THE BOOK-MEN. 471 



forests and deserts, of men as ignorant, superstitious, wild, and brutal 

 as the Comanche Indians. Such, nevertheless, is the fact ; and the 

 question naturally arises : How, through the ages, have our ances- 

 tors been able to overcome their abject condition, and rise to the 

 heights of knowledge and art, to survey an immense horizon of truth, 

 and use the magical bounties of invention ? Did the light break upon 

 us all at once ; did we get all the superior advantages of science and 

 art we now enjoy from a single hand or from one inspiration, or was 

 the process not only slow and gradual, but difficult and terrible ? To 

 what or to whom do we owe this great change, this wonderful trans- 

 formation of the mind, manners, and labors of the human race ? 



We answer at once : The progress of man from the savage to 

 the civilized state of society and to its functions and uses was in- 

 deed slow and arduous, and is due to the studies of solitary, think- 

 ing book-men, careful theorists, or inquisitive philosophers, who, in 

 each generation, and one after the other, have promulgated the result 

 of their meditations. 



Understand us we mean what we say : we say boo7c-me?i, we say 

 theorists y and, if humor prompts, it may add contemptuous epithets to 

 the terms. We may say, if we choose, mere book-men, mad theorists, 

 or dreamy philosophers, and still the proposition would be true. 



To demonstrate this truth we might begin with primeval man, go 

 through ancient history, tracing the march of mind from the mythic 

 Hermes of Egypt, the Pythagoras of Greece, the Zoroaster of Persia, 

 to the grand display of civilization exhibited by the Roman Empire 

 under Aurelius Antoninus, or under Constantine the Great, and thence 

 follow the current in all its vicissitudes down to the present age. But 

 the limits of a single article preclude so extended a review of human 

 progress. Hence, we are compelled to select, if possible, a period of 

 history within which a fair illustration of the march of mind may be 

 found (leaving out former and subsequent ages), to test other periods 

 by the same laws of development. Let us, therefore, begin in the 

 middle of the middle ages, that is to say, in the year 800 after Christ, 

 and finish with the discovery of America, in the fifteenth century. 

 From this first point our premises will be apparent. At the last point 

 our conclusion will be reached ; and then all the consequences, as ap- 

 plicable to modern times, will show themselves as clearly as the land- 

 scape in the light of day. 



In the year 800 after Christ, what was the state of Europe ? The 

 Goths, the Yandals, the Franks, the Huns, the Normans, the Turks, 

 and other barbarian hordes, had invaded and overthrown the Roman 

 Empire, and had established various kingdoms upon its ruins. These 

 hordes of savages had destroyed, not only all the works of civilization, 

 but civilization itself. Ignorant as they were of everything that dis- 

 tinguishes and elevates human nature, they broke up the schools, ruined 

 the monuments, abolished arts and manufactures, prevented commerce, 



