STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 45 



to suit the altered environment and the ever-increasing 

 needs of mankind. 



All accessible and available collections of knowledge, 

 ancient and modern, illustrate the truth of these obser- 

 vations to a greater or lesser degree, and point to the 

 existence of common factors in their individual formation 

 and preservation, these factors undergoing, in late and 

 modern times, a continuity and consistency of operation 

 due to improved methods and geographical facilities which 

 were impossible in the earliest periods of human existence 

 and progress. While the factors engaged in the produc- 

 tion, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge have 

 been comparatively uniform, certain communities and 

 individuals have been conspicuous in their use of them, 

 and have left contributions to the world's common stock 

 of knowledge which still continue to supply the means of 

 .education to the present day. 



In the list of these contributors of knowledge, data, 

 and methods, we are certainly largely indebted to every 

 great nationality of antiquity, but superlatively so to the 

 authors of Holy Writ, in which we get a resume, or 

 bird's eye view, of the origin of the cosmos, the early 

 history of the earth, the origin and sequence of its flora 

 and fauna, the appearance and evolution of the human 

 race, with its culminating characteristics of intelligence 

 and moral sense, with a belief in a future life and destiny 

 altogether unapproached for combined fulness and brevity, 

 terseness of expression, and trueness to nature so far as 

 yet known. 



The definite arrangement of knowledge and its subse- 

 quent preservation seem to owe much to the stratigraphic 

 methods adopted by its earliest and later exponents by 

 which the characteristics of symmetrical proportions and 

 regularity of detail gave it the qualities of coherence of 

 texture and easiness of transmission and acquirement by 

 "word of mouth" methods, which were then and long 

 after the sole means of communicating, directly preserv- 

 ing, and transmitting to posterity the stock of knowledge 

 possessed by the leading nationalities and "schools of 

 thought." 



Thus the manner of stratification was moulded, so to 



