392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be entertained by the historical investigator who has constantly before 

 his eyes the vicissitudes of political affairs. But in his taoerat r\\iap 

 the great rhetorician falls into the same error as he falls into immedi- 

 ately afterward in holding that the foundation of natural theology is 

 to-day just what it was in earlier times ; that, in philosophizing about 

 the origin of things, a thinker at the present day is not more favorably 

 situated than Thales and Simonides ; and that, as concerns the question, 

 what becomes of man after death, a highly-educated European, left to 

 his unassisted reason in other words, unaided by revelation is as 

 little likely to be in the right as is a Blackfoot Indian. In both cases 

 Macaulay overlooks a fact alien to him as a writer of political history, 

 and, as it would appear, particularly so to his special genius namely, 

 the changes wrought, and daily being brought about with ever-increas- 

 ing rapidity, in the condition of the human race by natural science. 

 Modern humanity is different from mediaeval and ancient humanity ; 

 the condition, the views, and the ideas of our race, in ancient and in 

 modern times are no longer comparable inter se, thanks to the new ele- 

 ments introduced by natural science. Our science and civilization 

 securely rest on the basis of induction and the useful arts ; ancient 

 science and civilization were built upon the shaky foundation of specu- 

 lation and aesthetics. 



VII. The Dangers which threaten Modern Civilization. 



What now can check modern civilization ? What lightnings can 

 ever shatter this tower of Babel ? It makes one dizzy to think of what 

 mankind is destined to be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hun- 

 dred thousand or more years hence. What is there to which it may 

 not attain ? As it nowadays, mole-like, works its way through moun- 

 tain-chains and under the ocean, why may it not at some future time 

 imitate the flight of the bird ? And, as it has solved the enigmas of 

 mechanics, why should it not solve also the enigmas of mind? 



Alas ! it is decreed that trees shall not reach the sky. It is more 

 than doubtful that man will ever fly ; but the time never will come 

 when he can tell how matter thinks. It is easier for us to reconcile 

 ourselves to these limitations than to that everlasting age of ice which 

 science remorselessly points out to us as the last scene in the drama of 

 human affairs. Thus curiously enough it happens that, whereas natural 

 science had seemed to promise to civilization a perpetual duration by 

 insuring it against the inroads of barbarism, it again makes the assur- 

 ance void and robs us of our hopes of a stable habitation on the earth. 

 The day will come when man no longer can say, " Lo ! Homer's sun 

 sends down his beams even on us ; " l a day when the earth, over and 

 over ice-clad, will travel sluggishly around the sun, whose fires will 

 then burn only with a ruddy glow ; a day when, just as in the begin- 



1 "Und die Sonne Homer's, siehe, sie lachelt auch uns" concluding pentameter of 

 Schiller's " Spaziergang." 



