4 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



fallen, and thus they developed a theory of the rise and fall 

 of culture and civilization. In Plato's writings we find the 

 vie^v expressed that the world had been created as a perfect 

 world, but that it was not immortal and had in it the seeds 

 of decay, so that in time it would degenerate completely and 

 would be destroyed if the Creator did not intervene and start 

 the cycle again. The first stage of such a cycle would be the 

 golden age of legend, and the period in which the Greeks 

 found themselves they considered to be one of gradual decay 

 and degeneration. This view was in accordance w^ith the 

 whole attitude of the Greeks tow^ard life, an attitude of skepti- 

 cism and of pessimism. To a Greek philosopher, man was 

 a small figure in a great and turbulent universe, struggling 

 against the will of the pitiless gods who held his fate in their 

 hands and played with it for amusement; so that finally the 

 lesson was laid down tiiat a man must do all that he can and 

 that then, having failed, he must be prepared to suffer all 

 that he can suffer. This philosophy was expressed not only 

 by the philosophers themselves but it was stated even more 

 clearly by the tragic poets who had so great an influence on 

 Greek thought and who have retained that influence in the 

 thought of men to this day. 



Plato's theory of world cycles became the orthodox theory 

 of history among the Greeks and passed from them to the 

 Romans. According to some of the follows ers of Pythagoras, 

 each cycle repeated to the minutest particular the course and 

 events of the preceding cycle. This theory w^as adopted by 

 the Stoics and is referred to by Marcus Aurelius in his Medi- 

 tations. He says that the "rational soul" contemplates the 

 grand revolutions of nature and the destruction and renewal 

 of the universe. So uniform is the course of history that a 

 man of forty years may know all the past and all the future. 



There w^as a moment in Greek history w^hen the Greek 

 scholars stood on the edge of the discovery- of the method of 

 experimental science. For that moment they saw the possi- 

 bility of a different idea of history, and the Epicureans re- 

 jected the doctrine of a golden age and a subsequent degen- 



