in the water, and from them the more advanced species gradually arose. Man sprang from the fish. Individuals and species constantly change, but the substance whence they are derived, the ἄπειρον, is indestructible (ἄφθαρτον, ἀθάνατον, ἀνώλεθρον), because it is uncreated (ἀγέννητον). It envelops everything, produces everything, governs everything (περιέχει ἅπαντα καὶ πάντα κυβερνᾷ). It is the supreme divinity (тò leîov), possessing a perpetual vitality of its own. 3. ANAXIMENES 1 of Miletus, the disciple of Anaximander and third representative of the Ionian philosophy, calls the generative principle of things air or breath (ańp, πveûμa, Vuxn). His philosophy, which is a more exact formulation of Anaximander's doctrine, may be summarized in the following words: infinite matter, a perpetual motion of condensation and rarefaction that is something like a plastic principle, necessity directing the motion (díŋ, ȧváyên). Matter, motion, motive force, directing necessity: we find among the Ionians all the elements of the explanations of nature attempted afterwards. But their systems are like rudimentary organisms. The perfection of a living being depends upon the greater or less differentiation of its organs; the more its constitutive parts differ from each other and become specialized, the higher it rises in the scale of beings. Now, the Ionian philosophy is, when compared with that of Aristotle, perfectly uniform. Thales regards water, Anaximenes air, as substratum, motive force, and fate, or the law of motion.2 Progress in science, as well as in nature, is made possible by the division of labor, by differentiation of the constitutive elements of being, by the multiplication and opposition of systems. 1 Plutarch, in Eusebius, Præp. evang., I., 8; Cicero, De nat. deor., L, 10; Schleiermacher, Ueber Diogenes von Apollonia (loc. cit.); Ritter and Preller, pp. 20-23; [Burnet, pp. 79 ff. -TR.]. • Aristotle, Met., I., 10, 2. § 6. The Problem of Becoming 1. The first question that arouses controversy is the problem of becoming. Being persists, beings constantly change; they are born and they pass away. How can being both persist and not persist? Reflection upon this problem, the metaphysical problem par excellence, since it lies at the root of all the sciences and dominates all questions, gives rise to three systems, the types of all European philosophies, the Eleatic system; the system of Heraclitus; the atomistic system, which was proclaimed in the idealistic sense by the Pythagoreans, in the materialistic sense by Leucippus and Democritus, and with a dualistic turn by Anaxagoras. The first two are radical; each suppresses one of the terms of the antinomy; the third is a doctrine of conciliation. According to the Eleatic hypothesis, being is everything, change is but phenomenal; according to Heraclitus, change is everything, and being, or permanence, is but an illusion; according to the monadists and atomists, both permanence and change exist: permanence in the beings, perpetual change in their relations. The Eleatics deny becoming; Heraclitus makes a god of it; the atomists explain it. A. NEGATION OF BECOMING § 7. Eleatic Philosophy. Xenophanes, Parmenides, At the time when Anaximander flourished in Miletus, another Ionian, Xenophanes of Colophon, immigrated into 1 Considered by the Pythagoreans as ideal unities or numbers; by the atomists as real or material unities. [Karsten, Philosophorum græcorum veterum operum reliquiæ, 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1835 ff.; Bergk, Commentatio de Arist. libello de Xeno phane, etc., Marburg, 1843.- TR.} Magna Græcia, travelled through the cities as a philosopher and rhapsodist, and finally settled in Elea in Lucania, where he gained adherents. His theological innovations were developed and systematized by Parmenides of Elea and Melissus of Samos, who raised them to the dignity of a metaphysic. Zeno of Elea, the disciple of Parmenides, undertook to defend them by means of dialectics, thereby becoming the precursor of the Sophists. 1. XENOPHANES1 is a decided opponent of the national mythology, towards which he assumes a similar attitude to that of the Hebrew prophets who raised their powerful voices against polytheism and its empty conceptions. His written and spoken words proclaim him as the real creator of philosophical monotheism, which he identifies with pantheism. With an eloquence that is full of irony, his satires, some fragments of which are extant, combat the error of those who infinitely multiply the divine Being, who attribute to him a human form (anthropomorphism) and human passions (anthropopathism). There is one God, he says, one only God, comparable to the gods of Homer or to mortals neither in form nor in thought. This God is all eye, all ear, all thought. Being immutable and immovable, he has no need of going about, now hither, now thither, ir order to carry out his wishes, but without toil he governs 1 Aristotle (?), De Xenophane, Zenone, et Gorgia; Clement of Alex., Erpóμara, V., p. 601 C; ibid., p. 711 B; Buhle, Commentatio de ortu et progressu pantheismi inde a Xenophane, etc., Gött., 1790; V. Cousin, Xénophane, fondateur de l'école d'Élée (in the Nouveaux fragments philosophiques), Paris, 1828; Kern, Quaestiones Xenophanec, Naumburg 1846; Mullach, Fragmenta, I., pp. 101 ff.; Ritter and Preller, pp. 7584; [Burnet, pp. 115 ff.]; J. Freudenthal, Ueber die Theologie des Xenophanes, Breslau, 1886. Freudenthal bases his view partly on the words év rois beoio (Mullach, p. 101), and makes Xenophanes a polytheist. This is a strange misconception of the spirit for the letter, and would be like reckoning Spinoza among the theists, because he calls nature God, and God a thinking thing. all things by his thought alone. Mortals, of course, accepi the authority of Homer and Hesiod, and think that the gods are born as they are, and like them have feeling, voice, and body; and they ascribe to the gods all things that are a shame and disgrace among men, - theft, adultery, and falsehood. They do as the oxen or lions would do if they could paint: they would certainly represent their gods in the form of lions or oxen. In place of these imaginary beings, let us adore the one infinite Being, who bears us in his bosom, and in whom there is neither generation nor corruption, neither change nor origin. 2. PARMENIDES 2 completes the teachings of his master, and makes them the starting-point for a strictly monistic 1 Mullach, pp. 101-102: Εἷς θεὸς ἔν τε θεοῖσι και ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος, οὔτε δέμας θνητοῖσιν ὁμοῖῖος οὔτε νόημα. ̓Αλλ' εἶτοι χεῖράς γ' εἶχον βόες ἠὲ λέοντες, και κε θεῶν ἰδέας ἔγραφον • Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math., VII., 111; Simplicius, In phys., f. 7, 9, 19, 25, 31, 38; Proclus, Comment. in Plat. Timæum, p. 105; Clem of Alex., Strom., V., pp. 552 D, 614 A; Mullach, Fragm. phil. grå I., pp. 199 ff.; Ritter and Preller, pp. 85 ff.; [Burnet, pp. 218 ff.]. system. Since there is no change in God, and since God is everything, that which we call change (ahowovobai) is but an appearance, an illusion (bota), and there is in reality neither origin nor decay. The eternal being alone exists: this thesis forms the subject of a philosophical poem, the fragments of which are the most ancient monument in our possession of metaphysical speculation proper among the Greeks. In the first part, dedicated to Truth, he demonstrates by means of specious arguments that our notions of change, plurality, and limitation contradict reason. In the second part, which deals with the merely illusory, he attempts to give an explanation of nature from the standpoint of illusion. Starting out with the idea of being, he proves that that which is cannot have become what it is, nor can it cease to be, nor become something else; for if being has begun to exist, it has come either from being or non-being. Now, in the former case, it is its own product, it has created itself, which is equivalent to saying that it has not originated, that it is eternal. The latter case supposes that something can come from nothing, which is absurd. For the same reasons, that which exists can neither change nor perish, for in death it would pass either into being or into non-being. If being is changed into being, then it does not change; and to assume that it becomes nothing is as impossible as to make it come from nothing. Consequently being is eternal. It is, moreover, immovable; for it could move only in space; now space is or is not; if space is, it is identical with being, and to say of being that it is moved in space is to say that being is moved in being, which means that it is at rest. If space is nothing, there cannot be any movement either, for movement is possible only in space. Hence, movement cannot be conceived in any way, and is but an appearance. Being is a continuous (ovvexés) and indivisible whole There is no void anywhere. There |