  Anaxagoras’ solution is to deny that there is any lower limit on smallness. Adopting the model of density described above, he can say that there is no lowest degree of density in the mixture. This emphasis on density makes it clear that Anaxagoras’ technical sense of smallness is not one of particle size but of degree of submergence or emergence in the mixture. For an ingredient to be small is for there to be a comparatively low density of that ingredient in a particular area of the mixture in comparison with all the other ingredients (everything else) in that area. The corresponding assertion that there is no upper limit on largeness can then be interpreted as the claim that no matter how emergent from the mixture (standing out from the background mixture) an ingredient is, it can become still more emergent. So, no matter how sweet some water tastes, there is still some salt in it. The salt in the sample is small, i.e., submerged in the mixture of water and other ingredients, but there will never cease to be salt in the sample. Correspondingly, no matter how salty another sample is, it can always become more salty and even “turn to salt” because there is no upper limit to the degree of emergence from the background. As the salt emerges, other ingredients will submerge, but will never disappear, so that the wet itself is deeply submerged in the mix, and we are left with an apparently solid block of salt (though that salt will itself contain all other ingredients, with most of them in such small concentrations that they are completely submerged and not apparent to an observer). This account of large and small is implied in Schofield 1980, and worked out more fully in Inwood 1986 and Furth 1991; it is accepted in Curd 2007; see also Marmodoro 2017.