[2. Anaximander.]
Anaximander was also of Miletus, and he was a friend of Thales. “The latter,” says Cicero (Acad. Quaest. IV. 37), “could not convince him that everything consisted of water.” Anaximander’s father was called Praxiades; the date of his birth is not quite certain; according to Tennemann (vol. I. p. 413), it is put in Olympiad 42, 3 (610 B.C.), while Diogenes Laertius (II. I, 2) says, taking his information from Apollodorus, an Athenian, that in Ol. 58, 2 (547 B.C.), he was sixty-four years old, and that he died soon after, that is to say about the date of Thales’ death. And taking for granted that he died in his ninetieth year, Thales must have been nearly twenty-eight years older than Anaximander. It is related of Anaximander that he lived in Samos with the tyrant Polycrates, where were Pythagoras and Anacreon also. Themistius, according to Brucker (Pt. I. p. 478), says of him that he first put his philosophic thoughts into writing, but this is also recorded of others, as for example, of Pherecydes, who was older than he. Anaximander is said to have written about nature, the fixed stars, the sphere, besides other matters; he further produced something like a map, showing the boundary (πρίμετρον) of land and sea; he also made other mathematical inventions, such as a sun-dial that he put up in Lacedæmon, and instruments by which the course of the sun was shown, and the equinox determined; a chart of the heavens was likewise made by him.
His philosophical reflections are not comprehensive, and do not extend as far as to determination. Diogenes says in the passage quoted before: “He adduced the Infinite” (τὸ ἄπειρον, the undetermined), “as principle and element; he neither determined it as air or water or any such thing.” There are, however, few attributes of this Infinite given. (α.) “It is the principle of all becoming and passing away; at long intervals infinite worlds or gods rise out of it, and again they pass away into the same.” This has quite an oriental tone. “He gives as a reason that the principle is to be determined as the Infinite, the fact that it does not need material for continuous origination. It contains everything in itself and rules over all: it is divine, immortal, and never passes away.”[23] (β.) Out of the one, Anaximander separates the opposites which are contained in it, as do Empedocles and Anaxagoras; thus everything in this medley is certainly there, but undetermined.[24] That is, everything is really contained therein in possibility (δυνάμει), “so that,” says Aristotle (Metaphys. XI. 2), “it is not only that everything arises accidentally out of what is not, but everything also arises from what is, although it is from incipient being which is not yet in actuality.” Diogenes Laertius adds (II. 1): “The parts of the Infinite change, but it itself is unchangeable.” (γ.) Lastly, it is said that the infinitude is in size and not in number, and Anaximander differs thus from Anaxagoras, Empedocles and the other atomists, who maintain the absolute discretion of the infinite, while Anaximander upholds its absolute continuity.[25] Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 8) speaks also of a principle which is neither water nor air, but is “thicker than air and thinner than water.” Many have connected this idea with Anaximander, and it is possible that it belongs to him.
The advance made by the determination of the principle as infinite in comprehensiveness rests in the fact that absolute essence no longer is a simple universal, but one which negates the finite. At the same time, viewed from the material side, Anaximander removes the individuality of the element of water; his objective principle does not appear to be material, and it may be understood as Thought. But it is clear that he did not mean anything else than matter generally, universal matter.[26] Plutarch reproaches Anaximander “for not saying what (τι) his infinite is, whether air, water or earth.” But a definite quality such as one of these is transient; matter determined as infinitude means the motion of positing definite forms, and again abolishing the separation. True and infinite Being is to be shown in this and not in negative absence of limit. This universality and negation of the finite is, however, our operation only: in describing matter as infinite, Anaximander does not seem to have said that this is its infinitude.
He has said further (and in this, according to Theophrastus, he agrees with Anaxagoras), “In the infinite the like separates itself from the unlike and allies itself to the like; thus what in the whole was gold becomes gold, what was earth, earth, &c., so that properly nothing originates, seeing that it was already there.”[27] These, however, are poor determinations, which only show the necessity of the transition from the undetermined to the determined; for this still takes place here in an unsatisfying way. As to the further question of how the infinite determines the opposite in its separation, it seems that the theory of the quantitative distinction of condensation and rarefaction was held by Anaximander as well as by Thales. Those who come later designate the process of separation from the Infinite as development. Anaximander supposes man to develop from a fish, which abandoned water for the land.[28] Development comes also into prominence in recent times, but as a mere succession in time—a formula in the use of which men often imagine that they are saying something brilliant; but there is no real necessity, no thought, and above all, no Notion contained in it.
But in later records the idea of warmth, as being the disintegration of form, and that of cold, is ascribed to Anaximander by Stobæus (Eclog. Phys. c. 24, p. 500); this Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 5) first ascribed to Parmenides. Eusebius (De præp. Evang. I. 8), out of a lost work of Plutarch, gives us something from Anaximander’s Cosmogony which is dark, and which, indeed, Eusebius himself did not rightly understand. Its sense is approximately this: “Out of the Infinite, infinite heavenly spheres and infinite worlds have been set apart; but they carry within them their own destruction, because they only are through constant dividing off.” That is, since the Infinite is the principle, separation is the positing of a difference, i.e. of a determination or something finite. “The earth has the form of a cylinder, the height of which is the third part of the breadth. Both of the eternally productive principles of warmth and cold separate themselves in the creation of this earth, and a fiery sphere is formed round the air encircling the earth, like the bark around a tree. As this broke up, and the pieces were compressed into circles, sun, moon, and stars were formed.” Hence Anaximander, according to Stobæus (Ecl. Phys. 25, p. 510), likewise called the stars “wheel-shaped with fire-filled wrappings of air.” This Cosmogony is as good as the geological hypothesis of the earth-crust which burst open, or as Buffon’s explosion of the sun, which beginning, on the other hand, with the sun, makes the planets to be stones projected from it. While the ancients confined the stars to our atmosphere, and made the sun first proceed from the earth, we make the sun to be the substance and birthplace of the earth, and separate the stars entirely from any further connection with us, because for us, like the gods worshipped by the Epicureans, they are at rest. In the process of origination, the sun, indeed, descends as the universal, but in nature it is that which comes later; thus in truth the earth is the totality, and the sun but an abstract moment.
3. Anaximenes.
Anaximenes still remains as having made his appearance between the 55th and 58th Olympiads (560-548 B.C.). He was likewise of Miletus, a contemporary and friend of Anaximander; he has little to distinguish him, and very little is known about him. Diogenes Laertius says neither with consideration nor consistency (II. 3): “He was born, according to Apollodorus in the 63rd Olympiad, and died in the year Sardis was conquered” (by Cyrus, Olympiad 58th).
In place of the undetermined matter of Anaximander, he brings forward a definite natural element; hence the absolute is in a real form, but instead of the water of Thales, that form is air. He found that for matter a sensuous being was indeed essential, and air has the additional advantage of being more devoid of form; it is less corporeal than water, for we do not see it, but feel it first in movement. Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 3) says: “Out of it everything comes forth, and into it everything is again resolved.” According to Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 10), “he defined it as immeasurable, infinite, and in constant motion.” Diogenes Laertius expresses this in the passage already quoted: “The principle is air and the infinite” (οὖτος ἀρχὴν ἀέρα εἶπε καὶ τὸ ἄπειρον) as if there were two principles; however, ἀρχὴν καὶ ἄπειρον may be taken together as subject, and ἀέρα regarded as the predicate in the statement. For Simplicius, in dealing with the Physics of Aristotle, expressly says (p. 6, a) “that the first principle was to him one and infinite in nature as it was to Anaximander, but it was not indefinite as with the latter, but determined, that is, it was air,” which, however, he seems to have understood as endowed with soul.
Plutarch characterizes Anaximenes’ mode of representation which makes everything proceed from air—later on it was called ether—and resolve itself therein, better thus: “As our soul, which is air, holds us together (συγρατεῖ), one spirit (πνεῦμα) and air together likewise hold (περιέχει) the whole world together; spirit and air are synonymous.” Anaximenes shows very clearly the nature of his essence in the soul, and he thus points out what may be called the transition of natural philosophy into the philosophy of consciousness, or the surrender of the objective form of principle. The nature of this principle has hitherto been determined in a manner which is foreign and negative to consciousness; both its reality, water or air, and the infinite are a “beyond” to consciousness. But soul is the universal medium; it is a collection of conceptions which pass away and come forth, while the unity and continuity never cease. It is active as well as passive, from its unity severing asunder the conceptions and sublating them, and it is present to itself in its infinitude, so that negative signification and positive come into unison. Speaking more precisely, this idea of the nature of the origin of things is that of Anaxagoras, the pupil of Anaximenes.