CHAPTER II
The Chemical Philosophy of the Ancients
SPECULATIONS, as to the origin and nature of matter, and as to the conditions and forces which affect it, are to be found, more or less imperfectly developed, in the oldest systems of philosophy of which we have any record. These speculations are not based, in any real sense, upon the systematic observation of natural phenomena. Still, as they appealed to human reason, they must be held to be founded upon experience, or at least not to be consciously inconsistent with it: All the oldest cosmogonies regarded water as the fundamental principle of things from Okeanos sprang the gods—them selves deified personifications of the “elements” or principles of which the world was made.
In the course of time this doctrine of the origin and essential nature of matter came to be more particularly associated with the name of Thales of Miletus, who lived six centuries before
our era, and who, according to Tertullian, is to be regarded as the first of the race of the natural philosophers—that is, the first of those who made it their business to inquire after natural causes and phenomena. Thales is known to
19
