THE ATOMISTS
_Anaxagoras and the cosmos--Mind in nature--The seeds of existence_
[129]
I. ANAXAGORAS.--Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia,
about the year 500 B.C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, of
which city Clazomenae was for some time a dependency. This step on his
part may have been connected with the circumstances attending the great
invasion of Greece by Xerxes in the year 480. For Xerxes drew a large
contingent of his army from the Ionian cities which he had subdued, and
many who were unwilling to serve against their mother-country may have
taken refuge about that time in Athens. At Athens he resided for
nearly fifty years, and during that period became the friend and
teacher of many eminent men, among the rest of Pericles, the great
Athenian [118] statesman, and of Euripides, the dramatist. Like most
of the Ionian philosophers he had a taste for mathematics and
astronomy, as well as for certain practical applications of
mathematics. Among other books he is said to have written a treatise
on the art {53} of scene-designing for the stage, possibly to oblige
his friend and pupil Euripides. In his case, as in that of his
predecessors, only fragments of his philosophic writings have been
preserved, and the connection of certain portions of his teaching as
they have come down to us remains somewhat uncertain.
[119]
With respect to the constitution of the universe we have the following:
"Origination and destruction are phrases which are generally
misunderstood among the Greeks. Nothing really is originated or
destroyed; the only processes which actually take place are combination
and separation of elements already existing. [120] These elements we
are to conceive as having been in a state of chaos at first, infinite
in number and infinitely small, forming in their immobility a confused
and characterless unity. About this chaos was spread the air and
aether, infinite also in the multitude of their particles, and
infinitely extended. Before separation commenced there was no clear
colour or appearance in anything, whether of moist or dry, of hot or
cold, of bright or dark, but only an infinite number of the seeds of
things, having concealed in them all manner of forms and colours and
savours."
There is a curious resemblance in this to the opening verses of
Genesis, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep." Nor is the next step in his philosophy without
its resemblance to that in the Biblical record. [122] As summarised by
Diogenes Laertius it takes this form, "All things were as one: then
cometh Mind, and by division brought all things into order." [121]
"Conceiving," as Aristotle puts it, "that the original elements of
things had no power to generate or develop out of themselves things as
they exist, philosophers were forced by the facts themselves to seek
the immediate cause of this development. They were unable to believe
that fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account for
the order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they think
it possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance.
_One_ (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is the
ordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause of
order and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared with
those before him, as one sober amidst a crowd of babblers."
[122]
Elsewhere, however, Aristotle modifies this commendation.
"Anaxagoras," he says, "uses Mind only as a kind of last resort,
dragging it in when he fails otherwise to account for a phenomenon, but
never thinking of it else." And in the _Phaedo_ Plato makes Socrates
speak of the high hopes with which he had taken to the works of
Anaxagoras, and how grievously he had been disappointed. "As I
proceeded," he says, "I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Mind
or any other principle of order, and having {55} recourse to air, and
aether, and water, and other eccentricities."
Anaxagoras, then, at least on this side of his teaching, must be
considered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of a
philosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence on
subsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than a
dead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety of
phenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he is
theoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels,' in practice he is
a materialist.
[12]
Mind he conceived as something apart, sitting throned like Zeus upon
the heights, giving doubtless the first impulse to the movement of
things, but leaving them for the rest to their own inherent tendencies.
As distinguished from them it was, he conceived, the one thing which
was absolutely pure and unmixed. All things else had intermixture with
every other, the mixtures increasing in complexity towards the centre
of things. On the outmost verge were distributed the finest and least
complex forms of things--the sun, the moon, the stars; the more dense
gathering together, to form as it were in the centre of the vortex, the
earth and its manifold existences. By the intermixture of air and
earth and water, containing in themselves the infinitely varied seeds
of things, plants and animals were {56} developed. The seeds
themselves are too minute to be apprehended by the senses, but we can
divine their character by the various characters of the visible things
themselves, each of these having a necessary correspondence with the
nature of the seeds from which they respectively were formed.
[128]
Thus for a true apprehension of things sensation and reason are both
necessary--sensation to certify to the apparent characters of objects,
reason to pass from these to the nature of the invisible seeds or atoms
which cause those characters. Taken by themselves our sensations are
false, inasmuch as they give us only combined impressions, yet they are
a necessary stage towards the truth, as providing the materials which
reason must separate into their real elements.
From this brief summary we may gather that Mind was conceived, so to
speak, as placed at the _beginning_ of existence, inasmuch as it is the
first originator of the vortex motions of the atoms or seeds of things;
it was conceived also at the _end_ of existence as the power which by
analysis of the data of sensation goes back through the complexity of
actual being to the original unmingled or undeveloped nature of things.
But the whole process of nature itself between these limits Anaxagoras
conceived as a purely mechanical or at least physical development, the
uncertainty of his view as between these two alternative ways of
considering it being {57} typified in his use of the two expressions
_atoms_ and _seeds_. The analogies of this view with those of modern
materialism, which finds in the ultimate molecules of matter "the
promise and the potency of all life and all existence," need not be
here enlarged upon.
After nearly half a century's teaching at Athens Anaxagoras was
indicted on a charge of inculcating doctrines subversive of religion.
It is obvious enough that his theories left no room for the popular
mythology, but the Athenians were not usually very sensitive as to the
bearing of mere theories upon their public institutions. It seems
probable that the accusation was merely a cloak for political
hostility. Anaxagoras was the friend and intimate of Pericles, leader
of the democratic party in the state, and the attack upon Anaxagoras
was really a political move intended to damage Pericles. As such
Pericles himself accepted it, and the trial became a contest of
strength, which resulted in a partial success and a partial defeat for
both sides. Pericles succeeded in saving his friend's life, but the
opposite party obtained a sentence of fine and banishment against him.
Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont, and there,
after some five years, he died.
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