34 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



he conceived to be water probably, says Aristotle, deriv- 

 ing his opinion from observing that the nutriment of all 

 things is moist, and that even actual heat is therefrom 

 generated and animal life sustained. 



Writers of every age, from Aristotle onward, have 

 agreed in regarding Thales as the father of philosophy, 

 and yet very little is known of his life : Herodotus and 

 Aristotle are nearest to him in point of time, and they 

 furnish all that is even measurably trustworthy concerning 

 him. Herodotus 1 describes, first, his prediction of an 

 eclipse of the sun which brought to a sudden end one of 

 the interminable series of battles which the Lydians and 

 Medes were waging, and also that when the advance of the 

 army of Croesus was impeded by a river, he caused a new 

 channel to be made for the stream in rear of the camp, so 

 that the water becoming divided into two branches became 

 sufficiently shallow to be fordable. Modern re-calculation 

 of the eclipse fixes its probable date, and hence the period 

 when Thales lived, at 585 B. C. 2 



If so minute and cautious an investigator as Aristotle 

 could obtain nothing more definite concerning Thales than 

 such as is contained in the meagre statements which he 

 gives, it is hardly to be expected that the commentators 

 who came afterwards could have had any better sources for 

 trustworthy information, especially as time has not 

 brought to light a single writing which can be shown to 

 be the Milesian's production. Nevertheless modern re- 

 views of electrical progress seldom fail to ascribe to 

 Thales the conception of a soul in the amber as well as in 

 the lodestone. The doubtful foundation of this resides in 

 a single sentence in the so-called life of Thales with which 

 begins the " Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philoso- 

 phers,'' written by Diogenes Laertius. L,aertius is sup- 

 posed to have been a native of Laerte in Cilicia, and the 

 time when he lived, judging from the periods of the 



1 Herod. : i. 74, 75. 



2 Todd : Total Eclipses of the Sun, Boston, 1894. 



