October 2S, 1897] 



NATURE 



621 



SCIENCE AND MODERN CIVILISATION} 

 ■^^HEN Harvey was entering on his career as an investigator, 

 in the early years of the seventeenth century, the great 

 movement of the Renaissance had produced its full effects. 

 Starting in Italy in the fourteenth century, it spread during the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and permeated the rising 

 nationalities of Western Europe. It was through the zeal en- 

 gendered by this movement that the priceless literary and 

 artistic treasures of (ireece and Rome were rescued from oblivion 

 and made the secure heritage of all time. The study of these 

 monuments of ancient genius, and the inspiration communicated 

 by them, saved medieval Europe from barbarism, and created a 

 new civilisation not inferior in polish to that of the classical ages. 

 Upon literature and the fine arts the spirit of the Renaissance 

 reacted with the happiest possible effects. It inspired the 

 masterpieces of poetry, painting, architecture, and sculpture, 

 which constitute the glory of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies, and compel the admiration and challenge the rivalry of 

 the nineteenth century. But, as regards natural knowledge, the j 

 influence of the Renaissance was at the first, and even for a long ! 

 time, distinctly unfavourable. The writings of Hippocrates, j 

 Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen and other masters were studied I 

 and searched, not for inspiration to new inquiry and j 

 higher development— but these great names were erected 

 into sacrosanct authorities, beyond whose teaching it was I 

 vain, and even impious, to seek to penetrate. The result | 

 of this perversion was that the pursuit of natural knowledge j 

 degenerated into sterile disputations over the words of the i 

 masters. This numbing despotism of authority comatosed the 

 intellect of Europe during many generations. It received the 

 first rude shocks from the discoveries of the great anatomists of 

 the sixteenth century ; and it was finally overthrown by the 

 force of the demonstrations of Galileo and Harvey— powerfully ! 

 aided, no doubt, by the philosophical writings of Bacon and j 

 Descartes. j 



These four men— Galileo, Harvey, Bacon, and Descartes- 

 were the dominating spirits of their epoch in the sphere of 

 natural knowledge ; they were contemporaries ; and three of \ 

 them must have had more or less personal acquaintance with i 

 each other. Harvey was Bacon's friend and physician ; and we 

 can easily believe that much talk went on between the investi- ; 

 gator and philosopher concerning the studies in which they were ■ 

 mutually interested— and that Bacon imbibed his enlightened 

 notions respecting the importance of experiments in the puraiit 

 of knowledge from the precepts and practice of Harvey. It 

 does not appear that Descartes was personally known to Harvey, 

 but he was one of the earliest to accept the doctrine of the \ 

 circulation, and to write in its defence. When Harvey was a j 

 student at Padua, Galileo occupied the chair of mathematics in 

 that university. These two men take rank as the twin founders 

 of modern science — the one in the domain of biology and the 

 other in the domain of physics. Their lives largely overlapped ; j 

 they were contemporaries for sixty-four years, and both nearly j 

 reached the patriarchal age of fourscore. Roughly speaking, ' 

 their period of activity covered the first half of the seventeenth i 

 century. They were, each in his respective department, pioneers \ 

 in the method of searching out the secrets of nature by observa- 

 tion and experiment, and in proclaiming the paramount neces- 

 sity of relying on the evidence of the senses as against the dicta 

 of authority. j 



The present year is the 300th anniversary of Harvey's I 

 graduation at Cambridge, and of the commencement* of his ! 

 career as a student and investigator of nature. That date, 1597, ' 

 corresponds roughly with the birth-time of modern science. 

 The occasion is, therefore, not inappropriate for a survey of 

 the changes impressed upon civilised society by science— after j 

 three centuries of expansion and growth. The lapse of time is j 

 sufficiently long, and the advance made is sufficiently great, to 

 enable us to estimate approximately the scope and .strength of 

 this new factor in our environment ; and perhaps even to appre- 

 ciate the influence which the cultivation of science is likely to 

 have on the future of modern civilisation. 



All the older civilisations have issued either in extinction, or 

 in permanent stagnation. The civilisations of Egypt and 

 Chaldxa and of Greece and Rome, after a phase of progressive 

 decline, eventually perished by military conquest. The ancient 

 civilisations of the Far East— those of India and China— still 



1 Extract from the Harveian Oration, delivered before the Royal College 

 of Physicians, October 18, by Sir William Roberts, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of 

 the College. 



NO. 1 46 1, VOL. 56] 



persist, and have a semblance of life ; but it is a life of helpless 

 torpor and immobility. Is our modern civilisation doomed to 

 share a kindred fate? There are, I think, good reasons for 

 believing that in this respect history will not repeat itself. 

 Special features are observable, and special forces are at work, 

 in contemporary civilisation which differentiate it profoundly 

 from all its predecessors. 



It may be said, broadly, that the older civilisations rested essen- 

 tially upon art and literature (including philosophy)— and that 

 modern civilisation rests, in addition, upon science and all that 

 science brings in its train. This distinction is, I think, fundamental 

 —and connotes a radical difference as regards stability and con- 

 tinuance between ancient and modern society. A comparison 

 of the rnode of growth of the fine arts and literature on the one 

 hand, with the mode of growth of science and its dependent 

 useful and industrial arts on the other, brings out this point very 

 clearly. 



The evolution of literature and art displays the following 

 well-marked characteristics. Starting from some rude beginnings, 

 each branch of literature and each branch of the fine arts grows 

 by a succession of improved ideals until a certain culminating 

 level of excellence (or phase of maturity) is attained. When this 

 level is reached no further growth takes place, nor even seems 

 possible. The level of excellence attainable by any nation 

 depends presumably upon the measure of the original endowment 

 of the race with artistic and literary faculty. When and after 

 this summit level of excellence is achieved, all subsequent ex- 

 pan.sion, if any, is quantitative rather than qualitative— and 

 consists in modifications, variations, repetitions and imitations — 

 but without any real advance in artistic and literary excellence. 

 It may be further noted that there is observable in the past 

 annals of literature and the fine arts a fatal tendency to a 

 downward rnovement. The variations are apt to show mere- 

 tricious qualities— which indicate, in the judgment of critics, a 

 degradation from the high .standard of the earlier masters. The 

 life of each of the fine arts seems, as Prof. Courthope has ex- 

 pressed it, to resemble the life of an individual in having periods 

 of infancy, maturity and decline. The witness of history bears 

 out this view. 



It is almost startling to consider how long ago it is since most 

 branches of art and literature had already reached their highest 

 known pitch of excellence. The Homeric poems are supposed 

 to have been composed a thousand years before the Christian 

 Era — and no one doubts that as examples of epic poetry they 

 still stand in the front rank. In the fourth and fifth centuries 

 B.C. there occurred in Greece an extraordinary outburst of 

 artistic and literary genius— such perhaps as the world has 

 never seen before nor since. During this epoch sculpture was 

 represented by Phidias and Praxiteles— architecture by the 

 builders of the Parthenon— painting by Apelles and Zeuxis — dra- 

 matic poetry by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes — and 

 speculative philosophy by Plato and Aristotle. Greece main- 

 tained her political independence for two centuries after this 

 period ; but she did not produce anything superior, nor 

 apparently even equal, to the masterpieces of this golden age. 



A parallel sequence is observable in the history of Ancient 

 Rome. Art, literature, and philosophy— and all studies that 

 may be grouped under these headings— attained their culmination 

 in the Augustan age ; and no advance thereupon took place, but 

 rather a falling off, during the .subsequent centuries of imperial 

 Rome's political existence. 



If we turn our eyes to the Far East we see that the master- 

 pieces of architecture and ornamental metal work, and of poetic 

 and philosophical literature are all old— many of them very old. 

 Neither in India nor China nor in any other Far Eastern countr)- 

 are there any indications of advance for many centuries in the 

 domain of artistic and literary culture. 



The hi.story of Western Europe tells a .similar tale. The 

 finest examples of Gothic and Norman architecture date from 

 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Painting culminated in 

 Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with Raphael, 

 Da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, and Paul Veronese. The same 

 art reached its highest level in the Low Countries with Rem- 

 brandt and Rubens — in Spain with V^elasquez and Murillo — in 

 France with Claude Lorraine and Poussin— all artists who 

 flourished in the seventeenth century. In England nothing 

 greater than the works of Reynolds, Ciainsborough, and Turner 

 has been produced by later artists. Similarly with literature : 

 most of the masterpieces belong to a past age. Italy can show 

 no higher examples of poetry than the creations of Dante, 



