non-physical ideas. Then as regards the Nous occupying
space, it is not true that greater and smaller are necessar-
ily 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 charac-
ter with the mind of man (the smaller). For Anaxagoras it
is the one Nous which animates all living beings, men, ani-
mals, 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 doctrine,
never fully developed till the time of Descartes. And to say
that Anaxagoras did not realize that mind is non-spatial is
merely to say that he lived before the time of Descartes.
No doubt it would follow from this that the incorporeality
of mind is vaguely and indistinctly conceived by Anaxago-
ras, that the antithesis between matter and mind is not so
sharply drawn by him as it is by us. But still the antithe-
sis is conceived, and therefore it is correct to say that the
Nous of Anaxagoras is an incorporeal principle. The whole
point of this introduction of the Nous into the philosophy
of Anaxagoras is because he could not explain the design
and order of the universe on a purely physical basis.
[Footnote 8:Early Greek Philosophy, chap. vi. §132.]The next characteristic of Nous is that it is to be thought of
as essentially the ground of motion. It is because he cannot
in any other way explain purposive motion that Anaxago-
ras introduces mind into his otherwise materialistic system.
Mind plays the part of the moving force which explains the
world-process of unmixing. As the ground of motion, the
Nous is itself unmoved; for if there were any motion in it we
should have to seek for the ground of this motion in some-
thing else outside it. That which is the cause of all motion,
cannot itself be moved. Next, the Nous is absolutely pure
and unmixed with anything else. It exists apart, by itself,
wholly in itself, and for itself. In contrast to matter, it is
uncompounded and simple. It is this which gives it om-
nipotence, complete power over everything, because there
is no mixture of matter in it to limit it, to clog and hinder
its activities. We moderns are {101} inclined to ask the
question whether the Nous is personal. Is it, for example,
a personal being like the God of the Christians? This is a
question which it is almost impossible to answer. Anaxago-
ras certainly never considered it. According to Zeller, the
Greeks had an imperfect and undeveloped conception of
personality. Even in Plato we find the same difficulty. The
antithesis between God as a personal and as an impersonal
being, is a wholly modern idea. No Greek ever discussed
it.To come now to the question of the activity of the Nous
and its function in the philosophy of Anaxagoras, we must
note that it is essentially a world-forming, and not a world-
creating, intelligence. The Nous and matter exist side by