Anaxagoras

“ In elaborating this conception Anaxagoras proved himself one of the most remarkable scientific dreamers of antiquity. To have substituted for the Greek Pantheon of anthropomorphic deities the conception of a non-anthropomorphic immaterial and ethereal entity, of all things in the world "the most rarefied and the purest," is to have performed a feat which, considering the age and the environment in which it was accomplished, staggers the imagination. ”

“ Anaxagoras was charged with not having offered victims to the gods; and with having blasphemed the divine Phœbus, by saying the sun was only a huge ball of fire. Being called upon to answer whether he were guilty of this offence, he replied: "Living victims I have never sacrificed to the gods; because, like the Pythagoreans, I object to the shedding of blood; but, like the disciples of their sublime philosopher, I have duly offered on their altars small goats and rams made of wax. ”

“ Anaxagoras was extremely attached to his lovely grandchild; and her great intellectual gifts, accompanied as they were by uncommon purity of character, had procured from him and his friends a degree of respect not usually bestowed upon women of that period. She was a most welcome auditor to the philosophers, poets, and artists, who were ever fond of gathering round the good old man; and when it was either necessary or proper to remain in her own apartment, there was the treasured wisdom of Thales, Pythagoras, Hesiod, Homer, Simonides, Ibycus, and Pindar. ”

“ Again let Anaxagoras speak for himself: "Other things include a portion of everything, but nous is infinite, and self-powerful, and mixed with nothing, but it exists alone, itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would include parts of all things, if it were mixed with anything; for a portion of everything exists in every thing, as has been said by me before, and things mingled with it would prevent it from having power over anything in the same way that it does now that it is alone by itself. ”

“ All men are lost in science, and science is progressive. The great scientific lights of our day may be insignificant, compared with those who are to arise, if profundity and accuracy of knowledge is the test. It is the genius of the ancients, their grasp and power of mind, their original labors which we are to consider. Anaxagoras was one of the greatest philosophical geniuses of all ages; but, as philosophy is a science, and is progressive, his knowledge could not be compared with that of Aristotle. ”

“ Anaxagoras marks a turning-point in the history of philosophy. With him speculation passed from the colonies of Greece to settle at Athens. By the theory of minute constituents of things, and his emphasis on mechanical processes in the formation of order, he paved the way for the atomic theory. By his enunciation of the order that comes from reason, on the other hand, he suggested, though he seems not to have stated explicitly, the theory that nature is the work of design. ”

“ XI. Anaxagoras, who received his learning from Anaximenes, was the first who affirmed the system and disposition of all things to be contrived and perfected by the power and reason of an infinite mind; in which infinity he did not perceive that there could be no conjunction of sense and motion, nor any sense in the least degree, where nature herself could feel no impulse. ”

“ His Relation to his Predecessors.—The system of Anaxagoras starts from the same point with his predecessors, and is simply another attempt at the solution of the same problem. Like Empedocles and the Atomists so did Anaxagoras most vehemently deny the becoming. “The becoming and departing,”—so runs one of his sayings—“the Greeks hold without foundation, for nothing can ever be said to become or depart; but, since existing things may be compounded together and again divided, we should name the becoming more correctly a combination, and the departing a separation.” ”

“ Anaxagoras, said wisely that material forms lead the contemplative mind to the worship of ideal good, which is in its nature immortal and divine. Homer tells us that the golden chain resting upon Olympus reaches even to the earth. Here we see but a few of the last links, and those imperfectly. We are like men in a subterranean cave, so chained that they can look only forward to the entrance. Far above and behind us is a glowing fire: and beautiful beings, of every form, are moving between the light and us poor fettered mortals. ”

“ He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as the cause of all things, not matter in its different elements, but rather mind, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the world. ”

“ Yet the idea of the Nous was sufficient to introduce rationalism into Greece, for it was the first presentation of an existing rational force wholly distinct from matter. Anaxagoras was bent upon scientific discovery, and the important things in his mind were his method and his original theory of matter. How often it happens that what seems secondary to a great man proves after all his most far-reaching service to the world. ”

“ Aristotle compliments Anaxagoras thus highly because he was the first to introduce into philosophy the conception of ends or final causes. The argument founded on final causes has been largely insisted on in modern times. It is known popularly as the argument from design, the argument which, from the contemplation of the marks of forethought and contrivance observable in the objects and operations of nature, rises to the conception of a one all-wise, all-powerful, and all-benevolent Artificer of the universe. ”

“ Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this divine infinite Mind, not inclosed in any body, is the efficient cause of all things; out of the infinite matter consisting of similar parts, everything being made according to its species by the divine mind, who when all things were at first confusedly mingled together, came and reduced them to order. ”

“ This difference followed naturally from the opinions of the two philosophers on the nature of the soul or mind. Anaxagoras supposed it peculiar in itself, and dissimilar to the Homœomeries without. Empedokles conceived it as a compound of the four elements, analogous to all that was without: hence man knew each exterior element by its like within himself — earth by earth, water by water, &c. ”

“ Anaxagoras was, therefore, in that sense quite right. Teleology is not evidence of a world-creating mind, and if we are to prove that, we must have recourse to other lines of reasoning.
In the beginning, then, there was a chaotic mixture of different kinds of matter. The Nous produced a vortex at one point in the middle of this mass. This vortex spread itself outwards in the mass of matter, like rings caused by the fall of a stone in water. It goes on for ever and continually draws more and more matter out of the infinite mass into itself. The movement, therefore, is never-ending. ”

“ Here, then, we have nearly all the elements of the Daltonian theory of atoms on the one hand, and the nebular hypothesis of Laplace on the other. But this is not quite all. In addition to such diverse elementary particles as those of gold, water, and the rest, Anaxagoras conceived a species of particles differing from all the others, not merely as they differ from one another, but constituting a class by themselves; particles infinitely smaller than the others; particles that are described as infinite, self-powerful, mixed with nothing, but existing alone. ”

“ It is nothing strange to discover that Anaximander and the Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras have propounded theories regarding the structure of the cosmos, the origin and development of animals and man, and the nature of matter itself. Nowadays, so enormously involved has become the mass of mere facts regarding each of these departments of knowledge that no one man has the temerity to attempt to master them all. ”

“ Here there were no flaws in the reasoning of Anaxagoras. By scientific induction he passed from observation to explanation. A new and most important element was added to the science of astronomy.
Looking back from the latter-day stand-point, it would seem as if the mind of the philosopher must have taken one other step: the mind that had conceived sun, moon, stars, and earth to be of one substance might naturally, we should think, have reached out to the further induction that, since the moon is a sphere, the other cosmic bodies, including the earth, must be spheres also. ”

“ If we ask how external bodies are brought together, and made up into unities, Anaxagoras felt so keenly the necessity of a moving cause that he set up his famous Nous, which we cannot translate by the word mind, for it was still a material cause, though far more subtle and active than the rest, such as we now imagine ether to be. ”

“ In order to aid our conception of what Anaxagoras means by the ὁμοιομερῆ, I suppose the universe, the present orderly universe, to be beaten up, with all its diversities, into a sort of pulp or powder of uniform consistency throughout. This pulp or powder, which, in my description of it, is set forth as artificially produced, was, in the estimation of our philosopher, the natural state of the universe before an organising intelligence went to work upon its materials, and elicited order out of chaos. ”

“ Anaxagoras holds that sense perception comes to pass by means of opposites, for the like is unaffected by the like. He then essays to review each sense separately. Accordingly he maintains that seeing is due to the reflection a in the pupil, but that nothing is reflected in what is of like hue, but only in what is of a different hue. Now with most [creatures] this contrast of hue [with that of the pupil] occurs by day, but with some by night, and this is why the latter are keen of vision by night. But, in general, night the rather is of the eye's own hue. ”

“ It was doubtless the recognition of the unreliability of the senses that extorted from him the well-known complaint: "Nothing can be known; nothing can be learned; nothing can be certain; sense is limited; intellect is weak; life is short."
Anaxagoras is persecuted.
The biography of Anaxagoras is not without interest. Born in affluence, he devoted all his means to philosophy, and in his old age encountered poverty and want. ”

“ As a matter of fact, they did present the appearance of "air and aether"; for the qualities (things) which belong to these—i.e. the hot and the cold, prevail in quantity over all other things in the universe, and everything is most obviously that of which it has most in it (fr. 12 sub fin.) . Here, then, Anaxagoras attaches himself to Anaximenes. The
primary condition of things, before the formation of the worlds, is much the same in both; only, with Anaxagoras, the original mass is no longer the primary substance, but a mixture of innumerable seeds divided into infinitely small parts. ”

“ The teachings of Anaxagoras were destined to attain to wide-spread power over the Grecian mind. As auguries, omens, and prodigies exercised a great influence on the public affairs of Greece, a philosophical explanation of natural phenomena had a tendency to diminish respect for the popular religion in the eyes of the multitude, and to leave the minds of rulers and statesmen open to the influences of reason, and to the rejection of the follies of superstition. The doctrines taught by Anaxagoras were the commencement of the contest between the old philosophy and the new ”

“ Anaxagoras appears to conceive his Nous as one among numerous other real agents in Nature, material like the rest, yet differing from the rest as being powerful, simple, and pure from all mixture,164 as being endued with universal cognizance, as being the earliest to act in point of time, and as furnishing the primary condition to the activity of the rest by setting on foot the cosmical rotation. The Homœomeries are coeternal with, if not anterior to, Nous. They have laws and properties of their own, which they follow, when once liberated, without waiting for the dictation of Nous. ”

“ There is little doubt that he selected the term in order to mark the identity of the source of motion in the world with that in the animal organism. That again is in accordance with the scientific interests of the time. In his astronomical theories, however, Anaxagoras showed himself a true eastern Ionian, and lagged far behind the Pythagoreans. For him, as for the Ionians of the Aegean down to and including Democritus, the earth was flat, and the eddy or vortex which gave rise to the world was still rotation in a plane. ”

“ The doxographers speak of Anaxagoras as the pupil of Anaximenes. [12] This can hardly be correct; Anaximenes most probably died before Anaxagoras was born. But it is not enough to say that the statement arose from the fact that the name of Anaxagoras followed that of Anaximenes in the Successions. We have its original source in a fragment of Theophrastos himself, which states that Anaxagoras had been "an associate of the philosophy of Anaximenes." ”

“ To another very eminent philosopher, Anaxagoras, best known to the world as the teacher of Socrates, we are indebted for the most important service to the atomic theory, which, after its statement by Democritus, remained to be done. Anaxagoras, in fact, stated a theory which so exactly contradicts the atomic theory of Democritus that the truth or falsehood of the one theory implies the falsehood or truth of the other. The question of the existence or non-existence of atoms cannot be presented to us this evening with greater clearness than in the alternative theories of these two philosophers. ”