So also a geologist of the present day, when he speculates upon the early condition[4] of the Kosmos, reasons upon gaseous, fluid, solid, varieties of matter, as manifesting those same laws and properties which experience attests, but manifesting them under different combinations and circumstances. The defect of the Ionic philosophers, unavoidable at the time, was, that possessing nothing beyond a superficial experience, they either ascribed to these physical agents powers and properties not real, or exaggerated prodigiously such as were real; so that the primordial substance chosen, though bearing a familiar name, became little better than a fiction. The Pythagoreans did the same in regard to numbers, ascribing to them properties altogether fanciful and imaginary. [Footnote 3: Plato (Sophistes, 242-243) observes respecting these early theorists--what Aristotle says about Hesiod and the Theogonies--that they followed out their own subjective veins of thought without asking whether we, the many listeners, were able to follow them or were left behind in the dark. I dare say that this was true (as indeed it is true respecting most writers on speculative matters), but I am sure that all of them would have made the same complaint if they had heard Plato read his Timæus.] [Footnote 4: Bacon has some striking remarks on the contrast in this respect between the earlier philosophers and Aristotle. Bacon, after commending the early Greek philosophers for having adopted as their first principle some known and positive matter, not a mere abstraction, goes on to say:-- "Videntur antiqui illi, in inquisitione principiorum, rationem non admodum acutam instituisse, sed hoc solummodo egisse, ut ex corporibus apparentibus et manifestis, quod maximé excelleret, quærerent, et quod tale videbatur, principium rerum ponerent: tanquam per excellentiam, non veré aut realiter. . . . Quod si principium illud suum teneant non per excellentiam, sed simpliciter, videntur utique in duriorem tropum incidere: cum res plané deducatur ad æquivocum, neque de igne naturali, aut naturali ære, aut aquâ, quod asserunt, prædicari videatur, sed de igne aliquo phantastico et notionali (et sic de cæteris) qui nomen ignis retineat, definitionem abneget. . . . Principium statuerunt secundum sensum, aliquod ens verum: modum autem ejus dispensandi (liberius se gerentes) phantasticum." (Bacon, Parmenidis, Telesii, et Democriti Philosophia, vol. xi., p. 115-116, ed. Montagu.)