Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/199

Rh a knowledge of it, and this Parmenides had to supply himself.

91. The view that the Second Part of the poem of Parmenides was a sketch of contemporary Pythagorean cosmology is, doubtless, incapable of rigorous demonstration, but it can be made extremely probable. The entire history of Pythagoreanism up to the end of the fifth century B.C. is certainly conjectural; but, if we find in Parmenides ideas wholly unconnected with his own view of the world, and if we find precisely the same ideas in later Pythagoreanism, the most natural inference will be that the later Pythagoreans derived these views from their predecessors, and that they formed part of the original stock-in-trade of the society. This will be confirmed if we find that they are developments of certain features in the old Ionian cosmology. Pythagoras came from Samos, and it was not, so far as we can see, in his cosmological views that he chiefly displayed originality. It has been pointed out (§ 53) that the idea of the world breathing came from Anaximenes, and we need not be surprised to find traces of Anaximander too. Now, if we were confined to what Aristotle tells us on this subject, it would be hard to make out a case; but his statements require, as usual, to be examined with care. He says, first of all, that the two elements of Parmenides were the Warm and the Cold. In this he is so far justified by the fragments that, since the Fire of which Parmenides speaks is, of course, warm, the other "form," which has all the opposite qualities, must of necessity be cold. Here, then, we have the traditional "opposites" of the Milesians. Aristotle's