The Historians' History of the World 04

The men of contemplative life vanish from public and often from social life; they make a habit of living celibate lives in small circles and communities; doctrine alone, and that often esoteric, takes its place side by side with research. Those who translate into action what they have learned from the masters generally contribute little to scientific inquiry. Philosophy is compelled to an inevitable step, the several sciences disengage themselves from her. What remains,—metaphysical and logical speculation,—nevertheless maintains its supreme ascendancy in virtue of the fact that from this time forward the active, effective potency of philosophy shines forth, the potency which she exercises as magistra vitæ

, as the religion of the heart and the assurance of the intellect in life and conduct. This power extends its sway over ever widening circles even though it cannot reach down to the lower classes; and the gulf between the cultured and the illiterate grows broader and broader. Athens remains the capital city of this philosophy; this is its only title to distinction. Wide as are the differences between the schools, they are agreed in this, that their ideal is the sage, the man apart, who takes his stand not only above the world but outside it—the reverse of the kingly type. The historic continuity of the ancient ideals, Ionian no less than Dorian, is unmistakable.

The various sciences flourish where the necessary means are at their disposal, that is to say, at the courts. This does not make them courtly in character, although Eratosthenes and Aristarchus were tutors of princes; not mathematics alone but all serious learning knows no royal road for kings. The library, the observatory, the scientific collections, and the medical school of Alexandria, which far surpass all others, must be looked upon as directly due to the school of Aristotle; the first two Ptolemies honoured learning, and for that reason gave it nothing but means and liberty. In the second century, their unworthy successors banished the company of scholars, who then found liberty at least in Rhodes. By tracing the course of mathematics and astronomy we can see how the scholars of the few places where they laboured with enthusiasm keep in constant touch with one another by their writings; but splendid as is the progress made by individuals, the number of those who can really follow is very small, and we feel that a general stagnation must set in if this correspondence were to die out and the few scientific institutions perish. Without the study of pure science that of the applied sciences will never make progress; it will soon lose ground. Thus it was, even in the department in which observation and practice most go hand in hand, in medicine. From his geographical, botanical, and zoölogical survey, Alexander had left behind an enormous mass of material which was at first augmented by many additions. Eratosthenes, in his map of the world, could use some of the astronomical definitions of locality which had evidently been made for the purpose. This is the origin of the network of degrees with which the globe is overlaid, and one would have thought that other scholars would have hastened to verify and complete it by further measurements of shadows. Not so. True, Eratosthenes stands at the end of the third century, when the great period of advance is over, and the evil genius of Greece gathers strength to rest satisfied with the great things achieved and, by canonising them, to put a stop to further progress. The criticism of Hipparchus, well grounded as it was in the abstract, contributed something to this end by repudiating the good attained and setting hindrances in the way of a greater attainable good, for the sake of a greatest good that was unattainable. Every department of natural science presents much the same spectacle. What has been gained by the labours of the third century, is here and there carried farther by the few (in many cases, as was inevitable, by quantitative amplification), but in the main the scientific thinking had been done; and by no means all the old ideas were transmitted, even in this petrified form. It was left for the nineteenth century, which in its own strength has advanced to an incomparable height of knowledge, to look back and appreciate at its just value the achievements and intuitions of the earlier age.