Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/587

Rh. Although Buckle wrote a history of civilization and frequently uses the term, as also science and history, I do not find that he defines any of them. He undertook to write a history of human progress that should be as trustworthy as a work on natural or physical science, because he thought it possible to discover and to formulate its laws as clearly as those of the material universe. Neither does M. Guizot define civilization, although he devotes many pages of his work to explaining what he means by the term. M. Rambauld in his recent history of French civilization admits that, notwithstanding the vast amount of work that has been done in the collection of materials, there are still many points to be cleared up. After telling his readers what sort of a history he proposes to write, he sums up by saying: "In a word, how our ancestors lived and by what labors they prepared the better life that we now enjoy." This sort of history approaches most nearly to a physical science because it deals with such general facts that they can be confirmed by a great deal of testimony. We can usually tell how a people who come within the historic period lived, what were their customs and their religion, what was their social and political organization, even when we are constrained to accept with much reservation the reputed deeds of individuals.

The term "science" has of late fallen into almost as great disrepute as the other much-abused word "professor." Both have shared the fate of the man who once upon a time went down to Jericho. We hear of a science of carpentry, a science of journalism, a science of athletics, a science of horse-shoeing, and the like almost without end, every one of which is presided over by its appropriate professor, or by several of them. If we could have a science of humbug, a science of dulnessdullness [sic], a science of false pretense, each properly manned or womaned, our gullible public would probably ere long be wiser than it is now. When the English language contained only forty or fifty thousand words, every one had a fairly definite meaning which all intelligent persons understood. Now when it is reputed to include about ten times as many, each one is given the significance that the ignorance or the heedlessness of the user chooses to assign to it. For as Mephistopheles said to the student:

 And just where fails the comprehension, A word steps promptly in as deputy.

What doth it profit a man to enter upon the laborious and endless task of seeking for facts when words will serve many more purposes and can be picked up anywhere and everywhere?

History being the written record of events arranged with reference to their relation to each other as cause and effect in the nature of the case is preceded by chronicles. The peoples who inhabited all that part of the world known as the "Ancient East" hardly got beyond this stage. We have characteristic specimens in the Old Testament. In many.