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EARLY
GREEK PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN BURNET, M.A., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR

AND ST. LEONARD, ST. ANDREWS

Περὶ μὲν τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐσκόπουν, τὰ δ’ ὄντα ὑπέλαβον

εἶναι τὰ αἰσθητὰ μόνον.—Aristotle.

SECOND EDITION

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1908

First Edition published April 1892.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

It has been no easy task to revise this volume in such a way as to make it more worthy of the favour with which it has been received. Most of it has had to be rewritten in the light of certain discoveries made since the publication of the first edition, above all, that of the extracts from Menon’s Ἰατρικά, which have furnished, as I believe, a clue to the history of Pythagoreanism. I trust that all other obligations are duly acknowledged in the proper place.

It did not seem worth while to eliminate all traces of a certain youthful assurance which marked the first edition. I should not write now as I wrote at the age of twenty-five; but I still feel that the main contentions of the book were sound, so I have not tried to amend the style. The references to Zeller and “Ritter and Preller” are adapted throughout to the latest editions. The Aristotelian commentators are referred to by the pages and verses of the Berlin Academy edition, and Stobaeus by those of Wachsmuth.

J. B.

St. Andrews, 1908.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

No apology is needed for the appearance of a work dealing with Early Greek Philosophy. The want of one has long been felt; for there are few branches of philology in which more progress has been made in the last twenty years, and the results of that progress have not yet been made accessible to the English reader. My original intention was simply to report these results; but I soon found that I was obliged to dissent from some of them, and it seemed best to say so distinctly. Very likely I am wrong in most of these cases, but my mistakes may be of use in calling attention to unobserved points. In any case, I hope no one will think I have been wanting in the respect due to the great authority of Zeller, who was the first to recall the history of philosophy from the extravagances into which it had wandered earlier in the century. I am glad to find that all my divergences from his account have only led me a little further in the path that he struck out.

I am very sensible of the imperfect execution of some parts of this work; but the subject has become so large, and the number of authorities whose testimony must be weighed is so great, that it is not easy for any one writer to be equally at home in all parts of the field.

I have consulted the student’s convenience by giving references to the seventh edition of Ritter and Preller (ed. Schultess) throughout. The references to Zeller are to the fourth German edition, from which the English translation was made. I have been able to make some use also of the recently published fifth edition (1892), and all references to it are distinguished by the symbol Z⁵. I can only wish that it had appeared in time for me to incorporate its results more thoroughly.

I have to thank many friends for advice and suggestions, and, above all, Mr. Harold H. Joachim, Fellow of Merton College, who read most of the work before it went to press.

J. B.

Oxford, 1892.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION

The cosmological character of early Greek philosophy.

I. It was not till the primitive view of the world and the customary rules of life had broken down, that the Greeks, began to feel the needs which philosophies of nature and of conduct seek to satisfy. Nor were those needs felt all at once. The traditional maxims of conduct were not seriously questioned till the old view of nature had passed away; and, for this reason, the earliest philosophers busied themselves mainly with speculations about the world around them. In due season, Logic was called into being to meet a fresh want. The pursuit of cosmological inquiry beyond a certain point inevitably brought to light a wide divergence between science and common sense, which was itself a problem that demanded solution, and moreover constrained philosophers to study the means of defending their paradoxes against the prejudices of the unscientific many. Later still, the prevailing interest in logical matters raised the question of the origin and validity of knowledge; while, about the same time, the breakdown of traditional morality gave rise to Ethics. The period which precedes the rise of Logic and Ethics has thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated apart.[^[1]]

The primitive view of the world.

II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essentially a thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in Custom and Myth, to the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two.

We must not allow ourselves to be misled by metaphors about “the childhood of the race,” though even these, if properly understood, are suggestive enough. Our ideas of the true state of a child’s mind are apt to be coloured by that theory of antenatal existence which has found, perhaps, its highest expression in Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. We transfer these ideas to the race generally, and are thus led to think of the men who made and repeated myths as simple, innocent creatures who were somehow nearer than we are to the beginning of things, and so, perhaps, saw with a clearer vision. A truer view of what a child’s thoughts really are will help to put us on the right track. Left to themselves, children are often tormented by vague terrors of surrounding objects which they fear to confide to any one. Their games are based upon an animistic theory of things, and they are great believers in luck and in the lot. They are devotees, too, of that “cult of odds and ends” which is fetishism; and the unsightly old dolls which they often cherish more fondly than the choicest products of the toy-shop, remind us forcibly of the ungainly stocks and stones which Pausanias found in the Holy of Holies of many a stately Greek temple. At Sparta the Tyndaridai were a couple of boards, while the old image of Hera at Samos was a roughly-hewn log.[^[2]]

On the other hand, we must remember that, even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the world was already very old. Those Greeks who first tried to understand nature were not at all in the position of men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path. There was already in the field a tolerably consistent view of the world, though no doubt it was rather implied and assumed in ritual and myth than distinctly realised as such. The early thinkers did a far greater thing than merely to make a beginning. By turning their backs on the savage view of things, they renewed their youth, and with it, as it proved, the youth of the world, at a time when the world seemed in its dotage.

The marvel is that they were able to do this so thoroughly as they did. A savage myth might be preserved here and there to the scandal of philosophers; fetishes, totems, and magic rites might lurk in holes and corners with the moles and with the bats, to be unearthed long afterwards by the curious in such matters. But the all-pervading superstition, which we call primitive because we know not how or whence it came, was gone for ever; and we find Herodotos noting with unfeigned surprise the existence among “barbarians” of beliefs and customs which, not so long ago, his own forefathers had taught and practised quite as zealously as ever did Libyan or Scyth. Even then, he might have found most of them surviving on the “high places” of Hellas.

Traces of the primitive view in early literature.

III. In one respect the way had been prepared already. Long before history begins, the colonisation of the islands and the coasts of Asia Minor had brought about a state of things that was not favourable to the rigid maintenance of traditional customs and ways of thought. A myth is essentially a local thing, and though the emigrants might give the names of ancestral sanctuaries to similar spots in their new homes, they could not transfer with the names the old sentiment of awe. Besides, these were, on the whole, stirring and joyful times. The spirit of adventure is not favourable to superstition, and men whose chief occupation is fighting are not apt to be oppressed by that “fear of the world” which some tell us is the normal state of the savage mind. Even the savage becomes in great measure free from it when he is really happy.

1. Homer.

That is why we find so few traces of the primitive view of the world in Homer. The gods have become frankly human, and everything savage is, so far as may be, kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of early beliefs and practices, but they are exceptional. In that strange episode of the Fourteenth Book of the Iliad known as The Deceiving of Zeus we find a number of theogonical ideas which are otherwise quite foreign to Homer, but they are treated with so little seriousness that the whole thing has even been regarded as a parody or burlesque of some primitive poem on the birth of the gods. That, however, is to mistake the spirit of Homer. He finds the old myth ready to his hand, and sees in it matter for a “joyous tale,” just as Demodokos did in the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. There is no antagonism to traditional views, but rather a complete detachment from them.

It has often been noted that Homer never speaks of the primitive custom of purification for bloodshed. The dead heroes are burned, not buried, as the kings of continental Hellas were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In the Iliad we have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroklos, in close connexion with the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. All that was part of the traditional story, and Homer says as little about it as he can. There is also the Nekyia in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, which has been assigned to a late date on the ground that it contains Orphic ideas. The reasoning does not appear cogent. As we shall see, the Orphics did not so much invent new ideas as revive old ones, and if the legend took Odysseus to the abode of the dead, that had to be described in accordance with the accepted views about it.

In fact, we are never entitled to infer from Homer’s silence that the primitive view was unknown to him. The absence of certain things from the poems is due to reticence rather than ignorance; for, wherever anything to his purpose was to be got from an old story, he did not hesitate to use it. On the other hand, when the tradition necessarily brought him into contact with savage ideas, he prefers to treat them with reserve. We may infer, then, that at least in a certain society, that of the princes for whom Homer sang, the primitive view of the world was already discredited by a comparatively early date.[^[3]]

2. Hesiod.

IV. When we come to Hesiod, we seem to be in another world. We hear stories of the gods which are not only irrational but repulsive, and these stories are told quite seriously. Hesiod makes the Muses say: “We know how to tell many false things that are like the truth; but we know too, when we will, to utter what is true.”[^[4]] This means that he was quite conscious of the difference between the Homeric spirit and his own. The old light-heartedness is gone, and it is important to tell the truth about the gods. Hesiod knows, too, that he belongs to a later and a sadder time than Homer. In describing the Ages of the World, he inserts a fifth age between those of Bronze and Iron. That is the Age of the Heroes, the age Homer sang of. It was better than the Bronze Age which came before it, and far better than that which followed it, the Age of Iron, in which Hesiod lives.[^[5]] He also feels that he is singing for another class. It is to shepherds and husbandmen he addresses himself, and the princes for whom Homer sang have become remote persons who give “crooked dooms.” For common men there is no hope but in hard, unceasing toil. It is the voice of the people we now hear for the first time, and of a people for whom the romance and splendour of the Greek Middle Ages meant nothing. The primitive view of the world had never really died out among them; so it was natural for their first spokesman to assume it in his poems. That is why we find in Hesiod these old, savage tales, which Homer disdained to speak of.

Yet it would be wrong to see in the Theogony a mere revival of the old superstition. Nothing can ever be revived just as it was; for in every reaction there is a polemical element which differentiates it completely from the earlier stage it vainly seeks to reproduce. Hesiod could not help being affected by the new spirit which trade and adventure had awakened over the sea, and he became a pioneer in spite of himself. The rudiments of what grew into Ionic science and history are to be found in his poems, and he really did more than any one to hasten that decay of the old ideas which he was seeking to arrest. The Theogony is an attempt to reduce all the stories about the gods into a single system, and system is necessarily fatal to so wayward a thing as mythology. Hesiod, no less than Homer, teaches a panhellenic polytheism; the only difference is that with him this is more directly based on the legends attached to the local cults, which he thus sought to invest with a national significance. The result is that the myth becomes primary and the cult secondary, a complete inversion of the primitive relation. Herodotos tells us that it was Homer and Hesiod who made a theogony for the Hellenes, who gave the gods their names, and distributed among them their offices and arts,[^[6]] and it is perfectly true. The Olympian pantheon took the place of the old local gods in men’s minds, and this was as much the doing of Hesiod as of Homer. The ordinary man had no ties to this company of gods, but at most to one or two of them; and even these he would hardly recognise in the humanised figures, detached from all local associations, which poetry had substituted for the older objects of worship. The gods of Greece had become a splendid subject for art; but they came between the Hellenes and their ancestral religions. They were incapable of satisfying the needs of the people, and that is the secret of the religious revival which we shall have to consider in the sequel.

Cosmogony.

V. Nor is it only in this way that Hesiod shows himself a child of his time. His Theogony is at the same time a Cosmogony, though it would seem that here he was following others rather than working out a thought of his own. At any rate, he only mentions the two great cosmogonical figures, Chaos and Eros, and does not really bring them into connexion with his system. The conception of Chaos represents a distinct effort to picture the beginning of things. It is not a formless mixture, but rather, as its etymology indicates, the yawning gulf or gap where nothing is as yet.[^[7]] We may be sure that this is not primitive. Savage man does not feel called upon to form an idea of the very beginning of all things; he takes for granted that there was something to begin with. The other figure, that of Eros, was doubtless intended to explain the impulse to production which gave rise to the whole process. That, at least, is what the Maoris mean by it, as may be seen from the following remarkable passage[^[8]]:—

From the conception the increase,

From the increase the swelling,

From the swelling the thought,

From the thought the remembrance,

From the remembrance the desire.

The word became fruitful,

It dwelt with the feeble glimmering,

It brought forth the night.

Hesiod must have had some such primitive speculation to work on, but he does not tell us anything clearly on the subject.

We have records of great activity in the production of cosmogonies during the whole of the sixth century B.C., and we know something of the systems of Epimenides, Pherekydes,[^[9]] and Akousilaos. As there were speculations of this kind even before Hesiod, we need have no hesitation in believing that the earliest Orphic cosmogony goes back to that century too.[^[10]] The feature which is common to all these systems is the attempt to get behind the gap, and to put Kronos or Zeus in the first place. This is what Aristotle has in view when he distinguishes the “theologians” from those who were half theologians and half philosophers, and who put what was best in the beginning.[^[11]] It is obvious, however, that this process is the very reverse of scientific, and might be carried on indefinitely; so we have nothing to do with the cosmogonists in our present inquiry, except so far as they can be shown to have influenced the course of more sober investigations. Indeed, these speculations are still based on the primitive view of the world, and so fall outside the limits we have traced for ourselves.

General characteristics of early Greek cosmology.

VI. What, then, was the step that placed the Ionian cosmologists once for all above the level of the Maoris? Grote and Zeller make it consist in the substitution of impersonal causes acting according to law for personal causes acting arbitrarily. But the distinction between personal and impersonal was not really felt in antiquity, and it is a mistake to lay much stress on it. It seems rather that the real advance made by the scientific men of Miletos was that they left off telling tales. They gave up the hopeless task of describing what was when as yet there was nothing, and asked instead what all things really are now.

Ex nihilo nihil.

The great principle which underlies all their thinking, though it is first put into words by Parmenides, is that Nothing comes into being out of nothing, and nothing passes away into nothing. They saw, however, that particular things were always coming into being and passing away again, and from this it followed that their existence was no true or stable one. The only things that were real and eternal were the original matter which passed through all these changes and the motion which gave rise to them, to which was soon added that law of proportion or compensation which, despite the continual becoming and passing away of things, secured the relative permanence and stability of the various forms of existence that go to make up the world. That these were, in fact, the leading ideas of the early cosmologists, cannot, of course, be proved till we have given a detailed exposition of their systems; but we can show at once how natural it was for such thoughts to come to them. It is always the problem of change and decay that first excites the wonder which, as Plato says, is the starting-point of all philosophy. Besides this, there was in the Ionic nature a vein of melancholy which led it to brood upon the instability of things. Even before the time of Thales, Mimnermos of Kolophon sings the sadness of change; and, at a later date, the lament of Simonides, that the generations of men fall like the leaves of the forest, touches a chord already struck by the earliest singer of Ionia.[^[12]] Now, so long as men could believe everything they saw was alive like themselves, the spectacle of the unceasing death and new birth of nature would only tinge their thoughts with a certain mournfulness, which would find its expression in such things as the Linos dirges which the Greeks borrowed from their Asiatic neighbours;[^[13]] but when primitive animism, which had seen conscious life everywhere, was gone, and polytheistic mythology, which had personified at least the more striking natural phenomena, was going, it must have seemed that there was nowhere any abiding reality. Nowadays we are accustomed, for good and for ill, to the notion of dead things, obedient, not to inner impulses, but solely to mechanical laws. But that is not the view of the natural man, and we may be sure that, when first it forced itself on him, it must have provoked a strong sense of dissatisfaction. Relief was only to be had from the reflexion that as nothing comes from nothing, nothing can pass away into nothing. There must, then, be something which always is, something fundamental which persists throughout all change, and ceases to exist in one form only that it may reappear in another. It is significant that this something is spoken of as “deathless” and “ageless.”[^[14]]

Φύσις

VII. So far as I know, no historian of Greek philosophy has clearly laid it down that the word which was used by the early cosmologists to express this idea of a permanent and primary substance was none other than φύσις; and that the title Περὶ φύσεως, so commonly given to philosophical works of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.,[^[15]] means simply Concerning the Primary Substance. Both Plato and Aristotle use the term in this sense when they are discussing the earlier philosophy,[^[16]] and its history shows clearly enough what its original meaning must have been. In Greek philosophical language, φύσις always means that which is primary, fundamental, and persistent, as opposed to what is secondary, derivative, and transient; what is “given,” as opposed to that which is made or becomes. It is what is there to begin with. It is true that Plato and his successors also identify φύσις with the best or most normal condition of a thing; but that is just because they held the goal of any development to be prior to the process by which it is reached. Such an idea was wholly unknown to the pioneers of philosophy. They sought the explanation of the incomplete world we know, not in the end, but in the beginning. It seemed to them that, if only they could strip off all the modifications which Art and Chance had introduced, they would get at the ultimately real; and so the search after φύσις, first in the world at large and afterwards in human society, became the chief interest of the age we have to deal with.

The word ἀρχή, by which the early cosmologists are usually said to have designated the object of their search, is in this sense purely Aristotelian. It is quite natural that it should be employed in the well-known historical sketch of the First Book of the Metaphysics; for Aristotle is there testing the theories of earlier thinkers by his own doctrine of the four causes. But Plato never uses the term in this connexion, and it does not occur once in the genuine fragments of the early philosophers. It is confined to the Stoic and Peripatetic handbooks from which most of our knowledge is derived, and these simply repeat Aristotle. Zeller has pointed out in a footnote[^[17]] that it would be an anachronism to refer the subtle Aristotelian use of the word to the beginnings of speculation. To Anaximander ἀρχή could only have meant “beginning,” and it was far more than a beginning that the early cosmologists were looking for: it was the eternal ground of all things.

There is one very important conclusion that follows at once from the account just given of the meaning of φύσις, and it is, that the search for the primary substance really was the thing that interested the Ionian philosophers. Had their main object been, as Teichmüller held it was, the explanation of celestial and meteorological phenomena, their researches would not have been called Περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίη,[^[18]] but rather Περὶ οὐρανοῦ or Περὶ μετεώρων. And this we shall find confirmed by a study of the way in which Greek cosmology developed. The growing thought which may be traced through the successive representatives of any school is always that which concerns the primary substance, while the astronomical and other theories are, in the main, peculiar to the individual thinkers. Teichmüller undoubtedly did good service by his protest against the treatment of these theories as mere isolated curiosities. They form, on the contrary, coherent systems which must be looked at as wholes. But it is none the less true that Greek philosophy began, as it ended, with the search for what was abiding in the flux of things.

Motion and rest.

VIII. But how could this give back to nature the life of which it had been robbed by advancing knowledge? Simply by making it possible for the life that had hitherto been supposed to reside in each particular thing to be transferred to the one thing of which all others were passing forms. The very process of birth, growth, and decay might now be regarded as the unceasing activity of the one ultimate reality. Aristotle and his followers expressed this by saying that the early cosmologists believed in an “eternal motion,” and in substance this is correct, though it is not probable that they said anything about the eternal motion in their writings. It is more likely that they simply took it for granted. In early times, it is not movement but rest that has to be accounted for, and we may be sure that the eternity of motion was not asserted till it had been denied. As we shall see, it was Parmenides who first denied it. The idea of a single ultimate substance, when thoroughly worked out, seemed to leave no room for motion; and after the time of Parmenides, we do find that philosophers were concerned to show how it began. At first, this would not seem to require explanation at all.

Modern writers sometimes give the name of Hylozoism to this way of thinking, but the term is apt to be misleading. It suggests theories which deny the separate reality of life and spirit, whereas, in the days of Thales, and even far later, the distinction between matter and spirit had not been felt, still less formulated in such a way that it could be denied. The uncreated, indestructible reality of which these early thinkers tell us was a body, or even matter, if we choose to call it so; but it was not matter in the sense in which matter is opposed to spirit.

The downfall of the primitive view of the world.

IX. We have indicated the main characteristics of the primitive view of the world, and we have sketched in outline the view which displaced it; we must now consider the causes which led to the downfall of the one and the rise of the other. Foremost among these was undoubtedly the widening of the Greek horizon occasioned by the great extension of maritime enterprise which followed the decay of the Phoenician naval supremacy. The scene of the old stories had, as a rule, been laid just outside the boundaries of the world known to the men who believed them. Odysseus does not meet with Kirke or the Kyklops or the Sirens in the familiar Aegean, but in regions which lay beyond the ken of the Greeks at the time the Odyssey was composed. Now, however, the West was beginning to be familiar too, and the fancy of the Greek explorers led them to identify the lands which they discovered with the places which the hero of the national fairy-tale had come to in his wanderings. It was soon discovered that the monstrous beings in question were no longer to be found there, and the belief grew up that they had never been there at all. So, too, the Milesians had settled colonies all round the Euxine. The colonists went out with Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα in their minds; and, at the same time as they changed the name of the Inhospitable to the Hospitable Sea, they localised the “far country” (αἶα) of the primitive tale, and made Jason fetch the Golden Fleece from Kolchis. Above all, the Phokaians had explored the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Herakles,[^[19]] and the new knowledge that the “endless paths” of the sea had boundaries must have moved men’s minds in much the same way as the discovery of America did in later days. A single example will illustrate the process which was always going on. According to the primitive view, the heavens were supported by a giant called Atlas. No one had ever seen him, though he was supposed to live in Arkadia. The Phokaian explorers identified him with a cloud-capped mountain in Africa, and once they had done this, the old belief was doomed. It was impossible to go on believing in a god who was also a mountain, conveniently situated for the trader to steer by, as he sailed to Tarshish in quest of silver.

Alleged Oriental origin of philosophy.

X. But by far the most important question we have to face is that of the nature and extent of the influence exercised by what we call Eastern wisdom on the Greek mind. It is a common idea even now that the Greeks in some way derived their philosophy from Egypt and Babylon, and we must therefore try to understand as clearly as possible what such a statement really means. To begin with, we must observe that no writer of the period during which Greek philosophy flourished knows anything at all of its having come from the East. Herodotos would not have omitted to say so, had he ever heard of it; for it would have confirmed his own belief in the Egyptian origin of Greek religion and civilisation.[^[20]] Plato, who had a very great respect for the Egyptians on other grounds, distinctly implies that they were a businesslike rather than a philosophical people.[^[21]] Aristotle speaks only of the origin of mathematics in Egypt[^[22]] (a point to which we shall return), though, if he had known of an Egyptian philosophy, it would have suited his argument better to mention that. It is not till a far later date, when Egyptian priests and Alexandrian Jews began to vie with one another in discovering the sources of Greek philosophy in their own past, that we first have definite statements to the effect that it came from Phoenicia or Egypt. Here, however, we must carefully note two things. In the first place, the word “philosophy” had come by that time to include theology of a more or less mystical type, and was even applied to various forms of asceticism.[^[23]] In the second place, the so-called Egyptian philosophy was only arrived at by a process of turning primitive myths into allegories. We are still able to judge Philo’s Old Testament interpretation for ourselves, and we may be sure that the Egyptian allegorists were even more arbitrary; for they had far less promising material to work on. Nothing can be more savage than the myth of Isis and Osiris;[^[24]] yet it is first interpreted according to the ideas of later Greek philosophy, and then declared to be the original source of that philosophy.

This method of interpretation may be said to culminate with the Neopythagorean Noumenios, from whom it passed to the Christian Apologists. It is Noumenios who asks, “What is Plato, but Moses speaking Attic?”[^[25]] It seems likely, indeed, that he was thinking of certain marked resemblances between Plato’s Laws and the Levitical Code when he said this—resemblances due to the fact that certain primitive legal ideas are similarly modified in both; but in any case Clement and Eusebios give the remark a far wider application.[^[26]] At the Renaissance, this absurd farrago was revived along with everything else, and certain ideas derived from the Praeparatio Evangelica continued for long to colour accepted views on the subject. Even Cudworth speaks complacently of the ancient “Moschical or Mosaical philosophy” taught by Thales and Pythagoras.[^[27]] It is important to realise the true origin of this deeply-rooted prejudice against the originality of the Greeks. It does not come from modern researches into the beliefs of ancient peoples; for these have disclosed absolutely nothing in the way of evidence for a Phoenician or Egyptian philosophy. It is a mere residuum of the Alexandrian passion for allegory.

Of course no one nowadays would rest the case for the Oriental origin of Greek philosophy on the evidence of Clement or Eusebios; the favourite argument in recent times has been the analogy of the arts and religion. We are seeing more and more, it is said, that the Greeks derived their art and many of their religious ideas from the East; and it is urged that the same will in all probability prove true of their philosophy. This is a specious argument, but not in the least conclusive. It ignores altogether the essential difference in the way these things are transmitted from people to people. Material civilisation and the arts may pass easily from one people to another, though they have not a common language, and certain simple religious ideas can be conveyed by ritual better than in any other way. Philosophy, on the other hand, can only be expressed in abstract language, and it can only be transmitted by educated men, whether by means of books or oral teaching. Now we know of no Greek, in the times we are dealing with, who knew enough of any Oriental language to read an Egyptian book or even to listen to the discourse of an Egyptian priest, and we never hear till a late date of Oriental teachers who wrote or spoke in Greek. The Greek traveller in Egypt would no doubt pick up a few words of Egyptian, and it is certain that somehow or other the priests could make themselves understood by the Greeks. They were able to rebuke Hekataios for his family pride, and Plato tells a story of the same sort at the beginning of the Timaeus.[^[28]] But they must have made use of interpreters, and it is impossible to conceive of philosophical ideas being communicated through an uneducated dragoman.[^[29]]

But really it is not worth while to ask whether the communication of philosophical ideas was possible or not, till some evidence has been produced that any of these peoples had a philosophy to communicate. No such evidence has yet been discovered, and, so far as we know, the Indians were the only people besides the Greeks who ever had anything that deserves the name. No one now will suggest that Greek philosophy came from India, and indeed everything points to the conclusion that Indian philosophy came from Greece. The chronology of Sanskrit literature is an extremely difficult subject; but, so far as we can see, the great Indian systems are later in date than the Greek philosophies which they most nearly resemble. Of course the mysticism of the Upanishads and of Buddhism were of native growth and profoundly influenced philosophy, but they were not themselves philosophy in any true sense of the word.[^[30]]

Egyptian mathematics.

XI. It would, however, be another thing to say that Greek philosophy originated quite independently of Oriental influences. The Greeks themselves believed their mathematical science to be of Egyptian origin, and they must also have known something of Babylonian astronomy. It cannot be an accident that philosophy originated in Ionia just at the time when communication with these two countries was easiest, and it is significant that the very man who was said to have introduced geometry from Egypt is also regarded as the first of the philosophers. It thus becomes very important for us to discover, if we can, what Egyptian mathematics meant. We shall see that, even here, the Greeks were really original.

There is a papyrus in the Rhind collection at the British Museum[^[31]] which gives us an instructive glimpse of arithmetic and geometry as these sciences were understood on the banks of the Nile. It is the work of one Aahmes, and contains rules for calculations both of an arithmetical and a geometrical character. The arithmetical problems mostly concern measures of corn and fruit, and deal particularly with such questions as the division of a number of measures among a given number of persons, the number of loaves or jars of beer that certain measures will yield, and the wages due to the workmen for a certain piece of work. It corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of Egyptian arithmetic which Plato has given us in the Laws, where he tells us that the children learnt along with their letters to solve problems in the distribution of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller numbers of people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so forth.[^[32]] This is clearly the origin of the art which the Greeks called λογιστική, and they certainly borrowed that from Egypt; but there is not the slightest trace of what the Greeks called ἀριθμητική, or the scientific study of numbers.

The geometry of the Rhind papyrus is of a similarly utilitarian character, and Herodotos, who tells us that Egyptian geometry arose from the necessity of measuring the land afresh after the inundations, is obviously far nearer the mark than Aristotle, who says that it grew out of the leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste.[^[33]] We find, accordingly, that the rules given for calculating areas are only exact when these are rectangular. As fields are usually more or less rectangular, this would be sufficient for practical purposes. The rule for finding what is called the seqt of a pyramid is, however, on a rather higher level, as we should expect; for the angles of the Egyptian pyramids really are equal, and there must have been some method for obtaining this result. It comes to this. Given the “length across the sole of the foot,” that is, the diagonal of the base, and that of the piremus or “ridge,” to find a number which represents the ratio between them. This is done by dividing half the diagonal of the base by the “ridge,” and it is obvious that such a method might quite well be discovered empirically. It seems an anachronism to speak of elementary trigonometry in connexion with a rule like this, and there is nothing to suggest that the Egyptians went any further.[^[34]] That the Greeks learnt as much from them, we shall see to be highly probable, though we shall see also that, from a comparatively early period, they generalised it so as to make it of use in measuring the distances of inaccessible objects, such as ships at sea. It was probably this generalisation that suggested the idea of a science of geometry, which was really the creation of the Pythagoreans, and we can see how far the Greeks soon surpassed their teachers from a remark of Demokritos which has been preserved. He says (fr. 299): “I have listened to many learned men, but no one has yet surpassed me in the construction of figures out of lines accompanied by demonstration, not even the Egyptian harpedonapts, as they call them.”[^[35]] Now the word ἁρπεδονάπτης is not Egyptian but Greek. It means “cord-fastener,”[^[36]] and it is a striking coincidence that the oldest Indian geometrical treatise is called the Çulvasutras or “rules of the cord.” These things point to the use of the triangle of which the sides are 3, 4, 5, and which has always a right angle. We know that this triangle was used from an early date among the Chinese and the Hindus, who doubtless got it from Babylon, and we shall see that Thales probably learnt the use of it in Egypt.[^[37]] There is no reason whatever for supposing that any of these peoples had in any degree troubled themselves to give a theoretical demonstration of its properties, though Demokritos would certainly have been able to do so. Finally, we must note the highly significant fact that all mathematical terms are of purely Greek origin.[^[38]]

Babylonian astronomy.

XII. The other source from which the Ionians directly or indirectly derived material for their cosmology was the Babylonian astronomy. There is no doubt that the Babylonians from a very early date had recorded all celestial phenomena like eclipses. They had also studied the planetary motions, and determined the signs of the zodiac. Further, they were able to predict the recurrence of the phenomena they had observed with considerable accuracy by means of cycles based on their recorded observations. I can see no reason for doubting that they had observed the phenomenon of precession. Indeed, they could hardly have failed to notice it; for their observations went back over so many centuries, that it would be quite appreciable. We know that, at a later date, Ptolemy estimated the precession of the equinoxes at one degree in a hundred years, and it is extremely probable that this is just the Babylonian value. At any rate, it agrees very well with their division of the celestial circle into 360 degrees, and made it possible for a century to be regarded as a day in the “Great Year,” a conception we shall meet with later on.[^[39]]

We shall see that Thales probably knew the cycle which the Babylonians used to predict eclipses ([§ 3]); but it would be a mistake to suppose that the pioneers of Greek science had any detailed knowledge of the Babylonian astronomy. It was not till the time of Plato that even the names of the planets were known,[^[40]] and the recorded observations were only made available in Alexandrian times. But, even if they had known these, their originality would remain. The Babylonians studied and recorded celestial phenomena for what we call astrological purposes, not from any scientific interest. There is no evidence at all that their accumulated observations ever suggested to them the least dissatisfaction with the primitive view of the world, or that they attempted to account for what they saw in any but the crudest way. The Greeks, on the other hand, with far fewer data to go upon, made at least three discoveries of capital importance in the course of two or three generations. In the first place, they discovered that the earth is a sphere and does not rest on anything. In the second place, they discovered the true theory of lunar and solar eclipses; and, in close connexion with this, they came to see, in the third place, that the earth is not the centre of our system, but revolves round it like the other planets. Not very much later, certain Greeks even took, at least tentatively, the final step of identifying the centre round which the earth and the planets revolve with the sun. These discoveries will be discussed in their proper place; they are only mentioned here to show the gulf between Greek astronomy and everything that had preceded it. The Babylonians had as many thousand years as the Greeks had centuries to make these discoveries, and it does not appear that they ever thought of one of them. The originality of the Greeks cannot be successfully questioned till it can be shown that the Babylonians had even an incorrect idea of what we call the solar system.

We may sum up all this by saying that the Greeks did not borrow either their philosophy or their science from the East. They did, however, get from Egypt certain rules of mensuration which, when generalised, gave birth to geometry; while from Babylon they learnt that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles with the greatest regularity. This piece of knowledge undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the rise of science; for to the Greek it suggested further questions such as the Babylonian did not dream of.[^[41]]

The scientific character of the early Greek cosmology.

XIII. It is necessary to say something as to the scientific worth of the philosophy we are about to study. We have just seen that the Eastern peoples were, at the time of which we write, considerably richer than the Greeks in accumulated facts, though these facts had certainly not been observed for any scientific purpose, and their possession never suggested a revision of the primitive view of the world. The Greeks, however, saw in them something that could be turned to account, and they were never as a people slow to act on the maxim, Chacun prend son bien partout où il le trouve. The most striking monument of this spirit which has come down to us is the work of Herodotos; and the visit of Solon to Croesus which he describes, however unhistorical it may be, gives a very lively and faithful picture of it. Croesus tells Solon that he has heard much of “his wisdom and his wanderings,” and how, from love of knowledge (φιλοσοφέων), he has travelled over much land for the purpose of seeing what was to be seen (θεωρίης εἵνεκεν). The words θεωρίη, φιλοσοφίη, and ἱστορίη are, in fact, the catchwords of the time, though they had, we must remember, a somewhat different meaning from that which they were afterwards made to bear at Athens.[^[42]] The idea that underlies them all may, perhaps, be best rendered in English by the word Curiosity; and it was just this great gift of curiosity, and the desire to see all the wonderful things—pyramids, inundations, and so forth—that were to be seen, which enabled the Greeks to pick up and turn to their own use such scraps of knowledge as they could come by among the barbarians. No sooner did a Greek philosopher learn half a dozen geometrical propositions, and hear that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles, than he set to work to look for law everywhere in nature, and, with a splendid audacity, almost amounting to ὕβρις, to construct a system of the universe. We may smile, if we please, at the strange medley of childish fancy and true scientific insight which these Titanic efforts display, and sometimes we feel disposed to sympathise with the sages of the day who warned their more daring contemporaries “to think the thoughts befitting man’s estate” (ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν). But we shall do well to remember at the same time that even now it is just such hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress possible, and that nearly every one of the early inquirers whom we are about to study made some permanent addition to the store of positive knowledge, besides opening up new views of the world in every direction.

There is no justification either for the idea that Greek science was built up solely by more or less lucky guesswork, instead of by observation and experiment. The nature of our tradition, which mostly consists of Placita—that is, of what we call “results”—tends, no doubt, to create this impression. We are seldom told why any early philosopher held the views he did, and the appearance of a string of “opinions” suggests dogmatism. There are, however, certain exceptions to the general character of the tradition; and we may reasonably suppose that, if the later Greeks had been interested in the matter, there would have been many more. We shall see that Anaximander made some remarkable discoveries in marine biology, which the researches of the nineteenth century have fully confirmed ([§ 21]), and even Xenophanes supported one of his theories by referring to the fossils and petrifactions of such widely separated places as Malta, Paros, and Syracuse ([§ 59]). This is enough to show that the theory, so commonly held by the earlier philosophers, that the earth had been originally in a moist state, was not mythological in origin, but was based on, or at any rate confirmed by, biological and palaeontological observations of a thoroughly modern and scientific type. It would surely be absurd to imagine that the men who could make these observations had not the curiosity or the ability to make many others of which the memory is lost. Indeed, the idea that the Greeks were not observers is almost ludicrously wrong, as is proved by two simple considerations. The anatomical accuracy of Greek sculpture bears witness to trained habits of observation, and those of the highest order, while the fixing of the seasons by the heliacal rising and setting of the stars shows a familiarity with celestial phenomena which is by no means common at the present day.[^[43]] We know, then, that the Greeks could observe well in matters affecting agriculture, navigation, and the arts, and we know that they were curious about the world. Is it conceivable that they did not use their powers of observation to gratify that curiosity? It is true, of course, that they had not our instruments of precision; but a great deal can be discovered by the help of very simple apparatus. It is not to be supposed that Anaximander erected his gnomon merely that the Spartans might know the seasons.[^[44]]

Nor is it true that the Greeks made no use of experiment. The rise of the experimental method dates from the time when the medical schools began to influence the development of philosophy, and accordingly we find that the first recorded experiment of a modern type is that of Empedokles with the klepsydra. We have his own account of this (fr. [100]), and we can see how it brought him to the verge of anticipating both Harvey and Torricelli. It is once more inconceivable that an inquisitive people should have applied the experimental method in a single case without extending it to the elucidation of other problems.

Of course the great difficulty for us is the geocentric hypothesis from which science inevitably started, though only to outgrow it in a surprisingly short time. So long as the earth is supposed to be in the centre of the world, meteorology, in the later sense of the word, is necessarily identified with astronomy. It is difficult for us to feel at home in this point of view, and indeed we have no suitable word to express what the Greeks at first called an οὐρανός. It will be convenient to use the word “world” for it; but then we must remember that it does not refer solely, or even chiefly, to the earth. The later word κόσμος bears witness to the growth of scientific ideas. It meant at first the marshalling of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state. It was transferred from this to the world because in early days the regularity and constancy of human life was far more clearly seen than the uniformity of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of law and custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless. That, too, is why, when the regular course of nature was first realised, no better word for it could be found than δίκη. It is the same metaphor which still lives on in the expression “natural law.”[^[45]]

The science of the sixth century was mainly concerned, then, with those parts of the world that are “aloft” (τὰ μετέωρα), and these include, along with the heavenly bodies, such things as clouds, rainbows, and lightning. That is how the heavenly bodies came sometimes to be explained as ignited clouds, an idea which seems astonishing to us. But we must bear in mind that science inevitably and rightly began with the most obvious hypothesis, and that it was only the thorough working out of this that could show its inadequacy. It is just because the Greeks were the first people to take the geocentric hypothesis seriously that they were able to go beyond it. Of course the pioneers of Greek thought had no clear idea of the nature of scientific hypothesis, and supposed themselves to be dealing with ultimate reality. That was inevitable before the rise of Logic. At the same time, a sure instinct guided them to the right method, and we can see how it was the effort to “save appearances”[^[46]] that really operated from the first. It is, therefore, to those men that we owe the conception of an exact science which should ultimately take in the whole world as its object. They fancied—absurdly enough, no doubt—that they could work out this science at once. We sometimes make the same mistake nowadays; and it can no more rob the Greeks of the honour of having been the first to see the true, though perhaps unattainable, end of all science than it can rob our own scientific men of the honour of having brought that end nearer than it was. It is still knowledge of the kind foreseen and attempted by the Greeks that they are in search of.

Schools of philosophy.

XIV. Theophrastos, the first writer to treat the history of Greek philosophy in a systematic way,[^[47]] represented the early cosmologists as standing to one another in the relation of master and scholar, and as members of regular societies. This has been regarded by many modern writers as an anachronism, and some have even denied the existence of “schools” of philosophy altogether. Such a reaction against the older view was quite justified in so far as it was directed against arbitrary classifications like the “Ionic” and “Italian” schools, which are derived through Laertios Diogenes from the Alexandrian writers of “Successions.” But the express statements of Theophrastos are not to be so lightly set aside. As this point is of great importance, it will be necessary to elucidate it still further before we enter upon our story.

The modern view really rests upon a mistaken idea of the way in which civilisation develops. In almost every department of life, we find that the corporation at first is everything and the individual nothing. The peoples of the East hardly got beyond this stage at all; their science, such as it is, is anonymous, the inherited property of a caste or guild, and we still see clearly in some cases that it was once the same among the Hellenes. Medicine, for instance, was originally the “mystery” of the Asklepiads, and it is to be supposed that all craftsmen (δημιουργοί), amongst whom Homer classes the bards (ἀοιδοί), were at first organised in a similar way. What distinguished the Hellenes from other peoples was that at a comparatively early date these crafts came under the influence of outstanding individuals, who gave them a fresh direction and a new impulse. It is doubtless in some such way that we should understand the relation of Homer to the Homeridai. The Asklepiads at a later date produced Hippokrates, and if we knew more of such guilds as the Daidalids, it is likely we should find something of the same kind. But this does not destroy the corporate character of the craft; indeed, it rather intensifies it. The guild becomes what we call a “school,” and the disciple takes the place of the apprentice. That is a vital change. A close guild with none but official heads is essentially conservative, while a band of disciples attached to a master they revere is the greatest progressive force the world knows.

It is certain that the later Athenian schools were organised corporations, the oldest of which, the Academy, maintained its existence as such for some nine hundred years, and the only question we have to decide is whether this was an innovation made in the fourth century B.C., or rather the continuance of an old tradition. As it happens, we have the authority of Plato for speaking of the chief early systems as handed down in schools. He makes Sokrates speak of “the men of Ephesos,” the Herakleiteans, as forming a strong body in his own day,[^[48]] and the stranger of the Sophist and the Statesman speaks of his school as still in existence at Elea.[^[49]] We also hear of “Anaxagoreans,”[^[50]] and no one, of course, can doubt that the Pythagoreans were a society. In fact, there is hardly any school but that of Miletos for which we have not external evidence of the strongest kind; and even as regards it, we have the significant fact that Theophrastos speaks of philosophers of a later date as having been “associates of the philosophy of Anaximenes.”[^[51]] We shall see too in the first chapter that the internal evidence in favour of the existence of a Milesian school is very strong indeed. It is from this point of view, then, that we shall now proceed to consider the men who created Hellenic science.

[1]. It will be observed that Demokritos falls outside the period thus limited. The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of Sokrates along with the “pre-Socratic philosophers” obscures the true course of historical development. Demokritos comes after Protagoras, and his theory is already conditioned by the epistemological problem. (See Brochard, “Protagoras et Démocrite,” Arch. ii. p. 368.) He has also a regular theory of conduct (E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 514 n.).

[2]. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 64; Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 272-276.

[3]. On all this, see especially Rohde, Psyche, pp. 14 sqq.

[4]. Hes. Theog. 27. They are the same Muses who inspired Homer, which means, in our language, that Hesiod wrote in hexameters and used the Epic dialect. The new literary genre has not yet found its appropriate vehicle, which is elegy.

[5]. There is great historical insight here. It was Hesiod, not our modern historians, who first pointed out that the “Greek Middle Ages” were a break in the normal development.

[6]. Herod. ii. 53.

[7]. The word χάος certainly means the “gape” or “yawn,” the Orphic χάσμα πελώριον. Grimm compared it with the Scandinavian Ginnunga-Gap.

[8]. Quoted from Taylor’s New Zealand, pp. 110-112, by Mr. Andrew Lang, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 52 (2nd ed.).

[9]. For the remains of Pherekydes, see Diels, Vorsokratiker, pp. 506 sqq. (1st ed.), and the interesting account in Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. i. pp. 85 sqq.

[10]. This was the view of Lobeck with regard to the so-called “Rhapsodic Theogony” described by Damaskios, and was revived by Otto Kern (De Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis, 1888). Its savage character is the best proof of its antiquity. Cf. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i. chap. x.

[11]. Arist. Met. Ν, 4. 1091 b 8.

[12]. Simonides, fr. 85, 2 Bergk. Il. vi. 146.

[13]. On Adonis-Thammuz, Lityerses, Linos, and Osiris, see Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. i. pp. 278 sqq.

[14]. The Epic phrase ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως seems to have suggested this. Anaximander applied both epithets to the primary substance (R. P. 17 and 17 a). Euripides, in describing the blessedness of the scientific life (fr. inc. 910), says ἀθανάτου ... φύσεως κόσμον ἀγήρω (R. P. 148 c fin.).

[15]. I do not mean to imply that the philosophers used this title themselves; for early prose writings had no titles. The writer mentioned his name and the subject of his work in the first sentence, as Herodotos, for instance, does.

[16]. Plato, Laws, 892 c 2, φύσιν βούλονται λέγειν γένεσιν (i.e. τὸ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται) τὴν περὶ τὰ πρῶτα (i.e. τὴν τῶν πρώτων). Arist. Phys. Β, 1. 193 a 21, διόπερ οἱ μὲν πῦρ, οἱ δὲ γῆν, οἱ δ’ ἀέρα φασίν, οἱ δὲ ὗδωρ, οἱ δ’ ἔνια τούτων, οἱ δὲ πάντα ταῦτα τὴν φύσιν εἶναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων.

[17]. Zeller, p. 217, n. 2 (Eng. trans. p. 248, n. 2). See below, Chap. I. p. 57, [n. 105].

[18]. We have the authority of Plato for giving them this name. Cf. Phd. 96 a 7, ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν. So, in the fragment of Euripides referred to on p. 12, [n. 14], the man who discerns “the ageless order of immortal φύσις” is referred to as ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας ἔσχε μάθησιν.

[19]. Herod. i. 163.

[20]. All he can say is that the worship of Dionysos and the doctrine of transmigration came from Egypt (ii. 49, 123). We shall see that both these statements are incorrect, and in any case they do not imply anything directly as to philosophy.

[21]. In Rep. 435 e, after saying that τὸ θυμοειδές is characteristic of the Thracians and Scythians, and τὸ φιλομαθές of the Hellenes, he refers us to Phoenicia and Egypt for τὸ φιλοχρήματον. In the Laws, where the Egyptians are so strongly commended for their conservatism in matters of art, he says (747 b 6) that arithmetical studies are valuable only if we remove all ἀνελευθερία and φιλοχρηματία from the souls of the learners. Otherwise, we produce πανουργία instead of σοφία, as we can see that the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and many other peoples do.

[22]. Arist. Met. Α, 1. 981 b 23.

[23]. See Zeller, p. 3, n. 2. Philo applies the term πάτριος φιλοσοφία to the theology of the Essenes and Therapeutai.

[24]. On this, see Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 135.

[25]. Noumenios, fr. 13 (R. P. 624), Τί γάρ ἐστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωυσῆς ἀττικίζων;

[26]. Clement (Strom. i. p. 8, 5, Stählin) calls Plato ὁ ἐξ Ἑβραίων φιλόσοφος.

[27]. We learn from Strabo (xvi. p. 757) that it was Poseidonios who introduced Mochos of Sidon into the history of philosophy. He attributes the atomic theory to him. His identification with Moses, however, is a later tour de force. Philon of Byblos published what purported to be a translation of an ancient Phoenician history by Sanchuniathon, which was used by Porphyry and afterwards by Eusebios. How familiar all this became, is shown by the speech of the stranger in the Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xiv.

[28]. Herod. ii. 143; Plato, Tim. 22 b 3.

[29]. Gomperz’s “native bride,” who discusses the wisdom of her people with her Greek lord (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 95), does not convince me either. She would probably teach her maids the rites of strange goddesses; but she would not be likely to talk theology with her husband, and still less philosophy or science. The use of Babylonian as an international language will account for the fact that the Egyptians knew something of Babylonian astronomy; but it does not help us to explain how the Greeks could communicate with the Egyptians. It is plain that the Greeks did not even know of this international language; for it is just the sort of thing they would have recorded with interest if they had. In early days, they may have met with it in Cyprus, but that was apparently forgotten.

[30]. For the possibility that Indian philosophy came from Greece, see Weber, Die Griechen in Indien (Berl. Sitzb. 1890, pp. 901 sqq.), and Goblet d’Alviella, Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce (Paris, 1897).

[31]. I am indebted for most of the information which follows to Cantor’s Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, vol. i. pp. 46-63. See also Gow’s Short History of Greek Mathematics, §§ 73-80; and Milhaud, La science grecque, pp. 91 sqq. The discussion in the last-named work is of special value because it is based on M. Rodet’s paper in the Bulletin de la Société Mathématique, vol. vi., which in some important respects supplements the interpretation of Eisenlohr, on which the earlier accounts depend.

[32]. Plato, Laws, 819 b 4, μήλων τέ τινων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν ἄμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυκτῶν καὶ παλαιστῶν ἐφεδρείας τε καὶ συλλήξεως ἐν μέρει καὶ ἐφεξῆς καὶ ὡς πεφύκασι γίγνεσθαι. καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πως διαδιδόντες. In its context, the passage implies that no more than this could be learnt in Egypt.

[33]. Herod. ii. 109; Arist. Met. Α, 1. 981 b 23.

[34]. For a fuller account of this method, see Gow, Short History of Greek Mathematics, pp. 127 sqq.; and Milhaud, Science grecque, p. 99.

[35]. R. P. 188.

[36]. The real meaning of ἁρπεδονάπτης was first pointed out by Cantor. The gardener laying out a flower-bed is the true modern representative of the “harpedonapts.”

[37]. See Milhaud, Science grecque, p. 103.

[38]. The word πυραμίς is often supposed to be derived from the term piremus used in the Rhind papyrus, which does not mean pyramid, but “ridge.” It is really, however, a Greek word too, and is the name of a kind of cake. The Greeks called crocodiles lizards, ostriches sparrows, and obelisks meat-skewers, so they may very well have called the pyramids cakes. We seem to hear an echo of the slang of the mercenaries that carved their names on the colossus at Abu-Simbel.

[39]. Three different positions of the equinox are given in three different Babylonian tablets, namely, 10°, 8° 15′, and 8° 0′ 30″ of Aries. (Kugler, Mondrechnung, p. 103; Ginzel, Klio, i. p. 205.) Given knowledge of this kind, and the practice of formulating recurrences in cycles, it is scarcely conceivable that the Babylonians should not have invented a cycle for precession. It is equally intelligible that they should only have reached a rough approximation; for the precessional period is really about 27,600 years and not 36,000. It is to be observed that Plato’s “perfect year” is also 36,000 solar years (Adam’s Republic, vol. ii. p. 302), and that it is probably connected with the precession of the equinoxes. (Cf. Tim. 39 d, a passage which is most easily interpreted if referred to precession.) This suggestion as to the origin of the “Great Year” was thrown out by Mr. Adam (op. cit. p. 305), and is now confirmed by Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1906).

[40]. In classical Greek literature, no planets but Ἕσπερος and Ἑωσφόρος are mentioned by name at all. Parmenides (or Pythagoras) first identified these as a single planet ([§ 93]). Mercury appears for the first time by name in Tim. 38 e, and the other divine names are given in Epin. 987 b sq., where they are said to be “Syrian.” The Greek names Φαίνων, Φαέθων, Πυρόεις, Φωσφόρος, Στίλβων, may be older, but this cannot be proved.

[41]. The Platonic account of this matter is to be found in the Epinomis, 986 e 9 sqq., and is summed up by the words λάβωμεν δὲ ὡς ὅτιπερ ἂν Ἕλληνες βαρβάρων παραλάβωσι, κάλλιον τοῦτο εἰς τέλος ἀπεργάζονται (987 d 9). The point is well put by Theon (Adrastos), Exp. p. 177, 20 Hiller, who speaks of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians as ἄνευ φυσιολογίας ἀτελεῖς ποιούμενοι τὰς μεθόδους, δέον ἅμα καὶ φυσικῶς περὶ τούτων ἐπισκοπεῖν· ὅπερ οἱ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀστρολογήσαντες ἐπειρῶντο ποιεῖν, τὰς παρὰ τούτων λαβόντες ἀρχὰς καὶ τῶν φαινομένων τηρήσεις. The importance of this last passage is that it represents the view taken at Alexandria, where the facts were accurately known.

[42]. Still, the word θεωρία never wholly lost its early associations, and the Greeks always felt that the θεωρητικὸς βίος meant literally “the life of the spectator.” Its special use, and the whole theory of the “three lives,” seem to be of Pythagorean origin. See my edition of Aristotle’s Ethics, p. 19 n.

[43]. These two points are rightly emphasised by Staigmüller, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Naturwissenschaften im klassischen Altertume (Progr. Stuttgart, 1899, p. 8).

[44]. The gnomon was not a sundial, but an upright erected on a flat surface, in the centre of three concentric circles. These were drawn so that the end of the gnomon’s shadow touched the innermost circle at midday on the summer solstice, the intermediate circle at the equinoxes, and the outermost circle at the winter solstice. See Bretschneider, Die Geometrie vor Euklid, p. 60.

[45]. The term κόσμος seems to be Pythagorean in this sense. It was not familiar even at the beginning of the fourth century. Xenophon speaks of “what the sophists call the κόσμος” (Mem. i. 11). For δίκη, see below, §§ 14, 72.

[46]. This phrase originated in the school of Plato. The method of research in use there was for the leader to “propound” (προτείνειν, προβάλλεσθαι) it as a “problem” (πρόβλημα) to find the simplest “hypothesis” (τίνων ὑποτεθέντων) on which it is possible to account for and do justice to all the observed facts (σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα). It was in its French form, sauver les apparences, that the phrase acquired the meaning it usually has now.

[47]. See Appendix, [§ 7].

[48]. Tht. 179 e 4, αὐτοῖς ... τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἔφεσον. The humorous denial that the Herakleiteans had any disciples (180 b 8, Ποίοις μαθηταῖς, ὦ δαιμόνιε;) implies that this was the normal and recognised relation.

[49]. Soph. 242 d 4, τὸ ... παρ’ ἡμῖν Ἐλεατικὸν ἔθνος. Cf. ib. 216 a 3, ἑταῖρον δὲ τῶν ἀμφὶ Παρμενίδην καὶ Ζήνωνα [ἑταίρων] (where ἑταίρων is probably interpolated, but gives the right sense); 217 a, 1, οἱ περὶ τὸν ἐκεῖ τόπον.

[50]. Crat. 409 b 6, εἴπερ ἀληθῆ οἱ Ἀναξαγόρειοι λέγουσιν.

[51]. Cf. Chap. VI. [§ 122]; and, on the whole subject, see Diels, “Über die ältesten Philosophenschulen der Griechen” in Philosophische Aufsätze Eduard Zeller gewidmet (Leipzig, 1887).

CHAPTER I
THE MILESIAN SCHOOL

Miletos and Lydia.

1. It was at Miletos that the earliest school of scientific cosmology had its home. At the time it arose, the Milesians were in an exceptionally favourable position for scientific as well as commercial pursuits. They had, indeed, come into conflict more than once with the neighbouring Lydians, whose rulers were now bent upon extending their dominion to the coast; but, towards the end of the seventh century B.C., Thrasyboulos, tyrant of Miletos, had succeeded in making terms with King Alyattes, and an alliance was concluded between them, which not only saved Miletos for the present from a disaster like that which befell Smyrna, but secured it against molestation for the future. Even half a century later, when Croesus, resuming his father’s forward policy, made war upon and conquered Ephesos, Miletos was still able to maintain the old treaty-relation, and never, strictly speaking, became subject to the Lydians at all. We can hardly doubt that the sense of security which this exceptional position would foster had something to do with the rise of scientific inquiry. Material prosperity is necessary as a foundation for the highest intellectual effort; and at this time Miletos was in possession of all the refinements of life to a degree unknown in continental Hellas.

Nor was it only in this way that the Lydian connexion would favour the growth of science at Miletos. What was called Hellenism at a later date seems to have been traditional in the dynasty of the Mermnadai. There may well be some truth in the statement of Herodotos, that all the “sophists” of the time flocked to the court of Sardeis.[^[52]] The tradition which represents Croesus as what we should call the “patron” of Greek wisdom, was fully developed in the fifth century; and, however unhistorical its details may be, it must clearly have some sort of foundation in fact. Particularly noteworthy is “the common tale among the Greeks,” that Thales accompanied him on his luckless campaign against Pteria, apparently in the capacity of military engineer. Herodotos, indeed, disbelieves the story that he diverted the course of the Halys;[^[53]] but he does not attack it on the ground of any antecedent improbability, and it is quite clear that those who reported it found no difficulty in accepting the relation which it presupposes between the philosopher and the king.

It should be added that the Lydian alliance would greatly facilitate intercourse with Babylon and Egypt. Lydia was an advanced post of Babylonian culture, and Croesus was on friendly terms with the kings of both Egypt and Babylon. It is noteworthy, too, that Amasis of Egypt had the same Hellenic sympathies as Croesus, and that the Milesians possessed a temple of their own at Naukratis.[^[54]]

I. Thales

Origin.

2. There can be no doubt that the founder of the Milesian school, and therefore the first of the cosmologists, was Thales;[^[55]] but all we can really be said to know of him comes from Herodotos, and the romance of the Seven Wise Men was already in existence when he wrote. He tells us, in the first place, that Thales was of Phoenician descent, a statement which other writers explained by saying he belonged to the Thelidai, a noble house descended from Kadmos and Agenor.[^[56]] This is clearly connected with the view of Herodotos that there were “Kadmeians” from Boiotia among the original Ionian colonists, and it is certain that there really were people called Kadmeians in several Ionic cities.[^[57]] Whether they were of Semitic origin is, of course, another matter. Herodotos probably mentions the supposed descent of Thales simply because he was believed to have introduced certain improvements in navigation from Phoenicia.[^[58]] At any rate, the name Examyes, which his father bore, lends no support to the view that he was a Semite. It is a Karian name, and the Karians had been almost completely assimilated by the Ionians. On the monuments, we find Greek and Karian names alternating in the same families, and there is therefore no reason to suppose that Thales was anything else than an ordinary Milesian citizen, though perhaps with Karian blood in his veins.[^[59]]

The eclipse foretold by Thales.

3. By far the most remarkable statement that Herodotos makes about Thales is that he foretold the eclipse of the sun which put an end to the war between the Lydians and the Medes.[^[60]] Now, we may be sure that he was quite ignorant of the true cause of eclipses. Anaximander and his successors certainly were so,[^[61]] and it is incredible that the right explanation should once have been given and then forgotten so soon. Even supposing, however, Thales had known the cause of eclipses, no one can believe that such scraps of elementary geometry as he picked up in Egypt would enable him to calculate one from the elements of the moon’s path. Yet the evidence for the prediction is too strong to be rejected off-hand. The testimony of Herodotos to an event which must have happened about a hundred years before his own birth may, perhaps, be deemed insufficient; but that of Xenophanes is a very different matter, and it is this we have really to deal with.[^[62]] According to Theophrastos, Xenophanes was a disciple of Anaximander, and he may quite well have seen and spoken with Thales. In any case, he must have known scores of people who were able to remember what happened, and he had no conceivable interest in misrepresenting it. The prediction of the eclipse is really better attested than any other fact about Thales whatsoever, and the evidence for it is about as strong as for anything that happened in the early part of the sixth century B.C.

Now it is quite possible to predict eclipses without knowing their true cause, and there is no doubt that the Babylonians actually did so. On the basis of their astronomical observations, they had made out a cycle of 223 lunar months, within which eclipses of the sun and moon recurred at equal intervals of time.[^[63]] This, it is true, would not enable them to predict eclipses of the sun for a given spot on the earth’s surface; for these phenomena are not visible at all places where the sun is above the horizon at the time. We do not occupy a position at the centre of the earth, and what astronomers call the geocentric parallax has to be taken into account. It would only, therefore, be possible to tell by means of the cycle that an eclipse of the sun would be visible somewhere, and that it might be worth while to look out for it. Now, if we may judge from a report by a Chaldaean astronomer which has been preserved, this was just the position of the Babylonians. They watched for eclipses at the proper dates; and, if they did not occur, they announced the fact as a good omen.[^[64]] To explain what we are told about Thales no more than this is required. He simply said there would be an eclipse; and, as good luck would have it, it was visible in Asia Minor, and on a striking occasion.

Date of Thales.

4. The prediction of the eclipse does not, then, throw much light upon the scientific attainments of Thales; but, if we can fix its date, it will give us a point from which to start in trying to determine the time at which he lived. Modern astronomers have calculated that there was an eclipse of the sun, probably visible in Asia Minor, on May 28 (O.S.), 585 B.C.,[^[65]] while Pliny gives the date of the eclipse foretold by Thales as Ol. XLVIII. 4 (585/4 B.C.).[^[66]] This, it is true, does not exactly tally; for May 585 belongs to the year 586/5 B.C. It is sufficiently near, however, to justify us in identifying the eclipse as that of Thales, and this is confirmed by Apollodoros, who fixed his floruit in the same year.[^[67]] The further statement that, according to Demetrios Phalereus, Thales “received the name of wise” in the archonship of Damasias at Athens, agrees very well with this, and is doubtless based on the story of the Delphic tripod; for the archonship of Damasias is the era of the restoration of the Pythian Games.[^[68]]

Thales in Egypt.

5. The introduction of Egyptian geometry into Hellas is universally ascribed to Thales, and it is extremely probable that he did visit Egypt; for he had a theory of the inundations of the Nile. In a well-known passage,[^[69]] Herodotos gives three explanations of the fact that this alone of all rivers rises in summer and falls in winter; but, as his custom is in such cases, he does not name their authors. The first of them, however, that which attributes the floods to the Etesian winds, is ascribed to Thales in the Placita,[^[70]] and also by many later writers. Now, those statements are derived from a treatise on the Rise of the Nile attributed to Aristotle and known to the Greek commentators, but now extant only in a Latin epitome of the thirteenth century.[^[71]] In this work the first of the three theories mentioned by Herodotos is ascribed to Thales, the second to Euthymenes of Massalia, and the third to Anaxagoras. Where did Aristotle, or whoever wrote the book, get these names? We think naturally once more of Hekataios, whom Herodotos so often reproduces without mentioning his name; and this conjecture is much strengthened when we find that Hekataios actually mentioned Euthymenes.[^[72]] We may conclude, then, that Thales really was in Egypt; and, perhaps, that Hekataios, in describing the Nile, took account, as was only natural, of his distinguished fellow-citizen’s views.

Thales and geometry.

6. As to the nature and extent of the mathematical knowledge brought back by Thales from Egypt, it seems desirable to point out that many writers have seriously misunderstood the character of the tradition.[^[73]] In his commentary on the First Book of Euclid, Proclus enumerates, on the authority of Eudemos, certain propositions which he says were known to Thales.[^[74]] One of the theorems with which he credits him is that two triangles are equal when they have one side and the two adjacent angles equal. This he must have known, said Eudemos, as otherwise he could not have measured the distances of ships at sea from a watch-tower in the way he was said to have done.[^[75]] Here we see how all these statements arose. Certain remarkable feats in the way of measurement were traditionally ascribed to Thales, and it was assumed that he must have known all the propositions which these imply. But this is quite an illusory method of inference. Both the measurement of the distance of ships at sea, and that of the height of the pyramids, which is also ascribed to him,[^[76]] are easy applications of what Aahmes calls the seqt. These rules of mensuration may well have been brought from Egypt by Thales, but we have no ground for supposing that he knew any more about their rationale than did the author of the Rhind papyrus. Perhaps, indeed, he gave them a wider application than the Egyptians had done. Still, mathematics, properly so called, did not come into existence till some time after Thales.

Thales as a politician.

7. Thales appears once more in the pages of Herodotos some time before the fall of the Lydian empire. He is said to have urged the Ionian Greeks to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos.[^[77]] We shall have occasion to notice more than once in the sequel that the early schools of philosophy were in the habit of trying to influence the course of political events; and there are many things, for instance the part played by Hekataios in the Ionian revolt, which point to the conclusion that the scientific men of Miletos took up a very decided position in the stirring times that followed the death of Thales. It is this political action which has gained the founder of the Milesian school his undisputed place among the Seven Wise Men; and it is owing mainly to his inclusion among those worthies that the numerous anecdotes which were told of him in later days attached themselves to his name.[^[78]]

Uncertain character of the tradition.

8. If Thales ever wrote anything, it soon was lost, and the works which were written in his name did not, as a rule, deceive even the ancients.[^[79]] Aristotle professes to know something about the views of Thales; but he does not pretend to know how they were arrived at, nor the arguments by which they were supported. He does, indeed, make certain suggestions, which are repeated by later writers as statements of fact; but he himself simply gives them for what they are worth.[^[80]] There is another difficulty in connexion with the tradition. Many a precise-looking statement in the Placita has no other foundation than the habit of ascribing any doctrine which was, roughly speaking, characteristic of the whole Ionic “Succession” to “Thales and his followers,” and so producing the appearance of a definite statement about Thales. But, in spite of all this, we need not doubt that Aristotle was correctly informed with regard to the leading points. We have seen traces of reference to Thales in Hekataios, and nothing can be more likely than that later writers of the school should have quoted the views of its founder. We may venture, therefore, upon a conjectural restoration of his cosmology, in which we shall be guided by what we know for certain of the subsequent development of the Milesian school; for we should naturally expect to find its characteristic doctrines at least foreshadowed in the teaching of its earliest representative. But all this must be taken for just what it is worth; speaking strictly, we do not know anything about the teaching of Thales at all.

Conjectural account of the cosmology of Thales.

9. The statements of Aristotle may be reduced to three:

• (1) The earth floats on the water.[^[81]]
• (2) Water is the material cause[^[82]] of all things.
• (3) All things are full of gods. The magnet is alive; for it has the power of moving iron.[^[83]]

The first of these statements must be understood in the light of the second, which is expressed in Aristotelian terminology, but would undoubtedly mean that Thales had said water was the fundamental or primary thing, of which all other things were mere transient forms. It was, we shall see, just such a primary substance that the Milesian school as a whole was seeking, and it is unlikely that the earliest answer to the great question of the day should have been the comparatively subtle one given by Anaximander. We are, perhaps, justified in holding that the greatness of Thales consisted in this, that he was the first to ask, not what was the original thing, but what is the primary thing now; or, more simply still, “What is the world made of?” The answer he gave to this question was: Water.

Water.

10. Aristotle and Theophratos, followed by Simplicius and the doxographers, suggest several explanations of this answer. By Aristotle these explanations are given as conjectural; it is only later writers that repeat them as if they were quite certain.[^[84]] The most probable view of them seems to be that Aristotle simply ascribed to Thales the arguments used at a later date by Hippon of Samos in support of a similar thesis.[^[85]] This would account for their physiological character. The rise of scientific medicine had made biological arguments very popular in the fifth century; but, in the days of Thales, the prevailing interest was not physiological, but rather what we should call meteorological, and it is therefore from this point of view we must try to understand the theory.

Now it is not very hard to see how considerations of a meteorological kind may have led Thales to adopt the view he did. Of all the things we know, water seems to take the most various shapes. It is familiar to us in a solid, a liquid, and a vaporous form, and so Thales may well have thought that he saw the world-process from water and back to water again going on before his very eyes. The phenomenon of evaporation naturally suggests everywhere that the fire of the heavenly bodies is kept up by the moisture which they draw from the sea. Even at the present day, the country people speak of the appearance of sunbeams as “the sun drawing water.” Water comes down again in the rain; and lastly, so the early cosmologists thought, it turns to earth. This seems strange to us, but it may have seemed natural enough to men who were familiar with the river of Egypt which had formed the Delta, and with the torrents of Asia Minor, which bring down unusually large alluvial deposits. At the present day the Gulf of Latmos, on which Miletos used to stand, is completely filled up. Lastly, they thought, earth turns once more to water—an idea derived from the observation of dew, night-mists, and subterranean springs. For these last were not in early times supposed to have anything at all to do with the rain. The “waters under the earth” were regarded as an entirely independent source of moisture.[^[86]]

Theology.

11. The third of the statements mentioned above is supposed by Aristotle himself to imply that Thales believed in a “soul of the world,” though he is careful to mark this as no more than an inference.[^[87]] The doctrine of the world-soul is then attributed quite positively to Thales by Aetios, who gives it in the Stoic phraseology which he found in his immediate source, and identifies the world-intellect with God.[^[88]] Cicero found a similar account of the matter in the Epicurean manual which he followed, but he goes a step further. Eliminating the Stoic pantheism, he turns the world-intellect into a Platonic demiourgos, and says that Thales held there was a divine mind which formed all things out of water.[^[89]] All this is derived from the cautious statement of Aristotle, and can have no greater authority than its source. We need not enter, then, upon the old controversy whether Thales was an atheist or not. It is really irrelevant. If we may judge from his successors, he may very possibly have called water divine; but, if he had any religious beliefs at all, we may be sure they were quite unconnected with his cosmological theory.

Nor must we make too much of the saying itself that “all things are full of gods.” It is often supposed to mean that Thales attributed a “plastic life” to matter, or that he was a “hylozoist.” We have seen already how misleading this way of speaking is apt to be,[^[90]] and we shall do well to avoid it. It is not safe to regard such an apophthegm as evidence for anything; the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven Wise Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed now to one sage and now to another.[^[91]] On the other hand, it is extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls. That is no apophthegm, but something more on the level of the statement that the earth floats on the water. It is, in fact, just the sort of thing we should expect Hekataios to record about Thales. It would be wrong, however, to draw any inferences from it as to his view of the world; for to say that the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything, that other things are not.[^[92]]

II. Anaximander

Life.

12. The next name that has come down to us is that of Anaximander, son of Praxiades. He too was a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos described him as an “associate” of Thales.[^[93]] We have seen how that expression is to be understood (§ XIV.).

According to Apollodoros, Anaximander was sixty-four years old in Ol. LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytos, who says he was born in Ol. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny, who assigns his discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to the same Olympiad.[^[94]] We seem to have here something more than a mere combination of the ordinary type; for, according to all the rules of Alexandrian chronology, Anaximander should have “flourished” in 565 B.C., that is, just half-way between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty, not sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodoros appears to have said that he had met with the work of Anaximander; and his reason for mentioning this must be that he found in it some indication which enabled him to fix its date without having recourse to conjecture. Diels suggests that Anaximander may have given his age at the time of writing as sixty-four, and that the book may have contained some other statement showing it to have been published in 547/6 B.C.[^[95]] Perhaps, however, this hardly does justice to the fact that the year given is just that which preceded the fall of Sardeis and the subjugation of the Lydian empire by the Persians. It may be a more plausible conjecture that Anaximander, writing some years later, incidentally mentioned what his age had been at the time of that great crisis. We know from Xenophanes that the question, “How old were you when the Mede appeared?” was considered an interesting one in those days.[^[96]] At all events, we seem to be justified in believing that Anaximander was a generation younger than Thales. When he died we do not really know.[^[97]]

Like his predecessor, Anaximander distinguished himself by certain practical inventions. Some writers credited him with that of the gnomon; but that can hardly be correct. Herodotos tells us this instrument came from Babylon, so perhaps it was Anaximander who made it known among the Greeks. He was also the first to construct a map, and Eratosthenes said this was the map elaborated by Hekataios.[^[98]]

Theophrastos on Anaximander’s theory of the primary substance.

13. Nearly all we know of Anaximander’s system is derived in the last resort from Theophrastos.[^[99]] As to the credibility of what we are told on his authority, it is enough to remark that the original work, which was in the hands of Apollodoros, must certainly have existed in the time of Theophrastos. Moreover, he seems once at least to have quoted Anaximander’s own words, and he criticised his style. Here are the remains of what he said of him in the First Book:—

Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales,[^[100]] said that the material cause and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce this name for the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any other of the so-called[^[101]] elements, but a substance different from them which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (Dox. p. 476; R. P. 16).

He says that this is eternal and ageless, and that it encompasses all the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, “as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time,” as he says[^[102]] in these somewhat poetical terms.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 16).

And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

He did not ascribe the origin of things to any alteration in matter, but said that the oppositions in the substratum, which was a boundless body, were separated out.—Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18).

The primary substance is not one of the “elements.”

14. Anaximander taught, then, that there was one eternal, indestructible substance out of which everything arises, and into which everything once more returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is continually being made good. This is only the natural development of the thought we have ventured to ascribe to Thales, and there can be no doubt that Anaximander at least distinctly formulated it. Indeed, we can still follow to some extent the reasoning which led him to do so. Thales had regarded water as the most likely of all the things we know to be that of which all others are forms; Anaximander appears to have asked himself how the primary substance could be one of these particular things. His argument seems to be preserved by Aristotle, who has the following passage in his discussion of the Infinite:—

Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another—air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. Phys. Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b).

It is clear that in this passage Anaximander is contrasted with Thales and with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the account given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the form is Aristotle’s own, and the mention of “elements” is an anachronism.[^[103]] Anaximander was struck, it would seem, by the opposition and strife between the things which go to make up the world; the warm fire was opposed to the cold air, the dry earth to the moist sea. These opposites were at war, and any predominance of one over the other was an “injustice” for which they must make reparation to one another.[^[104]] We may suppose that his thoughts ran somewhat as follows. If Thales had been right in saying that water was the fundamental reality, it would not be easy to see how anything else could ever have existed. One side of the opposition, the cold and moist, would have had its way unchecked, injustice would have prevailed, and the warm and dry would have been driven from the field long ago. We must, then, have something which is not itself one of the warring opposites we know, something more primitive, out of which they arise, and into which they once more pass away. That Anaximander called this something by the name of φύσις, is clear from the doxographers; the current statement that the word ἀρχή in the sense of a “first principle” was introduced by him, is probably due to a misunderstanding of what Theophrastos said.[^[105]]

Aristotle’s account of the theory.

15. It was natural for Aristotle to regard this theory as an anticipation or presentiment of his own doctrine of “indeterminate matter.”[^[106]] He knew very well, of course, that he himself was the author of that; but it is in accordance with his method to represent his own theories as the distinct formulation of truths which earlier thinkers had only guessed at. It was to be expected, then, that he should sometimes express the views of Anaximander in terms of the theory of “elements.” He knew too that the Boundless was a body,[^[107]] though in his own system there was no room for anything corporeal prior to the elements; so he had to speak of it as a boundless body “alongside of” or “distinct from” the elements (παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα). So far as I know, no one has doubted that, when he uses this phrase, he is referring to Anaximander.

In a number of other places Aristotle speaks of a thinker, whom he does not happen to name, who held that the primary substance was something “intermediate between” the elements or between two of them.[^[108]] Nearly all the Greek commentators referred this to Anaximander also, but most modern writers refuse to follow them. It is, no doubt, easy to show that Anaximander can have never meant to describe the Boundless in this way, but that is no real objection to the older interpretation. It is difficult to see that it is more of an anachronism to call the Boundless “intermediate between the elements” than to say that it is “distinct from the elements”; and indeed, if once we introduce the elements at all, the former description is in some ways the more adequate of the two. At any rate, if we refuse to understand these passages as referring to Anaximander, we shall have to say that Aristotle paid a great deal of attention to some early thinker, whose very name has been lost, and who not only agreed with some of Anaximander’s views, but also, as is shown by one passage, used some of his most characteristic expressions.[^[109]] We may add that in one or two places Aristotle certainly seems to identify the “intermediate” with the something “distinct from” the elements.[^[110]]

There is even one place in which he appears to speak of Anaximander’s Boundless as a “mixture,” though his words may perhaps admit of another interpretation.[^[111]] But this is of no consequence for our interpretation of Anaximander himself. It is certain that he cannot have said anything about “elements,” which no one thought of before Empedokles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The question has only been mentioned at all because it has been the subject of a lengthy controversy,[^[112]] and because it throws great light on the historical value of Aristotle’s statements. From the point of view of his own system, these are abundantly justified; but we shall have to remember in other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some earlier thinker, we are not in the least bound to believe what he says in a historical sense.

The primary substance is infinite.

16. Anaximander’s reason for conceiving the primary substance as boundless was, no doubt, that indicated by Aristotle, namely, “that becoming might not fail.”[^[113]] It is not likely, however, that these words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough for us to know that Theophrastos, who had seen his book, attributed the thought to him. And certainly the way in which he regarded the world would bring home to him with more than common force the need of a boundless stock of matter. The “opposites” of which our world consists are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their strife is marked by “unjust” encroachments on either side. The warm commits “injustice” in summer, the cold in winter. To redress the balance, they must be absorbed once more in their common ground; and this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must picture to ourselves, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the heavens which bound the world we live in.[^[114]] This mass is a body, and out of it our world once emerged by the “separating out” of the opposites, which one day will all be absorbed again in the Boundless, and our world will cease to be.

The eternal motion.

17. The doxographers say it was the “eternal motion” that brought into being “all the heavens and all the worlds within them.” As we have seen ([§ VIII]), it is not likely that Anaximander himself used the phrase “eternal motion.” That is rather Aristotle’s own version of what he found stated about the “separating out” of opposites. We are not told expressly how Anaximander conceived this to operate, but the term “separating out” suggests some process of shaking and sifting as in a sieve. Now it is just such a process that Plato makes the Pythagorean Timaios describe, and the most probable theory is certainly that here, as in many other cases, he has reproduced a genuinely early view. As we shall see, it is quite likely that the Pythagoreans should have followed Anaximander in this.[^[115]] In any case, it is wrong to identify the “eternal motion” with the diurnal revolution of the heavens, as has sometimes been done. That motion cannot possibly be eternal, for the simple reason that the heavens themselves are perishable. Aristotle says, indeed, that all who believe the world has come into being represent the earth as having been forced into the centre by the circular motion;[^[116]] but, though this doubtless refers to Anaximander among others, it is quite irrelevant here. It has to do only with the formation of the world after it has been once for all separated off and enclosed in its own heaven, and we shall have to remember it when we come to that part of the theory. At present, we have only to do with the motion of the Boundless itself; and, if we wish to picture that, it is much safer to regard it as a sort of shaking up and down which sorts out the opposites from the infinite mass.

The innumerable worlds.

18. We are told more than once that Anaximander believed there were “innumerable worlds in the Boundless,”[^[117]] and it is now usual to regard these with Zeller as an infinite series succeeding one another in time. It may be allowed at once that his disproof of the idea that the worlds are coexistent and eternal is decisive. To suppose that Anaximander regarded this or any other world as eternal, is a flat contradiction of everything we otherwise know, and of the Theophrastean tradition that he taught the world was perishable. We have, then, to decide between the view that, though all the worlds are perishable, there may be an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, and the view that a new world never comes into existence till the old one has passed away. Now, Zeller allows[^[118]] that there is nothing in the first of these views that is inconsistent with what we know of Anaximander; but he thinks all the statements which have come down to us point rather to the second. It seems to me that this is by no means the case, and, as the matter is of fundamental importance, it will be necessary to examine the evidence once more.

In the first place, the doxographical tradition proves that Theophrastos discussed the views of all the early philosophers as to whether there was one world or an infinite number, and there can be no doubt that, when he ascribed “innumerable worlds” to the Atomists, he meant coexistent and not successive worlds. Now, if he had really classed two such different views under one head, he would at least have been careful to point out in what respect they differed, and there is no trace of any such distinction in our tradition. On the contrary, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaos, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leukippos, Demokritos, and Epicurus are all mentioned together as holding the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” on all sides of this one,[^[119]] and the only distinction drawn between their views is that, while Epicurus made the distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the worlds were equidistant.[^[120]] Zeller rejected this evidence, which he supposed to be merely that of Stobaios, on the ground that we can have no confidence in a writer who attributes “innumerable worlds” to Anaximenes, Archelaos, and Xenophanes. With regard to the first two, I hope to show that the statement is quite correct, and that it is not even incorrect in the case of the last.[^[121]] In any case, it can be proved that the passage comes from Aetios,[^[122]] and there is no reason for doubting that, in the last resort, it is derived from Theophrastos, though the name of Epicurus may have been added later. This is still further confirmed by what Simplicius says in his commentary on the Physics.[^[123]]

Those who assumed innumerable worlds, e.g. Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, at a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into being and passed away ad infinitum, some always coming into being and others passing away.

It is probable that this too comes from Theophrastos through Alexander. Simplicius does not invent such things.

We come lastly to a very important statement which Cicero has copied from Philodemos, the author of the Epicurean treatise on Religion found at Herculaneum, or perhaps from the immediate source of that work. “Anaximander’s opinion was,” he makes Velleius say, “that there were gods who came into being, rising and passing away at long intervals, and that these were the innumerable worlds”;[^[124]] and this must clearly be taken along with the statement of Aetios to the effect that, according to Anaximander, the “innumerable heavens” were gods.[^[125]] Now it is very much more natural to understand the “long intervals” which Cicero mentions as intervals of space than as intervals of time;[^[126]] and, if we take the passage in this way, we have a perfect agreement among all our authorities.

It may be added that it is very unnatural to understand the statement that the Boundless “encompasses all the worlds” of worlds succeeding one another in time; for on this view there is at a given time only one world to “encompass.” Moreover, the argument mentioned by Aristotle that, if what is outside the heavens is infinite, body must be infinite, and there must be innumerable worlds, can only be understood in this sense, and is certainly intended to represent the reasoning of the Milesians; for they were the only cosmologists who held there was a boundless body outside the heavens.[^[127]] Lastly, we happen to know that Petron, one of the earliest Pythagoreans, held there were just one hundred and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle,[^[128]] which shows that views of this sort existed long before the Atomists, and looks like an attempt to introduce some order into Anaximander’s universe.

Origin of the heavenly bodies.

19. The doxographers have not left us in the dark as to the process by which the different parts of the world arose from the Boundless. The following statement comes ultimately from Theophrastos:—

He says that something capable of begetting hot and cold was separated off from the eternal at the origin of this world. From this arose a sphere of flame which grew round the air encircling the earth, as the bark grows round a tree. When this was torn off and enclosed in certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 19).

We see from this that when a portion of the Boundless had been separated off from the rest to form a world, it first of all differentiated itself into the two opposites, hot and cold. The hot appears as a sphere of flame surrounding the cold; the cold, as earth with air surrounding it. We are not told, however, in this extract how the cold came to be differentiated into earth, air, and water; but there is a passage in Aristotle’s Meteorology which throws some light on the subject. We read there:—

But those who are wiser in the wisdom of men give an origin for the sea. At first, they say, all the terrestrial region was moist; and, as it was dried up by the sun, the portion of it that evaporated produced the winds and the turnings of the sun and moon, while the portion left behind was the sea. So they think the sea is becoming smaller by being dried up, and that at last it will all be dry.—Meteor. Β, 1. 353 b 5.

And the same absurdity arises for those who say that the earth and the terrestrial part of the world at first were moist, but that air arose from the heat of the sun, and that the whole world was thus increased, and that this is the cause of winds and the turnings of the heavens.[^[129]]—Ib. 2. 355 a 21 (R. P. 20 a).

In his commentary on the passage, Alexander tells us that this was the view of Anaximander and Diogenes; and what he says is amply confirmed by Anaximander’s theory of the sea as it is given by the doxographers ([§ 20]). We conclude, then, that after the first separation of the hot and the cold, the heat of the sphere of flame turned part of the moist, cold interior of the world into air or vapour—it is all one at this date—and that the expansion of this mist broke up the sphere of flame itself into rings. I give the theory which he adopted to explain the origin of the heavenly bodies from these rings as it has been preserved by Hippolytos, with some supplements from Aetios:—

The heavenly bodies are wheels of fire separated off from the fire which encircles the world, and enclosed in air. And they have breathing-holes, certain pipe-like passages at which the heavenly bodies are seen. For this reason, too, when the breathing-holes are stopped, eclipses occur. And the moon appears now to wax and now to wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times the size (of the earth, while that) of the moon is eighteen times as large.[^[130]] The sun is highest of all, and lowest are the wheels of the fixed stars.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20).

Anaximander said the stars were hoop-like compressions of air, full of fire, breathing out flames at a certain point from orifices. The sun was highest of all, after it came the moon, and below these the fixed stars and the planets.—Aetios, ii. 13, 7; 15, 6 (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was a ring twenty-eight times the size of the earth, like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow and full of fire, showing the fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.—Aet. ii. 20, 1 (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was equal to the earth, but the ring from which it breathes out and by which it is carried round was twenty-seven times as large as the earth.—Aet. ii. 21, 1 (Dox. p. 351).

Anaximander said the moon was a ring eighteen times the size of the earth....—Aet. ii. 25, 1 (Dox. p. 355).[^[131]]

Anaximander held that thunder and lightning were caused by the blast. When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with violence, then the breakage of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift gives the appearance of a flash by contrast with the darkness of the cloud.—Aet. iii. 3, 1 (Dox. p. 367).

Anaximander held that wind was a current of air (i.e. vapour) which arose when its finest and moistest particles were set in motion or dissolved by the sun.—Aet. iii. 6, 1 (Dox. p. 374).

Rain was produced by the moisture drawn up from the earth by the sun.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6, 7 (Dox. p. 560).

We saw above that the sphere of flame was broken up into rings by the expansion of the air or vapour that its own heat had drawn up from the moist, cold interior. We must remember that Anaximander knew nothing of the ring of Saturn. There are three of these rings, that of the sun, that of the moon, and, lastly, nearest to the earth, the circle of the stars. The circle of the sun was twenty-seven times, and that of the moon eighteen times as large as the earth, from which we may perhaps infer that the circle of the stars was nine times as large. The numbers nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, play a considerable part in primitive cosmogonies.[^[132]] We do not see the rings of fire as complete circles; for the mist that formed them encloses the fire, and becomes an outer ring of opaque vapour. These outer rings, however, have openings at one point of their circumference, through which the fire escapes, and these are the heavenly bodies we actually see.[^[133]]

It will be observed that we only hear of three circles, and that the circle of the sun is the highest. The circle of the stars presents some difficulty. It is, in all probability, the Milky Way, the appearance of which may well have suggested the whole theory.[^[134]] It seems that Anaximander must have thought it had more “breathing-holes” than one, though the tradition is silent on this point. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that he regarded it as a sphere. He could not have failed to see that a sphere so placed would make the sun and moon permanently invisible. What, then, are we to say of the fixed stars that do not lie in the Milky Way? There seems to be no way of accounting for them unless we assume that they are the “innumerable worlds” which we have just discussed. As the fire and air which surrounded the world have been broken up into rings, we must be able to see right out into the Boundless, and the fixed stars must be just the worlds, each surrounded by its fiery envelope. It does not seem possible to explain all we are told in any other way; and, if this is right, the statement of some authors, that Anaximander regarded the stars of heaven as gods, may be more than the mere mistake which it is now generally taken to be.[^[135]]

The explanation given of thunder and lightning was very similar. They too were caused by fire breaking through compressed air, that is to say, through the storm-clouds. It seems probable that this is really the origin of the theory, and that Anaximander explained the heavenly bodies on the analogy of lightning, not vice versa. That would be in perfect agreement with the meteorological interest of the time.

Earth and sea.

20. We turn now to what we are told of the origin of earth and sea from the moist, cold matter which was “separated off” in the beginning, and which filled the inside of the sphere of flame:—

The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it.—Aet. iii. 16, 1 (R. P. 20 a).

He says that the earth is cylindrical in form, and that its depth is as a third part of its. breadth.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.).

The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is convex and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the surfaces, and the other is on the opposite side.[^[136]]—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20).

Adopting for a moment the later theory of “elements,” we see that Anaximander put fire on one side as “the hot,” and all the rest on the other as “the cold,” which is also moist. This may explain how Aristotle came to speak of the Boundless as intermediate between fire and water. And we have seen also that the moist element was partly turned into “air” or vapour by the fire, which explains how he could say the Boundless was something between fire and air, or between air and water.[^[137]]

The moist, cold interior of the world is not, it will be noticed, pure water. It is always called “the moist” or “the moist state.” That is because it has to be still further differentiated under the influence of heat into earth, water, and vapour. The gradual drying up of the water by the fire is a good example of what Anaximander meant by “injustice.” And we see how this injustice brings about the destruction of the world. The fire will in time dry up and burn up the whole of the cold, moist element. But then it will not be fire any longer; it will simply be the “mixture,” if we choose to call it so, of the hot and cold—that is, it will be the same as the Boundless which surrounds it, and will pass away into it.

The view which Anaximander takes of the earth is a great advance upon anything we can reasonably attribute to Thales, and Aristotle has preserved the arguments by which he supported it. It is equally distant from the extremes in every direction, and there is no reason for it to move up or down or sideways.[^[138]] Still, he does not attain to the idea that it is spherical. He believes that we live on a convex disc, and from this the cylindrical form follows as a matter of course. The really remarkable thing is that he should have seen, however dimly, that there is no absolute up and down in the world.

Animals.

21. We have seen enough to show us that the speculations of Anaximander about the world were of an extremely daring character; we come now to the crowning audacity of all, his theory of the origin of living creatures. The Theophrastean account of this has been well preserved by the doxographers:—

Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the beginning.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 22 a).

The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier part. When the bark broke off,[^[139]] they survived for a short time.—Aet. v. 19, 1 (R. P. 22).

Further, he says that originally man was born from animals of another species. His reason is that while other animals quickly find food by themselves, man alone requires a lengthy period of suckling. Hence, had he been originally as he is now, he would never have survived.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.).

He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes, and after having been reared like sharks,[^[140]] and become capable of protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to land.—Plut. Symp. Quaest. 730 f (R. P. ib.).

The importance of these statements has sometimes been overrated and still more often underestimated. Anaximander has been called a precursor of Darwin by some, while others have treated the whole thing as a mythological survival. It is therefore important to notice that this is one of the rare cases where we have not merely a placitum, but an indication, meagre though it be, of the observations on which it was based, and the line of argument by which it was supported. It is clear from this that Anaximander had an idea of what is meant by adaptation to environment and survival of the fittest, and that he saw the higher mammals could not represent the original type of animal. For this he looked to the sea, and he naturally fixed upon those fishes which present the closest analogy to the mammalia. The statements of Aristotle about the galeus levis were shown long ago by Johannes Müller to be more accurate than those of later naturalists, and we now know that these observations were already made by Anaximander. The manner in which the shark nourishes its young furnished him with the very thing he required to explain the survival of the earliest animals.[^[141]]

Theology.

22. In the course of our discussion of the “innumerable worlds” we saw that Anaximander regarded these as gods. It is true, of course, as Zeller says,[^[142]] that to the Greeks the word θεός meant primarily an object of worship, and he rightly adds that no one would think of worshipping innumerable worlds. This, however, is no real objection to our interpretation, though it serves to bring out an interesting point in the development of Greek theological ideas. The philosophers, in fact, departed altogether from the received usage of the word θεός. Empedokles called the Sphere and the Elements gods, though it is not to be supposed that he regarded them as objects of worship, and in the same way we shall find that Diogenes of Apollonia spoke of Air as a god.[^[143]] As we may learn from the Clouds of Aristophanes, it was just this way of speaking that got philosophers the name of being ἄθεοι. It is of great importance to bear this point in mind; for, when we come to Xenophanes, we shall see that the god or gods he spoke of meant just the world or worlds. It seems also that Anaximander called the Boundless itself divine,[^[144]] which is quite in accordance with the language of Empedokles and Diogenes referred to above.

III. Anaximenes

Life.

23. Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, was, according to Theophrastos[Theophrastos], an “associate” of Anaximander.[^[145]] Apollodoros said, it appears, that he “flourished” about the time of the fall of Sardeis (546/5 B.C.), and died in Ol. LXIII. (528/524 B.C.).[^[146]] In other words, he was born when Thales “flourished,” and “flourished” when Thales died, and this means that Apollodoros had no definite information about his date at all. He most probably made him die in the sixty-third Olympiad because that gives just a hundred years, or three generations, for the Milesian school from the birth of Thales. We cannot, therefore, say anything positive as to his date, except that he must have been younger than Anaximander, and must have flourished before 494 B.C., when the school was, of course, broken up by the destruction of Miletos.

His book.

24. Anaximenes wrote a book which certainly survived until the age of literary criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and unpretentious Ionic,[^[147]] very different, we may suppose, from the poetical prose of Anaximander.[^[148]] We may probably trust this criticism, which comes ultimately from Theophrastos; and it furnishes a good illustration of the truth that the character of a man’s thoughts is sure to find expression in his style. We have seen that the speculations of Anaximander were distinguished for their hardihood and breadth; those of Anaximenes are marked by just the opposite quality. He appears to have thought out his system carefully, but he rejects the more audacious theories of his predecessor. The result is that, while his view of the world is on the whole much less like the truth than Anaximander’s, it is more fruitful in ideas that were destined to hold their ground.

Theory of the primary substance.

25. Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastos wrote a special monograph;[^[149]] and this gives us an additional guarantee for the trustworthiness of the tradition derived from his great work. The following[^[150]] are the passages which seem to contain the fullest and most accurate account of what he had to say on the central feature of the system:—

Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, who had been an associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was indeterminate, like Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it was Air.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

From it, he said, the things that are, and have been, and shall be, the gods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come from its offspring.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).

“Just as,” he said, “our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.”—Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).

And the form of the air is as follows. Where it is most even, it is invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture and motion, make it visible. It is always in motion; for, if it were not, it would not change so much as it does.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).

It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and condensation.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds, on the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by felting;[^[151]] and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water, condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it can be, to stones.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28).[^[152]]

Rarefaction and condensation.

26. At the first glance, this undoubtedly looks like a falling off from the more refined doctrine of Anaximander to a cruder view; but a moment’s reflexion will show that this is not altogether the case. On the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into the theory is a notable advance.[^[153]] In fact, it makes the Milesian cosmology thoroughly consistent for the first time; since it is clear that a theory which explains everything by the transformations of a single substance is bound to regard all differences as purely quantitative. The infinite substance of Anaximander, from which the opposites “in it” are “separated out,” cannot, strictly speaking, be thought of as homogeneous, and the only way to save the unity of the primary substance is to say that all diversities are due to the presence of more or less of it in a given space. And when once this important step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to make the primary substance something “distinct from the elements,” to use Aristotle’s inaccurate but convenient phrase; it may just as well be one of them.

Air.

27. The air that Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should not call by that name. In its normal condition, when most evenly distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our “air”; it is identical with the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is why he called it πνεῦμα. On the other hand, the old idea, familiar to us in Homer, that mist or vapour is condensed air, is still accepted without question. In other words, we may say that Anaximenes supposed it to be a good deal easier to get liquid air than it has since proved to be. It was Empedokles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we call air was a distinct corporeal substance, and was not identical either with vapour or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists “air” is always a form of vapour, and even darkness is a form of it. It was Empedokles who cleared up this point too by showing that darkness is a shadow.[^[154]]

It was natural for Anaximenes to fix upon Air in this sense as the primary substance; for, in the system of Anaximander, it occupied an intermediate place between the two fundamental opposites, the sphere of flame and the cold, moist mass within it ([§ 19]). We know from Plutarch that he fancied air became warmer when rarefied, and colder when condensed. Of this he satisfied himself by a curious experimental proof. When we breathe with our mouths open, the air is warm; when we breathe with our lips closed, it is cold.[^[155]]

The world breathes.

28. This argument from human breathing brings us to an important point in the theory of Anaximenes, which is attested by the single fragment that has come down to us.[^[156]] “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” The primary substance bears the same relation to the life of the world as to that of man. Now this, we shall see, was the Pythagorean view;[^[157]] and it is also an early instance of the argument from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and so marks the first beginnings of an interest in physiological matters.

The parts of the world.

29. We turn now to the doxographical tradition concerning the formation of the world and its parts:—

He says that, as the air was felted, the earth first came into being. It is very broad and is accordingly supported by the air.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3 (R. P. 25).

In the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are of a fiery nature, are supported by the air because of their breadth. The heavenly bodies were produced from the earth by moisture rising from it. When this is rarefied, fire comes into being, and the stars are composed of the fire thus raised aloft. There were also bodies of earthy substance in the region of the stars, revolving along with them. And he says that the heavenly bodies do not move under the earth, as others suppose, but round it, as a cap turns round our head. The sun is hidden from sight, not because it goes under the earth, but because it is concealed by the higher parts of the earth, and because its distance from us becomes greater. The stars give no heat because of the greatness of their distance.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 4-6 (R. P. 28).

Winds are produced when air is condensed and rushes along under propulsion; but when it is concentrated and thickened still more, clouds are generated; and, lastly, it turns to water.[^[158]]—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 7 (Dox. p. 561).

The stars are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the heavens.—Aet. ii. 14, 3 (Dox. p. 344).

They do not go under the earth, but turn round it.—Ib. 16, 6 (Dox. p. 346).

The sun is fiery.—Ib. 20, 2 (Dox. p. 348).

It is broad like a leaf.—Ib. 22, 1 (Dox. p. 352).

The heavenly bodies are diverted from their courses by the resistance of compressed air.—Ib. 23, 1 (Dox. p. 352).

The moon is of fire.—Ib. 25, 2 (Dox. p. 356).

Anaximenes explained lightning like Anaximander, adding as an illustration what happens in the case of the sea, which flashes when divided by the oars.—Ib. iii. 3, 2 (Dox. p. 368).

Hail is produced when water freezes in falling; snow, when there is some air imprisoned in the water.—Aet. iii 4, 1 (Dox. p. 370).

The rainbow is produced when the beams of the sun fall on thick condensed air. Hence the anterior part of it seems red, being burnt by the sun’s rays, while the other part is dark, owing to the predominance of moisture. And he says that a rainbow is produced at night by the moon, but not often, because there is not constantly a full moon, and because the moon’s light is weaker than that of the sun.—Schol. Arat.[^[159]] (Dox. p. 231).

The earth was like a table in shape.—Aet. iii. 10, 3 (Dox. p. 377).

The cause of earthquakes was the dryness and moisture of the earth, occasioned by droughts and heavy rains respectively.—Ib. 15, 3 (Dox. p. 379).

We have seen that Anaximenes was quite justified in going back to Thales in regard to his general theory of the primary substance; but it cannot be denied that the effect of this upon the details of his cosmology was unfortunate. The earth is once more imagined as a table-like disc floating upon the air. The sun, moon, and planets are also fiery discs which float on the air “like leaves.” It follows that the heavenly bodies cannot be thought of as going under the earth at night, but only as going round it laterally like a cap or a millstone.[^[160]] This curious view is also mentioned in Aristotle’s Meteorology,[^[161]] where the elevation of the northern parts of the earth, which makes it possible for the heavenly bodies to be hidden from sight, is referred to. In fact, whereas Anaximander had regarded the orbits of the sun, moon, and stars as oblique with reference to the earth, Anaximenes regarded the earth itself as inclined. The only real advance is the distinction of the planets, which float freely in the air, from the fixed stars, which are fastened to the “crystalline” vault of the sky.[^[162]]

The earthy bodies, which circulate among the planets, are doubtless intended to account for eclipses and the phases of the moon.[^[163]]

Innumerable worlds.

30. As might be expected, there is the same difficulty about the “innumerable worlds” ascribed to Anaximenes as about those of Anaximander, and most of the arguments given above ([§ 18]) apply here also. The evidence, however, is far less satisfactory. Cicero says that Anaximenes regarded air as a god, and adds that it came into being.[^[164]] That there is some confusion here is obvious. Air, as the primary substance, is certainly eternal, and it is quite likely that Anaximenes called it “divine,” as Anaximander did the Boundless; but it is certain that he also spoke of gods who came into being and passed away. These arose, he said, from the air. This is expressly stated by Hippolytos,[^[165]] and also by St. Augustine.[^[166]] These gods are probably to be explained like Anaximander’s. Simplicius, indeed, takes another view;[^[167]] but he may have been misled by a Stoic authority.

Influence of Anaximenes.

31. It is not quite easy for us to realise that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, and for long after, Anaximenes was a much more important figure than Anaximander. And yet the fact is certain. We shall see that Pythagoras, though he followed Anaximander in his account of the heavenly bodies, was far more indebted to Anaximenes for his general theory of reality ([§ 53]). We shall see further that when, at a later date, science revived once more in Ionia, it was “the philosophy of Anaximenes” to which it attached itself ([§ 122]). Anaxagoras adopted many of his most characteristic views ([§ 135]), and some of them even found their way into the cosmology of the Atomists.[^[168]] Diogenes of Apollonia went back to the central doctrine of Anaximenes, and once more made Air the primary substance, though he also tried to combine it with the theories of Anaxagoras ([§ 188]). We shall come to all this later on; but it seemed desirable to point out at once that Anaximenes marks the culminating point of the line of thought which started with Thales, and to show how the “philosophy of Anaximenes” came to mean the Milesian doctrine as a whole. This it can only have done because it was really the work of a school, of which Anaximenes was the last distinguished representative, and because his contribution to it was one that completed the system he had inherited from his predecessors. That the theory of rarefaction and condensation was really such a completion of the Milesian system, we have seen already ([§ 26]), and it need only be added that a clear realisation of this fact will be the best clue at once to the understanding of the Milesian cosmology itself and to that of the systems which followed it. In the main, it is from Anaximenes that they all start.

[52]. Herod. i. 29. Some other points may be noted in confirmation of what has been said as to the “Hellenism” of the Mermnadai. Alyattes had two wives, one of whom, the mother of Croesus, was a Karian; the other was an Ionian, and by her he had a son called by the Greek name Pantaleon (ib. 92). The offerings of Gyges were pointed out in the treasury of Kypselos at Delphoi (ib. 14), and those of Alyattes were one of the “sights” of the place (ib. 25). Croesus also showed great liberality to Delphoi (ib. 50), and to many other Greek shrines (ib. 92). He gave most of the pillars for the great temple at Ephesos. The stories of Miltiades (vi. 37) and Alkmeon (ib. 125) should also be mentioned in this connexion.

[53]. Herod. i. 75. He disbelieves it because he had heard, probably from the Greeks of Sinope, of the great antiquity of the bridge on the royal road between Ankyra and Pteria (Ramsay, Asia Minor, p. 29). Xanthos recorded a tradition that it was Thales who induced Croesus to ascend his pyre when he knew a shower was coming (fr. 19).

[54]. Milesians at Naukratis, Herod. ii. 178, where Amasis is said to have been φιλέλλην. He subscribed to the rebuilding of the temple at Delphoi after the great fire (ib. 180).

[55]. Simplicius, indeed, quotes from Theophrastos the statement that Thales had many predecessors (Dox. p. 475, 11). This, however, need not trouble us; for the scholiast on Apollonios Rhodios (ii. 1248) tells us that Theophrastos made Prometheus the first philosopher, which is merely an application of Peripatetic literalism to a remark of Plato’s (Phileb. 16 c 6). Cf. Appendix, [§ 2].

[56]. Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d.); Diog. i. 22 (R. P. 9).

[57]. Strabo, xiv. pp. 633, 636; Pausan. vii. 2, 7. Priene was called Kadme, and the oldest annalist of Miletos bore the name Kadmos. See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 158.