i as yet there was nothing, and asked instead what -all
things really are now.
The great principle which underlies all their
thinking, though it is first put into words by
Parmenides, is that Nothing comes into being out of
nothing, and nothing passes away into nothing. They
saw, however, that particular things were always
1 Arist. Met. N, 4. 1091 Ὁ 8.
Introduction ες
coming into being and passing away again, and from this
it followed that their existence was no true or stable
one. The only things that were real and eternal were
the original matter which passed through all these
changes and the motion which gave rise to them, to
- which was soon added that law of proportion or compen-
sation which, despite the continual becoming and passing
away of things, secured the relative permanence and
stability of the various forms of existence that go to
make up the world. That these were, in fact, the
leading ideas of the early cosmologists, cannot, of course,
be proved till we have given a detailed exposition of
their systems ; but we can show at once how natural it
was for such thoughts to come to them. It is always
7 the problem of change and eee. that first excites the
᾿ς wonder which, as Plato says, is the starting-point of
all philosophy. Besides this, there was in the Ionic
nature a vein of melancholy which led it to brood
upon the instability of things. Even before the
time of Thales, Mimnermos of Kolophon sings the
sadness_of change ; and, at a later date, the lament
of Simonides, that the generations of men fall like the
leaves of the forest, touches a chord already struck by
the earliest singer of Ionia Now, so long as men
could believe everything they saw was alive like them-
selves, the spectacle of the unceasing death and new
birth of. nature would only tinge their thoughts with a
certain mournfulness, which would find its expression
in such things as the Linos dirges which the Greeks
borrowed from their Asiatic neighbours ;* but when
1 φἰπποηΐδες, fr. 85, 2 Bergk. 722. vi. 146. 2 On Adonis-Thammuz, Lityerses, Linos, and Osiris, see Frazer, Golden
Bough, vol. i. pp. 278 sqq.
12 Early Greek Philosophy
primitive animism, which had seen conscious life every-
where, was gone, and polytheistic mythology, which ~
had personified at least the more striking natural
phenomena, was going, it must have seemed that there
was nowhere any abiding reality. Nowadays we are
accustomed, for good and for ill, to the notion of
dead things, obedient, not to inner impulses, but solely
to mechanical laws. But that is not the view of the
natural man, and we may be sure that, when first it
forced itself on him, it must have provoked a strong
sense of dissatisfaction. Relief was only to be had
from the reflexion that as nothing comes from nothing,
nothing can pass away into nothing. There must,
then, be something which always is, something funda-
mental which persists throughout all change, and
ceases to exist in one form only that it may reappear in
another. It is significant that this something is spoken
of as “deathless” and “ageless.” *
VII. So far as JI know, no historian of Greek
philosophy has clearly laid it down that the word
which was used by the early cosmologists to express
this idea of a permanent and primary substance was
none other than φύσις ; and that the title Περὶ φύσεως,
so commonly given to philosophical works of the
sixth and fifth centuries B.C? means simply Cox-
cerning the Primary Substance. ~ Both Plato and
Aristotle use the term in this sense when they are
1 The Epic phrase ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως seems to have suggested this. Anaximander applied both epithets to the primary substance (ΚΕ, P. 17 and 17a). Euripides, in describing the blessedness of the scientific life (fr. inc. 910), says ἀθανάτου. . . φύσεως κόσμον ἀγήρω (R. P. 148 ς fin.).
2 I do not mean to imply that the philosophers used this title them- selves; for early prose writings had no titles. The writer mentioned his name and the subject of his work in the first sentence, as Herodotos, for instance, does,
INTRODUCTION 13
discussing the earlier philosophy,’ and its history shows
clearly enough what its original meaning must have
been. In Greek philosophical language, φύσις always
means that which is primary, fundamental, and
persistent, as opposed to what is secondary, derivative,
and transient; what is “given,” as opposed to that
which is made or becomes. It is what is there to
begin with. It is true that Plato and his successors
also identify φύσις with the best or most normal con-
dition of a thing; but that is just because they held
the goal of any development to be prior to the process
by which it is reached. Such an idea was wholly un-
known to the pioneers of philosophy. They sought
the explanation of the incomplete world we know, not
in the end, but in the beginning. It seemed to them
that, if only they could strip off all the modifications
which Art and Chance had introduced, they would get
at the ultimately real; and so the search after φύσις,
first in the world at large and afterwards in human
society, became the panes interest of the age we have to
deal with. Aco,
The word ais, ΑΝ chic the early cosmologists
are usually said to have designated the object of their
search, is in this sense purely Aristotelian, It is
quite natural that it should be employed in the well-
known historical sketch of the First Book of the Jeta-
physics; for Aristotle is there testing the theories of
earlier thinkers by his own doctrine of the four causes.
But Plato never uses the term in this connexion, and
it does not occur once in the genuine fragments of the
1 Plato, Laws, 892 c 2, φύσιν βούλονται λέγειν γένεσιν (1.6. τὸ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται) τὴν περὶ τὰ πρῶτα (1.6. τὴν τῶν πρώτων). Arist. Phys. B, I. 193 ἃ 21, διόπερ οἱ μὲν πῦρ, οἱ δὲ γῆν, οἱ δ᾽ ἀέρα φασίν, οἱ δὲ ὕδωρ, οἱ δ᾽ ἔνια τούτων, οἱ δὲ πάντα ταῦτα τὴν φύσιν εἶναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων.
14 Early Greek Philosophy
early philosophers. It is confined to the Stoic and
Peripatetic handbooks from which most of our know-
ledge is derived, and these simply repeat Aristotle.
Zeller has pointed out in a footnote’ that it would be
an anachronism to refer the subtle Aristotelian use
of the word to the beginnings of speculation. To
Anaximander ἀρχή could only have meant “begin-
ning,” and it was far more than a beginning that the
early cosmologists were looking for: it was the eternal
ground of all things.
There is one very important conclusion that follows
at once from the account just given of the meaning of
φύσις, and it is, that the search for the primary sub-
stance really was the thing that interested the Ionian
philosophers. Had their main object been, as
Teichmiiller held it was, the explanation of celestial
and meteorological phenomena, their researches would
not haye been called Περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίη,, but rather
Περὶ οὐρανοῦ or Περὶ μετεώρων. Ἀπά this we shall
find confirmed by a study of the way in which Greek
cosmology developed. The growing thought which
may be traced through the successive representatives
of any school is always that which concerns the
primary substance, while the astronomical and other
theories are, in the main, peculiar to the individual
thinkers. Teichmiiller undoubtedly did good service
by his protest against the treatment of these theories
as mere isolated curiosities. They form, on the con-
1 Zeller, p. 217, n. 2 (Eng. trans. p. 248, n. 2). See below, Chap. I.
Psf ἃς
2 We have the authority of Plato for giving them this name. Cf. Phd. 96 « 7, ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν. So, in the fragment of Euripides referred to on p. 12, n. 1, the man who discerns “the ageless order of immortal vous” is referred ‘to as ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας ἔσχε μάθησιν.
Introduction 1:55
trary, coherent systems which must be looked at as wholes. But it is none the less true that Greek philosophy began, as it ended, with the search for what ν' was abiding in the flux of things. | » VIII. But how.could this give back to nature the Motion and life of which it had been robbed by advancing know- ledge? Simply by making it possible for the life that had hitherto been supposed to reside in each particular thing to be transferred to the one thing of which all others were passing forms. The very process of birth, growth, and decay might now be regarded as the unceasing activity of the one ultimate reality. Aristotle and his followers expressed this by saying that the early cosmologists believed in an “eternal motion,” and in substance this is correct; though it is not probable that they said anything about the eternal motion in their writings. It is more likely that they simply took it for granted. In early- times, it is not movement but rest that has to be ‘accounted for, and we may be sure that the eternity of motion was not asserted till it had been denied. As we shall see, it was Parmenides who first denied it. The idea of a single ultimate substance, when , thoroughly worked out, seemed to leave no room for motion; and after the time of Parmenides, we do find that philosophers were concerned to show how ἢ it began. Αἱ first, this would not seem to require, explanation at all. κ᾿
Modern writers sometimes give the name of
Hylozoism to this way of thinking, but the term is
apt to. “be misleading. It suggests theories which deny
the separate reality of life and spirit, whereas, in the
days of Thales, and even far later, the distinction
} tive view of
16 Early Greek Philosophy
between matter and spirit had not been felt, still less
formulated in such a way that it could be denied.
The uncreated, indestructible reality of which these
early thinkers tell us was a body, or even matter, if we
choose to call it so; but it was not matter in the
sense in which matter is opposed to spirit. - *
The downfall *1X. We have indicated the main characteristics of ΠΡ the primitive view of the world, and we have sketched aires rorid. in outline the view which displaced it; we must now consider the causés which led to the downfall of the one and the rise of the other. Foremost among these was undoubtedly the widening of the Greek horizon occasioned by the great extension of maritime enter- prise which followed the decay of the Phoenician naval supremacy. The scene of the old stories had, as a rule, been laid just outside the boundaries of the world known to the men who believed them. Odysseus does not meet with Kirke or the Kyklops or the Sirens in the familiar Aegean, but in regions which lay beyond the ken of the Greeks at the time the Odyssey - was composed. Now, however, the West was begin- ning to be familiar too, and the fancy of the Greek explorers led them to identify the lands which they discovered with the places which the hero of the national fairy-tale had come to in his wanderings. It was soon discovered that the monstrous beings in question weré no longer to be found there, and the belief grew up that they had never been there at all. So, too, the Milesians had settled colonies all round the Euxine. The colonists went out with ᾿Αργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα in their minds ; and, at the same time as they changed the name of the Inhospitable to the Hospit- able Sea, they logalised the “far country” (aia) of the
Introduction 17
primitive tale, and made Jason fetch the Golden Fleece
from Kolchis. Above all, the Phokaians had explored
the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Herakles,
and the new knowledge that the “ endless paths” of
the sea had boundaries must have moved men’s minds
in muchhe same way as the discovery of America did
in later days. A single example will illustrate the
process which was always going on. According to the
primitive view, the heavens were supported by a giant
called Atlas. No one had ever seen him, though he
was supposed to live in Arkadia. The Phokaian ex-
plorers identified him with a cloud-capped mountain in
Africa, and once they had done this, the old belief was
doomed. It was impossible to go on believing in a
god who was also a mountain, conveniently situated
for the trader to steer by,,as he sailed to Tarshish in
quest of silver.
X. But by far the most important question we have Alleged _
2 Ξ Oriental origin
to face is that of the nature and extent of the influence of philosophy.
exercised by what we call Eastern wisdom on the
Greek mind. It is a common idea even now that the
Greeks in some way derived their philosophy from
Egypt and Babylon, and we must therefore try to
understand as clearly as possible what such a state-
ment really means. To begin with, we must observe
that no “writer of the period during which Greek
philosophy flourished knows anything at all of its
having come from the East. Herodotos would not
have omitted to say so, had he ever heard of it; for it
would have confirmed his own belief in the Egyptian
origin of Greek religion and civilisation.’ Plato, who