52 Chracter of Early Egyptian Science. 



comprehending the souls of men, and of gods, and of the world; 

 but as it differs greatly from that of Moses, we shall not over 

 rigorously insist that it was learnt in Egypt, but allow that it 

 may have been the fruit of the Samian"'s own fertile invention. 



The fact is, that in all this we find nothing that has relation 

 or similitude to true science in any one department. It is ac- 

 knowledged (p. 43), " that the experimental method was en- 

 tirely unknown in these days." Equally wanting was every 

 species of rational theory, which is in all cases the fruit only of 

 experiment and observation. The dogmas of Thales and Py- 

 thagoras, whether indigenous of Greece or borrowed from 

 Egypt, are only a small portion of that painful picture of hu- 

 man ignorance, weakness, and self-conceit, which the history of 

 Grecian philosophy unfolds to us. The wildest hypotheses 

 were assumed as the foundations of science, and the progress of 

 true knowledge impeded by it for ages. Out of the abundant 

 stores of his own genius and science. Baron Cuvier, as he has 

 done in these lectures, may furnish a veil to cover the ragged- 

 ness and squalor of its professors, and may make a subject 

 amusing by his resources and eloquence, whose intrinsic merits 

 can never render it interesting ; but their capricious and fantas- 

 tical hallucinations were long since better judged of by one of 

 the most learned of our countrymen : — 



" These are false, or little else but dreams, 

 Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. 

 Alas ! what can they teach, and not mislead, 

 Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, 

 And how the world began •.'* 



• There are only two exceptions to the insignificant and worthless cha- 

 racter of the science of the early Greeks. One is their geometry, which 

 will always remain a very beautiful and interesting monument of human 

 genius. That geometry was invented in Egypt, is a conjecture of Herodo- 

 tus, given as entirely his own. If the Greeks got it there, it must have been 

 while it was yet quite in its infancy ; for whatever credit we attach to the 

 account that Pythagoras first demonstrated the theorem which forms the 

 47th proposition of Euclid, as referred to by the Baron Cuvier, we have 

 much evidence that geometry was not much advanced till the period of the 

 Alexandrian school. The geometry of solids must have been only quite in 

 its infancy till the time of Archimedes, for we have the most complete his- 

 torical evidence, that he first demonstrated the ratios of the cone, sphere, 



