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Some New Philosophical Views

SOME NEW PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS.

By THE EDITOR OF

THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW."

(Reprinted from "The Contemporary Review for April, 1881.)

LONDON: PRINTED BY
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., CHANDOS STREET
AND PAUL'S WORK, EDINBURGH

SOME NEW PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS.

An Inquiry into the Process of Human Experience: attempting to set forth
its Lower Laws; with some Hints as to the Higher Phenomena of
Consciousness. By William Cyples. London. 1880.

THE book named above has now been before the public for more than a year.
Having been myself interested by a first perusal of it, I have watched with
some curiosity the reception it has met with from the critics. The precise
degree of praise or blame given to his performance, the author may be left
to measure for himself, with what philosophy the writing of a big treatise
on that topic may have bestowed. But in what quarters appreciation has been
shown, and in what others non-appreciation, of what purports to be, and I
believe is, an original book in the higher field of thinking, is a matter
of more public significance. A consideration of it will tell us something
of the present intellectual activity of literary and philosophical
criticism among us. I think I may, with interest to the reader, combine
that aim, more or less, with the main purpose of the present paper, namely,
to give some account of Mr. Cyples's volume itself.

Let me at once say that it is very curious, and must be significant of the
condition of criticism, that the writers in several religious organs have
quite failed to see that the book is a quarry from which may be got a
variety of reasonings, each one of which is as a weapon in the hands of
those who hold anti-materialistic views. These arguments, it is true, are
not used by Mr. Cyples to point any doctrinal conclusions; but none the
less there they are in his pages; and the very fact that he has come upon
them, as it seems, in a mere way of exhaustively inquiring into
psycho-physiological matters, irrespective of dogmatic bias, might have
been urged by the champions of spiritual beliefs as a recommendation,
rather than otherwise. The critics on that side appear, so far as I can
judge, to have been confused, and, in some cases, perhaps, one should say
alarmed, by the large extent to which Mr. Cyples uses the language of the
physicists. But they ought to be able to detect new psychical and
physiological affirmations favourable to them (for the book purports, as I
will show directly, to make a number of these), even if they are presented
in the terms which the physicists employ. But a further remark requires to
be made in order to state fully the explanation which is suggested to my
own mind of the attitude which most of the writers in the theological
reviews have taken up as to the volume. It is easy to see that all who hold
orthodox views will be certain to be honestly dissatisfied by what will
appear to them the altogether too large admissions it makes of the
scientists' explanations of the physiological process of human
consciousness, and of the reign of physical law in the world. That is a
fair controversy, which the author must wage for himself. I am not, in this
paper, going to intermeddle in it. I limit myself to repeating, that, in my
own opinion, something which is the opposite of acuteness has been shown by
the critics on that side in not recognizing a series of new reasonings
available for their ends, because they were not couched in doctrinal
shibboleths. The writer of one of the reviews of the book which I happened
to read in a denominational publication made it a first objection to it,
that, in an early chapter of this psycho-physiological Inquiry, the author
has stated that a nervous system acting specifically, with adequate blood
supply, &c., is needed for human consciousness. This is rather depressing
when looked at as marking the mental level at which in those quarters
philosophical criticism stands at this moment. It is tantamount to accusing
Mr. Cyples of having wilfully and heretically invented such things as
swoon, sleep, and death. I think he may fairly plead that he did not do so,
but that he has only reasoned about them long after they were in existence.

I have turned to this aspect of the book first of all, but I scarcely
expect the writer of "The Process of Human Experience" will feel that he
owes anybody many thanks who does so. I infer that he would like what he
would call the scientific element in the work to be first put forward. His
treatment of the complicated problem of "Attention;" his tracking out of
the working rules of the Association of Ideas; his more detailed
appreciation of the use in intellectual operation of the Language-faculty;
these would be, I suppose, the parts of the book he would wish to be
earliest looked at. He has a passion for framing formulas, generalizing
laws, and coining fresh and very unattractive words and phrases; doing this
with what seems to me a very droll obtuseness to the fact that the ordinary
reader wishes to have, not as much as possible, but as little as may be of
this sort of thing. Even the most favourable critics—at least, all whose
notices I have perused—agree that the book is very hard reading. Mr. Cyples
has made his own defence on this score, in a paper published in Mind,
entitled, "Four New Philosophical Terms;" but I am sure that he has
underestimated the obstacles in the way of getting a new nomenclature
accepted.

In my own opinion, too, there are special difficulties just now hindering
the success of such an experiment, owing to the thinkers in the realm of
English philosophy who for more than a generation just have had the public
ear, studiously avoiding technology in their works. Certain critics of Mr.
Mill state that they find his language loose when it is strictly
scrutinized,—Professor Stanley Jevons has said so in these pages,—but it is
undeniable that it has an appearance of lucidness. Mr. Darwin uses a few
catch-phrases, but they are free from what is commonly meant by
technicality, and, in fact, the ease of his style has greatly helped the
spreading of his views. Professors Huxley and Tyndall have each a rare art
of making plain what they urge; and Professor Bain is only a little less a
master of simple statement. Mr. Matthew Arnold, of late years, has seemed
to accumulate a phraseology of his own; but it consists not of new terms
but of parts of sentences, familiar enough when the words are taken
separately, and only made special by allotment to a particular meaning, and
by a strenuous iteration afterwards in their use. In Mr. Herbert Spencer's
works, a nomenclature of some intricacy is to be met with, but he, again,
has shown much skill in habituating his readers to it. If Mr. Cyples says,
as I gather he does, that in arriving at what he believes to be new
conclusions, he found that the mental process developed these new terms of
expression, and that he has had to work with them, it has to be allowed
that he knows best what happened in his own case. All that he has now to do
is to get the public to use his terminology, and to speak of "the neurotic
diagram," "egoistic-actualisation," "the Executive System," &c. I myself
think that he would have made his task not a little easier if he had just
reversed the order of the contents of his volume, and begun with what is
now the ending of it,—that is, the portion in which the use of the
technology is the least frequent. Anyhow that is the plan which I, who wish
to do what I think a notable book a service, find my judgment suggests.

In Chapter XXI., that is, in the last chapter, if we except the short
conclusion of the work, the author deals with "Art: its Functions." I
should like to let him speak at once for himself, by quoting the opening
sections defining Art generally, or else by giving a novel hypothesis he
puts forward on the once much-debated question of the origin of the
Sublime. But I will go on to a shorter passage, where an explanation of the
puzzle as to what may be called the emotional excess which has always been
noted in the case of Music is thus hinted at:—

"The emotional charm of Music has struck men as a great mystery. There
appears to be no doubt that it gets all the marvellous effects it has
beyond the mere pleasing of the ear, from its random but multitudinous
summonses of the efferent-activity, which at its vague challenges stirs
unceasingly in faintly tumultuous irrelevancy. In this way, Music arouses
aimlessly, but splendidly, the sheer, as yet unfulfilled, potentiality
within us."

Throughout this chapter, great use is made of the function ascribed to "the
efferent-activity." For instance, our author, in considering the question
which has bulked rather largely in critical literature of late, what
bearings morality has on Art, thus speaks:—

"Before Art can effeminate, it must become petty; before it can make us
morbid, it must descend to gross realism. So long as Art keeps the
sense-impressions on which it relies large and noble, and does not carry
them into such grouped detail as to give precise cues to the efferent
impulses, the question of morality has no relevancy to it. Its true purpose
is then seen clear and full—that of habituating us to larger living by
fragmentary exercises of the actualising-process on a scale more
magnificent than the previous practical experiences. But, for this, the
inflations of the personality must be general: the Art inspirations must be
left broad and anonymous, to be allotted definitely hereafter in some way
of conduct. The efferent-activity must preserve its own real reminiscences
intact; Art, or what passes for it, cannot touch those without killing
them. Nor can Art be saved from its own corruption but by timely periodical
infusions of the Sublime."

Further on, there is a passage as to the province of the Comic in Art,
which may he quoted:—

"Art always stirs the ultimate sense of the human fortune, by either
pretending that the world is lighter, gayer, easier than it had before
seemed, or by arousingly challenging us ourselves to be nobler, larger,
gigantic, in facing its difficulties. In both these cases, though in
different ways, what is vitally concerned is the efferent-activity..... The
Comic seems to borrow in its own queer manner from both the realms just
mentioned. It is true, it must not present the world as really gay and
light, having the appearance of being wholly trivial—that—would give no
comicality at all. On the other hand, its rough catastrophes must not fully
challenge right sympathetic activity in us. This is saying, that while
comicality apes seriousness, it must really be without permanent ill
consequences. In fact, both the above Art-functions are in Humour essayed
together, but are transposed in the fulfilling, and so are alike
more-or-less nullified, though not before much gratification has been had.
In Humour we have a burlesque appeal to the sense of human fortune, making
of it nothing but fun; doing this by means of sheer blunder, stupidity, and
miscarriage. The reason of the perennial popular charm of Humour is at once
seen when this is remembered—it lies in comicality utterly resting the
ordinary efferent-activity and relaxing the Brain of every sensory nervous
co-ordination. Comedy, taken in the broad meaning, asks for its full
success even moderate ugliness in the persons most concerned in it, with
awkwardness of gesture, inexact speech, irrelevancy of doing. But this is
exactly the same as the eye, ear, &c., only half-attending; the first rude
infantile groupings of the sense-activities again become sufficient, easing
all the laboured additions of the later acquired nervous co-ordinations;
and further, in spite of a great bustle and pother,—for this there must be
the show of,—there is nothing to be done but to sit still and behold. The
easily-afforded energy which is stirred by the first cues of this
make-believe, bubbles away in laughter; the man finding himself perfectly
efficient without an effort, for all obligation of duty is given up. Is it
wonderful that most men like it?"

Another quotation will describe what is classified by the author as the
realm of the lightly amusing. He says:—

"This realm of the lightly amusing is extensive. At its best it rises into
glories of elegance and beauty, but, in the extremes, it descends to tinsel
and filigree; and, for the furthest, lowest, dimmest points of it, mere
gimcrack is enough. It would, however, save much well-intentioned but
somewhat stupid criticism condemning the unreality of the theatre,
protesting against a kind of preposterousness in some parts of our dress,
and in the upholstering of certain apartments in our houses, and as being
also shown in some of the manners allotted to the more leisurely hours of
social intercourse, if it were borne in mind that, beneath the
grotesqueness, these things have a real use in the sudden and complete
disengagement of our ordinary efforts of attention, new adjustments being
in these ways challenged in their place. It is easy to ridicule the
circumstance of the chief room in every house being tricked out in a style
which would seem to be only befitting if we were sophisticated fairies
playing at an ornamental domesticity for a few hours now-and-again of an
evening; also, there undeniably is palpable absurdity in opera being
performed in a foreign language, and the full dress of both sexes, though
in different kinds, has an admitted preposterousness. All that can be said
on the other hand is, that universal experience shows this artificiality to
be in a manner natural; since alongside the world of business and of
practical life, a long-descended, shining, holiday tradition of an
opposite, unserious sphere, wholly unlike common reality, has had to be
kept up by sheer way of balance. Periodically, the artificiality grows
ridiculously elaborate; amusement becomes more laborious than work,—the two
almost exchange places. Then, Satire finds its true duty in exposing the
failure, and effecting a sobering through the freshness of a return to
plain reality; the laying aside the ponderous triviality being a temporary
relief and recreation. But there is an abiding need for positive,
unmitigated relaxation. The proper test is, whether the influence of the
artificiality is to really lighten the spirits; if so, this second function
of Art is discharged by it. Criticism must wait for depression setting
in—the ceasing of a light, natural laughter is Satire's due signal."

I am tempted to find space for yet another passage, where the writer—still
inquiring into the explanation of the feeling of Sublimity—argues that in
Terror there is always a perception of more than Novelty. He observes:—

"A mountain with no scars upon its sides telling of the rage of storms; no
dizzying sheer descents of plunging precipice; no gulfs; no inaccessible
peaks; but a mountain showing all gradual, smooth, shining,—this would not
be sublime in the second of the two senses above specified, no matter what
its mere size. To give it sublimity of that kind you must mark it with
violence. It needs here-and-there singeing and seaming with traces of the
flaming thunderbolt; fringes of black struggling pines must show dwarfed
and painful on the narrow edges of its unsheltering cliffs; you must hang
somewhere amidst its higher snows the fatal avalanche, held only by
creaking faulty chains of ice; the beaked-and-taloned eagle has to sweep
and soar about its cliffs; it must have mysterious ravines, usually black
with silence, in which you know lie bleaching the bones of victims of the
precipices and the eagles—those dark abysses changing at times into the
sudden crash and roar of unexplained tumult. The secret of the fearful
addition to sublimity thus got is this,—that each circumstance in that list
covers a nervous disintegration."

There is a good deal more in the chapter that must be left unnoticed
here—the author's views of the function of Tragedy, and of a certain
artifact which he looks for from the progress of physical science.
Literature he styles the final department of Art, doing so on the ground
that, by employing words as its medium, "it alone can use multiformity of
associations, being able in a single phrase to mix the cues for starting
several senses." But it may take some readers by surprise to find what is
the writer's last word on this subject of Art: it is a long way from being
wholly eulogistic. He says:—

"Though Art, using the term with the above understood limitation, and
reserving Literature, is able to give prompt, large actualisations of the
Ego at an easy low level of untransformed, or very little transformed
sensory experience, yet, apart from the provisional uses we have spoken
of,—viz., filling up otherwise empty spaces in life, restfully alternating
attention, &c.,—none of these egoistic-actualisations can be estimated as
of much intrinsic value. They only occupy the intervals between man's
better living. Not only cannot Art give the very highest complexities of
sentiency, substituting the egoistic-actualisations which are rendered by
Conduct, but at the times it is having sway, it must preclude these by a
preoccupation of the sensory apparatus peripherally. The nervous system has
to work the other way—from the interior—in all heightenings of character.
As compared with Conduct, Art has small subtlety, little intricacy of
inter-appeal to the consciousness, but only masses some simpler forms of
sentiency; it necessarily offers no reality answering to that of personal
relationships stirred by practical doing. It is owing to this deficiency
that many men seeking after what is termed spirituality are prompted so
greatly to dispense with Art; though, let us hasten to add, if they neglect
it wholly they do so at the risk of becoming narrow from the sheer lack of
the larger habituations of the nervous-apparatus which it gives—these being
always needed at some points."

Very likely, a reader of the above extracts who may happen to have also
seen some of the critiques I earlier hinted at, speaking of the volume as
written in an involved, confused, "Latinised" or "Grecised" style, will be
a little perplexed at not finding the reading more difficult. Two of Mr.
Cyples's largely-used technical phrases—i.e., "egoistic-actualisation" and
"efferent-activity"—are brought into play; but for the rest, I myself
believe that I see in the passages I have given traces of a practised,
ready pen. The fact is, that the critics who have spoken in this way of the
style of the author, have confused the deliberate and studied adoption of a
set technology, used in perfect, and I may add relentless consistency, with
a lack of ability to write simple composition. The above citations are from
the plainest portion of the book, but the plainness there is owing merely
to the absence of the new technical terms which are used so copiously
elsewhere; and in any part of the book, the skill in composition, allowing
for the nature of the topics dealt with, reappears whenever the use of the
terminology is suspended.

I can conceive that the author had a misgiving that some of his reviewers
would make the blunder of not knowing a technology when they saw it, and
that he nearly wholly dispensed with it in the writing of this chapter, as
providing himself with a trap wherein to catch them. If he did so, he has
succeeded, for they have fallen right into it. At the same time, convicting
your critics of not knowing their own business by first laying in their way
a temptation to rail at your volume is not the height of wisdom in an
author, and I think Mr. Cyples would have done much better to have made his
book easier reading throughout. But he may, if he will, fairly retort that
there is certainly some defect of skill in philosophical criticism among us
at this moment when it makes no distinction between an author's purposed
and careful use of a technical vocabulary, and mere ineptitude in
composition. If the reader finds any of the latter in the preceding
quotations,he "will do what I have not done.

But I wish to give some account of the book as a whole. Adequately to
notice in a single article a volume dealing connectedly with all the
fundamental questions of philosophy, and which in doing so itself occupies
over eight hundred pages, is not easy. It is made the harder by the
unusually large claims the author puts forward for originality, alike in
matters of observed facts and of explanatory hypotheses. I will, first of
all, attempt a rough catalogue of the leading instances.

Mr. Cyples, then, asserts that, by the observing of minute facts, which he
specifies, connected with reverie, the management of Attention, &c., he has
made out what he styles an initiatory law of human experience to this
purport,—that no one of the senses can operate so as to give the
consciousness belonging to it without a certain aggregation of its
activity, which is only got by the associated working of muscular machinery
connected with it. Obviously, this is a subtle point, but it is also a very
important one, as any one will discover who notes the use the alleged
generalization is made of in the author's detailed explanations of the
puzzling phenomena of Attention; of the facts which have recently been made
the basis of what is called the doctrine of Relativity; and of the
circumstance that the conceptions of Space and Time enter into all our
experience. I cannot myself say that I am satisfied the evidence the author
puts forward is ample enough to demonstrate his case; I think that it
should have been worked out with more particularity; but there is no
denying that the alleged law seems, at the least, to throw a good deal of
light on the process of Attention. It is only fair to quote a few words
from the author's statement. He says:—

"Each of the senses is always being acted upon; the skin never fails to be
in contact with something; there is no door to the passage of the ear;
light can penetrate the eyelid when dropped; and the temperature of the air
surrounding us is ever rising and falling."

"Everybody knows that we can have eyes open in broad daylight without
seeing; that the ear may be fully vibrating without our hearing; and so
with all the other senses."

"In smell, there is movement of the nostril; in taste there is always a
degree of pressure."

"The allotment of the special sense-organs in the bodily frame—in
particular the spreading of the apparatus of touch over nearly the whole
external superficies, with the partial extension of it internally, in the
mouth, &c.—make it impracticable for the muscular machinery (except when
operating below the minimum fixed by the Law of Effectiveness) to act
isolatedly."

"Immobility of the motory apparatus connected with the different senses, no
matter how slight or momentary it may be, arrests experience in respect of
the sense. Fix the eye, and if you do it completely, you cease to see; give
over altering pressure, and the sensation of touch stops."

"In every sensation, there mingles the experience of Time and Space, which
all thinkers now agree must involve the action of the muscular sense."

The writer argues that we manage our Attention, alike in the way of
observing any object more closely and in purposed ceasing to attend, by an
acquired power of volitionally and automatically controlling this
coincidence in activity between any sense and the muscular machinery having
connection with it. In the dissociation of this conjoint activity through
over-use, the influence of narcotics, &c., he finds the explanation of
fatigue, swoon, sleep, &c.

As forming the second novelty of importance may be named the striking
hypothesis on the subjects of Pleasure and Pain, propounded in Chapter III.
So far as the problem of the phenomenon of Pain is not wholly shirked by
the modern philosophers who found their psychology on physiology, the
solution hinted at is that pain is the accompaniment of any abatement of
vitality. This is the view of both Professor Bain and Mr. Spencer. But the
explanation has not satisfied Mr. Cyples. In a long passage he points out
what he terms the "irrationality" and irrelevancy which pain shows when it
occurs. He says that some injuries and some diseases do not cause pain in
anything like a degree proportionate to their abatement of vitality; while,
on the other hand, the tortures of corns and toothache are, he affirms,
penalties great enough for bad emperors who have abused the purple by all
excesses of wrong indulgence. He points also to the fact, that anæsthetics,
&c, can blot out pain. The hypothesis put forward by himself is to the
effect that pain arises whenever a nervous grouping is "disintegrated" by
being made to act in a way of partial non-repetition of its former full
activity.

The view is followed out into minute detail; eight sub-laws being traced as
operating in the occurrence of pain. I must confine myself to quoting a
single passage:—

"The experience of fatigue, or tiring, offers a striking example of the
law. It is an experiment within everybody's power. Put out the arm, leaving
it to sustain its own weight. It will not be long before the not
unsatisfactory sensation got from integrating the vigorous muscular
co-ordinations decreases; the feeling will shortly turn into one of
discomfort; if the position be preserved it will become painful. Rapidly
the experience will be that of torment, and it is possible to make the pain
acummulate to agony. What has happened to cause this alteration of
experience? A progressive disintegration of the nervous co-ordinations, as
one bundle of fibres after another becomes disabled in use."

The working of this alleged law is exemplified by instances given of all
kinds, taken from the mental and moral as well as the sensory regions of
our experience. That the reviewers of the book in publications whose main
business is the defence of spiritual beliefs have not seen the favourable
significance of this new speculation for their side, is one of the things
which I have before said is to me surprising. Mr. Cyples, with the
reticence in that direction which is a characteristic of his volume, stops
short of urging the theory to its extreme point; but there is no question
that if this hypothesis can be established, it cuts right into the heart of
Materialism, striking at the very key of its chief position. I will cite
just two or three sentences scattered in this and other chapters, and
which, I venture to think, ought to have been noted keenly by the critics:—

"Pain, as a first rough definition, may be said to be a protest which
consciousness makes against its own dwindling."

"In pain, the consciousness is somehow in excess of the lessened physical
activity then in use.… Non-impression affects us, and becomes a real event
in our experience."

"The egoistic experience, in cases of pain, is not merely made feeble, or
faint, or narrow; it is vividly ill, intensely self-unsatisfactory."

"How comes pain to be, if Mind is only constituted in proportionate
quantification by the neurotic-diagram then existing?"

It scarcely needs to be indicated to the reflective reader that all this
reasoning points straight to the substantiality of the Ego, and its more or
less independence (after it is actualized by and in sensation) of physical
conditions;—these being the very cardinal points which the
anti-materialists have to prove. Mr. Cyples's hypothesis of Pain, in a
word, affects all the controversial reasoning of these subjects.

He has a related theory of Pleasure which, in the case of
"sensory-experience," he works out into what he proposes as a strict Law of
the Beautiful. In the case of all the specific kinds of sensations, whether
in colours, odours, taste, touch, &c., he affirms that the secret of their
pleasurableness consists in their offering "accumulation of consciousness
by multiplying identical impression."

Not attempting to observe any strict order in cataloguing points which seem
to me to be new, I may go at once to a novel view which occurs in the
chapter on "The Will." After conceding all the facts that the most rigid
Determinists posit, the author leaves their final conclusion quite in the
air by a series of subtle hypothetical suggestions, based on what seems to
be a minuter observing of the physiological process of Conduct than has
hitherto been made. I can only hint at his method. He thus sums up the
objections which the scientists urge against Will:—

"It is mathematically demonstrable that any arrest, alteration, or extra
occurrence of a physical process necessarily implies increase of Energy,
and ultimately of mass of Matter in the world.… Any conceivable alteration
in the prior order of atoms, centres of force, or elemental activities,
reckoned in any terms of Motion, must, in fact, have the effect of
increasing the sum total."

But, in pursuing his exhaustive statement of the case, the writer points
out that the mathematical calculus is not as yet perfect enough to deal
particularly with all actual quantities. He says that if the increments of
energy needed to make valid the persuasion we have of physical sequence
being altered in our activity in Conduct, be below a certain limit of size
and frequency, the present calculus cannot pronounce that the increments
are not "masked" in the ordinary mundane dynamics. Next he makes a curious
inquiry into the size and the frequency of the increments of energy which
might subserve the needs of a Conduct that should be definable as moral in
the old meaning of the word. In the course of the inquiry he affirms that
in the case of the lower order of volitions,—those connecting with the
passions,—"ideatory-cerebration" ceases in the same quantitative proportion
as muscular exertion takes place; while he asserts that where the higher
matters of Conduct are concerned—in every instance of which restraint of
automatic impulse is seen—the above rule is precisely reversed, there being
increase of ideation and abatement of habitual muscular activity. For this,
he states, addition of cerebral structure is needed, but—and here is the
significant point—the increment of energy required for it may be
infinitesimal. But whence comes the addition of energy, and what determines
its granting? Here our author brings in an alleged "duplicity of faculty"
in the Ego, in proof of which he quotes the facts on which the modern
doctrine of Relativity rests; and to this faculty, he says, if Conduct is
not wholly illusory, must be ascribed a potentiality for which the best
available name is "aspiration"—the opportunity for its exercise or
non-exercise arising when previously-acquired cerebral structure is in full
use, which it always is when Conscience is acting. As matter of fact, he
points out that all the men in whom experience rises highest, affirm that
if "aspiration" be exercised, a law or a Force comes into play by which a
positive increase of energy is given from and by a Creative Source.

But, surprising to say, a writer of one of the critiques I have seen of
this book, in a religious publication, thinks that the above reasoning is
materialistic. On the other hand, Mr. James Sully, in his appreciative
review of the volume in Mind, spoke of it, I remember, as the author's "new
mysticism." If these views be "mysticism," it is stated in a severely
scientific form; and it would seem that if "physicists," with the mental
habitudes given by their studies, are ever to reach Faith, it must be along
some such lines.

I had marked a number of other topics as to which the writer claims to have
worked out original scientific conclusions. He explains that the
fundamental process of the Intellect consists in our making our own
"efferent-activities" represent, and practically measure, the larger
operations of the physical world; he seems, in considering the difficult
question of Attention, to establish as a fact that the "unit of impression"
and "the unit of consciousness" are not the same; in his detailed inquiry
into the Laws of the Succession of Ideas, he formulates no fewer than
fifteen generalizations, as explaining what he terms the permutation of
thought. I may just mention with respect to this last-named inquiry, that,
in reading it, I was reminded that the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, in the last
volume of his "Problems of Life and Mind," states that, as far back as
1868, Mr. Cyples communicated to him a newly-framed law upon the
Association of Ideas. I note that the law as there quoted by Mr. Lewes is
modified in the present book,—see p. 182. Chapter IV. is devoted to
explaining a theory of the author as to the mechanism of Memory. In it, he
asserts that for reminiscence cerebral fibres must "repeat the activity
they underwent in the original act of experience." He quotes, in support of
this, the curious facts witnessed in persons suffering from aphasia. It is
here that he puts forward the technical term which has so staggered some of
his critics,—"The Neurotic Diagram;" for he not only assumes that the
cerebral fibres have, from moment to moment of our consciousness, to be
acting in a specific grouping or configuration, but he intimates that, in
reminiscent consciousness, as distinguished from consciousness which is
being sustained by peripheral impression, a "duplicated set of fibres" and
an arrangement of "central molecules" are brought into play. If Mr. Cyples
has been inside his own brain, or anybody else's, when it was in full
activity, and has seen all this going forward, well and good. But, in
reading this chapter, and also other portions of the work, I was again and
again reminded of Mr. Lewes's remark, that there is a strong tendency in
some modern thinkers to assume a much more detailed knowledge of cerebral
operations than it is possible for them or for anybody, really to possess
in the present state of physiological science. It is true that Mr. Cyples
may say that in a case where experiment is so greatly barred as it is in
the case of the brain, hypothesis is the only tool left for an inquirer to
work with. But the fact of your grounds being perforce conjectural, is
scarcely a justification for hurrying to positive conclusions.

A great part of the author's big volume yet remains unnoticed. So far, not
much more than its psychology has been dealt with. It would require another
paper to give a detailed account of its philosophical doctrine. The author
is a Realist in so far that he recognizes a physical system which exists
independently of our consciousness, and gives, indeed, the occasions for
the consciousness; but he says that this physical world is only
"intellectually inferred" by us, not sensorially cognized. In his peculiar
terminology, all that we know of it is that it is an "Executive System,"
extending beyond ourselves, in connection with some of whose events, and
only with some of them, sensations, &c., happen to us. But all our
consciousness, he resolutely argues, is, whenever it arises, so much
addition to the sum-total of Being otherwise existing; neither the
beginnings nor the ceasings of consciousness having any effect
quantitatively upon the operations of the Executive System of Nature. A
little space must be made for extracts, just to hint the author's
arguments:—

"In all the brain-activities accompanying our experience, the physical and
chemical changes go on in the same modes, observe the same order, and give
the same quantitative results as if no sensation, thinking, and feeling had
arisen."

"Motion-in-general does not condition consciousness; the movements along
with which our experience occurs have to be specific ones. They must be of
certain rates, volumes, &c."

"Either the added event of our consciousness is given by an increase of
efficacy which developes in or along with Matter's activity within our
bodily frame, or else it is assignable to such an increase occurring along
with Matter's activity in certain larger, extra-bodily situations of the
Cosmical Executive-System, operating at the same time on, in, and through
the body."

"In reminiscence and imagination, we can have repetition of sensations
without the events in the larger Executive-System with which they primarily
occurred, and indeed they can exist along with very different events there
happening. We can in dream see the sun in the sky at midnight; by means of
waking fancies, we can at any time, with more or less of completeness,
subjectively enjoy tastes, odours, contacts, sounds.… So little as this
does the general cosmical situation necessarily avail."

"Strictly speaking, it is not the whole of the executive-operation in the
volume, rate, &c., with which our consciousness arises, that connects
causatively with the enlargement of efficacy giving it, but only the small
differentiating quantity which heightens or abates the prior existing
dynamics to just the specific volume, rate, &c., that is effective. But the
intellect finds itself obliged to consider these differentiating dynamical
quantities as interchangeable, since in the executive-operation itself they
are simply equivalent, and subtractable and addable.… But each of them is
found to be singly ineffective for conditioning consciousness."

Here, again, it is obvious that if this reasoning can be fully established,
it makes a great breach in Materialism; rendering it necessary, in order to
account for the human Ego and its experience, to bring in a potentiality
for varying the quantity of phenomena in a way which limits physical
conceptions to their own field, and adds another field beyond. The author's
chapters entitled, "The Ego," and "Is there Evidence of Entity other than
Matter?" contain much novel reasoning, in addition to the above. The
general effect of it, though he does not utterly push home the
conclusions,—always seeming to affect the reticence of an inquirer merely
who only states the facts as he finds them,—is that our
"egoistic-actualisation" is to be referred to a system of Mind which
extends beyond the present limits of the Ego; for, as to the latter, he
says the "irrationality" of some of the "happenings" of our pleasures and
pains, and the persuasion we all have of possessing a physical power of
interfering with material sequence, seem to intimate that a historic
catastrophe has at some time befallen the egoistic consciousness of the
race. I cannot follow up these matters; nor can I find space for explaining
Mr. Cyples's modification of the old, commonly-adopted theory of
Impression. I may add, that, as most readers who have accompanied me up to
this point would very likely expect, he adopts, with respect to merely
physical organization, the principle of Evolution,—remarking that, so far
as concerns the development of all physiological difference, it is rational
to suppose that the field of modification in the later species would be
intra-uterine, not extra-uterine. His airiness in making the concession is,
I suppose, explained by the fact, that it in no way affects his other main
conclusions. It will give some idea of the range of the author's inquiries,
if I quote the headings of a few of the chapters:—"The Emotions: their
General Mode," "Conscience," "Is there a Rational Basis for Dogma?"
"Hypothesis of the Soul," "The Problem of Evil," "The Organization of
Experience." Incidentally, the questions of Utilitarianism, Comtism, &c.,
are discussed at length.

I may just note a significant side-hint which the writer throws out in
inquiring into the genesis of modern scepticism. He asks, whether physical
science, despite its priceless practical progress, has not really for a
time simplified "cerebration" in respect of the chief generalizations of
our meditative thinking on the human lot? I believe that he is right in
thinking that this is so; and in that fact seems to lie whatever of hope
there is of any recovery of Faith on the part of those who have lost it on
merely intellectual grounds.

When turning over the pages, the eye not infrequently falls upon single
remarks worth pondering. Take two or three specimens:—

"Scientifically regarded, the evil of falsehood is, that it is always in
some degree destructive of reminiscence, which is the very stuff of our
life."

"Bare potentiality is the conception of all others most native to man."

"A man may know whether or not he is improving or degenerating in conduct
by noting if the emotions require larger or smaller sensory-cues. In the
former case, he is certainly going backward."

"Such a word as 'ever' gives a reverberation more prolonged than suits
mundane periods of time; it appears to the heart resoundingly to echo on
into eternity."

In conclusion, I will only say that, though Mr. Cyples seems to me to
indulge much too freely in hypothesis, and has, by the adoption of a
difficult technology, placed a huge obstacle in the way of the
popularization of his book, yet I believe no one who is a professed student
in the higher fields of thought can neglect his volume, save at the risk of
not being acquainted with some of the most laboriously worked-out
philosophical thinking done for some time past.

Popular Science Monthly/Volume 75/July 1909/Darwin's Influence Upon
Philosophy

Fragments of Empedocles

Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd edition
Chapter V. Epedokles of Akragas
Section 105. The Remains

We have more abundant remains of Empedokles than of any other early Greek
philosopher. If we trust our manuscripts of Diogenes and of Souidas, the
librarians of Alexandria estimated the Poem on Nature and the Purifacations
together as 5000 verses, of which about 2000 belonged to the former work.¹
Diels gives about 350 verses and parts of verses from the cosmological
poem, or not a fifth of the whole. It is important to remember that, even
in this favourable instance, so much has been lost. The other poems
ascribed to Empedokles by the Alexandrian scholars were probably not his.²
I give the remains as they are arranged by Diels:

1 And do thou give ear, Pausanias, son of Anchitos the wise!

2 For straitened are the powers that are spread over their bodily parts,
and many are the woes that burst in on them and blunt the edge of their
careful thoughts! They behold but a brief span of a life that is no life,³
and, doomed to swift death, are borne up and fly off like smoke. Each is
convinced of that alone which he had chanced upon as he is hurried every
way, and idly boasts he has found the whole. So hardly can these things be
seen by the eyes or heard by the ears of men, so hardly grasped by their
mind! Howbeit, thou, since thou hast found thy way hither, shalt learn no
more than mortal mind hath power.

3 . . . to keep within thy dumb heart.

4 But, O ye gods, turn aside from my tongue the madness of those men.
Hallow my lips and make a pure stream flow from them! And thee, much-wooed,
white-armed Virgin Muse, do I beseech that I may hear what is lawful for
the children of a day! Speed me on my way from the abode of Holiness and
drive my willing car! Thee shall no garlands of glory and honour at the
hands of mortals constrain to lift them from the ground, on condition of
speaking in thy pride beyond that which is lawful and right, and so to gain
a seat upon the heights of wisdom.

Go to now, consider with all thy powers in what way each thing is clear.
Hold not thy sight in greater credit as compared with thy hearing, nor
value thy resounding ear above the clear instructions of thy tongue;⁴ and
do not withhold thy confidence in any of thy other bodily parts by which
there is an opening for understanding, but consider everything in the way
it is clear.

5 But it is all too much the way of low minds to disbelieve their betters.
Do thou learn as the sure testimonies of my Muse bid thee, when my words
have been divided⁵ in thy heart.

6 Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bringing
Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis whose tear-drops are a well-spring to mortals.⁶

7 . . . uncreated.

8 And I shall tell thee another thing. There is no substance⁷ of any of all
the things that perish, nor any cessation for them of baneful death. They
are only a mingling and interchange of what has been mingled. Substance is
but a name given to these things by men.

9 But they (hold?) that when Light and Air (chance?) to have been mingled
in the fashion of a man, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or of
plants or birds, that that is to be born, and when these things have been
separated once more, they call it (wrongly?) woeful death. I follow the
custom and call it so myself.⁸

10 Avenging death.

11 12 Fools!—for they have no far-reaching thoughts—who deem that what
before was not comes into being, or that aught can perish and be utterly
destroyed. For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is,
and it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; for it will
always be, wherever one may keep putting it.

13 And in the All there is naught empty and naught too full.

14 In the All there is naught empty. Whence, then, could aught come to
increase it?

15 A man who is wise in such matters would never surmise in his heart that
as long as mortals live what they call their life, so long they are, and
suffer good and ill; while before they were formed and after they have been
dissolved they are just nothing at all.

16 For even as they (Strife and Love) were aforetime, so too they shall be;
nor ever, methinks, will boundless time be emptied of that pair.

17 I shall tell thee a twofold tale. At one time it grew to be one only out
of many; at another, it divided up to be many instead of one. There is a
double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming
together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it;
the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these
things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in
one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the
repulsion of Strife. Thus, as far as it is their nature to grow into one
out of many, and to become many once more when the one is parted asunder,
so far they come into being and their life abides not. But, inasmuch as
they never cease changing their places continually, so far they are ever
immovable as they go round the circle of existence.

. . .

But come, hearken to my words, for it is learning that increaseth wisdom.
As I said before, when I declared the heads of my discourse, I shall tell
thee a twofold tale. At one time it grew together to be one only out of
many, at another it parted asunder so as to be many instead of one;—Fire
and Water and Earth and the mighty height of Air; dread Strife, too, apart
from these, of equal weight to each, and Love in their midst, equal in
length and breadth. Her do thou contemplate with thy mind, nor sit with
dazed eyes. It is she that is known as being implanted in the frame of
mortals. It is she that makes them have thoughts of love and work the works
of peace. They call her by the names of Joy and Aphrodite. Her has no
mortal yet marked moving round among them,⁹ but do thou attend to the
undeceitful ordering of my discourse.

For all these are equal and alike in age, yet each has a different
prerogative and its own peculiar nature, but they gain the upper hand in
turn when the time comes round. And nothing comes into being besides these,
nor do they pass away; for, if they had been passing away continually, they
would not be now, and what could increase this All and whence could it
come? How, too, could it perish, since no place is empty of these things?
There are these alone; but, running through one another, they become now
this, now that,¹⁰ and like things evermore.

18 Love.

19 Clinging Love.

20 This (the contest of Love and Strife) is manifest in the mass of mortal
limbs. At one time all the limbs that are the body's portion are brought
together by Love in blooming life's high season; at another, severed by
cruel Strife, they wander each alone by the breakers of life's sea. It is
the same with plants and the fish that make their homes in the waters, with
the beasts that have their lairs on the hills and the seabirds that sail on
wings.

21 Come now, look at the things that bear witness to my earlier discourse,
if so be that there was any shortcoming as to their form in the earlier
list. Behold the sun, everywhere bright and warm, and all the immortal
things that are bathed in heat and bright radiance.¹¹ Behold the rain,
everywhere dark and cold; and from the earth issue forth things
close-pressed and solid. When they are in strife all these are different in
form and separated; but they come together in love, and are desired by one
another.

For out of these have sprung all things that were and are and shall
be—trees and men and women, beasts and birds and the fishes that dwell in
the waters, yea, and the gods that live long lives and are exalted in
honour.

For there are these alone; but, running through one another, they take
different shapes—so much does mixture change them.

22 For all of these—sun, earth, sky, and sea—are at one with all their
parts that are cast far and wide from them in mortal things. And even so
all things that are more adapted for mixture are like to one another and
united in love by Aphrodite. Those things, again, that differ most in
origin, mixture and the forms imprinted on each, are most hostile, being
altogether unaccustomed to unite and very sorry by the bidding of Strife,
since it hath wrought their birth.

23 Just as when painters are elaborating temple-offerings, men whom wisdom
hath well taught their art,—they, when they have taken pigments of many
colours with their hands, mix them in due proportion, more of some and less
of others, and from them produce shapes like unto all things, making trees
and men and women, beasts and birds and fishes that dwell in the waters,
yea, and gods, that live long lives, and are exalted in honour,—so let not
the error prevail over thy mind,¹² that there is any other source of all
the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers. Know this for
sure, for thou hast heard the tale from a goddess.¹³

24 Stepping from summit to summit, not to travel only one path of words to
the end . . .

25 What is right may well be said even twice.

26 For they prevail in turn as the circle comes round, and pass into one
another, and grow great in their appointed turn.

There are these alone; but, running through one another, they become men
and the tribes of beasts. At one time they are all brought together into
one order by Love; at another, they are carried each in different
directions by the repulsion of Strife, till they grow once more into one
and are wholly subdued. Thus in so far as they are wont to grow into one
out of many, and again divided become more than one, so far they come into
being and their life is not lasting; but in so far as they never cease
changing continually, so far are they evermore, immovable in the circle.

27 There (in the sphere) are distinguished neither the swift limbs of the
sun, no, nor the shaggy earth in its might, nor the sea,—so fast was the
god bound in the close covering of Harmony, spherical and round, rejoicing
in his circular solitude.¹⁴

27a There is no discord and no unseemly strife in his limbs.

28 But he was equal on every side and quite without end, spherical and
round, rejoicing in his circular solitude.

29 Two branches do not spring from his back, he has no feet, no swift
knees, no fruitful parts; but he was spherical and equal on every side.

30 31 But when Strife was grown great in the limbs of the god and sprang
forth to claim his prerogatives, in the fulness of the alternate time set
for them by the mighty oath, . . . for all the limbs of the god in turn
quaked.

32 But when Strife was grown great in the limbs of the god and sprang forth
to claim his prerogatives, in the fulness of the alternate time set for
them by the mighty oath, . . . for all the limbs of the god in turn quaked.

33 Even as when fig juice rivets and binds white milk . . .

34 Cementing¹⁵ meal with water . . .

35 36 But now I shall retrace my steps over the paths of song that I have
travelled before, drawing from my saying a new saying. When Strife was
fallen to the lowest depth of the vortex, and Love had reached to the
centre of the whirl, in it do all things come together so as to be one
only; not all at once, but coming together at their will each from
different quarters; and, as they mingled, strife began to pass out to the
furthest limit. Yet many things remained unmixed, alternating with the
things that were being mixed, namely, all that Strife not fallen yet
retained; for it had not yet altogether retired perfectly from them to the
outermost boundaries of the circle. Some of it still remained within, and
some had passed out from the limbs of the All. But in proportion as it kept
rushing out, a soft, immortal stream of blameless Love kept running in, and
straightway those things became mortal which had been immortal before,
those things were mixed that had before been unmixed, each changing its
path. And, as they mingled, countless tribes of mortal creatures were
scattered abroad endowed with all manner of forms, a wonder to behold.¹⁶

37 Earth increases its own mass, and Air swells the bulk of Air.

38 Come, I shall now tell thee first of all the beginning of the sun,¹⁷ and
the sources from which have sprung all the things we now behold, the earth
and the billowy sea, the damp vapour and the Titan air that binds his
circle fast round all things.

39 If the depths of the earth and the vast air were infinite, a foolish
saying which has been vainly dropped from the lips of many mortals, though
they have seen but a little of the All . . . ¹⁸

40 The sharp-darting sun and the gentle moon.

41 But (the sunlight) is gathered together and circles round the mighty
heavens.

42 And she cuts off his rays as he goes above her, and casts a shadow on as
much of the earth as is the breadth of the pale-faced moon.¹⁹

43 Even so the sunbeam, having struck the broad and mighty circle of the
moon, returns at once, running so as to reach the sky.

44 It flashes back to Olympos with untroubled countenance.

45 46 There circles round the earth a round borrowed light, as the nave of
the wheel circles round the furthest (goal).²⁰

47 For she gazes at the sacred circle of the lordly sun opposite.

48 It is the earth that makes night by coming before the lights.

49 . . . of solitary, blind-eyed night.

50  And Iris bringeth wind or mighty rain from the sea.

51 (Fire) swiftly rushing upwards . . .

52 And many fires burn beneath the earth.

53 For so it (the air) chanced to be running at that time, though often
otherwise.

54 But the air sank down upon the earth with its long roots.

55 Sea the sweat of the earth.

56 Salt was solidified by the impact of the sun's beams.

57 On it (the earth) many heads sprung up without necks and arms wandered
bare and bereft of shoulders. Eyes strayed up and down in want of
foreheads.

58 Solitary limbs wandered seeking for union.

59 But, as divinity was mingled still further with divinity, these things
joined together as each might chance, and many other things besides them
continually arose.

60 Shambling creatures with countless hands.

61 Many creatures with faces and breasts looking in different directions
were born; some, offspring of oxen with faces of men, while others, again,
arose as offspring of men with the heads of oxen, and creatures in whom the
nature of women and men was mingled, furnished with sterile²¹ parts.

62 Come now, hear how the Fire as it was separated caused the night-born
shoots of men and tearful women to arise; for my tale is not off the point
nor uninformed. Whole-natured forms first arose from the earth, having a
portion both of water and fire.²² These did the fire, desirous of reaching
its like, send up, showing as yet neither the charming form of the limbs,
nor yet the voice and parts that are proper to men.

63 . . . But the substance of (the child's) limbs is divided between them,
part of it in men's (and part in women's body).

64 And upon him came desire reminding him through sight.

65 . . . And it was poured out in the purified parts; and when it met with
cold women arose from it.

66 The divided meadows of Aphrodite.

67 For in its warmer part the womb brings forth males, and that is why men
are dark and more manly and shaggy.

68 On the tenth day of the eighth month it turns to a white putrefaction.²³

69 Double bearing.²⁴

70 Sheepskin.²⁵

71 But if thy assurance of these things was in any way deficient as to how,
out of Water and Earth and Air and Fire mingled together, arose the forms
and colours of all those mortal things that have been fitted together by
Aphrodite, and so are now come into being . . .

72 How tall trees and the fishes in the sea . . .

73 And even as at that time Kypris, preparing warmth,²⁶ after she had
moistened the Earth in water, gave it to swift fire to harden it . . .

74 Leading the songless tribe of fertile fish.

75 All of those which are dense within and rare without, having received a
flaccidity of this kind at the hands of Kypris . . .

76 This thou mayest see in the heavy-backed shell-fish that dwell in the
sea, in sea-snails and the stony-skinned turtles. In them thou mayest see
that the earthy part dwells on the uppermost surface of the skin.

77 78 It is moisture²⁷ that makes evergreen trees flourish with abundance
of fruit the whole year round.

79 And so first of all tall olive trees bear eggs . . .

80 Wherefore pomegranates are late-born and apples succulent.

81 Wine is the water from the bark, putrefied in the wood.

82 Hair and leaves, and thick feathers of birds, and the scales that grow
on mighty limbs, are the same thing.

83 But the hair of hedgehogs is sharp-pointed and bristles on their backs.

84 And even as when a man thinking to sally forth through a stormy night,
gets him ready a lantern, a flame of blazing fire, fastening to it horn
plates to keep out all manner of winds, and they scatter the blast of the
winds that blow, but the light leaping out through them, shines across the
threshold with unfailing beams, as much of it as is finer;²⁸ even so did
she (Love) then entrap the elemental fire, the round pupil, confined within
membranes and delicate tissues, which are pierced through and through with
wondrous passages. They keep out the deep water that surrounds the pupil,
but they let through the fire, as much of it as is finer.

85 But the gentle flame (of the eye) has but a scanty portion of earth.

86 Out of these divine Aphrodite fashioned unwearying eyes.

87 Aphrodite fitting these together with rivets of love.

88 One vision is produced by both the eyes.

89 Know that effluences flow from all things that have come into being.

90 So sweet lays hold of sweet, and bitter rushes to bitter; acid comes to
acid, and warm couples with warm.

91 Water fits better into wine, but it will not (mingle) with oil.

92 Copper mixed with tin.

93 The bloom of scarlet dye mingles with the grey linen.²⁹

94 And the black colour at the bottom of a river arises from the shadow.
The same is seen in hollow caves.

95 Since they (the eyes) first grew together in the hands of Kypris.

96 The kindly earth received in its broad funnels two parts of gleaming
Nestis out of the eight, and four of Hephaistos. So arose white bones
divinely fitted together by the cement of proportion.

97 The spine (was broken).

98 And the earth, anchoring in the perfect harbours of Aphrodite, meets
with these in nearly equal proportions, with Hephaistos and Water and
gleaming Air—either a little more of it, or less of them and more of it.
From these did blood arise and the manifold forms of flesh.

99 The bell . . . the fleshy sprout (of the ear).³⁰

100 Thus³¹ do all things draw breath and breathe it out again. All have
bloodless tubes of flesh extended over the surface of their bodies; and at
the mouths of these the outermost surface of the skin is perforated all
over with pores closely packed together, so as to keep in the blood while a
free passage is cut for the air to pass through. Then, when the thin blood
recedes from these, the bubbling air rushes in with an impetuous surge; and
when the blood runs back it is breathed out again. Just as when a girl,
playing with a water-clock of shining brass, puts the orifice of the pipe
upon her comely hand, and dips the water-clock into the yielding mass of
silvery water—the stream does not then flow into the vessel, but the bulk
of the air³² inside, pressing upon the close-packed perforations, keeps it
out till she uncovers the compressed stream; but then air escapes and an
equal volume of water runs in,—just in the same way, when water occupies
the depths of the brazen vessel and the opening and passage is stopped up
by the human hand, the air outside, striving to get in, holds the water
back at the gates of the ill-sounding neck, pressing upon its surface, till
she lets go with her hand. Then, on the contrary, just in the opposite way
to what happened before, the wind rushes in and an equal volume of water
runs out to make room.³³ Even so, when the thin blood that surges through
the limbs rushes backwards to the interior, straightway the stream of air
comes in with a rushing swell; but when the blood runs back the air
breathes out again in equal quantity.

101 (The dog) with its nostrils tracking out the fragments of the beast's
limbs, and the breath from their feet that they leave in the soft grass.³⁴

102 Thus all things have their share of breath and smell.

103 104 Thus have all things thought by fortune's will . . . And inasmuch
as the rarest things came together in their fall.

105 (The heart), dwelling in the sea of blood that runs in opposite
directions, where chiefly is what men call thought; for the blood round the
heart is the thought of men.

106 For the wisdom of men grows according to what is before them.

107 For out of these are all things formed and fitted together, and by
these do men think and feel pleasure and pain.

108 And just so far as they grow to be different, so far do different
thoughts ever present themselves to their minds (in dreams).³⁵

109 For it is with earth that we see Earth, and Water with water; by air we
see bright Air, by fire destroying Fire. By love do we see Love, and Hate
by grievous hate.

110 For if, supported on thy steadfast mind, thou wilt contemplate these
things with good intent and faultless care, then shalt thou have all these
things in abundance throughout thy life, and thou shalt gain many others
from them. For these things grow of themselves into thy heart, where is
each man's true nature. But if thou strivest after things of another kind,
as it is the way with men that ten thousand sorry matters blunt their
careful thoughts, soon will these things desert thee when the time comes
round; for they long to return once more to their own kind; for know that
all things have wisdom and a share of thought.

111 And thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defence against ills and
old age; since for thee alone will I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest
the violence of the weariless winds that arise to sweep the earth and waste
the fields; and again, when thou so desirest, thou shalt bring back their
blasts in return. Thou shalt cause for men a seasonable drought after the
dark rains, and again thou shalt change the summer drought for streams that
feed the trees as they pour down from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from
Hades the life of a dead man.

112 Friends, that inhabit the great town looking down on the yellow rock of
Akragas, up by the citadel, busy in goodly works, harbours of honour for
the stranger, men unskilled in meanness, all hail. I go about among you an
immortal god, no mortal now, honoured among all as is meet, crowned with
fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway, whenever I enter with these in
my train, both men and women, into the flourishing towns, is reverence done
me; they go after me in countless throngs; asking of me what is the way to
gain; some desiring oracles, while some, who for many a weary day have been
pierced by the grievous pangs of all manner of sickness, beg to hear from
me the word of healing.

113 But why do I harp on these things, as if it were any great matter that
I should surpass mortal, perishable men?

114 Friends, I know indeed that truth is in the words I shall utter, but it
is hard for men, and jealous are they of the assault of belief on their
souls.

115 There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods,³⁶
eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, that whenever one of the daemons,
whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his hands with
blood,³⁷ or followed strife and forsworn himself, he must wander thrice ten
thousand seasons from the abodes of the blessed, being born throughout the
time in all manners of mortal forms, changing one toilsome path of life for
another. For the mighty Air drives him into the Sea, and the Sea spews him
forth on the dry Earth; Earth tosses him into the beams of the blazing Sun,
and he flings him back to the eddies of Air. One takes him from the other,
and all reject him. One of these I now am, an exile and a wanderer from the
gods, for that I put my trust in insensate strife.

116 Charis loathes intolerable Necessity.

117 For I have been ere now a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a dumb
fish in the sea.

118 I wept and I wailed when I saw the unfamiliar land.

119 From what honour, from what a height of bliss have I fallen to go about
among mortals here on earth.

120 We have come under this roofed-in cave.³⁸

121 . . . the joyless land, where are Death and Wrath and troops of Dooms
besides; and parching Plagues and Rottennesses and Floods roam in darkness
over the meadow of Ate.

122 123 There were³⁹ Chthonie and far-sighted Heliope, bloody Discord and
gentle-visaged Harmony, Kallisto and Aischre, Speed and Tarrying, lovely
Truth and dark-haired Uncertainty, Birth and Decay, Sleep and Waking,
Movement and Immobility, crowned Majesty and Meanness, Silence and Voice.

124 Alas, O wretched race of mortals, sore unblessed: such are the strifes
and groanings from which ye have been born!

125 From living creatures he made them dead, changing their forms.

126 (The goddess) clothing them with a strange garment of flesh.⁴⁰

127 Among beasts they⁴¹ become lions that make their lair on the hills and
their couch on the ground; and laurels among trees with goodly foliage.

128 Nor had they⁴² any Ares for a god nor Kydoimos, no nor King Zeus nor
Kronos nor Poseidon, but Kypris the Queen . . . Her did they propitiate
with holy gifts, with painted figures⁴³ and perfumes of cunning fragrancy,
with offerings of pure myrrh and sweet-smelling frankincense, casting on
the ground libations of brown honey. And the altar did not reek with pure
bull's blood, but this was held in the greatest abomination among men, to
eat the goodly limbs after tearing out the life.

129 And there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all
manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for
whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all
the things that are, in ten, yea, twenty lifetimes of men.⁴⁴

130 For all things were tame and gentle to man, both beasts and birds, and
friendly feelings were kindled everywhere.

131 If ever, as regards the things of a day, immortal Muse, thou didst
deign to take thought for my endeavour, then stand by me once more as I
pray to thee, O Kalliopeia, as I utter a pure discourse concerning the
blessed gods.

132 Blessed is the man who has gained the riches of divine wisdom; wretched
he who has a dim opinion of the gods in his heart.

133 It is not possible for us to set God before our eyes, or to lay hold of
him with our hands, which is the broadest way of persuasion that leads into
the heart of man.

134 For he is not furnished with a human head on his body, two branches do
not sprout from his shoulders, he has no feet, no swift knees, nor hairy
parts; but he is only a sacred and unutterable mind flashing through the
whole world with rapid thoughts.

135 (This is not lawful for some and unlawful for others) but the law for
all extends everywhere, through the wide-ruling air and the infinite light
of heaven.

136 Will ye not cease from this ill-sounding slaughter? See ye not that ye
are devouring one another in the thoughtlessness of your hearts ?

137 And the father lifts up his own son in a changed form and slays him
with a prayer. Infatuated fool! And they run up to the sacrificers, begging
mercy, while he, deaf to their cries, slaughters them in his halls and gets
ready the evil feast. In like manner does the son seize his father, and
children their mother, tear out their life and eat the kindred flesh.

138 Draining their life with bronze.⁴⁵

139 Ah, woe is me that the pitiless day of death did not destroy me ere
ever I wrought evil deeds of devouring with my lips!

140 Abstain wholly from laurel leaves.

141 Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!

142 Him will the roofed palace of aigis-bearing Zeus never rejoice, nor yet
the house of . . .

143 Wash your hands, cutting the water from the five springs in the
unyielding bronze.

144 Fast from wickedness!

145 Therefore are ye distraught by grievous wickednesses, and will not
unburden your souls of wretched sorrows.

146 147 But, at the last, they appear among mortal men as prophets,
song-writers, physicians, and princes; and thence they rise up as gods
exalted in honour, sharing the hearth of the other gods and the same table,
free from human woes, safe from destiny, and incapable of hurt.

148 . . . Earth that envelops the man.

Notes

[1] Diog. viii. 77 (R. P. 162); Souidas s.v. Ἐμπεδοκλῆς· καὶ ἔγραψε δι'
  ἐπῶν Περὶ φύσεως τῶν ὄντων βιβλία β´, καὶ ἔστιν ἔπη ὡς δισχίλια. It
  hardly seems likely, however, that the Katharmoi extended to 3000 verses,
  so Diels proposes to read πάντα τρισχίλια for πεντακισχίλια in Diogenes.
  See Diels, "Über die Gedichte des Empedokles" (Berl. Sitzb. 1898, pp. 396
  sqq.).
[2] Hieronymos of Rhodes declared (Diog. viii. 58) that he had met with
  forty-three tragedies by Empedokles; but see Stein, pp. 5 sqq. The poem
  on the Persian wars, which he also refers to (Diog. viii. 57), seems to
  have arisen from a corruption in the text of Arist. Probl. 929 b 16,
  where Bekker reads ἐν τοῖς Περσικοῖς. The same passage, however, is said
  to occur ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς, in Meteor. Δ, 4. 382 a 1, though there too E
  has Περσικοῖς.
[3] The MSS. of Sextus have ζωῆσι βίου. Diels reads ζωῆς ἰδίου. I still
  prefer Scaliger's ζωῆς ἀβίου. Cf. fr. 15, τὸ δὴ βίοτον καλέουσι.
[4] The sense of taste, not speech.
[5] Clement's reading διατμηθέντος may perhaps stand if we take λόγοιο as
  "discourse," "argument" (cf. διαιρεῖν). Diels conjectures διασσηθέντος
  and renders "when their speech has penetrated the sieve of thy mind."
[6] The four "elements" are introduced under mythological names, for which
  see below, p. 229, n. 3.
[7] Plutarch (Adv. Col. 1112 a) says that φύσις here means "birth," as is
  shown by its opposition to death, and all interpreters (including myself)
  have hitherto followed him. On the other hand, the fragment clearly deals
  with θνητά, and Empedokles cannot have said that there was no death of
  mortal things. The θνητά are just perishable combinations of the four
  elements (cf. fr. 35, 11), and the point is that they are constantly
  coming into being and passing away. It is, therefore, impossible, as
  pointed out by Prof. Lovejoy (Philosophical Review, xviii. 371 sqq.), to
  take θανάτοιο τελευτή as equivalent to θάνατος here, and it may equally
  well mean "end of death." Now Aristotle, in a passage where he is
  carefully distinguishing the various senses of φύσις (Met. Δ, 4. 1015 a
  1), quotes this very verse as an illustration of the meaning ἡ τῶν ὄντων
  οὐσία (see further in the Appendix). I understand the words ἐπὶ τοῖσδ' as
  equivalent to ἐπὶ τοῖς θνητοῖς, and I take the meaning of the fragment to
  be that temporary compounds or combinations like flesh, bone, etc., have
  no φύσις of their own. Only the four "immortal" elements have a φύσις
  which does not pass away. This interpretation is confirmed by the way
  Diogenes of Apollonia speaks in denying the ultimate reality of the
  "elements." He says (fr. 2) εἰ τούτων τι ἦν ἕτερον τοῦ ἑτέρου, ἕτερον ὂν
  τῇ ἰδίᾳ φύσει, i.e. he says the elements are θνητά.
[8] I understand this fragment to deal with the "elements," of which φῶς
  and αἰθήρ (Fire and Air) are taken as examples. These are not subject to
  birth and death, like the θνητά of fr. 8, and the application of the
  terms to them is as much a matter of convention as the application of the
  term φύσις to the perishable combinations which are subject to birth and
  death. The text is corrupt in Plutarch, and has two or three lacunae, but
  the usual reconstructions depart too far from the tradition. I suggest
  the following, which has at least the merit of not requiring the
  alteration of a single letter:
    οἱ δ' ὅτε μὲν κατὰ φῶτα μιγὲν φῶς αἰθέρι [κύρσῃ], ἢ κατὰ θηρῶν
    ἀγροτέρων γένος ἢ κατὰ θάμνων ἠὲ κατ' οἰωνῶν, τότε μὲν τὸ ν[έμουσι]
    γενέσθαι· εὖτε δ' ἀποκρινθῶσι, τάδ' αὖ δυσδαίμονα πότμον ᾗ θέμις [οὐ]
    καλέουσι, νόμῳ δ' ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός.
I understand τάδε in the fourth verse as referring to the "elements" (e.g.
  Fire and Air), which cannot properly be said to be born or to die as
  their combinations do. I take it that Fire and Air are specially
  mentioned because the life of animate creatures depends on them. The
  earth and water would never of themselves produce a living being.
[9] Reading μετὰ τοῖσιν. I still think, however, that Knatz's
  palaeographically admirable conjuncture μετὰ θεοῖσιν (i.e. among the
  elements) deserves consideration.
[10] Keeping ἄλλοτε with Diels.
[11] Reading ἄμβροτα δ' ὅσσ' ἴδει with Diels. For the word ἶδος, cf. frs.
  62, 5; 73, 2. The reference is to the moon, etc., which are made of
  solidified Air, and receive their light from the fiery hemisphere. See
  below, §113.
[12] Reading with Blass (Jahrb. f. kl. Phil., 1883, p. 19) and Diels:
    οὕτω μή σ' ἀπάτη φρένα καινύτω κτλ.
Cf. Hesychios: καινύτω· νικάτω. This is practically what the MSS. of
  Simplicius give, and Hesychios has many Empedoklean glosses.
[13] The "goddess" is, of course, the Muse. Cf. fr. 5.
[14] The word μονίῃ, if it is right, cannot mean "rest," but only solitude.
  There is no reason for altering περιηγέι, though Simplicius has
  περιγηθέι.
[15] The masculine κολλήσας shows that the subject cannot have been
  Φιλότης; and Karsten was doubtless right in believing that Empedokles
  introduced the simile of a baker here. It is in his manner to take
  illustrations from human arts.
[16] We see clearly from this fragment how the ἀθάνατα (the elements) are
  identified with the "unmixed," and the θνητά (the perishable
  combinations) with the "mixed."
[17] Come, I shall now tell thee first of all the beginning of the sun,46
  and the sources from which have sprung all the things we now behold, the
  earth and the billowy sea, the damp vapour and the Titan air that binds
  his circle fast round all things.
[18] The lines are referred to Xenophanes by Aristotle, who quotes them De
  caelo, B, 13. 294 a 21. See above, Chap. II. p. 125, n. 3.
[19] I translate Diels's conjecture ἀπεστέγασεν ... ἔστ' ἃν ἴῃ.
[20] See p. 177, n. 1.
[21] Reading στείροις with Diels.
[22] Retaining εἴδεος (i.e. ἴδεος), which is read in the MSS. of
  Simplicius. Cf. above, p. 209, n. 1.
[23] That Empedokles regarded milk as putrefied blood is stated by
  Aristotle (De gen. an. Δ, 8. 777 a 7). The word πύον means pus. There may
  be a pun on πυός "beestings," but that has its vowel long.
[24] Said of women in reference to births in the seventh and ninth months.
[25] Of the membrane round the foetus.
[26] Reading ἴδεα ποιπνύουσα with Diels.
[27] This seems clearly to be the meaning of ἠήρ here. Cf. fr. 100, v. 13,
  and p. 228, n. 2.
[28] See Beare, p. 16, n. 1, where Plato, Tim. 45 b 4 (τοῦ πυρὸς ὅσον τὸ
  μὲν κάειν οὐκ ἔσχεν, τὸ δὲ παρέχειν φῶς ἥμερον) is aptly quoted.
[29] On this fragment see Clara E. Millerd, On the Interpretation of
  Empedocles, p. 38, n. 3.
[30] On fr. 99, see Beare, p. 96, n. 1.
[31] This passage is quoted by Aristotle (De respir, 473 b 9), who makes
  the curious mistake of taking ῥινῶν for the genitive of ῥίς instead of
  ῥινός The locus classicus on the klepsydra is Probl. 914 b 9 sqq. (where
  read αὐλοῦ for ἄλλου b 12). It was a metal vessel with a narrow neck
  αὐλός at the top and with a sort of strainer ἠθμός pierced with holes
  (τρήματα, τρυπήματα) at the bottom. The passage in the Problems just
  referred to attributes this theory of the phenomenon to Anaxagoras, and
  we shall see that he also made use of the experiment (§ 131).
[32] The MSS. of Aristotle have ἀέρος here, though the air is called αἰθήρ
  in four other verses of the fragment (vv. 5, 7, 18, 24.). It is easier to
  suppose that Aristotle made a slip in this one verse than that Empedokles
  should use ἀήρ in a sense he elsewhere avoids (p. 228, n. 2), and this
  suspicion is confirmed by the form ἀέρος instead of ἠέρος. I think,
  therefore, that Stein was right in reading αἰθέρος.
[33] This seems to be the experiment described in Probl. 914 b 26, ἐὰν γάρ
  τις αὐτῆς (τῆς κλεψύδρας) αὐτὴν τὴν κωδίαν ἐμπλήσας ὕδατος, ἐπιλαβὼν τὸν
  αὐλόν, καταστρέψῃ ἐπὶ τὸν αὐλόν, οὐ φέρεται τὸ ὕδωρ διὰ τοῦ αὐλοῦ ἐπὶ
  στόμα. ἀνοιχθέντος δὲ τοῦ στόματος, οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐκρεῖ κατὰ τὸν αὐλόν, ἀλλὰ
  μικροτέρῳ ὕστερον, ὡς οὐκ ὂν ἐπὶ τῷ στόματι τοῦ αὐλοῦ, ἀλλ' ὕστερον διὰ
  τούτου φερόμενον ἀνοιχθέντος. The epithet δυσηχέος is best explained as a
  reference to the ἐρυγμός or "belching" referred to at 915 a 7. Any one
  can produce this effect with a water-bottle. If it were not for this
  epithet, it would be tempting to read ἠθμοῖο for ἰσθμοῖο, and that is
  actually the reading of a few MSS.
[34] On fr. 101, see Beare, p. 135, n. 2.
[35] That this refers to dreams, we learn from Simpl. De an. p. 202, 30.
[36] Necessity is an Orphic personage, and Gorgias, the disciple of
  Empedokles, says θεῶν βουλεύμασιν καὶ ἀνάγκης ψηφίσμασιν (Hel. 6).
[37] I retain φόνῳ v. 3 (so too Diels). The first word of v. 4 has been
  lost. Diels suggests Νείκεϊ, which may well be right and takes ἁμαρτήσας
  as equivalent to ὁμαρτήσας. I have translated accordingly.
[38] According to Porphyry (De antro Nymph. 8), these words were spoken by
  the "powers" who conduct the soul into the world (ψυχοπομποὶ δυνάμεις).
  The "cave" is not originally Platonic but Orphic.
[39] This passage is closely modelled on the Catalogue of Nymphs in Iliad
  xviii. 39 sqq. Chthonie is found already in Pherekydes (Diog. i. 119).
[40] I have retained ἀλλόγνωτι though it is a little hard to interpret. On
  the history of the Orphic chiton in gnostic imagery see Bernays, Theophr.
  Schr. n. 9. It was identified with the coat of skins made by God for
  Adam. Cf. also Shakespeare's "muddy vesture of decay."
[41] This is the best μετοίκησις (Ael. Nat. an. xii. 7).
[42] The dwellers in the Golden Age.
[43] The MSS. of Porphyry have γραπτοῖς τε ζώοισι The emendation of Bernays
  (adopted in R. P.) does not convince me. I venture to suggest μακτοῖς on
  the strength of the story related by Favorinus (ap. Diog. viii. 53) as to
  the bloodless sacrifice offered by Empedokles at Olympia.
[44] These lines were already referred to Pythagoras by Timaios (Diog.
  viii. 54). As we are told (Diog. ib.) that some referred the verses to
  Parmenides, it is clear that no name was given.
[45] On frs. 138 and 143 see Vahlen on Arist. Poet. 21. 1457 b 13, and
  Diels in Hermes, xv. p. 173.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was
published before January 1, 1923.

The author died in 1928, so this work is also in the public domain in
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Laws (Plato)/Book I

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: An Athenian Stranger, Cleinias (a Cretan),
Megillus (a Lacedaemonian).

ATHENIAN: Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the
author of your laws?

CLEINIAS: A God, Stranger; in very truth a God: among us Cretans he is said
to have been Zeus, but in Lacedaemon, whence our friend here comes, I
believe they would say that Apollo is their lawgiver: would they not,
Megillus?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And do you, Cleinias, believe, as Homer tells, that every ninth
year Minos went to converse with his Olympian sire, and was inspired by him
to make laws for your cities?

CLEINIAS: Yes, that is our tradition; and there was Rhadamanthus, a brother
of his, with whose name you are familiar; he is reputed to have been the
justest of men, and we Cretans are of opinion that he earned this
reputation from his righteous administration of justice when he was alive.

ATHENIAN: Yes, and a noble reputation it was, worthy of a son of Zeus. As
you and Megillus have been trained in these institutions, I dare say that
you will not be unwilling to give an account of your government and laws;
on our way we can pass the time pleasantly in talking about them, for I am
told that the distance from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus is
considerable; and doubtless there are shady places under the lofty trees,
which will protect us from this scorching sun. Being no longer young, we
may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the whole journey without
difficulty, beguiling the time by conversation.

CLEINIAS: Yes, Stranger, and if we proceed onward we shall come to groves
of cypresses, which are of rare height and beauty, and there are green
meadows, in which we may repose and converse.

ATHENIAN: Very good.

CLEINIAS: Very good, indeed; and still better when we see them; let us move
on cheerily.

ATHENIAN: I am willing.—And first, I want to know why the law has ordained
that you shall have common meals and gymnastic exercises, and wear arms.

CLEINIAS: I think, Stranger, that the aim of our institutions is easily
intelligible to any one. Look at the character of our country: Crete is not
like Thessaly, a large plain; and for this reason they have horsemen in
Thessaly, and we have runners—the inequality of the ground in our country
is more adapted to locomotion on foot; but then, if you have runners you
must have light arms,—no one can carry a heavy weight when running, and
bows and arrows are convenient because they are light. Now all these
regulations have been made with a view to war, and the legislator appears
to me to have looked to this in all his arrangements:—the common meals, if
I am not mistaken, were instituted by him for a similar reason, because he
saw that while they are in the field the citizens are by the nature of the
case compelled to take their meals together for the sake of mutual
protection. He seems to me to have thought the world foolish in not
understanding that all men are always at war with one another; and if in
war there ought to be common meals and certain persons regularly appointed
under others to protect an army, they should be continued in peace. For
what men in general term peace would be said by him to be only a name; in
reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other, not
indeed proclaimed by heralds, but everlasting. And if you look closely, you
will find that this was the intention of the Cretan legislator; all
institutions, private as well as public, were arranged by him with a view
to war; in giving them he was under the impression that no possessions or
institutions are of any value to him who is defeated in battle; for all the
good things of the conquered pass into the hands of the conquerors.

ATHENIAN: You appear to me, Stranger, to have been thoroughly trained in
the Cretan institutions, and to be well informed about them; will you tell
me a little more explicitly what is the principle of government which you
would lay down? You seem to imagine that a well-governed state ought to be
so ordered as to conquer all other states in war: am I right in supposing
this to be your meaning?

CLEINIAS: Certainly; and our Lacedaemonian friend, if I am not mistaken,
will agree with me.

MEGILLUS: Why, my good friend, how could any Lacedaemonian say anything
else?

ATHENIAN: And is what you say applicable only to states, or also to
villages?

CLEINIAS: To both alike.

ATHENIAN: The case is the same?

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: And in the village will there be the same war of family against
family, and of individual against individual?

CLEINIAS: The same.

ATHENIAN: And should each man conceive himself to be his own enemy:—what
shall we say?

CLEINIAS: O Athenian Stranger—inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, for
you seem to deserve rather to be named after the goddess herself, because
you go back to first principles,—you have thrown a light upon the argument,
and will now be better able to understand what I was just saying,—that all
men are publicly one another's enemies, and each man privately his own.

(ATHENIAN: My good sir, what do you mean?)—

CLEINIAS:...Moreover, there is a victory and defeat—the first and best of
victories, the lowest and worst of defeats—which each man gains or sustains
at the hands, not of another, but of himself; this shows that there is a
war against ourselves going on within every one of us.

ATHENIAN: Let us now reverse the order of the argument: Seeing that every
individual is either his own superior or his own inferior, may we say that
there is the same principle in the house, the village, and the state?

CLEINIAS: You mean that in each of them there is a principle of superiority
or inferiority to self?

ATHENIAN: Yes.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right in asking the question, for there certainly
is such a principle, and above all in states; and the state in which the
better citizens win a victory over the mob and over the inferior classes
may be truly said to be better than itself, and may be justly praised,
where such a victory is gained, or censured in the opposite case.

ATHENIAN: Whether the better is ever really conquered by the worse, is a
question which requires more discussion, and may be therefore left for the
present. But I now quite understand your meaning when you say that citizens
who are of the same race and live in the same cities may unjustly conspire,
and having the superiority in numbers may overcome and enslave the few
just; and when they prevail, the state may be truly called its own inferior
and therefore bad; and when they are defeated, its own superior and
therefore good.

CLEINIAS: Your remark, Stranger, is a paradox, and yet we cannot possibly
deny it.

ATHENIAN: Here is another case for consideration;—in a family there may be
several brothers, who are the offspring of a single pair; very possibly the
majority of them may be unjust, and the just may be in a minority.

CLEINIAS: Very possibly.

ATHENIAN: And you and I ought not to raise a question of words as to
whether this family and household are rightly said to be superior when they
conquer, and inferior when they are conquered; for we are not now
considering what may or may not be the proper or customary way of speaking,
but we are considering the natural principles of right and wrong in laws.

CLEINIAS: What you say, Stranger, is most true.

MEGILLUS: Quite excellent, in my opinion, as far as we have gone.

ATHENIAN: Again; might there not be a judge over these brethren, of whom we
were speaking?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Now, which would be the better judge—one who destroyed the bad
and appointed the good to govern themselves; or one who, while allowing the
good to govern, let the bad live, and made them voluntarily submit? Or
third, I suppose, in the scale of excellence might be placed a judge, who,
finding the family distracted, not only did not destroy any one, but
reconciled them to one another for ever after, and gave them laws which
they mutually observed, and was able to keep them friends.

CLEINIAS: The last would be by far the best sort of judge and legislator.

ATHENIAN: And yet the aim of all the laws which he gave would be the
reverse of war.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And will he who constitutes the state and orders the life of man
have in view external war, or that kind of intestine war called civil,
which no one, if he could prevent, would like to have occurring in his own
state; and when occurring, every one would wish to be quit of as soon as
possible?

CLEINIAS: He would have the latter chiefly in view.

ATHENIAN: And would he prefer that this civil war should be terminated by
the destruction of one of the parties, and by the victory of the other, or
that peace and friendship should be re-established, and that, being
reconciled, they should give their attention to foreign enemies?

CLEINIAS: Every one would desire the latter in the case of his own state.

ATHENIAN: And would not that also be the desire of the legislator?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And would not every one always make laws for the sake of the
best?

CLEINIAS: To be sure.

ATHENIAN: But war, whether external or civil, is not the best, and the need
of either is to be deprecated; but peace with one another, and good will,
are best. Nor is the victory of the state over itself to be regarded as a
really good thing, but as a necessity; a man might as well say that the
body was in the best state when sick and purged by medicine, forgetting
that there is also a state of the body which needs no purge. And in like
manner no one can be a true statesman, whether he aims at the happiness of
the individual or state, who looks only, or first of all, to external
warfare; nor will he ever be a sound legislator who orders peace for the
sake of war, and not war for the sake of peace.

CLEINIAS: I suppose that there is truth, Stranger, in that remark of yours;
and yet I am greatly mistaken if war is not the entire aim and object of
our own institutions, and also of the Lacedaemonian.

ATHENIAN: I dare say; but there is no reason why we should rudely quarrel
with one another about your legislators, instead of gently questioning
them, seeing that both we and they are equally in earnest. Please follow me
and the argument closely:—And first I will put forward Tyrtaeus, an
Athenian by birth, but also a Spartan citizen, who of all men was most
eager about war: Well, he says,

'I sing not, I care not, about any man,

even if he were the richest of men, and possessed every good (and then he
gives a whole list of them), if he be not at all times a brave warrior.' I
imagine that you, too, must have heard his poems; our Lacedaemonian friend
has probably heard more than enough of them.

MEGILLUS: Very true.

CLEINIAS: And they have found their way from Lacedaemon to Crete.

ATHENIAN: Come now and let us all join in asking this question of Tyrtaeus:
O most divine poet, we will say to him, the excellent praise which you have
bestowed on those who excel in war sufficiently proves that you are wise
and good, and I and Megillus and Cleinias of Cnosus do, as I believe,
entirely agree with you. But we should like to be quite sure that we are
speaking of the same men; tell us, then, do you agree with us in thinking
that there are two kinds of war; or what would you say? A far inferior man
to Tyrtaeus would have no difficulty in replying quite truly, that war is
of two kinds,—one which is universally called civil war, and is, as we were
just now saying, of all wars the worst; the other, as we should all admit,
in which we fall out with other nations who are of a different race, is a
far milder form of warfare.

CLEINIAS: Certainly, far milder.

ATHENIAN: Well, now, when you praise and blame war in this high-flown
strain, whom are you praising or blaming, and to which kind of war are you
referring? I suppose that you must mean foreign war, if I am to judge from
expressions of yours in which you say that you abominate those

'Who refuse to look upon fields of blood, and will not draw near and strike
at their enemies.'

And we shall naturally go on to say to him,—You, Tyrtaeus, as it seems,
praise those who distinguish themselves in external and foreign war; and he
must admit this.

CLEINIAS: Evidently.

ATHENIAN: They are good; but we say that there are still better men whose
virtue is displayed in the greatest of all battles. And we too have a poet
whom we summon as a witness, Theognis, citizen of Megara in Sicily:

'Cyrnus,' he says, 'he who is faithful in a civil broil is worth his weight
in gold and silver.'

And such an one is far better, as we affirm, than the other in a more
difficult kind of war, much in the same degree as justice and temperance
and wisdom, when united with courage, are better than courage only; for a
man cannot be faithful and good in civil strife without having all virtue.
But in the war of which Tyrtaeus speaks, many a mercenary soldier will take
his stand and be ready to die at his post, and yet they are generally and
almost without exception insolent, unjust, violent men, and the most
senseless of human beings. You will ask what the conclusion is, and what I
am seeking to prove: I maintain that the divine legislator of Crete, like
any other who is worthy of consideration, will always and above all things
in making laws have regard to the greatest virtue; which, according to
Theognis, is loyalty in the hour of danger, and may be truly called perfect
justice. Whereas, that virtue which Tyrtaeus highly praises is well enough,
and was praised by the poet at the right time, yet in place and dignity may
be said to be only fourth rate (i.e., it ranks after justice, temperance,
and wisdom.).

CLEINIAS: Stranger, we are degrading our inspired lawgiver to a rank which
is far beneath him.

ATHENIAN: Nay, I think that we degrade not him but ourselves, if we imagine
that Lycurgus and Minos laid down laws both in Lacedaemon and Crete mainly
with a view to war.

CLEINIAS: What ought we to say then?

ATHENIAN: What truth and what justice require of us, if I am not mistaken,
when speaking in behalf of divine excellence;—that the legislator when
making his laws had in view not a part only, and this the lowest part of
virtue, but all virtue, and that he devised classes of laws answering to
the kinds of virtue; not in the way in which modern inventors of laws make
the classes, for they only investigate and offer laws whenever a want is
felt, and one man has a class of laws about allotments and heiresses,
another about assaults; others about ten thousand other such matters. But
we maintain that the right way of examining into laws is to proceed as we
have now done, and I admired the spirit of your exposition; for you were
quite right in beginning with virtue, and saying that this was the aim of
the giver of the law, but I thought that you went wrong when you added that
all his legislation had a view only to a part, and the least part of
virtue, and this called forth my subsequent remarks. Will you allow me then
to explain how I should have liked to have heard you expound the matter?

CLEINIAS: By all means.

ATHENIAN: You ought to have said, Stranger—The Cretan laws are with reason
famous among the Hellenes; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to
make those who use them happy; and they confer every sort of good. Now
goods are of two kinds: there are human and there are divine goods, and the
human hang upon the divine; and the state which attains the greater, at the
same time acquires the less, or, not having the greater, has neither. Of
the lesser goods the first is health, the second beauty, the third
strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and
the fourth is wealth, not the blind god (Pluto), but one who is keen of
sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion. For wisdom is chief and
leader of the divine class of goods, and next follows temperance; and from
the union of these two with courage springs justice, and fourth in the
scale of virtue is courage. All these naturally take precedence of the
other goods, and this is the order in which the legislator must place them,
and after them he will enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens
with a view to these, the human looking to the divine, and the divine
looking to their leader mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to
contracts of marriage which they make one with another, and then to the
procreation and education of children, both male and female; the duty of
the lawgiver will be to take charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and
at every time of life, and to give them punishments and rewards; and in
reference to all their intercourse with one another, he ought to consider
their pains and pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their
passions; he should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them
rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and
terror, and the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of
misfortune, and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the
experiences which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the
opposite of these; in all these states he should determine and teach what
is the good and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the
legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in what
way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and
dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary: he should see
how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice is
found or is wanting in their several dealings with one another; and honour
those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties on those who disobey,
until the round of civil life is ended, and the time has come for the
consideration of the proper funeral rites and honours of the dead. And the
lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these
things,—some who walk by intelligence, others by true opinion only, and
then mind will bind together all his ordinances and show them to be in
harmony with temperance and justice, and not with wealth or ambition. This
is the spirit, Stranger, in which I was and am desirous that you should
pursue the subject. And I want to know the nature of all these things, and
how they are arranged in the laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those
of the Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus gave; and how the order of
them is discovered to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by
study or habit, although they are far from being self-evident to the rest
of mankind like ourselves.

CLEINIAS: How shall we proceed, Stranger?

ATHENIAN: I think that we must begin again as before, and first consider
the habit of courage; and then we will go on and discuss another and then
another form of virtue, if you please. In this way we shall have a model of
the whole; and with these and similar discourses we will beguile the way.
And when we have gone through all the virtues, we will show, by the grace
of God, that the institutions of which I was speaking look to virtue.

MEGILLUS: Very good; and suppose that you first criticize this praiser of
Zeus and the laws of Crete.

ATHENIAN: I will try to criticize you and myself, as well as him, for the
argument is a common concern. Tell me,—were not first the syssitia, and
secondly the gymnasia, invented by your legislator with a view to war?

MEGILLUS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: And what comes third, and what fourth? For that, I think, is the
sort of enumeration which ought to be made of the remaining parts of
virtue, no matter whether you call them parts or what their name is,
provided the meaning is clear.

MEGILLUS: Then I, or any other Lacedaemonian, would reply that hunting is
third in order.

ATHENIAN: Let us see if we can discover what comes fourth and fifth.

MEGILLUS: I think that I can get as far as the fourth head, which is the
frequent endurance of pain, exhibited among us Spartans in certain
hand-to-hand fights; also in stealing with the prospect of getting a good
beating; there is, too, the so-called Crypteia, or secret service, in which
wonderful endurance is shown,—our people wander over the whole country by
day and by night, and even in winter have not a shoe to their foot, and are
without beds to lie upon, and have to attend upon themselves. Marvellous,
too, is the endurance which our citizens show in their naked exercises,
contending against the violent summer heat; and there are many similar
practices, to speak of which in detail would be endless.

ATHENIAN: Excellent, O Lacedaemonian Stranger. But how ought we to define
courage? Is it to be regarded only as a combat against fears and pains, or
also against desires and pleasures, and against flatteries; which exercise
such a tremendous power, that they make the hearts even of respectable
citizens to melt like wax?

MEGILLUS: I should say the latter.

ATHENIAN: In what preceded, as you will remember, our Cnosian friend was
speaking of a man or a city being inferior to themselves:—Were you not,
Cleinias?

CLEINIAS: I was.

ATHENIAN: Now, which is in the truest sense inferior, the man who is
overcome by pleasure or by pain?

CLEINIAS: I should say the man who is overcome by pleasure; for all men
deem him to be inferior in a more disgraceful sense, than the other who is
overcome by pain.

ATHENIAN: But surely the lawgivers of Crete and Lacedaemon have not
legislated for a courage which is lame of one leg, able only to meet
attacks which come from the left, but impotent against the insidious
flatteries which come from the right?

CLEINIAS: Able to meet both, I should say.

ATHENIAN: Then let me once more ask, what institutions have you in either
of your states which give a taste of pleasures, and do not avoid them any
more than they avoid pains; but which set a person in the midst of them,
and compel or induce him by the prospect of reward to get the better of
them? Where is an ordinance about pleasure similar to that about pain to be
found in your laws? Tell me what there is of this nature among you:—What is
there which makes your citizen equally brave against pleasure and pain,
conquering what they ought to conquer, and superior to the enemies who are
most dangerous and nearest home?

MEGILLUS: I was able to tell you, Stranger, many laws which were directed
against pain; but I do not know that I can point out any great or obvious
examples of similar institutions which are concerned with pleasure; there
are some lesser provisions, however, which I might mention.

CLEINIAS: Neither can I show anything of that sort which is at all equally
prominent in the Cretan laws.

ATHENIAN: No wonder, my dear friends; and if, as is very likely, in our
search after the true and good, one of us may have to censure the laws of
the others, we must not be offended, but take kindly what another says.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right, Athenian Stranger, and we will do as you
say.

ATHENIAN: At our time of life, Cleinias, there should be no feeling of
irritation.

CLEINIAS: Certainly not.

ATHENIAN: I will not at present determine whether he who censures the
Cretan or Lacedaemonian polities is right or wrong. But I believe that I
can tell better than either of you what the many say about them. For
assuming that you have reasonably good laws, one of the best of them will
be the law forbidding any young men to enquire which of them are right or
wrong; but with one mouth and one voice they must all agree that the laws
are all good, for they came from God; and any one who says the contrary is
not to be listened to. But an old man who remarks any defect in your laws
may communicate his observation to a ruler or to an equal in years when no
young man is present.

CLEINIAS: Exactly so, Stranger; and like a diviner, although not there at
the time, you seem to me quite to have hit the meaning of the legislator,
and to say what is most true.

ATHENIAN: As there are no young men present, and the legislator has given
old men free licence, there will be no impropriety in our discussing these
very matters now that we are alone.

CLEINIAS: True. And therefore you may be as free as you like in your
censure of our laws, for there is no discredit in knowing what is wrong; he
who receives what is said in a generous and friendly spirit will be all the
better for it.

ATHENIAN: Very good; however, I am not going to say anything against your
laws until to the best of my ability I have examined them, but I am going
to raise doubts about them. For you are the only people known to us,
whether Greek or barbarian, whom the legislator commanded to eschew all
great pleasures and amusements and never to touch them; whereas in the
matter of pains or fears which we have just been discussing, he thought
that they who from infancy had always avoided pains and fears and sorrows,
when they were compelled to face them would run away from those who were
hardened in them, and would become their subjects. Now the legislator ought
to have considered that this was equally true of pleasure; he should have
said to himself, that if our citizens are from their youth upward
unacquainted with the greatest pleasures, and unused to endure amid the
temptations of pleasure, and are not disciplined to refrain from all things
evil, the sweet feeling of pleasure will overcome them just as fear would
overcome the former class; and in another, and even a worse manner, they
will be the slaves of those who are able to endure amid pleasures, and have
had the opportunity of enjoying them, they being often the worst of
mankind. One half of their souls will be a slave, the other half free; and
they will not be worthy to be called in the true sense men and freemen.
Tell me whether you assent to my words?

CLEINIAS: On first hearing, what you say appears to be the truth; but to be
hasty in coming to a conclusion about such important matters would be very
childish and simple.

ATHENIAN: Suppose, Cleinias and Megillus, that we consider the virtue which
follows next of those which we intended to discuss (for after courage comes
temperance), what institutions shall we find relating to temperance, either
in Crete or Lacedaemon, which, like your military institutions, differ from
those of any ordinary state.

MEGILLUS: That is not an easy question to answer; still I should say that
the common meals and gymnastic exercises have been excellently devised for
the promotion both of temperance and courage.

ATHENIAN: There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to states,
in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no dispute about
them. As in the human body, the regimen which does good in one way does
harm in another; and we can hardly say that any one course of treatment is
adapted to a particular constitution. Now the gymnasia and common meals do
a great deal of good, and yet they are a source of evil in civil troubles;
as is shown in the case of the Milesian, and Boeotian, and Thurian youth,
among whom these institutions seem always to have had a tendency to degrade
the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man,
but of the beasts. The charge may be fairly brought against your cities
above all others, and is true also of most other states which especially
cultivate gymnastics. Whether such matters are to be regarded jestingly or
seriously, I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises
out of the intercourse between men and women; but that the intercourse of
men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the
bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always
accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they
wanted to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the
practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver. Leaving
the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns almost
entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals: these are
two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from them where and
when, and as much as he ought, is happy; and this holds of men and
animals—of individuals as well as states; and he who indulges in them
ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of happy.

MEGILLUS: I admit, Stranger, that your words are well spoken, and I hardly
know what to say in answer to you; but still I think that the Spartan
lawgiver was quite right in forbidding pleasure. Of the Cretan laws, I
shall leave the defence to my Cnosian friend. But the laws of Sparta, in as
far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be the best in the world;
for that which leads mankind in general into the wildest pleasure and
licence, and every other folly, the law has clean driven out; and neither
in the country nor in towns which are under the control of Sparta, will you
find revelries and the many incitements of every kind of pleasure which
accompany them; and any one who meets a drunken and disorderly person, will
immediately have him most severely punished, and will not let him off on
any pretence, not even at the time of a Dionysiac festival; although I have
remarked that this may happen at your performances 'on the cart,' as they
are called; and among our Tarentine colonists I have seen the whole city
drunk at a Dionysiac festival; but nothing of the sort happens among us.

ATHENIAN: O Lacedaemonian Stranger, these festivities are praiseworthy
where there is a spirit of endurance, but are very senseless when they are
under no regulations. In order to retaliate, an Athenian has only to point
out the licence which exists among your women. To all such accusations,
whether they are brought against the Tarentines, or us, or you, there is
one answer which exonerates the practice in question from impropriety. When
a stranger expresses wonder at the singularity of what he sees, any
inhabitant will naturally answer him:—Wonder not, O stranger; this is our
custom, and you may very likely have some other custom about the same
things. Now we are speaking, my friends, not about men in general, but
about the merits and defects of the lawgivers themselves. Let us then
discourse a little more at length about intoxication, which is a very
important subject, and will seriously task the discrimination of the
legislator. I am not speaking of drinking, or not drinking, wine at all,
but of intoxication. Are we to follow the custom of the Scythians, and
Persians, and Carthaginians, and Celts, and Iberians, and Thracians, who
are all warlike nations, or that of your countrymen, for they, as you say,
altogether abstain? But the Scythians and Thracians, both men and women,
drink unmixed wine, which they pour on their garments, and this they think
a happy and glorious institution. The Persians, again, are much given to
other practices of luxury which you reject, but they have more moderation
in them than the Thracians and Scythians.

MEGILLUS: O best of men, we have only to take arms into our hands, and we
send all these nations flying before us.

ATHENIAN: Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as there
always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be given, and
therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle affords more than
a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of institutions. For when the
greater states conquer and enslave the lesser, as the Syracusans have done
the Locrians, who appear to be the best-governed people in their part of
the world, or as the Athenians have done the Ceans (and there are ten
thousand other instances of the same sort of thing), all this is not to the
point; let us endeavour rather to form a conclusion about each institution
in itself and say nothing, at present, of victories and defeats. Let us
only say that such and such a custom is honourable, and another not. And
first permit me to tell you how good and bad are to be estimated in
reference to these very matters.

MEGILLUS: How do you mean?

ATHENIAN: All those who are ready at a moment's notice to praise or censure
any practice which is matter of discussion, seem to me to proceed in a
wrong way. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean:—You may suppose
a person to be praising wheat as a good kind of food, whereupon another
person instantly blames wheat, without ever enquiring into its effect or
use, or in what way, or to whom, or with what, or in what state and how,
wheat is to be given. And that is just what we are doing in this
discussion. At the very mention of the word intoxication, one side is ready
with their praises and the other with their censures; which is absurd. For
either side adduce their witnesses and approvers, and some of us think that
we speak with authority because we have many witnesses; and others because
they see those who abstain conquering in battle, and this again is disputed
by us. Now I cannot say that I shall be satisfied, if we go on discussing
each of the remaining laws in the same way. And about this very point of
intoxication I should like to speak in another way, which I hold to be the
right one; for if number is to be the criterion, are there not myriads upon
myriads of nations ready to dispute the point with you, who are only two
cities?

MEGILLUS: I shall gladly welcome any method of enquiry which is right.

ATHENIAN: Let me put the matter thus:—Suppose a person to praise the
keeping of goats, and the creatures themselves as capital things to have,
and then some one who had seen goats feeding without a goatherd in
cultivated spots, and doing mischief, were to censure a goat or any other
animal who has no keeper, or a bad keeper, would there be any sense or
justice in such censure?

MEGILLUS: Certainly not.

ATHENIAN: Does a captain require only to have nautical knowledge in order
to be a good captain, whether he is sea-sick or not? What do you say?

MEGILLUS: I say that he is not a good captain if, although he have nautical
skill, he is liable to sea-sickness.

ATHENIAN: And what would you say of the commander of an army? Will he be
able to command merely because he has military skill if he be a coward,
who, when danger comes, is sick and drunk with fear?

MEGILLUS: Impossible.

ATHENIAN: And what if besides being a coward he has no skill?

MEGILLUS: He is a miserable fellow, not fit to be a commander of men, but
only of old women.

ATHENIAN: And what would you say of some one who blames or praises any sort
of meeting which is intended by nature to have a ruler, and is well enough
when under his presidency? The critic, however, has never seen the society
meeting together at an orderly feast under the control of a president, but
always without a ruler or with a bad one:—when observers of this class
praise or blame such meetings, are we to suppose that what they say is of
any value?

MEGILLUS: Certainly not, if they have never seen or been present at such a
meeting when rightly ordered.

ATHENIAN: Reflect; may not banqueters and banquets be said to constitute a
kind of meeting?

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And did any one ever see this sort of convivial meeting rightly
ordered? Of course you two will answer that you have never seen them at
all, because they are not customary or lawful in your country; but I have
come across many of them in many different places, and moreover I have made
enquiries about them wherever I went, as I may say, and never did I see or
hear of anything of the kind which was carried on altogether rightly; in
some few particulars they might be right, but in general they were utterly
wrong.

CLEINIAS: What do you mean, Stranger, by this remark? Explain. For we, as
you say, from our inexperience in such matters, might very likely not know,
even if they came in our way, what was right or wrong in such societies.

ATHENIAN: Likely enough; then let me try to be your instructor: You would
acknowledge, would you not, that in all gatherings of mankind, of whatever
sort, there ought to be a leader?

CLEINIAS: Certainly I should.

ATHENIAN: And we were saying just now, that when men are at war the leader
ought to be a brave man?

CLEINIAS: We were.

ATHENIAN: The brave man is less likely than the coward to be disturbed by
fears?

CLEINIAS: That again is true.

ATHENIAN: And if there were a possibility of having a general of an army
who was absolutely fearless and imperturbable, should we not by all means
appoint him?

CLEINIAS: Assuredly.

ATHENIAN: Now, however, we are speaking not of a general who is to command
an army, when foe meets foe in time of war, but of one who is to regulate
meetings of another sort, when friend meets friend in time of peace.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And that sort of meeting, if attended with drunkenness, is apt to
be unquiet.

CLEINIAS: Certainly; the reverse of quiet.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, then, the revellers as well as the soldiers
will require a ruler?

CLEINIAS: To be sure; no men more so.

ATHENIAN: And we ought, if possible, to provide them with a quiet ruler?

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And he should be a man who understands society; for his duty is
to preserve the friendly feelings which exist among the company at the
time, and to increase them for the future by his use of the occasion.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: Must we not appoint a sober man and a wise to be our master of
the revels? For if the ruler of drinkers be himself young and drunken, and
not over-wise, only by some special good fortune will he be saved from
doing some great evil.

CLEINIAS: It will be by a singular good fortune that he is saved.

ATHENIAN: Now suppose such associations to be framed in the best way
possible in states, and that some one blames the very fact of their
existence—he may very likely be right. But if he blames a practice which he
only sees very much mismanaged, he shows in the first place that he is not
aware of the mismanagement, and also not aware that everything done in this
way will turn out to be wrong, because done without the superintendence of
a sober ruler. Do you not see that a drunken pilot or a drunken ruler of
any sort will ruin ship, chariot, army—anything, in short, of which he has
the direction?

CLEINIAS: The last remark is very true, Stranger; and I see quite clearly
the advantage of an army having a good leader—he will give victory in war
to his followers, which is a very great advantage; and so of other things.
But I do not see any similar advantage which either individuals or states
gain from the good management of a feast; and I want you to tell me what
great good will be effected, supposing that this drinking ordinance is duly
established.

ATHENIAN: If you mean to ask what great good accrues to the state from the
right training of a single youth, or of a single chorus—when the question
is put in that form, we cannot deny that the good is not very great in any
particular instance. But if you ask what is the good of education in
general, the answer is easy—that education makes good men, and that good
men act nobly, and conquer their enemies in battle, because they are good.
Education certainly gives victory, although victory sometimes produces
forgetfulness of education; for many have grown insolent from victory in
war, and this insolence has engendered in them innumerable evils; and many
a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors; but education is
never suicidal.

CLEINIAS: You seem to imply, my friend, that convivial meetings, when
rightly ordered, are an important element of education.

ATHENIAN: Certainly I do.

CLEINIAS: And can you show that what you have been saying is true?

ATHENIAN: To be absolutely sure of the truth of matters concerning which
there are many opinions, is an attribute of the Gods not given to man,
Stranger; but I shall be very happy to tell you what I think, especially as
we are now proposing to enter on a discussion concerning laws and
constitutions.

CLEINIAS: Your opinion, Stranger, about the questions which are now being
raised, is precisely what we want to hear.

ATHENIAN: Very good; I will try to find a way of explaining my meaning, and
you shall try to have the gift of understanding me. But first let me make
an apology. The Athenian citizen is reputed among all the Hellenes to be a
great talker, whereas Sparta is renowned for brevity, and the Cretans have
more wit than words. Now I am afraid of appearing to elicit a very long
discourse out of very small materials. For drinking indeed may appear to be
a slight matter, and yet is one which cannot be rightly ordered according
to nature, without correct principles of music; these are necessary to any
clear or satisfactory treatment of the subject, and music again runs up
into education generally, and there is much to be said about all this. What
would you say then to leaving these matters for the present, and passing on
to some other question of law?

MEGILLUS: O Athenian Stranger, let me tell you what perhaps you do not
know, that our family is the proxenus of your state. I imagine that from
their earliest youth all boys, when they are told that they are the proxeni
of a particular state, feel kindly towards their second country; and this
has certainly been my own feeling. I can well remember from the days of my
boyhood, how, when any Lacedaemonians praised or blamed the Athenians, they
used to say to me,—'See, Megillus, how ill or how well,' as the case might
be, 'has your state treated us'; and having always had to fight your
battles against detractors when I heard you assailed, I became warmly
attached to you. And I always like to hear the Athenian tongue spoken; the
common saying is quite true, that a good Athenian is more than ordinarily
good, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by the divine
inspiration of his own nature, and is not manufactured. Therefore be
assured that I shall like to hear you say whatever you have to say.

CLEINIAS: Yes, Stranger; and when you have heard me speak, say boldly what
is in your thoughts. Let me remind you of a tie which unites you to Crete.
You must have heard here the story of the prophet Epimenides, who was of my
family, and came to Athens ten years before the Persian war, in accordance
with the response of the Oracle, and offered certain sacrifices which the
God commanded. The Athenians were at that time in dread of the Persian
invasion; and he said that for ten years they would not come, and that when
they came, they would go away again without accomplishing any of their
objects, and would suffer more evil than they inflicted. At that time my
forefathers formed ties of hospitality with you; thus ancient is the
friendship which I and my parents have had for you.

ATHENIAN: You seem to be quite ready to listen; and I am also ready to
perform as much as I can of an almost impossible task, which I will
nevertheless attempt. At the outset of the discussion, let me define the
nature and power of education; for this is the way by which our argument
must travel onwards to the God Dionysus.

CLEINIAS: Let us proceed, if you please.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, if I tell you what are my notions of education, will
you consider whether they satisfy you?

CLEINIAS: Let us hear.

ATHENIAN: According to my view, any one who would be good at anything must
practise that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in
its several branches: for example, he who is to be a good builder, should
play at building children's houses; he who is to be a good husbandman, at
tilling the ground; and those who have the care of their education should
provide them when young with mimic tools. They should learn beforehand the
knowledge which they will afterwards require for their art. For example,
the future carpenter should learn to measure or apply the line in play; and
the future warrior should learn riding, or some other exercise, for
amusement, and the teacher should endeavour to direct the children's
inclinations and pleasures, by the help of amusements, to their final aim
in life. The most important part of education is right training in the
nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be guided to the love of
that sort of excellence in which when he grows up to manhood he will have
to be perfected. Do you agree with me thus far?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-
defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame about the
bringing-up of each person, we call one man educated and another
uneducated, although the uneducated man may be sometimes very well educated
for the calling of a retail trader, or of a captain of a ship, and the
like. For we are not speaking of education in this narrower sense, but of
that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man
eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how
rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our
view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the
acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from
intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be
called education at all. But let us not quarrel with one another about a
word, provided that the proposition which has just been granted hold good:
to wit, that those who are rightly educated generally become good men.
Neither must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and
fairest thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, though liable
to take a wrong direction, is capable of reformation. And this work of
reformation is the great business of every man while he lives.

CLEINIAS: Very true; and we entirely agree with you.

ATHENIAN: And we agreed before that they are good men who are able to rule
themselves, and bad men who are not.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right.

ATHENIAN: Let me now proceed, if I can, to clear up the subject a little
further by an illustration which I will offer you.

CLEINIAS: Proceed.

ATHENIAN: Do we not consider each of ourselves to be one?

CLEINIAS: We do.

ATHENIAN: And each one of us has in his bosom two counsellors, both foolish
and also antagonistic; of which we call the one pleasure, and the other
pain.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: Also there are opinions about the future, which have the general
name of expectations; and the specific name of fear, when the expectation
is of pain; and of hope, when of pleasure; and further, there is reflection
about the good or evil of them, and this, when embodied in a decree by the
State, is called Law.

CLEINIAS: I am hardly able to follow you; proceed, however, as if I were.

MEGILLUS: I am in the like case.

ATHENIAN: Let us look at the matter thus: May we not conceive each of us
living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or
created with a purpose—which of the two we cannot certainly know? But we do
know, that these affections in us are like cords and strings, which pull us
different and opposite ways, and to opposite actions; and herein lies the
difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one
among these cords which every man ought to grasp and never let go, but to
pull with it against all the rest; and this is the sacred and golden cord
of reason, called by us the common law of the State; there are others which
are hard and of iron, but this one is soft because golden; and there are
several other kinds. Now we ought always to cooperate with the lead of the
best, which is law. For inasmuch as reason is beautiful and gentle, and not
violent, her rule must needs have ministers in order to help the golden
principle in vanquishing the other principles. And thus the moral of the
tale about our being puppets will not have been lost, and the meaning of
the expression 'superior or inferior to a man's self' will become clearer;
and the individual, attaining to right reason in this matter of pulling the
strings of the puppet, should live according to its rule; while the city,
receiving the same from some god or from one who has knowledge of these
things, should embody it in a law, to be her guide in her dealings with
herself and with other states. In this way virtue and vice will be more
clearly distinguished by us. And when they have become clearer, education
and other institutions will in like manner become clearer; and in
particular that question of convivial entertainment, which may seem,
perhaps, to have been a very trifling matter, and to have taken a great
many more words than were necessary.

CLEINIAS: Perhaps, however, the theme may turn out not to be unworthy of
the length of discourse.

ATHENIAN: Very good; let us proceed with any enquiry which really bears on
our present object.

CLEINIAS: Proceed.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that we give this puppet of ours drink,—what will be the
effect on him?

CLEINIAS: Having what in view do you ask that question?

ATHENIAN: Nothing as yet; but I ask generally, when the puppet is brought
to the drink, what sort of result is likely to follow. I will endeavour to
explain my meaning more clearly: what I am now asking is this—Does the
drinking of wine heighten and increase pleasures and pains, and passions
and loves?

CLEINIAS: Very greatly.

ATHENIAN: And are perception and memory, and opinion and prudence,
heightened and increased? Do not these qualities entirely desert a man if
he becomes saturated with drink?

CLEINIAS: Yes, they entirely desert him.

ATHENIAN: Does he not return to the state of soul in which he was when a
young child?

CLEINIAS: He does.

ATHENIAN: Then at that time he will have the least control over himself?

CLEINIAS: The least.

ATHENIAN: And will he not be in a most wretched plight?

CLEINIAS: Most wretched.

ATHENIAN: Then not only an old man but also a drunkard becomes a second
time a child?

CLEINIAS: Well said, Stranger.

ATHENIAN: Is there any argument which will prove to us that we ought to
encourage the taste for drinking instead of doing all we can to avoid it?

CLEINIAS: I suppose that there is; you at any rate, were just now saying
that you were ready to maintain such a doctrine.

ATHENIAN: True, I was; and I am ready still, seeing that you have both
declared that you are anxious to hear me.

CLEINIAS: To be sure we are, if only for the strangeness of the paradox,
which asserts that a man ought of his own accord to plunge into utter
degradation.

ATHENIAN: Are you speaking of the soul?

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: And what would you say about the body, my friend? Are you not
surprised at any one of his own accord bringing upon himself deformity,
leanness, ugliness, decrepitude?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Yet when a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop, and
takes medicine, is he not aware that soon, and for many days afterwards, he
will be in a state of body which he would die rather than accept as the
permanent condition of his life? Are not those who train in gymnasia, at
first beginning reduced to a state of weakness?

CLEINIAS: Yes, all that is well known.

ATHENIAN: Also that they go of their own accord for the sake of the
subsequent benefit?

CLEINIAS: Very good.

ATHENIAN: And we may conceive this to be true in the same way of other
practices?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And the same view may be taken of the pastime of drinking wine,
if we are right in supposing that the same good effect follows?

CLEINIAS: To be sure.

ATHENIAN: If such convivialities should turn out to have any advantage
equal in importance to that of gymnastic, they are in their very nature to
be preferred to mere bodily exercise, inasmuch as they have no
accompaniment of pain.

CLEINIAS: True; but I hardly think that we shall be able to discover any
such benefits to be derived from them.

ATHENIAN: That is just what we must endeavour to show. And let me ask you a
question:—Do we not distinguish two kinds of fear, which are very
different?

CLEINIAS: What are they?

ATHENIAN: There is the fear of expected evil.

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: And there is the fear of an evil reputation; we are afraid of
being thought evil, because we do or say some dishonourable thing, which
fear we and all men term shame.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: These are the two fears, as I called them; one of which is the
opposite of pain and other fears, and the opposite also of the greatest and
most numerous sort of pleasures.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And does not the legislator and every one who is good for
anything, hold this fear in the greatest honour? This is what he terms
reverence, and the confidence which is the reverse of this he terms
insolence; and the latter he always deems to be a very great evil both to
individuals and to states.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Does not this kind of fear preserve us in many important ways?
What is there which so surely gives victory and safety in war? For there
are two things which give victory—confidence before enemies, and fear of
disgrace before friends.

CLEINIAS: There are.

ATHENIAN: Then each of us should be fearless and also fearful; and why we
should be either has now been determined.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make any one fearless, we and the law bring
him face to face with many fears.

CLEINIAS: Clearly.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make him rightly fearful, must we not
introduce him to shameless pleasures, and train him to take up arms against
them, and to overcome them? Or does this principle apply to courage only,
and must he who would be perfect in valour fight against and overcome his
own natural character,—since if he be unpractised and inexperienced in such
conflicts, he will not be half the man which he might have been,—and are we
to suppose, that with temperance it is otherwise, and that he who has never
fought with the shameless and unrighteous temptations of his pleasures and
lusts, and conquered them, in earnest and in play, by word, deed, and act,
will still be perfectly temperate?

CLEINIAS: A most unlikely supposition.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that some God had given a fear-potion to men, and that
the more a man drank of this the more he regarded himself at every draught
as a child of misfortune, and that he feared everything happening or about
to happen to him; and that at last the most courageous of men utterly lost
his presence of mind for a time, and only came to himself again when he had
slept off the influence of the draught.

CLEINIAS: But has such a draught, Stranger, ever really been known among
men?

ATHENIAN: No; but, if there had been, might not such a draught have been of
use to the legislator as a test of courage? Might we not go and say to him,
'O legislator, whether you are legislating for the Cretan, or for any other
state, would you not like to have a touchstone of the courage and cowardice
of your citizens?'

CLEINIAS: 'I should,' will be the answer of every one.

ATHENIAN: 'And you would rather have a touchstone in which there is no risk
and no great danger than the reverse?'

CLEINIAS: In that proposition every one may safely agree.

ATHENIAN: 'And in order to make use of the draught, you would lead them
amid these imaginary terrors, and prove them, when the affection of fear
was working upon them, and compel them to be fearless, exhorting and
admonishing them; and also honouring them, but dishonouring any one who
will not be persuaded by you to be in all respects such as you command him;
and if he underwent the trial well and manfully, you would let him go
unscathed; but if ill, you would inflict a punishment upon him? Or would
you abstain from using the potion altogether, although you have no reason
for abstaining?'

CLEINIAS: He would be certain, Stranger, to use the potion.

ATHENIAN: This would be a mode of testing and training which would be
wonderfully easy in comparison with those now in use, and might be applied
to a single person, or to a few, or indeed to any number; and he would do
well who provided himself with the potion only, rather than with any number
of other things, whether he preferred to be by himself in solitude, and
there contend with his fears, because he was ashamed to be seen by the eye
of man until he was perfect; or trusting to the force of his own nature and
habits, and believing that he had been already disciplined sufficiently, he
did not hesitate to train himself in company with any number of others, and
display his power in conquering the irresistible change effected by the
draught—his virtue being such, that he never in any instance fell into any
great unseemliness, but was always himself, and left off before he arrived
at the last cup, fearing that he, like all other men, might be overcome by
the potion.

CLEINIAS: Yes, Stranger, in that last case, too, he might equally show his
self-control.

ATHENIAN: Let us return to the lawgiver, and say to him:—'Well, lawgiver,
there is certainly no such fear-potion which man has either received from
the Gods or himself discovered; for witchcraft has no place at our board.
But is there any potion which might serve as a test of overboldness and
excessive and indiscreet boasting?

CLEINIAS: I suppose that he will say, Yes,—meaning that wine is such a
potion.

ATHENIAN: Is not the effect of this quite the opposite of the effect of the
other? When a man drinks wine he begins to be better pleased with himself,
and the more he drinks the more he is filled full of brave hopes, and
conceit of his power, and at last the string of his tongue is loosened, and
fancying himself wise, he is brimming over with lawlessness, and has no
more fear or respect, and is ready to do or say anything.

CLEINIAS: I think that every one will admit the truth of your description.

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Now, let us remember, as we were saying, that there are two
things which should be cultivated in the soul: first, the greatest courage;
secondly, the greatest fear—

CLEINIAS: Which you said to be characteristic of reverence, if I am not
mistaken.

ATHENIAN: Thank you for reminding me. But now, as the habit of courage and
fearlessness is to be trained amid fears, let us consider whether the
opposite quality is not also to be trained among opposites.

CLEINIAS: That is probably the case.

ATHENIAN: There are times and seasons at which we are by nature more than
commonly valiant and bold; now we ought to train ourselves on these
occasions to be as free from impudence and shamelessness as possible, and
to be afraid to say or suffer or do anything that is base.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Are not the moments in which we are apt to be bold and shameless
such as these?—when we are under the influence of anger, love, pride,
ignorance, avarice, cowardice? or when wealth, beauty, strength, and all
the intoxicating workings of pleasure madden us? What is better adapted
than the festive use of wine, in the first place to test, and in the second
place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it?
What is there cheaper, or more innocent? For do but consider which is the
greater risk:—Would you rather test a man of a morose and savage nature,
which is the source of ten thousand acts of injustice, by making bargains
with him at a risk to yourself, or by having him as a companion at the
festival of Dionysus? Or would you, if you wanted to apply a touchstone to
a man who is prone to love, entrust your wife, or your sons, or daughters
to him, perilling your dearest interests in order to have a view of the
condition of his soul? I might mention numberless cases, in which the
advantage would be manifest of getting to know a character in sport, and
without paying dearly for experience. And I do not believe that either a
Cretan, or any other man, will doubt that such a test is a fair test, and
safer, cheaper, and speedier than any other.

CLEINIAS: That is certainly true.

ATHENIAN: And this knowledge of the natures and habits of men's souls will
be of the greatest use in that art which has the management of them; and
that art, if I am not mistaken, is politics.

CLEINIAS: Exactly so.

On Ancient Medicine

Part I

Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid
down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or
cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose (thus reducing their
subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original
causes of diseases or of death among mankind), are all clearly mistaken in
much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an
art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions, and
the good operators and practitioners in which they hold in especial honor.
For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if
there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been
investigated or found out in it, would not have been the case, but all
would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything
concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not
so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from
one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with
Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty
hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious, in attempting
to handle which it is necessary to use some hypothesis; as, for example,
with regard to things above us and things below the earth; if any one
should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted,
the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true
or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to
discover the truth.

Part II

But all these requisites belong of old to Medicine, and an origin and way
have been found out, by which many and elegant discoveries have been made,
during a length of time, and others will yet be found out, if a person
possessed of the proper ability, and knowing those discoveries which have
been made, should proceed from them to prosecute his investigations. But
whoever, rejecting and despising all these, attempts to pursue another
course and form of inquiry, and says he has discovered anything, is
deceived himself and deceives others, for the thing is impossible. And for
what reason it is impossible, I will now endeavor to explain, by stating
and showing what the art really is. From this it will be manifest that
discoveries cannot possibly be made in any other way. And most especially,
it appears to me, that whoever treats of this art should treat of things
which are familiar to the common people. For of nothing else will such a
one have to inquire or treat, but of the diseases under which the common
people have labored, which diseases and the causes of their origin and
departure, their increase and decline, illiterate persons cannot easily
find out themselves, but still it is easy for them to understand these
things when discovered and expounded by others. For it is nothing more than
that every one is put in mind of what had occurred to himself. But whoever
does not reach the capacity of the illiterate vulgar and fails to make them
listen to him, misses his mark. Wherefore, then, there is no necessity for
any hypothesis.

Part III

For the art of Medicine would not have been invented at first, nor would it
have been made a subject of investigation (for there would have been no
need of it), if when men are indisposed, the same food and other articles
of regimen which they eat and drink when in good health were proper for
them, and if no others were preferable to these. But now necessity itself
made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things
when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health,
neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold
that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been
discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner
as the ox, the horse, and all other animals, except man, do of the
productions of the earth, such as fruits, weeds, and grass; for from such
things these animals grow, live free of disease, and require no other kind
of food. And, at first, I am of opinion that man used the same sort of
food, and that the present articles of diet had been discovered and
invented only after a long lapse of time, for when they suffered much and
severely from strong and brutish diet, swallowing things which were raw,
unmixed, and possessing great strength, they became exposed to strong pains
and diseases, and to early deaths. It is likely, indeed, that from habit
they would suffer less from these things then than we would now, but still
they would suffer severely even then; and it is likely that the greater
number, and those who had weaker constitutions, would all perish; whereas
the stronger would hold out for a longer time, as even nowadays some, in
consequence of using strong articles of food, get off with little trouble,
but others with much pain and suffering. From this necessity it appears to
me that they would search out the food befitting their nature, and thus
discover that which we now use: and that from wheat, by macerating it,
stripping it of its hull, grinding it all down, sifting, toasting, and
baking it, they formed bread; and from barley they formed cake (maza),
performing many operations in regard to it; they boiled, they roasted, they
mixed, they diluted those things which are strong and of intense qualities
with weaker things, fashioning them to the nature and powers of man, and
considering that the stronger things Nature would not be able to manage if
administered, and that from such things pains, diseases, and death would
arise, but such as Nature could manage, that from them food, growth, and
health, would arise. To such a discovery and investigation what more
suitable name could one give than that of Medicine? since it was discovered
for the health of man, for his nourishment and safety, as a substitute for
that kind of diet by which pains, diseases, and deaths were occasioned.

Part IV

And if this is not held to be an art, I do not object. For it is not
suitable to call any one an artist of that which no one is ignorant of, but
which all know from usage and necessity. But still the discovery is a great
one, and requiring much art and investigation. Wherefore those who devote
themselves to gymnastics and training, are always making some new
discovery, by pursuing the same line of inquiry, where, by eating and
drinking certain things, they are improved and grow stronger than they
were.

Part V

Let us inquire then regarding what is admitted to be Medicine; namely, that
which was invented for the sake of the sick, which possesses a name and
practitioners, whether it also seeks to accomplish the same objects, and
whence it derived its origin. To me, then, it appears, as I said at the
commencement, that nobody would have sought for medicine at all, provided
the same kinds of diet had suited with men in sickness as in good health.
Wherefore, even yet, such races of men as make no use of medicine, namely,
barbarians, and even certain of the Greeks, live in the same way when sick
as when in health; that is to say, they take what suits their appetite, and
neither abstain from, nor restrict themselves in anything for which they
have a desire. But those who have cultivated and invented medicine, having
the same object in view as those of whom I formerly spoke, in the first
place, I suppose, diminished the quantity of the articles of food which
they used, and this alone would be sufficient for certain of the sick, and
be manifestly beneficial to them, although not to all, for there would be
some so affected as not to be able to manage even small quantities of their
usual food, and as such persons would seem to require something weaker,
they invented soups, by mixing a few strong things with much water, and
thus abstracting that which was strong in them by dilution and boiling. But
such as could not manage even soups, laid them aside, and had recourse to
drinks, and so regulated them as to mixture and quantity, that they were
administered neither stronger nor weaker than what was required.

Part VI

But this ought to be well known, that soups do not agree with certain
persons in their diseases, but, on the contrary, when administered both the
fevers and the pains are exacerbated, and it becomes obvious that what was
given has proved food and increase to the disease, but a wasting and
weakness to the body. But whatever persons so affected partook of solid
food, or cake, or bread, even in small quantity, would be ten times and
more decidedly injured than those who had taken soups, for no other reason
than from the strength of the food in reference to the affection; and to
whomsoever it is proper to take soups and not eat solid food, such a one
will be much more injured if he eat much than if he eat little, but even
little food will be injurious to him. But all the causes of the sufferance
refer themselves to this rule, that the strongest things most especially
and decidedly hurt man, whether in health or in disease.

Part VII

What other object, then, had he in view who is called a physician, and is
admitted to be a practitioner of the art, who found out the regimen and
diet befitting the sick, than he who originally found out and prepared for
all mankind that kind of food which we all now use, in place of the former
savage and brutish mode of living? To me it appears that the mode is the
same, and the discovery of a similar nature. The one sought to abstract
those things which the constitution of man cannot digest, because of their
wildness and intemperature, and the other those things which are beyond the
powers of the affection in which any one may happen to be laid up. Now, how
does the one differ from the other, except that the latter admits of
greater variety, and requires more application, whereas the former was the
commencement of the process?

Part VIII

And if one would compare the diet of sick persons with that of persons in
health, he will find it not more injurious than that of healthy persons in
comparison with that of wild beasts and of other animals. For, suppose a
man laboring under one of those diseases which are neither serious and
unsupportable, nor yet altogether mild, but such as that, upon making any
mistake in diet, it will become apparent, as if he should eat bread and
flesh, or any other of those articles which prove beneficial to healthy
persons, and that, too, not in great quantity, but much less than he could
have taken when in good health; and that another man in good health, having
a constitution neither very feeble, nor yet strong, eats of those things
which are wholesome and strengthening to an ox or a horse, such as vetches,
barley, and the like, and that, too, not in great quantity, but much less
than he could take; the healthy person who did so would be subjected to no
less disturbance and danger than the sick person who took bread or cake
unseasonably. All these things are proofs that Medicine is to be prosecuted
and discovered by the same method as the other.

Part IX

And if it were simply, as is laid down, that such things as are stronger
prove injurious, but such as are weaker prove beneficial and nourishing,
both to sick and healthy persons, it were an easy matter, for then the
safest rule would be to circumscribe the diet to the lowest point. But then
it is no less mistake, nor one that injuries a man less, provided a
deficient diet, or one consisting of weaker things than what mare proper,
be administered. For, in the constitution of man, abstinence may enervate,
weaken, and kill. And there are many other ills, different from those of
repletion, but no less dreadful, arising from deficiency of food; wherefore
the practice in those cases is more varied, and requires greater accuracy.
For one must aim at attaining a certain measure, and yet this measure
admits neither weight nor calculation of any kind, by which it may be
accurately determined, unless it be the sensation of the body; wherefore it
is a task to learn this accurately, so as not to commit small blunders
either on the one side or the other, and in fact I would give great praise
to the physician whose mistakes are small, for perfect accuracy is seldom
to be seen, since many physicians seem to me to be in the same plight as
bad pilots, who, if they commit mistakes while conducting the ship in a
calm do not expose themselves, but when a storm and violent hurricane
overtake them, they then, from their ignorance and mistakes, are discovered
to be what they are, by all men, namely, in losing their ship. And thus bad
and commonplace physicians, when they treat men who have no serious
illness, in which case one may commit great mistakes without producing any
formidable mischief (and such complaints occur much more frequently to men
than dangerous ones): under these circumstances, when they commit mistakes,
they do not expose themselves to ordinary men; but when they fall in with a
great, a strong, and a dangerous disease, then their mistakes and want of
skill are made apparent to all. Their punishment is not far off, but is
swift in overtaking both the one and the other.

Part X

And that no less mischief happens to a man from unseasonable depletion than
from repletion, may be clearly seen upon reverting to the consideration of
persons in health. For, to some, with whom it agrees to take only one meal
in the day, and they have arranged it so accordingly; whilst others, for
the same reason, also take dinner, and this they do because they find it
good for them, and not like those persons who, for pleasure or from any
casual circumstance, adopt the one or the other custom and to the bulk of
mankind it is of little consequence which of these rules they observe, that
is to say, whether they make it a practice to take one or two meals. But
there are certain persons who cannot readily change their diet with
impunity; and if they make any alteration in it for one day, or even for a
part of a day, are greatly injured thereby. Such persons, provided they
take dinner when it is not their wont, immediately become heavy and
inactive, both in body and mind, and are weighed down with yawning,
slumbering, and thirst; and if they take supper in addition, they are
seized with flatulence, tormina, and diarrhea, and to many this has been
the commencement of a serious disease, when they have merely taken twice in
a day the same food which they have been in the custom of taking once. And
thus, also, if one who has been accustomed to dine, and this rule agrees
with him, should not dine at the accustomed hour, he will straightway feel
great loss of strength, trembling, and want of spirits, the eyes of such a
person will become more pallid, his urine thick and hot, his mouth bitter;
his bowels will seem, as it were, to hang loose; he will suffer from
vertigo, lowness of spirit, and inactivity,- such are the effects; and if
he should attempt to take at supper the same food which he was wont to
partake of at dinner, it will appear insipid, and he will not be able to
take it off; and these things, passing downwards with tormina and rumbling,
burn up his bowels; he experiences insomnolency or troubled and disturbed
dreams; and to many of them these symptoms are the commencement of some
disease.

Part XI

But let us inquire what are the causes of these things which happened to
them. To him, then, who was accustomed to take only one meal in the day,
they happened because he did not wait the proper time, until his bowels had
completely derived benefit from and had digested the articles taken at the
preceding meal, and until his belly had become soft, and got into a state
of rest, but he gave it a new supply while in a state of heat and
fermentation, for such bellies digest much more slowly, and require more
rest and ease. And as to him who had been accustomed to dinner, since, as
soon as the body required food, and when the former meal was consumed, and
he wanted refreshment, no new supply was furnished to it, he wastes and is
consumed from want of food. For all the symptoms which I describe as
befalling to this man I refer to want of food. And I also say that all men
who, when in a state of health, remain for two or three days without food,
experience the same unpleasant symptoms as those which I described in the
case of him who had omitted to take dinner.

Part XII

Wherefore, I say, that such constitutions as suffer quickly and strongly
from errors in diet, are weaker than others that do not; and that a weak
person is in a state very nearly approaching to one in disease; but a
person in disease is the weaker, and it is, therefore, more likely that he
should suffer if he encounters anything that is unseasonable. It is
difficult, seeing that there is no such accuracy in the Art, to hit always
upon what is most expedient, and yet many cases occur in medicine which
would require this accuracy, as we shall explain. But on that account, I
say, we ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not
been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things,
but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by
reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of
great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from
chance.

Part XIII

But I wish the discourse to revert to the new method of those who prosecute
their inquiries in the Art by hypothesis. For if hot, or cold, or moist, or
dry, be that which proves injurious to man, and if the person who would
treat him properly must apply cold to the hot, hot to the cold, moist to
the dry, and dry to the moist- let me be presented with a man, not indeed
one of a strong constitution, but one of the weaker, and let him eat wheat,
such as it is supplied from the thrashing-floor, raw and unprepared, with
raw meat, and let him drink water. By using such a diet I know that he will
suffer much and severely, for he will experience pains, his body will
become weak, and his bowels deranged, and he will not subsist long. What
remedy, then, is to be provided for one so situated? Hot? or cold? or
moist? or dry? For it is clear that it must be one or other of these. For,
according to this principle, if it is one of the which is injuring the
patient, it is to be removed by its contrary. But the surest and most
obvious remedy is to change the diet which the person used, and instead of
wheat to give bread, and instead of raw flesh, boiled, and to drink wine in
addition to these; for by making these changes it is impossible but that he
must get better, unless completely disorganized by time and diet. What,
then, shall we say? whether that, as he suffered from cold, these hot
things being applied were of use to him, or the contrary? I should think
this question must prove a puzzler to whomsoever it is put. For whether did
he who prepared bread out of wheat remove the hot, the cold, the moist, or
the dry principle in it?- for the bread is consigned both to fire and to
water, and is wrought with many things, each of which has its peculiar
property and nature, some of which it loses, and with others it is diluted
and mixed.

Part XIV

And this I know, moreover, that to the human body it makes a great
difference whether the bread be fine or coarse; of wheat with or without
the hull, whether mixed with much or little water, strongly wrought or
scarcely at all, baked or raw- and a multitude of similar differences; and
so, in like manner, with the cake (maza); the powers of each, too, are
great, and the one nowise like the other. Whoever pays no attention to
these things, or, paying attention, does not comprehend them, how can he
understand the diseases which befall a man? For, by every one of these
things, a man is affected and changed this way or that, and the whole of
his life is subjected to them, whether in health, convalescence, or
disease. Nothing else, then, can be more important or more necessary to
know than these things. So that the first inventors, pursuing their
investigations properly, and by a suitable train of reasoning, according to
the nature of man, made their discoveries, and thought the Art worthy of
being ascribed to a god, as is the established belief. For they did not
suppose that the dry or the moist, the hot or the cold, or any of these are
either injurious to man, or that man stands in need of them, but whatever
in each was strong, and more than a match for a man's constitution,
whatever he could not manage, that they held to be hurtful, and sought to
remove. Now, of the sweet, the strongest is that which is intensely sweet;
of the bitter, that which is intensely bitter; of the acid, that which is
intensely acid; and of all things that which is extreme, for these things
they saw both existing in man, and proving injurious to him. For there is
in man the bitter and the salt, the sweet and the acid, the sour and the
insipid, and a multitude of other things having all sorts of powers both as
regards quantity and strength. These, when all mixed and mingled up with
one another, are not apparent, neither do they hurt a man; but when any of
them is separate, and stands by itself, then it becomes perceptible, and
hurts a man. And thus, of articles of food, those which are unsuitable and
hurtful to man when administered, every one is either bitter, or intensely
so, or saltish or acid, or something else intense and strong, and therefore
we are disordered by them in like manner as we are by the secretions in the
body. But all those things which a man eats and drinks are devoid of any
such intense and well-marked quality, such as bread, cake, and many other
things of a similar nature which man is accustomed to use for food, with
the exception of condiments and confectioneries, which are made to gratify
the palate and for luxury. And from those things, when received into the
body abundantly, there is no disorder nor dissolution of the powers
belonging to the body; but strength, growth, and nourishment result from
them, and this for no other reason than because they are well mixed, have
nothing in them of an immoderate character, nor anything strong, but the
whole forms one simple and not strong substance.

Part XV

I cannot think in what manner they who advance this doctrine, and transfer
Art from the cause I have described to hypothesis, will cure men according
to the principle which they have laid down. For, as far as I know, neither
the hot nor the cold, nor the dry, nor the moist, has ever been found
unmixed with any other quality; but I suppose they use the same articles of
meat and drink as all we other men do. But to this substance they give the
attribute of being hot, to that cold, to that dry, and to that moist. Since
it would be absurd to advise the patient to take something hot, for he
would straightway ask what it is? so that he must either play the fool, or
have recourse to some one of the well known substances; and if this hot
thing happen to be sour, and that hot thing insipid, and this hot thing has
the power of raising a disturbance in the body (and there are many other
kinds of heat, possessing many opposite powers), he will be obliged to
administer some one of them, either the hot and the sour, or the hot and
the insipid, or that which, at the same time, is cold and sour (for there
is such a substance), or the cold and the insipid. For, as I think, the
very opposite effects will result from either of these, not only in man,
but also in a bladder, a vessel of wood, and in many other things possessed
of far less sensibility than man; for it is not the heat which is possessed
of great efficacy, but the sour and the insipid, and other qualities as
described by me, both in man and out of man, and that whether eaten or
drunk, rubbed in externally, and otherwise applied.

Part XVI

But I think that of all the qualities heat and cold exercise the least
operation in the body, for these reasons: as long time as hot and cold are
mixed up with one another they do not give trouble, for the cold is
attempered and rendered more moderate by the hot, and the hot by the cold;
but when the one is wholly separate from the other, then it gives pain; and
at that season when cold is applied it creates some pain to a man, but
quickly, for that very reason, heat spontaneously arises in him without
requiring any aid or preparation. And these things operate thus both upon
men in health and in disease. For example, if a person in health wishes to
cool his body during winter, and bathes either in cold water or in any
other way, the more he does this, unless his body be fairly congealed, when
he resumes his clothes and comes into a place of shelter, his body becomes
more heated than before. And thus, too, if a person wish to be warmed
thoroughly either by means of a hot bath or strong fire, and straightway
having the same clothing on, takes up his abode again in the place he was
in when he became congealed, he will appear much colder, and more disposed
to chills than before. And if a person fan himself on account of a
suffocating heat, and having procured refrigeration for himself in this
manner, cease doing so, the heat and suffocation will be ten times greater
in his case than in that of a person who does nothing of the kind. And, to
give a more striking example, persons travelling in the snow, or otherwise
in rigorous weather, and contracting great cold in their feet, their hands,
or their head, what do they not suffer from inflammation and tingling when
they put on warm clothing and get into a hot place? In some instances,
blisters arise as if from burning with fire, and they do not suffer from
any of those unpleasant symptoms until they become heated. So readily does
either of these pass into the other; and I could mention many other
examples. And with regard to the sick, is it not in those who experience a
rigor that the most acute fever is apt to break out? And yet not so
strongly neither, but that it ceases in a short time, and, for the most
part, without having occasioned much mischief; and while it remains, it is
hot, and passing over the whole body, ends for the most part in the feet,
where the chills and cold were most intense and lasted longest; and, when
sweat supervenes, and the fever passes off, the patient is much colder than
if he had not taken the fever at all. Why then should that which so quickly
passes into the opposite extreme, and loses its own powers spontaneously,
be reckoned a mighty and serious affair? And what necessity is there for
any great remedy for it?

Part XVII

One might here say- but persons in ardent fevers, pneumonia, and other
formidable diseases, do not quickly get rid of the heat, nor experience
these rapid alterations of heat and cold. And I reckon this very
circumstance the strongest proof that it is not from heat simply that men
get into the febrile state, neither is it the sole cause of the mischief,
but that this species of heat is bitter, and that acid, and the other
saltish, and many other varieties; and again there is cold combined with
other qualities. These are what proves injurious; heat, it is true, is
present also, possessed of strength as being that which conducts, is
exacerbated and increased along with the other, but has no power greater
than what is peculiar to itself.

Part XVIII

With regard to these symptoms, in the first place those are most obvious of
which we have all often had experience. Thus, then, in such of us as have a
coryza and defluxion from the nostrils, this discharge is much more acrid
than that which formerly was formed in and ran from them daily; and it
occasions swelling of the nose, and it inflames, being of a hot and
extremely ardent nature, as you may know, if you apply your hand to the
place; and, if the disease remains long, the part becomes ulcerated
although destitute of flesh and hard; and the heat in the nose ceases, not
when the defluxion takes place and the inflammation is present, but when
the running becomes thicker and less acrid, and more mixed with the former
secretion, then it is that the heat ceases. But in all those cases in which
this decidedly proceeds from cold alone, without the concourse of any other
quality, there is a change from cold to hot, and from hot to cold, and
these quickly supervene, and require no coction. But all the others being
connected, as I have said, with acrimony and intemperance of humors, pass
off in this way by being mixed and concocted.

Part XIX

But such defluxions as are determined to the eyes being possessed of strong
and varied acrimonies, ulcerate the eyelids, and in some cases corrode the
and parts below the eyes upon which they flow, and even occasion rupture
and erosion of the tunic which surrounds the eyeball. But pain, heat, and
extreme burning prevail until the defluxions are concocted and become
thicker, and concretions form about the eyes, and the coction takes place
from the fluids being mixed up, diluted, and digested together. And in
defluxions upon the throat, from which are formed hoarseness, cynanche,
crysipelas, and pneumonia, all these have at first saltish, watery, and
acrid discharges, and with these the diseases gain strength. But when the
discharges become thicker, more concocted, and are freed from all acrimony,
then, indeed, the fevers pass away, and the other symptoms which annoyed
the patient; for we must account those things the cause of each complaint,
which, being present in a certain fashion, the complaint exists, but it
ceases when they change to another combination. But those which originate
from pure heat or cold, and do not participate in any other quality, will
then cease when they undergo a change from cold to hot, and from hot to
cold; and they change in the manner I have described before. Wherefore, all
the other complaints to which man is subject arise from powers
(qualities?). Thus, when there is an overflow of the bitter principle,
which we call yellow bile, what anxiety, burning heat, and loss of strength
prevail! but if relieved from it, either by being purged spontaneously, or
by means of a medicine seasonably administered, the patient is decidedly
relieved of the pains and heat; but while these things float on the
stomach, unconcocted and undigested, no contrivance could make the pains
and fever cease; and when there are acidities of an acrid and aeruginous
character, what varieties of frenzy, gnawing pains in the bowels and chest,
and inquietude, prevail! and these do not cease until the acidities be
purged away, or are calmed down and mixed with other fluids. The coction,
change, attenuation, and thickening into the form of humors, take place
through many and various forms; therefore the crises and calculations of
time are of great importance in such matters; but to all such changes hot
and cold are but little exposed, for these are neither liable to
putrefaction nor thickening. What then shall we say of the change? that it
is a combination (crasis) of these humors having different powers toward
one another. But the hot does not loose its heat when mixed with any other
thing except the cold; nor again, the cold, except when mixed with the hot.
But all other things connected with man become the more mild and better in
proportion as they are mixed with the more things besides. But a man is in
the best possible state when they are concocted and at rest, exhibiting no
one peculiar quality; but I think I have said enough in explanation of
them.

Part XX

Certain sophists and physicians say that it is not possible for any one to
know medicine who does not know what man is [and how he was made and how
constructed], and that whoever would cure men properly, must learn this in
the first place. But this saying rather appertains to philosophy, as
Empedocles and certain others have described what man in his origin is, and
how he first was made and constructed. But I think whatever such has been
said or written by sophist or physician concerning nature has less
connection with the art of medicine than with the art of painting. And I
think that one cannot know anything certain respecting nature from any
other quarter than from medicine; and that this knowledge is to be attained
when one comprehends the whole subject of medicine properly, but not until
then; and I say that this history shows what man is, by what causes he was
made, and other things accurately. Wherefore it appears to me necessary to
every physician to be skilled in nature, and strive to know, if he would
wish to perform his duties, what man is in relation to the articles of food
and drink, and to his other occupations, and what are the effects of each
of them to every one. And it is not enough to know simply that cheese is a
bad article of food, as disagreeing with whoever eats of it to satiety, but
what sort of disturbance it creates, and wherefore, and with what principle
in man it disagrees; for there are many other articles of food and drink
naturally bad which affect man in a different manner. Thus, to illustrate
my meaning by an example, undiluted wine drunk in large quantity renders a
man feeble; and everybody seeing this knows that such is the power of wine,
and the cause thereof; and we know, moreover, on what parts of a man's body
it principally exerts its action; and I wish the same certainty to appear
in other cases. For cheese (since we used it as an example) does not prove
equally injurious to all men, for there are some who can take it to satiety
without being hurt by it in the least, but, on the contrary, it is
wonderful what strength it imparts to those it agrees with; but there are
some who do not bear it well, their constitutions are different, and they
differ in this respect, that what in their body is incompatible with
cheese, is roused and put in commotion by such a thing; and those in whose
bodies such a humor happens to prevail in greater quantity and intensity,
are likely to suffer the more from it. But if the thing had been pernicious
to of man, it would have hurt all. Whoever knows these things will not
suffer from it.

Part XXI

During convalescence from diseases, and also in protracted diseases, many
disorders occur, some spontaneously, and some from certain things
accidentally administered. I know that the common herd of physicians, like
the vulgar, if there happen to have been any innovation made about that
day, such as the bath being used, a walk taken, or any unusual food eaten,
all which were better done than otherwise, attribute notwithstanding the
cause of these disorders, to some of these things, being ignorant of the
true cause but proscribing what may have been very proper. Now this ought
not to be so; but one should know the effects of a bath or a walk
unseasonably applied; for thus there will never be any mischief from these
things, nor from any other thing, nor from repletion, nor from such and
such an article of food. Whoever does not know what effect these things
produce upon a man, cannot know the consequences which result from them,
nor how to apply them.

Part XXII

And it appears to me that one ought also to know what diseases arise in man
from the powers, and what from the structures. What do I mean by this? By
powers, I mean intense and strong juices; and by structures, whatever
conformations there are in man. For some are hollow, and from broad
contracted into narrow; some expanded, some hard and round, some broad and
suspended, some stretched, some long, some dense, some rare and succulent,
some spongy and of loose texture. Now, then, which of these figures is the
best calculated to suck to itself and attract humidity from another body?
Whether what is hollow and expanded, or what is solid and round, or what is
hollow, and from broad, gradually turning narrow? I think such as from
hollow and broad are contracted into narrow: this may be ascertained
otherwise from obvious facts: thus, if you gape wide with the mouth you
cannot draw in any liquid; but by protruding, contracting, and compressing
the lips, and still more by using a tube, you can readily draw in whatever
you wish. And thus, too, the instruments which are used for cupping are
broad below and gradually become narrow, and are so constructed in order to
suck and draw in from the fleshy parts. The nature and construction of the
parts within a man are of a like nature; the bladder, the head, the uterus
in woman; these parts clearly attract, and are always filled with a juice
which is foreign to them. Those parts which are hollow and expanded are
most likely to receive any humidity flowing into them, but cannot attract
it in like manner. Those parts which are solid and round could not attract
a humidity, nor receive it when it flows to them, for it would glide past,
and find no place of rest on them. But spongy and rare parts, such as the
spleen, the lungs, and the breasts, drink up especially the juices around
them, and become hardened and enlarged by the accession of juices. Such
things happen to these organs especially. For it is not with the spleen as
with the stomach, in which there is a liquid, which it contains and
evacuates every day; but when it (the spleen) drinks up and receives a
fluid into itself, the hollow and lax parts of it are filled, even the
small interstices; and, instead of being rare and soft, it becomes hard and
dense, and it can neither digest nor discharge its contents: these things
it suffers, owing to the nature of its structure. Those things which
engender flatulence or tormina in the body, naturally do so in the hollow
and broad parts of the body, such as the stomach and chest, where they
produce rumbling noises; for when they do not fill the parts so as to be
stationary, but have changes of place and movements, there must necessarily
be noise and apparent movements from them. But such parts as are fleshy and
soft, in these there occur torpor and obstructions, such as happen in
apoplexy. But when it (the flatus?) encounters a broad and resisting
structure, and rushes against such a part, and this happens when it is by
nature not strong so as to be able to withstand it without suffering
injury; nor soft and rare, so as to receive or yield to it, but tender,
juicy, full of blood, and dense, like the liver, owing to its density and
broadness, it resists and does not yield. But flatus, when it obtains
admission, increases and becomes stronger, and rushes toward any resisting
object; but owing to its tenderness, and the quantity of blood which it
(the liver) contains, it cannot be without uneasiness; and for these
reasons the most acute and frequent pains occur in the region of it, along
with suppurations and chronic tumors (phymata). These symptoms also occur
in the site of the diaphragm, but much less frequently; for the diaphragm
is a broad, expanded, and resisting substance, of a nervous (tendinous?)
and strong nature, and therefore less susceptible of pain; and yet pains
and chronic abscesses do occur about it.

Part XXIII

There are both within and without the body many other kinds of structure,
which differ much from one another as to sufferings both in health and
disease; such as whether the head be small or large; the neck slender or
thick, long or short; the belly long or round; the chest and ribs broad or
narrow; and many others besides, all which you ought to be acquainted with,
and their differences; so that knowing the causes of each, you may make the
more accurate observations.

Part XXIV

And, as has been formerly stated, one ought to be acquainted with the
powers of juices, and what action each of them has upon man, and their
alliances towards one another. What I say is this: if a sweet juice change
to another kind, not from any admixture, but because it has undergone a
mutation within itself; what does it first become?- bitter? salt? austere?
or acid? I think acid. And hence, an acid juice is the most improper of all
things that can be administered in cases in which a sweet juice is the most
proper. Thus, if one should succeed in his investigations of external
things, he would be the better able always to select the best; for that is
best which is farthest removed from that which is unwholesome.

Enchiridion

I

Of things some are in our power, and others are not. In our power are
opinion, movement toward a thing, desire, aversion (turning from a thing);
and in a word, whatever are our own acts: not in our power are the body,
property, reputation, offices (magisterial power), and in a word, what­ever
are not our own acts. And the things in our power are by nature free, not
subject to restraint nor hindrance: but the things not in our power are
weak, slavish, subject to restraint, in the power of others. Remember then
that if you think the things which are by nature slavish to be free, and
the things which are in the power of others to be your own, you will be
hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will blame both gods
and men: but if you think that only which is your own to be your own, and
if you think that what is another's, as it really is, belongs to another,
no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame
any man, you will accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily (against
your will), no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not
suffer any harm.

If then you desire (aim at) such great things, remember that you must not
(attempt to) lay hold of them with a small effort; but you must leave alone
some things entirely, and postpone others for the present. But if you wish
for these things also (such great things), and power (office) and wealth,
perhaps you will not gain even these very things (power and wealth) because
you aim also at those former things (such great things):¹ certainly you
will fail in those things through which alone happiness and freedom are
secured. Straightway, then, practice saying to every harsh appearance,² You
are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be. Then examine it
by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it
relates to the things which are in our power or to the things which are not
in our power: and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be
ready to say, that it does not con­cern you.

II

Remember that desire contains in it the profession (hope) of obtaining that
which you desire; and the profession (hope) in aversion (turning from a
thing) is that you will not fall into that which you attempt to avoid: and
he who fails in his desire is unfortunate; and he who falls into that which
he would avoid, is unhappy. If then you attempt to avoid only the things
contrary to nature which are within your power, you will not be involved in
any of the things which you would avoid. But if you attempt to avoid
disease or death or poverty, you will be unhappy. Take away, then, aversion
from all things which are not in our power, and transfer it to the things
contrary to nature which are in our power. But destroy desire completely
for the present. For if you desire anything which is not in our power, you
must be unfortunate: but of the things in our power, and which it would be
good to desire, nothing yet is before you. But employ only the power of
moving toward an object and retiring from it; and these powers indeed only
slightly and with exceptions and with remission.

III

In everything which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved,
remember to add this to the (description, notion): What is the nature of
each thing, beginning from the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say
it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken, you
will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it
is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you
will not be disturbed.

IV

When you are going to take in hand any act, remind yourself what kind of an
act it is. If you are going to bathe, place before yourself what happens in
the bath: some splashing the water, others pushing against one another,
others abusing one another, and some stealing: and thus with more safety
you will undertake the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to
bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner con­formable to nature. And so
you will do in every act: for thus if any hindrance to bathing shall
happen, let this thought be ready; it was not this only that I intended,
but I intended also to maintain my will in a way conformable to nature; but
I shall not maintain it so, if I am vexed at what happens.

V

Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about
the things: for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it
would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death, that it is
terrible, is the terrible thing. When then, we are impeded or dis­turbed or
grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves, that is, our opinions.
It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad
condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the
blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to
blame another, nor himself.

VI

Be not elated at any advantage (excellence), which belongs to another. If a
horse when he is elated should say, I am beautiful, one might endure it.
But when you are elated, and say, I have a beautiful horse, you must know
that you are elated at having a good horse.³ What then is your own? The use
of appearances. Consequently, when in the use of appearances you are
conformable to nature, then be elated, for then you will be elated at
something good which is your own.

VII

As on a voyage when the vessel has reached a port, if you go out to get
water, it is an amusement by the way to pick up a shellfish or some bulb,
but your thoughts ought to be directed to the ship, and you ought to be
constantly watching if the captain should call, and then you must throw
away all those things, that you may not be bound and pitched into the ship
like sheep: so in life also, if there be given to you instead of a little
bulb and a shell a wife and child, there will be nothing to prevent (you
from taking them). But if the captain should call, run to the ship, and
leave all those things without regard to them. But if you are old, do not
even go far from the ship, lest when you are called you make default.

VIII

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish
the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil
flow of life.

IX

Disease is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will
itself chooses. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will.
And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you
will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself.

X

On the occasion of every accident (event) that befalls you, remember to
turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use. If
you see a fair man or a fair woman, you will find that the power to resist
is temperance (continence). If labor (pain) be presented to you, you will
find that it is endurance. If it be abusive words, you will find it to be
patience. And if you have been thus formed to the (proper) habit, the
appearances will not carry you along with them.

XI

Never say about anything, I have lost it, but say I have restored it. Is
your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has been
restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not then this also been
restored? But he who has taken it from me is a bad man. But what is it to
you, by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he may allow
you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travelers do
with their inn.

XII

If you intend to improve, throw away such thoughts as these: if I neglect
my affairs, I shall not have the means of living: unless I chastise my
slave, he will be bad. For it is better to die of hunger and so to be
released from grief and fear than to live in abundance with perturbation;
and it is better for your slave to be bad than for you to be unhappy.⁴
Begin then from little things. Is the oil spilled? Is a little wine stolen?
Say on the occasion, at such price is sold freedom from perturbation; at
such price is sold tranquility, but nothing is got for nothing. And when
you call your slave, consider that it is possible that he does not hear;
and if he does hear, that he will do nothing which you wish. But matters
are not so well with him, but altogether well with you, that it should be
in his power for you to be not disturbed.⁵

XIII

If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish
with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing: and if
you shall seem to some to be a person of importance, distrust yourself. For
you should know that it is not easy both to keep your will in a condition
conformable to nature and (to secure) external things: but if a man is
careful about the one, it is an absolute necessity that he will neglect the
other.

XIV

If you would have your children and your wife and your friends to live
forever, you are silly; for you would have the things which are not in your
power to be in your power, and the things which belong to others to be
yours. So if you would have your slave to be free from faults, you are a
fool; for you would have badness not to be badness, but something else.⁶
But if you wish not to fail in your desires, you are able to do that.
Practice, then, this which you are able to do. He is the master of every
man who has the power over the things, which another person wishes or does
not wish, the power to confer them on him or to take them away. Whoever
then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid
anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this rule, he must
be a slave.

XV

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that
something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand
and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not
detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire
forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. Do so with respect to
children, so with respect to a wife, so with respect to magisterial
offices, so with respect to wealth, and you will be some time a worthy
partner of the banquets of the gods. But if you take none of the things
which are set before you, and even despise them, then you will be not only
a fellow banqueter with the gods, but also a partner with them in power.
For by acting thus Diogenes and Heraclitus and those like them were
de­servedly divine, and were so called.

XVI

When you see a person weeping in sorrow either when a child goes abroad or
when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the
appearance do not hurry you away with it, as if he were suffering in
external things.⁷ But straightway make a distinction in your own mind, and
be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts
this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this
thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to
show him sympathy,⁸ and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take
care that you do not lament internally also.

XVII

Remember that thou art an actor in a play,⁹ of such a kind as the teacher
(author) may choose; if short, of a short one; if long, of a long one: if
he wishes you to act the part of a poor man, see that you act the part
naturally; if the part of a lame man, of a magistrate, of a private person,
(do the same). For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to
you; but to select the part, belongs to another.

XVIII

When a raven has croaked inauspiciously, let not the ap­pearance hurry you
away with it; but straightaway make a distinction in your mind and say,
None of these things is signified to me, but either to my poor body, or to
my small property, or to my reputation, or to my children or to my wife:
but to me all significations are auspicious if I choose. For whatever of
these things results, it is in my power to derive benefit from it.

XIX

You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in
your power to conquer. Take care, then, when you observe a man honored
before others or possessed of great power or highly esteemed for any
reason, not to suppose him happy, and be not carried away by the
appearance. For if the nature of the good is in our power, neither envy nor
jealousy will have a place in us. But you yourself will not wish to be a
general or senator or consul, but a free man: and there is only one way to
this, to despise (care not for) the things which are not in our power.

XX

Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you,
but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When, then, a
man irritates you, you must know that it is your own opinion which has
irritated you. Therefore especially try not to be carried away by the
appearance. For if you once gain time and delay, you will more easily
master yourself.

XXI

Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be daily
before your eyes; but most of all death: and you will never think of
anything mean nor will you desire anything extravagantly.

XXIII

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to
please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.
Be satisfied, then, in every­thing with being a philosopher; and if you
wish to seem also to any person to be a philosopher, appear so to
your­self, and you will be able to do this.

XXII

If you desire philosophy, prepare yourself from the be­ginning to be
ridiculed, to expect that many will sneer at you, and say, He has all at
once returned to us as a phi­losopher; and whence does he get this
supercilious look for us? Do you not show a supercilious look; but hold on
to the things which seem to you best as one appointed by God to this
station. And remember that if you abide in the same principles, these men
who first ridiculed will afterward admire you: but if you shall have been
over­powered by them, you will bring on yourself double ridicule.

XXIII

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to
please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.
Be satisfied, then, in every­thing with being a philosopher; and if you
wish to seem also to any person to be a philosopher, appear so to
your­self, and you will be able to do this.

XXIV

Let not these thoughts afflict you, I shall live unhonored and be nobody
nowhere. For if want of honor is an evil, you cannot be in evil through the
means (fault) of another any more than you can be involved in anything
base. Is it then your business to obtain the rank of a magistrate, or to be
received at a banquet? By no means. How then can this be want of honor
(dishonor)? And how will you be nobody nowhere, when you ought to be
somebody in those things only which are in your power, in which indeed it
is permitted to you to be a man of the greatest worth? But your friends
will be without assistance! What do you mean by being without assistance?
They will not receive money from you, nor will you make them Roman
citizens. Who then told you that these are among the things which are in
our power, and not in the power of others? And who can give to another what
he has not himself? Acquire money then, your friends say, that we also may
have something. If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest, and
faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it. But if
you ask me to lose the things which are good and my own, in order that you
may gain the things which are not good, see how unfair and silly you are.
Besides, which would you rather have, money or a faithful and modest
friend? For this end, then, rather help me to be such a man, and do not ask
me to do this by which I shall lose that character. But my country, you
say, as far as it depends on me, will be without my help. I ask again, what
help do you mean? It will not have porticoes or baths through you. And what
does this mean? For it is not furnished with shoes by means of a smith, nor
with arms by means of a shoemaker. But it is enough if every man fully
discharges the work that is his own: and if you provided it with another
citizen faithful and modest, would you not be useful to it? Yes. Then you
also cannot be useless to it. What place, then, you say, shall I hold in
the city? Whatever you can, if you maintain at the same time your fidelity
and modesty. But if when you wish to be useful to the state, you shall lose
these qualities, what profit could you be to it, if you were made shameless
and faithless?

XXV

Has any man been preferred before you at a banquet, or in being saluted, or
in being invited to a consultation? If these things are good, you ought to
rejoice that he has obtained them: but if bad, be not grieved because you
have not obtained them; and remember that you cannot, if you do not the
same things in order to obtain what is not in our power, be considered
worthy of the same (equal) things. For how can a man obtain an equal share
with another when he does not visit a man's doors as that other man does,
when he does not attend him when he goes abroad, as the other man does;
when he does not praise (flatter) him as another does? You will be unjust,
then, and insatiable, if you do not part with the price, in return for
which those things are sold, and if you wish to obtain them for nothing.
Well, what is the price of lettuces? An obolus¹⁰ perhaps. If, then, a man
gives up the obolus, and receives the lettuces, and if you do not give up
the obolus and do not obtain the lettuces, do not suppose that you receive
less than he who has got the lettuces; for as he has the lettuces, so you
have the obolus which you did not give. In the same way, then, in the other
matter also you have not been invited to a man's feast, for you did not
give to the host the price at which the supper is sold; but he sells it for
praise (flattery), he sells it for personal attention. Give then the price,
if it is for your interest, for which it is sold. But if you wish both not
to give the price and to obtain the things, you are insatiable and silly.
Have you nothing then in place of the supper? You have indeed, you have the
not flattering of him, whom you did not choose to flatter; you have the not
enduring of the man when he enters the room.

XXVI

We may learn the wish (will) of nature from the things in which we do not
differ from one another; for instance, when your neighbor's slave has
broken his cup, or anything else, we are ready to say forthwith, that it is
one of the things which happen. You must know, then, that when your cup
also is broken, you ought to think as you did when your neighbor's cup was
broken. Transfer this reflection to greater things also. Is another man's
child or wife dead? There is no one who would not say, this is an event
incident to man. But when a man's own child or wife is dead, forthwith he
calls out, Woe to me, how wretched I am. But we ought to remember how we
feel when we hear that it has happened to others.

XXVII

As a mark is not set up for the purpose of missing the aim, so neither does
the nature of evil exist in the world.¹¹

XXVIII

If any person was intending to put your body in the power of any man whom
you fell in with on the way, you would be vexed: but that you put your
understanding in the power of any man whom you meet, so that if he should
revile you, it is disturbed and troubled, are you not ashamed at this?

XXIX¹²

In every act observe the things which come first, and those which follow
it; and so proceed to the act. If you do not, at first you will approach it
with alacrity, without having thought of the things which will follow; but
afterward, when certain base (ugly) things have shown themselves, you will
be ashamed. A man wishes to conquer at the Olympic games. I also wish
indeed, for it is a fine thing. But observe both the things which come
first, and the things which follow; and then begin the act. You must do
everything according to rule, eat according to strict orders; abstain from
delicacies; exercise yourself as you are bid at appointed times, in heat,
in cold; you must not drink cold water, nor wine as you choose. In a word,
you must deliver yourself up to the exercise master as you do to the
physician, and then proceed to the contest. And sometimes you will strain
the hand, put the ankle out of joint, swallow much dust, sometimes be
flogged, and after all this be defeated. When you have considered all this,
if you still choose, go to the contest: if you do not, you will behave like
children, who at one time play at wrestlers, another time as flute players,
again as gladiators, then as trumpeters, then as tragic actors: so you also
will be at one time an athlete, at another a gladiator, then a rhetorician,
then a philosopher, but with your whole soul you will be nothing at all;
but like an ape you imitate everything that you see, and one thing after
another pleases you. For you have not undertaken anything with
consideration, nor have you surveyed it well; but carelessly and with cold
desire.

Thus some who have seen a philosopher and having heard one speak, as
Euphrates speaks—and who can speak as he does? They wish to be philosophers
themselves also.

My man, first of all consider what kind of thing it is: and then examine
your own nature, if you are able to sustain the character. Do you wish to
be a pentathlete or a wrestler? Look at your arms, your thighs, examine
your loins. For different men are formed by nature for different things. Do
you think that if you do these things, you can eat in the same manner,
drink in the same manner, and in the same manner loathe certain things? You
must pass sleepless nights; endure toil; go away from your kinsmen; be
despised by a slave; in everything have the inferior part, in honor, in
office, in the courts of justice, in every little matter. Consider these
things, if you would exchange for them, freedom from passions, liberty,
tranquility. If not, take care that, like little children, you be not now a
philosopher, then a servant of the publicani, then a rhetorician, then a
procurator (manager) for Caesar. These things are not consistent. You must
be one man, either good or bad. You must either cultivate your own ruling
faculty, or external things; you must either exercise your skill on
internal things or on external things; that is, you must either maintain
the position of a philosopher or that of a common person.

XXX

Duties are universally measured by relations. Is a man a father? The
precept is to take care of him, to yield to him in all things, to submit
when he is reproachful, when he inflicts blows. But suppose that he is a
bad father. Were you then by nature made akin to a good father? No; but to
a father. Does a brother wrong you? Maintain then your own position toward
him, and do not examine what he is doing, but what you must do that your
will shall be conformable to nature. For another will not damage you,
unless you choose: but you will be damaged then when you shall think that
you are damaged. In this way, then, you will discover your duty from the
relation of a neighbor, from that of a citizen, from that of a general, if
you are accustomed to contemplate the relations.

XXXI

As to piety toward the gods you must know that this is the chief thing, to
have right opinions about them, to think that they exist, and that they
administer the All well and justly; and you must fix yourself in this
principle (duty), to obey them, and yield to them in everything which
happens, and voluntarily to follow it as being accomplished by the wisest
intelligence. For if you do so, you will never either blame the gods, nor
will you accuse them of neglecting you. And it is not possible for this to
be done in any other way than by withdrawing from the things which are not
in our power, and by placing the good and the evil only in those things
which are in our power. For if you think that any of the things which are
not in our power is good or bad, it is absolutely necessary that, when you
do not obtain what you wish, and when you fall into those things which you
do not wish, you will find fault and hate those who are the cause of them;
for every animal is formed by nature to this, to fly from and to turn from
the things which appear harmful and the things which are the cause of the
harm, but to follow and admire the things which are useful and the causes
of the useful.

It is impossible, then, for a person who thinks that he is harmed to be
delighted with that which he thinks to be the cause of the harm, as it is
also impossible to be pleased with the harm itself. For this reason also a
father is reviled by his son, when he gives no part to his son of the
things which are considered to be good: and it was this which made
Polynices and Eteocles¹³ enemies, the opinion that royal power was a good.
It is for this reason that the cultivator of the earth reviles the gods,
for this reason the sailor does, and the merchant, and for this reason
those who lose their wives and their children. For where the useful (your
interest) is, there also piety is.¹⁴ Consequently, he who takes care to
desire as he ought and to avoid as he ought, at the same time also cares
after piety. But to make libations and to sacrifice and to offer first
fruits according to the custom of our fathers, purely and not meanly nor
carelessly nor scantily nor above our ability, is a thing which belongs to
all to do.

XXXII

When you have recourse to divination, remember that you do not know how it
will turn out, but that you are come to inquire from the diviner. But of
what kind it is, you know when you come, if indeed you are a philosopher.
For if it is any of the things which are not in our power, it is absolutely
necessary that it must be neither good nor bad. Do not then bring to the
diviner desire or aversion: if you do, you will approach him with fear. But
having determined in your mind that everything which shall turn out
(result) is indifferent, and does not concern you, and whatever it may be,
for it will be in your power to use it well, and no man will hinder this,
come then with confidence to the gods as your advisers. And then, when any
advice shall have been given, remember whom you have taken as advisers, and
whom you will have neglected, if you do not obey them. And go to
divination, as Socrates said that you ought, about those matters in which
all the inquiry has reference to the result, and in which means are not
given either by reason nor by any other art for knowing the thing which is
the subject of the inquiry. Wherefore, when we ought to share a friend's
danger or that of our country, you must not consult the diviner whether you
ought to share it. For even if the diviner shall tell you that the signs of
the victims are unlucky, it is plain that this is a token of death or
mutilation of part of the body or of exile. But reason prevails that even
with these risks we should share the dangers of our friend and of our
country. Therefore attend to the greater diviner, the Pythian god, who
ejected from the temple him who did not assist his friend when he was being
murdered.¹⁵

XXXIII

Immediately prescribe some character and some form to yourself, which you
shall observe both when you are alone and when you meet with men.

And let silence be the general rule, or let only what is necessary be said,
and in few words. And rarely and when the occasion calls we shall say
something; but about none of the common subjects, nor about gladiators, nor
horse-races, nor about athletes, nor about eating or drinking, which are
the usual subjects; and especially not about men, as blaming them or
praising them, or comparing them. If then you are able, bring over by your
conversation the conversation of your associates to that which is proper;
but if you should happen to be confined to the company of strangers, be
silent.

Let not your laughter be much, nor on many occasions, nor excessive.

Refuse altogether to take an oath, if it is possible: if it is not, refuse
as far as you are able.

Avoid banquets which are given by strangers and by ignorant persons. But if
ever there is occasion to join in them, let your attention be carefully
fixed, that you slip not into the manners of the vulgar (the uninstructed).
For you must know, that if your companion be impure, he also who keeps
company with him must become impure, though he should happen to be pure.

Take (apply) the things which relate to the body as far as the bare use, as
food, drink, clothing, house, and slaves: but exclude everything which is
for show or luxury.

As to pleasure with women, abstain as far as you can before marriage: but
if you do indulge in it, do it in the way which is conformable to custom.
Do not, however, be disagreeable to those who indulge in these pleasures,
or reprove them; and do not often boast that you do not indulge in them
yourself.

If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do
not make any defense (answer) to what has been told you: but reply, The man
did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these
only.

It is not necessary to go to the theaters often: but if there is ever a
proper occasion for going, do not show yourself as being a partisan of any
man except yourself, that is, desire only that to be done which is done,
and for him only to gain the prize who gains the prize; for in this way you
will meet with no hindrance But abstain entirely from shouts and laughter
at any (thing or person), or violent emotions. And when you are come away,
do not talk much about what has passed on the stage, except about that
which may lead to your own improvement. For it is plain, if you do talk
much, that you admired the spectacle (more than you ought).¹⁶

Do not go to the hearing of certain persons' recitations nor visit them
readily. But if you do attend, observe gravity and sedateness, and also
avoid making yourself disagreeable.¹⁷

When you are going to meet with any person, and particularly one of those
who are considered to be in a superior condition, place before yourself
what Socrates or Zeno would have done in such circumstances, and you will
have no difficulty in making a proper use of the occasion.

When you are going to any of those who are in great power, place before
yourself that you will not find the man at home, that you will be excluded,
that the door will not be opened to you, that the man will not care about
you. And if with all this it is your duty to visit him, bear what happens,
and never say to yourself that it was not worth the trouble. For this is
silly, and marks the character of a man who is offended by externals.

In company take care not to speak much and excessively about your own acts
or dangers: for as it is pleasant to you to make mention of your dangers,
it is not so pleasant to others to hear what has happened to you. Take care
also not to provoke laughter; for this is a slippery way toward vulgar
habits, and is also adapted to diminish the respect of your neighbors. It
is a dangerous habit also to approach obscene talk. When, then, anything of
this kind happens, if there is a good opportunity, rebuke the man who has
proceeded to this talk: but if there is not an opportunity, by your silence
at least, and blushing and expression of dissatisfaction by your
countenance, show plainly that you are displeased at such talk.

XXXIV

If you have received the impression of any pleasure, guard yourself against
being carried away by it; but let the thing wait for you, and allow
yourself a certain delay on your own part. Then think of both times, of the
time when you will enjoy the pleasure, and of the time after the enjoyment
of the pleasure when you will repent and will reproach yourself. And set
against these things how you will rejoice if you have abstained from the
pleasure, and how you will commend yourself. But if it seem to you
seasonable to undertake (do) the thing, take care that the charm of it, and
the pleasure, and the attraction of it shall not conquer you: but set on
the other side the consideration how much better it is to be conscious that
you have gained this victory.

XXXV

When you have decided that a thing ought to be done and are doing it, never
avoid being seen doing it, though the many shall form an unfavorable
opinion about it. For if it is not right to do it, avoid doing the thing;
but if it is right, why are you afraid of those who shall find fault
wrongly?

XXXVI

As the proposition it is either day or it is night is of great importance
for the disjunctive argument, but for the conjunctive is of no value,¹⁸ so
in a symposium (entertainment) to select the larger share is of great value
for the body, but for the maintenance of the social feeling is worth
nothing. When then you are eating with another, remember to look not only
to the value for the body of the things set before you, but also to the
value of the behavior toward the host which ought to be observed.

XXXVII

If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in
this matter in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that which you
might have fulfilled.

XXXVIII

In walking about as you take care not to step on a nail or to sprain your
foot, so take care not to damage your own ruling faculty: and if we observe
this rule in every act, we shall undertake the act with more security.

XXXIX

The measure of possession (property) is to every man the body, as the foot
is of the shoe. If then you stand on this rule (the demands of the body),
you will maintain the measure: but if you pass beyond it, you must then of
necessity be hurried as it were down a precipice. As also in the matter of
the shoe, if you go beyond the (necessities of the) foot, the shoe is
gilded, then of a purple color, then embroidered:¹⁹ for there is no limit
to that which has once passed the true measure.

XL

Women forthwith from the age of fourteen²⁰ are called by the men mistresses
(dominae). Therefore, since they see that there is nothing else that they
can obtain, but only the power of lying with men, they begin to decorate
themselves, and to place all their hopes in this. It is worth our while,
then, to take care that they may know that they are valued (by men) for
nothing else than appearing (being) decent and modest and discreet.

XLI

It is a mark of a mean capacity to spend much time on the things which
concern the body, such as much exercise, much eating, much drinking, much
easing of the body, much copulation. But these things should be done as
subordinate things: and let all your care be directed to the mind.

XLII

When any person treats you ill or speaks ill of ,you, remember that he does
this or says this because he thinks that it is his duty. It is not
possible, then, for him to follow that which seems right to you, but that
which seems right to himself. Accordingly, if he is wrong in his opinion,
he is the person who is hurt, for he is the person who has been deceived;
for if a man shall suppose the true conjunction²¹ to be false, it is not
the conjunction which is hindered, but the man who has been deceived about
it. If you proceed, then, from these opinions, you will be mild in temper
to him who reviles you: for say on each occasion, It seemed so to him.

XLIII

Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by
which it may not. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act
by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which
cannot be borne; but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that
he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle
by which it can be borne.

XLIV

These reasonings do not cohere: I am richer than you, therefore I am better
than you; I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you. On
the contrary these rather cohere, I am richer than you, therefore my
possessions are greater than yours: I am more eloquent than you, therefore
my speech is superior to yours. But you are neither possession nor speech.

XLV

Does a man bathe quickly (early)? Do not say that he bathes badly, but that
he bathes quickly. Does a man drink much wine? Do not say that he does this
badly, but say that he drinks much. For before you shall have determined
the opinion,²² how do you know whether he is acting wrong? Thus it will not
happen to you to comprehend some appearances which are capable of being
comprehended, but to assent to others.

XLVI

On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, and do not speak much among the
uninstructed about theorems (philosophical rules, precepts): but do that
which follows from them. For example, at a banquet do not say how a man
ought to eat, but eat as you ought to eat. For remember that in this way
Socrates²³ also altogether avoided ostentation: persons used to come to him
and ask to be recommended by him to philosophers, and he used to take them
to philosophers: so easily did he submit to being overlooked. Accordingly,
if any conversation should arise among uninstructed persons about any
theorem, generally be silent; for there is great danger that you will
immediately vomit up what you have not digested. And when a man shall say
to you, that you know nothing, and you are not vexed, then be sure that you
have begun the work (of philosophy). For even sheep do not vomit up their
grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they
have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and
milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the uninstructed, but show the
acts which come from their digestion.

XLVII

When at a small cost you are supplied with everything for the body, do not
be proud of this; nor, if you drink water, say on every occasion, I drink
water. But consider first how much more frugal the poor are than we, and
how much more enduring of labor. And if you ever wish to exercise yourself
in labor and endurance, do it for yourself, and not for others: do not
embrace statues.²⁴ But if you are ever very thirsty, take a draught of cold
water, and spit it out, and tell no man.

XLVIII

The condition and characteristic of an uninstructed person is this: he
never expects from himself profit (advantage) nor harm, but from externals.
The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is this: he expects all
advantage and all harm from himself. The signs (marks) of one who is making
progress are these: he censures no man, he praises no man, he blames no
man, he accuses no man, he says nothing about himself as if he were
somebody or knew something; when he is impeded at all or hindered, he
blames himself: if a man praises him, he ridicules the praiser to himself:
if a man censures him, he makes no defense: he goes about like weak
persons, being careful not to move any of the things which are placed,
before they are firmly fixed: he removes all desire from himself, and he
transfers aversion to those things only of the things within our power
which are contrary to nature: he employs a moderate movement toward
everything: whether he is considered foolish or ignorant, he cares not: and
in a word he watches himself as if he were an enemy and lying in ambush.

XLIX

When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of
Chrysippus, say to yourself, If Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this
man would have nothing to be proud of. But what is it that I wish? To
understand Nature and to follow it. I inquire, therefore, who is the
interpreter: and when I have heard that it is Chrysippus, I come to him
(the interpreter). But I do not understand what is written, and therefore I
seek the interpreter. And so far there is yet nothing to be proud of. But
when I shall have found the interpreter, the thing that remains is to use
the precepts (the lessons). This itself is the only thing to be proud of.
But if I shall admire the exposition, what else have I been made unless a
grammarian instead of a philosopher? except in one thing, that I am
explaining Chrysippus instead of Homer. When, then, any man says to me,
Read Chrysippus to me, I rather blush, when I cannot show my acts like to
and consistent with his words.

L

Whatever things (rules) are proposed²⁵ to you [for the conduct of life]
abide by them, as if they were laws, as if you would be guilty of impiety
if you transgressed any of them. And whatever any man shall say about you,
do not attend to it: for this is no affair of yours.

LI

How long will you then still defer thinking yourself worthy of the best
things, and in no matter transgressing the distinctive reason? Have you
accepted the theorems (rules), which it was your duty to agree to, and have
you agreed to them?

What teacher, then, do you still expect that you defer to him the
correction of yourself? You are no longer a youth, but already a full-grown
man. If then you are negligent and slothful, and are continually making
procrastination after procrastination, and proposal (intention) after
proposal, and fixing day after day, after which you will attend to
yourself, you will not know that you are not making improvement, but you
will continue ignorant (uninstructed) both while you live and till you die.
Immediately, then, think it right to live as a full-grown man, and one who
is making proficiency, and let everything which appears to you to be the
best be to you a law which must not be transgressed. And if anything
laborious, or pleasant or glorious or inglorious be presented to you,
remember that now is the contest, now are the Olympic games, and they
cannot be deferred; and that it depends on one defeat and one giving way
that progress is either lost or maintained. Socrates in this way becomes
perfect, in all things improving himself, attending to nothing except to
reason. But you, though you are not yet a Socrates, ought to live as one
who wishes to be a Socrates.

LII

The first and most necessary place (part) in philosophy is the use of
theorems (precepts), for instance, that we must not lie: the second part is
that of demonstrations, for instance, How is it proved that we ought not to
lie: the third is that which is confirmatory of these two and explanatory,
for example, How is this a demonstration?

For what is demonstration, what is consequence, what is contradiction, what
is truth, what is falsehood? The third part (topic) is necessary on account
of the second, and the second on account of the first; but the most
necessary and that on which we ought to rest is the first. But we do the
contrary. For we spend our time on the third topic, and all our earnestness
is about it: but we entirely neglect the first. Therefore we lie; but the
demonstration that we ought not to lie we have ready to hand.

LIII

In every thing (circumstance) we should hold these maxims ready to hand:

  Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O Destiny,
  The way that I am bid by you to go:
  To follow I am ready. If I choose not,
  I make myself a wretch, and still must follow.²⁶

  But whoso nobly yields unto necessity,
  We hold him wise, and skill'd in things divine.²⁷

And the third also:

  O Crito, if so it pleases the gods, so let it be;
  Anytus and Melitus are able indeed to kill me, but they cannot harm me.²⁸

Footnotes

[1] This passage will be obscure in the original, unless it is examined
  well. I have followed the explanation of Simplicius, iv. (i. 4.)
[2] Appearances are named 'harsh' or 'rough' when they are 'contrary to
  reason and overexciting and in fact make life rough (uneven) by the want
  of symmetry and by inequality in the movements, Simplicius, v. (i. 5.)
[3] Upton proposes to read eph' hippou agaphôi instead of epi hippôi
  agaphôi. The meaning then will be 'elated at something good which is in
  the horse.' I think that he is right.
[4] He means, Do not chastise your slave while you are in a passion, lest,
  while you are trying to correct him, and it is very doubtful whether you
  will succeed, you fall into a vice which is a man's great and only
  calamity. Schweig.
[5] The passage seems to mean, that your slave has not the power of
  disturbing you, because you have the power of not being disturbed. See
  Upton's note on the text.
[6] Telein is used here, as it often is among the Stoics, to 'wish
  absolutely,' 'to will.' When Epictetus says 'you would have badness not
  to be badness,' he means that 'badness' is in the will of him who has the
  badness, and as you wish to subject it to your will, you are a fool. It
  is your business, as far as you can, to improve the slave: you may wish
  this. It is his business to obey your instruction: this is what he ought
  to wish to do; but for him to will to do this, that lies in himself, not
  in you. Schweig.
[7] This is obscure. 'It is true that the man is wretched, not because of
  the things external which have happened to him, but through the fact that
  he allows himself to be affected so much by external things which are
  placed out of his power.' Schweig.
[8] It has been objected to Epictetus that he expresses no sympathy with
  those who suffer sorrow. But here he tells you to show sympathy, a thing
  which comforts most people. But it would be contrary to his teaching, if
  he told you to suffer mentally with another.
[9] Compare Antoninus, xi. 6, xii. 36.
[10] The sixth part of a drachma.
[11] This passage is explained in the commentary of Simplicius, (xxxiv., in
  Schweig.'s ed. xxvii. p. 264), and Schweighaeuser agrees with the
  explanation, which is this: Nothing in the world (universe) can exist or
  be done (happen) which in its proper sense, in itself and in its nature
  is bad; for every thing is and is done by the wisdom and will of God and
  for the purpose which he intended: but to miss a mark is to fail in an
  intention; and as a man does not set up a mark, or does not form a
  purpose for the purpose of missing the mark or the purpose, so it is
  absurd (inconsistent) to say that God has a purpose or design, and that
  he purposed or designed anything which in itself and in its nature is
  bad. The commentary of Simplicius is worth reading. But how many will
  read it? Perhaps one in a million.
[12] 'Compare iii. 15, from which all this passage has been transferred to
  the Encheiridion by the copyists.' Upton. On which Schweighaeuser
  remarks, 'Why should we not say by Arrian, who composed the Encheiridion
  from the Discourses of Epictetus?' See the notes of Upton and Schweig. on
  some differences in the readings of the passage in iii. 15, and in this
  passage.
[13] See Discourses, ii. 22, 13, iv. 5, 9.
[14] 'It is plain enough that the philosopher does not say this, that the
  reckoning of our private advantage ought to be the sole origin and
  foundation of piety towards God.' Schweig., and he proceeds to explain
  the sentence, which at first appears rather obscure. Perhaps Arrian
  intends to say that the feeling of piety coincides with the opinion of
  the useful, the profitable; and that the man who takes care to desire as
  he ought to do and to avoid as he ought to do, thus also cares after
  piety, and so he will secure his interest (the profitable) and he will
  not be discontented. In Discourses, i. 27, 14 (p. 81) it is said ean mê
  en tôi autôi êi to eusebes kai sumpheron, ou dunatai sôphênai to eusebes
  en tini. This is what is said here (s. 31).
[15] The story is told by Aelian (iii. c. 44), and by Simplicius in his
  commentary on the Encheiridion (p. 411, ed. Schweig.). Upton.
[16] To admire (phaumazein) is contrary to the precept of Epictetus;
  Discourses, i. 29, ii. 6, iii. 20. Upton.
[17] Such recitations were common at Rome, when authors read their works
  and invited persons to attend. These recitations are often mentioned in
  the letters of the younger Pliny. See Epictetus, Discourses, iii. 23.
[18] Compare Discourses, i. 25, 11, etc.
[19] The word is kentêton 'acu pictum,' ornamented by needlework.
[20] Fourteen was considered the age of puberty in Roman males, but in
  females the age of twelve (Justin. Inst. I. tit. 22). Compare Gaius, i.
  196.
[21] to alêphes sumpeplegmenon is rendered in the Latin by 'verum
  conjunctum.' Mrs. Carter renders it by 'a true proposition,' which I
  suppose to be the meaning.
[22] Mrs. Carter translates this, Unless you perfectly understand the
  principle [from which anyone acts].
[23] See iii. 23, 22; iv. 8, 2.
[24] See Discourses, iii. 12.
[25] This may mean, 'what is proposed to you by philosophers,' and
  especially in this little book. Schweighaeuser thinks that it may mean
  'what you have proposed to yourself:' but he is inclined to understand it
  simply, 'what is proposed above, or taught above.'
[26] The first four verses are by the Stoic Cleanthes, the pupil of Zeno,
  and the teacher of Chrysippus. He was a native of Assus in Mysia; and
  Simplicius, who wrote his commentary on the Encheiridion in the sixth
  century, A.D., saw even at this late period in Assus a beautiful statue
  of Cleanthes erected by a decree of the Roman senate in honour of this
  excellent man. (Simplicius, ed. Schweig. p. 522.)
[27] The two second verses are from a play of Euripides, a writer who has
  supplied more verses for quotation than any ancient tragedian.
[28] The third quotation is from the Criton of Plato. Socrates is the
  speaker. The last part is from the Apology of Plato, and Socrates is also
  the speaker. The words 'and the third also,' Schweighaeuser says, have
  been introduced from the commentary of Simplicius. Simplicius concludes
  his commentary thus: Epictetus connects the end with the beginning, which
  reminds us of what was said in the beginning, that the man who places the
  good and the evil among the things which are in our power, and not in
  externals, will neither be compelled by any man nor ever injured.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the
applicable copyright protections of the original content.
Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1923, and is in the public domain
worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Translation:

This work was published before January 1, 1923, and is in the public domain
worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Fragments of Anaxagoras

Fragment 1

All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the
small too was infinite. And, when all things were together, none of them
could be distinguished for their smallness. For air and aether prevailed
over all things, being both of them infinite; for amongst all things these
are the greatest both in quantity and size.¹

Fragment 2

For air and aether are separated off from the mass that surrounds the
world, and the surrounding mass is infinite in quantity.

Fragment 3

Nor is there a least of what is small, but there is always a smaller; for
it cannot be that what is should cease to be by being cut.² But there is
also always something greater than what is great, and it is equal to the
small in amount, and, compared with itself, each thing is both great and
small.

Fragment 4

And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained
many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all
things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours, and that men have
been formed in them, and the other animals that have life, and that these
men have inhabited cities and cultivated fields as with us; and that they
have a sun and a moon and the rest as with us; and that their earth brings
forth for them many things of all kinds of which they gather the best
together into their dwellings, and use them. Thus much have I said with
regard to separating off, to show that it will not be only with us that
things are separated off, but elsewhere too.

But before they were separated off, when all things were together, not even
was any colour distinguishable; for the mixture of all things prevented
it—of the moist and the dry; and the warm and the cold, and the light and
the dark, and of much earth that was in it, and of a multitude of
innumerable seeds in no way like each, other. For none of theother things
either is like any Other. And these things being so, we must hold that all
things are in the whole.³

Fragment 5

And those things having been thus decided, we must know that all of them
are neither more nor less; for it is not possible for them to be more than
all, and all are always equal.

Fragment 6

And since the portions of the great and of the small are equal in amount,
for this reason, too, all things will be in everything; nor is it possible
for them to be apart, but all things have a portion of everything. Since it
is impossible for there to be a least thing, they cannot be separated, nor
come to be by themselves; but they must be now, just as they were in the
beginning, all-together. And in all things many things are contained, and
an equal number both in the greater and in the smaller of the things that
are separated off.

Fragment 7

. . . So that we cannot know the number of the things that are separated
off, either in word or deed.

Fragment 8

The things that are in one world are not divided nor cut off from one
another with a hatchet, neither the warm from the cold nor the cold from
the warm.

Fragment 9

. . . as these things revolve and are separated off by the force and
swiftness. And the swiftness makes the force. Their swiftness is not like
the swiftness of any of the things that are now among men, but in every way
many times as swift.

Fragment 10

How can hair come from what is not hair, or flesh from what is not flesh?

Fragment 11

In everything there is a portion of everything except Nous, and there are
some things in which there is Nous also.

Fragment 12

All other things partake in a portion of everything, while Nous is infinite
and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.
For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would
partake in all things if it were mixed with any; for in everything there is
a portion of everything, as has been said by me in what goes before, and
the things mixed with it would hinder it, so that it would have power over
nothing in the same way that it has now being alone by itself. For it is
the thinnest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about
everything and the greatest strength; and Nous has power over all things,
both greater and smaller, that have life. And Nous had power over the whole
revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to
revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a
larger space, and will extend over a larger still. And all the things that
are mingled together and separated off and distinguished are all known by
Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that
were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve
the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the aether that are
separated off. And this revolution caused the separating off, and the rare
is separated off from the dense, the warm from the cold, the light from the
dark, and the dry from the moist. And there are many portions in many
things. But no thing is altogether separated off nor distinguished from
anything else except Nous. And all Nous is alike, both the greater and the
smaller; while nothing else is like anything else, but each single thing is
and was most manifestly those things of which it has most in it.

Fragment 13

And when Nous began to move things, separating off took place from all that
was moved, and so much as Nous set in motion was separated. And as things
were set in motion and separated, the revolution caused them to be
separated much more.

Fragment 14

And Nous, which ever is, is certainly there, where everything else is, in
the surrounding mass, and in what has been united with it and separated off
from it.⁴

Fragment 15

The dense and the moist and the cold and the dark came together where the
earth is now, while the rare and the warm and the dry (and the bright) went
out towards the further part of the aether.⁵

Fragment 16

From these as they are separated off earth is solidified; for from mists
water is separated off, and from water earth. From the earth stones are
solidified by the cold, and these rush outwards more than water.

Fragment 17

The Hellenes follow a wrong usage in speaking of coming into being and
passing away; for nothing comes into being or passes away, but there is
mingling and separation of things that are. So they would be right to call
coming into being mixture, and passing away separation.

Fragment 18

It is the sun that puts brightness into the moon.

Fragment 19

We call rainbow the reflexion of the sun in the clouds. (Now it is a sign
of storm; for the water that flows round the cloud causes wind or pours
down in rain.)

Fragment 20

With the rise of the Dogstar (?) men begin the harvest; with its setting
they begin to till the fields. It is hidden for forty days and nights.

Fragment 21

From the weakness of our senses we are not able to judge the truth.

Fragment 21a

What appears is a vision of the unseen.

Fragment 21b

(We can make use of the lower animals) because we use our own experience
and memory and wisdom and art.

Fragment 22

What is called "birds' milk" is the white of the egg.

Notes

[1] Simplicius tells us this was at the beginning of Book I. The sentence
  quoted by Diog. ii. 6 (R. P. 153) is not a fragment of Anaxagoras, but a
  summary, like the πάντα ῥεῖ ascribed to Herakleitos." (Chap. III. p.
  146).
[2] Zeller's τομῇ still seems to me a convincing correction of the MS. τὸ
  μή, which Diels retains.
[3] I had already pointed out in the first edition that Simplicius quotes
  this three times as a continuous fragment, and that we are not entitled
  to break it up. Diels now prints it as a single passage.
[4] Simplicius gives fr. 14 thus (p. 157, 5); ὁ δὲ νοῦς ὅσα ἐστί τε κάρτα
  καὶ νῦν ἐστιν. Diels now reads ὁ δὲ νοῦς ὃς ἀ<εί> ἐστί τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν
  ἐστιν. The correspondence of ἀεὶ . . . καὶ νῦν is strongly in favour of
  this.
[5] On the text of fr. 15, see R. P. 156 a. I have followed Schorn in
  adding καὶ τὸ λαμπρόν from Hippolytos.

References

- Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920)

Fragments of Heraclitus

Contents

Fragments: 1 2 3 4 4a 5 7 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 48 49 49a
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 67a 68 69 70 71 72 73
74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
99 100 101 101a 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116
117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
136 137 138 139

Fragments Organized By Topic

Logos and the Unity of Opposites1, 10, 50, 51, 54, 67, 88

Change12, 80

Human Wisdom and Law41, 44

Fragment 1

Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians, VII, 132 [s. A 16.]

Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it
when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all.
For, though, all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem
as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and
deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and
showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when
awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.

Fragment 2

Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians, VII 133

So we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of
their own. Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a
wisdom of their own.

Fragment 3

Aetius, Opinions, II, 21, 4

[Doxogr. 351]

The sun is the width of a human foot.

Fragment 4

Albertus Magnus, On vegetables, VI, 401

Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.¹

Fragment 4a

Anatolius [cod. Mon.gr.384, f, 58]

Fragment 5

Fragment of a Greek Theosophist, 68

They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if
one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. And they
pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a man's house, knowing
not what gods or heroes are.

Fragment 6

Aristotle, Meteorology, B 2, 355a 14

The sun is new every day.

Fragment 7

Aristotle, De sensu, 5, 443a 23

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

Fragment 8

Aristotle, Ethics, Book VIII, Part 1, 1155b 4

It is what opposes that helps.²

Fragment 9

Aristotle, Ethics, Book X, Part 5, 1176a 7

Asses would prefer sweepings to gold.³

Fragment 10

Ps. Aristotle, On the World, 5. p. 396b20

Couples are things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is
drawn asunder, the harmonious and discordant. The one is made up of all
things, and all things issue from the one.

Fragment 11

Ps.-Aristotle, On the world, 6, 401, a 10s.

Every beast is driven to pasture with blows.

Fragment 12

Arius Didymus in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XV, 20, 2.

You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are flowing in
upon you.

Fragment 13

Texte reconstitué, voir 1.
[Vgl. B 9]. CLEM. Strom. I 2 (II 4, 3 St.)
[Vgl. B 37. 68 B 147. Plotin. I 6, 6.]

It is better to delight in the mire than in the clean river.

Fragment 14

Clement of Alexandria, Protreptic, 22, 2.

Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bacchos and priestesses of the wine-vat,
mystery-mongers practised among men.

Fragment 15

Clement of Alexandria, Protreptic, 34, 5.

For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and sang the
shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is
the same as Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the
wine vat.

Fragment 16

Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogue, 99, 5.

How can one hide from that which never sets?

Fragment 17

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, 8, 1.

The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with, nor do
they mark them when they are taught, though they think they do.

Fragment 18

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, 17, 4.

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard
to be sought out and difficult.

Fragment 19

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, 24, 5.

Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.

Fragment 20

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III, 14, 1.

When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms - or
rather to rest - and they leave children behind them to meet with dooms in
turn.

Fragment 21

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III, 3, 21, 1.

All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in slumber
are sleep.

Fragment 22

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 2, 4, 2.

Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little.

Fragment 23

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 10, 1.

Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.

Fragment 24

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 4, 16, 1.

Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle.

Fragment 25

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 7, 49, 3.

Greater deaths win greater portions.

Fragment 26

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 141, 2.

Man is kindled and put out like a light in the nighttime.

Fragment 27

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, IV, 22, 144, 3.

There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream
of.

Fragment 28

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 1, 9, 3.

The most esteemed of them knows but fancies; yet of a truth justice shall
overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.

Fragment 29

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 9, 59, 5.

For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory
among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.

Fragment 30

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 14, 104, 2.

This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but
it was ever, is now and ever shall be an ever-living fire, with measures
kindling and measures going out.

Fragment 31

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 14, 104, 3.

The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is
earth, half whirlwind.

Fragment 32

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 115, 1.

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name
of Zeus.

Fragment 33

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 14, 115, 2.

And it is the law, too, to obey the counsel of one.

Fragment 34

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 115, 3. & Preparation for the Gospel,
XIII, 13, 42.

Fools when they do hear are like the deaf; of them, does the saying bear
witness that they are absent when present.

Fragment 35

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 140, 6.

Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

Fragment 36

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, VI, 17, 2.

For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become
earth. But water comes from earth; and, from water, soul.

Fragment 37

Columella, Res rustica, VIII, 4, 4.

Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.

Fragment 38

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, I, 23.

(He [Thales] is said to have been the first who studied astronomy, the
first to predict eclipses of the sun and to fix the solstices ... and
Heraclitus and Democritus confirm this.)

Fragment 39

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, I, 88.

In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the
rest.

Fragment 40

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 1.

The learning of many things teaches not understanding, else would it have
taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios.

Fragment 41

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 1.

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are
steered through all things.

Fragment 42

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 1.

Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochos
likewise.

Fragment 43

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 2.

Pride [hubris] needs putting out, even more than a house in fire.

Fragment 44

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 2.

The people must fight for its law as for its walls.

Fragment 45

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 7.

Of soul you shall never find boundaries, not if you track it on every path;
so deep is its cause.⁴

Fragment 46

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 7.

Self-conceit [is] a falling sickness (epilepsy) and eyesight a lying
sense.⁴

Fragment 47

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 73

Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.

Fragment 48

Etymologicum magnum, Article: βιός

The bow (βιός) is called life (βίος), but its work is death.

Fragment 49

Theodore Prodromus, Letters, I.

One is as ten thousand to me, if he be the best.

Fragment 49a

Heraclitus, Homeric Questions, 24

We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.

Fragment 50

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 1.

It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all
things are one.

Fragment 51

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 2.

Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an
attunement of opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.

Fragment 52

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 4.

Eternity is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's.

Fragment 53

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 4.

War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and
some men, some bond and some free.

Fragment 54

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 5.

The unseen harmony is better than the visible.

Fragment 55

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 15.

The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize the most.

Fragment 56

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 6.

Men are deceived in their knowledge of things that are manifest, even as
Homer was who was the wisest of all the Greeks. For he was even deceived by
boys killing lice when they said to him: What we have seen and grasped,
these we leave behind; whereas what we have not seen and grasped, these we
carry away.⁵

Fragment 57

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 2.

Hesiod is most men's teacher. Men think he knew very many things, a man who
did not know day or night! They are one.

Fragment 58

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 3.

Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, demand a fee for it
which they do not deserve to get.

Fragment 59

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 4.

The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb (γναφεῖον) is one
and the same.

Fragment 60

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 4.

The way up and the way down is one and the same.

Fragment 61

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 5.

The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is
good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.

Fragment 62

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 6.

Mortals, immortals, immortals, mortals, the one living the other's death
and dying the other's life.

Fragment 63

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 6.

. . . that they rise up and become the wakeful guardians of the quick and
dead.

Fragment 64

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 7.

It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things.

Fragment 65

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 7.

Fire is want and surfeit.

Fragment 66

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 7.

Fire in its advance will judge and convict all things.

Fragment 67

Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 10, 8.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger;
but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices,
is named according to the savour of each.

Fragment 67a

Hisdosus scholasticus, Commentary on the Timaeus, 17v.

ita vitalis calor a sole procedens omnibus quae vivunt vitam subministrat.
cui sententiae Heraclitus adquiescens optimam similitudinem dat de aranea
ad animam, de tela araneae ad corpus, sic(ut) aranea, ait, stans in medio
telae sentit, quam cito musca aliquem filum suum corrumpit itaque illuc
celeriter currit quasi de fili persectione dolens, sic hominis anima aliqua
parte corporis laesa, illuc festine meat, quasi impatiens laesionis
corporis, cui firme et proportionaliter iuncta est.

Fragment 68

Iamblichus, On the mysteries, I, 11.

On this account, also, they are very properly called by Heraclitus
remedies, as healing things of a dreadful nature, and saving souls from the
calamities with which the realms of generation are replete.⁶

Fragment 69

Iamblichus, On the mysteries, V, 15.

We must admit, therefore, that there are two-fold species of sacrifices;
one kind, indeed, pertaining to men who are entirely purified, which, as
Heraclitus says, rarely happens to one man, or to a certain easily to be
numbered few of mankind...⁶

Fragment 70

Iamblichus, On the soul, in Stobaeus, II, 1, 16.

πόσῳ δὴ οὖν βέλτιον Ἡ. παίδων ἀθύρματα νενόμικεν εἶναι τὰ ἀνθρώπινα
δοξάσματα.

A little better, then, Heraclitus has considered human opinions to be
children's toys.

Fragment 71

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 46.

Think too of him who forgets where the way leads.⁷

Fragment 72

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 46.

They are estranged from that with which they have most constant
intercourse.

Fragment 73

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 46.

We ought not to act and speak as if we were asleep.⁷

Fragment 74

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 46.

We ought not [behave] like children who learn from their parents.⁷

Fragment 75

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 42.

Those who are asleep are fellow-workers . . . .

Fragment 76

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 46.

The death of earth is to become water, and the death of water is to become
air, and the death of air is to become fire, and reversely.⁷

Fragment 77

Porphyry, The cave of the nymphs, 10 & Numenius, fr. 35.

It is pleasure to souls to become moist.

Fragment 78

Celsus, in Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 12.

The way of man has no wisdom, but that of the gods has.

Fragment 79

Celsus, in Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 12.

Man is called a baby by god, even as a child by a man.

Fragment 80

Celsus, in Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 42.

We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all
things come into being and pass away (?) through strife.

Fragment 81

Diogenes of Babylon, in Philodemus, Rhetoric, I, col. 62.

The [sciences] introduce no reasoning which is aimed to deceive, but all
the principles of the rhetoricians are aimed exclusively at that, and
according to Heraclitus rhetoric is the prince of liars.⁸

ἡ δὲ τῶν ῥητόρων εἰσαγωγὴ πάντα τὰ θεωρήματα πρὸς τοῦτ΄ ἔχει τείνοντα καὶ
κατὰ τὸν Ἡράκλειτον κοπίδων ἐστὶν ἀρχηγός.

[Schol. κοπίδας τὰς λόγων τέχνας ἔλεγον ἄλλοι τε καὶ ὁ Τίμαιος γράφων. «
ὥστε καὶ φαίνεσθαι μὴ τὸν Πυθαγόραν εὑρεπὴν ὄντα τῶν ἀληθινῶν κοπίδων μηδὲ
τὸν ὑφ΄ Ἡρακλείτου κατηορούμενον, ἀλλ΄ αὐτὸν τὸν Ἡράκλειτον εἶναι τὸν
ἀλαζονευόμενον ».]

Fragment 82

Plato, Hippias major, 289 a.

The most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

Fragment 83

Plato, Hippias major, 289 b.

The wisest man is an ape compared to god.

Fragment 84

Plotinus, Enneads, IV, 8(6), 1.14.

Change reposes, and that it is weariness to keep toiling at the same things
and always beginning again.⁹

Fragment 85

Aristotle, Eudemian ethics, B 7, 1223 b 23 s.

It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire, for it will pay with soul
for what it craves.

Fragment 86

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 13, 88, 4.

. . . (The wise man) is not known because of men's want of belief.

Fragment 87

Plutarch, On listening to lectures, 28 D.

The fool is fluttered at every word.

Fragment 88

Ps. Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius, 106 E.

And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep,
young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter
in turn are shifted and become the former.

Fragment 89

Plutarch, On superstition, 3, 166 C.

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a
world of his own.

Fragment 90

Plutarch, On the E at Delphi, 388 DE.

All things are exchanged for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares
for gold, and gold for wares.

Fragment 91

Plutarch, On the E at Delphi, 392 B.

You cannot step twice into the same rivers.

Fragment 92

Plutarch, Why the Pythia no longer prophesies in verse, 397 A.

And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and
unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god
in her.

Fragment 93

Plutarch, Why the Pythia no longer prophesies in verse, 404 D.

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his
meaning, but shows it by a sign.

Fragment 94

Plutarch, On exile, 604 AB.

The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the
handmaids of Justice will find him out.

Fragment 95

Plutarch, De audiendo, 43 D.

It is best to hide folly.

Fragment 96

Plutarch, Table talk, IV, 4, 3, 669A.

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

Fragment 97

Plutarch, Should old men take part in politics, 787 C.

Dogs bark at every one they do not know.

Fragment 98

Plutarch, On the face in the moon, 28, 943 E.

Souls smell in Hades.

Fragment 99

Clement of Alexandria, Protreptic, 113, 3.

If there were no sun, it would be night.

Fragment 100

Plutarch, Platonic questions, 4, 1007 D-E.

… the seasons that bring all things.

Fragment 101

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1118 C.

I dived into myself

Fragment 101a

Polybius, Histories, XII 27

Of these sight is, according to Heraclitus, by far the truer; for eyes are
surer witnesses than ears.¹⁰

Fragment 102

Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ad Λ 4.

To a god all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things
wrong and some right.

Fragment 103

Porphyry, Notes on Homer, on Iliad XIV. 200.

In the circumference of a circle the beginning and the end are common.

Fragment 104

Proclus, Commentary on the first Alcibiades, 256.

For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the
crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good.

Fragment 105

Scholium on Homer, ad S 251.

(« Ἕκτορι δ΄ ἦεν ἑταῖρος, Πουλυδάμας, ἰῇ δ΄ ἐν νυκτὶ γένοντο ) Ἡ. ἐντεῦθεν
ἀστρολόγον φησὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον καὶ ἐν οἷς φησι «μοῖραν δ΄ οὔ τινά φημι
πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν» κτλ.

Fragment 106

Seneca, Epistles 12,7

One day is like any other.

Fragment 107

Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematiciens, VII, 126.

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand
not their language.

Fragment 108

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 174.

Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to
understanding that wisdom is apart from all.

Fragment 109

Stobaeus Floril. iii. 82.

κρύπτειν ἀμαθίην κρέσσον ἢ ἐς τὸ μέσον φέρειν.

It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.

Fragment 110

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 176.

It is no good for men to get all they wish to get.

Fragment 111

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 177.

It is sickness that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, satiety;
weariness, rest.

Fragment 112

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 178.

Self-control is the highest virtue, and wisdom is to speak truth and
consciously to act according to nature.

Fragment 113

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 179.

Thought is common to all.

Fragment 114

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 179.

Those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common to all
as a city holds to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are
fed by the one divine law. It prevails as much as it will, and suffices for
all things with something to spare.

Fragment 115

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 1, 180.

ψυχῆς ἐστι λόγος ἑαυτὸν αὔξων.

Fragment 116

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 5, 6.

All men are have the capacity to come to know themselves and to (have/be)
self-control.

Fragment 117

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 5, 7.

A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not
where he steps, having his soul moist.

Fragment 118

Stobaeus, Anthology, III, 5, 8.

The dry soul is the wised and best.

Fragment 119

Plutarch, Platonic questions, 999 E.

Man's character is his fate.

Fragment 120

Strabo, Geography, I, 1,6.

The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the
boundary of bright Zeus.

Fragment 121

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, IX, 2.

The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them,
and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodoros,
the best man among them, saying: "We will have none who is best among us;
if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others."

Fragment 122

Suda, ἀμφισβατεῖν

(Heraclitus says "wrangling" [agchibasien].)¹¹

Fragment 123

Proclus, Commentary on Republic II .

Nature loves to hide.

Fragment 124

Theophrastus, Metaphysics, 15.

ἄλογον δὲ κἀκεῖνο δόξειεν ἄν, εἰ ὁ μὲν ὅλος οὐρανὸς καὶ ἕκαστα τῶν μερῶν
ἅπαντ΄ ἐν τάξει καὶ λόγῳ, καὶ μορφαῖς καὶ δυνάμεσιν καὶ περιόδοις, ἐν δὲ
ταῖς ἀρχαῖς μηθὲν τοιοῦτον, ἀλλ΄ ὥσπερ σάρμα εἰκῆ κεχυμένων ὁ κάλλιστος,
φησὶν Ἡράκλειτος, [ὁ] κόσμος.

Fragment 125

Theophrastus, On vertigo, 9-10.

Even the posset separates if it is not stirred.

Fragment 126

John Tzetzes, Commentary on the Iliad, p. 126

Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the
parched is moistened.

Fragment 127

Fragment of a Greek Theosophist, 69.¹²

ὁ αὐτὸς πρὸς Αἰγυπτίους ἔφη· εἰ θεοί εἰσιν, ἵνα τί θρηνεῖτε αὐτούς; εἰ δὲ
θρηνεῖτε αὐτούς, μηκέτι τούτους ἡγεῖσθε θεούς.

Fragment 128

Fragment of a Greek Theosophist, 74.¹²

ὅτι ὁ Ἡράκλειτος ὁρῶν τοὺς Ἕλληνας γέρα τοῖς δαίμοσιν ἀπονέμοντας εἶπεν·

δαιμόνων ἀγάλμασιν εὔχονται [οὐκ] ἀκούουσιν, ὥσπερ ἀκούοιεν, οὐκ
ἀποδιδοῦσιν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀπαιτοῖεν.

Fragment 129

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the philosophers, VIII, 6.

Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and
choosing out these writings, claimed for his own wisdom what was but a
knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.

Fragment 130

Gnomologium Monacense Latinum, I, 19.

non convenit ridiculum esse ita, ut ridiculus ipse videaris.

Fragment 131

Gnomologium Parisinum. nr. 209

ὁ δέ γε Ἡ. ἔλεγε τὴν οἴησιν προκοπῆς ἐγκοπήν.

Fragment 132

Gnomologium Vaticanum. 743, nr. 312-315

τιμαὶ θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους καταδουλοῦνται.

Fragment 133

Gnomologium Vaticanum.

ἄνθρωποι κακοὶ ἀληθινῶν ἀντίδικοι

Fragment 134

Gnomologium Vaticanum.

τὴν παιδείαν ἕτερον ἥλιον εἶναι τοῖς πεπαιδευμένοις.

Fragment 135

Gnomologium Vaticanum.

συντομωτάτην ὁδὸν ἔλεγεν εἰς εὐδοξίαν τὸ γενέσθαι ἀγαθόν.

Fragment 136

Maximus Serm. 8 ἡ εὔκαιρος χάρις λιμῶι καθάπερ τροφὴ ἁρμόττουσα τὴν τῆς
ψυχῆς ἔνδειαν ἰἀται.

[Scholium to Epictetus' Discourses, IV, 7, 27. Ἡρακλείτου· ψυχαὶ ἀρηίφατοι
καθερώπεραι (ainsi) ἢ ἐνὶ νούσοις.]

Fragment 137

Stobaeus, Anthology, I, 5, 15.

γράφει γοῦν « ἔστι γὰρ εἱμαρμένα πάντως. . .»

Fragment 138

Codex Parisinus 1630. f. 191r

Ἡρακλείτου φιλοσόφου κατὰ τοῦ βίου. Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμοι τρίβον κτλ.

Fragment 139

Catal. Codd. Astrol. Graec. IV, 32

Ἡρακλείτου φιλοσόφου. Ἐπειδὴ φασί τινες εἰς ἀρχὰς κεῖσθαι τὰ ἄστρα . . .
μέχρις οὗ ἐθέλει ὁ ποιήσας αὐτόν.

Notes

[1] Albertus Magnus, De vegetabilibus (1867) libri VII, historiae naturalis
  pars XVIII. E. H. F. Meyer and K. Jessen, editors. G. Reimeri, Berlin,
  Germany.
[2] W.D. Ross; also at 1155b, quoting Heraclitus: 'from different tones
  comes the fairest tune' and 'all things are produced through strife'" (©
  1908 Clarendon Press)
[3] W.D. Ross (© 1908 Clarendon Press)
[4] R. D. Hicks (1925) Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent
  Philosophers. Loeb Classical Library
[5] Fragment 92e
[6] Thomas Taylor, (1895) Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians,
  Chaldeans, and Assyrians
[7] George Long, (1862) The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
[8] The Rhetorica of Philodemus. Translation and Commentary by Harry M.
  Hubbell. (1920). Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and
  Sciences, Volume XXIII, page 336.
[9] Stephen Mackenna, (1917), Plotinus. Volume 3
[10] F. O. Hultsch, E. S. Shuckburgh, (1889), The Histories of Polybius,
  Vol. 2
[11] Suda On Line, α1762
[12] From Heraclitus: Fragments (Phoenix Supplementary Volume) by T.M.
  Robinson: The most recent edition of the fragments of Greek theosophists
  is by H. Erbse, Fragmente griechische Theosophien (Hamburg 1941)

References

- http://philoctetes.free.fr/heraclite.pdf

Fragments of Melissus

Fragment 1

What was was ever, and ever shall be. For, if it had come into being, it
needs must have been nothing before it came into being. Now, if it were
nothing, in no wise could anything have arisen out of nothing.

Fragment 2

Since, then, it has not come into being, and since it is, was ever, and
ever shall be, it has no beginning or end, but is without limit. For, if it
had come into being, it would have had a beginning (for it would have begun
to come into being at some time or other) and an end (for it would have
ceased to come into being at some time or other); but, if it neither began
nor ended, and ever was and ever shall be, it has no beginning or end; for
it is not possible for anything to be ever without all being.

Fragment 3

Further, just as it ever is, so it must ever be infinite in magnitude.

Fragment 4

But nothing which has a beginning or end is either eternal or infinite.

Fragment 5

If it were not one, it would be bounded by something else.

Fragment 6

For if it is (infinite), it must be one; for if it were two, it could not
be infinite; for then they would be bounded by one another.¹

Fragment 7

So then it is eternal and infinite and one and all alike. And it cannot
perish nor become greater, nor does it suffer pain or grief. For, if any of
these things happened to it, it would no longer be one. For if it is
altered, then the real must needs not be all alike, but what was before
must pass away, and what was not must come into being. Now, if it changed
by so much as a single hair in ten thousand years, it would all perish in
the whole of time.

Further, it is not possible either that its order should be changed; for
the order which it had before does not perish, nor does that which was not
come into being. But, since nothing is either added to it or passes away or
is altered, how can any real thing have had its order changed? For if
anything became different, that would amount to a change in its order.

Nor does it suffer pain; for a thing in pain could not all be. For a thing
in pain could not be ever, nor has it the same power as what is whole. Nor
would it be alike, if it were in pain; for it is only from the addition or
subtraction of something that it could feel pain, and then it would no
longer be alike. Nor could what is whole feel pain; for then what was whole
and what was real would pass away, and what was not would come into being.
And the same argument applies to grief as to pain.

Nor is anything empty: For what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot
be.

Nor does it move; for it has nowhere to betake itself to, but is full. For
if there were aught empty, it would betake itself to the empty. But, since
there is naught empty, it has nowhere to betake itself to.

And it cannot be dense and rare; for it is not possible for what is rare to
be as full as what is dense, but what is rare is at once emptier than what
is dense.

This is the way in which we must distinguish between what is full and what
is not full. If a thing has room for anything else, and takes it in, it is
not full; but if it has no room for anything and does not take it in, it is
full.

Now, it must needs be full if there is naught empty, and if it is full, it
does not move.

Fragment 8

This argument, then, is the greatest proof that it is one alone; but the
following are proofs of it also. If there were a many, these would have to
be of the same kind as I say that the one is. For if there is earth and
water, and air and iron, and gold and fire, and if one thing is living and
another dead, and if things are black and white and all that men say they
really are,--if that is so, and if we see and hear aright, each one of
these must be such as we first decided, and they cannot be changed or
altered, but each must be just as it is. But, as it is, we say that we see
and hear and understand aright, and yet we believe that what is warm
becomes cold, and what is cold warm; that what is hard turns soft, and what
is soft hard; that what is living dies, and that things are born from what
lives not; and that all those things are changed, and that what they were
and what they are now are in no way alike. We think that iron, which is
hard, is rubbed away by contact with the finger;² and so with gold and
stone and everything which we fancy to be strong, and that earth and stone
are made out of water; so that it turns out that we neither see nor know
realities.

Now these things do not agree with one another. We said that there were
many things that were eternal and had forms and strength of their own, and
yet we fancy that they all suffer alteration, and that they change from
what we see each time. It is clear, then, that we did not see aright after
all, nor are we right in believing that all these things are many. They
would not change if they were real, but each thing would be just what we
believed it to be; for nothing is stronger than true reality. But if it has
changed, what was has passed away, and what was not is come into being. So
then, if there were many things, they would have to be just of the same
nature as the one.

Fragment 9

Now, if it were to exist, it must needs be one; but if it is one, it cannot
have body; for, if it had body it would have parts, and would no longer be
one.³

Fragment 10

If what is real is divided, it moves; but if it moves, it cannot be.⁴

Notes

[1] This fragment is quoted by Simpl. De caelo, p. 557, 16 (R. P. 144). The
  insertion of the word "infinite" is justified by the paraphrase (R. P.
  144 a) and by M.X.G. 974 a 11, πᾶν δὲ ἄπειρον ὂν ... ἓν ... εἶναι· εἰ γὰρ
  δύο ἢ πλείω εἴη, πέρατ' ἂν εἶναι ταῦτα πρὸς ἄλληλα.
[2] Reading ὁμουρέων with Bergk. Diels keeps the MS. ὁμοῦ ῥεων; Zeller (p.
  613, n. 1) conjectures ὑπ' ἰοῦ ῥέων.
[3] I read εἰ μὲν οὖν εἴη with E F for the εἰ μὲν ὂν εἴη. The ἐὸν which
  still stands in R. P. is a piece of local colour due to the editors.
  Diels also now reads οὖν.
[4] Diels now reads ἀλλὰ with E for the ἅμα of F, and attaches the word to
  the next sentence.

References

- Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920)

Fragments of Parmenides

Prologue

Fragment 1

The car that bears me carried me as far as ever my heart desired,
when it had brought me and set me on the renowned way
of the goddess, which leads the man who knows through all the towns.¹
On that way was I borne along; for on it did the wise steeds carry me,
drawing my car, and maidens showed the way.
And the axle, glowing in the socket—
for it was urged round by the whirling
wheels at each end—gave forth a sound as of a pipe,
when the daughters of the Sun, hasting to convey me into the light,
threw back their veils from off their faces and left the abode of Night.

There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day,²
fitted above with a lintel and below with a threshold of stone.
They themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors,
and Avenging Justice keeps the keys that fit them.
Her did the maidens entreat with gentle words
and cunningly persuade to unfasten without demur the bolted bars
from the gates. Then, when the doors were thrown back,
they disclosed a wide opening,
when their brazen posts fitted with rivets and nails
swung back one after the other. Straight through them,
on the broad way, did the maidens guide the horses and the car,
and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took
my right hand in hers, and spake to me these words:

Welcome, O youth, that comest to my abode on the car
that bears thee tended by immortal charioteers!
It is no ill chance, but right and justice that has sent thee forth to
travel
on this way. Far, indeed, does it lie from the beaten track of men!
Meet it is that thou shouldst learn all things,
as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth,
as the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief at all.
Yet none the less shalt thou learn these things also,—how passing right
through all things one should judge the things that seem to be.³

The Way of Truth

Fragments 2, 3

Come now, I will tell thee—and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it
away—
the only two ways of search that can be thought of.
The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be,
is the way of belief, for truth is its companion.
The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be,—
that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all.
For thou canst not know what is not—that is impossible—
nor utter it; . . .
. . . for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.⁴

Fragment 4

Look steadfastly with thy mind at things though afar as if they were at
hand.
Thou canst not cut off what is from holding fast to what is,
neither scattering itself abroad in order
nor coming together.

Fragment 5

. . . It is all one to me
where I begin; for I shall come back again there.

Fragment 6

It needs must be that what can be spoken and thought is; for it is possible
for it to be,
and it is not possible for what is nothing to be.⁵ This is what I bid thee
ponder.
I hold thee back from this first way of inquiry,
and from this other also, upon which mortals knowing naught
wander two-faced; for helplessness
guides the wandering thought in their breasts, so that they are borne along
stupefied like men deaf and blind. Undiscerning crowds,
who hold that it is and is not the same
and not the same,⁶ and all things travel in opposite directions!⁷

Fragment 7

For this shall never be proved, that the things that are not are;
and do thou restrain thy thought from this way of inquiry.

Nor let habit by its much experience force thee to cast upon this way
a wandering eye or sounding ear or tongue;
but judge by argument⁸ the much disputed proof
uttered by me . . .

Fragment 8

. . . One path only
is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In this path are very many
tokens
that what is is uncreated and indestructible;
for it is complete,⁹ immovable, and without end.
Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once,
a continuous one. For what kind of origin for it wilt thou look for?
In what way and from what source could it have drawn its increase? I shall
not let thee say nor think
that it came from what is not; for it can neither be thought nor uttered
that anything is not. And, if it came from nothing, what need
could have made it arise later rather than sooner?
Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at all.
Nor will the force of truth suffer aught to arise
besides itself from that which is not. Wherefore,
justice doth not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass
away,
but holds it fast. Our judgment thereon depends on this:
"Is it or is it not?" Surely it is adjudged, as it needs must be,
that we are to set aside the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is
no true way),
and that the other path is real and true.
How, then, can what is be going to be in the future? Or how could it come
into being?
If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the
future.
Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.

Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike,
and there is no more¹⁰ of it in one place than in another, to hinder it
from holding together,
nor less of it, but everything is full of what is.
Wherefore it is wholly continuous; for what is, is in contact with what is.

Moreover, it is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains,
without beginning and without end; since coming into being and passing away
have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away.
It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself.
And thus it remaineth constant in its place; for hard necessity
keeps it in the bonds of the limit that holds it fast on every side.
Wherefore it is not permitted to what is to be infinite;
for it is in need of nothing; while, if it were infinite, it would stand in
need of everything.¹¹

The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought
exists is the same;¹²
for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is
uttered.¹³

And there is not, and never shall be,
anything besides what is, since fate has chained it
so as to be whole and immovable. Wherefore all these things are but names
which mortals have given, believing them to be true—
coming into being and passing away, being and not being,
change of place and alteration of bright colour.

Since, then, it has a furthest limit, it is complete
on every side, like the mass of a rounded sphere,
equally poised from the centre in every direction; for it cannot be greater
or smaller in one place than in another.
For there is no nothing that could keep it from reaching
out equally, nor can aught that is be
more here and less there than what is, since it is all inviolable.
For the point from which it is equal in every direction tends equally to
the limits.

The Way of Belief

Here shall I close my trustworthy speech and thought
about the truth. Henceforward learn the beliefs of mortals,
giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words.

Mortals have made up their minds to name two forms,
one of which they should not name, and that is where they go astray from
the truth.
They have distinguished them as opposite in form, and have assigned to them
marks
distinct from one another. To the one they allot the fire of heaven,
gentle, very light, in every direction the same as itself,
but not the same as the other. The other is
just the opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body.
Of these I tell thee the whole arrangement as it seems likely;
for so no thought of mortals will ever outstrip thee.

Fragment 9

Now that all things have been named light and night,
and the names which belong to the power of each have been assigned to these
things and to those,
everything is full at once of light and dark night,
both equal, since neither has aught to do with the other.

Fragments 10, 11

And thou shalt know the substance of the sky, and all the signs in the sky,
and the resplendent works of the glowing sun's pure
torch, and whence they arose.
And thou shalt learn likewise of the wandering deeds of the round-faced
moon,
and of her substance. Thou shalt know, too, the heavens that surround us,
whence they arose, and how Necessity took them and bound them to keep the
limits of the stars . . .
. . . how the earth, and the sun, and the moon,
and the sky that is common to all, and the Milky Way, and the outermost
Olympos,
and the burning might of the stars arose.

Fragment 12

The narrower bands were filled with unmixed fire,
and those next them with night, and in the midst of these rushes their
portion of fire.
In the midst of these is the divinity that directs the course of all
things;
for she is the beginner of all painful birth and all begetting,
driving the female to the embrace of the male, and the
male to that of the female.

Fragment 13

First of all the gods she contrived Eros.

Fragment 14

Shining by night with borrowed light,¹⁴ wandering round the earth.

Fragment 15

Always looking to the beams of the sun.

Fragment 16

For just as thought stands at any time to the mixture of its erring organs,
so does it come to men; for that which thinks is the same,
namely, the substance of the limbs,
in each and every man; for their thought is that of which there is more in
them.¹⁵

Fragment 17

On the right boys; on the left girls.¹⁶

Fragment 18

¹⁷

Fragment 19

Thus, according to men's opinions, did things come into being, and thus
they are now.
In time they will grow up and pass away.
To each of these things men have assigned a fixed name.

Notes

[1] The best MS. of Sextus, who quotes this passage, reads κατὰ πάντ' ἄστη
  Parmenides, then, was an itinerant philosopher, like the sophists of the
  next generation, and this makes his visit to the Athens of Perikles all
  the more natural.
[2] For these see Hesiod, Theog. 748.
[3] I read δοκιμῶσ' (i.e. δοκιμῶσαι) with Diels. I have left it ambiguous
  in my rendering whether εἶναι is to be taken with δοκιμῶσαι or δοκοῦντα.
[4] I still believe that Zeller's is the only possible interpretation of τὸ
  γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι (denn dasselbe kann gedacht werden und
  sein, p. 558, n. 1: Eng. trans. p. 584, n. 1). It is impossible to
  separate νοεῖν ἔστιν here from fr. 4, εἰσὶ νοῆσαι, "can be thought." No
  rendering is admissible which makes νοεῖν the subject of the sentence;
  for a bare infinitive is never so used. (Some grammars make ποιεῖν the
  subject in a sentence like δίκαιόν ἐστι τοῦτο ποιεῖν , but this is shown
  to be wrong by δίκαιός εἰμι τοῦτο ποιεῖν.) The use of the infinitive as a
  subject only became possible when the articular infinitive was developed
  (cf. Monro, H. Gr. §§ 233, 234, 242). The original dative meaning of the
  infinitive at once explains the usage (νοεῖν ἔστιν, "is for thinking,"
  "can be thought," ἔστιν εἶναι, "is for being," "can be").
[5] The construction here is the same as that explained in the last note.
  The words τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ' ἐόν mean "that which it is possible to
  speak of and think," and are correctly paraphrased by Simplicius (Phys.
  p. 86, 29, Diels), εἰ οὖν ὅπερ ἄν τις ἢ εἴπῃ ἢ νοήσῃ τὸ ὄν ἔστι. Then
  ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι means "it can be," and the last phrase should be construed
  οὐκ ἔστι μηδὲν (εἶναι), "there is no room for nothing to be."
[6] I construe οἷς νενόμισται τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν καὶ οὐ
  ταὐτόν. The subject of the infinitives πέλειν καὶ οὐκ εἶναι is the it,
  which has to be supplied also with ἔστιν and οὐκ ἔστιν. This way of
  taking the words makes it unnecessary to believe that Parmenides said
  instead of (τὸ) μὴ εἶναι for "not-being." There is no difference between
  πέλειν and εἶναι except in rhythmical value.
[7] I take πάντων as neuter and understand παλίντροπος κέλευθος as
  equivalent to the ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω of Herakleitos. I do not think it has
  anything to do with the παλίντονος (or παλίντροπος) ἁρμονίη. See Chap.
  III. p. 136, n. 4.
[8] This is the earliest instance of λόγος in the sense of (dialectical)
  argument which Sokrates made familiar. He got it, of course, from the
  Eleatics. The Herakleitean use is quite different.
[9] I prefer to read ἔστι γὰρ οὐλομελές with Plutarch (Adv. Col. 1114 c).
  Proklos (in Parm. 1152, 24) also read οὐλομελές. Simplicius, who has
  μουνογενές here, calls the One of Parmenides ὁλομελές elsewhere (Phys. p.
  137, 15). The reading of [Plut.] Strom. 5, μοῦνον μουνογενές, helps to
  explain the confusion. We have only to suppose that the letters μ, ν, γ
  were written above the line in the Academy copy of Parmenides by some one
  who had Tim. 31 b 3 in mind. Parmenides could not call what is
  "only-begotten," though the Pythagoreans might call the world so.
[10] For the difficulties which have been felt about μᾶλλον here, see
  Diels's note. If the word is to be pressed, his interpretation is
  admissible; but it seems to me that this is simply an instance of "polar
  expression." It is true that it is only the case of there being less of
  what is in one place than another that is important for the divisibility
  of the One; but if there is less in one place, there is more in another
  than in that place. In any case, the reference to the Pythagorean "air"
  or "void" which makes reality discontinuous is plain.
[11] Simplicius certainly read μὴ ἐὸν δ' ἂν παντὸς ἐδεῖτο, which is
  metrically impossible. I have followed Bergk in deleting μή, and have
  interpreted with Zeller. So too Diels.
[12] For the construction of ἔστι νοεῖν, see above, p. 173, n. 2.
[13] As Diels rightly points out, the Ionic φατίζειν is equivalent to
  ὀνομάζειν. The meaning, I think, is this. We may name things as we
  choose, but there can be no thought corresponding to a name that is not
  the name of something real.
[14] Note the curious echo of II. v. 214. Empedokles has it too (fr. 45).
  It appears to be a joke, made in the spirit of Xenophanes, when it was
  first discovered that the moon shone by reflected light. Anaxagoras may
  have introduced this view to the Athenians (§ 135), but these verses
  prove it was not originated by him.
[15] This fragment of the theory of knowledge which was expounded in the
  second part of the poem of Parmenides must be taken in connexion with
  what we are told by Theophrastos in the "Fragment on Sensation" (Dox. p.
  499; cf. p. 193). It appears from this that he said the character of
  men's thought depended upon the preponderance of the light or the dark
  element in their bodies. They are wise when the light element
  predominates, and foolish when the dark gets the upper hand.
[16] This is a fragment of Parmenides's embryology.
[17] Diels's fr. 18 is a retranslation of the Latin hexameters of Caelius
  Aurelianus.

References

- Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920)

Fragments of Xenophanes

Fragment 1

Now is the floor clean, and the hands and cups of all; one sets twisted
garlands on our heads, another hands us fragrant ointment on a salver. The
mixing bowl stands ready, full of gladness, and there is more wine at hand
that promises never to leave us in the lurch, soft and smelling of flowers
in the jars. In the midst the frankincense sends up its holy scent, and
there is cold water, sweet and clean. Brown loaves are set before us and a
lordly table laden with cheese and rich honey. The altar in the midst is
clustered round with flowers; song and revel fill the halls.

But first it is meet that men should hymn the god with joy, with holy tales
and pure words; then after libation and prayer made that we may have
strength to do right—for that is in truth the first thing to do—no sin is
it to drink as much as a man can take and get home without an attendant, so
he be not stricken in years. And of all men is he to be praised who after
drinking gives goodly proof of himself in the trial of skill,¹ as memory
and strength will serve him. Let him not sing of Titans and Giants—those
fictions of the men of old—nor of turbulent civil broils in which is no
good thing at all; but to give heedful reverence to the gods is ever good.

Fragment 2

What if a man win victory in swiftness of foot, or in the pentathlon, at
Olympia, where is the precinct of Zeus by Pisa's springs, or in wrestling,
– what if by cruel boxing or that fearful sport men call pankration he
become more glorious in the citizens' eyes, and win a place of honour in
the sight of all at the games, his food at the public cost from the State,
and a gift to be an heirloom for him, – what if he conquer in the
chariot-race, – he will not deserve all this for his portion so much as I
do. Far better is our art than the strength of men and of horses! These are
but thoughtless judgements, nor is it fitting to set strength before goodly
art.² Even if there arise a mighty boxer among a people, or one great in
the pentathlon or at wrestling, or one excelling in swiftness of foot—and
that stands in honour before all tasks of men at the games—the city would
be none the better governed for that. It is but little joy a city gets of
it if a man conquer at the games by Pisa's banks; it is not this that makes
fat the store-houses of a city.

Fragment 3

They learnt dainty and unprofitable ways from the Lydians, so long as they
were free from hateful tyranny; they went to the market-place with cloaks
of purple dye, not less than a thousand of them all told, vainglorious and
proud of their comely tresses, reeking with fragrance from cunning salves.

Fragment 4

Nor would a man mix wine in a cup by pouring out the wine first, but water
first and wine on the top of it.

Fragment 5

Thou didst send the thigh-bone of a kid and get for it the fat leg of a
fatted bull, a worthy guerdon for a man to get, whose glory is to reach
every part of Hellas and never to pass away, so long as Greek songs last.³

Fragment 7

And now I will turn to another tale and point the way . . . . Once they say
that he (Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was being beaten and spoke
this word: "Stop! don't beat it! For it is the soul of a friend that I
recognised when I heard its voice."⁴

Fragment 8

There are by this time threescore years and seven that have tossed my
careworn soul⁵ up and down the land of Hellas; and there were then
five-and-twenty years from my birth, if I can say aught truly about these
matters.

Fragment 9

Much weaker than an aged man.

Fragment 10

Since all at first have learnt according to Homer . . . .

Fragment 11

Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and
a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one
another.

Fragment 12

Since they have uttered many lawless deeds of the gods, stealings and
adulteries and deceivings of one another.

Fragment 14

But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes
like theirs, and voice and form.

Fragment 15

Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their
hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of
the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the
image of their several kinds.

Fragment 16

The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say
theirs have blue eyes and red hair.

Fragment 18

The gods have not revealed all things to men from the beginning, but by
seeking they find in time what is better.

Fragment 23

One god, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form like unto mortals
nor in thought . . . .

Fragment 24

He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over.

Fragment 25

But without toil he swayeth all things by the thought of his mind.

Fragment 26

And he abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all; nor doth it
befit him to go about now hither now thither.

Fragment 27

All things come from the earth, and in earth all things end.

Fragment 28

This limit of the earth above is seen at our feet in contact with the air;⁶
below it reaches down without a limit.

Fragment 29

All things are earth and water that come into being and grow.

Fragment 30

The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither in the
clouds (would there be any blasts of wind blowing forth) from within
without the mighty sea, nor rivers' streams nor rain-water from the sky.
The mighty sea is father of clouds and of winds and of rivers.⁷

Fragment 31

The sun swinging over⁸ the earth and warming it . . . .

Fragment 32

She that they call Iris is a cloud likewise, purple, scarlet and green to
behold.

Fragment 33

For we all are born of earth and water.

Fragment 34

There never was nor will be a man who has certain knowledge about the gods
and about all the things I speak of. Even if he should chance to say the
complete truth, yet he himself knows not that it is so. But all may have
their fancy.⁹

Fragment 35

Let these be taken as fancies¹⁰ something like the truth.

Fragment 36

All of them¹¹ that are visible for mortals to behold.

Fragment 37

And in some caves water drips . . . .

Fragment 38

If god had not made brown honey, men would think figs far sweeter than they
do.

Notes

[1] So I understand ἀμφ' ἀρετῆς. The τόνος is "strength of lungs." The next
  verses are directed against Hesiod and Alkaios (Diels).
[2] At this date "art" is the natural translation of σοφίη in such a writer
  as Xenophanes.
[3] Diels suggests that this is an attack on a poet like Simonides, whose
  greed was proverbial.
[4] The name of Pythagoras does not occur in the lines that have been
  preserved; but the source of Diogenes viii. 36 must have had the complete
  elegy before him; for he said the verses occurred ἐν ἐλεγείᾳ, ἧς ἀρχὴ Νῦν
  αὖτ' ἄλλον ἔπειμι λόγον κτλ.
[5] Bergk (Litteraturgesch. ii. p. 418, n. 23) took φροντίς here to mean
  the literary work of Xenophanes, but it is surely an anachronism to
  suppose that at this date it could be used like the Latin cura.
[6] Reading ἠέρι for καὶ ῥεῖ with Diels.
[7] This fragment has been recovered from the Geneva scholia on Homer (see
  Arch. iv. p. 652). The words in brackets are added by Diels.
[8] The word is ὑπεριέμενος. This is quoted from the Allegories as an
  explanation of the name Hyperion, and doubtless Xenophanes so meant it.
[9] It is more natural to take πᾶσι as masculine than as neuter, and ἐπὶ
  πᾶσι can mean "in the power of all."
[10] Reading δεδοξάσθω with Wilamowitz.
[11] As Diels suggests, this probably refers to the stars, which Xenophanes
  held to be clouds.

References

- Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY (Gr. φίλος, fond of, and σοφία, wisdom), a general term whose
meaning and scope have varied very considerably according to the usage of
different authors and different ages. It can best be explained by a survey
of the steps by which philosophy differentiated itself, in the history of
Greek thought, from the idea of knowledge and culture in general. These
steps may be traced in the gradual specification of the term. The tradition
which assigns the first employment of the Greek word φιλοσοφία to
Pythagoras has hardly any claim to be regarded as authentic; and the
somewhat self-conscious modesty to which Diogenes Laertius attributes the
choice of the designation is, in all probability, a piece of etymology
crystallized into narrative. It is true that, as a matter of fact, the
earliest uses of the word (the verb φιλοσοφειν occurs in Herodotus and
Thucydides) imply the idea of the pursuit of knowledge; but the distinction
between the σοφός, or wise man, and the φιλόσοφος, or lover of wisdom,
appears first in the Platonic writings, and lends itself naturally to the
so-called Socratic irony. The same thought is to be found in Xenophon, and
is doubtless to be attributed to the historical Socrates. But the word soon
lost this special implication. What is of real interest to us is to trace
the progress from the idea of the philosopher as occupied with any and
every department of knowledge to that which assigns him a special kind of
knowledge as his province.

A specific sense of the word first meets us in Plato, who defines the
philosopher as one who apprehends the essence or reality of things in
opposition to the man who dwells in appearances and the shows of sense. The
philosophers, he says, " are those who are able to grasp the eternal and
immutable "; they are " those who set their affections on that which in
each case really exists " (Rep. 480). In Plato, however, this distinction
is applied chiefly in an ethical and religious direction; and, while it
defines philosophy, so far correctly, as the endeavour to express what
things are in their ultimate constitution, it is not yet accompanied by a
sufficient differentiation of the subsidiary inquiries by which this
ultimate question may be approached. Logic, ethics and physics, psychology,
theory of knowledge and metaphysics are all fused together by Plato in a
semi-religious synthesis. It is not till we come to Aristotle - the
encyclopaedist of the ancient world - that we find a demarcation of the
different philosophic disciplines corresponding, in the main, to that still
current. The earliest philosophers, or " physiologers," had occupied
themselves chiefly with what we may call cosmology; the one question which
covers everything for them is that of the underlying substance of the world
around them, and they essay to answer this question, so to speak, by simple
inspection. In Socrates and Plato, on the other hand, the start is made
from a consideration of man's moral and intellectual activity; but
knowledge and action are confused with one another, as in the Socratic
doctrine that virtue is knowledge. To this correspond the Platonic
confusion of logic and ethics and the attempt to substitute a theory of
concepts for a metaphysic of reality. Aristotle's methodic intellect led
him to separate the different aspects of reality here confounded. He became
the founder of logic, psychology, ethics and aesthetics as separate
sciences; while he prefixed to all such (comparatively) special inquiries
the investigation of the ultimate nature of existence as such, or of those
first principles which are common to, and presupposed in, every narrower
field of knowledge. For this investigation Aristotle's most usual name is "
first philosophy " or, as a modern might say, " first principles "; but
there has since been appropriated to it, apparently by accident, the title
" metaphysics." " Philosophy," as a term of general application, was not,
indeed restricted by Aristotle or his successors to the disciplines just
enumerated. Aristotle himself includes under the title, besides
mathematics, all his physical inquiries. It was only in the Alexandrian
period, as Zeller points out, that the special sciences attained to
independent cultivation. Nevertheless, as the mass of knowledge
accumulated, it naturally came about that the name " philosophy " ceased to
be applied to inquiries concerned with the particulars as such. The details
of physics, for example, were abandoned to the scientific specialist, and
philosophy restricted itself in this department to the question of the
relation of the physical universe to the ultimate ground or author of
things. This inquiry which was long called " rational cosmology," may be
said to form part of the general subject of metaphysics, or at all events a
pendant to it. By the gradual sifting out of the special sciences
philosophy thus came to embrace primarily the inquiries grouped as "
metaphysics " or " first philosophy." These would embrace, according to the
Wolffian scheme long current in philosophical textbooks, ontology proper,
or the science of being as such, with its three-branch sciences of
(rational) psychology, cosmology and (rational or natural) theology,
dealing with the three chief forms of being - the soul, the world and God.
Subsidiary to metaphysics, as the central inquiry, stand the sciences of
logic and ethics, to which may be added aesthetics, constituting three
normative sciences - sciences, that is, which do not, primarily, describe
facts, but rather prescribe ends or set forth ideals. It is evident,
however, that if logic deals with conceptions which may be considered
constitutive of knowledge as such, and if ethics deals with the harmonious
realization of human life, which is the highest known form of existence,
both sciences must have a great deal of weight in the settling of the
general question of metaphysics.

In sum, then, we may say that " philosophy " has come to be understood at
least in modern times as a general term covering the various disciplines
just enumerated. It has frequently tended, however, and still tends, to be
used as specially convertible with the narrower term " metaphysics." This
is not unnatural, seeing that it is only so far as they bear on the one
central question of the nature of existence that philosophy spreads its
mantle over psychology, logic or ethics. The particular organic conditions
of perception and the associative laws to which the mind, as a part of
nature, is subjected, are facts in themselves indifferent to the
philosopher; and therefore the development of psychology into an
independent science, which took place during the latter half of the loth
century and may now be said to be complete, represents an entirely natural
evolution. Similarly, logic, so far as it is an art of thought or a
doctrine of fallacies, and ethics, so far as it is occupied with a natural
history of impulses and moral sentiments, do neither of them belong, except
by courtesy, to the philosophic province. But, although this is so, it is
perhaps hardly desirable to deprive ourselves of the use of two terms
instead of one. It will not be easy to infuse into so abstract and
bloodless a term as " metaphysics " the fuller life (and especially the
inclusion of ethical considerations) suggested by the more concrete term
"philosophy." We shall first of all, then, attempt to differentiate
philosophy from the special sciences, and afterwards proceed to take up
one. by one what have been called the philosophical sciences, with the view
of showing how far the usual subject-matter of each is really philosophical
in its bearing, and how far it belongs rather to the domain of " science "
strictly so called. The order in which, for clearness of exposition, it
will be most convenient to consider these disciplines will be psychology,
epistemology or theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, then logic,
aesthetics and ethics. Finally, the connexion of the last-mentioned with
politics (or, to speak more modernly, with jurisprudence and sociology),
with the philosophy of history and the philosophy of religion, will call
for a few words on the relation of these sciences to general philosophy.

Philosophy and Natural Science.—In distinguishing philosophy from the
sciences, it may not be amiss at the outset to guard against the possible
misunderstanding that philosophy is concerned with a subject-matter
different from, and in some obscure way transcending, the subject-matter of
the sciences. Now that psychology, or the observational and experimental
study of mind, may be said to have been definitively included among the
positive sciences, there is not even the apparent ground which once existed
for such an idea. Philosophy, even under its most discredited name of
metaphysics, has no other subjectmatter than the nature of the real world,
as that world lies around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers
on every side. But if this is so, it may be asked what function can remain
for philosophy when every portion of the field is already lotted out and
enclosed by specialists? Philosophy claims to be the science of the whole;
but, if we get the knowledge of the parts from the different sciences, what
is there left for philosophy to tell us ? To this it is sufficient to
answer generally that the synthesis of the parts is something more than
that detailed knowledge of the parts in separation which is gained by the
man of science. It is with the ultimate synthesis that philosophy concerns
itself ; it has to show that the subject-matter which we are all dealing
with in detail really is a whole, consisting of articulated members.
Evidently, therefore, the relation existing between philosophy and the
sciences will be, to some extent, one of reciprocal influence. The sciences
may be said to furnish philosophy with its matter, but philosophical
criticism reacts upon the matter thus furnished, and transforms it. Such
transformation is inevitable, for the parts only exist and can only be
fully, i.e. truly, known in their relation to the whole. A pure specialist,
if such a being were possible, would be merely an instrument whose results
had to be co-ordinated and used by others. Now, though a pure specialist
may be an abstraction of the mind, the tendency of specialists in any
department naturally is to lose sight of the whole in attention to the
particular categories or modes of nature's working which happen to be
exemplified, and fruitfully applied, in their own sphere of investigation;
and in proportion as this is the case it becomes necessary for their
theories to be co-ordinated with the results of other inquirers, and set,
as it were, in the light of the whole. This task of co-ordination, in the
broadest sense, is undertaken by philosophy; for the philosopher is
essentially what Plato, in a happy moment, styled him, συνοπτικός, the man
who takes a "synoptic" or comprehensive view of the universe as a whole.
The aim of philosophy (whether fully attainable or not) is to exhibit the
universe as a rational system in the harmony of all its parts; and
accordingly the philosopher refuses to consider the parts out of their
relation to the whole whose parts they are. Philosophy corrects in this way
the abstractions which are inevitably made by the scientific specialist,
and may claim, therefore, to be the only " concrete " science, that is to
say, the only science which takes account of all the elements in the
problem, and the only science whose results can claim to be true in more
than a provisional sense.

For it is evident from what has been said that the way in which we commonly
speak of " facts " is calculated to convey a false impression. The world is
not a collection of individual facts existing side by side and capable of
being known separately. A fact is nothing except in its relations to other
facts; and as these relations are multiplied in the progress of knowledge
the nature of the so-called fact is indefinitely modified. Moreover, every
statement of fact involves certain general notions and theories, so that
the " facts " of the separate sciences cannot be stated except in terms of
the conceptions or hypotheses which are assumed by the particular science.
Thus mathematics assumes space as an existent infinite, without
investigating in what sense the existence or the infinity of this Unding,
as Kant called it, can be asserted. In the same way, physics may be said to
assume the notion of material atoms and forces. These and similar
assumptions are ultimate presuppositions or working hypotheses for the
sciences themselves. But it is the office of philosophy, as a theory of
knowledge, to submit such conceptions to a critical analysis, with a view
to discover how far they can be thought out, or how far, when this is done,
they refute themselves, and call for a different form of statement, if they
are to be taken as a statement of the ultimate nature of the real.¹ The
first statement may frequently turn out to have been merely provisionally
or relatively true; it is then superseded by, or rather inevitably merges
itself in, a less abstract account. In this the same " facts " appear
differently, because no longer separated from other aspects that belong to
the full reality of the known world. There is no such thing, we have said,
as an individual fact; and the nature of any fact is not fully known unless
we know it in all its relations to the system of the universe, or, in
Spinoza's phrase, sub specie aeternitatis. In strictness, there is but one
res completa or concrete fact, and it is the business of philosophy, as
science of the whole, to expound the chief relations that constitute its
complex nature.

The last abstraction which it becomes the duty of philosophy to remove is
the abstraction from the knowing subject which is made by all the sciences,
including, as we shall see, the science of psychology. The sciences, one
and all, deal with a world of objects, but the ultimate fact as we know it
is the existence of an object for a subject. Subject-object, knowledge, or,
more widely, self-consciousness with its implicates - this unity in duality
is the ultimate aspect which reality presents. It has generally been
considered, therefore, as constituting in a special sense the problem of
philosophy. Philosophy may be said to be the explication of what is
involved in this relation, or, in Kantian phraseology, a theory of its
possibility. Any would-be theory of the universe which makes its central
fact impossible stands self-condemned. On the other hand, a sufficient
analysis here may be expected to yield us a statement of the reality of
things in its last terms, and thus to shed a light backwards upon the true
nature of our subordinate conceptions.

Psychology, Epistemology and Metaphysics.—This leads to the consideration
of the main divisions of philosophy - Psychology (q.v.), epistemology
(theory of knowledge, Erkenntnisstheorie), and metaphysics (ontology; see
Metaphysic). A special relation has always existed between psychology and
systematic philosophy, but the closeness of the connexion has been
characteristic of modern and more particularly of English thought. The
connexion is not difficult to explain, seeing that in psychology, or the
science of mind, we study the fact of intelligence (and moral action), and
have, so far, in our hands the fact to which all other facts are relative.
From this point of view we may even see a truth in Jacobi's dictum as
quoted by Sir W. Hamilton : " Nature conceals God; man reveals God." Nature
by itself, that is to say, is insufficient. The ultimate explanation of
things cannot be given by any theory which excludes from its survey the
intelligence in which nature, as it were, gathers herself up. But
knowledge, or the mind as knowing, willing, &c., may be looked at in two
different ways. It may be regarded simply as a fact; in which case the
evolutions of mind may be traced and reduced to laws in the same way as the
phenomena treated by the other sciences. This study gives us the science of
empirical psychology, or, as it is now termed, psychology sans phrase. In
order to give an adequate account of its subject-matter, psychology may
require higher or more complex categories than are employed in the other
sciences, just as biology, for example, cannot work with mechanical
categories alone, but introduces the conception of development or growth.
But the affinities of such a study are manifestly with the sciences as such
rather than with philosophy; and the definitive establishment of psychology
as an independent science has already been alluded to. Since it has been
taken up by specialists, psychology is being established on a broader basis
of induction, and with the advantage, in some departments, of the
employment of experimental methods of measurement. But it is not of mind in
this aspect that such assertions can be made as those quoted above. Mind,
as studied by the psychologist - mind as a mere fact or phenomenon -
grounds no inference to anything beyond itself. The distinction between
mind viewed as a succession of "states of consciousness " and the further
aspect of mind which philosophy considers was very clearly put by Croom
Robertson, who also made a happy suggestion of two terms to designate the
double point of view: " We may view knowledge as mere subjective function,
but it has its full meaning only as it is taken to represent what we may
call objective fact, or is such as is named (in different circumstances)
real, valid, true. As mere subjective function, which it is to the
psychologist, it is best spoken of by an unambiguous name, and for this
there seems none better than Intellection. We may then say that psychology
is occupied with the natural function of Intellection, seeking to discover
its laws and distinguishing its various modes (perception, representative
imagination, conception, &c.) according to the various circumstances in
which the laws are found at work. Philosophy, on the other hand, is theory
of Knowledge (as that which is known)." - " Psychology and Philosophy,"
Mind (1883), pp. 15, 16.

The confusion of these two points of view has led, and still leads, to
serious philosophical misconception. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that, in the English school since Hume, psychology superseded properly
philosophical inquiry. And we find even a thinker with a wider horizon like
Sir W. Hamilton encouraging the confusion by speaking of " psychology or
metaphysics,"² while his lectures on metaphysics are mainly taken up with
what belongs in the strictest sense to psychology proper, with an
occasional excursus (as in the theory of perception) into epistemology. The
distinction between psychology and theory of knowledge was first clearly
made by Kant, who repeatedly insisted that the Critique of Pure Reason was
not to be taken as a psychological inquiry. He defined his problem as the
quid juris or the question of the validity of knowledge, not its quid facti
or the laws of the empirical genesis and evolution of intellection (to use
Croom Robertson's phraseology). Since Kant philosophy has chiefly taken the
form of theory of knowledge or of a criticism of experience. Not, indeed, a
preliminary criticism of our faculties or conceptions such as Kant himself
proposed to institute, in order to determine the limits of their
application; such a criticism ab extra of the nature of our experience is
essentially a thing impossible. The only criticism which can be applied in
such a case is the immanent criticism which the conceptions or categories
exercise upon one another. The organized criticism of these conceptions is
really nothing more than the full explication of what they mean and of what
experience in its full nature or notion is. This constitutes the theory of
knowledge in the only tenable sense of the term, and it lays down, in
Kantian language, the conditions of the possibility of experience. These
conditions are the conditions of knowledge as such, or, as it may be put,
of objective consciousness - of a self-consciousness of a world of objects
and through them conscious of itself. The inquiry is, therefore, logical or
transcendental in its nature, and does not entangle us in any decision as
to the conditions of the genesis of such consciousness in the individual.
When we inquire into subjective conditions we are thinking of facts causing
other facts. But the logical or transcendental conditions are not causes or
even factors of knowledge; they are the statement of its idea. Hence the
dispute between evolutionist and transcendentalist rests, in general, on an
ignoratio elenchi; for the history of the genesis of an idea (the
historical or genetic method) does not contain an answer to - though it may
throw light on - the philosophical question of its truth or validity.
Speaking of this transcendental consciousness, Kant goes so far as to say
that it is not of the slightest consequence " whether the idea of it be
clear or obscure (in empirical consciousness), no, not even whether it
really exists or not. But the possibility of the logical form of all
knowledge rests on its relation to this apperception as a faculty or
potentiality " (Werke, ed. Hartenstein, iii. 578 note). Or, if we return to
the distinction between epistemology and psychology, by way of illustrating
the nature of the former, we may take the following summing up by Professor
James Ward in a valuable article on " Psychological Principles " in Mind
(April 1883, pp. 166, 567) : " Comparing psychology and epistemology, then,
we may say that the former is essentially genetic in its method, and might,
if we had the power to revise our existing terminology, be called biology;
the latter, on the other hand, is essentially devoid of everything
historical, and treats, sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza might have
said, of human knowledge, conceived as the possession of mind in general."
Kant's problem is not, in its wording, very different from that which Locke
set before him when he resolved to " inquire into the original, certainty
and extent of human knowledge together with the grounds and degrees of
belief, opinion and assent." Locke's Essay is undoubtedly, in its
intention, a contribution to the theory of knowledge. But, because time had
not yet made the matter clear, Locke suffered himself to digress in his
second book into the psychological question of the origin of our ideas; and
his theory of knowledge is ruined by the failure to distinguish between the
epistemological sense of " idea " as significant content and the
psychological sense in which it is applied to a fact or process in the
individual mind. The same confusion runs through Berkeley's arguments and
vitiates his conclusions as well as those of Hume. But appearing with these
thinkers as the problem of perception, epistemology widens its scope and
becomes, in Kant's hands, the question of the possibility of experience in
general. With Hegel it passes into a completely articulated " logic," which
apparently claims to be at the same time a metaphysic, or an ultimate
expression of the nature of the real.

This introduces us to the second part of the question we are seeking to
determine, namely the relation of epistemology to metaphysics. It is
evident that philosophy as theory of knowledge must have for its complement
philosophy as metaphysics (ontology) or theory of being. The question of
the truth of our knowledge, and the question of the ultimate nature of what
we know, are in reality two sides of the same inquiry; and therefore our
epistemological results have to be ontologically expressed. But it is not
every thinker that can see his way with Hegel to assert in set terms the
identity of thought and being. Hence the theory of knowledge becomes with
some a theory of human ignorance. This is the case with Herbert Spencer's
doctrine of the Unknowable, which he advances as the result of
epistemological considerations in the philosophical prolegomena to his
system. Very similar positions were maintained by Kant and Comte; and,
under the name of " agnosticism " (q.v.), the theory has popularized itself
in the outer courts of philosophy, and on the shifting borderland of
philosophy and literature. The truth is that the habit of thinking
exclusively from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge tends to beget
an undue subjectivity of temper. And the fact that it has become usual for
men to think from this standpoint is very plainly seen in the almost
universal description of philosophy as an analysis of " experience,"
instead of its more old-fashioned de s ignation as an inquiry into " the
nature of things." As it is matter of universal agreement that the problem
of being must be attacked indirectly through the problem of knowledge, this
substitution may be regarded as an advance, more especially as it implies
that the fact of experience, or of self-conscious existence, is the chief
fact to be dealt with. But if so, then self-consciousness must be treated
as itself real, and as organically related to the rest of existence. If
self-consciousness be treated in this objective fashion, then we pass
naturally from epistemology to metaphysics or ontology. (For, although the
term " ontology " has been as good as disused, it still remains true that
the aim of philosophy must be to furnish us with an ontology or a coherent
and adequate theory of the nature of reality.) But if, on the other hand,
knowledge and reality be ab initio opposed to one another - if
consciousness be set on one side as over against reality, and merely
holding up a mirror to it - then it follows with equal naturalness that the
truly real must be something which lurks unrevealed behind the subject's
representation of it. Hence come the different varieties of a so-called
phenomenalism. The upholders of such a theory would, in general, deride the
term `" metaphysics " or " ontology "; but it is evident, none the less,
that their position itself implies a certain theory of the universe and of
our own place in it, and the establishment of this theory constitutes their
metaphysics.

Without prejudice, then, to the claim of epistemology to constitute the
central philosophic discipline, we may simply note its liability to be
pressed too far. The exclusive preoccupation of men's minds with the
question of knowledge during the neo-Kantian revival in the 'seventies of
the last century drew from Lotze the caustic criticism that " the continual
sharpening of the knife becomes tiresome, if , after all, we have nothing
to cut with it." Stillingfleet's complaint against Locke was that he was "
one of the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning that have almost
discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world." The same may
be said with greater truth of the devotees of the theory of knowledge; they
seem to have no need of so old-fashioned a commodity as reality. Yet, after
all, Fichte's dictum holds good that knowledge as knowledge - i.e. so long
as it is looked at as knowledge - is, ipso facto, not reality. The result
of the foregoing, however, is to show that, as soon as epistemology draws
its conclusion, it becomes metaphysics; the theory of knowledge passes into
a theory of being. The ontological conclusion, moreover, is not to be
regarded as something added by an external process; it is an immediate
implication. The metaphysic is the epistemology from another point of view
- regarded as completing itself, and explaining in the course of its
exposition that relative or practical separation of the individual knower
from the knowable world, which it is a sheer assumption to take as
absolute. This, not the so-called assumption of the implicit unity of being
and thought, is the really unwarrantable postulate; for it is an assumption
which we are obliged to retract bit by bit, while the other offers the
whole doctrine of knowledge as its voucher.

Logic, Aesthetics and Ethics.—If the theory of knowledge thus passes
insensibly into metaphysics it becomes somewhat difficult to assign a
distinct sphere to logic (q.v.). Ueberweg's definition of it as " the
science of the regulative laws of thought " (or " the normative science of
thought ") comes near enough to the traditional sense to enable us to
compare profitably the usual subject-matter of the science with the
definition and end of philosophy. The introduction of the term " regulative
" or " normative " is intended to differentiate the science from psychology
as the science of mental processes or events. In this reference logic does
not tell us how our intellections connect themselves as mental phenomena,
but how we ought to connect our thoughts if they are to realize truth
(either as consistency with what we thought before or as agreement with
observed facts). Logic, therefore, agrees with epistemology (and differs
from psychology) in treating thought not as mental fact but as knowledge,
as idea, as having meaning in relation to an objective world. To this
extent it must inevitably form a part of the theory of knowledge. But, if
we desire to keep by older landmarks and maintain a distinction between the
two disciplines, a ground for doing so may be found in the fact that all
the main definitions of logic point to the investigation of the laws of
thought in a subjective reference - with a view, that is, by an analysis of
the operation, to ensure its more correct performance. According to the old
phrase, logic is the art of correct thinking. Moreover we commonly find the
logician assuming that the process of thought has advanced a certain length
before his examination of it begins; he takes his material full-formed from
perception, without, as a rule, inquiring into the nature of the
conceptions which are involved in our perceptive experience. Occupying a
position, therefore, within the wider sphere of the general theory of
knowledge, ordinary logic consists in an analysis of the nature of general
statement, and of the conditions under which we pass validly from one
general statement to another. But the logic of the schools is eked out by
contributions from a variety of sources (e.g. from grammar on one side and
from psychology on another), and cannot claim the unity of an independent
science.

Aesthetics (q.v.) may be treated as a department of psychology or
physiology, and in England this is the mode of treatment that has been most
general. To what peculiar excitation of our bodily or mental organism, it
is asked, are the emotions due which make us declare an object beautiful or
sublime? And, the question being put in this form, the attempt has been
made in some cases to explain away any peculiarity in the emotions by
analysing them into simpler elements, such as primitive organic pleasures
and prolonged associations of usefulness or fitness. But, just as
psychology in general cannot do duty for a theory of knowledge, so it holds
true of this particular application of psychology that a mere reference of
these emotions to the mechanism and interactive play of our faculties
cannot be regarded as an account of the nature of the beautiful. Perhaps by
talking of " emotions " we tend to give an unduly subjective colour to the
investigation; it would be better to speak of the perception of the
beautiful. Pleasure in itself is unqualified, and affords no differentia.
In the case of a beautiful object the resultant pleasure borrows its
specific quality from the presence of determinations essentially objective
in their nature, though not reducible to the categories of science. Unless,
indeed, we conceive our faculties to be constructed on some arbitrary plan
which puts them out of relation to the facts with which they have to deal,
we have a prima facie right to treat beauty as an objective determination
of things. The question of aesthetics would then be formulated - What is it
in things that makes them beautiful, and what is the relation of this
aspect of the universe to its ultimate nature, as that is expounded in
metaphysics? The answer constitutes the substance of aesthetics, considered
as a branch of philosophy. But it is not given simply in abstract terms:
the philosophical treatment of aesthetics includes also an exposition of
the concrete phases of art, as these have appeared in the history of the
world, relating themselves to different phases of human culture.

Of ethics (q.v.) it may also be said that many of the topics commonly
embraced under that title are not strictly philosophical in their nature.
They are subjects for a scientific psychology employing the historical
method with the conceptions of heredity and development, and calling to its
aid, as such a psychology will do, the investigations of all the
sociological sciences. To such a psychology must be relegated all questions
as to the origin and development of moral ideas. Similarly, the question
debated at such length by English moralists as to the nature of the moral
faculty (moral sense, conscience, &c.) and the controversy concerning the
freedom of the will belong entirely to psychology. If we exclude such
questions in the interest of systematic correctness, and seek to determine
for ethics a definite subject-matter, the science may be said to fall into
two departments. The first of these deals with the notion of duty, and
endeavours to define the good or the ultimate end of action; the second
lays out the scheme of concrete duties which are deducible from, or which,
at least, are covered by, this abstractly stated principle. The second of
these departments is really the proper subject-matter of ethics considered
as a separate science; but it is often conspicuous by its absence from
ethical treatises. However moralists may differ on first principles, there
seems to be remarkably little practical divergence when they come to lay
down the particular laws of morality. It may be added that, where a
systematic account of duties is actually given, the connexion of the
particular duties with the universal formula is in general more formal than
real. It is only under the head of casuistry (q.v.) that ethics has been
much cultivated as a separate science. The first department of ethics, on
the other hand, is the branch of the subject in virtue of which ethics
forms part of philosophy. As described above, it ought rather to be called,
in Kant's phrase, the metaphysic of ethics. A theory of obligation is
ultimately found to be inseparable from a metaphysic of personality. The
connexion of ethics with metaphysics will be patent as a matter of fact, if
it be remembered how Plato's philosophy is summed up in the idea of the
good, and how Aristotle also employs the essentially ethical notion of end
as the ultimate category by which the universe may be explained or reduced
to unity. But the necessity of the connexion is also apparent, unless we
are to suppose that, as regards the course of universal nature, man is
altogether an imperium in imperio, or rather (to adopt the forcible phrase
of Marcus Aurelius) an abscess or excrescence on the nature of things. If,
on the contrary, we must hold that man is essentially related to what the
same writer calls " a common nature," then it is a legitimate corollary
that in man as intelligence we ought to find the key of the whole fabric.
At all events, this method of approach must be truer than any which, by
restricting itself to the external aspect of phenomena as presented in
space, leaves no scope for inwardness and life and all that, in Lotze's
language, gives " value " to the world. The argument ex analogia hominis
has often been carried too far; but if a " chief end of man " be
discoverable - av9p6miruvov ayaOov, as Aristotle wisely insisted that the
ethical end must be determined - then it may be assumed that this end
cannot be irrelevant to that ultimate " meaning " of the universe which,
according to Lotze, is the quest of philosophy. If " the idea of humanity,"
as Kant called it, has ethical perfection at its core, then a universe
which is really an organic whole must be ultimately representable as a
moral order or a spiritual kingdom such as Leibnitz named, in words
borrowed from St Augustine, a city of God.

Philosophy of the State (Political Philosophy), Philosophy of History,
Philosophy of Religion.—In Plato and Aristotle ethics and politics are
indissolubly connected. In other words, seeing that the highest human good
is realizable only in a community, the theory of the state as the organ of
morality, and itself in its structure and institutions the expression of
ethical ideas or qualities, becomes an integral part of philosophy. The
difficulty already hinted at, which individualistic systems of ethics
experience in connecting particular duties with the abstract principle of
duty is a proof of the failure of their method. For the content of morality
we are necessarily referred, in great part, to the experience crystallized
in laws and institutions and to the unwritten law of custom, honour and
good breeding, which has become organic in the society of which we are
members. Plato's Republic and Hegel's Philosophie des Rechts are the most
typical examples of a fully developed philosophy of the state, but in the
earlier modern period the prolonged discussion of natural rights and the
social contract must be regarded as a contribution to such a theory.
Moreover, if philosophy is to complete its constructive work, it must bring
the course of human history within its survey, and exhibit the sequence of
events as an evolution in which the purposive action of reason is
traceable. This is the task of the philosophy of history, a peculiarly
modern study, due to the growth of a humanistic and historical point of
view. Lessing's conception of history as an " education of the human race "
is a typical example of this interpretation of the facts, and was indeed
the precursor which stimulated many more elaborate German theories. The
philosophy of history differs, it will be observed, from the purely
scientific or descriptive studies covered by the general title of
sociology. Sociology conceives itself as a natural science elucidating a
factual sequence. The philosophy of history is essentially teleological;
that is to say, it seeks to interpret the process as the realization of an
immanent end. It may be said, therefore, to involve a complete metaphysical
theory. Social institutions and customs and the different forms of
state-organization are judged according to the degree in which they promote
the realization of the human ideal. History is thus represented by Hegel,
for example, as the realization of the idea of freedom, or rather as the
reconciliation of individual freedom and the play of cultured interests
with the stable objectivity of law and an abiding consciousness of the
greater whole in which we move. So far as the course of universal history
can be truly represented as an approximation to this reconciliation by a
widening and deepening of both the elements, we may claim to possess a
philosophy of history. But although the possibility of such a philosophy
seems implied in the postulated nationality of the universe, many would
hold that it remains as yet an unachieved ideal.

There only remains to be briefly noticed the relation of philosophy to
theology and the nature of what is called Philosophy of Religion. By
theology is commonly understood the systematic presentation of the teaching
of some positive or historical religion as to the existence and attributes
of a Supreme Being, including his relation to the world and especially to
man. But these topics have also been treated by philosophers and religious
thinkers, without dependence on any historical data or special divine
revelation, under the title of Natural Theology. Natural Theology is
specially associated with the Stoic theories of providence in ancient times
and with elaborations of the argument from design in the 18th century. But
there is no warrant for restricting the term to any special mode of
approaching the problems indicated; and as these form the central subject
of metaphysical inquiry, no valid distinction can be drawn between natural
theology and general metaphysics. The philosophy of religion, on the other
hand, investigates the nature of the religious consciousness and the value
of its pronouncements on human life and man's relation to the ground of
things. Unity, reconciliation, peace, joy, " the victory that overcometh
the world " - such, in slightly varying phrases, is the content of
religious faith. Does this consciousness represent an authentic insight
into ultimate fact, or is it a pitiful illusion of the nerves, born of
man's hopes and fears and of his fundamental ignorance? The philosophy of
religion assumes the first alternative. The function of philosophy in
general is the reflective analysis of experience, and the religious
experience of mankind is prima facie entitled to the same consideration as
any other form of conscious activity. The certainties of religious faith
are matter of feeling or immediate assurance, and are expressed in the
pictorial language of imagination. It becomes the function of philosophy,
dealing with these utterances, to relate them to the results of other
spheres of experience, and to determine their real meaning in the more
exact terms of thought. The philosophy of religion also traces in the
different historical forms of religious belief and practice the gradual
evolution of what it takes to be the truth of the matter. Such an account
may be distinguished from what is usually called the science of religion by
the teleological or 'metaphysical presuppositions it involves. The science
of religion gives a purely historical and comparative account of the
various manifestations of the religious instinct without pronouncing on
their relative truth or value and without, therefore, professing to apply
the idea of evolution in the philosophical sense. That idea is fundamental
in the philosophy of religion, which therefore can be written only from the
standpoint of a constructive metaphysical theory.

It is, indeed, only from the standpoint of such a theory that the
definitions and divisions of the different philosophical disciplines
adopted in this article can be said to hold good. But those who, like the
positivists, agnostics and sceptics, deny the possibility of metaphysics as
a theory of the ultimate nature of things, are still obliged to retain
philosophy as a theory of knowledge, in order to justify the asserted
limitation or impotence of human reason.

Bibliography—The best general histories of philosophy are by J. E. Erdmann,
Friedrich Ueberweg and W. Windelband, Windelband's being probably the
freshest in its treatment and point of view. Ed. Zeller's History of Greek
Philosophy still holds the field as the best continuous exposition of the
subject, but more recent work in the early period is represented by H.
Diels and J. Burnet, while Zeller's view of Plato may be said to have been
superseded by the later researches of Lewis Campbell, H. Jackson and
others. T. Gomperz's Greek Thinkers is an able, if somewhat diffuse, survey
of the philosophical development in connexion with the general movement of
Greek life and culture. It does not go beyond Plato. B. Haureau, A. Stockl
and Karl Werner give the fullest and most trustworthy histories of the
medieval period, but the subject is very carefully treated by Erdmann and
Ueberweg, and a useful compendium, written from a Roman Catholic
standpoint, is De Wulf's History of Medieval Philosophy (1900; Eng. trans.,
1907). For modern times, in addition to the general histories already
named, the works of Kuno Fischer, R. Falckenberg and H. Hoffding, and R.
Adamson's Lectures on the Development of Modern Philosophy, may be
specially mentioned. Writers on the history of philosophy generally prefix
to their work a discussion of the scope of philosophy, its divisions and
its relations to other departments of knowledge, and the account given by
Windelband and Ueberweg will be found specially good. The Introductions to
Philosophy published by F. Paulsen, O. Ktilpe, W. Wundt and G. T. Ladd,
deal largely with this subject, which is also treated by Henry Sidgwick in
his Philoso p hy, its Scope and Relations (1902), by Ernest Naville, La
Definition de la philosophie (1894) and by Wundt in the introduction to his
System der Philosophic (1889). A useful work of general reference is J. M.
Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (3 vols., 1902-1905). (A.
S. P.-P.)

[1] The revisional office which philosophy here assumes constitutes her the
  critic of the sciences. It is in this connexion that the meaning of the
  definition of philosophy as " the science of principles " can best be
  seen. This is perhaps the most usual definition, and, though vague, one
  of the least misleading.
[2] It is true that he afterwards modifies this misleading identification
  by introducing the distinction between empirical psychology or the
  phenomenology of mind and inferential psychology' or ontology, i.e.
  metaphysics proper. But he continues to use the terms " philosophy," "
  metaphysics," and " mental science " as synonymous.

Fichte (Adamson)/Chapter V

CHAPTER V.

GENERAL IDEA OF FICHTE'S PHILOSOPHY.

The philosophy of Fichte attaches itself, by a kind of natural necessity,
to that of Kant, of which it is an extension and development, and in
relation to which it has its special significance. The difficulties in the
way of obtaining a summary view of its nature and tendency are thus, for
the general reader, increased. From the peculiar form of the system, it is
not at all possible to effect an easy entrance into it; but the closeness
of its connection with the Kantian philosophy renders it necessary not only
that the reader should become acquainted with the specific character of the
critical method, with the point of view from which the problems of
speculative thought are regarded in all later German systems, but also that
he should have a sufficient grasp of the details of the critical philosophy
to appreciate what is peculiar in Fichte's advance upon it. Of these
fundamental requisites for comprehension of Fichte's doctrine, the first is
the more important,—even, one may say, the more essential. The English
student who has been accustomed to the analytical and psychological method
of Berkeley, or Hume, or Mill, or even to the more developed forms of
recent realistic or scientific thinking, as in Spencer, finds himself, as
it were, in a new world, when he is brought into contact with the Kantian
and post-Kantian speculations—a world in which at first sight all appears
to be inverted or reversed. Apparent inversion, as we know, may arise
either from the position of the things themselves, or from the inverted
view of the observer; and the extraordinary difference between the English
and the later German philosophy is merely the result of the fundamental
difference in point of view from which they contemplate philosophical
questions. The problems with which both are engaged are of necessity the
same—no philosophy is ever new—but the methods employed are radically
divergent, and not without careful analysis and criticism can they be
brought within sight of one another. It is indispensable, in attempting to
give a systematic account of one phase of German speculation, that we
should endeavour to make clear the characteristic feature which
distinguishes that mode of thought, and we can hardly do so without
comparing it to some extent with the prevailing type of English philosophy.
So soon as the point of view and method of treatment have become clear, we
are in a position to consider the problems to which the speculative method
must be applied, and thus to obtain a preliminary outline or general
conception of the whole system. This, in the first instance, is what we
propose to undertake, leaving to the more detailed account of the system
the second introductory subject—the contents or results of the Kantian
philosophy.

If we consider what is involved in the descriptive adjectives which have
been, applied to what may be called the current English philosophy, we
shall be able to discover, by mere force of contrast, some of the most
important characteristics of the Kantian method of speculative research.
Historically, indeed, the Kantian method was an attempt to revise what had
appeared as the final result of English philosophy; and though the later
post-Kantian writers make little or no reference to English thought, the
connection between the two is not to be overlooked. A more fruitful
conception of the aim and function of speculative thinking is to be
obtained by working towards Kant from the position of Locke and Hume than
from that of Leibnitz, important as the influence of the latter undoubtedly
was. The English philosophy, we have said, may be distinguished as
prevailingly analytical or psychological in method. In other words, if it
be regarded as the primary and all-comprehensive function of philosophy to
render intelligible the whole of experience, to give a systematic and
reasoned account of all that enters into the life of the human thinking
being, then the method of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and their successors,
proposes to supply answers to the various problems into which this one
comprehensive inquiry divides itself, by an analysis of the conscious
experience of the thinking subject, by a complete psychology of human
nature. Conscious experience, that of which the individual subject becomes
aware as making up his existence, is regarded as material upon which the
processes of observation, classification, analysis, employed to good
purpose in physical inquiries, are to be directed. At first sight, indeed,
such a method appears not merely natural, but the only possible way in
which a philosophical theory, granting such to be feasible, can be
constructed. For is not a philosophical theory a kind of knowledge? And how
otherwise than by investigation of the contents of mind can we arrive at
any conclusions regarding the nature and limits of knowledge? "It surely
needs no argumentation," says a distinguished exponent of the view, "to
show that the problem, "What can we know? cannot be approached without the
examination of the contents of the mind, and the determination of how much
of these contents maybe called knowledge."¹ Since that which stands in need
of explanation is experience itself, we evidently cannot explain it
otherwise than by looking at it. To look beyond experience is absurd; there
is evidently nothing left but the examination of experience, and to this
philosophy must needs be confined.

It may here be remarked that any difference between the philosophical
methods under comparison does not arise concerning the restriction of
knowledge to experience. Fichte as well as Kant is aware that philosophy
has only to think experience, that it in no way adds to experience, and
that it must contain nothing beyond experience. "I declare," he writes in
one of the most popular of his expositions, "the very innermost spirit and
soul of my philosophy to be, that man has nothing beyond experience, and
that he obtains all that he has, from experience, from life only. All his
thinking, whether vague or scientific, whether popular or transcendental,
proceeds from experience and concerns nothing but experience."² Any
divergence arises, not from disagreement respecting the quite empty
proposition, that there is nothing beyond experience, but from some
difference in conception of experience and in the method of dealing with
it. Critical examination often shows that under an apparently simple
question or statement a whole theory lies concealed, and that the
inferences drawn follow not from the fact contained in the query or
proposition, but from the underlying theory. Thus, in the case in point,
the restriction of philosophical inquiry to experience has always meant, to
writers of the English school, that phenomena of inner and outer life are
known in the same way, and that beyond the knowledge thus obtained there is
nothing standing in need of investigation or capable of being investigated.
"Psychology," says the writer previously referred to, "differs from
physical science only in the nature of its subject-matter, and not in its
method of investigation."³

English philosophy thus starts with a definite conception of the nature and
limits of speculative inquiry. Experience, inner and outer, is equally
matter for scientific treatment; and the results of such treatment form, on
the one hand, natural science strictly so called—on the other, mental
science, of which certain generalised propositions make up the substance of
philosophy. It is not putting the matter too strongly to say that the
categorical rejection of this psychological method is the very essence of
the critical philosophy, the key-note of the critical spirit in
speculation. For Kant, as for Fichte, psychology is a science or doctrine
subordinate to philosophy proper, involving in its method assumptions which
it is the very business of philosophy to discuss, and employing notions
which it is the function of philosophy to criticise. So far from
speculative principles being generalisations from psychological data, they
are antecedent to the establishment of such data as facts of experience.
The naïve doctrine that since cognition is an aspect or form of conscious
experience, its nature, extent, and validity are to be considered by
investigating it according to the rules of scientific method,—just as we
should investigate an object presented in outer experience,—is not to be
identified with the truth which the most metaphysical thinker acknowledges,
that only by thought can thought be tested and examined. The special lesson
of the critical philosophy is that the assumption of a distinction of the
whole field of experience into the two realms of objective facts and of
subjective facts itself requires examination and defence. We must consider
what the significance of such a distinction is for the conscious subject
within whose experience it presents itself, and under what conditions it
can be recognised by him. Were we to begin our philosophical analysis, as
psychology must begin, with the distinction as in some way a fact given,
and assume simply that the thinking subject is confronted with two orders
of phenomena to be interpreted through the same notions, we should commit a
twofold error. For, on the one hand, while in words we appear to assert
that the two orders of facts make up all that is, we have in reality placed
alongside of them, in a quite inexplicable fashion, the thinking subject or
mind, a tertium quid which certainly stands in need of some explanation;
and, on the other hand, the qualities and relations discoverable among
facts, when contemplated as matters of observation for the thinking
subject, are only such as appear to a supposed external observer, and not
their qualities and relations for the intelligence whose very substance
they compose. We voluntarily abstract from the essential feature of the
problem, the existence of the conscious subject for whom the orders of
facts are there present, and must therefore recognise that any conclusions
from investigation of the facts have validity only in subordination to the
abstraction from which we start. Thus psychology, as ordinarily
conceived—the scientific account of the phenomena to be observed in
consciousness, the description, analysis, and history of mental
phenomena—stands on precisely the same level as the natural sciences, and
like them, leaves out of consideration the problem with which philosophy as
such has to deal. Even the analysis of mental states, which forms a portion
of psychological treatment, is the analysis of them as facts of
observation,—that is, the determination of the conditions on which their
occurrence depends, the separation of simpler and more complex states, and
the formulation of general laws of coexistence and succession, not the
analysis of their significance as elements of the cognitive or moral
experience of a conscious subject The fundamental notions which we apply in
psychological research are those of all scientific method, and concern
objects—i.e., things regarded as existing in conjunction and mutual
interdependence. Their very applicability, therefore, depends on the
resolution of the prior questions as to the significance of knowledge of
any thing or object, and the relations involved therein. Such prior
questions may be called, in Kantian phraseology, transcendental, and the
whole method by which they are treated the transcendental method. The
substitution of this transcendental method for the earlier abstract
metaphysics, and for the prevailingly psychological fashion of dealing with
philosophical problems, is, in brief, Kant's contribution to modern
thought.⁴

The fundamental difference between the psychological method of dealing with
philosophical problems, the method which regards the states of mind as so
many definite objects for a conscious observer, and the transcendental
method, which proposes for consideration the conditions under which
knowledge of a thing is possible for a thinking subject and the
significance of such knowledge, appears with great clearness in the
philosophical system of Berkeley—a system in which both methods may be
discerned, though neither receives precise expression, and the combination
seems to have remained unobserved by the author. Berkeley's thinking is in
so many ways typical of the English spirit, his idealism has affected so
much of current speculation, and his position in the general development of
modern philosophy is so peculiar, that it is worth while here to scrutinise
somewhat closely the principles upon which he proceeded.

Beyond all question, Berkeley started, in his philosophical analysis, with
a doctrine which in terms may be regarded as identical with the principle
of the transcendental method. He proposed to investigate philosophical
notions or terms in the light of the doctrine, that no fact can possibly be
admitted which is not a fact for some conscious subject. Every metaphysical
theorem or notion must be subjected to the same test, reduction of its
terms to the experience of a thinking being. His attack on abstractions is
thus virtually identical with the Kantian criticism of
things-in-themselves. For Berkeley an abstraction is a supposed fact of
experience which from its nature cannot possibly form part of the
experience of a conscious subject. If we remove from a fact those relations
or qualifications through which only it enters into and forms portion of
the conscious experience of some subject, we have as result an abstractum
or contradiction,—something supposed to be a possible object of experience,
and yet at the same time wanting in the qualities requisite for any such
object. Material substance as distinct from the varied and specifically
qualified material things, unqualified matter as the cause of objective
phenomena, things as existing out of relation to conscious intelligence,
abstract ideas of facts of experience, are instances of such abstraction.
Berkeley's demand that, before discussing problems as to matter, cause,
substance, and other metaphysical notions, we shall first determine what
they mean for us, has the true note of the transcendental method.

On the other hand, it is equally beyond doubt that Berkeley, under the
influence of Locke's philosophy, accepted as the criterion of the
possibility of entrance into the conscious experience of a subject, the
possibility of forming one fact of observation in the observed sum of
states making up conscious experience. In his view, as in that of Locke,
existence for a self-conscious subject meant individual or particular
existence as an object of internal observation. Thus from the outset he
united in one system the transcendental and the psychological methods, and
the history of the development of his thoughts is an instructive record of
the struggle between the two principles. The manifold inconsistencies which
criticism discloses in his doctrine are natural results of the attempt,
however unconscious, to combine two radically incompatible views.

Berkeley's earliest reflections, those contained in the 'Commonplace Book,'
discovered and published by Professor Fraser, are dominated throughout by
the individualist notion which is part of the psychological method. He is
even disposed at times to reject his underlying doctrine of the necessary
implication of subject and object, and to regard mind itself as but a
collection of particular ideas, as, indeed, mind necessarily is, for
internal observation. In the first formal stage of his philosophy, the
stage represented by the 'Principles,' the most characteristic features are
due to the steady application of the individualist criterion. It seems
evident to him that to the observer, regarded as standing apart from
conscious experience, nothing can be presented but isolated, single states,
connected externally or contingently, containing in themselves no reference
to underlying substance or cause, and existing only as facts for an
observer. The result is one aspect, unfortunately almost the only aspect
known, of the Berkeleian idealism. Existence is the sum of states making up
the experience of the individual; there is nothing beyond the mind and its
own phenomena. From such a mere subjective fancy no philosophical aid is to
be found for resolving any of the harder problems of thought. As the matter
is well put by Dr Stirling: "The same things that were called without or
noumenal, are now called within and phenomenal; but, call them as you may,
it is their systematic explanation that is wanted. Such systematic
explanation, embracing man and the entire round of his experiences,
sensuous, intellectual, moral, religious, aesthetical, political, &c., is
alone philosophy, and to that no repetition of without is within, or matter
is phenomenal, will ever prove adequate."⁵ In short, the slightest
reflection enables one to see that the most airy subjective idealism and
the crassest materialism are one and the same. In both cases we are left
with the mere statement that things are what they are, and it matters not
whether we call them ideas or forms of matter.

This, however, is but one side of Berkeley's so-called idealism. Although,
while developing from the individualist principle, he could arrive at no
other conclusion than that experience consists in the isolated states of
the individual thinker, yet it seemed to him equally clear that the
conscious subject could not be regarded as merely one of the objects of
internal observation. The independent existence and activity of the
conscious self were therefore admitted by him as somehow beyond experience
in the narrow sense, and in a very confused fashion he proceeded to ask
what the significance of experience could be for such a self-conscious
subject. His answer, given briefly and without adequate investigation of
its real ground, was practically that for such a subject conscious
experience must present itself as a conditioned and dependent fact, as a
series of accidents of which intelligence or mind is the substance, as a
series of effects of which intelligence or mind is the cause. Thus the
psychological idealism, reached by application of the one method, was
transformed by application of the other into a species of objective or
theological idealism. The conception of a mere flux of conscious states was
converted into the more complex notion of an intelligible system—a world of
free and independent spirits, whose modes of action and passion are the
several modifications of actual experience as known to us. Finite minds are
related to one another and to the Infinite Mind by mutual action and
reaction. The course of nature is the result of the operation of the Divine
Mind on finite intelligences.

A notion like this is essentially what Kant and Fichte call "dogmatic."⁶ It
implies or starts from the assumption of an absolute opposition between two
orders of real existences, the finite and the infinite mind, and endeavours
to explain their reconciliation or conjunction by means of a conception
which has validity only for the diverse objects of one conscious subject. A
conscious subject can only think the objects which make up his experience
as mutually determining, for only so do they compose one experience. To
transfer this notion to the possible relations of infinite and finite
intelligences, which by supposition are not mere objects for mind, is to
make an invalid, or technically, a transcendent use of it. No ingenuity can
render a finite and relative notion like that of causal action, or of
mutual determination, adequate to express the possible connection between
experience and the ground of all possible experience. God and the world are
not to be thought as respectively cause and effect.

The Berkeleian theological idealism thus yields no solution of the problem
it was intended to answer. It is simply a translation into the language of
idealism of the popular view that the experience of the conscious subject
is due to some action from without; and if no further analysis be given, it
is not of the slightest consequence, philosophically, whether we say that
God is the cause of the varied character of conscious experience, or that
things in themselves are the cause. In both cases we have started with the
conception of the finite, self-existent mind, and explain its experience as
communicated to it from without. Such a mere fashion of speech makes clear
neither what the significance of "coming from without" can be for an
intelligence possessing only subjective states, nor how the notion of
"without" can possibly arise in its consciousness, nor how it comes to
regard itself as finite, and to refer for explanation to an Infinite Mind.⁷

The later stages of Berkeley's thinking show the gradual perception on his
part of the deficiencies in his earlier doctrine. On the one hand, it
became increasingly apparent that the results of the psychological method
required to be qualified or limited by reference to the counter-conception
of the conscious subject as in no sense a possible object of conscious
experience: on the other hand, it began to appear doubtful to Berkeley how
far any worth or validity could be ascribed to the psychological method. He
had assumed throughout his earlier inquiry that to the supposed external
observer, whether our own mind or not, the facts of conscious experience
would present themselves as a contingent series or stream; but it now
occurred to him that in so doing, he had simply cast into the mind of this
external observer all that was required to render knowledge possible, all
that must be investigated before we can determine what knowledge really is.
Thus, in 'Alciphron,' stress is laid upon the fact that Self is not an
idea—i.e., not an object of observation; and on the analogy of this, the
wider inference is rested, that many intellectual principles may likewise
have validity, although what they refer to can in no sense be reduced to
ideas, or isolated individual elements of conscious experience. In 'Siris,'
Berkeley begins to point out that the stream of contingent facts of
experience is not a datum requiring merely to be observed, but is possible
material of knowledge only for an intelligence which combines the scattered
parts in relations not included in the conception of them as mere objects.
In fact, in the latest stage of his philosophical development, it becomes
evident to him that the so-called simple ideas of Locke are really concrete
and complex units of cognition; and that sense, so far from furnishing a
kind of knowledge, supplies only elements, which for a thinking subject are
possible material of knowledge.

Berkeley's doctrine has been considered in some detail, partly because no
subsequent English philosophical thinking seems to have advanced beyond his
position, partly because one can discern very clearly in him the principles
upon which English philosophy has always proceeded. The results of his work
will probably have made intelligible what is to be understood by the
psychological method of treating speculative problems, what is the precise
nature of the assumptions underlying it, and what, on the whole, must be
the characteristic feature of the opposed method. The psychological method,
starting from the point of view of ordinary consciousness, in which the
individual subject is confronted with two dissimilar series of facts, inner
and outer experience, and in which each series, as it presents itself
separately, is viewed from the same quasi external position, proceeds to
treat these facts by the help of the familiar category or notion of the
thing and its relations to other things. The world of external experience
appears as a totality of existing things, reciprocally determining and
being determined, each of which is what it is because the others are what
they are. It matters not that, by the introduction of some subjective
analysis, we reduce the supposed things to more or less permanent groups or
series of sensations: the essential fact is, that they are thought as
making up a mechanical whole. When the same conception is applied to inner
experience, to the thinking subject, his states and relations to experience
in general, the only logical result is a system of completed determinism,
or, as Fichte calls it, dogmatism. Even without raising the question as to
the legitimacy or validity of the notion thus applied to the interpretation
of things in external nature, Fichte points out that the same conception,
the same method, cannot be applied to the interpretation of the life of the
conscious subject. For, here, each fact is to be regarded, not only as a
thing standing in relations to other things,—relations only conceivable
when we secretly postulate the presence of some mind which relates the
things to one another,—but as a fact for the conscious subject. They are
not external to him, but form part of his very being and substance, and
philosophy has specially to deal with their significance for him. The
psychological method has simply thrown out of account or neglected the
fundamental fact, that of self-consciousness. Mechanical or dogmatic
explanations of mental phenomena may be adequate as statements of the
conditions under which these phenomena come to be, but they are utterly
inadequate as explanations of what these phenomena are for the conscious
subject. Take as an example of the difference between the modes of
treatment, the important distinction appearing in consciousness between Ego
and non-Ego, self and not-self. The psychological theory, if it is wise and
enlightened, begins by assuming provisionally the existence of objective
conditions under which specific sensations arise, and points to the
variable nature of these conditions, and the variable combinations of
sensations which result—e.g., the constant presence of motor or muscular
sensations with different groups of passive sensations as giving the key to
the origin of the notion. But such an explanation tacitly assumes the very
point at issue. Why should either passive or active sensations, or any
combinations of them, appear to the conscious subject himself as
limitations? If we represent to ourselves the conscious subject as a thing
acted upon and reacting, we may try by the help of this metaphor to render
intelligible the fact that some states of his experience appear as
objective and determined, while others are thought as subjective and
relatively undetermined; but our explanation extends only to the metaphor
and not to that which is symbolised. There is no resemblance between
passive and active sensations, and the assumed actions and reactions from
which they arise; and the only problem, how the consciousness of difference
arises out of the sensations, is not answered by reference to actions and
reactions which are not in the sensations at all, but, if in consciousness
at all, are added by thought. On the other hand, the speculative method
proposes, by an analysis of self-consciousness and of the conditions under
which it is possible, to clear up the significance for the conscious
subject himself of those important differences which characterise his
experience. Nothing must here be assumed which transcends
self-consciousness, but nothing must be accepted as solution which is not
for self-consciousness. The distinction between Ego and non-Ego is one for
the thinking subject; it is hopeless, therefore, to look for solution to
hypotheses which lie outside of the thinking subject. The so-called
scientific method in philosophy is emphatically the method of metaphysical
assumptions, for throughout its procedure it has recourse to explanations
which transcend experience.

Thus the philosophy of Fichte starts with the demand that the facts of
experience shall be examined as facts of self-consciousness. They exist
only for a thinking being, and their significance or interpretation for the
thinking subject is the substance of philosophy. Philosophy is thus the
re-thinking of experience,—the endeavour to construct by rigid and
methodical analysis that which to ordinary consciousness presents itself as
a completed and given whole. Speculation, therefore, in no way transcends
the limits of experience; it does not extend the bounds of thinking; it
intrudes in no way into the province of natural science, which is but an
extension of ordinary consciousness. "No proposition of a philosophy which
knows itself is, in that form, a proposition for real life. It is either a
step in the system, from which further progress may be made; or if
speculation has in it reached a final point, a proposition to which
sensation and perception must be added, as rationally included therein,
before it can be of service for life. Philosophy, even when completed,
cannot yield the element of sense, which is the true inner principle of
life (or actuality)."⁸ Philosophy is thus the subjective side of that which
objectively appears or presents itself as reality, in ordinary life. The
experience of the finite subject, an experience in which, so far as
cognition is concerned, the inner and outer worlds are distinct; in which,
so far as action is concerned, sensuous impulse and reasoned purpose,
personal desire and general or rational will, are combined; in which, so
far as the whole sphere of his finite existence is concerned, the feeling
of personal independence is curiously allied with those strivings after
infinite being in which independence would cease;—this experience, in all
its diversity, is the matter to be explained; and while philosophy may
divide itself into various branches according to the different problems
proposed, it is in a twofold sense a unity. For the experience to be
interpreted is one, and the whole interpretation is but the exposition of
the significance of experience for self-consciousness, which is also one.

If, now, we call any fact of experience which presents itself in
consciousness, a cognition or matter of knowledge, and every systematic
account of any series or class of such facts, a science (Wissenschaft), we
shall be prepared to understand why it was that Fichte selected, as title
for philosophy in general, the term, theory of science or of knowledge
(Wissenschaftslehre), and what are the formal requirements of this
comprehensive doctrine.⁹ It is the business of Wissenschaftslehre to
develop from its first principle the organic plan or complete framework of
human knowledge. We may assume hypothetically that there is system in human
cognition, and if so, we assume that all principles can be shown to rest
upon some one comprehensive absolute principle—a principle incapable of
proof, but giving the ground of proof to all other principles. Our
assumption can receive justification only in and by the course of the
development itself,—i.e., we can show that there is system in human
knowledge if we develop completely, from its first principle, all that is
contained in human knowledge.

Fichte's earliest systematic work, the tract "On the Notion of
Wissenschaftslehre," contains a number of formal determinations regarding
the new science; but the true meaning of what is there laid down becomes
apparent only when the nature of the doctrine itself has been seen. It is
desirable therefore to omit all reference to this tract, at least until the
system has been explained.

Notes

[1] Huxley's 'Hume,' p. 49.
[2] "Sonnenklarer Bericht," 'Werke,' vol. ii. p. 333. Cf. 'Werke,' vol. ii.
  pp. 9, 10, 123, 395; vol. v. pp. 340-344.
[3] Huxley's 'Hume,' p. 51.
[4] The term transcendental probably has, for English ears, an unpleasant
  ring, and will suggest metaphysical efforts to transcend experience. It
  must be understood, however, that transcendental method is simply the
  patient and rigorous analysis of experience itself. For any question or
  theorem which might pass beyond possible experience, Kant reserved the
  term transcendent; and the distinction, if not the mode of expressing it,
  is accepted by all his successors. Neither in Kant nor in Fichte is there
  anything in the slightest degree resembling what is commonly called
  metaphysics.
[5] "Annotations" to Schwegler's 'History of Philosophy,' p. 419.
[6] See for Fichte's vigorous criticism of Berkeley, 'Werke,' vol. i. pp.
  438, 439.
[7] One of these unanswered difficulties suggests the reason for the close
  similarity which has been found between Berkeley and Leibnitz. From
  Berkeley's subjective or psychological point of view, the criterion of
  objectivity is want of consciousness of productive power on the part of
  the thinking subject. Now evidently, in the absence of other grounds,
  objectivity of this sort might be accounted for by reference to
  unconscious acts of production on the part of the subject, as well as by
  action from without. Experience would thus be the evolution of the
  thinking subject; inner and outer would imply only differences in the
  conscious activity of the subject; the Berkeleian finite mind would be
  identical with the Leibnitzian monad.
[8] "Rückerinnerungen," § 9, 'Werke,' vol. v. p. 343.
[9] The terms theory of science and theory of knowledge have of recent
  years acquired so special a significance among German writers on logic,
  that either would lead to misunderstanding if applied to Fichte's
  philosophical doctrine. Theorie der Wissenschaft has been taken to mean
  the systematic account of the methods actually followed in scientific
  research—e.g., observation, experiment, analysis, &c.; while
  Erkenntniss-theorie, or theory of knowledge, when used by a logical
  writer, implies that he brings to bear upon the doctrines of formal logic
  the combined results of psychology and general philosophy. There is a
  deplorable want of consistency in the use of the terms.

An Essay Towards a Theory of Art/Part II

Scope of Æsthetic

Æsthetic experience, then, is the experience which is presupposed by all
art but does not necessarily—does, in fact, quite exceptionally—result in
art: and this is the experience which, as a feature of life as a whole, and
not of any specialised life, forms the field of the æsthetic science. (The
taking in of a work of art is, of course, an æsthetic experience; but what
is then taken in is different from all other æsthetic experience: and this
term will, therefore, be most conveniently used as excluding artistic
experience.) Now this æsthetic science is often held to be the study of
that peculiar reaction in us to the events of inner and outer life which is
called the sense of beauty. But we must decline to allow our terms of
reference to be limited beforehand. Beauty occurs, of course, both in art
and nature: both as the result of deliberate intention and of casual
occurrence. And this is the most obvious link between art and æsthetic. But
just now we are considering the æsthetic and inevitable experience of
everybody as the necessary preliminary of the exceptional and deliberate
activity of the artist. No doubt the most important thing about æsthetic
experience is the fact that beauty can occur in it. But as soon as we begin
to investigate beauty we come upon ugliness, and at once our enquiry
widens. New questions arise: Is ugliness the mere absence of beauty? We
must not assume that: any more than in ethics we ought to assume that a bad
deed is simply one that is not good. Then is ugliness a sort of active
opposite to beauty? It may be; but we cannot begin to decide until we are
sure, first, what sort of experience it is in which both beauty and
ugliness can occur? Second, how do they occur?

The Matter of Æsthetic

As to the kind of experience in which they occur, the shortest way round
that question is by way of art. For however art may specialise, it derives
its matter solely from æsthetic experience; and has the advantage of
presenting that pure, and therefore in a peculiarly recognisable form. Let
me for a moment attend to the art of literature. How could we—not define
it—but just roughly describe it? We might call it, the art of expressing
oneself in words. Well, that is what I am doing now. Am I, therefore,
creating a work of art? Assuredly not. And note the ambiguity in the word
"art." For in that phrase—"the art of expressing oneself in words"—the word
"art" means no more than it does in "the art of household management." It
means simply a definitely adjusted skill. But there is no ambiguity when we
speak of a work of art. How then must we qualify that meaning of "a
definitely adjested skill" in order to arrive at the sense of a work of
art? At first it would seem to be in a merely negative fashion. Why am I
not now creating a work of art, although I am expressing myself in words? I
think everyone would agree, that it is because I am using expression for an
ulterior purpose. The success I hope to achieve is more than the success of
merely achieving expression. I am arguing: I am trying to convince you.
Whether I succeed or fail does not depend solely on my power of expression;
it depends also on the value of my theory. My expression is not now in the
least for its own sake, but altogether for the sake of making my theory
penetrate your minds and get to work there. And you are judging my power of
expression not in itself, not for its own sake, but for the sake of
something it conveys beyond itself, the operation of a train of reasoning:
you judge it according as it effects a purpose outside itself, you judge it
according as it enables you to judge my argument. That is the sole value of
the expression I am now using: that it is the means by which you value
something else.

So, to compare small things with great, if I say the "Origin of Species" is
well written, I do not mean that I can enjoy the writing for its own sake:
I mean that it is admirably fitted to convey the information and effect the
persuasion Darwin intended. Expression here justifies itself by its ability
to do more than exist as mere expression: as it does in the case of any
book which aims at information or persuasion; and for just that reason any
such book is not a work of art. We mean, that is to say, by a work of art,
something that does not have to serve a purpose beyond mere expression in
order to justify itself. Imagine that I am reading this to you; and now
suppose that I break off to sing you a song or tell you a story; and
suppose that I manage to please you. You would say the song was a good one,
or the story was. But why? Should I have improved your minds? Not in the
sense of adding to your information, or organising what you already
possess; the goodness you recognise does not have to hitch itself on to any
reason. A good story well told has no need to be anything more than just
that; in fact, it is a work of art. I should have expressed myself—to what
purpose?—in order to achieve an expression that could satisfactorily exist
simply as a piece of expression: it had no other purpose—but there may be
more in that purpose than at first appears. Expression for its own sake,
then,—expression that carries its own justification—that does not need to
go beyond itself in order to make good: that seems to be the condition
under which a work of art can occur.

But—expression for its own sake?—is that quite satisfactory? After
all—there must be expression of something. We can put it this way: a work
of art is the expression of something which we feel justifies itself in
expression by the mere fact of being expressed. So the next thing is to
ask, what sort of a something is that? What sort of matter is it which, as
soon as we apprehend it, we find wholly satisfactory in itself, without
having to ask what use it is or what good it does or what it means—not even
whether it is real?

What Æsthetic Experience is

Of course, the answer is, in fact, so obvious that the difficulty is to
know where to begin. But we must have it out clear and recognisable. I will
make a flank attack. I was staying a while ago with my family on the shores
of Morecambe Bay. The news came one morning that a horse was in the
quicksands: so we all set off to assist in digging it out. I may say—not to
make the story too thrilling—that there was no danger to us. It was a
temporary quicksand, due to rain. Only the head, back and tail of the horse
were above ground, but it would not sink further: the sand had set firm all
round—till we began to dig, and then it at once became a sort of porridge.
It was a long business and horribly exciting. We could feel at our backs
the menace of the tide; it was only a gleam as yet on the skyline—but
everyone knows how the Morecambe tide comes in. Exciting, certainly; but
the excitement was one of intense and practical anxiety. We were all the
time calculating the possibility that the poor beast might be still
embedded when the water was up to its nostrils; and we were trying not to
notice the anguish of terror in its eyes and the quivering palsy to which
exhaustion had reduced its pitiable struggles. But there was one member of
the party who hopt about in pure candid untroubled enjoyment of the whole
affair: this inexhaustibly interesting world had provided one more
first-rate spectacle for his especial benefit. "Will the horse be
drownded?" he kept eagerly asking. There was nothing callous in that: what
the horse felt about it had simply never occurred to him: the only judgment
to which the spectacle had been referred was the simple and immediate
judgment, Was it a thrilling affair or not? Why, of course it was: the
whole thing was most admirably arranged. And then came the final touch. The
men were busily digging round; we were all hauling on a rope doubled
endways round the horse's body; the owner was hauling on the horse's tail.
But the tail and his hands were slippery with salt water; and just as we
made a grand concerted effort,—the tail slipt through his hands and over he
went, heels over head. Instantly there shrilled out a piercing keen peal of
ecstatic delight; I have never heard laughter of a more unqualified
rapture: and I have never, I think, been more shocked by the intrusion of
the pure æsthetic view of things into the world of moral or practical
values. Severe remonstration followed: the unseasonable nature of laughter
was made clear. But the excuse was irresistible: "I thought he'd pulled the
tail right out!" That would, indeed, have raised the affair to an exquisite
perfection. It was not true; but the instantaneous impression of it was
accepted without question and enjoyed to the utmost—simply as a thing
given.

Now this was pure æsthetic experience: that is to say, it was experience
that did not look outside itself for its value. That small boy had still
the faculty (alas, he will lose it too soon) of taking everything as it
comes along and finding it immediately good or bad: of instantly deciding
its value simply as experience, without requiring any other interest. I
suppose that is why children are sometimes said to be natural artists: they
at any rate live naturally in the condition which alone makes art possible.
And I dare say, too, it is their purely æsthetic life which makes children
seem to come among us "trailing clouds of glory". If heaven means anything,
it must mean a state in which everything is immediately good in itself:
intellectual or moral judgments would never be tolerated there.

But Æsthetic Experience is not Itself Art

But children are not artists merely because they live æsthetically. It
might seem an easy transition from my small boy's enjoyment of a tragic
event (for the event which he enjoyed most—the extraction of the tail—was
surely a tragical one, though it wasn't a real one)—it might seem a
straightforward passage from this sort of æsthetic experience to a tragic
work of art: to—shall we say—"Othello." And certainly, just as that
incident of the horse's disaster was enjoyed, so also is it with the
tragedy of Othello; it, too, tragedy as it is, is enjoyed. And much in the
same way. It is an immediate and unhesitating enjoyment; we are, as we say,
absorbed in the tragedy—the story becomes, for the time being, our own
concern; it lives is us, as a profound disturbance of our natures: and we
like being so disturbed. A least, if we don't like it, the tragedy has not
come off. There ought not to be any great difficulty, either, in the fact
that we obviously do take an interest in what Othello thinks about
it—whereas the horse's point of view was simply non-existent for the
fortunate small spectator of its anguish. But we only have to extend the
scope of the enjoyment. Why may not Othello's torment be enjoyed in the
same unquestioning immediate manner—simply as something given, judged
purely as itself: is it good as torment? So stated, this may seem either
barbarous or perverse: yet I believe it is true. But also it seems certain
to me, that this mere parallelism of a piece of art with a piece of nature
will never give a complete account of the former. We do not enjoy a tragedy
simply as we enjoy a street accident: though the latter kind of enjoyment
is contained in the former. I would rather say, that natural æsthetic
enjoyment is present in artistic enjoyment as a means to an end.

But just now we are looking for the kind of matter that is capable of what
we may call pure expression: and clearly we have found it. A thing which,
when expressed, is justified by the mere fact of being expressed, must be
something of this kind. It must be something that has an immediate
unquestioned value of its own—a face-value—that does not call for reference
outside itself. I may be interested in a thing because it is true, or good,
or real, or useful; but also I may be interested in it simply because I
like it as itself. Of course, I may like it for itself and also for
whatever further satisfaction in may give me; but that is not necessary. I
may like the shape of a mountain or the pattern of a carpet: but so far as
that liking is concerned, I do not mind whether it is a real mountain or a
real carpet. The question of its reality simply does not arise—unless as a
further interest, which makes no difference to my mere liking of it.

Distribution of Æsthetic Experience

Now experience of this kind—that carries on the face of it its own instant
value—that does not in order to be valued need to bring in any intellectual
or moral or other interest; that is, in fact, judged instantaneously and as
it seems automatically—experience of this kind is nothing exceptional. We
may notice it clearly, perhaps, only when it has a striking occasion: my
small boy and the foundered horse; nursemaids at a funeral, inspecting with
all the airs of connoisseurs the grief of this mourner and of that; the
thrilling summons we all feel, going soberly on our business, when the
running crowds tell us there has been an accident. On such occasions we
notice with a certain shock human nature's capacity for taking things at
their face-value, for liking them as things good in themselves: is that one
a good specimen of a mourner? and so on. I am told that doctors develop
this capacity without any compunction—and of course, without in the least
prejudicing their sympathy. Coleridge, that moral man—or rather that most
moralistic man—made no scruple of rushing with glee to watch a pianoforte
factory on fire—and then damning it for a failure, because all the pianos
weren't burnt. For what is a fire, first of all? A blaze, good or bad: and
then—whatever your intellectual, moral or financial judgment may make of
it. In fact, the possibility of this kind of "face-value" experience is the
basis of every kind of conscious life. Nay, it is rather the possibility of
being consciously alive at all: for it is nothing but the intuition of
whatever occurs to us or in us, and the instant appreciation of that
intuition as such. All experience, in fact, is without exception æsthetic
experience; but usually, I suppose, we are so concerned with its effect on
our intellectual or moral or practical judgment that we allow the æsthetic
judgment to be swampt. In the affair of digging out the horse, the
experience of the whole party had an æsthetic aspect, but we ignored it as
much as we could; we never allowed it to present itself pure, still less
did we allow ourselves the primitive and childlike liberty of enjoying it.
But consciousness can maintain itself and take account of itself wholly in
intution; and there is a form of judgment which is valid there and only
there. By æsthetic judgment I mean the valuation of experience as such; and
we may, therefore, confine the term "æsthetic experience" to that which is
recognisably assessed by the æsthetic judgment—distinctly valued as itself,
in its own immediate interest, without submitting its matter to any further
judgment. It is easy to see how this may be in sensuous or emotional or
imaginative impressions: and they form no doubt the usual matter of
æsthetic experience. But matter intended for intellectual or moral or
practical valuation may also be valued æsthetically, if the mere intuition
of it as it occurs has a face-value of its own: though this is not so
common, since such experience must always have been specially prepared for
the judgment to which it is proceeding, and therefore seems fitted to
realise its interest only outside itself—i.e. in the judgment for which it
is designed. ¹ But even a train of rational thought, whether judged
intellectually as true or false, is first of all an event in one's mental
life, and can be judged simply as an event. And so it is that rational
thought can occur not only in poetry, but as poetry: it is when its
expression there gives us, surrounding the substantial thought, the living
experience of thinking it rationally. What we value in so-called
philosophical poetry—and music, too (as in Strauss's "Zarathustra")—is not
a version of this or that philosophy, but an expression of what it feels
like to be a philosopher of this or that kind.

And so, too, mathematicians, with two equally sound solutions before them,
will find one elegant and one clumsy: clearly they are therein judging
their mathematical experience æsthetically, simply as such without regard
to its ultimate validity. The æsthetic judgment can even be at variance
with the intellectual judgment. When Hobbes derives the mental fact of
imagination from the material fact of inertia, the neat ingenuity of the
argument, the way he makes it come in pat to his ruling purpose, nay, the
very immensity of the gap he thus fantastically and impudently bridges—all
this gives me an immediate and keen delight: judging it æsthetically, I
applaud; but at the same time, judging it intellectually, I find it to be
mere nonsense.

It is well known how Nietzsche took an entirely æsthetic delight in the
idea, the intellectual experience, of Eternal Recurrence: and ferociously
loving it for its own immediate value, quite apart from its truth, he
inserted it into the midst of his system, and thereby completely deprived
this of any intellectual coherence it might have had. And there are perhaps
other instances of philosophy's reliance on an æsthetic judgment. When the
essential congruence between the rational mind and a rational universe is
asserted, the assertion seems to rest on an æsthetic judgment: the doctrine
is not so much true as eminently satisfactory in itself. But what I wish to
emphasise now is that this immediately interested, wholly self-reliant
experience which we call æsthetic is not confined to a few special kinds of
matter: it may occur anywhere—wherever intuition is vivid enough to provide
its own valuation.

Footnotes

[1] This suggests another mark of æsthetic experience, defined as
  experience recognisably assessed by æsthetic judgment: vis. it does not
  have to be prepared for submission to the judgment, that is to say, it is
  judged immediately.

An Essay Towards a Theory of Art/Part III

So we now have in its main outline the nature of æsthetic experience: it is
experience simply as such, valued for its own sake without reference to any
judgment as to its truth or reality or moral goodness. And anything at all
can be an æsthetic experience: even matter which is on its way to
intellectual or moral judgment can be that, so long as it is taken at its
face-value, simply as pure experience—simply as something which is just
happening in one's mind. It is the primary fact of conscious life that we
are first of all interested in things happening simply because they do
happen: this is the interest of experience in its æsthetic aspect, and it
requires no justification except itself.

Beauty Occurs Only in Æsthetic Experience

This aspect of life, then—the value of experience simply as such, without
regard to any ulterior value of what is experienced—is the subject of
æsthetic science. With this our purpose has now little else to do: it was
only necessary for us to find out in what aspect of life art has its
origin. But I must go on to round off this part of our present business
with the obvious assertion that it is in this aspect of life, and only
here, that things are found to be beautiful. The beauty of things in
general æsthetic experience is what we call the beauty of nature: it is the
beauty that just happens to us, in contrast with the beauty that is
deliberately induced in us by art. But the difference is only in the way
beauty comes to us; the sense of beauty is the same in either case—either
in nature or in art: it is a peculiar sense of the value of things in
giving us pure and immediate experience. So far as beauty is concerned
there is no difference between art and æsthetic, except that beauty must
occur in art, but as for æsthetic all we can say is that beauty can occur
in it. The fact that it can occur in æsthetic experience will always
provide the study of that aspect of life with its most interesting
questions: Under what conditions does beauty occur? What is its nature when
it does occur? They are notoriously baffling questions; but with their
general form—that is, as regards natural beauty—we are not concerned,
except as they enter into the specific beauty of art; and what I shall say
of beauty must not be taken as implying any proposal to reduce the immense
variety of natural beauty to one standard form: all that would belong to
æsthetic science. I may say that I do not think such an attempt would
succeed, nor do I think it is required.

But Æsthetic Experience Need not be Beautiful; The Judgment of Beauty

But there are two observations on the general conditions and nature of
beauty which are pertinent to our enquiry. In the first place, it must not
be assumed that æsthetic experience merely has to be enjoyed in order to be
beautiful. I can quite easily like a state of things wholly for its own
immediate quality without finding beauty in it; and it seems clear to me
that it is even possible to like ugliness without in the least pretending
that it is beauty. It is, at any rate, clear that the scope of æsthetic
interest is vastly larger than that covered by the sense of beauty. But in
the second place, what is this sense of beauty? Is it the sense of some
quality persisting through all the multitudinous forms which beauty can
take? If so, no wonder æsthetic science has so far been puzzled to account
for it. But—here brevity requires the airs of dogmatism—beauty is not a
quality of things. The sense of beauty is the sense of ourselves passing
the final æsthetic judgment on certain crucial forms of pure experience. By
virtue of it we completely experience the complete judgment of experience.
This may not greatly diminish the puzzle of beauty: but it at least shows
us where to look for its elucidation—in ourselves. It absolves us from the
difficulty of taking beauty as a thing perceived: the difficulty, namely,
of showing what is the factor common to the infinite variety of "beautiful
perceptions." But an infinite variety of things may come up before one
judgment, so long as they are all in the condition which that judgment
requires for its operation. And this condition we have already found—the
condition of æsthetic experience: which is no more than the condition of
being presented merely as an experience. I am only now concerned with the
beauty that occurs specifically in art: and there, even more than in
nature, beauty seems unintelligible except as a judgment which we pass on
certain forms of experience. Moreover, the judgment of beauty is not, I
believe, anything set apart from the rest of spiritual life. There is but
one faculty of judgment; and according to the sphere in which it operates,
its final verdicts are given as truth, morality or beauty. They are
different verdicts, and must never be confused: but, as they all emanate
from the same faculty, I do not believe they will ever irreducibly
contradict one another.

Illustrated in a Locomotive

Let me briefly illustrate, in two instances, this view that beauty is a
form of judgment, before I pass to the specific problem of art. Both these
instances will be found to have their bearing on that problem, although
they belong to what, in contrast with art, I have called nature: in fact,
one belongs to engineering, and the other to metaphysics. My engineering
instance is a locomotive. If an engineer alluded to some locomotive as a
beautiful design, he might, for all I know, have things like boiler
pressure and coal consumption and indicated horsepower in his mind: in that
case he would be experiencing his professional knowledge and judging it
æsthetically, just as a surgeon does when he speaks of a beautiful
operation. But I am rather thinking of what the ordinary man means when he
calls a locomotive a beautiful design: and, at any rate, he means the mere
look of the thing, as when he calls a face or a hill beautiful; surgery
does not seem to provide a parallel here. Does he find some common quality
in a locomotive, a face, and a hill? He may: but if we are to make his
sense of beauty depend, in these three things, on perception of a common
quality, we must, in all three, ignore certain other qualities which
clearly enter into that sense. And what is the quality common to these
three things, and also to the song of a lark and an act of self-sacrifice?
Those also I find beautiful. Not one of the five was meant to give me
beauty. But I find that I can contemplate each one of them as an experience
immediately satisfactory in itself, without requiring me to justify it by
my knowledge of the thing's purpose. I do not have to know how many tons a
locomotive can pull at how many miles an hour in order to find its design
beautiful. But I do not only find that I can appreciate a locomotive, a
face, a hill, a lark's song, and an act of self-sacrifice as providing me
with experience which can be judged pure and as itself, without needing a
judgment of its purpose. I find also that this æsthetic judgment can, in
each of these cases, assume a finality, beyond which I cannot conceive that
judgment of this kind can go. The sense that I am passing this finality of
æsthetic judgment on these things, and that they not only can bear it but
require it, is my sense of their beauty.

Evident Adaptation May be Judged Beautiful

Now I said, a while ago, that in art æsthetic experience is consciously
directed to a foreordained end; but it will be clear by this that it is to
an end which still resides within æsthetic experience: the end is, in fact,
nothing but the expression of this as such. When a locomotive is designed,
however, there is not the least intention of submitting it to æsthetic
judgment; it is wholly designed to a practical end, and its existence is to
be justified by its achievement of that end. A locomotive is therefore not
a work of art. Yet it may be beautiful. And for the very reason that it
does evidently exhibit its ability to achieve its end. I do not have to
test that; and I may be deceived: a locomotive may much more look the
embodiment of powerful speed than it actally is. But so long as it does
look that, I want no more for its æsthetic judgment. I do not even have to
formulate to myself what the object of a locomotive is. The eminently
satisfactory thing about its appearance is that one single purpose presides
over the concerted assemblage of its parts: and if its wholeness is such
that the appearance of every noticeable part clearly contributes to the
complete appearance of one supreme and inclusive function, then it
obviously reaches that self-contained perfection of æsthetic experience
which requires finality of æsthetic judgment: it is beautiful. On the other
hand, locomotives which do perfectly achieve their practical end may not be
beautiful: simply because their ability to justify their existence
practically is not apparent—or rather their singleness of function is not
evidently and unmistakably presiding over their whole structure. But the
ugliness of the early locomotives is merely apparent inefficiency. Compare
them with the superb beauty of a L.N.W. six-coupled express engine or a
G.N. "Atlantic."

I am far from suggesting that adaptation to an end is always beautiful: and
very far from suggesting that beauty is always an adaptation to an end. But
when it is paramount in appearance—when, in fact, this supremacy of end as
such over means forms the staple of an æsthetic experience which calls for
finality of æsthetic judgment. It will soon appear that the beauty peculiar
to art is due to the fact that æsthetic experience is there presented for
judgment in an exactly similar form. Observe that I do not say that the
harmony of parts in a purposeful whole is beauty, but that by reason of
this the experience of conteplating such an object occurs in a condition
which makes it possible for æsthetic judgment to attain to beauty. There
may be—there almost certainly are—other conditions which also make that
possible. But that is for æsthetic science to investigate. I have not,
indeed, attempted to explain the sense of beauty. If it really is a sense
of passing final judgment it will most likely prove inexplicable: for the
judgment being the faculty to which even intellection must report if it is
to get a decision, it does not seem possible to make out how the nature of
judgment is to be exhibited—i.e. how intellection, which can only refer to
judgment, is to present judgment for judgment.

I was, perhaps, over-hasty in assuming that the engineer was indifferent to
æsthetic judgment in his designing of locomotives: it is probably there as
a sort of instinct, deciding his choice of several possible modes of
structure: just as the mathematician, of two equally valid proofs, will
instinctively choose the more elegant—that, namely, in which the means more
evidently betray the supremacy of the end. I don't know how it may be with
mathematicians; but with locomotive engineers it is remarkable how readily
the English allow their designs to yield an æsthetic justification. I can
well imagine future millionaires of taste collecting English locomotives as
nowadays they collect Greek vases.

Absolute Beauty

And now for my metaphysical instance. Since Plato, and the discovery (or
rather the intelligible exposition) of "universals," man has been haunted
by the notion of Absolute Beauty: not the abstract idea of beauty (which
universalises beauty by impoverishing it); but a reality independent of
temporal experience, by virtue of which all our fleeting occasions of
beauty are made possible, as it imparts itself downward through the scale
of being; and this, since it includes every conceivable occurrence of
beauty, universalises beauty by a limitless enrichment. Of the
philosophical value of universlas I am not now to speak; but the æsthetic
value of this philosophical conception of a universal and absolute beauty
is immense, and has often been celebrated. One is loth to give it up. Yet
if beauty is not a quality of things, but a judgment of the experience of
things, what is to come of absolute beauty? It seems to me that beauty as
judgment not only leaves absolute beauty still conceivable, but rescues it
from that suspicion of fantaxy and futility which is apt to cling to the
Platonic Idea. Where, how, in what existence, does the Idea of Beauty
eternalise its perfection? The question must leave us gaping, if the Idea
is a universal quality. But take it as judgment. Why, then, absolute beauty
is nothing but the whole universe and sum of things experiencing itself and
judging its self-experience to be beautiful. It would be in this way.

If beauty is the subject's own judgment, then no subject, no beauty. We
must accept that for individual subjects. But how if there be a universal
subject? If we assume totality of things, I see not why we should not also
assume that totality is an experience. An experience of what? Clearly, of
itself, and as totality. In that case, it must be a purely æsthetic
experience; for the self-experience of totality can only be valid in itself
and as itself. But if there can be intuitional experience in totality, it
can be judged, and there will be the sense of judging it; for this belongs
to intuition. And the judgment of this experience can only be a finality of
all possible judgment; which may bear the same relation to any possible
judgment that infinity bears to number. And the self-experience of the
universal subject judging its own experience with eternal finality will be
absolute beauty. Note, too, that experience in totality can only be
presented for judgment in perfection of the form which we have already
taken as the typical condition of the judgment of beauty. The universal
subject can only experience itself as the perfect coherence of parts in the
whole, as the complete manifestation of an inclusive function (i.e. whole
existence) dominating, yet requiring and maintained by, every fraction of
its appearance (and here appearance is one with reality).

How it is the Type of a Work of Art

Now if this be absolute beauty, it is the type of every work of art, in a
much more recognisable manner than the idea of beauty as universal quality
can be. For in the first place, a work of art cannot be other than, as far
as its scope extends, a world of coherent parts harmonised into
self-contained unity. And in the second place, it is a world which
experiences itself; for no work of art exists until it has occurred, by
transference from the artist's mind, in the mind of some reader, hearer or
beholder (whom, for convenience, we shall call recipient): it is a world,
therefore, made out of the recipient's consciousness of experience; and in
fact is, for the time being, the same thing as his self-conscious
experience; and is therefore, conversely, a world experiencing itself. And
this is a world of coherent parts manifesting throughout an ultimate unity.
It is nothing but a model, in the experience of an individual subject, of
the absolute beauty in the experience of the universal subject.

An Essay Towards a Theory of Art/Part IV

Art is the Expression of Aesthetic Experience

The difficult part of our business lies in these prolegomena. But if we can
now asume as I have described it the nature of the æsthetic aspect of life,
and can then agree on the relation of art to it, we shall find that a not
very troublesome analysis of the latter will give us a comprehensive and
workable theory of art. As to the relation of art to æsthetic experience,
there seems no possibility of disagreement here. Art is the expression of
æsthetic experience. The artist transfers his experience to the recipient;
and we can therefore look on artistic expression either as getting
something out (the artist's point of view), or as taking something in (the
recipient's): the something in both cases being æsthetic experience—but
specialized: specialised in the act of getting it out and in the act of
taking it in. For art is always purposive; the experience in which it
originates must be collected into one continuous act deliberately willed,
the purpose of it being nothing but to transform the experience into
expression. From this it will follow that every part of a work of art must
be there in the interests of the whole. This is from the artist's point of
view. But also the recipient accepts a work of art as being an act of
deliberate will: the purpose of it being from his point of view to effect a
transformation of expression into experience; and he will not, therefore,
accept any part of the expression solely in its own immediate interest, but
also in the interest of the complete impression he knows the artist designs
to make on him. But it does not make much difference in the theory of art
whether we look on it from the artist's side of the recipient's; I shall
take it now from one and now from the other as convenience suggests.

Well, this is the first thing which is implied when we say that art is the
expression of æsthetic experience; and you will see at once what an immense
gulf it puts between art and the beauty of nature: the gulf is that
unfathomable thing, an act of individual will. But let us look more closely
at what "expression" in this connection means; and then we shall be ready
to look into the way expression comes about.

Expression in Art is Communication

The word expression as it is strictly used in philosophy does not mean the
same thing as communication. Several theorists, having assumed, as they
must, that art is expression, go on to point out that expression is not
communication; and conclude from that that communication is a mere accident
in art, as though the artist in his work were just talking to himself, and
we happen along and overhear what he is saying. This is mere confusion, and
comes of theorising from some philosophical prejudice or other, instead of
rom the fact of art. What happens when an artist makes a work of art? He
makes his experience communicable: and in order to make it exactly and
perfectly so he will spend the whole force of his spirit. And what happens
when we receive a work of art? An experience is commnunicated to us: and we
know that when that happens, we are completing the arch which the artist
himself could only half build. The arch, however, is not merely the
artist's appeal to his audience, but, as the result of that, the explicit
attainment of a certain perfection, not yet definable; the desire of this
may well be urgent in the artist's mind, but is wholly dependent on his
ability to make his matter communicable. If æsthetic experience is the
condition of art's activity, the essence of its activity is communication.

No Communication, No Art

A man is looking at a landskip and finding it beautiful. But he is not
thereby creating a work of art; it would take an æsthetic philosopher to
say that, and he could only say it in the poor sophism that the man is
creating a private little work of art of his own and enjoying it all by
himself. There is no such thing as a private work of art: all art is public
property—that is the meaning of the word "art." Yet in the strict
philosophical sense the man's experience has been expressed: it has been
expressed by the mere fact of being distinctly and decisively known. Out of
the flux of his existence this momentary arrangement of its factors has
been seized hold of by his attention and held up for contemplation: it has
been isolated and, as it were, crystallised into what we may call an image.
This is internal expression: and every æsthetic experience is, in this
sense, its own expression by the mere fact of distinctly occurring.

Now suppose this man is an artist. He desires, therefore, to achieve
expression of his experience. But if it is expression in the strictly
limited sense, he has got it; he need do nothing more. Yet we know that he
will show himself specifically to be an artist by the precise fact that he
will do something more. He does not begin to be an artist until he begins
to publish his experience. The expression he desires to achieve is external
expression. You may say he is merely recording his experience. But for
whose inspection? For his own? Certainly: by only for his own? Ask any
artist, if you can charm him into a moment of candour. Or ask yourself,
What are picture exhibitions for, what are publishing firms for, what are
concerts for? Art requires the public just as certainly as the public
requires art. Take away his audience and you take away the artist's
function. This is nothing exceptional. I suppose an engineer builds bridges
for his own satisfaction; but would he build them if there were no one to
go over them? And indeed we must either assume that art is fundamentally a
publication of experience; or else we must assume that art has no function
or has it only as an epiphenomenon. But a function that is an epiphenomenon
is an absurity; and to conceive an activity as functionless is to be
intellectually incoherent. If we suppose that art can be understood, we
suppose that it has a function, and that this is necessary. But this can
only mean, that art necessarily publishes itself: for how else could it
function?

All this could, however, be put more simply, if more brusquely, thus: if
the function of art be wholly private to the artist, why should he be at
such pains to perfect an intelligible outward expression? And if it be said
that he is under no obligation to do this, the answer is that unless he
produce something in which others can share, he has not produced what is
called art. An artist fails in so far as he keeps his matter to himself;
and especially he thereby fails to achieve for his matter that perfection
of its existence which we shall have to consider at the end of this
enquiry.

Expression in Art is of Whole Experience; Compound Structure of Experience

External expression then—publication—there can be no art without that; and,
of course, it supposes first the artist's internal expression. Now let this
man of ours be so moved by the beauty of his experience that he exclaims
something: How lovely! What colours! What lines and masses! That is
external expression; but it is not art. He is not expressing his
experience: he is only expressing his opinion of it—though, of course, his
opinion is part of his experience. Or on the other hand, suppose he
expressed himself simply and solely as an instrument of vision; suppose he
could make himself a sort of camera and set down merely the object of his
experience, whatever that may mean; that might be painting, but it would
not be art. I don't think it could be done, though there are painters who
get very near it; I don't think it possible to pick out of a visual
experience that which is simply the brain's use of lens and retina. But if
it could be done, it would not be art because, once more, it would only
give part of the experience. When we say that art consists of the
expression of experience, we mean the expression of whole experience: both
of the substance which the world contributes by being experienced and
simultaneously of the value which the mind contributes by experiencing.
There must always be two parties to an experience; and we may broadly mark
them out as that which makes the occasion and that which exploits the
occasion. But, of course, the occasion and its exploitation become one in
the experience: they both exist as the experience. Thus it would be
misleading for our purpose to speak of what is experienced and what
experiences; with the latter we are not concerned, and the former is
equally occasion and exploitation—an occasion, indeed, that exists by being
exploited.

It is clear that the mind itself can contribute the occasion of an
experience. This happens, for example, when the experience is wholly of the
kind we call thought. Thus Darwin in the "Origin of Species" gives us
simply what we may variously call the object, substance or occasion of an
experience: an argument, or process of intellection. And the book for just
that reason is not art. It would have been art if the technique which
expressed the substance had simultaneously been a technique which expressed
the pains and fervours, the sense of laborious diligence and of flashing
insight, the troublesomeness and the exultation, which accompanied this
great argument. For then he would have been expressing experience as such
and as a whole—Darwin's matter and Darwin's sense of it. Just this—thought
enveloped in the whole experience of thinking—is what Lucretius did
express, thereby supremely achieving art. De Rerum Naturâ is not an
expression simply of a train of thought, but equally of Lucretius' flaming
exultation in the belief that his thought explained the world. And we read
the poem not to learn what Lucretius thought, but because he can
communicate to us the sublime experience of being made by intellect equal
to our destiny.

No Imitation of Objects in Art

Thus experience must first be single intuition before consciousness can
discriminate object and subject in it: and art expresses experience before
analysis has begun to work on it; or, once more, experience simply as such.
We here abandon altogether the notion that art is an imitation of objects.
Objects are extracted from experience, and art notoriously fails to imitate
them. Imitation is then said to be modified; but how? and why? We dispense
with all these vexatious difficulties. Untruth can never be modified into
truth. Art does not imitate objects, but the experiences in which the
objects occur, at a stage before they have become objects. But art can
imitate experience in terms of its objects (as technique); and then we know
how and why it fails to imitate the object.

So we have found that two things are implied when we say, art is the
expression of experience. First, the expression must be public, or
external; second, it must express experience as a whole—and that is neither
what I give nor what the world gives, but both together.

Why the Arts may be Classed Together

But suppose now our man of the landskip does proceed to a work of art. He
will then have recorded, we will assume, an experience of beauty. But he
will have done much more than that; he will have added to the natural
beauty—he will have wholly enveloped it in—a beauty that cannot occur in
nature, a beauty that belongs peculiarly to art: the beauty that resides in
the mere fact of expression. You would see that at once if the work of art
we are supposing were music or a poem; but it would be no less certain if
the natural beauty—the beauty of the experience which was equally composed
of what his eyes saw and what his spirit valued—if this had been expressed
by the skill of painting. And it is the mere fact that all the arts,
whatever the medium of their technique, begin in the same kind of
experience—namely, æsthetic,—and end in the same kind of specialisation of
it—the beauty of its whole expression: it is this fact that enables us to
do what otherwise would scarcely appear an obvious thing to do: that is, to
bring music, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture into one class.

Beautiful Experience not Necessarily the Source of Art; But Beauty Must Be
the Result of Art; Origin of Art Is Impulsive Experience; Existence of Art
is Expressive Experience; They Are Distinguishable; Impulsive Experience
the End as Well as the Cause

We go on then to enquire more exactly into two questions which apply to all
art: what kind of experience art requires, and what kind of beauty it
specifically achieves as art. The first question might seem to have been
already sufficiently answered: art, we say, is the expression of æsthetic
experience. If nothing more than this is required to account for art as
regards its matter, we have no right to add to it—that is, to limit it. The
only limitation of it we need consider is one which is flagrantly
contradicted by art itself, but is nevertheless so commonly assumed that it
should be disposed of. Most writers on these topics assume that in art an
experience is first judged to be beautiful and then expressed. The most
cursory survey of any art will show the falsity of this. There is no
necessity that the experience which is expressed must have been beautiful;
there is solely the necessity that whatever art expresses must become
beautiful in the expression. Instances jump to one's mind of nobly
beautiful works of art expressing something which we can still feel in the
art—through the beauty of it—as not beautiful. It has not then become
beautiful? Yes, it has; so long as it remains simply the thing in
expression. But when he have the feeling I have just mentioned, we have
been performing a feat which is often supposed impossibly difficult, but
which is in fact the easiest thing in the world. We have been considering
the matter of art apart from its technique: criticism of the most
elementary kind. We have allowed the work of art to occur in us—i.e. to
communicate its motive; and then we are taking the experience of this as
finally communicated and valuing it by itself—of course, æsthetically. This
could only be held impossible if the originating experience and its
communication were held to be the same thing; and that, we shall soon see,
is far from the truth. But note that while our minds rest in criticism, we
are temporarily destroying the work of art; for art is not only the
expression of æsthetic experience; its existence is the æsthetic experience
of that expression, this latter experience having expression only in the
strict sense—i.e. internal expression. Where I have to deal precisely with
these two layers of æsthetic experience in art, I shall distinguish them
thus: the experience which art exists to express, its motive or origin or
inspiration, I shall call impulsive experience; this is what happened to
the artist, and moved him to design its communication in a work of art. But
the experience of taking in a work of art, of accepting it as
communication, the experience which gives it existence as art, I shall call
expressive experience. For most theoretical purposes, the artist's
experience is impulsive, the recipient's is expressive; but evidently the
artist not only experiences his inspiration, but his own activity in
expressing it. Obviously impulsive experience is throughout implied by
expressive experience, and as something ultimately distinguishable; for the
whole business of art rests on the supposition that an impulsive experience
can be recognised as the result of its communication, though to recognise
it is not necessarily to formulate it in words: indeed, no accurate
formulation of it will be possible except to repeat that which yielded the
expressive experience—i.e. the work of art itself. It will be clear, too,
that the specific beauty of art resides in expressive experience; and the
statement given above about things becoming beautiful in art may be put
more concisely and accurately thus: whatever impulsive experience may be,
expressive experience must be beautiful. Now in the kind of criticism we
have been considering, what has happened is this: the expressive experience
having completed itself, the impulsive experience has thereby been
completely exhibited as the purpose of this; and being thus known has been
distinguished from its vehicle and valued apart from it. This has destroyed
its existence as art. We can, however, easily restore it to that condition;
and then the impulsive experience and its means of communication, though
not the same thing, are once more completely compounded into a work of art
which exists as expressive experience: and to a result which must be
beautiful. But now perhaps not simply beautiful. We go back from our
criticism to our expressive experience of the work of art (which is, for us
as recipients, only the object of this experience) with a richer
contribution to the experience from ourselves. We have now the sense of
having valued the impulsive experience as itself, apart from the expressive
experience of its communication: and this sense now cannot but enter into
the renewal of expressive experience, which therefore becomes much more
complex. And thus it may be that we can sharply feel the impulsive
experience as unbeautiful even within the inclusive and conspicuously
beautiful expressive experience. It is by no means uncommon in art to feel
beauty triumphing over unbeautiful things, nay, compelling them to
contibute to it; and yet even while they are doing that they do not cease
to be unbeautiful.

So far then from art having to originate in beautiful experience it can
actually give us the paradoxical impression of beauty conveying a sense of
unbeautiful things. Is agony beautiful? We have Michelangelo's "Dawn." Is a
corpse beautiful, and the grimaces of weeping? We have Mantegna's "Dead
Christ." Is eternal damnation beautiful? We have Dante's "Inferno." Is
drunken lechery beautiful? We have Burns's "Jolly Beggars." And I see not
how nine-tenths of the drama is to be accounted for as art, if art is
always to proceed from an original judgment of beauty. But in truth it is
under no such necessity. All art has to do is express æsthetic experience;
and this may or may not be beautiful: that is wholly indifferent to art. We
merely require it to communicate that kind of experience in which things
carry an immediate and spontaneous face-value. It does not, of course,
follow, that if an æsthetic experience is unbeautiful, it is therefore
disliked; for as we see from everyday life, even ugly things can be
actually enjoyed. But there are plenty of cases in which the beauty of art
does include repulsive experience. And in these cases it is simply a
question which will win—our detestation of the artist's matter or our
delight in his art. With those who think it illegitimate to dislike the
matter of art (its impulsive experience) I do not stop to argue; I am
concerned with the facts of art, not human nature. It must, however, be
remarked that when the matter of art is found repulsive, this is perhaps
always due to some contamination of æsthetic experience with ulterior
judgment, especially moral. But the main fact of art in this present stage
of my argument is that æsthetic experience of any kind whatever is valid
for art; and if this be not beautiful experience, it is no part of the
business of art to bamboozle us into believing it beautiful; art merely has
to make the presentation of it beautiful: that is, to envelop it completely
in the beauty which comes of its perfect expression.

An Essay Towards a Theory of Art/Part V

Specific Beauty of Art is given by Expression; Fragmentary Beauty; Whole
Beauty; It is Given by Evident Adaptation

We are assuming that the expression in perfect, or as perfect as it can be.
It would seem strange, if beauty were a perceptible quality, to make it
reside in such a thing as expression; but quite what we should expect, I
think, if beauty is a judgment—the sense of a finality of judgment on
æsthetic experience. For what in the expressive experience of art is the
crucial thing? Of course it is the fact that this experience is the
experience of an expression: expression as such is the essential thing we
have to judge, so long as it is a work of art we are judging, and not the
destruction of it in criticism. If during expressive experience the
emergence of its purpose—its impulsive experience—suddenly and strikingly
extends its scope or sharpens its definition, in just the way required for
establishing and individualising it, then surely, this being æsthetically
appreciated, we have precisely the experience we should expext to be judged
beautiful. Take any line of poetry notably beautiful, and analyse as far as
you can what is occurring when you appreciate its beauty; and however
keenly you analyse, you will find that that which is occurring is nothing
but the acceptance for its own sake of some trenchant decision or exquisite
delicacy of complex expression. We know more and feel more about that which
the poet is comnmunicating to us: something perhaps which would never have
occurred to us as possible to be known or felt about it; but it is the
accomplishment of this that we judge beautiful. The same analysis will give
the same result in any art. What is the beauty of a graphic design or a
musical melody? Or rather, not what is the beauty, but what is the design
or melody effecting in us when, and whereby, its beauty occurs? Surely it
is effecting nothing else but the broadly or subtly decisive establishment
of itself. And that is its expression. But in a fragmentary analysis of a
work of art, we must remember that beauty is only one (the final) kind of
æsthetic judgment. Thus the phrase which opens Beethoven's 5th Symphony
seems to me grandly impressive, but not beautiful; my judgment is
seized—and at once suspended; this is something, I feel, which is warning
me; what this phrase means is, that it is to be followed up. And it
instantly is followed up—by a repetition of itself at harmonic intervals
which forms an inclusive period of melody: and this is decisive in itself,
this is beautiful. The second subject, however, as soon as it is enounced,
is beautiful; it completely establishes itself. But it is one of the chief
vices of criticism to take a work of art fragmentarily. Every part of it,
and every judgment of its parts, must be accounted for in the completed
whole. And herein, in the work as a whole, artistic expression provides us
with æsthetic experience in a form which we have already recognised as
remarkably conducive to the judgment of beauty. The experience which is the
motive of art (its impulsive experience) may, as we have seen, be very
complex: it may have an object of most intricate structure and promote in
me a most intricate system of associations. In any case, there is the
complexity of object and subject. All this will be one experience, and as
such must be expressed. To draw the expression of these intricacies
together into a single resultant expression must conspicuously give a form
of end as such mastering and presiding over means; and nothing is more
likely than this, when æsthetically experienced, to yield a sense of
beauty. It is clear, moreover, that end presiding over means is nothing but
another aspect of expression. It would be improper, although it may
sometimes be convenient, to say that artistic beauty is expression. Beauty
is superadded to expression. In the experience of expression, the sense of
beauty may occur as the sense of radiant finality in æsthetically judging
it as such.

Art not Created for the Sake of Beauty

A corollary of this view, that the specific beauty of art is the sense of
just expression, would be that no genuine artist would trouble to ask
himself, while he is at work, whether his art is going to be considered
beautiful or not. And as this is certainly the case it confirms this view
very strongly. It is the amateur artist who worries himself with anxiety to
create beauty. Now if he has his mind on beauty, the only beauty he can
think of is the beauty that has already been created: there is no other.
There is the general condition under which beauty can occur in art, but
there is no general beauty of art: there is only an individual beauty here
and another there: and each is, of course, peculiar to its occasion—in our
view, the particular expression of particular matter. Hence all he can do,
if his mind is set on beauty, is to adapt the beauty that has already been
created and try to fit it into his own purpose. And hence, the amateur
artist. The genuine artist does not bother about beauty; he does not need
to. He has something to express; to get it expressed is the sole business
of his art; and all he is anxious about is to achieve expression complete
and just and unequivocal. He knows that if he can do so his work cannot
fail to be beautiful; for such expression, experienced and judged as such,
becomes beauty by being so judged. This is the artist's sincerity; to
attend faithfully and laboriously to the utterance which will say exactly
what is in him, neither more nor less; to attend to this without allowing
the reward of it—beauty—to divide his mind, and perhaps prejudice him in
his selection of means. A work of art, in fact, is not created in order to
be beautiful; beauty is the sign that it has succeeded in being a work of
art.

Beauty not Specific to Art may Occur in Art

Evidently, we are now rid of the notion that artistic beauty can be
ornament; that is a beauty somehow existing in its own right but fastened
on from without to the theme of art. Yet it is not impossible for ornament
to occur in art, but not as belonging to the beauty which is specifically
artistic. There are three possible ways in which beauty may be present in a
work of art, but only one of them is a necessary characteristic of art.
First, the original inspiration may have been an experience judged
beautiful. Equally it may not have been that; but if it was beautiful, then
it would have so maintained itself through the expressive experience.
Clearly, however, this is not properly artistic, but natural beauty.
Secondly, there may be natural beauty incidental to the medium as such,
e.g. quality of colour, quality of tone, quality of vowel sequence. It is
exceedingly unlikely that this will be independent of expressive intention;
and if it is not independent, it will belong to the third mode of beauty.
But if it is, then as an accidental beauty needlessly attached to the
specific fact of art it will be, in the strict sense, ornament: i.e. a
natural beauty clinging to artistic beauty. Thirdly, there is the beauty of
expression. This there must be in art, and this is the beauty peculiar to
art; and we have seen what form of experience it seems necessarily to
imply.

Possible Limitations of Art and Beauty

If the beauty of art is the judgment of an æsthetic experience (i.e.
expressive experience) which manifestly presents itself as adaptation of
means to end, it is nothing exceptional (the specific thing being what
means to what end). We have seen just this in the beauty of a locomotive;
and it is the same with the much celebrated beauty of shipping. ¹ Anchors,
lines of prow and stern, rigging, masts, funnels and the rest—they are all
beautiful simply because, in the æsthetic experience of them, nothing can
be clearer than their complete manifestation of functional design: in each
of them, a single end harmonises and controls the means. So all the means
of art are manifestly designed to achieve an end; and beauty is the sign of
success. An interesting enquiry suggests itself here. Can a simple
experience be judged beautiful? If so, would its expression be art? We must
first be sure what simple experience is. A colour has been suggested. It is
questionable whether I can have an experience that is merely red, though as
a wholly imaginary affair it is not inconceivable. But supposing I can have
it, there will be in the experience not only the red, but how red affects
me. I do not see what technique painting could find to express such an
experience; but obviously the technique of poetry could express it, and, if
successful, the expression would be art, and beautiful. An abstract idea
seems the only thing that could give a simple experience. And it happens
that an abstract idea is the only thing for which language has a really
adequate expression. Not that the idea of beauty is the same thing as the
word "Beauty"; but divest the idea of all concretion and emotional or other
association, and thus abstracted there is no more in the idea than is given
by the word. "Beauty," then, is the perfect expression of the idea of
beauty. But the word "beauty" is not therefore a work of art, and it is not
beautiful. So that if the thing expressed is really simple, its expression
will yield neither art nor beauty. From which we may perhaps conclude, that
art is the expression of some degree of complexity; and that the beauty
which comes of expression will not occur unless there is the manifest
appearance of means adapted to an end. "Beauty" being the mere label of the
idea gives no sense of adaptation. It may be remarked here that, although
the word "Beauty" as the expression of abstract beauty is not beautiful,
yet, since an intellectual process can be æsthetically experienced, a
definition of beauty might be beautiful; for in the experience of defining
beauty there would necessarily unite the idea of beauty and its definition,
and the definition would be adaptation of means to an end. The conditions
of expressive beauty would, therefore, be satisfied: complex unity and
adaptation. The notion of a definition of beauty which is itself beautiful
would perhaps be shocking to logicians, since it is an indefinite regress.
The proper inference would seem to be that beauty is not logically defined;
or, more completely, that the idea of beauty is an indefinite idea, i.e.
not strictly an idea at all, but rather a sense of the possibility of a
certain judgment.

How Art is Disinterested

We may notice one more implication in the doctrine that art is the
expression of æsthetic experience. Art is said to be disinterested. There
is no doubt of this as regards its motive, the impulsive experience. Since
this is æsthetic, and bears its own value, it is obviously both morally and
intellectually disinterested—it is not to be valued as either good or true.
What is even more important, it is not to be valued as real. Look, for
instance, at that old and vexatious problem of dramatic illusion. Once
grasp what æsthetic experience is, and the problem vanishes. We are in a
world which is neither reality nor illusion: such a valuation simply does
not arise. We do not ask whether the man on the stage is really Hamlet; we
do not ask if we are really at Elsinore. We know he is an actor; we know we
are in a theatre, with a female hat in front and a man behind who doesn't
know what to do with his legs. Yet we accept the acting as the fortunes of
Hamlet, and the play takes place at Elsinore. Shall we call this, with
Coleridge, "willing suspension of disbelief"? We do not have to suspend
what does not occur. We neither believe nor disbelieve in the staging; Mr.
So-and-so does not become the Prince of Denmark by his well-trained
gestures and celebrated voice. A story is being told us, in a peculiarly
effective technique. Is it a good story? Is it being well told? Those, and
variations on them, are the only questions that arise. If we can say Yes to
them, we are satisfied. Did the actor look Hamlet, speak Hamlet, act
Hamlet—and in sum appear Hamlet? If so, that is all we want. There is no
illusion about it. We never think of also asking, Is he Hamlet? We have
been living in that sphere of experience in which there is no reality
because there is no unreality: the sphere which is prior to the troublesome
distinction between seeming and being, the sphere in which the only
relevant valuation is immediate face-value.

How it is Interested

The specialisation of natural æsthetic experience into the experience
communicated by art makes, then, no difference as regards its
characteristic quality—its disinterestedness. But as it is taken in, during
the experience of its artistic communication (while it is expressive
experience, that is) it is not completely disinterested; it has a value
beyond that of its immediate impression. Yet this is still an æsthetic
value; the interest does not refer beyond æsthetic judgment. It is simply
that every part of a work of art exists both in its own immediate interest
and in the mediate interest of the whole. This is clear in poetry and
music, where attention has to move through time; but attention has to move
also in painting, sculpture and architecture: it has to move through space.
In any work of art, the whole cannot be known until we know the parts. But
while we are knowing the parts, we also know that a whole is to be made out
of them; even though we have not the faintest notion what that whole is to
be. For an experience, however complex, must be one thing, in order to be
an experience at all. A thing is experienced when we attend to it, and we
can only attend to it as a whole. If there are several things, there are
several acts of attention; and therefore several experiences. But this
singleness of experience, given by singleness of attention, must be
disintegrated into its components in order to be expressed. Our experience
of this disintegrated expression, however, is always interested in its
final reintegration; when we are to experience the summation of all the
previous experiences into a whole, which will yield our equivalent to the
artist's original inspiration: expressive experience will have completely
signified its impulsive experience.

Footnotes

[1] See the admirable account of this in Castiglione's "Il Cortegiano."
  Castiglione is, of course, not justified in making out that all beauty
  assumes this form.

System of the Fine Arts

Foreword
Book 1: On the Creatress Imagination
Book 2: On Dance and Ornamentation