three hundred and sixty-five days. He counselled the Ionians to form a confederacy against the menacing power of Persia, and to make Teos the head of the union. Herodotus says that he accompanied the Lydians in the war against the Medes, and when Croesus was at a loss to know how to transport his army across the river Halys, in order to penetrate into Persia, Thales relieved his difficulty by saying that he should make the river, which was in front of them, flow behind them. This was done by making a semicircular canal, to turn the river from its former bed and pass in their rear; and thus they found themselves on the opposite side of the river without crossing it. He predicted the eclipse of the sun which occurred during the same war. Foreseeing a great abundance of olives, he bought up all the oil-presses in the country, and by means of his monopoly acquired great wealth; but, as some one has remarked, philosophy does not find the same facilities now-a-days. When contemplating the stars, he fell into a ditch which he had not observed. A Thracian servant who attended him tauntingly told him that he should first observe those things which were before his feet, and afterwards he might aspire to the knowledge of those in the heavens. His death is placed by some in the seventieth, by others in the ninetieth year of his age. While viewing a gymnastic contest, he was overcome by the heat of the place and the infirmities of age. Diogenes Laertius cites Lobon of Argos, who says that Thales left two hundred verses; but these were probably nothing more than certain pithy sayings such as were attributed to all the seven wise men.

The great problem of philosophy with him was to determine the origin and cause of the universe. All things, he argued, are nourished by moisture, and even heat is produced from humidity, and nourished by it. Also the seed of all things is humid, but water is the principle of the humid. Therefore, since all things arise from and are preserved by water, it must be the principle and cause of all things. That water was the cause of all things was a very ancient opinion in Greece. Homer says, 'Qкeavòs öσTEр γένεσις πάντεσσι τέτυκται, and the ancient fable taught that Oceanus and Tethys were the parents of generation. Thales gave the universe a soul or principle of motion, and regarded the whole world as a living being. By the 4

THIRD SERIES. — VOL. III. NO. I.

human soul he understood the principle of motion in man, and in the same sense he is said to have maintained that amber and the magnet have a soul, because they possess a moving force. The universal soul of the world he called divine and eternal, but he did not regard it as a divinity distinct from water, but as an inherent quality of water. The original water, which he regards as the principle and cause of all, is possessed of this divine soul, which is the principle of motion and is identified with it, and it is by this moving force of the water that all things are evolved or generated from it. Such atheistic physiologizing might perhaps be regarded as unworthy of the name of philosophy, and it might be asked what Thales did for science. But there are two things in the philosophy of Thales which are of importance. The first is the doctrine of the unity of the First Cause; and the second is, that, in attempting by argument to establish his position, he cut himself off from the mythological poets, and founded the philosophy of Greece.

Thales was followed by a succession of philosophers in Ionia, who did little more than continue his inquiries into the origin of the universe. The oldest of these was Anaximander, born at Miletus, in the second year of the forty-third Olympiad (607 B. C.). He was the friend or disciple of Thales, who was thirty years his senior. To Anaximander is commonly ascribed the invention of the sun-dial, though Pliny says it was discovered by Anaximenes, and Herodotus says it was brought into Greece from Babylon. He wrote his philosophy in verse, and although it was soon afterwards lost, it may very probably have been seen by the earlier writers. Anaximander is said to have been the first to use the Greek word ȧpx" to designate the principle or origin of things. This he placed in the infinite. By the infinite he understood a mixture (μiyua) of all the elementary parts. He calls the infinite divine, eternal, and imperishable, and endows it with a necessary and inherent motion, whereby the elements of the infinite separate themselves from one another. The infinite with Anaximander is a unity, but contains the multiplicity of elements out of which things are composed by separation and combination. On the decomposition of the infinite, the cold and earthy were separated from the warm. The former constitute the earth, the latter the heavenly bodies, which

he regarded as balls of fire surrounded by air, and emitting light through apertures, so that, when the aperture of the sun is shut up, its light is no longer visible, thus causing an eclipse. The primal mixture of the cold and watery was to a certain degree dried up by the constantly increasing heat of the sun, thus forming our globe in its present condition. The first animals issued from the moisture which was dried up by the sun, and came forth covered with a prickly rind or shell, which they afterwards burst and appeared on the dry ground. The first birth of animals was very imperfect, but as the earth grew dryer by the action of the sun it became capable of producing more perfect animals. Man was the last of these productions, and being in need of great assistance in his infancy he was first formed in a fish-shape, and after he became able to assist himself he was thrown upon the land and took his present form. The effect of the sun's heat upon the earth is to dry up the cold elements of which it is formed, leaving only the warm. Therefore he said that the earth will be destroyed by fire, and again return into the infinite, to be again separated and evolved into combinations similar to the present. He said the stars were gods, and were produced from the infinite and returned to it, and were absorbed in it at long intervals. In this doctrine of Anaximander we find the old fable that all things in the beginning were chaos, an opinion which seems to pervade almost all the older philosophy of Greece. Admitting no divinity, for the stars, which he called gods, were the production of the infinite, he attributed a self-moving force to the infinite, by which are produced the many changes which it continually undergoes. This was the prevailing doctrine of atheists, and hence Aristotle, to prove God, refutes this argument; and by showing that whatever is moved is moved by another, he deduces the necessity of a first Mover, unmoved, which is God.

Anaximenes, the third in order of the Ionian philosophers, is generally regarded as the disciple of Anaximander. Dr. Ritter brings two objections to this. He thinks he discovers a greater resemblance to Thales in the doctrine of Anaximenes than in that of Anaximander. To this we attach but little importance, for the scholar does not necessarily follow the precepts of the master, and, moreover, the doctrine of Anaximander is not so different from that of

Thales and Anaximenes as to warrant the denial that he may have been the pupil of the one, and the teacher of the other. The other argument, which he deduces from chronology, is not more conclusive.

"The usual chronology," he says, "does not in any wise consist with the supposition that Anaximenes was the disciple of Anaximander; for although widely different dates are assigned for the birth of Anaximenes, the more credible account of Apollodorus places the event in Olympiad 63, whereas Anaximander died shortly after the fifty-eighth Olympiad." The account of Apollodorus, which he calls "the more credible account," says that Anaximenes was born in the sixty-third Olympiad, and died at the time of the taking of Sardis. Sardis was captured by Cyrus, 548 B. C., and the sixty-third Olympiad began 528 B. C., which would place the death of Anaximenes twenty years earlier than his birth. Such a contradictory statement can hardly be called "the more credible account." Ritter remarks, that "the statement in this tradition, that he died at the time of the capture of Sardis, originated apparently from some inadvertence." It is equally possible that the other part of the statement, that he was born in the sixtythird Olympiad, may have "originated from some inadvertence," and we reject the whole statement, as being both contradictory to itself and to the other writers. Origen* says he flourished in the first year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad (548 B. C.). Suidas says he was born in the fifty-fifth Olympiad (560 B. C.), which would make him forty-seven years younger than Anaximander. other authorities, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, Eusebius, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Cicero, all call him the disciple of Anaximander.

Besides

Anaximenes taught that infinite air is the principle of all things. The air is infinite, but the objects which are produced from it are finite. The gods and the human soul are the purest productions of air, and approach nearest to the nature of the infinite air. He differed from Anaximander in determining the nature of the infinite, which the latter considered as a mixture of all the elements. Like him, he makes motion an inherent quality in the primary substance. When rarefied, the air becomes fire; when condensed, water; water condensed becomes earth

*Philosophoumena, c. 7.

and stones. His physical doctrine or explanation of the natural phenomena is exceedingly rude and simple, though quite in accordance with his theory. Thus, he said, earthquakes are produced either by too great dryness or too great moisture in the earth, caused by excess of heat or rain. Anaximenes left two disciples, according to the general opinion, Anaxagoras and Diogenes.

Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenæ, in Ionia, in the first year of the seventieth Olympiad (500 B. C.), according to Apollodorus, and died in the eighty-eighth (428 B. C.). He inherited an easy competency, which he renounced in order to apply himself wholly to the study of nature. He visited Athens at the age of twenty years, but seems to have returned to Ionia, and there taught philosophy for some time after the death of Anaximenes. He afterwards established himself at Athens, where many distinguished men are said to have been his disciples. Among these are mentioned Archelaus, Socrates, Empedocles, Democritus, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, Thucydides, Pericles, Themistocles, Euripides, and sop the tragedian. That he taught philosophy publicly, at Athens, is contrary to the assertion of Diogenes Laertius, who says that Archelaus, his disciple, was the first to bring the natural or physical philosophy of Ionia to Athens. In his old age, Anaxagoras was accused of impiety towards the gods, and exiled from Athens. He then retired to Lampsacus, where he soon afterwards died. His memory was held in great veneration in that city, and, in accordance with a request which he made the magistrates before dying, the anniversary of his death was granted as a holiday, and was still kept in the time of Diogenes Laertius. The doctrine of Anaxagoras is that all things are formed of infinitely small particles, infinite in number. Nothing begins or ceases to be, for all generation is a mixing together or aggregation, and all corruption is a separation of the original particles. These particles are called óμooμep or óμoloμépeia, or similarly disposed parts; but whether Anaxagoras used this term may be doubted. Ritter thinks Aristotle was the first to use it. This whole mass of commingled and disorderly elements or particles was brought into order and formed into the world by the action of intelligence. He rejected chance, and fate he declared to be only an empty name. He seems to have regarded in