Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/679

Rh Burnet's book covers the period generally called the pre-Sokratic, or the period prior to the "rise of epistemological and ethical speculation"; from this he excludes Demokritos as presupposing the epistemological problem and following Protagoras. In the introduction he takes a brief glance at the mythology of Greece prior to the rise of philosophy, and makes some interesting suggestions of an anthropological nature. The step which placed the "Ionian cosmologists once for all above the level of the Maoris" is not the "substitution of impersonal causes acting according to law for personal causes acting arbitrarily," as Grote and Zeller say, but simply that the Milesian philosophers "left off telling tales. They gave up the hopeless task of describing what was when as yet there was nothing, and asked instead what all things really are now." The underlying principle of all the philosophy of the Ionian cosmologists, says our author, was ex nihilo nihil fit. This was explicitly formulated, he takes pains to say, not until Parmenides (cf. Zeller, 5te Aufl. p. 207). The word which was used for "primary substance" was, as Burnet points out,, so that does not mean "On the Nature of Things," but "Concerning the Primary Substance." In this new interpretation of the word I think Burnet is right.

In his discussion of Anaximander our author gives a very clear résumé of the several views of the, and this he follows by a lucid criticism of them all, in which he finds it impossible to accept any of them, chiefly on chronological grounds. He holds that they all distort the theory of Anaximander by interpreting it through the "categories of a later age." This result, however, brings us orally no further than Zeller left the matter when he said that Anaximander probably ascribed to the no definite quality at all. For his grounds, vid. 5te Aufl. p. 216. That, as used by Anaximenes, does not mean air, but vapor or mist (p. 78), is a departure from the usual interpretation of the word, for which Burnet, I think, does not bring sufficient support. It is not satisfactory in the light of fragments 18 and 21 (Ritter & Preller). The very broad statement that "in all the earlier cosmologists means water in a vaporous state, more or less condensed," is simply made, not substantiated (cf. also p. 200, and the citation from Schmidt's Griechische Synonymik in note 37; further, p. 240 seq.). The a priori plausibility of this meaning which is brought forward in the following paragraph is not convincing. Zeller has, I think, shown satisfactorily that the of Anaximenes is simply our atmospheric air (p. 240 seqq. 5te Aufl.).

Under the head of "Science and Religion" Burnet gives us a very interesting chapter on "Pythagoras and Xenophanes." Contemporary with the first the conflict between the beliefs of the philosophers and the beliefs of the people arose what our author calls the "religious revival" of the sixth century B.C. The breaking up through colonization "of