CAP.

I
In Greece, however, men succeeded for once in freeing
the vision from the mist of wonder, and in transferrins their
study of the world from the dazzling fable-land of religious
and poetical ideas to the sphere of reason and of sober
theory. (p.12)
If this substance had been conceived as sentient, and
its sensations supposed to become thoughts by means ot
the growing complexity and motion of the substance, a
vigorous Materialism might have been developed in this
direction; Sobre o Ar de Diogines de Apollonia. (p.13)
Explanar o enigmatico pelo simples:
for so long as men started at all from the
external objects of the phenomenal world, this was the
only way of explaining the enigmatical from the plain,
the complex from the simple, and the unknown from the
known; and even the insufficiency of every mechanical
theory of the world could appear only in this way, because
this was the only way in which a thorough explanation
could be reached afc all. (p.14)
The essential foundations of Demokritos's metaphysic.
(p.18 - p.20)
I. Out of nothing arises nothing ; nothing that is can he
destroyed. All change is only combination and separation
of atoms.
Duas doutrinas da fisica moderna: 1) the theory of the
indestructibility of matter, 2) and that of the persistence of
force.
"In all changes of phenomena matter is permanent, and the quantity
thereof in nature is neither increased nor diminished."
(p.19; Kant)
Parmenides of Elea was the first to deny all becoming and
perishing. (...) But here arose a contradiction
between appearance and being,(p.19)
How, then, from such unchanging existence could the phenomenal
arise? (p.19)
Only first by means of
Atomism was this thought fully represented, and made
the corner-stone of a strictly mechanical theory of the
universe ; and it was further necessary to bring into connection
the axiom of the necessity of everything that
happens. (p.20)
II. "Nothing happens by chance, but everything through a
cause and of necessity".
This proposition, (...) must be regarded as a decided
negation of all teleology, for the "cause" (logos) is
nothing but the mathematico-mechanical law followed
by the atoms in their motion through an unconditional
necessity. Hence Aristotle complains repeatedly that

Demokritos, leaving aside teleological causes (causa final),

had explained everything by a necessity of nature. (p.20)
Entre uma predestinao absoluta (chistian religion) e um
determinao necessaria (materialismo) no h lugar para chance.
We call accidental anything the cause or object of which we
do not know, merely for the sake of brevity, and therefore
quite unphilosophically; (p.21)
And rightly, so far as physical investigation or any strict
science is concerned ; for it is only from the side of efficient
causes that the phenomenal world is accessible to inquiry, (p.21)
An absolute teleology, however, Bacon was willing to
admit, although, his conception of it was not sufficiently
clear. This notion of a design in the totality of nature,
which in detail only gradually becomes intelligible to us
by means of efficient causes, does not refer, of course, to any
absolutely human design, and therefore not to a design intelligible
to man in its details. And yet religions need an
absolutely anthropomorphic design.(p.22)
Hence the necessity of a rigorous elimination of final
causes before any science at all can develop itself. (...) the
chief point was this, viz., a clear recognition of the
postulate of the necessity of all things as a condition of
any rational knowledge of nature. (p.22)
III. Nothing exists but atoms and empty space : all else
is only opinion.
Here we have in the same proposition at once the
strong and the weak side of all Atomism. The foundation
of every rational explanation of nature, of every great
discovery of modern times, has been the reduction of
phenomena into the motion of the smallest particles; (...)
On the Atomic theory we
explain to-day the laws of sound, of light, of heat, of
chemical and physical changes in things in the widest
sense, and yet Atomism is as little able to-day as in the
time of Demokritos to explain even the simplest sensation
of sound, light, heat, taste, and so on.(p.22-23)
but she (science)is for ever precluded from finding a
bridge between what the simplest sound is as the sensation
of a subject
mine, for instance and the processes of
disintegration in the brain which science must assume in
order to explain this particular sensation of sound as
a fact in the objective world.(p.23)
They explained motion and change in general as
mere phenomena, and, in fact, non-existent phenomena.
Demokritos limited this destructive criticism to sense
qualities. " Only in opinion consists sweetness, bitterness,
warmth, cold, colour ; in truth, there is nothing but the
atoms and empty space."(p.23)
IV. The atoms are infinite in number, and of endless variety
ofform. In the eternal fall through infinite space,

the greater, which fall more quickly, strike against

the lesser, and lateral movements and vortices that
thus arise are the commencement of the formation of
worlds. Innumerable worlds are formed and perish
successively and simultaneously.
Here Demokritos gives us a thoroughly logical view,
although one which cannot be maintained in face of our
modern physics. (p.25)
V. The variety of all things is a consequence of the variety of
their atoms in number, size, figure, and arrangement;
there is no qualitative difference of atoms. They have
no "internal conditions;" and act on each other only
hy pressure or collision
We have already seen, in connection with the third proposition,
that Demokritos regarded the sense qualities, such
as colour, sound, heat, and so on, as mere deceptive appearances,
which is only to say that he entirely sacrificed ther
subjective side of phenomena, which is, nevertheless, all
that is immediately given, in order to be able to carry out
a more consequent objective explanation ; and accordingly
Demokritos engaged, in fact, in the most exhaustive investigations
as to what must be, in the object, the substratum
of the sensible qualities.(p.27)
The sensation
is not in the individual atom, and still less is it an
aggregate of them; for how could it be brought into a
focus through void space ? It is produced and determined
by means of a Form in which the atoms act in mutual
co-operation. Materialism here borders closely on Formalism,
as Aristotle has not forgotten to point out.2<5
Whilst he, however, made the forms transcendentally
causes of motion, and thereby struck at the root of
all natural science, Demokritos was careful not to
follow up the formalistic side of his own theory, which
would only lead him into the depths of metaphysic.
Here we first find the need of the Kantian "Critick of
Eeason " to throw the first weak ray of light into the depths
of a mystery which, after all the progress of our knowledge
of nature, is yet to-day as great as it was in the time of
Demokritos.(p.28)
VI. The soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms, like
those offire. These atoms are the most mooile, and
by their motion, which permeates the whole body,
the phenomena of life are produced.
Demokritos regarded mind not as "the world-building
force," but only as one form of matter amongst others.
Even Empedokles had regarded rationality as an internal
property of the elements; Demokritos, on the contrary,
only as a " phenomenon taking its origin from the mathematical
constitution of certain atoms in their relation to
the others." And this is just Demokritos's superiority (...)
The special case of those processes we call " intellectual
"must be explained from the universal laws of all motion,

or we have no explanation at all.(p.30)

Happiness consists in the cheerful calmness of spirit
which man can attain only by securing the mastery over
his desires. Temperance and purity of heart, united with
culture of the emotions and development of the intelligence,
supply every man with the means, in spite of all the
vicissitudes of life, of reaching this goal. Sensual pleasure
affords only a brief satisfaction ; and he only who does
good for the sake of its intrinsic merit, without being
swayed by fear or hope, is sure of this inward reward. (...)
but it (esta moral) is nevertheless lacking in
the distinctive mark of all idealistic morality, a principle
of conduct taken directly from the consciousness, and
asserted independently of experience.(p.31)
CAP. II
What stuff or matter is in tlie outer world of nature,
sensation is in the inner life of man. (...) It is possible
to have a very lively consciousness,
which busies itself with the highest and most
important things, and yet at the same time to have sensations
of an evanescent sensuous strength. But sensations
there always are ; and from their relations, their harmony
or want of harmony, are formed the contents and meaning
of consciousness; (...) As, then,
the Materialist, looking into external nature, follows out
the forms of things from the materials of which they are
composed, and with them lays the foundations of his
philosophy, so the Sensationalist refers the whole of consciousness
back to sensations.(p.37)
Much rather will the consequent Materialist deny that
sensation exists independently of matter, and will accord
ingly, even in the facts of consciousness, find only effects
of ordinary material changes, and regard these in the same
light as the other material facts of the external world:
the Sensationalist will, on the other hand, be obliged to
deny that we know anything whatever of matter, or of
the things of the external world in general, since we have
only our own perception of the things, and cannot know
how this stands related to the things in themselves. (...)
Sensation
is to him not only the material (Stoff) of all the
facts of consciousness, but also the only immediately*** given
material, since we have and know the things of the external
world only in our sensations.(p.38)
Protagoras marks a great and decisive turning-point in
the history of Greek philosophy. He is the first who
started, not from the object from external nature, but
from the subject from the spiritual nature of man. (...)
The expression that something
is, always needs a further determination in relation to what
it is or is becoming; otherwise our predication has* no
meaning.(p.41)
The most distinctive features of the philosophy of Protagoras
are the following propositions underlying his Sensationalism

:
1. Man is the measure of all things : of those that are
that they are ; of those that are not that they are not.
Man is the measure of things, that is, it depends
upon our sensations how things appear to us, and
this appearance is all that is given us ; and so it is not
man in his universal and necessary qualities, but each
individual in each single moment, that is the measure of
things.
2. Contradictory assertions are equally true.(p.42)
If it is a question of the universal and necessary
qualities, than Protagoras must be regarded wholly as a
predecessor of the theoretical philosophy of Kant. Yet
Protagoras as to the influence of the subject, as well as to
the judgment of the object, kept close to the individual perception,
and so far from viewing the ' man as such,' he
cannot even, strictly speaking, make the individual the
measure of things, for the individual is mutable ; and if
the same temperature appear to the same man at one time
cool, at another warm, both impressions are in their own
moment equally true, and there is no truth outside this.
It was not the object of Protagoras to maintain the
simultaneous truth and falsity of the same assertion in the
mouth of the same individual ; although, indeed, he teaches
that, of every proposition maintained by any one, the opposite
may be maintained with equal right, in so far as there
may be any one to whom it so appears. (...)
for the
real fact, the immediately given, is in reality the phenomenon.
But our mind demands something persistent*** in
the flood of phenomena. Sokrates sought the path to this
persistent element; Plato, in complete contrast to the
Sophists, believed he had found it in the universal, in face
of which the particular sank back into unreal seeming.
In this controversy, if we view it quite theoretically, the
Sophists are right, and Plato's theoretical philosophy can
find its higher significance only in the deep-lying suspicion
of a hidden truth, and in its relations to the ideal elements
of life.(p.43)
In Ethic the fatal consequences of the standpoint of Protagoras
are most obvious. (...) At the same time, the consequence
must have followed from the theoretical conception
of this unconditioned relativity, that that is right and
good for the man which in each case seems to him right
and good.(p.43)
But if we look closely at the position that desire is the
moving principle of action, we easily see that the ground
was already prepared by the Sensationalism of Protagoras
for the Cyrenaic doctrine of pleasure. the sokraric Aristippos.
...

Cap. III
(p. 52)
...
Sobre Socrates
One sees from this how at bottom the doctrine of the
identity of thought and existence has a theological root,
since it supposes that the reason of a world-soul, or a God,
and a reason, moreover, differing from the human reason
only in degree, has so contrived and disposed everything
that we can think it again, and, if we use our reason quite
rightly, must think it again. (p. 66)
...
But in that case the universal
would have been conceived in a strict Nominalistic
sense. Knowledge might have extended itself to infinity
on this field without ever getting beyond empiricism and
probability.
If the Platonic Sokrates
proves, for example (in the Kratylus), that names are not
arbitrarily assigned to things, but that they correspond to
the innermost nature of the object, (Contra o Pegasus de Quine !!!)
(p. 68)
As bases da argumentao de Socrates:
Yet this is a dogmatism
which consisted in the constant repetition of few and
simple dogmas : virtue is knowledge ; the just man alone
is really happy ; self-knowledge is the first duty of man
;
to improve himself is of more consequence than any care
for external things, and so on.
(p. 70)
As ieias de Plato:
But we must not fail to understand that from this paradoxical
method of working of course only paradoxical results
could follow. The name is made a thing, but a thing
having no similarity with any other thing, and to which,
in the nature of human thought, only negative predicates
can be attached. But since there is an absolute necessity
for some positive assertion, we find ourselves from the outset
in the region of myth and symbol. (p. 77)
O racionalismo platonico:
The idea itself is said to be perceived by the reason,
though but imperfectly in this earthly life, and the reason
stands related to this supersensuous existence as the
senses are related to sensible objects. And this is the
origin of that sharp separation of reason and sensation
which has ever since dominated all philosophy, and has

excited endless misunderstandings. (p. 78)

Cap. IV (p.98)
Epicuro
A ordem eterna e a felicidade do homem de Epicuro:
"The mere historical knowledge of natural events, without
a knowledge of causes, is valueless; for it does not
free us from fear nor lift us above superstition. The
more causes of change we have discovered, the more
we shall attain the calmness of contemplation; and it
cannot be supposed that this inquiry can be without
result upon our happiness. For the deepest anxieties of the
human heart arise from this, that we regard these earthly
things as abiding and satisfying, and so we must tremble
at all the changes which nevertheless occur. But he who
regards change in things as necessarily inherent in their
very existence is obviously free from this terror."
(p. 101)
"... for if an effect can be ascribed to
natural causes, I need not any longer seek after supernatural
ones. Here we recognise a principle which the
German Eationalism of the last century frequently applied
to the explanation of miracles."
(p.103)
"But we are forgetting to ask whether and how we can
prove what is the real cause of the events, and this want
of a certain distinction has its revenge ; for only those explanations
will give us lasting satisfaction in which we
find a coherence and a principle of unity."
(p.104)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Thus, with regard to the moon, Epikuros supposed that
it might have its own light, but its light might also come
from the sun. If it is suddenly eclipsed, it may be that
there is a temporary extinction of the light ; it may also
be that the earth has interposed between the sun and
moon, and so by its shadow causes the eclipse.
The latter opinion seems indeed to have been specially
held by the Epikureans ; only it is so combined with the
other that we see how unimportant it was considered to
decide between them. You may choose which view you
prefer only let your explanation remain a natural one.
This natural explanation must rest upon analogy with
other known cases; for Epikuros declares that the right
study of nature must not arbitrarily propose new laws,
but must everywhere base itself upon actually observed
facts. So soon as we abandon the way of observation, we
have lost the traces of nature, and are straying into the
region of idle fantasies."
(p.104)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
p.123

CAP. V
Lucretius.
(p.126)
139