Anaxagoras strikes out a path almost directly opposed to this materialist doctrine. As the first decisive and conscious dualist among Greek philosophers, he takes the material substratum of being, the inexhaustible many of distinctly characterized and distinctly separate “Seeds” of things—which are nevertheless indistinguishably intermingled with each other—and sets over against them a force which he 387 obviously did not mean to derive from them, to which he gives a name usually attached to the faculty of thought in man, and which in any case he thought of as analogous to that faculty.104 This “Mind”, simple, unmixed and unchangeable, is given such titles and adjectives that it is impossible to mistake the effort of Anaxagoras to think of it as something distinct from everything material, and in fact, absolutely immaterial and incorporeal.105 It is at once power of thought and force of will; at the creation of the world it gives the first circular impulse to the intrinsically motionless lump of matter; the creation of distinct forms in accordance with a conscious purpose is begun by it—though the carrying out of this purpose is indeed to be completed in accordance with pure mechanical laws without the interference of “Mind”. This “Mind” that plans and orders but does not make the world, that with the conscious insight of its omniscient wisdom106 influences matter without being influenced in turn, that moves without being moved;107 set over against the multiplicity of things as an indivisible unity,108 “having nothing in common with anything outside itself”109 but entirely self-contained110—how shall we conceive of it otherwise than as an almost personified, transcendent divine power confronting the world of matter as something foreign to it, ruling the world from without by magical, not mechanical, means?
But this transcendent is also completely immanent. Wherever in this world life and independent movement are found, there, too, the mind as the source of life and movement must be active. “Mind rules all that has soul” says Anaxagoras.111 In saying this he has not indeed asserted the presence of “Mind” within the animated being nor yet identity of nature as between soul and mind. But when we hear that Mind “goes through all things,112 that in everything there is a part of all things, except of mind, and in some things of mind also”,113 that must imply the penetration of many associations of matter by mind (hardly any longer to be thought of as immaterial) whereby the previously asserted transcendency of mind seems to be given up. At any rate, as such associations in which is “Mind”, living and animated beings are regarded. It is in them that “Mind” is present in continual, equal creativeness, though in different degrees;114 indeed, Mind is or constitutes that very thing that we call the “soul” of a living being.115 Among these living beings, which exist upon the moon,116 as well as on earth, are not only men and beasts, but also plants.117 In all these “Mind” is active; without losing any of its purity or unity, it is mixed with them.118 388 How we are to conceive the omnipotent Mind, whose oneness and self-containedness has been so emphatically asserted, as nevertheless entering simultaneously into the infinity of individual being—that certainly remains obscure. It is clear, however, that having thus derived all animated being from the single World-Mind, Anaxagoras could not speak of the continued existence of individual, self-existent “souls” after the dissolution of the material concretions in which moving and animating “soul-force” had once lived. The view is definitely ascribed to him that separation from the body is also “the soul’s death”.119 Nothing, indeed, of the component parts that belong to the whole perishes, and no change in its nature takes place. So “Mind”, whose manifestations the “souls” were, maintains itself unaltered and undiminished; but after the dissolution of the united, which “the Hellenes” regard as its destruction,120 though the component parts of the individual remain, yet not that particular mixture in which the peculiarity of the individual was inherent—“Mind” remains, but not the soul . . .
Thus, the first distinct separation of the intellectual thinking principle from the material substance with which it was—not fused, much less identified, but—contrasted in sovereignty and independence, did not lead to the recognition of the indestructibility of the individual spirit.
Shall we say that the mental, self-moved, life-giving principle, whether set over against the material and corporeal or indivisibly united with it, is for the physiologist always something universal—that the essentially real is impersonal? For him the individual, the personality conscious of itself and of the outer world, can be nothing but a manifestation of the universal, whether the latter is regarded as fixed and at rest, or as a living process that untiringly develops itself, recruits itself, and reconstructs itself in ever renewed creations. The only permanent, unchanging reality is the universal, the essential and fundamentally real Nature which appears in all individual things, speaks out of their mouth, and, in reality, only works and lives in them. The individual human soul has its indestructibility only in its identity with the universal that represents itself in it. The individual forms of “appearance”, having no independence of their own, cannot permanently abide.
The view that imperishable life belongs to the individual soul could only be reached by a line of thought that took as a fact and held fast to it as something given that the individual spirit is a reality. (Its appearance and disappearance in the 389 midst of the one universe was indeed for the physiologists the true miracle, the problem never satisfactorily solved.) Such a belief in individuality, the belief in an independently existent individual substance that had never had a beginning and could therefore never have an end, was the contribution, however fancifully it might be expressed, of the theologians and the mystics. For them immortality, the power of substantive duration unlimited by time, was extended also to include the individual. The individual soul is for them a self-existent, individual, divine being, indestructible because it is divine.
Greek philosophy underwent many changes in the course of its speculations during the following ages; but exactly in proportion as it, to a greater or lesser degree, accepted theological elements or on the other hand rejected such elements, did it give fundamental support to the view of the soul’s immortality, or grudgingly admit it, or absolutely reject it.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XI
1 ψυχή = “life,” “concept of life,” in Homer (though not indeed used to denote psychical powers during lifetime): see above, pp. 30, 31. So, too, occasionally in the remains of the Iambic and Elegiac poets of the earliest period: Archil. 23; Tyrt. 10, 14; 11, 5; Sol. 13, 46; Thgn. 568 f., 730; (Hippon. 43, 1?). ψυχή = “life” in the proverbial phrase περὶ ψυχῆς τρεχεῖν (see Wessel. and Valck. on Hdt. vii, 57; Jacobs on Ach. Tat., p. 896). ψυχή frequently = “life” in the idiom of the Attic orators (see Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 803).
2 See above, pp. 5, 30. Even the Homeric poems in one case show a slight uncertainty of language and of psychological conception when they use θυμός, the highest and most general of the powers of life dwelling within the visible and living man, in the sense of ψυχή, the double of the man who dwells as a lodger in his body, separate and taking no part in the ordinary business of his life. The θυμός (see above, chap. i, n. 57) is active during the man’s lifetime, is enclosed in the midriff (ἐν φρεσὶ θυμὸς) and when that is overtaken by death is itself overwhelmed (Ψ 104): on the arrival of death it leaves the body and perishes—while the ψυχή flies away intact. The distinction is clearly maintained, e.g. in λ 220 f.: “fire destroys the body” ἐπεί κεν πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. θυμός and ψυχή therefore leave the body of the slain man simultaneously (θυμοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς κεκαδών Λ 334, φ 154); but in very different ways. The relation between them becomes, however, interchangeability in the single case when it is said of the θυμός that it in death will enter ἀπὸ μέλέων δόμον Ἄιδος εἴσω—Η 131; in reality this could only be said of that very different being, the ψυχή. (When a fainting-fit has passed over we do indeed hear, not that the ψυχή—though this it was that had left the man: see above, chap. i, n. 8—but that ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, X 475, ε 458, ω 349. This, however, is not a case of θυμός instead of ψυχή, but θυμός is merely an abbreviated form of the whole statement which would be in full: both θυμός and ψυχή have now returned into the man; cf. Ε 696. It is a kind of synecdoche.) In the line Η 131 we really, then, do have θυμός instead of ψυχή either as the result of a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the two words or merely through an oversight. But never (and this is the most essential point) do we have a case in Homer of the opposite exchange of significance: i.e. of ψυχή used in the sense θυμός (νόος, μένος, ἠτορ, etc.), as meaning the mental power and its activity in the living and waking man. Just this, however, and more than this, the sum and substance of all the mental powers in general, is what the word ψυχή means in the language of the philosophers (except those affected by religious tendencies). They left out of account altogether that spiritual double of mankind whom the popular psychology called the ψυχή, and were thus free to use the word to express the whole psychical content of the human individual. From the fifth century onwards we find the word ψυχή used commonly, and even regularly, in this sense in the vocabulary of non-philosophical poets and prose writers. Only theologians and poets, or philosophers of a theological tendency, continued to use the 391 word in its ancient and primitive sense. Indeed, when the separation of a spiritual being from the body of a man in death was being spoken of, ψυχή always continued to be the proper word for this sense even in popular language. (An extremely rare example of θυμός in this sense, comparable with Η 131, is [Arist.] Pepl. 61 Bgk.; θυμόν . . . αἰθὴρ λαμπρὸς ἔχει. In the corresponding epigram, Epigr. Gr. 41, we have ψυχήν.)
3 ἔνιοι, among them Choirilos of Samos: D.L. i, 24 (from Favorinus): Vors.4, i, p. 1, 21.
4 Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 20 f. “Aristotle and Hippias” ap. D.L. i, 24; Vors., p. 2, 1. τὰ φυτὰ ἔμψυχα ζῷα, Dox. 438a, 6, b, 1.
5 Metaphorical language: Θαλῆς ᾠήθη πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἶναι, Arist., An. 1, 5, p. 411a, 8. τὸν κόσμον (ἔμψυχον καὶ) δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. i, 27; Dox. 301b, 2; Vors. p. 2, 20. Pl., Lg. 899 B, is an allusion to the θεῶν πλήρη πάντα (as Krische remarks, Theol. Lehr. d. Gr. Denker, p. 37). There is perhaps a half-mocking reference to the words in the saying attributed by anecdotal tradition to Herakleitos: εἶναι καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς (i.e. in his own hearth) Arist., PA. 1, 5, p. 645a, 17 ff. Hence Herakleitos himself was credited with the opinion of Thales in slightly altered form: πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. ix, 7 (Vors., p. 68, 29), in the first (and valueless) of the two lists of the doctrines of Herakl. there given.
6 Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 10–14. Dox. 559, 18. Vors., p. 17, 35.
7 Anaximander, fr. 2 Mull. Vors., p. 15, 26. That Anaximander declared the soul to be “like air” is an erroneous statement of Theodoret.: see Diels, Dox. 387b, 10 (Vors. 21, 5).
8 Anaximenes in Dox. 278a, 12 ff.; b, 8 ff. fr. 2 Diels.
9 Anaxim. calls τὸν ἀέρα θεόν, i.e. it has divine power: Dox. 302b, 5; 531a, 17, b, 1–2. Vors. 24, 18. This at least is to be understood in the same sense in which Anaximander is said to have called τὸ ἄπειρον, τὸ θεῖον (Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 13; Vors., p. 17, 35).
10 ἓν πάντα εἶναι, fr. 1 (Byw.); 50 (Diels).
11 Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 25 ff. Vors. 74, 30. Hkl. is also meant in p. 405a, 5. Dox. 471, 2 (Arius Didymus); 389a, 3 ff.
12 Arist., p. 405a. 25 ff. Hkl. fr. 68 (36 D.).
13 S.E., M. 7, 127, 129–31. Vors. 75, 14 ff.
14 ὁ θεός is both the Universal Fire, that transforms itself into the world, and at the same time its power (and λόγος: frr. 2 [1], 92 [2]): fr. 36 (67). τὸ πῦρ θεὸν ὑπείληφεν, Herakl.: Cl. Al., Prot. 5, 64, p. 55 P. [Vors. n. 8 A 8]. πῦρ νοερὸν τὸν θεὸν (εἶναι ἐφθέγξατο), Hippol., RH. i, 4, p. 10, 57 Mill.—“Zeus” as metaphor for this universal fire (hence οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει), the “only wise one”; fr. 65 (32).
15 ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα (περιέχ. = the universal Fire) is said of the soul and its reasoning faculty ap. S.E., M. vii, 130; Vors., p. 75, 19; (cf. ἀπορροὴ καὶ μοῖρα ἐκ τοῦ φρονοῦντος, Plu., Is. et O. 77, p. 382 B). This is fully Herakleitean in thought if not also in actual form of expression.
16 That Herakleitos drew the conclusions affecting also the “Soul”—the spiritual man—freely paraphrased in the text, arising necessarily out of his doctrine of the perpetual change in the material substance that excludes all possibility of lasting self-identity in any object (frr. 40, 41, 42, 81 = 91, 12, 49 a), is proved especially by the words of Plutarch in the eighteenth chapter of his treatise de E Delph. p. 392—a chapter which is entirely based on Herakleitos, who is twice actually cited in it. Not only does ὁ νέος die εἰς τὸν ἀκμάζοντα κτλ., but ὁ χθὲς (ἄνθρωπος) εἰς τὸν σήμερον τέθνηκεν, ὁ δὲ σήμερον εἰς τὸν 392 αὔριον ἀποθνήσκει. μένει δ’ οὐδείς, οὐδ’ ἔστιν εἷς, ἀλλα γιγνόμεθα πολλοὶ περὶ ἓν φάντασμα κτλ.; cf. Cons. ad Apoll. 10, p. 106 E. Herakl. is also the origin of what is said in Plato, Smp. 207 D ff.: each man is only apparently one and the same; in reality, even while he is still alive, “he continually suffers a new and different man to take the place of the old and departing one”—and this applies, just as much to the soul as to the body. (Only from the standpoint of Herakleitean doctrine—here adopted in passing by Plato as suiting his chosen method of argument—is the conclusion he reaches justified; the conclusion is that it is only by the perpetual substitution of a new being like the old one that man has immortality, and not by the eternal preservation of his own proper being; for this advantage belongs peculiarly to the divine. This, of course, cannot possibly be understood as the serious teaching of Plato himself.)—The Herakleitean denial of personal identity in men is alluded to by Epicharmos (or a pseudo-Ep.?) ap. D.L. iii, 11, ll. 13–18; Vors., p. 118–19 (cf. Wytt. ad Plu., Ser. Num. V. 559 A = vii, p. 397 f. Ox.; Bernays, Rh. Mus. viii, 280 ff.); and cf. Sen., Ep. 58, 23.—It is instructive to compare with Herakl.’s doctrine of the instability of the psychic complex the very similar theory of the influx and reflux of the elements of the “soul” as described in the Indian doctrine of Jainism. The soul (in the Indian doctrine) continually transforms, re-arranges, and restores itself, just like the body. See Deussen, System d. Vedânta, 330.
17 The apparently contradictory statement ψυχῇσι τέρψιν, μὴ θάνατον, ὑγρῇσι γενέσθαι ap. Porph., Antr. Nymph. 10 (72 By., 77 D.), does not represent the words or real opinion of Hkl., but only of Numenios’ (fr. 35 Thedinga) arbitrary and personal interpretation of Hkl. doctrine (see Gomperz in Sitzb. d. Wien. Ak. 113, 1015 ff.).
18 A doctrine of transmigration of souls is attributed to Hkl. by Schuster, Heraklit, p. 174 ff. (1873). The utterances of Herakleitos there quoted to prove this thesis (frr. 78, 67, 123 = 88, 62, 63) do not, however, imply anything of the kind and there is not the slightest indication in the whole of Hkl’s doctrinal system upon which a theory of the transmigration of the soul might be founded.
19 To prove that Herakleitos spoke of a continuation of the life of the individual soul after its separation from the body, appeal is made partly to the statements of later philosophers, partly to actual utterances of Herakl. (cf. in particular Zeller, Greek Phil. to Socr. ii, 86; Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee, p. 214 ff.). Platonist philosophers do, of course, attribute to Herakleitos a doctrine of the soul which taught the pre-existence of the individual soul, “its fall in birth,” and its departure into a separate life of its own after death (cf. Numenios ap. Porph., Ant. 10; Iamb., ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 375, 7; 38, 21 ff. W.; Aen. Gaz., Thphr., pp. 5, 7 Boiss.). These accounts, however, are plainly but private and arbitrary interpretations of Herakleitean sayings (μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται, κάματός ἐστι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ μοχθεῖν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι) in the light of the conceptions current among those philosophers themselves; they are homiletic, fancifully conceived expositions of very short and ambiguous texts, and can so much the less serve as witnesses of Herakleitos’ real opinions since Plotinos (4, 8, 1) openly admits that Herakl. in this matter has omitted σαφῆ ἡμῖν ποιῆσαι τὸν λόγον. Others read into certain Herakleitean utterances the Orphic doctrine of σῶμα—σῆμα, the entombment of the soul in the body (Philo, Leg. Alleg. 1, 33, i, p. 65 M.; S.E., P. iii, 230), which cannot, however, be seriously supposed to be his teaching. The soul did not for Hkl., any more than for the Pythagoreans or Platonics, 393 come into existence at birth (substantially) out of nothing (which was the popular idea); it rather, as a portion of the universal fire (the universal psyche) is in existence from eternity. But it certainly does not follow, because later writers insisted on finding in him the idea so familiar to themselves, that Hkl. himself accepted the pre-existence of disembodied separate souls possessing complete and absolute individuality. A few enigmatic and highly picturesque expressions—typical of this philosopher’s favourite manner of expressing abstract ideas by clothing them in symbolic imagery—might tempt to such an interpretation. ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (fr. 67 = 62)—that certainly does sound as if Hkl. had meant to speak of the entrance into the human life of individual divine beings (and this was simply substituted in inaccurate quotations of the saying: θεοὶ θνητοί, ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι, etc.; cf. Bernays, Heraklit. Briefe, 39 ff.). And yet Herakleitos can only have meant, in conformity with his whole position, that eternal and perishable, divine and human are alike and interchangeable; he has for the moment personified τὸ θεῖον (also called ὁ θεός fr. 36 = 67; cf. fr. 61 = 102) as individual ἀθάνατοι, but he only means what he says in another place: ταὐτὸ τὸ ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκός (fr. 78 = 88), βίος and θάνατος are the same (fr. 66 = 48). It seems to me impossible to extract from these words of this 67th fragment (62nd), or from no. 44 (= 53), a doctrine of the ascent to divinity of special great men (with Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1010, 1041 f.). Nor would anything be asserted by such a doctrine about the immortality of such men. The striking phrase ἀνθρώπους μένει τελευτήσαντας ἅσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται (fr. 122 = 27) is certainly understood by Cl. Al. as referring to the punishment of the soul after death. But the same Cl. Al., Str. v, 9, p. 649 P., is capable of explaining the Herakleitean ἐκπύρωσις (in which Herakl. actually speaks of a κρίσις by fire: fr. 26 = 66) as a διὰ πυρὸς κάθαρσις τῶν κακῶς βεβιωκότων. In fact, he is giving to statements torn from their context a meaning that accords with his own knowledge and comprehension. The same sentence (fr. 122 = 27) is given a quite different and consolatory sense by Plu. ap. Stob., Fl. 120, 8 fin.; cf. Schuster, Heraklit, p. 190, n. 1. Herakl. himself need have meant nothing more than the perpetual process of change that “awaits men after death”.—Other utterances are no more conclusive for a doctrine of immortality in Hkl. (fr. 7 = 18 belongs to quite another context). “Those who have fallen in war are honoured both by gods (whose existence was not denied by Hkl. nor was it necessary that he should) and men,” fr. 102 = 24; that their reward was anything else but fame—for example, blessed immortality—is not suggested even by Cl. Al. (Str. iv, 16, p. 571 P.), and is certainly not to be extracted from H.’s words, fr. 126 = 5 (the fool) οὕτι γινώσκων θεοὺς οὐδ’ ἥρωας οἵτινές εἰσιν simply shows that Hkl. did not share the popular ideas about gods and Heroes, but supplies nothing positive.—In fr. 38 = 98 we have αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ’ ᾅδην. Are we really to deduce from this that Herakl. believed in a regular Homeric Hades? ᾅδης is a metaphorical expression for the opposite of the life on earth (just as it is used metaphorically for the opp. of φάος by the Herakleitean [Hippocr.] de Victu, 1, 4, p. 632 Kühn = vi, 476 Lit.). For the souls ᾅδης means the ὅδος κάτω and the sense of the dictum is: after disappearing in death the souls when they have travelled on the way downwards through water and earth will at last rise up again through water, and drawing in to themselves pure, dry “fire” will become “souls” again, (ὀσμῶνται is remarkable 394 but not to be altered. ὁσιοῦνται Pfleiderer; but the connexion in which Plu. quotes the saying of Herakl. [Fac. O. L. xxviii, p. 943 E] shows that there is no reference to the purification of the souls in Hades, but merely of their nourishment and strengthening by the ἀναθυμίασις of the fiery aether; cf. also S.E., M. ix, 73, following Poseidonios. This ἀναθυμιᾶν—and the becoming “fiery” again—is what Hkl. calls ὀσμᾶσθαι.)—From the hopelessly corrupt fr. 123 = 63 nothing intelligible can be extracted.—Nowhere can we find clear and unambiguous statements of Herakleitos witnessing to his belief in the immortality of the individual soul; and it would require such statements to make us attribute to Herakleitos a conception that, as everyone admits, is in hopeless contradiction with the rest of his teaching. He says perfectly plainly that in death the soul becomes water; and that means that it, as the soul = fire, perishes. If his belief had been anything like that of the mystics (as the Neoplatonists supposed) he must have regarded death—the liberation of the soul from the fetters of corporeality and the realm of the lower elements—as a complete issue of the soul into its proper element, the fire. Whereas, what he teaches is the opposite of this: the soul perishes, becomes water, then earth, and then water again, and finally soul once more (fr. 68 = 36). Only in this sense is it indestructible.
20 e.g. by Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit, etc., p. 209, and frequently.
21 The Sibyl fr. 12 = 92; the Delphic Oracle 11 = 93; Kathartic practices 130 = 5; Bakchoi, etc., 124 = 14.
22 ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος fr. 127 = 15 (and to that extent—as being reconcilable with the doctrine of Hkl.—may the Dionysiac mysteries be considered valid: this must be the meaning of the sentence). On the other hand, we have disapproval of the μυστήρια carried out ἀνιερωστί by men: fr. 125 = 14 (for the worshippers do not perceive the real meaning of the ceremonies).
23 In contrast to the Neoplatonic writers who attributed to Hkl. a doctrine of the soul like the Orphico-Pythagorean, the [Plutarchian] account in the Placita Philos. is again much nearer the real meaning of Herakleitos; cf. 4, 7 (where the name of Herakleitos has fallen out, as can be seen from Theodoret; see Diels, Dox., p. 392; Vors. 76, 1) . . . ἐξιοῦσαν (τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν) εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. Even this is not quite correct as expressing what Hkl. really thought as to the fate of the soul but it does at least show once more that the contrary views of the Neoplatonists are also only interpretations, not evidence.
24 Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἔστι γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν. Dox., p. 320; Vors. 73, 10. στάσις and ἠρεμία could never make a real “life”—not even a blessed life far removed from the world—but are signs of what is “dead”, i.e. of what is nowhere to be found in this world, in fact, Nothing.
25 Parmenldes’ polemic against Herakleitos: l. 46 ff. Mull.; fr. 6, 4 ff. Diels; see Bernays, Rh. Mus. vii, 115 (cf. Diels, Parm. 68).
26 Aristotle (acc. to S.E., M. x, 46; Vors. 142, 33 ff.) ἀφυσίκους αὐτοὺς κέκληκεν, ὅτι ἀρχὴ κινησεώς ἐστιν ἡ φύσις, ἣν ἀνεῖλον φάμενοι μηδὲν κινεῖσθαι.
27 Thphr., Sens. § 4; Vors. 146, 13 f.
28 γεγενῆσθαι τὴν τῶν πάντων φύσιν ἐκ θερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ καὶ ξηροῦ καὶ ὑγροῦ, λαμβανόντων εἰς ἄλληλα τὴν μετανολήν, καὶ ψυχὴν κρᾶμα ὑπάρχειν ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων κατὰ μηδενὸς τούτων ἐπικράτησιν, Zeno ap. D.L. ix, 29; Vors. 166, 14. The composition out of four elements instead of two as with Parmenides may have been arrived at by Zeno 395 in imitation of the “four roots” of Empedokles, each of which was distinguished by possessing one of the four qualities θερμόν κτλ. The statement that the ψυχή arises from the equal mixture of the four qualities reminds us of Empedokles’ account of φρονεῖν (Vors. 218, 1 = 220, 23; Thphr., Sens. 10, 23). On the other side, Zeno takes over and applies to the ψυχή what the Pythagorean physician Alkmaion said about ὑγίεια (Vors. 136, 1; Dox., p. 442; cf. Arist., An. 408a, 1): his point of view is almost identical with that of those Pythagoreans who regarded the “soul” as made up out of a ἁρμονία of the Cold, the Warm, etc. (see below). He may have actually got his views from the acquaintance of Pythagorean physiologists (he was regarded as a “Pythagorean”: Str. 252).
29 Simpl. ad Arist., Ph., p. 39 D.; Vors. 162, 11; cf. Diels, Parm. 109 f. (1897).
30 Parmenides pupil of Diochaites the Pythagorean and of Ameinias, also as it appears a Pythagorean: Sotion ap. D.L. ix, 21; Vors. 138. He was counted a Pythagorean by tradition which, however, was very free with its attributions of this kind. Call. fr. 100d, 17; Str. 252; V. Pyth. ap. Phot., Bibl. 249, p. 439a, 37 Bk.; Iamb., VP. 267 (with Sch., p. 190 N.). The Pyth. influence on Parmenides may have been essentially of an ethical nature: εἰς ἡσυχίαν προετράπη ὑπὸ Ἀμεινίου, D.L. ix, 21. Παρμενίδειος καὶ Πυθαγόρειος βίος as equivalent: [Ceb.] Tab. 2 fin. Str., p. 252, connects the good government of Elea with the Pythagorean influence of Parmenides (and of Zeno). Parmenides law-giver of Elea: Speus. π. φιλοσόφων ap. D.L. ix, 23.
31 φιλοσοφίαν δὲ πρῶτος ὠνόμασε Πυθαγόρας καὶ ἑαυτὸν φιλόσοφον: D.L., Proem. 12 (though the rest is from the fictitious dialogue of Herakl. Pont. see Cic., TD. v, 8–9).
32 Pl., Rp. 600 AB.
33 πολυμαθίη, ἱστορίη of Pythag.; Herakl. frr. 16, 17 = 40, 129. παντοίων τὰ μάλιστα σοφῶν ἐπιήρανος ἔργων is said of Pythag. by Emped. (429 Mull.) fr. 129, 3.—The Pythagorean account of the construction of the world was known to Parmenides at the beginning of the fifth century and imitated by him in several points: Krische, Theol. Lehren d. gr. D. 103 ff. (To what extent Parmenides in other respects controverted Pythag. doctrine—as has been recently asserted of him—may be left undecided.) Fanciful speculations about numbers are attributed to Pythag. himself by Aristot., MM. 1182a, 11 ff.; Vors. 347, 3.
34 Emped. 427 ff. Mull.; fr. 129 Diels. That this praeconium does really refer to Pythag. (as Timaeus and others supposed) and not to Parmenides (as the undefined οἱ δέ of D.L. viii, 54, thought) appears to be proved by l. 4 ff., which allude to a remarkable power of ἀνάμνησις which was certainly attributed by legend to Pythag., never to Parmenides.