Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/276

 262 appearance by maintaining that the opposites—hot and cold, moist and dry—were things, each one of which was real in the Parmenidean sense. Anaxagoras regarded this as inadequate. Everything changes into everything else, the things of which the world is made are not "cut off with a hatchet" (fr. 8) in this way. On the contrary, the true formula must be: There is a portion of everything in everything (fr. 11).

128. A part of the argument by which Anaxagoras sought to prove this point has been preserved in a corrupt form by Aetios, and Diels has recovered some of the original words from the scholiast on St. Gregory Nazianzene. "We use a simple nourishment," he said, "when we eat the fruit of Demeter or drink water. But how can hair be made of what is not hair, or flesh of what is not flesh?" (fr. 10). That is just the sort of question the early Milesians must have asked, only the physiological interest has now definitely replaced the meteorological. We shall find a similar train of reasoning in Diogenes of Apollonia (fr. 2).

The statewent that there is a portion of everything in everything, is not to be understood as referring simply to the original mixture of things before the formation of the worlds (fr. 1). On the contrary, even now "all things are together," and everything, however small and however great, has an equal number of "portions" (fr. 6). A smaller particle of matter could only contain a smaller number of portions, if one of those portions ceased to be; but if anything is, in the full Parmenidean sense, it, is impossible that mere division should make it cease to be (fr. 3). Matter is infinitely divisible; for there is no least thing, any more than there is a greatest. But however great or small a body may be, it contains just the same number of "portions," that is, a portion of everything.

129. What are these "things" of which everything