1. The closer consideration of this principle in its bearings would have no interest. For since the whole philosophy of Thales lies in the fact that water is this principle, the only point of interest can be to ask how far that principle is important and speculative. Thales comprehends essence as devoid of form. While the sensuous certitude of each thing in its individuality is not questioned, this objective actuality is now to be raised into the Notion that reflects itself into itself and is itself to be set forth as Notion; in commencement this is seen in the world’s being manifested as water, or as a simple universal. Fluid is, in its Notion, life, and hence it is water itself, spiritually expressed; in the so-called grounds or reasons, on the contrary, water has the form of existent universal. We certainly grant this universal activity of water, and for that reason call it an element, a physical universal power; but while we find it thus to be the universal of activity, we also find it to be this actual, not everywhere, but in proximity to other elements—earth, air and fire. Water thus has not got a sensuous universality, but a speculative one merely; to be speculative universality, however, would necessitate its being Notion and having what is sensuous removed. Here we have the strife between sensuous universality and universality of the Notion.
The real essence of nature has to be defined, that is, nature has to be expressed as the simple essence of thought. Now simple essence, the Notion of the universal, is that which is devoid of form, but this water as it is, comes into the determination of form, and is thus, in relation to others, a particular existence just like everything that is natural. Yet as regards the other elements, water is determined as formless and simple, while the earth is that which has points, air is the element of all change, and fire evidently changes into itself. Now if the need of unity impels us to recognize for separate things a universal, water, although it has the drawback of being a particular thing, can easily be utilized as the One, both on account of its neutrality, and because it is more material than air.
The proposition of Thales, that water is the Absolute, or as the ancients say, the principle, is the beginning of Philosophy, because with it the consciousness is arrived at that essence, truth, that which is alone in and for itself, are one. A departure from what is in our sensuous perception here takes place; man recedes from this immediate existence. We must be able to forget that we are accustomed to a rich concrete world of thought; with us the very child learns, “There is one God in Heaven, invisible.” Such determinations are not yet present here; the world of Thought must first be formed and there is as yet no pure unity. Man has nature before him as water, air, stars, the arch of the heavens; and the horizon of his ideas is limited to this. The imagination has, indeed, its gods, but its content still is natural; the Greeks had considered sun, mountains, earth, sea, rivers, &c., as independent powers, revered them as gods, and elevated them by the imagination to activity, movement, consciousness and will. What there is besides, like the conceptions of Homer, for instance, is something in which thought could not find satisfaction; it produces mere images of the imagination, endlessly endowed with animation and form, but destitute of simple unity. It must undoubtedly be said that in this unconsciousness of an intellectual world, one must acknowledge that there is a great robustness of mind evinced in not granting this plenitude of existence to the natural world, but in reducing it to a simple substance, which, as the ever enduring principle, neither originates nor disappears, while the gods have a Theogony and are manifold and changing. This wild, endlessly varied imagination of Homer is set at rest by the proposition that existence is water; this conflict of an endless quantity of principles, all these ideas that a particular object is an independent truth, a self-sufficient power over others existing in its own right, are taken away, and it is shown likewise that there is only one universal, the universal self-existent, the simple unimaginative perception, the thought that is one and one alone.
This universal stands in direct relationship to the particular and to the existence of the world as manifested. The first thing implied in what has been said, is that the particular existence has no independence, is not true in and for itself, but is only an accidental modification. But the affirmative point of view is that all other things proceed from the one, that the one remains thereby the substance from which all other things proceed, and it is only through a determination which is accidental and external that the particular existence has its being. It is similarly the case that all particular existence is transient, that is, it loses the form of particular and again becomes the universal, water. The simple proposition of Thales therefore, is Philosophy, because in it water, though sensuous, is not looked at in its particularity as opposed to other natural things, but as Thought in which everything is resolved and comprehended. Thus we approach the divorce of the absolute from the finite; but it is not to be thought that the unity stands above, and that down here we have the finite world. This idea is often found in the common conception of God—where permanence is attributed to the world and where men often represent two kinds of actuality to themselves, a sensuous and a supersensuous world of equal standing. The philosophic point of view is that the one is alone the truly actual, and here we must take actual in its higher significance, because we call everything actual in common life. The second circumstance to be remembered is that with the ancient philosophers, the principle has a definite and, at first, a physical form. To us this does not appear to be philosophic but only physical; in this case, however, matter has philosophic significance. Thales’ theory is thus a natural philosophy, because this universal essence is determined as real; consequently the Absolute is determined as the unity of thought and Being.
2. Now if we have this undifferentiated principle predominating, the question arises as to the determination of this first principle. The transition from universal to particular at once becomes essential, and it begins with the determination of activity; the necessity for such arises here. That which is to be a veritable principle must not have a one-sided, particular form, but in it the difference must itself be absolute, while other principles are only special kinds of forms. The fact that the Absolute is what determines itself is already more concrete; we have the activity and the higher self-consciousness of the spiritual principle, by which the form has worked itself into being absolute form, the totality of form. Since it is most profound, this comes latest; what has first to be done is merely to look at things as determined.
Form is lacking to water as conceived by Thales. How is this accorded to it? The method is stated (and stated by Aristotle, but not directly of Thales), in which particular forms have arisen out of water; it is said to be through a process of condensation and rarefaction (_πυκνότητι καὶ μανότητι_), or, as it may be better put, through greater or less intensity. Tennemann (vol. I. p. 59) in reference to this, cites from Aristotle, _De gen. et corrupt._ I. 1, where there is no mention of condensation and rarefaction as regards Thales, and further, _De cælo_, III. 5, where it is only said that those who uphold water or air, or something finer than water or coarser than air, define difference as density and rarity, but nothing is said of its being Thales who gave expression to this distinction. Tiedmann (vol. I. p. 38) quotes yet other authorities; it was, however, later on, that this distinction was first ascribed to Thales.[22] Thus much is made out, that for the first time in this natural philosophy as in the modern, that which is essential in form is really the quantitative difference in its existence. This merely quantitative difference, however, which, as the increasing and decreasing density of water, constitutes its only form-determination, is an external expression of the absolute difference; it is an unessential distinction set up through another and is not the inner difference of the Notion in itself; it is therefore not worth while to spend more time over it.
Difference as regards the Notion has no physical significance, but differences or the simple duality of form in the sides of its opposition, must be comprehended as universally in the Notion. On this account a sensuous interpretation must not be given to the material, that is to particular determinations, as when it is definitely said that rare water is air, rare air, fiery ether, thick water, mud, which then becomes earth; according to this, air would be the rarefaction of the first water, ether the rarefaction of air, and earth and mud the sediment of water. As sensuous difference or change, the division here appears as something manifested for consciousness; the moderns have experimented in making thicker and thinner what to the senses is the same.
Change has consequently a double sense; one with reference to existence and another with reference to the Notion. When change is considered by the ancients, it is usually supposed to have to do with a change in what exists, and thus, for instance, inquiry would be made as to whether water can be changed through chemical action, such as heat, distillation, &c., into earth; finite chemistry is confined to this.
But what is meant in all ancient philosophies is change as regards the Notion. That is to say, water does not become converted into air or space and time in retorts, &c. But in every philosophic idea, this transition of one quality into another takes place, _i.e._ this inward connection is shown in the Notion, according to which no one thing can subsist independently and without the other, for the life of nature has its subsistence in the fact that one thing is necessarily related to the other. We certainly are accustomed to believe that if water were taken away, it would indeed fare badly with plants and animals, but that stones would still remain; or that of colours, blue could be abstracted without harming in the least yellow or red. As regards merely empirical existence, it may easily be shown that each quality exists on its own account, but in the Notion they only are, through one another, and by virtue of an inward necessity. We certainly see this also in living matter, where things happen in another way, for here the Notion comes into existence; thus if, for example, we abstract the heart, the lungs and all else collapse. And in the same way all nature exists only in the unity of all its parts, just as the brain can exist only in unity with the other organs.
3. If the form is, however, only expressed in both its sides as condensation and rarefaction, it is not in and for itself, for to be this it must be grasped as the _absolute Notion_, and as an endlessly forming unity. What is said on this point by Aristotle (De Anima, I. 2, also 5) is this: “Thales seems, according to what is said of him, to consider the soul as something having movement, for he says of the loadstone that it has a soul, since it moves the iron.” Diogenes Laertius (I. 24) adds amber to this, from which we see that even Thales knew about electricity, although another explanation of it is that _ἤλεκτρον_ was besides a metal. Aldobrandini says of this passage in Diogenes, that it is a stone which is so hostile to poison that when touched by such it immediately hisses. The above remark by Aristotle is perverted by Diogenes to such an extent that he says: “Thales has likewise ascribed a soul to what is lifeless.” However, this is not the question, for the point is how he thought of absolute form, and whether he expressed the Idea generally as soul so that absolute essence should be the unity of simple essence and form.
Diogenes certainly says further of Thales (I. 27), “The world is animated and full of demons,” and Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 7) says, “He called God the Intelligence (_νοῦς_) of the world.” But all the ancients, and particularly Aristotle, ascribe this expression unanimously to Anaxagoras as the one who first said that the _νοῦς_ is the principle of things. Thus it does not conduce to the further determination of form according to Thales, to find in Cicero (De Nat.
Deor. I. 10) this passage: “Thales says that water is the beginning of everything, but God is the Mind which forms all that is, out of water.” Thales may certainly have spoken of God, but Cicero has added the statement that he comprehended him as the _νοῦς_ which formed everything out of water. Tiedmann (vol. I. p. 42) declares the passage to be possibly corrupt, since Cicero later on (c. 11) says of Anaxagoras that “he first maintained the order of things to have been brought about through the infinite power of Mind.” However, the Epicurean, in whose mouth these words are put, speaks “with confidence only fearing that he should appear to have any doubts” (c. 8) both previously and subsequently of other philosophers rather foolishly, so that this description is given merely as a jest. Aristotle understands historic accuracy better, and therefore we must follow him. But to those who make it their business to find everywhere the conception of the creation of the world by God, that passage in Cicero is a great source of delight, and it is a much disputed point whether Thales is to be counted amongst those who accepted the existence of a God. The Theism of Thales is maintained by Plouquet, whilst others would have him to be an atheist or polytheist, because he says that everything is full of demons. However, this question as to whether Thales believed in God does not concern us here, for acceptation, faith, popular religion are not in question; we only have to do with the philosophic determination of absolute existence. And if Thales did speak of God as constituting everything out of this same water, that would not give us any further information about this existence; we should have spoken unphilosophically of Thales because we should have used an empty word without inquiring about its speculative significance. Similarly the word world-soul is useless, because its being is not thereby expressed.
Thus all these further, as also later, assertions do not justify us in maintaining that Thales comprehended form in the absolute in a definite manner; on the contrary, the rest of the history of philosophical development refutes this view. We see that form certainly seems to be shown forth in existence, but as yet this unity is no further developed. The idea that the magnet has a soul is indeed always better than saying that it has the power of attraction; for power is a quality which is considered as a predicate separable from matter, while soul is movement in unison with matter in its essence. An idea such as this of Thales stands isolated, however, and has no further relation to his absolute thought. Thus, in fact, the philosophy of Thales is comprised in the following simple elements: (_a_) It has constituted an abstraction in order to comprehend nature in a simple sensuous essence. (_b_) It has brought forth the Notion of ground or principle; that is, it has defined water to be the infinite Notion, the simple essence of thought, without determining it further as the difference of quantity. That is the limited significance of this principle of Thales.
2. _Anaximander._ 2. _Anaximander._ Anaximander was also of Miletus, and he was a friend of Thales. “The latter,” says Cicero (Acad. Quaest. IV. 37), “could not convince him that everything consisted of water.” Anaximander’s father was called Praxiades; the date of his birth is not quite certain; according to Tennemann (vol. I. p. 413), it is put in Olympiad 42, 3 (610 B.C.), while Diogenes Laertius (II. I, 2) says, taking his information from Apollodorus, an Athenian, that in Ol. 58, 2 (547 B.C.), he was sixty-four years old, and that he died soon after, that is to say about the date of Thales’ death. And taking for granted that he died in his ninetieth year, Thales must have been nearly twenty-eight years older than Anaximander. It is related of Anaximander that he lived in Samos with the tyrant Polycrates, where were Pythagoras and Anacreon also. Themistius, according to Brucker (Pt. I. p. 478), says of him that he first put his philosophic thoughts into writing, but this is also recorded of others, as for example, of Pherecydes, who was older than he. Anaximander is said to have written about nature, the fixed stars, the sphere, besides other matters; he further produced something like a map, showing the boundary (_πρίμετρον_) of land and sea; he also made other mathematical inventions, such as a sun-dial that he put up in Lacedæmon, and instruments by which the course of the sun was shown, and the equinox determined; a chart of the heavens was likewise made by him.
His philosophical reflections are not comprehensive, and do not extend as far as to determination. Diogenes says in the passage quoted before: “He adduced the Infinite” (_τὸ ἄπειρον_, the undetermined), “as principle and element; he neither determined it as air or water or any such thing.” There are, however, few attributes of this Infinite given. (_α_.) “It is the principle of all becoming and passing away; at long intervals infinite worlds or gods rise out of it, and again they pass away into the same.” This has quite an oriental tone. “He gives as a reason that the principle is to be determined as the Infinite, the fact that it does not need material for continuous origination. It contains everything in itself and rules over all: it is divine, immortal, and never passes away.”[23] (_β_.) Out of the one, Anaximander separates the opposites which are contained in it, as do Empedocles and Anaxagoras; thus everything in this medley is certainly there, but undetermined.[24] That is, everything is really contained therein in possibility (_δυνάμει_), “so that,” says Aristotle (Metaphys. XI. 2), “it is not only that everything arises accidentally out of what is not, but everything also arises from what is, although it is from incipient being which is not yet in actuality.” Diogenes Laertius adds (II. 1): “The parts of the Infinite change, but it itself is unchangeable.” (_γ_.) Lastly, it is said that the infinitude is in size and not in number, and Anaximander differs thus from Anaxagoras, Empedocles and the other atomists, who maintain the absolute discretion of the infinite, while Anaximander upholds its absolute continuity.[25] Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 8) speaks also of a principle which is neither water nor air, but is “thicker than air and thinner than water.” Many have connected this idea with Anaximander, and it is possible that it belongs to him.
The advance made by the determination of the principle as infinite in comprehensiveness rests in the fact that absolute essence no longer is a simple universal, but one which negates the finite. At the same time, viewed from the material side, Anaximander removes the individuality of the element of water; his objective principle does not appear to be material, and it may be understood as Thought. But it is clear that he did not mean anything else than matter generally, universal matter.[26] Plutarch reproaches Anaximander “for not saying what (_τι_) his infinite is, whether air, water or earth.” But a definite quality such as one of these is transient; matter determined as infinitude means the motion of positing definite forms, and again abolishing the separation. True and infinite Being is to be shown in this and not in negative absence of limit. This universality and negation of the finite is, however, our operation only: in describing matter as infinite, Anaximander does not seem to have said that this is its infinitude.
He has said further (and in this, according to Theophrastus, he agrees with Anaxagoras), “In the infinite the like separates itself from the unlike and allies itself to the like; thus what in the whole was gold becomes gold, what was earth, earth, &c., so that properly nothing originates, seeing that it was already there.”[27] These, however, are poor determinations, which only show the necessity of the transition from the undetermined to the determined; for this still takes place here in an unsatisfying way. As to the further question of how the infinite determines the opposite in its separation, it seems that the theory of the quantitative distinction of condensation and rarefaction was held by Anaximander as well as by Thales. Those who come later designate the process of separation from the Infinite as development. Anaximander supposes man to develop from a fish, which abandoned water for the land.[28] Development comes also into prominence in recent times, but as a mere succession in time—a formula in the use of which men often imagine that they are saying something brilliant; but there is no real necessity, no thought, and above all, no Notion contained in it.
But in later records the idea of warmth, as being the disintegration of form, and that of cold, is ascribed to Anaximander by Stobæus (Eclog. Phys. c. 24, p. 500); this Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 5) first ascribed to Parmenides. Eusebius (De præp. Evang. I. 8), out of a lost work of Plutarch, gives us something from Anaximander’s Cosmogony which is dark, and which, indeed, Eusebius himself did not rightly understand.
Its sense is approximately this: “Out of the Infinite, infinite heavenly spheres and infinite worlds have been set apart; but they carry within them their own destruction, because they only are through constant dividing off.” That is, since the Infinite is the principle, separation is the positing of a difference, i.e. of a determination or something finite. “The earth has the form of a cylinder, the height of which is the third part of the breadth. Both of the eternally productive principles of warmth and cold separate themselves in the creation of this earth, and a fiery sphere is formed round the air encircling the earth, like the bark around a tree. As this broke up, and the pieces were compressed into circles, sun, moon, and stars were formed.” Hence Anaximander, according to Stobæus (Ecl. Phys. 25, p. 510), likewise called the stars “wheel-shaped with fire-filled wrappings of air.” This Cosmogony is as good as the geological hypothesis of the earth-crust which burst open, or as Buffon’s explosion of the sun, which beginning, on the other hand, with the sun, makes the planets to be stones projected from it. While the ancients confined the stars to our atmosphere, and made the sun first proceed from the earth, we make the sun to be the substance and birthplace of the earth, and separate the stars entirely from any further connection with us, because for us, like the gods worshipped by the Epicureans, they are at rest. In the process of origination, the sun, indeed, descends as the universal, but in nature it is that which comes later; thus in truth the earth is the totality, and the sun but an abstract moment.
3. _Anaximenes._ Anaximenes still remains as having made his appearance between the 55th and 58th Olympiads (560-548 B.C.). He was likewise of Miletus, a contemporary and friend of Anaximander; he has little to distinguish him, and very little is known about him. Diogenes Laertius says neither with consideration nor consistency (II. 3): “He was born, according to Apollodorus in the 63rd Olympiad, and died in the year Sardis was conquered” (by Cyrus, Olympiad 58th).
In place of the undetermined matter of Anaximander, he brings forward a definite natural element; hence the absolute is in a real form, but instead of the water of Thales, that form is air. He found that for matter a sensuous being was indeed essential, and air has the additional advantage of being more devoid of form; it is less corporeal than water, for we do not see it, but feel it first in movement. Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 3) says: “Out of it everything comes forth, and into it everything is again resolved.” According to Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 10), “he defined it as immeasurable, infinite, and in constant motion.” Diogenes Laertius expresses this in the passage already quoted: “The principle is air and the infinite” (_οὖτος ἀρχὴν ἀέρα εἶπε καὶ τὸ ἄπειρον_) as if there were two principles; however, _ἀρχὴν καὶ ἄπειρον_ may be taken together as subject, and _ἀέρα_ regarded as the predicate in the statement. For Simplicius, in dealing with the Physics of Aristotle, expressly says (p. 6, a) “that the first principle was to him one and infinite in nature as it was to Anaximander, but it was not indefinite as with the latter, but determined, that is, it was air,” which, however, he seems to have understood as endowed with soul.
Plutarch characterizes Anaximenes’ mode of representation which makes everything proceed from air—later on it was called ether—and resolve itself therein, better thus: “As our soul, which is air, holds us together (_συγρατεῖ_), one spirit (_πνεῦμα_) and air together likewise hold (_περιέχει_) the whole world together; spirit and air are synonymous.” Anaximenes shows very clearly the nature of his essence in the soul, and he thus points out what may be called the transition of natural philosophy into the philosophy of consciousness, or the surrender of the objective form of principle. The nature of this principle has hitherto been determined in a manner which is foreign and negative to consciousness; both its reality, water or air, and the infinite are a “beyond” to consciousness. But soul is the universal medium; it is a collection of conceptions which pass away and come forth, while the unity and continuity never cease. It is active as well as passive, from its unity severing asunder the conceptions and sublating them, and it is present to itself in its infinitude, so that negative signification and positive come into unison. Speaking more precisely, this idea of the nature of the origin of things is that of Anaxagoras, the pupil of Anaximenes.
Pherecydes has also to be mentioned as the teacher of Pythagoras; he is of Syros, one of the Cyclades islands. He is said to have drawn water from a spring, and to have learned therefrom that an earthquake would take place in three days; he is also said to have predicted of a ship in full sail that it would go down, and it sank in a moment. Theopompus in Diogenes Laertius (I. 116), relates of this Pherecydes that “he first wrote to the Greeks about Nature and the gods” (which was before said of Anaximander). His writings are said to have been in prose, and from what is related of them it is clear that it must have been a theogony of which he wrote. The first words, still preserved to us, are: “Jupiter and Time and what is terrestrial (_χθών_) were from eternity (_εἰς ἀεί_); the name of earthly (_χθονίῃ_) was given to the terrestrial sphere when Zeus granted to it gifts.”[29] How it goes on is not known, but this cannot be deemed a great loss. Hermias tells us only this besides:[30] “He maintained Zeus or Fire (_αἰθέρα_), Earth and Chronos or Time as principles—fire as active, earth as passive, and time as that in which everything originates.” Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippasus, and Archelaus are also called Ionic philosophers, but we know nothing more of them than their names, and that they gave their adherence to one principle or the other.