A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE 



The influence of the barbarian nations will claim 

 further attention as we proceed. But now, for the 

 moment, we must turn our eyes in the other direction 

 and give attention to certain phases of Greek and of 

 Oriental thought which were destined to play a most 

 important part in the development of the Western 

 mind a more important part, indeed, in the early 

 mediaeval period than that played by those important 

 inductions of science which have chiefly claimed our 

 attention in recent chapters. The subject in question 

 is the old familiar one of false inductions or .pseudo- 

 science. In dealing with the early development of 

 thought and with Oriental science, we had occasion 

 to emphasize the fact that such false inductions led 

 everywhere to the prevalence of superstition. In 

 dealing with Greek science, we have largely ignored 

 this subject, confining attention chiefly to the pro- 

 gressive phases of thought; but it must not be in- 

 ferred from this that Greek science, with all its secure 

 inductions, was entirely free from superstition. On 

 the contrary, the most casual acquaintance with Greek 

 literature would suffice to show the incorrectness of 

 such a supposition. True, the great thinkers of Greece 

 were probably freer from this thraldom of false in- 

 ductions than any of their predecessors. Even at a 

 very early day such men as Xenophanes, Empedocles, 

 Anaxagoras, and Plato attained to a singularly ration- 

 alistic conception of the universe. 



We saw that " the father of medicine," Hippocrates, 

 banished demonology and conceived disease as due to 

 natural causes. At a slightly later day the sophists 

 challenged all knowledge, and Pyrrhonism became a 



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