think how they might apply the gifts of nature to 

 their own uses a movement was begun which should 

 ultimately lead to civilization. 



Long indeed must have been the ages required 

 for the development of this rudest primitive commun- 

 ity into the civilization revealed to us by the most 

 ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After spoken 

 language was developed, and after the rude represen- 

 tation of ideas by visible marks drawn to resemble them 

 had long been practiced, some Cadmus must have 

 invented an alphabet. When the use of written lan- 

 guage was thus introduced, the word of command ceased 

 to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it 

 became possible for master minds to extend their influ- 

 ence as far as a written message could be carried. 

 Then were communities gathered into provinces ; prov- 

 inces into kingdoms ; kingdoms into the great empires 

 of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization which 

 we find pictured in the most ancient records a stage 

 in which men were governed by laws that were per- 

 haps as wisely adapted to their conditions as our laws 

 are to ours in which the phenomena of nature were 

 rudely observed, and striking occurrences in the earth 

 or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the nation. 



Vast was the progress of knowledge during the 

 interval between these empires and the century in 

 which modern science began. Yet, if I am right in 

 making a distinction between the slow and regular 

 steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that 

 which preceded it, and the entrance of the mind at 

 some fairly definite epoch into an entirely new sphere 

 of activity, it would appear that there was only one 



"9 



