Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/586

582 record, or only a very incomplete one? If we say, the French character is the product of French history, we mean one thing; if we say, M. Martin wrote a French history or a history of the French, we mean something quite different. This distinction is rarely observed with care.

All knowledge, every fact as distinguished from opinion or belief, may be classed under the head of science; at any rate, it is difficult to distinguish between them. There is a great deal of knowledge not intellectually apprehended that is the result of experience or of instinct. We are wont to employ the latter term to designate a capacity which we can not further analyze. Most quadrupeds when thrown into deep water swim as readily the first time as the twentieth, while man can not swim until he has learned. We know that quadrupeds can swim, but it is a question whether they know it. Is it proper to apply the term knowledge to what is known without having been learned? Most men as well as other animals learn by experience; the latter only to a limited extent however. The most important discovery ever made by man was the use of fire. How he made it we do not know. The Greek myth of Prometheus, who is reputed to have stolen it from heaven, points to a celestial origin, that is to a stroke of lightning. How highly fire was prized in ancient times is demonstrated by the veneration accorded to the Vestal virgins. They represented the last remnant of paganism to give way before the advance of Christianity. Herodotus relates that the sole survivor of the Lacedæmonians at the battle of Thermopylæ was so disgraced that "no Spartan would give him a light to kindle his fire." In pioneer times the housewife was usually careful to keep the fire on the hearth from going out in the summer when it was not needed for warmth. In this respect civilized people usually exhibit less ingenuity than savages. The practical use that could be made of fire was without doubt the most important discovery made by prehistoric man; it is probable that his rise from the bestial stage began with it.

Buckle believed history to be the most popular branch of knowledge and the one upon which most had been-written. If his opinion is correct it is due to the circumstance that it is hardly possible to deal with any subject without viewing it to some extent historically. But he also considered the most celebrated historians inferior to the most successful cultivators of physical science. The comparison is unfair because the subject matter is widely disparate. The cultivator of a physical science works with his materials directly; the historian indirectly. The former is a good deal in the position of the magistrate who, when trying a case, has his witnesses before him. He can examine and cross-examine until he has ascertained the truth as nearly as possible. The latter is like the same official who has to rely upon affidavits. He can not go behind the returns, or if he does, he has to depend upon surmises and