Leucippus (fl. 440 bce) and Democritus (fl. 420 bce) introduced atomism with its ontology of atoms and the void and its rejection of any design or steering factors for cosmogony. Instead, there were an infinite number of different cosmoi in an infinite void, the cosmoi all coming together accidentally rather than by any design or purpose. I hope by now no one is expecting a final triumphant chapter, extolling mechanistic atomism and praising the virtues of a supposed Greek enlightenment. There is a strong positive case that Leucippus and Democritus rejected non-natural explanation in favour of purely natural explanation, and posited only natural entities, though as we will see in the ensuing sections, the case is perhaps not quite so straightforward as one might initially think. Their explanations are not so thoroughly mechanistic as is sometimes assumed and they make surprisingly frequent use of biological analogues. Leucippus and Democritus make use of the notion of like to like. This is often thought of as a force, but this is almost certainly not the case and Leucippus and Democritus did not make use of forces at the atomic level. Neither though is it a sympathy. Finally, Leucippus and Democritus did have a theology and a theory of dreams. Ultimately this is based on their atomist ontology, but these theories do require some investigation. As is common practice, I make no attempt to separate the views of Leucippus and Democritus.
Belief in gods
Leucippus and Democritus attempted to explain how a belief in the gods came about. Possibly the most famous passage in this context is given to us by Sextus Empiricus:
There are those who believe that we come to the idea of gods from remarkable things which happen in the cosmos. Democritus said that in relation to meteorological phenomena, the men of old, in relation to thunder, lightning and thunderbolts, the conjunction of the stars and the eclipses of the sun and moon, were afraid and believed there to be gods because of these things.1
As we saw in the chapter on the Milesians this is significant in several ways. It targets meteorological phenomena that in Homer and Hesiod are explained by the actions of the gods. In a moment we will see Democritus’ natural explanations for those phenomena. It also explicitly links the origins of a belief in the gods to fear of these phenomena. A less-well-known passage, which is still of considerable importance, is Democritus Fr. 14:
A small number of wise men, raising their hands to what the Greeks now call the air, said ‘Zeus thinks of all things, knows all things, gives and takes away and is king of all things’.2
One way of reading this fragment, particularly in relation to the Sextus Empiricus passage above is that while we used to employ explanations relating to the gods for some phenomena (meteorological phenomena as the wise men used to raise their hands to what we now call air?), we have no need of such explanations now as we simply cite air and other natural entities in our explanations of such phenomena. One can read this passage in another way, as affirming faith in the gods (the small number of wise men were right and we are now wrong to explain in terms of air). However, such a reading would not cohere well with the rest of Democritus’ views, in particular the Sextus passage above. One can suggest targets for an association of gods/divinity and air. Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia are both possibilities, as we have seen they both associate divinity and air. So too the Derveni Papyrus may be a target, especially as it says:
Existing things have each been called a single name on account of what dominates them, all things being called Zeus for this reason. Air dominates all as far as it wants to. When they say that Moira span they say that the understanding of Zeus sanctions how the things that are, that have been generated and the things that will be must come to be and cease.3
Euripides is also a possible target, Fr. 941 says:
Do you see the high, unlimited aether
Embracing the earth with fluid arms?
Believe it is Zeus, believe it is god.4
I actually think Democritus Fr. 14 is rather more general here and is an attack on the idea of the gods controlling meteorological phenomena in general rather than the specific notion of an association between air/aether and god, but the latter is possible as well.
Leucippus and Democritus on meteorology
Stobaeus includes a section on Leucippus and on Democritus under his heading ‘concerning thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, hurricanes and typhoons’:
Leucippus has thunder come about by a breaking out of fire from the densest clouds. Democritus says that thunder is due to an irregular combination forcing its way down through a cloud which contains it. Lightning is the collision of clouds, from which the begetters of fire come, and rubbing against itself through the void and porous parts it is strained and gathered together. Thunderbolts occur when the purer, smaller, more even and close packable, as he has written, generators of fire are moved rapidly and forcibly. Hurricanes occur when a combination of fire and much void, held back in a place of much void and enclosed in its own membrane, become an organised body due to their mixture and move violently to the depths.5
So Democritus gives entirely natural explanations for thunder, lightning, thunderbolts and hurricanes. Democritus also has something to say about some other significant meteorological phenomena which had been taken to have non-natural explanations. Seneca Natural Questions V/2 gives Democritus’ account of wind. He reports Democritus as saying that in an empty square or street people can pass unhindered, but when there are many people they bump into each other and become entangled with one another and flow together. Similarly with atoms, where the flowing together constitutes wind.6 Aristotle gives us Democritus’ account of the nature of earthquakes:
Democritus says that the earth is full of water, and when it receives much more rain water, it is moved by that. For when too much occurs so that the cavities cannot receive it, the forcing out causes the earthquake and when drying out happens there is a drawing to the emptier places from the fuller and the earthquake is the impact of the motion.7
Pseudo-Plutarch, under his heading ‘On the rising of the Nile’ tells us that:
Democritus says when snow in the north melts around the summer solstice, clouds are formed from the vapour. When they are forced south to Egypt by the annual winds they give forth furious rain storms which fully fill the lakes and the river Nile.8
So Democritus has an entirely natural account of the flooding of the Nile. Outbreaks of plague were often put down to the intervention of the gods in ancient Greece and there is a famous passage in the first book of Homer’s Iliad where Agamemnon has angered the gods and they have sent a plague upon his army. Achilles in his speech suggests consulting a diviner or someone good at dreams and wonders whether burning mutton or goat will lift the plague. In relation to this, it is interesting that Plutarch tells us that:
We know that Democritus said and wrote that when worlds outside our own are destroyed foreign bodies flow into here, often they are the source of plague or other unusual happenings.9
One might argue that this is hand waving, that there is little that could be done to confirm or deny such a theory and it is alarmingly broad in that any unusual happening might be put down to an influx of atoms from a destroyed cosmos. On the other hand, it does provide an entirely natural account of what had been taken to be a non-natural phenomenon and one that has a prominent place in Homer. On the issue of the origin of humans, Lactantius tells us that:
Democritus was not correct in thinking that humans were generated from earth like worms, lacking any design or creator.10
Again, although we lack details here we have a natural explanation of what had been taken by Homer and Hesiod to be a non-natural phenomenon.
Metrodorus
Metrodorus (fl. fourth century bce) was a follower of Leucippus and Democritus, at least on the atoms and void ontology and belief in multiple cosmoi. He too had something to say on meteorology. Pseudo-Plutarch says that:
Metrodorus said that when the wind falls upon a cloud and firmly compacts it, the breaking results in a bang, the striking and cleaving in a flash, the rapidity of motion, the sun imparting heat, in throwing a thunderbolt. The weakening of the thunderbolt produces a hurricane (prêstêr).11
Here we have a good selection of the Anaximander phenomena, explained in a fairly standard manner. We have thunder, lightning, the thunderbolt and the hurricane all given natural explanations. It is notable that even someone who held a strongly sceptical epistemology like Metrodorus felt it necessary to give natural explanations of meteorological phenomena.12
Atomist ontology
There is a more general philosophical point in relation to the early atomists, which is that their ontology is in one sense highly parsimonious and their thought is generally reductive. It is parsimonious in the sense that there is only what is, the atoms, and the void and no other sort of substance. It is also strongly reductive in that what we perceive can be reduced down to our interactions with atoms. Perhaps the most famous early atomist saying is Democritus Fr. 9:
By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and the void.13
It is also important the Democritus takes a reductive line on mind/soul, believing it to be constituted from spherical atoms.14 If there is such an ontology of atoms and the void (and we might reasonably add in motion here as well), and the atoms are simply pieces of being while the void is not-being, it is hard to see how there will be much of a basis for a belief in the non-natural. Importantly, there is no sense of an extended world in Democritus. Democritus Fr. 297 says:
Some people, being ignorant of the breaking up of mortal nature, but aware of doing evil in their lives, make false stories about a time after the end.15
Pseudo-Plutarch also tells us that:
Democritus and Epicurus say the soul is mortal and dies with the body.16
The early atomists employed a like-to-like principle whereby like things were sorted together with other like things in the vortices which produced cosmoi. We will look at the like-to-like principle in more detail later, as there is a debate about whether it is simply an effect of the motions of atoms or whether the atoms have the property of moving like to like. For now I want to make another point about targeting. Pseudo-Plutarch tells us that:
Democritus says that air is broken into similarly shaped bodies and these are rolled in with pieces of the voice. For jackdaws sit with jackdaws and:
‘God always leads like with like’
On the seashore we see pebbles like to each other in the same place, the round ones and the long ones. So too with sieves, where things of like form are brought together, but beans and chick-peas are separated.17
There is a longer and more detailed passage in Sextus which affirms this sort of thinking about a like-to-like principle and it is clear that the like-to-like principle has a critical role in cosmos formation for Democritus. Plutarch’s quotation here that ‘god always leads like to like’ is from Homer and from a memorable passage in Homer where Odysseus is a beggar and is walking with a swineherd and is insulted on the grounds that ‘god always leads like to like’.18 Democritus has a natural explanation of the like-to-like principle. He takes the separation of things like-to-like as a natural consequence of the vortices of atoms that form in the void, from which the cosmoi are generated. Again we have an important, memorable passage in Greek literature where a phenomenon which depends on the actions of the gods is being explained in perfectly natural terms and I would argue that Homer is again being targeted by Democritus.
Biological analogues
Leucippus and Democritus are often seen as forerunners of the mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century.19 Leucippus and Democritus, while they can quite reasonably be called materialists, can hardly be called mechanists, at least not in the seventeenth century sense of the term.20 Certainly they do not have clockwork as a central explanatory metaphor as many in the seventeenth century did. Fontenelle put it like this:
‘I perceive’, said the Countess, ‘Philosophy is now become very Mechanical.’ ‘So Mechanical’, said I, ‘that I fear we shall quickly be asham’d of it; they will have the World to be in great, what a watch is in little; which is very regular and depends only upon the just disposing of the several parts of the movement. But pray tell me, Madam, had you not formerly a more sublime idea of the Universe?21
Or there is John Locke’s famous passage:
If we knew the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium, as a watchmaker does those of a watch, we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep, as well as a watchmaker can, that a little piece of paper laid on the balance will keep the watch from going, till it be removed … The dissolving of silver in aqua regis and gold in aqua fortis and not vice versa would then perhaps be no more difficult to know than it is to a smith to understand why the turning of one key will open a lock, and not the turning of another.22
Here, instead of a mechanical analogue for physical and even biological processes, Leucippus and Democritus use a biological analogue for physical processes.23 Sextus Empiricus tells us that:
There is an old view which, as I said previously, has long been prevalent among the phusikoi, that like recognises like. Democritus confirmed of this opinion and Plato spoke of it in his Timaeus.24 Democritus founds his argument on both animate and inanimate things. For animals, he says, flock with animals of the same kind – doves with doves, cranes with cranes, and so with the other irrational animals. Similarly in the case of inanimate things, as can be seen from seeds that are being winnowed and from pebbles on the sea-shore. For in the one case the whirl of the sieve separately arranges lentils with lentils, barley with barley, wheat with wheat; and in the other case, by the motion of the waves, oval pebbles are pushed into the same place as oval pebbles, and round pebbles as round pebbles, as though the similarity in things has some sort of ability for leading things together. That is Democritus’ view.25
As we will see in a moment, like to like is critical for the early atomists’ account of cosmos formation. Is it a mechanical principle though? The like-to-like effect is explained in terms of both animate and inanimate metaphors contrary to mechanical philosophy. Whirling is agricultural rather than strictly mechanical, at least in the clockwork sense, and we might say something similar to the analogy with the sea and pebbles. It is interesting that Metrodorus of Chios, a pupil of Democritus, says that:
It is strange for one ear of corn to be produced in a great plain, and for one world in the boundless.26
Here we have a biological comparison for the production of cosmoi. Leucippus and Democritus are not alone in this among the ancient atomists. Epicurus insisted that cosmoi grow from seeds.27 Whirling is critical for Leucippus and Democritus as it generates cosmos formation. The key passage is from Diogenes Laertius:
Leucippus holds that the whole is infinite … part of it is full, and part void … from these, innumerable kosmoi come to be and are dissolved into these again. The cosmoi are generated in this manner. By ‘cutting off from the infinite’, many bodies of all shapes move into a great void, where they are crowded together and produce a single vortex, where colliding with each other and circulating in all manner of ways, they separate out like to like. When, because of their great number they are no longer capable of moving around in equilibrium, those that are fine spread out into the outside void, as if sifted, while the rest hold together and becoming entangled, they unite their motions and create the first spherical structure. This stands apart like a membrane (humena), containing in itself all kinds of bodies. As they whirl around, due to the resistance of the middle, the surrounding membrane becomes thin, and the close packed atoms flow together due to touching the vortex. In this way the earth came into being, the atoms which had been borne in to the middle remaining there together. Again the surrounding membrane (humena) itself is increased, due to the influx of external bodies.28 As it moves around in the vortex, it takes in whatever it touches. Some of the bodies which become entangled form a structure which is firstly moist and muddy, but which dries out as it revolves with the vortex of the whole, and then ignites to produce the constitution of the stars.29
This process, although it looks straightforwardly physical and mechanical actually includes an important biological analogue as well. Twice here there is mention of a membrane, humena, in the process of cosmos formation. The Greek word here being most typically used of a membrane around the brain, heart or foetus. We have further evidence on this in that Stobaeus tells us that:
Leucippus and Democritus envelop the cosmos in a circular garment or membrane (humena) which comes about through the hook shaped atoms becoming entangled.30
The membrane plays a critical role in cosmos formation and is also important for how cosmoi can have demarcation and identity criteria. They help to separate off a cosmos from the void and other cosmoi and are part of what give a cosmos its identity. Democritus also uses this biological analogue in relation to his explanation of hurricanes. Stobaeus tells us that for Democritus:
Hurricanes occur when a combination of fire and much void, held back in a place of much void and enclosed in its own membrane (humenôn), becomes an organised body due to their mixture and move violently to the depths.31
Leucippus and Democritus do use humên in biological contexts themselves, e.g. referring to the skull bone being more like a membrane in deer.32 None of this, as far as I am concerned, is to be in any way critical of Leucippus and Democritus. They used biological analogues, but as we have seen so did many of the presocratics and there is nothing invariant or beyond nature here. What I do think this does is narrow the gap somewhat between Leucippus and Democritus and some other presocratics in terms of explanation.33 It also poses a problem for any historiography which values only purely mechanical explanations as there is no presocratic philosopher who supplies them to the exclusion of any other sort of explanation.
Leucippus and Democritus on forces
Did Leucippus and Democritus postulate universal forces acting at a distance? If they did not, did they think of like to like as a magical sympathy? In particular, Leucippus and Democritus make use of a like-to-like principle in cosmogony. In many ways this is a typical principle of the ancient world. It is important to recognise that there is no force of attraction working at a distance here, in the sense of a force operating between like entities. All there is is a sorting principle. It requires the whirl for the process to take place. Democritus Fr. 164 is important here:
In the one case the whirl of the sieve separately arranges lentils with lentils, barley with barley, wheat with wheat; and in the other case, by the motion of the waves, oval pebbles are pushed into the same place as oval pebbles, and round pebbles as round pebbles, as though the similarity in things has some sort of ability for leading things together. That is Democritus’ view.34
It is critical in translating the last sentence not to introduce the word force in the translation. There is no word for force in the Greek, which simply talks of some capacity for bringing things together. Whether that is by some force which acts at a distance or due to some other effect should be left open. It is important here that motion is required for the like-to-like principle to come into effect. There is no suggestion here that if we leave a mixture of lentils, barley and wheat in a sieve, 35 that they will separate out without the sieve being whirled, or that similar stones on the beach will separate out if they are not agitated by the waves.36 So this is not a Newtonian universal force whereby all pieces of matter attract all other pieces of matter at all times. Nor is it a sympathetic interaction which applies at all times. This is a sorting effect which occurs only when the sieve is being whirled or only when a vortex is formed in the void. 37 This should not surprise us as the atomist ontology makes no mention of forces at all, but simply has atoms and the void, as we saw above. So too the atoms are without character and we might conclude from that that they do not have forces operating between them. Stobaeus tells us that:
Democritus says that nothing is coloured in nature, as the elements are characterless (apoia),38 both the solid and the empty.39
On the related issue of weight, I take the view that weight is not an intrinsic property of the atoms for Leucippus and Democritus but that atoms only have weight in vortices. 40 If the like-to-like principle operates outside of the vortices, there is a serious difficulty. As there is no beginning to the universe for Leucippus and Democritus an unlimited amount of time has already occurred.41 So everything should have sorted like to like by now but it has not.42 So there is no like-to-like effect outside of the vortices.43 Like to like for Leucippus and Democritus is a sorting principle operative when a certain form of motion is in progress. There are no forces or sympathies between atoms acting at a distance. Like to like can be construed in that manner, but was not by Leucippus and Democritus.44
Leucippus and Democritus: theology
There is some evidence to suggest that Democritus believed in gods and the divine, though quite what sort of gods he believed in is complex. As ever, this type of evidence is unclear and tangled, but our best source is probably Sextus Empiricus, who tells us that:
Democritus was wrong in that he explained the difficult in terms of the unbelievable. Nature gives a great many different starting points for how humans have come to a belief in the gods. That there are extraordinary human shaped images in what surrounds and all manner of things which Democritus imagines is entirely unbelievable.45
Sextus Empiricus also tells us that:
Democritus says images approach humans, some being benevolent, some doing ill, so he prayed to meet good images. These are massive, extraordinary and difficult to destroy, though not indestructible. They prophesy the future to men by appearing and speaking to them. The men of old came to a belief in the gods from apprehending the appearance of these things, and other than these there is no god which has an indestructible nature.46
Everyone is agreed that Democritus does not breach his basic ontology in his account of the gods and why men believe in them. Gods, if they exist, are not a different sort of substance to what is.47 Also agreed is that for Democritus there are these eidôla, usually translated as images, which humans encounter. As in Democritus’ theory of perception, these eidôla will be films of atoms. According to Democritus, objects give off a film of atoms and when we encounter these, perception occurs. Perhaps the simplest view, which has had both ancient and modern supporters, is that Democritus was in fact an atheist and what he did was to give an explanation of why some men come to believe in gods, without believing in gods himself. As Vlastos bluntly puts it:
I consider the eidôla to be an aetiological explanation of the popular belief in gods, and nothing more.48
Cicero tells us that:
What of Democritus? Does he not go wrong in considering images and their wanderings as gods? … As he denies anything is eternal, as nothing remains in the same state perpetually, he evidently removes the divine so completely that there cannot be any belief in it.49
One point in favour of this view is that Democritus has been criticised for having a rather conservative view of the gods relative to other presocratic philosophers.50 On one view, Democritus asserts that there are many gods, they are anthropomorphic and they have good or bad intentions towards humans.51 This is almost the sort of account of the gods which was criticised by Xenophanes and is very far from the sort of pantheism advocated by the Milesians. On the Democritus-as-atheist view though there are no gods which have these characteristics, merely eidôla which when some humans meet them, lead them into believing that there are gods with these characteristics. So we may meet with eidôla who are good or bad for us, but the eidôla do not have good or bad intentions. We may interpret meeting eidôla as in some way indicating the future, but the eidôla do not speak. The point is to explain why humans have come to believe in gods with these characteristics, not to assert that there are such gods. Democritus then has a radical, atheist position which some would say is fully in line with his philosophical position on atoms and the void.
Barnes takes the view that the second Sextus passage above is actually about dreams and indeed eidôlon can have this psychological sense of an idea in the mind.52 This idea is attractive in that it can accept virtually everything the doxography has to say about the eidôla for Democritus (that there are many anthropomorphic gods with good or bad intentions who speak to us of the future, etc.) as they are merely ideas in our minds, like dreams and it is these dreams which led some to a belief in the gods. One problem with this view, as Taylor has argued,53 is at least some eidôla are substantial and exist outside of the mind as they are a fundamental part of Democritus’ theory of perception. The idea that eidôla can refer to something other, or more than physical images of the gods is an important one which I will return to below.
Eidôla and gods
The second view here is that the eidôla constitute the gods and so Democritus believes in the existence of the gods, though in a slightly attenuated manner. These gods though are entirely natural, being composed of atoms. That the gods are supposed to have intentions and morality is not a problem, as the mind for Democritus is distributed throughout the body. Any image given off by the body will include mind atoms as well and this might be thought to give the images intelligence and life. On this view, the images will have the standard characteristics of gods, there are many anthropomorphic gods with good or bad intentions who speak to us of the future, etc.
An interesting strategy here is to compare Democritus with Thomas Hobbes. Where Descartes supposed there to be three substances, matter, mind and god, reducing everything in the physical world to the size, shape and motion of atoms, later in the seventeenth century Hobbes went further and reduced mind and god as well, supposing there to be only one substance. Hobbes was accused of atheism. His defence was adamant and robust. He claimed to subscribe to everything in the Nicene creed. Hobbes also held that an incorporeal substance was inconceivable and could not exist. To believe that god was an incorporeal substance was problematic for Hobbes, as there simply were no incorporeal substances. So Hobbes believed he was a true theist in saying that god was composed of fine matter, as that was the only way in which god could exist. The parallels with Democritus are obvious enough. If all there is are atoms and the void, then if there are gods, they must be constituted from atoms.
One view we can decisively rule out for Democritus is that there are independent gods who give rise to the relevant eidôla that humans encounter. The final sentence of the second Sextus passage above would seem to weigh heavily against this and there is no need for there to be gods in Democritus’ theory for there to be the relevant eidôla.
Some of this debate is going to depend on what we accept as genuine characteristics of the eidôla from the doxography. This is by no means straightforward as there are some very odd claims on the doxography which cannot be admitted, e.g. Stobaeus’ report that Democritus believed that god is mind in spherical fire or St. Cyril who says the same thing but adds that this is the soul of the world.54 Exactly what we do accept is another matter, especially as the doxography is usually hostile to Democritus on this issue and very confused.
Democritus is perhaps better thought of in terms of what he did not believe in. He did not believe in the standard pantheon and he gave natural explanations for all the meteorological phenomena usually associated with such gods. He was not a Milesian pantheist, believing matter to be able to steer itself into a cosmos. Cosmoi are formed without any such guidance in Leucippus and Democritus. Nor did he believe in a god that has a mind/body relationship with the physical cosmos. Whether the eidôla explain a belief in the gods or in some attenuated sense are gods seems a smaller consideration in this context. Democritus was not placed in ancient lists of atheists, but such lists were notoriously unreliable.55 I incline to Vlastos’ view that the eidôla merely explain a belief in the gods. I see little in Leucippus and Democritus to suggest otherwise and am suspicious of the accuracy of the later doxography.
Eidôla: an alternative
I want to offer a different suggestion on the eidôla and again this is a targeting issue and Homer once again may be the target. eidôlon has a broader meaning than ‘image’ and can mean ‘phantom’ or ‘ghost’. Homer makes significant use of the term in this sense. Throughout both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer uses eidôlon in relation to the ghosts, phantoms and wraiths which appear to the heroes at various stages and play an important part in the plot.56 This is not to say that the eidôla are in themselves phantoms, or indeed ghosts or wraiths, but that they may explain human belief in such things, parallel to the Democritus as atheist view has the eidôla explain belief in the gods. Nor is this a claim that all eidôla are eidôla of ghosts, phantoms and wraiths but that some may be along with the eidôla of gods.
To go back to Barnes’ suggestion that eidôla are dreams, or ideas in the mind, I would not want to rule this out either as long as we do not take this as an exclusive account of what all eidôla are for Democritus. There may be general and more specific targeting issues here. The more general one is what are dreams and where do they come from? The more specific one may be dreams in Homer, what they are and where they come from. Just as ghosts, phantoms and wraiths abound in Homer, there are many passages to do with dreams. Dreams in Homer may be beneficial or distressing; Odyssey IV/809, VI/49 has beneficial dreams while Odyssey XX/87 has a dream sent by some god for your distress. Dreams are usually from a god (Odyssey XIV/495).57 Dreams may be deceitful or true as Penelope explains at Odyssey XIX/560, and one may have either dreams or waking visions as at Odyssey XIX/541. Odyssey IV/841 has dreams tied up with wraiths and the afterlife. At Iliad II/6 Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon, at Iliad II/56 Agamemnon wakes with the voice of the dream still ringing around him and at Iliad II/80 he describes his dream. That dreams need interpretation is stressed at Iliad I/63 and V/149.
If Democritus does have this broad construal of eidôla, as encompassing not only images of what we take to be gods, but also of ghosts, phantoms and wraiths and also to be dreams or ideas in the mind, then this theory can do a great deal of interesting work for him, with some interesting Homeric targets. To go back to the Sextus passage we looked at earlier:
There are those who believe that we come to the idea of gods from remarkable things which happen in the cosmos. Democritus said that in relation to meteorological phenomena, the men of old, in relation to thunder, lightning and thunderbolts, the conjunction of the stars and the eclipses of the sun and moon, were afraid and believed there to be gods because of these things.58
Democritus could explain belief in the gods without eidôla. Eidôla seem rather an extravagant notion just for another explanation of why humans believe in gods. One might then take the line that eidôla are gods themselves. Here is an important alternative. Eidôla are not gods but they explain belief in a great deal more phenomena than simply the gods. As we have seen in several places in this book, the natural explanation of dreams and dream divination was an important issue for some presocratic thinkers such as the Hippocratics, Xenophanes and Heraclitus.
Leucippus and Democritus on prayer
It is interesting, relative to what I argued about prayer in relation to the Hippocratics and Xenophanes, to note that Democritus advocated prayer. Plutarch tells us that:
Democritus, by praying to encounter good images, makes it clear that there are others which are difficult to deal with and have bad intentions and impulses.59
The verb to pray here is euchomai, the standard verb for prayer in Homer and Hesiod. This though can hardly be intercessionary prayer for several reasons. First inside a vortex and inside a cosmos, necessity prevails. Second, what is Democritus praying to? There are eidôla, but no gods who could override the necessity and certainly the eidôla themselves cannot override necessity. Prayer for Democritus might make sense if we understand it as a prayer of hope rather than entreaty. So ‘I pray to meet good eidola’ then means ‘I hope to meet good eidola’. If Democritus does have something other than intercessory prayer to offer, that is important as a further example of the theory that presocratic intellectuals could devise a form of prayer appropriate to their own philosophical/theological beliefs rather than be stuck with the prayers of standard Greek religion. I take it as more likely that Democritus has an alternative to intercessory prayer and merely an explanation of religious belief than Democritus believed in gods who could intervene in the causal necessities of atomism and his prayers were intercessory.60 It is also noticeable that, as with other presocratic intellectuals who rethought the notion of prayer, there is an absence of any mention of sacrifice in Leucippus and Democritus.
Leucippus and Democritus on the divine
Democritus does use the term divine and does so quite frequently. Democritus Fr. 112 says:
It is characteristic of a divine mind always to think of something good.61
Democritus Fr. 37 says that:
Those who choose the goods of the soul choose divine things, while those who choose the goods of the body choose human things.62
I take it that this use of ‘divine’ is unproblematic, merely favouring the mental and the good over their alternatives without any sense that the divine involves a god or anything non-natural. Especially as:
Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus deny that the cosmos is alive or that it has providential government, but is governed by some non-rational nature, and they hold that it is made of atoms.63
Here we might be able to say something more about prayer for Democritus. Prayer might be something more than a hope to meet good eidôla, it might also serve to focus the mind on what is good. So prayer for Democritus may be about forming the right attitudes to choose to think of good things and to choose the goods of the mind. I note in relation to the Plutarch passage that Democritus was ‘praying to encounter good images’. He was not specifically praying to a god or gods and that may be very significant.
Conclusion
There is a very strong case that Leucippus and Democritus gave only natural explanations, though as I suggested at the outset, this case is not quite so clear as one might expect from the atomist ontology of atoms and void.
Leucippus and Democritus certainly gave natural explanations of a wide range of meteorological phenomena, including the five Anaximander phenomena. It is notable that they attempted an explanation of incidences of plague, especially as that is prominent in Homer and Hesiod. It is also notable that they invoked the like-to-like principle without any reference to the gods where ‘God always leads like with like’ in Homer.64
Leucippus and Democritus also had an explanation of how a belief in the gods came about, in an entirely natural manner, due, significantly, to fear of ‘thunder, lightning and thunderbolts, the conjunction of the stars and the eclipses of the sun and moon’.65 The theory of eidôla seems to be something more than another explanation of how humans came to believe in gods and to be an explanation of dreams and visions in general. If so, Homer may again be a significant target here given the role dreams and visions play in his work.
That Democritus referred to the divine is entirely unproblematic as it is clear he is referring to the good and the intellectual rather than to any god. It is significant that Democritus advocated prayer. It is also significant that the report does not have Democritus praying to a god and that prayer for Democritus can be related to his view that one should pursue the intellectual and the good. That is important for one of the themes of this book, that presocratic intellectuals could produce forms of prayer suitable to their own philosophical/theological beliefs and were not restricted to the types of prayer of ordinary Greek religious belief.
It is important to recognise that Leucippus and Democritus were not mechanists, if we mean by mechanists people who do not use any biological analogues for physical processes, let alone stricter conceptions of mechanism.66 The like-to-like effect was based on biological and agricultural examples and there was an important role for a biological analogue, the notion of a membrane, in their cosmogony and cosmology. Nor did Leucippus and Democritus believe in forces acting between atoms. The like-to-like effect is a sorting principle which operates only when the requisite motion, in this case that of the vortex, is present.