Leukippos and Demokritos have decided about all things practically by the same method and on the same theory, taking as their starting-point what naturally comes first. Some of the ancients had held that the real must necessarily be one and immovable; for, said they, empty space is not real, and motion would be impossible without empty space separated ffom matter 3 nor, further, could reality be a many, if there were nothing to separate things, And it makes no difference if any one holds that the All is not continuous, but discrete, with its parts in contact (the Pythagorean view), instead of holding that reality is many, not one, and that there is empty space. For, if it is divisible at every point there is no one, and therefore no many, and the Whole is empty (Zeno); while, if we say it is divisible in one place
1 This prejudice is apparent all through Gomperz’s Greek Thinkers, and seriously impairs the value of that fascinating, though somewhat imaginative work. It is amusing to notice that Brieger, from the same point of view, regards the custom of making Anaxagoras the last of the Presocratics as due to theological prepossessions (Hermes, xxxvi. p. 185). I am sorry that I cannot agree with either side; but the bitterness of the disputants bears witness to the fundamental importance of the questions raised by the early Greek philosophers.
2 Arist. de Gen. Corr. A, 8. 324 b 35 (R. P. 193).
386 Early Greek Philosophy
and not in another, this looks like an arbitrary fiction; for up to what point and for what reason will part of the Whole be in this state and be full, while the rest is discrete? And, on the same grounds, they further say that there can be no motion. In consequence of these reasonings, then, going beyond perception and overlooking it in the belief that we ought to follow the argument, they say that the All is one and immovable (Parmenides), and some of them that it is infinite (JZe/issos), for any limit would be bounded by empty space. ‘This, then, is the opinion they expressed about the truth, and these are the reasons which led them to do so. Now, so far as arguments go, this conclusion does seem to follow ; but, if we appeal to facts, to hold such a view looks like madness. No one who is mad is so far out of his senses that fire and ice appear to him to be one; it is only things that are right, and things that appear right from habit, in which madness makes some people see no difference.
Leukippos, however, thought he had a theory which was in harmony with sense-perception, and did not do away with coming into being and passing away, nor motion, nor the multiplicity of things. He made this concession to experience, while he conceded, on the other hand, to those who invented the One that motion was impossible without the void, that the void was not real, and that nothing of what was real was not real. ‘‘For,” said he, ‘‘that which is strictly speaking real is an absolute plenum; but the plenum is not one. On the contrary, there are an infinite number of them, and they are invisible owing to the smallness of their bulk. They move in the void (for there is a void); and by their coming together they effect coming into. being ;. by their separation, passing away.”
It is true that in this passage Zeno and Melissos
are not named, but the reference to them is unmistak-
able. The argument of Zeno against the Pythagoreans
is clearly given ; and Melissos was the only Eleatic who
made reality infinite, a point which is distinctly men-
tioned. We are therefore justified by Aristotle’s words
Leukippos of Miletos 387
in explaining the genesis of Atomism and its relation
to Eleaticism as follows. Zeno had shown that all
pluralist systems yet known, and especially Pytha-
goreanism, were unable to stand before the arguments
from infinite divisibility which he adduced. Melissos
had used the same argument against Anaxagoras, and
had added, by way of reductio ad absurdum, that, if
there were many things, each one of them must be
such as the Eleatics held the One to be. To this
Leukippos answers, “Why not?” He admitted the
force of Zeno’s arguments by setting a limit to
: divisibility, and to each of the atoms which he thus
arrived at he ascribed all the predicates of the Eleatic
One ; for Parmenides had shown that if 22 zs, it must
have these predicates somehow. The same view is
implied in a passage of Aristotle’s Physics. “Some,”
we are there told, “surrendered to both arguments, to the
first, the argument that all things are one, if the word
zs is used in one sense only (Parmenides), by affirming
the reality of what is not; to the second, that based
on dichotomy (Zeno), by introducing indivisible magni-
tudes.” Finally, it is only by regarding the matter in
this way that we can attach any meaning to another
statement of Aristotle’s to the effect that Leukippos
and Demokritos, as well as the Pythagoreans, virtually
make all things out of numbers. Leukippos, in fact,
gave the Pythagorean monads the character of the
Parmenidean One.
174. We must observe that the atom is not mathe- Atoms.
1 Arist. Phys. A, 3. 187 a 1 (R. P. 134 Ὁ).
2 Arist. de Caelo, Τ', 4. 303 a 8, τρόπον γάρ τινα καὶ οὗτοι (Λεύκιππος καὶ Δημόκριτος) πάντα τὰ ὄντα ποιοῦσιν ἀριθμοὺς καὶ ἐξ ἀριθμῶν. This also serves to explain what Herakleides may have meant by attributing the theory of corporeal ὄγκοι to the Pythagorean Ekphantos of Syracuse (above, p. 338, n. 1).
388 Early Greek Philosophy
matically indivisible, for it has magnitude; it is,
however, physically indivisible, because, like the One
of Parmenides, it contains in it no empty space.’ Each
atom has extension, and all the atoms are exactly
alike in substance.” Therefore all differences in things
must be accounted for either by the shape of the atoms
or by their arrangement. It seems probable that the
three ways in which differences arise, namely, shape,
connexion with them.? This explains, too, why the
atoms are called “ forms” or “figures,” a way of
speaking which seems to be of Pythagorean origin.‘
That they are also called φύσις " is quite intelligible
if we remember what was said of that word in
"the Introduction (§ VII.). The differences in shape,
order, and position just referred to account for the
1 The Epicureans misunderstood this point, or misrepresented it in order to magnify their own originality (see Zeller, p. 857, n. 3; Eng. trans. ii. p. 225, n. 2).
2 Arist. de Caelo, A, 7. 275 Ὁ 32, τὴν δὲ φύσιν εἶναί φασιν αὐτῶν μίαν ; Phys. Τ', 4. 203 a 34, αὐτῷ (Δημοκρίτῳ) τὸ κοινὸν σῶμα πάντων ἐστὶν ἀρχή.
8. Arist. Met. A, 4. 985 Ὁ 13 (R. P. 192); cf. de Gen. Corr. 315 Ὁ 6. As Diels’ suggests, the illustration from the letters of the alphabet is probably due to Demokritos. It shows, in any case, how the word στοιχεῖον came to be used later for ‘‘element.” We must read, with .Wilamowitz, τὸ δὲ Z τοῦ H θέσει for τὸ δὲ Z τοῦ N θέσει, the older form of the letter Z being just an H laid upon its side (Diels, Z/ementum, p. 13, n. I).
4 Demokritos wrote a work, Περὶ ἰδεῶν (Sext. Math. vii. 137; R. P. 204), which Diels identifies with the Περὶ τῶν διαφερόντων ῥυσμῶν of Thrasylos, 727}. v. 3. Theophrastos refers to Demokritos, ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν εἰδῶν (de Senstbus, ὃ 51). Plut. adv. Col. 1111 a, εἶναι δὲ πάντα τὰς ἀτόμους, ἰδέας ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ καλουμένας (so the MSS, : ἰδίως, Wyttenbach ; <#> ἰδέας, Diels). Arist. Phys. Τ', 4. 203 a 21, (Δημόκριτος) ἐκ τῆς πανσπερμίας τῶν σχημάτων (ἄπειρα ποιεῖ τὰ στοιχεῖα). Cf. de Gen. Corr. A, 2. 315 Ὁ 7 (ΚΕ. P. 196). :
5 Arist. Phys. ©, 9. 265 Ὁ 25; Simpl. Phys. p. 1318, 33, ταῦτα yap (τὰ ἄτομα σώματα) ἐκεῖνοι φύσιν ἐκάλουν.
4 Leukippos of Miletos 389
s “opposites,” the “elements” being regarded rather as
3 aggregates of these (πανσπερμίαι), as by Anaxagoras,’
175. Leukippos affirmed the existence both of the The void.
Full and the Empty, terms which he may have
_ borrowed from Melissos.2” As we have seen, he had
to assume the existence of empty space, which the
: Eleatics had denied, in order to make his explanation
. of the nature of body possible. Here again he is
developing a Pythagorean view. The Pythagoreans
had spoken of the void, which kept the units apart ;
but they had not distinguished it from atmospheric
‘ air (§ 53), which Empedokles had shown to be a
corporeal substance (δ 107). Parmenides, indeed, had
: formed a clearer conception of space, but only to
deny its reality. Leukippos started from this. He
admitted, indeed, that space was not real, that is to
say, corporeal; but he maintained that it existed all
the same. He hardly, it is true, had words to express
his discovery in; for the verb “to be” had hitherto
been used by philosophers only of body. But he did
his best to make his meaning clear by saying that
“what is not” (in the old corporealist sense) “is” (in
another sense) just as much as “what is.” The void
is as real as body.
It is a curious fact that the Atomists, who are
commonly regarded as the great materialists of
antiquity, were actually the first to say distinctly that
a thing might be real without being a body.
176. It might seem a hopeless task to disentangle Cosmology. the cosmology of Leukippos from that of Demokritos, with which it is generally identified ; but that very fact
1 Simpl. Phys. p. 36, 1 (Diels, Vors. p. 346), and R. P. 196 a. 2 Arist. Met. A, 4. 985 Ὁ 4(R. P. 192). Cf. Melissos, fr. 7 sud fin.
390 Early Greek Philosophy
affords an invaluable clue. So far as we know, no one
after Theophrastos was able to distinguish the doctrines
of the two men, and it follows from this that all definite
statements about Leukippos in later writers must, in
the long run, go back to him. If we follow this up,
we shall be able to give a fairly clear account of the
system, and we shall even come across some views
which are peculiar to Leukippos and were not adopted
by Demokritos.'
We shall start from the fuller of the two doxo-
graphies in Diogenes, which comes from an epitome of
Theophrastos.” It is as follows :—
He says that the All is infinite, and that it is part full, and part empty. These (the full and the empty), he says, are the elements. From them arise innumerable worlds and are resolved into them. The worlds come into being thus. There were borne along by “abscision from the infinite” many bodies of all sorts of figures “into a mighty void,” and they being gathered together produce a single vortex. In it, as they came into collision with one another and were whirled round in all manner of ways, those which were alike were separated apart and came to their likes. But, as they were no longer able to revolve in equilibrium owing to their multitude, those of them that were fine went out to the external void, as if passed through a sieve; the rest stayed together, and becoming entangled with one another, ran down together, and made a first spherical structure. This was in substance like a membrane or skin containing in itself all kinds of bodies. And, as these bodies were borne round in a vortex, in virtue of the resistance of the middle, the surround- ing membrane became thin, as the contiguous bodies kept
1 Cf, Zeller, ‘‘Zu Leukippus” (Arch. xv. p. 138).
3 Diog. ix. 31 sqq. (R. P. 197, 197 c). This passage deals expressly with Leukippos, not with Demokritos or even ‘‘ Leukippos and Demokritos.” For the distinction between the ‘‘summary” and ‘* detailed” doxographies in Diogenes, see Appendix, § 15.
Leukippos of Miletos 391
flowing together from contact with the vortex. And in this way the earth came into being, those things which had been borne towards the middle abiding there. Moreover, the containing membrane was increased by the further separating out of bodies from outside ; and, being itself carried round in a vortex, it further got possession of all with which it had come in contact. Some of these becoming entangled, produce a structure, which was at first moist and muddy; but, when they had been dried and were revolving along with the vortex of the whole, they were then ignited and produced the sub-
stance of the heavenly bodies. The circle of the sun is the