234 SCIENCE. [x. 



of inductive physical science, save those whose minds 

 have been saturatedwith this sameviewof Nature, which 

 they have as an historic fact slowly but thoroughly 

 learnt from the writings of these Jewish sages. 



Such is the fact. The founders of inductive phy- 

 sical science were not the Jews ; but first the Chal- 

 dasans, next the Greeks, next their pupils the Romans 

 or rather a few sages among each race. But what 

 success had they? The Chaldasau astronomers 

 made a few discoveries concerning the motions of 

 the heavenly bodies, which, rudimentary as they were, 

 still prove them to have been men of rare intellect. 

 For a great and a patient genius must he have been, 

 who first distinguished the planets from the fixed 

 stars, or worked out the earliest astronomical calcula- 

 tion. But they seem to have been crushed, as it were, 

 by their own discoveries. They stopped short. They 

 gave way again to the primeval fear of Nature. They 

 sank into planet-worship. They invented, it would 

 seem, that fantastic pseudo-science of astrology, which 

 lay for ages after as an incubus on the human in- 

 tellect and conscience. They became the magicians 

 and quacks of the old world ; and mankind owed them 

 thenceforth nothing but evil. Among the Greeks and 

 Romans, again, those sages who dared face Nature 

 like reasonable men, were accused by the superstitious 

 mob as irreverent impious atheists. The wisest of 

 them all, Socrates, was actually put to death on that 

 charge; and finally, they failed. School after school, 

 in Greece and Rome, struggled to discover, and to 

 get a hearing for, some theory of the universe which 

 was founded on something like experience, reason, 

 common sense. They were not allowed to prosecute 



