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But to record geographical knowledge, the first thing that is necessary is a map, and accordingly it is a Greek philosopher named ANAXIMANDER of Miletus, of the sixth century B.C., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing. Now, in order to make a map of one's own country, little astronomical knowledge is required.
Anaximander affirms that the circle of the moon is nineteen times bigger than the earth, and resembles the sun, its orb being full of fire; and it suffers an eclipse when the wheel makes a revolution, which he describes by the divers turnings of a chariot-wheel, in the midst of it there being a hollow nave replenished with fire, which hath but one way of expiration.
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.
Their satyrs or forest divinities were creatures blending the animal with the human. So Anaximander, although an advocate of the old hypothesis of evolution, was not the originator of the thought. The old guess-up had its origin in Pagan mythology.
The thought here expressed finds its germ, perhaps, in the Babylonian conception that everything came forth from a chaos of waters. Yet the fact that the thought of Anaximander has come down to posterity through such various channels suggests that the Greek thinker had got far enough away from the Oriental conception to make his view seem to his contemporaries a novel and individual one.
The like affections, natural and adventitious, in all such things do happen. Anaximander believes that wind is a fluid air, the sun putting into motion or melting the moist subtle parts of it.
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find that the invention of the gnomon is also attributed to Anaximander, for without some such instrument it would have been impossible for him to have made any map worthy of the name.
All that we know of the psychology of Thales is summed up in the famous maxim, "Know thyself," a maxim which, taken in connection with the proven receptivity of the philosopher's mind, suggests to us a marvellously rounded personality. The disciples or successors of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were credited with advancing knowledge through the invention or introduction of the sundial.
We have seen the dawn of philosophy with Thales; Miletus, his birthplace, bore his immediate successors. Anaximander, his younger contemporary , is said, with Pherecydes, to have been the first philosopher who availed himself of the invention of writing.
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Pittakus of Lesbos, the most celebrated Hellenic philosophers, had in former and happier days been guests at the court of Croesus in Sardis. His full clear voice sounded like pure song when compared with the shrill tones of Amasis.
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