THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



while at the same time regarding them as scarcely 

 better than barbarians. Indeed this is more than 

 unsupported hypothesis; for has it not been difficult 

 for the Western world to admit the truly civilized con- 

 dition of the Chinese, simply because that highly in- 

 tellectual race of Orientals has not kept abreast of the 

 Occidental changes in applied mechanics? Say what 

 we will, this is the standard which we of the Western 

 world apply as the test of civilization. 



If, sweeping over in retrospect the history of the 

 world since the time when* the Egyptian and Babylonian 

 civilizations were at their height, we attempt some such 

 classification of the stages of progress as that which 

 we a moment ago applied to pre-historic times, we 

 shall be led to some rather startling conclusions. In 

 the broadest view, it will appear that the age which 

 ushered in the historic period continued unbroken 

 by the advance of any great revolutionary invention 

 throughout the long centuries of pre-Christian antiquity, 

 and well into the so-called Middle Ages of our newer 

 era. Then came the invention of gunpowder, or at 

 least its introduction to the Western world since the 

 Chinaman here lays claim to vague centuries of prece- 

 dence. Following hard upon the introduction of 

 gunpowder, with its capacity to add to the destructive 

 efficiency of man's most sinister form of labor, came 

 a mechanism no less epoch-making in a far different 

 field the printing press. 



But even these inventions, great as was their influ- 

 ence upon the progress of civilization, can scarcely be 

 considered, it seems to me, as taking rank with the 



