or his disciples by their collections of facts. When the thinkers of
modern times, following Bacon, undervalue or disparage the speculations of
ancient philosophers, they seem wholly to forget the conditions of the
world and of the human mind, under which they carried on their
investigations. When we accuse them of being under the influence of words,
do we suppose that we are altogether free from this illusion? When we
remark that Greek physics soon became stationary or extinct, may we not
observe also that there have been and may be again periods in the history
of modern philosophy which have been barren and unproductive? We might as
well maintain that Greek art was not real or great, because it had nihil
simile aut secundum, as say that Greek physics were a failure because they
admire no subsequent progress.

The charge of premature generalization which is often urged against ancient
philosophers is really an anachronism. For they can hardly be said to have
generalized at all. They may be said more truly to have cleared up and
defined by the help of experience ideas which they already possessed. The
beginnings of thought about nature must always have this character. A true
method is the result of many ages of experiment and observation, and is
ever going on and enlarging with the progress of science and knowledge. At
first men personify nature, then they form impressions of nature, at last
they conceive 'measure' or laws of nature. They pass out of mythology into
philosophy. Early science is not a process of discovery in the modern
sense; but rather a process of correcting by observation, and to a certain
extent only, the first impressions of nature, which mankind, when they
began to think, had received from poetry or language or unintelligent
sense. Of all scientific truths the greatest and simplest is the
uniformity of nature; this was expressed by the ancients in many ways, as
fate, or necessity, or measure, or limit. Unexpected events, of which the
cause was unknown to them, they attributed to chance (Thucyd.). But their