e word _husk_ or
_bark_ ((Greek) _phloios_) seems to have been a favourite one with him,
as implying and depicting a conception of interior and necessary
development in things. Thus he seems to have postulated an inherent
tendency or law in the infinite, which compelled it to develop contrary
characters, as hot and cold, dry and moist. In consequence of this
fundamental tendency an envelope of fire, he says, came into being,
encircling another envelope of air, which latter in turn enveloped the
sphere of earth, each being like the 'husk' of the other, or like the
bark which encloses the tree. This concentric system he conceives as
having in some way been parted up into various systems, represented by
the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth. The last he figured as
hanging in space, and deriving its stability from the inherent and
perfect balance or relation of its parts.

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[16]

Then, again, as to the origin of man, he seems to have in like manner
taught a theory of development from lower forms of life. In his view
the first living creatures must have come into being in moisture (thus
recalling the theory of Thales). As time went on, and these forms of
life reached their fuller possibilities, they came to be transferred to
the dry land, casting off their old nature like a husk or bark. More
particularly he insists that man must have developed out of other and
lower forms of life, because of his exceptional need, under present
conditions, of care and nursing in his earlier years. Had he come into
being at once as a human creature he could never have survived.

The analogies of these theories with modern speculations are obvious
and interesting. But without enlarging on these, one has only to say
in conclusion that, suggestive and interesting as many of these poor
fragments, these _disjecti membra poetae_, are individually, they leave
us more and more impressed with a sense of incompleteness in our
knowledge of Anaximander's theory as a whole. It may be that as a
consistent and perfected system the theory never was worked out; it may
be that it never was properly understood.

[1] By some authorities it is stated that Anaximander, the second
philosopher of this school, was the first to use the word _arche_ in
the philosophic sense. Whether this be so or not, Thales certainly had
the idea.

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CHAPTER II

THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS (_concluded_)

_Air the beginning of things--All thin