THE CONQUEST OF NATURE. 97 



conferred, they erected an image and a golden 

 shrine. 



But while the Ptolemies were Pharaohs to the 

 Egyptians, they were Greeks to the colonists of 

 Alexandria ; and they founded or favoured that school 

 of thought upon which modern science is established. 



There is a great enterprise in which men have 

 always been unconsciously engaged, but which they 

 will pursue with method as a vocation and an art, 

 which they will devoutly adopt as a religious faith as 

 soon as they realise its glory. It is the conquest of 

 the planet on which we dwell; the destruction or 

 domestication of the savage forces by which we are 

 tormented and enslaved. An- episode of this war 

 occurring in Ancient Egypt has been described ; the 

 war itself began with the rise of our ancestors into the 

 human state, and when drawing fire from wood or stone, 

 thsy made it serve them night and day the first great 

 victory was won. But we can conquer Nature only by 

 obeying her laws, and in order to obey those laws, we 

 must first learn what they are. 



Storms and tides, thunder and lightning and eclipse, 

 the movement of the heavenly bodies, the changing as- 

 pects of the earth were among all ancient people re- 

 garded as divine phenomena. In the Greek world 

 there was no despotic caste, but the people clung 

 fondly to their faith, and the study of nature which 

 began in Ionia was at first regarded with abhorrence 

 and dismay. The popular religion was supported by 

 the genius of Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey were 

 not only regarded as epic poems, but as sacred writ ; 

 even the geography had been inspired. However 

 when the Greeks began to travel, the old legends could 

 no longer be received. It was soon discovered that 



G 



