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[967b] which is now actually held was suspected by all who studied them accurately—namely, that if they were soulless, and consequently devoid of reason, they could never have employed with such precision calculations so marvellous; and even in those days there were some who dared to hazard the statement1 that reason is the orderer of all that is in the heavens. But the same thinkers, through mistaking the nature of the soul and conceiving her to be posterior, instead of prior, to body,

1 An allusion to the saying of Anaxagoras, “All things were together; then Reason (νοῦς) came and set them in order.” But A. ascribed to Reason only the initiation of a world-order; in all other respects his doctrine was materialistic, and he used purely physical causes and processes in explaining the world, regarding the stars as fiery masses of matter (“full of earth, stones,” etc.). Cp.Phaedo 91 B ff.

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