The doctrines of the Greek sages on matter and spirit

The doctrines of the sages of Greece

on matter and spirit

Plato (1) built the foundation of his doctrine on the coming-to-be of the world upon the eternity (azalīyah) of an original matter, which he expresses as the unformed element, or first prime matter (hayūlā) (2): it has no shape and no pattern, and stands disposed to the receiving of forms; and when it has received form it comes to be as a mother to things. This matter is the origin of the world, and from it the world took its shape and its constitution. His doctrine declares the impossibility of the creation of a thing out of nothing; and effects, for all their difference, terminate on his doctrine in a first everlasting cause.

Plutarch (Fluṭarkhus), in his treatise on Natural Opinions (al-Ārāʼ al-Ṭabīʻīyah), ascribed to him that Plato says that bodies were in the beginning in motion, a motion not ordered, and that the God arranged them in order, since order is better than the absence of order.

Aristotle's doctrine (1) on matter and the soul

This philosopher held the eternity of the celestial spheres which the ancients imagined; and for him they are of a fifth element, other than the four elements, incorruptible, called “the aether”, and expressed as the divine substance — so it receives no influence, no alteration, and no passing away.

As for the original matter, or the unformed element — which Ibn Rushd, the commentator upon Aristotle's philosophy, calls the ultimate matter (al-māddah al-quṣwā) — it has, for Aristotle, no agent. But there overflowed to those spheres, from the hidden governing power, a motion by which the first body was moved, that is, the highest sphere; and by its motion all that was joined to it was moved, until the motion reached the whole (thus) (2). And this motion too is eternal. So the truth of this theory declares the eternity of the celestial phenomena, and the eternity of their motion, and the impossibility of the creation of a thing out of nothing.

The function of the governing, overmastering power, that is, the divine power, is the setting of these bodies in motion in their firm order; and the world, were this everlasting power to depart from it, would have neither fixity nor permanence available to it. He said in his well-known treatise, The Golden Epistle, which he composed for Alexander the King, and which ʻĪsā ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nafīsī turned into Arabic, that the consensus, ancient and modern, is borne out, that the subsistence of every thing and its fixity are from God — exalted and mighty is He; there is not in the world a single nature to which fixity is available if the everlasting power and the divine aid depart from it (1). And he flatly denies that the issuing of the act from the first cause is posterior to it by a temporal posteriority; and the intellect (2), for him, is not preceded by time, but is preceded by the essence of the agent. And he interprets the words of certain philosophers, from which a temporal posteriority in the issuing of the act is taken, by saying that they, “when they wished to express causality, had need to mention priority; and priority, in the expression, takes in time, and so too in the meaning, for one who has not been trained.” And he denies that there is any substantial difference between his view and the view of the philosophers in that. These two men of genius acknowledge the first cause, agent and governing, while denying temporal origination of the original matter; and a party among the great Greek philosophers hold the eternity of matter and deny the agent cause.

(Among them): Archelaus (Arsālāwus) (3) of Athens, whose doctrine is that the principle of the world is that which has no limit, in which condensation and rarefaction occur: so part of it becomes fire and part of it becomes water. And among them is Anaximander of Miletus (Athnākumandūs min Milat), who holds that the principle of the world and of existing things is that which has no limit; from it the whole was, and to it the whole terminates. For this reason he holds that worlds without limit come to be, and then corrupt and return to the thing out of which those worlds came to be, while no diminution befalls it, it being existent everlastingly.

And among them is Epicurus (Abīqūrus) (1), the philosopher of Athens, the contemporary of Democritus, whose doctrine is that the principle of existing things is small bodies (that is, tiny particles which the senses do not perceive because of their smallness); and they are eternal and incorruptible, and no difference and no alteration befalls anything of their parts, and they possess shape and weight.

And among them is Empedocles (Anbādqalis) (2), who holds that the incorruptible aether is among the principles of things; and he posits the elements (usṭuqusāt) as composed of those small parts, so that these are in the standing of elements of the elements — hence for him they are without limit; and the denial of limit requires the denial of the agent cause. And among them is Democritus (3), the famous natural philosopher, whose doctrine is that the minute particles in matter are dispersed, simple, indivisible, eternal, exceeding all reckoning, and imperceptible because of their smallness; they are like the dust present in the air, which is not ordinarily perceived and appears only in the sunbeam. And out of their unions existing things come to be, both inanimate and animal; and the soul, for him, is of fine small substances.

Aristotle's doctrine

and that of his teacher Plato on the soul

The second holds that it is a spiritual substance that moves of itself; and the first defines it, as Ibn Sīnā the philosopher set out in his treatise on the soul, as a first perfection for a natural instrumental body. The substantial difference between the two doctrines is that the soul, for Plato, is existent before the existence of the body and attaches to it after its existence; while for Aristotle, although it is not material, the existence of the body is a condition for the overflowing of the soul to it from the Originator, exalted be He — so that upon his view the soul is not existent before the body.

Then Aristotle affirms an intellectual substance separate from bodies, which stands to human souls in the standing of light to sight; and souls, when they depart from bodies, are united with it. It is that which is called “the universal intellect”. And they are, for both of them, immortal and enduring; so immortality belongs properly to the intellectual part of the soul, that is, to the rational soul (1).

The view of Epicurus and Democritus

Epicurus and Democritus hold the perishing of the soul and its effacement.

The doctrine of certain Greek philosophers on life and its appearance upon the face of the earth

Anaximander (Anqasmadras) (1) holds that the first animals were generated in moisture, and that scales covered them like the scales of the fish; and when the ages and the years had come upon them, their life became a short and slight span. As for the living thing, for Democritus and Epicurus it is generated only from a living thing (2).

— Notes —

[6] (1) Plato «Platon», one of the most famous of the philosophers of Greece. He was born in Athens in the first year of the eighty-eighth Olympiad, about the year 430 before Christ, and died in the first year of the hundred and eighth Olympiad, about the year 348, at the age of 81. He was of a distinguished family: his father Ariston was of the lineage of Codrus, the last of the ancient kings of Athens, and his mother Perictione of the lineage of Solon the sage.

[6] (2) Hayūlā is a Greek word whose meaning is the origin and the matter. In technical usage it is a substance in the body receptive of what befalls that body of conjunction and separation, the locus of the two forms, the corporeal and the specific.

[7] (1) Aristotle «Aristote» is a great Greek philosopher. He was born in the town of “Stagira” in the land of Macedonia. His writings are of the greatest importance and are reckoned an encyclopaedia among scholars; among them is The History of Animals «L'Histoire des Animause». He died at “Chalcis” (384–322 before Christ).

[7] (1) The phrase has been transmitted from Aristotle's Golden Epistle; perhaps the correct reading is “to the whole”.

[8] ( 1 ) And the treatise is among the most eminent of the works of learning.

[8] ( 2 ) And what is meant by the intellect is the first intellect, which is a second substantial source for all effects.

[8] ( 3 ) Arsālāwus «Areesilaus», or: Arsīzīlās «Areesilas», is a Greek sage. He was born at “Pitane” «Pitane» — 316–241 before Christ — and he is one of the teachers of Socrates «Socrate». He founded a great academy in his land «Le Académie», and he has much merit to his credit with his pupils, whose number is not to be counted.

[9] (1) Epicurus (Epicurs) — and he is called Abīkūr or Abīqūr — one of the famous sages of Greece. It is said that he was born on the island of Samos (341–370) before Christ; and it is said that he was born at Jarjansūs (Gargettus), one of the outskirts of Athens; and it is said that he was born in “Gharghatah”, a village in “Attica”, because the stock of his forebears was from there, and he was brought as a child to “Samos” (Samos). His father was poor, a teacher in one of the meaner schools. His learning is made a proverb, so that one says: Epicurean (Epicurien).

[9] (2) Empedocles was born at Agrigentum on the island of Sicily in the year 450 B.C.; we have not verified the year of his death.

[9] (3) Démocrite, or: Dhīmuqrāṭīs, or: Dhīmūkrītus. He is a famous philosopher, born at “Abdera” in “Thrace” in the fifth century before Christ, that is, in the year 470 B.C. Neither the course of his life nor his writings are known with any fixity: as for his writings, because they have not reached us; and as for his life, because what the ancients wrote about him is mixed up

[10] with tales of no substance beneath them. And they allege that Democritus lived 109 years, and that he died by his own choosing, out of a loathing for remaining, by cutting himself off from food.

[10] (1) O soul, you are rays, as the sun is — rays upon the peopled ground, and rays upon the waste And when God folds up the day, they draw back — the scattered rays, and meet in the place of return Aḥmad Shawqī

[11] (1) Anqasmadras, or: Anqasīmandurūs (Anaximandre), a Greek philosopher and mathematician of the Ionian school. He is the son of “Praxiades”. “He was born at Miletus” — 610–547 before Christ. The ancients ascribed to him strange inventions and marvellous works: they said that he drew the first geographical maps, and invented the sundial (the solar clock); and some of them said that he did not invent it, but taught the people of his land how to use it. And he has a substantial work that inquires into “the Infinite”.

[11] (2) This view supports the doctrine of growth and ascent which has become widespread in the latter centuries.