04 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



This school did not much employ itself in the 

 developement of its principles as applied to physical 

 inquiries : but we are not without examples of such 

 speculations. Plutarch's Treatise Uept TOV Tipwrov 

 ^v^pov 9 " On the First Cold," may be cited as one. 

 It is in reality a discussion of a question which has 

 been agitated in modern times also ; whether cold 

 be a positive quality or a mere privation. " Is there, 

 O Favorinus," he begins, " a First Power and Essence 

 of the Cold, as Fire is of the Hot ; by a certain pre- 

 sence and participation of which all other things are 

 cold : or is rather coldness a privation of heat, as 

 darkness is of light, and rest of motion ?" 



3. Technical Forms of the Pythagoreans. The 

 Numbers of the Pythagoreans, when propounded 

 as the explanation of physical phenomena, as they 

 were, are still more obscure than the ideas of the 

 Platonists. There were, indeed, considerable re- 

 semblances in the way in which these two kinds of 

 notions were spoken of. Plato called his Ideas 

 unities, monads ; and as, according to him, Ideas, so, 

 according to the Pythagoreans, Numbers, were the 

 causes of things being what they are 87 . But there 

 was this difference, that things shared the nature of 

 the Platonic Ideas "by participation," while they 

 shared the nature of Pythagorean Numbers "by 

 imitation." Moreover, the Pythagoreans followed 

 their notion out into much greater developement 

 than any other school, investing particular numbers 



27 Arist. Metapb. i. 6. 



