CLARENCE E. DUTTON-RELATION OF SCIENCE TO CIVILIZATION. 37 
tinction between modern and ancient reasoning, I will proceed at once 
to the most striking and important one. In the ancient philosophy the 
syllogistic form of reasoning, which was almost universal, involved 
premises which were esteemed, to be fixed and ultimate Some were 
acknowledged to be axioms, others to be founded on authority which 
was more than human and which could not be disputed without impiety. 
To question them, even, was held to be mere logical contumacy. Some 
of these postulates have been held to be true down to the present time, 
or at least have not yet been overthrown. But a far greater proportion 
of them have long since been discarded from human beliefs. Since the 
validity of conclusions can never be greater than that of the premises, 
the result can readily be imagined. Progress in knowledge was possible 
only along those lines where the primary postulates were sound, and 
these were narrow in the extreme. Outside of these narrow lines every 
argument, every hypothesis, every speculation, was sure to collide sooner 
or later with some of these fixed beliefs and be flung back to its starting 
point. It was in the inductive branch of reasoning that this barrier 
proved to be the most insuperable, and in the advance of knowledge in¬ 
duction is primary and antecedent to deduction. There was however 
one branch of philosophy in which the ancients made real progress, and 
that was geometry. But it happens that in this field of thought all the 
primary postulates were in the main sound; although modern criticism 
has challenged the proof of some of the Euclidean postulates, the ques¬ 
tions thus raised have little relevancy to the geometric problems which 
troubled the ancient philosopher. Yet the progress of geometry was 
greatly hampered indirectly by the prevailing disease. For we now 
know that all branches of science must lend mutual aid and assistance to 
each, and one branch levies upon the others for pabulum and stimulus. 
One branch is constantly proposing problems for the others to solve. 
Ancient geometry was deprived of any such help or incentive. 
This exceptional immunity of geometry from the prevailing malady 
no doubt explains the admiration and delight with which it was regarded 
by the philosophers of antiquity. In it they found satisfaction of their 
reasoning powers, resting in sure conclusions and in harmony with the 
world of phenomena around them. All else was doubt, confusion, my^s- 
tery—an endless conflict of mind and matter with conclusions in which 
nothing was concluded. When Plato was asked what was the occupation 
of the deity he answered, “ He geometrizes continually.” 
But when we turn to modern scientific philosophy how vast the differ¬ 
ence! Here no such adamantine barriers, no such crushing interdicts, 
block the way of logical induction. Science makes but one ultimate 
postulate and that is the existence of mind and matter conditioned by 
time and space. What mind is, in the last analysis, it troubles itself 
little to inquire, but directs its inquiry wholly to matter with its time 
