Thales Milesius ex septem illis sapientia memoratis viris facile præcipuus: fuit enim geometricæ penes Grajos primus repertor, et naturæ rerum certissimus explorator, et astrorum peritissimus contemplator, maximas res parvis lineis reperit, temporum ambitus, ventorum flatus, stellarum meatus, tonitruum sonora miracula, siderum obliqua curricula, Solis annula reverticula; idem Lunæ vel nascentis incrementa, vel senescentis dispendia, vel delinquentis obstacula.
“Thales the Milesian was decisively the most eminent of the seven famous sages; for he was the first inventor of geometry among the Greeks, the most judicious inquirer into nature, and the most skilful observer of the stars; he made great discoveries by small geometrical lines, the regulation of times and seasons, the theory of the winds, the course of the stars, the wonderful causes of thunder, the oblique motions of the planets, the annual revolution of the sun, the reason of the increase, decrease, and eclipse of the moon.”[[1]]
Though it is no where expressly affirmed that electricity was discovered by Thales to be the cause of thunder, yet when the two facts are placed together, they will furnish an additional argument to those writers who contend that the ancients knew much more than we are willing to allow them of those shining truths, which are the peculiar boast of modern ages. Nor should this early discovery, if we could admit it to be real, excite our surprise. Whatever hindrances might impede the progress of the ancients in other branches of knowledge, from the abstruse nature of the subject, or the want of necessary helps, it may rather excite our wonder, that the effects of electricity should remain so long unobserved. The electric fluid is no local or occasional agent; it is coeval with the world; its presence pervades every substance; it is the principal cause of the grandest scenes in nature, and its operations can hardly fail to show themselves wherever bodies are concerned.
From the time of Thales, there is a chasm in the history of electricity for three hundred years. Indeed, natural science of all kind appears to have languished, during this period. Theophrastus, who flourished 371 years before Christ, the disciple and successor of Aristotle, and he to whom the learned are indebted for the preservation of his master’s works, then adds one more fact to the history of electricity.
In his treatise on stones, after speaking of the attractive power of amber, found on the coast of Liguria, he goes on to ascribe the same properties to the lapis lyncurius, the same substance now called tourmaline. “It possesses (says he) an attractive power like amber: and as they say attracts not only straws and leaves, but copper also, and iron, if in small particles.[[2]]”
These two discoveries of Thales and Theophrastus are all, on the subject of electricity, that industry has been able clearly to collect from the barren records of antiquity. Pliny indeed has observed that “amber being rubbed with the fingers, and having thereby become warmed, attracts to itself straws and dried leaves, in the same manner as the magnet does iron.” He also attributes to the Lyncurium the same properties.—Solinus and Priscian, also, make similar statements. But as these are no more than what Thales and Theophrastus had remarked before, they are to be considered only as a repetition of what the preceding writers had made known, not as any addition to the information possessed on this subject. In like manner it might be mentioned that Aristotle, Pliny, Oppian and Claudius, were fully acquainted with the benumbing effects produced by the touch of the Torpedo; but as they do not appear to have suspected that these effects were produced by electricity, they cannot be considered as communicating or possessing any additional knowledge in regard to this powerful agent.[[3]]
On subjects which regard taste, or which address themselves to the imagination, on poetry, eloquence and the fine arts, it is to the ancients we are to look for information and the models of perfection. But on the various branches of knowledge which depend on observation, on experiment, on investigation, which comprehend all the parts of mechanical philosophy, the philosophers of antiquity afford little that is either new or just. Hurried away by the vivacity of their genius, which their peculiar complexion invited them to cultivate, and the particular circumstances of the age were calculated to inflame, they investigated facts, not that by accumulated discoveries they might lay the foundation of solid science, but so far only as they served to support or illustrate some favourite hypothesis.
Aristotle, to whose profound and elevated genius we are accustomed to turn for satisfactory information on so many other subjects, affords no remarks on electricity, and little worthy of observation on most of the branches of natural science. One, who on this point has a right to speak, observes.—“That though there are several very sublime questions in his physics, which he clears up in a very masterly way, yet the main, the gross of the work is good for nothing, infelix operis summa.[[4]]”
From the time of Theophrastus till the beginning of the 17th century of the christian æra, there is no unequivocal evidence that in the science of electricity any discovery or improvement was made, except the solitary and unimportant fact that jet, and perhaps agate, is endued with the same power as amber, of attracting and repelling light bodies.—Nor is it ascertained by whom, or at what particular period, this fact was added to the slender stock of electrical knowledge which was then possessed. And thus it appears that for the space of about 1900 years, the part of philosophy, of which we trace the history, was nearly stationary.