Note 42 — Part I

See Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, p. 46, who, speaking of the old Ionian Nature-philosophers, says: "The bold flight of their imagination did not stop at the assumption of a plurality of indestructible elements; it never rested till it reached the conception of a single fundamental or primordial matter as the essence of natural diversity.... The impulse to simplification, when it had once been aroused, was like a stone set in motion, which rolls continuously till it is checked by an obstacle." See also Dr. W. Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung, p. 20.