United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
When Thales and Hippo held that moisture was the universal cause, and external element, of which all other things were but the infinitely various sensible manifestations; when Anaximenes predicated the same thing of air, Pythagoras of numbers, and the like, they all thought that they had found a real explanation; and were content to rest in this explanation as ultimate.
I asked the sea and the deeps and the living creeping things, and they answered, 'We are not thy God, seek above us. I asked the morning air, and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, 'Anaximenes was deceived, we are not thy God. I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, 'Nor, say they, 'are we the God whom thou seekest. And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh, 'Ye have told me of my God that ye are not He: tell me something more of Him. And they cried out with a loud voice, 'He made us."
Two of the Milesians, disciples of Anaximander and Anaximenes, were staying then in Egypt, to study astronomy and the peculiar wisdom of the Egyptians at Heliopolis, and the third was a wealthy merchant and ship-owner, named Theopompus, who had settled at Naukratis.
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.
And at last we find him extolling not only his deeds and actions, but his orations also, as well those that were only spoken, as those that were published; as if he were engaged in a boyish trial of skill, who should speak best, with the rhetoricians, Isocrates and Anaximenes, not as one who could claim the task to guide and instruct the Roman nation, the Soldier full-armed, terrific to the foe.
Anaximenes thinks the bow is thus formed; the sun casting its splendor upon a thick, black, and gross cloud, and the rays not being in a capacity to penetrate beyond the superficies.
Word Of The Day