The Presocratic World-Picture

Author(s): W. K. C. Guthrie
Source: The Harvard Theological Review , Apr., 1952, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 1952), pp. 87-
104
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 1
W. K. C. GUTHRIE

PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE

I recently became aware that I had for a long time en

certain preconceptions about the way in which Presocrat
ers saw the world, without ever having seriously cons
evidence on which my belief was based. This I have no
do, with the results which are set forth in this paper. Sin
case it will deal, in a fairly general way, with problems c
the interaction of philosophical and religious though
Greece, I hope it will have a certain interest, whether
readers agree with the thesis put forward. The perennia
tion of that topic has been enhanced in recent years b
cussion provoked by Werner Jaeger's book on The Theol
Early Greek Philosophers, from which I take this sen
kind of text for my own reflections: "Though philosoph
death to the old gods, it is itself religion."
The thesis is this, that in bare but significant outline, a
picture of the nature of the Universe, of living creatur
divinity was shared by a surprising number of Greek ph
and religious thinkers of the 6th and early 5th centurie
spite of the vast differences of temperament which led
create systems so varied in detail and in philosophical
This world-picture was not the creation of any one of t
rather seems to have been assumed by all at the outset,
suggested by certain indications in Greek literature t
shared by the unphilosophical multitude. Moreover, if I
to grasp the nature of this framework is essential to an u
ing of the solutions offered to the problem of existence
rationalist cosmology and by mystical religion.2 I canno
all the evidence for its validity, nor attempt to solve th

1This paper has been much improved as a result of discussions w

Kirk, who must not, however, be thought to agree with every point mad
2 By 'mystical' in this context I mean that type of religion which e
possibility of a union, however achieved, between human and divine.

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88 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

whence it arose in the first place, if it was not fro

single Greek thinker - whether from earlier H
from Oriental lore, or from some universal tr
chology. What I shall do is, first, to describe t
simply and briefly without reference to any e
try to show, by means of some examples, how
behind various philosophical and religious sy
fore the time of Socrates, and to estimate its effec
We live in a world, or universe, to which I
some of the Greeks themselves, by the nam
word 'universe' is too wide, suggesting that it
sum of existence, which I shall argue was not
the other hand, might be too narrow, since we
signify only the earth. From the time of Anax
was usually regarded as spherical, though An
believed it, exceptionally, to be a hemisphere.
the sky, whose spherical shape seemed to m
ference from observation, when its direct imp
combined with a study of the motions of the fi
generally supposed to lie on its circumference.
might be either spherical or cylindrical in sha
of this sphere, and Anaximander had already a
that it could float freely in space without the n
support. Within the sphere, at different level
planets move in their orbits.
Beyond the cosmic sphere - and this is the es
description - there was very far from bein
floated, as it were, in a circumambient substan
least of indefinite extent. This substance wa
nature than those which made up the contents
It was alive and eternally so, sentient and inte
divine element' (rb 6Etov). In its pristine purit
existed only outside the kosmos, but - what is
portance for religion and philosophy alike - in
terated form it penetrated the kosmos and wa
creatures.

The contents of the kosmos, apart from any share which the
may have in this divine substance, are composed of the four 'op

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 89

posites': hot, cold, wet and dry. To ask whether th

tives refer to qualities or substances would be anac
contrary natures of these account for the destr
composite creatures of the physical world, since t
destructive.

"Hot, cold, wet and dry, four champions fierce,

Strive here for mastery."

The divine, on the other hand, has none of the contraries in its
nature, since it exists eternally, exempt from generation and decay.
Whether it is in any sense physical, and if so of what kind of body,
is a question which will turn up at various stages of our discussion.
That is the general picture. Can we suppose that it was accepted
by such diverse thinkers as the Milesian cosmologists, Heraclitus,
the Orphic writers of religious poems, and others? And how did it
affect their views on that primary concern of the religious mind,
the nature of the human soul and its relation to the universe in
which it lives?
The early 6th century B.C. saw a simultaneous outburst of spir-
itual activity in two spheres which superficially seem widely dif-
ferent. There was the intense intellectual curiosity about the
origin and nature of the universe, and attempt to solve its problems
by rational means, which is represented by the Milesians Thales
Anaximander and Anaximenes; and there was the deeply religious
conception of the nature and fate of the human soul, and of the
means to its salvation, which is generally called Orphic because
there is good evidence that it was taught, even if not exclusively, in
certain religious poems attributed to the authorship, or at least the
inspiration, of the mythical singer Orpheus.
Since the Milesians assumed that the universe had evolved from
a single basic substance, their problem was that of the One and the
Many, i.e. in this case what was the nature of this one original
substance and how had it become differentiated into the multi-
plicity which we see today? Concerning the world of Thales, gen-
erated from moisture - the precondition of life, as Aristotle noted
- we know too little to say whether it fits in with the picture I
have outlined. At least the statements attributed to him, that the
whole is alive and full of gods or spirits, need not conflict with it.

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90 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Anaximander called the first substance the Boundless or the Un-

defined. According to Aristotle (whom, with Burnet, Ross and
others, I am inclined to believe), he argued that none of the physi-
cal bodies in the present kosmos could be primary, since owing to
their antagonism it would not have produced the others but rather
have prevented their ever coming into existence. In this undiffer-
entiated mass, the antagonistic properties were as yet latent. Since
it was eternally in motion, it happened that in a certain part of it
the 'opposites' began to separate themselves out. Hence arose
what Anaximander called the germ (y~,viov) of a kosmos; and I
do not think that this use of language appropriate to organic na-
ture was metaphorical. It is unnecessary to trace again the
development of the embryo world, or re-assess the mixture of un-
consciously surviving mythical thought and precociously scientific
acumen which it displays. Our interest is in the matrix in which
the kosmos was formed, and which still encompasses it all round.
It is the arche, archetype or original stuff of everything, and must
have existed from all time. This one might suppose, in an age of
evolutionary science, to be the lowest and most elementary form of
matter. Not so the Greek. "And this, they say," wrote Aristotle in
describing the views of these early philosophers, "is the divine; for
it is immortal and indestructible, as Anaximander and most of the
natural philosophers maintain." It was not only said to 'encom-
pass' all things, but also to 'guide' or 'govern' them. For a Greek
philosopher of this and later ages the essential mark of life was the
power of self-movement. This the arche must have if the kosmos
is to come to birth within it and there is no prior arche to move it.
It was then something living. And to all Greeks, whether philoso-
phers or not, everlasting life was the essential mark of a god.
'Gods' and 'immortals' were interchangeable terms. The philoso-
phers had outgrown the anthropomorphic conceptions of their
contemporaries, but they had by no means given up the idea of
divinity, and that was how they still interpreted it. It may have
been Anaximander himself who substituted the more abstract term
'divinity' for the more concrete term 'god,' as Jaeger thinks. It
would be in keeping with his other neuter expressions 'the hot,'
'the cold' and so forth. But so long as the idea is retained, other
' Phys. iii. 4. 203 b 13.

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 91

characteristics besides the bare scientific minim

are bound to cling to it. It must for instance
thinking.
This characteristic of the primal world-stuff comes out more
clearly in the thought of Anaximander's younger contemporary
Anaximenes, and still more clearly in the 5th century philosopher
Diogenes of Apollonia, who followed Anaximenes in holding this
substance to be a form of air. For the ability of air to generate
other forms of matter, these two appealed to the phenomena of
condensation and rarefaction. Moreover since in accordance with
the ideas of the time it must also be shown to be the life-principle,
they explicitly drew the parallel between its action in the universe
and the function of souls in human bodies. "Just as our soul" said
Anaximenes, "which is air, is the controlling and unifying principle
in us, so breath and air surround the whole kosmos."4 The genu-
ineness of this particular fragment has been doubted, but largely
from a prior belief that such a parallel would not have been drawn
until a later date. Since, however, I have been struggling in vain
against a growing conviction that this close relationship between
the divine principle without and the soul within was precisely a
mark of 6th century thought - taken so much for granted that it
underlies Milesian cosmology and Orphic theology alike - I nat-
urally do not find this argument strong. Whether or not it is a
word-for-word quotation, I take it to be a correct statement of his
belief. There is in any case other evidence that Anaximenes de-
scribed the soul of man as air, which was also for him the self-
moving stuff of the whole universe.
Diogenes, his follower, started by repeating the Milesian prin-
ciple that "all things are differentiations of the same thing," " and
naming this thing as air. Like the others he conceived himself to
be giving a rational and scientific account, and for the most part
his language is correspondingly matter-of-fact. Yet when he comes
to describe this primal air, there is a more exalted ring about his
phrases. "That which has intelligence," he says, "is in my view
what men call air; and by it all are steered, and it has power over
all; I believe that this very thing is God, and reaches everything,
4Fr. 2 DK.
" Fr. 2 DK.

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92 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

and orders all things, and is in all things, and t

which does not partake in it." 6 (Jaeger has dra
hymnodic form and phraseology of this fragm
with this when Theophrastus ascribes to him t
living creatures "the air within," i.e. the soul,
the god." 7
If we turn from these attempts at scientific
contemporary mystical tradition which I shall
beliefs like these. The soul is alien to the body
a prison or a tomb from which it cries out fo
caught not only in a single body but in a wear
which involves its incarceration in a whole ser
or human - for all nature is akin. (We may
selves to be reminded of the single basic sub
sians.) At death it goes to a place of punishm
according to the life it has led, which is temp
sand years it must be reincarnated in a mor
formance of the proper rituals and adherence
of the Orphic life could so purify the soul tha
tions, perhaps even after three successive O
escape from the body altogether. It would t
happy, blessed and immortal.9
In what kind of cosmology were these event
been anything like that depicted by the M
Aristotle gives us a clue, for he says (De an
Orphic poems teach that "the soul comes into
as we breathe, borne by the winds." In spite o
esis between soul and body, we are not yet at
former can be thought of as non-material. It is
as in the Milesian tradition, at least when it
Greek thought in general, both popular and p
the less pure substance which filled the lower
around the earth. It meant cloud as much as
SFr. 5.
7DK ii p. 56 1.3.
8 For Linforth's view of this passage (Arts of Orpheus, University of California
Press 1941, P. 147), see Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (Methuen 1950) p.
311 n. 3.
' For the evidence on which this paragraph is based, see Guthrie, Orpheus and
Greek Religion (Methuen 1935) ch. v.

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 93

outer heavens was not aer but aither, the name o

from the root of alOWL 'to blaze,' so that it was ofte
fire. Aither was living and divine. A character
that it is what men mean by Zeus, and indeed the
of the name Zeus to mean the sky points in the s
mystic believed that this was the substance to
was akin and with which it could be utterly iden
slough off the impurities of intra-cosmic existe
divine that was in us. So long as it is caught in t
carnation it is, as Empedocles said of himself, to
the four cosmic elements in the regions of aer.
the Milesian philosopher were the ceaselessly-w
and the reason, in Empedocles's doctrine, why th
mercy is an appropriate one: it is that in its sin
trust in the works of strife and bloodshed. Thu
the 'weary wheel' (to use the Orphic phrase) is a
escape outside the kosmos, towards reunion with
substance - the &8o0 aUll5p - that lies outside.
This union of the individual soul with the aithe
have been linked in the Greek mind with the
doctrine of the cycle of reincarnation. In itse
been fairly widespread. There are several ref
Euripides, besides the line of the epitaph on the
at Potidaea in 432:

"Aither received their souls, their bodies

If I may be allowed to adduce also a late witn

the description of the next world in Vergil's Ae
the Orphic doctrine, and Elysium is there said t
fields of the air." (Aen. vi. 887.) It is explained
the souls which must submit to reincarnation ar
out from the more fully purified. These latte
(orbis) of their time is complete, will have slough

10 I.G. i. 442. If some think this is to read too much into

only state my own opinion, which is based on the general b
aither, on parallels like Eur. Hel. 1014 ff. (quoted below, p
siderations which find their place in my text. Their cumula
considerable.

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94 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

the impurity which clings to them, and what wi

as "the aetherial sense, the fire of unmixed ray
In comparative studies it is sometimes said
doctrine must always be opposed to any system
annihilation of a soul's individuality after de
manence of individuality is required by the doc
tion. It is true that so long as the soul is destine
it must retain its individuality. But there is a
here which vitiates the comparison, and it is
visualize this very widely accepted world-pic
phics shared with others. To them the real c
tween life and death-life in the body on earth
but between what went on within the kosmos and what outside it.
It is between life within the circle of reincarnation -during which,
whether in or out of the body, the soul has the taint of the body
clinging to it - and the bliss of escape and reunion, which is the
only true immortality. Retention of individuality means that the
soul is still airy, still clogged with the lower elements within the
kosmos. The final goal, like that of every true mystic, is the utter
loss of self in the infinity of the divine.

I hope I have shown that the thinkers so far mentioned shared

that general picture of the universe which I described at the be-
ginning. To select (for it is necessary here to be selective) a more
difficult case, can we say the same about the enigmatic Heraclitus
at the beginning of the 5th century? Most people would say no,
and those who might be inclined to agree with me are not on the
whole the people who have used the soundest arguments about this
remarkable man. Heraclitus seems to have founded his whole
cosmology on a ruthless acceptance of the doctrine of opposites
with all its consequences. The components of the kosmos were
engaged in endless warfare, and each lives by the death of the
other (fr. 76 Diels-Kranz). Any apparent stability is as the sta-
bility of two armies locked in deadly conflict of which neither has
as yet prevailed. Peace and harmony, such as the Pythagoreans
desired, would be undesirable even if possible, for they would mean
universal death. Flux and change are the conditions of life:
war is the father of all (fr. 53, cf. 80). He said that his kosmos was

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 95

always and is and will be an ever-living fire, i

kindled and in measures extinguished (fr. 30).
believe, like those against whom he fulminates,
time generated from a single basic substance. The
ever being kindled and extinguished provided th
of the everlasting change and mutual destruct
kosmos lives (cf. fr. 90o).
We may notice, however, that this descript
KOO(T7LOV 7TOVE, 'this order' or 'this organism.' Py
ited with having been the first to give the word
nite meaning of 'world,' and we are perhaps not j
ing that with a thinker so little later as Heraclitu
so as to have that meaning naturally and inevita
even if he had in mind, as I have suggested, its m
ing of 'order' or 'organism,' I have little doubt t
which he refers is the world of our direct experie
the natural elements, or opposites, play their pa
part of the whole sum of existence in which his
had recognized the presence and interaction of c
without drawing the same uncompromising co
critic. Yet in view of his tirades against them
something more positive than this if we are goin
he too believed that this was not all, but that th
and deathless divine substance outside the kos
evidence at all for the existence of something
nent in his system, outside the flux of the 'way u
We immediately think of that strange conceptio
the logos. It is first of all the word or message w
one with a curiously independent existence, for
to listen "not to me but to the logos" (fr. 50). N
doctrine of universal flux, he says that it "exists
and that "all things come to pass in accordanc
(fr. i). He also identifies it with what he calls "t
2, cf. I13). There is, he says, a world common to
like sleepers, each living his private dream and n
n Aristotle remarked (Diels-Kranz A 4, vol. i, p. 144, and n
word dei in this sentence might qualify either the preceding 6V
d4verotL. I am inclined to think that H. intended the forme
permanence of the X6-yos is sufficiently evident apart from thi

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96 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

the real world which all share alike (fr. 89).

the logos is, this common element, which clear
permanent validity transcending the flux of gen
It may still be said that, after all, logos only
like 'word,' 'account' or 'argumient,' whereas w
for is a substantial and (so far as we have met i
reality. But is that all that logos means to H
at least that the divine and ruling element of th
was at the same time identified with the pr
stuff from which the kosmos had evolved. On
vinced, for the notorious obscurity of Heraclit
has now reached a stage when matter and spiri
really require to be separated, but the separati
consciously effected. His ruling principle ha
more intellectualized, as its name logos suggests
as non-material is as yet beyond his range. "W
"is one thing, to know the gnome - though
things through all things" (fr. 41). Thought
surely the same thing as the logos) is the active
the universe, as in the earlier philosophers,
(Kv,/Epva^) is that already used of the divine s
mander as also later by Diogenes with his air-g
the next step we have to rely not on an actual
litus but on a statement of his views by Sextus
been accused of importing into them at this po
post-Aristotelian philosophers like the Stoics
need to associate myself with the accusation, i
trine in question is one which we have already f
pre-Platonic thinkers as Anaximenes, the Orph
Apollonia, and could find also (on Aristotle's
mocritus; the doctrine, namely, that there is a
stuff of which mortal creatures acquire a tinc
in either as air itself or with the air. Heraclitu
(Diels-Kranz A 16, vol. i, p. 148), held that "

(r7 0rEPLE'XOV a &) is rational and endowed w

divine reason (logos), according to him, we dra
and thus become thinking creatures ourselves.
the divine substance, though also called by H

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 97

pearing as something akin to air or breath,12

safely identify it with the fire which occupied
place in his system. According to the Christian
(Ref. ix. io), Heraclitus "says that this fire is
cause of the ordering of the whole." The notion
was 'rational' illustrates well the curious stage
matter and spirit are tugging at the bonds whic
have not yet got free. It is of course true that l
like the Stoic deliberately adopted a materialisti
after the distinction drawn so sharply by Pla
actual fragments of Heraclitus are compared wit
of later writers, it is quite clear that he is still
stage before any distinction had been consciousl
ception is no more than a development of the
world-stuff of the Milesians.
There is of course no inconsistency in identifying the divine
logos at once with air and fire. Both in earlier cosmologies and in
popular belief, as we have seen, the air around us was only the less
pure form of the fiery element - called indifferently fire or aither
- which occupied the outer regions of the sky. In its pure form
it is not visible flame, but something invisible, which Aristotle
describes as 'a dry exhalation' (Meteor. 341 b 6 ff). By the time
it reaches our nostrils it has of course lost its pristine purity, and
therefore the life and intellect which it gives to us, though contain-
ing a divine element, have not the perfection of the fiery mind
which rules the universe.
This view of the soul's nature is carried out, somewhat quaintly,
in the further fragments referring to it. Since its true nature is
fiery, therefore "the dry soul is wisest and best" (fr. i i8). The
wetter a soul the worse it is (the foolish behaviour of drunkards is,
in fr. I 17, brought into connection with this), and "to become water
is death to souls" (fr. 36, cf. 77). But death is not complete ex-
tinction. Souls, like the fiery sun and everything else in the kos-
mos, must continue to alternate on the upward and downward path
of destruction and rebirth, and so he continues: "but out of water
1"R. B. Onians (The Origins of European Thought, Cambridge 1951) has noted
that in an age before writing has become familiar, speech and thought are naturally
conceived materially, as composed of breath. He brings this idea into connection
with Heraclitus's logos on p. 77, n. 9.

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98 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

comes soul." Because the soul is thus involved in

where nothing is the same for two instants tog
have held that Heraclitus could have had no belie
ity like that of the Pythagoreans and Orphics.
applies only to the kosmos, not to the fiery di
purity surrounds it. If I am asked how in th
know that in its pure state it lies around, i.e. o
rather than within its boundary - that convict
has been gradually and almost involuntarily
can only reply that, were it wholly within it, it
its flux and change, and could not be steadfast,
If then a soul lives a foolish, or wet life, it goe
and its labours in the cosmic treadmill may be
wise, and learns to follow the logos, to which it
the habits of ancient thought it will be assimilat
escape outside the kosmos from the cycle of be
acter in Euripides says (Hel. 1014 ff.) echoin
esoteric of contemporary beliefs; "The mind of
yet is its thought (y~&vr ) immortal, as it pl
mortal aither." For all his haughty independen
that Heraclitus freed himself from this concep
sophical religion of his time.

In the slightly later figure of Empedocles we f

bination of the scientific and mystical sides of
indeed, as Freeman truly said,'" we hardly kno
we sometimes feel inclined to echo the verdict of Lucretius that he
'seems scarce born of mortal stock.' Here I must limit myself
strictly to what is relevant to my theme. Parmenides had shown up
the logical difficulties involved in any theory which derived the
world from a single substance. Empedocles therefore promoted the
four commonly recognized substances --earth, water, air and
fire - to the rank of primary elements, or 'roots' as he called them.
The manifold and changing world was the result of temporary
combinations of these indestructible root-substances in different
proportions. They did not combine of their own independent mo-
tion or volition. For the first time the cause of motion is separated
SHistory of Sicily ii. 342.

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 99

from the bodies moved. There were two contrar

in the world, which he named Love and Strif
parts of his writings they appear as purely p
attraction and repulsion. Love, or Harmony, dra
diverse elements together to form composite cr
arates them into great masses of their own kin
the sea. The world-process is one of alternating
Love and Strife prevail in turn.
Yet not even now, when moving force has bee
moved bodies, are the forces thought of as non
in space, like subtle self-moving currents of flu
sequently the time of the triumph of Love, wh
elements in complete fusion, is described in s
time when Love has penetrated the kosmos thro
and driven Strife outside, where it lies all aroun
In due course Strife begins to penetrate again an
ally driven outside. A world such as we live i
possible in the intermediate stages, when the el
separated and partly combined. Our own is the
is gaining ascendency. At this point we touch th
the system, and learn that the two opposite f
physical but moral in their effects. Love or Har
of good, and Strife of evil, for Empedocles, fol
orean and Orphic teachers, is a convinced m
adapted to his own cosmology the Orphic doctri
its doom of reincarnation. It is a fallen daimon,
gods. When men first appeared on the earth th
was far stronger, and they were sinless. But Str
and they turned to sin and above all to bloodshe
they are condemned to wander, as he says, "t
seasons from the abodes of the blessed, being bo
mortal forms." He himself is one of these, "an
and a wanderer," tossed without rest from one e
Yet it was not too late to turn again to the
the soul which did so might when its allotte
freedom from the cycle of births and rejoin the
was akin. Empedocles knew this, and felt tha
hand. Hence his proud boast: "I am among y

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100 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

god, no longer a mortal," strikingly echoed b

verses scratched on sheets of gold and interred
initiate of a mystic sect in his own Western land
assured that if it can prove its initiated status t
the next world, they will greet it with the welc
blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal."
Now I feel sure that Empedocles's views on
tended to fit into his whole world-system. Some
impossible, on the ground that his scientific view
Orphic doctrines of a reincarnated and poten
This is in fact the recognized crux of his though
as the empirical world was concerned, he was
materialist, even extending his materialism to t
sensation and thought. "To Empedocles" said
427 a 2 I ff.) "sensation and thought are alike of
seems to be true. A line of Empedocles himself m
about the heart as the reasoning part of man. T
faculties whereby we perceive and draw conc
world around us was clearly considered by him to
his incarnate state, to be a function of the body
a resultant of that temporary and perishable com
physical root-substances. To suppose that in spea
and immortal part of himself he meant these se
ing faculties of the incarnate mortal is indeed
gross inconsistency. But there is no need so t
pears not to have called the divine self 4vx4, th
for the soul. It is a daimon, to whom the body an
alien.14 "Clothed in an unfamiliar garment of
describes it (fr. 126). There is much earlier lor
which he must have taken for granted. The hist
tion is quite different from that of rvyxq, and in m
to our own associations with the word 'soul.' Sometimes daimon is
used interchangeably with OE6E, god. Where there is a distinction,
as in Plato's Symposium, daimones are a race of intermediate be-
ings dwelling in the elements between heaven and earth. They go
up and down over the earth clad in aer, says Hesiod. Similarly in

1" This point is made by E. R. Dodds in The Greeks and the Irrational (Univer-
sity of California Press I951), pp. 152 f.

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 101

Empedocles (as Rostagni noted) the drama of th

acted among the elements between heaven and
following the Pythagorean and Orphic tradition
for its sins be imprisoned in a mortal body, thou
spirit. This it is which in stories of strange s
Epimenides and Hermotimus, could leave the body
search of divine knowledge. This it is which in
active when the limbs are sleeping. For its pe
knowledge is indeed necessary, but not the kn
senses, whose object is the elements within the ko
foundation as we have seen is purely material. "W
earth, with water, water." (fr. 109 v. i.) On
"Blessed is the man who has gained the riches of
(fr. 132). Like knows like, and to know the div
come divine, and moreover: "It is not possible
divine before our eyes, or to lay hold on it w
(fr. I33.)
There is a divinity outside the natural world. It has no bodily
parts at all, but is "only a sacred and unutterable Mind darting
through the whole world with rapid thoughts" (fr. i34). To this
divinity there is something in ourselves that is akin.
Much must no doubt remain obscure. Even if we possessed the
whole of his works, it would not be easy to penetrate the inmost
thoughts - the adyta cordis - of a man like this. The fragments
do not make clear the relationship of the divine Mind to Love, but
they must, one would think, have been practically identical, Love
representing the work of this Mind in so far as it enters the kos-
mos, where as we saw it finds itself opposed by the power of evil.
Hippolytus (vii. 31), in a passage somewhat overlaid by Stoic
preconceptions, speaks of the &8IaLoq X0yoq in Empedocles as some-
thing mediating between the contrasting principles of Love and
Strife and working on the side of Love. We know from the frag-
ments the importance of logos in his system. Perhaps this, the
typically Hellenic spirit of just proportion and measure, is the
divine element, the sacred Mind, like the logos of Heraclitus. This
is speculative, but at least if we recall our general cosmological
framework - the spherical kosmos of warring opposites lapped in
the circumambient divine, which in a more or less adulterated

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102 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

form penetrates the cosmic sphere - we can I th

it for Empedocles's sacred Mind, his Love, his da
fallen gods and at the same time our own true se
and rationalist alike small portions of the divine
in animal and human bodies. And Empedocles wa
and mystic.
We must not lose sight of what even a modern authority like
Arnold Toynbee calls the "thoroughly scientific nature" of Em-
pedocles's thought, nor forget that in his materialistic physical
system there was no room for any divine purpose or intelligent
creation. Our kosmos is the purely chance result of the interplay
of opposite forces of attraction and repulsion. Things combined
"as they happened to run together" (fr. 59). Apparent teleological
development is explained on a theory of the survival of the fittest.
Have we then at last caught Empedocles thinking in water-tight
compartments? It may seem strange, indeed scarcely defensible,
to explain the physical universe thus on the lines of a purely mech-
anistic materialism and at the same time to believe in the existence
of a "sacred and unutterable mind darting through the whole kos-
mos with rapid thoughts." But was it not of the essence of early
Greek cosmology and mysticism to hold that the whole matter and
order of the kosmos were the enemy of divinity? We may usefully
draw a distinction between these ideas as the Presocratic philoso-
phers used them and as they were modified and transmuted by
Socrates and Plato.
Plato was immensely attracted by the Orphic view that the soul
was alien to the body, something whose true home was not of this
world. With that went a belief in the necessary imperfection of the
material world in contrast to the perfection of the eternal realities
and of deity. But on one point he and Socrates protested vigorously
against the world-picture of all their predecessors, rational and
mystical alike. For it was a conscious protest against all of them
when Socrates in the Phaedo, speaking in particular of Anaxagoras,
maintained that if there were a divine mind, then it must have
ordered all things for the best. This was only to bring into the
open a contradiction of which earlier thinkers seem to have been
curiously unaware. It was exactly as Socrates complained. They
spoke of a divinity; they even said, in their favorite phrase, that

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 THE PRESOCRATIC WORLD-PICTURE 103

it 'steered all things'; but when it came to explain

and maintenance of the physical world, they mad
divine principle as a cause, but only adduced, as h
aethers and waters and many other absurdities
mitted, says Plato in the Timaeus,1" that because o
minimum of irrationality in matter, this world o
be perfect or eternal; but because God is the orde
ensured that it is the best that any physical wo
fact a reflection of the eternal world in terms of time and matter.
Here we step from the Presocratic world to the Platonic; and we
may judge both of the difference between them and of the extent
to which the one prepared the ground for the other.
One general point in conclusion. There is a temptation for us,
as historians of Greek religion, to be a little over-analytical in our
approach. Regarding rationalist and mystic as contrasting and
mutually exclusive terms, we are apt to classify our Greeks as
belonging to one or the other class - the Milesians on one side of
the fence, the Orphics on the other, with a disapproving frown for
Empedocles because he insists on keeping one leg on each side.
Surely what Empedocles should teach us is that we are in a period
of thought before such distinctions had any meaning. All shared a
common background which was neither rational nor mystical ex-
clusively. To ignore or deny this background called for a degree
of originality of which few were capable. I have expressed my
belief that even the contemptuous and highly individual Heraclitus
was unable to free himself from it, and though my examples could
not be exhaustive, the Pythagorean idea that the ouranos breathes
in some of the infinite breath outside seems to presuppose a similar
framework.'6 (How for the Pythagoreans anything a"nLpov could
be divine is perhaps a problem, which at present I can only men-
tion.) One man must be admitted to have denied the general
scheme, the most self-sufficient and original of them all, whose
thought was a challenge to subsequent Greek philosophy. The way
of truth according to Parmenides leaves no room for any infinite
divine substance beyond the one spherical Being. But I doubt if
there is any other clear exception. Aristotle, who perhaps under-

15 29 e foll., 37 d.
16 Aristotle, Phys. iv. 6. 213 b 23.

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104 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

stood his predecessors better than some modern

showed himself aware of the general view when
was indeed a lot of mythical lumber in the thou
such as the representation of gods in the form o
animals, but that all alike shared one central
"all nature is encompassed with the divine." And
they were right.

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