PART I

GREEK PHILOSOPHY BEFORE PLATO

CHAPTER I

1

THE EARLY IONIAN PHILOSOPHERS

1. THALES of Miletus.1- We begin with the thinker to whom Aristotle assigned the position of leader in philosophical speculation. When Aristotle called Thales the leader, the first of those who speculated philosophically on nature, he undoubtedly implied a contrast between the tenor of the new conception and something which had preceded it. What that something is, Aristotle nowhere explicitly declares. It is probable, however, that he has in view the antecedent mythologies, whether in their cruder form, as expressed, for example, in Hesiod, or in a more developed fashion, as in the speculations of Pherecydes. The characteristic of the new line of investigation of which Thales is regarded as the originator was certainly that it took for its object the structure of the universe as it existed and was apprehended, and sought to find an explanation of 1 Born about 625 B.C.; died about 2 ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας. 547 B.C. -Arist. Met. A 983 b 20. (R.P. 10.)

it in some component, constituent, or relation of that universe itself. The term púois (nature), as we can see more definitely from the immediate successor of Thales, was beginning to lose its personified significance and to retain as the fundamental elements of its meaning (1) the total mass of actual fact, and (2) the generating principle thereof.

Thales, then, beginning his speculation on nature, seems to have offered as the fundamental principle of explanationWater.1 All things are formed from water; water is the primitive substance of all that is. On what he based this assertion, by what arguments he defended it, we do not know. Already in Aristotle's time there was only tradition respecting the utterances of Thales. It is to be added, however, that Thales evidently did not contemplate any such separation as afterwards was seen to be inevitable between the material substratum (as we call it) and the motive power or principle of change. To him evidently these two, being and change, were identical. Water, we may suppose, transformed itself into the variety of the changing universe by some inherent principle, or power of movement, which was not distinct from the material substratum itself. It cannot even be said that Thales attempted even in the most general terms to define in what way, or by what procedure, the material substratum transformed itself into the variety of the changing universe. That he identified the inherent principle of change with what is divine in nature and with the soul3 must be interpreted as meaning only that for Thales the fundamental principle of the universe was naturally the greatest, the divine, and that, like all the early thinkers, he drew no distinction between what we call mechanical or

1 Arist. Met. A 983 b 21. (R. P. 10.) when wávтa nλhpn Oeŵv elval. 405 a 2 Arist. Met. A 983 b 22. (R. P. 10.) 19: čoike dè kal Oaλñs. κινητικόν Arist. De An. i. 411 a 7: kal èv τι τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπολαβεῖν. (R.P. 13, τῷ ὅλῳ δέ τινες αὐτὴν τὴν ψυχὴν) 13 a.) μεμίχθαί φασιν, ὅθεν ἴσως καὶ Θαλῆς

externally determined movement, and spontaneous, selfdetermined change such as appears to be due to the soul. Throughout the thought of this early period, the term vuxn (soul) has a far wider denotation than with us. It signifies quite generally the principle of movement at large.

2. ANAXIMANDER of Miletus.-Far more important, because representing a much more advanced stage of abstraction, is the work of Anaximander, who is regarded as the immediate successor of Thales. Anaximander, according to tradition, was among the first to do work in astronomical science. He is said to have been the first to construct a map; and the first to have constructed the sun-dial 2 (though this is probably erroneous). His speculations about the visible universe he is said to have embodied in a work on nature (Tepì púσews), of which nothing but a few words now remain.3 Anaximander, so far as the specially philosophical side of his work is concerned, brings forward, as the principle or foundation of all that is, what he called the Infinite (тò άπεiρov)— an ambiguous term, of which Anaximander does not seem to have offered any unambiguous explanation. It is perhaps from a misunderstanding of a passage in Theophrastus that a later writer has said, "Anaximander was the first to use the term principle, or beginning (apxn)." Probably Theophrastus only meant to say that Anaximander was the first to declare as the principle and element of things, 'the Infinite.' In all probability Anaximander did speak of his 'Infinite' as the 'beginning' of things, for, however confusedly he may have conceived the matter, his speculations about the universe involved the distinction between the primitive condition and what follows therefrom.

1 Born about 610 B.C.; died after 540 B C.

2 R.P. 15. (Diog. Laert. ii. 1.)

3 R.P. 16. (Theophrast. fr. 2 ap.

4

Simpl. Phys. 24, 13.)

4 πρῶτος τοῦτο τοὔνομα κομίσας τῆς ἀρχῆς.—R.P. 16,

In the second place, Aristotle repeatedly and explicitly assigns to Anaximander a definite conception of the way in which the multiplicity, the variety, of things is generated from the Infinite. He uses always for the process the term ÉKKρíveσOαι (separation), and, as the general marks of the variety, the term evavтióтηTES1 (the Opposites). 1 The Opposites are sundered out from the Infinite. These opposites we no doubt name now by the terms of qualitiesdry and moist, cold and hot; but it is quite certain that the abstract notion of quality formed no part of the philosophical equipment at that time. There was no distinction then between thing and quality, such as is logically possible now. Anaximander meant by the Hot,' 'the Cold,' the concrete quanta or masses, forming part of the visible, tangible world,2 brought together, so to speak, rather in a collective fashion than logically by abstraction.

It would follow from this that Anaximander, so far as the general process of change in the universe is concerned, conceived of it as a constant emergence of opposites from the substratum, their coexistence in varying amounts, and in all probability their return according to some general law into the substratum itself—a cyclical process, in which the relation of the opposites to one another is metaphorically represented by the help of the term adicía (injustice, intrusion): the one opposite being conceived to encroach or intrude on the other. Evidently Aristotle is proceeding on the ground

1 Arist. Phys. i. 187 a 20. (R.P. 16 c.)

2 Hot, cold, dry, moist, are roughly equivalent to fire, air, earth, waterthe four elements. In Aristotle fire is the hot-dry, air the hot-moist, earth the cold-dry, and water the cold-moist.

"Anaximander of Miletus, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales, said that the principle [= material cause] and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce this name for the principle. He says it is neither water, nor any other of what are now

3 Theophrastus's account of Anaxi- called the elements, but a substance mander is as follows:

(púois) different from them, which is