At present, we have only to do with the
motion of the Boundless itself; and, if we wish to picture that, it is
much safer to regard it as a sort of shaking up and down which sorts out
the opposites from the infinite mass.
Footnote 115:
Plato, _Tim._ 52 e, where the elements are separated by being shaken,
stirred, and carried in different directions: “just as by sieves and
instruments for winnowing corn, the grain is shaken and sifted, and
the dense and heavy parts go one way, and the rare and light are
carried to a different place and settle there.” For the relation of
Pythagoreanism to Anaximander, see below, § 53.
Footnote 116:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Β, 13. 295 a 9. The identification of the eternal
motion with the diurnal revolution is insisted on by Teichmüller and
Tannery, and is the real source of the very unnatural interpretation
which they give to the word ἄπειρον. It was obviously difficult to
credit Anaximander with a belief in an infinite body which revolves in
a circle. The whole theory rests upon a confusion between the finite
spherical κόσμος within the οὐρανός and the infinite περιέχον outside
it.
[Sidenote: The innumerable worlds.]
18. We are told more than once that Anaximander believed there were
“innumerable worlds in the Boundless,”[117] and it is now usual to
regard these with Zeller as an infinite series succeeding one another in
time. It may be allowed at once that his disproof of the idea that the
worlds are coexistent and eternal is decisive. To suppose that
Anaximander regarded this or any other world as eternal, is a flat
contradiction of everything we otherwise know, and of the Theophrastean
tradition that he taught the world was perishable. We have, then, to
decide between the view that, though all the worlds are perishable,
there may be an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time,
and the view that a new world never comes into existence till the old
one has passed away. Now, Zeller allows[118] that there is nothing in
the first of these views that is inconsistent with what we know of
Anaximander; but he thinks all the statements which have come down to us
point rather to the second. It seems to me that this is by no means the
case, and, as the matter is of fundamental importance, it will be
necessary to examine the evidence once more.
Footnote 117:
[Plut.] _Strom._ fr. 2 (R. P. 21 b). The words ἀνακυκλουμένων πάντων
αὐτῶν are most naturally to be interpreted as referring to an
ἀνακύκλησις or cycle of γένεσις and φθορά in each of a multitude of
coexistent worlds. It would be a very strange phrase to use of a
succession of single worlds.
Footnote 118:
Zeller, pp. 234 sqq.
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