HEIDEL, — Iltpl 4>vo-€ws. 109 



tion of the material thing, yielding, as its final result, the formula of 

 its production or origin with a view to its possible reproduction, the new 

 method proposed to define the idea of the thing. Henceforth it mat- 

 tered little whether the thing was material or not ; nor did it matter 

 whether it was actually or only " potentially " existent. These distinc- 

 tions did not and could not arise until the new method supplanted that 

 of the pre-Socratics. 121 The thing itself has a beginning, a source, and 

 a history : it is transient. The idea of the thing (for the Socratic) had 

 no relation to beginnings or history : it is eternal. The idea of a key, 

 for example, is totally different from the key itself. The key is of brass 

 or of iron : that is to say, it is defined with reference to its material 

 source : the definition of the idea of a key, however, looks inevitably 

 to its purpose, or end. Thus the limits of the process of 0i'o-is, erected 

 by this two-fold method of definition, are polar opposites. In either 

 direction the quest was for the truly existent, and, the human mind 

 being constituted as it is, the ultimate existence must be the first cause. 

 To the Socratic the first cause must be the end or purpose ; but, since 

 historically this conception was a cadet and could not wholly supplant 

 the first-born, the end must be in the beginning, even if it be only 

 " potentially " present there. Like most Socratic ideas, the conception 

 of the causality of <£i'o-<.s, as the end of a process, was involved in many 

 pre-Socratic expressions, though their significance was not realized. 

 Attention was directed above to instances of personification (involving 

 agency) of </>ucns in the sense of constitution, talent, etc., falling under 

 III. The same implication belongs to 7re<f>vKe and cpvo-iv ex eL w ^ n the 

 infinitive. Nature thus becomes, as it is by Aristotle expressly re- 

 garded, a circular process, in which the end of one cycle is the begin- 

 ning of another : a!'0pu>Tro<s avOpwirov yerra. The kvkXos yereo-ews thus 



established is, however, for the pre-Socratic a real process, with a clear 

 history, comparable to the Orphic cycle, in which the immortal soul 

 experiences the vicissitudes incident to sin. In Aristotle, where the 

 process as a whole is all in all, the single moment tends to assume the 

 guise of something having a reality only for the theorist, — a kind of 

 psychologists' fallacy. 



121 Hippocrates, II. t^x"V^> 2 (6, 2 foil. Littre) is an interesting discussion of the 

 "existence" of arts, which could not have taken the form it actually takes if the 

 Aristotelian distinctions had been current. "Potentiality" and "actuality" have 

 no significance in relation to things which have a real history ; the terms acquire 

 meaning only in relation to an ideal construction, such as we find in the Aristotelian 

 system, where the definition of the oiaia. of a thing has reference to its realization of 

 an end as seen from without. Teichmuller, strangely enough, imported these con- 

 ceptions into the pre-Socratics. 



