Early Greek Philosophy (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...of animal life, and the pollution incurred by eating meat. A deep vein of Oriental pessimism also enters into his theory of existence. Standing alone such utterances might be interpreted as no more than an enthusiastic expression of the new Orphic religion, derived proximately from the Pythagorean schools of South Italy. The puzzling thing is that they have come down to us in close association with a thoroughly materialistic philosophy, where no place seems to be left for an immortal human soul, and hardly even for gods, except as poetic names for the elements and forces of nature. Empedocles lived towards the middle of the fifth century B.C. One is tempted to think of him as a 'modernist' in reference to the religion of his age, giving a mythological colouring to speculations really destructive of all mythology. 3. The Pour Elements.--'No wise man, ' the Sicilian philosopher tells us, 'would imagine that mortals had no existence before their birth, and will have none after their dissolution.' These words might be taken to imply the soul's eternity. But probably they mean no more than that the body is composed of imperishable parts. Empedocles is credibly reported to have been a pupil of Parmenides; and he repeats the master's assertion that what is can neither begin nor cease to be, but without pushing it to the extent of denying all reality to change and motion. What men call birth and death are simply a mixture and separation of pre-existing substances. Fire, air, earth, and water are the ultimate elements whence all things arise and into which they return. Each of these had been erected by one or other of the Ionian thinkers into the sole principle of nature: Empedocles follows the facile method of eclectics in every age by granting...