SCIENTIFIC FAITH AND WORKS 107 



remain a source of wonder to moderns. If we may believe all that 

 students of the pyramids tell us, the Egyptians had no mean knowledge 

 of astronomy as well. Certain it is that the Assyrians had a knowledge 

 not only of astronomy, but of mathematics, having highly developed 

 systems of numeration and methods of calculation, their sexagesimal 

 system of numeration having come down to us in the division of the 

 circle into three hundred and sixty degrees, against which anachronism 

 the decimal system is but now beginning to struggle. The engineering 

 operations of the Egyptians, however, were of a very simple sort, and 

 their construction of the pyramids was probably permitted rather by the 

 unlimited supply of forced labor than by the employment of devices 

 for taking advantage of anything but brute force. 



As the Hebrews were specialists in morals, so the Greeks were spe- 

 cialists in beauty, and pushed its culture to a degree never before or 

 since attained. Had the Greeks left to us no masterpieces of literature, 

 we should forever remember them by their magnificent temples, their 

 incomparable sculpture, and their beautiful vases. Such a people must 

 inevitably have had great thoughts to express in prose and verse, and it 

 is not surprising that they were sensible of the beauties of the intellect, 

 and pushed the study of geometry to a very considerable extent. The 

 value which they attached to this study may be inferred from the in- 

 scription over the door of Plato's academy, " Let none enter who is not 

 a geometrician," a motto which, by the way, I would gladly see placed 

 over the gate of the modern college. Archytas of Tarentum, about 

 400 B.C., had devised apparatus for constructing various curves, had 

 recognized the spherical form of the earth, and its daily rotation. 

 Aristotle wrote a voluminous treatise on animals, showing careful 

 observation of their habits, and even left a treatment of mechanical 

 problems in which he almost recognizes the nature of the parallelogram 

 of motions and of centrifugal force. In the domain of physics, how- 

 ever, he is not particularly happy, and is better at asking questions than 

 in solving them. A hundred years later, however, Archimedes, the 

 greatest of the Greek scientists, not only makes great advances in geom- 

 etry, including a method that i$ in a measure the precursor of the in- 

 tegral calculus, but displays an acute knowledge of the principles of 

 statics, including the principle of the lever, and of the fundamentals of 

 hydrostatics, especially the principle named after him. With Archi- 

 medes, as with the other Greek philosophers, the practical applications 

 accompanied, and probably generally preceded, the theoretical inquiries, 

 and indeed this is still usually the case. The Eomans, who succeeded 

 the Greeks in importance in the ancient world, certainly did not do so 

 on account of their cultivation of scientific studies, in which they played 

 a poor part. Their very clumsy system of numeration would show their 

 lack of mathematical talent, but on the other hand their extremely prac- 



