[11] Simplikius ad Aristotel. Physic. fol. 6 a. apud Preller, Histor. Philos. Græco-Rom. § 57, ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταὐτὰ γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ τίσιν καὶ δίκην ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν. Simplikius remarks upon the poetical character of this phraseology, ποιητικωτέροις ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων.
[12] Origen. Philosophumen. p. 11, ed. Miller; Plutarch ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, xv. 23-46-47; Stobæus Eclog. i. p. 510. Anaximander supposed that eclipses of the sun and moon were caused by the occasional closing of these apertures (Euseb. xv. 50-61). The part of the sun visible to us was, in his opinion, not smaller than the earth, and of the purest fire (Diog. Laert. ii. 1).
Eudêmus, in his history of astronomy, mentioned Anaximander as the first who had discussed the magnitudes and distances of the celestial bodies (Simplikius ad Aristot. De Cœlo, ap. Schol. Brand, p. 497, a. 12).
[13] Aristotel. Meteorol. ii. 2, p. 355, a. 21, which is referred by Alexander of Aphrodisias to Anaximander; also De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 295, b. 12.
A doctrine somewhat like it is ascribed even to Thales. See Alexander’s Commentary on Aristotel. Metaphys. i. p. 983, b. 17.
The reason here assigned by Anaximander why the Earth remained still, is the earliest example in Greek philosophy of that fallacy called the principle of the Sufficient Reason, so well analysed and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, book v., ch. 3, sect. 5.
The remarks which Aristotle himself makes upon it are also very interesting, when he cites the opinion of Anaximander. Compare Plato, Phædon, p. 109, c. 132, with the citations in Wyttenbach’s note.
[14] Plutarch, Placit. Philos. v. 19.
[15] Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 3; Seneca, Quæst. Nat. ii. 18-19.
[16] Strabo, i. p. 7. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 1) states that Anaximander affirmed the figure of the earth to be spherical; and Dr. Whewell, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, follows his statement. But Schleiermacher (Ueber Anaximandros, vol. ii. p. 204 of his Sämmtliche Werke) and Gruppe (Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, p. 38) contest this assertion, and prefer that of Plutarch (ap. Eusebium Præp. Evang. i. 8, Placit. Philos. iii. 10), which I have adopted in the text. It is to be remembered that Diogenes himself, in another place (ix. 3, 21), affirms Parmenides to have been the first who propounded the spherical figure of the earth. See the facts upon this subject collected and discussed in the instructive dissertation of L. Oettinger, Die Vorstellungen der Griechen und Römer ueber die Erde als Himmelskörper, p. 38; Freiburg, 1850.