Advance Sheets from PENN MONTHLY, 
Jor August, 1879. 
THE MODERN MUSEUM:* 
ois sentiment which forms the text of the following remarks, 
is this: that of all the grand edifices which men are accus- 
tomed to erect for public uses, none is more necessary than the 
museum. I firmly believe that the spirit of the present age has 
made it that of great museums. This is the day of colossal ex- 
hibits of the works of creation, .as the middle ages were the ages 
for the building of immense temples, or cathedrals. These, it must 
be confessed, were too frequently erected to an unknown God. 
But with the field of nature exposed before us, as it has been by 
the labors of many men during the present century, we have 
now acquired, it is to be hoped, some knowledge of that God who 
had been previously unknown, so far as relates to those works 
which interest us most immediately. 
Now, as regards the method of presenting the results of the 
great and all embracing process of creation, I will offer a kind 
of synopsis of the order in which it appears to our minds as we 
stand within our civilization, and thence cast our eyes over the past, 
gradually unfolding the history of the world from its commence- 
ment. Some of the statements which I shall make will doubtless 
be trite, for I chiefly hope to exhibit the connection between facts 
already recognized, upon which the classification of this great ex- 
position may be securely based. ; 
It is well known that man as an animal commenced his exist- 
ence with but few appliances for protecting and supporting himself. 
There is still a state of savagery in which even the making of the 
vessels for holding food and liquid is unknown. Implements of 
all kinds, at an early day, and ina still existing state of savagery, 
were nothing but fragments of rocks, mostly of flint, and the use 
of metals was unknown, except as shining ornaments with which 
the savage was amused in leisure moments. The making of pot- 
*An address delivered by Professor E. D. Cope, at the opening of the Permanent 
Exposition, in Philadelphia, May roth, 1879. : 
