i5o THE WORLD MACHINE 



unctuous morality, of high aims, of a large and wide-eyed 

 humanity, was scant then as it is scant now. They were the 

 remnant set over against the vast majority, as they are the 

 remnant set over the vast majority still. 



Three or four centuries of Hellenic freedom from superstition, 

 of clear thinking and a rational investigation of nature, could 

 not transform the mind of the populace, just as three or four 

 centuries of modern scientific development has not transformed 

 it. If the spirit of rationalism in its modern day renascence 

 has struck deeper, has taken a firmer hold, the fact is due to 

 forces in some sense extraneous to the scientific spirit. It is 

 because of what we have come to call applied science, the 

 practical use of knowledge, the development of machinery, 

 and the consequent diffusion of comfort and advantages, that 

 our own time is cleaner, saner, less cruel, less brutal, less credulous, 

 than that of two thousand years ago. 



To sum up : Hellenism, Hellenic art, literature, science, 

 was a stage all things considered, a very high stage far 

 nearer to our own than anything in the twelve or fifteen centuries 

 which intervened. It was by a slender space that the Greek 

 mind failed wholly to anticipate our present-day cosmical theory. 

 They had attained to grandiose ideas of infinitude, which 

 modern research has somewhat extended but not changed. They 

 had gained, in all its fundamental characters, a true representa- 

 tion of the place ^'of this earth in space, its form, its size, its 

 motion, the grandeur of the sun, the distance of the stars 

 in brief, a correct and reasoned picture of creation as it is. 

 There were giants among them who would be giants no less, 

 and, it may be added, no more, to-day. They reasoned as we 

 reason, measured as we measure ; their achievement was im- 

 mense ; it deserved to endure. 



What we may regard as the crowning discovery, they missed. 

 The conception of a single mechanical force acting across the 

 furthest confines of the universe alone was wanting. This idea, 

 which was finally to banish the crude notions of the inter- 

 vention of gods and demons in the course of the heavens, which 

 eventually was to destroy the notion of the intervention of 

 gods and demons in the affairs of men, finally and for ever to 

 establish the idea of a universal order and universal law, they 

 lacked. Let us not on this account belittle the splendour of 

 their deeds. 



