Anaximenes

“ In one of its modifications, this fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating every thing as the soul or principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless activity. "If Anaximenes discovered that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the very highest sense, himself, so that without it he would have been a poor, helpless, isolated creature ”

“ 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. ”

“ As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
In the largest sense, even applying it to the gods of the Greek Pantheon, did he assert this colossal doctrine. Anaximenes went further, and, assuming that the particles of ether are the most subtle in the universe, he set up the principle of rarification and condensation of matter, asserting that this was the one great cause of the differences in the bodies we perceive. ”

“ Anaximenes and Diogenes, Xenophanes and Parmenides, Leukippus and Demokritus, may indeed be coupled together as kindred pairs yet by no means in such manner that the second of the two is a mere disciple and copyist of the first. Such abundance and variety of speculative genius and invention is one of the most memorable facts in the history of the Hellenic mind. ”

“ If either Anaximenes, or Thales, or any of their contemporaries, had held the doctrine that νοῦς was the Efficient Cause, that doctrine could not have been reputed, as it was throughout antiquity, to have originated with Anaxagoras. The testimony of Aristotle, in the first book of his Metaphysics, is perfectly decisive with respect to these early speculations. ”

“ The object of research is firstly what is "the ordering of immortal ageless φύσις," and secondly, how it arose. Anaxagoras, who introduced Ionian science to Athens, had belonged to the school of Anaximenes (§ 122) . We know from Aristotle (loc. cit. p. 9 n. 1) that not only Anaximander, but most of the φυσιολόγοι, applied epithets like this to the Boundless. ”

“ Crates' son the Samian.
The philosopher also wrote the following letter:
Pythagoras to Anaximenes.
"Even you, O most excellent of men, were you no better born and famed than Pythagoras, would have risen and departed from Miletus. But now your ancestral glory has detained you as it had detained me were I Anaximenes's peer. But if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase. 50. For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one's mother country. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As for Anaximenes, he, even according to Cicero, maintained, not that air was the material out of which God made the world, but that the air was a god: "Anaximenes aëra deum statuit:" or according to St. Augustine, that it was the material out of which the gods were made; "non tamen ab ipsis [Diis] aërem factum, sed ipsos ex aëre ortos credidit." Those who are not familiar with the metaphysical terminology of antiquity, must not be misled by finding it stated that Anaximenes attributed ψυχὴ (translated soul, or life) to his universal element, the air. ”

“ As we should expect, then, philosophy begins in materialism. The first answer to the question, what the ultimate reality is, places the nature of that reality in a sensuous object, water. The other members of the Ionic school, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, are also materialists. And from their time onwards we can trace the gradual rise of thought, with occasional breaks and relapses, from this sensualism of the Ionics, through the semi-sensuous idealism of the Eleatics, to the highest point of pure non-sensuous thought, the idealism of Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ There is another Anaximander, also of Miletus, a historian who wrote in the Ionic dialect.
Anaximenes 3. Anaximenes, [6] the son of Eurystratus, a native of Miletus, was a pupil of Anaximander. According to some, he was also a pupil of Parmenides. He took for his first principle air or that which is unlimited. He held that the stars move round the earth but do not go under it. He writes simply and unaffectedly in the Ionic dialect.
According to Apollodorus he was contemporary with the taking of Sardis and died in the 63rd Olympiad. ”

“ This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as the few known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplying a step towards the completer development of the motive [22] idea in being, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought.
IV. HERACLITUS.—Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus, Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position in the development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to be classed with the philosophers of Miletus. ”

“ His philosophy is thus a step in advance of the theories of Thales, the conception of the Infinite, however vague, being superior to the idea of water constituting the first principle of all things. Anaximander occupied himself a great deal with mathematics and geography. To him is credited the invention of geographical maps and the first application of the gnomon or style fixed on a horizontal plane to determine the solstices and equinoxes.
Anaximenes (an-aks-im ́e-nēz) of Miletus, an ancient Greek (Ionic) philosopher, according to whom air was the first principle of all things. ”

“ Anaximenes, pupil of Anaximander, seems to have rebelled against the extreme materialism of his master. Perceiving that air is necessary to life, that the universe is surrounded by air, he was convinced that out of air all things have resulted. The process by which things grow is twofold, condensation (πύκνωσις) and rarefaction (ἀραίωσις) , or, in other words, heat and cold. From the former process result cloud, water and stone; from the latter, fire and aether. This theory is closely allied to that of Thales, but it is superior in that it specifies the processes of change. ”

“ His originality is illustrated by his theory of evolution. According to him animals first arose from slime evaporated by the sun; they lived in the sea and had prickly coverings; men at first resembled fishes.
But his astronomical views were not less remarkable. Anaximander boldly maintained that the earth is in the centre of the universe, suspended freely and without support, whereas Thales regarded it as resting on the water and Anaximenes as supported by the air. It remains in its position, said Anaximander, because it is at an equal distance from all the rest of the heavenly bodies. ”

“ ANAXIMENES, a Greek historian and rhetorician, was born at Lampascus, in Asia Minor, in the 4th century B.C. He accompanied Alexander, whom he is said to have instructed in rhetoric, on his expedition against Persia. ”

“ This then Anaximenes. He flourished about the 1st year of the 58th Olympiad. [69]
7. About Anaxagoras.
After him was Anaxagoras of Clazomene, son of Hegesibulus. He said that the beginning of the universe was mind and matter, mind being the creator and matter that which came unto being. [70] For that when all things were together, mind came and arranged them. He says, however, that the material principles are boundless, even the smallest of them. And that all things partake of movement, being p. 21. moved by mind, and that like things come together. ”

“ As we may learn from the Clouds of Aristophanes, it was just this way of speaking that got philosophers the name of being ἄθεοι. It is of great importance to bear this point in mind; for, when we come to Xenophanes, we shall see that the god or gods he spoke of meant just the world or worlds. It seems also that Anaximander called the Boundless itself divine, [144] which is quite in accordance with the language of Empedokles and Diogenes referred to above.
III. Anaximenes
Life. ”

“ When, however, we come to the motion of the world once it has been "separated off," we are on safer ground. It is certain that one of the chief features of early cosmology is the part. played in it by the analogy of an eddy in water or in wind, a δίνη (or δῖνος) , [82] and there seems to be little doubt that we are entitled to regard this as the doctrine of Anaximander and Anaximenes. ”

“ Anaximenes was the friend of Thales and Anaximander, and all three were born at Miletus. He considered that air was the first cause of all things, or primary condition of matter; all finite things were formed from the infinite air by compression or rarefaction produced by eternal motion. Heat and cold are produced by the varying density of the primal element. He held the eternity of matter like his brother philosophers, and believed that the soul itself is merely a form of air. ”

“ Anaxagoras, that it is far greater than Peloponnesus. Heraclitus, that it is no broader than a man's foot. Epicurus, that he equally embraceth all the foresaid opinions,—that the sun may be of magnitude as it appears, or it may be somewhat greater or somewhat less.
CHAPTER XXII. WHAT IS THE FIGURE OR SHAPE OF THE SUN.
Anaximenes affirms that in its dilatation it resembles a leaf. Heraclitus, that it hath the shape of a boat, and is somewhat crooked. The Stoics, that it is spherical, and it is of the same figure with the world and the stars. ”

“ Diels (Dox. p. 46) refers these similes to Anaximenes and Anaximander respectively. They come, of course, from Aetios (Note on Sources, § 10) , though they are given neither by Stobaios nor in the Placita. ↑ B, 1. 354 a 28 (R. P. 28 c) . ↑ For this reason, I now reject the statement of Aetios, ii. 14, 3 (p. 76) , Ἀναξιμένης ἥλων δίκην καταπεπηγέναι τῷ κρυσταλλοειδεῖ. That there is some confusion of names here is strongly suggested by the words which immediately follow, ἔνιοι δὲ πέταλα εἶναι πύρινα ὥσπερ τὰ ζωγραφήματα, which is surely the genuine doctrine of Anaximenes. ”

“ And when he would know the meaning of the concourse, Anchises said: “These are souls which have yet to live again in a mortal body, and they are constrained to drink of the water of forgetfulness.” And Æneas said: “Nay, my father, can any desire to take again upon them the body of death?” Then Anchises made reply: “Listen, my son, and I will tell thee all. There is one soul in heaven and earth and the stars and the shining orb of the moon and the great sun himself; from which soul also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of the air, and of the fishes of the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When, at the dawn of science in Greece, the ancient religion was disappearing like a mist at sunrise, the pious and thoughtful men of that country were thrown into a condition of intellectual despair. Anaxagoras plaintively exclaims, 'Nothing can be known, nothing can be learned, nothing can be certain, sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short.' Xenophanes tells us that it is impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the Truth. ”

“ Mind is now brought to the fore as a problem for philosophy. To find reason, intelligence, mind, in all things, in the State, in the individual, in external nature, this is the characteristic of the second period of Greek philosophy. To have formulated the antithesis between mind and matter is the most important work of Anaxagoras. ”

“ ANATHEMA.
Where shall I go? Tell me.
GUARDIAN.
Where you are going.
ANATHEMA.
What shall I do? Tell me.
GUARDIAN.
What you are doing.
ANATHEMA.
You speak through silence—can I understand the language of your silence? Tell me.
GUARDIAN.
No. Never. My face is open, but you see it not. My speech is loud, but you hear it not. My commands are clear, but you know them not, Anathema. And you shall never see, and you shall never hear, and you shall never know, Anathema, unfortunate spirit, deathless in numbers, eternally alive in measures and in weights, but as yet unborn to life.
ANATHEMA.
Tormented. ”

“ He did not ascribe the origin of things to any alteration in matter, but said that the oppositions in the substratum, which was a boundless body, were separated out.—Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18) .
The primary substance is not one of the “elements.” 14. Anaximander taught, then, that there was one eternal, indestructible substance out of which everything arises, and into which everything once more returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is continually being made good. ”

“ Only, be it observed, that while in the primitive Biblical idea this formless void precedes in time an ordered universe, in Anaximander's conception this formless infinitude is always here, is in fact the only reality which ever is here, something without beginning or ending, underlying all, enwrapping all, governing all. ”