LEROY C. COOLKY. 27 



added to it for several centuries before the close of this 

 long period. The elements of life and growth were ab- 

 solutely wanting. 



Astronomy as a living science began with the Greeks. 

 Thales, the father of it, was born six hundred and forty 

 years before the Christian era. From the small number 

 of isolated facts then known, astronomy in Greece grew 

 into a more and more extensive catalogue of observations 

 and hypotheses, until the illustrious Ptolemy, who lived 

 in the first century of our era, was able to construct, as 

 he did, a comprehensive theory of the universe. 



Now, the Grecian skies were not unlike those of Egypt 

 or Chaldea. The same objects and similar changes were 

 presented to the eye, so that there were the same mate- 

 rials out of which to construct a science in all those coun- 

 tries. The success of the Greeks did not, therefore, arise 

 because of better material or better conditions for obser- 

 vation. But we have to ascribe their superior attain- 

 ments to the fact that they, in the observation of the 

 skies, were actuated by a far different and nobler motive. 



We find that the Chaldean watched the periodic changes 

 of the moon and the aspects of the stars, prompted by the 

 vain desire to foretell his own future, and the Egyptian 

 that he might fix the times of his feasts and festivals ; 

 but the Grecian that he might learn the relations of the 

 heavenly bodies to one another and the causes of their 

 changes. The Chinese were content to observe the order 

 of the moon's phases and the times of successive eclipses, 

 which, by simple inspection, would give them the rule 

 of the recurrence of these phenomena, while the Greeks 

 sought for the causes of these facts, and abated their 

 study only when they found an adequate explanation of 

 them in the phenomena of the sun's light and the moon's 

 motion around the earth. 



The more ancient peoples gathered many facts in re- 

 gard to the movements of the sun and stars, but went no 



