It might be inferred that the first person to consider this question was Hesiod, or indeed anyone else who assumed Love or Desire as a first principle in things; e.g. Parmenides. For he says, where he is describing the creation of the universe, Love she Footnote 1Probably Aphrodite (so Simplicius, Plutarch). created first of all the gods . . .
Parmenides Fr. 13 (Diels)And Hesiod says, Footnote 2Hes. Th. 116-20. The quotation is slightly inaccurate. First of all things was Chaos made, and then/Broad-bosomed Earth . . ./And Love, the foremost of immortal beings,
thus implying that there must be in the world some cause to move things and combine them.
The question of arranging these thinkers in order of priority may be decided later. Now since it was apparent that nature also contains the opposite of what is good, i.e. not only order and beauty, but disorder and ugliness; and that there are more bad and common things than there are good and beautiful: in view of this another thinker introduced Love and Strife Footnote 3Empedocles Fr. 17, 26 (Diels); R.P. 166. Cf. Burnet, E.G.P. 108 ff. as the respective causes of these things—
because if one follows up and appreciates the statements of Empedocles with a view to his real meaning and not to his obscure language, it will be found that Love is the cause of good, and Strife of evil. Thus it would perhaps be correct to say that Empedocles in a sense spoke of evil and good as first principles, and was the first to do so—that is, if the cause of all good things is absolute good.
These thinkers then, as I say, down to the time of Empedocles, seem to have grasped two of the causes which we have defined in the Physics Footnote 4Aristot. Phys. 2.3, 7. : the material cause and the source of motion; but only vaguely and indefinitely. They are like untrained soldiers in a battle, who rush about and often strike good blows, but without science; in the same way these thinkers do not seem to understand their own statements, since it is clear that upon the whole they seldom or never apply them.
Anaxagoras avails himself of Mind as an artificial device for producing order, and drags it in whenever he is at a loss to explain some necessary result; but otherwise he makes anything rather than Mind the cause of what happens. Footnote 5Cf. Plat. Phaedo 98b, Plat. Laws 967b; also Aristot. Met. 7.5. Again, Empedocles does indeed use causes to a greater degree than Anaxagoras, but not sufficiently; nor does he attain to consistency in their use.
At any rate Love often differentiates and Strife combines: because whenever the universe is differentiated into its elements by Strife, fire and each of the other elements are agglomerated into a unity; and whenever they are all combined together again by Love, the particles of each element are necessarily again differentiated.
Empedocles, then, differed from his predecessors in that he first introduced the division of this cause, making the source of motion not one but two contrary forces.
Further, he was the first to maintain that the so-called material elements are four—not that he uses them as four, but as two only, treating fire on the one hand by itself, and the elements opposed to it—earth, air and water—on the other, as a single nature. Footnote 6Cf. 3.14. This can be seen from a study of his writings. Footnote 7e.g. Empedocles, Fr. 62 (Diels).
Such, then, as I say, is his account of the nature and number of the first principles.
Leucippus, Footnote 8Of Miletus; fl. circa 440 (?) B.C. See Burnet, E.G.P. 171 ff. however, and his disciple Democritus Footnote 9Of Abdera; fl. circa B.C. E.G.P loc. cit. hold that the elements are the Full and the Void—calling the one what is
and the other what is not.
Of these they identify the full or solid with what is,
and the void or rare with what is not
(hence they hold that what is not is no less real than what is, Footnote 10For the probable connection between the Atomists and the Eleatics see E.G.P. 173, 175, and cf. De Gen. et Corr. 324b 35-325a 32. because Void is as real as Body); and they say that these are the material causes of things.
And just as those who make the underlying substance a unity generate all other things by means of its modifications, assuming rarity and density as first principles of these modifications, so these thinkers hold that the differences
Footnote 11i.e., of the atoms. are the causes of everything else.
These differences, they say, are three: shape, arrangement, and position; because they hold that what is differs only in contour, inter-contact, and inclination . Footnote 12Cf. R.P. 194. (Of these contour means shape, inter-contact arrangement, and inclination position.) Thus, e.g., A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in arrangement, and Z from N Footnote 13These letters will convey Aristotle’s point better to the English reader, but see critical note. in position.
As for motion, whence and how it arises in things, they casually ignored this point, very much as the other thinkers did. Such, then, as I say, seems to be the extent of the inquiries which the earlier thinkers made into these two kinds of cause.