A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 

 BOOK I 



OHOULD the story that is about to be unfolded 

 O be found to lack interest, the writers must stand 

 convicted of unpardonable lack of art. Nothing but 

 dulness in the telling could mar the story, for in itself 

 it is the record of the growth of those ideas that have 

 made our race and its civilization what they are; of 

 ideas instinct with human interest, vital with meaning 

 for OUT race ; fundamental in their influence on human 

 development; part and parcel of the mechanism of 

 human thought on the one hand, and of practical civil- 

 ization on the other. Such a phrase as " fundamental 

 principles ' ' may seem at first thought a hard saying, 

 but the idea it implies is less repellent than the phrase 

 itself, for the fundamental principles in question are 

 so closely linked with the present interests of every one 

 of us that they lie within the grasp of every average 

 man and woman nay, of every well-developed boy 

 and girl. These principles are not merely the stepping- 

 stones to culture, the prerequisites of knowledge 



