CHILDHOOD OF SCIENCE.* 



In the middle centuries of the Christian era, between two ages 

 of promise and of progress, occurred the gloomiest period in 

 human annals. The thousand years that ended with the fifteenth 

 century have been named, by the common consent of historians, 

 the dark ages of the world. All the lights of ancient civiliza- 

 tion were extinguished in the growing darkness of that period. 

 The grace of Grecian culture and the charm of classic literature 

 relapsed into ugly wranglings and the empty war of words. 

 The amenities of social life and the peaceful sway of civil law 

 sank into the misrule of passion and the lawless reign of feuds. 



It was a strange and unaccountable relapse, for the records of 

 noble civilizations were on the shelves of the monasteries, and 

 under the dust of ages lay the volumes of the teachers of anti- 

 quity, of Plato and Socrates, of Euclid and Archimedes, of 

 Pythagoras and Aristotle. With many of the elements of 

 knowledge and the revelations of nature, with the unlit lamps of 

 science and philosophy in their hands, the scholars of the middle 

 ages groped and stumbled through the night of a thousand 

 years. 



In the year 1346, on the famous battle-field of Crecy, in the 

 heart of France, thirty thousand Englishmen under Edward the 

 Third and his son the Black Prince, gave battle to a French 

 army of four times their number. But from the English van- 

 guard, we are told, the booming of cannon for the first time 

 broke in on the clang of spears and the twang of crossbows. 

 The mail-clad archers were stricken with terror as they saw their 



* A Lecture written in I860, and delivered at various places in Illinois. 



