4 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



older civilizations, notably of Egypt and Chaldsea. 

 But, mix as they might with other peoples, the 

 Greeks never lost their own strongly marked indi- 

 viduality, and, in imparting what they had acquired 

 or discovered to younger peoples, that is, younger 

 in culture, they stamped it with an impress all their 

 own. 



At the later period with which we are dealing, 

 refugees from the Peloponnesus, who would not sub- 

 mit to the Dorian yoke, had been long settled in 

 Ionia. To what extent they had been influenced 

 by contact with their neighbours is a question which, 

 even were it easy to answer, need not occupy us 

 here. Certain it is that trade and travel had widened 

 their intellectual horizon, and although India lay too 

 remote to touch them closely (if that incurious, 

 dreamy East had touched them, it would have taught 

 them nothing), there was Babylonia with her star- 

 watchers, and Egypt with her land-surveyors. From 

 the one, these lonians probably gained knowledge 

 of certain periodic movements of some of the heav- 

 enly bodies; and from the other, a few rules of 

 mensuration, perchance a little crude science. But 

 this is conjecture. For all the rest that she evolved, 

 and with which she enriched the world, ancient 

 Greece is in debt to none. 



While the Oriental shrunk from quest after 

 causes, looking, as Professor Butcher aptly remarks 

 in his Aspects of the Greek Genius, on " each fresh 

 gain of earth as so much robbery of heaven," the 



