EARLY KNOWLEDGE METHOD OF RESEARCH. 9 



500 428. Anaxagoras, so celebrated as a religious 

 reformer and the precursor of Socrates teaching as he 

 did the existence of a supreme Intelligence was a practical 

 astronomer of no mean degree: he declared THE MOON to 

 be another earth like our own ; detected THE MOUNTAINS 

 and valleys of our satellite ; explained that an eclipse 

 of the sun is caused by the passage of the moon directly 

 between us and the sun, and an eclipse of the moon 

 by the earth's passage directly between the sun and the 

 moon and casting its shadow on the latter. He could 

 hardly have been the discoverer of this phenomenon, as 

 it is asserted of him, since Thales calculated the eclipses 

 of the sun, and the Egyptians (according to Diogenes 

 Laertius) had observed and detected the cause of the phe- 

 nomenon long since. Anaxagoras understood that the stars 

 do not move, but that the PLANETS Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, 

 Venus, Mercury, MOVE in the revolving heavens. He also 

 held that meteorites are of cosmical origin. 



From this point, leaving what is rather legendary than 

 historical, or what is, in the main, Egyptian rather than 

 European knowledge, we pass into the Greek world proper, 

 whence we are enabled, from the reliable data in our pos- 

 session, to trace with certainty the rapid progress effected 

 in science. For, beholding, as we are able to do, the coming 

 into existence of the method of research, from its gestation 

 with Plato to its birth with Aristotle, we can follow the 

 stream of development in its unbroken course from the Vth 

 century before our era until the present day. Our scientific 

 survey then begins with the two great philosophers. 



Every one knows what Plato's deductive method of 

 research was. 



Plato (429347 B.C.), caring less for phenomena (matter, 

 objects, facts) than for his own conceptions, would arrive 

 after deep meditation at a certain doctrine which he deemed 

 a universal truth or law; and, in order to prove his pro- 

 position, he would seek round him, and bring forward, a 

 series of phenomena which would agree with it and ap- 

 parently establish it. But as he left out of his purview 

 many of the phenomena which would have upset his con- 



