Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/24

10 VII. Now, Ionian science was introduced into Athens by Anaxagoras about the time Euripides was born, and there are sufficient traces of its influence on him. It is, therefore, significant that, in a fragment which portrays the blessedness of a life devoted to scientific research (ἱστορία) he uses the very epithets "ageless and deathless" which Anaximander had applied to the one primary substance, and that he associates them with the term φύσις The passage is so important for our present purpose that I quote it in full: ὄλβιος ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας ἔσχε μάθησιν, μήτε πολιτῶν ἐπὶ πημοσύνας μήτ' εἰς ἀδίκους πράξεις ὁρμῶν, ἀλλ' ἀθανάτου καθορῶν φύσεως κόσμον ἀγήρω, τίς τε συνέστη καὶ ὅπη καὶ ὅπως· τοῖς τοιούτοις οὐδέποτ' αἰσχρῶν ἔργων μελέτημα προσίζει.

This fragment is clear evidence that, in the fifth century B.C., the name φύσις was given to the everlasting something of which the world was made. That is quite in accordance with the history of the word, so far as we can make it out. Its original meaning appears to be the "stuff" of which