ed upon the disturbance of the chaotic matter by heat
and cold. Nay, more, Anaximander explained the origin of living
creatures on like principles, for the sun's heat, acting upon the primal
miry earth, produced filmy bladders or bubbles, and these, becoming
surrounded with a prickly rind, at length burst open, and, as from an
egg, animals came forth. At first they were ill-formed and imperfect,
but subsequently elaborated and developed. As to man, so far from being
produced in his perfect shape, he was ejected as a fish, and under that
form continued in the muddy water until he was capable of supporting
himself on dry land. Besides "the Infinite" being thus the cause of
generation, it was also the cause of destruction: "things must all
return whence they came, according to destiny, for they must all, in
order of time, undergo due penalties and expiations of wrong-doing."
This expression obviously contains a moral consideration, and is an
exemplification of the commencing feeble interconnection between
physical and moral philosophy.

As to the more solid discoveries attributed to this philosopher, we may
dispose of them in the same manner that we have dealt with the like
facts in the biographies of his predecessors--they are idle inventions
of his vainglorious countrymen. That he was the first to make maps is
scarcely consistent with the well-known fact that the Egyptians had
cultivated geometry for that express purpose thirty centuries before he
was born. As to his inventing sun-dials, the shadow had gone back on
that of Ahaz a long time before. In reality, the sun-dial was a very
ancient Oriental invention. And as to his being the first to make an
exact calculation of the size and distance of the heavenly bodies, it
need only be remarked that those who have so greatly extolled his
labours must have overlooked how incompatible such discoveries are with
a system which assumes that the earth is cylindrical in shape, and kept
in the midst of the heavens by the atmosphere; that the sun is farther
off than the fixed stars; and that each of the heavenly bodies is made
to revolve by means of a crystalline wheel.

The philosopher whose views we have next to consider is Anaxagoras of
Clazomene, the friend and master of Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates.
Like several of his predecessors, he had visited Egypt. Among his
disciples were numbered some of the most eminent men of those times.

[Sidenote: Anaxagoras teaches the uncha