TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILIZATION. 709 



skirmishers exist as a reserve, and this more from stubbornness than 

 conviction. At all events they do not in the least retard the chief move- 

 ment. 



What had happened had the reaction of that time prevailed — for it 

 was a reaction begun in Germany more than 100 years before, Coper- 

 nicus having lain more than 90 years in the grave when Galileo was 

 unwillingly compelled to witness against him — what had happened in 

 such an event is difficult to conceive; and yet not so, for we may see it 

 exemplified in the great Arabian nation. Among this people the reac- 

 tion had, in truth, conquered. Their Galileos, their Averrhoes, and 

 numberless others, were defeated, together with their free convictions; 

 with them their entire sect, and therewith the Arabian culture, which 

 already had lifted the hand to grasp the palm of victory of free knowl- 

 edge, was paralyzed by the fanatical victors, and paralyzed they still lie 

 low, already half a thousand years. Allah aalam ! " God alone knows," 

 therefore shalt thou not desire to know ! So sounds it since then for 

 the pure Mohammedan ; all investigation is cut off from him, forbidden 

 and declared sinful. A noble and refined disciple of the Prophet has 

 given expression to the hope that the Moslem may yet be called to take 

 up the lost leadership. Who may believe him ? However, it appears 

 certain that the overthrow of free thought in the Arabian language 

 has become decisive for the remaining Asiatic culture. Like a dam lies 

 the spiritual-slain mass between them and us, and so has it come that 

 we alone have entered into the development to which the pictured 

 progress of thought led the way. The powers of nature which she has 

 taught us to make useful are the mechanical, i^hysical, and chemical ; 

 to permit them to work for us requires a great outfit of mathematical 

 and natural science. From this entire equipment we exercise a portion 

 as a privilege. 



It seems necessary, in order to brieflj" distinguish the two directions 

 of development, to call them by ijarticular names. The Greeks named 

 an artistic mechanism, an arrangement through which the unusual could 

 be conducted, a manganon, which word goes back, according to some, to 

 the name of the eminent race of magicians. All kinds of definite tangi- 

 ble things which were considered skillfully and wisely thought out were 

 so titled ; among others, a catapult for projectiles for purposes of war. 

 With this the word comes into the Middle Ages. Then, early in the sev- 

 enteenth century, a great machine was invented for rolling and smooth- 

 ing the washing, and since this contrivance bore a remarkable outward 

 resemblance to the catapult, it was also given its name, whereupon the 

 word wandered further into the remaining European tongues, as every 

 house-wife knows, or perhaps does not know, if she send her washing 

 to a "mangle." 



Again, for our purpose, [ would generalize that old word and name, 

 on the one hand, that something by means of which the forces of na- 

 ture are known in her laws, matiganism, and on the other, that which 



