Etext of Early Greek Philosophy
by John Burnet

Early Greek Philosophy
by John Burnet 

Introduction 
1. The Cosmological Character of Early Greek Philosophy
2. The Traditional View of the World
3. Homer
4. Hesiod
5. Cosmogony
6. General Characteristcs of Greek Cosmology
7. Phusis
8. Motion and Rest
9. The Secular Character of Ionian Science
10. Alleged Oriental Origin of Philosophy
11. Egyptian Mathematics
12. Babylonian Astronomy
13. The Scientific Chracter of the Early Greek Cosmology
14. Schools of Philosophy

I. The Cosmological Character of Early Greek Philosophy 

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

II. The Traditional View of the World 

It must, however, be remembered that the world was already very
old when science and philosophy began. In particular, the Aegean
Sea had been the seat of a high civilization from the Neolithic age
onwards, a civilization as ancient as that of Egypt or of Babylon,
and superior to either in most things that matter. It is becoming
clearer every day that the Greek civilization of later days was
mainly the revival and continuation of this, though it no doubt
received certain new and important elements from the less
civilized northern peoples who for a time arrested its development.
The original Mediterranean population must have far outnumbered
the intruders, and must have assimilated and absorbed them in a
few generations, except in a state like Sparta, which deliberately
set itself to resist the process. At any rate, it is to the older race we
owe Greek Art and Greek Science. It is a remarkable fact that
every one of the men whose work we are about to study was an
Ionian, except Empedocles of Acragas, and this exception is
perhaps more apparent than real. Acragas was founded from the
Rhodian colony of Gela, its oikistęs was himself a Rhodian, and
Rhodes, though officially Dorian, had been a center of the early
Aegean civilization. We may fairly assume that the emigrants
belonged mainly to the older population rather than to the new
Dorian aristocracy. Pythagoras founded his society in the Achaean
city of Croton, but he himself was an Ionian from Samos.

This being so, we must be prepared to find that the Greeks of
historical times who first tried to understand the world were not at
all in the position of men setting out on a hitherto untrodden path.
The remains of Aegean art prove that there must have been a
tolerably consistent view of the world in existence already, though
we cannot hope to recover it in detail till the records are
deciphered. The ceremony represented on the sarcophagus of
Hagia Triada implies some quite definite view as to the state of the
dead, and we may be sure that the Aegean people were as capable
of developing theological speculation as were the Egyptians and
Babylonians. We shall expect to find traces of this in later days,
and it may be said at once that things like the fragments of
Pherecydes of Syros are inexplicable except as survivals of some
such speculation. There is no ground for supposing that this was
borrowed from Egypt, though no doubt these early civilizations all
influenced one another. The Egyptians may have borrowed from
Crete as readily as the Cretans from Egypt, and there was a seed of
life in the sea civilization which was somehow lacking in that of
the great rivers.

On the other hand, it is clear that the northern invaders must have
assisted the free development of the Greek genius by breaking up
the powerful monarchies of earlier days and, above all, by
checking the growth of a superstition like that which ultimately
stifled Egypt and Babylon.

That there was once a real danger of this is suggested by certain
features in the Aegean remains. On the other hand, the worship of
Apollo seems to have been brought from the North by the
Achaeans, and indeed what has been called the Olympian religion
was, so far as we can see, derived mainly from that source. Still,
the artistic form it assumed bears the stamp of Mediterranean
peoples, and it was chiefly in that form it appealed to them. It
could not become oppressive to them as the old Aegean religion
might very possibly have done. It was probably due to the
Achaeans that the Greeks never had a priestly class, and that may
well have had something to do with the rise of free science among
them.

III. Homer 

We see the working of these influences clearly in Homer. Though
he doubtless belonged to the older race himself and used its
language, it is for the courts of Achaean princes he sings, and the
gods and heroes he celebrates are mostly Achaean. That is why we
find so few traces of the traditional view of the world in the epic.
The gods have become frankly human, and everything primitive is
kept out of sight. There are, of course, vestiges of the early beliefs
and practices, but they are exceptional. It has often been noted that
Homer never speaks of the primitive custom of purification for
homicide. The dead heroes are burned, not buried, as the kings of
the older race were. Ghosts play hardly any part. In the Iliad we
have, to be sure, the ghost of Patroclus, in close connection with
the solitary instance of human sacrifice in Homer. There is also the
Nekyia in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey. Such things,
however, are rare, and we may fairly infer that, at least in a certain
society, that of the Achaean princes for whom Homer sang, the
traditional view of the world was already discredited at a
comparatively early date, though it naturally emerges here and
there.

IV. Hesiod 

When we come to Hesiod, we seem to be in another world. We
hear stories of the gods which are not only irrational but repulsive,
and these are told quite seriously. Hesiod makes the Muses say:
"We know how to tell many false things that are like the truth; but
we know too, when we will, to utter what is true." This means that
he was conscious of the difference between the Homeric spirit and
his own. The old lightheartedness is gone, and it is important to
tell the truth about the gods. Hesiod knows, too, that he belongs to
a later and a sadder time than Homer. In describing the Ages of the
World, he inserts a fifth age between those of Bronze and Iron.
That is the Age of the Heroes, the age Homer sang of. It was better
than the Bronze Age which came before it, and far better than that
which followed it, the Age of Iron, in which Hesiod lives. He also
feels that he is singing for another class. It is to shepherds and
husbandman of the older race he addresses himself, and the
Achaean princes for whom Homer sang have become remote
persons who give "crooked dooms." The romance and splendor of
the Achaean Middle Ages meant nothing to the common people.

The primitive view of the world had never really died out among
them; so it was natural for their first spokesman to assume it in his
poems. That is why we find in Hesiod these old savage tales,
which Homer disdained.

Yet it would be wrong to see in the Theogony a mere revival of the
old superstition. Hesiod could not help being affected by the new
spirit, and he became a pioneer in spite of himself. The rudiments
of what grew into Ionic science and history are to be found in his
poems, and he really did more than anyone to hasten that decay of
the old ideas which he was seeking to arrest. The Theogony is an
attempt to reduce all the stories about the gods into a single
system, and system is fatal to so wayward a thing as mythology.
Moreover, though the spirit in which Hesiod treats his theme is
that of the older race, the gods of whom he sings are for the most
part those of the Achaeans. This introduces an element of
contradiction into the system from first to last. Herodotus tells us
that it was Homer and Hesiod who made a theogony for the
Hellenes, who gave the gods their names, and distributed among
them their offices and arts, and it is perfectly true. The Olympian
pantheon took the place of the older gods in men's minds, and this
was quite as much the doing of Hesiod as of Homer. The ordinary
man would hardly recognize his gods in the humanized figures,
detached from all local associations, which poetry had substituted
for the older objects of worship. Such gods were incapable of
satisfying the needs of the people, and that is the secret of the
religious revival we shall have to consider later.

V. Cosmogony 

Nor is it only in this way that Hesiod shows himself a child of his
time.

His Theogony is at the same time a Cosmogony, though it would
seem that here he was following the older tradition rather than
working out a thought of his own. At any rate, he only mentions
the two great cosmogonical figures, Chaos and Eros, and does not
really bring them into connection with his system. They seem to
belong, in fact, to an older stratum of speculation. The conception
of Chaos represents a distinct effort to picture the beginning of
things. It is not a formless mixture, but rather, as its etymology
indicates, the yawning gulf or gap where nothing is as yet. We may
be sure that this is not primitive. Primitive man does not feel
called on to form an idea of the very beginning of all things; he
takes for granted that there was something to begin with. The other
figure, that of Eros, was doubtless intended to explain the impulse
to production which gave rise to the whole process. These are
clearly speculative ideas, but in Hesiod they are blurred and
confused.

We have records of great activity in the production of cosmogonies
during the whole of the sixth century B.C., and we know
something of the systems of Epimenides, Pherecydes, and
Acusilaus. If there were speculations of this kind even before
Hesiod, we need have no hesitation in believing that the earliest
Orphic cosmogony goes back to that century too. The feature
common to all these systems is the attempt to get behind the Gap,
and to put Kronos or Zeus in the first place. That is what Aristotle
has in view when he distinguishes the "theologians" from those
who were half theologians and half philosophers, and who put
what was best in the beginning. It is obvious, however, that this
process is the very reverse of scientific, and might be carried on
indefinitely; so we have nothing to do with the cosmogonists in
our present inquiry, except so far as they can be shown to have
influenced the course of more sober investigations.

VI. General Characteristcs of Greek Cosmology 

The Ionians, as we can see from their literature, were deeply
impressed by the transitoriness of things. There is, in fact, a
fundamental pessimism in their outlook on life, such as is natural
to an over-civilized age with no very definite religious convictions.
We find Mimnermus of Colophon preoccupied with the sadness of
the coming of old age, while at a later date the lament of
Simonides, that the generations of men fall like the leaves of the
forest, touches a chord that Homer had already struck. Now this
sentiment always finds its best illustrations in the changes of the
seasons, and the cycle of growth and decay is a far more striking
phenomenon in Aegean lands than in the North, and takes still
more clearly the form of a war of opposites, hot and cold, wet and
dry. It is, accordingly, from that point of view the early
cosmologists regard the world. The opposition of day and night,
summer and winter, with their suggestive parallelism in sleep and
waking, birth and death, are the outstanding features of the world
as they saw it.

The changes of the seasons are plainly brought about by the
encroachments of one pair of opposites, the cold and the wet, on
the other pair, the hot and the dry, which in their turn encroach on
the other pair. This process was naturally described in terms
borrowed from human society; for in early days the regularity and
constancy of human life was far more clearly realized than the
uniformity of nature. Man lived in a charmed circle of social law
and custom, but the world around him at first seemed lawless.

That is why the encroachment of one opposite on another was
spoken of as injustice (adikia) and the due observance of a balance
between them as justice (dikę). The later word kosmos is based on
this notion too. It meant originally the discipline of an army, and
next the ordered constitution of a state.

That, however, was not enough. The earliest cosmologists could
find no satisfaction in the view of the world as a perpetual contest
between opposites. They felt that these must somehow have a
common ground, from which they had issued and to which they
must return once more. They were in search of something more
primary than the opposites, something which persisted through all
change, and ceased to exist in one form only to reappear in
another. That this was really the spirit in which they entered on
their quest is shown by the fact that they spoke of this something
as "ageless" and "deathless." If, as is sometimes held, their real
interest had been in the process of growth and becoming, they
would hardly have applied epithets so charged with poetical
emotion and association to what is alone permanent in a world of
change and decay. That is the true meaning of Ionian "Monism." 

VII. Phusis 

Now, Ionian science was introduced into Athens by Anaxagoras
about the time Euripides was born, and there are sufficient traces
of its influence on him. It is, therefore, significant that, in a
fragment which portrays the blessedness of a life devoted to
scientific research (historia), he uses the very epithets "ageless and
deathless" which Anaximander had applied to the one primary
substance, and that he associates them with the term phusis. The
passage is so important for our present purpose that I quote it in
full: 

olbios hostis tęs historias
esche mathęsiv męte politôn
epi pęmosunas męt' eis adikous
praxeis hormôn,
all' athanatou kathorôn phuseôs
kosmon agęrô, tis te sunestę
kai hopęi kai hopôs
tois toioutois oudepot' aischrôn
ergôn meletęma prosizei.

This fragment is clear evidence that, in the fifth century B.C., the
name phusis was given to the everlasting something of which the
world was made.

That is quite in accordance with the history of the word, so far as
we can make it out. Its original meaning appears to be the "stuff"
of which anything is made, a meaning which easily passes into that
of its "make-up," its general character or constitution. Those early
cosmologists who were seeking for an "undying and ageless"
something, would naturally express the idea by saying there was
"one phusis" of all things. When that was given up, under the
influence of Eleatic criticism, the old word was still used.
Empedocles held there were four such primitive stuffs, each with a
phusis of its own, while the Atomists believed in an infinite
number, to which they also applied the term.

The term archę, which is often used in our authorities, is in this
sense purely Aristotelian. It is very natural that it should have been
adopted by Theophrastus and later writers; for they all start from
the well-known passage of the Physics in which Aristotle classifies
his predecessors according as they postulated one or more archai.
But Plato never uses the term in this connection, and it does not
occur once in the genuine fragments of the early philosophers,
which would be very strange on the assumption that they employed
it.

Now, if this is so, we can understand at once why the Ionians
called science Peri phuseôs historię. We shall see that the growing
thought which may be traced through the successive
representatives of any school is always that which concerns the
primary substance, whereas the astronomical and other theories
are, in the main, peculiar to the individual thinkers.

The chief interest of all is the quest for what is abiding in the flux
of things.

VIII. Motion and Rest 

According to Aristotle and his followers, the early cosmologists
believed also in an "eternal motion" (aidios kinęsis), but that is
probably their own way of putting the thing. It is not at all likely
that the Ionians said anything about the eternity of motion in their
writings. In early times, it is not movement but rest that has to be
accounted for, and it is unlikely that the origin of motion was
discussed till its possibility had been denied. As we shall see, that
was done by Parmenides; and accordingly his successors,
accepting the fact of motion, were bound to show how it
originated. I understand Aristotle's statement, then, as meaning no
more than that the early thinkers did not feel the need of assigning
an origin for motion. The eternity of motion is an inference, which
is substantially correct, but is misleading in so far as it suggests
deliberate rejection of a doctrine not yet formulated.

A more important question is the nature of this motion. It is clear
that it must have existed before the beginning of the world, since it
is what brought the world into being. It cannot, therefore, be
identified with the diurnal revolution of the heavens, as it has been
by many writers, or with any other purely mundane motion. The
Pythagorean doctrine, as expounded in Plato's Timaeus, is that the
original motion was irregular and disorderly, and we shall see
reason for believing that the Atomists ascribed a motion of that
kind to the atoms. It is safer, then, not to attribute any regular or
well-defined motion to the primary substance of the early
cosmologists at this stage.

IX. The Secular Character of Ionian Science 

In all this, there is no trace of theological speculation. We have
seen that there had been a complete break with the early Aegean
religion, and that the Olympian polytheism never had a firm hold
on the Ionian mind. It is therefore quite wrong to look for the
origins of Ionian science in mythological ideas of any kind. No
doubt there were many vestiges of the older beliefs and practices
in those parts of Greece which had not come under the rule of the
Northerners, and we shall see presently how they reasserted
themselves in the Orphic and other mysteries, but the case of Ionia
was different. It was only after the coming of the Achaeans that the
Greeks were able to establish their settlements on the coast of Asia
Minor, which had been closed to them by the Hittites, and there
was no traditional background there at all. In the islands of the
Aegean it was otherwise, but Ionia proper was a country without a
past. That explains the secular character of the earliest Ionian
philosophy.

We must not be misled by the use of the word theos in the remains
that have come down to us. It is quite true that the Ionians applied
it to the "primary substance" and to the world or worlds, but that
means no more and no less than the use of the divine epithets
"ageless" and "deathless" to which we have referred already. In its
religious sense the word "god" always means first and foremost an
object of worship, but already in Homer that has ceased to be its
only signification. Hesiod's Theogony is the best evidence of the
change. It is clear that many of the gods mentioned there were
never worshiped by any one, and some of them are mere
personifications of natural phenomena, or even of human passions.
This non-religious use of the word "god" is characteristic of the
whole period we are dealing with, and it is of the first importance
to realize it. No one who does so will fall into the error of deriving
science from mythology.

We see this, above all, from the fact that, while primitive religion
regards the heavenly bodies and the heavens themselves as divine,
and therefore of a wholly different nature from anything on this
earth, the Ionians from the very first set their faces against any
such distinction, though it must have been perfectly familiar to
them from popular beliefs.

Aristotle revived the distinction at a later date, but Greek science
began by rejecting it.

X. Alleged Oriental Origin of Philosophy 

We have also to face the question of the nature and extent of the
influence exercised by what we call Eastern wisdom on the Greek
mind. It is a common idea even now that the Greeks in some way
derived their philosophy from Egypt and Babylon, and we must
therefore try to understand as clearly as possible what such a
statement really means. To begin with, we must observe that the
question wears a very different aspect now that we know the great
antiquity of the Aegean civilization. Much that has been regarded
as Oriental may just as well be native. As for later influences, we
must insist that no writer of the period during which Greek
philosophy flourished knows anything of its having come from the
East. Herodotus would not have omitted to say so, had he heard of
it; for it would have confirmed his own belief in the Egyptian
origin of Greek religion and civilization. Plato, who had a great
respect for the Egyptians on other grounds, classes them as a
business-like rather than a philosophical people. Aristotle speaks
only of the origin of mathematics in Egypt (a point to which we
shall return), though, if he had known of an Egyptian philosophy,
it would have suited his argument better to mention that. It is not
till later, when Egyptian priests and Alexandrian Jews began to vie
with one another in discovering the sources of Greek philosophy in
their own past, that we have definite statements to the effect that it
came from Phoenicia or Egypt. But the so-called Egyptian
philosophy was only arrived at by a process of turning primitive
myths into allegories. We are still able to judge Philo's Old
Testament interpretation for ourselves, and we may be sure that
the Egyptian allegorists were even more arbitrary; for they had far
less promising material to work on. The myth of Isis and Osiris,
for instance, is first interpreted according to the ideas of later
Greek philosophy, and then declared to be the source of that
philosophy.

This method of interpretation culminated with the Neopythagorean
Numenius, from whom it passed to the Christian Apologists. It is
Numenius who asks, "What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?"
Clement and Eusebius give the remark a still wider application. At
the Renaissance, this farrago was revived along with everything
else, and certain ideas derived from the Praeparatio Evangelica
continued for long to color accepted views.

Cudworth speaks of the ancient "Moschical or Mosaical
philosophy" taught by Thales and Pythagoras. It is important to
realize the true origin of this prejudice against the originality of the
Greeks. It does not come from modern researches into the beliefs
of ancient peoples; for these have disclosed nothing in the way of
evidence for a Phoenician or Egyptian philosophy. It is a mere
residuum of the Alexandrian passion for allegory.

Of course no one nowadays would rest the case for the Oriental
origin of Greek philosophy on the evidence of Clement or
Eusebius; the favorite argument in recent times has been the
analogy of the arts. We are seeing more and more, it is said, that
the Greeks derived their art from the East; and it is urged that the
same will in all probability prove true of their philosophy. That is
a specious argument, but not at all conclusive.

It ignores the difference in the way these things are transmitted
from people to people. Material civilization and the arts may pass
easily from one people to another, though they have not a common
language, but philosophy can only be expressed in abstract
language, and can only be transmitted by educated men, whether
by means of books or oral teaching.

Now we know of no Greek, in the times we are dealing with, who
could read an Egyptian book or even listen to the discourse of an
Egyptian priest, and we never hear till a late date of Oriental
teachers who wrote or spoke in Greek. The Greek traveler in Egypt
would no doubt pick up a few words of Egyptian, and it is taken
for granted that the priests could make themselves understood by
the Greeks. But they must have made use of interpreters, and it is
impossible to conceive of philosophical ideas being communicated
through an uneducated dragoman.

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

XI. Egyptian Mathematics 

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

The Rhind papyrus in the British Museum gives us a glimpse of
arithmetic and geometry as they were understood on the banks of
the Nile. It is the work of one Aahmes, and contains rules for
calculations both of an arithmetical and a geometrical character.
The arithmetical problems mostly concern measures of corn and
fruit, and deal particularly with such questions as the division of a
number of measures among a given number of persons, the
number of loaves or jars of beer that certain measures will yield,
and the wages due to the workmen for a certain piece of work. It
corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of Egyptian
arithmetic Plato gives us in the Laws, where he tells us that
children learnt along with their letters to solve problems in the
distribution of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller numbers of
people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so forth. This is
clearly the origin of the art which the Greeks called logistikę, and
they probably borrowed that from Egypt, where it was highly
developed; but there is no trace of what the Greeks called
arithmętikę, the scientific study of numbers.

The geometry of the Rhind papyrus is of a similar character, and
Herodotus, who tells us that Egyptian geometry arose from the
necessity of measuring the land afresh after the inundations, is
clearly far nearer the mark than Aristotle, who says it grew out of
the leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste. The rules given for
calculating areas are only exact when these are rectangular. As
fields are usually more or less rectangular, this would be sufficient
for practical purposes. It is even assumed that a right-angled
triangle can be equilateral. The rule for finding what is called the
seqt of a pyramid is, however, on a rather higher level, as we
should expect. It comes to this. Given the "length across the sole of
the foot," that is, the diagonal of the base, and that of the piremus
or "ridge," to find a number which represents the ratio between
them. This is done by dividing half the diagonal of the base by the
"ridge," and it is obvious that such a method might quite well be
discovered empirically. It seems an anachronism to speak of
elementary trigonometry in connection with a rule like this, and
there is nothing to suggest that the Egyptians went any further.
That the Greeks learnt as much from them is highly probable,
though we shall see also that, from. the very first, they generalized
it so as to make it of use in measuring the distances of inaccessible
objects, such as ships at sea. It was probably this generalization
that suggested the idea of a science of geometry, which was really
the creation of the Pythagoreans, and we can see how far the
Greeks soon surpassed their teachers from a remark attributed to
Democritus. It runs (fr. 299) : "I have listened to many learned
men, but no one has yet surpassed me in the construction of figures
out of lines accompanied by demonstration, not even the Egyptian
arpedonapts, as they call them." Now the word arpedovaptęs is
not Egyptian but Greek. It means "cord-fastener," and it is a
striking coincidence that the oldest Indian geometrical treatise is
called the Sulvasutras or "rules of the cord." These things point to
the use of the triangle of which the sides are as 3, 4, 5, and which
has always a right angle. We know that this was used from an early
date among the Chinese and the Hindus, who doubtless got it from
Babylon, and we shall see that Thales probably learnt the use of it
in Egypt. There is no reason for supposing that any of these
peoples had troubled themselves to give a theoretical
demonstration of its properties, though Democritus would
certainly have been able to do so. As we shall see, however, there
is no real evidence that Thales had any mathematical knowledge
which went beyond the Rhind papyrus, and we must conclude that
mathematics in the strict sense arose in Greece after his time. It is
significant in this connection that all mathematical terms are
purely Greek in their origin.

XII. Babylonian Astronomy 

The other source from which the Ionians were supposed to have
derived their science is Babylonian astronomy. It is certain, of
course, that the Babylonians had observed the heavens from an
early date. They had planned out the fixed stars, and especially
those of the zodiac, in constellations. That is useful for purposes of
observational astronomy, but in itself it belongs rather to
mythology or folklore. They had distinguished and named the
planets and noted their apparent motions. They were well aware of
their stations and retrograde movements, and they were familiar
with the solstices and equinoxes. They had also noted the
occurrence of eclipses with a view to predicting their return for
purposes of divination. But we must not exaggerate the antiquity
or accuracy of these observations. It was long before the
Babylonians had a satisfactory calendar, and they kept the year
right only by intercalating a thirteenth month when it seemed
desirable. That made a trustworthy chronology impossible, and
therefore there were not and could not be any data available for
astronomical purposes before the so-called era of Nabonassar (747
B.C.). The oldest astronomical document of a really scientific
character which had come to light up to 1907 is dated 523 B.C., in
the reign of Cambyses, when Pythagoras had already founded his
school at Croton. Moreover, the golden age of Babylonian
observational astronomy is now assigned to the period after
Alexander the Great, when Babylon was a Hellenistic city. Even
then, though great accuracy of observation was attained, and data
were accumulated which were of service to the Alexandrian
astronomers, there is no evidence that Babylonian astronomy had
passed beyond the empirical stage.

We shall see that Thales probably knew the cycle by means of
which the Babylonians tried to predict eclipses (§ 3); but it would
be a mistake to suppose that the pioneers of Greek science had any
detailed knowledge of Babylonian observations. The Babylonian
names of the planets do not occur earlier than the writings of
Plato's old age. We shall find, indeed, that the earliest
cosmologists paid no attention to the planets, and it is hard to say
what they thought about the fixed stars. That, in itself, shows that
they started for themselves, and were quite independent of
Babylonian observations, and the recorded observations were only
made fully available in Alexandrian times. But, even if the Ionians
had known them, their originality would remain. The Babylonians
recorded celestial phenomena for astrological purposes, not from
any scientific interest. There is no evidence that they attempted to
account for what they saw in any but the crudest way. The Greeks,
on the other hand, made at least three discoveries of capital
importance in the course of two or three generations. In the first
place, they discovered that the earth is a sphere and does not rest
on anything. In the second place, they discovered the true theory of
lunar and solar eclipses; and, in close connection with that, they
came to see, in the third place, that the earth is not the center of
our system, but revolves round the center like the planets. Not
much later, certain Greeks took, at least tentatively, the final step
of identifying the center round which the earth and planets revolve
with the sun. These discoveries will be discussed in their proper
place; they are only mentioned here to show the gulf between
Greek astronomy and everything that had preceded it. On the other
hand, the Greeks rejected astrology, and it was not till the third
century B.C. that it was introduced among them.

We may sum up all this by saying that the Greeks did not borrow
either their philosophy or their science from the East. They did,
however, get from Egypt certain rules of mensuration which, when
generalized, gave birth to geometry; while from Babylon they
learnt that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles. This
piece of knowledge doubtless had a great deal to do with the rise
of science; for to the Greek it suggested further questions such as
no Babylonian ever dreamt of.

XIII. The Scientific Character of the Early Greek Cosmology 

It is necessary to insist on the scientific character of the philosophy
we are about to study. We have seen that the Eastern peoples were
considerably richer than the Greeks in accumulated facts, though
these facts had not been observed for any scientific purpose, and
never suggested a revision of the primitive view of the world. The
Greeks, however, saw in them something that could be turned to
account, and they were never as a people slow to act on the
maxim, Chacun prend son bien partout oů il le trouve. The visit of
Solon to Croesus which Herodotus describes, however unhistorical
it may be, gives us a good idea of this spirit. Croesus tells Solon
that he has heard much of "his wisdom and his wanderings," and
how from love of knowledge (philosopheôn), he has traveled over
much land for the purpose of seeing what was to be seen (theôrięs
heineken). The words theôrię, philosophię and historię are, in
fact, the catchwords of the time, though they had, no doubt, a
somewhat different meaning from that they were afterwards made
to bear at Athens.

The idea that underlies them all may, perhaps, be rendered in
English by the word Curiosity; and it was just this great gift of
curiosity, and the desire to see all the wonderful things --
pyramids, inundations, and so forth -- that were to be seen, which
enabled the Ionians to pick up and turn to their own use such
scraps of knowledge as they could come by among the barbarians.
No sooner did an Ionian philosopher learn half-a-dozen
geometrical propositions, and hear that the phenomena of the
heavens recur in cycles, than he set to work to look for law
everywhere in nature, and, with an audacity almost amounting to
hubris, to construct a system of the universe. We may smile at the
medley of childish fancy and scientific insight which these efforts
display, and sometimes we feel disposed to sympathise with the
sages of the day who warned their more daring contemporaries "to
think the thoughts befitting man's estate" (anthrôpina phronein).
But we shall do well to remember that even now it is just such
hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress
possible, and that nearly every one of these early inquirers made
some permanent addition to positive knowledge, besides opening
up new views of the world in every direction.

There is no justification either for the idea that Greek science was
built up by more or less lucky guesswork, instead of by
observation and experiment. The nature of our tradition, which
mostly consists of Placita -- that is, of what we call "results" --
tends, no doubt, to create this impression. We are seldom told why
any early philosopher held the views he did, and the appearance of
a string of "opinions" suggests dogmatism.

There are, however, certain exceptions to the general character of
the tradition; and we may reasonably suppose that, if the later
Greeks had been interested in the matter, there would have been
many more. We shall see that Anaximander made some
remarkable discoveries in marine biology, which the researches of
the nineteenth century have confirmed (§ 22), and even
Xenophanes supported one of his theories by referring to the
fossils and petrifactions of such widely separated places as Malta,
Paros, and Syracuse (§ 59). This is enough to show that the theory,
so commonly held by the earlier philosophers, that the earth had
been originally in a moist state, was not purely mythological in
origin, but based on biological and palaeontological observations.
It would surely be absurd to imagine that the men who could make
these observations had not the curiosity or the ability to make
many others of which the memory is lost. Indeed, the idea that the
Greeks were not observers is ludicrously wrong, as is proved by
the anatomical accuracy of their sculpture, which bears witness to
trained habits of observation, while the Hippocratean corpus
contains models of scientific observation at its best. We know,
then, that the Greeks could observe well, and we know that they
were curious about the world. Is it conceivable that they did not
use their powers of observation to gratify that curiosity? It is true
that they had not our instruments of precision; but a great deal can
be discovered by the help of very simple apparatus.

It is not to be supposed that Anaximander erected his gnomon
merely that the Spartans might know the seasons.

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

Of course the great difficulty for us is the geocentric hypothesis
from which science inevitably started, though only to outgrow it in
a surprisingly short time. So long as the earth is supposed to be in
the center of the world, meteorology, in the later sense of the
word, is necessarily identified with astronomy. It is difficult for us
to feel at home in this point of view, and indeed we have no
suitable word to express what the Greeks at first called an ouranos.
It will be convenient to use the term "world" for it; but then we
must remember that it does not refer solely, or even chiefly, to the
earth, though it includes that along with the heavenly bodies.

The science of the sixth century was mainly concerned, therefore,
with those parts of the world that are "aloft" (ta meteôra), and
these include such things as clouds, rainbows, and lightning, as
well as the heavenly bodies. That is how the latter came
sometimes to be explained as ignited clouds, an idea which seems
astonishing to us. But even that is better than to regard the sun,
moon, and stars as having a different nature from the earth, and
science inevitably and rightly began with the most obvious
hypothesis, and it was only the thorough working out of this that
could show its inadequacy. It is just because the Greeks were the
first people to take the geocentric hypothesis seriously that they
were able to go beyond it. Of course the pioneers of Greek thought
had no clear idea of the nature of scientific hypothesis, and
supposed themselves to be dealing with ultimate reality, but a sure
instinct guided them to the right method, and we can see how it
was the effort to "save appearances" that really operated from the
first. It is to those men we owe the conception of an exact science
which should ultimately take in the whole world as its object. They
fancied they could work out this science at once. We sometimes
make the same mistake nowadays, and forget that all scientific
progress consists in the advance from a less to a more adequate
hypothesis. The Greeks were the first to follow this method, and
that is their title to be regarded as the originators of science.

XIV. Schools of Philosophy 

Theophrastus, the first writer to treat the history of Greek
philosophy in a systematic way, represented the early cosmologists
as standing to one another in the relation of master and scholar,
and as members of regular societies. This has been regarded as an
anachronism, and some have even denied the existence of
"schools" of philosophy altogether. But the statements of
Theophrastus on such a subject are not to be lightly set aside. As
this point is of great importance, it will be necessary to elucidate it
before we enter on our story.

In almost every department of life, the corporation at first is
everything and the individual nothing. The peoples of the East
hardly got beyond this stage; their science, such as it is, is
anonymous, the inherited property of a caste or guild, and we still
see clearly in some cases that it was once the same among the
Greeks. Medicine, for instance, was originally the "mystery" of the
Asclepiads. What distinguished the Greeks from other peoples was
that at an early date these crafts came under the influence of
outstanding individuals, who gave them a fresh direction and a
new impulse. But this does not destroy the corporate character of
the craft; it rather intensifies it. The guild becomes what we call a
"school," and the disciple takes the place of the apprentice. That is
a vital change. A close guild with none but official heads is
essentially conservative, while a band of disciples attached to a
master they revere is the greatest progressive force the world
knows.

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

The Milesian School   1. Miletus and Lydia 

It was at Miletus that the earliest school of scientific cosmology
had its home, and it is not, perhaps, without significance that
Miletus is just the place where the continuity of Aegean and Ionian
civilization is most clearly marked. The Milesians had come into
conflict more than once with the Lydians, whose rulers were bent
on extending their dominion to the coast; but, towards the end of
the seventh century B.C., the tyrant Thrasybulus succeeded in
making terms with King Alyattes, and an alliance was concluded
which secured Miletus against molestation for the future. Even
half a century later, when Croesus, resuming his father's forward
policy, made war upon and conquered Ephesus, Miletus was able
to maintain the old treaty-relation, and never, strictly speaking,
became subject to the Lydians at all. The Lydian connection,
moreover, favored the growth of science at Miletus. What was
called at a later date Hellenism seems to have been traditional in
the dynasty of the Mermnadae, and Herodotus says that all the
"sophists" of the time flocked to the court of Sardis. The tradition
which represents Croesus as the "patron" of Greek wisdom was
fully developed in the fifth century; and, however unhistorical its
details may be, it must clearly have some foundation in fact.
Particularly noteworthy is "the common tale among the Greeks,"
that Thales accompanied Croesus on his luckless campaign against
Pteria, apparently in the capacity of military engineer. Herodotus
disbelieves the story that he diverted the course of the Halys, but
only because he knew there were bridges there already. It is clear
that the Ionians were great engineers, and that they were employed
as such by the eastern kings. 

It should be added that the Lydian alliance would facilitate
intercourse with Babylon and Egypt. Lydia was an advanced post
of Babylonian culture, and Croesus was on friendly terms with the
kings of Egypt and Babylon. Amasis of Egypt had the same
Hellenic sympathies as Croesus, and the Milesians possessed a
temple of their own at Naucratis.

Thales   

2. Origin
3. The Eclipse Foretold by Thales
4. Date of Thales
5. Thales in Egypt
6. Thales and Geometry
7. Thales as a Politician
8. Uncertain Character of the Tradition
9. The Cosmology of Thales
10. Water
11. Theology

2. Origin 

The founder of the Milesian school, and therefore the first man of
science, was Thales; but all we can really be said to know of him
comes from Herodotus, and the Tale of the Seven Wise Men was
already in existence when he wrote. He says that Thales was of
Phoenician descent, a statement which other writers explained by
saying he belonged to a noble house descended from Cadmus and
Agenor. Herodotus probably mentions the supposed descent of
Thales simply because he was believed to have introduced certain
improvements in navigation from Phoenicia. At any rate, his
father's name, Examyes, lends no support to the view that he was a
Semite. It is Carian, and the Carians had been almost completely
assimilated by the Ionians. On the monuments we find Greek and
Carian names alternating in the same families, while the name
Thales is otherwise known as Cretan. There is therefore no reason
to doubt that Thales was of pure Milesian descent, though he
probably had Carian blood in his veins. 

3. The Eclipse Foretold by Thales 

The most remarkable statement Herodotus makes about Thales is
that he foretold the eclipse of the sun which put an end to the war
between the Lydians and the Medes. Now, he was quite ignorant of
the cause of eclipses. Anaximander and his successors certainly
were so, and it is incredible that the explanation should have been
given and forgotten so soon. Even supposing Thales had known
the cause of eclipses, such scraps of elementary geometry as he
picked up in Egypt would never have enabled him to calculate one.
Yet the evidence for the prediction is too strong to be rejected
off-hand. The testimony of Herodotus is said to have been
confirmed by Xenophanes, and according to Theophrastus
Xenophanes was a disciple of Anaximander. In any case, he must
have known scores of people who were able to remember what
happened. The prediction of the eclipse is therefore better attested
than any other fact about Thales whatsoever.
 
Now it is possible to predict eclipses of the moon approximately
without knowing their true cause, and there is no doubt that the
Babylonians actually did so. It is generally stated, further, that they
had made out a cycle of 223 lunar months, within which eclipses
of the sun and moon recurred at equal intervals of time. This,
however, would not have enabled them to predict eclipses of the
sun for a given spot on the earth's surface; for these phenomena are
not visible at all places where the sun is above the horizon at the
time. We do not occupy a position at the center of the earth, and
the geocentric parallax has to be taken into account. It would only,
therefore, be possible to tell by means of the cycle that an eclipse
of the sun would be visible somewhere, and that it might be worth
while to look out for it, though an observer at a given place might
be disappointed five times out of six. Now, if we may judge from
reports by Chaldaean astronomers which have been preserved, this
was just the position of the Babylonians in the eighth century B.C.
They watched for eclipses at the proper dates; and, if they did not
occur, they announced the fact as a good omen. To explain what
we are told about Thales no more is required. He said there would
be an eclipse by a certain date; and luckily it was visible in Asia
Minor, and on a striking occasion.

4. Date of Thales 

The prediction of the eclipse does not, then, throw any light on the
scientific attainments of Thales; but, if we can fix its date, it will
give us an indication of the time at which he lived. Astronomers
have calculated that there was an eclipse of the sun, probably
visible in Asia Minor, on May 28 (O.S.), 585 B.C., while Pliny
gives the date of the eclipse foretold by Thales as O1. XLVIII. 4
(585/4 B.C.). This does not exactly tally; for May 585 belongs to
the year 586/5 B.C. It is near enough, however, to justify us in
identifying the eclipse as that of Thales, and this is confirmed by
Apollodorus, who fixed his floruit in the same year. The further
statement in Diogenes that, according to Demetrius Phalereus,
Thales "received the name of wise" in the archonship of Damasias
at Athens, really refers to the Tale of the Seven Wise Men, as is
shown by the words which follow, and is doubtless based on the
story of the Delphic tripod; for the archonship of Damasias is the
era of the restoration of the Pythian Games.

5. Thales in Egypt 

The introduction of Egyptian geometry into Hellas is ascribed to
Thales, and it is probable that he did visit Egypt; for he had a
theory of the inundations of the Nile. Herodotus gives three
explanations of the fact that this alone of all rivers rises in summer
and falls in winter; but, as his custom is, he does not name their
authors. The first, however, which attributes the rise of the Nile to
the Etesian winds, is ascribed to Thales in the Placita, and by many
later writers. Now, this comes from a treatise on the Rise of the
Nile attributed to Aristotle and known to the Greek commentators,
but extant only in a Latin epitome of the thirteenth century. In this
the first of the theories mentioned by Herodotus is ascribed to
Thales, the second to Euthymenes of Massalia, and the third to
Anaxagoras. Where did Aristotle, or whoever wrote the book, get
these names? We think naturally of Hecataeus; and this conjecture
is strengthened when we find that Hecataeus mentioned
Euthymenes. We may conclude that Thales really was in Egypt;
and, perhaps, that Hecataeus, in describing the Nile, took account,
as was natural, of his fellow-citizen's views.

6. Thales and Geometry 

As to the nature and extent of the mathematical knowledge
brought back by Thales from Egypt, it must be pointed out that
most writers have seriously misunderstood the character of the
tradition. In his commentary on the First Book of Euclid, Proclus
enumerates, on the authority of Eudemus, certain propositions
which he says were known to Thales, one of which is that two
triangles are equal when they have one side and the two adjacent
angles equal. This he must have known, as otherwise he could not
have measured the distances of ships at sea in the way he was said
to have done. Here we see how all these statements arose. Certain
feats in the way of measurement were traditionally ascribed to
Thales, and Eudemus assumed that he must have known all the
propositions these imply. But this is quite illusory. Both the
measurement of the distance of ships at sea, and that of the height
of the pyramids, which is also ascribed to him, are easy
applications of the rule given by Aahmes for finding the seqt.
What the tradition really points to is that Thales applied this
empirical rule to practical problems which the Egyptians had never
faced, and that he was thus the originator of general methods. That
is a sufficient title to fame.

7. Thales as a Politician 

Thales appears once more in Herodotus some time before the fall
of the Lydian monarchy. He is said to have urged the Ionian
Greeks to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos. We shall
have occasion to notice more than once that the early schools of
philosophy by no means held aloof from politics; and there are
many things, for instance the part played by Hecataeus in the
Ionian revolt, which suggest that the scientific men of Miletus took
up a very decided position in the stirring times that followed the
death of Thales. It is this political action which has gained the
founder of the Milesian school his undisputed place among the
Seven Wise Men; and it is owing to his inclusion among those
worthies that the numerous anecdotes told of him in later days
attached themselves to his name.

8. Uncertain Character of the Tradition 

So far as we know, Thales wrote nothing, and no writer earlier
than Aristotle knows anything of him as a scientific man and a
philosopher; in the older tradition he is simply an engineer and an
inventor. It is obvious, however, that the requirements of Milesian
enterprise and commerce would necessarily turn his attention to
problems which we should call astronomical. He was said, we saw,
to have introduced the practice of steering a ship's course by Ursa
minor; and there is a remarkable persistence in the tradition that he
tried to do something for the calendar, though the details are not
sufficiently well attested to find a place here. No doubt he
constructed a parapˆgma like those of much later date which have
been discovered at Miletus. The parapˆgma was the oldest form of
almanac, and gave, for a series of years, the equinoxes and
solstices, the phases of the moon, the heliacal risings and settings
of certain stars, and also weather predictions. Even Aristotle does
not pretend to know how Thales arrived at the views he ascribes to
him or by what arguments they were supported. This very reserve,
however, makes it hard to doubt that he was correctly informed
with regard to the few points about them he mentions, so we may
venture on a conjectural restoration of his cosmology. This, of
course, must be taken for just what it is worth.

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

(1) The earth floats on the water.

(2) Water is the material cause of all things.

(3) All things are full of gods. The magnet is alive; for it has the
power of moving iron.

The first of these statements must be understood in the light of the
second, which is expressed in Aristotelian terminology, but would
undoubtedly mean that Thales had said water was the stuff of
which all other things were transient forms. We have seen that this
was the great question of the day.

10. Water 

Aristotle and Theophrastus, followed by Simplicius and the
doxographers, suggest several explanations of this doctrine.
Aristotle gives them as conjectures; it is only later writers that
repeat them as if they were quite certain. The most probable view
seems to be that Aristotle ascribed to Thales the arguments used at
a later date by Hippon of Samos in support of a similar thesis. That
would account for their physiological character. The rise of
scientific medicine had made biological arguments popular in the
fifth century; but, in the days of Thales, the prevailing interest was
not physiological, but meteorological, and it is from this point of
view we must try to understand the theory.

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

11. Theology 

The third of the statements mentioned above is supposed by
Aristotle to imply that Thales believed in a "soul of the world,"
though he is careful to mark this as no more than an inference. The
doctrine of the world-soul is then attributed quite positively to
Thales by Aetius, who gives it in the Stoic phraseology which he
found in his immediate source, and identifies the world-intellect
with God. Cicero found a similar statement in the Epicurean
manual which he followed, but he goes a step further. Eliminating
the Stoic pantheism, he turns the world-intellect into a Platonic
demiourgos, and says that Thales held there was a divine mind
which formed all things out of water. All this is derived from
Aristotle's cautious statement, and can have no greater authority
than its source. We need not enter, then, on the old controversy
whether Thales was an atheist or not. If we may judge from his
successors, he may very possibly have called water a "god"; but
that would not imply any definite religious belief . 

Nor must we make too much of the saying that "all things are full
of gods." It is not safe to regard an apophthegm as evidence, and
the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven Wise
Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such
sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed
now to one sage and now to another. On the other hand, it is
probable that Thales did say the magnet and amber had souls. That
is no apophthegm, but more on the level of the statement that the
earth floats on the water. It is just the sort of thing we should
expect Hecataeus to record about Thales. It would be wrong,
however, to draw any inference from it as to his view of the world;
for to say the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything,
that other things are not.

Anaximander   

12. Life
13. Theophrastus on Anaximander's Theory of the Primary
Substance
14. The Primary Substance is Not One of the Elements
15. Aristotle's Account of the Theory
16. The Primary Substance is Infinite
17. The Innumerable Worlds
18. "Eternal Motion" and the Dinˆ
19. Origin of the Heavenly Bodies
20. Earth and Sea
21. The Heavenly Bodies
22. Animals

12. Life 

Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was also a citizen of Miletus, and
Theophrastus described him as an "associate" of Thales. We have
seen how that expression is to be understood ( XIV).

According to Apollodorus, Anaximander was sixty-four years old
in 01. LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytus,
who says he was born in 01. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny,
who assigns his great discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to
01. LVIII. We seem to have something more here than a
combination of the ordinary type; for, according to all the rules,
Anaximander should have "flourished" in 565 B.C., half-way
between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty,
not sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodorus appears to have said that
he had met with the work of Anaximander; and the only reason he
can have had for mentioning this must be that he found in it some
indication which enabled him to fix its date. Now 547/6 is just the
year before the fall of Sardis, and we may perhaps conjecture that
Anaximander mentioned what his age had been at the time of that
event. We know from Xenophanes that the question, "How old
were you when the Mede appeared?" was considered an interesting
one in those days. At all events, Anaximander was apparently a
generation younger than Thales.

Like his predecessor, he distinguished himself by certain practical
inventions. Some writers credited him with that of the gnomon;
but that can hardly be correct. Herodotus tells us this instrument
came from Babylon, and Thales must have used it to determine the
solstices and equinoxes. Anaximander was also the first to
construct a map, and Eratosthenes said this was the map
elaborated by Hecataeus. No doubt it was intended to be of service
to Milesian enterprise in the Black Sea. Anaximander himself
conducted a colony to Apollonia, and his fellow-citizens erected a
statue to him.

13. Theophrastus on Anaximander's Theory of the Primary

Anaximenes

23. Life
24. His Book
25. Theory of the Primary Substances
26. Rarefaction and Condensation
27. Air
28. The World Breathes
29. The Parts of the World
30. Innumerable Worlds
31. Influence of Anaximenes

23. Life 

Anaximenes of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, was, according to
Theophrastus, an "associate" of Anaximander. Apollodorus said, it
appears, that he "flourished" about the time of the fall of Sardis
(546/5 B.C.), and died in 01. LXIII. (528/525 B.C.). In other
words, he was born when Thales "flourished," and "flourished"
when Thales died, and this means that Apollodorus had no definite
information about his date. He perhaps made him die in the
sixty-third Olympiad because that gives just three generations for
the Milesian school. We cannot therefore say anything positive as
to his date, except that he must have been younger than
Anaximander. 

24. His Book 

Anaximenes wrote a book which survived until the age of literary
criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and unpretentious
Ionic, very different, we may suppose, from the poetical prose of
Anaximander. The speculations of Anaximander were
distinguished for their hardihood and breadth; those of
Anaximenes are marked by the opposite quality. He appears to
have thought out his system carefully, but he rejects the more
audacious theories of his predecessor. The result is that, while his
view of the world is less like the truth than Anaximander's, it is
perhaps more fruitful in ideas that were destined to hold their
ground.

25. Theory of the Primary Substances 

Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastus
wrote a special monograph; and this gives us an additional
guarantee for the trustworthiness of the tradition. The following
are the passages which contain the fullest account of the central
feature of his system :

Anaximenes of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, who had been an
associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying
substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was
indeterminate, like Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it
was Air. -- Phys. Op. fr. 2.

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

"Just as," he said, "our soul, being air, holds us together, so do
breath and air encompass the whole world." -- Aet. i. 3, 4.

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

It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and
condensation. -- Phys. Op. fr. 2.

When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds,
on the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by
felting; and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water,
condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much
as it can be, to stones. -- Hipp. Ref. i. 7.

26. Rarefaction and Condensation 

At first, this looks like a falling off from the more refined doctrine
of Anaximander to a cruder view; but this is not really the case. On
the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into
the theory is a notable advance. In fact, it makes the Milesian
cosmology consistent for the first time; since a theory which
explains everything as a form of a single substance is clearly
bound to regard all differences as quantitative. The only way to
save the unity of the primary substance is to say that all diversities
are due to the presence of more or less of it in a given space. And
when once this step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to
make the primary substance something "distinct from the
elements," to use Aristotle's inaccurate but convenient phrase; it
may just as well be one of them.

27. Air 

The air Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should
not call by the name. In its normal condition, when most evenly
distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our "air"; it is
the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is why he
called it pneuma. On the other hand, the old idea that mist or vapor
is condensed air, is still accepted without question. It was
Empedocles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we call
air was a distinct corporeal substance, and not identical either with
vapor or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists "air" is
always a form of vapor, and even darkness is a form of "air." It was
Empedocles who cleared up this point too by showing that
darkness is a shadow.

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

28. The World Breathes 

This argument brings us to an important point in the theory, which
is attested by the single fragment that has come down to us. "Just
as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air
encompass the whole world." The primary substance bears the
same relation to the life of the world as to that of man. Now this
was the Pythagorean view; and it is also an early instance of the
argument from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and so marks the
beginning of an interest in physiological matters.

29. The Parts of the World 

We turn now to the doxographical tradition concerning the
formation of the world and its parts: He says that, as the air was
felted, the earth first came into being. It is very broad and is
accordingly supported by the air. -- Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3.

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

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

The stars [are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the
heavens, but some say they] are fiery leaves, like paintings. -- Aet.
ii. 14, 3 (Dox. p. 344).
 
They do not go under the earth, but turn round it. -- Ib. 16, 6 (Dox.
p. 348).

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

It is broad like a leaf. -- Ib. 22, I (Dox. p. 352).

The heavenly bodies turn back in their courses owing to the
resistance of compressed air. -- Ib. 23, I (Dox. p. 352).

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have seen that Anaximenes was justified in going back to
Thales in regard to the nature of primary substance; but the effect
upon the details of his cosmology was unfortunate. The earth is
once more imagined as a table-like disc floating on the air. The
sun, moon, and stars are also fiery discs which float on the air "like
leaves"; an idea naturally suggested by the "eddy" (dinˆ). It follows
that the heavenly bodies cannot go under the earth at night, as
Anaximander must have held, but only round it laterally like a cap
or a millstone. This view is also mentioned in Aristotle's
Meteorology, where the elevation of the northern parts of the
earth, which makes it possible for the heavenly bodies to be hidden
from sight, is referred to. This is only meant to explain why the
stars outside the Arctic circle appear to rise and set, and the
explanation is fairly adequate if we remember that the world is
regarded as rotating in a plane. It is quite inconsistent with the
theory of a celestial sphere.

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

30. Innumerable Worlds 

As might be expected, there is much the same difficulty about the
"innumerable worlds" ascribed to Anaximenes as there is about
those of Anaximander. The evidence, however, is far less
satisfactory. Cicero says that Anaximenes regarded air as a god,
and adds that it came into being. That cannot be right. Air, as the
primary substance, is certainly eternal, and it is quite likely that
Anaximenes called it "divine," as Anaximander did the Boundless;
but it is certain that he also spoke of gods who came into being and
passed away. These arose, he said, from the air. This is expressly
stated by Hippolytus, and also by St. Augustine. These gods are
probably to be explained like Anaximander's. Simplicius, indeed,
takes another view; but he may have been misled by a Stoic
authority.

31. Influence of Anaximenes 

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

Nearly all we know of Anaximander's system is derived in the last
resort from Theophrastus, who certainly knew his book. He seems
once at least to have quoted Anaximander's own words, and he
criticized his style. Here are the remains of what he said of him in
the First Book:

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

He says that this is "eternal and ageless," and that it "encompasses
all the worlds." -- Hipp. Ref. i. 6.

And into that from which things take their rise they pass away
once more, "as is meet; for they make reparation and satisfaction
to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of
time," as he says in these somewhat poetical terms. -- Phys. Op. fr.
2.

And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in which was
brought about the origin of the worlds. -- Hipp. Ref. i. 6.

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

14. The Primary Substance is Not One of the Elements 

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

Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite,
either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they
then derive from it, or without this qualification. For there are
some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the
infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not
be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to
another -- air is cold, water moist, and fire hot -- and therefore, if
any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by
this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something
other than the elements, and from it the elements arise. -- Arist.
Phys. G, 5. 204 b 22.

It is clear that Anaximander is here contrasted with Thales and
with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the
account given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the
form is Aristotle's own, and in particular the "elements" are an
anachronism. Anaximander started, it would seem, from the strife
between the opposites which go to make up the world; the warm
was opposed to the cold, the dry to the wet. These were at war, and
any predominance of one over the other was an "injustice" for
which they must make reparation to one another at the appointed
time. If Thales had been right in saying that water was the
fundamental reality, it would not be easy to see how anything else
could ever have existed. One side of the opposition, the cold and
moist, would have had its way unchecked, and the warm and dry
would have been driven from the field long ago. We must, then,
have something not itself one of the warring opposites, something
more primitive, out of which they arise, and into which they once
more pass away. That Anaximander called this something by the
name of phusis is the natural interpretation of what Theophrastus
says; the current statement that the term archˆ was introduced by
him appears to be due to a misunderstanding. We have seen that,
when Aristotle used the term in discussing Thales, he meant what
is called the "material cause," and it is hard to believe that it means
anything else here.

15. Aristotle's Account of the Theory 

It was natural for Aristotle to regard this theory as an anticipation
or presentiment of his own doctrine of "indeterminate matter," and
that he should sometimes express the views of Anaximander in
terms of the later theory of "elements." He knew that the
Boundless was a body, though in his own system there was no
room for anything corporeal prior to the elements; so he had to
speak of it as a boundless body "alongside of" or "distinct from"
the elements (para ta stoicheia). So far as I know no one has
doubted that, when he uses this phrase, he is referring to
Anaximander.

In a number of other places Aristotle speaks of someone who held
the primary substance to be something "intermediate between" the
elements or between two of them. Nearly all the Greek
commentators referred this to Anaximander also, but most modem
writers refuse to follow them. It is, no doubt, easy to show that
Anaximander himself cannot have said anything of the sort, but
that is no real objection. Aristotle puts things in his own way
regardless of historical considerations, and it is difficult to see that
it is more of an anachronism to call the Boundless "intermediate
between the elements" than to say that it is "distinct from the
elements." Indeed, if once we introduce the elements at all, the
former description is the more adequate of the two. At any rate, if
we refuse to understand these passages as referring to
Anaximander, we shall have to say that Aristotle paid a great deal
of attention to someone whose very name has been lost, and who
not only agreed with some of Anaximander's views, but also used
some of his most characteristic expressions. We may add that in
one or two places Aristotle certainly seems to identify the
"intermediate" with the something "distinct from" the elements.

There is even one passage in which he speaks of Anaximander's
Boundless as a "mixture," though his words may perhaps admit of
another interpretation. But this is of no consequence for our
interpretation of Anaximander. It is certain that he cannot have
said anything about "elements," which no one thought of before
Empedocles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The
question has only been mentioned because it has given rise to a
lengthy controversy, and because it throws light on the historical
value of Aristotle's statements. From the point of view of his own
system, these may be justified; but we shall have to remember in
other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some earlier
thinker, we are not bound to take what he says in an historical
sense.

16. The Primary Substance is Infinite 

Anaximander's reason for conceiving the primary substance as
boundless was, no doubt, as indicated by Aristotle, "that becoming
might not fail." It is not clear, however, that these words are his
own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough
for us that Theophrastus, who had seen his book, attributed the
thought to him. And certainly his view of the world would bring
home to him the need of a boundless stock of matter. The
"opposites" are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their
strife is marked by "unjust" encroachments on either side. The
warm commits "injustice" in summer, the cold in winter, and this
would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the
Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it
from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh.
We must picture, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of
the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side
of the world we live in. This mass is a body, out of which our
world once emerged, and into which it will one day be absorbed
again.

17. The Innumerable Worlds 

We are told that Anaximander believed there were "innumerable
worlds in the Boundless," and we have to decide between the
interpretation that, though all the worlds are perishable, there are
an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, and
Zeller's view that a new world never comes into existence till the
old one has passed away, so that there is never more than one
world at a time. As this point is of fundamental importance, it will
be necessary to examine the evidence carefully.

In the first place, the, doxographical tradition proves that
Theophrastus discussed the views of all the early philosophers as
to whether there was one world or an infinite number, and there
can be no doubt that, when he ascribed "innumerable worlds" to
the Atomists, he meant coexistent and not successive worlds. Now,
if he had classed two such different views under one head, he
would have been careful to point out in what respect they differed,
and there is no trace of any such distinction. On the contrary,
Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaus, Xenophanes, Diogenes,
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus are all mentioned together as
holding the doctrine of "innumerable worlds" on every side of this
one, and the only distinction is that, while Epicurus made the
distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the
worlds were equidistant. Zeller rejected this evidence on the
ground that we can have no confidence in a writer who attributes
"innumerable worlds" to Anaximenes, Archelaus, and
Xenophanes. With regard to the first two, I hope to show that the
statement is correct, and that it is at least intelligible in the case of
the last. In any case, the passage comes from Aetius, and there is
no reason for doubting that it is derived from Theophrastus, though
the name of Epicurus has been added later. This is confirmed by
what Simplicius says: 

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

It is practically certain that this too comes from Theophrastus
through Alexander.

We come next to a very important statement which Cicero has
copied from Philodemus, the author of the Epicurean treatise on
Religion found at Herculaneum, or perhaps from the immediate
source of that work. "Anaximander's opinion was," he makes
Velleius say, "that there were gods who came into being, rising
and passing away at long intervals, and that these were the
innumerable worlds "; and this must clearly be taken along with
the statement of Aetius that, according to Anaximander, the
"innumerable heavens" were gods. Now it is much more natural to
understand the "long intervals" as intervals of space than as
intervals of time; and, if that is right, we have a perfect agreement
among our authorities.

It may be added that it is very unnatural to understand the
statement that the Boundless "encompasses all the worlds" of
worlds succeeding one another in time; for on this view there is at
a given time only one world to "encompass." Moreover, the
argument mentioned by Aristotle that, if what is outside the
heavens is infinite, body must be infinite, and there must be
innumerable worlds, can only be understood in one sense, and is
certainly intended to represent the reasoning of the Milesians; for
they were the only cosmologists who held there was a boundless
body outside the heavens. Lastly, we happen to know that Petron,
one of the earliest Pythagoreans, held there were just one hundred
and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle, which shows at
least that the doctrine of a plurality of worlds was much older than
the Atomists. 

18. "Eternal Motion" and the Dine

The doxographers say it was the "eternal motion" that brought into
being "all the heavens and all the worlds within them." We have
seen ( VIII) that this is probably only the Aristotelian way of
putting the thing, and that we must not identify the primordial
motion of the Boundless with any purely mundane movement such
as the diurnal revolution. That would be quite inconsistent,
moreover, with the doctrine of innumerable worlds, each of which
has, presumably, its own center and its own diurnal revolution. As
to the true nature of this motion, we have no definite statement,
but the term "separating off" (apokrisis) rather suggests some
process of shaking and sifting as in a riddle or sieve. That is given
in Plato's Timaeus as the Pythagorean doctrine, and the
Pythagoreans followed Anaximander pretty closely in their
cosmology ( 54). The school of Abdera, as will be shown ( 179),
attributed a motion of the same kind to their atoms, and they too
were mainly dependent on the Milesians for the details of their
system. This, however, must remain a conjecture in the absence of
express testimony.

When, however, we come to the motion of the world once it has
been "separated off," we are on safer ground. It is certain that one
of the chief features of early cosmology is the part played in it by
the analogy of an eddy in water or in wind, a dinˆ (or dinos), and
there seems to be little doubt that we are entitled to regard this as
the doctrine of Anaximander and Anaximenes. It would arise very
naturally in the minds of thinkers who started with water as the
primary substance and ended with "air," and it would account
admirably for the position of earth and water in the center and fire
at the circumference, with "air" between them. Heavy things tend
to the center of a vortex and light things are forced out to the
periphery. It is to be observed that there is no question of a sphere
in revolution at this date; what we have to picture is rotary motion
in a plane or planes more or less inclined to the earth's surface. It is
in favor of the conjecture given above as to the nature of the
primordial motion that it provides a satisfactory dynamical
explanation of the formation of the dinˆ, and we shall find once
more ( 180) that the Atomists held precisely this view of its
origin.

19. Origin of the Heavenly Bodies 

The doxographers also give us some indications of the process by
which the different parts of the world arose from the Boundless.
The following statement comes ultimately from Theophrastus : He
says that something capable of begetting hot and cold out of the
eternal was separated off at the origin of this world. From this
arose a sphere of flame which fitted close round the air
surrounding the earth as the bark round a tree. When this had been
torn off and shut up in certain rings, the sun, moon and stars came
into existence. -- Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2.

We see from this that, when a portion of the Boundless was
separated off from the rest to form a world, it first differentiated
itself into the two opposites, hot and cold. The hot appears as
flame surrounding the cold; the cold, as earth with air surrounding
it. We are not told here how the cold was differentiated into earth,
water and air, but there is a passage in Aristotle's Meteorology
which throws some light on the question. After discussing the
views of the "theologians" regarding the sea, he says :

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

And the same absurdity arises for those who say the earth too was
at first moist, and that, when the region of the world about the
earth was heated by the sun, air was produced and the whole
heavens were increased, and that it (the air) produced winds and
caused its (the sun's) turnings back. -- Ib. 2. 355 a 21.

In his commentary on the passage, Alexander says this was the
view of Anaximander and Diogenes, and cites Theophrastus as his
authority for the statement. This is confirmed by Anaximander's
theory of the sea as given by the doxographers ( 20). We
conclude, then, that after the first separation of the hot and the
cold by the dinˆ, the heat of the flame turned part of the moist,
cold interior of the world into air or vapor -- it is all one at this
date -- and that the expansion of this mist broke up the flame itself
into rings. We shall come back to these rings presently, but we
must look first at what we are told of the earth.

20. Earth and Sea 

The origin of earth and sea from the moist, cold matter which was
"separated off" in the beginning is thus described: 

The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried
up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it. -- Aet. iii. 16,
I.

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

The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it
is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is
hollow and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the
surfaces, and the other is on the opposite side. -- Hipp. Ref. I. 6.

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

The moist, cold interior of the world is not, in fact, water. It is
always called "the moist" or "the moist state." That is because it
has to be still further differentiated under the influence of heat into
earth, water, and vapor. The gradual drying up of the water by the
fire is a good example of what Anaximander meant by "injustice." 

Thales had said that the earth floated on the water, but
Anaximander realized that it was freely suspended in space
(mete“ros) and did not require any support. Aristotle has preserved
the argument he used. The earth is equally distant from the
circumference of the vortex in every direction, and there is no
reason for it to move up or down or sideways. The doctrine of
innumerable worlds was inconsistent with the existence of an
absolute up and down in the universe, so the argument is quite
sound. The central position of the earth is due to the dinˆ; for the
greater masses tend to the center of an eddy. There is good
evidence that Anaximander made the earth share in the rotary
movement. It is not, however, a sphere, so we must not speak of an
axial revolution. The shape given to the earth by Anaximander is
easily explained if we adopt the view that the world is a system of
rotating rings. It is just a solid ring in the middle of the vortex.

21. The Heavenly Bodies 

We have seen that the flame which had been forced to the
circumference of the vortex was broken up into rings by the
pressure of expanding vapor produced by its own heat. I give the
statements of Hippolytus and Aetius as to the formation of the
heavenly bodies from these rings.

The heavenly bodies are a wheel of fire, separated off from the fire
of the world, and surrounded by air. And there are breathing-holes,
certain pipe-like passages, at which the heavenly bodies show
themselves. That is why, when the breathing-holes are stopped,
eclipses take place. And the moon appears now to wax and now to
wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The
wheel of the sun is 27 times the size of (the earth, while that of)
the moon is 18 times as large. The sun is the highest of all, and
lowest are the wheels of the stars. -- Hipp. Ref. i. 6.

The heavenly bodies were hoop-like compressions of air, fun of
fire, breathing out flames at a certain point through orifices. -- Aet.
ii. I3, 7.  The sun was a wheel 28 times the size of the earth, like a
chariot-wheel with the felloe hollow, full of fire, showing the fire
at a. certain point through an orifice, as through the nozzle of a
pair of beflows. -- Aet. ii. 20, 1).

The sun was equal to the earth, but the wheel from which it
breathes out and by which it is carried round was 27 times the size
of the earth. -- Aet. ii. 21, 1.

The sun was eclipsed when the orifice of the fire's breathing-hole
was stopped. -- Aet. ii. 24, 2.

The moon was a wheel 19 times the size of the earth, like a
chariot-wheel with its felloe hollow and full of fire like that of the
sun, lying oblique also like it, with one breathing-hole like the
nozzle of a pair of bellows. [It is eclipsed because of the turnings
of the wheel.] -- Aet. ii. 25, 1.

The moon was eclipsed when the orifice of the wheel was stopped.
-- Aet. ii. 29, 1.

(Thunder and lightning, etc.) were all caused by the blast of the
wind. When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with
violence, then the tearing of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift
gives the appearance of a flash in contrast with the blackness of
the cloud. -- Aet. iii. 3, I.

Wind was a current of air (i.e. vapor), which arose when its finest
and moistest particles were stirred or melted by the sun. -- Aet. iii.
7, 1.

There is a curious variation in the figures given for the size of the
wheels of the heavenly bodies, and it seems most likely that 18 and
27 refer to their inner, while 19 and 28 refer to their outer
circumference. We may, perhaps, infer that the wheels of the
"stars" were nine times the size of the earth; for the numbers 9, 18,
27 play a considerable part in primitive cosmogonies. We do not
see the wheels of fire as complete circles; for the vapor or mist
which formed them encloses the fire, and forms an outer ring
except at one point of their circumference, through which the fire
escapes, and that is the heavenly body we actually see. It is
possible that the theory of "wheels" was suggested by the Milky
Way. If we ask how it is that the wheels of air can make the fire
invisible to us without becoming visible themselves, the answer is
that such is the property of what the Greeks at this date called
"air." For instance, when a Homeric hero is made invisible by
being clothed in "air," we can see right through both the "air" and
the hero. It should be added that lightning is explained in much the
same way as the heavenly bodies. It, too, was fire breaking through
condensed air, in this case storm clouds. It seems probable that this
was really the origin of the theory, and that Anaximander
explained the heavenly bodies on the analogy of lightning, not vice
versa. It must be remembered that meteorology and astronomy
were still undifferentiated, and that the theory of "wheels" or rings
is a natural inference from the idea of the vortex.

So far we seem to be justified, by the authority of Theophrastus, in
going; and, if that is so, certain further inferences seem to be
inevitable. In the first place, Anaximander had shaken himself free
of the old idea that the heavens are a solid vault. There is nothing
to prevent us from seeing right out into the Boundless, and it is
hard to think that Anaximander did not believe he did. The
traditional cosmos has given place to a much grander scheme, that
of innumerable vortices in a boundless mass, which is neither
water nor air. In that case, it is difficult to resist the belief that
what we call the fixed stars were identified with the "innumerable
worlds" which were also "gods." It would follow that the diurnal
revolution is only apparent; for the stars are at unequal distances
from us, and can have no rotation in common. It must, then, be due
to the rotation of the cylindrical earth in twenty-four hours. We
have seen that the earth certainly shared in the rotation of the dinˆ.
That gets rid of one difficulty, the wheel of the "stars," which is
between the earth and the moon; for the fixed stars could not be
explained by a "wheel" at all; a sphere would be required. What,
then, are the "stars" which are accounted for by this inner wheel? I
venture to suggest that they are the morning and the evening stars,
which, we have seen, were not recognized yet as a single luminary.
In other words, I believe that Anaximander regarded the fixed stars
as stationary, each rotating in its own vortex. No doubt this
involves us in a difficulty regarding the rotation of the sun and the
moon. It follows from the nature of the vortex that they must rotate
in the same direction as the earth, and, on the assumption just
made, that must be from west to east, and it must be a slower
rotation than that of the earth, which is inconsistent with the fact
that the circumference of a vortex rotates more rapidly than the
center. That, however, is a difficulty which all the Ionian
cosmologists down to Democritus had to face. Holding, as they
did, that the whole rotation was in the same direction, they had to
say that what we call the greatest velocities were the least. The
moon, for instance, did not rotate so rapidly as the sun, since the
sun more nearly keeps up with the fixed stars. That Anaximander
failed to observe this difficulty is not surprising, if we remember
that he was the first to attack the problem. It is not immediately
obvious that the center of the vortex must have a slower motion
than the circumference. This serves to explain the origin of the
theory that the heavenly bodies have a rotation of their own in the
opposite direction to the diurnal revolution which we shall see
reason for attributing to Pythagoras ( 54).

22. Animals 

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

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

The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in
a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the
drier part. When the bark broke off, they survived for a short time.
-- Aet. v. 19, 4.

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

He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes,
and after having been reared like sharks, and become capable of
protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to
land. -- Plut. Symp. Quaest. 730 f.

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

Anaximenes   

23. Life
24. His Book
25. Theory of the Primary Substances
26. Rarefaction and Condensation
27. Air
28. The World Breathes
29. The Parts of the World
30. Innumerable Worlds
31. Influence of Anaximenes

23. Life 

Anaximenes of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, was, according to
Theophrastus, an "associate" of Anaximander. Apollodorus said, it
appears, that he "flourished" about the time of the fall of Sardis
(546/5 B.C.), and died in 01. LXIII. (528/525 B.C.). In other
words, he was born when Thales "flourished," and "flourished"
when Thales died, and this means that Apollodorus had no definite
information about his date. He perhaps made him die in the
sixty-third Olympiad because that gives just three generations for
the Milesian school. We cannot therefore say anything positive as
to his date, except that he must have been younger than
Anaximander.

24. His Book 

Anaximenes wrote a book which survived until the age of literary
criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and unpretentious
Ionic, very different, we may suppose, from the poetical prose of
Anaximander.

The speculations of Anaximander were distinguished for their
hardihood and breadth; those of Anaximenes are marked by the
opposite quality. He appears to have thought out his system
carefully, but he rejects the more audacious theories of his
predecessor. The result is that, while his view of the world is less
like the truth than Anaximander's, it is perhaps more fruitful in
ideas that were destined to hold their ground.

25. Theory of the Primary Substances 

Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastus
wrote a special monograph; and this gives us an additional
guarantee for the trustworthiness of the tradition. The following
are the passages which contain the fullest account of the central
feature of his system : 

Anaximenes of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, who had been an
associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying
substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was
indeterminate, like Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it
was Air. -- Phys. Op. fr. 2.

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

"Just as," he said, "our soul, being air, holds us together, so do
breath and air encompass the whole world." -- Aet. i. 3, 4.

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

It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and
condensation. -- Phys. Op. fr. 2

When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds,
on the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by
felting; and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water,
condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much
as it can be, to stones. -- Hipp. Ref. i. 7.

26. Rarefaction and Condensation 

At first, this looks like a falling off from the more refined doctrine
of Anaximander to a cruder view; but this is not really the case. On
the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into
the theory is a notable advance. In fact, it makes the Milesian
cosmology consistent for the first time; since a theory which
explains everything as a form of a single substance is clearly
bound to regard all differences as quantitative. The only way to
save the unity of the primary substance is to say that all diversities
are due to the presence of more or less of it in a given space. And
when once this step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to
make the primary substance something "distinct from the
elements," to use Aristotle's inaccurate but convenient phrase; it
may just as well be one of them.

27. Air 

The air Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should
not call by the name. In its normal condition, when most evenly
distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our "air"; it is
the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is why he
called it pneuma. On the other hand, the old idea that mist or vapor
is condensed air, is still accepted without question. It was
Empedocles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we call
air was a distinct corporeal substance, and not identical either with
vapor or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists "air" is
always a form of vapor, and even darkness is a form of "air." It was
Empedocles who cleared up this point too by showing that
darkness is a shadow.

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

28. The World Breathes 

This argument brings us to an important point in the theory, which
is attested by the single fragment that has come down to us. "Just
as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air
encompass the whole world." The primary substance bears the
same relation to the life of the world as to that of man. Now this
was the Pythagorean view; and it is also an early instance of the
argument from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and so marks the
beginning of an interest in physiological matters.

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

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

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

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

The stars [are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the
heavens, but some say they] are fiery leaves, like paintings. -- Aet.
ii. 14, 3 (Dox. p. 344).

They do not go under the earth, but turn round it. -- Ib. 16, 6 (Dox.
p. 348).

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

It is broad like a leaf. -- Ib. 22, I (Dox. p. 352).

The heavenly bodies turn back in their courses owing to the
resistance of compressed air. -- Ib. 23, I (Dox. p. 352).

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

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

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

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

(Dox. p. 231).

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

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

We have seen that Anaximenes was justified in going back to
Thales in regard to the nature of primary substance; but the effect
upon the details of his cosmology was unfortunate. The earth is
once more imagined as a table-like disc floating on the air. The
sun, moon, and stars are also fiery discs which float on the air "like
leaves"; an idea naturally suggested by the "eddy" (dinę). It
follows that the heavenly bodies cannot go under the earth at night,
as Anaximander must have held, but only round it laterally like a
cap or a millstone. This view is also mentioned in Aristotle's
Meteorology, where the elevation of the northern parts of the
earth, which makes it possible for the heavenly bodies to be hidden
from sight, is referred to. This is only meant to explain why the
stars outside the Arctic circle appear to rise and set, and the
explanation is fairly adequate if we remember that the world is
regarded as rotating in a plane.

It is quite inconsistent with the theory of a celestial sphere.

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

30. Innumerable Worlds 

As might be expected, there is much the same difficulty about the
"innumerable worlds" ascribed to Anaximenes as there is about
those of Anaximander. The evidence, however, is far less
satisfactory. Cicero says that Anaximenes regarded air as a god,
and adds that it came into being.

That cannot be right. Air, as the primary substance, is certainly
eternal, and it is quite likely that Anaximenes called it "divine," as
Anaximander did the Boundless; but it is certain that he also spoke
of gods who came into being and passed away. These arose, he
said, from the air. This is expressly stated by Hippolytus, and also
by St. Augustine. These gods are probably to be explained like
Anaximander's. Simplicius, indeed, takes another view; but he may
have been misled by a Stoic authority.

31. Influence of Anaximenes 

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

Science and Religion     

  32. Ionia and the West
  33. The Delian Religion
  34. Orphicism
  35. Philosophy as a Way of Life
  36. Relation of Religion and Philosophy

32. Ionia and the West

The spirit of the Ionians in Asia was, as we have seen, thoroughly
secular; and, so far as we can judge, the Milesians wholly ignored
traditional beliefs. Their use of the term "god" for the primary
substance and the innumerable worlds had no religious
significance. It was different in the Aegean islands, which had
been the home of the Ionians long before the Anatolian coasts
were open to colonization, and where there were many memories
of a remote past. These seem to have centered round the sanctuary
of Delos, and the fragments of Pherecydes, who belonged to the
neighboring island of Syros, read like belated utterances of an
earlier age. No doubt it was also different in the Chalcidian and
Ionian colonies of the West, which were founded at a time when
Hesiod and his followers still held unchallenged authority.

Now Pythagoras and Xenophanes, the most striking figures of the
generation that saw the Greek cities in Asia become subject to
Persia, were both Ionians, but both spent the greater part of their
lives in the West. There it was no longer possible to ignore
religion, especially when reinforced by the revival that now swept
over the Greek world. Henceforth the leaders of enlightenment
must either seek to reform and deepen traditional religion, like
Pythagoras, or oppose it openly, like Xenophanes.

33. The Delian Religion 

The revival was not, however, a mere recrudescence of the old
Aegean religion, but was profoundly influenced by the diffusion of
certain ideas originating in what was then the far North. The
temple legend of Delos is certainly ancient, and it connects the
worship of Apollo with the Hyperboreans, who were thought of as
living on the banks of the Danube.

The "holy things wrapped in straw," which were passed on from
people to people till they reached Delos by way of the head of the
Adriatic, Dodona, and the Malian Gulf, bear witness to a real
connection between the Danubian and Aegean civilizations at an
early date, and it is natural to associate this with the coming of the
Achaeans. The stories of Abaris the Hyperborean and Aristeas of
Proconnesus belong to the same religious movement and prove
that it was based on a view of the soul which was new, so far as we
can see, in the Aegean. Now the connection of Pythagoras with
Delos is well attested, and it is certain that he founded his society
in cities which gloried in the Achaean name. If the Delian religion
was really Achaean, we have a clue to certain things in the life of
Pythagoras which are otherwise puzzling. We shall come back to
these later.

34. Orphicism 

It was not, however, in its Delian form that the northern religion
had most influence. In Thrace it had attached itself to the wild
worship of Dionysus, and was associated with the name of
Orpheus. In this religion the new beliefs were mainly based on the
phenomenon of "ecstasy" (ekstasis, "stepping out"). It was
supposed that it was only when "out of the body" that the soul
revealed its true nature. It was not merely a feeble double of the
self, as in Homer, but a fallen god, which might be restored to its
high estate by a system of "purifications" (katharmoi) and
sacraments (orgia). In this form, the new religion made an
immediate appeal to all sorts and conditions of men who could not
find satisfaction in the worship of the secularized anthropomorphic
gods of the poets and the state religions.

The Orphic religion had two features which were new in Greece. It
looked to a written revelation as the source of religious authority,
and its adherents were organized in communities, based, not on
any real or supposed tie of blood, but on voluntary adhesion and
initiation. Most of the Orphic literature that has come down to us
is of late date and uncertain origin, but the thin gold plates, with
Orphic verses inscribed on them, discovered at Thourioi and
Petelia take us back to a time when Orphicism was still a living
creed. From them we learn that it had some striking resemblances
to the beliefs prevalent in India about the same time, though it is
really impossible to assume any Indian influence in Greece at this
date. In any case, the main purpose of the Orphic observances and
rites was to release the soul from the "wheel of birth," that is, from
reincarnation in animal or vegetable forms. The soul so released
became once more a god and enjoyed everlasting bliss.

35. Philosophy as a Way of Life 

The chief reason for taking account of the Orphic communities
here is that their Organization seems to have suggested the idea
that philosophy is above all a "way of life." In Ionia, as we have
seen, philosophia meant something like "curiosity," and from that
use of it the common Athenian sense of "culture," as we find it in
Isocrates, seems to have been derived. On the other hand,
wherever we can trace the influence of Pythagoras, the word has a
far deeper meaning. Philosophy is itself a "purification" and a way
of escape from the "wheel." That is the idea so nobly expressed in
the Phaedo, which is manifestly inspired by Pythagorean doctrine.
This way of regarding philosophy is henceforth characteristic of
the best Greek thought. Aristotle is as much influenced by it as any
one, as we may see from the Tenth Book of the Ethics, and as we
should see still more clearly if we possessed his Protrepticus in its
entirety. There was a danger that this attitude should degenerate
into mere quietism and "otherworldliness," a danger Plato saw and
sought to avert. It was he that insisted on philosophers taking their
turn to descend once more into the Cave to help their former
fellow prisoners. If the other view ultimately prevailed, that was
hardly the fault of the philosophers.

36. Relation of Religion and Philosophy 

Science, then, became a religion, and to that extent it is true that
philosophy was influenced by religion. It would be wrong,
however, to suppose that even now philosophy took over any
particular doctrines from religion. The religious revival implied,
we have seen, a new view of the soul, and we might expect to find
that it profoundly influenced the teaching of philosophers on that
subject. The remarkable thing is that this did not happen. Even the
Pythagoreans and Empedocles, who took part in the religious
movement themselves, held views about the soul which flatly
contradicted the beliefs implied in their religious practices.

There is no room for an immortal soul in any philosophy of this
period, as we shall see. Socrates was the first philosopher to assert
the doctrine on rational grounds, and it is significant that Plato
represents him as only half serious in appealing to the Orphics for
confirmation of his own teaching.

The reason is that ancient religion was not a body of doctrine.
Nothing was required but that the ritual should be performed
correctly and in a proper frame of mind; the worshiper was free to
give any explanation of it he pleased. It might be as exalted as that
of Pindar and Sophocles or as debased as that of the itinerant
mystery-mongers described in Plato's Republic. "The initiated,"
said Aristotle, "are not supposed to learn anything, but to be
affected in a certain way and put into a certain frame of mind."
That is why the religious revival could inspire philosophy with a
new spirit, but could not at first graft new doctrines on it.

Pythagoras of Samos 

  37. Character of the Tradition
  38. Life of Pythagoras
  39. The Order
  40. Downfall of the Order
  41. Want of Evidence as to the Teaching of Pythagoras
  42. Transmigration
  43. Abstinence
  44. Akousmata
  45. Pythagoras as a Man of Science
  46. Arithmetic
  47. The Figures
  48. Triangular, Square and Oblong Numbers
  49. Geometry and Harmonics
  50. Incommensurability
  51. Proportion and Harmony
  52. Things Are Numbers
  53. Cosmology
  54. The Heavenly Bodies

37. Character of the Tradition 

It is not easy to give any account of Pythagoras that can claim to be
regarded as historical. The earliest reference to him, indeed, is
practically a contemporary one. Some verses are quoted from
Xenophanes, in which we are told that Pythagoras once heard a
dog howling and appealed to its master not to beat it, as he
recognized the voice of a departed friend. From this we know that
he taught the doctrine of transmigration.

Heraclitus, in the next generation, speaks of his having carried
scientific investigation (historię) further than any one, though he
made use of it for purposes of imposture. Later, though still within
the century, Herodotus speaks of him as "not the weakest scientific
man (sophistęs) among the Hellenes," and he says he had been
told by the Greeks of the Hellespont that the legendary Scythian
Salmoxis had been a slave of Pythagoras at Samos. He does not
believe that; for he knew Salmoxis lived many years before
Pythagoras. The story, however, is evidence that Pythagoras was
well known in the fifth century, both as a scientific man and as a
preacher of immortality. That takes us some way.

Plato was deeply interested in Pythagoreanism, but he is curiously
reserved about Pythagoras. He only mentions him once by name in
all his writings, and all we are told then is that he won the
affections of his followers in an unusual degree (diapherontôs
ęgapęthę) by teaching them a "way of life," which was still
called Pythagorean. Even the Pythagoreans are only once
mentioned by name, in the passage where Socrates is made to say
that they regard music and astronomy as sister sciences. On the
other hand, Plato tells us a good deal about men whom we know
from other sources to have been Pythagoreans, but he avoids the
name. For all he says, we should only have been able to guess that
Echecrates and Philolaus belonged to the school. Usually
Pythagorean views are given anonymously, as those of "ingenious
persons" (kompsoi tives) or the like, and we are not even told
expressly that Timaeus the Locrian, into whose mouth Plato has
placed an unmistakably Pythagorean cosmology, belonged to the
society. We are left to infer it from the fact that he comes from
Italy. Aristotle imitates his master's reserve in this matter. The
name of Pythagoras occurs only twice in the genuine works that
have come down to us. In one place we are told that Alcmaeon
was a young man in the old age of Pythagoras, and the other is a
quotation from Alcidamas to the effect that "the men of Italy
honored Pythagoras." Aristotle is not so shy of the word
"Pythagorean" as Plato, but he uses it in a curious way. He says
such things as "the men of Italy who are called Pythagoreans," and
he usually refers to particular doctrines as those of "some of the
Pythagoreans." It looks as if there was some doubt in the fourth
century as to who the genuine Pythagoreans were. We shall see
why as we go on.

Aristotle also wrote a special treatise on the Pythagoreans which
has not come down to us, but from which quotations are found in
later writers.

These are of great value, as they have to do with the religious side
of Pythagoreanism.

The only other ancient authorities on Pythagoras were Aristoxenus
of Taras, Dicaearchus of Messene, and Timaeus of Tauromenium,
who all had special opportunities of knowing something about
him. The account of the Pythagorean Order in the Life of
Pythagoras by Iamblichus is based mainly on Timaeus, who was
no doubt an uncritical historian, but who had access to information
about Italy and Sicily which makes his testimony very valuable
when it can be recovered. Aristoxenus had been personally
acquainted with the last generation of the Pythagorean society at
Phlius.

It is evident, however, that he wished to represent Pythagoras
simply as a man of science, and was anxious to refute the idea that
he was a religious teacher. In the same way, Dicaearchus tried to
make out that Pythagoras was simply a statesman and reformer.

When we come to the Lives of Pythagoras, by Porphyry,
Iamblichus, and Diogenes Laertius, we find ourselves once more in
the region of the miraculous. They are based on authorities of a
very suspicious character, and the result is a mass of incredible
fiction. It would be quite wrong, however, to ignore the miraculous
elements in the legend of Pythagoras; for some of the most striking
miracles are quoted from Aristotle's work on the Pythagoreans and
from the Tripod of Andron of Ephesus, both of which belong to
the fourth century B.