Conclusion.
193. The cosmology of Archelaos, like that of Diogenes, has all the characteristics of the age to which it belonged—an age of reaction, eclecticism, and investigation of detail.[[1026]] Hippon of Samos and Idaios of Himera represent nothing more than the feeling that philosophy had run into a blind alley, from which it could only escape by trying back. The Herakleiteans at Ephesos, impenetrably wrapped up as they were in their own system, did little but exaggerate its paradoxes and develop its more fanciful side.[[1027]] It was not enough for Kratylos to say with Herakleitos (fr. 84) that you cannot step twice into the same river; you could not do so even once.[[1028]] But in nothing was the total bankruptcy of the early cosmology so clearly shown as in the work of Gorgias, entitled Substance or the Non-existent, in which an absolute nihilism was set forth and based upon the Eleatic dialectic.[[1029]] The fact is that philosophy, so long as it clung to its old presuppositions, had nothing more to say; for the answer of Leukippos to the question of Thales was really final. Fresh life must be given to the speculative impulse by the raising of new problems, those of knowledge and conduct, before any further progress was possible; and this was done by the “Sophists” and Sokrates. Then, in the hands of Demokritos and Plato, philosophy took a new form, and started on a fresh course.
[986]. Cf. what is said in Chap. IV. p. 167, [n. 383], of the Περὶ διαίτης. The Περὶ ἀνθρώπου φύσιος and the Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰατρικῆς are invaluable documents for the attitude of scientific men to cosmological theories at this date.
[987]. Cf. Chap. VIII. p. 379, [n. 919].
[988]. Aristoxenos said he was a Samian (R. P. 219 a). In Menon’s Iatrika he is called a Krotoniate, while others assign him to Rhegion or Metapontion. This probably means that he was affiliated to the Pythagorean medical school. The evidence of Aristoxenos is, in that case, all the more valuable. Hippon is mentioned along with Melissos in Iamblichos’s Catalogue of Pythagoreans (V. Pyth. 267).
[989]. Schol. on Clouds, 94 sqq.
[990]. Arist. Met. Α, 3. 984 a 3 (R. P. 219 a).
[991]. Alexander in Met. p. 26, 21 (R. P. 219).
[992]. Arist. de An. Α, 2. 405 b 2 (R. P. 220).