This we learn from Plato and Aristotle, who blame Anaxagoras for inconsistency in deserting his own hypothesis, and in invoking explanations from physical agencies, to the neglect of Nous and its supposed optimising purposes. But Anaxagoras, as far as we can judge by his remaining fragments, seems not to have committed any such inconsistency. He did not proclaim his Nous to be a powerful extra-cosmical Architect, like the Demiurgus of Plato--nor an intra-cosmical, immanent, undeliberating instinct (such as Aristotle calls Nature), tending towards the production and renewal of regular forms and conjunctions, yet operating along with other agencies which produced concomitants irregular, unpredictable, often even obstructive and monstrous. Anaxagoras appears to conceive his Nous as one among numerous other real agents in Nature, material like the rest, yet differing from the rest as being powerful, simple, and pure from all mixture,[164] as being endued with universal cognizance, as being the earliest to act in point of time, and as furnishing the primary condition to the activity of the rest by setting on foot the cosmical rotation. The Homoeomeries are coeternal with, if not anterior to, Nous. They have laws and properties of their own, which they follow, when once liberated, without waiting for the dictation of Nous. What they do is known by, but not ordered by, Nous.[165] It is therefore no inconsistency in Anaxagoras that he assigns to mind one distinct and peculiar agency, but nothing more; and that when trying to explain the variety of phenomena he makes reference to other physical agencies, as the case seems to require.[166] [Footnote 164: Anaxagoras, Fr. 8,** p. 100, Schaub. [Greek: e)sti\ ga\r lepto/tato/n te pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn], &c. This means, not that [Greek: nou=s] was unextended or immaterial, but that it was thinner or more subtle than either fire or air. Herakleitus regarded [Greek: to\ perie/chon] as [Greek: logiko\n kai\ phrenê=res]. Diogenes of Apollonia considered air as endued with cognition, and as imparting cognition by being inhaled. Compare Plutarch, De Placit. Philos. iv. 3. I cannot think, with Brücker (Hist. Philosop. part ii. b. ii. De Sectâ Ionicâ, p. 504, ed. 2nd), and with Tennemann, Ges. Ph. i. 8, p. 312, that Anaxagoras was "primus qui Dei ideam inter Græcos à materialitate quasi purificavit," &c. I agree rather with Zeller (Philos. der Griech. i. p. 680-683, ed. 2nd), that the Anaxagorean Nous is not conceived as having either immateriality or personality.] [Footnote 165: Simplikius, in Physic. Aristot. p. 73. [Greek: kai\ A)naxago/ras de\ to\n nou=n e)a/sas, ô(/s phêsin Eu)/dêmos, kai\ au)tomati/zôn ta\ polla\ suni/stêsin.]] [Footnote 166: Diogen. Laert. ii. 8. [Greek: Nou=n . . . a)rchê\n kinê/seôs]. Brücker, Hist. Philos. ut supra. "Scilicet, semel inducto in materiam à mente motu, sufficere putavit Anaxagoras, juxta leges naturæ motûsque, rerum ortum describere."]