NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



Euclid, next before that of Hero. Eratosthenes 

 and perhaps Ctesibius were his contemporaries. 

 From Syracuse to Alexandria is near a thousand 

 miles. In those days travel by boat or camel was 

 slow; there was no steamship to carry, no mariner's 

 compass to guide; but it was at Alexandria that 

 Archimedes attended school, and there his youth 

 was spent. He was of the intellectual lineage of 

 Euclid ; his work was a legitimate part of the glo- 

 ries of the Alexandrian school. 



Such, in meagre, fragmentary outline, was the in- 

 fluence and the work of that splendid city and that 

 fruitful time. And Alexandria came late. The 

 foundling of the Macedonian came after Athens 

 Athens with all its poets and philosophers, its heroes 

 and its gods. A space of more than twenty-three 

 centuries lies between us and the days of Pericles, 

 and to Pericles and his contemporaries, to Eurip- 

 ides, to Phidias, to Plato, to Aristotle, the world 

 must have seemed very old. Back of them were 

 Nippur and Babylon, Memphis and Thebes, My- 

 kenae and Troy. And all this 



"pomp of yesterday 

 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre." 



He who will review the intellectual history of 

 mankind, more especially in the light of recent ac- 



18 



