22 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Taught a 

 Divine 

 Creator of 

 the World. 



His doctrine 

 of similar 



to the opinions of Anaxagoras, we fortunately possess some unexcep- 

 tionable documents in the poetry of his disciple Euripides, who, it is 

 well known, was called the philosopher of the stage, and who intro- 

 duced into many of his dramas the leading tenets of his master, 

 particularly into his * Chrysippus.' 



The founder of the Ionic school had taught that the Deity was the 

 mind of the universe ; a notion very nearly, if not exactly, coinciding 

 with that of the Hylozoick philosophers, who said that matter was 

 endowed with a kind of reason. But Anaxagoras was the first who 

 taught in express terms a Oeog Srjpiovpyoc, a divine creator of the 

 world. According to him, all things were a shapeless and inert mass, 

 which the divine intelligence endued with motion, form, and beauty. 

 Euripides calls the Deity avrotyvriQ, " self- existent," and says that he 

 " interwove nature with the ethereal circle or orb." In other 

 passages he represents the Anaxagorean doctrine of the divine mind 

 imforming matter by the poetical union of JEther with the Earth : 



KJ yrtv 

 Tovrov vo 



s^ovf t/yoeti"; Iv ee,yita.Xcti; ] 

 Z5jy, ranS* wyov faov. 



See'st thou on high this vast expanse of air, 

 Encircling in its liquid arms the earth ? 

 This, this is Jove, revere the present God ! 



Hence we find, in the surviving plays of Euripides, frequent invo- 

 cations to Jove and the earth. This part of the poetical mythology 

 of the Greek drama is fully illustrated by Valcenaer in his ' Diatribe 

 on the Fragments of Euripides,' who conjectures that Anaxagoras 

 derived his notion of the two principles of animal life from Egypt, the 

 great nursery of Greek philosophy; since Procopius (a very late 

 writer, it must be confessed) mentions Anaxagoras of Clazomene as 

 one of those who travelled into Egypt for the sake of acquiring a more 

 exact knowledge of physics and theology. 



Another dogma of Anaxagoras was, that nature consisted in the 

 repeated union and dissolution of the same particles ; agreeably to 

 what Lucretius says (ii. 1001) : 



Nee sic interimit mors res, ut materiai 

 Corpora conficiat, sed coetum dissupat ollis. 



And Ovid 



Nee perit in tnnto quicquam (mihi credite) mundo; 

 Sed variat, faciemque novat. 



It was upon the strength of this doctrine that Socrates afterwards 

 asserted that the souls of men, when freed from their temporary union 

 with the body, returned to their native heaven. 



The most curious and abstruse of his notions was that of the 

 ojuoiojutpeicu, or similar particles. He maintained that every body con- 

 sisted of particles similar to itself; for instance, gold consists of atoms 

 of gold; a bone, of minute bones, and so on. (This doctrine is 



