438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that their monarchy had stood without material change for 10,000 

 years. There is much reason for believing that their religion and 

 polity were about the same for at least 3,000 years, and for presum- 

 ing that they must have been very slow in reaching that condition. 

 The farther we look back into history, the longer we find the intervals 

 between the permanent improvements of culture. The present age is 

 resplendent not less for the magnitude of its inventions and discoveries 

 than for the speed with which they have crowded upon one another's 

 heels, and have been carried round the world. No previous time 

 has approached ours in its achievements, and, if ever any force of 

 culture deserved apotheosis, it is steam. 



ON THE BACKWAEDNESS OF THE ANCIENTS IN 



NATUKAL SCIENCE. 



By CAKL VON LITTEOW. 1 



I CAN hardly be mistaken in holding that the ceremonies attending 

 the installation of a rector of our university chiefly concern the 

 students. Thus only can I account for the fact that on the one hand 

 the newly-installed officer is burdened with the unpleasant duty of 

 listening to a history of his own life, and, on the other, that he is re- 

 quired to deliver an address whose sole purpose is to make known the 

 ground he occupies in science and in his teaching. His colleagues, 

 to whom he is indebted for his election, of course have no need to be 

 informed where he stands, while the students oftentimes have but 

 scant opportunity of knowing what manner of opinions are held by 

 him. Hence it is that my words are addressed first of all to you, my 

 young friends. 



Those nations of antiquity which so long freely and unchallenged 

 have borne the title of " classical," owe to their mastery of form what- 

 ever right they have to that honorable epithet. While we must re- 

 gard our predecessors in culture as being the best patterns in all 

 that regards form, we may nevertheless of ourselves assert that in the 

 investigation of matter, and in the arts of making it subservient to 

 man, we in turn equally or even to a greater degree surpass the an- 

 cients. This condition of things is indeed nothing but one phase of 

 the strife between the real and the ideal a strife which, fortunately 

 for mankind, is never altogether allayed. That in nearly every de- 

 partment of art taking this terra in its widest sense we are on the 

 whole the miserable Epigoni of the ancients, is universally admitted, 



1 Inaugural Address on his installation as Rector of the University of Vienna. Trans- 

 lated by J. Fitzgerald, A. M. 



