AMONG THE GREEKS 61 



ing to Aristotle and Plato, had taken this step before 

 Anaxagoras, But even he applied this newly discov- 

 ered principle in exceptional cases, — not to the 

 origin of life, surely, for he derived plants and ani- 

 mals from the air and ether. He did not, therefore, 

 further the explanation of the problem of design in 

 Nature, which Empedocles is mistakenly supposed to 

 have raised. 



Also attributed to Anaxagoras^ is the notion 

 that the uses of the human hand in the various 

 arts have through inheritance played an impor- 

 tant part in human intellectual progress: 



Now Anaxagoras says that it is due to his pos- 

 sessing hands that Man is of all things the most in- 

 telligent. But it may be argued that he comes into 

 possession of hands because of liis outstanding intel- 

 ligence. For hands are a tool, and Nature always 

 allots each tool, just as any sensible man would do, to 

 whosoever is able to make use of it. It is obviously 

 better and simpler to find a man who can play the 

 flute and then supply him with the instrument, rather 

 than to look for a man who happens to possess a 

 flute and then teach him to play upon it. 



The formative power of mind over matter 

 traversed the whole philosophy of Anaxagoras 

 and more or less adumbrated the 'form' and 'mat- 

 ter' conception of Aristotle and the 'emergent' 

 philosophy of Lloyd Morgan of today. Living 



1 Aristotle: De Partibus Animalium, p. 687a, 7. 



