ages before, and which had ceased to
be; rather it meant the reality of things now. Thales then was the
putter of a question, which had not been asked expressly before, but
which has never ceased to be asked since. He was also the formulator
of a new meaning for a word; the word 'beginning' ((Greek) _arche_) got
the meaning of 'underlying reality' and so of 'ending' as well. In
short, he so dealt with a word, on the surface of it implying {4} time,
as to eliminate the idea of time, and suggest a method of looking at
the world, more profound and far-reaching than had been before
imagined.[1]

It is interesting to find that the man who was thus the first
philosopher, the first observer who took a metaphysical, non-temporal,
analytical view of the world, and so became the predecessor of all
those votaries of 'other-world' ways of thinking,--whether as academic
idealist, or 'budge doctor of the Stoic fur,' or Christian ascetic or
what not, whose ways are such a puzzle to the 'hard-headed practical
man,'--was himself one of the shrewdest men of his day, so shrewd that
by common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the Seven
Sages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world's
tradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb.

[9]

The chief record that we possess of the philosophic teaching of Thales
is contained in an interesting notice of earlier philosophies by
Aristotle, the main part of which as regards Thales runs as follows:

"The early philosophers as a rule formulated the originative principle
((Greek) _arche_) of all things under some material expression. By the
originative principle or element of things they meant that of which all
{5} existing things are composed, that which determines their coming
into being, and into which they pass on ceasing to be. Where these
philosophers differed from each other was simply in the answer which
they gave to the question what was the nature of this principle, the
differences of view among them applying both to the number, and to the
character, of the supposed element or elements.

"Thales, the pioneer of this philosophy, maintained that _Water_ was
the originative principle of all things. It was doubtless in this
sense that he said that the earth rested on water. What suggested the
conception to him may have been such facts of observation, as that all
forms of substance which promote life are moist, that heat itself seems
t