276 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a governmental organization, little was known of the natural stages in 

 the course of human development. The notable works of Maine and 

 McLennan on primitive law, of Fustel de Coulanges on " The Ancient 

 City," of Lewis H. Morgan and Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte 

 on early society, and of Taylor and Powell and Brinton on lowly re- 

 ligion had not been written — indeed the epoch-marking investigations 

 of these and other writers run back to the unprecedented efforts of the 

 American revolutionists to ascertain the ultimate foundations of human 

 government, efforts not disparaged but only accentuated by the rapid 

 growth of human knowledge since they were made. Since then, science 

 has come into being on the earlier foundation laid by Bacon and Linne 

 and a few others : of the five cardinal principles of science, 1 the first 

 (the indestructibility of matter) was established by a contemporary of 

 the Eevolution, Lavoisier; the second (the persistence of motion) grew 

 out of Piiimford's experiments begun under the influence of this Amer- 

 ican rennaissance ; while the others (the development of species, the 

 uniformity of nature, and the responsivity of mind) came scores of 

 years later — indeed nearly all of the current branches of science have 

 arisen since the revolution. Since then, too, historical knowledge has 

 been both expanded and refined; geographic knowledge has extended 

 over the full half of the earth then practically unknown ; invention has 

 revolutionized industries, largely through the American example ; steam 

 and electricity and high explosives have been harnessed; the world's 

 population has doubled; man's conquest over nature has advanced 

 further than during all earlier time ; statecraft in the modern sense has 

 taken form, and diplomacy has been reconstructed, both largely through 

 the world-touching influence of the seventh and eighth decades of the 

 eighteenth century; and the American governmental model has been 

 adopted in spirit if not in form by far the greater part of the nations 

 of the earth. In the light of the vast advance since 1776, the sagacity 

 and courage displayed by the signers of the declaration and the articles 

 of confederation, and especially by the framers of the constitution, 

 shine forth among the greater marvels of human history. 



The founders included eminent scholars and statesmen, yet they 

 were practical men confronted by problems of which the issue meant 

 life or death; and on surveying the field of experience in governmental 

 organization within their reach, they seized on the essentials and wisely 

 withheld their hands from both the collateral and the controvertible. 

 Dwelling long on the pressingly practical (as shown by the record of 

 discussion in the constitutional convention), they defined clearly the 

 legislative and executive and judicative functions of the nascent gov- 



1 Outlined in an address of the president of the Anthropological Society of 

 Washington, delivered before the Washington Academy of Sciences and affiliated 

 societies February 19, 1900 (Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sci- 

 ences, Vol. 2, 1900, pp. 1-12). 



