30 AMONG THE GREEKS. 



the shores and In the waters of the blue ^gean, 

 teeming with what we now know to be the earHest 

 and simplest forms of animals and plants, they 

 founded their hypotheses as to the origin and suc- 

 cession of life. Lucretius the Roman was Greek 

 in spirit, but dwelling inland he substituted a ter- 

 restrial theory. Even the early Greek natural phi- 

 losophy sprang more or less from observation, and 

 therefore had some concrete value. It was not 

 wholly imaginative. 



The spirit of the Greeks was vigorous and hope- 

 ful. Not pausing to test their theories by research, 

 they did not suffer the disappointments and delays 

 which come from our own efforts to wrest truths 

 from Nature. Combined with great freedom and 

 wide range of ideas, independence of thought, and 

 tendencies to rapid generalization, they had genuine 

 gifts of scientific deduction, which enabled them to 

 reach truth, as it were, by inspiration. As a case 

 in point, Aristotle advanced a true theory of the 

 nature of embryonic development by a very easy 

 process, when contrasted with the slow steps which 

 led to the establishment of the same theory of Epi- 

 genesis in the eighteenth century. 



Their development from a childish to a mature 

 philosophy was a slow one, and their thought upon 

 Nature passed through four phases. First, the pre- 

 historic mythological phase, which left its imprints 

 in guesses as to the strange origin of monstrous 

 forms of life, by the first natural philosophers who 



