THE GREEK ATTITUDE 



could practise virtue nor how he could conduct a 

 State, — does he lay aside his Socratic indifference as 

 if he felt it to be necessary to show that he could 

 create also a practical philosophical system. In the 

 Republic^ he outlines an ideal State which has served 

 as a model to all later attempts which pass now under 

 the name of Utopias. In contrast to the care and 

 accuracy with which he there elaborated the laws of 

 government for the State, we find him vague and 

 showing a decided lack of real interest when he at- 

 tempts, in the Timaeus, to define his ideas of physical 

 and biological laws. 



We can pass over his discussion of phenomena, 

 although he does give us in broad outline the first 

 scientific cosmogony; but, we must not fail to note 

 that he seized on the principle that by mathematics 

 alone, through its laws of number and measure, man 

 can imagine boundaries of things in the unlimited 

 or infinite extent of space. Plato, by the introduction 

 of mathematical form as the determination of indi- 

 vidual things, accomplished an undying service to 

 science. He is unquestionably the source of the Greek 

 school of mathematics, astronomy, and physics, which 

 began with his pupil, Euclid, and reached its height 

 in the genius of Archimedes, Hipparchus, and Ptole- 

 my. If this great school of physical science had not 

 suffered shipwreck through the apathy of the Romans 

 and the hostility of the Christians, we should prob- 

 ably not have had to wait for a Galileo and a Newton 



HP 1 



