a theory of the universe they
commenced by postulating an arche--a first principle or element out of
which, by a _vital_ process, all else should be produced. "Accordingly,
whatever seemed the most subtle or pliable, as well as _universal_
element in the mass of the visible world, was marked as the seminal
principle whose successive developments and transformations produced all
the rest."[402] With this seminal principle the living, _animating_
principle seems to have been associated--in some instances perhaps
confounded, and in most instances called by the same name. And having
pursued this analogy so far, we shall find the _most decided and
conclusive_ evidence of a tendency to regard the soul of man as similar,
in its nature, to the soul which animates the world.

[Footnote 401: Plato's "Laws," bk. x. ch. i.; "Timaeus," ch. xii.]

[Footnote 402: Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. 1. p.
292.]

_Thales of Miletus_(B.C. 636-542) was the first to lead the way in the
perilous inquiry after an arche, or first principle, which should
furnish a rational explanation of the universe. Following, as it would
seem, the genealogy of Hesiod, he supposed _water_ to be the primal
element out of which all material things were produced. Aristotle
supposes he was impressed with this idea from observing that all things
are nourished by moisture; warmth itself, he declared, proceeded from
moisture; the seeds of all things are moist; water, when condensed,
becomes earth.

Thus convinced of the universal presence of water, he declared it to be
the first principle of things.[403]

And now, from this brief statement of the Thalean physics, are we to
conclude that he recognized only a _material_ cause of the universe?
Such is the impression we receive from the reading of the First Book of
Aristotle's Metaphysics. His evident purpose is to prove that the first
philosophers of the Ionian school did not recognize an _efficient_
cause. In his opinion, they were decidedly materialistic. Now to
question the authority of Aristotle may appear to many an act of
presumption. But Aristotle was not infallible; and nothing is more
certain than that in more than one instance he does great injustice to
his predecessors.[404] To him, unquestionably, belongs the honor of
having made a complete and exhaustive classification of causes, but
there certainly does appear something more than vanity in the assumption
that he, of all the Greek philo