ORIGINS OF SCIENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 21 



The laying out of buildings and the construction of irrigation 

 ditches are examples of engineering feats which excite ad- 

 miration. Perhaps the most remarkable of all is the record- 

 ing of the levels of the Nile in all latitudes, which resulted in 

 a line being carried in one plane around all the bends of the 

 river for some seven hundred miles. Although in the same 

 plane throughout its length, this line is not exactly parallel to 

 the flood slope for the entire distance. But when it was later 

 extended some two hundred miles up the river the plane and 

 the flood slope became more closely parallel. 6 



If, as some maintain, there exists a correlation between 

 climatic conditions and the character of a civilization, a 

 parallel may be drawn in ancient Egypt. The climate of the 

 Nile valley offered an appropriate setting for a civilization 

 which was intensely material, but at the same time peaceful 

 and benign. But the Egyptian, despite his practical accom- 

 plishment, exhibits certain mental crudities. 7 In abstract 

 thinking, there seems to have been much confusion of 

 thought. There is no clear evidence of a conspicuous ability 

 to generalize, and with this may perhaps be correlated a 

 certain planlessness in architecture and an inaccuracy of 

 artistic representation. If these were characteristics of 

 Egyptian thought, we can the better understand their 

 scientific limitations. Wonderful in their grasp of mechan- 

 ical processes, in the confidence with which they undertook 

 great enterprises like the building of the pyramids, and in 

 their governmental organization, they give no evidence of 

 the transcendent imagination which led the Greek in his 

 quest for natural causation. No other people in history ever 

 persisted for so long a period without external invasion or 

 serious internal revolution. Their material foundation was 

 early assured. Yet the Egyptians seem never to have 

 passed beyond the more immediate problems of science and 

 philosophy. It is this failure to progress which constitutes 



6 Breasted, J. H., loc. cit. 



7 Taylor, H. O., "Ancient Ideals," p. 12. 



