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THE CONCEPT OF MOTION
IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT
BARBARA M. SATTLER
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477901
DOI: 10.1017/9781108775199
© Cambridge University Press 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sattler, Barbara M., 1974– author.
Title: The concept of motion in ancient Greek thought : foundations in logic, method, and
mathematics / Barbara Sattler, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdon ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University
Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020009167 | ISBN 9781108477901 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108775199
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion. | Philosophy, Ancient.
Classification: LCC B187.M6 S28 2020 | DDC 116–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009167
ISBN 978-1-108-47790-1 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements page ix
Introduction 1
Overview of the Project 1
Methodology, Treatment of Sources, and Relationships
of Thinkers Investigated 5
Overview of the Chapters 11
1 Conceptual Foundations 17
1.1 The Concepts of Kinêsis, Physis, and Natural Philosophy 17
1.1.1 The Concept of Motion (Kinêsis) 17
1.1.2 The Ancient Greek Conceptions of Physis and Natural
Philosophy 27
1.1.3 The Concept of Being 30
1.2 Criteria of Inquiry 31
1.2.1 The Principle of Non-Contradiction 32
1.2.2 The Principle of Excluded Middle 37
1.2.3 The Principle of Sufficient Reason 39
1.2.4 Rational Admissibility 46
1.2.5 Saving the Phenomena 49
1.3 The Role of Logic 53
1.3.1 Operators and Operands 55
1.3.2 Negation and Identity as Operators 57
1.4 The Role of Mathematics: The Connection between Mathematics
and Natural Philosophy 67
1.4.1 The Use of Mathematics for Science in General 67
1.4.2 How to Do Things with Numbers: Measurement
and Countability 73
v
vi contents
Bibliography 404
Index Locorum 423
General Index 426
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For a long time the fate of this book resembled that of Achilles’ competition
with the tortoise – while the point of accomplishment was clearly in sight, it
seemed the finishing line would never be crossed. The length of the race is
evident from the fact that some crucial ideas go back to my PhD thesis.1 Some
chapter sections overlap with articles I have published in the meantime, but
these articles explore or develop individual points.2 A full view of my subject
can be found only here.
While the project seemed to move with the speed of a tortoise, I was
lucky in receiving a wealth of support, for which I am immensely
grateful. First and foremost, I want to thank those people who com-
mitted the time and effort to read the entire manuscript: Sarah Broadie,
whose comments always pushed me to dig deeper into the philosophical
problems; Ken Winkler, who is perhaps the most careful and subtle
reader I have ever known; and Michael Della Rocca, the most generous
monist around.
Furthermore, I want to thank Verity Harte, from whom I learned so much
about framing, for reading chapters 2–4 and 7–9. Both Henry Mendell and
Stephen Menn read several chapters and gave me valuable feedback, especially
on ancient science and mathematics. Individual chapters or sections profited
from comments from Andrew Gregory, Larry Horn, Arnaud Macé, Malcolm
Schofield, Michalis Sialaros, Stewart Shapiro, Katja Vogt, and readers for the
press.
I also want to thank Rona Johnston for helping me with my English in a way
that always occasioned learning more about the English language in general,
Cady Crowley for help with the index, and Hilary Gaskin for handling the
manuscript for CUP so quickly, professionally, and flexibly.
1
Material from chapters 7, 8, and 9, as well as the second half of Chapter 3, and the last part
of Chapter 5. My doctoral thesis, titled “The Emergence of Motion”, can be read on
microfiche at the library of the FU-Berlin and at a couple of other German libraries.
2
Section 1.3.2.1.1 in Chapter 1 and parts of chapter 2 overlap with Sattler 2011; section 3.6.4
in Chapter 3 with Sattler 2015 and a subsection of 3.6.1 with Sattler 2019b; section 7.2.1 in
Chapter 7 with Sattler 2019a; and sections 1.4.2 in Chapter 1 and 8.1 and 8.2.3 in Chapter 8
with Sattler 2017a.
ix
x acknowledgements
Dem liebenden Andenken an Ulrich Bergmann gewidmet – ohne ihn wäre dieses
Buch nie begonnen worden.
u
Introduction
1
2 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
4
I will show what we may understand by a ‘scientific enterprise’ in Chapter 1.
5
Hence, we can say that Parmenides is also the first philosopher where we find second-order
thoughts about philosophy, thoughts like ‘What counts as a proper inquiry and why?’ Kahn
1994 has argued for understanding Anaximander as the inventor of models of explanation
and Gregory 2016 claims that we find such second-order thoughts also in Anaximander, for
example, in the decisions he makes about what he takes as evidence. But this is implicit in
Anaximander. There is no hint of any explicit discussion of such questions, as we find, I
argue in the second chapter, for example, in Parmenides’ fragment 7.
6
I will explain in the first chapter what I understand by logical tools and the broad notion of
logic at work here.
introduction 3
13
This is not to say that there were no other interesting streams that were lost – I deal with
some of these in my book manuscript Ancient Notions of Time.
14
Even though the notion of a cause of a motion is obviously important for an investigation
of motion also in antiquity, causation can only be hinted at in the chapters on Plato and in
the investigation of the principle of sufficient reason.
15
Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and of demonstration, for example, seems to be important
for his idea of the possibility of natural philosophy, but I will only be able to hint at it in
the chapters on Aristotle. The distinction between epistêmê and doxa, and what their
respective objects can be, will to some degree come into the discussion of Parmenides and
Plato.
16
I will also not debate the distinction between what is often seen as Plato’s quantitative
account of physics versus Aristotle’s qualitative account; indeed I will be dealing with
aspects of Aristotle that are very much on the quantitative side.
6 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
analysis of the ancient thinkers. They are meant to help translate the seemingly
familiar, but in fact often rather different conceptual frameworks of the ancient
Greek thinkers into a language and terminology that is accessible to a modern
reader. Our modern, substantially enlarged, toolbox for doing philosophy
may, if used prudently, allow us to figure out what is going on in these ancient
texts in a clearer way.
Using in part modern logical and argumentative tools to understand ancient
thoughts bears the risk, however, of altering or even distorting the ancient views,
as these tools may include assumptions that the ancient thinkers do not share.
And this may feed into a dangerous tendency in the scholarship of the history of
philosophy to make the ancients less unwieldy and to assimilate them simply to
our own thinking – a tendency that I think is harming us not only as historians of
philosophy but also as philosophers, since it reduces our investigation to looking
for confirmation, rather than for alternative ways of understanding the world.17
The use of modern tools often seems necessary, however, to make ancient
thoughts understandable for us (and if we do not make the modern tools we
use explicit, so much the worse, for the chances are high that they will creep in
implicitly). Thus, we will have to think about these tools, what alternatives to
them there might have been in ancient contexts, and accordingly, we will often
work with a somewhat wider or different understanding of these tools than
contemporary philosophers would. And if we do this in a conscious and
responsible way, we may thus also learn something about how our modern
toolbox came into being and why certain distinctions may be distinctions on
which, deep down, we still base our philosophical activities.18
The ancient sources we will look at are of very different kinds – from
Plato’s dialogues, where we possess a (comparatively) safe and complete
textual basis, to fragments of Parmenides, Zeno, and the atomists.
Especially with the atomists we often have only snippets of their original
works or have to rely on the summarising accounts of other, not necessarily
sympathetic, thinkers. One problem that thus arises concerns the methodol-
ogy of how to deal with these sources, especially the fragments.19 In general, I
will treat the sources we have very seriously and believe them, if possible – an
approach I would regard as methodological carefulness. A source may be
17
Cf. Sattler 2014.
18
I will thus try to combine what are sometimes called historic and rational reconstructions
of ancient thought; cf. Makin 1988.
19
For a fuller treatment of the problems with which we are faced when dealing with
Presocratic fragments, cf. Mansfeld 1999, Runia 2008, and Sattler 2013. In the current
book, all fragments are numbered according to Diels-Kranz. In addition, other collections
of the Presocratic fragments will be used if they contain more evidence, as, for example,
Lee’s edition of Zeno’s paradoxes, or Taylor’s collection of the atomist fragments.
Citations of editions, translations, and commentaries are to editors’, translators’, and
commentators’ names only, without dates.
introduction 7
20
According to Makin 1993, p. 63, we find such a case with Aetius. Another case may be
Simplicius’ report on the partlessness of atoms: in In Phys 82.1 he reports that the atoms of
Democritus have parts, while in 925.14 ff. he tells us that they were seen as being partless.
21
An example of this would be the testimonies on weight in the atomists.
22
Curd and Graham 2008, for example, reject Plato and Aristotle as reliable witnesses because
the ancient reports of Parmenides as being a monist of sorts do not fit Curd’s and Graham’s
understanding of Parmenides as not rejecting change and plurality (cf. also Osborne 2006,
p. 227). While it seems uncontroversial to me that the ancients may have seen Parmenides
with other eyes than we see him, turning the ancients thus into unreliable witnesses on such
a fundamental point seems to me too high a price to pay for making sure that Parmenides
does not violate contemporary preferences for pluralism.
23
One example where we can clearly make such a distinction is Plato’s Symposium 187a,
where we are given a report of Heraclitus’ fragment B51 first and then (in a consciously
humorous form) a rather idiosyncratic interpretation and correction of it by the character
Eryximachos.
24
Cherniss 1935. This tendency seems to have become even more of a trend recently with
Palmer 2009.
25
Cf., for example, Chapter 4, where I deal with Sedley’s 1982 claim that Aristotle’s
testimony is of little historic value for the atomists’ notion of a vacuum.
8 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
32
So, for example, by Sedley 2008. Palmer 2009 even sees Parmenides in continuity with
both the Milesians and Plato’s account in Republic V (for my assessment of this claim, see
Sattler 2014).
33
For example, by understanding him as a pluralist in the way Curd 1998 does.
34
So Osborne 2006.
35
Even scholars who are deeply committed to the continuity thesis usually see what
continuity there is in metaphysics, not in natural philosophy. Such a clear distinction
between cosmology on the one hand and the metaphysical realm on the other is new with
Parmenides.
36
Osborne 2006, p. 224 thinks that in the traditional story the post-Parmenideans meet
Parmenides’ challenge by positing a plurality, which contradicts his monism. But, accord-
ing to Osborne, given that they provide no systematic argument to defend it, nothing of
what Parmenides said had any effect on them. Curd seems to deal with this problem by
making Parmenides himself not a real monist; but then, as Osborne holds, there is
nothing revolutionary about him. I will challenge Osborne’s position by showing how
the atomists defend their pluralism by taking up and extending the logical operators and
criteria of Parmenides, which shows that his philosophy did indeed have an important
effect on them. I should, however, mention that Osborne’s scepticism mainly holds for
Empedocles and Anaxagoras, about whom I will not make any claims here.
37
Osborne 2006, pp. 244–5 herself points out that philosophical interaction need not have
taken place in the way contemporary philosophers expect.
10 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
intensively. We will see that the main reactions to Parmenides from the
atomists seek to show that natural philosophy could still be done, but that
it required, as Parmenides demonstrated, a new method and rigour.38
However, Presocratic interaction is only part of the narrative I give here,
which also includes Plato and Aristotle. The breadth of my account brings
additional interpretative problems – the relationship between Plato and
Aristotle, for example, or that between Plato and Parmenides.39 In the latter
case recent literature has adopted two extremes: on the one hand, Parmenides
has been seen as closely prefiguring Plato,40 on the other hand, Plato has been
seen as misunderstanding and distorting Parmenides.41 I select a middle way
between these two extremes, suggesting that while Plato did understand
Parmenides quite well, he saw that Parmenides’ position lacked a middle
ground for contingent things, those things that are in some ways but are not
in others, which Parmenides cannot conceive with his logical tools. We will see
how Plato decisively develops Parmenides’ logical tools; the lovers-of-sight-
and-sound passage in Republic V can be understood as precisely such a
development.42
In this book, I aim not only to show previously unrecognised connections
and developments over the whole period I am considering, but also to offer
novel readings of the work of each of the actors in my story, as will be evident
in the overview of the chapters. Let us thus move on to this outline of what I
seek to achieve in the individual chapters.
38
For some readers, the Presocratic part of the story I tell may sound comparable to some
parts of Guthrie’s A History of Greek Philosophy. While I am sympathetic with the broad
outline of Guthrie’s account of the Presocratics, this book can be read completely
independently of the reader’s stance on Guthrie for at least three reasons: (1) while I
think Guthrie is right in understanding Parmenides as a watershed in Presocratic
philosophy, I will not rely on this; (2) none of the main points I follow in the development
of this story – the logical operators, the criteria of philosophy, and the introduction of
mathematical concepts – are found in Guthrie; (3) finally, my interpretation of the
individual thinkers differs markedly from Guthrie’s – to give just one example, Guthrie
takes Parmenides to claim that everything apart from the One Being is mere appearance, a
position I explicitly argue against in Chapter 2.
39
It may also be seen as a problem that the atomists, in contrast to the Eleatics, are
materialists, and that we are moving from a mechanistic account of motion in the
atomists to a teleological one in Plato and Aristotle. While these different starting points
for understanding motion pose different requirements on the explanation of motion, I
will concentrate on the basic structures that are relevant to all these positions.
40
So Palmer 2009, who understands Parmenides’ threefold division of necessary, contin-
gent, and impossible being as immediate preparation for the lovers-of-sight-and-sound
passage in Republic V.
41
So Cordero 2011, who claims that the assimilation of Parmenides to Plato has led to a
wrong ordering of the fragments and that Plato himself did not understand Parmenides.
42
Republic 476a ff.
introduction 11
Chapter 2: Parmenides
In the second chapter I present Parmenides’ account of the object of rational
enquiry and the challenge it represents for natural philosophy. I show how
Parmenides’ specific interpretation of the criteria he establishes for rational
enquiry and his logical operators heavily influence his understanding of Being
(i.e., what there is and can be thought) and lead to the exclusion of natural
philosophy from rational enquiry.43 This reconstruction of the reasoning for
Parmenides’ account of what can be an object of rational enquiry offers a new
interpretation of the basis of his monism.
I argue that Parmenides establishes explicit criteria for rational investigation
– logical consistency, what I call ‘rational admissibility’, and a principle of
sufficient reason. Parmenides tries to show that his philosophy alone satisfies
these criteria. His philosophy is based on three fundamental notions: Being
(what truly is); Sameness (understood as self-sameness); and Negation
(roughly understood as a one-place operator non-A that denotes the polar
opposite of A, and does not allow for difference only in certain respects). The
notion of Sameness works as the only connection operator, that of Negation as
the only separation operator. Being, Sameness, and Negation are systematically
intertwined in such a way that any change of one conception would necessitate
changes in the conceptions of the others.
Though prima facie Parmenides’ account maintains logical consistency, the
way in which it is set up explicitly excludes the main components of natural
43
Thus, while his philosophy might seem counterintuitive, I want to show how his exclu-
sion of the realm of change and motion from philosophy is a logical result of his
philosophical framework.
12 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
philosophy: time, space, motion, and change. I show how this exclusion results
not only from his understanding of the negation operator, but also from the
fact that the number of fundamental concepts in use in his philosophy is too
small to sustain an account of nature. In addition, the concepts themselves are
too indeterminate – the basic concepts are used to signify basic entities
(‘Being’) as well as what I shall call ‘logical operators’ (‘is’). And there are less
basic concepts in the background, such as Parmenides’ notions of unity and of
a whole, that are never explicitly clarified.
This reconstruction prepares us for how Parmenides’ successors could, and
indeed had to, respond to Parmenides’ challenge: they reacted to Parmenides’
rigorous standard of knowledge by developing his criteria and operators
further and by distinguishing between weaker and stronger standards of
knowledge.
Chapter 3: Zeno
In the third chapter I show how Zeno takes up and advances Parmenides’
criteria for philosophy. For example, Zeno adopts the principle of non-
contradiction in the way established by Parmenides and uses it as a basis to
develop his paradoxes of plurality, place, and motion,44 which start with his
opponent’s position and then show how this position leads into inconsisten-
cies. With the help of these paradoxes, in particular those of motion,
Parmenides’ challenge is further spelled out. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion
confront any natural philosopher with two kinds of problem: mereological
problems and spatio-temporal problems. Zeno’s paradoxes thus also provide
a first indication of what it would be to account successfully for time, space,
and motion. Hence they can be taken as a touchstone for determining
whether later natural philosophers meet the Eleatic challenge. Parmenides’
criteria for philosophy are thus not only taken up and developed but also
implicitly complemented by Zeno’s paradoxes which function as a criterion
specific for natural philosophy.
What is distinctive about my approach to the interpretation of Zeno’s
paradoxes is that it offers what I call a ‘conceptual reading’: it starts with a
careful analysis of the concepts of time, space, and motion and their implica-
tions as employed by Zeno in his paradoxes, and then investigates which
features of these notions contribute to the paradoxical result. By contrast, the
dominant view in the secondary literature so far takes the notions implicitly
employed in Zeno’s paradoxes for granted, without further analysis, and only
44
Parmenides’ poem is the first place where the principle of non-contradiction is metho-
dically employed as a criterion for reliable knowledge (see Chapter 2). And Zeno’s
paradoxes would not work if the principle of non-contradiction was not already firmly
established.
introduction 13
considers how we might deal with or solve the paradoxes (for example, by
employing modern mathematical tools). This literature also reduces the para-
doxes of motion to paradoxes arising for any continuous magnitude.45 In
contrast, my conceptual reading allows for a reconstruction according to
which they are truly paradoxes of motion and examines whether the notions
Zeno uses are sufficiently developed and indeed appropriate for grasping what
is specific for motion. Thus understood, Zeno’s paradoxes show that the task of
giving an account of motion is made problematic not only by the relation
between part and whole but also by the relation between time and space.
With respect to the relation of part and whole, I show that Zeno inherited
from Parmenides an ambiguous notion of wholeness, which leads to a
confusion of two basic notions in his paradoxes: the notion of a whole that
is the sum of its parts and thus posterior to its parts, and the notion of a whole
that is prior to any parts that might be gained from the whole. One reaction to
his paradoxes required of subsequent thinkers is to establish a coherent
account of whole and part that is suitable for understanding time, space,
and motion.
Zeno’s paradoxes can be understood as one of the most severe explicit
attacks on a conceptualisation of motion. Another attack is that of Melissus,
which claims that there can be no motion since there is no void and motion is
only possible if there is void. This claim by Melissus will be taken up briefly in
Chapter 4.
45
I am using the term ‘magnitude’ here as referring to any physical magnitude; thus, it is not
restricted to spatially extended magnitudes. In our discussion of Aristotle’s usage of
megethos, however, we will see that he predominantly uses it for spatial magnitude. See
also Mueller 1970, p. 168.
14 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
second step is possible because their physical interpretation of Being and non-
Being allows the atomists not only to set up a precursor of a conception of
space, but also to understand non-Being as a basic concept on a par with Being.
To understand non-Being as on a par with Being necessitates an implicit
distinction between understanding Being and non-Being as entities and
understanding them as operators. In this way the atomists increase the com-
plexity of the logical system in use. ‘Non-Being’ plays two roles: (1) it denotes
an ‘entity’, the void, and (2) it signifies an operator, ‘is not’. In contrast to
Parmenides’ negation operator, this atomist operator indicates not strict
opposition but difference, for example, the difference between atoms.
Likewise, ‘Being’ plays two roles: (1) it signifies an entity, atoms, and (2) it
denotes an existence operator, ‘is’. This existence operator can also be applied
to the void, and hence to non-Being.
To an extent, this atomist approach prepares the way for a logical framework
for a philosophy of nature. It cannot, however, as yet give a consistent account
of motion, time, and space. Zeno’s paradoxes – the test for the conceptual
coherence of a natural philosophy – cannot be answered in the atomist system
for at least two reasons. First, the atomists react only to the mereological
problems of Zeno’s paradoxes, but not to the spatio-temporal problems.
Secondly, while the atomists no longer confuse different part-whole relations
but work with a single conception of a whole as the sum of its parts, the part-
whole relation they work with can be shown to be insufficient to avoid Zeno’s
paradoxes.
46
We will see that these are the positive criteria which an eikôs mythos has to fulfil.
16 the concept of motion in ancient greek thought
Conceptual Foundations
1
Physics 192b13–14, cf. also 200b12–13.
2
For the passive sense see Physics 255b30–1 and Anagnostopoulos 2017, p. 172. On the
other hand, the word kineitai, that is the grammatical passive of the cognate verb, can often
be translated as ‘it moves’ (in an intransitive sense).
17
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no related content on Scribd:
However, thanks to the doctor and to a Frenchman who remained
near us, things were better than they otherwise might have been.
We were waiting in great suspense to hear the result of the
negotiations. At last there came a man with the news that peace had
been declared on the 1st of June. It was wonderful. I had been so
anxious to hear if it would be peace, and now when the news came I
could not be joyful. I knew nothing for certain yet about the terms,
and I thought, “That is the reason why I do not feel happier, although
it is two years and six months now since we began this dreadful and
pitiless struggle from which we have so often longed to be
delivered.”
The children were very happy. The doctor and our Frenchman still
had their horses, and they rode off that same day. Other burghers
fired their guns into the air for joy. They did not know what sort of a
peace it was, but for the moment they could only rejoice.
I did not want to stay any longer where I was, but had still no oxen.
A short way off there was a man who had a span of Government
oxen. I sent my boy to this man to get them from him so that I should
be able to return to my own district.
He sent the oxen, and everything was soon ready for the start,
although, as I had always had two waggons with me before, it was
very difficult to get everything packed into one. Whatever I was not
able to load I left behind me. We had been in this place now for more
than a month, and the people were sorry to see us going away. But,
however hard it might be for me, on I went.
The waggon was heavy and the road very sandy, so that very
often the children had to get out and walk alongside the waggon.
The first place we came to belonged to Widow Lemmer. The poor old
woman was very unhappy, for that very week the “khakis” had taken
away her cows and everything else that she had remaining.
From there I went on again, but heard no talk of peace. I went past
the Zoutspannen to the place belonging to G. Stolz.
I stopped there that Sunday. In the afternoon it was peaceful, and
yet I felt so sorrowful. Saturday night I could not sleep, and that night
I said to my daughter Ada, “I cannot think why I feel like this about
the peace. If only it is not a surrender of arms, this peace that they
talk of! But no,” I said, “it cannot be anything like that, for then it
would not be peace.”
At ten o’clock next morning my children and I all met together for
worship.
I felt very much affected. There had been so many Sundays spent
in making war, and now to-day it was peace. Therefore I said to my
children, “We have been through so many hard and bitter days, and
the Almighty Father has brought us safely through our weary
pilgrimage. Let us now thank Him with all our hearts.” I felt that it was
only God’s goodness that had spared us from falling into the hands
of our adversary.
That afternoon I went to lie down for a little in my waggon. At four
o’clock in the afternoon Liebenberg arrived from Klerksdorp and
came to my waggon with the report of peace. And now I had to hear
that it was indeed a surrender of our arms.
I did not know how to pacify my children; they wept bitterly, and
could not find words for their indignation. And yet it was peace all the
same. I said to them, “Let us keep silence; later on we shall
understand it all.”
I stayed there till Monday morning. As Liebenberg had come to
take me to Klerksdorp, and as from there I should be able to go on to
Pretoria, I soon thought to myself, “What a joy it will be when I can
meet my children again, after having been separated from them for
nearly two years.”
But this peace was so distasteful that I could not get over the
thought of it.
When everything was packed we made ready to start. While I was
driving I took my day-book. The text for that morning was Gen. xxii.
7: “And Abraham said God will provide....”
Now we went on quickly. I met on that road none but sorrowing
women and children. I said sometimes, “Where can the poor
burghers be that we do not meet them?”
After having travelled for a couple of days we came to Mr D. van
der Merwe’s place. There I met several burghers. Van der Merwe
was a good and clever man and I was glad to be able to talk with
him. He told me that, however incomprehensible it might all seem,
he was sure that the officers after having struggled so long and so
bitterly would now also do their best.
As they had first gone to the Zwartruggens and Marico to see that
the arms were all given up, I had not seen any of them yet.
We were now in the Lichtenburg district. I waited at Mr van der
Merwe’s place. It was bitterly cold. It snowed for three days, and
during all my wanderings this was the worst cold I had experienced.
And there was no house to shelter us. There were plenty of buildings
there, but all were more or less in ruins. It was dreadful to see them.
Now came the time when the burghers in this neighbourhood also
had to give up their arms.
On the 12th of June the last gun had been given up in the
Lichtenburg district. That evening my people came for the first time
to my tent. I thought how bitter it was to meet them in this way. My
husband came to me and my son, little Coos. Little Coos cried,
“Mamma, I have still got my gun.”
It was very hard for him; he could stand the war better than the
peace. I did not want to speak about it with his father. The terrible
shedding of blood was at end. We had offered up our property and
our blood for Freedom and Justice.... Where was this freedom?
where was this justice?
Jesus was betrayed by Judas. He had to die the cruel death on
the cross. His death brought us everlasting life; yet Judas killed
himself.
We have been betrayed by many of our burghers. We have lost
our right for a time. Yet they who struggled to the end, and who
resolved that right must go first without thinking of might, have kept
their fortitude. However the end may have shaped itself, they are
glad not to have been Judases.
There was now a great longing on the part of all those around to
see the members of their families from whom they had been parted
for so long.
I, too, rejoiced that I could go to Pretoria to see my children, whom
I had not seen for so long a time. And I thought again of my beloved
son, whom I had had to give up.
And yet I had not had to sacrifice so much; many a woman had
given her husband and her children too.
We went on to Klerksdorp in my waggon. As we would have to
drive for two days before getting there, and as Sunday came in
between, on that day we made a halt. It was the last Sunday that I
spent out on the veldt. I thought earnestly of all that had taken place.
How many Sundays had I not spent in flying before the enemy?
Sunday evening we entered Klerksdorp; Monday morning I sent
back the waggons which had housed me and my children for twenty
months. I had grown so used to life in my waggon that I did not like
to see it go away.
We went to Pretoria that evening, and I found my children in well-
being. It was pleasant after such a long separation. I had been two
days in Pretoria when a son was born to my daughter. Then I
became a grandmother, for this was the first grand-child. He was
christened Jacobus Herklaas De la Rey. I felt very grateful. In all the
bitterness of those weary days I was able to say, “But He knoweth
the way that I take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as
gold” (Job xxiii. 10); and also as in Job ii. 10 (the last part), “What?
Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive
evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.”
Now, dear brothers and sisters, since we are sure that God shall
prove His Word, let us stand steadfast in our faith and wait for the
salvation of the Lord. This is the time of trial; now will the Lord see if
we are worthy that He should make His wonders manifest unto us
before the eyes of the whole world.
Praise the Lord, who ever will forgive your sins. How many they
may be, He will graciously forgive. He knows your sufferings and will
lovingly cure them. He will cleanse your life from stain, and will
crown you with goodness and mercy as He saved you in your need.
Jacoba Elizabeth De la Rey,
(born Greef).
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