The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

epletion. With Aristotle and Epicurus, the science of modern civilization
reached adolescence.
Section II. There is a clear-cut obviousness about Aristotle’s doctrines
which is entirely lacking to Plato’s cosmology. Of course neither Plato, nor
Aristotle, originated his own particular line of thought. There was a
history behind them of three or four generations of thinkers, back to
the dim figures of Thales and Pythagoras, and even beyond them. Also
Aristotle worked for twenty years in the Academy of Plato, and derived
ideas from that active, speculative group of thinkers, to whom the
modern world owes its speculation, its criticism, its deductive and
inductive sciences, and the civilization of its religious concepts. They
were the narrow channel through which passed the confused traditions
of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, and of the sea-borne Greek civilization.
From this Academy and its Aristotelian off-shoot, there emerged the
various lines of thought which the subsequent schools of Alexandria
turned into the first phase of modern science, natural and humane.
Undoubtedly the world then lost picturesqueness. For prophets were
superseded by professors. In other words, as the movement has
penetrated into habits of thought, intuitive conviction has wilted in the
face of criticism. But amid all the limitations of humanity, wandering
dazed in the abundant universe, knowledge has reconditioned human life,
and has made possible that virtue which requires such measure of
intellectual analysis.