44 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



Mythology, the controlling factor in the world's intel- 

 lectual progress, had given way to philosophy, and now 

 philosophy in its turn was beginning to yield its power 

 into the hands of science. 



The first great university of Alexandria, begun under 

 Alexander the Great, flourished under the patronage of 

 the Ptolemies for nearly four centuries. It was the gath- 

 ering place for philosophers from every part of the world. 

 Its students at one time numbered fourteen thousand souls 

 and its libraries contained seven hundred thousand vol- 

 umes. 



Here were made the discoveries of Archimedes in 

 mechanics, of Euclid and Apollonius Pergseus in mathe- 

 matics, of Hipparchus in astronomy and with the selopile 

 of Hero, here began the steam engine. All of this great 

 work was done before the year 150 B. C. We need only 

 compare the category of Hero's inventions with the single 

 material notion of Thales, to perceive the radical change 

 in thought which had occurred. It is the contrast of the 

 force-pump and the water-soul. It was not the crude and 

 imperfect classifications of Aristotle which accomplished 

 this. The inductive theory in that stage of the world's 

 history could not have established itself, not merely for 

 want of knowledge of a sufficiency of facts which would 

 demonstrate its truth in any particular instance, but also 

 because there was no group of natural facts which could 

 be clearly seen, unobscured by mists of attending specu- 

 lation and superstition. 



Amid all this activity the progress which was made in 

 knowledge of the amber and of the lodestone was very 

 small. Pliny 1 has the dubious assertion that the architect 

 Timochares began to erect a vaulted roof of lodestone 'in 



Singularly enough, as we shall see in dealing with the first-named period, 

 it appears not at all unlikely that the English were then much more 

 familiar with the attraction of jet than they were with that of amber. 



1 Pliny : lib. xxxiv. 42. Vitruvius : De Archit., lib. iv. ; time, circa 

 31 B. C. 



