[Sidenote: Thales, about 640 B.C.]
Thus Thales of Miletus, during the late seventh and early sixth century
B.C., is said to have been satisfied when he found in water--or
moisture--the ultimate principle out of which all things and all life,
including gods and men, were evolved. With such a speculation of infant
philosophy we are here not concerned, except to say that it was not
Pantheism as understood in modern times. For while his ablest exponents
admit that no sufficient evidence is left to show very clearly what he
meant, there seems no reason for supposing that to him the Universe was
a Living God.
[Sidenote: Successors of Thales.]
It would be fruitless to relate how successors of Thales varied his
theory of an ultimate "principle," by substituting air or fire for
water. But it is worth while to note that another citizen of Miletus,
Anaximander, after an interval of some forty years, pronounced that the
beginning, the first principle, the origin of all things, was neither
water, nor air, nor fire, but the Infinite ([Greek: to apeae on]). And
though the best authorities confess that they cannot be sure of his
meaning, this may very well be because he anticipated Herbert Spencer by
two and a half millenniums, in acknowledging that all things merge in
one and the same Unknowable. But, so far as our evidence goes, he made
no such attempt as the modern philosopher did, to persuade the religious
instinct that this Unknowable could supply the place of all the gods.
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