Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleatic school followed from the two former, although its development was contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence upon them was to some extent reactionary.
Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle, namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from the water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in many legends diffused through the world even in modern times. He said that everything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself was derived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is the origin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it is the primitive principle of the world. We see how much this theory is concerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth by means of seed. He regarded the world as a living being, which had been evolved from an imperfect germ of moisture. This mode of animating the world, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already in existence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy. He saw life in the appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to be animate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filled with demons and genii.[32]
We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales, declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything was derived from a primitive condition of germs. The same opinion was held by Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras. Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremely ancient in his time. The other philosophers of the Ionic and successive schools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement of their theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so that it is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions are identical.
It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved a more rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols and primitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although they assumed a larger and more scientific form. Thales and others assigned a mechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which was contrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world as a living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functions as all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons, thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race.
While the scientific faculty was gathering strength and leading the way to a more rational consideration of the world and natural phenomena, really advancing beyond the earlier ideas which had been almost wholly mythical, myth was still the matrix of thought, although its envelopment was partly rent asunder and was becoming transparent. From this brief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for our purpose, let us return to the Pythagorean school, in which, although the faculty at work is essentially objective, there is a closer consideration of the analogies between thought and the world, and the ground is more often retraced, so that theory assumes a more intellectual form.
The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the world as the union of the two opposite principles of the illimitable and the limited, of the equal and the unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive union, since they formulated the supreme principle as equal—unequal (Arist. Met. xii. 7.) They held the infinite to be the place of the one. There was an attraction between the two principles, which was termed the act of breathing; hence the void entered into the world and separated things from each other. Thus their conception of the world was that of a concourse of opposite principles. They represented its limits as a unity and as the true beginning of multiplicity. They regarded the development of the world as a process of life regulated by the primitive principles contained in the world; its breath or life depended on the breaking forth of the infinite void in Uranus, and the time which is termed the interval of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath into the world. All therefore emanates from one, and all is at the same time governed by one supreme power. Number is everything, and is the essence of things, but the triad includes all number, since it contains the beginning, middle, and end. Everything is derived from the primitive one and from the principal number; and since this number in breathing its vital evolution into the void is divided into many units, everything is derived from the multiplicity of these units or numbers.
Since, by his idea of the source of universal order, Pythagoras partly accepted the theocosmic monad as the final and necessary root of all life, and of all that is knowable, he could not fail to see the convertibility of the unit into the Being. But if the unit must always precede the manifold, there is a first unit from which all the others proceed; if this first and eternal unit is at the same time the absolute being, it follows that number and the world have a common origin and a common essence, and that the intrinsic causes and possible combinations of number are virtually accomplished in the development of the world, and these causes and combinations are ideal forms of this development. The monad is developed by these laws through all the generative processes of nature, while at the same time it remains eternal in the system of the universe; so that things not only have their origin and essence, their place and time according to numerical causes, but each is in effect a number as far as its individual properties and the universal process of cosmic life are concerned. The reason of the number must depend upon the substance, by the configurations of which it is defined, divided, added, and multiplied, and to this geometry is added, which measures all things in relation to themselves and others. This eternal cause makes it intelligible that if immaterial principles precede and govern the whole material world, it is also by means of these that the classification of science is in intrinsic agreement with that of nature. Numbers have their value in music, in gymnastics, in medicine, in morals, in politics, in all branches of science. The Pythagorean arithmetic is the bond and universal logic of the knowable. But at the same time Pythagoras and his school peopled the world with demons and genii, which were the causes of disease; they did not abandon the old mythical ideas of the incarnation of spirits and the transmigration of souls—theories and beliefs which recur in nearly all primitive and savage peoples.
In this vast Pythagorean scheme, which contrasts with that of the Ionic school of physics, thought is more explicitly freed from the ruder mythical ideas, and rises to a more intelligent and rational conception of the world, but the ancient popular traditions still persist, and there is an evident entification of number. The primitive monad, numbers, their genesis and relations, are not regarded as abstract conceptions, necessary for understanding the order of nature, and a merely logical function of the mind; they are the substantial essence which underlies all mythical representations. Although the essential life of the world is considered from a more abstract point of view, yet the mythical analogy of animal life evidently finds a place in the breath of the void and of time, assumed to be independent entities. The subsequent train of beliefs in spirits, of their incarnations and transmigrations, are closely connected with the phantasmagoria of the past, and display their mythical genesis; yet by their deeper and more explicit thought they may be said to infuse intellectual life into the world and into science which relates to it. In this first rational classification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and its ideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation of manifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamental conceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of being altogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific.
I must here be allowed to quote a hymn in the Rig-Veda, which was historically earlier than the primitive philosophy of Greece, but which reveals the same tendency, the same mythical and scientific teaching in its interpretation of the world. In this hymn, which has been translated and explained by Max Müller, we see how boldly the problem of the origin of the world is stated (hymn 129, book x.)—
"Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death—yet was there nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound—an ocean without light—
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth,
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose—
Nature below, and power and will above—
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The gods themselves came later into being—
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it—or perchance even He knows not."