Note 35 — Chapter XI · THE PHILOSOPHERS

ψυχαί filling the whole air, not distinguished from δαίμονες and ἥρωες, Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 32; Vors.4 i, xliv (who in this section of his account—§§31 ff.—is giving older Pythagorean ideas. Poseidonios expresses the same ideas; but it does not therefore follow that he got them from the Stoics. Poseid. borrowed and elaborated many Pythagorean views). More subtly expressed: the soul is ἀθάνατος because it is eternally in motion like τὰ θεῖα πάντα, the moon, sun, stars, and heaven; Alkmaion ap. Arist., An. 405a, 29 ff.; Vors. 133, 40; cf. Krische, 75 f. The perpetual movement of the ψυχαί was one of the older Pythag. beliefs: it is expressed in the old fable (known already to Demokritos) of the motes in the sunbeam, which, in their continual agitation, are, or enclose, swarming souls (see below, n. 40). In Alkmaion’s treatment of the doctrine there is the additional idea that the soul of man ἔοικε τοῖς ἀθανάτοις. The derivation of its immortality and divinity from its origin in the World-soul (this is often said to be a Pythagorean doctrine: Cic., ND. i, 27; Sen. 78; D.L. viii, 28; S.E., M. ix, 127) does indeed suggest Stoic pantheism in the form of its expression but in substance it may very well go back to the older Pythag. teaching. (The genuineness of the frag. [21 D.] of Philolaos ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 20, 2 ff.; Vors. 318, 13, remains, however, dubious.) The idea that the soul and νοῦς of man came to him from an impersonal θεῖον, an all-pervading ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησις, must have been widespread even in the fifth century. It finds expression in Xen., M. 1, 4, 8–17; 4, 3, 14, where it is certainly not an original fancy of Xenophon’s, but must have been derived by him from somewhere or other (not from Socrates, however, nor Plato).