io GREEK SCIENCE AND 



of the flimsiest. Further, the Greeks, it would be easy 

 to show, were on the whole a credulous people. Yet 

 their earliest scientific works of which we have sub- 

 stantial remains are as free from that scepticism con- 

 cerning the essential order of the Universe that we 

 call superstition, as full of the idea of natural and 

 discoverable law as any modern treatise on Physiology 

 or Physics. Greek scientific works often blunder in 

 observation or err in inference, they all too frequently 

 accept facts at second hand or without verification, and it 

 is their besetting sin that they constantly make sweeping 

 generalizations on inadequate evidence. Rut their fjrm 

 faith in order is that which marks off their view of^the 

 Universe from that of all other ancient and from all 

 primitive peoples. It is a truly marvellous thing to 

 contemplate how sincerely and how fervently, how 

 constantly and under what a variety of character the 

 Greeks expressed their vision of a wholly reasonable 

 world, their Theuna^ which, according to the greatest of 

 them all, literally makes man like God. 



Theirs is a view that has justified itself in the cen- 

 turies that have since passed. The Greek's knowledge 

 of Nature was a very little thing placed by the side of 

 the vast hoard that the centuries have brought to us. 

 Yet the more we investigate our world and probe its 

 mysteries, the further do we trace that order on which 

 the Greek based his faith. It is not, of course, that the 

 mystery becomes less, but it becomes more circum- 

 ferential. As we make our clearing in this infinite forest, 

 the space around us widens, the trees recede, and if 

 the forest gets no smaller at least there smite less upon 

 our ears those wild and uncouth forest notes, those 



enchantments drear 

 Where more is meant than meets the ear. 



