432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them more evenly, thus preventing disease and famine, and to visit new 

 and more profitable fields of industry, multiplies so as to keep pace 

 with the increased supplies of food and with the demand for labor. 



Education, like civilization, of which it is a large part, belongs 

 mainly to the Euraryans. It is the misfortune of the Chinese and 

 Japanese that more time is required to learn their hieroglyphical 

 writing than to get a liberal education in a Teutonic or Latin tongue. 

 The Arabs and Hindoos have alphabets, but they have no eminent 

 schools, no rich literature, no great city in which their race has reached 

 a leading place in culture. The possession of the alphabet, with the 

 books, the schools, the wealth, and the centres of civilization, in the 

 temperate zone, where man has the strongest stimulus and the most 

 energy for the exercise of his physical and mental faculties, gives to 

 Euraryans the mastery of the fortunes, and almost a monopoly of the 

 interest of earth. Progress depends not so much on the number of 

 those who come within its nominal domain, as of those who are under 

 its full influence and appreciate its value; that is, the educated people. 

 They have increased ninefold since 1770. In that year not one out 

 of a hundred adults in Russia and Turkey, not ten in Catholic Europe, 

 not thirty in Protestaut Europe, could read. Now, about eighty-five 

 out of a hundred in the Teutonic, and fifty in the Latin nations, can 

 read, or nearly 200,000,000 in all. The gain in education is, however, 

 much more than that indicated in the mere increase of those able to 

 read. The quality of the learning has improved as much as its quan- 

 tity. In the middle of the last century, there were few books worth 

 reading in any modern language. A man was not accounted well 

 educated unless he were familiar with Latin. So scanty were the lit- 

 eratures of French, English and German, that they were considered 

 unworthy of the notice of scholars. The student had to read Greek 

 and Latin to learn " the humanities." There was no science save dry 

 astronomy and mathematics, little history, little philosophy, little 

 poetry. The chemistry, geology, and physiology, which form the bulk 

 of our positive knowledge, are products of the steam age ; and, instead 

 of being dry and remote from the business and associations of practi- 

 cal life, they come home to us every day, guarding our health, assist- 

 ing our industry, and influencing our opinions. Ancient Egypt, As- 

 syria, and Hindostan, and the prehistoric man in Europe, have been 

 made known to us by late research, and even our histories of Greece 

 and Rome have required rewriting, to adapt them to the advance of 

 our knowledge and philosophy. 



A large majority of our most instructive books are the product of 

 the last hundred years. Of the works sold in the book-stores or loaned 

 by the public libraries, at least ninety-five per cent, are new. Nearly ' 

 all our prose romance, and most of our poetry, history, and miscellane- 

 ous literature, belong to the steam age in origin and spirit. We now 

 write ten times as many books, and publish fifty times as many vol- 



