Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/11

 

 

 

 NAXAGORAS, according to the most probable calculations, was born about the year At his native  of, in , he had, it appears, some amount of property and prospects of  influence, both of which he surrendered, from a fear that they would interfere with his search after the. In early manhood he went to, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters of ; and in that city he is said to have continued for thirty years. Here learnt to love and admire him; and the   derived from him an enthusiasm for  and humanity. His influence was due partly to his and  eminence, but still more to the  dignity of his nature, and his superiority to ordinary weaknesses—traits which legend has embalmed. His observations of the celestial bodies led him to form new theories of the universal order, and brought him into collision with the which found the objects of its worship in the heavens. Anaxagoras had tried to reduce s to the operation of known causes: he had removed the of deity from the, and profanely turned  into a mass of blazing , larger than the ; and he was even reported to have brought the phenomena of  within the limits of predictable events. The dominant, and the ignorance of the multitude, could not tolerate such explanation; and the enemies of used the s of their countrymen as a means of attacking the ideas of that statesman in the person of his friend. Anaxagoras was arrested on a charge of contravening the established dogmas of ; and it required all the of Pericles to rescue him from the persecutors. Even then Athens could no longer be the sphere of his activity. He was forced to retire to, where he died about It is difficult to present the cosmical theory of Anaxagoras in an intelligible scheme. All things have existed in a sort of way from the beginning. But originally they existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in their number, inextricably mixed throughout the spaces of the world. All things were in that mass, but in the obscurity of indistinguishableness. There were the seeds or miniatures of, and, and , in the primitive mixture; but these parts, of like nature with their wholes (the of ), had to he eliminated from the complex mass before they could receive a definite name and character. The existing species of things having thus been transferred, with all their specialities, to the prehistoric stage, they were multiplied endlessly in number, by reducing their size through continued subdivision, at the same time that each one thing is so indissolubly connected with every other that the keenest analysis can never completely sever them. The work of arrangement, the segregation of like from unlike, and the summation of the into totals of the same name, was the work of  or. This peculiar thing, called Mind, was no less illimitable than the chaotic mass, but it stood pure and independent, a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations, and everywhere the same. This subtle agent, possessed of all knowledge and power, is especially seen ruling in all the forms of. Its first appearance, and the only manifestation of it which Anaxagoras describes, is. Reason originated a rotatory movement in the mass (a movement far exceeding the most rapid in this present scene), which, arising in one corner or point, gradually extended till it gave distinctness and reality to the aggregates of like parts. But even after it has done its best, the original intermixing of things is not wholly overcome. No one thing in the world is ever absolutely separated, as by the blow of an, from the rest of things. The name given to it merely signifies that in that congeries of fragments the particular seed is preponderant. Every a of this present universe is only a by a majority, and is also in lesser number b, c, d. Anaxagoras proceeded to give some amount of the stages in the process from original chaos to present arrangements. The division into cold and warm  first broke the spell of confusion. With increasing cold, the former gave rise to, , and s. The seeds of life which continued floating in the were carried down with the s, and produced. s, including, sprang from the warm and moist. If these things be so, then the evidence of the s must be held in slight esteem. We seem to see things coming into being and passing from it; but reflection tells us that decease and growth only mean a new aggregation and disruption. Thus Anaxagoras distrusted the senses, and gave