Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/65

Rh work of a master as too sacred to require addition or improvement. Ptolemy's system of the universe was so great an advance on the explanations which preceded it, that for sixteen dreary centuries it was imposed upon students of the heavens. Not until the time of Copernicus was the theory established that the sun is the center of our system, as against the notion that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. Aristotle had such a wonderful grasp of mind, had so comprehensive knowledge, and was a man of so much constructive genius, that admiration of him paralyzed research in science for nearly two thousand years. Whewell, the historian of the inductive sciences, shows how Aristotle's Hellenic love of symmetry in thought led him to bridge gaps in evidence and induction by verbal propositions. His works presented a fictitious completeness which imposed upon students for ages. Mere comment and expansion gave place to original work only when Bacon, Galileo, and others like them, taught that the way to know Nature was to observe, experiment, and generalize. When the methods of Aristotle and Ptolemy as observers were imitated, and when their results ceased to be echoed, was science born again, to achieve wonderful victories; then the goose-step of the schoolmen became the onward march of exploration.

The revolt against the predominance of classical education in favor of that of science is a noteworthy sign of the times. Greek and Latin literatures used to be held to furnish a mental training obtainable by no other studies. Now the dominion of words is passing away. In technical schools and colleges students are brought into direct contact with the facts of Nature, and are taught how to interpret these facts into principles. It is becoming more and more widely held that the ancient literatures only provided a gymnasium for the mind, exercise wherein can be profitably superseded and included by that afforded in the tasks of the laboratory, the workshops or the botanic field. Instead of repeating Greek prose and verse, the student of science is taught skill in the use of his senses and reasoning powers, it being intended that he shall so acquire knowledge as to be able to add to knowledge.

As in the history of science and education, so in that of the state, has authority declined before the spread of the love of freedom. The history of European and American civilization is the history of the gradual recognition of the individual's rights, as against the claims of monarchy and aristocracy, of privileged persons, families, and classes. And, however imperfectly democracy may fulfill the expectations of its advocates, through freedom having often come before education in responsibility, one thing is clear, its idea is better than those which it has displaced—the idea that, as each individual man has duties to the state, he has correlative rights which entitle him to a voice in appointing those who make the laws and execute them.

In its advance from authority to freedom, the history of Christian