A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  There is a similarity to Heraclitus, but a softening, since it is not Strife alone, but Strife and Love together, that produce change. Plato couples Heraclitus and Empedocles in the Sophist (242):

  There are Ionian, and in more recent time Sicilian, muses, who have arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles (of the One and the Many), is safer, and to say that being is one and many, and that these are held together by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, as the severer Muses assert, while the gentler ones do not insist on the perpetual strife and peace, but admit a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity sometimes prevailing under the sway of Aphrodite, and then again plurality and war, by reason of a principle of strife.

  Empedocles held that the material world is a sphere; that in the Golden Age Strife was outside and Love inside; then, gradually. Strife entered and Love was expelled, until, at the worst, Strife will be wholly within and Love wholly without the sphere. Then—though for what reason is not clear—an opposite movement begins, until the Golden Age returns, but not for ever. The whole cycle is then repeated. One might have supposed that either extreme could be stable, but that is not the view of Empedocles. He wished to explain motion while taking account of the arguments of Parmenides, and he had no wish to arrive, at any stage, at an unchanging universe.

  The views of Empedocles on religion are, in the main, Pythagorean. In a fragment which, in all likelihood, refers to Pythagoras, he says: “There was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, yea twenty lifetimes of men.” In the Golden Age, as already mentioned, men worshipped only Aphrodite, “and the altar did not reek with pure bull’s blood, but this was held in the greatest abomination among men, to eat the goodly limbs after tearing out the life.”

  At one time he speaks of himself exuberantly as a god:

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

  At another time he feels himself a great sinner, undergoing expiation for his impiety:

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

  What his sin had been, we do not know; perhaps nothing that we should think very grievous. For he says:

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

  “Abstain wholly from laurel leaves …

  “Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!”

  So perhaps he had done nothing worse than munching laurel leaves or guzzling beans.

  The most famous passage in Plato, in which he compares this world to a cave, in which we see only shadows of the realities in the bright world above, is anticipated by Empedocles; its origin is in the teaching of the Orphics.

  There are some—presumably those who abstain from sin through many incarnations—who at last achieve immortal bliss in the company of the gods:

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

  In all this, it would seem, there is very little that was not already contained in the teaching of Orphism and Pythagoreanism.

  The originality of Empedocles, outside science, consists in the doctrine of the four elements and in the use of the two principles of Love and Strife to explain change.

  He rejected monism, and regarded the course of nature as regulated by chance and necessity rather than by purpose. In these respects his philosophy was more scientific than those of Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. In other respects, it is true, he acquiesced in current superstitions; but in this he was no worse than many more recent men of science.

  CHAPTER VII

  Athens in Relation to Culture

  THE greatness of Athens begins at the time of the two Persian wars (490 B.C. and 480-79 B.C.). Before that time, Ionia and Magna Graecia (the Greek cities of south Italy and Sicily) produced the great men. The victory of Athens against the Persian king Darius at Marathon (490), and of the combined Greek fleets against his son and successor Xerxes (480) under Athenian leadership, gave Athens great prestige. The Ionians in the islands and on part of the mainland of Asia Minor had rebelled against Persia, and their liberation was effected by Athens after the Persians had been driven from the mainland of Greece. In this operation the Spartans, who cared only about their own territory, took no part. Thus Athens became the predominant partner in an alliance against Persia. By the constitution of the alliance, any constituent State was bound to contribute either a specified number of ships, or the cost of them. Most chose the latter, and thus Athens acquired naval supremacy over the other allies, and gradually transformed the alliance into an Athenian Empire. Athens became rich, and prospered under the wise leadership of Pericles, who governed, by the free choice of the citizens, for about thirty years, until his fall in 430 B.C.

  The age of Pericles was the happiest and most glorious time in the history of Athens. Aeschylus, who had fought in the Persian wars, inaugurated Greek tragedy; one of his tragedies, the Persae, departing from the custom of choosing Homeric subjects, deals with the defeat of Darius. He was quickly followed by Sophocles, and Sophocles by Euripides, who, however, extends into the dark days of the Peloponnesian War that followed the fall and death of Pericles, and reflects in his plays the scepticism of the later period. His contemporary Aristophanes, the comic poet, makes fun of all isms from the standpoint of robust and limited common sense; more particularly, he holds up Socrates to obloquy as one who denies the existence of Zeus and dabbles in unholy pseudo-scientific mysteries.

  Athens had been captured by Xerxes, and the temples on the Acropolis had been destroyed by fire. Pericles devoted himself to their reconstruction. The Parthenon and the other temples whose ruins remain to impress our age were built by him. Pheidias the sculptor was employed by the State to make colossal statues of gods and goddesses. At the end of this period, Athens was the most beautiful and splendid city of the Hellenic world.

  Herodotus, the father of history, was a native of Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, but lived in Athens, was encouraged by the Athenian State, and wrote his account of the Persian wars from the Athenian point of view.

  The achievements of Athens in the time of Pericles are perhaps the most astonishing thing in all history. Until that time, Athens had lagged behind many other Greek cities; neither in art nor in literature had it produced any great man (excep
t Solon, who was primarily a lawgiver). Suddenly, under the stimulus of victory and wealth and the need of reconstruction, architects, sculptors, and dramatists, who remain unsurpassed to the present day, produced works which dominated the future down to modern times. This is the more surprising when we consider the smallness of the population involved. Athens at its maximum, about 430 B.C., is estimated to have numbered about 230,000 (including slaves), and the surrounding territory of rural Attica probably contained a rather smaller population. Never before or since has anything approaching the same proportion of the inhabitants of any area shown itself capable of work of the highest excellence.

  In philosophy, Athens contributes only two great names, Socrates and Plato. Plato belongs to a somewhat later period, but Socrates passed his youth and early manhood under Pericles. The Athenians were sufficiently interested in philosophy to listen eagerly to teachers from other cities. The Sophists were sought after by young men who wished to learn the art of disputation; in the Protagoras, the Platonic Socrates gives an amusing satirical description of the ardent disciples hanging on the words of the eminent visitor. Pericles, as we shall see, imported Anaxagoras, from whom Socrates professed to have learned the pre-eminence of mind in creation.

  Most of Plato’s dialogues are supposed by him to take place during the rime of Pericles, and they give an agreeable picture of life among the rich. Plato belonged to an aristocratic Athenian family, and grew up in the tradition of the period before war and democracy had destroyed the wealth and security of the upper classes. His young men, who have no need to work, spend most of their leisure in the pursuit of science and mathematics and philosophy; they know Homer almost by heart, and are critical judges of the merits of professional reciters of poetry. The art of deductive reasoning had been lately discovered, and afforded the excitement of new theories, both true and false, over the whole field of knowledge. It was possible in that age, as in few others, to be both intelligent and happy, and happy through intelligence.

  But the balance of forces which produced this golden age was precarious. It was threatened both from within and from without—from within by the democracy, and from without by Sparta. To understand what happened after Pericles, we must consider briefly the earlier history of Attica.

  Attica, at the beginning of the historical period, was a self-supporting little agricultural region; Athens, its capital, was not large, but contained a growing population of artisans and skilled artificers who desired to dispose of their produce abroad. Gradually it was found more profitable to cultivate vines and olives rather than grain, and to import grain, chiefly from the coast of the Black Sea. This form of cultivation required more capital than the cultivation of grain, and the small farmers got into debt. Attica, like other Greek states, had been a monarchy in the Homeric age, but the king became a merely religious official without political power. The government fell into the hands of the aristocracy, who oppressed both the country farmers and the urban artisans. A compromise in the direction of democracy was effected by Solon early in the sixth century, and much of his work survived through a subsequent period of tyranny under Peisistratus and his sons. When this period came to an end, the aristocrats, as the opponents of tyranny, were able to recommend themselves to the democracy. Until the fall of Pericles, democratic processes gave power to the aristocracy, as in nineteenth century England. But towards the end of his life the leaders of the Athenian democracy began to demand a larger share of political power. At the same time, his imperialist policy, with which the economic prosperity of Athens was bound up, caused increasing friction with Sparta, leading at last to the Peloponnesian War (431-404), in which Athens was completely defeated.

  In spite of political collapse, the prestige of Athens survived, and throughout almost a millennium philosophy was centred there. Alexandria eclipsed Athens in mathematics and science, but Aristotle and Plato had made Athens philosophically supreme. The Academy, where Plato had taught, survived all other schools, and persisted, as an island of paganism, for two centuries after the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. At last, in A.D. 529, it was closed by Justinian because of his religious bigotry, and the Dark Ages descended upon Europe.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Anaxagoras

  THE philosopher Anaxagoras, though not the equal of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, or Parmenides, has nevertheless a considerable historical importance. He was an Ionian, and carried on the scientific, rationalist tradition of Ionia. He was the first to introduce philosophy to the Athenians, and the first to suggest mind as the primary cause of physical changes.

  He was born at Clazomenae, in Ionia, about the year 500 B.C., but he spent about thirty years of his life in Athens, approximately from 462 to 432 B.C. He was probably induced to come by Pericles, who was bent on civilizing his fellow-townsmen. Perhaps Aspasia, who came from Miletus, introduced him to Pericles. Plato, in the Phaedrus, says:

  Pericles “fell in, it seems with Anaxagoras, who was a scientific man; and satiating himself with the theory of things on high, and having attained to a knowledge of the true nature of intellect and folly, which were just what the discourses of Anaxagoras were mainly about, he drew from that source whatever was of a nature to further him in the art of speech.”

  It is said that Anaxagoras also influenced Euripides, but this is more doubtful.

  The citizens of Athens, like those of other cities in other ages and continents, showed a certain hostility to those who attempted to introduce a higher level of culture than that to which they were accustomed. When Pericles was growing old, his opponents began a campaign against him by attacking his friends. They accused Pheidias of embezzling some of the gold that was to be employed on his statues. They passed a law permitting impeachment of those who did not practise religion and taught theories about “the things on high.” Under this law, they prosecuted Anaxagoras, who was accused of teaching that the sun was a red-hot stone and the moon was earth. (The same accusation was repeated by the prosecutors of Socrates, who made fun of them for being out of date.) What happened is not certain, except that he had to leave Athens. It seems probable that Pericles got him out of prison and managed to get him away. He returned to Ionia, where he founded a school. In accordance with his will, the anniversary of his death was kept as a schoolchildren’s holiday.

  Anaxagoras held that everything is infinitely divisible, and that even the smallest portion of matter contains some of each element. Things appear to be that of which they contain most. Thus, for example, everything contains some fire, but we only call it fire if that element preponderates. Like Empedocles, he argues against the void, saying that the clepsydra or an inflated skin shows that there is air where there seems to be nothing.

  He differed from his predecessors in regarding mind (nous) as a substance which enters into the composition of living things, and distinguishes them from dead matter. In everything, he says, there is a portion of everything except mind, and some things contain mind also. Mind has power over all things that have life; it is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing. Except as regards mind, everything, however small, contains portions of all opposites, such as hot and cold, white and black. He maintained that snow is black (in part).

  Mind is the source of all motion. It causes a rotation, which is gradually spreading throughout the world, and is causing the lightest things to go to the circumference, and the heaviest to fall towards the centre. Mind is uniform, and is just as good in animals as in man. Man d apparent superiority is due to the fact that he has hands; all seeming differences of intelligence are really due to bodily differences.

  Both Aristotle and the Platonic Socrates complain that Anaxagoras, after introducing mind, makes very little use of it. Aristotle points out that he only introduces mind as a cause when he knows no other. Whenever he can, he gives a mechanical explanation. He rejected necessity and chance as giving the origins of things; nevertheless, there was no “Providence” in his cosmology. He does not seem to have thought much abo
ut ethics or religion; probably he was an atheist, as his prosecutors maintained. All his predecessors influenced him, except Pythagoras. The influence of Parmenides was the same in his case as in that of Empedocles.

  In science he had great merit. It was he who first explained that the moon shines by reflected light, though there is a cryptic fragment in Parmenides suggesting that he also knew this. Anaxagoras gave the correct theory of eclipses, and knew that the moon is below the sun. The sun and stars, he said, are fiery stones, but we do not feel the heat of the stars because they are too distant. The sun is larger than the Peloponnesus. The moon has mountains, and (he thought) inhabitants.

  Anaxagoras is said to have been of the school of Anaximenes; certainly he kept alive the rationalist and scientific tradition of the Ionians. One does not find in him the ethical and religious preoccupations which, passing from the Pythagoreans to Socrates and from Socrates to Plato, brought an obscurantist bias into Greek philosophy. He is not quite in the first rank, but he is important as the first to bring philosophy to Athens, and as one of the influences that helped to form Socrates.

  CHAPTER IX