548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



planted in a people, it becomes the inspiration of its institutions, 

 arts, and conduct. Its empire over the minds of the people is 

 absolute. Men of action think of nothing else than of carrying it 

 out and applying it ; and philosophers, artists, and literary men 

 occupy themselves with presenting it in various forms. Tran- 

 sient accessory ideas may arise from the fundamental idea, always 

 bearing the impress of the one from which they issued. Egyptian 

 civilization, European civilization in the middle ages, and the 

 Mussulman civilization of the Arabs, were all derived from a very 

 small number of religious ideas that put their mark on the most 

 minute elements of those civilizations, and made them distin- 

 guishable at once. 



In fact, the men of every age are surrounded by a network of 

 traditions, customs, and opinions, created by their ideas, from the 

 yoke of which they can not subtract themselves, and which make 

 them very like one another. Men are more than anything else 

 led, with a despotism which no tyrant ever exercised, by custom 

 and opinion, which regulate the slightest actions of our existence, 

 and from which the most independent man never thinks of extri- 

 cating himself. Asiatic sovereigns are often represented as des- 

 pots guided only by their fancies. These fancies are really confined 

 within singularly narrow limits. The network of traditions and 

 the yoke of opinions are especially strong in the East. Religious 

 traditions, which have been loosened with us, retain all their em- 

 pire there. The most self-sufficient despot would never strike at 

 these two masters, which he knows are infinitely more powerful 

 than he. Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the 

 Revue Scientifique. 



+++ 



SKETCH OF CHARLES UPHAM SHEPARD. 



/CHARLES UPHAM SHEPARD was born at Little Compton, 

 ^-^ a town in the southeastern corner of Rhode Island, June 29, 

 1804. He was fitted for college in the Providence Grammar School 

 and entered Brown University in 1820, but left the following 

 year to join the sophomore class of the new college which opened 

 then at Amherst, Mass. He was graduated in due course in the 

 class of 1824. 



In a graphic sketch of Amherst College as it was during his 

 student days, contributed to Prof. Tyler's History, Prof. Shepard 

 has said : 



" I remember that I was the youngest of my class. Most of 

 my fellows were mature youths who did not appear to me youths 

 at all seniors in character and manlike in purpose, with an air 

 which seemed to tell of years of yearning for the ministry, and 



