276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
a governmental organization, little was known of the natural stages in 
the course of human development. The notable works of Maine and 
McLennan on primitive law, of Fustel de Coulanges on “The Ancient 
City,” of Lewis H. Morgan and Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte 
on early society, and of Taylor and Powell and Brinton on lowly re- 
ligion had not been written—indeed the epoch-marking investigations 
of these and other writers run back to the unprecedented efforts of the 
American revolutionists to ascertain the ultimate foundations of human 
government, efforts not disparaged but only accentuated by the rapid 
growth of human knowledge since they were made. Since then, science 
has come into being on the earlier foundation laid by Bacon and Linne 
and a few others: of the five cardinal principles of science,’ the first 
(the indestructibility of matter) was established by a contemporary of 
the Revolution, Lavoisier; the second (the persistence of motion) grew 
out of Rumford’s experiments begun under the influence of this Amer- 
ican rennaissance; while the others (the development of species, the 
uniformity of nature, and the responsivity of mind) came scores of 
years later—indeed nearly all of the current branches of science have 
arisen since the revolution. Since then, too, historical knowledge has 
been both expanded and refined; geographic knowledge has extended 
over the full half of the earth then practically unknown; invention has 
revolutionized industries, largely through the American example ; steam 
and electricity and high explosives have been harnessed; the world’s 
population has doubled; man’s conquest over nature has advanced 
further than during all earlier time; statecraft in the modern sense has 
taken form, and diplomacy has been reconstructed, both largely through 
the world-touching influence of the seventh and eighth decades of the 
eighteenth century; and the American governmental model has been 
adopted in spirit if not in form by far the greater part of the nations 
of the earth. In the light of the vast advance since 1776, the sagacity 
and courage displayed by the signers of the declaration and the articles 
of confederation, and especially by the framers of the constitution, 
shine forth among the greater marvels of human history. 
The founders included eminent scholars and statesmen, yet they 
were practical men confronted by problems of which the issue meant 
life or death; and on surveying the field of experience in governmental 
organization within their reach, they seized on the essentials and wisely 
withheld their hands from both the collateral and the controvertible. 
Dwelling long on the pressingly practical (as shown by the record of 
discussion in the constitutional convention), they defined clearly the 
legislative and executive and judicative functions of the nascent gov- 
1 Outlined in an address of the president of the Anthropological Society of 
Washington, delivered before the Washington Academy of Sciences and affiliated 
societies February 19, 1900 (Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sci- 
ences, Vol. 2, 1900, pp. 1-12). 
