Note 49 — Chapter XIV · THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY AS A WHOLE AND ITS HISTORICAL POSITION.

Known for three things—his theory of atoms, his theory of the acquisition of knowledge, and his resolution of the soul into matter.

All bodies, he held, consist of atoms, which differ from the atoms of Democritus in that they owe their origin to the meeting and breaking up of greater masses, and are not in quality alike and unchangeable (ἀπαθεῖς). Sext. Pyrrh. iii. 32; Math. ix. 363; x. 318; viii. 220; iii. 5; Galen. l.c. 9, p. 698; Dionys.; Alex. (in Eus. Pr. Ev. xiv. 23, 4); Cœl. Aurelian. De Pass. Acut. i. 14. See Fabric. on Pyrrh. iii. 32. The latter is probably in error in describing the primary atoms of Asclepiades as without quality, differing only in size, form, number, and arrangement. Although in this respect he resembled Heraclides, with whom he is generally classed, and applied, like him, the name ὄγκοι to atoms, still it is probable that his knowledge of Heraclides was traditionally derived from the Epicureans.

He also asserted, with Epicurus (Antiochus, in Sext. Math. vii. 201): τὰς μὲν αἰσθήσεις ὄντως καὶ ἀληθῶς ἀντιλήψεις εἶναι, λόγῳ δὲ μηδὲν ὅλως ἡμᾶς καταλαμβάνειν. At the same time he maintained that our senses cannot distinguish the component parts of things, but even Epicurus and Democritus admitted as much in respect of atoms.

He differs entirely from Epicurus in denying the existence of a soul apart from body, and in referring every kind of notion, including the soul itself, to the action of the senses (Sext. Math. vii. 380; Plut. Plac. iv. 2, 6; Cœl. Aurelian. l.c. in Fabric. on the passage of Sext.; Tertullian, De An. 15). What is elsewhere stated of Asclepiades, leaving alone his medical views, for instance, that with Heraclitus he believed in a perpetual flux of things, is not at variance with Epicurean principles. ↑