THE UNITY OF SCIENCE. <^z-j 



time in Pliny's day ; and tlie exchange of thought has gained as 

 immensely as the exchange of friendly sentiments. In this way 

 it is a fact that every apjplication of science develops the moral 

 force of man. 



Man measures the universe, and he measures himself in the 

 rapidity of his thought and will, and finds the relation between 

 the world and himself. He knows that he measures with relation 

 to himself, that he measures with his senses ; and in the relations 

 between them and the world, in the necessary relation which 

 unites them, he finds the human absolute. Reducing all the meas- 

 ures to a single scale, he discovers the unity of the science for which 

 there exists a law that embraces all, anthropology. Anthropology 

 examines the nature of man, the civilization of man, his laws, his 

 errors, his poetry, his ideal. This ideal, which must go on ascend- 

 ing in proportion as man attains knowledge of himself, consists 

 in the harmonious development of the species ; and this embraces 

 all the factors — the functions, passions, and aspirations — of his 

 moral being. The more the individual assimilates himself to it, 

 the more this harmony makes of man a work of art, the more it 

 gives him the faculty and the right to admire and love his title 

 of man ; because he finds the reason of the good and the beautiful 

 rooted in his nature. Anthropology embraces ethics, eesthetics, 

 and history. 



Hope comes to fortify the ideal at an epoch when we are com- 

 prehending the transformation of force and of form ; because, with 

 this conception of the conservation of force, all phenomena and 

 all the moral manifestations of men may perfect themselves with- 

 out ever striking upon an ultimate limit. Against such an ideal, 

 against such a hope, the shadows of ignorance and the discourage- 

 ments of pessimism will never prevail. The shadows are afraid 

 of a statue,* and pessimism has no courage but that of despair. 

 But the poet (Victor Hugo) has said with right, " Whoever de- 

 spairs is in the wrong." He who does not despair and who works 

 carries in his own conscience the fruit and the recompense of his 

 efforts. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the 

 Revue Scieniifique. 



Prof. Prestwich, in a paper on the date, duration, and general conditions of 

 the last glacial period, estimates the date of the melting of the ice-sheet at from 

 eight to ten thousand years ago. He admits the appearance of man in Europe 

 before the spread of the ice over the continent, and assigns the residence of 

 neolithic man in Europe — although he had probably been established in the East 

 before that date — to some three or four thousand years b. o. 



* I mean the statue of Giordano Bruno. The place selected for its site (also a very 

 natural location, and the only one worthy of it), the Campo del I'lori, where it looks upon 

 the spot where the heroic thinker was burned, is a protest against clerical intolerance. 



