Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies/Book I/Part 15
Chapter XIII.—Ecphantus; His Scepticism; Tenet of Infinity.
One Ecphantus, a native of Syracuse, affirmed that it is not possible to attain a true knowledge of things. He defines, however, as he thinks, primary bodies to be indivisible,[1] and that there are three variations of these, viz., bulk, figure, capacity, from which are generated the objects of sense. But that there is a determinable multitude of these, and that this is infinite.[2] And that bodies are moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by divine power, which he calls mind and soul; and that of this the world is a representation; wherefore also it has been made in the form of a sphere by divine power.[3] And that the earth in the middle of the cosmical system is moved round its own centre towards the east.[4]
Footnotes edit
- ↑ Some confusion has crept into the text. The first clause of the second sentence belongs probably to the first. The sense would then run thus: “Ecphantus affirmed the impossibility of dogmatic truth, for that every one was permitted to frame definitions as he thought proper.”
- ↑ Or, “that there is, according to this, a multitude of defined existences, and that such is infinite.”
- ↑ Or, “a single power.”
- ↑ [So far anticipating modern science.]