COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 541
menageries of wild and rare animals in the " king's houses of
Brucliium," as means of incitement towards the study of natural
history,* and as amply sufficient to furnish empirical science
with the materials requisite for its further development ; but
the peculiar character of the Ptolemaic period, as well as of
the whole Alexandrian school which retained the same indi-
viduality of type until the third and fourth centuries, manifested
itself in a different direction, inclining less to an immediate
observation of particulars than to a laborious accumulation
of the results of that which had already been noted by others,
and to a careful classification, comparison, and mental elaboration
of these results. During a period of many centuries,
and until the powerful mind of Aristotle was revealed, the
phenomena of nature, not regarded as objects of acute
observation, were subjected to the sole control of ideal inter-
pretation, and to the arbitrary sway of vague presentimentsand
vacillating hypotheses, but from the time of the Stagirite
a higher appreciation for empirical science was manifested.
The facts already known were now first
critically examined.
As natural philosophy, by pursuing the certain path of
induction, gradually approached nearer to the scrutinising character
of empirism, it became less bold in its speculations,
and less fanciful in its images. A laborious tendency to accu-
mulate materials enforced the necessity for a certain amount of
and although the works of different dis-
polymathic learning ;
tinguished thinkers occasionally exhibited precious fruits, these
were unfortunately too often accompanied, in the decline of
creative conception amongst the Greeks, by a mere barren
erudition devoid of animation. The absence of a careful
attention to the form as well as to animation and grace of
diction, has likewise contributed to expose Alexandrinian learn-
ing to the severe animadversions of posterity.
The present section would be incomplete if it were to omit
a notice of the accession yielded to general knowledge by the
Indian elephants, drove the African ones to flight. The latter were
probably never employed as war elephants in such large numbers as
in Asiatic expeditions, where Kandragupta had assembled 9000, the
powerful King of the Prasii 6000, and Akbar an equally large number.
(Lassen, Ind. Altertliumskunde, bd. i. s. 305-307.)
* Athen., xiv. p. 654; compare Parthey, Das alexandriniscJie Mu-
seum, eine Preisschrift, s. 55 und 171.