The lives, opinions, and remarkable sayings of the most famous ancient philosophers. The first volume written in Greek, by Diogenes Laertius ; made English by several hands ...

The LIFE of ARCHELAƲS.

ARchelaus, an Athenian, or Milesian, was the Son of Apollodorus, or of Mido as others affirm, the Disciple of Anaxagoras, and Socrates's Master. He was the first that introduced natural Philoso∣phy out of Ionia into Athens, and was therefore called the Naturalist. However he was the last Professor of natural Phi∣losophy, Socrates soon after advancing the Study of Ethics, of which nevertheless, he himself, in his Life-time, did not seem to have been utterly Ignorant; for he made several of his publick Readings, up∣on the Subjects of Law, of Morality and Justice. Which being borrowed from him, and propagated by Socrates, he was therefore look'd upon as the first Inventor of Ethics. He asserted two Principles of Generation, Heat and Cold; and that Living Animals were first created out of Mud; and that Good and Evil did not proceed from Nature, but from the Law. For all which he gave these particular Reasons; First, that the Water being melt∣ed and dissolved by the Heat, when it

came to be thickned by the fiery Mixture, made the Earth; but being fluid, produ∣ced the Air: whence it came to pass, that the one was curbed by the circular Moti∣on of the Air, the other by that of the Fire. Then, that living Animals were begotten out of the hot Earth, which dis∣solved the Mud into a Substance, almost like Milk, for their Nourishment: and that after the same manner Men were pro∣duced. He was the first who defined the Voice of Man to be the Repercussion of the Air; and affirmed that the Sea was a vast Body of Water, strained through the Earth, into the Cavities of the terre∣strial Globe, that the Sun was the bigger of the Stars, and the whole was infinite.

Besides this Archelaus there were three others of the same Name. The one Cho∣rographer, who made a distinct Mapp of that part of the World, over which Ale∣xander had marched. Another, who wrote of natural Productions: the third an Orator, who also wrote of the Art of Rhetoric.