CIVILIZATION AND SCIENCE. 39 i 



who could have solved its own riddle of how to get sweetness out of 

 what is disgusting ? Gay-Lussac's art of preserving articles of food has 

 done away with the distinction of seasons for the poor as well as for 

 the rich. The poisoner, with impotent rage, sees all his crafty schemes 

 unveiled. The destroying angels of small-pox, plague, and scurvy, are 

 chained. Lister's bandage excludes from the wounds received on the 

 battle-field the insidious and poisonous germs revealed by the sunbeam. 

 Chloral spreads the wings of the god of sleep over the most tortured 

 soul ; and Chloroform sets at naught, at our pleasure, the Biblical curse 

 of woman. 



Thus is fulfilled the saying of that prophet of science, Francis Bacon, 

 that knowledge is power. All European nations, the Old World and 

 the New, are running a race on this course. A distinguished critic of 

 art not long ago laid down the proposition that in the development of 

 the plastic arts is to be found the measure of the height attained by 

 humanity at any given time. If that is so, then the time from Phidias 

 down to Lysippus, and the cinque-cento, would have seen the highest 

 development of humanity ever reached hitherto, and perhaps never to 

 be attained again ; the present century would at best give out but a 

 feeble flicker of culture, as having produced the cartoons of Cornelius ! 

 This measuring the height of man's development by one single aspect 

 of human activity is in itself a false idea, and hence the judgment ex- 

 pressed above is as erroneous as is, for instance, the one-sided ethical 

 conception of man held by Semitism. But if there exists any criterion 

 which, per se, gives a measure of man's progress, it would appear rather 

 to be the degree of mastery over Nature that has been attained in any 

 age. The history of art is influenced by accidental circumstances, as 

 talent, taste, patronage, prosperity. In the investigation and subjuga- 

 tion of Nature alone there is no standing still ; the store is ever increas- 

 ing, and the creative force is ever producing more and more. Here 

 alone does each successive generation stand securely on the shoulders 

 of their predecessors. Here alone is the disciple disheartened by no nee 

 plus ultra, oppressed by no weight of authority, and even mediocrity 

 finds an honorable place, if it does but seek the truth diligently and 

 conscientiously. Finally, it is not art that saves civilization from an- 

 other downfall. Art, with all its glory, would to-day, as often before, 

 under the same circumstances, fall a helpless prey to barbarism, were it 

 not that natural science gives to our present life a security, which we 

 are so accustomed to consider as the natural condition of the existence 

 of modern civilization that we do not even think of asking whence that 

 security is derived. 



We are all familiar with Macaulay's prophecy of the tourist from 

 New Zealand who, while the Roman Church still exists in undiminished 

 vigor, shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken 

 arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. In this gloomy 

 picture Macaulay indulges pessimistic views such as are very likely to 



