856 REPORT— 1900. 



ascribe it entirely to the inductive method introduced by Bacon, as opposed to the 

 too exclusive confinement of the mind to the deductive systems of the older 

 scholastic philosophy which preceded his time, and to which in a large measure 

 he was undoubtedly instrumental in giving the death-blow. This view, however, 

 is not altogether correct, for in the teaching of Socrates and Aristotle we find 

 continued reference to the impor ance of inquiry, observation, and induction. 



And in the cases of Hipparchus and Ptolemy in the best days of the Alexandrian 

 school of astronomy we find the most laborious observations carried on for 

 hundreds of years under circumstances and with instruments which we should 

 now consider totally inadequate; and by their means discoveries were then made 

 with an accuracy which surprises us ; and from these discoveries conclusions were 

 drawn which for more than a thousand years stood the test and satisfied the 

 requirements of some of the most acute thinkers of the world. 



We should, I think, in the first instance inquire how it came about that the 

 great mental energies of philosophers of the ancient world failed to produce that 

 fruit which we in later ages are gathering in such rich abundance. 



To arrive at some idea on this question we must endeavour to picture to our- 

 selves the inner consciousness of the great minds of antiquity when they first 

 began to contemplate the circumstances by which they were surrounded, and were 

 called upon by that inexorable and mysterious longing of the human mind to 

 answer those great questions of the whence and the whither which are so strangely 

 rooted in the hearts of all deep-thinking people. 



To them were presented for the first time those great phenomena of nature by 

 which we are always surrounded, many of these being of a character at once to 

 charm and at other times to terrify the beholder. And in what I may call the 

 childhood of the human mind, they, like children of a later age, were prone to 

 ascribe to what they saw around them qualities and properties to which the 

 phenomena in themselves had no relation. 



What I may call the nascent deductive principle, so strong in all our minds, 

 had given to it by these ancient philosophers the free play of fancy and imagina- 

 tion which led them to conclusions based on their own ideas and not upon the 

 facts of unerring nature. Consequently we see in the early age of Greek thought 

 the natural laws of the universe in smiling morn or darkening night, in raging sea 

 or the thunderbolts of heaven, ascribed to the immediate action of benevolent or 

 malevolent powers in tbe celestial world ; and as a consequence the Greek mind 

 from its earliest period became saturated with the beautiful conceptions of her 

 poets, and following from this when philosophy first approached the subject, 

 theories were broached and conclusions were adopted, many of them on an utterly 

 erroneous basis. 



Steeped as the Greek mind was in its lovely ideals of nature, it is not sur- 

 prising to find that, when their philosophers began to formulate their theories, 

 these deductions took the place of fact ; and celestial observations, when they made 

 them, as they undoubtedly did, were used, not for the purpose of illustrating the 

 laws of nature as we interpret them, but as a means, partly religious and partly 

 philosophical, in support of their preconceived ideas of the universe, the foundations 

 of which, having been laid in poetry, became crystallised in the wonderful con- 

 ceptions of the great men who directed their country's mind. 



In looking, therefore, at nature in the earlier ages of scientific thought, we find 

 that the standpoint from which everything was viewed was narrowed down to a 

 universe constructed for man alone, the powers of which were governed by the 

 caprice and whim of the great gods of Olympus, and yet even in this period we 

 notice true opinions arising with regard to the structure of the universe. For 

 instance, Pythagoras — and Aristarchus — conceived the idea that the sun was the 

 centre of the universe, and that the planets revolved around him. 



This correct deduction was to a large extent vitiated by bringing it into rela- 

 tion with another conception, that of harmonics. 



Hence we find the true ideas of Pythagoras mixed up, and in a sense confused, 

 by this theory of the harmony of the spheres. 



And even when at a later period, more accurate observation gave the ancient8 



