30 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



mainspring of an advance in scientific knowledge. 

 It is a mental state as extreme in the one direction 

 as the frankly materialistic view of life is in the opposite 

 way. Each fails ultimately in that it takes no account 

 of the dual nature of mankind, that it ignores the 

 interconnection of the mind and the body, of the 

 individual and the society. 



But there is no doubt that at all times the philosophy 

 of India indirectly influenced the schools of thought of 

 Asia Minor ; and it is certain that, during the Arab 

 domination in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, 

 the mathematics and medicine of India mingled with 

 the stores saved from Greece and Rome, and re- 

 entered the schools of Western Europe by way of 

 Spain and Constantinople. 



On Greece all the separate streams of knowledge 



of the ancient world converged, there to be filtered 



and purified, and turned into new and 



more fruitful channels by the marvellous 



genius of the first European race to emerge from 



obscurity. 



To understand the genesis of the natural philosophy 

 of the Greeks, a natural philosophy which formulated 

 so many of the problems afterwards attacked by 

 science, and suggested tentatively so many successful 

 solutions, we must consider briefly the Greek popula- 

 tions, their religion, and the physical and social 

 conditions of their existence. 



It is probable that the effective part of the early 

 inhabitants of Greece were a tribe of conquerors 

 belonging to the great Northern race whose chief home 

 seems to have been on the shores of the Baltic. This 



