he remarks, 'loves to be hid.' Together with these contributory inducements to skeptical despondency may also be classed the indirect presumption derivable from the fact that a tendency to pessimism is among Oriental thinkers an undoubted result of the vein of sentiment which Herakleitos indulged. The 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity' of Koheleth, and the perpetual stress on the Mâyâ of the Hindoo philosopher, cannot be characterised as optimistic estimates of existence. I cannot leave this remarkable man without pointing out the inherent excellences of much of his thought. In some respects the system of the Ephesian physicist approaches the speculation of the nineteenth century. Besides minor approximations there is a clear recognition of nature as immutable law, as perpetual movement, and of movement not in a straight line, as some modern physical dogmatists persist in explaining it, but rather in recurring cycles, and by means of various and often antagonistic forces. That such is the normal process of nature and humanity is incidentally confirmed by the fact pointed out by Professor Max Müller: 'Ephesus, in the sixth century before Christ, was listening to one of the wisest men that Greece ever produced, Herakleitos, while a thousand years later the same town resounded with the frivolous and futile wrangling of Cyrillus and the council of Ephesus.' As a free-thinker his influence is strongly marked on the whole of subsequent Hellenic thought, as I have already briefly mentioned, and this irrespectively of the nature of the speculations. Tenebrous as are many of his utterances to us as they were to his contemporaries,2 it is the tenebrosity not of the night, but of a thunder-cloud riven by unceasing and brilliant lightning-flashes of profound thought, and suggestive apperceptions of truth.

Demokritos.

Hitherto we have seen Skepticism gradually developing in Greek philosophy on the side of metaphysics. The human mind is engaged mostly in self-reflection, in gauging the powers and

1 Hibbert Lectures, p. 67.

2 Sokrates said of Herakleitos's Book on Nature, that what he could understand of it was excellent, what he could not he believed to be equally so, but that the book required an able swimmer (Diog. Laert. ii. 22, lx. 11, 12). Hegel thus explains the 'darkness' of his Greek predecessor: Das Dunkle dieser Philosophie liegt aber hauptsächlich darin, dass ein tiefer, speculativer Gedanke in ihr ausgedrückt ist; der Begriff, die Idee ist dem verstande zuwider, kann nicht von ihm gefasst werden, wogegen die Mathematik für ihn ganz leicht ist.' Gesch. der Philosophie, i. p. 304.

limits of her faculties, in contemplating the universe as reflected in the mirror of her own laws and methods, with a result dubious and suspensive, if not actually negative. But Hellenic physical inquiry arrives at the same uncertain results from the objective consideration of the facts of the universe. The different explanations of natural phenomena adopted by the Ionian philosophers, from Thales downwards, were found to be as unsatisfactory as the speculations of the Eleatics or Herakleitos, while their skeptical effect upon the popular creed was probably much greater. This is the stage at which the early atomists of Greece come before us. Demokritos may be said to sum up and to complete the materialism of the Ionic thinkers. All preceding physical speculations, the water of Thales, the air of Anaximenes, the four elements of Empedokles, find their ultimate resolution in the atoms of Demokritos. Beyond this point physical analysis and theory could no farther go. Hence, with the exception of some trifling additions, materialism has made no trustworthy advance since the time of its great founder, about 450 B.C.1

Like all the Ionic philosophers, Demokritos attempts to make the material world disclose the secret of its origin, and solve its many enigmas. After long and arduous contemplation of the facts and processes of nature, he formulates his conclusions, most of which are still primary axioms in the creed of materialists. 'Out of nothing,' he says, 'comes nothing.'-'No existing thing can be annihilated.'-'All change consists in the aggregation and dissolution of parts.'-'Nothing happens by accident, but all things come of reason and with necessity.'-'The primordial constitutive elements of the universe are only plenum and vacuum.'-'Like always tends to like.'-'Atoms are infinite in number, and of endless diversity of form,' &c.-The perpetual movement of which nature consists is vortex (dín), which is set in motion by fate or necessity.2

Such are the rudiments of constructive materialism for which Hellenic and European thought are indebted to Demokritos. By means of these and with the aid of a powerful imagination he evolves the Universe together with its numerous worlds from its chaos of atoms. But notwithstanding his elaborate theorising on the subject, Demokritos is fully aware of the hypothetical character of his system. He is as much a Skeptic as a Physicist.3 With Cf. Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, i. p. 15.

2 Cf. Zeller, Gesch. i. 709, &c. Lange, i. p. 12, &c. Ritter and Preller, p. 40.

A recent writer says of him: Er war weder Skeptiker noch Physiker,

Sextos Empeirikos, he is the standard instance of a physicist who questions the certainty of all Physical phenomena. All sensations he regarded as pure matters of opinion and common agreement. "It is opinion that decides what is sweet and bitter, what is hot and cold, what colour is,' &c. The only true entities are atoms and vacuum. To the same purport he says, 'What things are esteemed and thought as sensible do not really exist, the sole existences are atoms and vacuum." Were a captious inquirer to ask how we can have cognition of atoms and vacuum if all certainty be denied to the senses, he would find that Demokritos, like Herakleitos, immediately takes refuge in a supersensual knowledge. There are, he says, two kinds of cognition, one genuine, the other obscure. The obscure are the following-sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The genuine consists of what is distinct from the senses. Hence when the obscure are unable, as in minute matters, to see, or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch, we must adopt the more subtle and genuine method.2 The signification of these dicta is obvious. Demokritos takes refuge in noumena from the uncertainty of phenomena. From the sensible aspects of the material world he appeals to supposed invisible states by which they are conditioned. Rejecting the crude theories of the Ionic thinkers with Empedokles, he takes his stand on a hyperphysical conception of the Universe. No doubt his theory constitutes an advance on prior materialistic schemes. In view of the multiplicity of natural products conjoined with the identity of so many of their ingredients-in view also of the researches of astronomers and chemists since the time of Demokritos-primitive atoms form a more probable starting-point for a material universe than air, or earth, or water. Nevertheless it is certain that Demokritos did not claim for his supersensuous theories more than a certain probability. Perhaps he regarded his analysis of matter as more full and complete than any Ionic thinker had as yet put forward, and to that extent as having a prior claim to acceptance. At least he never considered it as possessing demonstrable certitude. Demokritos may on this ground claim credit for a perspicacity

für einen Physiker ist er zu sehr Skeptiker, für einen Skeptiker zu sehr Physiker' (S. A. Byk, Die Vorsokratische Philosophie der Griechen, ii. p. 173), to which it might fairly be replied that he carried his physical theories and his Skeptical caution so far as he thought possible. It would be well if many a modern 'zu sehr Physiker' tempered his hypotheses with SkepHerr Byk appropriately compares this union of affirmation and negation with the plenum and vacuum of the Demokritean theory. Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 135–39. Comp. Mullach, Frag. i. p. 357. 2 Sext. Emp. adv. Math. loc. cit.

ticism.

1

which is far from being shared by modern materialists. He was clear-sighted enough to perceive that every scheme that is founded ultimately upon a divisibility of matter, far transcending all methods of direct perception and verification, must needs be beset with uncertainty. Hence we have his Skeptical dicta, 'Truth is uncertain. Man's knowledge is bounded by this limit, that it is far from the truth.' This is partly due to the individualistic aspect of all cognition. Of nothing do we know what is really true, but only what is apparent to every man as he happens to be personally affected by external objects.' 'Even though anything seem evident, exact knowledge of it is doubtful. It is also due to nominalism, language and names being only verbal agreements, and therefore no guarantees for truth. In reality, therefore, we know nothing, "Truth lies hid as in a well!' This judicious tone of uncertainty in matters so immeasurably beyond human means of investigation is apt to be forgotten by the successors of Demokritos in the present day. Because their science deals with matter as an object of sensuous perception and experimental observation, they forget the inherent inscrutabilities which underlie every portion of their theory. But in truth the overweening despotism of the materialist is just as unfounded as that of the metaphysician. Conceive for a moment the materials of the system as propounded by Demokritos. An infinite vacuum or empty space occupied by an infinity of atoms, endowed with an infinity of different forms, weights, qualities, as shown by the infinity of diversiform objects and phenomena in the universe, and is any other determination respecting it conceivable but one pervaded by uncertainties? It is therefore, as I have said, to the credit of his far-sightedness and candour that our Skeptic both saw and acknowledged the haphazard character of his conclusions. Out of this chaotic jumble of atoms and qualitiesgenerated by this conflux of infinite contingencies, phenomena might conceivably have presented a very different aspect from that with which our senses and experience invest them.3 The necessity by which they are co-ordinated and arranged is merely a subjective requirement of our own. It is the verdict of our infirm senses on the actuality presented to them. An absolute necessity we have no means of affirming. Hence Demokritos's conclusion, that

2

1 Mullach, i. pp. 357-58. Comp. the passages collected by Zeller, Gesch. i. 744-46, with his notes.

2 See, on this point, Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, i. p. 15, and passim. 3 ποῖα οὖν τούτων ἀληθῆ ἢ ψευδῆ ἄδηλον· οὐθὲν γὰρ μᾶλλον τάδε ἢ τάδη àλnoî, àλλ' dμolws. Aristot. Metaph. iv. 5, 1009. Comp. notes 1 and 3 of Zeller, Gesch. i. p. 744.

phenomena might have been other than what they are, for 'of all existing things each one might exist either in one mode or in another;' and that all our pronunciamentos about them are but matters of opinion, is the only one justified by his principles.

1

There can, then, be no reasonable doubt either as to the existence or considerable range of his Skepticism. It is amply attested by the similar teachings of associates and disciples as well as confirmed by subsequent historians. But his own dicta, and the relation of his principles to each other, are sufficient evidence on the point. He seems even indifferent to those incongruities of his system which he must have known were provocative of doubt and uncertainty. When, e.g. he makes the mind or intellect the criterion of truth instead of the senses, the value of the newer standard is irretrievably impaired by his opinion, that both intellection and sensuous perception have a common origin. Nor is this the only conspicuous gap in his ratiocination. Perhaps in the true Skeptical spirit he was content with setting forth the best hypotheses his limited knowledge allowed him to form on the subject of the universe without being very careful of the congruity of his system as a whole. But though a pronounced Skeptic, the precise nature of his Skepticism is not quite so easily determined. That he was not a Pyrrhonist, a denier of the existence of Truth, is clear for several reasons: his own elaborate physical system, and his reliance to a great extent on reason and intuition, whatever their intrinsic merits, constitute a sufficient disproof of such a theory.3 Moreover, there is the fact stated by Plutarch, that he commented in severe terms on the Skeptical sophisms of Protagoras. There is also the distinction insisted on by Sextos Empeirikos between the doubt of Demokritos and complete Pyrrhonism, though as to this the extreme scrupulosity of the great commentator in excluding

4

E.g. Leukippos and Metrodoros of Chios, both of whom have Skeptical reputations.

2 Zeller, i. p. 740.

3 On the whole subject of the Skepticism of Demokritos, compare Zeller, Gesch. i. 744, &c.

4 Adr. Colotem. 1108; Reiske, x. p. 561. Cf. Sext. adv. Math. vii. 389. 5 Pyrr. Hyp. i. 213, &c. The main distinction seems to have been that the Demokriteans accepted the où μâλλov-a primary axiom of Greek Skepticism-in the sense of a distinct affirmation of the Law of Contradiction, e.g. something is A or not A, whereas the Pyrrhonists refused even the amount of dogma implied in that proposition, declining to affirm positively anything respecting either or both alternatives. On the fourfold employment of the phrase où μâλλov, comp. Diog. Laert. ix. 75, and Fabricius's note on Pyrr. Hyp. i. 213, Kühn's ed. i. p. 92.