Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/419

Rh thoughts and, to some extent, the feelings of the people of the most distant ages and the most remote regions, almost as well as those of our intimate friends. Yet when we remember that man has left intelligible traces upon the earth, dating back at least seven thousand years, and compare their testimony with the world, say three hundred years ago, we are not conscious of a great advance either intellectually or socially. It is evident, therefore, that important as sight is to man, something more is needed to make him progressive. As soon as the mind becomes fossilized by tradition all advance ceases. If, on the other hand, we compare the world about A.D. 1600 with its condition at the present day, we are constrained to marvel at the advance that has been made. In fact it is not putting the case too strong to say that if by progress we mean man's power over matter, it has been greater during the last fifty years than during all the preceding time of his abode upon the earth. No more striking example of the stationary condition of mankind in certain relations exists than that furnished by artificial lighting. The situation in 1800 was virtually the same that had existed from the earliest times. Torches were used out-of-doors and lamps indoors. Many of the latter found in Grecian and Roman tombs served their purpose just as well as some of those used within the memory of men now living. Friction matches did not become general until about the middle of the last century. It is sometimes said in a tone of deprecation that as the realm of science increases that of poetry diminishes. Yet the fact is that the appreciation of the beauties of natural scenery has advanced with the careful study of nature. There may not be a realized connection, for poets are rarely scientists; albeit both have often been equally close observers, even if not found in each other's company or united in the same person. Few men have written more appreciatively or more sympathetically of the beauty and grandeur of natural scenery than geologists not a few; and geology is among the most modern of the sciences. The botanist who sees vegetation not only with his corporeal eye, but with his mind as well, derives a keener enjoyment from the beauties of vegetable life than does he who can not see beneath the surface; who has no conception of the forces that make plant life what it is.

To the ancients, especially to the Greeks, sea and stream, forest and field, mountain and moorland, were peopled with animate beings, it is true, and their imaginations seem to have sported in a region that is virtually closed to us moderns. On the other hand, while these beings were objects of interest they were also sources of terror; they were quite as often the doers of mischief as the bringers of blessings. Storms and lightning, floods and volcanic eruptions, are still natural phenomena to be feared, but they are no longer looked upon with superstitious dread as something to which man must submit with a blind and unreasoning fatalism. Their devastations can in some measure