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Thales asserted all things to have been derived from water, and water is still among unsophisticated tribes the favourite 'Urstoff.' Anaximenes substituted air. Heracleitus gave the preference to the mobile and vital element (as he thought it) of fire. Anaximander, on the other hand, might put forward a colourable claim to priority over Sir William Crookes in the invention of 'protyle.' He imagined as the matrix of the world a boundless expanse of generalized matter, containing potentially all the chemical species, which, separating out by degrees through the affinity of like for like, formed, by their contrasts and conjunctions, the infinitely varied sum of things. The successors of Anaximander had recourse to spontaneously arising condensations and rarefactions as the mainspring of development; but all these vague principles were quickly crowded into oblivion by the definite and intelligible doctrine of the 'four elements' enunciated by Empedocles, which, guaranteed by the imprimatur of Plato, took a place unchallenged for nearly two millenniums among the fundamentals of science. Erroneous and misleading though it was, it yet served as a means of regulating appearances and guiding vagrant ideas—it was a track to follow in the absence of any better method of orientation.