At the time when the power of scientific investigation was scanty and helpless, the problems proposed were thus such as to lie out of the reach of science in its largest compass. Gradually, indeed, subjects more special and limited, and upon which experience, or deductions from experience, could be brought to bear, were added to the list of quæsita, and examined with great profit and instruction: but the old problems, with new ones, alike unfathomable, were never eliminated, and always occupied a prominent place in the philosophical world. Now it was this disproportion, between questions to be solved and means of solution, which gave rise to that conspicuous characteristic of Grecian philosophy,—the antagonist force of suspensive skepticism, passing in some minds into a broad negation of the attainability of general truth,—which it nourished from its beginning to its end; commencing as early as Xenophanês, continuing to manifest itself seven centuries afterwards in Ænesidêmus and Sextus Empiricus, and including in the interval between these two extremes some of the most powerful intellects in Greece. The present is not the time for considering these Skeptics, who bear an unpopular name, and have not often been fairly appreciated; the more so, as it often suited the purpose of men, themselves essentially skeptical, like Sokratês and Plato, to denounce professed skepticism with indignation. But it is essential to bring them into notice at the first spring of Grecian philosophy under Thalês, because the circumstances were then laid which so soon afterwards developed them.
Though the celebrity of Thalês in antiquity was great and universal, scarcely any distinct facts were known respecting him: it is certain that he left nothing in writing. Extensive travels in Egypt and Asia are ascribed to him, and as a general fact these travels are doubtless true, since no other means of acquiring knowledge were then open. At a time when the brother of the Lesbian Alkæus was serving in the Babylonian army, we may easily conceive that an inquisitive Milesian would make his way to that wonderful city wherein stood the temple-observatory of the Chaldæan priesthood; nor is it impossible that he may have seen the still greater city of Ninus, or Nineveh, before its capture and destruction by the Medes. How great his reputation was in his lifetime, the admiration expressed by his younger contemporary, Xenophanês, assures us; and Herakleitus, in the next generation, a severe judge of all other philosophers, spoke of him with similar esteem. To him were traced, by the Grecian inquirers of the fourth century B. C., the first beginnings of geometry, astronomy, and physiology in its large and really appropriate sense, the scientific study of nature: for the Greek word denoting nature (φύσις), first comes into comprehensive use about this time (as I have remarked in an earlier chapter),[693] with its derivatives physics and physiology, as distinguished from the theology of the old poets. Little stress can be laid on those elementary propositions in geometry which are specified as discovered, or as first demonstrated, by Thalês,—still less upon the solar eclipse respecting which, according to Herodotus, he determined beforehand the year of occurrence.[694] But the main doctrine of his physiology,—using that word in its larger Greek sense,—is distinctly attested. He stripped Oceanus and Tethys, primeval parents of the gods in the Homeric theogony, of their personality,—and laid down water, or fluid substance, as the single original element from which everything came, and into which everything returned.[695] The doctrine of one eternal element, remaining always the same in its essence, but indefinitely variable in its manifestations to sense, was thus first introduced to the discussion of the Grecian public. We have no means of knowing the reasons by which Thalês supported this opinion, nor could even Aristotle do more than conjecture what they might have been; but one of the statements urged on behalf of it,—that the earth itself rested on water,[696]—we may safely refer to the Milesian himself, for it would hardly have been advanced at a later age. Moreover, Thalês is reported to have held, that everything was living and full of gods; and that the magnet, especially, was a living thing. Thus the gods, as far as we can pretend to follow opinions so very faintly transmitted, are conceived as active powers, and causes of changeful manifestation, attached to the primeval substance:[697] the universe being assimilated to an organized body or system.
Respecting Hippo,—who reproduced the theory of Thalês under a more generalized form of expression, substituting, in place of water, moisture, or something common to air and water,[698]—we do not know whether he belonged to the sixth or the fifth century B. C. But Anaximander, Xenophanês, and Pherekydês belong to the latter half of the sixth century. Anaximander, the son of Praxiadês, was a native of Milêtus,—Xenophanês, a native of Kolophon; the former, among the earliest expositors of doctrine in prose,[699] while the latter committed his opinions to the old medium of verse. Anaximander seems to have taken up the philosophical problem, while he materially altered the hypothesis of his predecessor Thalês. Instead of the primeval fluid of the latter, he supposed a primeval principle, without any actual determining qualities whatever, but including all qualities potentially, and manifesting them in an infinite variety from its continually self-changing nature,—a principle, which was nothing in itself, yet had the capacity of producing any and all manifestations, however contrary to each other,[700]—a primeval something, whose essence it was to be eternally productive of different phenomena,—a sort of mathematical point, which counts for nothing in itself, but is vigorous in generating lines to any extent that may be desired. In this manner, Anaximander professed to give a comprehensive explanation of change in general, or generation, or destruction,—how it happened that one sensible thing began and another ceased to exist,—according to the vague problems which these early inquirers were in the habit of setting to themselves.[701] He avoided that which the first philosophers especially dreaded, the affirmation that generation could take place out of Nothing; yet the primeval Something, which he supposed was only distinguished from nothing by possessing this very power of generation.
In his theory, he passed from the province of physics into that of metaphysics. He first introduced into Grecian philosophy that important word which signifies a beginning or a principle,[702] and first opened that metaphysical discussion, which was carried on in various ways throughout the whole period of Grecian philosophy, as to the one and the many—the continuous and the variable—that which exists eternally, as distinguished from that which comes and passes away in ever-changing manifestations. His physiology, or explanation of nature, thus conducted the mind into a different route from that suggested by the hypothesis of Thalês, which was built upon physical considerations, and was therefore calculated to suggest and stimulate observations of physical phenomena for the purpose of verifying or confuting it,—while the hypothesis of Anaximander admitted only of being discussed dialectically, or by reasonings expressed in general language; reasonings sometimes, indeed, referring to experience for the purpose of illustration, but seldom resting on it, and never looking out for it as a necessary support. The physical explanation of nature, however, once introduced by Thalês, although deserted by Anaximander, was taken up by Anaximenês and others afterwards, and reproduced with many divergences of doctrine,—yet always more or less entangled and perplexed with metaphysical additions, since the two departments were never clearly parted throughout all Grecian philosophy. Of these subsequent physical philosophers I shall speak hereafter: at present, I confine myself to the thinkers of the sixth century B. C., among whom Anaximander stands prominent, not as the follower of Thalês, but as the author of an hypothesis both new and tending in a different direction.
It was not merely as the author of this hypothesis, however, that Anaximander enlarged the Greek mind and roused the powers of thought: we find him also mentioned as distinguished in astronomy and geometry. He is said to have been the first to establish a sun-dial in Greece, to construct a sphere, and to explain the obliquity of the ecliptic;[703] how far such alleged authorship really belongs to him, we cannot be certain,—but there is one step of immense importance which he is clearly affirmed to have made. He was the first to compose a treatise on the geography of the land and sea within his cognizance, and to construct a chart or map founded thereupon,—seemingly a tablet of brass. Such a novelty, wondrous even to the rude and ignorant, was calculated to stimulate powerfully inquisitive minds, and from it may be dated the commencement of Grecian rational geography,—not the least valuable among the contributions of this people to the stock of human knowledge.
Xenophanês of Kolophon, somewhat younger than Anaximander, and nearly contemporary with Pythagoras (seemingly from about 570-480 B. C.), migrated from Kolophon[704] to Zanklê and Katana in Sicily and Elea in Italy, soon after the time when Ionia became subject to the Persians, (540-530 B. C.) He was the founder of what is called the Eleatic school of philosophers,—a real school, since it appears that Parmenidês, Zeno, and Melissus, pursued and developed, in a great degree, the train of speculation which had been begun by Xenophanês,—doubtless with additions and variations of their own, but especially with a dialectic power which belongs to the age of Periklês, and is unknown in the sixth century B. C. He was the author of more than one poem of considerable length, one on the foundation of Kolophon and another on that of Elea; besides his poem on Nature, wherein his philosophical doctrines were set forth.[705] His manner appears to have been controversial and full of asperity towards antagonists; but what is most remarkable is the plain-spoken manner in which he declared himself against the popular religion, and in which he denounced as abominable the descriptions of the gods given by Homer and Hesiod.[706]
He is said to have controverted the doctrines both of Thalês and Pythagoras: this is probable enough; but he seems to have taken his start from the philosophy of Anaximander,—not, however, to adopt it, but to reverse it,—and to set forth an opinion which we may call its contrary. Nature, in the conception of Anaximander, consisted of a Something having no other attribute except the unlimited power of generating and cancelling phenomenal changes: in this doctrine, the something or substratum existed only in and for those changes, and could not be said to exist at all in any other sense: the permanent was thus merged and lost in the variable,—the one in the many. Xenophanês laid down the exact opposite: he conceived Nature as one unchangeable and indivisible whole, spherical, animated, endued with reason, and penetrated by or indeed identical with God: he denied the objective reality of all change, or generation, or destruction, which he seems to have considered as only changes or modifications in the percipient, and perhaps different in one percipient and another. That which exists, he maintained, could not have been generated, nor could it ever be destroyed: there was neither real generation nor real destruction of anything; but that which men took for such, was the change in their own feelings and ideas. He thus recognized the permanent without the variable,[707]—the one without the many. And his treatment of the received religious creed was in harmony with such physical or metaphysical hypothesis; for while he held the whole of Nature to be God, without parts or change, he at the same time pronounced the popular gods to be entities of subjective fancy, imagined by men after their own model: if oxen or lions were to become religious, he added, they would in like manner provide for themselves gods after their respective shapes and characters.[708] This hypothesis, which seemed to set aside altogether the study of the sensible world as a source of knowledge, was expounded briefly, and as it should seem, obscurely and rudely, by Xenophanês; at least we may infer thus much from the slighting epithet applied to him by Aristotle.[709] But his successors, Parmenidês and Zeno, in the succeeding century, expanded it considerably, supported it with extraordinary acuteness of dialectics, and even superadded a second part, in which the phenomena of sense—though considered only as appearances, not partaking in the reality of the one Ens—were yet explained by a new physical hypothesis; so that they will be found to exercise great influence over the speculations both of Plato and Aristotle. We discover in Xenophanês, moreover, a vein of skepticism, and a mournful despair as to the attainability of certain knowledge,[710] which the nature of his philosophy was well calculated to suggest, and in which the sillograph Timon of the third century B. C., who seems to have spoken of Xenophanês better than of most of the other philosophers, powerfully sympathized.
The cosmogony of Pherekydês of Syrus, contemporary of Anaximander and among the teachers of Pythagoras, seems, according to the fragments preserved, a combination of the old legendary fancies with Orphic mysticism,[711] and probably exercised little influence over the subsequent course of Grecian philosophy. By what has been said of Thalês, Anaximander, and Xenophanês, it will be seen that the sixth century B. C. witnessed the opening of several of those roads of intellectual speculation which the later philosophers pursued farther, or at least from which they branched off. Before the year 500 B. C. many interesting questions were thus brought into discussion, which Solon, who died about 558 B. C., had never heard of,—just as he may probably never have seen the map of Anaximander. But neither of these two distinguished men—Anaximander or Xenophanês—was anything more than a speculative inquirer. The third eminent name of this century, of whom I am now about to speak,—Pythagoras, combined in his character disparate elements which require rather a longer development.
Pythagoras was founder of a brotherhood, originally brought together by a religious influence, and with observances approaching to monastic peculiarity,—working in a direction at once religious, political, and scientific, and exercising for some time a real political ascendency,—but afterwards banished from government and state affairs into a sectarian privacy with scientific pursuits, not without, however, still producing some statesmen individually distinguished. Amidst the multitude of false and apocryphal statements which circulated in antiquity respecting this celebrated man, we find a few important facts reasonably attested and deserving credence. He was a native of Samos,[712] son of an opulent merchant named Mnêsarchus,—or, according to some of his later and more fervent admirers, of Apollo; born, as far as we can make out, about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B. C. On the many marvels recounted respecting his youth, it is unnecessary to dwell. Among them may be numbered his wide-reaching travels, said to have been prolonged for nearly thirty years, to visit the Arabians, the Syrians, the Phenicians, the Chaldæans, the Indians, and the Gallic Druids. But there is reason to believe that he really visited Egypt[713]—perhaps also Phenicia—and Babylon, then Chaldæan and independent. At the time when he saw Egypt, between 560-540 B. C., about one century earlier than Herodotus, it was under Amasis, the last of its own kings, with its peculiar native character yet unimpaired by foreign conquest, and only slightly modified by the admission during the preceding century of Grecian mercenary troops and traders. The spectacle of Egyptian habits, the conversation of the priests, and the initiation into various mysteries or secret rites and stories not accessible to the general public, may very naturally have impressed the mind of Pythagoras, and given him that turn for mystic observance, asceticism, and peculiarity of diet and clothing,—which manifested itself from the same cause among several of his contemporaries, but which was not a common phenomenon in the primitive Greek religion. Besides visiting Egypt, Pythagoras is also said to have profited by the teaching of Thalês, of Anaximander, and of Pherekydês of Syros.[714] Amidst the towns of Ionia, he would, moreover, have an opportunity of conversing with many Greek navigators who had visited foreign countries, especially Italy and Sicily. His mind seems to have been acted upon and impelled by this combined stimulus,—partly towards an imaginative and religious vein of speculation, with a life of mystic observance,—partly towards that active exercise, both of mind and body, which the genius of an Hellenic community so naturally tended to suggest.
Of the personal doctrines or opinions of Pythagoras, whom we must distinguish from Philolaus and the subsequent Pythagoreans, we have little certain knowledge, though doubtless the first germ of their geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, etc. must have proceeded from him. But that he believed in the metempsychosis or transmigration of the souls of deceased men into other men, as well as into animals, we know, not only by other evidence, but also by the testimony of his contemporary, the philosopher Xenophanês of Elea. Pythagoras, seeing a dog beaten, and hearing him howl, desired the striker to desist, saying: “It is the soul of a friend of mine, whom I recognized by his voice.” This—together with the general testimony of Hêrakleitus, that Pythagoras was a man of extensive research and acquired instruction, but artful for mischief and destitute of sound judgment—is all that we know about him from contemporaries. Herodotus, two generations afterwards, while he conceives the Pythagoreans as a peculiar religious order, intimates that both Orpheus and Pythagoras had derived the doctrine of the metempsychosis from Egypt, but had pretended to it as their own without acknowledgment.[715]