Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/52

 *stem, and to become a distinct branch of philosophical investigation. Anaximander cannot, at this distance of time, be directly associated with the practical problems of human life, but must ever remain wrapped up in his "infinity," which is neither Air nor Water, nor any other element, but "something that is different from all of them." It is not, however, without significance in this connexion, that the most striking fragment of his Philosophy that has reached our times is couched in ethical phraseology: "That out of which existing things have their birth must also, of right, be their grave when they are destroyed. For they must, by the dispensation of time, give a just compensation for their injustice." We are in equal ignorance of any special ethical teaching of Anaximenes. Heraclitus, however, has a distinctly ethical aspect, in spite of the physical nature of most of his philosophical speculations. Self-knowledge, which is alien to the multitude, who are under the sway of the poets, is already, in Heraclitus, the basis of self-control, as it is in Socrates the basis of all moral excellence. An ordered self-control is the highest of all virtues; even the Sun must not transgress the limits of his sphere, or the Erinnyes, the Ministers of Justice, will find him out. Anaxagoras, whom Sextus Empiricus will one day describe as "the