Early Greek Philosophy Author:Alfred William Benn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHERS 1. Zeno of Elea.—Parmenides seems never to have made more than one disciple. This was a young Eleate named Zeno, to... more » whom he was united not only by common opinions but by the bonds of devoted private affection. Yet closely as they agree in principle, the two thinkers belong to distinct ages with widely contrasted tendencies and methods: the one dogmatic, the other argumentative ; the one more comprehensive, the other more analytic ; the one potent to unite and simplify; the other excelling in subtlety and minuteness. What struck people most about the philosophy of Parmenides was that it denied motion; and to such a laughter-loving race as the Greeks this paradox gave much occasion for ridicule. Zeno came to his master's assistance by showing, or attempting to show, that the idea of motion involves greater difficulties than its denial; and this he did by a series of examples whose interest is not exhausted even for the speculation of our own times. His most celebrated puzzle is that known as Achilles and the tortoise. Let us suppose that there is a race between the two, and that the tortoise is allowed a start, say, of ten feet; then Achilles will never overtake his slow- footed competitor, for while he is getting over the first ten feet the tortoise will have accomplished, say, one foot, or as much less than that as you please. Anyhow it will be some measurable distance, however small. Then while Achilles is traversing that space the tortoise will have advanced through the same fraction of it as before, and so on ad infinitum. It is no answer to say that as a matter of fact the swifter does always overtake the slower runner; the question is how space can be conceived except as infinitely divisible, and how, granting that, an infin...« less