Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/409



IN all nations and states, the progress of the sciences has been uniformly slow. When the temples of Egypt, and the porticoes of Athens, were the archives of history and philosophy, human acquirements remained in a manner stagnant, in the obscurity of the hieroglyphics, and in the verbal precepts of the masters. The Romans, to whom the knowledge of the Greeks devolved, propagated in every part of the globe the refinement of their ideas, conjointly with the glory of their triumphant arms. With the prosperity of the empire, civilization, study, and literature, received a proportionate increase. Soon, however, this smiling scene underwent an entire change: the establishment of two empires, in the east and in the west; the successive revolutions in each of these dominions; the wars carried on by the barbarians; the irruptions made by them into almost every part of Europe; and other analogous events, caused the sciences and fine arts to disappear, and in that point of view may be said to have brutalized society. Then it was that the monk, retired from the world, or voluntarily obscured according to the conception of men, was the sole depository of these arts, and of these sciences, more especially of those which are termed abstract. In the cloisters, the judge, the