He proclaims, at the very beginning of the book, his thoroughgoing materialism. Life, he says, is nothing but a motion of the limbs, and therefore automata have an artificial life. The commonwealth, which he calls Leviathan, is a creation of art, and is in fact an artificial man. This is intended as more than an analogy, and is worked out in some d

PLATO and Aristotle were the most influential of all philosophers, ancient, medieval, or modern; and of the two, it was Plato who had the greater effect upon subsequent ages. I say this for two reasons: first, that Aristotle himself is an outcome of Plato; second, that Christian theology and philosophy, at any rate until the thirteenth century, was

CHAPTER XIII The Sources of Plato’s Opinions

Part I. The Pre-Socratics

Scepticism was a lazy man’s consolation, since it showed the ignorant to be as wise as the reputed men of learning. To men who, by temperament, required a gospel, it might seem unsatisfying, but like every doctrine of the Hellenistic period it recommended itself as an antidote to worry. Why trouble about the future? It is wholly uncertain. You may

The Spanish Jews produced one philosopher of importance, Maimonides.

Things increase in actuality by acquiring form; matter without form is only a potentiality.

As we shall see, the majority even of the best philosophers fell in with the belief in astrology. It involved, since it thought the future predictable, a belief in necessity or fate, which could be set against the prevalent belief in fortune. No doubt most men believed in both, and never noticed the inconsistency.

He attributed to himself a semi-divine character, and appears to have said: “There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.”