154 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE 'things' arise by 'separation.' It is God: by its law all ' things ' must be destroyed again into that from which they were made ; they meet with * retribution ' for their ' unrighteousness,' i.e. their selfishness in claim- ing a separate existence. The third Milesian, Anaxi- MENES, trying to specify what Anaximander left unclear, takes the Infinite to be really Vapour — h-qp ; while the process of separation by which the various things come into being is really condensation due to change of temperature. The unity of this school lies in its con- ception of the question to be answered — "What is the world ? " means to them, " What is the world made of?" — and in their assumption of a half-materialist hylozoism. ' Air,' for instance, is ' Mind.' The school spent most of its activity on scientific research, till it shared the destruction of its city in 494 B.C. It re- mained the chief source and stimulus of later philosophy. Altogether opposite in spirit was the great ' Thiasos ' of the West, founded about 530 B.C., by an exiled Samian oligarch, Pythagoras. Its principles seem to have included a religious reformation, hostile both to the theology of the poets and to the local cults ; a moral reformation, reacting against the freer life and more complicated social conditions of the time ; and a poli- tical reaction in support of the aristocratic principle, which was in danger of disappearing before the demo- cracies and tyrannies. In the time of its founder the sect distinguished itself by unusual superstition, and by perpetrating the great crime of the age, the destruction of Sybaris. Later, it did important work in mathematics and astronomy. The doctrine of the Milesians was spread over Hellas by the minstrel Xenophanes (see p. 74). A rhapsode
