[Sidenote: The puerility of Ionian philosophy.]
I have lingered on the chief features of the early Greek philosophy as exhibited in the physical school of Ionia. They serve to impress upon us its intrinsic imperfection. It is a mixture of the physical, metaphysical, and mystical which, upon the whole, has no other value than this, that it shows how feeble were the beginnings of our knowledge--that we commenced with the importation of a few vulgar errors from Egypt. In presence of the utilitarian philosophy of that country and the theology of India, how vain and even childish are these germs of science in Greece! Yet this very imperfection is not without its use, since it warns us of the inferior position in which we stand as respects the time of our civilization when compared with those ancient states, and teaches us to reject the assertion which so many European scholars have wearied themselves in establishing, that Greece led the way to all human knowledge of any value. Above all, it impresses upon us more appropriate, because more humble views of our present attainments and position, and gives us to understand that other races of men not only preceded us in intellectual culture, but have equalled, and perhaps surpassed every thing that we have yet done in mental philosophy.
[Sidenote: Anaximander's doctrine of the Infinite.]
Of the other founders of Ionic sects it may be observed that, though they gave to their doctrines different forms, the method of reasoning was essentially the same in them all. Of this a better illustration could not be given than in the philosophy of Anaximander of Miletus, who was contemporary with Thales. He started with the postulate that things arose by separation from a universal mixture of all: his primordial principle was therefore chaos, though he veiled it in the metaphysically obscure designation "The Infinite." The want of precision in this respect gave rise to much difference of opinion as to his tenets. To his chaos he imputed an internal energy, by which its parts spontaneously separated from each other; to those parts he imputed absolute unchangeability. He taught that the earth is of a cylindrical form, its base being one-third of its altitude; it is retained in the centre of the world by the air in an equality of distance from all the boundaries of the universe; that the fixed stars and planets revolved round it, each being fastened to a crystalline ring; and beyond them, in like manner, the moon, and, still farther off, the sun. He conceived of an opposition between the central and circumferential regions, the former being naturally cold, and the latter hot; indeed, in his opinion, the settling of the cold parts to the centre, and the ascending of the hot, gave origin, respectively, to the formation of the earth and shining celestial bodies, the latter first existing as a complete shell or sphere, which, undergoing destruction, broke up into stars. Already we perceive the tendency of Greek philosophy to shape itself into systems of cosmogony, founded upon the disturbance of the chaotic matter by heat and cold. Nay, more, Anaximander explained the origin of living creatures on like principles, for the sun's heat, acting upon the primal miry earth, produced filmy bladders or bubbles, and these, becoming surrounded with a prickly rind, at length burst open, and, as from an egg, animals came forth. At first they were ill-formed and imperfect, but subsequently elaborated and developed. As to man, so far from being produced in his perfect shape, he was ejected as a fish, and under that form continued in the muddy water until he was capable of supporting himself on dry land. Besides "the Infinite" being thus the cause of generation, it was also the cause of destruction: "things must all return whence they came, according to destiny, for they must all, in order of time, undergo due penalties and expiations of wrong-doing." This expression obviously contains a moral consideration, and is an exemplification of the commencing feeble interconnection between physical and moral philosophy.