[983b]
[1]
however, let us avail ourselves of the evidence of
those who have before us approached the investigation of reality and
philosophized about Truth. For clearly they too recognize certain
principles and causes, and so it will be of some assistance to our
present inquiry if we study their teaching; because we shall either
discover some other kind of cause, or have more confidence in those
which we have just described.Most of the earliest
philosophers conceived only of material principles as underlying all
things. That of which all things consist, from which they first come
and into which on their destruction they are ultimately resolved, of
which the essence persists although modified by its
affections—this, they say, is an element and principle of
existing things. Hence they believe that nothing is either generated
or destroyed, since this kind of primary entity always persists.
Similarly we do not say that
Socrates comes into being absolutely when he
becomes handsome or cultured, nor that he is destroyed when he loses
these qualities; because the substrate,
Socrates himself, persists.In the same way nothing else is
generated or destroyed; for there is some one entity (or more than
one) which always persists and from which all other things are
generated. All are not
agreed, however,
[20]
as to the
number and character of these principles.
Thales,1 the founder of
this school of philosophy,2 says the permanent entity is water (which is
why he also propounded that the earth floats on water). Presumably he
derived this assumption from seeing that the nutriment of everything
is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and depends
upon it for its existence (and that from which a thing is generated is
always its first principle). He derived his assumption, then, from
this; and also from the fact that the seeds of everything have a moist
nature, whereas water is the first principle of the nature of moist
things.There are some3 who think that the men of very
ancient times, long before the present era, who first speculated about
the gods, also held this same opinion about the primary entity. For
they4 represented
Oceanus and Tethys to be the parents of creation, and the oath of the
gods to be by water—
Styx,5 as they call it. Now what is most
ancient is most revered, and what is most revered is what we swear by.
1 Thales of Miletus, fl. 585 B.C.
2 That of the Ionian monists, who sought a single material principle of everything.
3 Cf. Plat. Crat. 402b, Plat. Theaet. 152e, Plat. Theaet. 180c,d.
4 cf. Hom. Il. 14. 201, Hom. Il. 14.246.
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