Gomperz, Theodor 1901a. Greek thinkers: A history of ancient philosophy. Vol. 1. Translated by Laurie Magnus. London: John Murray. [Internet Archive]
Hellas is a sea-girt mountain-land. The poverty of her soil corresponds to the narrowness of her river-valleys. And here we find the first clue to some of the essential features of Hellenic evolution proper. It is clear, for instance, that a permanent home and a steady and manifold care and attention were offered to any seeds of civilization which might be deposited in her soil. Her mountain-barriers served her in the office of stone walls, breaking the force of the storm of conquest which sweeps unchecked across the plains. Each hilly canton was a potential seat of culture. Each could develop a separate type of that strongly marked individualism, which was ultimately to prove so favourable to the rich and many-sided civilization of Greece, so fatal to the political concentration of her powers. (Gomperz 1901a: 4)
An explanation as to why someone from another part of Greece should read Aristophanes to familiarize themselves with the Athenian language and culture.
The bays that offer the best harbourage on the Greek [|] peninsula open toward the east, and the islands and islets, with which that region is thickly sown, afford, as it were, a series of stepping-stones to the ancient seats of Asiatic civilization. Greece may be said to look east and south. Her back is turned to the north and west, with their semi-barbaric conditions. Another circumstance of quite exceptional good fortune may be ranged with these natural advantages. (Gomperz 1901a: 4-5)
Complemented by a contrary situation in Italy, which is hilly in the east, as Mahaffy explained. Italy and Greece have their backs towards each other, as it were.
The favoured country enjoyed a steadier rate of progress, a more unbroken evolution, a comparative immunity from the sacrifice of her national resources. And if further proof be required, take the fate of the Celts and Germans, whom Rome enslaved at the moment that she civilized; or take the sad lot of the savage tribes of to-day, who received the blessing of civilization at the hands of almighty Europe, and wear it too often as a curse. (Gomperz 1901a: 5)
Estonians were then not far removed from membership in that lot.
Take navigation, for instance. Where vessels formerly had hugged the shore, and had not ventured in deep waters, now they boldly crossed the sea. The mercantile marine was protected by men-of-war. Seaworthy battleships came into use with raised decks and three rows of oars, the first of them being built for the Samians in 705 B.C. (Gomperz 1901a: 8)
The island of Samos represented in the history of Greece this early on.
In civic and party business a man would play his own part, advising and blaming as counsellor or critic, and boldly giving vent among his fellows to his sentiments of expectation or disappointment, his joy, his sorrow, his anger, and his scorn. He became a unit in society, self-made for the most part, and entirely self-dependent, and would deem his private concerns of sufficient importance to display them in the light of publicity. He poured out his heart to his fellow-citizens, making them the arbiters in his love-suits and law-suits, and appealing to their sympathy in the injuries he suffered, the success he achieved, the pleasures he enjoyed. (Gomperz 1901a: 10)
The democratic public. The inner life of man turned out for the environing society.
The didactic poets still aimed at system, order, and harmony in their treatment of the material, but side by side with [|] those endeavours a manifold diversity was to be remarked, and a licence in criticism, expressing itself in a prejudice or preference in respect to this or that hero or heroine of holy tradition. (Gomperz 1901a: 10-11)
The "expressions of preference or aversion" (PC 5.1), with prejudice in place of aversions.
Greece became the apprentice of older civilized countries, turning to Egypt above all for the paramount example of artistic instinct, natural joy, and engaging humour. (Gomperz 1901a: 11)
Another rare instinct, closely approximating the instinct of play.
The sanctuary at Delphi, sacred to Pythian Apollo, was situated in the shadow of steep, beetling crags. Thither would come, and there would meet, an endless line of pilgrims from all parts of Greece and her colonies - private citizens, representatives of whole states, and, since the middle of the seventeenth century at least, occasional envoys from foreign courts. They all came to consult the god; but the answers they received were mostly the result of the priest's ingenious manipulation of the stock of useful knowledge deposited by former clients. (Gomperz 1901a: 12)
A coincidence with the Bene Gesserit who systematically collected information from across the Imperium.
Nor would their intercourse he confined to the exchange of news and information. Men would take one another's measure; opinion would be freely canvassed; the merits of the different institutions in that land of many subdivisions - their custom,s habits, and beliefs - would form topics of general discussion. Comparison engendered judgment, and judgment brought reflection in its train to bear on the causes of the differences and on the permanent element in change. (Gomperz 1901a: 12)
The Olympic games were also an occasion for social intercourse and the meeting of different cultures.
Then a writing-material of a kind which can hardly be improved was afforded by the pulp of the papyrus shrub, split into slender and flexible strips. From city to city, from land to land, from century to century, the sheets of written symbols now began to fly. The circulation of thought was accelerated, the commerce of intellect enlarged, and the continuity of culture guaranteed, in a degree which can well-nigh be compared with that which marked the invention of the printing-press at the dawn of modern history. (Gomperz 1901a: 13)
The three great leap forwards in the diffusion of knowledge: the papyrus, the printing-press, and the internet.
New answers were given to the eternal question of mankind - What is the meaning of self, God, and the world? and these new answers gradually replaced or reshaped the former acceptations of religious belief. (Gomperz 1901a: 15)
Made it to page 15 until the first triad: (1) the world; (2) self; and (3) God.
Human thought follows twin channels. It obeys the law of likeness, and it obeys the law of contiguity. While similar ideas suggest one another, yet the same result is evolved by ideas which occur simultaneously or in immediate succession. An absent friend, for instance, may be recalled to our thoughts not merely by the sight of his portrait; the rooms in which he dwelt, the tools which he handled, served the purpose just as well. These laws are summarily known as the laws of the association of ideas, and the conception of natural phenomena, which may be called the personification of nature, is directly and inevitably due to their action. (Gomperz 1901a: 15)
Similarity and contiguity, equivalence and successivity.
Savage man, unacquainted as he was with the finer distinctions of scientific thought, was led to believe in these beings by a triple set of inferences. The first was drawn from real or apparent observations of the outer world; the second from the inner or moral life; and the third depended on observations taken at the transition from life to death in the human and animal creation. (Gomperz 1901a: 18)
The triad now in the order I'm accustomed with: (1) the outer world; (2) the inner or moral life; and (3) the transition between these two - as when the soul leaves the body.
The smell of a flower teaches the primitive man that there are objects not the less real because they evade his sight and touch. The wind, whose material nature he can but partially understand, makes him acquainted with objects that can be felt, but not seen. Shadows, that contain the outline of an object without its material resistance, and still more the coloured images reflected in a sheet of water, bring astonishment and confusion to the mind of primitive man. In both instances he is aware of something precisely resembling the material object, which yet mocks his endevaour to seize it and touch it. Dream-pictures serve but to increase his confusion. He perceived them, he thought, with all his senses at once; they stood in bodily shape before his eyes, and still in the morning the doors of his hut were as firmly closed as overnight. Men and beasts, plants, stones, and tools of all kinds, stood indisputably before him, plainly perceptible to sight, hearing, and touch, and yet in many instances there could actually have been no room for them in the limited accommodation of his dwelling. Thus he is driven to the conclusion that, like perfumes and winds, shadows and reflections, they were the souls of things. (Gomperz 1901a: 18)
A longer excursion on the theory that the concept of the soul and life after death arose from the observation that the soul can leave the body in sleep, from which it was falsely concluded that the soul can outlive the body.
A second theory is to be remarked among some other peoples. The reflection in the pupil of the eye which vanishes at the approach of death is there regarded as the source of the processes of life and animation. But these attributes, after all, are most commonly ascribed to the warm breath or stream which proceeds from within the living organism, and by far the most of the words which are used in different languages to signify "soul" and "spirit" express that primary meaning. (Gomperz 1901a: 20)
This one is less familiar. Breath and blood are indeed common connections with the "soul", but the glitter in the eyes (sära silmas) does not ring any bells.
At the period of which we are speaking the custom of burning the dead body prevailed, and the consequent belief obtained, and was clearly expressed by Homer, that the consuming flames finally severed body from soul, and consigned the soul to the realm of shadows. (Gomperz 1901a: 33)
Noted for the role of fire in eschatological affairs. The symbolism of fire I've noticed has a deeper significance with "thirdness".
The ancient Indian regarded the clouds as cows - as soon as they were milked the fruitful rain poured down; if the quickening moisture were long delayed, the drought was ascribed to evil spirits who had stolen the herds and hidden them in rocky caves, and Indra, the god of heaven, had to descend on the storm-wind to free them from their bondage, and rescue them from the robbers. (Gomperz 1901a: 35)
Is that why they are considered sacred?
The Greek in his dark hour of pessimism would ask why the evils of life were so much in excess of its blessings, and the question immediately suggested a second one - Who and what brought evil in the world? And his answer mainly resembles that of the modern Frenchman, the sum of whose researches into the sources of innumerable transgressions was contained in the words "cherchez la femme." But the ancient Greek cast his indictment of the weaker and fairer sex in the form of a single charge. He relates that Zeus, with the help of the rest of gods, in order to punish Prometheus for his theft of fire and the consequent arrogance of mankind, created a woman adorned with all the graces as the mother of the female race, and sent her down to the earth. At another time the Greek, still groping for enlightenment on this subject, accused curiosity or the thirst for knowledge as the root of all evil. If the gods, he said, had endowed us with every blessing, and had locked up all evils in a box, and had straightly warned us not to open it, human - and chiefly woman's - curiosity would have set at nought the divine prohibition. Both myths are merged in one: Pandora, the woman, as her name implies, adorned with every seductive gift, is the woman, stung by curiosity, who lifts the lid of the fateful box and lets its perilous contents escape. Once more we are astounded at the similarity of mythical invention obtaining among the more diverse peoples, and one almost involuntarily recall the allied Hebraic story of Eve - the mother of all life - and the ominous consequences of her sinful curiosity. (Gomperz 1901a: 37)
Wow. A really surprising but not incredible connection.
All that remained was a something stretching from the topmost heights to the uttermost depths, and continuing immeasurably on either side the hollow emptiness interposed between the Hevaen and the Earth. The Babylonians called it apsu, "the abyss," or tiamat, "the deep." The Scandinavians knew it as ginnunga gap, "the yawning gap," a term of which the first word belongs to the same root as the Greek Chaos. This gaping void, this abysmal deep, was conceived as obscure and dark simply because - in accordance with the principles of this system - none of the sources of light had as yet been put in action. (Gomperz 1901a: 41)
Indeed, khaos is 'vast chasm, void'.
1.1. THE OLD IONIAN NATURE-PHILOSPHERS
So far as the evidence of history extends, an organized caste of priests and scholars, combining the necessary leisure with the equally necessary continuity of tradition, was at all times indispensable to the beginnings of scientific research. But its beginning and its end in such cases were only too likely to coincide, for when scientific doctrines are mixed up with religious tenets, the same lifeless dogmatism will commonly benumb them both. (Gomperz 1901a: 43)
The Egyptian priests had "the necessary leisure" to develop the beginnings of mathematics.
Here, then, we find that genius anticipated science. The full truth of these doctrines was not finally established till the great era of chemistly in the eighteenth century, led by Lavoisier with the balance of his hand. At another point the "physiologists" of Ionia actually outstripped the results of modern knowledge. The bold flight of their imagination did not stop at the assumption of a plurality of indestructible elements; it never rested till it reached the conception of a single fundamental or primordial matter as the source of material diversity. Here it may almost be said that inexperience was the mother of wisdom. The impulse to simplification, when it had once been aroused, was like a stone set in motion which rolls continuously till it is checked by an obstacle. It advanced from infinity to plurality, from plurality to unity; no inconvenient facts could place impediments in its path, nor could call a peremptory halt. (Gomperz 1901a: 46)
I have just read about the exploits of Lavoisier (here). About the "physiologists" we heard a little something in the course on the history of philosophy. In this post henceforth I shall mark passages that relate to something I've met in that course with the letter Φ. These I'll have to review when I'm preparing for the exam. As to advancing "from infinity to plurality, from plurality to unity" I wonder if infinity here stands for totality.
We may readily credit the tradition that Thales supplied his Egyptian masters with the method they had sought in vain of computing the height of the towering pyramids which are the wonders of their home. He pointed out to them that at the time of day when a man's shadow - or that of any other object presenting no difficulty to mensuration - is exactly equal to the size of the original, then, too, the shadow of the pyramid can neither be longer nor shorter than its actual height. (Gomperz 1901a: 47)
Brilliant!
He [Thales] turned them to commercial uses, and would hire a number of oil-presses in order to exploit his advantage if he happened to foresee an exceptional harvest in the olive gardens. (Gomperz 1901a: 47)
You don't make bank during a gold rush by looking for gold, you do it by shelling shovels.
Similarly, he supposed that the ancestors of the human race had [|] their origin in the bellies of fish, and did not quit that habitation till they had reached full vigour. Possibly Anaximander was influenced in this belief by the old Babylonian theory of a primeval race of fish-men, but that, at least, we cannot assert with confidence. (Gomperz 1901a: 54-55)
Sounds like an ancient version of the aquatic ape theory.
The poet who, according to Herodotus, was associated with Hesiod in the invention of Greek religion would not have been honoured by Heraclitus, but "banished from public recitations and scourged with rods." For Heraclitus was equally opposed to all objects of popular belief. He contemned the worship of images, which was as if "a man should chatter to a stone wall;" he despised the system of sin-offerings which expiated one stain by another, "just as if a man who had stepped into mud were to wash himself clean with mud;" and he [|] inveighed against the "abominable" rites of the Bachanalia as strongly as against the "unhallowed observance" of the Mysteries. (Gomperz 1901a: 60-61)
"Ya'll a bunch of dummies" - Heraclitus, probably.
Hesiod "the polymath, whom most men follow as their master," Pythagoras the philosophizing mathematician, Xenophanes the philosophic rhapsodist, Hecatæus the historian and geographer, were all tarred with the same brush. (Gomperz 1901a: 61)
Heraclitus clapped at Pythagoras?
Nor was Heraclitus troubled by the postponement of his reward; "one thing," says a fragment, "worthy men choose in preference to all others - renown incorruptible." (Gomperz 1901a: 61)
Not wrong, I guess.
He [Heraclitus] withdrew to the solitude of the mountains, where he ended his days, having first [|] posited in the temple of Artemis a roll of manuscripts containing the result of his life's work as an inheritance for generations to come. (Gomperz 1901a: 62-63)
The proper exit strategy of a philosopher - to make sure that his writings will live on.
The broken fragments that have reached us defy all attempts to restore them to their original cosecution, or to attribute them with certainty to the three sections - physics, ethics, and politics - in which the work was divided. (Gomperz 1901a: 63)
I'm not sure if this is a proper triad: (1) physics, dealing with bodies, maybe; (2) ethics is in its right place; but (3) politics assumes that the height of intellectual work is achieved in governance.
In principle he is most closely allied with Anaximander. Both were equally impressed by the transitoriness of all single objects, the ceaseless mutation and transformation of things, and the aspect of the order of nature as an order in law. But Heraclitus parted from his gretaest predecessor in the restlessness of his temperament, so averse from all patient research, in the more poetic trend of his imagination, and in his demand for conceptinos of a richer and more sculpturesque kind. (Gomperz 1901a: 63)
"No man ever steps in the same river twice."
The first principle [fire] of our poet-philosopher is not merely the ceaseless spring of birth and decay; it is not merely divine, as it was to his predecessors. Heraclitus regarded it as the source of the world's intelligence, as the conscious regulative principle of all existence which "will not be called Zeus," since it is not a personal being with individuality of its own, and yet "will be called Zeus," since it is the supreme principle of the world, and accordingly the highest principle of life. In this connection it should be remembered that the Greek "zên" means "to live," and the corresponding forms of the name Zeus may well be kept in recollection. (Gomperz 1901a: 64)
Recarding this only because I've promised to note all instances of connection between fire and intelligence/divinity.
Cosmos itself, which sprang from primary fire, is bound to return to it again [|] by a double process which, however protracted its duration, operates in fixed periods, and will constantly repeat its operation. (Gomperz 1901a: 64-65)
Not wrong. We now have computer-generated visualizations of what it will look like when our galaxy will hit another. Presumably Earth will be an insignificant barren ball of crusted dirt long before that.
His favourite simile was that of the flowing stream. "We cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh and ever fresh waters are constantly pouring into it." And since the river regarded as an enduring mass of water was the same, but regarded as a combination of particles was not the same, this [|] reflection was pointed to the paradox that "we step into the same river, and we do not step into it; we are, and we are not." (Gomperz 1901a: 66-67)
The second part of the sentence (emphasized) I don't think I've seen before.
The action of an object may vary, even to the point of contradiction, with the varieties of the object on which it acts. "Sea-water is the purest and most disgusting; it is drinkable and wholesome for fishes, undrinkable and noxious for men." Every one who is acquainted with the fragments extant of Heraclitus' work will be aware that he was not recording an isolated observation in that sentence. Rather he was announcing for the first time the principle of the relativity of qualities which he pushed forthwith, as his manner was, to its extreme consequences, in the words "good and bad are the same," reminding us of his former paradox, "We are and we are not." (Gomperz 1901a: 68)
A very simple example of relativity.
It would be purblind folly to bera him a grudge for this, for in the case of mistaken or neglected truths, and especially in the instance of such truths as naturally lend themselves to mistake or neglect, the thing of supreme and primary importance is that they should be discovered at all. (Gomperz 1901a: 69)
Define:purblind - obsolete: wholly blind; lacking in vision, insight, or understanding: obtuse.
And our philosopher's eye is ever glancing from the inanimate to the animate, from animate to inanimate creation. Or rather, the distinction was nonexistent for him. To his eye the whole world was eternally living fire, and the soul, the vehicle of life, nay, the godhead itself, were fire and nothing but fire. (Gomperz 1901a: 71)
Fire, fire, fire!
"The fallen in war," he exclaims, "are honoured by gods and men, and the greater the fall the louder the pæan" of honour and admiration. (Gomperz 1901a: 73)
Mitte "Mida kõrgemalt kukud, seda valusam on" vaid "Mida suurejoonelisemalt (lahingus) langed, seda valjum on (sulle pühendatud) kiidulaul."
1.2. ORPHIC SYSTEMS OF COSMOLOGY
The key to the departure is to be sought in that theory of the next world which may be described in one word as the retributive. It is a doctrine which rested in the first instance on the fact of common observation that a man's moral and mental qualities determine to a great extent his lot. Power and fortune in this life are apt to favour the brave, the strong, the circumspect, the resolute; and hence, by an obvious inference, or by the mere association of ideas, he expects the same fate to attend him in the life to come. (Gomperz 1901a: 81)
The passion for power and wealth in this life are awarded with influence and riches in the next?
The state of the soul after death was frequently taken as glorified. The dead were often promoted to spirits who watched over the destinies of the living. The "Elysian Fields" and the "Fortunate Islands" began to fill with inhabitants. (Gomperz 1901a: 83)
The islands of the blessed?
One feature was common to all. The worshippers of the Mysteries and the disciples of Orphic Pythagoreanism were moved alike by a heightened interest in the future of the soul, based in the first instance on their disdain for earthly life, and resting ultimately on the gloomy view which they took of it. (Gomperz 1901a: 84)
Is there a distinction between Orphic and Non-Orphic Pythagoreanism?
In the tombs of Lower Italy, for example, dating from the third century B.C., which have lately been opened, gold plates have been found inscribed with Orphic verses formerly known to us merely by a referenc in Proclus, a Neo-Platonist of the fifth century A.D. Thus seven hundred years were added at a stroke to their presumptive antiquity. (Gomperz 1901a: 84)
The famous "pieces of gold foil which were inscribed with direction for finding one's way in the other world and with promises for attaining immortality" (Kingsley 1994: 3).
Pherecydes was further devoted to astronomical research. He probably borrowed the principles of the science from Babylon, and his observatory was for a long time one of the sights which were shown to visitors to Syros. As a philosopher, then, he recognized three primordial beings - Chronos, or the Time-principle; Zeus, whom he called Zas; and Chthonie, the goddess of earth. The variant "Zas" was doubtless connected with that signification of the name which we have already met in Heraclitus, and which sought to represent the chief of the gods as the highest principle of life. (Gomperz 1901a: 86)
Forced into a triad: (1) Chtonie; (2) Chronos; and (3) Zas.
Nothing is at once so difficult and so indispensable to our task as to frame a conception of the imperfect state of criticism at that day. Many separate legends it did away with altogether. Others which rested on precisely the same foundation it adopted with complete faith, so that its attitude towards tradition in general, so far from being systematic, was of the kind which naively expected to discover a key to the deepest secrets of the universe in the names and fables of individual gods. Pherecydes, then, may be regarded as one of the earliest representatives of that half-critical, half-credulous eclecticism which serves to typify so many thinkers of other peoples and times. (Gomperz 1901a: 90)
Jakobson's "Slavic Gods and Demons" (1985[1950]) come to mind. As does Stephen Fry's Mythos. Or those speculations that the forefathers of Estonians must have travelled through Iran because some names of the their sound Zoroastrian.
Other circumstances, too, contributed to the welcome extended to foreign doctrines of religion. From them the Greek had already borrowed several of his gods and heroes, such as the Semitic Astoreth (Athoret or Aphrodite), and Adonis her lover, and later the Thracian Bendis and the Phrygian Cybele; and as his ancient native traditions failed more and more to satisfy his increasing curiosity and thirst for knowledge, foreign sources would be drawn on more freely in an age of acute intellectual vigour and progress. (Gomperz 1901a: 96)
The connections between the Greek and Semitic cultures are more interesting than I would have guessed.
1.3. PYTHAGORAS AND HIS DISCIPLES
"PYTHAGORAS, son of Mnesarchus, has practised research and inquiry more than all other men, and has made up his wisdom out of polymathy and out of bad arts." This invective of Heraclitus and another quoted by us above, comprise almost the sole contemporary testimony to the life-work of a man whom an endless train of disciples has lauded and admired to the utmost, and whom posterity has honoured like a demi-god. (Gomperz 1901a: 99)
A somewhat different rendering: "he practised inquiry of all men the most, and making a selection composed from these writings his own wisdom, a knowing of many things, a base concoction" (cf. Morrison 1956: 136).
The cohesion of the aristocrats in a religious and social community with beliefs and observances of its own which set them apart from the mass of the citizens as a kind of populus in populo and rendered them haughtier and less accessible than ever, could not but increase the bitterness of the existing battle of the classes. The clamour for further political rights rose to a higher pitch; the outcry against the foreign intruder and his new-fangled notions grew louder, and to these manifestations was added the personal resentment of unsuccessful candidates for admittance to the brotherhood. So the Pythagorean community in Croton was doomed. A catastrophe as horrible as that which destroyed the Knights Templar overtook it about 500 B.C., when its members were burnt alive, presumably in their place of assembly. (Gomperz 1901a: 101)
If I recall correctly, the democratic element in the city was spurred against the pythagoreans because an ambitious tyrant from a neighbouring city was turned away from the pythagorean community. After the fact, the pythagoreans were invited back but it was far too late, too many had perished.
The ancients and moderns have both, with partial correctness, reproached the Pythagoreans with a want of sobriety and a caprice of imagination. But it is a pleasure to be able to point out that this play of fancy and emotion, and the corresponding delight in what is beautiful and harmonious, though they occasionally obstructed the path of scientific research, yet in many decisive instances smoothed the obstacles away and lent wings to inquiry. (Gomperz 1901a: 102)
Oh no, they're too imaginative!
And as soon as the foundations had been laid for the mechanics of sound, all other systems of mechanics might seem to be open to investigation. Great was the delight aroused by this wonderful discovery, and we can hardly be surprised if the further speculations of the Pythagoreans transgressed the bounds of moderation. The brilliance and obscurity of their doctrine lie within a step of one another, and we reach at once the Pythagorean mysticism of number, which strikes us at first sight as opposed to reason and understanding. Sound, one of the most volatile of phenomena, had been shown to be measurable in space. But number is the measure of all space; it is the expression of the regularity so suddenly observed to pervade every department of nature, and it was an easy inference to regard it as the heart and essence of things. (Gomperz 1901a: 103)
The point here being that if you can make sense of the pythagorean theory of music then all other pythagorean theories might follow.
Fire and Air, and Anaximander's "infinite," comprising all material contraries, were deposed as the Principle of the world, and the vacant throne was taken by Number as the expression of universal law. We have just now marked the historical explanation of this view, which, in defiance of the natural order of things, regarded Number as their most intimate essence, and not merely as the expression of relations and proportions. (Gomperz 1901a: 104)
Thus "all is number" cannot be explained away with something like everything is measurable.
Now these points were identified by the Pythagoreans with Unity - that is, [|] with the element of Number. Number, then, appeared to them as a kind of fundamental principle, in which the objective world was not merely dissolved by thought, but from which it proceeded. It was, as it were, composed and built up of Number, so that the line which consisted of two points would represent duality, the plane would represent the conception of three, and the body the conception of four. (Gomperz 1901a: 104-105)
1 - point; 2 - line; 3 - plane; 4 - body. Add them together (1+2+3+4) and you get 10, the prefect number.
Number was the ultimate basis of the spiritual no less than of the material [|] world. Seven, for instance, was identified with health; eight with Love and Friendship, as a harmony best expressed by the octave; Justice figured as a square number, doubtless because the "eye for eye" theory of retribution recalled the composition of a number out of two like factors. (Gomperz 1901a: 105-106)
Something to take into consideration when reviewing Charles Fourier's quasi-pythagorean scheme of passions.
They do not merely fill the multitude with intellectual delusions, as is shown in the history of religions, but strong men of rare and subtle powers are sometimes liable to their sway. We ought to realize the intoxicating force of these all-comprehensive abstractions, working as they did on minds at home only in the thin air of those intellectual heights, or at least debarred from the counterpoise afforded by gifts and occupations of a widely differing kind. (Gomperz 1901a: 106)
Thinking of my own disconcerting tendency to impose the triad on everything, which involves numbering phenomena that clearly have no numerical relation outside of a very abstract system of thought.
The sacredness of the number three meets us as early as Homer, where a trinity of gods, Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, are addressed in a single supplication. Three, again, and its square play the most prominent part in the rites of the Greeks and Romans and of the Eastern branches of the Aryans. We find it in ancestor worship, where the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are selected out of the whole [|] lineage of Tritopatores or paternal triad. We find it again in the number of the expiatory sacrifices, of the dedicatory offerings, of the funeral festivals, of the Graces, the Fates, the Muses, and so forth, and we need merely mention the Indian Trimurti - Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva - and kindred religious conceptions, and the trinity of primary beings of Pherecydes and the Orphics generally. The Pythagoreans sought to establish the sacred character of this number by claiming that it contained a beginning, a middle, and an end, an argument which was not entirely without effect on the highly cultivated mind of Aristotle. It is not without surprise that we are strongly reminded of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in the speculations of Giordano Bruno and Auguste Comte. (Gomperz 1901a: 106-107)
Most likely this pervasive triadism and trichotomizing is due to nothing else than the law of three, the tendency of human mind to find satisfaction in a group of three items. At some point I should really look into the psychological investigation of this phenomenon.
After that no one can be astonished at the curious teachings which issued from the Pythagoreans. We read there without surprise that Unity, or the Monad, contains the two fundamental contraries - the Unlimited and the Limited - which form the basis of the universe; we are told that their harmonious mixture engendered the numbers on which all being depends, and is thus accountable for the origin of the world; the odd numbers correspond to the Limited, and the even to the Unlimited. (Gomperz 1901a: 107)
Possibility (Unlimited) and Necessity (Limited).
We can imagine our astonished readers inquiring if the pioneers of exact science were at the same time the pioneers and the most influential prophets of mysticism. The fact is undoubted, but the astonishment seems to us to argue an insufficient acquaintance with the peculiarities of the mathematical temperament. (Gomperz 1901a: 108)
Acquaintance with even this little pythagorean doctrine has led me to a higher evaluation of all sorts of mysticism, at least when it conforms to triadic scheming.
In the first place, the school was founded in an era of overweening credulity. Secondly, Pythagoras himself was as much a man of religious temperament as of scientific training. His personality, too, was imposing, and he had the further advantage of having successfully inaugurated new doctrines and customs which had invested him with a kind of halo. The old Pythagoreans, with their defective criticism and their proneness to superstition, were mocked at as men of clumsy and ungainly intellect. More than the disciples of any other school, they swore to the words of their master. "Ipse dixit" was their favourite cry; it was the magic shield which warded off every doubt and repelled every hostile attack. (Gomperz 1901a: 109)
Clumsiness and ungainliness is no obstacle. Dogmatism on the face of it is another matter.
But whereas Anaximander had merely departed from the primeval conception of a flat disc-like earth, so far as to give it the shape of a drum, Pythagoras now went further. He recognized [|] and stated that the earth is spherical. There are three possible ways by which Pythagoras may have reached this original discovery. He may have based it on the right interpretation of phenomena, above all on the round shadow cast by the earth in the eclipse of the moon. Or he may have extended the groundless assumption of a spherical sky to the separate luminaries of heaven. Or, finally, he may have been prepossessed in favour of a ball-shape by his view of it as the "most perfect" of corporeal forms. But whichever alternative we adopt, it was in all circumstances a grand and new step in the direction of the true, the Copernican view of the universe. (Gomperz 1901a: 110-111)
Galileo: "You wonder that there are so few followers of the Pythagorean opinion [that the earth moves] while I am astonished that there have been any up to this day who have embraced and followed it" (in Chalmers 1999: 151).
1.4. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE
The question suggests itself here, Did these Pythagoreans recognize and teach the rotation of the earth round its axis? Our answer is: They did not do that, but they did recognize and teach the existence of a movement which operated in a precisely similar manner. It was, so to say, the rotation round its axis of an earth-ball with a considerably enlarged circumference. They represented the earth as circulating in twenty-four hours round a central point, the nature of which will presently occupy us. Here, however, the reader should familiarize himself with a simple feature of this doctrine. (Gomperz 1901a: 113)
Imagining this, I come to a retort levelled at the rotation of the Earth by others: if it were so, then one part of the Earth would be stationary and on the other side everything should be cast off into space. Instead of an axis, say an imaginary stick, running through the center of Earth I'm imagining one tied on the surface.
It may be asked, however, what need there was of inventing a central fire, when it actually existed and was visible to every man's eye. What was wanted was a centre of motion and a source of vigour and life. But instead of accrediting the universal light of the sun with the rank that belonged to it, a luminous body was invented whose rays no mortal eye had seen, and, considering that the habitable side of the earth was turned away from the central fire, no mortal eye would ever see. It was an hypothesis removed by a perverse ingenuity from every chance of verification, and one wonders why its mistaken authors did not rather jump straight away at the heliogentric doctrine, and rest satisfied therewith. (Gomperz 1901a: 115)
"A perverse ingenuity" indeed.
At first sight, for instance, no doctrine could appear more arbitrary than that of the harmony of the spheres. It obviously sprang in the last resort from an æsthetic demand which was formulated as follows: Our eyes are filled with the grandest sights; how is it, then, that the twin sense of our ears should go empty? But the premise on which the answer rested was not wholly unreasonable. For unless the space in which the stars revolved is completely void, the matter that fills it must undergo vibrations which in themselves are capable of being heard. Even in recent times, no meaner philosopher than Karl Ernst von Baer, the great founder of embryology, had asked if there is not "perhaps a murmur in universal space, a harmony of the spheres, audible to quite other ears than ours." (Gomperz 1901a: 117-118)
Would not have expected to meet a reference to the person on our two kroon bill in a discussion of Pythagorean astronomy.
Philosophy was approaching the point of view reached in later times by Tycho de Brahe, who represented all the planets with the exception of the earth as revolving round the sun, while the sun with his train of planets revolved round the earth. The last and final step was taken by Aristarchus of Samos, the Copernicus of antiquity, about 280 B.C., who completed what the astronomer from the Pontus, to whom allusion has just been made, had less definitely begun. (Gomperz 1901a: 121)
This Aristarchus of Samos (usually mentioned without place of origin) has cropped up several times in my recent readings.
1.5. ORPHIC AND PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINES OF THE SOUL
ORPHICISM and Pythagorism might be called the male and female forms of the same conception. In the one there is a surplus of visionary and fantastic elements; in the other, of rational and scientific method. The one answers to the need for personal salvation; the other to the requirements of state and society. The one is dominated by a love of purity and by a fear of contamination; the other promotes the cause of morality and civil order. The one is wanting in vigorous self-confidence, and tends to a contrite asceticism; the other exhibits the resolute disciple of an ethical culture, nourished on the arts and on self-examination. Among the Orphics it is a religious brotherhood which unites the members of the community, whereas the union of the Pythagoreans takes the form of a semi-political knightly order. Orphicism takes no account of mathematical or astronomical research; Pythagorism holds aloof from the speculations of cosmogony and theogony. (Gomperz 1901a: 123)
At some point I'm going to have to read some of those books on Orphism I've downloaded from the internet archive (e.g. Reinach). Here I emphasized what appear to be the Pythagorean tendencies.
Aristotle tells us that, "according to the Pythagorean myths, any soul goes into any body," and, to say nothing of the evidence of countless authorities of a later date, Xenophanes, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, relates a story which illustrates this point. His verses on the subject are still extant. He tells us that Pythagoras, seeing a dog being maltreated, and hearing him howl, cried out in pitying tones, "Leave off beating the dog, for I recognize in his tones the voice of the soul of a friend." An anecdote of this kind - and its anecdotal character is vouched for by the words "it is related," with which Xenophanes introduced the story - could hardly have been invented, unless the incident had been typical of the man of whom it was told. As a matter of fact, Pythagoras - as we see from Empedocles, for instance - had many wonderful tales to tell of the previous existence of his own soul. (Gomperz 1901a: 124)
As if it required a supernatural reason not to violently abuse animals.
Unfortunately, the direct evidence which we now possess of the Egyptian theory of the soul prevents our complete acquiescence in that account. The "Book of the Dead" recognizes the privilege of good souls to assume various shapes of animals and plants; it may "appear one day as a heron, another as a cockchafer, and yet another as a lotus-flower on the water;" it may display itself as the winged phœnix, as a goose, a swallow, a plover, a crane, or a viper. And the wicked soul, too, [|] the restless vagabond between heaven and earth, seeks a human body in which to pitch its tent, in order to torment it with sickness, and to harry it to bloodshed and madness. But when Herodotus goes on to speak of the regular course pursued by the soul of the dead, "through all departments of life, on land, in the sea, and in the air, till after the expiry of three thousand years it returns to a human body again," we note that he is exceeding his Egyptian text, at least as far as it has hithero been deciphered. (Gomperz 1901a: 126-127)
The interval also doesn't match; Pythagoras is said to "have declared that the reincarnations which befell him happened at interval of 216 years" (Dillon 1969: 275).
There is a far closer agreement between Pythagorism and the Indian doctrine, not merely in their general features, but even in certain details, such as vegetarianism; and it may be added that the formulæ which summarize the whole creed of the "circle and wheel" of births are likewise the same in both. It is almost impossible for us to refer this identity to mere chance. (Gomperz 1901a: 127)
Clearly the influence of Pythagoras und die Inder (Schroeder 1884) (cf. Keith 1909: 569).
The three gold tablets committed to the tombs of dead men during the fourth and third centuries B.C. in the neighbourhood of ancient Thurii - a district formerly hospitable to Pythagoreans - contain some illustrative references in this connection. "I escaped from the burdensome circle of lamentation" - this was the cry of hope raised byt he purified soul which had "fully atoned for its works of iniquity," and which approached "holy Persephone, Queen of the Shades," in the guise of "a suppliant for protection," proud to belong to the "blissful race" of that goddess and her peers in the under-world. They would send it "to the seats of the innocent," and would utter the redeeming word in its expectant ears - "a [|] god shalt thou be instead of a mortal." These series of verses are clearly the variant recensions of a common and an older text. They combine with several other fragments, partly belonging to the same age and to neighbouring localities, partly to the island of Crete and the later Roman epoch, to form the scanty remains of what we might conveniently call the Orphic "Book of the Dead." In them we can trace the journey of the soul in the underworld; their different recensions display an exact correspondence with one another as well as with the tablets of Thurii, and recent experience warrants the good hope that our information may presently be more complete. (Gomperz 1901a: 129-130)
Could "the seats of the innocent" be the very same islands of the blessed? Aside from becoming godlike oneself the themes are familiar enough from Christianity and Buddhism: this world is one of suffering, especially for misdeeds that haunt one's conscience, and must be atoned for.
Taking these assumptions, three elements are left as native to that doctrine. First, we have the melancholy view of life which depreciated earthly existence and the goods of this world; secondly, an assured confidence in the justice of the gods, who punished every misdeed and rewarded every merit; and, thirdly, the fixed belief in the divine nature and the divine origin of the soul. At present we have merely to note that pessimistic view of life which contrasted so grimly with the brilliant insouciance of the Homeric age. (Gomperz 1901a: 130)
The world is meant for suffering is that melancholy/pessimistic view of life, and that one's misdeeds must be atoned for is subsumed under the confidence in the justice of the gods.
Next, it is to be noted that the direction to the future life given to the belief in retribution would have gained most ground in pessimistic times and climes. (Gomperz 1901a: 131)
Define:clime - a region considered with reference to its climate.
And by the side of the precepts of civil morality common to all ethical codes we find traces there of a refinement of moral feeling in an uncommon and partly in a surprising degree. The following quotations will illustrate this point: -- "I have not oppressed the widow."
- "I have not withdrawn the milk from the mouth of the suckling."
- "I have not made the poor man poorer."
- "I have not made the journeyman work beyond his contracted time."
- "I was not negligent; I was not idle."
- "I have not traduced the slave to his employer."
- "I have not made any man's tears to flow."
Moreover, the ethical teaching which shines between the lines of this confession enjoined acts of positive benevolence as well as the avoidance of wrongdoing. (Gomperz 1901a: 134)
Not making the poor man poorer is an ethical dictum that is sorely missing from the Christian canon, what with their tithes and the pernicious gospel of prosperity.
In the course of our inquiry, we shall frequently have occasion to cross the path of Orphicism. We shall become acquainted with the fruits of its harvest, and mark the misgrowths that disfigured it. We shall see the influence that it exercised on Plato, and through him on posterity. And here we shall hardly fail to note that the psychical dualism which divided body and soul was [|] extended and expanded at this point to a real dualism between the world and the Deity. (Gomperz 1901a: 137-138)
Well now I know what to call it - this psychical dualism. Does the division of mental faculties into sensation, will, and cognition constitute a psychological triadism?
They pointed to the example of the particles of dust in [|] the sunlight. There they were provided with corpuscles which surround us on all sides, and which we inhale with every breath we draw, but which stand on the border-line of perceptibility, and are not visible till the sunlight falls on them. It is true, indeed, that the continuous vibration of those sensitive particles of dust, even when the air was apparently quite still, reminded the observer of the ceaseless motion which was ascribed to the soul, and thus assisted the identifying process; but even without this adventitious aid the theory was intelligible, and from its author's point of view was an eminently reasonable one. It was customary at that epoch to regard the soul, not as an immaterial being, but as one so finely composed of matter as to be invisible or hardly visible. Thus the question and its answer were alike completely justified. (Gomperz 1901a: 138-139)
Floating dust actually spiritual particles.
To this we reply that spectrum analysis has revealed to us growing worlds by the side of decaying worlds, so that various phases of development are simultaneously exhibited in different parts of the universe. (Gomperz 1901a: 146)
Permanent dynamic synchrony.
Many names have reached us of the earlier adherents of the school, but they are little more than names. The men and women they conceal - for women too took an eager part in the semi-religious movement inaugurated by Pythagoras - were united in a close community. Their loyalty to one another, the communistic solidarity of their interests, ande the altruistic friendship they displayed, are features as characteristic of the brotherhood as their earnest endeavour to moderate and control their passions. For the ideas of harmony and measure which prevailed in their philosophy were likewise the ideals of their life. (Gomperz 1901a: 147)
Hence the tedium of those scholars whose main effort is spent on elucidating who was and who wasn't a pythagorean in a large crowd of ancient names.
Alcmæon's chief work was accomplished in the fields of anatomy and physiology. His claim to immortality rests on the fact that he was the first to recognize the brain as the central organ of intellectual activity. A trustworthy tradition relates that he used the evidence of animal dissection, and his own references seem to support this account. By this means he discovered the chief nerves of sense, which he agrees with Aristotle in calling "conduits," or "canals," and traced them to their termination in the brain. Modern science reinforces the functional significance of such anatomical facts by observations taken during illnesses or lesions, and Alcmæon followed the same method. (Gomperz 1901a: 148)
The organ of thinking does not reside in the belly?
When we come to ask what led Alcmæon to attribute constant motion to the soul, we see that he could not have derived it from the uninterrupted psychical processes of ideation, emotion, and volition. (Gomperz 1901a: 150)
The modern psychological triad: (1) emotion; (2) volition; and (3) ideation.
2.1. XENOPHANES
The poor rhapsodist, who regarded a palatable meal as the fit reward for artistic fame, was the greatest and the most influential innovator of his age. This minstrel's calling was by no means remunerative, but it served to screen the perilous activity of the religious and philosophic missionary. (Gomperz 1901a: 155)
Philosophy does not make one rich but it may, with luck, feed you.
Oblivion has fallen on the epic poems that he wrote, describing in thousands of verses the foundation of piny Colophon, his mother-city, and the settlement in elea. But many a precious fragment remains of his didactic poem with its philosophic depth of thought, as well as of his fascinating elegies, pointing to so much genuine wit and genial warmth in their author, whom one cannot but love and honour as a man of fearless mind and unimpeachable intentions. (Gomperz 1901a: 156)
Only fragments of a poem extant appears to be a common theme among these philosophers. The case is very similar with Parmenides.
True, he poured the vials of his scorn over much that was dear to the heart of his people; the figures of the epic gods were especially reserved for his indignation on account of the example they supplied. Homer and Hesiod, he maintained, taught men no better lessons than "theft, adultery, and mutual deceit." (Gomperz 1901a: 156)
Even here I see a triad: (1) wealth can be stolen; (2) fame is a conduit to adultery; and (3) intellectual dishonesty and bad faith can run rampant.
In his view it was the height of absurdity to crown the victor in the boxing match or wrestling bout, in the foot-race or chariot-race, with the highest honours. And it seemed to increase the humiliating aspect of his own fortune in life when he saw the brilliant reception accorded by the mass of the people to the brute strength of the prize-fighter. "It is ill done," wrote Xenophanes, "to cherish the strength of the body higher than beneficent wisdom," and "better is our wisdom than the strength of horses and men." (Gomperz 1901a: 156)
On par with Pythagorean ethics: wisdom is mole valuable than wealth and strength.
The changeless rest of the Supreme Deity is justified on the ground that "it does not beseem him to wander hither and thither." It is a striking phrase but it obviously means nothing more than that the chief of the gods must not hurry officiously to and fro like an obsequious serving-man; he must cultivate the majestic inactivity of a king on his throne. (Gomperz 1901a: 159)
Define:beseem - to be fitting or becoming; to be suitable to: befit. This "majestic inactivity" is familiar enough from studies of nonverbal communication: the higher-status person is inactive, while the lower-status person stirs about.
He found impressions of fishes, and probably of seaweeds, in the younger Tertiary strata of the celebrated quarries of Syracuse, and he discovered all kinds of marine shells in the older Tertiary stratum of Malta. Hence he deduced certain changes which the surface of the earth had undergone in remote periods, and as an anticatastrophist, to follow Sir Charles Lyell's definition, he regarded these changes, not as the result of immense separate crises, but as the outcome of steady and imperceptibly minute processes gradually consummated to effects of colossal dimensions. (Gomperz 1901a: 162)
Phraseology that can be employed on linguistic change (permanent dynamic synchrony) as well.
2.2. PARMENIDES
He attacked physicians and litterati who represented the human body as composed of a single substance. Some declared this "All-in-one" to be air, others fire, and others again water, and each of them, according to Polybus, "supported his doctrine by evidence and proofs which in reality mean nothing." The truth of the assertion, declared its author, becomes as clear as daylight if one watches the dialectic tourneys devised for the entertainment of the public. For while he who is in possession of the truth makes it triumph always and everywhere, here victory falls to the chance possessor of the most persuasive tongue. And this memorable polemic concludes by saying, "So far as I can see, these people throw one another successfully by means of their speeches, and by their imprudence they help the thesis of Melissus on its legs." (Gomperz 1901a: 165)
Φ Rhetoric can help anyone win an argument, to paint white as black and vice versa.
The "thesis" of Melissus meant nothing else, to use his own words, than that "we neither see nor know what is." The brilliant world by which we are surrounded, and of which our senses bring us tidings, is a mere semblance and deception. All change, all motion, all growth, and all occurrences, everything that provides matter for natural science and speculation is a dream, a shadow, and nothing more. The one reality behind this phantasmagoric illusion is - what? (Gomperz 1901a: 166)
A tenet some, erroneously, associate with the name of Immanuel Kant.
The senior of Melissus was Parmenides, the veritable founder of the famous doctrine of unity. He was born at Elea as the son of prosperous and respected parents, whose position would naturally have entitled him to take part in political life. He is said to have drawn up a code of laws for Elea, and the well-authenticated reference which fixes his floruit in the 69th Olympiad (504-501 B.C.) may be taken as the date of some public act of this kind. (Gomperz 1901a: 166)
The doctrine of unity, I take it, is that being does not change, move, or grow.
The leaf which is full of sap and verdant to-day is sere and yellow to-morrow, and brown and shrivelled the day after. Where, then, are we to seize the Thing itself; how recognize and grasp its permanent element? (Gomperz 1901a: 168)
In that case the answer is simple: in the atoms of molecules which persist after the leaf has decomposed.
The truth is, his theory of Being prepared the way for the kindred conceptions of later ontologists without being identical with those theories. It was still of the earth earthy; it brings us to the forecourt, but not to the fane, of metaphysics. (Gomperz 1901a: 170)
Define:fane - a temple; a place consecrated to religion; a church.
Still, Parmenides was plainly quite honest in his conviction that he had expelled from his universe everything dependent on the perception of the senses. He erred in this conviction. He shared with Immanuel Kant, to mention but one out of many, his mistake of the sensuous origin of the idea of space, but he cannot fairly be blamed for it. It is more astonishing that, while he left space and its corporeal contents undisturbed, he dismissed to the limbo of appearance that movement in space which depends on the same evidence. (Gomperz 1901a: 176)
Recording this for that dubious future date when I've grasped Kant's philosophy.
We have watched the disappearance of all differences in sensuous objects and their various states; we have watched the vanishing of all changes of place from the universe which was not denied spatial extension and contents, and what, we may ask, is now left? Nothing but a bare uniform homogeneous mass, a lump of matter without form or contour, - nothing else would have been left to the mind of any one but a Greek, with his instinct for form and beauty, who was at once a poet and a disciple of Pythagoras. (Gomperz 1901a: 177)
A vague uncharted nebula!
As such his place would have been untenable within the Eleatic school between the pantheist Xenophanes and Melissus. As such Plato, the bitter enemy of materialists and atheists, would never have addressed him as "the great," and would never have rendered him a degree of homage which he withheld from the rest of his predecessors in philosophy. (Gomperz 1901a: 179)
Oh. No biggie.
His own expressions betray him, chiefly the Greek word δόξα, which we have to render by "opinion," but which really conveys several finer shades of meaning. It signifies the sense-perception - the thing that appears to men; and it signifies equally the idea, or view, or opinion - the thing that appears to men to be true. Thus Parmenides was precluded, by the habit of thought and speech prevailing in his times, from treating and approaching with any degree of confidence what we designate subjective or relative truth. (Gomperz 1901a: 181)
Mitte arvamus vaid näivus.
2.3. THE DISCIPLES OF PARMENIDES
MELISSUS is the enfant terrible of metaphysics. The childish clumsiness of his false conclusions betrays many a secret which the finer art of his successors was careful to preserve. In this way we may explain the strking change in their attitude towards him which constantly surprises us. At one time they shun his intimacy and deny their uncouth predecessor much in the same way as a man's family will turn his back on him in order to avoid disgrace. At another time they are delighted to find that their own views were shared by so early a representative of their school; they pat their awkward champion encouragingly on the back, and exert themselves to explain away the worst blemishes that sully the serviceable philosophy of Melissus. Thus the thinker is alternately called clumsy and clever, crude and creditable, and these epiteths succeed one another in pictorial succession from the times of Aristotle till the present day. (Gomperz 1901a: 184)
The duality of reception.
On the whole may call it a model and masterpiece of à priori reasoning which renounces every appeal to experience. (Gomperz 1901a: 187)
That which has no beginning nor end is infinite. Brilliant.
Unity was transformed without delay into uniformity and homogeneity. And these ideas were employed to draw conclusions touching the character of being, which were just as appropriate as if one said that a die ceases to be one as soon as all its six sides cease to display the same colour. But let us listen to Melissus in his own defence:"Thus," he declared, "being is everlasting, and infinite, and one, and wholly homogeneous. It is incapable of decay or increase, nor can it suffer a cosmic change. It is equally insensible to pain or grief, for if it could experience any of these, it would no longer be one."
These principles were defended by their author in detail, but we shall merely have occasion to draw attention to a few points. In the first place, we may note the argument which led to the denial of every change. Melissus maintained that a change of being, since it prevents its remaining homogeneous, would destroy what had been, and would bring what had not been into existence. (Gomperz 1901a: 188)
Φ: "Joonia mõtlemise küsimuseasetus [...] eeldab oleva terviku niisugust mõistmist, mille kohaselt viimast iseloomustab saamises, liikumises olemine. [...] Samuti implitseerib too küsimuseasetus arusaama, et vaatamata nähtuste tohutule mitmekesisusele, mida meie kogemus meile tõendab, kätkeb olev endas ühtsust."
The following reflection is calculated to excite our surprise: "If the Universe were to change in ten thousand years by as much as a hair's breadth, it would be destroyed in the course of all time." We are delighted here at the wide perspective which is in such striking contrast to the narrow horizon of older philosophers with their childish cosmogonic and mythological speculations. (Gomperz 1901a: 188)
Kui vana ja tähtsa tähendusega on "karvavõrra" (juuksekarva jagu) muutumine.
Numerical ideas, including the idea of unity, are known to us purely as relative; the tree is singular in relation to its fellows in the forest, but plural in relation to its branches; the branches are singular to one another, but plural to their leaves, and so forth. Now, if we agree to forget this, and to take our conception of unity in earnest, we shall be entering a path which will lead us to no minor goal than the complete "emptification," not merely of material existence, but of spiritual existence as well, inasmuch as our states of consciousness describe a temporal succession. At this point unity, dispossessed of all its contents, passed into naked nothingness. Later, we shall have to consider the history of a revolution of this kind, by which nihilism or the doctrine of nothingess proceeded from the Eleatic ontology or doctrine of being. (Gomperz 1901a: 191)
Good illustration of the interplay between unity and plurality.
Parmenides' doctrine of unity had set a peal of laughter ringing through the whole of Greece, and this outburst of mirth and ridicule, as noisy as that which less than two centuries ago greeted Bishop Berkeley's denial of matter, summoned Zeno to the lists. He was burning to retaliate, and he promptly seized his opportunity. He paid the scoffers, as Plato tells us, "with their own coin in full, and added something in the bargain." (Gomperz 1901a: 192)
"The dilemma, so far as there is one, is overcome by the good old method, that of recognizing facts. Achilles does in fact catch the tortoise." (Bentley 1941: 480)
He [Zeno] challenged them somewhat in this wise: "You laugh at us because we reject all movement as absurd and impossible; you rail at us for fools because we rail at the senses for liars; because we see in the plurality of objects nothing but idle delusion, therefore you throw stones at us. See to it that you are not yourselves living in a glass house!" (Gomperz 1901a: 212)
Wow, wouldn't have guessed that this old saying is that old.
Unity and plurality are not absolute conceptions, but purely relative. If I have an apple before me, it will depend entirely on my point of view, on the purpose by which I am directed, whether I regard it as a unity, as a part of a collection of apples, or as a plurality, as the aggregate of its constituent parts. Unity and plurality cannot be treated as absolutes. (Gomperz 1901a: 201)
"Suppose I want to explain to a unilingual Indian what Chesterfield is, and I point to a package of cigarettes. What can the Indian conclude? He doesn't know whether I mean this package in particular, or a package in general, one cigarette or many, a certain brand or cigarettes in general, or, still more generally, something to smoke, or, universally, any agreeable thing." (Jakobson 1971[1953d]: 566)
A proof of this progress is the clear distinction, hinted at in Xenophanes but now defined by Parmenides, between Knowledge and Belief - Reason and Opinion. The [|] distinction gains in importance if we recall the hopeless confusion of these elements in the contemporary teaching of the Pythagorean School. (Gomperz 1901a: 205-206)
Yeah, this distinction is mentioned very visibly on Xenophanes' Wikipedia page but Gomperz as if skipped over it. This is not the only instance - in many points it seems like his point is to pass judgement rather than to inform.
2.4. ANAXAGORAS
A loaf of bread lies before us. It is composed of vegetable matters, and helps to nourish our body. But the constituent parts of the human or animal body are multiple: it has skin, flesh, blood, veins, sinews, cartilages, bones, hair, etc. Each of these parts is distinguished from the rest by its light or dark hue, its softness or hardness, its elasticity or the contrary, and so forth. How, then, could it happen, Anaxagoras asked himself, that the uniformly constituted bread should produce this rich multiplicity of objects? A change of qualities was incredible, so that the sole remaining hypothesis was that the bread which nourishes us already contained the countless forms of matter, as such, which the human body displays. Their minuteness of size would withdraw them from our perception. (Gomperz 1901a: 211)
Does this only apply to bread, or are human features inherent in everything humans may put in their mouth?
It was the Nous which was supposed to have given that first shock, and we prefer to leave this word in the original Greek, since every translation, whether we render it by "mind" or by "thought-element," introduces something foreign to its nature. According to Anaxagoras' own account, it was "the finest and purest of all things;" it was "alone free from admixture with any other thing, for had it been so mixed it would have participated with all other things" - it will be remembered that the segregation of elements was incomplete - "and its admixture would have prevented it from exercising the same force over any single object" as its pure condition enables it to do. (Gomperz 1901a: 215)
νοῦς - mind, reason, understanding.
He was not merely half a theologian, but he was a full-grown natural philosopher as well, though his endowment was extremely one-sided. To his own contemporaries he appeared a very type of that kind, the more so as the new theology, by which the Nous doctrine may be described, had completely released him from the old mythological fetters. The great objects of nature were no longer divine in his eyes: they were masses of matter, obedient to the same natural laws as all other material aggregates whether great or small. It was a constant topic of adverse criticism among his own contemporaries that he looked on the sun, for instance, no longer as Helios the god, but as nothing more or less than "an ignited stone." (Gomperz 1901a: 217)
This theology of the Nous is what I'd like to read more about. So many subjects to dive into after this book!
In other respects, too, Anaxagoras did not recognize any impassable gulf between the animal and the vegetable creations. Plants were supposed to participate at least in feelings of pleasure and pain, the pleasure being the accomplishment of the growth of trees, and pain of the loss of their leaves. (Gomperz 1901a: 222)
Floral sympathy.
In intellectual endowment he recognized only differences of degree, and his Nous was located by him in all animals without exception, the great and the small, the high and the low, with no other difference except that of quantity. (Gomperz 1901a: 222)
"The microscopist looks to see whether the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there" (CP 1.269; in Nöth 1998: 338).
There is, therefore, not one primary matter, or a few of them, but absolutely countless primary matters. Or, more precisely stated, nothing was left but the distinction between homogeneous accumulations (homoiomeries) and heterogeneous mixtures, thus involving the disappearance of that between original and derivative forms of matter. (Gomperz 1901a: 223)
Define:homoiomerous - Uniform in structure; composed of units (e.g. cells) all of the same type.
2.5. EMPEDOCLES
The physician, the hierophant, the orator, the politician, the author of works for the common good, whatever their secondary tastes, are united by their prime interest in man. We shall therefore expect to find that [|] Empedocles the philosopher was an anthropologist as well as a cosmologist, and that his investigation of nature led him to the regions of physiology, chemistry, and physics, rather than to those of astronomy and mathematics. (Gomperz 1901a: 229-230)
This might prove interesting. More so, at least, than paradoxes of space and movements of planets and stars.
The value of a doctrine in the history of science is not always commensurate with its degree of objective truth. A theory may be wholly true, and yet the unpreparedness of human understanding may make it useless and abortive, whereas a second theory, though wholly untrue, may render abundant service to the progress of knowledge precisely on account of that stage of intellectual development. In the age with which we are dealing, and far beyond its confines, the doctrine of a single primary matter belongs to the first-named category of ineffectual theories; in the same era and in those immediately succeeding to it the doctrine of the four elements belongs to the second of our categories. (Gomperz 1901a: 232)
Similar discussion by Vihalemm (1981: 6).
Finally, Empedocles, following in the footsteps of Anaximander, Heraclitus, and at least a proportion of the Pythagoreans, and regarding all phenomena as cyclical in character, would not have considered the succession of these two epochs of the world as having taken place once for all, but as a constantly recurring alternation of such periods. This, in fact, was his teaching, and he selected as its vehicles a couple of forces, working in consecutive epochs of temporary superiority. These powers dominated matter under the names of "Friendship" and "Discord." It was the part of the first to combine and unite substances of different natures, whereas Discord, as soon as its turn arrived, broke those bonds of union and left the elements free to obey their natural tendency of like to like. (Gomperz 1901a: 239)
Love and respect. A familiar phrase - "bonds of union".
An immense sphere contains the elements, which are molten and mingled in indiscriminate chaos. (Gomperz 1901a: 240)
Alliteration. Like "time and clime".
Furthermore, the sun was not conceived as shining by its own light, but as a kind of glass-like body absorbing and reflecting the light of ether. In this doctrine Empedocles may have given a lead to the younger Pythagoreans. He agreed with Anaxagoras in supposing that the light of the moon was borrowed from the sun, and, further, in his correct explanation of the eclipses of the two luminaries. (Gomperz 1901a: 243)
The glassy essence of the sun. The image calls out to write a fictional piece in which a crew is sent to clean the surface of the sun with squeegees.
First of all, single limbs were supposed to have sprung from the earth - "heads," for instance, "without neck and trunk," "arms without shoulders," and "eyes without a face." Some of these fragmentary creatures were bound together by Friendship, others were driven to and fro in a solitary condition, unable to effect a landing and gain a [|] foothold on the "shore of life." Whenever such combinations took place, all kinds of monsters would be created, "double-headed and double-breasted beings," "human forms with heads of bulls," "bodies of bulls with human heads," and so forth. These grotesque shapes disappeared as quickly as the original separate limbs, and only such combinations as exhibited an inner harmony evinced themselves as fit for life, maintained a permanent place, and finally multiplied by procreation. (Gomperz 1901a: 243-244)
What gore! Fully developed limbs springing out earth.
The child in Empedocles must answer for the fantastic attempts to explain the deepest secrets of procreation - the birth of male or female offspring, their resemblance to the father or the mother, the production of twins or triplets, the shocks sustained by pregnant women and their supposed relation to birthmarks, the origin of monstrosities, and the sterility of mules. (Gomperz 1901a: 244)
This theory of the origin of birthmarks still circulated in my youth.
The conjecture is justified by the facts. Empedocles did not merely follow Anaxagoras in ascribing sensibility to plants, but he taught that, without exception, "everything possesses the power of thought and a share in understanding." (Gomperz 1901a: 245)
This needs but little qualification: everything living, and "thought" reduced to sensibility.
The author of a new theory, in our opinion, is commonly fully aware of the innovation he is making, and of its contrast with older doctrines; he tends rather to emphasize those features than to weaken and destroy their force by clothing them [|] in antiquated forms. (Gomperz 1901a: 245-246)
The innovator is not only aware of tradition but makes an effort to draw out the contrast.
The psyche of Homer played precisely the same idle part in the existence of man on earth as the "soul-demon" in Empedocles. The fact may arouse our surprise, but it is beyond dispute. Psyche's sole raison d'être would appear to be her separation from the body at death and her survival in the underworld. Not a single instance can be quoted in which she appears as the agent of human thought, will, or emotion. We may go further than this. Those functions, so far from being performed by the Homeric psyche, actually belonged to a being of quite a different formation - to a perishable being which dissolved in air at the death of animals and men. To what extent it is even legitimate to speak of a two-soul theory in Homer, and this second mortal soul went by the name of Thymos. The word is identical with the Latin fumus, or smoke, with the Sanskrit dhumas, the Old Slavonic dymu, and so forth. We were ignorant of the nature of this smoke-soul till it was illustrated by a remark of Alfred von Kremer, who in the course of his inquiries into Oriental peoples and civilizations, stated that "the steam ascending from the warm and freshly-shed blood" was regarded as the psychic agent. The smoke-soul is older in origin than the exclusively Greek psyche. (Gomperz 1901a: 249)
This I have to investigate further. Chase gives θυμός as "Passion", i.e. the first element in Pythagoras' triad (cf. 1863: 469).
Except in a single instance, no details are forthcoming anent these secondary gods, but in some memorable verses about Apollo, Empedocles describes him as not possessed of human limbs, and calls him "a spiritual being (Phres), holy, ineffable, hastening [|] with swift thoughts through the world." (Gomperz 1901a: 252-253)
This Phren (φρήν) Chase gave as "Intelligence" (ibid, 469). Define:anent - about, concerning, in regard to, lying against or alongside. (Evidently "anent" is archaic Schottish.)
2.6. THE HISTORIANS
One experience that occurred to Hecatæus may be related here as typical of the impressions which he and his like had frequently to derive from their contact with older civilizations. He was talking to the priests in Egyptian Thebes, and he had shown them, doubtless with a certain complacency, his genealogical tree, which began with a divine ancestor separated from Hecatæus only by fifteen generations. Thereupon the priests led him into a hall where the statues of the high priests of Thebes were placed. They numbered no less than three hundred and forty-five, and Hecatæus was assured by his close-shaven guides that each of the statues had been erected during the lifetime of its original, that the priestly dignity was hereditary, and that the high office had descended uninterruptedly throughout the series before him from father to son; that all its incumbents had been mortal men, and not one of them a god or even a demigod; and they added for his information that at an earlier date there had been gods on earth, but that from the time of the first high priest downwards history had been the history of mankind alone, fully authenticated by documentary evidence. (Gomperz 1901a: 257)
This reads like a scene out of one of the first episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Specifically the long line of statues of previous Avatars in the air temple sanctuary.
This plump invention, due to the arrogance of the Egyptians, aroused in Herodotus a transient emotion of scepticism which found vent in the question "how they knew this for a certainty," but he presently accepted it as a fact, for the consentaneity of the whole thing was so complete. (Gomperz 1901a: 261)
Define:consentaneity - Manifesting agreement; accordant. Unanimous. From Latin cōnsentāneus, from cōnsentīre, to agree; see consent.
The outcome of the scepticism of Herodotus was probably chiefly his conviction that human knowledge at the best is but a poor standard by which to measure divine things, and that, looking at these through the descriptions of the poets, we see them through a glass darkly. (Gomperz 1901a: 265)
A biblical phrase that has its own Wikipedia section. The "glass" was originally a polished stone, i.e. a speculum, meaning that it was intended to involve mirror reflections.
3.1. THE PHYSICIANS
In all these triumphs of the intellect our humble acknowledgment is due to the founders of science in Greece. The threads that bind antiquity with modern times lie open to view, and our present inquiry will have to take them in account. (Gomperz 1901a: 275)
I'm currently considering writing my essay for the history of science course about ancient psychology, i.e. try to trace the emotion, volition, cognition triad to its ancient Greek roots, which may not be the Pythagorean one I have taken for granted via Pliny Earl Chase.
To explain the supremacy of the last-named, we may recall a saying of Herodotus, who ascribed the good luck of Hellas tot he fact that she "enjoys by far the best-tempered climate." Here, as elsewhere, the secret of success lay in the combination and inter-communion of opposites. (Gomperz 1901a: 276)
Odd use of the word "communion". Opposites participate in each other?
Besides the formulæ of spells, amulets, and symbolic acts, herbs and salves had also their uses, and it might happen that one and the same means of healing would be applied to quite different cases. (Gomperz 1901a: 278)
Significant gestures.
In this way the plant eye-bright was prescribed as a cure for diseases of the eye, because a black speck which is contained in the flower suggested the idea of the pupil. Similarly, the red colour of the blood-stone, or hæmatite, formed its pretended qualification to stop a hæmorrhage. An Egyptian belief maintained that the blood of black animals could prevent the whitening of the hair, and modern Styria reproduces the ancient Indian doctrine that jaundice may be expelled into yellow birds. (Gomperz 1901a: 278)
This was treated by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things. Medieval Europe, too, believed that god had planted iconic signs like this in natural remedies.
As superstition grew old it preferred to cover its nakedness with more and more meretricious finery; it glittered with foreign authorities, such as the physicians of Thrace, the Getic and Hyperborean miracle-mongers Zalmoxis and Abaris, and the magicians of Persia, till the overflowing stream of Chaldean and Egyptian pseudo-science swept up these rags and tags of superstition and bore them down on its flood. (Gomperz 1901a: 283)
Zalmoxis and Abaris are already all too familiar figures associated with Pythagoras. Define:meretricious - of or relating to a prostitute: having the nature of prostitution meretricious relationships; tawdrily and falsely attractive the paradise they found was a piece of meretricious trash. I take it as an antonym of meritorious.
Without soaring aspiration and without daring deed there is no science, no knowledge of nature. The conquest of a new region of knowledge resembles in many respects the occupation of virgin territory. First come the road-makers, who unite a number of isolated points; then come the bridge-makers, who span many a yawning chasm; and ast come the temporary shelters, which must ultimately be replaced by statelier buildings on deeper foundations and composed of more durable materials. (Gomperz 1901a: 295)
The colonization of areas of knowledge.
With a deep sense of the dignity of his calling, and with a keen appreciation of its significance for the welfare and prosperity of mankind, he refused to be indifferent to a movement which tended to degrade its worth, to annual the distinction between good physicians and bad, and - what was most important - to undermine the structure of the science itself. His attack was not directed at isolated details in the system of his adversaries; he went to the root of the evil. (Gomperz 1901a: 297)
Radical!
The highest praise was due to that physician who committed merely trivial blunders; the majority were like those steersmen who repeatedly err with impunity in a quiet sea and under a cloudless sky, but whose mistakes are fraught with fatal consequences if a storm arise. (Gomperz 1901a: 299)
This reminds me of an insightful quip about the Trump administration, which thrived in self-created crises (i.e. Trump tweeting something extremely stupid) but fell apart the moment some extraneous crisis (coronavirus) emerged.
The pioneer virtues which distinguished the Coic masters from their opponents were a self-abnegation, and a timely renunciation of ambitions, fascinating enough and even exalted in themselves, but at that era and long afterwards out of reach, and these virtues entitle them to our ungrudging admiration at this day. (Gomperz 1901a: 309)
Ambition pertains, after all, to externals.
Their humoural pathology, for instance, which is the hall-mark of the Hippocratic school, and which referred all internal diseases to the constitution and proportion of the four presumable cardinal humours, possesses, in the judgment of modern science, not a jot more truth than the anthropogony of the book "On Muscles" or the fictitious theory of matter which was combated in the treatise "On Old Medicine." (Gomperz 1901a: 310)
Humorism. Another theory that finds its source in pythagorean quarters - from Alcmaeon of Croton. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
He displayed a genuine spirit of research in his endeavour to strengthen the doctrien which he was combating by fresh and weighty arguments, as when he wrote in one place, "my opponent's view will be assisted by the following consideration." No less sturdy and incorruptible was the instinct for the truth evinced by the author of the work "On the Joints," which Littré characterized as "the great surgical monument of antiquity and a model for all future ages." The writer, a physician of noble mind and lofty thought, did not shrink from recording his own failures for the information of his fellow-investigators. In the immortal language in which one such passage was composed, we read, "I have written this down deliberately, for it is valuable to learn of unsuccessful experiments, and to know the causes of their non-success." (Gomperz 1901a: 314)
This I've heard about J. L. Austin's How to do things with words, that it is a record of his failures increasingly approximating something satisfactory. Still haven't read it yet, though.
3.2. THE ATOMISTS
The emphasis that was laid here on the mere scope of his culture and achievements is in full accord with our conception of the man in whom we recognize less of the initiative faculty of invention than of the erudition that continues and expands it. Nor should we be repelled by the boastful tone that is taken. Lessing said, with a very slight exaggeration, that "politeness was a thing unknown to the ancients," and his saying might be transferred to modesty with even better right. (Gomperz 1901a: 318)
Originality (the initiative of invention) is a power (faculty).
We left that problem in a parlous condition in the hands of Anaxagoras, and have lost sight of it since then. (Gomperz 1901a: 319)
Perilous.
The alternative left was between one or very few elements of desultorily changing qualities and numberless primary substances foreign to one another and with no kind of bond of relationship, nor was there any other choice. (Gomperz 1901a: 319)
Suhtesidemed.
"According to convention," he [Democritus] said, "there are a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention there is colour. In truth there are atoms and a void." (Gomperz 1901a: 320)
Powerful stuff.
We pass from individual atoms to atomic groups. These were regarded by Democritus as combinations or concatenations, in the literal sense of that word. Their contact in his eyes was the result of their being linked or "hooked" together, and the infinite variety of shapes which the atoms possessed in the theory of Democritus helped him to account for such processes. He drew instructive distinctions between the gregarious capacities of his atoms. Some were unsociable particles, affording no handle for combination except by enclosing them in a shell; others were supplied with hooks and eyes, with balls and sockets, wiht involuted edges, with mortice and dovetail, or with some other of the countless means of rendering them attachable, some at once and others at two points. (Gomperz 1901a: 334)
Before the "sympathy" between chemical elements there was "sociability" between them.
But by an accident of vision we are not directly aware of the circumgyration by which we and our planet and all that it contains are borne through space. And another accident of vision withdraws from our limited senses the unceasing circulation of the particles of matter. (Gomperz 1901a: 343)
Hence why a conspiracy theorist nutjob like Hando Tõnumaa can hold that the Earth is flat and carbon does not exist. Both phenomena inhabit magnitudes inaccessible to everyday observation.
Instead of theology we should blame metaphysics, which has so frequently fanned and flattered the prejudices of mankind. (Gomperz 1901a: 344)
Alliteration. See "times and climes".
At the same time, he [Democritus] is said to have admitted the divinity of the stars, doubtless on account of their fiery nature, in accordance, that is to say, with his doctrine that they were composed of soul-atoms, and he shared the belief of Empedocles in supernatural Beings of long though not of unlimited life. (Gomperz 1901a: 355)
The islands of the blessed are on fire.
Either he must have failed to notice that this incessant shedding of thin atomic layers or membranes (called by him "idols" or images) must in course of time have brought about a considerable diminution in the substantial bulk of bodies, or else he must have met this objection by a reference to the perishableness of all objects of sense. (Gomperz 1901a: 358)
Etymologically, "idol" comes from the same eidōlon as "idea".
Nay, even when they reached the processes of organic life, they did not attempt to strike out a new path of elucidation. On both charges alike they incurred the reproach of Aristotle. In his eyes the assumption that the order and beauty of the universe were of spontaneous growth was just as inadequate as the second assumption, that the adaptation of means to ends in the structure of animals and plants had occurred without the control of an immanent principle of purpose, or, to use the word coined by Karl Ernst von Baer and precisely corresponding to Aristotle's meaning, had been developed without Zielstreibigkeit or "spontaneous teleology." (Gomperz 1901a: 364)
I wonder what the deal is: von Baer is seemingly the only contemporary Gomperz mentions. The only connection I can find online is that both were members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and for some reason that list is only available in the Spanish Wikipedia. Funnily enough, A. H. Gardiner was also a member.
Here, we venture to believe, is the key to the ethics of Democritus. Posterity has characterized the sage as "the laughing philosopher," because he saw the disproportion of the business of man with his actual place and meaning. (Gomperz 1901a: 368)
The overview effect that accompanies pondering upon how all of human history has taken place on an insignificant pale blue dot.
If treated of the tranquility of the soul, of its εύθυμία, or "cheerfulness," and it was remarkable for the modesty of the goal which it set before human endeavour. Not bliss, not happiness, was the end to be attained, but a state of bare "well-being," of a soul's peace undistracted alike by superstitious fears as by overmastering passions, of a "composure" or equanimity similar to the "smooth mirror" of the stormless sea. The treatise opened with a description of the miserable condition of the majority of mankind, ever unquiet, ever impelled on a vain search for happiness, now seizing one thing and now another, without obtaining permanent satisfaction. The immoderateness of human desires, the neglect of the narrow limits by which mortal happiness is confined, the disturbances wrought by superstition on man's peace of mind, - these, it would seem, were the chief sources of unhappiness, as characterized by Democritus. (Gomperz 1901a: 368)
"Euthymia is defined as a normal, tranquil mental state or mood." (Wiki) That desires are inherently immoderate is reportedly a common theme in platonism.
3.3. THE ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHERS OF NATURE
In a previous chapter we have made the acquaintance of Hippasus of Metapontum, an eclectic philosopher of this kind, who sought to reconcile the teaching of Heraclitus with that of Pythagoras, and we shall presently have to consider other representatives of that movement. (Gomperz 1901a: 371)
Hippasus was the bloke who supposedly drowned at sea for discovering irrational numbers: "Pythagoreans preached that all numbers could be expressed as the ratio of integers, and the discovery of irrational numbers is said to have shocked them."
All the roads of investigation which his predecessors had trodden led him to his principle of air, and the secret of the success he attained lay in his combination of versatility and one-sidedness, of indiscriminate eclecticism united with an obstinate consistency. There were many mansions in the house of this eclectic system. It contained the mechanical theory of the universe, the teleological view of nature, material monism, and the rule of an intelligent principle in matter. (Gomperz 1901a: 374)
This bicycle contains many cars.
Man's higher intelligence, in the opinion of this thinker, was the boon of his upright gait. He breathed a purer air than the four-legged animals who walked with their heads bowed earthwards; and this view, that they inhaled an air tainted by the moistures of the soil, was applied by Diogenes in a lesser degree to children also with their smaller stature. (Gomperz 1901a: 376)
Giraffes, if they existed, would be the most intelligent animal on Earth.
Thus Theophrastus, in his brilliant critical review of the psychology of Diogenes, exclaimed that the birds should surpass us in understanding, if it be true that the purity of the air we breathe is the measure of the excellence and refinement of our reason. Why, he asked, should not our whole thought be changed with every change of residence according as we breathe the air of the mountains or the marshes? (Gomperz 1901a: 376)
Evidently the stuff of his play "The Clouds".
3.4. THE BEGINNINGS OF MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE
And whether the sceptre wielded byt he democrats was moderate or unlimited, the chief instrument of government in practically the whole of Greece was the power of the tongue. More than this. It was not merely in the council-chamber and the popular assembly that the efficacy of speech was supreme. In the law courts too, where hundreds of jurymen would sometimes be sitting together, words were the universal weapons, the clever manipulation of which was more than half the battle. The gift and faculty of speech were the sole road to honour and power. (Gomperz 1901a: 382)
The role of speech (and rhetoric/oratory) in the public life of the Greek polis and nations that emulated it.
We think we discern a pedantic note in these utterances, a hint of the schoolmaster's exaggerated reverence for what is founded on reflection, reduced to rule, and teachable by precept. (Gomperz 1901a: 390)
Thirdness.
We are reminded of the Frenchman who maintained that his mother-tongue was constructed more naturally than English, because in English pain is called "bread," whereas in French it is called pain and it is pain. (Gomperz 1901a: 395)
Don't either of them know that the true name of bread is leib?
The name of Democritus is mentioned as the author, or at least as the earliest champion, of this counter-theory. At the same time we are made acquainted with the outline of the arguments which he marshalled against the doctrine of the natural origin of language. The sage of Abdera referred to the plurality of meanings borne by certain words (homonymy), and to the plurality of words used to designate certain objects (polyonymy). Further, he was struck by the occasional phenomenon of a change of appellations, and lastly by the "anonymity" of certain objects or ideas. (Gomperz 1901a: 396)
This is familiar from Locke on the part of his essay dealing with the abuses of language, as from Robert Boyle: "I find that even Eminent Writers [...] do so abuse the termes they employ, that as they will now and then give diverse things, one name; and some of them (perhaps) such as do much more properly signifie some Distinct Body of another kind" (in Golinski 1990: 385).
A single example will suffice to help us to realize the conceptions of the natural and the conventional element in speech. The original Indo-European language possessed a root pu, which carried with it the meaning of "to cleanse." Presuming, as is extremely probable, that this is a genuine original root and not derivative, we may be permitted to speculate on the manner in which this little syllable reached its fundamental significance. If we employ the mouth itself, the organ of speech, to perform an act of cleansing, this is done by blowing away the particles of dust, straw, etc., which cover and pollute any superficial plane. If we do this energetically by a determined narrowing of our protruded lips, we produce sounds like p, pf, or pu. In this way thel ast-named sound might at least have obtained its primitive significance. Presuming our conjecture to be correct, a definite position and movement of the organs of speech formed in this instance, as doubtless in countless others, the bond between sound and meaning. (Gomperz 1901a: 399)
Sound symbolism. Estonian is not an Indo-European language but our ancestors may have borrowed from such, as Estonian has both puhas (clean) and puhuma (to blow).
The antithesis between law and nature was foreign to all epochs in which the spirit of criticism was still in a rudimentary stage. Wherever authority and tradition reigned in undisputed supremacy, the extant rules of life were accepted as the only natural laws, or, more exactly stated, their relation to nature was outside the region of doubt or even of discussion. This is the attitude of the Mohammedan of to-day, who walks among us like a living fossil, clothed in the impassivity of that early era of thought, and invoking the revelation of Allah, as manifested in the Koran, as the supreme authority beyond the reach of appeal in all questions of religion, law, ethics, and politics. (Gomperz 1901a: 402)
A familiar theme. Long ago I read somewhere that this situation was and continues to be particularly unfortunate for women in the Islamic world, as Mohammed came and canonised the situation as natural right when a women's lives were more restricted than before there and elsewhere later on.
History and ethnology had widened the study of the moral and political conditions of various tribes, nations, and epochs, and hence was derived a keener perception of the Protean multiformity of human customs and laws. (Gomperz 1901a: 403)
"Protean multiformity" can also apply on language. In contrast with the Babylon myth our species have probably spoken a nearly endless variety of languages all around, e.g. the ~3000 languages that were found in Australia upon its discovery.
Hippodamus of Miletus, again, whose acquaintance our readers have already made, and [|] who was slightly senior to Phaleas, recommended a complete transformation of the internal constitution of states as well as of the external arrangement of cities. His ideal polity comprised three classes, in the respective spheres of industry, agriculture, and war. Of his three divisions of thel and one-third only was to be private property; another third was to be devoted to the purposes of divine worship, and the remainder to military supply. All the public officials were to be elected by the suffrages of the total community of 10,000 men. The magic number three was also efficacious in Hippodamus' division of the criminal code into three sections, applied respectively to offences against life, honour, and property. The administrative work of government similarly fell in three categories, dealing respectively with the citizens, the orphans, and the foreigners. (Gomperz 1901a: 409-410)
Another triadic division of society, to compare with Pythagorean and Platonic ones. "According to Aristotle, Hippodamus was the first author who wrote upon the theory of government, without any knowledge of practical affairs" (Wiki).
3.5. THE SOPHISTS
In various apartments of the interior of the house other sophists were holding their court, each surrounded by a bevy of admirers like the belle of a ball. And now Socrates preferred his request in an ordinary conversational tone, and the rhetorician replied in measured language, with a long set speech delivered with impressive ceremony. A philosophic discussion sprang up between the two, and the rest of the company, hurriedly collecting all the benches and seats in the house, sat down to the feast of ear and mind. (Gomperz 1901a: 415)
(1) Set speech, like "set phrases", fabricated beforehand for ready use afterwards; (2) "feast of ear and mind" called by Mahaffy and Kant an "intellectual feast".
But the debt is forgotten before it is paid; the debtor reverts to the old familiar usage, and speaks of the sophists once more as if they were really mere intellectual acrobats, unscrupulous tormentors of language, or the authors of pernicious teachings. (Gomperz 1901a: 422)
Ajuakrobaadid, keeleväänajad.
At another time, anticipating Epicurus, he [Prodicus] sought to arm his disciples against the horrors of death by explaining that death concerned neither the living nor the dead. As long as we live, death does not exist; as soon as we die, we ourselves exist no longer. (Gomperz 1901a: 428)
φ - We have just reached the Epicureans in our introductory course in philosophy: "[...] surma korral ei saa inimene tunda mingeid kannatusi. Järelikult pole mingit põhjust surma karta: kui oleme meie, pole surma; kui on surm, pole meid - surmal pole meiega mingit kokkupuutumist."
The Hippias of that prologue is a wholly unpretentious compiler, whose aim it was to select the most important information from the narratives of poets and prosewriters, whether Greek or barbarian, and to arrange them in homogeneous groups, without advancing any other claim whatsoever to originality or versatility as an historian. His work, destined as it was for entertainment rather than for instruction, afforded but a slight handle for critical acumen. (Gomperz 1901a: 432)
Nearly analogous to what I'm up to in this here blog.
Further, we may remark as a proof of the above-mentioned leanings to cosmopolitanism, that Hippias the sophist employed non-Hellenic sources of history and devoted himself to the annals of barbarian tribes with equal impartiality. His life's ideal, which he shared with the Cynics whom he had influenced, was "self-sufficiency" (αύτάρκεια). Unluckily, we possess no remains of his ethical discourses. (Gomperz 1901a: 433)
Φ - "Kosmos ei saanud demiurgos'lt neid organeid just selle tõttu, et ta loodi eneseküllasena, autarkes. [...] Autarkeia oli üks peamisi mõisteid, mille kaudu kreeklased defineerisid seda, mida nad mõistsid vabaduse all [...] Mõistus on inimese kõige autarksem hingejagu - tema jaoks on kõik vajalik temas endas."
But the chief of all his [Antiphon's] writings was a treatise "On Concord." It was renowned in antiquity for its rich style, for the even flow of its diction, and for the extraordinary wealth of its ideas - virtues which can still be traced in its new fragmentary remains. It was a work of practical philosophy, in which self-seeking, and weak will, and the sluggishness which looks on life as though it were a game of chess that could be renewed after a defeat, and anarchy - "the worst of human evils" - were mercilessly flagellated, while the self-control that is produced by a thorough knowledge of the appetite, and, above all, the power of education, were warmly praised and brilliantly delineated. (Gomperz 1901a: 435)
(1) self-seeking; (2) weak will and sluggishness; and (3) knowledge and education.
It was a sheer impossibility for the sophists, dependent as they were on wide orders of the public, to promulgate anti-social doctrines. They were far more liable to the danger of preaching, if we may so express ourselves, doctrines of a hyper-social tendency, and of subjecting the individual to the tyranny of public opinion in perhaps too high a degree, or, not to exaggerate their influence, of becoming at least the mouthpiece of opinions of that kind. (Gomperz 1901a: 436)
Makes sense. I'll have to keep this in mind when I read more (from other authors) about the sophists.
3.6. PROTAGORAS OF ABDERA
Protagoras was the first to distinguish the several tenses of the verb and the moods of predication. These last he entitled the "stems" of speech, with wishes, questions, answers, and commands as their several branches, and those four kinds of clauses were expressed [|] in his opinion by the four moods of the verb which we call optative, conjunctive, indicative, and imperative. In one instance - the conjunctive - it must be admitted, however, that the identification was not established without a certain amount of violence. (Gomperz 1901a: 442-443)
Wishes and questions being "emotive" in Jakobson's sense, that is, proceeding from the addresser; commands being "conative" because oriented towards the addressee, whereas "answers" have no place in his scheme.
The "man" it speaks of is not this or that specimen of the genus, not any individual Tom, Dick, or Harry, but universal man. The sentence has a generic and not an individual significance. (Gomperz 1901a: 453)
A phraseologism with its own Wikipedia page.
Now, this means neither more nor less than that, to use expressions employed by John Stuart Mill, "There exist no real things exactly conformable to the definitions. There exist no points without magnitude; no lines without breadth, nor perfectly straight; no circles with all their radii exactly equal," etc. On this point, however, there never was any conflict of opinion between the adherents of the most diverse schools. (Gomperz 1901a: 455)
The chasm between the real and the ideal.
3.7. GORGIAS OF LEONTINI
We may well speak of excrescences in this connection, for the history of every new method of style - and the phenomenon is not confined to the arts of speech - may be traced through three stages. It begins with its vigorous employment by those who invented it or who reintroduced it; but in that stage the vigour is not excessive, and, moreover, it is mitigated by the fertility of the thoughts to be expressed. Next comes its exaggerated abuse on the part of imitators, in whose clumsier hands the manner becomes a mannerism. Finally, the circle of available methods of art is widened to receive the new aid, which is now employed in due proportion and in appropriate circumstances. (Gomperz 1901a: 479)
Not exactly the dynamics between center and periphery, in which there is a continual overthrowing of styles rather than a perfection of any given style.
The third thesis ran as follows. The knowledge of the Being, even if it existed and were cognizable, would not be communicable. The proof of this was to the effect that, the means of communication being language, it was impossible to convey through words anything else but words. Language and other symbols, not being of the same nature as the thing they symbolize, can only communicate symbols. How, for instance, can the sense of colour be communicated? "The ear is as incapable of perceiving colours as the sight of knowing sounds." And if the person wishing to communicate a colour were to show another person the object which aroused the colour-impression in himself, he would still have no solid ground for assuming that the second impression would precisely resemble his own. (Gomperz 1901a: 486)
The problem of identity, now applied on colour. The view of language given here does not appear to take into account that symbols representing something other than themselves - meaning, information.
Nevertheless, the relation between the sensible world and the "Being" of Parmenides and Melissus is completely analogous to that which obtains between the phenomenon and the Noumenon or "thing in itself" of Kant. In making this admission, however, we must be careful to note that the "Being" had not yet lost every trace of its empiric origin, that it was still chiefly conceived as extended in spcae. It is true that the surviving fragments of Gorgias and of his authorities will be searched in vain for a single expression bringing this contrast into sharp relief. (Gomperz 1901a: 488)
Exactly what I thought.
3.8. THE ADVANCE OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE
The prince of encyclopædists, Democritus himself, who had discussed the beginnings of poetry in his works on the composition and language [|] of Homer, was occupied in other treatises with the beginnings of music, and he was the first to utter the thought, elaborated at a later date by Plato and Aristotle, that leisure and a certain amount of material prosperity are the most favourable soil for the production of art and science. (Gomperz 1901a: 497-498)
The list of his works itself is impressive.
The topic then under discussion was the penalty to be meted out to the Lesbian rebels, and Diodotus drew an incomparable picture of the irresistible force of passion and of its subversive influence on the evildoer's judgment. (Gomperz 1901a: 515)
I need to grow up.
