152 SCIENCE AND CULTURE VI 



Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations 

 of mathematics were so well laid by them, that 

 our children learn their geometry from a book 

 written for the schools of Alexandria two thou- 

 sand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural 

 continuation and development of the work of 

 Hipparchus and of Ptolemy ; modern physics of 

 that of Democritus and of Archimedes; it was 

 long before modern biological science outgrew 

 the knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by 

 Theophrastus, and by Galen. 



We cannot know all the best thoughts and 

 sayings of the Greeks unless we know what they 

 thought about natural phenomena. We cannot 

 fully apprehend their criticism of life unless we 

 understand the extent to which that criticism was 

 affected by scientific conceptions. We falsely pre- 

 tend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless 

 we are penetrated, as the best minds among them 

 were, with an unhesitating faith that the free em- 

 ployment of reason, in accordance with scientific 

 method, is the sole method of reaching truth. 



Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of 

 our modern Humanists to the possession of the 

 monopoly of culture and to the exclusive inherit- 

 ance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if 

 not abandoned. But I should be very sorry that 

 anything I have said should be taken to imply a 

 desire on my part to depreciate the value of 

 classical education, as it might be and as it some- 



