50 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



In a word, then, the speculations of the early philosophers are 

 not radically differentiated from the fancies of the poets by the log- 

 ical consistency and sober discrimination which come only from a long 

 period of training in rigid scientific method. The early philosopher 

 will be best understood if we think of him as gifted with the eager 

 desire to hnow^ together with the poet's fancy and that adventurous 

 imagination which, to use the words of the tine tribute of Lucretius 

 to his master: 



****** Bfctra 



Processit longe flammautia moenia mundi 



Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque, 



Unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri, 



Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique 



Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus hserens.' 



2. The poet and philosopher alike, in thinking about the origin 

 of things, assume the existence of matter at the first. There is no 

 creation out of nothing. It is surprising to find in so well-known a 

 writer as John Fiske a statement to the contrary: "The Ancients 

 freely admitted that matter might be created and destroyed.^" 

 If he means in these words to include the Greeks, he could not be 

 further from the truth. Burnet, our best authority on early Greek 

 philosophy, says: "The great principle which underlies the specu- 

 lations of the early cosmologists, though it is first laid down by 

 Parmenides, is that 'Nothing comes into being out of nothing, and 

 nothing passes away into nothing.^' " 



This statement of Burnet needs some qualification. Auaximander, 

 for instance, had the first part of the dictum but not the last. He 

 assumed that nothing could come out of nothing, but seems to have 

 held that matter can be destroyed. At any rate, that seems to be the 

 implication of the statement that Auaximander assumed his primary 

 substance or first principle to be infinite, in order that the process of 



Lucret. De Rerum Natura 1:73-77. 

 'Cosmic Philosophy, I. p. 280. 

 'Early Greek Philosophy, p. 9. 



