ANCIENT SCIENCE. 



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our history at a period sufficiently remote,, but with a people whose 

 records enable us to follow with a certain amount of distinctness the 

 growth of scientific ideas, and from whom 'we may trafc/ tyie progress 

 of science in a direct line to our own times. We refer to that won- 

 derful race whose antique relics afford us still our grandest models in 

 poetry and arts the ancient Greeks. 



It must not be supposed that the scientific and philosophical doc- 

 trines which were inculcated by this or that sage, among the Greeks 

 or other races, represent ideas which were generally accepted by men 

 of his time or country, or were even known to them. The number of 

 originating minds in any community is always very small, and though 

 individuals of a given people contemporaneously exhibit every phase 

 of intellectual development, the position from which the philosopher 

 surveys the world is often one of solitary elevation ; but it seldom 

 happens that the people at large are ready to listen to his voice as to 

 that of a prophet descended from a sacred mount. The utterances 

 of the philosopher may even be direct contradictions of the accepted 

 and cherished beliefs of his contemporaries : indeed, it is upon record 

 that some of those who first among the Greeks sought to explain the 

 phenomena of nature by physical causes, were in no small personal 

 danger of suffering the terrible penalty attached to the conviction of 

 impiety towards the gods. It was the action of these divinities which the 

 ordinary Greek of Hesiod's and of Homer's time saw in every move- 

 ment of nature, and to seek for physical causes where he clearly recog- 

 nized the operation of personal wills would appear to him at once im- 

 pious and absurd. Or, to borrow the expression of an acute writer, the 

 question for the men of ancient Greece was not What are the causes 

 of ram, thunder, and earthquakes? but Who rains and thunders? 

 who shakes the earth ? And they would be quite satisfied to be told 

 that it was Zeus or Poseidon. 



The writings of the earlier philosophers of Greece have not come 

 down to us. It is only from the accounts of their doctrines given by 

 later writers, or from criticisms on their works, that we are made im- 

 perfectly acquainted with their systems. The first name we find in 

 the roll of Greek philosophers is that of Thales, who propounded 

 certain doctrines displaying that search after generalization which has 

 been mentioned as characteristic of science. 



THALES (B.C. 640 548) was a native of Miletus, the chief city of 

 Ionia, a flourishing colony planted by the Greeks on the shores of Asia 

 Minor. The lonians were more enterprising than the natives of the 

 mother country, and by actively engaging in trade and navigation they 

 became a wealthy people, while as yet Hellas proper remained com- 

 paratively poor. At the commencement of authentic Greek history, 

 these lonians were also noted for their intellectual/ culture and artistic 

 taste. Their temples were celebrated for their size and splendour, and 

 their cities vied with each other in the production of the most magnifi- 



