THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF Mrs* F. M. Foster i HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY HISTORY OP ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY BY DR. W. WINDELBAND PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITT OF STRASSBURQ ^utj)0ri|eti Cranglation BY HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY IN TUFTS COLLEGE FEOM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1899 Copyright, 1899, By Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. GIFi 4 6S^^^£^ 2anibf rsttg Press : John Wn.soN and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. TO WILLIAM R. SHIPMAN, LL.D. Professor of EntjItsI) in ^Tufts (Collcfle, MV FRIEND AND COUNSELLOR. lVl633ri:i6 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Professor Windelband's Geschichte der Alien Philo- Sophie is already well known to German philosophical readers as one of the famous Miiller series of hand-books, and yet to that wider circle of English readers it is still a foreign book. In many quarters technical scholars of Greek philosophy have already commended its important innovations, and to these its erudition and scholarship are patent. In its translation, however, under the title of "The History of Ancient Philosophy," it will reach the general reader and serve as an introduction to the beginner in phi- losophy. I have personally never been able to see why the approaches to the study of philosophy have been made as difficult and uninviting as possible. In other hard sub- jects all sorts of helps and devices are used to allure the beginner within. Into philosophy the beginner has always had to force his way with no indulgent hand to help. In the past the history of thought has too often been entirely separated from the history of affairs, as if the subjec- tive historical processes could have been possible with- out the objective concrete events. Professor Windelband has gone far to lead the general reader to the history of thought through the history of the affairs of the Greek nation. This is, to my mind, the difficult but absolutely necessary task of the historian of thought, if he wishes to reach any but technical philosophers. This work occu- Vlll PREFACE pies a unique position in this respect, and may mark the beginning of an epoch in the rewriting of the history of philosophy. I am indebted to many friends for help in my transla- tion of this work. The reader will allow me to mention in particular Professor George H. Palmer, of Harvard, my friend and former teacher, for introducing me to tlie work ; and my colleagues, Professor Charles St. Clair Wade for much exceedingly valuable assistance, and especially Pro- fessors Charles E. Fay and Leo R. Lewis, whose generous and untiring aid in the discussion of the whole I shall ever remember. Whatever merits the translation may have, are due in no small measure to their help; for whatever defects may appear, I can hold only myself responsible. So complete are the bibliographies here and elsewhere that I have found it necessary to append only a list of such works as are helpful to the English reader of Ancient Philosophy. HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN. Tufts College, June, 1899. PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION Having undertaken to prepare a r^sum^ of the history of ancient philosophy for the Handhuch der Klassischen Alter- tumsivissenschaft, it seemed expedient to offer to my trained readers, not an extract from the history of the literature of the Greeks and Romans, which can be found elsewhere ; but rather a short and clear presentation, such as would awaken interest and give an insight into the subject matter and the development of ancient philosophy. The necessity of a new edition gives evidence that this presentation has won itself friends far beyond the circle of those most nearly interested. This, moreover, would not have hap- pened had I not abandoned the idea of presenting a col- lation from the data usually furnished, and had I not given to the subject the form which my long personal experience as an academic teacher had proved to be most available. As a result I found myself in the somewhat painful posi- tion of being compelled to present didactically many very considerable deviations from the previous conception and treatment, without being able in the limitations of this r^sum^ to advance for experts my reasons save in short references. I should have been very glad if I could have found time to justify my innovations by accompanying de- tailed discussions. But, unfortunately, the execution of my whole purpose has been postponed up to this time through more important and imperative tasks. The new X PREFACE edition, therefore, finds me again in the same position of being compelled to trust more in the force of the general relations of the subject matter and in the emphasis briefly laid upon important moments, than in a leisurely extended polemical presentation, which would otherwise have been usual in this particular field. For the chief matters in which I have gone my own ways — the separation of Pythagoras from the Pythagoreans and the discussion of the latter under " Efforts toward Reconciliation between Heracleitanism and the Theory of Parmenides," the separation of the two phases of Atomism by the Protagorean Sophistic, the juxtaposition of Democ- ritus and Plato, the conception of the Hellenic-Roman phil- osophy as a progressive application — first ethical and then religious — of science, to which I have also organically con- nected Patristics, — all this the reader finds unchanged in its essentials. My treatment of these questions has found recognition in many quarters, but in many also an expected opposition; and the reader may be assured that I have always been grateful for this latter, and have given it care- ful consideration. This weighing of objections was the more needful since I had occasion in the mean time to deal with the same questions in a larger connection and from a different point of view. The trained eye will not fail to recognize in this second edition the influence of the objec- tions of experts, even where these have not convinced me, in the numerous small changes in the presentation, and in the choice of bibliography and citations. Here, again, the revising hand needed to follow many a kindly suggestion in the discussions of this book, and accept many a gratifying explanation in the works that have appeared during the past five years. The only change in the external form of the book is in the very desirable addition of an index to the philosophers discussed. TREFACE xi Then may my brief treatise continue to fulfil its task : to solicit friends appreciative of a noble cause, to preserve alive the consciousness of the imperishable worth which the creations of Greek thought possess for all human culture. WILHELM WINDELBAND. Strasburg, April, 1893. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Translator's Preface vii Author's Preface (to second German edition) ... ix INTRODUCTION 1. Significance of ancient philosophy to European civilization 1 2. Division of ancient philosophy 3 3. Historical methods 5 4-6. Sources and developments of ancient philosophy ... 8 A. — GREEK PHILOSOPHY Introduction : The preliminary conditions of philosophy in the Greek intellectual life of the seventh and sixth cen- turies b. c 16-292 7. Geographical survey 16 8. Social and political relations 17 9. The period of ethical reflection : the Seven Wise Men . . 18 10. Practical and special learning 20 11. Religious ideas 26 12. The reformation by Pythagoras 28 13. The first problems of science 33 1. The Milesian Nature Philosophy. Pages 36-45. 14. Thales • . 36 15. Anaximander 39 16. Anaximenes 43 xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 2. The Metaphysical Conflict. — Heracleitus and THE Eleatics. Pages 46-71. 17. Xenophanes 46 18. Heracleitus 52 19. Parmenides 59 20. Zeno and Melissus 65 3. Efforts toward Reconciliation. Pages 71-100. 21. Empedocles ^ . . . . 73 22. Anaxagoras 80 23. The beginnings of Atomism : Leucippus 87 24. The Pythagoreans 93 4. The Greek Enlightenment. — The Sophists AND Socrates. Pages 100-151. 25. Eclecticism and special research 100 26. The Sophists 108 27. Socrates 123 28. The Megarian and Elean-Eretrian Schools 135 29. The Cynic School 140 30. The Cyrenaic School 145 5. Materialism and Idealism. — Democritus and Plato. Pages 151-223. 31. The life and writings of Democritus 155 32. The theoretic philosophy of Democritus 159 33. The practical philosophy of Democritus 170 34. The life and writings of Plato 174 35. The theory of Ideas of Plato 189 36. The ethics of Plato 204 37. The nature philosophy of Plato 216 6. Aristotle. Pages 224-292. 38. The Older Academy 224 30. The life and writings of Aristotle 230 40. The logic of Aristotle 247 41. The metaphysics of Aristotle 257 42. The physics of Aristotle 268 43. The ethics and poetics of Aristotle 282 TABLE OF CONTENTS xv B. — HELLENIC-ROMAN PHILOSOFHY Paob 44. Introduction 293 1. The Controversies of the Schools. Pages 298-329 45. The Peripatetics 298 46. The Stoics 303 47. The Epicureans 319 2. Skepticism and Syncretism. Pages 329-349. 48. The Skeptics 329 49. Eclecticism 337 60. Mystic Platoiiism 341 3. Patristics. Pages 349-365. 51. The Apologists 352 52. The Gnostics and their opponents 355 53. The Alexandrian School of Catechists. Origen .... 361 4. Neo-Platonism. Pages 365-383. 54. The Alexandrian School : Plotinus 366 55. The Syrian School : Jamblichus 375 56. The Athenian School : Proclus 377 BIBLIOGRAPHY 385 INDEX 389 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION 1. Scientific interest in ancient, especially in Greek, philosophy, is not confined to the value that it possesses as a peculiar subject for historical research and for the study of the growth of civilization. But it is also equally con- cerned in the permanent significance that the content of ancient thought possesses by reason of its place in the development of the intellectual life of Europe. The emphasis falls primarily upon the lifting of mere knowing to the plane of systematic knowledge, or science. Not content with his storing of practical facts, and with his fantastic speculations born of his religious needs, the Greek sought knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge, like art, was developed as an independent function from its involvement in the other activities of civilization. So, first and foremost, the history of ancient philosophy is an insight into the origin of European science in general. It is, however, at the same time the history of the birth of the separate sciences. For the process of differentia- tion, which begins with distinguishing thought from con- duct and mythology, was continued within the domain of science itself. With the accumulation and organic ar- rangement of its facts, the early, simple, and unitary science to which the Greeks gave the name <^L\oao(f>La, divided into 2 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY the special sciences, the single cf^iXoaocjyiai, and these then continued to develop on more or less independent lines. Concerning the history and meaning of the name of " phi- losophy," see especially R. Haym, in Ersch and Gruber's Ency- Mopddie^ III. division, vol. 24 ; Ueberweg, Grundriss^ I. § 1 ; Windelbaud, FraeXudien^ p. 1 ff. The word became a technical term in the Socratic school. It meant there exactly what sci- ence means in German. In later time, after the division into the special sciences, the word philosophy had the sense of ethico-religious practical wisdom. See § 2. The beginnings of scientific life that are thus found in ancient philosophy are most influential upon the entire development that follows. With proportionately few data, Greek philosophy produced, with a kind of grand simplicity, conceptual forms for the intellectual elaboration of its facts, and with a remorseless logic it developed every essential point of view for the study of the universe. Therein con- sists the peculiar character of ancient thought and the high didactic significance of its history. Our present language and our conception of the world are thoroughly permeated by the results of ancient science. The naive ruggedness with wdiich ancient philosophers followed out single motives of reflection to their most one-sided logical conclusions, brings into clearest relief that practical and psychological necessity which governs not only the evolution of the problems of philosophy, but also the repeated historical tendencies toward the solution of these problems. We may likewise ascribe a typical significance to the universal stages of development of ancient philosophy, in view of the fact that philosophy at first turned with undaunted courage to the study of the outer world ; thwarted there, it turned back to the inner world, and from this point of view, with renewed strength, it attempted to conceive the World- All. Even the manner in which ancient thought placed its entire apparatus of conceptual knowledge at the service of INTHODUCTION 3 social and religious needs has a peculiar and more than historical value. The real significance of ancient philosophy will be much ex- aggerated if one tries to draw close analogies between the dif- ferent phases of modern philosophy and its exponents, and those of the ancients. Read K. v. Reichlin-Meldegg, D. Pared- lelismus d. alien u. neuen Philosophies Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1865. A detailed parallelism is impossible, because all the forms of the modern history of civilization have so much more nearly complete presuppositions, and are more complicated than those of the ancient world. The typical character of the latter is valid in so far as they have " writ large" and often nearly grotesquely the simple and elemental forms of mental life, which among moderns are far more complicated in their combinations. 2. The total of that which is usually designated as ancient philosophy falls into two large divisions, which must be distinguished as much in respect to the civilizations that form their background as in respect to the intel- lectual principles that move them. These divisions are, (1) Greek philosophy, and (2) Hellenic-Roman philosophy. '^^ We may assume the year of the death of Aristotle, 322 b. c, as the historical line of demarcation between the two. Greek philosophy grew out of an exclusive national culture, and is the legitimate offspring of the Greek spirit. The Hellenic-Roman philosophy came, on the other hand, out of much more manifold and contradictory intellectual movements. After the days of Alexander the Great a culture that was so cosmopolitan that it broke down all national barriers, increased in ever-widening circles among the nations upon the Mediterranean Sea. The fulfilment of these intellectual movements was objectively expressed in the Roman Empire, subjectively in Christianity ; and, be it remarked, the Hellenic-Roman philosophy forms one of the mightiest factors in this very process of amalgamation. Moreover, there is a not less important difference in the scientific interest of the two periods. Greek philosophy 4 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY began with an independent desire for knowledge. It was ever concerned in the quest for knowledge that was free from all subordinate purposes. It perfected itself in Aris- totle, partly in his logic, which was a universal theory of knowledge, and partly in the scheme of a developed system of sciences. The energy of this purely theoretic interest was gradually extinguished in the following time, and was only partly maintained in unpretentious work upon the objective special sciences. The practical question how the Wise Man should live entered into " philosophy," however, and knowledge was no longer sought on account of itself but as a means of right living. In this way the Hellenic- Roman philosophy fell into dependence upon the general but temporary changes in society, — a thing that never happened in purely Greek philosophy. Then later its original ethical tendency changed entirely into the effort to find by means of science a satisfaction for religious aspira- tion. In Greece, philosophy, therefore, was science that had ripened into independence ; in Hellenism and the Roman Empire, philosophy entered with a full possession of its consciousness into the service of the social and religious mission of man. It is obvious, from the elasticity of all historical divisions, that this antithesis is not absolute, but only relative. The post- Aristotelian philosophy is not entirely lacking in endeavors for the essentially theoretical, nor indeed among the purely Greek thinkers are there wanting those who set for philosophy ultimately practical ends, — the Socratics for example. How- ever, comparison of the different definitions which in the course of antiquity have been given for the problem of philosophy, justifies, on the whole, the division we have chosen, which takes the purpose of philosophy in its entirety as the principium divisionis. These divisions approach most nearly among later writers those of Ch. A. Brandis in his shorter work, Gesch. d. Entwick. d. gn'echischen Phil. u. Hirer Nachimrkiuigen im romisclien lieiche (2 vols., Berlin, 18(52 and 1864), although he distin- guishes formally three periods here, as in his larger work. INTRODUCTION 5 These periods are: (1) pre-Socratic philosophy; (2) the devel- opmeut from Socrates to Aristotle; (3) post-Aristoteliau phi- losophy. Yet he unites the first two divisions as " the first half," and distinctly recognizes their inner relationship in con- trast to the third division, which forms "the second half." Zeller and Schweglcr also employ these three periods as the basis of their work upon the Greeks, while Ritter puts the Stoics andf Epicureans also in the second period. Hegel, on the other hand, treats the entire Greek philosophy until Aris- totle as the first period, to w^hich he adds the Graeco-Roman philosophy as the second and the neo-Platonic philosophy as the third. Ueberweg accepts the divisions of Ritter, with this variation, — he transfers the Sophists from the first period to the second. We purposely desist from dividing here the two chief periods of philosophy into subordinate periods. The demand for com- prehensiveness, which alone would justify further divisions, is satisfied with the simple general divisions, while a comprehen- sive view of the steps in development is provided for in another manner by the treatment of individual doctrines. If a completer subdivision should be insisted upon, the following might be adopted : — (a) Greek philosophy into three periods : — (1) The cosmological, which includes the entire pre-Socratic speculation, and reaches down to about 450 b. c. (§§ 1-3) ; (2) The anthropological, to which belong the men of the Greek Enlightenment, i. e., the Sophists, Socrates, and the so- called Socratic schools (§ 4) ; (3) The systematic, which by its uniting the two preceding periods is the flowering period of Greek science. (6) Hellenic-Roman philosophy into two sections : — (1) The school-controversies of the post- Aristotelian time, with the accompanying essential ethical tendency, critical skep- ticism, and retrospective erudition (§§1 and 2). (2) Eclectic Platonism, with its bifurcation into the rival sys- tems of Christian and neo-Platonic religions (§§3 and 4). 3. The scientific treatment of the history of philosophy or of a part of that history, as in this treatise, has a double task. On the one hand it must determine the actual number of those concepts which are claimed to be " philosophic," and must conceive them in their genesis, particularly in their relation to each other. On the other 6 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY hand, it must determine the value of each individual philosophic doctrine in the development of the scientific consciousness. In the first regard the history of philosophy is purely an historical science. As such, it must without any predilec- tion proceed, by a careful examination of the tradition, to establish with philological exactness the content of the philosophic doctrines. It must explain their origin with all the precautionary measures of the historical method. It furthermore must make clear their genetic relations, on the one hand, to the personal life of the philosophers, and, on the other, to civilization as a whole. In this way it will be plain how philosophy has attained to an actual process of development. From this historical point of view, however, there arises for the history of philosophy the critical task of determin- ing the results which the various systems of philosophy have yielded for the construction of the human concep- tion of the world. The point of view for this critical study need not be the peculiar philosophical attitude of history. Nevertheless it must, on the one hand, be that of inner criticism, which tests the teaching of a philosophical sys- tem by logical compatibility and consistency ; it must, on the other hand, be that of historical generalization, which estimates philosophical teaching according to its intellec- tual fruitfulncss and its practical historical efficacy . The history of ancient philosophy as a science has to meet very great and sometimes insuperable difficulties in the fragmentary character of the literary sources. On the other liand, in its critical ])roblem, it is fortunate in being able, after a development of nearly two thousand years, to judge the value of individual teaching with no personal bias. The different points of view taken in investigating the his- tory of philosophy are as follows : — INTRODUCTION 7 (1) The iiaiVe point of view of description. According to this tiie teachings of the different pliilosophers are supposed to be reported with historical authenticity. So soon, however, as any report is claimed to be of scientific value, the tradition must be criticised ; and this, as all other historical criticism, can be accomplished only by investigating the sources. (2) The genetic point of view of explanation^ which has three possible forms, — (a) The psychological explanation. This represents the per- sonalit}^ and individual relations of the respective philosophers as tlie actual causes or occasions of their opinions. (6) The pragmatic method. This is an attempt to under- stand the teaching of each philosopher by explaining the contra- dictions and unsolved problems of his immediate predecessors. (c) The kultur-historisch view. This sees in the philosophical systems the progressive consciousness of the entire ideal de- velopment of the human mind. (3) The speculative attitude of criticism. Starting from a systematic conviction, this seeks to characterize the different phases of philosophical development by the contributions thereto wliicli they have severally furnished- (Compare Hegel, in Vor- lesunyen ilber d. Gesch. d. Phil., Complete Works ^ Vol. XIII. 19 ff. ; Ueberweg, Grundriss, I. § 3 ; Comjylete Works, Gesch. d. Phil., Freiburg i.B.,1892,§§l and 2.) Until within the previous century enumeration of the placita philosop)horum, with some little application of the pragmatic method, essentially predomi- nated in the history of philosophy. Hegel, with all the exagger- ation of this speculative point of view, was the first to raise philosophy from a mere collection of curiosities to a science. His constructive and fundamental idea — that in the historical order of philosophical theories the categories of true philoso- phy repeat themselves as progressive achievements of human- ity — involved an emphasis upon the kidtui'-historisch and the pragmatic explanations, and this required only the individual- istic p)sychological supplementation. On account of Hegel's speculative conception, on the other hand, historical criticism fell with the disappearance of faith in the absolute philosophy. By this historical criticism the mere establishment of the facts and their genetic explanation are changed into a complete philo- sophical science. Hegel created the science of the history of philosophy according to its ideal purposes, but not until after his day was safe ground presented for achieving such a science by the philological method of getting the data without presupposi- tions. Upon no territory has this method since recorded such far-reaching success as upon the field of ancient philosophy. % 8 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 4. The scientific helps to the study of ancient philos- ophy fall into three classes : — (a) The Original Sources. Only a very few of the writings of ancient philosophers have been preserved. As to complete single works in the purely Greek philos- ophy, they are to be found only in Plato and Aristotle.^ The original sources, however, are richer in the Hellenic- Eoman period. The writings of the ancient Greek think- ers are preserved in only a fragmentary way through incidental citations of later literature. The most comprehensive collection not especially mentioned hereafter, is that of F. W. A. Mullach, Fragmenta philosoplio- rum Gra'corum (3 vols., Paris, 1860-81). Yet it satisfies to- day neither the demands for completeness nor for accuracy. Nevertheless the works that have come down to us are by no means to be accepted in toto and on trust. Not alone unintentionally, but also from its desire to give to its own teaching, so far as possible, the nimbus of ancient wisdom, later antiquity substituted in many instances its own compositions for the writings of the ancients, or in- terpolated their texts. The sources of Greek philosophy in particular are not only in a very fragmentary but also in a very uncertain state, and we are still limited to a conjecture of a greater or less degree of probability in regard to many very weighty questions. The philological- historical criticism, which seems indispensable imder these circumstances, requires a safe criterion for our guidance, and this criterion we possess in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Opposed to tlie easy credulity with which in the previous century (according to Buble) tradition was receive J, Schleier- maclier liad the especial merit of having begun ai d incited a fruitful criticism. Brandis, Trendelenburg, Zeller, and Diels were likewise the leaders in this direction. 5. (^>) TJie Corroborative Testimony/ of Antiquity. Early (according to Xenophon) in ancient literature we find tes- INTRODUCTION 9 timony on the life and death of notable philosophers. Of importance for us, moreover, arc the passages in which Plato and Aristotle — especially in the beginning of his Metaphysics — linked their own teaching to the early phi- losophy. At the time of Aristotle there arose a widely spread, partly historical and partly critical literature, con- cerning what w^as then ancient philosophy. Unfortunately, this has been lost, excepting a few fragments. Especially deplorable is the loss of the writings of this character of Aristotle and his immediate disciples, — Theophrastus in particular. Similar w^orks, likewise no longer extant, issued from the Academy, in which, moreover, commentating also had its beginning at an early time. So, also, the historical and critical works of the Stoics have gone forever. This historiography of philosophy, the so-called dox- ography, with its commentating and collating, developed enormously in the Alexandrian literature, and had its three philosophical centres in Pergamus, Rhodes, and Alexandria. These voluminous and numerous w^orks in their original form are in the main lost. Yet with all recognition of the erudition that doubtless permeated them, it must still be maintained that they have exercised a bewildering influence in various ways upon succeeding writers, who took excerpts directly out of them. Besides this almost unavoidable danger of reading later conceptions and theo- ries into the old teaching, there appear three chief sources of error, — (1) In the inclination to fix the succession of ancient philoso- phers after the manner of the later successions of scholarchs. (2) In the fantastic tendenc}^ to dignify ancient Greece with the miraculous and the extraordinary. (3) Finally, in the effort that sprang out of an undefined feel- ing of the dependence of Grecian upon Oriental culture. En- couraged by a new acquaintance with the East, some scholars have tried to knit every significant fact as closely as possible with Oriental influence. 10 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Statements at only third or fourth hand are left over to us from the Roman period. The historical notes in the fragments of Yarro, in the writings of Cicero (Rud. Heizel, Untersuch. zu C. jt)7?z76»s. Schriften, 3 parts, Leipzig, 1877- 1883), as well as of Seneca, Lucretius, and Plutarch, are valuable, but must be used with care. The philosophical- historical writings of Plutarch are lost. The compila- tion preserved under his name, De pTiysicis pMlosopJiorum decretis (in Dubner's edition of the Morals, Paris, 1841), is, according to Diels, an abstract of the Placita of Aetius, dating back to Theophrastus, and was made perhaps in the middle of the second century. The spurious book irepl ^i\oa6cj)ov laropla^, which is falsely ascribed to Galen, is in the main identical with it in the nineteenth vol- ume of Kuhn^sclien Gresamtausgahe) . Many later excerpts of Favonius are included among the uncritically collected reports ; so, also, those of Apuleius and of Gellius (Nodes atticce, ed. Hertz, Leipzig, 1884-85 ; see also Mercklin, Die Zitiermethode u. Quellenhenutzung des A. (7., Leipzig, 1860). Lucian's writings must also be mentioned in this connection. Those numberless historical accounts in the writings of Galen (especially De placitis Hijjj^ocratls et Platonis, separately published by Iwan Miiller, Leipzig, 1874) and of Sextus Empiricus (Op. ed. Bekker, Berlin, 1842 : 7rvpp(i)V€Coc viroTviraxrei'^ and 7rpo9 /nady/jLarLKOv^;) are philosophically more trustworthy. Out of the same period grew the work of Flavins Philostratus, Vitce sophistarum (ed. Westermann, Paris, 1849), and of Athenseus, Deipno- sophistte (ed. Meincke, Leipzig, 1857-69). Finally, there is the book which was regarded for a long time almost as the principal source for a history of ancient philosophy ; viz., that of Diogenes Laertius, irepl /Slcov, Soyf^drcov kol d7ro(f)6€yfidTcov tmv ev (f)cXo(TO(f)ia 6vBoKifi7j(TdvTa)v ^i(3\ia heKa (ed. Cobet, Paris, 1850). Another kind of secondary sources is furnished by the INTRODUCTION 11 writings of the church fathers, who have polemical, apolo- getic, and dogmatic aims in reproducing the Greek phi- losophy. This is especially true of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen {Kara KeXo-ou), llippolytus (^Refuta- tio omnium hceresium, ed. Duncker, Gott., 1859, the first hook of this being formerly snpposed to be a work of Origen under the title (f)i\oaorf)ovfi6va), ^useh'ms (^Prcep. evanr/. ,cd. Pindorf, Leipzig, 1868), and in certain respects also Tertul- lian and Augustine. The importance of the church fathers as sources for the study of ancient philosophy has attained recently to a completer and more fruitful recognition, especially since the impulse given by Diels to their study. Finally, the activity in commentating and historical re- search was carried on in a lively fashion in the neo- Platonic school. The chief work indeed, that of Porphyry, is not preserved (cenne (Paris, 5 ed., 1892) ; A. Fouill^e, Histoire de la Philosophie (Paris, 3 ed., 1882) ; R. Blakey, History of the Philosophy of Mind (London, 1848) ; G. H. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy (London, 4 ed., 1871, German ed., Berlin, 1871). The completest literary data for the historiography of philos- ophy, and particularly ancient philosophy, are found in IJeber- weg, Grundriss d. Philos.^ a work which presents also in its remarkable continuation by M. Heinze (7 ed. , Berlin, 1886) an indispensable completeness in its annotations. The texts fur- nished by Ueberweg himself were at first only superficially systematized by him, and were given an unequal, confused, and, for beginners, untransparent character by his later additions, interpolations, and annotations. 1 An inspiring statement of the development of ancient philosophy is also that of Brandis's Gescliichte der PJiilos. seit Kant, 1 Part (Breslau, 1842). 14 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY The profounder philological studies at the beginning of the nineteenth century were advantageous to the history of ancient philosophy, since a critical sifting of tradition and a philological and methodical basis for historical-philoso- phical research was facilitated (compare Zeller, Jalirhucher der Gegemvart Jahrg., 1843). The greatest credit for such a stimulus is due to Schleiermacherj whose translation of Plato was a powerful example, and whose special works upon Heracleitus, Diogenes of ApoUonia, Anaximander, and others have been placed in Part III. book 2, of his col- lected works. Among the numerous special researches are to be mentioned A. B. Krische's Forschujigen auf dem Gebiete der alien Philosophie (Gott., 1840) ; also A. Trende- lenburg, Historische Beitrdge zur Philosophie (Berlin, 1846 f.), the author of which deserves credit for his stimula- tion of Aristotelian studies ; H. Siebeck, Untersuchungen zur Philosophie der Griechen (2 ed., Freiburg i. Br., 1888) ; G. Teichmiiller, Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe (Berlin, 1874 ff.) ; 0. Apelt, Beitrcige zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Leipzig, 1891) ; E. Norden (the same title), Leipzig, 1892. As the first product of these critico-philological studies, we may consider the praiseworthy work of Ch. A. Brandis, Handhuch der Geschichte der griechisch-romische^i Philoso- phie (Berlin, 1835-60), by the side of which the author placed a shorter and especially finely conceived exposition, Geschichte der JEntwickelungen der griechischen Philosophie U7idihrer Nachwirkungen im ro^nischen Beiche (Berlin, 1862 u. 1864). With less exhaustivencss, but with a peculiar superiority in the development of the problems, Ludw. Striimpcll (2d part, Leipzig, 1854, 1861), K. Prantl (Stuttgart, 2 cd., 1863), and A. Schweglcr (3 ed., espe- cially, by Kcistlin, Freiburg, 1883) treated the same subject. All these valuable works, and with them the numerous synopses, compendiums, and compilations (see Ueberweg, INTRODUCTION 15 above mentioned, pp. 27-29), are overshadowed beside that masterpiece and, for many reasons, final word upon ancient philosophy : E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Grlechen (Tu- bingen, 1844 ff. : the first book is published in the fifth edi- tion, the second in the fourth edition, the otliers in the third edition).^ Here, upon the broadest philological-historical foundation and upon original sources, a philosophical, authoritative, and illuminating statement is given of the entire development. Zeller has published a clever sum- mary of the whole in Grundriss d. Gesch. der Alien P kilos. (4 ed., Leipzig, 1893). The special sides of ancient philosophy have been presented in the following notable works : — Logic: K. Prantl, Gesch.d. Logik im Abendlande (vols. 1 and 2, Leipzig, 1855 and 1861) ; P. Natorp, Forscliungen z. Gesch. des ErTxenntnissprohlems im Altertum (Berlin, 1884) ; Giov. Cesca, La teoria della conoscenza nella Jilos. greca (Verona, 1887). Psychology: H. Siebeck, Gesch. d. Psy. (vol. 1, Gotha, 1880 and 1884) ; A. E. Chaiguet, Histoire de la j^s?/. des grecs (Paris, 1887-92). Ethics : L. v. Henning, D. Prinzipien d, Eihik, etc. (Berlin, 1825) ; E. Teuerlein, D. pJiilos. Sittenlehre in ihren geschicJit- lichen Hauptformen (Tubingen, 1857 and 1859) ; Paul Janet, Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique (Paris, 1858) ; J. Mackintosh, The Progress of Ethical Philosophy (Lowdow^ 1862) ; W. Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Loudon, 1862) ; E. Blakey, History of Moral Science (Edin- burgh, 1863) ; L. Schmidt, D. Ethik d. al. Griechen (Berlin, 1881) ; Th. Zeigler, D. Ethik d. Gr. u. Edmer (Bonn, 1881) ; C. Kostlin, Gesch. d. Ethik {1 vol., Tubingen, 1887) ; especially compare R. Eucken, D. Lebensanschauungen d. grossen Denker (Leipzig, 1890). The following particularly treat special topics : M. Heinze, D, Lehre v. Logos (Leipzig, 1872) ; D. Lehred. Eudaemonismus in griech. Philos. (Leipzig, 1884) ; CI. Biiumcker, Das Problem d. Materie in d. griech. Philos. (^Miinster, 1890) ; J. Walter, Gesch. d. Aesthetik im Altertum (Leipzig, 1893). ^ Referred to in this work usually as I^, 11^. , etc. — Tr. 16 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY A. GREEK PHILOSOPHY Introduction The Preliminary Conditions of Philosojyhy in the CrreeJc Intellectual Life of the Seventh and Sixth Centuries B. G?- 7. The history of the philosophy of the Greeks, like the history of their political development, requires a larger con- ception of the geography of the country than the present conception of its political relations would imply. Our usual present idea of ancient Greece is of a country wherein Athens by its literature overshadowed the other portions, and by the brilliancy of its golden age eclipsed its earlier history. Ancient Greece was the Grecian sea with all its coasts from Asia Minor to Sicily and from Gyrene to Thrace. The natural link of the three great continents was this sea, with its islands and coasts occupied by the most gifted of people, which from the earliest historical times had settled all its coasts. (Homer.) Within this circle, the later so-called Motherland, the Greece of the continent of Europe, played at the beginning a very subordinate role. In the development of Greek culture, however, leadership fell to that branch of the race which in its entire history was in closest contact with the Orient, the lonians. This race laid the foundation of later Greek development, and by its commercial activity established the power of Greece. At first as seafarers and sea-robbers in the train of the Phoenicians, in the ninth and eighth centuries the lonians won an increasing independence, and in the seventh cen- ^ tury they commanded the world's trade between the three continents. Over the entire Mediterranean, from the Black Sea to the Pillars of Hercules, tlie Greek colonies and trade cen- ^ Reference should be made to corresponding sections in historical parts of this book for details. GREEK PIIILOSOniY 17 tres were extended. Even Egypt opened its treasures to the enterprising Ionian spirit. At the head of these cities of commerce, and at the same time the leader of the Ionian League, Miletus appeared in the seventh century as the most powci'ful and most notable centre of the Greek genius. It likewise became the cradle of Greek science. For here in Ionia of Asia Minor the riches of the entire world were heaped together ; here Oriental luxury, pomp, material pleasure held their public pageants ; here began to awaken the sense of the beauty of living and the love of higher ideals, while rude customs still ruled upon the continent of Europe. The spirit became free from the pressure of daily need, and in its play created the works of noble leisure, of art, and of science. The cultured man is he who in his leisure does not become a mere idler. 8. Thus, while wealth acquired from trade afforded the basis for the free mental development of the Greek, so, on the other hand, this same wealth led to changes of polit- ical and social conditions which were likewise favorable to the development of intellectual life. Originally, aristo- cratic families had ruled Ionian cities, and they were probably descended from the warlike bands that in the so- called Ionian migration from the continent of Europe had settled the islands. But in time, through their commerce, there grew up a class of well-conditioned citizens, who re- stricted and opposed the power of the aristocracy. On the one hand bold and ambitious, on the other thoughtful and patriotic men took advantage of these democratic ten- dencies, and after destroying the power of the oligarchy tried to set up monarchies and equalize, as far as possible, the interests of all classes. The tyranny based on democratic principles is the typical governmental rule of this time, and extended its power, although not without vigorous and often long partisan struggles, from Asia Minor across the islands even to 2 18 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY European Greece. Thrasybnlus in Miletus, Polycrates in Samos, Pittacus in Lesbos, Periander in Corinth, Peisistra- tus in Athens, Gelon and Hiero in Syracuse, — these men had courts that at this time constituted the centres of in- tellectual life. They drew poets to them ; they founded libraries ; they supported every movement in art and sci- ence. But, on the other hand, this political overthrow drove the aristocrats into gloomy retirement. Discon- tented with public affairs, the aristocrats withdrew to pri- vate life, w^hich they adorned with the gifts of the Muses. Heracleitus is a conspicuous example of this state of affairs. Thus the reversed relations favored in many ways the unfolding and extending of intellectual interests. This enrichment of consciousness, this increase in a higher culture among the Greeks of the seventh and sixth '\y centuries, showed itself first in the development of lyric poetry, in which the gradual transition from the expression of universal religious and political feeling to that which is personal and individual formed a typical process. In the passion and excitement of internecine political conflict, the individual becomes conscious of his independence and worth, and he " girds up his loins " to assert his rights everywhere. In the course of time satirical poetry grew beside the lyric, as the expression of a keen and cleverly developed individual judgment. There was, moreover, still more characteristic evidence of the spirit of the time in the so-called Gnomic poetry, the content of wbich is made up of sententious reflections upon moral principles. This sort of moralizing, which appeared also in fable-poetry and in other literature, may be regarded as symptomatic of the deeper stirring of the national spirit. 9. Now, any extended reflection upon maxims of moral judgment shows immediately that the validity of morality has been questioned in some way, that social consciousness has become unsettled, and that the individual in his growing GREEK PHILOSOPHY 19 independence has transcended the bounds authoritatively drawn by the universal consciousness. Therefore it was entirely characteristic of this Gnomic poetry to recommend moderation ; to show how universal standards of life had been endangered by the unbridled careers of single per- sons, and how in the presence of threatening or present anarchy the individual must try to re-establish these rules through independent reflection. The end of the seventh and the beginning of the sixth centuries in Greece formed, therefore, an epoch of peculiar ethical reflection, which is usually called, after the manner of the ancients, the Age of the Seven Wise Men. It was an age of reflection. The simple devotion to the conventions of the previous age had ceased, and social consciousness was profoundly disturbed. Individuals began to go their own ways. Notable men appeared, and earnestly exhorted ^ society to come back to its senses. Rules of life were established. In riddle, in anecdote, in epigram, the moral- izing sermon was made palatable, and " winged words " passed from mouth to mouth. But, let it be remembered, these homilies are possible only when the individual op- poses the vagaries of the mob, and with independent judg- ment brings to consciousness the maxims of right conduct. Tradition selected earlv seven of such men, to whom it gave the name of the Wise Men. They were not men of erudition, nor of science, but men of practical wisdom, and in the main of remarkable political ability .^ They pointed out the right thing to do in critical moments, and therefore ^ With this conception about the Seven "Wise Men, it is conceivable that Plato (Protag., 343 a) should characterize them as forerunners of the old stronjj Dorian moralitv in contrast to the innovations of the Ionian movement ; ^t^Xcot..! kuI epaa-ral kol fjLadrjToi ttjs AaKcBaifMovioiv - Dicaiarchus called them ovre aoff)ovs ovre (^tXotrot^ovf, avverovs Se Tivas KOL vo^odfTiKovs. Diog. Lacrt., I. 40. 20 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY in public and private matters were authorities to their fellow-citizens. The spirit of Gnomic poetry was prom- inent in the apothegms, the catchwords, which tliey are supposed to have uttered. Nothing was repeated by them so often and with so many phrasings as the firjEev dyav I Tradition is not agreed as to the names of " the Seven." Four ^ only are mentioned by all : Bias of Priene, who upon the invasion of the Persians recommended to the lonians a migra- tion to Sardinia ; Pittacus, who was tyrant of Mitylene, about GOO B. c. ; Solon, the law-giver of Athens and the Gnomic poet ; Thales, founder of the jMilesian philosophy, who advised the lonians to form a federation with a joint council in Teos. The names of the others vary. The later age ascribed to the Seven all kinds of aphorisms, letters, etc. (collected and translated into German, but without critical investigation, by C. Dilthey, Darmstadt, 1835).^ While in this way, through political and social relations, the independence of individual judgment was educated first on its practical side, and the propensity was formed for expressing such judgment, it was an inevitable con- sequence that a similar emancipation of single individuals from the ordinary way of thinking should take place within the domain of theory. Independent judgment naturally ap- peared at this point, and formed its own views about the connection of things. Nevertheless this propensity could manifest itself only in a revision and reconstruction of those materials, which the individuals discovered partly in the intellectual treasures accumulated previously in the nation's practical life, and partly in the religious ideas. 10. The practical knowledge of the Greeks had in- creased to very remarkal)lc dimensions between the time of ITcsiod's Works and Days and the year 600 b. c. The inventive, trade-driving lonians undoubtedly had learned very much from the Orientals, witli whom they had inter- ^ Compare Cic. Rep., I. 12. Also Lael., 7. - Bruiico, Aet. Sem.-ErL, HI. 299 ff. GREEK PHILOSOrHY 21 course and of whom they were rivals. Among these, especially among the Egyptians, Phucniciaiis, and Assyrians, there existed knowledge that had been garnered through many centuries, and it is incredible that the Greeks should not have appropriated it wherever opportunity offered. The question how much the Greeks learned from the Orient has passed through many stages. In opposition to the un- critical, often fantastic, and untenable statements of the later Greeks, who tried to derive everything important of their own teaching from the honorable antiquity of Oriental tradition, later philology, in its admiration for everything Greek, has persistently espoused the theory of an autochtlionic genesis. But the more the similarities with the Oriental civilization, and the relations between the different forms of the old and the Greek culture have been brought to the light by acquaint- ance with the ancient Orient, dating from the beginning of this century ; and the more, on the other hand, philosophy understood the continuity of the historical moments of civiliza- tion ; so much the more decided became the tendency to refer the beginnings of Greek science to Oriental influences, particu- larly in the history of philosophy. AVith brilliant fancy A. Roth (Gescli. unserer abendldndischen Philos., Mannheim, 1858 f.,) attempted to rehabilitate the accounts of the neo-Platouists, who by interpretation and perversion had read into the mj^thic narratives, which were introduced from the Orient, Greek philo- sophical doctrines ; he then rediscovered these doctrines as prime- val wisdom. With a forced construction, Gladisch (D. Religioii u. d. Philos. in Hirer iveltgesch. Entwick., Breslau, 1852) tried to see in all the beginnings of Greek philosophy direct relations to individual Oriental peoples ; ancl he so conceived the re- lationship that the Greeks are supposed to have appropriated in succession the ripe products of all the other civilizations. This appears from the following titles of his special essays : Die Ff/tharjoreer und die Schinesen (Posen, 1841) ; Die Eleaten und die Indier (Posen, 1844) ; EmpedoMes und die Egypter (Leipzig, 1858) ; Ileracleitos und Zoroaster (Leipzig, 1850) ; Anaxagoras und Israeliten (Leipzig, 18C4). Besides the fact that they first found many analogies through an artful in- terpretation, both Goth and Gladisch fell into the error of transmuting analogies into causal relations, where equally notable disparities might also have been found. ISloreover, where, as usual, religion is concerned, that of the Greeks, which 22 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY has influenced the beginnings of science in so many ways, was found to be in genetic and historical relationship with that of the Orient. Such exaggerations are certainly censurable. But, on the other hand, it would be denying the existence of the sun at noontide to refuse to acknowledge that the Greeks in great measure owe their information to contact with the barbarians. It is here even as in the history of art. The Greeks imported a larse amount of information out of the Orient. This con- sisted in special facts of knowledge, particularly of a mathe- matical and astronomical kind, and consisted perhaps besides in certain mj^thological ideas. But with the recognition of this sit- uation, which recognition in the long run is inevitable, one does not rob the Greeks in the least of their true originality. For as they in art derived particular forms and norms from Egyptian and Ass3'rian tradition, but in the employment and reconstruction of these used their own artistic genius, so there flowed in upon them too from the Orient many kinds of knowledge, arising out of the work and practical needs of many centuries, and various kinds of mythological tales, born of the religious imagination. But nevertlieless they were the first to transmute this knowledge into a wisdom sought on account of itself. This spirit of sci- ence, like their original activity, resulted from emancipated and independent individual thought, to which Oriental civilization had not attained. Principally in mathematics and astronomy do the Greeks appear as the pupils of the Orientals. Since economic needs compelled the Phoenicians to make an arithmetic, and from early times led the Egyptians to construct a geometry, it is probable that in these things the Greeks were pupils rather than teachers of their neighbors. A proposition like that concerning proportionality and its application to perspective, Thales did not communicate to the Egyptians, but derived from them.^ Altliough there are further ascribed to him propositions like that concerning the halving of the circle by the diameter, the isosceles triangle, the vertical angles, the equality of triangles liaving a side and two angles equal, yet it may be safely concluded in every instance that these elementary pro})ositions were generally known to the Greeks 1 See § 24. GREEK riiiLosoriiY 23 of his time. It is likewise a matter of indifference whether Pythagoras liimself discovered the theorem named after him or whether his school established it, whether the discovery was the result of pure geometrical reasoning or was an actual measurement with the square and by an arithmetical calcu- lation, as Roth says. Here, again, the reality of such knowl- edge at that time is rendered certain, and its suggestion, at least, from the Oriental circle is probable. In any case, however, these studies in Greece soon flourished in a high degree. Anaxagoras was reported, for instance, to have busied himself in prison with the squaring of the circle. Astronomical thought had a similar status, for Thales pre- dicted an eclipse of the sun, and it is highly probable that he here availed himself of the Chaldean Saros. On the other hand, the cosmographical ideas ascribed to the oldest philosophers point to an Egyptian origin, especially that view, authoritative for later time, of concentric spherical shells in which the planets were supposed to move around the earth as a centre. From all reports it appears that the questions concerning the constitution of the world, of the size, distance, form, and rotation of the planets, of the incli- nation of the ecliptic, etc., keenly interested every one of the ancient thinkers. The Milesians still thought the earth to be flat, cylindrical, or plate-shaped, floating upon a dark, cold atmosphere and in the middle of a world sphere. The Pythagoreans seem to be the first independently to discover the spherical shape of the earth. In the physics of this time the interest in meteorology is dominant. Every phi- losopher felt bound to explain the clouds, air, wind, snow, hail, and ice. Not until later did an interest in biology awaken, and the mysteries of reproduction and propagation called forth a multitude of fantastic hypotheses (Parmcni- des, Empedocles, etc.). Deficiencv in nhvsioloo:ical and anatomical knowledure obviously delayed for a long time the progress of medical 24 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY science. Therefore we are safe in saying ^ that medical science was inlierited in its original tradition entirely inde- pendently of all other sciences as the esoteric teaching of certain priestly families ; and that philosophy also hardly had any connection with medicine down to about the time of the Pythagoreans. Medicine consisted simply in empir- ical rules, technical facts, and a mass of data accumulated during the experience of centuries. It was not an aetiological science, but an art practised in the spirit of religion. We have still the oath of the Asclepiades (a priestly order of this sort, which however had also lay brethren), who as well as the gymnasts practised the art of healing. Such medical orders or schools existed notably in Rhodes, Cyrene, Cro- tona, Cos, and Cnidus. Rules for the treatment of the sick were partly codified in documents, and Hippocrates knew two versions of the 7i^w/xat Kvihiai (Cnidian sentences), the more valuable of which (laTpLKOirepov) came from Euryphon of Cnidus. Likewise the geographical knowledge of the Greeks had reached a high degree of completeness about this time. The broad commercial activity whereby they visited the Mediterranean Sea and all its coasts had essentially trans- formed and enriched the Homeric picture of the world. It is stated that Anaximander drew up the first map of the world. The statement of Herodotus^ is interesting, that Aris- tagoras, by showing such a chart in Laceda3mon, sought to awaken the continental Greeks to a realizing sense of the menaced geographical situation of Greece by the Persian Em[)ire. Historical knowledge too was beginning to be accu- mulated at this time, — yet strikingly late for a people like the Greeks. From the old epic had issued the theo- gonic poetry, on the one hand, and the heroic on the other. 1 lliiser, Lehrbuch d. Gescli. d. Medizin, 2 ed., §§ 21-25. 2 V. 49. GREEK PHILOSOPHY 25 Collections of saira and of the histories of the foimdino: of cities, as they had been gathered by the logographers, were added to these for the first time in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor. Men, who after long journeys gave to their logog- raphies greater extent and variety of interest, introduced then that form of historical presentation which we may still recognize in Herodotus. At the same time, however, this was pressed into the background by the grouping of all accounts around the important event of the Persian wars. In place of fantastic fables about strange people in the form that Aristeas of Proconnesus related them, we now have the more sober reports of the logographers. Of these there appeared, in the sixth century, Cadmus, Dionysius, and especially Hecateius of Miletus, with his 7re/3t^i7?;o-t?, in which geography and history are closely interwoven. In these men realistic considerations had taken the place of iesthetical, and their writings therefore have the prose rather than the poetic form. About 600 B. c. the intellectual circle of the Greeks was replete with this manifold and important knowledge, and it is clear that there were men, otherwise favorably conditioned in life, who took a direct and immediate interest in knowl- edge which had hitherto been employed for the most varied practical ends. They planned how to order, classify, and extend these acquisitions. It is likewise comprehensible how scientific schools for the same purposes were formed, as it might happen, around distinguished men, and how in these schools by co-operative labor a kind of scholastic order and tradition maintained itself from one generation to another. After the investigations of H. Diels (Philos. Aufsdtze z. Zel- lerjubildnm^ Berlin, 1887, p. 241 f.) it can scarcely be doubted that ill this very early time the scientific life of the Greeks constituted itself into closed corporations, and that the learned societies already at that time carried all the weight of judicial- religious associations (Otao-oL) which v. Wilamowitz-Mollendorf 26 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (Antigonos von Karystos, p. 263 f.) has already proved for the later schools. The Pythagoreans were undoubtedly such an association. The schools of physicians were organized on the same principle, — perhaps still more rigorously in the form of the priestly orders. Why, then, should this not be the case with the schools of Miletus, Elea, and Abdera? 11. Likewise, in the religious notions of the Greeks lay certain definite points of departure for the beginnings of their philosophy, especially since those religious notions were in the liveliest fermentation about the time of the seventh and sixth centuries. This is accounted for by the great vitality which from the beginning characterized the religious existence of the Greeks by reason of their unparalleled development. Out of the early differentiation of originally common ideas, out of the capricious formation of local cults within families, tribes, cities, and provinces, incidentally also out of the introduction of distinctive foreign religious ceremonies, there grew up a rich and, as it were, confusingly iridescent variety of religions. Stand- ing over against this, epic poetry had already created its Olympus, its poetic purification, and its human ennobling of the original, mythical forms. These products of poetry came to be the national religious property of the Hellenes. But along with the veneration of these products there were the old cults that shut themselves up only the more closely in the Mysteries, in which now as ever the peculiar energy of religious craving expressed itself in a service of expiation and redemption. With the advance of civiliza- tion, however, the aesthetic mytliology succumbed to a gradual change in two directions which had been blended indistinguishably in the Olympian forms. The first direc- tion was toward mythical explanation of nature ; the second was toward ethical idealizing. The first tendency showed itself in the development of the cosmogonic out of the epic poetry. Cosmogonic poetry GREEK rillLOSOPllY 27 shows how the individual poets with their peculiar fancies studied the question of the origin of things, and in addition niythologizcd the great powers of nature in a traditional or freely creative form. Two groups can be distinguished among them, corresponding to the different interpreta- tions of Homeric poetry. Such of the Orphic theogonies, which go back thus far, belong, with the sole exception of Hcsiod, to one group, and Epimenides and Acusilaus are amoug its better defined historic names. Whether they presuppose only Chaos or Night as the original powers, or whether with these Air, Earth, Heaven, or something else, — they appear reasonably enough in Aristotle as ol i/c vvKTo^ y€vvMVT€^ OeoXoyot. For it is always some dark and reasonless primeval ground from which they evolve material things, and they may be considered as representatives of the evolutionist idea. Likewise in this respect Milesian science followed immediately in their wake, and had in part the same principles but with greater clearness of thought (§§ 14-16). Over against these was the later ten- dency whose representatives were regarded by Aristotle as standing between the poets and philosophers (fiefiLyfiivoL avTOiv). By these the Perfect was supposed as the form- ing (creative) principle at the beginning of time. To them belongs, besides the entirely mythical Hermotimus of Clazomenae, ^ the historical Pherecydes of Syrus, a contem- porary of the earliest philosophers and a man who wrote his conceptions in prose. He presupposed Zeus as the per- sonality giving order and reason to the world, and that Time 2 and Earth act with Zeus as original principles {xpovo^, X^^^)' He appears to have represented in grotesque images the "five-fold" development of individual things out of the rational principle. 1 Whom some try to identify with Anaxagoras. Sec Carus, Nach- gelassene Werke, 4 vols., 330 f. ; Zeller, I''. 924 f. 2 Xpovos may mean something else. Zelk-r, P. 73. 28 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Sturz (Leipzig, 1834) has published the fragments of Pherecydes. Roth, out of most uncertain data, Gesch. unserer abendlandischen I* kilos. ^ II. 161 f., tried to attribute to Phere- C3Tles the introduction into Greece of Egyptian metaphysics and astronomy. J. Conrad (Coblenz, 1857), R. Zimmermann, Studien u. Kritlken (Vienna, 1870, 1 f.), also treat the " phi- losophy" of Pherecydes. See H. Diels, Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos., I. 11. These later cosmogonies were apparently already under the influence of the ethical movement, which had pressed into the circle of religious ideas, and, as against the nature- mythical interpretation that ascribed aesthetic character to the different gods, sought to embody in them the ideal of moral life. The second tendency comes to light in the Gnomic poetry in particular. Zeus is thus (Solon) honored less as creator of Nature than as ruler of the moral world. The fifth century, in following out this idea, saw the Homeric mythology expressed completely in ethico-alle- gorical terms (especially ascribed to Metrodorus of Lamp- sacus, a pupil of Anaxagoras). Three moments especially in the ethicizing of religious ideas appear : (1) the gradual stripping off of naive anthropomorphism from the gods, which led to a violent opposition to aesthetic mythology on the part of Xenophanes, who was a direct descendant in this respect of the Gnomic poets ; (2) necessarily connected with the above, the development of the monotheistic germs contained in the previous ideas ; (3) the emphasis on the thought of moral retribution in the form of faith in immor- tality and transmigration. So far as the last two thoughts belonged with a greater or less degree of clearness also to the Mysteries, they were in some degree the centre of an ethical reaction against the pantheon " constructed by the poets." 12. In this direction tended the great movement wliich shook the Avestern part of civilized Greece about tlie end of the sixth century, and in many ways influenced the devel- GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 29 opment oT science. This movement is the etJiico-religious 7'eformation of Pi/tltagoras. It is jihsohitel}^ necessary, in the interest of historical clear- ness, to distinguish Pythagoras from the Pythagoreans, and the practice of the former from the science of the latter. The in- vestigations of modern time have more and more led to this distinction. The accounts of the later ancients (neo-Pythago- rean and neo-Platonic) had gathered so many myths al)out tJie personality of Pythagoras, and had so ascribed to him the ripest and highest thoughts of Greek philosophy through direct and indirect falsification, that he became a mysterious and entirely inconceivable form. But the fact that the cloud of myths should thicken from century to century in ancient time around him, makes it necessary^ to go back to the oldest and, at the same time, most authoritative accounts. Therein it ap- pears that neither Plato nor Aristotle knew anything about a philosophy of Pythagoras, but simply make mention of a philosophy of the " so-called Pythagoreans." Nowhere is the "number theory" referred to the "Master" himself. It is also to be regarded as highly probable that Pythagoras himself wrote nothing. At any rate, nothing is preserved which can be confidently attributed to him, and neither Plato nor Aristotle knew of anything of the sort. On the other hand, the first philo- sophical writing of the school is that of Philolaus,'^ the con- temporary of Anaxagoras, and therefore of Socrates and Democritus. This philosophic teaching will be set forth in the place which belongs to it chronologically in the develop- ment of Greek philosophy (§ 24). Pythagoras himself, how- ever, in the light of historical criticism, appears only as a kind of founder of religion, and a man of grand ethical and political efficiency. His work had an important place among the causes and the preliminary conditions of the scientific life in Greece. Concerning the life of Pythagoras little is certain. He came from an old Tyrrhean-Phliasian stock, which had migrated to his home, Samos, at the latest in the time of his grandfather. Here he was born, somewhere between the years 580 and 570, as the son of JMnesarchus, a rich merchant. It is not impos- sible that differences that arose between him and Polycrates, or the antipathy of the aristocrat to this t^a-ant, drove him out of 1 Sec Zeller, P. 256 if., against A. Roth (Gesch. iinserer ahendlayi. Phi- los., II. b, 2G1 £., 48 £.). Zeller shows clearly that Pythagoras had no philosopliy. 2 Diog. Lacrt., YIIT. 15, 85. 30 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Samos, where he seems to have entered already iipoiv a career similar to that of his later life. It is not to be determined with perfect surety, but may be regarded as by no means im- probable, that he made a kind of educative journey to investi- gate the sanctuaries and cults of Greece. At this time he came to know Pherecydes. This journey may have extended also into foreign lands as far as Egypt.^ About the year 530, however, he settled in Magna Graecia, the region where (at a time when Ionia already was struggling with Persia for existence) were brought together, in the most splendid way, Greek power and Greek culture. Here was still a more motley mixture of Hellenic stocks, and here between cities, and in the cities between parties, the battle for existence was most passion- ately waged. Pythagoras appeared here and preached, founded his new sect, and met with the most decided success. He chose the austere and aristocratic Crotona as the centre of his operations. It appears that his sect co-operated in tlie decisive battle (510 b. c.) in which Crotona destroyed its democratic rival, the voluptuous Sybaris. But very soon after that event democracy became predominant in Crotona itself and in other cities, and the Pythagoreans were cruelly persecuted. These persecutions were more than once repeated in the first half of the fifth century, and the sect was entirely dispersed. Wliether Pythagoras in one of these persecutions, perhaps even in the very first instigated by Cylon in 504, found his end, or whether in another way, or where, when, and how, is uncertain. His death is surrounded by myths, but we shall have to place it at about 500. Jamblichus, De vita Pythagorica^ and Porphyry, De vita Pytluujorce (ed. Kissling, Leipzig, 1815-16, etc.), H. Ritter, Geschichte der 2^ythagorischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 182G) ; B. Krische, De societatis a Pyt/i agora in urbe C rotoniatarum con- ditce scoiio politico (Gottingen, 1830) ; E. Zeller, Pyth. u. die Py th. -saga, Vortvug u. Ablidl. I. (Leipzig, 1865) 30 ft'.; Ed. Ciiaignet, Pytliagore et la 2}hiloso2)hie pythago7icienne (Paris, 1873) ; J^. V. Schroeder, Pyth. u. d. Inder (Leipzig, 188-1) ; P. Tannery, Arch. f. Gesch. d. Ph.., I. 29 ff. On the one hand, Pythagoras found his purpose in the moral clarification and purification of the world of religious 1 There is scarcely a ground for doubting the testimony of Isocrates (Rusir, 11). The circumstances of the second half of the sixth century make it appear as in no wise an exce})tional case that the son of a patri- cian of Samos should journey to Egypt. GREEK PHILOSOPHY 31 ideas. He stood in this respect entirely in line with llic progress and innovation of the time, and he antagonized, as a point of view antiqnated or coming to be so, tlie religion of the poets, in which he missed a moral earnestness. On the other hand, he was inspired by the same ethical impulse ao-ainst that weakenini^ of the moral bond to which the new methods of Greek social life threatened to lead, and in fact had already led. He called, therefore, for a return to the old institutions and convictions. Especially in politics, he represented a reaction in favor of the aristoc- racy as opposed to the growing democratic movement. This opposition determined the peculiar position of the Pythag- orean society. The society was, in truth, one of the most important factors in the religious and intellectual advance of the Greek spirit, and at the same time it flung itself aG:ainst the current of the time as rerards ethics and politics.^ As to the latter, the Ionian Pythagoras preferred the more conservative Dorian character, and the " Italian philosophy" founded by him passed among the ancients as an antithesis to the Ionian. The emphasis upon the unity of the divine Being and a purely moral conception of the same was carried no farther by Pythagoras and by the Pythagoreans than by the Gnomic poets. Neither was the conception of tlie purely spiritual here attained, nor a scientific foundation and presentation given to ethical concepts, nor, finally, a sharp contradiction made to the polytheistic popular religion. (Of course we do not in- chide in this statement the doctrines of the neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic schools.) On the contrary, Pythagoras had the pedagogic acumen to develop these higher conceptions from tliose existing in the myths and religious ceremonies. He used in this way the Mysteries, especially the Orphic, and he himself appears to have been connected with the cult of Apollo in particular. He laid particular emphasis upon the doctrine of immortality and its application to a theory of moral religious retribution, and this also took the mythic form of the doctrine 1 Similarly and on a larger scale this is repeated by Plato's work. 32 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY of metempsychosis. But doubtless the Mysteries themselves contained much in harmony with the doctrine of transmigra- tion, especially those Mysteries of the chthonic divinities. But to the ordinary Greeks transmigration was and remained a foreign conception, wiiich in early times they had mocked at,^ and they were most inclined to lay it at the door of foreign influence. Whatever of the Pythagorean ethical teaching is certainly proved, may be found in the Gnomic teachings. But at all events we see there, in the consciousness of duty, in introspec- tion, and in subordination to authority, a greater earnestness and rigor, with at the same time a decided abandonment of sense-pleasure and a powerful tendency to spiritualize life.^ Many ascetic tendencies doubtless were already connected with this. The pronounced political turn which Pythagoras at the same time gave to his society determined its fate and led it first to victory, then to destruction. Yet this political tendency is not to be regarded as original, but as the natural consequence of the moral-religious ideal of life. In order to attain such a goal, Pythagoras founded at first in Crotona his religious society, which soon spread over a greater part of Magna Graecia. But this sect was, to be sure, at first only a kind of Mysteries, and nearest related to it were the Orphics. It is to be distinguished from these only so far as it expressly determined also the political and in part even the private life of its members by its regulations. It sought to evolve also a general educa- tion and an all-round method of life out of its moral- religious principle. Its most commendable feature was, that within the society the external goods of life were relatively little prized, and the common activities were directed toward fostering science and art. Thus, the religious in time became a scientific Olacro^. To Pythago- ras himself may be referred the thorough study of music, 1 See Xcnophancs' witty distich against it : Diog. Laert. , VIII. 36. 2 The so-called " golden poem " wherein the Pythagorean rules of life are laid down was, according to IMullach, collated by Lysis. Zeller is certainly right in saying that it was probably earlier handed down in verse form. GREEK PHILOSOPHY 33 and perhaps in the same connection the beginnings of mathematical investigations which therefore, like medicine, liave a point of depai'ture equally independent of that of " general philoso])hy." ^ It is 110 longer certain how much the society directed by Pythagoras liiiiiself was in possession of all of the rules by which, according to later accounts, the community life of the members, their initiation, their education even to the particuUirs of each day's duties, were provided for. The conception taken from later analogies is scarcely credible, that the Pythagoreans were a secret society in which the novitiate first after a long preparation and after the performance of many symbolical formalities could share in the " mysteries." Roth in particular has tried to re-establish this distinction of the esoteric and ex- oteric. Pythagoreanism was certainly no more and no less a secret society than all the other Mysteries, and there is not the slightest ground for assuming a secret science in it. That the stimulus given by Pythagoras to the spiritual community of life was concerned with music and mathematics, may safely be accepted. All else is doubtful, and probabl}^ fabulous. So, too, it is impossible to find out anything certain as to the founder's personal famiUarity with these subjects. Even the well-known geometrical proposition is not to be attributed to him in entire confidence. He himself belongs rather to the religious and political life. But the spirit in which he founded his school was of such a nature that scientific interest could and actually did flourish in it. 13. In Greek national life such were the essential condi- tions for the origin of the philosophy which appeared at the beginning of the sixth century as an independent phenom- enon. Its entire course, however, since it was dependent upon the general civilization of the nation, shows a gradual drifting from circumference to centre. The beginnings lie scattered in those circles of Hellenic life where, in friendly as well as in hostile contact with neighboring peoples, it first developed into full independence. Afterwards in the entire Sophistic Enlightenment philosophy centred itself in ^ See G. Cantor, Vorlesungen iiher d. Gesch. d. ]\f(ilJi., I. 125 f. 3 34 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY the Athens of Pericles ; and there through the great per- sonality of Socrates it became naturalized, it perfected itself, and established its great schools. Subjectively viewed, the development of Greek science is a fully rounded whole. Like all naive and natural think- ing, it began with a recognition of the outer world. Its first tendency was entirely cosmological, and it passed through the physical into metaphysical problems. Foundering in these and at the same time troubled by the dialectic of public life, the Spirit made itself an object of reflection. An anthropological period began, in which man appeared as the most worthy object of consideration, and ultimately as the only object of investigation. Finally, science in its perfected strength, acquired in the profound study of the laws of its reason, turned back to the old problems, the conquest of which came to it now in great systematic continuity. See § 2, note. — Hegel, Gesch. der Pliilos., Complete WorTcs^ Vol. XIII. 188. If one strips away the formal from Hegel's terminology, which served him in his systematization of the historical processes, then one meets here, as so often in Hegel, an inspired insight, with which he apprehended the essential features in the development of historical phenomena. The origins of scientific reflection are to be sought in the cities of the seacoast of Ionia, which were in a flourishing condition about 600 b. c. The happy nature of the Ionian race was here accompanied by all the necessary material, social, and intellectual requisitions for science. Its men- tal alertness, its frequently dangerous curiosity for the novel, and its creative talent were remarkable. Here, for the first time, mature minds brought their independent judg- ment to bear not only upon practical but upon theoretical questions. ^ The idea of the connection of things was no 1 Plutarch Sol., 8 (concerning Thales) : nepairepco rrjs xpf"'$' f |iAcea-<9at T^ Bccopia. GREEK riiiLosoriiv 35 longer formed after the models of mythology, but by per- sonal reflection and meditation. Nevertheless these new endeavors leading to science grew out of the circle of reli- gious ideas, and thereby did science prove itself to be one of the functions which had been differentiated out of the original religious life of human society. At first science treated the same problems that concerned mythological fancv. The difference between the two does not Ke in their subject matter, but in the form of their interrogation and the nature of their reply. Science begins where a conceptual problem takes the place of curiosity as to se- quences, and where, therefore, fancies and fables are replaced by the investigations of permanent relations. The common task for the Greek philosopher lay in the ^ necessity to understand the change of things, their origi- nation, destruction, and transmutation into one another. This very change, this process of happening (^Gesclieheii) j was accepted as a matter of course, and was not required ■ to be explained or reduced to its causes. It had rather to ^ be described, objectified, and conceptually stated. The myth accomplished this in the form of a narrative. To the ques- tion. What existed previously ? it made answer with a description of the origin of the world, and tells of the battles of Titans and how they finally produced this world. , Among men of science this interest in the past gave way !\ to an interest in what is permanent. They no longer asked for the temporal but for the real prius of perceived Being. Face to face with the perpetual vicissitudes of in- dividual things, they expressed the thought of a world- 1 unity, by asking what is permanent amid the changes;,! - Consequently they formed as the goal of their research the concept of a world-stuff that changes into all things, and into which all things return when these things vanish from perception. The idea of a temporal origin of things gives place to that of eternal Being, and thus arises the t \ 36 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY apyi)^ the first concept of Greek philosophy. The first question of Greek science was, " What is the stuff out of which the world is made, and how is the stuff changed into single things ? " Science thus arose from cosmogonies and theogonies. The transition from the myth to science consists in stripping off the historical, in rejecting chronological nar- ration, and in reflecting upon the Unchangeable. Tlie first science was obviously an investigation of nature. See S. A. Byk. Die vorsocratiscJie Philos. d. Or. in Hirer org an- ischen Gliedenmg, 2 parts, Leipzig, 1875 and 1877. 1. The Milesian Nature Philosophy 14. The principal centre for these beginnings in science was the chief of the Ionian cities, Miletus. From two gen- erations of scientists in this city, tradition has preserved three names : Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.^ ^ Arist. 3Iet., I. 3, 983, b. 8. : e^ ov yap €(ttlv anavTa to. ovra Koi i^ ov yiyveraL TrpcuTov Kai (Is o (fydeiperai TeXfuraioi/, rrjs fiev otcri'as' vnofievov- crT}s, TOLS be ivaOecn pera^aXXovo-qs, tovto (ttol)(^7ov koL tuvttjv apxtjv (ftaaiv (Ivai r5>v uvtcov. Omitting the deduction of the Aristotelian categories, ova-ia and ttcWos, this definition of dpxr), which furnishes an immediate suggestion of the transition from the temporal to the conceptual, may be taken as historical in the sense that it existed among the old lonians. It is of little importance who introduced the term apxf] in this concep- tual way. Simpl. Phi/s.^ 6 recto, 24, 13 asserts it to be due to Anaxi- mander. The thought was already present in Thales. 2 It is evident that one need not liudt the Milesian philosophy to these three well-known men ; but nothing is traditionally certain. For the allusion of Theophrastus, who (Simpl. Phys., 6) speaks of pre- decessors of Thales, may also be applied to the cosmogonies ; and the reports of Aristotle, according to which the physicists were those who accepted as apx^ the intermediaries between air and water (Z)e ccelo, III. 5, 303 b, 12) or between air and fire (Phi/s., I. 4, 187 a, 14) leave open the possibility and probability that he has in mind the later eclec- tic stragglers. Compare § 25. THE MILKSIAN NATURE I'lULOSOPHY 37 R. Ritter, Gesch.dcr ionischen PJulosojthie (lierlin, 1821) ; R. Se3'del, Der Fortschritt der Jletap/n/j^ik aider den dltesten ionU schen Philosophen (Leipzig, 18(11) ; P. Taunery, Poar Vhistoire de la science hellene, I. (Paris, 1887). Tlialc s (about 600 b. c.) answered the question concern- ing the substantial constitution of the wo rkl (^Weltstoff) bv declarino: it to be water. This is the only assertion that can be attributed to him with perfect certainty. Even Aristotle,^ who could give only traditional reports concern- ing Thales, as early as his time had only conjectures about the grounds of this assertion. When Aristotle states that the moist character of the animal seed and animal nutri- tion was the occasion for this statement of Thales (and to Aristotle's inference,^ all later supplementary conjectures appear to refer), we are permitted to attribute this inferen ce tn flip^apppifip. ip terest in bi ology, which appealed strongly to the Stagirite, but, for all we know, not at all to Thales. More probable is the conjecture, likewise reported by Aristotle,^ which brings the teaching of Thales into connec- tion with ancient cosmological ideas. In these the ocean was considered the oldest and most important thing. It would be exceedingly strange if the Ionian thinker, in an- swer to the question as to the constitution of the world, had not decided in favor of- the element so important to his people. Th e thouo-ht of it s infi nite mobility, its tran sfor- nx(i tion into eart h and aiF, ifs^l-engul fi n g violence, could not but have holrl fin impoi-tnnt p1npn in fho rnind.^ of spn- ^ffljing f'^lk The reported cosmographical '^ ideas of Th ales u also agree with this, i(fc he is said to have thought that the earth floated in water, and to have given, in connection with this, a Neptunian explanation of earthquakes. / 1 Met., I. 3, 983 b, 22, Xa^wj; 'iacos Tf}v vnoKr^^iv. 2 Plut. Plac.phiL, I. 3 (Dox., 276). Compare Zeller, P. 175, 2. 3 See beyond. 4 Arist. De ccelo, IT. 13, 294 a, 28. \ 38 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY But it makes no difference whether Thales came to his assertion more through organic than inorganic observations. So much is clear, that the cliemical composition of water, the pure HgO, did not determine his choice of it as the cos- mic matter. Rather its_flm(j[ state of aggregation and th e importa nt r51e j that it p1ayed-4a^ie mobile JjIfi-oL nature detemuned.hjs^ decision, so that in the ancient reports vypov is often substituted for vhcop. \ The idea of Thales \ seems to have been to select as the world stuff that form of matter, which promised to make most readily compre- ^ hensible, the transformation on the one hand to the solid, on the other to the volatile.J. More definite data concern- ing the modus operandi of these changes do not appear to have been furnished by Thales. It must remain problemat- ical whether he, like the later philosophers, conceived this process of change as a condensation and rarefaction. At any rate, Th ales represented tliis flu id cosmic mat ter as in con tinuous self-motion. Of a force moving matter and distinguishable from it, he taught nothing.^ In naively considering an event as a thing requiring no further explanation, he advocated, like his followers, the so-called hylozoistic theory, which represents matter as eo ipso moving and on that account animated. With this are compatible his iravra irXyjpT) Oeojv elvai'^ and his ascri})- \ tion of a soul to the ma^net.^ The scientific view of the world had obviousT^ at this stage not yet excluded the im- aginative view of nature held by Greek mythology. ^ According to the statements of the later writers (Cicero, De nat. deor., I. 10), Thales i)laced in antithesis to the cosmic matter the form- ing divine spirit. Such statements betray^ on the one hand, the termi- nology of the Stoics, and on the other lead us to infer a confounding of Thales with Anaxagoras. TliQ ^iylozoism eft all the ancient physicists, including Thales, is aflirmed b y Aristotle in Met., I. 3. 2 Arist. De aimna, I. 5, 411 a, 8. 8 Ibid.y I. 2, 405 a, 20. THE MILESIAN NATURE J'HILOSOriiY 39 The time in which Thales lived is detcriiiiiied by an eclipse, which he is said to have predicted. In accordance with modern investigations (Zech, Astronomische Untermiduuicjen iiber die icichtifj.sten Finsfernisse^ Leipzig, 1853), this must be placed in the year [)85 n. c. His life falls, at all events, in the flourishing period of j\liletus under Thrasybulus. The year of his birth cannot be exactly determined; his death may be placed directly after the Persian invasion in the middle of the sixth century (Diels, Ehein. Mas., XXXI. 15 f.). He belonged to the old family of the Thelides, which sprang from the Boeotian Cadmians, who migrated into Asia Minor. Hence the state- ment that he was of Phoenician derivation (Zeller, I'*. 169, 1). See § 9 for his practical and political activity; § 10, for his knowledge of mathematics and physics. The Egyptian jour- neys which later literature reports, are at least doubtful ; although, provided that he was engaged in commerce, they are not impossible. None of the writings of Thales are cited by Aristotle, and it is consequently doubtful if he committed any- thing to writing. 15. If Thales is to be regarded as the first physici st, w e meet the first metaphysician in the person of his somewhat . younger countryman, Anaximander ,(611-545 B. c). For^^ his aiis^ver -to the _c|uesti on concerning the constitution of .. ^ the universe is already to be essentially distinguished, in its content as well as in its fundamentals, from that of Thales. Thales had sought to find the cos mic matter in the empir i- cally known, and had^seized upou-wliafc. appears as themost completely mutable . If Anaximo ^i^p^- WP^ ^""^^ ^ontonti with th is tlic ory, it was on account_o f his prono unced principle i^ '^ thatJhe_cosmic matter must bethought ns infiijjtp, SO that it n^aynot be thought to ex haust its'^lf in itp cront ionff From this it followed immediately that the cosmic ma tter r^^n^t be found am on g empirically giyen forms of matter, all of which are limited. LThus there remained for the definition ofl:he cosmic matter only the quality of its spatial and temporal infinity^- Consequently ^naximander said that the a/3%»; is the aireipov. 1 Arist. Phys., III. 8, 208 a, 8-. see Plut. PZac, I. 3 {Dox., 277), Iva f) yevearis fj-fj eTrikeinrj. 4 40 HISTORY OE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY TItp mngf. i mj>nvfrvnt aspect of tliis dictuHiJs^tliat' here, .:^ f orJiLfi-£j:&t time, is the step taken from the concret e to the ahstract^ f rom the anschaidich to the hegrifflich. fAnaxi- mander explained the sensuously given hy the concept, ' The advance consisted in the fact that the airetpov is dis- tinguished from all perceptible forms of matter) Anaxi- j mande r thus referred the world of expjxience_to _JLJ^Qa■lity i beyo nd experienc e, the idea of which arises from a concep- '• l:ual postulate^ He characterized tliis tr anscendent re ality by all the predicates which his mind conceived as requisite for the cosmic matter. He called it aOdvarov /cal avooXe- Opovy ayewnrov Kal d(j)6apTov ; ^ he described it as including | all things {ireptexeiv) and as determining their motion \) {KvlBepvav) ; ^ and he designated it in this sense as to Oelov. But with tliis first metaphysical concept began then also the difficulty of giving a content to it.^ That Anaximander conceived the aireipov to be pre-eminently a spatial and temporal infinity, follows from the way in which he arrived at this principle. Concerning his attitude, however, toward the question of the qualitative determination of the aireipov^ both antiquity and still more modern investiga- tors have apparently had divided opinions. The simplest and the most natural theory to entertain is the following : (that Anaximander did not express himself about the quality )of this imperceivable cosmic matter, for the ancient ac- counts agree that he did not identify it with any one of the (known elements. More questionable, certainly, is it whether he, as Herbart (W. W., I. 196) and his school (Striimpcll, I. 29) are inclined to accept, expressly denied the qualitative determination of tlie cosmic matter, which would have anticip ated the Plnlnni.-- V li^i.^folimi pnnpoi.fmri ^ 1 Arist. Phijs., ITT. 4, 203 b, 8. Likewise atSiov and dyrjpa, see Ilippol. Ref. hcer., I. G (Dox., 559). 2 AVliifh expression does not mean, as Roth thinks (GescJi. unseref ahendl. Philos.j II. 142^, " a mental guidance." See Zeller, I*. 204, 1. ). THE MILKSIAN NATURE rJlILOSOPHY 41 of matter as an undetermined possibility. But, on the otiier liand, it is ccrtiiin that Anaximandcr thought of tlie aireipov always as Gurpuimil,^ and only the kind of cor- poreality can bo subject to controversy. The hypothesis, too, expressed repeatedly in later antiquity, is untenable, viz., that he asserted the cosmic matter to be an inter- mediary state between water and air, or air and fire. On the contrary, the combination of the Anaximandrian prin- ciple with i\\Q ixi>y^a of Empedocles and Anaxagoras^ which Aristotle gives, led even in antiquity to the conception of the aireipov as a mixture of all the empirical material elements. If noWj_also, the adherence x)f Anaximander to^^ hylozoistic monism is — as ..Aristotle 5ays it is — so. very certain that one cannot make liim (with Ritter, op. cit.') the father of mechanical physics, in opposition to. Ionian dynamics,^ yet, on the other hand, it is incontrovertible that Anaximander in some conjecturable, obscure way must have stated that the aireipov contains^ in itself all known '. material elements, and then differentiates these elements - in the cosmic process.^ Doubtless he held an attitude of uncertainty as to the relationship of the aireipov to these particular elements, similar to the mythological primeval idea of_Cha^s^.jihiiili_.idea, to be .sure, had already been greatly purified, but not yet thoroughly elaborated and assimilated. Accordingly Anaximander was doubtless content in merely indicating as eKKpiveaOai the development of par- 1 Compare Zeller, I^. 18G, 1, as against Michelis, De an. infnito (Braunsberg, 1874). 2 Arist. Met., XI. 2, lOfiO b, 22 : to which add especially P/^//.?., I. 4, 1S7 a, 20 : ol d €K Tov iubs evoixrai ras ivavTLOTrjTas cKKpiveadai, wcrirep Kva^lfxavhpos (f)rjai ktX. Compare § 22. 3 Brundis, Hamlhuch, I. 125. ^ Arist. Met., XI. 2, and Theoplirastus (Simpl. Phys^., 6) interpret this as a dwdnei inclusion. Tlie uTreipop became to them their aopiaros v\t). 42 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY ticular things from the cosmic matter. Indeed he caused the antithetical "Wlarm jmd Cold to bo differentiated from the aTTetpov as its first qualitative determinations. Out of the mixture of these two qualities was supposed to be formed then th e Fluid, th e fundamental material, of the finite empirieal^world. Thus the metaphysical basis to the theory of Thales was complete; for Anaximander_ tnught tliat the particular parts of the w orld had been diffe rejitiated out- of the Fluid. These were the earth, air, and the fire encircling the whole. The philosopher inserted into this meteorological account of the origin of the world a multitude of single astronom- ical ideas (§ 10) which, even if they appear childish to us to-day, nevertheless not only show a many-sided in- terest in nature, but also presuppose independent obser- vations and conclusions. Anaximander reflected upon the facts of organic life also, and there is preserved one obser- .^ vation of his in accord ^ with the modern evolution theory. This is to the effect that animals appeared when the primi- tive liquid earth dried up, and were originally fish in form. Then some of them, adapting themselves to their new envi- ronment, became land animals. This process of develop- ment, in its naive explanation, includes even man. The single qualitative differentiations are lost again in the perpetual life-process of the cosmic matter, in the same wav that thev arise out of the direipou, Anaximander, in the single fragment verbally i)reserved to us, has described this reabsorption in a poetic ^ manner — reminding us of original Oriental-religious ideas — as a kind of compensation for the injustice of individual existence. ef mv Be i) yevrjal'; ean roU oixTL, Kat rr)v (f)9opav eh ravra yiveoOat Kara to '^pecov. hthovai ryap avra hiKriv koI Tiaiv [aXX^/Xoi?] Tr\<=; ahiKia^ Kara 1 riut. P/rtC, V. 19 {Dox., 430) ; Ilippol. Eef. hoer., 1.6{Dox., 560). Coin)>are Teichmiiller, Studien, I. 63 f. 2 Simpl. PJujs., 6^, 24, 13. THE M1LE8IAN NATURE rillLOSOPHY 43 T)]v Tov ^povov Tci^Lv, To tliis Aiiaxiinandcr united the ^theory, iilso_siiiiilarly Oriental3_..that JJic^ciasinicjna^te^ ^ perpetual tra nsformat i on creates ou t of itself world-syst ems, and again a jbsorbsj bliem.^ Whether to the viq^v of an end- I^ss~pTurality of success1V«L world-formations was connected also that of a })lurality of/Co-existing worlds, contained in the primitive matter, I'^mains undecided and not probable.^ The deteijja^nation of the dates of the life of Anaximander rests upou tl(e arbitrary statement of Apollodorus, that in the second year or.the fifty-eighth Olympiad he was sixty-four years old and directly Afterwards died. (Diog. Laert., U. 2.) This is not far from the trutli. Further of his biography is not known. His work, to which some one gave the title -n-epl (fivaews^ was in prose, and appears to have been lost very early. Compare Sehlei- ermacher, Ueher An.^ W. W. III. 2, 171 f . ; Biisgeu, Ueher das aTreipov des A. (SYieshadQU, 1867) ; Neuhiiuser, ^jiaa;. Milesiiis^ (Bonn, 1883j. 16. We turn back from tlie metnphjm'fial to tT^^ pV'j^^l / point of view when we pass from Anaximander to Anaxi- menes, for the latter s ought the cosm ic matter a^ain in the ; empi rically known . Nevertheless the reflections of Anaxi- mander were not ineffectual upon his successor. For when \ he substituted the air in place of the water of Thales, he had especial reference to the postulate. .oL ^i ax imander::__ he explained that the air is the aireipo^ ^PX^- He found the claims of the metaphysician to be thus satisfied by the em- pirical material.^ At the same time he chose the air on .^ft — - 1 Plut. Strom., fr. 2 {Dox., 579). 2 SoeZeller, I. 212 f. ^ This is attested expressly by Simplicius, Phys., 6r, 24, 26 : see Eus. Prcep., I. 8, 3 {Dox., 579) and especially Schol. in Arist., 514 a, 33 ; anecpou p.kv Koi avTos vneOeTO ttjv apx^v, ov prju en nopicTTov ktX. It is thus impossible to premise with Ritter (Gesch. der Philos., 217) that Auaximencs made a distinction between the air as a metaphysical cosmic matter and the same as an empirical element. Brand is also, who first entertained this view in his handbook, I. 144, has later (^Gesch. d. Entio., I. 5G, 2) not laid so much stress on it. V 44 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY account pf iva€oj<; was written ^ yXoyaarj 'laSt airXfj kcu dTrcptrTO). This is the beginning of a dry practical prose which shows itself contemporaneously in the historiog- raphy of his countryman Hecatoeus. With the destruction of Miletus-after the battle of Lade, 494, and the fall of the independence of lonia^ the first development of Greek science along the lines of natural philosophy came to an end.^ When, at least a generation * after Anaximenes, in another Ionian city, Ephesus, the great scientific theory of Heracleit us appeared, the new theory did not leave the old theory un used. TTpvnpjpifng, /^ on the other hand, joined to the_old theor y the religious and metaj.)liysical proble ms wh ich had appeared in the mean time from other directions^ 1 Sirapl. PJnjs., 25 7 T 2 According to Diog. Laert., II. 2. ^ The great chronological chasm between Anaximenes and Heraclei- tus is consistent with the entirely different handling of the problems by the latter. Therefore the customary way of making Heracleitus a follower of the Milesians is the less tenable, since the teaching of Pleracleitus absolutely presupposes that of Xenophanes. * If one places the death of Anaximenes at 52.5 (Diels and Zeller) and that of Heracleitus, at the earliest, at 475, then the chasm appears still greater. 46 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 2. The Metaphysical Conflict — Heracleitus and the Eleatics. The advance from the speculations in jiature-pliilosophy ^f the Milesians to the conceptual in vestig ations in Being ■ and Becoming of Heracleitus and his Eleatic opponents was the result of a reaction, which the conception of the ^- world created by Ionian. science necessarily exerted upon tlie religio us ideas of the Gre eks. The monistic tendency ) which science showed in seekinor the unitarv cosmic matter ^ i was in implicit opposition to polytheistic mythology, and ■• necessarily became more and more accentuated. It was inevitable, therefore, that Greek science on the one hand should emphasize an d^ r einforce the mmTJ-^^J^- snggpsfion which it found in the field of religious ideas, but on the other that it should fall so much the more J^^^"^ ahnrppr ^^ opposition to_the jpoly theism_^f ,_ th e state ..religi on. 17. The imperturbable champion of this conflict, the man who stands as the religious-philosophical link between the Milesian nature philosophy and the two great metaphys- ical systems of Heracleitus and Parmenides, and at the same time the man who is the messenger_of philosophy "■^from the East to the Wes t, ^s Xenopha nes.^ the rhapsodist 1 The disposition of the material of the text, whereby Xenophanes, who is generally called the "founder" of the Eleatic school, has been separated from this school, is justified by these two facts : firstly, the theory of Xenophanes in point of time and subject matter precedes that of Heracleitus, and the theory of Heracleitus in the same respects pre- cedes that of Parmenides ; secondly, that Xenophanes is neither a genuine Eleatic, nor yet a representative of the Eleatic theory of Being, enunciated first by Parmenides. The importance of Xenophanes lies not within a metaphysical but a religious-philosophical territory, and his strength does not consist in conceptual thought (Arist. Met, I. 5, 986 b, 27, calls him, as opposed to Parmenides, dypoiKorepov) but in the powerful and grand thought of Oneness. See Brandis, Handhuchy I. 359. THE METArMYSlCAL CONFLICT 47 of Colophon, who sang in Magna Graecia (570-470). To him antiquity referred as the first champion against the anthropomorphic element in the popular religion. He , criticised the repre sentation of godsJii^JiiiiiumrJCQ^flajLand a made sport of the~^ets who aTEnbuted to celestials the passions and sins of men.^ He a^gserted the singlene ss of ^ . the_highest and true God.i_ If we may believe that herein he taught nothing but what was already provided for and hinted at, if not indeed definitely presented, in the Pythag- orean doctrine as known to him, and possibly even earlier in the Mysteries, — then jjiat whi^J i mnkn s Xenophancs a philosopher is the basis which he develgp ^H for innimthn- ism from t he philosophv of the Milesian physics . We can conaense his teaching into a sentence : the apyj] is the Godhead. According to his religious convictiouy God is -j ' the original ground of all thinners, gjid to him are due all 'p^ a ttributes which the physicists had ascri bed to the cosmic. I iQatter. ^ He is unoriginated and imperishable;* and, as "fEe cosmic matter was identical with the World- AIL ior th^ lonians, so for Xenj:4jhaii£a -was.-GlQd^ideiiticaL-t o the w orld- alJ He contains all things in himself, and he is at the same time ev koL irav.^ This philosophical monotheism, 1 Compare the well-known verse in Clem. Alex. Strom. ^ V. 714 (fr. 5, G). 2 Compare Sext. Emp. Adv. math., IX. 193 and I. 289, * " Eis Bebs €u re Oeolai Koi avOpoanotai fieyLaros ovre dcfias 6vT]rol(nv o^io'iios ovT€ vorjfia.^^ The njctapliysical JHQnotheism in Xenophanes and later in the Greek thinkers— in a certain sense. even in Plato — is allied with the recognition also of subordinate deities which are treated Rs parts of the world. The Stoa was the first to attempt to analyze this relationship in a conceptual way. Side by side with the metaphysical monotheism, there thus continued to exist a mythical polytheism. * According to Arist. Rhet., TI. 23, 1399 b, 6, Xenophanes declared it impious to speak of birth and death, of origination and extinction, of a Godhead, d^(f)OTep(os yap o'vp.^alveiv prj flvai tovs deovs nore. ^ Compare Simpl. Phys.f 6', 22, 2G ; ev to ov koI nav . . . 3cuovati^" — of — the teaching of - Xenophanes; ^ For just here the concept of the apx^ ^oul4 no lon^r serve as an explanation of empirical events. However, Xenophanes did not himself appear to have been conscious of the chasm he left between his metaphysical principle, and the plurality an d cliart^eableness of individual things.^ For in an obviously naive * manner he conjoined to his religious metaphysics a multitude of physical theories. Nevertheless he does not appear as an independent in- vestigator in physics, but he simply follows the views of Anaximander, with whose entire doctrine he seems to liave been perfectly familiar,^ and adds certain more or less happy observations of his own. Among the latter 1 Eus. Prcep. ev., L 8, 4 : elvai Xeyci to ndu del o/xolov. Hippolyt. Re/., I. 14 : ore eu to nav ccttiv e^o) fieTa^oXTJs. He also denied movement to the world-all ; compare Simpl. Phi/s , 6'^, 23, 6 : aul S' iv tcovtco re uei/eiv Kivovixevov ovdeu ovSe fxcT€p)(e(T6ai fxiu eTrnrpenei. uXXoBev (iWrj. ^ This very opposition Aristotle emphasizes in connection with Met., I. 5. ^ It is possible, also, that he endeavored to avoid a difficulty here by an indefinite expression, just as Diogenes, IT. 1, reports that Anaximander (no source of authority given) tauglit : to. /leV fxepr] fxcTa^dXXeiv. to 5e nav dfieTa^XrjTov clvai. ^ Thus ho lets stand the plurality of mythical gods under the meta- physical Godhead. ^ Theophrastus appears to think him the puj)il of Anaximander See Zeller, I*. 508, 1 . 50 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY belong the very childish ideas about astronomical objects. For instance, the stars were to him clouds of fire, which were quenched when they set and were enkindled when they rose ; ^ he attached great significance ^ to the earth as the fundamental element of the empirical world (with the addition of the water), and he thought it to be endless^ in its downward direction. His statement was more happy about the petrifactions he had observed in Sicily, as a proof of the original drying of the earth from its muddy condi- tion.* Yet Xenophanes apparently held such physical theories concerning the individual and temporary in small esteem compared to his religious metaphysics, which he championed vehemently. To this only can his sceptical remarks in one of his fragments^ refer. The differing statements as to when Xenophanes lived can be reconciled most easily by assuming that the time when he, accordingjto his own statement (Diog. Laert., IX. 19), at twenty- five began his wanderings, coincided with the invasion by the Per- sians under Harpagus (546, in consequence of which so many lonians left their homes). He himself testifies (loo. cit.) that his wanderings lasted sixty-seven years, at which time he must have attained the age of at least ninety-two. Impoverished during the emigration, if not already poor, which is less prob- able, he supported himself as a rhapsodist by the public render- ing of his own verses. In old age he settled in Elea, the founding of which in 537 by the fugitive Phamicians he cele- brated in two thousand distichs. According to the preserved fragments, his poetic activity was essentially of the Gnomic order (§0). He embodied his teaching in a didactic poem in liexameter, of which only a few fragments remain. These have been collated by Mullach ; also by Karsten, PhilosopJiorum Graecorum operum reliquice^ I. 1 (Amsterdam, 1835) ; Reinhold, De genuina Xeiiophanis docfrina (.Tena, 1847), and in tlie dif- ferent works about Xenophanes by Franz Kern (Proyramm, 1 Stob. Eel, I. 522 {Dox., 348). 2 Achilles Tatius in Jsagoge ad Aratiwi, 128. 3 Simj)!. Phj/s. 41^ 189, 1. Sext. Emp. Ado. math., IX. 3G1. ^ Ilippol. Re/., I. 14 (Dox. 565). 6 Sextus Emp., VII. 4J), 110 ; VIII. 326. Stob. EcL, I. 224. THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 51 Naumburg, 18G4 ; Oldenburg, KS7(; ; Danzig, 1871; Stettin, 1871, 1877) ; Freudentluil, Die Theoloyie ilr^ Xe)iophanes (Bres- lau, 18.SG). Compare Arch. f. Gesdi. d. l*/iilos., I. 322 f. Tlie pseudo-ArisLoteiiau treatise De XenopUane Zenone Gor- cjia (printed in the works of Aristotle, and in Mullach, Fragm. I. 271, also under the title De Melissa, Xehophane et Gorgia), came from the Peripatetic school. According to the investii^ja- tions of Brandis, Bergk, Ueberweg, Vermehren, and Zeller, "we may believe that the last part of this work doubtless treats of Gorgias, and the first part almost as surely of jNIelissus. The middle portion presupposes an older presentation about Xcnoph- anes which was referred wrongly by a later commentator to Zeno, and was supplemented with some statements about Zeno's views drawn from other sources. This part of the treatise can be used only with the greatest judgment, and then as illustra- tive of what on the one hand the fragments, and on the other the reports, of Aristotle give. The teaching of Xenophanes, immature as it appears, nevertheless discloses the in adequacy of the Milesian con- cept of the apxV' I In or behind the chanQ^e of single thina' ST' j he said^ should be souo'ht a cosmic principle ^'^^'^^ ^voofjr^o ltheni_ji11, hut, ypf ^^g^^f nlwavs remains unchan oed. But if we seriously conceive of this cosmic principle of X Xenophanes as utterly unchangeable, aiid at the same time regard it as the sole and all-embracing actuality, it is jmpossilila to understand its capacity of heing^cjOiiselc^ly transmuted into individual things. T he two thouglji-mo - ftifs that had been fundamental in the concept o f tbp f^fj^ I now part company, — on the one .hand, the reflection upon K thc umdamental fact of the cosmic proces s ( GescJiehe7is), on the other tlip. fundamcutnl jmst ulato of the pormanCJ lt, of the unchangeably self-determined, of Being. The more difiicult their reconciliation appeared, the more conceivable is it that the young science, at whose command there was as yet no wealth of mediating data, and which on the other hand w\as developed with naive unconcern, should fall upon the expedient of thinking out each motif by itself without regard for the other. From this courageous onesidedness, I / 52 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY t/ r I jimdaunted as it was at paradoxical consequences, origi- j/nated the two great metaphysical systems whose opposition determined later thought. _ These are tlie theories of Hera- cleitus and Parmenides. 18. The f| noj-.nne of ahsn1iTte,_ ceaseless, and ujiiyj2rsal ^mutability alre ady was ev en in antiq uit y regar ded as the' k erne l of Heracleitanism. Its watchword is iravra pec ; and Vlien Plato ^ gave the phrase a new turn, on iravra %&)pet Kol ovhev fjuevei, he gave at the same time the obverse of the proposition, viz., the d enial of the per manent. Here in this is Heracleitus, '^ t he Dark ," essentially distinguished from the Milesian philosophers, with whom he, under the name of the "renian natural philoso^jhers," is generally classed (§ 16). Ij ^racleitus found no thing perman ent in the perce ptual world , and' he gave up search for lE"""^ the most varied 'phrase he presented the fundamental truth of the continuous transm utation of all things into o ne anothe r. From every realm of life he seized ex- amples, in order to point out the passage of opposites into ach other. He described in bold figure s .the ceaselessnes s 1 was to him tJie essence of thejvorjj ^jjmd A> i,necded lU) rIoH vn.tinn rn -id o \-] )1nnntinn. There are no truly ^ ^existing thhigs, b ut all things oul yhecome and pass aiuay agam in the play oi: perpetual world-movemen t. The a/o%^ is >^not so much immutable matter in independent motion, as ^ the Milesians had said, b ut is the motion it;jiel^r-fi;Q m_which j "y m forms of mnttp ji_arc- l n tnr d erived as projjLicts.^ This thought is stated by Heracleitus. ])y lio means with con- ceptual clearness, but in sensuous pictures. { Already the Milesian investigators h ad noted that all motion and change iirG._connQctcd with temperature changes (§16), and so. Heracleitu s .thought that the etei'nal cosmic motion cx- press.CiIitselfJby^rer7Fir_e is the apxn^ l^ut not as a stuff identical with itself in all its changes, but rather as the 1 CrahjL, 402 a. ,7 J THE METAPHYSICAL C(^NFLICT 53 e ver-un iform process itself, in which all things rise and vn pass away. It is the world itself, therefore, in its unorigi- nating and nnperishing mutability .^ The exceptional difficulty of this relationship was remarked b3^ the ancients, and from it, especially, the Ephesian got liis nickname, u-Korcur)-?. Herein appeared the amalgamation of the abstract and the concrete, of tlie sensuous and the symboli- cal, which, in general, characterized the entire thought and habit of expression of Ileracleitus. Neither to oracular pride nor to the assumption of raysteriousness (Zeller, I"*. 570 f.) is this deficiency to be attributed in his writing, but to inability to find an adequate form for his aspiring abstract thought. Besides this, a priestly ceremoniousness of tone is unmistak- able. Hence the wrestling with language which appears in nearly all the fragments ; hence the rhetorical vehemence of expression and a heaping up of metaphors, in which a power- ful and sometimes grotesque fancy is displayed. Concerning especially his fundamental teaching, his words seem to sliow in isolated passages that he had ouly substituted fire for water or air. But more exact search shows that the ap^rj meant quite a different thing to him. He a lso identified fire and the world- all and fire and the Godhead ; — n ay, hylozoic pantheism find s in t lie teaenmg ot iieracieitus its own most perfect expressio n . Yelh e meant that this world principle is onlv t1i(vmovement r epresenterl in thn fi re. I t is the cosmic process its elf. Heracleitus proceeded from the point of view that the Crc-motion is originally in itself the final ground of tilings, and accordingly no per manent B eing is fundamental in it. He found fire to be the condition of*every change, and, therefore the object of scientific knowledge. ^^But he did ' not only mean this in the sense that " nothing is perma- ; nent save change," but also in the higher sense that IFis : eternal movement completes itself in determined and eve r- r ecurrent form s. From this metaphysical thesis he at- tempted to understand the problem of the ever-permanent series of repetitions, the rhythm of movement and the la^ ^>^ ^ Fr. 46 (Schust.) k6(t^ovt6v avrov dirdvTcov ovre tis decov oi/Ve duOpoi- ir(ov €nolt](T(v, dXX' ^v del Koi 'dcrriv ivvp dei^coov. 54 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY ^ of change. ^In obscure and undev eloped f orm.M VJy mated liere the conm$it>ion ^f-^^ii^f^wral laiu. It appeared in the vesture of the mythical Elfjuapixevrj^ as an all-determining Fate, or an all-powerful AUt], menacing every deviation with punishment. Since it is to be regarded as the peculiar object of reason, he called it the ^0709, — the reason that rules the world. '''^J'^^ In the later presentations of this theory, in which i ts Stoi cism appears, it is difficult to get at what is in itself peculiarly Ileracleitan (Zeller, 1 4. 606 f.). Tint, t^i^ /iliir"' ^ "-"Q'^^qi thought of a world-order of natnral pbeDomena cannot b£ L cTeriTed to H eraoleitiis. ( lompare M. Heinze, Die Lelire vom Logos in der griechischen PMlosopMe (Leipzig, 1872). -* / The most universal form of the cosm ic p rocess was, there - re, for Heracleitus that of opposition and ita elim ination. From the notion of thft_^^flow of nil things/' it followed that every single tiling in its continuous^ change unites^^J injtself perpetually opposing determinations. Everything is only a transitiojL, a t^point of li mit between the vanishiiig and the alxmt-to^j^e. The lite of nature is a continuo us pass- i ng into one another of all opposites^ a nd out of their s trife CQiXL g the individual thingjs >, TroA^eao ? irdvrwv fjLevlrdT'^p^&Ti, irdvTwv Be paaikev^.^ But as these antitheses ultimately arise only out of the universal and all-embracing, living, fiery, cosmic force, so they find their adjustment and reconciliation in this same fire. Fire is, in this respect, the " unseen har- Aiony." 2 Tbft ^vorld-all is consequently the self-divided ^ Jiifl tho self-renni tiirg nnify ^ It is at oiic_and the same 1 1 Fr. 75. ^ ('ompare Fr. 8 : apyiovlr] yap dcfjavqs (f)au€prjs KpeiTTcav. iv ^ras dia(popas Koi erepoTTjTas 6 ^lyfucoi' Oeos €Kpvy\r€ kol Karedvaev. Coinp. Zeller, P. 604 f. The dcjxiprjs here obviously characterizes the metaphysical in opposition to the j)hysical. ^ Plato, Sipiip., 187 a : to fv 8iauisiin n^ nnd indeed in such wise that they are consta ntly) l)nhi.nced ii^ till^^'^ results. Thus it haijjjcns that single t ilin gs have the appearance of p rsisting^ w hen two o ppos- ing forces tempor arily hold each other in equilibri unyj asTToTmstSiccT^ic^^r^^ appears as a permanent tli i ng because just as much water flows to a point as flows from it. Heracleitus designated this rh ythm of change as t he ♦ two 'i Ways " which are identical, the odoT^Kdra) and the 6Sh^ auo).^ By the first Way the original fire changes itself inte-water and-tlien into eartl^ through condensation ; by, the second the earth changes back through liquefac- ^ tien. to _ water and then to fire. This double process is -^^^^j^t^ true in one respect for the entire world ; for in regularly "^f^Xt recui-rent periods* it develops into individual things from the original fire, and then returns to the initial condition j ofpurefire. Hence comes the idea of alternating world- "w^ formation a nd world-destructio n.^ On tlie oThor hand, this / \ tima'te figure of the bow and the lyre : naXipTovos [-rponos] yap dpp.oviT) Koa-^iov BKcoa-nep to^ov kul \vpT]s. As to the meaning, see Zeller, V. 598 f 1 Ibid., 641. I 2'Fr. 67. From these determinations apparently come vcIkos an (pLKoTTjs, the different conditions developed by Empedocles (§ 21). 8 Compare Dioc?. Laert., IX. 8. The designations KaTio and avo) are to be understood as first of all spatial, but they appear to have acquired a connotation of value. A thing becomes less valuable, the farther it is from the fiery element. "4 He has suggested for these the Great Year (18,000 or 10,800 years?) ; following perhaps the Chaldeans. s The acceptance of successive world-format long and destructions in Heracleitus may be looked upon as assured from the deductions of Zeller, B. 626-6-40. 56 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY orderly change of matter verifies itself in every single series in nature. How far Heracleitus, however, applied his view to particular physical objects, we do not know. In cosmogony, he appears to have been satisfied with bring- ing "the " sea " out of the primitive fire, and then out of the \ sea ijie earth on the one hand, and on the other the warm aii\frhe only detail authoritatively attested — one that re- minds us of Xenophanes — that the sun is a mass of vapor, taking fire in the morning and becoming extinguished in the evening, reconciles us to the loss of other theories of Heracleitus, in case he had any. F(it Heradfiitus was Y--^es s_a physicist than a metaphysicia n. He thought out a single fundamental principle with profound reflection and vivid imagination. His interest lay in the most general of principles and in anthropological questions. It can scarcely be accidental that in the preserved fragments of Heracleitus there is little peculiarly physical, but much that is jneta physical a nd anthropological. If his writing actually had three koyoi (T)iog. Laert., IX. 5), of which one dealt with TTcpi Tov TravTo?, and both the others were ttoXltlko^ and ^eoAoyt/co?, this is proof tliat we have to do with a philosopher who did n ot, n.R his ]\niesian predeces sors, accord a merely casual y Von^ideratio n to human life, but made it his prime study. The conflict of the pure fire and the lower elements into which everything changes repeats itself in man. 31i£._aaul ^ as the living principle is fire, and _ finds itself a captive in a body made out of water aad earth, which, on account of its inherent rigidness, is to the soul an abhorrent^ objecC^ With this theory Heracleitus united ideas of transmio;ray^ lion, of rctril)ution after death, and the like; and he, as Pythagoras, seems to have attached it to certain Mysteries. In general he took a position in religious matters similar to that of Pythasforasr. Without breaking entirely with the poi)ular faith, he espoused an interpretation of the ,' myths that inclined toward monotheism and had an et hical impor t. THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 57 The vitality .ol-tke soul,- and consequently its perfection ^--^^S ■ in every respect, depends on its deriving its nonrislnncnt from the cosmic fire, the universal reaso n, the \6yo<:/ The breath is the physical mediuni of obtainnig this noui^ish- ment, and cessation of the breath stops activity f) /^fimther medi um of li fe, howe ver, is sen se perception, whic^h is the abso rption of the outer throup^h the innnr fire; and this accounts for the depression of soul-activitv in sleepN The drier and more fiery, the better and wiser is the s^, and the more does it participate in the universal cosmic reason, feince the cosmic reason is cosmic law,_the reasonableness 1—^ of nian consists in his conf ormity to law^ and in his con- p scions subordination to^y On that account Heracleitus A regarded the ethicnl nnd politmni tnsVs of ninnkind as ^ e xpressions of the supremacy of law. His entire aristo- ' cratic hate against the democracy, that had attained to j power, is revealed in diatribes against the anarchy of the multitudes and their caprice. Onl x ^^^ subordination to o rder and in the last instance -t» nosnnV, Inw^ can man win that serenity wki iili c o nstitutes his happiness. In an ajjprclie nsion of J aw, however, and in subordination t o the universally valid, Heracleitus found the theoretical gimi of mankind. Only tlio. reafton a url not snuse pprcnption guai-antees th^_att'-'i ^"'^^^p^^t -of this ao nl. an d, without the reason fyes and e^ Yf\ m-P hn d w^itnes ses.^ The great mass 1 The well-known Fra^irment 11 (Sext. Emp. Adi-. math., VIT. 12G), KUKol fidpTvpes dv9p(OTroi(TCv 6(f)6aXp.oi kqI ara ^ap^dpovi ■'irvxds exovroiv, is usually intcr ]jreted as a disdain of sense knowled ge. Schuster (p. 19 f.) has made an attempt (confuted by Zeller, K 572 f., G5G f.) to stamp Heracleitus as a sensualist on account of his theory of perception. The correct position lies in the mean between these two authorities. Ki^'ht knowledge indeed arises in sense when the right soul e laborate^ it, The critc j 'i on to which all things are referred is here ag^n conf t q<^1^w^hjteh is universally va lid and won only througTi sleep and through mere individual perception every one has only his own, and therefore a false, world of ideas. The analogy in practical life is 'jUv^^v 58 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY of mankind in this respect are badly off. They do not reflect, but live on as the deluded victims of sense, whose greatest deception consists hj its simulation of permanent Being amid the transitoriness of all the phenomena of perception, i Heracleitus of Ephesus, son of Blyson, belonged to the most eminent family of his native city, which traced its origin to Codrus. In this family the dignity of apx^v /^ao-tAevs was in- herited, and Heracleitus is said to have surrendered it to his brother. The dates of his birth and death are not exactly known. If he survived the banishment of his friend Hermodo- rus (compare E. Zeller, De Herm. E]}liesio, Marburg, 1851), who was forced from the city by the democratic ascendency after the throwing off of Persian domination, his death can scarcely have been before 470. About this time he himself went into retirement to devote himself to science. His birth, since he is said to have lived about sixty years, can be placed between 540-530. With these dates, moreover, the statements of Diogenes Laertius agree, for Diogenes places the aKfx-q of Heracleitus in the sixty-ninth Olympiad. His own writing, in poetically ceremonial prose, supposes that Pythagoras and Xenophanes are already familiar names. It was not probably written until the third decade of the fifth century. His rude partisanship upon the side of the o ppi-p««pfl nricjtr.or^py i^t gll t hat IS known of his nr'pi ^ by wlnr-h Is ex plninfid his contempt for mankind, his solitariness and bitterness, and his ever emphatic antagonism toward the public and its capricious sentiments. In the collection and attempt at a systematic ordering of the unfortunately meagre fragments of Ileracleitus' book, and in the presentation of his doctrine, the following men have done eminent service : Fr. Schleiermacher {Her. der DwnMe von Ephesus, Ges. Wcrke III., II. 1-146) ; Jak. Bernays ( Ges. Abh. herausgez. von Usener, I., 1885, 1-108, and in addition especially the "Letters of Heracleitus," Berlin, 1869); Ferd. Lassalle {Die Philos. Jler. des Dtinkeln von Ej^hesus, 2 vols., Picrlin, 1858) ; P. Schuster {Her. v. Ephesus, Leipzig, 1873, in the Acta soc. ])hil., Lips, ed., Ritschl, III. 1-394) ; Teich- midler {Neiie Stadien zu Gesch. der Begriffe, Parts 1 and 2) ; shown in Fragment 123, ^wov eort naai to (fipovelv, ^vv vocd Xeyovras IcTxypl^ea-QaL xph '''^ $vuco ttclvtohv, coanep vnp.(o noKis Kul rroXv laxvporepcos • , Tpe(f>oi>Tai, yap nduTfS ol duOpcomvui vopoi vno evos tov delov. THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 59 J. I>y>Y:iter {Her. rellquiw^ Oxford), 1877, a collection which iiichides, to be sure, tlie counterfeiLed letters, but those, liow- ever, tluit presunnibly came from ancient sources ; Th. Goni- perz {Zu JI.'s Lehre und den Ueherresten seines Werke, Vienna, 1887) ; P^dui. Plleiderer, Die Fhilos. der Her, v. Eph. im Lichte der Mijsterienidcen (Berlin, 188G). In the theory of Heracleitus, scientific reflection as the sole true method already so far strengthened itself in the abstract development of his concepts that it set itself over against customary opinion and sense appearance with * a rugged self-consciousness. To a still higher degree the same attitude appears in the ^itagonist[c theory of the /i* lEleatic Sch ool, x ,«^.,__Pi 19. The scientific founder of the Eleatic school was YO^^ Parmenides. W hat had been set forth by Xenophanes in fcligiQus assertions about tlie unity and singleness ot th e Godhead and its ident itv_with the wo rl„(L_j^aa._ developed e ntirely conceptually by Parmenides as a metap hvsical theory. Xh^t conce pt, however, w hich was placed as central and dr ew all th e others entirel y into its circle, w^aa lieVng. The great Eleatic was led up to his theory through rcflcc- tions of a purely formal logi cal natur e. In a still obscure and undeveloped form the correlation of consciousness and ,^ Being hovered before his mind, ijl t hinking is referre ck-^^c^yru^i to s Qmetl p'ng t.hono-htj and therefore has Bein g for its co n- \ '*^**-" tout. -Thinking that refers to Nothing and is th ei-efore ^ -contentless, cannot be. yhfirpfnrf^ not-T^o ing cannot b e ^ thought^ and much the less can it be .^ It is the greatest of all follies to discuss not-Being at all, for we must speak of it as a thought content, that is, as something being, and must contradict ourselves.^ If all thinking refers, however, ^ Verses 35-40 (Mullach) : ovtc yap av yvoirji to ye fifj iov • ov yap avvcTov. ovT€ (Ppdaaii. to yap avTo voelu eariv T€ Ka\ eivai. 2 vv. 43-51. Steinhart and liernays have rightly called attention to the fact that Heracleitus is antagonized here, for he ascribes Being and not-Being alike to the things conceived in the process of Becoming. y^ HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY to something being, then is Being everywhere the same. For whatsoever also may be thought as in the particular thing, nevertheless the quality of Being (^das Scin') is in all the same. j^^jpg; i« ^^^^ ^^^^ pvnrlnpf nf gp ^,l->^b-^np.^,innjjinf. has compared the particular thought contents. Being alon e remains when all difference hasbeen abstr acted from the content determinations of actuality.^ From this fol- J lows the fundamental doctrine of the Eleatics, that only \ the one abstract Be ing is. The philosophy of Parmenides would be complete in this brief sentence eanv ehac, if on the one hand there did not follow from this conceptual definition a number of predicates of Being, — predicates primarily negative and susceptible only disjunctively of positive formulation ; and if on the other hand the philosopher did not deviate from the strict logic of his own postulates. In respect to the first, nj^l timn and qualitativ e distinc- j tions mu st b<^ d^T7''*^^l ^^ Br^ifij]^ Being is unoriginated and ( y imperisliable. It was not and will not be, but only is in , timeless eternity .^ For time, wherein perhaps any thing that is, first was and suffered change,^ is in no wise different \ from a thino; that is. Beino' is also unchaBse^hlej^erLtirely ^ hoin ogeneous and unitar y i n qua lity. It is also not plural, J but is the one unique, indivisible,'^ absolute cosmic Being. ■> Compare Zeller, I*. 670. The same dialectic in reference to Being and not-Being is repeated in the dialogue, The Soj)hist (238), in seeking for the possibility of error. 1 This line of thought is repeated by the Neo-Platonists, by Spinoza et ah, and is unavoidable if Being is valid as the criterion of " things being." Compare Kant, Kr. d. i\ Vern., Kehrb., 4 71 f. 2 V. 59 ff., especially Gl : ovbt ttot tJv ov3' ecrrai eVei vvv ecTTiv ofxov nav 8 V. 9r» : oi'Sf ;(/joi'Of eariv fj (CTTch nXXo napeK tov iovTOS. J his is di- rected perhaps against the cosmogonies, ])erhaps against the chrono- logical measure of cosmic development in Heracleitus. 4 V. 78. THE METArm^STCAL CONELTCT , (61 All plurality, all qualitative difference, all origination, all change or destruction are sluit out by true Being. In this respect Parnienides has constructed the concept in perfect clearness and sharpness. But this abstract ontology^among the Eleatics nevertheless took another turn through some content definitions obtained from tlie inner and outer world of experience. This oc- curred in the two directions resulting from the way in which Parmenides gained the concept of Being from tlie identity of thinking and the thing thought. That Being, > to which thought refers in its naive conception as if it were its own necessary content, is corporeal actuality. Therefore the Being of Parmenid es was identified with the p absolutely corporea l. The polemic against the acceptance of not-Being got a new aspect in this way. The 6v coin- cides with the TrXeov, the fir] 6v Avith the Kevov ; and the ^ Eleatics taught _that there is no empty sn ace. There- fore Being is_jjidivisibLe,im and excludes^ not * only qualitative change, but also all cliange of place. This absolute corporeality is therefore not boundless (areXevTriTov)^ but is B^inj^^ that is complete in it^ slf, unchangeably determined, self-bounded, like a perfectly rounded, changeless and homogeneous sphere.^ ^ vv. 80, 85 ; rcovrov t' iv rcovrco re fieuov Ka6 ecovTo re Kflrai. 2 V. 88 f. Doubtless Parmenides antagonized the Milesian teachins: of the aireipov in all its possible affiliations. But it is utterly unnecessary to think that the opposition of nepas and aneipov presupposes the num- ber investigations of the Pythagoreans. There is not the slightest trace of this in Parmenides. Inversely, it is not impossible that the opposition of the Eleatics against all predecessors made the dual con- cept so important that the Pythagoreans inserted this among their fundamental antitheses. Doubtless the purely Greek representation influenced Parmenides, in which the measurable and self-determined and never the measureless and undetermined was regarded as perfect. Melissus seems (§ 20) to have neglected this point, and thus to have approached the theory of Anaximander. « V. 102 f. 4 > 62 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY On the other hand, however, there was again for Par- menides no B eing which was not eithejL-Caosciousness or something thought : tcovtop 8' iarl voelv re koI ovveKev iaTL L>67]iJLa (v. 94). As for Xenophanes, so also for Parmenides, Gor poreality and thou ght perfectly coincide in this.jiosmic god, this abstract Bein^ : to rPpiT-ipn1 wnrlrl thnt Pnrmonulpfi had to deny the existence of t hat world. All plu rality and diversitv. all comingpii to existence, existing and passing out _of existence, are onl y illusory appearance, — ta ise"names. that mortals have givepTo true ^>ei'po ^.^ ^ Ihe Eleatic found t he origin of this appearance in sense-perc eption, of whose illu- sory ^ ch aracter he gave warning. He did not seem, however, to realize the circle invoh'cd in his reasoning. Although from an entirely opposite principle, he explained in a sharper epigrammatic way than Heracleitus, how t he truth an be sought only in conceptual thought but never in the 7^ ^ V. 98 f. The conjecture 6vap instead of 6Vo/x* (v. 98, Gladiscli) is invalidated by, among other thinLjs, the circumstance that Sophistry and Eristic, which were develo})ed from Eleaticism, frequently spoke of the plurality of names for the one thing that is (§ 28). 2 V. 54 f. THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 63 scnses._ His ontology is ar-pf4i-f4^<44j^ general ontol ogv. and that he even descended to details which he made it his duty ^ to explain in all their bearings. In some particulars he subjoined existing theories to his own without making any ^actual advance in physics. His astronomical ideas agree so thoroughly with those of the Pythagoreans, with whom he doubtless came in contact, that one must admit the dependence of the Eleatics upon the Pythagoreans in astronomy .2 As^to the origin of man, he held the same view that Anaxi mander held before him and t hat, Empe- flpoTpR hfild a.fter him . Otherwise, excepting some remarks about procreation, etc., only his theory of sensation has c ome down to u s. In this he taught, like Heracleitus, that of JJi e two f undamental elements contained in ma n, each is s n{i;ceptible t o that which is related to i t in the external world. The Warm in a living man senses the fiery connec- tion-in-things (^Lebenszusammenhang'), but even also in the corpse, the cold, stiff body feels what is like it in its surroundings. JTp ovpvpggofi f^p npininn fhnf or my mau's 1 V. 120 f. 2 Compare, for details, ZeHer, I. 525 f . That Parmenides here showed not the least knowledge of the so-called number-theory, is another proof of the later origin of this philosophical teaching of the Pythagoreans, whose mathematical and astronomical investigations obviously preceded their metaphysical. See § 24. . y ■vT THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 65 ideas and intuitions aro determined .by ^ the mixture of these two elements in him. There is no ground for doubting the genuineness of the report of Phxto"- that Purnienides in his old age went to Athens, where the young Socrates saw him. The statements of the dialogue l^annenides, which presents the fiction ^ of a conversation be- tween Parmenides and Socrates, are not wanting in probabilit3\ According to tiiis, Parmenides was born about 515. He came from a distinguished family, and his intercourse with the Pythagoreans is w^ell attested.'^ On the other hand, however, his acquaintance w^ith Xenophanes ^ is also well proved, together with whom he directed the activity of the scientific association in his native city, Elea. Parmenides exercised a decided in- fluence on the political life also of this newly founded city,^ and is in general represented as a serious, influential, and morally high character."^ His work was written about .470 or somewhat later. It was in answer to that of Heracleitus, and at the same time it inspired the theories developed somewhat later and almost contemporaneously by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leu- cippus, and Philolaus (Chap. III.). It is in verse, and shows a peculiar amalgamation o f abstract thought and plastic poet ic fancy. The greater portion of the preserved fragments came from the first and ontological section of the poem, which was perhaps also called irepl <^i'o-£co?. Besides Karsten and MuUach, Am. Peyron (Parmenklis et EmpedoMis fragmenta, Leipzig, 1810) and Heiur. Stein {Symh. j^^iiiologorum Bonnensium in Jionorem F. Jiitschleii, Leipzig, 1864, p. 763 f.) have collected and discussed the fragments. Compare Vatke, Parmenklis Veliensis doctrina, Berlin, 1844; A. Bilumker, Die Einheit des P'scheti Seins {Jahrh. f. Jcl. klass. Fhilol., 1886, 541 f.). 20. Whereas Parmenides made a ncf inconsiderable con- cession to the customary idea of the plurality and change of things, at least in his construction of an hypothetical 1 V. 14G f. 2 Thecetetus, 183 e. 3 ParmenideSf 127 b ; Sophist, 217 c. 4 Diog. Laert, IX. 25; Strabo, 27, 1, 1. 5 Arist. Met., 1. 5, 986 b, 22. ^ Diog. Laert., IX. 23, according to Speusippus. . '' Plato, Theoet, 183 e: compare Soph., 237 a; Parm., 127 b. 5 .^ 66 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY physics his friend and pupil Zeno of Elea proceeded to refute even this customary point of view, and thereby to establish directly the teaching of his master concerning the unity and unchangeableness of Being. ' The habit of abstract thinking, which was raised to a pre-eminence by Parmenides, manifested itself here in the way in which his pupil turned entirely from tlie earlier physical tendency of science, ^e no was no longer concerned in apprehending or understanding empirical reality. ^ He was interested only in the conceptual defence of t-h«-paradoxes of his teacher. In seeking to discover, therefore, the contradictions which inhere in ordinary opinions regarding the plurality and mutability of things, he employed in a more partisan spirit than Parmenides arguments not based on subject matter or empirical fact, but only those ofjormal logic. This appeared primarily in the form of the proof, —first systematically and expertly used, as it seems, by Zeno. By the continuous repetition of contradictory disjunc- tives, he sought to deny exhaustively all the possibilities of comprehension and defence of the assailed thought, until it was at last brought into obvious contradictions. On account of this keen application of the apparatus of logic, which lets the entire proof seem to be controlled by the law of contradiction, we may suppose that Zeno firs t l^ad a clear consciousness of fonmul — logical — relations. Aristotle even calle r! hjip thp invAnfnv nf din1o.piiV..2 ^, All tlie difficulties that Zeno by this method found in the ideas of multiplicity and movement refer to the infinity of space and time, and indeed partly to the infinitely large, partly to the infinitely small. These difficulties simply prove in the last instance the impossibility of thinking exclusively of continuous spatial and temporal quantities 1 Zellcr, IP. 538, for unimportant and even trivial notes which seem to controvert this, and for the most part rest upon misconceptions. 2 Diog. Laert., VIII. 57. THE METAPHYSICAL CONFLICT 67 as analyzed into discrete parts, — of thinking of the in- finity of the perceptive process. Upon tliis ground the dilliculties of Zeno could find no conclusive solution until tlie very real and difficult problems resting on them were consid- ered from the point of view of the infinitesimal calculus. Compare Aristotle, Physics, in many places with the comments by Simplicius. Bayle, Diet. hist, et crit., article Zenon; Herbart, Einleitung in die Philos., § 139 ; Metcqyh.., § 284 f. ; Hegel, Gesch. cl. Phil., Complete Works, Vol. Xlll. 312 f. ; Wellmann, Zenoii's Beweise gegen die Beivegung und ihre Wideiieguiigen, Frankfort a. O., 1870 ; C. Dunau, Les arguments de Zeiion d'EUe contre le mouvement, Nantes, 1884. The proofs advanced by Zeno against the multiplicity ^ of what really is, were two, and^^t hey were concerned i n mst with magnitude, in part with number. /As regar ds m a^nitndft ^ whatever pos s tf^s j ^f^s Taping mU iS t, if it bo mt^n y^ be on the one hand infinitely small and on the other V in finitely great : infinit ely small because the aggregation of ever so many parts, of which every one, being indivisible, has no magnitude, can result also in no magnitude ; infinitely great because the juxtaposition of two parts pre- supposes a boundary between the two, which, as something real, must itself likewise have spatial magnitude, but on this account must again be parted by boundaries from the two minor portions of .which the same is true, etc., etc. A gain, as regards number, whatever pnsspaspR Piping mnaf.^ if it i uLsupposed to be many, be thought as both IjjyiJtpH nnrl unlimite.d. It must be limited because it is just as many as it is, no more nor less. It must be unlimited because two different things possessing Being must be separated by a boundary which as a third must itself be different from these, and must be separated from them both by a fourth and fifth, and so ad infinitum.'" ^ 1 The second part of the argument is essentially the same in both proofs, and was called by the ancients the argument ck dixoTOfxias, in QS HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY :,. It is probable, and also chronologically quite possible, that these proofs were even at that time directed aga inst the b egin- nJLigft of AtoiTii iUTi (§ 23). They are intended to show: that the world cannot bethought as an aggregation of atoms. Consist- ent with this view is the further circumstance that Zeno's polemic wa^iaaiia- i v gainst th e idea of mutab ility of what pos- sesses Being only in th e sense o f Kiv7jo-t9, not in the sense of aAAotoj- r^.c- (qnnntniivp. o.hTm^e^. - Atomism affi rmed K tVyjcrts, and denied qualitative chan^e.^ There is, in addition, a third argument flgainst the pluraTity of Being, which Zeno seemed rather to indi- cate than to develop. This is the so-called Sorites, according to which it is inconceivable how a bushel of corn could make a noise when the single kernels make none. This argument became effective in the polemic against the atomists, who sought to derive qualitative determinations from the joint motion of atoms. Presumably against atomism there was directed another argument of Zeno, which dealt neither with the plural- ity nor the motion of what possesses Being, but with the reality of empt}' space, which was the presupposition of move- ment to the atomists. Zeno showed that if what pjosse^ses Baing.should be thought as in space, this space j is nn actuality must be thought to be^n another space, etc., ad mfinitum. On the other hand, the application which Zeno made of the categories of infinity and finiteness, of the unlimited and limited, appears to suggest a relationship to the Pythagoreans, in whose investigations these ideas played a great role. § 19 ; § 24. The contradiction involved in the conception of motion Zeno tried to prove in four ways : (1) ^i^JJie^mipo^&iJbility of poi7iq through a fixed space. This means that the infinite divisibility of the space to be passed through \vill not allow the beginning of motion to appear thinkable. (2) By the impossihilitii of 'passing through a sj^ane that haa oTin mihle limits. Tliis^ supposes the goal, which is to be reached in any finite time, to be pushed away, though perhaps ever so little. An example of this is Achilles, who cannot catch the tor-toi^Ki. (3) By the infinitely small amount of motion nf. nnij I'^afn'ni ff f^vnp ^ sincc thc body lu motiou during any ■which tHyli ntqp^ is used not in the logical but ip th^ nriginni physical sense. THE METAPTIYSICAL CONFLICT 69 individual instant of time is at some dcfrnitc point, i. e. at rest. He used the resting arrow as an example. (4) B?/ the relativity of the amoxmt of matLoii^ A motion of a carriage appears to differ in amount according as it is measured in its process of separation by a stationary carriage or by one in motion in the opposite direction. Little is known about the life of Zeno. If one holds that the exact chronological reports in the 'dialogue of Par men ides are fictitious and the statements of the ancients about the aK^xrj are doubtful, nevertheless it is certain Zeno can have been scarcely a generation younger than Parmenides. One ^vill not make a mistake if one places the length of his life at sixty years, between 490 and 430. He was, then, the contempo- rary of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Philolaus, and it is easily possible that he held fast to Parmenides' doctrine of Being in its conceptual abstractness in direct contrast to the remodellings of it by these men. His well-attested ^vy- ypajufxa was composed in prose, and, to suit his formal schema- tism, was divided into chapters. In these the single virodicru'^ found their reductio ad absurdiim.^ If the presentation of these in accordance with their polemic nature had the form of question and answer,'^ then this is probably the beginning of the philosophic dialogue-literature which later developed so richly.^ Of lesser significance ^ wasJ^IfiJi^gH*- of Samos. Not a . native Eleatic, h e was al ^n nnf, n nmiiplofp nnrl onnaiotfonfy^ supp orter of Pfipmonidoc' B doctrine of Bei ng. He was ' somewhat the junior of the Eleatic, and lived on into the time of the eclectic tendency in which the opposing the- ories began to fade out (§ 25). In the main, to be sure, he thoro ughly defended the Eleatic fundamental principle, and in a manner obviously antagonistic to Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and in part to the Milesian physics. 1 Plato, Pann., 127 c ff. ; Simpl. Phjs., 30 v, 139, 5. 2 Arist. nepl aocf). eXeyx-, 10, 170 b, 22. 8 Diog. Laert, III. 48. * Arist. Met., I. 5, 986 b, 27 ; Phys., 1. 3, 186 a, 8. nepl ao(f). i\iyx- 5, 167 b, 13. > 70 HISTOKY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY ,-:.. X^t-JlS-StoQcl with his doct rino of the infinity of the One in so striking a contrast to Parmenides, and in such obvions ^harmony with Anaxima nder, that he appears as a real intermediary between the two. / The form of his arguments shows the infinp.no.p.jjf tho. dialectic schematis m of Zeno. - Melissus tried to prove 'in these that (1) what really is, |s Afprnnl _bacnusp it cnn nri ge out of neither what is nor whatjs not; (2) that what^rc allv is. is without hep; innino; and end, temporally and spatially, i. e. infinite {aireipov) ; (3) that, what really is, is single, since several thingsjjiat reall y are^ wou l d limit one another in space and tim e ; (4) that what really~is, iff un^hnng^^^^^^^j^^^'ionl'^"", ^^^ pnnr|i- tionless, because every change involves a kind of origina- tijQiLJimLcjiding, and every movement presuppose s em pty space whicli cannot be thought as possessing Eeing»- It is thus clear that Aristotle correctly found the conception of the €v in Melissus to be more materialistic tha n in Parmen- ides. What Melissus won by such an approximation to the Milesian physics, when he still denied every change to Being, is not clear. His theory appears, therefore, to be a compromise without any strong principle. MeHssus, son of Itbagenes, was a navarch, under whom the Samiaii fleet conquered the Athenians in 442. His personal rehition to the Eleatics has not been explained. His ^I'yypa/x/xa {■n-epl (^('(reojs or Trept tov 6vto<;^ Siniplicius and Snidas) was writ- ten in prose. Compare F. Kern, Znr Wilrdignnq des 3/., (Stet- tin, 1880); A. Pabst, De M. P. fmr/mentis {Bonn, 1889); M. Ol'fner, Znr Beurtheilung des M. {Arch. f. Gesch. d. Fhilos., IV. 12 f.). The p ojemie of Zo no gave clearest expression to the fundamental principle of the Eleatic pliilosophy. He thought out logically and consistently the conceptually i^ costi^ry oonoopt of Being, which in i tself alone did not suffice for the apprehension and explanation of the empiri-- cally actual. Tlio l-TovnninUn,. t.h psis thni. the essence of. EFFORTS T( ) W A K 1 ) K i:CONClLIxVTION 71 > tlii n.i2:s is to be sought in an orderly prno.p.ss oF po.rpo.fiinl . cji an.<>c, stood opposed to it. Zeno's argument was pu rely ^ofl tologicaTll . It recognized ^l y the one incrcate and un chaniicable BeinJ, and denied the reality of multi])licitv 7 __.i-CL 'eality of multiplic ity _jjj4 -J^e oming wit hout also explaining their appearanc e. The arouimc^t_of-_H£Lcackilus was pnt.ivPJY prpnpfi^f ^ II seized upon the process itself and its permanent modes with out satisfying the need of_connecting this process witJi an ultimate and continuous actuality ,_ The concept of Being is, however, a necessary postulate of thought, and the pro- cess of occurrence is a fact not to be denied. Consequently, from the o])position of these two doctrines, Hellenic philos- ophy gained a clear view of the task which in an indefinite way underlay the very initial conception of the apxv- This task was from Being to explain the process of phenomena T change. tfi Jt> 2 1> 3. Efforts toward Reconciliation. l^ The above problem gave rise to a number of philosophi- cal theories which are best designated) as efforts toward T omnp,ih'n.tinn hntwf if>p fbo ihnu^ht onnf/^fs of thft yjp.n.tip. nnd . Heracleitan schoo ls.^) ' Since all the alignments aim at so modifying the Elcatic idea of Being that from it the or- dcrly process of occurrence irL_tlie Heracleitan sense may seem oonooivfihlo. thpv nro. at oi ipo nf n mpfnphysiTTnl nnrT,^ p hysical character. Two ways were open for the solution of this problem : . one led from Parmenides, the other from Heracleitus. I- j^' ^[Tlio I'nnflofjnnpY pf the Elcatic concept of Being to expla in j " ! e mpirical ])luralitv an d change w^as due essentially ^^ ^^' ^ j ^cJ [.nualities of singleness an d s p?^,tin.l imm obility.? If thesefw ^^.^ / cl iaracteri sties, however, were given u p, Biose of B on-I M ' '^ B ecoming, indcstrilfiiibility, and qualitative perman encej co uld be; more strongly maintained in order to ex plain pro 72 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY _gess and change by means of a plurality of ob jects^ pos- ■^sessing; Being (Seienden), with the help of spatial motion, / )| The theories of Erapedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists ^ moved in this direction. Common to them all was the l]i,c; pi nf snhstn.n nesj and the mechanistic method of explanation, in virtue of whic h oris^in, chan^-e, and de struc- !iion were supposed to be derived merely from the motio ns ^f t hese substances unchangeable in them _sglves. These eories were in -ft^trpmft antithesis to thf^ hvlozois tic ^ m onism of the Milesians in particular . ' On the oOier hand, these three systems were distinguishable from one another partly as to the number and quality of the sub- stances that each assumed to exist, partly as to the rela- tionships of substances to motion and moving force. The jnctnffim'f^ncy nf the Heracleitn.n thp.my p.nnsi.stfifl^ howpvprj in its establishing the concept of the rhythm of the process .Di-Qccurrence, but in retaining nothing else of what really. is^_aa--entering Jnto- thea£L_.changes._, Heracleitus had not recognized any one of the -empirical materials, nor any abstract noumeno n, and consequently nothing as Being. ^ T f now Parmen ides Rhnwprl fhnt thinking nnfloniflhly pro- supposes something that really is, one would be forced t o try to vindicate the character of Pfijng fnj- fliP rpWinna and connections w hich Heracleitus hnd retained— as the . sole permanenc e. This the Pythagoreans attempted to do with their peculiar number theory. ( C These fonr efforts toward reconciliation sprang accordingly simultaneously out of one and the same need. Tlieir represen- tatives were nearly contemporaneous. From this fact are explained not only a number of tlie similarities and allinities in tlieir doctrines, but also the circumstance that they frequently, particularly in polemics, seem to have referred directl}^ to one another. This is at tlie same time a proof of the lively scien- tific interest and interchange of ideas in the middle of the fifth century through the entire circle of Greek civilization. The "efforts toward a reconciliation" used as a basis for associating these philosophers here is fairly generally recognized EFFORTS TOW A HI) RECONCILIATION 73 for the first three, although on the one hand Anaxagoras is usually set apart by himself (Ilegel, Zeller, Uebervveg), be- cause we have overestimated his doctrine of the i/oGs. On the other hand, Atomism (JSchleiermacher, Hitter) has naturally been classified with Sophistry. Compare, respectiveh^, § 22 and § 2*3. Yet, from tlie time of the Pythagoreans until now, Striimpell alone has preceded me in this proposed view. Brandis trea.ts indeed the Pythagoreans for thft ^iisL tune before the Sophists, but as a tendency independent of the others. 1 21/ The first and most imperfect of these attempts set reconciliation was that o f Empedocles. He ^proceeded . e xpressly f^op t-h^ th fiaJR of Parmmiidpis, that-tliere can"^ be__no origination and de struction as such . In bis effort to explain apparent origination and destruction, he said that e very orifyinatio n sh ould be regarded as a comb i- n ation ,^ncre very destruction a sepa ratio n ot the"original e lements .^ He called the original materials the pL^co/xara irdvTwv, and he does not seem to have employed the later customary expression, aroixela. i The pTcd^atcs of '^ uno ri- ginated^' ^^imperishable," ^^ unchangeable,'^ belong to t liVlX''^ elements. Tjjui^are eternal Uemg ; and the manifold am raUge of single t|.iings_are supposed to be explained b^ s patial motio n, by virtue of which they are mix ed in differ-) i n g rfilntJQ ^ig tn nnp nnnt.lipr '1 Accordingly,' Empedocles should apparently be accredited with the priority of formin o- tJm rmirejHion of the cleme nt that has been so powerful in the development of our science of nature. Ti^ is thn conception of a matorinl^ homng n- neous in content, qualitatively unchangeable, and liable to chano-ino- states of motion and to inophnmVnl rli-vi^joi^^ He got this conception, nevertheless, in the attempt to make ' ^ the concept of Being of Parmenides useful in the explana- tion of nature. Much less happy, although historically 1 Plutarch, Plac, T. 30 (7>o.r., 326) (jiva-i^ ovhcvo^ eo-riv amivTcov Bi^tjtwv ovbe Ti9 ov\oiJL€vov Bavdroio reXevrr], aXXa ^ovov {u^is re diaXka^is T€ fiiyeuTOtv eoTi, (pvais S'eVl tols ouofid^erai dvOpconoicnv. 74 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY \ quite as effective, was the point of view which Empedocles formed of fV»f| nn^^^hnr nnd p,sro]K?o nf thpsp pifimnnfs He a dduced the well-known four : earth, air^ fire, aud„j£iiter . ( The choice of four fundamental elements was the result of no systematic conception on the part of Empedocles, in the way ihiit ArisLOt/e^^by i7>.o«,t this theory was established and made the common property of all literature, later made them a fundamental part of his system. As it appears, it was the result of an impartial consideration of the previous philosophic theories of nature : .water, iiir, fire a re t o be foimd n s e l ements am ong th e loniaus ; and earth in the hypotlietieal ph^^^ios-at-tb^-Ele- ^itins^ i Thnt Empedocles ^ placed fire over against the three other elements, and thus returned to the two divisions of Heracleitus (§ 19), reminds us of this latter. Nevertheless the number of elements as four has in it somethiug arbitrary and immature, as likewise appears from the superficial characterization that Empedocles gave to each singly.^ r Empedocles to all appearances was not able to say how the different qualities of particular things were derived from their combining. Quantitative relationships and states of aggregation might appear to be thus derived, but not particular qualities. Consequently Empedocles seems to have had only the former in mind when he so described the process of combination and separation, that therein the protruding parts of one body were supposed to press into the pores, i. e. into the interstices,^ of another body. Empedocles seems to be referring to the former also in liis defining the relationship and the strength of the recip- rocal attraction of empirical things by the stereometrical similarity between the emanations of one substance and the pores of another. ,: As to the qualitative difference 1 Arist. Met., I. 4, 985 a, 32 ; De gen. et corr., IT. 3, 330 b, 19. 2 Zellcr, P. G90. 3 That this acceptation presupposed a discontinuity of the orin^inal matter, and hardly was to be thouojht withotit the presui)position of empty space, which he with the Eleatics denied (fr. v. 91, Arist. De ccelo, IV. 2, 309 a, ID), appears to have furnished no difliculty to Empedocles. EFFORTS TOWAKl) IIFCONCILIATION 75 between individual things, he taught only in very general terms tliat this diri'erence depends on the dilTerent masses in whicli all or only some of the elements exist in combination. )__But the more that Empcdocles claimed the character of the Parraenidean Being for his four elements, the less could he find in them an explanation of the motion in which they must exist according to his theory of union and separation. ) As pure cjinu gnl^ss V,9\no\ ^ Ji(^. ekme.nt,^ rm,hi ^^nt wnv^fhp.'m .. s elves, hut onlii he moved. Jo explain the world, the theory needed further, then, beside the four elements, a cause of m otion or.i|^ m ovi n g -^rce. .. Here, in the statement of thi s .problem, ap pears first completely E mpedocles's opposition t o t he hylozoism of tlie Mi1esii].ns . He was the first in whose fl-t^nry /V^^Yf (iw^ ^''^'f^rv HT ^ differentiated as sci)arate cog powers. Un der the influence of Parmenides he had"~accord- ingly so conceived the world-stuffthat the ground of motion could not be found in it itself. So, in order to explain the cosmic process, lie_had to find a force different from th o, stuff a nd moving i t. Although Empedocles introduced this dualism into the scientific thought of the Greeks, it ai)peared not m sharp conceptual, but in mythical-poetic form ; for ho HpsioM-infod tho fwn pngn-|jf^ forPP^ T.r^^^^\^ ^HUmd thp mm r^ bi nation and sep aration of theprimi^iv^ gnhRf,nnpp«, u^ Lr^'"" and Hate. _ The personification, which Empedocles moreover, as like- wise Parmenides iu his didactic poem, extended to the ele- ments, was mythical and poetic ; so also the representation inadeq^ii^e because stated in terms of sense and not developed to conjjbptnal clearness, was of the same character. Indeed, it is ii|ft certain from the passages in which his principles (dp^^al) were enumerated as six in all, Avhetlier or not he thought of the two forces incidentally as bodies (Arist. De gen. et corr.^ I. 1, 314 a, 16; Simpl. Ph/js. G v, 25, 21), whicli as such were mingled witli the other substances. Obviously he formed no sharp idea of the nature of the actuality and the effi- ciency that belong to Love and IJate. There is the additional 76 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY fact that the duality of forces not only was called forth by the theoretic need of representing the different causes in the opposed processes of cosmic union and separation ; but it was also occasioned by considerations of worth, in which Love is the cause of Goodness and Hate of Evil (compare Aristotle, Met.^ I. 4, 1)84 b, 32). The view of Aristotle is supported by the predi- cates which Empedocles (fragment v. 106 f.) attributes to <^iA.oT7y9 and velKoy ^^^^ nppn.sition and conllict between the co mbining and separating principles. , \i Jlai^LJa-iiiC-ph^c c of tho lleracleitan fundamental principle in T. the EmpedoclLian c unceptiou_ o|_tiie cosiaps. Ou the other. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION 77 liaiul, it can be said that the two parts of the Parmenidean didactic i)oem appear no longer in the opposition of Being and Appearance, l)nt in the relationship of changing cosn)ic states. LThe first and third phases are acosmic in the Kleatic sense ; the second and fourth are, ou the contrary, full of the Ileracleitan - TTOJ All that wc have of the particulars of the theory of Empe- docles seems to teach that he regarded the present state of the woi-ld as the fourth phase, in which tlie elements that have been separated by Hate are reuniting through Love into the Sphairos. At least' in reference to the formation of the world he taught that the separated elements have been brought through Love into the whirling motion that is in the process of uniting them. Originally the air en- compassed the whole like a sphere, and by virtue of this motion fire broke out from below. The air was pressed below and into the middle, was mixed with the w^ater into mud, and then formed into the earth. The two hemi- spheres originated in this way : one was light and fiery ; the other dark, airy, and interspersed with masses of fire, which on account of the rushing of the air in rotatory motion around the earth created day and night. In particular, Empedocles showed — not without dependence on the Pythagoreans — highly developed astronomical ideas concerning the illumination of the moon from the sun, concern- ing eclipses, the inclination of the ecliptic, etc., and also many interesting meteorological hypotheses. Empedocles had an especial interest in the organic world. He regarded plants as primary organisms and as having souls like animals. He compared in isolated remarks the formation of fruit with the procreation of animals, their leaves with hair, feathers, and scales ; and so one finds in him the beginnings of a comparative mor- phology. Also numerous ])hysiological observations of his are preserved. But especially are there biological rcllec- 1 78 HISTORY OF AI^CIENT PHIL0S(^PHY tious, in which he in some measure in the spirit of the present theory of adaptation explained, although with fanci- ful naivete, the existence of the present vital organisms by the survival of purposeful forms from things that on the whole were aimlessly created.^ Empedocles did not except man ^ from this purely me- chanical origination, and he constructed a large number of interesting single hypotheses in respect to his physiological functions. The blood plays a n impo rtant role in this theory. It was to him the real carrier of life, and in it he believed he c ould see tlie most 4ifixfeiiLjiomM»«tion of the four elements^ — ft is of especial interest that: he conceived the process of perception and sensation as analogous to his universal theory of the interaction of elements. He ex- plained this process as contact of the small parts of the perceived things with the similar parts of the perceiving organs, wherein the former were supposed to press upon the latter, as in hearing ; or the latter upon the former, as in sight. Since then, in general, such interaction was to his mind the more close, the more nearly similar were the emanations and pores, Jie established the pri nciple, there- fo re, that all extn rnni tliino-s n.ro. Imnwn by thnt in us wliich JR Fiimilnr to tb^m Herein was involved to some degree the idea tKni, tyi nn ia n. miV.roo.Qfim^ tl ie finest adm ix- ture of all the elem ents. Hence it followed for Empedocles tl Kit all percept ual knowledge depends upon the combination of elements in the bo dy and e si)Ccially in the blnoH., nnd fbnt tbr> gpirifnnl nature depends on the physical nature. Just on this 1 Aristotle has brought this thought into abstract expression, and it contains the whole modern development theory in mice. Phys., II. 8, 198 b, 29; ottou fiev ovv arravra crvvefSi] cocrTrep Kau el evcKO. tov eyevero, ravra jiev iaoidr)^ airo tov avro^drov crvaTitvTa €7nTT]8ei(Oi, baa de fir] ovtcos, aTTcoXero kul aTroWvTai KaOamp ^EixnfdoKXjjS Xeyet, etc. ^ He appears to have made good use of the tales about the centaurs. EFFORTS TO WARD RECONCILIATION 79 account, moreover he ^oiild deplore incidentally^ as Xeno -\ plianes deplored, the limitation of human knowledge ; and could assert, on the other hand^ with Henn ^lf^ituft ^"'^ fc^'- menideSj that truQ^ knowledge does not ^^ro w out of sense perQep tion^ but only put of refle ction (voelv) audr^soft_ Empedocles of Agrigentum, the first Dorian in the history of philosophy, lived probably from 490-430. He came from a rich and respectable family which had been partisans for the democracy in the municipal struggles. Like his father, Meton, Empedocles distiuguished himself as a citizen and statesman, but later he fell into the disfavor of the other citizens. In his vocation of physician and priest, and with the paraphernalia of a magician,- he then travelled about through Sicily and Magna Gr.Tcia. Many stories circulated into later time concerning his death, like that well-known one of his leap into JEtna. In this religious role he taught the doctrine of transmigration and of an apparently purer intuition of God, like that of the Apollo cult. These teachings, which were not consistent in content with his metaphysico-physical theories, show, however, much the greater similarity to the teaching of Pythagoras (§ 12). Pythagorean- ism he certainly knew, and indeed his entire career suggests a copy of that of Pythagoras. When we consider his political affiliations, it is improbable that he had any close connection with the Pythagorean society. Empedocles stood comparatively isolated, — save his acquaintance with the teachings of Hera- cleitus and Parmenides, the latter of whom he presumably knew personally. Nevertheless he seems to have been affili- ated with a yet larger body in that he is characterized as one of the first representatives of rhetoric.^ He had even con- nections with the so-called Sicilian school of rhetoric (or ora- tory) , in which are preserved the names of Tisias and Ivorax as well as that of Gorgias, whom they antedate.'* Only Trept ^uo-ews and KaOapfxoi are the writings of Empedocles that can be authenticated. The preserved small fragments are especially collated by Sturz (Leipzig, 1805), Karsten (Amsterdam, 1838), and Stein (Bonn, 1852). Compare Bergk, De proemio, E. Berl., 1 Fr. V. 24; 81. '■^ Thus he pictured himself in the beginning of the Songs of Purifica- cation (Kadapfioi). 2 Diog. Laert., VIII. 57 ; Sext. Emp. Adv. math., VII. 6. 4 See below, § 26. 80 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 1839 ; Panzerbieter, Beitrdge zur Kritik und Erlduterung des E. (Meiningen, 1844) ; Schlager, E. quate?ius IleracUtum secutus sit (Eisenach, 1878). — O. Kern, E. und d. Orphiker (Arch, f, Gesch. d. Ph., I. 498 f.). 22. " Older in years, younger in works than Empedo- cles," ^ Anaxagoras brought the movement of thought, which liaS" tmtrrP5egu n by Empedocles, to an end in one direction. He, like Empedocles, was convinced that we do \ not use language correctly when we speak of origination i .and "destruction, siace the mass of the worl d must rem ain ^z^ M'Junchangeablv the same.^ On this account appai^ent origi- •^ I -nation and destruction are better designated as combina- tion and separation (avyKpca-L^ sivc o-uya/xtft?). .^^jiatever H enters into combination or wha tever suffers separation waS ^/ _to him, also, a phu^aTityof original substanc^ whic h he called y^pvuara or o-TrepfjLard. Thus tar ne ^ a^^ree d with his \ predecessor. But he took decided exception to the arbi- / "^ trary assumption of Empedocles that there are only four — ^ elements, since it is impossible to explain the qualita- tive distinctions of empirical things by the union of these four elements. Since the Parmenidean idea of Being excludes the new creation and destruction of qualitative determinations, and demands qualitative unchangeable- ness for tlie totality of primitive materials, Anaxag o- ras argued thatt here are as many qualitative yprnjua ra^ different from one another, as there a re_ qualitative deter- 1 mi nations in emuimaJLthings. The things of which we arc sensible are composite, and they are named according to the primitive material that prevails in them at any par- ticular instant.^ Their qualitative change (aWo/wo-t?) '-^ consists in the fact that other primitive materials enter into the combination or some are excluded from it. 1 Arist. Met., I. 3, 984 a, 11. P' 2 Fr. 14. 8 Arist. Phys.,l\ 187 b. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION 81 Tlie xpwara must, according to this, be thought as divis- ^ iblc ; ^ and in antithesis to the perceived things, wliich con- sist of heterogeneous components, we must designate as 'y^pi^fiara all those substances which fall into homogeneous parts, however far they be divided. Therefore Aristotle designated the airepfiara of Anaxagoras as ofioLo/iepri, and in later literature they go under the name of homoio- meriai. Consequently, what Annv^ H^-nrnft Wd ho rn in mind ^ was., nothing- otlioi^ tlian thr ^^r^jiemist's idea of the elemen t^^- The utter inadequacy of data" on w^hich Anaxagoras could depend appears in the development of his theory. For since observation had as yet not been directed to chemical, but only to mechanical analysis, the constituents of ani- mals, such as bones, flesh, and marrow, as w\)ll as metals, were enumerated as elements. Further, because _ the philosoplier possessed iio.-.meana_jQJP fixing upon a deter- mined number -oLjelements,.ha.declarad them to be num- berless and differing in form (t^'a.), color, and taste. "*"" " When Aristotle iu several places (see Zeller, I^. 875 f.) cites only organic substances in Anaxagoras as examples of the ele- ments, he is speaking more out of his preference for this field than of an inclination on the part of Anaxagoras to refer inorganic matter to the organic. There is not the slightest trace to be discovered in Anaxagoras' cosmogony of a qualita- tive distinction between the organic aiid the inorganic. In "^ particular, what we may cal l hi^ teleolog.^ is not by any me ans confined to the organic. As j-eprards the motion of these substance s. Anaxagorns -'-^ rd^O_se,parpti]'l tllin pvinr^ipl^ nf Rpino- frnm flinf V>f RppnmW X_ . i 4i|r. hut, in nn en tiroly fli_Pfovpnf wny frnm wlmt wp fjnrlj/ in Empedocles. The poetical and mythical form of this thought ho stripped off ; but at the same time, instead 1 In remarkable dependence on Parmenidcs, Anaxagoras neverthe- less makes a polemic, like Empedocles, against the acceptance of empty space (Arist. P/n1ltP.d ^'U flifFp.TPnt proporfiniia in alno-lp fhing-s 1 *• Anax agQras_,ii&ed this tboiiPJTJ>sfviiff only to explain on tke^one-liand the beginniiigs of motion^ imiJLQii_thfi other such single processes which he could not derive from the niechanism of the oaco^Jor all awakened cosmic motion. Q What these processes in particular are, we cannot ^ ascer- tain from the reproaches made against Anaxagoras.^ So far as our knowledge goes, the application that Anaxagoras has made of his roO? theory to explain the cosmic process is limited simply to this, — fhnt jhA asnrihpd f.n. the " order- ing'^ t.honght-ftfnfF thp hpgipning of motion^ fl]irl fhnf he 4: tjirrLCfinnrivnd tho motion to go on rP^^l"'^^i^n1]y by J^^H?^^- and pressn rp hptwpp n the ot her primitivp TYintpvi als lin a *inanner planned by the vov^. Connected with this is the fact that ^Anaxagoras denie d a plurality both of coexisting successive worlds, an d tbat he aimed to describe only tJifl nrigj p of onr present worlds „ Con spquently in distinc- 1 from his-.prexi£!Xi£ssors he spoke the refore of a temp oral^ Pg-inm'ng nf thp WOfl^ Preceding this beginning is a state of the most perfect , mingling of all substances, reminding us of the Sphairos of Empedocles. In this mingling all '^pi^fiara^ with the excep- tion of the 1/0O9, are so minutely distributed that the whole ^ possesses no particular character. This idea reminds ns on the one hand of Chaos, on the other of the aircipov of Aoaximander. In his delineation of this idea, we have the fact tliat he taught that the mixtures of dif- fering yQii^fxara let Only those qualities come into perception in ^ How misjudged the meaning is, is clear, for Anaxagoras conceived his vovs as a divine being:, 2 It is highly improbable, according to Theopli. Hist, plant., -111. 1, 4, that it concerns the genesis of the organism. 8 Plato, PJiwdo, 97 b; Arist. Met., I. 4, 985 a, 18. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION 85 wliicli tlic components are all Jiarnionized. He also in this way conceived the four elements of Empedocles as such mix- tures of primitive matter.^ Absolute mixture has no quality; ojiov Trarra ^^nj/jLara ijv is the beginning of tlie writing of Anaxagoras. L I n this Chaos the primitive thought-material first cre ated at one point " a rotatory motion of great velocity. This, l)c- ing extended in broadening circles, led to the formation of the orderly world, and is further being continued on account of the infinity of matter. By this rotation two great masses are first differentiated which were characterized by the opposi- tion of Bright, Warm, Pure-light, and Dry, as against Dark, Cold, Dense-heavy, and Moist, and are designated by Anaxa- goras as alOrjp and chjp.^ The latter is pressed into the centre, and condensed into water, earth, and stones. His ideas of the earth show him to have been essenti ally iiifiuei ic(?d Ijv^ the Ion jans^_ He regarded the stars as dissipated frag- ments of earth and stone that have become glowing in the., fiery circle._^ He saw in the great meteor of Argospotamoi a confirmation of this theory and at the same time a proof of the substantial homogeneity of the world. Anaxagoras's astronomical view shows highly developed, many-sided ideas and inferences, which rest in part upon his own studies. \ ^o, cvplained eclipses Corro.ct.ly ; nnd whilfi ho f|1]n\yod to th e sun and moon altogether too sma ll dimensions, they w^ere nevertheless very great compared to their perceptual size._j ~~^ ^ A ppnrflmorly A r^ni^ n.frorns WHS con vincod that^iis in Cliaos, S O in all individual things developed from it, the comb ina- 1 Arist. De gen. el corr., I. 1, 314 a, 24 ; Zeller, 1*. 876. - Presumably Anaxagoras assumed this ])oint to be die pole star : sec H. Martin, M&nioires de rinstitut, 21), 1 7G f. ; see Dilthey, op. cit. 3 These antitheses remind us more of the lonians than of Parmenides. In respect to the manifold of the mixture and the determination of the qualities, they stand in Anaxagoras obviously between the filyfia and the Empedoclean elements. A Z^ HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY linn of ti | f pjipmip. plpmpnf-.s is SO fine and intimat e that somethinp; at leas t of each one is everywhere,; Thus the Q ]^ gninV rrnra^^inTn (je velop as plants and animal s on the s eparation of the water and earth, which separation was caused by the heavenly fire. But the z/oO?, as the vitalizing principle, stands in intimate relations with these, and its in- dependent power of motion was doubtless introduced here by Anaxagoras as the cause of functions that are not mechani- cally explicable.^ He, too, seems to have given especial attention to sense perception, which, however, he derived, in,^ entire opposition to Empedocles, from the reciprocal action of opposites influenced by the feeling of aversion. Accord- ingly perceptual knowledge acquired in this way is only relative.^ In contrast to it, the truth is found solely through Q^ ^ the \6yo<;, through the participation of the individual in the world reason. Anaxagoras originated in Clazomena3 in the circle of Ionian culture, from which apparently he got his rich scientific knowl- edge and his pronounced positive and physical interest. His birth is (Zeller, I^. 865 f., against Hermann) to be placed at about 500. We do not know about his education, particularly how he could have been so powerfully influenced by the Eleat- ics. He was of wealthy antecedents, and was regarded as an honorable gentleman, who, far away from all practical and polit- ical interests, "declared the heaven to be his fatherland, and the study of the heavenly bodies his life's task," — a statement in which, side by side with the presentation of a purely theo- retical ideal of life, is to be noted the astronomical tendency which also characterized his philosophy. About the middle of the century Anaxagoras, then the first among philosophers of renown, removed to Athens, where he formed a centre of scien- tific activity, and appears to have drawn about Inm the most notal)le men. lie was the friend of Pericles, and became in- ^ 'Vo this the objection of Aristotle applies, that Anaxagoras did not distinguish the ])rinciple of thought (i/oO?) from the animating (he- seelenden) jjrinciple {-^vxr])- (/^e an., I. 2, 404 b.) This objection certainly did not arise from immanent criticism. 2 Arist. Met., IV. 5, 1009 b, 25; Sext. Emp., VII. 91. EFFORTS TOWARD UKCO.NCILIATION. volved under the charge of impiety in the political suit brcfiiglit against Pericles in 434:. He was obliged in consequence of this to leave Athens and go to J^anipsacus. Here he founded a scientific association, and while high in honor he died a few 3^ears later (about 428). The fragments of the only writing preserved of his (as it appears) -n-epl ^i-o-eojs (^in prose) have been collected by Schaubach (Leipzig, 1827) and Scliorn (with those of Diogenes of ApoUonia, Bonn, 1820) ; Panzerbieter, De fragmentorum Anax. ordine (Meiuingen, 1836) ; Breier, Die PJiilosoplue cles An, nach Aristotles (Berlin, 1840) ; Zevort, Dissert, de la vie et la doctrine d' A. (Paris, 1843) ; Alexi, A. it. seine Philosophie (Neu-Ruppin, 1867) ; M. Heinze, Ueher den vous des A. {Ber. d. Sachs. Ges. d. W., 1890). Archelaus is called a pupil of Anaxagoras, but appears, nevertheless, to be so much influenced also by other theories that he will be mentioned in a later place. The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poem, which in part is ascribed to Anaxagoras himself (Diog. Laert., II. 11), in part to his pupil, Metrodorus, has only the slightest relation to his philosophy. 23.Vrhe philosopher who desired to abandon the arbitrary t heory of the four elemeiita of KTr ipprTocIps^ wns obliged, in order to oppose to it a consistent theory ^JxLJiaa^rt either that the qual jtnti^^ dofarmi'nQfinng f^f things are all p ri- " Tinnrv f\v. tl^it tto otip. of \]mm is _ The first way Anaxagoras^ [V'^iose ; t he ^U^o mists the sec ond. "P^Mtrin their explana- tion of empirical occurrence they a lso poj^ j^p^^^^^^ ^ plura lit y o f unchangcablp thinp;s having Beins^^ they had the boldness. t rT^dp (1iipp^nll "7pin[j|;|^tiye distinctions of the phenomen al wn i-lfl fn)m pnrply quantitn.tivp differentiations of th e true ft&5; piicp of thinfrs. This is their especial significance in the history of European science^ It has been customary in the history of philosophy to treat the t heory of the Atomista in infsepn.rn ,h1p nnnnopfinn ivifh the pre-Spphistic systems. This is explained from the fact that all direct knowledge fails concerning the founder of this theory, Leucippus and his doctrine, and that the teaching of the Atomists lies before us relatively complete only in the form that Democritus developed it. But between Leucippus and Democritus is an interval of certainly forty years, and this lies in that epoch of most strenuous mental labor, — which epoch i 88 HISTOKY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. witnessed in Greece the beginnings of Sophism. Leucippus is the contemporary of Zeno, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, but Democritus is the contemporary of Socrates, and, in the works of his old age, of Plato. It is also consonant with this differ- ence of years that the fundamental thought of the Atomists in the form of the metaphysical postulate of Leucippus arose from the Heracleitan-Parmenidean problems ; but also that the I development of that postulate, which Democritus gave to these pfoblems, was for the Jirst time pos sible upon the Sophis tic 1 theories as a basis, especially those pf Protagoras (^ 32).; To these changed temporal conditions there is t he fur ther corre- spondence in the fact that those theories of the Atomists, Avhich we can reter to Leucippus, remained entirely in the compass of the problems confronting his contemporaries, Empedocles and Anaxagoras. On the other hand, the theory of Democritus gives the impression of being a comprehensive system, like that of Plato. Therefore the reasons from the point of cosmology and from that of the subject matter require the beginnings of Atomism in Leucippus to be separated from the system of Democritus, which was conditioned by the subjective turn given to Greek thought. We must make this discrimination, however difficult it may be in details. Accordingly in this place is to be developed only the general met npliysical basis of Atom ism, which has grown out o f Eleaticism .^ It was theref or^~'o5r the one hand a complete misconception of the primal motives, but on the other a legitimate feeling — although defended entirely falsely in connection with precon- ceived notions — with which Schleiermacher (Gesch. cl. Philos.^ ed. Windelband, III. 4 a, 73) and Ritter after him {Gesch. d. Pliilos., 1. 589 f.) sought to classify the Atomists with the Sophists. \_ In Leucippus Atomism arose as an offshoot of Eleaticism. The theory of Democritus, however, far from being itself Sophistic, presupposed the theory of Protagoras. The suggestion of this relation may be found in Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geistes- luitisenschaften, I. 200. Leucipp us, the first representative of this theory, stands in flic most marked dependence on f h^ FiIp^^^^ fr^nr'lu'ncr To his mind also, T^cJTL"; <^v^l'idod ^ lot only all orig ination and destruction, but tdi__qiiiilitaiii:i3 — ch-ange. — Likewise Beinu: coincides with the corporeal, that is, the ov with the 1 As to the perfect certainty of ascribing this to Leucippus, see Zel.ler, P. 843, n. 1. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION. . 89 ifkeov. By virtue of this coincidence Parmenidcs liad felt comiiello^tojtellTlMT^ als o that of l)luBlIiJ}:.>>>nd motion. Should now, however, as the interest of ])hysics demanded, plurality and motion be recognized as real, and a scientific apprehension of the actual again be rendered possible, then the simplest and most logical method was to declare ^ that " Non-Bein^." tlie A^oid {to Kevov)^ did nevertheless exist. The aim qA this assumption, however, is simply this: to make possible " plurality and mobility fo r that which reaU y is. ~TlTcl;ehy it becomes jjossible to create a world of experience froi tlTe^^^Toid " and the multiform " Full " moving in thJ < " Yoid,".. to construct that world fro m that which has no Being and from a multiplicity of those things th atJiave// Being. A categorical p hysics thus appears in place of the hypothetical physics of Parmenides, and in place of a problematical appears an assertorical and an apodeictic physics. But while Leucippus departed from the Parmeuidean \ concept of Being only so far as seemed absolutely neces- sary to explain plurality and motion, he still clung not on ly t o the characteri stic of unchangeableness (un-Becoming and indestructibilitv), but also to the thorou^Effoins: qualitati ve homogeneity of what possess Being. In oppo- sition to Empedocles and Anaxagoras, Leucij^pus therefore taught that all these varieties Qf what possess Being_aj'e homogeneous in qualitv.__He agreed entirely witli_Par- menides that this quality is abstract corporeality {to irXeov) ^ devoid of nil RpnoTlip. qiialitiPg" AccoidlJig tu the Eleatics,\ all,^djstinctions are due only to the permeat ion of that I which__really_is noETWifert whi ch really is. So, on the one hand, to Leucippus dj ajinctions between in dividuals 1 Democritus seems to be the first to have made the pointed remark : ^if) fiaWov TO SeV fi TO fiT]8ev elvai, " das; Ichls sei um nicliis mehr real als das iXichts/' Plut. Adv. col. 4, 2 (1109). 90 HISI^ORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOrilY. (rliat really possess Being exist only in those qualities due o their ""Kmij ^tion throu.g iLJtot--wIiIiSrreally is not ; viz., empty space. These are the distin ctions ^_form and motion. On the other hand, each of the changeless sub- 1 stances possessing Being must be thought as a corporeality, homogeneous in itself, a continuum and therefore indivisi- ' ble. Being, which is mo ved in empty space, ther efore con- sists of JjiiLn^'>''<^^'^^^l^; f^^'^rC^^ling^y g^nQn i-x-triip^a Leucippus called these Atoms (^cito/jlol), every one of which is, like the Being of Pn r m pn 1 d p.s^ji T) ori gi n n.ted ^ i n d ^gt.rii ojjhlp ^ un- changeable^^ indmjibj^^and homog^ne in itself and with / all other Being. The single cosmic-Being of Parmenides was broken up into an infinite number of small primitive elements which, were they not separated by empty space,* would constitute a single element in the sense of Empe- docles, and indeed would be the absolute qualitativeless ep of Parmenides. Of all the transformations of the Eleatic teaching, that of Leucippus is characterized by a striking simplicity, and by keen logical limitation to that which is indispensable to a professed explanation of the phenomenal world. At the same time it is clear that the Atomism which became later so important in the development of scientific theories did not grow out of experi- ence, or observations and the conclusions built upon them, but directl}^ out of the abstractest metaphysical concepts and absolutely universal needs for the exj[)laiiation. of actuality. Up to this point the Atomistic theory has been regarded as _a^ jvariant of the Eleatic metaphysic, arising from an interest in physics. But, o:ii^lic other hand, Leucippusjs so far under the influence of Ionian monism that he does not sopk f,hf> rause^ of motion in n. foree d ifferent from the_stuf f, but h c_ regards s j '>^^''^V u ij iti jiiu jJ T ujf ji s a^cjuali ty, imman o]it in the stii fF. The corporeality that is» homoge- neous in all atoms did not, in his mind, possess the power to change itself qualitatively, that is to say, aWo/wo-t^ ; but it did possess /c/j/^^crt?, an original underivable motion that EFFORTS TOWAUD RECONCILIATION. 91 is ffiven ill its own essenc e. In fiict, Leiicippus seems to have understood by this term not so much that of heavi- ness, — fall from above downward, — but rather a chaotic primal conditioii_of bodies moving, disorderly, among each other in all directions (§ 32). At all events, the Atom- ists bnlil llii.^ originnl state of motii^n ng nnpnucod ^^^,^ ^y^^(»^ t^(^i s< Ji-evide nt^i S o we can see in tlieir view the perfect" svnthcsis of the Ileracleitan and Elcatic thouirht : all ho mo- gcneouij elemeuls of BohlJ T ure thOuiz'ht as unchanL^eable. hnt nt thpVvm^ ^^^"'"'^ ^^ i^'' ^ ^rs^^f" p f motion thaFis sclf- nj;jo;irinJ7^.d, ; This is the extent to which the beginnings of Atomism may with certainty be ascribed to Leucipims. It is an >L attempt to explain the world by atoms in original motioiK^ in empty space. The purely mechanical part of the ^ theory, that the world was formed by collision, lateral and rotator V motion, likewise presented itself to the founder of Atomism in the same form in which Democritus later developed it. It is not so easy to explain, however, how Leucippus solved the more difficult and delicate question regarding the manner in which the various empirical qualities arose from these complexes of atoms ; that is to v say, t he transformation of quantitative into qualit ative y^ differences. Of his answer we know nothino:. The sub- jective method which Democritus applied to it was not as yet available to the founder of Atomism, since this method grew out of the investigations of Protagoras. Whether Leucippus^ was content with setting up this origination J 1 To my mind, there is no foundation for the belief that Leucippus in his doctrine of the aia-drjTo. employed the antithesis of ^vaci — j/o/xw ; from its significance and following all tradition, this antithesis is Sp- phistic. The inference rests upon the obviously late and inaccurate note in Stoba?us, EcL, I. 1101 (Dox., 397 b, 9) from which it might also be adduced that Diogenes of Apollonia was an Atomist. It is certain that Leucippus, as an Eleatic, denied sense qualities as real. For some later Jv^ 92 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. of the qualities out of the quantitative relationships only as a metaphysical postulate ; whether he explained these qualities, like Parmenides, simply as vain show and illu- sion ; or whether he in an uncertain manner, like Empedo- cles, derived all other material from the four elements and their mixtures, so that he too sought to refer empirical things back to the different form and size of the combining atoms, — how far, in fact, he in general passed from the metaphysical principles to the specific development of the physical theory, — concerning all this it is doubtless too late to determine. From the allusions in his theory, and from the very uncertain reports from the extant literature, it is only safe to say that probably Leucippus was younger than Parmenides, considerably older than Democritus and contemporary with Empedocles and Anaxagoras. It is hardly possible to decide between the differ- ent reports, whether his residence was in Miletus, Elea, or Abdera. Since however his pupil (eratpo?) Democritus doubt- less was an Abderite, and came from a scientifically active circle which we cannot^ possibly suppose to be that of the Magi, alleged to have been left behind by Xerxes, we may assume that a scientific activity was developed in Abdera in the second half of the sixth century, which city attained its highest glory under the influence of the colonists from Teos. Leucippus was its first representative of an}^ significance.- Protagoras appears to have originated in the school of Abdera at a time between the two great Atomists (§ 26). That Leucippus put his thought in writing is not entirely certain, but is probable. Nothing of his work remains, however. In any event, even early in anti- quity, there was uncertainty about the authorship of what had been ascrilx'd to him.^ Theophrastus ascribed ^ to him the /xeyas Stakocr/xo? wliicli went under the name of Democritus. It is reporter this denial is identical with the assertion of their subjectivity (i/o/xQj). Parmenides himself best teaches us how little this equivalence was possible for a pre-So})histic thinker. 1 Zeller, R 763. '^ Diels. Aufsdtze ZeUcr's JuhiUaunh p. 258 f. ^ De Xen., Zen.^ Gory., G, 980 a, 7; iv rois AcvkIttttov KaXovfxevois Xoyois- ■* Diog. Laert., IX. 4G. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION. 93 strange that in the memory of succeeding times and indeed in modern time (Bacon, Alb. Lange), even as in anti({uity (Kpicu- rus), he has been entirely overshadowed by Deinocritus.^ 24. " Between these an d in p ar t already before them." ^ t-kii i^ytltagoreans sought finally t o ap ply their m atliGmaticnl s Uidies to the solution of the Heracleitan-Eleatic problem i However in this respect the Pythagoreans faiJiLjnoj^ei'fectly homogeneoH* wlrohr. - it appears rather that within the society, corresponding to its geographical extension and its gradual disintegration, the scientillc work divided on different lines. ^ Some Pythagoreans clung to the development of mathematics' and astrononi}' ; others busied themselves partly with medicine, , partly with the investigation of different physical theories (con- \ cerning both see § 25) ; others finally espoused the metaphysical \ theory, which so far as we know was constructed first by Philolaus and is usually designated as the number theory. Philolaus, if not the creator, at least the first literary repre- . seivtalive ot the ^^ Pv lhagorj[? mi philosophy," was an older cori^ tompornr yof Socrn t.ps .nnd Demonntiis, and cannot, at any rate, be set farther back than Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Indeed he is presumably somewhat younger than the latter two. Of his life we know nearly nothing, and we are even not sure whether he was a native of Tarentum or Crotona. Also that he, like other P3-thflg^r-^rrT r^1^" -"^ <- t1 > P o^^f^ nf thn fifth pontnry, liy pd for a time in Thebes, is inferred with uncertainty from the passage in Plato, Phcedo, 61. Nearly as doubtful is his supposed authorship of the fragments that are preserved under his name. They have been collated and discussed first by Bockh (Berlin, 18PJ). From the investigations of Fr. Preller (article Philolaos in Ersch mid Gruher Encykl, III. 23, 370 f.), V. Rose {De AristoteUs Uhrorum ordine et auctoritate, Berlin, 1854), C. Schaar- schmidt (Bonn, 18G4), Zeller (Hermes, 1875, p. 175 f.), they may be assumed in part to be genuine, but they must be very cau- tiously introduced into the discussion of the original number theory. 1 Zeller, P. 761, 843. Compare E. Rhode, Verhandl. der Trierer Philol.-Versuchungen, 1879, and Jahrhiicher far Philologie u. Pddncjofjik, 1881, 741 f. Diets, Verlinndlungen der Stettiner Philologie Vers. 1880. 2 Arist. Met., I. "> : (v de rnvrois kcu npo tovtwv ol KoKovfievoi UvOayd- petot Tuiv fiadrjiiciTOiv dyj/di-ievoi kt\. 94 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. Along with Philolaus are mentioned, in Italy Clinias of Taren- tum,^ in Thebes Lycis the teacher of Epamuiondas, and Eiirytus the pupil of Philolaus, a citizen of Crotona or Tarentum. Eury- tus in turn had as pupils Xenophihis of Thracian Chalcis, the Phliasians Phanto, Echecrates, Diodes, Polymastus.^ From Cyrene Prorus is mentioned. In Athens Plato brought forward the two Pythagoreans, Simraias and Cebes, as witnesses of the death of Socrates. Almost mythical are the Locrian Timaeus ^ and the Lucanian Ocellus. The philosophic teaching of any of these men is not in any way certainly known. AVith the disso- lution of the Pythagorean League in the fourth century the school became extinct. The doctrines of the last significant personality in it, Archytus of Tarentum, merged, so far as our knowledge goes, into those of the older Academy (§ 38). A collection of all the Pythagorean fragments is in Mullach ; Ritter, Gesch. der pyth. Philos. (Hamburg, 1826) ; Rothen- biicher, Das System der Pythagoreen nach den Angahen des Aristoteles (Berlin, 1867) ; Alb. Heinze, Die meta. Grundleliren der dlteren P. (Leipzig, 1871), Chaignet, Pythagore et la philos. Pythagoi'ieime, 2 vols. (Paris, 1873) ; Sobczyk, Das JV/^K ^^.V-^- tem (Leipzig, 1878) ; A Doering, Wandlungeninder pyth. Lehre (Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos.^ v. 503 f.). / As to the Pythagorean teaching, only that can be regarded as genuine which Plato and Aristotle report, together with the concurrent portions of the fragments transmitted in such ques- ■ tionable shape._ In the Pythagorea n society mathematical investigations were pursued for the first time quite independently, and were brought to a high degree of perfection. Detailed views concerning the number system, concerning the series of odd and even numbers, of prime numbers, of squares, etc., were early instituted^^ It is not improbable that they, applying arithmetic to geometry, came to the conception embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem. Herein must they have had a premonition of the real value of number-relations in that they represen t number as the rul ing 1 Jambl. De vita Pyth., 2G6. 2 Diog. Laert., YUJ. 4G. 3 The writing bearinnj this name and concerned with the soul of the world, usually published in Plato's works, is certainly a later compendium of Plato's Timceus. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION. 95 pr inciple iii_ sx>a£C. Tlieir niiin])cr tlieory was strengthened by tlic results attained by them in music. Altliougli later reports include ^ much that is fabulous and physically impossible, there can nevertheless be no doubt that the Pythagorean harmonic shows an exact knowledge of those simple arithmetical relations (first of all, the string-lengths) out of which musical melody arises. To this may be added that the regular revolution of the stars, — of which they made especially careful observations, and which are indeed the standard for all time measurements, — made the world- order (/coo-yLto?) likewise appear to them to be numerically determined. From these premises it can be understood how some Pythagoreans came therefore to find in numbers the permanent essence of things, concerning which essence the battle between philosophic theories had taken place. On the one hand, nmnb ers might be subst ituted — since they were supposed ta be self-existent, unchangeable, and self-unitary — for the njisj-mot Rping p f^th e^ Eleatic s_as, a principle at least equally available in the explanation of the phenomenal world. On the other hand, s ince Her acleitus had found that the only permanent in change was hi the or- derly fo rms of the natiire~"p K)Ccrsg7theTelationshlptJ df JirmF " ber ruling the pro cess of ch ange gave an exactfi i: . form to _this id ea. The Pythagorean number-theory attempted to determine numerically the permanent relations of cosmic life. ; The Pythagoreans said therefore : All is number, and. they meant by this tha t numbers are the determining essfum c' of all thing s. Since nowJJiesa-aamealiSLtractL numbers and number-relationships are found in many different things and processes, they said also that th e number s are the or iginal forms which are copied by th cjhings! ' 1 Zeller, I*. 317. The observations of the Pythagoreans in the har- monic or, as it is call41, canonic, wore apparently empiricall^^ffildc upon the heptachord withltrings of different length. That they had no theory of oscillation, goes without saying. \ 96 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. It is scarcely conceivable that the Pythagoreans came to their predilection for mathematics, music, and astronomy through metaphysics. The inverse is rather true, that they came from such concrete studies, in undertaking to enter upon the solution of universal problems, — as Aristotle (Met., I. 5) also suffi- ciently indicated by the aij/dfxcvoL. For their treatment of geom- etry and stereometry, and their prevailing arithmetical fondness, see Roth (Gesch. unserer abendl. Philos., II. 2), although he on this territory accredits indeed too much to the old Pythagoreans. Cantor, Vorles. uber cl. Gesch. d. 3Iath., I. 124. ^ In order to derive, however, at one and the same time the manifoldness and changeableness of individual things from number relations, the Pythagoreans gave metaphysical meaning to the fundamental opposition which they found in the number theory. They declared that the odd and^ the even are respectively identical with the limited and .tjie unlimited.^ As all numbers are composed of the even and the odd, all things also combine in themselves fundamental an- titheses, and especially that of the limited and the unlim- >^ited. To this Ileracleitan fundamental principle there is ^ hound this l ogical consequence, that everything is flie^'ec- f ^^^X /Conciliatio n of opposites, or a ^Miarmony ," — an expression \ whicli m the mouth of the Pythagoreans has always the suggestion of musical investigations. The antithesis, however, acquired among the Pythagore- ans in conformity to their later attitude a still more pro- nounced value than with Heracleitus. The limited was the better, the more valuable to them, as it was to Parmenides. Odd numbers are more nearly perfect than even. In this way the Pythagorean system got a dualistic cast, which is noticeable in all its parts ; but this was theoretically over- come by the fact that since the One, the odd-even primi- tive number, creates both series from itself, so also all the 1 The ground of this identification (Simpl. Phys., 105 r. ; compare Zoller, P. 322) is artificial in that it was obviously made ad hoc, and is no natural product of the number theory. EFFORTS TOWARD RECONCILIATION. 97 antitheses of the cosmic life arc in a grand harmonious unity. • The hiter Stoic neo-PLitonists, i. e. neo-P^'thagoreans, tried to fuid in this autitliesis tliat of force aud stutl', spirit and matter, and they deduced the dyads from the divine monads. Neverthe- less, not the slightest suggestion of such a conception can be found in the Plato-Aristotelian reports, which would certainly have been particularly observant of this point. All that \vc know with any certainty respecting the' special doctrine of the Pythagoreans as contrasted with these general principles reveals t heir effort toj eonstrnct, in accordance with a scheme of numbers, an harmonic order ofthmgs in the various fields. For~fhTs~tTlere"S^rTed fiTst the decimal system, in which every one of the first ten num- bers is accorded a special significance,^ derived from arith- metical considerations. The aj U - hmotical mysticism or symbolism of the Pythagoreans seemstahave consisted in bringing into relation with numbers the fundamental ideas of vanous departments of knowledge, and thereby giving expression to the relatiye rank, value, and significance of these ideas. . There is here the suggestion of the ideal thought of an order of things permanently determined by the number series; but much caprice in oracular symbolizing and parallelizing was obviously developed in details. Beside the number ten of cos- mic bodies, the series of elements is about as follows (Jambli- chus) : (1) point, (2) line, (3) surface, (4) solid, (5) quahty, (6) soul, (7) reason, etc^;„or» on the other hand, (1) reason as located in the brain, (2) sensation in the heart, (3) germination in the navel, (4) procreation in genitaUbuSj etc7~~Then the virtues, like justice, were also designated by numbers. At the same time these concepts, which are symbolized by the same number in different series, also suggest and nrp. related t^ ^ ue ano ther.^ Thiis it pnmp nbont fhnt. flio sQulwas called a -sqtvare or -.a sphe re. Doubtless with this the thought was connected that ^ In a certain sense the Pytha. /. Id. PhiloL, 1882, IGl f. 2 Tlu! mass of writings passing under the name of Hippocrates arc pnbhshed by Kiihn and by Littre, and the latter ha-s made a French translation. Only a small portion of these writings belongs to Hip- pocrates, and this portion contains several very difficult })roblems of detail. J. Ill)erg, SlwIUi Pseiidippnrrafea (lj(}\])z\fi, 188.3). '^ Sec C. Goring, Ueber den Begrijjf d. Ursache in d. griech. Philos. (Leipzig, 1874). 108 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. gies are sought. As with Alcmseon, the mixture of the four fundamental humors — the blood, phlegm, yellow gall, and black gall — formed likewise the central point of this medical theory. Besides this the school of Hippocrates de- veloped an accurate knowledge of anatomy and physiology. In the former branch the knowledge of the brain and ner- vous system, and especially, even thus early, of the particu- lar sense nerves, is to be particularly noted ; and concerning the latter is the theory of the e/x(f)VTov Oepfiou, wherein the cause of life was sought. The bearer of life, however, was held to be the TrvevjjLa, which is a material wafted like air through the veins, ^ This is an hypothesis which, like similar teachings of Diogenes of Apollonia, seemed to rest upon a presentiment of the importance of oxygen. Historical research also, like tliat of natural science, acquired at the end of tlie fifth century not only greater extent and more manifold form,^ but also a positive and scientific method. While in Herodotus the naturalistic narrative was still interwoven with myth and saga, and the realistic conception was still permeated with elements of the old faith, the stripping off of the mythical appears to have been perfected in Thucydides, whose mastery of psychological motivation was determined entirely by the spirit of his time, the Attic Enlightenment. 26. But with this internal process of transformation there went on also in the second half of the fifth century a great change in the external relations of Greek science. There was here, too, a powerful influence in the mighty development of the national life which had dawned upon 1 Sec n. Sicbeck, Die Entioickelung der Lelire vom Geist (nvev^a) in der antiken Wissenschaft : ZeitschrifL fiir VdlkersjyFsycliologie, 1881, p. 364 f. Compare with his Gescli. der Psycholof/ie, I. 2, p. 730 £. ^ Logography developed into histories of locaUties (Xanthus of Sardis and IIi])])asus of Rheginm, the Lydian and Sicihan histories); then (§ 11), into fuller expositions by Charo of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Mitylene, Damastes, etc. THE GllKEK ENLIGHTENMENT 109 Greece during the Persian wars. The glorious struggle for existence which the Greeks made against the Asiatic ascendancy had strained the powers of the people to the utmost, and had hrought all their possibilities to their richest unfolding. The most valuable prize of the victory was that impulse for a national unity of mental life, out of which the great creations of Hellenic culture proceeded. Science was involved in this movement. Science was drawn out of the silent circles of the select societies in which it had until then been nurtured. On the one hand, it entered with its discoveries and inventioi>s into the service of practical life ;^ on the other hand, its doctrines, and par- ticularly its transformation of religious views, were brought through poetry to the apprehension of the common mind. The view of nature in ^sch3'lus, Sophocles, Pindar, and Simonides appears on the whole in a similar setting as in the Gnomic poets. Direct allusions to philosophy are found first in Euripides (compare especiall}' E. Kohler, Die Philosophie des Eurijndes^ I. ; Anaxagoras und E.^ Biickeburg, 1873), and in Epieharmus, who stood near to the Pythagoreans, but also seems to have been familiar with the other philosophic teachings of his time. (Compare Leop. Schmidt, QucBstiones Epicharmecp,, Bonn, 1846; Zeller, P. 460 f.) ''The divestiture of nature of its gods by science " pressed always further to an ethical alle- gorizing of the gods (Metrodorus of Lampsacus ; compare § 11). This permitted, on the other hand, the comedy (of Epiehar- mus, Cratiuus, Eupolis) to outdo the anthropomorphism, which had been for good and all outgrown, even to the extent of witty persiflage of their divinities. The weaker faith appeared, the greater seemed the need of supplying its place by knowledge. Amid such increased intellectual activity there arose in all Greece in the fifth century an impulse for education, aris- ^ An example may be found in the architecture of Hippodaraus of Miletus, whose connection with the Pythagoreans is indeed very doubt- ful. His ma^jnificent buildinprg, however, in the Piraeus, Thurii, and Rhodes, and the entire development of architecture, presuppose a high degree of development in mechanics and technology. Compare K. i^ . Hermann, D. H. Milesio (Marburg, 1841). 110 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOrilY. ing out of need, curiosity, and wonder. Everybody desired to know what the schools had developed through research and reflection concerning the nature of things. To such questioning a ready answer was speedily forthcoming. There were men who engaged to reveal the results of science to the people. Philosophy stepped out of the school and forth upon the mart.^ These public teachers of science were the Sophists. That the Sophists converted science into a trade is one of the chief and heaviest charges which Socrates,^ Plato,^ and Aris- totle ^ raised against them ; these three thought the dignity of science as a disinterested research was impaired in this way by the Sophists. If we cannot agree ^ with this judgment from a modern point of view, yet the fact is nevertheless to be recog- nized that when science was taught for pa}', it assumed an en- tirely new social position ; and this is the essential fact in the whole matter. This movement showed itself first of all in Athens. Here, in the middle of the fifth century, the intellectual life of Greece was concentrated, had attained its highest efflo- rescence, and had gained its political power and commer- cial supremacy. Science, like art, crowded into this r?}? 'EWdSo<: TO irpvTavelov rr)? ao^ia<^. Here the need of cul- ture developed most actively among the lesser citizens, here learning began to have political and social power, and here the supremacy of culture was personified in Pericles. Thus in science also Athens absorbed into itself the scat- tered beginnings of Greek civilization. Anaxagoras had lived for a long time in Athens. Par- mcnides and Zeno probably visited Athens, and Ileracleitanism was represented tliere by Cratylus. All important Sophists ^ Sec Windelbaiul, Praeludien, p. 5G £. '^ Xen. Afem., I. 6. 8 Gorg., 420 c. 4 Eth. NiL, IX. 1, 11G4 a, 24. 6 See Grote, Hist, of Gr., VIII. 493 f. ; Zeller, li 971 f. \ THE GREEK ENLIGIHTENMENT. Ill sought and foiiiul here lionor and glory. With them began the Attic period of ancient pliilosophy, its most magnificent period. The Sophists are, accordingly, first and foremost the bearers of the Greek Enlightenment. The period of their activity is that of the expansion of scientific culture. With less ability in independent creation, the Sophists devoted their energies to revising and popularizing existing theories. Their work was first directed, with an eye to the people's needs, to imparting to the mass of people the results of science. Therein lay, along with their justification, also the danger to which the Sophists succumbed. 'Xo\Q\s,Gorgias unci Empedodes (Berichte der Berliner Akademie) . Alcidamus of Elea, Tolus ^ of Agrigentum, Lycophron, and Protarehiis '^ are named as pupils of Gorgias. Protagoras, doubtless the most important of the Sophists, was born in Abdera in 480 or somewhat earlier. It can be assumed that he was not distant in his views from the school of Atomists in that city. Considerably younger than Leucippus, and about twenty years older than Democritus, he formed the natural connection between the two (see §§ 23, 31). With keen insight into the needs of the time, and much admired as a teacher of wisdom, he was one of the first to make an extended tour of the Grecian cities. He was in Athens many times. In 411, and during the rule of the four hundred, he was there for the last time, and was accused of atheism. He was con- demned, and upon his flight to Sicily was drowned. The titles (Diog. Laert., IX. 55) of his numerous writings, only a very few of which are preserved, prove that he dealt with the most varied subjects in the domain of theory and practice. Com- pare J. Frei, Qumstiones Protagorem (Bonn, 1845) ; A. J. Vi- trhiga, De Prot. vita et pliilos. (Groningen, 1851). Lately Th. Gompertz {Vienna Session Reports, 1890) has identified a Sophistic speech with the Apiology of Medicine in the pseudo- Hippocratic writing, irepl rexvy]'?-, and has noted its not fully undoubted connection with the teaching of Protagoras. Antimserus of Mende, Archagoras, Euathlus,^ Theodorus the mathematician, and in a wider sense Xeniades of Corinth also are to be regarded as pupils of Protagoras. Eminent citizens of Athens, like Critias, probably Callicles, or poets like Evenus of Paros, etc., stood in a less intimate connection with the Sophists. The practical and political aim of their instruction com- pelled the Sophists to turn aside from independent nature study and metaphysical speculation, and to content them- selves with the presentation, in popular form, of such the- ories only when they were called for or appeared effective.* 1 Plato, a org. ' ^ Plato, Phileb. ^ Plato, Thece fetus. 4 Many, like (Jorgias, rejected tliis as perfectly worthless. See Plato, Meno, 95 c. THE GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT. 116 The peculiar task in teaching men how to persuade drove them, on the other hand, to interest themselves more thor- oughly in man, especially on liis psychological side. Who- ever endeavors to inlluence man by speech must know something of the genesis and development of his ideas and volitions. While earlier science with naive devotion to the outer world had coined fundamental concepts for its knowledge of nature, Sophistry, so far as it adopted the methods of science, turned to inner experience, and com- pleted the incomplete earlier philosophy by studying the mental life of man. In this essentially anthropological tendency, sopliistry turned philosophy on the road to subjectivism. 1 This new kind of work began first with language. The efforts of Prodicus in synonymy, those of Hippias in grammar, were in this direction. Protagoras was especially fruitful in this respect. Persuaded that theory without practice was as little useful as practice ^ without theory, he connected the practical teaching, to which Gorgias seems to have limited himself, with philological investigations. He concerned himself with the right use of words,^ in their genders, tenses, modes,^ etc. Compare Lersch, Die SpracJij)lnlos, der alien. T. 15 f. ; Alherti, Die Sprachpliilos. vor Platon (Philol., 1856) ; Prautl, Gesch. cler Logik, I. 14 f. Similar small beginnings in logic appeared, in addition to those in grammar. That teachers of oratory should 1 Wliat Cicero (Tusc, V. 4, 10) said of Socrates, that he called philosophy down from heaven into the cities and houses, is equally true for the entire Greek Enlightenment, for the Sophists as well as for him. 2 Stobseus Florilen^ium, 29, 80. 8 Plato, Phmlr., 267 c. 4 Diog. Laert., IX. 53, in which he distinguished ev^wAfyi e/jcorrjo-iy, nnoxprjcris, and cWoXjJ. 116 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. reflect how a thing was to be proved and controverted, is obvious. It is also easily credible (Diog. Laert., IX. 51 f.) that Protagoras had his attention drawn to the nature of contradictory propositions, and was the first to teach the method of proof (Taro et contra over anything whatsoever, and to equipping their pupils in this facility. Their principal aim was accordingly to be able to confuse the listener, to drive him into making absurd answers, and to refute one's opponent. Protagoras also wrote avrtkoylat and /caraffaXXovref; ; ^ and the practice of the Sophists, especially in later time, in trying to be sensational, consisted simply in that art, which is called Eristic. Plato's Euthydemus describes with many playful witticisms the method of Eristic h\ the example of the two brothers Euth3'demus and Dionysidorus, and Aristotle has taken the pains to arrange S3'stematicall3' these witticisms in the last book of tlio Topics (Trept o-ocfiLo-TLKSiv ikeyx'iyv). The greater number of these witticisms are puns. The ambiguit}^ of the words, of the cn(hngs, of the S3'ntactical forms, etc., are in the main the basis of the witticisms (Prantl, Gesch. d. J-^oc/-> !• 20 f.). The great favor with which these jokes were received in Greece, and espe- 1 Sophist, 251 b. 2 Arist. Met., IT. 2, 998 a, 3. ^ Twv irpos Ti eiuai ttju aKf]deiav. Scxt. Emp. Adv. mafJi., VII. 60. 4 Hero the ambiguity of the copula also plays a part. Lyco])liron j)r()p()sed to omit the copula. ^ 'J'lie proposition that " man is the measure of all things " is cited as the be<'-inning of this work, and at the same time as the beginning of a work, called aX^^eta, which perhaps formed the first part of it. THE GKEEK ENLIGHTENMENT. 121 cinlly ill Athens, is explained hy the yontliful inclination to quibble, b}' the soutlnon's fondness for talking, and by the awakening of reflective criticism upon familiar things of daily life. However, this facetious method was unpromising for the serious progress of science. On the other hand, the con- victionless attitude of mind that the Sophists designedly or undesignedly encouraged became a direct menace in its a])plication upon that domain in which, as their entire effort showed, they were alone deeply interested, — the cthico-politicaL Since the time of the Seven Wise Men (§ 9), the content of moral and civil laws and obedience to them had been a common subject for reflection. But the growing individualism, the inspired activity of the Periclean age, and the anarchy of the Athenian democracy for the first time brought into question through the Sophists the justification of tlicse norms. Since here also the individual man with his temporary desires and needs was declared to be the measure of all things, the binding power of the law became as relatively valid as theoretical truth had been. See H. Sidgwick, The Sophists (Journal of Philology, 1872, 1873) ; A. Harpf, Die Ethik des ProUuioras (Heidelberg, 1884) ; and the general literature concerning the 8o[)hists and particu- larlv tliat concerning Socrates. Of the profounder investigations in which the more important Sophists were largely engaged, almost nothing is preserved save individual remarks and striking asser- tions. At most there is the nn'tli of Piotagoras in the dialogue of that name (320 f.). Perhaps the first half of the second book of the Heinihlic refers also to something of the same sort. Per- haps the Soj)hists suffer in this domain, as in theory, from the fact that we are instructed concerning them only from their opponents.^ The most important point of view which the Sophists in this respect set up appeared in their contrast of the natural ^ There is also a fragment found by Fr. Blass (ITniver?;. Sclirijt. Kiel.y 1889) in Jamblichus, Protreptkce oraiiones ad philosophiam, c\\. ?0, who attributed it to the Sophist Antiphon. . . _ 122 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. and social condition of man. From reflection upon the difference and change not only of legal prescriptions but also of social rules,i the Sophists concluded that at least a greater part of these had been established by convention through human statute (Secret sive vo^xw) ; and that only such laws were universally binding as were established in all men equally by nature ((/)uo-et)- The natural therefore appeared to be of the greater worth, — more nearly per- manent and more binding than the social. Natural law seemed higher than liistoric positive law. The more se- rious Sophists endeavored then further to strip off from natural morality and natural laws the mass of convention- alities : Protagoras'^ taught that justice and conscience (hiKT) and alSco'^) are the gifts of the gods, and are common to all men ; but neither this nor the assertion of Hippias, that "law" violently drives^ man to many things that are contrary to " nature," sets up any thoroughgoing and neces- sary opposition between the two legislations. But the more the theory of the Sophists conceived of " nature " as " human nature," and as " human nature " limited to its physical, impulsive, and individual aspect, so much the more did "law" appear a detriment and a limitation of the nat- ural man. Archelaus, the pupil of Anaxagoras, declared that social differences do not arise from " Nature." They are conventional determinations (ou (pvaei, aWa vo^w).^ Plato ^ has Callicles develop the theory that all laws are created by the stronger, and these laws, on account of need of protection, the weaker accept. He ^ puts into the mouth 1 Compare IIii)})ias in Xcn. Mem., IV. 4, 14 f. ^ III liis myth roprodiiccul by Plato. 3 riato, Prol., ool V. Similarly, but somewhat more brusquely, Cal- licU'S expresses himself in Plato, Gonjlas, 482 f. 4 Diog. Laert., II. IG. ^ Loc. cit. Republic, 1, 338 f. thl: guki:k KNLic.irrENMKNT. 123 of Thrasymachus of Clialcedon a naturalistic psychology of legislation, according to which the ruler in a natural body politic would establish laws for his own advantage. In this spirit Sophistry contended, in part from the point of view of " natural right," in part from that of absolute anarchy, against many existing institutions : ^ not only as the democratic Lycophron against every privilege of the nobility, or as Alcidamus against so fundamental a prin- ciple of ancient society as was slavery, but finally even against all custom and all tradition.'-^ The independence of individual judgment, Avhich the Enlightenment pro- claimed, shattered the rule of all authority and dissipated the content of social consciousness. In the attacks which already science in its more serious aspects had directed against religious ideas, it is obvious that religious authority also would be swept away with the flood of the Sophistic movement. All shades of religious freethinking are met with in Sophistic literatui-e : — every- thing, from the cautious skepticism of Protagoras, who claimed ^ to know nothing of the gods, to the naturalistic and anthropological explanations of Critias ^ and Prodicus ^ as to belief in the gods, and even to the outspoken atheism of a certain Diagoras ^ of Melos. 27. Against the destructive activity of the Sophists ap- peared the powerful personality of Socrates, who stood indeed with his opponents upon the common ground of the Enlightenment, and like them raised to a principle the indc- 1 To some extent with positive propositions whose authors, according to Aristotle {Pol., If. 8 & 7), were Hippodanius and a certain Phaleas. 2 Compare Arist. Pol, I. 3, 1253 b, 20. 3 Hy reason of the vagueness of the object and the brevity of human life; compare Diog. Laert., IX. 51. * Compare the verse in Sext. Em p., IX. 54. ^ Cic. Be nahira deorum, I. 42, 118. 6 Compare Zeller, I*. 864, 1. 124 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. pendent reflection concerning everything given by tradition and custom. But at the same time he was unshaken in the conviction that through reflection a universally valid truth could certainly be found. The reports of Xenophon/ Plato, and Aristotle are the chief sources of our knowledge coucerniug Socrates. The remarkably different light that is cast from such different men upon this great personality makes him stand out in plastic distinctness. Xenophon saw more of the sober, practical, and popular side of the life aud character of the man. Plato, on the contrary, beheld the height of his imaginatiou, the depth of his spiritual being, his elevating influence on youthful and highly gifted minds. See S. Ribbing, Ueber das VerhaUuiss zwischen d. xenojihontischen u. d. platonisclien Berichteu ilber d. Persdnliclikeit u. d. Lehre d. So%rates (Upsala, 1870). Xenophon's representation, so far as the author's knowledge goes, is one of historic fidelit}^, but it was strongly under the influence of Cynic party prejudice. Plato's writings, however, place in the mouth of Socrates less often Socrates' teachings (only in the Apology and the earliest dialogues) than the consequences that Plato has drawn out of them. Aristotle's teaching is everywhere authoritative as re- gards the teachings of Socrates ; for, following Socrates by some- what of an interval, and uninfluenced by personal relationship, he was able to set in clear light the essential features of Socrates' scientific worko H. Kochly, Sokrates u. sein Volk (in Acad. Vortr. u. Bed., I. 219 f.); E. V. Lasaulx, Des Sokrates Lehen, Lehre ujid Tod (Miinchen, 1857) ; M. Carriere, Sokrates u. seine Stellung in der Gescli. des menscJdicheu Geistes (in Westermaiui' s Monats- heften, 1864) ; E. Alberti, Sokrates, ein Versucli ilber ihn nach den Qndlen (Gottingen, 1869); E. Chaignet, Vie de Sokrate (Paris, 1868); A. Labriola, La doctrina di Sokrate (Neapel, 1871) ; A.FomWee, La pJnlos. de Sokrate (Paris, 1873) ; A.Krohn, Sokrate doctrina e Flatonis repuhlica illustrata (Halle, 1875) ; AVindelband, Sokrates (in Praeludien, p. 54 f .) ; K. Joel, Der Echte a. der xenophontische Sokrates, I. (Leipzig, 1892). 1 The Memorabilia arc essential for our consideration of this (sec A. Krohn, Soc. u. Xen., HalN-, 1874). So is the Sj/mposium. The cinestion as to the priority of the S//i)iposiu7n of Xenophon or the S>/mposiu7n of Plato is not yet fully (leci.icd in favor of the former, but is of late acce[)ted. Compare Ch. V. Compare Sander, Bemerkungen zu Xeno- phon^s Berichlen, etc. (Magdeburg, 1884). THE GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT. 125 Socrates was born hi Athens a little before 409,^ the son of Sophroniscns, a sculptor, and PhiiMiarete. He learned the trade ^ of his father, and discrinihuitingly absorbed the various elements of culture of his time, without ap})lying; himself to properly erudite studies. Acquaintance with the methods of instruction of the Sopliists awoke in him the con- viction of the dangerousness of their tendencies. Against them he felt himself called by divine direction ^ to a serious examination'* of himself and his fellow-citizens, and to un- remitting labor in the direction of moral perfection. He was moved by a deep religious spirit and an exalted moral sense in his investigations. He shared with his contem- poraries an immediate interest in these investigations; and his own peculiar activity, which began in Athens as early as the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,^ rests upon these. He belonged to no school, and it was foreign to his purpose to found one. With spontaneous feeling, he sought on the broad public held, which Athenian life offered, intellectual intercourse with every one. His extra- ordinary exterior,^ his dry humor, his ready and trium- phant repartee brought him into universal notice. His geniality, however, and the fine spiritual nature which lay hidden in his astonishing shell,''' the unselfishness which he manifested unstintedly toward his friends, exercised an irresistible charm upon all the remarkable personalities of the time, especially upon the better elements of the Athe- 1 He was at his death (399) over seventy years old. 2 Concerning a piece, later on pointed out as one upon which the young Socrates was said to have wrought, see P. Schuster, Ueher die Portrdts cler griech. Philos. (Leipzig, 1877). 8 Plato, Apol, 33 c. * i^eTii^etv cfiavTou Koi Tovy (iWovs I ibid., 28 e. ^ The production of the Clouds, 423, attests his popularity. ^ The humorous characterization of his own Silcnus shape is in Xeno- phon's Si/mpnsiiim, 4, 19 f. ■^ Compare the beautiful speech of Alcibiadcs in Plato, Si/mposium, 215 f. 126 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. iiiaii youth. While he in this way obeyed higher duty to the neglect ^ of home cares, in free fellowship a circle of admirers formed itself around him in which especially the aristocratic youth were represented in men like xllcibiades. He held himself as far away from political activity as pos- sible, but the unavoidable duties of the citizen of a state he performed with simple integrity .2 At the age of seventy Socrates was accused of " cor- rupting the youth and introducing new gods." The charges arose originally from low personal motives,^ but became serious through political complications,^ in that the aristo- cratically inclined philosopher, as the most popular and active " Sophist," was to be made answerable for moral degeneration by the democratic reactionary party. Not- withstanding he would have been freed with a small pen- alty ^ if he himself had not offended ^ the Heliasts by his candid pride in his virtue. The execution of the sentence of death was delayed thirty days by the Oewpla to Delos, and Socrates disdained in his loyalty "* to law the flight so easily possible to him. He drank the cup of hemlock in May ,8 399. 1 Concerning; Xantippe, whose name has become proverbial, see E. Zeller, Zur Ehrenrettung der Xen. (in Vortrag und Abhandlung, I. p. 51 f). ^ He made three campaigns, and showed himself, as prvtanis, just and fearless against the excited minds of the masses (see Plato, ApnL, 32 f.). 3 The accusers Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon acted out of personal animosity, unless they were men of straw (K. F. Hermann, De Soc, accu- satoribus, Gottingen, 1854). '* See Grote, History of Greece, VITT. 551 f. 5 The verdict of " guilty " was carried only by a majority of three or thirty ; the sentence of death had a nnich larger majority (more than eighty). * The Apology of Plato may be taken as authentic in its essentials, ' Compare Plato's dialogue, the Crito. ^ Tn respect to the extern:d circumstances of the day of his death, Plato's dialogue, the Phcvjlo, is certainly historical, although Plato in it THE GKKKK RNLKJHTKNMENT. 127 An instructor in philosopliy, in the strict sense of the term, Socrates did not have. He culled himself (Xen. Si/iifposium^ 1, 0) avTovfiy6 toteles, Fart 1. (Innsbruck, 1877). Besides, the determinism of , Socrates stands in a close relation to his eudaemonism (see below). For the proposition that no one will freely do wrong is founded upon the same basis with that proposition that if one has recognized what is good for him it would be impossible for him to choose the opposite against his own interest. Com- pare Xen. Mem., IV. 6, G; Arist. Magn. Moral.^ I. 9, 1187 a, 17. In the realm of ethics, moreover, Socrates stopped at this most general suggestion without developing syste- 1 Xen. Mem., III. 9. 2 Til Xenopbon one still finds the word ao(f)ta for this ; see Mem.f 111. 9. THE GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT. 13 o matically that kind of knowing (Wlsseri') in which vir- tue was said to consist. For the distinctive trait of the activity of Socrates was that he never lost sight of the given conditions. Therefore the question, " What tlicn is the Good ? " always became the question as to what is the Good in a particular respect and for a particular indi- vidual ;i and the answer was always found in the suitable, in that which perfectly satisfies the striving of man and makes him happy. According to the grosser 2 interpreta- tion of Xcnophon, Socrates' ethical theory was utilitarian- ism, and the value of virtue founded on knowing sank to the prudential cleverness of acting in every case according to correct knowledge {Erkenntnis) of expediency. The finer presentation of Plato refers, liowever, this co(f>e\L/jLov, which is assumed as identical with koXov and a;enes roui>h and coarse ridicule of the Platonic tlieor}' (r/javre^wi/ opoj, T/jaTre^oTT/ra ^\)vx of)u), Diog. Laert., VI. 53; compare Schol. in An'M., Gij b, 45, etc. ; Zeller, IP. 255) ; for these leaders of the Cynics onl}' single things existed m natura rerum. The class concepts are onl}' names without content. At the same time it is evident that, since the essence of a thing did not seem to them logicall}'' determinable, thej' claimed that it was producible only in sense perception. Thus they fell into the coarse materialism which regards a thing as actual only as the thing can be held in the hand. Presumabh' this fact is meant in the Sophist^ 246 a ; Themtetus^ 155 e, Phwdo^ 79 f. Compare Natorp, Forschungen^ 198 f. So much the more was the science of these men limited to their theoretically meagre doctrine of virtue. Virtue, and it alone, is sufficient to satisfy all strivings for happi- ness. Virtue is not only the highest, but the only good, — the only certain means of being happy. Over against this spiritual and therefore sure possession, which is protected against all the changes of the fateful world, the Cynics despised all that men otherwise held dear. Virtue alone is of worth ; wickedness alone is to be shunned ; all else is indifferent {jL^id<\>opov)} From this principle they taught the contempt of riches and luxury, of fame and honor, of sense-pleasure and sense-pain. But with this radical con- sistency, Avhich ever grew sharper with them, they also despised all the joy and beauty of life, all shame and con- ventionality, family and country. The obtrusive moralization of these philosophical beggars appears mainly in their coarse witticisms ; and ver}' many anec- dotes relate to Diogenes. There is very little of serious inves- tigation in their moralizing. Antisthenes appears to assert the worthlessness of pleasure, perhaps against Aristippus, and to have sought to demonstrate that man with such a conviction, even if it be not entirely right, would be proof against the 1 Diog. Laert., VI. 105. 144 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY slavery of sense pleasure.^ In Diogenes this disgust of all external goods grew to the philosophical grim humor of a prole- tarian, who has staked his cause on nothing. Irrespective of the mental culture to which, so far as it concerns virtue, he ascribed some worth, ^ he contended against all the devices of civilization as superfluous, foolish, and dangerous to virtue. Most dubious in all this was the shamelessness of which the Cynics were guilty, and their intentional disregard of all the con- ventions of sexual relations ; similar too was their indifference to the family life and to the state.^ For the cosmopolitanism in which Diogenes took pride * had not the positive content of a universal human ideal, but sought only to free the individual from every limitation imposed upon him by civilization. In particular, the Cynics fought against slavery as unnatural and unjust, just as already the Sophists had fought. On the other hand, it must not remain unnoticed that'Antisthenes/ in defiance of the judgment of Greek society, declared that work is a good. Cynicism finally reckoned also religion among the a8ta:es of our own essence, and these alone concern us. Sensations, since they are a consciousness of our own condition, are always true.^ In this spirit the Cyrenaics assumed an attitude of skeptical indifference to natural science. They followed Protagoras in the individualistic turn of this theory when they asserted that the individual knows only his own sensations, and common nomenclature is no guarantee of similarity in the content of the thought. That these epistemological investigations of the school of Aristippus were used for a basis of their ethics but did not evoke their ethics, is proved for the most part by the subordinate posi- tion which they received in the later systematizations of the school. According to Sextus Empiricus {Adv. math.^ VII. 11), the treatment at this time was divided into five parts : concern- ing good and evil ; concerning the states of the soul {irdOrj) ; concerning actions ; concerning external causes ; and, finally, concerning the criteria of truth (/rt'o-rei?). However, the fundamental problem of the Cyrenaics (as of the Cynics) was that concerning the real happiness of man, and they emphasized simply the included moment of pleasure or displeasure in those states of mind to which knowledge is limited. As, however, Protagoras had re- ferred the theoretic content of perception to differing cor- poreal motions, the Cyrenaics sought to derive also the affective tone of the same from the different states of motion of him perceiving.^ Gentle motion (\eia KLvrjat^;^ corresponds to pleasure (^r^hovrf)^ violent (rpa^'^'^'Ci) to dis- 1 S«rxt. Emp. Adv. malh., VII. 191 f. ; farther, Diog. Laert., II. 92. ^ Sext. Emp. op. cit. 105. 3 P^usebius, loc. cit. ; Dioj;. Laert , II. 86 f. Likewise the exposition in the Philehus,A2 f., which l)rin_i!js this teaching directly into connection with the ndvra pel, presumably refers to Aristippus. Compare Zeller, IP. 352 f. 148 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY pleasure (ttoVo?), rest from motion to absence of pleasure and pain (^aySovia koI airovia). Since now these three possibilities include the whole range of stimuli, there are only two, perhaps three irdOr]'. pleasant Qqhea)^ unpleasant (ttX7eim), and the states of indifference between them (ra fiera^v).^ Since, however, among these three possible states, pleasure alone is worth striving for, ijSoui] is the only goal of the will (Te\o:s in themselves. All others belons; to the thino-s onlv so far as they affect the perceiving subject. The secondary qualities are not therefore signs of things, but of subjective states.^ Democritus considered color, taste, and temperature as belonging to the secondary qualities, and he based their subjectivity on the difference of the impression of the same object upon different men.* In this theory of the subjectivity of sense qualities (for de- tails, see below) Democritus carried out the suggestions of Protagoras. His principle of relativit}' especiall}' shows this. His polemic against Protagoras was prompted by the fact that he held, like Plato, side by side with the theory of the relativity of sense perception, the possibility of a knowledge of absolute real- ity. On this account, even as Plato, he battled against the Pro- tagoreau theor}^, in which ever}' perception in this relative sense Beaii could not be marks of distinction between the single atoms, but only between the complexes. Compare De generatione et corrup(io7ie, 1^., 314 a, 24, in which things are distinguished hy the atoms, and their rd^ti and OecTLs. Finally, both of the latter moments (order and position) deter- mine the dWoicoais, the qualities of particular things. 1 Heaviness (/3apo?) in Atomism very often clearly signifies approxi- mately the same as movableness, i. e. the degree of reaction in pressure and impact. The direction of the movement in fall is included by the term in Epicureanism. 2 The expressions " primary and secondary qualities " have been in- troduced by Locke. The Democritan distinction had been previously renewed by Galileo and Descartes. Descartes reckoned solidity among the secondary qualities, but Locke placed it back among the primary. ^ TTCidr] T^s alaBrjaecos aXkoLOVfxeuTjs : Theoph. De 86713., 63 f. 4 Ihid. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 1G3 must be called true. Compare Scxt. Emp. Adr. math., VIII. 50, Vir. 139; Plutarch, Adr. col., 4, 2 (1109). Democritus also added to his recognition of the subjectively relalive the assertion of the objectively absolute, lieality, however, con- sists of space and geometrical forms of matter, and herein is iiis relationship to the Pythagoreans. Compare V. Brochard, J^ro- tagoras et Democrit {Arch. f. Gesch. der Philos., II. 308 f.). Every place of the meeting of several atoms can there- fore become the beginning of a vortex movement that is ever increasing in its dimensions, and proves to be the point of tlie crystallization of a particular world. On the one side it is possible that the small worlds thus formed may be drawn into the vortices of a larger system and become component parts of it, or on the other hand that they may shatter and destroy each other in some unfavorable col- lision. Thus there is an endless manifold of worlds, and an eternal living-process in the universe, in which the single worlds arise and again disappear through purely mechanical necessity. As to the form of our own world-system. Atomism taught that the whole swings in empty space like a ball. The out- ermost shell of this ball consists of compactly united atoms, and the interior is filled with air, while in the middle, like a disc, rests the earth. The process of separation of what is stable and what is flowing, is taking place still in the earth. The stars are like the earth, except that they are much smaller bodies. Their fires are kindled by the rota- tion of the whole world, and are nourished by the vapors of the earth. Democritus said that the sun and moon are of large dimensions, and he spoke of the mountains of the moon. Both sun and moon were originally independent atom-complexes. They have been drawn into the terres- trial system by its revolution, and they were in that way set on fire. We cannot here go into the detailed description which tlic Atomists made of this division of the elements, as brought about 164 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY by the vortex movement ; see Zeller, I*. 798 f. Nevertheless, the interpretation still championed bj' Zeller, I^. 874 f., and earlier the universal interpretation, has been shaken by A. Brieger {Die Urbewegung der Atome, etc., 1884, Halle; compare -Dd atomorum Epicurearum, motu principally M. Hertz, p. 888), and by H. C. Liepmann {Die Mechanik der Democritischen Atome, Leipzig, 1885). This earlier interpretation was that the Atomists regarded the original motion of the atom in the direction of the fall, i. e. downwards as perceived by the senses. Though the ancient commentators thus brought the motion of the atoms into connection with ^dpos (compare above), yet the movement down- wards was not expressly mentioned as absolute. Democritus could easily designate in the vortex system of atoms the opposi- tion between centripetal and centrifugal directions as Karto and av(o. Accordingl}^ he could have investigated the effect of the "heavy" in the vortex without teaching the conception of the Epicureans that " weight" is the cause of motion. Atomism has been apparently very much confounded with this in later time. However in the sources (probably academic) which Cicero {Defin.^ I. 6, 17) uses, there is the express state- ment that Democritus taught an original movement of the atoms in infinito inani^ in quo nihil nee summum nee infimunn nee medium nee extremum sit. Epicurus, on the contrar}-, degraded this teaching in assuming that the fall-motion is the natural one for bodies. The turbulenta atomorum co7icursio, on the other hand, here (20) was made a charge against Democritus. Plato {Ti?n..f 30 a, Ktvovfxevov 7rA.r//X|ueAaj9 kol araKrtos) appears to me to signify this, and doubtless refers here to Atomism. Com- pare Aristotle, De coelo, III. 2, 300 b, 16. In his matured rep- resentation of endless space, it is remarkable that Democritus took a i)oint of view in astronomy that was even for his time very antiquated. He did not think of the shape of the earth as spherical. He affiliated closely throughout with Anaxagoras, never with the Pj'thagoreans. With this exception his single hypotheses, especially his peculiar meteorological and ph3'sical hypotheses, make us recognize in him the thoughtful man of research and the penetrating observer. We find him'collecting many kinds of particular observations and explanations even in biology, wliicli Aristotle and others later used. He agreed with Empedocles as to the origin of organisms (§ 21). The most important of the elements was thought by Democritus to be fire. It is the most perfect because it is the most mobile. It consists of the finest atoms, Avliich ai'e MATERIALISM iVND IDEALISM 105 smooth and round "^ and the smallest of all. Its importance consisted in its being the principle of motion in organisms,^ and hence it is the soul-stuff.^ For the ynotion of fire atoms is psychical activity.'^ Upon this principle Pemocritus built an elaborately developed materialistic psychology, which in turn formed the fundamental principle of his cpistemology and ethics. Fr. Heinisoeth, Democritus de anima doctrina (Bonn, 1835) ; G. Hart, Zur Seelen- und Erkenntnislehre des Democritus (Leip- zig, 1886). It is evident that the theory of fire in Democritus goes hack to Heracleitns. Fire plays, however, in Atomism the same role in many respects as the mind-stuff lo^s in Anaxagoras. This is especialh' true in his explanation of the organic world. Fire is indeed not the element that is moved by itself alone, but it is the most movable element, and it imparts its motion to the more inert material. It must be understood, from these refer- ences and relationships, that Democritus also thought that the soul and reason were distributed through the entire world, and that the}' could be designated as the divine.^ Yet it is certainly a later explanation which attempts to find in his theory a world- soul like the Heracleitan-Stoic w^orld-soul. The isolation by the atomistsof the motion of the separate fire-atoms has no reference to a unitar}' function. In physiology Democritus considered the soul atoms to be disseminated throughout the entire body. He supposed that between every two atoms of the material of the human bod}' is a fire atom.^ Thereby he concluded that soul-atoms of differ- ent size and motion are associated with different parts of the bod}'. He accordingly located the different psychical functions in different parts of the body, — thought in the brain, percep- tions in the different sense organs, the violent emotions {opyi]) in the heart, and the appetites in the liver. The fire atoms were supposed to be held together in the body by the breath, so that tlie diminution of the breath in sleep and death leads to the diminution or nearly entire destruction of the psychical life. The spiritual individuality of man is also destroyed at death. The peculiarity of the Democritan psychology consisted in the fundamental hypothesis that the life of the soul and 1 Arist. De ccelo, IIL 4, 303 a, U. 2 jj^id. Be an., I. 2, 404 a, 27. 3 Compare Zeller, K 814. -* Arist. he. cit. 405 a, 8. 5 Cicero, De nat. deor., I. 43, 120. ^ Lucret. De rer. nat.,lll. 370. 166 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY its entire qualitatively determined content has its final explanation in the quantitative difference of the motion of atoms. The life of the soul is really also only an atom- motion, although the very finest and most nearly perfect of all motions.^ This doctrine attempted to elaborate the different kinds of atomic motion which form the true essence of the different psychical functions. This shows itself in the first place in his theory of per- ception. Since, for example, the influence of external things upon us, which is manifested in perception, is possible only by contact according to a mechanical principle,^ sensation can be induced only by emanations of these things pressing upon our organs. The sensitive fire-atoms found in these organs, are thus set in a motion, which precisely is the sensa- tion.^ Indeed Democritus, with support from the theory of Empedocles, concludes that in every organ the stimulating motions corresponding to its atomic constitution become perception, when a similar motion meets* them from the soul atoms of the organ. Democritus developed these theories for sight and hearing in particular. It is particularly im- portant for his entire theory that he called the influences emanating from objects "small images" (et^wXa), in his dis- cussion of sight. 1 That Democritus did not actually deduce the qualitative from the quantitative, but only had assertions and good intentions about it, is quite obvious. It is of course unattainable ; and this shows the impossibility of a logical completion of the materialistic metaphysic. That he, however, sought to work it out systematically, makes him the father of materialism. 2 Therefore touch is the fundamental sense ; compare Arist. De sens., 4, 442 a, 29. This conception reappears in the " new psychology," — an interesting fact of historical development. 8 Theoph. De sens.^ 54 f. ^ Ibid. 5G. Developed in respect to the car. Here is also the modern conception concerning the specific energy of the sense-organs, as dependent on the peri})heral end-organs being suited to the ref)roduction of different motions. This is approximately the thought of Democritus. MATEUIALISM AND IDEALISM 167 Dcmocritus agreed entirely with Protagoras in his as- sessment of the episteniological value of these sensations. Since, then, the motion thus called forth is conditioned not only hy the transmitting media ^ but also by the indepen- dent action of the fire atoms,^ sensation is no true expres- sion for the nature of perceived things. Therein consists the subjectivity of sense perception and its inability to give true knowledge, and sense docs not therefore truly repre- sent the atoms and their connection in empty spiice. Sense yields only qualitative determinations, like color, taste, and temperature, Democritus associated the formulation of this thought with the Sophistic contrast of the law of na- ture and the law of man : vojjlm jXvkv Kal vo/jucp iriKpovy vojjlo) OepjJiov, vofjLO) ^Irv^pov, vofia) XP^^V • ^'^^V ^^ cirofia Kal K€v6v.^ Thereby to sense experience objective truth is denied.* Sense experience yields only an obscure view of what is actual. True knowledge^ — viz., of the atoms, which are not perceptible to our senses, and of likewise imperceptible empty space — can be attained only by thought. This rationalism, which in a t3'pical manner stands in contrast to the natural science theory of sense perception, arose out of the metaphysical need of the Protagorean theory of perception, and went be3-ond it. For a ver}'' instructive parallel between ^ Theoph. De sens., 50. 2 The Heracleitan-Protagorean moment of this theory lay in this counter-motion particularly. 3 Sext. Emp., VTI. 135. Compare Theoph. De sens., 63. lie like- wise traced the human nomenclature for thin2i;s back to decrts. See Zeller, P. 824, 3. * The occasional strictures about the limitations of human knowledge (Diog. Laert., IX. 72 ; see Zeller, P. 823 f.) are, as also in Empedocles, to be considered only in this relation. It seems all the more true, since Democritus expressly t;uight that there might also exist for other things other methods of perception than those of man. This was con- sistent with his whole theory. See Plutarch, Plac, IV. 10 (Box., 399). Compare below. 5 Sext. Fnip. Adv. math., VII. 139. 168 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Plato and Democritus, see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math.^ VIII. 56. This rationalism of Democritus corresponds, in fact, entirel}^ to that of the old metaphysic and the nature philosophy-. The only difference is that here in Democritus it is not only asserted, but it is also based upon an anthropological doctrine. It is further to be observed, and it is also of value in drawing a parallel with Plato (Natorp, Forscliungen, 207), that Democritus yvoijxt] yvqa-irj refers to space and the mathematical relations pos- sible in space. It must remain undecided how far connections with the P^'thagoreans are to be supposed. Democritus, at all events, is as far distant as the P^'thagoreans and the Academy from a really fruitful application of mathematics to physics in the manner of Galileo. But, finally, thought itself, which grasps the truth of things, is nothing else than a motion of atoms, and in so far is like perception. ^ Furthermore, since thought, as all kinds of motion, can arise only from mechanical causes, Democritus saw himself driven to the conclusion that the voriai^i as well as the ataOrjai^ presupposes'^ impressions of elScoXa from the outer world upon the body. In view of the documents that lie before us, it is only supposititious ^ liow Democritus more exactly represented to himself the process of thought. It is certain ^ that he traced dreams, visions, and hallucinations to e'iScoXa as their causes. These arc also ideas introduced indeed through bodily im- pressions, but not by the customary path of perception 1 AltliouGjh in itself not equivalent on the higher planes. It is like- wise dissimilar to all the functions of the fire atoms. 2 Plutarch, Plac, IV. 8 (Dox., 395). 3 Zeller (V. 821, 2) thinks that Democritus did not attempt such an in- vestigation concerning the psychological principle in order to establish the preference of thought to perception. Zellcr's view seems improbable, in the first place, on account of Democritus' elaboration elsewhere of his epistemological and psychological doctrine; in the second place, on account of the importance of the matter for his whole system ; finally, because of the traces of such undertakings in his preserved fragments. Compare G. Hart, Zur Seelen- und Erkenninislehre des Dem., p. 19f. 4 Plutarch, QucBst. conv., VIII. 10, 2; Cic. De div., II. 67, 137 f. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM. 169 tliroiigli the organs of scnsc.^ Democritus is so far from holding these images as purely subjective that he ascribes to them rather a kind of presentient truth.^ He looks upon the process distinctly after the analogy of the sense of sight as the name eiScoXa shows. ethcoXa, liner than those inlluencing the sense, create a correspondingly finer motion of the soul atoms, and thus arises our dream knowledge. If now Democritus regarded thought as the finest motion of the fire atoms, he must have looked upon the finest ei^coXa also as the stimuli of that motion, viz. those et^coXa in which the true atomistic form of things is copied. Thought is accordingly an immediate knowledge ^ of the most minute articulation of actuality, — the theory of atoms. These finest eiScoXa remain ineffectual to the greater portion of humanity compared to the gross and violent stimulations to the sense organs. The Wise Man, however, is alone sensitive^ to them, but he must avert his attention from the senses ^ in order to conceive them. Compare E. Johnson, Der Sensualisinus des DemoJcrit^ etc. (Plauen, 1868) ; Natorp, Forschungen, 164 f. To designate De- mocritus as a sensualist is only justified bv the fact that he thought 1 It does not appear from the preserved passages exactly clear ■whether Democritus in his explanation of dreams thought that the eXboika press in during sleep without the help of the sense organs ; or that they were those that had pressed in during wakefulness, but on account of their weakness had first come into activity during a state of sleep. Perhaps he had both conceptions. 2 According to Plutarch {op. cit.), the dream is able to reveal a strange life of the soul to the dreamer. ^ Thought in analogy to sense of sight ; pointed out first by Brandis {Handbuch, I. 333 f.) and abandoned by him (Gesch. d. Ejitio., I. 145) ; analogy revived by Johnson. This analogy is to the effect that thought is an immediate inner perception or the intuitive conception of absolute reality. ^ Compare the somewhat dark passage, Plutarch, Plac, IV. 10: ArjuoKpiTOi nXeiovs ciuat aladrjcrcLS irepX to. aXoya ^(oa Koi nepi tovs cro(f)ovs Koi TTfpi T0V9 Beovt. * See Hart, op. cit. p. 19 f. 170 HISTORY OF ANCIENT rillLOSOPflY that the ground of the stimulation and the functioning of thought is analogous to that of (sight) perception. The distinguishing characteristic of Democritus is, however, this, that thought could go on without the help and therefore to the exclusion of sense-activity. Therefore he is an outspoken rationalist.^ These passages in which it is apparentlj^ as€ribed to Democ- ritus that he drew conclusions from cf^atvofxeva concerning the vorjTOi (Sext. Emp., VII. 140; Arist. J)e an., I. 2, 404 a, 27), prove onl}' on the one side that he undertook to explain phenom- ena from atomic movement : rw dXXoLovo-Oat Troiet t6 ala-ddvecrOai (Theoph. De sens., 49). On the other side these passages show that he tried to have the theories verify themselves through their ability to explain phenomena, and to derive appearance from absolute actuality. Aoyot Trpos rrjv Oio-Orjcnv ofioXoyovfieva Xiyovres (Arist. De gen. et corr., I. 8, 325 a). 33. The Ethics of Democritus, like his epistemology, has its roots in his psychology. Feeling and desire are KLvi^aei^^ motions of the fire atoms. As, however, he established in theory this difference of value, — that only obscure recog- nition of phenomena takes place in the gross stimula- tions of the senses, and that insight into the true form of things is solicited by the gentlest movement of thought, — so in pi'actice he applied the same distinction. As in meta- physics knowledge is the re\o^^ in ethics happiness (evSai- fjLovla) is the T6\o<=;. In the attainment of this happiness there is also here the fundamental difference between ap- pearance and truth.3 The joys of sense deceive, and only 1 Just as all pre-Sophistic pliilosophers (Heracleitus, Parmenides) arc found to have their epistemological rationalism united with a distinct- ively sensualistic psychology of thought. Compare Windelband, Gesch. d. Plidos., § 6. 2 Or ovpo<:, fr. 8 and 9. With this establishment of a unifyinLi; prin- ciple for the ethical determination of value, Democritus stood unicpiely by the side of Socrates. Practically he differed from Socrates but little. Compare Zietjjler, Grsch. tier Ethik, I. 34. Fortunately, ibid. 36, there is an allusion indicating that Democritus' pupil, Anaxarchus, was called EvbaiiJLovLKos. 3 The opposition of vojxos and (pvais prevails also here. Only through 1 nun an convention (i/o/xo)) desires are of value. The Wise Man lives here (fivirei. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 171 those of the spirit arc true. This fundamental thought shows itself through all the ethieal expressions of Demo- critus as a principle fully parallel to his epistemological principle. Also here he held the principle as authoritative that violent and stormy ^ motions disturb the equilibrium of the soul, i. e. disturb the fire atoms. Such motions bring with them a state of agitation of the senses. Therefore, in spite of their apparent momentary pleasure, such motions lead in reality to lasting dissatisfaction. Fine and gentle motions of thought have, on the contrary, true pleasure in themselves. Compare Lortzing, JJeher die ethischen Fragmenta Denio- crifs (Berlin, 1873) ; R. Hirzel in Hermes (1879, p. 354 f.) ; F. Kern, in Zeitschr. fur Fhilos. u. j^hilos. KritiJc (1880, supple- mentary part) ; M. Heinze, Der Eudamoni sinus in der griech. Fhilos. (Leipzig, 1873). The attempt to reduce all qualitative" to quantitative relations, which ver}' properl}' gives a uiiique place in ancient philosophy to the Democritan atomism, becomes the capstone of his ethics. The fXLKpal klvtjo-cls contain true happiness in the moral as well as in the intellectual world, and the fxeydXat are disturbing and deceptive. For particulars, see especially G. Hart, O]). cit., p. 20 f. If then the value of the psychical functions is made dependent in both directions upon the intensit}" of atomic motion, and indeed in inverse ratio, then it is difficult not to think of the similar purpose in the hedonism of Aristippus, who made the same distinction, in a coarser way to be sure, in estimating the value of the delights of the senses. It must remain undecided whether Democritus directlv influenced the Cvrenaics, or whether there had been a common source for the two in the doctrine of Pvthao"oras. The pleasures of sense are relative. They have a phe- nomenal 2 but not an actual value, viz., the value belonging 1 Fr. 20 (Stob. EcL, I. 40). '^ Plato, Rep. 584 a. The above representation is supported prima- rily by Plato's Republic, 583 f., and Philehus, 43 f., whose references to Democritus appear to Ilirzel and Natorp to be certain (see above). In both instances it is remarkable to see the exposition colored by medical expressions and examjdes wliich probably belong to the writing of Democritus (nepl evBvjjLirjs). 172 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY to (f)vcn^. Sense pleasures differ like the perceptions in different individuals, and depend on circumstances. Every sense pleasure is conditioned ^ only by the cessa- tion of unpleasurable feeling in the desire concerned, and therefore loses its apparently positive character. True happiness consists in peace {rjauxLci) of the soul, and Democritus generally uses evOvfxia to designate it. But he also uses many other expressions, as aOaix^la^ arapa^la, adavjjiacrla, dpfiovia, ^u/jL/jLerpia,^ especially evecrrco. He has for it a very happy simile of a calm of the sea (yakrjvrj'). By every excess*^ of excitation thought is aroused to aWo(j)pov€tv^ and feeling to stormy unrest. The right condition of gentle harmonious motion of the soul-atoms is possible only through intellectual knowledge. Out of this flows the true happiness of man. In these definitions the content of the ethics of Democ- ritus is fully on a level with the ethics of Socrates. The ethics of Democritus intimately connected the social worth of man with his intellectual refinement. The ground of evil is lack of cultivation.^ Happiness therefore con- sists not in worldly goods,^ but in knowledge/ in the har- monious leading of the life, in a life of temperance and self-limitation.^ The social worth of a man is to be esti- mated ^ by his mental calibre and not by his actions ; and he who acts unjustly is more unhappy than he who suffers unjustly .^*^ Everywhere he regarded the peace of man to be within himself (eveaTco). He looked upon the with- drawal from the sense-desires and upon the enjoyment of the intellectual life as true happiness.^^ 1 Fr. Mor. 47. 2 Both the last terms have a Pythasjorean sound. 3 Fr. 25. 4 Theoph. De se7is., 58. 5 Fr. 116. - 6 Yr. 1. 7 Fr. 136. 8 Fr. 20 ; compare 25. » Fr. 109. 10 Fr. 224. 11 It must remain uncertain to what extent Democritus distinguished MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 173 The numerous single sentences which have been preserved from Democritus suit entirely the quality oi" this noble and high view of life. Since they all, however, have been transmitted in a disconnected wa}-, it can no longer be determined whether and how they have a systematic derivation from the developed fundamental principle. In particular is to be emphasized the high worth that Democritus places in friendship,^ and on the other hand his full understanding of the importance of civil life, from which he seems to have deviated only in reference to the Wise Man- with a cosmopolitanism analogous to that of the Sophists. Yet there remains here much that is doubtful. Democritus maintained an attitude of indifference to religious belief, which was consistent with his philosoph}'. He ex- plained the mythical forms, in part by means of moral alle- gories,* in part by nature-myth * explanations. He accepted, in connection with his theory of perception, essentiall}- higher an- thropomorphous beings imperceptible to the senses, but influential in visions and dreams. He called these daemons ctSwAa, an ex- pression emplo^'ed elsewhere in his epistemology for the emana- tions from things. They are sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent.^ The school at Abdera disappeared quickl}^ after Democritus died. Even in its special undertaking, it performed,^ after the leader fell, scarcely anything worth mentioning. Its philosophi- cal tendenc}', however, became more and more sophistic,' and thereby led to Skepticism. Metrodorus of Chios and Anax- archus of Abdera, the companion of Alexander on his Asiatic campaign, are the notable names. Through the influence of Pyrrho, a pupil of Metrodorus, the Abderite philosophy became Skepticism, and the contemporaneous Nausiphanes formed the connection between it and Epicureanism. between the perfect happiness of the Wise Man won through the yvqa-ir] yvco^T), and the peace of the ordinary man obtained by temperance and self-control. Compare Th. Ziegler, op. cit.^ who wishes to put into a similar relationship both of the chief ethical writings, Trepi evdvfiLTjs and vnodrJKai. 1 Fr. 1G2 f. 2 Fr. 225. 3 Clemens, Cohort., 45 f. '* Sext. Emp. Adv. math., IX. 24. ^ Ibid. ^ The astronomical tenets of Metrodorus seem to indicate a relapse into Heracleitan ideas. Compare Zeller, P. 859. ' For the theoretical skepticism of Metrodorus, compare Eusebius, Prcep. ev., XIV. 19, 5. Whatever is reported of the ethical tendency of Anaxarchus reminds one of Hedonism, and Cynicism as well. 174 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 84. Democritus' consummation of the metaphysics of science by means of materialistic psychology formed in the total growth of ancient thought only an early dying branch. The principal tendency of Greek thought perfected itself nearly contemporaneously in the ethical immaterialism of Plato at the centre of Attic civilization. The same ele- ments of the earlier science, which were fundamental to the theory of Democritus, were combined afresh and in an entirely different manner in the Platonic system under the influence of the Socratic principle. Heracleitus, Parmeni- des, Anaxagoras, Philolaus, and Protagoras furnished the material for the theory of Plato, but it was worked over in an entirely original manner from the point of view of con- ceptual knowledge. Plato, the son of Aristo and Perictione, was born in Athens in 427, and came from a distinguished and pros- perous family. Endowed with every talent physical and mental, he received a careful education, and he was familiar at an early age with all the scientific theories that interested Athens at that time. The political excitement of the time made the youth desire a political career. The Peloponnesian war was raging, and during its progress the internal and external affairs of Athens were becoming more and more precarious. On the other hand, the rich artistic development of the time was irresistibly attractive, and Plato was led to try poetry in many of its forms. Both Plato's political and poetic longings appear to follow him in his entire philosophy : on the one side in the lively, al- though changing interest that liis scientiRc work always shows in the problems of statecraft, and on the other in the artistically perfected form of his dialogues. But both are subordinate to his entire absorption in the personality and teaching of the character of his great master Socrates, whose truest and most discriminating pupil he remained for many years. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 175 Of the general works concerning Plato and Iiis tlicorv tlicrc arc to be named W. G. Tennemann, fSf/stcm der phit. Philoti.^ 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1792-5) ; Fr. Ast, rUUon's Leben u. ScJiriften (Leipzig, 1816) ; K. F. Hermann, Gesch. u. Syst. der j)lat. Philos. (Heidelberg, 1839) ; G. Grote, Plato and Other Com- p(niio?is of Socrates (London, 186.5) ; II. v. Stein, Siehen Bucher zurGesch. des Platonismus (Gottingen, 1861 f.) ; A. E. Cliaignet, La vie et les ecrits de Plato (Paris, 1871) ; A. Fouillee, La2)hilo- sop/u'e de Plato (4 vols., 2d ed., Paris, 1890). The nearest pupils of Plato, especiall}' Hermodorus, dealt with his life ; also the Peripatetics, Aristoxenus and others. The expositions of Apuleius and Ol3'rapiodorus (published in Cobet's edition of Diogenes Laertes) have been preserved. Besides there is a life of Plato in the Prolegomena (printed in Hermann's edition of the Platonic writings). The collection of spurious letters printed with his works is a very un trust worth}' source. Only the seventh among them is of any worth. K. Steinhart has published a life of Plato (Leipzig, 1873), which ranks well among the new works. On his father's side, Plato had the blood of the Codrus family in his veins, and on his mother's he traced his lineage back to Solon. -^ He himself was called after his grandfather, Aris- tocles, and is said to have been called Plato for the first time by his gymnasium teacher on account of his broad frame. For the determination of the j'ear of his birth, the statements of Her- modorus are decisive (Diog. Laert., III. 6), that when he went to Euclid at Megara in 309, immediately after the death of Socrates, he was twentj'-eight years old. That his birthday was celebrated in the Academy on the seventh Thargelion emanates possibly from the Apollo cult, to which many of the early myths about the philosopher seemingly are referable. That Plato was early remarkable in every physical and musi- cal art is entirely in agreement with every part of the picture of his personality. The particular accounts about his teachers (Zeller, IP. 394) throw no light on his own scientific significance. His early acquaintance with the Heracleitan Cratylus is attested by Aristotle.^ At what points of time in his development the teachings of the other philosophers whose influence is traceable in his works were known to him, cannot be ascertained. Early in his career Heracleitus, the Eleatics, Protagoras and other Sophists, and later ^ Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans were authorities for him. 1 It is improbable that his family was poor, as many later writers would have it. His style of life indicates the contrary. 2 Met.^ I. 6, 987 a, 32. ^ luJeed, relatively late: see below. 176 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Plato was hostile to the democrac}', as was consistent with the traditions of his family' and the political views of his teacher, Socrates. Yet his political inclinations, as he has laid them down in his works, diverge so far from historic aristocracy that his complete abstinence from public life in his native city appears highly conceivable. That he concerned himself in his 3'outh, as was the custom, with epic and dramatic poetr}', is not to be doubted, notwithstanding the uncertainty of the particular tra- ditions about it. Concerning the time when he became acquainted with Socrates, an acquaintance that certainl}' eclipsed all the early interests of the 3'outh, there is nothing very definite to be said. If he were then, according to Hermodorus/ twenty 3'ears old, there remained very little room for his poetic attempts, which ceased when he began philosophy. It is probable that Plato had formulated the content of the separate conversations in the earliest dialogues durinof Socrates' life.^ 'o After the death of Socrates, Plato went first, with other pupils of the master, to Euclid at Megara. He soon after began a journey which took him to Cyrene^ and to Egypt, and he seems to have returned to Athens from this journey about 395. Here he apparently already began, if not his teaching, yet the part of his literary work in which he opposed the different tendencies of the Sophists. About the end of the first decade of the fourth century, he began his first tour to Magna Grascia and Sicily, which not only brouglit him into personal touch with the Pythagoreans, but also led him to the court of the elder Dion of Syracuse. Here he was in close intimacy with Dion, and was thereby drawn into the strife of political parties which ruled the court. Matters became dangerous for him, for the tyrant grew hostile and treated him as a prisoner of war. He delivered Plato over to the Spartan ambassador, and the 1 Diog. Laert., III. 6. 2 The statement concerning the Lysis, ibid. 35, is in itself by no means improbable. 8 His intimate relations with the mathematician Tlieodorus, the pupil of Protagoras (see Thecvtelus) , are somehow connected with his stay in Cyrene ; possibly also his essentially polemic relation to Aristippus. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 177 latter sent the philosopher to tlie slave-market of ^gina, where a man from Cyrcne bought his freedom. About 387 Plato returned to Athens, and founded his scientific society soon after in the Academy, a gymnasium. Here, to a con- tinuously increasing band of friends and youths, he imparted his philosophic theories, sometimes in dialogues, sometimes in lono'cr discourses. The only data for this part of his life which are not reported alike cverywiiere in the sources have probably been given their definitive statement by Zeller, II*. 402. It is probable that Plato's Wanderjahre, from the death of Socrates until liis failure in Syracuse, were not without interruption, and that he mean- while had ah-eady begun his instruction at Athens, altliough to a small circle, and not yet to tlie closed and organized Academy. The literary activity of Plato in tlie interim (395-91) was essen-' tially only a defence of the Socratic doctrijie, as Plato conceived it and had begun to develop it against Sophistry, which was flourishing more than ever. Whether or not Plato left his liome a second time for political reasons, during the Corinthian war, when Athens was again ruled by the democracy,^ is uncertain. He probably at that time attempted in Syracuse, perhaps in collusion with the Pythagoreans, to bring his political principles into vogue by the exercise of influence upon the tyrant. For the treatment which he experienced at the hands of Dionysins, who seems to have threatened his life, is hardlj' to be explained by an}' mere unpopularity of his ethical parrhesia, but is, on the contrary, natural enough if Plato entered politics. At first Plato probably taught in the Socratic manner by con- versation, and he sought to construct concepts with the help of his pupils. But the more his own opinions became finished, and the smaller the organization of the Academy grew in numbers, the more didactic became his work, and the more had it the form of the lecture. In the successive dialogues the work of the inter- locutor becomes fainter and less important. Later Aristotle and the other pupils published lectures of Plato. The philosopher allowed himself only twice to be induced away from his teaching in the Academy, which teaching ^ That about this time public attention turned again to Socrates, is shown by the circumstance that even then the rhetorician Polycrates published an attack upon Socrates. See Diog. Lacrt., II. 39. 12 178 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY ' I p lasted the entire second half of his life ; and then only ! through the hope of fulfilling his political ideals. After | the death of the elder Dionysius, he sought, with the help ' of Dion, to influence the younger Dionysius. He had no j success in the first attempt in 367, and the third Sicilian ; journey in 361 brought him into great personal danger ' again. In this journey his special effort was to reconcile j Dion and Dionysius the younger. Only the energetic effort j of the Pythagoreans who, with Archytas at their head, repre- senting the power of Tarentum, seems to have saved him. Plato died in 347, in his eightieth year. He was revered by his contemporaries, and celebrated as a hero by posterity, i He was a perfect Greek and a great man, — one who united in himself all the excellences of bodily beauty with intel- ' lectual and moral power. He also ennobled the esthetic , life of tlie Greeks with a depth of spirituality which assured \ to him an influence for a thousand years. The political character of the second and third Sicilian journey's is beyond doubt, but that does not preclude the supposition that Plato at that time, in his intercourse with the Pythagoreans, was pursuing his scientific work. At any rate, the number theory exercised an increasing but scared}' a healthy influence on part of the development of his philosophical thought. On the other hand, his influence on the Pythagoreans was very fruitful. The reports of the ancients as to the length of life and the time of death of the philosopher differ only a little. They are I easil}' reconciled in the statement that Plato died in the middle of the year 347. It is also said that he died suddenly in the middle of a marj'iage feast. The report of Cicero — scribens est mortuus — signifies only that Plato was still laboring to perfect his works at the time of his death. The aspersions upon his character in later literature arose from the animosities of the scholastic controversy. They are refuted, however, by the respectful tone with which Aristotle always spoke of Plato, even when he was battling against his theory. It is not entii-ely i impossible that in later time, when Aristotle went his own way and Plato became more Pythagorean in his mysticism, that the relations between the two became less close and somewhat in- harmonious. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 170 Wc can get the most reliable picture of Plato from his own writings. They sliow in their author the realization of the Socratic ideal : his scientific investigations are carried on with all the seriousness of a moral endeavor seeking its own fulfilment. The serene beauty of his compositions and the perfect purity of his diction reveal the artist who from the heights of the culture of his time gives to the thought of that time a form that transcends the time. With the exception of the Apology^ they are dialogues in which the conversation and the deciding word, if a decision is reached, fall in by fai* the majority of cases to Socrates. In reference to their content, only a few of the dialogues have a fixed plan of philosophical research. Rather, almost always threads of thought were spun from the chief prob- lem in any direction and followed to the end. On that account the dialogues are not scientific treatises, but w^orks of art in which scientific " experiences " are reproduced in an idealized form. One remarks this agsthetic character in Plato's use of myths, which appear usually at the beginning or end of an investigation, where Plato cannot or will not develop his thought conceptually. The story form of the argument enhances its poetic power. By the term *' experiences," which are elaborated in Plato's dialogues, we do not mean so much the conferences wliich the poet philosopher employed or devised as the outer scenorv of his works, but the discussions in which he himself led in the circle of his riper friends.-^ Such a dialogue as the Parmenides bears even the character of being the aesthetic resume oi actually fought out word-battles. The Platonic authorship of these is extremely doubtful, but they must have originated in the Pla- tonic circle. Tlie actuall}- occurring conversation is idealized and universalized in these dialogues, being placed in the mouth of Socrates and other persons, some of wliom had already died. Plato shows here his imagination by his selection and ^ Tliis certainly happened later also, when scholastic teachincrlin, 1883), that this dialogue should he put as late as the fourth decade of the fourth century, cannot be reconciled with its content. MATEKIALISM AND IDEALISM 185 from public life. Yet the ox[)l;inalion of this nin}' be that Plato began the Thartetus in Athens, and completed it after or npon his journey ; for the dialogue refers to a wound that Theiiitetus received in an encounter during the Corinthian war. His clash with the tyrant and his wily and adroit tlatterer (Aristii)pus?) is consistent with his experiences at this time. There is per- haps a connection between this and the change of form, which makes it necessary to place the dialogue at the end of this series. (3) The Works of the Most Fruitful Period of Plato's Acticity. These are the Phcedrus^ Symjyosiiim^ and the cbief part of the Republic. In the same period were probably written the Parmeiiides^ Sophist^ and Politicus, which cer- tainly came from tbe Platonic circle. The Phcedrus ma}^ be viewed as Plato's program delivered upon his entrance (386) into active teaching in the Academy. Philosophicall}' it contains the fundamental thoughts of this period in mythical dress : the theorj' of the two worlds (§ 35) and the triple division of the soul (§ 36). In the contention between L3sias and Isocrates he takes the latter's part, but de- clares tliereby (276) that he prefers the living conversation to the written word. If Plato concentrated from now on his powers in oral instruction, it is natural that he should appear not to have published any work in the two following decades. Not until immediately after the Phcedrus did he give tlic fullest expression to his entire teaching in the " love speeches " ^ of the Symposium (385 or 384). The most superb of all his artistic 1 The exposition of these thoughts lies so essentially in the direct line of the Platonic philosophy that it does not seem necessary to seek their inspiration in the appearance of a work of Xenophon. Xeno- phon did not have the sliorhtest occasion to treat the " love-speeches " hy the side of the MemorahUin as a separate work, as he manifestly did treat them. It is rather probable that after Plato idealized the evening feast (for there is undoubtedly some historical ground for the descri[)tion) in his own way, Xenophon felt compelled to give an ac- count of the facts. His additions were especially to the thoroughly prac- tical conception, Avhich Socrates developed, as to the relations of the sexes. In addition to these practical reasons there are also verbal and historical grounds for placing Plato's account prior to that of Xcno- ])hon's rather than the opposite. Compare A. Hug (PhiloL, 1852), and Rettig (^Xen.'s Gastmahl, Greek and German, Leipzig, 1881). 186 HISTORY OF ANCIENT riilLOSOPHY products, it represents in every respect the acme of bis intellect- ual [)o\ver. [n the elegance of its rhetoric and in the character- ization of single individuals carried out to verbal detail, it is surpassed b}' no work. Upon the background of the cosmology, suggested in the Phoedriis and clearly developed here, it pictures the epoj? as the living bond of the Phitonic society. The Menexenus has the same general tendencies as the Sym- jwsium and the Phmdrus, but it was probabl}' written not b}' Plato, but b}- one of iiis pupils. It boasts somewhat proudl}' at the end that Aspasia has many more beautiful speeches like the given funeral-oration. During the time of literar}' silence that immediately followed, Plato appears to have been going on with his great life work, — that one, among all his works, which presents the most serious critical and historical difficulties. This is the Hepuhlic. As it lies before us, it is wanting in an intellectual and artistic unity in spite of its subtile, often all too intricate, references and cross- references. All attempts to establish such a unity fail. Follow- ing the fruitless dialogue concerning justice, which forms the first part of the work (first, according to the present divisions, which were indeed traditional earl}' in antiquity), there comes, after the insertion of a species of sophistic discourse, the conver- sation with entirely new persons concerning the ideal state, and concerning the education necessar}' for constructing a state by which the ideal justice may be realized. Thus there appear tw^o perfectly unlike parts welded together, but the second and greater (Books II.-X.) is b}' no means a decided advance in thought. In particular, the diatribe taken up again at the beginning of the tenth book against the poets,, stands abruptly in the way between the proofs that the just man in the Platonic sense is the happiest man on earth (P>ook IX., 2d half, 588 f.) as well as after death (Book X., 2d half, 608 c.) It is particularly striking that whereas the teaching about the ideal state and the education l)eculiar to it restricts itself entirely to the limits set forth in the Phcedrus and Sjjmposium, we find an intervening section (487-587) which not only expresses the teaching of Ideas as the hiiihest content of this education in the sense stated in the PJiwdo and developed in the Philebus, but also develops in a more extended way the different metaphysical teachings of the later j)eriod. These and other single references, which cannot be followed out in this i)lace, show that there are three strata in the PepnbUc: (1) the dialogue of early origin concerning justice (Book I., possibly including ai)[)endix, 357-G7) ; (2) the outline of an ideal state as the realization of justice, originating at the time of his teaching, that followed the Phwdras and Syniposiam MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 187 (liooks II. -V.), and the entire conclnsion from Ch. XII. (IJook I IX.) ; (3) the theory, dating from the time of the PJimdo and Philebns, of the Idea of the Good, and the critique of the consti- tutions of the state (487-587). As I'Uito grew older, he sought to weUl these tlu'ee parts into one another. To accompHsh tliis, he now and then worked over tiie earher portions, but he did not succeed in bringing them into a perfect organic union. In acce[)ting a successive genesis of the whole, the simplest ex- planation is given of the insertions, which appear still further within the different parts in polemic justification. These in- sertions are attempts to meet objections that had in the mean time been raised oralh' or in writing. In the course of the discussion of the theory of Ideas in the Academ}', there appeared difficulties in the way of their devel- opment. The Parjnenides and Sophist were written especialh' to express these objections and to discuss them. The Parmt- nides with a dialectic which drew its formal and practical argu- ments from Eleaticism, tears the theory of Ideas to pieces without reaching a positive result. The contemptuous tone and the boyish immature role which is clearly given to the Socrates- Plato, stands in the wa}' of regarding this as Plato's criticism of himself. Probabl}- an older member of the Platonic circle, who was educated in Eleatic sophistry, is the author of this dialogue. The Parmenides does not give to Socrates, but to Parmenides, the deciding word, and it bears entirely the Eleatic character of sterile dialectic.-^ The question about tlie genuineness of the Sophist and the PoUficus is more difficult. That both have the same author can be inferred from their form. On the one hand, in both, as in Parmenides, not Socrates but a friend and guest, who is an Eleatic, leads the conversation ; on the other hand, there is the pedantic and somewhat absurd schematism, with which, by a continuously progressive dichotomy, the concept of the Sopiiist and statesman is attained. It is therefore impossible to ascribe one dialogue to Plato and the other not to him, as Suchow has attempted. The tw^o stand or fall together. It might be pos- sible to divine an intended caricature of the philosopher in certain externals that are in other respects wholly un-Platonic, but the contents of both forbid this. The criticism of the theory ^ If Philebits, 14 c, refers to Parmenides, the notable way in giving up the investigation of ev and noXKa. is rather a reason for regarding the Parmenides as a polemic that had been rejected. This is better than to let both these dialop-ues stand or fall to«;ether, as Ueberwe<»' prefers (I. lal, 7th ed.). 188 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY of Ideas which is contained in the Sophist (compare § 28) might be conceived, perhaps, as Platonic self-criticism, although weighty reasons are also against it. But the manner in which it solves the discovered difficulties is not Platonic.^ So the Politicus contains many points of view which agree with Plato's political convictions. It is, however, not probable that the philosopher tried to treat the same problem in a book other than the Republic^ especially since the Politicus sets up other teachings wiiich differ on important points. Convincing reasons are therefore adduced for seeking the authorship of both in a member of the Academy with strong Eleatic sympathies.^ It is singular enough that the divergence of both from the Platonic teaching lies exactly in the direction of the metaphysics and politics of Aristotle,^ who entered the Academy in 367. About this time the dialogue lo may have originated, which indeed makes use of Platonic thoughts in its distinction between poetr}' and philosophy, but cannot be safely attributed to the head of the school. (4) The Chief Works on Teleological Idealism. These were written in the time before and after the third Sicilian journey. They are the Fhcedo^ Philebus, the correspond- ing parts of the llepuhlic (487 f.), and in connection with these the fragment of Critias and the Timmus. The characteristic of this period is the introduction of Anaxa- gorean and Pythagorean elements into the theorj' of Ideas. The central concept is the Idea of the Good. The introduction of these elements finds its full perfection in the Pliwdo^ which was written presumabl3' shortly' before the third Sicilian journey'. 1 In the passa,2;c of Pliaido (101 d), Plato explains the problem of the Sophist and also of Parmenides as relatively indifferent problems, compared to the importance of the establishment of the theory of ideas. 2 Who perhaps was prevented by death or other cause from the third proj)osed dialogue ((f)LX6(ro(f)os). Th:it the trilogy seems to be connected as to its external framework (which is moreover very much wanting in fancy) with the conclusion of tli(i Thecctetus, is not decisive for the Platonic authorship. ' The way in which he mentions both dialogues, 1 cannot recognize as proof of their genuineness, in spite of the conclusions of Zeller (IP. 457 f.). MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 189 As if conscious of the diingers to be met, PLito gives to this dia- logue tlie tone of a hist will and testauient to the school. As a delightful counterpart to the /Si/mpof^iuni, he pictures the dying Wise Man as a teacher of inimortalit}'. After this journey, the philosopher ^ reached the zenith of his metaphysics in his investigations concerning the Idea of the Good, which are embodied in the dialogue Philebus. All the thoughts - that are expressed there, are to be found again in the less abstract presentation in the middle part of the liepuhUc,^ which was designated above as its third stratum (487-587).'* Plato has then, as an afterthought, brought into external rela- tionship the incomplete sketches of his philosophy of history (Cn'tias)^ and hkewise his mythical theory of nature (Thnceus) with the scenic setting of the llepuhlic (supposabl^- finished at this time). (5) The Laivs. This is the work of his old age. This sketch of a second-best state originated at the time when Plato in his Xo'yoi aypa-Trroi entirely went through the theor}' of Ideas with the Pythagorean theory of numbers in mind. The exposition passes over here into senile formalit}-, although still worthy our admiration. The present form of the work pro- ceeded from Plato even in its details, although the manuscript was said to have been published first by Philip of Opus after the death of Plato. The same scholar had edited the epitome of the Laivs^ which under the title of Ejnnomis was received in the Platonic circle. 35. The epistemological, metaphysical doctrine, known as the theory of Ideas, forms the central point in tlie 1 The new course that Plato certainly takes, shows itself in the peculiar fact that in the Philehus expressions like epoo? and dv(invT](rLi have lost the specific sense Avhich the earHer dialogues have given them, 2 Among others, the treatment also of the concept of pleasure which mic^ht he claimed to belong to Democritus. (See above.) 8 Tn this part a number of pedagogical and political discussions appear to have been sprinkled, which already could have belonged to the earlier sketch of the ideal state and supposably did belong to it. The details cannot be given here. * This interpolated piece begins with a discussion. In this discus- sion the experiences, which the philosopher underwent with the young tyrant at Syracuse, are made use of detail by detail. 190 HISTOPvY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Platonic philosophy. The root of this inspired conception lies in Plato's attempt to transcend the Protagorean doc- trine of relativity, whose validity for the world of sense and perception he recognized. By the help of the study of concepts after the Socratic method he tried to attain a safe and a universally valid science of the true essence of things. The final motive of this theory was, however, the ethical need of winning true virtue by true knowledge. The subjective point of departure ^ ^as, for Plato as for' Socrates, the conviction of the inefficiency of customary virtue. The virtue of custom, resting upon convention and prudential considerations, is unconscious of its fundamen- tal principle, and is exposed to the insecurity of change and opinions. Plato showed to Sophistry ^ that it with its pleasure theory took the popular point of view for its own, and he found the reason for this in the fact that Sophis- try renounced all real knowledge, and therefore could find no fundamental basis for virtue. In this sense Plato ^ purposely agreed with the Protagorean theory about the value of sense perception and of opinions based on it. He was vigorous in asserting the relativity of such knowl- edge, and its inability to give us the true essence of things. But precisely for that reason the ethical need drove Plato beyond Sophistry, and led him to fight Protagoras the more energetically with Protagoras' own relativism. If there be virtue of any sort, it must rest on other than relative knowledge, which alone the Sophists considered. But Socrates had, to the mind of Plato, shown us the way through conceptual science to this other knowledge which is independent of all accident of perception and 1 Especially Meno, 9G f. Compare Phwdoj 82 a, and t\\Q RepuUic \n dilTerent places. - Cliielly in the GorgUis. ^ All the points of view of the Sophistic epistemology are discussed thoroughly in the Thecv.lehis. MATKKTATJvSM AND IDEALISM ]01 opinion. Tlic methodical development of this postuhite was called by Plato the Dialectic.^ Its object is on the one hand to find individual concepts (a way coy ij), and then to establish the mutual relations of these concepts by division (BLaip€(TL<;, re/jLvecv). Plato used the Socratic induction in the main in finding the concepts, and supplemented this by hypothetical discussions in testing and verifying the con- cepts. These hypothetical discussions draw out all the consecpiences from the constructed concept, and thus bring it to the touchstone ^ of fact. The dividing of these class concepts is the method which was introduced anew ^ by Plato with the intention of exposing the logical relations between concepts ; and therefore connected with this pro- cess of dividing there are investigations concerning the compatibility and incompatibility of concepts, i. e., concern- ing the principle of disjunction.* As the last goal of dialectic, there appeared withal a logical system of con- cepts,^ arranged according to their relations of co-ordina- tion and subordination. Herbart, De Plat, systematis fundamento., Vol. XIT. Gl f . ; S. Ribbing, Genetisclie Darstellting V07i Plato)is Idecnlehre (Leipzig, 1863-64) ; II. Cohen, Die plat. Ideenlehre (ZeitscJir, f. Volkerpsych. u. S2yrachioisse)ieh. 1866) ; H. v. Stein, S'lehen Biicher zur Geschichte des Plat. (Gott., 1862-75, 3 vols.) ; A. Peipers, Untersiichimgen ilher das System Plat., Vol. I. (The epistemology of Plato, examined with especial reference 1 PhcEdr., 2G5 f. ; Rep., 511 f ; ibid., 533. ; PJiileh., 16. 2 Meno, 86; Phced., 101; Rep., 534. The Parmenide!^ similarly (135 f.) ; ])ut applies the Platonic principle in the spirit of the fruitless antinomy of the Eleatic Sophists. 3 Phileh., 16. 4 Particularly Phfcd., 102 f. ^ In their metliod, the Parmenidca, Snphht, and PoUticus stand entirely on PLatonic ijround by their happy and logically sharp turns. The application, however, that they make of the method seems a juve- nile attempt at independent development rather than an ironical auto- caricature Itv Plato. 192 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY to the Thecetetus) (Leipzig, 1874) ; Onotologia jylatonica (Leipzig, 1883). The Frotagorean doctrine of relativity is for Plato not only an object of polemic, but, as in the case of Democritus, is an inte- gral part of his system. This will become more evident as we proceed. Skepticism of the senses is the might}" corner-stone of both these S3'stems of rationalism. On the other hand, the ethical point of view of Plato carried with it the attitude — and herein that of Democritus was also one with it — that it could not ascribe to the Sophistic doctrine of pleasure even the worth of a relatively valid moment. This was at least the doctrine in the first draft of the theory of the Ideas, although later, especially in the Philebus^ Plato's conception was in this somewhat changed (§ 3G). Direct, logical, or methodological investigations were not yet made by Plato, at least not in his writings. On the contrary, one finds numerous isolated statements scattered through his dialogues. In practical treatment the synagogic method out- weighs by far the dieretic. Only the Sophist and Politlens give examples of the dieretic method, and these are indeed very unfortunate examples. Hypothetical discussions of concepts, however, grew to a fruitful principle in the scientific theories of the Older Academy (§ 37). These concepts include a kind of knowledge that is very different in origin and content from that founded on per- ception. In perception there comes into consciousness the world of change and appearance. Conception gives us the permanent Essence of things (^ovala). The objective con- tent of conceptual knowledge is the Idea. If true knowl- edge — thus Plato followed the Socratic ideal — is supposed to be given in the concepts, then this must be a knowledge of what really is.^ As, therefore, the relative truth of sense perception consists in its translating the changing relations that spring up in the process of Becoming, so the absolute truth of conceptual knowledge (that of Dia- lectic) consists in the fact that it conceives in the Ideas the true Being, independent of every change. So two dif- ferent worlds correspond to the two ways of knowing: a 1 Thecct., 188; Rep., 47G f. MATERIALISM AND IDEALIS^t 193 world of true reality, the Ideas, the object of conceptual knowledge ; and a world of relative actuality, the things that come and go, the objects of sense perception.^ The predicates of the Eleatic Being belong therefore to the Idea as the object of true knowledge, avro KaO' avro fjueO' avTov /jiovoeiSe^ ael 6v ; ^ it is unchangeable, ovhe ttot ovSa/jbrj ovSa/jLco'^ dWoLcoaiv ovSe/jblav ivSex^raL.^ The perceivable individual things, on the contrary, constitute the Hcracleitan flux of continuous origination, change, and destruction. The fundamental principle of the metaphysical epistemol- ogy of Plato is this : two worlds must be distinguished,* one of which is and never becomes, the other of which be- comes and never is ; one is the object of the reason (1/07^0-^9), the other is the object of sense (alaOi^o-i^^. Since, now, the objects are as completely separated (%ft)/3t9) as the methods of knowing are distinct, the Ideas stand as incor- poreal forms (^do-cofjLara etSr)) in contrast to material things, which are perceived by the senses. The Ideas, which are never to be found ^ in space or in matter, which indeed exist purely for themselves (etXt/cpti^e?), which are to be grasped^ not by the senses but only by thought, form an intel- ligible world in themselves (totto? votjto^). A rational theory of knoivledge requires an immaterialistic meta- physics. This immaterialism was the peculiarly original creation of Plato. Where in the earlier systems, not excluding that of Auaxagoras, the discussion turned upon the spiritual as the distinctive principle, nevertheless the principle always appeared as a pecuUar kind of corporeal actualit}'. Plato, on the other hand, first discovered a purely spiritual world. The theory of Ideas is, therefore, an entirely new mediation of the Eleatic and the Heracleitan metaphysic, employing the 1 This view is stated most clearly in TbncBus, 27 £., 57f. Compare Rep., 509 £., 533. 2 Si/mp., 211. 8 PhcEclo, 78. 4 xim., 27 d. 5 Symp., 211. 6 p^gp^^ 507; Tim., 28. 13 194 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY opposition between the Protagorcan and Socratic theories of knowledge. Precisely for this reason, in the Thecetetus, Plato brought the Sophistic theory of perception into closer relation- ship "to the Tvavra pet than the Sophist himself had brought it. On the other hand, the close relationship of the Socratic episte- mology to the Eleatic doctrine of Being had already been recog- nized by the Megarians (§ 28). The positive metaphysic of Plato may be characterized, therefore, as immaterialistic Eleati- cism.^ Therein consists its ontological character (Deuschle). It cognizes Being in Ideas, and relegates Becoming to a lower form of knowing. The neo-Pythagorean-neo-Platonic conception was an en- tire misunderstanding of Plato. According to this concep- tion. Ideas possess no independent actuality, but are only thought-forms supposed to exist in the divine mind. Through the neo-Platonism of the Renaissance, and even down to the beginning of this centurj', this interpretation of Plato obtained. Herbart was of great service in his opposition to it {Einleit. in d. Fhilos., § 144 f. ; Vol. I. 240 f.). Consistent with the theory of two worlds, as the central point in Platonism, is the manner in which Plato repre- sented our cognition of Ideas in particular. The primary function of the Ideas is to set forth the logical character of the class concepts, to reveal the com- mon qualities (to kolvov) of the particulars which the class concepts comprehend. They are, in the Aristotelian phraseology, the ev eirl ttoXXcov.^ But Plato regarded the process of thought, not as analysis, nor as an abstraction by comparison, but as rather a synoptic jniuiMon ^ of reality presented in single examples. The Idea cannot be con- tained in its perceived phenomenon. It is of another sort, and cannot be found in appearance. In other words, ma- terial things do not include the Idea, but are only the 1 The relative pluralistic character of the theory of Ideas is in con- trast to original Eleaticism. It did not, as in the earlier attempts at mediation, arise from the need of an explanation of Becoming;, but from the circumstance that conceptual knowledge can and must refer to a manifold of independent content-determinations. 2 Met., I. 9, 990 b, G. ^ Pha>dr., 265; Rep., 537. MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 195 copies or shadows^ of it. Therefore the perceptions can- not inchidc the Ideas as separable integral })arts, but are, on the contrary, only the occasions for the apprehension of that Idea that is similar to the perceptions but not identi- cal with them. Since the Idea cannot be created by re- flection, it must be regarded as an original possession of the soul which the soul remembers when it sees its copy in the sense world. The recognition of the ideas is dud- In the mythical representation in the Phccdrus, Plato presupposes that the human soul has gazed upon the Idea with its supersensible faculties, — those related to the world of Ideas, — before its entrance into earthly life, but it remembers them only upon the perception of correspond- ing phenomena. Thereby out of the painful feeling of astonishment at the contrast between the Idea and its phenomenon is created the philosophic impulse, the long- ing love for the supersensible Idea. This love is the epco^,^ which conducts it back from the transitoriness of sense to the immortality of the ideal world.* There is an interesting parallel between the intuitive character, which the recognition of Ideas in Plato possesses, and the yi'oi^T) yvrjai-q of Democdtus. In Plato also analogies to optical impressions predominate. Both Democritus and Plato have in mind immediate knowledge of the pure forms (ISiat), the abso- lutel}' actual ^ which is attained wholly apart from sense percep- 1 Rep., 514 f. ; Phcedo, 73. 2 Meno, 80 f. ; Phcedr., 249 f. ; Phcedo, 72 f. 3 Phcedr., 250 f., and especially Symp.j 200 f. ^ The theory of the epcos takes on thereby in the Symposium a more uni- versal aspect of hoholding the living principle of all Becoming {yevea-Ls) in the desire for the Idea {oxxrla), and so prepares the way for the teleo- logical interpretation of Ideas. ^ One has the same right to speak of " sensualism " in Plato as in Democritus. Both explain true knowledge of the oircoy ov as the recep- tion of the tSe'ai by the soul, not as an act of sense perception, although as illustrated by the analogy to optical perception. 196 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY tion. The exposition of this teaching appears in Plato {Phcedrus and Symposiuvi) in mythical tbim. For since it is a question of the time-process of the knowledge of the eternal, of the genesis of the intuition of the Absolute, a dialectic presentation is not possible. Since the Ideas are liypostasized class-concepts, in their first draft there are foi' Plato as many Ideas as there are class concepts or general names for different perceptual things. There are, therefore. Ideas of all that is in any wise thinkable,^ — Ideas of things, qualities and relations, of products of art and nature, of the good and of the bad, of the high and of the low.^ The later dialogues (^Sympo- sium^ Phcedo^ Timceus) speak only of such Ideas as have an inherent value, such as the good and the beautiful ; of such as correspond to nature products, like fire, snow, etc. ; and, finally, of mathematical relations, like great and small, unity and duality. Aristotle reports that Plato in later time did no longer recognize Ideas of artifacts, negations, and relations, and that he held, in place of these, essentially nature class-concepts.^ An exacter determination of the circle within which the philosopher, especially in different periods of his development, extended or wished to extend his theory of Ideas, cannot be made. In general the chronological order of the dialogues indicates that Plato originally constructed a world of Ideas according to his logical and epistemological view of class concepts. In the course of time, however, he came more and more to seek in this supersensible world the highest values and the fundamental onto- logical forms, according to which the sense world of Becoming is modelled. From the world of Ideas there thus arose an 1 Rei)., 59G. 2 For particular proofs, consult Zeller, II^. 585 f. The dialogue Parmenides proves with fine irony to the " young Socrates " that he must accept also the Ideas of hair, mud, etc. (130 f.). In as late a writing as the middle part of the Republic, Plato used the Ideas of bed, etc., to illustrate his theory. 8 Met., XI. 3, 1070 a, 18. I MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 197 ideal world. The norms of value thus took the place of class concepts. The ctliical motive became more and more inilueu- tial in his philosoph}', as appears also in what follows. The more thoroiiglily the theory of Ideas in their first draft distinguished the two worlds from each other, the more difficult it became to determine the relation of the things of sense to their respective Ideas. The characteristic of this relation most frequently given in the dialogues 3feno, Thecetetus, Phcedrus, and Symposium, and likewise in the Phcedo, is similarity. This is consistent with the thought which the philosopher developed in those same dialogues concerning the origin of concepts ; for similarity forms the psychological ground through which ,^ stimulated by percep- tion, the recollection of the Idea is said to come. Similar- ity ,2 however, is not equivalence. The Idea never appears fully in the things,^ and accordingly Plato designated the relationship of the two as /jLi/jLrjai^:^. The Idea is thus regarded ^ as the original ( Urhild) {irapaheiyixa) ^iho sensed object as the copy {Ahhild) (^el'SwXov^ . Exactly herein consists the small amount of reality which the corporeal 1 Now one would say: accordinjr to the law of the association of ideas, which moreover Plato enunciated expressly in this respect in the Phcedo, 73 f. 2 In view of the same the Parmenides raises the dialectic plea (131 f.), that it presupposes a iertium comparationis for the Idea and the phicnomenon and forms an infinite regress. It is the objection of the TpiTos (iv$po37ros. Comparc Aristotle, Met., VI. 113, 1039 a, 2. 8 Plato was probably prompted to emphasize this by the inconp;ruity of actual life with the ethical norm ; primarily, however, from the theo- retical point of view by the fact that the mathematical concepts are factors in the consideration, and that these are never the result of per- ception. See Phcedo, 73 a; JMeno, 85 e. The hypothetical discussion of concepts stands furthermore in most exact connection with this. * Whether lie thus early adopted this expression from the Pythago- rean number theory need not be discussed. ^ See the freely accommodative and relatively early presentation in the RepuUiCj 595 f. 198 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY world possesses in contrast to the ol/tw^ 6v. On the other hand, viewed from its logical side, the Idea is the unitary, the permanent,^ in which the things of sense in their origi- nation, change, and destruction have only temporary and occasional part {iierex^i^v).^ Tliis relationship is, again, on- tologically so viewed that the change of qualities of sensi- ble things is reduced ultimately to a coming and going of Ideas. On account of this change the Idea at one time participates in tlie particular thing Qirapova-ia)^ and at another leaves it.* The later phase (PJicedo^ of the theory of Ideas lias a thought that seems to have been absent from the original statement, viz., that in the Ideas the causes may be some- how found for the things of sense appearing as they do appear. The purpose of Plato was originally only to recog- nize permanent true Being. The theory of Ideas in the Meno, Thecetetus, Phcedrus, and Symposmm does not attempt . to be an explanation of the world of phenomena. The sig- nificance of the S'ophist is that it proposes this problem. Confronting the theory of Ideas with other metaphysical theories, the Sophist asks how this lower world of sense- appearance and its Becoming can be conceived as deduced from supersensible forms which are removed from all motion 1 The Parmenides (130 f.) makes also at tliis point some dialectic objections of the Eleatic sort. Plato {Philehus, 14 f.) very curtly deals with these. 2 STjmp., 211 b. 3 Phced, 100 d. ^ The way in which the Plicedo develops this (102 f.) shows a re- markable analogy to the teaching of Anaxagoras, which teaching is also significant in other respects in this dialogue (sec below.) As in Anax- agoras, the individuals are said to owe the change of their qualities to the entrance or exit of the qualitatively unchangeable xPW^^^ (§ 22), so here the Idea is added as giving a quality and as augmenting the thing (TTpuayiyucadai). Or it disappears again when, of mutually exclusive Ideas, the one already inherent in the thinir shuts out the other. This ex})lanation is essentially that of the Ilerbartian conception of Ideas as alisolnfe Qualitdten. IMATEUIALLSM AND IDKALISM 19'J and change. It shows that immaterial Eleaticism is as nn- ablc as early Eleaticism to explain this problem. For in order to explain the motion of the sense- world. Ideas must I themselves be endowed with motion, life, soul, and reason. [But the elScov 4>lXol deny ^ to the Ideas all these qualities, especially the most important quality of motion. The Platonic philosophy reaches its zenith in tho solution of this problem. The Fhcedo declares that in the Ideas alone is the cause (alria) of the phenomenal world to bo found, and however this relationship is to be conceived, the sense object is indebted to the Idea alone for its qualities.^ This is the strongest of Plato's convictions, and to prove it is the greatest problem of the dialectic. There are in- troduced in the same dialogue, however, the two elements, Anaxagoreanism and Pythagoreanism,^ through which this new phase of the theory of Ideas took shape in his mind. 1 Soph., 248 f. The author of the SopJiist founds this criticism (2-47 d) upon the definition that the ovtods 6V must be thought as dvvafMis, and whatever possesses Being must be thought as power in order to explain Becoming (das Gescheheii). Althougli this expression is not to be explained in the spirit of the Aristotelian terminology (Zeller, II^. 575, 3), still this view lies nowise in the direction in which Plato later solved the problem, bvvaixis is active power (see Republic, 47 7, where bvvajxLs is used in the sense of a faculty of the soul). Ideas are, how- ever, final causes, and not such '' faculties " as are definable only through their effects {Rep., loc. cit.). 2 Phccdo, 100 d, where reference seems to be made to the dialof^ue Soph ist. 3 About the time of this change Aristotle entered the Academy; hence his exposition of the genesis of the theory of Ideas (Met., I. 6). The great significance which is ascribed in the Metaphysics to tlic Pythago- rean theory in its bearing on Plato is not consistent with the content of any of the foundation dialogues, ThecBtetus, Phcedrus, and Sympo- sium. Practically it begins first with the Philehus. But even the Phmdo shows, in its choice of persons and also in its discussion of the problems, that account is taken of the Pythagorean philosophy. Never- theless (Met., XII. 4, 1078 b, 9) Aristotle himself elsewhere remarks 200 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PIIILOSOrHY If the Ideas cannot themselves move and suffer change, they can be the causes of phenomena only in the sense that they arc the purposes which are realized in phenomena. The only conception which therefore, from the point of view of the theory of Ideas, appears to be possible as an explanation of phenomena, is the teleological.^ The true relation between the Idea (^ovaio) and the phenomenon (^yeveac^} is that of purpose. Plato found in the z^oO^-theory of Anaxagoras an attempt to make this point of view valid. But while he subjected the insufficient development of this theory to a sharp criticism,^ he main- tained in addition that the establishment as well as the development of a teleological view of the world is possible only to a theory of Ideas.^ The same theory is further developed in tlie PJiilehus and in the corresponding part of the Republic. If the Soj^hist^ from a formal and logical point of view called attention to the fact that a similar Kotvayvla, a relationship of co-ordination and subordination, exists between Ideas as well as between phenomena and Ideas, so the Eepuhlic^ and the PJiilehus ^ emphasized also the systematic unity of the ova la, and found it in the Idea of the Good, as including all other Ideas within itself. Thus the pyramid of con- cepts reached its apex, not by means of a formally logical process of abstraction, but, as it happens in the entire Pla- tonic dialectic, by means of an ontological intuition, express- ing here its final and highest viroOeai^.'' For since all that the oriiirinal conception of the theory of Ideas was independent of the ninnber theory. Phileh., 54 c, : ^vfj-naaav yeueaip ovaias eveKa ylyveaOai ^vinraaTji. 2 Phcrdo, 97 f. 8 Ibid.^ 99 f. lie called this the bfvTcpos; n'Kovs of philosophy, and the development of philosophy as a theoretical explanation of phenom- ena he sketched in 95 c, ff. 4 Soph., 251 f. 6 Rep., 511 b. c Phileb., 16 f. 7 phcEdo, 101 b; Rep., loc. cit. MATEUIALISM AND IDEALISM 201 that is, is for sonic good, the Idea of the Good or of tlie ahsoUite purpose is that to which all other Ideas are subor- dinated, this subordination being teleological rather than logical. The Idea of the Good stands, therefore, even above Being and Knowing, which are the two highest disjunctives.^ It is the sun 2 in the realm of Ideas from which everytliing else gets its value as well as its actuality. It is the World Reason. To it belong the name of povs^ and that of Godhead. This iinmiiterialistic perfecting of the Anaxagorcan thought is set by Plato in the Philebus (28 f.) and stands o[)posed to the svstem of irrational necessitv of Democritns. In this connection, as a matter of fact, the vovQn (^ZeitscJir. f. Altertimisvnssenschaft, 1836) ; O. Gruppe, Die Frag, des Arch. (Berlin, 1840) ; Fr. Beckmann, De Pgthagoreorum reliquiis (Berlin, 1844); Zeller, V^. 103 f . ; Eggers, De Arch. Tar. etc. (Paris, 1833). Polemo and Crates owe the leadership of the Academy more to their Athenian birth and their own moral worthiness than to their philosophical significance. Grantor originated in Soli in Cilicia, and was known particularly through his writing, ir^pl TrevOovs. H. E. Meier, Ueber die Schriff, Trepl 7rev6ov<; (Halle, 1840) ; F. Kaj^ser, De Crantore Acade^nico (Heidelberg, 1841). The Older Academy took in general the Laivs of Plato as its point of view. It pushed the theory of Ideas aside ARISTOTLK 227 Ito make way for the number theory. Thus Speusippus on his side ascribed to numbers a reality that is supersensible and separated from the objects of sense, — the same which Plato had given to the Ideas. Similarly Philip of Opus in the Ephiomls declared that the highest knowledge upon which the state in the Laivs must be built is mathemat- ics and astronomy. For these sciences teach men eternal proportions, according to which God has ordered the world and by which he is leading it to a true piety. Besides this mathematical theology Speusippus, accommodating himself to the spirit of his school, recognized to a greater degree than Plato the worth of empirical science. He dilated upon an aia07jai<; iino-TrjiJLoviKrj^ which participates in con- ceptual truth. 1 But he had no explanatory theory of this, rather only a collection of facts arranged logically as he pre- sented them in his compendium (ofioia ovo/uLara) which was manifestly intended for the use of the school. Xenocrates divided philosophy into dialectics, ethics and physics as a i basis for instruction.^ He held firmly to the theory of 'Ideas, but recognized that mathematical determinations had, in contrast to the sense world, an independent reality similar to that of the Ideas. He distinguished, accordingly, three ^ realms of that Avhich can be known: the supersensible, the mathematically determined forms of the world-all, and the sense objects. To these objects there corresponds, first, the eiriarrjfiT], including dialectics and pure mathematics ; secondly, the ho^a^ which as an astronomical theory is given both an empirical and a mathematical basis ; thirdly, the aLaOr]aL<;, which is not false, but exposed to all sorts of delusions. Tlie Platonists seem to have thought that the chief task of their metaphysics was the teleological construction of a graded series of mediatory principles between the 1 Sext. Emp., YIT. 145. 2 jJjIj^^ Kj. 8 7/,/^/.^ 14 7. 228 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY supersensible and the sensiblej In the sohition of this task, however, two opposing tendencies made themselves felt, which are connected with the names of Speusippus and Xcnocrates. If the former abandoned the theory of Ideas, it was essentiallv because he could re^-ard the Per- feet and the Good,^ not as tlie alrca of the more Imper- fect, the Sensible, but rather as its highest teleological result. He therefore postulated numbers as the dp-^^ and unity and plurality as their elements and next in order geometrical magnitudes and stereometrical forms, to whose fourfold number he added the Pythagorean ether.^^* Be- sides this, he found the principle of motion in the world- soul (pov^), which he seems to have identified with the central fire of the Pythagoreans. The goal of motion is the Good, which as the most perfect belongs at the end. Xenocrates contrasted with this evolution theory the theory of emanation, in that he derived numbers and Ideas from unity and indeterminate duality (dopiaroi; Svd^}. Numbers are to him identical with the Ideas, according to the schema of Plato's d^ypairra Soyfiara. He also further defined the soul as self-moving number.^ * Thus there is a descent from the unity of the Good down to the Sensi- ble ; and between the world-soul and corporeal things exists a completely graduated kingdom of good and bad daemons. In this very contrast Plato's pupils showed that they were engaged upon the unsolved problems of Plato's later metaphysics, in that they desired to develop further his teaching on its religious side. The opposition between alrla and avimiriov, between Idea and space, between the perfect and the imperfect, grew entirely to* a religious antithesis of the Good and the Bad. They — especially Xenocrates — surrendered the monistic motive 1 Arist., Met., XI. 7, 1072 b, 31. 2 See § 24. 3 Plato, Procr. an., I. 5 (1012); see Arist., Anal, past., II^. 91 a, 38. ^ Sec R. llcinze, Xenocr., p. 15 f. AFxISTOTLE 229 ill the teaching of their master to fantastic speculations which turned particularly upon the cause of eviP in the world. More interesting than the fantastic Pythngorizing by the leaders of the school is, on the other hand, the high development of mathematics whicli arose in the P^'thagorean-Platonic circles at this time, even to tlie solving of the more dilficult problems. There was the diorism of Neocleides, the theory of the propor- tion in Arch3'tas and P3udoxus, the golden section, the spiral line, the doubling of the cube by the application of parabolas and hyperbolas (see Cantor, Gesch. der Math.^ I. 202 f.). Then there was the astronomy' taught b}' Hicetas, Ecphantus, and Heracleides, concerned with the stationariness of the fixed heaven of stars and the turning of the axis of the earth. Herakleides thought of Mercurv and Venus as satellites of the sun. See Ideler, AbhamlL cl Bed. Akad. d. Whs., 1828 and 1830. On the other hand, however, there is the fact that those men, who were only indirectl}' related to the school, developed the relationship of certain motives of Platonism with other teachings. Thus Heracleides still held to the Platonic constrnction of the ele- ments when he advocated the synthesis that P>-phantes sought between Atomism and Pythagoreanism (§ 25). Eudoxus like- wise conceived the tSeat entirely in the sense of the homoiomerii of Anaxagoras.'-^ With such a mathematical corruption of the theory of Ideas there was conjoined the lapse into popular moraliz- ing on the part of the older Academicians. Only in some measure, however, did the energy of their religious spirit compensate for this deterioration. As concerns morals, the school can hardly be made answ^eralde for the hedo- nism of Eudoxus,^ especially since Heracleides appears* to have openly antagonized it. The theory of goods, however, found in the Philehits ^ was cultivated much more in an ac- commodative sense : for Speusippus sought happiness in the 1 See Arist., especially Met., XIII. 4, 1091 b, 22. 2 Ibid., I. 9, 991 a, IG, with the commentary of Alexander Aphr. (Schol. in Arist., 572 b, 15). 8 Arist. Eth. Mc.,l. 12, 1101 b, 27. * Atben., XII. 512 a. 5 Compare above, § 36. 230 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY perfect development of natural gifts ; ^ Xenocrates, though recognizing fully the value of virtue, nevertheless recog- nized external goods as also necessary to the attainment of the highest good. He set for the majority of mankind ^ the practical (j)p6vr]at^ in place of the iTTio-Ti-j^-r-j wliich falls to the lot of the few, and finally, in opposition to the Stoics, described ^ virtue, health, pleasure, and wealth as the various soods, evaluating them in that order. ^It is especially noteworthy that according to all that we know the social-ethical character and the political tendency of the Platonic morals were not further fostered among his pupils, i Rather in the Academy the quest after correct rules of living for the individual came more and more into the foreground. I Nature philosophy still engaged the at- tention of theorists, as^can be seen in Grantor's commen- tary to the Timceus. LEthical researches, however, took on the individualistic aspect of the period J Polcmo taught that virtue, which is the essential condition of happiness, completely gives satisfactory happiness (avrdp/cr] 7rp6<; evSai/jboviav) only in connection with the goods of the body and life. Virtue cannot be practised in scientific research, but in action.^ Scarcely a step was necessary from such views to those of the Stoa. I-— 39. \ Beneath these different efforts of the Older Academy would obviously lie a fundamental tendency to adjust Plato's idealism to the practical interests of Greek society and of the empirical sciences. But dependence upon Pytliagorean- ism on the one hamTand on the other a general lack of philosophical originality always stunted all these under- takings. In the mean time the problem was solved by him who had brought with him into the Platonic theory 1 Clemens, Sh-om. ,JJ. 21 (500). Compare concerning Polemo, Cicero, Acad., TI. 42, 131. 2 Ck'mens, Strojn., U. 5 (441). 8 Soxt. Erap. Ado. math.j XI. 51 f. * Diog. Laert., IV. 18. AUISTUTLK 231 an inborn predilection for medicine and the science of nature. This perfecter of Greek philosophy was Aristotle (384-322). Fr. Biese, Die Fhilos. des Aristoteles (2 vols., Berlin, 1835- 42) ; A. Rosmiiii-Serbati, Aristote esposto ed emmijiafo (Torino, 1858) ; G. II. Lewes, Aristotle, A Chapter from, the History of the Science (Lond. 1864; German, Leipzig, 1865) ; G. Grote, Aristotle (incomplete, but published by Bain and Robertson, 2 vols., London, 1872) ; E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford, 1883). The home of Aristotle was Stagira,^ a city in the neigh]:)orhood of Athos, on that Thracian peninsula which had been colonized ^ chiefly from Chalcis. He came from an old family of physicians. His father, Nicomachus, was body-physician and a close personal friend of the king, Amyntas, of Macedon. Detailed reports about the youth and education of the philosopher arc wanting. His edu- cation was in the charge of his guardian, Proxenus of Atarneus, after the death of both his parents. He was only eighteen years old when he entered the Academy in 367, and his connection with it was uninterrupted until Plato's death, so far as we know. Ho won a prominent place in it very quickly, grew early from the position of a puj)il to that of a teacher in the band, was the champion literary spirit of the school through his brilliant writings which at once made him famous, and in public lectures concerning the art of speaking, antagonized Isocrates, to whose anti-scientific rhetoric the Platonic school had never been reconciled.^ Concerning the life of Aristotle, see J. C. Bnhle, Vita Arist. per annos diyesta, iii the Bipontine edition of the works, 1. 80 f. ; 1 Also Sta![jciros. - Aristotle disposed in his will (Diog. Laert., V. 14) of a piece of prop- erty in Chalcis, which he jjerhaps inherited from his mother, Phaistias. 2 In spite of the advances Plato showed to him in the Phcedrus as always preferable to Lysias. 232 HISTORY or ancient philosophy A. Stahr, Anstotelia, Part I., on the life of Aristotle (Ilallc, 1830). Of the ancient biographies of the philosopher, the more valuable, those of the older Peripatetics, are lost, and only a few of the later remain. It is imcertain whether Aristotle grew up in Stagira or in Pella, the residence of the Macedonian kings. It is as little determinable when his father died, and where he himself lived under the tutelage of Proxenus, — in Stagira or Atarneus.-^ AVe are also entirely restricted to the following suppositions as to his educational training : it is scarcely to be doubted that, according to the famil}^ tradition, as the son of the Macedonian court physician, he was destined by his famil}' for medicine and received a training for it ; in the intimate relationship existing between scientific medicine, in which Hippocrates was the leading spirit, and the Democritan studies of nature, it may be supposed that these were the first elements in the early educa- tion of our philosopher. At any rate, he grew up in this atmos- phere of the science of medicine in northern Greece, and he owed to it his respect for the results of experience, his keen perception of fact, and his carefulness as to details in investi- gation, which contrast him with the Attic philosophers. On the other hand, it must be said that one must not magnify too much the reach of knowledge that his seventeen 3'ears in the Academy brouolit to him. It was certainlv later that Aristotle got his immense scientific erudition, — in part, to be sure, during his attacliment to the Academy, but chiefl}' during his sta}' in Atarneus, Mitylene, and Stagira before he began to teach. It is possible that Aristotle remained true to this scientific incli- nation wiiile he was in the Academy, and that he was in part re- sponsible for gradually causing more attention to be paid to those matters (§ 37). At first, however, the spirit of the Platonic school must have turned him in other directions, and what we know of his activity in the twent}' 3'ears of his study, of the form and contents of his writings of that time, the rhetorical lectures, etc., do not allow us to suppose that such inclinations predominated in him. The malicious school gossip which was circulated in later time al)out the relations between Aristotle and his great teacher sliould be passed over with a deserved silence. See particulars in Zeller, IIP. 8 f. If one holds himself to that which is safely testified to, especially in the writings of Aristotle, one finds a simple human relationship. The pupil looked upon his teacher 1 The later references to Atarneus can be explained by the fact that Ilermeias was for a long time an auditor of Plato. IMATEllIALISM AND IDEALISM 233 with great revoionco.^ lUit the more mature he liecame, the more iiulepondeiitly did lie pass judgmont in)on Phito's philo- sophical positions, lie recognized with accurate glance their es- sential detects, and he did not conceal his doubts, if his aged master directed his theory upon unfortunate lines. Never- theless he remained a member of the fraternity with his own intk^pendent circle of activit}', and he separated from the school only at the moment when after his master's death perversit}' was exalted to principle in the choice of an insignificant head of the school. Nothing makes against the conclusion that in these difficult relations Aristotle avoided both extremes, with that worth}' tact that always characterized his actions. ►See below concerning the writings of this i)eriod. That his relation to Isocrates was somewhat strained, we see on the one liand from Cicero's reports {De orat., HI. 35, 141 ; Orat.^ 19, 62; compare Quint.., III. 114), and on the other from the shameful pamphlet which a pupil of the orator published against the philosopher. Aristotle showed here also his noble self- control, when he later in the Rlietoric did Hot hesitate to give examples fl'om Isocrates. After Plato's death Aristotle in company with Xenoc- rates betook himself to Hermeias, the ruler of Atarneus and Assus, and a true friend to Aristotle. Aristotle married his relative, Pythias, later after the tyrant had met an un- happy end, the victim of Persian treachery. Previously he seems to have migrated for a time to Mytilene, and perhaps also for a short time to Athens.^ In 343 he obeyed the summons of Philip of Macedon to undertake the education of the then thirteen-year-old Alexander. Although we are entirely without information concerning what kind of education this was, yet the entire later life of Alexander bore the best witness of its effect. Also later the philosopher remained in the best of relations with his great pupil, although the treatment of the nephew of Aristotle, Callisthenes, by the king may have brought a temporary estrangement. 1 Compare the simple beautiful verses of Aristotle from the elegy to Eudemns : Olympiad, in Gorg., 166. 2 See Th. Bergk, Rhein. Mus., XXXVII. 359 f. 234 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY The regular instruction of the young prince ceased, at all events, when he was entrusted by his father, after 340, with administrative and military duties. The relation of the philosopher was therefore more independent of the Macedonian court, and the next years he was engaged for the most part in scientific work in his native city, in inti- mate companionship with his somewhat younger friend, Theophrastus, who became a real support to him in the following time. For when Alexander entered upon his campaign in Asia and Aristotle saw himself entirely free of immediate further obligation to him, he went with his friend to Athens and founded his own school there. This school, in the universality of its scientific interest, in the orderliness of its methods of study, and in its systematic arrangements for joint inquiry, very soon rose above the Academy, and became the pattern of all the later societies of scholars of antiquity. Its place was the Lyceum, a gymnasium consecrated to the Lycian Apollo, from whose shady walks ^ tlie school got the name of Peripatetic. Twelve years (335-323) Aristotle administered this school in ceaseless activity. When, however, after the death of Alexander, the Athenians began to rise up against the Macedonian rule in Greece, the position of the philoso- pher became dangerous, standing as he did in such close connections with the royal house. He betook himself to Chalcis, and in the following year a disease of the stomach cut short his active and honorable career. Concerning Hermeias^ of Atarneus, see A. Bockh, Kleine Schrift, VI. 185 ff. ; P. C. Engelbreclit, IFeber die Bezielmngen zu Alexander (FAslehen, 1845) ; Rob. Geier (Halle, 1848 and 1850) ; M. Carriere (Wester7ncmn, Monatsh.^ 1865). Aristotle owed to 1 ProLably from the custom of lecturing part of the time ainthulando. See Zeller, IIP. 29 f. 2 In memory of this friend, Aristotle dedicated his hymn upon virtue ; Diog. Laert., V. 7. ARISTOTLE 2o^} /lis relations with difTercMit courts and to his own eas}- circum- stances tlie abundance of the scientific expedients which amouir other thin<2:s made his extensive collections possible. The reports of the ancients concerning the greatness of the sums placed at his disposal arc obviously somewhat overestimated. One cannot doubt, on the whole, from his court relationships, the support which he found for his work. Concerning the relations of the philosopher and his great pupil, gossip has circulated widely, just because there has been wanting any trustworthy information about it. If the friend- ship in later years was actually somewhat cooler (as Plutarch also reports, Alexander, 8), yet it was entire foolishness and slan- der on the part of later opponents to charge Aristotle with a share in the supposed poisoning of the king (see Zeller, IIP. 3G f.). The favorable relations of the philosopher to the Macedonian court were most clearly confirmed by the events after the death of the king. Doubtful as the single statements here again ma}' be, it is certain that the philosopher left his circle of activity at Athens in order to avoid a political danger. How great it had become can no longer be determined ; for the reports concern- ing the charges of impiety,^ concerning his defence and the excuse for his escape in the expression that he wished to spare the Athenians a second crime against philosoph}', — all this smacks, especialh' in its details,'-^ strongly of an attempt to make Aristotle's end as uearl}- as possible like that of Socrates. To every depreciation that the character of Aristotle has suffered, his system of science stands as the best contradic- tion. It is a creation of sncli magnificent proportions and of such construction that it can have been only the work of a life filled w^ith the pure love of tru.th, and even then it is almost beyond our comprehension. Zl^or the Aristotelian philosophy includes the entire range of knowdedge of that time in such a way that it comprehends all the lines of ear^ lier development at the same time that it considerably elab- orates the most of these lines. It turns upon all territories an equal interest and an equal intellectual appreciationT? 1 See E. Heitz in O. MUller, Lit. Gesch., IP. 253 f. ^ Compare E. Zeller in Hermes^ 187G ; II. Uscner, Die Organisation der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit bei den Alten : Preuss. Jahrb., LIII. If. (1884). 236 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Aristotle met the demands of the history of science more completely than Plato. Even in his Ethics the purely theo- retic and not the practical interest is fundamental. He is the scientific spirit Kar e^o^vv. ] In him the process of the in- dependence of the spirit of learning completes itself. He is, in the ^yonderful many-sidedness of his activity, the em- bodiment of Greek science, and he has for that reason remained "the philosopher" for two thousand years. / Furthermore he became " the philosopher," not as an isolated thinker, but as the head of his school. The most striking char- acteristic of his intellectual personalit}' is the administrative abilit}' with which he divided his material, separated and formu- lated his problems, ordered and co-ordinated the entire scientific work. This methodizing of scientific activity is his greatest performance. To this end the beginnings already made in the earlier schools, especially in that of Democritus, might well have been of service. But the universal sketch of a system of science in the exact statement of methods such as Aristotle gave, first brings these earlier attempts to their complete fruition. His conduct of the Lyceum can be looked upon not only as a care- fulh' arranged and methodically progressive instruction, but also, above all, it must especially be viewed as an impulsion to inde- pendent scientific research and organized work.^ Tlie great number of facts and their orderl}' arrangement are only to be explained through the combined efforts of man}' forces guided and schooled by a common principle. All this appeared and was developed in the Aristotelian writings. The activity of the school, which is itself a work of the master, forms an in- tegral constituent of his great life-work and his works. The collections of writings transmitted under the name of Aristotle do not give even an approximately complete I)icture of the immense literary activity of the man. They apparently include, however, with relatively few exceptions, just that part of liis work upon which his philosophical significance rests, viz., his scientific writings. 1 Compare E. Zeller in Hermeft, 1876 ; H. Usener, Die Organisation der ivianenschaftlichen Arbeit bei de)i Alten: Preuss. Jahrb., LIU. If. (1884). ARISTOTLE 237 The preserved remainder of the Aristotelian writings forms still a statel}' pile, even after the genuine have been separated from the doubtful and S[)urious. But in extent it is manifestly only a smaller part of that which came forth from the literar}' wo]ksho[) of the philosopher. From the two lists of his writings that antiquity has preserved (published in the Berlin edition, V. 14G3 f.) the one of Diogenes Laertius (V. 22 f.), which was changed b}' the anonymous Megarian, probably b}' Hesychius, is supposably based u[)on a report of the Peripatetic Hermippus (about 200 B. c), concerning the Aristotelian collection in the Alexandrian library. The other list originated with the Peripa- tetic, Ptoleniicus, in the second centur}' a. d., and was preserved parti}' by Arabic writers (Zeller, IIP. 54). The traditional collection appears essentially to have come from the published Aristotelian writings, which somewhere in the middle of the first century b. c. were prepared by Andro- nicus of Rhodes with the co-operation of the grammarian Tyrannion. In modern time it was printed first in a Latin translation in 1489, together with the commentaries of Averrocs, and in a Greek translation in Venice in 1495 ff. Of the later editions ma}' be mentioned the Bipontine, by Biehle (5 vols., incompleted, jB^^o^i/fi et Argentorati^ 1791 f.) ; that of the Berlin Academ}' (text recension by Imm. Becker, annotations by Brandis, fragments by V. Kose, index by Bonitz 5 vols., Berlin, 1831-70) ; the Didot edition by Dlibner, Bussemaker, and Heitz (5 vols., Paris, 1848-74) ; stereotype edition of Tauchnitz (Leipzig, 1843). Concerning a special edition of his single works, see Ueberweg, V. 186 f. German translations are in different collections, particularly' in J. v. Kirchmann's Philos. BihliotJiek. These preserved writings offer problems for solution which differ from those in the Platonic writings, but are no less dilli- cult. Indeed, there is but little agreement among the authori- ties as to the questions involved. The discussion has been only a little concerned with the chronology- of single works ; it has had niore concern with the very doubtful genuineness of many of them ; it has found its greatest concern with the liter- ar\' character, the origin and purpose of the single writings and of the collection. J. G. Biihle, De lihrorum Aristotelis distributio7ie ^V^. exoteri- cos et acvoamatiros (Bipontine ed., I. 105 f.) ; Titze, De Arist. opmim serie et dUti)ictione (Leipzig, 182G) ; Ch. Brandis {Rhein. Mus., 1827) ; A. Stahr, AHstotelia, Part II., Die ScJiir/csale der Arist. Schrifte)i (Lei|)zig, 1832); L. Spengel, Abhwidl. der hair, Akad. der Wlss., 1837 f. ; V. Rose, De Arist. 238 HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY librorura ordine et auctoritate (Berlin, 1854) ; H. Bonitz, Arist. Studien (Vienna, 1862 f.) ; Jac. Bernays, Die Dialoge des Arist. (Berlin, 18G3) ; E. lleitz, Die verlorenen /Schriften des Arist. (Leipzig, 1865) ; tlie same in O. Mlliler's Litteratur Geschich.., ll\ 256 f. ; F. Vahlen, Arist. Aufsatze (Vienna, 1870 f.); R. Shiite (Oxford, 1888). The writings ^ of Aristotle are divided with reference to their literary character into three classes : — (1) The Works published by Aristotle himself, and in- tended for a wider circle of readers. Of these no single work is complete, and only frag- ments are extant. They originated in the main during Aristotle's attendance at the Academy, and showed strongly the influence, even in their titles, of the Platonic philosophy. They were, on the whole, dialogues, and if they did not also possess the artistic fancy with which Plato managed this form, they are striking, nevertheless, in their fresh in- tuitions, happy inventions, florid diction, as well as in the richness of their thought. These cKSeSo/xeVot Xoyoi were counted by Aristotle, in his occa- sional mention of them in his didactic writings, as belonging to the general class of c^wreptKot Xoyoi. B}' this class he seems to have understood the more popular treatment of scientific questions in antithesis to the methodical and scholastic cultiva- tion of science. The latter, which centres in the lectures of the head of the school, appeared later as the acroamatic writings. The opposition of the exoteric and the acroamatic teaching does not, then, necessaril}' signif}- in itself a difference in content of doctrine, but onl}' a difference in form of presentation. There is no word about a secret teaching. It may, however, be ac- cepted as true that the exoteric writings originated when he was in the Academy, and the acroamatic, when he was an indepen- dent teacher ; and from this fact even essential differences are easily explained. See Zeller, III^. 112 f. ; H. Diels, Sitzungsher. der Bed. Akad., 1883 ; H. Susemihl, Jahrbuchf. FhiloL, 1884. Aristotle owed his literar}' fame in antiquity to his published 1 Excepting the personal writings like the verses, the testament (Diog. Laert., V. 13 f.), and the letters, of which scarcely anything genuine is preserved. ATlISTOTLt: 239 writings, and certain!}' in all justice if we ma}' judge from the few preserved specimens.^ For if, on account of the "golden flow " of his words, he is classed with Democritus and Plato as a model," nevertheless this praise cannot be applied to the writ- ings that have been preserved. The " golden tlow " is so seldom in these writings that it is more supposable that they are ex- cerpts from his dialogues that were made either by Aristotle himself or by some of his pupils.^ The composition of the Aristotelian dialogues is said to have l)een distinguished from the Platonic by a less vivid treatment of the dramatic setting, and also by the circumstance that the Stagirite himself gave the leading word. In content the}- were affiliated in part closel}' to the Platonic dialogues. Thus, the Eudemus especially appears to have been a detailed copy of the Phoido. Other titles like Trepl hiKaiO(Tvvy]