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SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 542. 



time of writing), algoritlim aud algebra 

 came out of almacabala, leaving a residuum 

 of black art and white magic, jugglery and 

 enchantment ; and as the algorithm grew 

 into arithmetic and wizardly geomancy 

 gave way to scholarly geometry, mathe- 

 matics took shape as the complement of 

 astronomy — and these sisters twain were 

 nurses and teachers of all the younger sci- 

 ences. Still the caldron of inchoate knowl- 

 edge boiled and bubbled with ^laebethian 

 pother, and the foul fmnes of black magic 

 long concealed the few germs of real knowl- 

 edge shaped by the steady pressure of ac- 

 tual experience— for this was the time of 

 alchemy, whose slimy spume at last slipped 

 away from chemistry, the third of the 

 sciences. 



Astronomy led writing (as the constella- 

 tions attest), while mathematics followed 

 close on -writing and records as its symbols 

 show, and both belonged to what may be 

 called the naissance of knowledge; chem- 

 istry appeared during the same period, 

 bearing the prophecy of physics caught by 

 Archimedes, yet remained a helpless weak- 

 ling — the foil and puppet of medievalism 

 — throughout the whole of the dark ages; 

 but during the renaissance the trio of elder 

 sciences gained strength together and as- 

 sumed lasting dominion over the realra of 

 knowledge. Because their birth dates back 

 to or beyond the beginning of records, the 

 early stages of these sciences are imperfect- 

 ly written ; but the youngest science, an- 

 thropology, buys methods and principles 

 from the more exact elders and pays amply 

 in coin of history— for by tracing the ca- 

 reers of later-born or slower-grown folk 

 and cults, anthropologists learn to retrace 

 the lost steps in the careers of ancestral 

 peoples and early cultures. Here lie some 

 of the relations between anthropology and 

 the elder sciences; she receives exact meth- 

 ods tested by millenniums of experience, 

 and gives interpretations of the ideas and 



motives, the arts and accomplishments, the 

 modes of thought and the stages of progress 

 of the earliest science-makers. Astronomy 

 and mathematics and chemistry are sys- 

 tems of knowledge produced hy men and 

 minds, anthropology is systematic knowl- 

 edge of these producers; and neither the 

 old sciences nor the new can be rendered 

 complete and stable without the support of 

 the others. 



The science of sentient man- of man as 

 a thinking and collective organism— helps 

 to illumine the dark ages no less than the 

 naissance of knowledge ; and at the same 

 time it sheds new light on the origin of 

 that group of modern sciences of which it 

 is itself the youngest. The early period of 

 intellectual activity in Babylon and Alex- 

 andria, Athens and Rome, may be likened 

 to the blossoming of a plant in spring-time ; 

 it was the summing and outshowiug of a 

 mentality shaped during uncounted genera- 

 tions of experience along definite lines, in 

 environments of distinctive sort — and the 

 blossoming was fuller of promise than the 

 ancients dreamed. Then came the ages 

 that were dark because energy was diverted 

 to new lines ; for leaders of thought gave 

 way to leaders of action, and these be- 

 came pioneers in new environments where 

 threads of new experience had to be spun 

 from the lives of generations before they 

 could be woven into the fabric of knowl- 

 edge. The forefathers of the joint found- 

 ers of scholasticism and science lived win- 

 terless lives in sunny lands, and the early 

 science reveals an elysian tinge; while the 

 ancestry of the makers of modern (or nat- 

 ural) science spent their force in conquer- 

 ing woodlands and wood-life in cloudy 

 and wet and long-wintered Europe, and 

 their efforts finally yielded a harder and 

 more practical product than that of the 

 earlier and easier time. During the nature- 

 conquest of a millennium and more, the 

 ideals of the elder masters seemed lost in a 



