sophers, was the only one who recognized
them all. His sagacious classification was simply a resume of the labors
of his predecessors. His "principles" or "causes" were incipient in the
thought of the first speculators in philosophy. Their accurate
definition and clearer presentation was the work of ages of analytic
thought. The phrases "efficient," "formal," "final" cause, are, we
grant, peculiar to Aristotle; the ideas were equally the possession of
his predecessors.

[Footnote 403: Aristotle's "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 404: Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 77;
Cousin's "The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," p. 77.]

The evidence, we think, is conclusive that, with this primal element
(water), Thales associated a formative principle of motion; to the
"material" he added the "efficient" cause. A strong presumption in favor
of this opinion is grounded on the psychological views of Thales. The
author of "De Placitis Philosophorum" associates him with Pythagoras and
Plato, in teaching that the soul is incorporeal, making it naturally
self-active, and an intelligent substance.[405] And it is admitted by
Aristotle (rather unwillingly, we grant, but his testimony is all the
more valuable on that account) that, in his time, the opinion that the
soul is a principle, aeikineton--ever moving, or essentially
self-active, was currently ascribed to Thales. "If we may rely on the
notices of Thales, he too would seem to have conceived the soul as a
_moving principle_."[406] Extending this idea, that the soul is a moving
principle, he held that all motion in the universe was due to the
presence of a living soul. "He is reported to have said that the
loadstone possessed a soul because it could move iron."[407] And he
taught that "the world itself is _animated_, and full of gods."[408]
"Some think that _soul_ and _life_ is mingled with the whole universe;
and thence, perhaps, was that [opinion] of Thales that all things are
full of gods,"[409] portions, as Aristotle said, of the universal soul.
These views are quite in harmony with the theology which makes the Deity
the moving energy of the universe--the energy which wrought the
successive transformations of the primitive aqueous element. They also
furnish a strong corroboration of the positive statement of
Cicero--"Aquam, dixit Thales, esse initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem
quae ex aqua cuncta fingeret." Thales said that water is the first
princ