Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

[Footnote 418: ][ (return) ] Zeller's "History of Greek Philosophy," vol. i. p. 57.

[Footnote 419: ][ (return) ] Butler's "Lectures," vol. i. p. 297, note.

The general inference, therefore, from all that remains of the doctrine of Heraclitus is that he was a Materialistic Pantheist. His God was a living, rational, intelligent Ether--a soul pervading the universe. The form of the universe, its ever-changing phenomena, were a necessary emanation from, or a perpetual transformation of, this universal soul.

With Heraclitus we close our survey of that sect of the physical school which regarded the world as a living organism.

The second subdivision of the physical school, the Mechanical or Atomist theorists, attempted the explanation of the universe by analogies derived from mechanical collocations, arrangements, and movements. The universe was regarded by them as a vast superstructure built up from elemental particles, aggregated by some inherent force or mutual affinity.

Anaximander of Miletus (born B.C. 610) we place at the head of the Mechanical sect of the Ionian school; first, on the authority of Aristotle, who intimates that the philosophic dogmata of Anaximander "resemble those of Democritus," who was certainly an Atomist; and, secondly, because we can clearly trace a genetic connection between the opinions of Democritus and Leucippus and those of Anaximander.

The ἀρχή, or first principle of Anaximander, was τὸ ἄπειρον, the boundless, the illimitable, the infinite. Some historians of philosophy have imagined that the infinite of Anaximander was the "unlimited all," and have therefore placed him at the head of the Italian or "idealistic school." These writers are manifestly in error. Anaximander was unquestionably a sensationalist. Whatever his "infinite" may be found to be, one thing is clear, it was not a "metaphysical infinite"--it did not include infinite power, much less infinite mind.

The testimony of Aristotle is conclusive that by "the infinite" Anaximander understood the multitude of primary, material particles. He calls it "a µῖγµα, or mixture of elements." [⁴²⁰] It was, in fact, a chaos--an original state in which the primary elements existed in a chaotic combination without limitation or division. He assumed a certain "prima materia," which was neither air, nor water, nor fire, but a "mixture" of all, to be the first principle of the universe. The account of the opinions of Anaximander which is given by Plutarch ("De Placita," etc.) is a further confirmation of our interpretation of his infinite. "Anaximander, the Milesian, affirmed the infinite to be the first principle, and that all things are generated out of it, and corrupted again into it. His infinite is nothing else but matter." "Whence," says Cudworth, "we conclude that Anaximander's infinite was nothing else but an infinite chaos of matter, in which were actually or potentially contained all manner of qualities, by the fortuitous secretion and segregation of which he supposed infinite worlds to be successively generated and corrupted. So that we may easily guess whence Leucippus and Democritus had their infinite worlds, and perceive how near akin these two Atheistic hypotheses were." [⁴²¹] The reader, whose curiosity may lead him to consult the authorities collected by Cudworth (pp. 185-188), will find in the doctrine of Anaximander a rude anticipation of the modern theories of "spontaneous generation" and "the transmutation of species." In the fragments of Anaximander that remain we find no recognition of an ordering Mind, and his philosophy is the dawn of a Materialistic school.

[Footnote 420: ][ (return) ] Aristotle's "Metaphysics," bk. xi. ch. ii.

[Footnote 421: ][ (return) ] Cudworth's "Intellectual System," vol. i. pp. 186, 187.