CARDINAL PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE 3 



(or the integrality) of the things counted — and this may fairly 

 be deemed the inception of Science. Patient search among the 

 lighter shadows of less remote antiquity discovers traditions and 

 records of an epoch in which men living under the clear skies 

 of arid regions were impressed with the apparent stability of 

 the star-decked firmament, and gradually grouped the heavenly 

 bodies into systems ; the early grouping was largely mystical 

 or astrological, the primal constellations were mainly beast-gods 

 translated to the heavens, and the crystal spheres invented to 

 carry the greater luminaries and planets were but supernal fig- 

 ments ; yet the crude system marked conscious effort to organ- 

 ize experiences of consciously recognized things — and it is fair 

 to date the definite conception of Science from this primitive 

 Astronomy. The gradually multiplying records of olden times 

 indicate that the mental processes fixed by counting and star- 

 gazing were steadily extended to other things, which were 

 slowly recognized as entities: Even before 450 B. C, Parmen- 

 ides had held that substance may neither become nor perish, 

 and about this early date Empedocles taught (of course in met- 

 aphysical wise) that the ultimate particles of matter must be in- 

 divisible, immutable, and indestructible ; while Democritus 

 summed the philosophical opinion of his period (460 B. C. to 

 357 B. C.) in a proposition which may be rendered, " Out of 

 nothing nothing arises ; nothing that is can be destroyed ; 

 change is only combination or separation of atoms ; " and a 

 like vievj^ was held by Epicurus and his disciple Lucretius dur- 

 ing the century before the opening of our era. The progress of 

 the notion lagged during the Dark Ages but revived with the 

 Renaissance and the physical researches of Gassendi, Leibnitz, 

 and especially Lavoisier (i 743-1 794), who showed experiment- 

 ally that matter is neither lost nor gained in chemical change — 

 and this experimental demonstration ma}^ justly be held to mark 

 the full birth of Science as consciously organized knowledge. 

 i\.t the same time the demonstration established that cardinal 

 principle of Science commonly phrased The Indestructibility of 

 Matter. Essentially, the integration expressed in this formula 

 involved in the first place the extension of macroscopic obser- 

 vation into microcosmic nature, and in the second place the ex- 



