DAILY INFLUENCES OF ASTRONOMY CAMPBELL. 141 



There had once existed a wonderful Greek civilization, but for twelve 

 or fifteen centuries it was so nearly suppressed as to be without seri- 

 ous influence upon the life of the European peoples. Greek litera- 

 ture, one of the world's priceless possessions, not surpassed by the 

 best modern literatures, was as complete two thousand years ago as 

 it is to-day. Yet in the Middle Ages, if we except a few scattered 

 churchmen, it was lost to the European world. A Greek science 

 never existed. Now and then, it is true, a Greek philosopher taught 

 that the earth is round, or that the earth revolves around the sun, 

 or speculated upon the constitution of matter; but excepting the 

 geometry of Euclid and Archimedes, we may say that nothing was 

 proved, and that no serious efforts were made to obtain proofs. 

 There could be no scientific spirit in the Greek nation and Greek 

 civilization so long as the Greek religion lived, and the Greek people 

 and government consulted and were guided by the oracles. If there 

 had been a Greek science equal in merit to modern science, think you 

 that stupidity and superstition could have secured a stranglehold 

 upon Greek civilization and have maintained a thousand years of 

 ignorance and mental degradation? Intellectual life could not pros- 

 per in Europe so long as dogma in Italy, only three hundred years 

 ago, in the days of Bruno and Galileo, was able to say, " Animals 

 which move have limbs and muscles ; the earth has no limbs or mus- 

 cles, therefore it does not move;" or as long as dogma in Massachu- 

 setts, only 250 years ago, was able to hang by the neck until dead the 

 woman whom it charged with " giving a look toward the great meet- 

 ing house of Salem, and immediately a demon entered the house 

 and tore down a part of the wainscoting." The morals and the in- 

 tellect of the world had reached a deplorable state at the epoch of 

 the Borgias. It was the re-birth of science, chiefly of astronomy, as 

 exemplified by the work of Columbus and Copernicus, and secondly 

 the growth of medical science, which gave to the people of Europe 

 the power to dispel gradually the unthinkable conditions of the 

 Middle Ages. 



It has been said that we may judge of the degree of civilization 

 of a nation by the provision which the people of the nation have 

 made for the study of astronomy. A review of present-day nations 

 is convincing that the statement represents the approximate truth. It 

 is essentially true even of sections of our own country. In our first 

 years as a nation a few small telescopes were in private hands, here 

 and there ; they were used merely for occasional looking at the stars ; 

 there were no observatories in the United States — no telescopes 

 suitably mounted and housed for the serious study of the stars. The 

 founding of the third American observatory, at Hudson, Ohio, about 

 1839, only a year or two after the completion of the second observa- 



