FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 



35 



10. Man was the last to appear, and his primi- 

 tive state was one of savagery. His first tools and 

 weapons were of stone; then, after the discovery of 

 metals, of copper; and, following that, of iron. His 

 body and soul are alike compounded of atoms, and 

 the soul is extinguished at death. 



The science of Prehistoric Archeology confirms the 

 theory of man's slow passage from barbarism to civili- 

 zation; and the science of Comparative Psychology de- 

 clares that the evidence of his immortality is neither 

 stronger nor weaker than the evidence of the immor- 

 tality of the lower animals. 



Such, in very broad outline, is the legacy of sug- 

 gestive theories bequeathed by the Ionian school and 

 its successors, theories which fell into the rear when 

 Athens became a centre of intellectual life in which 

 discussion passed from the physical to those ethical 

 problems which lie outside the range of this survey. 

 Although Aristotle, by his prolonged and careful 

 observations, forms a conspicuous exception, the 

 fact abides that insight, rather than experiment, ruled 

 Greek speculation, the fantastic guesses of parts of 

 which themselves evidence the survival of the crude 

 and false ideas about earth and sky long prevailing. 

 The more wonderful is it, therefore, that so much 

 therein points the way along which inquiry travelled 

 after its subsequent long arrest; and the more ap- 

 parent is it that nothing in science or art, and but 

 little in theological speculations, at least among us 



