ar to himself, a principle, moreover, which is
entirely new in philosophy. Empedocles had taken as his moving forces,
Love and Hate, mythical and fanciful on the one hand, and yet purely
physical on the other. The forces of the Atomists were also completely
material. But Anaxagoras conceives the moving force as wholly
non-physical and incorporeal. It is called Nous, that is, mind or
intelligence. It is intelligence which produces the movement in things
which brings about the formation of the world. What was it, now, which
led Anaxagoras to the doctrine of a world-governing intelligence? It
seems that he was struck with the apparent design, order, beauty and
harmony of the universe. These things, he thought, could not be
accounted for by blind forces. The world is apparently a rationally
governed world. It moves towards definite ends. Nature shows plentiful
examples of the adaptation of means to ends. There appears to be plan
and purpose in the world. The Atomists had assumed nothing but matter
and physical force. How can design, order, harmony and beauty be
brought about by blind forces acting upon chaotic matter? Blind forces
acting upon a chaos would produce motion and change. But the change
would be meaningless and purposeless. They could not produce a
rationally ordered cosmos. One chaos would succeed another chaos ad
infinitum. That alone which can produce law and order is intelligence.
There must therefore be a world-controlling Nous.

{98}

What is the character of the Nous, according to Anaxagoras? Is it, in
the first place, really conceived as purely non-material and
incorporeal? Aristotle, who was in a position to know more of the
matter than any modern scholar, clearly implies in his criticism that
the Nous of Anaxagoras is an incorporeal principle, and he has been
followed in this by the majority of the best modern writers, such as
Zeller and Erdmann. But the opposite view has been maintained, by
Grote, for example, and more recently by Professor Burnet, who thinks
that Anaxagoras conceived the Nous as a material and physical force.
[Footnote 8] As the matter is of fundamental importance, I will
mention the chief arguments upon which Professor Burnet rests his
case. In the first place Anaxagoras described the Nous as the
"thinnest and purest of all things." He also said that it was
"unmixed," that it had in it no mixture of anything besides itself.
Professor Burnet argues that such words as "thin" and "unm