4<>0 DEFECTS OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



views were simple, ingenious, and grand ; but 

 their knowledge of natural history, including 

 geography, geology, mineralogy, chemistry, bo- 

 tany, and comparative anatomy, was far too 

 limited to form the basis of a comprehensive 

 theory. And notwithstanding the high impor- 

 tance attached by the Greeks to the agency of 

 fire in the phenomena of nature, they never made 

 anything like a regular and systematic attempt 

 to point out the laws by which it operates, in se- 

 parating and recombining what they called the 

 elements of air, water, and earth. Nor did Hip- 

 pocrates explain the manner in which animal heat 

 is derived from the atmosphere by respiration ; 

 how it is connected with fever, inflammation, and 

 the various forms of disease. The same observa- 

 tion applies to all his successors, down to the 

 time of Galen, against whom Bacon brought the 

 heavy accusation, (which applies equally to the 

 modern teachers of medicine,) that " he took 

 away the infamy of ignorance in physicians, by 

 declaring so many diseases incurable ; thus pa- 

 ralyzing their exertions, cutting off the hopes of 

 improvement, and proscribing the sick." It was 

 therefore justly observed by this great reformer 

 of science, that " inventions for enlarging the 

 power of man over the university of things must 

 be sought in the light of nature, and not in the 

 dim shades of antiquity." 



From the decline of Grecian and Roman civi- 



