Ilcpi $v<r€<os. 



A STUDY OF THE CONCEPTION OF NATURE AMONG THE 

 PRE-SOCRATICS. 1 



By William Akthue Heidel. 

 Presented by M. H. Morgan, October 13, 1909; Received November 3, 1909. 



Professor John Burnet says : 2 "So far as I know, no historian of 

 Greek philosophy has clearly laid it down that the word used by the 

 early cosinologists to express this idea of a permanent and primary sub- 

 stance was none other than (£vo-is ; 3 and that the title Uepl <£uo-eojs, so 

 commonly given to philosophical works of the sixth and fifth centuries 

 b. c., 4 means simply Concerning the Primary Substance. Both Plato 

 and Aristotle use the term in this sense when they are discussing the 



1 This paper was begun in the spring of 1908, and was read in substance before 

 the Classical Club of Princeton University, Dec. 17, 1908. 



2 Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., 1908, p. 12 foil. 



3 Burnet, ibid., p. 13 foil., p. 57, n. 1, rejects the traditional view that Anaxi- 

 mander so used dpxv, which, he says, "is in this sense purely Aristotelian." This 

 statement, and the other that "To Anaximander dpxv could only have meant begin- 

 ning," are open to question ; cp. Hippocrates, IT. vovauv, 51 (7, 584 Littre) i»7rd rCbv 

 apx& v duo-Tartu cDe etp-rjKa. oi vdvTa, and ibid. (7, 590 Littre) 6'/cws epydfrvrai at dpxa-l 

 rr/v OepfMTjv ko1 t-qv ra.paxh v T V ''■>"/ P J virdyovcrau is vovcrov. Cp. Philolaus, fr. 6 eVei 5e 

 ral dpxal virdpxov oi>x bp-diaL ov8' 6p.6<pv\oL eWcu, fr. 8 ijpuv p.ovds ws civ dpxr] odaa 

 irdvTuv, fr. 11 dpxd ical dyep.uv, though I lay no stress on these, believing that all the 

 so-called fragments of Philolaus, excepting fr. 16, which occurs in the Eudemian 

 Ethics, are spurious. Cp. also note 166, below. This use of dpxv = causal principle 

 may well have been old ; cp. Tnr/r) and pifap.a = GTOixeiov. The ' Aristotelian ' sense 

 of dpxv occurs in Plato, Tim. 48 B ; cp. Diels, Elementum, p. 20. Burnet also 

 says (p. 56) "That Anaximander called this something [i.e. his "Airetpov] by the 

 name of <pvcris, is clear from the doxographers." This statement likewise may fairly 

 be challenged. 



4 Burnet here adds in a note : "I do not mean to imply that the philosophers 

 used this title themselves ; for early prose writings had no titles. The writer men- 

 tioned his name and the subject of his work in the first sentence, as Herodotus, for 

 instance, does." As the titles were, in all probability, added later it is interesting 

 to note the words of Galen, de Elem. sec. Hippocr. 1. 9, p. 487 Kiihn : rd yap tuiv 

 ira\aiG)v airavTa. irepl <pv<Teus iiriytypairTai, rd MeXicrcrov, t& Uapptvldov, rd EfnreSo- 

 k\4ovs, 'A\Kp.aiu)v6s re /ecu Topylov, xai IIpo8lKov, kclI twv &\\uv dirdvrwv. It was there- 

 fore, as we shall see, a sort of blanket-title. 



