Psyche, by Erwin Rohde—A Project Gutenberg eBook

75 ἄτης λειμών, fr. 121, 4 (21 Mull.; cf. 16) is the name given by Empedokles to the earth; and not to Hades (as has been supposed), of which—as an intermediate place of purgation between two births—there is nowhere any mention in his verses. That the ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 121, 1) to which Emped. is cast down, the realm of Φόνος κτλ. (fr. 121) and the Ἄτης λειμών, all refer to the earth, ὁ ἔγγειος τόπος, τὰ περὶ γῆν, is expressly stated by Themistios, Or. 13, and Hierocl. in C. Aur. 24 (fr. 121), p. 470 Mull. [FPG. i]; Synes. also implies it (Ep. 147, p. 283 C; Prov. i, 89 D); the same is distinctly implied for fr. 121, 4, and by Jul., Or. vii, 226 B; Philo, ii, p. 638 M.—Procl., in Crat., p. 103 Boiss., connects fr. 121, 3, αὐχμηραί τε νόσοι καὶ σήψιες ἔργα τε ῥευστά immediately with fr. 121, 2, and both lines acc. to him apply to τὰ ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην; i.e. not to any kind of underworld but to the region of the earth (cf. Emp. ap. Hippol., RH. i, 4; Vors. 210, 27; Dox. 559). The idea that Hades is being spoken of in these lines is a view peculiar to moderns who have misunderstood the poet and set aside the clear testimony of Themistios and the rest. Maass, Orpheus, 113, speaks as though the interpretation in favour of Hades rested upon a tradition which I “contradicted”. On the contrary, that interpretation is itself contradicted by definite tradition and by common sense (for Emp. falls from Heaven to earth and not, please God, to Hades!). The view is quite baseless (though Maass himself finds in the ἔργα ῥευστά of fr. 121 [20 M.]—the inconstant, transitory works of men upon earth—a support for his Hades-view: these “fluid works” or things are, he thinks, nothing else but the stream of filth, the σκὼρ ἀείνων, in Hades of which pious invention rumoured: certainly an ingenious interpretation). Emp. is, in fact, the first to regard this earthly sojourning as the real Hell—the ἀσυνήθης, ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 118, 121, 1, the latter a parodying reminiscence of λ 94)—an ἄντρον ὑπόστεγον (fr. 120) filled with all the plagues and terrors of the original Hades (121). Stoics and Epicureans (see below) took up the idea after him and elaborated it in detail. The daimones that are shut up in this life here below—a ζωὴ ἄβιος (fr. 2, 3)—are as if dead: 404 frr. 125 (?), 35, 14. The Orphic idea of the σῶμα—σῆμα (see above, p. 345) was thus thoroughly and energetically carried out. (Macr., in S. Scip. 1, 10, 9 ff., attributed the idea that the inferi are nothing else but the material world of earth to the old theologi (§ 17) who, he says, lived before the development of a philosophic science of nature.)

76 3 Mull.; fr. 115, 3: εὖτέ τις (τῶν δαιμόνων) ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιηνῃ. He means βρῶσις σαρκῶν καὶ ἀλληλοφαγία as Plu. paraphrases it, Es. Carn. 1, p. 996 B (for this must always imply acc. to Emp. the “murder” of a spirit of the same race: fr. 136). Even for God it is a crime to taste of a meat (“blood”)-offering and, in fact, there were only bloodless offerings made in the Golden Age (which was described by Emp. not in the Φυσικά—the principle of which work denied that there had ever been such a period—but in some other poem in which he left his philosophic doctrine out of account; perhaps the Καθαρμοί): 420 ff. M; fr. 128, 3 ff.

77 fr. 115, 4. The earth then becomes the place of their banishment and punishment for gods that have broken their oath. This is a version of the impressive picture in Hes., Th. 793 ff. Dei peierantes were punished for nine years (cf. Hes., Th. 801) in Tartaros: Orpheus (not Lucan in his “Orpheus”) ap. Serv., A. vi, 565. (To this also alludes the poet from whose elegiac verses came the frag. ap. Serv., A. vi, 324: τοῦ [sc. Στυγὸς ὕδατος] στυγνὸν πῶμα καὶ ἀθανάτῳ: this is probably how the words should be read.) So that instead of the “underworld” or Tartaros, the world is for Emp. the worst place of sorrows. From Emp. is derived the conception that the realm of the inferi is our world, that inhabited by men, and that there is no other, nor any need of another ᾅδης—a conception often alluded to and improved upon by Stoic and other semi-philosophers (esp. clear in Serv., A. vi, 127, often only in allegorical sense: Lucr. iii, 978 ff. [See also Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 107.]).

78 30,000 ὧραι: which means probably “years” (hardly “seasons” as Dieterich, Nekyia, 119, takes it). The figure 30,000 has no special meaning (e.g. 300 periods of a life-time each): it is merely a concrete phrase for “innumerable” (and is frequent: Hirzel, Ber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1885, p. 64 ff.). This enormous period of time is the divine counter-part, as measured by divine standards of time, of the μέγας ἐνιαυτός, the ennaëteris during which the earthly murderer had to fly from the land of his violent deed. The fiction of Emp. clearly shows the influence of this expiation of murder by ἀπενιαυτισμός.

79 fr. 121 (22 ff.).

80 ἀργαλέας βιοίτοιο κελεύθους . . . fr. 115, 8 (8).

81 Emp. does not even use the word ψυχή of these δαίμονες confined within corporeality. They are so named, however, regularly and without qualification by the later authors who quote verses from the Prooimion of the Φυσικά, Plutarch, Plotinos, Hippolytos, etc.

82 Peculiar to Emp. is the attempt to give actual details of the crimes for which the spirits are condemned to ἐνσωμάτωσις; and also the extension of metempsychosis to plants (which is occasionally attributed, but by late authorities only, to the Pythagoreans as well).

83 The entirely unpurified seem not to have been condemned to everlasting punishment in Hades, of which in general he shows no knowledge, by Emp. (as by the Pythagoreans sometimes). He merely, it seems, threatens them with ever-renewed rebirth upon earth and the impossibility of τὸ κύκλου λῆξαι (until the complete ascendency of φιλία). This appears to be the meaning of fr. 145 (455 f.) from the way in which Cl. Al., Protr. ii, 27, p. 23 P., cites the lines. 405

84 As we may paraphrase—though indeed here, too, only with reservations—the κακότης and κακότητες of Emp. fr. 145 (454 f.).

85 frr. 136–7, 128, 9 f. (424, 440). Very remarkable in a thinker of such an early period is what is said (fr. 135) about the πάντων νόμιμον which forbids κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον.—Apart from this we have other vestiges of kathartic rules: purification with water drawn from five springs: fr. 143 (see Append. v); abstention from the eating of beans (fr. 141) and of laurel leaves (fr. 140). The laurel is sacred as a magic plant, together with the σκίλλα (see App. v) and ῥάμνος (see above, chap. v, n. 95). Cf. Gp. 11, 2, etc. Its special sacredness gives the laurel its importance in the cult of Apollo. Emp. (like Pythagoras) seems to have paid special honour to Apollo: it appears from something that is said ap. D.L. viii, 57, that he wrote a προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure φρὴν ἱερή in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133–4, was regarded by him as applying particularly περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).

86 In fanciful ways: fr. 127 (lion, laurel), 448 Mull.

87 fr. 146 (457) πρόμοι being used probably with intention as a vague term: regal power would hardly have seemed to possess special merit to the democratically minded Emp. He hardly knew it in any form but the tyrannis and to this he showed himself an energetic opponent (even though the violent language of Timaeus, the enemy of tyrants, is not to be taken quite literally). He himself was offered royal power, but he refused it with contempt as one who was πάσης ἀρχῆς ἀλλότριος: Xanthos and Arist. ap. D.L. viii, 63; Vors. 196, 10. He might all the same (and rightly) regard himself in political matters, too, as one of the πρόμοι; it is plain that in the enumeration of those who were εἰς τέλος born as μάντεις τε καὶ ὑμνοπόλοι καὶ ἰητροί, καὶ πρόμοι ἀνθρώποισιν ἐπιχθονίοισι πέλονται, and were never to be born again, he includes himself especially, and, in fact, takes himself as the model of this last and highest stage upon earth. He himself was all these things simultaneously.

88 frr. 146–7 (459 ff.) ἔνθεν ἀναβλαστοῦσι θεοὶ τιμῇσι φέριστοι, ἀθανάτοις ἄλλοισιν ὁμέστιοι, ἔν τε τραπέζαις (read ἔν τε τράπεζοι—a tmesis, = ἐντράπεζοί τε)· εὔνιες ἀνδρείων ἀχέων, ἀπόκηροι, ἀτειρεῖς.

89 Emped. perhaps described himself as “god” also in fr. 23, 11 (144) ἀλλὰ τορῶς τοῦτ’ ἴσθι (he is speaking to Pausanias), θεοῦ πάρα μῦθον ἀκούσας. See Bidez, Biogr. d’Emp., p. 166 (1894)—unless these words would be better taken as an abbreviated comparison (with omission of ὡς): “as certainly as if you had received these words from a god.”

90 As Plu. is inclined to do: Exil. xvii, p. 607 D.

91 As several modern critics have attempted to do.

92 fr. 17, 30 (92).

93 See above, chap. i, pp. 4 ff.

94 As late again as Plotinos, who speaks of the διττὸν ἐν ἡμῖν: the σῶμα which is a θηρίον ζῳωθέν and the ἀληθὴς ἄνθρωπος distinct from it, etc. (1, 1, 10; 6, 7, 5).

95 At any rate Emp. spoke of the ekstasis, the furor which is an animi purgatio and to be entirely distinguished from that which is produced by alienatio mentis (φρονεῖν ἀλλοῖα, fr. 108): Cael. Aur., Morb. Chron. i, 5, p. 25 Sich. = Vors. 223. A special ἐνθουσιαστικόν in the soul as its θειότατον (part): Stoics (and Plato) acc. to Dox. 639, 25. A special organ of the soul which effects the union with the divine, being the ἄνθος τῆς οὐσίας ἡμῶν, is mentioned in Proclus (Zeller, Phil. d. Griech.² iii, 2, 738). 406

96 τὸ ὅλον, the whole reality of Being and Becoming in the world, cannot be comprehended by man through his senses nor even with νοῦς: fr. 2 (36-43). But Empedokles has in his own persuasion grasped it; he is situated σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι (fr. 4, 8), αὐτὴν ἐπαγγέλλεται δώσειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν (Procl., in Ti. 106 E). Proclus declares that the words σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι—and this is a further point—are meant to apply to Emped. himself. (I do not quite understand Bidez’ doubts about what is said here, and in what follows: see Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Phil. ix, 203, 42.) Whence, then, did the poet obtain this knowledge of the truth since it is revealed neither to the senses nor to the νοῦς? At any rate, the ψυχοπομποὶ δυνάμεις (Porph., Antr. 8), who conducted his soul-daimon out of the region of the gods, say to the soul (fr. 2, 8): σὺ δ’ οὖν ἐπεὶ ὧδ’ ἐλιάσθης (i.e. “since you have been cast up here—on the earth”—not “since you have so desired it”, as Bergk, Opusc. ii, 23, explains: which would be a distorted idea expressed in distorted language)—πεύσεαι οὐ πλέον ἠὲ βροτείη μῆτις ὅπωπεν (thus with Panzerbieter, for ὄρωρε). According to this we must suppose that his more profound knowledge (insight into the μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων of the elements, together with knowledge of the destiny and purpose of the soul-daimones, etc.), which he cannot have got on earth or in his earthly body must have been brought with him out of his divine past-life. This knowledge is then peculiar to the daimon (or ψυχή in the older sense) that is buried in the body; and Emp. presumably owes it to an ἀνάμνησις of his earlier life (a faculty that is only rarely active). From what other source could he have got his knowledge of his previous ἐνσωματώσεις (fr. 117)? He has even farther and more profound knowledge than he dares communicate—fr. 4 (45-51), and says quite plainly that he is keeping back in piety a last remnant of wisdom that is unsuited for human ears (to this extent the authorities—ἄλλοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ λέγοντες—of S.E., M. vii, 122—have rightly understood him).—The belief in a miraculous power of ἀνάμνησις that goes beyond the present life of the individual may have been derived by Emp. from Pythagorean doctrine or mythology. Emp. himself follows the legend of the Pyth. school and attributes such a power of recollection to Pythagoras: ὅπποτε γὰρ πάσῃσι . . . fr. 129 [430 ff.]. See Append. x. The eager development—indeed, the cult—of the μνήμη in Pythagorean circles is well known. The invention of the myths describing the fountain of Mnemosyne in Hades may also be Pythagorean (see below). Throughout the various ἐνσωματώσεις of the soul it is the undying μνήμη that alone preserves the unity of personality which (as the ψυχή) lives through all these transformations and is bound together in this way. It is evident how important this idea was for the doctrine of transmigration (it occurs also in the teaching of Buddha). Plato, like Empedokles, seems to have got the idea of an ἀνάμνησις reaching beyond the limits of the present life from the Pythagoreans: he, then, it is true, developed the idea in connexion with his own philosophy to unexpected conclusions (cf. further, Dieterich, Nekyia, 122).

97 φιλία is for him (not indeed in his words but in his intention as Arist. understood him): αἰτία τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὸ δὲ νεῖκος τῶν κακῶν, Metaph. 985a, 4 ff.; 1075b, 1–7. Hence the ἠπιόφρων Φιλότητος ἀμεμφέος ἄμβροτος ὁρμή (fr. 35) is contrasted with Νεῖκος μαινόμενον (115, 14), οὐλόμενον (17, 19), λυγρόν (109). The σφαῖρος in which only φιλία prevails while νεῖκος is completely vanquished, is called μονίῃ περιήργεϊ γαίων, fr. 27, 28. 407

98 θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες (frr. 20, 12, 23, 8). Exactly the same is said of the δαίμονες οἵτε βίοιο λελόγχασι μακραίωνος (115, 5). In the face of these expressions, so definitely setting a period to the lifetime of the gods, we must suppose that the epithets which Emp. applies to himself—he is to be in the future θεὸς ἄμβροτος οὐκ ἔτι θνητός, 112, 4—are merely intended to assert that he shall not die any more in his incarnation as a man (the same thing must be meant when those who are delivered from the circle of rebirth are called ἀπόκηροι, ἄτειρεῖς (147); the gods are only called ἄθανατοι by traditional convention). Plutarch also, Def. Or. 16, p. 418 E, distinctly states that the δαίμονες of Emp. eventually die. That the gods (but not τὸ θεῖον itself) were liable to extinction had already been the opinion of Anaximander and Anaximenes. Acc. to Emp. the individual δαίμονες would be reabsorbed into the universal divinity, the σφαῖρος (just as the individual deities of the Stoics are reabsorbed at the world-conflagration into Zeus who is alone indestructible). [= ll. 131, 141, 461, 460 M.]

99 Emp., frr. 133, 134 (389–96), speaks of a supersensual divinity that is entirely φρὴν ἱερή: he gives to this divinity the name of Apollo, but the description is said to apply περὶ παντὸς τοῦ θείου. Hipp., RH. vii, 29, p. 386 D.-S., refers the description to the σφαῖρος. The σφαῖρος, in which no νεῖκος is left was called by Emp. ὁ θεός, ὁ εὐδαιμονέστατος θεός (Arist., An. i, 5, 410b, 5–6; Metaph. ii, 4, 1000b, 3). It is, however, certain that Emp. would not have regarded the σφαῖρος as pure φρὴν ἱερή. It appears, in fact, that in the σφαῖρος, in which everything is together and united, even the divine power thought of as supersensual is brought to a close. In the world-state of multiplicity caused by νεῖκος divinity seems to be regarded as separate from the elements and the forces. “Furious conflict” (115, 14) then attacks even the divinity and divides it against itself; hence the origin of individual δαίμονες as a self-caused division of the divine, a desertion from the One θεῖον—the individual δαίμονες are φυγάδες, θεόθεν (115, 13). These individual δαίμονες are entangled in the world from its origin until at last, having become purified, they rise again to the heights of divinity; and when all individuality is again fused into one by φιλία they return once more into the universal divinity in order with it to enter into the σφαῖρος.—Thus we may perhaps reconstruct the Empedoklean fantasy. His lines do not supply sufficient evidence for the complete reconstruction of his picture of the perpetually recurring process. We should naturally expect a certain obscurity to cling to this attempt to fuse together physiology and theology.

100 Lucr. iii, 370–3.

101 All that is essential on the subject of Demokritos’ doctrine of the soul is to be found in Arist., An. i, 2, p. 403b, 31–404a, 16; 405a., 7–13; i, 3, p. 406b, 15–22; Resp. iv, p. 471b, 30–472a, 17.—The air is full of the particles which Demokritos calls νοῦς and ψυχή: Resp. 472a, 6–8 [Vors. ii, 36]. The atoms hovering in the air become visible as “motes in the sunbeam”; of these some are the soul-atoms (this must be the meaning of An. 404A, 3 ff.; Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 15 W., is only drawing upon Arist.). This is a modification of the opinion held by the Pythagoreans (mentioned also by Arist. 404a, 16 ff.) that the motes in the sunbeam are “souls” (see above, chap. x, n. 34). Inhalation of the world-stuff as a condition of life in the individual is imitated from Herakleitos (see S.E., M. vii, 129).

102 The soul acc. to Dem. ἐκβαίνει μὲν τοῦ σώματος, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐκβαίνειν διαφορεῖται καὶ διασκεδάννυται, Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 16 f. W. 408

103 Dem. φθαρτὴν (εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν) τῷ σώματι συνδιαφθειρομένην, Dox. 393a, 8 [Vors. A 109]. Since the disruption of the soul-atoms is not effected at a single blow death may, in consequence, sometimes be only apparent; i.e. when many but not all the soul-particles have escaped. For this reason also, with the possible re-assemblage of the soul-atoms, ἀναβιώσεις of the apparently dead may occur. Cases of this kind seem to have been treated in the work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου: see Procl., in Rp. ii, 113, 6 Kr.; D.L. ix, 46; it is counted among the most famous, or at least the most popular of Dem.’s writings in the anecdote ap. Ath. 168 B; cf. [Hp.] Ep. 10, 3, p. 291 Hch. [ix, 322 Lit.]; Vors. 55 C, 2. This view of the retention of vitality, of course, only applies to the period immediately following the (apparent) death (it is fairly correctly represented by [Plu.] Plac. Ph. 4, 4, 4 [Dox. 390], it was probably attributed to Dem. on account of a similar observation made by Parmenides; see above, p. 373). Nevertheless, out of it grew up the assertion, which was then attributed to Dem., that in fact τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων αἰσθάνεται: e.g. Alex. Aph. in Arist., Top. 21, 21; [Vors. ii, 38, 8]; Stob., Ecl. i, p. 477, 18 W. In the case, at least, of those that are really “dead”, i.e. of bodies that have been deserted by all the soul-atoms, Dem. certainly never taught the presence of αἴσθησις: against the vulgarization of his opinions that would attribute such a view as this to him (as Epicurus himself did) the Democritici spoken of by Cic. (TD. i, 82) made their protest.—The work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου can certainly not have confined itself to considerations of a purely physical nature; otherwise Thrasyllos (D.L. ix, 46) could not have classified it among the ἠθικὰ βιβλία of Dem. [Vors. ii, 19]. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what from Dem.’s point of view there could have been to say about “the things in the Underworld”. It is hardly possible to suppose (as Mullach, Dem. fr., pp. 117–18, and Heyne do) that Dem. would think himself obliged either to answer or to parody the fabulous inventions of the poets about the realm of shadows. It is difficult to be certain that Dem. was really the author of the work: the forgery of later times was particularly fond of turning the most clear-headed of materialists into a mage and a jack-of-all-trades. (Dem.’s observations of the possibility of ἀναβιοῦν is in part at least the origin of the writing π. τ. ἐν ᾅδου; it is also responsible for the anecdote that makes him promise to the Persian king that he will restore his dead wife to life again, etc.—a variation of an ingenious story widely spread both in the East and the West. See my Lecture on Greek Novel-writing: Verh. der Philologenvers. zu Rostock, 1875, p. 68 f.)—The “fragmenta moralia” of Dem. are with rare exceptions (e.g. Mull. frr. 7, 23, 48, 49, etc. = 146, 159, 147, 127 D.) wholesale fabrications of the feeblest kind. One of them, however (119 Mull., 297 D.), agrees at least with what Dem. may very well have said about the punishments in Hell (though in rather different words—he was incapable of quite such a monstrosity as μυθοπλαστέοντες, which sounds very late Greek. Vain efforts have been made to justify this μυθοπλαστέω by reference to the older μυθοπλάστης. But μυθοποιός, ὀδοφύλαξ, ἀργυροκόπος, etc., are also old, and it is no secret that verbs derived by further extension from such composite verbal nouns are mostly late formations: thus μυθοποιέω, ὀδοφυλακέω, ἀργυροκοπέω, and again πετροβολέω, ἱεροφαντέω, τεκνοκτονέω, etc.). In another of these falsa no echo even of Dem.’s thought is to be found: fr. moral. 1 Mull. [171 D.] ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος.

104 Dem., whose inquiries set out from the study of inorganic nature, 409 was led to predicate a mechanical obedience to law in organic nature as well. Anaxagoras starting from the study of organic nature and in particular of man, its highest development, derived from that study the concept of purpose—purpose consciously undertaken and carried out—and this idea affected his outlook upon the whole of nature, including inorganic nature. This teleological system, regarded as of universal application, is made by him to depend on a Being modelled upon the human mind, the only source, in fact, from which he could have derived his experience of action carried out in accordance with pre-arranged purpose.

105 Cf. here and on what follows, Heinze, Ber. d. Sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1890, pp. 1 ff.

106 νοῦς must be omniscient if it γνώμην περὶ παντὸς ἴσχει (fr. 6 M. = 12 D.). It has organized (διεκόσμησε) not only what was and is but also what is to be: frr. 6, 12 [12, 14 D.].

107 Arist., Ph. 256b. 24 ff.

108 ὁ γὰρ νοῦς (of Anaxag.) εἷς: Arist., Metaph. 1069b, 31. On the other hand, χρήματα ἄπειρα πλῆθος: Anaxag. fr. 1.

109 Ἀναξαγόρας φησι τὸν νοῦν κοινὸν οὐθὲν οὐθενὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔχειν. Arist., An. i, 2, p. 405b, 19 ff.; cf. iii, 4, p. 429b, 23 f.

110 Anaxag. fr. 6 [12]: τὰ μὲν ἄλλα <πάντα> παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει, νόος δέ ἐστι ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μοῦνος αὐτὸς ἐφ, ἑωυτοῦ ἐστι. (ἄπειρον does not seem to supply the required opposition to what proceeds: ? ἁπλόον. Anaxag. used the word of νοῦς acc. to Arist., An. 405a, 16; 429b, 23. Zeller also suggests ἁπλόον, Archiv f. G. d. Philos. v, 441.)

111 ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει, καὶ τὰ μέζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νόος κρατέει· καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νόος ἐκράτησε, ὤστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν, fr. 6 [12]. This κρατεῖν at the beginning of the εριχώρησις cannot at any rate take place by the inter-mixture of νοῦς in the σπέρματα or by the entry of νοῦς into these. Because νοῦς is both ἀπαθής and ἀμιγήςs, it κρατοίη ἂν ἀμιγὴς ὤν, Arist., Ph. 256b, 27; cf. 429a, 18. Does this also apply to νοῦς when it τῶν ψυχὴν ἐχόντων κρατέει? And yet in this case it appears to be divided, as μείζωνn or ἐλάττων in each case, in the ζῷα.—No one can help being reminded here of the insoluble aporiai raised in Aristotle’s own doctrine of the active νοῦς which, in this case too, is ἀπαθής, ἀμιγής, χωριστός from the body; is also deprived of all attributes of individuality (which reside entirely in the lower psychical powers) and thus appears as a common divine spirit. And yet it is said to be a μόριον τῆς ψυχῆς, present ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, dwelling inside the body yet having nothing in common with it, and in any case is thought of as an individual mind. In the case of Anaxagoras the same aporiai apply also to the nourishing, feeling, desiring, and moving soul (as it is called by Arist.); for all the “parts” of the soul are included almost indistinguishably by him under the conception of νοῦς.—The difficulty of reconciling the unity and inward continuity of the spiritual (immaterial, that cannot be thought of as divided)—with its individuation and distribution into the multiplicity of souls, is one which repeatedly occurs in Greek philosophy.

112 διὰ πάντων ἰόντα, Pl., Crat. 413 C.

113 ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νόου· ἔστι οἷσι δὲ καὶ νόος ἔνι, fr. 5 [11].

114 νόος δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μέζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάσσων, fr. 6 [12].

115 Arist., An. i, 2, p. 404b, 1–7: Anaxag. often gives τὸν νοῦν as τὸ αἴτιον τοῦ καλῶς καὶ ὀρθῶς· ἑτέρωθι δὲ (he says) τοῦτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν· ἐν ἅπασι γὰρ ὑπάρχειν αὐτὸν τοῖς ζῴοις, καὶ μεγάλοις καὶ μικροῖς 410 καὶ τιμίοις καὶ ἀτιμοτέροις (in which case the νοῦς that dwells within all the ζῷα cannot be any longer regarded as ὁ κατὰ φρόνησιν λεγόμενος νοῦς). Anaxag. had expressed himself indistinctly: ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτων (i.e, the relation between νοῦς and ψυχή). Cf. 405a, 13 f. In the sense of the words as used by Anaxagoras νοῦς and ψυχή were simply identified by Plato: Crat. 400 A.