Hesiod represents the point of view ancient and popular (to use Aristotle’s expression[3]) among the Greeks, from whence all their philosophical speculation took its departure; and which continued throughout their history, to underlie all the philosophical speculations, as the faith of the ordinary public who neither frequented the schools nor conversed with philosophers. While Aristophanes, speaking in the name of this popular faith, denounces and derides Sokrates as a searcher, alike foolish and irreligious, after astronomical and physical causes — Sokrates himself not only denies the truth of the allegation, but adopts as his own the sentiment which dictated it; proclaiming Anaxagoras and others to be culpable for prying into mysteries which the Gods intentionally kept hidden.[4] The repugnance felt by a numerous public, against scientific explanation — as eliminating the divine agents and substituting in their place irrational causes,[5] — was a permanent fact of which philosophers were always obliged to take account, and which modified the tone of their speculations without being powerful enough to repress them.
[3] Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 8, p. 989, a. 10. Φησὶ δέ καὶ Ἡσίοδος τὴν γῆν πρώτην γενέσθαι τῶν σωμάτων· οὕτως ἀρχαίαν καὶ δημοτικὴν συμβέβηκεν εἶναι τὴν ὑπόληψιν.
Again in the beginning of the second book of the Meteorologica, Aristotle contrasts the ancient and primitive theology with the “human wisdom” which grew up subsequently: Οἱ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες περὶ τὰς θεολογίας — οἱ σοφώτεροι τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην σοφίαν (Meteor, ii. i. p. 353, a.)
[4] Xenophon, Memor. iv. 7, 5; i. 1, 11-15. Plato, Apolog. p. 26 E.
[5] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23. Οὐ γὰρ ἠνειχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον.
Thales, the first Greek who propounded the hypothesis of physical agency in place of personal. Water, the primordial substance, or ἀρχή.
Even in the sixth century B.C., when the habit of composing in prose was first introduced, Pherekydes and Akusilaus still continued in their prose the theogony, or the mythical cosmogony, of Hesiod and the other old Poets: while Epimenides and the Orphic poets put forth different theogonies, blended with mystical dogmas. It was, however, in the same century, and in the first half of it, that Thales of Miletus (620-560 B.C.), set the example of a new vein of thought. Instead of the Homeric Okeanus, father of all things, Thales assumed the material substance, Water, as the primordial matter and the universal substratum of everything in nature. By various transmutations, all other substances were generated from water; all of them, when destroyed, returned into water. Like the old poets, Thales conceived the surface of the earth to be flat and round; but he did not, like them, regard it as stretching down to the depths of Tartarus: he supposed it to be flat and shallow, floating on the immensity of the watery expanse or Ocean.[6] This is the main feature of the Thaletian hypothesis, about which, however, its author seems to have left no writing. Aristotle says little about Thales, and that little in a tone of so much doubt,[7] that we can hardly confide in the opinions and discoveries ascribed to him by others.[8]
[6] Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 3, p. 983, b. 21. De Cœlo, ii. 13, p. 294, a. 29. Θαλῆς, ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας, &c. Seneca, Natural. Quæst. vi. 6.
Pherekydes, Epimenides, &c., were contemporary with the earliest Ionic philosophers (Brandis, Handbuch der Gesch. der Gr.-Röm. Phil., s. 23).
According to Plutarch (Aquæ et Ignis Comparatio, p. 955, init.), most persons believed that Hesiod, by the word Chaos, meant Water. Zeno the Stoic adopted this interpretation (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 498). On the other hand, Bacchylides the poet, and after him Zenodotus, called Air by the name Chaos (Schol. Hesiod. Theogon. p. 392, Gaisf.). Hermann considers that the Hesiodic Chaos means empty space (see note, Brandis, Handb. d. Gesch. d. Gr.-Röm. Phil., vol. i., p. 71).