The smallness thus does not take away their existence, for they are still there; but existence is just the being perceptible to sight, smell, &c. These infinitely small homœomeriæ undoubtedly disappear in a more complete conception; flesh, for instance, is such itself, but it is also a mixture of everything, _i.e._ it is not simple. Further analysis equally shows how such a conception must, to a greater or lesser degree, become confused; on the one side each form is thus in its main elements, original, and these parts together constitute a corporeal whole; this whole has, however, on the other side, to contain everything in itself. The _νοῦς_, then, is only what binds and separates, what divides and arranges [_das diakosmirende_]. This may suffice us; however easily we may get confused with the homœomeriæ of Anaxagoras, we must hold fast to the main determination. The homœomeriæ still form a striking conception, and it may be asked how it conforms with the rest of Anaxagoras’ principle.
3. _The Relation of the Two._ Now as to the relation of the _νοῦς_ to that matter, both are not speculatively posited as one, for the relation itself is not set forth as one, nor has the Notion penetrated it. Here the ideas become in some measure superficial, and in some measure the conceptions are more consistent as regards the particular, than they at first appear. Because the understanding is the self-determining, the content is end, it retains itself in relation to what is different; it does not arise and pass away although it is in activity. The conception of Anaxagoras that concrete principles subsist and retain themselves, is thus consistent; he abolishes arising and passing away and accepts only an external change, a uniting together, and a severance of what is so united. The principles are concrete and have content, _i.e._ so many ends; in the change that takes place the principles really retain themselves. Like only goes with like even if the chaotic mixture is a combination of the unlike; but this is only a combination and not an individual, living form which maintains itself, binding like to like. Thus, however rude these ideas are, they are still really in harmony with the _νοῦς_.
But if the _νοῦς_ is with Anaxagoras the moving soul in all, it yet remains to the real, as the soul of the world and the organic system of the whole, a mere word. For the living as living, since the soul was conceived of as principle, the ancients demanded no further principle (for it is the self-moving), but for determinateness, which the animal is as element in the system of the whole, they again required only the universal of these determinations. Anaxagoras calls the understanding such a principle, and in fact the absolute Notion, as simple existence, the self-identical in its differences, the dividing, the reality-establishing, must be known as such. But that Anaxagoras showed forth the understanding in the universe, or had grasped it as a rational system—of this not only do we not find a trace, but the ancients expressly say that he simply let the matter pass, just as when we say that the world or nature is a great system, the world is wisely ordered or is generally speaking rational. By this we are shown no more of the realization of this reason or the comprehensibility of the world. The _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is thus still formal, although the identity of the principle with the realization was recognized.
Aristotle (Met. I. 4) recognizes the insufficiency of the Anaxagorean principle: “Anaxagoras, indeed, requires the _νοῦς_ for his formation of the world-system; that is, when he has a difficulty in showing the reason for which it is in accordance with necessity, he brings it in; otherwise he employs anything for the sake of explanation, rather than thought.”
It is nowhere more clearly set forth that the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras is still formal, than in the well-known passage out of Plato’s Phædo (p. 97-99, Steph.; p. 85-89, Bekk.), which is noteworthy for its exposition of the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Socrates, according to Plato, states most definitely both what the absolute to them was, and why Anaxagoras did not satisfy them. I quote this because it will best of all lead us on to the main conception which we recognize in the philosophic consciousness of the ancients; at the same time it is an example of the loquacity of Socrates. Socrates’ understanding of the _νοῦς_ as end is better because its determinations are congenial to him, so that we also see in it the principal forms that appear in Socrates. Plato makes Socrates, in prison, an hour before his death, relate at considerable length his experiences with regard to Anaxagoras: “When I heard it read from a book of Anaxagoras, that he said that the understanding is the disposer of the world and the first cause, I rejoiced in such a cause, and I held that if Mind apportioned out all reality, it would apportion it for the best” (the end would be shown forth). “Now if anyone wished to find the cause of the individual thing, how it becomes, and how it passes away, or how it is, he must discover this from what is best for that thing, whether it is being or in some way suffering or doing.”
That the understanding is cause, or that everything is made for the best, means the same thing; this will become clearer from the opposite. It is further said, “For this reason a man has only to consider for himself, as for all others, what is best and most perfect, and then he would of necessity know the worse, for the same science comprises both. Thus reflecting, I rejoiced that I could believe that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of existence” (of the good) “such as I approved of; he would, I believed, tell me whether the earth was flat or round, and if he told me this, he would show me the cause and necessity of the fact, because he would show me the one or the other as being the better; and if he said that the earth is in the centre, he would show me that it was better that it should be in the centre” (i.e. its implicitly and explicitly determined end, and not utility as an externally determined end). “And when he had shown me this, I should be satisfied though he brought forward no other kind of causes, for the same would hold good for the sun, the moon, and the other stars, their respective velocities, returnings, and other conditions. Because he assigned its cause to each and to all in common, I thought that he would explain what was best for each and what was best for all” (the free, implicitly and explicitly existent Idea, the absolute end). “I would not have given up this hope for a great deal, but seized these writings zealously and read them as soon as possible in order to learn as soon as possible the good and the evil. These bright hopes faded when I saw that he did not require thought at all nor any reason for the formation of things, but had recourse to air, fire, water and many other eccentricities.” We here see how to what is best, according to the understanding (the relation of final end), that which we call natural causes is opposed, just as in Leibnitz the operating and the final causes are different.
Socrates explains this in the following way: “It appears to me to be as if some one were to say that Socrates performs all his actions with understanding, and then in going on to give the reasons for each of my actions, were to say that I sit here because my body consists of bones and muscles; the bones are fixed and have joints that divide them (_διαφυὰς_), but the muscles have the power of extending and bending, and they cover the bones with flesh and skin; it is as though he were further to bring forward as the cause of my talking with you, other similar causes, sounds, and air, hearing, and a thousand other things, but omitted to give the true cause” (free independent determination), “which is that the Athenians judged it fit to condemn me, and therefore I judged it better and more just to sit here and to suffer the punishment which they accorded” (we must recollect that one of his friends had arranged everything for the flight of Socrates, but that he refused to go) “for else, by the dog of Egypt, how long ago would these bones and muscles have gone to Megara or to Boeotia, had they been moved only by their opinion of what was best, and had I not considered it juster and better to bear the punishment which the State laid upon me, instead of escaping and fleeing from it.” Plato here correctly places the two kinds of reason and cause in opposition to one another—the cause proceeding from ends, and the inferior, subject, and merely external causes of chemistry, mechanism, &c.—in order to show the discrepancy between them, as here exemplified in the case of a man with consciousness. Anaxagoras seems to define an end and to wish to proceed from it; but he immediately lets this go again and proceeds to quite external causes. “But to call these” (these bones and muscles) “causes is quite improper. If, however, anyone were to say that without having bones and muscles and whatever else I have, I could not do that which I consider best, he would be quite right. But to say that from such causes, I do that which I do, and do with understanding; to say that I do not do it from the choice of what is best—to make such an assertion shows a great want of consideration; it signifies an incapacity to distinguish that the one is the true cause and the other is only that without which the cause could not operate,” _i.e._ the conditions.
This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean _νοῦς_ we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras made no application of his _νοῦς_ to reality. But the positive element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes, and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that are immanent. According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration of nature in relation to ends—as present in our thought and not existent in nature—we also banish from our consideration teleological explanations in nature formerly admired, _e.g._ that grass grows that animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end, the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to them. The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin; Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a particular thing, which might have another content than reality or appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and the product are the same. This realization goes right through the opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal, and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus. They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus. Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the universal.
In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example, where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises. Answers of this kind give the causes, _i.e._ the individuality opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles, &c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal, however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different individuals. Their real nature is the same.
But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially related to another, _e.g._ the Idea of the plant to that of the animal; the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology—that plants are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies. The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up. Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the world which is immanent within it.
These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent. What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak, the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form, dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction, pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself, to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got: it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought, indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor, abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations—water, Being, number, &c.—and these cannot endure; the universal must go forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.
We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, _i.e._ an infinite amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ. The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception; for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus, in the first place, we find from him—as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math. VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (_λόγος_) is the criterion of the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their weakness”—weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small; the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be something ideal and thought. A celebrated example of this is given by him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that, “there is a medium between contradiction (_ἀντιφάσεως_); so that everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists, sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.
There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought; and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign is Thought, _i.e._ consciousness has this real existence in itself. But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness; thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed, known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists; we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the universal is now developing.
CHAPTER II FIRST PERIOD, SECOND DIVISION: FROM THE SOPHISTS TO THE SOCRATICS.
IN this second division we have first to consider more particularly the Sophists, secondly Socrates, and thirdly the Socratics, while we distinguish from these Plato, and take him along with Aristotle in the third division. The _νοῦς_, which is at first only grasped in a very subjective manner as end, that is to say as that which is end to men, _i.e._ the Good, in Plato and Aristotle became understood in what is on the whole an objective way, as genus or Idea. Because thought has now become set forth as principle, and this at first presents a subjective appearance as being the subjective activity of thought, there now sets in (since the absolute is posited as subject) an age of subjective reflection; _i.e._ there begins in this period—which coincides with the disintegration of Greece in the Peloponnesian war—the principle of modern times.
Since in the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras, as the still formal self-determining activity, determination is as yet quite undetermined, general and abstract, and along with that contentless throughout, the universal standpoint is the immediate necessity of going on to a content which begins actual determination. But what is this absolute, universal content which abstract thought as self-determining activity gives itself? That is the real question here. Consciousness now confronts the untrammeled thought of those ancient philosophers, whose general ideas we have considered. While hitherto the subject, when it reflected on the absolute, only produced thoughts, and had this content before it, it is now seen that what is here present is not the whole, but that the thinking subject likewise really belongs to the totality of the objective. Furthermore, this subjectivity of thought has again the double character of at once being the infinite, self-relating form, which as this pure activity of the universal, receives content-determinations; and, on the other hand, as consciousness reflects that it is the thinking subject which is thus positing, of also being a return of spirit from objectivity into itself. Thus if thought, because it immersed itself in the object, had as such, and like the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras, at first no content, because this stood on the other side, so now, with the return of thought as to the consciousness that the subject is what thinks, we have the other side—that what has to be dealt with is the attainment of a truly absolute content. This content, taken abstractly, may itself be again a double one. Either the “I” is in respect of determination the real when it makes itself and its interests the content, or the content becomes determined as the altogether universal. According to this, we have two questions to deal with, which are—how the determination of what is in and for itself is to be comprehended, and how this is likewise in immediate relation to the “I” as thinking. It comes to pass in Philosophy that although the “I” is the positing, yet the posited content of that which is thought is the object existent in and for itself. If one were to remain at saying that the “I” is that which posits, this would be the false idealism of modern times: in earlier times men did not remain at saying that what is thought is bad because I posit it.
To the Sophists the content is _mine_, and subjective: Socrates grasped the content which is in and for itself, and the followers of Socrates have, in direct connection with him, merely further defined this content.
A.—THE SOPHISTS.
The Notion, which reason has found in Anaxagoras to be real existence, is the simple negative into which all determination, all that is existent and individual sinks. Before the Notion nothing can exist, for it is simply the predicateless absolute to which everything is clearly a moment only; for it there is thus nothing so to speak permanently fixed and sealed. The Notion is just the constant change of Heraclitus, the movement, the causticity, which nothing can resist.
Thus the Notion which finds itself, finds itself as the absolute power before which everything vanishes; and thereby all things, all existence, everything held to be secure, is now made fleeting. This security—whether it be a security of natural Being or the security of definite conceptions, principles, customs and laws—becomes vacillation and loses its stability. As universal, such principles, &c., certainly themselves pertain to the Notion, yet their universality is only their form, for the content which they have, as determinate, falls into movement. We see this movement arising in the so-called Sophists whom we here encounter for the first time. They gave themselves the name _σοφισταί_, as teachers of wisdom, _i.e._ as those who could make wise (_σοφίζειν_). The learning of the Sophists is thus directly the opposite to ours, which only aspires to acquire information and investigate what is and has been—it is a mass of empirical matter, in which the discovery of a new form, a new worm, or other vermin is held to be a point of great importance. Our learned professors are in so far much less responsible than the Sophists; however, Philosophy has nothing to do with this lack of responsibility.
But as regards the relation of the Sophists to what is ordinarily believed, they are, by the healthy human understanding, as much decried as by morality. By the former this is on account of their theoretic teaching, since it is senseless to say that nothing is; and in respect of practice because they subvert all principles and laws. For the first mentioned, things certainly cannot be left in this confusion of movement and in their negative aspect merely; yet the rest into which they pass is not the restoration of what is moved into its former condition of security, as if in the end the result were the same and the action were a superfluous one. Now the sophistry of common opinion, which is without the culture of thought and without scientific knowledge, is found in the fact that to it its determinations are, as such, held to be existent in and for themselves, and a number of rules of life, maxims, principles, &c., are considered as absolutely fixed truths. Mind itself is, however, the unity of these in many ways limited truths, which in it are all recognized as being present as sublated only, as merely relative truths, _i.e._ with their restrictions, in their limitation, and not as existent in themselves.
Hence these truths to the ordinary understanding, are, in fact, no more, for on another occasion it allows and even asserts the opposite to have a value also for consciousness; or it does not know that it says directly the opposite to what it means, its expression being thus only an expression of contradiction. In its actions generally, and not in its bad actions, ordinary understanding breaks these its maxims and its principles itself, and if it leads a rational life, it is properly speaking only a standing inconsistency, the making good of one narrow maxim of conduct through breaking off from others. For example, a statesman of experience and culture is one who knows how to steer a middle course, and has practical understanding, _i.e._ deals with the whole extent of the case before him and not with one side of it, which expresses itself in one maxim only. On the other hand, he, whoever he is, who acts on one maxim, is a pedant and spoils things for himself and others. Most commonly it is thus. For example, we hear it said, “it is certain that the things that I see are; I believe in their reality.”
Anyone can say this quite easily. But in fact it is not true that he believes in their reality; really he assumes the contrary. For he eats and drinks them, _i.e._ he is convinced that these things are not in themselves, and their being has no security, no subsistence. Thus common understanding is in its actions better than it thinks, for in action it is Mind as a whole. But it is not here known to itself as Mind, for what comes within its consciousness are definite laws, rules, general propositions, such as by its understanding are esteemed to be the absolute truth, whose limitation it, however, sets aside in action. Now, when the Notion turns to the riches which consciousness thinks to possess, and when the latter is sensible of the danger to its truth without which it would not be, when its fixed realities are destroyed, it is enraged; and the Notion which in this its realization applies itself to the common verities, draws hatred and disdain upon itself. This is the ground of the universal denunciation of the Sophists; a denunciation of healthy human understanding which does not know how else to help itself.