the philosopher was wont to declare that in an earlier state he
had visited Hades, and had there seen Homer and Hesiod tortured
because of the absurd things they had said about the gods.
Apocrypbal or otherwise, the tale suggests that Pythagoras was an
agnostic as regards the current Greek religion of his time. The
same thing is perhaps true of most of the great thinkers of this
earliest period. But one among them was remembered in later times
as having had a peculiar aversion to the anthropomorphic
conceptions of his fellows. This was Xenophanes, who was born at
Colophon probably about the year 580 B.C., and who, after a life
of wandering, settled finally in Italy and became the founder of
the so-called Eleatic School.

A few fragments of the philosophical poem in which Xenophanes
expressed his views have come down to us, and these fragments
include a tolerably definite avowal of his faith. "God is one
supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in
mind," says Xenophanes. Again he asserts that "mortals suppose
that the gods are born (as they themselves are), that they wear
man's clothing and have human voice and body; but," he continues,
"if cattle or lions had hands so as to paint with their hands and
produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and
give them bodies in form like their own--horses like horses,
cattle like cattle." Elsewhere he says, with great acumen: "There
has not been a man, nor will there be, who knows distinctly what
I say about the gods or in regard to all things. For even if one
chance for the most part to say what is true, still he would not
know; but every one thinks that he knows."[6]

In the same spirit Xenophanes speaks of the battles of Titans, of
giants, and of centaurs as "fictions of former ages." All this
tells of the questioning spirit which distinguishes the
scientific investigator. Precisely whither this spirit led him we
do not know, but the writers of a later time have preserved a
tradition regarding a belief of Xenophanes that perhaps entitles
him to be considered the father of geology. Thus Hippolytus
records that Xenophanes studied the fossils to be found in
quarries, and drew from their observation remarkable conclusions.
His words are as follows: "Xenophanes believes that once the
earth was mingled with the sea, but in the course of time it
became freed from moisture; and his proofs are such as these:
that shells are found in the midst of the land and among the
mountains, that in the quarries of Syracuse the imprints of a
fish and of seals had been found, and in Paros the imprint of an
anchovy at some depth in the stone, and in Melite shallow
impressions of all sorts of sea products. He says that these
imprints were made when everything long ago was covered with mud,
and then the imprint dried in the mud. Further, he says that all
men will be destroyed when the earth sinks into the sea and
becomes mud, and that the race will begin anew from the
beginning; and this transformation takes place for all
worlds."[7] Here, then, we see this earliest of paleontologists
studying the fossil-bearing strata of the earth, and drawing from
his observations a marvellously scientific induction. Almost two
thousand years later another famous citizen of Italy, Leonardo da
Vinci, was independently to think out similar conclusions from
like observations. But not until the nineteenth century of our
era, some twenty-four hundred years after the time of Xenophanes,
was the old Greek's doctrine to be accepted by the scientific
world. The ideas of Xenophanes were known to his contemporaries
and, as we see, quoted for a few centuries by his successors,
then they were ignored or quite forgotten; and if any philosopher
of an ensuing age before the time of Leonardo championed a like
rational explanation of the fossils, we have no record of the
fact. The geological doctrine of Xenophanes, then, must be listed
among those remarkable Greek anticipations of nineteenth -century
science which suffered almost total eclipse in the intervening
centuries.

Among the pupils of Xenophanes was Parmenides, the thinker who
was destined to carry on the work of his master along the same
scientific lines, though at the same time mingling his scientific
conceptions with the mysticism of the poet. We have already had
occasion to mention that Parmenides championed the idea that the
earth is round; noting also that doubts exist as to whether he or
Pythagoras originated this doctrine. No explicit answer to this
question can possibly be hoped for. It seems clear, however, that
for a long time the Italic School, to which both these
philosophers belonged, had a monopoly of the belief in question.
Parmenides, like Pythagoras, is credited with having believed in
the motion of the earth, though the evidence furnished by the
writings of the philosopher himself is not as demonstrative as
one could wish. Unfortunately, the copyists of a later age were
more concerned with metaphysical speculations than with more
tangible things. But as far as the fragmentary references to the
ideas of Parmenides may be accepted, they do not support the idea
of the earth's motion. Indeed, Parmenides is made to say
explicitly, in preserved fragments, that "the world is immovable,
limited, and spheroidal in form."[8]

Nevertheless, some modern interpreters have found an opposite
meaning in Parmenides. Thus Ritter interprets him as supposing
"that the earth is in the centre spherical, and maintained in
rotary motion by its equiponderance; around it lie certain rings,
the highest composed of the rare element fire, the next lower a
compound of light and darkness, and lowest of all one wholly of
night, which probably indicated to his mind the surface of the
earth, the centre of which again he probably considered to be
fire."[9] But this, like too many interpretations of ancient
thought, appears to read into the fragments ideas which the words


<< previous page | next page >>

Jump to page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 |