374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so did philosophy arise among them, and it declined with the deca- 

 dence of material prosperity. In those splendid days of Greece when 

 Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno were the representatives of great schools 

 of thought, which still exercise their influence on mankind, Greece 

 was a great manufacturing and mercantile community; Corinth 

 was the seat of the manufacture of hardware; Athens that of jew- 

 elry, shipbuilding, and pottery. The rich men of Greece and all its 

 free citizens were actively engaged in trade and commerce. The 

 learned class were the sons of those citizens, and were in possession 

 of their accumulated experience derived through industry and for- 

 eign relations. Thales was an oil merchant; Aristotle inherited 

 wealth from his father, who was a physician, but, spending it, is 

 believed to have supported himself as a druggist till Philip appointed 

 him tutor to Alexander. Plato's wealth was largely derived from 

 commerce, and his master, Socrates, is said to have been a sculptor. 

 Zeno, too, was a traveling merchant. Archimedes is perhaps an 

 exception, for he is said to have been closely related to a prince; but 

 if so, he is the only princely discoverer of science on record." 



In ancient Greece we see the flood of the first great intellectual 

 tide. Alas! it never touched the shores of western Europe, but it 

 undoubtedly reached to Rome, and there must have been very much 

 more observational science taught in the Roman studia than we 

 generally imagine, otherwise how account for Pliny, the vast public 

 works, their civilizing influence carried over sea and land from be- 

 yond Bab-el-Mandeb to Scotland? In some directions their applica- 

 tions of science are as yet unsurpassed. 



With the fall of the Roman Empire both science and philosophy 

 disappeared for a while. The first wave had come and gone; its last 

 feebler ripples seem to have been represented at this time by the 

 gradual change of the Roman secular studia wherever they existed 

 into clerical schools, the more important of which were in time 

 attached to the chief cathedrals and monasteries; and it is not diffi- 

 cult to understand why the secular (or scientific) instruction was 

 gradually replaced by one more fitted for the training of priests. 



It is not to be wondered at that the ceaseless strife in the center 

 of Europe had driven what little learning there was to the western 

 and southern extremities, where the turmoil was less — I refer to 

 Britain and South Italy — while the exiled ISTestorians carried Hel- 

 lenic science and philosophy out of Europe altogether to Mesopo- 

 tamia and Arabia. 



The next wave — it was but a small one — had its origin in our own 

 country. In the eighth century England was at its greatest height, 

 relatively, in educational matters, chiefly owing to the labors of 

 two men. Beda, generally called the Venerable Bede, the most 



