his households and his cities, dwelling comfortably in his habitations.
But the thought which enabled him to lay a secure basis, economic and
social or political, for his life had other issues and promised other
fruit. The Greek mind became interested in knowledge for its own sake
and in itself as the knower of its world.

The second and more important creation of the Greek mind was Science or
the Sciences. In no earlier civilization can we trace anything but the
faintest germs of this, while in Greek civilization it comes almost at
once to flower and fruit. First and foremost we have to think of
Mathematics, of Arithmetic and Geometry and Optics and Acoustics and
Astronomy, but we must not forget also their later and perhaps not
wholly so successful advances in Physics and Chemistry, in Botany and
Zoology, in Anatomy and Physiology. Doubtless, especially in the case of
the Sciences where experiments are required and have proved so fertile
in the extension of our knowledge, there were grave defects, and too
much trust was placed in mere observation and hasty speculation; but
what they accomplished in Science is no less but more marvellous than
what they accomplished in Art. The idea of Science was there, disengaged
from the limiting restrictions of practical necessities, the idea of
free and therefore all the more potent Science. The whole physical--and
much more than the physical--environment of human life was proclaimed
permeable to human thought and therefore governable by human will or at
any rate already amicable and amenable to human purposes.

But yet a third advance was made. The Greek mind became conscious of
itself as the knower and therefore the lord and master of its world.
Turning inward upon itself it discovered itself as the centre of its
universe and set itself to explore this new inner realm of being. In the
consciousness of itself it found inexhaustible interest and strength.