the founder of Grecian philosophy, and one of the seven wise men of Greece, is said to have been born at Miletus in Ionia, about the thirty-fifth Olympiad, or in 640 B.C. (Diog. Laërt. "Thales"). According to Hieronymus, he never had any teacher. He travelled early into Egypt, and associated with the priests whom he met in that country. He is reported likewise to have measured the pyramids of Egypt by the shadow which the sun traced upon the ground (Diogenes Laërt.). He was distinguished for his practical wisdom as well as for his scientific skill; for he is said to have diverted the course of the River Halys, which allowed Cressus and his army to pass; and he united and strengthened the Ionians into a federal council, to resist the threatening insolence of Persia. In science, again, he is reported to have predicted the first eclipse on record, and to have divided the year into 365 days, to have proposed and proved various geometrical problems, and he is admitted on all hands to be the originator of philosophy. The first cause of all things was water, according to Thales. (Aristotle, Metaph., i.c. 3.) Aristotle conjectures the probable reason which induced the Ionian philosopher to adopt, to all appearance, so eccentric an explanation of the origin of the universe. He remarks in his Metaphysics (i.e.), that this view likely had its origin in the observation, that all things that grow appear to have their nourishment in moisture, and that the actual heat which arises with the process of germination seems to owe its existence to the presence of water. Thus, animal life, alike with vegetable life, owes its origin to the presence of moisture. Aristotle adds further respecting Thales' philosophy, that he maintained the world to be full of gods, and that all motion is due to the presence of a soul. Thales died in his seventy-eighth year, according to Apollodorus, or in his ninety-eighth, according to Sosicrates. Diogenes Laërtius recounts a number of maxims respecting Thales, but many of them are obviously spurious. Let one suffice as a specimen. Thales leaving his lodging under the care of an old woman, to contemplate the stars, accidentally fell into a ditch on his way, when the garrulous domestic administered a rebuke, by asking, "How canst thou know what is doing in the heavens, when thou canst not perceive what is at thy feet?"