Thus we see in this principle the formation of free consciousness and the freedom of individuality in its greatness. The principle of subjective freedom appears at first, however, still in unison with the universal principle of Greek morality as established by law, and even with mythology; and thus in its promulgation, because the genius of its conceptions could develop freely, it brought about these masterpieces in the beautiful plastic arts, and the immortal works of poetry and history. The principle of subjectivity had, thus far, not taken the form that particularity, as such, should be set free, and that its content should be a subjectively particular, at least distinguished from the universal principle, universal morality, universal religion, universal laws. Thus we do not see the carrying out of isolated ideas, but the great, moral, solid, divine content made in these works object for consciousness, and generally brought before consciousness. Later we shall find the form of subjectivity becoming free for itself, and appearing in opposition to the substantial, to morality, religion, and law.
The basis of this principle of subjectivity, though it is still a merely general one, we now see in Anaxagoras. But amongst this noble, free, and cultured people of Athens, he who had the happiness to be first, was Pericles, and this circumstance raised him in the estimation of the individual to a place so high that few could reach it. Of all that is great amongst men, the power of ruling over the will of men who have but one will, is the greatest, for this controlling individuality must be both the most universal and the most living—a lot for a mortal being than which hardly any better can be found. His individuality was, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle 5) as deep as it was perfect; as serious (he never laughed), as full of energy and restfulness: Athens had him the whole day long. Thucydides has preserved some of Pericles’ speeches to the people which allow of few works being compared to them.
Under Pericles the highest culture of the moral commonwealth is to be found, the juncture where individuality is still under and also in the universal. Presently individuality prevails, because its activity falls into extremes, since the state as state, is not yet independently organized within itself. Because the essence of the Athenian State was the common spirit, and the religious faith of individuals in this constituted their essence, there disappears with the disappearance of this faith, the inner Being of the people, since the spirit is not in the form of the Notion as it is in our states. The speedy transition to this last is the _νοῦς_, subjectivity, as Being, self-reflection. When Anaxagoras at this time, the principle of which has just been given, came to Athens, he was sought out by Pericles, and, as his friend, lived in very intimate relations with him, before the latter occupied himself with public affairs. But Plutarch (in Pericle 4, 16) also relates that Anaxagoras came to want because Pericles neglected him—did not supply the illuminating lamp with oil.
A more important matter is that Anaxagoras (as happened later with Socrates and many other philosophers) was accused of despising those whom the people accepted as gods. The prose of the understanding came into contact with the poetic, religious point of view. It is distinctly said by Diogenes Laertius (II. 12) that Anaxagoras believed the sun and stars to be burning stones; and he is, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle, 6) blamed for having explained something that the prophets stated to be a marvellous omen, in a natural way; it quite tallies with this that he is said to have foretold that on the day of Ægos-Potamos, where the Athenians lost their last fleet against Lysander, a stone should fall from heaven.[81] The general remark might be made of Thales, Anaximander, &c., that the sun, moon, earth and stars were counted as mere things, i.e. as objects external to mind, and that they no longer held them to be living gods, but represented them in different ways—which ideas, for the rest, deserve no further consideration, since these matters belong properly to ordinary learning. Things may be derived from thought; thought really brings about the result that certain objects which may be called divine, and certain conceptions of these which may be called poetic, together with the whole range of superstitious beliefs, are demolished—they are brought down to being what are called natural things. For in thought, as the identity of itself and of Being, mind knows itself as the truly actual, so that for mind in thought, the unspiritual and material is brought down to being mere things, to the negative of mind. All the ideas of those philosophers have this in common, that nature is through them undeified; they brought the poetic view of nature down to the prosaic, and destroyed the poetic point of view which ascribes to all that is now considered to be lifeless, a life proper to itself, perhaps also sensation, and, it may be, a being after the usual order of consciousness. The loss of this point of view is not to be lamented as if unity with nature, pure faith, innocent purity and childlike spirit went with it. Innocent and childlike it may certainly have been, but reason is just the going forth from such innocence and unity with nature. So soon as mind grasps itself, is for itself, it must for that very reason confront the ‘other’ of itself as a negation of consciousness, i.e. look on it as something devoid of mind, an unconscious and lifeless thing, and it must first come to itself through this opposition. There is in this a fixing of self-moving things such as are met with in the myths of the ancients, who relate such tales as that the Argonauts secured the rocks on the Straits of the Hellespont which formerly moved like scissors. Similarly progressive culture consolidated that which formerly was thought to have its own motion and life in itself, and made it into unmoving matter. This transition of the mythical point of view into the prosaic, here comes to be recognized by the Athenians. A prosaic point of view such as this, assumes that man has requirements quite different from those he formerly had; in this we find traces of the powerful, necessary conversion brought about in the ideas of man through the strengthening of thought, through knowledge of himself, and through Philosophy.
The institution of charges of atheism, which we shall touch upon more fully in dealing with Socrates, is, in Anaxagoras’ case, quite comprehensible, from the specific reason that the Athenians, who were envious of Pericles, who contended with him for the first place, and who did not venture to proceed against him openly, took his favourites to law, and sought through charges against his friend, to injure him. Thus his friend Aspasia was brought under accusation, and the noble Pericles had, according to Plutarch (in Pericle, 32), in order to save her from condemnation, to beg the individual citizens of Athens with tears for her acquittal. The Athenian people in their freedom, demanded such acts of the potentates to whom they allowed supremacy, for thereby an acknowledgment was given of their subordination to the people; they thus made themselves the Nemesis in respect to the high place accorded to the great, for they placed themselves in a position of equality with these, while these again made evident their dependence, subjection and powerlessness before the others. What is told about the result of this charge against Anaxagoras is quite contradictory and uncertain: Pericles certainly saved him from condemnation to death. He was either, as some say, condemned only to banishment after Pericles had led him before the people, speaking and entreating for him, after, by reason of his age, attenuation and weakness the sympathy of the people had been aroused; or else, as others say, with the help of Pericles, he escaped from Athens and was in absence condemned to death, the judgment never being executed upon him. Others again say that he was liberated, but from the vexation that he felt respecting these charges, and from apprehension as to their repetition, he voluntarily left Athens. And at about sixty or seventy years of age, he died in Lampsacus in the 88th Olympiad (428 B.C.).[82] 1. _The Universal Principle._ The logical principle of Anaxagoras was that he recognized the _νοῦς_ as the simple, absolute essence of the world. The simplicity of the _νοῦς_ is not a Being but a universality which is distinguished from itself, though in such a way that the distinction is immediately sublated and the identity is set forth for itself. This universal for itself, sundered, exists in purity only as thought; it exists also in nature as objective existence, but in that case no longer purely for itself, but as having particularity as an immediate in it. Space and time are, for example, the most ideal, universal facts in nature as such, but there is no pure space, no pure time and motion any more than any pure matter—for this universal is immediately defined space, air, earth, &c. In thought, when I say, I am I, or I = I, I certainly distinguish something from me, but the pure unity remains; there is no movement but a distinction which is not distinguished, or the being-for-me. And in all that I think, if the thought has a definite content, it is my thought: I am thus known to myself in this object. This universal which thus exists for itself and the individual, or thought and being, thus, however, come into definite opposition. Here the speculative unity of this universal with the individual should be considered as it is posited as absolute unity, but the comprehension of the Notion itself is certainly not found with the ancients. We need not expect a pure Notion such as one of an understanding realizing itself into a system, organized as a universe.
How Anaxagoras enunciated the Notion of the _νοῦς_, Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) goes on to tell: “Anaxagoras maintains that the soul is the principle of movement. Yet he does not always express himself fully about the soul and _νοῦς_: he seems to separate _νοῦς_ and soul from one another, and still he makes use of them as though they were the same existence, only that by preference he makes the _νοῦς_ the principle of everything. He certainly speaks frequently of the _νοῦς_ as of the cause of the beautiful and right, but another time he calls it the soul. For it is in all animals, in large as well as small, the higher kind and the lower; it alone of all existence is the simple, unadulterated and pure; it is devoid of pain and is not in community with any other.”[83] What we therefore have to do is to show from the principle of motion, that it is the self-moving; and this thought is, as existent for itself. As soul, the self-moving is only immediately individual; the _νοῦς_, however, as simple, is the universal. Thought moves on account of something: the end is the first simple which makes itself result; this principle with the ancients is grasped as good and evil, i.e. end as positive and negative. This determination is a very important one, but with Anaxagoras it was not fully worked out. While in the first place the principles are material, from these Aristotle then distinguishes determination and form, and thirdly he finds in the process of Heraclitus, the principle of motion. Then in the fourth place there comes the reason why, the determination of end, with the _νοῦς_; this is the concrete in itself. Aristotle adds in the above-mentioned passage (p. 192), “according to these men” (the Ionians and others) “and in reference to such causes” (water, fire, &c.), “since they are not sufficient to beget the nature of things, the philosophers are, as already said, compelled by the truth to go on to the principle following (_ἐχομένην_). For neither the earth nor any other principle is capable of explaining the fact that while on the one hand all is good and beautiful, on the other, something else is produced, and those men do not seem to have thought that this was so; nor is it seemly to abandon such matters to hazard (_αὐτομάτῳ_) and to chance.” Goodness and beauty express the simple restful Notion, and change the Notion in its movement.
With this principle comes the determination of an understanding as of self-determining activity; this has hitherto been wanting, for the Becoming of Heraclitus, which is only process, is not yet as fate, the independently self-determining. By this we must not represent to ourselves subjective thought; in thinking we think immediately of our thought as it is in consciousness. Here, on the contrary, quite objective thought is meant, active understanding—as we say, there is reason in the world, or we speak of genera in nature which are the universal. The genus animal is the substantial of the dog; the dog itself is this; the laws of nature are themselves nature’s immanent essence. The nature is not formed from without as men make a table; this is also made with understanding, but through an understanding outside of this wood. This external form, which is called the understanding, immediately occurs to us in speaking of the understanding; but here the universal is meant, that which is the immanent nature of the object itself. The _νοῦς_ is thus not a thinking existence from without which regulates the world; by such the meaning present to Anaxagoras would be quite destroyed and all its philosophic interest taken away. For to speak of an individual, a unit from without, is to fall into the ordinary conception and its dualism; a so-called thinking principle is no longer a thought, but is a subject. But still the true universal is for all that not abstract, but the universal is just the determining in and out of itself of the particular in and for itself. In this activity, which is independently self-determining, the fact is at once implied that the activity, because it constitutes process, retains itself as the universal self-identical. Fire, which, according to Heraclitus, was process, dies away and merely passes over, without independent existence, into the opposite; it is certainly also a circle and a return to fire, but the principle does not retain itself in its determinateness as the universal, seeing that a simple passing into the opposite takes place.
This relation to itself in determination which we see appearing in Anaxagoras, now, however, contains the determination of the universal though it is not formally expressed, and therein we have the end or the Good.
I have just recently (p. 316) spoken of the Notion of the end, yet by that we must not merely think of the form of the end as it is in us, in conscious beings. At first, end, in as far as I have it, is my conception, which is for itself, and the realization of which depends on my wish; if I carry it out, and if I am not unskilful, the object produced must be conformable to the end, containing nothing but it.
There is a transition from subjectivity to objectivity through which this opposition is always again sublated. Because I am discontented with my end in that it is only subjective, my activity consists in removing this defect and making it objective. In objectivity the end has retained itself; for instance, if I have the end in view of building a house and am active for that end, the house results in which my end is realized. But we must not, as we usually do, abide at the conception of this subjective end; in this case both I and the end exist independently and externally in relation to each other. In the conception that God, as wisdom, rules the world in accordance with an end, for instance, the end is posited for itself in a wise, figuratively conceiving Being. But the universal of end is the fact that since it is a determination independently fixed, that rules present existence, the end is the truth, the soul of a thing. The Good in the end gives content to itself, so that while it is active with this content, and after it has entered into externality, no other content comes forth than what was already present. The best example of this is presented in life; it has desires, and these desires are its ends; as merely living, however, it knows nothing of these ends, but yet they are first, immediate determinations which are established.
The animal works at satisfying these desires, i.e. at reaching the end; it relates itself to external things, partly mechanically, partly chemically. But the character of its activity does not remain mechanical or chemical; the product is rather the animal itself, which, as its own end, brings forth in its activity only itself, since it negates and overturns those mechanical or chemical relationships. In mechanical and chemical process, on the other hand, the result is something different, in which the subject does not retain itself; but in the end, beginning and end are alike, for we posit the subjective objectively in order to receive it again. Self-preservation is a continual production by which nothing new, but always the old, arises; it is a taking back of activity for the production of itself.
Thus this self-determining activity, which is then active on something else, enters into opposition, but it again negates the opposition, governs it, in it reflects upon itself; it is the end, the thought, that which conserves itself in its self-determination. The development of these moments is the business of Philosophy from henceforth. But if we look more closely as to how far Anaxagoras has got in the development of this thought, we find nothing further than the activity determining from out of itself, which sets up a limit or measure; further than the determination of measure, development does not go. Anaxagoras gives us no more concrete definition of the _νοῦς_, and this we are still left to consider; we thus have nothing more than the abstract determination of the concrete in itself. The above-mentioned predicates which Anaxagoras gives the _νοῦς_, may thus indeed be affirmed, but they are, on their own account, one-sided only.
2. _The Homœomeriæ._ This is the one side in the principle of Anaxagoras; we now have to consider the going forth of the _νοῦς_ into further determinations. This remaining part of the philosophy of Anaxagoras at first, however, makes us think that the hopes in which such a principle justified us must be very much diminished. On the other side, this universal is confronted by Being, matter, the manifold generally, potentiality as distinguished from the former as actuality.
For if the Good or the end is also determined as potentiality, the universal, as the self-moving, may rather be called the actual in itself, the being-for-self, as opposed to implicit being, potentiality, passivity. Aristotle says in an important passage (Met. I. 8): “If any one should say of Anaxagoras that he adopted two principles, he would rest his statement on a point respecting which the latter never really clearly defined himself, but which he had necessarily to acknowledge to those who adduced it...That is, Anaxagoras says that originally everything is mingled...But where nothing is yet separated, no distinguishing feature is present; such substance is neither a white, black, gray, nor any other colour, but colourless; it has no quality nor quantity nor determination (_τί_). All is mingled except the _νοῦς_; this is unmingled and pure. With this in view, it thus occurs to him to denominate as principles the one, for it alone is single and unmingled, and the other-being (_θάτερον_), what we call the indeterminate, before it has become determined or partakes of any kind of form.”
This other principle is celebrated under the name of homœomeries (_ὁμοιομερῆ_), of like parts or homogeneous, in Aristotle’s rendering (Met. I. 3, 7); Riemer translates _ἡ ὁμοιομερεια_ “the similarity of individual parts to the whole,” and _αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι_ “the elementary matter,” yet this latter word seems to be of a later origin.[84] Aristotle says, “Anaxagoras sets forth” (in respect of the material) “infinitely many principles, for he maintained that, like water and fire in Empedocles’ system, nearly all that is formed of like parts only arises from union and passes away through separation; other arising and passing away there is none, for equal parts remain eternal.” That is, the existent, the individual matter, such as bones, metal, flesh, &c., in itself consists of parts like itself—flesh of small particles of flesh, gold of small gold particles, &c. Thus he said at the beginning of his work, “All has been alike” (i.e. unseparated as in a chaos), “and has rested for an infinitude of time; then came the _νοῦς_, and it brought in movement, separated and brought order into the separated creation (_διεκόσμησεν_), in that it united the like.”[85] The homœomeriæ become clearer if we compare them with the conceptions of Leucippus and Democritus and others. In Leucippus and Democritus, as well as Empedocles, we saw this matter, or the absolute as objective existence, determined so that simple atoms—with the latter the four elements and with the former infinitely many—were set forth as separate only in form; their syntheses and combinations were existing things. Aristotle (De cœlo, III. 3) says further on this point, “Anaxagoras asserts of the elements the opposite to Empedocles. For the latter takes as original principles, fire, air, earth, and water, through whose union all things arise. On the other hand, Anaxagoras maintains what are of like parts such as flesh, bones, or the like to be simple materials; such things as water and fire, on the contrary, are a mixture of the original elements. For any one of these four consists of the infinite admixture of all invisible, existing things of like parts, which hence come forth from these.” The principle held good for him as for the Eleatics, that “the like only comes out of the like; there is no transition into the opposite, no union of opposites possible.” All change is hence to him only a separation and union of the like; change as true change, would be a Becoming out of the negative of itself. “That is, because Anaxagoras,” says Aristotle (Phys. I, 4), “partook of the view of all physicists that it is impossible that anything can come out of nothing, there was nothing left but to admit that what becomes was already present as an existent, but that, on account of its small size, it was imperceptible to us.” This point of view is also quite different from the conception of Thales and Heraclitus, in which, not only the possibility, but the actuality of the transformation of these like qualitative differences is essentially maintained. But to Anaxagoras with whom the elements are a mingled chaos formed therefrom, having only an apparent uniformity, concrete things arise through the severance of these infinitely many principles from such a chaos, since like finds like. Respecting the difference between Empedocles and Anaxagoras, there is further what Aristotle adds in the same place: “The former allows a change (_περίοδον_) in these conditions, the latter only their one appearance.” The conception of Democritus is similar to that of Anaxagoras in so far as that an infinite manifold is the original source. But with Anaxagoras the determination of the fundamental principles appears to contain that which we consider as organized, and to be by no means an independently existent simple; thus perfectly individualized atoms such as particles of flesh and of gold, form, through their coming together, that which appears to be organized. That comes near our ordinary ideas. Means of nourishment, it is thought, contain such parts as are homogeneous to blood, flesh, &c. Anaxagoras hence says, according to Aristotle (De gen. anim. I. 18), “Flesh comes to flesh through food.” Digestion is thus nothing more than the taking up of the homogeneous and separation of the heterogeneous; all nourishment and growth is thus not true assimilation but only increase, because each internal organ of the animal only draws its parts to itself out of the various plants, bodies, &c. Death is, on the other hand, the separation of the like and the mingling with the heterogeneous. The activity of the _νοῦς_, as the sundering of the like out of the chaos and the putting together of the like, as also the setting at liberty again of this like, is certainly simple and relative to itself, but purely formal and thus for itself contentless.
This is the general standpoint of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, and quite the same standpoint which in more recent times reigns in chemistry for instance; flesh is certainly no longer regarded as simple, but as being hydrogen, &c. The chemical elements are oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and metals, &c. Chemistry says, if you want to know what flesh, wood, stone, &c., really are, you must set forth their simple elements, and these are ultimate. It also says that much is only relatively simple, _e.g._ platinum consists of three or four metals. Water and air were similarly long held to be simple, but chemistry at length analyzed them. From this chemical point of view, the simple principles of natural things are determined as infinitely qualitative and thus accepted as unchangeable and invariable, so that all else consists only of the combination of these simples. Man, according to this, is a collection of carbon and hydrogen, some earth, oxides, phosphorus, &c. It is a favourite idea of the physicists to place in the water or in the air, oxygen and carbon, which exist and only require to be separated. This idea of Anaxagoras certainly also differs from modern chemistry; that which we consider as concrete, is for him qualitatively determined or elementary. Yet he allows, with regard to flesh, that the parts are not all alike. “For this reason, they say,” remarks Aristotle (Phys. I. 4; Met. IV. 5),—but not particularly of Anaxagoras—“everything is contained in everything, for they saw everything arise out of everything: it only appears to be different and is called different in accordance with the predominating number of the particular kind of parts which have mingled themselves with others. In truth the whole is not white, or black, or sweet, or flesh, or bones; but the homœomeriæ which have most accumulated in any place, bring about the result that the whole appears to us as this determinate.” As thus each thing contains all other things, water, air, bones, fruits, &c., on the other hand, the water contains flesh as flesh, bones, &c. Into this infinitely manifold nature of the principles, Anaxagoras thus goes back; the sensuous has first arisen through the accumulation of all those parts, and in it the one kind of parts then has a predominance.
While he defines absolute existence as universal, we see here that in objective existence, or in matter, universality and thought abandon Anaxagoras. The implicit is to him, indeed, no absolutely sensuous Being; the homœomeriæ are the non-sensuous, _i.e._ the invisible and inaudible, &c. This is the highest point reached by common physicists in passing from sensuous Being to the non-sensuous, as to the mere negation of the being-for-us; but the positive side is that existent Being is itself universal. The objective is to Anaxagoras certainly the _νοῦς_, but for him the other-Being is a mixture of simple elements, which are neither flesh nor fish, red nor blue; again this simple is not simple in itself, but in its essence consists of homœomeriæ, which are, however, so small that they are imperceptible.