FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 7 



records, he visited Eg-ypt — through watching the 

 wonder-working, life-giving Nile; perhaps as doubt- 

 less sharing the current belief in an ocean-washed 

 earth, said that the primary substance was Water. 

 Anaximander, his friend and pupil, disagreeing with 

 what seemed to him a too concrete answer, argued, 

 in more abstract fashion, that " the material cause 

 and first element of things was the Infinite." This 

 material cause, which he was the first thus to name, 

 " is neither water nor any other of what are now 

 called the ckmcnfs " (we quote from Tlieophrastus, 

 the famous pupil of Aristotle, born at Eresus in Les- 

 bos, 371 B. c). Perhaps, follo-^ing Professor Bur- 

 net's able guidance through the complexities of defi- 

 nitions, the term Boundless best expresses the 

 " one eternal, indestructible substance out of which 

 everything arises, and into which everything once 

 more returns " ; in other words, the exhaustless stock 

 of matter from which the waste of existence is being 

 continually made good. 



Anaximander was the first to assert the origin of 

 life from the non-living, i. e., " the moist element as 

 it was evaporated by the sun," and to speak of man 

 as " like another animal, namely, a fish, in the be- 

 ginning." This looks well-nigh akin to prevision of 

 the mutability of species, and of what modern biology 

 has proved concerning the marine ancestry of the 

 highest animals, although it is one of many ancient 

 speculations as to the origin of life in slimy matter. 

 And when Anaximander adds that " while other 



