SIGHT AND SEEING IN ANCIENT TIMES 415 



thoughts and, to some extent, the feelings of the people of the most 

 distant ages and the most remote regions, almost as well as those of our 

 intimate friends. Yet when we remember that man has left intelligible 

 traces upon the earth, dating back at least seven thousand years, and 

 compare their testimony with the world, say three hundred years ago, 

 we are not conscious of a great advance either intellectually or socially. 

 It is evident, therefore, that important as sight is to man, something 

 more is needed to make him progressive. As soon as the mind be- 

 comes fossilized bv tradition all advance ceases. If, on the other hand, 

 we compare the world about a.d. 1600 with its condition at the present 

 day, we are constrained to marvel at the advance that has been made. 

 In fact it is not putting the case too strong to say that if by progress 

 we mean man's power over matter, it has been greater during the last 

 fifty years than during all the preceding time of his abode upon the 

 earth. No more striking example of the stationary condition of man- 

 kind in certain relations exists than that furnished by artificial lighting. 

 The situation in 1800 was virtually the same that had existed from the 

 earliest times. Torches were used out-of-doors and lamps indoors. 

 Many of the latter found in Grecian and Soman tombs served their 

 purpose just as well as some of those used within the memory of men 

 now living. Friction matches did not become general until about 

 the middle of the last century. It is sometimes said in a tone of 

 deprecation that as the realm of science increases that of poetry 

 diminishes. Yet the fact is that the appreciation of the beauties of 

 natural scenery has advanced with the careful study of nature. There 

 may not be a realized connection, for poets are rarely scientists; albeit 

 both have often been equally close observers, even if not found in each 

 other's company or united in the same person. Few men have written 

 more appreciatively or more sympathetically of the beauty and 

 grandeur of natural scenery than geologists not a few; and geology is 

 among the most modern of the sciences. The botanist who sees vegeta- 

 tion not only with his corporeal eye, but with his mind as well, derives 

 a keener enjoyment from the beauties of vegetable life than does he who 

 can not see beneath the surface; who has no conception of the forces 

 that make plant life what it is. 



To the ancients, especially to the Greeks, sea and stream, forest and 

 field, mountain and moorland, were peopled with animate beings, it is 

 true, and their imaginations seem to have sported in a region that is 

 virtually closed to us moderns. On the other hand, while these be- 

 ings were objects of interest they were also sources of terror ; they were 

 quite as often the doers of mischief as the bringers of blessings. Storms 

 and lightning, floods and volcanic eruptions, are still natural phe- 

 nomena to be feared, but they are no longer looked upon with super- 

 stitious dread as something to which man must submit with a blind 

 and unreasoning fatalism. Their devastations can in some measure 



