In comparing the theory of Anaxagoras with that of Empedokles, we perceive that both of them denied not only the generation of new matter out of nothing (in which denial all the ancient physical philosophers concurred), but also the transformation of one form of matter into others, which had been affirmed by Thales and others. Both of them laid down as a basis the existence of matter in a variety of primordial forms. They maintained that what others called generation or transformation, was only a combination or separation of these pre-existing materials, in great diversity of ratios. Of such primordial forms of matter Empedokles recognised only four, the so-called Elements; each simple and radically distinct from the others, and capable of existing apart from them, though capable also of being combined with them. Anaxagoras recognised primordial forms of matter in indefinite number, with an infinite or indefinite stock of particles of each; but no one form of matter (except Nous) capable of being entirely severed from the remainder. In the constitution of every individual body in nature, particles of all the different forms were combined; but some one or a few forms were preponderant and manifest, all the others overlaid and latent. Herein consisted the difference between one body and another. The Homœomeric body was one in which a confluence of like particles had taken place so numerous and powerful, as to submerge all the coexistent particles of other sorts. The majority thus passed for the whole, the various minorities not being allowed to manifest themselves, yet not for that reason ceasing to exist: a type of human society as usually constituted, wherein some one vein of sentiment, ethical, æsthetical, religious, political, &c., acquires such omnipotence as to impose silence on dissentients, who are supposed not to exist because they cannot proclaim themselves without ruin.
Suggested partly by the phenomena of animal nutrition.
The hypothesis of multifarious forms of matter, latent yet still real and recoverable, appears to have been suggested to Anaxagoras mainly by the phenomena of animal nutrition.[156] The bread and meat on which we feed nourishes all the different parts of our body — blood, flesh, bones, ligaments, veins, trachea, hair, &c. The nutriment must contain in itself different matters homogeneous with all these tissues and organs; though we cannot see such matters, our reason tells us that they must be there. This physiological divination is interesting from its general approximation towards the results of modern analysis.
[156] See a remarkable passage in Plutarch, Placit. Philosoph. i. 3.
Chaos common to both Empedokles and Anaxagoras: moving agency, different in one from the other theory.
Both Empedokles and Anaxagoras begin their constructive process from a state of stagnation and confusion both tantamount to Chaos; which is not so much active discord (as Ovid paints it), as rest and nullity arising from the equilibrium of opposite forces. The chaos is in fact almost a reproduction of the Infinite of Anaximander.[157] But Anaxagoras as well as Empedokles enlarged his hypothesis by introducing (what had not occurred or did not seem necessary to Anaximander) a special and separate agency for eliciting positive movement and development out of the negative and stationary Chaos. The Nous or Mind is the Agency selected for this purpose by Anaxagoras: Love and Enmity by Empedokles. Both the one and the other initiate the rotatory cosmical motion; upon which follows as well the partial disgregation of the chaotic mass, as the congregation of like particles of it towards each other.
[157] This is a just comparison of Theophrastus. See the passage from his φυσικὴ ἱστορία, referred to by Simplikius ad Aristot. Physic. i. p. 187, a. 21 (p. 335, Schol. Brand.).
Nous, or mind, postulated by Anaxagoras — how understood by later writers — how intended by Anaxagoras himself.
The Nous of Anaxagoras was understood by later writers as a God;[158] but there is nothing in the fragments now remaining to justify the belief that the author himself conceived it in that manner — or that he proposed it (according to Aristotle’s expression[159]) as the cause of all that was good in the world, assigning other agencies as the causes of all evil. It is not characterised by him as a person — not so much as the Love and Enmity of Empedokles. It is not one but multitudinous, and all its separate manifestations are alike, differing only as greater or less. It is in fact identical with the soul, the vital principle, or vitality, belonging not only to all men and to all plants also.[160] It is one substance, or form of matter among the rest, but thinner than all of them (thinner than even fire or air), and distinguished by the peculiar characteristic of being absolutely unmixed. It has moving power and knowledge, like the air of Diogenes the Apolloniate: it initiates movement; and it knows about all the things which either pass into or pass out of combination. It disposes or puts in order all things that were, are, or will be; but it effects this only by acting as a fermenting principle, to break up the huddled mass, and to initiate rotatory motion, at first only on a small scale, then gradually increasing. Rotation having once begun, and the mass having been as it were unpacked and liberated the component Homœomeries are represented as coming together by their own inherent attraction.[161] The Anaxagorean Nous introduces order and symmetry into Nature, simply by stirring up rotatory motion in the inert mass, so as to release the Homœomeries from prison. It originates and maintains the great cosmical fact of rotatory motion; which variety of motion, from its perfect regularity and sameness, is declared by Plato also to be the one most consonant to Reason and Intelligence.[162] Such rotation being once set on foot, the other phenomena of the universe are supposed to be determined by its influence, and by their own tendencies and properties besides: but there is no farther agency of Nous, which only knows these phenomena as and when they occur. Anaxagoras tried to explain them as well as he could; not by reference to final causes, nor by assuming good purposes of Nous which each combination was intended to answer — but by physical analogies, well or ill chosen, and especially by the working of the grand cosmical rotation.[163]
[158] Cicero, Academ. iv. 37; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, ix. 6, τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι κατ’ αὐτὸν θεὸς, &c.