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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Thales
Thales was the first person who affirmed that the souls of men were immortal; and he was the first person, too, who discovered the path of the sun from one end of the ecliptic to the other; and who, as one account tells us, defined the magnitude of the sun as being seven hundred and twenty times as great as that of the moon. He was also the first person who called the last day of the month the thirtieth. And likewise the first to converse about natural philosophy, as some say. But Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls also to lifeless things, forming his conjecture from the nature of the magnet, and of amber. He asserted water to be the principle of all things, and that the world had life, and was full of demons; they say, too, that he was the original definer of the seasons of the year, and that it was he who divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. And he never had any teacher except during the time that he went to Egypt, and associated with the priests. Hieronymus also says that he measured the Pyramids: watching their shadow, and calculating when they were of the same size as that was. He lived with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus, as we are informed by Minyas. These are quoted as some of his lines:
And the following are quoted as sayings of his: -- "God is the most ancient of all things, for he had no birth: the world is the most beautiful of things, for it is the work of God; place is the greatest of things, for it contains all things: intellect is the swiftest of things, for it runs through everything, necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules everything: time is the wisest of things, for it finds out everything." He said also that there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," he said some one to him, "do not you die?" "Because," he said, "it does make no difference." A man asked him which was made first, night or day, and he replied, "Night was made first by one day." Another man asked him whether a man who did wrong, could escape the notice of the gods. "No, not even if he things wrong," said he. An adulterer inquired of him whether he should swear that he had not committed adultery. "Perjury," said he, "is no worse than adultery." When he was asked what was very difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another." What was most pleasant? "To be successful." To the question, "What is the divinity?" he replied, "That which has neither beginning nor end." When asked what hard thing he had seen, he said, "An old man a tyrant." When the question was put to him how a man might most easily endure misfortune, he said, "If he saw his enemies more unfortunate still>' When asked how men might live most virtuously and most justly, he said, "If we never do ourselves what we blame in others." To the question, "Who was happy?" he made answer, "He who is healthy in his body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed as to his mind." He said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as those who were present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but to be beautified by their studies. "Do not," said he, "get rich by evil actions, and let not any one ever be able to reproach you with speaking against those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance you give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your children." He said that the reason of the Nile overflowing was that its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a contrary direction.
Excerpted from Early Greek Philosophy, ed. and tr. by John Burnet (1930). |
The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by A. A. Long
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