uction of the material universe. So with geometry.
It might begin as an investigation of the relations of particular
triangles, squares, and oblongs, but it developed into an attempt to
grasp the nature of space relations and to understand them as depending
on simple common principles. This is to say that in the hands of the
Greeks these subjects first became sciences. But a still greater subject
also became in their hands matter for disinterested rational inquiry.
They developed what Aristotle called the science of Reality, or, as we
call it, Philosophy--the attempt to approach by the rational criticism
of experience the problem of the nature and origin of the universe and
of man's place therein. They propounded the fundamental questions which
still occupy the highest intellects of mankind. They laid the
foundations of method and bequeathed to Europe the terminology which all
exact thinking requires. Even when we speak of method we are using an
Aristotelian term, and when we distinguish one subject from another we
are employing the Latin translation of the word which Aristotle
introduced. In a word, modern thought, scientific and philosophic alike,
has a unitary origin. It is derived from the Greek.

The mode of this derivation is not simple, and would require
considerable space to examine in detail. In outline it must suffice to
say that the Greek culture was spread over the Eastern Mediterranean
through the conquests of Alexander, and that as its capital Alexandria
gradually replaced Athens. It flowed westward with the Roman conquests,
when, as the Roman poet said, captured Greece took captive her barbarous
conqueror and introduced the arts into rustic Latium. It shared in the
general decline which accompanied the rebarbarization and final collapse
of the Roman Empire. But now occurred a division in the stream of
historic tendency. The fortunes of East and West were separated. The
Western Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes, and after the sixth
century the tradition of the old culture was maintained for the most
part in the monasteries. Greek was forgotten in the West. Greek authors
were known only in Latin translations, and science and philosophy came
to a standstill. In the East the Mohammedan conquests brought the Arabs
into touch with Greek learning. They preserved the tradition and
extended the work, and it was the contact with Arabic culture through
the crusades which initiated the first renaissance in the Wes