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- $Unique_ID{bob00817}
- $Pretitle{}
- $Title{History Of Religions
- Chapter III: Part II}
- $Subtitle{}
- $Author{Foot Moore, George}
- $Affiliation{}
- $Subject{mysteries
- gods
- footnote
- god
- things
- religion
- anaxagoras
- eleusinian
- life
- earth}
- $Date{1913}
- $Log{}
- Title: History Of Religions
- Book: Religions Of Greece
- Author: Foot Moore, George
- Date: 1913
-
- Chapter III: Part II
-
- Upon this doctrine of retribution beneath the earth the transmigration of
- souls is superimposed, and is itself made retributive. ^1 This aspect of the
- Orphic teaching was apparently particularly cultivated in Pythagorean circles;
- we shall meet it again in the eschatology of Plato.
-
- [Footnote 1: The same combination was made in India in the same way. See
- above, p. 276.]
-
- The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells how the goddess bade the people of
- Eleusis rear her a temple before the city, and how the king fulfilled the
- command. Before she ascended to Olympus she taught the princes the ritual of
- her cult, and instituted the hallowed mysteries which may not be divulged.
- "Blessed is that man, of dwellers on the earth, who has seen these things!
- But he who dies without initiation and participation in the sacred rites, in
- the dank gloom below will not have so happy a lot." The mysteries of Eleusis
- were thus, in origin, a local cult of Demeter the conduct of which was in the
- hands of certain noble families of the city. Of its character the poet gives
- no hint, but he says expressly that those who were admitted to the mysteries
- received the assurance of a blessed life beyond the tomb. The whole content
- of the Hymn makes it clear, further, that the ground of this assurance was the
- deliverance of Kore from Hades, which is the gist of the myth. It is another
- instance of the resuscitation of plant life after the winter's death taken as
- the promise and proof that man, too, may rise to newness of life. To us, the
- seed of grain falling into the ground in the autumn and dying, coming to life
- in the spring, flourishing and fruitful, seems but a poetical analogy or a
- symbol. To primitive apprehension, however, life in plant and animal was one;
- the overcoming of death was as much a divine wonder in the seed or the tree as
- in man, and the gods who wrought the one had the secret of the other. ^1 It
- would be quite in accord with these notions if, as some have supposed, the
- supreme moment in the ritual of Eleusis was the exhibition to the epopts of an
- ear of wheat.
-
- [Footnote 1: It is not meant that these conceptions were in the minds of the
- Greeks of the fifth century; to them, and long before them, Demeter and Kore
- were great personal deities, and the dramatic myth was certainly for them no
- allegory of the corn-maiden.]
-
- Eleusis was annexed to Attica, probably in the seventh century, and the
- mysteries were taken under public control, the chief offices remaining,
- however, hereditary in the family of the Kerykes and the ancient Eleusinian
- gens of the Eumolpidai. In contrast to the Orphic mysteries, which always
- remained sectarian conventicles, the Eleusinian mysteries were a recognised
- branch of the established religion, though only the initiated were admitted to
- their secret rites. This privilege, which may once have been restricted to
- certain Eleusinian clans, was extended not only to all Athenian citizens but
- to all Greeks without distinction of city or race; women as well as men were
- eligible, even minors and slaves; only such as were defiled by blood guilt
- were excluded, as they were, indeed, from the public cults. When Athens
- became the centre of Greek life, the Eleusinian mysteries became a Panhellenic
- institution as truly as the Delphian oracle of Apollo. In later times Romans
- also were admitted.
-
- The first step of one who wished to be initiated into the Eleusinian
- mysteries was to apply privately to a member of either of the two families in
- whose charge the celebration of the mysteries was, the Kerykes or the
- Eumolpidai, who admitted him to the first stage by rites which resemble a
- purification from blood guilt. The next degree was initiation into the Lesser
- Mysteries, celebrated in Agrai, a suburb of Athens, in February. The Great
- Mysteries fell in the autumn. The participants gathered in Athens in the
- middle of Boedromion (September); the observances began with a proclamation by
- the hierophant warning the unworthy not to profane the mysteries by their
- presence. On the 16th they went down to the shore and purified themselves by
- a sea-bath. The two following days were spent in Athens. On the 19th the
- great company, dressed in white and escorted by the armed ephebi, set out for
- Eleusis by the Sacred Street, carrying with them the image of the god Iakchos,
- and loudly calling on his name. ^1 The progress of the procession was slow,
- not only by reason of its numbers, but because there were numerous halts along
- the way, which was lined with monuments, hero-shrines, and temples. The
- arrival at the bridge over the Kephissos was the signal for an outburst of
- scurrilous abuse, which spared no station nor reputation; every man took the
- licence of the hour to loose his tongue against such as offended the
- democratic sense by being leading citizens, or those against whom he had some
- private grudge, so that "bridging" was common Attic slang for wanton
- vilification. ^2
-
- [Footnote 1: Iakchos is identified by Sophocles with Bacchos (Dionysos). His
- temple was in Athens, and he had no shrine in Eleusis, from which it is
- inferred that his relation to the mysteries is adventitious and due to
- Athenian influence. The matter is, however, very obscure.]
-
- [Footnote 2: It is likely that the custom had originally a religious motive,
- abuse being a familiar apotropaic exercise.]
-
- The ceremonies at Eleusis lasted two or three days. There were offerings
- to the gods of the Eleusinian circle and others at the temples, and dances by
- torchlight out-of-doors; but the properly mystic rites took place in a great
- oblong hall to which only those who had been previously initiated into the
- Lesser Mysteries were admitted. On all sides of this hall were rising seats
- for the spectators, as in a theatre; in the middle was a raised platform or
- stage. The secret of what went on within these walls was so well kept that
- very little is definitely known about it. One point conclusively established
- is that the Eleusinian mysteries did not profess to impart an esoteric
- doctrine concerning the future life. The important thing in them was not what
- was said, but what was done; not instruction, but impression. ^1
-
- [Footnote 1: The initiated do not learn what they must do, but feel certain
- emotions are put in a certain suitable frame of mind." - Aristotle.]
-
- It is probable that scenes from the myth of Demeter were acted or
- presented in tableaux vivants - the rape of Kore, the grief of the mother, the
- return of the lost daughter from the nether world, the institution of the
- mysteries. Such representations were not uncommon in the public cults; but
- here they were surrounded by every circumstance that could quicken
- imagination, kindle emotion, and give substance to things hoped for, reality
- to things not seen. This solemn mystery-play was, however, not all. There
- was a higher degree which could not be taken under a year after admission to
- the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis. To those who attained it were displayed the
- contents of the ark, the nature and significance of which were explained by
- the hierophant. It may be conjectured that these objects, the sight of which
- inspired the deepest awe, were things which the goddess was believed herself
- to have used in inaugurating the mysteries, so that the rite resembled the
- exhibition of the most venerated relics in a Christian church. ^2 This
- exhibition must have been at a different time from the mystery-play, perhaps
- on the following night. The attendance was doubtless much less numerous; and
- it seems probable that the epopts in small groups drew near to the anaktoron,
- or raised platform, on which the shrines containing the sacred objects were
- placed, while the hierophant displayed and explained them.
-
- [Footnote 2: For example, the Seamless Robe at Trier or the Sudarium
- (Veronica) at Rome. It may not be irrelevant to remark that John of Damascus
- expresses the doctrine of the church when he says that Christ offers the
- relics to Christians as a means of grace. The legends of the Holy Grail show
- the mediaeval feeling.]
-
- Rites of a sacramental character, also, had a place in the Eleusinia. One
- such rite preceded admission to the spectacle in the great hall; each of the
- mystae partook of the kukeon, a kind of gruel which the mourning Demeter, when
- she broke her nine days' fast, refusing wine, bade the queen, Metaneira,
- prepare for her of barley-groats, water, and pennyroyal leaves rubbed fine.
- Other sacramental acts are indicated in the password of the Eleusinian
- mysteries as reported by Clement of Alexandria: "I fasted, I drank the gruel,
- I took from the ark, and having tasted, ^1 I put it away in the basket, and
- from the basket into the ark." If the text is rightly restored, the reference
- would appear to be to some sort of communion bread, or cake.
-
- [Footnote 1: So the text is emended by Lobeck. The manuscript reading is
- "having wrought."]
-
- Whatever obscurity surrounds the rites at Eleusis, there is no
- concealment of the faith of those who took part in them. From the Homeric
- Hymn on, the assurance of a blessed immortality is the good which men seek and
- find in the mysteries; it is this which gave them their persistent attraction
- not only for the multitudes, but for the noblest souls among the Greeks. Thus
- Pindar: "Blessed he, who having seen them, passes beneath the hollow earth; he
- knows the end of life, and knows its god-given origin"; and Sophocles: "O
- thrice-blessed those mortals, who having beheld these mysteries descend to
- Hades; to them alone it is given there to live; for the rest all evils are
- there."
-
- These quotations make it clear, also, that salvation was only for the
- initiated - as we should say, for members of the church. It does not appear
- that moral defects, so far as they did not, like blood guilt, involve
- religious defilement, excluded either from the church or its salvation,
- whereas the foreigner (the man of non-Greek speech) was not admitted. The
- sarcasm of Diogenes was as apt to the Eleusinian mysteries as to the Orphic
- thiasoi. But here, too, the moral common sense of the community refused the
- consequences of ecclesiastical logic; the growing belief in the inexorably
- just judgment after death also conflicted with it. Thinkers like Heraclitus
- ridicule the superstition that physical purifications can purge the soul of
- moral defilement. Finally, the great thought breaks through at least here and
- there, "Purity is holy-mindedness." ^1
-
- [Footnote 1: Quoted by Porphyry through Theophrastus from an inscription at
- Epidaurus.]
-
- Branches of the Eleusinian mysteries were established in numerous places,
- but none of them rivalled the fame of the original. Among other mysteries
- which flourished in the same age the most notable were those of Samothrace,
- which according to Herodotus had been adopted by the Greeks from the earlier
- inhabitants of the island ("Pelasgians"). They attained their great
- importance, however, in the fourth century, and in the Hellenistic and Roman
- times stood second only to the Eleusinia, enjoying the peculiar favour of the
- rulers. The name of the Kabeiroi, who figure in the Samothracian religion,
- has commonly been interpreted as Phoenician ("the great gods"), ^2 and it has
- accordingly been supposed that the cult was introduced by Phoenician traders,
- who may early have had a factory on the island. In the age when we know
- anything about it there seems to be nothing distinctively Semitic in the
- religion. Demeter was one of the great deities of the island; her daughter
- Kore was associated with her, and the pair was grouped in divers ways with the
- two Kabeiroi. At Thebes, where also the Kabeiroi were worshipped, the elder
- of the two was identified with Dionysos, while in Lemnos he was Hephaistos.
- The mysteries of Andania in Messenia also enjoyed great repute in this period.
- The Eleusinian pair was here joined with the two ancient local deities, Apollo
- Karneios and Hermes Kriophoros.
-
- [Footnote 2: The etymology is perfectly good; it can be matched with an
- equally good Indo-Germanic possibility.]
-
- Ample provision would seem thus to be made for every man to be saved in
- the fashion that best suited his temperament, from the decorous solemnity of
- the spectacle at Eleusis to the orgiastic enthusiasm of the Bacchic thiasoi.
- But besides these mystery-churches, voluntary or under state supervision,
- there was a peculiar evangelistic movement, which became prominent in the
- fourth century, though its beginnings probably lie much farther back. Small
- bands of men and women went about the country with a donkey-load of stuff -
- including the ceremonial fawn-skins and the apparatus of initiation, drums and
- tambourines, their books, and tame snakes - gathering curious hearers and
- preaching the Orphic salvation, purifying their converts from the sin and
- uncleanness, and admitting them to the mystic fellowship. Demosthenes taunts
- his opponent, Aeschines, with having, when a young man, acted as acolyte to
- his mother, who seems to have been a captain in one of these branches of the
- Salvation Army. When she had an initiation on hand, Aeschines read the liturgy
- and attended to a variety of other arrangements:
-
- In the night time wearing the fawn-skin and mixing the bowl; purifying
- the candidates, and swabbing them off with mud and bran; then making the man
- arise from his purification, and bidding him say, "I have escaped evil, I have
- found a better thing" - priding yourself that nobody ever shouted so loud. . .
- . By day leading the fine companies marching through the streets, wearing the
- chaplets of fennel and poplar-leaves, hugging their brown snakes and raising
- them above their heads, bawling Euoi saboi! and dancing to the tune of Hues
- attes! attes hues! while old women salute you by the titles of Leader, Guide,
- Ark-bearer, Sieve-bearer, and the like. For such services you were paid with
- sops and twisted rolls and fresh-baked cakes - who would not count himself a
- lucky dog to fare so well?
-
- Demosthenes' malicious portrait of his rival may or may not be an
- accurate description of the doings of the particular band with which
- Aeschines' mother trained, but it gives a vivid picture of the kind of thing
- his hearers had seen many a time; that was what gave his satire its telling
- point.
-
- The demand for remedies for the ailments of the soul produced also a
- multitude of quacks, who peddled infallible purges and panaceas of salvation.
- Of peculiarly evil note among those who thus preyed on the credulous
- superstition of the masses were the mendicant devotees of the Phrygian goddess
- Cybele, the Metragyrtai, whose name describes their vocation - agyrtes is a
- man who takes up a collection. They dealt in necromancy and magic as well as
- purifications, and earned for agyrtes its secondary meaning, 'vagabond,
- impostor.' Others practised according to the Orphic school and called
- themselves "Orpheotelestai."
-
- The sixth century, in which the orgiastic cults of Dionysos and his
- congeners were overrunning Greece and religion was taking the nether-worldly
- turn which has been described above, witnessed also the beginning of
- philosophy. In the age of colonial and commercial expansion the Ionian cities
- had taken the lead, and they held the primacy not only in wealth and
- enterprise but in culture and intellectual life. There the logographers made
- the first essays in writing prose, and attempted to extract from the epics,
- the temple legends, and the often fictitious pedigrees of noble families, a
- history of the cities - particularly of their foundation - set in a
- chronological scheme, becoming thus precursors of the historians; there
- Hecataeus of Miletus, as the fruit of his travels and inquiries, composed in
- the form of a guide-book, The Tour of the World, the first descriptive
- geography; there, also, Greek philosophy was born.
-
- The Ionian thinkers went straight at the problem of the origin and
- constitution of the universe. This problem had been prepared for them by
- theology. The Theogony of Hesiod, as we have seen, was at the same time a
- cosmogony. Cosmogonic powers such as Chaos, Gaia (Earth), Eros (Love),
- however invested with mythical personality, are not gods of the popular
- religion to whom the role of world-makers has been assigned, but, in this
- capacity, creatures of nascent speculation. The first philosophers also often
- express themselves in mythical language and think in mythical forms - how
- could they do otherwise? But while the theological cosmogony is only a
- prelude to the divine genealogies and mythical doings of the gods in heaven
- and on earth, the end of the philosophers, more or less clearly conceived, was
- to explain the existence of the world and the phenomena of nature by natural
- causes.
-
- They seek, therefore, a primordial matter, or world-stuff, not inert and
- passive, but endowed with an immanent energy which, working in accordance with
- physical laws, produces all the changes of the phenomenal world. With the
- exception of Heraclitus, to whom we shall return, the early Ionians seem to
- have gone their serene way, regardless of the bearing of their speculations on
- religion, nor does it appear that they were assailed for their opinions. It
- is clear, however, that if they gave the name of gods to anything in their
- materialistic universe, they had really no use for them.
-
- A sharp attack upon religion in the name of reason and morals was made by
- Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, who, driven from home at the age of
- twenty-five, spent a considerable part of his life in Sicily. Xenophanes found
- many things wrong in his world - the luxury which his countrymen at home had
- learned from the Lydians, as well as the Sicilian passion for athletic
- competitions and the honours and privileges heaped on Olympian winners. His
- self-esteem, like that of many another professor, is wounded when he sees a
- man who has won a horse-race more thought of than himself for all his
- learning. It is all wrong to prefer brawn to brains! He satirises
- anthropomorphic notions of the gods: Mortals think that the gods are born and
- have human speech and form. The Ethiopians imagine their gods flat-nosed and
- black; the Thracians, blue-eyed and red-haired; and if cattle and horses or
- lions had hands and could draw, horses would draw the gods as horses and
- cattle as cattle - each kind would make its gods in its own likeness. Worse
- than this, the poets represent the gods with all the moral weaknesses of men.
- "Homer and Hesiod ascribe to the gods everything that among men is a shame and
- a disgrace - theft, adultery, and deceit." And everybody learns about the gods
- from Homer! Over against the vulgar polytheism Xenophanes sets his own idea
- of god: "There is one god, greatest among gods and men, not like mortals
- either in form or in thought." ^1 This god "without effort swings the universe
- by the purpose of his mind." "He ever abides in the same place, nor moves at
- all; it does not beseem him to wander hither and thither." The One of
- Xenophanes is not, however, a supramundane god, but the universe itself,
- endued with sense and thought and purpose.
-
- [Footnote 1: Xenophanes rejects mental anthropomorphism as well as physical.]
-
- Heraclitus expressly denies that the universe had a beginning or a
- creator: "This cosmic order, the same for all beings, no god or man made, but
- it always was and is and will be, ever-living fire, blazing up and dying down
- in measure." The uniformity of natural law is poetically asserted in another
- passage: "The sun will not overstep his bounds (literally, measures); for if
- he does, the Erinyes, the avenging handmaids of justice, will find him out."
- The pure elemental fire, the first principle, is intelligence. In his
- oracular style, Heraclitus says of it: "One, the alone wise, is unwilling and
- yet is willing to be called by the name of Zeus." That is, if you think of god
- as the vulgar do, it is no god; but if you understand what god is, it is the
- supreme god.
-
- Man is a microcosm, like the macrocosm compact of earth and water and
- fire, and the same process of change is continually going on in him. The
- soul, the conscious and intelligent in man, is of the same nature with the one
- wisdom of the universe, of which it is indeed a spark; it is, however, not the
- pure elemental fire, but a dry heat; when this leaves the body, the rest, mere
- earth and water, is worth only to be cast on the dung heap. It is death to the
- soul to turn to water; the pleasures that irrigate the soul, like drunkenness
- which drowns intelligence and consciousness, are evil - "Dry sunlight; wisest
- and best soul!" ^1
-
- [Footnote 1: The original of the Baconian "dry light" of reason. A plausible
- emendation, adopted by many moderns is, "The dry soul is the wisest and
- best."]
-
- The most highly reputed authorities fare badly at Heraclitus' hands:
- Homer and Archilochus ought to be turned out of the lists and flogged. Hesiod
- is most men's teacher, and is credited with knowledge of many things - a man
- who did not know day nor night! "Varied learning does not teach a man to have
- sense, or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, or again Xenophanes and
- Hecataeus."
-
- Of the popular religion Heraclitus speaks with a keener scorn than
- Xenophanes: "Men pray to the idols - just as if one were to converse with
- houses, knowing not what is the nature of gods and heroes!" If a man who had
- stepped into the mud should wash himself off with mud, every one would take
- him for mad; to purify a man of blood guilt by blood expiations is no less
- absurd. The Bacchic mysteries had reached Ionia, and they stirred the honest
- man's bile; he rails at the "night roamers, magians, bacchants, wild women,
- mystae." The initiations are accomplished with unholy rites: "Were it not
- Dionysos in whose honour they march in procession and sing their obscene song
- (the phallic hymn), it would be a most scandalous performance. The Dionysos
- to whom they rave and revel is no other than Hades!"
-
- Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school, raised the physical
- problem of the Ionians into a metaphysical problem, the nature of reality. ^1
- Starting with the antithesis of being and non-being, he argues that being is,
- and that its existence is necessary; but non-being is unthinkable and
- therefore non-existent, for what is must be thinkable. Being is eternal: it
- cannot have its origin in any other being, for there is no other besides the
- one; nor can it have arisen out of non-being, for it has been proved that
- there is no such thing. It does not fall under the category of time; we
- cannot say of it, "It was," nor "It will be," but only, "It is." Reality is
- unchangeable, for in all change something that was not becomes something that
- is, involving the transition from non-being to being, which has been
- demonstrated to be absurd. In short, all manifoldness, qualitative
- difference, becoming, change, passing away, are excluded from the idea of
- reality. This conception of being became classic. Through Plato and
- Aristotle it passed into theology; the scholastic definitions of God in
- Christianity and Mohammedanism repeat this idea of metaphysical perfection,
- which caused trouble enough when the attempt had to be made to reconcile it
- with the conception of a living God such as religion requires.
-
- [Footnote 1: Whether Parmenides himself conceived it metaphysically is another
- question.]
-
- Instead of trying to derive everything from one principle as the Ionians
- had done, Empedocles took the four elements as he found them - fire, air,
- water, earth. These elements are eternal and irreducible; they are combined
- in different groupings and proportions by "friendship," and the combinations
- are broken up again into their constituents by "strife" - attraction and
- repulsion, we should say, or affinity and incompatibility. Thus the endless
- variety of things, arising, changing, dissolving, was accounted for by the
- four material elements and the two polar forces. In Empedocles' description
- of the origin of living nature there are curious speculations about evolution
- and the survival of the fittest. He also elaborated a theory of
- sense-perception.
-
- The gods of the popular religion, "living long ages through and excelling
- in honours," spring, like trees, and men and women, beasts, birds, and
- water-nourished fishes, "all things that are or will be," from the same
- elements. The Sphere, that is, the universe itself, is god in a higher sense,
- and Empedocles uses of it language reminiscent of Xenophanes on the One.
-
- Empedocles was a many-sided character - philosopher, democratic
- politician, and man of science, a preacher of the Orphic-Pythagorean gospel,
- and an expert in the purification of souls. His extravagant professions are
- doubtless to blame that he comes down to us as a miracle-monger with a
- distinct touch of the charlatan. In his religious writings, which bear the
- significant title Purgations, the transmigration of souls is a ruling idea. He
- says of his own metamorphoses: "I was once a youth, a maiden, a plant, a bird,
- and a mute sea-fish." The slaughter of animals for food or in sacrifice is a
- deadly sin, for a father may be slaying his own son, a son his father,
- children their mother. Those who have stained their hands with blood or sworn
- false oaths are doomed for thrice ten thousand seasons to roam far from the
- blessed, being born in course of time in every kind of mortal form, exchanging
- one grievous path of life for another. "For the mighty air chases them to the
- sea, and the sea spits them out on the land, the earth to the rays of the
- shining sun, and this tosses them into the whirlwinds of the air; one element
- receives them from the other, and all hate them. To these I now belong, an
- exile from God and a wanderer, because I yielded to the impulse of mad
- strife."
-
- Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was the last of the Ionian succession. Instead
- of the four "roots" of Empedocles he assumed that all substances were
- elementary. These "seeds," or germs, were infinite in number and
- infinitesimal in magnitude, and were mingled in a primordial matter which had
- none of the distinguishing qualities of individual things - no colour, for
- example, because all colours were mixed in it. What gives importance to
- Anaxagoras in the history of philosophy is not, however, his theory of the
- constitution of matter, but the fact that, abandoning the monistic hypotheses
- of his predecessors, he introduces a second principle, Nous (Mind). Starting
- at one centre, the Nous sets up an ever-extending rotary motion in matter, in
- consequence of which particles of like nature assemble, separating themselves
- from the unlike, forming first the ether and the worlds. As the process
- proceeds the various substances arise, consisting chiefly of the same element
- and named from this predominance, but containing, nevertheless, larger or
- smaller portions of all other elements, so that "there is something of
- everything in everything." The question whether the Nous of Anaxagoras was
- material or immaterial has been the subject of some unprofitable argument: it
- was certainly not material in his sense, ^1 and there is no reason to suppose
- that it was immaterial in the Platonic sense; it would probably be nearer the
- truth to compare his conception with the Stoic Pneuma.
-
- [Footnote 1: This is the meaning his definition: "The other things contain a
- portion of everything, but Nous is infinite and self-determined, and is
- mingled with nothing, but is alone independent."]
-
- In the Phaedo of Plato, Socrates expresses his disappointment that
- Anaxagoras, having introduced mind into the universe, gave it so little to do.
- The idea that mind ordered the world and was the cause of all things seemed to
- Socrates a true and fruitful one, but when he got hold of the book he
- discovered that the author made no use of mind at all, but explained things by
- physical causes, "airs and ethers and fluids, and many other absurdities."
- Aristotle's criticism is in the same vein: "Anaxagoras employs mind as a deus
- ex machina to get the world made, and lugs it in when he is at a loss to
- explain why anything must be as it is, but, for the rest, makes everything
- rather than mind a cause of what comes to pass." But however incompletely
- Anaxagoras may have apprehended the scope and consequence of his own idea, the
- fact remains that he begins an era of dualistic systems in Greek philosophy.
-
- Up to this time philosophy had flourished in the Ionian cities, in
- southern Italy, and in Sicily; the mother country had taken no part in the
- movement. Athens was, however, beginning to draw to itself men of note from
- all parts of the Hellenic world. Among these was Anaxagoras, who made that
- city his home for some thirty years (ca. 462-432). There he moved in the
- brilliant Periclean circle, and enjoyed the intimacy of Pericles himself. In
- the little city he was doubtless a familiar figure; the wits on the street
- nicknamed him "Nous." As the Peloponnesian war was casting its shadows before,
- the temper of the masses became ugly; they could not reach Pericles himself,
- but more than one of his friends had to suffer for his favour. Pheidias was
- one of these, Anaxagoras another. A certain Diopeithes got a vote passed in
- 432 B. C. that persons should be prosecuted who did not observe the ordinances
- of religion or promulgated theories about the heavens. Thereupon Anaxagoras
- was brought up for his offence against the state religion in teaching that the
- sun was a red-hot mass of rock. ^1 Conflicting stories are told about what
- followed; the only thing certain is that the philosopher left Athens and
- returned to Asia Minor, where not long after he died at Lampsacus. It was the
- first exhibition of the religious intolerance of the Athenians which not only
- Socrates, but Protagoras, Aristotle, Stilpon, and Theophrastus were to
- experience.
-
- [Footnote 1: And therefore no god. Anaxagoras taught that the sun was a
- red-hot mass of rock, larger than the Peloponnesus, and that the moon was a
- cold earth, with hills and valleys, and that it was inhabited.]
-
- The antipodes of Anaxagoras' dualism of matter and mind was the atomic
- theory of Democritus, the last word of materialistic monism. ^1 Democritus was
- the most learned and many-sided of the philosophers before Aristotle, a man
- who had travelled widely, a thinker of notable acumen, a fertile author, and a
- writer whose style was thought by ancient critics worthy to be compared to
- Plato. The properties of Being had been convincingly demonstrated by the
- Eleatics: what truly is must be simple, eternal, and unchangeable. Their
- mistake was in denying the existence of empty space; ^2 the void is as real as
- body. There is an infinite number of atoms, too minute to be perceived by any
- sense, qualitatively exactly the same, but differing in shape, position, and
- arrangement. To these atoms belong the predicates which the Eleatics gave to
- the universe. The atoms move eternally in the infinite void, but with
- different rates corresponding to their size and weight. In consequence of
- collision and composition of motions, rotary movements arise, and worlds are
- formed. Under purely physical laws, atoms of similar form and weight group and
- arrange themselves in innumerable ways, constituting thus the elements and
- bodily objects. Under the same laws these combinations are broken up, things
- change and decay, worlds are dissolved; only the atoms are unchangeable.
-
- [Footnote 1: The founder of this system was Leucippus; but his doctrine is
- sufficiently known only as developed by Democritus.]
-
- [Footnote 2: For the Eleatics empty space was "non-being."]
-
-