A Critical History of Greek Philosophy by W. T. Stace (short story to read txt) 📖

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

[Footnote 6: Page 64.]

Not only is Being, for Heracleitus, identical with not-being, but everything in the universe has in it its own opposite. Every existent thing is a "harmony of opposite tensions." A harmony contains necessarily two opposite principles which, in spite of their opposition, reveal an underlying unity. That it is by virtue of this principle that everything in the universe exists, is the teaching of Heracleitus. All things contain their own opposites within them. In the struggle and antagonism between hostile principles consists their life, their being, their very existence. At the heart of things is conflict. If there were no conflict in a thing, it would cease to exist. This idea is expressed by Heracleitus in a variety of ways. "Strife," he says, "is the father of all things." "The one, sundering from itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre." "God is day and night, summer and winter, war and peace, satiety and hunger." "Join together whole and unwhole, congruous and incongruous, accordant and discordant, then comes from one all and from all one." In this sense, too, he censures Homer for having prayed that strife might cease from among gods and men. If such a prayer were granted, the universe itself would pass away.

{78}

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

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

In his religious opinions Heracleitus was sceptical. But he does not, like Xenophanes, direct his attacks against the central ideas of religion, and the doctrine of the gods. He attacks mostly the outward observances and forms in which the religious spirit manifests itself. He inveighs against the worship of images, and urges the uselessness of blood sacrifice.

With the Eleatics he distinguishes between sense and reason, and places truth in rational cognition. The illusion of permanence he ascribes to the senses. It is by reason that we rise to the knowledge of the law of Becoming. In the comprehension of this law lies the duty of man, and the only road to happiness. Understanding this, man becomes resigned and contented. He sees that evil is the necessary counterpart of good, and pain the necessary counterpart of pleasure, and that both together are necessary to form the harmony of the world. Good and evil are principles on the struggle {80} between which the very existence of things depends. Evil, too, is necessary, has its place in the world. To see this is to put oneself above pitiful and futile struggles against the supreme law of the universe.

{81}

CHAPTER VI

EMPEDOCLES

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

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

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

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

Empedocles taught the doctrine of periodic world-cycles. The world-process is, therefore, properly speaking, circular, and has neither beginning nor end. But in describing this process one must begin somewhere. We will begin, then, with the sphairos (sphere). In the primeval sphere the four elements are completely mixed, and interpenetrate each other completely. Water is not separated off from air, nor air from earth. All are chaotically mixed together. In any portion of the