1 6 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



stimulus to industry viz., individual and independent 

 ambition and welfare ; for slaves had no end in view, not 

 even the bringing up of a family ; and they made machinery 

 unnecessary, because they were cheaper than machinery. 

 Slavery, therefore, limited the means of production, and 

 closed the road to competition and mechanical improve- 

 ments. 



IV. On the other hand the universal CONTEMPT in which 

 slavery was held deterred free men from entering the indus- 

 trial and commercial career which was almost exclusively 

 the pursuit of slaves, and which alone could at one and the 

 same time conduce to the development of wealth, raise the 

 status of civilisation, and lead to that stimulation necessary 

 for the creation of new means of progress in the field of 

 applied science. So long as trade and industry, together 

 with manual labour, were considered as beneath the dignity 

 of free men, practical advancement was well-nigh impossible. 



V. The mildness of the CLIMATE in which early civilisation 

 flourished restricted the necessaries of life and this was a 

 permanent cause of stagnation for utility was a much 

 weaker incentive of inventions and science than in northern 

 regions. 



VI. PRECONCEIVED THEORIES constituted another draw- 

 back for science is very frequently the outcome of practical 

 and physical manual work, and there were relatively too few 

 trades and industries for them to induce scientific researches 

 and lead to many scientific results. Compare theory and 

 practice : Alchemy, for instance, sought the philosopher's 

 stone and the elixir of life and f ailed \ but on its way, 

 through and out of the processes of manipulation it neces- 

 sitated, it accidentally made many useful discoveries, and 

 finally paved the way to Chemistry. In antiquity the absence 

 of manipulation or the workshop was a bar to the disappear- 

 ance of the theoretical conceptions which stood in the way. 



VII. MATERIAL SUBSTANCES naturally also play an 

 important part in the progress of scientific theories and 

 their application : without glass, for instance, we could have 

 no astronomical nor physiological instruments, hence neither 

 astronomy nor physiology; without coal and iron, the law 



