38 THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 



of phenomena in mental biography is the failure of the 

 Greeks to succeed after giving the world such a glorious 

 start. They had every essential for permanent success : 

 scientific imagination, keen powers of observation ; and 

 if in the days of Hippocrates the mathematical method 

 of interrogating Nature prevailed rather than the experi- 

 mental, Galen carried the latter to a degree of perfection 

 never again reached until the time of Harvey. Only 

 when placed in its true position in relation to Greek 

 religion and philosophy, as has been done so skilfully 

 by Gomperz, 1 do we realize the immensity of the debt 

 we owe to those 'our young light-hearted masters'. 

 And Gomperz makes clear the nature of the debt of 

 Greek thought to the practical sense of the physicians. 

 But alas ! upon the fires they kindled were poured the 

 dust and ashes of contending philosophies, and neither 

 the men of the Alexandrian school nor the brilliant 

 labours of the most encyclopaedic mind that has ever 

 been given to medicine sufficed to replenish them. 

 Fortunately, here and there amid the embers of the 

 Middle Ages glowed the coals from which we have 

 lighted the fires of modern progress. The special dis- 

 tinction which divides modern from ancient science is 

 its fruitful application to human needs not that this 

 was unknown to the Greeks; but the practical re- 

 cognition of the laws of life and matter has in the 

 past century remade the world. In making knowledge 

 effective we have succeeded where our masters failed. 

 But this last and final stage, always of slow and painful 



1 The three volumes of his Greek Thinkers, now in English dress, 

 should be studied by every young man who wishes to get at the 

 foundations of philosophy. The picturesque style of Professor 

 Gomperz and his strong sympathy with science add greatly to the 

 interest of the work. 



