54 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



time, while only those systems persisted which were 

 fit for the environment. Here we see a faint fore- 

 cast of the nebular hypothesis and the Darwinian 

 theory of natural selection. 



In classical times, original scientific thought seems 

 to have been confined to the Greeks. Although the 

 The Failure composition of the inhabitants in the 

 of Rome, adjoining peninsula, or at any rate in its 

 northern parts, and in the Roman State, was probably 

 of a similar character to that of Greece, i.e. an indi- 

 genous Mediterranean race, overlain and directed by 

 an incoming people from beyond the Alps, yet the 

 resultant population showed considerable differences 

 in development and achievement. The Romans, with 

 their incomparable instinct for the State, and their 

 transcendent power as administrators and framers 

 of law, had little academic intellectual force, although 

 the numerous compilations that came into being seem 

 to indicate a considerable curiosity about natural 

 objects. Their art, their science, even their medicine, 

 seem to have been borrowed from the Greeks ; and, 

 when Rome became mistress of the world, Greek 

 philosophers and Greek physicians resorted to the 

 banks of the Tiber, without establishing any native 

 schools, there or elsewhere, worthy to succeed those 

 of Athens. 



/ One Roman citizen, born in North Italy, the elder 

 Pliny (23-79 A.D.), is to be remembered for having 

 produced in the thirty-seven books of his Natur- 

 alis Historia an encyclopaedia of the whole science 

 of the period. He placed on record the know- 

 ledge and beliefs of a series of forgotten writers and 



