This inspired statement of the order in which the conception of God as a determinate mode of thought is evolved in the human mind is exactly verified by the history of reflective thought as presented in Greek philosophy. Reflective thought began with Thales in Asia Minor and Pythagoras in Lower Italy. The Ionian and Italian schools commenced most naturally with the objective phenomena of nature, and sought for the ἀρχή--the first principle and cause of all that appears. Their question was not, _Is_ there a first principle and cause? but _What_ is the first principle and cause? The orderly phenomena of the universe presented themselves to their minds as the expression of _power_ and _thought_ as certainly as they do to ours; and their endeavor was to construe this intuition in logical form and give it articulate expression. It is true their method was at first defective, and the results attained were consequently often erroneous. Still their mental effort must have been unconsciously governed by those fixed laws of cognition which constrain all minds to regard all phenomena as the expression of power, and all orderly arrangement as the utterance of thought. If in the realm of objective things they fixed upon a single element as that out of which all things else were evolved, that first seed of things was either a living, potential energy, or it was associated with and animated by a living soul.[492] Or if guided by analogy, they conceived the universe as a living organism, "Whose body nature is, and God the soul." The informing principle was still an _intelligent_ Power. So that at the end of this period of inquiry we find that Anaxagoras distinctly articulates the word which his countrymen had half unconsciously recognized, "the ἀρχή, or first principle, is mind, intellect, νοῦς."