JOHM WESLEY POWELL II9 



of Nature were not systemized. Such was the epoch culmi- 

 nating in the glories of Alexandria and Athens, when adult 

 Art led infantile Science upon the stage of human activity. 

 The natural sciences were not ; and although the philosophers 

 taught " Know thyself," much as Pope long after proclaimed : 



The proper study of mankind is Man, 



and although Praxiteles and Phidias attained a knowledge of 

 external anatomy hardly less refined than that of today, the 

 prevailing notions concerning races and peoples, as well as of 

 physiology and pathology, were fantastic and myth tinged. 

 Yet the epoch yielded systems of philosophy, summing the 

 ever multiplying experiences of the relations between the human 

 mind and external Nature, which have fertilized knowledge 

 throughout all the later centuries. Powell was among those 

 who drank deep at the perennial fount of classic philosophy ; 

 and the course of his intellectual career was laid with constant 

 reference to the courses followed by the pioneers of definite 

 thought about the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. 



In the second epoch of science, men summed the experiences 

 of generations rather than of centuries, and of the variables as 

 well as the constants of Nature ; and so the natural sciences 

 came up, chiefly in northwestern Europe. Eminent among the 

 pioneers of this renaissance was Linne, who framed a " System 

 of Nature " still regarded as the foundation of the modern 

 sciences of organisms ; and here the genus Homo was first 

 defined in terms acceptable to modern students. Later in the 

 same epoch Huxley indicated "Man's Place in Nature" and 

 Darwin traced the " Descent of Man " in terms at first evoking 

 dissent from many, j^et in such masterly fashion as to affect all 

 later thought and leave a permanent impress on science. Other 

 contributors there were in numbers ; but these three — Linne, 

 Huxley, and Darwin — stand out not merely as leaders of 

 thought but as expositors of the structural similarities between 

 the genus Homo and other genera of the animal realm. An- 

 other pioneer of the Renaissance — the pioneer in some respects 

 — pushed out along in a course midway between that of classic 

 philosophers and that of the rising naturalists ; this was Francis 



