Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/765

Rh X E N X E N 719 of natural kinds, took for his principles arithmetical unit) and plurality, and accordingly identified ideal numbers with arithmetical numbers. In thus reverting to the crudities of certain Pytha goreans he laid himself open to the criticisms of Aristotle, who, in his Metaphysics, recognizing amongst contemporary Platonists three principal groups (1) those who, like Plato, distinguished mathematical and ideal numbers ; (2) those who, like Xenocrates, identified them ; and (3) those who, like Speusippus, postulated mathematical numbers only has much to say against the Xeno- cratean interpretation of the theory, and in particular points out that, if the ideas are numbers made up of arithmetical units, they not only cease to be principles but also become subject to arithmetical operations. Xenocrates s theory of inorganic nature was substanti ally identical with the theory of the elements which is propounded in the Timseus, 53 C sq. Nevertheless, holding that every dimen sion lias a principle of its own, he rejected the derivation of the elemental solids pyramid, octahedron, icosahedron, and cube from triangular surfaces, and in so far approximated to atomism. Moreover, to the tetrad of simple elements namely, fire, air, water, earth he added the TT^TTTTJ oixria, ether. His cosmology, which is drawn almost entirely from the Timseus, and, as he intimated, is not to be regarded as a cosmogony, should be studied in connexion with his psychology. Soul is a self-mov ing number, derived from the two fundamental principles, unity and plurality (5uas aoptcrros), whence it obtains its powers of rest and motion. It is incorporeal, and may exist apart from body. The irrational soul, as well as the rational soul, is immortal. The universe, the heavenly bodies, man, animals, and presumably plants, are each of them endowed with a soul, which is more or less perfect according to the position which it occupies in the descend ing scale of creation. With this Platonic philosopheme Xenocrates combines the current theology, identifying the universe and the heavenly bodies with the greater gods, and reserving a place be tween tliem and mortals for the lesser divinities. If the extant authorities are to be trusted, Xenocrates recognized three grades of cognition, each appropriated to a region of its own, namely, knowledge, opinion, and sensation, having for their re spective objects supra-celestials or ideas, celestials or stars, and infra- celestials or things. Even here the mythological tendency displays itself, vo-rjrd, 5oa&amp;lt;rrd, and alffdrjTd being severally committed to Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho. Of Xenocrates s logic we know only that with Plato he distinguished rb Ka6 avrb and T& 7rp6s TL, re jecting the Aristotelian list of ten categories as a superfluity. Valuing philosophy chiefly for its influence upon conduct, Xeno crates bestowed especial attention upon ethics. The catalogue of his works shows that he had written largely upon this subject ; but the indications of doctrine which have survived are scanty, and may be summed up in a few sentences. Things are goods, ills, or neutrals. Goods are of three sorts mental, bodily, external ; but of all goods virtue is incomparably the greatest, Happiness con sists in the practice of virtue, the requisite powers and opportunities being presupposed. Hence the virtuous man is always happy, though his happiness cannot be perfect unless he is adequately provided with personal and extraneous advantages. The virtuous man is pure, not in act only, but also in heart. To the attainment of virtue the best help is philosophy; for the philosopher does of his own accord what others do under the compulsion of law. Specula tive wisdom and practical wisdom are to be distinguished. Meagre as these statements are, they suffice to show that in ethics, as else where, Xonocrates worked upon Platonic lines, and that in his theory of the relations of external advantages to happiness, as well as in the technicalities of his exposition, he closely resembled Aristotle. Xenocrates was not in any sense a great thinker. His ineta- physic was a travesty rather than a reproduction of that of his master. His ethic had little which was distinctive. But his austere life and commanding personality made him an effective teacher, and his influence, kept alive by his pupils Polemon and Crates, ceased only when Arcesilaus, the founder of the so-called Second Academy, gave a new direction to the studies of the school. Bibliography. D. Van de Wynpersse, De Xenocrate Chalccdnnio, Leyden, 1822 ; C. A. Brandis, Gesch. d. Griechisch-EomiscJien PUUosopliie, Berlin, 1853, ii. 2, 1, 19-37; E. Zeller, FhUosophie d. Griechen, Leipsic, 1875, ii., 1, 840-842, 8C.2-8S3 ; P. W. A. Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Grxcorum, Paris, 1SS1, iii. 100-130. (II. JA.) XEXOPHANES of Colophon, the reputed founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, is supposed to have been born in the third or fourth decade of the 6th century B.C. An exile from his Ionian home, he resided for a time in Sicily, at Zancle and at Catana, and afterwards estab lished himself in southern Italy, at Elea, a Phocujan colony founded in the sixty-first Olympiad (536-533). In one of the extant fragments he speaks of himself as having begun his wanderings sixty-seven years before, when he was twenty-five years of age, so that he was not less than ninety-two when he died. His teaching found expression in poems, which he recited rhapsoclically in the course of his travels. In the more considerable of the elegiac frag ments which have survived he ridicules the doctrine of the migration of souls (xviii.), asserts the claims of wisdom against the prevalent athleticism, Avhich seemed to him to conduce neither to the good government of states nor to their material prosperity (xix.), reprobates the introduction of Lydian luxury into Colophon (xx.), and recommends the reasonable enjoyment of social pleasures (xxi.). Of the epic fragments the more important are those in which he attacks the &quot;anthropomorphic and anthropopathic poly theism&quot; of his contemporaries. According to Aristotle, &quot; this first of Eleatic Unitarians was not careful to say whether the unity which he postulated was finite or infinite, but, contemplating the whole firmament,&quot; (or perhaps &quot;the whole world,&quot; for the word ovpavos is ambiguous), &quot;declared that the One is God.&quot; Whether Xenophanes was a monotheist, whose assertion of the unity of God suggested to Parmenides the doctrine of the unity of Being, or a pantheist, whose assertion of the unity of God was also a declaration of the unity of Being, so that he anticipated Parmenides, in other words, whether Xenophanes s teach ing was purely theological or had also a philosophical significance, is a question about which authorities have differed and will probably continue to differ. The silence of the extant fragments, which have not one word about the unity of Being, favours the one view ; the voice of anti quity, which proclaims Xenophanes the founder of Eleati- cism, has been thought to favour the other. Of Xenophanes s utterances about (1) God, (2) the world, (3) knowledge, the following survive. (1) &quot; There is one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals,. . . He is all sight, all mind, all ear (i.e., not a com posite organism). . . . Without an effort ruleth he all things by thought. . . . He abideth ever in the same place motionless, and it beiitteth him not to wander hither and thither. . . . Yet men imagine gods to be born, and to have senses, and voice, and body, like themselves. . . . Even so the gods of the Ethiopians are swarthy and flat-nosed, the gods of the Thracians are fair-haired and blue-eyed. . . . Even so Homer and Hcsiod attributed to the gods all that is a shame and a reproach among men theft, adultery, deceit, and other lawless acts. . . . Even so lions and horses and oxen, if they had hands wherewith to grave images, would fashion gods after their own shapes and make them bodies like to their own. (2) From earth all things are and to earth all things return. . . . From earth and water come all of us. ... The sea is the well whence water springeth. . . . Here at our feet is the end of the earth where it reacheth unto air, but, below, its foundations are without end. . . . The rainbow, which men call Iris, is a cloud that is purple and red and yellow. (3) No man hath certainly known, nor shall certainly know, aught of that which I say about the gods and about all things ; for, be that which he saith ever so perfect, yet doth he not know it ; all things are matters of opinion. . . . That which I say is opinion like unto truth. . . . The gods did not reveal all things to mortals in the beginning ; long is the search ere man findeth that which is better.&quot; There is very little secondary evidence to record. &quot; The Eleatic school,&quot; says the Stranger in Plato s Sophist, 242 D, &quot;beginning with Xenophanes, and even earlier, starts from the principle of the unity of all things. &quot; Aristotle, in a passage already cited, Meta physics, A5,spcaks of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic Unitarians, adding that his monotheism was reached through the contempla tion of the ovpavds. Theophrastus (in Simplicity s Ad F/tysica, 5) sums up Xenophancs s teaching in the propositions, &quot;The All is One and the One is God.&quot; Timon (in Sext. Empir., Pyrrh., i. 224), ignoring Xenophanes s theology, makes him resolve all things into one and the same unity. The demonstrations of the unity and the attributes of God, with which the treatise DC Melissa, Xcnophane, et Gorgia (now no longer ascribed to Aristotle or Theophrastus) ac credits Xcnophanes, are plainly framed on the model of Eleatic proofs of the unity and the attributes of the Ent, and must there fore be set aside. The cpitomators of a later time add nothing to the testimonies already enumerated. Thus, whereas in his writings, so far as they are known to us, Xenophanes appears as a theologian protesting against an anthropo morphic polytheism, the ancients seem to have regarded him as a philosopher asserting the unity of Being. How are we to under stand these conflicting, though not irreconcilable, testimonies ? According to Zeller, tlie discrepancy is only apparent. The Greek