NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



and no doubt abreast of his time; but he had lit- 

 tle knowledge of the real substances of which this 

 world is made. His guesses about atoms were as 

 vague as those of Democritus or Lucretius. With 

 all his store of knowledge Newton could have taught 

 less of new things to the mythical Hermes of the 

 remotest days of old Egypt than he might learn 

 to-day from Lord Kelvin or Professor Berthelot. 



Yet this marvellous advance in no way implies 

 any corresponding advance in the natural powers 

 of the human mind. Opinion may vary as to the 

 relative merits of individuals; no doubt Aristotle 

 had no such acute intellect as Newton, yet, if 

 we remember the curious and clumsy blunders of 

 Aristotle, it should not be forgotten that Newton 

 spent half his life quarrelling over doctrines of the 

 Trinity, and that his theological puerilities form a 

 large part of his writings. What is certain is that 

 the eight centuries from Thales and Pythagoras to 

 Euclid and Galen produced an astonishing array of 

 minds of the first order. If Archimedes, Hippar- 

 chus, Ptolemy, and the rest, added less to the sum 

 of solid knowledge than Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, 

 and their successors, the cause must be sought in 

 other things than the quality of gray substance. 

 And if there has been no perceptible advance in the 

 powers of the mind in 2000 or 3000 years, it is 

 doubtful if another 3000 or even 6000 years, could 



22 



