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176 thus the founder, we may say, of what is nowadays termed Natural Theology as distinguished from Revelation. The doctrine of Anaxagoras will come out more clearly if we compare it with the position occupied by the philosophers who preceded him.

13. Previous to the time of Anaxagoras, philosophers had speculated concerning the beginning or origin of things, but not concerning their ends or purposes. The changes and operations of nature were too obtrusive not to compel them to have recourse to some active principle or principles whereby these changes might be explained. In the Ionic school some vital force was admitted, some anima mundi, by which the condensation or rarefaction of the primeval element was brought about. In the Eleatic school, in so far as they departed from the strict logic of their system and admitted change into the universe, some active principle or influence was laid down as the efficient cause of the changes. By Heraclitus, who contended that the whole universe was a continual flux or process of change—by him strife or contention was set forth as the parent or producer of all things, , war as the begetter of all things. The efficient agents of. Empedocles were  and  friendship and enmity. And the Atomists invested their atoms with certain principles of attraction and repulsion, by which their combinations and separations were determined. I mention these particulars for the purpose of