d chemical
processes, or, putting it otherwise, between molecular processes and
atomic processes; but the reader must be guarded against supposing that
Anaxagoras had any such thought as this in mind. His ultimate mixable
particles can be compared only with the Daltonian atom, not with the
molecule of the modern physicist, and his "infinite, self-powerful, and
unmixable" particles are not comparable with anything but the ether of
the modern physicist, with which hypothetical substance they have many
points of resemblance. But the "infinite, self-powerful, and unmixed"
particles constituting thus an ether-like plenum which permeates all
material structures, have also, in the mind of Anaxagoras, a function
which carries them perhaps a stage beyond the province of the modern
ether. For these "infinite, self powerful, and unmixed" particles are
imbued with, and, indeed, themselves constitute, what Anaxagoras terms
nous, a word which the modern translator has usually paraphrased as
"mind." Neither that word nor any other available one probably conveys
an accurate idea of what Anaxagoras meant to imply by the word nous.
For him the word meant not merely "mind" in the sense of receptive and
comprehending intelligence, but directive and creative intelligence as
well. Again let Anaxagoras speak for himself: "Other things include
a portion of everything, but nous is infinite, and self-powerful, and
mixed with nothing, but it exists alone, itself by itself. For if it
were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would include
parts of all things, if it were mixed with anything; for a portion of
everything exists in every thing, as has been said by me before, and
things mingled with it would prevent it from having power over anything
in the same way that it does now that it is alone by itself. For it is
the most rarefied of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge
in regard to everything and the greatest power; over all that has life,
both greater and less, nous rules. And nous ruled the rotation of the
whole, so that it set it in rotation in the beginning. First it began
the rotation from a small beginning, then more and more was included
in the motion, and yet more will be included. Both the mixed and the
separated and distinct, all things nous recognized. And whatever things
were to be, and whatever things were, as many as are now, and whatever
things shall be, all these nous arranged in order; and it arrang