From the Beginning to Plato

198 ANAXAGORAS AND THE ATOMISTS
description). Analysis goes on for ever, in principle at least; even when the
technical limit is reached of whatever process of physical separation has been
employed, we know a priori that every sample of yellow, shiny, malleable stuff
contains infinitely many samples of every kind of stuff, but always more of
yellow, shiny, malleable stuff than of any other.
An objection to the attribution of this theory to Anaxagoras is that it seems
flatly to contradict Aristotle’s evidence (DK 59 A 43, 45, 46) that in
Anaxagoras’ system the elements were ‘the homoeomerous things’. In
Aristotelian terminology a homoeomerous substance is one whose parts are of
the same nature as the whole, e.g. every part of a piece of flesh is a piece of flesh,
as opposed for example to a plant, whose parts are leaves, roots etc., not plants.
In general, stuffs, which we have seen to be among Anaxagoras’ basic things, are
in Aristotelian terms homoeomerous. Hence Anaxagoras is committed to holding
that every part of a piece of gold is a piece of gold, which contradicts the account
given above, according to which a piece of gold contains, in addition to pieces of
gold, portions of every other substance and quality. (This contradiction is the
basis of Cornford’s interpretation of ‘everything in everything’ as ‘every
opposite in every substance’.) This difficulty seems to me illusory. One
possibility (adopted by McKirahan [2.7], 208, n. 38) is that in identifying
Anaxagoras’ basic substances as ‘the homoeomerous things’ Aristotle means
merely to identify them as stuffs, i.e. the things which in Aristotle’s theory are
homoeomerous, without attributing to Anaxagoras the thesis that those stuffs are
in fact homoeomerous. This may well be right. It is, however, possible that
Anaxagoras may have maintained (the texts are silent) that stuffs and qualities
are indeed homoeomerous, despite containing portions of every stuff and quality.
He could do so consistently if by ‘homoeomerous’ he meant ‘having every part of
the same kind as the whole’, and if by part he understood what is produced by
division. He might then have maintained that however minutely one divided up a
lump of gold, what would be produced would be fragments of gold, the other
stuffs and qualities being separable, if at all, not by division, but by other
processes such as smelting. That would be, in effect, to distinguish parts, separable
by division, from portions, separable, if at all, otherwise than by division. (It is
not necessary for this hypothesis to suppose that Anaxagoras marked that
distinction by any explicit distinction of terminology.) I emphasize that this
suggestion is offered merely as a possibility, and that I am not maintaining that it
has positive textual support. The crucial point is that the interpretation of the
‘everything, in everything’ doctrine which I have defended above is not
inconsistent with Aristotle’s statements that Anaxagoras’ basic things were
homoeomerous.
That doctrine is neither empty nor viciously regressive; it is an ingenious
construction which allows Anaxagoras to maintain consistently two of his
fundamental theses: (1) there is a portion of every stuff in every stuff, (2) each
stuff is characterized by the character of its predominant portion. Its crucial flaw
is its lack of explanatory force; the character of a stuff is ‘explained’ by its