An Introduction to Philosophy, George Stuart Fullerton [books to read in your 20s .TXT] 📗

explains the coming into being offire, wind, clouds, water, and earth, as due to a condensation andexpansion of the universal principle, air. The boldness of theirspeculations we may explain as due to a courage born of ignorance, butthe explanations they offer are scientific in spirit, at least.

Moreover, these men do not stand alone. They are the advance guard ofan army whose latest representatives are the men who are enlighteningthe world at the present day. The evolution of science--taking thatword in the broad sense to mean organized and systematizedknowledge--must be traced in the works of the Greek philosophers fromThales down. Here we have the source and the rivulet to which we cantrace back the mighty stream which is flowing past our own doors.Apparently insignificant in its beginnings, it must still for a whileseem insignificant to the man who follows with an unreflective eye thecourse of the current.

It would take me too far afield to give an account of the Greek schoolswhic