--a theory which probably arose from observations on the uses of
moisture in the nourishment of animal and vegetable life. A
similar process of reasoning led Anaxim'enes, of Miletus, half
a century later, to substitute air for water; and by analogous
reasoning Heracli'tus, of Ephesus, surnamed "the naturalist,"
was led to regard the basis of fire or flame as the fundamental
principle of all things, both spiritual and material. Diog'enes,
the Cretan, was led to regard the universe as issuing from an
intelligent principle--a rational as well as sensitive soul--but
without recognizing any distinction between mind and matter;
while Anaximan'der conceived the primitive state of the universe
to have been a vast chaos or infinity, containing the elements
from which the world was constructed by inherent or self-moving
processes of separation and combination. This doctrine was revived
by Anaxag'oras, an Ionian, a century later, who combined it with
the philosophy of Diogenes, and taught the existence of one supreme
mind.


XENOPH'ANES AND PYTHAG'ORAS.

Two widely different schools of philosophy now arose in the western
Greek colonies of lower Italy. Xenophanes, a native of Ionia, who
had fled to E'lea, was the founder of one, and Pythagoras, of
Samos, of the other. The former, known as the Eleat'ic philosophy,
admitted a supreme intelligence, eternal and incorporeal, pervading
all things, and, like the universe itself, spherical in form. This
system was developed in the following century by Parmen'ides and
Zeno, who exercised a great influence upon the Greek mind.
Pythagoras was the first Grecian to assume the title of philosopher,