Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/237

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GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

if that be your theory, you are compelled by the necessities of reason to suppose that thought and intelligence are the attributes of Him who has ordered all things for the best, whether He binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loosens the bands of Orion.

17. To return to Anaxagoras, and to sum up his philosophy in a very few words. First, there are ends in nature, that is to say, purpose and order pervade the universe; purpose and order are only other names for the good; but purpose, order, good, imply forethought and intelligence; therefore, the first cause and principle of all things is all-wise and intelligent; in other words, is mind or understanding, νοῦς. Secondly, this mind is not mixed up with the ὁμοιομερῆ. It is totally different from them. Were it mixed up with their substance it could not be capable of moving and controlling them. Another principle would be required to account for the operations of nature. But it is not mixed up with them; hence it can order and direct them. Under its control, combinations and separations take place among the ὁμοιομερῆ, by which their original constitution is altered. Like draws to like, and unlike separates itself from unlike. The ὁμοιομερῆ, however, so far preserve their original constitution, that each of them, or each thing which an aggregate of them composes, takes its character from the preponderance of certain kinds of matter, without losing entirely all, or perhaps any of the other kinds of matter which went to the com-