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