into a general conception. Hence the method of Plato was capable
of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in
reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy
in its operation, but much more solid. It implied endless labor
in the collection of facts, a tedious resort to experiment and
observation, the application of demonstration. The philosophy of
Plato is a gorgeous castle in the air; that of Aristotle a solid
structure, laboriously, and with many failures, founded on the
solid rock.

An appeal to the imagination is much more alluring than the
employment of reason. In the intellectual decline of Alexandria,
indolent methods were preferred to laborious observation and
severe mental exercise. The schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded
with speculative mystics, such as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus.
These took the place of the severe geometers of the old Museum.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MUSEUM. The Alexandrian school offers the
first example of that system which, in the hands of modern
physicists, has led to such wonderful results. It rejected
imagination, and made its theories the expression of facts
obtained by experiment and observation, aided by mathematical
discussion. It enforced the principle that the true method of
studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. The researches
of Archimedes in specific gravity, and the works of Ptolemy on
optics, resemble our present investigations in experimental
philosophy, and stand in striking contrast with the speculative
vagaries of the older writers. Laplace says that the only
observation which the history of astronomy offers us, made by the
Greeks before the school of Alexandria, is that of the summer