2 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



the night, and stars, and the sea, and all moving 

 objects were to him living and thinking beings. 

 For thousands and thousands of years, man was 

 a most practical creature. 



Then suddenly in certain corners of the globe 

 his brain acquired new cells, or new creases, and 

 he began to think in quite new ways, and to 

 wonder where he was, and what he was, and why 

 he was. Such an awakening took place about 

 twenty-five centuries ago in a little country called 

 Greece (then including Ionia in Asia Minor). 

 Why did the brain develop ; why did thought flare 

 up there and then } It was not a case of gradual 

 growth, due to selection and survival of the fittest. 

 Brains had then no particular survival-value, and 

 certainly in respect of brains there could be no 

 very stringent selective process. To what, then, 

 was this awakening due ^ The question is difficult 

 to answer ; but it is suggestive that the brain- 

 wave culminated where East meets West, and just 

 about the time the Egyptian ports were opened to 

 the Greeks, and when there was great activity in 

 Greek commerce, and correspondingly active inter- 

 course with all parts of the world. On the shores 

 and isles of Greece met and married fair-haired bar- 

 barians from the North, land-measuring Egyptians, 

 star-gazing Babylonians, sea-going Phoenicians — 

 on this little ragged piece of land, with its adjacent 



