BEGINNINGS IN GREECE 45 



plied knowledge of similar triangles is doubtful. In connection 

 with his shadow measurements it is interesting that his scholar 

 Anaximander, born 611 B.C., introduced the sun-dial into Greece. 



While our knowledge of Thales and his work is extremely 

 meagre, the mathematical results above mentioned have consid- 

 erable significance in connection with the comparison between 

 Greece and Egypt. The Egyptian standpoint was fundamentally 

 practical, specific, inductive; the Greek shows already its char- 

 acteristic tendencies to abstract generalization, to logical proof, 

 and to the methods of deductive science. Most of the facts as- 

 cribed to Thales may well have been known to the Egyptians. 

 For them these facts would have remained unrelated; for the 

 Greeks they were the beginnings of an extraordinary develop- 

 ment of the science of geometry. 



MILESIAN COSMOLOGY. The cosmological ideas of the Milesian 

 philosophers were sufficiently ingenious and picturesque. To 

 Thales the earth is a circular disk floating in an ocean of water. 

 This water is the fundamental element of the whole. Ice, snow, 

 and frost turn readily into water, even rocks wear away and 

 disappear in it. Man himself seems capable of turning into it, 

 while the waters of sea and land shrink into solid residues. By 

 evaporation of the water air is formed, its agitation causes earth- 

 quakes. The stars between their setting and rising pass behind 

 the earth. 



The following passages (Fairbanks' translation) indicate the 

 estimation in which Thales was held by later Greek philosophers. 



As to the quantity and form of this first principle or element, 

 there is a difference of opinion ; but Thales, the founder of this sort 

 of philosophy, says that it is water (accordingly he declares that the 

 earth rests on water), getting the idea I suppose because he saw that 

 the nourishment of all beings is moist, and that warmth itself is 

 generated from moisture and persists in it (for that from which all 

 things spring is the first principle of them) ; and getting the idea also 

 from the fact that the germs of all beings are of a moist nature, while 

 water is the first principle of the nature of what is moist. . . . 

 'Some say that the earth rests on water. I have ascertained that 



