3 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



held in that course by an external cause. 1 Kepler least of all had any 

 clear conception of the laws of motion, but held views closely resembling 

 those of Pythagoras. But when we consider that, not reckoning Archi- 

 medes, whose teaching was not understood or quickly forgotten, the 

 human mind had for two thousand years not made a step of progress 

 in this matter, we cannot but wonder at the rapidity with which such 

 ideas are now developing ; and herein we recognize the influence of 

 that new sense which has been awakened among civilized nations by 

 monotheism. Scarcely had the human mind abandoned the waving sea 

 of speculation, escaped from the mare tenebrosum of scholastic theology, 

 and set its foot on the firm land of inductive investigation, when it tri- 

 umphantly sped along a track which brought it at one bound, as we 

 might say, up to the highest accessible point ; for only fifty years sepa- 

 rate Galilei's "Discorsi" from Newton's " Principia," and the formula- 

 tion by Leibnitz, in the same year 1686, of the doctrine of the conser- 

 vation of energy. 



And so at last with a rapid succession of geographical, astronomical, 

 physical, and chemical discoveries, came the period whose benefits we 

 enjoy, and to which we give the name of the technico-inductive period, 

 because its results are due to the fact that in natural science speculation 

 has given way to induction, the /ledodog eTcaKTUtrj, of which it is so hard 

 to give an idea to an outsider, because strictly it is nothing else but 

 common-sense applied to a given problem. 



The study of this new phase of human history is as full of comfort 

 and encouragement as the study of the mind's enslavement, by the 

 phantasms of its own imagination during the " middle ages," was pain- 

 ful and depressing. Nay, who will deny that, in reviewing the whole 

 history of mankind, with the exception of the golden age of Grecian 

 civilization, which passed away as rapidly as everything beautiful does, 

 no nobler spectacle is to be seen than that which is beginning to unfold 

 itself to our view, and which is even now becoming grander from day 

 to day. 



Here we have a universal history very different from the histories 

 which commonly go by that name, and which tell of nothing save the 

 rise and fall of dynasties and empires, treaties and disputed successions, 

 wars and conquests, battles and sieges, rebellions and party strifes, dev- 

 astation of cities and harassment of populations, murders and execu- 

 tions, court conspiracies and priestly intrigues ; which exhibit to us, in 

 the war of all against all, nothing but ambition, avarice, and sensuality, 

 violence, treachery, and revenge, fraud, superstition, and hypocrisy. 

 Only at rare intervals is this dark picture relieved by the cheering ap- 

 parition of genuine princely magnanimity, or of peace and prosperity 

 among the people, oftener by the soul-stirring deeds of a heroism which, 

 alas ! too often is spent in vain. For, whither ultimately leads this 



1 Concerning this stage of the mind's development, consult Whewell, " History of the 

 Inductive Sciences," vol. ii., p. 23, et seq. 



