THE TWO ASPECTS OF SCIENCE 7 



from 300 B.C. to A.D. 1700, than in the 200 years from 

 500 B.C. to 300 B.C. All speculation on the nature and 

 meaning of the world throughout the Roman Age of 

 civilization, through the Dark Ages and through the 

 Mediaeval Age, drew its inspiration directly from the 

 Greek philosophers, and especially from Aristotle ; it is 

 not until the Renaissance is well advanced that a new 

 stream enters from a wholly independent source. And 

 even to-day, when there is no school of thought which 

 maintains the Greek tradition in anything approaching 

 purity, its influence is still potent. Its effect upon 

 language is still most evident ; we cannot speak upon 

 any abstract subject, or express any general idea, without 

 using words which are either Greek or direct Latin 

 translations of Greek words. And since words are an 

 indispensable instrument of thought, in using Greek 

 words we are bound to be influenced to some extent by 

 Greek ideas. 



Now Greek learning formed a single whole. To-day 

 we distinguish many branches of learning mathematics, 

 science, philosophy, history, and so on. But this division 

 is quite modern ; Greek thought made hardly any dis- 

 tinction between them. (Perhaps an exception should 

 be made of history, and also of the study of languages ; 

 the Greeks did not study languages ; they knew none 

 but their own.) Even at the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century, all learning was called philosophy or (less 

 frequently) science, and a man was called a philosopher 

 even if he studied what we should now call mathematics 

 or science. Until well on in that century the universities 

 recognized only one form of study as a means to a degree, 

 and that form included a little of most of the forms recog- 

 nized, and sharply divided, at the present day. The 

 reason is not to be found simply in the smaller body of 

 knowledge at that time, so that one mind could grasp all 

 that was known : there was a real absence of distinction 



