240 Demokriti Frag. p. 207, Mullach; Sext. Empiric, adv. Mathemat. ix. 19; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 10, p. 735 A.
241 Plutarch, Symposiac. v. 7, p. 683 A.
242 Aristotel. De Divinat. per Somnum, p. 464, a. 5; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 9, p. 733 E. ὅτι καὶ κόσμων ἐκτὸς φθαρέντων καὶ σωμάτων ἀλλοφύλων ἐκ τῆς ἀποῤῥοίας ἐπιῤῥεόντων, ἐνταῦθα πολλάκις ἀρχαὶ παρεμπίπτουσι λοιμῶν καὶ παθῶν οὐ συνήθων.
243 Plutarch, De Oraculor. Defectu, p. 419. αὐτὸς εὔχεται εὐλόγχων εἰδωλων τυγχάνειν.
Universality of Demokritus — his ethical views.
Among the lost treasures of Hellenic intellect, there are few which are more to be regretted than the works of Demokritus. Little is known of them except the titles: but these are instructive as well as multifarious. The number of different subjects which they embrace is astonishing. Besides his atomic theory, and its application to cosmogony and physics, whereby he is chiefly known, and from whence his title of physicus was derived — we find mention of works on geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, optics, geography or geology, zoology, botany, medicine, music, and poetry, grammar, history, ethics, &c.244 In such universality he is the predecessor, perhaps the model, of Aristotle. It is not likely that this wide range of subjects should have been handled in a spirit of empty generality, without facts or particulars: for we know that his life was long, his curiosity insatiable, and his personal travel and observation greater than that of any contemporary. We know too that he entered more or less upon the field of dialectics, discussing those questions of evidence which became so rife in the Platonic age. He criticised, and is said to have combated, the doctrine laid down by Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things”. It would have been interesting to know from what point of view he approached it: but we learn only the fact that he criticised it adversely.245 The numerous treatises of Demokritus, together with the proportion of them which relate to ethical and social subjects, rank him with the philosophers of the Platonic and Aristotelian age. His Summum Bonum, as far as we can make out, appears to have been the maintenance of mental serenity and contentment: in which view he recommended a life of tranquil contemplation, apart from money-making, or ambition, or the exciting pleasures of life.246
244 See the list of the works of Demokritus in Diogen. Laert. ix. 46, and in Mullach’s edition of the Fragments, p. 105-107. Mullach mentions here (note 18) that Demokritus is cited seventy-eight times in the extant works of Aristotle, and sometimes with honourable mention. He is never mentioned by Plato. In the fragment of Philodemus de Musica, Demokritus is called ἀνὴρ οὐ φυσιολογώτατος μόνον τῶν ἀρχαίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰ ἱστορούμενα οὐδενὸς ἦττον πολυπράγμων (Mullach, p. 237). Seneca calls him “Democritus, subtilissimus antiquorum omnium”. — Quæstion. Natural. vii. 2. And Dionysius of Hal. (De Comp. Verb. p. 187, R.) characterises Demokritus, Plato, and Aristotle (he arranges them in that order) as first among all the philosophers, in respect of σύνθεσις τῶν ὀνομάτων.
245 Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, p. 1108.
Among the Demokritean treatises, was one entitled Pythagoras, which contained probably a comment on the life and doctrines of that eminent man, written in an admiring spirit. (Diog. Laert. ix. 38.)
246 Seneca, De Tranquill. Animæ, cap. 2. “Hanc stabilem animi sedem Græci Εὐθυμίαν vocant, de quo Democriti volumen egregium est.” Compare Cicero De Finib. v. 29; Diogen. Laert. ix. 45. For εὐθυμία Demokritus used as synonyms εὐεστώ, ἀθαμβίη, ἀταραξίη, &c. See Mullach, p. 416.
Variety of sects and theories — multiplicity of individual authorities is the characteristic of Greek philosophy.
The first feeling of any reader accustomed to the astronomy and physics of the present century, on considering the various theories noticed in the preceding chapter, is a sort of astonishment that such theories should have been ever propounded or accepted as true. Yet there can be no doubt that they represent the best thoughts of sincere, contemplative, and ingenious men, furnished with as much knowledge of fact, and as good a method, as was then attainable. The record of what such men have received as scientific truth or probability, in different ages, is instructive in many ways, but in none more than in showing how essentially relative and variable are the conditions of human belief; how unfounded is the assumption of those modern philosophers who proclaim certain first truths or first principles as universal, intuitive, self-evident; how little any theorist can appreciate à priori the causes of belief in an age materially different from his own, or can lay down maxims as to what must be universally believed or universally disbelieved by all mankind. We shall have farther illustration of this truth as we proceed: here I only note variety of belief, even on the most fundamental points, as being the essential feature of Grecian philosophy even from its outset, long before the age of those who are usually denounced as the active sowers of discord, the Sophists and the professed disputants. Each philosopher followed his own individual reason, departing from traditional or established creeds, and incurring from the believing public more or less of obloquy; but no one among the philosophers acquired marked supremacy over the rest. There is no established philosophical orthodoxy, but a collection of Dissenters — ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλων γλῶσσα μεμιγμένη — small sects, each with its own following, each springing from a special individual as authority, each knowing itself to be only one among many.
These early theorists are not known from their own writings, which have been lost. Importance of the information of Aristotle about them.
It is a misfortune that we do not possess a complete work, or even considerable fragments, from any one of these philosophers, so as to know what their views were when stated by themselves, and upon what reasons they insisted. All that we know is derived from a few detached notices, in very many cases preserved by Aristotle; who, not content (like Plato) with simply following out his own vein of ideas, exhibits in his own writings much of that polymathy which he transmitted to the Peripatetics generally, and adverts often to the works of predecessors. Being a critic as well as a witness, he sometimes blends together inconveniently the two functions, and is accused (probably with reason to a certain extent) of making unfair reports; but if it were not for him, we should really know nothing of the Hellenic philosophers before Plato. It is curious to read the manner in which Aristotle speaks of these philosophical predecessors as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι), and takes credit to his own philosophy for having attained a higher and more commanding point of view.1
1 Bacon ascribes the extinction of these early Greek philosophers to Aristotle, who thought that he could not assure his own philosophical empire, except by putting to death all his brothers, like the Turkish Sultan. This remark occurs more than once in Bacon (Nov. Org. Aph. 67; Redargutio Philosoph. vol. xi. p. 450, ed. Montagu). In so far as it is a reproach, I think it is not deserved. Aristotle’s works, indeed, have been preserved, and those of his predecessors have not: but Aristotle, far from seeking to destroy their works, has been the chief medium for preserving to us the little which we know about them. His attention to the works of his predecessors is something very unusual among the theorists of the ancient world. His friends Eudêmus and Theophrastus followed his example, in embodying the history of the earlier theories in distinct works of their own, now unfortunately lost.
It is much to be regretted that no scholar has yet employed himself in collecting and editing the fragments of the lost scientific histories of Eudêmus (the Rhodian) and Theophrastus. A new edition of the Commentaries of Simplikius is also greatly wanted: those which exist are both rare and unreadable.
Zeller remarks that several of the statements contained in Proklus’s commentary on Euclid, respecting the earliest Grecian mathematicians, are borrowed from the γεωμετρικαὶ ἱστορίαι of the Rhodian Eudêmus (Zeller — De Hermodoro Ephesio et Hermodoro Platonico, p. 12).
Abundance of speculative genius and invention — a memorable fact in the Hellenic mind.
During the century and a half between Thales and the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, we have passed in review twelve distinct schemes of philosophy — Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Herakleitus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, the Apolloniate Diogenes, Leukippus, and Demokritus. Of most of these philosophers it may fairly be said that each speculated upon nature in an original vein of his own. Anaximenes and Diogenes, Xenophanes and Parmenides, Leukippus and Demokritus, may indeed be coupled together as kindred pairs yet by no means in such manner that the second of the two is a mere disciple and copyist of the first. Such abundance and variety of speculative genius and invention is one of the most memorable facts in the history of the Hellenic mind. The prompting of intelligent curiosity, the thirst for some plausible hypothesis to explain the Kosmos and its generation, the belief that a basis or point of departure might be found in the Kosmos itself, apart from those mythical personifications which dwelt both in the popular mind and in the poetical Theogonies, the mental effort required to select some known agency and to connect it by a chain of reasoning with the result — all this is a new phenomenon in the history of the human mind.
Difficulties which a Grecian philosopher had to overcome — prevalent view of Nature, established, impressive, and misleading.
An early Greek philosopher found nothing around him to stimulate or assist the effort, and much to obstruct it. He found Nature disguised under a diversified and omnipresent Polytheistic agency, eminently captivating and impressive to the emotions — at once mysterious and familiar — embodied in the ancient Theogonies, and penetrating deeply all the abundant epic and lyric poetry, the only literature of the time. It is perfectly true (as Aristotle remarks2) that Hesiod and the other theological poets, who referred everything to the generation and agency of the Gods, thought only of what was plausible to themselves, without enquiring whether it would appear equally plausible to their successors; a reproach which bears upon many subsequent philosophers also. The contemporary public, to whom they addressed themselves, knew no other way of conceiving Nature than under this religious and poetical view, as an aggregate of manifestations by divine personal agents, upon whose volition — sometimes signified beforehand by obscure warnings intelligible to the privileged interpreters, but often inscrutable — the turn of events depended. Thales and the other Ionic philosophers were the first who became dissatisfied with this point of view, and sought for some “causes and beginnings” more regular, knowable, and predictable. They fixed upon the common, familiar, widely-extended, material substances, water, air, fire, &c.; and they could hardly fix upon any others. Their attempt to find a scientific basis was unsuccessful; but the memorable fact consisted in their looking for one.
2 Aristot. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1000, a. 10.
Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Ἡσίοδον, καὶ πάντες ὅσοι θεόλογοι, μόνον ἐφρόντισαν τοῦ πιθανοῦ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτούς, ἡμῶν δ’ ὠλιγώρησαν· Θεοὺς γὰρ ποιοῦντες τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἐκ θεῶν γεγονέναι, &c. Aristotle mentions them a few lines afterwards as not worth serious notice, περὶ τῶν μυθικῶς σοφιζομένων οὐκ ἄξιον μετὰ σπουδῆς σκοπεῖν.
Views of the Ionic philosophers — compared with the more recent abstractions of Plato and Aristotle.
In the theories of these Ionic philosophers, the physical ideas of generation, transmutation, local motion, are found in the foreground: generation in the Kosmos to replace generation by the God. Pythagoras and Empedokles blend with their speculations a good deal both of ethics and theology, which we shall find yet more preponderant when we come to the cosmical theories of Plato. He brings us back to the mythical Prometheus, armed with the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of the Pythagoreans: he assumes a chaotic substratum, modified by the intentional and deliberate construction of the Demiurgus and his divine sons, who are described as building up and mixing like a human artisan or chemist. In the theory of Aristotle we find Nature half personified, and assumed to be perpetually at work under the influence of an appetite for good or regularity, which determines her to aim instinctively and without deliberation (like bees or spiders) at constant ends, though these regular tendencies are always accompanied, and often thwarted, by accessories, irregular, undefinable, unpredictable. Both Plato and Aristotle, in their dialectical age, carried abstraction farther than it had been carried by the Ionic philosophers.3 Aristotle imputes to the Ionic philosophers that they neglected three out of his four causes (the efficient, formal, and final), and that they attended only to the material. This was a height of abstraction first attained by Plato and himself; in a way sometimes useful, sometimes misleading. The earlier philosophers had not learnt to divide substance from its powers or properties; nor to conceive substance without power as one thing, and power without substance as another. Their primordial substance, with its powers and properties, implicated together as one concrete and without any abstraction, was at once an efficient, a formal, and a material cause: a final cause they did not suppose themselves to want, inasmuch as they always conceived a fixed terminus towards which the agency was directed, though they did not conceive such fixed tendency under the symbol of an appetite and its end. Water, Air, Fire, were in their view not simply inert and receptive patients, impotent until they were stimulated by the active force residing in the ever revolving celestial spheres — but positive agents themselves, productive of important effects. So also a geologist of the present day, when he speculates upon the early condition4 of the Kosmos, reasons upon gaseous, fluid, solid, varieties of matter, as manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests, but manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances. The defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was, that possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either ascribed to these physical agents powers and properties not real, or exaggerated prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial substance chosen, though bearing a familiar name, became little better than a fiction. The Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers, ascribing to them properties altogether fanciful and imaginary.
3 Plato (Sophistes, 242-243) observes respecting these early theorists — what Aristotle says about Hesiod and the Theogonies — that they followed out their own subjective veins of thought without asking whether we, the many listeners, were able to follow them or were left behind in the dark. I dare say that this was true (as indeed it is true respecting most writers on speculative matters), but I am sure that all of them would have made the same complaint if they had heard Plato read his Timæus.
4 Bacon has some striking remarks on the contrast in this respect between the earlier philosophers and Aristotle.
Bacon, after commending the early Greek philosophers for having adopted as their first principle some known and positive matter, not a mere abstraction, goes on to say:—
“Videntur antiqui illi, in inquisitione principiorum, rationem non admodum acutam instituisse, sed hoc solummodo egisse, ut ex corporibus apparentibus et manifestis, quod maximé excelleret, quærerent, et quod tale videbatur, principium rerum ponerent: tanquam per excellentiam, non veré aut realiter.… Quod si principium illud suum teneant non per excellentiam, sed simpliciter, videntur utique in duriorem tropum incidere: cum res plané deducatur ad æquivocum, neque de igne naturali, aut naturali ære, aut aquâ, quod asserunt, prædicari videatur, sed de igne aliquo phantastico et notionali (et sic de cæteris) qui nomen ignis retineat, definitionem abneget.… Principium statuerunt secundum sensum, aliquod ens verum: modum autem ejus dispensandi (liberius se gerentes) phantasticum.” (Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol. xi., p. 115-116, ed. Montagu.)
“Materia illa spoliata et passiva prorsus humanæ mentis commentum quoddam videtur. Materia prima ponenda est conjuncta cum principio motûs primo, ut invenitur. Hæc tria (materia, forma, motus) nullo modo discerpenda, sed tantummodo distinguenda, atque asserenda materia (qualiscunque ea sit), ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut omnis virtus, essentia, actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus consecutio et emanatio esse possit. Omnes ferè antiqui, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes. Heraclitus, Democritus, de materiâ primâ in cæteris dissidentes, in hoc convenerunt, quod materiam activam formâ nonnullâ, et formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se principium motûs habentem, posuerunt.” (Bacon, De Parmenidis, Telesii, et Campanellæ, Philosoph., p. 653-654, t. v.)
Compare Aphorism I. 50 of the Novum Organum.
Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol. xi. ed. Montagu, p. 106-107. “Sed omnes ferè antiqui (anterior to Plato), Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Democritus, de materiâ primâ in cæteris dissidentes, in hoc convenerunt, quod materiam activam, formâ nonnullâ, et formam suam dispensantem, atque intra se principium motûs habentem, posuerunt. Neque aliter cuiquam opinari licebit, qui non experientiæ plané desertor esse velit. Itaque hi omnes mentem rebus submiserunt. At Plato mundum cogitationibus, Aristoteles verò etiam cogitationes verbis, adjudicarunt.” … “Omnino materia prima ponenda est conjuncta cum formâ primâ, ac etiam cum principio motûs primo, ut invenitur. Nam et motûs quoque abstractio infinitas phantasias peperit, de animis, vitis, et similibus — ac si iis per materiam et formam non satisfieret, sed ex suis propriis penderent illa principiis. Sed hæc tria nullo modo discerpenda, sed tantummodo distinguenda: atque asserenda materia (qualiscunque ea sit) ita ornata et apparata et formata, ut omnis virtus, essentia, actio, atque motus naturalis, ejus consecutio et emanatio esse possit. Neque propterea metuendum, ne res torpeant, aut varietas ista, quam cernimus, explicari non possit — ut postea docebimus.”
Playfair also observes, in his Dissertation on the Progress of Natural Philosophy, prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 31:—
“Science was not merely stationary, but often retrograde; and the reasonings of Democritus and Anaxagoras were in many respects more solid than those of Plato and Aristotle.”
See a good summary of Aristotle’s cosmical views, in Ideler, Comm. in Aristotel. Meteorologica, i. 2, p. 328-329.
Parmenides and Pythagoras — more nearly akin to Plato and Aristotle.
Parmenides and Pythagoras, taking views of the Kosmos metaphysical and geometrical rather than physical, supplied the basis upon which Plato’s speculations were built. Aristotle recognises Empedokles and Anaxagoras as having approached to his own doctrine — force abstracted or considered apart from substance, yet not absolutely detached from it. This is true about Empedokles to a certain extent, since his theory admits Love and Enmity as agents, the four elements as patients: but it is hardly true about Anaxagoras, in whose theory Noûs imparts nothing more than a momentary shock, exercising what modern chemists call a catalytic agency in originating movement among a stationary and stagnant mass of Homœomeries, which, as soon as they are liberated from imprisonment, follow inherent tendencies of their own, not receiving any farther impulse or direction from Noûs.
Advantage derived from this variety of constructive imagination among the Greeks.
In the number of cosmical theories proposed, from Thales to Demokritus, as well as in the diversity and even discordance of the principles on which they were founded — we note not merely the growth and development of scientific curiosity, but also the spontaneity and exuberance of constructive imagination.5 This last is a prominent attribute of the Hellenic mind, displayed to the greatest advantage in their poetical, oratorical, historical, artistic, productions, and transferred from thence to minister to their scientific curiosity. None of their known contemporaries showed the like aptitudes, not even the Babylonians and Egyptians, who were diligent in the observation of the heavens. Now the constructive imagination is not less indispensable to the formation of scientific theories than to the compositions of art, although in the two departments it is subject to different conditions, and appeals to different canons and tests in the human mind. Each of these early Hellenic theories, though all were hypotheses and “anticipations of nature,” yet as connecting together various facts upon intelligible principles, was a step in advance; while the very number and discordance of them (urged by Sokrates6 as an argument for discrediting the purpose common to all), was on the whole advantageous. It lessened the mischief arising from the imperfections of each, increased the chance of exposing such imperfections, and prevented the consecration of any one among them (with that inveterate and peremptory orthodoxy which Plato so much admires7 in the Egyptians) as an infallible dogma and an exclusive mode of looking at facts. All the theorists laboured under the common defect of a scanty and inaccurate experience: all of them were prompted by a vague but powerful emotion of curiosity to connect together the past and present of Nature by some threads intelligible and satisfactory to their own minds; each of them followed out some analogy of his own, such as seemed to carry with it a self-justifying plausibility; and each could find some phenomena which countenanced his own peculiar view. As far as we can judge, Leukippus and Demokritus greatly surpassed the others, partly in the pains which they took to elaborate their theory, partly in the number of facts which they brought into consistency with it. The loss of the voluminous writings of Demokritus is deeply to be regretted.8
5 Karsten observes, in his account of the philosophy of Parmenides (sect, 23, p. 241):—
“Primum mundi descriptionem consideremus. Argumentum illustre et magnificum, cujus quanto major erat veterum in contemplando admiratio, tanto minor ferè in observando diligentia fuit. Quippe universi ornatum et pulcritudinem admirati, ejus naturam partiumque ordinem non sensu assequi studuerunt, sed mente informarunt ad eam pulcri perfectique speciem quæ in ipsorum animis insideret: sic ut Aristoteles ait, non sua cogitata suasque notiones ad mundi naturam, sed hanc illa accommodantes. Hujusmodi quoque fuit Parmenidea ratio.”
6 Xenophon, Memor. i. 1, 13-14.
7 Plato, Legg. ii. 656-657.
8 About the style of Demokritus, see Cicero De Orat. i. 11. Orator. c. 20.
All these theories were found in circulation by Sokrates, Zeno, Plato, and the dialecticians. Importance of the scrutiny of negative Dialectic.
In studying the writings of Plato and Aristotle, we must recollect that they found all these theories pre-existent or contemporaneous. We are not to imagine that they were the first who turned an enquiring eye on Nature. So far is this from being the case that Aristotle is, as it were, oppressed both by the multitude and by the discordance of his predecessors, whom he cites, with a sort of indulgent consciousness of superiority, as “the ancients” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι).9 The dialectic activity, inaugurated by Sokrates and Zeno, lowered the estimation of these cosmical theories in more ways than one: first, by the new topics of man and society, which Sokrates put in the foreground for discussion, and treated as the only topics worthy of discussion: next, by the great acuteness which each of them displayed in the employment of the negative weapons, and in bringing to view the weak part of an opponent’s case. When we look at the number of these early theories, and the great need which all of them had to be sifted and scrutinised, we shall recognise the value of negative procedure under such circumstances, whether the negationist had or had not any better affirmative theory of his own. Sokrates, moreover, not only turned the subject-matter of discussion from physics to ethics, but also brought into conscious review the method of philosophising: which was afterwards still farther considered and illustrated by Plato. General and abstract terms and their meaning, stood out as the capital problems of philosophical research, and as the governing agents of the human mind during the process: in Plato and Aristotle, and the Dialectics of their age, we find the meaning or concept corresponding to these terms invested with an objective character, and represented as a cause or beginning; by which, or out of which, real concrete things were produced. Logical, metaphysical, ethical, entities, whose existence consists in being named and reasoned about, are presented to us (by Plato) as the real antecedents and producers of the sensible Kosmos and its contents, or (by Aristotle) as coeternal with the Kosmos, but as its underlying constituents — the ἀρχαὶ, primordia or ultimata — into which it was the purpose and duty of the philosopher to resolve sensible things. The men of words and debate, the dialecticians or metaphysical speculators of the period since Zeno and Sokrates, who took little notice of the facts of Nature, stand contrasted in the language of Aristotle with the antecedent physical philosophers who meddled less with debate and more with facts. The contrast is taken in his mind between Plato and Demokritus.10
9 Aristot. Gen. et Corr. i. 314, a. 6; 325, a. 2; Metaphys. Λ. 1069, a. 25. See the sense of ἀρχαϊκῶς, Met. N. 1089, a. 2, with the note of Bonitz.
Adam Smith, in his very instructive examination of the ancient systems of Physics and Metaphysics, is too much inclined to criticise Plato and Aristotle as if they were the earliest theorizers, and as if they had no predecessors.
10 Aristotel. Gen. et Corr. i. 316, a. 6. — διὸ ὅσοι ἐνῳκήκασι μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς, μᾶλλον δύνανται ὑποτίθεσθαι τοιαύτας ἀρχὰς, αἳ ἐπὶ πολὺ δύνανται συνείρειν· οἱ δ’ ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν λόγων ἀθεώρητοι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ὄντες, πρὸς ὀλίγα βλέψαντες, ἀποφαίνονται ῥᾷον· ἴδοι δ’ ἄν τις καὶ ἐκ τούτων ὅσον διαφέρουσιν οἱ φυσικῶς καὶ λογικῶς σκοποῦντες, &c. This remark is thoroughly Baconian.
Οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις is the phrase by which Aristotle characterises the Platonici. — Metaphys. Θ. 1050, b. 35.
The early theorists were studied along with Plato and Aristotle, in the third and second centuries B.C.
Both by Stoics and by Epikureans, during the third and second centuries B.C., Demokritus, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, and Herakleitus were studied along with Plato and Aristotle — by some, even more. Lucretius mentions and criticises all the four, though he never names Plato or Aristotle. Cicero greatly admires the style of Demokritus, whose works were arranged in tetralogies by Thrasyllus, as those of Plato were.11
11 Epikurus is said to have especially admired Anaxagoras (Diog. L. x. 12).
Negative attribute common to all the early theorists — little or no dialectic.
In considering the early theorists above enumerated, there is great difficulty in finding any positive characteristic applicable to all of them. But a negative characteristic may be found, and has already been indicated by Aristotle. “The earlier philosophers (says he) had no part in dialectics: Dialectical force did not yet exist.”12 And the period upon which we are now entering is distinguished mainly by the introduction and increasing preponderance of this new element — Dialectic — first made conspicuously manifest in the Eleatic Zeno and Sokrates; two memorable persons, very different from each other, but having this property in common.
12 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 32. Οἱ γὰρ πρότεροι διαλεκτικῆς οὐ μετεῖχον. — M. 1078, b. 25; διαλεκτικὴ γὰρ ἰσχὺς οὔπω τότ’ ἦν, ὥστε δύνασθαι, &c.
It is Zeno who stands announced, on the authority of Aristotle, as the inventor of dialectic: that is, as the first person of whose skill in the art of cross-examination and refutation conspicuous illustrative specimens were preserved. He was among the first who composed written dialogues on controversial matters of philosophy.13 Both he, and his contemporary the Samian Melissus, took up the defence of the Parmenidean doctrine. It is remarkable that both one and the other were eminent as political men in their native cities. Zeno is even said to have perished miserably, in generous but fruitless attempts to preserve Elea from being enslaved by the despot Nearchus.
13 Diogen. Laert. ix. 25-28.
The epithets applied to Zeno by Timon are remarkable.
|
Ἀμφοτερογλώσσου τε μέγα σθένος οὐκ
ἀλαπαδνὸν
Ζήνωνος πάντων ἐπιλήπτορος, &c. |
Zeno’s Dialectic — he refuted the opponents of Parmenides, by showing that their assumptions led to contradictions and absurdities.
We know the reasonings of Zeno and Melissus only through scanty fragments, and those fragments transmitted by opponents. But it is plain that both of them, especially Zeno, pressed their adversaries with grave difficulties, which it was more easy to deride than to elucidate. Both took their departure from the ground occupied by Parmenides. They agreed with him in recognising the phenomenal, apparent, or relative world, the world of sense and experience, as a subject of knowledge, though of uncertain and imperfect knowledge. Each of them gave, as Parmenides had done, certain affirmative opinions, or at least probable conjectures, for the purpose of explaining it.14 But beyond this world of appearances, there lay the real, absolute, ontological, ultra-phenomenal, or Noumenal world, which Parmenides represented as Ens unum continuum, and which his opponents contended to be plural and discontinuous. These opponents deduced absurd and ridiculous consequences from the theory of the One. Herein both Zeno and Melissus defended Parmenides. Zeno, the better dialectician of the two, retorted upon the advocates of absolute plurality and discontinuousness, showing that their doctrine led to consequences not less absurd and contradictory than the Ens unum of Parmenides. He advanced many distinct arguments; some of them antinomies, deducing from the same premisses both the affirmative and the negative of the same conclusion.15
14 Diog. Laert. ix. 24-29.
Zeller (Phil. d. Griech. i. p. 424, note 2) doubts the assertion that Zeno delivered probable opinions and hypotheses, as Parmenides had done before him, respecting phenomenal nature. But I see no adequate ground for such doubt.
15 Simplikius, in Aristotel. Physic. f. 30. ἐν μέντοι τῷ συγγράμματι αὐτοῦ, πολλὰ ἔχοντι ἐπιχειρήματα, καθ’ ἕκαστον δείκνυσιν, ὅτι τῷ πολλὰ εἶναι λέγοντι συμβαίνει τὰ ἐναντία λέγειν, &c.
Consequences of their assumption of Entia Plura Discontinua. Reductiones ad absurdum.
If things in themselves were many (he said) they must be both infinitely small and infinitely great. Infinitely small, because the many things must consist in a number of units, each essentially indivisible: but that which is indivisible has no magnitude, or is infinitely small if indeed it can be said to have any existence whatever:16 Infinitely great, because each of the many things, if assumed to exist, must have magnitude. Having magnitude, each thing has parts which also have magnitude: these parts are, by the hypothesis, essentially discontinuous, but this implies that they are kept apart from each other by other intervening parts — and these intervening parts must be again kept apart by others. Each body will thus contain in itself an infinite number of parts, each having magnitude. In other words, it will be infinitely great.17
16 Aristotel. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1001, b. 7. ἔτι εἰ ἀδιαίρετον αὐτὸ τὸ ἕν, κατὰ μὲν τὸ Ζήνωνος ἀξίωμα, οὐθὲν ἂν εἴη.
ὃ γὰρ μήτε προστιθέμενον μητὲ ἀφαιρούμενον ποιεῖ τι μεῖζον μηδὲ ἕλαττον, οὔ φησιν εἶναι τοῦτο τῶν ὄντων, ὡς δῆλον ὅτι ὄντος μεγέθους τοῦ ὄντος.
Seneca (Epistol. 88) and Alexander of Aphrodisias (see the passages of Themistius and Simplikius cited by Brandis, Handbuch Philos. i. p. 412-416) conceive Zeno as having dissented from Parmenides, and as having denied the existence, not only of τὰ πολλὰ, but also of τὸ ἕν. But Zeno seems to have adhered to Parmenides; and to have denied the existence of τὸ ἕν, only upon the hypothesis opposed to Parmenides — namely, that τὰ πολλὰ existed. Zeno argued thus:—Assuming that the Real or Absolute is essentially divisible and discontinuous, divisibility must be pushed to infinity, so that you never arrive at any ultimatum, or any real unit (ἀκριβῶς ἕν). If you admit τὰ πολλὰ, you renounce τὸ ἕν. The reasoning of Zeno, as far as we know it, is nearly all directed against the hypothesis of Entia plura discontinua. Tennemann (Gesch. Philos. i. 4, p. 205) thinks that the reasoning of Zeno is directed against the world of sense: in which I cannot agree with him.