have been impersonal. Among Egyptians and Babylonians alike we
have had to deal with classes of scientific records, but we have
scarcely come across a single name. Now, however, we shall begin
to find records of the work of individual investigators. In
general, from now on, we shall be able to trace each great idea,
if not to its originator, at least to some one man of genius who
was prominent in bringing it before the world. The first of these
vitalizers of thought, who stands out at the beginnings of Greek
history, is this same Thales, of Miletus. His is not a very
sharply defined personality as we look back upon it, and we can
by no means be certain that all the discoveries which are
ascribed to him are specifically his. Of his individuality as a
man we know very little. It is not even quite certain as to where
he was born; Miletus is usually accepted as his birthplace, but
one tradition makes him by birth a Phenician. It is not at all in
question, however, that by blood he was at least in part an
Ionian Greek. It will be recalled that in the seventh century
B.C., when Thales was born--and for a long time thereafter--the
eastern shores of the aegean Sea were quite as prominently the
centre of Greek influence as was the peninsula of Greece itself.
Not merely Thales, but his followers and disciples, Anaximander
and Anaximenes, were born there. So also was Herodotas, the
Father of History, not to extend the list. There is nothing
anomalous, then, in the fact that Thales, the father of Greek
thought, was born and passed his life on soil that was not
geographically a part of Greece; but the fact has an important
significance of another kind. Thanks to his environment, Thales
was necessarily brought more or less in contact with Oriental
ideas. There was close commercial contact between the land of his
nativity and the great Babylonian capital off to the east, as