The mind of Zeus

AB: A STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TELEOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE COSMOS THROUGH THE SEMANTIC CAREER OF A SINGLE TERM, "NOUS" OR MIND, IN THE POETIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS FROM HOMER TO THE 5TH CENTURY B.C. SPECIAL ATTE PAID TO THE EMERGENT CONCEPT OF THE 'MIND OF ZEUS’ IN HOMER, XENOPHANES N S CRITIQUE OF HOMERIC ‘THEOLOGY’, AND TO EMPEDOCLES AS A REP THE MIND OF ZEUS By J. R. WARDEN “The mind (noos) of Zeus is ever stronger than that of man” (Homer, /liad, 16.688). “Mind (nous) is the finest of all things and the purest; it has knowledge about everything and the greatest power; and it controls all things both the greater and the smaller that have life” (Anaxagoras, B 12 DK). Some three hundred years stand between these two passages. I want to attempt in this paper to trace the development of the concept noos/ nous over this time span, and to suggest, if I may anticipate my conclusion, that Anaxagoras’ Nous is in direct line of descent from Homer’s Dios Noos, the Mind of Zeus. I do not seek to add substantially to the excellent analyses already available of noos and associated terms; and I acknowledge gratefully my debt to them.' My purpose is rather to show how the career of this term influences and is influenced by the deyelopment of a world view which is of central significance for the understanding of Greek thought. Of the many proposed etymologies for the word “noos’’ the most plausible seems to be that from a root *snu meaning to sniff.” Even if this etymology be rejected, it is evident that the activity of noos is N (e+ ER ÀWARDEiN, \ar closely related tq sense perception. Indeed there are passages in the Homeric poems where the verb noeo appears to mean simply “to see.” “Hektor, when he saw (enoesen) with his eyes his cousin fallen in the dust called to the Trojans and Lycians.”* At other times and more frequently noeo seems to involve a special form of perception, somewhere between the sensible and the mental, more penetrating than sight but no less immediate. Aphrodite in the likeness of an old woman attempts to lure Helen to her bedchamber where Paris, she says, is awaiting her. Helen sees the old bawd for who she is; and “when ‘In particular I should mention K. von Fritz, ‘Noos & Noein in the Homeric poems,” Classical Philology 38 (1943), 79-93, “Noos & Noein and their derivatives in Presocratic Philosophy (including Anaxagoras),” Classical Philology 40 (1945), 223-42; 41 (1946) 12-34; B. Snell, The Discovery of Mind (New York, 1960), esp. chs. 1, 7; J. Bochme, Die Seele und das Ich in homerischen Epos (Leipzig-Berlin, 1929); H. Fraenkel, Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (New York, 1951); E. L. Harrison, “Notes on Homeric Psychology," Phoenix 14 (1960), 63-80; R. B. Onians, Origins of European Thought (Cambridge, 1954); J. Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die Menschliche Welt (Essen, 1964), 1-41. ?E. Schwyzer, Festschrift für Paul Kretschmer (Leipzig & New York, 1926), 247ff; K. von Fritz, Classical Philology 38 (1943), 92-93. 3{liad, 15.422. The translations are from Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago, 1951). ta Be. dal

“The mind (noos) of Zeus is ever stronger than that of man” (Homer, Iliad, 16.688). “Mind (nous) is the finest of all things and the purest; it has knowledge about everything and the greatest power; and it controls all things both the greater and the smaller that have life” (Anaxagoras, B 12 DK). Some three hundred years stand between these two passages. I want to attempt in this paper to trace the development of the concept noos/ nous over this time span, and to suggest, if I may anticipate my conclusion, that Anaxagoras’ Nous is in direct line of descent from Homer’s Dios Noos, the Mind of Zeus. I do not seek to add substantially to the excellent analyses already available of noos and associated terms; and I acknowledge gratefully my debt to them.’ My purpose is rather to show how the career of this term influences and is influenced by the development of a world view which is of central significance for the understanding of Greek thought. Of the many proposed etymologies for the word “‘noos” the most plausible seems to be that from a root *snu meaning to sniff.” Even if this etymology be rejected, it is evident that the activity of noos is closely related tq sense perception. Indeed there are passages in the Homeric poems where the verb noeo appears to mean simply “to see.” “Hektor, when he saw (enoesen) with his eyes his cousin fallen in the dust called to the Trojans and Lycians.”* At other times and more frequently noeo seems to involve a special form of perception, somewhere between the sensible and the mental, more penetrating than sight but no less immediate. Aphrodite in the likeness of an old woman attempts to lure Helen to her bedchamber where Paris, she says, is awaiting her. Helen sees the old bawd for who she is; and “when ‘In particular I should mention K. von Fritz, “Noos & Noein in the Homeric poems,” Classical Philology 38 (1943), 79-93, “‘Noos & Noein and their derivatives in Presocratic Philosophy (including Anaxagoras),” Classical Philology 40 (1945), 223-42; 41 (1946) 12-34; B. Snell, The Discovery of Mind (New York, 1960), esp. chs. 1, 7; J. Boehme, Die Seele und das Ich in homerischen Epos (Leipzig-Berlin, 1929); H. Fraenkel, Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (New York, 1951); E. L. Harrison, “Notes on Homeric Psychology,” Phoenix 14 (1960), 63-80; R. B. Onians, Origins of European Thought (Cambridge, 1954); J. Mansfeld, Offenbarung des Parmenides und die Menschliche Welt (Essen, 1964), 1-41. Die ?E. Schwyzer, Festschrift für Paul Kretschmer (Leipzig & New York, 1926), 247ff; K. von Fritz, Classical Philology 38 (1943), 92-93. 8Jliad, 15.422ff. The translations are from Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago, 1951).

she perceived (enoese) the round sweet throat of the goddess and her desirable breasts and her eyes that were full of shining, she wondered.”’* For Homeric man perception and cognition lie very close; noos lives on the borderline; in later usage, though it moves further away from sense perception (indeed at times stands in opposition to it), it is regularly regarded as an organ whose function is analogous to that of a sense organ. It has often been observed that Homer uses words which we conventionally translate as “to know” in contexts which seem to us to belong to the sphere of the emotions and the will. “The Trojans,” says Achilles, “would run and cram full of dead men the water courses, if powerful Agamemnon treated me kindly [literally “knew gentle things to me”].” Sthenelos gives the horses of Aineias to Deipylus “his dear companion, whom beyond all others of his own age he prized, for their hearts were intimate [literally “he knew well-fitting things to him in his heart or mind’’].”” Apollo complains to his fellow gods: “No, you gods; your desire is to help this cursed Achilles within whose breast there are no feelings of justice, nor can his mind be bent, but his purposes are fierce [literally “he knows fierce things’’] like a lion’? Basing themselves on such passages commentators are inclined to jump to far-ranging comments on the Greek tendency to intellectualize morality and to play down the importance of the will; they see this Homeric usage as presaging the Socratic equation virtue = knowledge. But the equation must be reversible. The usage involves a moralization of knowledge as much (or as little) as it involves an intellectualization of morality. The truth is not that Homer uses an intellectual term to describe behavior that more properly belongs to the sphere of the emotions, the will, and ultimately of morality; but that for Homer the terms employed contain both senses and neither of them has priority. The conceptual distinction has not been made. Feeling and willing, knowing and perceiving are a single complex. Knowledge is affective. Or in the words of a modern psychologist: “Every ‘idea’ is not only a state or act of knowing but also a tendency to movement.’’® Such interdependence of emotion, perception, and cognition is not peculiar to Homeric man, but would seem to be a feature common to many preliterate societies. Lévy-Bruhl describes just this phenomenon in Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures when he says:’ “The mental activities [sc. of such societies] are too little differentiated for it to be possible to consider the concepts or images of objects independently of the feelings, emotions, and passions which ‘Iliad, 3.396ff. Slliad, 16.71 ff, 5.325f, 24.39ff. SW. McDougall, An Outline of Psychology (London, 1929), 290; Onians, 15-22. "Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures (Paris, 1910), 28 (my translation).

evoke these concepts and images and which are evoked by them.” And Lévi-Strauss in The Savage Mind, in his chapter called the “Science of the Concrete” distinguishes between “two distinct modes of scientific thought ... one roughly adapted to that of perception and imagination: the other [i.e., Modern Science] at a remove from it. It is as though the necessary connections which are the object of all science ... could be arrived at by two different routes, one very close to, the other more remote from, sensible intuition.”’® Noos is certainly very close to sensible intuition; as “mental eye” in Snell’s phrase® it operates not by a logical or discursive process, but by an intuitive apperception of a situation, by recognizing the pattern and structure of a situation, by classifying it as such and such, and thus in a sense bringing it into being. It is an organ that is not taken in by the surface appearance of things, but can see things as they really are. A corollary of this is that the noos of man, much more of a god, is hard to know, hidden as it is behind his words, the expression on his face and so on. “Speak out, do not hide it in your noos, and thus we shall both know” says Thetis to Achilles.'® And Antinous complains to Telemachus that his mother Penelope “gives us all hope and makes promises to each one of us, sending messages; but her noos is intent on other things.”’!! Most of Homer’s “psychological organs” are identified with bodily organs. Kradie, etor, phrenes are firmly anchored in the body. Noos, whether at one time so identified or not, is very seldom localized. As a result of this we find already within the Homeric poems that noos is not as closely involved with the body as the other terms, and is not identified with one (relatively speaking) subordinate function of the total self. Noos can stand independent of self, or rather can take the place of self, when self is viewed from the angle of its rational activities.'? In the sense that I have been discussing the intellectual content of noos is to the fore. As a mental vision of the truth it is infallible and does not permit of variation from one individual to another. It is common. But while knowledge of an object is always the same, opinions vary. The scene is set for the division between knowledge and opinion, between an incorporeal mind and the senses associated with the body. We shall see that noos travels a long way in this direction from its original virtual identification with perception. But it travels another route as well, one that is in a sense contradictory to that just outlined. At this point it is perhaps necessary to look at the semantic range of noos more closely. It has probably been apparent in the preceding discussion that the precise meaning of the term has been shifting. It can apply to the faculty or “mental organ” (mind), or to ®The Savage Mind (London, 1966), 15. HHiad, 1.363. "Ody. 2.91f. °Op. cit, 13. 12J, Boehme, 52ff.

the function of that faculty (thinking), or to the product of that function (thought or plan). The development of the sense “plan” is in part the result of the affective element in Homeric cognition. The mind (noos) by exercising its function of intuitive thinking (noos) reacts to the situation with emotion and will, and formulates a plan (noos). This reaction is in the first instance particular to a particular situation. But from reaction to a single situation (i.e., temporary attitude), it comes to signify permanent attitude, disposition, or character. Odysseus, on his way to pay a call on the Cyclopes, says that he wants to find out who they are, “whether they are violent, fierce, and unjust, or hospitable and their noos is godfearing.”'* And Patroclus chides Achilles: “Thetis is not your mother; it was the grey sea and the steep rocks that bore you—for your noos is stubborn.”’'* In this sense noos obviausly cannot retain the characteristics of infallibility and invariability discussed above. There are as many nooi as there are men. Odysseus in his wandering “has seen the cities and learnt the noos of many men.” "° Noos in its ethical sense is at first neutral; a man’s noos may be stubborn or yielding, godless or godfearing. But we can trace it gravitating towards a single pole. In this respect the career of noos is comparable to that of thumos. For Homer thumos is the main organ of man’s emotional life. With it (or in it) he feels joy and grief, pleasure and pain, love and hate, honor and shame, desire and aversion, pride and humility, courage and fear. Like noos, it is not only an organ but the function of that organ. He felt courage in his thumos; he went into battle with courageous thumos. But there is further development. Thumos comes more and more to refer to the positive one of the pairs of opposites just listed. Athumos means lacking in will. And the qualities which it describes become limited to those especially related to a positive manifestation of the will: anger and courage. Noos shows a similar range of usage: an organ (mind), a function (thinking + an emotive element), the result of the function. At this point the semantic pattern bifurcates: in one direction the intellectual element predominates— noos is that which is thought, the object of thinking: in the other the affective element predominates—noos is attitude, character, disposition, at first neutral, but increasingly associated with positive and morally desirable traits of character. The division between intellectual and ethical is never complete. In Theognis to have noos means to be of good character, but this in turn presupposes wisdom. His position is partisan—the man of noos is the man who thinks and feels as he does. Noos thus retains the affective element with which it started; the affective element becomes more positive and specific. Knowledge equals, i.e., entails, virtue. SOdy. 9.175f. “Iliad, 16.34f. SOdy. 1.3

The career of thumos is not merely analogous to that of noos; it affects it directly. I have described thumos in Homer as the main organ of man’s emotional life; this is an incomplete description; it is also concerned with man’s cognition. It operates as an organ of knowledge and belief, deliberation and persuasion. As its functions become circumscribed and it loses its intellectual content, thumos and noos become increasingly polarized. A man whose noos is not stronger than his thumos is always in trouble, says Theognis. Paradoxically then noos comes to be contrasted with the emotions while still retaining an important affective ingredient.'® Enough of noos in general. What of Dios Noos? Patroclus in Iliad 16: went after Trojans and Lycians in a huge blind fury./Besotted: had he only kept the command of Peleiades/he might have got clear away from the evil spirit of black death./But always the mind af Zeus is a stronger thing than man’s mind./He terrifies even the warlike man, he takes away victory /lightly .. (685—90). Notice the shift in subject in the translation; the mind of Zeus is stronger; he terrifies even the warlike man, etc. Should noos be retained as the subject? Does it matter? The shift is so easily effected that Zeus is more or less identified with his noos. What does noos mean here? In part his intention or plan: this plan involves Patroclus’ death. Patroclus as a mere mortal is powerless to change the pattern of this plan. But it is not the plan that is stronger (kreisson); it is Zeus that is stronger and the complex of wit and will that make up his noos; the plan is the product of this complex. In this usage the plan has not yet been separated from its conceiver and given objective status. What is the origin of this superior strength? Snell,” in an analysis of human and divine knowledge, quotes the invocation to the muses that prefaces the Catalogue of ships: Tell me now Muses that dwell in the palace of Olympus— For you are goddesses, you are at hand and know all things, But we hear only a rumor and know nothing— Who were the captains and lords of the Danaans. Snell goes on to say: “the goddesses are superior to man for the simple reason that they are always at hand, and have seen everything, and know it now—while he absorbs nothing but hearsay.” Zeus’ superior strength has the same origin; he is all-seeing as befits a sky-god, and with his noos is able to see and comprehend the pattern of events, past, present, and future. But his role is not passive; if it were he would not be stronger but merely wiser. His noos involves his will; he does not merely comprehend the pattern of events, he molds and © Theognis 631; E. L. Harrison, 71f. Op. cit 136f.

fashions it. It is an oversimplification to say that his knowledge is the source of his power; the two are inextricably intertwined in the concept of noos. In Book 15 of the Iliad, Apollo comes to the wounded Hector; he has now recovered consciousness and is recovering strength. “The sweat and hard breathing had begun to stop once the noos of Zeus wakened him” (241-42). In the next book Ajax is forced to retreat under the volleys of Trojan spears. “He could no longer hold his place; the noos of Zeus beat him back, and the proud Trojans with their spears” (10203). These two passages bring out more clearly the active nature of Zeus’ noos. It stands as subject of an active verb; it is fashioning events not merely comprehending them. “No man not even a strong one can drag aside the noos of Zeus, for he (or it) is stronger by far.’’'* It is the presence of noos that distinguishes man from other mortal creatures; it is the inferiority of his noos that distinguishes him from the gods. “The noos of mortal men is such as the gods bring from day to day,”!® says Odysseus. Zeus’ noos is immutable and infallible. That is the human predicament. In the fifth book of the Odyssey we are told: “It is not possible... to bypass or frustrate the noos of Zeus” (103f). The verb translated “frustrate” means literally to make vain or empty, to invalidate, nullify. It is characteristic of the noos of Zeus that it always achieves its end or telos; and it is this that distinguishes it from the noos of man. In the “Hymn of Hermes” and the Theogony the noos of Zeus “exeteleito” (reaches its telos)”°; and Semonides with the buoyant pessimism of his age takes it a stage further: “My child, deep-throwing Zeus controls the end (telos) of all things disposing as he wills. We who are mortals have no noos, we live like cattle from day to day, knowing nothing of god’s plans”?! Add Theognis: “We men think vain things knowing nothing, but the gods achieve everything in accordance with their noos.”?? The divide between the mind of god and the mind of man deepens. Two further developments in Hesiod. In the Works and Days (line 105) we are told: “it is not possible in any way to escape (or avoid) the noos of Zeus.” We know from Homer that it is stronger than man’s noos, that we cannot drag it aside; it is no doubt implicit in Homer’s words that we cannot escape it. But the explicit statement in Hesiod might seem to betoken a change in the theological climate. Such a change of climate is more readily visible in a further, rather remarkable passage from the Works and Days.”* “Zeus’ noos is one thing at one time, another at another, and it is hard for mortal men to know it (noesai).” This sounds a new note. Zeus’ noos is not merely '8Tliad, 8.143f. 20H. Hermes 10, Hesiod, Theogony 1002. “Theognis 141f. "Ody. 18.136f. ?!Semonides Fr 1, 1-5 Diehl. Works and Days 483f.

stronger, but inscrutable; not merely inscrutable, but in its very nature unpredictable. The unchanging noos, the truth that lies behind phenomena, is here brought together with the ethical noos, attitude or disposition, which admits of infinite variety both between individuals and within a single individual. The intertwining of the different semantic strands is again visible. The result is that a Homeric commonplace has been adapted to the theology of a more anxious and fearridden age. We have seen that the poet is privileged to receive from the Muses information not available to ordinary men. In the Works and Days (line 661) Hesiod makes an even bolder claim: “I shall speak the noos of aegis-bearing Zeus; for the muses taught me undying song.” The fact that the item of knowledge Hesiod acquires in this way concerns the behavior of many-pegged ships does not make his claim less bold. He confesses that his own empirical knowledge of this mode of transport has been limited to a single journey, but it is not empirical knowledge that is in question. The mind of Zeus is hard to know, but there are special routes to this knowledge, and those who are specially privileged to take them. At this stage the poet, later the philosopher. Let us turn now to a figure who is of considerable importance for our investigation. Xenophanes straddles the two worlds of epic and philosophy, standing near the end of one tradition and near the beginning of the other. On him our paper hinges; for it was he who began to work out the theological and philosophical significance latent in the term we have been discussing. His crucial contribution lies in his rejection of the anthropomorphic gods of Homeric epic. His god he describes thus: “one god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.”** “The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks (noei), the whole of him hears” (ibid.). Thought and perception, still regarded as a single complex, are the sole activity of Xenophanes’ god and the source of his power. “Without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his noos” (ibid.). This god is not equipped with the limbs and organs of a mortal; but deprived of these executive instruments of thought, what for man turns will into deed, he is yet able to shake all things. We have seen that in Homer noos involves both cognition and volition; we have seen that ultimately the superiority of Zeus’ noos lies not merely in its superior knowledge of past, present, and future, but in its active patterning and controlling of events. Thus his power does not require limbs and muscles for its execution; noos entails telos (accomplishment). Take away his organs and all other anthropomorphic characteristics; leave only that in respect of which god is superior to man; and you are left with noos. Noos, as it is not closely related with any MB 23, 24, 25 DK.

physiological organ, more easily survives such a stripping than other psychological terms. And what you are left with is just noos—there is not much point in calling it Zeus’ noos; for what does this new Zeus consist of apart from noos? We have seen that noos showed tendencies in Homer to separate from or replace the thinker. It could do this in its objective sense of thought or plan. But clearly this will not do; Xenophanes’ god is not thought but the thinking mind. A thought cannot think nor can a plan plan. To shake all things noos must involve active thinking and willing. Noos is mind usurping the identity of its possessor.”° One further point on Xenophanes. God, he tells us, is in no way similar to mortals either in body or thought. Of mortal thinking he says this: “No man knows or ever will know, the truth about the gods and about everything I speak of; for even if one chanced to say the complete truth, yet oneself knows it not; but seeming is wrought over all things”? Man’s method of inquiry is different: “by seeking men find out better in time.”’”” Man’s method is empirical and discursive. It stands in contrast to the intuitive and immediate apperception which is the preserve of noos and of god. For Homer noos is a common faculty. His successors emphasize the gap between the mind of god and the mind of men. The concept of two levels and kinds of knowledge is implicit in the opposition between noos and the senses, noos as penetrating behind phenomena and as hidden behind phenomena. Xenophanes takes the step of ascribing these two levels of knowledge to two levels of being. Man’s knowledge and god’s knowledge are different in kind. Alcmaeon speaks with the same voice: “concerning things unseen and things mortal the gods see clearly” but we, he says, can only conjecture.# “There are many things,” says Protagoras, “that prevent human knowledge, the obscurity of the matter and the shortness of man’s life”? Man’s knowledge is empirical, his reasoning processes discursive, his conclusions are uncertain. Noos is intuitive, immediate, and infallible. It is hard to be sure on the basis of fragmentary evidence how rigidly Xenophanes maintained this dichotomy between human and divine thought. Did he deny noos to mortals entirely? Or did he allow that some at least (including presumably himself) had access to this mode of cognition?® In one form or another this latter seems to This should not be taken to imply that Xenophanes conceived of his god as incorporeal. Frag. 23, for instance, in which he says that god is “like mortals in neither thought nor frame (demas)” makes it clear that he is still thinking of him in corporeal terms. The point is that it is with his noos, and his noos alone, that he acts. B 34 DK. TB 18 DK. 28B | DK. #B 4 DK. ®E.g., Mansfeld, 11: “Man wird Xenophanes aber vielleicht zutrauen dürfen, dass er selber über ein inspiriertes Wissen um seinen neuen Gott verfügte, zu dem er auf dem Wege der unmittelbaren geistigen Erfahrung gekommen wäre.” He admits,

have been the view that prevailed among the Presocratics that followed him. Anaxagoras appears to say that there is a part of noos in everything that is animate.*’ Parmenides is more exclusive. He agrees with Xenophanes that only with noos can we apprehend the real. And he has nothing but scorn for “twoheaded” mortals who are “deaf and blind and devoid of judgment.”*? But he does not conclude from this that the real is unknowable. He agrees with Hesiod that this knowledge is limited to a privileged minority. Heraclitus makes a contribution to the debate typically obscure but typically important. “Those who speak with noos (xun nooi) must base what they say on that which is common (xunoi), just as a political community is based on the law.’’*? The pun is obvious and far from being merely decorative. The common (xunon) is the special area of operation of noos. Elsewhere Heraclitus says: “Although the logos is common (xunos) the many live as though they had a private understanding (phronesis).”** Common in the sense of universally valid, and in the sense of universally accessible. If the common is universally accessible—and access to it is via the noos—then all men must have this capacity even if they do not use it, but behave as though they were fast asleep. Heraclitus’ protreptic message is pointless if his audience do not possess the faculty required to understand it. “ ‘Noos’ is what I [Heraclitus] am displaying and what you [the many] ought to be [and are capable of] displaying. Wake up, open your eyes and see the truth.” When Xenophanes sought to strip the Homeric gods of all their anthropomorphic characteristics, noos did not fall victim to his purge. For Homer the noos of Zeus and the noos of man were the same in kind. For Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, if not for Xenophanes himself, the mind of man remains the same in kind as the mind that controls the universe. This is a crucial point. In a sense it provides the epistemological however, that there is no evidence for this in the fragments. See also von Fritz (1943), 230: “Neither in the literal nor in the indirect fragments of Xenophanes’ works are the words noos, etc., ever used in regard to human beings. Perhaps this is not quite accidental.” In frag. 23, where god is said to be unlike mortals either in body (demas) or in thought (noema), Xenophanes seems primarily concerned to emphasize the difference in kind that exists between god and man, both in their physical and mental properties; it is presumably as ludicrous to think that the mental processes of god are in any way similar to those of man as to assume that he has hands. This conclusion seems to me more important than the fact that the term noema is used of both parties. It is dangerous to treat it as a technical term. It may mean no more here than “mode of thinking.” This, combined with the fact that in frag. 18 Xenophanes seems to set up an alternative method as the proper cognitive method for man, inclines me to suspect that Xenophanes went further in separating human and divine thought than his successors were able to accept. 31B 11 DK.

base for the Presocratic philosopher, his right to assume access to the secrets of the universe. Noos is that which penetrates behind phenomena and that which lies hidden behind phenomena. And it plays a large part in determining what those secrets will be. For noos we have seen is not a morally neutral term. Man projects his values into the universe together with his mind. The power that controls the world is both rational and morally informed; and the norms of cosmic behavior under the control of this intelligence are patterned on man’s social behavior within the human community. The Presocratic inherits from Homer a concept of intelligence that is invested with power and involved with morality, and an assumption that god and man, community and cosmos are identical in kind. It would be wearisome at this juncture to work systematically through the Presocratics supporting this conclusion. It would be irresponsible to leave it unsupported. I have already alluded briefly to the positions of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras. I would like to look in more detail at one word, and one philosopher. The philosopher is Empedocles—chosen because he seems to fit least well into the pattern; the word is kuberno—to guide or steer. In its literal application kuberno is used of the activity of the pilot of a ship. It would seem likely that the metaphorical usage implies reason and direction: the pilot must know what he is doing—and where he is going. The two earliest metaphorical usages in nonphilosophical writers strongly support the conclusion that the metaphor contains the sense of rational guidance. Antiphon addresses a jury: dike de kuberneseien; may justice guide you (to your decision), and Pindar in Pythian 5.122. “The great noos of Zeus guides (kubernai) the fortunes of those men dear to him.” According to Aristotle all the Presocratic philosophers who postulated an infinite primary substance with no separate source of motion, maintained that this substance “‘enfolds all and guides all” (kubernan) 3° If this is the case, the primary substance must be regarded, not simply as a material substratum from which the constituents of the universe are formed by some quasi-mechanical process, but as an intelligent agent working towards a goal. As Kirk and Raven rather grudgingly admit in their discussion of this passage “‘the archaic theomorphic, and thus to some extent anthropomorphic, conception of the primary stuff favours the assumption of purposeful action.”’*” Kuberno is used of the activity of the highest principle probably by Anaximander, certainly in the extant fragments of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Diogenes; it is found too in passages imitative of pre35 Antiphon 1.13. Aristotle, Physics 203 b 7. 7G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957) 115.

socratic terminology in Pseudo-Philolaus and Hippocrates.” “This and this alone,” says Heraclitus, “is wisdom: to understand the thought [gnome] that guides everything in every way.” And Diogenes: “It seems to me that that which has intelligence is what men call air, and that all men are guided by this and that it has power over all things. For this very thing seems to me to be a god.” Jaeger suggests that this passage of Diogenes, with its hymnodic and elevated style, contains what had become more or less a formula for the description of the highest principle.®® Listen lastly to Plato in the Philebus surveying his predecessors: “All philosophers assert with one voice that nous is the king of heaven and earth. . . . Should we believe,” he asks a little later, “as our fathers declared, that the universe is ordered and guided (diakuberno) by a marvellous intelligence (nous) and wisdom?’’*° There might seem to be little room in Empedocles’ universe, with its four elements and two principles of motion, love and strife, for a purposive intelligence. Love has been described as “the least intellectual of the presocratic deities”; “true to her character,” we are told, “she seems to act on impulse.’’*’ But look for a moment at this passage from fr. 17: “On her [love] do thou gaze with thy noos, and sit not with dazed eyes; for she is recognized as inborn in mortal limbs; by her they think kind thoughts and do harmonious works; calling her Joy by name and Aphrodite.” Then add fr. 109: “with earth do we see earth, with water water, with air bright air, with fire consuming fire; with love do we see love, strife with dread strife.” With love we see love; but it is with the noos we apprehend her. This would suggest that love and noos are identical. Further, for Empedocles our cognitive functions depend on and are the result of the blending of the elements within us. The more harmonious the blend, the higher the quality of the mental act. As love is the blending agent, intelligence is her creature. Indeed fr. 17 sums up rather succinctly some of the points I have been trying to make. “‘Gaze with thy noos, sit not with dazed eyes”: the activity of noos is still seen as analogous to sense-perception; but (at the same time) it is in the second half of the line contrasted with sense-perception. “For she is recognized as inborn in mortal limbs; by her they think kind thoughts and do harmonious works.” Love is responsible for blending in society and in the cosmos. The interHeraclitus B 41, Parmenides B 12.3, Diogenes B 5, [Philolaus] B 21, Hippocrates, de Victu 1, 10. 39W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), #0Philebus 28 C and D. #F. Solmsen, J.H.1., 24 (1963), 479.

twining of the moral and the rational, the cosmos and the human community is all contained in this fragment. “Empedocles,” says Solmsen, “may not be a teleologist by Platonic or Aristotelian standards, yet he knows where the operation of ‘love’ finds its end or perfection (te/os). It was in the creation of a living being, which thanks to the organization of the elements in the blood (and flesh) had attained the highest degree of intelligence and sensitivity, and was ideally adjusted to the world in which it lived. Had Cypris not ‘willed’ this arrangement? had it come about accidentally?”* In a famous passage of the Phaedo,** Socrates makes the following complaint: “One day I heard someone reading an extract from what he said was a book by Anaxagoras, to the effect that it is nous that arranges all things in order and causes all things; now there was a cause that delighted me, for I felt that in a way it was good that nous should be the cause of everything. . . . I never supposed that when Anaxagoras had said that [things] are ordered by nous he would bring in some other cause for them, and not be content with showing that it is best for them to be as they are.” I would imagine that Anaxagoras would not have been at all satisfied by the suggestion that he should say the earth was in the center of the universe because that was the best place for it to be. But there is some force in Socrates’ complaint. A large part of the impulse to speculation among the Presocratics lies in their rejection of the so-called mythopoeic mode of thought in favor of an explanation of nature in terms of events and processes visible in nature. “The cosmologies of mythopoeic thought,” says Frankfort, “are basically revelations received in a confrontation with a cosmic thou”; for this “thou” the Presocratics sought to substitute an objective and measurable “it.” But central to their systems remains this important legacy of an earlier mode of thought— the anthropomorphic mind of god. Mind involves power; and this power is not arbitrary; it is directed towards an end; the end is in accord with reason. The reasonable end is good. The mind of Zeus, whose descendant this is, always achieves its telos. The Presocratics do not make explicit what is the nature of this telos, or the means by which it is achieved. They are bashful teleologists. It was left to Plato to draw the conclusions without inhibitions. The mind of Zeus takes many shapes; and through these transformations it plays its part in the development of the prejudice, belief, or realization that the world is guided and controlled by an intelligence in accordance with a rational plan, and that that plan is “for the best.” Scarborough College, University of Toronto. “Philosophical Review 59 (1950), 439f. “Before Philosophy (London, 1949), 262.