INTRODUCTION.

himself contributed to metaphysics, the conception of a causative mind. And so his philosophy ends in a dualism A system recognizing two independent principles, such as mind and matter, which Anaxagoras failed to fully reconcile. of the crudest type.

Results.

§ 11. And now we have lying before us the materials out of which, with the aid of a hint or two gained from Socrates, Plato was to construct an idealistic philosophy. These materials consist of the three principles enunciated by the three great teachers whose views we have been considering¹. These principles we may term by different names according to the mode of viewing them—Motion, Rest, Life; Multiplicity, Unity, Thought; Becoming, Being, Soul: all these triads amount to the same. But however pregnant with truth these conceptions may prove to be, they are thus far impotent and sterile to the utmost. Each is presented to us in helpless isolation, incapable by itself of affording an explanation of things or a basis of knowledge. To bring them to light was only for men of genius, rightly to conciliate and coordinate them required the supreme genius of all. Like the bow of Odysseus, they await the hand of the master who alone can wield them. The One of Parmenides and the Many of Heraclitus must be united in the Mind of Anaxagoras: that is to say, unity and plurality must be shown as two necessary and inseparable modes of soul's existence, before a philosophy can arise that is indeed worthy of the name. And it is very necessary to realise that to all appearance nothing could be more hopeless than the deadlock at which philosophical speculation had arrived: every way seemed to have been tried, and not one led to know-

¹ It may be thought strange that I here make no mention of the Pythagoreans. But the Pythagorean influence on Platonism has been grossly overrated. Far too much importance has often been attached to the statements of late and untrustworthy authorities, or to fragments attributed on most unsubstantial grounds to Pythagorean writers. All that we can safely believe about Pythagorean philosophising is to be found, apart from what Plato tells us, in Aristotle: and from his statements we may pretty fairly infer that they had no real metaphysical system at all. There is indeed some superficial resemblance between the Pythagorean theory of numbers and the Platonic theory of ideas—a resemblance sufficient to induce Aristotle to draw a comparison between them in the first book of the metaphysics. But that the similarity was merely external is plain from Aristotle's own account, and also that the significance to be attached to the Pythagorean numbers had been left in an obscurity which probably could not have been cleared up by the authors of the theory. We may doubtless accept the verdict of Aristotle in a somewhat wider sense than he meant by the words—they treated the matter altogether too simply original: "λίαν ἁπλῶς ἐπραγματεύθησαν" (lian haplōs epragmateuthēsan). Aristotle uses this phrase to criticize the lack of depth or complexity in their investigation..