280 HEIDEL. 



the matters which chiefly claimed their attention. Of Pythagoras, 

 indeed, we are able to judge solely by later Pythagoreans; as for 

 Heraclitus, he has in his own words so clearly expressed himself 

 as to leave no room for doubt. For him the philosopher, though he 

 must of course know many things, does not attain wisdom by much 

 learning; the wisdom of the pliilosopher lies in the understanding 

 of the unif;sdng and governing principle. Pythagoras might have 

 said that it lay in learning the mathematical formula for the law. 

 This new interest is metaphysical, or at all events akin to metaphysics. 

 It does not, so far as I can discover, appear an^-^vhere in the Mile- 

 sians; but through Socrates, who was equally influenced by Hera- 

 cliteans and Pythagoreans, this conception of what marks the phi- 

 losopher and philosopky descended to Plato and to Aristotle, and so 

 shaped the doxographic tradition. 



The interests of the ^Milesians — chronology, descriptive geography, 

 ethnography, ethnic and biological history — could not be included 

 in the scope of philosophy proper. However scientific their methods 

 and aims, they were then and still remain essentially empirical; 

 however much they may in subordinate matters employ mathematics, 

 principles, such as Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans sought, are not 

 to be discovered there. Only in cosmology might one perhaps think 

 to find an exception; but even here we pass from would-be history 

 among the ISIilesians to mathematical and descriptive astronomy in 

 the Pythogoreans, of whom Aristotle quaintly says that "they intend 

 to construct a cosmos and to speak in the manner of the ^ucruot, " ^"^ 

 when in fact they were merely offering a mathematical construction 

 of it. 



From this survey of the doxographic tradition, it becomes apparent 

 that the early [Milesians, so far as they appear in it, are out of their 

 element, and in any case could not hope to be represented sympa- 

 thetically, especially from Aristotle onwards. If they appear at all, it 

 must be in a capacity at least doubtful. Ai'istotle regarded Thales, 

 Anaximander and Anaximenes as proposing doctrines concerned with 

 ontological principles and -with processes of change having metaphysi- 



87 Met. 1091"'' IS KoafxoTroiovcn Kcii (^iicriKcos 3ov\ovTai \eyew. Actually, of 

 course, they were interested chiefly in very diflferent things; such resemblance 

 as their language had to that of the (pwioXoyoi was probabh* due to one or 

 other of two influences, either to the influence of the lonians who were really 

 (f>v(TLo\6yoL, or to that of our common way of thinking, which generally gives 

 even to purely abstract and mathematical constructions a time-form. Hence 

 the debate regarding the question whether Plato ascribed to the cosmos an 

 origin in time. 



