ngeability of the universe.]

[Sidenote: The primal intellect.]

[Sidenote: Cosmogony of Anaxagoras.]

The fundamental principle of his philosophy was the recognition of the
unchangeability of the universe as a whole, the variety of forms that we
see being produced by new arrangements of its constituent parts. Such a
doctrine includes, of course, the idea of the eternity of matter.
Anaxagoras says, "Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or
ceases to be, for nothing comes into being or is destroyed, but all is
an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things, so that all becoming
might more correctly be called becoming-mixed, and all corruption
becoming-separate." In such a statement we cannot fail to remark that
the Greek is fast passing into the track of the Egyptian and the Hindu.
In some respects his views recall those of the chaos of Anaximander, as
when he says, "Together were all things infinite in number and
smallness; nothing was distinguishable. Before they were sorted, while
all was together, there was no quality noticeable." To the first moving
force which arranged the parts of things out of the chaos, he gave the
designation of "the Intellect," rejecting Fate as an empty name, and
imputing all things to Reason. He made no distinction between the Soul
and Intellect. His tenets evidently include a dualism indicated by the
moving force and the moved mass, an opposition between the corporeal and
mental. This indicated that for philosophy there are two separate
routes, the physical and intellectual. While Reason is thus the prime
mover in his philosophy, he likewise employed many subordinate agents in
the government of things--for instance, air, water, and fire, being
evidently unable to explain the state of nature in a satisfactory way by
the operation of the Intellect alone. We recognize in the details of his
system ideas derived from former ones, such as the settling of the cold
and dense below, and the rising of the warm and light above. In the
beginning the action of Intellect was only partial; that which was
primarily moved was only imperfectly sorted, and contained in itself the
capability of many separations. From this point his system became a
cosmogony, showing how the elements and fogs, stones, stars, and the
sea, were produced. These explanations, as mighty be anticipated, have
no exactness. Among his primary elements are many incongruous things,
such as cold, colour, fire, gold, lead, c