WRITING AND PRINTING 



indefinitely, the knowledge that the mind had ac- 

 quired, no longer died with the memory of him who 

 had possessed it. To the knowledge gained in one 

 man's life, could now be added that which was best 

 worth preserving, left by many of those who had gone 

 before him. Tn this way the short span of life 

 granted to man, has been extended both backward 

 and forward, since he can learn from those who have 

 long been dead, and can teach to others yet unborn. 



The last four centuries have witnessed the dis- 

 covery and the general practice of the art of printing; 

 to this invention is due the wide dissemination of 

 knowledge, and the subsequent downfall of much 

 ignorance and superstition in Europe and in the 

 Western World beginning with the downfall of 

 Scholasticism and the false philosopohy that it 

 taught. 



The evolution of the species of animals, through 

 slight modifications of the laws of heredity, from the 

 simplest non-structural plasmoid, to higher and 

 higher organisms with increased functional capacities 

 until Man is reached, has required hundreds of thou- 

 sands of years. Strange as this procedure of evolu- 

 tion may seem to us, it finds strong corroboration 

 and an analogy in the life-history of each individual 

 animal, most strongly of all in that of man. Em- 

 bryology teaches that human life begins, as all other 



