Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/100

 90 fact, between prehistoric works and deeds and all the greatest scientific achievements. Very wonderful as the early progress was,—think of civilized man's failure to domesticate animals, and, incomparably important, think of the winning of fire,—it lacked a certain germ of growth, which is familiar to us in our own times. Each thing came by itself, it came by accident, and it did not directly lead to other things. Beyond living one's life and waiting for something to turn up so that one's ingenuity might be exercised, there was no method of discovery or invention; the knowledge that existed was not systematized; there was no generalization from experience; and each invention, aside from its particular utility, led to nothing else. How different have been the effects of Pasteur's discovery of the place of micro-organisms in nature! Almost at once the causes of many of the gravest diseases of man and other animals became known. There followed the discovery of means of avoiding disease, of curing disease, and we are now well on the way to blot out some of the oldest scourges of humanity. Such are a few of the results in medicine. When the chemical and agricultural results are added, Pasteur appears already to have influenced the life of almost every civilized man.

Clearly the early advances of practical knowledge are not to be confounded with natural science. They belong to the period of human development which is the concern of the anthropologist, and they only concern us as they help to an understanding of what science really is.

ANCIENT SCIENCE

A very little true science did, however, exist at the dawn of history, such as a description of the zodiac and astronomical knowledge, upon which more or less perfect calendars could be based, and knowledge of the properties of triangles which was useful in surveying after the Nile floods. To this slender store the earliest of the Greek philosophers contributed new discoveries, but before long the genius and power of the Greek mind led to overweening confidence in speculation unaided by observation and experiment, and, as a result, the