ixed" would
be meaningless in connection with an incorporeal principle. Only
material things can properly be described as thin, pure, and unmixed.
Secondly, Professor Burnet thinks that it is quite certain that the
Nous occupies space, for Anaxagoras speaks of greater and smaller
portions of it. Greater and smaller are spatial relations. Hence the
Nous occupies space, and that which occupies space is material. But
surely these are very inconclusive arguments. In the first place as
regards the use of the words "thin" and "unmixed." It is true that
these terms express primarily physical qualities. But, as I pointed
out in {99} the first chapter, almost all words by which we seek to
express incorporeal ideas have originally a physical signification.
And if Anaxagoras is to be called a materialist because he described
the Nous as thin, then we must also plead guilty to materialism if we
say that the thought of Plato is "luminous," or that the mind of
Aristotle is "clear." The fact is that all philosophy labours under
the difficulty of having to express non-sensuous thought in language
which has been evolved for the purpose of expressing sensuous ideas.
There is no philosophy in the world, even up to the present day, in
which expressions could not be found in plenty which are based upon
the use of physical analogies to express entirely non-physical ideas.
Then as regards the Nous occupying space, it is not true that greater
and smaller are necessarily spatial relations. They are also
qualitative relations of degree. I say that the mind of Plato is
greater than the mind of Callias. Am I to be called a materialist? Am
I to be supposed to mean that Plato's mind occupies more space than
that of Callias? And it is certainly in this way that Anaxagoras uses
the terms. "All Nous," he says, "is alike, both the greater and the
smaller." He means thereby that the world-forming mind (the greater)
is identical in character with the mind of man (the smaller). For
Anaxagoras it is the one Nous which animates all living beings, men,
animals, and even plants. These different orders of beings are
animated by the same Nous but in different degrees, that of man being
the greatest. But this does not mean that the Nous in man occupies
more space than the Nous in a plant. But even if Anaxagoras did
conceive the Nous as spatial, it does not follow that he {100}
regarded it as material. The doctrine of the non-spatiality of mind is
a modern doctrin