gs pass--The eternal and the
temporary--The weeping philosopher_

[17]

III. ANAXIMENES.--This philosopher was also a native of Miletus, and is
said to have been a hearer or pupil of Anaximander. As we have said,
the [19] tendency of the later members of the school was towards
emphasising the _motive_ side of the supposed underlying principle of
nature, and accordingly Anaximenes chose Air as the element which best
[18] represented or symbolised that principle. Its fluidity, readiness
of movement, wide extension, and absolute neutrality of character as
regards colour, taste, smell, form, etc., were obvious suggestions.
The breath also, whose very name to the ancients implied an identity
with the life or soul, was nothing but air; and the identification of
Air with Life supplied just that principle of productiveness and
movement, which was felt [20] to be necessary in the primal element of
being. The process of existence, then, he conceived as consisting in a
certain concentration of this diffused life-giving element into more or
less solidified forms, and the {15} ultimate separation and expansion
of these back into the formless air again. The contrary forces
previously used by Anaximander--heat and cold, drought and
moisture--are with Anaximenes also the agencies which institute these
changes.

This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as the
few known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplying
a step towards the completer development of the _motive_ [22] idea in
being, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought.

IV. HERACLITUS.--Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus,
Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position in
the development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to be
classed with the philosophers of Miletus. His period may be given
approximately as from about 560 to 500 B.C., though others place him a
generation later. Few authentic particulars have been preserved of
him. We hear of extensive travels, of his return to his native city
only to refuse a share in its activities, of his retirement to a
hermit's life. He seems to have formed a contrast to the preceding
philosophers in his greater detachment from the ordinary interests of
civic existence; and much in his teaching suggests the ascetic if not
the misanthrope. He received the nickname of 'The Obscure,' from the
studied mystery in which he was supposed