Historical Relations 93 



pretend that these changes have been entirely to the good. We 

 believe, however, that an impartial survey of the general effects of 

 the scientific idea upon men's minds and hearts throughout the 

 ages will result in an overwhelming verdict in its favour as a very 

 beneficent and humanising instrument. In helping man to gain 

 a clear idea of the knowable world, science has also helped him to 

 understand his fellow-man. 



Xo give any adequate account of the development of ancient 

 conceptions of the knowable world would involve a description of 

 the whole course of Greek thought. Here we are only concerned 

 with the process by which rational ideas became applied to the 

 known physical universe, and with the bearing of this process on 

 religious thought. The process is precisely that which we nowa- 

 days call science, a department which in antiquity was, however, 

 by no means always clearly separated from other modes of thought 

 and particularly was linked with philosophy. Among the Greek 

 " philosophers " who worked before the close of the fifth century 

 B.C. we are able to trace how these rational ideas came gradually 

 to be universally applied. Far back in the history of Greek thought 

 we see men feeling their way to a new interpretation of that 

 universal principle which they distinguish ascpuc7i<;, "/>Aym,"aword 

 which survives in our modern terms, physics, physiology, physical, 

 physician, etc. 



Physis meant at first growth or development, the essential 

 element of all existence, and it was specially applied to living 

 things. Gradually there dawned on the Greek mind the idea that 

 this growth proceeded according to definite rules which differed 

 in different cases but in which a Certain common character might" 

 be distinguished. By a simple process of transference physis came 

 to be regarded as this rule or manner of development itself, and so 

 it came to mean something very near to what we should now call a 

 natural law. 



As knowledge grew, these rules or laws were traced more and 

 more widely. Under such circumstances the philosophers tried 

 to discern that which was behind the laws. It was inevitable that 

 some, at least, should see there an individual and personal power. 

 Thus physis was given a real existence apart from the individual 

 laws which the philosophers had succeeded in tracing. Physis, 

 in fact, was more or less personified. Had the religion of the 

 Greeks advanced along rational lines with their other departments 



