. For the ideas here expressed the
author is indebted to a conversation with Hermann Usener at the
Philological Congress in Vienna, May, 1893.
Page 158, 1. 39. Aristotle : Mctaphys^ i. 5 ; and Timon (Wachs-
niuth, Corfiusc. poes. ludib., 156).
Page 1 60. Xenophanes was formerly regarded as the first Greek
monotheist. The decisive arguments to the contrary are contained
and driven home in FreudenthaTs treatise, Ifber die Theologie des
Xenophanes, Breslau, 1886, to which our account is much indebted.
At the same time, Zeller can justly claim to have exposed some of the
weaker links in Freudenthal's chain of evidence (cf. Deutsche Litte-
raturzeitung) 13 Nov., 1886, and Archiv, ii. i ff.).
Page 1 60, 1. 34. " An imitation in Euripides :" Hercules Fur ens,
1343, compared with Pseudo- Plutarch, Stromat.) afatd Euseb., Prap.
JKvang.) i. 8, 4.
Pages 1 60, 1 6 1. The alleged monotheism of Xenophanes is at
once and finally confuted by the single verse, Ely 6tb$ & re 0eo?<n /ectf
wOpfarourt /i^yio-Tos, Fragm. i. Its testimony could be weakened only
by the interpretation — contrary to the straightforward sense of the
line — "compared with" real "men and" imaginary "gods." Von
Wilamowitz, Euripides Hcraklcs^ ed. i, ii. 246, with whom I cannot
agree in this instance, holds a different opinion. We much prefer
to recognize the reference here to a supreme god who is hardly less
superior to the lower gods than to mankind. Cf, perhaps Rig Veda*
x, 12 1. 8, " He who by his might looked even over the waters which
held power (the germ) and generated the sacrifice (light), he <w/io alone
/.v God above all gotk .-—Who is the God to whom we shall offer
sacrifice ? " translated by F. Max Miiller, Vedic Hymns^ part i. p. 2,
Oxford, 1891 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 32).
Page 162, 1L 15, 16. Besides Syracuse and Malta, our authority
(Ilippolytus, i. 14) likewise mentions Paros ; but my colleague, Prof.
Suess, informs me that there are no fossils in Paros. A remark in his
letter, to the effect that the impressions of seals, alleged to be dis-
covered there, are a palaiontological impossibility, has led me to the
conjecture that, by a very slight change, QVKW or $vKtw (*' of sea-
weed ") should be read instead of ^w/cwy, On this emendation Suess
remarks, * t^uite clear and striking impressions of fucoids, which
even the layman readily recognizes as such, arc found in a light-grey
marl-slate, alternating with sanclstdne, not indeed in the quarries (of
Syracuse) themselves, but at no very great distance from them, and in
many other parts of Sicily." CF, Pseudo-Plutarch, ajwd Kuseb,, he. <//.,
Page 164, I 5, Aristotle: JMr/tfiys,, i* 5, 986 B. 21, Ki^vW
ufcv Safru^^uru'.
164, rh, i. Jin. \Ve may briefly advert at thisi point to the
552 NOT£S AND ADDITIONS.
remarkable parallelism in the development of Greek and Hindoo
thought. How surprising it is to observe that (according to Oldenl>er£,
Buddha, 45, ed. 2) the " first traces " of the doctrine " of metempsy-
chosis occur in the Vedic texts not long before the first appearance ol
the doctrine of the eternal One," precisely as the metempsychosis
of Pythagoras immediately precedes the Universal-Unity doctrine of
Xenophanes ! But in other z-espects likewise the doctrine of dtman
strikingly reminds us of the Eleatic theory of Ens. In spite of this
agreement, however, there are very considerable differences that must
not be overlooked. The excess of visionary enthusiasm among the
Hindoos is an excess of rational reflection among the Greeks. The
difference leaps to light when we remember, for instance, the geological
speculations of Xenophanes in the domain of natural science, or the
attempts of Parmenides, in the second part of his didactic poem, to
give a scientific explanation of the cosmic processes. In Hindoo specu-
lation, metaphysics are connected almost exclusively with religion ; in
Greek, not merely with religion, but also with science. Thus, though
the results of thought display a striking similarity in either instance,
I was yet entitled to presume motives of thought in the instance of the
( Greeks of an essentially different kind.
BOOK II. — CHAPTER II.
The fragments of the poem of Parmenides were re-edited after
Mullach, by Heinrich Stein, in the Symlola Philologorum nonne
Leipsic, 1867, fascic. post, 765-806.
Page 165, 1. 2. " On the nature of man : " Littr<<, (Eitvres
pocrate, vi. 32 fF.
Page 166, 1. 16. " Un-natural philosophers " and " stoppers-of-the-
Universe:" cf. Plato, Thefftetu^ 181, A., and Aristotle, apud Scxt.
Emp., Adv+ Mathemat., x. 46 (p. 485, 25, Bekkcr).
Page 166, § 2. The chief source for the biography of Parmenitles
is Laert. Diog., ix. ch. 3. As boundary-marks in the chronology of his
life, we may mention generally that he was a younger contemporary
of Xenophanes, and likewise of Heraclitus (whose doctrines he knew
and ridiculed) ; that he was older than M'iissus, and (according to
Plato's trustworthy statement, Parmemdes, 127 B) a quarter oif a
century older than Zeno. We do not know the foundation for the
date of his " floruit " given by Apollodorus ; but it seems to me wholly
illegitimate to impute arbitrary calculations to that great and con-
scientious inquirer in this instance, considering that he relied on none
but autobiographical testimony in his chronology of Anaximander and
Democritus, and that he discussed the chronology of Empcdocles, in
verses which we still possess, in the minutest fashion,
Page 167, L 35. For the quotation from Melissus, cf, Mullach,
op, <7/,, 82, 83. I have emended the concluding sentence of the passage
NOTXS AND AJ)DITIONS. 553
by a transposition which the sense requires ; cf. " Apologie der Ilcil-
kunst," 167 {Wiener Siteungsher.) 1891, No. ix.).
Page 169, 11. 22 JjFL Cf. Mullach, op. cit., 114, vv. 45-51. The
reference to Heraclitus was recognized and proved by Bernays, Rhem.
Afus.) New Series, vii. 114^:
Page 171. Since the denial of the generation and decay of matter
continues to be ascribed to the Eleatics alone, and not to their prede-
cessors, it seems necessary to add at this point the express testimony
of Aristotle, P/iys., i. 4, 187 A 26 : Atkrb faoXan&foGiv rty Koivfa 5rf£ov rwv
ov ovtievhs ticrov fify ovros. MetaphyS^ i. 3, 984
i ical T^V tybffw 8\7)v ob ftdvov Kark ysvsffiv Kal
(rovro p\v ykp itp^Mv re Kal Trdvres vfj.o\6y^ffot,v). Ibid.) 984 All: Kal
8i& roDro otfre ytyve<rQat obtitv otovraL of/T€ a,ir6\\vcrQa,t (viz. the old physiolo-
gists from Thales downwards). Metafihys., xi. 6, 1062 B 24 : rb ykp
jU7/5*i/ UK /x-J; Strro* ytyveffQctt nav 5' ^| vvros tfxefov airdt/Tcav %<frl Koiv'bv 5Jy/xa T&V
Page 172, 1. 9. "One of Parmenides' expressions:" we refer to
Stein, v. 66.
Page 172, 1. 32* The "telling fragment " of Anaxagoras was
brought to light by Diels (in Hermes, xiii. 4) from a scholion to
Gregory of Naxianzus, Migne, Patrol. 6r., xxxvi. 901.
Page 175, 1. 23. "A distinguished physiologist:" Du Bois-
Reymond, in the Sitzitngsberichte der kgl. preuss. Akademie der
IVissensck^ " liegriissung des Herrn Landolt," Febr. 1882.
Page 177, 1. 10. "The existence of a vacuum." It is true that
the word "vacuum19 (ttwt&v) has only found its way into the text
(Stein, v. 84) by means of a false conjecture. But the conception on
its own account plays an important part in Parmcnides. At one time
it appears as the contrary of fy-xteov, a the full ; " at another, the vacuum
(the empty or non-ens) has to be supplied in thought as the subject of
the verb &roi>^{«, which has been persecuted with vain emendations, in
Stein, vv, 38-40, which are to bo separated from what precedes and in
no wise belong to the proem : oft ykp ^iror^^et. r& ir&ov rov Mvros ^x*0^*
otf rt ffK&vdptvov wdvry friivrcas /caret R6<riJ.t>v otfr« ffwtffr&ftwov.
Pnge 177? 1* 20. " In the circle of the Pythagoreans," Cf. what
Natorp, following Biiumker, has said on this point, Philosoph* Afonats-
lwftt\ xxvii. 476. This is evident, moreover, from Aristotle, Phys^ iv. 6
(213 B 22), where, however, the vacuum appears in another applica-
tion. Perhaps it would actually be more appropriate not to inquire
about the authors of this doctrine at all, but rather of the opposite one.
For, after all, the old mythical view was that originally a vacuum had
.stretched from the highest height to the lowest depth, the gap now
yawning between heaven and earth being the remains thereof. And
in common consciousness even the air too, before its pressure and
resistance had been ascertained by experiments such as those of
Anaxagoras, was regarded as a vacuum, and not as a " something n
554 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
(cf. Aristotle, Phys. iv. 6, 213 A 25). It was through these and similar
attempts that the problem of motion first entered the world. It is
easy enough indeed to try to disguise the physical problem with a
metaphysical cloak, and to discover its essence in the phrase, " the full
cannot take in anything" (see p. 350). Such an apory, however,
would never have occurred to any one, as long as that medium in
which movements are executed almost without any resistance was not
recognized as full, or at least as not essentially different from full.
Page 1 8o,l. 10. Aristotle, Hetaphys., i. 5> 9^6 B 31.
Page 1 8 1, 1. 35. " Orphic influences " have been traced by O. Kern,
De Orphet . . . Theogoniis, 52, and in the Archiv, iii. 173.
Page 183, 1. 24. On the world as depicted by Parmenides, cf.
H, Berger, Geschichte der wissenschaftl. Erkunde^ etc., ii. 31 Jf.
BOOK II. — CHAPTER IIL
Melissus. Personal details about him in Laert. Diog., ix. ch. 4,
Apollodorus there puts \i\sfloruit in the 84th Olympiad. It is obvious
and has been generally acknowledged that the year Ol. 84,4 = 441 iu\
is intended, in which Melissus won the naval battle mentioned in the
text Here for once we can lay actual hands on Apollodorus' method
of procedure in connecting his personal facts with some historical
event whose date he could fix with certainty, while otherwise we are
frequently obliged merely to presume it. Remains of Melissus' treatise,
" On Nature or Ens," are preserved for us almost solely by Simplidus
in his commentaries on Aristotle's Physics and De Ccrfo, which we now
possess in the greatly improved editions of Dicls and Heiberg. Cf.
further A. Pabst in his dissertation De Mclissi Samil Fragments,
Bonn, 1889. According to this investigation, it can now be accounted
as at least highly probable that only a portion of the fragments really
deserve that name, while in others the ideas of Melissus are nut
rendered with literal fidelity.
Page 184, 1. 17. Aristotle. He calls Melissus "crude" (^oprijcjy),
Phys., i. 3; Melissus and Xenophanes together " somewhat clumsy"
((UKpbv aypoucfcepoi}, Metaphys^ i. 5.
Page 184, 1. 27. " A condition of undisturbed bliss." "Has any
one ever reflected on what kinds of states of consciousness Melissus
may have attributed to his bare Being ? For he did attribute conscious-
ness to it, since he declares it exempt from pain and grief. By this he
evidently aims at endowing it with pure undisturbed bliss." These
words were written by the author of this work in January, 1880, and he
was soon enabled to add the remark, " This has at last been acknow-
ledged by Fr. Kern in his valuable essay, valuable likewise for its
appreciation of Parmenides: *Zur Wiirdigung des Melissos von
Samos,' in the Festschrift des Stettiner Stadtgymn. stir tiegrussung
der 35, Versammlung deutscher Philology etc., Stettin, 1880," if
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 555
Melissus was satisfied with these negative designations, and forbore
to do honour to his blissful universal Being as such, considerations of
prudence may have intervened. The man who occupied a prominent
position in the public life of his native country was more strongly
bound than other philosophers to respect the religious susceptibility of
his fellow-citizens. That is plainly why he preferred not to attribute
directly to his " All-One " the bliss of the popular divinities (pdicapes
fool), but only to hint at it indirectly.
Page 1 86, L 10. Aristotle: Sophist. Eknch., 5, 167 B 13; and
Phys., i. 3, 1 86 A 10.
Page 191, 1. 33. Zeno of Elea: cf. Laert. Diog., ix. ch.!5. Laertius,
i.e. Apollodorus, here fixes \asfloruit in the 7Qth Olympiad, and Plato
(cf. supra, note on p. 166, 1. 31) calls him 25 years younger than
Parmenides, whose jfor^z? is fixed in the 69th Olympiad : both these
accounts may very well rest on truth. For according to what we have
remarked above in our note on Melissus, and previously, too, anent
the procedure of Apollodorus, there is no reason at all to assume that
the same, or even approximately the same, differences of age must
correspond with those of the floruit — the differences at the zenith.
We shall have to speak later on of Zeno's critical discussion of the
doctrine of Empedoclcs (Itfyyifts 'E/wreSo/cXckv* in Suidas, s.v. 7d]v<*v\
It has often been doubted, although without any reason, if Zeno, like
his master Pannenides, also propounded doctrines of nature-philosophy.
The title of a treatise u On Nature " (Suidas, ibid?) is in favour of his
having done so, and even more so are the tenets attributed to him in
Laert. Dwj£.9 ix. 29.
The chief sources from which we gather our knowledge of his argu-
ments are : Aristotle, PJiys., iv. i ; iv. 3 ; vi. 2 ; and especially vi. 9 ;
and the commentaries on those passages in Simplicius.
Page 192,1. 10. Plato: in the dialogue Parmenides, 128 D. He
describes the astounding impression made by his speeches in Phcr.dnts,
261 IX
Page 192, 1. 24. Pierre Bayie : in his Dictionnaire historique ft
critique, iv* 536, edition of 1730.
Page 192, L 25* " A grain of millet : " hinted at by Aristotle, Pfiys.,
vii. 5, amplified by Simplicius in his note in the form of a dialogue
between /eno and Protagoras,
Page 196, 1. 14. On what follows, cf. Fricdrich Uberweg, System tier
Logik, 409, ed. 3.
Page 196, 1. 26. J. S. Mill, Examination of Sir William
naniiltorfs Philosophy, 533, ed. 3, sees in this confusion of infinite
divisibility and infinite magnitude the nucleus of the apory. This was
precisely the judgment of Aristotle ; cf. Phys., vi. 2, 233 A 21^
Page 201, Interesting side-lights on the so-called sophisms of the
Eristics, and, among them, on Zeno's "Achilles and the tortoise," are
furnished by the subtle intellect of the Chinese. Cf. IL A. Giles,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Chuang Tzie, 453, London, 1889 : " If you take a stick a foot long and
every day cut it in half, you will never come to the end of it."
Page 204, 1, 14. Plato : in Parmcnidcs^ 128 C.
BOOK II. — CHAPTER IV.
Page 208. Anaxagoras : cf. chiefly Anaxagora Clazomenii Frag*
meuta9cQ\l. Ed. Schaubach, Leipsic, 1827 ; or W. Schorn, Anaxag&rcr
Claz. et Diogenis Afollonza&e Fragment^ Bonn, 1829. The almost
exclusive quarry for the fragments is the commentary of Simplicius on
the Physics of Aristotle. A little phrase in Simplicius (on Aristotle,
De Coslo, 608, 26 Heiberg), has been overlooked by the collectors of the
fragments ; another brilliant remark, which has been missed by the
collectors, is in Plutarch, Moral., 98 F (Dt Fortuna, c. 3). On the cir-
cumstances of his life, see Laert. Diog., ii. ch. 3. Apollodorus places
his birth in the 7oth Olympiad (500-497 n.C.), his death in the first
year of the 88tli (428 li.C.). It is reported by Lnert. Diog. as an un-
authenticated fact (A^TM), that he was born in 500 r..C., and thus readied
the age of seventy-two. On his relations with Pericles, cf. i'lato, Phtfdr*
270 A, and Plutarch, Life of Pcriclcs, especially c. 32. The mental
composure with which he bore the loss of his only son was admired
by all antiquity. On the date of the publication of his work, cp. Diels,
Seneca nnd Lucatt^ from the JRtrL Akad^nie-Abhandlun^n^ 1885,
p. 8 n. In Laert. Diog., ii. 1 1, we have certainly to complete the reading
thus : lif\ &PXOVTOS Av<r [tffrpdrov] = 467 B.C. That his (p. SCK), I. 22)
was the first book illustrated with diagraiiis (except geometrical writ-
ings destined for a special professional public ?) has recently been
correctly inferred by Kothc, in Fleckctsms Jahrbuchcr^ 1886, pp. 769,
Jfi9 from Clement of Alexandria, Strt>M. i. 364 Pott., and Laert. Diog,,
ioc. cit.
Page 212, 1. 35. My explanation of Anaxagoras' utterance about
the colour of snow, which at tirst sight seems so hazardous* is founded
on the glaring contrast which otherwise would exist between the basis
of his whole theory of matter (the unshakable belief in the qualitative
truth of sense-perceptions) and the assertion that we are in this case
deceived by sight. My exposition also tallies as exactly as possible
with the text of Cicero's statement, which earlier interpreters thoroughly
misapprehended : " sed sibi quia sciret aquam nigram esse, undo ilia
concreta esset, alfam ipmm esse ne wider i guide in " (Acatt* {J//tfj/,
iv. 31).
Page 213, § 2. About the cosmogony of Anaxagoras, cf. the instruc-
tive discussion by W. Dilthey, ILinteitttng in die Ggistcswissetischaft)
i* 200 ff* I am at one with Zeller(i, 1002 n., ed« 5), however, in being1
unable to agree with him in assuming that Anaxagoras imagined the
structure of the world to be shaped like a cone, lie may probably be
credited with the idea that the celestial globe, formed as it had been
by rotation (wepix^0*^)* would increase in circumference in proportion
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 557
to the ever larger size of the masses of matter that become involved
in the rotatory movement. It is useful, perhaps, to remind the reader
that Anaxagoras at any rate seems to know nothing of a material
celestial globe, or of such a firmament of the fixed stars. Even where
it might most be expected (e.g. Fragm. 8, Schaub.) there is no hint
of such an image.
Pages 215, 216, The constantly renewed attempts to prove the
purely spiritual nature of the Nous of Anaxagoras are characterized
partly by their contradiction with the unequivocal assertions of the
sage of Clazomenre himself, partly by the subtle artifices to which
their defenders feel compelled to resort. Thus the words of Anaxa-
goras, \eTTT<$rar()v irwrw x^^toTw^, arc interpreted as " the most saga-
dous " instead of " the finest of all things ; " or the Aristotelian <W\QVV
(" simple ") is taken as something other than a reproduction of the pre-
dicate aituye.? ("unmixed")- The method here followed consists
essentially in setting statements of Aristotle, more or less arbitrarily
interpreted, against the clear text of the Anaxagorean utterances,
Sound arguments against the entire immateriality of the Nous are to
be found in Natorp, Philos* Monatshefte^ xxvii. 477. The expression
"thought-clement" (p. 215, 1. 29) is from Winclclband in I wan
Mailer's Handbuch der klass. Altcrtums'wisscnschaf^ v. I, 165.
I'a^e 216, 1. 34* The complaints about the insufficient xise of the
Nous by its investor are to be found in Plato, Phado^ 97, c.^; and in
Aristotle, Mvtaphys., L 3, 985 B 17.
Page 220, 1. 3* " A difficulty which has still to be realized and
explained :" cf. Aristotle, Dd Cado^ ii. 13. It was mentioned, as 1 now
discover, but not, in my opinion, solved, by Drieger, Die Urb&wegung
der AtoMC) etc, (Gymasial-Programm, Halle, 1884), pp. 2X/,
That Anaxagoras attributed a flat shape to the earth (1. 6) is
proved by the evidence collected iu Schaubach, pp. 174, 175.
Simplicius is alone in alluding to a tambourine- or cylinder-shape by
the word r«/*irwo«i5^ (on Aristotle, J)e C&lo, ii. 13, p. 520, 28 Jf.t
Hcihcrg). Hcj however, weakens his own testimony by mentioning
Anaximenes as well as Anaxagoras, for it is quite certain that,
with respect to the shape of the earth, Anaximenes agreed, not with
Anaxhnandor, but with T hales. It is therefore misleading, to say the
least, when Xeller, Uberweg, and others speak of a " flat cylinder."
Pages 220-222, On the astronomical and meteorological doctrines
of the philosopher, cf. Doxogr. (lr, 137, 138.
Page 221, 1. 5. On Anaxagoras' explanation of the clusters of
stars in the Milky Way, of* Tannery, Pour Pllistotredc la science
279, On the problem itself, cf. amongst others, Wundt,
Page 223, 1. 20* Schlciermachcr set the fashion of denying the
term Uomccomerics to Anaxagoras, and of regarding it as an innova-
tion of Aristotle's* The unequivocal evidence of antiquity against
558 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
this assumption has been collected by Schaubach, p. 89. That the
conjecture is untenable is shown as clearly as daylight from the fact
that Epicurus, and after him Lucretius, who had no reason whatever
for using the Aristotelian terminology, employ the word. Cf. Mtmro's
commentary on Lucretius, i. 834; and the present writer, in the
Zeiisckriftfur die Ostreichischen Gymnasicn, xviii. 212.
Page 225, 1. 18. Xenophon's disdainful judgment is from
Mcmordb^ iv. 7.
BOOK II.— CHAPTER V.
Page 227, § i. Empedocles : cf. H. Stein, Empcdodis Agrigcntim
Fragment^ Bonn, 1852; Diels, "Studia Empedoclea," in Hermes^
xv. A new fragment of a verse and a half is given by Knatx, in
Sched® philol) Bonn, 1891 ; Doxogr. Gr. passim. He is further treated
by Laert. Diog., viii. ch. 2. There is an excellent investigation of the
sources by J. Bidez, La Biographic d^EmpHocle^ Ghent, 1894,
The remarks on Girgenti here and in the following pages arc
based on the author's personal impressions of travel ; still, cp. too
Kenan's essay, " Vingt jours en Sicile," in his Melanges dc voyages cf.
dViistoirC) 103,^ For the chronology, we have at our disposal in this
instance a series of verses from the chronicle of Apollodorus in Lacrt,
Diog., loc. cit. The vexed statement in Aristotle, Metaphys^ i, 3, that
Anaxagoras was older than Empedocles in years, but younger in
achievements, neither contains any reference to the dates of the
publication of their works, nor yet any judgment as to their value. It
merely serves to account for the inverted chronological order which
Aristotle favoured on expository, grounds. He treated Empcdocles
before Anaxagoras, because the four elements of Empedocles were
far more akin to the material Monism of the older nature-philosophers
than were the infinitely numerous primary substances of Anaxagoras,
Cf. the little sentence just before : 'E/^SoK^y 5^ r£ rforapa irpbs TO?S
GipTjfji&ois yr\v vpocfTtOels T^raprov.
Page 229, 1. io. On the draining of Selinus, and " On the Boring
of a Mountain in Acragas by Empedocles," cf. the essay with that
title in thsfemlleton of the Allgemdne Zritung, Augsburg, November
15, 1881. Bidez, loc* cit^ p. 34, preceded by bicls, has made it very
probable that the story of a woman wakened from a death-like trance
(1. 15) is taken from the treatise nepl -njy favw by Heradides of
Pontus, and based on a legend already current at that time.
Page 230, 11. 20 ff. Tannery, op. tit., 319, was probably the first
to suggest the view of a connection between Empedoclcs' medical
studies and his anti-monistic theory of matter.
Page 231, 1. 33. The four elements arc met with in the popular
physics, not only of the Greeks, but likewise of the Hindoos ; c£ Kern,
BuddhismuS) German edition by H. Jacobi, i. 438; cf. too the
Persian theory of the elements in the Vendtdad, translated by
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 559
J. Darmesteter, in the Sacred Books of the East, iv. 187, The follow-
ing passage in Kopp's Entwicklung der Chemie in der neuercn Zeit,
p. 1 10, shows at how late a date this primeval doctrine disappeared :
u If, in the time preceding the rise of Lavoisier's system, a question
were asked . . . about the elements of bodies, the answer was that
earth, water, air, and fire were still, as ever, to be regarded as elements,
or at any rate that most people believed in these elements."
Page 233, L 10. For the comparison of the four elements with the
primary colours, cp. Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates " DC Natura
Ilominis " (xv. 32, Kiihn).
Page 235, 1. 2. The dependence of Ernpedocles on Alcmacon was
proved by Diels, Gorgias und Empedokles, p. 11.
Page 238, 11. ii ff. The experiment here alluded to (Stein,
vv. 2Q4j?r, presupposes the existence of spaces Twhich are at least
temporarily empty. Against this it is strange that both Aristotle (De
O/0, iv. 2) and Theophrastus (De Sensibus, in Doxogr. Gr., 503,
9-12) should declare that Empedocles denied the existence of empty
space. True, Theophrastus is careful to add that Empedocles herein
was inconsistent, and much the same remark is hinted by Aristotle
(f)e Gcnerat. ct Corrupt., i. 8). Here we are led to conjecture that a
misunderstanding blocks the way. The verses alleged to contain the
denial of empty space are still preserved (Stein, 91 ^), but they
seem susceptible of another interpretation. I should freely reproduce
their sense as follows : " Nowhere can be said, Here the All is not;
nowhere, Hare is something other than the All? In my opinion the
genitive *oD iravr6s must be made to depend on Ktvsfo (cf. Stein, in,
Totfrcuj> . . . Kf^o-cTcw), If Mve6u were used here absolutely, in the
sense of " empty space," what would the neighbouring ouB£ wpur<r6v
be doing beside it ? Least of all can the verse be quoted to confute
the assumption of permanently empty, or even of temporarily
emptied, interstices.
It is curious that Aristotle (loc. tit, and Physics^ iv. 6) denies the
vacuum-conception to Anaxagoras likewise, remarking that his experi-
ment with the inflated bag (see p. 213, 1. 32), as well as the air-pressure
experiment — which must have been that of Empedocles mentioned
above —do not prove that there is no empty space, but that " air is
something." Here, again, we may be permitted to conjecture that
Aristotle somewhat misunderstood the object of those old inquirers.
Anaxagoras had made such ample use of the Invisible, that he cannot
have escaped t^e reproach of doing business with Non-entities. He
then proved to the sceptics that there are invisible bodies, and that
where ihere seems to be Nothing, Something in truth is present. An
emptied bag seems at first to contain nothing. But inflate it — this is
precisely the experiment of Anaxagoras alluded to by Aristotle — bind
up its opening, tie it and pull it fast, and the resistance which it offers
to all attempts at compression will very soon teach us that the Invisible
560 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
inside it is a material Something. We take the liberty of believing
that Anaxagoras intended to prove exactly what he actually did prove.
As the theory of an empty space did not originate with Leucippus, so
it by no means follows from what has been said that Empedocles
must have been influenced by him, This supposition, reiterated of
late, seems baseless to me, not merely because Aristotle knew nothing
of such a connection (cf. De General, et Corrupt. , i. 8, especially 324 B,
32^ and 325 B, 36^), but chiefly because the doctrines of Empedocles
at many points can very readily be viewed as steps preliminary to
Atomism, whereas, if such influence had really been exerted, they
would be far more difficult to understand as steps backward or
downward from a height already attained.
Page 241, § 5. On the cosmology of Empedocles, cf. Karsteu,
Em$edodisRcliqida'.)AfibJF. ; Grnppc, Kosmlschc Systemc dcr Gricc/icn>
98-100 ; Tannery, Pour Phistoire^ etc., 316^ ; Doxogr. GrM ftmiin*
Page 242, 1. 12. On this experiment with goblets, and the infer-
ences drawn from it, cf, Aristotle, jCte CWtf, ii. 13. The report, meagre
enough in all truth, was utterly misunderstood by Gruppe, op. M9 99.
Page 243, § 6. " Modes for the beginnings of organic being : *
Here the experts are frequently at variance, and full certainty seems
hardly attainable. Against Diimmler's view of the case (A^adcmt^
218 j^), which I have adopted in the text, objections have been niiscd
by feller, i, 795, 796, ed. 5, which I cannot regard as decisive,
Zeller's opinion is that Empedocles was not thinking of a progressive
transformation of organic beings, but that they "simply disappear
from the scene, and for those which supersede them a fresh creation
from the beginning is required." Against this view it is to be urged
that of the four modes of origin described by ^Etius, probably accord-
ing to Theopbrastus (Doxogr., 430, 431), the first and second at any
rate do not stand in this relation. For the '< grotesque*' («tew\o<j>a»/*rt)
formations of the second " genesis " are evidently supposed to have been
produced by the concretion of the non-combined members of the first
(cf. kcrvfufrvfoi . . . rots papto'S with trvf/tyvonfoeav rwv fup&v)* And the
grotesqueness of the organisms of the second scries obviously arises
from the union of the dissimilar parti-formations of the first genesis
(cf. Empedodis Fragment^ 244-261, Stein)* Further, the fourth
genesis certainly belongs to the first generated, not to the first
generating, beings. Its effect is : fourthly, animal beings arose by
sexual generation, not animal beings arose which engendered others
sexually. This hardly requires demonstration. I do not insist on the
point, which might, perhaps, be called captious, that the numeration
would otherwise be incomplete ; for then those beings called into
existence by generation would form a fifth genesis* But the
cause therein assigned (rots ft . , . ^o^a^y, Doxogr,, 431) can only
be interpreted as referring to a modification in this instance of already
* existing beings, which was the actual condition of the generation*
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 561
Thus the relation presumed by Zeller docs not exist between the third
and the fourth geneses either. The third genesis alone is exceptional
in its relation to the second, but then it falls out of line also in every
other respect as well. Be it noted, however, the text is corrupt. The
decisive word 6\o$vuv rests on conjecture. This conjecture, it is true,
finds support in Empedocles, v, 365 — but what a support it is ! To
all appearance (even if we do not set store by the word irpwra), there
is no question there of agenesis ensuing on other modes of generation,
nor yet of a mode of generation of animal beings in general, but solely
of human beings. We must give Zeller right in maintaining that
Dummler's attempt to assign this anthropogony to another world-
period than the rest of the zoogonies does not agree with the excerpt
in ^Etius. But as this part of the excerpt does not fit in with the
context in other respects either, Dummler's hypothesis is still not yet
condemned. I at least do not regard the conjecture as too bold, that
yfttius was bearing in mind that versified description of the origin of
mankind as proceeding directly from the elements ; that he erroneously
inserted it in this evolution-scries, thereby expelling what we might
have expected to find there, viz. those organisms that survived after
the elimination of structures unfit for life. He may have regarded as
a member of a consecutive series that which belonged properly by its
side and which was only outwardly combined with the links of the
self-inclusive chain in an enumeration of the various modes of origin.
(By the way, in Doxogr., 530 ; 27, 28, should we not read IK rw
^/to<rrofxw instead of <?/c r&v fytofov ?)
A striking parallel to the doctrine of Empedocles on the origin of
animals is to be found, we may add, in Diderot. Cf. John Morley,
Diderot and the Encyclopedists, I. m, London, 1878.
Page 244, 1. 17. Among the "gleams of inspiration" of Empc-
docks, we may further count the fact that he was the lirst to recog-
nize—we do not in the least know on what grounds — that even light
requires a certain time for its propagation (Aristotle, De Sens., c. 6,
446 A 25).
Page 245, 1, 24. " Hylozoism in exctlsis." Thus Rohdc, too, has
lately called the Empecloclean doctrine " a fully developed hylozoistic"
one (Psyche^ ii, *88,ed. 2). I regard as utterly groundless the view main-
tained by such eminent men as Windelband, for instance, that the
introduction of motive forces by Empedocles was an attempt to fulfil
thc^*//'/tf of Pannenidcs: "as pure changeless Ens the elements cannot
move of themselves ; they can only b* moved* (I wan Muller's Hand-
bitch) v. i> 161), Is it necessary to remind the reader that Pannenides
considered motion in itself as impossible, without respect to whether
its impulse came from within or from without ? As far as I can see,
the Kmpedoclean assumption of the two non-material Powers was due
solely to the impossibility of tracing back to one tendency, immanent
in matter as such, and therefore of equable operation, the tendencies
YOU I. 20
562 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
dominant in the two alternative world-periods, and thus relieving one
another. The dualism of Empedocles is no whit more fundamental
than that of Anaxagoras, whose Nous was merely meant to assist the
solution of a definite mechanical and teleological problem. As the
gravity inherent to matter was kept by Anaxagoras as an independent
source of motion side by side with the impulse of Nous, so Empe-
docles retained the attraction of like by like side by side with the im-
pulses derived from " Friendship )J and " Discord." Aristotle himself
{Degmerat. et corrupt.^ it, 6) says that Friendship and Discord are the
causes of merely " a certain " motion (ctoAct TWOS Ktvha-ws raGra atria),
thus proving that Empedocles did not regard these two Powers as the
only motive forces, and contradicting what might be read into the
first chapters of the Metaphysics^ where Aristotle is just defending a
thesis.
Page 246, 1. 4. The phrase cited from Aristotle will be found in
De gencrat. et corrupt., ii. 6 (333 B 21). Immediately before occur
the words in which the elements are pronounced older than the deity
(viz. S^cupos), Ta <J>i5cr€i irpdrepa TOW flcov.
Page 246, 1. 35. On Empedocles' " physics of the soul w cf. f)0.wgt\
Gr.t 502, besides the Fragments (especially 329-332, Stein).
Page 247, 1. 35. In agreement with Dieterich, Nebyia, 119, 1 com-
pute the 30,000 S/xu of the soul's wandering at 10,000 years, each con-
sisting of three seasons or Spat. This reckoning is compatible with
the Platonic data on the subject. Rohde, however, regards the Horai
as years, and can see in the number 30,000 merely an expression for
an unlimited quantity of years (Psyche, ii. 179, n. 3, and 187, ed. 2). But
Rohde and also Dummler (Akademika^ 237) point to the parallelism
which will be found noted in our text at p. 252 (§ 8 ?«/£).
Page 249, 1. 26. Alfred von Kremcr, in the Wiener Stisungsbe*
richte (PhiL-hist. Classe 1889, No. iii., Stndim cur vcrglsichcnden
Culturgewhichtc)) p* 53,
Page 250, 1. 4. Pindar, Fragm. 131, Bergk.
Page 250, 1. 23. Pannenides : on the partial perception which he
ascribed even to corpses, cf. Theophrastus, DC SMm&u$(DQxogr.9 499)-
Ibid. .* «al tfxws $£ icw T& $v %xeiv TH/& yvwcnv. His doctrine of the fate
of souls is known to us from Simplicius, Phys^ p. 39, 19, Diets,
Parallel to the xfitfis n<\4w of Parmenides (1. 35) is the ^«<r*j K*\
fypovla. of Philolaus (cp. Plato, Ph&do, c. 36, compared with 6r D).
Page 251, L 35, The " Questions of King Milindas » Sacr&t BM&S
of the East, xxxv. pp. 40^ and 71 Jfi
Page 253, 1. 2. The identification of that spiritual divinity with
Apollo goes back to Ammonius, who probably read in their original
context the verses (347-351, Stein) which he alone communicates in
their entirety,
Page 253, L 26. " The occasional attitude of hostility " to Xeno-
phanes ; cf. vv. 146^, Stein,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 56^
BOOK II.— CHAPTER VI.
Page 255, § i. For the remains of Hecatseus (1. 22) see C. Mullet's
Fragmenta Historicornm Gra'corum, i. j ff. On his deeds of state-
craft (1. 20), cf. Herodotus, v. 36 and 125 /, and Diodorus, x. 25, 2,
Dindorf.' His adventure at Thebes (p. 257) is related by Herodotus, ii.
143. His rationalizing historical method has been characterized by
Grote, History of Greece, i. 350 (new edit,, 10 vols., 1888), and has
lately been illustrated by Diels in Hermes, xxii. 411^: Similar ideas
to those in our text will be found in Ed. Meyer, Philologies, New
Series, ii, 270.
Page 258, § 2. Out of the extensive literature on Herodotus I am
glad to give special mention to a little book, as unpretentious as it is
valuable, Sittlich-reUgiosc Lcbensaiischauung des Herodotos, by Hoff-
meistcr, Essen 1832.
Pages 259 to 272. The passages from Herodotus treated in these
pages, besides the proem (i. i ff. ), are : ii. u$ff. (Helen) ; ii. 54 ff.
(Dodona) ; vii. 129 (Poseidon) ; ii. i\ff. (the Nile delta); vii. 189^
(Magi and storm); \\.passini (identification of Greek and Egyptian
divinities) ; ii. 53 (Homer and Hesiod) ; i. 131 (nature-worship of the
Persians) ; ii. 45 (forgiveness of the gods and heroes) ; ii. 120 (distrust
of the epic poets) ; ii. 3 (equal ignorance about divine things) ; iii. 108
("Divine Providence") ; vii. 10 and i. 32 (jealousy of the gods) ; vii.
*33^» (Bulis and Sperthies) ; iv. 25 (Polar nights) ; iii. 115 (" Isles of
Tin") ; iv. 36 (the rounded earth) ; ii. 33 (Nile and Danube) ; iii. 107
(winged serpents) ; iii. 102 (gold-digging ants) ; iii. 116 (Arimaspians) ;
ii. 21 (Ocean and the flood of the Nile). Compare on this subject the
author's "Herodoteisc e Studien," ii* 8 [526] ff., in the Wiener
Siteuugsbcrichte, 1883.
BOOK III.
Page 273. The first motto is taken from an essay by Berthelot,
" La Chimic clans 1'antiquitd et au moyen-&ge," in the Revue des deux
mondes, September 15, 1893, pp. 316, 317. The second is from Boltz-
mann's academic address, " Der zweite Hauptsatz der mechanischen
Warmetheorie," in the Almanack der KaiserL Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, Vienna, 1886, p. 234* The third I once found in a para-
phrase of Philodcmus in the Hcrculanean papyri, Wiener Studim, ii. 5.
BOOK III. — CHAPTER L
Pages 277, 1. 14. The quotation is from Homer, Iliad, xu 514.
Page 277, L 27. The Indogermamc "formula of blessing " men*
tioned here is due to Ad. Kuhn, Zritschrift fur mrgldch. Sprach-
) xiii, 49. The " Song of a Physician )J (I. 31) is translated
564 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
by R. T. H . Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigvcda (x. 97), ii, 533, 2nd edit.,
Benares, 1897. On this and on the oldest Hindoo medicine, cf.
Zimmer, AlUndisches Leben, 375, 394, 396, 398, 399.
Pages 277, 278. The examples of popular medical superstition are
taken from the Pkarmacologia of Dr. Paris, quoted by J. S. Mill,
Logic, vol. ii. bk. v, ch. 3, §8 ,- Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, trans.
by H. M. Tirard, p. 232 ; Fossel, Volksmcdlcln itnd medic. Abcrglaubcn
in Steiermark) quoted in the Allgtmeine Zeitung> Munich, September
23, 1891.
Page 278, 1. 34. On the surgery of savages and their bold opera-
tions, cf. B artels, Die Median der Naturvolker> Leipsic, 1893, pp. 300
and 305, 306; also Von den Steinen, Unter den JSaturwlkcrn Cm-
tralbrasilienS) p. 373.
Pages 278, 279. Here, and again at p. 283, 1. 28, frequent use has
been made of Welcker's essay, " Epoden oder das Besprechen,"
Kleincschrifien, iii. 64^. For what follows (p, 279, 1. 12), cf. Odyssey,
xix. 457/. and xviii. 383^ On itinerant Indian physicians (p, 279,
1. 19) in the earliest times, cf. Kaegi, Der Rigwdct) p. in.
Page 279, L 33. On Democedes and his adventures, cf. Herodotus,
iii. 125 ff.
Page 280, 1. 9. " The Cypriot physician Onasilus : " cf, the inscrip-
tion at Edalion, now in Collitz, Griecltische Dialektinscfoift&t^ 26 Jf.
In what concerns the date of the inscription I follow 0. HofTmani
Die griechischen Dialcktc^ i, 41, in opposition to JLarfeld in Bursian*s
Jahresberichte^ Ixvi. (1892) 36,
Page 280, 1. 23. *'The Physician's Oath** is in iL Littrd, GCuvrts
dHippocrati, iv. 628^: The prohibition of castration (p. 281,!. 2) I
discover in the words O&T«JI&» 8ioW^ pt\v XtdiSvras, which can only be
translated, " I will not cut, not even those who suffer from stony indura-
tion." Now, as a general prohibition of the knife, in an nge when
" cutting and burning " were the chief features of medical practice,
would be an absurdity, no choice is left but to take the word rtftrw
in a special sense, and to understand it as " castrate," as it was used
by Hesiod, Works and Days, 786 and 790 /, by Pseudo-Phocylidcs,
v. 187, Bergk, and by Lucian, De Syria Dca% § 15 (cf. also roptusss
&ero/ifas). But then we must not take \i6tQvras to refer to stone in the
bladder, but to those stone-like hardenings which can only b<s relieved
by castration ; indeed, the verb in question is employed of indurations
of the most diverse kinds. This old conjecture of mine on the mean-
ing of the passage was first communicated and discussed by my medi-
cal colleague, Theodo* Puschmann, in Virchow-Hirsch's Jahrtsberichtt
uder die l<ortscJiritte der gesamten Mcdicin^ 1883, i. 326, and he has
frequently returned to it.
Page 281. "Duties and status :w the passages, relating to the
conduct and personal appearance of physicians in general ore : Littrd,
iv, 182, 184, 188, 312, 638, 640 \ ix, 14, 204, 210, 354, 3558, 266, 268,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 565
Page 282, 1. 3. Aristotle speaks of Hippocrates as a great physician.
Politics, iv. (vulgo vii.) 4, 1326 A 24.
Page 282, 1. 21. Diels brings the most recent portions of the
Hippocratic collection somewhat lower down than I do, ascribing
them to the middle of the fourth century B.C. (This was verbally
communicated in his address at the Philological Congress at Cologne,
Sept. 1895.)
Page 284, 1. 14. Epidaurus : the description is based on the
personal impressions of the author. The " notes 3> of cases at
Epidaurus mentioned in the text have been collected by Kavvadias,
Les Fouilles d*E$idaure, i. pp. 23-34,
Page 285, 1. 25. " A recent discovery : * we refer to the London
papyrus : Anonymi Londimnsis ex Aristotclis iatricis Menoniis et aliis
medlcis ecloga, ed. H. Diels, Berlin, 1893. Cf. the discussion of its
contents by Diels in Hermes, xxviii. (" liber die Excerpte von Menons
latrika ")• On the writings in the Hippocratic collection which belong
to the Cnidian school (p. 286, 1. 5), cf. especially Littre, viii. 6 Jf., and
recently Johannes Ilberg in Gricch. Studien* . . H. Lipsius dargelracht
(Leipsic, 1894), pp. 22^:
Page 286, §4. The books " On Diet " have been practically alone
among the Hippocratic writings in attracting the attention of philo-
sophers and philologists. Cf. Bernays, Gesammelte Abkandlungen, i.
I JF» j Teichmuller, Nme Studim znr Geschichte der Begriffe, ii. 3 ff. ;
Weygoldt, JaMucher fur Philologie, 1882, pp. 161 ff. ; and Zeller,
Philosophic der Griechcn, i. 694, ed. 5. I do not consider Weygoldt and
Zeller successful in their attempts to prove the more recent date of this
treatise. The influence on its author of Heraclitus and Empedocles
is beyond dispute ; indeed, the way the two systems are employed
points to a time when both were still full of life— the doctrine of
Kmpcdocles, that is to say, still young, and that of Heraclitus not yet
antiquated* Teichmullcr's refutation (pp. 48-50) of the assumption
that the writer " On Diet " also made use of Archelaus seems to me
wholly pertinent. If he required any precursor in respect to material
dualism, a much more likely name is that of Parmenides, who, accord-
ing to Aristotle (Metafhys^ i. 3), looked on fire, just as our author does,
as a kind of moving cause, Anaxagoras likewise appears to have been
not unknown to our author, though by no means to have exercised any
permanent influence over him. In the very chapters whose contents
Weygoldt (p. 174) traces to Anaxagoras and Archelaus, there is a
sentence which straightly contradicts the fundamental theory of
Atiaxagoras : #r« yty otfirorf icari rtaM tffrdpwct, i\XJ oM A^Xotofytiva M
?k woi M r<4 (vl 3741 Littr.). This is directly preceded by a sentence
•which admittedly reminds one of an Anaxagorean fragment (No. 3 in
Schaubach), It stands there like a notice-board to warn us to regard
such similarities as anything rather than decisive proofs* If the author
really had this fragment before his eyes, he only borrowed its verbal
566 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
form, and not its thought, the term oW^/icwo, for instance, being used in
an entirely different sense in each. I cannot perceive the remini-
scences of Democritus which Zeller finds. His argument founded on
the seven vowels is irrelevant, for the distinctive signs for H and n,
though indeed not officially introduced into Athens till 403 B.C., were
yet known to non-official usage long before, not merely in Ionia, where
the author almost certainly wrote, but also in Athens itself, where Zcllor
thinks that he resided.
The passages here adduced from the treatise " On Diet " arc to be
found invi. 468, 470 (cf. also 606), and 472.
Page 288, 1, 6. The doctrine of organic equilibrium is most dis-
tinctly formulated in Littr<5, vi. 606, and at the end of Book III.
p. 636.
Page 288, 11. 14, 17. My statements here about the Cniclians Eury-
phon and Herodicus are drawn from the above-mentioned Papyrus
Londinensis (p. 7), where all the fragments of Euryphon are authenti-
cated in the index,
Page 289. The quotations refer to Book i. " On Diet," vi. 484, 474,
476.
Page 289, 1. 39. On the experiment here mentioned, cf. Littrl's
remark, vi. 527.
Page 290, 1. 1 1. "An exact knowledge " is attributed to the inter-
preters of dreams, vi. 642 (eicri^, ot tcpfyovcrt w«pi rtav rotovrw d/cpt£f/
Page 290, 1. 22. The little treatise vepl <r«pKG>v (" On Flesh," or «' On
the Muscles ") is in Littrd, vol. vii. There is certainly no need to follow
Littr6 in calling it post- Aristotelian on the ground that the author is
aware that two chief veins originate in the heart. The time at which
such obvious facts of anatomy became known could not possibly be
stated with certainty even in antiquity. The date of the composition
of this little book is most clearly illuminated by its eclectic features
noticed on p. 293.
Page 293, 3. 5. "Aristotle's words : " Politics , i. 2 init.
Page 294, 1. 12. For the treatise " On the Number Seven," see
Littr£, viii. 634 j£ (a better version in ix.'433 fi)> and cf. Ilberg, op* tvX,
and Harder, " Zur pseud-hippokratischen Schrift, w«pl Wo/wtewy/ Rheln-
zsches Museum^ New Series, xlviiu 433 jf«
Page 295, 1. 13. The remark at the close of the paragraph on the
part played by the number seven in j,he alchemy of the Arabs is based
on an article by Berthelot in the Revue de$ deux mo tides , i Oct. 1893,
P* 557*
Page 297, L, 8. The treatise " On Old Medicine " forms the con-
clusion of Littrd's first volume. Our citations from it (pp. 297 to 299}
will be found in Littr6, i, 570-606.
Page 300, 1. 9. The important jzoth chapter of the treatise " On
Old Medicine" here treated is in Littrd, i. 620-634.
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 567
Page 300,1. 31. ''The almost verbal resemblance:" i.e. of the
words in i. 620 to those in vi. 468.
Page 305, 1. 21. See Littre*, i. 572.
Page 307, 11. 16, 17. Herodotus, ii. 33 ; Euripides, Fragm. 574,
Nauck, edit. 2 ; Epicurus, apud Laert. Diog., x. 32.
Page 309, 1. 16. The quotation is from Bunge's Lehrbuch dcr
pJiysioL undpathoL Chcmic^ p. 86, edit. 2.
Page 310, 1. 28. For the treatise " On the Nature of Women," see
Littre*, vii. 312. The introduction should be read, and likewise ii. 110-
112, the introduction to the Prognosticon.
Page 311, 1. 3. For the treatise "On Water, Air, and Sites," see
Littre*, ii. 12 J\ For that " On the Sacred Disease " (1. 23), see Littrd,
vi. 352^: The maxims (11. 30^) on diseases as at once human and
divine, Littre', vi. 394 and 364 and ii. 76.
Page 312. For the polemical expressions quoted, see Littrd, vi. 354
to 362.
Pages 314, 315. The quotations made here from Hippocratic
physicians will be found in Littr^'s edition, ii. 302, 328 ; iv.212, 252, 254.
Littrd's opinion of the treatise " On the Joints" is taken from iv. 75.
I call the author of that work a " pioneer of comparative anatomy "
on account of his expressions in Littrd, iv. 192 and 198-
BOOK III.— CHAPTER II.
Page 316, 1. 10. "A romance in letters :" (Etwres d*Hippocratcy
ix, 320^, especially 350 and 354 L, On Hippocrates' visits to the
sick in Abdcra, see the undoubtedly genuine third book of the
tipidemicS) iii. 122, 124, 128.
Page 317. On Leucippus, cf. Laert. Diog., ix. ch. 6. It seems most
reasonable to consider Miletus as his birthplace (1. 8), because iifthe
two other cases of Elca and Abdera his relations with Zcno and
Democritus respectively might be regarded as probable sources of
error. The dispute as to his historical reality (1. 19) has most recently
been carried on between Rohde ( Verhtwdlnngen de.r 34 Philologen*
Vmammlung, 64^, and Fleckeisen's Jahrb'itchcr, 1881, pp. 741 ft),
Natorp (AVi*7>*. Must urn, xli. 349 Jfc), and Diels
tier 35 JPhitol* Versmlg., 96 ft ; cf. also JRJmnisckos
xlii, i ^), The authority of Aristotle and Theophrastus is decisive
against the doubts of Epicurus (apud Laert. Diog,, x. 13). Though I
agree unreservedly with Diels in this view, yet I cannot share his
opinion that Theophrastus regarded Lcucippus as a disciple of
Parmenides, For the words /cotiwVa* tt*ppwtiy rys <jn\o<ro<t>ta$
(Doxogn, 483^ 12) need not, mejitdicc> express this ; just as little does
the verbally identical utterance on the relation of Anaxagoras to the
doctrine of Anaxinienes — /coH/a^o-ay ?%$ *Amf tpfaovs 4>*Xo<r0<£(a* (Doxogn,
4?3> *8 jfi) — oblige us to credit Theophrastus with the consequent
568 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
anachronism. Again, it was no other than Theophrastus who attri-
buted (tfjiW Laert. Diog., ix. 46) "The Great Order of the Universe"
(1. 30) to Leucippus. The only extant fragment, quoted in the text, is
trom the treatise *' On the Mind" (yElius, in DoxogT., 321 B 10),
Page 318. On Democritus, cf. Laert. Diog,, ix. ch. 7. As to the date
of his birth, which on autobiographical evidence is placed in the 8oth
Olympiad (=460-457 B.C., but probably the first year of the Olympiad
is meant), cf. Apollodorus, apitd Laert. Diog., ix. 41. The fragments
are (very imperfectly) collected in Mullach, Democrat Abdcrita:
opcrum fragment^ Berlin, 1843. The two fragments quoted (11. 4 and
30) occur in Clement of Alexandria, Stromat., i. 357 (Potter), and
Laert. Diog., ix. 36. The Platonic phrase in I 26 is from Republic^
ii. 368 A.
Page 319, 11. 4, ii. The two quotations from Aristotle are from
DC Getierat. ct Corrupt^ i. 2, 315 A 34 /. and 316 A 6^ Cf. also the
significant passages, ibld^ i. 8, 324 B 35^ and 325 A 23jjC
Page 320, 1. 3. Mullach, p. 204.
Page 321, 1. 21. Galilei: the quotation from his treatise, ** II
Saggiatore" will be found in the Florentine edition of 1844, iv.
333/
Page 323, 1. 2. The ensuing account is based on Aristotle,
Metaphys^ i. 4y£#. Diels not unjustly conjectures (in a courteous com-
munication to me on the subject) that the exemplification by N and
2 rests on an erroneous tradition, and that those two letters should be
replaced by H and ffi .
Page 328, 1. 15. The quotation is from Fechner's book,
physikalische u. philosophische Atomenhhre^ ed. 2. The whole dis-
cussion (pp. 79-81) should be read ; it is notable equally by its depth
of thought as by its brilliance of expression.
Page 328, 1. 28. John Stuart Mill, Logic, vol. i. bk. iii, ch. 6, § i.
For what follows, cf. Lothar Meyer, Die modernen Timor! en dtr Chcmit^
ed, ^passim, eg. 253, 273, 183-
Page 329, 1. 25. Cournoi:, Traitt de Fenchaincment ctes idtfo
fondamentales dans les sciences et dans Vhistoirc^ I. 245* Descartes
(1. 35) writes to Mersenne : " J'admire ceux qui disent que cc que j'ai
e*crit ne sont que centones Democriti," etc*, (Euvrts, viii. 328, ed,
Cousin, Here the great Robert Boyle (1627-1691) ought likewise to
be remembered, who said that " possibly there was at the bottom of
all bodies one and the same primeval matter, extended* divisible, and
impenetrable, and that the differences we discern in them were only
the consequence of the unequal size, shape, rest, or movement, and of
the respective position of the atoms " (Kopp, Gestfiichte der £V5ww/i,
ii. 308).
Page 331, 11. 4, 5. What is here said about muscarine and neurine
I have taken from Bunge, Lekrbuch dw physwl. u, paihofag*
ft), ed. 2,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 569
Page 332, 1. 13. For Democrilus' explanation of specific gravity,
cf. Mullach, p. 215. The witness is Theophraslus, De Sensibus^o
whom we are also indebted for the rest of our information on Demo-
critus1 theory of the senses (Doxogr. Gr., 516^).
Page 333, 1. 33. The reference is to Versttch nbcr die gereizte
Nermn- nnd Muskclfaser (Berlin, 1797), i. 429* Humboldt, however,
does not express these ideas as his own. The most eminent modern
exponent of this theory is probably Nic. Lemery, from whose Cours
dc Chymis (1675) K°PP» m his Ceschichte der Chemie^ iii. 84, quotes
the following passage : ". . . je ne crois pas qu'on me conteste
que Pacide n'ait des pointes . . , ; il ne faut que le gouter pour
tomber dans ce sentiment, car il fait des picottements sur la
langue," etc.
Page 33 Si !• 3- Descartes and Huyghens : cf. Lasswitz, Geschichtc
der Atomistik) ii. 91 ; and Huyghens, Diswtrs de la cause de la
pesantcur, in the appendix to the Traitt de la lumtire, p. 102, Leipsic
edition : " des corps faits d'un amas de petites parties accrochtes
ensemble." But similar ideas are also to be found in Lemery (1645-
1715) according to Kopp, op. #'/., ii. 308. Descartes, according to
1 luyghcns' terse formulation of his point of view (pp. cff., 93), refers
everything back to principles, " tels que sont ceux qui dependent des
corps consid<5rez sans qualitez et de leurs mouvements." For what
follows (L 10) cf. L. Meyer, op. tit., 223: "The term 'saturation* is
merely a word in the room of an idea, in the room of a clear con-
reption." Cf., too, ibid., p. 387. Pascal's dictum (I 18) will be
found in his /V/Afcfor, ii. 17 (ii. 249 of the Paris edition, 1823) : " II
faut dire en gros : ccla se fait par figure et mouvement, car cela est
vraL Mais de dire quels, et composer la machine, cela est ridicule ;
car cela est inutile et incertain et pdnible."
Pages 335, 336. The chief evidence for the Democritean cosmogony
will be found in Laert. Diog., ix, 31 ; Hippolytus, i. 10 ; Democritus,
Fragm. 2 (fhys\ p. 207, and Fragm, 6, p. 208, Mullach ; cf. Plato,
Tim*, 52 K. The whole subject has recently been admirably treated
by Bricger, Die Urbewgung der A tome nnd die Weltentstchung bei
I<eitkipp und Demokrit (Gymnasial- Programm, Halle, 1884), and by
Hugo Carl Liepmann, Die Mcchanik der leucipp-democrit'schen Atome
^The Doctorate Dissertation, Berlin, 1885),
Page 337,1. 38. "A passage from Aristotle:" De Car/0, ii. 13,
where the doctrine of the " vortex w is attributed to "all," *.*,
as the context shows, to all the older nature-philosophers and
originators of cosmogonies (295 A 9J^). Teichmullcr, Studien sur
Geschickte der Begrlffe^ p. 83, Berlin, 1874, first noted and de-
monstrated that Anaximander is almost certainly included amongst
these.
Page 339, L 27, The statements in the text on the actual effect of
whirlwinds, and especially of the " Etesiai," or summer north winds
570 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
in Greece, have been approved by my colleague, Professor Harm,
and arc partly based on his courteous and instructive communica-
tions.
Page 340, 1. 5. Aristotle's remarks on this subject arc to be found
in De Casio ) iii. 2 (300 B 8), and Mctafhys., i. 4 (985 JB 20),
Page 343, 1. 6. " Riddles of the universe : " cf. Ubcr die Gretiscn
des Naturcrkeniiens. Die sic.beu Wcltriitscl, Two discourses by Emil
du Bois-Reymond, ed. 3, Leipsic, 1891, p. 83.
Page 344, 11. 13-16. A number of Bacon's utterances on this
subject are collected in Grote's Plato, i. 92 f.
Cf. further L. Stein, Ldbnis und Sfinosa, 66 f.
Tyndall's phrase is taken from his Fragments of Science^ 5th eel,,
1876, p. 355-
Page 345, 1. 5. Thcophrastus : Doxogr., 483, 12^
Page 348, 1. 3. Cf. the reference to Parmenides on p. 177.
Page 349, 1. 27. Galilei : cp. op. tit., p. 336; " Ma che ne* corpi
esterni, per eccitare in noi i sapori, gli odori c i suoni, si richiegga
altro che grandezze, figure, moltitudini e movimcnti tardi o veloci, io
non lo credo." Similarly, Huyghens, op. cit^ 96 : " En nc supposant
dans la nature que des corps qui soient faits d'une mcsmc matiere,
dans lesquels on ne considers aucune gualitt ni aucune inclination &
s'approcher les uns des autres, mais settlement des differ cntes grandeurs,
figures et mouvements w A clear allusion, quoted by Lasswhz, op.
at., ii. 49, shows us that Galilei was well acquainted with the doctrines
of Dcmocritus, and Lowenheim, Der Einfiuss Dcmokrits attf Galifal
(Archit/, vii. 230^;), has recently proved that Galilei applied himself
closely to the theories of Democritus.
As to Huyghens, cfc the expression of his astonishment (op* tit.,
93) that not only the other philosophers but even Democritus
omitted to explain gravity: "On pent le pardonncr a ceux qui se
contentoient de parcillcs solutions en bien de rencontres ; mais non
pas si bien a D<Smocrite et a ceux de sa Secte, qui aiant entrepris
de rendre raison de tout par des Atonies en ont exceptd la seule
Pesanteur."
Pages 350, 351. The evidence for the existence of the vacuum
is given in Aristotle, Physics ', iv, 6 (213 B SJf.)*
Page 35 1, 1. 36. " From Leucippus downwards : " cp, Thcophrasius
(Doxogr. Gr., 483, 17 /.), The sentence, *ol rfo fr avroiy <TXT/^TWI/
faretpov T& irKviQos Sik rb fjujti^v fj.a\.\ov TOLQVTOV f) rotovrov «7yai, I regard as
parenthetical, and I supply in thought rb o-x^a a^rw^ as the subject to
vttovrov* It has become customary to identify this utterance of
Leucippus with the Democritean statement on the secondary qualities,
oi (M\\oy rotov % <TQ?W (in Plutarch, Adv> Colot^ 4, r, and Sextus Emp^
Pyrrh. Hyp., i. 213 = 48, 13^, Bekker). Yet, pardonable though this
confusion may be, the context in which the two sentences appear
cannot leave us in any doubt as to the difference between them.
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 571
There would be no end to the meanings we should have to read into
Theophrastus' account in order to make it even half-comprehensible
on that supposition. How can that phrase of Democritus, which, as
Zeller, too, is ready to admit (i. 920, n. 2, ed. 5), relates " merely to
the secondary sensible qualities," help to prove the infinite number of
the shapes of the atoms ? The number of subjective variations, of
which the typical example, also quoted by Sextus (ibid^ is the honey
that tastes bitter to a jaundiced man, may perhaps amount to three,
four, or even ten ; but, even if there were a hundred or a thousand
such variations, this would have nothing to do with the infinite
number of the shapes of the atoms. And, what is yet more significant,
the existence of this infinite number is one thing : their combination
in each single object of sense is a different thing altogether. And
how intolerably violent it would be to have to think forward to
combination from existence, which is solely the subject in Theo-
phrastus, and which, according to the whole context, can solely be
his subject! Above all, Theophrastus himself i(Doxogr., 518, 2o/.)
speaks merely of the combination of many shapes of atoms, and by
no means of infinitely many, in a single sensible object. Here,
moreover, a special case is in question, and not a general rule. (The
passage, by the way, stands in need of critical aid, and may have
originally read thus : &u* lv iKdcrry [Xefrf iro\\k eW [Kal rpaxtci] Kal vlv
Page 354, 11. 18-21. The quotations are from Ernst Mach, Die
Princifiim dcr Mcchanik, etc. (Internationale wissenschaftliche Biblio-
thek), 463^
Page 355, L 19. On the theological doctrines of Democritus, cf.
chiefly Sextus Emp., Adv. Math.) ix, i, p. 394, 28^, and 396, 5^,
Bekkcr ; also Tertullian, Ad Nationes^ ii. 3 (connected by Zeller —
justly, of course — with Eustathius on Odyssey, xii. 63). A' notable
feature is his rationalistic explanation of the practice of divination
from entrails (Cicero, De Divinatione, ii. 13, 30), which has been
recently declared to be the one correct explanation by Ihering,
Vorgcschichte dsr Indoeuropder, 448, Though certainly far from
being true, yet this elucidatory attempt is precisely characteristic of
Democritus. Elsewhere, too, he devotes himself to finding a basis of
reality in religious customs and beliefs ; he considered divine appari-
tions and significant visions of sleep as alike something more than
fictions, just as he discerned in the gods of popular belief indications
of natural factors and even of moral forces, disfigured, indeed, and
misinterpreted by the caprice of poets (cf. Clement of Alexandria,
Protrept) ch. vi* p. 59, Potter ; cf., too, the same author's Stromat.^
v. 14, 709, Potter). To restore the corrupt words consult also Eusebius,
Prwp* Evang^ xiiu 13, § 27, in, 322, Gaisford; Laert Diog,, ix,
46* Diels discusses "Demokrits D&moriengiauben" in Archvu^ vii.
XS4-157.
57- KOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Page 356, 1. 17. Theophrastus stales and criticizes DcmocriUib'
theory of cognition in Doxogr., 5 i6Jf. On the soul-atoms of Lcucippus
and Democritus, and the part played by respiration, cf, Aristotle, tie
Anima, i. 2, 403 B, 31^
Page 356, 1. 36. Parmenides and Empedocles : cf. Doxogr., 390,
i^ff. It is important to draw attention to the continuance of the
doctrine of universal animation chiefly because most writers assume
far too early a date for the disappearance of the hylozoistic mode of
thought, fixing it generally as early as Anaxagoras and Empedocles.
Pages 358, 359. These "sighs" are registered by Sext Emp.,
Adv. Math.,v\\. 135^:, p. 22O/, Bekkcr ; cf., too, Laert. Diog. ix. 72,
Page 359, 1. 22. Cf. above, the note on p. 290, 1. n.
Page 361, 1. 12, The maxims about genuine and obscure know-
ledge are also enumerated by Sextus Emp., Adv. Math.} vii. I38/,
p. 121, Bekker.
Page 363, 1. 15. Aristotle's critical remarks are contained in
Phys.) viii. 252 A, B. With this cf. sonic remarks of Theophrastus
on Plato, which for once sound wholly un-Aristotelian, and which
Proclus quotes in his commentary on the Tiwtcus, p. 176 of the Basle
edition (also in Doxogr., 485, 13 J£).
Page 364, 1, 6. Aristotle's accusation will be found in Metafihys^ L
4,yfo. For what follows, cf. Diihring, Kritische Geschichte dtr allge-
meinen Prlncipicn dcr Mechanik, 109-112. For "the reproach of
Aristotle » (1. 27), cp. PAys.t ii. 4, 196 A, 24^5 and DC gtntr&t.
animal.^ v. 789, B 2.
Page 366, 1. 20. " In listening to Democritus," etc. : cp., chiefly,
Hippolytus, i. 13, which Lciwenheim (Archiv, vii. 246) has turned to
good use with the remark that Democritus had " already deposed in
principle the geocentric point of view."
Page 367, 1. 27. Metrodorus of Chios : apud Stobuwm, Edogte^ i.
496 (i. p. 199, i,, Wachsmuth),
Pages 367, 368, On the e'hical fragments of Democritus, cf*
Lortzing's eponymous Berliner Gymnasia?- Programm^ 1873 ; Hir?<el>
Demokrits Schrift wpl Mv^s (Hermes, xiv. 354^); Natorp^ Die
Ethika des Dewokritos, 1893 (reviewed by Diels in the Dtutsche
Littcratur~Zeitnng) 1893, No. 41). Scanty but evidently genuine
information on the ethics of Democritus is given by Laert. Diog.,
ix. 45. The terms "cheerfulness," "well-being,'* and "composure"
represent respectively the Democritean expressions fMujufoj, «OtffT<$,
and &0ajuj8*»7.
Page 368, 1. 37. The "brilliant fragment " mentioned in the text,
and preserved in Stobacus, Fhrileglum^ 46, 48, has been conjectural!/
restored by the author of this work in his BtUrSge sur Kritit und
ErU&rung gritch. SchriJtstelUr, iii 26 (a 5^6, Wiener SiUungsben,
J876),
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 573
BOOK III.— CHAPTER III.
, Page 371, 1. 21. Diogenes of Apollonia: he is treated by Lacrt.
Diog. (ix. ch. 9), who quotes his proem, but otherwise deals with him
very scantily. The fragments are in Schorn (cf. note to p. 208, supr^
andinPanzcrbieter,Z>/^;^J^<?//^/^^, Leipsic, 1830. Alsocf. Chr.
Petersen, Hippocratis nomine qua circumferuntur scripta^ etc. (Ham-
burger Gymnasial-Programm, 1839) ; Diels' above-mentioned dis-
course on Leucippus and Democritus, and his essays on " Leukippos
und Diogenes von Apollonia" (Rhdnischcs Museum, xlii. ijf, ; and
"Uber die Excerpte von Menons latrika" (Hermes, xxviii. 427^).
The chief evidence is that of Theophrastus (Doxogr., 477, 5).
Page 373, 1. 21. On the wording of this slightly corrupt passage,
cf. my Bcitrdge sur Kritik und Erblcirung, etc., L 39 (= 271, Wiener
Sitzungsberichle, 1875).
Page 374, L 22. The " Theory of Heaven " (^retapo\oy(^ and
likewise the treatise nepl foepdirov <jn5<re«y, were not actually seen by
SimpHcius, to whom we are once more indebted for nearly all the
fragments ; he only found them mentioned in the principal work of
Diogenes (Ptiys., i. 4, p. 151, Diels).
Page 375, L 13. The remark on Homer is in Philodemus, On
Pietyi p« 70 of my edition. Dummler (Akadcmika, 113) seeks to
show that the Stoics depended on Diogenes *' in their theory of per-
ception and also in their . . . embryology." Diimmler (ibid. 225),
and Wcygoldt besides (Archw, i. 161 ft), discuss the relation of
Diogenes to certain treatises in the Hippocratic collection.
Page 37<3, L 21. For Theophrastus' "critical review of the
psychology of Diogenes," see De Sensible, 39 ff. (Doxogr., 510 ff.\
The verse quoted (1. 35) from the Clouds of Aristophanes runs ; ATyuv
(828 Meineke, repeated 1472; cf., too,
Page 377, L 20. Hippo : the fragments of the n<H/<farrcu in Kock,
Comicorum Atticorum Fragment*, i. 60 ff. For the single fragment
(L 24), cp. Nicole, Les scolies Genwoises de PlUade, i. 198 (Geneva,
1891) ; »t maintains the opinion, much discussed at that time, that the
water of all springs and wells is derived from the sea. On this, cf.
Diels, *' Dbcr die Genfcr Fragmeute dcs Xenophanes und Hippon,"
in the Btrlintr SUsungsberichte, 1891, 575 jfi Aristotle's remark is
from Metaphys^ i. 3, and De Anima, i. 2. My own views in the text
(I. 27) rest on a combination of Aristotle's Mctaphys., i. 3, of his
commentator Alexander on the passage (p. 21, 17, Bonitz), and of
Hippolytus, i. 16 (Doxogr,, 566, 20). The valuable information of
Hippolytus first permitted us to include Hippo in the eclectic move-
ment of the age, whereas the bald and all too brief statement of
Aristotle made him appear as a singularly belated follower of Thalcs,
Page 377, 1* 34> Archolaus : cf, kaert. Dioj., ii. ch. 4 ; further,
574 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Theophrastus, in Doxogr., 479 /., Mtius (ibid., 280), Hippolytus,
i. 9 (ibid., 563).
Page 378, § 3. I recovered Metrodorus' "allegorical key to
Homer "from Herculanensmm Volumimwi Collcctio A If era, vii. 90,
on the basis of a short note in the lexicographer Hcsychius,
'A.va,(jLepvW rbv otWpcc Mryrp Jfcypoy ctoA7/70pi/c«*. This "find" was first
published in the Academy, 15 Jan., 1873.
Kenan's " remark about Philo's allegorizing interpretation of the
scriptures :w Histoire dupeuple d> Israel, v. 349.
On Theagenes and his followers, cf. Bergk, GrlcchiscJic Littcratnr-
Gcschichte, i. 264, 891. The apology of Theagenes is mentioned in a
scholion to Iliad, xx. 67. His "floruit " (or birth, 7670^5 ?) is fixed by
Tatian (Adi;. Grac., cap. 48), in the reign of Cambyses, Lc. between 529
and 522, so that he was a neighbour of Xenophanes in a temporal no
less than in a local sense. We have already mentioned Democritus*
share in the allegorical interpretation ; the share of Anaxagorns is
warranted by a tradition, which has been quite needlessly suspected,
in Laert. Dio'g., ii. n.
BOOK III,— CHAPTER IV.
Page 381. Here, and also in the following chapter, I have to
some extent drawn on my old essay, "The Greek Sophists * (neutschc.
Jahrbucher fur Politik und Litter atur, April, 1863), in part verbally,
and in part with sundry additions and corrections.
Page 384, 1. 18. " Introduction of foreign cults:" cf. M. Clcrc,
Le$ mt&ques Athtnictis, 118^ Paris, 1893. (^or the Athenians'
love of strangers as extended even to the gods, see Strabo, x, 3, 18,
p. 471.) Cf. Foucart, Les associatiom rlligicuses chez lc$ Grccs, $J,
Paris, 1873.
Page 386, 1. 2. Charondas : The question as to the period of his
activity has been treated most recently by Busolt, Gricch. Geschtchte,
i. 279, n. i, but unfortunately still without finality, Aristotle (1, 3) on
Charondas, Politics, ii. 12. For his " law relating to the guardianship
of orphans " (1. 6), see Diodorus, xii. 15.
Pages 386, 387. " Professional authorship : " the art of cooking by
Mithaecus, see Plato, Gorgias, 518 C. Athenseus, i. p. 5 B, preserves
a little of a versified work of this kind by Philoxenus the Leucadian.
The books of Democritus on tactics and warfare appear itx the
catalogue of his writings, Laert. Diog., ix. 48. His treatises on
painting and agriculture are also mentioned there. (The doubts as
to the authenticity of the last-named work expressed by Gemoll,
Untersuchungen uber die Quellen . , „ der Geoponica^ 125, Berlin,
1883, seem to me utterly unfounded.) The Didetlcs of Herodicus
of Selymbria are several times mentioned by Plato, in the
Hippocratic writings, in Galen, etc., and finally in the London
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 575
Papyrus. Xenophon in his little treatise wepi iWiKifc names Simon as
his predecessor. Lasus of Hermione, who lived at the court of the
Pisistratidoa, is called by Suidas the oldest theorist in music. There
seems to me no doubt, especially after the quotations in Philodemus
(cf. my treatise, Zu Philodems Buchern von der Mnsik^ 10, Vienna,
1885), that Damon, whose personality and importance are well
known, likewise discussed music. Biicheler's reserve (RhciniscJus
Museum, xl. 309^) can hardly hold out against these passages. Of
Hippias we shall speak later. On the painter Agatharchus, who
wrote on scenic decoration, cf. Vitruvius, pref. to Book VII. (also on
Anaxagoras, ibid?), Sophocles perfected the technique of the stage,
and certainly wrote on the Chorus (Suidas, s.v,). On the " Canon " of
Polycletus, cf. Galen, DC Hippocrat. ct Plat. Placitis, v. 448, Kiihn ;
the sole fragment, a small one, is in Philo, Mechanic. Syntaxis, ed.
Schonc, iv. 50, 5^ A library on the art of soothsaying, apparently
not altogether insigniiicant, is mentioned by the orator Isocrates,
Orat. 19, 5. Hippodamus of Miletus is treated by Aristotle, Pol.,
ii. 8. To the category of professional authorship, too, belong the
mathematical, astronomical, and rhetorical manuals, which we have
not expressly mentioned here.
Page 388, L 30. Moschion : see Fragm. 6 in Nauck's Tragicorum
(jrcr.corum Fragmcnta^ p. 812, ed. 2.
Page 389, 1. 2. For the great fragment of the Sisyphus of Critias,
ibid. 771. The treatise by Protagoras "On the Aboriginal State"
of mankind (1. 4) is mentioned by Laert. Diog,, ix. 55. Plato's
reproduction of it (1. 24) is in the dialogue Protagora^ 320 CJf.
Page 390, 1. 30. George Forster: see the introduction to the
German translation of Cootfs Third Voyage, v. 67^:, in the edition of
Gervmus,
Pages 391, 392. Locke's treatises " On Civil Government" are in
the fifth vol. of his collected works (10 vols., London, 1823). Chief
passages, 398, 400, 405. On p. 398 (§ 103 of the second treatise) is
the curious saying about the argument from what has been to
what should be.
Page 392, 1. 18* Marsilius of Padua: his Defensor Pads was
published in manuscript in 1346 ; but the book had been completed
before ti July, 1324: cf. 0. Lorenz, Deittschlands Gcschichtsqudlen im
Mittdalter, ii. 349, ed. 3. A noteworthy sentence is the following in
c. xil : " Convenerunt enim homines ad civilem communicationem
proptcr commodum et vitae sufHcientiam consequendam et opposita
declinandum." And another : " Quia . . . nemo sibi scienter nocet
aut vult inmstum, ideoque volunt omnes aut plurimi legem con-
venientem communi civium conferenti " (in the sense of the Greek
iruutpfyov « advantage).
On the earlier medieval forms of the doctrine of the social contract
(L 28), cf* II* von Kicken, GeschichU und System d<ir mitttlalterlichen
576 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
Weltanschauung^ 356^ Friedrich von Gentz did indeed state in so
many words that "the social contract is the basis of general political
science" (cf. John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence, i. 310, cd.
2) ; but still he added the counter-statement : " The original contract
. . . was . . . nowhere actually concluded" (Biester's Berliner
Monatsschrift, 1793, p. 537). Karl Welcker (died 1869) may be
taken as the last representative of the original-contract theory, though,
admittedly, in a strongly modified sense ; cf, Bluntschli, Geschichte d(s
allgemeinen Staatsr edits, p. 538.
Page 393, 1. 31. Plato, Republic, ii. 358 E ; the authors of the
theory are not mentioned.
Page 394,1. 3« Epicurus : apitd Laert. Diog., x. 150, and Lucretius,
v. 1017 j>£ H4i^
Page 394, § 5. John Stuart Mill : Essays on Some Unsettled
Questions of Political Economy -, p. 157 (London, 1844) : "But while
the philosopher and the practical man bandy half-truths with one
another, we may seek far without finding one who, placed on a higher
eminence of thought, comprehends as a whole what they see only in
separate parts."
Page 395, 1. 36. Heraclitus on &tos and j8t<fc, Fragm. 66, By water.
Page 396, 1. 14. The arguments of Democritus are quoted by
Proclus in his commentary on Plato's Cratylus^ p. 6 of Boissonade's
edition.
Page 398, 1. 4- Epicurus : the principal passage is in Laert. Diog,,
x. 75 /. Besides Lucretius, v. 1026^ (Bernays), and Origen, Contra
Cclsum^ pp. 18^ (Spencer), the Oenoanda stone must now be specially
consulted; cp. Bulletin de correspondance helld tuque, 1892, pp. 43 .//I
(discussed by myself in the gazette of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences, Vienna, 6 July, 1892 ; at greater length, and in many re-
spects better, by Usener, Rheinhchcs Museum, xlvii* 440^).
Page 401, 1. 15. Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions, 270,
and 272, 273, 2nd ed., London, 1890.
Page 402, 1. 3. Archelaus : besides Laert. Diog., ii. ch. 4, cf. Hip-
polytus, i. 9 (Doxogn Gr,, 564, 6 ff^). Euripides (I 36) : Fragm, 920
and 168.
Page 403, 1. J. Alcidamas : Qr&torcs Attici (Zurich edition), ii. 154,
Bardesanes (1. 21) : Excerpts in Eusebius, Prttp* E*vang., vi. 10 ; the
Syriac text in Cureton's Spicihgiitm Syriaeum* To this category
belongs also the fragment in The Flinders Petrie Pafyrt^ i,, No. 9,
Dublin, 1891. Herodotus (1. 22): iii. 38 j note also the intcntness with
which he traces the contrast between Egyptian and Greek usages
down to the smallest details, ii, 35, An allied tendency which came
to marked expression dominates the narrative of the medieval
traveller, Sir John Mandeville.
Page 404, 1. 3. The fragment of Pindar quoted by Herodotus ia in
Bergk, Poetct Lyriti Gr#ci\ i. 439, ed, 4* The next quotation (1 7) is
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 577
taken from the so-called AiaXe'leis, written 'in the Doric dialect
{Qpuscnla, moraliti) coll. Orelli, ii. 216 = Mullach, Fragm. Philos. Gr.,
i. 546 B). On this, cf. Rohde in the Gottingeu University Gazette,*
1884, p, 30 ; Diimmler, Akademika, 250 ; and my remarks in the
Deutsche Littcratur-Zdtung) 1889, col. 1340. Euripides (1. 17), Ion,
854 Jf., and Fragm. 336. Hippias (1. 34), in Plato, Protagoras,
337 C.
Page 405. Our remarks on the affinity between the doctrine
voiced by Callicles and Heraclitean thought agree very well with the
very words in Gorgias^ 490 A : iro\\dias &pct eTs fypov&v nvpfav f^ <f>po-
vovwrvv Kpttrrwv torf, and again: ei 6 efs rS)V pvplav Kpelrrav, chiming
exactly with Heraclitus, Fragm. 113: & tyol /ufyioi, &v &purros $, a
harmony which did not remain unnoticed even in antiquity ; cf.
Olympiodori Scholia in Plat. Gorg^ p. 267, ed. Jahn, in Jahrb. fur
P/uloLy xiv., suppl. vol. (Leipsic, 1848). Bergk's conjecture (Griech.
Littcratur-Geschichte, iv. 447) that Callicles was but a transparent mask
for Charicles, a well-known oligarch of that age, can hardly be correct.
The slight change in the form of the name would have been to no pur-
pose, inasmuch as a number of details are introduced about the per-
sonality of the man (cf. especially 487 C), which would have been silly if
they did not apply to the original, and, if they did, would have frustrated
Plato^ intention. Callicles appears as a hater of sophists in Gorgias,
520 A, where to the question OVKOVV &/cotJcts roiaura \ey6vrcw r&v <f>affK6ttrcov
he answers,
Page 406, The quotations from the Gorgias refer to 483 E and
492 D. The phrase occurring between the two about " the rule of the
mightier 7> is a quotation from Haller, against whom Hegel, Rechtsphi-
losopMe (Gesam. Werke, viii.)> 317, directs a polemic, as spirited as it
is clever.
Page 407, § 8. Diagoras of Mclos. Of this writer we possess five
verses from two different poems (Philodemus, On Piety) p. 8s, ed.
Comperz), besides the title ($/V/.) of a third poem. These verses
breathe a thoroughly religious spirit, and lend complete credibility to
the report that his faith in the gods or in providence was shattered by
some unrequited injury of which he was the victim. Cp. the Scholion
to Aristophanes, Clouds^ 8,50, Meineke; Sext Emp., 402, 17^, Bekkcr ;
and Suidas, s.v. Of his prose writings we are acquainted with two
titles, the farowpylCorrGs and the *p^ytox \6yoi (Suidas ; Tatian, Or. ad
6V., c. 27), both probably designating the same work, in which he
seems to have satirized the belief in mysteries, and to have employed
that semi-historical method of treating the gods which was later known
as the Euhemeristic (cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph^ 370 /), A precise date is
afforded only by the statement in Diodorus, xiii. 6, that the Athenians
had put a price on the head of Diagoras in the year 4iS~4> during the
L 2 P
578 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
sensational days of the Mutilation of the Hermae and kindred occur-
rences. This is not contradicted by the reference in the speech of
Pseudo-Lysias against Andocides, which, according to Jebb, Attic
Orators, i. 277, ed. 2, was composed in the year 399. It is more
difficult to reconcile with it the allusion in the Clouds of Aristophanes,
830 (Meineke), according to which the irreligious spirit of the poet
must have been notorious as early as 423. Thoroughly confusing
are the data in Suidas, who places his "floruit" in the 78th
Olympiad, and at the same time makes Democritus (who was yet
xuiborn 1) emancipate him from slavery. Nor does Eusebius furnish
any help, for he at one time reckons Diagoras among the nature-
philosophers and at another connects him with the lyric poet
Bacchylides, and sets his * floruit," first in the 75th, and secondly in
the 78th Olympiad (Chronicon^ ii. 102 /, Schone). We may mention
in passing the anecdote in Cicero, DC Natura Deorum^ iii. 37, and in
Laert. Diog., vi. 59, which wavers between Diagoras and Diogenes the
Cynic, nor should we forget in so doing the ludicrous contradictions
in which Cicero involves himself (De N, Z>., ibid, ; and cp* i. i and 42).
Page 408, 1. 21. Herodotus, i. 32. Euripides (L 25), Fragw. 285.
Then Herodotus, iii. 80^ ; Euripides, Fragm. 810 ; Suppliant^ 911 ft.
(Nauck) ; and Fmgin. 1027.
Page 409, L 19. "The parallel between the cultivation of the
intellect and the sowing of a field:1' cp. pseudo-Hippocrates, N<f/ws
(iv. 640, Littrd), and Antiphontis Soph. Fragm^ i34(Blnss). Natural
disposition, education, knowledge, exercise — these ideas appear as
early as Thucydides (L 121, 3), like the worn coinage of currency. We
shall have to consider later on what Protagoras has to say on the same
subject. " Culture " and " natural disposition " are likewise combined
by the author of the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise, " On the Art "
(vi. 1 6, Littre). Cf., further, Democritus (?), Fragm. mor^ 130 and 133
(Mullach), which may again be compared with Nauck, Fragmcttta
Gr&corum Tragicorum, ed. 2, "Adespota," 516, and Critias, *Fr
6 (Bergk). Echoes of all these discussions in Isocrates, Orat 13,
and in Plato, PJtcsdrus^ 269 D.
Page 409, 1. 30. Phaleas of Chalccdon : cf. Aristotle, Politics^ ii. 7.
His date may be fixed with approximate certainty by the fact that he
was younger than Hippodamus (who vp&ros T<£V /4 ™A.»rt<w<tyt«Vwy
frcx^PW* n mpt 7ro\tT6/as ^7r«?v -rijy apfo-njjp, ibid^ 8), and yet evidently
older than Plato. In Aristotle's account of the political ideal of
Hippodamus, the words $ero 5' c% ««1 r&v vAfuw etvai rpttt {JL&VQV - it<pl $„
ykp af 5(/cat ytvovrat, rpta raur' eli/ctt T^V tyrfjufo, titytv fadfav teva,rw can Only
refer, in my opinion, to penal laws. This is not merely because at Sl*<u
points to that interpretation, nor because the three given categories
can only form the basis of a classification of the penal code, but also
because Hippodamus, so far from repealing or limiting legislation for
the public welfare, was far rather concerned to extend and enlarge its
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 579
conventional boundaries. And, apart from this, what room would
otherwise be left for constitutional law, for the administrative code,
for civil justice? Aristotle uses the word v6p.oi in the same restricted
sense when he calls Pittacus, and again Draco (with but a slight
change of diction), [an author of v6^v &\\' ob iro^tret&s (PoLy ii. 12).
What the t*6vov in the citation is meant to exclude we do not know ;
perhaps those portions of criminal law in which the injured— or like-
wise the injuring — parties are other than human beings ?
Page 411, 1. 2. For the Aristophanic buffoonery, cp. Frogs^ 892 f.
(Meineke) : alB^p tybv fittncqiM Kal yX&rri}s <rrpd<l>i.y£ leal £i^€<tt i
BOOK III.— CHAPTER V.
Page 412, 1. 8. ./Elian, Var. Hist^ xii. 32, relates that Gorgias and
Hippias wore purple raiment on holiday occasions. On the similar
appearance of the rhapsodists, cf. Plato, Ion, 530 B. More details,
though with but a paltry explanation, are given by Eustathius on
Iliad, i. init. For the description of a richly decked rhapsodist,
relating indeed to the very earliest times, cf. Nicolaus Damasc.,
Fragm, 62 (Fragm. Hist. Crac., iii. 395). The first impulse towards
the teaching of drawing (1. 20) was given by the painter Pamphilus of
S icy on, who is mentioned in the Plutus of Aristophanes (produced
U.C. 388) ; cf. v, 385, Meineke. Cf. Hermann-Bliimner, Privat-
Altcrtumcr^ 324 and 473).
Page 413, 1. 10. Protagoras of Abdera: in the Platonic- dialogue
of that name, 318 E. Cf. with this the very similar object pursued by
the orator Isocrates in his instruction, Or* 15, §§ 304 /, (Oratores
Attid) i, 289 A), and also the way in which Xenophon at least re-
garded the intercourse of Socrates with young men (Memor^ i. 2, 64).
Pages 414, 415. This account is freely adapted to Plato's in the
dialogue just alluded to.
Page 416, L to. Valuable evidence on the use of the word
" sophist " had already been collected in antiquity by the orator
Aristidcs (ii. 407, Dindorf). ^Eschylus and Sophocles employ the
term of clever musicians (cf. the lexicons of those authors for proofs) ;
,/Eschylus, moreover, calls Prometheus a sophjst (w. 62 and 943,
KirchhofF: in the latter passage not without a certain bitterness).
Pindar speaks, so of musicians and poets, Isthm^ 5, 28. The comic
poet Cratinus comprises under that designation all the poets, Homer
and Hesiod included, <ro$t<rr$>v o-^n/oj, Atticorum Comicorum Frag-
wentti) i. 12, Fragm. 2, Kock. The historian Androtion applied the
name sophist to the seven sages (Aristides, loc. ;a£), Herodotus,
implicitly at least, calls Solon a sophist (i. 29), and Pythagoras like-
wise (iv. 95)* Diogenes of Apollonia called his predecessors by that
name according to Simplic., Physics^ 151, 26, Diels. In Isocrates
580 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
{Helena, 9) the sophist is the antithesis of the layman or everyday
man ; cf. also Ad NlcocL, 13, and Ad Demonic*, 51 (the latter indeed
of doubtful authenticity). In a no less honourable sense the word is
used by Alcidamas in the exordium of his speech " On the Sophists."
The popular decree introduced by Uiopeithes (L 31) is in Plutarch,
Life of Pericles, ch. 32.
Page 417, 1. 5. On the contempt of manual labour, cf. Herodotus,
ii, 167. On the Theban law of exclusion (1. cf), cf. Aristotle, Politics,
iii. 5 (1278 A 25). Later we shall have to treat of Plato's and
Aristotle's contempt of industrial activity (1. n); here a couple of
examples will suffice : robs <t>a,v\ov$ T€ /cal ^por^ccs-, Plato, JRcpublic, iii.
405 A ; ^5^ &€\TlffT7) Tf6\LS OU TTOi^CTCI pdlfCUIffOV TTOAfTT^, Al'iStOtlC, /W///t*,Vf
iii. 5, 1278 A 8. For the contempt felt for the orator or writer of
speeches (I. 20), cp. the account of the gibes at Antiphon by the comic
poet Platon in pseudo-Plutarch, Vit. X. Orator., p. 833 C ( ~ ii, 1015,
Diibner), and Philostratus, who is vaguer, Vit. Sophist., i. 15 ( = ii. 16,
Kayser). On Isocrates, cf. Blass, Attische Rercdsamkdt, ii. 14, ed. 2,
and pseudo- Plutarch, op. tit., 837 B ( =s 1020, 20, Diibner), to which
Blass refers (ibid., 21). Note, too, the satisfaction with which Theo-
pompus, the disciple of Isocrates, in the Bihliotheca of Photius, cod.
176, p. 120, Bekker, plumes himself on his own independent means,
which saved him from the necessity of writing speeches for pay, or
giving lessons as a sophist.
On Lord Byron (1. 27), who sneered at Sir Walter Scott because
he wrote for money and "worked for his patrons," cf. Brandes,
HoMptstromnngen der Litter atur, etc., iv. 190. My remarks on the
founders of the Edinburgh Review are based on Cockburn's Life of
Lord Jeffrey, i, 133, 136, ii. 70 (Edinburgh, 1852). J. J. Rousseau's
antipathy to writing for a livelihood is well known ; cf. his Confessions ',
book 9. Scherer, Poetik, 122, says, " In the sixteenth century the
payment of authors was not firmly established ; it was still doubtful
if it was honourable to accept remuneration."
To look at the thing from the standard ot antiquity, the words
Attributed to Isocrates (loc.tit!), Z>Ve ml Ibbv rbv purfov apifljuou/xfw, <ftrr
SuKpttrKS &$ ** Myvuv jjuavrb? vvv rovrois Trcirpa^&ov,** should be compared
with those of Xenophon (Memor^ I 2, 6), robs ft Aa/xj8&oi/ras Ti$s ^(Afav
fjuffObv Aj/S/jaTroSro-rAs £aurwj/ ATwciAet. No less striking is the agreement
between the utterance of Plato {Republic, ix, 590 C), £tt*>aucrf« T« wai
X«^oT«x^a 5i4 rt, olfet, ^ei5o* <ptyet ; and that of Xenophon (fyntg.) 13, 8),
&pict1 l/ccfo'Ty ffoQiffrtyv /t\7jd^vat» S tffrtv fot&of w&pd y« rois «3 ^povovir^.
From this point of view we may get to understand Xenophon
(Afir;«0r,,i.6, 13) expressing his contempt of the sophists in the crude
words, KQ,\ rty ffotptav &<ra&rft>? rota juiy &p7uplow T^? ftw\apfa<p irwXoDrrav
(remember the veirpaphov of Isocrates) a-QQiffrkt tbairtp itdpwnt* iiroica-
xowo-iy, though, indeed, the same Xenophon ut other times means by
" sophists }> simply ** philosophers : » cf. Mmor.t i. i, n,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 581
ivb TWJ/ <ro(j>icrrcav /ctftr/ios; and iv. 2, I, ypd^ttra ToAAcb tfvv*i\€yfjLcvoj>
re /cat ffoQwr&v rS>v eu5o«fywwrar«wv. And it signifies but little else when
Plato (Protagoras, 312 A) makes young Hippocrates, "the son of a
great and rich family,3' whose heart is so set on the instruction of
Protagoras, answer with a decided " No " and a blush the question if
he meant to become a sophist himself. In order not to be misled at
this point, let the reader now open his Plutarch at the life of Pericles,
ch. 2: "There was never any young gentleman nobly born, that
seeing the image of Jupiter (which is in the city of Pisa) desired to
become Phidas ; nor Polyclitus, from seeing of Juno, in the city of
Argos; nor that desired to be Anacreon, or Philemon, or Archilo-
chus, for that they took pleasure sometime to read their works n
(North).
Page 418, 1. 16. Cf. (Jowett) Plato, Gorglas,*$$ D : /ier& iMipeucfov
Iv yvvfy rptQv fy rfrr&pw tytdvpt&vra. The words are addressed to
Socrates, but, as was remarked long ago, they apply better to Plato
than to Socrates.
Page 418, 1. 38. John Stuart .Mill, Dissertations and Discussions,
iii. 295 (1867), being a reprint of his review of Grote's Plato, refers
to this passage (Lysis, 204 A), which had previously been neglected in
the discussion of the present question. In the Meno, 85 B, the geo-
meters are called sophists.
Page 419, 1. 22. Plato sneers at the trifling fees paid to the
sophists, Apology, 20 B, C, and Cratylus, 384 B ; he reproaches them
for their high charges, ibid., 391 B, C, and elsewhere,
Pages 420, 421. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick (Journal of
Philology, iv. 288 ft) was the first, and, so far, we believe the only,
writer to draw attention to the change which the use of the word
" sophist w underwent in Plato's own day. This valuable essay (" The
Sophists") constitutes, indeed, the most important supplement yet
furnished to Grote's treatment of this subject, which Sidgwick justly
calls " a historical discovery of the highest order," though it has gained
more renown than serious consideration.
Page 421, 1. 10. The Aristotelian use of the word " sophist " can
be found by any one in Bonitz's excellent Index.
Pages 421, 422. The authorities for the statements here advanced
arc Isocrates, Philipp*, 84 ; Aristides, op. tit. ; Polybius, xii. 8 ; Plu-
tarch, Life of Alexander, chs. 53, 55 ; Ncue B rucks fit eke Epikurs,
published by the author of the present work in the Wiener Sitsungi-
berichte, 1876, pp. 91 / (7 / of the separate reprint) ; Galen, iv.
449, KUhn ; Lucian, De Moris Peregrini, § 13.
On the use of the word " sophist " in the time of the Roman Empire,
see a valuable note in Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and
Usages upon tlie Christian Church (The Hibbert Lectures, 1888), p. 101,
n. 2, London, 1890. Just as Plato sneers at the large fees paid to the
sophists, so ecclesiastical writers, especially Justin and Tatian, sneer
582 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
at those paid to the heathen philosophers and rhetoricians of their time
(cf. Renan, Origincs du Christianismc^ vi. 483^).
Page 423, 1 24, The author has devoted a comprehensive dis-
sertation to the treatise " On the Art," of which frequent use is made
in this and the next section (" Die Apologic der Heilkunst/' Wiener
Sitzungsberichtt) 1890, No. ix.).
Page 425, § 4. Prodicus : cf. chiefly Welcker's treatise, «' Prodikos
von Keos,Vorganger des Socrates" {Rhein.Musetimfiir Philol^ i., and
reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, ii. 393 jf.), a treatise eminently distin-
guished alike by its richness of contents and impartiality of view.
Next, see Cougny's valuable little work, De Prodico Ceio, Socratts
Magistro et Antcce$$orey Paris, 1857. We possess no actual fragments
of Prodicus, for the three sentences in Stobaeus (Florilegium, i. 236,
and ii. 391, Meineke) and in Plutarch (Dc Sanit.pr&c.)&\. 8 = 151, 4/,
Diibner) can hardly be regarded as such. The personal friendship
(1, 36) between Prodicus and Socrates is vouched for by Xenophon
(Couviv., iv. 26) and Plato {ThMstetus, 151 B, M&io, 381 D, etc.),
who are for once in striking agreement, though Plato, as is his wont,
cannot mention the evidently established fact without a tinge of
irony.
On the satire of Aristophanes (page 426, 1. 4) in the TaT^vto-Tat, see
Kock, Atticorum Comicorum Fragmenta, i. 490, Yet Aristophanes
mentions him with special esteem in Clouds, 361 (Meineke), The
allusion to him in the Birds, 692 (Meineke), admits no certain deduc*
tions. The quotation in the text (L 8) from the Calltas of -dSschines
has been handed down to us by Athenscus, v. 220 B. The historian
Diodorus, as well as ^schines, calls Anaxagoras a sophist, in a
passage, too, quite free from animosity : 'Avc^aytpav r)>v o-o^xdrnjv,
Si&aovcoAov <Wa Ete/n/oWovs, &$ Jure^owra fls rous 6cov$ 3(rvKO(pdvTQVv.
On the influence of Prodicus on the Cynics (1. 29), cf. especially,
besides Welcker, Diimmler, Akadcmika^ jpasswt. His two books on
nature-philosophy are mentioned, with a scanty and not even verbal
transcript from them, by Galen, i. 187 ; ii. 130 ; xv. 325, Kiihn. Cicero,
De Qratore, iii. 32, 128, ascribes an active interest in the natura
reriim to him in conjunction with Protagoras and the orator Thra-
symachus.
Antyllus, quoted by Marcellinus, Vit. Thuc^ § 36 (in Kriiger's edit,,
ii. 197 ; cf. also Spengel, Artium Scriptores, 53/)> Credits the influence
of Prodicus on Thucydides (page 427, 1. 7).
Page 428, 1. i. Euripides: Suppliants > 196^, ^€{f yfyn*, &s r&
xeipoya vtefa ftporoitriv itfn *3>v &ti.w6vuvt The deep voice of Prodicus
(L ii) is mentioned by Plato, Protagoras^ 316 A, where there is also
an allusion to his weakly constitution. Plato, ibid^ 341 E, hints at
the inherited gloom of the inhabitants of Ceos (L 6) ; cp. \Velckcr,
p. 614. The description of life's evils, and the simile tacked on to it
(u. i3^>, occurs in the pseudo-Platonic AxiochuS) 360 D,^ For
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 583
what follows, cf. ibid^ 369 B. For the similar remark by Epicurus
(1. 21), see Laert. Diog., x. 125.
Here, however, a reservation must be made. The quotations in
the last dozen lines are transmitted to us in the pseudo-Platonic
Axiochus. This is a comparatively late literary production, and its
language is all too leniently criticized by K. F. Hermann (Geschichte
itnd System dcr platonischen Philosophic, p. 583), when he calls it,
non-Platonic indeed, but for the most part pure Attic. It is far more
likely that the little treatise dates from post-Alexandrian times, as
seems to be clearly proved by the occurrence of non-Platonic and
non-Attic word-forms and constructions in absolute profusion. Now,
since the ideas attributed therein to Prodicus partly reappear in later
writers (e.g. in Crates the Cynic, in Epicurus, and apparently, at least,
also in Bion of Borysthenes), one may begin by hazarding the con-
jecture that the author of the Axiochus and these writers did not
really draw from a common source, but that he far more probably
drew from them. Early and late, many scholars have been found to
vote for this view, H. Feddersen's recent discussion being the most
confident and searching (Uberden pscudo-platonischen Dialog Axzo-
chos, Rcalschul-Programm, Cuxhaven, 1895). After the maturest re-
flection I cannot subscribe to this judgment. We cannot, indeed,
absolutely exclude the possibility that the author of the Axiochus may
here and there have attributed a thought or a shred of a thought to
the old sophist without due right. ' But he who will carefully read the
chief passages — the review of the various stages of life and the simile
of death as a creditor — first in the Axiochus, and then in its alleged
"sources," and will weigh them against one another, he will not
be able to resist the impression that the style of the pseudo-Platonic
dialogue bears the stamp of complete originality. In it, for
example, the successive extinction of the vital functions, the partial
death of single organs preceding the total death of the organism, is
aptly compared with a series of distraints, with the part-payments,
that is to say, wrung by the impatient creditor to compensate him for
the postponement of the payment in full. Outwardly like, but
essentially quite different, is the simile in Bion, who compares the
burdens of old age to the contrivances hit upon by a landlord to relieve
his house from the occupancy of a tenant in arrears ; such as, e.g.,
removing the doors and cutting off the water. Here it is sought to
affect the will of the tenant. His further stay in the house is to be
made unbearable* And as the inconsiderate behaviour of the land-
lord corresponds to the cruelty of nature, so quitting the house in
the one case must correspond to quitting life in the other. And so
it actually is. In the passage concerned, Bion is discussing suicide ;
in cases of such grave affliction he recommends suicide (in Teles, apud
Stote., Florilegiumy v. 67 =a iii. 46, Wachsmuth-Hense). Now, the
more poorly we think of the author of tib&Axiockus — and we have not
584 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
the least reason to think highly of him— the less likely we are to
believe that Bion's simile, brilliant in its way, was transformed by him
so cleverly, and was made to serve an essentially different purpose.
We must refrain here from entering into further details. Yet, since
the composition of the dialogue, however late we may date it, almost
certainly does not belong to a time when the writings of Prodicus,
especially the Seasons, with which we are most concerned, were already
forgotten, we can at least hardly doubt that what is put in the mouth
of Prodicus is in harmony with the main character of his view of life ;
indeed, it tallies well with the conception we have formed of him from
the fable of Hercules, from some statements in Plato, and from the
unassailable testimony of the dialogue Eryxias, which, to judge by
its language, is more ancient than the Ayiochus. (I am gratified to
find myself in agreement on this subject with Zcllcr, Philosophic dcr
Griechen, i. 1124, n, 2, ed. 5.)
Page 429, 1. 4. " Hercules at the parting of the ways : " the fable
is told by Xenophon, Memorabilia, ii. i, 21. On the Sophocleun
model, already recognized as such by Athenaius (xii. />///.)> cf. Nauck,
Fragm. Trag. Gr., p. 209, ed. 2. The subsequent influence of the
apologue is very thoroughly treated by Cougny, op. at., 79^C ; some
fresh contributions to the subject are added by Dieterich, Netyia, 191,
Cougny (Hid., 38) with some probability interprets " The Seasons "
(1. 13) as the various ages of man.
" Eulogy of agriculture " (L 19). It is legitimate to infer such a
purpose from a reference in Themistius (T& woXct rys y*<apytas>> Or. xxx*
p. 349, Dindorf). The " conception of objects indifferent in them-
selves " (1. 34) is thoroughly discussed, and assigned to Prodicus, in the
pseudo-Platonic Eryxias^ with which cf. Plato, Euthydcmits, 279 jfi
Page 430, 1. 3. ** Origin of the belief in gods." On this the chief
passages are Philodemus, On Piety, 71 and 75 /. of ray edition (my
restoration of the text now completed by Diels, Hermes, xnu i) ; u
short sentence from the same in Cicero, DC Natura Deorum, L 42,
118 ; and Sextus Emp., Adv. Math., ix. 18, with 39 ; 52 (394, 22 ;
399, 39, and 402, 15, Bekker). J. H. Voss (1. 16), Mythologisthe /'V«
schnngett) i. 62 ; and on Persacus (1. 27), cf. Philodemus, lo& at*
Page 431, 1. 3. Hippias: cf. the collective account in C Muller,
Fragm. Hist* Gr., ii, 59-63. Only No. 6 therein deserves the name
of a fragment ; it was handed down by Clement of Alexandria, 5#vw.t
vi. 745 (Pott.), and most recently treated in my ticitrdgc mtr Krittk
nnd Erkliirung, iv. i3/. ( Wiener Sifaungsbcnchts, 1890, 4th treatise).
His personality is described in Plato's Hippias Minor, and in the
ttippias Major (perhaps pseudo-Platonic). Cf. also Plato, frotagvrwt
passim; and Philostratus, Vit Sophist, n ss ii. 13^, Kayscr. On
his achievements as a geometer, Tannery, Pour Plnstoire tie la scttnf*
HelUm, 246, pronounces that " Hippias d1Elis fut un matMuwticien
remaro.uable*" More on the subject in Allman, Greek Geometry \ 191*
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. . 585
L, B. Alberti (1. 34) : cf. Burckhardt, Cultur der Renaissance, i.
152, ed. 4.
Page 432, 1. 21. Plutarch's doubts as to the trustworthiness of the
" List of the Olympic Victors " occur in his Numa (ch. i.), and have
lately won the assent of Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History -, 68 and
Many valuable remarks on the positive contents and the far-
reaching influence of Hippias' doctrines are afforded by Dtimmler in
the Akademika*
Page 434, § 6. Antiphon : cf. chiefly H. Sauppe, De Antiphonte
Sophista (Gottinger Universitats-Programm, 1867) ; next, the collec-
tions of the fragments in the Oratores Attici, ii. (Zurich edition) ; in
the appendix to Blass, Antiphontis Orationes^ 130^, ed. 2. Cf., also,
Croisct in the Annuaire de P association pour V encouragement des
ttitdes Grccques, 1883, 143^
Page 435, 1. 5. On the traces of a naive realism, cf. the author's
Apologie der Heilkunst, p. 24 ; and on the " Art of Consolations " (1. 8),
cf. Buresch, Consolat. Hist Grit., Tzff. On the style and contents of
the treatise "On Concord" (1. II), cf. Philostratus, Vit. Sophist.^ 15
(ii. 17, Kayser) ; on the literary characteristics of Antiphon generally,
cf. Hermogenes, Rhet. 6r., ii. 415 (Spengel).
Page 435, 1. 24. We owe the increase in new fragments of Anti-
phon to Blass, who, in the " Kieler Festprogramm " De AnUphonte
Sop hist a Jamblicfii Auctorc, 1889, has, I think, adduced convincing
proofs of the fact that the Protrcpticus of Jarnblichus (ed. Pistelli,
95^1) contains great pieces from a book of Antiphon, and indeed, as
he might have ventured to say without misgiving, from the book vrepl
&novo(as. "Thus Grote" (1. 36): not exactly Grote himself, but a
reviewer of him (the late Sir William Smith ; originally in the
Quarterly Review^ clxxv* $3), whose " terse and perspicuous " render-
ing of his own point of view Grote himself quotes with approval,
History of Greece^ vii. 80, 81 n., new ed., 10 vols., 1888. Cf. The
Personal Life of George Grote, 231.
To what Sauppe (op. tit. gjfi) has said of the influence on Anti-
phon of the nature-philosophers who preceded him, we may add that
Fragtn, 94 (Blass) seems reminiscent of Empedoclean doctrines. The
effect of it is as follows : Antiphon designates the present order of the
universe as " the now ruling $id<rra<ri$" and this tallies exactly with
the result of a closer investigation of the remaining fragments of Em-
pcdocles, viz. that the present state of the universe, in which the elements
are for the most part separated from one another, stands under the
sign, not of " Friendship," but of waxing ** Discord." Cf. also Fragm.
105 (Blass), where the sea is called an exudation, with the Empe-
doclean 77}* ffy£ra ed\<ur<rw (Stein, v. 165). Sauppe (pp. cit.) had
already treated with well-founded suspicion the casual remark of
Origen that the author of the *AA<0««w had " deposed Providence "
586 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
(Adversus Cclsum> iv. ch. 25). We entirely agree with Sauppe's opinion
that Origen read that meaning into Antiphon's treatise, " interpretando
et concludendo." In any case, as Sauppe again observed with perfect
correctness, not only Fragm. 108, but also 80 (Blass), point to the
acknowledgment of a Deity. That two such dissimilar characters —
the soothsayer and the aggressive freethinker — should here have been
united in one person is so highly improbable, if not utterly impossible,
that the report in question, in order to gain credibility, would have to
be much better vouched for. An ecclesiastical writer might see a
deposing of Providence in any nature-philosopher's attempt to explain
the universe — especially in one which tries, after the manner of Kmpc-
docles, to trace the arrangement of organic life, and the purpose it
fulfils, back to natural causes,
BOOK III.— CHAPTER VI.
Page 438, 1. i. Protagoras : cf.'Laert Diog., ix. ch.'8. The few sur-
viving fragments of his works, as well as all the other information we
have about him, arc collected and amply discussed in Johannes Frei,
Qu&stiones Protagorece^ Bonn, 1845, and in A. J. Vitringa, Disyitfaitb
de Protagortz vita etfhilosoffiiia, Groningen, 1852,
Of Protagoras' studies in natural science faint but, in my opinion,
not uncertain traces are preserved. Cf. Cicero, De Oratory iiL 33
(128); Dionys. on Isocrates, i. (p. 536, Reiske); Eupolis m the
Flatterers^ Fragm. 146, 147 (i. 297, Kock).
The catalogue of his works in Laert. Diog*,, ix. 55, is not even a
complete list of the " extant J> writings (a-wfo^eva £*#A,&) ; his meta-
physical chef-cFceu'vrei read as recently as by Porphyry, is wanting
there*
Heraclides of Pont us (apud Diog. Laert., loc* c&) records that ho
gave laws to the Thurians (I. 21). My conjectural account in the text
of the nature of that legislation was more fully advanced in my con*
tribution to the Bettrdge sur GcschickU des grtechhchen undromischen
Rechts, 93 ff.^ by Professor Franz Hoffmann, my colleague for juris-
prudence (Vienna, 1870). I am now aware that I was anticipated in
this by M. H. E. Meier, Qpuscula, i. 222,
Page 439, *• 5- There is no tradition that Protagoras actually
visited Thurii, but it may be taken as extremely probable. On the
architecture of the city, cf. Diodorus, xiL 10 ; on Hippodamus there are
proofs in Schiller, De Rebus TAurioruw, 4. Apollodorus, m extant
verses of his Chronicle (Laert. Diog., viii. 52), relates that Kmpcdodes
(L 9) stayed at Thurii soon after its foundation* Herodotus, whom
Aristotle (A^/., in, 9) calls a Thurian, is generally known to have
resided there.
On "the division of the citizens into ten provinces )J (I n), cf*
Diodorus, xii. II.
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 587
The fragment on Pericles (L 26) is in Plutarch, ConsoL ad
Apollon., 33.
Page 440, 1. 10. An equestrian statue discovered at Eleusis has
been identified, with a high degree of probability, as that of the accuser
of Protagoras (cf. Bruckner, in Athen. Mitt^ xiv. 398^ ; to the contrary,
Kaibel, Stilund Text der roAare/a 'Ato^afov, 1 86). In the statement that
this Pythodorus was one of the Four Hundred (Laert. Diog.,ix. 54), I,
in common with some others, recognize merely a more exact designa-
tion of the person of the accuser, not of the date of the accusation.
For it is scarcely probable that in this brief oligarchic interregnum
(411 B.C.) the law-courts would have been at work and 500 Heliasts
have been convoked — this, as shown by the trial of Socrates, being
the number required in a charge of acre'jSew. But far weightier reasons
remain to contradict that assumption. Plato, in his dialogue Prota-
goraS) 317 C, puts these words into the sophist's mouth : " There is no
one here present of whom I might not be the father" (Jowett). Here
Plato, who on this occasion had no reason whatever to confuse
chronology, must first of all have thought of Socrates. Now Socrates,
who died in 399 B.C., can hardly have been born later than 471 (for the
reading wAe/w I^So/^j/cwra in the Apology, 17 D, may be taken as unas-
sailable), but likewise not, indeed, much earlier ; otherwise the round
number of 70 years would be inadmissible in the Crito, 52 E. Thus
we arrive at the year 485, or still more probably, at 486 or 487, for the
birth of Protagoras. This date also accords with that of the Thurian
legislation (443), which could not well have been entrusted to Prota-
goras until he had established by long practice a considerable reputa-
tion as a sophist, and we know that he was about 30 when he took up
the profession (cf. Laert. Diog., ix. 56 ; Plato, Meno^ 91 E). Now,
since Apollodorus represents him as living to the age of 70 (" about
70," says Plato, Meno, 91 E), it is necessary to place his death, which
is said to have followed immediately on the accusation, a few years —
say, five or six— before 411. Hence, then, it becomes possible for us
to apply to Protagoras those verses from the Palamedes of Euripides
(Fragm. 588, Nauck, ed. 2) in which even in antiquity an allusion was
correctly perceived (Laert. Diog,, ii. 44), but was incorrectly applied
to the death of Socrates, who was executed 16 years after the produc-
tion of the play. Another dialectician, Zeno, was also compared with
Palamedes (Plato, Ph&drus, 261 D), for, says the scholiast, he was
KwirttfrJijuw* And the words bf Xenophon (Memor., iv. 2, 33) show
how closely in this respect he recalled that mythical personage : rovrov
7fy> ty iedw«$ fyyovvu' its Siefc (rotytav QBoyijOfls . . . &ir<6x«To. It remains a
moot question whether or not the poet also alluded to his dead friend
in his Ixion (Philochorus apud Laert, Diog., ix. 55).
Page 441, § 2. Of the fragments relating to education, the first
two are to be found in Stobaeus, Florilegium^ 29, 80 (iii, 652, Hense),
and Cramer, Anecd* Par,) i. 174. The third was recovered lately
588 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
(Bucheler and Giliemeister in the Rhcin* Museum, xxvii. 526^) from
the Syriac translation of pseudo-Plutarch's treatise, ^f>l &<r/c#<rews,
published by Lagarde in 1858. As I was writing this [1894] I was
informed by the kind offices of Dicls of a new alleged fragment of
Protagoras relating to education, published in Sachau's Inedita
Syriac^ prsef., v. The empty verbiage of this oration hardly admits
the thought of genuineness, the less so since a similar fragment which
is preserved there, and which flaunts the name of Anaxagoras, looks
even more unlike the work of the sage of Clazomence than this of the
sage of Abdera.
Page 442, 1. ii. On the linguistic studies of Protagoras, cf. Lacrt.
Diog., ix. 52, 53 ; Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 19 ; Rhetor ic^ iii. 5 ; *?<»////.?/„
Elcnch^ ch. 14 ; and the gibes in Aristophanes, Clouth, 658 jfi
(Meineke). On Protagoras as an adherent of the " con vent io mil *
theory of language (1. 29), cf. my Apologie der Heilkunst^ mjf.
Page 444, 1. 36. The three words are 0efy>a£, irJ^raf, and <rrfyc£.
Pages 445-448, § 3. Cf. the list of writings in Laert. DiogM
:x 55.
For the following story, cp. Plutarch, Life of Pmdcs, ch. 36
(Stesimbrotus is named as the authority in the next sentence).
On lawsuits against animals, cf. chiefly Karl von Amira, Tisrstmftn
-und Tierprocesse^ in the Proceedings of the Institut fur ostreichische
Geschichts-Forschung, xii. 545^ ; also the newspaper AusUirn^ 1869,
477 ff* ; Miklosich, Die Blutrachc bci den Slawn, p. 7 (from the Wiener
Denkschriften, 1887); Tylor, Primitive Culture,, i. 359 ; Zend-Avesta, i.
(Sacred Books of the East^ iv.) 159; JR/tetn. Museum) xli. 130^. ; finally,
Sorel, Proces contre les anim&u%9 etc., 16 (Compiiigne, 1877). Hegel's
remark is in his Gesckichte der Philosophic^ ii. 27, cd. 2 (IVerkc^ xiv,).
The passage from Plato is in the Prota£ora$> 324 B,
Pages 448-450, § 4. The first sentence of Protagoras' book on the
gods is in Laert Diog., ix. 51.
Lobeck's hint: Protagoras was "accused of Atheism because he
denied the cognizability of God through the reason " (A. Lehnerdt,
Auswahl aits Lobecks akademischen Reden^ 189).
On his mode of settling his honorarium, cf. Plato, Pr#tag&r&$) 328
B.C., and Aristotle, JNicom. Ethics^ ix. i (where, however, the oath is
not mentioned).
On A&jArfT7?$ (obscurity, want of perceptibility), cf, Gomperx,
Apologie der Htilkunst, 1,^3 \ also tfie use of b$wh as practically
equivalent to #577X0*.
Kenan's words are taken from his Feuilhs Dltachdc^ pp. xvi./
Page 450, 1. 25. The three titles of the chief work of Protagoras
occur in Porphyry (apud Euseb., Pr&p. E<vang*) x. 3 ss ii/ 463,
Gaisford) ; in Plato, ThttttttW) 161 C ; and in Sextus Kmp., Adv.
Math., vii. 560 ^ 202, 27, Bekker. The chief passage is quoted in the
Theatetus, 152 A, and in Laert, Diog., ix. 51,
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 589
Page 45 1, 1. 23. Goethe : in Riemer, Briefe <von und an Goethe
(l: Aphorisms "), p. 316.
The author has discussed the meaning of the phrase exhaustively
in his Apolt)gie\ der Heilkunst, pp. zbjfi His predecessors in prefer-
ring the generic interpretation of " man " are : Peipers, Die Erkennt-
nisstheoricPlatoS) 44^; Laas, Neuere Untersuchungen uber Protagoras
(in the Vierteljahrschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic, viii. 479 ff.) ;
and Halbfass, Die Berichte des Platon und Aristoteles uber Protagoras
. . . kritischuntersttchtQn. Fleckeisen's Jahrbuctier, Suppl., xiii. 1882).
The author's arguments were partly strengthened and partly modified
by W. Jerusalem, Zttr Dcutung des Homo- Mensura- Satees (" Eranos
Vindobonensis," 153^); he is, however, mistaken in attributing
the generic interpretation to Grote likewise. So far was Grote
from this, that he even incorporated the individualistic interpre-
tation in his translation of the tenet : " As things appear to me, so
they are to me : as they appear to you, so they are to you " (Grote,
Plato, ii, 323).
Page 455, 1. 13. Aristotle, Metaphys^ iii. 997 B 35 to 998 A 4.
The quotation from Mill (L 20) refers to his Logic> vol. i. bk. ii.
ch. 5, §§ i, 6. Cf. Sir John Herschel, Essays^ p. 216 ; Helmholtz, in the
Academy, i. 128^ (12 Feb., 1870), and Populare Aufsatze^ 3rd series,
p. 26.
Page 458, 1. 38. " In a dream : " Thecstetus, 201 D. Out of the
voluminous Thcaetetus-literature the following may be specially
selected : Schlciermacher's Einlettung; Bonitz, Platoniscke Stitdien^
2nd eel., with special reference to pp. 46-53 ; Diimmler, Antisthenica,
pp. 56 ft, and Akademicci) pp. 174^
Page 460, 1. 22. Timon : Fragm, 48 (Corp. poes. ep. Gr. ludibunda,
ii. 163). Aristotle (1. 38), Metaph^ 1007 B, 22 ff. ; 1009 A, 6 ff. ;
1053 A 35.
Page 461, 1. 4. Plato, Cratylus, 386 A. Judged by the standard of
language, the Cratylits is not later, but — however little — earlier, than
the Thtatttus (cp. Dittenberger, Hermes^ xvi. 331 Jf.^ and Schanz,
ibid*) xxi, 442 to 449). This circumstance will in all likelihood be
urged against the view of the TheaUtus advanced on pp. 458, 459 of our
tfcxt. But, apart from the fact that the — probably inconsiderable —
distance of time between the two dialogues does not exclude the
possibility that Plato was already busy with the Thecstctus when he
published the Cratyhts; apart from this, and other like possibilities, I
have in no wise maintained that the scheme of the Tfo&tefus stood
alone in permitting its author to expound the homo-mensura tenet in
the individualistic form which he there preferred. It was the most suit-
able place for it, because that exposition helped to smooth the way for
the extensive account of the fictitious Protagorean theory of cognition.
Still, there was nothing to prevent him from introducing and casually
mentioning it, as he actually does in the Cratylus, in any other place ;
590 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
in none, however, does the historical figure of Protagoras appear in
as strong a light as in the dialogue that bears his name. I have
already willingly admitted that this interpretation can be drawn as a
deduction from the statement, directly contained in the words of
Protagoras, that every perception has an objective reality as its basis.
And I shall be equally willing to admit that the subjective theory is
directly contained in that statement, and that the intention of the
sophist was directed thereto, as soon as any one has confuted my
arguments against the traditional acceptation of the tenet. This,
however, no one of my critics has as yet even attempted to do. For
the rest, cp. to the close of § 5, my Afologle der Hcilkumt, 173-178* It
is highly deplorable that we depend for our information anent the
polemic of Democritus against Protagoras solely on an isolated notice
in Sextus Emp., Adit. Mathctn^ vii. 389 (p. 275, Bekker). On this,
cp. Apologia der Hcilkunst^ 176. We may add that Plato {Ritthyde*
S) 286 C)» in referring the doctrine (of Antisthenes) that there is no
back to Protagoras "and others yet more ancient," can
hardly have been thinking of the homo-mensura tenet, which is,
on the contrary, always represented as striking astonishment by
its novelty. In conclusion, we may point to the paraphrase by
Hermias, Irrisio Gent. Philos^ c. 9 (Doxogn Gr., 653), which agrees
almost exactly with the view we have taken : UpearayAptts * . . 4><£<r«<yv •
#pos Kal Kpt<ri,$ ruv irpctyndrtov & #v0ponros, teal rcfc p^v faroirhrrovra, rats
rw flrpcfyuaro, rck $& /x^ frnQvCitrwra, 0t5»/c $a"riv %v ro7s fJffoemt rff*
On this also, cp. Apologh der Htilkunst, 174.
Page 462, § 6. "Two Speeches:" cf. Laert, Diog., ix, 51;
Euripides, Fragm. 189, Nauck, ed. 2 ; Isocrates, Drat. 10, tmt
Seneca (Epist. Moral^ 88, 43 =s iii. 254, Haase) is alone in having
understood the sentence as if the two \6yot were of equal value. This,
however, as already perceived by Bernays (R/tcin, Mu^ vii. 467), is
by no means implied in the text of the utterance. The doctrine, we
may add, belongs to Arcesilaus (cf. Euseb., Prcrp. Evang., 14, 4 =
iii. 430, Gaisford).
Page 463. The four quotations on this page will be found in
Diderot, CEuvrcs Computes (ed. Ass<5zat), ii. 120 ; Alexander Bain,
John Stuart Mill: a Criticism (1882), p. 104 ; Mill's own Disserta-
tions and Discussions (1867), iii. 331 ; and Goethe, Gespr&chc mti
Eckertnann (3rd cd.), i, 241.
Page 464, 1. 1 8. Aristoxcnus : cf. Lacrt. Diog., iii. 37 ; discussed
more exhaustively in my Apologia der Hdthins^ 1 84 / Timon
(L 33)": Fragm. 10 (pp. tit, p, 109).
Though Laert. Diog., IK. JS, ascribes to Protagoras a r^vrj tpwriK&v,
and, in § 51, adds to the sentence about the Srfo xrfyot the remark oT» K«.
tfvwp6r^ yet neither the one statement nor the other can yield us a
coaception of the Protagorean dialectic different from that which the
Platonic dialogue supplies. Nobody ever called himself an Eristic ;
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 591
the term remained at all times one of disparagement (cf. Isocrates,
Or at. 10, initial irepi r&$ fytfas SmTp^orres) ; so that the above-mentioned
title of his book cannot have been of JProtagoras' own choosing. But
if the book — doubtlessihis rex^ or text-book of Rhetoric — showed a
great dexterity in argument, and gave instruction in the art of making
speeches for and against a thesis, this was ground enough for our
compiler, or rather for his authorities, to bestow tbat designation
upon it.
Page 466, L 2. In calling the Sophistes of Plato " one of his latest
dialogues," I find myself in agreement with the great majority of
modern Platonic scholars* Yet, since so great an authority as Zeller
opposes this conclusion, I should certainly not omit to establish it
here, were it not that a later volume of tbis work will be infinitely
better suited for that purpose. Accordingly, at this point I shall
merely express my conviction that in the whole range of Platonic
inquiry nothing has been more triumphantly established than the
chronology of the writings classed as ii. b by Dittenberger {Hermes -,
xvi. 326) ; cf. now especially Prof. Lewis Campbell, Plattfs Republic,
ii, &£>ff. (Oxford, 1894).
Page 466, § 7. The passage herein discussed of the Platonic
Sophistes (232 D) was differently taken and rendered by me in the
Apologie tier Heilkunst, 181 /. Since then I have been happy to
avail myself of the learning of my reviewers, and of several private
correspondents, and to admit that my then interpretation, which
agreed with Campbell's and Jowett's, was wrong. The context forces
us to the conviction that we must make the best of the somewhat harsh
hypcrbaton (in the position of abrfo). This is the sole point on which
1 have considered myself obliged to modify the statements contained
in that book of mine which has been so frequently mentioned. It is
likewise my firm conviction that the removal of this sorry prop has
not in any way damaged the structure of argument which is therein
built up. As to the other contents of this paragraph, I must again
refer to the ApoL der Heilkunst, where the present hints are more
fully developed.
Page 471, § 8. Aristotle : Rhetoric, ii. 24^.
For what follows, cf. Plato, Apology, 23 D ; and Isocrates, Qrat.
i$, §§ 1 6 and 32. Cf. also the excellent remarks of Grote, History of
Grcec^ vii, 46 n. (10 vols., 1888), where he decisively condemns the use
commonly made of the Aristophanic burlesque, in which the $foo»o$ and
the fatKw xtyo$ are introduced as speakers : " If Aristophanes is a witness
against any one, he is a witness against Sokrat£s, who is the person
singled out for attack in the ' Clouds.' But these authors [Ritter and
Brandis are named in the text], not admitting Aristophanes as an
evidence against SokratSs whom he does attack, nevertheless quote
him as an evidence against men like Protagoras and Gorgias whom
ho does not attack.1'
592 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
On what follows, cf. especially Aristotle, Rhetoric^ i. I (1355 A, B) ;
Plato, GorgiaS) 456 D ; Sextus Emp., Adv. Math^ ii, 44 (683, 22^,
Bekker) ; Philodemus, in his rhetorical writings, passim (the passages
are discussed by the author of this work in the Zcitschrift fur die
Oestr. Gymnasien^ 1866, p. 698) ; Chrysippus, in Plutarch, DC Stoic.
Rcfiugn., c. 10, 15 (= Moral/a, 268, 37 ff^ Diibner) ; finally, Aris-
totle, Rhetoric^ ii. 26 init. ; iii. iSfin.
Page 473, 1. 12. Aristotle: Rhetoric, i. ifai. ; further, cp. above,
notes to pp. 448-450 ; and Plato, Protagoras^ 351 D, On Protagoras
as "a teacher of rhetoric" (1. 37), cp. the evidence in Frei,
Protag., pp. 150^
Page 474, 1. 24. Quintilian : Inst* Oraf., ii. i, 1 2.
BOOK III.— CHAPTER VII.
Page 476, § i- The life of Gorgias had been treated by Hermippus
and Clearchus in their biographies (Athena^us, xi. 505 D, and xii.
548 D), Trustworthy data arc now lacking concerning his birth and
death. We may believe Apollodorus (afud LaerU Diog., viii. 58) that
he lived to be 109 years old. He survived Socrates (Plato, Apology >
19 E), and spent his last years in Thessaly, where (according to
Pausanias, vl 17, 9) he enjoyed the favour of Jason of Phcra^7 who
ascended the throne circ. 380. By far the greatest part of his long life,
however, evidently falls in the fifth century, so that at the time of his
appearance as an envoy in Athens (Diodorus, xii. 53) he was already
approaching old age. Diels, in his Gorguis und Rmpcdochs^ p. 3,
holds " firmly to FreTs delimitation, 483-375 * (JRitein. Mmcum^ New
Series, vii. 527^). Von Wilamowitz not improbably ikes his Olympic
oration in the summer of 408 (Arfatotcks undAthcti) i. 172). He is
treated most fully, though not without an admixture of anachronisms
(cf. Apologie der Hcilkmist, I7i/),by Philostratus, Vttte Sqpftist^ c
9 ; and, in modern times, by Blass, Attache BendsaHiktit^ i, 47 fffy
ed. 2. The fragments are collected in Orators Attfci, ii, i ^9 Jf<
Bernays (Rhcui. Museum, New Scries, viii. 432) has added the
fragment of the Olympic oration preserved by Clement of Alexandria,
Strom. L ch. n (346, Potter).
On the ridicule of Thrasymachus (L 17) in the AeuroXflV of
Aristophanes, see Kock, Atticorum Comicorum Fragment^ i. 439.
Page 477, 1. 7- The last words of Gorgias are in VElian, Vur*
Hist, ii. 35. The inscription on the base of the Olympic statue (1. 15)
is in Kaibel, E$igr. Gr>, p. 534.
Page 478, il. 6. Shakespeare, Macbeth^ iii. 4 : " Our monuments
shall be the maws of kites.* The two similes of Gorgias wtrc
censured by Longinus, ^pl ttyov*, iii, 2 (p. 5, Jahn-Vahlen)*
The characteristics of the alto tstilo (L 37) are tajcea from
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 593
Landmann's essay, Shakspere and Euphuism^ in the Transactions of
the New Shakspere Society, Series I., 1880-86, p. 250.
Page 479, 1. 8. " FalstafPs speech : " Henry IV., Pt. /., ii. 4.
This passage, which we follow Brandes (William Shakespeare, A
Critical Study > i. 53) in selecting as characteristic, is likewise quoted
by Landmann (ibid.}. The reader will note the alliteration with
drink, /ears, pleasure, passion, words, 'zooes.
Page 479, 1, 27. In rejecting the two declamations that have
come down under the name of Gorgias, I follow Leonhard Spengel's
demonstration (Artium Scriptures, 73^), which has been frequently
ignored but never confuted; cp. my Apologia der Heilkunst, 165 /,
and Von Wilamowitz, Aristotales und Athen., i. 172.
Page 481, 1. 5, On the relation of Gorgias to Empedocles, cp.
Satyrus, apud Laert. Diog., viii 58, and Diels' illuminating discussion
in his Gorgias und Empedocles, to which such frequent reference has
been made.
The " little work which used to be ascribed to Aristotle " (1. 30)
has been best and most recently edited by Apelt in the collection
Aristotclis quaferuntur de plantis, etc., Leipsic, 1888. Our note on
page 155, supra, should be consulted at this point. It is absolutely
out of the question to regard this treatise as the work even of Theo-
phrastus, to whom the Vatican MS. ascribes it, and to whom
Simplicius — elsewhere so well informed — seems likewise to have
attributed it (Pfiys., 22, 26, Diels) ; especially, we may add, on account
of the notices it contains about Anaximander (975 B 12 ; cp., too, the
wrong <J>«<r£ rim, ibid., 1. 7). A complement to the account in this
libellus is furnished by Sextus, Adv. Math., vii. 65 ff. = 203 ff.,
Bekken
Page 483, 1. 36. A most modern parallel to the second argument
for the first thesis of Gorgias is offered by MansePs ratiocination,
noted in Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamiltorfs Philosophy^
p. 114, 3rd edit.
Page 487, 1. 23. A rt critical discussion " of the Empedoclean
doctrine formed the contents of the ££4yim* *E,fjnreti<>K\4ovs9 mentioned
by Suidas, s.v. Z4ivw~ as Diels, Gorgias undEmpedokles, 17 [359], has
shown to be in the highest degree probable.
Page 488, L 10. George Grote : Plato, 1. 107 /., and History of
Greece, vii. 51 (10 vols.,-i888). The "remark " (1. 14) in contradiction
therewith is in Zeller, Philos* der Griechen, i. 1104, 5th edit
Page 489, 1. 9. Cp. Windelband, GeschicHte der Philosophic, 69,
Our sole authority on Xeniades (1. 12) is Sextus, Adv. Math., viu 53 =
201, 9.#C, Bekker. A notable parallel occurs in the Rig Veda, x. 72,
3 : *' Existence, in the earliest age of Gods, from Non-existence sprang "
[Griffith, Hymns of the Rig Veda, ii. 486, Benares, 2nd edit, 1897.
The translator is indebted for this reference to Mrs. Max Muller],
Page 491, 1. 2i» The quotation is from Plato, Protag^ 334 C,
VOL. I, 2 Q
594 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
The " earliest experiment in definition proper " (1. 32) is from [Hippo-
crates] DeArtc, § 3 (Littrd, vi. 4).
Page 492, 1. i. Democritus : cp. Mullach, 209 (from Sextus, Adv.
Math., vii. 265 = 248, 25,Bekker) : foepcawos l<rriv & trdvrLs tfyw. Very
similarly Pascal (Penstes, i. 2, Paris edit,, 1823, p. 28) : " Quclle
ndcessitd y a-t-il d'expliquer ce qu'on entend par le mot homme <> Ne
sait-on pas assez quelle est la chose qu'on veut ddsignerpar ceterme ?"
Genuine attempts at definition by Democritus and the Pythagoreans
are mentioned by Aristotle, Metqph., xiii. 4 (1078 B 19, jfi). Autolycus
(1. 10) : cp, Autolyci de Splicera^ etc., edit. Hultsch, Leipsic, 1885,
pp. 2 and 48. Cp., too, the definition of Number attributed to Thales
in lamblichi in NicomacJit Aritjim. Introduct. Liber (Pistelli, p. 10)
with the remarks of Hultsch, Berliner Philologischc WQcJienschrift,
15 June, 1895, column 775. The invaluable fragment of Eudcmtus
{Fragtnenta colL Sficngel, 113 jfi) instructs us on the earliest phases
of the study of geometry, as likewise the oldest surviving geometrical
demonstration (by Hippocrates of Chios, middle of the fifth century)
apud Simplic., Phys^ 60^, Diels. Gorgias' definition of rhetoric
(1. 20) : Oratores Attici^ ii. 130 B 18. The definition of colour is iu
Plato, MenO) 76 D (where I should defend tfXTjudrw against Dicls,
Gorgias und EmpedoMe^ 8, who otherwise has materially furthered
the comprehension of the definition).
On what follows, cp. Plato, Timccus, 67 C, and PhitcbitS) 58 Ay/,
(sec Hirzcl, Hermes, x. 254, and Dummler, Ak&dcmika, 33),
Page 493, 1. 7. The oration of Alcidamas '* On the Sophists 1} is
now in the appendix to Blass, Antfyhontis Qratwncs^ edit. 2, Leipsic,
1881. His Qvcructs is mentioned by Laert. Diog., viii. 56*
On Polus (1. 15) as a student of nature, cp. Plato, Gorgias, 465 D.,
On the tomb of Isocrates (1. 20), cp. Pseudo-Plutarch, Vit* x. Orat^
iv* 26 (1021, 43, Diibner),
On Lycophron's avoidance of the copula (L 34), cp, Aristotle, Phys*%
i. 3 (185 B 27).
Page 494, 1, jo. " The Xenophontic Socrates" : A few?., i. i, 14,
and iv. 7, zff.
BOOK III.— CHAPTER VIIL
Pages 497, 498. The fragments of the historians here mentioned
are to be found in C. M tiller's Fraginenta Historicorum Grttwrwtt.
On Stesimbrotus, cf. Heuer's Munstcrer Dissertation (1863), supple-
mented now by fresh fragments in Philodemus, On Piety > pp. 22, 41 /f
45 of my edition.
On the oldest historical writings on Hterature and music, cf* Killer,
Rheinisehes Museum^ xli, 401*
Page 498, 1. 2. The " thought 7' uttered by Democritus is from
NOTES AND ADDITIONS. 595
Philodemus, De Musica, col. 36 (Kemke, p. 108), with which cf. Plato,
CritiaS) no A, and Aristotle, Metafihys., 981 B, 20.
On the earliest chronological 1 publications, cf. Unger, in I wan
Mutter's Handbnch der Klassischen Altertumswissensch^ i. 573.
Page 499. Here we would especially refer to the brilliant and
thoughtful University Festival Oration by the late Rudolf ScholL
whom learning lost too soon : Die Anf tinge einer jbolitischcn Litteratur
bcideii Gricchen (Munich, 1890). Yet I have not been able to assent
to ScholPs view of the " Constitution of Athens," and I contest it on
page 500.
Page 502, I. 24. The "accursed Demos" is mentioned in the
epitaph on Critias, in the scholia to ^Eschines, Adv. Timarch., 39
(Qratorcs A ttici\ ii. 15).
Page 502, § 3. The year 424 B.C. was fixed as the date of publi-
cation of the treatise ** On the Constitution of Athens,'* by Kirchhoff,
Die Alfassimgsseit der Schrift win Staate der Athener (Akademie-
Abhandlung), Berlin, 1878. Xenophon's claim to the'A0i?»/aW woXireta,
formerly included in his works, is now very properly disallowed, but
no other known author has as yet been allowed to have even a pre-
sumptive claim to it,
Page 503, 1. 13. Scholl, op. city has some excellent remarks on
Thucydides' methods of historical research ; likewise Kohler, " Ueber
die Archaologie des Thukydides," in Commentationes Mommseniana,
370^ There is a brilliantly correct utterance, too, in Scherer, Poetik^
p. 67.
Page 504, 1. 6. "A pupil of Anaxagoras." To this notice of
Marcellinus, § 22 (Krugeijs edition, ii. 194), K. O. Miiller adds the
pertinent remark : " We may justly regard him as the Anaxagoras of
history " (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece^ continued by
J. W. Donaldson, London, 1858, ii. 132).
The quotation immediately preceding, and those following on
pages 504^, are from Thucydidcs, i. 23 ; Herodotus, i. i ; Thucydides,
i. 22 ; i, 20; ii. 15 (very similar with respect to method is Aristotle's
discussion, Constitution of Athens > c. 3); i. 5, 6,
Page 506, 1. 34. Cf. Odyssey, iii. 73, and Aristarchus in the
scholia.
Page 507, 1. 34. For Hellen, the ancestor of the Hellenic race, see
Thucydides, i. 3 ; Ion as an historical personage, Aristotle, Constitu-
tion of Athens^ c. 3, On what follows, cf. Thucydides, i. 1-19.
Pages 510, 5ti. Cf. Thucydides, ii, 54 (oracle about the plague) ;
ii. 17 (Pclasgic field) ; v. 103 (superstition denounced) ; v. 26 (duration
of the war) ; i, 23 (ominous natural occurrences) ; ii. 8 (earthquake at
Delos) ; i 21 (the word "mythical")*
Pages 512, 5*3* Cf, Thucydides, ii. 28 (eclipse of the sun) ; vii. 50
(eclipse of the moon) ; vii. 79 (thunderstorm) ; iii. 89 (flood) ; iv. 24
(CSnrybd;s) ; ii. 102 (Achdous) ; ii* 47 ff* (description of the plague) ;
596 NOTES AND ADDITIONS.
vii. 44 (the course of a battle) ; iv. 118 /, v. 18 /., 23 /, 47, 77, 70
(documentary evidence of treaties, apart from those contained in the
probably unfinished book, viii. ; of these, v. 47 has been re-discovered
as an inscription ; v. 77 and 79 are in the Doric dialect ; cf. now
Kirchhoff, Thukydidcs und sein Urkundenmaterial, Berlin, 1895);
vii. ii (report of a general, viz. Nicias) ; i. 22 (characterization of the
speeches).
Pages 514, 515, Cf. Thucydides, vi. 8^ (speeches of Nicias and
Alcibiadcs) ; ii. 35 Jf. (funeral oration of Pericles) ; i. 86 (speech of
Sthenelaidas) ; iii. 45 (Diodotus against the deterrent theory),
Pages 516, 517. Cf. Thucydides, vii. 69 (speech of Nicias before
the decisive battle) ; iii. 38 (Cleon's censorious speech).
Page 518. Cf. Thucydides, iv, 40 (Cleon's "mad " promise) ; vii.
86 (lament on the death of Nicias) ; iii. 83 (" simplicity 3> of heart : T&
ts o$ rb yswcfiov ir\ti<rrw jtiere^f t).
INDEX.
N.B, — The Notes and Additions in this volume (pp. 521-596) refer to the Text
(pp. 3-519) by page and line (or section). Jlius^ in the /uifar, *' Map-
making^ 49," for example^ carries with it a reference, not merely to p, 49 in
the 7fxtt but likewise to " Jtye 49, /. 30 " in the Notes and Additions, to
be found on p. 533. In the majority of instances this second paginal
reference has, accordingly^ been omitted. The standard writers and their
works mentioned by the author in the Notes have not been enumerated i*i
the fndex^ exctpt in cases where he distinguishes them by special acknowledg-
ment or repeated us?. — JLM.
AbJera, 317
Absolutism versus social contract
doctrine, 391 /. ; dictum of a
modern champion, 406
" Achilles and the Tortoise," 195/1,
Acropolis, 506
Acusilaus, 91
,/Kgospotami meteorite, 218
yl^chmcs, 426
•rf&chylos, 97, 131, 441
Agamemnon's tomb, 32
Agriculture, 387
Albert!, Leone ttattista, 431
Alcibiades, 407, 426, 437, 514
Alcidamas, 403, 493 ; sources, 576
Alcmaeonof Croton, 147; physiology,
148 ; doctrine of the senses, 149 ;
psychology, 150 f. \ conclusion,
152 ; and Parmenides, 183 \ in-
fluence on Empedocles, 230, 235 \
and corpus IHppocrat^ 282; as
physician, 285 j and the brain, 313 j
his and the Indian theories of
vision, 549
Alexander, 120, 422
Alexandrian savants, 506
Allegorical method, 375, 379 /
Altruism, 133
Aminias, 167
Amphipolis, siepe of, 503
Anaxagoras, and Parmenides, 172 j
boro atCtoomeno^, 308 \ residence
in Athens, 209 \ doctrine of matter
210 ; countless "seeds," 211 f.
324, 378 ; his cosmogony, 214 ;
agency of " Nous,'* 215 ; ciiiicism
of Plato and Aristotle, 216 ; the
sun " an ignited stone," 217 ; anti-
cipates principles of modern astro-
nomy, 218 j explains superiority
of man, 219 ; defects of his astro-
nomy, 220; discusses the Milky
Way, 221 ; views of organic life,
222 ; theory of the senses, 223 ;
objective and subjective qualities,
224 ; conclusion, 225 / ; and
Empedocles, 2327., 241, 243, 254;
and corpus Hippocrat^ 282 ; and
atomism, 324; the inflated bag,
326 ; and Leucippus, 346 / ; and
Diogenes Ap., 371, 373; and
Archelaus, 378 ; treatise on the
stage, 387 ; and Thucydides, 504 ;
sources, 556
Anaxiniander of Miletus, 48 ; map-
maker, 49 ; astronomer, 50 ; cos-
mogonist, $lj^ j organic creation,
54 ; cosmic periods, 55 ; and
Ileraclitus, 61, 65 ; and Pytha-
goras, no; and Parmenides, 172;
and Anaxagoras, 222 ; and the
cosmogonic vortex, 337, 339 ; and
Archelaus, 378 ; sources, 532
Anaximenes of Miletus, 50 ; primary
matter, $6 ; hint of atomic theory,
57 ; astronomy, 58 ; and Anaxt-
uiander, 59; and Heraclilus, 61;
598
INDEX.
and Pannenides, 172 ; and Anaxa-
goras, 220 ; and Kmpedocles, 231 ;
and atomic doctrine, 323 ; and
Diogenes Ap., 371, 373; and
Archelaus, 378 ; sources, 534 ;
eighteenth-century parallels, 535
Ancestor-worship, 23, 32
u Ancient Medicine," Hippocratic
treatise on, 164, 297^., 490
Animals, Greek attitude towards,
126 ; lawsuits against, 446
" Anonymity," 396
Anthropology supersedes cosmology,
495
<f Antilogies," of Protagoras, 464
Antiphon, 434 » " On Concord," 435 ;
and Callicles, 437 ; authorities,
5*5
Amisthenes, 380 ; Plato's enemy,
421
Apollonius, 91
" Apories " of Zeno, 192 jp.
Archelaus, 377 ; as eclectic philo-
sopher, 378 ; on " Beauty, Justice,
and the Laws," 402
Archilochus, 433
Archimedes, Deinocritus, and Galilei,
367
Architecture, 387
Aristarchus of Samos, 121, 367
Aristides, the rhetorician, 284
Aristippus, 453; purpose of his
appearance in Plato's "Thesetc-
tus," 459
Aristophanes, ** Plutus," 284 ;
"Clouds," 376, 4** 5 "Epulones,"
420, 476; " Broilers," 426; jests
at Protagoras, 445
Aristotle, on Thales, 48 ; on Anaxi-
mander, 51 ; on Heraclitus, 63, 76 ;
on the " theologians," 85 ; on the
Pythagoreans, 104-110, 119,492;
on metempsychosis, 124 ; and Alc-
nuaon, 148, 151 ; on Xenophanes,
159, 164; son Parmenides, 171,
iSo; and Melissus, 186 ; on An-
axagoras, 216, 220 ; on Kmpcdocles,
246 ; on Hippocrates *' the Great,"
282 5 on therapeutics, 293 ; on Oe-
mocritus, 319, 363 ; on Leucippus,
320 ; on arrangement, contact, and
position of bodies, 322 ; on Demo-
critus and Leucippus, 363 ; on
Hippo, 377 ; on Clwirondas, 386 ;
on natural basis of slavery, 405 ; on
Hippodamus, 410 ; uses "sophist**
in three senses, 421 ; is called a
sophist, 422; on Theramenes,
426 ; testifies to Protagoras as
mathematician, 455 ; on the Jwmo-
memnra\£\\<i\.i 461 ; on the rhetoric
of Protagoras, 471 ; " Rhetoric,1'
472 /. j advice to poets, 474 ;
(pseudo-) Arist. on Gorgias, 481 ;
use of inverse deduction, 506 ; of
semi-historical method, 507
Aristoxenus, 464
Art = handicraft, 390
**Art of Consolations, " Antiphon's
treatise, 435
Asia Minor, west coast, 14, 279
" Assayer, The," 321
Association of ideas, t$ff*
Astronomy, contributions of Philo-
laus, 113 $\ j heliocentric doctrine,
120 ; contributions of Anaxa-
goras, 218 ; of Oemocritus, 366
Atharva-Veda, 278
Athens, the centre of Greek life, 381 ;
head of a confederacy, 382 j study
of rhetoric and politics, 383 ; shibbo-
leths of government, 407 ; the city
of law-suits, 418 j age of Pericles
and Italian Renaissance, 431 ; de-
mocracy and liberty, 436 ; plague
and war, 439; an embassy from
Leontini, 476 ; treatise on the con-
stitution, 499 ft\ ; the Acropolis,
506
Atomism, not a theory, but an hypo-
thesis, 353; its value, 354; its"
relation to materialism, 355 ; its
teleology, 364 /. ; its comparative
failure at the start, 370
Atomists, Bk. IU., Ou II. See l)e-
mocritus, Leucippus, etc.
Attica, 4
Attraction of like by like, 237 /!,
336
Augustine, St*, 87
Abrdptceta, 433
Autolycus, 492
B
Babylon, position in history of re-
ligion, 96 /. ; perhaps visited by
Pythagoras, 100; ** world-year, "
I42/.
Bacon, 75. 344* 47<>» SOS
Bacr, K. K. von, n8; coins word
ti 364
Ballads, desuetude of, 10
Bardesanes, 403
Basutos, 524
Uatteux, 271
Battle of the gods in mythology, 88
INDEX.
599
Baylc, Peter, 192
"Bellerophon,"408
Berkeley, 192, 321
Bias and Heraclitus, 6 1
Bill of Exchange, 9
Bccckh, 120
"Book of the Dead," 126, I33/.
Boyle, Robert, 568
Brahe, Tycho de, 121
Brahma, 124
Brain, its physical and psychical signi-
ficance, 313
Brandis, Handbuck der Geschichte
der griechisch-romischen Philoso-
phic, 530
Bruno, Giordano, 107, 344
Buckle, 58
Buddha, 124
Biihler, Professor, 549
Burial, 5247.
Burke, 500
Burritt, Elihu, 380
Byron, Lord, 417
Cabanis, Mirabeau's physician, 470
Cuiaarian section, 278
Cakloron, 479 ^ . „
Collides. See " Gorgias "
Callows, 73
Callisthencs, 422
Cambaceres, 477
" Canon," of Democritus, 361 ; of
Polycletus, 3*>7
Castration, 564
Cause, its ambiguous meaning, 341
Centrifugal force, 53, 2x8, 339
Ceos, 428
< lhaldiwm pseudo-science, 283
Chaos, llesiodic, 41 ; Anaxagoroan,
313; Scandinavian and Hindoo
parallels, $26
Charlemagne, 5°&
Charon of kampsacus, 498
Charowlas, 386, 438^:
Chemistry, contributions of Empe-
docles, 233/ ; of atomists, W1/. \
modern and ancient, 330 ; chemical
elements, 531 ,
Chinese, state religion, 32 ; sopmsms,
Chronology a special study, 49^
Cinquecento, 30
Clcauthes, 77> 53^
Cleow, 5i6/
Cleostratus,498 . f 0
CHathcncB, 137 5 tas reforms, 382
Cnklus, school of physicians, 286 ;
its chefcT&uvre, 314
c Code Napoleon," 447
Coexistence of contraries, 7I/.
Coinage, 8.
Colonies, 5^
Colophon, 156
Colotes, 359
Colour, defined by Gorgias, 492
Comparative anatomy founded, 315
Compromise in Greek thought,
371
Homte, Auguste, 107, 420
* Concord," treatise on, 435
Conflagration of the World, 536
Constancy of matter, i75^-» 32S
•« Constitution of Athens," treatise
on, 499 ; bond between sea-power
and democracy, 500 ; doctrinaire
tendencies, 501 ; its uncompromis-
ing condemnation of the status quo^
502
Convention. See Nature verms Con-
vention
Cooking, 386
Copernicus, Hi
Corporeity of Being denied by Melis-
sus, 190 f.
Corpus Hippocraticum^ 282 ff. (sec
Hippocrates and separate treatises)
"CorrectiLanguage," treatise on, 429
" Correct Speech," treatise on, 442^.
Correlation of qualities and quan-
tities, 349
'*Corroborations" of Bemocritus,
359
Cos, school of medicine, 296 ; its un-
dying glory, 309 ; contrast with
Cnidus, 310
" Counter-earth " of Pythagoreans,
Cournotj 329
Cratinus, 377
Critias the statesman, 389, 437
Criticism, growth of spirit in JileaUc
school, 205 ; rise in historical re-
search, 256 ; third great wave in
study of medicine, 313 ; fostered
in fifth century, 384 ; in Thucy-
dides, 505
Crocodile, 19
Croesus, 408
Croton, seat of Pythagoreans, TOO/.
<* Crushing Speeches Vt of Diagoras,
408
Cyclic process, 141
Cypsehdes, 9
Cyrenaic School of Socratics, 452
Cyrus, 127, 157
6oo
INDEX.
Dallon, 234
Damastes, 497
Damon, 386
Darius, 268, 280
Darwin, 365, 401
Dayaks, 124
De Tocquevillc, 516
Death, primitive views of, 20 /, ; fear
of the dead, 524
Deductive method, 308 ; applied to
society and politics, 500 ; in Thucy-
dides, 509
*< Defender of Peace, The," treatise,
3?2
Definition, earliest experiment in
treatise " On the Art/' 491 ; prac-
tised by mathematicians, 492
Delphi, oracle, 12
Democedes of Croton, 279/.
Democracy, succeeds "Tyranny," 10;
typical Athenian, 382 ; and liberty,
436 ; arid sea-power, 500
tDemocritus of Abdera, 316 ; indis-
tinguishable as atomist from Leu-
cippus, 317 ; character and travels,
318 ; his hypothesis on the problem
of matter, 319 ; nature and con-
vention, 320; compared with
Galilei, 321 ; reality of matter,
322 j atomism the fruit of Ionian
physiology, 323 ; two agents of
atomic theory, 324; and postu-
lates of matter, 325 ; contribu-
tions to chemical science, 329/1 ;
recognizes differences only of size
and shape, 332 ; his physiology
of the senses, 333 ; atomic groups,
334 ; revives and alters principle
ot " like to like," 336 /. ; the cos-
mogonic vortex, 338/1 ; inquiry
into atomic motion, 340 ; limits of
inquiry, 341 /. ; debt of atomism
to Ionia and Elea, 344 ; evidence
of Theophrastus, 345 ; atomists
' and Eleatics, 347 ; " Democri-
tean" quantitative determination
of corporeal movements really the
work of Leucippus, 350 ; the
existence of a vacuum, 352 ; his
materialism, 354 ; belief in the
gods, 355 ; his psychology, 356 ;
and optics, 357 /I j his scepticism
according to Sextus, 359 5 accord-
ing to Colotcs, 360 ; his " Canon,"
361 ; genuine and obscure cogni-
tion, 362 ; recognizes experience
as source of knowledge, 363 ; his
astronomy, 366 ; his cosmology,
367 ; his ethics, 368 ; conclusion,
369 ; his book on tactics, 86 ; on
painting; and agriculture, 387 ; on
law and justice, 394 ; on conven-
tional origin of language, 396^! ;
his argument from homonymy
refuted, 401 ; his experiments in
definition, 492 ; on leisure in art
and science, 498 ; authorities, 568
Descartes, 329, 335, 344, 349 ; criti-
cizes Galilei, 364
" Description of the
Ilecatreus, 255
•'Description of the Earth, A,'* by
Diagoras of Melos, 408; sources,
577/1
Diderot, 463
Diels, Hermann, Doxographi Gract\
529, and notes fastim ; Gorgias
und £mpedoclt$t notes passim
" J)iet," Hippocnitic treatise on, 286
Jf, ; treatise by llerodicus, 386
*' DifFercntiation '* of matter, 52 ; re*
placed by mechanical separation,
214; developed by EmpudocJes,
239
DiochaiU'S, 167
Diodorus, 84
Diodotus, 515
Diogenes of Apollonia, aSa ; as
physician, 285 ; most distinguished
eclectic philosopher, 371 ; his
treatise ** On Nature,1* 372 j jtuj»-
plements nous-theory by air-
theory, 373 ; his cucycloptwUsm,
374 ; his single principle ot matter,
375 ; in oj>tics, pyschology, etc.,
376 ,• derided by Aristophanes,
377 J, sources, 573
Dionysms of Miletus, 498
Dionysus Xagreus, ia8/.
Diopeithes, 4x6
«' Discord,'* in Apollonius, 91 ; in
Kmpedocles, 2397., 338
'* Diseases of Women, treatise on,
310
Dodona, oracle, 261 /,
" Dreams," Hippocratic treatise on,
290
Druids and Druses, 124
Dubois- Raymond, 175
E
Eclecticism (see Diogenes of A pot-
Ionia, Archclaus, etc,)i 3711
Hippo's inclusion, 573
INDEX.
60 1
Ecphantus, 120
Edinburgh Review^ 417
Education, metaphor from the field,
4O9> 578 ; curriculum extended,
412 ; activity of the sophists, 413 ;
views of Anliphon, 437 ; of Prota-
goras, 441
" Effluvia," 236, 492
Egypt, influence on Greek religion,
96 /. ; visited by Pythagoras, 100 ;
visited by Hecatseus, 257 /. ;
influence on popular medicine,
283 j on Mycenean art, 521 ;
Egyptian geometry, 531
El-Arnarna, cuneiform archives, 96
Kleatic school reviexved, 205 ff* ;
relation with Empedocles, 253 j
with the Atomists, 345 ff. ; polemic
of Protagoras, 450,- of Gorgias,
485 ; authorities, 550
Kmbryo, Hippocratic views, 291
Knmedocles of Acragas (Blc. II. Ch.
v.)» 9*t 130, 140 ; and Parmenides,
183 ; his native city, 227 ; ambition,
228; versatility, 2295 speculative
chemist, 230; doctrine of four
elements, 231^. ; theory of vision,
235 ; allied physiological doc-
trines, 236 ft. ; twin forces of
" Friendship" and "Discord," 239
/ ; details of his cosmology, 241 /. ;
theory of organic being, 243 /. ;
endows matter with soul, 245 ; his
dualistic psychology, 246 ff. ; self-
contradiction, 251 5 his harmonious
theology, 252; relation with
Kleatics, 253 ; summary, 254 ;
awl corpus JBKppoerat^ 2825 as
physician, 285 j and Democritus,
33o> 355 J and Gorgias, 481, 487 ;
sources, 558
" Kmpty " hypotheses, 305 /.
" Kngjish Kssay," 474
Kpaminondas, 101
Kphosus in the time of Heraclitus, 62
Kpjcharmes, 313
Kpjctetug, 77
Kpicurus, 330, 356, 394 ; on lan-
guage* 39*
Kpulaurus as health-resort, 284
Kpilepay, 312
Kpi men ides, 91
Kquivalcnts in chemistry, 328
Eristic, 590/.
Ether in coxitemporary physics, 330
Euclides, 421
Eudemus, 9o/t 94, 140, 144
Eudoxus, ui
Eumolpus, 477
Euphuism, ancient and modern, 48o/
Eupolis, 420
Euripides^ 160, 372 ; on nature and
convention, 404 ; on happiness,
408 ; on Prodicus, 428 ; and Prota-
goras, 440, 462
Euryphon, 288
E&flu^fo, Democritean, 368
Euthymenes, 498
Exact science, 299
Existence of elements, 45
Fairy tales, their migration, 541
" Fall of the soul by sin," 128
"Fate," treatise on, 403
Fechner, 182, 328
Fees, Protagorean mode of settle-
ment, 449, 473
Fetishism, 18^. ; yields to polytheism,
27 ; exposed by^ Prodicus, 430 ;
origin and authorities, 522^
Fichte, 145
Fine arts, professional studies, 386 /.
Fire, in doctrine of Heraclitus, 64
ff. ; of Philolaus, 117 ; of Hippo-
cratic treatise "On Diet," 287 ; in
atomic hypothesis, 357 ; in the
legend of Prometheus, 389
Fish-men, 53
Flux in the doctrine of Heraclitus,
68 ff. f influence on Parmenides,
167
Forster, George, 390
Franklin, Benjamin, 219
French Revolution, 393, 410
" Friendship " and *fc Discord," 2397.
" Funeral Oration," of Gorgias,
478 ; of Pericles, 436, 516
Galilei, 321, 329, 349 ; criticised by
Descartes and Mersenne, 364 ; and
Aristotelianism, 366 ; and Archi*
medes, 367
Games of Olympia, 12
Gassendi, 329
Gcber, 149
Gender of substantives, 443^
" Genealogies," by Hecatos, 255
« Genesis/' 5607.
Geographical exploration, 7/.
Girgenti, 227
Glaucus of Rhegium, 497
Gnomon, 50, 532
INDEX.
(iods, 24.^".; and men in Homer,
aS/l ; borrowed, 96 ; conceptions
corrected in Egypt, z$7 /. ; "On
the Gods," by Protagoras, 440;
inferior aiul perishable gods, 534
Goethe, 44, 55> 2445 45^ 463'
" Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, '
480
Gomperz, JBdtriigv, etc., 550, and
notes passim; Hcrodoteische Studien^
563 ; Die Apofagie der Heilkunst^
582, and notes passim
Gorgias of Leontini, 229; Sicilian
envoy to Athens, 476 ; death and
memorials, 477 ; a founder of
panegyric prose, 477 ; characteristics
of his style, 478 ; parallel features
in Renaissance literature, 479 f.^
his live known speeches, 480 ; his
nature-philosophy and ethics, 481 ;
three theses of Being, 482-486 ;
their logical value, 487 J}\ ; his
quarrel with the Eleatics, 489 f. ;
definitions of rhetoric and colour,
492 ; evidence of his pupils, 493 ;
comparison -with the Xcnophontic
Socrates, 494 ; conclusion, 495 ?
sources, 592
" Gorgias," of Plato, 405 ; views of
Callicles on might and riglit, 406 ;
transformation of his character,
407 ; ^ polemic of Antiphon, 437 ;
repudiation of rhetoric, 47 1 ; Calli-
cles and Charicles, 577
*c Grain of Millet," 192 ff., 322,
464
Grammar, introduced by Protagoras*
441
Gravitation, 218
"Great Order of the Universe,"
treatise by Democritus on the, 317
Greater Greece, 6
Greece and Greeks, 4 ; influence of
Kgyptand Babylon, 5, n, 96, etc. ;
colonies, 6 ; exploration, 8 j battle
of classes, 9; travel, n ; art of
writing, 13 j west coast of Asia
Minor, 14; religious ideas, 15;
early gods, 24 ; sense of beauty,
27 ; circles of ancestor-worship,
32 ; origin of evil, 37 ; priesthood,
43 ; belief in immortality, Si J}\ ;
debt to the East, 9,5 ; other foreign
influences, 96 ; views of life and
Philolaic system, 117; tra«Hmigra-
tion of souls, X26 ; attitude to
monotheism, 161 ; first illustrated
book, 209 ; Intellectual enfranchise*
meat, 2555 favourable conditions,
275 ; springs of success, 276 ; early
physicians, 279 ; art of medicine,
285 ; dawn of true science, 295 :
the Mdsterjcthre^ 296 ; seat and
centre at Athens, 381 ; power of
the tongue, 382 ; friction of in-
tellect, 383 ; inlellectualism, 385 /. ;
professional authorship, 386 J\ ;
progress of thought, 388 j theories
of language-formation, 394 jf. •
authority and reason, 408 /. ;
radicalism, 411 ; widening of edu-
cational curriculum, 412 ; dislike
of the sophists, 416 ; contempt of
wage-earning, 4x7; Pan-Hellenism,
430, 480 ; panegyric and forensic*
eloquence, 477 ; man, " ihe proper
study of mankind," 495 ; develop-
ment of historiography, 497 y. ;
discovery of globular shape of earth,
S43 ; Greek and Hindoo thought,
, 551 f.
Greenlandcrs, 124
Grote, on sophists, 435 j on Ciorgius,
488
Guevara, 479/.
II
Hann, Professor, 570
Hanno, 120; his Ptriplm and doc-
trine of a central lire, 545
** Harmony of the spheres," 117
Hccatrcus of Miletus, 61 ; statesman
and historian, 255 ; exordium to
history, 256, 505^ ; visit to Thebes,
257 ; reconstruction of myths, 258 ;
criticized by Herodotus, 50$ ;
authorities, 563
Hegel, 77, 447
Hcliocentricity, no; supersedes
geocontricity, 122
lEollauicus, 91, 432, 4<)8
Hellas and Hellenes. Sect ( Jreece and
( J reeks, passim
Hernclules, 121, 498, 558
Hcrnclitism summarised, 78 /.
Hcraclitus of Kphcsus, 59; chrono*
logy, 60; contempt of mankind,
6 1 j aristocratic sympathy, 62 ?
primary matter, 63 /. ; objections,
05 ; doctrine^ of flux, 66 / ; rela-
tivity of (jualities, 68; coexistence
of contraries, 71 5 war, 72 ; uni-
versal law, 74 / j intellectual and
moral consequences, 76/» ; conclu*
sion, 78 /. ; and Pytliagoras» 99-
X09 ; cyclic procc$a» 141 j ami
INDEX.
603
Xenophancs, 161; and Parmcnidcs, !
1 67./^. 5 and Knipcdocles, 231 ; and
corpus Hlppocmt^ 282 ; and atom-
ism, 323, 357 ; on language, 395 /.;
sources, 535 ; his co-ordination
with Pythagoras and Xenophanes
justified, 537
u Hercules at the parting of the
ways," 429, 584
TTermodorus, 62
Ilerodicus, 288, 386
Herodotus of Ilalicarnassus, 60, 96,
100, 126 /., 219 ; birth, 258 ; re-
construction of myths, 259 ; legend
of Troy, 260 ; oracle of Dodona,
261 ; other measures of *' compro-
mise," 263 /. ; scepticism, 265 ;
supposed monotheistic tendency,
266 ; Providence, 267 ; its judicial
attribute, 268 ; credulity and hy-
per criticism, 269 / ; access of
positivism, 271 ; conclusion, 272 ;
on Greek climate, 276 ; on verifi-
cation, 306 ; on human convention,
403 /. ; argument on happiness,
408 ; on the contempt of industry,
417 j contrasted with Thucydides,
503 f. ; on the Thracians, 546
Herschel, 455
Hcsiod of Ascra, 38; "Thcogony,"
39 ; cosmogonic system, 40 /. ;
original speculations, 41 ; and
Anaximander, 51 ; and Homer, 60,
130; future life, 83; and Phere-
cydes, 89 ; VKthcr, 98 ; idealized
the past, 387
tlieronymus, 91
Ilippusus of Metapontum, 146, 37*
Hippo, 285 ; eclectic philosopher,
377; sources, 573, . , 0
Hippocrates, 164; birth, 282; rela-
tions to predecessors, 282/5 two
groups of treatises in corpus^ 286 ;
*< On Diet," 287 ; its promise and
performance, 289 ; "On Dreams,"
290; "On the Muscles," 290; in-
dependent experiments, 291 ; pro
blem of organic creation, 292 j merit
of treatise " Ou the Muscles," 294 ;
" Ou the Number Seven," 294^ ;
** Ou Old Medicine," 297^ ; po-
lemic ami reliction, 303 ; his use of
hypothesis, 3°§ /• ; invention of
correct inductive method, 308 5
" Prognoslicon,"3io; u On Water,
Air, and Sites," 311; marks of true
scientific spirit, 314; author of " On
the J oints f ' the pioneer of compara-
tive anatomy, 315. Hippocrates
in Abdcra, 316 ; pseudo-IIippo-
cratic treatise " On the Art," 423 ;
its contents and style, 424 ; not
altogether a type of its kind, 425 ;
reconsidered, 467 ; its author was
Protagoras (</.zO» 4^8 ; its Rela-
tivistic spirit, 491
Hobbes, 118, 321
Hoffmeister, SittUch-rcligiose Le-
bensanschaunng des Herodotos^
563
Homer, gods, 24 ; Hymn to Aphro-
dite, 26 ; and Schliemann, 28 ;
gods and men, 28 f. ; obsequies of
Patroclus, 30 /. ; obsolete soul-
worship, 33 ; and Ilesiod, 38, 60,
130 ; problem of matter, 45 ; and
HeracliVus, 60 ; future world, 82
/. ; doctrine of Night, 91, 525 ;
sacred number three, 106 ; insouci-
ance, 130 ; psyche, 249 ; divine
and human, 266 ; medical art,
279 ; allegorized by Diogenes Ap.,
371; ; allegorical key of Metrodorus,
37&» 574 ; allegorized by Theagenes,
379 ; linguistic criticism of Prota-
goras, 443 /. ; biography by Stesim-
brotus, 497 ; treatment by Thu-
cydides, so;/
llomo-Mmsura, tenet, 451 /. ; its
generic significance, 453 ; = " cog-
nition is sense-perception, "accord-
to Plato, 456
Homonymy, 396, 401
Horses, treatise by Si mo, 386 ; in the
pscan of Forster, 390
Human sacrifices, 30 ff,
Humboldt, A. von, 333
Huyghens, 335, 349
s«Hylozoists,"66, 2,
245
Immortality, Soj^.j 250
Impenetrability of matter, 325 /.
"Imperative Speech, The," by Pro-
tngoras, 445
" Incorrect Actions of Mankind, On
the," Protagoras' treatise, 445
Indestructibility of matter, 45
India, art of medicine, 278
Inductive method, 308
Intellectualism, 385 /:
Inverse deduction as historical method,
506
Ion, *' Pilgrimage,** 498
Ionia, 14, 157, 522
604
INJtEX.
Ionian nature-philosophy, Bk. L Ch,
I. See Anaximcnes, Anaximandcr,
etc.
"Tpscdixit," 109 t
Islam, disperses fairy tales, 541
"Isles of Tin," 269
Tsocrates, 417 ; calls Plato a sophist,
422 ; and Protagoras, 462 ; euphu-
ism, 479 ; pupil of Gorgias, 493
Isomery, 328
Jason of Phcrae, 477
aundice, Styrian view, 278
"Joints," Hippocratic treatise on
the, 314
Justice, basis of Plato's discussion in
JKep. I., 464
K
Kant, 53, 176, 195, 218, 488
Karens, 124
Karsten, Philosophontm . . .
$50, and notes passim
" Kettles " and u tripods,*' 8, 521
Kremer, Alfred von, 249
Lachish, 96
Laertixjs Diogenes, 530, and notes
passim
Lampsacus, death of Anaxagoras,
209
Language, two theories of origin,
394; natural origin supported by
Heraclitus, 395 ; counter- theory of
Democritus, 396 jf. ; Epicurean
ridicule, 398 ; studies of Trodicus,
427; the book **On Correct
Speech " by Protagoras, 442 ff* \
increased strictness of word-con-
ceptions, 491 ; philosophy of lan-
guage, $27
Laplace, 53, 218
Lassalle, 77
Losus of Hermione, 386
Lavoisier, 46, 559
Leibniz, 344
Leasing, 124, 3x8
Leucippus (see Democritus), 66, 224,
3*7.$ J clings to both postulates of
\ matter, 325 j his chemistry, 328 ;
y, 342 ; cvid^ucc of Tnco-
phnislus, 345 ; antl Anax«i<;oras,
3$6/'. 5 and i'amicnidcs, 348 ; the
crown of his labours, 349 ; his <l
priori demonstrations, 350 /" ; his
materialism, 355 ; authorities and
sources, 5677.
Lewis, Sir (1. C., 1 12
Liberty, 436
" Like by like," l£mpcd odes' doctiine
of attraction, 237 ; revived by
Pcmocritus, 336
*'List of Olympic Victors,'* 432
Littrc, 314 ; (Xttvrtf £ f/ipjveraft,
notes fi(tssii?i
Lobeck, Christian August, 92, 95,
Locke, 3*i»34$,
Logos in New Testament, 90
London Papyrus, 565
Lucian, calls Christ a sophist, 422
Lycophron, 493
Lydia, 532
Lyell, Sir C.» 162
Lyly, John, 478; "Kuplnu
479
Lysias, calls Plato a sophist, 4-12
M
Machiavclli, 500, 515
Malta, 162
** Manes, "32
Manichueau doctrine, 538
Maoris, 36, 91, 525
Map-making, 49
Marcus Aurelius, 77
Marriage-torch, symbolism, 544
Marsilius of Padua, 392
Mathematicians, qualities and delects
of, 109 ; practise ddimtion, 492
Matter, problem of, 44 /.t aio Jf*+
3*9^, 343
Medici, 9
Medicine-man, 277
Melancomas, 60
Molissus of Samos, 165 ; sense of his
" thesis,*1 166; scepticism, 168 ;
tnfttnt tenible of nmtaphysies, 184 ;
piactical mystic, 185 ; his metluxl
of reasoninff, 187 j some of its
fallacies, JtSoJjC ; incorporeal Being,
190 ; and corpus llifpocrat^ 283 ;
xud the hotno-mcnsura tenet of
Protagoras, 453 ; stud
554
Meno**ot Plato, 493
Mercenaries, 592
INDEX.
605
Metaphysics, prejudices of, 343/.
Metempsychosis, 123^. ; and Phere-
cydes, 542 ; non-Greek origin, 546
Meteorology suspected of atheism,
416
Me to, 227
Meton, 498
Metrodorus of Chios, 367
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, 378 ; his
allegorical key to Homer, 379, 574
Miccus, 418
Middle Ages, parallelisms in, 7 /"., 9,
95, 124, 392, 446
lilky
Milky Way, explanation of Anaxa-
goras, 221
Mill, J. S., 328, 394, 455, 463
"Mind," treatise of Leucippus on
the, 317
Mithcxicus, 386
Mnesarchus, 99
Modesty, ancient, 318, 419 $ growth,
490 /.
Monochord, of Pythagoras, 102
Monotheism, supersedes polytheism,
44 ; regarded as sacrilegious, 161
Montesquieu, 158, 311
Moschion, 388
Moses, 90
Motion and rest, 341 jJT",, 536
Mullach, AristotcliSi etc., 550, and
notes passim
M tiller, Johannes, 296
MUSOJUS, 91
** Muscles," Hippocratic treatise on,
290/.
Music, treatises on theory, 386;
historically treated, 497 f.
Mycensc, tombs, 32 ; civilization, 33 j
Egypt and Mycenean art, 521
Mysticism, 132 /. ; treatise "On the
Mysteries," 497
Myths transformed, 258^.
N
Napoleon, 157
National psychology, founded, 311
Natural worship, aijf,
*« Nature," treatise on, 372.^
"Nature of Man," treatise on,
"Nature or Not-Being," lost treatise
of Gorgias, 481
" Nature of Women," treatise on,
310
Nature versus Convention, in sense-
perception, 3Z&JF' ; in language-
formation, 394 ff.^ the same illus-
trated, 399 / ; in political and
social phenomena, 402 ff.
Nature-myths, 35 /
Nature-Philosophers, Bk. I. Ch. I.
See separate headings
Navigation, 8
Neo-Platonists, 84
Newton, 57
Nicias, 514, 516, 518
Niebelungenlied, 28
Night as primary being, 91
Nile, Thales and the rUe of, 47 ;
view of Herodotus, 27
Nominalists, 434
*'Nous" of Anaxagoras, 215^.;
treated by Diogenes of Apollonia,
Number, Pythagorean doctrine of,
103 ; expression of universal law,
104 ; and spatial relations, 105 ;
and spiritual relations, 106 ; sacred
numbers, 107 ; odds and evens,
1 08 ; in Hippocrates, 291
" Number Seven," Hippocratic
treatise on, 294/.
Nymplis, 26
Cannes, 534
" Obscurity," in Protagoras fragment
on the gods, 449
Odyssey, contrasted points of view,
524
CEnopides, 498
" Ogenos "=Oceanus, 86 ; 538
Oken, L., 107,289
"Old Medicine." See "Ancient
Medicine "
Olorus, 502
" Omniscients " of Cratinus, 377
Onasilus of Cyprus, 280
Onomacritus, b6, 137
Orchomenus, vaulted tomb, 32
" Order of the Universe," treatise by
Leucippus on the, 317
Orpnans, the law of Charondas,
386
Orpheus and Orphicism, 84jf!, 123^,
I34/:, 247
Orphics, cosmogomy, 90^ ; Egyptian
and Phoenician parallels, 94 ; Ather ;
98 ; trinity of primary beings, 107 ;
myth of Dionysus Zagreus, I28/. ,
religion, 135^; and tyrants, 137 ;
age of poems, 539
Orthugoride*, 9
5o6
INDEX.
Painting, and medicine, 300 /- j
theory discussed by Dcmocritus,
3S7,
Pandora, 37
Pan-Hellenism, 439, 480
Papyrus shrub, 13
Parmenidcs of Elea, 166 ; his debt to
predecessors, 167 ; assails Hera-
clitus, 169 ; icouoclasm, 170 ; the
postulates of matter, 172 jff\ ; its
^changeability, 176; his universe,
I77/. ; spiritual and material, 179 ;
his " Words of opinion," 181 ; his
physiology, 183 ; defended by
£eno, 192 ; relation to Anaxa-
goras, 209 ; and Knipedoclcs, 250,
253 ; and corpus Hippocrat^ 282 ;
and atomism, 324 ; und Leucippus,
345 fif. ; and Archclaus, 378 ; and
.Protagoras, 44$ ; and Gorgias,
487 ; sources, 552
Pascal, 335
Pericles, 438/,, 446
Persceus, 430
Persia, as link between East and
West, 127 ; influence of Persinn
wars, 382, 384 ; Greek histories of
Persia, 498
"Personification of nature,** 34 $.,
444
'« Phocdrus" of Plato, 472
Phaleas of Chalccdon, 409 ; sources,
578
Phanes, 84, 92^, 539
Pherecydesof Syros, 85^, 100, 107 ;
sources, 538
Philo of Alexandria, 379
Philodemus, On Piety, 577
Philolaus, x 12 ; system of astronomy,
113^; ; universal fire, 117 ; psycho-
logy, 250 ; as physician, 285 ; move-
ment of firmament of fixed stars,
544
Philosophy, general considerations of
scogc^and meaning, 526^
Phoenicia, 5
"Physician's Oath, the,0 28o/,
Pindar, 130, 250, 404, 441
Pisistratitles, 9, 137,382
Pisistratus, 86
" Pitaras w of Hindoos, 32
Plato, 135, 137 ; and " the great "
Parwenidfts, 179; on Zeno, 192,
204; on Anaxagoras, 216; self-
praise, 3x8; pedantic note, 390;
on law ami justice, 3^3; **Cmty»
lus^" 395 j eojitnopohtau ideal uf
Hippias, 404 ; ** (lorgia.'.,'* 405 t
the character of Calliolcs, 406
f. ; on Protagoras, 413 f. ; his
contempt for society, 41*8 ; his
attacks on the sophists, 419 ;
differentiates between old and new
rnco of sophists, 420^. ; is hi:n-
self callctl a sophist, 422 ; on
ProiUcus, 425 ; on Protagoms,
449 ; view of homo-mensura tonrl,
456 y/*. ; and '* autil(»gic," »j66 ;
treatment of rhetoric, 471 J\ ;
solecisms of logic, 483 ; on
Ciorgias, 492 /I ; ovidonco t»f
" Cratylus" and " Thcstttc-tus,"
5897. ; date of " Sophistcs," 591
PI iny, 62
Plurality of causes, 3
Poetry, development of, 10^ ; senten-
tious, 12 ; written, 13 ; and scenery,
27 ; stigmatised by Xcnoplmnos,
157; allegorical method, 375, 380 ;
historically treated , 4977.
** Poets and Sophists," treatise on,
497
" Polarity," 71
Politics, rise of study at Athens, 383
Polus, 493
Polybus, 165 ; relation to Fanw-
nides, 171 ; quotes Alcmnxm, 230
Polycletus, 387
Polycratos, 9, ICK>
Polymathy, denounced by Ileraclitu:;,
6r
Polyonjjmy, 396
Polytheism, 27 ; inclines to mono-
theism, 44 ; opposed by Herodotus,
264
Porphyry, 450, 453
Postulates of matter, 172^ 254 ; UH
raw material of atomic theory,
Proclus, 84
Prodicus, of Ceos, 385: ** the pre-
cursor of Socrates," 435 ; specu-
lations on language, 427 ; pcKwiiii-
ism, 428 ; ideals ami ethics, 429 ;
contribution to history of rfiliijion,
430 ; authorities, 582
Professional authorship, 386, $/4/
Professionalism, 417, 5807.
Prometheus, 389
Proportional combination*, 33J/., 328
Proste-compositiou, 13, 49, 425, 477
Protagortw of Abdora (Hk. IU, Cli-
VI.), 3^ ; educational ulcsxl, 413 j
chouses title of sophist, 410$
analysis of fotm« of »u<?ech, 4a; ;
legislator at ThurU, 438 ; reidvut*«
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11