ANAXIMENES

, an eminent Greek philosopher, born at Miletus, the friend, scholar, and successor of Anaximander. He diffused some degree of light upon the obscurity of his master's system. He made the first principle of things to consist in the air, which he considered as infinite or immense, and to which he ascribed a perpetual motion; that this air was the same as spirit or God, since the divine power resided in it, and agitated it. The stars were as fiery nails in the heavens; the sun a flat plate of fire; the earth an extended flat surface, &c.