NOTES ON EARLY GREEK COSMOGONICAL 

 SPECULATIONS 



* George Noblin 



It is my purpose to point out briefly certain features that run 

 through the early attempts of the Greeks to picture to themselves 

 the creation of the world and the origin of things. 



In view of the prevalent notion that there is little or nothing in 

 common between the fantastical dreams of the poets on this subject 

 and the more sober speculations of the early philosophers, it may not 

 be without interest to note that there are common features that 

 characterize the conception of the poet and philosopher alike, and 

 serve, in some degree at least, to bridge over the apparent gulf 

 between them. 



1. The Tnethod of the early philosophers is not essentially dif- 

 ferent from the poet's in trying to solve the problem of the origin of 

 things. Thinkers like Anaximander and Heraclitus are virtually 

 poets who try to imagine how this world might have sprung into 

 being. They abandoned, it is true, the cruder fancies of the popular 

 cosmogonies handed down by the poets, and assumed a first principle 

 or fundamental substance from which the things of this world sprang 

 and of which they are but transitory forms. However, this first 

 principle once assumed, they deduced the world of things from that 

 with a spirit and a method not essentially different from the poet's. 

 There was as yet no patient seeking after facts and building up the 

 structure of knowledge stone by stone. 



Rather, there followed the first awakening of the philosophic 

 movement an intoxication of mind which recocfnized no limitations 

 to human knowledge, but with the poet's boldness of imagination 

 sought at once to grasp the great things of the world. 



