GREEK SCIENCE IN EARLY ATTIC PERIOD 



about the earth in space, may we not suppose that they 

 were once a part of the earth itself, and that they 

 have been thrown off by the force of a whirling mo- 

 tion? Such was the conclusion which Anaxagoras 

 reached; such his explanation of the origin of the 

 heavenly bodies. It was a marvellous guess. De- 

 duct from it all that recent science has shown to be un- 

 true; bear in mind that the stars are suns, compared 

 with which the earth is a mere speck of dust; recall 

 that the sun is parent, not daughter, of the earth, and 

 despite all these deductions, the cosmogonic guess of 

 Anaxagoras remains, as it seems to us, one of the most 

 marvellous feats of human intelligence. It was the 

 first explanation of the cosmic bodies that could be 

 called, in any sense, an anticipation of what the 

 science of our own day accepts as a true explanation 

 of cosmic origins. Moreover, let us urge again that 

 this was no mere accidental flight of the imagination; 

 it was a scientific induction based on the only data 

 available ; perhaps it is not too much to say that it was 

 the only scientific induction which these data would 

 fairly sustain. Of course it is not for a moment to be 

 inferred that Anaxagoras understood, in the modern 

 sense, the character of that whirling force which we 

 call centrifugal. About two thousand years were yet 

 to elapse before that force was explained as elementary 

 inertia; and even that explanation, let us not forget, 

 merely sufficed to push back the barriers of mystery 

 by one other stage; for even in our day inertia is a 

 statement of fact rather than an explanation. 



But however little Anaxagoras could explain the 

 centrifugal force on mechanical principles, the prac- 



VOL. I 10 145 



