650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



der from mouth to mouth before they were intrusted to the graphic 

 symbols ; from this moment they disappeared from memory. Written 

 language is the downfall of tradition. 



The history of the rise of the two great races of antiquity, the 

 Greek and the Roman, is barren of important inventions. Their blue 

 shy made them wellnigh independent of Nature. Amid the cheerful 

 enjoyment of the natural, intellect in Greece flourished as never before 

 or afterward in any clime ; the age of Pericles 



"The age of godlike fantasy, 

 Is vanished, never to return." 



The palmy days soon passed away, however; the mountainous land of 

 small extent succumbed first to the Macedonian, then to the Roman 

 victor. The descendants of the conquerors of Asia became private 

 teachers to the Roman grandees. 



Rome herself developed into political greatness only. With the 

 exception of her historians, her scientific lustre was merely a faint im- 

 age of Grecian culture, very much like German literature of the first 

 half of the eighteenth century when compared with the times of Louis 

 XIV. and Queen Anne. No remarkable invention, of lasting benefit 

 to humanity, sprang from the Romans. Even the weapons of war, 

 down to the invention of gunpowder, remained the same as when 

 Glaucus and Dioniedes handled them. Shield, spear, and sword, had 

 changed shape and size, but none of their functions. 



Not until the invention of gunpowder was the aspect of society 

 essentially changed. A bit of charcoal, a nitre-crystal, and a few 

 grains of sulphur mixed together, made up a powder that rent moun- 

 tains and crushed walls. At once all the then prevailing systems of 

 attack and defence were overthrown. The nation most advanced in 

 technical matters became the most powerful. With a few thousand 

 blunderbusses, a handful of adventurers conquered a new continent. 

 The history of the invention of gunpowder is as yet a myth. Very like- 

 ly, an accident was the main cause. Science claims no reward. Then 

 came a series of inventions and discoveries, each of which played an 

 important part in framing society anew. The compass emboldened the 

 mariner to leave the coast for the open sea, and helped to discover a 

 new continent and circumnavigate an old one ; the telescope revealed 

 celestial spaces hitherto unknown; the laws of the pendulum, discov- 

 ered at that epoch, the laws of compressed air, of the circulation of the 

 blood, of the motions of the planets, furnished important building-ma- 

 terial with which to rear culture and civilization. The newly-invented 

 art of printing rendered the sources of knowledge accessible to all. 

 Our purpose is not to unfold all this in detail ; but it was necessary to 

 show the distances of those stopping-points where history changes 

 horses in order to go forward with renewed vigor. With the inven- 

 tion of printing, history commenced making more rapid strides. A 



