For the remains of Pherekydes, see Diels, _Vorsokratiker_, pp. 506 sqq. (1st ed.), and the interesting account in Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, vol. i. pp. 85 sqq. Footnote 10: This was the view of Lobeck with regard to the so-called “Rhapsodic Theogony” described by Damaskios, and was revived by Otto Kern (_De Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis_, 1888). Its savage character is the best proof of its antiquity. Cf. Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. i. chap. x. Footnote 11: Arist. _Met._ Ν, 4. 1091 b 8. [Sidenote: General characteristics of early Greek cosmology.] VI. What, then, was the step that placed the Ionian cosmologists once for all above the level of the Maoris? Grote and Zeller make it consist in the substitution of impersonal causes acting according to law for personal causes acting arbitrarily. But the distinction between personal and impersonal was not really felt in antiquity, and it is a mistake to lay much stress on it. It seems rather that the real advance made by the scientific men of Miletos was that they left off telling tales. They gave up the hopeless task of describing what was when as yet there was nothing, and asked instead what all things really are now. [Sidenote: _Ex nihilo nihil._] The great principle which underlies all their thinking, though it is first put into words by Parmenides, is that _Nothing comes into being out of nothing, and nothing passes away into nothing_. They saw, however, that particular things were always coming into being and passing away again, and from this it followed that their existence was no true or stable one. The only things that were real and eternal were the original matter which passed through all these changes and the motion which gave rise to them, to which was soon added that law of proportion or compensation which, despite the continual becoming and passing away of things, secured the relative permanence and stability of the various forms of existence that go to make up the world. That these were, in fact, the leading ideas of the early cosmologists, cannot, of course, be proved till we have given a detailed exposition of their systems; but we can show at once how natural it was for such thoughts to come to them. It is always the problem of change and decay that first excites the wonder which, as Plato says, is the starting-point of all philosophy. Besides this, there was in the Ionic nature a vein of melancholy which led it to brood upon the instability of things. Even before the time of Thales, Mimnermos of Kolophon sings the sadness of change; and, at a later date, the lament of Simonides, that the generations of men fall like the leaves of the forest, touches a chord already struck by the earliest singer of Ionia.[12] Now, so long as men could believe everything they saw was alive like themselves, the spectacle of the unceasing death and new birth of nature would only tinge their thoughts with a certain mournfulness, which would find its