Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/362

358 of matter, as the reality of life. In the language of the early Greeks we find the words soul and spirit synonymous with breath, and while the Greeks had the practical idea of the soul as the active power in being, they conceived of it as a thinner, finer form of matter. For example, Anaximenes speaks of air as being the breath of life. These old Ionian thinkers were not materialists, however, in quite the modern sense, which explains spirit as a function of matter, but they held rather the childlike idea that spirit is a purer, higher form of matter, for matter with them was the eternal existing something. It was not created, neither did the gods of Grecian mythology give it its form, for the gods had very little to do with the inner life of the Ionian thinkers in their efforts to find a natural cause for all phenomena.

Anaxagoras did not have very much difficulty in formulating a cosmic theory which suited him, that is, in making 'cosmos out of chaos' His method of working was reasonably scientific, but the results of his theory in regard to the origin of things around him were ludicrously childish and impossible, and were not of especial service to Greek thought except as they led up to his one great idea. We will give in a few words the substance of his world theory. Herakleitos, the philosopher of the flux, had founded his cosmos upon constant change, or becoming. Anaxagoras repudiated the idea of change; absolute change was impossible. "The Hellenes," he said, "are wrong in using the expressions 'coming into being' and 'perishing,' for nothing comes into being or perishes, but there is mixture and separation of things that are." Chemical change he had never thought about; therefore, things must always have been what they are now. All objects, organic or inorganic, in which respect he made no distinction, as bone, flesh or gold, for example, had existed from eternity in the same form in small particles. The apparently simple substances, like air, fire, earth and water, are really the most complex, because they contain the greatest number of these particles. In the beginning this infinite number of small particles was in the form of chaos. In chaos a wonderfully rapid whirling motion started, and like particles joined with like until objects as we know them, including all forms of animal life, came into existence. Aristophanes, in his 'clouds,' ridicules Anaxagoras's idea of the whirl with pungent wit, for he represents one of his characters as saying that Zeus is no longer the leading god, but 'whirl' has taken his place.

Anaxagoras, however, was not as illogical in regard to the origin of motion as he had been regarding the construction of matter. He knew that motion could not start of itself. The origin of motion was the problem which his contemporaries were solving in different ways, according to their trend of thought, Empedokles with his love and hate, or primitive form of chemical affinity, and Leukippos with atoms in a vacuum, the heaviest falling faster and uniting. Neither of these