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SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



deur, and therefore it is safer to appeal to 

 them than to other nations which can only 

 show as proofs of their antiquity writings 

 drawn up in far later ages. Looking at 

 their ancient civilization, it seems to have 

 been formed by men whose minds worked 

 much like our own. No superhuman powers 

 were required for the work, but just human 

 nature groping on by roundabout ways, 

 reaching great results, yet not half knowing 

 how to profit by them when reached; solv- 

 ing the great problem of writing, yet not 

 seeing how to simplify the clumsy hiero- 

 glyphics into letters; devoting earnest 

 thought to religion and yet keeping up a dog 

 and cat worship which was a jest even to 

 the ancients ; cultivating astronomy and yet 

 remaining mazed in the follies of astrology. 

 TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 1, p. 22. (A., 

 1899.) 



5OO. Shows Traces of More 



Remote Antiquity Prehistoric Develop- 

 ment and Progress. In the midst of their 

 [Egyptians and Babylonians] most striking 

 efforts of civilization, the traces may be dis- 

 cerned of the barbaric condition which pre- 

 vailed before; the Egyptian pyramids are 

 burial-mounds like those of prehistoric 

 England, but huge in size and built of hewn 

 stone or brick; the Egyptian hieroglyphics, 

 with their pictures of men and beasts and 

 miscellaneous things, tell the story of their 

 own invention, how they began as a mere 

 picture-writing, like that of the rude hunt- 

 ers of America. Thus it appears that civili- 

 zation, at the earliest dates where history 

 brings it into view, had already reached a 

 level which can only be accounted for by 

 growth during a long prehistoric period. 

 This result agrees with the conclusions al- 

 ready arrived at by the study of races and 

 language. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 1, p. 

 22. (A., 1899.) 



501. CIVILIZATION CAME TO EUROPE 

 FROM WITHOUT Archeology Tells the Story 

 Fixing a Relative Date. When metals 

 were very scarce, it would naturally some- 

 times happen that, in order to make up the 

 necessary quantity, some tin would be added 

 to copper, or vice versa. It would then be 

 found that the properties of the alloy were 

 quite different from those of either metal, 

 and a very few experiments would deter- 

 mine the most advantageous proportion, 

 which for axes and other cutting instru- 

 ments is about nine parts of copper to one 

 of tin. No implements or weapons of tin 

 have yet been found, and those of copper are 

 extremely rare, in western Europe, whence 

 it has been inferred that the art of making 

 bronze was known elsewhere before the use 

 of either copper or tin was introduced into 

 Europe. AVEBURY Prehistoric Times, ch. 1, 

 p. 4. (A., 1900.) 



502. CIVILIZATION, CULTURE THE 

 RIPE FRUIT OF Pioneer Too Hard Driven 

 for Abstractions. When the Pilgrim Fa- 

 thers landed at Plymouth Rock, and when 



Penn made his treaty with the Indians, the 

 newcomers had to build their houses, to 

 chasten the earth into cultivation, and to 

 take care of their souls. In such a com- 

 munity, science, in its more abstract forms, 

 was not to be thought of. And at the pres- 

 ent hour, when your hardy Western pioneers 

 stand face to face with stubborn Nature, 

 piercing the mountains and subduing the 

 forest and the prairie, the pursuit of 

 science, for its own sake, is not to be ex- 

 pected. The first need of man is food and 

 shelter; but a vast portion of this con- 

 tinent is already raised far beyond this 

 need. The gentlemen of New York, Brook- 

 lyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 

 Washington have already built their houses, 

 and very beautiful they are; they have also 

 secured their dinners, to the excellence of 

 which I can also bear testimony. They have, 

 in fact, reached that precise condition of 

 well-being and independence when a culture, 

 as high as humanity has yet reached, may 

 be justly demanded at their hands. They 

 have reached that maturity, as possessors of 

 wealth and leisure, when the investigator 

 of natural truth, for the truth's own sake, 

 ought to find among them promoters and 

 protectors. TYNDALL Lectures on Light, p. 

 224. (A., 1898.) 



5O3. CIVILIZATION, DECLINE OF 



The Half-castes of India The Digger In- 

 dians of North America. Degeneration is 

 to be seen among the descendants of Por- 

 tuguese in the East Indies, who have inter- 

 married with the natives and fallen out of 

 the march of civilization, so that newly ar- 

 rived Europeans go to look at them loun- 

 ging about their mean hovels in the midst of 

 luxuriant tropical fruits and flowers, as if 

 they had been set there to teach by example 

 how man falls in culture where the need of 

 effort is wanting. Another frequent cause 

 of loss of civilization is when people once 

 more prosperous are ruined or driven from 

 their homes, like those Shoshone Indians 

 who have taken refuge from their enemies, 

 the Blackfeet, in the wilds of the Rocky 

 Mountains, where they now roam, called 

 Digger Indians, from the wild roots they dig 

 for as part of their miserable subsistence. 

 Not only the degraded state of such out- 

 casts, but the loss of particular arts by 

 other peoples, may often be explained by 

 loss of culture under unfavorable conditions. 

 TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 1, p. 19. (A., 

 1899.) 



5O4. 



The South Sea Is- 



landers Planting Nails Lost Arts. The 

 South Sea Islanders, tho not a very rude 

 people when visited by Captain Cook, used 

 only stone hatchets and knives, being indeed 

 so ignorant of metal that they planted the 

 first iron nails they got from the English 

 sailors, in the hope of raising a new crop. 

 Possibly their ancestors never had metals, 

 but it seems as likely that these ancestors 

 were an Asiatic people to whom metal was 



