Thales down. Here we have the source and the rivulet to which we can
trace back the mighty stream which is flowing past our own doors.
Apparently insignificant in its beginnings, it must still for a while
seem insignificant to the man who follows with an unreflective eye the
course of the current.

It would take me too far afield to give an account of the Greek schools
which immediately succeeded the Ionic: to tell of the Pythagoreans, who
held that all things were constituted by numbers; of the Eleatics, who
held that "only Being is," and denied the possibility of change,
thereby reducing the shifting panorama of the things about us to a mere
delusive world of appearances; of Heraclitus, who was so impressed by
the constant flux of things that he summed up his view of nature in the
words: "Everything flows"; of Empedocles, who found his explanation of
the world in the combination of the four elements, since become
traditional, earth, water, fire, and air; of Democritus, who developed
a materialistic atomism which reminds one strongly of the doctrine of
atoms as it has appeared in modern science; of Anaxagoras, who traced
the system of things to the setting in order of an infinite
multiplicity of different elements,--"seeds of things,"--which setting
in order was due to the activity of the finest of things, Mind.

It is a delight to discover the illuminating thoughts which came to the
minds of these men; and, on the other hand, it is amusing to see how
recklessly they launched themselves on boundless seas when they were
unprovided with chart and compass. They were like brilliant children,
who know little of the dangers of the great world, but are ready to
undertake anything. These philosophers regarded all knowledge as their
province, and did not despair of governing so great a realm. They were
ready to explain the whole world and everything in it. Of course, this