without its use,
since it warns us of the inferior position in which we stand as respects
the time of our civilization when compared with those ancient states,
and teaches us to reject the assertion which so many European scholars
have wearied themselves in establishing, that Greece led the way to all
human knowledge of any value. Above all, it impresses upon us more
appropriate, because more humble views of our present attainments and
position, and gives us to understand that other races of men not only
preceded us in intellectual culture, but have equalled, and perhaps
surpassed every thing that we have yet done in mental philosophy.

[Sidenote: Anaximander's doctrine of the Infinite.]

[Sidenote: Origin of cosmogony.]

[Sidenote: Origin of biology.]

Of the other founders of Ionic sects it may be observed that, though
they gave to their doctrines different forms, the method of reasoning
was essentially the same in them all. Of this a better illustration
could not be given than in the philosophy of Anaximander of Miletus, who
was contemporary with Thales. He started with the postulate that things
arose by separation from a universal mixture of all: his primordial
principle was therefore chaos, though he veiled it in the metaphysically
obscure designation "The Infinite." The want of precision in this
respect gave rise to much difference of opinion as to his tenets. To his
chaos he imputed an internal energy, by which its parts spontaneously
separated from each other; to those parts he imputed absolute
unchangeability. He taught that the earth is of a cylindrical form, its
base being one-third of its altitude; it is retained in the centre of
the world by the air in an equality of distance from all the boundaries
of the universe; that the fixed stars and planets revolved round it,
each being fastened to a crystalline ring; and beyond them, in like
manner, the moon, and, still farther off, the sun. He conceived of an
opposition between the central and circumferential regions, the former
being naturally cold, and the latter hot; indeed, in his opinion, the
settling of the cold parts to the centre, and the ascending of the hot,
gave origin, respectively, to the formation of the earth and shining
celestial bodies, the latter first existing as a complete shell or
sphere, which, undergoing destruction, broke up into stars. Already we
perceive the tendency of Greek philosophy to shape itself into systems
of cosmogony, found