every investigation is for the purpose of knowing some-
thing, and as we cannot be said to know before we can
comprehend wherefore a thing is what it is, (comprehend,
that is, its first cause,) so it is evident that we must thus
study the laws of reproduction destruction and change,
throughout nature, in order to be enabled to refer, for
each subject of investigation, to the first causes of the
phænomena. This argument seems to confine causation
to natural operations in particular, that is, living bodies;
but cause had then, as it has now, a far wider significa-
tion—besides essence, individual being, elements, and
other admitted first causes, that of which anything is
made, was said to be its cause, as bronze of a statue,
silver of a goblet, and, in a general sense the maker is
the cause of the production, and he who alters, of the
change, &c. Thus, there was great latitude in the
enumeration of first causes. Thales[1], the founder of
this branch of philosophy, maintains that water is a
first cause, because the earth rose from water. Anaxi-
menes and Democritus contend that, as air was before
water, so it is rather to be regarded as the first cause of
everything.
Hippasus and Heraclitus set it down as being fire;
and Empedocles, adding earth, adopted four elementary
causes; for he maintained, that these elements are un-
changeable and unproduceable, although capable of com-
bining with and separating from one another. He first
- ↑ Metaphysica, i. 3. 5. 8.
