48 Baron Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. 



garded bodies themselves as mere illusions. Anaxagoras main- 

 tained the reality of matter, and at the same time that of mind) 

 which rules and directs it. The principle we see is like that 

 of natural theology, which, in our day, serves as the basis of all 

 religions. Nothing, therefore, was more unjust than the charge 

 of atheism, directed against a man who was the first theist that 

 ever existed among the Greeks. 



Anaxagoras does not at all admit as a principle, either fire or 

 water, or even the reunion of the four elements. According to 

 him there was diversity in matter ; every sort of matter was com- 

 posed of corpuscules like to itself, and by consequence like to 

 one another. From the singular objections made by the ancients 

 against the system of homceomerias, the name given to those 

 composing molecules, it appears they have not understood it. 

 They ask, for example, if a man is composed of small men ; as 

 if Anaxagoras had ever admitted this mode of composition in 

 any other case than in that of simple bodies. 



None of the works of Anaxagoras has reached us ; a few of 

 his apophthegms are however preserved. He said that noth- 

 ing comes out of nothing ; that every thing is in every thing, 

 and can produce every thing ; thereby meaning, undoubtedly, 

 that every composed body contains all the species of simple 

 molecules, which, combined in different proportions, would pro- 

 duce different mixed beings. 



This philosopher traced the reason of things in observation. 

 It is told, that the people having considered as a horrible pro^ 

 digy, a ram which was born with only one horn, Anaxagoras dis- 

 sected the animal, and explained the cause of this monstrosity. 

 He was far from being sufficiently strict in the examination of 

 facts, if it is true that he believed that weasels, storks and crmvs 

 produced their young by the mouth. In his time a very large- 

 stone fell from the air, near Aegos-Potamus. He tried to ex- 

 plain this fact, and it is pretended that the conclusion to which 

 he came was, that the heaven was a vault of stones. He be- 

 lieved the moon to be inhabited, and regarded the sun as an in- 

 flamed metallic mass ; this constituted one of the chief accusa- 

 tions which the Athenians urged against him. 



Anaxagoras was the precursor of Socrates, whose opinioRs- 

 will be considered in our next lecture. 



