fall of snow there must be a fall of rain; so that if it snowed in those regions it must rain too." I need not observe that Herodotus was not aware of the difference between the climate of high mountains and plains in a torrid region; but it is impossible not to be struck both with the activity and the coherency of thought displayed by the Greek mind in this primitive physical inquiry.

But I must not omit the hypothesis which Herodotus himself proposes, after rejecting those which have been already given. It does not appear to me easy to catch his exact meaning, but the statement will still be curious. "If," he says, "one who has condemned opinions previously promulgated may put forwards his own opinion concerning so obscure a matter, I will state why it seems to me that the Nile is flooded in summer." This opinion he propounds at first with an oracular brevity, which it is difficult to suppose that he did not intend to be impressive. "In winter the sun is carried by the seasons away from his former course, and goes to the upper parts of Libya. And there, in short, is the whole account; for that region to which this divinity (the sun) is nearest, must naturally be most scant of water, and the river-sources of that country must be dried up."

But the lively and garrulous Ionian immediately relaxes from this apparent reserve. "To explain the matter more at length," he proceeds, "it is thus. The sun, when he traverses the upper parts of Libya,

does what he commonly does in summer;—he draws the water to him (ἕλκει ἐπ ̓ ἑωυτὸν το ὕδωρ), and having thus drawn it, he pushes it to the upper regions (of the air probably,) and then the winds take it and disperse it till they dissolve in moisture. And thus the winds which blow from those countries, Libs and Notus, are the most moist of all winds. Now when the winter relaxes and the sun returns to the north, he still draws water from all the rivers, but they are increased by showers and rain-torrents, so that they are in flood till the summer comes; and then, the rain failing and the sun still drawing them, they become small. But the Nile, not being fed by rains, yet being drawn by the sun, is, alone of all rivers, much more scanty in the winter than in the summer. For in summer it is drawn like all other rivers, but in winter it alone has its supplies shut up. And in this way, I have been led to think the sun is the cause of the occurrence in question." We may remark that the historian here appears to ascribe the inequality of the Nile at different seasons to the influence of the sun upon its springs alone, the other cause of change, the rains, being here excluded: and that, on this supposition, the same relative effects would be produced whether the sun increase the sources in winter by melting the snows, or diminish them in summer by what he calls drawing them upwards.

This specimen of the early efforts of the Greeks in physical speculations, appears to me to speak

VOL. I.

D

strongly for the opinion that their philosophy on such subjects was the native growth of the Greek mind, and owed nothing to the supposed lore of Egypt and the East; an opiníon which has been adopted with regard to the Greek philosophy in general by the most competent judges on a full survey of the evidence". Indeed, we have no evidence whatever that, at any period, the African or Asiatic nations, (with the exception perhaps of the Indians,) ever felt this importunate curiosity with regard to the definite application of the idea of cause and effect to visible phenomena; or drew so strong a line between a fabulous legend and a reason rendered; or attempted to ascend to a natural cause by classing together phenomena of the same kind. We may be well excused, therefore, for believing that they could not impart to the Greeks what they themselves did not possess; and so far as our survey goes, physical philosophy has its origin, apparently spontaneous and independent, in the active and acute intellect of Greece.

Sect. 2.-Primitive Mistake in Greek Physical

Philosophy.

We now proceed to examine with what success the Greeks followed the track into which they had thus struck. And here we are obliged to confess that

5 Thirlwall, Hist. Gr., ii. 130; and, as there quoted, Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, i. 159–173.

they very soon turned aside from the right road to truth, and deviated into a vast field of error, in which they and their successors have wandered almost to the present time. It is not necessary here to inquire why those faculties which appear to be bestowed upon us for the discovery of truth, were permitted by Providence to fail so signally in answering that purpose; whether, like the powers by which we seek our happiness, they involve a responsibility on our part, and may be defeated by rejecting the guidance of a higher faculty; or whether these endowments, though they did not immediately lead man to profound physical knowledge, answered some nobler and better purpose in his constitution and government. The fact undoubtedly was, that the physical philosophy of the Greeks soon became trifling and worthless; and it is proper to point out, as precisely as we can, in what the fundamental mistake consisted.

To explain this, we may in the first place return for a moment to Herodotus's account of the cause of the floods of the Nile.

The reader will probably have observed a remarkable phrase used by Herodotus, in his own explanation of these inundations. He says that the sun draws, or attracts, the water; a metaphorical term, obviously intended to denote some more general and abstract conception than that of the visible operation which the word primarily signifies. This abstract notion of 'drawing' is, in the historian, as

we see, very vague and loose; it might, with equal propriety, be explained to mean what we now understand by mechanical or by chemical attraction, or pressure, or evaporation. And in like manner, all the first attempts to comprehend the operations of nature, led to the introduction of abstract conceptions, often vague, indeed, but not, therefore, unmeaning; such as motion and velocity, force and pressure, impetus and momentum (pon). And the next step in philosophizing, necessarily was to endeavour to make these vague abstractions more clear and fixed, so that the logical faculty should be able to employ them securely and coherently. But there were two ways of making this attempt; the one, by examining the words only, and the thoughts which they call up; the other, by attending to the facts and things which bring these abstract terms into use. The latter, the method of real inquiry, was the way to success; but the Greeks followed the former, the verbal or notional course, and failed.

If Herodotus, when the notion of the sun's attracting the waters of rivers had entered into his mind, had gone on to instruct himself, by attention to facts, in what manner this notion could be made more definite, while it still remained applicable to all the knowledge which could be obtained, he would have made some progress towards a true solution of his problem. If, for instance, he had tried to ascertain whether this Attraction which the sun exerted upon the waters of rivers, depended on his influence