ITS METHODS AND TENDENCIES. 451 
If the wheels of time could, for our benefit, be rolled 
back, and we could see in all its details the civilization 
of Europe three or four hundred years ago, we should 
find that our so much respected ancestors, who fill so 
large a space on the page of history, were little better 
than barbarians. Among the English, the French, the 
Germans, Spanish and Italians we should find a phase of 
civilization which, excepting that it included the elements 
—as yet but imperfectly developed—of a true religious 
faith, is scarcely to be preferred to that of the Chinese. 
Aside from the vast difference perceptible between the 
civilization of that epoch and ours, as exhibited in the 
political condition of the people, in their social economy 
and morals, the general intellectual darkness of the period 
referred to could not fail to impress us both profoundly 
and painfully. Out of that darkness and chaos have 
come, as if by magic, all our modern democracy with its 
individual liberty and dignity, all our civil and religious 
freedom, all our philanthropy and benevolence, all our 
diffused comfort and luxury, most of our good manners 
and good morals, and all the splendid achievements of 
our modern scientific investigation. 
It is unnecessary for me here to describe in detail the 
origin and growth of modern science. That has been so 
well done by Dr. Whewell that all men of education are 
familiar with the steps by which the grand, beautiful, and 
symmetrical fabric formed by the grouping of the natural 
Sciences has acquired its present lofty proportions. 
Previous to the period when the Baconian philosophy 
_Was accepted as a guide in scientific investigation, but one 
department of science had attained a development which 
has any considerable claim to our respect. Mathematics, 
both pure and applied, had been assiduously cultivated 
