HEIDEL. — n<=p! <t>v<r«os. Ill 



versal 125 frame of things. Difficult, and in some cases impossible, it 

 is to distinguish clearly between the outward frame or constitution and 

 the inner constitution or character of things (III. B). Each <f>vo-is or 

 frame has its inner constitution corresponding to it, which will of course 

 vary according as the <£vo-is in question is individual, generic, or uni- 

 versal. Description or definition of the <£uo-is relates the individual or 

 generic to the universal. Of course the crude methods of description 

 and definition in use in the pre-Socratic period were not consciously 

 generalized ; but there was an evident desire, manifested most clearly 

 in the parallel drawn between the microcosm and the cosmos, to find 

 the universal in the particular. In accordance with the chemical mode 

 of definition in vogue this desire assumed the form of the postulate 

 that the constitution of individual things was the same as that of the 

 world as a whole. We may, if we choose, denounce this procedure as 

 crude logic, but it was instinctive logic, or logic in the making, for 

 all that. The differentiae specificae were found chiefly in the propor- 

 tions of the Xo'yo? /xt'^ews, although this method was to a limited extent 

 supplemented, though perhaps nowhere wholly supplanted, by the 

 differentiation introduced in the universal through rarefaction and con- 

 densation, or — what practically amounts to the same thing — through 

 heat and cold. As to the universal, the wide-spread conviction that 

 each thing shares the attributes, or rather the constituents, of the world 

 one and all in varying proportions, served as a bond of union, making 

 things, on the physical side, capable of interaction, and, on the intel- 

 lectual side, capable of being comprehended. The motive that inspired 

 the postulation of a common principle for the explanation of the mani- 

 fold data of sense is particularly evident in the case of the Pythagor- 

 eans, whose postulate that all is at bottom number or numerical relation 

 has no meaning except that of rendering phenomena intelligible. This 

 is clear even without accepting the so-called fragments of Philolaus, in 

 which it is expressly stated. To Aristotle this principle descended in 

 two forms. For physical theory, it provided a basis of interaction, 



specific differentiae, of which we have an early example in Horn. Od. 10, 303, the 

 <p6<ris of the plant /xQ\v pointed out to Odysseus by Hermes ; later we find, in the 

 same class, <pv<ris denoting the characteristic differentiae of sex. Under (2) we might 

 likewise include many uses in which (pvais — dvvafus, since the fxirpa of <pi<ns and 

 dvvafits are specific differentiae. Cp. n. 85 above and n. 113, where natural kinds are 

 called cpvcrios ^KaaT-fifixna. 



125 In this sense <p\j<ns practically = k6<t/jlos. For the uses of Koo-fxos see Bernays, 

 Abh. der Akad. Berlin, 1882, p. 6 foil. In this universal sense <pvcri$ = ra (pvofieva, 

 (pvtrts tQv SXojv, etc. For instances see Archytas, fr. 1; Eurip. fr. 910; Critias, fr. 

 19 (Diels); Ai<T<roi A6701 (Dialcxcis), Diels, Vorsokr. II. 647, 15; Hippocrates, 

 II. apxa.ii]s iijrpiKriS, 20 (p. 24 foil., Kiihlewein). 



