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A History of Science — Volume 1

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Title: A History of Science — Volume 1

Author: Henry Smith Williams
        Edward Huntington Williams


        
Release date: April 1, 1999 [eBook #1705]
                Most recently updated: November 17, 2009

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1705

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF SCIENCE — VOLUME 1 ***




Produced by Charles Keller





A HISTORY OF SCIENCE

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.

ASSISTED BY EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, M.D.

IN FIVE VOLUMES


VOLUME I. THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE




   BOOK I.

   CONTENTS

   CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE

   CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE

   CHAPTER III. SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

   CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET

   CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

   CHAPTER VI. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY

   CHAPTER VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD

   CHAPTER VIII. POST-SOCRATIC SCIENCE AT ATHENS

   CHAPTER IX. GREEK SCIENCE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC PERIOD

   CHAPTER X. SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD

   CHAPTER XI. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT CLASSICAL SCIENCE

   APPENDIX




A HISTORY OF SCIENCE




BOOK I

Should the story that is about to be unfolded be found to lack interest,
the writers must stand convicted of unpardonable lack of art. Nothing
but dulness in the telling could mar the story, for in itself it is
the record of the growth of those ideas that have made our race and its
civilization what they are; of ideas instinct with human interest,
vital with meaning for our race; fundamental in their influence on human
development; part and parcel of the mechanism of human thought on the
one hand, and of practical civilization on the other. Such a phrase as
"fundamental principles" may seem at first thought a hard saying, but
the idea it implies is less repellent than the phrase itself, for
the fundamental principles in question are so closely linked with the
present interests of every one of us that they lie within the grasp of
every average man and woman--nay, of every well-developed boy and girl.
These principles are not merely the stepping-stones to culture, the
prerequisites of knowledge--they are, in themselves, an essential part
of the knowledge of every cultivated person.

It is our task, not merely to show what these principles are, but to
point out how they have been discovered by our predecessors. We shall
trace the growth of these ideas from their first vague beginnings. We
shall see how vagueness of thought gave way to precision; how a general
truth, once grasped and formulated, was found to be a stepping-stone to
other truths. We shall see that there are no isolated facts, no
isolated principles, in nature; that each part of our story is linked
by indissoluble bands with that which goes before, and with that which
comes after. For the most part the discovery of this principle or that
in a given sequence is no accident. Galileo and Keppler must precede
Newton. Cuvier and Lyall must come before Darwin;--Which, after all, is
no more than saying that in our Temple of Science, as in any other piece
of architecture, the foundation must precede the superstructure.

We shall best understand our story of the growth of science if we think
of each new principle as a stepping-stone which must fit into its own
particular niche; and if we reflect that the entire structure of modern
civilization would be different from what it is, and less perfect than
it is, had not that particular stepping-stone been found and shaped and
placed in position. Taken as a whole, our stepping-stones lead us up and
up towards the alluring heights of an acropolis of knowledge, on which
stands the Temple of Modern Science. The story of the building of this
wonderful structure is in itself fascinating and beautiful.




I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE

To speak of a prehistoric science may seem like a contradiction of
terms. The word prehistoric seems to imply barbarism, while science,
clearly enough, seems the outgrowth of civilization; but rightly
considered, there is no contradiction. For, on the one hand, man had
ceased to be a barbarian long before the beginning of what we call the
historical period; and, on the other hand, science, of a kind, is no
less a precursor and a cause of civilization than it is a consequent. To
get this clearly in mind, we must ask ourselves: What, then, is science?
The word runs glibly enough upon the tongue of our every-day speech, but
it is not often, perhaps, that they who use it habitually ask themselves
just what it means. Yet the answer is not difficult. A little attention
will show that science, as the word is commonly used, implies these
things: first, the gathering of knowledge through observation; second,
the classification of such knowledge, and through this classification,
the elaboration of general ideas or principles. In the familiar
definition of Herbert Spencer, science is organized knowledge.

Now it is patent enough, at first glance, that the veriest savage must
have been an observer of the phenomena of nature. But it may not be so
obvious that he must also have been a classifier of his observations--an
organizer of knowledge. Yet the more we consider the case, the more
clear it will become that the two methods are too closely linked
together to be dissevered. To observe outside phenomena is not more
inherent in the nature of the mind than to draw inferences from these
phenomena. A deer passing through the forest scents the ground and
detects a certain odor. A sequence of ideas is generated in the mind of
the deer. Nothing in the deer's experience can produce that odor but
a wolf; therefore the scientific inference is drawn that wolves have
passed that way. But it is a part of the deer's scientific knowledge,
based on previous experience, individual and racial; that wolves are
dangerous beasts, and so, combining direct observation in the present
with the application of a general principle based on past experience,
the deer reaches the very logical conclusion that it may wisely turn
about and run in another direction. All this implies, essentially, a
comprehension and use of scientific principles; and, strange as it seems
to speak of a deer as possessing scientific knowledge, yet there is
really no absurdity in the statement. The deer does possess scientific
knowledge; knowledge differing in degree only, not in kind, from the
knowledge of a Newton. Nor is the animal, within the range of its
intelligence, less logical, less scientific in the application of that
knowledge, than is the man. The animal that could not make accurate
scientific observations of its surroundings, and deduce accurate
scientific conclusions from them, would soon pay the penalty of its lack
of logic.

What is true of man's precursors in the animal scale is, of course, true
in a wider and fuller sense of man himself at the very lowest stage
of his development. Ages before the time which the limitations of our
knowledge force us to speak of as the dawn of history, man had reached
a high stage of development. As a social being, he had developed all
the elements of a primitive civilization. If, for convenience of
classification, we speak of his state as savage, or barbaric, we use
terms which, after all, are relative, and which do not shut off our
primitive ancestors from a tolerably close association with our own
ideals. We know that, even in the Stone Age, man had learned how to
domesticate animals and make them useful to him, and that he had also
learned to cultivate the soil. Later on, doubtless by slow and painful
stages, he attained those wonderful elements of knowledge that enabled
him to smelt metals and to produce implements of bronze, and then of
iron. Even in the Stone Age he was a mechanic of marvellous skill, as
any one of to-day may satisfy himself by attempting to duplicate such an
implement as a chipped arrow-head. And a barbarian who could fashion
an axe or a knife of bronze had certainly gone far in his knowledge of
scientific principles and their practical application. The practical
application was, doubtless, the only thought that our primitive ancestor
had in mind; quite probably the question as to principles that might
be involved troubled him not at all. Yet, in spite of himself, he
knew certain rudimentary principles of science, even though he did not
formulate them.

Let us inquire what some of these principles are. Such an inquiry will,
as it were, clear the ground for our structure of science. It will
show the plane of knowledge on which historical investigation begins.
Incidentally, perhaps, it will reveal to us unsuspected affinities
between ourselves and our remote ancestor. Without attempting anything
like a full analysis, we may note in passing, not merely what primitive
man knew, but what he did not know; that at least a vague notion may be
gained of the field for scientific research that lay open for historic
man to cultivate.


It must be understood that the knowledge of primitive man, as we are
about to outline it, is inferential. We cannot trace the development
of these principles, much less can we say who discovered them. Some of
them, as already suggested, are man's heritage from non-human ancestors.
Others can only have been grasped by him after he had reached a
relatively high stage of human development. But all the principles here
listed must surely have been parts of our primitive ancestor's knowledge
before those earliest days of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization,
the records of which constitute our first introduction to the so-called
historical period. Taken somewhat in the order of their probable
discovery, the scientific ideas of primitive man may be roughly listed
as follows:

1. Primitive man must have conceived that the earth is flat and of
limitless extent. By this it is not meant to imply that he had a
distinct conception of infinity, but, for that matter, it cannot be said
that any one to-day has a conception of infinity that could be called
definite. But, reasoning from experience and the reports of travellers,
there was nothing to suggest to early man the limit of the earth. He
did, indeed, find in his wanderings, that changed climatic conditions
barred him from farther progress; but beyond the farthest reaches of
his migrations, the seemingly flat land-surfaces and water-surfaces
stretched away unbroken and, to all appearances, without end. It would
require a reach of the philosophical imagination to conceive a limit
to the earth, and while such imaginings may have been current in the
prehistoric period, we can have no proof of them, and we may well
postpone consideration of man's early dreamings as to the shape of the
earth until we enter the historical epoch where we stand on firm ground.

2. Primitive man must, from a very early period, have observed that the
sun gives heat and light, and that the moon and stars seem to give light
only and no heat. It required but a slight extension of this observation
to note that the changing phases of the seasons were associated with the
seeming approach and recession of the sun. This observation, however,
could not have been made until man had migrated from the tropical
regions, and had reached a stage of mechanical development enabling him
to live in subtropical or temperate zones. Even then it is conceivable
that a long period must have elapsed before a direct causal relation was
felt to exist between the shifting of the sun and the shifting of the
seasons; because, as every one knows, the periods of greatest heat in
summer and greatest cold in winter usually come some weeks after the
time of the solstices. Yet, the fact that these extremes of temperature
are associated in some way with the change of the sun's place in the
heavens must, in time, have impressed itself upon even a rudimentary
intelligence. It is hardly necessary to add that this is not meant
to imply any definite knowledge of the real meaning of, the seeming
oscillations of the sun. We shall see that, even at a relatively late
period, the vaguest notions were still in vogue as to the cause of the
sun's changes of position.

That the sun, moon, and stars move across the heavens must obviously
have been among the earliest scientific observations. It must not be
inferred, however, that this observation implied a necessary conception
of the complete revolution of these bodies about the earth. It is
unnecessary to speculate here as to how the primitive intelligence
conceived the transfer of the sun from the western to the eastern
horizon, to be effected each night, for we shall have occasion to
examine some historical speculations regarding this phenomenon. We may
assume, however, that the idea of the transfer of the heavenly bodies
beneath the earth (whatever the conception as to the form of that body)
must early have presented itself.

It required a relatively high development of the observing faculties,
yet a development which man must have attained ages before the
historical period, to note that the moon has a secondary motion, which
leads it to shift its relative position in the heavens, as regards
the stars; that the stars themselves, on the other hand, keep a fixed
relation as regards one another, with the notable exception of two or
three of the most brilliant members of the galaxy, the latter being the
bodies which came to be known finally as planets, or wandering stars.
The wandering propensities of such brilliant bodies as Jupiter and Venus
cannot well have escaped detection. We may safely assume, however, that
these anomalous motions of the moon and planets found no explanation
that could be called scientific until a relatively late period.

3. Turning from the heavens to the earth, and ignoring such primitive
observations as that of the distinction between land and water, we may
note that there was one great scientific law which must have forced
itself upon the attention of primitive man. This is the law of universal
terrestrial gravitation. The word gravitation suggests the name of
Newton, and it may excite surprise to hear a knowledge of gravitation
ascribed to men who preceded that philosopher by, say, twenty-five or
fifty thousand years. Yet the slightest consideration of the facts will
make it clear that the great central law that all heavy bodies fall
directly towards the earth, cannot have escaped the attention of the
most primitive intelligence. The arboreal habits of our primitive
ancestors gave opportunities for constant observation of the
practicalities of this law. And, so soon as man had developed the mental
capacity to formulate ideas, one of the earliest ideas must have been
the conception, however vaguely phrased in words, that all unsupported
bodies fall towards the earth. The same phenomenon being observed to
operate on water-surfaces, and no alteration being observed in its
operation in different portions of man's habitat, the most primitive
wanderer must have come to have full faith in the universal action of
the observed law of gravitation. Indeed, it is inconceivable that he can
have imagined a place on the earth where this law does not operate.
On the other hand, of course, he never grasped the conception of the
operation of this law beyond the close proximity of the earth. To extend
the reach of gravitation out to the moon and to the stars, including
within its compass every particle of matter in the universe, was the
work of Newton, as we shall see in due course. Meantime we shall
better understand that work if we recall that the mere local fact
of terrestrial gravitation has been the familiar knowledge of all
generations of men. It may further help to connect us in sympathy with
our primeval ancestor if we recall that in the attempt to explain this
fact of terrestrial gravitation Newton made no advance, and we of to-day
are scarcely more enlightened than the man of the Stone Age. Like the
man of the Stone Age, we know that an arrow shot into the sky falls
back to the earth. We can calculate, as he could not do, the arc it will
describe and the exact speed of its fall; but as to why it returns to
earth at all, the greatest philosopher of to-day is almost as much
in the dark as was the first primitive bowman that ever made the
experiment.

Other physical facts going to make up an elementary science of
mechanics, that were demonstratively known to prehistoric man, were such
as these: the rigidity of solids and the mobility of liquids; the
fact that changes of temperature transform solids to liquids and vice
versa--that heat, for example, melts copper and even iron, and that
cold congeals water; and the fact that friction, as illustrated in the
rubbing together of two sticks, may produce heat enough to cause a fire.
The rationale of this last experiment did not receive an explanation
until about the beginning of the nineteenth century of our own era.
But the experimental fact was so well known to prehistoric man that he
employed this method, as various savage tribes employ it to this day,
for the altogether practical purpose of making a fire; just as he
employed his practical knowledge of the mutability of solids and liquids
in smelting ores, in alloying copper with tin to make bronze, and in
casting this alloy in molds to make various implements and weapons.
Here, then, were the germs of an elementary science of physics.
Meanwhile such observations as that of the solution of salt in water
may be considered as giving a first lesson in chemistry, but beyond such
altogether rudimentary conceptions chemical knowledge could not have
gone--unless, indeed, the practical observation of the effects of fire
be included; nor can this well be overlooked, since scarcely another
single line of practical observation had a more direct influence in
promoting the progress of man towards the heights of civilization.

4. In the field of what we now speak of as biological knowledge,
primitive man had obviously the widest opportunity for practical
observation. We can hardly doubt that man attained, at an early day, to
that conception of identity and of difference which Plato places at
the head of his metaphysical system. We shall urge presently that it
is precisely such general ideas as these that were man's earliest
inductions from observation, and hence that came to seem the
most universal and "innate" ideas of his mentality. It is quite
inconceivable, for example, that even the most rudimentary intelligence
that could be called human could fail to discriminate between living
things and, let us say, the rocks of the earth. The most primitive
intelligence, then, must have made a tacit classification of the natural
objects about it into the grand divisions of animate and inanimate
nature. Doubtless the nascent scientist may have imagined life animating
many bodies that we should call inanimate--such as the sun, wandering
planets, the winds, and lightning; and, on the other hand, he may
quite likely have relegated such objects as trees to the ranks of the
non-living; but that he recognized a fundamental distinction between,
let us say, a wolf and a granite bowlder we cannot well doubt. A step
beyond this--a step, however, that may have required centuries
or millenniums in the taking--must have carried man to a plane of
intelligence from which a primitive Aristotle or Linnaeus was enabled
to note differences and resemblances connoting such groups of things
as fishes, birds, and furry beasts. This conception, to be sure, is an
abstraction of a relatively high order. We know that there are savage
races to-day whose language contains no word for such an abstraction as
bird or tree. We are bound to believe, then, that there were long ages
of human progress during which the highest man had attained no such
stage of abstraction; but, on the other hand, it is equally little in
question that this degree of mental development had been attained long
before the opening of our historical period. The primeval man, then,
whose scientific knowledge we are attempting to predicate, had become,
through his conception of fishes, birds, and hairy animals as separate
classes, a scientific zoologist of relatively high attainments.

In the practical field of medical knowledge, a certain stage of
development must have been reached at a very early day. Even animals
pick and choose among the vegetables about them, and at times seek out
certain herbs quite different from their ordinary food, practising a
sort of instinctive therapeutics. The cat's fondness for catnip is
a case in point. The most primitive man, then, must have inherited a
racial or instinctive knowledge of the medicinal effects of certain
herbs; in particular he must have had such elementary knowledge of
toxicology as would enable him to avoid eating certain poisonous
berries. Perhaps, indeed, we are placing the effect before the cause
to some extent; for, after all, the animal system possesses marvellous
powers of adaption, and there is perhaps hardly any poisonous vegetable
which man might not have learned to eat without deleterious effect,
provided the experiment were made gradually. To a certain extent, then,
the observed poisonous effects of numerous plants upon the human system
are to be explained by the fact that our ancestors have avoided this
particular vegetable. Certain fruits and berries might have come to have
been a part of man's diet, had they grown in the regions he inhabited
at an early day, which now are poisonous to his system. This thought,
however, carries us too far afield. For practical purposes, it suffices
that certain roots, leaves, and fruits possess principles that are
poisonous to the human system, and that unless man had learned in some
way to avoid these, our race must have come to disaster. In point of
fact, he did learn to avoid them; and such evidence implied, as has been
said, an elementary knowledge of toxicology.

Coupled with this knowledge of things dangerous to the human system,
there must have grown up, at a very early day, a belief in the remedial
character of various vegetables as agents to combat disease. Here,
of course, was a rudimentary therapeutics, a crude principle of an
empirical art of medicine. As just suggested, the lower order of animals
have an instinctive knowledge that enables them to seek out remedial
herbs (though we probably exaggerate the extent of this instinctive
knowledge); and if this be true, man must have inherited from his
prehuman ancestors this instinct along with the others. That he extended
this knowledge through observation and practice, and came early to make
extensive use of drugs in the treatment of disease, is placed beyond
cavil through the observation of the various existing barbaric tribes,
nearly all of whom practice elaborate systems of therapeutics. We shall
have occasion to see that even within historic times the particular
therapeutic measures employed were often crude, and, as we are
accustomed to say, unscientific; but even the crudest of them are really
based upon scientific principles, inasmuch as their application implies
the deduction of principles of action from previous observations.
Certain drugs are applied to appease certain symptoms of disease because
in the belief of the medicine-man such drugs have proved beneficial in
previous similar cases.

All this, however, implies an appreciation of the fact that man is
subject to "natural" diseases, and that if these diseases are not
combated, death may result. But it should be understood that the
earliest man probably had no such conception as this. Throughout all the
ages of early development, what we call "natural" disease and "natural"
death meant the onslaught of a tangible enemy. A study of this question
leads us to some very curious inferences. The more we look into the
matter the more the thought forces itself home to us that the idea
of natural death, as we now conceive it, came to primitive man as
a relatively late scientific induction. This thought seems almost
startling, so axiomatic has the conception "man is mortal" come to
appear. Yet a study of the ideas of existing savages, combined with
our knowledge of the point of view from which historical peoples regard
disease, make it more probable that the primitive conception of human
life did not include the idea of necessary death. We are told that
the Australian savage who falls from a tree and breaks his neck is not
regarded as having met a natural death, but as having been the victim of
the magical practices of the "medicine-man" of some neighboring tribe.
Similarly, we shall find that the Egyptian and the Babylonian of the
early historical period conceived illness as being almost invariably
the result of the machinations of an enemy. One need but recall the
superstitious observances of the Middle Ages, and the yet more recent
belief in witchcraft, to realize how generally disease has been
personified as a malicious agent invoked by an unfriendly mind. Indeed,
the phraseology of our present-day speech is still reminiscent of this;
as when, for example, we speak of an "attack of fever," and the like.

When, following out this idea, we picture to ourselves the conditions
under which primitive man lived, it will be evident at once how
relatively infrequent must have been his observation of what we usually
term natural death. His world was a world of strife; he lived by the
chase; he saw animals kill one another; he witnessed the death of his
own fellows at the hands of enemies. Naturally enough, then, when a
member of his family was "struck down" by invisible agents, he ascribed
this death also to violence, even though the offensive agent was
concealed. Moreover, having very little idea of the lapse of
time--being quite unaccustomed, that is, to reckon events from any fixed
era--primitive man cannot have gained at once a clear conception of age
as applied to his fellows. Until a relatively late stage of development
made tribal life possible, it cannot have been usual for man to have
knowledge of his grandparents; as a rule he did not know his own parents
after he had passed the adolescent stage and had been turned out upon
the world to care for himself. If, then, certain of his fellow-beings
showed those evidences of infirmity which we ascribe to age, it did not
necessarily follow that he saw any association between such infirmities
and the length of time which those persons had lived. The very fact that
some barbaric nations retain the custom of killing the aged and infirm,
in itself suggests the possibility that this custom arose before a clear
conception had been attained that such drags upon the community would be
removed presently in the natural order of things. To a person who had
no clear conception of the lapse of time and no preconception as to
the limited period of man's life, the infirmities of age might very
naturally be ascribed to the repeated attacks of those inimical powers
which were understood sooner or later to carry off most members of
the race. And coupled with this thought would go the conception that
inasmuch as some people through luck had escaped the vengeance of all
their enemies for long periods, these same individuals might continue
to escape for indefinite periods of the future. There were no written
records to tell primeval man of events of long ago. He lived in the
present, and his sweep of ideas scarcely carried him back beyond
the limits of his individual memory. But memory is observed to be
fallacious. It must early have been noted that some people recalled
events which other participants in them had quite forgotten, and it may
readily enough have been inferred that those members of the tribe who
spoke of events which others could not recall were merely the ones who
were gifted with the best memories. If these reached a period when their
memories became vague, it did not follow that their recollections
had carried them back to the beginnings of their lives. Indeed, it is
contrary to all experience to believe that any man remembers all
the things he has once known, and the observed fallaciousness and
evanescence of memory would thus tend to substantiate rather than to
controvert the idea that various members of a tribe had been alive for
an indefinite period.

Without further elaborating the argument, it seems a justifiable
inference that the first conception primitive man would have of his
own life would not include the thought of natural death, but would,
conversely, connote the vague conception of endless life. Our
own ancestors, a few generations removed, had not got rid of this
conception, as the perpetual quest of the spring of eternal youth amply
testifies. A naturalist of our own day has suggested that perhaps birds
never die except by violence. The thought, then, that man has a term of
years beyond which "in the nature of things," as the saying goes, he
may not live, would have dawned but gradually upon the developing
intelligence of successive generations of men; and we cannot feel
sure that he would fully have grasped the conception of a "natural"
termination of human life until he had shaken himself free from the idea
that disease is always the result of the magic practice of an enemy. Our
observation of historical man in antiquity makes it somewhat doubtful
whether this conception had been attained before the close of the
prehistoric period. If it had, this conception of the mortality of man
was one of the most striking scientific inductions to which prehistoric
man attained. Incidentally, it may be noted that the conception of
eternal life for the human body being a more primitive idea than the
conception of natural death, the idea of the immortality of the spirit
would be the most natural of conceptions. The immortal spirit, indeed,
would be but a correlative of the immortal body, and the idea which we
shall see prevalent among the Egyptians that the soul persists only
as long as the body is intact--the idea upon which the practice of
mummifying the dead depended--finds a ready explanation. But this phase
of the subject carries us somewhat afield. For our present purpose it
suffices to have pointed out that the conception of man's mortality--a
conception which now seems of all others the most natural and
"innate"--was in all probability a relatively late scientific induction
of our primitive ancestors.

5. Turning from the consideration of the body to its mental complement,
we are forced to admit that here, also, our primitive man must have
made certain elementary observations that underlie such sciences as
psychology, mathematics, and political economy. The elementary emotions
associated with hunger and with satiety, with love and with hatred, must
have forced themselves upon the earliest intelligence that reached the
plane of conscious self-observation. The capacity to count, at least
to the number four or five, is within the range of even animal
intelligence. Certain savages have gone scarcely farther than this;
but our primeval ancestor, who was forging on towards civilization, had
learned to count his fingers and toes, and to number objects about him
by fives and tens in consequence, before he passed beyond the plane of
numerous existing barbarians. How much beyond this he had gone we
need not attempt to inquire; but the relatively high development of
mathematics in the early historical period suggests that primeval man
had attained a not inconsiderable knowledge of numbers. The humdrum
vocation of looking after a numerous progeny must have taught the
mother the rudiments of addition and subtraction; and the elements of
multiplication and division are implied in the capacity to carry on
even the rudest form of barter, such as the various tribes must have
practised from an early day.

As to political ideas, even the crudest tribal life was based on
certain conceptions of ownership, at least of tribal ownership, and the
application of the principle of likeness and difference to which we have
already referred. Each tribe, of course, differed in some regard from
other tribes, and the recognition of these differences implied in
itself a political classification. A certain tribe took possession of a
particular hunting-ground, which became, for the time being, its home,
and over which it came to exercise certain rights. An invasion of this
territory by another tribe might lead to war, and the banding together
of the members of the tribe to repel the invader implied both a
recognition of communal unity and a species of prejudice in favor of
that community that constituted a primitive patriotism. But this unity
of action in opposing another tribe would not prevent a certain rivalry
of interest between the members of the same tribe, which would show
itself more and more prominently as the tribe increased in size. The
association of two or more persons implies, always, the ascendency of
some and the subordination of others. Leadership and subordination are
necessary correlatives of difference of physical and mental endowment,
and rivalry between leaders would inevitably lead to the formation of
primitive political parties. With the ultimate success and ascendency
of one leader, who secures either absolute power or power modified in
accordance with the advice of subordinate leaders, we have the germs of
an elaborate political system--an embryo science of government.

Meanwhile, the very existence of such a community implies the
recognition on the part of its members of certain individual rights,
the recognition of which is essential to communal harmony. The right of
individual ownership of the various articles and implements of every-day
life must be recognized, or all harmony would be at an end. Certain
rules of justice--primitive laws--must, by common consent, give
protection to the weakest members of the community. Here are the
rudiments of a system of ethics. It may seem anomalous to speak of this
primitive morality, this early recognition of the principles of right
and wrong, as having any relation to science. Yet, rightly considered,
there is no incongruity in such a citation. There cannot well be a doubt
that the adoption of those broad principles of right and wrong which
underlie the entire structure of modern civilization was due to
scientific induction,--in other words, to the belief, based on
observation and experience, that the principles implied were essential
to communal progress. He who has scanned the pageant of history knows
how often these principles seem to be absent in the intercourse of men
and nations. Yet the ideal is always there as a standard by which all
deeds are judged.


It would appear, then, that the entire superstructure of later science
had its foundation in the knowledge and practice of prehistoric man. The
civilization of the historical period could not have advanced as it has
had there not been countless generations of culture back of it. The new
principles of science could not have been evolved had there not
been great basal principles which ages of unconscious experiment had
impressed upon the mind of our race. Due meed of praise must be given,
then, to our primitive ancestor for his scientific accomplishments; but
justice demands that we should look a little farther and consider the
reverse side of the picture. We have had to do, thus far, chiefly
with the positive side of accomplishment. We have pointed out what our
primitive ancestor knew, intimating, perhaps, the limitations of his
knowledge; but we have had little to say of one all-important feature
of his scientific theorizing. The feature in question is based on the
highly scientific desire and propensity to find explanations for the
phenomena of nature. Without such desire no progress could be made. It
is, as we have seen, the generalizing from experience that constitutes
real scientific progress; and yet, just as most other good things can
be overdone, this scientific propensity may be carried to a disastrous
excess.

Primeval man did not escape this danger. He observed, he reasoned,
he found explanations; but he did not always discriminate as to the
logicality of his reasonings. He failed to recognize the limitations of
his knowledge. The observed uniformity in the sequence of certain events
impressed on his mind the idea of cause and effect. Proximate causes
known, he sought remoter causes; childlike, his inquiring mind was
always asking, Why? and, childlike, he demanded an explicit answer. If
the forces of nature seemed to combat him, if wind and rain opposed his
progress and thunder and lightning seemed to menace his existence, he
was led irrevocably to think of those human foes who warred with
him, and to see, back of the warfare of the elements, an inscrutable
malevolent intelligence which took this method to express its
displeasure. But every other line of scientific observation leads
equally, following back a sequence of events, to seemingly causeless
beginnings. Modern science can explain the lightning, as it can explain
a great number of the mysteries which the primeval intelligence could
not penetrate. But the primordial man could not wait for the revelations
of scientific investigation: he must vault at once to a final solution
of all scientific problems. He found his solution by peopling the world
with invisible forces, anthropomorphic in their conception, like himself
in their thought and action, differing only in the limitations of their
powers. His own dream existence gave him seeming proof of the existence
of an alter ego, a spiritual portion of himself that could dissever
itself from his body and wander at will; his scientific inductions
seemed to tell him of a world of invisible beings, capable of
influencing him for good or ill. From the scientific exercise of his
faculties he evolved the all-encompassing generalizations of invisible
and all-powerful causes back of the phenomena of nature. These
generalizations, early developed and seemingly supported by the
observations of countless generations, came to be among the most
firmly established scientific inductions of our primeval ancestor.
They obtained a hold upon the mentality of our race that led subsequent
generations to think of them, sometimes to speak of them, as "innate"
ideas. The observations upon which they were based are now, for the most
part, susceptible of other interpretations; but the old interpretations
have precedent and prejudice back of them, and they represent ideas
that are more difficult than almost any others to eradicate. Always,
and everywhere, superstitions based upon unwarranted early scientific
deductions have been the most implacable foes to the progress of
science. Men have built systems of philosophy around their conception of
anthropomorphic deities; they have linked to these systems of philosophy
the allied conception of the immutability of man's spirit, and they have
asked that scientific progress should stop short at the brink of these
systems of philosophy and accept their dictates as final. Yet there is
not to-day in existence, and there never has been, one jot of scientific
evidence for the existence of these intangible anthropomorphic powers
back of nature that is not susceptible of scientific challenge and
of more logical interpretation. In despite of which the superstitious
beliefs are still as firmly fixed in the minds of a large majority of
our race as they were in the mind of our prehistoric ancestor. The fact
of this baleful heritage must not be forgotten in estimating the debt of
gratitude which historic man owes to his barbaric predecessor.




II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE

In the previous chapter we have purposely refrained from referring to
any particular tribe or race of historical man. Now, however, we are
at the beginnings of national existence, and we have to consider the
accomplishments of an individual race; or rather, perhaps, of two or
more races that occupied successively the same geographical territory.
But even now our studies must for a time remain very general; we shall
see little or nothing of the deeds of individual scientists in the
course of our study of Egyptian culture. We are still, it must be
understood, at the beginnings of history; indeed, we must first bridge
over the gap from the prehistoric before we may find ourselves fairly on
the line of march of historical science.

At the very outset we may well ask what constitutes the distinction
between prehistoric and historic epochs--a distinction which has been
constantly implied in much that we have said. The reply savors somewhat
of vagueness. It is a distinction having to do, not so much with facts
of human progress as with our interpretation of these facts. When we
speak of the dawn of history we must not be understood to imply that, at
the period in question, there was any sudden change in the intellectual
status of the human race or in the status of any individual tribe or
nation of men. What we mean is that modern knowledge has penetrated the
mists of the past for the period we term historical with something more
of clearness and precision than it has been able to bring to bear upon
yet earlier periods. New accessions of knowledge may thus shift from
time to time the bounds of the so-called historical period. The clearest
illustration of this is furnished by our interpretation of Egyptian
history. Until recently the biblical records of the Hebrew captivity or
service, together with the similar account of Josephus, furnished about
all that was known of Egyptian history even of so comparatively recent
a time as that of Ramses II. (fifteenth century B.C.), and from that
period on there was almost a complete gap until the story was taken
up by the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus. It is true that
the king-lists of the Alexandrian historian, Manetho, were all along
accessible in somewhat garbled copies. But at best they seemed to supply
unintelligible lists of names and dates which no one was disposed
to take seriously. That they were, broadly speaking, true historical
records, and most important historical records at that, was not
recognized by modern scholars until fresh light had been thrown on the
subject from altogether new sources.

These new sources of knowledge of ancient history demand a moment's
consideration. They are all-important because they have been the means
of extending the historical period of Egyptian history (using the word
history in the way just explained) by three or four thousand years. As
just suggested, that historical period carried the scholarship of the
early nineteenth century scarcely beyond the fifteenth century B.C., but
to-day's vision extends with tolerable clearness to about the middle
of the fifth millennium B.C. This change has been brought about chiefly
through study of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. These hieroglyphics
constitute, as we now know, a highly developed system of writing; a
system that was practised for some thousands of years, but which fell
utterly into disuse in the later Roman period, and the knowledge of
which passed absolutely from the mind of man. For about two thousand
years no one was able to read, with any degree of explicitness, a single
character of this strange script, and the idea became prevalent that
it did not constitute a real system of writing, but only a more or less
barbaric system of religious symbolism. The falsity of this view was
shown early in the nineteenth century when Dr. Thomas Young was led,
through study of the famous trilingual inscription of the Rosetta stone,
to make the first successful attempt at clearing up the mysteries of the
hieroglyphics.

This is not the place to tell the story of his fascinating discoveries
and those of his successors. That story belongs to nineteenth-century
science, not to the science of the Egyptians. Suffice it here that Young
gained the first clew to a few of the phonetic values of the Egyptian
symbols, and that the work of discovery was carried on and vastly
extended by the Frenchman Champollion, a little later, with the result
that the firm foundations of the modern science of Egyptology were laid.
Subsequently such students as Rosellini the Italian, Lepsius the German,
and Wilkinson the Englishman, entered the field, which in due course
was cultivated by De Rouge in France and Birch in England, and by
such distinguished latter-day workers as Chabas, Mariette, Maspero,
Amelineau, and De Morgan among the Frenchmen; Professor Petrie and Dr.
Budge in England; and Brugsch Pasha and Professor Erman in Germany, not
to mention a large coterie of somewhat less familiar names. These men
working, some of them in the field of practical exploration, some as
students of the Egyptian language and writing, have restored to us a
tolerably precise knowledge of the history of Egypt from the time of the
first historical king, Mena, whose date is placed at about the middle
of the fifth century B.C. We know not merely the names of most of the
subsequent rulers, but some thing of the deeds of many of them;
and, what is vastly more important, we know, thanks to the modern
interpretation of the old literature, many things concerning the life
of the people, and in particular concerning their highest culture, their
methods of thought, and their scientific attainments, which might well
have been supposed to be past finding out. Nor has modern investigation
halted with the time of the first kings; the recent explorations of such
archaeologists as Amelineau, De Morgan, and Petrie have brought to light
numerous remains of what is now spoken of as the predynastic period--a
period when the inhabitants of the Nile Valley used implements of
chipped stone, when their pottery was made without the use of the
potter's wheel, and when they buried their dead in curiously cramped
attitudes without attempt at mummification. These aboriginal inhabitants
of Egypt cannot perhaps with strict propriety be spoken of as living
within the historical period, since we cannot date their relics with any
accuracy. But they give us glimpses of the early stages of civilization
upon which the Egyptians of the dynastic period were to advance.

It is held that the nascent civilization of these Egyptians of the
Neolithic, or late Stone Age, was overthrown by the invading hosts of a
more highly civilized race which probably came from the East, and which
may have been of a Semitic stock. The presumption is that this invading
people brought with it a knowledge of the arts of war and peace,
developed or adopted in its old home. The introduction of these arts
served to bridge somewhat suddenly, so far as Egypt is concerned, that
gap between the prehistoric and the historic stage of culture to which
we have all along referred. The essential structure of that bridge,
let it now be clearly understood, consisted of a single element. That
element is the capacity to make written records: a knowledge of the art
of writing. Clearly understood, it is this element of knowledge that
forms the line bounding the historical period. Numberless mementos are
in existence that tell of the intellectual activities of prehistoric
man; such mementos as flint implements, pieces of pottery, and fragments
of bone, inscribed with pictures that may fairly be spoken of as works
of art; but so long as no written word accompanies these records, so
long as no name of king or scribe comes down to us, we feel that these
records belong to the domain of archaeology rather than to that of
history. Yet it must be understood all along that these two domains
shade one into the other and, it has already been urged, that the
distinction between them is one that pertains rather to modern
scholarship than to the development of civilization itself. Bearing this
distinction still in mind, and recalling that the historical period,
which is to be the field of our observation throughout the rest of our
studies, extends for Egypt well back into the fifth millennium B.C., let
us briefly review the practical phases of that civilization to which the
Egyptian had attained before the beginning of the dynastic period. Since
theoretical science is everywhere linked with the mechanical arts, this
survey will give us a clear comprehension of the field that lies open
for the progress of science in the long stages of historical time upon
which we are just entering.

We may pass over such rudimentary advances in the direction of
civilization as are implied in the use of articulate language, the
application of fire to the uses of man, and the systematic making of
dwellings of one sort or another, since all of these are stages of
progress that were reached very early in the prehistoric period.
What more directly concerns us is to note that a really high stage of
mechanical development had been reached before the dawnings of Egyptian
history proper. All manner of household utensils were employed; the
potter's wheel aided in the construction of a great variety of earthen
vessels; weaving had become a fine art, and weapons of bronze, including
axes, spears, knives, and arrow-heads, were in constant use. Animals had
long been domesticated, in particular the dog, the cat, and the ox;
the horse was introduced later from the East. The practical arts of
agriculture were practised almost as they are at the present day in
Egypt, there being, of course, the same dependence then as now upon the
inundations of the Nile.

As to government, the Egyptian of the first dynasty regarded his king
as a demi-god to be actually deified after his death, and this point of
view was not changed throughout the stages of later Egyptian history. In
point of art, marvellous advances upon the skill of the prehistoric
man had been made, probably in part under Asiatic influences, and that
unique style of stilted yet expressive drawing had come into vogue,
which was to be remembered in after times as typically Egyptian. More
important than all else, our Egyptian of the earliest historical period
was in possession of the art of writing. He had begun to make those
specific records which were impossible to the man of the Stone Age, and
thus he had entered fully upon the way of historical progress which, as
already pointed out, has its very foundation in written records. From
now on the deeds of individual kings could find specific record. It
began to be possible to fix the chronology of remote events with some
accuracy; and with this same fixing of chronologies came the advent of
true history. The period which precedes what is usually spoken of as
the first dynasty in Egypt is one into which the present-day searcher
is still able to see but darkly. The evidence seems to suggest than an
invasion of relatively cultured people from the East overthrew, and in
time supplanted, the Neolithic civilization of the Nile Valley. It is
impossible to date this invasion accurately, but it cannot well have
been later than the year 5000 B.C., and it may have been a great many
centuries earlier than this. Be the exact dates what they may, we find
the Egyptian of the fifth millennium B.C. in full possession of a highly
organized civilization.

All subsequent ages have marvelled at the pyramids, some of which date
from about the year 4000 B.C., though we may note in passing that these
dates must not be taken too literally. The chronology of ancient Egypt
cannot as yet be fixed with exact accuracy, but the disagreements
between the various students of the subject need give us little concern.
For our present purpose it does not in the least matter whether the
pyramids were built three thousand or four thousand years before the
beginning of our era. It suffices that they date back to a period long
antecedent to the beginnings of civilization in Western Europe. They
prove that the Egyptian of that early day had attained a knowledge of
practical mechanics which, even from the twentieth-century point of
view, is not to be spoken of lightly. It has sometimes been suggested
that these mighty pyramids, built as they are of great blocks of stone,
speak for an almost miraculous knowledge on the part of their builders;
but a saner view of the conditions gives no warrant for this thought.
Diodoras, the Sicilian, in his famous World's History, written about
the beginning of our era, explains the building of the pyramids by
suggesting that great quantities of earth were piled against the side
of the rising structure to form an inclined plane up which the blocks
of stone were dragged. He gives us certain figures, based, doubtless,
on reports made to him by Egyptian priests, who in turn drew upon the
traditions of their country, perhaps even upon written records no
longer preserved. He says that one hundred and twenty thousand men
were employed in the construction of the largest pyramid, and that,
notwithstanding the size of this host of workers, the task occupied
twenty years. We must not place too much dependence upon such figures as
these, for the ancient historians are notoriously given to exaggeration
in recording numbers; yet we need not doubt that the report given by
Diodorus is substantially accurate in its main outlines as to the method
through which the pyramids were constructed. A host of men putting their
added weight and strength to the task, with the aid of ropes, pulleys,
rollers, and levers, and utilizing the principle of the inclined plane,
could undoubtedly move and elevate and place in position the
largest blocks that enter into the pyramids or--what seems even more
wonderful--the most gigantic obelisks, without the aid of any other
kind of mechanism or of any more occult power. The same hands could, as
Diodorus suggests, remove all trace of the debris of construction and
leave the pyramids and obelisks standing in weird isolation, as if
sprung into being through a miracle.


ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCE

It has been necessary to bear in mind these phases of practical
civilization because much that we know of the purely scientific
attainments of the Egyptians is based upon modern observation of their
pyramids and temples. It was early observed, for example, that the
pyramids are obviously oriented as regards the direction in which they
face, in strict accordance with some astronomical principle. Early in
the nineteenth century the Frenchman Biot made interesting studies in
regard to this subject, and a hundred years later, in our own time, Sir
Joseph Norman Lockyer, following up the work of various intermediary
observers, has given the subject much attention, making it the central
theme of his work on The Dawn of Astronomy.(1) Lockyer's researches
make it clear that in the main the temples of Egypt were oriented with
reference to the point at which the sun rises on the day of the summer
solstice. The time of the solstice had peculiar interest for the
Egyptians, because it corresponded rather closely with the time of the
rising of the Nile. The floods of that river appear with very great
regularity; the on-rushing tide reaches the region of Heliopolis and
Memphis almost precisely on the day of the summer solstice. The
time varies at different stages of the river's course, but as the
civilization of the early dynasties centred at Memphis, observations
made at this place had widest vogue.

Considering the all-essential character of the Nile floods-without which
civilization would be impossible in Egypt--it is not strange that the
time of their appearance should be taken as marking the beginning of a
new year. The fact that their coming coincides with the solstice makes
such a division of the calendar perfectly natural. In point of fact,
from the earliest periods of which records have come down to us, the new
year of the Egyptians dates from the summer solstice. It is certain that
from the earliest historical periods the Egyptians were aware of the
approximate length of the year. It would be strange were it otherwise,
considering the ease with which a record of days could be kept from Nile
flood to Nile flood, or from solstice to solstice. But this, of course,
applies only to an approximate count. There is some reason to believe
that in the earliest period the Egyptians made this count only 360 days.
The fact that their year was divided into twelve months of thirty days
each lends color to this belief; but, in any event, the mistake was
discovered in due time and a partial remedy was applied through the
interpolation of a "little month" of five days between the end of the
twelfth month and the new year. This nearly but not quite remedied
the matter. What it obviously failed to do was to take account of that
additional quarter of a day which really rounds out the actual year.

It would have been a vastly convenient thing for humanity had it chanced
that the earth had so accommodated its rotary motion with its speed
of transit about the sun as to make its annual flight in precisely 360
days. Twelve lunar months of thirty days each would then have coincided
exactly with the solar year, and most of the complexities of the
calendar, which have so puzzled historical students, would have been
avoided; but, on the other hand, perhaps this very simplicity would
have proved detrimental to astronomical science by preventing men from
searching the heavens as carefully as they have done. Be that as it may,
the complexity exists. The actual year of three hundred and sixty-five
and (about) one-quarter days cannot be divided evenly into months,
and some such expedient as the intercalation of days here and there is
essential, else the calendar will become absolutely out of harmony with
the seasons.

In the case of the Egyptians, the attempt at adjustment was made, as
just noted, by the introduction of the five days, constituting what the
Egyptians themselves termed "the five days over and above the year."
These so-called epagomenal days were undoubtedly introduced at a very
early period. Maspero holds that they were in use before the first
Thinite dynasty, citing in evidence the fact that the legend of Osiris
explains these days as having been created by the god Thot in order
to permit Nuit to give birth to all her children; this expedient being
necessary to overcome a ban which had been pronounced against Nuit,
according to which she could not give birth to children on any day of
the year. But, of course, the five additional days do not suffice fully
to rectify the calendar. There remains the additional quarter of a day
to be accounted for. This, of course, amounts to a full day every fourth
year. We shall see that later Alexandrian science hit upon the expedient
of adding a day to every fourth year; an expedient which the Julian
calendar adopted and which still gives us our familiar leap-year. But,
unfortunately, the ancient Egyptian failed to recognize the need of
this additional day, or if he did recognize it he failed to act on
his knowledge, and so it happened that, starting somewhere back in the
remote past with a new year's day that coincided with the inundation of
the Nile, there was a constantly shifting maladjustment of calendar and
seasons as time went on.

The Egyptian seasons, it should be explained, were three in number: the
season of the inundation, the season of the seed-time, and the season
of the harvest; each season being, of course, four months in extent.
Originally, as just mentioned, the season of the inundations began and
coincided with the actual time of inundation. The more precise fixing of
new year's day was accomplished through observation of the time of
the so-called heliacal rising of the dog-star, Sirius, which bore the
Egyptian name Sothis. It chances that, as viewed from about the region
of Heliopolis, the sun at the time of the summer solstice occupies an
apparent position in the heavens close to the dog-star. Now, as is well
known, the Egyptians, seeing divinity back of almost every phenomenon
of nature, very naturally paid particular reverence to so obviously
influential a personage as the sun-god. In particular they thought it
fitting to do homage to him just as he was starting out on his tour of
Egypt in the morning; and that they might know the precise moment of his
coming, the Egyptian astronomer priests, perched on the hill-tops near
their temples, were wont to scan the eastern horizon with reference
to some star which had been observed to precede the solar luminary.
Of course the precession of the equinoxes, due to that axial wobble in
which our clumsy earth indulges, would change the apparent position of
the fixed stars in reference to the sun, so that the same star could not
do service as heliacal messenger indefinitely; but, on the other hand,
these changes are so slow that observations by many generations of
astronomers would be required to detect the shifting. It is believed
by Lockyer, though the evidence is not quite demonstrative, that the
astronomical observations of the Egyptians date back to a period when
Sothis, the dog-star, was not in close association with the sun on the
morning of the summer solstice. Yet, according to the calculations of
Biot, the heliacal rising of Sothis at the solstice was noted as early
as the year 3285 B.C., and it is certain that this star continued
throughout subsequent centuries to keep this position of peculiar
prestige. Hence it was that Sothis came to be associated with Isis, one
of the most important divinities of Egypt, and that the day in which
Sothis was first visible in the morning sky marked the beginning of
the new year; that day coinciding, as already noted, with the summer
solstice and with the beginning of the Nile flow.

But now for the difficulties introduced by that unreckoned quarter of
a day. Obviously with a calendar of 365 days only, at the end of four
years, the calendar year, or vague year, as the Egyptians came to call
it, had gained by one full day upon the actual solar year--that is to
say, the heliacal rising of Sothis, the dog-star, would not occur on
new year's day of the faulty calendar, but a day later. And with each
succeeding period of four years the day of heliacal rising, which marked
the true beginning of the year--and which still, of course, coincided
with the inundation--would have fallen another day behind the calendar.
In the course of 120 years an entire month would be lost; and in 480
years so great would become the shifting that the seasons would be
altogether misplaced; the actual time of inundations corresponding with
what the calendar registered as the seed-time, and the actual seed-time
in turn corresponding with the harvest-time of the calendar.

At first thought this seems very awkward and confusing, but in all
probability the effects were by no means so much so in actual practice.
We need go no farther than to our own experience to know that the names
of seasons, as of months and days, come to have in the minds of most of
us a purely conventional significance. Few of us stop to give a thought
to the meaning of the words January, February, etc., except as they
connote certain climatic conditions. If, then, our own calendar were
so defective that in the course of 120 years the month of February had
shifted back to occupy the position of the original January, the change
would have been so gradual, covering the period of two life-times or
of four or five average generations, that it might well escape general
observation.

Each succeeding generation of Egyptians, then, may not improbably have
associated the names of the seasons with the contemporary climatic
conditions, troubling themselves little with the thought that in an
earlier age the climatic conditions for each period of the calendar were
quite different. We cannot well suppose, however, that the astronomer
priests were oblivious to the true state of things. Upon them devolved
the duty of predicting the time of the Nile flood; a duty they were
enabled to perform without difficulty through observation of the rising
of the solstitial sun and its Sothic messenger. To these observers it
must finally have been apparent that the shifting of the seasons was
at the rate of one day in four years; this known, it required no great
mathematical skill to compute that this shifting would finally effect a
complete circuit of the calendar, so that after (4 X 365 =) 1460
years the first day of the calendar year would again coincide with the
heliacal rising of Sothis and with the coming of the Nile flood. In
other words, 1461 vague years or Egyptian calendar years Of 365 days
each correspond to 1460 actual solar years of 365 1/4 days each. This
period, measured thus by the heliacal rising of Sothis, is spoken of as
the Sothic cycle.

To us who are trained from childhood to understand that the year
consists of (approximately) 365 1/4 days, and to know that the calendar
may be regulated approximately by the introduction of an extra day every
fourth year, this recognition of the Sothic cycle seems simple enough.
Yet if the average man of us will reflect how little he knows, of his
own knowledge, of the exact length of the year, it will soon become
evident that the appreciation of the faults of the calendar and the
knowledge of its periodical adjustment constituted a relatively
high development of scientific knowledge on the part of the Egyptian
astronomer. It may be added that various efforts to reform the calendar
were made by the ancient Egyptians, but that they cannot be credited
with a satisfactory solution of the problem; for, of course, the
Alexandrian scientists of the Ptolemaic period (whose work we shall have
occasion to review presently) were not Egyptians in any proper sense of
the word, but Greeks.

Since so much of the time of the astronomer priests was devoted to
observation of the heavenly bodies, it is not surprising that they
should have mapped out the apparent course of the moon and the visible
planets in their nightly tour of the heavens, and that they should have
divided the stars of the firmament into more or less arbitrary groups
or constellations. That they did so is evidenced by various sculptured
representations of constellations corresponding to signs of the
zodiac which still ornament the ceilings of various ancient temples.
Unfortunately the decorative sense, which was always predominant with
the Egyptian sculptor, led him to take various liberties with the
distribution of figures in these representations of the constellations,
so that the inferences drawn from them as to the exact map of the
heavens as the Egyptians conceived it cannot be fully relied upon. It
appears, however, that the Egyptian astronomer divided the zodiac
into twenty-four decani, or constellations. The arbitrary groupings
of figures, with the aid of which these are delineated, bear a close
resemblance to the equally arbitrary outlines which we are still
accustomed to use for the same purpose.


IDEAS OF COSMOLOGY

In viewing this astronomical system of the Egyptians one cannot avoid
the question as to just what interpretation was placed upon it as
regards the actual mechanical structure of the universe. A proximal
answer to the question is supplied us with a good deal of clearness.
It appears that the Egyptian conceived the sky as a sort of tangible or
material roof placed above the world, and supported at each of its four
corners by a column or pillar, which was later on conceived as a great
mountain. The earth itself was conceived to be a rectangular box, longer
from north to south than from east to west; the upper surface of this
box, upon which man lived, being slightly concave and having, of course,
the valley of the Nile as its centre. The pillars of support were
situated at the points of the compass; the northern one being located
beyond the Mediterranean Sea; the southern one away beyond the habitable
regions towards the source of the Nile, and the eastern and western ones
in equally inaccessible regions. Circling about the southern side
of the world was a great river suspended in mid-air on something
comparable to mountain cliffs; on which river the sun-god made his daily
course in a boat, fighting day by day his ever-recurring battle against
Set, the demon of darkness. The wide channel of this river enabled the
sun-god to alter his course from time to time, as he is observed to do;
in winter directing his bark towards the farther bank of the channel;
in summer gliding close to the nearer bank. As to the stars, they were
similar lights, suspended from the vault of the heaven; but just how
their observed motion of translation across the heavens was explained
is not apparent. It is more than probable that no one explanation was,
universally accepted.

In explaining the origin of this mechanism of the heavens, the Egyptian
imagination ran riot. Each separate part of Egypt had its own hierarchy
of gods, and more or less its own explanations of cosmogony. There does
not appear to have been any one central story of creation that found
universal acceptance, any more than there was one specific deity
everywhere recognized as supreme among the gods. Perhaps the most
interesting of the cosmogonic myths was that which conceived that Nuit,
the goddess of night, had been torn from the arms of her husband, Sibu
the earth-god, and elevated to the sky despite her protests and her
husband's struggles, there to remain supported by her four limbs, which
became metamorphosed into the pillars, or mountains, already mentioned.
The forcible elevation of Nuit had been effected on the day of creation
by a new god, Shu, who came forth from the primeval waters. A
painting on the mummy case of one Betuhamon, now in the Turin Museum,
illustrates, in the graphic manner so characteristic of the Egyptians,
this act of creation. As Maspero(2) points out, the struggle of Sibu
resulted in contorted attitudes to which the irregularities of the
earth's surface are to be ascribed.

In contemplating such a scheme of celestial mechanics as that just
outlined, one cannot avoid raising the question as to just the degree
of literalness which the Egyptians themselves put upon it. We know how
essentially eye-minded the Egyptian was, to use a modern psychological
phrase--that is to say, how essential to him it seemed that all his
conceptions should be visualized. The evidences of this are everywhere:
all his gods were made tangible; he believed in the immortality of
the soul, yet he could not conceive of such immortality except in
association with an immortal body; he must mummify the body of the dead,
else, as he firmly believed, the dissolution of the spirit would take
place along with the dissolution of the body itself. His world was
peopled everywhere with spirits, but they were spirits associated always
with corporeal bodies; his gods found lodgment in sun and moon and
stars; in earth and water; in the bodies of reptiles and birds and
mammals. He worshipped all of these things: the sun, the moon, water,
earth, the spirit of the Nile, the ibis, the cat, the ram, and apis the
bull; but, so far as we can judge, his imagination did not reach to the
idea of an absolutely incorporeal deity. Similarly his conception of
the mechanism of the heavens must be a tangibly mechanical one. He must
think of the starry firmament as a substantial entity which could not
defy the law of gravitation, and which, therefore, must have the same
manner of support as is required by the roof of a house or temple. We
know that this idea of the materiality of the firmament found elaborate
expression in those later cosmological guesses which were to dominate
the thought of Europe until the time of Newton. We need not doubt,
therefore, that for the Egyptian this solid vault of the heavens had a
very real existence. If now and then some dreamer conceived the great
bodies of the firmament as floating in a less material plenum--and such
iconoclastic dreamers there are in all ages--no record of his musings
has come down to us, and we must freely admit that if such thoughts
existed they were alien to the character of the Egyptian mind as a
whole.

While the Egyptians conceived the heavenly bodies as the abiding-place
of various of their deities, it does not appear that they practised
astrology in the later acceptance of that word. This is the more
remarkable since the conception of lucky and unlucky days was carried
by the Egyptians to the extremes of absurdity. "One day was lucky
or unlucky," says Erman,(3) "according as a good or bad mythological
incident took place on that day. For instance, the 1st of Mechir, on
which day the sky was raised, and the 27th of Athyr, when Horus and, Set
concluded peace together and divided the world between them, were lucky
days; on the other hand, the 14th of Tybi, on which Isis and Nephthys
mourned for Osiris, was an unlucky day. With the unlucky days, which,
fortunately, were less in number than the lucky days, they distinguished
different degrees of ill-luck. Some were very unlucky, others only
threatened ill-luck, and many, like the 17th and the 27th Choiakh, were
partly good and partly bad according to the time of day. Lucky days
might, as a rule, be disregarded. At most it might be as well to visit
some specially renowned temple, or to 'celebrate a joyful day at home,'
but no particular precautions were really necessary; and, above all,
it was said, 'what thou also seest on the day is lucky.' It was quite
otherwise with the unlucky and dangerous days, which imposed so many
and such great limitations on people that those who wished to be prudent
were always obliged to bear them in mind when determining on any course
of action. Certain conditions were easy to carry out. Music and singing
were to be avoided on the 14th Tybi, the day of the mourning of Osiris,
and no one was allowed to wash on the 16th Tybi; whilst the name of Set
might not be pronounced on the 24th of Pharmuthi. Fish was forbidden on
certain days; and what was still more difficult in a country so rich
in mice, on the 12th of Tybi no mouse might be seen. The most tiresome
prohibitions, however, were those which occurred not infrequently,
namely, those concerning work and going out: for instance, four times in
Paophi the people had to 'do nothing at all,' and five times to sit
the whole day or half the day in the house; and the same rule had to be
observed each month. It was impossible to rejoice if a child was born on
the 23d of Thoth; the parents knew it could not live. Those born on the
20th of Choiakh would become blind, and those born on the 3d of Choiakh,
deaf."


CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS

Where such conceptions as these pertained, it goes without saying that
charms and incantations intended to break the spell of the unlucky
omens were equally prevalent. Such incantations consisted usually of the
recitation of certain phrases based originally, it would appear, upon
incidents in the history of the gods. The words which the god had spoken
in connection with some lucky incident would, it was thought, prove
effective now in bringing good luck to the human supplicant--that is
to say, the magician hoped through repeating the words of the god to
exercise the magic power of the god. It was even possible, with the aid
of the magical observances, partly to balk fate itself. Thus the person
predestined through birth on an unlucky day to die of a serpent bite
might postpone the time of this fateful visitation to extreme old age.
The like uncertainty attached to those spells which one person was
supposed to be able to exercise over another. It was held, for example,
that if something belonging to an individual, such as a lock of hair
or a paring of the nails, could be secured and incorporated in a waxen
figure, this figure would be intimately associated with the personality
of that individual. An enemy might thus secure occult power over one;
any indignity practised upon the waxen figure would result in like
injury to its human prototype. If the figure were bruised or beaten,
some accident would overtake its double; if the image were placed over
a fire, the human being would fall into a fever, and so on. But, of
course, such mysterious evils as these would be met and combated by
equally mysterious processes; and so it was that the entire art of
medicine was closely linked with magical practices. It was not, indeed,
held, according to Maspero, that the magical spells of enemies were
the sole sources of human ailments, but one could never be sure to what
extent such spells entered into the affliction; and so closely were the
human activities associated in the mind of the Egyptian with one form or
another of occult influences that purely physical conditions were at a
discount. In the later times, at any rate, the physician was usually
a priest, and there was a close association between the material and
spiritual phases of therapeutics. Erman(4) tells us that the following
formula had to be recited at the preparation of all medicaments: "That
Isis might make free, make free. That Isis might make Horus free from
all evil that his brother Set had done to him when he slew his father,
Osiris. O Isis, great enchantress, free me, release me from all evil red
things, from the fever of the god, and the fever of the goddess, from
death and death from pain, and the pain which comes over me; as thou
hast freed, as thou hast released thy son Horus, whilst I enter into the
fire and come forth from the water," etc. Again, when the invalid took
the medicine, an incantation had to be said which began thus: "Come
remedy, come drive it out of my heart, out of these limbs strong in
magic power with the remedy." He adds: "There may have been a few
rationalists amongst the Egyptian doctors, for the number of magic
formulae varies much in the different books. The book that we
have specially taken for a foundation for this account of Egyptian
medicine--the great papyrus of the eighteenth dynasty edited by
Ebers(5)--contains, for instance, far fewer exorcisms than some later
writings with similar contents, probably because the doctor who compiled
this book of recipes from older sources had very little liking for
magic."

It must be understood, however--indeed, what has just been said implies
as much--that the physician by no means relied upon incantations alone;
on the contrary, he equipped himself with an astonishing variety of
medicaments. He had a particular fondness for what the modern physician
speaks of as a "shot-gun" prescription--one containing a great variety
of ingredients. Not only did herbs of many kinds enter into this, but
such substances as lizard's blood, the teeth of swine, putrid meat,
the moisture from pigs' ears, boiled horn, and numerous other even more
repellent ingredients. Whoever is familiar with the formulae employed by
European physicians even so recently as the eighteenth century will note
a striking similarity here. Erman points out that the modern Egyptian
even of this day holds closely to many of the practices of his remote
ancestor. In particular, the efficacy of the beetle as a medicinal
agent has stood the test of ages of practice. "Against all kinds of
witchcraft," says an ancient formula, "a great scarabaeus beetle; cut
off his head and wings, boil him; put him in oil and lay him out;
then cook his head and wings, put them in snake fat, boil, and let the
patient drink the mixture." The modern Egyptian, says Erman, uses almost
precisely the same recipe, except that the snake fat is replaced by
modern oil.

In evidence of the importance which was attached to practical medicine
in the Egypt of an early day, the names of several physicians have come
down to us from an age which has preserved very few names indeed, save
those of kings. In reference to this Erman says(6): "We still know
the names of some of the early body physicians of this time;
Sechmetna'eonch, 'chief physician of the Pharaoh,' and Nesmenan his
chief, the 'superintendent of the physicians of the Pharaoh.' The
priests also of the lioness-headed goddess Sechmet seem to have been
famed for their medical wisdom, whilst the son of this goddess, the
demi-god Imhotep, was in later times considered to be the creator of
medical knowledge. These ancient doctors of the New Empire do not seem
to have improved upon the older conceptions about the construction of
the human body."

As to the actual scientific attainments of the Egyptian physician, it is
difficult to speak with precision. Despite the cumbersome formulae and
the grotesque incantations, we need not doubt that a certain practical
value attended his therapeutics. He practised almost pure empiricism,
however, and certainly it must have been almost impossible to determine
which ones, if any, of the numerous ingredients of the prescription had
real efficacy.

The practical anatomical knowledge of the physician, there is every
reason to believe, was extremely limited. At first thought it might
seem that the practice of embalming would have led to the custom of
dissecting human bodies, and that the Egyptians, as a result of this,
would have excelled in the knowledge of anatomy. But the actual
results were rather the reverse of this. Embalming the dead, it must
be recalled, was a purely religious observance. It took place under the
superintendence of the priests, but so great was the reverence for the
human body that the priests themselves were not permitted to make the
abdominal incision which was a necessary preliminary of the process.
This incision, as we are informed by both Herodotus(7) and Diodorus(8),
was made by a special officer, whose status, if we may believe the
explicit statement of Diodorus, was quite comparable to that of the
modern hangman. The paraschistas, as he was called, having performed
his necessary but obnoxious function, with the aid of a sharp Ethiopian
stone, retired hastily, leaving the remaining processes to the priests.
These, however, confined their observations to the abdominal viscera;
under no consideration did they make other incisions in the body. It
follows, therefore, that their opportunity for anatomical observations
was most limited.

Since even the necessary mutilation inflicted on the corpse was regarded
with such horror, it follows that anything in the way of dissection
for a less sacred purpose was absolutely prohibited. Probably the same
prohibition extended to a large number of animals, since most of these
were held sacred in one part of Egypt or another. Moreover, there is
nothing in what we know of the Egyptian mind to suggest the probability
that any Egyptian physician would make extensive anatomical observations
for the love of pure knowledge. All Egyptian science is eminently
practical. If we think of the Egyptian as mysterious, it is because
of the superstitious observances that we everywhere associate with his
daily acts; but these, as we have already tried to make clear, were
really based on scientific observations of a kind, and the attempt at
true inferences from these observations. But whether or not the Egyptian
physician desired anatomical knowledge, the results of his inquiries
were certainly most meagre. The essentials of his system had to do with
a series of vessels, alleged to be twenty-two or twenty-four in number,
which penetrated the head and were distributed in pairs to the various
members of the body, and which were vaguely thought of as carriers of
water, air, excretory fluids, etc. Yet back of this vagueness, as must
not be overlooked, there was an all-essential recognition of the heart
as the central vascular organ. The heart is called the beginning of all
the members. Its vessels, we are told, "lead to all the members; whether
the doctor lays his finger on the forehead, on the back of the head, on
the hands, on the place of the stomach (?), on the arms, or on the feet,
everywhere he meets with the heart, because its vessels lead to all
the members."(9) This recognition of the pulse must be credited to the
Egyptian physician as a piece of practical knowledge, in some measure
off-setting the vagueness of his anatomical theories.


ABSTRACT SCIENCE

But, indeed, practical knowledge was, as has been said over and
over, the essential characteristic of Egyptian science. Yet another
illustration of this is furnished us if we turn to the more abstract
departments of thought and inquire what were the Egyptian attempts
in such a field as mathematics. The answer does not tend greatly to
increase our admiration for the Egyptian mind. We are led to see,
indeed, that the Egyptian merchant was able to perform all the
computations necessary to his craft, but we are forced to conclude that
the knowledge of numbers scarcely extended beyond this, and that even
here the methods of reckoning were tedious and cumbersome. Our knowledge
of the subject rests largely upon the so-called papyrus Rhind,(10) which
is a sort of mythological hand-book of the ancient Egyptians. Analyzing
this document, Professor Erman concludes that the knowledge of the
Egyptians was adequate to all practical requirements. Their mathematics
taught them "how in the exchange of bread for beer the respective value
was to be determined when converted into a quantity of corn; how to
reckon the size of a field; how to determine how a given quantity of
corn would go into a granary of a certain size," and like every-day
problems. Yet they were obliged to make some of their simple
computations in a very roundabout way. It would appear, for example,
that their mental arithmetic did not enable them to multiply by a number
larger than two, and that they did not reach a clear conception of
complex fractional numbers. They did, indeed, recognize that each part
of an object divided into 10 pieces became 1/10 of that object; they
even grasped the idea of 2/3 this being a conception easily visualized;
but they apparently did not visualize such a conception as 3/10 except
in the crude form of 1/10 plus 1/10 plus 1/10. Their entire idea
of division seems defective. They viewed the subject from the more
elementary stand-point of multiplication. Thus, in order to find out
how many times 7 is contained in 77, an existing example shows that the
numbers representing 1 times 7, 2 times 7, 4 times 7, 8 times 7 were set
down successively and various experimental additions made to find out
which sets of these numbers aggregated 77.

  --1 7
  --2 14
  --4 28
  --8 56

A line before the first, second, and fourth of these numbers indicated
that it is necessary to multiply 7 by 1 plus 2 plus 8--that is, by 11,
in order to obtain 77; that is to say, 7 goes 11 times in 77. All this
seems very cumbersome indeed, yet we must not overlook the fact that the
process which goes on in our own minds in performing such a problem
as this is precisely similar, except that we have learned to slur
over certain of the intermediate steps with the aid of a memorized
multiplication table. In the last analysis, division is only the
obverse side of multiplication, and any one who has not learned his
multiplication table is reduced to some such expedient as that of the
Egyptian. Indeed, whenever we pass beyond the range of our memorized
multiplication table-which for most of us ends with the twelves--the
experimental character of the trial multiplication through which
division is finally effected does not so greatly differ from the
experimental efforts which the Egyptian was obliged to apply to smaller
numbers.

Despite his defective comprehension of fractions, the Egyptian was
able to work out problems of relative complexity; for example, he could
determine the answer of such a problem as this: a number together with
its fifth part makes 21; what is the number? The process by which the
Egyptian solved this problem seems very cumbersome to any one for whom
a rudimentary knowledge of algebra makes it simple, yet the method
which we employ differs only in that we are enabled, thanks to our
hypothetical x, to make a short cut, and the essential fact must not be
overlooked that the Egyptian reached a correct solution of the problem.
With all due desire to give credit, however, the fact remains that
the Egyptian was but a crude mathematician. Here, as elsewhere, it
is impossible to admire him for any high development of theoretical
science. First, last, and all the time, he was practical, and there is
nothing to show that the thought of science for its own sake, for the
mere love of knowing, ever entered his head.

In general, then, we must admit that the Egyptian had not progressed far
in the hard way of abstract thinking. He worshipped everything about him
because he feared the result of failing to do so. He embalmed the
dead lest the spirit of the neglected one might come to torment him.
Eye-minded as he was, he came to have an artistic sense, to love
decorative effects. But he let these always take precedence over his
sense of truth; as, for example, when he modified his lists of kings at
Abydos to fit the space which the architect had left to be filled; he
had no historical sense to show to him that truth should take precedence
over mere decoration. And everywhere he lived in the same happy-go-lucky
way. He loved personal ease, the pleasures of the table, the luxuries
of life, games, recreations, festivals. He took no heed for the morrow,
except as the morrow might minister to his personal needs. Essentially
a sensual being, he scarcely conceived the meaning of the intellectual
life in the modern sense of the term. He had perforce learned some
things about astronomy, because these were necessary to his worship
of the gods; about practical medicine, because this ministered to his
material needs; about practical arithmetic, because this aided him in
every-day affairs. The bare rudiments of an historical science may be
said to be crudely outlined in his defective lists of kings. But beyond
this he did not go. Science as science, and for its own sake, was
unknown to him. He had gods for all material functions, and festivals
in honor of every god; but there was no goddess of mere wisdom in his
pantheon. The conception of Minerva was reserved for the creative genius
of another people.




III. SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

Throughout classical antiquity Egyptian science was famous. We know that
Plato spent some years in Egypt in the hope of penetrating the alleged
mysteries of its fabled learning; and the story of the Egyptian priest
who patronizingly assured Solon that the Greeks were but babes was
quoted everywhere without disapproval. Even so late as the time of
Augustus, we find Diodorus, the Sicilian, looking back with veneration
upon the Oriental learning, to which Pliny also refers with unbounded
respect. From what we have seen of Egyptian science, all this furnishes
us with a somewhat striking commentary upon the attainments of the
Greeks and Romans themselves. To refer at length to this would be to
anticipate our purpose; what now concerns us is to recall that all along
there was another nation, or group of nations, that disputed the palm
for scientific attainments. This group of nations found a home in the
valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. Their land was named Mesopotamia by
the Greeks, because a large part of it lay between the two rivers just
mentioned. The peoples themselves are familiar to every one as
the Babylonians and the Assyrians. These peoples were of Semitic
stock--allied, therefore, to the ancient Hebrews and Phoenicians and of
the same racial stem with the Arameans and Arabs.

The great capital of the Babylonians during the later period of their
history was the famed city of Babylon itself; the most famous capital
of the Assyrians was Nineveh, that city to which, as every Bible-student
will recall, the prophet Jonah was journeying when he had a
much-exploited experience, the record of which forms no part of
scientific annals. It was the kings of Assyria, issuing from their
palaces in Nineveh, who dominated the civilization of Western Asia
during the heyday of Hebrew history, and whose deeds are so frequently
mentioned in the Hebrew chronicles. Later on, in the year 606 B.C.,
Nineveh was overthrown by the Medes(1) and Babylonians. The famous city
was completely destroyed, never to be rebuilt. Babylon, however, though
conquered subsequently by Cyrus and held in subjection by Darius,(2) the
Persian kings, continued to hold sway as a great world-capital for some
centuries. The last great historical event that occurred within its
walls was the death of Alexander the Great, which took place there in
the year 322 B.C.

In the time of Herodotus the fame of Babylon was at its height, and the
father of history has left us a most entertaining account of what he saw
when he visited the wonderful capital. Unfortunately, Herodotus was
not a scholar in the proper acceptance of the term. He probably had no
inkling of the Babylonian language, so the voluminous records of its
literature were entirely shut off from his observation. He therefore
enlightens us but little regarding the science of the Babylonians,
though his observations on their practical civilization give us
incidental references of no small importance. Somewhat more detailed
references to the scientific attainments of the Babylonians are found
in the fragments that have come down to us of the writings of the great
Babylonian historian, Berosus,(3) who was born in Babylon about 330
B.C., and who was, therefore, a contemporary of Alexander the Great.
But the writings of Berosus also, or at least such parts of them as have
come down to us, leave very much to be desired in point of explicitness.
They give some glimpses of Babylonian history, and they detail at some
length the strange mythical tales of creation that entered into the
Babylonian conception of cosmogony--details which find their counterpart
in the allied recitals of the Hebrews. But taken all in all, the
glimpses of the actual state of Chaldean(4) learning, as it was commonly
called, amounted to scarcely more than vague wonder-tales. No one
really knew just what interpretation to put upon these tales until
the explorers of the nineteenth century had excavated the ruins of the
Babylonian and Assyrian cities, bringing to light the relics of their
wonderful civilization. But these relics fortunately included vast
numbers of written documents, inscribed on tablets, prisms, and
cylinders of terra-cotta. When nineteenth-century scholarship had
penetrated the mysteries of the strange script, and ferreted out the
secrets of an unknown tongue, the world at last was in possession of
authentic records by which the traditions regarding the Babylonians
and Assyrians could be tested. Thanks to these materials, a new science
commonly spoken of as Assyriology came into being, and a most important
chapter of human history was brought to light. It became apparent that
the Greek ideas concerning Mesopotamia, though vague in the extreme,
were founded on fact. No one any longer questions that the Mesopotamian
civilization was fully on a par with that of Egypt; indeed, it is rather
held that superiority lay with the Asiatics. Certainly, in point of
purely scientific attainments, the Babylonians passed somewhat beyond
their Egyptian competitors. All the evidence seems to suggest also that
the Babylonian civilization was even more ancient than that of Egypt.
The precise dates are here in dispute; nor for our present purpose need
they greatly concern us. But the Assyrio-Babylonian records have much
greater historical accuracy as regards matters of chronology than
have the Egyptian, and it is believed that our knowledge of the early
Babylonian history is carried back, with some certainty, to King Sargon
of Agade,(5) for whom the date 3800 B.C. is generally accepted; while
somewhat vaguer records give us glimpses of periods as remote as the
sixth, perhaps even the seventh or eighth millenniums before our era.

At a very early period Babylon itself was not a capital and Nineveh
had not come into existence. The important cities, such as Nippur and
Shirpurla, were situated farther to the south. It is on the site of
these cities that the recent excavations have been made, such as those
of the University of Pennsylvania expeditions at Nippur,(6) which are
giving us glimpses into remoter recesses of the historical period.

Even if we disregard the more problematical early dates, we are
still concerned with the records of a civilization extending unbroken
throughout a period of about four thousand years; the actual period is
in all probability twice or thrice that. Naturally enough, the current
of history is not an unbroken stream throughout this long epoch.
It appears that at least two utterly different ethnic elements are
involved. A preponderance of evidence seems to show that the earliest
civilized inhabitants of Mesopotamia were not Semitic, but an alien
race, which is now commonly spoken of as Sumerian. This people, of whom
we catch glimpses chiefly through the records of its successors, appears
to have been subjugated or overthrown by Semitic invaders, who, coming
perhaps from Arabia (their origin is in dispute), took possession of the
region of the Tigris and Euphrates, learned from the Sumerians many of
the useful arts, and, partly perhaps because of their mixed lineage,
were enabled to develop the most wonderful civilization of antiquity.
Could we analyze the details of this civilization from its earliest to
its latest period we should of course find the same changes which always
attend racial progress and decay. We should then be able, no doubt,
to speak of certain golden epochs and their periods of decline. To a
certain meagre extent we are able to do this now. We know, for example,
that King Khammurabi, who lived about 2200 B.C., was a great law-giver,
the ancient prototype of Justinian; and the epochs of such Assyrian
kings as Sargon II., Asshurnazirpal, Sennacherib, and Asshurbanapal
stand out with much distinctness. Yet, as a whole, the record does not
enable us to trace with clearness the progress of scientific thought.
At best we can gain fewer glimpses in this direction than in almost
any other, for it is the record of war and conquest rather than of the
peaceful arts that commanded the attention of the ancient scribe. So
in dealing with the scientific achievements of these peoples, we shall
perforce consider their varied civilizations as a unity, and attempt,
as best we may, to summarize their achievements as a whole. For the most
part, we shall not attempt to discriminate as to what share in the final
product was due to Sumerian, what to Babylonian, and what to Assyrian.
We shall speak of Babylonian science as including all these elements;
and drawing our information chiefly from the relatively late Assyrian
and Babylonian sources, which, therefore, represent the culminating
achievements of all these ages of effort, we shall attempt to discover
what was the actual status of Mesopotamian science at its climax. In so
far as we succeed, we shall be able to judge what scientific heritage
Europe received from the Orient; for in the records of Babylonian
science we have to do with the Eastern mind at its best. Let us turn to
the specific inquiry as to the achievements of the Chaldean scientist
whose fame so dazzled the eyes of his contemporaries of the classic
world.


BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMY

Our first concern naturally is astronomy, this being here, as in Egypt,
the first-born and the most important of the sciences. The fame of the
Chaldean astronomer was indeed what chiefly commanded the admiration of
the Greeks, and it was through the results of astronomical observations
that Babylonia transmitted her most important influences to the Western
world. "Our division of time is of Babylonian origin," says Hornmel;(7)
"to Babylonia we owe the week of seven days, with the names of the
planets for the days of the week, and the division into hours and
months." Hence the almost personal interest which we of to-day must
needs feel in the efforts of the Babylonian star-gazer.

It must not be supposed, however, that the Chaldean astronomer had
made any very extraordinary advances upon the knowledge of the Egyptian
"watchers of the night." After all, it required patient observation
rather than any peculiar genius in the observer to note in the course of
time such broad astronomical conditions as the regularity of the moon's
phases, and the relation of the lunar periods to the longer periodical
oscillations of the sun. Nor could the curious wanderings of the planets
escape the attention of even a moderately keen observer. The chief
distinction between the Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers appears to
have consisted in the relative importance they attached to various of
the phenomena which they both observed. The Egyptian, as we have seen,
centred his attention upon the sun. That luminary was the abode of
one of his most important gods. His worship was essentially solar. The
Babylonian, on the other hand, appears to have been peculiarly impressed
with the importance of the moon. He could not, of course, overlook the
attention-compelling fact of the solar year; but his unit of time was
the lunar period of thirty days, and his year consisted of twelve lunar
periods, or 360 days. He was perfectly aware, however, that this period
did not coincide with the actual year; but the relative unimportance
which he ascribed to the solar year is evidenced by the fact that he
interpolated an added month to adjust the calendar only once in six
years. Indeed, it would appear that the Babylonians and Assyrians did
not adopt precisely the same method of adjusting the calendar, since the
Babylonians had two intercular months called Elul and Adar, whereas the
Assyrians had only a single such month, called the second Adar.(8) (The
Ve'Adar of the Hebrews.) This diversity further emphasizes the fact that
it was the lunar period which received chief attention, the adjustment
of this period with the solar seasons being a necessary expedient of
secondary importance. It is held that these lunar periods have often
been made to do service for years in the Babylonian computations and in
the allied computations of the early Hebrews. The lives of the Hebrew
patriarchs, for example, as recorded in the Bible, are perhaps reckoned
in lunar "years." Divided by twelve, the "years" of Methuselah accord
fairly with the usual experience of mankind.

Yet, on the other hand, the convenience of the solar year in computing
long periods of time was not unrecognized, since this period is utilized
in reckoning the reigns of the Assyrian kings. It may be added that the
reign of a king "was not reckoned from the day of his accession, but
from the Assyrian new year's day, either before or after the day of
accession. There does not appear to have been any fixed rule as to which
new year's day should be chosen; but from the number of known cases, it
appears to have been the general practice to count the reigning years
from the new year's day nearest the accession, and to call the period
between the accession day and the first new year's day 'the beginning of
the reign,' when the year from the new year's day was called the
first year, and the following ones were brought successively from
it. Notwithstanding, in the dates of several Assyrian and Babylonian
sovereigns there are cases of the year of accession being considered
as the first year, thus giving two reckonings for the reigns of various
monarchs, among others, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, Nebuchadrezzar."(9)
This uncertainty as to the years of reckoning again emphasizes the fact
that the solar year did not have for the Assyrian chronology quite the
same significance that it has for us.

The Assyrian month commenced on the evening when the new moon was first
observed, or, in case the moon was not visible, the new month started
thirty days after the last month. Since the actual lunar period is
about twenty-nine and one-half days, a practical adjustment was required
between the months themselves, and this was probably effected by
counting alternate months as Only 29 days in length. Mr. R. Campbell
Thompson(10) is led by his studies of the astrological tablets to
emphasize this fact. He believes that "the object of the astrological
reports which related to the appearance of the moon and sun was to help
determine and foretell the length of the lunar month." Mr. Thompson
believes also that there is evidence to show that the interculary month
was added at a period less than six years. In point of fact, it does
not appear to be quite clearly established as to precisely how the
adjustment of days with the lunar months, and lunar months with the
solar year, was effected. It is clear, however, according to Smith,
"that the first 28 days of every month were divided into four weeks of
seven days each; the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth
days respectively being Sabbaths, and that there was a general
prohibition of work on these days." Here, of course, is the foundation
of the Hebrew system of Sabbatical days which we have inherited. The
sacredness of the number seven itself--the belief in which has not
been quite shaken off even to this day--was deduced by the Assyrian
astronomer from his observation of the seven planetary bodies--namely,
Sin (the moon), Samas (the sun), Umunpawddu (Jupiter), Dilbat (Venus),
Kaimanu (Saturn), Gudud (Mercury), Mustabarru-mutanu (Mars).(11) Twelve
lunar periods, making up approximately the solar year, gave peculiar
importance to the number twelve also. Thus the zodiac was divided into
twelve signs which astronomers of all subsequent times have continued
to recognize; and the duodecimal system of counting took precedence with
the Babylonian mathematicians over the more primitive and, as it seems
to us, more satisfactory decimal system.

Another discrepancy between the Babylonian and Egyptian years appears in
the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the
vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with
the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates
occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the
Nile flood comes at the time of the solstice. It is but natural that so
important a phenomenon as the Nile flood should make a strong impression
upon the minds of a people living in a valley. The fact that occasional
excessive inundations have led to most disastrous results is evidenced
in the incorporation of stories of the almost total destruction of
mankind by such floods among the myth tales of all peoples who reside in
valley countries. The flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates had not, it
is true, quite the same significance for the Mesopotamians that the
Nile flood had for the Egyptians. Nevertheless it was a most important
phenomenon, and may very readily be imagined to have been the most
tangible index to the seasons. But in recognizing the time of the
inundations and the vernal equinox, the Assyrians did not dethrone
the moon from its accustomed precedence, for the year was reckoned as
commencing not precisely at the vernal equinox, but at the new moon next
before the equinox.


ASTROLOGY

Beyond marking the seasons, the chief interests that actuated the
Babylonian astronomer in his observations were astrological. After
quoting Diodorus to the effect that the Babylonian priests observed the
position of certain stars in order to cast horoscopes, Thompson tells us
that from a very early day the very name Chaldean became synonymous with
magician. He adds that "from Mesopotamia, by way of Greece and Rome, a
certain amount of Babylonian astrology made its way among the nations
of the west, and it is quite probable that many superstitions which we
commonly record as the peculiar product of western civilization took
their origin from those of the early dwellers on the alluvial lands of
Mesopotamia. One Assurbanipal, king of Assyria B.C. 668-626, added to
the royal library at Nineveh his contribution of tablets, which included
many series of documents which related exclusively to the astrology of
the ancient Babylonians, who in turn had borrowed it with modifications
from the Sumerian invaders of the country. Among these must be mentioned
the series which was commonly called 'the Day of Bel,' and which was
decreed by the learned to have been written in the time of the great
Sargon I., king of Agade, 3800 B.C. With such ancient works as these to
guide them, the profession of deducing omens from daily events reached
such a pitch of importance in the last Assyrian Empire that a system
of making periodical reports came into being. By these the king was
informed of all the occurrences in the heavens and on earth, and the
results of astrological studies in respect to after events. The heads
of the astrological profession were men of high rank and position, and
their office was hereditary. The variety of information contained in
these reports is best gathered from the fact that they were sent from
cities as far removed from each other as Assur in the north and Erech
in the south, and it can only be assumed that they were despatched
by runners, or men mounted on swift horses. As reports also came from
Dilbat, Kutba, Nippur, and Bursippa, all cities of ancient foundation,
the king was probably well acquainted with the general course of events
in his empire."(12)

From certain passages in the astrological tablets, Thompson draws the
interesting conclusion that the Chaldean astronomers were acquainted
with some kind of a machine for reckoning time. He finds in one of the
tablets a phrase which he interprets to mean measure-governor, and
he infers from this the existence of a kind of a calculator. He calls
attention also to the fact that Sextus Empiricus(13) states that the
clepsydra was known to the Chaldeans, and that Herodotus asserts that
the Greeks borrowed certain measures of time from the Babylonians.
He finds further corroboration in the fact that the Babylonians had
a time-measure by which they divided the day and the night; a measure
called kasbu, which contained two hours. In a report relating to the day
of the vernal equinox, it is stated that there are six kasbu of the day
and six kasbu of the night.

While the astrologers deduced their omens from all the celestial bodies
known to them, they chiefly gave attention to the moon, noting with
great care the shape of its horns, and deducing such a conclusion
as that "if the horns are pointed the king will overcome whatever
he goreth," and that "when the moon is low at its appearance, the
submission (of the people) of a far country will come."(14) The
relations of the moon and sun were a source of constant observation,
it being noted whether the sun and moon were seen together above the
horizon; whether one set as the other rose, and the like. And whatever
the phenomena, there was always, of course, a direct association between
such phenomena and the well-being of human kind--in particular the king,
at whose instance, and doubtless at whose expense, the observations were
carried out.

From omens associated with the heavenly bodies it is but a step to omens
based upon other phenomena of nature, and we, shall see in a moment that
the Babylonian prophets made free use of their opportunities in this
direction also. But before we turn from the field of astronomy, it will
be well to inform ourselves as to what system the Chaldean astronomer
had invented in explanation of the mechanics of the universe. Our
answer to this inquiry is not quite as definite as could be desired, the
vagueness of the records, no doubt, coinciding with the like vagueness
in the minds of the Chaldeans themselves. So far as we can interpret
the somewhat mystical references that have come down to us, however,
the Babylonian cosmology would seem to have represented the earth as a
circular plane surrounded by a great circular river, beyond which rose
an impregnable barrier of mountains, and resting upon an infinite sea of
waters. The material vault of the heavens was supposed to find support
upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through
which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected
remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural.
The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the
Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible
phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception
of the cosmos was attainable. We shall see in due course by what
faltering steps the European imagination advanced from the crude ideas
of Egypt and Babylonia to the relatively clear vision of Newton and
Laplace.


CHALDEAN MAGIC

We turn now from the field of the astrologer to the closely allied
province of Chaldean magic--a province which includes the other;
which, indeed, is so all-encompassing as scarcely to leave any phase of
Babylonian thought outside its bounds.

The tablets having to do with omens, exorcisms, and the like magic
practices make up an astonishingly large proportion of the Babylonian
records. In viewing them it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
superstitions which they evidenced absolutely dominated the life of
the Babylonians of every degree. Yet it must not be forgotten that the
greatest inconsistencies everywhere exist between the superstitious
beliefs of a people and the practical observances of that people. No
other problem is so difficult for the historian as that which confronts
him when he endeavors to penetrate the mysteries of an alien religion;
and when, as in the present case, the superstitions involved have been
transmitted from generation to generation, their exact practical
phases as interpreted by any particular generation must be somewhat
problematical. The tablets upon which our knowledge of these omens is
based are many of them from the libraries of the later kings of Nineveh;
but the omens themselves are, in such cases, inscribed in the original
Accadian form in which they have come down from remote ages, accompanied
by an Assyrian translation. Thus the superstitions involved had back of
them hundreds of years, even thousands of years, of precedent; and
we need not doubt that the ideas with which they are associated were
interwoven with almost every thought and deed of the life of the people.
Professor Sayce assures us that the Assyrians and Babylonians counted no
fewer than three hundred spirits of heaven, and six hundred spirits of
earth. "Like the Jews of the Talmud," he says, "they believed that
the world was swarming with noxious spirits, who produced the various
diseases to which man is liable, and might be swallowed with the food
and drink which support life." Fox Talbot was inclined to believe that
exorcisms were the exclusive means used to drive away the tormenting
spirits. This seems unlikely, considering the uniform association
of drugs with the magical practices among their people. Yet there is
certainly a strange silence of the tablets in regard to medicine.
Talbot tells us that sometimes divine images were brought into the
sick-chamber, and written texts taken from holy books were placed on the
walls and bound around the sick man's members. If these failed, recourse
was had to the influence of the mamit, which the evil powers were unable
to resist. On a tablet, written in the Accadian language only, the
Assyrian version being taken, however, was found the following:

  1. Take a white cloth. In it place the mamit,
  2. in the sick man's right hand.
  3. Take a black cloth,
  4. wrap it around his left hand.
  5. Then all the evil spirits (a long list of them is given)
  6. and the sins which he has committed
  7. shall quit their hold of him
  8. and shall never return.


The symbolism of the black cloth in the left hand seems evident. The
dying man repents of his former evil deeds, and he puts his trust in
holiness, symbolized by the white cloth in his right hand. Then follow
some obscure lines about the spirits:

  1. Their heads shall remove from his head.
  2. Their heads shall let go his hands.
  3. Their feet shall depart from his feet.

Which perhaps may be explained thus: we learn from another tablet that
the various classes of evil spirits troubled different parts of
the body; some injured the head, some the hands and the feet, etc.,
therefore the passage before may mean "the spirits whose power is
over the hand shall loose their hands from his," etc. "But," concludes
Talbot, "I can offer no decided opinion upon such obscure points of
their superstition."(15)

In regard to evil spirits, as elsewhere, the number seven had a peculiar
significance, it being held that that number of spirits might enter into
a man together. Talbot has translated(16) a "wild chant" which he names
"The Song of the Seven Spirits."

  1. There are seven! There are seven!
  2. In the depths of the ocean there are seven!
  3. In the heights of the heaven there are seven!
  4. In the ocean stream in a palace they were born.
  5. Male they are not: female they are not!
  6. Wives they have not! Children are not born to them!
  7. Rules they have not! Government they know not!
  8. Prayers they hear not!
  9. There are seven! There are seven! Twice over there are
seven!

The tablets make frequent allusion to these seven spirits. One starts
thus:

  1. The god (---) shall stand by his bedside;
  2. These seven evil spirits he shall root out and shall expel
them from his body,  3. and these seven shall never return to the sick man
again.(17)


Altogether similar are the exorcisms intended to ward off disease.
Professor Sayce has published translations of some of these.(18) Each of
these ends with the same phrase, and they differ only in regard to the
particular maladies from which freedom is desired. One reads:

"From wasting, from want of health, from the evil spirit of the ulcer,
from the spreading quinsy of the gullet, from the violent ulcer, from
the noxious ulcer, may the king of heaven preserve, may the king of
earth preserve."

Another is phrased thus:

"From the cruel spirit of the head, from the strong spirit of the head,
from the head spirit that departs not, from the head spirit that comes
not forth, from the head spirit that will not go, from the noxious
head spirit, may the king of heaven preserve, may the king of earth
preserve."

As to omens having to do with the affairs of everyday life the number
is legion. For example, Moppert has published, in the Journal
Asiatique,(19) the translation of a tablet which contains on its two
sides several scores of birth-portents, a few of which maybe quoted at
random:

"When a woman bears a child and it has the ears of a lion, a strong
king is in the country." "When a woman bears a child and it has a bird's
beak, that country is oppressed." "When a woman bears a child and its
right hand is wanting, that country goes to destruction." "When a woman
bears a child and its feet are wanting, the roads of the country are
cut; that house is destroyed." "When a woman bears a child and at the
time of its birth its beard is grown, floods are in the country." "When
a woman bears a child and at the time of its birth its mouth is open and
speaks, there is pestilence in the country, the Air-god inundates the
crops of the country, injury in the country is caused."

Some of these portents, it will be observed, are not in much danger
of realization, and it is curious to surmise by what stretch of the
imagination they can have been invented. There is, for example, on the
same tablet just quoted, one reference which assures us that "when a
sheep bears a lion the forces march multitudinously; the king has not a
rival." There are other omens, however, that are so easy of realization
as to lead one to suppose that any Babylonian who regarded all the
superstitious signs must have been in constant terror. Thus a tablet
translated by Professor Sayce(20) gives a long list of omens furnished
by dogs, in which we are assured that:

  1. If a yellow dog enters into the palace, exit from that
     palace will be baleful.
  2. If a dog to the palace goes, and on a throne lies down, that
     palace is burned.
  3. If a black dog into a temple enters, the foundation of that
     temple is not stable.
  4. If female dogs one litter bear, destruction to the city.

It is needless to continue these citations, since they but reiterate
endlessly the same story. It is interesting to recall, however, that the
observations of animate nature, which were doubtless superstitious in
their motive, had given the Babylonians some inklings of a knowledge of
classification. Thus, according to Menant,(21) some of the tablets from
Nineveh, which are written, as usual, in both the Sumerian and Assyrian
languages, and which, therefore, like practically all Assyrian books,
draw upon the knowledge of old Babylonia, give lists of animals, making
an attempt at classification. The dog, lion, and wolf are placed in one
category; the ox, sheep, and goat in another; the dog family itself is
divided into various races, as the domestic dog, the coursing dog, the
small dog, the dog of Elan, etc. Similar attempts at classification of
birds are found. Thus, birds of rapid flight, sea-birds, and marsh-birds
are differentiated. Insects are classified according to habit; those
that attack plants, animals, clothing, or wood. Vegetables seem to be
classified according to their usefulness. One tablet enumerates the uses
of wood according to its adaptability for timber-work of palaces, or
construction of vessels, the making of implements of husbandry, or even
furniture. Minerals occupy a long series in these tablets. They are
classed according to their qualities, gold and silver occupying a
division apart; precious stones forming another series. Our Babylonians,
then, must be credited with the development of a rudimentary science of
natural history.


BABYLONIAN MEDICINE

We have just seen that medical practice in the Babylonian world was
strangely under the cloud of superstition. But it should be understood
that our estimate, through lack of correct data, probably does much less
than justice to the attainments of the physician of the time. As already
noted, the existing tablets chance not to throw much light on the
subject. It is known, however, that the practitioner of medicine
occupied a position of some, authority and responsibility. The proof
of this is found in the clauses relating to the legal status of
the physician which are contained in the now famous code(22) of the
Babylonian King Khamurabi, who reigned about 2300 years before our era.
These clauses, though throwing no light on the scientific attainments
of the physician of the period, are too curious to be omitted. They are
clauses 215 to 227 of the celebrated code, and are as follows:

215. If a doctor has treated a man for a severe wound with a lancet of
bronze and has cured the man, or has opened a tumor with a bronze lancet
and has cured the man's eye, he shall receive ten shekels of silver.

216. If it was a freedman, he shall receive five shekels of silver.

217. If it was a man's slave, the owner of the slave shall give the
doctor two shekels of silver.

218. If a physician has treated a free-born man for a severe wound with
a lancet of bronze and has caused the man to die, or has opened a tumor
of the man with a lancet of bronze and has destroyed his eye, his hands
one shall cut off.

219. If the doctor has treated the slave of a freedman for a severe
wound with a bronze lancet and has caused him to die, he shall give back
slave for slave.

220. If he has opened his tumor with a bronze lancet and has ruined his
eye, he shall pay the half of his price in money.

221. If a doctor has cured the broken limb of a man, or has healed his
sick body, the patient shall pay the doctor five shekels of silver.

222. If it was a freedman, he shall give three shekels of silver.

223. If it was a man's slave, the owner of the slave shall give two
shekels of silver to the doctor.

224. If the doctor of oxen and asses has treated an ox or an ass for a
grave wound and has cured it, the owner of the ox or the ass shall give
to the doctor as his pay one-sixth of a shekel of silver.

225. If he has treated an ox or an ass for a severe wound and has caused
its death, he shall pay one-fourth of its price to the owner of the ox
or the ass.

226. If a barber-surgeon, without consent of the owner of a slave, has
branded the slave with an indelible mark, one shall cut off the hands of
that barber.

227. If any one deceive the surgeon-barber and make him brand a slave
with an indelible mark, one shall kill that man and bury him in his
house. The barber shall swear, "I did not mark him wittingly," and he
shall be guiltless.


ESTIMATES OF BABYLONIAN SCIENCE

Before turning from the Oriental world it is perhaps worth while to
attempt to estimate somewhat specifically the world-influence of the
name, Babylonian science. Perhaps we cannot better gain an idea as to
the estimate put upon that science by the classical world than through
a somewhat extended quotation from a classical author. Diodorus Siculus,
who, as already noted, lived at about the time of Augustus, and who,
therefore, scanned in perspective the entire sweep of classical Greek
history, has left us a striking summary which is doubly valuable because
of its comparisons of Babylonian with Greek influence. Having viewed the
science of Babylonia in the light of the interpretations made possible
by the recent study of original documents, we are prepared to draw our
own conclusions from the statements of the Greek historian. Here is his
estimate in the words of the quaint translation made by Philemon Holland
in the year 1700:(23)


"They being the most ancient Babylonians, hold the same station and
dignity in the Common-wealth as the Egyptian Priests do in Egypt: For
being deputed to Divine Offices, they spend all their Time in the study
of Philosophy, and are especially famous for the Art of Astrology. They
are mightily given to Divination, and foretel future Events, and imploy
themselves either by Purifications, Sacrifices, or other Inchantments
to avert Evils, or procure good Fortune and Success. They are skilful
likewise in the Art of Divination, by the flying of Birds, and
interpreting of Dreams and Prodigies: And are reputed as true Oracles
(in declaring what will come to pass) by their exact and diligent
viewing the Intrals of the Sacrifices. But they attain not to this
Knowledge in the same manner as the Grecians do; for the Chaldeans learn
it by Tradition from their Ancestors, the Son from the Father, who
are all in the mean time free from all other publick Offices and
Attendances; and because their Parents are their Tutors, they both learn
every thing without Envy, and rely with more confidence upon the truth
of what is taught them; and being train'd up in this Learning, from
their very Childhood, they become most famous Philosophers, (that Age
being most capable of Learning, wherein they spend much of their time).
But the Grecians for the most part come raw to this study, unfitted and
unprepar'd, and are long before they attain to the Knowledge of this
Philosophy: And after they have spent some small time in this Study,
they are many times call'd off and forc'd to leave it, in order to get
a Livelihood and Subsistence. And although some, few do industriously
apply themselves to Philosophy, yet for the sake of Gain, these very Men
are opinionative, and ever and anon starting new and high Points, and
never fix in the steps of their Ancestors. But the Barbarians keeping
constantly close to the same thing, attain to a perfect and distinct
Knowledge in every particular.

"But the Grecians, cunningly catching at all Opportunities of Gain,
make new Sects and Parties, and by their contrary Opinions wrangling and
quarelling concerning the chiefest Points, lead their Scholars into a
Maze; and being uncertain and doubtful what to pitch upon for certain
truth, their Minds are fluctuating and in suspence all the days of their
Lives, and unable to give a certain assent unto any thing. For if any
Man will but examine the most eminent Sects of the Philosophers, he
shall find them much differing among themselves, and even opposing one
another in the most weighty parts of their Philosophy. But to return to
the Chaldeans, they hold that the World is eternal, which had neither
any certain Beginning, nor shall have any End; but all agree, that all
things are order'd, and this beautiful Fabrick is supported by a Divine
Providence, and that the Motions of the Heavens are not perform'd by
chance and of their own accord, but by a certain and determinate Will
and Appointment of the Gods.

"Therefore from a long observation of the Stars, and an exact Knowledge
of the motions and influences of every one of them, wherein they excel
all others, they fortel many things that are to come to pass.

"They say that the Five Stars which some call Planets, but they
Interpreters, are most worthy of Consideration, both for their motions
and their remarkable influences, especially that which the Grecians call
Saturn. The brightest of them all, and which often portends many and
great Events, they call Sol, the other Four they name Mars, Venus,
Mercury, and Jupiter, with our own Country Astrologers. They give the
Name of Interpreters to these Stars, because these only by a peculiar
Motion do portend things to come, and instead of Jupiters, do declare to
Men before-hand the good-will of the Gods; whereas the other Stars (not
being of the number of the Planets) have a constant ordinary motion.
Future Events (they say) are pointed at sometimes by their Rising, and
sometimes by their Setting, and at other times by their Colour, as
may be experienc'd by those that will diligently observe it; sometimes
foreshewing Hurricanes, at other times Tempestuous Rains, and then
again exceeding Droughts. By these, they say, are often portended the
appearance of Comets, Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, Earthquakes and all
other the various Changes and remarkable effects in the Air, boding
good and bad, not only to Nations in general, but to Kings and Private
Persons in particular. Under the course of these Planets, they say are
Thirty Stars, which they call Counselling Gods, half of whom observe
what is done under the Earth, and the other half take notice of the
actions of Men upon the Earth, and what is transacted in the Heavens.
Once every Ten Days space (they say) one of the highest Order of these
Stars descends to them that are of the lowest, like a Messenger sent
from them above; and then again another ascends from those below to them
above, and that this is their constant natural motion to continue for
ever. The chief of these Gods, they say, are Twelve in number, to each
of which they attribute a Month, and one Sign of the Twelve in the
Zodiack.

"Through these Twelve Signs the Sun, Moon, and the other Five Planets
run their Course. The Sun in a Years time, and the Moon in the space
of a Month. To every one of the Planets they assign their own proper
Courses, which are perform'd variously in lesser or shorter time
according as their several motions are quicker or slower. These Stars,
they say, have a great influence both as to good and bad in Mens
Nativities; and from the consideration of their several Natures, may
be foreknown what will befal Men afterwards. As they foretold things
to come to other Kings formerly, so they did to Alexander who conquer'd
Darius, and to his Successors Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator; and
accordingly things fell out as they declar'd; which we shall relate
particularly hereafter in a more convenient time. They tell likewise
private Men their Fortunes so certainly, that those who have found the
thing true by Experience, have esteem'd it a Miracle, and above the
reach of man to perform. Out of the Circle of the Zodiack they describe
Four and Twenty Stars, Twelve towards the North Pole, and as many to the
South.

"Those which we see, they assign to the living; and the other that do
not appear, they conceive are Constellations for the Dead; and they term
them Judges of all things. The Moon, they say, is in the lowest Orb;
and being therefore next to the Earth (because she is so small), she
finishes her Course in a little time, not through the swiftness of her
Motion, but the shortness of her Sphear. In that which they affirm (that
she has but a borrow'd light, and that when she is eclips'd, it's caus'd
by the interposition of the shadow of the Earth) they agree with the
Grecians.

"Their Rules and Notions concerning the Eclipses of the Sun are but weak
and mean, which they dare not positively foretel, nor fix a certain time
for them. They have likewise Opinions concerning the Earth peculiar to
themselves, affirming it to resemble a Boat, and to be hollow, to prove
which, and other things relating to the frame of the World, they abound
in Arguments; but to give a particular Account of 'em, we conceive would
be a thing foreign to our History. But this any Man may justly and truly
say, That the Chaldeans far exceed all other Men in the Knowledge of
Astrology, and have study'd it most of any other Art or Science: But
the number of years during which the Chaldeans say, those of their
Profession have given themselves to the study of this natural
Philosophy, is incredible; for when Alexander was in Asia, they reckon'd
up Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand Years since they first began to
observe the Motions of the Stars."


Let us now supplement this estimate of Babylonian influence with another
estimate written in our own day, and quoted by one of the most recent
historians of Babylonia and Assyria.(24) The estimate in question
is that of Canon Rawlinson in his Great Oriental Monarchies.(25) Of
Babylonia he says:

"Hers was apparently the genius which excogitated an alphabet; worked
out the simpler problems of arithmetic; invented implements for
measuring the lapse of time; conceived the idea of raising enormous
structures with the poorest of all materials, clay; discovered the art
of polishing, boring, and engraving gems; reproduced with truthfulness
the outlines of human and animal forms; attained to high perfection
in textile fabrics; studied with success the motions of the heavenly
bodies; conceived of grammar as a science; elaborated a system of law;
saw the value of an exact chronology--in almost every branch of science
made a beginning, thus rendering it comparatively easy for other nations
to proceed with the superstructure.... It was from the East, not from
Egypt, that Greece derived her architecture, her sculpture, her science,
her philosophy, her mathematical knowledge--in a word, her intellectual
life. And Babylon was the source to which the entire stream of Eastern
civilization may be traced. It is scarcely too much to say that, but for
Babylon, real civilization might not yet have dawned upon the earth."


Considering that a period of almost two thousand years separates the
times of writing of these two estimates, the estimates themselves are
singularly in unison. They show that the greatest of Oriental nations
has not suffered in reputation at the hands of posterity. It is indeed
almost impossible to contemplate the monuments of Babylonian and
Assyrian civilization that are now preserved in the European and
American museums without becoming enthusiastic. That certainly was
a wonderful civilization which has left us the tablets on which are
inscribed the laws of a Khamurabi on the one hand, and the art
treasures of the palace of an Asshurbanipal on the other. Yet a candid
consideration of the scientific attainments of the Babylonians and
Assyrians can scarcely arouse us to a like enthusiasm. In considering
the subject we have seen that, so far as pure science is concerned,
the efforts of the Babylonians and Assyrians chiefly centred about the
subjects of astrology and magic. With the records of their ghost-haunted
science fresh in mind, one might be forgiven for a momentary desire
to take issue with Canon Rawlinson's words. We are assured that the
scientific attainments of Europe are almost solely to be credited to
Babylonia and not to Egypt, but we should not forget that Plato, the
greatest of the Greek thinkers, went to Egypt and not to Babylonia to
pursue his studies when he wished to penetrate the secrets of Oriental
science and philosophy. Clearly, then, classical Greece did not consider
Babylonia as having a monopoly of scientific knowledge, and we of
to-day, when we attempt to weigh the new evidence that has come to us
in recent generations with the Babylonian records themselves, find that
some, at least, of the heritages for which Babylonia has been praised
are of more than doubtful value. Babylonia, for example, gave us our
seven-day week and our system of computing by twelves. But surely the
world could have got on as well without that magic number seven; and
after some hundreds of generations we are coming to feel that the
decimal system of the Egyptians has advantages over the duodecimal
system of the Babylonians. Again, the Babylonians did not invent the
alphabet; they did not even accept it when all the rest of the world had
recognized its value. In grammar and arithmetic, as with astronomy, they
seemed not to have advanced greatly, if at all, upon the Egyptians. One
field in which they stand out in startling pre-eminence is the field
of astrology; but this, in the estimate of modern thought, is the
very negation of science. Babylonia impressed her superstitions on
the Western world, and when we consider the baleful influence of these
superstitions, we may almost question whether we might not reverse
Canon Rawlinson's estimate and say that perhaps but for Babylonia real
civilization, based on the application of true science, might have
dawned upon the earth a score of centuries before it did. Yet, after
all, perhaps this estimate is unjust. Society, like an individual
organism, must creep before it can walk, and perhaps the Babylonian
experiments in astrology and magic, which European civilization was
destined to copy for some three or four thousand years, must have been
made a part of the necessary evolution of our race in one place or in
another. That thought, however, need not blind us to the essential
fact, which the historian of science must needs admit, that for the
Babylonian, despite his boasted culture, science spelled superstition.




IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET

Before we turn specifically to the new world of the west, it remains
to take note of what may perhaps be regarded as the very greatest
achievement of ancient science. This was the analysis of speech sounds,
and the resulting development of a system of alphabetical writing. To
comprehend the series of scientific inductions which led to this result,
we must go back in imagination and trace briefly the development of
the methods of recording thought by means of graphic symbols. In other
words, we must trace the evolution of the art of writing. In doing so
we cannot hold to national lines as we have done in the preceding two
chapters, though the efforts of the two great scientific nations just
considered will enter prominently into the story.

The familiar Greek legend assures us that a Phoenician named Kadmus was
the first to bring a knowledge of letters into Europe. An elaboration
of the story, current throughout classical times, offered the further
explanation that the Phoenicians had in turn acquired the art of writing
from the Egyptians or Babylonians. Knowledge as to the true origin and
development of the art of writing did not extend in antiquity beyond
such vagaries as these. Nineteenth-century studies gave the first
real clews to an understanding of the subject. These studies tended
to authenticate the essential fact on which the legend of Kadmus was
founded; to the extent, at least, of making it probable that the later
Grecian alphabet was introduced from Phoenicia--though not, of course,
by any individual named Kadmus, the latter being, indeed, a name of
purely Greek origin. Further studies of the past generation tended
to corroborate the ancient belief as to the original source of the
Phoenician alphabet, but divided scholars between two opinions: the one
contending that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were the source upon which
the Phoenicians drew; and the other contending with equal fervor that
the Babylonian wedge character must be conceded that honor.

But, as has often happened in other fields after years of acrimonious
controversy, a new discovery or two may suffice to show that neither
contestant was right. After the Egyptologists of the school of De
Rouge(1) thought they had demonstrated that the familiar symbols of the
Phoenician alphabet had been copied from that modified form of Egyptian
hieroglyphics known as the hieratic writing, the Assyriologists came
forward to prove that certain characters of the Babylonian syllabary
also show a likeness to the alphabetical characters that seemingly could
not be due to chance. And then, when a settlement of the dispute seemed
almost hopeless, it was shown through the Egyptian excavations that
characters even more closely resembling those in dispute had been in use
all about the shores of the Mediterranean, quite independently of
either Egyptian or Assyrian writings, from periods so ancient as to be
virtually prehistoric.

Coupled with this disconcerting discovery are the revelations brought to
light by the excavations at the sites of Knossos and other long-buried
cities of the island of Crete.(2) These excavations, which are still
in progress, show that the art of writing was known and practised
independently in Crete before that cataclysmic overthrow of the early
Greek civilization which archaeologists are accustomed to ascribe to the
hypothetical invasion of the Dorians. The significance of this is that
the art of writing was known in Europe long before the advent of the
mythical Kadmus. But since the early Cretan scripts are not to be
identified with the scripts used in Greece in historical times, whereas
the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent from the Phoenician
alphabet, the validity of the Kadmus legend, in a modified form, must
still be admitted.

As has just been suggested, the new knowledge, particularly that which
related to the great antiquity of characters similar to the Phoenician
alphabetical signs, is somewhat disconcerting. Its general trend,
however, is quite in the same direction with most of the new
archaeological knowledge of recent decades---that is to say, it tends
to emphasize the idea that human civilization in most of its important
elaborations is vastly older than has hitherto been supposed. It may be
added, however, that no definite clews are as yet available that enable
us to fix even an approximate date for the origin of the Phoenician
alphabet. The signs, to which reference has been made, may well have
been in existence for thousands of years, utilized merely as property
marks, symbols for counting and the like, before the idea of setting
them aside as phonetic symbols was ever conceived. Nothing is more
certain, in the judgment of the present-day investigator, than that man
learned to write by slow and painful stages. It is probable that the
conception of such an analysis of speech sounds as would make the idea
of an alphabet possible came at a very late stage of social evolution,
and as the culminating achievement of a long series of improvements
in the art of writing. The precise steps that marked this path of
intellectual development can for the most part be known only by
inference; yet it is probable that the main chapters of the story may be
reproduced with essential accuracy.


FIRST STEPS

For the very first chapters of the story we must go back in imagination
to the prehistoric period. Even barbaric man feels the need of
self-expression, and strives to make his ideas manifest to other men by
pictorial signs. The cave-dwellers scratched pictures of men and animals
on the surface of a reindeer horn or mammoth tusk as mementos of his
prowess. The American Indian does essentially the same thing to-day,
making pictures that crudely record his successes in war and the chase.
The Northern Indian had got no farther than this when the white man
discovered America; but the Aztecs of the Southwest and the Maya people
of Yucatan had carried their picture-making to a much higher state
of elaboration.(3) They had developed systems of pictographs or
hieroglyphics that would doubtless in the course of generations have
been elaborated into alphabetical systems, had not the Europeans cut off
the civilization of which they were the highest exponents.

What the Aztec and Maya were striving towards in the sixteenth century
A.D., various Oriental nations had attained at least five or six
thousand years earlier. In Egypt at the time of the pyramid-builders,
and in Babylonia at the same epoch, the people had developed systems of
writing that enabled them not merely to present a limited range of ideas
pictorially, but to express in full elaboration and with finer shades of
meaning all the ideas that pertain to highly cultured existence. The
man of that time made records of military achievements, recorded the
transactions of every-day business life, and gave expression to his
moral and spiritual aspirations in a way strangely comparable to the
manner of our own time. He had perfected highly elaborate systems of
writing.


EGYPTIAN WRITING

Of the two ancient systems of writing just referred to as being in
vogue at the so-called dawnings of history, the more picturesque and
suggestive was the hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians. This is a
curiously conglomerate system of writing, made up in part of symbols
reminiscent of the crudest stages of picture-writing, in part of symbols
having the phonetic value of syllables, and in part of true alphabetical
letters. In a word, the Egyptian writing represents in itself the
elements of the various stages through which the art of writing has
developed.(4) We must conceive that new features were from time to time
added to it, while the old features, curiously enough, were not given
up.

Here, for example, in the midst of unintelligible lines and pot-hooks,
are various pictures that are instantly recognizable as representations
of hawks, lions, ibises, and the like. It can hardly be questioned that
when these pictures were first used calligraphically they were meant to
represent the idea of a bird or animal. In other words, the first stage
of picture-writing did not go beyond the mere representation of an
eagle by the picture of an eagle. But this, obviously, would confine
the presentation of ideas within very narrow limits. In due course some
inventive genius conceived the thought of symbolizing a picture. To him
the outline of an eagle might represent not merely an actual bird, but
the thought of strength, of courage, or of swift progress. Such a use
of symbols obviously extends the range of utility of a nascent art of
writing. Then in due course some wonderful psychologist--or perhaps the
joint efforts of many generations of psychologists--made the astounding
discovery that the human voice, which seems to flow on in an unbroken
stream of endlessly varied modulations and intonations, may really be
analyzed into a comparatively limited number of component sounds--into a
few hundreds of syllables. That wonderful idea conceived, it was only
a matter of time until it would occur to some other enterprising genius
that by selecting an arbitrary symbol to represent each one of these
elementary sounds it would be possible to make a written record of the
words of human speech which could be reproduced--rephonated--by some
one who had never heard the words and did not know in advance what this
written record contained. This, of course, is what every child learns
to do now in the primer class, but we may feel assured that such an
idea never occurred to any human being until the peculiar forms of
pictographic writing just referred to had been practised for many
centuries. Yet, as we have said, some genius of prehistoric Egypt
conceived the idea and put it into practical execution, and the
hieroglyphic writing of which the Egyptians were in full possession at
the very beginning of what we term the historical period made use
of this phonetic system along with the ideographic system already
described.

So fond were the Egyptians of their pictorial symbols used
ideographically that they clung to them persistently throughout the
entire period of Egyptian history. They used symbols as phonetic
equivalents very frequently, but they never learned to depend upon them
exclusively. The scribe always interspersed his phonetic signs with some
other signs intended as graphic aids. After spelling a word out in full,
he added a picture, sometimes even two or three pictures, representative
of the individual thing, or at least of the type of thing to which the
word belongs. Two or three illustrations will make this clear.

Thus qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey
is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after being spelled,
is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third,
temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added;
and fourth, tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of
a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual
determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the
plural number.

It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere whim which led the
Egyptians to the use of this system of determinatives. There was sound
reason back of it. It amounted to no more than the expedient we adopt
when we spell "to," "two," or "too," in indication of a single sound
with three different meanings. The Egyptian language abounds in words
having more than one meaning, and in writing these it is obvious that
some means of distinction is desirable. The same thing occurs even more
frequently in the Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese
adopt a more clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol for each
of the meanings of a syllable; so that while the actual word-sounds of
their speech are only a few hundreds in number, the characters of their
written language mount high into the thousands.


BABYLONIAN WRITING

While the civilization of the Nile Valley was developing this
extraordinary system of hieroglyphics, the inhabitants of Babylonia
were practising the art of writing along somewhat different lines. It is
certain that they began with picture-making, and that in due course they
advanced to the development of the syllabary; but, unlike their Egyptian
cousins, the men of Babylonia saw fit to discard the old system when
they had perfected a better one.(5) So at a very early day their
writing--as revealed to us now through the recent excavations--had
ceased to have that pictorial aspect which distinguishes the Egyptian
script. What had originally been pictures of objects--fish, houses,
and the like--had come to be represented by mere aggregations of
wedge-shaped marks. As the writing of the Babvlonians was chiefly
inscribed on soft clay, the adaptation of this wedge-shaped mark in lieu
of an ordinary line was probably a mere matter of convenience, since the
sharp-cornered implement used in making the inscription naturally made
a wedge-shaped impression in the clay. That, however, is a detail.
The essential thing is that the Babylonian had so fully analyzed
the speech-sounds that he felt entire confidence in them, and having
selected a sufficient number of conventional characters--each made up
of wedge-shaped lines--to represent all the phonetic sounds of his
language, spelled the words out in syllables and to some extent
dispensed with the determinative signs which, as we have seen, played so
prominent a part in the Egyptian writing. His cousins the Assyrians used
habitually a system of writing the foundation of which was an elaborate
phonetic syllabary; a system, therefore, far removed from the old
crude pictograph, and in some respects much more developed than the
complicated Egyptian method; yet, after all, a system that stopped short
of perfection by the wide gap that separates the syllabary from the true
alphabet.

A brief analysis of speech sounds will aid us in understanding the real
nature of the syllabary. Let us take for consideration the consonantal
sound represented by the letter b. A moment's consideration will make
it clear that this sound enters into a large number of syllables. There
are, for example, at least twenty vowel sounds in the English language,
not to speak of certain digraphs; that is to say, each of the important
vowels has from two to six sounds. Each of these vowel sounds may enter
into combination with the b sound alone to form three syllables; as
ba, ab, bal, be, eb, bel, etc. Thus there are at least sixty b-sound
syllables. But this is not the end, for other consonantal sounds may be
associated in the syllables in such combinations as bad, bed, bar, bark,
cab, etc. As each of the other twenty odd consonantal sounds may enter
into similar combinations, it is obvious that there are several hundreds
of fundamental syllables to be taken into account in any syllabic system
of writing. For each of these syllables a symbol must be set aside
and held in reserve as the representative of that particular sound. A
perfect syllabary, then, would require some hundred or more of symbols
to represent b sounds alone; and since the sounds for c, d, f, and the
rest are equally varied, the entire syllabary would run into thousands
of characters, almost rivalling in complexity the Chinese system. But
in practice the most perfect syllabary, Such as that of the Babylonians,
fell short of this degree of precision through ignoring the minor shades
of sound; just as our own alphabet is content to represent some thirty
vowel sounds by five letters, ignoring the fact that a, for example, has
really half a dozen distinct phonetic values. By such slurring of sounds
the syllabary is reduced far below its ideal limits; yet even so it
retains three or four hundred characters.

In point of fact, such a work as Professor Delitzsch's Assyrian
Grammar(6) presents signs for three hundred and thirty-four syllables,
together with sundry alternative signs and determinatives to tax the
memory of the would-be reader of Assyrian. Let us take for example a few
of the b sounds. It has been explained that the basis of the Assyrian
written character is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously
repeated and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.

To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set, as an
equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in old Assyria
in the long generations when that land was the culture Centre of the
world. Nor was the task confined to the natives of Babylonia and Assyria
alone. About the fifteenth century B.C., and probably for a long time
before and after that period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the
Babylonians was the official means of communication throughout western
Asia and between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery
of a collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten,
preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the
Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a majority of
the most highly civilized people in the world to be the most perfect
script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe of the time did not in
the least realize the waste of energy involved in his labors, or ever
suspect that there could be any better way of writing.

Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into its
component phonetic elements--had any one been genius enough to make such
analysis--would have given the key to simpler and better things. But
such an analysis was very hard to make, as the sequel shows. Nor is
the utility of such an analysis self-evident, as the experience of
the Egyptians proved. The vowel sound is so intimately linked with the
consonant--the con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its
very name--that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual
recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by
itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of phonation,
was the feat at which human intelligence so long balked. The germ of
great things lay in that analysis. It was a process of simplification,
and all art development is from the complex to the simple.
Unfortunately, however, it did not seem a simplification, but rather
quite the reverse. We may well suppose that the idea of wresting from
the syllabary its secret of consonants and vowels, and giving to
each consonantal sound a distinct sign, seemed a most cumbersome and
embarrassing complication to the ancient scholars--that is to say,
after the time arrived when any one gave such an idea expression. We can
imagine them saying: "You will oblige us to use four signs instead of
one to write such an elementary syllable as 'bard,' for example.
Out upon such endless perplexity!" Nor is such a suggestion purely
gratuitous, for it is an historical fact that the old syllabary
continued to be used in Babylon hundreds of years after the alphabetical
system had been introduced.(7) Custom is everything in establishing our
prejudices. The Japanese to-day rebel against the introduction of an
alphabet, thinking it ambiguous.

Yet, in the end, conservatism always yields, and so it was with
opposition to the alphabet. Once the idea of the consonant had been
firmly grasped, the old syllabary was doomed, though generations of time
might be required to complete the obsequies--generations of time and the
influence of a new nation. We have now to inquire how and by whom this
advance was made.


THE ALPHABET ACHIEVED

We cannot believe that any nation could have vaulted to the final stage
of the simple alphabetical writing without tracing the devious and
difficult way of the pictograph and the syllabary. It is possible,
however, for a cultivated nation to build upon the shoulders of its
neighbors, and, profiting by the experience of others, to make sudden
leaps upward and onward. And this is seemingly what happened in the
final development of the art of writing. For while the Babylonians and
Assyrians rested content with their elaborate syllabary, a nation on
either side of them, geographically speaking, solved the problem, which
they perhaps did not even recognize as a problem; wrested from their
syllabary its secret of consonants and vowels, and by adopting an
arbitrary sign for each consonantal sound, produced that most wonderful
of human inventions, the alphabet.

The two nations credited with this wonderful achievement are the
Phoenicians and the Persians. But it is not usually conceded that the
two are entitled to anything like equal credit. The Persians, probably
in the time of Cyrus the Great, used certain characters of the
Babylonian script for the construction of an alphabet; but at this time
the Phoenician alphabet had undoubtedly been in use for some centuries,
and it is more than probable that the Persian borrowed his idea of an
alphabet from a Phoenician source. And that, of course, makes all the
difference. Granted the idea of an alphabet, it requires no great reach
of constructive genius to supply a set of alphabetical characters;
though even here, it may be added parenthetically, a study of the
development of alphabets will show that mankind has all along had a
characteristic propensity to copy rather than to invent.

Regarding the Persian alphabet-maker, then, as a copyist rather than
a true inventor, it remains to turn attention to the Phoenician source
whence, as is commonly believed, the original alphabet which became "the
mother of all existing alphabets" came into being. It must be admitted
at the outset that evidence for the Phoenician origin of this alphabet
is traditional rather than demonstrative. The Phoenicians were the great
traders of antiquity; undoubtedly they were largely responsible for the
transmission of the alphabet from one part of the world to another, once
it had been invented. Too much credit cannot be given them for this; and
as the world always honors him who makes an idea fertile rather than the
originator of the idea, there can be little injustice in continuing
to speak of the Phoenicians as the inventors of the alphabet. But the
actual facts of the case will probably never be known. For aught we
know, it may have been some dreamy-eyed Israelite, some Babylonian
philosopher, some Egyptian mystic, perhaps even some obscure Cretan,
who gave to the hard-headed Phoenician trader this conception of a
dismembered syllable with its all-essential, elemental, wonder-working
consonant. But it is futile now to attempt even to surmise on such
unfathomable details as these. Suffice it that the analysis was made;
that one sign and no more was adopted for each consonantal sound of the
Semitic tongue, and that the entire cumbersome mechanism of the Egyptian
and Babylonian writing systems was rendered obsolescent. These systems
did not yield at once, to be sure; all human experience would have been
set at naught had they done so. They held their own, and much more than
held their own, for many centuries. After the Phoenicians as a nation
had ceased to have importance; after their original script had been
endlessly modified by many alien nations; after the original alphabet
had made the conquest of all civilized Europe and of far outlying
portions of the Orient--the Egyptian and Babylonian scribes continued to
indite their missives in the same old pictographs and syllables.

The inventive thinker must have been struck with amazement when, after
making the fullest analysis of speech-sounds of which he was capable,
he found himself supplied with only a score or so of symbols. Yet as
regards the consonantal sounds he had exhausted the resources of the
Semitic tongue. As to vowels, he scarcely considered them at all. It
seemed to him sufficient to use one symbol for each consonantal sound.
This reduced the hitherto complex mechanism of writing to so simple a
system that the inventor must have regarded it with sheer delight. On
the other hand, the conservative scholar doubtless thought it distinctly
ambiguous. In truth, it must be admitted that the system was imperfect.
It was a vast improvement on the old syllabary, but it had its
drawbacks. Perhaps it had been made a bit too simple; certainly
it should have had symbols for the vowel sounds as well as for the
consonants. Nevertheless, the vowel-lacking alphabet seems to have taken
the popular fancy, and to this day Semitic people have never supplied
its deficiencies save with certain dots and points.

Peoples using the Aryan speech soon saw the defect, and the Greeks
supplied symbols for several new sounds at a very early day.(8) But
there the matter rested, and the alphabet has remained imperfect. For
the purposes of the English language there should certainly have been
added a dozen or more new characters. It is clear, for example, that, in
the interest of explicitness, we should have a separate symbol for the
vowel sound in each of the following syllables: bar, bay, bann, ball, to
cite a single illustration.

There is, to be sure, a seemingly valid reason for not extending
our alphabet, in the fact that in multiplying syllables it would be
difficult to select characters at once easy to make and unambiguous.
Moreover, the conservatives might point out, with telling effect, that
the present alphabet has proved admirably effective for about three
thousand years. Yet the fact that our dictionaries supply diacritical
marks for some thirty vowels sounds to indicate the pronunciation of the
words of our every-day speech, shows how we let memory and guessing
do the work that might reasonably be demanded of a really complete
alphabet. But, whatever its defects, the existing alphabet is a
marvellous piece of mechanism, the result of thousands of years
of intellectual effort. It is, perhaps without exception, the most
stupendous invention of the human intellect within historical times--an
achievement taking rank with such great prehistoric discoveries as the
use of articulate speech, the making of a fire, and the invention of
stone implements, of the wheel and axle, and of picture-writing. It made
possible for the first time that education of the masses upon which all
later progress of civilization was so largely to depend.




V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

Herodotus, the Father of History, tells us that once upon a time--which
time, as the modern computator shows us, was about the year 590 B.C.--a
war had risen between the Lydians and the Medes and continued five
years. "In these years the Medes often discomfited the Lydians and the
Lydians often discomfited the Medes (and among other things they fought
a battle by night); and yet they still carried on the war with equally
balanced fortitude. In the sixth year a battle took place in which it
happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night.
And this change of the day Thales, the Milesian, had foretold to the
Ionians, laying down as a limit this very year in which the change took
place. The Lydians, however, and the Medes, when they saw that it had
become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much
more eager, both of them, that peace should be made between them."

This memorable incident occurred while Alyattus, father of Croesus,
was king of the Lydians. The modern astronomer, reckoning backward,
estimates this eclipse as occurring probably May 25th, 585 B.C. The
date is important as fixing a mile-stone in the chronology of ancient
history, but it is doubly memorable because it is the first recorded
instance of a predicted eclipse. Herodotus, who tells the story, was not
born until about one hundred years after the incident occurred, but time
had not dimmed the fame of the man who had performed the necromantic
feat of prophecy. Thales, the Milesian, thanks in part at least to this
accomplishment, had been known in life as first on the list of the Seven
Wise Men of Greece, and had passed into history as the father of Greek
philosophy. We may add that he had even found wider popular fame through
being named by Hippolytus, and then by Father aesop, as the philosopher
who, intent on studying the heavens, fell into a well; "whereupon," says
Hippolytus, "a maid-servant named Thratta laughed at him and said, 'In
his search for things in the sky he does not see what is at his feet.'"

Such citations as these serve to bring vividly to mind the fact that
we are entering a new epoch of thought. Hitherto our studies have been
impersonal. Among Egyptians and Babylonians alike we have had to deal
with classes of scientific records, but we have scarcely come across a
single name. Now, however, we shall begin to find records of the work of
individual investigators. In general, from now on, we shall be able to
trace each great idea, if not to its originator, at least to some one
man of genius who was prominent in bringing it before the world. The
first of these vitalizers of thought, who stands out at the beginnings
of Greek history, is this same Thales, of Miletus. His is not a very
sharply defined personality as we look back upon it, and we can by no
means be certain that all the discoveries which are ascribed to him are
specifically his. Of his individuality as a man we know very little. It
is not even quite certain as to where he was born; Miletus is usually
accepted as his birthplace, but one tradition makes him by birth a
Phenician. It is not at all in question, however, that by blood he
was at least in part an Ionian Greek. It will be recalled that in
the seventh century B.C., when Thales was born--and for a long
time thereafter--the eastern shores of the aegean Sea were quite as
prominently the centre of Greek influence as was the peninsula of Greece
itself. Not merely Thales, but his followers and disciples, Anaximander
and Anaximenes, were born there. So also was Herodotas, the Father of
History, not to extend the list. There is nothing anomalous, then, in
the fact that Thales, the father of Greek thought, was born and passed
his life on soil that was not geographically a part of Greece; but
the fact has an important significance of another kind. Thanks to his
environment, Thales was necessarily brought more or less in contact with
Oriental ideas. There was close commercial contact between the land of
his nativity and the great Babylonian capital off to the east, as also
with Egypt. Doubtless this association was of influence in shaping
the development of Thales's mind. Indeed, it was an accepted tradition
throughout classical times that the Milesian philosopher had travelled
in Egypt, and had there gained at least the rudiments of his knowledge
of geometry. In the fullest sense, then, Thales may be regarded as
representing a link in the chain of thought connecting the learning
of the old Orient with the nascent scholarship of the new Occident.
Occupying this position, it is fitting that the personality of Thales
should partake somewhat of mystery; that the scene may not be shifted
too suddenly from the vague, impersonal East to the individualism of
Europe.

All of this, however, must not be taken as casting any doubt upon the
existence of Thales as a real person. Even the dates of his life--640 to
546 B.C.--may be accepted as at least approximately trustworthy; and the
specific discoveries ascribed to him illustrate equally well the stage
of development of Greek thought, whether Thales himself or one of his
immediate disciples were the discoverer. We have already mentioned the
feat which was said to have given Thales his great reputation. That
Thales was universally credited with having predicted the famous eclipse
is beyond question. That he actually did predict it in any precise sense
of the word is open to doubt. At all events, his prediction was not
based upon any such precise knowledge as that of the modern astronomer.
There is, indeed, only one way in which he could have foretold the
eclipse, and that is through knowledge of the regular succession of
preceding eclipses. But that knowledge implies access on the part of
some one to long series of records of practical observations of the
heavens. Such records, as we have seen, existed in Egypt and even
more notably in Babylonia. That these records were the source of the
information which established the reputation of Thales is an unavoidable
inference. In other words, the magical prevision of the father of Greek
thought was but a reflex of Oriental wisdom. Nevertheless, it sufficed
to establish Thales as the father of Greek astronomy. In point of fact,
his actual astronomical attainments would appear to have been meagre
enough. There is nothing to show that he gained an inkling of the true
character of the solar system. He did not even recognize the sphericity
of the earth, but held, still following the Oriental authorities, that
the world is a flat disk. Even his famous cosmogonic guess, according to
which water is the essence of all things and the primordial element
out of which the earth was developed, is but an elaboration of the
Babylonian conception.

When we turn to the other field of thought with which the name of Thales
is associated--namely, geometry--we again find evidence of the Oriental
influence. The science of geometry, Herodotus assures us, was invented
in Egypt. It was there an eminently practical science, being applied, as
the name literally suggests, to the measurement of the earth's surface.
Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians were obliged to cultivate
the science because the periodical inundations washed away the
boundary-lines between their farms. The primitive geometer, then, was
a surveyor. The Egyptian records, as now revealed to us, show that the
science had not been carried far in the land of its birth. The
Egyptian geometer was able to measure irregular pieces of land only
approximately. He never fully grasped the idea of the perpendicular
as the true index of measurement for the triangle, but based his
calculations upon measurements of the actual side of that figure.
Nevertheless, he had learned to square the circle with a close
approximation to the truth, and, in general, his measurement sufficed
for all his practical needs. Just how much of the geometrical knowledge
which added to the fame of Thales was borrowed directly from the
Egyptians, and how much he actually created we cannot be sure. Nor is
the question raised in disparagement of his genius. Receptivity is the
first prerequisite to progressive thinking, and that Thales reached out
after and imbibed portions of Oriental wisdom argues in itself for
the creative character of his genius. Whether borrower of originator,
however, Thales is credited with the expression of the following
geometrical truths:

1. That the circle is bisected by its diameter.

2. That the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal.

3. That when two straight lines cut each other the vertical opposite
angles are equal.

4. That the angle in a semicircle is a right angle.

5. That one side and one acute angle of a right-angle triangle determine
the other sides of the triangle.

It was by the application of the last of these principles that Thales is
said to have performed the really notable feat of measuring the distance
of a ship from the shore, his method being precisely the same in
principle as that by which the guns are sighted on a modern man-of-war.
Another practical demonstration which Thales was credited with making,
and to which also his geometrical studies led him, was the measurement
of any tall object, such as a pyramid or building or tree, by means
of its shadow. The method, though simple enough, was ingenious. It
consisted merely in observing the moment of the day when a perpendicular
stick casts a shadow equal to its own length. Obviously the tree or
monument would also cast a shadow equal to its own height at the same
moment. It remains then but to measure the length of this shadow to
determine the height of the object. Such feats as this evidence the
practicality of the genius of Thales. They suggest that Greek science,
guided by imagination, was starting on the high-road of observation. We
are told that Thales conceived for the first time the geometry of lines,
and that this, indeed, constituted his real advance upon the Egyptians.
We are told also that he conceived the eclipse of the sun as a purely
natural phenomenon, and that herein lay his advance upon the Chaldean
point of view. But if this be true Thales was greatly in advance of his
time, for it will be recalled that fully two hundred years later
the Greeks under Nicias before Syracuse were so disconcerted by the
appearance of an eclipse, which was interpreted as a direct omen and
warning, that Nicias threw away the last opportunity to rescue his army.
Thucydides, it is true, in recording this fact speaks disparagingly of
the superstitious bent of the mind of Nicias, but Thucydides also was a
man far in advance of his time.

All that we know of the psychology of Thales is summed up in the famous
maxim, "Know thyself," a maxim which, taken in connection with
the proven receptivity of the philosopher's mind, suggests to us a
marvellously rounded personality.

The disciples or successors of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were
credited with advancing knowledge through the invention or introduction
of the sundial. We may be sure, however, that the gnomon, which is the
rudimentary sundial, had been known and used from remote periods in
the Orient, and the most that is probable is that Anaximander may
have elaborated some special design, possibly the bowl-shaped sundial,
through which the shadow of the gnomon would indicate the time. The same
philosopher is said to have made the first sketch of a geographical map,
but this again is a statement which modern researches have shown to be
fallacious, since a Babylonian attempt at depicting the geography of
the world is still preserved to us on a clay tablet. Anaximander may,
however, have been the first Greek to make an attempt of this kind. Here
again the influence of Babylonian science upon the germinating Western
thought is suggested.

It is said that Anaximander departed from Thales's conception of the
earth, and, it may be added, from the Babylonian conception also, in
that he conceived it as a cylinder, or rather as a truncated cone, the
upper end of which is the habitable portion. This conception is perhaps
the first of these guesses through which the Greek mind attempted to
explain the apparent fixity of the earth. To ask what supports the earth
in space is most natural, but the answer given by Anaximander, like that
more familiar Greek solution which transformed the cone, or cylinder,
into the giant Atlas, is but another illustration of that substitution
of unwarranted inference for scientific induction which we have already
so often pointed out as characteristic of the primitive stages of
thought.

Anaximander held at least one theory which, as vouched for by various
copyists and commentators, entitles him to be considered perhaps the
first teacher of the idea of organic evolution. According to this idea,
man developed from a fishlike ancestor, "growing up as sharks do until
able to help himself and then coming forth on dry land."(1) The thought
here expressed finds its germ, perhaps, in the Babylonian conception
that everything came forth from a chaos of waters. Yet the fact that the
thought of Anaximander has come down to posterity through such various
channels suggests that the Greek thinker had got far enough away from
the Oriental conception to make his view seem to his contemporaries a
novel and individual one. Indeed, nothing we know of the Oriental line
of thought conveys any suggestion of the idea of transformation of
species, whereas that idea is distinctly formulated in the traditional
views of Anaximander.




VI. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY

Diogenes Laertius tells a story about a youth who, clad in a purple
toga, entered the arena at the Olympian games and asked to compete
with the other youths in boxing. He was derisively denied admission,
presumably because he was beyond the legitimate age for juvenile
contestants. Nothing daunted, the youth entered the lists of men, and
turned the laugh on his critics by coming off victor. The youth who
performed this feat was named Pythagoras. He was the same man, if we
may credit the story, who afterwards migrated to Italy and became
the founder of the famous Crotonian School of Philosophy; the man who
developed the religion of the Orphic mysteries; who conceived the
idea of the music of the spheres; who promulgated the doctrine of
metempsychosis; who first, perhaps, of all men clearly conceived the
notion that this world on which we live is a ball which moves in space
and which may be habitable on every side.

A strange development that for a stripling pugilist. But we must not
forget that in the Greek world athletics held a peculiar place. The
chief winner of Olympian games gave his name to an epoch (the ensuing
Olympiad of four years), and was honored almost before all others in the
land. A sound mind in a sound body was the motto of the day. To excel
in feats of strength and dexterity was an accomplishment that even
a philosopher need not scorn. It will be recalled that aeschylus
distinguished himself at the battle of Marathon; that Thucydides, the
greatest of Greek historians, was a general in the Peloponnesian War;
that Xenophon, the pupil and biographer of Socrates, was chiefly famed
for having led the Ten Thousand in the memorable campaign of Cyrus
the Younger; that Plato himself was credited with having shown
great aptitude in early life as a wrestler. If, then, Pythagoras the
philosopher was really the Pythagoras who won the boxing contest, we may
suppose that in looking back upon this athletic feat from the heights of
his priesthood--for he came to be almost deified--he regarded it not as
an indiscretion of his youth, but as one of the greatest achievements of
his life. Not unlikely he recalled with pride that he was credited
with being no less an innovator in athletics than in philosophy. At all
events, tradition credits him with the invention of "scientific"
boxing. Was it he, perhaps, who taught the Greeks to strike a rising
and swinging blow from the hip, as depicted in the famous metopes of the
Parthenon? If so, the innovation of Pythagoras was as little heeded in
this regard in a subsequent age as was his theory of the motion of the
earth; for to strike a swinging blow from the hip, rather than from the
shoulder, is a trick which the pugilist learned anew in our own day.

But enough of pugilism and of what, at best, is a doubtful tradition.
Our concern is with another "science" than that of the arena. We
must follow the purple-robed victor to Italy--if, indeed, we be not
over-credulous in accepting the tradition--and learn of triumphs of a
different kind that have placed the name of Pythagoras high on the list
of the fathers of Grecian thought. To Italy? Yes, to the western limits
of the Greek world. Here it was, beyond the confines of actual Greek
territory, that Hellenic thought found its second home, its first home
being, as we have seen, in Asia Minor. Pythagoras, indeed, to whom we
have just been introduced, was born on the island of Samos, which lies
near the coast of Asia Minor, but he probably migrated at an early
day to Crotona, in Italy. There he lived, taught, and developed
his philosophy until rather late in life, when, having incurred the
displeasure of his fellow-citizens, he suffered the not unusual penalty
of banishment.

Of the three other great Italic leaders of thought of the early period,
Xenophanes came rather late in life to Elea and founded the famous
Eleatic School, of which Parmenides became the most distinguished
ornament. These two were Ionians, and they lived in the sixth century
before our era. Empedocles, the Sicilian, was of Doric origin. He lived
about the middle of the fifth century B.C., at a time, therefore, when
Athens had attained a position of chief glory among the Greek states;
but there is no evidence that Empedocles ever visited that city, though
it was rumored that he returned to the Peloponnesus to die. The other
great Italic philosophers just named, living, as we have seen, in the
previous century, can scarcely have thought of Athens as a centre of
Greek thought. Indeed, the very fact that these men lived in Italy made
that peninsula, rather than the mother-land of Greece, the centre of
Hellenic influence. But all these men, it must constantly be borne in
mind, were Greeks by birth and language, fully recognized as such in
their own time and by posterity. Yet the fact that they lived in a land
which was at no time a part of the geographical territory of Greece must
not be forgotten. They, or their ancestors of recent generations, had
been pioneers among those venturesome colonists who reached out into
distant portions of the world, and made homes for themselves in much
the same spirit in which colonists from Europe began to populate America
some two thousand years later. In general, colonists from the different
parts of Greece localized themselves somewhat definitely in their new
homes; yet there must naturally have been a good deal of commingling
among the various families of pioneers, and, to a certain extent, a
mingling also with the earlier inhabitants of the country. This racial
mingling, combined with the well-known vitalizing influence of the
pioneer life, led, we may suppose, to a more rapid and more varied
development than occurred among the home-staying Greeks. In proof of
this, witness the remarkable schools of philosophy which, as we have
seen, were thus developed at the confines of the Greek world, and
which were presently to invade and, as it were, take by storm the
mother-country itself.

As to the personality of these pioneer philosophers of the West, our
knowledge is for the most part more or less traditional. What has been
said of Thales may be repeated, in the main, regarding Pythagoras,
Parmenides, and Empedocles. That they were real persons is not at all in
question, but much that is merely traditional has come to be associated
with their names. Pythagoras was the senior, and doubtless his ideas may
have influenced the others more or less, though each is usually spoken
of as the founder of an independent school. Much confusion has all along
existed, however, as to the precise ideas which were to be ascribed to
each of the leaders. Numberless commentators, indeed, have endeavored
to pick out from among the traditions of antiquity, aided by such
fragments, of the writing of the philosophers as have come down to us,
the particular ideas that characterized each thinker, and to weave these
ideas into systems. But such efforts, notwithstanding the mental energy
that has been expended upon them, were, of necessity, futile, since, in
the first place, the ancient philosophers themselves did not specialize
and systematize their ideas according to modern notions, and, in the
second place, the records of their individual teachings have been too
scantily preserved to serve for the purpose of classification. It
is freely admitted that fable has woven an impenetrable mesh of
contradictions about the personalities of these ancient thinkers, and it
would be folly to hope that this same artificer had been less busy with
their beliefs and theories. When one reads that Pythagoras advocated an
exclusively vegetable diet, yet that he was the first to train athletes
on meat diet; that he sacrificed only inanimate things, yet that he
offered up a hundred oxen in honor of his great discovery regarding
the sides of a triangle, and such like inconsistencies in the same
biography, one gains a realizing sense of the extent to which diverse
traditions enter into the story as it has come down to us. And yet we
must reflect that most men change their opinions in the course of a long
lifetime, and that the antagonistic reports may both be true.

True or false, these fables have an abiding interest, since they prove
the unique and extraordinary character of the personality about which
they are woven. The alleged witticisms of a Whistler, in our own day,
were doubtless, for the most part, quite unknown to Whistler himself,
yet they never would have been ascribed to him were they not akin to
witticisms that he did originate--were they not, in short, typical
expressions of his personality. And so of the heroes of the past. "It is
no ordinary man," said George Henry Lewes, speaking of Pythagoras,
"whom fable exalts into the poetic region. Whenever you find romantic or
miraculous deeds attributed, be certain that the hero was great enough
to maintain the weight of the crown of this fabulous glory."(1) We may
not doubt, then, that Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Empedocles, with whose
names fable was so busy throughout antiquity, were men of extraordinary
personality. We are here chiefly concerned, however, neither with the
personality of the man nor yet with the precise doctrines which each one
of them taught. A knowledge of the latter would be interesting were it
attainable, but in the confused state of the reports that have come down
to us we cannot hope to be able to ascribe each idea with precision
to its proper source. At best we can merely outline, even here not too
precisely, the scientific doctrines which the Italic philosophers as a
whole seem to have advocated.

First and foremost, there is the doctrine that the earth is a sphere.
Pythagoras is said to have been the first advocate of this theory; but,
unfortunately, it is reported also that Parmenides was its author. This
rivalship for the discovery of an important truth we shall see repeated
over and over in more recent times. Could we know the whole truth, it
would perhaps appear that the idea of the sphericity of the earth was
originated long before the time of the Greek philosophers. But it must
be admitted that there is no record of any sort to give tangible support
to such an assumption. So far as we can ascertain, no Egyptian or
Babylonian astronomer ever grasped the wonderful conception that the
earth is round. That the Italic Greeks should have conceived that idea
was perhaps not so much because they were astronomers as because they
were practical geographers and geometers. Pythagoras, as we have noted,
was born at Samos, and, therefore, made a relatively long sea voyage in
passing to Italy. Now, as every one knows, the most simple and tangible
demonstration of the convexity of the earth's surface is furnished by
observation of an approaching ship at sea. On a clear day a keen eye
may discern the mast and sails rising gradually above the horizon, to be
followed in due course by the hull. Similarly, on approaching the shore,
high objects become visible before those that lie nearer the water. It
is at least a plausible supposition that Pythagoras may have made such
observations as these during the voyage in question, and that therein
may lie the germ of that wonderful conception of the world as a sphere.

To what extent further proof, based on the fact that the earth's shadow
when the moon is eclipsed is always convex, may have been known to
Pythagoras we cannot say. There is no proof that any of the Italic
philosophers made extensive records of astronomical observations as did
the Egyptians and Babylonians; but we must constantly recall that the
writings of classical antiquity have been almost altogether destroyed.
The absence of astronomical records is, therefore, no proof that such
records never existed. Pythagoras, it should be said, is reported to
have travelled in Egypt, and he must there have gained an inkling of
astronomical methods. Indeed, he speaks of himself specifically, in a
letter quoted by Diogenes, as one who is accustomed to study astronomy.
Yet a later sentence of the letter, which asserts that the philosopher
is not always occupied about speculations of his own fancy, suggesting,
as it does, the dreamer rather than the observer, gives us probably a
truer glimpse into the philosopher's mind. There is, indeed, reason to
suppose that the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth appealed to
Pythagoras chiefly because it accorded with his conception that the
sphere is the most perfect solid, just as the circle is the most perfect
plane surface. Be that as it may, the fact remains that we have here, as
far as we can trace its origin, the first expression of the scientific
theory that the earth is round. Had the Italic philosophers accomplished
nothing more than this, their accomplishment would none the less mark an
epoch in the progress of thought.

That Pythagoras was an observer of the heavens is further evidenced by
the statement made by Diogenes, on the authority of Parmenides, that
Pythagoras was the first person who discovered or asserted the identity
of Hesperus and Lucifer--that is to say, of the morning and the evening
star. This was really a remarkable discovery, and one that was no doubt
instrumental later on in determining that theory of the mechanics of
the heavens which we shall see elaborated presently. To have made such
a discovery argues again for the practicality of the mind of Pythagoras.
His, indeed, would seem to have been a mind in which practical
common-sense was strangely blended with the capacity for wide and
imaginative generalization. As further evidence of his practicality,
it is asserted that he was the first person who introduced measures and
weights among the Greeks, this assertion being made on the authority of
Aristoxenus. It will be observed that he is said to have introduced,
not to have invented, weights and measures, a statement which suggests
a knowledge on the part of the Greeks that weights and measures were
previously employed in Egypt and Babylonia.

The mind that could conceive the world as a sphere and that interested
itself in weights and measures was, obviously, a mind of the visualizing
type. It is characteristic of this type of mind to be interested in the
tangibilities of geometry, hence it is not surprising to be told
that Pythagoras "carried that science to perfection." The most famous
discovery of Pythagoras in this field was that the square of the
hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the
other sides of the triangle. We have already noted the fable that
his enthusiasm over this discovery led him to sacrifice a hecatomb.
Doubtless the story is apocryphal, but doubtless, also, it expresses
the truth as to the fervid joy with which the philosopher must have
contemplated the results of his creative imagination.

No line alleged to have been written by Pythagoras has come down to us.
We are told that he refrained from publishing his doctrines, except by
word of mouth. "The Lucanians and the Peucetians, and the Messapians and
the Romans," we are assured, "flocked around him, coming with eagerness
to hear his discourses; no fewer than six hundred came to him every
night; and if any one of them had ever been permitted to see the master,
they wrote of it to their friends as if they had gained some great
advantage." Nevertheless, we are assured that until the time of
Philolaus no doctrines of Pythagoras were ever published, to which
statement it is added that "when the three celebrated books were
published, Plato wrote to have them purchased for him for a hundred
minas."(2) But if such books existed, they are lost to the modern world,
and we are obliged to accept the assertions of relatively late writers
as to the theories of the great Crotonian.

Perhaps we cannot do better than quote at length from an important
summary of the remaining doctrines of Pythagoras, which Diogenes himself
quoted from the work of a predecessor.(3) Despite its somewhat inchoate
character, this summary is a most remarkable one, as a brief analysis
of its contents will show. It should be explained that Alexander (whose
work is now lost) is said to have found these dogmas set down in the
commentaries of Pythagoras. If this assertion be accepted, we are
brought one step nearer the philosopher himself. The summary is as
follows:


"That the monad was the beginning of everything. From the monad proceeds
an indefinite duad, which is subordinate to the monad as to its cause.
That from the monad and the indefinite duad proceed numbers. And
from numbers signs. And from these last, lines of which plane figures
consist. And from plane figures are derived solid bodies. And from solid
bodies sensible bodies, of which last there are four elements--fire,
water, earth, and air. And that the world, which is indued with life and
intellect, and which is of a spherical figure, having the earth, which
is also spherical, and inhabited all over in its centre,(4) results from
a combination of these elements, and derives its motion from them; and
also that there are antipodes, and that what is below, as respects us,
is above in respect of them.

"He also taught that light and darkness, and cold and heat, and dryness
and moisture, were equally divided in the world; and that while heat was
predominant it was summer; while cold had the mastery, it was winter;
when dryness prevailed, it was spring; and when moisture preponderated,
winter. And while all these qualities were on a level, then was the
loveliest season of the year; of which the flourishing spring was the
wholesome period, and the season of autumn the most pernicious one. Of
the day, he said that the flourishing period was the morning, and the
fading one the evening; on which account that also was the least healthy
time.

"Another of his theories was that the air around the earth was immovable
and pregnant with disease, and that everything in it was mortal; but
that the upper air was in perpetual motion, and pure and salubrious, and
that everything in that was immortal, and on that account divine. And
that the sun and the moon and the stars were all gods; for in them the
warm principle predominates which is the cause of life. And that the
moon derives its light from the sun. And that there is a relationship
between men and the gods, because men partake of the divine principle;
on which account, also, God exercises his providence for our advantage.
Also, that Fate is the cause of the arrangement of the world both
generally and particularly. Moreover, that a ray from the sun penetrated
both the cold aether and the dense aether; and they call the air the
cold aether, and the sea and moisture they call the dense aether. And
this ray descends into the depths, and in this way vivifies everything.
And everything which partakes of the principle of heat lives, on which
account, also, plants are animated beings; but that all living things
have not necessarily souls. And that the soul is a something tom off
from the aether, both warm and cold, from its partaking of the cold
aether. And that the soul is something different from life. Also,
that it is immortal, because that from which it has been detached is
immortal.

"Also, that animals are born from one another by seeds, and that it is
impossible for there to be any spontaneous production by the earth.
And that seed is a drop from the brain which contains in itself a warm
vapor; and that when this is applied to the womb it transmits virtue and
moisture and blood from the brain, from which flesh and sinews and bones
and hair and the whole body are produced. And from the vapor is produced
the soul, and also sensation. And that the infant first becomes a solid
body at the end of forty days; but, according to the principles of
harmony, it is not perfect till seven, or perhaps nine, or at most ten
months, and then it is brought forth. And that it contains in itself all
the principles of life, which are all connected together, and by their
union and combination form a harmonious whole, each of them developing
itself at the appointed time.

"The senses in general, and especially the sight, are a vapor of
excessive warmth, and on this account a man is said to see through air
and through water. For the hot principle is opposed by the cold one;
since, if the vapor in the eyes were cold, it would have the same
temperature as the air, and so would be dissipated. As it is, in some
passages he calls the eyes the gates of the sun; and he speaks in a
similar manner of hearing and of the other senses.

"He also says that the soul of man is divided into three parts: into
intuition and reason and mind, and that the first and last divisions are
found also in other animals, but that the middle one, reason, is only
found in man. And that the chief abode of the soul is in those parts
of the body which are between the heart and the brain. And that that
portion of it which is in the heart is the mind; but that deliberation
and reason reside in the br

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