Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/282

276 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 religion 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 American rennaissancerenaissance [sic]; 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