Part 2 (1/2)

Originally, these four elements were absolutely alike and unmovable, dwelling together in a divine sphere where friends.h.i.+p united them, until gradually strife pressing from the circ.u.mference to the centre of the sphere (_i. e._ attaining a separating activity), broke this union, and the formation of the world immediately began as the result.

2. THE FOUR ELEMENTS.-With his doctrine of the four elements, Empedocles, on the one side, may be joined to the series of the Ionic philosophers, but, on the other, he is excluded from this by his a.s.suming the original elements to be four. He is distinctly said by the ancients to have originated the theory of the four elements. He is more definitely distinguished from the old Ionics, from the fact that he ascribed to his four ”root-elements” a changeless being, by virtue of which they neither arose from each other nor departed into each other, and were capable of no change of essence but only of a change of state.

Every thing which is called arising and departing, every change rests therefore only upon the mingling and withdrawing of these eternal and fundamental materials; the inexhaustible manifoldness of being rests upon the different proportions in which these elements are mingled.

Every becoming is conceived as such only as a change of place. In this we have a mechanical in opposition to a dynamic explanation of nature.

3. THE TWO POWERS.-Whence now can arise any becoming, if in matter itself there is found no principle to account for the change? Since Empedocles did not, like the Eleatics, deny that there was change, nor yet, like Herac.l.i.tus, introduce it in his matter, as an indwelling principle, so there was no other course left him but to place, by the side of his matter, a moving power. The opposition of the one and the many which had been set up by his predecessors, and which demanded an explanation, led him to ascribe to this moving power, two originally diverse directions, viz.: repulsion and attraction. The separation of the one into the many, and the union again of the many into the one, had indicated an opposition of powers which Herac.l.i.tus had already recognized. While now Parmenides starting from the one had made love as his principle, and Herac.l.i.tus starting from the many had made strife as his, Empedocles combines the two as the principle of his philosophy. The difficulty is, he has not sufficiently limited in respect to one another, the sphere of operation of these two directions of his power.

Although, to friends.h.i.+p belonged peculiarly the attractive, and to strife the repelling function, yet does Empedocles, on the other hand, suffer his strife to have in the formation of the world a unifying, and his friends.h.i.+p a dividing effect. In fact, the complete separation of a dividing and unifying power in the movement of the becoming, is an unmaintainable abstraction.

4. RELATION OF THE EMPEDOCLEAN TO THE ELEATIC AND HERAc.l.i.tIC PHILOSOPHY.-Empedocles, by placing, as the principle of the becoming, a moving power by the side of his matter, makes his philosophy a mediation of the Eleatic and Herac.l.i.tic principles, or more properly a placing of them side by side. He has interwoven these two principles in equal proportions in his system. With the Eleatics he denied all arising and departing, _i. e._ the transition of being into not-being and of not-being into being, and with Herac.l.i.tus he shared the interest to find an explanation for change. From the former he derived the abiding, unchangeable being of his fundamental matter, and from the latter the principle of the moving power. With the Eleatics, in fine, he considered the true being in an original and indistinguishable unity as a sphere, and with Herac.l.i.tus, he regarded the present world as a constant product of striving powers and oppositions. He has, therefore, been properly called an Eclectic, who has united the fundamental thoughts of his two predecessors, though not always in a logical way.

SECTION IX.

THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.

1. ITS PROPOUNDERS.-Empedocles had sought to effect a combination of the Eleatic and Herac.l.i.tic principle-the same was attempted, though in a different way, by the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. Democritus, the better known of the two, was the son of rich parents, and was born about 460 B. C. in Abdera, an Ionian colony. He travelled extensively, and no Greek before the time of Aristotle possessed such varied attainments. He embodied the wealth of his collected knowledge in a series of writings, of which, however, only a few fragments have come down to us. For rhythm and elegance of language, Cicero compared him with Plato. He died in a good old age.

2. THE ATOMS.-Empedocles derived all determinateness of the phenomenal from a certain number of qualitatively determined and undistinguishable original materials, while the Atomists derived the same from an originally unlimited number of const.i.tuent elements, or atoms, which were h.o.m.ogeneous in respect of quality, but diverse in respect of form.

These atoms are unchangeable, material particles, possessing indeed extension, but yet indivisible, and can only be determined in respect of magnitude. As being, and without quality, they are entirely incapable of any transformation or qualitative change, and, therefore, all becoming is, as with Empedocles, only a change of place. The manifoldness of the phenomenal world is only to be explained from the different form, disposition, and arrangement of the atoms as they become, in various ways, united.

3. THE FULNESS AND THE VOID.-The atoms, in order to be atoms, _i. e._ undivided and impenetrable unities,-must be mutually limited and separated. There must be something set over against them which preserves them as atoms, and which is the original cause of their separateness and impenetrability. This is the void s.p.a.ce, or more strictly the intervals which are found between the atoms, and which hinder their mutual contact. The atoms, as being and absolute fulness, and the interval between them, as the void and the not-being, are two determinations which only represent in a real and objective way, what are in thought, as logical conceptions, the two elements in the Herac.l.i.tic becoming, viz. being and the not-being. But since the void s.p.a.ce is one determination of being, it must possess objective reality no less than the atoms, and Democritus even went so far as to expressly affirm in opposition to the Eleatics, that being is no more than nothing.

4. THE ATOMISTIC NECESSITY.-Democritus, like Empedocles, though far more extensively than he, attempted to answer the question-whence arise these changes and movements which we behold? Wherein lies the ground that the atoms should enter into these manifold combinations, and bring forth such a wealth of inorganic and organic forms? Democritus attempted to solve the problem by affirming that the ground of movement lay in the gravity or original condition of the material particles, and, therefore, in the matter itself, but in this way he only talked about the question without answering it. The idea of an infinite series of causalities was thus attained, but not a final ground of all the manifestations of the becoming, and of change. Such a final ground was still to be sought, and as Democritus expressly declared that it could not lie in an ultimate reason ????, where Anaxagoras placed it, there only remained for him to find it in an absolute necessity, or a necessary pre-determinateness ??????. This he adopted as his ”final ground,” and is said to have named it chance t???, in opposition to the inquiry after final causes, or the Anaxagorean teleology. Consequent upon this, we find as the prominent characteristic of the later Atomistic school (Diagoras the Melier), polemics against the G.o.ds of the people, and a constantly more publicly affirmed Atheism and Materialism.

5. RELATIVE POSITION OF THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.-Hegel characterizes the relative position of the Atomistic Philosophy as follows, viz.:-”In the Eleatic Philosophy being and not-being stand as ant.i.theses,-being alone is, and not-being is not; in the Herac.l.i.tic idea, being and not-being are the same,-both together, _i. e._ the becoming, are the predicate of concrete being; but being and not-being, as objectively determined, or in other words, as appearing to the sensuous intuition, are precisely the same as the ant.i.thesis of the fulness and the void.

Parmenides, Herac.l.i.tus and the Atomists all sought for the abstract universal; Parmenides found it in _being_, Herac.l.i.tus in the _process_ of being _per se_, and the Atomists in the _determination_ of being _per se_.” So much of this as ascribes to the Atomists the characteristic predicate of being _per se_ is doubtless correct,-but the real thought of the Atomistic system is rather a.n.a.logous with the Empedoclean, to explain the possibility of the becoming, by presupposing these substances as possessing being _per se_, but without quality. To this end the not-being or the void, _i. e._ the side which is opposed to the Eleatic principle, is elaborated with no less care than the side which harmonizes with it, _i. e._ that the atoms are without quality and never change in their original elements. The Atomistic Philosophy is therefore a mediation between the Eleatic and the Herac.l.i.tic principles. It is Eleatic in affirming the undivided being _per se_ of the atoms;-Herac.l.i.tic, in declaring their multeity and manifoldness. It is Eleatic in the declaration of an absolute fulness in the atoms, and Herac.l.i.tic in the claim of a real not-being, _i. e._ the void s.p.a.ce. It is Eleatic in its denial of the becoming, _i. e._ of the arising and departing,-and Herac.l.i.tic in its affirmation that to the atoms belong movement and a capacity for unlimited combinations. The Atomists carried out their leading thought more logically than Empedocles, and we might even say that their system is the perfection of a purely mechanical explanation of nature, since all subsequent Atomists, even to our own day, have only repeated their fundamental conceptions. But the great defect which cleaves to every Atomistic system, Aristotle has justly recognized, when he shows that it is a contradiction, on the one hand, to set up something corporeal or s.p.a.ce-filling as indivisible, and on the other, to derive the extended from that which has no extension, and that the consciousless and inconceivable necessity of Democritus is especially defective, in that it totally banishes from nature all conception of design. This is the point to which Anaxagoras turns his attention, and introduces his principle of an intelligence working with design.

SECTION X.

ANAXAGORAS.

1. HIS PERSONAL HISTORY.-Anaxagoras is said to have been born at Clazamena, about the year 500 B. C.; to have gone to Athens immediately, or soon after the Persian war, to have lived and taught there for a long time, and, finally, accused of irreverence to the G.o.ds, to have fled, and died at Lampsacus, at the age of 72. He it was who first planted philosophy at Athens, which from this time on became the centre of intellectual life in Greece. Through his personal relations to Pericles, Euripides, and other important men,-among whom Themistocles and Thucydides should be named-he exerted a decisive influence upon the culture of the age. It was on account of this that the charge of defaming the G.o.ds was brought against him, doubtless by the political opponents of Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work ”_Concerning Nature_”

which in the time of Socrates was widely circulated.

2. HIS RELATION TO HIS PREDECESSORS.-The system of Anaxagoras starts from the same point with his predecessors, and is simply another attempt at the solution of the same problem. Like Empedocles and the Atomists so did Anaxagoras most vehemently deny the becoming. ”The becoming and departing,”-so runs one of his sayings-”the Greeks hold without foundation, for nothing can ever be said to become or depart; but, since existing things may be compounded together and again divided, we should name the becoming more correctly a combination, and the departing a separation.” From this view, that every thing arose by the mingling of different elements, and departed by the withdrawing of these elements, Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, was obliged to separate matter from the moving power. But though his point of starting was the same, yet was his direction essentially different from that of any previous philosopher. It was clear that neither Empedocles nor Democritus had satisfactorily apprehended the moving power. The mythical energies of love and hate of the one, or the unconscious necessity of the other, explained nothing, and least of all, the design of the becoming in nature. The conception of an activity which could thus work designedly, must, therefore, be brought into the conception of the moving power, and this Anaxagoras accomplished by setting up the idea of a world-forming intelligence (????), absolutely separated from all matter and working with design.

3. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE ????.-Anaxagoras described this intelligence as free to dispose, unmingled with any thing, the ground of movement, but itself unmoved, every where active, and the most refined and pure of all things. Although these predicates rest partly upon a physical a.n.a.logy, and do not exhibit purely the conception of immateriality, yet on the other hand does the attribute of thought and of a conscious acting with design admit no doubt to remain of the decided idealistic character of the Anaxagorean principle. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras went no farther than to enunciate his fundamental thought without attempting its complete application. The explanation of this is obvious from the reasons which first led him to adopt his principle. It was only the need of an original cause of motion, to which also might be attributed the capacity to work designedly, which had led him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His ????, therefore, is almost nothing but a mover of matter, and in this function nearly all its activity is expended. Hence the universal complaint of the ancients, especially of Plato and Aristotle, respecting the mechanical character of his doctrine. In Plato's Phaedon Socrates relates that, in the hope of being directed beyond a simple occasioning, or mediate cause, he had turned to the book of Anaxagoras, but had found there only a mechanical instead of a truly teleological explanation of being. And as Plato so also does Aristotle find fault with Anaxagoras in that, while he admits mind as the ultimate ground of things, he yet resorts to it only as to a _Deus ex machina_ for the explanation of phenomena, whose necessity he could not derive from the causality in nature. Anaxagoras, therefore, has rather postulated than proved mind as an energy above nature, and as the truth and actuality of natural being.

The further extension of his system, his doctrine concerning the h.o.m.oiomeria (const.i.tuent elements of things), which according to him existed together originally in a chaotic condition until with their separation and parting the formation of the world began-can here only be mentioned.

4. ANAXAGORAS AS THE CLOSE OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC REALISM.-With the Anaxagorean principle of the ????, _i. e._ with the acquisition of an absolutely immaterial principle, closes the realistic period of the old Grecian Philosophy. Anaxagoras combined together the principles of all his predecessors. The infinite matter of the Hylics is represented in his chaotic original mingling of things; the Eleatic pure being appears in the idea of the ????; the Herac.l.i.tic power of becoming and the Empedoclean moving energies are both seen in the creating and arranging power of the eternal mind, while the Democritic atoms come to view in the h.o.m.oiomeria. Anaxagoras is the closing point of an old and the beginning point of a new course of development,-the latter through the setting up of his ideal principle, and the former through the defective and completely physical manner in which this principle was yet again applied.