Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/64

50 held there was a divine mind which formed all things out of water. All this is derived from Aristotle's cautious statement, and can have no greater authority than its source. We need not enter, then, on the old controversy whether Thales was an atheist or not. If we may judge from his successors, he may very possibly have called water a "god"; but that would not imply any definite religious belief.

Nor must we make too much of the saying that "all things are full of gods." It is not safe to regard an apophthegm as evidence, and the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven Wise Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed now to one sage and now to another. On the other hand, it is probable that Thales did say the magnet and amber had souls. That is no apophthegm, but more on the level of the statement that the earth floats on the water. It is just the sort of thing we should expect Hekataios to record about Thales. It would be wrong, however, to draw any inference from it as to his view of the world; for to say the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything, that other things are not.

12. Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was also a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos described him as an "associate" of Thales. We have seen how that expression is to be understood (§ XIV).