I.] THE GREEKS. 9
spirit which characterised the people, fitted them to undertake
expeditions into distant lands. But it was the national intellect
of the Greeks that especially qualified them for geographical
investigation. Their comprehensiveness of mind was suited to a
subject which, as we have seen, embraces a wide area of know-
ledge, and imparted to it a philosophical as well as a scientific
character. Hence at an early period we find that the information
gathered by their traders was recorded, and made the basis for
enquiries into the origin and constitution of the world. Their
acuteness of observation caused them to notice the peculiarities
of the countries which they visited, and of the objects which they
met with in them; and these they learnt to compare with one
another, and to speculate on their resemblances. This was the
commencement of physical geography, which formed a link
between the study of the earth at large and the detailed investi-
gation of physical phenomena. The versatility of their intellect
prevented them from confining themselves to one side of the
study, and led them to regard it from several points of view.
Thus mathematical, and physical, and historical geography, each
in its turn, obtained recognition, and at last systematic treatises
were written, in which all these aspects of the subject were
combined. To this we may add a certain expansiveness of
temperament—the very reverse of the exclusiveness of the
Phoenicians—which impelled them to communicate to others
the knowledge which they themselves obtained.
The country also which was inhabited by the Greeks on both
sides of the Aegean was peculiarly suggestive for
geographical study, both in its general characteristics suggestive
and in the peculiar phenomena which it exhibits.
For a science like astronomy, requiring as it does
above all things a clear atmosphere and an unimpeded range
of view, the plains of Babylonia were a more fitting home.
Geometry, which, we are told, .originated in the necessity of
measuring the ground in Egypt after the landmarks had been
obliterated by the inundation of the Nile, would naturally look
to that country as its birthplace. But for geography Greece had
lessons to teach which nowhere else could be learnt to equal
advantage on account of the extraordinary variety of its natural