Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1304

Rh 1292 XENOCRATES. ration and connection of the different modes of cognition and compreliension, than did Speusippus. Pie referred science (eTritrTTj^iTy) to that essence which is the object of pure thought, and is not included in the phenomenal world ; sensuous per- ception {a1a6r)(n<!) to that which passes into the world of phenomena ; conception (So|o) to that essence which is at once the object of sensuous perception, and, mathematically, of pure reason — the essence of heaven or the stars ; so that he con- ceived of So|a in a higher sense, and endeavoured, more decidedly than Plato, to exhibit mathematics as mediating between knowledge and sensuous perception (Sext. Emp. adv. Math. vii. 147, &c. ; comp. Boeth. inAristoL de Interp. p. 297). All three modes of apprehension partake of truth ; but in what manner scientific perception (eTricTTTjjUoi'iK^ ai'cr- 6r}(Tis) did so, we unfortunately do not learn. Even here Xenocrales's preference for symbolic modes of sensualising or denoting appears : he connected the above three stages of knowledge with the three Parcae, Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho. It is the more to be regretted that we know nothing further about the mode in which Xenocrates carried out his dialectic, as it is probable that what was pe- culiar to the Aristotelian logic did not remain unnoticed in it, for it can hardly bo doubted that the division of the existent into the absolutely existent, and the relatively existent [rh KaG" avrh Koi rh irpds tj, Simpl. in Arist. Categ. iii. f. 6, b ; Schol. in Arist. p. 47), attributed to Xenocrates, was opposed to the Aristotelian table of categories. We know from Plutarch {de Animae procreat. e Tim. p. 1012, d., 1013, e.) that Xenocrates, if he did not explain the Platonic construction of the world-soul as Grantor after him did, yet conceived of it in a peculiar manner, so that one branch of interpretation of the Timaeus con- nected itself with him ; and further (Arist. de Caelo, i. 10. p. 279, b., 32, Metaph. xiv. 4; Schol. in Arist. p. 488, b. &c., 827, b.) we learn that he stood at the head of those who, regarding the uni- verse as un-originated and imperishable, looked upon the chronic succession in the Platonic theory as a form in which to denote the relations of conceptual succession. Plutarch unfortunately pre- supposed, as known, that of which only a few obscure traces have been preserved, and contented himself with bringing forward the well-known as- sumption of the Chalcedonian, that the soul is a self-moving number [1. c; comp. Arist. de Anirna, i. 2, 4, Anal. Post. ii. 4, ib. Interp.). Probably we should connect with this the statement that Xeno- crates called unity and duality {fj-ovas and Zvds) deities, and characterised the former as the first male existence, ruling in heaven, as father and Zeus, as uneven number and spirit ; the latter as female, as the mother of the gods, and as the soul of the universe which reigns over the mutable world under heaven (Stob. Ed. Phys. i. 62), or, as others have it, that he named the Zeus who ever remains like himself, governing in the sphere of the immu- table, the highest ; the one who rules over the mutable, sublunary world, the last, or outermost (Plut. Plat. Quaest. ix. 1; Clem. Alex. Stro7n. v. 604). If, like other Platonists, he designated the material principle as undefined duality {a6rpi(TTOs Su<£s), the world-soul was probably described by him as the first defined duality, the conditioning or defining principle of every separate definitude in the sphere of the material and changeable, but not XENOCRATES. extending beyond it. He appears to hare called it in the highest sense the individual soul, in a derivative sense a self-moving number, that is, the first number endowed with motion. To this world- soul Zeus, or the world-spirit, has entrusted — in what degree and in what extent, we do not learn — dominion over that which is liable to motion and change. The divine power of the world-soul is then again represented, in the different spheres of the universe, as infusing soul into the planets, sun, and moon, — in a purer form, in the shape of Olympic gods. As a sublunary daemonical power (as Here, Poseidon, Demeter), it dwells in the elements, and these daemonical natures, midway between gods and men, are related to them as the isosceles triangle is to the equilateral and the scalene (Stob. I. c; Plut. de Orac. defect, p. 416, c; Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 13). The divine world-soul which reigns over the whole domain of sublunary changes he appears to have designated as the last Zeus, the last divine activity. It is not till we get to the sphere of the separate daemonical powers of nature that the opposition between good and evil begins (Stob. Ed. Phi/s.-p. 62), and the daemonical power is appeased by means of a stubbornness which it finds there congenial to it ; the good daemonical power makes happy those in whom it takes up its abode, the bad ruins them ; for eudae- monia is the indwelling of a good daemon, the opposite the indwelling of a bad one (Plut. de hid. et Os. p. 360, d., 361, a., de Orac. defect, p. 41 9, a.; Arist, Top. ii. 2 ; Stob. Serm. civ. 24). How Xenocrates endeavoured to establish and connect scientifically these assumptions, which appear to be taken chiefly from his books on the nature of the gods (Cic. /. c), we do not learn, and can only discover the one fundamental idea at the basis of them, that all grades of existence are penetrated by divine power, and that this grows less and less energetic in proportion as it descends to the perish- able and individual. Hence also he appears to have maintained that as far as consciousness extends, so far also extends an intuition of that all-ruling divine power, of which he represented even irrational ani- mals as partaking (Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 590). But neither the thick nor the thin {TrvKvhv koX /xavSu), to the different combinations of which he appears to have endeavoured to refer the various grades of material existence, were regarded by him as in themselves partaking of soul (Plut. de Fac. in orbe lunae^ p. 943, f.) ; doubtless because he referred them immediately to the divine activity, and was far from attempting to reconcile the duality of the principia, or to resolve them into an original unity. Hence too he was for proving the incorporeality of the soul by the fact that it is not nourished as the body is (Nemesius, p. 31, Ant.). But what more precise conception he formed of the material prin- cipium, the twofold infinite, or the undefined duality, or which of the different modes of ex- pression attributed by Aristotle to the Platonists (iWetapA. N,l.p. 1087,b.,p.l088. 15.c.2,p. 1088, b., 28. c. 5, p. 1092. 35) belonged to him, can hardly be determined with certainty. As little can we ascertain which of the three assumptions, noticed by Aristotle, respecting the primal numbers, and their relation to the ideas and to mathematical numbers {Metaph. M, 6. p. 1080, b., 11. c. 9, p. 1086. 2. c. 8, p. 1083. 27., comp. N, 5. p. 1090, b., 31, &c.) was his. We can only assume as pro- bable, that, after the example of Plato, he designated