ANTIQUITY OF MAN SATCE 529 



dead, of which we have heard so much of late, are in themselves 

 of little historical value; long centuries, for example, separate those 

 which are found in Western Europe from those which are found in 

 »Iaj)an. 



In the case of an inductive science, the false assumptions or other 

 faults with which it starts are corrected in time. It deals with ob- 

 jective facts and not with the tastes and predilections of an individ- 

 ual scholar. And the interpretation of the facts becomes more exact 

 and limited with the progress of the science. Archeology has out- 

 lived its years of infancy, and in its broad outlines can now take 

 rank with geology. And like the geologist, the archeologist has had 

 to leave catastrophic theorizing to the literary amateur. Athena 

 did not spring full-grown from the head of Zeus. The art and cul- 

 ture of classical Greece, we now know, had its origin in the Greece 

 of the Minoan and Mycenaean Age; the invasion of the barbarian 

 north overshadowed it only for awhile, but the seed remained ready 

 to bud and blossom again as soon as the older race had freed itself 

 from the domination of their feudal conquerors. So, too, in West- 

 ern Europe, the Dark Ages were but a break in the history of its 

 civilization. A thousand years are but as a day in the life of civil- 

 ized man, and the Renaissance meant, not that the culture of the 

 Roman Empire was reborn, but that it had been lying like the seed 

 in the soil, ready to spring up again and burst into leaf as soon as 

 the conditions that environed it were favorable. In scientific arche- 

 ology catastrophic theories have as little place as they have in geol- 

 ogy or physics. 



