The principle of the One is altogether ideal and belongs entirely to

thought, even though we wish to say that atoms exist. The atom may be

taken materially, but it is supersensuous, purely intellectual. In our

times, too, more especially through the instrumentality of Gassendi,

this conception of atoms has been renewed. The atoms of Leucippus are,

however, not molecules, the small particles of Physics. In Leucippus,

according to Aristotle, (De gen. et corr. I. 8) there is to be found

the idea that “atoms are invisible because of the smallness of their

body,” which is much like the way in which molecules are now-a-days

spoken of: but this is merely a way of speaking of them. The One can

neither be seen nor shown with magnifying glasses or measures, because

it is an abstraction of thought; what is shown is always matter that is

put together. It is just as futile when, as in modern times, men try

by the microscope to investigate the inmost part of the organism, the

soul, and think they can discover it by means of sight and feeling.

Thus the principle of the One is altogether ideal, but not in the

sense of being in thought or in the head alone, but in such a way that

thought is made the true essence of things. Leucippus understood it

so, and his philosophy is consequently not at all empirical. Tennemann

(Vol. 1, p. 261), on the other hand, says, quite wrongly, “The system

of Leucippus is opposed to that of the Eleatics; he recognizes the

empirical world as the only objective reality, and body as the only

kind of existence.” But the atom and the vacuum are not things of

experience; Leucippus says that it is not the senses through which

we become conscious of the truth, and thereby he has established an

idealism in the higher sense and not one which is merely subjective.

_b. The Constitution of the World_

However abstract this principle might be to Leucippus, he was

anxious to make it concrete. The meaning of atom is the individual,

the indivisible; in another form the One is thus individuality,

the determination of subjectivity. The universal and, on the other

side, the individual, are great determinations which are involved

in everything, and men first know what they have in these abstract

determinations, when they recognize in the concrete that even there

they are predominant. To Leucippus and Democritus this principle, which

afterwards came to light with Epicurus, remained physical; but it also

appears in what is intellectual. Mind indeed, is also an atom and one;

but as one within itself, it is at the same time infinitely full. In

freedom, right and law, in exercising will, our only concern is with

this opposition of universality and individuality. In the sphere of

the state the point of view that the single will is, as an atom, the

absolute, may be maintained; the more modern theories of the state

which also made themselves of practical effect, are of this kind. The

state must rest on the universal, that is, on the will that exists

in and for itself; if it rests on that of the individual, it becomes

atomic and is comprehended in accordance with the thought-determination

of the one, as is the case in Rousseau’s _Contrat Social_. From what

Aristotle tells us in the passage last quoted, Leucippus’ idea of all

that is concrete and actual is further this: “The full is nothing

simple, for it is an infinitely manifold. These infinitely many, move

in the vacuum, for the vacuum exists; their conglomeration brings

about origination” (that is, of an existing thing, or what is for the

senses), “disintegration and separation result in passing away.” All

other categories are included here. “Activity and passivity subsist in

the fact, that they are contiguous; but their contiguity is not their

becoming one, for from that which is truly” (abstractly) “one there

does not come a number, nor from that which is truly many, one.” Or,

it may be said, they are in fact neither passive nor active, “for they

merely abide through the vacuum” without having as their principle,

process. Atoms thus are, even in their apparent union in that which

we call things, separated from one another through the vacuum which

is purely negative and foreign to them, _i.e._ their relation is not

inherent in themselves, but is with something other than them, in which

they remain what they are. This vacuum, the negative in relation to the

affirmative, is also the principle of the movement of atoms; they are

so to speak solicited by the vacuum to fill up and to negate it.

These are the doctrines of the atomists. We see that we have reached

the extreme limits of these thoughts, for when relation comes into

question, we step beyond them. Being and non-being, as something

thought, which, when represented for consciousness as differing in

regard to one another, are the plenum and the vacuum, have no diversity

in themselves; for the plenum has likewise negativity in itself; as

independent, it excludes what is different; it is one and infinitely

many ones, while the vacuum is not exclusive, but pure continuity. Both

these opposites, the one and continuity, being now settled, nothing is

easier to imagine than that atoms should float in existent continuity,

now being separated and now united; and thus that their union should

be only a superficial relation, or a synthesis that is not determined

through the inherent nature of what is united, but in which these

self-existent beings really remain separated still. But this is an

altogether external relationship; the purely independent is united to

the independent, and thus a mechanical combination alone results. All

that is living, spiritual, &c., is then merely thrown together; and

change, origination, creation, are simple union.

However highly these principles are to be esteemed as a forward step,

they at once reveal to us their total inadequacy, as is also the

case when we enter with them on further concrete determinations.

Nevertheless, we need not add what is in great measure added by the

conception of a later date, that once upon a time, there was a chaos, a

void filled with atoms, which afterwards became united and orderly, and

that the world thereby arose; it is now and ever that what implicitly

exists is the plenum and the vacuum. The satisfying point of view which

natural science found in such thoughts, is just the simple fact that in

these the existent is in its antithesis as what is thought and what is

opposed to thought, and is hereby what exists in and for itself. The

Atomists are therefore, generally speaking, opposed to the idea of the

creation and maintenance of this world by means of a foreign principle.

It is in the theory of atoms that science first feels released from

the sense of having no foundation for the world. For if nature is

represented as created and held together by another, it is conceived

of as not existent in itself, and thus as having its Notion outside

itself, _i.e._ its principle or origin is foreign to it and it has no

principle as such, only being conceivable from the will of another; as

it is, it is contingent, devoid of necessity and Notion in itself. In

the conception of the atomist, however, we have the conception of the

inherency of nature, that is to say, thought finds itself in it, or

its principle is in itself something thought, and the Notion finds its

satisfaction in conceiving and establishing it as Notion. In abstract

existence, nature has its ground in itself and is simply for itself;

the atom and the vacuum are just such simple Notions. But we cannot

here see or find more than the formal fact that quite general and

simple principles, the antithesis between the one and continuity, are

represented.

If we proceed from a wider, richer point of view in nature, and demand

that from the atomic theory, it, too, must be made comprehensible, the

satisfaction at once disappears and we see the impossibility of getting

any further. Hence we must get beyond these pure thoughts of continuity

and discontinuity. For these negations, the units, are not in and for

themselves; the atoms are indivisible and like themselves, or their

principle is made pure continuity, so that they may be said to come

directly into one clump. The conception certainly keeps them separate

and gives them a sensuously represented Being; but if they are alike,

they are, as pure continuity, the same as what is empty. But that which

is, is concrete and determined. How then can diversity be conceived

of from these principles? Whence comes the determinate character of

plants, colour, form? The point is, that though these atoms as small

particles may be allowed to subsist as independent, their union becomes

merely a combination which is altogether external and accidental. The

determinate difference is missed; the one, as that which is for itself,

loses all its determinateness. If various matters, electrical, magnetic

and luminous, are assumed, and, at the same time, a mechanical shifting

about of molecules, on the one hand unity is quite disregarded, and, on

the other, no rational word is uttered in regard to the transition of

phenomena, but only what is tautological.

Since Leucippus and Democritus wished to go further, the necessity of

a more definite distinction than this superficial one of union and

separation was introduced, and they sought to bring this about by

ascribing diversity to atoms, and, indeed, by making their diversity

infinite. Aristotle (Met. I. 4) says: “This diversity they sought to

determine in three ways. They say that atoms differ in figure, as A

does from N; in order” (place) “as AN from NA; in position”—as to

whether they stand upright or lie—“as Z from N. From these all other

differences must come.” We see that figure, order and posture are again

external relationships, indifferent determinations, _i.e._ unessential

relations which do not affect the nature of the thing in itself nor its

immanent determinateness, for their unity is only in another. Taken on

its own account, this difference is indeed inconsistent, for as the

entirely simple one, the atoms are perfectly alike, and thus any such

diversity cannot come into question.

We here have an endeavour to lead the sensuous back into few

determinations. Aristotle (De gen. et corr. I. 8) says in this

connection of Leucippus: “He wished to bring the conception of the

phenomenal and sensuous perception nearer, and thereby represented

movement, origination and decease, as existent in themselves.” In

this we see no more than that actuality from him receives its rights,

while others speak only of deception. But when Leucippus in the end

represents the atom as also fashioned in itself, he brings existence

certainly so much nearer to sensuous perception, but not to the Notion;

we must, indeed, go on to fashioning, but so far we are still a long

way off from the determination of continuity and discretion. Aristotle

(De sensu, 4) therefore says: “Democritus, and most of the other

ancient philosophers are, when they speak of what is sensuous, very

awkward, because they wish to make all that is felt into something

tangible; they reduce everything to what is evident to the sense of

touch, black being rough, and white smooth.” All sensuous qualities are

thus only led back to form, to the various ways of uniting molecules

which make any particular thing capable of being tasted or smelt; and

this endeavour is one which is also made by the atomists of modern

times. The French particularly, from Descartes onward, stand in this

category. It is the instinct of reason to understand the phenomenal

and the perceptible, only the way is false; it is a quite unmeaning,

undetermined universality. Since figure, order, posture and form,

constitute the only determination of what is in itself, nothing is said

as to how these moments are experienced as colour, and indeed variety

of colour, &c.; the transition to other than mechanical determinations

is not made, or it shows itself to be shallow and barren.

How it was that Leucippus, from these poor principles of atoms and

of the vacuum, which he never got beyond, because he took them to be

the absolute, hazarded a construction of the whole world (which may

appear to us as strange as it is empty), Diogenes Laertius tells us

(IX. 31-33) in an account which seems meaningless enough. But the

nature of the subject allows of little better, and we can do no more

than observe from it the barrenness of this conception. It runs thus:

“Atoms, divergent in form, propel themselves through their separation

from the infinite, into the great vacuum.” (Democritus adds to this,

“by means of their mutual resistance (_ἀντιτυπία_) and a tremulous,

swinging motion (_παλμός_).”)[71] “Here gathered, they form one vortex

(_δίνην_) where, by dashing together and revolving round in all sorts

of ways, the like are separated off with the like. But since they are

of equal weight, when they cannot, on account of their number, move

in any way, the finer go into outer vacuum, being so to speak forced

out; and the others remain together and, being entangled, run one

against another, and form the first round system. But this stands apart

like a husk that holds within it all sorts of bodies; since these, in

pressing towards the middle, make a vortex movement, this encircling

skin becomes thin, because from the action of the vortex, they are

continually running together. The earth arises in this way, because

these bodies, collected in the middle, remain together. That which

encircles and which is like a husk, again becomes increased by means of

the adherence of external bodies, and since it also moves within the

vortex, it draws everything with which it comes in contact to itself.

The union of some of these bodies again forms a system, first the moist

and slimy, and then the dry, and that which circles in the vortex of

the whole; after that, being ignited, they constitute the substance of

the stars. The outer circle is the sun, the inner the moon,” &c. This

is an empty representation; there is no interest in these dry, confused

ideas of circle-motion, and of what is later on called attraction

and repulsion, beyond the fact that the different kinds of motion are

looked at as the principle of matter.

_c. The Soul_

Finally Aristotle relates (De anim. I. 2) that in regard to the

soul, Leucippus and Democritus said that “it is spherical atoms.” We

find further from Plutarch (De plac. phil. IV. 8) that Democritus

applied himself to the relation borne by consciousness to the

explanation, amongst other things, of the origin of feelings, because

with him, the conceptions that from things fine surfaces, so to speak,

free themselves, and fly into the eyes, ears, &c., first began. We see

that, thus far, Democritus expressed the difference between the moments

of implicit Being and Being-for-another more distinctly. For he said,

as Sextus tells us (adv. Math. VII. 135): “Warmth exists according

to opinion (_νόμῳ_), and so do cold and colour, sweet and bitter:

only the indivisible and void are truthful (_ἐτεῇ_).” That is to say,

only the void and indivisible and their determinations are implicit;

unessential, different Being, such as warmth, &c., is for another. But

by this the way is at once opened up to the false idealism that means

to be done with what is objective by bringing it into relation with

consciousness, merely saying of it that it is _my_ feeling. Thereby

sensuous individuality is, indeed, annulled in the form of Being, but

it still remains the same sensuous manifold; a sensuously notionless

manifold of feeling is established, in which there is no reason, and

with which this idealism has no further concern.

2. EMPEDOCLES.

The fragments of Empedocles left, have several times been collected.

Sturz of Leipzig collected above 400 verses.[72] Peyron arranged a

collection of fragments of Empedocles and Parmenides,[73] which was put

into print in Leipzig in 1810. In Wolff’s Analects, a treatise is to be

found on Empedocles by Ritter.

Empedocles’ birthplace was Agrigentum in Sicily, while Heraclitus

belonged to Asia Minor. We thus come back to Italy, for our history

changes about between these two sides; from Greece proper, as the

middle point, we have as yet had no philosophies at all. Empedocles,

according to Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415), flourished about the 80th

Olympiad (460 B.C.). Sturz (pp. 9, 10) quotes Dodwell’s words: (De

ætate Pythag. p. 220), which indicate that Empedocles was born in

Olympiad 77, 1 (472 B.C.). They are as follows: “In the second year of

the 85th Olympiad Parmenides had reached his 65th year, so that Zeno

was born in the second year of the 75th Olympiad;[74] thus he was six

years older than his fellow-student Empedocles, for the latter was

only one year old when Pythagoras died in the first or second year of

the 77th Olympiad.” Aristotle says (Met. I. 3): “In age Empedocles is

subsequent to Anaxagoras, but his works are earlier.” But not only did

he philosophize earlier as regards time, that is, at a younger age,

but in reference to the stage reached by the Notion, his philosophy is

earlier and less mature than that of Anaxagoras.

From Diogenes’ accounts of his life (VIII. 59, 60-73), he also seems

to have been a kind of magician and sorcerer, like Pythagoras. During

his life he was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and, after

his death, a statue was erected to him in his native town; his fame

extended very far. He did not live apart, like Heraclitus, but in the

exercise of great influence on the affairs of the town of Agrigentum,

like Parmenides in Elea. He acquired the credit, after the death of

Meton, the ruler of Agrigentum, of bringing about a free constitution

and equal rights to all citizens. He likewise frustrated several

attempts which were made by people of Agrigentum to seize upon the

rulership of their city; and when the esteem of his fellow-citizens

rose so high that they offered him the crown, he rejected their offers,

and lived ever after amongst them as a respected private individual.

Both of his life and death much which was fabulous was told. Seeing

that he was famous in life, we are told that he wished not to appear

to die an ordinary death, as a proof that he was not a mortal man, but

had merely passed out of sight. After a feast he is said either to have

suddenly disappeared, or else to have been on Etna with his friends,

and suddenly to have been seen of them no more. But what became of him

was revealed by the fact that one of his shoes was thrown up by Etna,

and found by one of his friends; this made it clear that he threw

himself into Etna, thereby to withdraw himself from the notice of

mankind, and to give rise to the idea that he did not really die, but

that he was taken up amongst the gods.

The origin and occasion for this fable seems to lie in a poem in which

there are several verses that, taken alone, make great professions.

He says, according to Sturz, (p. 530: Reliquiæ _τῶν καθαρμῶν_, v.

364-376):—

“Friends who dwell within the fort on yellow Acragas

And who in the best of works are busy, I greet you!

To you I am an immortal god, no more a mortal man,

Do ye not see how that where’er I go, all honour me,

My head being ‘circled round with diadems and crowns of green?

When so decked out, I show myself in towns of wealth,

Men and women pray to me. And thousands follow

My steps, to seek from me the way to bliss,

Others ask for prophecies; others again,

Healing words for ailments manifold beseech.

But what is this to me—as though ‘twere anything

By art to conquer much corrupted man.”

But, taken in the context, this laudation means that I am highly

honoured, but what is the value of that to me; it expresses weariness

of the honour given him by men.

Empedocles had Pythagoreans as pupils, and went about with them; he

is sometimes considered to have been a Pythagorean like Parmenides

and Zeno, but this is the only ground for such a statement. It is a

question whether he belonged to the League; his philosophy has no

resemblance to the Pythagorean. According to Diogenes Laertius (VIII.

56), he was also called Zeno’s fellow-pupil. There have, indeed, been

many isolated reflections of a physical kind preserved to us, as also

some words of exhortation, and in him thought as penetrating within

reality, and the knowledge of nature seem to have attained to greater

breadth and compass; we find in him, however, less speculative depth

than in Heraclitus, but a Notion more imbued with the point of view

of reality, and a culture derived from natural philosophy or the

contemplation of nature. Empedocles is more poetic than definitely

philosophical; he is not very interesting, and much cannot be made of

his philosophy.

As to the particular Notion which governs it, and which really begins

in it to appear, we may call it Combination or Synthesis. It is as

combination that the unity of opposites first presents itself; this

Notion, first opening up with Heraclitus, is, while in a condition

of rest, conceived of as combination, before thought grasps the

universal in Anaxagoras. Empedocles’ synthesis, as a completion of

the relationship, thus belongs to Heraclitus, whose speculative Idea,

though in reality, is process, but this is so without the individual

moments in reality being mutually related as Notions. Empedocles’

conception of synthesis holds good to the present day. He also is

the originator of the common idea that has even come down to us, of

regarding the four known physical elements of fire, air, water, and

earth, as fundamental; by chemists they are certainly no longer held

to be elements, because they understand by elements a simple chemical

substance. I will now give Empedocles’ ideas shortly, and draw the many

units mentioned into the connection of a whole.

His general ideas Aristotle[75] shortly sums up thus: “To the three

elements, fire, air, and water, each of which was in turn considered

as the principle from which everything proceeded, Empedocles added

the Earth as the fourth corporeal element, saying that it is these

which always remain the same, never becoming, but being united and

separated as the more or the less, combining into one and coming

out of one.” Carbon, metal, &c., are not something existing in and

for itself which remains constant and never becomes; thus nothing

metaphysical is signified by them. But with Empedocles this undoubtedly

is the case: every particular thing arises through some kind of union

of the four. These four elements, to our ordinary idea, are not so

many sensuous things if we consider them as universal elements; for,

looked at sensuously, there are various other sensuous things. All

that is organic, for example, is of another kind; and, further, earth

as one, as simple, pure earth, does not exist, for it is in manifold

determinateness. In the idea of four elements we have the elevation of

sensuous ideas into thought.

Aristotle further says in reference to the abstract Notion of their

relation to one another (Met. I. 4), that Empedocles did not only

require the four elements as principles, but also Friendship and

Strife, which we have already met with in Heraclitus; it is at once

evident that these are of another kind, because they are, properly

speaking, universal. He has the four natural elements as the real, and

friendship and strife as the ideal principles, so that six elements,

of which Sextus[76] often speaks, make their appearance in lines

that Aristotle (Met. II. 4) and Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 92) have

preserved:—

“With the earth, we see the earth, with water, water,

With air, heavenly air, with fire, eternal fire,

With love, love is seen, and strife with sorrowful strife.”

Through our participation in them they become for us. There we have the

idea that spirit, the soul, is itself the unity, the very totality of

elements, in which the principle of earth relates to earth, water to

water, love to love, &c.[77] In seeing fire, the fire is in us for whom

objective fire is, and so on.

Empedocles also speaks of the process of these elements, but he did not

comprehend it further; the point to be remarked is that he represented

their unity as a combination. In this synthetic union, which is a

superficial relation devoid of Notion, being partly related and partly

unrelated, the contradiction necessarily results that at one time the

unity of elements is established and at another, their separation:

the unity is not the universal unity in which they are moments,

being even in their diversity one, and in their unity different, for

these two moments, unity and diversity, fall asunder, and union and

separation are quite indeterminate relationships. Empedocles says in

the first book of his poem on Nature, as given by Sturz (p. 517, v.

106-109): “There is no such thing as a Nature, only a combination and

separation of what is combined; it is merely called Nature by men.”

That is to say, that which constitutes anything, as being its elements

or parts, is not as yet called its nature, but only its determinate

unity. For example, the nature of an animal is its constant and real

determinateness, its kind, its universality, which is simple. But

Empedocles does away with nature in this sense, for every thing,

according to him, is the combination of simple elements, and thus

not in itself the universal, simple and true: this is not what is

signified by us when we speak of nature. Now this nature in which a

thing moves in accordance with its own end, Aristotle (De gen. et

corr. II. 6) misses in Empedocles; in later times this conception was

still further lost. Because the elements were thus existent simply in

themselves, there was, properly speaking, no process established in

them, for in process they are only vanishing moments, and not existent

in themselves. Being thus implicit, they must have been unchangeable,

or they could not constitute themselves into a unity; for in the one

their subsistence, or their implicit existence would be destroyed. But

because Empedocles says that things subsist from these elements, he

immediately establishes their unity.

These are the principal points in Empedocles’ philosophy. I will quote

the remarks that Aristotle (Met. I. 4) makes in this regard.

(_α_) “If we wish to follow this up, and do so in accordance with

the understanding, not merely stumbling over it like Empedocles, we

should say that friendship is the principle of good and strife the

principle of evil, so that in a measure we may assert that Empedocles

maintained—and was the first to do so—that the evil and the good

are the absolute principles, because the good is the principle of all

good, and the bad the principle of all evil.” Aristotle shows the trace

of universality present here; for to him it may be termed essential

in dealing with the Notion of the principle, that which is in and for

itself. But this is only the Notion, or the thought which is present

in and for itself; we have not yet seen such a principle, for we find

it first in Anaxagoras. If Aristotle found the principle of motion

missed in ancient philosophers, in the Becoming of Heraclitus, he again

missed in Heraclitus the still deeper principle of the Good, and hence

wished to discover it in Empedocles. By the good the “why” is to be

understood, that which is an end in and for itself, which is clearly

established in itself, which is on its own account, and through which

all else is; the end has the determination of activity, the bringing

forth of itself, so that it, as end to itself, is the Idea, the Notion

that makes itself objective and, in its objectivity, is identical with

itself. Aristotle thus entirely controverts Heraclitus, because his

principle is change alone, without remaining like self, maintaining

self, and going back within self.

(_β_) Aristotle also says in criticizing further the relationship

and determination of these two universal principles of Friendship

and Strife, as of union and separation, that “Empedocles neither

adequately made use of them nor discovered in them what they involved

(_ἐξευρίσκει τὸ ὁμολογούμενον_); for with him friendship frequently

divides and strife unites. That is, when the All falls asunder through

strife amongst the elements, fire is thereby united into one, and

so is each of the other elements.” The separation of the elements

which are comprised within the All, is just as necessarily the union

amongst themselves of the parts of each element; that which, on the

one hand, is the coming into separation, as independent, is at the

same time something united within itself. “But when everything through

friendship goes back into one, it is necessary that the parts of

each element undergo separation again.” The being in one is itself a

manifold, a diverse relation of the four diversities, and thus the

going together is likewise a separation. This is the case generally

with all determinateness, that it must in itself be the opposite, and

must manifest itself as such. The remark that, speaking generally,

there is no union without separation, no separation without union, is

a profound one; identity and non-identity are thought-determinations

of this kind which cannot be separated. The reproach made by Aristotle

is one that lies in the nature of the thing. And when Aristotle says

that Empedocles, although younger than Heraclitus, “was the first to

maintain such principles, because he did not assert that the principle

of motion is one, but that it is different and opposed,” this certainly

relates to the fact that he thought it was in Empedocles that he first

found design, although his utterances on the subject were dubious.

(_γ_) As to the real moments in which this ideal realizes

itself, Aristotle further says, “He does not speak of them as

four”—equivalents in juxtaposition—“but on the contrary as two;

fire he puts by itself on the one side, and the three others, earth,

air, and water, on the other.” What would be most interesting is the

determination of their relationship.

(_δ_) In what deals with the relationship of the two ideal moments,

friendship and strife, and of the four real elements, there is thus

nothing rational, for Empedocles, according to Aristotle (Met. XII.

10), did not properly separate, but co-ordinated them, so that we often

see them in proximity and counted as having equal value; but it is

self-evident that Empedocles also separated these two sides, the real

and the ideal, and expressed thought as their relation.

(_ε_) Aristotle says with justice (De gen. et corr. I. 1) that

“Empedocles contradicts both himself and appearances. For at one time

he maintains that none of the elements springs out of the other, but

all else comes from them; and, at another time, he makes them into a

whole through friendship, and again destroys this unity through strife.

Thus through particular differences and qualities, one becomes water,

the other fire, &c. Now if the particular differences are taken away

(and they can be taken away since they have arisen), it is evident

that water arises from earth, and the reverse. The All was not yet

fire, earth, water, and air, when these were still one, so that it

is not clear whether he made the one or the many to be, properly

speaking, real existence.” Because the elements become one, their

special character, that through which water is water, is nothing in

itself, that is, they are passing into something different; but this

contradicts the statement that they are the absolute elements, or that

they are implicit. He considers actual things as an intermingling

of elements, but in regard to their first origin, he thinks that

everything springs from one through friendship and strife. This

customary absence of thought is in the nature of synthetic conceptions;

it now upholds unity, then multiplicity, and does not bring both

thoughts together; as sublated, one is also not one.[78]

F. ANAXAGORAS.

With Anaxagoras[79] a light, if still a weak one, begins to dawn,

because the understanding is now recognized as the principle. Aristotle

says of Anaxagoras (Met. I. 3): “But he who said that reason (_νοῦς_),

in what lives as also in nature, is the origin of the world and of all

order, is like a sober man as compared with those who came before and

spoke at random (_εἰκῆ_).” As Aristotle says, hitherto philosophers may

“be compared to the fencers who fence in an unscientific way. Just as

the latter often make good thrusts in their struggle, though not by any

skill, these philosophers seem to speak without any knowledge of what

they say.” Now if Anaxagoras, as a sober man amongst drunkards, was

the first to reach this consciousness—for he says that pure thought

is the actually existent universal and true—he yet, to a considerable

extent, still thrusts into space.

The connection of his philosophy with what precedes is as follows:

In Heraclitus’ Idea as motion, all moments are absolutely vanishing.

Empedocles represents the gathering together of this motion into a

unity, but into a synthetic unity; and with Leucippus and Democritus

it is the same. With Empedocles, however, the moments of this

unity are the existent elements of fire, water, &c., and with the

others, pure abstractions, implicit being, thoughts. But in this way

universality is directly asserted, for the opposing elements have no

longer any sensuous support. We have had Being, Becoming, the One, as

principles; they are universal thoughts and not sensuous, nor are they

figures of the imagination; the content and its parts are, however,

taken from what is sensuous, and they are thoughts in some sort of

a determination. Anaxagoras now says that it is not gods, sensuous

principles, elements, or thoughts—which really are determinations of

reflection—but that it is the Universal, Thought itself, in and for

itself, without opposition, all embracing, which is the substance or

the principle. The unity as universal, returns from the opposition into

itself, while in the synthesis of Empedocles, what is opposed is still

apart from it and independent, and Thought is not Being. Here, however,

Thought as pure, free process in itself, is the self-determining

universal, and is not distinguished from conscious thought. In

Anaxagoras quite new ground is thus opened up.

Anaxagoras concludes this period, and after him a fresh one begins.

In accordance with the favourite idea of there being a genealogical

descent of principles from the teacher to the taught, because he was

an Ionian, he is often represented as perpetuating the Ionic school,

and as an Ionic philosopher: Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, too, was his

teacher. To support this theory Diogenes Laertius (II. 6) makes him a

disciple of Anaximenes, whose birth is, however, placed in Ol. 55-58,

or about sixty years earlier than that of Anaxagoras.

Aristotle says (Met. I. 3) that Anaxagoras first began by these

determinations to express absolute reality as understanding. Aristotle

and others after him, such as Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 7), mention

the bare fact that Hermotimus gave rise to this conception, but it

was clearly due to Anaxagoras. Little is gained if such a fact were

true, since we learn no more about the philosophy of Hermotimus; it

cannot have been much. Others have made numerous historical researches

respecting this Hermotimus. The name we have already mentioned amongst

those of whom it is said that Pythagoras existed in them before he

lived as Pythagoras. We also have a story of Hermotimus to the effect

that he possessed the peculiar gift of being able to make his soul quit

his body. But this did him bad service in the end, since his wife,

with whom he had a dispute, and who besides knew very well how matters

stood, showed to their acquaintances this soul-deserted body as dead,

and it was burnt before the soul reinstated itself—which soul must

have been astonished.[80] It is not worth while to investigate what

lies at the ground of these ancient stories, i.e. into how we should

regard the matter: we may think of it as implying a state of ecstasy.

We must consider the life of Anaxagoras before his philosophy.

Anaxagoras, according to Diogenes (II. 7), born in Ol. 70 (500 B.C.),

comes earlier than Democritus, and in age also precedes Empedocles,

yet, on the whole, he was contemporaneous with these, as also with

Parmenides; he was as old as Zeno, and lived somewhat earlier than

Socrates, but still they were acquainted with one another. His native

town was Clazomenæ, in Lydia, not very far from Colophon and Ephesus,

and situated on an isthmus by which a great peninsula is connected

with the mainland. His life is shortly summed up in the statement that

he devoted himself to the study of the sciences, withdrew from public

affairs; according to Valerius Maximus (VIII. 7, extr. 6) he made

numerous journeys, and finally, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. pp.

300, 415), in the forty-fifth year of his age, in the 81st Olympiad

(456 B.C.), and at a propitious time, he came to Athens.

With him we thus find Philosophy in Greece proper, where so far there

had been none, and coming, indeed, as far as Athens; hitherto either

Asia Minor or Italy had been the seat of Philosophy, though, when the

inhabitants of Asia Minor fell under Persian rule, with their loss of

freedom, it expired amongst them. Anaxagoras, himself a native of Asia

Minor, lived in the important period between the war of the Medes and

the age of Pericles, principally in Athens, which had now reached the

zenith of its greatness, for it was both the head of Grecian power, and

the seat and centre of the arts and sciences. Athens, after the Persian

wars, brought the greater part of the Greek islands into subjection,

as also a number of maritime towns in Thrace, and even further into

the Black Sea. As the greatest artists collected in Athens, so also

did the most noted philosophers and sophists live there—a circle

of luminaries in the arts and sciences such as we have in Æschylus,

Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Diogenes of Apollonia, Protagoras,

Anaxagoras, and others from Asia Minor. Pericles then ruled the State,

and raised it to that height of splendour which may be called the

golden age in Athenian life; Anaxagoras, although living in the most

flourishing time of Athenian life, touches on its decay, or rather

reaches the first threatening of that decay, which ended in a total

extermination of this beautiful life.

What is of special interest at this time is the opposition between

Athens and Lacedæmon, the two Greek nations which contended with one

another for the foremost place in Greece; here we must therefore allude

to the principles of these celebrated States. While the Lacedæmonians

had no arts or sciences, Athens had to thank the character of its

constitution, and of its whole spirit, for the fact that it was the

seat of the sciences and fine arts. But the constitution of Lacedæmon

is also worthy of high esteem, for it regulated and restrained the

high Doric spirit, and its principal feature was that all personal

peculiarity was subordinated, or rather sacrificed, to the general aim

of the life of the State, and the individual had the consciousness of

his honour and sufficiency only in the consciousness of working for

the State. A people of such genuine unity, in whom the will of the

individual had, properly speaking, quite disappeared, were united by

an indestructible bond, and Lacedæmon was hence placed at the head of

Greece, and obtained the leadership, which, we find, it held among the

Argives in the days of Troy. This is a great principle which must exist

in every true State, but which with the Lacedæmonians retained its

one-sided character; this one-sidedness was avoided by the Athenians,

and by that means they became the greater. In Lacedæmon personality

proper was so much disregarded that the individual could not have

free development or expression; individuality was not recognized, and

hence not brought into harmony with the common end of the State. This

abrogation of the rights of subjectivity, which, expressed in his own

way, is also found in Plato’s Republic, was carried very far with the

Lacedæmonians. But the universal is living spirit only in so far as the

individual consciousness finds itself as such within it; the universal

is not constituted of the immediate life and being of the individual,

the mere substance, but formed of conscious life. As individuality

which separates itself from the universal is powerless and falls to

the ground, the one-sided universal, the morality of individuality

cannot stand firm. The Lacedæmonian spirit, which had not taken into

account the freedom of consciousness, and whose universal had isolated

itself therefrom, had hence to see it break forth in opposition to the

universal; and though the first to come forward as the liberators of

Greece from its tyranny were the Spartans, whom even Athens thanks for

the expulsion of the descendants of Pisistratus, their relationship

to their confederates soon passes into that of common, mean, tyranny.

Within the State it likewise ends in a harsh aristocracy, just as the

fixed equilibrium of property (each family retaining its inheritance,

and through forbidding the possession of money, or trade and commerce,

preventing the possibility of inequality in riches) passes into an

avarice which, as opposed to this universal, is brutal and mean. This

essential moment of particularity, not being taken into the State,

and hence not made legal and moral (moral first of all), comes forth

as vice. In a rational organization all the elements of the Idea are

present; if the liver were isolated as bile it would become not more,

and not less active, but becoming antagonistic, it would isolate itself

from the corporate economy of the body. Solon, on the contrary, gave to

the Athenians not only equality of laws and unity of spirit in their

constitution (which was a purer democracy than in Sparta), but although

each citizen had his substantial consciousness in unity with the laws

of the State, he also gave free play to the individual mind, so that

each might do as he would, and might find expression for himself.

Solon entrusted the executive to the people, not to the Ephors, and

this became self-government after the displacement of the tyrants,

and thus in truth a free people arose; the individual had the whole

within himself, as he had his consciousness and action in the whole.

Thus we see in this principle the formation of free consciousness

and the freedom of individuality in its greatness. The principle of

subjective freedom appears at first, however, still in unison with the

universal principle of Greek morality as established by law, and even

with mythology; and thus in its promulgation, because the genius of its

conceptions could develop freely, it brought about these masterpieces

in the beautiful plastic arts, and the immortal works of poetry and

history. The principle of subjectivity had, thus far, not taken the

form that particularity, as such, should be set free, and that its

content should be a subjectively particular, at least distinguished

from the universal principle, universal morality, universal religion,

universal laws. Thus we do not see the carrying out of isolated ideas,

but the great, moral, solid, divine content made in these works object

for consciousness, and generally brought before consciousness. Later

we shall find the form of subjectivity becoming free for itself, and

appearing in opposition to the substantial, to morality, religion, and

law.

The basis of this principle of subjectivity, though it is still a

merely general one, we now see in Anaxagoras. But amongst this noble,

free, and cultured people of Athens, he who had the happiness to be

first, was Pericles, and this circumstance raised him in the estimation

of the individual to a place so high that few could reach it. Of all

that is great amongst men, the power of ruling over the will of men who

have but one will, is the greatest, for this controlling individuality

must be both the most universal and the most living—a lot for a mortal

being than which hardly any better can be found. His individuality was,

according to Plutarch, (in Pericle 5) as deep as it was perfect; as

serious (he never laughed), as full of energy and restfulness: Athens

had him the whole day long. Thucydides has preserved some of Pericles’

speeches to the people which allow of few works being compared to them.

Under Pericles the highest culture of the moral commonwealth is to be

found, the juncture where individuality is still under and also in the

universal. Presently individuality prevails, because its activity falls

into extremes, since the state as state, is not yet independently

organized within itself. Because the essence of the Athenian State

was the common spirit, and the religious faith of individuals in this

constituted their essence, there disappears with the disappearance of

this faith, the inner Being of the people, since the spirit is not in

the form of the Notion as it is in our states. The speedy transition

to this last is the _νοῦς_, subjectivity, as Being, self-reflection.

When Anaxagoras at this time, the principle of which has just been

given, came to Athens, he was sought out by Pericles, and, as his

friend, lived in very intimate relations with him, before the latter

occupied himself with public affairs. But Plutarch (in Pericle 4, 16)

also relates that Anaxagoras came to want because Pericles neglected

him—did not supply the illuminating lamp with oil.

A more important matter is that Anaxagoras (as happened later with

Socrates and many other philosophers) was accused of despising those

whom the people accepted as gods. The prose of the understanding

came into contact with the poetic, religious point of view. It

is distinctly said by Diogenes Laertius (II. 12) that Anaxagoras

believed the sun and stars to be burning stones; and he is, according

to Plutarch, (in Pericle, 6) blamed for having explained something

that the prophets stated to be a marvellous omen, in a natural way;

it quite tallies with this that he is said to have foretold that on

the day of Ægos-Potamos, where the Athenians lost their last fleet

against Lysander, a stone should fall from heaven.[81] The general

remark might be made of Thales, Anaximander, &c., that the sun,

moon, earth and stars were counted as mere things, i.e. as objects

external to mind, and that they no longer held them to be living

gods, but represented them in different ways—which ideas, for the

rest, deserve no further consideration, since these matters belong

properly to ordinary learning. Things may be derived from thought;

thought really brings about the result that certain objects which may

be called divine, and certain conceptions of these which may be called

poetic, together with the whole range of superstitious beliefs, are

demolished—they are brought down to being what are called natural

things. For in thought, as the identity of itself and of Being, mind

knows itself as the truly actual, so that for mind in thought, the

unspiritual and material is brought down to being mere things, to the

negative of mind. All the ideas of those philosophers have this in

common, that nature is through them undeified; they brought the poetic

view of nature down to the prosaic, and destroyed the poetic point of

view which ascribes to all that is now considered to be lifeless, a

life proper to itself, perhaps also sensation, and, it may be, a being

after the usual order of consciousness. The loss of this point of view

is not to be lamented as if unity with nature, pure faith, innocent

purity and childlike spirit went with it. Innocent and childlike it

may certainly have been, but reason is just the going forth from

such innocence and unity with nature. So soon as mind grasps itself,

is for itself, it must for that very reason confront the ‘other’ of

itself as a negation of consciousness, i.e. look on it as something

devoid of mind, an unconscious and lifeless thing, and it must first

come to itself through this opposition. There is in this a fixing of

self-moving things such as are met with in the myths of the ancients,

who relate such tales as that the Argonauts secured the rocks on the

Straits of the Hellespont which formerly moved like scissors. Similarly

progressive culture consolidated that which formerly was thought to

have its own motion and life in itself, and made it into unmoving

matter. This transition of the mythical point of view into the prosaic,

here comes to be recognized by the Athenians. A prosaic point of

view such as this, assumes that man has requirements quite different

from those he formerly had; in this we find traces of the powerful,

necessary conversion brought about in the ideas of man through the

strengthening of thought, through knowledge of himself, and through

Philosophy.

The institution of charges of atheism, which we shall touch upon

more fully in dealing with Socrates, is, in Anaxagoras’ case, quite

comprehensible, from the specific reason that the Athenians, who were

envious of Pericles, who contended with him for the first place, and

who did not venture to proceed against him openly, took his favourites

to law, and sought through charges against his friend, to injure him.

Thus his friend Aspasia was brought under accusation, and the noble

Pericles had, according to Plutarch (in Pericle, 32), in order to save

her from condemnation, to beg the individual citizens of Athens with

tears for her acquittal. The Athenian people in their freedom, demanded

such acts of the potentates to whom they allowed supremacy, for thereby

an acknowledgment was given of their subordination to the people; they

thus made themselves the Nemesis in respect to the high place accorded

to the great, for they placed themselves in a position of equality with

these, while these again made evident their dependence, subjection

and powerlessness before the others. What is told about the result of

this charge against Anaxagoras is quite contradictory and uncertain:

Pericles certainly saved him from condemnation to death. He was either,

as some say, condemned only to banishment after Pericles had led him

before the people, speaking and entreating for him, after, by reason

of his age, attenuation and weakness the sympathy of the people had

been aroused; or else, as others say, with the help of Pericles, he

escaped from Athens and was in absence condemned to death, the judgment

never being executed upon him. Others again say that he was liberated,

but from the vexation that he felt respecting these charges, and from

apprehension as to their repetition, he voluntarily left Athens. And at

about sixty or seventy years of age, he died in Lampsacus in the 88th

Olympiad (428 B.C.).[82]

1. _The Universal Principle._ The logical principle of Anaxagoras was

that he recognized the _νοῦς_ as the simple, absolute essence of the

world. The simplicity of the _νοῦς_ is not a Being but a universality

which is distinguished from itself, though in such a way that the

distinction is immediately sublated and the identity is set forth for

itself. This universal for itself, sundered, exists in purity only

as thought; it exists also in nature as objective existence, but in

that case no longer purely for itself, but as having particularity as

an immediate in it. Space and time are, for example, the most ideal,

universal facts in nature as such, but there is no pure space, no pure

time and motion any more than any pure matter—for this universal is

immediately defined space, air, earth, &c. In thought, when I say, I

am I, or I = I, I certainly distinguish something from me, but the

pure unity remains; there is no movement but a distinction which is

not distinguished, or the being-for-me. And in all that I think, if

the thought has a definite content, it is my thought: I am thus known

to myself in this object. This universal which thus exists for itself

and the individual, or thought and being, thus, however, come into

definite opposition. Here the speculative unity of this universal with

the individual should be considered as it is posited as absolute unity,

but the comprehension of the Notion itself is certainly not found

with the ancients. We need not expect a pure Notion such as one of an

understanding realizing itself into a system, organized as a universe.

How Anaxagoras enunciated the Notion of the _νοῦς_, Aristotle (De

anim. I. 2) goes on to tell: “Anaxagoras maintains that the soul is

the principle of movement. Yet he does not always express himself

fully about the soul and _νοῦς_: he seems to separate _νοῦς_ and soul

from one another, and still he makes use of them as though they were

the same existence, only that by preference he makes the _νοῦς_ the

principle of everything. He certainly speaks frequently of the _νοῦς_

as of the cause of the beautiful and right, but another time he calls

it the soul. For it is in all animals, in large as well as small, the

higher kind and the lower; it alone of all existence is the simple,

unadulterated and pure; it is devoid of pain and is not in community

with any other.”[83] What we therefore have to do is to show from the

principle of motion, that it is the self-moving; and this thought is,

as existent for itself. As soul, the self-moving is only immediately

individual; the _νοῦς_, however, as simple, is the universal. Thought

moves on account of something: the end is the first simple which

makes itself result; this principle with the ancients is grasped as

good and evil, i.e. end as positive and negative. This determination

is a very important one, but with Anaxagoras it was not fully worked

out. While in the first place the principles are material, from these

Aristotle then distinguishes determination and form, and thirdly he

finds in the process of Heraclitus, the principle of motion. Then in

the fourth place there comes the reason why, the determination of end,

with the _νοῦς_; this is the concrete in itself. Aristotle adds in

the above-mentioned passage (p. 192), “according to these men” (the

Ionians and others) “and in reference to such causes” (water, fire,

&c.), “since they are not sufficient to beget the nature of things,

the philosophers are, as already said, compelled by the truth to go on

to the principle following (_ἐχομένην_). For neither the earth nor any

other principle is capable of explaining the fact that while on the

one hand all is good and beautiful, on the other, something else is

produced, and those men do not seem to have thought that this was so;

nor is it seemly to abandon such matters to hazard (_αὐτομάτῳ_) and to

chance.” Goodness and beauty express the simple restful Notion, and

change the Notion in its movement.

With this principle comes the determination of an understanding as of

self-determining activity; this has hitherto been wanting, for the

Becoming of Heraclitus, which is only process, is not yet as fate,

the independently self-determining. By this we must not represent

to ourselves subjective thought; in thinking we think immediately

of our thought as it is in consciousness. Here, on the contrary,

quite objective thought is meant, active understanding—as we say,

there is reason in the world, or we speak of genera in nature which

are the universal. The genus animal is the substantial of the dog;

the dog itself is this; the laws of nature are themselves nature’s

immanent essence. The nature is not formed from without as men

make a table; this is also made with understanding, but through an

understanding outside of this wood. This external form, which is

called the understanding, immediately occurs to us in speaking of

the understanding; but here the universal is meant, that which is

the immanent nature of the object itself. The _νοῦς_ is thus not a

thinking existence from without which regulates the world; by such

the meaning present to Anaxagoras would be quite destroyed and all

its philosophic interest taken away. For to speak of an individual,

a unit from without, is to fall into the ordinary conception and its

dualism; a so-called thinking principle is no longer a thought, but is

a subject. But still the true universal is for all that not abstract,

but the universal is just the determining in and out of itself of the

particular in and for itself. In this activity, which is independently

self-determining, the fact is at once implied that the activity,

because it constitutes process, retains itself as the universal

self-identical. Fire, which, according to Heraclitus, was process,

dies away and merely passes over, without independent existence, into

the opposite; it is certainly also a circle and a return to fire, but

the principle does not retain itself in its determinateness as the

universal, seeing that a simple passing into the opposite takes place.

This relation to itself in determination which we see appearing in

Anaxagoras, now, however, contains the determination of the universal

though it is not formally expressed, and therein we have the end or the

Good.

I have just recently (p. 316) spoken of the Notion of the end, yet

by that we must not merely think of the form of the end as it is in

us, in conscious beings. At first, end, in as far as I have it, is my

conception, which is for itself, and the realization of which depends

on my wish; if I carry it out, and if I am not unskilful, the object

produced must be conformable to the end, containing nothing but it.

There is a transition from subjectivity to objectivity through which

this opposition is always again sublated. Because I am discontented

with my end in that it is only subjective, my activity consists in

removing this defect and making it objective. In objectivity the

end has retained itself; for instance, if I have the end in view of

building a house and am active for that end, the house results in

which my end is realized. But we must not, as we usually do, abide at

the conception of this subjective end; in this case both I and the

end exist independently and externally in relation to each other. In

the conception that God, as wisdom, rules the world in accordance

with an end, for instance, the end is posited for itself in a wise,

figuratively conceiving Being. But the universal of end is the fact

that since it is a determination independently fixed, that rules

present existence, the end is the truth, the soul of a thing. The Good

in the end gives content to itself, so that while it is active with

this content, and after it has entered into externality, no other

content comes forth than what was already present. The best example of

this is presented in life; it has desires, and these desires are its

ends; as merely living, however, it knows nothing of these ends, but

yet they are first, immediate determinations which are established.

The animal works at satisfying these desires, i.e. at reaching the

end; it relates itself to external things, partly mechanically,

partly chemically. But the character of its activity does not remain

mechanical or chemical; the product is rather the animal itself,

which, as its own end, brings forth in its activity only itself, since

it negates and overturns those mechanical or chemical relationships.

In mechanical and chemical process, on the other hand, the result is

something different, in which the subject does not retain itself; but

in the end, beginning and end are alike, for we posit the subjective

objectively in order to receive it again. Self-preservation is a

continual production by which nothing new, but always the old, arises;

it is a taking back of activity for the production of itself.

Thus this self-determining activity, which is then active on something

else, enters into opposition, but it again negates the opposition,

governs it, in it reflects upon itself; it is the end, the thought,

that which conserves itself in its self-determination. The development

of these moments is the business of Philosophy from henceforth. But

if we look more closely as to how far Anaxagoras has got in the

development of this thought, we find nothing further than the activity

determining from out of itself, which sets up a limit or measure;

further than the determination of measure, development does not go.

Anaxagoras gives us no more concrete definition of the _νοῦς_, and

this we are still left to consider; we thus have nothing more than the

abstract determination of the concrete in itself. The above-mentioned

predicates which Anaxagoras gives the _νοῦς_, may thus indeed be

affirmed, but they are, on their own account, one-sided only.

2. _The Homœomeriæ._ This is the one side in the principle of

Anaxagoras; we now have to consider the going forth of the _νοῦς_

into further determinations. This remaining part of the philosophy of

Anaxagoras at first, however, makes us think that the hopes in which

such a principle justified us must be very much diminished. On the

other side, this universal is confronted by Being, matter, the manifold

generally, potentiality as distinguished from the former as actuality.

For if the Good or the end is also determined as potentiality, the

universal, as the self-moving, may rather be called the actual in

itself, the being-for-self, as opposed to implicit being, potentiality,

passivity. Aristotle says in an important passage (Met. I. 8): “If

any one should say of Anaxagoras that he adopted two principles,

he would rest his statement on a point respecting which the latter

never really clearly defined himself, but which he had necessarily

to acknowledge to those who adduced it.... That is, Anaxagoras says

that originally everything is mingled.... But where nothing is yet

separated, no distinguishing feature is present; such substance is

neither a white, black, gray, nor any other colour, but colourless; it

has no quality nor quantity nor determination (_τί_). All is mingled

except the _νοῦς_; this is unmingled and pure. With this in view, it

thus occurs to him to denominate as principles the one, for it alone is

single and unmingled, and the other-being (_θάτερον_), what we call the

indeterminate, before it has become determined or partakes of any kind

of form.”

This other principle is celebrated under the name of homœomeries

(_ὁμοιομερῆ_), of like parts or homogeneous, in Aristotle’s rendering

(Met. I. 3, 7); Riemer translates _ἡ ὁμοιομερεια_ “the similarity of

individual parts to the whole,” and _αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι_ “the elementary

matter,” yet this latter word seems to be of a later origin.[84]

Aristotle says, “Anaxagoras sets forth” (in respect of the material)

“infinitely many principles, for he maintained that, like water

and fire in Empedocles’ system, nearly all that is formed of like

parts only arises from union and passes away through separation;

other arising and passing away there is none, for equal parts remain

eternal.” That is, the existent, the individual matter, such as bones,

metal, flesh, &c., in itself consists of parts like itself—flesh

of small particles of flesh, gold of small gold particles, &c. Thus

he said at the beginning of his work, “All has been alike” (i.e.

unseparated as in a chaos), “and has rested for an infinitude of time;

then came the _νοῦς_, and it brought in movement, separated and brought

order into the separated creation (_διεκόσμησεν_), in that it united

the like.”[85]

The homœomeriæ become clearer if we compare them with the conceptions

of Leucippus and Democritus and others. In Leucippus and Democritus, as

well as Empedocles, we saw this matter, or the absolute as objective

existence, determined so that simple atoms—with the latter the four

elements and with the former infinitely many—were set forth as

separate only in form; their syntheses and combinations were existing

things. Aristotle (De cœlo, III. 3) says further on this point,

“Anaxagoras asserts of the elements the opposite to Empedocles. For

the latter takes as original principles, fire, air, earth, and water,

through whose union all things arise. On the other hand, Anaxagoras

maintains what are of like parts such as flesh, bones, or the like to

be simple materials; such things as water and fire, on the contrary,

are a mixture of the original elements. For any one of these four

consists of the infinite admixture of all invisible, existing things

of like parts, which hence come forth from these.” The principle

held good for him as for the Eleatics, that “the like only comes out

of the like; there is no transition into the opposite, no union of

opposites possible.” All change is hence to him only a separation

and union of the like; change as true change, would be a Becoming

out of the negative of itself. “That is, because Anaxagoras,” says

Aristotle (Phys. I, 4), “partook of the view of all physicists that

it is impossible that anything can come out of nothing, there was

nothing left but to admit that what becomes was already present as an

existent, but that, on account of its small size, it was imperceptible

to us.” This point of view is also quite different from the conception

of Thales and Heraclitus, in which, not only the possibility, but

the actuality of the transformation of these like qualitative

differences is essentially maintained. But to Anaxagoras with whom

the elements are a mingled chaos formed therefrom, having only an

apparent uniformity, concrete things arise through the severance of

these infinitely many principles from such a chaos, since like finds

like. Respecting the difference between Empedocles and Anaxagoras,

there is further what Aristotle adds in the same place: “The former

allows a change (_περίοδον_) in these conditions, the latter only

their one appearance.” The conception of Democritus is similar to that

of Anaxagoras in so far as that an infinite manifold is the original

source. But with Anaxagoras the determination of the fundamental

principles appears to contain that which we consider as organized, and

to be by no means an independently existent simple; thus perfectly

individualized atoms such as particles of flesh and of gold, form,

through their coming together, that which appears to be organized. That

comes near our ordinary ideas. Means of nourishment, it is thought,

contain such parts as are homogeneous to blood, flesh, &c. Anaxagoras

hence says, according to Aristotle (De gen. anim. I. 18), “Flesh

comes to flesh through food.” Digestion is thus nothing more than the

taking up of the homogeneous and separation of the heterogeneous;

all nourishment and growth is thus not true assimilation but only

increase, because each internal organ of the animal only draws its

parts to itself out of the various plants, bodies, &c. Death is, on

the other hand, the separation of the like and the mingling with the

heterogeneous. The activity of the _νοῦς_, as the sundering of the like

out of the chaos and the putting together of the like, as also the

setting at liberty again of this like, is certainly simple and relative

to itself, but purely formal and thus for itself contentless.

This is the general standpoint of the philosophy of Anaxagoras,

and quite the same standpoint which in more recent times reigns in

chemistry for instance; flesh is certainly no longer regarded as

simple, but as being hydrogen, &c. The chemical elements are oxygen,

hydrogen, carbon and metals, &c. Chemistry says, if you want to know

what flesh, wood, stone, &c., really are, you must set forth their

simple elements, and these are ultimate. It also says that much is only

relatively simple, _e.g._ platinum consists of three or four metals.

Water and air were similarly long held to be simple, but chemistry at

length analyzed them. From this chemical point of view, the simple

principles of natural things are determined as infinitely qualitative

and thus accepted as unchangeable and invariable, so that all else

consists only of the combination of these simples. Man, according to

this, is a collection of carbon and hydrogen, some earth, oxides,

phosphorus, &c. It is a favourite idea of the physicists to place

in the water or in the air, oxygen and carbon, which exist and only

require to be separated. This idea of Anaxagoras certainly also differs

from modern chemistry; that which we consider as concrete, is for him

qualitatively determined or elementary. Yet he allows, with regard to

flesh, that the parts are not all alike. “For this reason, they say,”

remarks Aristotle (Phys. I. 4; Met. IV. 5),—but not particularly

of Anaxagoras—“everything is contained in everything, for they saw

everything arise out of everything: it only appears to be different and

is called different in accordance with the predominating number of the

particular kind of parts which have mingled themselves with others. In

truth the whole is not white, or black, or sweet, or flesh, or bones;

but the homœomeriæ which have most accumulated in any place, bring

about the result that the whole appears to us as this determinate.”

As thus each thing contains all other things, water, air, bones,

fruits, &c., on the other hand, the water contains flesh as flesh,

bones, &c. Into this infinitely manifold nature of the principles,

Anaxagoras thus goes back; the sensuous has first arisen through the

accumulation of all those parts, and in it the one kind of parts then

has a predominance.

While he defines absolute existence as universal, we see here that in

objective existence, or in matter, universality and thought abandon

Anaxagoras. The implicit is to him, indeed, no absolutely sensuous

Being; the homœomeriæ are the non-sensuous, _i.e._ the invisible and

inaudible, &c. This is the highest point reached by common physicists

in passing from sensuous Being to the non-sensuous, as to the mere

negation of the being-for-us; but the positive side is that existent

Being is itself universal. The objective is to Anaxagoras certainly

the _νοῦς_, but for him the other-Being is a mixture of simple

elements, which are neither flesh nor fish, red nor blue; again

this simple is not simple in itself, but in its essence consists of

homœomeriæ, which are, however, so small that they are imperceptible.

The smallness thus does not take away their existence, for they are

still there; but existence is just the being perceptible to sight,

smell, &c. These infinitely small homœomeriæ undoubtedly disappear in

a more complete conception; flesh, for instance, is such itself, but

it is also a mixture of everything, _i.e._ it is not simple. Further

analysis equally shows how such a conception must, to a greater or

lesser degree, become confused; on the one side each form is thus

in its main elements, original, and these parts together constitute

a corporeal whole; this whole has, however, on the other side, to

contain everything in itself. The _νοῦς_, then, is only what binds and

separates, what divides and arranges [_das diakosmirende_]. This may

suffice us; however easily we may get confused with the homœomeriæ of

Anaxagoras, we must hold fast to the main determination. The homœomeriæ

still form a striking conception, and it may be asked how it conforms

with the rest of Anaxagoras’ principle.

3. _The Relation of the Two._ Now as to the relation of the _νοῦς_

to that matter, both are not speculatively posited as one, for

the relation itself is not set forth as one, nor has the Notion

penetrated it. Here the ideas become in some measure superficial, and

in some measure the conceptions are more consistent as regards the

particular, than they at first appear. Because the understanding is the

self-determining, the content is end, it retains itself in relation to

what is different; it does not arise and pass away although it is in

activity. The conception of Anaxagoras that concrete principles subsist

and retain themselves, is thus consistent; he abolishes arising and

passing away and accepts only an external change, a uniting together,

and a severance of what is so united. The principles are concrete and

have content, _i.e._ so many ends; in the change that takes place the

principles really retain themselves. Like only goes with like even if

the chaotic mixture is a combination of the unlike; but this is only a

combination and not an individual, living form which maintains itself,

binding like to like. Thus, however rude these ideas are, they are

still really in harmony with the _νοῦς_.

But if the _νοῦς_ is with Anaxagoras the moving soul in all, it yet

remains to the real, as the soul of the world and the organic system of

the whole, a mere word. For the living as living, since the soul was

conceived of as principle, the ancients demanded no further principle

(for it is the self-moving), but for determinateness, which the

animal is as element in the system of the whole, they again required

only the universal of these determinations. Anaxagoras calls the

understanding such a principle, and in fact the absolute Notion, as

simple existence, the self-identical in its differences, the dividing,

the reality-establishing, must be known as such. But that Anaxagoras

showed forth the understanding in the universe, or had grasped it as

a rational system—of this not only do we not find a trace, but the

ancients expressly say that he simply let the matter pass, just as

when we say that the world or nature is a great system, the world is

wisely ordered or is generally speaking rational. By this we are shown

no more of the realization of this reason or the comprehensibility of

the world. The _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is thus still formal, although

the identity of the principle with the realization was recognized.

Aristotle (Met. I. 4) recognizes the insufficiency of the Anaxagorean

principle: “Anaxagoras, indeed, requires the _νοῦς_ for his formation

of the world-system; that is, when he has a difficulty in showing the

reason for which it is in accordance with necessity, he brings it in;

otherwise he employs anything for the sake of explanation, rather than

thought.”

It is nowhere more clearly set forth that the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is

still formal, than in the well-known passage out of Plato’s Phædo (p.

97-99, Steph.; p. 85-89, Bekk.), which is noteworthy for its exposition

of the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Socrates, according to Plato, states

most definitely both what the absolute to them was, and why Anaxagoras

did not satisfy them. I quote this because it will best of all lead

us on to the main conception which we recognize in the philosophic

consciousness of the ancients; at the same time it is an example of the

loquacity of Socrates. Socrates’ understanding of the _νοῦς_ as end

is better because its determinations are congenial to him, so that we

also see in it the principal forms that appear in Socrates. Plato makes

Socrates, in prison, an hour before his death, relate at considerable

length his experiences with regard to Anaxagoras: “When I heard it read

from a book of Anaxagoras, that he said that the understanding is the

disposer of the world and the first cause, I rejoiced in such a cause,

and I held that if Mind apportioned out all reality, it would apportion

it for the best” (the end would be shown forth). “Now if anyone wished

to find the cause of the individual thing, how it becomes, and how it

passes away, or how it is, he must discover this from what is best for

that thing, whether it is being or in some way suffering or doing.”

That the understanding is cause, or that everything is made for the

best, means the same thing; this will become clearer from the opposite.

It is further said, “For this reason a man has only to consider for

himself, as for all others, what is best and most perfect, and then he

would of necessity know the worse, for the same science comprises both.

Thus reflecting, I rejoiced that I could believe that I had found in

Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of existence” (of the good) “such

as I approved of; he would, I believed, tell me whether the earth was

flat or round, and if he told me this, he would show me the cause and

necessity of the fact, because he would show me the one or the other

as being the better; and if he said that the earth is in the centre,

he would show me that it was better that it should be in the centre”

(i.e. its implicitly and explicitly determined end, and not utility as

an externally determined end). “And when he had shown me this, I should

be satisfied though he brought forward no other kind of causes, for

the same would hold good for the sun, the moon, and the other stars,

their respective velocities, returnings, and other conditions. Because

he assigned its cause to each and to all in common, I thought that he

would explain what was best for each and what was best for all” (the

free, implicitly and explicitly existent Idea, the absolute end). “I

would not have given up this hope for a great deal, but seized these

writings zealously and read them as soon as possible in order to learn

as soon as possible the good and the evil. These bright hopes faded

when I saw that he did not require thought at all nor any reason for

the formation of things, but had recourse to air, fire, water and many

other eccentricities.” We here see how to what is best, according to

the understanding (the relation of final end), that which we call

natural causes is opposed, just as in Leibnitz the operating and the

final causes are different.

Socrates explains this in the following way: “It appears to me to be

as if some one were to say that Socrates performs all his actions with

understanding, and then in going on to give the reasons for each of

my actions, were to say that I sit here because my body consists of

bones and muscles; the bones are fixed and have joints that divide

them (_διαφυὰς_), but the muscles have the power of extending and

bending, and they cover the bones with flesh and skin; it is as though

he were further to bring forward as the cause of my talking with

you, other similar causes, sounds, and air, hearing, and a thousand

other things, but omitted to give the true cause” (free independent

determination), “which is that the Athenians judged it fit to condemn

me, and therefore I judged it better and more just to sit here and to

suffer the punishment which they accorded” (we must recollect that one

of his friends had arranged everything for the flight of Socrates, but

that he refused to go) “for else, by the dog of Egypt, how long ago

would these bones and muscles have gone to Megara or to Boeotia, had

they been moved only by their opinion of what was best, and had I not

considered it juster and better to bear the punishment which the State

laid upon me, instead of escaping and fleeing from it.” Plato here

correctly places the two kinds of reason and cause in opposition to one

another—the cause proceeding from ends, and the inferior, subject, and

merely external causes of chemistry, mechanism, &c.—in order to show

the discrepancy between them, as here exemplified in the case of a man

with consciousness. Anaxagoras seems to define an end and to wish to

proceed from it; but he immediately lets this go again and proceeds to

quite external causes. “But to call these” (these bones and muscles)

“causes is quite improper. If, however, anyone were to say that without

having bones and muscles and whatever else I have, I could not do

that which I consider best, he would be quite right. But to say that

from such causes, I do that which I do, and do with understanding;

to say that I do not do it from the choice of what is best—to make

such an assertion shows a great want of consideration; it signifies an

incapacity to distinguish that the one is the true cause and the other

is only that without which the cause could not operate,” _i.e._ the

conditions.

This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes

of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it

is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate

and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean

_νοῦς_ we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras

made no application of his _νοῦς_ to reality. But the positive

element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to

be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to

desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which

fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is

partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive

action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so

far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other

hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in

nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes,

and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that

are immanent. According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in

Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the

causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek

in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration

of nature in relation to ends—as present in our thought and not

existent in nature—we also banish from our consideration teleological

explanations in nature formerly admired, _e.g._ that grass grows that

animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we

may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be

consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have

skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to

the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the

inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end,

the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then

becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to

another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful

for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to

them. The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and

this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is

to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does

not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin;

Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at

nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient

is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s

meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to

represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think

of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to

what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence

as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized

in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered

consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and

for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This

Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself;

it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and

which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination

before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming

is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the

animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins

its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of

something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as

germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which

in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a

particular thing, which might have another content than reality or

appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition

of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and

the product are the same. This realization goes right through the

opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The

genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal,

and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of

races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus.

They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals

in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus.

Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought

forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the

universal.

In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly

named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now

if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the

moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example,

where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this

its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree

whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises.

Answers of this kind give the causes, _i.e._ the individuality

opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now

nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the

sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence

certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set

the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles,

&c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are

so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal,

however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear

in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts

actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result

into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just

as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which

constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different

individuals. Their real nature is the same.

But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially

related to another, _e.g._ the Idea of the plant to that of the animal;

the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology—that plants

are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies.

The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in

the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth

has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each

moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus

is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal

the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the

universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted

to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided

way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just

as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for

itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back

into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself,

but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it

is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found

directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up.

Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the

world which is immanent within it.

These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the

speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly

expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent.

What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby

think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness

as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its

speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This

is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that

thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak,

the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here

on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form,

dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in

Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal

when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction,

pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the

significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself,

to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has

reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got:

it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone

knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought,

indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the

positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the

predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far

as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery

of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second

period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very

great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in

it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor,

abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations—water,

Being, number, &c.—and these cannot endure; the universal must go

forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we

find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.

We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed

to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By

Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of

consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory

can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real

existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary

reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and

independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, _i.e._ an infinite

amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is

sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ.

The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise

be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in

thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception;

for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus,

in the first place, we find from him—as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math.

VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (_λόγος_) is the criterion of

the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their

weakness”—weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small;

the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be

something ideal and thought. A celebrated example of this is given by

him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion

that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He

here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to

Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that,

“there is a medium between contradiction (_ἀντιφάσεως_); so that

everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are

mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not

true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That

one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as

they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent

Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists,

sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.

There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning

of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to

Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the

true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought;

and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it

is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in

so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the

knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something

foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign

is Thought, _i.e._ consciousness has this real existence in itself.

But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness;

thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is

what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed,

known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than

that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of

the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of

consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists;

we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the

universal is now developing.