Early Greek Philosophy — John Burnet (Heraclitus fragments)

3 Plato, Phd. 97 Ὁ 8 (R. P. 155 d).

Nous.

310 Early Greek Philosophy

were all dashed to the ground when I went on and
found that the man made no use of Mind at all. He
ascribed no causal power whatever to it in the ordering
of things, but to airs, and aethers, and waters, and a
host of other strange things.” Aristotle, probably
with this passage in mind, says:' “ Anaxagoras uses
Mind as a deus ex machina to account for the formation
of the world ; and whenever he is at a loss to explain
why anything necessarily is, he drags it in. But in
other cases he makes anything rather than Mind the
cause.” These utterances may well suggest that the
Nous of Anaxagoras did not really stand on a_higher
level than the Love and Strife of Empedokles, and this’
will only be confirmed when we look at what he
himself has to say about it.

In the first place, Nous is unmixed (fr. 12), and
does not, like other things, contain a portion of every-
thing. This would hardly be worth saying of an
immaterial mind; no one would suppose that to be
hot or cold. The result of its being unmixed is that

it “has power over” everything, that is to say, in the

language of Anaxagoras, it causes things to move.”
Herakleitos had said as much of Fire, and Empedokles
of Strife. Further, it is the “thinnest” of all things,
so that it can penetrate everywhere, and it would be
meaningless to say that the immaterial is “thinner”
than the material. It is true that Nous also “knows

1 Arist. Met. A, 4. 985 ἃ 18 (R. P. 155 4).

2. Arist. Phys. Θ, 5. 256 Ὁ 24, διὸ καὶ ᾿Αναξαγόρας ὀρθῶς λέγει, τὸν νοῦν ἀπαθῆ φάσκων καὶ ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ἐπειδήπερ κινήσεως ἀρχὴν αὐτὸν ποιεῖ εἷναι" οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μόνως κινοίη ἀκίνητος ὧν καὶ κρατοίη ἀμιγὴς ὥν. This is only quoted for the meaning of κρατεῖν. Of course, the words ἀκίνητος ὧν are not meant to be historical, and still less is the interpretation in de An. I, 4. 429 a 18. Diogenes of Apollonia (fr. 5) couples ὑπὸ τούτου πάντα κυβερνᾶσθαι (the old Milesian word) with πάντων κρατεῖν.

Anaxagoras of Klazomenai 311

all things”; but so, perhaps, did the Fire of
Herakleitos,| and certainly the Air of Diogenes.’
Zeller holds, indeed, that Anaxagoras meant to speak
of something incorporeal; but he admits that he did
not succeed in doing so, and that is historically the
important point. Nous is certainly imagined as
occupying space ; for we hear of greater _and smaller
parts of it (fr. 12).

The truth probably is that Anaxagoras substituted
Nous for the Love and Strife of Empedokles, because
he wished to retain the old Ionic doctrine of a
substance that “knows” all things, and to identify
this with the new theory of a substance that “ moves”
all things. Perhaps, too, it was his increased interest in
physiological as distinguished from purely cosmological
matters that led him to speak of Mind rather than
Soul. The former word certainly suggests design
more clearly than the latter, But, in any case, the
originality of Anaxagoras lies far more in the theory
of matter than in that of Nous.

133. The formation of a world starts with a
rotatory motion which Nous imparts to a portion of
the mixed mass in which “all things are together”
(fr. 13), and this rotatory motion gradually extends
over a wider and wider space. Its rapidity (fr. 9)
produced a separation of the rare and the dense, the
cold and the hot, the dark and the light, the moist and
the dry (fr. 15). This separation produces two great
masses, the one consisting of the rare, hot, light, and
dry, called the “Aether”; the other, in which the
opposite qualities predominate, called “ Air” (fr. 1).

1 If we retain the MS. εἰδέναι in fr. 1. In any case, the name τὸ σοφόν implies as much. 2 See fr. 3, 5. 8 Zeller, p. 993.

Formation of the worlds.

Innumerable worlds.

312 Early Greek Philosophy

Of these the Aether or Fire’ took the outside while the Air occupied the centre (fr. 15).

The next stage is the separation of the air into
clouds, water, earth, and stones (fr. 16). In this
Anaxagoras follows Anaximenes closely. In_ his
account of the origin of the heavenly bodies, however,
he showed himself more original. We read at the
end of fr. 16 that stones “rush outwards more than
water,” and we learn from the doxographers that the
heavenly bodies were explained as stones torn from
the earth by the rapidity of its revolution and made
red-hot by the speed of their own motion.? Perhaps
the fall of the meteoric stone at Aigospotamoi had
something to do with the origin of this theory. It
may also be observed that, while in the earlier stages
of the world-formation we are guided chiefly by the
analogy of water rotating with light and heavy bodies
floating in it, we are here reminded rather of a sling.

134. That Anaxagoras adopted the ordinary Ionian
theory of innumerable worlds is perfectly clear from
fr. 4, which we have no right to regard as other than
continuous.* The words “that it was not only with
us that things were separated off, but elsewhere too”
can only mean that Nous has caused a _ rotatory
movement in more parts of the boundless mixture than
one. Aetios certainly includes Anaxagoras among
those who held there was only one world; but this
testimony cannot be considered of the same weight as

* Note that Anaxagoras says “air”? where Empedokles usually said “‘aether,” and that ‘‘aether” is with him equivalent to fire. Cf. Arist. de Caelo, T, 3. 302 Ὁ 4, τὸ yap πῦρ καὶ τὸν αἰθέρα προσαγορεύει ταὐτό ; and 4. A, 3. 270 Ὁ 24, ᾿Αναξαγόρας δὲ καταχρῆται τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ οὐ καλῶς" ὀνομάζει yap αἰθέρα ἀντὶ πυρός. [

3. Aet. ii. 13, 3 (Dox. p. 341; R. P. 157 ¢). 3 See above, p. 300, n. 1.

Anaxagoras of Klazomenai 313

that of the fragments.’ Zeller’s reference of the words

“elsewhere, as with us” to the moon is very im-

probable. Is it likely that any one-.would say that
the inhabitants of the moon “have a sun and moon
as with us” ?”
135. The cosmology of Anaxagoras is clearly based
upon that of Anaximenes, as will be obvious from
a comparison of the following passage of Hippolytos *
with the quotations given in Chap. I. (δ 29) :-—

(3) The earth is flat in shape, and remains suspended because of its size and because there isno vacuum.* For this reason the air is very strong, and supports the earth which is borne up by it.

(4) Of the moisture on the surface of the earth, the sea
arose from the waters in the earth (for when these were
evaporated the remainder turned salt),° and from the rivers
which flow into it.

(5) Rivers take their being both from the rains and from the waters in the earth ; for the earth is hollow and has waters in its cavities. And the Nile rises in summer owing to the water that comes down from the snows in Ethiopia.®

1 Aet. ii. 1, 3. See above, Chap. I. p. 63.

2 Further, it can be proved that this passage (fr. 4) occurred quite near the beginning of the work. Cf. Simpl. Phys. p. 34, 28, mer’ ὀλίγα τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ πρώτου Περὶ φυσέως, p. 156, 1, καὶ μετ᾽ ὀλίγα (after fr. 2), which itself occurred, μετ᾽ ὀλίγον (after fr. 1), which was the beginning of the book. A reference to other ‘‘ worlds” would be quite in place here, but not a reference to the moon.

3 Ref. i. 8, 3 (Dox. p. 562).

* This is an addition to the older view occasioned by the Eleatic denial of the void.

> The text here is very corrupt, but the general sense can be got from Aet. iii. 16. 2.

® The MS. reading is ἐν τοῖς ἄρκτοις, for which Diels adopts Fredrichs’ ἐν τοῖς Gyrapxtixois. I have thought it safer to translate the ἐν τῇ Αἰθιοπίᾳ which Aetios gives (iv. 1, 3). This view is mentioned and rejected by Herodotos (ii. 22). Seneca (V.Q. iv. 2, 17) points out that it was adopted by Aischylos (Supp/. 559, fr. 300, Nauck), Sophokles (fr. 797), and Euripides (el. 3, fr. 228). ᾽

Cosmology

314 Early Greek Philosophy

(6) The sun and the moon and all the stars are fiery stones carried round by the rotation of the aether. Under the stars are the sun and moon, and also certain bodies which revolve with them, but are invisible to us.

(7) We do not feel the heat of the stars because of the greatness of their distance from the earth; and, further, they are not so warm as the sun, because ‘they occupy a colder region. ‘The moon is below the sun, and nearer us.

(8) The sun surpasses the Peloponnesos in size. The
moon has not a light of her own, but gets it from the sun.
The course of the stars goes under the earth.

(9) The moon is eclipsed by the earth screening the sun’s light from it, and sometimes, too, by the bodies below the moon coming before it. The sun is eclipsed at the new moon, when the moon screens it from us. Both the sun and the moon turn in their courses owing to the repulsion of the air. The moon turns frequently, because it cannot prevail over the cold.

(10) Anaxagoras was the first to determine what concerns
the eclipses and the illumination of the sun and moon.
And he said the moon was of earth, and had plains and
ravines in it. The Milky Way was the reflexion of the
light of the stars that were not illuminated by the sun.
Shooting stars were sparks, as it were, which leapt out owing
to the motion of the heavenly vault.

(11) Winds arose when the air was rarefied by the sun, and when things were burned and made their way to the vault of heaven and were carried off. Thunder and lightning were produced by heat striking upon clouds.

(12) Earthquakes were caused by the air above striking on that beneath the earth ; for the movement of the latter caused the earth which floats on it to rock.

All this confirms in the most striking way the state-
ment of Theophrastos, that Anaxagoras had belonged to
the school of Anaximenes. The flat earth floating on
the air, the dark bodies below the moon, the explanation
of the solstices and the “turnings” of the moon by the
resistance of air, the explanations given of wind and of

Anaxagoras of Klazomenai 315

thunder and lightning, are all derived from the earlier inquirer.

136. “ There is a portion of everything in every- thing except Nous, and there are some things in which there is Nous also” (fr. 11). In these words Anaxa- goras laid down the distinction between animate and inanimate things. He tells us that it is the same Nous that “has power over,” that is, sets in motion, all things that have life, both the greater and the smaller (fr. 12). The Nous in living creatures is the same in all (fr. 12), and from this it followed that the different grades of intelligence which we observe in the animal and vegetable worlds depend entirely on the structure of the body. The Nous was the same, but it had more opportunities in one body than another. Man was the wisest of animals, not because he had a better sort of Nous, but simply because he had hands.’ This view is quite in accordance with the previous development of thought upon the subject. Parmenides, in the Second Part of his poem (fr. 16), had already made the thought of men depend upon the constitution of their limbs.

As all Nous is the same, we are not surprised to
find that plants were regarded as living creatures. If
we may trust. the pseudo-Aristotelian TZveatise on
Plants” so far, Anaxagoras argued that they must feel
pleasure and pain in connexion with their growth and
with the fall of their leaves. Plutarch says * that ,he
called plants “animals fixed in the earth.” |

Both plants and animals originated in the first instance from the πανσπερμία. Plants first arose when

1 Arist. de Part. An. A, το. 687 a 7 (R. P. 160 Ὁ). 2 [Arist.] εὐ plant, A, 1. 815 a 15 (R. P. 160). 8. Plut. 0.4. 1(R. P. 160), fgov . . . ἐγγεῖον.

Biology.

Perception.

316 Early Greek Philosophy

the seeds of them which the air contained were brought
down by the rain-water,’ and animals originated in a
similar way.2. Like Anaximander, Anaxagoras held
that animals first arose in the moist element.’

137. In these scanty notices we seem to see traces
of a polemical attitude towards Empedokles, and the
same may be observed in what we are told of the
theory of perception adopted by Anaxagoras, especially
in the view that perception is of contraries* The
account which Theophrastos gives of this® is as
follows :—