212 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



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.* 



We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions 

 prior to Thales, declaring the world to be a living 



* Aristot., De anima ; Cic., De b-gibus; Diog., Lae. 



