The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE SOCRATIC IMPULSE 3
achieve a cosmogony or physical explanation of the
cosmos. In this way, they were all naturally materialists,
and took simply a mechanical view of things. Their
great quest was for the material apx*} or first principle
of existence the primitive stuff or matter out of which
the world was formed ;
Thales (B.C. 640 to 550) finding
it in water, Anaximenes in air, Heracleitus in fire.
But if the first principle of things was material, so too
must be all that is dependent
on it: so too must be
the human soul, which was variously conceived as fire,
air, breath.
Mental facts and processes, accordingly,
consciousness itself, sensation, intellection, volition,
were interpreted materially. Parmenides, the Eleatic,
laid down the doctrine that like acting upon
like is
the cause of sensation. This doctrine Empedocles
(born about 500 B.C.) accepted, and, combining it with
his own special teaching that man, like the universe,
consists of the four elements fire, air, earth, water,
proceeded to explain thereby sense-perception
in all
its forms. Effluvia or emanations (aTroppoiai) from the
different external bodies enter man through pores
(TTO/DOI), and, like being recognized by like (fire by fire,
water by water, etc.), give rise to what we know
respectively as the sensations of sight, hearing, taste,
smell.
All is explained by material effluxes and pores,
and the recognition of like by like (17 yvwo-is TOV 6/xotov
TW 6/xoi w). This dominance of materialism is specially
obvious in the Atomic philosophy, represented by
Democritus (born about 460 B.C.), the doctrines of
which we shall see, later on, in their full development,
when we come to the psychology of Epicurus. Even
Anaxagoras (born about 500 B.C.), who was probably