THE IDEA OF SPIRIT IN GREEK THOUGHT 359 



theories, however, seemed satisfactory to Anaxagoras. How then could 

 he start the whirl in chaos ? Long years of meditation were doubtless 

 necessary before he evolved his great idea, which revealed a dim under- 

 standing of the power of reason in the origin of being. To start a 

 whirl he must have an outside something, and if reason is the strongest 

 element of human power, why should there not be some form of reason 

 which is independent of matter and able to originate the whirl in chaos, 

 and then to retire from the scene of action and return to the separate 

 and lonely existence of its unknown past ? Thus was born the idea of 

 the Nous. The Nous is half spirit and half matter, as yet a vague 

 force, the beginning of a conception of the thinking element in the 

 universe. There is only one fragment preserved from the sayings of 

 Anaxagoras which would imply a kind of personality in the Nous, in 

 which he speaks of its having knowledge of the past, present and 

 future. In general, however, we find that Anaxagoras's understanding 

 of the Nous was rather that of a kind of matter, a thinking essence, 

 the lightest of all things, a semi-material force. 



When Anaxagoras was forty years old, having partially at least 

 formulated his world theory, he went to Athens, the first philosopher 

 to live there. Athens was then in the dawn of its brightest day. 

 Perikles was coming into power, and his mind was seething with all 

 the possibilities which the development of the Athenian democracy 

 provided, and he was ripe for the strongest idealistic teaching of his 

 age. Anaxagoras's migration to Athens has sometimes been attributed 

 to Aspasia, who, herself from Miletos, would be desirous of bringing 

 to Athens as much as possible of the brilliancy and culture of Ionia. 

 There are chronological difficulties, however, against this supposition, 

 as Aspasia must have been too young at that time to have gained influ- 

 ence over Athenian society; in fact, it may be quite possible, on the 

 contrary, that Anaxagoras was himself the cause of Aspasia's going to 

 Athens. Perikles, in his desire for the best for his beautiful Athens, 

 very probably himself invited Anaxagoras from Ionia to Greece. 



Anaxagoras's influence over Perikles was strong, and from the con- 

 genial counsels of these two great men was brought forth a wonderful 

 atmosphere of love of freedom and reign of reason in Athens. We can 

 picture Athens as she was in the beginning of Perikles's power from 

 the excavations of Dr. Dorpfeld, president of the German School of 

 Archeology in Athens, begun in 1891, on the northwest side of the 

 Akropolis — a primitive town with small, insignificant houses and nar- 

 row streets — and it was during the three decades of Anaxagoras's life 

 in Athens that the marvelous changes there were produced by Perikles. 

 Eager pursuit of knowledge and art arose. Astronomy was influencing 

 the reckoning of time. A new Athens was building with straight, broad 

 streets and graceful columns. Music and gymnastics were being made 

 prominent, and on the Akropolis was beginning to blossom the highest 



