Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

And if that which disappears had been destroyed and become non-existent, everything would have perished, that into which the things were dissolved being non-existent. Moreover, the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain. For there is nothing into which it can change. For outside the sum of things there is nothing which could enter into it and bring about the change.

Further [this he says also in the Larger Epitome near the beginning and in his First Book On Nature], the whole of being consists of bodies and space.[*](Usener’s insertion of bodies and space comes from § 86;cf.Diels,Dox. Gr. 581. 28.) For the existence of bodies is everywhere attested by sense itself, and it is upon sensation that reason must rely when it attempts to infer the unknown from the known.

And if there were no space (which we call also void and place and intangible nature),[*](Cf. Lucr. i. 426.) bodies would have nothing in which to be and

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through which to move, as they are plainly seen to move. Beyond bodies and space there is nothing which by mental apprehension or on its analogy we can conceive to exist. When we speak of bodies and space, both are regarded as wholes or separate things, not as the properties or accidents of separate things.

Again [he repeats this in the First Book and in Books XIV. and XV. of the work On Nature and in the Larger Epitome], of bodies some are composite, others the elements of which these composite bodies are made.

These elements are indivisible and unchangeable, and necessarily so, if things are not all to be destroyed and pass into non-existence, but are to be strong enough to endure when the composite bodies are broken up, because they possess a solid nature and are incapable of being anywhere or anyhow dissolved.[*](Cf.§ 54.) It follows that the first beginnings must be indivisible, corporeal entities.

Again, the sum of things is infinite. For what is finite has an extremity, and the extremity of anything is discerned only by comparison with something else. (Now the sum of things is not discerned by comparison with anything else:[*](The missing premiss is supplied by Cicero, De div. ii. 103 at quod omne est, id non cernitur ex alio extrinsecus. Cf. Lucr. i. 960.)) hence, since it has no extremity, it has no limit; and, since it has no limit, it must be unlimited or infinite.

Moreover, the sum of things is unlimited both by reason of the multitude of the atoms and the extent of the void.

For if the void were infinite and bodies finite, the bodies would not have stayed anywhere but would have been dispersed in their course through the infinite void, not having any supports or counter-checks

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to send them back on their upward rebound. Again, if the void were finite, the infinity of bodies would not have anywhere to be.

Furthermore, the atoms, which have no void in them—out of which composite bodies arise and into which they are dissolved—vary indefinitely in their shapes; for so many varieties of things as we see could never have arisen out of a recurrence of a definite number of the same shapes. The like atoms of each shape are absolutely infinite; but the variety of shapes, though indefinitely large, is not absolutely infinite.

[For neither does the divisibility go on ad infinitum, he says below[*](Properly further within—a proof that the Scholiast read his Epicurus from a papyrus scroll which had to be unrolled. Hence further within or nearer the centre expresses the same thing as further on or below in a modern book.); but he adds, since the qualities change, unless one is prepared to keep enlarging their magnitudes also simply ad infinitum.]

The atoms are in continual motion through all eternity. [Further, he says below,[*](Properly further within—a proof that the Scholiast read his Epicurus from a papyrus scroll which had to be unrolled. Hence further within or nearer the centre expresses the same thing as further on or below in a modern book.) that the atoms move with equal speed, since the void makes way for the lightest and heaviest alike.] Some of them rebound to a considerable distance from each other, while others merely oscillate in one place when they chance to have got entangled or to be enclosed by a mass of other atoms shaped for entangling.[*](Note the distinction between (1) solids, composed of interlacing atoms (which have got entangled), and (2) fluids, composed of atoms not interlaced, needing a sheath or container of other atoms, if they are to remain united. To (2) belongs Soul (§ 66). See Lucr. ii. 80-141; Cic. De fin. i. 7.)

This is because each atom is separated from the rest by void, which is incapable of offering any resistance to the rebound; while it is the solidity of the atom which makes it rebound after a collision,

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however short the distance to which it rebounds, when it finds itself imprisoned in a mass of entangling atoms. Of all this there is no beginning, since both atoms and void exist from everlasting. [He says below that atoms have no quality at all except shape, size, and weight. But that colour varies with the arrangement of the atoms he states in his Twelve Rudiments; further, that they are not of any and every size; at any rate no atom has ever been seen by our sense.]