Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/288

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This theory marks in some respects an advance on that of Empedokles. It was a happy thought of Anaxagoras to make sensation depend upon irritation by opposites, and to connect it with pain. Many modern theories are based upon a similar idea.

That Anaxagoras regarded the senses as incapable of reaching the truth of things is shown by the fragments preserved by Sextus. But we must not, for all that, turn him into a sceptic. The saying preserved by Aristotle that "things are as we suppose them to be," has no value at all as evidence. It comes from some collection of apophthegms, not from the treatise of Anaxagoras himself; and it had, as likely as not, a moral application. He did say (fr. 21) that "the weakness of our senses prevents our discerning the truth," but this meant simply that we do not see the "portions" of everything which are in