ANAXIMENES, born at Miletus, an eminent Greek philosopher; friend, scholar, and successor of Anaximander. He diffused some degree of light upon the obscurity of his master's system. He made the first principle of things to consist in the air, which he considered as immanent or infinite, and to which he ascribed a perpetual motion. He asserted, that all things which proceeded from it were definite and circumscribed; and that this air, therefore, was God, since the divine power resided in it and agitated it. Coldness and moisture, heat and motion, rendered it visible, and dressed it in different forms, according to the different degrees of its condensation. All the elements thus proceed from heat and cold. The earth was, in his opinion, one continued flat surface.