'It must indeed, if that is possible,' he said. 'Well, in what went before, they were trained by us in a certain gymnastic and music.' 'That is so,' he said. 'And gymnastic, I suppose, has to do with what comes to be and passes away, for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.' 'So it appears.' 'Then this would not be the study we are seeking.' 'No, indeed.' 'Then is it music, as far as we have described it before?'
'No,' he said, 'that, if you recall, was the counterpart of gymnastic, training the guardians by habituation, imparting through harmony a certain attunement — not knowledge — and through rhythm a good rhythm, and in its stories possessing certain other kindred habits, whether the stories were mythical or truer ones; but a study leading toward the sort of thing you are now seeking, there was nothing of that in it.'
'You remind me most precisely,' I said, 'for indeed it had nothing of the kind.' 'But, my dear Glaucon, what could such a thing be? For all the crafts, at any rate, seemed to be servile.' 'How could they not?'
Then, proceeding further, he adds: 'Let us take care lest those whom we shall rear attempt some incomplete grasp of these matters, without ever arriving at that point to which all must ultimately arrive — as we were just now saying about astronomy. Or do you not know that they do the same sort of thing about harmony too? For, measuring against one another the audible concords and notes, they labor endlessly, just as the astronomers do.'
'By the gods, yes,' he said, 'and ridiculously too — giving names to certain close intervals and laying their ears close, as if trying to catch a voice from next door: some claim they can still make out a certain sound in between, and that this is the smallest interval by which one must measure; others dispute this, insisting the notes are already alike — both sides setting their ears in charge ahead of their minds.'
'You mean,' I said, 'the good men who torment the strings and put them to the rack, twisting them on the pegs. But lest the image grow too long — with blows dealt by the plectrum, and accusation and denial and boasting on the part of the strings — I will drop the image, and say that I do not mean these men, but those others we said just now were being discussed with regard to harmony.'
'For they do the very same thing as those engaged in astronomy: they seek the numbers in these audible concords, but they do not rise up to the level of problems, to examine which numbers are concordant and which are not, and why each is so.'
But let these things stand for us as preliminary matters, in our own defense that it was not apart from right judgment that we made light of such unprofitable learning. Let us, then, henceforth consider, beginning from the outset, the doctrinal disagreements among the aforesaid natural philosophers with one another. Plutarch, then, writes — having gathered together all at once the opinions of all the Platonists and Pythagoreans alike, and again of the still older philosophers called natural philosophers, and in turn of the more recent Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans — in the work he entitled 'On the Physical Doctrines Held by the Philosophers'; from which I shall set forth the following.
Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages, declared that the first principle of existing things is water. This man is thought to have been the founder of philosophy, and from him the Ionian school took its name; and very many successions of philosophers arose from it. Having pursued philosophy in Egypt, he came to Miletus in old age. He says that all things come from water and that all things are resolved into water. He conjectures this, first, from the fact that the seed of all living things, being their origin, is moist; hence it is likely that all things too have their origin from moisture. Second, that all plants are nourished by moisture and bear fruit by it, but wither when deprived of it. Third, that even the fire of the sun and of the stars, and the universe itself, are nourished by the exhalations of the waters. For this reason Homer too suggests this view concerning water: 'Ocean, who has been made the origin of all.' These are the views of Thales.
Anaximander of Miletus says that the first principle of existing things is the infinite; for from this all things come to be, and into this all things perish; wherefore innumerable worlds are also generated, and again perish back into that from which they come. He says this is so because the infinite is boundless, so that the process of generation which depends upon it may never fail. But this man too errs, in not saying what the infinite is — whether air, water, earth, or some other bodies. He errs, then, in declaring the matter but doing away with the efficient cause. For the infinite is nothing other than matter; but matter cannot exist in actuality unless the efficient cause is presupposed.
Anaximenes of Miletus declared air to be the first principle of existing things; for from this all things come to be, and into it again they are resolved. 'Just as our soul,' he says, 'being air, holds us together, so too breath and air encompass the whole universe' — air and breath being spoken of as synonyms. But this man too errs, in supposing that living things are composed from air and breath alone, simple and uniform. For it is impossible that matter alone should stand as the single first principle of existing things; the efficient cause must also be posited. For instance, silver alone does not suffice to produce a cup, unless there is also the one who makes it, that is, the silversmith; and likewise with bronze, wood, and other materials.
Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontum held fire to be the first principle of all things; for they say that all things come from fire and all things end in fire, and that as this is quenched, the whole world-order is formed. For first, the coarsest part of it, condensing into itself, becomes earth; then, as the earth is loosened by fire's action, it naturally becomes water, and as this evaporates it becomes air. And again the universe and all bodies are consumed by fire in a great conflagration. Fire, then, is the beginning, because all things come from it, and also the end, because all things are resolved back into it.
Democritus, whom Epicurus followed much later, held the first principles of existing things to be atomic bodies, perceptible only by reason, having no share in the void, ungenerated, eternal, indestructible, incapable even of being fractured, of being reshaped through their parts, or of being altered — being, indeed, perceptible only by reason. These, he held, move within the void and through the void; and the void itself is infinite, as are the bodies. Three attributes belong to bodies: shape, size, and weight; but Democritus spoke of only two, size and shape, while Epicurus added weight to these as a third. For it is necessary, he says, that bodies move by the impulsion of weight, since otherwise they would not move at all. The shapes of the atoms, they say, are finite in number, not infinite; for none are hook-shaped, trident-shaped, or ring-shaped, since such shapes are easily broken, whereas atoms are impassible and unbreakable; rather, they have their own proper shapes, perceptible only by reason. And it is called 'atom' not because it is the smallest thing, but because it cannot be cut, being impassible and having no share in the void; so that to say 'atom' is to say 'unbreakable, impassible, without share in the void.' And that the atom exists is clear; for there are elements, and living things devoid of void within them, and the unit.
Empedocles, son of Meton, of Acragas, held there to be four elements — fire, air, water, earth — and two first principles and powers, Love and Strife, of which the one is unitive and the other divisive. He speaks thus: 'First hear the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, and life-bringing Hera, and Aidoneus, and Nestis, who with her tears moistens the mortal spring.' By Zeus he means the fiery heat and the ether; by 'life-bringing Hera,' the air; the earth he signifies by Aidoneus; and by Nestis and 'the mortal spring' he means, as it were, seed and water.
So great, then, is the disagreement among the earliest natural philosophers, and such also is their view concerning first principles — none of them positing, among their first principles, God, a Maker, a Craftsman, or any cause of the whole, nor indeed gods, nor incorporeal powers, nor intellectual natures, nor rational substances, nor anything at all beyond the objects of sense.
Anaxagoras alone, then, is recorded as the first of the Greeks to declare, in his discourse on first principles, that Mind is the cause of all things. They say, indeed, that this man admired the study of nature far more than those before him — so much so that he let his own land become pasture for sheep on its account — and that he was the first of the Greeks to give clear articulation to the doctrine of first principles. For he pronounced not only on the substance of all things, as those before him had done, but also on the cause that moves it.
'For in the beginning,' he says, 'all things were mixed together, but Mind entered in and brought them from disorder into order.' It is remarkable that this man, though the first among the Greeks to speak of the divine in this manner, was thought by the Athenians to be an atheist — because he did not make a god of the sun but rather of the sun's maker — and came close to being stoned to death.
But it is said that not even this man kept his doctrine intact. For though he set Mind over all things, he no longer gave his account of the natural philosophy of existing things in accordance with mind and reasoning. Hear, then, the sort of thing for which Socrates, in Plato's dialogue on the soul, finds fault with the man, in the following words:
But once, as he said, having heard someone reading from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is Mind that orders all things and is the cause of all, I was pleased at this cause and thought it was in some way well for Mind to be the cause of all things; and I supposed that, if this were so, Mind, in ordering all things, would order each thing and set it in the way that would be best.
If then one wished to find the cause concerning each thing, how it comes to be or perishes or exists, one must find this about it: in what way it is best for it either to be, or to undergo, or to do anything else whatsoever. On this reasoning, then, it befits a man to consider nothing else, both about himself and about other things, except what is best and most excellent. And this same man must necessarily also know the worse; for the knowledge concerning them is the same.
Reflecting on these things, I gladly supposed I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher after my own mind concerning the cause of the things that are, and that he would tell me, first, whether the earth is flat or round; and once he had said which, he would go on to explain the cause and the necessity, stating what is better, and that it was better for it to be such; and if he said it was in the middle, he would go on to explain how it was better for it to be in the middle. And if he showed me these things, I was prepared no longer to seek any other kind of cause.
And likewise concerning the sun I had prepared myself to inquire in the same way, and concerning the moon and the other stars, about their speed relative to one another, and their turnings, and their other affections — in what way it is better for each of them both to do and to undergo what it does and undergoes. For I never thought that he, who said they had been ordered by Mind, would bring forward for them any other cause than that it is best for them to be as they are.
So I thought that, having assigned the cause for each of them, he would also, in common for all of them, go on to explain the good common to all. And I would not have sold my hopes for a great sum; but taking up the books most eagerly, I read as quickly as I was able, so that I might know as quickly as possible the best and the worse. But from a wonderful hope, my friend, I was carried away and lost. For as I went on and read, I saw a man making no use at all of Mind, nor assigning to it any causes for the ordering of things, but attributing the causes to airs and aethers and waters, and many other absurd things.
And it seemed to me that he had suffered something very similar to this: as if someone, saying that Socrates does everything he does by mind, should then, in attempting to state the causes of each thing that I do, say first that I am now sitting here for these reasons — that my body is composed of bones and sinews, and that the bones are solid and have joints apart from one another, while the sinews, being such as can be tightened and relaxed, surround the bones together with the flesh and the skin, which holds them together;
so that, the bones hanging loose at their joints, the sinews, by relaxing and tightening, make it possible for me now to bend my limbs, and it is on account of this cause that, being bent, I sit here. And again, concerning my conversing with you, he would state other such causes, attributing it to voices and airs and hearings and countless other such things, neglecting to state the causes that are truly true — that because it seemed better to the Athenians to condemn me, for this reason it has in turn seemed better to me to sit here, and more just to remain and undergo whatever penalty they should ordain.
Since, by the dog, I think, these very sinews and bones of mine would long ago have been off in Megara or among the Boeotians, carried there by their opinion of what is best, had I not thought it more just and more noble, rather than fleeing and running away, to submit to whatever penalty the city should impose.
But to call such things causes is altogether absurd; though if someone should say that without having such things as bones and sinews and whatever else I have, I should not be able to do what has seemed best to me, he would speak the truth. But to say that it is on account of these that I do what I do, and that I act thus by mind, and not by the choice of what is best, would be a great and extreme carelessness of speech.
Then he adds: ‘Wherefore indeed one man, putting a vortex around the earth, makes the earth remain in place under the heaven; another props up the air as a base beneath it, like a wide kneading-trough. But as for the power by which these things are now laid in the best possible way — this they neither seek, nor think it has any divine strength; rather they suppose that they will one day discover an Atlas stronger and more immortal than this and holding all things together still more, and truly they think that the good and the fitting binds and holds together nothing at all.’
So much did Socrates say concerning the opinion of Anaxagoras. Now Anaxagoras' successor, both in his school and in his opinion, was Archelaus, and Socrates is said to have been a hearer of Archelaus. But besides these, other natural philosophers, Xenophanes and Pythagoras, who flourished at the same time as Anaxagoras, philosophized concerning the incorruptibility of god and the immortality of the soul; and from these, and after them, arose the sects of Greek philosophy, some following the one group, some the other, and some also devising opinions of their own. Again, then, Plutarch writes concerning the opinions of these same men about the gods in this manner:
Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus of Cyrene, and Euhemerus of Tegea, say outright that there are no gods at all; and Callimachus of Cyrene alludes to Euhemerus in his Iambics. And Euripides the tragedian was unwilling to reveal this openly, fearing the Areopagus, but he made it known in this manner: for he introduced Sisyphus as the champion of this opinion, and advocated for his view.
After these he again introduces Anaxagoras, saying first that he thought rightly concerning god. He speaks thus: ‘Anaxagoras says that in the beginning the bodies stood still, and Mind, which belongs to god, set them in order and produced the generations of all things. But Plato supposed that the first bodies were not standing still but moving in a disorderly manner; wherefore, he says, god, taking charge of them, since order is better than disorder, set them in order.’
To these he adds: ‘Both are mistaken, in that they made god concerned with human affairs, and for this reason constructing the world for their sake; for the blessed and imperishable living being, filled with all good things and receptive of no evil, being wholly occupied with the preservation of its own happiness and incorruptibility, has no concern for human affairs. For it would be ill-fated, laboring like a hired workman or a carpenter, bearing burdens and taking anxious thought for the construction of the world.’
And again: ‘The god of whom they speak either did not exist in the previous eternity, when the bodies were motionless, or when they were moving disorderly, or he was asleep, or he was awake, or neither of these. But the first cannot be admitted; for every god is eternal. Nor the second; for if god had been asleep from eternity, he would have died; for eternal sleep is death. But god admits of no sleep; for the immortal is far removed from anything near to sleep.’
‘But if god was awake, either he was lacking something with respect to happiness, or he was filled full with blessedness. And according to neither the first nor the second is god blessed; for what lacks something with respect to happiness is not blessed; nor according to the second; for lacking nothing, he would not have been about to undertake empty actions. But how, if god exists and human affairs are governed by his providence, does the base man prosper while the noble man suffers the opposite? For Agamemnon, being both a good king and a mighty spearman, was treacherously slain, overcome by an adulterer and an adulteress; and his kinsman Heracles too, having cleansed away many things that plagued human life, was treacherously slain, poisoned by Deianeira.’
Thales holds the cosmos is god. Anaximander holds the stars are heavenly gods. Democritus holds that god is a spherical fire within fire, the soul of the cosmos. Pythagoras holds that of the first principles, the Monad is god — and the Good, which is the nature of the One, is Mind itself — while the indefinite Dyad is a daimon and evil, around which is the material multitude, and this is also the visible cosmos.
After these, hear how the moderns, later in time, held their opinions. Socrates and Plato held that the One, which is of a single nature and self-generated, the unitary, the truly-existing Good, is god. And all these names hasten toward Mind. Mind, then, is god, a separate Form — that is, unmixed with all matter and entangled with nothing passible.
Aristotle holds that the highest god is a separate Form, mounted upon the sphere of the universe — which is an aethereal body, called by him the fifth element. This being divided into spheres that are, by nature, contiguous, but distinguished in their definition, he thinks each of the spheres is a living being composed of body and soul, of which the body is aethereal, moving in a circular course, while the soul is an unmoved rational principle, the cause of the motion according to actuality.
The Stoics declare god to be intelligent, a designing fire proceeding methodically toward the generation of the cosmos, encompassing all the seminal principles (logoi spermatikoi) according to which each thing comes to be according to fate; and they call it a breath (pneuma) pervading through the whole cosmos, taking on different appellations throughout the whole of matter through which it has passed. And they call god both the cosmos and the stars and the earth, and, highest of all, the Mind in the aether.
Epicurus holds the gods to be anthropomorphic, but all of them perceptible only by reason, on account of the fineness of the parts of the nature of the images (eidola). And the same man holds four other kinds of natures, indestructible by their very kind: the atoms, the void, the infinite, and the similarities — these being called homoiomereiai — and the elements.
Such, then, are the divisions and blasphemies concerning god among the natural philosophers, of whom reason (the argument) establishes as foremost those around Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, Plato and Socrates, who set Mind and God over the cosmos. But these men are shown to be mere children in point of time, compared with the times in which the latest events of Hebrew antiquity are recorded;
so then the knowledge of the God of the universe was not, after all, the most ancient thing among all the Greeks, and among those long ago who introduced polytheistic superstition solely among the Phoenicians and Egyptians — that knowledge which Anaxagoras, first of all the Greeks, and those around him, brought forth. And indeed the polytheistic superstition prevailed among all the nations; but it was, it seems, not one containing the true theology, but that which the Egyptians and Phoenicians were first of all attested to have established;
this theology which deified no gods at all, nor any divine powers, but men already long lying among the dead — as the argument concerning the truth has already shown. Come then, let us again take up the argument. Since, among the natural philosophers, some referred everything to the senses, while others in turn opposed these — such as those around Xenophanes of Colophon and Parmenides of Elea, who did away with the senses, saying that nothing perceptible by sense is comprehensible, and that for this reason one must trust reason alone — let us examine the objections that have been raised against them.
There were others who, following these, gave voice to the same doctrine. For they think it necessary to reject the senses and the appearances (phantasiai), and to trust reason alone. For such things were said earlier by Xenophanes and Parmenides and Zeno and Melissus, and later by those around Stilpo and the Megarians. Hence these held that being is one, and that the other does not exist, and that nothing is either generated or destroyed or moved at all.
Now, the fuller argument against these we shall come to know when we philosophize; but for now let this much be said: we would say that our reason is the most divine thing in us; nevertheless there is need also of sense-perception, just as indeed there is also need of the body. And that sense-perception, too, is by nature truthful is clear; for it is not possible for the one perceiving not to be affected in some way; and being affected, he would surely know the affection; sense-perception, then, is also a kind of knowledge.
But indeed, if to perceive is to be affected in some way, and everything that is affected is affected by something, then altogether the agent and the patient would have to be different. So, first, the thing spoken of would have to be different — for instance, color and sound; and then, that which is would not be one; and indeed it would not be unmoved either, for sense-perception is motion.
In this way, everyone wishes his senses to be in a natural condition, trusting, I suppose, the healthy ones rather than the diseased. Reasonably, then, a terrible love of them has been implanted in us. For no one, unless he were mad, would ever choose to lose a single sense, even if all other goods should thereby come to him.
Those, then, who slander the senses ought, if they are indeed persuaded that they possess them in vain, to have said what Pandarus in Homer says concerning his own bow — ‘let a stranger straightway cut my head from my shoulders, if I do not break this bow in pieces with my own hands and cast it into the bright fire, since it attends me to no purpose’ — and thereafter to go and mutilate all their own senses; for so indeed would one believe them, since they would be teaching by their very deed that they have no need of them at all.
But as it is, this is the most absurd thing of all: while declaring them useless in their argument, in their actions they continue to make the most use of them.
Melissus indeed, wishing to demonstrate that none of the things that appear and are seen truly exist, demonstrates this by means of the very appearances themselves. He says, for instance: ‘For if water and air and fire and iron and gold exist, and one thing is living, another dead, and things are black and white and all the other things that men say are true, and we see and hear rightly, then that which is ought to remain such as it first seemed to us to be, and not change, nor become something else, but each thing ought to remain like what it is. But now we say that we see and hear and understand rightly; yet it seems to us that the hot becomes cold, and the cold hot, and the hard soft, and the soft hard.’
When he says these and many other such things, one might very reasonably ask him: is it, then, that when what is now hot afterward becomes cold, you came to know this without perceiving it at all? And likewise concerning the other cases. For, as I said, nothing would be found by this except the doing away with and refuting of the senses, precisely because one trusts them the most.
But such arguments have by now given a sufficient account of themselves; they have indeed grown so faint as if they had never been spoken at all. Let us, then, at last confidently say that those philosophize rightly who take up both the senses and reason for the knowledge of things.
Such, then, were those around Xenophanes, who is said to have flourished at the same time as those around Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. Parmenides was a hearer of Xenophanes; of Parmenides, Melissus; of him, Zeno; of him, Leucippus; of him, Democritus; of him, Protagoras and Nessas; of Nessas, Metrodorus; of him, Diogenes; of him, Anaxarchus. And Pyrrho became a disciple of Anaxarchus, from whom arose the school of those called the Skeptics — who, defining that absolutely nothing at all is comprehensible either by sense or by reason, and suspending judgment in all things, were refuted by their opponents; and how their opponents refuted them may be learned from the treatise mentioned above, which reads, word for word, somewhat as follows:
It is necessary, before all else, to examine concerning our own knowledge; for if, on the other hand, we are by nature capable of knowing nothing at all, there is no further need to inquire concerning other things.
There were, then, also some among the ancients who gave voice to this doctrine, whom Aristotle has refuted. But Pyrrho of Elis also maintained such views with force; he himself, however, left nothing in writing, while his disciple Timon says that the one who is going to attain happiness must look to these three things: first, what the nature of things is; second, in what manner we ought to be disposed toward them; and finally, what will result for those who are so disposed.
He says that Pyrrho declared things to be, equally, indifferent and unstable and undeterminable, and that for this reason neither our senses nor our opinions are either true or false. For this reason, then, one must not trust them, but must be without opinion, unswerving, and unshaken, saying of each single thing that it no more is than is not, or that it both is and is not, or that it neither is nor is not.
Timon says that for those so disposed the result will be, first, speechlessness, and then freedom from disturbance (ataraxia); but Aenesidemus says pleasure.
These, then, are the chief points of what is said; let us examine whether they speak rightly. Since, then, they say that all things are equally indifferent, and for this reason bid us assent to nothing and hold no opinion, one might reasonably, I think, ask them this: are those who suppose that things differ from one another mistaken, or not? For in every case, if they are mistaken, they would not be judging rightly; so it is necessary for them to say that there are some who hold false opinions about the things that are. They themselves, then, would be the ones speaking the truth; and thus there would after all be something true and something false. But if we, the many, are not mistaken in supposing that things differ, why then are they so displeased as to rebuke us? For they themselves would be mistaken in maintaining that things do not differ.
And indeed, even if we should grant them that all things are equally indifferent, it is clear that not even they themselves would differ from the many. What, then, would their wisdom amount to? And why does Timon revile all the others, yet sing the praises of Pyrrho alone?
Furthermore, if all things are equally indifferent and for this reason one must hold no opinion, then not even these claims themselves would differ - I mean the difference or non-difference of things, and the holding or not holding of opinion. For why should things be thus rather than not thus? Or, as Timon says, 'why yes and why no, and the very "why"'? It is plain, then, that inquiry itself is thereby abolished; so let them cease from troubling us. For they now rave quite beyond the bounds of art, at once bidding us hold no opinion, and at the same time commanding us to do this very thing; saying that one ought to declare nothing about anything, and then themselves declaring; demanding that we assent to nothing, yet bidding us be persuaded by them; and then, while saying that they know nothing, they refute everyone as though they knew well.