The Original Mixture (All Things Together)

Anaxagoras taught that the cosmos began not from nothing but from a boundless, undifferentiated blend in which "all things were together," with a portion of everything present in everything else — bone in bread, dark in light, the seeds of all qualities intermingled. Nothing is ever truly created or destroyed; the visible world emerges only as Mind (Nous) sets this primordial stuff spinning, so that ingredients separate out into the things we see. Because every substance still contains a share of all others, the mixture is never fully unwound — there is no smallest part and no pure, unmixed thing except Mind itself. The doctrine answered how change is possible without anything coming from what is not.