4 INTRODUCTION 



only if it agrees with manifest facts (phenomena)." ^ 

 We need not be surprised that, in spite of the warning 

 which he had himself given, and a mental bias towards 

 scepticism rather than towards credulity, he should have 

 taken for granted many beliefs which cannot stand a strict 

 inquiry. Experiment, which modern science regards as 

 a chief test of conjectures and a chief means of gaining 

 new knowledge, was not yet reckoned among the ordinary 

 resources of the natural philosopher.^ 



Theophrastus is not to be compared with Aristotle as 

 a thinker. It belongs to the age in which he lived that 

 he should have shown the same passion for multifarious 

 knowledge and the same lack of acquaintance with the 

 scientific uses of experiment. The two botanical treatises 

 by Theophrastus which have come down to us are 

 founded on a wide knowledge of the plants, not only 

 of Greece, but of Egypt and Persia as well. Some of 

 these plants must have been minutely investigated, 

 for details are noted which were little attended to by 

 the botanists of modern Europe until the time of 

 Malpighi. The natural history of Theophrastus, like 

 that of Aristotle, was far too extensive to be the pro- 

 duct of a single life-time, but who his predecessors were, 

 and what learning they transmitted to him, are questions 

 to which no satisfactory answers can be returned. 



The botanic garden of Theophrastus is no better 

 authenticated than the royal menageries and the army 

 of collectors, which are said to have provided materials 

 for the zoological studies of Aristotle. It is vouched 



^De Generatione, HI, x, 25. 



2 We can only point to two examples of deliberate scientific experiments in 

 Greek authors, those on the reflection and refraction of light, contained in a 

 treatise on Optics often attributed to Ptolemy, and those on the numerical 

 relations of the musical scale, for which Diogenes Laertius gives the credit to 

 Pythagoras. 



