20 THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE. 



soil depends upon the dew, the rain, and the annual con- 

 tribution of falling leaves, which enrich it. 



Literature, art, and science, make the most luxuriant 

 growth where wealth is the most abundant and most 

 widely diffused, where government is strongest and most 

 liberal, and where religion is most pervading and spirit- 

 ual. Poverty, anarchy, and irreligion, are to them what 

 the sands of the Sahara are to the flowers, the grains 

 and the grasses. 



But, while literature, art, and science can thrive only 

 in civilized communities, they are at the same time, on 

 the other hand, the most powerful elements in modern 

 civilization. Just consider how large a part they play 

 in the affairs of life. Banish the libraries from our 

 homes and our schools ; deprive our houses of their stat- 

 uary and paintings, and our public institutions of their 

 galleries of art ; rob our commerce of steam and electric- 

 ity, our manufactories of chemical processes, and our 

 agricultural industries of scientific appliances, and how 

 barren and lifeless would be our political and social 

 condition. 



From such considerations it would seem that neither 

 of these two sets of factors in civilization could exist 

 without the other. Nevertheless, if, prompted by the 

 spirit of modern philosophy, we probe antiquity, we find 

 that, in the beginning, this mutual dependence did not 

 exist ; that these two sets of elements were introduced 

 at different periods in human development ; and that 

 law and religion — not literature and art — came first and 

 are most fundamental. This is the testimony of the 

 records. 



The light of history, as we look backward, becomes 

 more and more obscured, and yet not quite wholly ob- 

 scured, by the mists of legends. We also catch glimpses 

 of an almost prehistoric poetry. Think, for example, of 

 such bards as Eumolpus and Orpheus, antedating Homer 



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