He says that nothing comes to be, nor is destroyed, nor moves, and that the universe is one, without change. He also says that god is eternal and one and alike in every part, and finite and spherical, and perceptive in all his parts.
The sun comes to be each day from small fiery particles gathered together, and the earth is infinite and is bounded neither by air nor by heaven. There are infinite suns and moons, and all things are from earth.
This man said the sea is salty because many mixtures flow together into it; but Metrodorus said it is salty because it is filtered through the earth, and for this reason becomes salty.
Xenophanes thinks that a mixture of the earth with the sea takes place, and that in time the earth is dissolved by the moisture, asserting that he has proofs such as these: that in the midst of the land and in the mountains shells are found, and at Syracuse, he says, in the stone-quarries there has been found the impression of a fish and of seals, and at Paros the impression of a small fish in the depth of the stone, and at Melite (Malta) slabs bearing impressions of all sea creatures.
He says these things came to be when everything was long ago turned to mud, and the impression dried in the mud, and all mankind was destroyed. And whenever the earth, carried down into the sea, becomes mud, then generation begins again, and this transformation happens for all worlds.
A certain Ecphantus of Syracuse said that it is not possible to attain true knowledge of the things that exist. He defines, as he holds, that the first bodies are indivisible, and that there are three variations among them — magnitude, shape, and power — from which the perceptible things come to be. And the multitude of these is determinate, yet also infinite. The bodies are moved neither by weight nor by a blow, but by a divine power, which he calls mind and soul. This world is, then, modeled on an idea, on account of which it also came to be spherical through divine power; and the earth, in the middle of the world, moves about its own center toward the east.
Hippon of Rhegium said that the first principles are cold water and hot fire. And fire, having come to be from water, overpowered the power of that which begot it and constituted the world. He calls the soul at one time the brain, at another water; for indeed, he says, the seed which appears to us comes from moisture, from which he says the soul comes to be.
These things, then, we consider we have set forth sufficiently. Wherefore it seems fitting that, since we have now adequately run through what seemed true to the natural philosophers, we should turn back to Socrates and Plato, who valued moral philosophy above all.
Socrates, then, became a pupil of Archelaus the natural philosopher; and he, having valued above all the precept 'know thyself' and having established a great school, had of all his pupils Plato as the most capable, though he himself left behind no writings.
But Plato, having taken an impression of his entire wisdom, established his school, mingling together natural philosophy, ethics, and dialectic. What Plato lays down as doctrine is as follows.
Plato holds that the first principles of the universe are god, matter, and paradigm: god as the maker and orderer of this universe and its providential ruler; matter as that which underlies all things, which he also calls the receptacle and the nurse, from which, having been ordered, the four elements came to be, out of which the world is composed — fire, air, earth, water — and from which all the other things called compounds, both animals and plants, have been composed.
The paradigm, he says, is the mind of god, which he also calls the idea — something like an image, to which, keeping his attention fixed in his mind, god fashioned all things.
He says that god is incorporeal and without form, and comprehensible only by wise men; matter, he says, is a body in potentiality but not yet in actuality; for being without shape and without quality, it becomes a body only when it has taken on shapes and qualities.
Matter, then, is a first principle and coeval with god; and by this reasoning the world too is unbegotten, for he says it is composed out of matter. And upon the unbegotten, indestructibility altogether follows. But insofar as it is posited to be a body composed of many qualities and forms, in this respect it is also begotten and destructible.
But some of the Platonists have combined both views, using an illustration of this sort: that just as a wagon can always remain indestructible if repaired part by part — even though its parts perish each time, the whole always remains complete — in this same manner the world too is always being destroyed part by part, but, since the parts removed are repaired and replaced in equal measure, it remains eternal.
As for god, some say he speaks of him as one, unbegotten and indestructible, as he says in the Laws: 'God, then, just as the ancient saying goes, holding the beginning and end and middle of all things that exist' — thus declaring him to be the one who has passed through all things.
But others say he speaks of many indefinite gods, when he says: 'Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father'; and still others say he speaks of gods defined in number, when he says:
'Zeus, great in heaven, driving his winged chariot' — and when he traces the genealogy of the children of Uranus and Ge (Heaven and Earth). Others say that he holds that these are begotten gods, and that, because they have been begotten, they necessarily are bound to perish, but through the will of god they are immortal — as when he adds and says: 'Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father, indissoluble while I will it' — implying that, if he willed them to be dissolved, they would easily be dissolved.
As for the soul, some say he calls it unbegotten and indestructible, when he says: 'All soul is immortal, for that which is ever-moving is immortal'; and when he demonstrates that it is self-moved and a first principle of motion. Others say he holds it to be begotten, but indestructible through the will of god. Others say he holds it to be composite, both begotten and destructible; for indeed he posits a 'mixing-bowl' for it, and that it has a radiant body, and everything that has come to be must of necessity perish.
Those who say the soul is immortal rely chiefly on those passages in which he also says there are judgments after death in the courts of Hades, and that the good souls obtain a good reward, while the wicked ones receive fitting penalties.
Some, then, say that he also acknowledges transmigration of souls, and that the souls, being determinate in number, pass from one body into another, each according to its own worth, and that at certain determinate periods they are sent up again into this world, to give proof of their own choice.
But others say not so, but that each soul obtains a place according to its worth, and they use as testimony the fact that he says some souls of good men are with Zeus, others revolve together with other gods, while those who during this life have wrought wicked and unjust deeds are in eternal punishments.
They say that he calls some things among affairs 'immediate' (unmixed), others 'mediate' (mixed), and others 'intermediate'; waking and sleep, and such things, are 'immediate'; 'mediate' are, for example, good and evil things; and 'intermediate,' for instance, between white and black, gray, or some other color.
They say he calls only the things pertaining to the soul properly good, while the things pertaining to the body and external things are no longer properly good, but 'so-called' goods; and in many places he has also named them 'intermediate' things.
For it is possible to use them well or badly. The virtues, then, he says, are extremes in point of honor, but means in point of essence; for nothing is more honorable than virtue, but its excess or deficiency ends in vice. For instance, he says there are four virtues — prudence, temperance, justice, courage — and that upon each of these there follow two vices, by excess and by deficiency: for prudence, folly by deficiency, cunning by excess; for temperance, licentiousness by deficiency, boorishness by excess; for justice, receiving less than one's due by deficiency, taking more than one's due by excess; for courage, cowardice by deficiency, rashness by excess. And these virtues, when engendered in a man, render him perfect and furnish him with happiness.
He says happiness is likeness to god, so far as is possible; and likeness to god comes about when one becomes holy and just, together with prudence. For he posits this as the goal of the highest wisdom and virtue.
He says the virtues reciprocally accompany one another and are uniform, and never oppose one another. But the vices are manifold, and sometimes reciprocally accompany one another, sometimes oppose one another.
He says fate exists, yet not all things come to be according to fate, but something also lies in our own power, in those passages where he says: 'The blame is his who chooses; god is blameless' — and 'this is the ordinance of Adrasteia.' Thus he acknowledges both what is according to fate and what is in our power. He says that sins are involuntary.
For no one would willingly admit evil, that is, injustice, into the fairest thing in us, which is the soul; but through ignorance and a mistake about the good, thinking they are doing something noble, men arrive at evil.
And the clearest expression of this is in the Republic, where he says: 'Again, moreover, you dare to say that vice is shameful and hateful to god; how then would anyone choose such an evil? You say, whoever is inferior is overcome by pleasures. Is not this too, then, involuntary, if indeed to conquer is voluntary? So that from every argument, reasoning shows that wrongdoing at least is involuntary.'
Someone raises against him this objection: why then are they punished, if they sin involuntarily? He replies that it is for one reason, so that he himself may as quickly as possible be delivered from vice and undergo punishment — for to undergo punishment is not an evil but a good, provided it is to bring about a purification of evils — and so that the rest of mankind, hearing of it, may commit no sin, but guard against such error.
The nature of evil, he holds, neither came to be from god nor has substance in itself, but comes to be by opposition to, and accompaniment of, the good, either by excess or by deficiency, as we said before concerning the virtues. Plato, then, as we said before, having brought together the three parts of philosophy as a whole, philosophized in this manner.
Aristotle, having become his pupil, brought philosophy into a systematic art and became more logical, positing that the elements of all things are substance and accident: substance being one, underlying all things, and the accidents nine — quantity, quality, relation, place, time, having, position, doing, being-affected.
Substance, then, is such as god, man, and each of the things that can fall under a like definition. Concerning the accidents, quality is observed, for instance white, black; quantity, for instance two cubits, three cubits; relation, for instance father, son; place, for instance at Athens, at Megara; time, for instance at the tenth Olympiad; having, for instance to possess; doing, for instance to write and, in general, to perform some activity; position, for instance [reclining, standing]; and being-affected, for instance to be struck.
He too posits that some things have a mean, while others are immediate, as we said also concerning Plato. And in most respects he is in agreement with Plato, except in the doctrine concerning the soul.
For Plato holds it to be immortal, whereas Aristotle holds that it survives even afterward, but that it, too, then vanishes into the fifth body, which he posits as existing alongside the other four — fire, earth, water, and air — being finer than these, like a breath (spirit).
Plato, then, says that only the things pertaining to the soul are truly good and are sufficient for happiness; but Aristotle introduces a threefold class of goods and says that the wise man is not perfect unless there are also present to him the goods of the body and external goods — the former being beauty, strength, keenness of the senses, soundness of health; the external being wealth, noble birth, reputation, power, peace, friendship. And the internal goods, pertaining to the soul, as Plato also held, are prudence, temperance, justice, courage.
He too says that evils come to be in opposition to goods, and that they exist beneath the region around the moon, but no longer above the moon. And he says that the soul of the whole world is immortal, and the world itself eternal, but that the individual soul, as we said before, vanishes.
He, then, carried on his philosophical discourses in the Lyceum; but Zeno did so in the Painted Stoa. Those who followed Zeno took their name from the place, that is, from the stoa, and were called Stoics; those who followed Aristotle took their name from the activity, for since they inquired while walking about in the Lyceum, they were for this reason called Peripatetics. These, then, are the doctrines of Aristotle.
The Stoics, they too, developed philosophy in a more syllogistic direction and confined it, so to speak, within definitions, Chrysippus and Zeno having come to hold the same opinions; and they too posited god as the first principle of all things, being a body, the purest of all; and that his providence extends through all things.
They too affirmed that all things happen according to fate, using an illustration of this kind: that just as, if a dog is tied to a cart, if it is willing to follow, it is both drawn along and follows, thereby exercising its own free choice together with necessity, that is, with fate; but if it is unwilling to follow, it will nevertheless be compelled — the same, surely, holds for men too: even if unwilling to follow, they will nevertheless be compelled to enter into what is fated.
They say the soul is immortal, but that it is a body, and that it comes to be from the cooling of the surrounding air, and for this reason is called 'psyche.' They also acknowledge that transmigration takes place, the souls being determinate in number.
They accept that there will be a conflagration and a purification of this world — some holding it will be of the whole, others of a part — and they say that it is purified part by part; and they call the destruction and the generation of another world out of it, virtually, 'purification.'
They posited that all things are bodies, and that body passes through body [interpenetrates], but [the text here is corrupt: possibly meaning by mutual displacement], and that all things are filled full and that nothing is void. These, then, are also the doctrines of the Stoics.
Epicurus, however, laid down an opinion virtually opposite to all the others. He posited as first principles of the universe atoms and void: void, as it were, the place of the things that will be, and atoms as matter, out of which all things are formed.
From the atoms coming together, both god came to be, and the elements, and everything in them, both animals and other things, so that nothing either comes to be or is composed unless it be from atoms. The atoms, he said, are the finest-parted bodies, of which there could be no center nor any point nor any division whatsoever; for this reason he also named them 'atoms' (indivisibles).
While acknowledging that god exists, eternal and indestructible, he says that god exercises providence over nothing, and that in general there is neither providence nor fate, but that all things come to be by spontaneous chance. For god, he says, dwells in the 'intermundia,' as they are called by him — for he posited that there is a certain dwelling-place of god outside the world, called the intermundia — enjoying pleasure and remaining at rest in the utmost happiness, neither himself having troubles nor providing them for others.
In keeping with these things, he has also made his account concerning wise men, saying that the goal of wisdom is pleasure. But different people have understood the term 'pleasure' differently: some understand it as pleasure according to mortal desires, others as the pleasure that is in virtue.
The souls of men, he holds, are dissolved together with their bodies, just as he also posits that they are begotten together with them; for he says they are blood, and when this departs or is altered, the whole man perishes. From this it follows that there are neither judgments nor courts in Hades, so that whatever anyone may do in this life and escape notice is altogether without accountability. Such, then, are also the doctrines of Epicurus.
Another sect of philosophers was called the Academic, because they carried on their discussions in the Academy; of these Pyrrho was the founder, from whom the philosophers were called Pyrrhonists. He was the first to introduce the incomprehensibility of all things, so as to argue on both sides, yet to declare nothing definitively.
For he held that nothing, neither of the objects of intellect nor of the objects of sense, is true, but that it only seems so to men. And he held that all substance is in flux and changeable and never remains the same.
Some of the Academics, then, say that one ought from the outset to declare nothing about anything, but simply, having made the attempt to argue, to leave it there. Others added the phrase 'no more,' saying, for example, that fire is no more fire than it is something else. Yet they did not declare what it actually is, but only of what sort it is.
Among the Indians too there is a sect of philosophers among the Brahmins, who profess a self-sufficient way of life and abstain from ensouled things and from foods cooked by fire, being content with tree-fruits, and not even gathering these themselves, but living by carrying off those that fall to the ground, drinking the water of the river †Tagabena†.
They live naked, saying that the body has been made by God as a garment for the soul. They say that God is light — not such as one sees, nor such as the sun and fire, but for them God is the Word (Logos), not the articulate word, but the word of knowledge, through which the hidden mysteries of nature are seen by the wise. This light — which they call the Word, [that is, God] — they say that they alone know, because they alone have cast off vainglory, which is the last garment of the soul.
These men despise death; and they continually glorify God in their own tongue, as we have said before, and send up hymns. There are no women among them, nor do they beget children.
Those who desire a life like theirs cross over from the country on the opposite side of the river and remain there, no longer returning; and they too are called Brahmins. But they do not lead a similar life; for there are also women in that country, from whom those who dwell there are born and themselves beget children.
This Word, which they call God, they say is corporeal, and wears a body around itself from without, just as if one wears a garment made of sheep's wool; and when it has stripped off the body that surrounds it, it becomes visible to the eye. The Brahmins say that there is war within the body that surrounds them, and they have come to regard the body as full of wars, against which, as against enemies, they draw up in battle array and fight, as we have already indicated.
They say that all men are captives of their own kindred enemies — belly and private parts, throat, anger, joy, grief, desire, and the like. Only he who has raised up a trophy of victory over these goes on to God.
Therefore the Brahmins deify Dandamis, to whom Alexander the Macedonian came, as one who had won the war within the body, but they inveigh against Calanus as one who impiously deserted their philosophy. And the Brahmins, laying aside the body, like fish darting up out of water into the clear air, behold the sun.
The Druids among the Celts have applied themselves thoroughly to the Pythagorean philosophy, the cause of this pursuit having been Zamolxis, a slave of Pythagoras, Thracian by birth; who, after the death of Pythagoras, having gone there, became for them the cause of this philosophy.
The Celts glorify these as prophets and men of foreknowledge, because by the Pythagorean art, from pebbles and numbers, they foretell certain things to them; and we will not pass over in silence the methods of this art itself, since from these too some have dared to introduce sects. The Druids also practice magic.
Hesiod the poet, too, himself says that he heard the following account of nature from the Muses; and that the Muses are the daughters of Zeus. For Zeus, through excess of desire, having lain unceasingly with Mnemosyne for nine nights and days together, Mnemosyne conceived these nine in a single womb, receiving one on each night.
So then, having called the nine Muses from Pieria, that is, from Olympus, he asked to be taught how at the first gods and earth came to be, and rivers, and the boundless sea with its raging swell, and the shining stars, and the wide heaven above; how they divided their wealth and apportioned their honors, and also how at the first they took possession of many-folded Olympus. 'Tell me these things, Muses,' he says, 'from the beginning, and tell me which of them came into being first. Verily, first of all Chaos came to be, but then Earth, broad-breasted, the ever-secure seat of all the immortals who hold the peak of snowy Olympus, and misty Tartarus in a recess of the wide-wayed earth, and Eros, who is fairest among the immortal gods, looser of limbs, who in the breasts of all gods and all men subdues the mind and prudent counsel. Out of Chaos came Erebus and black Night; and from Night in turn came Aether and Day. And Earth first bore starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, that he might be an ever-secure seat for the blessed gods. She also bore the long mountains, the graceful haunts of the Nymphs, who dwell along the wooded mountains. She also bore the unharvested sea, seething with its swell, Pontus, without delightful union in love; but afterward, having lain with Heaven, she bore deep-eddying Ocean, and Coeus, and Crius, and Hyperion, and Iapetus, and Theia, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosyne, and gold-crowned Phoebe, and lovely Tethys. After these was born, youngest of all, Cronus of crooked counsel, most terrible of her children, and he hated his vigorous father. She also bore the Cyclopes, having an overweening spirit.' And he numbers all the rest of the Giants as sprung from Cronus. And later, he says, Zeus was born of Rhea.
All these men, then, have set forth, according to their own opinion, these things concerning the nature and origin of the universe, just as we have expounded them. But all of them, falling short of the divine, occupied themselves with the substance of the things that have come to be, astonished at the magnitudes of creation and supposing these very things to be divine, each preferring some different part of creation, but failing to recognize God, the maker and craftsman of these things.
I think, then, that I have sufficiently set forth the opinions of those among the Greeks who have undertaken to philosophize, from whom the heretics, taking their starting-points, have attempted the things that will shortly be spoken of. It seems best first to set forth and speak of the mystic teachings and whatever things certain men have curiously imagined concerning the stars or magnitudes; for by taking their starting-points from these they are thought by many to tell marvels; then, following on from this, we shall expose the feeble doctrines held by them.