1. After Anaximenes came some one jolly, scoffing, and yet profound: the philosopher-poet Xenopha-nes.

2. As Xenophanes, the Presocratic free-thinker, wrote 2500 years ago, "If Lion could think, their Gods would have a mane and roar."

3. Xenophanes held some vague concept of a single deity that was 'in no way like men in shape or in thought' but rather 'causing all things by the thought of his mind'.

4. Homer's gods, Xenophanes complained, had all the immoral and disgraceful traits of flawed human beings and should hardly be the object of veneration.

5. Like Thales before him, Xenophanes speculated about the underlying principles of natural phenomena.

6. Nonetheless, Xenophanes clearly had enough influence to be remembered and mentioned by those that followed him.

7. Xenophanes was also the first known thinker to anticipate Socrates' caution regarding claims of certain knowledge.

8. Under the influence of Pythagoras and Xenophanes, Parmenides proposes his theory about "Being".

9. Xenophanes If shit had a God, God would look like shit.

10. Philosophical certainties could not be had, according to Xenophanes, for even if we chance to hit upon the truth, there is no way of knowing for certain that things are as we think they are.

11. An ancient Greek colony of southern Italy near the Gulf of Salerno. Reputedly founded by Xenophanes, it was the center of the Eleatic school of philosophy.

12. If oxen and horses had hands and could paint, Xenophanes said, oxen would no doubt paint the forms of gods like oxen and horses would paint them like horses.

12. Wish you will love and make progress everyday!

13. In one of the earliest known expressions of cultural relativism, Xenophanes remarked that Homer's gods were simply a reflection of Homerian culture.

14. Whereas Thales had conceived the first principle to be water, Xenophanes proposed the rather less glamorous possibility of mud.