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PART II. PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 



IN glancing at the history of humanity, one fact 

 immediately attracts attention. It is the su- 

 premacy over all the continents which Europe has 

 been able to win and to keep until the present day. 

 The cause of this supremacy has not been either 

 numerical superiority or a more advanced social organi- 

 zation or even any particular religious and literary ideas. 

 The Chinese, as is well known, were civilized long before 

 the Europeans, and, long before them, were acquainted 

 with the use of the compass and even of gunpowder. 

 The Hindoos, on the other hand, have possessed from 

 the remote past a religion and a literature whose 

 attraction, even to Western minds, is far from being 

 exhausted ; and in Central America there existed a 

 state of advanced civilization, which was annihilated 

 by the Spanish conquest. As to numerical superiority, 

 it is sufficient to recall the fact, that even at the present 

 time, either India or China has a larger population 

 than Europe. If the white race has triumphed over 

 other races, it is because it possessed weapons infinitely 

 more formidable than those of its adversaries, and that 

 for commercial transactions it had at its disposal manu- 

 factured products far superior to those of other nations. 

 Now, the manufacture of these weapons and products 

 has only been rendered possible through the progres- 

 sive development of the mathematical and physical 

 sciences of which the Greek nation laid down the 

 principles and established the solid foundations. So it 

 may be said that if ancient Greece had not created 

 and transmitted rational science to Europe, the latter 



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