The first of these statements must be understood in the light of the second, which is expressed in Aristotelian terminology, but would undoubtedly mean that Thales had said water was the fundamental or primary thing, of which all other things were mere transient forms. It was, we shall see, just such a primary substance that the Milesian school as a whole was seeking, and it is unlikely that the earliest answer to the great question of the day should have been the comparatively subtle one given by Anaximander. We are, perhaps, justified in holding that the greatness of Thales consisted in this, that he was the first to ask, not what _was_ the original thing, but what _is_ the primary thing now; or, more simply still, “What is the world made of?” The answer he gave to this question was: _Water_. [Sidenote: Water.] 10. Aristotle and Theophratos, followed by Simplicius and the doxographers, suggest several explanations of this answer. By Aristotle these explanations are given as conjectural; it is only later writers that repeat them as if they were quite certain.[84] The most probable view of them seems to be that Aristotle simply ascribed to Thales the arguments used at a later date by Hippon of Samos in support of a similar thesis.[85] This would account for their physiological character. The rise of scientific medicine had made biological arguments very popular in the fifth century; but, in the days of Thales, the prevailing interest was not physiological, but rather what we should call meteorological, and it is therefore from this point of view we must try to understand the theory. Footnote 84: _Met._ Α, 3. 983 b 22; Aet. i. 3, 1; Simpl. _Phys._ p. 36, 10 (R. P. 10, 12, 12 a). The last of the explanations given by Aristotle, namely, that Thales was influenced by early cosmogonical theories about Okeanos and Tethys, has strangely been supposed to be more historical than the rest, whereas it is merely a fancy of Plato’s taken literally. Plato says more than once (_Tht._ 180 d 2; _Crat._ 402 b 4) that Herakleitos and his predecessors (οἱ ῥέοντες) derived their philosophy from Homer (_Il._ xiv. 201), and even earlier sources (Orph. frag. 2, Diels, _Vors._ 1st ed. p. 491). In quoting this suggestion, Aristotle refers it to “some”—a word which often means Plato—and he calls the originators of the theory παμπαλαίους, as Plato had done (_Met._ 983 b 28; cf. _Tht._ 181 b 3). This is a characteristic example of the way in which Aristotle gets history out of Plato. See Appendix, § 2. Footnote 85: