HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



self weapons of attack and defence : he chipped the shapeless flints 

 into spear-points; out of pebbles he formed sharp arrow-heads; be- 

 tween the extremities of the elastic bough torn from the trees He 

 stretched a cord made of the twisted fibres of their bark, and thus 

 found a means of sending winged messengers of death after the fleetest 

 prey. He would soon disdain the accidental shelter of thickets and 

 caverns when, by the exercise of his reason, he had learnt to construct 

 habitations for himself. Rude indeed must those primitive dwellings 

 have been; but, unlike the swallow which age after age continues to 

 build her nest in the same way, man progressed in knowledge, until at 

 length he was able to rear the solemn temple and the stately palace. 

 Again, such food as the spontaneous bounty of nature might supply in 

 fruits and roots, with which the uncertainties of the chase might be sup- 

 plemented, would soon prove inadequate for the sustenance of the in- 

 creasing tribes, and they must soon have learnt to sow and to reap, and 

 to know seed-time and harvest. And when the knowledge of primitive 

 man had extended to the management of fire, he greatly enlarged his 

 powers, and acquired that specially human distinction the art of 

 cooking his food. We see, then, that at the earliest period the very 

 necessities of life must have compelled men to observe the properties 

 of the things around them ; to study the appearance and habits of 

 animals ; to note the effects of heat ; to recognize the signs which 

 announced the return of the seasons for sowing their grain, and for 

 gathering in the produce. 



But however necessary such knowledge may be for existence, or in a 

 more advanced state for comfort, it is not this which we mean by science. 

 Take, for instance, the art of making bread, which was probably prac- 

 tised by the earlier races in some such manner as that represented in 

 Fig. i, wherein is depicted the process employed by certain savage 

 tribes at the present day. Rude as the process is and it consists 

 only in spreading the paste, made of flour and water, on a series of 

 flat stones which have been heated in a fire its employment betokens 

 the knowledge of a certain number of the facts of nature. It required 

 the experience of perhaps many ages to impart the knowledge of other 

 facts by which the originally rude process became improved. This 

 progress of an art, from its rudest to its more advanced state, does 

 not necessarily imply an advance in science. Arts originally improved 

 by advantage being taken of such facts as accident revealed, or by ex- 

 periments designed to discover facts, not for the sake of the knowledge 

 itself, but in order to find better means of attaining practical ends. 

 Science, on the other hand, seeks a knowledge of the truths of nature, 

 not as the means to an end, but as itself the end. Men lived and 

 acted for ages before they began to indulge in scientific inquiries, and 

 the vast body of natural truths, first acquired in the endeavour to 

 supply necessities and obtain comforts, formed the raw material, as it 

 may be termed, from which the first philosophers attempted to con- 



