The doctrine of the Pythagoreans seems to rest upon the same
ideas; some of them declared the motes in air, others what moved them,
to be soul. These motes were referred to because they are seen
always in movement, even in a complete calm.
The same tendency is shown by those who define soul as that which
moves itself; all seem to hold the view that movement is what is
closest to the nature of soul, and that while all else is moved by
soul, it alone moves itself. This belief arises from their never
seeing anything originating movement which is not first itself moved.
Similarly also Anaxagoras (and whoever agrees with him in saying
that mind set the whole in movement) declares the moving cause of
things to be soul. His position must, however, be distinguished from
that of Democritus. Democritus roundly identifies soul and mind, for
he identifies what appears with what is true-that is why he commends
Homer for the phrase 'Hector lay with thought distraught'; he does not
employ mind as a special faculty dealing with truth, but identifies
soul and mind. What Anaxagoras says about them is more obscure; in
many places he tells us that the cause of beauty and order is mind,
elsewhere that it is soul; it is found, he says, in all animals, great
and small, high and low, but mind (in the sense of intelligence)
appears not to belong alike to all animals, and indeed not even to all
human beings.
All those, then, who had special regard to the fact that what has
soul in it is moved, adopted the view that soul is to be identified
with what is eminently originative of movement.
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