374 THE KIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



problems that seemed insoluble a hundred years 

 ago ; it has opened out to us new provinces of 

 learning, the very existence of which was unsuspected 

 at the beginning of the century. Above all, it has 

 put clearly before our eyes the lofty aim of monistic 

 cosmology, and has pointed out the path which alone 

 will lead us towards it — the way of the exact empirical 

 investigation of facts, and of the critical, genetic study 

 of their causes. The great abstract law of mechanical 

 causality, of which our cosmological law — the law of 

 substance — is but another and a concrete expression, 

 now rules the entire universe, as it does the mind of 

 man ; it is the steady, immovable pole-star, whose 

 clear light falls on our path through the dark labyrinth 

 of the countless separate phenomena. To see the 

 truth of this more clearly, let us cast a brief glance at 

 the astonishing progress which the chief branches of 

 science have made in this remarkable period. 



I. — PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY. 



The study of the heavens is the oldest, the study of 

 man the youngest, of the sciences. With regard to 

 himself and the character of his being man only 

 obtained a clear knowledge in the second half of the 

 present century; with regard to the starry heavens, 

 the motions of the planets, and so on, he had acquired 

 astonishing information 4,500 years ago. The ancient 

 Chinese, Hindoos, Egyptians, and Chaldseans in the 

 distant East knew more of the science of the spheres 

 than the majority of educated Christians did in the 

 West 4,000 years after them. An eclipse of the sun 

 was astronomically observed in China in the year 

 2697 b.c, and the plane of the ecliptic was determined 



