! 60. Aristotle tried without success to discover from Finite or the poems of Xenophanes whether he regarded the rea world as finite or infinite. “He made no clear pro- nouncement on the subject,” he tells us. Theophrastos, on the other hand, decided that he regarded it as spherical and finite because he said it was “ equal every way.” This, however, leads to very serious difficulties. We have seen already that Xenophanes said the sun went right on to infinity, and this agrees with his view of the earth as an infinitely extended plain. Still more difficult to reconcile with the idea of a spherical and finite world is the statement of fr. 28 that, while the earth has an upper limit which we see, it has no limit below. This is attested by Aristotle, who speaks of the earth being “infinitely rooted,” and adds that Empedokles criticised Xenophanes. for holding this
1 Arist. Met. A, 5. 986 Ὁ 23 (R. P. 101), οὐδὲν διεσαφήνισεν.
5 This is given as an inference by Simpl. Phys. p. 23, 18 (R. P. 108 b), διὰ τὸ πανταχόθεν ὅμοιον. It does not merely come from J/X%.G. (R. P. 108), πάντῃ δ᾽ ὅμοιον ὄντα σφαιροειδῆ εἶναι. Hippolytos has it too (ef. i. 14; R. P. 102 a), so it goes back to Theophrastos. Timon of Phleious understood Xenophanes in the same way; for he makes him call the One ἴσον ἁπάντῃ (fr. 60, Diels = 40 Wachsm.; R. P. 102 a). .
138 Early Greek Philosophy
view. It further appears from the fragment of Empedokles quoted by Aristotle that Xenophanes said
the vast Air extended infinitely upwards. We are therefore bound to try to find room for an _ infinite earth and an infinite air in a spherical and finite world ! That comes of trying to find science in satire. If, on the other hand, we regard these statements from the same point of view as those about the heavenly bodies, we shall at once see what they most probably mean. ‘The story of Ouranos and Gaia was always the chief \\scandal of the 7heogony, and the infinite air gets rid of
Ouranos altogether. As to the earth stretching
infinitely downwards, that gets rid of Tartaros, which
Homer described as situated at the bottommost limit
of earth and sea, as far beneath Hades as heaven is
above the earth. This is pure conjecture, of course ;
but, if it is even possible, we are entitled to disbelieve
that such startling contradictions occurred in a
cosmological poem. :
A more subtle ae SRE of the difficulty
commended itself to the late Peripatetic who wrote an
account of the Eleatic school, part of which is still
extant in the Aristotelian corpus, and is generally
known now as the treatise on MJelissos, Xenophanes, and
Gorgias* He said that Xenophanes declared the
1 Arist. de Caelo, B, 13. 294 a 21 (R. P. 103 b).
2 I take δαψιλός as an attribute and ἀπείρονα as predicate to both subjects.
8 Ji, viii. 13-16, 478-481, especially the words’ οὐδ᾽ εἴ κε τὰ velara πείραθ᾽ ἵκηαι | γαίης καὶ πόντοιο x.t.d. iad viii. must have seemed a particularly bad book to Xenophanes. i
4 In Bekker’s edition this treatise bears the title Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, περὶ Ζήνωνος, περὶ T'opylov, but the best MS. gives as the titles of its three sections: (1) Περὶ Ζήνωνος, (2) Περὶ Ξενοφάνους, (3) Περὶ Γοργίου. The first section, however, plainly refers to Melissos, so the whole treatise is now entitled De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia (M.X.G.). It has been edited by Apelt in the Teubner Series, and more recently by Diels (Ad2.
Science and Religion 139
world to be neither finite nor infinite, and he composed
a series of arguments in support of this thesis, to
which he added another like it, namely, that the world
is neither in motion nor at rest. This has introduced
endless confusion into our sources. Alexander used
this treatise as well as the great work of Theophrastos,
and Simplicius supposed the quotations from it to be
from Theophrastos too. Having no copy of the poems
he was completely baffled, and until recently all accounts
of Xenophanes were vitiated by the same confusion.
It may even be suggested that, but for this, we
should have heard very little of the “philosophy of
Xenophanes,” a way of speaking which is in the main
a survival from the days before this scholastic exercise
was recognised as having no authority.
61. In the passage of the Metaphysics just referred rinigicc #
to, Aristotle speaks of Xenophanes as “the first
partisan of the One,”? and the context shows that
he means to suggest he was the first of the Eleatics.
We have seen already that the certain facts of his life
make it very unlikely that he settled at Elea and
founded a school there, and it is probable that, as
usual in such cases, Aristotle is simply reproducing
der k. Preuss. Akad. 1900), who has also given the section dealing with Xenophanes in P. Pk. Fr. pp. 24-29 (Vors. pp. 36 sqq.). He has now withdrawn the view maintained in Dox. p. 108 that the work belongs to the third century B.c., and holds that it was a Peripatetico eclectico (?.¢. sceptica, platonica, stoica admiscente) circa Christi natalem conscriptum. If that is so, there is no reason to doubt, as I formerly did, that the second section is really meant to deal with Xenophanes. The writer would have no first-hand knowledge of his poems, and the order in which the philosophers are discussed is that of the passage in the Metaphysics which suggested the whole thing. It is possible that a section on Parmenides preceded what we now have.
1 Met. A, 5. 986 Ὁ 21 (R. P. 101), πρῶτος τούτων ἑνίσας. The verb évifew occurs nowhere else, but is plainly formed on the analogy of μηδίζειν, φιλιππίζειν, and the like. It is not likely that it means ‘‘to unify. Aristotle could easily have said évécas if he had meant that.
140 Early Greek Philosophy
certain statements of Plato. At any rate, Plato had
spoken of the Eleatics as the “partisans of the
Whole,”* and he had also spoken of the school as
“starting with Xenophanes and even earlier.” The
last words, however, show clearly enough what he
meant. Just as he called the Herakleiteans “followers
of Homer and still more ancient teachers,” ὃ so_he
attached the Eleatic school to Xenophanes and still
earlier authorities. We have seen in other instances
how these playful and ironical remarks of Plato were
taken seriously by his successors, and we need not let
this fresh instance of the same thing influence our
general view of Xenophanes unduly.
Aristotle goes on to tell us that Xenophanes,
“referring to the whole world,’ said the One was god.”
This clearly alludes to frs. 23-26, where all human
attributes are denied of a god who is said to be one
and “the greatest among gods and men.” It may be
added that these verses gain very much in point if we
may think of them as closely connected with frs.
1 Tht. 181 a 6, τοῦ ὅλου στασιῶται. The noun στασιώτης has no other meaning than “‘ partisan.”’ There is no verb στασιοῦν ‘‘ to make stationary,” and such a formation would be against all analogy. The derivation στασιώτας. .. ἀπὸ τῆς στάσεως appears first in Sext. J/ath. x. 46, from which passage we may infer that Aristotle used the word, not that he gave the derivation.
2 Soph. 242 ἃ 5(R. P. 101 b). If the passage implies that Xenophanes . settled at Elea, it equally implies this of his predecessors. But Elea was not founded till Xenophanes was in the prime of life.
3 Tht. 179 e 3, τῶν Ἡρακλειτείων ἤ, ὥσπερ σὺ λέγεις, Ομηρείων καὶ ἔτι παλαιοτέρων. In this passage, Homer stands to the Herakleiteans in exactly the same relation as Xenophanes does to the Eleatics in the Sophist.
4 Met. 981 Ὁ 24. The words cannot mean ‘‘gazing up at the whole heavens,” or anything of that sort. They are taken as I take them by Bonitz (tm Hinblicke auf den ganzen Himmel) and Zeller (im Hinblick auf das Weltganze). The word ἀποβλέπειν had become much too colourless to bear the other meaning, and οὐρανός, as we know, means what was later called κόσμος.
Science and Religion [41
11-16, instead of referring the one set of verses to the
Satires and the other to a cosmological poem. It was
probably in the same context that Xenophanes called
the world or god “equal every way”! and denied that
it breathed:? The statement that. there is fo master-
ship among the gods® also goes very well with fr. 26.
A god has no wants, nor is it fitting for one god to be
the servant of others, like Iris.and Hermes in Homer.
62. That this “god” is just the world, Aristotle Monotheism
tells us, and the use of the word θεός is quite in men
accordance with Anaximander’s. Xenophanes regarded
it as sentient, though without any special organs of
sense, and it sways all things by the thought of its
mind. He also calls it “one god,” and, if that is
monotheism, then Xenophanes was a _ monotheist,
though this is surely not how the word is generally
understood. The fact is that the expression “one
god” wakens all sorts of associations. in our mind
which did not exist at all for the Greeks of this time.
His contemporaries would have been more likely to
call Xenophanes an atheist than anything else. As
Eduard Meyer excellently says : “ In Greece the question
of one god or gods many hardly plays any part.
Whether the divine power is thought of as a unity
or a plurality, is irrelevant in comparison with the
question whether it exists at all, and how its nature
and its relation to the world is to be understood.” *
1 See above, p. 137, n. 2.
2 Diog. ix: 19 (R. P. 103 c), ὅλον δ᾽ ὁρᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἀκούειν, μὴ μέντοι
' ἀναπνεῖν. See above, p. 120, ἢ. 2.
3 [Plut.] Strom. fr. 4, ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ περὶ θεῶν ws οὐδεμιᾶς ἡγεμονίας ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης ob yap ὅσιον δεσπόζεσθαί τινα τῶν θεῶν, ἐπιδεῖσθαί τε μηδενὸς αὐτῶν μηδένα μηδ᾽ ὅλως, ἀκούειν δὲ καὶ ὁρᾶν καθόλου καὶ μὴ κατὰ μέρος.
4 Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 466.
142 Early Greek Philosophy
On the other hand, it is wrong to say with Freuden-
thal that Xenophanes was in any sense a polytheist.'
That he should use the language of polytheism in his
elegies is only what we should expect, and the other
references to “gods” can be best explained as incidental
to his attack on the anthropomorphic gods of Homer
and Hesiod. In one case, Freudenthal has pressed a
proverbial way of speaking too hard.? Least of all
can we admit that Xenophanes allowed the existence
of subordinate or departmental gods; for it was just
the existence of such that he was chiefly concerned
todeny. At the same time, I cannot help thinking that
Freudenthal was more nearly right than Wilamowitz,
who says that Xenophanes “upheld the only real
monotheism that has ever existed upon earth.”* Diels,
I fancy, comes nearer the mark, when he calls it a
“somewhat narrow pantheism.”* But all these views
would have surprised Xenophanes himself about equally.
He was really Goethe’s Weltkind, with prophets to
right and left of him, and he would have smiled if
he had known that one day he was to be regarded
as a theologian.
1 Freudenthal, Dze Theologie des Xenophanes.
2 Xenophanes calls his god ‘‘ greatest among gods and men,” but this is simply a case of “‘ polar expression,” to which parallels will be found in Wilamowitz’s note to the Herakiles, v. 1106. Cf. especially the statement of Herakleitos (fr. 20) that ‘‘no one of gods or men” made the world.
3 Griechische Literatur, p. 38.
4 Parmenides Lehrgedicht, p. 9.
CHAPTER ΠΡ HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS