There is even one place in which he appears to speak of Anaximander’s Boundless as a “mixture,” though his words may perhaps admit of another interpretation.[111] But this is of no consequence for our interpretation of Anaximander himself. It is certain that he cannot have said anything about “elements,” which no one thought of before Empedokles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The question has only been mentioned at all because it has been the subject of a lengthy controversy,[112] and because it throws great light on the historical value of Aristotle’s statements. From the point of view of his own system, these are abundantly justified; but we shall have to remember in other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some earlier thinker, we are not in the least bound to believe what he says in a historical sense. Footnote 111: _Met._ Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c). Zeller (p. 205, n. 1) assumes an “easy zeugma.” I should prefer to say that καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα was an afterthought, and that Aristotle really meant τὸ Ἀναξαγόρου ἓν ... καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρου. _Met._ Α, 4. 187 a 20 does not assign the “mixture” to Anaximander. Footnote 112: For the literature of this controversy, see R. P. 15. A good deal of light is thrown on this and similar questions by W. A. Heidel, “Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy” (_Arch._ xix. p. 333). [Sidenote: The primary substance is infinite.] 16. Anaximander’s reason for conceiving the primary substance as boundless was, no doubt, that indicated by Aristotle, namely, “that becoming might not fail.”[113] It is not likely, however, that these words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough for us to know that Theophrastos, who had seen his book, attributed the thought to him. And certainly the way in which he regarded the world would bring home to him with more than common force the need of a boundless stock of matter. The “opposites” of which our world consists are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their strife is marked by “unjust” encroachments on either side. The warm commits “injustice” in summer, the cold in winter. To redress the balance, they must be absorbed once more in their common ground; and this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must picture to ourselves, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the heavens which bound the world we live in.[114] This mass is a body, and out of it our world once emerged by the “separating out” of the opposites, which one day will all be absorbed again in the Boundless, and our world will cease to be. Footnote 113: