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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 745 



unfolding of material power in modern 

 times has been that of the various sciences. 

 In fact, it is this leavening of our western 

 civilization with the knowledge and power 

 of the natural sciences, in their mastery- 

 over the forces of nature in the service of 

 man, that, more than any other single cri- 

 terion, marks off modernity from all that 

 goes before it. 



SERVICES OF GEOGRAPHY AND ASTRONOMY 



Historically speaking, the earliest of 

 modern sciences to affect the nature and 

 scope of investment was geography. The 

 European explorations and discoveries of 

 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 

 added an area of territory to the field of 

 commerce, probably three times the size of 

 that known to western Europe prior to the 

 rounding of Africa, the opening of a sea- 

 route to India, and the discovery of the 

 American continent. Then followed the 

 formation of the great trading corpora- 

 tions, of which the East India Company 

 was typical. These corporations broad- 

 ened out into the colonial policies of west- 

 ern Europe, in the effort to exploit the 

 lands thus discovered for the enrichment 

 of the home countries. Thus in the short 

 period of a single century the map of the 

 entire world had changed, almost beyond 

 recognition— all because the science of 

 geography had enabled the researchful 

 spirits of those times to pass from the con- 

 fines of the known out into the unknown. 



The next of the sciences to influence the 

 progress of modern investment was astron- 

 omy. It was by the aid of the science of 

 the heavenly bodies that ocean navigation 

 was rendered possible. It is not too much 

 to say that the annexation of the oceans to 

 the world's area of free enterprise was, 

 next to the discovery of America, the one 

 thing that had most to do with making 

 modern nations what they are in things 

 material. On this basis of maritime 



traffic, nine tenths of the world's interna- 

 tional trade rests. The sea is as vital to 

 Great Britain, and nearly as vital to the 

 national life of Germany, as food is to the 

 body. And yet, without the contributions 

 of astronomy the commerce of the world, 

 which normally among the nations exceeds 

 $25,000,000,000 a year, would be little more 

 than a coasting trade, whose vessels hug in 

 fear the shores of inland seas and the ocean 

 frontages of their own countries. 



These two sciences— geography and as- 

 tronomy — together put into the hands of 

 man the powers whereby he, within a com- 

 paratively short period of time, enlarged 

 the extent of the world's market by three 

 times its earlier area and taught men the 

 art of mastering maritime transportation, 

 thus connecting the world's continents by 

 highways over a field of intercourse cover- 

 ing three fourths of the area of the globe. 

 These sciences, when yet in their infancy, 

 laid the foundations of the commercial, in- 

 dustrial and financial powers whose wealth 

 has since assumed proportions so colossal 

 as to stagger the vividest imagination. 



METALLURGY AND THE REGIME OF MONEY 



The next group of sciences which have 

 radically influenced the course of modern 

 enterprise and investment is that which in- 

 cludes the production and the manufac- 

 ture of metals. Mining and metallurgy 

 put the old world in possession of the 

 precious metals of the new. The infusion 

 of metallic money in such unheard-of 

 quantities into the economic life of Europe 

 was one of the most revolutionary forces 

 that ever came to any age. There was not 

 a single institution, social relation or busi- 

 ness contract that did not undergo radical 

 transformation, by virtue of the effect of 

 the precious metals upon the laborer and 

 the employer, the state and the subject, the 

 debtor and the creditor. The precious 

 metals put the monetary systems of the na- 



