HEIDEL. — IIcpl Screws. 105 



We have seen that in the world of Homeric thought every event was 

 regarded as due to the activity of the gods, and that, as the conception 

 of Nature replaced that of the gods as a basis of explanation, <£iW 

 was conceived as the source of the manifold activities of the world. 

 The phenomena of life, cosmic and microcosmic, seeming to occur 

 spontaneously and without external cause 101 and direction, naturally 

 engrossed the attention of the philosopher and might well make it 

 appear possible to dispense with a special cause of motion. Aris- 

 totle 102 complains that the first philosophers did not concern them- 

 selves with this question, confining themselves to the investigation of 

 the material cause ; and such anticipations of his efficient cause as he 

 finds in the early cosmogonists and cosmologists bear the stamp of 

 vital and psychic agencies, hardly distinguishable from the personifica- 

 tions of mythology. From these facts divergent conclusions have been 

 drawn, some assuming that the mythical conceptions continued essen- 

 tially unchanged, others finding a refined animism to which they give 

 the name of bylozoism or hylopsychism. The first conclusion is shown 

 to be false by the mechanical interpretation put upon the activities of 

 the mythically named agencies ; 103 the second presupposes distinc- 

 tions which developed only at a later period. 104 In general the phil- 

 osophers appear to have contented themselves with the recognition of 

 the autonomy of nature, assigning no ground for her activity, since she 

 seemed herself to be the sufficient explanation of events. The strict 

 exclusion of divine agency not unnaturally suggests a conscious effort 

 to eliminate such interference, though this inference might be wrong ; 

 on the other hand the habit of saying that certain phenomena occur 

 " of themselves " or "of necessity "or "by chance" gave, as we have 

 seen, great offense to the teleological Socratics. A modern philoso- 

 pher, conscious of the difficulties presented by an attempt to define 

 causality and necessity, would judge these early thinkers with less 

 severity. But the constant criticism of pre-Socratic philosophers 

 by their Socratic successors, due to the teleological prepossessions of 



101 Spontaneous generation of animal life, for example, seems to have been gener- 

 ally accepted for lower forms. As philosophy advanced the higher forms of life were 

 included, at least at the beginning of the world. 



102 Aristotle, Met. 984 1 lS-985 b 22. Cp. Gilbert, Aristoteles und die Vorsokratiker, 

 Philol., 68, 378 foil. 



103 In Empedocles this is obvious to all who regard him as a philosopher and 

 consider the evidence ; it is equally clear in regard to Parmenides. Cp. my Quali- 

 tative Change, n. 89, and see also ibid. nn. 55 and 65. 



104 For this see Burnet, ed. 2, p. 15 foil. 



