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uncertain, and is mainly determined by the fact that he alludes to Pythagoras and Heraclitus alludes to him. He was an Ionian by birth, but lived most of his life in southern Italy. He believed all things to be made out of earth and water. As regards the gods he was a very emphatic free thinker. 'Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another…. Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form … yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds…. The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.' He believed in one God, unlike men in form and thought, who 'without toil swayeth all things by the force of his mind'. Xenophanes made fun of the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration. 'Once, they say, he (Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was being ill-treated. "Stop," he said, "don't hit it! It is the soul of a friend! I knew it when I heard its voice".' He believed it impossible to ascertain the truth in matters of theology. 'The certain truth there is no man who knows, nor ever shall be, about the gods and all the things whereof I speak. Yea, even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself knows it not—there is nowhere anything but guessing.'1

Xenophanes has his place in the succession of rationalists, who were opposed to the mystical tendencies of Pythagoras and others, but as an independent thinker he is not in the first rank.

The doctrine of Pythagoras, as we saw, is very difficult to disentangle from that of his disciples, and although Pythagoras himself is very early, the influence of his school is mainly subsequent to that of various other philosophers. The first of these to invent a theory which is still influential was Heraclitus, who flourished about 500 B.C. Of his life very little is known, except that he was an aristocratic citizen of Ephesus. He was chiefly famous in antiquity for his doctrine that everything is in a state of flux, but this, as we shall see, is only one aspect of his metaphysics.

Heraclitus, though an Ionian, was not in the scientific tradition of the Milesians.2 He was a mystic, but of a peculiar kind. He regarded fire as the fundamental substance; everything, like flame in a fire, is born by the death of something else. 'Mortals are immortals, and immortals are mortals, the one living the other's death and dying the other's life.' There is unity in the world, but it is a unity formed by the combination of opposites. 'All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things'; but the many have less reality than the one, which is God.

From what survives of his writings he does not appear as an amiable character. He was much addicted to contempt, and was the reverse of a

democrat. Concerning his fellow-citizens, he says: 'The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying "We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others".' He speaks ill of all his eminent predecessors, with a single exception. 'Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped.' 'Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from all.' 'The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.' 'Pythagoras … claimed for his own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.' The one exception to his condemnations is Teutamus, who is signalled out as 'of more account than the rest'. When we inquire the reason for this praise, we find that Teutamus