it is, we say that we see and hear and understand aright, and yet we believe that what is warm becomes cold, and what is cold warm; that what is hard turns soft, and what is soft hard ; that what is living dies, and that things are born from what lives not; and that all those things are changed, and that what they were and what they are now are in no way alike. We think that iron, which is hard, is rubbed away by contact with the finger;! and so with gold and stone and everything which we fancy to be strong, and that earth and stone are made out of water; so that it turns out that we neither see nor know realities. Now these things do not agree with one another. We said that there were many things that were eternal and had forms and strength of their own, and yet we fancy that _ they all suffer alteration, and that they change from what we see each time. It is clear, then, that we did not see aright after all, nor are we right in believing that all these things are many. They would not change if they were real, but each thing would be just what we believed it to be; for nothing _ is stronger than true reality. But if it has changed, what _ was has passed away, and what was not is come into being. : So then, if there were many things, they would have to be just of the same nature as the one. R. P. 147.
| (9) Now, if it were to exist, it must needs be one; but if it is one, it cannot have body ; for, if it had body it would have parts, and would no longer be one. ΚΕ. P. 146.”
: (10) If what is real is divided, it moves ; but if it moves, it cannot be. R. P. 144 a.3
166. It has been pointed out that Melissos was bers of reality.
_ perhaps not originally a member of the Eleatic school ;
but he certainly adopted all the views of Parmenides
as to the true nature of reality with one remarkable
exception. He appears to have opened his treatise with
1 Reading ὁμουρέων with Bergk. Diels keeps the MS, ὁμοῦ ῥέων ; Zeller (p. 613, n.’I) conjectures ὑπ᾽ lod ῥέων.
2 TI read εἰ μὲν οὖν εἴη with E F for the εἰ μὲν ὃν εἴη of Ὁ. The ἐὸν which still stands in R. P. is a piece of local colour due to the editors, Diels also now reads οὖν ( Vors. p. 149, 2).
8 Diels now reads ἀλλὰ with E for the dua of F, and attaches the word to the next sentence,
374 Early Greek Philosophy
a reassertion of the Parmenidean “ Nothing is not” (fr
1a), and the arguments by which he supported this
view are those with which we are already familias
(fr. 1). Reality, as with Parmenides, is eternal, ar
attribute which Melissos expressed in a way of his own
He argued that since everything that has come intc
being has a beginning and an end, everything that has
not come into being has no beginning or end. Aris-
totle is very severe upon him for this simple conversior
of a universal affirmative proposition ;* but, of course
his belief was not founded on that. His whole
conception of reality made it necessary for him tc
regard it as eternal.? It would be a more seriou:
matter if Aristotle were right in believing, as he
seems to have done,? that Melissos inferred that
what is must be infinite in space, because it hac
neither beginning nor end in time. This, however
seems quite incredible. As we have the fragment
which Aristotle interprets in this way (fr. 2), we are
quite entitled to understand it for ourselves, and |
cannot see anything to justify Aristotle’s assumptior
1 Arist. Phys. A, 3. 186a 7 (R. P. 143 a). Aristotle finds two flaws i the Eleatic reasoning : (1) ψευδῆ λαμβάνουσιν ; (2) ἀσυλλόγιστοί εἰσιν αὐτῶ; οἱ λόγοι. This is the first of these flaws. It is alsomentioned in Soph. £/ 168 Ὁ 35(R. P. 22.). So Eudemos af, Simpl. Phys. p. 105, 24, οὐ γάρ el τὸ γενόμενον ἀρχὴν ἔχει, τὸ μὴ γενόμενον ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἔχει, μᾶλλον ὃ τὸ μὴ ἔχον ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἐγένετο. y
2 The real reason is given in the paraphrase in Simpl. Phys. p. 103, 2: (R. P. 142 a), συγχωρεῖται yap καὶ τοῦτο ὑπὸ τῶν φυσικῶν, though o course Melissos himself would not have put it in that way. He regardec himself as a φυσικός like the rest ; but, from the time of Aristotle, it wa a commonplace that the Eleatics were not φυσικοί, since they deniec motion.
3 This has been denied by Offner, ‘‘ Zur Beurtheilung des Melissos ’ (Arch. iv. pp. 12 sqq.), but I now think he goes too far. Cf. especiall; Top. ix. 6, ws ἄμφω ταὐτὰ ὄντα τῷ ἀρχὴν ἔχειν, τό τε γεγονὸς Kal τὰ πεπερασμένον. The same point is made in ιϑοῤᾷ. Zl. 167 Ὁ 13 an 181 a 27.
The Younger Eleatics 375
that the expression “without limit” means without limit in space.’
167. Melissos did indeed differ from Parmenides in holding that reality was spatially as well as temporally infinite ; but he gave an excellent reason for this belief, and had no need to support it by the extraordinary argument just alluded to. What he said was that, if it were limited, it would be limited by empty space. This we know from Aristotle himself, and it marks a real advance upon Parmenides. He had thought it possible to regard reality as a finite sphere, but it would have been difficult for him to work out this view in detail. He would have had to say there was nothing outside the sphere ; but no one knew better than he that there is no such thing as nothing. Melissos saw that you cannot imagine a finite sphere without regarding it as surrounded by an infinite empty space ; ὃ and as, in common with the rest of the school, he denied the void (fr. 7), he was forced to say reality was spatially infinite (fr. 3). It is possible that he was influenced in this by his association with the Ionic school. ;
From the infinity of reality, it follows that it must
be’one ; for, if it were not one, it would be bounded by
something else (fr. 5). And, being one, it must be
homogeneous throughout (fr. 6a), for that is what we
1 The words ἀλλ᾽ ἄπειρόν ἐστι mean simply ‘ but it is without limit,” and this is simply a repetition of the statement that it has no beginning or end. The nature of the limit can only be determined by the context, and accordingly, when Melissos does introduce the subject of spatial infinity, he is careful to say τὸ μέγεθος ἄπειρον (fr. 3).
2 Arist. Gen. Corr. i. 8. 325 ἃ 14, ὃν καὶ ἀκίνητον τὸ πᾶν εἶναί φασι καὶ ἄπειρον ἔνιοι " τὸ γὰρ πέρας περαίνειν ἂν πρὸς τὸ κενόν. That this refers to Melissos has been proved by Zeller (p. 612, n. 2).
8 Note the disagreement with Zeno (§ 162).
Reality
spatially
infinite.
Opposition to Tonians,
376 Early Greek Philosophy
mean by one. . Reality, then, is a single, homogeneous,
corporeal plenum, stretching out to infinity in space, and
going backwards and forwards to infinity in time.
168. Eleaticism was always critical, and we are not
without indications of the attitude taken up by Melissos
towards contemporary systems. The flaw which he
found in the Ionian theories was that they all assumed
some want of homogeneity in the One, which is a real
inconsistency. Further, they all allowed the possibility
of change ; but, if all things are one, change must be a
form of coming into being and passing away. If you
admit that a thing can change, you cannot maintain
that it is eternal. Nor can the arrangement of the
parts of reality alter, as Anaximander, for instance,
had held; any such change necessarily involves a
coming into being and passing away. 3
The next point made by Melissos is somewhat
peculiar. Reality, he says, cannot feel sorrow or pain ;
for that is always due to the addition or subtraction of
something, which is impossible. It is not easy to be
- sure what this refers to. Perhaps it is to the theory of
Herakleitos with its Want and Surfeit, perhaps to some- thing of which no record has been preserved.
Motion in general * and rarefaction and condensation
in particular are impossible ; for both imply the exist-
ence of empty space. Divisibility is excluded for the
same reason. These are the same arguments as
Parmenides employed.
1 The view of Baumker that Melissos admitted ἀντιπερίστασις or motion in pleno (Jahrb. f. ki. Phil., 1886, p. 541 ; Das Problem der Materie, p. 59) depends upon some words of Simplicius (Phys. p. 104, 13), οὐχ ὅτι μὴ δυνατὸν διὰ πλήρους κινεῖσθαι, ws ἐπὶ τῶν σωμάτων λέγομεν x.T.X. These words were formerly turned into Ionic and passed off as a fragment of Melissos. They are, however, part of Simplicius’s own argument against Alexander, and have nothing to do with Melissos at all.
The Younger Eleatics 377
169. In nearly all accounts of the system of Opposition to
Melissos, we find it stated that he denied the
corporeality of what is real,—an opinion which is
supported by a reference to fr. 9, which is certainly
quoted by Simplicius to prove this very point. If,
however, our general view as to the character of early
Greek Philosophy is correct, the statement must seem
incredible. And it will seem even more surprising
when we find that in the Metaphysics Aristotle says
that, while the unity of Parmenides seemed to be ideal,
that of Melissos was material.? Now the fragment, as
it stands in the MSS. of Simplicius? puts a purely
hypothetical case, and would most naturally be under-
stood as a disproof of the existence of something on
the ground that, if it existed, it would have to be both
corporeal and one. This cannot refer to the Eleatic
One, in which Melissos himself believed ; and, as the
argument is almost verbally the same as one of
Zeno’s,* it is natural to suppose that it also was
directed against the Pythagorean assumption of ulti-
mate units. The only possible objection is that Sim-
plicius, who twice quotes the fragment, certainly took
it in the sense usually given to 5 But it was very
natural for him to make this mistake. “The One”
was an expression that had two senses in the middle
of the fifth century B.Cc.; it meant either the whole of
1 See, however, Baumker, Das Problem der Materie, pp. 57 sqq-, who remarks that ἐόν (or ὄν) in fr. 9 must be the predicate, as it has no article. In his fifth edition (p. 611, n. 2) Zeller has adopted the view here taken. He rightly observes that the hypothetical form εἰ μὲν ὃν εἴη speaks for it, and that the subject to εἴη must be ἕκαστον τῶν πολλῶν, as with Zeno,
2 Met. A, 5. 986 Ὁ 18 (R. P. 101).
3 Brandis changed the εἴη to ἔστι, but there is no warrant for this.
4 Cf. Zeno, fr. 1, especially the words εἰ δὲ ἔστιν, ἀνάγκη ἕκαστον μέγεθός τι ἔχειν καὶ πάχος.
5 Simpl. Phys. pp. 87, 6, and 110, 1.
Pythagoreans,
378 Early Greek Philosophy
reality or the point as a spatial unit. To maintain it
Opposition to . Anaxagoras.
in the first sense, the Eleatics were obliged to disprove
it in the second ; and so it sometimes seemed that they
were speaking of their own “One” when they really
meant the other. We have seen that the very same
difficulty was felt about Zeno’s denial of the “one.” ἢ
170. The most remarkable fragment of Melissos is, perhaps, the last (fr. 3). It seems to be directed against Anaxagoras ; at least the language used seems more applicable to him than to any one else. Anaxa- goras had admitted (ὃ 137, fiz.) that, so far as our per- ceptions go, they do not entirely agree with his theory, though he held this was due solely to their weakness. Melissos, taking advantage of this admission, urges that, if we give up the senses as the ultimate test of reality, we are not entitled to reject the Eleatic theory. With wonderful penetration he points out that if we are to say, with Anaxagoras, that things are a many, we are bound also to say that each one of them is such as the Eleatics declared the One to be. In other words, the only consistent pluralism is the atomic theory.
Melissos has long been unduly depreciated owing to
the criticisms of Aristotle ; but these, we have seen, are
based mainly on a somewhat pedantic objection to the
false conversion in the early part of the argument.
Melissos knew nothing about the rules of conversion ;
and if he had, he could easily have made his reasoning
formally correct without modifying his system. His
greatness consisted in this, that not only was he the
real systematiser of Eleaticism, but he was also able to
see, before the pluralists saw it themselves, the only