(1) Because of the weakness of our senses we are not able to glimpse the truth. Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.

(2) A thing does not come to be or perish; occurrences that are so called are simply the mixing and separating of real entities. For how could hair come from what is not hair, or flesh from what is not flesh?

(3) This being the case, we must suppose that composite things contain many ingredients of the very greatest variety: the seeds of everything, having all kinds of characteristics, colors and ways of affecting the senses.

(4) In everything there is a portion of everything else.

(5) When all things were together, before any separation had taken place, there was not even any discernible color. This was because of the utter mixture of all things—of moist with dry, hot with cold, bright with dark. And there was a large quantity of earth in the mixture, as well as seeds that were unlimited in number and of the utmost variety. For none of the products is ever like any other. And since this is so, we must believe that all this variety of things was present in the original whole.

(6) While other things have a share in the being of everything else, Mind is unlimited, autonomous and unmixed with anything, standing entirely by itself. For if it were not by itself but were mixed with anything else whatsoever, it would then participate in all that exists, since (as I have said) in everything that exists there is a share of everything else. If Mind were to share in the universal mixture, the things with which it was mixed would prevent it from having control over everything in the way it now does. However, the truth is that because of its exceptional fineness and purity, Mind has knowledge of all that is, and therein it has the greatest power.

(7) Anaxagoras of Clazomenae...held that the first principles were things that had identical parts. For it seemed to him quite impossible that anything should come into being from what does not exist, or be dissolved into it. In any case, we take in nourishment that is simple and homogeneous, such as bread or water, and from it our hair, veins, arteries, flesh, sinews, bones, and all the other parts of the body are nourished. Since this is so, we must agree that everything that exists is in the nourishment we take in, and that everything derives its growth from things that exist. In our nourishment, there must be some parts that produce blood, some that produce sinews, some that produce bones, and so on—parts that reason alone can apprehend.