September 19, 1902.J 



SCIENCE. 



455 



conscious courage and heroism of the scien- 

 tific spirit.'* The true scientific spirit, 

 however, is quite as often and as impres- 

 sively shown by the investigator who pub- 

 lishes conclusions at variance with the be- 

 liefs of the world or of his own colleagues, 

 and the physical suffering of a Galileo and 

 the moral crucifixion of the promoters of 

 almost every new discovery or new philos- 

 ophy afford illustrations of this fact. But 

 courage best appears in toleration. 



The past, the present and the future have 

 their special interests to the student of the 

 trend of human progress, and it is easy, in 

 a general way, to follow the line of the 

 curve. Compare what is known of the 

 older civilizations with the present of our 

 own and the promise of the future for com- 

 ing- generations of civilized men! 



In the days of the prehistoric races, 

 whose only records are now found in the 

 few relics here and there discovered by the 

 geologist and the antiquarian, centuries 

 passed without important changes, and 

 progress was inconceivably slow as meas- 

 ured by the movement of the later days. 

 Progress in the most enlightened countries 

 was comparable to that of China during 

 recent centuries and the barbarian stood ab- 

 solutely still and remains, even to-day, 

 as with his ancestors and forefathers of a 

 thousand generations before science or civ- 

 ilization had a home or a name. The ' curve 

 of progress ' was practically rectilinear and 

 horizontal through centuries and millen- 

 niums. 



With the appearance of manufactures, 

 trade and widening commerce and ex- 

 change, a rise became observable and the 

 trend of progress during the periods of the 

 history of the East Indian, the Babylonian, 

 the Assyrian, and the old Greek was slow- 

 ly but steadily upward. The discoveries 

 and philosophies of Aristotle and his eon- 

 temporaries and successors, the introduction 



* The Nation, June 5, 1002, p. 437. 



of the Aristotelian methods of study of na- 

 ture and of the sciences generally, the in- 

 ventions of Hero and the other Alexandri- 

 ans, of the mechanicians of the Museum 

 and the Serapion, the revelations of the 

 Ptolemys and the Euclids, the alchemists 

 and the naturalists of the Egyptian period 

 and of Greek mastery of the Nile : these 

 events and these inventors in science, phi- 

 losophy and mechanics produced the first ob- 

 servable acceleration and upward ciu'vature. 

 The Saracens, driving out the Greeks, sub- 

 stituting their own for the older civilization, 

 but yet seizing and carrying forward the 

 torch of knowledge and preserving every 

 spark of the older light, promoting all the 

 sciences, cherishing, learning all and caring 

 for men of science, brought aboirt a still 

 more marked acceleration, and the upward 

 trend of the curve continually became more 

 observable until, by transfer into Italy, and 

 in the hands of Leonardo, by importation 

 into Spain through Moorish enterprise and 

 wisdom, learning and the modern arts, so 

 far as then known, all the sciences 

 found safe and permanent home in Etirope, 

 despite the later opposition and persecution 

 of the pioneers in science by the all too 

 human elements of the dominant church. 



But it was not until about the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, at a time when 

 all the arts and all the sciences took a sud- 

 den start upward like the flowers of spring, 

 that any rapid pi'ogress commenced. Then 

 astronomy and physics and chemistry and 

 all the applied sciences began to contribute 

 to the advancement of learning, and Ba- 

 con 's aspiration and Milton 's cheerful lead- 

 ing, gradually bringing about a systemati- 

 zation of knowledge and a scientific method 

 of advancement of science, began to illus- 

 trate the wonderful power of systematic 

 work in well determined courses in accel- 

 erating all human progress. Prom the in- 

 troduction of the inventions which gave 

 firm foundation to the iron and steel manu- 



