[p. 340]
many purely verbal contrasts, which render more
obscure the natural obscurities of this little tract.
Indeed the reader is often forced to the conclusion
that the writer wished so to express himself that
more than one interpretation might legitimately be
put upon his words. In my paraphrase I have tried
to give the most obvious meaning, although I have
often felt that other meanings are almost equally
possible.
| I wish to point out that Chapters I, III, V and VI are
up to the present unsolved mysteries. Incidentally, I should
like to mention that Chapter I shows that the history of the
word εἶδος2 is not so simple as Professor A. E. Taylor makes
out in Varia Socratica.
|
Nutriment is more important as a philosophical
than as a medical document. The teaching of
Heraclitus did not die out with his death ; he had
followers who emended and developed his theories,
and one of these wrote Nutriment to bring a branch
of physiology into the domain of philosophy. The
tract is a striking proof of the difficulty of uniting
philosophy and science, and of pursuing the latter
on the methods of the former. Incidentally one may
notice that it belongs to the period of eclecticism
and reaction which followed the development of
atomism.
| See Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Chapter
X. |
Nutriment was accepted as a genuine work of
Hippocrates by Erotian, and a mutilated commentary
on it passes under the name of Galen. Aulus
Gellius (III. xvi), quotes it as a work of Hippocrates.
There was another tradition in antiquity, referred to
in two Paris MSS., that Nutriment was the work of
Thessalus or of Herophilus. It is easy to understand
how some found a difficulty in ascribing to the
