The philosophy of Ionia was echoed back with increased vigor from Magna Grecia. It is customary for the imagination, when Italy is its theme, to fly back to the days of Rome—to revel with Horace and with Cicero, with Virgil and Macænas. How great so ever may be our veneration for those later ages, they should never blot out from memory Italy’s earlier civilization, when Apuleia and Brutium were seats of learning instead of Tuscany, and when Pythagoras was master of its philosophy instead of Cicero and Seneca. The _point de depart_ of philosophy was the origin of the world and its elementary principle. Perhaps it was necessary that the mental machinery should first be employed upon the grosser matter ere it should seize hold of that most delicate of all materials, mind—that {740} the artillerymen of logic should first acquire skill in battering to pieces erroneous opinions on natural philosophy ere his piece should be directed against errors in ethics and psychology. Its _modus operandi_ was, generally, that of empiricism. This is in a degree true of all from Thales to Plato. As the astrologers and alchemists of all ages, so did the philosophers of the time of Thales. Though arguing on correct bases, they obtained the most improper results. Pushing their analysis beyond the bound of reason—not content with the phenomena of matter, of which experience has taught us more than suffices for the mind of man, they sought to discover the _arcanum_, the hidden principle of the world’s existence. They failed of course, and it is a humiliating though not less instructive task to glance in succession at the varied, though not less incoherent, labors of those great spirits who, notwithstanding that absurdity which belonged more properly to their age than to them individually, yet emitted occasional glimpses of what we in vain would hope had led to better results. According to Thales the principle of the world is water. He is said to have been induced to adopt this, in consequence of some partial experiments. There was besides another principle, prime mover of all things, which he called _nous_. To him we are indebted for that best and most ancient of maxims, _Know thyself_. Friend and townsman of Thales was Anaxamander. He lit his lamp at the same light and cast its blaze on the same subjects. His _point de depart_ is infinity, which he surnamed all-containing and divine, without determining it more precisely. Perpetual changes of earth and of things can take place in infinity. These were his _principia_, but from them he developed multitudes of doctrines which it is not now important to examine. He bent his attention to astronomy, and nearly similar were the doctrines of Pherecydes of Syros. He called his trinity of principles, God, time, and matter. He attempted to explain animated bodies and mankind. He considered the soul as imperishable. Anaxamander and Pherecydes were the two first philosophers who wrote their doctrines out.