pprove of more than one. I will not pursue an infinite number of
questions; only let us see whom he will approve of with respect to the
elements of things of which all things are composed; for there is a great
disagreement among the greatest men on this subject.

XXXVII. First of all, Thales, one of the seven, to whom they say that the
other six yielded the preeminence, said that everything originated out of
water; but he failed to convince Anaximander, his countryman and
companion, of this theory; for his idea was that there was an infinity of
nature from which all things were produced. After him, his pupil,
Anaximenes, said that the air was infinite, but that the things which were
generated from it were finite; and that the earth, and water, and fire,
were generated, and that from them was produced everything else.
Anaxagoras said that matter was infinite; but that from it were produced
minute particles resembling one another; that at first they were confused,
but afterwards brought into order by divine intellect. Xenophanes, who was
a little more ancient still, asserted that all things were only one single
being, and that that being was immutable and a god, not born, but
everlasting, of a globular form. Parmenides considered that it is fire
that moves the earth, which is formed out of it. Leucippus thought that
there was a _plenum_, and a _vacuum_; Democritus resembled him in this
idea, but was more copious on other matters: Empedocles adopts the theory
of the four ordinary and commonly known elements. Heraclitus refers
everything to fire; Melissus thinks that what exists is infinite,
immutable, always has existed, and always will. Plato thinks that the
world was made by God, so as to be eternal, out of matter which collects
everything to itself. The Pythagoreans affirm that everything proceeds
from numbers, and from the principles of mathematicians.

Now of all these different teachers the wise man will, I imagine, select
some one to follow; all the rest, numerous, and great men as they are,
will be discarded by him and condemned; but whichever doctrine he approves
of he will retain in his mind, being comprehended in the same manner as
those things which he comprehends by means of the senses; nor will he feel
any greater certainty of the fact of its now being day, than, since he is
a Stoic, of this world being wise, being endowed with intellect, which has
made both itself and the world, and which regulates, sets in m