Section 2.

Nature in the aspect which she presented to a Greek philosopher of the
fourth century before Christ is not easily reproduced to modern eyes. The
associations of mythology and poetry have to be added, and the unconscious
influence of science has to be subtracted, before we can behold the heavens
or the earth as they appeared to the Greek. The philosopher himself was a
child and also a man--a child in the range of his attainments, but also a
great intelligence having an insight into nature, and often anticipations
of the truth. He was full of original thoughts, and yet liable to be
imposed upon by the most obvious fallacies. He occasionally confused
numbers with ideas, and atoms with numbers; his a priori notions were out
of all proportion to his experience. He was ready to explain the phenomena
of the heavens by the most trivial analogies of earth. The experiments
which nature worked for him he sometimes accepted, but he never tried
experiments for himself which would either prove or disprove his theories.
His knowledge was unequal; while in some branches, such as medicine and
astronomy, he had made considerable proficiency, there were others, such as
chemistry, electricity, mechanics, of which the very names were unknown to
him. He was the natural enemy of mythology, and yet mythological ideas
still retained their hold over him. He was endeavouring to form a
conception of principles, but these principles or ideas were regarded by
him as real powers or entities, to which the world had been subjected. He
was always tending to argue from what was near to what was remote, from
what was known to what was unknown, from man to the universe, and back
again from the universe to man. While he was arranging the world, he was
arranging the forms of thought in his own mind; and the light from within
and the light from without often crossed and helped to confuse one another.
He might be compared to a builder engaged in some great design, who could