mathematisches Handbuch der alien Aegypter (Leipzig, 1877). Comte, Systeme de Politique Positive, pp. 297, 300.
'P. Laffitte, Les Grands Types de l'Humanite, vol. ii., p. 292.
p. 294.
Smyrnaei Platonici Liber de Astronomia, ed. Th. H. Martin, p. 324 (Paris, 1849). Cf. Diog. Laer. i. 24.
is the received interpretation of the passage in Diogenes Laertius, i. 24 (see Wolf, Gesch. der Astron., p. 269), where ceXrivalov is probably a scribe's error for Cf . Apuleius, Florida, iv. 18, who attributes to Thales, then old, the discovery: "quotienb sol magnitudine sua circulum quern permeat metiatur." mained for a long time the exclusive property of the Italian schools. (See Schiaparelli, i Precursori de Copernico nelr Anti chita, 5873.) Philosophy.—Whilst in virtue of his political sagacity and in tellectual eminence Thales held a place in the traditional list of the wise men, on the strength of the disinterested love of know ledge which appeared in his physical speculations he was accounted as a "philosopher" (0tX6004os). Thales's "philosophy" is usually summed up in the dogma "water is the principle, or the element, of things"; but, as the technical terms "principle" (etpxi7) and "element" (a-7-00(6ov) had not yet come into use, it may be con jectured that the phrase "all things are water" (ravra i')Ocop more exactly represents his teaching. Writings bearing his name were extant in antiquity; but as Aristotle, when he speaks of Thales's doctrine, always depends upon tradition, the writings were probably forgeries.
From Aristotle we learn (I) that Thales found in water the origin of things; (2) that he conceived the earth to float upon a sea of the elemental fluid; (3) that he supposed all things to be full of gods; (4) that in virtue of the attraction exercised by the magnet he attributed to it a soul. Here our information ends. Aristotle's suggestion that Thales was led to his fundamental dogma by observation of the part which moisture plays in the production and the maintenance of life, and Simplicius's, that the impressibility and the binding power of water were perhaps also in his thoughts, are by admission purely conjectural. Simpli cius's further suggestion that Thales conceived the element to be modified by thinning and thickening is plainly inconsistent with the statement of Theophrastus that the hypothesis in question was peculiar to Anaximenes. The assertion preserved by Stobaeus that Thales recognized, together with the material element, "water," "mind," which penetrates it and sets it in motion, is refuted by the precise testimony of Aristotle, who declares that the early physicists did not distinguish the moving cause from the material cause, and that before Hermotimus and Anaxagoras no one postu lated a creative intelligence.
It would seem, then, that Thales sought amid the variety of things a single material cause ; that he found such a cause in one of the forms of matter most familiar to him, namely, water, and accordingly regarded the world and all that it contains as water variously metamorphosed; and that he asked himself no questions about the manner of its transformation.
The doctrine of Thales was interpreted and developed by Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. The Eleatic Parme nides (q.v.), noted that, when Thales and his successors attributed to the supposed element changing qualities, they became plural ists; they therefore required that the superficial variety of nature should be strictly distinguished from its fundamental unity. Hence, whereas Thales and his successors had confounded the One, the element, and the Many, its modifications, the One and the Not One or Many became with Parmenides matters for separate inves tigation. In this way two lines of inquiry originated. On the one hand Empedocles and Anaxagoras, abandoning the pursuit of the One, gave themselves to the scientific study of the Many; on the other Zeno, abandoning the pursuit of the Many, gave himself to the dialectical study of the One. Both successions were doomed to failure; and the result was a scepticism from which the thought of Greece did not emerge until Plato, returning to Parmenides, declared the study of the One and the Many, jointly regarded, to be the true office of philosophy. Thus, meagre and futile as the doctrine of Thales was, all the Greek schools, with the solitary exception of that of Pythagoras, took their origin from it. Not in name only, but also in fact, Thales, the first of the Ionian physi cists, was the founder of the philosophy of Greece.