This period was in many ways like a more modern one. Greek civilization had stepped out into a new world. The conquering armies of Alexander, going out to the ends of the earth, had made communication possible between places that had hitherto hardly known of each other's existence. Science had made such remarkable strides that man's power over nature had been enormously increased, and the increase of scientific knowledge was affecting the old religious beliefs in the gods. Nothing seemed to be quite the same as it had hitherto been, and then, as at all such times, the minds of {401} men were affected by the changes. Some became more conservative than before and wanted nothing changed, because to them the old was necessarily the best, and there was only evil in what was new. Others went to the other extreme and wanted everything changed, because to them the new must necessarily be better than the old. But quietly in between these two extremes were the thinkers, those who were keeping alive that Greek spirit which knew that the vision of the whole truth had not yet been given to any man, and that the way to progress was not by destroying the old, but by building upon it in order to go on from a firm foundation to a fuller knowledge of the truth. Not to Thales, nor to Socrates, nor to Aristotle, nor yet to the men of the twentieth century has the complete vision of the truth of all things been vouchsafed, but to those who follow the quest in the spirit of the Greeks of old is granted to add a little to the progress of human knowledge. It was in the Museum at Alexandria that the thinkers worked. This Museum was founded by Ptolemy Soter, one of the rulers of Egypt after the break-up of Alexander's empire, and very much developed by his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus. This Museum, the Temple of the Muses, was what today would be called a university. It had lecture halls where mathematicians, astronomers, poets and philosophers taught; courts and porches where men walked and talked, houses where the men of learning lived. Above all, it had a Library, which contained several thousand books. This library was {402} catalogued by Callimachus, the first librarian of whom there is any record, and there were a hundred and twenty books of his catalogue. Book, however, is a wrong word to use for the collection in the Alexandrian Library, for there were no _books_ then, as we know them. Rolls took the place of books, and Callimachus soon found that the big rolls were very inconvenient. It is said that he complained that "a big book is a big nuisance," and that it was when he was librarian that the plan of dividing the large rolls into a number of smaller ones was thought of. These were easier to handle, but one work required a great many of the smaller rolls, and thirty-six were required for the Iliad and the Odyssey.