The Examined Life - Presocratic Philosophers 3. Thales Some say that [soul] is mixed in the whole universe. Perhaps that is why Thales thought that everything was full of gods. 1. Some say that [the earth] rests on water. This in fact is the oldest (Aristotle, On the Soul 411a7) view that has been transmitted to us, and they say that it was ad- vanced by Thales of Miletus who thought that the earth rests because 4. it can float like a log or something else of that sort (for none of these Thales, judging by what they report, seems to have believed that the things can rest on air, but they can rest on water) — as though the soul was something which produces motion, inasmuch as he said that same must not hold of the water supporting the earth as holds of the the magnet has a soul because it moves iron. earth itself. (Aristotle, On the Soul 405a19) (Aristotle, On the Heavens 294a28) 2. Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things. For they say that the element and first principle of the things that exist is that from which they all are and from which they first come into being and into which they are finally destroyed, its substance remaining and its properties changing... There must be some nature — either one or more than one — from which the other things come into being, it being pre- served. But as to the number and form of this sort of principle, they do not all agree. Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, says that it is water (that is why he declares that the earth rests on water). He perhaps came to acquire this belief from seeing that the nourish- ment of everything is moist and that heat itself comes from this and lives by this (for that from which anything comes into being is its first principle) - he came to his belief both for this reason and because the seeds of everything have a moist nature, and water is the natural principle of moist things. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 983b6) 1 The Examined Life - Presocratic Philosophers 2. Anaximander Of those who hold that the first principle is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, who was a successor and 1. pupil of Thales, said that the infinite is principle and element of the Anaximander was a pupil of Thales - Anaximander, son of Praxiades, things that exist. He was the first to introduce this word 'principle' a Milesian. He said that a certain infinite nature is first principle of <??>. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called the things that exist. From it come the heavens and the worlds in elements but some different infinite nature, from which all the heav- them. It is eternal and ageless, and it contains all the worlds. He ens and the worlds in them come into being. And the things from speaks of time, since generation and existence and destruction are which existing things come into being are also the things into which determinate. they are destroyed, in accordance with what must be. For they give Anaximander said that the infinite is principle and element of the justice and reparation to one another for their injustice in accor- things that exist, being the first to call it by the name of principle. In dance with the arrangement of time [12 B 1] (he speaks of them in addition, there is an eternal motion in which the heavens come into this way in somewhat poetical words). It is clear that he observed the being. change of the four elements into one another and was unwilling to make any one of them the underlying stuff but rather chose some- The earth is aloft, not supported by anything but resting where it is thing else apart from them. He accounts for coming into being not by because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is rounded, the alteration of the element, but by the separating off of the oppo- circular, like a stone pillar. Of its surfaces, we stand on one while the sites by the eternal motion. other is opposite. The heavenly bodies come into being as a circle of fire, separated off from the fire in the world and enclosed by air. (Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 24.13) There are certain tubular channels or breathing-holes through which the heavenly bodies appear; hence eclipses occur when the breathing- holes are blocked, and the moon appears sometimes waxing and sometimes waning according to whether the channels are blocked or open. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times greater <than the earth and the circle> of the moon <is eighteen times greater>. The sun is highest, the circles of the fixed stars lowest. Animals come into being <from moisture> evaporated by the sun. Humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish. Winds come into being when the finest vapors of air are separated off, collect together and move. Rain comes from vapor sent up by the things beneath the sun. Lightning occurs when wind breaks out and parts the clouds. He [Anaximander] was born in the third year of the forty-second Olympiad [610/609 BCE]. (Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies I vi 1-7) 2 The Examined Life - Presocratic Philosophers cipient exhalation. For, wanting to show that souls as they are ex- haled always become new, he likened them to rivers, saying: Heraclitus On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow - and souls are exhaled from the moist things. [B 12] 1. Now Zeno, like Heraclitus, says that the soul is an exhalation; but he They say that Euripides gave [Socrates] a copy of Heraclitus' book holds that it is percipient... and asked him what he thought of it. He replied: 'What I understand is splendid; and I think that what I don't understand is so too - but it (Arius Didymus, fragment 39 Diels, would talk a Delian to get to the bottom of it.' quoted by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel XV xx 2) (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers II 22) 4. Heraclitus the Obscure theologizes the natural world as something 2. unclear and to be conjectured about through symbols. He says: At the beginning of his writings on nature, and pointing in some way Gods are mortal, humans immortal, living their death, dying their at the environment, [Heraclitus] says: life. [B 62] Of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending, And again: both before hearing it and when first they have heard it. For although We step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not. all things come about in accordance with this account, they are like [B 49a] tyros as they try the words and the deeds which I expound as I divide Everything he says about nature is enigmatic and allegorized. up each thing according to its nature and say how it is. Other men fail to notice what they do when they are awake, just as they forget (Heraclitus, Homeric Questions 24.3-5) what they do when asleep. [B 1] Having thus explicitly established that everything we do or think de- 5. pends upon participation in the divine account, he continues and a For it is not possible to step twice into the same river, according to little later on adds: Heraclitus, nor to touch mortal substance twice in any condition: by the swiftness and speed of its change, it scatters and collects itself For that reason you must follow what is common (i.e. what is univer- again - or rather, it is not again and later but simultaneously that it sal - for 'common' means 'universal'). But although the account is comes together and departs, approaches and retires. [B 91] common, most men live as though they had an understanding of their own. [B 2] (Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 392B) (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians VII 132) 6. Heraclitus says that the universe is divisible and indivisible, gener- 3. ated and ungenerated, mortal and immortal, Word and Eternity, Fa- On the subject of the soul, Cleanthes sets out the doctrines of Zeno ther and Son, God and Justice. [the Stoic] in order to compare them to those of the other natural sci- entists. He says that Zeno, like Heraclitus, holds the soul to be a per- Listening not to me but to the account, it is wise to agree that all things are one, [B 50] 3 The Examined Life - Presocratic Philosophers by saying: "What we saw and caught we leave behind, what we nei- says Heraclitus. That everyone is ignorant of this and does not agree ther saw nor caught we take with us.' [B 56] he states as follows: ... Heraclitus says that dark and light, bad and good, are not different They do not comprehend how, in differing, it agrees with itself - a but one and the same. For example, he reproaches Hesiod for not backward-turning connection, like that of a bow and a lyre. [B 51] knowing day and night - for day and night, he says, are one, express- That an account exists always, being the universe and eternal, he says ing it thus: in this way: A teacher of most is Hesiod: they are sure he knows most who did not Of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending, recognize day and night - for they are one.