a moist nature, and that water is a first principle of
all things that are humid." This is very likely the true explanation.
But it will be noted that even Aristotle uses the word "probably," and
so gives his statement merely as a conjecture. How, in the opinion of
Thales, the universe arose out of water, is even more uncertain. Most
likely he never asked himself the question, and gave no explanation.
At any rate nothing is known on the point.

This being the sum and substance of the teaching of Thales, we may
naturally ask why, on account of such a crude and undeveloped idea, he
should be given the title of the father of philosophy. Why should
philosophy be said to begin here in particular? Now, the significance
of Thales is not that his water-philosophy has any value in itself,
but that this was the first recorded attempt to explain the universe
on naturalistic and scientific principles, without the aid of myths
and anthropomorphic gods. Moreover, Thales propounded the problem, and
determined the direction and character, of all pre-Socratic
philosophy. The fundamental thought of that period was, that under the
multiplicity of the world there must be a single ultimate principle.
The problem of all philosophers from Thales to Anaxagoras was, what is
the nature of that first principle from which all things have issued?
Their systems are all attempts to answer this question, and may be
classified according to their different replies. Thus Thales asserted
that the ultimate reality is water, Anaximander indefinite matter,
Anaximenes air, the Pythagoreans number, the Eleatics Being,
Heracleitus fire, Empedocles the four elements, Democritus atoms, and
so on. The first period is thus {23} essentially cosmological in
character, and it was Thales who determined the character. His
importance is that he was the first to propound the question, not that
he gave any rational reply to it.

We saw in the first chapter, that man is naturally a materialist, and
that philosophy is the movement from sensuous to non-sensuous thought.
As we should expect, then, philosophy begins in materialism. The first
answer to the question, what the ultimate reality is, places the
nature of that reality in a sensuous object, water. The other members
of the Ionic school, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, are also
materialists. And from their time onwards we can trace the gradual
rise of thought, with occasional breaks and relapses, from this
sensualism of