d. The Pythagoreans also applied their principle to the Soul, and

thus determined what is spiritual as number. Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) goes on to tell that they thought that solar corpuscles are soul, others, that it is what moves them; they adopted this idea because the corpuscles are ever moving, even in perfect stillness, and hence they must have motion of their own. This does not signify much, but it is evident from it that the determination of self-movement was sought for in the soul. The Pythagoreans made a further application of number-conceptions to the soul after another form, which Aristotle describes in the same place as follows:—“Thought is the one, knowledge or science is the two, for it comes alone out of the one. The number of the plane is popular idea, opinion; the number of the corporeal is sensuous feeling. Everything is judged of either by thought, or science, or opinion, or feeling.” In these ideas, which we must, however, ascribe to later Pythagoreans, we may undoubtedly find some adequacy, for while thought is pure universality, knowledge deals with something “other,” since it gives itself a determination and a content; but feeling is the most developed in its determinateness. “Now because the soul moves itself, it is the self-moving number,” yet we never find it said that it is connected with the monad.

This is a simple relationship to number-determinations. Aristotle instances (De anim. I. 3) one more intricate from Timæus: “The soul moves itself, and hence also the body because it is bound up with body; it consists of elements and is divided according to harmonic numbers, and hence it has feeling and an immediately indwelling (_σύμφυτον_) harmony. In order that the whole may have an harmonious movement, Timæus has bent the straight line of harmony (_εὐθυωρίαν_) into a circle, and again divided off from the whole circle two circles, which are doubly connected; and the one of these circles is again divided into seven circles, so that the movements of the soul may resemble those of the heavens.” The more definite significance of these ideas Aristotle unfortunately has not given; they contain a profound knowledge of the harmony of the whole, but yet they are forms which themselves remain dark, because they are clumsy and unsuitable. There is always a forcible turning and twisting, a struggle with the material part of the representation, as there is in mythical and distorted forms: nothing has the pliability of thought but thought itself. It is remarkable that the Pythagoreans have grasped the soul as a system which is a counterpart of the system of the heavens. In Plato’s Timæus this same idea is more definitely brought forward. Plato also gives further number-relations, but not their significance as well; even to the present day no one has been able to make any particular sense out of them. An arrangement of numbers such as this is easy, but to give to it a real significance is difficult, and, when done, it always must be arbitrary.

There is still something worthy of attention in what is said by the Pythagoreans in reference to the soul, and this is their doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. I. 16) says: “Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras, first said that the souls of men were immortal.” The doctrine of the transmigration of souls extends even to India, and, without doubt, Pythagoras took it from the Egyptians; indeed Herodotus (II. 123) expressly says so. After he speaks of the mythical ideas of the Egyptians as to the lower world, he continues: “The Egyptians were the first to say that the soul of man is immortal, and that, when the body disappears, it goes into another living being; and when it has gone through all the animals of land and sea, and likewise birds, it again takes the body of a man, the period being completed in 3000 years.” Diogenes Laertius says in this connection (VIII. 14) that the soul, according to Pythagoras, goes through a circle. “These ideas,” proceeds Herodotus, “are also found amongst the Greeks; there are some who, earlier or later, have made use of this particular doctrine, and have spoken of it as if it were their own; I know their names very well, but I will not mention them.” He undoubtedly meant Pythagoras and his followers. In the sequel, much that is given utterance to is fictitious: “Pythagoras himself is said to have stated that his former personality was known to him. Hermes granted him a knowledge of his circumstances before his birth. He lived as the son of Hermes, Æthalides, and then in the Trojan war as Euphorbus, the son of Panthous, who killed Patroclus, and was killed by Menelaus; in the third place he was Hermotimus; fourthly, Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos; in all he lived 207 years. Euphorbus’ shield was offered up to Apollo by Menelaus, and Pythagoras went to the temple and, from the mouldering shield, showed the existence of signs, hitherto not known of, by which it was recognized.”[46] We shall not treat further of these very various and foolish stories.

As in the case of the brotherhood copied from the Egyptian priesthood, so must we here set aside this oriental and un-Greek idea of the transmigration of souls. Both were too far removed from the Greek spirit to have had a place and a development there. With the Greeks, the consciousness of a higher, freer individuality has become too strong to allow any permanence to the idea of metempsychosis, according to which, man, this independent and self-sufficing Being, takes the form of a beast. They have, indeed, the conception of men as becoming springs of water, trees, animals, &c., but the idea of degradation which comes as a consequence of sin, lies at its root. Aristotle (De anim. I. 3) shortly and in his own manner deals with and annihilates this idea of the Pythagoreans. “They do not say for what reason soul dwells in body, nor how the latter is related to it. For owing to their unity of nature when one acts the other suffers: one moves and the other is moved, but none of this happens in what is mutually contingent. According to the Pythagorean myths any soul takes to any body, which is much like making architects take to flutes. For crafts must necessarily have tools and soul body; but each tool must have its proper form and kind.” It is implied in the transmigration of souls that the organization of the body is something accidental to the human soul; this refutation by Aristotle is complete. The eternal idea of metempsychosis had philosophic interest only as the inner Notion permeating all these forms, the oriental unity which appears in everything; we have not got this signification here, or at best we have but a glimmering of it. If we say that the particular soul is, as a definite thing, to wander about throughout all, we find firstly, that the soul is not a thing such as Leibnitz’ Monad, which, like a bubble in the cup of coffee, is possibly a sentient, thinking soul; in the second place an empty identity of the soul-thing such as this has no interest in relation to immortality.

3. _Practical Philosophy_. As regards the practical philosophy of Pythagoras, which is closely connected with what has gone before, there is but little that is philosophic known to us. Aristotle (Magn. Moral. I. 1) says of him that “he first sought to speak of virtue, but not in the right way, for, because he deduced the virtues from numbers, he could not form of them any proper theory.” The Pythagoreans adopted ten virtues as well as ten heavenly spheres. Justice, amongst others, is described as the number which is like itself in like manner (_ἴσακις ἴσος_); it is an even number, which remains even when multiplied with itself. Justice is pre-eminently what remains like itself; but this is an altogether abstract determination, which applies to much that is, and which does not exhaust the concrete, thus remaining quite indeterminate.

Under the name of the “Golden words,” we have a collection of hexameters which are a succession of moral reflections, but which are rightly ascribed to later Pythagoreans. They are old, well-known, moral maxims, which are expressed in a simple and dignified way, but which do not contain anything remarkable. They begin with the direction “to honour the immortal gods as they are by law established,” and further, “Honour the oath and then the illustrious heroes;” elsewhere they go on to direct “honour to be paid to parents and to relatives,” &c.[47] Such matter does not deserve to be regarded as philosophy, although it is of importance in the process of development.

The transition from the form of outward morals to morality as existent, is more important. As in Thales’ time, law-givers and administrators of states were preeminent in possessing a physical philosophy, so we see that with Pythagoras practical philosophy is advocated as the means of constituting a moral life. There we have the speculative Idea, the absolute essence, in its reality, and in a definite, sensuous existence; and similarly the moral life is submerged in actuality as the universal spirit of a people, and as their laws and rule. In Pythagoras, on the contrary, we have the reality of absolute essence raised, in speculation, out of sensuous reality, and expressed, though still imperfectly, as the essence of thought. Morality is likewise partly raised out of actuality as ordinarily known; it is certainly a moral disposition of all actuality, but as a brotherhood, and not as the life of a people. The Pythagorean League is an arbitrary existence and not a part of the constitution recognized by public sanction; and in his person Pythagoras isolated himself as teacher, as he also did his followers. The universal consciousness, the spirit of a people, is the substance of which the accident is the individual consciousness; the speculative is thus the fact that pure, universal law is absolute, individual consciousness, so that this last, because it draws therefrom its growth and nourishment, becomes universal self-consciousness. These two sides do not, however, come to us in the form of the opposition; it is first of all in morality that there is properly this Notion of the absolute individuality of consciousness which does everything on its own account. But we see that it was really present to the mind of Pythagoras that the substance of morality is the universal, from an example in Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 16). “A Pythagorean answered to the question of a father who inquired as to the best education he could give his son, that it should be that which would make him the citizen of a well-regulated State.” This answer is great and true; to the great principle of living in the spirit of one’s people, all other circumstances are subordinate. Nowadays men try to keep education free from the spirit of the times, but they cannot withdraw themselves from this supreme power, the State, for even if they try to separate themselves, they unconsciously remain beneath this universal. The speculative meaning of the practical philosophy of Pythagoras thus is, that in this signification, the individual consciousness shall obtain a moral reality in the brotherhood. But as number is a middle thing between the sensuous and Notion, the Pythagorean brotherhood is a middle between universal, actual morality and maintaining that in true morality the individual, as an individual, is responsible for his own behaviour; this morality ceases to be universal spirit. If we wish to see practical philosophy reappear, we shall find it; but, on the whole, we shall not see it become really speculative until very recent times.

We may satisfy ourselves with this as giving us an idea of the Pythagorean system. I will, however, shortly give the principal points of the criticism which Aristotle (Met. I. 8) makes upon the Pythagorean number-form. He says justly, in the first place: “If only the limited and the unlimited, the even and odd are made fundamental ideas, the Pythagoreans do not explain how movement arises, and how, without movement and change there can be coming into being and passing away, or the conditions and activities of heavenly objects.” This defect is significant; arithmetical numbers are dry forms and barren principles in which life and movement are deficient. Aristotle says secondly, “From number no other corporeal determinations, such as weight and lightness, are conceivable;” or number thus cannot pass into what is concrete. “They say that there is no number outside of those in the heavenly spheres.” For instance, a heavenly sphere and a virtue, or a natural manifestation in the earth, are determined as one and the same number. Each of the first numbers may be exhibited in each thing or quality; but in so far as number is made to express a further determination, this quite abstract, quantitative difference becomes altogether formal; it is as if the plant were five because it has five stamens. This is just as superficial as are determination through elements or through particular portions of the globe; it is a method as formal as that by which men now try to apply the categories of electricity, magnetism, galvanism, compression and expansion, of manly and of womanly, to everything. It is a purely empty system of determination where reality should be dealt with.

To Pythagoras and his disciples there are, moreover, many scientific conclusions and discoveries ascribed, which, however, do not concern us at all. Thus, according to Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 14, 27), he is said to have known that the morning and evening star is the same, and that the moon derives her light from the sun. We have already mentioned what he says of music. But what is best known is the Pythagorean Theorem; it really is the main proposition in geometry, and cannot be regarded like any other theorem. According to Diogenes, (VIII. 12), Pythagoras, on discovering the theorem, sacrificed a hecatomb, so important did he think it; and it may indeed seem remarkable that his joy should have gone so far as to ordain a great feast to which rich men and all the people were invited. It was worth the trouble; it was a rejoicing, a feast of spiritual cognition—at the cost of the oxen.

Other ideas which are brought forward by the Pythagoreans casually and without any connection, have no philosophic interest, and need only be mentioned. Aristotle, for instance, says (Phys. IV. 6) that “the Pythagoreans believed in an empty space which the heavens inspire, and an empty space which separates natural things and brings about the distinction between continuous and discrete; it first exists in numbers and makes them to be different.” Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 26-28) says much more, all of which is dull; this is like the later writers, who, generally speaking, take up what is external and devoid of any intellectual meaning. “The air which encircles the earth is immovable” (_ἄσειστον_, at least through itself) “and diseased, and all that is in it is mortal; but what is highest is in continual movement, pure and healthy, and in it everything is immortal—divine. Sun, moon and the other stars are gods, for in them warmth has predominance and is the cause of life. Man is related to the gods because he participates in warmth, and hence God cares for us. A ray penetrates from the sun through the thick and cold ether and gives life to everything; they call air, cold ether, the sea and moisture, thick ether. The soul is a detached portion of ether.”

C. THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.

The Pythagorean philosophy has not yet got the speculative form of expression for the Notion. Numbers are not pure Notion, but Notion in the form of ordinary idea or sensuous perception, and hence a mixture of both. This expression of absolute essence in what is a pure Notion or something thought, and the movement of the Notion or of Thought, is that which we find must come next, and this we discover in the Eleatic school. In it we see thought becoming free for itself; and in that which the Eleatics express as absolute essence, we see Thought grasp itself in purity, and the movement of Thought in Notions. In the physical philosophy we saw movement represented as an objective movement, as an origination and passing away. The Pythagoreans similarly did not reflect upon these Notions, and also treated their essence, Number, as fleeting. But since alteration is now grasped in its highest abstraction as Nothing, this objective movement changes into a subjective one, comes over to the side of consciousness, and existence becomes the unmoved. We here find the beginning of dialectic, _i.e._ simply the pure movement of thought in Notions; likewise we see the opposition of thought to outward appearance or sensuous Being, or of that which is implicit to the being-for-another of this implicitness, and in the objective existence we see the contradiction which it has in itself, or dialectic proper. When we reflect in anticipation on how the course of pure thought must be formed, we find (_α_) that pure thought (pure Being, the One) manifests itself immediately in its rigid isolation and self-identity, and everything else as null; (_β_) that the hitherto timid thought—which after it is strengthened, ascribes value to the “other” and constitutes itself therefrom—shows that it then grasps the other in its simplicity and even in so doing shows its nullity; (_γ_) finally, Thought manifests the other in the manifold nature of its determinations. We shall see this in the development and culture of the Eleatics in history. These Eleatic propositions still have interest for Philosophy, and are moments which must necessarily there appear.

Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno are to be reckoned as belonging to this school. Xenophanes may be regarded as the founder of it; Parmenides is supposed to have been his pupil, and Melissus, and especially Zeno, are called the pupils of Parmenides. In fact, they are to be taken together as forming the Eleatic school; later on it lost the name, being then called Sophistic, and its locality was transferred to Greece proper. What Xenophanes began, Parmenides and Melissus developed further, and similarly Zeno perfected what these two taught. Aristotle (Metaph. I. 5) characterizes the first three thus: “Parmenides seems to comprehend the one as Notion (_κατὰ τὸν λόγον_), Melissus as matter (_κατὰ τὴν ὕλην_); hence the former says that it is limited (_πεπερασμένον_) and the latter that it is unlimited (_ἄπειρον_). But Xenophanes, who was the first of them to express the theory of the One, made the matter no plainer (_διεσαφήνισεν_), nor did he deal with either of these aspects (_φύσεως_), but looking into the heavens”—as we say, into the blue—“said, God is the One. Xenophanes and Melissus are on the whole less civilized (_μικρὸν ἀγροικότεροι_); Parmenides, however, is more acute (_μᾶλλον βλέπων_).” There is less to say of Xenophanes and Melissus, and what has come to us from the latter in particular—in fragments and derived from the sayings of others—is still in a state of ferment, and in his case there is least knowledge obtainable. On the whole, philosophic utterances and Notions are still poor, and it was in Zeno that Philosophy first attained to a purer expression of itself.

1. XENOPHANES.

The period at which he lived is clear enough, and as this suffices, it is a matter of indifference that the year of his birth and of his death is unknown. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 18), he was contemporary with Anaximander and Pythagoras. Of his circumstances further than this, it is only known that he, for reasons which are unknown, escaped from his native town, Colophon, in Asia Minor, to Magna Græcia, and resided for the most part at Zancle, (now Messina) and Catana (still called Catania) in Sicily. I find it nowhere said by the ancients that he lived at Elea, although all recent writers on the history of Philosophy repeat it, one after the other. Tennemann, in particular, says (Vol. I. pp. 151 and 414), that about the 61st Olympiad (536 B.C.), he repaired from Colophon to Elea. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 20), however, only says that he flourished about the 60th Olympiad and that he made two thousand verses on the colonization of Elea, from which it might be easily concluded that he was also born at Elea. Strabo says this in the beginning of his sixth book—when describing Elea—of Parmenides and Zeno only, and these he called Pythagoreans; hence, according to Cicero (Acad. Quæst. IV. 42) the Eleatic school took its name from these two. Xenophanes was nearly a hundred years old, and lived to see the Median wars: it is said that he became so poor that he had not the means of having his children buried, and was obliged to do so with his own hands. Some say that he had no teacher; others name Archelaus, which is a chronological error.

He wrote a book “On Nature,” the general subject and title of Philosophy at that time; some verses have been preserved to us which so far show no powers of reasoning. Professor Brandis of Bonn collected them together, with the fragments of Parmenides and Melissus, under the title “Commentationum Eleaticarum, P. 1,” Altonæ, 1813. The older philosophers wrote in verse, for prose comes much later on; on account of the awkward and confused mode of expression in Xenophanes’ poems, Cicero calls them (Acad. Quæst. IV. 23): _minus boni versus_.

As to his philosophy, Xenophanes in the first place maintained absolute existence to be the one, and likewise called this God. “The all is One and God is implanted in all things; He is unchangeable, without beginning, middle or end.”[48] In some verses by Xenophanes found in Clemens of Alexandria (Strom. V. 14, p. 714, ed. Potter), it is said:

“One God is greatest amongst gods and men. Neither like unto mortals in spirit or in form;”

and in Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. IX. 144):

“He sees everywhere, thinks everywhere, and hears everywhere,”

to which words Diogenes Laertius (IX, 19) adds: “Thought and reason are everything and eternal.” By this Xenophanes denied the truth of the conceptions of origination and of passing away, of change, movement, &c., seeing that they merely belong to sensuous perception. “He found,” says Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 156) “all origination to be inconceivable:” the One as the immediate product of pure thought, is, in its immediacy, Being.

For us the determination of Being is already known and trivial, but if we know about Being, the One, we place this, as a particular determination, in a line with all the rest. Here, on the contrary, it signifies that all else has no reality and is only a semblance. We must forget our own ideas; we know of God as Spirit. But, because the Greeks only had before them the sensuous world, these gods of their imagination, and found in them no satisfaction, they rejected all as being untrue, and thus came to pure thought. This is a wonderful advance, and thought thus becomes for the first time free for itself in the Eleatic school. Being, the One of the Eleatic school, is just this immersion in the abyss of the abstract identity of the understanding. Just as this comes first, so it also comes last, as that to which the understanding comes back, and this is proved in recent times when God is grasped only as the highest Being. If we say of God that this the highest Being is outside of and over us, we can know nothing more of it but that it is, and thus it is the undetermined; for if we knew of determinations, this would be to possess knowledge. The truth then simply is that God is the One, not in the sense that there is one God (this is another determination), but only that He is identical with Himself; in this there is no other determination, any more than in the utterance of the Eleatic school. Modern thought has, indeed, passed through a longer path, not only through what is sensuous, but also through philosophic ideas and predicates of God, to this all negating abstraction; but the content, the result arrived at is the same.

With this the dialectic reasoning of the Eleatics is closely connected in respect that they have also proved that nothing can originate or pass away. This deduction is to be found in Aristotle’s work, De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia, c. 3. “It is impossible, he says,[49] that if anything is, it arises (and he even applies this to the Godhead); for it must arise either from the like or from the unlike. But both are equally impossible: for it is no more probable that the like should be engendered from the like, than that it should engender it, for the like must have determinations identical with one another.” In acknowledging similarity, the distinction between begetting and begotten falls away. “Just as little can unlike arise from unlike, for if from the weaker the stronger takes its rise; or from the smaller, the greater; or from the worse, the better: or if, conversely, the worse proceeds from the better, non-being would result from Being: this is impossible, and thus God is eternal.” The same thing has been expressed as Pantheism or Spinozaism, which rests on the proposition _ex nihilo fit nihil_. The unity of God is further proved by Xenophanes: “If God is the mightiest, He must be One; for were He two or more, He would not have dominion over the others, but, not having dominion over the others, He could not be God. Thus were there several, they would be relatively more powerful or weaker, and thus they would not be gods, for God’s nature is to have nothing mightier than He. Were they equal, God would no longer possess the quality of being the mightiest, for the like is neither worse nor better than the like”—or it does not differ therefrom. “Hence if God is, and is such as this, He is only one; He could not, were there several, do what He willed. Since He is one, He is everywhere alike. He hears, sees and has also the other senses everywhere, for were this not the case, the parts of God would be one more powerful than the other, which is impossible. Since God is everywhere alike, He has a spherical form, for He is not here thus and elsewhere different, but is everywhere the same. Since He is eternal and one and spherical in form, He is neither unlimited nor limited. To be unlimited is non-being; for that has neither middle, beginning, end, nor part; and what is unlimited corresponds to this description. But whatever non-being is, Being is not. Mutual limitation would take place if there were several, but since there is only One, it is not limited. The one does not move itself, nor is it unmoved; to be unmoved is non-being, for to it none other comes, nor does it go into another; but to be moved must mean to be several, for one must move into another. Thus the One neither rests nor is it moved, for it is neither non-being nor is it many. In all this God is thus indicated; He is eternal and One, like Himself and spherical, neither unlimited nor limited, neither at rest nor moved.” From this result, that nothing can arise from the like or from the unlike, Aristotle (De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia c. 4) draws this conclusion: “that either there is nothing excepting God, or all else is eternal.”

We here see a dialectic which may be called metaphysical reasoning, in which the principle of identity is fundamental. “The nothing is like nothing and does not pass into Being or conversely; thus nothing can originate from like.” This, the oldest mode of argument, holds its place even to the present day, as, for example, in the so-called proof of the unity of God. This proceeding consists of making presuppositions such as the power of God, and from them drawing conclusions and denying the existence of predicates; that is the usual course in our mode of reasoning. In respect of determinations, it must be remarked that they, as being negative, are all kept apart from the positive and merely real being. We reach this abstraction by a more ordinary way, and do not require a dialectic such as that of the Eleatic school: we say God is unchangeable, change concerns finite things alone (which we represent as an empirical proposition); on the one hand we thus have finite things and change, and on the other, unchangeableness in this abstract absolute unity with itself. It is the same separation, only that we also allow the finite to be Being, which the Eleatics deny. Or else we too proceed from finite things to kinds and genera, leaving the negative out bit by bit; and the highest order of all is God, who, as the highest Being, is affirmative only, but devoid of any determination. Or we pass from what is finite to the infinite, for we say that the finite as limited must have its basis in the infinite. In all these different forms which are quite familiar to us, there is the same difficult question which exists in reference to the Eleatic thought. Whence comes determination and how is it to be grasped—how is it in the one, leaving the finite aside, and also how does the infinite pass out into the finite? The Eleatics in their reflections were distinguished from this our ordinary reflecting thought, in that they went speculatively to work (the speculative element being that change does not exist at all) and that they thus showed that, as Being was presupposed, change in itself is contradictory and inconceivable. For from the one, from Being, the determination of the negative, of the manifold, is withdrawn. Thus while we, in our conception, allow the actuality of the finite world, the Eleatics are more consistent, in that they proceeded to say that only the One exists and that the negative does not exist at all;—a consequence which, if it necessarily arouses in us surprise, still none the less remains a great abstraction.

Sceptics saw in this the point of view of the uncertainty of all things, and Sextus several times[50] quotes verses such as these:—

“No man at any time knew clearly and truly; nor will he ever know What of the gods I say, as also of the universe. For what he thinks to speak most perfectly He knows that not at all; his own opinions cleave to all.”

Sextus, generalizing, explains this in the first passage thus: “Let us imagine that in a house in which are many valuables, there were those who sought for gold by night; in such a case everyone would think that he had found the gold, but would not know certainly whether he actually had found it. Thus philosophers come into this world as into a great house to seek the truth, but were they to reach it, they could not tell whether they really had attained to it.” The indefinite expressions of Xenophanes might also merely mean that none knows that which he (Xenophanes) here makes known. In the second passage Sextus puts it thus: “Xenophanes does not make all knowledge void, but only the scientific and infallible; opinionative knowledge is, however, left. He expresses this in saying that opinion cleaves to all. So that with him the criterion is made to be opinion, i.e. the apparent, and not that which is firm and sure; Parmenides, on the contrary, condemns opinion.” But from his doctrine of the One, there follows the annihilation of ordinary ideas, which is what he did in the foregoing dialectic; it is evident, however, that nobody could know the truth which he hereby utters. If a thought such as this passed through one’s head, one could not tell that it was true, and in such a case it would only be an opinion.

We here find in Xenophanes a double consciousness; a pure consciousness and consciousness of Being, and a consciousness of opinion. The former was to him the consciousness of the divine, and it is the pure dialectic, which is negatively related to all that is determined and which annuls it. The manner in which he expresses himself towards the sensuous world and finite thought-determinations is seen most clearly in his allusions to the Greek mythological conceptions of the gods. He says, amongst other things, according to Brandis (Comment. Eleat. P. I. p. 68):—

“Did beasts and lions only have hands, Works of art thereby to bring forth, as do men, They would, in creating divine forms, give to them What in image and size belongs to themselves.”

He also animadverts on the ideas of the gods held by Homer and Hesiod in verses which Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 193) has preserved to us:—

“Hesiod and Homer have attached to the gods All that which brings shame and censure to men; Stealing, adultery, and mutual deceit.”

As, on the one hand, he defined absolute Being to be simple, making that which is, however, break through and be immediately present in it, on the other hand he philosophizes on appearances; in reference to this certain fragments only are transmitted to us, and such physical opinions as these can have no great interest. They are meant to have no speculative significance any more than are those of our own physicists. When he says in this connection

“Out of the earth comes all, and returns to it again, We all have come from earth and water alike, Thus all that grows and takes its rise is only earth and water,”[51]

this does not signify existence, physical principles, as did the water of Thales. For Aristotle expressly says, that no one regarded the earth as the absolute principle.

2. PARMINIDES.

Parmenides is a striking figure in the Eleatic school, and he arrives at more definite conceptions than does Xenophanes. He was, according to Diogenes (IX. 21), born at Elea of a rich and honourable race. Of his life, however, little is known; Aristotle only says (Met. I. 5) from tradition that he was a scholar of Xenophanes. Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VII. 111) calls him a friend (_γνώριμος_) of Xenophanes. Diogenes Laertius further states: “He heard Anaximander and Xenophanes also, but did not follow the latter” (which seems only to refer to his place of abode), “but he lived with Aminias and Diochartes the Pythagorean, attached himself to the latter, and by the former, and not by Xenophanes, was prevailed upon to lead a quiet life.” That the period in which his life falls comes between Xenophanes and Zeno—so that he is contemporaneous with them, though younger than the former and older than the latter—is ascertained. According to Diogenes (IX. 23) he flourished about the 69th Olympiad (504-501 B.C.). What is most important is his journey to Athens with Zeno, where Plato makes them talk with Socrates. This may be accepted generally, but what is strictly historical in it cannot be ascertained. In the Thætetus Plato makes Socrates reply to the invitation to examine the Eleatic system: “For Melissus and the others who assert the All to be One at rest, I have a certain respect; I have even more for Parmenides. For, to speak in Homeric language, he seems to me both venerable and strong. I knew him when he was an old man and I was still quite young, and I heard wonderful things from him.”[52] And in the Platonic Dialogue Parmenides (p. 127. Steph. p. 4. Bekk.) where, as is well known, the conversation is carried on by Parmenides and Socrates, the historic circumstances of this interview are related in detail. “Parmenides was very old, had hair which was quite grey, was beautiful in countenance, about sixty-five years old, and Zeno almost forty.” Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415) places the journey in the 80th Olympiad (460-457 B.C.). Thus Socrates, since he was born in Olympiad 77, 4 (469 B.C.), would seem to have been still too young to have carried on a dialogue such as Plato describes, and the principal matter of this dialogue, which is written in the spirit of the Eleatic school, belongs to Plato himself. Besides, we know from Parmenides’ life, that he stood in high respect with his fellow-citizens at Elea, whose prosperity must be chiefly ascribed to the laws which Parmenides gave them.[53] We also find in the _πίναξ_ of Cebes (towards the beginning) “a Parmenidian life” used synonymously with a moral life.

It must be remarked that here, where the Eleatic school is definitely treated of, Plato does not speak of Xenophanes at all, but only of Melissus and Parmenides. The fact that Plato, in one of his dialogues, likewise accords the chief part to Parmenides, and puts in his mouth the most lofty dialectic that ever was given, does not concern us here. If with Xenophanes, by the proposition that out of nothing nothing comes, origination and what depends upon or can be traced back to it is denied, the opposition between Being and non-being makes its appearance still more clearly with Parmenides, though still unconsciously. Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius have preserved to us the most important fragments from the poems of Parmenides; for Parmenides also propounded his philosophy as a poem. The first long fragment in Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 111) is an allegorical preface to his poem on Nature. This preface is majestic; it is written after the manner of the times, and in it all there is an energetic, impetuous soul which strives with Being to grasp and to express it. We can show Parmenides’ philosophy best in his own words. The introduction runs thus:—

“Horses that bore me, impelled by their courage, Brought me to the much-famed streets of the goddess Who leads the wise man to every kind of knowledge. Maidens point out the way. The axle sings hot as the daughters of Helios quickly approach, Leaving the dwelling of night, pressing on to the light, With mighty hands raising the sheltering veil.”

The maidens are, according to Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 112, 113), the senses, and Helios’ daughters are more especially the eyes:—

“These are the gates of the pathways of night and of day. Now the heavenly maidens approach the great doors, Whose lock double-turned the punishing Dice protects. To this one soft words were by the maidens addressed Subtly persuading her the barriers of oak from the gates, Now to withdraw. Yet these, Directly the yawning breadth of the doors was revealed, Drove the horses and waggon, on through the gate. The goddess received me in friendship, seized with her one hand my right, And turning towards me, she said: ‘Oh, thou, who with guides all immortal and horses, Camest here in my palace,—be welcome, young man. For no evil fate has led thee into this path, (Indeed it lies far from the ways of a man) But Themis and Dice. Now shalt thou all things explore, The heart never-flinching of the truth that persuades, The transient opinions which are not to be trusted. But from such paths keep the inquiring soul far away. On this way let not the much followed custom Cause thee to take the rash eye as thy guide, Or the confused sounding ear and the tongue. Ponder considerately With thy reason alone, the doctrine much and often examined, Which I will proclaim. For there lacks but desire on your way.’”

The goddess develops everything from the double knowledge (_α_) of thought, of the truth, and (_β_) of opinion; these make up the two parts of the poem. In another fragment taken from Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 25; 19 a) and from Proclus on the Timæus (p. 29 b), we have the principal part of what is here related preserved to us. “Understand,” says the goddess, “which are the two roads of knowledge. The one which is only Being, and which is not non-being, is the path of conviction, the truth is in it. The other that is not Being, and which is necessarily non-being, is, I must tell you, a path quite devoid of reason, for thou canst neither know, or attain to, or express, non-being.” The nothing, in fact, turns into something, since it is thought or is said: we say something, think something, if we wish to think and say the nothing. “It is necessary that saying and thinking should be Being; for Being is, but nothing is not at all.” There the matter is stated in brief; and in this nothing, falls negation generally, or in more concrete form, limitation, the finite, restriction: _determinatio est negatio_ is Spinoza’s great saying. Parmenides says, whatever form the negation may take, it does not exist at all. To consider the nothing as the true is “the way of error in which the ignorant and double-minded mortals wander. Perplexity of mind sways the erring sense. Those who believe Being and non-being to be the same, and then again not the same, are like deaf and blind men surprised, like hordes confusedly driven.” The error is to confuse them and to ascribe the same value to each, or to distinguish them as if non-being were the limited generally. “Whichever way is taken, it leads back to the point from which it started.” It is a constantly self-contradictory and disintegrating movement. To human ideas, now this is held to be reality and now its opposite, and then again a mixture of both.

Simplicius quotes further, in writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 17 a; 31, 19): “But the truth is only the ‘is’; this is neither begotten of anything else, nor transient, entire, alone in its class (_μουνογενές_), unmoved and without end; it neither was, nor will be, but is at once the all. For what birth wouldst thou seek for it? How and whence should it be augmented? That it should be from that which is not, I shall allow thee neither to say nor to think, for neither can it be said or thought that the ‘is’ is not. What necessity had either later or earlier made it begin from the nothing? Thus must it throughout only be or not be; nor will any force of conviction ever make something else arise out of that which is not. Thus origination has disappeared, and decease is incredible. Being is not separable, for it is entirely like itself; it is nowhere more, else would it not hold together, nor is it less, for everything is full of Being. The all is one coherent whole, for Being flows into unison with Being: it is unchangeable and rests securely in itself; the force of necessity holds it within the bounds of limitation. It cannot hence be said that it is imperfect; for it is without defect, while non-existence is wanting in all.” This Being is not the undetermined (_ἄπειρον_) for it is kept within the limits of necessity; we similarly find in Aristotle that limitation is ascribed to Parmenides. The sense in which the expression “limit” is to be taken is uncertain. According to Parmenides, however, this absolute limitation is as _Δίκη_, absolute necessity clearly determined in itself; and it is an important fact that he went beyond the uncultured conception of the infinite. “Thought, and that on account of which thought is, are the same. For not without that which is, in which it expresses itself (_ἐν ᾦ πεφατισμένον ἐστίν_), wilt thou find Thought, seeing that it is nothing and will be nothing outside of that which is.” That is the main point. Thought produces itself, and what is produced is a Thought. Thought is thus identical with Being, for there is nothing beside Being, this great affirmation. Plotinus, in quoting (V. Ennead. I. 8) this last fragment says: “Parmenides adopted this point of view, inasmuch as he did not place Being in sensuous things; identifying Being with Thought, he maintained it to be unchangeable.” The Sophists concluded from this: “All is truth; there is no error, for error is the non-existent, that which is not to be thought.”

Since in this an advance into the region of the ideal is observable, Parmenides began Philosophy proper. A man now constitutes himself free from all ideas and opinions, denies their truth, and says necessity alone, Being, is the truth. This beginning is certainly still dim and indefinite, and we cannot say much of what it involves; but to take up this position certainly is to develop Philosophy proper, which has not hitherto existed. The dialectic that the transient has no truth, is implied in it, for if these determinations are taken as they are usually understood, contradictions ensue. In Simplicius (in Arist. Phys. p. 27 b.; 31 b.) we have further metaphorical images from Parmenides. “Since the utmost limit of Being is perfect, it resembles on every side the form of a well rounded sphere, which from its centre extends in all directions equally, for it can be neither larger or smaller in one part or another. There is no non-being which prevents it from attaining to the like”—from coming into unity with itself—“and there is no Being where it was devoid of Being, here more and there less. Because the all is without defect, it is in all places in the same way like itself in its determinations.” Plotinus in the passage quoted says: “He compares Being with the spherical form, because it comprehends all in itself, and Thought is not outside of this, but is contained in it.” And Simplicius says: “We must not wonder at him, for on account of the poetic form, he adopts a mythological fiction (_πλάσματος_).” It immediately strikes us that the sphere is limited, and furthermore in space, and hence another must be above it; but then the Notion of the sphere is the similarity of withholding the different, notwithstanding that even the undifferentiated must be expressed; hence this image is inconsistent.

Parmenides adds to this doctrine of the truth, the doctrine of human opinions, the illusive system of the world. Simplicius, writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7 b; 39 a), tells us that he says: “Men have two forms of opinion, one of which should not be, and in it they are mistaken; they set them in opposition to one another in form and symbol. The one, the ethereal fire of the flame, is quite fine, identical with itself throughout, but not identical with the other, for that is also for itself; on the other hand there is what belongs to night, or thick and ponderous existence.” By the former, warmth, softness, lightness is expressed, and by the latter, cold. “But since everything is called light and night, and their qualities are suited both to the one kind of things and the other, everything alike is filled with light and dark night; both are alike since nothing exists without both.” Aristotle (Met. I. 3 and 5), and the other historians, likewise unanimously attribute to Parmenides the fact that he sets forth two principles for the system of manifest things, warmth and cold, through the union of which everything is. Light, fire, is the active and animate; night, cold, is called the passive.

Parmenides also speaks like a Pythagorean—he was called _ἀνὲρ Πυθαγορεῖος_ by Strabo—in the following, and likewise mythological conception: “There are circlets wound round one another, one of which is of the rare element and the other of the dense, between which others are to be found, composed of light and darkness mingled. Those which are less are of impure fire, but those over them of night, through which proceed the forces of the flames. That which holds this all together, however, is something fixed, like a wall, under which there is a fiery wreath, and the most central of the rare spheres again is fiery. The most central of those mixed is the goddess that reigns over all, the Divider (_κληροῦχος_), Dice and Necessity. For she is the principle of all earthly produce and intermingling, which impels the male to mix with the female, and conversely; she took Love to help her, creating him first amongst the gods. The air is an exhalation (_ἀναπνοή_) of the earth; the sun and the milky way, the breath of fire; and the moon is air and fire mingled, &c.”[54]

It still remains to us to explain the manner in which Parmenides regarded sensation and thought, which may undoubtedly at first sight seem to be materialistic. Theophrastus,[55] for example, remarks in this regard: “Parmenides said nothing more than that there are two elements. Knowledge is determined according to the preponderance of the one or of the other; for, according as warmth or cold predominate, thought varies; it becomes better and purer through warmth, and yet it requires also a certain balance.”

“For as in each man there still is in his dispersive limbs an intermingling, So is the understanding of man; for that Which is thought by men, is the nature of the limbs, Both in one and all; for thought is indeed the most.”[56]

He thus takes sensation and thought to be the same, and makes remembrance and oblivion to arise from these through mingling them, but whether in the intermingling they take an equal place, whether this is thought or not, and what condition this is, he leaves quite undetermined. But that he ascribes sensation to the opposites in and for themselves is clear, because he says: “The dead do not feel light or warmth or hear voices, because the fire is out of them; they feel cold, stillness and the opposite, however, and, speaking generally, each existence has a certain knowledge.” In fact, this view of Parmenides is really the opposite of materialism, for materialism consists in putting together the soul from parts, or independent forces (the wooden horse of the senses).

3. MELISSUS.

There is little to tell about the life of Melissus. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 24) calls him a disciple of Parmenides, but the discipleship is uncertain; it is also said of him that he associated with Heraclitus. He was born in Samos, like Pythagoras, and was besides a distinguished statesman amongst his people. It is said by Plutarch (in Pericle, 26) that, as admiral of the Samians, he gained in battle a victory over the Athenians. He flourished about the 84th Olympiad (444 B.C.).

In regard to his philosophy, too, there is little to say. Aristotle, where he mentions him, places him always with Parmenides, as resembling him in mode of thought. Simplicius, writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7 sqq.), has preserved several fragments of his prose writings on Nature, which show the same kind of thoughts and arguments as we find in Parmenides, but, in part, somewhat more developed. It was a question whether the reasoning in which it is shown that change does not exist, or contradicts itself, which, by Aristotle in his incomplete, and, in some parts, most corrupt work on Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias (c. 2.), was ascribed to Xenophanes, did not really belong to Melissus.[57]

Since the beginning, in which we are told whose reasoning it is, is wanting, conjecture only applies it to Xenophanes. The writing begins with the words “He says,” without any name being given. It thus depends on the superscription alone whether Aristotle speaks of the philosophy of Xenophanes or not, and it must be noticed that different hands have put different superscriptions. Indeed, there is in this work (c. 2) an opinion of Xenophanes mentioned in such a way that it appears as though had what was previously quoted by Aristotle been by him ascribed to Xenophanes, the expression would have been different. It is possible that Zeno is meant, as the internal evidence abundantly shows. There is in it a dialectic more developed in form, more real reflexion, than from the verses could be expected, not from Xenophanes alone, but even from Parmenides. For Aristotle expressly says that Xenophanes does not yet determine with precision; thus the cultured reasoning contained in Aristotle must certainly be denied to Xenophanes; at least, it is so far certain that Xenophanes himself did not know how to express his thoughts in a manner so orderly and precise as that found here. We find it said:—

“If anything is, it is eternal (_ἀΐδιον_).” Eternity is an awkward word, for it immediately makes us think of time and mingle past and future as an infinite length of time; but what is meant is that _ἀΐδιον_ is the self-identical, supersensuous, unchangeable, pure present, which is without any time-conception. It is, origination and change are shut out; if it commences, it does so out of nothing or out of Being. “It is impossible that anything should arise from the nothing. If everything could have arisen, or could it merely not have been everything eternally, it would equally have arisen out of nothing. For, if everything had arisen, nothing would once have existed. If some were alone the existent out of which the rest sprang, the one would be more and greater. But the more and greater would thus have arisen out of the nothing of itself, for in the less there is not its more, nor in the smaller its greater.”

Simplicius makes this note to the Physics of Aristotle (p. 22 b): “No more can anything arise out of the existent, for the existent already is, and thus does not first arise from the existent.”

“As eternal, the existent also is unlimited, since it has no beginning from which it came, nor end in which it ceases. The infinite all is one, for, if there were two or more, they would limit one another,” and thus have a beginning and end. The one would be the nothing of the other and come forth from this nothing. “This one is like itself; for if it were unlike it would no longer be the one that was posited, but many. This one is likewise immovable, inasmuch as it does not move itself, since it does not pass out into anything. In passing out, it would require to do so into what is full or what is empty; it could not be into the full, for that is an impossibility, and just as little could it be into what is empty, for that is the nothing. The one, therefore, is in this way devoid of pain or suffering, not changing in position or form, or mingling with what is different. For all these determinations involve the origination of non-being and passing away of Being, which is impossible.” Thus here again the contradiction which takes place when origination and passing away are spoken of, is revealed.

Now Melissus places opinion in opposition to this truth. The change and multiplicity extinguished in Being appears on the other side, in consciousness, as in what is opinionative; it is necessary to say this if only the negative side, the removal of these moments, the Absolute as destitute of predicate, is laid hold of. “In sensuous perception the opposite is present for us; that is to say, a number of things, their change, their origination and passing away, and their intermingling. Thus that first knowledge must take its place beside this second, which has as much certainty for ordinary consciousness as the first.” Melissus does not seem to have decided for the one or the other, but, oscillating between both, to have limited the knowledge of the truth to the statement that, speaking generally, between two opposite modes of presentation, the more probable opinion is to be preferred, but that what is so preferred is only to be regarded as the stronger opinion, and not as truth. This is what Aristotle says of him.

Since Aristotle, in distinguishing his philosophy from the philosophy of Parmenides, maintains that in the first place Parmenides seems to understand the One as the principle of thought, and Melissus as matter, we must remark that this distinction falls away in pure existence, Being, or the One. Pure matter, as also pure thought (if I am to speak of such a distinction), are not present to Parmenides and Melissus, since they are abrogated; and it must only be in the manner of his expression that one of them—according to Aristotle (Phys. I. 2), on account of his clumsier mode of treatment (_μᾶλλον φορτικός_)—could seem to have conceived of the other sense. If the difference consisted secondly in the fact that Parmenides regarded the one as limited and Melissus as unlimited, this limitation of the one would, in effect, immediately contradict the philosophy of Parmenides; for since limit is the non-being of Being, non-being would thus be posited. But when Parmenides speaks of limit, we see that his poetic language is not altogether exact; limit, however, as pure limit, is just simple Being and absolute negativity, in which all else said and set forth is sublated. Necessity, as this pure negativity and movement within itself, although impassive thought, is absolutely bound to its opposite. In the third place it may be said that Parmenides set forth a concomitant philosophy of opinion or reality, to which Being as existence for thought was thus more opposed than was the case with Melissus.

4. ZENO.

What specially characterizes Zeno is the dialectic which, properly speaking, begins with him; he is the master of the Eleatic school in whom its pure thought arrives at the movement of the Notion in itself and becomes the pure soul of science. That is to say, in the Eleatics hitherto considered, we only have the proposition: “The nothing has no reality and is not at all, and thus what is called origin and decease disappears.” With Zeno, on the contrary, we certainly see just such an assertion of the one and removal of what contradicts it, but we also see that this assertion is not made the starting point; for reason begins by calmly demonstrating in that which is established as existent, its negation. Parmenides asserts that “The all is immutable, for, in change, the non-being of that which is would be asserted, but Being only is; in saying that non-being is, the subject and the predicate contradict themselves.” Zeno, on the other hand, says: “Assert your change; in it as change there is the negation to it, or it is nothing.” To the former change existed as motion, definite and complete. Zeno protested against motion as such, or pure motion. “Pure Being is not motion; it is rather the negation of motion.” We find it specially interesting that there is in Zeno the higher consciousness, the consciousness that when one determination is denied, this negation is itself again a determination, and then in the absolute negation not one determination, but both the opposites must be negated. Zeno anticipated this, and because he foresaw that Being is the opposite of nothing, he denied of the One what must be said of the nothing. But the same thing must occur with all the rest. We find this higher dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides; here it only breaks forth in respect to some determinations, and not to the determination of the One and of Being. The higher consciousness is the consciousness of the nullity of Being as of what is determined as against the nothing, partly found in Heraclitus and then in the Sophists; with them it never has any truth, it has no existence in itself, but is only the for-another, or the assurance of the individual consciousness, and assurance as refutation, i.e. the negative side of dialectic.

According to Diogenes Laertius, (IX. 25) Zeno was likewise an Eleat; he is the youngest, and lived most in company with Parmenides. The latter became very fond of him and adopted him as a son; his own father was called Telentagoras. Not in his State alone was his conduct held in high respect, for his fame was universal, and he was esteemed particularly as a teacher. Plato mentions that men came to him from Athens and other places, in order to profit from his learning.[58] Proud self-sufficiency is ascribed to him by Diogenes (IX. 28) because he—with the exception of a journey made to Athens—continued to reside in Elea, and did not stay a longer time in the great, mighty Athens, and there attain to fame. In very various narratives his death was made for ever celebrated for the strength of his mind evinced in it; it was said that he freed a State (whether his own home at Elea or in Sicily, is not known) from its Tyrant (the name is given differently, but an exact historical account has not been recorded) in the following way, and by the sacrifice of his life. He entered into a plot to overthrow the Tyrant, but this was betrayed. When the Tyrant now, in face of the people, caused him to be tortured in every possible way to get from him an avowal of his confederates, and when he questioned him about the enemies of the State, Zeno first named to the Tyrant all his friends as participators in the plot, and then spoke of the Tyrant himself as the pest of the State. The powerful remonstrances or the horrible tortures and death of Zeno aroused the citizens, inspired them with courage to fall upon the Tyrant, kill him, and liberate themselves. The manner of the end, and his violent and furious state of mind, is very variously depicted. He is said to have pretended to wish to say something into the Tyrant’s ear, and then to have bitten his ear, and thus held him fast until he was slain by the others. Others say that he seized him by the nose between his teeth; others that as on his reply great tortures were applied, he bit off his tongue and spat it into the Tyrant’s face, to show him that he could get nothing from him, and that he then was pounded in a mortar.[59]

It has just been noticed that Zeno had the very important character of being the originator of the true objective dialectic. Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Melissus, start with the proposition: “Nothing is nothing; the nothing does not exist at all, or the like is real existence,” that is, they make one of the opposed predicates to be existence. Now when they encounter the opposite in a determination, they demolish this determination, but it is only demolished through another, through my assertion, through the distinction that I form, by which one side is made to be the true, and the other the null. We have proceeded from a definite proposition; the nullity of the opposite does not appear in itself; it is not that it abrogates itself, i.e. that it contains a contradiction in itself. For instance, I assert of something that it is the null; then I show this by hypothesis in motion, and it follows that it is the null. But another consciousness does not assert this; I declare one thing to be directly true; another has the right of asserting something else as directly true, that is to say, motion. Similarly what seems to be the case when one philosophic system contradicts another, is that the first is pre-established, and that men starting from this point of view, combat the other. The matter is thus easily settled by saying: “The other has no truth, because it does not agree with me,” and the other has the right to say the same. It does not help if I prove my system or my proposition and then conclude that thus the opposite is false; to this other proposition the first always seems to be foreign and external. Falsity must not be demonstrated through another, and as untrue because the opposite is true, but in itself; we find this rational perception in Zeno.

In Plato’s Parmenides (pp. 127, 128, Steph., pp. 6, 7, Bekk.) this dialectic is very well described, for Plato makes Socrates say of it: “Zeno in his writings asserts fundamentally the same as does Parmenides, that All is One, but he would feign delude us into believing that he was telling something new. Parmenides thus shows in his poems that All is One; Zeno, on the contrary, shows that the Many cannot be.” Zeno replies, that “He wrote thus really against those who try to make Parmenides’ position ridiculous, for they try to show what absurdities and self-contradictions can be derived from his statements; he thus combats those who deduce Being from the many, in order to show that far more absurdities arise from this than from the statements of Parmenides.” That is the special aim of objective dialectic, in which we no longer maintain simple thought for itself, but see the battle fought with new vigour within the enemy’s camp. Dialectic has in Zeno this negative side, but it has also to be considered from its positive side.

According to the ordinary ideas of science, where propositions result from proof, proof is the movement of intelligence, a connection brought about by mediation. Dialectic is either (_α_) external dialectic, in which this movement is different from the comprehension of the movement, or (_β_) not a movement of our intelligence only, but what proceeds from the nature of the thing itself, i.e. from the pure Notion of the content. The former is a manner of regarding objects in such a way that reasons are revealed and new light thrown, by means of which all that was supposed to be firmly fixed, is made to totter; there may be reasons which are altogether external too, and we shall speak further of this dialectic when dealing with the Sophists. The other dialectic, however, is the immanent contemplation of the object; it is taken for itself, without previous hypothesis, idea or obligation, not under any outward conditions, laws or causes; we have to put ourselves right into the thing, to consider the object in itself, and to take it in the determinations which it has. In regarding it thus, it shows from itself that it contains opposed determinations, and thus breaks up; this dialectic we more especially find in the ancients. The subjective dialectic, which reasons from external grounds, is moderate, for it grants that: “In the right there is what is not right, and in the false the true.” True dialectic leaves nothing whatever to its object, as if the latter were deficient on one side only; for it disintegrates itself in the entirety of its nature. The result of this dialectic is null, the negative; the affirmative in it does not yet appear. This true dialectic may be associated with the work of the Eleatics. But in their case the real meaning and quality of philosophic understanding was not great, for they got no further than the fact that through contradiction the object is a nothing.

Zeno’s dialectic of matter has not been refuted to the present day; even now we have not got beyond it, and the matter is left in uncertainty. Simplicius, writing on the Physics of Aristotle (p. 30), says: “Zeno proves that if the many is, it must be great and small; if great, the many must be infinite in number” (it must have gone beyond the manifold, as indifferent limit, into the infinite; but what is infinite is no longer large and no longer many, for it is the negation of the many). “If small, it must be so small as to have no size,” like atoms. “Here he shows that what has neither size, thickness nor mass, cannot be. For if it were added to another, it would not cause its increase; were it, that is to say, to have no size and be added thereto, it could not supplement the size of the other and consequently that which is added is nothing. Similarly were it taken away, the other would not be made less, and thus it is nothing. If what has being is, each existence necessarily has size and thickness, is outside of one another, and one is separate from the other; the same applies to all else (_περὶ τοῦ προὔχοντος_), for it, too, has size, and in it there is what mutually differs (_προέξει αὐτοῦ τι_). But it is the same thing to say something once and to say it over and over again; in it nothing can be a last, nor will there not be another to the other. Thus if many are, they are small and great; small, so that they have no size; great, so that they are infinite.”

Aristotle (Phys. VI. 9) explains this dialectic further; Zeno’s treatment of motion was above all objectively dialectical. But the particulars which we find in the Parmenides of Plato are not his. For Zeno’s consciousness we see simple unmoved thought disappear, but become thinking movement; in that he combats sensuous movement, he concedes it. The reason that dialectic first fell on movement is that the dialectic is itself this movement, or movement itself the dialectic of all that is. The thing, as self-moving, has its dialectic in itself, and movement is the becoming another, self-abrogation. If Aristotle says that Zeno denied movement because it contains an inner contradiction, it is not to be understood to mean that movement did not exist at all. The point is not that there is movement and that this phenomenon exists; the fact that there is movement is as sensuously certain as that there are elephants; it is not in this sense that Zeno meant to deny movement. The point in question concerns its truth. Movement, however, is held to be untrue, because the conception of it involves a contradiction; by that he meant to say that no true Being can be predicated of it.

Zeno’s utterances are to be looked at from this point of view, not as being directed against the reality of motion, as would at first appear, but as pointing out how movement must necessarily be determined, and showing the course which must be taken. Zeno now brings forward four different arguments against motion; the proofs rest on the infinite divisibility of space and time.

(a) This is his first form of argument:—“Movement has no truth, because what is in motion must first reach the middle of the space before arriving at the end.” Aristotle expresses this thus shortly, because he had earlier treated of and worked out the subject at length. This is to be taken as indicating generally that the continuity of space is presupposed. What moves itself must reach a certain end, this way is a whole. In order to traverse the whole, what is in motion must first pass over the half, and now the end of this half is considered as being the end; but this half of space is again a whole, that which also has a half, and the half of this half must first have been reached, and so on into infinity. Zeno here arrives at the infinite divisibility of space; because space and time are absolutely continuous, there is no point at which the division can stop. Every dimension (and every time and space always have a dimension) is again divisible into two halves, which must be measured off; and however small a space we have, the same conditions reappear. Movement would be the act of passing through these infinite moments, and would therefore never end; thus what is in motion cannot reach its end. It is known how Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic, quite simply refuted these arguments against movement; without speaking he rose and walked about, contradicting them by action.[60] But when reasons are disputed, the only valid refutation is one derived from reasons; men have not merely to satisfy themselves by sensuous assurance, but also to understand. To refute objections is to prove their non-existence, as when they are made to fall away and can hence be adduced no longer; but it is necessary to think of motion as Zeno thought of it, and yet to carry this theory of motion further still.

We have here the spurious infinite or pure appearance, whose simple principle Philosophy demonstrates as universal Notion, for the first time making its appearance as developed in its contradiction; in the history of Philosophy a consciousness of this contradiction is also attained. Movement, this pure phenomenon, appears as something thought and shown forth in its real being—that is, in its distinction of pure self-identity and pure negativity, the point as distinguished from continuity. To us there is no contradiction in the idea that the here of space and the now of time are considered as a continuity and length; but their Notion is self-contradictory. Self-identity or continuity is absolute cohesion, the destruction of all difference, of all negation, of being for self; the point, on the contrary, is pure being-for-self, absolute self-distinction and the destruction of all identity and all connection with what is different. Both of these, however, are, in space and time, placed in one; space and time are thus the contradiction; it is necessary, first of all, to show the contradiction in movement, for in movement that which is opposed is, to ordinary conceptions, inevitably manifested. Movement is just the reality of time and space, and because this appears and is made manifest, the apparent contradiction is demonstrated, and it is this contradiction that Zeno notices. The limitation of bisection which is involved in the continuity of space, is not absolute limitation, for that which is limited is again continuity; however, this continuity is again not absolute, for the opposite has to be exhibited in it, the limitation of bisection; but the limitation of continuity is still not thereby established, the half is still continuous, and so on into infinity. In that we say “into infinity,” we place before ourselves a beyond, outside of the ordinary conception, which cannot reach so far. It is certainly an endless going forth, but in the Notion it is present, it is a progression from one opposed determination to others, from continuity to negativity, from negativity to continuity; but both of these are before us. Of these moments one in the process may be called the true one; Zeno first asserts continuous progression in such a way that no limited space can be arrived at as ultimate, or Zeno upholds progression in this limitation.

The general explanation which Aristotle gives to this contradiction, is that space and time are not infinitely divided, but are only divisible. But it now appears that, because they are divisible—that is, in potentiality—they must actually be infinitely divided, for else they could not be divided into infinity. That is the general answer of the ordinary man in endeavouring to refute the explanation of Aristotle. Bayle (Tom. IV. art. Zénon, not. E.) hence says of Aristotle’s answer that it is “pitoyable: C’est se moquer du monde que de se servir de cette doctrine; car si la matière est divisible à l’infini, elle contient un nombre infini de parties. Ce n’est donc point un infini en puissance, c’est un infini, qui existe réellement, actuellement. Mais quand-même on accorderait cet infini en puissance, qui deviendrait un infini par la division actuelle de ses parties, on ne perdrait pas ses avantages; car le mouvement est une chose, qui a la même vertu, que la division. Il touche une partie de l’espace sans toucher l’autre, et il les touche toutes les unes après les autres. N’est-ce pas les distinguer actuellement? N’est-ce pas faire ce que ferait un géomètre sur une table en tirant des lignes, qui désignassent tous les demi-pouces? Il ne brise pas la table en demi-pouces, mais il y fait néanmoins une division, qui marque la distinction actuelle des parties; et je ne crois pas qu’Aristote eut voulu nier, que _si_ l’on tirait une infinité de lignes sur un pouce de matière, on n’y introduisît une division, qui réduirait en infini actuel ce qui n’était selon lui qu’un infini virtual.” This _si_ is good! Divisibility is, as potentiality, the universal; there is continuity as well as negativity or the point posited in it—but posited as moment, and not as existent in and for itself. I can divide matter into infinitude, but I only can do so; I do not really divide it into infinitude. This is the infinite, that no one of its moments has reality. It never does happen that, in itself, one or other—that absolute limitation or absolute continuity—actually comes into existence in such a way that the other moment disappears. There are two absolute opposites, but they are moments, i.e. in the simple Notion or in the universal, in thought, if you will; for in thought, in ordinary conception, what is set forth both is and is not at the same time. What is represented either as such, or as an image of the conception, is not a thing; it has no Being, and yet it is not nothing.

Space and time furthermore, as _quantum_, form a limited extension, and thus can be measured off; just as I do not actually divide space, neither does the body which is in motion. The partition of space as divided, is not absolute discontinuity [Punktualität], nor is pure continuity the undivided and indivisible; likewise time is not pure negativity or discontinuity, but also continuity. Both are manifested in motion, in which the Notions have their reality for ordinary conception—pure negativity as time, continuity as space. Motion itself is just this actual unity in the opposition, and the sequence of both moments in this unity. To comprehend motion is to express its essence in the form of Notion, _i.e._, as unity of negativity and continuity; but in them neither continuity nor discreteness can be exhibited as the true existence. If we represent space or time to ourselves as infinitely divided, we have an infinitude of points, but continuity is present therein as a space which comprehends them: as Notion, however, continuity is the fact that all these are alike, and thus in reality they do not appear one out of the other like points. But both these moments make their appearance as existent; if they are manifested indifferently, their Notion is no longer posited, but their existence. In them as existent, negativity is a limited size, and they exist as limited space and time; actual motion is progression through a limited space and a limited time and not through infinite space and infinite time.

That what is in motion must reach the half is the assertion of continuity, i.e. the possibility of division as mere possibility; it is thus always possible in every space, however small. It is said that it is plain that the half must be reached, but in so saying, everything is allowed, including the fact that it never will be reached; for to say so in one case, is the same as saying it an infinite number of times. We mean, on the contrary, that in a larger space the half can be allowed, but we conceive that we must somewhere attain to a space so small that no halving is possible, or an indivisible, non-continuous space which is no space. This, however, is false, for continuity is a necessary determination; there is undoubtedly a smallest in space, i.e. a negation of continuity, but the negation is something quite abstract. Abstract adherence to the subdivision indicated, that is, to continuous bisection into infinitude, is likewise false, for in the conception of a half, the interruption of continuity is involved. We must say that there is no half of space, for space is continuous; a piece of wood may be broken into two halves, but not space, and space only exists in movement. It might equally be said that space consists of an endless number of points, i.e. of infinitely many limits and thus cannot be traversed. Men think themselves able to go from one indivisible point to another, but they do not thereby get any further, for of these there is an unlimited number. Continuity is split up into its opposite, a number which is indefinite; that is to say, if continuity is not admitted, there is no motion. It is false to assert that it is possible when one is reached, or that which is not continuous; for motion is connection. Thus when it was said that continuity is the presupposed possibility of infinite division, continuity is only the hypothesis; but what is exhibited in this continuity is the being of infinitely many, abstractly absolute limits.

(b) The second proof, which is also the presupposition of continuity and the manifestation of division, is called “Achilles, the Swift.” The ancients loved to clothe difficulties in sensuous representations. Of two bodies moving in one direction, one of which is in front and the other following at a fixed distance and moving quicker than the first, we know that the second will overtake the first. But Zeno says, “The slower can never be overtaken by the quicker.” And he proves it thus: “The second one requires a certain space of time to reach the place from which the one pursued started at the beginning of the given period.” Thus during the time in which the second reached the point where the first was, the latter went over a new space which the second has again to pass through in a part of this period; and in this way it goes into infinity.

c d e f g

B A

B, for instance, traverses two miles (c d) in an hour, A in the same time, one mile (d e); if they are two miles (c d) removed from one another, B has in one hour come to where A was at the beginning of the hour. While B, in the next half hour, goes over the distance crossed by A of one mile (d e), A has got half a mile (e f) further, and so on into infinity. Quicker motion does not help the second body at all in passing over the interval of space by which he is behind: the time which he requires, the slower body always has at its avail in order to accomplish some, although an ever shorter advance; and this, because of the continual division, never quite disappears.

Aristotle, in speaking of this, puts it shortly thus. “This proof asserts the same endless divisibility, but it is untrue, for the quick will overtake the slow body if the limits to be traversed be granted to it.” This answer is correct and contains all that can be said; that is, there are in this representation two periods of time and two distances, which are separated from one another, i.e. they are limited in relation to one another; when, on the contrary, we admit that time and space are continuous, so that two periods of time or points of space are related to one another as continuous, they are, while being two, not two, but identical. In ordinary language we solve the matter in the easiest way, for we say: “Because the second is quicker, it covers a greater distance in the same time as the slow; it can therefore come to the place from which the first started and get further still.” After B, at the end of the first hour, arrives at d and A at e, A in one and the same period, that is, in the second hour, goes over the distance e g, and B the distance d g. But this period of time which should be one, is divisible into that in which B accomplishes d e and that in which B passes through e g. A has a start of the first, by which it gets over the distance e f, so that A is at f at the same period as B is at e. The limitation which, according to Aristotle, is to be overcome, which must be penetrated, is thus that of time; since it is continuous, it must, for the solution of the difficulty, be said that what is divisible into two spaces of time is to be conceived of as one, in which B gets from d to e and from e to g, while A passes over the distance e g. In motion two periods, as well as two points in space, are indeed one.

If we wish to make motion clear to ourselves, we say that the body is in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves, it is no longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were it in either it would be at rest. Where then is it? If we say that it is between both, this is to convey nothing at all, for were it between both, it would be in a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement means to be in this place and not to be in it, and thus to be in both alike; this is the continuity of space and time which first makes motion possible. Zeno, in the deduction made by him, brought both these points into forcible opposition. The discretion of space and time we also uphold, but there must also be granted to them the overstepping of limits, i.e. the exhibition of limits as not being, or as being divided periods of time, which are also not divided. In our ordinary ideas we find the same determinations as those on which the dialectic of Zeno rests; we arrive at saying, though unwillingly, that in one period two distances of space are traversed, but we do not say that the quicker comprehends two moments of time in one; for that we fix a definite space. But in order that the slower may lose its precedence, it must be said that it loses its advantage of a moment of time, and indirectly the moment of space.

Zeno makes limit, division, the moment of discretion in space and time, the only element which is enforced in the whole of his conclusions, and hence results the contradiction. The difficulty is to overcome thought, for what makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really united. It brought about the Fall, for man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but it also remedies these evils.

(c) The third form, according to Aristotle, is as follows:—Zeno says: “The flying arrow rests, and for the reason that what is in motion is always in the self-same Now and the self-same Here, in the indistinguishable;” it is here and here and here. It can be said of the arrow that it is always the same, for it is always in the same space and the same time; it does not get beyond its space, does not take in another, that is, a greater or smaller space. That, however, is what we call rest and not motion. In the Here and Now, the becoming “other” is abrogated, limitation indeed being established, but only as moment; since in the Here and Now as such, there is no difference, continuity is here made to prevail against the mere belief in diversity. Each place is a different place, and thus the same; true, objective difference does not come forth in these sensuous relations, but in the spiritual.

This is also apparent in mechanics; of two bodies the question as to which moves presents itself before us. It requires more than two places—three at least—to determine which of them moves. But it is correct to say this, that motion is plainly relative; whether in absolute space the eye, for instance, rests, or whether it moves, is all the same. Or, according to a proposition brought forward by Newton, if two bodies move round one another in a circle, it may be asked whether the one rests or both move. Newton tries to decide this by means of an external circumstance, the strain on the string. When I walk on a ship in a direction opposed to the motion of the ship, this is in relation to the ship, motion, and in relation to all else, rest.

In both the first proofs, continuity in progression has the predominance; there is no absolute limit, but an overstepping of all limits. Here the opposite is established; absolute limitation, the interruption of continuity, without however passing into something else; while discretion is presupposed, continuity is maintained. Aristotle says of this proof: “It arises from the fact that it is taken for granted that time consists of the Now; for if this is not conceded, the conclusions will not follow.”

(d) “The fourth proof,” Aristotle continues, “is derived from similar bodies which move in opposite directions in the space beside a similar body, and with equal velocity, one from one end of the space, the other from the middle. It necessarily results from this that half the time is equal to the double of it. The fallacy rests in this, that Zeno supposes that what is beside the moving body, and what is beside the body at rest, move through an equal distance in equal time with equal velocity, which, however, is untrue.”

1 _E_|——|——|——|——|_F_ _k_ _i_ _m_ _C_|——|——|——|——|_D_ _g_ _n_ _h_ _A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

In a definite space such as a table (A B) let us suppose two bodies of equal length with it and with one another, one of which (C D) lies with one end (C) on the middle (g) of the table, and the other (E F), being in the same direction, has the point (E) only touching the end of the table (h); and supposing they move in opposite directions, and the former (C D) reaches in an hour the end (h) of the table; we have the result ensuing that the one (E F) passes in the half of the time through the same space (i k) which the other does in the double (g h); hence the half is equal to the double. That is to say, this second passes (let us say, in the point l) by the whole of the first C D. In the first half-hour l goes from m to i, while k only goes from g to n.

1 _E_|——|——|——|——|_F_ _k_ _o_ _i_ _m_ _C_|——|——|——|——|_D_ _g_ _n_ _h_ _A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

In the second half-hour l goes past o to k, and altogether passes from m to k, or the double of the distance.

1 _E_|——|——|——|——|_F_ _k_ _o_ _i_ _m_ _C_|——|——|——|——|_D_ _g_ _n_ _h_ _A_|——|——|——|——|_B_

This fourth form deals with the contradiction presented in opposite motion; that which is common is given entirely to one body, while it only does part for itself. Here the distance travelled by one body is the sum of the distance travelled by both, just as when I go two feet east, and from the same point another goes two feet west, we are four feet removed from one another; in the distance moved both are positive, and hence have to be added together. Or if I have gone two feet forwards and two feet backwards, although I have walked four feet, I have not moved from the spot; the motion is then nil, for by going forwards and backwards an opposition ensues which annuls itself.

This is the dialectic of Zeno; he had a knowledge of the determinations which our ideas of space and time contain, and showed in them their contradiction; Kant’s antinomies do no more than Zeno did here. The general result of the Eleatic dialectic has thus become, “the truth is the one, all else is untrue,” just as the Kantian philosophy resulted in “we know appearances only.” On the whole the principle is the same; “the content of knowledge is only an appearance and not truth,” but there is also a great difference present. That is to say, Zeno and the Eleatics in their proposition signified “that the sensuous world, with its multitudinous forms, is in itself appearance only, and has no truth.” But Kant does not mean this, for he asserts: “Because we apply the activity of our thought to the outer world, we constitute it appearance; what is without, first becomes an untruth by the fact that we put therein a mass of determinations. Only our knowledge, the spiritual, is thus appearance; the world is in itself absolute truth; it is our action alone that ruins it, our work is good for nothing.” It shows excessive humility of mind to believe that knowledge has no value; but Christ says, “Are ye not better than the sparrows?” and we are so inasmuch as we are thinking; as sensuous we are as good or as bad as sparrows. Zeno’s dialectic has greater objectivity than this modern dialectic.

Zeno’s dialectic is limited to Metaphysics; later, with the Sophists, it became general. We here leave the Eleatic school, which perpetuates itself in Leucippus and, on the other side, in the Sophists, in such a way that these last extended the Eleatic conceptions to all reality, and gave to it the relation of consciousness; the former, however, as one who later on worked out the Notion in its abstraction, makes a physical application of it, and one which is opposed to consciousness. There are several other Eleatics mentioned, to Tennemann’s surprise, who, however, cannot interest us. “It is so unexpected,” he says (Vol. I., p. 190), “that the Eleatic system should find disciples; and yet Sextus mentions a certain Xeniades.”

D. HERACLITUS.

If we put aside the Ionics, who did not understand the Absolute as Thought, and the Pythagoreans likewise, we have the pure Being of the Eleatics, and the dialectic which denies all finite relationships. Thought to the latter is the process of such manifestations; the world in itself is the apparent, and pure Being alone the true. The dialectic of Zeno thus lays hold of the determinations which rest in the content itself, but it may, in so far, also be called subjective dialectic, inasmuch as it rests in the contemplative subject, and the one, without this movement of the dialectic, is abstract identity. The next step from the existence of the dialectic as movement in the subject, is that it must necessarily itself become objective. If Aristotle blames Thales for doing away with motion, because change cannot be understood from Being, and likewise misses the actual in the Pythagorean numbers and Platonic Ideas, taken as the substances of the things which participate in them, Heraclitus at least understands the absolute as just this process of the dialectic. The dialectic is thus thre-fold: (_α_) the external dialectic, a reasoning which goes over and over again without ever reaching the soul of the thing; (_β_) immanent dialectic of the object, but falling within the contemplation of the subject; (_γ_) the objectivity of Heraclitus which takes the dialectic itself as principle. The advance requisite and made by Heraclitus is the progression from Being as the first immediate thought, to the category of Becoming as the second. This is the first concrete, the Absolute, as in it the unity of opposites. Thus with Heraclitus the philosophic Idea is to be met with in its speculative form; the reasoning of Parmenides and Zeno is abstract understanding. Heraclitus was thus universally esteemed a deep philosopher and even was decried as such. Here we see land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic.

Diogenes Laertius says (IX. 1) that Heraclitus flourished about the 69th Olympiad (500 B.C.), and that he was of Ephesus and in part contemporaneous with Parmenides: he began the separation and withdrawal of philosophers from public affairs and the interests of the country, and devoted himself in his isolation entirely to Philosophy. We have thus three stages: (_α_) the seven sages as statesmen, regents and law-givers; (_β_) the Pythagorean aristocratic league; (_γ_) an interest in science for its own sake. Little more is known of Heraclitus’ life than his relations to his countrymen the Ephesians, and according to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 15, 3), these were for the most part found in the fact that they despised him and were yet more profoundly despised by him—a relationship such as we have now-a-days, when each man exists for himself, and despises everyone else. In the case of this noble character, the disdain and sense of separation from the crowd emanates from the deep sense of the perversity of the ordinary ideas and life of his people: in reference to this, isolated expressions used on various occasions are still preserved. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. V. 36) and Diogenes Laertius (IX. 2) relate that Heraclitus said: “The Ephesians all deserve to have their necks broken as they grow up, so that the town should be left to minors” (people now say that only youth knows how to govern), “because they drove away his friend Hermodorus, the best of them all, and gave as their reason for so doing that amongst them none should be more excellent than the rest; and if any one were so, it should be elsewhere and amongst others.” It was for the same reason that in the Athenian Democracy great men were banished. Diogenes adds: “His fellow-citizens asked him to take part in the administration of public affairs, but he declined, because he did not like their constitution, laws and administration.” Proclus (T. III. pp. 115, 116, ed. Cousin) says: “The noble Heraclitus blamed the people for being devoid of understanding or thought. ‘What is,’ he says, ‘their understanding or their prudence? Most of them are bad, and few are good.’” Diogenes Laertius (IX. 6) furthermore says: “Antisthenes cites, as a proof of Heraclitus’ greatness, that he left his kingdom to his brother.” He expresses in the strongest manner his contempt for what is esteemed to be truth and right, in the letter preserved to us by Diogenes (IX. 13, 14), in which, to the invitation of Darius Hystaspes, “to make him acquainted with Greek wisdom—for his work on Nature contains a very forcible theory of the world, but it is in many passages obscure—to come to him and explain to him what required explanation” (this is certainly not very probable if Heraclitus’ turn of mind was also Oriental), he is said to have replied: “All mortal men depart from truth and justice and are given over to excess and vain opinions according to their evil understandings. But I, since I have attained to an oblivion of all evil, and shun the overpowering envy that follows me, and the vanity of high position, shall not come to Persia. I am content with little and live in my own way.”

The only work that he wrote, and the title of which, Diogenes tells us, was by some stated to be “The Muses” and by others “On Nature,” he deposited in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. It seems to have been preserved until modern times; the fragments which have come down to us are collected together in Stephanus’ _Poësis philosophica_ (p. 129, seq.). Schleiermacher also collected them and arranged them in a characteristic way. The title is “Heraclitus, the Dark, of Ephesus, as represented in fragments of his work and by the testimony of the ancients,” and it is to be found in Wolf and Buttmann’s “Museum of ancient Learning,” vol. I. (Berlin, 1807) pp. 315-533. Seventy-three passages are given. Kreuzer made one hope that he would work at Heraclitus more critically and with a knowledge of the language. He made a more complete collection, particularly from grammarians; however, as, for lack of time, he left it to be worked up by a younger scholar, and as the latter died, it never came before the public. Compilations of the kind are as a rule too copious: they contain a mass of learning and are more easily written than read. Heraclitus has been considered obscure, and is indeed celebrated for this; it also drew upon him the name of _σκοτεινός_. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 26; III. 14; De Finib. II. 5) takes up a wrong idea, as often happens to him; he thinks that Heraclitus purposely wrote obscurely. Any such design would, however, be a very shallow one, and it is really nothing but the shallowness of Cicero himself ascribed by him to Heraclitus. Heraclitus’ obscurity is rather a result of neglecting proper composition and of imperfect language; this is what was thought by Aristotle (Rhet. III. 5), who, from a grammatical point of view, ascribed it to a want of punctuation: “We do not know whether a word belongs to what precedes or what succeeds.” Demetrius is of the same opinion (De Elocutione, § 192, p. 78, ed. Schneider). Socrates, as Diogenes Laertius relates (II. 22; IX. 11-12), said of this book: “What he understood of it was excellent, and what he did not understand he believed to be as good, but it requires a vigorous (_Δηλίου_) swimmer to make his way through it.” The obscurity of this philosophy, however, chiefly consists in there being profound speculative thought contained in it; the Notion, the Idea, is foreign to the understanding and cannot be grasped by it, though it may find mathematics quite simple.

Plato studied the philosophy of Heraclitus with special diligence; we find much of it quoted in his works, and he got his earlier philosophic education most indubitably from this source, so that Heraclitus may be called Plato’s teacher. Hippocrates, likewise, is a philosopher of Heraclitus’ school. What is preserved to us of Heraclitus’ philosophy at first seems very contradictory, but we find the Notion making its appearance, and a man of profound reflection revealed. Zeno began to abrogate the opposed predicates, and he shows the opposition in movement, an assertion of limitation and an abrogation of the same; Zeno expressed the infinite, but on its negative side only, in reference to its contradiction as being the untrue. In Heraclitus we see the perfection of knowledge so far as it has gone, a perfecting of the Idea into a totality, which is the beginning of Philosophy, since it expresses the essence of the Idea, the Notion of the infinite, the potentially and actively existent, as that which it is, i.e. as the unity of opposites. From Heraclitus dates the ever-remaining Idea which is the same in all philosophers to the present day, as it was the Idea of Plato and of Aristotle.

1. _The Logical Principle._ Concerning the universal principle, this bold mind, Aristotle tells us (Metaph. IV. 3 and 7), first uttered the great saying: “Being and non-being are the same; everything is and yet is not.” The truth only is as the unity of distinct opposites and, indeed, of the pure opposition of being and non-being; but with the Eleatics we have the abstract understanding that Being is alone the truth. We say, in place of using the expression of Heraclitus, that the Absolute is the unity of being and non-being. When we understand that proposition as that “Being is and yet is not,” this does not seem to make much sense, but only to imply complete negation and want of thought. But we have another sentence that gives the meaning of the principle better. For Heraclitus says: “Everything is in a state of flux; nothing subsists nor does it ever remain the same.” And Plato further says of Heraclitus: “He compares things to the current of a river: no one can go twice into the same stream,”[61] for it flows on and other water is disturbed. Aristotle tells us (Met. IV. 5) that his successors even said “it could not once be entered,” for it changed directly; what is, is not again. Aristotle (De Cœlo, III. 1) goes on to say that Heraclitus declares that “there is only one that remains, and from out of this all else is formed; all except this one is not enduring (_παγίως_).”

This universal principle is better characterized as Becoming, the truth of Being; since everything is and is not, Heraclitus hereby expressed that everything is Becoming. Not merely does origination belong to it, but passing away as well; both are not independent, but identical. It is a great advance in thought to pass from Being to Becoming, even if, as the first unity of opposite determinations, it is still abstract. Because in this relationship both must be unrestful and therefore contain within themselves the principle of life, the lack of motion which Aristotle has demonstrated in the earlier philosophies is supplied, and this last is even made to be the principle. This philosophy is thus not one past and gone; its principle is essential, and is to be found in the beginning of my Logic, immediately after Being and Nothing. The recognition of the fact that Being and non-being are abstractions devoid of truth, that the first truth is to be found in Becoming, forms a great advance. The understanding comprehends both as having truth and value in isolation; reason, on the other hand, recognizes the one in the other, and sees that in the one its “other” is contained. If we do not take the conception of existence as complete, the pure Being of simple thought in which everything definite is denied, is the absolute negative; but nothing is the same, or just this self-identity. We here have an absolute transition into the opposite which Zeno did not reach, for he remained at the proposition, “From nothing, comes nothing.” With Heraclitus, however, the moment of negativity is immanent, and the Notion of Philosophy as complete is therefore dealt with.

In the first place we have here the abstract idea of Being and non-being in a form altogether immediate and general; but when we look closer, we find that Heraclitus also conceived of the opposites and their unification in a more definite manner. He says: “The opposites are combined in the self-same one, just as honey is both sweet and bitter.” Sextus remarks of this (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 29, §§ 210, 211; II. 6, § 63): “Heraclitus, like the Sceptics, proceeds from ordinary ideas; no one will deny that healthy men call honey sweet, while those who are sick will say it is bitter.” If it is only sweet, it cannot alter its nature in another individual; it would in all places and even to the jaundiced patient be sweet. Aristotle (De mundo, 5) quotes this from Heraclitus: “Join together the complete whole and the incomplete” (the whole makes itself the part, and the meaning of the part is to become the whole), “what coincides and what conflicts, what is harmonious and what discordant, and from out of them all comes one, and from one, all.” This one is not an abstraction, but the activity of dividing itself into opposites; the dead infinite is a poor abstraction as compared with the depths of Heraclitus. All that is concrete, as that God created the world, divided Himself, begot a Son, is contained in this determination. Sextus Empiricus mentions (adv. Math. IX. 337) that Heraclitus said: “The part is something different from the whole and is yet the same as the whole; substance is the whole and the part, the whole in the universe and the part in this living being.” Plato says in his Symposium (p. 187, Steph.; p. 397, Bekk.) of Heraclitus’ principle: “The one, separated from itself, makes itself one with itself like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.” He then makes Eryximachus, who speaks in the Symposium, criticize this thus: “In harmony there is discord, or it arises from opposites; for harmony does not arise from height and depth in that they are different, but from their union through the art of music.” But this does not contradict Heraclitus, who means the same thing. That which is simple, the repetition of a tone, is no harmony; difference is clearly necessary to harmony, or a definite antithesis; for it is the absolute becoming and not mere change. The real fact is that each particular tone is different from another—not abstractly so from any other, but from _its_ other—and thus it also can be one. Each particular only is, in so far as its opposite is implicitly contained in its Notion. Subjectivity is thus the “other” of objectivity and not of a piece of paper, which would be meaningless; since each is the “other” of the “other” as its “other,” we here have their identity. This is Heraclitus’ great principle; it may seem obscure, but it is speculative. And this to the understanding which maintains the independence of Being and non-being, the subjective and objective, the real and the ideal, is always difficult and dim.

2. _Natural Philosophy._ In his system Heraclitus did not rest content with thus expressing himself in Notions, or with what is purely logical. But in addition to this universal form in which he advanced his principle, he gave his idea a real and more natural form, and hence he is still reckoned as belonging to the Ionic school of natural philosophers. However, as regards this form of reality, historians are at variance; most of them, and amongst others, Aristotle (Met. I. 3, 8), say that he maintained fire to be the existent principle; others, according to Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 360; X. 233), say it was air, and others again assert that he made vapour to be the principle rather than air;[62] even time is, in Sextus (adv. Math. X. 216), given as the primary existence. The question arises as to how this diversity is to be comprehended. It must not be believed that all these accounts are to be ascribed to the inaccuracy of historians, for the witnesses are of the best, like Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, who do not speak casually of these forms, but definitely, without, however, remarking upon any such differences and contradictions. We seem to have a better reason in the obscurity of the writing of Heraclitus, which might, by the confusion of its expression, give occasion to misunderstanding. But when regarded closer, this difficulty, which is evident when merely looked at superficially, disappears; it is in the profoundly significant conceptions of Heraclitus that the true way out of this difficulty manifests itself. Heraclitus could no longer, like Thales, express water, air or anything similar as an absolute principle—he could no longer do so in the form of a primeval element from which the rest proceeds—because he thought of Being as identical with non-being, or the infinite Notion; thus the existent, absolute principle cannot with him come forth as a definite and actual thing such as water, but must be water in alteration, or as process only.

_a._ Understanding the abstract process as time, Heraclitus said: “Time is the first corporeal existence,” as Sextus (adv. Math. X. 231, 232) puts it. Corporeal is an unfortunate expression; the Sceptics frequently pick out the crudest expressions or make thoughts crude in the first place so that they may afterwards dispense with them. Corporeal here means abstract sensuousness; time, as the first sensuous existence, is the abstract representation of process. It is because Heraclitus did not rest at the logical expression of Becoming, but gave to his principle the form of the existent, that it was necessary that time should first present itself to him as such; for in the sensuously perceptible it is the first form of Becoming. Time is pure Becoming as perceived, the pure Notion, that which is simple, and the harmony issuing from absolute opposites; its essential nature is to be and not to be in one unity, and besides this, it has no other character. It is not that time _is_ or _is not_, for time _is_ non-being immediately in Being and Being immediately in non-being: it is the transition out of Being into non-being, the abstract Notion, but in an objective form, i.e. in so far as it is for us. In time there is no past and future, but only the now, and this is, but is not as regards the past; and this non-being, as future, turns round into Being. If we were to say how that which Heraclitus recognized as principle, might, in the pure form in which he recognized it, exist for consciousness, we could mention nothing else but time; and it quite accords with the principle of thought in Heraclitus to define time as the first form of Becoming.

_b._ But this pure, objective Notion must realize itself more fully, and thus we find in fact, that Heraclitus determined the process in a more markedly physical manner. In time we have the moments of Being and non-being manifested as negative only, or as vanishing immediately; if we wish to express both these moments as one independent totality, the question is asked, which physical existence corresponds to this determination. To Heraclitus the truth is to have grasped the essential being of nature, i.e. to have represented it as implicitly infinite, as process in itself; and consequently it is evident to us that Heraclitus could not say that the primary principle is air, water, or any such thing. They are not themselves process, but fire is process; and thus he maintains fire to be the elementary principle, and this is the real form of the Heraclitean principle, the soul and substance of the nature-process. Fire is physical time, absolute unrest, absolute disintegration of existence, the passing away of the “other,” but also of itself; and hence we can understand how Heraclitus, proceeding from his fundamental determination, could quite logically call fire the Notion of the process.

_c._ He further made this fire to be a real process; because its reality is for itself the whole process, the moments have become concretely determined. Fire, as the metamorphosis of bodily things, is the transformation and exhalation of the determinate; for this process Heraclitus used a particular word—evaporation (_ἀναθυμίασις_)—but it is rather transition. Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) says of Heraclitus in this regard, that, according to his view, “the soul is the principle because it is evaporation, the origination of everything; it is what is most incorporeal and always in a state of flux.” This is quite applicable to the primary principle of Heraclitus.

Furthermore he determined the real process in its abstract moments by separating two sides in it—“the way upwards (_ὁδὸς ἄνω_) and the way downwards (_ὁδὸς κάτω_)”—the one being division, in that it is the existence of opposites, and the other the unification of these existent opposites. Corresponding to these, he had, according to Diogenes (IX. 8), the further determinations “of enmity and strife (_πόλεμος_, _ἔρις_), and friendship and harmony (_ὁμολογία_, _εἰρήνη_); of these two, enmity and strife is that which is the principle of the origination of differences; but what leads to combustion is harmony and peace.” In enmity amongst men, the one sets himself up independently of the other, or is for himself and realizes himself; but unity and peace is sinking out of independence into indivisibility or non-reality. Everything is thre-fold and thereby real unity; nature is the never-resting, and the all is the transition out of the one into the other, from division into unity, and from unity into division.

The more detailed accounts of this real process are, in great measure, deficient and contradictory. In this connection, it is in some accounts[63] said of Heraclitus that he defined it thus: “Of the forms taken by fire there is first of all the sea, and then of it half is the earth and the other half the lightning flash (_πρηστήρ_),” the fire which springs up. This is general and very obscure. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 9) says: “Fire is condensed into moisture, and when concrete it becomes water; water hardens into earth and this is the way downwards. The earth then again becomes fluid, and from it moisture supervenes, and from this the evaporation of the sea, from which all else arises; this is the way upwards. Water divides into a dark evaporation, becoming earth, and into what is pure, sparkling, becoming fire and burning in the solar sphere; what is fiery becomes meteors, planets and stars.” These are thus not still, dead stars, but are regarded as in Becoming, as being eternally productive. We thus have, on the whole, a metamorphosis of fire. These oriental, metaphorical expressions are, however, in Heraclitus not to be taken in their strictly sensuous signification, and as if these changes were present to the outward observation; but they depict the nature of these elements by which the earth eternally creates its suns and comets.

Nature is thus a circle. With this in view, we find Heraclitus, according to Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V. 14, p. 711), saying: “The universe was made neither by God nor man, but it ever was and is, and will be, a living fire, that which, in accordance with its laws, (_μέτρῳ_) kindles and goes out.” We now understand what Aristotle says of the principle being the soul, since the latter is evaporation; that is to say, fire, as this self-moving process of the world, is the soul. Another statement follows, which is also found in Clement of Alexandria (Strom. VI. 2, p. 746): “To souls (to the living) death is the becoming water; to water death is the becoming earth; on the other hand from earth, water arises, and from water, the soul.” Thus, on the whole, this process is one of extinction, of going back from opposition into unity, of the re-awakening of the former, and of issuing forth from one. The extinction of the soul, of the fire in water, the conflagration that finally results, some, and amongst others, Diogenes Laertius (IX. 8), Eusebius (Præp. Evang. XIV. 3) and Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 218), falsely assert to be a conflagration of the world. What Heraclitus is said to have spoken of as a conflagration of this world, was thought to be an imaginary idea that after a certain time—as, according to our ideas, at the end of the world—the world would disappear in flames. But we see at once from passages which are most clear,[64] that this conflagration is not meant, but that it is the perpetual burning up as the Becoming of friendship, the universal life and the universal process of the universe. In respect of the fact that, according to Heraclitus, fire is the animating, or the soul, we find in Plutarch (De esu. carn. I. p. 995, ed. Xyl.) an expression which may seem odd, namely, that “the driest soul is the best.” We certainly do not esteem the most moist the best, but, on the other hand, the one which is most alive; however dry here signifies fiery and thus the driest soul is pure fire, and this is not lifeless but life itself.

These are the principal moments of the real life-process; I will stop here a moment because we here find expressed the whole Notion of speculative reflection regarding Nature. In this Notion, one moment and one element goes over into the other; fire becomes water, water earth and fire. The contention about the transmutation and immutability of the elements is an old one; in this conception the ordinary, sensuous science of nature separates itself from natural philosophy. In the speculative point of view, which is that of Heraclitus, the simple substance in fire and the other elements in itself becomes metamorphosed; in the other, all transition is abolished and only an external separation of what is already there is maintained. Water is just water, fire is fire, &c. If the former point of view upholds transmutation, the latter believes in the possibility of demonstrating the opposite; it no longer, indeed, maintains water, fire, &c., to be simple realities, for it resolves them into hydrogen, oxygen, &c., but it asserts their immutability. It justly asserts that what is asserted and implied in the speculative point of view, must also have the truth of actuality; for if to be the speculative means to be the very nature and principle of its elements, this must likewise be present. We are wrong in representing the speculative to be something existent only in thought or inwardly, which is no one knows where. It is really present, but men of learning shut their eyes to it because of their limited point of view. If we listen to their account, they only observe and say what they see; but their observation is not true, for unconsciously they transform what is seen through their limited and stereotyped conception; the strife is not due to the opposition between observation and the absolute Notion, but between the one Notion and the other. They show that changes—such as that of water into earth—are non-existent. Even in modern times this transformation was indeed maintained, for when water was distilled, a residuum of earth was found. On this subject, however, Lavoisier carried on a number of very conclusive researches; he weighed all the receptacles, and it was shown that the residuum proceeded from the vessels. There is a superficial process that does not carry us beyond the determinate nature of substance. They say in reference to it, “water does not change into air but only into moisture, and moisture always condenses back into water again.” But in this they merely fix on a one-sided, insufficient process, and give it out to be the absolute process. In the real process of nature they, however, found by experience that the crystal dissolved gives water, and in the crystal, water is lost and solidifies, or becomes the so-called water of crystallization; they found that the evaporation of the earth is not to be found as moisture, in outward form in the air, for air remains quite pure, or hydrogen entirely disappears in pure air; they have sought in vain to find hydrogen in the atmospheric air. Similarly they discovered that quite dry air in which they can show neither moisture nor hydrogen, passes into mist, rain, &c. These are their observations, but they spoilt all their perceptions of changes by the fixed conception which they brought with them of whole and part, and of consistence out of parts, and of the previous presence as such, of what manifests itself in coming into existence. When the crystal dissolved reveals water, they say, “it is not that water has arisen, for it was already present there.” When water in its decomposition reveals hydrogen and oxygen, that means, according to them, “these last have not arisen for they were already there as such, as the parts of which the water subsists.” But they can neither demonstrate water in crystal nor oxygen and hydrogen in water, and the same is true of “latent heat.” As we find in all expression of perception and experience, as soon as men speak, there is a Notion present; it cannot be withheld, for in consciousness there always is a touch of universality and truth. For the Notion is the real principle, but it is only to cultured reason that it is absolute Notion, and not if it remains, as here, confined in a determinate form. Hence these men necessarily attain to their limits, and they are troubled because they do not find hydrogen in air; hygrometers, flasks full of air brought down from heights by an air-balloon, do not show it to exist. And similarly the water of crystallization is no longer water, but is changed into earth.

To come back to Heraclitus, there is only one thing wanting to the process, which is that its simple principle should be recognized as universal Notion. The permanence and rest which Aristotle gives, may be missed. Heraclitus, indeed, says that everything flows on, that nothing is existent and only the one remains; but that is the Notion of the unity which only exists in opposition and not of that reflected within itself. This one, in its unity with the movement of the individuals, is the genus, or in its infinitude the simple Notion as thought; as such, the Idea has still to be determined, and we shall thus find it again as the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras. The universal is the immediate simple unity in opposition which goes back into itself as a process of differences; but this is also found in Heraclitus; he called this unity in opposition Fate (_εἱμαρμένη_) or Necessity.[65] And the Notion of necessity is none other than this, that determinateness constitutes the principle of the existent as individual, but in that very way, relates it to its opposite: this is the absolute “connection (_λόγος_) that permeates the Being of the whole.” He calls this “the ethereal body, the seed of the Becoming of everything”;[66] that to him is the Idea, the universal as reality, as process at rest.

3. _Relation of the Principle to Consciousness._ There is still something else to consider, and that is what position in this principle Heraclitus gives to consciousness; his philosophy has, on the whole, a bent towards a philosophy of nature, for the principle, although logical, is apprehended as the universal nature-process. How does this _λόγος_ come to consciousness? How is it related to the individual soul? I shall explain this here in greater detail: it is a beautiful, natural, childlike manner of speaking truth of the truth. The universal and the unity of the principle of consciousness and of the object, and the necessity of objectivity, make their first appearance here. Several passages from Heraclitus are preserved respecting his views of knowledge. From his principle that everything that is, at the same time is not, it immediately follows that he holds that sensuous certainty has no truth; for it is the certainty for which something exists as actual, which is not so in fact. Not this immediate Being, but absolute mediation, Being as thought of, Thought itself, is the true Being. Heraclitus in this relation says of sensuous perception—according to Clement of Alexandria—(Strom. III. 3, p. 520): “What we see waking is dead, but what we see sleeping, a dream,” and in Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 126, 127), “Men’s eyes and ears are bad witnesses, for they have barbarous souls. Reason (_λόγος_) is the judge of truth, not the arbitrary, but the only divine and universal judge”—this is the measure, the rhythm, that runs through the Being of everything. Absolute necessity is just the having the truth in consciousness; but every thought, or what proceeds from the individual, every relation in which there is only form and which has the content of the ordinary idea, is not such; what is so is the universal understanding, the developed consciousness of necessity, the identity of subjective and objective. Heraclitus says in this connection, according to Diogenes (IX. 1): “Much learning (_πολυμαθίν_) does not instruct the mind, else it had instructed Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecatæus. The only wisdom is to know the reason that reigns over all.”

Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 127-133), further describes the attitude of the subjective consciousness, of particular reason, to the universal, to this nature-process. That attitude has still a very physical appearance, resembling the state of mind we suppose in men who are mad or asleep. The waking man is related to things in a universal way, which is in conformity with the relation of the things and is the way in which others also regard them, and yet he still retains his independence. If, and in so far as I stand in the objectively intelligent connection of this state of mind, I am, just because of this externality, in finitude; but waking, I have the knowledge of the necessity of a connection in the form of objectivity, the knowledge of the universal existence, and thus the Idea in finite form. Sextus puts this in definite form: “Everything that surrounds us is logical and intelligent”—yet not therefore accompanied by consciousness. “If we draw this universal reality through our breath, we shall be intelligent, but we are so waking only, sleeping we are in oblivion.” The waking consciousness of the outer world, what belongs to the sphere of the understanding, is rather what may be called a condition; but here it is taken as the whole of rational consciousness. “For in sleep the channels of feeling are closed and the understanding that is in us is prevented from uniting (_συμφυΐας_) with the surroundings; the breath is the only connection (_πρόσφυσις_) maintained, and it may be compared to a root.” This breath is thus distinguished from the universal breath, i.e. from the being of another for us. Reason is this process with the objective: when we are not in connection with the whole, we only dream. “Separated, the understanding loses the power of consciousness (_μνημονικὴν δύναμιν_) that it formerly had.” The mind as individual unity only, loses objectivity, is not in individuality universal, is not the Thought which has itself as object. “In a waking condition, however, the understanding—gazing through the channels of sense as though it were through a window, and forming a relationship with the surroundings—maintains the logical power.” We here have the ideal in its native simplicity. “In the same way as coals which come near fire, themselves take fire, but apart from it, go out, the part which is cut off from the surroundings in our bodies becomes, through the separation, almost irrational.” This confutes those who think that God gives wisdom in sleep or in somnambulism. But in connection with the many channels it becomes similar to the whole. This whole, the universal and divine understanding, in unity with which we are logical, is, according to Heraclitus, the essence of truth. Hence that which appears as the universal to all, carries with it conviction, for it has part in the universal and divine Logos, while what is subscribed to by an individual carries with it no conviction from the opposite cause. He says in the beginning of his book on Nature: “Since the surroundings are reason, men are irrational both before they hear and when they first hear. For since what happens, happens according to this reason, they are still inexperienced when they search the sayings and the works which I expound, distinguishing the nature of everything and explaining its relations. But other men do not know what they do awake, just as they forget what they do in sleep.” Heraclitus says further: “We do and think everything in that we participate in the divine understanding (_λόγος_). Hence we must follow the universal understanding. But many live as if they had an understanding (_φρόνησιν_) of their own; the understanding is, however, nothing but interpretation” (being conscious) “of the manner in which all is ordered. Hence in so far as we participate in the knowledge (_μνήμης_) of it, we are in the truth; but in so far as we are singular (_ἰδιάσωμεν_) we are in error.” Great and important words! We cannot speak of truth in a truer or less prejudiced way. Consciousness as consciousness of the universal, is alone consciousness of truth; but consciousness of individuality and action as individual, an originality which becomes a singularity of content or of form, is the untrue and bad. Wickedness and error thus are constituted by isolating thought and thereby bringing about a separation from the universal. Men usually consider, when they speak of thinking something, that it must be something particular, but this is quite a delusion.

However much Heraclitus may maintain that there is no truth in sensuous knowledge because all that exists is in a state of flux, and that the existence of sensuous certainty is not while it is, he maintains the objective method in knowledge to be none the less necessary. The rational, the true, that which I know, is indeed a withdrawal from the objective as from what is sensuous, individual, definite and existent; but what reason knows within itself is necessity or the universal of being; it is the principle of thought, as it is the principle of the world. It is this contemplation of truth that Spinoza in his Ethics (P. II. propos. XLIV., coroll. II. p. 118, ed. Paul), calls “a contemplation of things in the guise of eternity.” The being-for-self of reason is not an objectless consciousness, or a dream, but a knowledge, that which is for itself; but this being-for-self is awake, or is objective and universal, _i.e._ is the same for all. The dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know; fancy may be instanced as just such a dream. Similarly it is by feeling that something is for me alone, and that I have something in me as in this subject; the feeling may profess to be ever so elevated, yet it really is the case that for me as this subject, it is what I feel, and not an object independent of me. But in truth, the object is for me something essentially free, and I am for myself devoid of subjectivity; similarly this object is no imaginary one made an object by me alone, but is in itself a universal.

There are, besides, many other fragments of Heraclitus, solitary expressions, such as his saying, “men are mortal gods, and gods immortal men; living is death to the former and dying is their life.”[67] Life is the death of the gods, death is the life of the gods; the divine is the rising through thought above mere nature which belongs to death. Hence Heraclitus also says, according to Sextus (adv. Math. VII., 349): “the power of thinking is outside the body,” which, in a remarkable way, Tennemann makes into: “outside of men.” In Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 24, § 230) we further read: “Heraclitus says that both life and death are united in our life as in our death; for if we live, our souls are dead and buried in us, but if we die, our souls arise and live.” We may, in fact, say of Heraclitus what Socrates said: “What remains to us of Heraclitus is excellent, and we must conjecture of what is lost, that it was as excellent.” Or if we wish to consider fate so just as always to preserve to posterity what is best, we must at least say of what we have of Heraclitus, that it is worthy of this preservation.

E. EMPEDOCLES, LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.

We shall take Leucippus and Democritus with Empedocles; in them there is manifested the ideality of the sensuous and also universal determinateness or a transition to the universal. Empedocles was a Pythagorean Italian, whose tendencies were Ionic; Leucippus and Democritus, who incline to the Italians, in that they carried on the Eleatic school, are more interesting. Both these philosophers belong to the same philosophic system; they must be taken together as regards their philosophic thought and considered thus.[68] Leucippus is the older, and Democritus perfected what the former began, but it is difficult to say what properly speaking belongs to him historically. It is certainly recorded that he developed Leucippus’ thought, and there is, too, some of his work preserved, but it is not worthy of quotation. In Empedocles we see the commencement of the determination and separation of principles. The becoming conscious of difference is an essential moment, but the principles here have in part the character of physical Being, and though partaking also of ideal Being, this form is not yet thought-form. On the other hand we find in Leucippus and Democritus the more ideal principles, the atom and the Nothing, and we also find thought-determination more immersed in the objective—that is, the beginning of a metaphysics of body; or pure Notions possess the significance of the material, and thus pass over thought into objective form. But the teaching is, on the whole, immature, and is incapable of giving satisfaction.

1. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.

Nothing is accurately known of the circumstances of Leucippus’ life, not even where he was born. Some, like Diogenes Laertius (IX. 30), make him out to be an Eleatic; others to have belonged to Abdera (because he was with Democritus), or to Melos—Melos is an island not far from the Peloponnesian coast—or else, as is asserted by Simplicius in writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7), to Miletus. It is definitely stated that he was a disciple and a friend of Zeno; yet he seems to have been almost contemporaneous with him as well as with Heraclitus.

It is less doubtful that Democritus belonged to Abdera in Thrace, on the Aegean Sea, a town that in later times became so notorious on account of foolish actions. He was born, it would appear, about the 80th Olympiad (460 B.C.), or Olympiad 77, 3 (470 B.C.); the first date is given by Apollodorus (Diog. Laert. IX. 41), the other by Thrasyllus; Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415) makes his birth to fall about the 71st Olympiad (494 B.C.). According to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 34), he was forty years younger than Anaxagoras, lived to the time of Socrates, and was even younger than he—that is supposing him to have been born, not in Olympiad 71, but in Olympiad 80. His connection with the Abderites has been much discussed, and many bad anecdotes are told regarding it by Diogenes Laertius. That he was very rich, Valerius Maximus (VIII. 7, ext. 4) judges from the fact that his father entertained the whole of Xerxes’ army on its passage to Greece. Diogenes tells (IX. 35, 36) that he expended his means, which were considerable, on journeys to Egypt and in penetrating into the East, but this last is not authentic. His possessions are stated to have amounted to a hundred talents, and if an Attic talent was worth about from 1000 to 1200 thalers, he must undoubtedly have been able to get far enough with that. It is always said that he was a friend and disciple of Leucippus, as Aristotle relates (Met. I. 4), but where they met is not told. Diogenes (IX. 39) goes on: “After he returned from his journeys into his own country, he lived very quietly, for he had consumed all his substance, but he was supported by his brother and attained to high honour amongst his countrymen”—not through his philosophy, but—“by some prophetic utterances. According to the law, however, he who ran through his father’s means could not have a place in the paternal burial-place. To give no place to the calumniator or evil speaker”—as though he had spent his means through extravagance—“he read his work _Διάκοσμος_ to the Abderites, and the latter gave him a present of 500 talents, had his statue publicly erected, and buried him with great pomp when, at 100 years old, he died.” That this was also an Abderite jest, those who left us this narrative, at least, did not see.

Leucippus is the originator of the famous atomic system which, as recently revived, is held to be the principle of rational science. If we take this system on its own account, it is certainly very barren, and there is not much to be looked for in it; but it must be allowed that we are greatly indebted to Leucippus, because, as it is expressed in our ordinary physics, he separated the universal and the sensuous, or the primary and the secondary, or the essential and the nonessential qualities of body. The universal quality means, in speculative language, the fact that the corporeal is really universally determined through the Notion or the principle of body: Leucippus understood the determinate nature of Being, not in a superficial manner, but in a speculative. When it is said that body has those universal qualities, such as form, impenetrability and weight, we think that the indeterminate conception of body is the essence, and that its essence is something other than these qualities. But speculatively, essential existence is just universal determinations; they are existent in themselves, or the abstract content and the reality of existence. To body as such, there is nothing left for the determination of reality but pure singularity; but it is the unity of opposites, and the unity of these predicates constitutes its reality.

Let us recollect that in the Eleatic philosophy Being and non-being were looked at as in opposition; that only Being is, and non-being, in which category we find motion, change, &c., is not. Being is not as yet the unity turning back, and turned back into itself, like Heraclitus’ motion and the universal. It may be said of the point of view that difference, change, motion, &c., fall within sensuous, immediate perception, that the assertion that only Being is, is as contradictory to appearances as to thought; for the nothing, that which the Eleatics abolished, is. Or within the Heraclitean Idea, Being and non-being are the same; Being is, but non-being, since it is one with Being, is as well, or Being is both the predicate of Being and of non-being. But Being and non-being are both expressed as having the qualities of objectivity, or as they are for sensuous perception, and hence they are the opposition of full and empty. Leucippus says this; he expresses as existent what was really present to the Eleatics. Aristotle says (Met. I. 4): “Leucippus and his friend Democritus maintain that the full and the empty are the elements, and they call the one the existent, and the other the non-existent; that is, the full and solid are the existent, the empty and rare, the non-existent. Hence they also say that Being is no more than non-being because the empty is as well as the bodily; and these form the material sources of everything.” The full has the atom as its principle. The Absolute, what exists in and for itself, is thus the atom and the empty (_τὰ ἄτομα καὶ τὸ κενόν_): this is an important, if at the same time, an insufficient explanation. It is not atoms as we should speak of them, such, for example, as we represent to ourselves as floating in the air, that are alone the principle, for the intervening nothing is just as essential. Thus here we have the first appearance of the atomic system. We must now give the further signification and determination of this principle.

_a. The Logical Principle_

The principal point of consideration is the One, existent for itself: this determination is a great principle and one which we have not hitherto had. Parmenides establishes Being or the abstract universal; Heraclitus, process; the determination of being-for-self belongs to Leucippus. Parmenides says that the nothing does not exist at all; with Heraclitus Becoming existed only as the transition of Being into nothing where each is negated; but the view that each is simply at home with itself, the positive as the self-existent one and the negative as empty, is what came to consciousness in Leucippus, and became the absolute determination. The atomic principle in this manner has not passed away, for it must from this point of view always exist; the being-for-self must in every logical philosophy[69] be an essential moment and yet it must not be put forward as ultimate. In the logical progression from Being and Becoming to this thought-determination, Being as existent here and now[70] certainly first appears, but this last belongs to the sphere of finality and hence cannot be the principle of Philosophy. Thus, though the development of Philosophy in history must correspond to the development of logical philosophy, there will still be passages in it which are absent in historical development. For instance, if we wished to make Being as existent here the principle, it would be what we have in consciousness—there are things, these things are finite and bear a relation to one another—but this is the category of our unthinking knowledge, of appearance. Being-for-self, on the other hand, is, as Being, simple relation to itself, but through negation of the other-Being. If I say I am for myself, I not only am, but I negate in me all else, exclude it from me, in so far as it seems to me to be external. As negation of other being, which is just negation in relation to me, being-for-self is the negation of negation and thus affirmation; and this is, as I call it, absolute negativity in which mediation indeed is present, but a mediation which is just as really taken away.

The principle of the One is altogether ideal and belongs entirely to thought, even though we wish to say that atoms exist. The atom may be taken materially, but it is supersensuous, purely intellectual. In our times, too, more especially through the instrumentality of Gassendi, this conception of atoms has been renewed. The atoms of Leucippus are, however, not molecules, the small particles of Physics. In Leucippus, according to Aristotle, (De gen. et corr. I. 8) there is to be found the idea that “atoms are invisible because of the smallness of their body,” which is much like the way in which molecules are now-a-days spoken of: but this is merely a way of speaking of them. The One can neither be seen nor shown with magnifying glasses or measures, because it is an abstraction of thought; what is shown is always matter that is put together. It is just as futile when, as in modern times, men try by the microscope to investigate the inmost part of the organism, the soul, and think they can discover it by means of sight and feeling. Thus the principle of the One is altogether ideal, but not in the sense of being in thought or in the head alone, but in such a way that thought is made the true essence of things. Leucippus understood it so, and his philosophy is consequently not at all empirical. Tennemann (Vol. 1, p. 261), on the other hand, says, quite wrongly, “The system of Leucippus is opposed to that of the Eleatics; he recognizes the empirical world as the only objective reality, and body as the only kind of existence.” But the atom and the vacuum are not things of experience; Leucippus says that it is not the senses through which we become conscious of the truth, and thereby he has established an idealism in the higher sense and not one which is merely subjective.

_b. The Constitution of the World_

However abstract this principle might be to Leucippus, he was anxious to make it concrete. The meaning of atom is the individual, the indivisible; in another form the One is thus individuality, the determination of subjectivity. The universal and, on the other side, the individual, are great determinations which are involved in everything, and men first know what they have in these abstract determinations, when they recognize in the concrete that even there they are predominant. To Leucippus and Democritus this principle, which afterwards came to light with Epicurus, remained physical; but it also appears in what is intellectual. Mind indeed, is also an atom and one; but as one within itself, it is at the same time infinitely full. In freedom, right and law, in exercising will, our only concern is with this opposition of universality and individuality. In the sphere of the state the point of view that the single will is, as an atom, the absolute, may be maintained; the more modern theories of the state which also made themselves of practical effect, are of this kind. The state must rest on the universal, that is, on the will that exists in and for itself; if it rests on that of the individual, it becomes atomic and is comprehended in accordance with the thought-determination of the one, as is the case in Rousseau’s _Contrat Social_. From what Aristotle tells us in the passage last quoted, Leucippus’ idea of all that is concrete and actual is further this: “The full is nothing simple, for it is an infinitely manifold. These infinitely many, move in the vacuum, for the vacuum exists; their conglomeration brings about origination” (that is, of an existing thing, or what is for the senses), “disintegration and separation result in passing away.” All other categories are included here. “Activity and passivity subsist in the fact, that they are contiguous; but their contiguity is not their becoming one, for from that which is truly” (abstractly) “one there does not come a number, nor from that which is truly many, one.” Or, it may be said, they are in fact neither passive nor active, “for they merely abide through the vacuum” without having as their principle, process. Atoms thus are, even in their apparent union in that which we call things, separated from one another through the vacuum which is purely negative and foreign to them, _i.e._ their relation is not inherent in themselves, but is with something other than them, in which they remain what they are. This vacuum, the negative in relation to the affirmative, is also the principle of the movement of atoms; they are so to speak solicited by the vacuum to fill up and to negate it.

These are the doctrines of the atomists. We see that we have reached the extreme limits of these thoughts, for when relation comes into question, we step beyond them. Being and non-being, as something thought, which, when represented for consciousness as differing in regard to one another, are the plenum and the vacuum, have no diversity in themselves; for the plenum has likewise negativity in itself; as independent, it excludes what is different; it is one and infinitely many ones, while the vacuum is not exclusive, but pure continuity. Both these opposites, the one and continuity, being now settled, nothing is easier to imagine than that atoms should float in existent continuity, now being separated and now united; and thus that their union should be only a superficial relation, or a synthesis that is not determined through the inherent nature of what is united, but in which these self-existent beings really remain separated still. But this is an altogether external relationship; the purely independent is united to the independent, and thus a mechanical combination alone results. All that is living, spiritual, &c., is then merely thrown together; and change, origination, creation, are simple union.

However highly these principles are to be esteemed as a forward step, they at once reveal to us their total inadequacy, as is also the case when we enter with them on further concrete determinations. Nevertheless, we need not add what is in great measure added by the conception of a later date, that once upon a time, there was a chaos, a void filled with atoms, which afterwards became united and orderly, and that the world thereby arose; it is now and ever that what implicitly exists is the plenum and the vacuum. The satisfying point of view which natural science found in such thoughts, is just the simple fact that in these the existent is in its antithesis as what is thought and what is opposed to thought, and is hereby what exists in and for itself. The Atomists are therefore, generally speaking, opposed to the idea of the creation and maintenance of this world by means of a foreign principle. It is in the theory of atoms that science first feels released from the sense of having no foundation for the world. For if nature is represented as created and held together by another, it is conceived of as not existent in itself, and thus as having its Notion outside itself, _i.e._ its principle or origin is foreign to it and it has no principle as such, only being conceivable from the will of another; as it is, it is contingent, devoid of necessity and Notion in itself. In the conception of the atomist, however, we have the conception of the inherency of nature, that is to say, thought finds itself in it, or its principle is in itself something thought, and the Notion finds its satisfaction in conceiving and establishing it as Notion. In abstract existence, nature has its ground in itself and is simply for itself; the atom and the vacuum are just such simple Notions. But we cannot here see or find more than the formal fact that quite general and simple principles, the antithesis between the one and continuity, are represented.

If we proceed from a wider, richer point of view in nature, and demand that from the atomic theory, it, too, must be made comprehensible, the satisfaction at once disappears and we see the impossibility of getting any further. Hence we must get beyond these pure thoughts of continuity and discontinuity. For these negations, the units, are not in and for themselves; the atoms are indivisible and like themselves, or their principle is made pure continuity, so that they may be said to come directly into one clump. The conception certainly keeps them separate and gives them a sensuously represented Being; but if they are alike, they are, as pure continuity, the same as what is empty. But that which is, is concrete and determined. How then can diversity be conceived of from these principles? Whence comes the determinate character of plants, colour, form? The point is, that though these atoms as small particles may be allowed to subsist as independent, their union becomes merely a combination which is altogether external and accidental. The determinate difference is missed; the one, as that which is for itself, loses all its determinateness. If various matters, electrical, magnetic and luminous, are assumed, and, at the same time, a mechanical shifting about of molecules, on the one hand unity is quite disregarded, and, on the other, no rational word is uttered in regard to the transition of phenomena, but only what is tautological.

Since Leucippus and Democritus wished to go further, the necessity of a more definite distinction than this superficial one of union and separation was introduced, and they sought to bring this about by ascribing diversity to atoms, and, indeed, by making their diversity infinite. Aristotle (Met. I. 4) says: “This diversity they sought to determine in three ways. They say that atoms differ in figure, as A does from N; in order” (place) “as AN from NA; in position”—as to whether they stand upright or lie—“as Z from N. From these all other differences must come.” We see that figure, order and posture are again external relationships, indifferent determinations, _i.e._ unessential relations which do not affect the nature of the thing in itself nor its immanent determinateness, for their unity is only in another. Taken on its own account, this difference is indeed inconsistent, for as the entirely simple one, the atoms are perfectly alike, and thus any such diversity cannot come into question.

We here have an endeavour to lead the sensuous back into few determinations. Aristotle (De gen. et corr. I. 8) says in this connection of Leucippus: “He wished to bring the conception of the phenomenal and sensuous perception nearer, and thereby represented movement, origination and decease, as existent in themselves.” In this we see no more than that actuality from him receives its rights, while others speak only of deception. But when Leucippus in the end represents the atom as also fashioned in itself, he brings existence certainly so much nearer to sensuous perception, but not to the Notion; we must, indeed, go on to fashioning, but so far we are still a long way off from the determination of continuity and discretion. Aristotle (De sensu, 4) therefore says: “Democritus, and most of the other ancient philosophers are, when they speak of what is sensuous, very awkward, because they wish to make all that is felt into something tangible; they reduce everything to what is evident to the sense of touch, black being rough, and white smooth.” All sensuous qualities are thus only led back to form, to the various ways of uniting molecules which make any particular thing capable of being tasted or smelt; and this endeavour is one which is also made by the atomists of modern times. The French particularly, from Descartes onward, stand in this category. It is the instinct of reason to understand the phenomenal and the perceptible, only the way is false; it is a quite unmeaning, undetermined universality. Since figure, order, posture and form, constitute the only determination of what is in itself, nothing is said as to how these moments are experienced as colour, and indeed variety of colour, &c.; the transition to other than mechanical determinations is not made, or it shows itself to be shallow and barren.

How it was that Leucippus, from these poor principles of atoms and of the vacuum, which he never got beyond, because he took them to be the absolute, hazarded a construction of the whole world (which may appear to us as strange as it is empty), Diogenes Laertius tells us (IX. 31-33) in an account which seems meaningless enough. But the nature of the subject allows of little better, and we can do no more than observe from it the barrenness of this conception. It runs thus: “Atoms, divergent in form, propel themselves through their separation from the infinite, into the great vacuum.” (Democritus adds to this, “by means of their mutual resistance (_ἀντιτυπία_) and a tremulous, swinging motion (_παλμός_).”)[71] “Here gathered, they form one vortex (_δίνην_) where, by dashing together and revolving round in all sorts of ways, the like are separated off with the like. But since they are of equal weight, when they cannot, on account of their number, move in any way, the finer go into outer vacuum, being so to speak forced out; and the others remain together and, being entangled, run one against another, and form the first round system. But this stands apart like a husk that holds within it all sorts of bodies; since these, in pressing towards the middle, make a vortex movement, this encircling skin becomes thin, because from the action of the vortex, they are continually running together. The earth arises in this way, because these bodies, collected in the middle, remain together. That which encircles and which is like a husk, again becomes increased by means of the adherence of external bodies, and since it also moves within the vortex, it draws everything with which it comes in contact to itself. The union of some of these bodies again forms a system, first the moist and slimy, and then the dry, and that which circles in the vortex of the whole; after that, being ignited, they constitute the substance of the stars. The outer circle is the sun, the inner the moon,” &c. This is an empty representation; there is no interest in these dry, confused ideas of circle-motion, and of what is later on called attraction and repulsion, beyond the fact that the different kinds of motion are looked at as the principle of matter.

_c. The Soul_

Finally Aristotle relates (De anim. I. 2) that in regard to the soul, Leucippus and Democritus said that “it is spherical atoms.” We find further from Plutarch (De plac. phil. IV. 8) that Democritus applied himself to the relation borne by consciousness to the explanation, amongst other things, of the origin of feelings, because with him, the conceptions that from things fine surfaces, so to speak, free themselves, and fly into the eyes, ears, &c., first began. We see that, thus far, Democritus expressed the difference between the moments of implicit Being and Being-for-another more distinctly. For he said, as Sextus tells us (adv. Math. VII. 135): “Warmth exists according to opinion (_νόμῳ_), and so do cold and colour, sweet and bitter: only the indivisible and void are truthful (_ἐτεῇ_).” That is to say, only the void and indivisible and their determinations are implicit; unessential, different Being, such as warmth, &c., is for another. But by this the way is at once opened up to the false idealism that means to be done with what is objective by bringing it into relation with consciousness, merely saying of it that it is _my_ feeling. Thereby sensuous individuality is, indeed, annulled in the form of Being, but it still remains the same sensuous manifold; a sensuously notionless manifold of feeling is established, in which there is no reason, and with which this idealism has no further concern.

2. EMPEDOCLES.

The fragments of Empedocles left, have several times been collected. Sturz of Leipzig collected above 400 verses.[72] Peyron arranged a collection of fragments of Empedocles and Parmenides,[73] which was put into print in Leipzig in 1810. In Wolff’s Analects, a treatise is to be found on Empedocles by Ritter.

Empedocles’ birthplace was Agrigentum in Sicily, while Heraclitus belonged to Asia Minor. We thus come back to Italy, for our history changes about between these two sides; from Greece proper, as the middle point, we have as yet had no philosophies at all. Empedocles, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415), flourished about the 80th Olympiad (460 B.C.). Sturz (pp. 9, 10) quotes Dodwell’s words: (De ætate Pythag. p. 220), which indicate that Empedocles was born in Olympiad 77, 1 (472 B.C.). They are as follows: “In the second year of the 85th Olympiad Parmenides had reached his 65th year, so that Zeno was born in the second year of the 75th Olympiad;[74] thus he was six years older than his fellow-student Empedocles, for the latter was only one year old when Pythagoras died in the first or second year of the 77th Olympiad.” Aristotle says (Met. I. 3): “In age Empedocles is subsequent to Anaxagoras, but his works are earlier.” But not only did he philosophize earlier as regards time, that is, at a younger age, but in reference to the stage reached by the Notion, his philosophy is earlier and less mature than that of Anaxagoras.

From Diogenes’ accounts of his life (VIII. 59, 60-73), he also seems to have been a kind of magician and sorcerer, like Pythagoras. During his life he was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and, after his death, a statue was erected to him in his native town; his fame extended very far. He did not live apart, like Heraclitus, but in the exercise of great influence on the affairs of the town of Agrigentum, like Parmenides in Elea. He acquired the credit, after the death of Meton, the ruler of Agrigentum, of bringing about a free constitution and equal rights to all citizens. He likewise frustrated several attempts which were made by people of Agrigentum to seize upon the rulership of their city; and when the esteem of his fellow-citizens rose so high that they offered him the crown, he rejected their offers, and lived ever after amongst them as a respected private individual. Both of his life and death much which was fabulous was told. Seeing that he was famous in life, we are told that he wished not to appear to die an ordinary death, as a proof that he was not a mortal man, but had merely passed out of sight. After a feast he is said either to have suddenly disappeared, or else to have been on Etna with his friends, and suddenly to have been seen of them no more. But what became of him was revealed by the fact that one of his shoes was thrown up by Etna, and found by one of his friends; this made it clear that he threw himself into Etna, thereby to withdraw himself from the notice of mankind, and to give rise to the idea that he did not really die, but that he was taken up amongst the gods.

The origin and occasion for this fable seems to lie in a poem in which there are several verses that, taken alone, make great professions. He says, according to Sturz, (p. 530: Reliquiæ _τῶν καθαρμῶν_, v. 364-376):—

“Friends who dwell within the fort on yellow Acragas And who in the best of works are busy, I greet you! To you I am an immortal god, no more a mortal man, Do ye not see how that where’er I go, all honour me, My head being ‘circled round with diadems and crowns of green? When so decked out, I show myself in towns of wealth, Men and women pray to me. And thousands follow My steps, to seek from me the way to bliss, Others ask for prophecies; others again, Healing words for ailments manifold beseech. But what is this to me—as though ‘twere anything By art to conquer much corrupted man.”

But, taken in the context, this laudation means that I am highly honoured, but what is the value of that to me; it expresses weariness of the honour given him by men.

Empedocles had Pythagoreans as pupils, and went about with them; he is sometimes considered to have been a Pythagorean like Parmenides and Zeno, but this is the only ground for such a statement. It is a question whether he belonged to the League; his philosophy has no resemblance to the Pythagorean. According to Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 56), he was also called Zeno’s fellow-pupil. There have, indeed, been many isolated reflections of a physical kind preserved to us, as also some words of exhortation, and in him thought as penetrating within reality, and the knowledge of nature seem to have attained to greater breadth and compass; we find in him, however, less speculative depth than in Heraclitus, but a Notion more imbued with the point of view of reality, and a culture derived from natural philosophy or the contemplation of nature. Empedocles is more poetic than definitely philosophical; he is not very interesting, and much cannot be made of his philosophy.

As to the particular Notion which governs it, and which really begins in it to appear, we may call it Combination or Synthesis. It is as combination that the unity of opposites first presents itself; this Notion, first opening up with Heraclitus, is, while in a condition of rest, conceived of as combination, before thought grasps the universal in Anaxagoras. Empedocles’ synthesis, as a completion of the relationship, thus belongs to Heraclitus, whose speculative Idea, though in reality, is process, but this is so without the individual moments in reality being mutually related as Notions. Empedocles’ conception of synthesis holds good to the present day. He also is the originator of the common idea that has even come down to us, of regarding the four known physical elements of fire, air, water, and earth, as fundamental; by chemists they are certainly no longer held to be elements, because they understand by elements a simple chemical substance. I will now give Empedocles’ ideas shortly, and draw the many units mentioned into the connection of a whole.

His general ideas Aristotle[75] shortly sums up thus: “To the three elements, fire, air, and water, each of which was in turn considered as the principle from which everything proceeded, Empedocles added the Earth as the fourth corporeal element, saying that it is these which always remain the same, never becoming, but being united and separated as the more or the less, combining into one and coming out of one.” Carbon, metal, &c., are not something existing in and for itself which remains constant and never becomes; thus nothing metaphysical is signified by them. But with Empedocles this undoubtedly is the case: every particular thing arises through some kind of union of the four. These four elements, to our ordinary idea, are not so many sensuous things if we consider them as universal elements; for, looked at sensuously, there are various other sensuous things. All that is organic, for example, is of another kind; and, further, earth as one, as simple, pure earth, does not exist, for it is in manifold determinateness. In the idea of four elements we have the elevation of sensuous ideas into thought.

Aristotle further says in reference to the abstract Notion of their relation to one another (Met. I. 4), that Empedocles did not only require the four elements as principles, but also Friendship and Strife, which we have already met with in Heraclitus; it is at once evident that these are of another kind, because they are, properly speaking, universal. He has the four natural elements as the real, and friendship and strife as the ideal principles, so that six elements, of which Sextus[76] often speaks, make their appearance in lines that Aristotle (Met. II. 4) and Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 92) have preserved:—

“With the earth, we see the earth, with water, water, With air, heavenly air, with fire, eternal fire, With love, love is seen, and strife with sorrowful strife.”

Through our participation in them they become for us. There we have the idea that spirit, the soul, is itself the unity, the very totality of elements, in which the principle of earth relates to earth, water to water, love to love, &c.[77] In seeing fire, the fire is in us for whom objective fire is, and so on.

Empedocles also speaks of the process of these elements, but he did not comprehend it further; the point to be remarked is that he represented their unity as a combination. In this synthetic union, which is a superficial relation devoid of Notion, being partly related and partly unrelated, the contradiction necessarily results that at one time the unity of elements is established and at another, their separation: the unity is not the universal unity in which they are moments, being even in their diversity one, and in their unity different, for these two moments, unity and diversity, fall asunder, and union and separation are quite indeterminate relationships. Empedocles says in the first book of his poem on Nature, as given by Sturz (p. 517, v. 106-109): “There is no such thing as a Nature, only a combination and separation of what is combined; it is merely called Nature by men.” That is to say, that which constitutes anything, as being its elements or parts, is not as yet called its nature, but only its determinate unity. For example, the nature of an animal is its constant and real determinateness, its kind, its universality, which is simple. But Empedocles does away with nature in this sense, for every thing, according to him, is the combination of simple elements, and thus not in itself the universal, simple and true: this is not what is signified by us when we speak of nature. Now this nature in which a thing moves in accordance with its own end, Aristotle (De gen. et corr. II. 6) misses in Empedocles; in later times this conception was still further lost. Because the elements were thus existent simply in themselves, there was, properly speaking, no process established in them, for in process they are only vanishing moments, and not existent in themselves. Being thus implicit, they must have been unchangeable, or they could not constitute themselves into a unity; for in the one their subsistence, or their implicit existence would be destroyed. But because Empedocles says that things subsist from these elements, he immediately establishes their unity.

These are the principal points in Empedocles’ philosophy. I will quote the remarks that Aristotle (Met. I. 4) makes in this regard.

(_α_) “If we wish to follow this up, and do so in accordance with the understanding, not merely stumbling over it like Empedocles, we should say that friendship is the principle of good and strife the principle of evil, so that in a measure we may assert that Empedocles maintained—and was the first to do so—that the evil and the good are the absolute principles, because the good is the principle of all good, and the bad the principle of all evil.” Aristotle shows the trace of universality present here; for to him it may be termed essential in dealing with the Notion of the principle, that which is in and for itself. But this is only the Notion, or the thought which is present in and for itself; we have not yet seen such a principle, for we find it first in Anaxagoras. If Aristotle found the principle of motion missed in ancient philosophers, in the Becoming of Heraclitus, he again missed in Heraclitus the still deeper principle of the Good, and hence wished to discover it in Empedocles. By the good the “why” is to be understood, that which is an end in and for itself, which is clearly established in itself, which is on its own account, and through which all else is; the end has the determination of activity, the bringing forth of itself, so that it, as end to itself, is the Idea, the Notion that makes itself objective and, in its objectivity, is identical with itself. Aristotle thus entirely controverts Heraclitus, because his principle is change alone, without remaining like self, maintaining self, and going back within self.

(_β_) Aristotle also says in criticizing further the relationship and determination of these two universal principles of Friendship and Strife, as of union and separation, that “Empedocles neither adequately made use of them nor discovered in them what they involved (_ἐξευρίσκει τὸ ὁμολογούμενον_); for with him friendship frequently divides and strife unites. That is, when the All falls asunder through strife amongst the elements, fire is thereby united into one, and so is each of the other elements.” The separation of the elements which are comprised within the All, is just as necessarily the union amongst themselves of the parts of each element; that which, on the one hand, is the coming into separation, as independent, is at the same time something united within itself. “But when everything through friendship goes back into one, it is necessary that the parts of each element undergo separation again.” The being in one is itself a manifold, a diverse relation of the four diversities, and thus the going together is likewise a separation. This is the case generally with all determinateness, that it must in itself be the opposite, and must manifest itself as such. The remark that, speaking generally, there is no union without separation, no separation without union, is a profound one; identity and non-identity are thought-determinations of this kind which cannot be separated. The reproach made by Aristotle is one that lies in the nature of the thing. And when Aristotle says that Empedocles, although younger than Heraclitus, “was the first to maintain such principles, because he did not assert that the principle of motion is one, but that it is different and opposed,” this certainly relates to the fact that he thought it was in Empedocles that he first found design, although his utterances on the subject were dubious.

(_γ_) As to the real moments in which this ideal realizes itself, Aristotle further says, “He does not speak of them as four”—equivalents in juxtaposition—“but on the contrary as two; fire he puts by itself on the one side, and the three others, earth, air, and water, on the other.” What would be most interesting is the determination of their relationship.

(_δ_) In what deals with the relationship of the two ideal moments, friendship and strife, and of the four real elements, there is thus nothing rational, for Empedocles, according to Aristotle (Met. XII. 10), did not properly separate, but co-ordinated them, so that we often see them in proximity and counted as having equal value; but it is self-evident that Empedocles also separated these two sides, the real and the ideal, and expressed thought as their relation.

(_ε_) Aristotle says with justice (De gen. et corr. I. 1) that “Empedocles contradicts both himself and appearances. For at one time he maintains that none of the elements springs out of the other, but all else comes from them; and, at another time, he makes them into a whole through friendship, and again destroys this unity through strife. Thus through particular differences and qualities, one becomes water, the other fire, &c. Now if the particular differences are taken away (and they can be taken away since they have arisen), it is evident that water arises from earth, and the reverse. The All was not yet fire, earth, water, and air, when these were still one, so that it is not clear whether he made the one or the many to be, properly speaking, real existence.” Because the elements become one, their special character, that through which water is water, is nothing in itself, that is, they are passing into something different; but this contradicts the statement that they are the absolute elements, or that they are implicit. He considers actual things as an intermingling of elements, but in regard to their first origin, he thinks that everything springs from one through friendship and strife. This customary absence of thought is in the nature of synthetic conceptions; it now upholds unity, then multiplicity, and does not bring both thoughts together; as sublated, one is also not one.[78]

F. ANAXAGORAS.

With Anaxagoras[79] a light, if still a weak one, begins to dawn, because the understanding is now recognized as the principle. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras (Met. I. 3): “But he who said that reason (_νοῦς_), in what lives as also in nature, is the origin of the world and of all order, is like a sober man as compared with those who came before and spoke at random (_εἰκῆ_).” As Aristotle says, hitherto philosophers may “be compared to the fencers who fence in an unscientific way. Just as the latter often make good thrusts in their struggle, though not by any skill, these philosophers seem to speak without any knowledge of what they say.” Now if Anaxagoras, as a sober man amongst drunkards, was the first to reach this consciousness—for he says that pure thought is the actually existent universal and true—he yet, to a considerable extent, still thrusts into space.

The connection of his philosophy with what precedes is as follows: In Heraclitus’ Idea as motion, all moments are absolutely vanishing. Empedocles represents the gathering together of this motion into a unity, but into a synthetic unity; and with Leucippus and Democritus it is the same. With Empedocles, however, the moments of this unity are the existent elements of fire, water, &c., and with the others, pure abstractions, implicit being, thoughts. But in this way universality is directly asserted, for the opposing elements have no longer any sensuous support. We have had Being, Becoming, the One, as principles; they are universal thoughts and not sensuous, nor are they figures of the imagination; the content and its parts are, however, taken from what is sensuous, and they are thoughts in some sort of a determination. Anaxagoras now says that it is not gods, sensuous principles, elements, or thoughts—which really are determinations of reflection—but that it is the Universal, Thought itself, in and for itself, without opposition, all embracing, which is the substance or the principle. The unity as universal, returns from the opposition into itself, while in the synthesis of Empedocles, what is opposed is still apart from it and independent, and Thought is not Being. Here, however, Thought as pure, free process in itself, is the self-determining universal, and is not distinguished from conscious thought. In Anaxagoras quite new ground is thus opened up.

Anaxagoras concludes this period, and after him a fresh one begins. In accordance with the favourite idea of there being a genealogical descent of principles from the teacher to the taught, because he was an Ionian, he is often represented as perpetuating the Ionic school, and as an Ionic philosopher: Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, too, was his teacher. To support this theory Diogenes Laertius (II. 6) makes him a disciple of Anaximenes, whose birth is, however, placed in Ol. 55-58, or about sixty years earlier than that of Anaxagoras.

Aristotle says (Met. I. 3) that Anaxagoras first began by these determinations to express absolute reality as understanding. Aristotle and others after him, such as Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 7), mention the bare fact that Hermotimus gave rise to this conception, but it was clearly due to Anaxagoras. Little is gained if such a fact were true, since we learn no more about the philosophy of Hermotimus; it cannot have been much. Others have made numerous historical researches respecting this Hermotimus. The name we have already mentioned amongst those of whom it is said that Pythagoras existed in them before he lived as Pythagoras. We also have a story of Hermotimus to the effect that he possessed the peculiar gift of being able to make his soul quit his body. But this did him bad service in the end, since his wife, with whom he had a dispute, and who besides knew very well how matters stood, showed to their acquaintances this soul-deserted body as dead, and it was burnt before the soul reinstated itself—which soul must have been astonished.[80] It is not worth while to investigate what lies at the ground of these ancient stories, i.e. into how we should regard the matter: we may think of it as implying a state of ecstasy.

We must consider the life of Anaxagoras before his philosophy. Anaxagoras, according to Diogenes (II. 7), born in Ol. 70 (500 B.C.), comes earlier than Democritus, and in age also precedes Empedocles, yet, on the whole, he was contemporaneous with these, as also with Parmenides; he was as old as Zeno, and lived somewhat earlier than Socrates, but still they were acquainted with one another. His native town was Clazomenæ, in Lydia, not very far from Colophon and Ephesus, and situated on an isthmus by which a great peninsula is connected with the mainland. His life is shortly summed up in the statement that he devoted himself to the study of the sciences, withdrew from public affairs; according to Valerius Maximus (VIII. 7, extr. 6) he made numerous journeys, and finally, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. pp. 300, 415), in the forty-fifth year of his age, in the 81st Olympiad (456 B.C.), and at a propitious time, he came to Athens.

With him we thus find Philosophy in Greece proper, where so far there had been none, and coming, indeed, as far as Athens; hitherto either Asia Minor or Italy had been the seat of Philosophy, though, when the inhabitants of Asia Minor fell under Persian rule, with their loss of freedom, it expired amongst them. Anaxagoras, himself a native of Asia Minor, lived in the important period between the war of the Medes and the age of Pericles, principally in Athens, which had now reached the zenith of its greatness, for it was both the head of Grecian power, and the seat and centre of the arts and sciences. Athens, after the Persian wars, brought the greater part of the Greek islands into subjection, as also a number of maritime towns in Thrace, and even further into the Black Sea. As the greatest artists collected in Athens, so also did the most noted philosophers and sophists live there—a circle of luminaries in the arts and sciences such as we have in Æschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Diogenes of Apollonia, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and others from Asia Minor. Pericles then ruled the State, and raised it to that height of splendour which may be called the golden age in Athenian life; Anaxagoras, although living in the most flourishing time of Athenian life, touches on its decay, or rather reaches the first threatening of that decay, which ended in a total extermination of this beautiful life.

What is of special interest at this time is the opposition between Athens and Lacedæmon, the two Greek nations which contended with one another for the foremost place in Greece; here we must therefore allude to the principles of these celebrated States. While the Lacedæmonians had no arts or sciences, Athens had to thank the character of its constitution, and of its whole spirit, for the fact that it was the seat of the sciences and fine arts. But the constitution of Lacedæmon is also worthy of high esteem, for it regulated and restrained the high Doric spirit, and its principal feature was that all personal peculiarity was subordinated, or rather sacrificed, to the general aim of the life of the State, and the individual had the consciousness of his honour and sufficiency only in the consciousness of working for the State. A people of such genuine unity, in whom the will of the individual had, properly speaking, quite disappeared, were united by an indestructible bond, and Lacedæmon was hence placed at the head of Greece, and obtained the leadership, which, we find, it held among the Argives in the days of Troy. This is a great principle which must exist in every true State, but which with the Lacedæmonians retained its one-sided character; this one-sidedness was avoided by the Athenians, and by that means they became the greater. In Lacedæmon personality proper was so much disregarded that the individual could not have free development or expression; individuality was not recognized, and hence not brought into harmony with the common end of the State. This abrogation of the rights of subjectivity, which, expressed in his own way, is also found in Plato’s Republic, was carried very far with the Lacedæmonians. But the universal is living spirit only in so far as the individual consciousness finds itself as such within it; the universal is not constituted of the immediate life and being of the individual, the mere substance, but formed of conscious life. As individuality which separates itself from the universal is powerless and falls to the ground, the one-sided universal, the morality of individuality cannot stand firm. The Lacedæmonian spirit, which had not taken into account the freedom of consciousness, and whose universal had isolated itself therefrom, had hence to see it break forth in opposition to the universal; and though the first to come forward as the liberators of Greece from its tyranny were the Spartans, whom even Athens thanks for the expulsion of the descendants of Pisistratus, their relationship to their confederates soon passes into that of common, mean, tyranny. Within the State it likewise ends in a harsh aristocracy, just as the fixed equilibrium of property (each family retaining its inheritance, and through forbidding the possession of money, or trade and commerce, preventing the possibility of inequality in riches) passes into an avarice which, as opposed to this universal, is brutal and mean. This essential moment of particularity, not being taken into the State, and hence not made legal and moral (moral first of all), comes forth as vice. In a rational organization all the elements of the Idea are present; if the liver were isolated as bile it would become not more, and not less active, but becoming antagonistic, it would isolate itself from the corporate economy of the body. Solon, on the contrary, gave to the Athenians not only equality of laws and unity of spirit in their constitution (which was a purer democracy than in Sparta), but although each citizen had his substantial consciousness in unity with the laws of the State, he also gave free play to the individual mind, so that each might do as he would, and might find expression for himself. Solon entrusted the executive to the people, not to the Ephors, and this became self-government after the displacement of the tyrants, and thus in truth a free people arose; the individual had the whole within himself, as he had his consciousness and action in the whole. Thus we see in this principle the formation of free consciousness and the freedom of individuality in its greatness. The principle of subjective freedom appears at first, however, still in unison with the universal principle of Greek morality as established by law, and even with mythology; and thus in its promulgation, because the genius of its conceptions could develop freely, it brought about these masterpieces in the beautiful plastic arts, and the immortal works of poetry and history. The principle of subjectivity had, thus far, not taken the form that particularity, as such, should be set free, and that its content should be a subjectively particular, at least distinguished from the universal principle, universal morality, universal religion, universal laws. Thus we do not see the carrying out of isolated ideas, but the great, moral, solid, divine content made in these works object for consciousness, and generally brought before consciousness. Later we shall find the form of subjectivity becoming free for itself, and appearing in opposition to the substantial, to morality, religion, and law.

The basis of this principle of subjectivity, though it is still a merely general one, we now see in Anaxagoras. But amongst this noble, free, and cultured people of Athens, he who had the happiness to be first, was Pericles, and this circumstance raised him in the estimation of the individual to a place so high that few could reach it. Of all that is great amongst men, the power of ruling over the will of men who have but one will, is the greatest, for this controlling individuality must be both the most universal and the most living—a lot for a mortal being than which hardly any better can be found. His individuality was, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle 5) as deep as it was perfect; as serious (he never laughed), as full of energy and restfulness: Athens had him the whole day long. Thucydides has preserved some of Pericles’ speeches to the people which allow of few works being compared to them. Under Pericles the highest culture of the moral commonwealth is to be found, the juncture where individuality is still under and also in the universal. Presently individuality prevails, because its activity falls into extremes, since the state as state, is not yet independently organized within itself. Because the essence of the Athenian State was the common spirit, and the religious faith of individuals in this constituted their essence, there disappears with the disappearance of this faith, the inner Being of the people, since the spirit is not in the form of the Notion as it is in our states. The speedy transition to this last is the _νοῦς_, subjectivity, as Being, self-reflection. When Anaxagoras at this time, the principle of which has just been given, came to Athens, he was sought out by Pericles, and, as his friend, lived in very intimate relations with him, before the latter occupied himself with public affairs. But Plutarch (in Pericle 4, 16) also relates that Anaxagoras came to want because Pericles neglected him—did not supply the illuminating lamp with oil.

A more important matter is that Anaxagoras (as happened later with Socrates and many other philosophers) was accused of despising those whom the people accepted as gods. The prose of the understanding came into contact with the poetic, religious point of view. It is distinctly said by Diogenes Laertius (II. 12) that Anaxagoras believed the sun and stars to be burning stones; and he is, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle, 6) blamed for having explained something that the prophets stated to be a marvellous omen, in a natural way; it quite tallies with this that he is said to have foretold that on the day of Ægos-Potamos, where the Athenians lost their last fleet against Lysander, a stone should fall from heaven.[81] The general remark might be made of Thales, Anaximander, &c., that the sun, moon, earth and stars were counted as mere things, i.e. as objects external to mind, and that they no longer held them to be living gods, but represented them in different ways—which ideas, for the rest, deserve no further consideration, since these matters belong properly to ordinary learning. Things may be derived from thought; thought really brings about the result that certain objects which may be called divine, and certain conceptions of these which may be called poetic, together with the whole range of superstitious beliefs, are demolished—they are brought down to being what are called natural things. For in thought, as the identity of itself and of Being, mind knows itself as the truly actual, so that for mind in thought, the unspiritual and material is brought down to being mere things, to the negative of mind. All the ideas of those philosophers have this in common, that nature is through them undeified; they brought the poetic view of nature down to the prosaic, and destroyed the poetic point of view which ascribes to all that is now considered to be lifeless, a life proper to itself, perhaps also sensation, and, it may be, a being after the usual order of consciousness. The loss of this point of view is not to be lamented as if unity with nature, pure faith, innocent purity and childlike spirit went with it. Innocent and childlike it may certainly have been, but reason is just the going forth from such innocence and unity with nature. So soon as mind grasps itself, is for itself, it must for that very reason confront the ‘other’ of itself as a negation of consciousness, i.e. look on it as something devoid of mind, an unconscious and lifeless thing, and it must first come to itself through this opposition. There is in this a fixing of self-moving things such as are met with in the myths of the ancients, who relate such tales as that the Argonauts secured the rocks on the Straits of the Hellespont which formerly moved like scissors. Similarly progressive culture consolidated that which formerly was thought to have its own motion and life in itself, and made it into unmoving matter. This transition of the mythical point of view into the prosaic, here comes to be recognized by the Athenians. A prosaic point of view such as this, assumes that man has requirements quite different from those he formerly had; in this we find traces of the powerful, necessary conversion brought about in the ideas of man through the strengthening of thought, through knowledge of himself, and through Philosophy.

The institution of charges of atheism, which we shall touch upon more fully in dealing with Socrates, is, in Anaxagoras’ case, quite comprehensible, from the specific reason that the Athenians, who were envious of Pericles, who contended with him for the first place, and who did not venture to proceed against him openly, took his favourites to law, and sought through charges against his friend, to injure him. Thus his friend Aspasia was brought under accusation, and the noble Pericles had, according to Plutarch (in Pericle, 32), in order to save her from condemnation, to beg the individual citizens of Athens with tears for her acquittal. The Athenian people in their freedom, demanded such acts of the potentates to whom they allowed supremacy, for thereby an acknowledgment was given of their subordination to the people; they thus made themselves the Nemesis in respect to the high place accorded to the great, for they placed themselves in a position of equality with these, while these again made evident their dependence, subjection and powerlessness before the others. What is told about the result of this charge against Anaxagoras is quite contradictory and uncertain: Pericles certainly saved him from condemnation to death. He was either, as some say, condemned only to banishment after Pericles had led him before the people, speaking and entreating for him, after, by reason of his age, attenuation and weakness the sympathy of the people had been aroused; or else, as others say, with the help of Pericles, he escaped from Athens and was in absence condemned to death, the judgment never being executed upon him. Others again say that he was liberated, but from the vexation that he felt respecting these charges, and from apprehension as to their repetition, he voluntarily left Athens. And at about sixty or seventy years of age, he died in Lampsacus in the 88th Olympiad (428 B.C.).[82]

1. _The Universal Principle._ The logical principle of Anaxagoras was that he recognized the _νοῦς_ as the simple, absolute essence of the world. The simplicity of the _νοῦς_ is not a Being but a universality which is distinguished from itself, though in such a way that the distinction is immediately sublated and the identity is set forth for itself. This universal for itself, sundered, exists in purity only as thought; it exists also in nature as objective existence, but in that case no longer purely for itself, but as having particularity as an immediate in it. Space and time are, for example, the most ideal, universal facts in nature as such, but there is no pure space, no pure time and motion any more than any pure matter—for this universal is immediately defined space, air, earth, &c. In thought, when I say, I am I, or I = I, I certainly distinguish something from me, but the pure unity remains; there is no movement but a distinction which is not distinguished, or the being-for-me. And in all that I think, if the thought has a definite content, it is my thought: I am thus known to myself in this object. This universal which thus exists for itself and the individual, or thought and being, thus, however, come into definite opposition. Here the speculative unity of this universal with the individual should be considered as it is posited as absolute unity, but the comprehension of the Notion itself is certainly not found with the ancients. We need not expect a pure Notion such as one of an understanding realizing itself into a system, organized as a universe.

How Anaxagoras enunciated the Notion of the _νοῦς_, Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) goes on to tell: “Anaxagoras maintains that the soul is the principle of movement. Yet he does not always express himself fully about the soul and _νοῦς_: he seems to separate _νοῦς_ and soul from one another, and still he makes use of them as though they were the same existence, only that by preference he makes the _νοῦς_ the principle of everything. He certainly speaks frequently of the _νοῦς_ as of the cause of the beautiful and right, but another time he calls it the soul. For it is in all animals, in large as well as small, the higher kind and the lower; it alone of all existence is the simple, unadulterated and pure; it is devoid of pain and is not in community with any other.”[83] What we therefore have to do is to show from the principle of motion, that it is the self-moving; and this thought is, as existent for itself. As soul, the self-moving is only immediately individual; the _νοῦς_, however, as simple, is the universal. Thought moves on account of something: the end is the first simple which makes itself result; this principle with the ancients is grasped as good and evil, i.e. end as positive and negative. This determination is a very important one, but with Anaxagoras it was not fully worked out. While in the first place the principles are material, from these Aristotle then distinguishes determination and form, and thirdly he finds in the process of Heraclitus, the principle of motion. Then in the fourth place there comes the reason why, the determination of end, with the _νοῦς_; this is the concrete in itself. Aristotle adds in the above-mentioned passage (p. 192), “according to these men” (the Ionians and others) “and in reference to such causes” (water, fire, &c.), “since they are not sufficient to beget the nature of things, the philosophers are, as already said, compelled by the truth to go on to the principle following (_ἐχομένην_). For neither the earth nor any other principle is capable of explaining the fact that while on the one hand all is good and beautiful, on the other, something else is produced, and those men do not seem to have thought that this was so; nor is it seemly to abandon such matters to hazard (_αὐτομάτῳ_) and to chance.” Goodness and beauty express the simple restful Notion, and change the Notion in its movement.

With this principle comes the determination of an understanding as of self-determining activity; this has hitherto been wanting, for the Becoming of Heraclitus, which is only process, is not yet as fate, the independently self-determining. By this we must not represent to ourselves subjective thought; in thinking we think immediately of our thought as it is in consciousness. Here, on the contrary, quite objective thought is meant, active understanding—as we say, there is reason in the world, or we speak of genera in nature which are the universal. The genus animal is the substantial of the dog; the dog itself is this; the laws of nature are themselves nature’s immanent essence. The nature is not formed from without as men make a table; this is also made with understanding, but through an understanding outside of this wood. This external form, which is called the understanding, immediately occurs to us in speaking of the understanding; but here the universal is meant, that which is the immanent nature of the object itself. The _νοῦς_ is thus not a thinking existence from without which regulates the world; by such the meaning present to Anaxagoras would be quite destroyed and all its philosophic interest taken away. For to speak of an individual, a unit from without, is to fall into the ordinary conception and its dualism; a so-called thinking principle is no longer a thought, but is a subject. But still the true universal is for all that not abstract, but the universal is just the determining in and out of itself of the particular in and for itself. In this activity, which is independently self-determining, the fact is at once implied that the activity, because it constitutes process, retains itself as the universal self-identical. Fire, which, according to Heraclitus, was process, dies away and merely passes over, without independent existence, into the opposite; it is certainly also a circle and a return to fire, but the principle does not retain itself in its determinateness as the universal, seeing that a simple passing into the opposite takes place. This relation to itself in determination which we see appearing in Anaxagoras, now, however, contains the determination of the universal though it is not formally expressed, and therein we have the end or the Good.

I have just recently (p. 316) spoken of the Notion of the end, yet by that we must not merely think of the form of the end as it is in us, in conscious beings. At first, end, in as far as I have it, is my conception, which is for itself, and the realization of which depends on my wish; if I carry it out, and if I am not unskilful, the object produced must be conformable to the end, containing nothing but it. There is a transition from subjectivity to objectivity through which this opposition is always again sublated. Because I am discontented with my end in that it is only subjective, my activity consists in removing this defect and making it objective. In objectivity the end has retained itself; for instance, if I have the end in view of building a house and am active for that end, the house results in which my end is realized. But we must not, as we usually do, abide at the conception of this subjective end; in this case both I and the end exist independently and externally in relation to each other. In the conception that God, as wisdom, rules the world in accordance with an end, for instance, the end is posited for itself in a wise, figuratively conceiving Being. But the universal of end is the fact that since it is a determination independently fixed, that rules present existence, the end is the truth, the soul of a thing. The Good in the end gives content to itself, so that while it is active with this content, and after it has entered into externality, no other content comes forth than what was already present. The best example of this is presented in life; it has desires, and these desires are its ends; as merely living, however, it knows nothing of these ends, but yet they are first, immediate determinations which are established. The animal works at satisfying these desires, i.e. at reaching the end; it relates itself to external things, partly mechanically, partly chemically. But the character of its activity does not remain mechanical or chemical; the product is rather the animal itself, which, as its own end, brings forth in its activity only itself, since it negates and overturns those mechanical or chemical relationships. In mechanical and chemical process, on the other hand, the result is something different, in which the subject does not retain itself; but in the end, beginning and end are alike, for we posit the subjective objectively in order to receive it again. Self-preservation is a continual production by which nothing new, but always the old, arises; it is a taking back of activity for the production of itself.

Thus this self-determining activity, which is then active on something else, enters into opposition, but it again negates the opposition, governs it, in it reflects upon itself; it is the end, the thought, that which conserves itself in its self-determination. The development of these moments is the business of Philosophy from henceforth. But if we look more closely as to how far Anaxagoras has got in the development of this thought, we find nothing further than the activity determining from out of itself, which sets up a limit or measure; further than the determination of measure, development does not go. Anaxagoras gives us no more concrete definition of the _νοῦς_, and this we are still left to consider; we thus have nothing more than the abstract determination of the concrete in itself. The above-mentioned predicates which Anaxagoras gives the _νοῦς_, may thus indeed be affirmed, but they are, on their own account, one-sided only.

2. _The Homœomeriæ._ This is the one side in the principle of Anaxagoras; we now have to consider the going forth of the _νοῦς_ into further determinations. This remaining part of the philosophy of Anaxagoras at first, however, makes us think that the hopes in which such a principle justified us must be very much diminished. On the other side, this universal is confronted by Being, matter, the manifold generally, potentiality as distinguished from the former as actuality. For if the Good or the end is also determined as potentiality, the universal, as the self-moving, may rather be called the actual in itself, the being-for-self, as opposed to implicit being, potentiality, passivity. Aristotle says in an important passage (Met. I. 8): “If any one should say of Anaxagoras that he adopted two principles, he would rest his statement on a point respecting which the latter never really clearly defined himself, but which he had necessarily to acknowledge to those who adduced it.... That is, Anaxagoras says that originally everything is mingled.... But where nothing is yet separated, no distinguishing feature is present; such substance is neither a white, black, gray, nor any other colour, but colourless; it has no quality nor quantity nor determination (_τί_). All is mingled except the _νοῦς_; this is unmingled and pure. With this in view, it thus occurs to him to denominate as principles the one, for it alone is single and unmingled, and the other-being (_θάτερον_), what we call the indeterminate, before it has become determined or partakes of any kind of form.”

This other principle is celebrated under the name of homœomeries (_ὁμοιομερῆ_), of like parts or homogeneous, in Aristotle’s rendering (Met. I. 3, 7); Riemer translates _ἡ ὁμοιομερεια_ “the similarity of individual parts to the whole,” and _αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι_ “the elementary matter,” yet this latter word seems to be of a later origin.[84] Aristotle says, “Anaxagoras sets forth” (in respect of the material) “infinitely many principles, for he maintained that, like water and fire in Empedocles’ system, nearly all that is formed of like parts only arises from union and passes away through separation; other arising and passing away there is none, for equal parts remain eternal.” That is, the existent, the individual matter, such as bones, metal, flesh, &c., in itself consists of parts like itself—flesh of small particles of flesh, gold of small gold particles, &c. Thus he said at the beginning of his work, “All has been alike” (i.e. unseparated as in a chaos), “and has rested for an infinitude of time; then came the _νοῦς_, and it brought in movement, separated and brought order into the separated creation (_διεκόσμησεν_), in that it united the like.”[85]

The homœomeriæ become clearer if we compare them with the conceptions of Leucippus and Democritus and others. In Leucippus and Democritus, as well as Empedocles, we saw this matter, or the absolute as objective existence, determined so that simple atoms—with the latter the four elements and with the former infinitely many—were set forth as separate only in form; their syntheses and combinations were existing things. Aristotle (De cœlo, III. 3) says further on this point, “Anaxagoras asserts of the elements the opposite to Empedocles. For the latter takes as original principles, fire, air, earth, and water, through whose union all things arise. On the other hand, Anaxagoras maintains what are of like parts such as flesh, bones, or the like to be simple materials; such things as water and fire, on the contrary, are a mixture of the original elements. For any one of these four consists of the infinite admixture of all invisible, existing things of like parts, which hence come forth from these.” The principle held good for him as for the Eleatics, that “the like only comes out of the like; there is no transition into the opposite, no union of opposites possible.” All change is hence to him only a separation and union of the like; change as true change, would be a Becoming out of the negative of itself. “That is, because Anaxagoras,” says Aristotle (Phys. I, 4), “partook of the view of all physicists that it is impossible that anything can come out of nothing, there was nothing left but to admit that what becomes was already present as an existent, but that, on account of its small size, it was imperceptible to us.” This point of view is also quite different from the conception of Thales and Heraclitus, in which, not only the possibility, but the actuality of the transformation of these like qualitative differences is essentially maintained. But to Anaxagoras with whom the elements are a mingled chaos formed therefrom, having only an apparent uniformity, concrete things arise through the severance of these infinitely many principles from such a chaos, since like finds like. Respecting the difference between Empedocles and Anaxagoras, there is further what Aristotle adds in the same place: “The former allows a change (_περίοδον_) in these conditions, the latter only their one appearance.” The conception of Democritus is similar to that of Anaxagoras in so far as that an infinite manifold is the original source. But with Anaxagoras the determination of the fundamental principles appears to contain that which we consider as organized, and to be by no means an independently existent simple; thus perfectly individualized atoms such as particles of flesh and of gold, form, through their coming together, that which appears to be organized. That comes near our ordinary ideas. Means of nourishment, it is thought, contain such parts as are homogeneous to blood, flesh, &c. Anaxagoras hence says, according to Aristotle (De gen. anim. I. 18), “Flesh comes to flesh through food.” Digestion is thus nothing more than the taking up of the homogeneous and separation of the heterogeneous; all nourishment and growth is thus not true assimilation but only increase, because each internal organ of the animal only draws its parts to itself out of the various plants, bodies, &c. Death is, on the other hand, the separation of the like and the mingling with the heterogeneous. The activity of the _νοῦς_, as the sundering of the like out of the chaos and the putting together of the like, as also the setting at liberty again of this like, is certainly simple and relative to itself, but purely formal and thus for itself contentless.

This is the general standpoint of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, and quite the same standpoint which in more recent times reigns in chemistry for instance; flesh is certainly no longer regarded as simple, but as being hydrogen, &c. The chemical elements are oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and metals, &c. Chemistry says, if you want to know what flesh, wood, stone, &c., really are, you must set forth their simple elements, and these are ultimate. It also says that much is only relatively simple, _e.g._ platinum consists of three or four metals. Water and air were similarly long held to be simple, but chemistry at length analyzed them. From this chemical point of view, the simple principles of natural things are determined as infinitely qualitative and thus accepted as unchangeable and invariable, so that all else consists only of the combination of these simples. Man, according to this, is a collection of carbon and hydrogen, some earth, oxides, phosphorus, &c. It is a favourite idea of the physicists to place in the water or in the air, oxygen and carbon, which exist and only require to be separated. This idea of Anaxagoras certainly also differs from modern chemistry; that which we consider as concrete, is for him qualitatively determined or elementary. Yet he allows, with regard to flesh, that the parts are not all alike. “For this reason, they say,” remarks Aristotle (Phys. I. 4; Met. IV. 5),—but not particularly of Anaxagoras—“everything is contained in everything, for they saw everything arise out of everything: it only appears to be different and is called different in accordance with the predominating number of the particular kind of parts which have mingled themselves with others. In truth the whole is not white, or black, or sweet, or flesh, or bones; but the homœomeriæ which have most accumulated in any place, bring about the result that the whole appears to us as this determinate.” As thus each thing contains all other things, water, air, bones, fruits, &c., on the other hand, the water contains flesh as flesh, bones, &c. Into this infinitely manifold nature of the principles, Anaxagoras thus goes back; the sensuous has first arisen through the accumulation of all those parts, and in it the one kind of parts then has a predominance.

While he defines absolute existence as universal, we see here that in objective existence, or in matter, universality and thought abandon Anaxagoras. The implicit is to him, indeed, no absolutely sensuous Being; the homœomeriæ are the non-sensuous, _i.e._ the invisible and inaudible, &c. This is the highest point reached by common physicists in passing from sensuous Being to the non-sensuous, as to the mere negation of the being-for-us; but the positive side is that existent Being is itself universal. The objective is to Anaxagoras certainly the _νοῦς_, but for him the other-Being is a mixture of simple elements, which are neither flesh nor fish, red nor blue; again this simple is not simple in itself, but in its essence consists of homœomeriæ, which are, however, so small that they are imperceptible. The smallness thus does not take away their existence, for they are still there; but existence is just the being perceptible to sight, smell, &c. These infinitely small homœomeriæ undoubtedly disappear in a more complete conception; flesh, for instance, is such itself, but it is also a mixture of everything, _i.e._ it is not simple. Further analysis equally shows how such a conception must, to a greater or lesser degree, become confused; on the one side each form is thus in its main elements, original, and these parts together constitute a corporeal whole; this whole has, however, on the other side, to contain everything in itself. The _νοῦς_, then, is only what binds and separates, what divides and arranges [_das diakosmirende_]. This may suffice us; however easily we may get confused with the homœomeriæ of Anaxagoras, we must hold fast to the main determination. The homœomeriæ still form a striking conception, and it may be asked how it conforms with the rest of Anaxagoras’ principle.

3. _The Relation of the Two._ Now as to the relation of the _νοῦς_ to that matter, both are not speculatively posited as one, for the relation itself is not set forth as one, nor has the Notion penetrated it. Here the ideas become in some measure superficial, and in some measure the conceptions are more consistent as regards the particular, than they at first appear. Because the understanding is the self-determining, the content is end, it retains itself in relation to what is different; it does not arise and pass away although it is in activity. The conception of Anaxagoras that concrete principles subsist and retain themselves, is thus consistent; he abolishes arising and passing away and accepts only an external change, a uniting together, and a severance of what is so united. The principles are concrete and have content, _i.e._ so many ends; in the change that takes place the principles really retain themselves. Like only goes with like even if the chaotic mixture is a combination of the unlike; but this is only a combination and not an individual, living form which maintains itself, binding like to like. Thus, however rude these ideas are, they are still really in harmony with the _νοῦς_.

But if the _νοῦς_ is with Anaxagoras the moving soul in all, it yet remains to the real, as the soul of the world and the organic system of the whole, a mere word. For the living as living, since the soul was conceived of as principle, the ancients demanded no further principle (for it is the self-moving), but for determinateness, which the animal is as element in the system of the whole, they again required only the universal of these determinations. Anaxagoras calls the understanding such a principle, and in fact the absolute Notion, as simple existence, the self-identical in its differences, the dividing, the reality-establishing, must be known as such. But that Anaxagoras showed forth the understanding in the universe, or had grasped it as a rational system—of this not only do we not find a trace, but the ancients expressly say that he simply let the matter pass, just as when we say that the world or nature is a great system, the world is wisely ordered or is generally speaking rational. By this we are shown no more of the realization of this reason or the comprehensibility of the world. The _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is thus still formal, although the identity of the principle with the realization was recognized. Aristotle (Met. I. 4) recognizes the insufficiency of the Anaxagorean principle: “Anaxagoras, indeed, requires the _νοῦς_ for his formation of the world-system; that is, when he has a difficulty in showing the reason for which it is in accordance with necessity, he brings it in; otherwise he employs anything for the sake of explanation, rather than thought.”

It is nowhere more clearly set forth that the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is still formal, than in the well-known passage out of Plato’s Phædo (p. 97-99, Steph.; p. 85-89, Bekk.), which is noteworthy for its exposition of the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Socrates, according to Plato, states most definitely both what the absolute to them was, and why Anaxagoras did not satisfy them. I quote this because it will best of all lead us on to the main conception which we recognize in the philosophic consciousness of the ancients; at the same time it is an example of the loquacity of Socrates. Socrates’ understanding of the _νοῦς_ as end is better because its determinations are congenial to him, so that we also see in it the principal forms that appear in Socrates. Plato makes Socrates, in prison, an hour before his death, relate at considerable length his experiences with regard to Anaxagoras: “When I heard it read from a book of Anaxagoras, that he said that the understanding is the disposer of the world and the first cause, I rejoiced in such a cause, and I held that if Mind apportioned out all reality, it would apportion it for the best” (the end would be shown forth). “Now if anyone wished to find the cause of the individual thing, how it becomes, and how it passes away, or how it is, he must discover this from what is best for that thing, whether it is being or in some way suffering or doing.” That the understanding is cause, or that everything is made for the best, means the same thing; this will become clearer from the opposite. It is further said, “For this reason a man has only to consider for himself, as for all others, what is best and most perfect, and then he would of necessity know the worse, for the same science comprises both. Thus reflecting, I rejoiced that I could believe that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of existence” (of the good) “such as I approved of; he would, I believed, tell me whether the earth was flat or round, and if he told me this, he would show me the cause and necessity of the fact, because he would show me the one or the other as being the better; and if he said that the earth is in the centre, he would show me that it was better that it should be in the centre” (i.e. its implicitly and explicitly determined end, and not utility as an externally determined end). “And when he had shown me this, I should be satisfied though he brought forward no other kind of causes, for the same would hold good for the sun, the moon, and the other stars, their respective velocities, returnings, and other conditions. Because he assigned its cause to each and to all in common, I thought that he would explain what was best for each and what was best for all” (the free, implicitly and explicitly existent Idea, the absolute end). “I would not have given up this hope for a great deal, but seized these writings zealously and read them as soon as possible in order to learn as soon as possible the good and the evil. These bright hopes faded when I saw that he did not require thought at all nor any reason for the formation of things, but had recourse to air, fire, water and many other eccentricities.” We here see how to what is best, according to the understanding (the relation of final end), that which we call natural causes is opposed, just as in Leibnitz the operating and the final causes are different.

Socrates explains this in the following way: “It appears to me to be as if some one were to say that Socrates performs all his actions with understanding, and then in going on to give the reasons for each of my actions, were to say that I sit here because my body consists of bones and muscles; the bones are fixed and have joints that divide them (_διαφυὰς_), but the muscles have the power of extending and bending, and they cover the bones with flesh and skin; it is as though he were further to bring forward as the cause of my talking with you, other similar causes, sounds, and air, hearing, and a thousand other things, but omitted to give the true cause” (free independent determination), “which is that the Athenians judged it fit to condemn me, and therefore I judged it better and more just to sit here and to suffer the punishment which they accorded” (we must recollect that one of his friends had arranged everything for the flight of Socrates, but that he refused to go) “for else, by the dog of Egypt, how long ago would these bones and muscles have gone to Megara or to Boeotia, had they been moved only by their opinion of what was best, and had I not considered it juster and better to bear the punishment which the State laid upon me, instead of escaping and fleeing from it.” Plato here correctly places the two kinds of reason and cause in opposition to one another—the cause proceeding from ends, and the inferior, subject, and merely external causes of chemistry, mechanism, &c.—in order to show the discrepancy between them, as here exemplified in the case of a man with consciousness. Anaxagoras seems to define an end and to wish to proceed from it; but he immediately lets this go again and proceeds to quite external causes. “But to call these” (these bones and muscles) “causes is quite improper. If, however, anyone were to say that without having bones and muscles and whatever else I have, I could not do that which I consider best, he would be quite right. But to say that from such causes, I do that which I do, and do with understanding; to say that I do not do it from the choice of what is best—to make such an assertion shows a great want of consideration; it signifies an incapacity to distinguish that the one is the true cause and the other is only that without which the cause could not operate,” _i.e._ the conditions.

This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean _νοῦς_ we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras made no application of his _νοῦς_ to reality. But the positive element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes, and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that are immanent. According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration of nature in relation to ends—as present in our thought and not existent in nature—we also banish from our consideration teleological explanations in nature formerly admired, _e.g._ that grass grows that animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end, the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to them. The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin; Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a particular thing, which might have another content than reality or appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and the product are the same. This realization goes right through the opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal, and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus. They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus. Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the universal.

In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example, where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises. Answers of this kind give the causes, _i.e._ the individuality opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles, &c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal, however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different individuals. Their real nature is the same.

But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially related to another, _e.g._ the Idea of the plant to that of the animal; the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology—that plants are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies. The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up. Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the world which is immanent within it.

These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent. What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak, the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form, dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction, pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself, to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got: it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought, indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor, abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations—water, Being, number, &c.—and these cannot endure; the universal must go forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.

We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, _i.e._ an infinite amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ. The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception; for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus, in the first place, we find from him—as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math. VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (_λόγος_) is the criterion of the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their weakness”—weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small; the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be something ideal and thought. A celebrated example of this is given by him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that, “there is a medium between contradiction (_ἀντιφάσεως_); so that everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists, sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.

There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought; and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign is Thought, _i.e._ consciousness has this real existence in itself. But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness; thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed, known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists; we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the universal is now developing.