_Alinari_] of these days was the New Comedy of Menander and his school. Menander’s work was taken over bodily by the Roman poets Plautus and Terence, who did little more than translate his comedies into Latin, and sometimes weave two of them together into one play, a process known by the not inappropriate technical name “contamination.” From the Roman comedians they passed almost direct to the Elizabethan age, so that in the history of the drama Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” begins almost where Menander left off. It must be confessed that the large fragments of Menander recently discovered do not raise our estimate of this dramatist. If we turn now to philosophy we find the great name of Aristotle overshadowing everything else.[114] If we have a true sense of historical proportion, we shall probably admit that the words of Aristotle have conquered the world in far truer sense than the spears of his great pupil. For Aristotle is the father of the inductive method, the patron saint of all those who observe and verify facts in order to discover the laws that control them. He was born at Stagira, in Thrace, but he came to Athens to be a disciple in the Academy, that pleasant olive-grove where Plato was the master. Twenty years he spent thus in study, and then he was commissioned by Philip to teach Alexander and other noble youths of Macedon. As soon as this task was completed he returned to Athens, and there founded his famous Peripatetic school of philosophy, so called because his lectures were delivered in the shady walks that surrounded the Lyceum. In the morning he would discuss abstruse questions with an inner circle of adepts, and in the cool of the evening deliver polished lectures to a wider circle. The fame of his teaching was spread throughout the world, and all the ablest intellects of Greece gathered to hear him. All his life he received the most generous support from Alexander, who made a point of collecting strange beasts from all quarters to enrich his zoological studies. The attitude of the monarch towards learning was in striking contrast to the behaviour of the Athenian democracy. Some wretched hierophant instituted a prosecution for impiety against Aristotle, just as they had done against Socrates, and forced him to withdraw from Athens for the closing years of his life.