CHAPTER V.

ATTEMPTS AT RECONCILING ELEATICS AND

HERACLITUS.

SECTION I.-EMPEDOCLES.

AN attempt to reconcile the Eleatics and Heraclitus was first made by Empedocles of Agrigentum (born about 495). He agreed with the Eleatics that existence out of nothing, as well as annihilation of something once existing, was inconceivable; but he also agreed with Heraclitus in his conception of multiplicity and motion in the universe. He reconciled these two views by supposing an original and lasting, but narrowly limited multiplicity, to which all varied existence may be and is ultimately reduced. This he found in the four elements, viz., fire, water, earth, and air. But if these are truly elements, they must be the ultimate, the simplest forms of existence. And so he cannot explain the process of their modification, as Heraclitus did, by maintaining that the inherent contrast gave motion-for with him they are simple. He must therefore assume that motion and change are caused from without by some force. But even with this force, there is no absolute birth or absolute destruction, but it merely

causes different positions, different congeries (mixture and severing, as he calls it) of the elements.

This philosopher-half a poet-assumes two forces— Love and Hate (attraction and repulsion), and he thinks that originally all elements were mixed to one vast Chaos (Spheros), held together by the attractive force, Love; then the repelling, severing force, Hate, came into action and tore this one complex existence into the numerous individual existences; and now life and motion consist of the continual wrestling of these two forces. His theory of perception is very interesting, and forms a stepping-stone to the subsequent materialistic views. Starting with the proposition: 'Only the similar in nature can perceive the similar,' he argues that man contains all the substance of the outer world, and so he says: With earth (in us) we perceive earth; with water, water; with ether, ether; with fire, fire; with love, love; with hatred, hatred.' Sensation also results from a mixture of the elements. Thought is a consequence of

material existence.

He also believed as Pythagoras did in Palingenesis, or the existence of the soul previous and subsequent to this life, a wandering of the soul into different bodies, and to different spheres. His moral principles were very high. He relinquished all prospects of political honours, which his noble birth and popular character afforded him, and made it his task to search for knowledge and to be of use to his fellow-men.

It was evident that the four elements which Empedocles assumed as the original forms of the universe

were not really simple. We shall now meet with attempts to explain the universe on the hypothesis that it ultimately consists of innumerable minute particles, which may be conceived in two different ways: either as qualitatively different from one another or qualitatively the same. The former of these two views we have in Anaxagoras, the other in the Atomists.

SECTION II.-ANAXAGORAS.

Anaxagoras of Clazomene (born 500 B.C.), settled in Athens, which town became the seat of almost all the subsequent great Greek philosophers. He had among his pupils Pericles, Phidias, Euripides, and Socrates. Sharing the friendship of Pericles, he became obnoxious to his enemies, and having been accused of atheism for explaining the signs and tokens of augury according to natural laws, for giving a moral meaning to the myths of Homer, and for interpreting allegorically the names of the gods, he was imprisoned, and only through the exertions of Pericles liberated. He left Athens and died in Lampsacus.

He too held that once all was Chaos. The innumerable, indivisible particles, of which there were as many different kinds as there are different things, were all mixed up and huddled together in one great disorder. The unity of Chaos was severed, the first shock of motion was given, by a force from without. This force is not like the Hate and Love of Empedocles, but is intelligent force; intelligence, mind itself, the great world-soul,

νους. Νοῦς gave the first shock of motion which severed Chaos, and drove all these particles about, so that the similar ones united with their similars to form things, as they now are; but motion still persists, and so things change continually.

Now, though Chaos has been severed, the individualisation of things is not complete, and in every one thing there are some of these minute particles of everything else remaining; and thus we have no absolute difference, but there is still a certain continuity-things are not, as he expresses it, 'chopped asunder as with a hatchet.'

There are organic germs floating about in the air, and so the earth produces plants and the higher organisms. Both animals and plants have souls, the one greater, the other smaller. These souls are individualised, severed parts of the world-soul, voûs itself.

SECTION III.-THE ATOMISTS.

The ultimate particles of Anaxagoras do not present a satisfactory solution of the question: they are not simple. In fact, this hypothesis begs the question, inasmuch as these ultimate particles have already all the differentiated characteristics of all individual things. An explanation seems very round-about, in which, from the outset, one seems to posit all different things, split them up into their smallest parts, each of which has all the attributes of the whole thing, and then, after having huddled all particles together, call for a wondrous intelligence to give the first impulse, to

sever these particles, and let them combine into things. This voûs coming at the opportunate moment to lend his assistance where reason could find no help, was rightly called by Aristotle a deus ex machina, a god from behind the scenes. The expression was used by Plato, who says that bad philosophers are like bad dramatists, who, finding that the natural flow of events and characters has woven their drama into an insoluble knot, caused some god from behind the scenes to cut it through.

These difficulties were felt by the Atomists, and they made an attempt to solve them.

Of the founder of this school, Leucippus, we only have the fact that he was the founder and the teacher of its chief representative, Democritus of Abdera (born 460 B.C.).

Instead of the complex units of Anaxagoras, Democritus assumes indivisible units without qualitative difference, atoms. And instead of the supernatural world-soul as cause of motion and change in these units, he assumes a natural cause of motion inherent in the atoms. Though atoms have no qualitative difference, they differ in quantity-some larger, some smaller. These units, in order to be units, must be distinct; they are separated by empty space. If they are similar in quality, but different in quantity, they must necessarily differ in weight, and being in empty space, unsupported, they must have a tendency to fall. So all atoms fall downwards; but, meeting with resistance, they rebound upwards—and so, we have continual motion to and fro.

But in this act of falling and rebounding, he thinks,