104 



Our Retrospect. 



learn more. We know, of course, that the Egyptians were wonderful 

 in their architecture, and we have been educated to believe that they 

 had certain very correct conceptions in astronomy ; but we cannot now 

 definitely determine how far or in what manner any popular study of 

 the sciences may have been fostered. As for even their astronomical 

 knowledge, perhaps the beginning if not the very ending of it may have 

 come, as did the astronomy of the Chaldeans, mainly through lonely 

 shepherd observations from the star-lit plains, whereby at last all men 

 came to know what other and more reflective men had calculated from 

 the first, and all further progress been arrested as soon as enough had 

 been learned to help locate the angles of a royal tomb or determine 

 the true direction of an avenue of sphynxes ; and perhaps in like man- 

 ner the study of all sciences was never advanced beyond a few leading 

 principles. If Egypt in its palmy days ever enjoyed the advantages 

 of any co-operative scientific method, its results must have perished 

 with the nation, leaving no sign. 



We come down, for further examination of the question, to the best 

 known of early written records,— the books of the Old Testament. 

 Here, too, we find little to encourage us. These books are grand in 

 conception and purpose, poetical often in diction, to be read for 

 instruction and example, to be cherished as the outpouring of a de- 

 votional spirit, which, if it had ever at any previous time existed in an 

 equal degree, had had no similar depth of expression ; but still, in 

 many respects, are confined within narrow limits of thought and 

 unobservant of any thing relating to the natural sciences or the study 

 of them. It is to be presumed, of course, that works written as his- 

 tory, or for purposes of praise, prophecy or the inculcation of the 

 moral law should not be expected to treat about scientific problems ; 

 still it seems scarcely possible that writings upon varied subjects, by 

 different authors and extending over many centuries should not, by 

 suggestion, throw out some intimations about the conditions of social 

 culture attending their several epochs. Yet here we find scarcely 

 any allusion at all to the wonders of nature spread so freely around 

 and so earnestly seeming to demand investigation, no curiosity about 

 races not far distant and many of them living under systems of phi- 

 losophy, codes and traditions* well worthy of bein studied, scarcely 

 a thought even about the stars shining down with unceasing invita- 

 tion to have the laws of their being and the methods of their progress 

 through space examined. A calm, uninvestigating literature, marked 

 with more than ordinary exclusiveness and narrowness of regard con- 

 cerning physical matters, and certainly not suggestive of a generous 

 desire in men of any class or nationality to enliven their period by 



