CH. II. ANAXAGORAS STUDIES THE MOON: 13 



CHAPTER II. 



499 TO 322 B.C. 



Anaxagoras studies the Moon — Describes Eclipses of the Sun and 

 Moon — Is Tried and Condemned for Denying that the Sun is a 

 God — Hippocrates the Father of Medicine — Separates the Office of 

 Priest and Doctor— Studies the Human Body — Eudoxus has an 

 Observatory — Makes a Map of the Stars — Explains the Movements 

 of the Planets — Democritus Studies the Milky Way — Aristotle an 

 Astronomer and Zoologist — Divides Animals into Classes — Teaches 

 that there is a Gradual Succession of Animal Life — Studies the 

 Difference of the Life in Plants and Animals. 



Anaxagoras, who was the next great teacher after Pythagoras, 

 was bom in Ionia about 499 B.C., but he went when quite 

 young to Athens. He loved to study nature for its own 

 sake, and was once heard to say that he was bom to con- 

 template the sun, moon, and heavens. Although there were 

 no telescopes in those days, he managed to observe that 

 there were mountains, plains, and valleys in the moon. He 

 believed it to be a second earth, perhaps with living beings 

 in it. He did not know, as we do now, that the moon has 

 no atmosphere round it, such as living beings like ourselves 

 require in order to breathe. He discovered that an eclipse 

 of the sun is caused by the moon coming directly between 

 the earth and the sun, and an eclipse of the moon by the 

 earth coming between the moon and the sun. When the 

 moon comes exactly between our earth and the sun, we 

 see the moon's dark body pass over the sun, so as to 



