COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



cies. Of all these barbarian races, we commonly 

 say that they have no history; and by this we 

 mean that throughout long ages they have made 

 no appreciable progress. In a similar sense we 

 should say of a race of monkeys or elephants 

 that it has no history. 



Of like import is the fact that as we go back- 

 ward in time we find the progressiveness of the 

 civilized races continually diminishing. No 

 previous century ever saw anything approach- 

 ing to the increase in social complexity which 

 has been wrought in America and Europe since 

 1789. In science and in the industrial arts the 

 change has been greater than in the ten pre- 

 ceding centuries taken together. Contrast the 

 seventeen centuries which it took to remodel 

 the astronomy of Hipparchos with the forty 

 years which it has taken to remodel the chem- 

 istry of Berzelius and the biology of Cuvier. 

 Note how the law of gravitation was nearly a 

 century in getting generally accepted by foreign 

 astronomers/ while within half a dozen years 

 from its promulgation, the theory of natural 



^ It was still on trial in France in 1 749, when Clairaut and 

 Lalande magnificently verified it by calculating the retardation 

 of Halley's comet. It may be said that the French are noto- 

 riously slow in adopting ideas which have originated in other 

 countries, and that they now ignore natural selection much as 

 they formerly ignored gravitation. Nevertheless, in spite of 

 the Academy and M. Flourens, there are plain indications that 



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