same name, but through the works of a commentator, who wrote and
observed in Alexandria 300 years after, during the age of the Antonines.
I mean, of course, the famous Ptolemy, whose name so long bore the
honour of that system which really belonged to Hipparchus.

This single fact speaks volumes for the real weakness of the great
artificial school of literature and science founded by the kings of
Egypt. From the father of Astronomy, as Delambre calls him, to Ptolemy,
the first man who seems really to have appreciated him, we have not a
discovery, hardly an observation or a name, to fill the gap. Physical
sages there were; but they were geometers and mathematicians, rather
than astronomic observers and inquirers. And in spite of all the huge
appliances and advantages of that great Museum, its inhabitants were
content, in physical science, as in all other branches of thought, to
comment, to expound, to do everything but open their eyes and observe
facts, and learn from them, as the predecessors whom they pretended to
honour had done. But so it is always. A genius, an original man
appears. He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what
they mean, and writes down their answer for the world's use. And then
his disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that
they do honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by
making his book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical
infallibility; declaring the very lie which he disproved by his whole
existence, that discovery is henceforth impossible, and the sum of
knowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered
before them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not
in the letter, but in spirit and in truth.

For this, if you will consider, is the true meaning of that great
command, "Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the