Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 6.djvu/50

44 that mind is innate in all animals alike; for that each, according to the difference of their physical constitution, employed [mind], at one time slower, at another faster.

Natural philosophy, then, continued from Thales until Archelaus. Socrates was the hearer of this [latter philosopher]. There are, however, also very many others, introducing various opinions respecting both the divinity and the nature of the universe; and if we were disposed to adduce all the opinions of these, it would be necessary to compose a vast quantity of books. But, reminding the reader of those whom we especially ought—who are deserving of mention from their fame, and from being, so to speak, the leaders to those who have subsequently framed systems of philosophy, and from their supplying them with a starting-point towards such undertakings—let us hasten on our investigations towards what remains for consideration.

For Parmenides likewise supposes the universe to be one, both eternal and unbegotten, and of a spherical form. And neither did he escape the opinion of the great body [of speculators], affirming fire and earth to be the originating principles of the universe—the earth as matter, but the fire as cause, even an efficient one. He asserted that the world would be destroyed, but in what way he does not mention. The same [philosopher], however, affirmed the universe to be eternal, and not generated, and of spherical form and homogeneous, but not having a figure in itself, and immoveable and limited.