Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/27

Rh To the former part of this age belong the weapons found in the Tiefenau, near Berne, plainly indicating that it was the field of a battle fought some 600 years u. c. Of great interest, also, is the ancient city of graves near Hallstadt, where the Burgomaster Ramsauer and others found over 900 graves and an immense quantity of iron and bronze weapons. But, interesting as such discoveries are, they lie too far outside the special topic of our treatise to be further discussed.

If a name, descriptive of the age in which we live, be sought for, "the Age of Paper" is perhaps as good as any that can be discussed. If we name it not from its present but its near future characteristic, we may perhaps best adopt that suggested by an eminent geologist—"the Age of Steel."

Even this hurried retrospect of the various prehistoric ages makes prominent the fact that in Europe, if not over all the earth, humanity has progressed, with various temporary haltings, from beginnings very rude and, in some respects, almost animal-like—that it is only after the lapse of many millenniums it has attained its present high physical and spiritual development.

In the progress of these studies we have perhaps become the poorer by more than one fair dream's evanishing. We have not found—we could not find—either the lovely paradise of our first parents, nor the much-sung, much-blessed golden age.

But one thing, at least, such investigations secure to us—the conviction, namely, of the limitless perfectibility implanted by the Creator in the very germs and essence of all his creatures, and preeminently in man.

And this conviction it is that opens to the eye and hope the precious, the inspiring prospect of an ever richer, fairer development for races yet to come.



ROPHECY is the prediction of an event—the declaration of something to come. When future events—either in the history of the world or in the life of man—have been foretold from no known data and from no law, the prophecy must have been divine, for none but God can know the future of man. When such events in the history of Nature and in the life of matter have been predicted from known data and from established laws, the prophecy is human and scientific. Every science in its growth passes through three stages: First, we have the stage of observation, when facts are collected and registered by many minds in many places. Next, we have the stage of 