858 REPORT— 1900. 



the culture of the mind was the object in view. On the other hand, all the affairs 

 of life connected with the mechanical arts were confined for the most part to a 

 large section of the people who were held in slavery, and who, with but few 

 exceptions, never rose to intellectual pursuits. 



But, above all, as their ideas crystalli-ed into the form of concrete theories 

 nearly allied to many supernatural conceptions, these were gradually absorbed by 

 the priesthood and mingled with the national faith, to differ from which, as in the 

 case of Socrates, meant recantation or death. 



Reviewing, therefore, the above impressions of the ancient world, we find the 

 most accurate observations combined with the most fanciful theories, worked out 

 with a logical and a mathematical skill which all the world admires, yet vitiated 

 by conceptions or theories based on fanciful resemblances, and the whole gradually 

 consolidated by priestcraft into a mass of superstitious dogma, to differ from which 

 was to incur the odium of heresy. 



We shall see as we proceed that this palsy of the mind was again repeated 

 after a lapse of 1,500 years. 



But even in the century which immediately preceded our era, we have indica- 

 tions that there were clear theories which had they been followed out to the full 

 might have led to an earlier gathering in of the fruits of science. 



At this point I may perhaps be permitted to read a few passages from the 

 great Latin poet Lucretius, who in his sweet Pyrrhean verses attempts to lay 

 before his beloved Memmius, the Roman soldier, the learning of tl e Greeks. 



I shall use Munro's translation. 



The entire six books are taken up by an attempt on the part of Lucretius to 

 explain to Memmius the whole realm of nature, starting from the atomic stand- 

 point of Democritus and Epicurus. 



I should explain that in the following passages Lucretius calls the atoms the 

 first-beginnings of things. 



This poem was written in the first century before our era, and gives a good 

 idea of the attitude of the Roman mind in its admiration of Greek philosophy, 

 while at the same time attacking the gross superstition of the priests. 



' When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth crushed down under 

 the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with 

 hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his 

 mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face. Him neither story 

 of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar could quell : they only 

 chafed the more the eager courage of his soul, filling him with desire to be the 

 first to burst the fast bars of nature's portals. Therefore the living force of his 

 soul gained the day : on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and 

 traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe ; whence he 

 returns a conqueror to tell us what can, what cannot come into being ; in short 

 on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary mark. 

 Therefore religion is put under foot and trampled upon in turn ; us his victory 

 brings level with heaven.' ' 



' This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the 

 sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature ; the warp 

 of whose design we shall begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out 

 of nothing by divine power.' * 



* We must admit therefore that nothing can come from nothing, since things 

 require seed before they can severally be born and be brought out into the buxom 

 fields of air.' ^ 



' Moreover nature dissolves everything back into its first bodies and does not 

 annihilate things.' * 



' And yet all things are not on all sides jammed together and kept in by body : 

 there is also void in things.* 



' Time also exists not by itself, but simply from the things which happen the 

 sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is present and 



» pook I., p, ?, 2 zbi4, p, 4. '. ma. p. 5. ♦ ma. p, e, « jHd. p. §, 



