THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTIILY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



age is the general effort at submitting to the or- 

 deal of enlightened criticism and scientific meth- 

 ods studies that before were wont to deal rather 

 with sentiments or tastes, theoretic ideas, or the 

 caprices of art. This significant change may be 

 seen in the researches which have for their end 

 to unearth extinct civilizations, and to trace to its 

 source the life of nations. Only the other day M. 

 Yillemain, in one of his most piquant lectures, 

 while enumerating the qualities necessary for an 

 historian, very coolly placed in the background 

 truthfulness and exactitude, and gave prominence 

 only to the art of literary composition. In his 

 opinion, writing history means skillfully con- 

 structing an emotional drama, attending to the 

 stage perspectives, and so ordering the action of 

 the piece as to produce the most striking effect. 



Great masters, no doubt, have been able by 

 the inspiration of genius to divine, so to speak, 

 the physiognomy of the past, and with exquisite 

 skill to recall to life all unchanged worlds that 

 have perished. Thus, in the narrative of Augus- 

 tin Thierry, we have pictured the gloomy period 

 of the Merovingians ; in the romances of \V alter 

 Scott, the struggles of Saxon and Norman ; in the 

 sparkling pages of Michelet, one or another as- 

 pect of the middle ages. Still, how dangerous a 

 thing it is to blend fables with truth, and how 

 faint is the distinction between the dramaturgist 

 and the historian! One writer, sharpening his 

 fine irony to gratify the wits, yields to the temp- 

 tation of portraying the men of his time in the 

 transparent colors of an antique picture, and 

 thus more or less sacrifices to the enticing mirage 

 of allusions either the likeness of the past or the 

 exactitude of the present. Another excels as a 

 composer of eloquent speeches, and in his eyes 

 the annals of a people contain nothing but jousts 

 of oratory : the fate of empires, according to 

 him, depends on the harangue of a general on the 

 battle-field, or of a tribune in the public place of 

 some little borough. They both forget the mass 

 of the people, and personify in a small number of 

 individuals the societies they describe. Besides, 

 they look at these societies only from the outside, 

 from the point of view of their public life ; they 

 are like travelers who judge of a strange country 

 from their observations during a flying visit to a 

 few of its seaports. In man, "fluctuating and 

 variable" as hi' is, they observe only that which 

 changes least — his virtues, his vices, his caprices ; 

 and it is their delight to excite emotion by over 

 and over again describing the strife of the self- 

 same passions; but the inner life, the unambi- 

 tious life, the homes of the past, they do not no- 



tice at all. They hardly ever step beyond the 

 threshold of the palace, or halt before the arti- 

 san's workshop or the laboring-man's hut; still 

 it is here that we get at the very conditions of 

 national life — the organization of the family, the 

 institution of property, the laws of labor, the 

 private ethics and the moral habits of a people. 

 Fortunately, we can restore sundry traits of the 

 effaced picture, thauks to patient research. A 

 monument turns up which, afcer much ingenious 

 discussion, enables us to understand the sacred 

 uses of fire in ancient states, or the importance of 

 luxury in the ancient mother-cities of Asia; again, 

 some charter or some inventory gives plain evi- 

 dence of the harmony and well-being of the rural 

 classes in the middle ages ; or some lirrc de raison 

 (book of accounts) gives us an insight into the 

 inner life of some obscure family in the past. 



Still these are only the too rare pages of a 

 damaged book, the leaves of which will never be 

 all found. But if we must make up our minds 

 to remain in ignorance of much of the past, can 

 we not at least collect all needed information re- 

 garding the present ? Something more than vain 

 curiosity should stimulate us here ; indeed, may 

 we not expect to find in this kind of researches 

 the solution of the difficulties which weigh most 

 heavily on modern civilization ? Humanity, even 

 on the privileged shores of Greece and Italy, is 

 not intended for the luxurious indolence of a life 

 of opulence, or for the fruitless agitations of the 

 political world. Labor is its law; and for na- 

 tions more truly even than for animal species is 

 the " struggle for life" decreed by Fate. Hence 

 the true history of societies must embrace the 

 history of the transformations undergone in time 

 and space by the institution of property, whether 

 collective or private, and by the conditions of 

 industry, whether rural or manufacturing, under 

 the influence of the natural environment and the 

 increasing wants of the population. But the 

 most attractive prizes of progress — as wealth, 

 intellectual culture, political power — are perilous 

 gifts ; nations, like individuals, seldom enjoy For- 

 tune's favors without being intoxicated thereby. 

 It is too easy to abuse them ; and a nation's pros- 

 perity, however fair its exterior, is gravely com- 

 promised when its moral is slower than its ma- 

 terial progress. 



The West is in our time passing through a 

 painful ordeal. Coal and steam have revolution- 

 ized the world. Great inventions, machinery, 

 Steam-engines, and railroads, have turned topsy- 

 turvy the usages of labor, and in part substituted 

 manufacture on the large scale for home-industry 



