DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
5 
enthusiasm, ‘ as you might think ’ (coy dv tls anXcos v7roXd(3cn), 
but much more through love and desire for philosophic 
inquiry, and in order to secure that he should not overlook 
any fragment of knowledge worth acquiring that might lie 
hidden in the mysteries or ceremonies of divine worship ; 
then, understanding that what he found in Phoenicia was in 
some sort an offshoot or descendant of the wisdom of tire 
priests of Egypt, he concluded that he should acquire learning 
more pure and more sublime by going to the fountain-head in 
Egypt itself. 
‘ There ’, continues the story, ‘ he studied with the priests 
and prophets and instructed himself on every possible topic, 
neglecting no item of the instruction favoured by the best 
judges, no individual man among those who were famous for 
their knowledge, no rite practised in the country wherever it 
was, and leaving no place unexplored where he thought he 
could discover something more. . . . And so he spent 22 
years in the shrines throughout Egypt, pursuing astronomy 
and geometry and, of set purpose and not by fits and starts or 
casually, entering into all the rites of divine worship, until he 
was taken captive by Cambyses’s force and carried off to 
Babylon, where again he consorted with the Magi, a willing 
pupil of willing masters. By them he was fully instructed in 
their solemn rites and religious worship, and in their midst he 
attained to the highest eminence in arithmetic, music, and the 
other branches of learning. After twelve years more thus 
spent he returned to Samos, being then about 56 years old.’ 
Whether these stories are true in their details or not is 
a matter of no consequence. They represent the traditional 
and universal view of the Greeks themselves regarding the 
beginnings of their philosophy, and they reflect throughout 
the Greek spirit and outlook. 
From a scientific point of view a very important advantage 
possessed by the Greeks was their remarkable capacity for 
accurate observation. This is attested throughout all periods, 
by the similes in Homer, by vase-paintings, by the ethno 
graphic data in Herodotus, by the ‘ Hippocratean ’ medical 
books, by the biological treatises of Aristotle, and by the 
history of Greek astronomy in all its stages. To take two 
commonplace examples. Any person who examines the 
under-side of a horse’s hoof, which we call a ‘ frog ’ and the