ERA OF THE GREEK AND ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOLS. 7 



" How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank I 

 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 

 Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night 

 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

 Sit, Jessica ; look how the floor of heaven 

 Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold : 

 There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, 

 But, in his motion, like an angel sings, 

 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim. 

 Such harmony is in immortal souls." 



It was the tendency in general of the Attic mind to study with ardour, morals, poli 

 tics, and religion, but to play with physical phenomena : regarding only the graceful and 

 poetic sentiments they suggested. Thales, an Ionian, and his successors, were exceptions 

 to this rule of their countrymen, and arrived at conceptions respecting the constitution of 

 the universe which strongly sympathise with the hypotheses that are now admitted. The 

 most prominent circumstances concerning him are, that while the Greeks were contented 

 with the rough approximation to the north afforded by the Great Bear, he introduced the 

 knowledge of the Little Bear, by which the Phoenician mariners had long been accustomed 

 to steer ; that he made a near approach to the diameter of the sun, taken at a mean ; taught 

 the sphericity of the earth ; and predicted a great solar eclipse, which occurred at the time 

 announced. We may regard this last-mentioned particular as the greatest astronomical 

 achievement, resting upon good authority, that had hitherto transpired. Herodotus, whose 

 relation may be substantially confirmed by other testimonies, observes, that in the midst 

 of an action between the Medes and Lydians, the day was suddenly changed into night. 

 He adds, that Thales the Milesian had predicted the year in which the eclipse would 

 happen, and that the hostile armies, when they saw the darkness, desisted from the battle. 

 According to the calculations of Bailly, the centre of the moon's shadow passed in a right 

 line over the north-eastern part of Asia Minor, the scene of the war, through Armenia 

 into Persia, on the morning of September 30th, B. c. 610. Want of minuteness in the 

 historian probably led to the statement that the prediction referred only to the year in 

 which the eclipse would take place, for, as it was total, or nearly so, Thales must have 

 been able to come much nearer to the time. It follows, also, that such a prediction could 

 only have been made with certainty by one in possession of a long series of observations 

 derived from some foreign source, as the Greeks themselves had not originated any : in 

 all likelihood from Chaldea, where the requisite materials might be found. 



The opinions held by the successors of Thales are in several respects remarkably 

 accordant with modern ideas. Anaximander maintained the tenet of the earth's move 

 ment about its axis, and of the moon's light being reflected from the sun. Anaxagoras, 

 who transferred the Ionic school from Miletus to Athens, in addition, offered a conjecture 

 that, like the earth, the moon had habitations, hills, and valleys. These doctrines were 

 taught upon a more extended scale by PYTHAGORAS, who appears to have reached the 

 sublime conception of the earth's motion round the sun, which Philolaus, his successor 

 in the Crotonian school, is generally believed to have taught openly. According to the 

 Pythagoreans, not only the planets, but the comets themselves, are in motion round the 

 sun, and not floating meteors formed in the atmosphere. But these were the conjectures 

 merely of sagacious minds, not possessed of the evidence requisite to give prevalence and 

 stability to opinions, while they were directly opposed to the testimony of the senses. 

 Hence, instead of obtaining the suffrages of antiquity, they met with little acceptance ; and 

 for eighteen centuries, the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies were regarded as unfold 

 ing the true constitution of the universe. A blind submission was yielded for ages to the 

 dogmas of the Aristotelians, who held the earth to be the quiescent centre of the universe, the 



