Thales, of Miletus in Ionia, was one of the seven sages of Greece: he was born about six hundred and forty years before the Christian era. After travelling into other countries, he returned to his own, and there devoted himself exclusively to the study of nature. Being the first of the Greeks who made any discoveries in _Astronomy_, he is said to have astonished his countrymen, by predicting a solar eclipse; and he instructed them, by communicating the knowledge of geometry and astronomy, which he had acquired while in Egypt. He died in the ninety-sixth year of his age,—544 years B. C. ----- According to Mr. Gibbon, the philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature of man, rather than from that of God. They meditated, however, as we are informed by this very ingenious historian, on the Divine Nature, as a most curious and important speculation; and, in the profound enquiry, they displayed both the strength and the weakness of the human understanding. The Stoics and the Platonists endeavoured to reconcile the interests of reason with their notions of piety. The opinions of the Academicians and Epicureans, the two other of the four most celebrated schools, were of a less religious cast: But, continues Mr. Gibbon, whilst the modest science of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged them to deny, the providence of a Supreme Ruler. Cicero[14] denominated the God of Plato the _Maker_, and the God of Aristotle the _Governor_, of the world.[15] It is somewhere observed, that it is no reflection on the character of Plato, to have been unable, by the efforts of his own reason, to acquire any notion of a proper creation; since we, who have the advantage of his writings, nay of writings infinitely more valuable than his, to instruct us, find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how any thing can first begin to have an existence. We believe the fact, on the authority of Revelation. ----- Footnote 14: Marcus Tullius Cicero—the same that has been already mentioned. He was, himself, not only one of the most learned and eloquent men, but one of the greatest philosophers, of antiquity. This illustrious Roman (whose death occurred forty-three years before the Christian era) firmly believed in the being of a God. He was likewise a decided advocate for the doctrine of the soul’s immortality; concerning which, some fine reasoning will be found in his book on _Old Age_;—a doctrine, however, by no means confined to Cicero alone, but one maintained by many of the most eminent among the heathen philosophers, in the early ages. Plato appears to have been the first who supported that opinion upon sound and permanent arguments, deduced from truth and established principles. Footnote 15: