ANAXIMENES.

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Anaksimenees.

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It was not my intention to devote an extensive investigation to Anaximenes himself. The following studies have been undertaken only on Anaximander's account; for it seemed to me very advantageous for an understanding of his doctrine if a further reflected light were cast upon it by emphasizing the divergent theories of his disciple. Here, however, I limit myself to three points in which the divergence most strikingly catches the eye, namely, the determination of the principle, the explanation of the separations, and the conjectures concerning the constitution of the heavens and the heavenly bodies. In fourth place, I have also treated a question that concerns Anaximenes himself: it is a vindication; for even our best historians have attributed to Anaximenes doctrines that belong only to the mythological period.

§ 1.

Air as the Unbounded (Greek text apeiron).

If Anaximander had seen that, in order that the production of things should not suffer from deficiency, an unbounded primal material had to be assumed, then he had at the same time surely conceived this material as corporeal. But the corporeal always appears to the senses. Thus, in order to maintain his theory, he would have had to proceed to subtle epistemological questions, to the

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contrast between sensory and intellectual cognition and to the contrast between potentiality and actuality; but no one at that time yet thought of this. Consequently, Anaximander's non-sensible yet material Unbounded necessarily appeared to have been erroneously conceived, and it was therefore a perfectly natural advance, and not a regression, when Anaximenes, observing the sensible world, sought a material that was at once unbounded and sensible.

All the surviving passages prove to us that Anaximenes, on the one hand, held fast to Anaximander's philosophical demand, while on the other he attempted to show that the required condition of unboundedness really belonged to air. Whereas earth and water always occupy a bounded space, even superficial observation had to make it evident that air has a tendency to spread in every direction, that it penetrates through the finest openings, that it permeates breathing animals, and that no one can perceive anywhere a boundary of the air toward the heavens. Furthermore, it was capable of bearing all the determining qualities that were otherwise distinguished, since it could be both warm and cold, both dry and moist, and also seemed, as in the case of hail, to pass over into solid form.

If, therefore, one considers the tendency of thought contained in Anaximander's Unbounded (Greek text apeiron), Anaximenes made a regression; but if, as justice demands, one simply takes what Anaximander accomplished as given, then we must recognize an advance of thought in Anaximenes, since the Heraclitean, Anaxagorean, and Democritean conceptions also had to be traversed before one could arrive at a deeper concept of matter.

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I would like to add one further consideration that places Anaximenes' doctrine in a very clear light. It is the consideration of quantity. That which surpasses everything else so greatly in quantity that everything else appears, in comparison with it, merely vanishingly small and insignificant, must necessarily also grow so much in importance for our conception that it receives the first place, and everything else appears as an accident attached to it.

Let us take Thales' conception of the world. He regarded the earth as bounded, the air as bounded above and below, and the stars as bounded in size and origin; water, by contrast, he conceived as extending without limit in every direction and downward into infinity. How could it not appear natural to him that all these bounded things had arisen from water, immeasurable in quantity?

Conversely, if Xenophanes believed that the earth extended its roots downward into infinity, then it follows from this immeasurability in quantity by itself that he could not have allowed the earth to arise, but that it had to be for him, if not the only principle, then certainly also a principle.

If we now move on to Anaximander, we see how he placed the earth, together with the water, at the center of the world as a sphere flattened on two sides. He conceived it as surrounded on all sides by air and allowed the air to extend to the remotest periphery of the heavens. Since we recognize from all the traditions that he practiced the mathematical mode of consideration, it must have been natural for him and for his countryman Anaximenes to calculate, according to the distance from the solar sphere that he assumed, the cubic content of the air.

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While Aristotle, in such a calculation *), found that under these assumptions the air would exceed all the other elements in quantity, and therefore set a boundary for it through the aether, so that it would remain in proportion to the other elements, Anaximenes, conversely, was very naturally driven to the conclusion that the immeasurable mass of air, in which the sun, moon, and planets merely flutter like leaves, was the unbounded principle from which everything had been formed through condensation and rarefaction.

§ 2.

Rarefaction and Condensation

The second principle of Anaximander was eternal motion, and Anaximenes agrees with him, as is evident from Hippolytus' report, in the words that the air is in eternal motion, since nothing that changes could change if there were no motion **). Anaximander, now, seems to have drawn the conception of eternal motion directly from observation of the heavens and to have used it for the separation and mixture of the elements that lay potentially in his Unbounded (Greek text apeiron). The question now arises whether, in his eternal motion, Anaximenes had only the various possible

Note: Compare Aristotle, Meteorology I.3:

“Greek text.”

“For it would greatly exceed the equality of the common proportion in relation to the corresponding bodies, even if the space between earth and heaven were full of two elements; for, so to speak, the volume of the earth is nothing in comparison with the encompassing magnitude, in which the whole mass and quantity of water are contained.”

Note: Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, Duncker, p. 18:

“Greek text.”

“But it is always in motion; for whatever changes could not change if it were not moved.”

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...individual movements in view, or whether he also meant the eternal rotation of the heavens?

Until now, so far as I can see, this question has not been raised. It is evident, however, that our judgment concerning Anaximenes must turn out enormously different depending on whether we follow one assumption or the other. If, namely, as has been done until now, we imagine Anaximenes' infinite air becoming denser or thinner, now here, now there, and accordingly producing the emergence of things, then the absurdity that we attribute to him is boundless; for the first question with which all philosophizing begins is always: Why? But why the air should become denser and thinner here and there is, unless we implant in it a genius who causes these convulsions either capriciously or according to a hidden decree, wholly incomprehensible.

Nothing, however, has been transmitted concerning such an origin of the movements. For I cannot bring myself to invoke for this purpose the vitality or ensoulment of the Unbounded or of the air, emphasized by Krische and also by Zeller.

It therefore seems to me a priori acceptable, in the case of a man who dissolves the entire actual world in thought in order to reconstruct it according to a theory, that he would not have left the first Why to chance, which makes every coherent theory impossible. I will therefore always be inclined to believe that by the eternal motion that he attributed to his principle, he understood the eternal rotation of the heavens, which was likewise assumed by Plato and Aristotle and was evident to the senses.

Aristotle did indeed distinguish, among his elements, different kinds of motion, allowing one to strive downward and another upward,

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and reserving circular motion for the fifth element beyond the sphere of air, the aether. But for this reason he also had no cosmogony; his world remained in eternal identity. Anaximenes, by contrast, like Anaximander and all the others who taught a gradual emergence of the present order and position of things, had to attribute to his principle itself that motion which could lead to the formation of this world. A tumultuous and incalculable movement here and there was not suited to this purpose; the motion of the whole, on the other hand, revealed itself clearly to the senses in the rotation of the heavens, where, according to Anaximenes, there was likewise only air, and this eternal vortex provided a sufficient explanatory ground for most phenomena.

For he could obtain the particular movements only after he had already produced particular elements. While, in Empedocles, the particular already lay ready in the primal mixture, in Anaximenes even this had first to be derived. For what Porphyry, according to Simplicius' report, attributes to Anaximenes may presumably be regarded as correct: that he considered the emergence of things to be merely a transformation of the primal material *). All emergence is merely transformation. But how is the air to transform itself, if inner qualitative alteration is excluded, except through motion? The air of Anaximenes, which according to Cicero and all the transmitted accounts is always in motion **),

Note: Simplicius, Physics 6.34:

“Greek text.”

“Coming-to-be is alteration.”

Note: Cicero, De natura deorum I.25:

“Post Anaximenes aera deum statuit eumque gigni esseque immensum et infinitum et semper in motu.”

“After Anaximenes, he Cicero declares air to be a god, and says that it is generated, immeasurable and infinite, and always in motion.”

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must, through its circular motion, first make the determinate emerge from the indeterminate *), namely, earth, water, and fire, and then, from these, all the individual things. The particular motions can therefore begin only after the particular has come into being.

That the first principial motion must be the circular motion of the heavens can also be seen from the expression in Eusebius: “Everything is generated through a condensation of this air and again through rarefaction; but motion has existed from eternity” **). For, according to the opinion of antiquity, the only motion that was eternal and continued always, and therefore, as principial, had no beginning, was the rotation of the heavens; and all those who, more boldly than Aristotle, also allowed the heavenly bodies to come into being nevertheless did not go beyond this principle, since without this rotation they would no longer have had a rational cause of emergence.

While Anaximander, as we saw, essentially conceived his Unbounded as a mixture, Anaximenes advanced one step in the mechanical mode of consideration; for just as he transformed this mystical Unbounded into sensible air, so the mystical processes of separation also had to be transformed, and Anaximenes made them into the clearly demonstrable condensation and rarefaction of the primal material.

Note: Cicero, Academica 4.37.118:

“Post ejus [i.e. Anaximandri] auditor Anaximenes infinitum aëra; sed ea, quae ex eo orirentur, definita: gigni autem terram, aquam, ignem, tunc ex his omnia.”

“After him Anaximander, his student Anaximenes posited infinite air; but the things that arose from it were determinate: earth, water, and fire were generated, and then everything from these.”

Note: Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica I.8.3:

“Greek text.”

“Everything is generated through the condensation of this air and again through rarefaction; motion, at least, exists from eternity.”

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We must therefore conceive Anaximenes' cosmogony as follows. First, we form the conception of air rotating in a vortex, as the principle that is in eternal motion. According to the general assumption of the ancients, which was based on the geometrical conception of radii extending apart from a center toward ever-greater distances, the material filling of the narrower space around the center must now, during the vortex motion, be denser than where, as the radius increases, the circumference of the sphere encloses an ever-expanding space. If we call the center the Below and the periphery the Above, then it follows that the thinner air must be found above, and the condensed air below.

In this way we must interpret Hippolytus' account: where the air is poured out into the thinner air, fire comes into being; but in the middle region, when air is condensed by air as a consequence of the rotation, clouds come into existence; with progressive condensation, water; when driven still further, earth; and at the highest degree of condensation, stones *).

People have mocked Anaximenes because he assumed air to be the thinnest thing in the world and

Note: Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies (ed. Miller, p. 12):

“Greek text.”

“For when it is condensed and rarefied it appears different; when it is poured out into thinner air, it becomes fire; in the middle, when air is condensed into air, a cloud is produced; still further, water; when condensed more extensively, earth; and when condensed to the greatest degree, stones.”

Roeper would change Greek text to Greek text and Greek text to Greek text. Salvinius has Greek text. Perhaps, however, Greek text, which Codex Taurinensis offers, should be retained. In any case, this term also seems uncertain in other passages. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica I.8.3, transmits Greek text instead of Greek text; and the sense would also be satisfactory if one read Greek text.

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but had spoken of a rarefaction of the same; only, in a remarkable way, people are willing to accept the condensation. I do not understand how one can disregard the relativity of these concepts; for the thinner is, after all, only thinner than the denser. If the air can become denser because a greater quantity of it is present in the same space where a smaller quantity was present before, then nothing stands in the way of its subsequent rarefaction either.

Clearly, however, through this Anaximenian conception the mathematical idea is introduced more fully into nature, quantity in general and space in particular; but I see nowhere that the idea of empty space had already arisen. These consequences were drawn only much later, and it must therefore be regarded as pure fantasy when Gruppe assumes, as a characteristic of Ionian cosmology, a boundary of the world against the emptiness lying all around it.

These doctrines of Anaximenes are undeniably again a regression if one understands the Anaximandrian Unbounded (Greek text apeiron) as matter that, in the separations, moves toward entelechy; but if one leaves aside these unjustified anticipations, since of all this only the fundamental impulse lies in Anaximander, while the explicit conception left the understanding in complete obscurity, then we must nevertheless recognize an advance in Anaximenes' one-sided, mechanical consideration; for from the correct but indeterminate, the path of history always first leads into the detours of one-sidedness.

If we now proceed from the principle, the first consequence of its rotation is condensation and rarefaction. These two states are, however, for Anaximenes

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equal to warmth and cold, so that Plutarch can rightly report of him, through Hippolytus, that the first causes of becoming were the opposites of the warm and the cold *). We saw above ** that Anaximenes allows fire to emerge from the air flowing apart into the thinner air; but we would nevertheless miss, in this connection so important to his doctrine—the connection of rarefaction with warmth and condensation with cold—if he had not expressly proved this doctrine. Naturally, we may not expect an exact investigation from Anaximenes; yet it is already related that, through observing the different sensations of warmth and cold when blowing, he believed he had recognized empirically that thin air is warm and dense air cold.

For everyone could repeat the experiment and verify the assertion. The wide-open mouth releases the air in a thinner and at the same time warmer form; the almost-closed mouth compresses the air as it is exhaled and releases it at the same time denser and colder. However strange it may seem to us that Anaximenes naively transferred our sensations of warmth as properties onto the object, we must not forget that the separation of the subjective and the objective first became conscious in the age of the Sophists. From the simple observation, through a false inference, Anaximenes arrived at a correct doctrine, namely, that warmth and cold are not particular substances but general determinations that can occur in every kind of matter—

Note: Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies I.7:

“Greek text.”

“So that the most important causes of becoming are the opposites, the warm and the cold.”

Note: Compare above, p. 80, note *).

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be. Thus he regarded warmth and cold merely as different states of aggregation of matter and arrived at the concluding proposition that fire, therefore, was simply air in a particular state.

That the eternal motion in Anaximander and Anaximenes is nothing other than the rotating motion of the universe, for this I can cite one further unimpeachable witness who expresses it without any ambiguity—I mean Aristotle. For in the second book On the Heavens, where he discusses the shape and position of the earth, he says *), concerning the position of the earth at the center of the world, that everyone gives the vortex (Greek text dinesis) as the cause, and indeed because they rely on the processes occurring in vortices in water and in the air; for in these, the larger and heavier thing always moves toward the center of the vortex. For this reason, all those who generated the world—that is, who constructed an account of the world's emergence—allowed the earth to move toward the center.

That Anaximander and Anaximenes are included among these world-generators is evident from what follows, where Aristotle presents the various theories they devised to explain why the earth, after it had once reached the center, remained there. Anaximander is named on this occasion, but Anaximenes too is clearly recognizable among those who, because of the earth's flat

Note: Aristotle, On the Heavens 2.13:

“Greek text (sc. Greek text.”

“And the earth came together, being carried toward the center, because of the vortex; for everyone gives this as the cause, on the basis of what occurs in liquids and around the air; for in these the larger and heavier things are always carried toward the center of the vortex. For this reason, all those who generate the heavens say that the earth came together at the center, and so forth.”

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shape (Greek text dia to platos), declared this position possible. For these reasons, and those given above, I therefore regard it as proven that, among our old Ionian natural philosophers, the principle of eternal motion is the rotating motion of the world.

But if we accept this proposition, then we have all the conditions of a mechanical physics and are compelled, on a grand scale, to attempt with these bold investigators a construction—or, as Aristotle always says ironically, a generation—of the world. All the details that are usually listed merely as absurdities, such as Anaximander's wheels of fire and his separations of the world, his formation of the earth and his many worlds, and Anaximenes' leaf-like heavenly bodies, and so forth, suddenly acquire meaning and intelligibility through being brought into the great coherence of a theory encompassing the entire world, and they must certainly, given the state of knowledge of nature at that time, be regarded as highly ingenious and admirable thoughts.

And what is perhaps most astonishing is that these childish cosmogonies of the earliest natural philosophers stand closer to our present-day natural science than do the proud systems of mature Platonic and Aristotelian cosmology, constructed with syllogistic apodictic certainty.

§ 3.

The Firmament and the Earth-like Heavenly Bodies

If Anaximenes is characterized by the fact that he followed the tendency toward a mechanical explanation of the world contained in Anaximander and attempted to work out the teacher's indeterminate concepts into definiteness, then this also shows itself very clearly at

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...the great contrast into which he came in explaining the celestial phenomena. Anaximander knew no solid shell of heaven and regarded the heavenly bodies as burning gas driven forth from a vortex of air; Anaximenes, by contrast, taught a solid, earth-like heaven and solid, earth-like bodies of the heavenly bodies.

If one wishes to explain why Anaximenes adopted these assumptions, tradition admittedly offers us no indication; but it is obvious that the tendency toward greater definiteness could very easily have brought Anaximenes to this advance. Anaximander's wheels of fire, which are to be conceived like the rings of Saturn and which revolve around the earth as the center of the world, leave the sun, in a certain sense, with no individuality. It is merely the fiery outflow from the wheel-shaped air-tube filled with fire. Yet an impulse to individualize the heavenly body more seems already to have guided Anaximander, if he assumed certain airy places from which the fire bursts forth, and we would gladly see in this the tendency to tear apart the ring of fire as well and allow it to close itself into one or more cosmic individuals in spherical form, as the modern hypotheses concerning the formation of our world require.

But the reports are lacking that would allow us to assume anything of the kind in Anaximander, and the words transmitted by Achilles Tatius, that the heaven is a bird which partakes of fire *), do not refer to the sun or to the individualized heavenly bodies, but are a comparison for the whole heaven.

Note: Achilles Tatius 5:

“Greek text.”

“What is the substance of heaven? Anaximander says: a winged thing that partakes of fire.”

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Secondly, there is the fact that the mobile nature and form of the air-vortices provide far too little assistance for explaining the ever-identical form of the sun and the ever-identical position and motion of the stars. It was therefore very natural to reject those Anaximandrian conceptions and derive the ever-same from something solid. If the sun is just as large as the earth, and if the earth originally became solid from an airy element, then Anaximenes could quite reasonably, without making any great leap, also ascribe a solid body to the sun and likewise grant the outermost periphery an earth-like solidity.

If Zeller *) apparently wishes to cast suspicion on Plutarch's report, as though Plutarch were wrong to think of a solid vault of heaven when he excerpts from Anaximenes that “the stars were nailed to the crystalline heaven as with nails,” then he was probably led to distrust the report only by the fact that elsewhere it is said that the sun floats like a leaf on the air **). This difficulty could be resolved if one simply conceived the fixed stars as fastened to the vault of heaven—as tradition alone asserts of them—and allowed the sun and moon, as nearer to the earth and engaged in variable motion, to float upon the air. In any case, I see no necessity for cutting away anything from the tradition here; and why should Anaximenes not already have had this conception, which a generation later nevertheless cannot be denyed to Empedocles *?

Note: Zeller, Philosophy of the Greeks I, third edition, p. 211, note 1, end.

Note: Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum II.10, On the Heavens: What is Its Substance?

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes says that the sun is flat like a leaf.”

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nevertheless cannot be denyed *). I therefore regard Anaximenes as the first philosopher to assume a firmament and solid heavenly bodies—I set Thales aside because the reports about him are too disconnected—and I recognize in this a great contrast with Anaximander and at the same time an advance, because the conception, however childish half of it may now appear to us, probably offered the only possibility at that time for explaining the regularity of the celestial phenomena.

I admit, however, that a difficulty remains; for Hippolytus unmistakably reports of Anaximenes that all the stars float upon the air **). But if this is the case, they cannot very well be fixed to the firmament. Against this one passage in Hippolytus, however, we have two passages in Plutarch that cannot reasonably be understood otherwise: 1) that the outermost periphery is earth-like (Greek text gein) and 2) that the heavenly bodies are fixed to the crystalline heaven like nails ***). If Anaximenes dared to oppose his teacher Anaximander by transforming the air-vortices into solid heavenly bodies:

Note: Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum II.11, On Heaven: What is Its Substance?

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes says that the outermost revolution is earth-like. Empedocles says that the heaven is a solid body, compacted from air by fire in a crystalline manner.”

Ibid. 2.14, On the Form of the Stars:

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes says that they are fixed in the crystalline heaven like nails.”

Ibid. 2.3, What is the Substance of the Stars and How Are They Constituted?

“Greek text.”

“Empedocles says that the fixed stars are bound to the crystalline heaven, while the wandering stars are free.”

Stobaeus copied these words from the same source, I.506

Note: Hippolytus I.7:

“Greek text.”

“But the earth is flat and borne upon the air, and likewise the sun, the moon, and the other stars; for, being fiery, they are all borne upon the air because of their breadth.”

*Note: Compare the penultimate note *).

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then the analogy is close that he also used Anaximander's fiery bark of the world in order, through it, to allow a crystalline firmament to be melted out of the air. These solid bodies could not, naturally, form like the earth through condensation at the center of the vortex; but since the fire up there must also exert some effect upon the air from which everything had arisen, Anaximenes could easily have arrived at the thought that a glass-like mass melted out of the air and was carried along in the vortex.

At least, we find this conception clearly expressed in Empedocles *), and there is no principial contradiction if we seek in this way to bring the inadequate reports concerning Anaximenes into harmony. For the consequence of the theory does indeed require us, in the Anaximandrian manner, to assume above only air—and air thinner than below—and the whole design of Anaximenes' cosmogony evidently rests upon this conception; but at the same time the actual observations of the heavens pressed toward the assumption of solid heavenly bodies.

For that reason, an inconsistency in the theory at this point is not to be censured but praised, and is not improbable but precisely to be expected. Almost all the later natural philosophers therefore assume solid heavenly bodies, such as Xenophanes, the Pythagoreans, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, the Atomists, and so forth. And the task is only to show how these solid bodies can remain suspended in the air. Here, then, partly the force of the rotating revolution is regarded as the cause—

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as cause, partly, as with our Anaximenes, the flat, leaf-like form. But once the possibility of solid bodies in the heavens is granted, the observations of the unchanging position and motion of the fixed stars could also recommend conceiving a solid vault of heaven for these shining nails in the ceiling of heaven.

I therefore cannot regard this doctrine as improbable, and would rather assume that Hippolytus' report is inaccurate, in that, in the sources he used, Greek text ta alla astra may have meant not “all the remaining stars,” but “the other planets.” Compare the dispute over the use of Greek text aster and Greek text astron in Achilles Tatius I.1.10

A passage in Zeller also moves me to this view, and this passage, it seems to me, can likewise be corrected. Zeller says *): “That the motion of the heavenly bodies does not proceed in a straight line but bends into a circle, Anaximenes explained by the resistance of the air.” But if one examines more closely the citation on which Zeller bases this assertion, one finds there nothing about a tendency of the stars to advance in a straight line and nothing about the effect of the resistance of the air in producing the circular line. The passage concerns only the solstices; and if one compares the parallel passage in Stobaeus, there too the subject is only an explanation of the sun's motion that does not proceed in a circle **).

Note: Zeller, Philosophy of the Greeks I, p. 211.

Note: Plutarch, “On the Tropes of the Sun,” chapter 23:

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes says that the sun is pushed out by condensed and resisting air.”

Stobaeus, Eclogae I.25, “On the Substance, Size, Shape, and Tropes of the Sun,” p. 524:

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes declared the sun to be fiery, and said that the stars, being pushed out by condensed and resisting air, make their turnings. But it is flat in shape.”

[Note cuts off, cont'd]

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For just as Anaximander taught eternal motion, and just as Empedocles and Democritus assumed the vortex as the principle of the formation of the world, so we may well believe Aristotle that all the ancient cosmogonists simply presupposed as given this cause of motion, whose effect was visible to everyone in the daily revolution of the heavens *). The difficulty for astronomers therefore lay not so much in explaining the circular line as in the remarkable deviation from the circular line that is noticeable first in the sun and then also in the planets. For these tropes of the sun Anaximenes now invoked the counter-effect of condensed air, through which this heavenly body would be driven out of its regular circular path.

This entire attempt at explanation clearly shows, however, that Anaximenes must already have known the zodiac, and

[Note cont'd:]

“Greek text.”

“make their turnings. But it is flat in shape.”

One can already see from the chapter headings that in both cases the subject is only the sun, and that, when Stobaeus speaks in general terms of Greek text astra, this can nevertheless refer only to such stars as make these tropes. Nor can the expression Greek text exotheisthai mean “to bend”; it can only mean “to be pushed out” from the circular path belonging to them.

Note: Aristotle, On the Heavens 2.13. Compare above, p. 83, note *).

This is certainly also the reason why Democritus, according to Galen, History of Philosophy 21, p. 295, Kühn, taught that the earth at first still wandered about—naturally driven around by the vortex—and only gradually came to rest as its density and heaviness increased. The conceptions of Heraclides and Ecphantus, also mentioned there, that the earth revolved like a wheel around its axis, likewise follow very naturally from the general assumption of the circular motion of the world and from a gradual emergence of our cosmic body.

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speaks therefore for contact with Pythagorean or Egyptian teachings *). Anaximenes' knowledge was therefore certainly much greater than Anaximander's, and although we cannot see precisely how far the regularity in the sun's motion had already become clear to him, the attempt to explain the sun's daily rotation together with its movement through the zodiac by mechanical causes is nevertheless worthy of respect. At the same time, however, one sees from this that Anaximenes, despite foreign influences, did not abandon the mechanical causes that governed Anaximander's conceptions, and therefore cannot have adopted too much from the Italian side or from elsewhere.

It is obvious that the passage cited by Zeller, after having been analyzed more precisely in this way, may no longer be used to explain the circular motion of the fixed stars; rather, this makes it more probable that the fixed stars, because they show no deviation from their path, can also be conceived as withdrawn from the influence of the air. They will be withdrawn from this influence if Anaximenes did not allow them to float freely upon the air, like the sun, but fastened them somehow to the crystalline heaven. Through this consideration we therefore become, it seems, more familiar with Anaximenes' distinctive conception, and his scattered assertions show everywhere a coherently intelligible motivation.

Note: Compare Galen, History of Philosophy 12, p. 270, Kühn, who attributes this discovery to Pythagoras.

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§ 4.

The Motion of the Sun

A very interesting question still remains for us, concerning whose answer the opinions of scholars diverge widely. Hippolytus' report is understood to mean that Anaximenes assigned the sun a course not circularly beneath and around the earth, but deflected sideways around the northern regions of the earth, as a cap is rotated around the head, and that it remained hidden there merely because of the high mountains in the north of the earth *).

Röth **), in his excessively hasty manner, has declared this entire report to be a “misunderstanding,” because the idea contains “nonsense” and could have been transmitted alongside the correct statement concerning the circular rotation “only by headless copyists out of wholly incomprehensible thoughtlessness.” But one must not deal so lightly with the few traditions that have come down to us. Even if they were not necessarily conveyed by the best minds, they must nevertheless be examined with particular respect precisely because of their scarcity. Moreover, contradiction and nonsense are by no means a complete sign of inauthenticity; for since, according to our present-day understanding, all the doctrines of the ancients are considered incorrect, there must also be many contradictions and some nonsense in all of them, which does not

Note: Hippolytus I.7, p. 84, Duncker:

“Greek text.”

“He says that the sun is not moved beneath the stars, as others have supposed, but around the earth, just as the cap is turned around our head; and that the sun is concealed, not by going beneath the earth, but by being covered by the higher regions of the earth, and because of the greater distance that has arisen between us and it.”

Note: History of Western Philosophy 2, pages 257 to 258.

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does not merely appear so to us, but was already emphasized by Aristotle with a certain humorous irony *). On the other hand, however, one must certainly hold fast to the fact that the contradictions of the doctrine must not be so obvious that they could have escaped every intelligent person, and therefore in this case I must take Röth's side; for a circular motion around the freely floating earth on the one hand, and a pushing of the sun around the northern region of the earth on the other, is a conception that neither Anaximenes nor any ancient natural philosopher could have brought into a unified view.

But since Röth, as already shown above (compare above, p. 8), mixes Anaximander's doctrines with those of Anaximenes and in general tends to investigate without sufficient philological precision, we would rather leave him entirely aside here and undertake a new investigation.

A new investigation is necessary, however, because Zeller too—our most learned and distinguished historian of Greek philosophy—attributes this absurd doctrine to Anaximenes and furthermore appeals to a testimony of Aristotle. Since the question is not of minor importance for the history of ancient astronomical conceptions, the detail should not prove tedious; and I mention only further that Gruppe also reproaches Anaximenes with a “retreat from the difficult theories of Thales” and finds it necessary to cast suspicion upon both his scientific ability and his character. He writes:

“Furthermore, Anaximenes denies that the sun and moon continue their courses beneath the earth; they merely go around behind, where in the north the earth rises. One

Note: For example, Meteorology 2.1, at the beginning:

“Greek text.”

“For in this way it is more tragic and more solemn.”

[Page 94]

sees that he grasps no problem in its sharpness, let alone solves it; instead, he seeks everywhere to negotiate as much as possible with popular conception. Hierarchical pressure in the democratically governed cities of Ionia seems to have become very perceptible at this time” *).

I proceed from the nowhere-disputed tradition that Anaximenes conceived the earth as surrounded on all sides by air. This doctrine is incompatible with the assumption that the sun—which, because of its flat form, floats on the air like a leaf—would at sunset be located upon the earth and push itself sideways around it like the cap that one turns around on one's head. I therefore assume a priori that either, as Röth immediately and rashly concluded, this second tradition was a misunderstanding on the part of the ancient reporters, or that it has not been correctly translated and interpreted by us moderns—Röth included.

The Aristotelian Testimony

The most important thing for arriving at a new explanation of the transmitted passages is the elimination of the Aristotelian report. His words are as follows **):

“Another proof that the northern regions of the earth rise high lies in the fact that many of the ancient meteorologists were also convinced that the sun does not move beneath the earth, but around the earth and around these northern regions, while remaining hidden from us and producing night because the earth is high toward the north.”

Note: Gruppe, Cosmological System of the Greeks, p. 46.

Note: Meteorology 2.1, near the end:

“Greek text.”

[Page 95]

Let us consider the meaning of this doctrine. During its daily course, the sun describes a semicircle that stands more or less perpendicular to the horizon; but once it arrives in the west, it turns toward the north and returns in the plane of the horizon around the north to the eastern point. Thus it describes two semicircles that, depending on the latitude of the place and the season of the year, stand almost perpendicular to one another. Since during its nocturnal course it is located in the plane of our horizon, the northern regions must therefore have very high mountains that completely conceal it from our eyes.

What could bring a reasonable person to this peculiar notion? The reason seems to me very simple. Evidently, no one would easily invent such a bizarre deflection from a circle already begun unless he were convinced that the sun would be stopped during its motion and would not be able to proceed further. But it cannot proceed further if, at its western point, it encounters water or earth. Therefore only those ancients could ascribe such a twisted motion to the sun who believed that the earth or the water extended in every direction along the horizon and downward into infinity.

But someone like Anaximenes, the student of Anaximander, who allows the earth to float freely and within limits in the air, evidently has not the slightest reason for such an assumption, since for him the path below is just as free as the path above. The only reasonable ground for the sun's zigzag motion is therefore absent in Anaximenes.

[Page 96]

But must Aristotle's passage be related to Anaximenes? Aristotle himself speaks only of the ancient meteorologists *), without naming anyone. I believe that it can be proved that the passage must not be related to Anaximenes.

The chapter, whose conclusion these words form, begins with a distinction between two different doctrines concerning the sea. The first doctrine is attributed to the ancients who occupied themselves with theology; the second to those who are wiser in human wisdom **). This designation alone, in all probability, places the ancient meteorologists together with the ancient theologizers in one group. The content of the doctrine does so even more.

For the ancients taught that there were sources and roots for water and earth—that is, that earth and water, as principles (Greek text archai), were unbounded downward, and that the entire heaven existed only above and because of the earth. The second group, however, assumes a coming-into-being (Greek text genesis) of water and earth, and therefore a limitation of them, indeed possibly a complete drying-up of the sea. This second doctrine points unambiguously to Anaximander, who held out this fate for the sea.

For this second group, the sun's zigzag motion evidently has no basis; the former, by contrast, who made the earth or water the principle and conceived them as founded downward into infinity, evidently had to confront the difficulty that the sun—

[Page 97]

at its western point, could not proceed further unless it were to be extinguished in the water or bore through the earth. The connection with the ancient theology is also sufficiently evident *); for it is well known that Homer leaves it undetermined how Helios, plunging into the sea, reaches the eastern point again, but that according to other myths Helios, sleeping on a golden bed or in a golden cup, returns through the Ocean from west to east to the land of the Ethiopians, carried above the water with winged speed.

I therefore regard it as proven by this that the passage cited by Zeller must not be related to Anaximenes. But once this testimony has been eliminated, we may now confidently attempt a new explanation of the transmitted passages.

New Attempt at an Explanation

The passages read: “not beneath the earth, but around the earth the heavenly bodies revolve” (Stobaeus) **).

Note: Compare the passages cited in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2.38 to 39, pages 469 to 470, from Pherecydes, Stesichorus, Antimachus, Aeschylus, and Mimnermus. I place the latter verses here:

“Greek text.

Greek text.”

“For Helios was allotted labor for every day, and there is never any rest for his horses or for him, when rosy-fingered Dawn, leaving the Ocean, rises into heaven.

For the beloved bed of golden substance carries him through the wave, winged beneath the water's surface, sleeping swiftly from the land of the Hesperides to the land of the Ethiopians, where his swift chariot and horses stand until early-born Dawn arrives.”

Note: Stobaeus I.510:

“Greek text.”

“The stars revolve not beneath the earth but around it.”

[Page 98]

“in the same way beneath the earth as the heavenly bodies revolve around the earth” (Plutarch) *). What compels us now to understand the preposition “around” (Greek text peri) as a sideways displacement of the sun in the plane of our horizon? Cannot—and more appropriately—what is meant be the going-around of the circle?

If we adopt this latter explanation, the passages say positively and negatively the same thing: negatively, that the sun does not move, as the older theologizers believed, beneath the earth, perhaps into the water, but continues its circle; and positively, that the motion above and below the earth is the same. What could be clearer than this explanation, and what is more appropriate to Anaximenes' conception of the freely floating earth than this circular motion of the heavens with the same radius above and below?

The Comparison with the Cap

This motion of the sun is now compared with the rotation of a cap around the head. In every comparison, one must pay attention to the point of comparison in order to understand it; for the sun and the cap have no further similarity in themselves. It is interesting, then, to see how people have believed that the point of comparison must be understood now in one respect, now in another.

Gruppe writes: “In the passage just cited from Origen we find another figurative expression that deserves not to be overlooked, for it says further: the heavenly bodies—that is, the fixed-star heaven—move like a hat around our

Note: Plutarch, De placitis philosophorum II.16:

“Greek text.”

“Anaximenes says that the stars revolve in the same way beneath the earth and around it.”

[Page 99]

head: Greek text hosperei Greek text. In the image of the hat, the conception of the hemisphere of heaven appears so clearly as, to my knowledge, nowhere else” *).

It is unfortunate if the conception of the hemisphere appears nowhere more securely than here; for Anaximenes would have had more reason for this conception if he had lived at the North Pole of the earth. But since he lived in the middle zone, where most of the heavenly bodies, and above all the sun, cross the horizon—that is, apparently go beneath the earth—there was no reason for this parallel motion around the horizon, and there is no proof at all of why one should conceive the hat precisely as a hemisphere and seek the point of comparison in that.

Others seem to have compared not the sun's entire motion, but only its return from west to east, in which it moves sideways around the north, with the rotation of a cap on the head. But if the cap lies closely against the head, this provides no similarity between the sun and the cap; for the sun is supposed to be farther from us than usual and would otherwise, like Phaethon, set the earth on fire.

It therefore seems that nothing remains except to determine the point of comparison by establishing the contrast in the relationship. The sun is supposed to move not beneath the earth but around the earth. If, therefore, the earth is not intersected by the sun's path, the sun moves with an unchanged radius, and this conception can hardly be illustrated more clearly to ordinary understanding, without geometrical expressions, than by the rotation of the cap around the head.

Note: The Cosmological System of the Greeks (1851), p. 47.

[Page 100]

And if, for the sake of amusement, one wishes to press the popular comparison further, we thereby also gain a conception of the sun's motion being inclined toward the horizon; for the ancients did not wear the cap as we wear our hats, but pushed it back onto the neck. Its rotation around the head is therefore a very appropriate image for the sun's daily circular motion, in which the axis of its path stands obliquely toward the horizon.

Contrast with the Thalesian Doctrine

Let us now briefly reconsider Anaximenes' position in relation to the astronomical theories. None of all the philosophers known to us has assumed the sun's zigzag motion around the northern horizon; rather, according to Aristotle's testimony, this doctrine belongs to the ancient theologizers, just as none of them made the earth the sole principle of the world. This ancient and popular conception likewise belongs, according to Aristotle's testimony, only to the mythologists and is accepted only by the uneducated people and by Hesiod *). Among the philosophers—

Note: Aristotle, Metaphysics I.8:

“Greek text.”

“None, at any rate, of the later thinkers who said that the earth was one element thought this, evidently because of its large mass; rather, each of the three elements has received a particular advocate: some say that it is fire, others water, and others air. Yet why do they not also say that it is earth, as do most people? For they say that everything is earth. Hesiod too says that earth was the first of bodies to come into being; thus it happens that this opinion is ancient and popular.”

[Page 101]

among the philosophers, however, there were two opposing theories. Some believed that the sun was extinguished every evening at its setting in the water—as Xenophanes and Heraclitus also taught later—but others held the bolder view that the setting of the sunlight was merely apparent, and that the sun instead moved at night with the same brilliance around the antipodal half of the earth. If the words transmitted from Anaximenes decidedly express a contrast (“not beneath, but around”), then we must presumably attribute the first doctrine to Thales; for the sun could hardly escape his infinite water during its circuit. The second doctrine, however, which Anaximenes represents, evidently belongs to the new cosmological school opened by Anaximander, which allowed the earth only a relatively small space in the middle of the air and the world.

Thus, I believe, we adequately understand the consequences, on the one hand, of the fundamental view of Anaximander and Anaximenes and, on the other, their common opposition to the older Thalesian cosmology.

The Reason for the Darkness of Night

If, however, the sun is not extinguished in the water at its setting, then Anaximenes faces the difficult question of why we do not see it at night, or why it becomes dark at night. The passage transmitted by Hippolytus also gives a clear answer to this, with two reasons: “the sun does not conceal

[Note cont'd from p. 100:]

Strabo therefore says, Geography I.1, that the earth's unbounded extension by itself excludes the revolution of the heavenly bodies:

“Greek text”

“the revolution of the heavenly bodies is evident, also in other ways and from the gnomonic instruments”—

whose invention is already attributed to Anaximander.

“Greek text.”

“From these considerations the thought immediately follows that, if the earth were rooted into infinity, such a revolution could not occur.”

[Page 102]

itself when it comes beneath the earth, but is merely concealed from us by the higher regions of the earth, and is also at a greater distance from us” *).

Anaximenes therefore explains the fact that we do not see the sun itself and its rays, first, from the constitution of the earth, since the north—as Aristotle also still assumes—has higher mountains capable of blocking the light; and secondly, from its greater distance from us. This second reason has not yet been considered attentively, but deserves particular consideration as a mathematical point.

If we follow the course of the sun according to Anaximenes' conception, it must stand closest to us at midday, and the distance will be smaller by half the diameter of the earth than the radius of the sun's orbit. The distance will then continually increase and become greatest midway between sunset and sunrise. For at midnight the sun will be farther from us by the entire diameter of the earth than it is at midday.

If Anaximenes regarded the circle of the sun's orbit as 28 or even 28 times 19 times as large as the circumference of the earth **), and furthermore, in agreement with Anaximander, assumed the sun to be just as large as the earth, while its image nevertheless shrinks, despite its small distance, to the small disk that we see, then, for his conception, a distance greater by one diameter of the earth could already have been sufficient to reduce the sun to the brightness of the moon or the stars. And so, from this greater distance,

Note: Hippolytus; see above, p. 92, note *).

Note: Compare above, p. 17.

[Page 103]

he could quite well explain why at night we notice nothing of the sun's light, just as the evening and morning twilight must certainly have indicated to him the increasing or decreasing distance of the sun. He is also said to have claimed that the stars could produce no warmth because of their great distance from us *).

Although Anaximenes perhaps assigned the earth a smaller diameter in depth than Anaximander did, this difference has no further influence under the assumption of a circular motion of the sun; for even if we take one-third or one-fourth of the large diameter as the difference, the sun, though still assumed to be as large as the earth, will nevertheless be seen as a small disk and will decrease considerably with increasing distance.

This second reason alone is sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of the interpretation hitherto accepted; for if the sun, after its setting, were supposed to move closely around the earth—or even upon the earth—behind the high northern mountains, it would necessarily have come considerably closer to us, and its invisibility could not be explained by the resulting greater distance.

Note: Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies I.7:

“Greek text.”

“The stars do not produce warmth because of the great distance.”

[Page 104]

Conclusion

I therefore hold that Anaximenes was very far from wishing to ascribe to the sun a Phaethonian course around the northern mountains of the earth. Rather, he rejected the old mistaken conception of an Above and a Below, by allowing the sun to travel not beneath the earth but around it *). Thus we rescue Anaximenes from an absurdity that has no connection with his doctrine, while nevertheless recognizing the tradition, which, properly understood, is honorable to Anaximenes.

Note: For this reason, the reading in Diogenes Laertius does not seem objectionable to me:

“Greek text.”

“But the stars move not above the earth, but around the earth.”

For with the Greek text hyper the Greek text peri also falls away, since Anaximenes precisely wishes to replace the Above and Below with the freer conception of Greek text peri.