24 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



1. That sleep is an affection merely of the body, not of the mind. 



2. That the cause of winds is the rarefaction of the air by the sun's 

 rays. His successors, not contented with this simple and true account 

 of the matter, had recourse to much more complicated and improbable 

 causes. 



3. That earthquakes are caused by air confined in subterraneous 

 caverns. 



4. That the rainbow is occasioned by the reflection of the sun's 

 rays in a dense cloud, opposite the sun. (Brucker says, " by the 

 refraction," but the word in Plutarch is avacXa<7ic, which Aristotle 

 uses of the reflection of light. The philosophers of that age knew 

 nothing of refraction : and when Pliny speaks of the rainbow, although 

 he uses the word refringi, he seems to mean reflexion.) 



Anaxagoras committed to writing some of his lucubrations; So- 

 crates is represented by Plato as expressing the dissatisfaction which 

 ha experienced, upon the perusal of a work of Anaxagoras, at finding 

 that he proceeded no further, in accounting for the actual state of 

 things, than mechanical causes ; instead of assigning moral causes, 

 such as the fitness of things, the principles of order, &c. Bayle 

 defends Anaxagoras, upon the ground, that, having once admitted a 

 first moving cause, he had no occasion to recur to it in his explanation 

 of the separate phenomena of nature. It appears, from this account, 

 that Socrates was not a scholar of Anaxagoras. 



Diogenes The principles of Anaxagoras were taken up by DIOGENES APOL- 



Apoiioniates. LO NIATES, the next philosopher of the Ionic school, who made, how- 

 ever, this important change, that he supposed the air not only to be 

 the first principle of all things, but also the efficient and moving 

 principle. 



Archeiaus Diogenes was succeeded by ARCHELAUS, both of them having been 



hearers of Anaxagoras. Archeiaus was called, by way of eminence, 



6 ^vo-tfcoc? " the natural philosopher." Some writers have attributed 



to him the honour, which is most commonly assigned to Anaxagoras, 



began teach- of having been the first to import philosophy from Ionia into Athens. 



Athens It is not unlikely that Archeiaus might have been the first who 



about 450 B.C. established a regular school of philosophy in that city; for Anaxagoras 



perhaps only taught some occasional disciples. But the method by 



which Bayle endeavours to reconcile the two accounts, is this: The 



ancient writers say nothing more than that Archeiaus first transported 



the Ionic school of philosophy from Ionia to Athens, which is strictly 



true ; for during the temporary residence of Anaxagoras in Attica, the 



chair of philosophy in Ionia was not vacant ; whereas, when Archeiaus 



came to Athens, he left no successor behind him in Ionia. 



Where Archeiaus altered the dogmas of Anaxagoras in physics, it 

 seems to have been for the worse, and the same may be said of his 

 moral philosophy ; since he maintained the dangerous position, that 

 there is no such thing as natural right ; that all actions are in them- 

 selves indifferent; and that their moral quality depends solely on the 



