Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with the knowledge of things.  In accordance with tradition and the logic of things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric.  The Eleatic school followed from the two former, although its development was contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence upon them was to some extent reactionary.

Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle, namely water.  The ancients believed that the land was separated from the water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in many legends diffused through the world even in modern times.  He said that everything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself was derived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is the origin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it is the primitive principle of the world.  We see how much this theory is concerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth by means of seed.  He regarded the world as a living being, which had been evolved from an imperfect germ of moisture.  This mode of animating the world, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already in existence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy.  He saw life in the appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to be animate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filled with demons and genii.[32]

We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales, declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything was derived from a primitive condition of germs.  The same opinion was held by Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras.  Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremely ancient in his time.  The other philosophers of the Ionic and successive schools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement of their theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so that it is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions are identical.

It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved a more rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols and primitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although they assumed a larger and more scientific form.  Thales and others assigned a mechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which was contrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world as a living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functions as all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons, thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race.