CHAPTER IV. 



I HAVK now to resume the tracing of progress in the 

 Western world. With the decline of the divine school of 

 Alexandria, which followed the period of the Ptolemies, 

 the inventive thought of civilization became almost sta- 

 tionary for nearly a thousand years. Mankind devoted 

 itself to thinking in circles, and believing before it under- 

 stood. Gradually the doctrine of faith in things spiritual 

 extended itself to things physical, and the latter, being 

 exalted above reason, became removed from the field of 

 human inquiry. From the acceptance of the theory that 

 the Scriptures contain all the knowledge vouchsafed to 

 man, to the interpretation of phenomena by texts, and 

 the gauging of physical laws by the rules of orthodoxy, 

 was but a natural descent. The downward path from the 

 splendid achievements of Archimedes and Hero and Euclid 

 was broad and easy, and it ended in the slough of the 

 schoolmen and the mystics, wherein the world wandered 

 for centuries, mistaking the fitful corpse lights of dead 

 falsehoods for the clear daybreak of coining truth. 



Fortunately for future progress, the mystery, which was 

 regarded as inseparable from the effects of the magnet and 

 the amber, proved the salvation of continuing knowledge 

 concerning them. There can be little doubt but that 

 many of the inventions made by the acute student minds 

 which congregated in Egypt were totally forgotten and 

 lost during the dark ages. It is only recently that the 

 art of portraying the human countenance in colors and 

 with a skill in handling and modeling hitherto supposed 

 to have had its origin with the painters of the Renaissance, 

 has been proved to have been known and practised in the 

 Greek-Egyptian settlements dating from the early centur- 



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