Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/35

From the standpoint of history or development, naive hylozo- ism is, after mythological animism (I refer to the Theogonies), the consistent and natural explanation of cosmic processes. With the early Greek cosmologists, therefore, the distinction between mechanism and teleology could not arise, since, in the first place, their philosophy was so far naifve; conceptless ; and, as a consequence of this, the distinction between the personal and the impersonal, the corporeal and the spiritual as such, had not arisen, and certainly could not arise. The truth of this statement is distinctly vindicated by reference to the philosophy of Anaxagoras, 1 who is held to have attempted a teleological explanation of the world-movement. And considering what a part astronomical phenomena play in determining the character of Greek philosophy, we can well believe that Anaxagoras had a teleological motive (a posteriori ) for his doctrine, due, no doubt, to his admiration of the stellar order. But we must note further that his ' Bewegungstoff ' (= ' Vernunftstoff ') is still ' Stoff/ and not < Geist,' and that finally he demanded a tele- ological explanation of the beginning only of the vortex motion ; while the further course of the motions, and thus every indi- vidual occurrence i he explained, as Leucippus and Empedocles did, purely mechanically?' This ' relapse ' into material caus- ation, and pure mechanism, is enough to show that the tele- ology of Anaxagoras has really no spiritual, idealistic, or philo- 1 It is usual to call the lonians (Milesians) hylozoists. When, however, I characterize the whole of Greek philosophy (including Anaxagoras, but of course excluding the Eleatics), up to the anthropological and systematic periods, as naive hylozoism, I do not mean that, for example, Heracleitus and Empedocles and Leucippus were so naively or so flatly hylozoistic as the Milesians, but that the attitude throughout, until the philosophy of the Concept, was hylozoistic. Limited space permits no detailed proof of this. But the point of my reference to Anaxagoras is that since his system retains the hylozoistic attitude, since his rous (see text below, p. 20) is only a subtler kind of matter, and thus not even quasi-rational, therefore, a fortiori, still greater must be the naivett of the pre- ceding systems, arid much less the possibility of any appreciation of the distinction between the corporeal and the spiritual as such. With Heracleitus, with Empe- docles and Leucippus, with Anaxagoras, movement is a matter of inherent or brute necessity. That is the hylozoistic attitude, which conceives movement as intelligible in itself, in need of no further explanation, and as a necessary or in- herent property of matter. 9 See Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophic, Eng. tr., p. 52.