be difficult to select characters at once easy to make and
unambiguous. Moreover, the conservatives might point out, with
telling effect, that the present alphabet has proved admirably
effective for about three thousand years. Yet the fact that our
dictionaries supply diacritical marks for some thirty vowels
sounds to indicate the pronunciation of the words of our
every-day speech, shows how we let memory and guessing do the
work that might reasonably be demanded of a really complete
alphabet. But, whatever its defects, the existing alphabet is a
marvellous piece of mechanism, the result of thousands of years
of intellectual effort. It is, perhaps without exception, the
most stupendous invention of the human intellect within
historical times--an achievement taking rank with such great
prehistoric discoveries as the use of articulate speech, the
making of a fire, and the invention of stone implements, of the
wheel and axle, and of picture-writing. It made possible for the
first time that education of the masses upon which all later
progress of civilization was so largely to depend.



V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

Herodotus, the Father of History, tells us that once upon a
time--which time, as the modern computator shows us, was about
the year 590 B.C. --a war had risen between the Lydians and the
Medes and continued five years. "In these years the Medes often
discomfited the Lydians and the Lydians often discomfited the
Medes (and among other things they fought a battle by night); and
yet they still carried on the war with equally balanced
fortitude. In the sixth year a battle took place in which it
happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became
night. And this change of the day Thales, the Milesian, had
foretold to the Ionians, laying down as a limit this very year in
which the change took place. The Lydians, however, and the Medes,
when they saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased
from their fighting and were much more eager, both of them, that
peace should be made between them."

This memorable incident occurred while Alyattus, father of
Croesus, was king of the Lydians. The modern astronomer,
reckoning backward, estimates this eclipse as occurring probably
May 25th, 585 B.C. The date is important as fixing a mile-stone
in the chronology of ancient history, but it is doubly memorable
because it is the first recorded instance of a predicted eclipse.
Herodotus, who tells the story, was not born until about one
hundred years after the incident occurred, but time had not
dimmed the fame of the man who had performed the necromantic feat
of prophecy. Thales, the Milesian, thanks in part at least to
this accomplishment, had been known in life as first on the list
of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, and had passed into history as
the father of Greek philosophy. We may add that he had even found
wider popular fame through being named by Hippolytus, and then by
Father aesop, as the philosopher who, intent on studying the
heavens, fell into a well; "whereupon," says Hippolytus, "a
maid-servant named Thratta laughed at him and said, 'In his
search for things in the sky he does not see what is at his
feet.' "

Such citations as these serve to bring vividly to mind the fact
that we are entering a new epoch of thought. Hitherto our studies
have been impersonal. Among Egyptians and Babylonians alike we
have had to deal with classes of scientific records, but we have
scarcely come across a single name. Now, however, we shall begin
to find records of the work of individual investigators. In
general, from now on, we shall be able to trace each great idea,
if not to its originator, at least to some one man of genius who
was prominent in bringing it before the world. The first of these
vitalizers of thought, who stands out at the beginnings of Greek
history, is this same Thales, of Miletus. His is not a very
sharply defined personality as we look back upon it, and we can
by no means be certain that all the discoveries which are
ascribed to him are specifically his. Of his individuality as a
man we know very little. It is not even quite certain as to where
he was born; Miletus is usually accepted as his birthplace, but
one tradition makes him by birth a Phenician. It is not at all in
question, however, that by blood he was at least in part an
Ionian Greek. It will be recalled that in the seventh century
B.C., when Thales was born--and for a long time thereafter--the
eastern shores of the aegean Sea were quite as prominently the
centre of Greek influence as was the peninsula of Greece itself.
Not merely Thales, but his followers and disciples, Anaximander
and Anaximenes, were born there. So also was Herodotas, the
Father of History, not to extend the list. There is nothing
anomalous, then, in the fact that Thales, the father of Greek
thought, was born and passed his life on soil that was not
geographically a part of Greece; but the fact has an important
significance of another kind. Thanks to his environment, Thales
was necessarily brought more or less in contact with Oriental
ideas. There was close commercial contact between the land of his
nativity and the great Babylonian capital off to the east, as
also with Egypt. Doubtless this association was of influence in
shaping the development of Thales's mind. Indeed, it was an
accepted tradition throughout classical times that the Milesian
philosopher had travelled in Egypt, and had there gained at least
the rudiments of his knowledge of geometry. In the fullest sense,
then, Thales may be regarded as representing a link in the chain
of thought connecting the learning of the old Orient with the
nascent scholarship of the new Occident. Occupying this position,
it is fitting that the personality of Thales should partake


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