contain portions of these ten thousand kinds of matter, and to whatever degree of fineness you might carry the division, that is to say, however small you might conceive the portion to be, it would still contain portions of these ten thousand kinds of matter. In short, the composition of the whole and the composition of its minutest parts would be precisely the same. The whole consists, we are supposing, of ten thousand kinds of matter; each particle of it (carry the division to whatever degree of minuteness you please) also consists of ten thousand kinds of matter. That, I conceive, is what is meant by saying that everything and every particle of a thing consists of particles similar to the thing or particle itself.
6. The mass of matter which I have endeavoured to describe to you, and the close intermingling of whose parts I supposed to be brought about by artificial means—this mass is, according to Anaxagoras, matter in its original condition. In order to aid our conception of what Anaxagoras means by the ὁμοιομερῆ, I suppose the universe, the present orderly universe, to be beaten up, with all its diversities, into a sort of pulp or powder of uniform consistency throughout. This pulp or powder, which, in my description of it, is set forth as artificially produced, was, in the estimation of our philosopher, the natural state of the universe before an organising intelligence went to work upon its materials, and elicited order out of chaos. In its primitive and chaotic state the world is a mass, every ingredient of
