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.
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