ate 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