In truth, the complaint which Sokrates here raises against Anaxagoras — that he assigned celestial Rotation as the cause of phenomena, in place of a quasi-human Reason — is just the same as that which Aristophanes in the Clouds advances against Sokrates himself.[66] The comic poet accuses Sokrates of displacing Zeus to make room for Dinos or Rotation. According to the popular religious belief, all or most of the agencies in Nature were personified, or supposed to be carried on by persons — Gods, Goddesses, Dæmons, Nymphs, &c., which army of independent agents were conceived, by some thinkers, as more or less systematised and consolidated under the central authority of the Kosmos itself. The causes of natural phenomena, especially of the grand and terrible phenomena, were supposed agents, conceived after the model of man, and assumed to be endowed with volition, force, affections, antipathies, &c.: some of them visible, such as Helios, Selênê, the Stars; others generally invisible, though showing themselves whenever it specially pleased them.[67] Sokrates, as we see by the Platonic Apology, was believed by his countrymen to deny these animated agencies, and to substitute instead of them inanimate forces, not put in motion by the quasi-human attributes of reason, feeling and volition. The Sokrates in the Platonic Phædon, taken at this second stage of his speculative wanderings, not only disclaims such a doctrine, but protests against it. He recognises no cause except a Nous or Reason borrowed by analogy from that of which he was conscious within himself, choosing what was best for himself in every special situation.[68] He tells us however that most of the contemporary philosophers dissented from this point of view. To them, such inanimate agencies were the sole and real causes, in one or other of which they found what they thought a satisfactory explanation.
[66] Aristophan. Nubes, 379-815. Δῖνος βασιλεύει, τὸν Δί’ ἐξεληλακώς. We find Proklus making this same complaint against Aristotle, “that he deserted theological principia, and indulged too much in physical reasonings” — τῶν μὲν θεολογικῶν ἀρχῶν ἀφιστάμενος, τοῖς δὲ φυσικοῖς λόγοις πέρα τοῦ δέοντος ἐνδιατρίβων (Proklus ad Timæum, ii. 90 E, p. 212, Schneider). Pascal also expresses the like displeasure against the Cartesian theory of the vortices. Descartes recognised God as having originally established rotatory motion among the atoms, together with an equal, unvarying quantity of motion: these two points being granted, Descartes considered that all cosmical facts and phenomena might be deduced from them.
“Sur la philosophie de Descartes, Pascal était de son sentiment sur l’automate; et n’en était point sur la matière subtile, dont il se moquait fort. Mais il ne pouvait souffrir sa manière d’expliquer la formation de toutes choses; et il disait très souvent, — Je ne puis pardonner à Descartes: il voudrait bien, dans toute sa philosophie, pouvoir se passer de Dieu: mais il n’a pu s’empêcher de lui accorder une chiquenaude pour mettre le monde en mouvement: après cela, il n’a que faire de Dieu.” (Pascal, Pensées, ch. xi. p. 237, edition de Louandre, citation from Mademoiselle Périer, Paris, 1854.)
Again, Lord Monboddo, in his Ancient Metaphysics (bk. ii. ch. 19, p. 276), cites these remarks of Plato and Aristotle on the deficiencies of Anaxagoras, and expresses the like censure himself against the cosmical theories of Newton:— “Sir Isaac puts me in mind of an ancient philosopher Anaxagoras, who maintained, as Sir Isaac does, that mind was the cause of all things; but when he came to explain the particular phænomena of nature, instead of having recourse to mind, employed airs and æthers, subtle spirits and fluids, and I know not what — in short, any thing rather than mind: a cause which he admitted to exist in the universe; but rather than employ it, had recourse to imaginary causes, of the existence of which he could give no proof. The Tragic poets of old, when they could not otherwise untie the knot of their fable, brought down a god in a machine, who solved all difficulties: but such philosophers as Anaxagoras will not, even when they cannot do better, employ mind or divinity. Our philosophers, since Sir Isaac’s time, have gone on in the same track, and still, I think, farther.”
Lord Monboddo speaks with still greater asperity about the Cartesian theory, making a remark on it similar to what has been above cited from Pascal. (See his Dissertation on the Newtonian Philosophy, Appendix to Ancient Metaphysics, pp. 498-499.)
[67] Plato, Timæus, p. 41 A. πάντες ὅσοι τε περιπολοῦσι φανερῶς καὶ ὅσοι φαίνονται καθ’ ὅσον ἂν ἐθέλωσι θεοὶ, &c.
[68] What Sokrates understands by the theory of Anaxagoras, is evident from his language — Phædon, pp. 98-99. He understands an indwelling cosmical Reason or Intelligence, deliberating and choosing, in each particular conjuncture, what was best for the Kosmos; just as his own (Sokrates) Reason deliberated and chose what was best for him (τῇ τοῦ βελτίστου αἱρέσει), in consequence of the previous determination of the Athenians to condemn and punish him.
This point deserves attention, because it is altogether different from Aristotle’s conception of Nous or Reason in the Kosmos: in which he recognises no consciousness, no deliberation, no choice, no reference to any special situation: but a constant, instinctive, undeliberating, movement towards Good as a determining End — i.e. towards the reproduction and perpetuation of regular Forms.
Hegel, in his Geschichte der Philosophie (Part i. pp. 355, 368-369, 2nd edit.), has given very instructive remarks, in the spirit of the Aristotelian Realism, both upon the principle announced by Anaxagoras, and upon the manner in which Anaxagoras is criticised by Sokrates in the Platonic Phædon. Hegel observes:—
“Along with this principle (that of Anaxagoras) there comes in the recognition of an Intelligence, or of a self-determining agency which was wanting before. Herein we are not to imagine thought, subjectively considered: when thought is spoken of, we are apt to revert to thought as it passes in our consciousness: but here, on the contrary, what is meant is, the Idea, considered altogether objectively, or Intelligence as an effective agent: (N.B. Intellectum, or Cogitatum — not Intellectio, or Cogitatio, which would mean the conscious process — see this distinction illustrated by Trendelenburg ad Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2, 5, p. 219: also Marbach, Gesch. der Phil. s. 54, 99 not. 2): as we say, that there is reason in the world, or as we speak of Genera in nature, which are the Universal. The Genus Animal is the Essential of the Dog — it is the Dog himself: the laws of nature are her immanent Essence. Nature is not formed from without, as men construct a table: the table is indeed constructed intelligently, but by an Intelligence extraneous to this wooden material. It is this extraneous form which we are apt to think of as representing Intelligence, when we hear it talked of: but what is really meant is, the Universal — the immanent nature of the object itself. The Νοῦς is not a thinking Being without, which has arranged the world: by such an interpretation the Idea of Anaxagoras would be quite perverted and deprived of all philosophical value. For to suppose an individual, particular, Something without, is to descend into the region of phantasms and its dualism: what is called, a thinking Being, is not an Idea, but a Subject. Nevertheless, what is really and truly Universal is not for that reason Abstract: its characteristic property, quâ Universal, is to determine in itself, by itself, and for itself, the particular accompaniments. While it carries on this process of change, it maintains itself at the same time as the Universal, always the same; this is a portion of its self-determining efficiency.” — What Hegel here adverts to seems identical with that which Dr. Henry More calls an Emanative Cause (Immortality of the Soul, ch. vi. p. 18), “the notion of a thing possible. An Emanative Effect is co-existent with the very substance of that which is said to be the Cause thereof. That which emanes, if I may so speak, is the same in reality with its Emanative Cause.”