In thus contending that Hellenic culture was not free from magic and that even the philosophy and science of the ancient Greeks show traces of superstition, I would not, however, obscure the fact that of extant literary remains the Greek are the first to present us with any very considerable body either of systematic rational speculation or of classified collection of observed facts concerning nature. Despite the rapid progress in recent years in knowledge of prehistoric man and Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, the Hellenic title to the primacy in philosophy and science has hardly been called in question, and no earlier works have been discovered that can compare in medicine with those ascribed to Hippocrates, in biology with those of Aristotle and Theophrastus, or in mathematics and physics with those of Euclid and Archimedes. Undoubtedly such men and writings had their predecessors, probably they owed something to ancient oriental civilization, but, taking them as we have them, they seem to be marked by great original power. Whatever may lie concealed beneath the surface of the past, or whatever signs or hints of scientific investigation and knowledge we may think we can detect and read between the lines, as it were, in other phases of older civilizations, in these works solid beginnings of experimental and mathematical science stand unmistakably forth. [Sidenote: Archimedes and Aristotle.] “An extraordinarily large proportion of the subject matter of the writings of Archimedes,” says Heath, “represents entirely new discoveries of his own. Though his range of subjects was almost encyclopædic, embracing geometry (plane and solid), arithmetic, mechanics, hydrostatics and astronomy, he was no compiler, no writer of text-books.... His objective is always some new thing, some definite addition to the sum of knowledge, and his complete originality cannot fail to strike anyone who reads his works intelligently, without any corroborative evidence such as is found in the introductory letters prefixed to most of them.... In some of his subjects Archimedes had no forerunners, _e. g._, in hydrostatics, where he invented the whole science, and (so far as mathematical demonstration was concerned) in his mechanical investigations.”[111] Aristotle’s _History of Animals_ is still highly esteemed by historians of biology[112] and often evidences “a large amount of personal observations,”[113] “great accuracy,” and “minute inquiry,” as in his account of the vascular system[114] or observations on the embryology of the chick.[115] “Most wonderful of all, perhaps, are those portions of his book in which he speaks of fishes, their diversities, their structure, their wanderings, and their food. Here we may read of fishes that have only recently been rediscovered, of structures only lately reinvestigated, of habits only of late made known.”[116] But of the achievements of Hellenic philosophy and Hellenistic science the reader may be safely assumed