142 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



admiration for the latter has not ceased to increase as I knew the 

 former better. 



The spirit of Greek science, which accomplished such wonders 

 within a period of about five centuries, was essentially the western 

 spirit, whose triumphs are the boast of modern scientists. But we 

 must bear in mind two important qualifications. First, that the 

 foundations of that Greek science were wholly oriental, and, how- 

 ever deep the Greek genius, it is not certain that it could have 

 built anything comparable to its actual achievements without those 

 foundations. When discussing the fate of a man of genius we 

 may make many suppositions, but it would be absurd to wonder 

 what would have happened if he had had other parents, for then 

 he would never have been. In the same way we have no right to 

 disregard the Egyptian father and the Mesopotamian mother of 

 the Greek genius. In the second place, while that genius was 

 creating what might be called (in opposition to Egyptian science 

 on one hand and to medieval science on the other) the begin- 

 ning of modern science, another development, equally miraculous, 

 but of an entirely different kind, was taking place in an oriental 

 country near the easternmost end of the Mediterranean Sea. 

 While Greek philosophers were trying to give a rational explana- 

 tion of the world and boldly postulated its physical unity, the 

 Hebrew prophets were establishing the moral unity of mankind 

 upon the notion of a single God. These two developments were 

 not parallel but complementary; they were equally momentous 

 but entirely independent; in spite of their spatial proximity they 

 proceeded for centuries in almost complete ignorance of one an- 

 other. They did not really come together until the end of ancient 

 times, and their union was finally cemented upon the prostrate 

 bodies of the two civilizations which gave birth to them. 



I shall come back to that presently. But I must first explain the 

 decadence and fall of the Greek spirit. After having made so many 

 conquests in such magnificent style, why did it stop? One can- 

 not help feeling that if that spirit had kept its valor for a few 



