6 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



which forms the material universe. At the very 

 first, perhaps, man conceived the material merely 

 as the sensuous ; and having not yet reached " that 

 invention of the human intellect, spoliated and 

 passive matter," he drew no distinction between 

 substance and its properties, or between the ob- 

 jective and subjective ; but by and by arose the 

 conception of matter as a duality of substance and 

 properties, — of matter as something outside the 

 mind. Whether this later conception be correct 

 and final, or acceptable to the most highly developed 

 intellects, we cannot here discuss ; but it is a 

 conception now well-nigh universal, and it was the 

 conception of matter current in the golden centuries 

 of Greek philosophy. 



What, then, was this matter^ a thing outside and 

 separate from the mind, that composed stones, and 

 trees, and stars, and men ? What was the world ^ 

 Had it existed from all time } Or was it made ^ 

 No longer satisfied with beautiful myths, the great 

 thinkers tried to construct new cosmogonies. 

 Thales, for instance, inspired no doubt by Egyptian 

 philosophy, derived all things from water. His 

 pupil Anaximander, with more mystical tendencies, 

 maintained that the material cause and first element 

 of things was the Infinite. Theophrastus in his 

 Opinions writes : " Anaximander of Miletus, son 

 of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of 



