Let the approach be by way of mythology. It was shown how
that Thales was partly guided to his choice of Water as the
_Welt-stoff_ by its place and function in the ancient
cosmologies. Numerous and widely diffused were the myths of
a primeval ocean out of which the structured universe arose.
The Babylonian tablet tells of the time before the times "when
above were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a
plant had not grown up; the abyss also had not broken up its
boundary. The chaos, the sea, was the producing mother of
them all." A passage from the Rig Veda speaks likewise of the
time, or rather the no-time, which preceded all things. "Death
was not then, nor immortality; there was no distinction of day or
night. Only _Something_ breathed without breath, inwardly
turned towards itself. Other than it there was nothing." And how
did these ancient mystics best picture to themselves the
primeval, or timeless, _Something_?--"What was the veiling
cover of everything?"--they themselves ask. And they answer
with another question--"Was it the water's deep abyss?" They
think of it as "an ocean without light." "Then (say they) from
the nothingness enveloped in empty gloom, Desire (Love)
arose, which was the first germ of mind. This loving impulse
the Sages, seeking in their heart, recognised as the bond
between Being and Non-Being." How deep the plunge here into
the sphere of abstract thought! Yet so subtle and forceful had
been the mystic influence of the ocean on the primitive mind
that it declares itself as a working element in their abstrusest
speculations.
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