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| Concerning the Two Schools of Philosophers, that Is, the Italic and Ionic, and Their Founders.
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Chapter 2.—Concerning the Two
Schools of Philosophers, that Is, the Italic and Ionic, and Their
Founders.
As far as concerns the literature
of the Greeks, whose language holds a more illustrious place than
any of the languages of the other nations, history mentions two
schools of philosophers, the one called the Italic school,
originating in that part of Italy which was formerly called Magna
Græcia; the other called the Ionic school, having its origin in
those regions which are still called by the name of Greece. The
Italic school had for its founder Pythagoras of Samos, to whom also
the term “philosophy” is said to owe its origin. For whereas
formerly those who seemed to excel others by the laudable manner in
which they regulated their lives were called sages, Pythagoras, on
being asked what he professed, replied that he was a philosopher,
that is, a student or lover of wisdom; for it seemed to him to be
the height of arrogance to profess oneself a sage.297
| 297 Sapiens,that is, a wise man, one who had attained to
wisdom. | The
founder of the Ionic school, again, was Thales of Miletus, one of
those seven who were styled the “seven sages,” of whom six were
distinguished by the kind of life they lived, and by certain maxims
which they gave forth for the proper conduct of life. Thales was
distinguished as an investigator into the nature of things; and, in
order that he might have successors in his school, he committed his
dissertations to writing. That, however, which especially
rendered him eminent was his ability, by means of astronomical
calculations, even to predict eclipses of the sun and moon. He
thought, however, that water was the first principle of things, and
that of it all the elements of the world, the world itself, and all
things which are generated in it, ultimately consist. Over all
this work, however, which, when we consider the world, appears so
admirable, he set nothing of the nature of divine mind. To him
succeeded Anaximander, his pupil, who held a different opinion
concerning the nature of things; for he did not hold that all
things spring from one principle, as Thales did, who held that
principle to be water, but thought that each thing springs from its
own proper principle. These principles of things he believed to
be infinite in number, and thought that they generated innumerable
worlds, and all the things which arise in them. He thought, also,
that these worlds are subject to a perpetual process of alternate
dissolution and regeneration, each one continuing for a longer or
shorter period of time, according to the nature of the case; nor
did he, any more than Thales, attribute anything to a divine mind
in the production of all this activity of things. Anaximander
left as his successor his disciple Anaximenes, who attributed all
the causes of things to an infinite air. He neither denied nor
ignored the existence of gods, but, so far from believing that the
air was made by them, he held, on the contrary, that they sprang
from the air. Anaxagoras, however, who was his pupil, perceived
that a divine mind was the productive cause of all things which we
see, and said that all the various kinds of things, according to
their several modes and species, were produced out of an infinite
matter consisting of homogeneous particles, but by the efficiency
of a divine mind. Diogenes, also, another pupil of Anaximenes,
said that a certain air was the original substance of things out of
which all things were produced, but that it was possessed of a
divine reason, without which nothing could be produced from it.
Anaxagoras was succeeded by his disciple Archelaus, who also
thought that all things consisted of homogeneous particles, of
which each particular thing was made, but that those particles were
pervaded by a divine mind, which perpetually energized all the
eternal bodies, namely, those particles, so that they are
alternately united and separated. Socrates, the master of Plato,
is said to have been the disciple of Archelaus; and on Plato’s
account it is that I have given this brief historical sketch of the
whole history of these schools.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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