THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 495 



round, and made her bend to his system : so that in this way he is 

 even more wrong than his modern followers, the Schoolmen, who have 

 deserted experience altogether." 



We may note also what Bacon says of the term Sophist. (Aph. 

 Ixxi.) "The wisdom of the Greeks was professorial, and prone to run 

 into disputatious : which kind is very adverse to the discovery of Truth 

 And the name of Sophists, which was cast in the way of contempt, by 

 those who wished to be reckoned philosophers, upon the old professors 

 of rhetoric, Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Pol us, does, in fact, fit the 

 whole race of them, Plato, 2 Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus ; 

 and their successors, Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest." 



That these two classes of teachers, as moralists, were not different in 

 their kind, has been urged by Mr. Grote in a very striking and amus- 

 ing manner. But Bacon speaks of them here as physical philosophers ; 

 in which character he holds that all of them were sophists, that is, 

 illusory reasoners. 



Aristotle s Account of the Rainbow. 



To exemplify the state of physical knowledge among the Greeks, we 

 may notice briefly Aristotle's account of the Rainbow ; a phenomenon 

 so striking and definite, and so completely explained by the optical 

 science of later times. We shall see that not only the explanations 

 there offered were of no value, but that even the observation of facts, 

 so common and so palpable, was inexact. In his Meteorologies (lib. 

 iii. c. 2) he says, "The Rainbow is never more than a semicircle. And 

 aft sunset and sunrise, the circle is least, but the arch is greatest; when 

 the sun is high, the circle is larger, but the arch is less." This is erro- 

 neous, for the diameter of the circle of which the arch of the rainbow 

 forms a part, is always the same, namely 82. " After the autumnal 

 equinox," he adds, "it appears at every hour of the day; but in the 

 summer season, it does not appear about noon." It is curious that he 

 did not see the reason of this. The centre of the circle of which the 

 rainbow is part, is always opposite to the sun. And therefore if the 

 sun be more than 41 above the horizon, the centre of the rainbow 

 will be so much below the horizon, that the place of the rainbow will 



2 It is curious that the attempt to show that Plato's opponents were not commonly 

 illusive and immoral reasoners, has been represented as an attempt to obliterate the 

 distinction of " Sophist" and " Philosopher." See A. Butler's Lectures, i. 357. 

 Note. 



