August 20, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



231 



dowed with the property of obeying law — 

 unalterably obeying law — is incomparably 

 grander than the conception of one law pre- 

 vailing here, another law prevailing there, 

 of irresponsible caprice operating both here 

 and there. 



History affords no more remarkable phe- 

 nomenon than the retrograde movement in 

 civilization which began with the decline of 

 Koman power and continued for more than 

 a thousand years, approximately to the 

 epoch of the Borgias, Columbus and Coper- 

 nicus. There had once existed a wonderful 

 Greek civilization, but for twelve or fifteen 

 centuries it was so nearly suppressed as to 

 be without serious influence upon the life 

 of the European people. Greek literature, 

 one of the world's priceless possessions, not 

 surpassed by the best modem literatures, 

 was as complete two thousand years ago as 

 it is to-day. Yet in the middle ages, if we 

 except a few scattered churchmen, it was 

 lost to the European world. A Greek sci- 

 ence never existed. Now and then, it is 

 true, a Greek philosopher taught that the 

 earth is round, or that the earth revolves 

 around the sun, or speculated upon the 

 constitution of matter: but excepting the 

 geometry of Euclid and Archimedes, we 

 may say that nothing was proved and that 

 no serious efforts were made to obtain 

 proofs. There could be no scientific spirit 

 in the Greek nation and civilization as long 

 as the Greek religion lived and the Greek 

 people and government consulted and were 

 guided by the Greek oracles. If there had 

 been a Greek science, equal in merit with 

 modern science, think you that stupidity 

 and superstition could have secured a 

 strangle hold upon Greek civilization and 

 have maintained a thousand years of igno- 

 rance and degradation? Intellectual life 

 could not prosper in Europe as long as 

 dogma in Italy, only 300 years ago, in the 

 days of Bruno and Galileo, was able to say, 



"Animals, which move, have limbs and 

 muscles ; the earth has no limbs nor muscles, 

 therefore it does not move;" or as long as 

 dogma in Massachusetts, less than 250 

 years ago, was able to hang by the neck 

 until dead the woman whom it charged 

 with "giving a look toward the great 

 meeting-house of Salem, and immediately 

 a demon entered the house and tore down 

 a part of the wainscoting." It was the 

 rebirth of science, exemplified chiefly by 

 astronomy, and secondarily by medicine, 

 which gave to the people of Europe the 

 power to dispel gradually the unthinkable 

 conditions of the middle ages. 



Shall we try to estimate what astronomy, 

 an ideal science, sometimes called an un- 

 practical science, has done for mankind? 

 We shall not dwell upon its so-called prac- 

 tical applications, such as the supplying of 

 accurate time, the sailing of ships precisely 

 to their destinations on the other side of 

 the great oceans, the making of accurate 

 maps of the continents and islands, the 

 running of boundary lines between nations, 

 the predicting of times of high and low 

 tides, and so on ; we shall consider only the 

 pure knowledge side of the subject. 



Conceive of the earth as eternally 

 shrouded in thick clouds so that the earth's 

 dwellers could never see the sun, the moon, 

 the stars and the nebulte, but not so thick 

 that the sun's energy could not penetrate 

 to the soil and grow the crops. Under these 

 conditions, we might know the earth's rock 

 strata to the depth of a mile or two, we 

 might know the mountains and the atmo- 

 sphere to a height of two or three miles, we 

 might acquire a knowledge of the oceans, 

 but we should be creatures of exceedingly 

 narrow limits. Our vision, our life, would 

 be confined to a stratum of earth and air 

 only four or five miles in thickness. It 

 would be as if the human race went about 

 its work of raising corn for food and cotton 



