68 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



ancient Greece, was an entire failure in the phy- 

 sical knowledge of which it is our business to trace 

 the history. Yet we are not, on that account, to 

 think slightingly of these early speculators. They 

 were men of extraordinary acuteness, invention, and 

 range of thought; and above all, they had the 

 merit of first completely unfolding the speculative 

 faculty; of starting in that keen and vigorous 

 chase of knowledge, out of which all the subsequent 

 culture and improvement of man's intellectual stores 

 have arisen. The sages of early Greece form the 

 heroic age of science. Like the first navigators in 

 their own mythology, they boldly ventured their 

 untried bark in a distant and arduous voyage, urged 

 on by the hopes of a supernatural success ; and 

 though they missed the imaginary golden prize 

 which they sought, they unlocked the gates of dis- 

 tant regions, and opened the seas to the keels of 

 the thousands of adventurers, who, in succeeding 

 times, sailed to and fro, to the indefinite increase of 

 the mental treasures of mankind. 



But inasmuch as their attempts, in one sense, 

 and at first, failed, we must proceed to offer some 

 account of this failure, and of its nature and causes. 



