594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to study the different stages through which man as an individual 

 passes from infancy to maturity. Psychology, finally, has taken cog- 

 nizance of the various facts supplied by the other sciences, and has 

 led us to understand, how, man being knoAvn, and his environment 

 being comprehended, we are to interpret their interaction. 



There are two conclusions which I think we are warranted in 

 drawing from the facts here presented. The first refers to the actual 

 relation between time and development. Just as geology teaches 

 us that the simpler organisms have existed on the earth through 

 vastly longer periods than the more complex, so it shows us that 

 the ages during which man used, simpler and stone implements 

 were greater in duration than those in which he has used more com- 

 plex and metal tools. Let us compare what we are doing now with 

 metals, and. what we did with them during the miserable epoch we 

 call the " age of chivalry," of which sentimentalism still gives us false 

 and fanciful pictures. The second conclusion springs from the first. 

 As the true history of our own race shows that we came from a low 

 and brutal state, common once to all mankind, so the facts of our 

 present condition give us reasonable hope for a better future. Let 

 us, then, stand, on the highest points of knowledge in all its depart- 

 ments, for these are touched with light. We must reach these heights 

 by continual reading, observation, and experiment. The result of 

 these is culture. All thought has an added, beauty as it approaches 

 the truth, but what is needed is to attain to clear conceptions. Our 

 impressions are blurred because we do not see facts clearly in all their 

 relations, and such impressions are ugly because they are imperfect. 

 We are yet in the morning of culture. We are only becoming sweet. 

 as wild-apple trees grafted on single boughs. It is not so much that 

 we are sinners as that we are sluggish and stupid that is the matter 

 with us. It is certain that there is a better time yet to come for our 

 race upon this earth than the present. It will be reached by a con- 

 tinuous exercise of our brain-power, giving us right reason at last, the 

 permanent correction for faults of conduct and for errors in our ideas. 

 Sir Henry Maine has said that "conceit and skepticism are the prod- 

 ucts of an arrested development of knowledge." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOMAS EDWAED. 



MANY of our readers, as their attention is arrested by the por- 

 trait we furnish this month, will glance at the name beneath it, 

 and musingly ask themselves whether they have ever seen or heard it 

 before. They will say, perhaps: "There were several Edwards, who 

 were Kings of England, and there was Edwards, who made a book 

 upon the will ; and there is Milne-Edwards, the great naturalist of 



