Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/461

 SPONTANEOUS ASTRONt>M. 439 There is one important difference, however, to note, between our time and that of Sokrates. In his day, the impressions not only respecting man and society, but also respecting the physical world, were of this same self-sown, self-propagating, and unscien- tific character. The popular astronomy of the Sokratic age was an aggregate of primitive, superficial observations and imagina tive inferences, passing unexamined from elder men to younger, accepted with unsuspecting faith, and consecrated by intense sentiment. Not only men like Nikias, or Anytus and Meletus, but even Sokrates himself, protested against the impudence of Anaxagoras, when he degraded the divine Helois and Selene into a sun and moon of calculable motions and magnitudes. But now, the development of the scientific point of view, with the vast increase of methodized physical and mathematical knowledge, has taught every one that such primitive astronomical and phy- sical convictions were nothing better than " a fancy of knowledge without the reality." l Every one renounces them without hesi- tation, seeks his conclusions from the scientific teacher, and looks to the proofs alone for his guarantee. A man who has never bestowed special study on astronomy, knows that he is ignorant of it : to fancy that he knows it, without such preparation, would be held an absurdity. While the scientific point of view has thus acquired complete predominance in reference to the physi- cal world, it has made little way comparatively on topics regard- ing man and society, wherein " fancy of knowledge without the 1 " There is no science which, more than astronomy, stands in need of such a preparation, or draws more largely on that intellectual liberality which is ready to adopt whatever is demonstrated, or concede whatever is rendered highly probable, however new and uncommon the points of view may be, in which objects the most familiar may thereby become placed. Almost til its conclusions stand in open and striking contradiction with those of superfi- cial and vulijar observation, and with what appears to every one, until he has understood and weighed the proofs to the contrary, the most positive evidence of hit senses. Thus the earth on which ho stands, and which has served for ages as the unshaken foundation of the firmest structures either of art or nature, is divested by the astronomer of its attribute of fixity, and con ce.ved by him as turning swiftly on its centre, and at the same time moving onward through space with great rapidity, etc." (Sir John Herschel, Astron omy, Introduction, sect. 2.