536 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



miracle granted by tlie favor of the gods, and, if necessary, imposed 

 upon tlieir will by tlie formulas of magic, was lield inseparable from 

 the secret action of natural forces. The Greeks dissolved this con- 

 nection of ideas, and founded, in the sixth century b. c, rational 

 science, stripped of mystery and magic, as it is now current among 

 us. The Alexandrian period witnessed the triumph of the new 

 method; when astronomy was fully disengaged from astrology, 

 geometry separated from the ancient rites of the field measurers, 

 medicine and surgery rid of pilgrimages and superstitious practices, 

 and chemistry rendered independent of the incantations by which it 

 was thought the success of its manipulations could be assured. 



This took place, in principle at least, with the most enlightened 

 minds. But the mysterious and charlatanish part of these sciences, 

 and their association with mysterious prayers and invocations, did 

 not disappear all at once. They persisted in antiquity, and even 

 acquired new favor as the ancient culture fell into decay; they were 

 held in honor during all the middle ages, and still rule in the East. 



European science has gradually, since the sixteenth century, 

 regained the firm tradition of the Hellenic philosophers. It has rid 

 itself of the old train of dogmas and chimerical operations, and has 

 pursued steadfastly the construction of the edifice founded by the 

 Greeks. While the accumulated work of generations has raised it to 

 a height not dreamed of by the ancients, and while it has extended 

 its dominant applications to all branches of the social organization, 

 we still have no right to say that our methods and our modern spirit 

 would be rejected by Archimedes or by Aristarchus of Samos. On 

 reading our works they would recognize their legitimate heirs. 



There was, however, an interval of sixteen centuries between 

 Grecian science and that of the moderns, during which no transmis- 

 sion of facts, ideas, and methods took place directly, but it was 

 effected through intermediaries of less stable minds, who were im- 

 bued with the ancient prejudices. Hence arose a mixture of pure 

 reason and mysticism, which dominated science toward the end of 

 the Roman Empire and during all the middle ages. By virtue of this 

 association of two contradictory elements, now become irrecon- 

 cilable, Greco-Alexandrine science took on a strange figure at the 

 beginning of the Christian era, when the pure rationalism of Democ- 

 ritus, Aristotle, and their earliest disciples had declined. Hence that 

 curious amalgam in which the positive notions of genuine chemistry 

 were confounded with the contradictions of gnosticism and the sur- 

 vivals of the religious traditions of ancient Egypt. This mixture 

 lasted longer in chemistry than in any other science, and it was not 

 till the end of the last century that chemistry was completely freed 

 from these singular ideas and constituted under a purely scientific 



