Early Greek Philosophy — John Burnet (Heraclitus fragments)

1 Herod, i. 163. 3. All he can say is that the worship of Dionysos and the doctrine of transmigration came from Egypt (ii. 49, 123). We shall see that both these

18 Early Greek Philosophy

had avery great respect for the Egyptians on other grounds, distinctly implies that they were a business- like rather than a philosophical people.’ Aristotle speaks only of the origin of mathematics in Egypt? (a point to which we shall return), though, if he had known of an Egyptian philosophy, it would have suited his argument better to mention that. It is not till a far later date, when Egyptian priests and Alexandrian Jews began to vie with one another in discovering the sources of Greek philosophy in their own past, that we first have definite statements to the effect that it came from Phoenicia or Egypt. -Here, however, we must carefully note two things. In the first place, the word “philosophy” had come by that time to include theology of a more or less mystical type, and was even applied to various forms of asceticism.’ In the second place, the so-called Egyptian philosophy was only arrived at by a process of turning primitive myths into allegories. We are still able to judge Philo’s Old Testament interpretation for ourselves, and we may be sure that the Egyptian allegorists were even more arbitrary ; for they had far less promising material to work on. Nothing can be more savage than the myth of Isis and Osiris ;* yet it is first interpreted accord-

statements are incorrect, and in any case they do not imply anything directly as to philosophy.

1 In Rep. 435 6, after saying that τὸ θυμοειδές is characteristic of the Thracians and Scythians, and τὸ φιλομαθές of the Hellenes, he refers us to Phoenicia and Egypt for τὸ φιλοχρήματον. Inthe Laws, where the Egyptians are so strongly commended for their conservatism in matters of art, he says (747 Ὁ 6) that arithmetical studiesare valuableonlyif we remove all ἀνελευθερία and φιλοχρηματία from the souls of the learners. Otherwise, we produce πανουργία instead of σοφία, as we can see that the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and many other peoples do. 5 Arist. Met, A, I. 981 Ὁ 23.

3 See Zeller, p. 3, ἢ. 2. Philo applies the term πάτριος φιλοσοφία to the theology of the Essenes and Therapeutai.

* On this, see Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 135.

Introduction 19

ing to the ideas of later Greek philosophy, and then declared to be the original source of that philosophy. This method of interpretation may be said to culminate with the Neopythagorean Noumenios, from whom it passed to the Christian Apologists. It is Noumenios who asks, “ What is Plato, but Moses speak- ing Attic?” * It seems likely, indeed, that he was think- ing of certain marked resemblances between Plato’s Laws and the Levitical Code when he said this— resemblances due to the fact that certain primitive legal ideas are similarly modified in both; but in any case Clement and Eusebios give the remark a far wider application.” At the Renaissance, this absurd farrago was revived along with everything else, and certain ideas derived from the Praeparatio Evangelica continued for long to colour accepted views on the subject. Even Cudworth speaks complacently of the ancient “Moschical or Mosaical philosophy” taught by Thales and Pythagoras.* It is important to realise the true origin of this deeply-rooted prejudice against the originality of the Greeks. It does not come from DA ees researches into the beliefs of ancient peoples ; or thesé have disclosed absolutely nothing in the way of ν᾿ evidence for a Phoenician or Egyptian philosophy. It is a mere residuum of the Alexandrian passion for allegory.

1 Noumenios, fr. 13 (R. P. 624), Τί γάρ ἐστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωυσῆς ἀττικίζων ;

2 Clement (Strom. i. p. 8, 5, Stahlin) calls Plato ὁ ἐξ ‘Ef φιλόσοφος.

3 We learn from Strabo (xvi. p. 757) that it was Poseidonios who introduced Mochos of Sidon into the history of philosophy. He attributes the atomic theory to him. His identification with Moses, however, is a later tour de force. Philon of Byblos published what purported to be a translation of an ancient Phoenician history by Sanchuniathon, which was used by Porphyry and afterwards by Eusebios. How familiar all this became, is shown by the speech of the stranger in the Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xiv.

20 Early Greek Philosophy

Of course no one nowadays would rest the case

for the Oriental origin of Greek philosophy on the

evidence of Clement or Eusebios; the favourite
argument in recent times has been the analogy of the
arts and religion. We are seeing more and more, it is
said, that the Greeks derived their art and many of
their religious ideas from the East; and it is urged
that the same will in all probability prove true of their
philosophy. This is a specious argument, but not
in the least conclusive. It ignores altogether the
essential’ difference in the way these things are trans-
mitted from people to people. Material civilisation
and the arts may pass easily from one people to
another, though they have not a common language,
and certain simple religious ideas can be conveyed by
ritual better than in any other way. Philosophy, on
the other hand, can only be expressed in abstract
language, and it'can only be transmitted by educated
men, whether by means of books or oral teaching.

' Now we know of no Greek, in the times we are dealing

with, who knew enough of any Oriental language to
read an Egyptian book or even to listen to the dis-
course of an Egyptian priest, and we never hear till
a late date of Oriental teachers who wrote or spoke in
Greek. The Greek traveller in Egypt would no doubt
pick up a few words of Egyptian, and it is certain that
somehow or other the priests could make themselves
understood by the Greeks. They were able to
rebuke Hekataios for his family pride, and Plato
tells a story of the same sort at the beginning of
the Zzmaeus.' But they must have made use of
interpreters, and it is impossible to conceive of

1 Herod. ii. 143; Plato, Zim. 22 Ὁ 3.

Agi INTRODUCTION 21

philosophical ideas being communicated through an uneducated dragoman.!

But really it is not worth while to ask whether the
communication of philosophical ideas was possible or
not, till some evidence has been produced that any of
these peoples had a philosophy to communicate. No
such evidence has yet been discovered, and, so far as
we know, the Indians were the only people besides the
Greeks who ever had anything that deserves the name.
No one now will suggest that Greek philosophy came
from India, and igdeed everything points to the con-
clusion that Indian philosophy came from Greece.
The chronology of Sanskrit literature is an extremely
difficult subject; but, so far as we can see, the great
Indian systems are later in date than the Greek
philosophies which they most nearly resemble. Of

course the mysticism of the Upanishads and of
Buddhism were of native growth and profoundly in-
fluenced philosophy, but they were not themselves
philosophy in any true sense of the word.” :

XI. It would, however, be another thing to say that Egyptian mathematics.

. {Greek philosophy originated quite independently of Oriental influences. The Greeks themselves believed

1 Gomperz’s ‘‘ native bride,” who discusses the wisdom of her people with her Greek lord (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 95), does not convince me either. She would probably teach her maids the rites of strange goddesses ; but she would not be likely to talk theology with her husband, and still less philosophy or science. The use of Babylonian as an international language will account for the fact that the Egyptians knew something of Babylonian astronomy ; but it does not help us to explain how the Greeks could communicate with the Egyptians. It is plain that the Greeks did not even know of this international language; for it is just the sort of thing they would have recorded with interest if they had. In early days, they may have met with it in Cyprus, but that was apparently forgotten.

_. 3 For the possibility that Indian philosophy came from Greece, see Weber, Die Griechen in Indien (Berl. Sitzb. 1890, pp. 901 sqq-), and Goblet d’Alviella, Ce gue /’ Inde doit ἃ la Gréce (Paris, 1897).

22 Early Greek Philosophy

their mathematical science to be of Egyptian origin,
and they must also have known something of Baby-
lonian astronomy. It cannot be an accident that
philosophy originated in onta” just at the time when
communication with these two countries was easiest,
and it is significant that the very man who was said
to have introduced geometry from Egypt is also re-
garded as the first of the philosophers. It thus
becomes very important for us to discover, if we can,
what Egyptian mathematics meant. We shall see
that, even here, the Greeks were really original.

There is a papyrus in the Rhind collection at the
British Museum * which gives us an instructive glimpse
of arithmetic and geometry as these sciences were
understood on the banks of the Nile. It is the work
of one Aahmes, and contains rules for calculations both
of an arithmetical and a geometrical character. The
arithmetical problems mostly concern measures of corn
and fruit, and deal particularly with such questions as
the division of a number of measures among a given
number of persons, the number of loaves or jars of beer
that certain measures will yield, and the wages due
to the workmen for a certain piece of work. It
corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of
Egyptian arithmetic which Plato has given us in the
Laws, where he tells us that the children learnt along
with their letters to solve problems in the distribution
of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller numbers of

1 IT am indebted for most of the information which follows to Cantor’s Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik, vol. i. pp. 46-63. See also Gow’s Short History of Greek Mathematics, 8§ 73-80; and Milhaud, Za science grecque, pp. 91 sqq. The discussion in the last-named work is of special value because it is based on M. Rodet’s paper in the Bulletin de la Société Mathématique, vol. vi., which in some important respects supplements the interpretation of Eisenlohr, on which the earlier accounts depend.

Introduction 23

people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so
forth. This is clearly the origin of the art which the
Greeks called λογιστική, and they certainly borrowed
that from Egypt; but there is not the slightest trace
of what the Greeks called ἀριθμητική, or the scientific
study of numbers.

The geometry of the Rhind papyrus is of a similarly utilitarian character, and Herodotos, who tells us that Egyptian geometry arose from the necessity of measur-~ ing the land afresh after the inundations, is obviously far nearer the mark than Aristotle, who says that it grew out of the leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste.” We find, accordingly, that the rules given for calculating areas are only exact when these are rectangular. As fields are usually more or less rectangular, this would be sufficient for practical purposes. The rule for finding what is called the segt of a pyramid is, however, on a rather higher level, as we should expect ; for the angles of the Egyptian pyramids really are equal, and there must have been some method for obtaining this result. It comes to this. Given the “length across the sole of the foot,” that is, the diagonal of the base, and that of the pzvemus or “ridge,” to find a number which represents the ratio between them. This is done by dividing half the diagonal of the base by the “ ridge,” and it is obvious that such a method might quite well be discovered empirically. It seems an anachronism to speak of elementary trigonometry in connexion with

1 Plato, Zaws, 819 Ὁ 4, μήλων τέ τινων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν ἅμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυκτῶν καὶ παλαιστῶν ἐφεδρείας τε καὶ συλλήξεως ἐν μέρει καὶ ἐφεξῆς καὶ ὡς πεφύκασι γίγνεσθαι. καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πὼς διαδιδόντες. In its context, the passage implies that no more than this could be learnt in Egypt.

2 Herod. ii. 109; Arist-.Jet, A, 1. 981 b 23.

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24 Early Greek Philosophy

a rule like this, and there is nothing to suggest that
the Egyptians went any further." That the Greeks
learnt as much from them, we shall see to be highly
probable, though we shall see also that, from a com-
paratively early period, they generalised it so as to
make it of use in measuring the distances of inaccessible
objects, such as ships at sea. It was probably this
generalisation that suggested the idea of a science of
geometry, which was really the creation of the Pytha-
goreans, and we can see how far the Greeks soon
surpassed their teachers from a remark of Demokritos
which has been preserved. He says (fr. 299): “I have
listened to many learned men, but no one has yet
surpassed me in the construction of figures out of lines
accompanied by demonstration, not even the Egyptian
harpedonapts, as they call them.”* Now the word
ἁρπεδονάπτης is not Egyptian but Greek. It means