Kitap 1
15
For presumably it is unnatural that either fire or earth or any other such element should cause existing things to be or become well and beautifully disposed; or indeed that those thinkers should hold such a view. Nor again was it satisfactory to commit so important a matter to spontaneity and chance.
16
Hence when someoneAnaxagoras. said that there is Mind in nature, just as in animals, and that this is the cause of all order and arrangement, he seemed like a sane man in contrast with the haphazard statements of his predecessors.Cf. Plat. Phaedo 97b-98b.
17
We know definitely that Anaxagoras adopted this view; but HermotimusA semi-mythical person supposed to have been a preincarnation of Pythagoras. of Clazomenae is credited with having stated it earlier. Those thinkers, then, who held this view assumed a principle in things which is the cause of beauty, and the sort of cause by which motion is communicated to things.
