wished to refute Leukippos, he would have had to use arguments of a very different kind.
172.Theophrastos on the atomic theory. Theophrastos wrote of Leukippos as follows in the First Book of his Opinions:
Leukippos of Elea or Miletos (for both accounts are given of him) had associated with Parmenides in philosophy. He did not, however, follow the same path in his explanation of things as Parmenides and Xenophanes did, but, to all appearance, the very opposite (R. P. 185). They made the All one, immovable, uncreated, and finite, and did not even permit us to search for what is not; he assumed innumerable and ever-moving elements, namely, the atoms. And he made their forms infinite in number, since there was no reason why they should be of one kind rather than another, and because he saw that there was unceasing becoming and change in things. He held, further, that what is is no more real than what is not, and that both are alike causes of the things that come into being; for he laid down that the substance of the atoms was compact and full, and he called them what is, while they moved in the void which he called what is not, but affirmed to be just as real as what is. R. P. 194.
173.Leukippos and the Eleatics. It will be observed that Theophrastos, while noting the affiliation of Leukippos to the Eleatic school, points out that his theory is, prima facie,[1] just the opposite of that maintained by Parmenides. Some have been led by this to deny the Eleaticism of Leukippos altogether; but this denial is really based on the view that the system of Parmenides was "metaphysical," coupled with a great reluctance to admit that so scientific a hypothesis as the atomic theory can have had a "metaphysical" origin. This is merely a prejudice, and we must not suppose Theophrastos himself believed the two theories to be so far apart as they
- ↑ The words ὡς δοκεῖ do not imply assent to the view introduced by them; indeed they are constantly used in reference to beliefs which the writer does not accept. The translation "methinks" in Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 345, is therefore most misleading, and there is no justification for Brieger's statement (Hermes, xxxvi. p. 165) that Theophrastos dissents from Aristotle's view as given in the passage about to be quoted.
