of these schools, but in outward demeanour they conformed, more or less strictly, with the religion of the state. The intellectual movement among the Greeks culminated after about two centuries of activity in the career of Aristotle, who undertook to sift, to harmonize, and to codify all the knowledge of his age.[1] A great work had been accomplished; all that wild outgrowth with which savage intellection is wont to encumber the domain of reason had been swept away, and the ground had been subjected to an orderly, though unproductive planting. The conception that nature would yield a harvest as the reward of rational study had been awakened, but the efforts lapsed because the method had yet to be discovered of fertilizing the vacant soil.[2]
The conception of social ethics or of mutual obligation among the members of a community appears to have been one of those influences which presided at the birth of civilization, and to have attained theoretical perfection far back in the prehistoric past; whilst the perpetual conflict between
- [Footnote: squalid, morose, and sententious; Epicureans, tranquil enjoyment and
indifference; Cyreneans (Aristippus), pure hedonism with discretion. In general the Epicureans are wrongly associated with the last conception.]
- ↑ Aristotle (c. 350 B.C.) was the first to perceive the importance of collecting facts and disposing them into their proper groups. Thus zoology, botany, anatomy, physiology, mineralogy, astronomy, meteorology, etc., began to take form in his hands, each being relegated to a separate compartment for consideration as a concordant whole and to receive future additions.
- ↑ Even with his limited outlook Aristotle had sufficient astuteness to divine that nature might become the "slave of man," and expresses himself clearly to that effect; Metaphysics, i, 2. Such a claim may provoke a smile from the modern who reviews the mild conquests of the embryo science of his day.
