44 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



of nature as held today could make itself realized, Aristotle and the system 

 which he created, unexcelled in its perfection of form as it is, are mainly- 

 responsible. Under such circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the 

 biology of antiquity, in spite of its splendid achievement, never succeeded 

 in advancing beyond Aristotle's conception of the phenomena of life. 



But if Aristotle thus represents, in most fields of science, the highest 

 that the culture of antiquity could attain, beyond which no further develop- 

 ment took place, this is not merely due to the influence of his own personality 

 and system. At the time of his death the Greeks had already seen their best 

 days. The civic spirit which, in spite of sordid party strife and sanguinary 

 border-feuds, had borne forward the petty Greek states both before and in 

 the throes of the Persian wars, disappeared as soon as the states lost their 

 independence, first through the hegemonies which the Athenians and the 

 Spartans in turn exercised over them, and later on through the Macedonian 

 and the Roman conquests. And with the sense of patriotism disappeared also 

 the intellectual power and will to act. The semi-oriental monarchies into 

 which the empire of Alexander became split up were certainly often governed 

 by enlightened princes who generously patronized the sciences, but their 

 lavish pensions had nevertheless to be purchased with obsequious flattery, 

 and the proud self-respect which induced Empedocles to refuse a royal crown, 

 and Heracleitus to decline the office of high-priest, existed no longer. The 

 great systems of thought which were created by the noblest spirits of later 

 antiquity were in fact essentially founded upon ethical aims; they were 

 intended to reinforce the individual in the struggle against the ever-increas- 

 ing difficulties which life in those days presented. The exact sciences, again, 

 were divided up more and more into special spheres and the research work 

 carried out during the succeeding centuries gave substantial results, until 

 here, too, the spiritual weariness from which that epoch suffered claimed 

 its due. 



In these circumstances it may seem suitable in the following chapter to 

 pay special regard to the attempts at a general explanation of natural phenom- 

 ena which were made after Aristotle, after which we shall view the results 

 achieved by the biology of antiquity as a special line of research. 



