late speech, the making of a fire, and the invention of
stone implements, of the wheel and axle, and of picture-writing. It made
possible for the first time that education of the masses upon which all
later progress of civilization was so largely to depend.

V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

Herodotus, the Father of History, tells us that once upon a time--which
time, as the modern computator shows us, was about the year 590 B.C.--a
war had risen between the Lydians and the Medes and continued five
years. "In these years the Medes often discomfited the Lydians and the
Lydians often discomfited the Medes (and among other things they fought
a battle by night); and yet they still carried on the war with equally
balanced fortitude. In the sixth year a battle took place in which it
happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night.
And this change of the day Thales, the Milesian, had foretold to the
Ionians, laying down as a limit this very year in which the change took
place. The Lydians, however, and the Medes, when they saw that it had
become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much
more eager, both of them, that peace should be made between them."

This memorable incident occurred while Alyattus, father of Croesus,
was king of the Lydians. The modern astronomer, reckoning backward,
estimates this eclipse as occurring probably May 25th, 585 B.C. The
date is important as fixing a mile-stone in the chronology of ancient
history, but it is doubly memorable because it is the first recorded
instance of a predicted eclipse. Herodotus, who tells the story, was not
born until about one hundred years after the incident occurred, but time
had not dimmed the fame of the man who had performed the necromantic
feat of prophecy. Thales, the Milesian, thanks in part at least to this
accomplishment, had been known in life as first on the list of the Seven
Wise Men of Greece, and had passed into history as the father of Greek
philosophy. We may add that he had even found wider popular fame through
being named by Hippolytus, and then by Father aesop, as the philosopher
who, intent on studying the heavens, fell into a well; "whereupon," says
Hippolytus, "a maid-servant named Thratta laughed at him and said, 'In
his search for things in the sky he does not see what is at his feet.'"

Such citations as these serve to bring vividly to mind the fact that
we are entering a new epoch of thought.