A Critical History of Greek Philosophy Part 4

Critical Remarks on Eleaticism.

The consideration of the meaning of Zeno's doctrine will give us an insight into the essentials of the position of the Eleatics. Zeno said that motion and multiplicity are not real. Now what does this mean?

Did Zeno mean to say that when he walked about the streets of Elea, it was not true that he walked about? Did he mean that it was not a fact that he moved from place to place? When I move my arms, did he mean that I am not moving my arms, but that they really remain at rest all the time? If so, we might justly conclude that this philosophy is a mere craze of speculation run mad, or else a joke. But this is not what is meant. The Eleatic position is that though the world of sense, of which multiplicity and motion are essential features, may exist, yet that outward world is not the true Being. They do not deny that the world exists. They do not deny that motion exists or that multiplicity exists. These things no sane man can deny. The existence of motion and multiplicity is, as Hegel says, as sensuously certain as the existence of elephants. Zeno, then, does not deny the existence of the world. What he denies is the truth of existence. What he means is: certainly there is motion and multiplicity; certainly the world is here, is present to our senses, but it is not the true world. It is {61} not reality. It is mere appearance, illusion, an outward show and sham, a hollow mask which hides the real being of things. You may ask what is meant by this distinction between appearance and reality. Is not even an appearance real? It appears. It exists. Even a delusion exists, and is therefore a real thing. So is not the distinction between appearance and reality itself meaningless? Now all this is perfectly true, but it does not comprehend quite what is meant by the distinction. What is meant is that the objects around us have existence, but not self-existence, not self-substantiality. That is to say, their being is not in themselves, their existence is not grounded in themselves but is grounded in another, and flows from that other.

They exist, but they are not independent existences. They are rather beings whose being flows into them from another, which itself is self-existent and self-substantial. They are, therefore, mere appearances of that other, which is the reality. Of course the Eleatics did not speak of appearance and reality in these terms. But this is what they were groping for, and dimly saw.

If we now look back upon the road on which we have travelled from the beginning of Greek philosophy, we shall be able to characterize the direction in which we have been moving. The earliest Greek philosophers, the Ionics, propounded the question, "what is the ultimate principle of things?" and answered it by declaring that the first principle of things is matter. The second Greek School, the Pythagoreans, answered the same question by declaring numbers to be the first principle. The third school, the Eleatics, answered the question by a.s.serting that the first principle of things is Being.

{62} Now the universe, as we know it, is both quant.i.tative and qualitative. Quant.i.ty and quality are characteristics of every sense-object. These are not, indeed, the only characteristics of the world, but they are the only characteristics which have so far come to light. Now the position of the Ionics was that the ultimate reality is both quant.i.tative and qualitative, that is to say, it is matter, for matter is just what has both quant.i.ty and quality. The Pythagoreans abstracted from the quality of things. They stripped off the qualitative aspect from things, and were accordingly left with only quant.i.ty as ultimate reality. Quant.i.ty is the same as number. Hence the Pythagorean position that the world is made of numbers. The Eleatic philosophy, proceeding one step further in the same direction, abstracted from quant.i.ty as well as quality. Whereas the Pythagoreans had denied the qualitative aspect of things, leaving themselves only with the quant.i.tative, the Eleatics denied both quant.i.ty and quality, for in denying multiplicity they denied quant.i.ty. Therefore they are left with the total abstraction of mere Being which has in it neither dividedness (quant.i.ty), nor positive character (quality). The rise from the Ionic to the Eleatic philosophy is therefore essentially a rise from sensuous to pure thinking. The Eleatic Being is a pure abstract thought. The position of the Pythagoreans on the other hand is that of semi-sensuous thought. They form the stepping-stone from the Ionics to the Eleatics.

Now let us consider what of worth there is in this Eleatic principle, and what its defects are. In the first place, it is necessary for us to understand that the Eleatic philosophy is the first monism. A monistic philosophy {63} is a philosophy which attempts to explain the entire universe from one single principle. The opposite of monism is therefore pluralism, which is that kind of philosophy which seeks to explain the universe from many ultimate and equally underived principles. But more particularly and more frequently we speak of the opposite of monism as being dualism, that is to say, the position that there are two ultimate principles of explanation. If, for example, we say that all the good in the universe arises from one source which is good, and that all the evil arises from another source which is evil, and that these sources of good and evil cannot be subordinated one to the other, and that one does not arise out of the other, but both are co-ordinate and equally primeval and independent, that position would be a dualism. All philosophy, which is worthy of the name, seeks, in some sense, a monistic explanation of the universe, and when we find that a system of philosophy breaks down and fails, then we may nearly always be sure its defect will reveal itself as an unreconciled dualism. Such a philosophy will begin with a monistic principle, and will attempt to derive or deduce the entire universe from it, but somewhere or other it comes across something in the world which it cannot bring under that principle. Then it is left with two equally ultimate existences, neither of which can be derived from the other.

Thus it breaks out into dualism.

Now the search for a monistic explanation of things is a universal tendency of human thought. Wherever we look in the world of thought, we find that this monistic tendency appears. I have already said that it appears throughout the history of philosophy. It reveals itself, {64} too, very clearly in the history of religion. Religion begins in polytheism, the belief in many G.o.ds. From that it pa.s.ses on to monotheism, the belief in one G.o.d, who is the sole author and creator of the universe. In Hindu thought we find the same thing. Hindu thought is based upon the principle that "All is one." Everything in the world is derived from one ultimate being, Brahman. But not only is this monistic tendency traceable in religion and philosophy; it is also traceable in science. The progress of scientific explanation is essentially a progress towards monism. In the first place, the explanation of isolated facts consists always in a.s.signing causes for them. Suppose there is a strange noise in your room at night. You say it is explained when you find that it is due to the falling of a book or the scuttling of a rat across the floor. The noise is thus explained by a.s.signing a cause for it. But this simply means that you have robbed it of its isolated and exceptional position, and reduced it to the position of an example of a general law. When the water freezes in your jug, you say that the cause of this is the cold. It is an example of the law that whenever the cold reaches a certain degree, then, other things being equal, water solidifies. But to a.s.sign causes in this way is not really to explain anything. It does not give any reason for an event happening. You cannot see any reason why water should solidify in the cold. It merely tells us that the event is not exceptional, but is an example of what always happens. It reduces the isolated event to a case of a general law, which "explains," not merely this one event, but possibly millions of events. It is not merely that cold solidifies the water in your jug. {65} It equally solidifies the water in everybody's jug. The same law "explains" all these, and likewise "explains" icebergs and the polar caps on the earth and the planet Mars. In fact scientific explanation means the reduction of millions of facts to one principle. But science does not stop here. It seeks further to explain the laws themselves, and its method is to reduce the many laws to one higher and more general law.

A familiar example of this is the explanation of Kepler's laws of the planetary motions. Kepler laid down three such laws. The first was that planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun in one focus. The second was that planets describe equal areas in equal times. The third was a rather more complicated law. Kepler knew these laws from observation, but he could not explain them. They were explained by Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation. Newton proved that Kepler's three laws could be mathematically deduced from the law of gravitation. In that way Kepler's laws were explained, and not only Kepler's laws, but many other astronomical laws and facts. Thus the explanation of the many isolated facts consists in their reduction to the one law, and the explanation of the many laws consists in their reduction to the one more general law. As knowledge advances, the phenomena of the universe come to be explained by fewer and fewer, and wider and wider, general principles. Obviously the ultimate goal would be the explanation of all things by one principle. I do not mean to say that scientific men have this end consciously in view. But the point is that the monistic tendency is there. What is meant by the explanation is the reduction of all things to one principle.

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In philosophy, in religion, and in science, then, we find this monistic tendency of thought. But it might be asked how we know that this universal tendency is right? How do we know that it is not merely a universal error? Is there no logical or philosophical basis for the belief that the ultimate explanation of things must be one? Now this is a subject which takes us far afield from Greek philosophy. The philosophical basis of monism was never thought out till the time of Spinoza. So we cannot go into it at length here. But, quite shortly, the question is--Is there any reason for believing that the ultimate explanation of things must be one? Now if we are to explain the universe, two conditions must be fulfilled. In the first place, the ultimate reality by which we attempt to explain everything must explain all the other things in the world. It must be possible to deduce the whole world from it. Secondly, the first principle must explain itself. It cannot be a principle which itself still requires explanation by something else. If it is itself not self-explanatory, but is an ultimate mystery, then even if we succeed in deducing the universe from it, nothing is thereby explained. This, for example, is precisely the defect of materialism. Even if we suppose it proved that all things, including mind, arise from matter, yet the objection remains that this explains nothing at all, for matter is not a self-explanatory existence. It is an unintelligible mystery. And to reduce the universe to an ultimate mystery is not to explain it.

Again; some people think that the world is to be explained by what they call a "first cause." But why should any cause be the first? Why should we stop anywhere in the chain of causes? Every cause is {67} necessarily the effect of a prior cause. The child, who is told that G.o.d made the world, and who inquires who, in that case, made G.o.d, is asking a highly sensible question. Or suppose, in tracing back the chain of causes, we come upon one which we have reason to say is really the first, is anything explained thereby? Still we are left with an ultimate mystery. Whatever the principle of explanation is, it cannot be a principle of this kind. It must be a principle which explains itself, and does not lead to something further, such as another cause. In other words, it must be a principle which has its whole being in itself, which does not for its completeness refer us to anything beyond itself. It must be something fully comprehended in itself, without reference to anything outside it. That is to say, it must be what we call self-determined or absolute. Now any absolute principle must necessarily be one. Suppose that it were two. Suppose you attempt to explain the world by two principles, X and Y, each of which is ultimate, neither being derived from the other. Then what relation does X bear to Y? We cannot fully comprehend X without knowing its relation to Y. Part of the character and being of X is const.i.tuted by its relation to Y. Part of X's character has to be explained by Y. But that is not to be self-explained. It is to be explained by something not itself. Therefore, the ultimate explanation of things must be one.

The Eleatics, then, were perfectly correct in saying that all is one, and that the ultimate principle of the universe, Being, is one. But if we examine the way in which they carried out their monism, we shall see that it broke down in a hopeless dualism. How did they {68} explain the existence of the world? They propounded the principle of Being, as the ultimate reality. How then did they derive the actual world from that principle? The answer is that they neither derived it nor made any attempt to derive it. Instead of deducing the world from their first principle, they simply denied the reality of the world altogether. They attempted to solve the problem by denying the existence of the problem. The world, they said, is simply not-being.

It is an illusion. Now certainly it is a great thing to know which is the true world, and which the false, but after all this is not an explanation. To call the world an illusion is not to explain it. If the world is reality, then the problem of philosophy is, how does that reality arise? If the world is illusion, then the problem is, how does that illusion arise? Call it illusion, if you like. But this is not explaining it. It is simply calling it names. This is the defect, too, of Indian philosophy in which the world is said to be Maya--delusion.

Hence in the Eleatic philosophy there are two worlds brought face to face, lying side by side of each other, unreconciled--the world of Being, which is the true world, and the world of facts, which is illusion. Although the Eleatics deny the sense-world, and call it illusion, yet of this illusion they cannot rid themselves. In some sense or other, this world is here, is present. It comes back upon our senses, and demands explanation. Call it illusion, but it still stands beside the true world, and demands that it be deduced from that. So that the Eleatics have two principles, the false world and the true world, simply lying side by side, without any connecting link between them, without anything to {69} show how the one arises from the other.

It is an utterly irreconcilable dualism.

It is easy to see why the Eleatic philosophy broke down in this dualism. It is due to the barrenness of their first principle itself.

Being, they say, has in it no becoming. All principle of motion is expressly excluded from it. Likewise they deny to it any multiplicity.

It is simply one, without any many in it. If you expressly exclude multiplicity and becoming from your first principle, then you can never get multiplicity and becoming out of it. You cannot get out of it anything that is not in it. If you say absolutely there is no multiplicity in the Absolute, then it is impossible to explain how multiplicity comes into this world. It is exactly the same in regard to the question of quality. Pure Being is without quality. It is mere "isness." It is an utterly featureless, characterless Being, perfectly empty and abstract. How then can the quality of things issue from it?

How can all the riches and variety of the world come out of this emptiness? The Eleatics are like jugglers who try to make you believe that they get rabbits, guinea-pigs, pieces of string, paper, and ribbon, out of an entirely empty top-hat. One can see how utterly barren and empty this principle is, if one translates it into figurative language, that is to say, into the language of religion.

The Eleatic principle would correspond to a religion in which we said that "G.o.d is," but beyond the fact that He "is," He has absolutely no character. But surely this is a wholly barren and meagre conception of the Deity. In the Christian religion we are accustomed to hear such expressions as, not only that "G.o.d is," but that "G.o.d is Love," "G.o.d is Power," {70} "G.o.d is Goodness," "G.o.d is Wisdom." Now objection may certainly be taken to these predicates and epithets on the ground that they are merely figurative and anthropomorphic. In fact, they exhibit the tendency to think non-sensuous objects sensuously. These predicates are merely picked up from the finite world and applied haphazard to G.o.d, for whom they are entirely inadequate. But at least these expressions teach us, that out of mere emptiness nothing can come; that the world cannot arise out of something which is lower and poorer than itself. Here in the world we find in a certain measure, love, wisdom, excellence, power. These things cannot spring from a source which is so poor that it contains nothing but "isness." The less can arise out of the greater, but not the greater out of the less. We may contrast Eleaticism not only with Christianity, but even with popular modern agnosticism. According to this, the Absolute is unknowable. But what the agnostic means is that human reason is inadequate to grasp the greatness of the ultimate being. But the Eleatic principle is, not that in saying "G.o.d is Love, Power, Wisdom,"

we are saying too little about G.o.d, and that our ideas are inadequate to express the fullness of His being, but on the contrary, that they express too high an idea for G.o.d, of whom nothing can be said except "He is," because there is absolutely nothing more to say. This conception of G.o.d is the conception of an absolutely empty being.

Monism, I said, is a necessary idea in philosophy. The Absolute must be one. But an utterly abstract monism is impossible. If the Absolute is simply one, wholly excludent of all process and multiplicity, out of such an abstraction the process and multiplicity of the {71} world cannot issue. The Absolute is not simply one, or simply many. It must be a many in one, as correctly set forth in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Religion moves from an abstract polytheism (G.o.d is many) to an abstract monotheism (G.o.d is one; Judaism, Hinduism and Islam).

But it does not stop there. It rightly pa.s.ses on to a concrete monotheism (G.o.d is many in one; Christianity). There are two popular misconceptions regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. The first mistake is that of popular rationalism, the second is that of popular theology. Popular rationalism a.s.serts that the doctrine of the Trinity is contrary to reason. Popular theology a.s.serts that it is a mystery which transcends reason. But the truth is that it neither contradicts nor transcends reason. On the contrary, it is in itself the highest manifestation of reason. What is really a mystery, what really contradicts reason, is to suppose that G.o.d, the Absolute, is simply one without any multiplicity. This contradiction results in the fatal dualism which broke out in Eleaticism, and has broken out in every other system of thought, such as that of the Hindus or that of Spinoza, which begins with the conception of the Absolute as a pure one, totally exclusive of the many.

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CHAPTER V

HERACLEITUS

Heracleitus was born about 535 B.C., and is believed to have lived to the age of sixty. This places his death at 475 B.C. He was thus subsequent to Xenophanes, contemporary with Parmenides, and older than Zeno. In historical order of time, therefore, he runs parallel to the Eleatics. Heracleitus was a man of Ephesus in Asia Minor. He was an aristocrat, descendant of a n.o.ble Ephesian family, and occupied in Ephesus the nominal position of basileus, or King. This, however, merely meant that he was the Chief Priest of the local branch of the Eleusinian mysteries, and this position he resigned in favour of his brother. He appears to have been a man of a somewhat aloof, solitary, and scornful nature. He looked down, not only upon the common herd, but even upon the great men of his own race. He mentions Xenophanes and Pythagoras in terms of obloquy. Homer, he thinks, should be taken out and whipped. Hesiod he considers to be the teacher of the common herd, one with them, "a man," he says, "who does not even know day and night." Upon the common herd of mortals he looks down with infinite scorn. Some of his sayings remind us not a little of Schopenhauer in their pungency and sharpness. "a.s.ses prefer straw to {73} gold." "Dogs bark at everyone they do not know." Many of his sayings, however, are memorable and trenchant epitomes of practical wisdom. "Man's character is his fate." "Physicians who cut, burn, stab and rack the sick, demand a fee for doing it, which they do not deserve to get." From his aloof and aristocratic standpoint he launched forth denunciations against the democracy of Ephesus.

Heracleitus embodied his philosophical thoughts in a prose treatise, which was well-known at the time of Socrates, but of which only fragments have come down to us. His style soon became proverbial for its difficulty and obscurity, and he gained the nickname of Heracleitus the "Dark," or the "Obscure." Socrates said of his work that what he understood of it was excellent, what not, he believed was equally so, but that the book required a tough swimmer. He has even been accused of intentional obscurity. But there does not seem to be any foundation for this charge. The fact is that if he takes no great trouble to explain his thoughts, neither does he take any trouble to conceal them. He does not write for fools. His att.i.tude appears to be that if his readers understand him, well; if not, so much the worse for his readers. He wastes no time in elaborating and explaining his thought, but embodies it in short, terse, pithy, and pregnant sayings.

His philosophical principle is the direct ant.i.thesis of Eleaticism.

The Eleatics had taught that only Being is, and Becoming is not at all. All change, all Becoming is mere illusion. For Heracleitus, on the contrary, only Becoming is, and Being, permanence, ident.i.ty, these are nothing but illusion. All things sublunary are {74} perpetually changing, pa.s.sing over into new forms and new shapes. Nothing stands, nothing holds fast, nothing remains what it is. "Into the same river,"

he says, "we go down, and we do not go down; for into the same river no man can enter twice; ever it flows in and flows out." Not only does he deny all absolute permanence, but even a relative permanence of things is declared to be illusory. We all know that everything has its term, that all things arise and pa.s.s away, from the insects who live an hour to the "eternal" hills. Yet we commonly attribute to these things at least a relative permanence, a shorter or longer continuance in the same state. But even this Heracleitus will not allow. Nothing is ever the same, nothing remains identical from one consecutive moment to another. The appearance of relative permanence is an illusion, like that which makes us think that a wave pa.s.sing over the surface of the water remains all the time the same identical wave.

Here, as we know, the water of which the wave is composed changes from moment to moment, only the form remaining the same. Precisely so, for Heracleitus, the permanent appearance of things results from the inflow and outflow in them of equivalent quant.i.ties of substance. "All is flux." It is not, for example, the same sun which sets to-day and rises to-morrow. It is a new sun. For the fire of the sun burns itself out and is replenished from the vapours of the sea.

Not only do things change from moment to moment. Even in one and the same moment they are and are not the same. It is not merely that a thing first is, and then a moment afterwards, is not. It both is and is not at the same time. The at-onceness of "is" and "is not" {75} is the meaning of Becoming. We shall understand this better if we contrast it with the Eleatic principle. The Eleatics described all things under two concepts, Being and not-being. Being has, for them, all truth, all reality. Not-being is wholly false and illusory. For Heracleitus both Being and not-being are equally real. The one is as true as the other. Both are true, for both are identical. Becoming is the ident.i.ty of Being and not-being. For Becoming has only two forms, namely, the arising of things and their pa.s.sing away, their beginning and their end, their origination and their decease. Perhaps you may think that this is not correct, that there are other forms of change besides origination and decease. A man is born. That is his origination. He dies. That is his decease. Between his birth and his death there are intermediate changes. He grows larger, grows older, grows wiser or more foolish, his hair turns grey. So also the leaf of a tree does not merely come into being and pa.s.s out of being. It changes in shape, form, colour. From light green it becomes dark green, and from dark green, yellow. But there is after all nothing in all this except origination and decease, not of the thing itself, but of its qualities. The change from green to yellow is the decease of green colour, the origination of yellow colour. Origination is the pa.s.sage of not-being into Being. Decease is the pa.s.sage of Being into not-being. Becoming, then, has in it only the two factors of Being and not-being, and it means the pa.s.sing of one into the other. But this pa.s.sage does not mean, for Heracleitus, that at one moment there is Being, and at the next moment not-being. It means that Being and not-being are in everything at one and the same time. Being is {76} not-being. Being has not-being in it. Take as an example the problem of life and death. Ordinarily we think that death is due to external causes, such as accident or disease. We consider that while life lasts, it is what it is, and remains what it is, namely life, unmixed with death, and that it goes on being life until something comes from outside, as it were, in the shape of external causes, and puts an end to it. You may have read Metchnikoff's book "The Nature of Man." In the course of that book he develops this idea. Death, he says, is always due to external causes. Therefore, if we could remove the causes, we could conquer death. The causes of death are mostly disease and accident, for even old age is disease. There is no reason why science should not advance so far as to eliminate disease and accident from life. In that case life might be made immortal, or at any rate, indefinitely prolonged. Now this is founded upon a confusion of ideas.

No doubt death is always due to external causes. Every event in the world is determined, and wholly determined, by causes. The law of causation admits of no exception whatever. Therefore it is perfectly true that in every case of death causes precede it. But, as I explained in the last chapter, [Footnote 6] to give the cause is not to give any reason for an event. Causation is never a principle of explanation of anything. It tells us that the phenomenon A is invariably and unconditionally followed by the phenomenon B, and we call A the cause of B. But this only means that whenever B happens, it happens in a certain regular order and succession of events. But it does not tell us why B happens at all. The reason of a thing is to be {77} distinguished from its cause. The reason why a man dies is not to be found in the causes which bring about his death. The reason rather is that life has the germ of death already in it, that life is already death potentially, that Being has not-being in it. The causation of death is merely the mechanism, by the instrumentality of which, through one set of causes or another, the inevitable end is brought about.

[Footnote 6: Page 64.]

Not only is Being, for Heracleitus, identical with not-being, but everything in the universe has in it its own opposite. Every existent thing is a "harmony of opposite tensions." A harmony contains necessarily two opposite principles which, in spite of their opposition, reveal an underlying unity. That it is by virtue of this principle that everything in the universe exists, is the teaching of Heracleitus. All things contain their own opposites within them. In the struggle and antagonism between hostile principles consists their life, their being, their very existence. At the heart of things is conflict. If there were no conflict in a thing, it would cease to exist. This idea is expressed by Heracleitus in a variety of ways.

"Strife," he says, "is the father of all things." "The one, sundering from itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre." "G.o.d is day and night, summer and winter, war and peace, satiety and hunger." "Join together whole and unwhole, congruous and incongruous, accordant and discordant, then comes from one all and from all one." In this sense, too, he censures Homer for having prayed that strife might cease from among G.o.ds and men. If such a prayer were granted, the universe itself would pa.s.s away.

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Side by side with this metaphysic, Heracleitus lays down a theory of physics. All things are composed of fire. "This world," he says, "neither one of the G.o.ds nor of the human race has made; but it is, it was, and ever shall be, an eternally living fire." All comes from fire, and to fire all returns. "All things are exchanged for fire and fire for all, as wares for gold and gold for wares." Thus there is only one ultimate kind of matter, fire, and all other forms of matter are merely modifications and variations of fire. It is clear for what reason Heracleitus enunciated this principle. It is an exact physical parallel to the metaphysical principle of Becoming. Fire is the most mutable of the elements. It does not remain the same from one moment to another. It is continually taking up matter in the form of fuel, and giving off equivalent matter in the form of smoke and vapour. The primal fire, according to Heracleitus, trans.m.u.tes itself into air, air into water, and water into earth. This he calls "the downward path."

To it corresponds "the upward path," the trans.m.u.tation of earth into water, water to air, and air to fire. All transformation takes place in this regular order, and therefore, says Heracleitus, "the upward and the downward path are one."

Fire is further specially identified with life and reason. It is the rational element in things. The more fire there is, the more life, the more movement. The more dark and heavy materials there are, the more death, cold, and not-being. The soul, accordingly, is fire, and like all other fires it continually burns itself out and needs replenishment. This it obtains, through the senses and the breath, from the common life and reason of the {79} world, that is, from the surrounding and all-pervading fire. In this we live and move and have our being. No man has a separate soul of his own. It is merely part of the one universal soul-fire. Hence if communication with this is cut off, man becomes irrational and finally dies. Sleep is the half-way house to death. In sleep the pa.s.sages of the senses are stopped up, and the outer fire reaches us only through breath. Hence in sleep we become irrational and senseless, turning aside from the common life of the world, each to a private world of his own. Heracleitus taught also the doctrine of periodic world-cycles. The world forms itself out of fire, and by conflagration pa.s.ses back to the primitive fire.

In his religious opinions Heracleitus was sceptical. But he does not, like Xenophanes, direct his attacks against the central ideas of religion, and the doctrine of the G.o.ds. He attacks mostly the outward observances and forms in which the religious spirit manifests itself.

He inveighs against the wors.h.i.+p of images, and urges the uselessness of blood sacrifice.

With the Eleatics he distinguishes between sense and reason, and places truth in rational cognition. The illusion of permanence he ascribes to the senses. It is by reason that we rise to the knowledge of the law of Becoming. In the comprehension of this law lies the duty of man, and the only road to happiness. Understanding this, man becomes resigned and contented. He sees that evil is the necessary counterpart of good, and pain the necessary counterpart of pleasure, and that both together are necessary to form the harmony of the world.

Good and evil are principles on the struggle {80} between which the very existence of things depends. Evil, too, is necessary, has its place in the world. To see this is to put oneself above pitiful and futile struggles against the supreme law of the universe.

CHAPTER VI

EMPEDOCLES

Empedocles was a man of Agrigentum in Sicily. The dates of his birth and death are placed about 495 and 435 B.C. respectively. Like Pythagoras, he possessed a powerful and magnetic personality. Hence all kinds of legends quickly grew up and wove themselves round his life and death. He was credited with the performance of miracles, and romantic stories were circulated about his death. A man of much persuasive eloquence he raised himself to the leaders.h.i.+p of the Agrigentine democracy, until he was driven out into exile.

The philosophy of Empedocles is eclectic in character. Greek philosophy had now developed a variety of conflicting principles, and the task of Empedocles is to reconcile these, and to weld them together in a new system, containing however no new thought of its own. In speaking of Parmenides, I pointed out that his teaching may be interpreted either in an idealistic or a materialistic sense, and that these two aspects of thought lie side by side in Parmenides, and that it is possible to emphasize either the one or the other. Empedocles seizes upon the materialistic side. The essential thought of Parmenides was that Being cannot pa.s.s into not-being, nor not-being into Being. Whatever is, remains for ever what it is. {82} If we take that in a purely material context, what it means is that matter has neither beginning nor end, is uncreated and indestructible. And this is the first basic principle of Empedocles. On the other hand, Heracleitus had shown that becoming and change cannot be denied. This is the second basic principle of Empedocles. That there is no absolute becoming, no creation, and utter destruction of things, and yet that things do somehow arise and pa.s.s away, this must be explained, these contradictory ideas must be reconciled. Now if we a.s.sert that matter is uncreated and indestructible, and yet that things arise and pa.s.s away, there is only one way of explaining this. We must suppose that objects, as wholes begin and cease to be, but that the material particles of which they are composed are uncreated and indestructible.

This thought now forms the first principle of Empedocles, and of his successors, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists.

Now the Ionic philosophers had taught that all things are composed of some one ultimate matter. Thales believed it to be water, Anaximenes air. This necessarily involved that the ultimate kind of matter must be capable of transformation into other kinds of matter. If it is water, then water must be capable of turning into bra.s.s, wood, iron, air, or whatever other kind of matter exists. And the same thing applies to the air of Anaximenes. Parmenides, however, had taught that whatever is, remains always the same, no change or transformation being possible. Empedocles here too follows Parmenides, and interprets his doctrine in his own way. One kind of matter, he thinks, can never change into another kind of matter; fire never becomes {83} water, nor does earth ever become air. This leads Empedocles at once to a doctrine of elements. The word "elements," indeed, is of later invention, and Empedocles speaks of the elements as "the roots of all." There are four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Empedocles was therefore the originator of the familiar cla.s.sification of the four elements. All other kinds of matter are to be explained as mixtures, in various proportions, of these four. Thus all origination and decease, as well as the differential qualities of certain kinds of matter, are now explained by the mixing and unmixing of the four elements. All becoming is simply composition and decomposition.

But the coming together and separation of the elements involves the movement of particles, and to explain this there must exist some moving force. The Ionic philosophers had a.s.sumed that matter has the power or force required for movement immanent in itself. The air of Anaximenes, of its own inherent power, transforms itself into other kinds of matter. This doctrine Empedocles rejects. Matter is for him absolutely dead and lifeless, without any principle of motion in itself. There is, therefore, only one remaining possibility. Forces acting upon matter from the outside must be a.s.sumed. And as the two essential processes of the world, mixing and unmixing, are opposite in character, so there must be two opposite forces. These he calls by the names Love and Hate, or Harmony and Discord. Though these terms may have an idealistic sound, Empedocles conceives them as entirely physical and material forces. But he identifies the attractions and repulsions of human beings, which we call love and hate, with the universally operating forces of the material world. Human love and {84} hate are but the manifestations in us of the mechanical forces of attraction and repulsion at work in the world at large.

Empedocles taught the doctrine of periodic world-cycles. The world-process is, therefore, properly speaking, circular, and has neither beginning nor end. But in describing this process one must begin somewhere. We will begin, then, with the sphairos (sphere). In the primeval sphere the four elements are completely mixed, and interpenetrate each other completely. Water is not separated off from air, nor air from earth. All are chaotically mixed together. In any portion of the sphere there must be an equal quant.i.ty of earth, air, fire and water. The elements are thus in union, and the sole force operative within the sphere is Love or Harmony. Hence the sphere is called a "blessed G.o.d." Hate, however, exists all round the outside of the sphere. Hate gradually penetrates from the circ.u.mference towards the centre and introduces the process of separation and disunion of the elements. This process continues till, like coming together with like, the elements are wholly separated. All the water is together; all the fire is together, and so on. When this process of disintegration is complete, Hate is supreme and Love is entirely driven out. But Love again begins to penetrate matter, to cause union and mixture of the elements, and finally brings the world back to the state of the original sphere. Then the same process begins again. At what position in this circular movement is our present world to be placed? The answer is that it is neither in the complete union of the sphere, nor is it completely disintegrated. It is half-way between the sphere and the stage of total {85} disintegration. It is proceeding from the former towards the later, and Hate is gradually gaining the upper hand. In the formation of the present world from the sphere the first element to be separated off was air, next fire, then the earth.

Water is squeezed out of the earth by the rapidity of its rotation.

The sky is composed of two halves. One is of fire, and this is the day. The other is dark matter with ma.s.ses of fire scattered about in it, and this is the night.

Empedocles believed in the transmigration of souls. He also put forward a theory of sense-perception, the essential of which is that like perceives like. The fire in us perceives external fire, and so with the other elements. Sight is caused by effluences of the fire and water of the eyes meeting similar effluences from external objects.

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CHAPTER VII