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from all matter; pervading and determining all things; and consequently the principle of all life (ψυχὴ τοῦ κόσμου), οι all sensation, and of all perception in the world.'

Anaxagoras was more inclined to the study of physics than of metaphysics, for which reason he is accused by Plato' and by Aristotle of not having conceded enough to final causes, and of having converted God into a machine. Accordingly he explained on physical principles the formation of plants and animals, and even celestial phenomena; which drew upon him the charge of atheism. Nevertheless, he regarded the testimony of the senses as subjectively true; but as insufficient to attain to objective truth, which was the privilege of the reason (Moyos).

Diogenes of Apollonia and Archelaus.

+F. SCHLEIERMACHER, On the Philosophy of Diogenes of Apollonia, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sc. of Berlin, 1815.

FR. PANZERBIETER, De Diogenis Apolloniatæ Vitâ et Scriptis, Meining. 1823, 4to.

108. The theism of Anaxagoras appears to have influenced Diogenes of Apollonia in Crete, as well as Archelaus of Miletus (or, according to others, of Athens), who were both at Athens at the same period. But the idea of this theism was too new to be understood in a sufficiently clear and profound manner so long as it remained separate from practical notions. Diogenes maintained that air was the fundamental principle of all Nature, and imputed it to an

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1 DIOG. LAERT. II, 6, sqq. ARIST. Phys. I, 4; VIII, 1; Metaph. I, 3; De Generat. et Corrupt. I, 1. SIMPLIC. in Phys. Arist. p. 33, sqq. ARIST. De Animâ, I, 1.

2 Phæd. c. 46, sqq.

3 Metaph. I, 4. Aristotle accuses him of using the Deity only as a machine in his philosophy.

4 Maintaining that the sun was originally ejected from the earth, and heated till it became a fiery mass, by rapid motion.

5 THEOPHRAST. Hist. Plantar. III, 2. DIOG. LAERT. II, 9. XENOPH. Memorab. IV, 7. PLATO, Apol. Socr. 14.

SEXTUS, Hypotyp. I, 33; Adv. Math. VII, 90. ARIST. Metaph. IV, 5, 7. CIC. Tusc. Quæst. IV, 23, 31.

7 Cf. above, § 87. He was sometimes surnamed Physicus; and flourished about 472 B.C. In his adoption of one elementary principle he resembled the Ionian school: his book was intitled IIɛpì quoews, of which Simplicius has preserved us several fragments.

intellectual energy uniting in this respect the system of Anaximenes with that of Anaxagoras. On the other hand, Archelaus, a disciple of Anaxagoras, maintained that all things were disengaged from the original chaos by the operation of two discordant principles of heat and cold (or of fire and water); that mankind had insensibly separated themselves from the common herd of the inferior animals; and was inclined to believe that our ideas of what is just, and the contrary, are conventional, and not by nature: 70 δίκαιον εἶναι καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν οὐ φύσει ἀλλὰ νόμῳ. With respect to the operations of the mind his system was one of pure materialism. The system of nature of this last is still more obscure than that of the former.

VIII. Transition to the Second Period of Greek Philosophy. The Sophists.

Particulars and opinions respecting them to be found in Xenophon, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empir, Diogenes Laertius, and Philostratus.

LUD. CRESOLLII Theatrum Veterum Rhetorum, Oratorum, Declamatorum, i.e., Sophistarum, de eorum disciplinâ ac discendi docendique ratione, Paris. 1620, 8vo. and in GRONOVIUS, Thes. tom. X.

GE. NIC. KRIEGK, Diss. de Sophistarum Eloquentiâ, Jena, 1702, 4to. Jo. GE. WALCHII Diatribe de præmiis Veterum Sophistarum Rhetorum atque Oratorum; in his Parerga Academica, p. 129; and De Enthusiasmo Veterum Sophistarum atque Oratorum, ibid. p. 367, sqq. + MEINERS, History of the Sciences, etc. vol. I, p. 112, sqq. and vol. II.

GEEL, Historia critica Sophistarum, qui Socratis ætate Athenis floruerunt. In Nov. Act. liter. Societ. Rheno-Trajectine, P. II, 1832.

109. The rapid diffusion of all sorts of knowledge and every variety of speculative system among the Greeks, the uncertainty of the principles assumed and the conclusions deduced in the highest investigations, (consequences of the little stability of the data on which they were grounded), together with the progress of a certain refinement which

1ARIST. De An. I, 2.; De Generat. et Corrupt. 1, 6. SIMPLIC. in Phys. Arist. p. 6 and 32. DIOG. LAERT. IX, 57. Cic. De Nat. Deor. I, 12. EUSEB. Præpar. Evang. XV.

2 Flourished about 460 B.C.

3 DIOG. LAERT. II, 16. Cf. SEXTUS, Adv. Math. VII, 135.

PLUTARCH. De Plac. Philos. I, 3. Cf. SIMPLIC. in Ph. Arist. p. 6 et STOв. Ecl. I.

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kept pace with the deterioration of their moral and religious habits, all these causes conspired to give birth to the tribe of Sophists; that is, to a class of persons possessed of a merely superficial and seeming knowledge; to the profession of which they were influenced by merely interested motives." The Sophists Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus,3 Hippias of Elis, Polus, Thrasymachus, and Callicles, were orators and scholars, very well practised it is true in the art of speaking, of dialectics, criticism, rhetoric, and politics; but being totally devoid of any real love of philosophy, were anxious only so far to follow the current of their time which set that way, as to promote their own advantage by means of their ability as disputants. All they desired was to distinguish themselves by the show of pretended universal knowledge; by solving the most intricate, most fanciful, and most useless questions; and above all, hoped to get money by the pretended possession of the art of persuasion. With this view they had contrived certain logical tricks of a kind to perplex their antagonists; and, without possessing in the least degree a spirit of philosophy, they maintained all sorts of philosophical theories. The end of their system would have been to destroy all difference between truth snd

error.

Their conduct reflected much of the general character of their age and country, while it had the advantageous effect of awakening at length, in others, a nobler and more elevated spirit of inquiry.

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110. The celebrated orator Gorgias of Leontium, a disciple of Empedocles, endeavoured, in his work on Nature,

1 The term σοφίστης had at first been equivalent to that of σοφός. 2 For an opposite view of the character of the Sophists, see GROTE'S History of Greece.

3 WELCKER, Prodikos von Keos, im Rheinischen Museum. Band. I, St. I, Nr. 4, 1833.

4 PLAT. Tim. ed. Bipont. tom. IX, p. 285. XENOPH. Memorab. I, 6. ARIST. Sophist. Elench. c. I. CIC. Acad. Quæst. II, 23.

5 Flourished about 440. Was ambassador at Athens 424 B.C. Foss, De Gorgia Leontino commentatio. 1828.

6 We find, apud Aristot. et Sext. Empir., fragments of this work, under the title: Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἢ περὶ φύσεως. Το Gorgias are also attributed the Speeches which are to be found among the Oratores Græci of REISKE, vol. VIII.

to demonstrate, by certain subtle arguments, that nothing real exists; because neither Negative nor Positive, nor both at the same time, can really exist. But even granting that something real did exist, yet 2nd, it would not be cognizable, because, if thoughts are not the real things, the real cannot be thought; and if thoughts were the real things, that which is not real could not be thought; consequently everything thought must be real in that case. Finally, even if something were cognizable, still it could not be imparted through the medium of words, because words do not express things, and nobody thinks like his neighbour. The distinction he established between objects, impressions, and words, was important, but led to no immediate result. Protagoras of Abdera (said to have been the disciple of Democritus) maintained that human knowledge consists only in the perception of the appearance through the subject, and that whatsoever appeared to any one, in his state at the time, was true; consequently, that man is the standard of all things (πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος): that, as far as truth or falsehood are concerned, there is no difference between our perceptions of external objects; that every way of considering a thing has its opposite, and that there is as much truth on the one side as the other; and that consequently nothing can be supported in argument with certainty; maintaining at the same time the sophistical profession, "to make the worse the better argument." As for the existence of the gods, he appears to have esteemed it doubtful, in consequence of which he was banished from

1 ARIST. De Xenoph. Zenone, et Gorgiâ, especially c. V, sqq. SEXT. Adv. Math. VII, 65, sqq.

2 PLAT. Theætet. ed. Bip. 11, 68. SEXT. Hyp. Pyrrh. I, 217. Cf. DIOG. LAERT. IX, 51.

3 PLAT. Crat. tom. III, 234, sqq. ARIST. Met. XI, 5. SEXTUS, Hyp. Pyrrh. I, 216, sqq.

4 PLAT. Theætet. p. 89, 90, 102. SEXT. Adv. Math. VII, 60, sqq. 369, 388. CIC. Ac. II, 46.

5 DIOG. LAERT. I. 1.

Cic. De Nat. Deor. I, 12, 23. SEXT. Adv. Math. IX, 56, sqq. DIOG. LAERT. IX, 51, 53.

On Protagoras, consult, besides the Dialogue which bears his name, in Plato, ed. Bip. vol. III, p. 83, sqq.; and Meno, vol. IV, p. 372, sqq., Elian, A. Gellius, Philostratus, and Suidas. J. C. BAPT. NURN

Athens (where he taught), and died in banishment, about the XCIII Olympiad. Prodicus of Julis in the isle of Ceos, a disciple of Pythagoras, employed himself in investigating the synonymes of words: deduced the principle of religion from the appearance of a beneficent intention in external nature;2 and declaimed very plausibly on the subject of virtue.3 Hippias of Elis was a pretender to universal knowledge. Thrasymachus of Chalcedon taught that "might made right;" and Polus of Agrigentum, Callicles of Acharnæ, Euthydemus of Chios, and others, that there is no other principle of obligation for man than instinct, caprice, and physical force; and that justice and its opposite are of political invention. Diagoras of Melos was notorious for professing atheism (§ 105). Critias" of Athens, the enemy of Socrates, and reckoned among the partisans of the Sophists, ascribed the origin of religion to political considerations, and appears, like Protagoras, to have asserted that the soul was material and resided in the senses; which last he appears to have placed in the blood."

BERGER, Doctrine of the Sophist Protagoras, on existence and nonexistence, Dortm. 1798, 8vo.

CHR. GOTTLOB HEYNII Prolusio in Narrationem de Protagora Gellii N. A. V, 10; et Apuleii in Flor. IV, 18, Götting. 1806, On his Sophisms and those of his disciple Evathlus.

Jo. LUD. ALEFELD, Mutua Pythagoræ et Evathli Sophismata, quibus olim in judicio certarunt, etc. Giess. 1730, 8vo.

1 About 420 B.C.

2 SEXT. EMP. Adv. Math. IX, 18. Crc. De Nat. Deor. I, 42.

3 For example, in his celebrated πidɛığıç, Hercules ad bivium. See Xenoph. Memorab. II, 1, 21; and Cf. Xenophontis Hercules Prodiceus et Silii Italici Scipio, perpetuâ notâ illustrati a GOTTH. AUG. CubÆO, Lips. 1797, 8vo.

4 PLAT. In Hipp. Maj. et Min. XENOPH. Memorab. IV, 4. CIC. De Orat. III, 32.

5 PLAT. De Republ. I; ed. Bip. tom. VI, p. 165, sqq. PLAT. Gorgias, Theætet. de Republ. II, de Leg. X,

7 One of the thirty tyrants, died 404 B.C.

8 SEXT. Hyp. Pyrrh. III, 218; Adv. Math. IX, 54. 9 ARIST. De Animâ, I, 2.

p. 76.

Præmissa est

CRITIÆ Tyranni Carminum aliorumque ingenii Monumentorum, quæ supersunt, dispos. illustr. et emend. Nic. BACHIUS. Critia Vita a Philostrato descripta, Lips. 1827, 8vo. WEBER de Critia Tyranno Progr. Francf. ad M. 1824, 4to.

GUIL. ERN.

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