ided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication with
them. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a time
when they first attempted to reduce the earlier and scanty knowledge of
nature to a system.

In Greece the historical course of this faculty ramified into two
classes of research, which were at that time objective, the Ionic and
the Pythagorean schools. In the former, the phenomenon and nature were
assumed to be the direct object of knowledge, while in the latter the
object in view was the idea and harmony of things. Influenced by earlier
and popular traditions, a mythical and philosophic system arose in the
Ionic school, which was exclusively devoted to physical speculations. In
Lower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the most
part Doric, a science was constituted which, although it included
physics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their material
value, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion of
good and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between the
Pythagorean philosophy and lyrical music--of which the origin was sought
as a clue to explain the world--shows how far this philosophy was
consonant with Doric thought. This historic process is quite natural,
since the speculations of philosophy are first directed to physical
phenomena, as they are displayed in inward and in external life, and
then rise to the consideration of specific types, in a word, to the
general and the universal.

Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from
the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the
intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with
the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of
things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleatic
school followed from the two former, although its development was
contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence
upon them was to some extent reactionary.

Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle,
namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from the
water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source
in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the
teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we
find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genes