ONE:The next great forward step in speculation was taken by Anaximander, another Milesian, also of distinguished attainments in mathematics and astronomy. We have seen that to Thales water, the all-embracing element, became, as such, the first cause of all things, the absolute principle of existence. His successor adopted the same general point of view, but looked out from it with a more penetrating gaze. Beyond water lay something else which he called the Infinite. He did not mean the empty abstraction which has stalked about in modern times under that ill-omened name, nor yet did he mean infinite space, but something richer and more concrete than either; a storehouse of materials whence the waste of existence could be perpetually made good. The growth and decay of individual forms involve a ceaseless drain on Nature, and the deficiency must be supplied by a corresponding influx from without.A For, be it observed that, although the Greek thinkers were at this period well aware that nothing can come from nothing, they had not yet grasped the complementary truth inalienably wedded to it by Lucretius in one immortal couplet, that nothing can return to nothing; and Kant is quite mistaken when he treats the two as historically inseparable. Common experience forces the one on our attention much sooner than the other. Our incomings are very strictly measured out and accounted for without difficulty, while it is hard to tell what becomes of all our expenditure, physical and economical. Yet, although the indestructibility of matter was a conception which had not yet dawned on Anaximander, he seems to have been feeling his way towards the recognition of a circulatory movement pervading all Nature. Everything, he says, must at last be reabsorbed in the Infinite as a punishment for the sin of its separate existence.10 Some may find in this sentiment a note of Oriental10 mysticism. Rather does its very sadness illustrate the healthy vitality of Greek feeling, to which absorption seemed like the punishment of a crime against the absolute, and not, as to so many Asiatics, the crown and consummation of spiritual perfection. Be this as it may, a doctrine which identified the death of the whole world with its reabsorption into a higher reality would soon suggest the idea that its component parts vanish only to reappear in new combinations.III.
TWO:At the Caf Quatre Bras, near Tervueren, the innkeeper told me that the Germans had asked the Netherland Government for permission to place a 42 cm. on Netherland territory in order to be able to shell Antwerp also from that side, but that the Netherland Government had refused. I tried as hard as possible to explain to the man that all stories of such requests were mere gossip. When more and more people entered the caf I withdrew into a corner. They were all very excited, and some of them had drunk more than was good for them. They related with violent gesticulations that the Allies had surrounded Brussels and might be expected to enter the town at any moment, that all was over with the Germans, and so on. Shouts of "Vive la Belgique!" and "Vive notre roi!" sounded until suddenly I drew their attention. They looked me up and down critically, and one of them asked:They crowded threateningly round me, getting more and more excited.
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