ABSTRACT
If the Babylonians and Egyptians thus succeeded in collecting quite a considerable mass of individual facts of science, it was nevertheless left to the Greek nation to deduce from these facts a consistently realized conception of nature — not free from mystical and magical influences, it is true, but still striving more and more after a natural explanation of the laws of existence. There has been much speculation as to why it should be amongst just this people, who were not only few in number, but were also politically divided, that such a splendid development of human thought should have taken place. The deepest cause is surely to be sought in the much discussed, yet fundamentally so inexplicable national character, in the spiritual and cultural disposition of the people. It may, at any rate, be worth while briefly considering its manifestations in the social sphere, in order to gain some idea of the external conditions of development under which free thought was here able to expand.
