The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

INTRODUCTION.

school was set up by Potamo of Alexandria, who picked out from the doctrines of each school what pleased him most. As he himself says in his Elementary Instruction, he believes there are certain criteria of truth: first, the faculty which judges, which is the superior one; and second, that which is the foundation of the judgment, being the most exact appearance of the objects. He identifies the first principles of everything as matter, the agent, quality, and place; for they show out of what, by what, how, and where anything is done. The "end" is that to which everything is referred—namely, a life made perfect with every virtue, not without the natural and external qualities of the body.

But we must now speak of the men themselves, and first of all about Thales.