Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/200

Rh of these with Fire and Earth is, however, misleading, though Theophrastos followed him in it. Simplicius, who had the poem before him (§ 85), after mentioning Fire and Earth, at once adds "or rather Light and Darkness"; and this is suggestive. Lastly, Aristotle's identification of the dense element with "what is not," the unreal of the First Part of the poem, is not easy to reconcile with the view that it is earth. On the other hand, if we suppose that the second of the two "forms," the one which should not have been "named," is the Pythagorean Air or Void, we get a very good explanation of Aristotle's identification of it with "what is not." We seem, then, to be justified in neglecting the identification of the dense element with earth for the present. At a later stage, we shall be able to see how it may have originated. The further statement of Theophrastos, that the Warm was the efficient cause and the Cold the material or passive, is not, of course, to be regarded as historical.

We have seen that Simplicius, with the poem of Parmenides before him, corrects Aristotle by substituting Light and Darkness for Fire and Earth, and he is amply borne out by the fragments he quotes. Parmenides himself calls one "form" Light, Flame, and Fire, and the other Night, and we have now to consider whether these can be identified with the Pythagorean Limit and Unlimited. We have seen good reason to believe (§ 58) that the idea of the world breathing belonged to the earliest form of Pythagoreanism, and there can be no difficulty in identifying this "boundless breath" with Darkness, which stands very well for the