not otherwise explain the origin of movement. It is only
the first movement of things, the formation of the vortex,
which he explains by mind. All subsequent process is ex-
plained by the action of the vortex itself, which draws the
surrounding matter into itself. The Nous is thus nothing
but another piece of mechanism to account for the first
impulse to motion. He regards the Nous simply as a first
cause, and thus the characteristic of all mechanism, to look
back to first causes, to the beginning, rather than to the
end of things for their explanation, appears here. Aristo-
tle, as usual, puts the matter in a nutshell. “Anaxagoras,”
he says, “uses mind as adeus ex machinato account for
the formation of the world, and whenever he is at a loss to
explain why anything necessarily is, he drags it in by force.
But in other cases he assigns as a cause for things anything
else in preference to mind.” [Footnote 10]
[Footnote 10; Aristotle,Metaphysics, book i, chap. iv.]
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