Respecting the criticism of Sokrates upon Anaxagoras, Hegel has further acute remarks which are too long to cite (p. 368 seq.)
The supposed theory of Anaxagoras cannot be carried out, either by Sokrates himself or any one else. Sokrates turns to general words, and adopts the theory of ideas.
It is however singular, that Sokrates, after he has extolled Anaxagoras for enunciating a grand general cause, and has blamed him only for not making application of it in detail, proceeds to state that neither he himself, nor any one else within his knowledge, could find the way of applying it, any more than Anaxagoras had done. If Anaxagoras had failed, no one else could do better. The facts before Sokrates could not be reconciled, by any way that he could devise, with his assumed principle of rational directing force, or constant optimistic purpose, inherent in the Kosmos. Accordingly he abandoned this track, and entered upon another: seeking a different sort of cause (τῆς αἰτίας τὸ εἶδος), not by contemplation of things, but by propositions and ratiocinative discourse. He now assumed as a principle an universal axiom or proposition, from which he proceeds to deduce consequences. The principle thus laid down is, That there exist substantial Ideas — universal Entia. Each of these Ideas communicates or imparts its own nature to the particulars which bear the same name: and such communion or participation is the cause why they are what they are. The cause why various objects are beautiful or great, is, because they partake of the Self-Beautiful or the Self-Great: the cause why they are two or three is, because they partake of the Dyad or the Triad.
Vague and dissentient meanings attached to the word Cause. That is a cause, to each man, which gives satisfaction to his inquisitive feelings.
Here then we have a third stage or variety of belief, in the speculative mind of Sokrates, respecting Causes. The self-existent Ideas (”propria Platonis supellex,” to use the words of Seneca[69]) are postulated as Causes: and in this belief Sokrates at last finds satisfaction. But these Causative Ideas, or Ideal Causes, though satisfactory to Plato, were accepted by scarcely any one else. They were transformed — seemingly even by Plato himself before his death, into Ideal Numbers, products of the One implicated with Great and Little or the undefined Dyad — and still farther transformed by his successors Speusippus and Xenokrates: they were impugned in every way, and emphatically rejected, by Aristotle.
[69] Seneca, Epistol.
About this disposition, manifested by many philosophers, and in a particular manner by Plato, to “embrace logical phantoms as real causes,” I transcribe a good passage from Malebranche.
“Je me sens encore extrêmement porté à dire que cette colonne est dure par sa nature; ou bien que les petits liens dont sont composés les corps durs, sont des atômes, dont les parties ne se peuvent diviser, comme étant les parties essentieles et dernières des corps — et qui sont essentiellement crochues ou branchues.
Mais je reconnois franchement, que ce n’est point expliquer la difficulté; et que, quittant les préoccupations et les illusions de mes sens, j’aurais tort de recourir à une forme abstraite, et d’embrasser un fantôme de logique pour la cause que je cherche. Je veux dire, que j’aurois tort de conçevoir, comme quelque chose de réel et de distinct, l’idée vague de nature et d’essence, qui n’exprime que ce que l’on sait: et de prendre ainsi une forme abstraite et universelle, comme une cause physique d’un effet très réel. Car il y a deux choses dont je ne saurais trop défier. La première est, l’impression de mes sens: et l’autre est, la facilité que j’ai de prendre les natures abstraites et les idées générales de logique, pour celles qui sont réelles et particulières: et je me souviens d’avoir été plusieurs fois séduit par ces deux principes d’erreur.” (Malebranche — Recherche de la Vérité, vol. iii., liv. vi., ch. 8, p. 245, ed. 1772.)
The foregoing picture given by Sokrates of the wanderings of his mind (τὰς ἐμὰς πλάνας) in search of Causes, is interesting, not only in reference to the Platonic age, but also to the process of speculation generally. Almost every one talks of a Cause as a word of the clearest meaning, familiar and understood by all hearers. There are many who represent the Idea of Cause as simple, intuitive, self-originated, universal; one and the same in all minds. These philosophers consider the maxim that every phenomenon must have a Cause — as self-evident, known à priori apart from experience: as something which no one can help believing as soon as it is stated to him.[70] The gropings of Sokrates are among the numerous facts which go to refute such a theory: or at least to show in what sense alone it can be partially admitted. There is no fixed, positive, universal Idea, corresponding to the word Cause. There is a wide divergence, as to the question what a Cause really is, between different ages of the same man (exemplified in the case of Sokrates): much more between different philosophers at one time and another. Plato complains of Anaxagoras and other philosophers for assigning as Causes that which did not truly deserve the name: Aristotle also blames the defective conceptions of his predecessors (Plato included) on the same subject. If there be an intuitive idea corresponding to the word Cause, it must be a different intuition in Plato and Aristotle — in Plato himself at one age and at another age: in other philosophers, different from both and from each other. The word is equivocal — πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον, in Aristotelian phrase — men use it familiarly, but vary much in the thing signified. That is a Cause, to each man, which gives satisfaction to the inquisitive feelings — curiosity, anxious perplexity, speculative embarrassment of his own mind. Now doubtless these inquisitive feelings are natural and widespread: they are emotions of our nature, which men seek (in some cases) to appease by some satisfactory hypothesis. That answer which affords satisfaction, looked at in one of its aspects, is called Cause; Beginning or Principle — Element — represent other aspects of the same Quæsitum:—