SCIENCE AND PROGRESS 



from old Plutarch, companion of all youth. He is 

 speaking of the great fleet of galleys that Marcellus 

 brought against Syracuse, and he says: 



"But Archimedes despised all this, and confided in the 

 superiority of his engines, though he did not think the 

 inventing of them an object worthy of his serious studies, 

 but reckoned them among the amusements of geometry. 

 Nor had he gone so far but at the pressing instance of 

 King Hiero, who entreated him to turn his art from ab- 

 stracted notions to matters of sense, and to make his rea- 

 sonings more intelligent to the generality of mankind, ap- 

 plying them to the uses of common life. 



"The first that turned their thoughts to mechanics, a 

 branch of knowledge which came afterwards to be so 

 much admired, were Eudoxus and Archytas, who thus 

 gave a variety and an agreeable turn to geometry, and 

 confirmed certain problems by sensible experiments and 

 by the use of instruments, which could not be demon- 

 strated by way of theorem. But when Plato inveighed 

 against them, with great indignation, as corrupting and 

 debasing the excellence of geometry, by making her de- 

 scend from incorporeal and intellectual to corporeal and 

 sensible things, and obliging her to make use of matter, 

 which requires much manual labor and is the object of 

 servile trades, then mechanics were separated from geom- 

 etry, and, being a long time despised by the philosopher, 

 were considered as a branch of the military art." * 



Compare this contemptuous sentimentality with 

 the sturdy spirit of Lord Kelvin, who has made a 

 fortune from his patents in cable telegraphy and in 



Plutarch's Lives, Langhorne trans., art. " Marcellus." 

 29 



