The Egyptians were a practical people. They made wonderful progress in the industrial arts and learned enough of scientific principles to enable them to deal with much success with the mechanical, agricultural, astronomical, medicinal, and chemical problems encountered. But, like the Babylonians, Assyrians and other Oriental peoples, the Egyptians did not systematize their sciences. Their investigations were always carried out with practical objects in view, and when the objects were attained the experiments ceased. They never discovered a true scientific method. That was left to be done by another people who were long students of Egyptian science and who, taking all the learning of Egypt, worked out from it, as a basis, the principal sciences as we have them to-day. The Greeks took the torch of scientific progress from the Egyptians, organized learning, and passed it on to the Romans and other peoples in sound, effective and augmented forms. The Greeks idealized and systematized scientific principles, whereas the Egyptians and earlier peoples rested content with the results they could obtain by their practical efforts. We will find that, throughout the history of science, progress has always been made by similar reactions between peoples possessing the one a practical, the other a philosophical genius. CHAPTER V FOUNDING OF SYSTEMATIC SCIENCE IN GREECE The world is indebted to the Greeks as much for science as for art and literature. The idealistic spirit of ancient Greece invested scientists as well as poets, artists, and thinkers generally. But the Greek scientists were students in the great schools of Egypt and brought much of their knowledge from that country. The greatest contributions made by Greece were in the nature of methods and analysis. They were led to these by the tendencies of the Greek mind to abstract thought and philosophical investigations. They soon recognized that science is knowledge gained by certain methods of abstraction. Data had to be systematically collected, digested, classified, and impartially studied. The results of such studies had to be assembled and expressed in the most useful forms. Progress had to be made by the trial and error method and the results of experiments tested by synthesis as well as analysis; by induction as well as deduction.