Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/269

247 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 247 after the example of Anaximenes. The copious fragments extant* exhibit short sentences connected by particles (as, and, but, for) with- out long periods. But though his style was loose, his reasoning was compact and well arranged. His demonstrations were synthetic, not analytic; that is to say, he subjoined the proof to the proposiiion to be proved, instead of arriving at his result by a process of inquiry. t The philosophy of Anaxagoras began with his doctrine of atoms, which, contrary to the opinion of all his predecessors, he considered as limited in number. He was the first to exclude the idea of creation from his explanation of nature. " The Greeks (he said) were mis- taken in their doctrine of creation and destruction; for nothing is either created or destroyed, but it is only produced from existing things by mixture, or it is dissolved by separation. They should therefore rather call creation a conjunction, and destruction a dissolution. "J It is easy to imagine that Anaxagoras, with this opinion, must have arrived at the doctrine of atoms which were unchangeable and imperishable, and which were mixed and united in bodies in different ways. But since, from the want of chemical knowledge, he was unable to deter- mine the component parts of bodies, he supposed that each separate body (as bone, flesh, wood, stone) consisted of corresponding particles, which are the celebrated dfwtouspEtai of Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, to explain the production of one thing from another he was obliged to assume that all things contained a portion of all other things, and that the particular form of each body depended upon the preponderating ingredient. Now, as Anaxagoras maintained the doctrine that bodies are mere matter, without any spontaneous power of change, he also required a principle of life and motion beyond the material world. This he called spirit (iovq), which, he says, is " the purest and most subtle of all things, having the most knowledge and the greatest strength. "§ Spirit does not obey the universal law of the ofxoiofxspsiat, viz. that of mixing with every thing; it exists in animate beings, but not so closely combined with the material atoms as these are with each other. This spirit gave to all those material atoms, which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder, the impulse by which they took the forms of indi- vidual tilings and beings. Anaxagoras considered this impulse as having been given by the rove in a circular direction; according to his opinion, not only the sun, moon, and stars, but even the air and the a?ther, are Illustrata, ab E. Schaubach, Lipsi»j 1827 ; fragm. 8. f Ilt'iice, for example, the p.issage concerning production quoted loner down was not at the beginning, but followed the propositions about i/toioftsguxi, >«D;, and motion. J Simplicius ad Phys. p. 34(i, fragm. 22, Schaubach. Concerning the position see Panzerbieter de Fragm. Anaxag. Online, p. 9, 21. & "EiTT/ yuo XsTroraro'v ts -ratruv %gr.f/.wrvv y.xi xafa^aiTavov, xui ywy.m yi xui rrccv- rc; trcctrocv "<r%n, xc.) l<r%iu (ityltrrov. Simplicius, ubi sup. Fragm. 8, Schaub.
 * The longest is in Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. p. 336. Anaxagovrc Fragmenta