226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing new is learned, and time only is lost) could be caused to pass off 

 more rapidly somewhat resembling reflex actions the brain would be 

 left free to turn to other, to higher aims. Translated for the Popular 

 Science Monthly from Die Gartenlaube. 



-- 



THE MILLENNIUM OF MADNESS. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD. 



IN a recent number of " The Popular Science Monthly " Professor 

 McElroy's brilliant essay on the cause and cure of feudalism was 

 prefaced by a question which has, indeed, been but rarely investigated 

 from a scientific point of view. The debasement of the noblest Cau- 

 casian nations during the thousand years following the day when the 

 power of Rome collapsed under the blows of the freedom-loving Goths 

 seems certainly the most striking anomaly in the history of mankind. 

 Yet would it have been well for those nations if their debasement had 

 been confined to that loss of personal liberty which in pagan Greece 

 and Rome followed the ascendency of a military despotism. But how 

 shall we account for the fact that in mediaeval Europe that loss was 

 accompanied by a general neglect of science and education, a general 

 decadence of industry, and a wide-spread epidemic of monstrous super- 

 stitions ? Thus supplemented, Professor McElroy's question expresses 

 the great enigma of the middle ages an enigma which can not be 

 wholly explained by the " adaptation of the horse to warfare and the 

 development of defensive armor." 



The doctrine of evolution recognizes the fact that the development 

 of social and physical organisms is not an unbroken march of progress. 

 Advancement alternates with pauses, as day with night, or life with 

 death ; the phenomena of progressive life roll through the cycles of 

 germination, maturity, and decay. In the household of Nature every 

 grave is a cradle ; the mold of every fallen tree furthers the growth of 

 new trees. Grecian colonies flourished on the ruins of Troy, Persian 

 provinces on the ruins of Babylon, Macedonian kingdoms on the grave 

 of the Persian Empire ; Roman legionaries inherited the wealth and 

 the culture of conquered Greece. The conquerors of Rome were the 

 noblest, stoutest, and manliest races of the Caucasian world ; freemen, 

 in love with health and Nature, yet withal with poetry, glory, honor, 

 justice, and honest thrift. They planted their banners in the garden- 

 lands of the West ; and their empires, gilt by the morning light of a 

 new era, were founded under auspices far happier than those of the 

 Arabian satrapies in the worn-out soil of the East. In less than five 

 hundred years after the establishment of their political independence, 

 the civilization of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs, had de- 

 veloped its fairest flowers industry, commercial activity, art, liberal 



