the first man who made a map. He held that the earth is shaped like a cylinder. He is variously
reported as saying the sun is as large as the earth, or twenty-seven times as large, or twenty-eight
times as large.
Wherever he is original, he is scientific and rationalistic.
Anaximenes, the last of the Milesian triad, is not quite so interesting as Anaximander, but makes
some important advances. His dates are very uncertain. He was certainly subsequent to
Anaximander, and he certainly flourished before 494 B.C., since in that year Miletus was
destroyed by the Persians in the course of their suppression of the Ionian revolt.
The fundamental substance, he said, is air. The soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed, air
becomes first water, then, if further condensed, earth, and finally stone. This theory has the merit
of making all the differences between different substances quantitative, depending entirely upon
the degree of condensation.
He thought that the earth is shaped like a round table, and that air encompasses everything: "Just
as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world." It
seems that the world breathes.
Anaximenes was more admired in antiquity than Anaximander, though almost any modern world
would make the opposite valuation. He had an important influence on Pythagoras and on much
subsequent speculation. The Pythagoreans discovered that the earth is spherical, but the atomists
adhered to the view of Anaximenes, that it is shaped like a disc.
The Milesian school is important, not for what it achieved, but for what it attempted. It was
brought into existence by the contact of the Greek mind with Babylonia and Egypt. Miletus was a
rich commercial city, in which primitive prejudices and superstitions were softened by intercourse
with many nations. Ionia, until its subjugation by Darius at the beginning of the fifth century, was
culturally the most important part of the Hellenic world. It was almost untouched by the religious
movement connected with Bacchus and Orpheus; its religion was Olympic, but seems to have
been not taken very seriously. The speculations of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes are to
be regarded as scientific hypotheses, and seldom show any undue intrusion of anthropomorphic
desires and moral ideas. The questions they asked