150 Nietzschereticai curiosity, but Nietzsche sought and found other bases on which
to criticize him. When he compared Socrates with other philosophers of
antiquity, it was primarily Democritus that Nietzsche played off against
him. Why Democritus? He was cold, practical, genuinely scientific, not
as "individual and eudaemonistic" as Socrates, and lacked the latter's
"loathsome pretension to happiness" (8,103).
Democritus had experimented with a worldview that closely resem-
bled the modern approach of the natural sciences. Nietzsche was now
finding it more and more appealing. In Ecce Homo, he looked back on the
period of his life after he had parted ways with Wagner. "Regarding
myself full of pity, Τ saw that I was quite emaciated, quite starved; reali-
ties were altogether lacking in my knowledge, and my 'idealities' were not
worth a damn!—An absolutely burning thirst took hold of me: from
then on I actually pursued nothing more than physiology, medicine, and
the natural sciences" (6,325; EH "Human, All Too Human" § 3).
Nietzsche, a classical philologist by training, had initially made his way to
the modern natural sciences by means of the ancient natural sciences.
The atomist Democritus had inspired him with his iciness.
Democritus did indeed break away from anthropomorphism in an
incomparably bold manner, extracting all moralist projections from his
view of life and making it appear neutralized, objectified, and hence
"cold." There are only falling atoms and empty space. Since the diverse
size of the atoms makes them fall at differing rates, they hit one another
like billiard balls, josde one another, and form random figures. The
human soul and mind are also only concatenations and jostlings of
exquisitely minute atoms. Democritus taught us that "nothing exists but
atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion" (Lange 1,18).
One of the opinions that buzz about but never alight on the essence
of things stipulates that nature is determined by goals. Democritus
exposed this kind of teleology as an anthropomorphic projection.
People imagine the universe in the same way that they set and pursue
goals. Democritus cautioned us not to do so. Although it is true that the
way the atoms fall, collide, and become linked happens with causality,