The Ε at Delphi (15-19)

But, said I, the most important matter I fear may embarrass our Plato when it is stated, just as he said that Anaxagoras was embarrassed by the name of the Moon, since he tried to claim as his own some very ancient opinion in regard to its illumination. Has not Plato said this in the Cratylus? [*]

Certainly, said Eustrophus, but what similarity there is I do not see.

Well, you know, of course, that in the Sophist [*] he demonstrates that the supreme first principles are five: Being, Identity, Divergence, and fourth and fifth besides these, Motion and Rest.[*] But in the Philebus [*] he employs another method of division and affirms that the Infinite is one and the Definite a second, and from the combination of these all generation arises. The cause which makes them combine he posits as a fourth class; the fifth he has left for us to surmise, by which the things combined attain once more dissociation and disengagement. I infer that these are intended to be figurative expressions corresponding to those just mentioned, generation corresponding to being, the infinite to motion, the definite to rest, the combining principle to identity, and the dissociating principle to divergence. But if these last are not the same as the others, even so, considered either in that way or in this, his division into five different classes would still hold good.

Evidently someone anticipated Plato in comprehending this before he did, and for that reason dedicated to the god an E as a demonstration and symbol of the number of all the elements.

Furthermore, observing that the Good displays itself under five categories,[*] of which the first is moderation, the second due proportion, the third the mind, the fourth the sciences and arts and the true opinions that have to do with the soul, and the fifth any pleasure that is pure and unalloyed with pain, at

this point he leaves off, thus suggesting the Orphic verse[*]

Bring to an end the current of song in the sixth generation.

Following upon all this that has been said to you, I continued, I shall sing one short verse[*] for Nicander and his friends, men of sagacity. On the sixth day of the new month, namely, when the prophetic priestess is conducted down to the Prytaneum, the first of your three sortitions is for five, she casting three and you casting two, each with reference to the other.[*] Is not this actually so?

Yes, said Nicander, but the reason must not be told to others.

Then, said I, smiling, until such time as we become holy men, and God grants us to know the truth, this also shall be added to what may be said on behalf of the Five.

Thus, as I remember, the tale of arithmetical and of mathematical laudations of E came to an end.

Ammonius, inasmuch as he plainly held that in mathematics was contained not the least important part of philosophy, was pleased with these remarks, and said, It is not worth while to argue too precisely over these matters with the young, except to say that every one of the numbers will provide not a little for them that wish to sing its praises. What need to speak of the others? Why, the sacred Seven of

Apollo will consume the whole day before the narration of all its powers is finished. Then again, we shall be branding the wise men as warring with common custom, as well as with the long years of time,[*] if they are to oust Seven from its place of honour and make Five sacred to the god, on the ground that it is in some way more closely related to him. I am therefore of the opinion that the significance of the letter is neither a numeral nor a place in a series nor a conjunction nor any of the subordinate parts of speech. No, it is an address and salutation to the god, complete in itself, which, by being spoken, brings him who utters it to thoughts of the god’s power. For the god addresses each one of us as we approach him here with the words Know Thyself,[*] as a form of welcome, which certainly is in no wise of less import than Hail; and we in turn reply to him Thou art, as rendering unto him a form of address which is truthful, free from deception, and the only one befitting him only, the assertion of Being.

The fact is that we really have no part nor parcel in Being,[*] but everything of a mortal nature is at some stage between coming into existence and passing away,[*] and presents only a dim and uncertain semblance and appearance of itself; and if you apply the whole force of your mind in your desire to apprehend it, it is like unto the violent grasping of water, which, by squeezing and compression, loses the handful enclosed, as it spurts through the fingers[*];

even so Reason, pursuing the exceedingly clear appearance of every one of those things that are susceptible to modification and change, is baffled by the one aspect of its coming into being, and by the other of its passing away; and thus it is unable to apprehend a single thing that is abiding or really existent.

It is impossible to step twice in the same river are the words of Heracleitus,[*] nor is it possible to lay hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent state; by the suddenness and swiftness of the change in it there comes dispersion and, at another time, a gathering together; or, rather, not at another time nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into its place and forsakes its place; it is coming and going.

Wherefore that which is born of it never attains unto being because of the unceasing and unstaying process of generation, which, ever bringing change, produces from the seed an embryo, then a babe, then a child, and in due course a boy, a young man, a mature man, an elderly man, an old man, causing the first generations and ages to pass away by those which succeed them. But we have a ridiculous fear of one death, we who have already died so many deaths, and still are dying! For not only is it true, as Heracleitus[*] used to say, that the death of heat is birth for steam, and the death of steam is birth for water, but the case is even more clearly to be seen in our own selves: the man in his prime passes away when the old man comes into existence, the young man passes away into the

man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the babe into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into the man of to-day; and the man of to-day is dying as he passes into the man of to-morrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person; but we become many persons, even as matter is drawn about some one semblance and common mould[*] with imperceptible movement. Else how is it that, if we remain the same persons, we take delight in some things now, whereas earlier we took delight in different things; that we love or hate opposite things, and so too with our admirations and our disapprovals, and that we use other words and feel other emotions and have no longer the same personal appearance, the same external form, or the same purposes in mind? For without change it is not reasonable that a person should have different experiences and emotions; and if he changes, he is not the same person; and if he is not the same person, he has no permanent being, but changes his very nature as one personality in him succeeds to another. Our senses, through ignorance of reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be is.

What, then, really is Being? It is that which is eternal, without beginning and without end, to which no length of time brings change. For time is something that is in motion, appearing in connexion with moving matter, ever flowing, retaining nothing, a receptacle, as it were, of birth and decay, whose familiar afterwards and before, shall be and has been, when they are uttered, are of themselves a confession of Not Being. For to speak of that which has not yet occurred in terms of Being, or to say of what has already ceased to be, that it is, is silly and absurd. And as for that on which we most rely to

support our conception of time, as we utter the words, it is here, it is at hand, and now — all this again reason, entering in, demolishes utterly. For now is crowded out into the future and the past, when we would look upon it as a culmination; for of necessity it suffers division. And if Nature, when it is measured, is subject to the same processes as is the agent that measures it, then there is nothing in Nature that has permanence or even existence, but all things are in the process of creation or destruction according to their relative distribution with respect to time. Wherefore it is irreverent in the case of that which is to say even that it was or shall be; for these are certain deviations, transitions, and alterations, belonging to that which by its nature has no permanence in Being.