Timaeus

INTRODUCTION.

must at some point or other return the same reply. Herakleitos then conceives a motive force to exist in matter, but seeks not any ulterior cause thereof.

The Eleatics simply abolished causation altogether. Since the One alone exists and changes never, it is the cause of nothing either to itself or to anything else. Causation in fact implies Becoming, and is thus excluded from the Eleatic system. No attempt is made to establish any relation of causality between the One and the Many, since the latter are absolutely negated. Nor does Parmenides in his treatise on the objects of Opinion make any effort to account for the apparent existence of the multitude of material particulars.

Anaxagoras is thus the first with whom the conception of an efficient cause came to the front; and herein, however defective may have been his treatment of the subject, his claim of originality is indefeasible.

Deficiencies of Anaxagoras.

§ 10. The shortcomings of the Anaxagorean theory have been dwelt upon both by Plato and by Aristotle. Plato found indeed much in Anaxagoras with which he could sympathize. His conception that Intelligence, as opposed to the atomistic ananke (necessity), is the motive cause in nature, is after Plato’s own heart. But after advancing so far, Anaxagoras stops short. Plato complains that he employs his Intelligence simply as a mechanical cause, as a source of energy, whereby he may have his cosmical system set in motion. But if, says Plato, the arche (first principle) of the universe is an intelligent mind, this must necessarily be ever aiming at the best in its ordering of the universe—no explanation can be adequate which is not thoroughly teleological. But Anaxagoras does not represent "the best" as the cause why things are as they are: having assumed his nous (mind) as a motive power, he then, like all the rest, assigns only physical and subsidiary causes. The final cause has in fact no place in the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Nor does he ever regard Mind as the indwelling and quickening essence of Nature, far less as her substance and reality. On the contrary, Mind is but an external motive power supplying the necessary impetus whereby the universe may be constructed on mechanical principles. Material phenomena stand over against it as an independent existence; they are ordered and controlled by Mind, but are not evolved from it, nor in any way conciliated with it. Thus we see how far Anaxagoras was from realizing the immeasurable importance of the principle which he