GREEK PHILOSOPHY, the various speculations of the ancient Greeks with regard to the origin of things. This is but a partial description of the intellectual efforts made by the keen and powerful minds of the ancient world to solve those problems which science nowadays is so eagerly investigating. The ori gin of Greek philosophy was the gradual dis belief that had seized men's minds as to the truth of the ancient poetical cosmogonies and antique mythologies of religion. Faith was dead and reason had awakened. In the 7th cen tury before our era, in the flourishing city of Miletus, capital of the Ionian colony, the first Greek philosopher propounded the question which is still being put, What is the basic sub stratum of all phenomena? In our own days Huxley called it protoplasm; Herbert Spencer said it was force. Thales of Miletus (636 a.c.) declared it was water, which to him seemed to permeate and give life to all things. Thales was the first of the Greek physicists, or ma terialists, and was considered one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. He was the founder of the Ionian School of Philosophy. He was suc ceeded in the long line of philosophical inquir ers by Anaximenes (529 a.c.) : who looking for the first element, the first cause, found it in air. Air was universal and must be the parent of all things. It was the breath of life and must therefore be the source of it. Diogenes of Ap pollonia (460 a.c.) fixed upon a higher notion as the first cause of things. He saw the ruling race of mankind prevailed over nature by their intelligence. He decided that intelligence was the cause and foundation of all things. In these speculations as to the nature of the uni verse and its origin we come upon two remark able men, Anaximander of Miletus (610 a.c.) and Pythagoras, who invented the word philoso phy. The former taught that all existence came from the infinite — a vague term, which did not mean the infinite intelligence but the infinite existence. Pythagoras said that num ber was the first thing, from which all else pro ceeded — a metaphysical abstraction, which al most defies analysis. Aristotle says the Pytha
goreans "taught that number was the beginning of things, the cause of their material existence, and of their modifications and different states?' The school of Eleatics is chiefly represented by the poet Xenophanes (620 a.c.). His philo sophic creed is thus described by Aristotle: °Casting his eyes upward at the immensity of heaven, he declared that The One was Goths Reason and imagination led this thinker to be come at once a Monotheist and a Pantheist. Parmenides who was born (536 a.c.) at Elea, a city which gave its name to Eleatics, was the first to make the great distinction between truth and opinion, between the deducfions of reason and the impression of sense. He made being the basis of things, for non-being was impossible — a discovery which at that stage in philosoph ical speculation was of great importance. Zeno, another Eleatic, born 500 Lc., who was the in ventor of logic, was persecuted and put to death for free-thinking and was a follower and dis ciple of Parmenides. Plato says that the mas ter proved the existence of the one; the disciple established the non-existence of the many. He preserved his master's distinction between truth and opinion. ((Your he would say, tell you that there are many things existing; reason avers that there is but one.s A contemporary of Zeno was a man who be gan at Ephesus those speculations as to the origin of the universe to which as preliminary he added a theory oh the origin of knowledge. This was Heraclitus (503 a.c.). He was a dis ciple of Xenophanes and taught that fire is the origin of everything, and there is no existence] but only change; things cannot be said to be; but only to be becoming; processes and not states formed the mode of existence. We can not know or name anything with truth, for as we look at it, it changes, and is something different from what we thought it.