Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/72

58 the cold in winter, and this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must picture, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the world we live in. This mass is a body, out of which our world once emerged, and into which it will one day be absorbed again.

17. We are told that Anaximander believed there were "innumerable worlds in the Boundless," and we have to decide between the interpretation that, though all the worlds are perishable, there are an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, and Zeller's view that a new world never comes into existence till the old one has passed away, so that there is never more than one world at a time. As this point is of fundamental importance, it will be necessary to examine the evidence carefully.

In the first place, the doxographical tradition proves that Theophrastos discussed the views of all the early philosophers as to whether there was one world or an infinite number, and there can be no doubt that, when he ascribed "innumerable worlds" to the Atomists, he meant coexistent and not successive worlds. Now, if he had classed two such different views under one head, he would